'Any questions?', the panel asked the audience at tonight's viewing of two documentaries on the Iranian internet revolution under the joint title of The Revolution Will Be Twittered at the CPH:DOX documentary festival, followed by a seminar on the current situation and the outlook in Iran. And the questions were many.'Will Twitter and the Internet have an actual impact on regime change in Iran?', 'There are reports of the regime blocking and filtering the internet, so how?', 'Are you supporting Mousavi and the Green Movement, since wearing a green scarf?' - and many more. All following the Iranian unrest this summer. The answers were moderate in their hope. Because the Iranian government slows down the internet speed to stop internal unrest voiced through blogs, mails, Twitters, etc. And there were even reports of repeat tweets - i.e. false Twitter messages supposed to voice support from Iranian to Iranian, but were actually repeated and copied tweets around the world, instead of documenting internal support.
Paradoxical News spoke with a female Iranian student visiting Denmark, who had to leave the film session and panel debate, because everywhere she went, every westerner would ask her questions about the current situation in Iran. Paradoxically, she was simply fed up with the questions. More so than the current situation.
The panel was moderated by Pernille Bramming, a Middle East and Iranian reporter for the Danish elitist newspaper of Weekendavisen. First debater was Iranian Omid Habibinia, a journalist and media researcher, formerly an employee of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, now based in Switzerland, who believes in changing the Iranian regime altogether - not just through reforms. He didn't believe in the so-called Green Movement and the green scarfs of Iranian Islamic reformists - but would like to see the Iranian flag in its full original tricolour style of red, white, green. Of which the green represents Islamic faith.
'I don't like the green element. It's a representation of Islam, and I don't like Islam. And I don't think that Mousavi can do anything within the regime, people are ready for a revolution,' Habibinia said. A supporter of the peaceful religious group of the Baháis in Iran (see Persecution of Bahá'ís).
Second debater was Arash Kamangir, an Iranian engineer now based in Toronto, Canada (his first name Arash is also a heroic archer-figure of Iranian folklore tradition). He flashed his green scarf to show his support to reforms in Iran, supporting the whole Green Revolution or Green Movement package of not only Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh. Known as Mousavi, a reformist politician and last Prime Minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989, who started the Green Movement, the supporters of which wear the Islamic green scarfs, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Movement and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Path_of_Hope). But also Seyed Mohammad Khatami (moderate Iranian president 1997-2005, who advocated for freedom of speech, and a political protegé and friend of Mousavi's) - and even Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (Iranian pragmatic conservative president 1989-1997) could have been a part of it according to Arash Kamangir.
'Let's just not have another Khomeini,' as Kamangir moderately put it, referring to the Iranian Revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 that overthrew the shah in Iran and turned the country into an Islamic Republic. Green - but not that green - the paradoxical lesson seems to be.