How can American's support the Iranians during this difficult time?

I wish I knew.

…while avoiding any more hostility from other countries for trying to help out? No way to do it. Anything we do will be viewed as trying to manipulate a sovereign power and will backlash. Screw ‘em and defend ourselves when they turn on us.

Maybe the question should be:

Should the Americans support the Iranians during this time of post-election disgruntlement?

I changed my location and timezone to Tehran’s on Twitter to try and jam up the search by the Iranian government for the twitterers actually from Tehran, but I’m not sure if that really will help.

There’s only so much average people can do in these situations without violating some other country’s self-determination, I think. One can protest, but other than that, there’s very little that can be done. It’s up to the people living there to make the changes they want. But If nothing else, perhaps the support of the rest of the world will encourage them to keep going.

The best American computer hackers should work closely with the best Iranian computer hackers to bypass any restrictions imposed by the illegitimate Iranian government.

Think of this: what is quiet ol’ Russia doing in the meanwhile .. ?
Is the big Korea thing just a face up – pretext?
Is Iran truly going to be a threat to itself, apart from the rest of the globe?
How much do we really know of all the diplomatic treaties active stealthily, away from the curious and ignorant eyes and ears of the people?
How much can we really find out through massively filtered broadcasting networks..?
Are we virtually invited to know, or to remain ignorant.

p.s.
Why didn’t you spell ’ Iranians ’ with an apostrophe as well ?

@Lisbeth X-P

I agree with @ru2bz46. Anything we do to support the protesters will fortify the case against the reformists. Obama has done everything he can by condemning the violence without siding with Mousavi. Sadly, this is their battle to fight.

I think there’s been more than enough US meddling in Iran affairs over the past 40 years.

Prayer. Lots of prayer. Or good, positive, hopefilled thoughts. Iranians are suffering tonight.

The Twitter thing is a good, practical way to help, even though it’s of limited use.

A more useful thing you can do, if you know about computers, is to set up a proxy server so Iranians can bypass their government’s internet blackout.

This blog has instructions (and make sure you read some other blog entries on there that detail how to do it for Macs as well as additional safeguard you should take). Contact the guy running the blog and he’ll get your proxy to Iranians.

For my part, I couldn’t figure out how to do this. So another way to help would be to contact me and explain how the hell to do the following stuff on a Squid config file.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic is right. The US has been responsible for the ascension of the Ayatolla via the inept meddling of our spy agency. We need to stay the hell away from this and let the Iranians sort out their own problems. If the change doesn’t come from within, it won’t be change.

I agree that there has been more than enough U.S. meddling, so I would tread gingerly. But I live in L.A., where I know a many Iranian-Americans, most of whom are great people, so I feel very anxious about this issue. We can be supportive of the protestors and hope and pray.

I feel very frustrated not to be able to do more.

Meddling can be okay and it doesn’t necessarily mean other countries have to be invaded.

@mattbrowne How can meddling be okay? It’s another country moving in to ‘solve’ another country’s problems. Look at the meddling that America has done to the Middle East. Sure, it got rid of the governments. America did a stellar job at that. Unfortunately, it failed miserably in clearing up and this had led to a larger headache for America itself.

Meddling is. We can make any value judgment we want. I think that, while it may have had beneficial effects, say in the former Yugoslavia (although the jury is out on that) or in Japan and Germany after WWII, it has far too often had an impact the opposite of what was intended. I maintain that no one knows how to “meddle” well, and it is a matter of pure luck if it is done with beneficial effect. Well, maybe not luck, for if government actually paid attention to what experts say, they might do a better job. However, meddling is almost always driven by ideology rather than science, and thus, when it works, it as pure luck.

@Saturated_Brain – Meddling occurs because people care about other people. Now I’m convinced that in almost all cases war is the wrong choice when it comes to meddling (there are exceptions). I’m also against forcing democracy down someone’s throat. And of course there are also cases where less extreme forms meddling was counterproductive. However, very often world publicity can save people’s lives. Aung San Suu Kyi – who is a Nobel Prize winner from Burma – might be dead if the rest of the world stopped meddling. I truly think the majority of educated people in Iran hope that other countries show solidarity and meddle. Not all meddling is driven by ideology.

The obama approach, ignore it, does not seem to work. I bet not ignoring it might be productive.