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possibilities for IMC Iran - and why it's urgent.

The USA government/corporate oligarchy planned to invade Iran during northern summer or autumn (fall) 2005 - now (early-mid 2006) it seems that the plans have become more and more serious - can independent, internet-supported media in Iran stop this together with world-wide supporters? 15 million people marching together around the world on 15.02.2003 failed to stop the attack on Iraq - partly due to the failure to counter official regime propaganda in the US. Even in 2005, a big fraction of people in the US think that the 11.09.2001 attacks and Saddam Hussein were linked. Some thoughts...

proposed feature Feb 2006

• ImcIranFeatureStopAttack

ImcIranPossibleWho

• Please add local and distant supporters' (e.g. antiwar) groups to ImcIranPossibleWho - this does not imply that any of these groups/individuals is/are associated with indymedia

internet access overall numbers

e.g. http://www.internetworldstats.com/middle.htm

Iran

• Iran - 68,458,680 population - Country size: 1,648,195 sq km
  • 18,000,000 users as of Aug 2007 (25.6% penetration, per ITU.)
  • 4,800,000 users as of Sept./2004, (7.0% penetration, per ITU.)

Iraq (even today)

• Iraq - 26,095,283 population - Country size: 434,128 sq km
  • 25,000 users as of Dec/2002, 0.1% penetration, per CIA.

So as of Aug 2007 Iran has about 720 times more internet users than Iraq had before the US attack. Sure there are some attempts at censorship and filtering in Iran - just as there are in nearly every country in the world - but this makes the chance of disarming Powell-Rumsfeld-Bush-Rice type urban legends much better than it was for Iraq (or Afghanistan).

The technological chance of Iranians directly providing alternative news sources is surely much better (about 200 times better) than it was for Iraq in 2003.

Of course, this technological advantage is not enough - it will only be enough if there are people links which make use of this technical opportunity to stop mass murder.

the blogosphere

The blogosphere is a big thing in Iran and among expat Iranians:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_blogs
  • There are at least 65,000 active weblogs (http://www.blogcensus.net) (out of estimated total of 2,000,000), written in the Persian language, the official language of Iran. There are also a few hundred weblogs written by Iranians in English and other languages. Most of them, though, belong to expatriates who live in North America, Europe, Japan, etc. Blogs By Iranians (http://www.blogsbyiranians.com) keeps a list of Iranian blogs written in English.
• list of Iranian blogs: http://blogsbyiranians.com/
• http://www.nowaroniran.com/ - No War on Iran blog
  • Mission Statement - The escalated public discourse about a possible military attack on Iran has alarmed many Iranians in Iran and its diaspora. As Iranians who are concerned about the implications of a war on our country, we have created this weblog to build a platform for preemptive dissent. In addition to our concerns about the fatalities of war, we are also troubled by the suppression of dissent in the U.S. and in Iran, and believe that war profoundly perpetuates civil repression.
  • clearly a few CIA/neocons are worried about the blogosphere - they are trying desperately to claim that the US has not intention of attacking Iran, that the US does not target civilians, etc etc
• http://peaceiran.blogspot.com/
  • About This Weblog: This weblog is dedicated to the Iranian people who are against a military attack on Iran. We believe that no war can contribute to the establishment of liberty and democracy in our country. "Iranians for Peace" welcomes the opinions of Iranian people around the globe who are in opposition to war. Please send your articles to: peaceiran@gmail.com
• http://jadi.civiblog.org/ Jadi. A 27 years old from Tehran / Iran.

farsi wikipedia

• farsi is the main language in Iran - the words farsi, persia, pharisee (christian bible) are essentially different versions of the same word, describing iranian language/place/people.
• http://fa.wikipedia.org - as of March 2005, has a bit under 2000 articles

anarchism from the farsi point of view

• دولت‌زدائ

geostrategic analyses - is it urgent?

Is the cheney/bush regime crazy enough to make the attack? Hints regarding neocon strategy may be useful for media deconstructive counter-strategies, even if it makes sense to make mass-murder difficult even if the risk seems not too high. Here are some analyses - see the blogs above for more.

YES

• http://www.globalagendamagazine.com/2005/ervandabrahamian.asp - Ervand Abrahamian, date - earlier than 31.03.2005
• http://www.nowaroniran.com/archives/000054.php - niki - February 27, 2005 09:14 PM
• http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=7343 McGovern: Attacking Iran 03/2/05
• http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=7560 June 2005 deadline in UN security council - Scott Ritter, April 01, 2005
  • Curiously, the date for the Bush administration's move to call for UN sanctions against Iran is June 2005. According to a US position paper circulated in Vienna at the end of last month, the US will give the EU-Iran discussions until June 2005 to resolve the Iranian standoff.
• https://israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4035/index.php

Dec 2005

NO

• http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=7333 Europe to Bush: \x93Hands off Iran\x94? Mike Whitney February 28, 2005
• http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/rattling_iran/ Noam Chomsky judges that The purpose of all of this show of intention to attack may be to rattle the Iranian leadership and provoke them into repressive actions at home, which could increase internal resistance and contribute to US campaigns of subversion that are almost certainly underway... US militancy and aggressive has the effect of frightening away foreign investors... If there is any serious chance that Iran can defend itself, or retaliate, I doubt that there will be a direct attack.
• http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=8371 Sasan Fayazmanesh, July 25, 2005, thinks that Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh have (incorrectly) believed misinformation from propagandists (so-called "experts") from the Bush regime and that while the Bush regime would ''like to'' overthrow the present (limited) democracy in Iran, it seriously only expects to be able to destabilise Iran and to deter democracy/human rights improvements there - this is probably similar to Chomsky's analysis.

media/propaganda elements

The main argument that the cheney/bush regime has used so far is the claim that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Just as in the case of the attack on Iraq, we should expect it to shift to other arguments (e.g. women's rights, history from 1979 but not from 1953, ...) once this one is shown to be baseless. In addition to countering false or distorted pro-war propaganda elements, it is probably a good idea to promote ''humanisation'' of Iran and Iranians in order that ''dehumanisation'' has more difficulty taking hold, hence the heading ''humanisation''.

Iran's nuclear program

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%27s_nuclear_program - as of 01.04.2005 this looks fairly reasonable
  • relatively easy task - translate this into the different language wikipedias (including farsee!!! so that Iranians will not believe US corporate propaganda...)

women's rights

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Woman - some good links here
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirin_Ebadi - if you're willing to focus on personalities, this might be interesting - but risks diverting from the bigger issues

gay rights

This is not a theme good for typical Bush regime propaganda - this seems to be a vector of human rights networking which opposes both the Bush regime and the mullahs:

• http://www.beirut.indymedia.org/ar/2005/07/2999.shtml
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Execution_of_two_gay_teens_in_Iran_spurs_controversy July 23, 2005
• http://mrbehi.blogs.com/i/2005/07/the_iranian_you.html July 20, 2005 The Iranian young; grown up in tyranny, treated with cruelty!
• http://roozonline.com/11english/008749.shtml Thursday, Jul 21, 2005 نجشنبه، ۳۰ تیر ۱۳۸۴ The Execution of Two Gay Young Men

humanisation

Probably any sort of educational stories about present Iranian society, preferably by Iranians in Iran or by expats, descriptions of the democratic process of struggle between reformers and conservatives, direct local human-to-human contacts, e.g. live webcam informal meetings, especially US <-> Iran?

• photos - iranians speak for themselves in photos - http://www.nowaroniran.com/gallery/archives.html
• http://www.nowaroniran.com/gallery/archives.html:
  

wikipedia resources

The (en) wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category%3AIran has lots of good pages. The more accurately we talk about Iran (no trotskist oversimplifications - "USA=bad, Iran=good") the more chance there is that people will understand each other, understand Iranians as human beings, Iranian society as a complex society, etc. Wikipedia pages necessarily have consensus viewpoints of a wide range of contributors.