March 27, 2005
Dehumanization
Here is a comment I recieved from a reader:
Hi derakhshan, as you probably already know the Cheney/Bush regime has started attacking Iran and would like to kill a hundred thousand civilians there like in Iraq, in order to better control oil in the region (remember 1953...).
One of the necessary propaganda methods for justifying the attack to US citizens was the process of dehumanization of "Iraqis".
IMHO, the iranian blogosphere and the internet experience of Iranians may be able to prevent dehumanization of "Iranians" and also help counter simplistic (and factually wrong or misleading) propaganda.
How? i can only speculate - it's really up to you Iranians to decide - people like me can only be supporters. So here are some speculations:
wikinews - http://en.wikinews.org is not yet used by as many people as wikipedia, but it is intended to be news (while wikipedia is meant to be for synthesis of old information, encyclopedia style). The whole style is likely to satisfy bloggers: a wiki is an html page which anyone with internet access can correct - the history of old changes is also available. But the difference is that you're supposed to stick to the facts and integrate different versions of the facts to get an NPOV. More free discussion is accepted on the discussion pages, in order to solve misunderstandings etc.
Anyway, the point is that the wikipedia and wikinews pages are a major node in the network of information distribution, and more and more people are taking them seriously, because of the fact that, in principle, they are not controlled by any single government or corporation, and certainly not by any individual (although there is a bit of a personality cult about the person who owns the computers on which the servers are hosted, who calls himself The Founder, but it's not as bad as in North Korea ;). If Iranian bloggers want to avoid having bombs dropped on Iran, then helping correct errors on missing context on wikipedia news articles and wikinews articles would be IMHO a good place to start. For example, unless there is pressure to remind people of the context that the USA/UK overthrew the elected Mossadegh government in 1953 in order to regain control of oil, then the racist ideas of Iran as a place "which has to be helped by bombing the hell out of it" will remain in place...
You might also want to consider starting an indymedia collective - but in that case the idea is to be really local and autonomous. See
NewImcHowTo on the indymedia twiki
for suggestions on how to start.
Posted by hoder at March 27, 2005 2:07 PM
I think this is an important point, and one I have been making to the Iranian Embassy in Norway. I write them regularly in response to crackdowns on blogs. If nothing else, blogs clearly shows the human face of the iranian people, and so, the crackdown on blogs could be disastrous for Iran.
---------
Boy, are you guys out to lunch. Even including all the terror bombings the civilian casualties in Iraq are under 10,000. Iran is in a permanent vegetative state precisely because the U.S. will never attack the place due to the inevitably high the civilian casualties if it does. A revolution inside the country is near impossible because the mullahs are too strong, too rich, and without principal. A bunch of kids with no guns won't cut it. As for the actual Iraqi deaths, do your own Google searches, one even lists every Iraqi civilian death including their names. Total deaths during the actual war are under 2,000; wounded under 5,000. Fewer Iraqis have been killed or injured in the three years the horrible Americans have been there than were tortured to death in one week during the Saddam days. And there was a real election there too. But from the sound of things on this blog, you Iranians deserve the mullahs you have and the lives you have.
---------
Boud, I am not going to vandalise anyones webpage, and I hope my comments on this site were not considered vandalism. My main point is that neither you nor I know how many civilians have been killed in Iraq. Even if you had a number you still don't know how they died. I understand your emotional reaction to the situation, it is a very important issue. However, I don't think that throwing around bullshit numbers is acceptable. If the United States wanted to target civilians there would not be any left. Condensation is annoying, try to limit the "denials of reality" "bias" nonsense.
---------
hi mike, IMHO Iranian readers will make up their own minds regarding US targetting of civilians. For total military + civilian death estimates, i recommend (to all) the appropriate wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq_casualties - i would suggest (mike) that you do not try to vandalise the page - the wikipedia community generally do not take kindly to vandalism. On the other hand, if you wished to contribute to documenting reliable sources of knowledge (rather than denials of reality), your contributions would be welcomed. For Iraqi civilian deaths reported in newspapers (an underestimate of the true number of deaths), the most reputed site AFAIK is http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ which presently has well documented reports of 17,000-20,000 Iraqi civilian deaths due to the invasion.
---------
No boud, I am not confused, I read the article. "Proper Statistical Analysis" with a margin of error that is 92,000! You have got to be kidding, even Slate.com went after this bullshit. The US does not target civilians, and it will not touch Iran.
---------
American forces will NOT make contact with the Iranian "military"
That's exactly the worry. During most of the twentieth century, wars have killed more and more civilians and fewer and fewer military.
And this includes wars by the US, which has consistently targetted civilians in massive numbers, simply because it's easier to kill civilians than soldiers.
---------
i think mike is a bit confused about the 100,000 civilians that the USA has killed in Iraq. Those 100,000 people are not just a rumour: epidemiologists went to Iraq, made empirical, quantitative research, and then made proper statistical analysis which was critically commented on by colleagues and eventually accepted by anonymous, independent researchers in a prestigious medical journal, the Lancet. You can see some discussion of the research in this article in the Independent (UK newspaper).
You should be skeptical of any source of information, of course. Like other information sources, The Lancet is biased. It is biased in favour of keeping its reputation as a journal of scientific, medical research. So it almost certainly discriminates against authors who do not have a PhD in at least one subject like epidemiology, statistics or medicine. It's up to you to judge the information in the light of this (known) bias. Anyway, i think that Iranian English-speaking readers know enough about statistics to be able to judge for themselves.
---------
Don't sweat nonsense. Americans are not trying to degrade the "100,000" dead, or even look at the article. Pre-election static causes outrages estimates like "100,000" civilians killed by airstrikes. If you read the actual article it will cease to be a rumor. American forces will NOT make contact with the Iranian "military", I am not picking on Iran but I doubt many Iranians are happy with the "military". Even the filthy neo-cons are not talking about invading, bombing or touching Iran, don't stress buddy.
---------
Note:
* Required
The following HTML tags are allowed in your comments: <a> <b> <i>. To make line and paragraph breaks, press return (don't use <br> or <p>).
The bold, italics, and link buttons (and associated shortcut keys) only work in IE 5+ on the PC.