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The State of Iran's Ongoing Netwar
An anonymous reader writes "Following disputed elections in Iran, opposition groups and activists have turned conventional protests into a major threat to the ruling government. The low-intensity protest movement is rapidly becoming the first true netwar of the 21st century. Opposition protesters have shown that within a few hours or less, the information technologies that are the mainstay of modern society can become its weapons, as well.
This article examines the current situation in Iran and the part played by new media technologies and strategies, showing how far the theory and practice of netwar has advanced since the concept first emerged in the late nineties."
TFA was one of the best written, well thought out blogs I've ever had the pleasure to read. Indeed JournalSquared should be invited to be an admin here at /.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Hardly any time to post. Spending most of my time on Fark
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Can you please post what we can do in order to help the Iranians throw over their dictatorship?
If Iran doesn't want to be known as a tyrannical society with as of broken government of that of North Korea, if it wants to get respect for a (peaceful) nuclear program, they have to stop this oppression, let there be free speech. Heck, if this throws Iran into chaos and the president really wants what is best for Iran, he will step down and let the opposition leader take control.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I the 1st net war of the 21st century was between Russia and Georgia. If you recall Russia executed ddos attacks on Georgia to stop communications during their invasion.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
As much of the foreign media has been shut out of Iran and communications have been cut and/or monitored in much of iran, twitter has become a major source of news coming out of iran. As much as many here on slashdot like to bash twitter, its clear that social networking tools such as twitter and facebook can be immensely useful in this sort of repressive situation. The traditional media have struggled to cover this, and there has been a lot of criticism of outlets such as CNN for not being on the ball.
The Huffington Post has a good blog covering much of the news coming out of twitter and blogs and some reporters still in iran.
The Guardian has perhaps the best reporting of the mainstream media, with a live blog that covers official reporters and some unofficial sources.
Anyone that writes a story about this that doesn't mention Fark specifically needs to do a bit more research on the subject. Tats(uma) obviously gets quite a bit of credit, but he wasn't the only person there keeping up with the tweets. Fark (and oddly, 4chan) became major filters for finding the real data for the first several days. I'm amazed at the people who still don't know there's effectively a civil war going on in Iran, since CNN and other mainstream media didn't really start reporting on it until yesterday.
The other bit is, because mainstream media has to hedge their bets - they have something to lose, where sites like Fark aren't even media sites, so they have nothing to lose - CNN and such has to worry about whether the dissidents will be successful. Because if they aren't, then you've pissed off the people still in power. Media blockout is one thing, but there was reliable reports of many deaths long before MSM was reporting there being only a single death.
BTW, Iranians still need proxies for their twitter updates. If you have the ability...
Also, one of the ways people have been trying to make it more difficult for the Iranian police to track down dissidents is by changing their twitter location and timezone to that of Tehran. Feel free to do that too.
But yeah, twitter is the only thing able to make it out right now, considering.
The West thinks in binary terms: free/not-free.
Life is more complicated than that.
When we find someone obstructing our interests, we round of millions of useful idiots to begin clamoring for "freedom," and use that to passive-aggressively unseat the regime.
All while we are increasingly banning our own freedoms here in the West, and might be better off with a goal of "an organized, thoughtful society" instead of the nebulous "freedom."
Futurist Traditionalism
How many divisions does the Internet have?
Belief Circle Clash in progress.
Last year's bunch of guys in Guy Fawkes masks taking on the Cult of Scientology was just the warmup. This year, the sport of nerds is geopolitics.
This week, we had Twitter replace CNN for live coverage of breaking news, Fark replacing the talking heads for analysis, Anonymous being linked to from The Pirate^WPersian Bay for ways to distribute images of preconfigured proxy servers, and to distribute video, and, the rest of /b/ actually helping by selectively flipping the DDOS switch on and off on Iranian government websites.
It's like Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End come to life.
Noah Shachtman over at wired http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/web-attacks-expand-in-irans-cyber-battle/#more-13774 seems to have an idea of what is happening and worth a read.
Wow, so listening to a bunch of people whine over twitter, facebook and youtube is considered a war these days? this is largely different than ddos attacks during the georgia / russia conflict.
I'm sure the military and police are scared. I'm sure they are also monitoring your communications.
Also I didn't read the article, because revolution and change still only happen in the physical medium ... usually with weapons.
Not long after the first requests for proxies went out, went out the requests for "So how do I configure this again?".
So I created ProxyBox [mirror] to help people get stuff setup quickly. It has squid (listening on a multitude of ports), tor, & ziproxy. It was quick and dirty (and the file size shows). Not to mention I'm just a Mechanical Engineer, not a security expert. This was meant for the fark crowd and not for the slashdot, I'm sure everyone here is more than capable of setting up some proxies.
Austin Heap has been distributing the Proxies to Iranians on the inside via twitter and such. (Twitter) his biggest problem right now is ssh servers inside of Iran to make sure that proxies work. Supposedly he's also been able to set up VPNs on fast connections. But work is slow because the internet is slow and he's down to 1-2 SSH boxes ATM.
They've already started blocking ports 80,81, 3128 & 8080. And starting to send fake RESETs on TCP connections (Comcast anyone?).
How you can help:
Well I'd like some help making ProxyBox a ton smaller. If DSL can get a full GUI in 50MB, there's no reason ProxyBox should be 400MB. I'd also like to turn it into a LiveCD or LiveUSB so it can be set up by anyone not just with VirtualBox. (jjarvis98 at gmail.com)
Tor is being used quite extensively. Some people have setup exit nodes and had their connections filled with people hitting nothing more than twitter, facebook & youtube. Set up an exit node or bridge if nothing else.
Supposedly UDP and ping still work fine. So some people are looking into TCP over UDP or I was also thinking about Ping Tunnel (Tcp over Ping)
#irantech on irc.freenode.net is a bit unorganized but it's working for now.
Actually, what you describe is indeed what happened in Iraq (with only marginally quibbling differences).
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Those mischievous denizens over at 4chan have apparently managed to throw up over 9000 proxies and waged a very effective series of denial of service attacks against the Iranian government. Somebody send those guys some Redbull and Cheetos!
against an irate populace is something that is one of the main pillars of our constitution.
The Declaration of Independance and the Right to Bear Arms were both very much about this. Basically, the Bill of Rights as a whole was meant to shore up the rights of the populace to defend itself against an abusive government.
It is very interesting to see that the Internet has changed the battlefield enough to level it in certain areas. Really since the mechanization of warfare, no populace could really effectively stand up to the military might of a state.
precisely. Re-read what I wrote.
Iraq - killing off ethnicities, millions of dead Iraqis, dissidents were made public examples of, their families killed.
Iran - nothing remotely like Iraq.
In Iran, dissidents are out in millions, hugging the Basij. In Iraq, dissidents were shot in high percentages. While people in Iran are being killed right now, it's substantially less than of 1% of the dissidents that are protesting. Phenomenally different situation.
Which is why, if you look at what I was responding to, the question of whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is not really relevant to whether we should go to Iran. They are different situations.
BTW, Iranians still need proxies for their twitter updates. If you have the ability...
I brought a couple of them up, but can't get in contact with anybody to distribute them, who do I need to tell?
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
It is up to every individual to assess the situation and decide, but I for one when I hear people living under a theocratic appointed-for-life dictator protest that they are being denied even a modest voice in running their country, and ask for my help, I am inclined to give it.
Net access will help clarify facts, for starters. I have just heard an oral report that the number of dead is not 1, as the regime claims, but more like 30 or 40. I have no way of verifying this as it is, but if we provide communication channels to the Iranian people we might obtain videos and testimony. Piercing the veil of secrecy and fear that supports oligarchs.
Everyone who thinks they are helping by siding with the Iranian opposition has a very poor understanding of Iranian politics. It doesn't matter whether it's from the government or whether it's from regular Western citizens, helping the opposition figures does not help the United States in any way. It just puts a different face on the same anti-Western government. The difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is on economic policy not foreign policy. What makes you think that if they opposition was successful in their political ambitions that they would become pro-American? Did they become pro-Israel after Israelis sold them weapons during the Iran Iraq war?
Depends - how many armed Iranians are likely to switch allegiance?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Iran is a considerably different place than Iraq was under Hussein. Under Hussein, Iraq was effectively a one-man dictatorship. Iran's governing structures are considerably more complex. Khamenei is the effective ruler of Iran, but there's considerable interplay with other high-level bodies, in particular the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts. There's a lot more jostling and scheming for influence than we are often aware. While, on the face of it, this may look like the beginnings of a revolution, I'm wagering it's more likely a coupe by former president Rafsanjani, who has close ties with Mousavi, and who is likely looking to unseat Khamenei and install himself as the Supreme Leader.
This is the saddest part of all of this. There are plenty of reasons for the Iranian people, or at least the middle and upper classes, to loathe Ahmadinejad, but if these proto-revolutionaries think they're fighting to take back Iran from the Ayatollahs, they're sadly mistaken. Mousavi is very much a loyal servant of the current regime, with many connections with the Guardian Council, certainly more than Ahmadinejad.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You just lumped "The West" into a big pile. What a bogus, binary statement. "The West" is far more complicated then you suggest.
The West thinks in binary terms: free/not-free.
Clearly not, since "The West" consists of dozens of different autonomous nations, a narrow spectrum of different governments and different degrees of freedom. We're constantly bickering about which Western nation is the most free/not-free, and we're constantly bickering about influence and business in Iran, among other topics.
This might seem a bit unnecessary, but readily handing out names to someone that replies to a comment isn't necessarily a good idea, what with the Iranian authorities actively looking for dissidents.
I'd suggest checking out the latest fark thread and either finding the info there, or just posting the question. Someone will likely email you if you ask for it. I'm not sure I trust my own people-vetting skills. It's easy to find the info there at fark though, and thanks for the proxies :)
Its clear nothing gets done for the people.
Things do get done in the name of the people to advance other agendas.
Proof, the whole liberation of Iraq. "We must invade to liberate the poor oppresed people of Iraq"
It was the same crap we here today. "Help the poor peole of Iran"
Now take a look at this: http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter/
Looks like the US and her friends are busy again trying to get what THEY want.
I'm glad this didn't happen in the US for our last Presidential election. But maybe next time, riots for 2012!!!
You make a good point.
You can google my username if you want, though. I've been active on this board, fark, reddit, HN, etc. for like...8 years.
I'll troll fark though, thanks :) (i think that me @...heap.com is probably getting slammed with emails right now, in fact, they're probably spamming the shit out of him).
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
You must have missed the part where several Grand Ayatollahs have come out against the election results, and only 1 is backing it. And where part of the demands of the dissidents is that Khamenei - who first blessed, then condemned, then blessed again the results - be removed. In fact, there is substantial talk about the fact that Khamenei clearly does not have Allah's voice if he is changing his position; once he blessed it, he really should have stuck with that. The double reversal greatly harms his reputation, both inside and outside of Iran.
I even tossed together a wiki page about the stances of the various Marjas. And L-rd have mercy, I'd love to have help editing it. There's a lot of things to try to filter, and most of those official pages are in languages I unfortunately cannot read.
This isn't a simple "nothing will change" situation anymore. Even Mousavi is likely to be temporary now, considering he was only allowed to run because Khamenei approved him.
These protests are only low-intensity if you count that the protesters aren't starting violence. There have been literally millions of protesters in each of several cities--and these are the ones who are coming out despite the very real threat of attack from paramilitary forces.
ah, that sucks...because that's the name to give if someone gives a name :/ I bet he'll have to get a new account after this. That, and the next time I'm in his town, I've got a beer for him. Or hell, her - I dunno. Tats can probably give you info to; check his profile on fark for contact info.
Let me put it this way. If Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are turfed tomorrow, the Islamic regime will still be there. There may be some changes, but at the end of the day, and unless an actual proper, focused revolution occurs, the differences won't be substantial.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The fact that a pro-democracy, pro human-rights, even pro women's-rights Grand Ayatollah ( Montazeri ) is likely to become the new temporary Supreme Leader while a new constitution is written means nothing to you?
Again, I suggest you start digging a bit deeper. Revolutions don't require extensive bloodshed, this one seems to be doing fairly well considering - using mostly hugs. Who said this isn't a fullscale revolution?
This statement started off as a paragraph or two in the early threads...
-
Very worrying report: Supreme Leader Khameini has called for Friday Prayers where he will be present. There are fears that the IRG is going to have a massive presence and that this might be a trap, but on the other hand not attending makes the reformists enemies of Islam and worthy of the death penalty. There are also reports that other Reformist candidate Karoubi and his entire party leadership were arrested.
Nothing much has happened in the last hours aside of that. There are reports of clerics and ayatollahs meeting in the holy Shiite city of Qom in order to plan to overthrow Khameini as supreme leader, as well as a more and more pro-dissenters stance from the army, but we have nothing substantiated so far. I will yet update this tomorrow, adding further information about various other groups operating in Iran right now and relevant to this revolution.
I really am trying to cram the most relevant information and speculation only. Everything is updated as events unfold, especially the timeline and what will happen in the future. If you want to link this, here is the website, updated as the situation changes:
https://sites.google.com/site/tatsumairanupdate/
All twitter posts about the army being involved are false as I am writing this Warning, new twitter feeds are most likely government members trying to spread misinformation, ignore them! Also, there is a handful of good twitter feeds, but please do not publicize their usernames, they are in enough danger as it is and they don't need more publiclity. Those in the know will c/p their entries. Major timeline overhaul, including what has unfolded in the last few hours.
Suppression of Dissent - The Players
Currently, there are either two or three groups who are suppressing the students on the ground that you'll read about throughout this thread:
1. The Basij
2. Ansar Hizbullah (which I will refer to as Ansar)
3. Lebanese Hizbullah (Unconfirmed but highly probable. Der Spiegel, based on a Voice of America report, says that 5,000 Hizbullah fighters are currently in Iran masquerading as riot police, confirming the independent reports. Many different independent reports and video point that way. Even in the last hours other independent twitter feeds have declared witnessing thugs beating on people while shouting in Arabic; I will refer to them as Hizbullah)
- The Basij are your regular paramilitary organization. They are the armed hand of the clerics. The Basij are a legal group, officially a student union, and are legally under direct orders of the Revolutionary Guard. Their main raison d'Ãtre is to quell dissent. They are the ones who go and crack skulls, force people to participate in pro-regime demonstrations, and generally try to stop any demonstrations from even starting. They are located throughout the country, in every mosque, every university, every social club you can think of. They function in a way very similar to the brownshirts.
They were the ones who first started the crackdown after the election, but it wasn't enough. While they are violent and repressive, they are still Persian and attacking fellow citizens. A beating is one thing, mass killings another.
- Another group was working with them, whose members are even more extreme, is Ansar. There is a lot of cross-membership between the Basij and Ansar, though not all are members of the other group and vice-versa. The vast majority of Ansar are Persians (either Basij or ex-military), though a lot of Arab recruits come from Lebanon and train with them under supervision of the Revolutionary Guard. They are not functioning under a legal umbrella, they are considered a vigilante group, but they pledge loyalty directly to the Supreme Leader and most people believe that they are under his control. They are currently helping the Basij to control the riots, but due to the fact that they are Persians and i
And so it begins.
Hmm.... there's information missing here. It would presumably be trivially easy for the Iranian government to:
The Internet is not magical. There have to be landlines. Landlines are wires. They can be cut. So how exactly is a reactionary government famous for interfering with people's lives, based on religious rules, having trouble keeping the Internet from its territory? I see two possible ways: 1) they're trying to play the "nothing wrong here" show to the rest of the world, who would maybe get suspicious of the country suddenly cut Internet access, or 2) there is a significant number of illegal landlines, with their own "fiber to the curb" distribution nodes for the dissenters. Both seem unlikely since they probably don't care about 1) and Someone Would Notice infrastructure of the size needed for 2).
Can anyone give more details?
-- Sig down
The Iranian government has been actively seeking out and destroying sat dishes. Some still remain. While wireless is easy to block, it's not easy to block completely - not when your own police force has disbanded, the military is refusing to do anything, and you're left with little more than the few extra thugs. Granted, your thugs have guns, and the population does not, but your thugs are also the less educated, generally rural types. Hick thugs versus educated urbanites, and you don't think some of those kids can find a way to get past the firewall Iran put up? Esp if you help out with a proxy for them?
Religious taboos tend to be stupid, but this one is the silliest.
Doesn't that seem a tad overly optimistic to you?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
no, because I've been keeping up with the information coming out of there for the last week.
The demands of the protestors (who number in the millions):
1. Dismissal of Khamenei for not being a fair leader
2. Dismissal of Ahmadinejad for his illegal acts
3. Temporary appointment of Ayatollah Montazeri as the Supreme Leader
4. Recognition of Mousavi as the President
5. Forming the Cabinet by Mousavi to prepare for revising the Constitution
6. unconditional and immediate release of all political prisoners
7. Dissolution of all organs of repression, public or secret.
Let me put it this way. If Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are turfed tomorrow, the Islamic regime will still be there.
Come on. If it's ok for Israel to have a Jewish regime, why isn't it ok for Iran to have an Islamic one? After all, their last experiment with a secular government didn't work out so well, the Shah was a thug propped in place by foreign governments.
Personally, I think that superstition should be kept far far away from government, religion is the opiate of the masses, etc. etc. But I'm obviously in a minority. So just get rid of the thugs and puppetmasters, and hopefully the other stuff will take care of itself.
Email me@austinheap.com, he's compiling an unpublished list of proxies that Iranians can ask for when they contact him. He's in one of the best positions to make sure the proxies get to the people who need them.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The problem, of course, is that sites like Fark are full of well-intentioned people who do not really know the first thing about what is going on or what they really should do -- they just want to do something, anything they can think of to feel like they are helping, while not even being very sure of WHAT they are helping.
So, being net-savvy, they think that forwarding every piece of information they receive (with no way bar VERY few exceptions of vetting that information) is helping, when they could very likely be opening themselves up to being used for propaganda from just about any imaginable source -- including the Mousavi campaign which 99.9% of those trying to help didn't even know existed before last Thursday, much less know anything about what it really means. They just know it's not Ahmadinejad and that has to be just splendid, so anything masquerading as not-being-Ahmadinejad must be your new BFF in Iran.
This is incredibly dangerous.
The urge to help, be part of history and change the world is strong, but it is extremely easy to exploit. Unless you _really_ are actively involved and _know_ your contacts and know what the hell you are doing, you stand a very high chance of hurting instead of helping -- and, let's face it, with no risk of danger sitting at a computer terminal in the U.S. and blind faith that everything you do is helping the cause, considering the conflict, you could end up contributing to people being killed.
BE CAREFUL.
Am I paranoid or is this coincidence?
NATO troops to the east and west of Iran, a revolt going on inside Iran... what a coincidence.
The U.S. might be behind this (telling Israel to use its excellent intelligence service, to apply some pressure here and there), or it's a gift from the heavens for Washington.
Why would it be a gift from the heavens for the U.S.? Simple, a while ago Iran set up an alternative oil-market to the U.S. one which was based on the Euro. Now, the only thing which needs to happen is that an U.S. friendly government "should" be installed and that problem is solved... but wait.
China and Veneuela won't like the U.S. messing with Iran and I'm not sure about the EU, but they're watching this very closely. This could go in any direction, but it will most likely benefit China.
If the U.S. and/or Israeli intelligence services appear to be involved and this net-war is stopped by the Iranian government, there's a good chance nothing will come out of this.
On the other hand; if the net-war succeeds and the Iranian government is toppled while information gets out that the CIA or Mossad are behind this... China and Venezuela might just get pissed. The latter doesn't worry me but the first does.
So, who stands to proffit from this? For the U.S. or Israel the price is a bit too high. China is too obvious and I doubt Venezuela can afford to stage this.
So, who's REALLY behind this? The stakes run too high to be just the people.
What if instead of Iran and Tehran, it was the United States of America and San Francisco? What if instead of Iranian opposite party, it was Libertarians? What if instead of US citizens assisting Iranians dissidents, it was Chinese assisting US dissidents? Would it be a good thing, or an assault on our national sovreignty?
Until we hear otherwise, we have a violent minority who are upset about being under-represented. We also have sympathetic outsiders who are willing to support them.
The whole situation is pretty bitter sweet. On one hand, there are a group of people who are standing up for a Westernized idea of freedom. On the other hand, they are the minority voice in a country that for the most part seems okay with a pious, religious based social order. For democracy to work, the minority has to behave themselves and go along with what the majority has decided on.
I'm not a big fan of the socialization of our economic system, but you don't see me organizing violent protests in the street and demanding a return to a fiscal system more in line with what was defined in the Constitution.
As yet, I've heard nothing that indicates that the Iranian opposition that backs Mousavi is generally opposed to "the Ayatollahs", rather than particular current policies. Is it so hard to understand that people can fiercely oppose the policies of an incumbent administration, and even see them as repressive, without opposing the basic -- at least, overt and theoretical -- structure of the government?
First, let me commend your work in compiling the positions of the Marjas -- that is interesting and illuminating.
Since no one is allowed to run for President without the approval of the Guardian Council a whole, I'm not sure I see what is special about this. ISTR that there was at one point a perception that he was preferred by Khamenei as an obstacle to other reformists, but, given Khamenei's initial and subsequent blessing of the results favoring Ahmadinejad, I don't think anyone is going to see Mousavi as a puppet or ally of Khamenei at this point.
Personally, I think that superstition should be kept far far away from government, religion is the opiate of the masses, etc. etc. But I'm obviously in a minority. So just get rid of the thugs and puppetmasters, and hopefully the other stuff will take care of itself
Yes, because atheists are always the most tolerant people in the world. They never talk badly or try to enforce their personal views upon others (certainly not what this post suggested!). They always view someone who is considerate and tolerant of others, while holding their own religious view, as something other than a religious nutjob who has been duped by simple manipulation. They certainly don't extinguish all religious beliefs that may disagree with their own, selfish agendas when they come to power. Besides, spirituality and religion have never been able to construct a system of laws or behavioral guidelines for the masses that our modern world would consider valuable, such as moral underpinnings of our own society and constitution. Systems of morality and governing civilization are two things that should NEVER walk hand in hand. Dubious religious machinations such as law, marriage, tolerance, modesty, self-sacrifice, temperance, and honesty are the very things that tear apart a perfectly good community!
/pervert/ their religions to gain power that are the dangerous ones, like Ahmadinejad, Bin Laden, and the Inquisition. They are properly condemned in the scriptures they proport to hardline. If it were not religious views they were twisting to gain power, it would simply be social views. It is not the religion that wrecks these men, rather it is these men who wreck the religion... and their charisma will grant them followers no matter what flag they're claiming to wave.
On a serious note: It's those who
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
England hasn't had a "proper, focussed revolution" since the Restoration, but despite the continuity of its government fairly substantial changes have occurred. The US hasn't had a successful "proper, focussed revolution" since the adoption of the Constitution, and the same is true. I see no basis for assuming that the Islamic Republic of Iran, even if it retained its same basic strucutre, would not, likewise, see substantial change over time.
I seem to recall there being some buzz in the independent media about Georgia invading South Ossetia
South Ossetia was part of Georgia. Many residents being Russian, they wanted to break away from Georgia.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The demand doesn't mean its likely to happen. I'm not at all an expert on Iran, but I'd be willing to bet that if the Guardian Council meets some of the demands (like throwing out the election results and tossing Khamenei), they won't appoint the temporary Supreme Leader proposed by the protestors, but someone else somewhat more conservative but not seen as close to Khamenei.
The dissidents would probably just steal bandwidth from the allies.
Rethinking email
They're not sending guns and ammunition, though. They're permitting the freedom of speech. The people providing proxies are not in power, and not making decisions outside of "Let a people speak when their government attempts to keep them from speaking." Which can be dangerous, but it's the right thing to do.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Iran isn't even a trading partner, so internal elections are none of our business.
Further, pre-election day polls showed the incumbent winning by a large margin. Any tampering with election results didn't change the will of the Iranian people.
What we have here is a sore loser and thousands of followers who are also sore losers. If Iran wants to have free elections (without preselected candidates), they need to reject the mixing of religion and politics.
I didn't vote for President Obama, but you didn't find me calling for a recount because he won.
Rat, is that you?
Falcon
Darn, where did I put that unobtainium?
Should there be a Law?
Activism and breaking news isn't exactly slashdot's thing any more.
It wouldn't surprise me if there only a few real posters here these days, and most everybody else is trolling for the lulz or 'turfing.
It's a shame really. I'm pretty sure there used to be a WAP wizard here who could have helped a lot to keep the info flowing despite the government crackdown.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The reason new media was effective was because it was beyond the understanding of the regime. As they grow to figure out things like Twitter, the effectivenes of new media will decline. That's why you'll never be able to beat word of mouth. Stories like this http://newfromthenews.com/2009/06/17/robert-fisk-makes-his-own-rules/ just go to prove that. You can shut down Facebook and Twitter, but not people. Foreign media is banned, but he stayed behind to get the story and send it out the old fashioned way. And any other way he could.
Iran needs Iphones
You may not be sending guns or ammunition, but you may be helping point those guns.
If you want to help, join up with an organization of people who really know what the hell is going on and can in some reasonable way ensure you aren't actually helping the wrong side. Blindly doing something with no sense of context beyond high-minded platitudes is NOT the right thing to do. In fact, it's reckless.
with all the stampede we are doing here, and with our technical expertise, actually slashdot should be wreaking havoc on mullah's aims in iran. yet, did anyone do anything ?
Read radical news here
despite your bullshit sarcasm, he should EXACTLY do that. thats why you elect representatives in a democracy.
Read radical news here
so, the mullahs in iran can suppres citizens, keep bolstering hizbollah, lebanese hizbollah, (unbelievably a group of FOREIGN islamist recruits), and basj, strengthen in power and keep more effectively pursuing islamicization aims of any countries nearby AND europe, and then in a decade later, its at your door.
there are stuff you can do well to stay out (iraq), and stuff you should not (afghanistan, taliban, iran). if youre a not a moron that is ...
let me give you a historic example - chamberlain DID stay out of german affairs in 30s.
Read radical news here
To all who say this is a beat-up or that these protesters dont speak for the Iranian people as a whole, go examine the evidence that the election WAS rigged.
For example, we have people who supposedly voted for Ahmadinejad who in reality would never have voted for Ahmadinejad.
These people voting for Ahmadinejad would have been like the Ku Klux Klan voting for Obama.
I'll bite, don't have much time though so I'll just refute one point
Besides, spirituality and religion have never been able to construct a system of laws or behavioral guidelines for the masses that our modern world would consider valuable
Remove the sarcasm and you would be true, it does not take faith to have morals, the mores of society effect religion more than religion effects the mores of society. As morals have changed over time, so does the interpretation of the bible by the religious in order to fit with the changing morals of society.
it was the United States of America and San Francisco?
No, it'd be California, the 8th largest economy in the world, or New Hampshire. Libertarians chose the state for the Free State Project.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
that email address is getting flooded. join #irantech on freenode and ask for the current one.
Austin is on there right now.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
#irantech on freenode
Anonymous routing is extremely difficult to accomplish on the Internet (cf. Tor), but that's actually the second-level problem. I'm much more concerned about physical access. How does the "educated urbanite" get bandwidth? I mean, from the physical level up?
Here are my possible scenarios, with problems I see in them:
I guess it all depends on what level of access is enough. If a twitter-like message once a week is enough, there could be reasonable safety. But if I were an Evil Overlord, I would concentrate more on the physical access, and a good deny-all-allow-some firewall policy for backup. Of course, we could assume that the Iranian government is simply too ignorant to realize those measures can be implemented.
What technologies can be used that can't be blocked by other technologies or physical access?
-- Sig down
No mod points for me today, so:
Yeah, you're right, I fear the US, or at least the US powers-that-be, would be hypocritical if that kind of shitstorm was happening here. However, I'd say that that kind if political hypocrisy is an "everyone does it" game (don't make it right)
However, the concept in your example seems to fall in the "likely couldn't understand it completely 'on paper' category
Any particular reason for selecting San Francisco as the US city in your example? If Libertarian politics have anything to do with your example, Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City and/or Dallas would also be appropriate. :P
You do have important words of caution on the Iranian developments, I'd say
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Every single set of instructions on that sharearchy link tells you to create a completely open proxy.
For the love of Christ, don't do that, the last thing we need is a ton of fresh new high bandwidth open proxy servers on the internet.
Please use Squid ACLs to only allow traffic from Iran. You can find a list of ACLs on Austin's blog. Reposted here since the coral cache wasn't working when I just tried:
---------
If you would like to limit your proxy to Iranian IP blocks, you want to change "http_access deny all" to read "http_access allow TRUSTED" add a line (BEFORE the http_access line to setup an access control list [ACL]). This ACL line that defines TRUSTED should read:
acl TRUSTED src 62.60.128.0/17 62.193.0.0/19 62.220.96.0/19 77.36.128.0/17 77.77.64.0/18 77.104.64.0/18 77.237.64.0/19 77.237.160.0/19 77.245.224.0/20 78.38.0.0/15 78.109.192.0/20 78.110.112.0/20 78.111.0.0/20 78.154.32.0/19 78.157.32.0/19 78.158.160.0/19 79.127.0.0/17 79.132.192.0/19 79.170.144.0/21 79.175.128.0/18 80.66.176.0/20 80.69.240.0/20 80.71.112.0/20 80.75.0.0/20 80.191.0.0/16 80.242.0.0/20 80.253.128.0/20 80.253.144.0/20 81.12.0.0/17 81.28.32.0/20 81.28.48.0/20 81.31.160.0/20 81.31.176.0/20 81.90.144.0/20 81.91.128.0/20 81.91.144.0/20 82.99.192.0/18 82.115.0.0/19 83.147.192.0/18 84.47.192.0/18 84.241.0.0/18 85.9.64.0/18 85.15.0.0/18 85.133.128.0/17 85.185.0.0/16 85.198.0.0/18 86.109.32.0/19 87.107.0.0/16 87.247.160.0/19 87.248.128.0/19 89.144.128.0/18 89.165.0.0/17 89.221.80.0/20 89.235.64.0/18 91.98.0.0/15 91.184.64.0/19 91.186.192.0/19 91.206.122.0/23 91.208.165.0/24 91.209.242.0/24 91.212.16.0/24 91.212.19.0/24 91.212.252.0/24 92.42.48.0/21 92.50.0.0/18 92.61.176.0/20 92.62.176.0/20 92.242.192.0/19 93.110.0.0/16 93.190.24.0/21 94.74.128.0/18 94.101.128.0/20 94.101.176.0/20 94.101.240.0/20 94.139.160.0/19 94.182.0.0/15 94.184.0.0/17 94.232.168.0/21 94.241.128.0/18 95.38.0.0/16 95.80.128.0/18 95.81.64.0/18 95.82.0.0/18 95.82.64.0/18 95.130.56.0/21 95.130.240.0/21 188.34.0.0/16 188.93.64.0/21 188.121.96.0/19 188.121.128.0/19 188.136.128.0/17 188.158.0.0/15 193.189.122.0/23 194.225.0.0/16 195.146.32.0/19 212.16.64.0/19 212.33.192.0/19 212.50.224.0/19 212.80.0.0/19 212.95.128.0/19 212.120.192.0/19 213.176.0.0/19 213.176.32.0/19 213.176.64.0/18 213.195.0.0/18 213.207.192.0/18 213.217.32.0/19 213.233.160.0/19 217.11.16.0/20 217.24.144.0/20 217.25.48.0/20 217.64.144.0/20 217.66.192.0/20 217.66.208.0/20 217.146.208.0/20 217.172.96.0/19 217.174.16.0/20 217.218.0.0/15
And some people from in Iran were saying they were blocked with those instructions.
Really? Gee, if only you could update the rules to add missing netblocks.
Of course a faithless man can have a conscience -- but before you say the line was anything near incorrect, remove all the laws in the US based on the 10 Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount and tell me what your lawbooks look like. In their time, both sets of moral instructions were completely revolutionary -- ridiculous by the standards of their contemporaries -- and today, you literally take them for granted. Did people before 30 AD have consciences? Yes, but they did not have the same moral structures to hang them on. Did similar moral structures appear in different areas across the world? Yes, but it was, universally, a large religion that brought them about.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
bah!! Don't put the email address up there, post a link to the instructions for how to set up a proxy There's also good material in this Wired article that auric_dude linked below and got that link from about how to get the proxies to who needs them.
How do I set up an effective proxy and make it available to Iranians?
This is an unprecendented situation for Iran,
Robert Fisk reports the special forces troops
have been protecting the demonstrators from militia's-much to his amazement.
Robert is probalbly the preeminent western jounalist in the Middle East. He is still wandering the streets of Iran reporting despite the danger.
The courage of these people in Iran is a lesson to us all in how to respond to government excess.
It's nice to see a people willing to put their lives on the line for principle, remember when westerners used to do that?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/17/2600571.htm
http://travellerwithin.blogspot.com/2009/06/to-you-new-iran-expert.html
if fascism overthrows our government, it will develop amongst bands of heavily armed antigovernment types first. nuts with guns in the woods do not protect us from fascism, they are soil in which fascism grows. i never understood why anyone believes assholes with guns in the woods are somehow protecting us from anything. they are the roots of fascism, not protection from it. anyone who reaches for a gun to protect their rights has a visceral instinct to will to power that is the same psychological root of fascism. meanwhile, the civilian exercise of democratic impulses is what will save us from such visceral instincts. not guns. you use words to maintain a democracy. military muscle, used by anyone, is the roots of our downfall, not our salvation. guns have no valid purpose in civilian life. anyone who thinks guns do have a valid purpose in civilian life don't even understand what civilian life is
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
don't pull a tiananmen square and just start machine gunning everyone
that really worries me ;-(
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The 1st such war involved Estonia and Russia (and its sympathizers). The war was sparked by the moving of a bronze statue of a Russian soldier on April 27, 2007. Russians in both Russia and elsewhere were outraged. According to the article published by "The Guardian", "The [Internet] attacks have been pouring in from all over the world, but Estonian officials and computer security experts say that, particularly in the early phase, some attackers were identified by their internet addresses - many of which were Russian, and some of which were from Russian state institutions."
Computerworld published an article about the incident. The Estonian government convicted an ethnic Russian (living in Estonia) of the crime. However, other cyber thugs (working for the Kremlin) also contributed to the attack, but these criminals live outside Estonia and are beyond the reach of its justice system.
Note that Estonia was part of the democratization wave that swept Eastern Europe around 1990. The Kremlin had brutalized and occupied Estonia for about 45 years. If an Estonian had opposed the occupation, Russian "security" forces would have killed him. Thousands of Estonians died at the hands of the Russian occupiers.
Despite this decades-long tyranny, the Estonians revolted against their Russian occupiers and established a liberal Western democracy and a free market in 1991. That is how people act when they truly want freedom and free markets.
By contrast, in 1979, after the Iranians overthrew the despotic government supported by Washington, the Iranians immediately established a brutal Islamic theocracy. That is how people act when they reject both freedom and free markets.
Cultures are different. Estonian culture and Iranian culture are different. The Iranian people are 100% responsible for creating a brutal theocracy. They are 100% responsible for the terrorist acts funded and conducted by Tehran.
what's the fucking problem?
meanwhile, if our democracy IS destroyed, it will be destroyed by... drum roll please... gangs of fascist assholes with guns
get my point yet?
you have so much faith in a tool which is really your enemy
if our country faces a crisis in which our democracy is at risk and the foundational principles are threatened, assholes with guns will not be there protecting us. assholes with guns will be avidly chipping away at our bedrock principles
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Set up this preconfigured proxy VM and let Austin Heap know about it. Read his best practices guide to make it as effective as possible. The Iranian government has very nice Nokia Siemens inspection filters on all the terrestrial traffic leaving the country and is jamming many sat freqs. Randomized ports to random proxy hosts and SSH tunnels are about the only way to get through; they've of course blocked all the usual proxy ports.
The phrase:
"the information technologies that are the mainstay of modern society can become its weapons, as well"
is very similar to what is being said in the "Free Speech or Stone Age" meme that has sprung up:
"Once again, the standardization and interoperability of these protocols
that so readily enables anonymous free speech are the same qualities that
make them so valuable to commerce. You cannot restrict access to this
functionality and continue to take part in modern commerce."
http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/06/free-speech-or-stone-age.html
(I recommend the entire article that is linked from the blog synopsis...)
Yes, but it was, universally, a large religion that brought them about.
Not particularly, if I were to start a religion saying 'murder is A-OK!' even in times where myth and fanciful things were the highlight of ones life, it would have been shot down instantly (or believers would have killed each other out).
Morals do not equate to religious precepts, however religious precepts throughout history do tend to encapsulate the morals of the time of the founding of the religion. What better way to fit the people your trying to make believers than to say you completely agree with most of their way of life, but you should worship $deity to make it better?
People tend to want to believe in something larger than themselves, to give their life more perceived meaning, it's in our nature to want our lives to be meaningful and to fit in with our peers. Religion fits that bill perfectly, thus it's prevalence throughout history, it only takes one man to think of one, and sufficiently convince others.
But essentially, you think morals came about because of religion, and I think religion just adopted some of the morals people already had.
Would I use some lines like this?
acl BADGOV src 194.225.164.0 - 194.225.165.255
http_access deny BADGOV
This is using only the first block on that page. I'm not sure if I can format IP blocks like that. Someone please help.
The government can't save you.
All of this is starting to feel like more than just an Iranian power struggle. I wonder if we might look back in a decade and see this moment as a first sign of Web Sovereignty--and realize that for all our hand-wringing over the BRIC countries' economic rise, the next truly global power will not be national in origin, but technological. Even if the popular protests "fail" in Iran, the comraderie, the sense of identity and belonging, as *citizens* of the Web, is likely to persist.
Hey - we've got an unelected leader here in the UK also.
Any ideas?
Believe it or not, the people over on Fark are being very measured about what we should and shouldn't do. Mostly, we've been getting proxies to reliable collectors and figuring out which Twitter feeds are reliable by checking how much of their information is later proven true. The other focus is assembling an accurate picture of what exactly is going over there without endangering protesters since the mainsteam media is completely dropping the ball on this.
It sounds like you haven't even glanced at the Fark effort. If so, you're making the exactly same mistake you just accused us; blindly blurting out uninformed and detrimental analysis on a situation you only know a tiny bit about. So before you go and discredit the hard work of Tatsuma, why not scroll up to his pasted summary and point out what exactly about it is false or is hurting the Iranian protesters' cause.
I looked at the instructions; They seem to be proposing open proxies without encryption and without a system for validation. This seems a simple way to set up many of the Iranian dissidents to be found. It may well be worth taking quite a risk, but much more could be done to protect the Iranians who are involved and they don't seem to be doing it.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Yes, because atheists are always the most tolerant people in the world.
Ooh, touched a nerve. Let me be clear, by "religion" I mean "gods, goddesses, and other supernatural deities", not "ethics" or the like. I never said that being free of those particular superstitions made a person pure and inerrant. There are many ways to control people, and religion is just one.
Dubious religious machinations such as law, marriage, tolerance, modesty, self-sacrifice, temperance, and honesty are the very things that tear apart a perfectly good community!
None of those things requires religion. Some of those things such as self-sacrifice and mating for life are even found in other species. (I suppose I am making the assumption that religion is a peculiarly human thing. Might not be, I guess.)
On a serious note: It's those who /pervert/ their religions to gain power that are the dangerous ones, like Ahmadinejad, Bin Laden, and the Inquisition.
Those are indeed extreme cases. But it's not just the ogres (and I don't think Ahmadinejad really qualifies, he's more of a garden-variety opportunist politician.. maybe substitute Bush or Milosevic). But they don't work alone. They use religious personnel to tell people that "god is on our side", "it's god's will", "you have to do it, because it's a lawful order". And thus the religions are complicit.
If it's ok for Israel to have a Jewish regime, why isn't it ok for Iran to have an Islamic one?
It's not so much that it's OK as that Israel's rabbinate only governs their equivalent of family court, and is only allowed to continue doing that because what with the whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict many parties would rather put aside religious issues and thus win some other smaller secular or religious parties into their coalition than take hard stances on the role of religion in their society. The status quo continues because nobody can build a large enough power center to change it in any direction: neither separation of rabbi and state nor halachic state.
Not particularly, if I were to start a religion saying 'murder is A-OK!' even in times where myth and fanciful things were the highlight of ones life, it would have been shot down instantly (or believers would have killed each other out).
Have you heard of the Aztecs?
no, because I've been keeping up with the information coming out of there for the last week.
The demands of the protestors (who number in the millions):
1. Dismissal of Khamenei for not being a fair leader 2. Dismissal of Ahmadinejad for his illegal acts 3. Temporary appointment of Ayatollah Montazeri as the Supreme Leader 4. Recognition of Mousavi as the President 5. Forming the Cabinet by Mousavi to prepare for revising the Constitution 6. unconditional and immediate release of all political prisoners 7. Dissolution of all organs of repression, public or secret.
6 and 7 aren't going to happen, but 1 through 5 might (with the revised Constitution being only slightly more likely than 6 or 7). If1 through 4 happen, the people will see that they can bring about change. It will only be a matter of time until they hit the streets demanding further change (unless Montazeri and Mousavi are smart enough to gradually move things toward a freer state--always a tricky thing). There have been several times in history where this type of street demonstration led to gradual improvement.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I must be missing something, because I think what you said is, "Israel isn't really Jewish, outside of part of the court system", and that can't be it. It may be that your qualifications for what constitutes a "[insert religion here] regime" are far stricter than mine. I'm not saying that Israel is a theocracy (and while Iran is a little closer, I don't think it is either). OTOH, both are a lot more than what you get with the typical Western European established religion, where the only real effect is that the king has to be a member of the official church, and there's a small government subsidy. But Israel is a state where the government strongly favors a religion, and treats citizens differently based upon their religion. (Somewhat muddled by the fact that "Jews" are not only a religion but one or more ethnic groups, but my opinions of states that discriminate based on ethnic group are even stronger, so let's assume that's not involved.)
This guy 'connect2raza' I see spamming almost all Iran discussions seems to have his CAPS key stuck for at least a year! This has to be some kind of record!!!
Just google his name and you'll find his little upper-case-copy-paste diamonds of high-pressure-brainwashing everywhere (most on press TV): http://www.google.nl/search?q=connect2raza
Is this the best netwar-soldier from the Iranian government, a loser with a broken-ass-keyboard?
G-d is like a user on IRC: if you say His Name in full, you'll nick-alert Him and interrupt His WoW session.
did you...read what I wrote at all?
The Iranian government has been actively seeking out and destroying sat dishes. Some still remain.
I already answered your question. Once a sat link is up, wireless from there. Then move the dish when appropriate. Any link to the outside (be it sat, or whatever else) gets shared.
Just how much bandwidth do you really think it takes to send a twitter update? There's a reason twitter is what is being used. They're not en-masse uploading youtube videos...
The ten commandments were 1500 years old in AD 30.
Ah, only if there were more reporters like Edward R. Murrow. I wonder if we'll ever see another reporter like him.
"Good night, and good luck."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This is great, and kudos to all who are helping.
However, other, more important and powerful world forces are watching carefully to see how the Iranian people conduct their revolution. If the time should come when bigger powers are at risk it seems to me that the chinks in the armor of totalitarianism will not be there for the rebellious (i'm looking at you, China; maybe even the US if you want to put your tin foil hat on and believe that pretty much everybody in the US isn't a sheeple already.)
-
Nowhere in my statements did I discredit anyone. I've been in many of the threads over the last few days. I've read Tatsuma's rather extensive contributions. Many people on there have provided very insightful analysis.
However, as the moderators there have had to continuously deal with, there is a bandwagon effect that is driving many people to act without much regard to sometimes rather obvious consequences. DDOS'ing Iranian government servers being a prime example. Blindly setting up open proxies with little regard to security and following instructions of random strangers on the net with nothing but nicknames to go on.
That is extremely dangerous psychology and I've not seen nearly enough caution accompanying calls for action. We're not talking about marching in solidarity. We're talking about utterly green novices setting up potentially lethal botnets and engaging in activity that is illegal and could be interpreted as coordinated, destructive espionage. That is not something to brush off lightly with platitudes about freedom because everyone is getting off on the fervor of the moment.
Even if the example was accidental, I saw Libertarian/San Francisco as a nice subtle reference to their attitude towards the Federal Reserve (the other places I named are the cities with the other 11 Federal Reserve Banks)
Gawd, I'm a nerd...:P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I'm sorry to see this post modded as "0, Troll." There was zero troll intent about it.
A couple others see it my way:
I don't know where these guys fit on the political scale, but I think it's interesting that people are seeing through the free/not-free facade that, amazingly, both the "oppressive" government and the "progressive" protesters seem to agree exists.
Futurist Traditionalism