People in the West, and especially North American liberal bloggers, are all excited by the events in Iran. They are excited because they think that they are witnessing the unfolding of a historic revolution: Bad Guy I'm-A-Dinner-Jacket rigged the election to prevent Good Guy Mousavi (who has the decency to have a name that can be pronounced by Americans) from taking powers, so the Good Iranians are going to the streets to protest and try to force Teheran to respect the popular vote and declare Mousavi the winner. Their weapon? Twitter! At least that's the story we read in the Western media.
From Associated Press: TEHRAN, Iran - In a massive outpouring reminiscent of the Islamic Revolution three decades ago, hundreds of thousands of Iranians streamed through the capital Monday, and the fist-waving protesters denounced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim to victory in a disputed election.
From MSNBC Nightly News : Defying efforts of the state to block the Internet and cell phone use, Iranians used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to transmit information about the protests taking place in Tehran.
I am personally very, very skeptical whenever I see big crowds of demonstators or mobs, because I know there are always puppeteers behind the curtains. According to David Seaton (http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/):
"Have you noticed that you can read all these Iranian "tweets"? Are you aware that the language of Iran is Farsi, not English? Does this piece of information suggest anything to you? Perhaps, the world is like in Hollywood movies where all the exotic character speak English, albeit with charming foreign accents? Or maybe, the dial on a person's bullshit meter might tremble a bit?
But, unlike the run up to the war in Iraq, this time some amateurs have take the trouble to do the homework that the "professionals" seem too understaffed to do themselves.
A financial website, "Charting Stocks", has taken the trouble that the MSM can't be bothered with and has exposed a very effective Israeli psy-op.
So, whatever is actually happening in Tehran, we now know that the Israelis are manipulating our perceptions.
Sit back and read this:
Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #IranElection
Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.
Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.
Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -
1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. "IranElection" was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.
Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran's election.
I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran
I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.
JPost actually ran a story about 3 people "who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers." Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours earlier? Is that newsworthy? JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers.
JPost, a major news organization, promoted these three Twitterers who went on the be the source of the IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost so concerned about Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers claim to be)? I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono? (who benefits).
There's no question that Israel perceives Iran as an enemy, more so than any other nation. According to a recent poll, more than half of Israel's population support using military force against Iran if they do not cease from developing nuclear energy (which they have the legal right to do as per the NNP treaty). Oddly enough, this comes out of a country which is not a cosigner to the NNP treaty and has no right to develop nuclear energy, yet posses an arsenal of nuclear BOMBS.
Of course, Mousavi himself plays an important role in causing the social unrest within Iran. How often do you see a candidate declare himself the winner before any votes are counted and then, when faced with defeat, call the entire election process a fraud? As obvious as it was in our own 2000 election, Al Gore would not touch the topic of voter fraud. No major US politician goes near the subject. They know full well that such an accusation would shake the entire foundation of our democracy and threaten the political structures that are in place.
These twitting spammers began crying foul before the final votes were even counted, just as Mousavi had. The spammer @IranRiggedElect created his profile before a winner was announced and preformed the public service of informing us in the United States , in English and every 10 minutes, of the unfair election. He did so unselfishly, and without any regard for his fellow friends and citizens of Iran, who don't speak English and don't use Twitter!"
Go read the rest at Seaton's blog.
