Witness

So today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that the IRI is trying to intimidate bloggers and activists all around the world, not just it Iran. They’re firing off lots of threatening emails (We’re everywhere! We know where you live! You’re not safe in the US!), arresting family members of expatriate bloggers, and detaining people for things they’ve written on Facebook and Twitter.

Sounds to me like they’re getting a little desperate.

I mean, threatening to kill Salman Rushdie was one thing. Threatening hundreds of thousands of bloggers living abroad…well, you can’t fault them for lack of ambition.

But fear can make people do crazy things. The IRI realizes the Internet has become the new mosque—the place where people can take refuge and organize—and it scares the hell out of them. For good reason, too. Young kids with cell phones are recording their misdeeds every day and posting the evidence on websites all around the world. And the IRI can’t stop it.

It makes me think of a passage in Haleh Esfandiai’s memoir about her recent imprisonment in Evin. In it she writes of one of the female prison guards who goes to a museum dedicated to remembering the abuses of SAVAK: The museum featured pictures of SAVAK’s jailers, interrogators, and torturers. When[the guard] saw the pictures, she told me, she remarked to a friend who was with her, “Someday, they will put our pictures in this museum.”

That prison guard was right. And the faces of the IRGC and Basij goons will be remembered as well. In fact, a good start has already been made on Facebook: //www.facebook.com/group.php?v=photos&gid=119...

So what’s next for the IRI? Will they try to intimidate the shareholders of Facebook and everyone else who has a hand in the Internet? Take down that page or else… Is Bill Gates on the list? It sounds crazy to even think it, but once a story has jumped the shark, there’s no telling where it will go next.