Iranian Bloggers: The World's Only Eyes and Ears

Iran / today / Tehran #IranElection on Twitpic
In the wake of contested election results and banned opposition rallies in Iran, the eyes and ears of the world are focused on the Islamic Republic. However, there isn't much to see or hear.

According to this morning's Guardian, Iranian authorities have successfully blocked television, radio and cell phone signals by generating interference. But communication has not been cut completely. Although the Islamic Republic still controls much of the Internet infrastructure and has installed one of the world's most sophisticated filtering systems, blocking the Internet is proving more problematic for Iranian authorities.

By using proxies or alternate pathways, savvy Internet users are sidestepping state-monitored gateways. Information on open proxies is being exchanged on Twitter to give Iranians full access to the Internet. I awoke early this morning to see many proxies posted on the micro-blogging site. It felt strange to imagine that Iranian authorities were there with me blocking these proxies as soon as they were made available.

As reported on CNN this morning, Twitter is how news of the upheaval is spreading to the rest of the world. In fact, at this moment, the Guardian's Iranian Election Crisis LIVE blog is following Mousavi1388 for its up-to-the-minute coverage.

I have been following persiankiwi all morning, as has a Canadian television network (CTV), which reportedly requested an interview. This individual has been giving riveting realtime coverage of today's rally in Teheran. Here is a summary of some of this morning's tweets:


The picture in the above right-hand corner of today's rally is courtesy of twitpics.com. It was posted by Madyar, another Iranian blogger I am following on Twitter.

If you would like join the many others leaving words of encouragement for these gutsy bloggers, then click here.

For some great pictures of the unrest in Teheran, click here.

Sources:
persiankiwi (Twitter)
Madyar (Twitter)
Change_for_Iran (source confirmed to be in Iran by Evan Williams, Twitter CEO)
www.twitter.com
The Guardian
CNN

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