1. The West is not behind these protests. Iranians are making their own judgements, and taking matters into their own hands. Barack Obama’s foreign policy strategy in the region was premised upon the idea that he would still be dealing with Ahmadinejad after the election, who was the devil they knew. The U.S and others like Britain are basically playing catch up, and decidedly unsure on whether to support the uprising;
2. Blogging, You Tube, Twitter and other social media have been central to getting the message out to the wider world. The idea that this is all apolitical fluff that is about following Ashton Kulcher around and “are not terms that signal any form of collective intelligence, creativity or networked socialism [but] are directives from the Central Software Committee” (to quote a recent pooh-poohing manifesto from the land of Digital Media High Theory) is actually being exposed in a sharp light on the streets of Teheran right now;
3. The mainstream media are not a monolith in relation to these matters. Several people have commented on the appalling lack of coverage on the U.S. cable networks, the BBC has been great, as has The Guardian and the New York Times news blog The Lede. Moral: don’t write off media outlets that invest in serious coverage of international affairs. Bloggers are not filling this gap at this stage.

I’m not certain that anyone has been writing off the MSM coverage in toto. It’s very rare that Australian media organisations these days fund good foreign correspondents, but clearly the quality of the reporting from a number of media outlets, particularly some of the British ones, is very high. It seems to me a mistake on either side to reduce this sort of thing to a dichotomised opposition between journalists working in the media and citizen activists and those who mediate their contributions. I think also this sort of dichotomy tends to get confused and conflated in value judgements made about the respective validity of bloggers and citizen journalists in countries with repressive regimes and countries like this one. That’s the case both on the left – say, with Antony Lowenstein to some degree, and certainly on the right – as with David Burchell.

One of the cautions worth noting with this event is that while there is validity in the argument that blogs and social media can play a really positive role in countries with repressive regimes, we also tend to miss the fact that a lot of blogs (for example in Egypt) are full of misogynistic, violent and narrow minded ranting, which would be most distasteful to most Western readers. There’s a tendency to pick up on the ones written by educated middle class folk, particularly those that express themselves in English. It would be wise to exercise some prudence in extrapolating only from those blogs, or from the Twittersphere.

There is actually a lot of dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad outside the middle class for basically economic reasons. But I’d be wary about making too quick a judgement about whether the protesters, twitterers etc. are representative of Iranian opinion more generally. That, of course, is not to say that their cause, insofar as that cause can be identified with democratisation and liberty, is not worthy of our support. Of course, it is.

The other comment I’d make is that Netanyahu would be quite happy to have Ahmadinejad stay, because the ability to portray him as a dangerous lunatic actually serves the interests of the Israeli state, and for that matter, those other governments who want strong action on the nuclear issue. International realpolitik also needs factoring into the analysis of any political upheaval.

Related post on LP: Open and links post on the Iranian election.

Elsewhere: Andrew Bartlett.

Update: Via Terry Flew, an article in the Graudian about the reliability and ambiguity of the information coming from Iran through social media.

Coverage of the Brisbane rally is at Nocensorship.info, and Skribe has uploaded a citizen journalism video report of the Perth event to YouTube:

Please feel free to add links or reports in comments.

It’s worth noting as well that the latest Essential Research poll found support for the censorship plan running at 49-40% [via The Poll Bludger]. Remembering that their sample is online and thus of internet users, there’s still obviously a way to go in turning around public opinion on this issue.

Related posts: The politics of the clean feed and protest tactics.

I support the cause, but I won’t be there. I’m aware of three other protest rallies and marches in Brisbane over the last month or so, and participants reported a condition close to heat exhaustion, no matter how behatted and water bottled. Saturday’s maximum temperature is forecast to be 33 and it’s bound to be over 30, with probably very high humidity all through the rally (and what’s with a four hour rally, anyway?). I just walked home from the bus stop – about three minutes’ walk – and even with a bit of shade and a slight breeze, at 28 degrees with a searing sun and very muggy conditions, that was an unpleasant three minutes. I was arguing in various activist communities as early as the mid 90s that the rally/march model had had its day. With all due respect to the organisers, no one sane would advise anyone to stand around for an hour in the middle of the day at the height of Brisbane summer. Shade in Brisbane square is about nil. There are actually serious health risks.

Surely net-savvy folk can find much more creative ways of making their point, and as I do recognise that it’s often worth gathering people together in physical space, whatever’s wrong with a night time vigil or sunset gathering on the grass? At best this rally will achieve a short grab on the news. Activists need to think much more innovatively, and also take into account the bloody climate!