Telephones Cut Off, Mousavi Arrested, Rafsanjani Resigns

[Jeff]

Kissinger: if Iranians can't do it, "then we must work for regime change in Iran from the outside."

Nice arched eyebrow from the BBC host.

[John Schröder]

http://trueslant.com/joshuakucera/2009/ ... bout-iran/

What if Twitter is leading us all astray in Iran?

Here are a few of the things that we’ve “learned” the last few days about the Iranian elections and their aftermath:

— 3 million people protested Monday in Tehran
— the losing candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was put under house arrest
— the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid on Saturday

These are just a handful of data points that have been shooting around the Internet, via Twitter or the opposition-friendly blogs. And all have been instrumental in building a public opinion case against the Iranian government for undercounting the support for Mousavi.

The problem is, none of them appear any longer to be true. The crowd was in the hundreds of thousands, most newspapers reported. Mousavi’s own wife said he wasn’t under house arrest Sunday, and Monday he appeared in person at the protest. And if the president of the election monitoring commission has gone over to the opposition, no serious reporter has reported it.

Also courtesy of the blogosphere, we have two sets of “real” vote counts “leaked” from the Interior Ministry; one set had Ahmedinejad getting 28 percent, and another gave him 13 percent. These are just a few examples I was able to come up with quickly.

Andrew Sullivan, who has been leading the charge in the U.S. to try to get us all to wear green and support the opposition, says that “[t]his event has been Twitter’s finest hour.” One of his commenters tells him: “You are gathering information from a myriad of sources and putting it out there for a cohesive message. CNN, NY Times, et al are merely running an article about ‘thousands’ of protesters. Its a canned message from just a few stale sources.”

But instead, it looks like the Internet is the medium for a lot of unfounded rumors by a lot of (understandably) passionate people in Iran. This is a chaotic situation, and rumors flourish in that environment. I’ve been there: I remember spending a morning in Iraq, during the war, trying to track down confirmation that Tariq Aziz was killed in a hail of bullets trying to run a roadblock while attempting to flee into Kurdistan. Everyone was convinced it had happened. Later in the day he gave a press conference to demonstrate that he was still alive. In Serbia in 2001, as word began to spread that Slobodan Milosevic was going to be arrested soon, a crowd gathered in his backyard, and rumors spread several times that Milosevic had killed himself, or that it was the CIA who was going to make the arrest.

But in the pre-Twitter age, those sorts of rumors petered out quickly if they weren’t true. If they were true, then journalists found out about them and reported them as fact. Now, the latter is still happening, which is why the journalists in Tehran now are writing pieces with considerably more nuance than what you see on blogs. But the former isn’t true any more – rumors can have a longer lifespan on a network of sympathetic blogs, Facebook postings and Twitter feeds.

At this point, we don’t know if there was election fraud or not. The AP has a story describing the current state of play on the fraud allegations (the speed of the announcement is now the main point of debate), and although the evidence for fraud is all in the beginning of the story and the evidence against is at the end, it’s a pretty balanced look that probably isn’t going to convince anyone to change their mind. So no need to rehash the arguments here.

None of this is to excuse the behavior of the government after the election results came out. Or to diminish the bravery and courage of the people who are out in the streets in Tehran getting beaten. But what if it’s based on a lie? A Twitter-fueled, mass delusion of a lie? That the one third of people who voted for Mousavi convinced themselves, via a social media echo chamber that selectively picked rumors and amplified them until they appeared true, that they in fact represented two thirds of the country? And then tried to bring down the government based on that delusion? Maybe it’s not the case this time. But doesn’t this entire episode seem to show how such a thing could happen? And then what?

[John Schröder]

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (3.2 million votes).

I know I'm not the sharpest light bulb in the cookie jar, but is there something wrong with the math here? In percentage terms - if MA's 24.5 mil is accurate, shouldn't HM's votes be around four times the 3.2 mil figure?

I'm not exactly a mathematical genius either, but I realized that, too. It's a typo: Mousavi got 13.2 million votes.

[orz]

* believes exact opposite of whatever is reported by the 'mainstream media' in all cases even if totally contradictory *

[John Schröder]

http://rebelreports.com/post/126005056/ ... tims-of-us

Seeing some of these people online turning their profile pictures green “for Iran” makes me want to create a Facebook and Twitter application that turns profile pictures blood red, in solidarity with all of the Afghans and Iraqis and Pakistanis being killed by US wars today; wars that people in the US failed to stop and whose representatives continue to fund to the tune of $100s of billions.

[StarmanSkye]

Jeremy Scahill wrote:
Seeing some of these people online turning their profile pictures green “for Iran” makes me want to create a Facebook and Twitter application that turns profile pictures blood red, in solidarity with all of the Afghans and Iraqis and Pakistanis being killed by US wars today; wars that people in the US failed to stop and whose representatives continue to fund to the tune of $100s of billions.

And which illegal, wholly unwarranted wars were fabricated and prosecuted by the US's OWN illegitimate top officials who weren't elected but were the benificiaries of outrageous election fraud.

Amazing, that Iran's supposed election irregularities should recieve more passionate attention by Americans than the abundant evidence their OWN election system is hopelessly fraudulent and compromised.

I have a strong sus that the secret American security state is manipulating events in Iran and exploiting Twitter as a public opinion management tool. After all, they've been doing it for more than 20 years and there's absolutely no reason why they'd stop now.

And too -- How many Americans even realize how or why or even that the US sabotaged Iran's democracy in 1953, leading to more than 30 years of severe repression, brutality and outrage until they threw-off the hated yoke of US-supported tyranny. The US played a major hand in provoking Iran's mullahcracy.

Helluva 'friendship' gift to cement peace and fraternity with.

[justdrew]

The candidate from the CIA

look at this headline:
Mousavi calls for major new protest
Facebook, Twitter announce Saturday march, defying Khamenei.

Could it be anymore obvious? After this US cryptocracy-driven putch fails, as it will fail, facebook and twitter are going to be worn out and all used up.

twitter would be nowhere today if not for 6 months of relentless mainstream media puffery. Do a word count in lexus/nexus, it's been relentless driving for months. Seriously, the whole damn thing with that bullshit site is media driven hype. The same media that is itself now more clearly than ever a State controlled organ of not-so-crypto Fascists. Who seem to basically run just about anything worth more than a few million dollars these days. We are all Captive Consumers now with nowhere to run but into the arms of the all protective State/Church/Corporation. Which doesn't really even have a use for most of us; but hey, to these kind souls, "all life is sacred" (ya, you can really see THAT in action all over the place), so we'll be fine I'm sure...

Notice the protesters getting beaten by the cops in Tehran are brave and courageous. In America they're fringe radicals engaging in low-level terrorism. This is as fucking Orwellian as it gets. what does MiniFox want me to believe today? The price of gas has gone down from 2.50 to 2.75, and we have always supported protesting potentially stolen elections... Soon they'll have their herd of livestock barking on command at pictures of Immadinnerjkacket every hour on the hour.

A Pathetic Nation of Cowardly Ignorant Swine. Specially bred and trained, not educated, to bark on command and always, always roll over. Simply irredeemable and unforgivably complicit. They have killed our future and now we just wait for the shit storm to hit.

The level of mind-splitting BULLSHIT coming out lately is just about over the top. Anyone.... anyone still believing the garbage on TV has got to be drugged-up and half-crazy, living in a state of self-imposed mind-wiped denial.

but yeah, of course, I'm just Bitter.

[Sweejak]

... The Iranian people sensed a deep fracture within the ruling establishment - something that was clearly expressed in astonishing language and tone, in the televised-for-the-first time live debates between the candidates - and they have ceased their chance to use the divide between their rulers to their own advantage.

The people may have taken to the streets under the excuse of the elections, and may have been encouraged by the rhetoric of the 'reformist' camp in favor of some breathing room in the suffocating political and cultural atmosphere imposed on them, but they have forced the debate further. They are openly, and in millions across the country, questioning the legitimacy of the establishment, represented at the moment by Ahmadinejad. The people, in short, have moved beyond Mousavi and the reformists, but are still willing to go along with the tactics formulated by reformist leaders; for the moment.

We will see how things unfold.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m55259&hd=&size=1&l=e

And, I have no doubt that outside influence also sees beyond Mousavi and Amahdinejad and is looking for some "breathing room".

Kissinger:

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2009/ ... uring.html

[Nordic]

Twitter. My God.

Did anyone else just recoil in the past few months, before this whole Iranian thing happened, from the way Twitter was being shoved down our throats by the corporate media?

They were promoting Twitter ad nauseum, unlike, really, anything else I've ever seen.

Right then I distrusted Twitter. Plus the whole name of it, and "tweets" for describing something that anyone would try to communicate. A "tweet"? That's almost as bad as a "diary" over at Dailykos. Okay, it's worse.

And now we're being told that Twitter is the hero of the revolution, blah blah blah, the world would not know the truth if it weren't for this fucking thing called TWITTER.

I wanted to write about it, and now I wish I had because I would look very prescient. But at the time it was just a suspicion, just that intuition of mine telling me "this is being shoved down our throats and promoted for a reason".

Furthermore, we know, because we've been told over and over again during the last eight years or so, that the CIA has been clandestinely inside Iran pushing for a "Democratic" revolution, trying to ramp up the restlessness with the young, hoping that they will overthrow the conservative Ayatollahs.

So all of this most certainly could be a CIA-backed, orchestrated, fueled event.

Not that that wouldn't make it "real" because the young people there have plenty to be rebel against, i.e. old guys with beards and robes telling them how to live their lives in the era of the Internet.

[Sweejak]

I've found Twitter incredibly useful, I left it alone for about a year but during the Australian fires it was amazing to read people tweeting as their homes burned. On the ground info way ahead of the reporters. In fact the reporters were subscribing to Twitter in an attempt to keep up. It's just micorblogging or a instant RSS and much of it depends on who you follow. But yes, it like everything can be militarized.

[Sweejak]

FWIW

Iran's Mousavi not planning Saturday protest-ally
Reuters

June 19, 2009

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Defeated Iranian presidential election candidate Mirhossein Mousavi is not calling on his supporters to stage new street protests on Saturday, an ally told Reuters on Friday.

The ally, who declined to be named, spoke after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the leaders of the mass street protests seen in Iran following a June 12 disputed presidential election that they would be responsible for any bloodshed.

At a demonstration in the capital on Thursday, Mousavi's supporters carried banners saying they would gather again in downtown Tehran on Saturday afternoon.

"Mousavi has no plans to hold a rally tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and if he decides to hold a rally it will be announced on his website," the ally said.

Copyright © 2008 Reuters

[Sweejak]

When the world's gotten blocked up before, like a monopoly game where everything's owned and nobody can make any progress, the way they erased the board and started over has been to have big world wars, and erase countries and bomb cities and bomb banks and then start from scratch again. This is not an option to us now because of all these 52,000 nuclear weapons....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... le4069.htm

[JackRiddler]

.

Today's the first moment of truth. Khamenei yesterday told the protesters to get off the streets, pro-Mousavi rallies announced for today (but not by Mousavi). Guardian Council invited the three losing candidates to a meet, but Mousavi and Karroubi boycotted.

Iranian Press TV (shown on CNN) actually says thousands have tried to rally, have been unable to occupy rally sites. Big police presence and tear gas at rallies. But even on CNN the number of attempted protesters is now down to "hundreds."

Then Press TV announced that a blast at Khomeini Mausoleum injured two. (On this day? Hearing that, what's your reaction?)

Watching CNN - the only coverage on TV right now - some impressions:

- Restrictions on foreign media basically give CNN (and the Twitter Brigades) carte blanche to make up any bullshit they like. "We don't have pictures, but we hear that maybe thousands are blah blah blah..."

- Every four seconds: Must say "social media" or "twitter," without which no revolution ever happened.

- Amazing: They ask if Press TV is biased! Very nice, now ask the same of all other broadcast outlets including themselves. It took them about five minutes to start doubting whether there really was a Khomeini mausoleum blast, or whether it's false flag. Very nice. Sort of historic, as I never saw them think anything like this. Can they start applying this suspicion as appropriate to all events where warranted?

- Obvious minute to minute visual manipulation. Like in a corner they'll show big rallies from Wednesday while they talk about today's (non) rallies, waiting a minute before they label them as rallies from Wednesday. Or just now while talking about the mausoleum blast they showed a car bomb aftermath from Iraq, labeled but completely non-sequitir, as though this was the mausoleum blast (causing the Iranian interview partner himself to issue the correction that this wasn't the mausoleum - just as they cut him off).

- Absolutely no followup detectable by search in The Guardian or anywhere else on the story of Mohammed Asgari, the supposed Interior Ministry official who supposedly passed supposed evidence of electoral fraud to Mousavi before supposedly dying in a supposedly suspicious supposed car crash.

.

[sunny]

Thanks Jack, watching now.

I wish I understood Farsi, CNN 'i-report' showing protesters chanting and would like to know what they're saying.

The coverage has turned gloomy and doomy, as opposed to the rah rah cheerleading of the last few days. For the protesters, to paraphrase Kissinger, it's 'do or die'.

[JackRiddler]

Twitter. My God.

Did anyone else just recoil in the past few months, before this whole Iranian thing happened, from the way Twitter was being shoved down our throats by the corporate media?

They were promoting Twitter ad nauseum, unlike, really, anything else I've ever seen.

Right then I distrusted Twitter. Plus the whole name of it, and "tweets" for describing something that anyone would try to communicate. A "tweet"? That's almost as bad as a "diary" over at Dailykos. Okay, it's worse.

Yes. Totally noticed that. Plus the insistence on using their terminology (it's never message via Twitter, it's always "tweet.") No Internet/media singularity development of the last 20 years has gotten quite the same relentless hype over a period of months, relative to its actual newness. It's a publicly readable SMS platform with a very short length limit. Perfect for creating a crowd effect without need of an actual physical crowd.

.