Twenty years ago I knew a lot of Persians. Bay area communist Pahlavi-exiled Persians. Los Angeles royalist Khomeini-exiled Persians. I knew a lot about Persian politics. A lot.
Today I know the operator of the Iran Network Information Center.
Today's Al-Jazeera:
Health Minister Massoud Pezeshkian claimed that in Bam, a city of 90,000 people "65 to 70 percent of the population have either been killed or injured."
You can contribute to the Paris-based medical charity Medicines Sans Frontieres (MSF) http://www.msf.org/.