How is Obama in any way responsibly for ANYTHING, good or bad, in this?
This was the Iranian people finally saying Enough is Enough. Obama didn't have anything to do with it.
I don't think there's any way to support this claim, but I have trouble imagining the vast rallies and inspired use of social networking had the Obama campaign not succeeded.
I guess this isn't saying that Obama actually did anything to affect this happening. But rather the fact of his election and the way it happened does, pretty clearly, seem to have inspired Iranians to some significant extent.
I'm really glad Obama invented Big Rallies just in time for these Iranian protests.
I don't think social networking is bringing in millions of people for these rallies, when most of those sites are blocked. (yes there are ways around them, but most people wouldn't know that)
As nice as it would be to think that Obama or the internet is super-charging this, rallies and revolutions have been going on for a long time.
Twitter and such has been nice for getting news out of Iran, but not too much else.
While the MSM is picking it up now, they took their sweet time getting to it, and spent the first good while trying to explain WHY they didn't cover instead of getting right to it.
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
While the MSM is picking it up now, they took their sweet time getting to it, and spent the first good while trying to explain WHY they didn't cover instead of getting right to it.
They have a perfectly good reason why they didn't cover it, they weren't allowed to by the Iranian government. Twitter is only any use as a news source in that it shows governments they can no longer muzzle information leaving their country, the major news networks gave me more useful info in one solid afternoon than it could in weeks. Anyway, the BBC has been leading with the story for days now, despite their inability to get reporters on the ground.
While the MSM is picking it up now, they took their sweet time getting to it, and spent the first good while trying to explain WHY they didn't cover instead of getting right to it.
They have a perfectly good reason why they didn't cover it, they weren't allowed to by the Iranian government.
That's a shitty reason. Networks weren't prevented from talking about it, just from getting their own footage. Obviously there are other sources of information, and it's a pity that almost nobody did anything for days.
While the MSM is picking it up now, they took their sweet time getting to it, and spent the first good while trying to explain WHY they didn't cover instead of getting right to it.
They have a perfectly good reason why they didn't cover it, they weren't allowed to by the Iranian government.
That's a shitty reason. Networks weren't prevented from talking about it, just from getting their own footage. Obviously there are other sources of information, and it's a pity that almost nobody did anything for days.
Well, remember excessive criticism of the regime could also endanger their people on the ground who might have faced reprisals if a network had said "The election has likely been stolen, CNN takes you live to an expert on the revolution who will explain why he believes that the authority of the Supreme Leader will never recover"
Only once it became clear that Iran could not supress the flow of information did it become moot to hold their tongues. Heck, its also a fact that the US usually doesn't care one jot about foreign affairs. I mean, big as this is, the EU elections were much more important and barely registered in the US news.
While the MSM is picking it up now, they took their sweet time getting to it, and spent the first good while trying to explain WHY they didn't cover instead of getting right to it.
They have a perfectly good reason why they didn't cover it, they weren't allowed to by the Iranian government.
That's a shitty reason. Networks weren't prevented from talking about it, just from getting their own footage. Obviously there are other sources of information, and it's a pity that almost nobody did anything for days.
Well, remember excessive criticism of the regime could also endanger their people on the ground who might have faced reprisals if a network had said "The election has likely been stolen, CNN takes you live to an expert on the revolution who will explain why he believes that the authority of the Supreme Leader will never recover"
Only once it became clear that Iran could not supress the flow of information did it become moot to hold their tongues. Heck, its also a fact that the US usually doesn't care one jot about foreign affairs. I mean, big as this is, the EU elections were much more important and barely registered in the US news.
I'm sorry, but if they aren't going to ask the tough questions, then what the fuck are they good for? Being a foreign correspondent is not the safest jobs, and these guys know what they are getting into.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
While the MSM is picking it up now, they took their sweet time getting to it, and spent the first good while trying to explain WHY they didn't cover instead of getting right to it.
They have a perfectly good reason why they didn't cover it, they weren't allowed to by the Iranian government.
That's a shitty reason. Networks weren't prevented from talking about it, just from getting their own footage. Obviously there are other sources of information, and it's a pity that almost nobody did anything for days.
Well, remember excessive criticism of the regime could also endanger their people on the ground who might have faced reprisals if a network had said "The election has likely been stolen, CNN takes you live to an expert on the revolution who will explain why he believes that the authority of the Supreme Leader will never recover"
Only once it became clear that Iran could not supress the flow of information did it become moot to hold their tongues. Heck, its also a fact that the US usually doesn't care one jot about foreign affairs. I mean, big as this is, the EU elections were much more important and barely registered in the US news.
I'm sorry, but if they aren't going to ask the tough questions, then what the fuck are they good for? Being a foreign correspondent is not the safest jobs, and these guys know what they are getting into.
Huzzah! A quote tree! The thing is, foreign correspondants don't just work for American media, there are a host of other companies serving other nations and regions that have a more vested interest in the affairs of the world than you cable television audience.
Try not to confuse the "MSM" as being only the major American networks. Newspapers, wire services, magazines, and publicly funded organizations like NPR and the BBC are all mainstream news sources.
Journalists are literally risking their lives going out and reporting this, whether it's gunfire into a crowd or being captured and imprisoned as a spy. Despite this, there are reporters that are doing excellent work in Iran right now, deciphering the picture that the individual brush strokes of Twitter are painting (and ruling out the baseless rumor). So far one journalist has been stabbed, several arrested, beaten, and then released, and the Iranian fixers, translators, and assistants that work with the news orgs are putting themselves in a difficult position because they have none of the (admittedly small) protections that foreign press has.
My local newspaper has run Iran on the front page two days in a row now (maybe Sunday, too, I didn't pick that one up) with several stories related to not just the events but the history of some of the key players.
Plus they have been running Iran stories front page for several days now.
Andrew Sullivan works for The Atlantic, not exactly a sprightly young startup company: The Daily Dish
Then there's the Boston Globe with reporters in the country, BBC, Getty, AP, I can't think of the big French wire service, LAT has someone, apparently, CNN has looked like doofuses but they have Christone Amanpour in Iran, filming, as well.
Twitter is a useful tool but it's potentially dangerous to the integrity of a news organization if journalists don't take it with the same skepticism they should approach everything. It can be very easy to start taking rumors as truth. It is the job of the journalist to confirm events, not relay rumor, misinformation, and wishful thinking. It can not only damage the integrity of the news source, it can also be dangerous. In highly impassioned times reporting rumor as fact can lead to people dying. Shit, Andrew Sullivan in his excitement took a tweet from an unconfirmed source and told the world that foreign paramilitaries were involved in the early violence (which he retracted soon after).
CNN looked like a bunch of idiots because they started reporting on content delivery systems instead of on content. It was obviously a knee-jerk reaction to #cnnfail when they ran their "isn't twitter neat?" segments. They would have been better off ignoring it and running what they had once some of their video started coming in.
Let's not go cheering the irrelevance of the main stream media, just yet. The idea of the citizen journalist is compelling, but it's also raw, emotional, and unreliable. The news landscape is better with social networking, the internet, and digital cameras to add irrepressible, instantaneous images but at the end of the day it is still the role of the professional journalist to provide clarity and honesty to those images.
It's also difficult to report on something knowing that A) your source is already identified and tagged with press credentials, and will likely be arrested within a few hours of your broadcast.
That said, American Media missed the boat as far as how to try and cover it. Instead of a gripping story of a media and technology crackdown and contested election results and riots, it was "hey, twitter said we sucked, OH YEAH TWITTER? Let's go to our special report on twitter, and what people tweet."
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
Twitter is a useful tool but it's potentially dangerous to the integrity of a news organization if journalists don't take it with the same skepticism they should approach everything. It can be very easy to start taking rumors as truth. It is the job of the journalist to confirm events, not relay rumor, misinformation, and wishful thinking. It can not only damage the integrity of the news source, it can also be dangerous. In highly impassioned times reporting rumor as fact can lead to people dying. Shit, Andrew Sullivan in his excitement took a tweet from an unconfirmed source and told the world that foreign paramilitaries were involved in the early violence (which he retracted soon after).
CNN looked like a bunch of idiots because they started reporting on content delivery systems instead of on content. It was obviously a knee-jerk reaction to #cnnfail when they ran their "isn't twitter neat?" segments. They would have been better off ignoring it and running what they had once some of their video started coming in.
Let's not go cheering the irrelevance of the main stream media, just yet. The idea of the citizen journalist is compelling, but it's also raw, emotional, and unreliable. The news landscape is better with social networking, the internet, and digital cameras to add irrepressible, instantaneous images but at the end of the day it is still the role of the professional journalist to provide clarity and honesty to those images.
Actually, Twitter has turned out to be pretty reliable if you know how to use it. Each poster has their own pseudonym, so you just see who is regularly backed up by pictures later, and trust them as a reliable informant, similar to the trust placed with "anonymous officials."
For example, I'd believe #iranelection and #changeforiran if the claimed Ahmedi had sent in the dragons.
How representative are Iran’s Twitter revolutionaries? In actual fact, the only allegedly Iranian Twitter users who have been identified by other Twitter users as tweeting about the Iranian protests, are fewer than 45 (see one list here), most of whose locations cannot be confirmed and almost all of whom post only in English. Yet, one can get as many as 2,500 updates in a single minute, on one stream alone (#iranelection), and most of that repetitive and uninformative material is not being posted by anyone except for a huge mass of American Twitter users. In total, only a third of Iranians even have Internet access (we saw in the Canadian case that Internet access does not translate into Twitter use) and, very interestingly, the youth who are most associated with the protests and with Twitter use, consist of 18-to-24-year-olds who in fact comprise “the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups” (poll).
. . .
“Where is my vote?” I am not sure where the votes of the disgruntled losers of the Iranian election are, but I doubt that they are in Twitter. Perhaps this view is mistaken, perhaps the way they recast their ballot is through Twitter, and one would think that the pretty young females with makeup and jewelry cast their real ballots when they held up signs in Tehran, in English, for foreign news photographers.
. . .
The last point raises the issue of how are we to value the “information” provided by this “Twitter revolt”. The first problem is to get over short attention spans — this is not the first “Twitter revolt” as some in Twitter suggest. The latest, previous revolt was in Moldova, and I personally followed very closely the Greek riots through Twitter and many other media. Indeed, the #griots stream is still active, and when it was especially active in December of 2008, it featured countless links to independent media, loaded with photographs and videos, and many if not most of the tweets were in Greek — it was a Greek event, generated for Greeks and to be consumed by Greeks. Thus previously I have not had the reason for criticizing Twitter as I do now.
. . .
It may be wrong to single out Americans here, since there is every likelihood, given the current geopolitical context, that Israeli Twitter users (among the heaviest Twitter users one can find) have a vested interest in manipulating the discussion to serve the ends of the Israeli state, as do many Americans. One thing to do is to try to foment a division between Iran and Hezbollah, thus one posted: “large number of armed forces are lebanese/arab hired to beat down the brave iranians” — completely without substance. Another Twitter use to I spoke to chose to quote the Talmud to the Iranian protesters. Interestingly, the Jerusalem Post was immediately “aware” of three “Iranian” bloggers (who post only in English), almost as soon as they joined, claiming without support that their Twitter feeds were from Iran (see here and here).
I say fairly interesting because some of it is quite informative and thought provoking (ease of impersonating Iranians, the reach of Twitter within Iran, its accuracy, etc.), while a lot of it is the usual pink-commie bullshit that would like to see Ahamdinejad remain in power because, hey, he's a friend of Hugo Chavez and the West doesn't like him (and vice-versa), so he must be a good guy, and his opponents, well, they attract a certain degree of sympathy from the West, so fuck those imperialist stooges.
But I haven't made up my mind on the bulk of it, give it a read and decide for yourselves.
Oh jeez after watching those videos just IMAGINE how different things could be right now...yikes.
It's bullshit. If McCain was in office right now he would've done the same thing Obama did. Play it safe. Recognize the people in Iran going through shit right now, but give the "benefit of the doubt" that Iran can settle the matter on its own fairly. The Republicans, McCain especially, are just taking this point of disagreeing with Obama to disagree with Obama, not necessarily because they would've done things differently.
This is the bullshit they've been playing since they've lost power and it's childish and irresponsible of them. But that's for another thread.
How representative are Iran’s Twitter revolutionaries? In actual fact, the only allegedly Iranian Twitter users who have been identified by other Twitter users as tweeting about the Iranian protests, are fewer than 45 (see one list here), most of whose locations cannot be confirmed and almost all of whom post only in English. Yet, one can get as many as 2,500 updates in a single minute, on one stream alone (#iranelection), and most of that repetitive and uninformative material is not being posted by anyone except for a huge mass of American Twitter users. In total, only a third of Iranians even have Internet access (we saw in the Canadian case that Internet access does not translate into Twitter use) and, very interestingly, the youth who are most associated with the protests and with Twitter use, consist of 18-to-24-year-olds who in fact comprise “the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups†(poll).
. . .
“Where is my vote?†I am not sure where the votes of the disgruntled losers of the Iranian election are, but I doubt that they are in Twitter. Perhaps this view is mistaken, perhaps the way they recast their ballot is through Twitter, and one would think that the pretty young females with makeup and jewelry cast their real ballots when they held up signs in Tehran, in English, for foreign news photographers.
. . .
The last point raises the issue of how are we to value the “information†provided by this “Twitter revoltâ€. The first problem is to get over short attention spans — this is not the first “Twitter revolt†as some in Twitter suggest. The latest, previous revolt was in Moldova, and I personally followed very closely the Greek riots through Twitter and many other media. Indeed, the #griots stream is still active, and when it was especially active in December of 2008, it featured countless links to independent media, loaded with photographs and videos, and many if not most of the tweets were in Greek — it was a Greek event, generated for Greeks and to be consumed by Greeks. Thus previously I have not had the reason for criticizing Twitter as I do now.
. . .
It may be wrong to single out Americans here, since there is every likelihood, given the current geopolitical context, that Israeli Twitter users (among the heaviest Twitter users one can find) have a vested interest in manipulating the discussion to serve the ends of the Israeli state, as do many Americans. One thing to do is to try to foment a division between Iran and Hezbollah, thus one posted: “large number of armed forces are lebanese/arab hired to beat down the brave iranians†— completely without substance. Another Twitter use to I spoke to chose to quote the Talmud to the Iranian protesters. Interestingly, the Jerusalem Post was immediately “aware†of three “Iranian†bloggers (who post only in English), almost as soon as they joined, claiming without support that their Twitter feeds were from Iran (see here and here).
I say fairly interesting because some of it is quite informative and thought provoking (ease of impersonating Iranians, the reach of Twitter within Iran, its accuracy, etc.), while a lot of it is the usual pink-commie bullshit that would like to see Ahamdinejad remain in power because, hey, he's a friend of Hugo Chavez and the West doesn't like him (and vice-versa), so he must be a good guy, and his opponents, well, they attract a certain degree of sympathy from the West, so fuck those imperialist stooges.
But I haven't made up my mind on the bulk of it, give it a read and decide for yourselves.
Everyone's favorite, "Change_for_Iran", seems to check out.
It also misses the obvious conclusion that Iranian twitterers are using English because most Iranians are fluent in it and people in the rest of the world can follow events based on those communications.
It's bullshit. If McCain was in office right now he would've done the same thing Obama did. Play it safe. Recognize the people in Iran going through shit right now, but give the "benefit of the doubt" that Iran can settle the matter on its own fairly. The Republicans, McCain especially, are just taking this point of disagreeing with Obama to disagree with Obama, not necessarily because they would've done things differently.
This is the bullshit they've been playing since they've lost power and it's childish and irresponsible of them. But that's for another thread.
Not getting involved in an Iranian civil war is a no-brainer IMHO.
It also misses the obvious conclusion that Iranian twitterers are using English because most Iranians are fluent in it and people in the rest of the world can follow events based on those communications.
Yeah, I'm assuming most of the people actually in-country actually know what's going on. I thought the purpose of the twitterers was to get the word out to the rest of the world on what's happening because most conventional forms of communication had been shut down entirely.
Of course the importance of communication between different in-country groups is not to be denied but I assumed those were in Farsi and the reason most people in the West weren't following those is simply because most of us can't read them.
It's bullshit. If McCain was in office right now he would've done the same thing Obama did. Play it safe. Recognize the people in Iran going through shit right now, but give the "benefit of the doubt" that Iran can settle the matter on its own fairly. The Republicans, McCain especially, are just taking this point of disagreeing with Obama to disagree with Obama, not necessarily because they would've done things differently.
This is the bullshit they've been playing since they've lost power and it's childish and irresponsible of them. But that's for another thread.
Not getting involved in an Iranian civil war is a no-brainer IMHO.
So is not picking a VP candidate before checking credentials and history very carefully.
It also misses the obvious conclusion that Iranian twitterers are using English because most Iranians are fluent in it and people in the rest of the world can follow events based on those communications.
Yeah, I'm assuming most of the people actually in-country actually know what's going on. I thought the purpose of the twitterers was to get the word out to the rest of the world on what's happening because most conventional forms of communication had been shut down entirely.
It also misses the obvious conclusion that Iranian twitterers are using English because most Iranians are fluent in it and people in the rest of the world can follow events based on those communications.
Yeah, I'm assuming most of the people actually in-country actually know what's going on. I thought the purpose of the twitterers was to get the word out to the rest of the world on what's happening because most conventional forms of communication had been shut down entirely.
Of course the importance of communication between different in-country groups is not to be denied but I assumed those were in Farsi and the reason most people in the West weren't following those is simply because most of us can't read them.
lots of them are tweeting in both languages
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
It's bullshit. If McCain was in office right now he would've done the same thing Obama did. Play it safe. Recognize the people in Iran going through shit right now, but give the "benefit of the doubt" that Iran can settle the matter on its own fairly. The Republicans, McCain especially, are just taking this point of disagreeing with Obama to disagree with Obama, not necessarily because they would've done things differently.
This is the bullshit they've been playing since they've lost power and it's childish and irresponsible of them. But that's for another thread.
Not getting involved in an Iranian civil war is a no-brainer IMHO.
It also misses the obvious conclusion that Iranian twitterers are using English because most Iranians are fluent in it and people in the rest of the world can follow events based on those communications.
Yeah, I'm assuming most of the people actually in-country actually know what's going on. I thought the purpose of the twitterers was to get the word out to the rest of the world on what's happening because most conventional forms of communication had been shut down entirely.
Then what was with all those "it's a trap" posts?
misinformation and confusion is to be expected when you're basically playing "telephone" with a lot of people over the internet
also intentional misinformation is out there as well
It also misses the obvious conclusion that Iranian twitterers are using English because most Iranians are fluent in it and people in the rest of the world can follow events based on those communications.
Yeah, I'm assuming most of the people actually in-country actually know what's going on. I thought the purpose of the twitterers was to get the word out to the rest of the world on what's happening because most conventional forms of communication had been shut down entirely.
Of course the importance of communication between different in-country groups is not to be denied but I assumed those were in Farsi and the reason most people in the West weren't following those is simply because most of us can't read them.
lots of them are tweeting in both languages
A lot of them are also linking to documents in Farsi.
Posts
dats a lot of people
makes obama's inauguration look like a small get together.
I'm really glad Obama invented Big Rallies just in time for these Iranian protests.
The internet is clearly being put to use, but it's not the catalyst, or even main facet, of it.
We're getting a distorted view of it because it's our only means of seeing what's going on.
As nice as it would be to think that Obama or the internet is super-charging this, rallies and revolutions have been going on for a long time.
Twitter and such has been nice for getting news out of Iran, but not too much else.
Found this also Iran accuses the US of meddling in election crisis
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Some really great photos, and some interesting insights.
it's not as if they're using twitter to coordinate activities or communicate or anything
the internet is practically useless here
They have a perfectly good reason why they didn't cover it, they weren't allowed to by the Iranian government. Twitter is only any use as a news source in that it shows governments they can no longer muzzle information leaving their country, the major news networks gave me more useful info in one solid afternoon than it could in weeks. Anyway, the BBC has been leading with the story for days now, despite their inability to get reporters on the ground.
God I love the internet.
EDIT: TotP Fuuuuuck
Well, remember excessive criticism of the regime could also endanger their people on the ground who might have faced reprisals if a network had said "The election has likely been stolen, CNN takes you live to an expert on the revolution who will explain why he believes that the authority of the Supreme Leader will never recover"
Only once it became clear that Iran could not supress the flow of information did it become moot to hold their tongues. Heck, its also a fact that the US usually doesn't care one jot about foreign affairs. I mean, big as this is, the EU elections were much more important and barely registered in the US news.
This video of the marches today has probably already been posted. Sorry if it has.
I'm sorry, but if they aren't going to ask the tough questions, then what the fuck are they good for? Being a foreign correspondent is not the safest jobs, and these guys know what they are getting into.
Huzzah! A quote tree! The thing is, foreign correspondants don't just work for American media, there are a host of other companies serving other nations and regions that have a more vested interest in the affairs of the world than you cable television audience.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Journalists are literally risking their lives going out and reporting this, whether it's gunfire into a crowd or being captured and imprisoned as a spy. Despite this, there are reporters that are doing excellent work in Iran right now, deciphering the picture that the individual brush strokes of Twitter are painting (and ruling out the baseless rumor). So far one journalist has been stabbed, several arrested, beaten, and then released, and the Iranian fixers, translators, and assistants that work with the news orgs are putting themselves in a difficult position because they have none of the (admittedly small) protections that foreign press has.
My local newspaper has run Iran on the front page two days in a row now (maybe Sunday, too, I didn't pick that one up) with several stories related to not just the events but the history of some of the key players.
The New York Times has been live blogging since before the election:
The Lede Blog
The photojournalism blog Lens has had three features and several other photos:
Lens: On Assignment: Covering Tehran
Lens: Pictures of the Day: Wed. June 17
Lens: Dateline: Iran
Plus they have been running Iran stories front page for several days now.
Andrew Sullivan works for The Atlantic, not exactly a sprightly young startup company:
The Daily Dish
Then there's the Boston Globe with reporters in the country, BBC, Getty, AP, I can't think of the big French wire service, LAT has someone, apparently, CNN has looked like doofuses but they have Christone Amanpour in Iran, filming, as well.
Twitter is a useful tool but it's potentially dangerous to the integrity of a news organization if journalists don't take it with the same skepticism they should approach everything. It can be very easy to start taking rumors as truth. It is the job of the journalist to confirm events, not relay rumor, misinformation, and wishful thinking. It can not only damage the integrity of the news source, it can also be dangerous. In highly impassioned times reporting rumor as fact can lead to people dying. Shit, Andrew Sullivan in his excitement took a tweet from an unconfirmed source and told the world that foreign paramilitaries were involved in the early violence (which he retracted soon after).
CNN looked like a bunch of idiots because they started reporting on content delivery systems instead of on content. It was obviously a knee-jerk reaction to #cnnfail when they ran their "isn't twitter neat?" segments. They would have been better off ignoring it and running what they had once some of their video started coming in.
Let's not go cheering the irrelevance of the main stream media, just yet. The idea of the citizen journalist is compelling, but it's also raw, emotional, and unreliable. The news landscape is better with social networking, the internet, and digital cameras to add irrepressible, instantaneous images but at the end of the day it is still the role of the professional journalist to provide clarity and honesty to those images.
That said, American Media missed the boat as far as how to try and cover it. Instead of a gripping story of a media and technology crackdown and contested election results and riots, it was "hey, twitter said we sucked, OH YEAH TWITTER? Let's go to our special report on twitter, and what people tweet."
I love Etymology
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
This is going to be the best meme ever.
Actually, Twitter has turned out to be pretty reliable if you know how to use it. Each poster has their own pseudonym, so you just see who is regularly backed up by pictures later, and trust them as a reliable informant, similar to the trust placed with "anonymous officials."
For example, I'd believe #iranelection and #changeforiran if the claimed Ahmedi had sent in the dragons.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Oh jeez after watching those videos just IMAGINE how different things could be right now...yikes.
I say fairly interesting because some of it is quite informative and thought provoking (ease of impersonating Iranians, the reach of Twitter within Iran, its accuracy, etc.), while a lot of it is the usual pink-commie bullshit that would like to see Ahamdinejad remain in power because, hey, he's a friend of Hugo Chavez and the West doesn't like him (and vice-versa), so he must be a good guy, and his opponents, well, they attract a certain degree of sympathy from the West, so fuck those imperialist stooges.
But I haven't made up my mind on the bulk of it, give it a read and decide for yourselves.
Also useful, a list of "legit" Iranian Twitterers: Who is on Twitter from Iran?
Everyone's favorite, "Change_for_Iran", seems to check out.
It's bullshit. If McCain was in office right now he would've done the same thing Obama did. Play it safe. Recognize the people in Iran going through shit right now, but give the "benefit of the doubt" that Iran can settle the matter on its own fairly. The Republicans, McCain especially, are just taking this point of disagreeing with Obama to disagree with Obama, not necessarily because they would've done things differently.
This is the bullshit they've been playing since they've lost power and it's childish and irresponsible of them. But that's for another thread.
It also misses the obvious conclusion that Iranian twitterers are using English because most Iranians are fluent in it and people in the rest of the world can follow events based on those communications.
Not getting involved in an Iranian civil war is a no-brainer IMHO.
Of course the importance of communication between different in-country groups is not to be denied but I assumed those were in Farsi and the reason most people in the West weren't following those is simply because most of us can't read them.
Heh.
Then what was with all those "it's a trap" posts?
lots of them are tweeting in both languages
This is exactly what I'm saying.
misinformation and confusion is to be expected when you're basically playing "telephone" with a lot of people over the internet
also intentional misinformation is out there as well
A lot of them are also linking to documents in Farsi.