Guardians Information Today
The Revolutionary Guards control the media, but the web does not fit. Here's how it lives and feeds on the cyber-revolution Iran.
Whenever he gets released, he will write His website on here. "
Mohammad Ali Abtahi, vice president during the presidency of Mr. Khatami and Mr. Karroubi adviser in the presidential election, today (Tuesday) was arrested. Once released he wrote on his website. " This is what you can read in one of the many blog silenced forced: in prison there are computers. Abtahi in Iran is called "The Blogging Mullah."
The blog-do-it-yourself. In Iran the term blogging comes near to everything beautifully. When is the only way. Hossein Derakhshan is one of the first Iranian bloggers. In 2000 he decided to write a simple guide to help in Persian others to create and organize your own blog. Seven months after the blog in Persian were more than 1,200, of which most written by women. Everything starts from there.
If it were not for blogs, the world - with its journalists detained in Tehran hotels or sent home - would be totally out of these shocking events. This, observed with the cynical eye of a media scholar, would not be more than a total revenge of blogs, internet, and bloggers in particular: the one who has always aspired to establish itself in the information free and independent, but which has always been replaced - in authority - the media more advanced in years. Now the media in Iran are not there. And the international media, the panic of empty news agency, they do? They become the only information that the news coming! Or rather, they become news sources.
becomes "news" the Iranian blogger. And the articles of the Western media are full of statements taken from
blog. Despite almost 10 years that Iran is among the countries with the highest number of blogs. Become news social networks, Twitter and Facebook. Although for years the container claims "chirp" quietly.
( www.flickr.com / photos / arasmus )
Where is my ... blogger? While at this time the Basij (volunteer Islamic militia) raids the houses and burning cars in the streets to create a climate of terror, more than 2,000 Iranians arrested and hundreds missing ones according to the International Federation of Human Rights Human . Reporters Without Borders recorded 59 to 20 June between bloggers and journalists who had left their computer keyboards. The highest number in the world, higher even China and Cuba
Her Name Was Neda. Among the missing, a face has become a symbol of this "silent revolt": Neda. The student of philosophy killed while walking in the parade with his father. A death in the world-view. A death on You Tube second per second was observed by at least 68,000 people.
Not only, therefore, the symbol is death (there are other cases of children killed on the web) but woman. A woman who had been in place too, not hidden by the veil, but the wall of hypocrisy that made her become a mid-set man. As Neda, the ranks of the demonstrations of these days there are many women in the streets against election fraud. For Iranian women, the final victory of Ahmadinejad means saying goodbye to equality of rights for which have been fighting for years.
Mir. Hossein Mousavi , had promised to reform the laws on unfair treatment of women. The way things stand now, an Iranian woman testifying in court has a significance that is only half that of a man. Women do not have a fair divorce, custody of children and even the rights of inheritance. Mousavi's why it is popular among many electric, and his wife Zahra Rahnavard is likely to have even more fans. It was the rector, appreciated by the crowds in political events, which is anything but invisible: he has never been afraid to talk about their ideas on women's rights in Iran.
Independent women. The Feminist School states that "Tajrish sq. Emamzadeh Saleh (a shrine north of Tehran) and the memorable Tajrish Bazaar hosted the volunteer members of the Movement coalition of women. " They have enthusiastically requested an independent presence for women in the electoral area of \u200b\u200bthe city. Their slogan was: "We are voting for the Rights of Women." Primary objective is that the Iranian authorities put an end to all discriminatory laws against women.
Campaigns and forbidden sites. Sussan Tahmasebi, women's rights activist writes NPR: "The issue of women's rights is the main topic of this election marks the first time and input, and specifically addressed in detail, the reform of women's rights in an election. In 2008, Iran's conservative government proposed a pre-nuptial fee over accommodation to reduce the financial burden on men, against which many leaders of the "One Million Signature Campaign " (declared illegal by Ahmadinejad) have worked a long time. In September 2008, the paper tax returns to the Legislative Council, citing the problem of government meddling in private contracts. However, the primary opposition to the government paper was received by the promotion of polygamy. Polygamy and the fee provided for were removed from the paper that is passed on September 9. After the victory of marriage with the paper in September 2008 a court sentenced to prison four women, all involved in "One Million Signatures Campaign", for having contributed to forbidden sites. They were identified as Mariam Hossein-khah, Nahid Keshavarz, Jelveh Javaheri and Parvin Ardalan.
( www.flickr.com / photos / forleen )
Women and blog is not like women and engines, but has the same a high rate of danger. Just look at the list of bloggers and journalists arrested (at the end of text). Although a study conducted by Maryam Kiani Allameh Tabatabai at the University of Tehran, showed that among the categories where you can share the blog of Iranian women in particular are emerging (74%) "personal papers" on the thoughts and feelings of the blogger, while only 14%, the blog "filters" the content are dealing with events outside the bloggers and news.
The topics of blogs by women are particularly literature, psychological issues, social and, finally, sex and culture. Politics is almost entirely absent. The study notes that the blogs are more about politics of 2 years and there is no blog on this topic that has less than a year. And what is justified by the scholar as "the women who write on blogs recently have other interests and write seriously about the current political affairs is not their priority." Pessimistic about their willingness to change the rules and traditions of Iranian society calling for equal rights, Kiani raises the argument that rather than ask Iranian women equal opportunities in the private sphere.
Question blog. Dr. Kiani has carried out a study on 124 women of Iranian blogs between January and March of 2008, but the platform for bloggers which carried out the search, the most common and Blogfa PersianBlog, are kept more under control by the censorship in Iran. One detail that the researcher would certainly not have omitted.
The Weblogistan represented a turning point for the emergence of the first intimate problems of women, those who were taboo, but when the complaint was made stronger than the blogs have served to create networks. Networks through which the reality trap, lock it and change it. In a network, help arrives from the threads. Such as the Centre for Astronomy ToruĊ (Poland) and in a dozen pages full of numbers and logarithms can explain the anomalies in the vote of the election in Iran.
A study published April 5, 2008 Harvard University in democracies the influence of the Internet (Internet and Democracy
) had shown that the
Iranian blogosphere is the most open public communications platform for political discourse . Research has shown that in this huge area of \u200b\u200bdebate, made up of approximately 60,000 regular updates, dominated by four major network formations, or poles, still divided into sub-clusters of bloggers:
1) Lay reformist
2) Conservative / religious
3) Persian Poetry and Literature
4) Mixed networks
The pole Lay reformist contains Iranians linked to both expatriates and dialogue on Iranian policies. The pole conservative / religious contains three distinct sub-classes, two focused mainly on religious issues and one on current affairs and politics.
Scholars Harvard they were surprised that despite the high rate of arrests and harassment of bloggers, they were so many complaints about open blogosphere - for most people living in Iran - but that, especially Only a small minority of these speak anonymously, even in those speeches political leanings. It is more common, however, among bloggers conservative / religious blogging anonymously.
Blogosphere resistant control. In conclusion, the Iranian blogosphere a peer-to peer more resistant to capture or control by the state compared to that architecture old crops and spoken of the model mass-media. This explains why the June 12 presidential election, mainstream media did not come without its last Iranians do not have your number.
paraphrase the thesis of the first Cluetrain Manifesto of 1999, we could say that "revolutions are conversations." And if the state locks the phone, conversations are on Facebook, Twitter, on blogs.
I The Revolutionary Guards have put their good viewfinder. Ridding before the foreign press and then starting the internal repression. Before splitting the sites that send the mouse movement as "sponsorship supported financially and technically by the Canadian and U.S. companies, backed by U.S. and British intelligence services", then - with the support of the judiciary - has come to announce the application of the death penalty for those causes of unrest.
There are many ways to circumvent the Guardians: by
websites specifically created to allow you to automatically update pages for which information is important to have the last minutes; link to instructions to send anonymous email
; software that let you communicate on the network
anonymous.
( www.flickr.com / photos / till )
Censorship dominates newspapers, websites, some blogging platforms, social networks are full of infiltration
, telephone communications are impossible in some areas. But now the situation is getting worse because even the blogs that manage to escape can not work: to be cut from time to time is also electricity. Or why the bloggers have their hands full from the handcuffs.
Crocodile tears. In what Reza Pahlavi between a tear and a glass of water, called a "bad time to be a lack of respect towards God and towards man" ("... The Citizens of Iran will not stand it. And at the end, he will not stand "), holders of information are the Guardians of the Revolution ... but not
As one spot ,
released by the broadcast of public service Iranian Intelligence Ministry, in screens since February: "We are the guardians of
your information."
And it shows.
Source: The Huffington Post, Reporters Without Borders, Twitter, npr.org