Attempted Iran media clampdown meets Internet age

Yahoo via AP ^ | June 17, 2009 43 mins ago | REBECCA SANTANA and BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press Writers Rebecca Santana And Barbara Ortutay,

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

CAIRO – Iran clamped down Tuesday on independent media in an attempt to control images of election protests, but pictures and videos leaked out anyway — showing how difficult it is to shut off the flow of information in the Internet age.

The restrictions imposed by the government made such social-networking sites as Twitter and Flickr more prominent — with even the U.S. State Department calling on Twitter to put off a scheduled shutdown for maintenance.

Iranians were posting items online, but it wasn't known how much of that information was being seen by others inside the country. And although some of the posts on Twitter appeared to be from users in Tehran, others clearly were not.

Following a massive opposition rally Monday, authorities restricted journalists — including Iranians working for foreign media — from reporting on the streets. They could effectively only work from their offices, conducting telephone interviews and monitoring official sources such as state TV.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Back to the French embassy:

In Tehran, anti-West protests erupt too

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Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:26:27 GMT

As pro-Moussavi supporters staged a civil rally in Tehran, demonstrators from the opposite camp have gathered outside the British and French embassies in Tehran.

Waving Iranian flags and chanting anti-US and British slogans, the demonstrators gathered on Monday to protest what they called western involvement in Iran's internal affairs.

"We have gathered here to protest a hidden agenda (by Britain and the world), aimed at creating chaos in our country," said a protester in front of the UK embassy.

"We say to all oppressive governments not to intervene in the future of our country. We will stand in their way with all our strength," said another protestor in front of the French embassy.

The protests came on the day that Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei ordered an investigation into allegations of election fraud.

The Leader also urged defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi to pursue his appeal against Friday's vote result legally.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Monday the Tehran government which is dealing with post-election riots "seems to be state violence against its own people in Tehran and elsewhere".

RZS/MD

[PapaBear3625]

re: French Embassy: not much of an attack Pro-Ahmadinejad demonstrators hurled eggs at the French Embassy on Monday, attempting to link the West to the unrest surrounding the election results.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just came across this from a tweeter message:

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From: iranartexile

Youtube

Open Letter to the World - English Version

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Ha!...They are too busy attacking their own people....just a photo-op event....

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More:

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RT @weirdchina: Time Magazine: Iran's Protests: Why Twitter Is the Medium of the Movement http://bit.ly/lMBuv #iranelection

9 minutes ago from Nambu

xrivoire

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Iran's Protests: Why Twitter Is the Medium of the Movement

*************************EXCERPT**********************************

The U.S. State Department doesn't usually take an interest in the maintenance schedules of dotcom start-ups. But over the weekend, officials there reached out to Twitter and asked them to delay a network upgrade that was scheduled for Monday night. The reason? To protect the interests of Iranians using the service to protest the presidential election that took place on June 12. Twitter moved the upgrade to 2 p.m. P.T. Tuesday afternoon — or 1:30 a.m. Tehran time. (Read "The Iran Election: Twitter's Big Moment.")

Related

Photos

Photos: Behind the Scenes with Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Stories

• In Iran, Rival Regime Factions Play a High-Stakes Game of Chicken
• Latest Tweets on Fallout from Iran's Election

When Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone founded Twitter in 2006, they were probably worried about things like making money and protecting people's privacy and drunk college kids breaking up with one another in 140 characters or less. What they weren't worried about was being suppressed by the Iranian government. But in the networked, surreally flattened world of social media, those things aren't as far apart as they used to be — and what began as a toy for online flirtation is suddenly being put to much more serious uses. After the election in Iran, cries of protest from supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi arose in all possible media, but the loudest cries were heard in a medium that didn't even exist the last time Iran had an election. (See pictures of Iran's presidential election and its turbulent aftermath.)

So what exactly makes Twitter the medium of the moment? It's free, highly mobile, very personal and very quick. It's also built to spread, and fast. Twitterers like to append notes called hashtags — #theylooklikethis — to their tweets, so that they can be grouped and searched for by topic; especially interesting or urgent tweets tend to get picked up and retransmitted by other Twitterers, a practice known as retweeting, or just RT. And Twitter is promiscuous by nature: tweets go out over two networks, the Internet and SMS, the network that cell phones use for text messages, and they can be received and read on practically anything with a screen and a network connection. (Read about how Twitter is changing the way we live.)

[visualops]

holy crap
looks like systematically going door to door

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Yes and based on tweeter messages they are importing help ...from Venezuela...as well as Palestine and Lebanon...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Related threads:

Iran's Protests: Why Twitter Is the Medium of the Movement

and

Twitter provides instant news on protests in Iran.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Related threads:

Iranian Opposition Head Calls For Rally Thursday

and

Iran Govt: Death Penalty to Protest Organizers

[visualops]

Can we get any confirmation on that??

[PapaBear3625]

Asgari is reported in multiple places to have been the leaker. He's since been killed.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

We have a lot of headline readers here that never get into the depts of threads....will post that.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

For the headline readers:...FR Thread from ibtimes.co.uk :

Iranian who leaked election results may have been assassinated

Now if we could get confirmation on Chavez supplying troops to Iran.....

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Back on the tweeter network for a bit:

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#iranelection has now fallen out of the number 1 trending topics spot. Don't let our support for Iranian supporters wane as well. Please RT

1 minute ago from web

p_anarchist

Parisa S.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More:***************************************************

Marjane Satrapi & Mohsen Makhmalbaf press conference in Brussels shared this: http://bit.ly/10w8sL #IranElection

3 minutes ago from web

libra0071

libra

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

jveritas...is this readable for you?

Election theft memo from Iran Interior Ministry (Authenticity NOT VERIFIED) #iranelection

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I have no idea if this is an authentic document.

If it is, it is a June 13, 2009 (Persian calendar 23 Khordad 1388)
memo from the office of Iran's Interior Ministry to Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei.

The memo informs Khamenei that the interior ministry announced a
victory by Ahmadinejad in accordance with Khamenei's wishes. The memo
says announcing an Ahmadinejad win is in the best interests of the
nation.

The chart that follows informs Khamenei of the vote's "real" results.

It says 42 million votes were cast with
with Mousavi getting 19,075,623 votes, Mehdi Karroubi getting
13,387,104 votes, Ahmadinejad finishing a distant third with 5,698,417
votes, and Mohsen Rezaee getting 3,754,218.

(Persian-to-English translation by my father. He read the memo off my phone, so please forgive minor typos).
#iranelection 

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More:

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RT @lesliejz @madcao: Regime still pretending there's no protest outside Tehran, photo says otherwise http://twitpic.com/7ki6e #IranElection

10 minutes ago from TweetDeck

jeffgentry

[tflabo]

McCain should have ‘meddled more’ in the USA election of Nov 4, 2008 instead of being the mild, meed RINO while Obama and complicit MSM pulled the wool over the sheeple’s eyes. But that he’ s voicing opposition of Obama’s weak support for Iranian freedom is a good thing nonetheless.
Obama is a worthless, weak fraud.

[pgkdan]

Bump