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Organized Online, Students Storm Gov't. Buildings In Moldova
An anonymous reader writes "Reacting to allegedly fraudulent election procedures, students are storming the presidency and parliament of the small eastern European country of Moldova. It is reported that they used Twitter to organize. Currently twitter and blogs are being used to spread word of what is happening since all national news websites have been blocked. If the 1989 Romanian revolution was the first to be televised, is this the first to be led by twitter and social networks?" Jamie points out this interesting presentation (from March 2008) by Ethan Zuckerman about the realities of online activism, including how governments try to constrain it.
...So Twitter is *occasionally* filled with useful material. :)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
will not be televised, but apparently it will be twittered.
I am officially gone from
Tomorrows CNN: "According to Twits from the Moldovian front...."
Maybe after this, twitting will sound a little less stupid.
Maybe.
I'm really surprised they managed to send so many messages without Twitter displaying the Fail Whale.
Summation 2
People use communication tools available to them to organize and carry out tactics?
Oh, it's because it's twitter it's a novelty.
Sent from your iPad.
If it isn't, Slashdot ain't doin' its job.
If Slashdot was doing its job it would be the FRIST REVOLUTION!.
From my time in Moldova with native students, all they want is to join up with the rest of Europe and get the show on the road. They're really frustrated at "the Man". There's the Romanians who don't want to reunite the countries (since Moldova is poorer), the Russians who keep feeding the border conflict with Transnistria (fascinating read about that tin pot narco/weapons state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria ), there's the EU that doesn't even want to consider Moldova as long as there's an unsolved border conflict, there's the communists in power, and so on. Doesn't surprise me much that they're going the same way as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine -- which was much the same circumstances.
Totally OT: Moldova has the BEST wine and the CRAZIEST Nightclubs. Gotta believe me on that one ;-)
I, Vigo, the Scourge of Carpathia, the Sorrow of Moldavia, command you!
tldr
As told in a lot of reports. But the government can't do much when suddenly it's stormed from everywhere, and after days and days of riots, some cop say: "hey I saw a blog that calls for this demonstration that was more like an angry mob !" I even think they didn't manage to close one of those blog. Also the election of 2004 in Spain, which happened three days after the Madrid train bombing, was won by the socialists, even though national TV was continually broadcasting that the ETA made those bombing (the ETA is a left wing basque nationalist group). Manuel Castells, a Spanish sociologist claim that everybody in the country was just SMSing all day for those three days, since it was clear for anyone left wing that it wasn't the ETA: the ETA usually claim their attacks, and do not usually target civilian.
The Soviet Union was crushed by fax machines. Twitter is just sort of a chickenshit fax machine for people who like to run their mouths.
BTW, good for the students.
You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip, Skip out for beer during commercials, Because the revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox In 4 parts without commercial interruptions. The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia. The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal. The revolution will not get rid of the nubs. The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother. There will be no pictures of you and Willie May pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run, or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance. NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32 or report from 29 districts. The revolution will not be televised. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay. There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process. There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving For just the proper occasion. Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and women will not care if Dick finally gets down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day. The revolution will not be televised. There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news and no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose. The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be right back after a message bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people. You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl. The revolution will not go better with Coke. The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath. The revolution will put you in the driver's seat. The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised. The revolution will be no re-run brothers; The revolution will be live.
Burmashave
How many more countries are going to sprout out in that area? I already went broke replacing all my atlases when the USSR broke up, Yugoslavia broke up and reorged a couple of times, then Kosovo went independent... sheesh! I wish there was an atlas with a bunch of scrapbook-style cutouts for the most likely countries to secede next :)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Alright, we've got to overthrow those assholes running this country. And we've got to do it in 140 characters or less. So I want everyone to
but certainly not the last.
viva la revolucion!
4chan (and related sites) have been used to organize things similar to this for a long time. Flashmobs too. Just because it's Twiter doesn't mean it's unheard of.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
Sounds like a plan to me.
It isn't the government that needs to be stormed though... it is the Federal Reserve Bank.
People hear so much about the government borrowing money to give to businesses and lower banks, but where does it come from? The Federal Reserve? People would have you think it is coming from China and other foreign investors, but when THEY aren't investing, where are those dollars coming from? Ah yes, the Federal Reserve... the private bank that has exclusive right to print and distribute currency. So the government borrows from the Federal Reserve Bank... but wait?! Isn't the Federal Reserve Bank part of the government? Nope. If that were the case, the government debt wouldn't go up... can't have debt without owing someone. In this case, it's the Federal Reserve Bank.
I can't say that the money supply would be any better off in the hands of Congress and the executive branch, but I think there would be less propensity to spend money that we don't have. (Look at it this way, the invention of the credit card has enabled people to grow staggering debt... the credit institution that is the Federal Reserve Bank has enabled the government to grow staggering debt.) But one thing is for certain. The Federal Reserve Bank has undue command and control over the destiny of the U.S. and there are only two solutions to that problem.
1. Add their function the the U.S. Constitution and ratify them as a fourth branch of government
2. Abolish the dependence on the Federal Reserve Bank and restore the powers of the Treasury department
Remember when students actually stood for something and raged against the machine, instead of for it? Nice to see that still exists somewhere.
Tomorrows CNN: "According to Twits from the Moldovian front...." Maybe after this, twitting will sound a little less stupid. Maybe.
Somehow I doubt it. Somewhere, the twits will be twoted as twaying something or other about how these tweettacks are a violation of their twitful rights...
But don't twote me on that...
Moldova is on my short list of places I want to visit in this world before I die. I'm happy to go places that aren't exactly tourist-ready but any place where "students are storming the presidency and parliament" is just too unstable to contemplate.
Cross Moldova off the list for now. Maybe in a couple of years, though.
tldr
Too Lazy; Didn't Revolt?
No. Tweeter Leads: Do Revolt
I can't say that the money supply would be any better off in the hands of Congress
Maybe you can't, but a lot of smart people pointed that out. (The Founders) Mind you, they weren't talking about a congress full of corrupt incomptent idiots... or maybe they were, and they still thought it was better than bankers.
You believe that do you? This is an armed and violent attack on the government. The government can deploy troops with heavy caliber machine guns with armor piercing rounds. Those rounds will go through two or more people. Bring in tanks from the rear. Now you have a squeeze play, with the rioters trapped between machine guns in the front and machine guns on tanks advancing towards them in the back. Lets not forget white phosphorous rounds, flame throwers, napalm.
There is plenty the government can do. While the rioters, and apparently you, believe they are untouchable and immortal, all it takes is seeing a couple of hundred people in the front die in less than five minutes to break the will or most mobs.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Perhaps "lead" as in what bullets are made of is accurate?
it is after all a form of rebellion, in an eastern european country, no less.
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
Students stormed government buildings in what was formerly known as Moldova on Tuesday, setting the stage for revolution. The country has been renamed to recognize its new constituency and has elected a new leader.
http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/shaq-hat.jpg
Viva Twitteronia!
Just take a look http://unimedia.info/ ! These guys are serious...
http://live.stirileprotv.ro/stream3/, waiting for an outbreak :D
$god = null;
if($god) echo 'I believe!';
I remember that the support groups for the Republic Windows sit down strike used a twitter feed to organize. I also remember that face to face meetings were more important. Tweets are good for flash mobs because they can notify many people very quickly. However, for any mass action to be sustained, you need serious planning and logistical support. Activism can never be coordinated solely over minuscule text messages.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
It was called the 2000 election in Florida. You could read about it on the Internet. The only difference was the lack of protests.
Evidently there IS an Internet kill switch in Moldovia. The whole country is offline. The major news portal that is normally hosted inside the country has put up a temporary site for itself hosted outside. See the unimedia link further down the comments.
Mod parent up. I let my damn mod points expire...
Unimedia is normally unimedia.md. Inside Moldovia, in other words. They're using outside hosting because everything in .md is down.
They're updating their page chronologically, with timestamps. The parliament building has been occupied since yesterday and..... CNN has yet to notice it. At all. Amazing.
Several thousands moldovans it's like 50% of the country's young people atm. It's like millions in New York.
If you do that, you will lose the survivors too (they will move to Romania, Ucraina or other countries).
Again, if you do that, the elders will still replace you. And you will die in pain.
gtkaml.org
The parliament building has been occupied since yesterday and..... CNN has yet to notice it. At all. Amazing.
Not so amazing.
They just don't want to give angry US citizens who are already organizing in ever-larger numbers for Tea Partys any ideas that might end up putting their Messiahs' and the new spendulous-taxulous liberal-Democrat U.S. regimes' "New Order" at risk, especially as U.S. citizens have firearms.
For now.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Here, in Moldova, it's a pretty good place to be right now. We destroyed the Parliament builing and the first floors of the Presidency (our version of White House). People where throwing computers out the windows, documents, chairs, and all they found in the building. It all burned. I've never thought we would manage to do so much. I guess in everyone of us there is a mad man, which is good news if you want to overthrow a stupid dictator. Btw, on topic... Everyone I know found out about this small revolution on the Internet. Yay! Whish us good luck fighing against our evil overlords! :>
I for one welcome our Supreme Overlord.
(I've fixed it for you)
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
You don't overturn the government ...
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
The communist govt of Moldova can't afford to do that. If they do that they're doomed. The govt may be communist but the times have changed, the country is not a closed-borders police state. There are almost 24/7 live broadcasts from Chisinau in Romania and the govt cannot shut down internet access completely (lots of ISPs don't cave in).
The world would know. A military response from the govt would be plenty of justification for NATO to intervene.
At the moment there hasn't been any military intervention, despite lots of rumours. Police special forces have used blank ammo to scare the people. There have been lots of arrests, over 200. There are riots in at least 2 other major cities.
Today since 10 AM local time Chisinau is back in the streets. The govt doesn't like that, does its best to prevent it, but can't really use the army. The odds are a hell of a lot better for Moldavian revolutionaries now than they were for Romanian revolutionaries in 1989.
In Soviet Russia, weblog tweets YOU!
I highly doubt that NATO would be able to justify intervening when this is a violent insurrection.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Read up on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
They where using 'online' to co ordinate national strikes back in the 1980's
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm much more "libertarian" with a small "L" as the current policies and platforms espoused by the Libertarian Party aren't realistic in many ways IMO. I don't like the actions of either of the two major parties and haven't for many, many years. I never said the Republicans were any better. Especially the last Republican administration. Both parties are two faces of the same B.S. The current Democrat administration & congress are, however, taking the tax & spend strategy to new heights.
I mentioned the Tea Partys as an example of dissent and unrest among the citizens concerning the new heights of tax & spend being reached. As far as I'm aware, the Tea Parties have participants from all parties, although sadly lacking in participants from the Obamabots and Democrat partisans in general.
Please don't attach party loyalties to me that I do not have, nor espoused in the post you're replying to.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Maybe the Moldovian government should borrow idea from The Guardian and launch a national newspaper on twitter to fight against the rebels.