IRAN: The Counter Revolution Will Be Digitized

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[Photo courtesy of TEHRANLIVE.ORG]

BBC: All over the world people are monitoring unfolding events in Iran via the internet, where an apparently decisive election victory by the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being challenged on the streets. Although there are signs the Iranian government is trying to cut some communications with the outside world, citizen journalism appears to be thriving on the web. Here is a selection of popular links, many of which have been written from a particular point of view but – when taken together – provide a wide range of perspectives.  MORE

tehran_protest.jpgGUARDIAN: In days gone by, crushing a revolution was a lot easier. There were no mobile phones to co-ordinate street action or relay what was happening to the outside world. Even more importantly, there wasn’t an internet. Now it is common to hear of “internet” or even “twitter revolutions” – as Andrew Sullivan on the Atlantic has already described the current protests in Iran. It is precisely for that reason that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to have – temporarily at least – shut down Facebook, Twitter, mobile phone networks and unsympathetic websites. Nevertheless, Iranians are still managing to feed out information, embracing the technology that the moderate Mir Hossein Mousavi employed during his ultimately unsuccessful election campaign. One of the most powerful photos to emerge so far is on Twitpic. The image of a woman holding a flag in one hand and raising her fist with the other as police approach is almost reminiscent of the iconic image from the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989. Dramatic photographs have also appeared on Twitter showing ordinary Iranian people confronting police – images previously unthinkable in such a repressive regime. MORE

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD: The breakouts firstly started in tehran and was on the same day that the votes were announced, however at the moment all the cities in iran, and i have to say in most of the cities in iran the situation might even be worse than tehran. people even have started to attack the military guards and they have taken control over some of the cities. MORE

FIVETHIRTYEIGHT: Like most Americans, there are few things I would like to see more than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s hateful President, to be voted out of office. Elections in thuggish, authoritarian states like Iran need be treated with the utmost skepticism and scrutiny. I can’t say I have any real degree of confidence in the official results, which showed Ahmadinejad winning with some 62 percent of the vote. There is a statistical analysis making the rounds, however, which purports to show overwhelmingly persuasive evidence that the Iranian election was rigged. I do not find this evidence compelling. MORE

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