On a personal note
I'm a little ashamed to say that the election fallout in Iran is the first world crisis in my lifetime to really touch me. I mean, there was 9/11, and the tsunami, and Katrina, and Darfur, but it all seemed distant. (9/11 in particular because I was home with a terrible head cold that day, and somehow hadn't really heard of the world trade center before it happened. I don't know.) Even though I have relatives in Louisiana, once we heard that they made it out okay, Katrina went back to being something terrible that was happening somewhere not-here. What it came down to was--what could I do that would actually make a difference? There's donating. My parents always seem to give something, and I'm a poor student (lately more than ever). Some friends went down to New Orleans for an alternative spring break building houses. Besides having a small frame to begin with, illness has made me an Epic Weakling, so that was out too.
Then came this weekend. Some of the battles are actually being fought on the grounds of a place I frequent, and it's Twitter. Don't laugh-- no one expected Twitter to have this use, but it's filling a void no one knew was there. People in Tehran are using to keep in touch when the phone networks are shut down, and organize rallies, and get the word out about what's happening when all the foreign journalists have been kicked out. The government is using tweets from Tehran to find the tweeters and arrest them. The US government even asked Twitter to delay its scheduled maintenance because it plays such a key role. The Irani government waited for the new downtime and then Anyway-- they're asking for retweets from inside Iran, minus the names, to get the word out and pull a little attention away from the people actually there. I thought, hey, I've got a twitter (it's @arrows_for_pens in case you were wondering). So I started retweeting. Twitter: it's the associated press of the future.
Last I checked I had 2 followers, both friends of mine. Now I have 35. I'm a little bit terrified of becoming twitter famous.
Granted, some of those probably found me when I tweeted about the book-banning controversy and linked Maureen Johnson and the National Coalition Against Censorship. But is that better? There are two topics. And I'm feeling responsible about what I tweet, which is just bizarre.
What happened:
There was an election. It seems to have been stolen, and not even very carefully. See Iran Election Fraud: 5 Reasons to Doubt the Results by our own John Green (his blog) of the (in)famous Vlogbrothers. Protesters took to the streets, and were met by the army and militia. It's not good times. Green Briefs are written each day making something concise out of the masses of tweets. See more elsewhere.
In conclusion:
1) go get a twitter. Honestly. It won't bite, and you don't have to follow Miley Cyrus if you don't want to. Make sure to set your location to Tehran and time zone to GMT+3:30
2) Click here to give your icon a green overlay in support of the protesters.
3) Follow @ncacensorship to mess with a book-banner's day, and people like @protesterhelp, @austinheap, and @puravidaus. And me, if you must. Unsafe to post the names of people actually in Iran, sorry. If you are following one of them, NEVER REPOST THEIR NAME. People have already died because of unsafe follow activities.
4) Cyberwar instructions here. More here.
5) Set up an anonymous IP for Iranians if you are so inclined: instructions here.
6) be wary of bad info - the Irani government is functioning as a rumour mill in order to destabilize the Mousavi supporters (those are debunked as quickly as possible,) and general bullsh*t. I myself have already been approached by a sketch representative of "the British press". Haha.
7) Retweet happenings inside Iran! If your source is there, make sure to leave out their name and reword the tweet. If not, it doesn't matter so much. Use the hash tags #iranelection and #GR88.
That's all I got for now. Restarting my comp so I can has anon ip proxy of my very own.
(up to 36 followers since I started typing. Wow.)