Thursday, July 16, 2009
Powerful forces converge in Iran this weekend after two remarkable acts of conscience:
1. The head of Iran's Nuclear Program resigns, not just from the Atomic agency, but also from the vice-presidency of Iran. He has ties to Khatami and Mousavi, and is believed to have strong reformist sympathies.
2. The head of Iran's national orchestra has resigned too and reportedly made it clear he was doing it to protest the crackdown on reformists, which continues, with more arrests every day.
3. Everyone now waits for Friday, when wild card Rafsanjani, the billionaire Ayatollah and pistachio king, delivers the Friday prayers. He is a wily old guy with a wet finger in the wind at all times, and has been sending mixed messages for the past few weeks. Just yesterday he said that he and Ayatollah Khamenei are like longtime lovers who occasionally have a spat(?!). But his family are strong reformists, his political party has condemned the elections, and he is the head of the Assembly of Experts, weakened a lot since the crackdown, but not out of the game. He is reported to be a big crook, which makes me think of the French elections in 2002, which resulted in a runoff between President Jacques Chirac, a center-of-right crook, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, an ultra-right, racist, xenophobe. Protest signs read, "Votez L'escroc, pas fasho," vote for the Crook not the Fascho. Good advice always. France held its nose and gave Chirac a huge victory, a landslide, but without a mandate.
Rafsanjani has more checks on his power now than when he was President. He has to be more responsive to the people, according to this Iranian, who has the most interesting take on Raffi.
4. And Mousavi has announced he will be attending the Friday prayers.
"Two strong factors are still working in his favour: a divided clerical establishment and the blogosphere, where Iranians are among the world’s liveliest performers." - The Economist
5. Karoubi says he'll be there too.
6. Ahmadinejad will not be in town as he has gone to Mashad to ride this out.
7. The regime thugs will make a good showing at the prayers. But they might want to be careful. The regime has lost a lot of support in places worldwide where Ahmadinejad was once admired for standing up to the West and to Israel, and revolt is brewing in three ethnic areas of the country.
8. Most importantly, Friday's gathering should feature a lot of mullahs holding Korans and heartbroken mothers holding photographs of their martyred children. Try as the regime might to confiscate every cellphone in Iran, block every port and punish in unspeakable ways those who record events, people will videotape and get it out to the world somehow.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The C.R.I.M.E. Report
I don't know where I signed up for this newsletter, but I'm glad I did. Civil Rights in the Middle East is comprehensive, well-written and often witty with stories you haven't read elsewhere ("MLK jr. comic translated into Farsi") Sign up on the website for the newsletter too.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Hip Hop: Lingua Franca of the World
If there is one universal language in today's world, it's hip-hop, which has been embraced by musicians and fans in every country, and married to the indigenous music. This one, a protest from Iran (don't have the English translation alas):
I'll get back to the saga of the Hacker soon-ish. Have a crapload of work to do.
I'll get back to the saga of the Hacker soon-ish. Have a crapload of work to do.
The Eyewitness Project
The Eyewitness Project aims to collect all photos, videos and other documents related to the Iranian elections for posterity. Help them out if you can here.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The Strange Battlefields of Twitter - Part 1
First off, I do love Twitter. As a supplement to the mainstream media, it's vital. But, if anything the last few weeks, it has shown it can't replace it. Citizen journalism in general made its bones recently, but it also became clear how important it is to have trained journalists vetting the material, checking the background, the sources, the assertions. Not that all members of the MSM do this well, but the best are very, very good at clearing the smoke away and getting at some sort of truth.
Still, Twitter proved to be a great listening post on the world -- not just twitter but all the "social media," bringing together a "Twitarmy" worldwide to help and support the Iranian protesters. The Iranians kept the world informed of their view of events, risking everything to bring out videos and photos. The foreigners found proxies to try to protect Tweeters in Iran, organized protests for them, Tweeted and RT'd links to photos, videos, MSM news stories. It was exuberant and invigorating watching this worldwide wave of revolution take on tyrants.
But things got dark very quickly.
People were beat and killed in the streets, hauled off to prison with no word to their families, and arrested in their homes, often after being tracked down online through the social media.
The regime was a little late to the online game but entered it with ferocity, and suddenly Twitter was crawling with spies, intelligence, counterintelligence, pro-regime trolls, ideological warriors, spammers, porn princesses, hackers and other troublemakers. What had been a cyberwar of ideas, information and support turned into a real battlefield in the larger Cyberwar, starring the same players and hangers-on as real world conflicts, and with real victims.
The intelligence people and their supporters blasted forth with disinformation and outright propaganda. Seconds after the Tehran government would announce something, the army of regime tweeters would be hard at work spreading the party line to the world, word for word in many cases, pausing at their long row of databanks at the Ministry of Interior only for Coca Colas and prayers. By now, the Iranian protesters were effectively silenced by the regime, many disappeared, many hiding, internet and phone blocked for the rest. Very little could be confirmed, and this made it easier for the regime to engage in a sickening crackdown away from the world's eyes, and for its counterintelligence to spread their toxins around the internet and create a fog to help hide it.
Very quickly, the obvious agents and spammers were marked as [#trollfail] and [#twitspam, #spam123] and blocked, but not before Green supporters outside Iran, fresh from watching videos of a bloody crackdown, had blasted back, so a lot of people were beating each other over the head with clubs online by trading vicious insults.
The second level was smarter. They set up accounts with green icons and information that made them sound like protesters or their supporters, and their initial tweets were anti-regime and pro-opposition. They gained followers and followed others and once they had their trust, they began to use them to retweet stories that questioned protesters and gave credit to the regime and/or which farmed IP addresses or spread viruses. It took a while longer to weed these people out and by then, a lot of damage had already been done.
At the top of this group they were much, much smarter and much, much scarier. This elite cybercorps emerged a little later, having lurked and studied the #iranelection thread first. That's when some of us met The Hacker and learned way too much about Cyberwar and Disinformation.
To be continued.
Still, Twitter proved to be a great listening post on the world -- not just twitter but all the "social media," bringing together a "Twitarmy" worldwide to help and support the Iranian protesters. The Iranians kept the world informed of their view of events, risking everything to bring out videos and photos. The foreigners found proxies to try to protect Tweeters in Iran, organized protests for them, Tweeted and RT'd links to photos, videos, MSM news stories. It was exuberant and invigorating watching this worldwide wave of revolution take on tyrants.
But things got dark very quickly.
People were beat and killed in the streets, hauled off to prison with no word to their families, and arrested in their homes, often after being tracked down online through the social media.
The regime was a little late to the online game but entered it with ferocity, and suddenly Twitter was crawling with spies, intelligence, counterintelligence, pro-regime trolls, ideological warriors, spammers, porn princesses, hackers and other troublemakers. What had been a cyberwar of ideas, information and support turned into a real battlefield in the larger Cyberwar, starring the same players and hangers-on as real world conflicts, and with real victims.
The intelligence people and their supporters blasted forth with disinformation and outright propaganda. Seconds after the Tehran government would announce something, the army of regime tweeters would be hard at work spreading the party line to the world, word for word in many cases, pausing at their long row of databanks at the Ministry of Interior only for Coca Colas and prayers. By now, the Iranian protesters were effectively silenced by the regime, many disappeared, many hiding, internet and phone blocked for the rest. Very little could be confirmed, and this made it easier for the regime to engage in a sickening crackdown away from the world's eyes, and for its counterintelligence to spread their toxins around the internet and create a fog to help hide it.
Very quickly, the obvious agents and spammers were marked as [#trollfail] and [#twitspam, #spam123] and blocked, but not before Green supporters outside Iran, fresh from watching videos of a bloody crackdown, had blasted back, so a lot of people were beating each other over the head with clubs online by trading vicious insults.
The second level was smarter. They set up accounts with green icons and information that made them sound like protesters or their supporters, and their initial tweets were anti-regime and pro-opposition. They gained followers and followed others and once they had their trust, they began to use them to retweet stories that questioned protesters and gave credit to the regime and/or which farmed IP addresses or spread viruses. It took a while longer to weed these people out and by then, a lot of damage had already been done.
At the top of this group they were much, much smarter and much, much scarier. This elite cybercorps emerged a little later, having lurked and studied the #iranelection thread first. That's when some of us met The Hacker and learned way too much about Cyberwar and Disinformation.
To be continued.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Carter Was Right
Jimmy Carter's 1979 'crisis of confidence' speech, which was judged then as the disaster that sunk his re-election hopes, is now re-evaluated with open eyes and hindsight in a new book by Kevin Mattson.
Excerpt here.
Transcript of the speech here.
Excerpt here.
Transcript of the speech here.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Sunday July 12, 2009 Instructions
Don't Drive Day in Support of Iran, Sunday, July 12 - Here's what to do:
(If you are a nondriver, proceed to point 2.)
1. Don't drive. Leave the car at home (or just stay home and have a nice day there).
THEN:
2. Take a photo (or vid) that
a) expresses support for the iranian protesters, using the color green or a poster AND
b) optional - shows an alternative method of transportation
Then either upload it to flickr and copy to the Flickr group
or send it to: info@drivenot.org
Be as simple and straightforward or as wildly creative as you like. It doesn't have to be a photo, it can be a drawing (good thing to get kids to do). Aside from expressing support for the protesters, the rest is your call.
If you absolutely have to drive on Sunday, you could pick another day next week when you would normally drive and leave the car at home that day.
Questions, comments, ideas? Please email info@drivenot.org.
For more information see the blog and FAQ.
(If you are a nondriver, proceed to point 2.)
1. Don't drive. Leave the car at home (or just stay home and have a nice day there).
THEN:
2. Take a photo (or vid) that
a) expresses support for the iranian protesters, using the color green or a poster AND
b) optional - shows an alternative method of transportation
Then either upload it to flickr and copy to the Flickr group
or send it to: info@drivenot.org
Be as simple and straightforward or as wildly creative as you like. It doesn't have to be a photo, it can be a drawing (good thing to get kids to do). Aside from expressing support for the protesters, the rest is your call.
If you absolutely have to drive on Sunday, you could pick another day next week when you would normally drive and leave the car at home that day.
Questions, comments, ideas? Please email info@drivenot.org.
For more information see the blog and FAQ.
Mr. and Mrs. Behi
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