Judge Judy? Just because I asked them if they were going to do what I sat around waiting for them to do yesterday? The fixer was a cool though. He fixed my windshield in record time.

On to Iran:

I tend to look at this whole thing, twitter thing, a little differently than most people I suppose. I was pleased to find this via twitter this afternoon. America’s Iranian Twitter Revolution. Some valid points, worth reading.

It was a little annoying to see some of the tweets about this potential revolution. Why? Because I got the impression, after following some of the links to the twit’s blogs, that the bloggers (not all but a majority) appeared to know little if anything about Iran, except possibly where it is, that we don’t want them to have nuclear weapons because they were Islamic terrorists out to nuke Israel and us off the face of the earth. It also boggles my mind, with health care and education, not to mention the economy, in such a state, that unless it’s a revolution in some far away place, something we really shouldn’t have anything to do with ( except publish as many of the photos and real Iranian tweets as possible), it’s not twit worthy. Unlike the major media, who don’t cover health care and education because those that work for major media have both, twitterer’s tend to jump on whatever comes their way as long as it’s easy and takes only a click of a finger or two, making far off revolutions enticing and anything else unlikely.

Be that as it may I found that some of the bloggers, those with no previous knowledge of Iran, it’s history or our policy history with Iran, had over the last week educated themselves, one going far back into ancient history and then going forward, if in a cursory manner, and that really is not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.

For now there is some decent coverage from the major media NYT and BBC, and bless Andrew Sullivan’s little heart, he is really in to this.

Doug is waxing poetic on this in Spoiling the saga .
And my god I think Pia is on twitter. I now have to find her.

Shirin Ebadi is going to town. Here are a few links, if you haven’t read them already.

An interesting interview with Shirin Ebadi in may of 2006

Shirin Ebadi agrees with Obama

Iran’s Human Rights Activists Being Arrested, Nobel Prize Winner Tells NPR

Void the Elections or Risk Violence

We may be innovative, but they are brave.

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Though there are probably a lot of bloggers each of us would like to muzzle, in the United States, unless we are slanderers, posting libelous content, or write on a subject in which we have known expertise — making our opinion in certain cases a basis for litigation — what we write is not going to land us in jail. (Though in Maryland it might get you put on a list of suspected terrorists)

With a few exceptions we aren’t really too worried about that knock at the door. They aren’t going to come and take us away for what we write. Not the case around the world where journalists, bloggers, and on line journalists sometimes face incarceration for what they report, draw, or opine about.

In December The Committee to Protect Journalist found the percent of jailed journalist that were “online” journalists had increased significantly.
Bloggers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Iran, and Cuba, just to name a few, have been jailed or muzzled. Not even mentioning China here, a country whose crack-down on free speech is well known.

An Iranian blogger died in prison on March 18th. Thanks to Global Voices, where the story seemed to break, with follow up from Reporters without Borders and the recently reactivated Committee to Protect Bloggers, we heard about it quickly. The story was also picked up a day later by The Lede blog, in the NYT.

Iranian blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi was given a two year prison sentence in December for “insulting” Iranian religious leaders. By his own account he was a cultural blogger not a political blogger, he was incarcerated in Tehran’s “notorious Evin prison for insulting religious leaders”. How he died isn’t perfectly clear at this time, though the Iranian official version seems to be suicide, that seems to be in dispute.

For those of us who are not yet in fear of imprisonment for our thoughts, pictures and beliefs, may it always be that way. We should pay homage to, or at least consider, those who do this — thing we call blogging — at a greater risk to themselves than we will ever (hopefully) know.

He is one of us.

A blogger.

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