At least this is the story as we have been able to figure it out.

Today in Iran Twitter is proving its value as an instant communication and broadcast medium for dissidents in Tehran. Mainstream media sources have nearly ignored recent significant events in Iran, (CNN, BBC Persia, and the NY Times have reportedly covered it to some degree but MSN, Fox, the Washington Post and others are said to have had only perfunctory coverage). A handful of dissidents and students in Tehran are managing fill the gap, however, posting information to Twitter from the ground as events unfold. Some are keeping up 20–30 tweets/hour or better, and their posts are being re-tweeted around the world in realtime. A live search of the #IranElections hashtag on Twitter returns 30 to 80 posts a minute from people on the ground in Iran and discussing the events around the world.

Photos and video are coming from the ground as well. BBC Persia has some live footage of the march, going on its fifth hour in Tehran. One user has been posting links to most of the TwitPic photos going up from the march itself, while ________ (a dissident on the ground) and _________ (a student at Tehran University) posted links earlier to two Farsi-language blogs with photos of the results of the university siege at http://25khordad.wordpress.com/ and http://entesabat88.persianblog.ir/. A video walk-through of a wrecked dorm at Tehran University can be found on Youtube here. Photos of police chasing people and a protester protecting a fallen riot cop are surfacing, as well as a photo showing that Mousavi is indeed in the crowd today, contrary to some reports. A video of a chanting crowd streaming down a major avenue in Tehran will give you goosebumps. Twitpipe and Twitcaps give you live streams of  twitter posts and images, respectively, relating to the Iranian Elections. Twitter and the Internet are changing the way the world works.

Some in the blogosphere stateside are doing a good job translating and syndicating the stream coming out of Iran. Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish is live-blogging the Iranian events. He has an excellent rundown of the weekend’s news here, and a particularly haunting post of photos and tweets from the inside here. FiveThirtyEight has an interesting discussion of why exactly the reported election results are statistically hard to believe. And I and thousands of other Twitter users are retweeting and distributing the highlights of the information stream to our followers.

Please pray for Christians and dissidents in Iran–this is a very dangerous situation. Some have already died, and this could turn into a massacre at a moment’s notice. It is a great opportunity though, as well, for a critical change in government to occur in Iran, one of the most closed countries on earth to democracy and the gospel. The newest reports on Twitter are saying that violence is ramping back up after twilight, and the streets are no longer safe. The internet and mobile networks are a tenuous link in a closed country, and we know that the government is actively trying to shut down these information leaks. Pray for freedom for this country, and for the continued health of those trying to let the world know what is happening!

John Calvin Young

Late breaking: Youtube channel of videos from Tehran today at http://www.youtube.com/user/iran09twitter

UPDATE: I can no longer distribute usernames of trusted sources on Twitter, as the government is using cyberwarfare tactics to track down and threaten, arrest, or do worse to those trying to get information out of the country. Don’t retweet raw information from the hashtag stream–there are known fake users posting disinformation for publicity or to muddy the waters. Stay with trusted sources–watch mine and other twitter streams known to use trusted sources, and read any IR twitterers carefully, checking back over their update history for consistency and opposition to the government. The most polemic are not necessarily the most accurate. I regret that the situation has reached that point, but security now demands a different level of behavior. Some things you can do: IR twitterers are asking that users outside the country switch their location and time zone to Tehran (+3:30 GMT) to swell the numbers of “Tehran” twitterers and make the government’s search harder. Also, if you do find a trustworthy source, don’t RT indiscriminately with the username–use “RT from Iran”. These users are more concerned about their lives than about proper credit. An excellent article on the cyberwarfare going on and what you can do is posted at http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for-i.html.  To paraphrase another user discussing security, remember it’s not a game or an internet meme to Iranian twitterers…it doesn’t close when they shut down TweetDeck or sign out of their browser. Many are hunkered down in safe houses or ruined buildings around Tehran, hoping to live out the night. Read, RT, reply, discuss to your heart’s content, but don’t be the one that exposes these brave members of the opposition to the government!

We praise God for his mercy in bringing her safe to term healthy and beautiful after the several scares we had during the pregnancy. Both mother and baby are doing fine, and little Katherine is incredibly cute, which you can see for yourself at the link below.

Announcing…Katherine Luther Young! An album of my newborn sister Katherine at less than a week old! 11 photos

Big brother to 7 now,
John Calvin Young

At long last, it is time to announce our latest project–“Hitler’s Law”! It will be a 7-minute “tactical” short drama targeted at the current deplorable struggle between the German government and Christian parents over the control of their children’s education. We hope to shoot during the month of August, 2008, and complete postproduction in time to submit it to the 2009 San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.

The History

Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party passed a series of “cultural purity” laws between 1937 and 1939. Among these were laws specifically mandating state-run public instruction for all children so as to prevent the formation of so-called “parallel societies”. The whole purpose was to force a homogeneous culture in Germany. The Nazi policy-makers understood that to influence the next generation, they had to control the children.

The scary thing is that these laws did not quietly go away. Although the majority of the Nazis’ policies were summarily ended with the unconditional surrender of the Reich in May 1945, many of these measures stayed on the books. Recently this particular law has been revived by the government as part of their program to stop the loss of their unique heritage. Christian homeschool families have been especially hard-hit. Many families have fled to Austria with only the clothes on their backs, mere hours ahead of the police, just as they did in Hitler’s day. Homeschool parents have been fined, placed in prison, their property and children confiscated for trying to teach their children at home. One family has even had to flee Europe for Canada to escape the long arm of the government, which in the EU can even reach them outside of Germany’s sovereign borders. The situation is very bad in Germany, and getting worse. We who enjoy freedom in the United States need to pray for our brethren in Germany, who still suffer under Hitler’s Law.

You can read our news alert blog at http://hitlerslaw.blogspot.com/, and feel free to send news items to news@hitlerslaw.com.

The Film

Hitler’s Law is the newest short project of Young Christian Studios. The story follows Herr & Frau Traugott, German parents in the summer of 1938 who must make a painful decision when the local SS officer demands their children be placed in the state schools. Will they cave to the officer’s demands and place their children in the schools, possibly losing their hearts forever? Or will they flee in the night from a town and a house where their family has lived for two hundred years with the clothes on their backs and nothing else? They have only a few short hours to decide…

The film then makes the connection to the present day, where the same laws designed to promote a homogenous society in Nazi Germany are being used to force Christian parents to place their children in the state schools. We are hoping that this short film will wake up American Christians and homeschoolers to the terrible plight of their brethren in Germany and will help to bring an outcry of public opinion against Germany’s restrictive education policies.

To complete this project, we need help in every area: funding, equipment, casting, costumes, locations, and post-production. If you live in the Triangle area of North Carolina or even if you don’t, and are interested in assisting us with this project, please email us at producer@hitlerslaw.com.

We will have a production blog up soon, Lord willing. In the meanwhile, you can read the initial draft of the script at http://youngchristianstudios.com/hitlerslaw_r1.pdf. The upcoming R3 draft will include certain changes, such as conversion of the “Priest” character to Lutheran minister, but I can’t get that draft up until I am able to get back into my laptop, which is having trouble.

Please pray for us, even if you can’t help with this project. We have an extremely tight time schedule to shoot it in, and it’s going to be a challenge. We believe it’s a story that really needs to be told, but usually that means that there will be a struggle to complete it.

In His Service,
John Calvin Young
Writer/Director/Producer, Hitler’s Law

Young’s Corollary for Publicly Promoted Announcements: If a definite time for an announcement or a release is made, events will conspire to make it ludicrous or plainly impossible to try to meet the deadline.

Yes, I am here. I am not dead. I am not even dead tired. But there will be no announcement tonight. I registered the domain, I picked the images for the splash screen. I even opened Photoshop and began the layout. That’s when my iffy-but-working AC power supply for my laptop decided to fail, apparently irreparably.

30 minutes of fiddling later–still not working. No problem! Web work is by definition portable–I’ll just move over to one of the other computers. (BTW, you don’t begin to appreciate something like Adobe Photoshop until you have had it and suddenly don’t.) So I fired up the trusty-and-free GIMP to finish the job and suddenly it crashes. With an unexplainable error. I download and reinstall GTK+ and GIMP 2.4.6. Twice. With no better results.

Rather than attempting to do it with Microsoft Paint, I decided to have another go at fixing the laptop. 45 minutes, three rubber bands, a piece of aluminum foil and a Norton Anthology of American Literature later, the power blinks on!

Joyfully I power up the laptop, open PS, and am importing my images when it decides to quit. Going back once more to GIMP, I reinstall it again, witness it crash AGAIN, and seized by some kind of desperation, begin disabling any .dll in my system32 folder that comes up with an error message. Finally, at 11:58, I belatedly conclude that apparently I am not to get this announcement out before midnight.

That is the comfort of being a Calvinist–the Lord must have a purpose of some sort behind this–who knows, possibly forcing me to get some sleep so I can get up and get to work in the morning. So I shall. The announcement will come tomorrow or the next day when the Lord enables me to get my electronic world put back together. Apparently it is also time to buy a new AC adapter…

Until then, a teaser…
What occurred on July 6th, 1938 that would have repercussions for the next 70 years? Hint: it’s been in the international news a lot lately.

In His Service,
John Calvin Young

Hint: it’s about a new project. It won’t be a big one in budget, but anticipate larger-than-average ripples in the pond.

Until tomorrow…

In His Service,
John Calvin Young