Social networks spread defiance online
As the embattled government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be trying to limit Internet access and communications in Iran, new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions. Iranians are blogging, posting to Facebook and, most visibly, coordinating their protests on Twitter, the messaging service. Their activity has increased, not decreased, since the presidential election on Friday and ensuing attempts by the government to restrict or censor their online communications.
The dissent on the streets of Iran over the re-election of Ahmadinejad and allegations of voter fraud is spilling over into the virtual world. The New York Times and Wired.com report that Twitter, Flickr and Facebook are becoming key modes of communication and dissent. For the last few days reports have been emerging that the Government has been moving to filter or shut down SMS texting to curb the spread of protests. Twitter streams are being shut down, with Twitter planning a 'day of maintenance' offline to deal with the role its technology is having in Iranian politics. A number of pro-opposition websites have been removed, signaling that the Iranian Government has recognised the influence that social networking is having in mobilising civil unrest. As a result of the collaborative and viral nature of online protests, as these sites are removed, other users are picking up the tab. Persiankiwi, with more than 25,000 followers, is using NZ mirrors to avoid the Iranian spybots.
Wired.com reports that users sympathetic to the protests are setting up distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks on pro-Government websites. Some Americans are donating web hosting to the protestors in an effort to avoid Iranian censorship. Networked Culture has launched a manifesto, Cyberwar for Beginners (most of the links to this document appear to have been suspended now). Other Iranians are complaining that the DDOS attacks are chewing up valuable bandwidth that could be used for distributing information, slowing the speed across the nation.
The blurring of boundaries between real and online politics is set to grow in the coming years as digital uptake continues. The internet celebrated its 40th birthday last weekend, although the birth of contemporary cyberspace is much more recent with Tim Berners-Lee's release of the World Wide Web in 1991, its ease of interface forever changing the environment through which news is filtered and received. Although currently the global internet penetration is only at around 23% of the world's total population and its accessibility is overwhelmingly skewed towards Europe, North America, parts of Asia and Australasia, there is growing evidence to suggest that its role in global geopolitics will be decisive. In the 2008 US Presidential Elections, a Pew Internet Poll found that 46% of Americans used the internet to help determine their vote. Obama's ability to develop to new social networking technologies no doubt influenced his election, supported by statistics that reveal he had the highest proportion of the youth vote since exit polling began.
Even in countries with much more limited penetration, the visibility of uncensored images and narratives causes a public relations headache for politicians. For example, in April last year Egyptian woman Esraa Abdel Fatah's mass invitations to a Facebook group calling for a general strike on April 6th attracted more than 70,000 members and led to her arrest. The recent Israeli assault on Gaza prompted similar online activism, with Egyptians setting up pro-Palestinian groups. Attempts by the Israeli Government to censor the media through American 'theatre of war' propaganda techniques (removing journalists from the frontline, encouraging them to film the conflict from a distance) proved futile due to Palestinians on Facebook. Their uploads of graphic images of citizens shredded to pieces by the bombings would survive for a couple of days before being removed, only to appear on another link by someone else who had saved the content. Just yesterday in China, Deng Yujiao escaped punishment for stabbing a Communist Party official and his friend who had attempted to sexually assault her in a karaoke bar. Many commentators have interpreted this leniency as partially due to the role that internet forums have had in allowing citizens to post their support online.
Iran only has around 35% of the population with internet access, yet this is enough to cause serious difficulties for Ahmadinejad. By circulating information on the protests and the state's attempt to oppress them, online activists are challenging Iran's control over its nation by extending the discourse on its rulership to the sympathetic and not necessarily culturally aligned. For example, Wired.com's piece on the cyber war features an interview with a former US intelligence analyst who has been aiding in attacks on Government websites. In this sense, although Ahmadinejad will have to focus on quelling the dissent internally, the battle for his leadership will occur on a much more broad scale through the World Wide Web as domestic protests spill over onto the internet. While such overflow could be characterised on the one hand as a new era of internet protest and action, on the other hand, the uneven playing field of the internet (what the UN calls the 'digital divide') also suits the US' strategic interests, raising questions about whether this is truly democracy or is open to abuse due to the ability of select individuals to have disproportionate effects on the internal politics of another nation. For example, if a cyber warfare programme allows an individual to bomb a site as if they were many individuals overloading traffic, it becomes difficult to know if these protests are the work of many or a few dedicated individuals. Obama certainly recognises the role that social networking platforms can have in opening up hermeneutically sealed cultures to US discourses, telling Twitter it should not attempt to shut down the service and should continue to allow Twitter to be an integral force in Iranian politics. The burgeoning revolution in Iran should be watched with interest then, as it represents the future of a politics where issues are extended beyond their national boundaries to clusters of internet activists defined not by nationality, but by their sympathetic leanings.
Finally an opinion piece from the left about the situation in Iran that is not acting as some sort of apologist for Mr Ahmadinejad blatant poll rigging.
ReplyDeleteObama seems to be acting quite sensibly at the moment interms of not getting to involved in the situation. However I do agree that his request to Twitter to delay maintenance work on the service while the protests are going does suggest the Administration is quietly supporting the anti-Ahmadinejad camp.
Finally an opinion piece from the left about the situation in Iran that is not acting as some sort of apologist for Mr Ahmadinejad blatant poll rigging.
ReplyDeleteSo petty
Awwwww... first time caller. You still a little annoyed that the opinion poll bandied about by your leftist friends to try and justify the elction result actually supports the view that the election was rigged?
ReplyDeleteI tell you what I would like to see from the left though on Iran. A little outrage against the deaths of the anti-Ahmadinejad protestors at the hands of State agents.
ReplyDeleteIf this was a Pro-western Government or Americans responsible I am sure we would never see the end of the bleatings on how evil these people are.
I'm sorry Gosman, you want Mousavi to win do you?
ReplyDeleteThe ABC of the election.
Who is Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmedinejad's main opponent in the election? He is an enigma wrapped in mystery. He impressed the Iranian youth and the urban middle class as a reformer and a modernist. Yet, as Iran's prime minister during 1981-89, Mousavi was an unvarnished hardliner. Evidently, what we have seen during his high-tech campaign is a vastly different Mousavi, as if he meticulously deconstructed and then reassembled himself.
This was what Mousavi had to say in a 1981 interview about the 444-day hostage crisis when young Iranian revolutionaries kept American diplomats in custody: "It was the beginning of the second stage of our revolution. It was after this that we discovered our true Islamic identity. After this we felt the sense that we could look Western policy in the eye and analyze it the way they had been evaluating us for many years."
Most likely, he had a hand in the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Ali Akbar Mohtashami, Hezbollah's patron saint, served as his interior minister. He was involved in the Iran-Contra deal in 1985, which was a trade-off with the Ronald Reagan administration whereby the US would supply arms to Iran and as quid pro quo Tehran would facilitate the release of the Hezbollah-held American hostages in Beirut. The irony is, Mousavi was the very anti-thesis of Rafsanjani and one of the first things the latter did in 1989 after taking over as president was to show Mousavi the door. Rafsanjani had no time for Mousavi's anti-"Westernism" or his visceral dislike of the market.
"I have been in Iran for exactly one week covering the 2009 Iranian election carnival. Since I arrived, few here doubted that the incumbent firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would win. My airport cab driver reminded me that the president had visited every province twice in the last four years – "Iran isn't Tehran," he said. Even when I asked Mousavi supporters if their man could really carry more than capital, their responses were filled with an Obamasque provisional optimism – "Yes we can", "I hope so", "If you vote." So the question occupying the international media, "How did Mousavi lose?" seems to be less a problem of the Iranian election commission and more a matter of bad perception rooted in the stubborn refusal to understand the role of religion in Iran.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the rather real possibility of voter fraud exists and one must wait in the coming weeks to see how these allegations unfold. But one should recall that in three decades of presidential elections, the accusations of rigging have rarely been levied against the vote count. Elections here are typically controlled by banning candidates from the start or closing opposition newspapers in advance.
In this election moreover, there were two separate governmental election monitors in addition to observers from each camp to prevent mass voter fraud. The sentimental implausibility of Ahmedinejad's victory that Mousavi's supporters set forth as the evidence of state corruption must be met by the equal implausibility that such widespread corruption could take place under clear daylight. So, until hard evidence emerges that can substantiate the claims of the opposition camp we need to look to other reasons to explain why so many are stunned by the day's events.
As far as international media coverage is concerned, it seems that wishful thinking got the better of credible reporting. It is true that Mousavi supporters jammed Tehran traffic for hours every night over the last week, though it was rarely mentioned that they did so only in the northern well-to-do neighborhoods of the capital. Women did relax their head covers and young men did dance in the street.
On Monday night at least 100,000 of the former prime minister's supporters set up a human chain across Tehran. But, hours before I had attended a mass rally for the incumbent president that got little to no coverage in the western press because, on account of the crowds, he never made it inside the hall to give his speech. Minimal estimates from that gathering have been placed at 600,000 (enthusiasts say a million). From the roof I watched as the veiled women and bearded men of all ages poured like lava."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/13/iranian-election
^^^ Ouch.
ReplyDeleteJust goes to show that the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.
Ummm.... I thought you might have noticed, Mr Bradbury, that I have made it pretty clear in my posts on this subject that neither of the two main candidates are acceptable to me.
ReplyDeleteI am not pretending that this election was anything more than a sham, unlike some people.
First time caller, I am hardly gloating over anybody's deaths here. I am in fact stating that more should be made about the brutal crackdown of dissent in Iran. You agree with this view point don't you?
ReplyDelete(what the UN calls the 'digital divide') "Obama certainly recognises the role that social networking platforms can have in opening up hermeneutically sealed cultures to US discourses,"
ReplyDeleteThe real divide between you and your co-bloggers is your access to education and your uncanny ability to follow my lead (on the Muslim Brotherhood and Mubarak for example) while the rest of us get left in your wake.A truly exceptional thesis is awaited in much appreciation and anticipation mate!
First time caller, I am hardly gloating over anybody's deaths here. I am in fact stating that more should be made about the brutal crackdown of dissent in Iran.
ReplyDeleteNo you are not, you are gloating over the deaths as a means to use those deaths to attack 'the left' for what you consider their 'support' of Iran. You don't care which side wins, you've admitted that, you are simply using protestor deaths as a means to attack 'the left'. You did it above
I am not pretending that this election was anything more than a sham, unlike some people.
You can't help yourself, you just hate the left and twist any issue into a supposed example of their ethical duplicity. It's so childish and you have yet to prove the election has been rigged.
In every city, the biggest presence at the protests was the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political organization, active in many countries throughout the Middle East, that seeks to govern according to Islamic law. Other, smaller demonstrations were put together, sometimes spontaneously, by leftist groups and student organizations.
ReplyDeleteBut in Egypt, this time, the protests were different: some of the anger was aimed directly at the government of President Hosni Mubarak. In defiance of threats from the police, and in contravention of a national taboo, some demonstrators chanted slogans against Mubarak, condemning his government for maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel, for exporting natural gas to the country and for restricting movement through Egypt’s border with Gaza.
As the street protests went on, young Egyptians also were mobilizing and venting their anger over Gaza on what would, until recently, have seemed an unlikely venue: Facebook, the social-networking site. In most countries in the Arab world, Facebook is now one of the 10 most-visited Web sites, and in Egypt it ranks third, after Google and Yahoo. About one in nine Egyptians has Internet access, and around 9 percent of that group are on Facebook — a total of almost 800,000 members. This month, hundreds of Egyptian Facebook members, in private homes and at Internet cafes, have set up Gaza-related “groups.” Most expressed hatred for Israel and the United States, but each one had its own focus. Some sought to coordinate humanitarian aid to Gaza, some criticized the Egyptian government, some criticized other Arab countries for blaming Egypt for the conflict and still others railed against Hamas. When I sat down in the middle of January with an Arabic-language translator to look through Facebook, we found one new group with almost 2,000 members called “I’m sure I can find 1,000,000 members who hate Israel!!!” and another called “With all due respect, Gaza, I don’t support you,” which blamed Palestinian suffering on Hamas and lamented the recent shooting of two Egyptian border guards, which had been attributed to Hamas fire. Another group implored God to “destroy and burn the hearts of the Zionists.” Some Egyptian Facebook users had joined all three groups.
Freedom of speech and the right to assemble are limited in Egypt, which since 1981 has been ruled by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party under a permanent state-of-emergency law. An estimated 18,000 Egyptians are imprisoned under the law, which allows the police to arrest people without charges, allows the government to ban political organizations and makes it illegal for more than five people to gather without a license from the government. Newspapers are monitored by the Ministry of Information and generally refrain from directly criticizing Mubarak. And so for young people in Egypt, Facebook, which allows users to speak freely to one another and encourages them to form groups, is irresistible as a platform not only for social interaction but also for dissent.
Although there are countless political Facebook groups in Egypt, many of which flare up and fall into disuse in a matter of days, the one with the most dynamic debates is that of the April 6 Youth Movement, a group of 70,000 mostly young and educated Egyptians, most of whom had never been involved with politics before joining the group. The movement is less than a year old; it formed more or less spontaneously on Facebook last spring around an effort to stage a general nationwide strike. Members coalesce around a few issues — free speech, economic stagnation and government.
Join the dots........
ReplyDelete"Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
.........
" What was international man of mystery Manucher Ghorbanifar up to when he met with top Pentagon experts on Iran? In a NEWSWEEK interview in Paris last month,
Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian spy who helped launch the Iran-contra affair, says one of the things he discussed with Defense officials Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin at meetings in Rome in December 2001 (and in Paris last June with only Rhode) was regime change in Iran."
(Newsweek Dec. 22 06)
http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:lDKNq9O3UvsJ:www.nogw.com/download/2006_mystery_,man.pdf+%23+%22Regime+Change+in+Iran%3F+One+Man%27s+Secret+Plan%22.+Newsweek,+22+December+2002.&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a
......
In any ordinary business, Manucher Ghorbanifar would cut an implausibly mysterious figure. Officially, he has been a shipping executive in Tehran and a commodities trader in France. By his own account he was a refugee from the revolutionary government of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, which confiscated his businesses in Iran, yet he later became a trusted friend and kitchen adviser to Mir Hussein Mousavi, Prime Minister in the Khomeini government."
http://205.188.238.109/time/magazine/article/0,9171,963262-1,00.html
for once america seem to be doing the right thing and keeping there nose out of other countries business.
ReplyDeleteSo it is all an American plot then is it then?
ReplyDeleteLOL!
" You don't care which side wins, you've admitted that, you are simply using protestor deaths as a means to attack 'the left'."
ReplyDeleteUmmmm.... no I very much care if the Brutal Islamic regime is shaken to the core and the election is shown to have been stolen.
I also care about the oppressive nature of the Iranian regime's response to opposition to blatent election rigging. This includes multitudes of deaths of innocent protestors which in my view should be condemned outright.
What I don't care about is either of the two candidates for the Presidency of the Islamic theocratic dictatorship. Both are supporters of a vile regime that deserves to be overthrown.
Obama is still supporting the wrong kind of people in the global war 'of' terror (G.W.O.T).Like his recent visit to Cairo and his speech for example.Hosni Mubarak, a dictator since he passed an unlawful state of emergency for martial law and illegal and indefinite detention.Just like Mr.Obamas attempts to change the site of jail and release for a lucky few who were sent to Bermuda (despite British objections) for the 4 Chinese Uighurs (deemed at too big a risk to be executed if returned home to mainland China, but are they safe "long-term" in the northern pacific just like Obamas warning to the Japanese to leave the whales alone as well) Italy has agreed to accept 3 detainees and the european union to transfer 10, as the Obama admin continues its struggle to find homes for the prisoners so the facility (gitmo) can be shut down next year.
ReplyDeleteIn the past week the Obama admin has made significant progress.One prisoner was sent to New York to face trial as a civilian with a possible charge and sentence and of course time off for time served and good behaviour and eventual if not immediate release and exoneration.While others were transferred to Chad, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.The latest announcement means only 226 remain at the prison, well down from over 240.(NZHERALD.CO.NZ)
And in 1981, when he assumed power after Islamic Jihad assasinated Sadat, and over 18,000 political opponents remain strung up and rotting and incarcerated.The Muslim Brotherhood opposition wants Islamic (Sharia) law, something which the world can't stomach since the focus shifted from the Communist Cold War threat and the very recent Axis powers meeting with Iran in Russia and this changed to muslim resistance to superpower hegemony.
Ummmm.... no I very much care if the Brutal Islamic regime is shaken to the core and the election is shown to have been stolen.
ReplyDeleteBut your main point on this blog has been to attack 'the left' on baseless grounds because you claim their lack of agreement with you means 'the left'' sides with Islamic fascism.
I also care about the oppressive nature of the Iranian regime's response to opposition to blatent election rigging. This includes multitudes of deaths of innocent protestors which in my view should be condemned outright.
But you are pretending that only you care, no one on this site has sided with the violence metted out to protestors, they have questioned whether or not the election has been rigged, you claim you don't care for either side so your gloating using protestor death to attack 'the left' is even more disgusting.
What I don't care about is either of the two candidates for the Presidency of the Islamic theocratic dictatorship. Both are supporters of a vile regime that deserves to be overthrown.
And wasn't that the mentality that led to the coup by the CIA in the 1950s that led to the theocracy you are attacking in the first place?
I think America has it right at the moment, but mouthing off like you are and following your mindset threatens the change that is happening right now. I also think the TV debates were very significant.
"This includes multitudes of deaths of innocent protestors which in my view should be condemned outright."
ReplyDeleteDo we have numbers Gosman?
It would also be good to know who was responsible for the deaths. Was there indeed an unidentified plain clothed gunman firing into the crowd?