Persepolis 2.0

Persepolis 2.0 describes Iran’s post-election uprising and spreads the word about Iranians’ historic struggle against repression. Based on the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi and edited by two Iranians living in Shanghai.

http://www.spreadpersepolis.com/

SOS – geeks needed!

Update, June 16

Important! read #iranelection cyberwar guide for beginners

and How to setup a proxy for Iran citizens (for Windows!)

I’ve removed the gadget from my sidebar.

Original post

Iranian protesters are using any means possible to co-ordinate actions, gather and share intelligence, and provide the world with a constant stream of documented real-time information. They are twittering live from the clashes in the student halls and the protests on the street, posting images and videos of events as they unfold.

The Iranian authorities are doing all they can to block communications. SMS is blocked, websites hacked or firewalled, TV and Radio are obviously useless.

The protesters need constant supply of proxy servers. These servers are used to bypass the government blocks on Internet sites and messaging services. Of course, once the addresses of these servers are made public, its only a matter of time until the government blocks them. So its a constant race. There’s a chicken & egg problem here, in order to get the proxy server addresses you need to have an open communication channel.

Many people are using twitter to share the addresses of proxies as they emerge. What we need is a mechanism which would allow mass sharing of these numbers. Here’s a simple scenario: someone sets up a service which collects proxy server announcements from twitter and posts them on a site, with an outgoing RSS feed. that feed can then be syndicated and embedded in any site around the world, thus replicating the information and making it hard for the goverment to block it.

Should be easy for someone with the right skills & infrastructure, no?

UPDATE

I just posted this idea on twitter, and within 2 minutes got a response:

@yishaym Would this search/feed be useful to you:

iran proxy OR proxies – Twitter Search

#iranelection

thatalias

Yes! thanks – see my new sidebar.

Update 2

@PsiphonInc says:

#Psiphon proxy node for #iranelection
http://digg.com/u15jQN
No download Just click&surf w/out #censorship

also, see comment about TOR

#iranelection: the revolution will b twtrd.

99% of the time twitter is TWOTer (Total Waste of Time). Then comes #cairospeech or #iranelection.

The Daily Dish reports that the Iraninan regime has locked down all other communications, but Twitter is live.

Follow the events on #iranelection

And on
http://iran.twazzup.com/

renjie has a list of Twitterers posting from inside Iran (via Reddit)

http://twitter.com/alirezasha

http://twitter.com/Gita

http://twitter.com/iran09

http://twitter.com/iranbaan

http://twitter.com/IranRiggedElect

http://twitter.com/mahdi

http://twitter.com/mohamadreza

http://twitter.com/mousavi1388

http://twitter.com/Mynumberone1988

http://twitter.com/Shahrzadmo

http://twitter.com/smileofcrash

http://twitter.com/StopAhmadi

http://twitter.com/tehranelection

http://twitter.com/TwitPersia

http://twitter.com/Change_for_Iran

http://twitter.com/ramezanpour

http://twitter.com/Keyvan

http://twitter.com/KeyvanGheissari

http://twitter.com/y_shar

http://twitter.com/IranElection09

http://twitter.com/parhamdoustdar

follow them. show them that they are not alone.

Take it from the Dod

CCN - Collaborative campaign news thingy

The Dod is a master hacker and overall kewl kat who has been putting his skills in the service of good people for many years. Currently on his agenda is the campaign against biometric ID in Israel (Hebrew). As part of his support for that campaign, he has developed a very clever widget which allows a group of people to collaboratively update a news ticker and embed it on various sites. The ticker is very web2.0, with flickr galeries and all. RSS coming soon.

Here’s the use scenario. You’re running a campaign, and need to constantly collect and distribute news in real time. You have 0 budget but a good group of activists.

Old school: nominate a PR person, have everyone email her the news, she edits them and maintains a website.

New school: open a private room on friendfeed, everyone joins the room and picks up the bookmarklet, and starts pushing news to the room. Next, everyone picks up this widget and plug it into their blogs, sites, etc. Now the news is flowing from the people to the people by the people.

The Dod has promissed twitter feedout and other goodies, but will not say when. With a bit of nudging, he’s ported the widget, and its documentation, to English. Only bummer is that it doesn’t work on wordpress.com. It works fine on blogspot, or on hosted wordpress.

The original, as used by the Israeli human rights society's campaign against biometric ids, as seen on Bracha Goleshet

free soul food, or the Atheist food kitchen

Clay Shirky asks:

Would it be possible to run an atheist soup kitchen? (This isn’t an entirely idle question…)

Easy.

A soup kitchen needs some fixed assets (space, pots, plates), and a reliable supply of three resources:

• Perishable goods, aka groceries.
• Manpower
• Modest finances to cover operating costs.

Let’s assume we have an intitial investment to cover fixed costs (from municipalities, foundations, etc.). The main challenge is sustaining a flow of resources over time. So -

• Use
  http://www.freecycle.org/
  to allow businesses and individuals to contribute borderline dated consumables. There’s more going down the drains than you need, and you’d be helping the environment at the same time. Might need to liaise with the
  http://www.freecycle.org/
  guys to tweak their terms of service, but I don’t see a problem there.
• Use
  http://www.timebank.org.uk/
  to recruit and time-manage volunteers.
• Use facebook causes,
  http://www.justgiving.com/
  and similar to raise money. You can also use these and other social-net’ing tools to recruit and promote.

Now, for some administrative health:

• Use a wiki (such as wikia or google sites) to share organisational knowledge among kitchens.
• Maintain a public facing blog, with at least 2 posts a day: one informational, one opinion.
• Use google app engine to construct and manage your operations database.
• Use ZohoCRM to manage supply chains.
• List locations of your soup kitchens on
  http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter
  

And some PR:

• Get the right people to blog about you.
• Get some good viral videos out there on youtube.
• Publish a constant flow of heart-warming stories of champion volonteers and some heart-breaking stories of your clients.

Most important:

Make a habit of innovation. Make your core service 5% more eficient each year, and use the residue to develop new services.

By the way, here in the civilised world we have an atheist soup kitchen, its called a welfare state. Not as streamlined, not as sexy, but it does keep people from freezing in the streets.

vote for LabourStart2.0

Eric Lee has applied for $80,000 from Knight News Challenge to upgrade LabourStart. LabourStart is

An online news service maintained by a global network of volunteers which aims to serve the international trade union movement by collecting and disseminating information — and by assisting unions in campaigning and other ways.

Its features include daily labour news links in more than 20 languages and a news syndication service used by more than over 700 trade union websites. News is collected from mainstream, trade union, and alternative news sources by a network of over 500 volunteer correspondents based on every continent.

Eric has been running it on a shoestring, and he thinks its time to take it to the next level. I think he deserves your vote.

Listen to Eric Lee

Finally. Someone says it out loud. Its not about the platform, the flash, the wiz, the bang. Its about getting unions – or any action group for that matter – to own their site. Owning it just like they own their placards and paint.
SO if they want a blog, give them a blog. If they want a FB page (yuck) let them have it, as long as they make it themselves.

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Wellington Chibebe and Lovemore Matombo need your face

This just in from John Wood and Derek Blackadder:

Subject: Your mugshot could make a difference!

Hi everyone!

Derek and I would like you to send us a photo of yourself.

We want it as the two leaders of the Zimbabwean unions, Wellington Chibebe and Lovemore Matombo were arrested for talking about the political situation in Zimbabwe on May Day and are going to be tried for ‘spreading falsehoods prejudicial to the state’ this coming Monday.

The idea is of course to shut them up over the course of the re-run elections. They are out on bail, but are prevented from appearing in public or making public statements, in contravention of their human rights, and they’re being very brave in going voluntarily into court next week even though they are no strangers to being really badly beaten up in police custody.

There are demos being called now in a number of countries (inc the UK) on Monday, and to help get some more attention to their case, we are trying to make a giant photo mosaic portrait of them, made up of supporters’ photos from all around the world. So we have only 2 days to get as many mugshot photographs as possible.

Your photo would end up 1 inch square on a big mosaic at the London demo, and we’ll be using the image for as much media and publicity as we can get with it. The idea is that if they are being prohibited from appearing in public, international solidarity from thousands of people around the world can make them “appear” around the world on Monday.

If you’d like to support a fairer environment for the coming elections in Zimbabwe, please help out by sending a mugshot photo of yourself to zim@tuc.org.uk or MMS it to 07546 229055, and circulating this to friends or colleagues who you think might be willing to help out too.

Best wishes and many thanks for helping!  :)
John

Read more on the TUC site

digg

trash mob

Uri Blau reports for Ha’aretz about a group of 80 or so teenagers who used ICQ and SMS to meet at the mall in Pisgat Ze’ev with the explicit intent of lynching a few Arabs and to scare others away from the mall.

It would have been difficult to choose a more cynical date on which to send out such a message: Wednesday, April 30, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Dozens of boys arrived at the meeting place in the Pisgat Ze’ev shopping mall. They streamed in from all parts of the capital, some on foot, some by bus and some driven in by parents. Equipped with knives, sticks and clubs, they all had one purpose: to do harm to Arabs for being Arabs.

(ht The Traveller Within)

Such an incident says nothing about Israel as a state or as a society. Every human group has its dark elements. As for the tools they used to organise their attrocious initiative – IQC, SMS, Twitter – they are not good nor bad. They can be used to promote human rights as well as they can be used to oppress them.

But the ease of organisation does change the scene: Clay Shirky often mentions flash mobs as an example of the positive impact technology has on the power of people to self-organize. And yes, I agree. Technology empowers individuals and communities. Which means we each, individually and collectively, have a greater responsibility.

We do not need to look to institutions to lead change, we can do it ourself. But we can no longer trust institutions to direct change. Here comes everybody, the good and the bad. There are no inocent by-standers: inaction is complaisance.

The Cute Cat Theory

Ethan Zuckerman’s notes from his talk at ETech. Including pictures of cats, youtube freedom of speech virals, government monitoring googlemap mashups, and a lot of stuff to think about – whether you’re a political activists, technological startupist, or just want LOLCats to rul da wrrld.

Read it. save it. spread the word.

(also on the WorldChanging blog)

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