[Reader-list] Twitter in Iran: genuine or orchestrated?

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Taha,

Thank you for posting the link from the Hoot (which quoted the text  
that appeared on the Charting Stocks Web Site).

While it is not impossible that there may be some external elements  
playing in the complex Iranian situation as it unfolds, it may be  
more than a little presumptuous to suggest that what is happening in  
Iran is a result of a 'Israeli' conspiracy. The millions who have  
marched in Tehran and other Iranian cities cannot all have been  
Mossad puppets. If Mossad had more than two million agents on the  
ground in Iran then Iran would have become an Israeli client state a  
very long time ago. Things would not have to wait for a hotly  
contested election.

But, it might just be that the hardliners on the Israeli right might  
be less than comfortable with Ahmedinijad's defeat.
The official Israeli state response to the events in Iran has  
persistently had a single line - 'It makes no difference whether the  
centre of power lies with Ahmedinijad or with Moussavi' . But  
interestingly, many on the Isreali right (and their allies in the  
American Neoconservative right) are far more comfortable with the  
idea of an Ahmedinijad victory. The irresponsible, war-mongering and  
anti-semitic diatribes of Ahmedinijad are far more suitable for the  
whipping up of an Anti-Iran sentiment (in Israel and the USA and  
elsewhere) than any leadership that actually reflected the will of  
the majority of the Iranian people to engage responsibly with the world.

I am posting below two links to texts that show Israeli intelligence  
hawks and Right Wing Neoconservative preferences (including the  
infamous Daniel Pipes) for an Ahmedinijad victory. The first link is  
from the Haaretz, a moderate left mainstream Israeli paper, no friend  
of the Israeli right, that it quotes Ephraim Halevy,  former Mossad  
Chief is, I think, significant.

--------------------

1. Ahmadinejad win actually preferable for Israel
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent
Haaretz, 14th June, 2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092587.html

"..paradoxically, it seems that from Israel's point of view the  
victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is actually  
preferable. Not only because "better the devil you know," but because  
the victory of the pro-reform candidate will paste an attractive mask  
on the face of Iranian nuclear ambitions...

... Ahmadinejad, with his Holocaust denial and his long series of  
provocations, drew most of the attention, but apparently had less  
influence on the nuclear program. There are even senior members of  
the Israeli defense establishment who share the public stance of  
former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy, who claimed that the Iranian  
president's behavior, perceived in the West as quasi-lunatic,  
advanced Israel's security interests. "

2. Neocons for Ahmadinejad
By Daniel Luban
http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=256

“I’m sometimes asked who I would vote for if I were enfranchised in  
this election, and I think that, with due hesitance, I would vote for  
Ahmadinejad,” Pipes said. The reason, Pipes went on, is that he would  
“prefer to have an enemy who’s forthright and obvious, who wakes  
people up with his outlandish statements.”

Although it is rather remarkable to see a prominent neoconservative  
admit this in public, it’s clear that many Iran hawks in America and  
Israel are similarly hoping for an Ahmadinejad victory next week.  
After all, the Iranian president’s outlandish statements have been a  
propaganda gold mine for those pushing military action against  
Tehran, and no warmongering op-ed would be complete without a  
ritualistic invocation of his (mistranslated) call to “wipe Israel  
off the map”. At last month’s AIPAC conference, Ahmadinejad was the  
undisputed star of the show; large glossy photos of him touring  
nuclear facilities in a lab coat were distributed to every conference- 
goer, and the largely geriatric audience was bludgeoned into a state  
of terror with constant juxtapositions of Hitler and Ahmadinejad,  
Auschwitz and Natanz. An alien who descended on the conference might  
be forgiven for thinking that Ahmadinejad was president of Israel or  
the U.S. rather than Iran, since he was far more discussed and  
displayed than Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, or Barack Obama."

----------------------

  Interestingly, 'Charting Stocks' (www.chartingstocks.net)  is a web  
sites that offers economic and financial analysis for people wishing  
to park their money in different corners of the global economy.  
'Facilities' like Charting Stocks offer 'Risk Analysis' in order to  
guide people to invest or not invest in 'economies' considered  
'risky' or 'risk free'. Sometimes, the distance between 'guidance on  
risk and risk avoidance' and engineering situations in different  
countries in order to create situations that can then be matched to  
'predictions' is an activity that many such facilities undertake.

Iran today means a lot of money for a lot of people. This is despite,  
and in some cases because of the US sanctions. Because US companies  
cannot directly engage with Iran, there is a huge industry that a)  
undertakes transactions in Iran (often at a considerably higher  
price) in goods that would normally be traded with the US and b)  
offering an indirect route for the actuality of Iran-US  and indeed  
Iran-Israel trade that needs to stay invisible. Let us never forget  
that the Reagan administration funded its operations in Nicaragua  
with money that came from selling arms to the Islamic Republic of  
Iran (when Ayatollah Khomeini was in power) through covert Israeli  
channels. Despite what might be said in public, and contrary to  
appearances, there are many entities (corporations and agencies) in  
many different (and suprising) parts of the world that have a vested  
interest in the continuity of the current regime in Iran.

  Indicating that the current regime is stable is very good value for  
a lot of investments. These investments could come from many places,  
from Russia, from China, from the European Union states, from Japan,  
even the US. If you take a look even at a list of Indian or India  
linked companies that do business with Iran currently, you will find  
a list of the golden hordes - Tata, Essar, Reliance Petrochemicals,  
ONGC Videsh. There is a lot at stake here, and many powerful  
interests will want the regime in Iran to stay (like in Burma) in  
power, come what may. Ahmedinijad, with his populism, with his  
messianic, slightly doltish mystical wooliness hides a regime grown  
fat on corruption, influence peddling, and sadism, and perhaps  
'Charting Stocks' or whoever runs it, has hedged their bets with him.

Here, for instance, is a report about how corporations such as Nokia  
and Siemens sold surveillance technology ('deep packet inspection' )  
to the Iranian regime to help it control and monitor emails and  
telecom networks used by ordinary Iranian citizens in an  
unprecedentedly invasive manner. Nokia and Siemens stocks are closely  
linked to the Iranian regime's ability to control all manner of  
digital dissent, including twitter. If this is the case, it would  
make sense for people to pool identities and constantly change  
identities in order to protect themselves. The realities hinted at by  
the 'Charting Stock' article may actually point to methods evolved by  
people on the ground to protect their identities while communicating  
with the outside world (hence the use of English).

Finally, let me forward a link in direct response to the Hoot  
quotation of the Charting Stocks story. Here is a rebuttal, for  
whatever it is worth, from the Jerusalem Times itself.

Hope to keep the discussion on Iran going.

best

Shuddha

-----------------

Is JPost behind the 'Iranian Twitter Revolution'?
By RICKY BEN-DAVID AND RACHEL GEIZHALS

The Jerusalem Post's routine online coverage of events in Iran has  
been cited as an ostensible key element behind the Iranian "Twitter  
Revolution," and characterized as being part of a purported Israeli  
conspiracy to stoke unrest in the Islamic republic.

In an online article entitled "Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize  
Iran Via Twitter" published on the Charting Stocks Web site, the  
unnamed writer charges: "right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in  
an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian  
election and causing political instability within Iran."

The "proof" cited was an online entry published on Sunday on the  
Post's "The Persian Abyss" blog, in which three very active Iranian  
Twitterers, whose tweets are still widely circulated, were mentioned  
as part of an online documentation of Iranians' reaction to the  
election results on social media outlets [their usernames were later  
taken down to protect them].

The article went on: "JPost, a major news organization, promoted  
these three Twitterers who went on to be the source of the  
IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost so concerned about  
Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers claim to be)?  
I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono? (who  
benefits)."

The writer allows that he does not think that the violence in Iran is  
a "Jewish conspiracy" because he is "not an anti-semite" and even  
claims that he is "half-Jewish." Instead he maintains that "these are  
the workings of the extreme right-wing of Israeli politics" since  
"Israel perceives Iran as an enemy, more so than any other nation."

"Needless to say, our coverage of events in Iran is guided solely by  
professional journalistic considerations," said the managing editor  
of The Jerusalem Post's Web site, www.jpost.com, Shani Rosenfelder.

Conspiracy theorists may be hard to convince, but it is Iran's young,  
educated pro-Mousavi supporters who have turned their bitter  
disappointment at the results of the presidential elections into a  
force to be reckoned with on the micro-blogging site Twitter.

As one 'Facebooker' put it (before Facebook was blocked): "This is  
not the will of the Iranian people; they are mostly in shock or  
despair, and the braver ones are being mercilessly beaten on the  
streets."

Using 'tweets' of 140 characters or less, Iran-based Twitterers have  
circulated reports at breakneck speed of the violence being used  
against protesters in the streets of Iran to millions worldwide,  
complete with video and photo evidence of government forces firing  
indiscriminately into crowds, beating people with batons and raiding  
student dormitories.

Despite the Iranian regime's efforts to block Internet access - and  
especially the streaming of photos and videos of the violence  
surrounding the protests - by decreasing the bandwidth, effectively  
slowing down online access to a frustrating level, tech-savvy  
Iranians have repeatedly found ways to bypass official restrictions  
using proxy sites that reroute Iran-based messages to post on Twitter.

The site has become the new, as-yet-foolproof tool used by pro- 
reformist Iranians to circulate real-time accounts of the suppression  
taking place around them. Twitterers have also used the site to  
mobilize people for rallies in Iran and to announce protests near  
Iranian embassies around the world.

"Twitter is the only method of communication they haven't found a way  
to mess with," one Iranian, who preferred to remain anonymous, told  
The Jerusalem Post by e-mail. "They don't understand, but average  
folks are very technologically competent. Most of the people  
protesting are in their twenties. It was a big miscalculation on the  
government's part."

On Tuesday, Iran state TV confirmed that seven people were killed in  
clashes with anti-riot police and the basij (Iran's volunteer-based  
paramilitary force) but unofficial reports, especially from Iranian  
Twitterers, put the number at close to 25.

That figure has not been confirmed by the mainstream media, thus many  
have dismissed information coming in from Twitter as unreliable and  
unverifiable.

And while "unverifiable" may be an accurate description for now, many  
accounts from Iran's Twitterers have turned out to be true.

One important example includes several Twitter reports on Sunday that  
government forces were heard speaking Arabic, raising suspicions that  
Hizbullah and Hamas reinforcements have been brought in.

This item was only available in the mainstream media on Wednesday,  
three days later; a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post in Teheran  
reported first-hand allegations of Hamas involvement overnight Tuesday.

Furthermore, the names of five students at Teheran University killed  
on Monday night were released by Twitter users overnight Tuesday,  
along with messages of despair and condolences. News services have  
yet to release that information although, again, the Post's reporter  
in Teheran included the names in her report on the front page of  
Wednesday's paper.

"We used to be customers of the media," said Dr. Yair Amichai- 
Hamburger, director of the Research Center for Internet Psychology at  
Sammy Ofer School of Communications at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary  
Center. "Now we produce the media."

Regular, everyday people have become journalists and social  
activists, he added, and a group of people with a shared interest can  
form a small but influential army. This allows the ability for real,  
dynamic opposition that is nearly impossible to suppress, even in a  
dictatorship like Iran, Amichai-Hamburger said.

Twitter in particular works well for such communication because it is  
short, simple and instant. Amichai-Hamburger explained that Twitter's  
immediateness escalates users' emotions, because people who are  
always online and always connected are always involved.


"It's not like reading the news," explained Amichai-Hamburger. "You  
are in the news."

The volume and potency of the information circulated on Twitter has  
become so powerful that Iranian Twitterers have pleaded with their  
followers not to retweet (forward) their messages using their  
usernames, as Iranian forces have confiscated computers, laptops and  
cellphones, effectively putting their lives at risk.

Twitterers have also reported that there have been arrests following  
wide retweets of their details, a development confirmed on Wednesday  
by international news services.

Iranian Twitterers have also been waging an online war against the  
regime by promoting sites that overload the Web sites of prominent  
regime figures, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme  
Leader Ali Khameini. Pro-government Web sites such as the  
semiofficial Fars News and Raja news have also been targeted.

The Twitter effect has not escaped the Obama administration. On  
Monday, the State Department intervened to put off a scheduled  
maintenance of the site which would have taken down Twitter for 90  
minutes on Monday at 21:45 p.m. Pacific time, 9:15 a.m. in Iran, a  
crucial time for Iranians.

Officials asked Twitter to postpone the downtime to coincide with the  
middle of the night in Iran, and the request was honored.
On 28-Jun-09, at 10:24 PM, Taha Mehmood wrote:

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net