The weekend’s Iran Tweets: where to find demonstration footage, cyber warfare, and the fate of one Iranian blogger
Just a few things, because, as always, others are blogging this better, and some of this stuff I’ve already passed on to my Facebook friends …
Today, as you may know if you’ve checked the news on Iran (somewhat overshadowed though it is at the moment by the news of today’s coup in Honduras, and, even more, by the continuing coverage of MJ’s death), the first officially permitted demonstration in days took place in Tehran; much of the #iranelection Twittering has concerned this demonstration. Others are Tweeting about maneuverings among Iran’s leaders, some of them confirmed accounts of actual speeches, but some definitely NOT confirmed. Recent examples of the latter:
First, Tehran Bureau recently blogged, on their web site, a rumor of a possible compromise in the works, that Rafsanjani was supposed to be negotiating behind the scenes, that would have led to a run off between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad. They then blogged that a source had told them the deal had fallen through. (For all I know, their sources may both have been true, and the deal may really have been in the works and now called off, but as it stands, it’s just something that’s been reported by one sometimes well connected Iranian-American site, and not confirmed.)
Second, there are Tweets right now saying both that Mousavi has been arrested, and that his arrest is NOT confirmed. Since you may well read this hours or days after I post it, depending on how often you look at my blog, it’s likely that, by the time you read this post, you’ll know which story is true. I don’t.
What I do know:
Photos of recent events have been posted, among other places, to a Flickr group on Tehran; the group is also getting plenty of other Tehran photos posted, so you have to hunt to find the ones posted by protesters.
There’s a Neda Soltan channel on Youtube with protest footage, including footage of today’s Ghoba mosque protest. Yesterday there were also protest montages up set to Michael Jackson’s songs “Beat It” and “They Don’t Really Care About Us,” something you can take as either a marketing ploy not to have the Iranian protester message lost in that competing story (the videos were, at the time, showing up in Michael Jackson searches), or a sign of the breadth of the world popularity of US pop music, or, perhaps, both.
Also on Youtube, Joan Baez has posted a video of herself singing “We Shall Overcome,” with some lyrics in Farsi, for the Iranian people:
The cyber war between Iranian protesters and the Iranian government continues, with each side attempting to use the net to its advantage. As Steve has mentioned, while the Iranian protesters use Tor’s onion routing to evade Iran’s filtering, the Iranian government has set up a web site using crowd sourcing to attempt to identify Iranian demonstrators. In turn, a cyberwar4iran blog has posted instructions for how to use Slowloris to join in a DDOS attack on the crowd sourcing site, instructions that it says will tie up server threads, not bandwidth, thereby bringing that site down while leaving the rest of the net open (never having heard of Slowloris before this weekend, I’m not prepared to offer an opinion one way or the other on the accuracy of this analysis, but as a computer professional I’m curious about all this cyber warfare stuff, and will be reading up on all this stuff later). Others interested in the technical side of things are referred to A Deeper Look at The Iranian Firewall (via Bruce Schneier).
Also prominent among the weekend’s Tweets is the story of persiankiwi. No, I’m not going to mask his name, though it turns out I was mistaken in my belief some days ago that he was someone like TehranBureau, posting from outside Iran (I initially thought the “kiwi” in his username meant that he was an Iranian in New Zealand with good contacts within Iran). He does appear to be coming from inside Iran, but I’m not masking his account name because, aside from any general debate about how identifying such an online pseudonym actually is, if there’s one thing that’s clear, at this point, about persiankiwi’s status, it’s that the Iranian government darn well already knows about the account.
The rest is a muddle. A few days ago, persiankiwi posted (the last thing he said is at the top):
Allah – you are the creator of all and all must return to you – Allah Akbar – #Iranelection Sea of Green
8:39 AM Jun 24th from web
thank you ppls 4 supporting Sea of Green – pls remember always our martyrs – Allah Akbar – Allah Akbar – Allah Akbar #Iranelection
8:36 AM Jun 24th from web
we must go – dont know when we can get internet – they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names – now we must move fast – #Iranelection
8:34 AM Jun 24th from web
Everybody is under arrest & cant move – Mousavi – Karroubi even rumour Khatami is in house guard – #Iranelection -
8:28 AM Jun 24th from web
they pull away the dead into trucks – like factory – no human can do this – we beg Allah for save us – #Iranelection
8:23 AM Jun 24th from web
Some people found this sequence of posts ominous, and, as the days passed, there were worried Tweets, both from people apparently inside Iran and from people outside, wondering about persiankiwi’s status. In the meantime, persiankiwi was among the people attacked by name by @Vagheeiat, an account by someone claiming to be part of the Iran Revolutionary Guard. Discussion of persiankiwi reached the point where a #persiankiwi hashtag joined the assortment of hashtags that cover Iran election traffic (which tags at this point include #iranelection, #gr88, #Iran09, and #Neda).
Then, yesterday, a new account surfaced, claiming to be the old persiankiwi (again, most recent Tweets on top):
… all free iranians: in the name of allah I confirm that I’m the old persiankiwi
…
they have tortured us – police very agressive the last days – Allah Akbar #Iranelection
4:05 AM Jun 27th from web
Account is controlled – they know my password #Iranelection Twitter
Today, some people are Tweeting that persiankiwi has been arrested
heard about @PersianKiwi I have no idea how they captured him/her, he/she was using freegate I guess
while others caution that it may be a false rumor
I would not believe everything on internet sites about persiankiwi, trying mk ppl fightened and stop tweeting #IranElection #iran #gr88
Finally, I’ll note that someone posted to #iranelection a link to Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy, an analysis of how to realistically organize nonviolent resistance to dictatorships.