DISQUS

jwest · 6 months ago

Kathy,

Wow. Great article.

steveholmes · 6 months ago

I don't base my suspicions on twitter or commentary.
Looking at the details of results leads reasonable people to suspect fraud.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/ju...

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/...

shannonlee · 6 months ago

Does anyone else feel that it is odd that Mousavi lost in his own home town by 20 points?

Or how about the results in the major cities that are predominantly very young and liberal?

As SH said, the results are a joke. Any reasonable person can see that there was fraud. Maybe Ahmadinejad won by a couple of points, it is possible. But he certainly did not win by the margin reported.

Lets leave twitter and facebook out of the equation and just look at the reported numbers.

hass · 6 months ago

Ahmadinejad was the governor of the province that Mousavi came from and had time to cultivate his support there. Gore lost in his home state too. Nor is there any particular identification between Mousavi and his home town. Major cities may have large populations of liberal/wealthy, but they're by no means predominant. Also it is not ncessary to count all the votes to declare a winner -- only a statistically signficant portion has to be counted, and there can be multiple counts going on simultaneously.

"Any reasonable person" would not simply believe things he was told.

Kathy · 6 months ago

Thanks for the feedback.

It's not a popular point of view, but I think we need to wait to see what happens with the investigation before we wring any more hands ... especially since our hand-wringing will do nothing but drive up our own blood pressure! Moreover, it's not like Iran was on the "good" side of the US foreign policy ledger.

I really wish all this passion (protests, Twitter activity, Facebook activity) were focused on DOMESTIC problems: health care, the debt (not the deficit), education, media literacy, scientific literacy, why incumbents almost always get re-elected *here*, etc.

dyionisiac · 6 months ago

Major Media is not reporting because the Government has closed their access off. No foreign media is allowed to report out of Iran at this moment. That is why the Twitter feeds are import. They are the only pipeline out.

Yes is is hard to follow previous standards of journalist rigor via twitter, but if the government were allowing free and open reporting this wouldn't all BE on twitter. And if the government had nothing to hide why would they be silencing the media?

Kathy · 6 months ago

Hi, Dyionisiac -- US media don't have a lot of feet on the ground in the middle east. Period. They've closed foreign offices because of costs.

I disagree with your suggestion that Twitter would not be used if there were more mainstream coverage of Iran. And I disagree with the implication that an unvetted pipeline is somehow better for us -- the outsiders -- than one where there is some veracity, verifiability.

Fairlee Winfield · 6 months ago

What do we really know about Iran's election. Very little, maybe nothing. Tweets won't tell us. Only time will. Remember 1970 Chile, overthrow of Salvadore Ayende, CIA involvement, our president Richard Nixon "do whatever necessary to get rid of him."

Kathy · 6 months ago

Thanks, Fairlee. Lots of folks don't want to wait for time to help flesh out the picture. :-)

camera lucida · 6 months ago

Great post.

As a frequent visitor to the region (I am a Japanese), I am astonished by the perception/information gap people in the U.S. are suffering.

It seems that people tend to reject the idea outright that is not familiar to them... or make up their own version of reality to match their beliefs (Mousavi the democratic reformer versus Ahmadinejad the Darth Vader ?) particularly when they are not sufficiently informed...

dyionisiac · 6 months ago

@kathy

I'm not saying an unvetted pipe is better than a vetted one, certainly. I'm saying it's better than nothing at all. I'm not saying twitter wouldn't be used if there was more mainstream coverage, I'm saying it wouldn't be very important if there were mainstream coverage.

That is why I try to run everything I retweet though filters. mostly only video and blogs actually from Iran, or stories by those sources that are verifiable, like what little the BBC can get out, or the Al Gizeira article on the topic and English translations of Mousavi's speeches so people will know what the elements really were.

I do State again that if the government had nothing to hide they would not have shut down communications. enough Has come out thought verified sources to show that this was a selection, not an election.

AxisV · 6 months ago

The U.S. media took side with the opposition before the election; Richard Engel of NBC mentioned green revolution several times and compared it to the Orange revolution. I do not believe Mousavi won nor came close in the election. I think he is being used to oppose Ahmadinejad. All I have seen are biased reporting; I have not seen Ahmadinejad supporters being interview on TV, only on NPR on Friday.

I find it ridiculous that a "Journalist" quoted information posted on tweeter as credible information. I find this an injustice to Americans, the government's propaganda should stay overseas. This is the same line that Bush took to get us into Iraq.

Congress has plugged its head into this issue and passing resolutions without knowing the facts. The same ignorant politicians would scream excuses later, just waiting to here them.

Iran has established democratic principles, every country cannot have similar governance structure.

wexens · 5 months ago

What about satellites ('member those?). If I can count the tiles on my roof via satellite I think we could determine the size of 'massive' demos in Tehran...but no: we get grainy, tight mobile phone video and they ask us to take their word for it as to what's going on. As to banning foreign media, that is wrong UNLESS those same media are flat-out organising an anti-democratic putsch to replace the government chosen by the people.
Then we have Neda, the grand martyr (god rest her soul), a passerby shot by whom? No-one knows. Now she has been catapulted to martyrdom and, yes, 'iconic' status. This is a put up job: a flag for a flagging rebellion to rally around. Funny how she's a beautiful young woman but then, human prejudice being what it is, they wouldn't milk half the sympathy trying to martyrize some ugly, hired, male thug who had been lobbing cobblestones at the cops who are trying to defend democracy from mob rule and the machinations of foreign agents provocateur....
In all, this is simply the biggest put-up, media manipulaton whitewash of modern times and, surprise surprise, whoever else it benefits, it's a gift for the Israelis....how bizarre

TOES