Since the start of the Iranian Uprising, many have contributed to the Twitterthread #iranelection. Their effort has been highly praised by Iranians and media.
Righty so, because #iranelection has achieved quite a few things. Very often, #iranelection was way faster in bringing news from or about Iran than main stream media. Many Twitterers have launched great initiativs like petitions. One of the highlights is, without any doubt, the Haystack project, developped by a Twitterer and enabling people in Iran to surf the Internet much safer.
While developments in Iran are somewhat slower these days, it is time for #iranelection activists to read and discuss more about Iran and its past and future. And this relative calm also offers a chance to think about the goals and posibilities of #iranelection.
Allow me to introduce the dutch shocklog www.geenstijl.nl now. This site has been very succesful in deploying different strategies to achieve a huge impact on subjects they chose. Tehy called it the GeenStijl guerilla tactics. In the past 5 years GeenStijl has been able to topple politicians, find criminals, uncover misuse of taxpayers money and giving a voice to criticism on the political system usualy not aired in mainstream media.
It might be wise to look at some of these tactics to be used by Twitterers at #iranelection. As such, the situation in Iran differs greatly from the situation in the Netherlands and Europe. Having said that, there is no doubt in my mind that the people at #iranelection will be able to deploy new strategic efforts to launch at the Iranian Putschist regime.
Off course, the tactics used by GeenStijl can not be simply duplicated for use againts the Iranian regime. But many lessons learned from GeenStijl's history can be adopted by #iranelection. One example of such tactis that should also be effective for #iranelection.
I am thinking of the attack on a seemingly rocksolid front of Irans establishment. We know now that the regime is far from stable. It is, in fact, very divided and gives the impression it is trying hard to survive the turmoils. This offers good possibilities to use the GeenStijl strategy of breaking a front.
All it takes is to sort one regimemember out that you consider vulnerable. In stead of focussing on the complete front, that is formed in order to impress as an unbreakable unity, this strategy is devolopped to brak that front by choosing one (or more) person and launch massive attack on that person.
The more this person gets into focus, the more of a threat he becomes to the seeming front. If applied properly, the collective of the front (regime) will tend to get rid of the one who is endangering the entire regime beacuse accusations towards that one person will affect the entire group. Teh others will want to get rid of the targeted, beacuse his position might harm their own interests. We have witnessed this extraordinary phenomena many times at GeenStijl.
So: how to pick the "victim"? It is obvious that the best targets are those who have committed or ordered torture, shooting and killing are vulnerable. Even within the conservative factions in Irans establishment people have heavily criticized both the crackdown on the Iranian people as well as the brutal treatment of detainees. THis means that those responsible are vulnerable. The rest of Irans establishment do not wish to be held responsible for acts commited by others.
Therefore, it might be considered to choose some of those elements within Irans establishment. It can also be considered tot highlight the ones behind the curtains, such as Mehba Yazdi and Mojtaba Khamenei.
These lessons learned could be introduced tot #iranelection 's arsenal of possibilities to help the Iranian People. This column is firstly written to invite folks at #iranelection to start thinking about the lessons learned from GeenStijl and develop custome made tactics for their activities for the Iranian people. I am sure #iranelection attrackts plenty smart and innovative people.
We can step up our efforts and show more ambition than we currently do.
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Thank you for sharing this interesting perspective! I had never heard of this group before, very interesting! I think Ahmadinejad is most vulnerable, body language at inauguration showed it. Yazdi is a charismatic guru, he will be tough to crack. Khamenei's on painkillers all the time & won't react to anything in a predictable way.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenI'm assuming that once you identify corporations that make goods or offer services that can only be used for harm, you find people who do harm to others without much thought--often they use a stock broker who makes decisions for them and only know that their investment turning a good profit. Because divestiture was used successfully against aparteit South Africa, it may work as well and be more pleasant to target the heirs of people with money who already understand the tactic and issues. Hate, even of the evil, cancers the soul. There are organizations who work with conscious investors seeking out companies into which the socially conscious rich can move their money. THough he is not perfect, Obama has turned his campaign site, Change. Gov. over to NGOs. In General the American Friends Service Committee is a good starting place because they provide organizers with subsistence seed money to start up projects that are then turned over to people who work well when pointed in the right direction. I don't know who is doing this in Europe. If you are working full time for free you might write them in Philadelphia and find out. There is usually a chairman of the Board. Since they've been doing this since the pre Civil War Days, when they operated an underground railroad for slaves, they know just about everybody.
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