One Hundred Forty Characters To Revolution In Iran.

A week ago I was at a campaigns and technology conference in Washington DC. We were learning about the importance of social networking technology in politics.  While we discussed the various uses that could and should be made of the facebook, blogs and twitter, we were discussing it in terms being successful in political campaigns.

 

For those unaware of what Twitter is, think of it as a short hand form of blogging which is limited to 140 characters per communication.  The Twitters are sent out to all those who have chosen to follow what you twitter about. 

 

Our discussions at the conference were about whether this type of communication had a relevance to political campaigns and if so how best to use this new communication tool.  Some, mostly those who already use Twitter were enthusiastic about the prospects for its usefulness and those who don’t did not understand how it could be anything more than a passing fad. 

 

Some of those I overheard discuss Twitter during the break between sessions derided the idea of sending messages of 140 characters or less, as being meaningless dribble about mundane activities, such as what someone was eating for lunch or when they were going to the bathroom.  (The actual phraseology used was a little more in the vernacular of

the street) One of the older participants likened twitter to a children’s toy for adults.

 

One week later, and Twitter can no longer be seen as trivial.  A revolution is being born in Iran through a string of uncensored 140 character messages. 

 

While the Iranian Regime has been successful in stopping the reporters from around the world from reporting live from Iran, they have been unsuccessful in their efforts to shut down Facebook, Twitter and other forms of uncensored electronic communications. 

 

Two thirds of Iran’s 70 million people are under the age of 30. Many of those taking to the streets are students. The students and the educated population of Tehran and elsewhere in Iran, are not only using Twitter to communicate with one another and to coordinate their protests they are sending out reports of their efforts to the world. 

 

The video being put up on You Tube is interesting, in that, it is from the perspective of those involved, not the perspective of  the professional media from some outside country interpreting what the rest of the world should know.  Those protesting or capturing the events of each day are uploading them to the World Wide Web so all of us can see what the Totalitarian Theocracy is doing to subjugate it’s people. 

 

This is a movement not only for freedom from theocratic rule but for equality of woman in Iranian society.  The Supreme Ruler of Iran just gave a speech in which he forbid further protests.  The protests are continuing despite the Iranian government’s best efforts to suppress them. The Chinese, North Korean, and other totalitarian governments are surely taking note of the power of these children’s toys.

 

The question in the coming days will be whether the Iranian military is going to be willing to use force against their brothers, sisters and children. At some point the Military will have to choose whether to use force or restraint. They have started to arrest those students who have been taken to the hospitals and are now raiding homes in the dead of night to take people away.

 

Hopefully some in the military will be following their friends and or family on twitter and will choose Democracy and Freedom for the future of the Persian people.