Fatemeh breaks it down: "It’s easy to get carried away by Iran’s Twitter revolution. The Twitter universe can feel the anxiety and intensity of tweets coming from Iranians in real time, which sweeps us away with revolutionary dreams of an Iran that we want to see. But in recent years, there have been plenty of protests against Ahmadinejad, plenty of universities and homes raided, and nothing ever came of it. Are the hashtags #IranRevolution leading to a real revolution, or will the protests evaporate after a few days?"
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Minotaar wrote:
Does anyone know what is up with the style of pinning the headscarf way back on the top of the head, so that lots of hair is showing? Is this a deliberate liberalization of the hajab style? Clearly some amount of hair is allowed to show, especially if it is near the face, but this seems to be a deliberate stretching of the “rules”. I like it!
Posted 18 Jun 2009 at 12:12 pm ¶
Rosa wrote:
I’ve been thinking about this since I found out. Changing your pic to green and your location to Tehran…but I think that some people are doing it more as a fad on Twitter. Just to say they did it. Kinda hipster-y, and it undermines the people actually helping and reporting on the information.
I didn’t change my pic or location because it felt fake to do so.
Posted 18 Jun 2009 at 1:17 pm ¶
Roxie wrote:
Rosa, I thought the same thing. But if ppl think I’m being hipster for doing so, I can’t waste my time on them
Posted 18 Jun 2009 at 4:24 pm ¶
ansel wrote:
Via Jeremy Scahill’s blog, “To You, the new Iran ‘expert’” by Mo-ha-med:
Posted 18 Jun 2009 at 5:24 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
@ansel — right on.
One of the thing that drives me a little crazy is having to correct several misconceptions a lot of people have about Iran. Here’s a few:
“The mullahs/imams/religious leaders run everything.”
No. Iran has a system of religious leaders who, essentially, get a kind of veto over many government decisions, but their power is far from absolute. In fact, we might remember that some years back they refused to seat many elected members of the parliament, and had to back down. Iran isn’t as open a democracy as we all might like, but it’s far from where one of our best buddies in the region — Saudi Arabia — is. In fact, I’d stack it as just slightly less open than Turkey, whose military has seen fit to interfere with election results it didn’t like as recently as the 90s.
“The Iranians want to destroy Israel and that’s why Ahmedinejad talks the way he does.”
No. First, Ahmedinejad has zero to say about what the Iranian military does. He’s president, not prime minister, and in a parliamentary system he can say all the crazy things he wants, but he isn’t the guy giving the orders as commander in chief. That falls to Ali Khamenei, supreme leader, who is chosen in a rather different way.
“Iran is governed by religious law.”
Um, no. Not quite. Islamic law is a framework around which a good chunk of the revolutionary constitution in 1979 was written, but the situation is far more complicated than that. You could make that case about Saudi Arabia, perhaps, or some of the other Gulf states, maybe.
“The religious leaders are all crazy fanatics who are trying to suppress an election result.”
No. The issues in Iran cannot be divided into Islamist=bad and Twittering young people = good. Again, the situation is far more complex, with the od Islamic revolutionaries, the military, the Council of Guardians, and a dozen other players in the mix.
All this, by the way, can be gleaned from looking at a couple of interesting books on the subject. I’d recommend Christopher de Bellaigue, who lives in Iran (I think he married an Iranian woman) and Juan Cole as starters. Both of them are deeply immersed int he culture of Iran. But it isn’t like it’s a big secret or requires a ton of expertise. I can’t even speak Farsi and I could figure it out.
And I want to give props to the BBC. I’ve been watching some of the coverage there, and if you don’t speak Arabic well enough to understand Al-Jazeera (and I most certainly do not) then those folks have been on the ball and on point and worth watching. Certainly a lot better than CNN. And that takes a lot of guts and good reporting.
Farnaz Fassihi of the WSJ has also been pretty darned good. (She’s Iranian herself IIRC).
Posted 19 Jun 2009 at 11:06 am ¶
Abu Sinan wrote:
@Ansel,
Awesome! I wonder how many of these people “helping” either actively or passively, have the first clue about ANY details involved here?
I wonder if these people would continue their support if they were aware that Mousavi is a VERY big fan of Hizb’Allah……you know the group that has killed many Americans and recently fought a bloody war against Israel?
I wonder if they’d still want to help if they knew that Mousavi was behind the start of the secret nuclear program in Iran?
Would they still help if they knew that he was a religious extremist and has no intention of “liberating” anyone nor tearing down the clerics ruling the country?
I am all for people helping out movements, but I just wish people would make an attempt to understand the situations and the movements they are helping.
I think 95% of those “helping” the Mousavi camp would be VERY uncomfortable if they knew many of his stances and his background and probably would stop helping.
What is it with the West in always thinking we can help, or that we should help?
Posted 19 Jun 2009 at 11:58 am ¶
Abu Sinan wrote:
@Rosa,
I didnt change anything or do anything, save for post on this blog.
Why?
1. I am not Iranian.
2. Having spent a lot of time in the area and speak some of the languages, I still dont know enough about the situation to take sides.
3. I have no stake in the issue and feel it would be unfair to do anything being uninformed and not having anything at stake were my opinions and “help” wrong.
The Western media has clearly sided with the opposition here for reasons that I think have no basis in fact or reality.
All I think about the situation is that the West and Westerners should stay out of it, and that before people make up their minds they look for real physical facts behind the arguments. As Ansel said eluded to, it would be really hard to fake over ten million votes, so there is more to the story than we are seeing here in the West.
It is all nice and good to debate the facts, but I think most Westerners do not know enough to make a valid choice on who to support, nor do I think people in the rest of the world would benefit from our “help” in the first place.
Western history is full of disasters when we tried to “help” the rest of the world.
Posted 19 Jun 2009 at 12:09 pm ¶
L wrote:
Call me naive, but I’m one of the many Iranian Americans who was pulling for a Mousavi win. Yes, he’s a member of the establishment and way too religious for my agnostic self and much of the secular Iranian American community. But there are some small differences that make him, in my opinion, a better choice than A’jad — he’s more woman-friendly, open to relations with the West, and less likely to do the amount of PR-damaging shit-talking that Ahmadinejad does. That’s my opinion as an outsider — I know that there are a host of other domestic (namely economic) issues that are at play here as well.
Now, I sort of think it’s better the election turned out this way. If Mousavi had won, it’s very likely that not much would have changed at all. But now that tons of people are out there protesting with no sign of slowing down, the prospect of change is greater– even if it comes farther down the road.
While what ansel quoted is true– a lot of people seem to be brand new Iran experts — I’m glad people are talking about this. We shouldn’t try to suppress dialogue.
There was an article going around asking people to change their Twitter locations to Tehran to make it harder for Iranian authorities to track down Twitter users in the country. I have no idea if that would actually help. But it takes about two seconds to do and I could care less if anyone thinks people who do that are just hipster sheep. Come on.
Posted 19 Jun 2009 at 1:13 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
@L– on a technical note, while changing your twitter location might make it harder to find out who is “really” in Iran if you were doing a visual or text-search, that isn’t quite how it works. If I wanted to find you, all I have to do is track back your IP address. While one can spoof IPs, most folks don’t take the time or money even to use Ghost Surf. The Iranian government has experts every bit as technically savvy as people here.
Changing the location is a nice expression of solidarity with the protest movement. I’m all for supporting movements that are progressive, for sure. But I like to make sure I know what the hell I’m doing, as Abu Sinan noted.
Posted 20 Jun 2009 at 8:29 am ¶
Lxy wrote:
Some interesting links on the (mis)use of Twitter–not by Iranians, but by “other” political forces:
Washington Taps Into a Potent New Force in Diplomacy
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/middleeast/17media.html?_r=1&ref=world
Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #IranElection
http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/06/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter/
JPost Removes the Evidence and Issues a Response #IranElection
http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/06/jpost-removes-the-evidence-and-issues-a-response-iranelection/
Posted 21 Jun 2009 at 4:01 am ¶
Joseph wrote:
@Fatemeh
Thanks for this. I have a first-hand account from Tehran that was passed to me by a colleague and I struggled with whether or not to blog it for all of these reasons. Finally I decided that I would post it with the caveat that it represented one person’s experience and isn’t intended as the final word on anything. I also tweeted a particular quote that was intended as a direct message to the world out of solidarity with the author… but I am extremely conscious of the ease with which social media can perpetuate Orientalist stereotypes. I think the liberal mythology about social media–that it is “neutral”, that is represents the “voice of the people”, that it exclusively supports western values (whatever they are)–are dangerously false.
Forest… trees. Thanks again.
Posted 21 Jun 2009 at 3:01 pm ¶