Iranian Protesters Greatest Weapon: Video Cameras

It would seem the government in Iran has the upper hand with it's police and soldiers. But those protesting against the stolen election there have greatest weapon of all -- video cameras and the Internet.

If it were not for the videos and pictures being broadcast out of Iran over the Internet, the press would int he West wouldn't pay much attention. Remember the Tibetan protests of last year. We were all outraged up until the phone videos started drying up. Now we no longer talk about Tibet, again. And how about the genocide in Darfur, or the AIDs catastrophe in the rest of the African continent. It doesn't exist. No video, no attention.

The US government would, if it wants to help, and the Republicans keep running their mouths about how much their concerned, should fund operations that would surreptitously supply video cameras and internet ready phones to the protesters.

This is the weapon of the future.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Obama News Conference Transcript 6-23-09

Read the complete transcript. Excerpt below:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

Your administration has said that the offer to talk to Iran’s leaders remains open. Can you say if that’s still so even with all the violence that has been committed by the government against the peaceful protesters?

And if it is, is there any red line that your administration won’t cross where that offer will be shut off?

OBAMA: Well, obviously what’s happened in Iran is profound, and we’re still waiting to see how it plays itself out.

My position coming into this office has been that the United States has core national security interests in making sure that Iran doesn’t possess a nuclear weapon and it stops exporting terrorism outside of its borders.

We have provided a path whereby Iran can reach out to the international community, engage, and become a part of international norms.

It is up to them to make a decision as to whether they choose that path. What we’ve been saying over the last several days, the last couple of weeks, obviously is not encouraging in terms of the path that this regime may choose to take.

And the fact that they are now in the midst of an extraordinary debate taking place in Iran, you know, may end up coloring how they respond to the international community as a whole.

We are going to monitor and see how this plays itself out before we make any judgments about how we proceed. But to reiterate, there is a path available to Iran in which their sovereignty is respected, their traditions, their culture, their faith is respected, but one in which they are part of a larger community that has responsibilities and operates according to norms and international rules that are universal.

We don’t know how they’re going to respond yet, and that’s what we’re waiting to see.

QUESTION: So should there be consequences for what’s happened so far?

OBAMA: I think that the international community is, as I said before, bearing witness to what’s taking place. And the Iranian government should understand that how they handle the dissent within their own country, generated indigenously, internally, from the Iranian people, will help shape the tone, not only for Iran’s future, but also its relationship to other countries.

[...]QUESTION: Yes, I did, but I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions on tonight from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online. And one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of -- of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

OBAMA: Well, look, we didn’t have international observers on the ground. We can’t say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country.

What we know is that a sizable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It’s not an isolated instance, a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so, ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States.