Comments on: Thoughts About the Great Iranian Twitterstorm

By: Church

Church — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:06:12 +0000

@9 Yogi
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It’s a bit early to call ‘fail.’ The revolution may yet be tweeted.

By: republibotthreepointoh

republibotthreepointoh — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:25:26 +0000

My limited understanding of these things is that while we traditionally represent Iran as a religious dictatorship, it actually isn’t one. It’s a sort of co-dependent republic that gets its authority from the religious fundamentalists, but then the religious fundamentalists need the government to shelter them from ugly harsh stupid reality. That may not be ideal, but it’s not a dictatorship, strictly speaking, and in some ways it’s a kind of theological equivalent of the old Soviet Union’s structure. Assuming I’m right about any of this, the fundamentalist side of the equation wanted to tighten it’s grasp – of course – and of course even a lot of staunch muslims aren’t gonna’ sit still for that.

My hunch, then, is that the twitstorm was mainly to make sure every part of the country knew what was going on, and the international english outflow has been mainly specifically to force the issue even more. My Iranian buddies from LA refer to the city as “Terrhangeles,” there’s been a huge Iranian population there forever.

By: lostepic

lostepic — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:38:56 +0000

@dennitzio: True and I agree. It’s not so much Khamenei, who was once president himself, but the position he currently holds as Supreme Leader, which is appointed by an unelected board of mullahs. Currently he very well may be at odds with one of the founding clerics of the Islamic Republic, Khomeini, who was part of Khamenei’s criticisms during his presidential election back in the 80′s. He doesn’t stand as close to the hardliners in the cleric’s expert board, hence, the supposed compromise with Ahmadinejad being Khamenei’s poster president.
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A promising note, is that the general population of Iran, most notably Tehran, are very untraditional and pro-west in the sense they show disillusionment and dissatisfaction with the Islamic Republic. Perhaps this brooha will be the catalyst for political/social change that the politically convoluted Iran needs.

By: yogi

yogi — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:29:38 +0000

Journalists like to make these grandiose allegorical pieces about things so after the fact they can say they were on the forefront of calling it. Most the time they end up looking pompous and just plain wrong. As far as I’ve heard, Twitter hasn’t actually gotten rid of any leader; it’s a little early to call the end of totalitarian dictatorships because of Twitter, Burma is still doing well, North Korea has a successor named. I believe in twitter its pronounced “#TwitterFail”.

By: dennitzio

dennitzio — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:04:49 +0000

@lostepic: I don’t think that conventional wisdom is still considered accurate. I’ve been reading (in Time, no less, along with NYT) that the Ayatollah is not as powerful as before, and there’s a power struggle going on between the old mullahs and the Republican Guard. Khamenei has allied himself with Ahmadinejad and that has cost him, especially after his flipflop on the election results. Apparently he was some kind of compromise choice for Ayatollah among the religious elite and has never been a very strong or decisive leader. Throw in Mousavi, who was an early PM and his appeal to the same demographic who put the mullahs in charge in the first place, and you have a very unstable political system. I don’t know what kind of support he has among the high-level clerics, but he wouldn’t have gotten even this far if he didn’t. They may see the writing on the wall – the youth demographic is far the largest in Iran – and want to prevent a revolution or destabilizing crackdown.

By: lostepic

lostepic — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:25:45 +0000

Who are these people? We addressed this already in another issue. With twitter posts, as with much on the internet, initially there is no way to verify who the twitters really are. Could be a 62 yr old White woman in Duluth for all we know, or an actual Persian who is skewing the truth for his/her cause. It could be block, but not over night.
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The real question is does any of it really matter. Most of the general public are not familiar with this, that the President doesn’t have that much power. The Clerics are the rulers, specifically the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The President cant make any international, military action without the approval of the Supreme Leader. If the votes were rigged those in power continue to manipulate behind the scenes, which all Iranians are aware of, and rule and make decisions despite who actually wins. I always said that Ahmadinejad did anything that actually jeopardized what the Ayatollah wants, just oust the man and bring in a new President that can caters to the wests wants while subverting them at the same time.
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What ever happens militarly or actual action its with the consent of the Ayatollahs.

By: anon76

anon76 — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:45:58 +0000

Hey, we were addressing Levs post. We just had to go through the upfronts first.

By: dennitzio

dennitzio — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:08:36 +0000

By the way, Lev, it must be either disconcerting or empowering that you have a whole community who gather on your blog to discuss stuff that has little to do with you or your posts…

By: dennitzio

dennitzio — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:07:39 +0000

If they’re using their cell phone SMS to send to/receive from Twitter, then it’s not so easy to block. They’d have to shut down all cell phone traffic (at least data). Though i suppose they could block whatever Twitter’s sms addresses are… Maybe not.

By: Church

Church — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:52:48 +0000

Tehran:1980
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It works on a couple levels…