Mass Arrests of Journalists Follow Iran Elections

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by the fact that no less than 23 journalists have been arrested in Iran in the week following the elections, making Iran one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Online activists are trying to counter this trend by giving advice for helping Iranian protesters. One problem is that Iranian leaders are trying to delegitimize the reform movement by pretending that the reformers are puppets of foreign powers, so special discretion is required for anyone wanting to help the Iranian people."

Re:Why do you think they call it I Ran?

[ls671]

This is not the way Iran is pronounced, for your information, it would sound more like "he ran".

Re:Surprised

[ShadowRangerRIT]

No it, doesn't confirm the elections were a farce. But there is quite a lot of statistical evidence [fivethirtyeight.com], and even the government admits to some apparent overvoting [washingtonpost.com]. Yes, it could all be coincidence (the statistical evidence allows for a less than 1% chance the chance the election results weren't made up), and it is possible that in between 50 and 170 districts, people voted outside their voting districts and therefore produced greater than 100% turnout, but it's extremely suspect all the same.

Deligitemized indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

"One problem is that Iranian leaders are trying to delegitimize the reform movement by pretending that they're puppets of foreign powers"
It takes no more than one Google query for green (orange, pink, whatever color) glasses to come down quickly:
http://www.google.com/search?q=400+million+iran

Fark has it right

[ultraexactzz]

The reason it's so important to cut through the misinformation is that the Iranian government is now tweeting with false information, and it's crucial to keep track of what is real and what is FUD. They are taking other measures as well; there are several reports that a speech by President Obama (who has yet to speak in support of the protesters) was translated as a speech calling for revolution and the overthrow of the regime. This lets Iran claim that the protests are the result of meddling by the Western powers.

Fark seems to be doing a really good job of cutting through the FUD and getting solid, reliable information out there. One of their users, Tatsuma, has a quite detailed and extensive analysis of the crisis, the players, and what is happening now. Their Iran threads would be a good place to start.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

They can still do that. If you read the history of these Iranian assholes, specifically the 1972 revolution, and the killings afterward. Or if you want to get totally horrified you can check out the history of the Iran-Iraq war (there's a reason Teheran and Baghdad have the largest cemetaries in the world, despite the fact muslims don't normally have graveyards at all. Those graveyards even have pictures and stories, which goes explicitly against islam, and yet these ayatollahs and even the Iraqi Sunni's support it).

They lost about 500.000 children in the following manner. The imam would give them a little plastic "key to paradise", you know, with the 72 virgins and so on, then send them almost naked and unarmed into a minefield to clear a path for soldiers.

Let me repeat : they did this to 500 THOUSAND children.

Are you certain this is sinking in ? 500 THOUSAND kids dead.

That's what these guys did to get, and remain in power. They are still more than capable of repeating this. Or it might be a reason for them to not repeat those things. I pray (to a God whose idea of an afterlife does NOT include slavery, not for me and not for anyone else) that they don't repeat their history.

The mullahs are probably correct in thinking that if they don't get the demonstrations under control they will get hanged though. They certainly deserve it, but I doubt they agree.

Re:that's nothing- try the political conventions h

[nedlohs]

Not all people are journalists.

Reporters without Borders doesn't care about non-journalists being arrested (well they might care, but it isn't what they are talking about).

Re:You got to hand it to them

[Attila Dimedici]

Once again we see this come up. The problem with the "popular vote" theory about the 2000 elections is that you don't know enough. The popular vote number in the wikipedia article is based on number of votes counted. Most states stop counting absentee ballots once the difference between the candidates is greater than the number of remaining absentee ballots. Therefore, we do not know what the actual total of actual votes for each candidate on a nationwide election. Second, the U.S. Presidential election is not based on the results of nationwide majority (and never has been nor was it intended to be).

Re:You got to hand it to them

[jcnnghm]

Bush won the mandatory Florida recount as well. The Supreme Court disallowed the hand recount because Florida wouldn't have it completed by the deadline.

Re:Iran will be interesting to watch...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should learn something yourself? The West installed a monarchy. The Iranians themselves overthrew the monarchy and installed the current theocracy.

Re:hey

[moose_hp]

Now, here's a pop quiz. If the RIAA and MPAA sued Microsoft and Oracle over breaching the copyright of their DRM, Richard Stallman testified on behalf of the RIAA and Theo de Raadt spoke in favour of Microsoft... Who would you cheer for?

42

Re:dictatorships, cartels, democracy

[jandrese]

There's a quote I think you should hear:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." -- John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton [phrases.org.uk]

This is why dictatorships are doomed to failure. Without a system of checks and balances on power, the people at the top will inevitably become corrupt. History has proven this time and time again.

Re:Surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope [wikipedia.org].

you're a dumbass

[Vicsun]

Your analogy is flawed. A CEO is responsible to his shareholders and can be replaced if he does a bad job. This is more analogous to a democracy, where, in theory a leader doing a bad job can be voted out and replaced. A CEO who was such by birthright, had absolute power and held no responsibility to anyone other than himself would very likely be worse than a CEO responsible to shareholders, like a leader responsible to the people would be better than one not responsible to anyone.

Benevolent dictators are not unheard of, but are definitely in the minority.

Re:Surprised

[Yvanhoe]

I would add that the last elections were characterized by massive arrest of opposition candidates in the last weeks before elections. The fact alone that this did not happen this time is a sign that the government had another way of cheating. Really, Iran is not used to 'fair elections'. Journalists can't work right now so they can't find confirmation of a persistent rumor, but it is said that national counting offices were run over by militants during the counting and that after that the trend changed.