FOR NEDA
Neda… a young woman brutally killed in the streets of Tehran during last years fraudulent elections in Iran. A young woman who dared to stand up for the basic rights every human deserves who paid the ultimate price. The life lost, shared with the world on YouTube, will not be in vain.
At Googoosh’s Nowruz concert in London earlier this year, she gave the most touching tribute to Neda. “I wish Neda was here with us,” she said. “Neda IS here with us!” Then a flash of V for victory peace signs flew up in the audience.
The real story is now being shared with the world and you can download the documentary FOR NEDA which has the first interviews her family has done since losing their daughter. Iran can try to jam the satellites broadcasting this and turn off people’s electricity, they can block the website distributing it, but they can’t silence her voice and her story.
This is for Neda.
Also, in case you want to see all the servers that were brought in to help handle a unprecedented demand for this documentary, they’re here. And yes, the green ethernet cords were on purpose.
Thank you to all who helped make this possible. Antony Thomas for being one of the most talented directors and putting this project together, Saeed who bravely and secretly filmed countless hours with Neda’s family in Iran, Atlas Networks for working so hard and being able to provide the capacity needed for digital distribution this large, and all the wonderful people at HBO for taking a chance.
22bahman Event Finder
I partnered up with the folks at United4Iran to build this Google Maps mashup to help people find out what 22bahman events will be going on near them. It’s a great way to quickly find out where you can show your support and help make a difference.
Want to get more involved? You can embed this on your site too, just copy and paste the following code and you’ll have a 22bahman map in a jiffy:
<iframe src='http://www.austinheap.com/assets/22bahman/embed.php' width='550' height='450' border='0'></iframe>
Update 1: Added 10 more events.
‘Millions’ Out in Support of Government in Iran? Think Again
Today, pro-government Iranians took to streets in Tehran and possibly other cities in a show of support for the Ahmadinejad government and for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A report by CNN spoke of hundreds of thousands of people in Tehran alone and perhaps thousands more in “Tabriz, Shiraz, Arak, Gilan and Sistan-Baluchestan province.”
According to CNN, protesters chanted slogans against Mir Hossein Mousavi, America, Britain, France, Israel and the Green Movement’s protests on Sunday – Ashura. However, the CNN report while accurate in most respects, failed to mention some very key facts about the protests; facts that would show the true nature of the protests.
For starters, the CNN report and some other media reports do not mention the fact that dozens of Buses chartered by the Iranian government ran non-stop from villages and suburbs around Tehran and other cities, bringing in government supporters in hordes to the protest venues. The buses began their operation the day before, ensuring the protest looked large enough.
These protesters were then later dispatched to their homes outside Tehran and other cities by the same buses. So what seemed like tens of thousands of Tehranis was in reality a mix of Tehranis and non-Tehranis brought in specifically for the purpose of fooling the world into believing that Tehran and other cities fully supports Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.
And while government-run media claimed millions and CNN claimed hundreds of thousands and that Tehran was ‘packed’ with protesters, independent analyses show that the protest in Tehran was composed of no more than 20,000 people.
Secondly, they fail to mention the fact that the protesters were offered free refreshments at the expense of the government to keep them there and to boost their morale. Their banners, slogans and even the declaration they released denouncing the opposition was written, prepared and handed over to them by the government. Protesters received all their material needs from the government from the minute they boarded the buses to the minute they got back home.
Even so, the enthusiasm that Green Movement supporters show when they are out protesting was non-existent during this protest. People had simply brought their whole families out for a day out on the streets after being prepped up by the government to counter the popular movement that is shaking the core of the Islamic Republic.
And even the government’s own media announced that there were no protests in some of the other large cities. Mashhad, the second largest city saw almost nothing. Neither did Isfahan, the third largest city. And there was no independent confirmation of protests from the cities that the government-run media reported.
Finally, there was no riot police, Basij or IRGC members out with batons, cables, pepper spray, tear gas and bullets to disperse the people or stop them from chanting and gathering. Compare this to the millions of people who marched onto streets in June or the hundreds of thousands that marched on Sunday in the face of brutal repression and a government ban on their protests and you will clearly see the desperate attempts by the Iranian government to make the world believe it has significant support among the populace.
If the government lifts bans on opposition protests, does not cut off telecommunication systems to disrupt planning, does not arrests hundreds and kill dozens, then we’ll see millions out on Iran’s streets every day.
The truth is, if the government did have support among the people, the crowds on Ashura would have been split between the Green Movement and the supporters of the Islamic Republic. On that day, it was an overwhelming show of support for reform and a clear rejection of the Islamic Republic – plain and simple. The ‘Tehranis’ the government showed the world today were huddled up in small pockets on that day or sitting at home in their villages, watching government propaganda on TV.
Protests like today’s may make the government feel a bit less insecure about its prospects of survival, but it is in no way going to change the resolve of the Iranian people or the perception of the government’s brutality and weakness in the minds of foreigners.
(This post originally appeared on The Daily NiteOwl by Josh Shahryar.)
How You Can Help: Iran 2.0 & Haystack
A lot of people have written asking how they can help without being a tech wizard. Well, here’s the answer: Donate.
In the past four weeks (three of which I took off of work) a lot has happened. First a tiny proxy list on Twitter, then a more organized effort called Proxyheap, and now Haystack, a completely custom protocol for beating the Iran governments filters.
While trying to finish up Haystack, I tried desperately to find an airline that would sponsor 4 flights (on very short notice, this Wednesday in fact) to no avail. I tried reaching out to contacts that worked there or at other companies who might be able to sponsor something on short notice, but it’s not coming together fast enough.
One Haystack launches, we’ll likely run out of bandwidth/servers from the people who have volunteered machines and resources quickly as the network grows, so this fund is also a pool for that. Here’s how the donations will break down:
1) Flights — I need to get four key players to San Francisco on Wednesday, this is expensive on such short notice but 24 hours feels like five weeks right now.
2) Servers and bandwidth for Haystack — as the network grows (and/or servers get blocked by the IRI) we’ll have to react fast and build in new capacity.
3) Organization costs — a non-profit is being setup right now to handle the censorship of Persians in Iran. The legal time has been donated by a great organization (more details soon) but there are various fees involved in making this happen.
4) Left over money — anything that is left over we will split evenly between Amnesty International and Tehran Bureau, two amazing organizations that have been instrumental in the fight for freedom.
We need your help Internet, thanks for reading.
Background: NY Times, SF Chronicle, BBC, The Rumpus
State of the Iran Proxies
So there’s been good news and bad news from launching proxyheap. (Btw, you can check it your proxy is working here.)
The good news? We have lots of support! The bad news? There’s a HUGE chunk of proxies misconfigured… rendering them useless. There’s also a bunch of proxies on un-reliable connections — we pass these out to people in Iran and when they’re down, it just makes things harder.
That said, special thanks to r3boot (the original author) and esr (who put all the pieces in place) for putting together a reliable Squid configuration file for those in Iran seeking unfiltered Internet access.
To quote from the config file:
# 0. Do this installation only on a non-essential machine, as the host may be
# targeted for serious denial-of-service or cracking attempts. For maximum
# security, run it inside a virtual machine.
#
# 1. Install squid on your system. You will need to be root for this.
# Under Ubuntu, do "apt-get install squid"
# Under RedHat, Fedora, and Centos do "yum install squid"
# Under Gentoo, do "emerge squid"
# Under OpenBSD, do "pkg_add PKG_PATH=ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/{version}/packages/i386/squid"
# Under FreeBSD, do this:
# wget http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/v2/2.7/squid-2.7.STABLE6.tar.gz;
# tar zxvf squid-2.7.STABLE6.tar.gz
# cd squid-2.7.STABLE6
# ./configure '--sysconfdir=/etc/squid' '--enable-storeio=diskd,ufs,aufs' '--enable-delay-pools' '--enable-pf-transparent' '--enable-ipf-transparent' '--disable-ident-lookups' '--enable-removal-policies'
# make
# make install
# Under NetBSD, do "cd /usr/ports/www/squid; make install clean"
#
# 2. Red Hat and CentOS only:
# * Edit the iptables via system-config-securitylevel. As root, run
# /usr/bin/system-config-securitylevel
# * Set SELinux: to either Permissive(slightly better) or Disabled.
# Note, this is a crude solution. Someone with more SELinux
# knowledge might be able to write a pass-through rule.
# * Now go into Customize. In Other Ports, set it like this:
# portnum:protocol (eg. 42342:tcp, 42343:tcp, 42344:tcp).
# Do this for all of your nonstandard ports. Hit OK->OK
#
# 3. Replace your squid configuration with this file. It is likely
# to be in /etc/squid/squid.conf, but could be in /etc/squid.conf
# as well.
#
# 4. Fix the "visible_hostname" line in /etc/squid.conf: it should declare
# your machine's hostname (i.e. the part following "userid@" in your
# terminal prompt)
#
# 5. Choose a nonstandard port number to listen on, or better yet
# about a dozen of them. Fix the http_port line in /etc/squid.conf.
# Add more lines as needed.
#
# 6. Specify the IP of a machine where you have login privilages on the
# "acl remote_test" liner below. You will use this to verify that your
# proxy is working, and can remove it afterwards.
#
# 7. Type "sudo adduser squid" and specify a password
#
# 8. Restart squid by typing: "/etc/init.d/squid restart"
#
# 9. Stop the service by typing "/etc/init.d/squid stop"
#
# 10. Test it in debug mode by typing "squid -z" (which creates the cache files)
#
# 11. Type "squid -NCd10" to test squid in debug mode and leave it running.
#
# 12. Open Firefox and type the URL localhost:3128 It will fail to retrieve a
# page, but at the bottom it should confirm that the error is generated
# by squid. (To be extra-sure, re-do this test using one of the
# non-standard ports you declared in step 4.)
#
# 13. Back at the Terminal type CTRL-C to cancel the debug mode
#
# 14. Start squid for real with "/etc/init.d/squid start". It will start
# automatically from now on.
#
# 15. If your squid host is sitting behind a hardware router with firewalling
# capability, you must set up port forwarding of all your nonstandard
# ports to the squid host machine. The procedure for this varies
# depending on your router, but is most likely to involves pointing your
# browser at 192.168.1.1 and navigating to a "Port Forwarding" page.
#
# 16. The easiest way to test that your proxy server is working is to
# use the proxy tester at austinheap.com:
#
# If it says "Fatal error: couldn't connect to host", then your
# squid instance probably isn't running; check for possible fatal
# error in the configuration parse, and if you don't see that make
# sure that you have correctly configured your ruter or firewall
# to pass through packets. If it says "Your proxy is not accepting
# connections from the validation servers.", you're at least
# reaching squid, but your allow/denies aren't right or you
# configuration file doesn't live where you think it does.
#
# 17. Register your proxy server with proxyheap at
#
# You'll have to do this once for each listener port you declared.
# You will receive an email notification from the proxyheap
# verification servers if all is well. Otherwise, email will tell you
# that your server could not be verified and drop the entry from the
# proxyyheap database. Once you are successfully registered,
# the Iranian revolutionaries can begin using your proxy with
# no further action required on your part.
#
# 18. Death threats have already been made against cooperating
# hackers. If you receive such a threat, report it to your local
# police immediately. Do not assume that your cooperation is unknown
# to the Iranian regime or their agents, and do not assume you will
# have warning if they act on their threats. If you are not already
# armed and prepared to defend yourself, fix both of these bugs.
I think this is a very good starting point for getting this effort organized and effective.
Connect 2.0
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