TEHRAN, IRAN – In solidarity with the people of Iran, I am veering entirely off topic today. First off: the post title is an homage to the Gil Scott-Heron poem and song, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, more of a spoken-word with congas actually. That’s why it’s twitterised and not twittered or tweeted. A quick Google search reveals it has been put to use already, in multiple instances, so I certainly can’t claim any authorship. The green is a tribute to the leading opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi; it was (and I suppose still is to a certain extent) his campaign color. Green is a popular color amongst the protesters who wear it in tribute to him (read on). Okay.
In case you’ve been under a rock for the past six days or so, here’s a brief rundown in broad strokes. A presidential election was held last week in Iran. Mousavi had been leading in the polls. In some areas, he held a commanding lead. He is a reformist and is seen as much more pro-west than the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his popularity is reflective of the will of a great many Iranians. The election was on Friday. Ahmadinejad came away with a ridiculous margin of victory (not even close), as determined by the “election board”, the head of which he appointed. Iranians were aghast. At various points throughout the weekend, the government clamped down on phone and text messaging services and crippled the internet bandwidth. Twitter survived and thrived with its 140 character messages. Meet-ups were arranged, crowds formed. Each new day since has brought more protests and more protesters, from apparently all walks of life. Hundreds have been injured, many killed. Shouts of Allah-u-akbar (God is great!) have been heard coming from rooftops. The last time this happened was during the revolution of 1979.
I’ve been following the action on Andrew Sullivan’s blog. He has sunk his teeth into the subject and is hanging on like a junkyard dog. Since early Saturday at least. Look through his posts from the past week and you will see a multi-faceted story unfolding. He has drawn from tweets, bloggers, text messages, in addition to the (growing at last) mainstream media (MSM). Did you know that Iran has the third most bloggers in the world? I didn’t. I am guessing that the majority of them aren’t using their blog to tell silly stories with even sillier pictures. It has something to do with a state-controlled MSM. I saw the animation video below on Sullivan’s blog. It’s worth a view.
IRAN: A Nation Of Bloggers from ayrakus on Vimeo.
My friend, Kathy, (via Facebook) pointed me to a Boston Globe online photo blog about the Iran situation. You should definitely check it out, too.
Credits: The photo in the graphic is by OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images, and is from Saturday. I got it from the Boston Globe link above, but it’s also been on many other news sources including Andrew Sullivan’s blog.
