Iranian democracy

[scottdisco]

Abolhassan Banisadr is claiming via Twitter (how fucking weird is that!) that the Sepah leaders arrested earlier were ordered to kill large numbers of protesters and refused.

and he has mentioned this Khamenei coup d'etat several times now.

 

[crackerjack]

Cole

quite, Scott, quite

here's Packer yesterday

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

and be careful how you twitter

http://twitspam.org/?p=1403

this one - how are they deciding exactly what is/isn't "disinformation? unless they're working directly w/people in Iran (which could be the case), tho even then.

Abolhassan Banisadr is claiming via Twitter (how fucking weird is that!) that the Sepah leaders arrested earlier were ordered to kill large numbers of protesters and refused.

but that doesn't really make sense? presumably if the regime (whoever that is, or is becoming - Khamenei, Ahmadenijad, top IRGC brass) wanted to massacre protesters surely they could have found someone to pull the trigger by now? it's not as if they have a shortage of gunmen. also, isn't he in France? if it's really Banisadr, of course.

 

[crackerjack]

this one - how are they deciding exactly what is/isn't "disinformation? unless they're working directly w/people in Iran (which could be the case), tho even then.

Indeed. And they could be getting disinfo from Iran.

Mousavi's peeps supposedly put out statement yesterday asking people to avoid a couple of sites which were pretending to be run by his campaign, asking for personal details.

 

[scottdisco]

this one - how are they deciding exactly what is/isn't "disinformation? unless they're working directly w/people in Iran (which could be the case), tho even then.

if you read the information in the link they explain it quite reasonably and persuasively FWIW.

@Cracker: yes i imagine the likes of Simon Tisdall in het graun (he's still their world affairs editor no?) will be agitating a little toward Obama to say something but - as a track rule with Tisdall (who has been far too kind to the Syrian dictatorship in the past, for instance, as just one example of his often bone-headed approach) for different reasons to, say, Ollie's principled earlier reasons - it strikes me just because Tisdall still has a bit of a anti-american tic inside him that breaks free now and again. (e.g. see his very confused take on Congress and the Armenian genocide last year or so.)

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

linked in the Cole piece

SF techie helps stir Iranian protests

...Iran has the highest number of bloggers per capita in the world, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University...

for real?

Heap, 25, has never followed Iranian news much...felt the same defiant frustration that led him in the past to butt heads with the music and movie industry associations by creating file-sharing sites...And I especially have no room for a tyrannical regime shutting up a whole population...

yeah, so quickly - on the one hand - engaged, good intentions, trying to do something constructive = good. on the other, getting into the middle of something you're essentially clueless about (surely the experience for many if not all cyber-supporters/followers of the Iranian elections etc) = ambiguous at best. not that both can't exist in the same space.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

if you read the information in the link they explain it quite reasonably and persuasively FWIW.

actually I read it & still wasn't very convinced.

not so much about spam - also if you take a quick look it seems 80% or more of what they target is, unsurprisingly, prngrphy & advertising or some mixture of the two - but about "disinformation". there's no explanation for how "disinformation" is separated out from good "information". who's deciding which is which? why am I supposed to trust them & their judgment, assuming it's in good faith?

 

[...]

Ollie's principled earlier reasons

Er, yeah, I might have been wrong about that, actually. I thought, yesterday, that Obama's cool distance was necessary and useful, however distasteful its underlying implications and reasons. (The realpolitik cynicism, the detente thing.)

Then again, I swung back the other way when I saw Henry Kissinger praising Obama on Newsnight last night for those very reasons. Anyone else see that slug-like visage sliming all over the screen? It curdled my Crème brûlée, which I'd been looking forward to all day.

 

[scottdisco]

fair enough.

This post will be updated as fake accounts are received. For those questioning the information here, we place accounts here that a) post multiple comments of the same sort (i.e. Spam) and b) accounts that are obviosuly trying to entrap twitter users who are tweeting from Iran or c) those who obviously are trying to spread mis-information. If we arent 100% sure we will put in it the “To watch” or “Suspected” list.

i admit there's ambiguity there with (b) and (c), and clearly i am assuming there are processes going on they're not putting out (they being the people compiling these lists) in the PD, so to an extent if i make any complimentary remark in their direction it's on faith
which doesn't answer your question. i got myself a Twitter and that FindTheRats that Vim linked to seems to show their working a bit.
eg one recent tweet appeared to reprimand another user by saying they didn't see information or mis-use, just a different pov to the situation. another tweet cautions "We're not silencing different povs, just trolls and spammers spreading misinformation." (you'd have to be following the twitter in question to get a broader overview and frankly i know you don't have time or inclination for that when there are people marching and heads in danger of being cracked.)

i agree about the well-intentioned SF techie example.
am sure a lot of people putting up proxy servers might not have been able to find Iran on a map two weeks ago and in helping creating space they are doing something helpful.
but that excellent article Vim linked to about just war theory's place in assessing the morality of DDOS attacks (wonderful piece that Vim, BTW, ta) shows up just the sorts of points you raise; i'm with you in the ambiguity camp in that sense.

 

[scottdisco]

Er, yeah, I might have been wrong about that, actually. I thought, yesterday, that Obama's cool distance was necessary and useful, however distasteful its underlying implications and reasons. (The realpolitik cynicism, the detente thing.)

i shouldn't have brought you in to my post there which was essentially an extended argument with that cock Tisdall, but i wanted some counter-example of a person with smarts and a moral compass, and you fitted the bill.

also the board knows, i think, how very similar Ollie and i are on these sorts of things, as a rule

 

[scottdisco]

i'm glad i didn't see Newsnight last night. that repulsive lizard. (harsh on reptiles i know.)

 

[vimothy]

WSJ:

At the same time, Iran's Interior Ministry ordered a probe into an attack late Sunday night on Tehran University students in a dormitory reported to have left several students dead and many more injured or arrested. Students say it was carried out by Islamic militia and police. Iran's English-language Press TV said the ministry urged Tehran's governor's office to identify those involved. Iran's influential speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, condemned the attack.

Students' Web sites reported mass resignations by Tehran University professors outraged over the incident. One medical student said he and his roommate blocked their door with furniture and hid in the closet when they heard the militia's motorcycles approaching. He heard the militia breaking down doors, and then screams of anguish as students were dragged from their beds and beaten violently.

When he came out after the militia had left, friends and classmates lay unconscious in dorm rooms and hallways, many with chest wounds from being stabbed or bloody faces from blows to their heads, he said. The staff of the hospital where the wounded students were taken, Hazrat Rasoul Hospital, was so shocked that they went on strike for two hours, standing silently outside the gate in their white medical uniforms.

 

[four_five_one]

Interesting rebuke to the left on the infinite thought blog: http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/2009/06/why-are-iranians-dreaming-again.asp

Also some points about technology worth quoting (which seem to back up Padraig's position):

"There is no doubt that new media and technologies have been playing an important role in the movement, but it seems that the cause and the effect are being reversed in the picture painted by the media. First of all, it is the existence of a strong political determination, combined with people becoming deprived of basic means of communication, which has led the movement to creatively test every other channel and method. Musavi’s paper was shut down on the night of election, his frequent request to talk to people on the state TV has been rejected, his official website is often blocked and his physical contact with his supporters has been kept minimum by keeping him in house arrest (with the exception of his appearance on the over a million march on June 15).

Second, due to the heavy pressure on foreign journalists inside Iran, these technological tools have come to play a significant role in sending the messages and images of the movement to the outside world. However, the creative self-organization of the movement is using a manifold of methods and channels, many of them simple and traditional, depending on their availability: shouting ‘death to dictator’ from rooftops, calling landlines, at the end of one rally chanting the time and place of the next one, and by jeopardizing oneself by physically standing on streets and distributing news to every passing car. The appearance of the movement which is being sold by the media to the western gaze – the cyber-fantasy of the western societies which has already labelled our movement a twitter revolution, seems to have completely missed the reality of those bodies which are shot dead, injured or ready to be endangered by non-virtual bullets."

 

[scottdisco]

120 Tehran profs resigned AFAIK, at least anyway

great quote four_five_one, i don't think anybody can miss the point with the final sentence.

 

[scottdisco]

gratuitously OT but just wanted to put this in as the final sentence footnote gave me a grim laugh: it's about Seumas Milne at the Guardian as regards his take on events.

here

p.s.
yes Milne wrote a book on the British miners' strike back in the day good lad etc etc

 

[vimothy]

presumably if the regime (whoever that is, or is becoming - Khamenei, Ahmadenijad, top IRGC brass) wanted to massacre protesters surely they could have found someone to pull the trigger by now?

Who's to say that this isn't still going to happen? I'd wait until foreign media coverage died off, until public opinion started to turn in Iran, and then do bloody murder. To do so in the open would be counterproductive.

 

[vimothy]

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/06/experts_iranian_revolution_unlikely.php

 

[scottdisco]

this guy will still be in charge of the recount, right? (whatever form that takes.)

 

[scottdisco]

having only just read the guest piece on IT that four_five_one linked to, i was struck by another voice making a point made continually elsewhere

It needs to be emphasized that Ahmadinejad’s economic policies are to the right of the IMF

IT went to a conference in Tehran once, didn't they? (OT but i am a nosey little bear.)

 

[jenks]

Er, yeah, I might have been wrong about that, actually. I thought, yesterday, that Obama's cool distance was necessary and useful, however distasteful its underlying implications and reasons. (The realpolitik cynicism, the detente thing.)

Then again, I swung back the other way when I saw Henry Kissinger praising Obama on Newsnight last night for those very reasons. Anyone else see that slug-like visage sliming all over the screen? It curdled my Crème brûlée, which I'd been looking forward to all day.

Bizarrely enough I did see him on Newsnight and my first thought, I'm not kidding, was I wonder if Craner is watching this and fuming!!!