A Peek into a Mind

This is just amazing. Twitter had a necessary maintenance scheduled for this evening, when they had to take the service down for a few hours. However, since twitter is one of the only channels of communication between Iran and the outside world, people had started tweeting, asking Twitter to wait with the maintenance.

Surprisingly enough – Twitter had heard and agreed!

Down Time Rescheduled

A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide—we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.

It’s amazing how small amount of attention the traditional media is giving to this story in Iran. For far less than that the world media been plastering Israel for days. I understand reporting from Iran is problematic, but hey, that’s where the news are, so it’s your job to be there!

I really hope the Iranians won’t fail here. From Israel perspective maybe Ahmadinejad is better than Mousavi, since both will continue towards nuclear power and both are against Israel – only Ahmadinejad is blunt about it, which is good for us. Still, I cannon but support the young people in Iran who have been living under strict regime which had just completely destroyed any false feeling of justice and freedom.

I can’t do much to help them (and I’m sure they wouldn’t want me to, being from ‘The Small Satan’), but I can try a little to rise awareness and keep them in the headlines.

#CNNfail is not only CNN. I’d say all western governments so far had been proven very impotent. The only excuse is if they actually do try to do some secret operations to help the protesters.

What’s going on in Iran right now is HOPE, where none was before. It’s not much but it’s there and we have a responsibility to keep it alive. There are things beyond the Israeli-Arab conflict, and they include justice. If the ‘official world’ doesn’t pick that up, then we bloggers/twitters/real people of the world must do it.

Andrew Sullivan reports from twitter with many unofficial news and defenitly the place to visit for up to date news, Nico Pitney has a live blogging on the events, an interesting piece by Gary entitled Iran’s political coup is well worth reading.

Leave more links in the comments for places which update regularly. And again, best place at all time is #iranelection.

From twitter:

RT @jimsciuttoabc #iranelection Ahmadinejad supporters in main square, we’ve seen Mousavi supporters on the way.

Just found this list of good twitters to follow from Tehran:

Been following these people all day:

[...took this off to not let Iranian Intelligence track these twitter users down...]

I’m posting here some videos uploaded to YouTube from phones and other places in Iran. If you know of any other, please leave a link in the comments.

Continue reading ‘Tehran riots – Videos’

Wow. I didn’t anticipate that. The Iranians took it seriously this time, there are widespread violent riots, cars smashed, fire started in garbage bins and other places. The media notes it’s the worst violence since the Islamic Revolution, which means it’s SERIOUSLY big.

Supporters of Mousavi are enraged by the blunt faking of the elections but the theocratic regime and people of Ahmadinejad.

So far Mousavi seems to take this rage to the street and doesn’t go down without fighting. He accused the religious leadership they are doing nothing when the people expect them to react (like the people don’t know they’re the ones behind this). This can turn real ugly real fast.

All I can say is that I admire the Iranian people that in spite of the police state they are living in, they have the courage to stand out and fight. Respect.

Update, Midnight
If there was a tiny bit of impression that Iran isn’t a dictatorship after fixing the elections, it has now gone completely. In an effort to contain the rage of the young, the theocratic regime has taken some radical steps – The cellular networks were shut down in most of the country, text messages and been completely halted, heavy censorship on the internet was issued, blocking Facebook, Twitter, sites of international news agencies and opposition parties in Iran, including the sites of Mousavi and the other 2 candidates for presidency. The country was always a dictatorship of the Mullas, but today it exposed her true face bluntly, without even a small mask. That regime must be topple.

Notes:
If you want to follow on this, try twitter search tags #iranelection and #mousavi. (thanks Lisa!) I personally prefer to work with Seesmic Desktop or Tweetdeck, both free.

Continue reading ‘Serious Riots in Iran, 3 dead’

Couldn’t stay with Interior design posts for too long before posting political issues, now could I?

I’ve watched the election in Iran with a bit of interest, though not too much. I figured Ahmadinejad is going to win, and besides, who cares who the president is when the real decisions are always made by the non-elected theocrats, anyway?

Well, seems the Iranian people care. The Israeli, US and European media is reporting big demonstration in Tehran after Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s rival, claimed his loss is a result of a big-scale, state-sponsored forgery.

The reports are of the possibly the biggest demonstrations in the past decade, violent clashes with the riot police are also reported. The government apparently also stopped all cellphone’s text messaging services in the country in an attempt to prevent people from organizing.

Here is a video which seems to be taken in Tehran today, showing the demonstrations:

More videos:

Continue reading ‘Iran: Violent Demonstrations in Tehran over final election results’