There's a Riot Goin' On

Power crisis in Iran. Revolution? It’s certainly something. Seems for real, with all of the opposition candidates (including conservative former head of Revolutionary Guard) calling Friday’s election stolen. Leading opposition candidate now under house arrest, and state forces clamping down on foreign media, jamming BBC satellites, locking down cellphone networks and internet access. Rumors of tanks, and video of riot police on motorcycles in the streets:

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Also, according to eyewitness accounts, gunshots could be heard last night until 3am in Elahiyeh, alongside chants of “God is great!” from people on their rooftops. This was a widespread tactic in the 1979 revolution, in which people were urged to take to their rooftops and shout “Allah-u Akbar.”

On the nerdly front, this is also fascinating. Far moreso than last year’s action in Burma, this is a revolution with an online component. Iran is much harder to seal off information-wise and so word is leaking out anyway. For anyone wondering how Twitter is good for anything, click here and wait for 10 seconds, when it will say something like “16 more results since you started searching. Refresh to see them.” Also good for pressuring old-school media.

Also different from Burma, the powers that be care about their ability to use networks as well, so there are spontanious denial-of-service attacks from the opposition. Goodness knows what will be possible once someone teaches people how to use popular benchmarking tools.

I hope it turns out well for the forces of Liberal Social Democracy, and with a minimum of bloodshed. We’ll see.