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An eyewitness writes from Tehran an account of Monday's massive demonstration for Mousavi:
Democracy is a long way ahead. I may not be alive to see that day. With eyes full of tear in these early hours of Tuesday 16th June 2009, I glorify the courage and bravery of those martyrs and I hope that their blood will make every one of us more committed to freedom, to democracy and to human rights.
link: Informed Comment: The Most Elegant Scene: Mass Protest in Tehran
Bill Keller writes:
Iranians are generally united in viewing the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to another four-year term as a miracle. Some believe it in the literal sense that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seemed to intend when he said “the miraculous hand of God” was at work. Others believe it in the sense that they see no earthly explanation why an incumbent who presided over worsening inflation, unemployment and isolation would draw more than seven million more votes than in his first victory.
link: Reporter's Notebook - Innocent Googling? No Such Thing in Tehran - NYTimes.com
Government has enough eyes to see us anyway. We need the world to see us. They are expelling foreign media.
link: FriendFeed
Allen Stratton writes:
In Monarch, a slum district on the outskirts of Francistown, I met an 18-year-old I'll call Sara. Sara had become pregnant, and infected, at 15; her son, age 2, was infected at birth. Aside from the woman who ran the AIDS awareness centre where she volunteered, I was the only one she trusted with her diagnosis; she was silenced by the same terror that affects so many worldwide – that if her status was disclosed, she and her son would be shunned and left to die alone. We sat with the center's director in Sara's one-room hut, the shutters closed, her son's crayon drawings nailed to the mud wall. “I am my parents' only child,” she said. “How do I tell them I will be dead soon? How do I tell them their only grandchild will be dead soon too?” The whites of her eyes were yellow, and her body skeletal, but she still chopped firewood, waited in line at the standpipe for water to bathe her babies. She didn't want to think about her son dying before her, but she was afraid of what would happen to him if she died first. That's why she'd volunteered at the centre: so that, just in case, there'd be people who'd know him and might look after him. There was a silence. Then she said: “If I can live four more years, he will be six. If he is six, maybe he will be old enough to survive without me.”
link: A novelist's notes on the sub-Saharan HIV/AIDS pandemic - The Globe and Mail
National Public Radio reports:
After an eight-year odyssey, four Muslims from China have been banished to — of all places — Bermuda. The four were among a group of Uighurs — members of a Turkic ethnic group from China's Xinjiang province — who fled China in the summer of 2001, claiming religious persecution. They slipped across the border into Afghanistan. Later, they crossed into Pakistan, where they were swept up by Pakistani security services. They were eventually jailed in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Uighurs were later declared innocent of terrorism, and the U.S. has been trying to place them somewhere ever since. Returning them to China would probably mean torture. Four of them were sent to Bermuda in the past week, accompanied by their interpreter, Rushan Abbas.
Big change from the Mao revolution, it started from the barrel of a gun to Iran's "...from the click of the mouse on twitter" #iranelection
link: (27) iranelection - Twitter Search
Excerpt: Jonathan Mirsky reviews
Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang
translated from the Chinese and edited by Bao Pu, Renee Chiang, and Adi Ignatius, with a foreword by Roderick MacFarquhar
Simon and Schuster, 306 pp., $26.00
Prisoner of the State is the secretly recorded memoir of Zhao Ziyang, once holder of China's two highest Party and state positions and the architect of the economic reforms that have brought the country to the edge of great-power status. The book has had much attention in the West. Inside China, despite official attempts to denigrate and block any news of it on the Internet, it is already having a powerful effect. This effect will increase as Chinese tourists from the mainland buy the Chinese edition of the book in Hong Kong.
link: China's Dictators at Work: The Secret Story - The New York Review of Books
Curse
by Pablo Neruda, Translated by Donald D. Walsh
Furrowed motherland, I swear that in your ashes
you will be born like a flower of eternal water
I swear that from your mouth of thirst will come to the air
the petals of bread, the spilt
inaugurated flower. Cursed,
cursed, cursed be those who with an ax and serpent
came to your earthly arena, cursed those
who waited for this day to open the door
of the dwelling to the moor and the bandit:
What have you achieved? Bring, bring the lamp,
see the soaked earth, see the blackened little bone
eaten by the flames, the garment
of murdered Spain.
The Guardian:
Grim details are emerging of the violent crackdown of opposition rallies as the powerful guardian council agrees a limited recount in the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Follow live updates on the aftermath of the disputed poll.
link: Iran's post-election unrest: live | News | guardian.co.uk
In a TV interview Mr Obama said there might not be much difference between the policies of President Ahmadinejad and rival Mir Hossein Mousavi. Mr Mousavi's supporters have continued street protests despite the threat of government force and earlier bloodshed. BBC correspondents in Tehran say the mood in the city is tense and angry. Tough new restrictions have been imposed on foreign media in Iran.
But despite government attempts to control the flow of information out of the country, Iranians have been using the internet to send images and personal accounts of the protests around the world. Mr Obama said he believed Iranian voices should be heard, although he added that he did not want to be seen to be "meddling".
link: BBC NEWS | Middle East | Obama refuses to 'meddle' in Iran
Michael Tomasky writes:
Whatever the criticisms . . . the central fact is that, so far, Obama's coalition is holding together. This is true in the country at large, where his approval ratings, though down several points from the very early days, are still more than high enough to provide him political capital. And it's true among Democrats of all stripes in Washington. I recently conducted eighteen interviews (most of them off the record or "on background," alas) with administration officials, members of Congress and staff, operatives, and insiders—this in addition to casual conversations with other such people that come naturally in my line of work. I heard quibbles, and sometimes more than quibbles, especially about the bank bailout, which was often described as a transfer of wealth from the middle class to Wall Street. By and large, though, I was struck by the sense of good feeling and optimism among these people. There was a broad understanding of the importance of the historical moment. In stark contrast to 1993 (Bill Clinton's first year as president), the factions within the Democratic Party are keeping their disagreements pretty quiet for now. People grasp that in this moment of high political capital, when they are up against a GOP that is becoming increasingly forceful in opposition, Democrats must prove this year that they can pass legislation that will fix the country's problems. And there was a confidence in their ability to do so that surprised me.
Salon News says:
Not long ago, Republicans were talking about attacking Iran. Now they think Obama doesn't love Iran enough.
The long-standing Middle East correspondent for The Independent, Robert Fisk, is defying the government crackdown on foreign media reporting in Iran. As he explains, he has been travelling around the streets of Tehran all day and most of the night and things are far from quiet:
I've just been witnessing a confrontation, in dusk and into the night, between about 15,000 supporters of Ahmadinejad - supposedly the president of Iran - who are desperate to down the supporters of Mr Mousavi, who thinks he should be the president of Iran. There were about 10,000 Mousavi men and women on the streets, with approximately 500 Iranian special forces, trying to keep them apart. It was interesting that the special forces - who normally take the side of Ahmadinejad's Basij militia - were there with clubs and sticks in their camouflage trousers and their purity white shirts and on this occasion the Iranian military kept them away from Mousavi's men and women. In fact at one point, Mousavi's supporters were shouting 'thank you, thank you' to the soldiers. One woman went up to the special forces men, who normally are very brutal with Mr Mousavi's supporters, and said 'can you protect us from the Basij?' He said 'with God's help'. It was quite extraordinary because it looked as if the military authorities in Tehran have either taken a decision not to go on supporting the very brutal militia - which is always associated with the presidency here - or individual soldiers have made up their own mind that they're tired of being associated with the kind of brutality that left seven dead yesterday - buried, by the way secretly by the police - and indeed the seven or eight students who were killed on the university campus 24 hours earlier.
link: Extraordinary scenes: Robert Fisk in Iran - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
from New ScientistNo doubt, the human brain has bulged in the six million or so years since our species last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees, offering more cognitive prowess compared to our closest relatives. But traces of human intelligence, such as a sense of numbers, or the ability to use tools, lurk in a wide range of animals, particularly in other primates.
link: Monkey 'IQ test' hints at intelligent human ancestor - life - 17 June 2009 - New Scientist
From NYTimes.com:
“This was just a call to say: ‘It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?’ ” said P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs.Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until Tuesday evening — 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran — because its partners recognized “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” The network was working normally again later Tuesday evening.
From niacINsight:
Liveblogging updates from Iran continue
June 16, 2009 10:21 pm When we last heard from our contact in Mashad (Iran’s second largest city), Sunday night, things sounded desperate:
“[We] are still safe, but to tell you the truth, all of us are feeling sick of what we have to see on streets these days. This afternoon, [we] saw five policemen attack a middle age lady. They beat her brutally, with no mercy. She tried to escape with her young daughter but they got her. I stopped and tried to help her, but three men in civilian clothes attacked my car, and I had to drive away because [my daughter] was with me. Tonight, people shouted “Allah o Akabar” from their roof tops, but hundreds of police forces on bikes swept the streets and marked houses from which they could hear voices. Tomorrow, I will go to a lawyer to ask for a [foreign] visa. This country will not be a safe place anymore, and I don’t want to repeat my parents’ mistake in 1979 by staying and watching.”
But we are thankful that our most recent update indicates that violence has abated somewhat:
God saves us from violence until now, and I trust him to keep us far from their dirty hands. Mashad was calm tonight and only “Allah o Akbar” was heard from roof tops. They attacked Ferdowsi university last night but the security of university kept them out. Today all the exams have been canceled by students and TEACHERS. When university manager (A.N. hard supporter) ordered students to go back to the exam room, teachers left the building and told him that only they have the authority to decide about the exam date and they decide not to take it. So brave. He didn’t mention if they applied for the foreign visa or if they’ve decided to stay through the turmoil
.
link: niacINsight
Excerpt from Peter Daou: The Philosophical Significance of Twitter: Consciousness Outfolding:
As with any new phenomenon, a wave of curiosity, criticism, mockery, and adulation follows. The Twitter meta wave is cresting. Now, attention is focused on Twitter's practical applications in the disputed Iranian election and its unique capacity to harness real-time events. In the larger picture, the most intriguing thing about Twitter is not how it is different from other online communication mechanisms, but how it is the same: one more technological innovation enabling the outfolding of consciousness -- the collective turning-outward of human thought. In Embryos, Galaxies, and Sentient Beings: How the Universe Makes Life, an exquisitely written and astonishingly insightful book, Richard Grossinger writes about 'infoldedeness', stating that "the universe is comprehensible only as a thing that has been folded many times upon itself." Reversing Grossinger's idea: the outfolding of the human mind, the collective sharing of our thoughts, myriad thoughts from the inane to the mundane to the profound, enabled by technology, is changing our perception of reality and thus changing reality itself. The explosion of online communication/networking tools this decade seems teleological; it is as though human evolution has a clear destination and the vehicles to get there are appearing and being adopted at lightning speed. In The Revolution of the Online Commentariat I wrote about the political ramifications: For the first time, we are thinking aloud unfettered and unfiltered by mass media gatekeepers. Events, information, words and deeds that a decade ago were discussed and contextualized statically in print or through the controlled funnel of television and radio, are now subjected to instantaneous interpretation and free-association by millions of citizens unencumbered by the media's constraints, aided by the optional -- and liberating -- cloak of anonymity. This is transformative, not just because it is a web-driven enhancement of traditional political and social mechanisms (as we've seen with organizing and fundraising) but because it is a radically different way that the world processes information and understands itself. If there's one thing that makes the 2008 election an inflection point, it is this: that the context, perception, and course of events is fundamentally changed by the collective behavior of the Internet's innumerable opinion-makers. Every piece of news and information is instantly processed by the combined brain power of millions, events are interpreted in new and unpredictable ways, observations transformed into beliefs, thoughts into reality. Ideas and opinions flow from the ground up, insights and inferences, speculation and extrapolation are put forth, then looped and re-looped on a previously unimaginable scale, conventional wisdom created in hours and minutes. Twitter is the latest instance in this ongoing process of pouring the content of hundreds of millions of minds onto a global cyber-canvass, the commixture becoming something new and unpredictable. This outfolding is at an early stage, and eventually the various ways in which it is manifested -- solipsistic profiles on Facebook and MySpace, instantaneous mass communication on Twitter, mind-melding on blogs, self-broadcasting on YouTube, virtual identities in Second Life -- will merge. At that point, we'll be wearing our brains on the outside, metaphorically.
link: Peter Daou: The Philosophical Significance of Twitter: Consciousness Outfolding
Foreign media banned from leaving offices to cover turmoil, but Iranians still dodge censors to post updates online
link: iranelection - Twitter Search
RT UNCONFIRMED 7 protest victims secretly buried in cemetery 257 near Khomeini shrine #iranelection #gr88
link: iranelection - Twitter Search
Re-post from TYWKIWDBI:
Maculinea arion, a large blue butterfly, became extinct in Britain 30 years ago; it has now been successfully reintroduced. That achievement involved more, however, than just hauling in a bunch of replacement butterflies or caterpillars:
Crucial to the success of the re-introduction was a discovery that the life cycle of the large blue is completely dependent on a species of ant called Myrmica sabuleti. Large blue caterpillars hatch on thyme buds and then trick M. sabuleti into thinking they are ant grubs. The ants then carry the caterpillars to their underground nests, where they feed on ant grubs for 10 months before pupating and emerging as butterflies. Professor Thomas realised that farmers had been gradually shifting their livestock away from grazing, causing the grass to become overgrown... This in turn meant the soil was now too cool to support adequate numbers of M. sabuleti ants... As part of the reintroduction programme by the conservationists, grazing was re-established on the sites chosen for the insects. There are now over 30 colonies across south-west England, with the largest supporting some 5,000 butterflies.
link: TYWKIWDBI
Mohammadreza Jalaeipour son of Hamidreza Jalaeipour (Journalist/ reformist) who is studying in UK was arrested today at airport #iranelection
link: FriendFeed
From Time:
Iraqis know it makes no difference who becomes President of Iran. Iraqis know from long experience that their neighbor — and historic enemy — is ruled not by its politicians but by its clergy. Although President Ahmadinejad gets plenty of press, even Iraqis with no interest in politics will tell you that the man who really matters in Tehran is Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. So the allegation that the election was rigged for Ahmadinejad doesn't raise too many eyebrows in Baghdad. "It was never about who the Iranian people want. It was always about who Khamenei wants," says a senior Iraqi official who asked not to be named. "Khamenei chose Ahmadinejad: So what?"
link: What Iraqis Think About Iran's Election Turmoil - TIME
b4 I forget - IRIB has been saying that demos r work of anti-gov thugs - IRIB wantto turn ppl against Mousavi - hack them pls #Iranelection 21 minutes ago from web
it is now dawn in tehran - streets are quiet - we must move from here - this was good internet connection but not ours - #Iranelection 30 minutes ago from web
link: persiankiwi (persiankiwi) on Twitter
confirmed: undercover agents inside peaceful crowds cause havoc and start fights with soldiers #iranelection #gr88
link: (28) iranelection - Twitter Search
From Loft965:
Next time they try to fool the people they better not be fools themselves. How can someone’s votes dip while counting. And how can all the candidates lose in their home states. For those of you that don’t understand these numbers: then you can read the times on the upper screen and lower. The third candidates votes decreased while counting. Spread it around! “Two screenshots Iranian state-run television illustrating the apparent decrease in votes for candidate Mohsen Rezaee over a four hour period. The upper picture shows Rezaee with 633,048 votes at 09:47; the lower shows the same candidate with 587,913 votes at 13:53 later that day, a decrease of 45,135.”
link
RT The most circulated email today was asking people to keep their door open for those escaping from riot police #iranelection
link: (63) iranelection - Twitter Search
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mahatma Gandhi #IranElection
link: iranelection - Twitter Search
ReTweet from an Iranian: "I realize now i do not fear death. I fear my daughter will not be free when i die." #IranElection
last night thousands stayed in streets between Parkway and Vanak sq until after 2am - #Iranelection
link: persiankiwi (persiankiwi) on Twitter
5:46 pm: From an anonymous university professor: Last night (Monday), 94 wounded persons were brought to the [Hazrat-e Rasul (the Prophet)] Hospital [in Sattar Khan]. Of these, 50 were shot and 9 of them died. The doctors stopped work for a few hours this morning and gathered in the yard with slogans in support of Musavi.
5:20 pm: NIAC put out a statement regarding the violence earlier today: The National Iranian American Council condemns the Iranian government’s use of violence against demonstrators in Tehran and cities across Iran. “We condemn the violations of the human rights of the Iranian people,” said NIAC President Trita Parsi. “The people’s right to freedom of expression must always be respected.” The violence ensued after elections widely perceived to have been either rigged or stolen. Credible reports and footage from Iran have shown security forces using brutal and sometimes lethal force to break up demonstrations across the country. The Iranian government is obligated under international law to respect the civil and political rights of its people under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. “We unequivocally demand that violence against protesters be immediately halted,” said Dokhi Fassihian, member of NIAC’s board of directors.
link: niacINsight
Derni's cartoon about Ahmadinejad's curtsy! http://i39.tinypic.com/2wfpjyu...
link: FriendFeed , Inside Iran Only SM Feed
Entry from a Tehran Bureau post:
I was born in 1984, amid a devastating war that had laid waste and destruction to my country. I was born between two subsequent nights of bombing raids. I was born into rationing, despair and hardship. I was born when young lives perished at the fronts. My father later told me that when I was born 1984 sounded so much like the 1984 predicted by Orwell. But my birth had turned over the glum outlook for my parents and 1984 had become a sign of hope, a hope for a future to come, or as my father put it, “a better future for my child to live.” My parents were not alone in this. During the baby boom of 1983 to 1986, millions of us came into this world, mouths to feed and miracles to be cherished. There and then a new generation was born, a generation who would bear witness to the legacy of generations of their parents, a legacy that was mainly composed of one thing, “the Islamic Republic.” In later years, in our schools, on TV, in books and newspapers they told us that before our time lived a tyrant who held a firm grip on our country, and that the defiant and valiant nation of Iran had risen up and overthrown him to establish three things, “Esteghlal, Azadi, Jomhouri Eslami.” Independence. Freedom. Islamic Republic. We were fascinated by the epic tales of young students, some as young as thirteen who during the war had sacrificed themselves for the greater good of the society. We were made to believe that we were living in Utopia, but the delusion only lasted a few years. Before long, that once naïve and innocent generation of 1984 had grown to be the young men and women of Iran, the so called third generation of the revolution. Faced with harsh realities of life we quickly came to realize that our world was far from the Utopia painted for us. It was more like a Dystopia where we had to fight for every single right, every single freedom.You have denied us so much. Out of this dark age one day emerged a man with qualities of a hero who would lead this generation out of this Dystopia and into that promised paradise. His name was Mohammad Khatami. Yet it turned out that he was neither the hero everyone expected him to be, nor did he have the capacity or desire to lead them out. To be fair things started crawling toward progress and modernization; there was a smaller degree of social rights and freedom, but it did not come at the pace that this restless third generation wanted. Thus a hero fell, and four years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad started. By the end of the four years, we were desperate for change. Hope materialized in the shape of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who happened to be the prime minister that now long gone 1984. But the totalitarians ruling the Dystopia swooped in and crushed that last bit of hope. In Brecht’s “Life of Galileo,” Galileo’s students condemn him at the end of the court proceedings with these words: “Pity the nation that doesn’t have a hero.” “Pity the nation that needs a hero,” he responds wisely. My generation is tired of being disillusioned. We refuse to accept the status quo and we have risen up in defiance. I am not sure how long it will take for the totalitarians to crush our resistance. For now though, we’re holding up just fine. We’re holding up fine even though our brothers at Basij and the police are murdering their dear fellow Iranians. We’re holding up even though you bash us with clubs and batons and try to suffocate us with your tear gas. A nation stands tall refusing to succumb that easily. Yesterday among the crowds who were just back from the warzone with their wounds and anger and sadness, I spotted an old friend of mine. “Welcome to 1984, my friend,” he said in great anguish. I nodded in agreement; we’d come full circle. He went on, “There we were facing the bloodthirsty riot police, hand in hand, like that ‘Brothers in Arms’ song from Dire Straits.” It was in that moment that I realized why the French Revolutionaries added “Fraternity” to their revolutionary slogan. “Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” indeed.
link: 1984 – tehranbureau
unconfirmed - several Generals have been arested - #Iranelection 10 minutes ago from web in azadi sq the killing was by baseej ONLY - military did not react - #Iranelection 12 minutes ago from web only baseej militia and Etellaat folowing orders - they cannot contain country without Army - #Iranelection 13 minutes ago from web
link: persiankiwi (persiankiwi) on Twitter
McClatchy:Ayatollah Ali Montazeri denounces election results."I ask police/army (personnel) not 'sell their religion,'#iranelection
link: iranelection - Twitter Search
The intelligence world lives and breathes by secrecy, perhaps more so than is necessary. Knowledgeable observers suggest that as much as 80 percent of the intelligence required to support informed policy-making is available via open-source channels, and that the habits of secrecy, bureaucracy and "stove-piping" are all that stand between us and greater access to those sources. In a world that's shifting in a thousand ways from the hierarchical to the distributed, from the top-down to the bottom-up, and -- gasp -- from the authoritative to the democratic, a more transparent approach to intelligence may be the wave of the future, and open-source intelligence may be the key to that effort.
link: OJR article: Flinging Open the Doors toIntelligence Gathering
maybe good news! RT unconfirmed - military has refused orders to shoot protesters #Iranelection
link: (51) iranelection - Twitter Search
Updates from Mir Hossein Mousavi میر Øسین موسوی Back to Updates|View Mir Hossein Mousavi میر Øسین موسوی's Page Displaying 1-5 of 27 updates.123456Next Project "Becoming Iranian: Iran Election Cyberwarfare Guide" Today at 12:32pm The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through twitter. 1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP.s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran. 2.Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation. 3.Keep you commonsense antenna up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don't retweet impetuously, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow. 4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is Tehran and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become Iranians. it becomes much harder to find them. 5. Don't blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don.t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in real danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don't signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind. 6. Denial of Service attacks. If you don't know what you are doing, stay out of this game. Only target those sites the legitimate Iranian bloggers are designating. Be aware that these attacks can have detrimental effects to the network the protesters are relying on. Keep monitoring their traffic to note when you should turn the taps on or off. 7. Do spread the (legitimate) word, it works! When the bloggers asked for twitter maintenance to be postponed using the #nomaintenance tag, it had the desired effect. As long as we spread good information, provide moral support to the protesters, and take our lead from the legitimate bloggers, we can make a constructive contribution.
link: Facebook | Your Updates
Excerpt from Anonandon's blog:
http://anonandon.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/140-characters-are-a-novel-when-youre-being-shot-at/
As I write this, Marlo D. Cruz just tweeted that the Iranian Army has moved into Tehran. It’s about11.27pm over there. By the time I’ve finished writing this post, we might know whether his source in Iran was bona fide or not but it’s unlikely. News is haemhorraging out of Iran but it’s difficult to find trustworthy reports.
Alireza Sedaghat confirmed that there’s no Google or Yahoo accesible in Iran. The women’s rights lawyer Shiva Nazar-Ahari has been arrested and there’s news floating of atrocities and shortage of blood and another peaceful pro-Mousavi meeting is being planned for Wednesday June 17. Frombloody pictures to secondhand reports, it’s all here on the internet. There are also tweets reporting that protesters are being taken to Evin, a high security prison. BBC painted its website green in support of the protesters in Iran and America’s State Department requested Twitter to reschedule its downtime because of how important Twitter had suddenly become to protesters in Iran. Thousands of people have added a green tint to their profile pictures and gone to the Settings button and changed their details to show they are in Tehran ever since BoingBoing.net came out with its Cyberwar Guide for Beginners.
There’s gushing reports in every possible media about the role that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have played to ensure that what is happening in Tehran and other parts of Iran are remembered, even as the evidence of these incidents are destroyed in fires and by bullets. Meanwhile, on Twitter, there’s a different battle being waged between a boy who has picked for himself the handle “Change_for_Iran” and two other Twitterers in particular, Justin Hart and someone else who calls themselves Jazzapplejuice. “Change_for_Iran” has earned quite a following for himself in the past few days and today his tweets were quoted on Sky News. His tweets tell us he’s been through tear gas and narrowly escaped the Basij. His friends haven’t been as lucky. One’s laptop has been smashed and another is dead. For those familiar with Bollywood, his Twitter reads like the end of “Rang de Basanti“. Except for the fact that he hasn’t gone about killing people in a weird and crazed re-enactment of an attempted assassination from the past. Also, the random Iranian men in the photographs and YouTube videos are way hotter than our actors and the Basij in their regular clothes are much more menacing than the bored extras pretending to be commandos in “Rang de Basanti”.
In the time that it has taken me to write these two paragraphs and pee once, Tabriz University has asked students to vacate the premises tomorrow for their own safety. State television has warned people to not go outside in Tehran. According to the state channels, it’s not possible for the election results to be wrong because the difference is of about 10 million. One student has died as a result of the violence in the University of Isfahan. Foreign journalists are not allowed to leave their offices. Cellphone networks are down and apparently, police are confiscating and smashing cameras. There was at least one explosion in Tehran, within hearing distance of the posh Shahrak-e-Gharb, and there are reportedly thousands of people out on their balconies chanting slogans. YouTube is apparently taking down videos showing dead protesters because it’s some sort of violation of its terms and that’s got lots of people’s knickers in a twist. Lisa Johnson has given “Change_for_Iran” a virtual hug. Justin Hart and Jazzapplejuice would probably snort and say they’re willing to bet that the hug is going to be one of the reasons “Change_for_Iran” remembers June 16, 2009. Because they don’t think “Change_for_Iran” is for real.
RT several arrests today after tracking thru twiter proxys - #Iranelection
link: (96) iranelection - Twitter Search
Through the recent and ongoing protests in Iran, I (like many others) have followed postings from Iran through Twitter. Much of what flies around there is second and third hand information tweeted and re-tweeted by observers such as myself. Some, however, is first hand, on the scene, and in the moment. Once such source is an individual in Tehran who goes by the Twitter name persiankiwi. Posts from this individual have proved consistently trustworthy, fascinating, and heroic. I will post persiankiwi's messages here when they seem most compelling.
news from tuesday::: our march was big success!! militia are now frightened of us - they know world is watching - #Iranelection
Perhaps the finest writer ever to use speed systematically, however, was W. H. Auden. He swallowed Benzedrine every morning for twenty years, from 1938 onward, balancing its effect with the barbiturate Seconal when he wanted to sleep. (He also kept a glass of vodka by the bed, to swig if he woke up during the night.) He took a pragmatic attitude toward amphetamines, regarding them as a "labor-saving device" in the "mental kitchen," with the important proviso that "these mechanisms are very crude, liable to injure the cook, and constantly breaking down." John Lanchester, "High Style," The New Yorker, January 6, 2003
link: Daily Routines
Take Action Online | Amnesty International USA | Human Rights Action Source: bit.ly Amnesty International USA, Action for Human Rights You can easily send a letter of support for Iranian protestors through Amnesty International, using this link: Amnesty International: Act to protect Iranian protesters! Take quick, easy action: http://bit.ly/1Jag4j
link: Facebook | My Links
Naghshe Jahan Sq / Esfehan / IRAN #iranelection on Twitpic
A photo of the crowd gathered in Tehran to protest alleged election fraud.
cyndeZu: Mohtashamipour, Head of Mousavi’s election protection committee: Election recount is useless, election must be declared VOID #IranElection
link: (43) iranelection - Twitter Search
