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June 09
If you don’t have a twitter account, it’s worth signing up just to follow #iranelection. Twitter is in many ways the only way news is getting out about the outrageous violence against the thousands of citizens protesting the recent election. I’m not one of those people who goes on and on about Twitter, but its ability to capture moment-by-moment news from people on the ground is astonishing. The revolution will not be televised….it will be tweeted. If you’re not on twitter, check out HuffPo’s liveblog.
There’s a really shocking photostream here.
On the other end of the spectrum, here’s some very good news–China had its first Gay Pride last week. Progress is creeping over the globe, little by little (Look! There’s my friends Megan and Nicole getting married in Shanghai. Congratulations!)
Posted by: Redhead Hope in Election 09, Gay for ... | Permalink
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5 Responses to “World Events”
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http://www.twitterfall.com is a good indicator of how much is really being said out there. People are setting up proxies all over Europe and the US (due to the government in Iran shutting down standard internet and proxy services) and railing against the normal “scheduled maintenance” that Twitter has every day.
It’s really spectacular what’s happening out there.
i must protest against your use of the term “outrageous violence against thousands of citizens.” as though this is something new. while i don’t agree with jana and dustin’s assessment that this crisis is somehow manufactured by western media, i gotta agree with her on one point: what did anyone expect? you got a hard-line conservative government that rose to power largely as a result of western economic aggression. iran was one of the most progressive countries in the region before the united states invaded neighboring iraq, and nearby afghanistan, plunging the region into a new period of chaos and violence. WE are guilty of OUTRAGEOUS VIOLENCE. WE are guilty of FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS. let’s tone down the rhetoric about iran until our own house is in order.
and in any case, this is no revolution. as far as i can tell, this is a mass protest by a relatively small segment of the population - urban youth and academics. granted, an impressive movement, but so far people like rafsanjani have said nothing. we’re not seeing pitched battle in the streets. looks like the authorities are largely trying to contain unrest rather than outright stop it. they’ll let things cool down while the council of guardians deliberates on a pre-ordained decision. maybe next election we’ll see some incremental political change in iran. like the incremental change we got here out of obama.
It’s not revolution, but it’s definitely pretty severe unrest. I don’t think two million people marching through a capital is “a small segment of the population.” It will die down, I think, but it certainly won’t blow over anytime soon.
If it were going to hit full-scale revolution, I think it would have by now. Even still, this is still a very profoundly important event in Iran and the Middle East as a whole.
Color revolution. That’s all I have to say.