This is an important article in that it identifies a crucial element of any PMC 2.0 type strategy. To insure that the opposition of your enemy, has the means to protest your enemy online. To actually insure that there are proxy servers available to the masses, and if not, to provide it. This is a key component of moral warfare, and that is if you are on the righteous side of a conflict, or want to portray yourself to world opinion as the righteous side, then you need to give some power to the people so they can actually show the world how righteous you and they really are.
And on the opposite side of things, I guarantee today’s enemies are using proxy servers to spew whatever crap they want to spit out. So remember the rule of thumb with OODA, because your enemy has the same access to the same stuff as you.(for the most part) Something to think about in today’s social media-centric world. –Matt
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A Simple Idea to Influence Iran
November 27, 2009
By GERALD F. SEIB
Sometimes the smallest ideas can have the biggest impact. And so it may be in helping to push change in Iran.
Almost without notice, a small initiative to help democratic reformers in Iran is moving through the U.S. Congress. The notion is disarmingly simple: With a small investment of money, the U.S. government can help Iranian citizens get around efforts by the Iranian regime to block their use of the Internet to communicate with each other and the outside world.
The power of this idea became apparent amid the widespread anger in Iran over the country’s disputed presidential election this summer. After President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election was announced, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest the dubious circumstances, the largest showing of popular unrest since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
The most powerful tools the latest protesters had were the Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and text messages they could circulate to organize among themselves and to communicate to the outside world. And so the Iranian government, as part of a general campaign to suppress protest, stepped in to cut off or slow down the freedom marchers’ Internet access, and to monitor traffic as a way of ferreting out leaders.