Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr. All demon spawn from Web 2.0, and we all love to make fun of these websites and the services they provide. However, here in the West, where everything is at arm’s length and democracy is something we do not remember fighting for, it’s easy to forget that what looks silly and useless to us, can be of the utmost importance somewhere else in the world. Update: I’ve been informed that the first casualty has fallen at the hands of armed government supporters. Hundreds of thousands of people are now on the streets all over Iran. More updates inside.
Currently, Iran is going through a major upheaval. Last week, the Islamic Republic of Iran, as it’s officially called, held its presidential election to find out if the people wanted four more years of ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or if they wanted something else. Ahmadinejad’s main opponent is the reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi. These elections have led to major problems in Iran.
Ahmadinejad and the government claimed victory, stating 65% of the votes went to him, with 32% voting for Mousavi. These results were immediately disputed by Mousavi and countless political analysts, who claim that the results were reversed, but in a very literal way: Mousavi claims his name has been swapped with that of Ahmadinejad. Mousavi also claimed victory.
The election saw a massive voter turnout of 80%, which seems to favour Mousavi because many reformists who did not bother to vote before, did go out and vote now. Mousavi’s goals for his term would be the removal of the ban on privately-owned television stations (currently, they are all state-owned), as well as the transfer of control over law enforcement to the president. Currently, it resides with the religious “Supreme Leader”. He also promotes equality for women, free flow of information, and the removal of the “moral police”. However, he is not against Iran’s nuclear program.
As soon as the official “results” were announced, it was suggested everywhere that massive fraud had been committed, and people started demonstrating. The government responded by kicking out foreign journalists, cutting communications, shutting down communication networks and the internet, and prohibiting any further protests. Still, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has ordered the Guardian Council to investigate possible election fraud. Time.com has a list of five reasons why the elections are probably rigged.
Illegal or not, banned or not, the Iranian people are now turning to the web to organise protests and voice their concern over the elections. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr are all used to make sure that they can continue to communicate and to get the news of what’s happening inside Iran out to the rest of the world.
It is times like these when you realise just how extremely important and powerful the internet has become, and how important it is that we keep the internet free, open, and without any form of control, be it by a government or by companies. While we here in the west take democracy and freedom of speech for granted, large parts of the world still need to fight for these things, and the internet has become an extremely powerful aid in these fights, especially when mainstream media get thrown out of the country, or are absent altogether.
Today, reportedly, more than a hundred thousand people are protesting in Tehran, the nation’s capitol; not for the faint hearted, seeing the harsh treatment of protesters by the police. A tweet earlier this morning read: “It’s worth taking the risk. We’re going. I won’t be able to update until I’m back. Again, thanks for your support and wish us luck.”
We sure do.
“We Iranians are friendly people, but our regime is rotten.” That’s what a young Iranian couple told Dutch journalists, who were later thrown out of the country. In a democracy, people get the government they deserve. But what if you have no democracy?
Update by David Adams:
It’s pretty clear that the “mainstream” media isn’t covering the ongoing post-election drama in Iran very well [note from Thom: Dutch media, at least, are covering it in great detail and at length], but let’s not forget the oldest of the new media: blogging. Iran is a nation full of bloggers (and blog-readers), and though the government has been making it difficult for those inside Iran to read what’s being blogged about the issue, there are many bloggers, both inside and outside Iran, that are covering the issue with great depth and insight.
One of the real problems with the unfiltered feed of raw data coming from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc is that as emotionally powerful as anecdotal, first-hand information can be, it can blind the receiver to the larger picture (and may not even be true). Luckliy, long-form new media journalism can provide crucial context, verification, and aggregation for these various sources of raw accounts. Prominent political blogger Andrew Sullivan has probably been providing the most comprehensive coverage of this issue in his blog over at The Atlantic, putting coverage by major news outlets to shame, in many cases by aggregating coverage by Twitterers and lesser-known bloggers, many inside Iran. Bloggers like Sullivan are completely immersing themselves into the issue and trying to get a handle on the live-feed so you don’t have to.
As exciting as the latest, hottest use of new technology may be, sources like Twitter are standing on the shoulders of giants, and it’s generally a combination of communication media, both new and established, that combine to provide a full understanding of an emerging event. In fact, the participation of the older “new” technologies (television, radio, the printed newspaper) would be welcome and worthwhile, if they were willing to embrace the sources upstream from them the same way that Bloggers have been willing to mine the feed from Twitter and YouTube.
I think there is something rotten in the state of Iran.
That said, I don’t give too much credence to user generated “news”.
One year ago if one would have trusted Digg to predict the outcome of the presidential elections Ron Paul would have been the certain winner.
We like to live in a black and white world, but the world is really colourful.
I’m sure that’s what the official Iranian media are claiming here: a bunch of people discontented because they didn’t get what they want…
By the same token, though… We can laugh at the Ron Paul supporters, but do we want to erase evidence of their existence entirely?
that is why you should only pay attention to those who are posting pictures and video. of the things they say.
Excellent news on the osnews!
Here in Iran the situation is a little bit more complicated than just using these services.
Goverment is censoring many websites in Iran.They started it with the excuse of blocking non-islamic websites but they used it to block every single website, or weblog who critisizes the goverment (not only opposition) in the past few years.
Twitter and facebook has been block and unblocked several times in the past few weeks.
On the other hand, the internet has been seriousely slow in the past few days too.
Also there is a balatarin.com which is a digg-like website for persian users.They have been fights between balatarin users and goverment-dependant websites.
Balatarin users tried DOS attacking the farsnews.com (which is a goverment fan, no-mather-what) and farsnews started a ‘light’ version to decrease the pressure on servers.In the response, farsnews included hidden iframes to balatarin so that all hits to farsnews will have a hit on balatarin.
(Balatarin was down for a few hours but owners asked for donations to get news servers and they got the neccessary money and are back again)
Unfortunately, that doest stop here.Goverment is the only owner of TV and Radio.So they have total control on it.
SMS services of all three cell phone operators has been disabled since friday (when counting of votes begun).
Also whole cell phone service was down for almost a day too.
Edit: I forgot to mention that having sattelite tv’s in iran is illegal, but almost everyone has them.Goverment tries to send ‘noise’ on the frequencies of the unwanted channels.Currently main opposition channels are not working in some parts of Tehran, including BBC Persian and Voice Of America (Persian).
So there is a media fight here.
Edited 2009-06-15 19:28 UTC
Generally if politicians care more about killing Jews than … well anything, really, they’re hiding something.
Fortunately that seems to be that Iran’s tired of rhetoric of killing Jews masking 300%+ inflation rates.
Funny how you state that Iran’s gov is only concerned with killing Jews when Iran has the largest *** Population outside of Israel and probably the largest Semitic *** Population in the world. If you bothered to dig a little into the Presidents transcripts instead of relying on MSM info what was being called for was the end to Israel being purely a *** State and the end of Zionism. Nothing what so ever with the death of *** people.
As for the Iranian elections and their results – are we much better off with our democratic Western Gov’s? How many of you supported the Wars that are being waged by the COW? How about those young service personel being sacrificed on the alter of Big Business interests? When you have an election in USA/UK/Australia and have only 2 parties to really choose from and there is nothing seperating them from each other policy wise is that Democracy? How about when those parties represent nothing of public interest and only Big Business stepping on Citizens Rights and the Environment as a result?
Who are we in the West to point fingers? I also find it interesting that the Washington Post’s own polling in Iran showed a similar result to what occured in the election. Time for the West to stop stomping on other countries an dpeoples rights in the name of their own interests and just leave the world to itself. As for what is show in the MSM – open your eyes and use your brain. You are not getting a true and real account of news and events.
Is Iran perfect – no but nor are we and to state otherwise is true hypocracy. Funny how Iran has a lot of Oil and Gass Reserves and that the US$ is being migrated away by the large up and coming econimic powers i.e. BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China).
When the former president of the Philippines, Joseph Estrada, was being accused by a former friend and drinking/gambling buddy of improper conduct involving money, the abrupt termination of the senate hearing of that friend triggered mass street protests that culminated in “EDSA 2” or “People Power 2”. Text messages were passed like brushfire all over the country telling people where to assemble. It reached a high point in the mass rally (which I attended the day before Estrada vacated the presidency) at the corner of two highways where a shrine and church were erected to commemorate the first People Power movement of 1986 to oust dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The local cellsites were so saturated with messages that the signal strength went down.
I’m curious to see how the situation in Iran will play out. I can only hope it is resolved to the benefit of the people.
PS Being from a non-Western country, I disagree with the occasional negative comments on articles about hobbyist OSes (like ReactOS), claiming them as supposedly impractical and useless. Maybe for those posters, but not for us who live in different conditions. It would do well to remind them that there are OSAlert readers like me.
howdelera, you are one brainwashed puppy. put this crap opinion piece on your blog and save us.
An article about how Web 2.0 apps are being used by the people in Iran – why in the world wouldn’t we want to hear about this? This may come as a shock, but sometimes the Tech world intersects with the Real world.
TBH, this is the first piece on osnews that has interested me in a few weeks. Also, I think the article is balanced and well written.
Only thing left out: go to search.twitter.com and search for #iranelection to follow twitter coverage.
Edited 2009-06-15 19:51 UTC
It’s in there, under the “Twitter” link. Thanks though, because some might’ve missed it.
The topic is interesting and the article well-written. But since it’s not Operating System news, I’d rather see this sort of stuff used as Page 2 filler.
It is indeed fascinating to follow what his happening in Iran right now and new media seems to play a key role here.
Twitter, which I always found silly before, seems to really play an important part for the people in Iran and it’s also one of the best ways to get first hand accounts of what is going on in Iran.
All in all blogs and twitter seem to be doing a much better job at covering the situation than much of the mainstream media. At least here in Germany, TV coverage is awful, to put it mildly, and international news channels like CNN are doing a terrible job.
For anyone who is interested, here are some sites I found worth following about the situation in Iran:
http://niacblog.wordpress.com/
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_…
http://twitter.com/TehranBureau/
http://twitter.com/iranelection09
http://twitter.com/StopAhmadi
Just out of coincidence I happened to have gone over to Andrew Sullivan’s site earlier just to see if he had written anything on the healthcare debate, and was surprised it was down due to increased traffic (although DOS was initially suspected). Huffingtonpost seems to be one of the few outlets truly covering this as extensively as they have. CNN, MSNBC, etc. all seem to have for most of yesterday and today treated this as a very small and insignificant event (at least not in proportion to the significance this has for the whole world!)
This is really an amazing event to watch and follow, because we simply have absolutely no idea where this could lead. Those of us who followed the initial days of the attempted August coup in the Soviet Union NEVER EVER would have thought this would lead to the dissolution of the entire Soviet Union. Then again, in China at Tiananmen Square many thought that change was going to come, that it was inevitable.
No matter what, Iran will never be the same. The demographics, much like here in the U.S., have shifted in favor of the young.
p.s. Doesn’t news like this really make these lame techie arguments seem so childish and trivial?
Ok, I know this comment is slightly off-topic and may be seen as some as silly. But I’ve been following the situation for some long hours now and I’ve read many good comments on it and I don’t think I can add much to a discussion on the theme.
On the other hand, reading the Time’s article (linked by Thom’s post, though I don’t blame him) and following a link for “Pictures of Iran’s presidential elections” really gave me a glimpse of Time’s incredibly poor taste.
Without any warning or any disclaimer, the very first picture is that of a dead man, shot, lying on the sidewalk covered in blood. The second isn’t much better, a man showing his injured arm, also covered in blood.
Is that what journalism has become for Time? I’m not overly-sensitive or anything like that, but there used to be some standards for this kind of information. To inform the reader of strong material being displayed, to warn those who might feel offended by it.
It’s just saddening to see their extremely poor taste.
[/rant]
Truth hurts.
I don’t see this as a problem. This is what the real world is like, outside of western comfort zones with universal remotes and 60″ plasma displays.
I’m sure it does. I live in a country that was under a military dictatorship during 20 years.
And as I stated before, it’s not about the images. I don’t quite care much about those, but I do care about giving the viewer the CHOICE of not staring at a dead man covered in blood if they don’t want to.
EDIT: I don’t know if I made this point clear: I’m not advocating that the images shouldn’t be there. Just saying that they should TELL the viewer that there are strong images ahead. They already open a pre-loadin screen that I have to click to start the slide show, why the hell can’t they warn the viewerbefore he clicks to start?
Edited 2009-06-15 22:08 UTC
The “real world” is something that a vast majority of people in the first-world spend-big to ignore. Having it put in front of them risks forcing them to consider that their own lives may not be as stable as they imagined^aEUR”that one day, that it may be their face on someone’s TV standing in the disaster of what was once their home.
Would you like fries with that?
I’m fairly sure that was a mixup on Time’s part. The “5 reasons” article and the photo gallery were posted yesterday. The gallery was subsequently updated with the bloody photos today. New links from other time articles to that photo gallery include warnings about graphic photos. The old article doesn’t have the same because the original gallery wasn’t particularly graphic.
Thanks for the information. Considering that, even though they could have been a little bit more careful, I have to admit they’re hardly as bad as I thought at first.
Looks like a fair mistake, nothing more, then.
There are actually 2 lessons about the media that you can draw from this.
1.) New internet media is trumping old media. This is the point of the article and it’s pretty much true. While CNN was playing reruns of crappy larry king interviews, huff post + andrew sullivan were basically around-the-clock live blogging what was happening using sources like twitter/youtube/etc.
2.) The flip side is that some old media will really never die. The reporting coming from the new york times, TIME magazine, and channel4 news in the uk has been nothing short of excellent. Each of those organizations have multiple reporters on the ground in Tehran right now. First-hand accounts and cell phone videos are useful and exciting, but there’s no way they replace real comprehensive journalism.
The scope of Ahmadinejad’s claimed victory is suspicious, sure, but I’m not entirely convinced he didn’t win.
Like someone mentioned earlier, if you were on the net you might have assumed Ron Paul was going to win. If you were on the net in 2004, you would have thought Bush had no chance. All the vocal internet users and news sites were pushing Kerry. But enough people were swayed by arguments to fear or religion or whatever that Bush won.
It could be the same with Ahmadinejad. Who are we most likely to be hearing from through Twitter and Facebook? The young, the tech savvy, the university educated. Those who speak English or French or whatever. We are most likely to be hearing from those who oppose Ahmadinejad. Could it be that we are hearing from the Iranian version of the Ron Paul supporters?
Obviously there are a lot of them, but as with Kerry supporters in ’04, are they a majority? If not, they got the result democracy mandates, for better or worse.
Mousavi is supported by the Rafsanjanis, who give off a more elitist vibe. Ahmadinejad is a man of the people (and IIRC the first non cleric to be president), living in his small apartment which has some appeal to the masses. I really wouldn’t be surprised if there was a non-twittering, conservative majority that voted for him again.
On the other hand, the reaction to their protests is the opposite of what one would hope for in a functioning democracy. If he really did win, Ahmadinejad should have no problem letting people address their perceived grievances, double check results, etc. The reaction to the protests has been typical totalitarianism, which does remove some credibility from Ahmadinejad’s proclaimed victory. What a mess.
I think the thing people are ignoring is this small little fact; regardless of who gets the ‘reigns of power’ – their influence over key policy decisions is next to zero. These key policy decisions such as foreign policy are controlled by Ali Hoseyni Kh"Amene^aEURTMi and the cadre of clerics which rule over Iran.
One also must remember that the opposition leader labelled as a ‘reformer’ was the one who set off Iran’s nuclear programme, he is socially conservative so don’t expect an reforms when it comes to social policy, and given his past it is doubtful he’ll be willing to negotiate on the nuclear issue.
But with that being said, one has to stand back and realise that there is a split within Iran; there are Clerics both now and in the past who oppose the Iranian regime, specifically, the role of clerics in the current setup. IIRC there was a cleric who in the 80s outwardly spoke against Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini but found his life came to a premature end.
As for Iran in the future; I don’t think things are going to get better until there is a bloody revolution followed by a public trial of all those clerics and their supporters for treason. 1200 years ago Persia was invaded by Muslims, and Islam was collectively rammed down their throat – too bad Khosrau didn’t repell that awful uncivilised Allahu Ackbar when the chance was given.
Edited 2009-06-16 03:06 UTC
One thing you are not thinking about… The protesters feel that they have been wronged by their government. This might easily spin out of control of the guardian council and they might find themselves fleeing for their lives.
Now.. back to likely reality, While the president and parliament need their laws “blessed” by the supreme leader for any legislation that they pass, a reform president and parliament decide what legislation is passed and is sent up to the supreme leader.
The choice of who sits in the seat as Supreme leader is also left up to a group of electors that the people vote on. The electors then choose a Supreme Leader from the Guardian Council. So, while the people don’t have as much influence or rights in their country as they do in other republics, reformers can have a positive affect on the lives of the people.
Some people will tell you democracy is not just a stupid idea, but that it’s actually dangerous. Friends, I want to highlight Iran’s opposition to basic human rights. First order of democracy is human rights.
Iran has “democracy” They are a democratic republic, just like the US. The problem is that the rights of the people were never codified and their parliament is not co-equal to the Guardian Council or the Supreme Leader so the voice of the people cannot protect the rights of the people like it does in other democratic republics like the US, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, etc.
Actually, the difference isn’t that great at all. In Iran, the ayatollahs more or less decide who the eligible candidates are. In the US, Wall Street bankers and the business elite (who, purely coincidentally, happen to control the mass media) decides who the eligible candidates are.
Has anybody considered the option that Ahmadinejad actually *is* still a popular president? Polls by mind you, American polling agencies showed that there was no direct evidence for election manipulation. US, Israel benefit from efforts to destabilise Iran, in various ways. The CIA or whatever name America’s agents provocateurs go by these days, and the Mossad are definitely active there too.
polling in a country where you need to fear any comment that can be considered sedition is unreliable.
Well no, Iran isn’t North Korea in that respect.
As anybody who has ever been there can testify.
I wouldn’t put it past it that the US government (read: CIA) are politically interferring here. Pretty much like what happened in 1955. The US does not like the current guy in charge and will use and dirty tracks to try and discredit and get rid of him.
How am I to provide proof of my suspicions when organisations like the CIA act in an underhanded and secretive manner, leaving little or no evidence behind of their tampering?
Dave