Iran not a Twitter Revolution

[333irani333]

great interview. one of the better ones i've seen. this guy knows what hes talking about

[7jerryv7]

I strongly disagree with the beginning statement in this video. The point was not that Twitter caused the revolution but that much of the riot video was disseminated by Twitter. I think it is a strawman argument.

It was not:

Twitter----> Revolution

It was:

Riots----broadcast---->Twitter

I believe that the importance of Twitter, and the internet, is downplayed. It did not cause the riots but disseminated the information and broadcast it to the world.

[PeterSodhi]

Some comment on the three Jews and the Jerusalem Post support for those three jews who generated 90% of the so called Twitter commentary would seem appropriate considering the title of this retarded fukwit posting.

[formprim]

this is an amazingly good analysis of the situation. No "who benefits?" bullshit, just whats happening in the country. Thank you.

[planettan]

Formula to fool the American Pavlov's dogs:

Fool me once, wtf? Fool me on every media outlets, IT MUST BE TRUE!

WHAT A PACT OF MENTALLY DISTURBED DOGS! Dr. Pavlov must be smiling in his grave, LMAO!

[planettan]

afrodisiac1984 talks in the great tradition of BiLo and MiSav (the two right wing dogs that can't talk but just keep barking!) LMAO!

One way you can tell that it is a CIA 'colored' distabilization ops are:

(1) totally one sided reporting

(2) their props/slogans are in ENGLISH and contained soundbytes made for US/UK media

(3) serogate English speaking mouthpieces appear simultaneously on all US media to generate critical mass coverages

....

[walkerda5nine]

hes voice keeps cuting out ????

[Tomorer]

This is truely one of the best reports I have ever seen ! I cannot thank you enough for this level of journalistic balance and I thoroughly believe this is the REAL NEWS ! Please keep it up and if I have anything to do with it U will be No. 1 ! EVERYONE SUBSCRIBE !

[rezavandi]

Guys, as an Iranian studying politics who is EXTRA suspcious of US policy, I tell you that this is a genuine movement man. If you lived in Iran for past few years you would know. People are FED UP! Students specially. The Baazaris (businessman), The students, and intellectural are fed up, they are being talked DOWN to constantly by a brutal regime, they were just waiting for a reason to let them release their frustration this is NOT us sponsored, please, this is people's explosion of frustration

[newmanfrigan]

Thank you for saying this. The US can set off violence, bombs etc., but not this.

[rezavandi]

Yes, thank you for the positive feedback friend.

[afrodisiac1984]

man i try telling them i try telling them, but these conspiracy nuts are on another planet...these barely literate idiots got nothing better to do than to litter youtube with nonesense...i know all about the democracy fund and the so called black ops, but these idiots cant tell the difference between that and iranian civil society.

[2ndSinner]

Funny how the iranian ''rioters'''use the ENGLISH ''phrase'', Where is my vote?....

Funny how most rioters look very western with their clothing and speak english without accent.....

funny how history repeats itself and fool the many sleeping sheeps who believe that global warming is a human cause, who believe that there wouldn't be a european union like hitler wanted it, who believe that there wont be a north american union....look at the past months AND WAKE THE FUCK UP!

[afrodisiac1984]

oh look the lunatics just keep on coming...

maybe you didnt think about the fact that unlike the backwaters that your from Iranians are actually educated and can speak english, i could when i was in Iran and i wasnt trained by the CIA, oh yea and those t-shirt and jean wearing youth really are "western looking" arent they, cause they should be wearing turbans and robes like "normal iranians" do every day...haha your so ignorant its hilarious

[eeedel]

Haha... there's a good chance hes never been to any city outside of America. People within a certain age bracket are normally "hip/trendy" and concern themselves with the same things "normal" young ppl around the globe do. That type of person are the same ones that think they'll see lions and giraffes on the tarmac if they ever go to Africa. Friend of mine in college has family in Cameroon and said she sees more wild animals running around in maryland/virginia than she ever did out there.

[2ndSinner]

yeah dumbass i KNOW they CAN speak english but you and none of these fuckers round here can tell me that an iranian inhabitent can speak english without accent and phrase things in english perfectly! nd look at the patern..afganistan,iraq next up is iran nd this time it wont even be american soldiers, this time they operate BEHIND the scene, history repeats itself, you should check it........

[afrodisiac1984]

so i should "check history" eh? i am a qualified historian who specialises in Iran what are your qualifictions? do you even know how history works? do you know how to read a book? and please show evidence of these people who are speaking english without any accent.

[afrodisiac1984]

these do not have any influenec on urban Iranian population and their operations aer only focused on kidnappings and bombings and the such they cannot bring millions of people onto the streets of Tehran and nor do they have such an orientation.

[MyImago]

Yes the US laid covert siege to Iran for 30 years. In 1953 CIA coup of Mosseddeq then installs Shah of Iran. Recently (March 2007)Congress voted $120 M for anti-regime media broadcasts into Iran and $60M in funding for opposition, violent underground Marxists and restive groups as Azeris, Kurds, Arabs under the "Iran Democracy Program". Pakistani intelligence sources put the CIA's recent spending on "black operations" to subvert Irans government at $400 million. No wonder Iran hates US.

[afrodisiac1984]

how does that contradict anything im saying???

[MyImago]

It does not contradict, It agrees and reinforces what you said. I'm on your side

[afrodisiac1984]

lol..sorry its ust im so used to arguing with some of the half wits on here that i automatically assume everyone is arguing with me

[andystokie]

so that 400 million dollars Bush had congress apportion to black ops to destabilization the regime in Iran didn't stir any hornets nests up ? ... yeh, ok, whatever .

I agree that the protesters are legitimate, but to say there is no outside hand is naive .

[afrodisiac1984]

this line of arguement is ridiculous i have extesively researched this topic, and was actually employed to do it. for one most of that money is spent on TV stations inside America such as VOA and Radio Farda and so on, these apart from beaming some news and pop music into iran had very little contact or influence in Iran. the other amount was aimed at funding terrorist groups largely made up of ethnic minorities and all around out of the way, rural border regions of Iran.

[k2dart]

Reese Erlich is a mouthpiece. He is reading, as you can see from his eyes moving left to right as he speaks.

[peymaania]

What happened to Pepe Escobar?

Pepe, I hope you are not in some podunk

eyeranian jail being sodomized by a

Batan made from Halaal meat? Oh

you HOT little Brazilian Chili Snap!

[MustacheVerra]

I think this guy under estimate the involvement of the US in those protest. The US did just that in 1953 where they paid streets gangs etc.. And he acknowledge the US has been trying to destabilize Iran for 2 years, what better time than an election to do that?

Other than that, it was interesting.

[GriNGoLocoTe]

Very true!

[VexRiot]

"Where's my vote?"

Where's the rest of Iran? Too much attention is given to Tehran being sore losers. It reminds me of San Francisco wanting to challenge the gay ban that thee entire state of California voted in favor for.

[GriNGoLocoTe]

Yep, I think this is an essential "fact" that has been overlooked. Teheran is only 10% of the population, and not even the whole of teheran is protesting. They should go and investigate what the common people have to say about this.

[Parisbomec]

the sound is just fine... good analysis thanks

[h0tie]

:D:D bad sound quality

[zayadnay]

bad sound quality? lol i can't hear the second guy at all!

[elysium1976]

I hear him quite clearly. But only out of the right channel.

[ofladrt]

I protested the election of 2000, which was a stolen election. What's all the noise about. We taught them how to do it. Just have Faux News declare you the winner.

[007arian]

Are u talking abt. merican election? If so, I should say there is a big difference between them, even though both of them are manipulated, more or less.

[iwantgmail]

Some how my first comment did not get posted so here it is again:

The media is spinning it as an appressed peoples' struggle against an autocratic and corrupt regime. It's all about the poor protesters right!! no body wants to consider the opinion of the Iranians living outside of Tehran. Who cares about the truth or something called facts. No one in the media is interested in knowing about the facts of the Iranian elections because that's just a big show kill right!!

To be continued ...

[iwantgmail]

In continuation of my previous comment...

2. In 2006 Seymour Hersh of The New yorker reported on the 400 million dollars that the US congress approved for the CIA for the purpose of destabilizing Iran. I wonder where all that money went ? Wait, maybe to foment civil unrest!!

3. Mousavi declared victory before voting had even closed at some places. Results were to be announced hours later. Thus he made absolutely sure that the election will be controversial no matter what the outcome.

[SaveJake]

He reported that because the Rev. Guard told him he had won and then collected all ballot boxes.....Then declared Ami. as the winner 10 minutes before Mousavi was to have his press conference.

[NYredwhiteandblue]

The us media has lost all credibility...

[timtam006]

They called it twitter revolution? What's so creative... ^^

Reese is right, Western Media is desperate...

[planettan]

Erlich speaks like Rummy, @05:53 "I think they were way off base..." this is military term made popular by Rummy.

CIA have been fermenting destabilization in Iran for decades. Why the hell were those protesters were holding signs in ENGLISH in Terran?

Erlich is WAY OFF BASE in his head for thinking that he can still tow the neocons language lines! LMAO!

[aburashdan]

what a ludicrious argument, for those who have no clue about the history of english in the arab, persian and indian continent think it was exported in the region with GI jones. what a crap! english was the defacto languge of the intelligentia in colonial times and had been adopted as a sign of elite class. most protests use english placards from india to phillipines. live in these regions before give your crap load of two penses

[planettan]

screw you colonial left over dunk! Elitists my @ss! Half of you Americans are mentally retarded!

Iran arrested 8 British embassy "workers" are the correct actions, they should also round up all the American CIA (i.e. English speaking 'elitists') agents in Iran!

Screw you, the official language of Iran is Farsi, not English. It's the Islamic Republic of Iran (not Yankee Poodle Republic).

[planettan]

Pardon me, I meant to say: scew you colonial left over DUNG!

Which is precisely why I said half of Americans are mentally retarded. Most of US foreign policies are pretty much based on economic colonialism for control of oil, minerals or market monopoly, etc.

But most of the Americans were brainwashed to believed that their government are not serving as slaves to the big corporations, but for "democracy" or "human rights", etc.

[VexRiot]

The word is neocolonialism. Doing a search on the word brings up a lot of interesting links but some would consider them unpatriotic and blaming America-first. Part of it deals with puppet governments that I'm aware of. John Perkin's book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, go into better detail about this form of control involving IMF & world bank and how these strangle the third world.

[2x1xx]

I am shocked at Erlich's apparent ignorance:

1st, almost 13 minutes of tape and no mention of succession of supreme leader changing to hereditary!?!? Khamenei is sick with cancer and wants to hand power to his son. Seems like a reason to fight to me.

2nd, the majority of Iranians are under 30. Cheap cell phones with internet access are widely available (not smart phones). They are savvy to the Net.

[PsyogiBottoms]

Only Twits twitter.

[schmuddelfinger]

lazy iran gov could just shut down all servers etc.. come on, dont be lazy mullah's.. and then they can finally answer the students with military power.. and it will end in some underground civil war..

[VexRiot]

At 2:59

"the clarics run the system. They determine who can for candidates."

And 3:07

"There's also vote fraud."

It doesn't make sense. They choose who runs yet there's vote fraud?

And 2:04

Another stolen election? I haven't heard of protests for 2005. Maybe the CIA was busy at that time and couldn't set up NGO's or something to foment manufactured protests?

[VexRiot]

Iran's top 6 largest cities make around 20% of the entire population of Iran. Tehran by itself represents 10% of the entire population because of it massive population of 7.1million, making it the largest city in the Middle East. Their protests don't reflect the entire nation, instead it's helping fuel the neocons who will use this as an opportunity to further delegitimize Iran from the world stage. And Iran is sandwiched between Afghanistan and Iraq, things couldn't be any easier.

[xxashyy]

Election stealing in Iran!?! NO really! You gotta be joking. All kidding aside, I find it amusing that Americans like Erlich worry some much about who gets elected in Iran while in 2000 and some say in 2004 also George Bush stole the election here in the US without a peep of criticism or skepticism from the western media and no investigation from the government here. This whole Iran issue is a smokescreen to keep the American people sleep.

[0fred00]

4 real

[zzRider]

Actually there is interesting material out there that leads me to believe the election, as well as the former administration, deserves a honest investigation.  If they are innocent, they have nothing to fear.

[xxashyy]

I agree. With all the problems with this government here in the US. Whether it be illegal spying, rendition, wide scale police abuses, civil liberties, and so on, the US government and media find enough time to talk endlessly about the Iranian election. This election circus is cover of course from the real obsession by the media and the government about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Which is NO threat to us of course, but to Israel.

[krum369]

Yes

[7jerryv7]

The demonstrations and protests were in response to the election results and not anything that appeared on Twitter. Reese is correct in pointing us in the right direction - the events will be webovised but Twitter did not cause people to revolt. What would be useful is information on how the demonstrators mobilized and who mobilized them. It looks like, as Reese points out, that there is strong support for regime change from all walks of life, not just the poor or rich.

[StephinRazin]

Only someone in complete denial of reality could believe the CIA is not neck deep in this. Popular movement my ass. A few liberal tehran upper middle class college kids are hardly representative of the 72 million iranians. Google Kenneth Timmerman of the National Endowment for Democracy. How could a US ngo think tank member know a supposedly spontaneous popular uprising over voter fraud would occur before the election took place? Sounds the opposite of genuince popular uprising to me

[GalenLW]

The Iranians have been preparing for this for at least a year (and probably longer) by massively increasing their militia forces, upgrading counter communications tech, and putting hardliner's and (the equivalent) of neoconservative think tanks into positions of power as they shift their military and state apparatus towards combating civil unrest. This despite the categorical failure of US sponsored groups to gain any political traction or accomplish essentially anything inside Iran.

[blunt1984]

"No, not really. That's an invention of CNN and the cable networks."

The coporate media lying to us again? I'm astounded!-LoL

[2020peter]

Muslims don't burn Mosques . .. have you heard of a country called Iraq or one called Pakistan? Mosques have often been the target of suicide attacks. That being said, who knows who is behind the attack on the Iranian Mosque, but it changes nothing about the character of the rebellion.

[2020peter]

Further, of course the CIA is involved. They must be fishing in troubled waters and trying to determine an outcome that will serve US interests. That does not mean this is not a genuine movement of the Iranian people, a movement not in the control of the CIA.

[newmanfrigan]

Thats about right, my friend. I guess people named Peter, like us, are just smarter about these things. It's clearly a genuine popular movement, but the goddamn CIA and other government agencies can't keep out of these things. They'll fuck us and the Iranian people over again, given half a chance. Fuck the CIA and their corporate criminal masters.

[bulldogger]

Erlich is an idiot, is he suggesting Iranians were burning Mosques this week ? Muslims don't burn Mosques, and if you think I'm making shit up here is the news report.

watch?v=Rx6YXRY7qqY

[2020peter]

one more time . . . Erlich wrote a book about CIA involvement in Iran . . . what he is saying here is that the movement in Iran is a broad based uprising, not something created by the CIA. It's the Iranian state that wants to blame it all on the CIA.

[1reimhard]

how can you steal an election, when the mullahs determine who can run???

[tartsphere]

True.

[bulldogger]

Sounds similar to how the USofA runs things.

[jacksoncarreras]

Let's hear what Paul Craig Roberts has to say!!! There's a side the Reals News is not even trying to show you! Who cares what the Director of Advanced Space Programs under Ford & Carter says? Howard Zinn says 9/11 truth is a waste of time, go back to bed. Don't worry America, the controlled left opposition is doing your critical thinking for you!

[StephinRazin]

was removed. response to voter fraud how did a dc thinktank neocon know about it b4 the fraud took place?

Congressman Ron Paul and the Chief of Pakistani intellegince service have publicly stated that 400 million has been spent to destabalize iran during this election. Why are the signs in english? Less than five percent, probably less than 1 percent speak english. THe bbc got caught showing pro-amenj. rallies as if they were mosavi rallies. Typical cia us media bullshit.

[newmanfrigan]

English is the default language in almost every country. Everyone speaks it. In most countries you will find street signs and many other things with a translation in English.

[StephinRazin]

oh trnn isnt censoring me today. Earlier when I outlined support for cia involvement in this "revolution" it wasnt removed.

May 27 2007 Abc report of US covertops

may 29 07 london telegraph report on same topic

june 2008 nyorker article by hearsh about plans for secret ops including false flag terrorism to lure iran into war

Thinktank beltway imperialist Kenneth timmerman wrote b4 the election took place that iran was ready fore a "green revolution" If this revolution was a response to vote

[chan0chap]

the election was NOT stolen .

stop spreading the bullshit.

ahmedinejad won by 11 million votes its impossible to fake that many votes

[StephinRazin]

operation restore a shah

[2020peter]

Erlich wrote a book about CIA involvement in Iran. He is NOT saying the CIA isn't involved. What he is saying is that the CIA is not the main trigger or cause of the uprising. The CIA will try to do what it can, but Iranians have their own reasons for this rebellion. People have a right to fight their oppressors, even if their oppressors are opposed to the US agenda.

[jigartala01]

11:30 - So true. Erlich, thank you for making it clear that the Iranian people do not want the United States to intervene!

[jigartala01]

11:30 - So true. Erlich, thank you for making it clear to those that do not understand that the Iranian people do not want the United States to intervene!

[peymaania]

It is irrelevant what Erlich looks like. You should never attack people for the way

they look because then no one will take

you seriously. Most people, yourself not included, outgrow childish mockery after leaving middle school. I truly enjoy the alternative perspectives to which I amexposed to on the RealNews Network.

However I make it a point not to rely on it for my only source of information and news.

[ruleof3]

If pigs fly....oh wait a minute...swine flu + bird fu = run for your lives!!!!!! sad but true haha

[ruleof3]

And this guy is telling me the USA has zero participation and is in no way sponsoring this unrising?????????

[zelzalosolh]

This man "Just coming back from Iran" means that they kicked him out. And his way of formulating words clearly shows this. He is a mad little bald man that cannot even hold his own emotions when reporting the news. The Real News has become so generic and dull after the Iranian protests in trying to grab a chunk of the media attention. It is now the Same old reporting with a strong propagandist element.

[2020peter]

people that fight with personal insults can't have too much to say. I think Real News is taking quite an different position from MSN . . they have reported on Iran's right under the NPT to enrich uranium, reported on US NIE that there is no weapons program, and they report on what seems to be the real character of this revolt.

[grit123]

? lol what? None of that made sense. Are we watching the same video?

[trekyz]

I'd be surprised if the CIA isn't involved in what is going on in Iran.

[2020peter]

I think the point isn't that the CIA is not involved, what Erlich is saying it's not the main factor at work. In fact Erlich wrote a whole book about CIA involvement in Iran.