According to a CNN blog post, the U.S. government is connecting with Twitter and other major social media companies to make sure that the flow of information from Iran remains uninterrupted.”

They want their guy in there.

One of the smartest things I have seen so far in this thread.

I am sick of some Americans being against their own govt, but believing it all powerful and interpreting everything in terms of America. It just more navel/gazing, just the mirror image of the jingoistic redneck with a plate that says “God Bless America”.

In one case America is pure, beautiful and almighty, everybody bows to Her. In the other, America is evil, gross and almighty, everybody bows to Her. It is the Standard according to which the world must be measured.

It makes me sick.

“It’s very hip to be on twitter now.”
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/15/its-something-called.html

The Iranian protesters deserve a lot of credit for their sacrifices and courageousness. However, I would expect the theocratic rulers of Iran to respond to the current wave of civil disobedience with extreme violence if America did NOT have a huge military presence to their immediate East and West. Do you really think The USA would – or should – stand idly by if G-d forbid masses of Iranians were slaughtered by the Revolutionary Guard? If McCain were President he might have fewer options as a Republican because of Bush’s legacy. But this is Obama’s watch now! He could justify on humanitarian grounds the USA supporting the Iranian dissidents with military force. He is so hugely popular he could easily win domestic consensus on some kind of military support or intervention short of an out right invasion. And if he could take out Iran’s WMD program while he’s at it that would be a twofer and guarantee the right would give him political cover as well.

The point is America’s campaigns of nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan have almost certainly encouraged the Iranian masses to revolt and a side benefit of the change in US administration is that it has severely limited Iran’s ruling clerics room to maneuver.

Well done Twitter!

http://pklrt.wrdprss.cm/2009/06/16/prf-srl-ffrt-t-dstblz-rn-v-twttr/

In any case, something is not passing the smell test for me. We have US politicians like McCain, who recently sang “bomb bomb bomb Iran” now so very concerned for the Iranian people? We have a “color revolution” in Iran, when other color revolutions have been linked to US covert action? We have the US president admit that the CIA facilitated a previous Iranian coup just a day before this went down?

Of course, the President of Iran is not even the real power of that nation, the ultimate leader is the Ayatolla, who vets the potential candidates even more thoroughly than the US media and their corporate backers.

Are you delusional? What occured in Iran on June 12 was a total sham election! That’s what all the fuss is about there. Duh! All of the candidates are approved by the Supreme Leader and his Council of Guardians. Even so the ruling clerics still felt the need to rig the voting.

I am willing to give the Twitter principals the benefit of the doubt but inasmuch as there is no proven business model to sustain that enterprise I think its safe to assume that much of their motivation is based on seizing the opportunity for a lot of good pubilicity.

Don’t link to any more anti-Semitic, conspiracy theory, nutjob blogs. Your reference has an article with pictures of a US dollar bill turned into a star of David as proof of a conspiracy.

At want point are people going to wake up to the fact that Mousavi is backed by the CIA who want to see Ahmadinejad gone?

Anything reputable to back that up?

You seem to be under the impression that the Iranian President pulls the levers of power in Iran. He doesn’t, and never has. The Supreme Leader of Iran is so titled for a reason.

The real action is happening at that level. There is the possibility that Ali Khamenei will be forced out. If he’s replaced by, say, his former favorite Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri (who advocates interesting things like the separation of mosque and state, and women’s rights), then the stage is set for a constitutional convention that could redefine the role of the revolutionary mullahs in Iranian governance.

That’s what’s at stake here. Not some tinfoil-hatted plot.

You cannot know if they would act different or not. What we know now is that we were lied to to get an useless war. As north Korea has proven (again, for the nth time), rulers can be irrational. And the US should not intervene, besides, they cannot afford it. Afghanistan, Iraq, maybe North Korea and also Iran?
Yeah, right. Either you call Dr. Manhattan or you get real. In my opinion, short of genocide, there should not be interventions. So, how many thousands of dead people are needed so Iran can have a peaceful revolution? That is not a vindication of “Bush doctrine”. That is a half baked excuse to support an interventions with lots of awful consequences, badly planned and lies as foundations.

“The point is America’s campaigns of nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan have almost certainly encouraged the Iranian masses to revolt and a side benefit of the change in US administration is that it has severely limited Iran’s ruling clerics room to maneuver.”

Prove it. or stop talking chickenhawk propaganda.

The US doesn’t care about genocide unless it co-incides with a more profitable interest they have – in which case it’s heart the genocide.

One of many cases in point: Darfur.

America, like alot of the west, really doesn’t have a moral leg to stand on anymore. But we can all pretend, and are doing so, as hard as possible.

Excerpt:

Now, based on my religious duties, I will remind you :

1- A legitimate state must respect all points of view. It may not oppress all critical views. I fear that this lead to the lost of people’s faith in Islam.

2- Given the current circumstances, I expect the government to take all measures to restore people’s confidence. Otherwise, as I have already said, a government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy.

Mousave is a Bush/Cheney stooge. The crackdown is immoral and reprehensible but it should have never gotten to this point in the first place.

In this case Twitter is acting like a useful idiot for the CIA and NSA propaganda machine.

Pardon me for not checking every damn link on a page that made a very sane sounding claim about the twitters coming “out of Iran”

Do YOU check every link on every page that YOU link to?

Your implication is that I am an anti-Semite. Will you actually come out and say that???

While I believe the above sentiment is sincere I think it misses the larger point. These events tell me that something is stirring in the soul of the Iranian people. That something is a deep yearning of a people for freedom expressed through real political representation. They see their neighbors to the west as a beacon of hope. Seven brutal years of nation building have granted them the trappings of a true democracy – a constitution, fair elections, and a free press.

Granted there still are security issues and sectarian unrest. But in February 2009 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina President Obama felt confident enough to announce that the US will withdraw combat forces from Iraq by August 2010 and all remaining troops by December 2011.

Perhaps what we are witness to the vindication of the Bush Doctrine. It’s still too early to tell. But if is a vindication then these events are surely about the US and her global leadership.

Mousavi was vetted by the Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians. If you really believe Mousavi is a “Bush/Cheney stooge” that is tantamount to saying Bush and Cheney successfully inserted a mole into the iranian political system. Do you really want to give them that much credit?

“Ye shall know them by their works and not their words, for their tongues shall drip sweet lies”

Because publicity is to improve your own profits, and so if this was ONLY a publicity stunt then Twitter would be trying to profit from the Iranian people’s misfourtune.

Hopefully that’s not their motive, and they decided to do the right thing for its own sake.

I’m kind of confused how this isn’t obvious.

Mousavi fits the bill perfectly.