With all the usual Caveats

[pecunium]

Jesus Wept

I don't know what happened in the election in Iran. This stopped being about the election very shortly after the election.

My take on it: The Iranian people were willing to put up with a lot; the various controls on their lives, the censorships, the restricted choices in elections, so long as they believed in the elections.

They might get the reforms they wanted, as fast as they wanted, but they believed the system was; in its ways, fair.

The election, and the responses to it, put all that into a cocked hat. The reactions to their reaction was gasoline on the fire. I don't think the US has any way to affect it, at least not for the good. Our record of interference (right down to this congress, and the reiterations of calls for the overthrow of the gov't; which we did so well the last time we managed that, there), means we really ought to keep our hands off.

None of which eases the horror at what is going on there right now.

Comments

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

It's dreadful. It is so difficult to see this and know that so little we can constructively do about it, save bear witness. Anyone know how to set up one's website as an anonymous proxy server?

[sethg]

You need some rudimentary sysadmin skills and you need administrative control over a computer with a permanent connection to the Internet and a static IP address. Also, this should be a computer that you're not actually using for anything important, just in case its bandwidth gets overwhelmed with Iran traffic or the ruling powers in Iran find out about you and decide to take revenge.

If those caveats don't scare you off, there are some instructions here.

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'll review it tonight, see if this is doable.