November 4th.

Whilst I think about things, take a look at Coatesy’s coverage of events in Iran.

Update 1: I will aim to cover this topic in more detail in the future, but it seems that there are continued demonstrations going-on in various Universities in Iran.

On this particular YouTube channel there are at least 5 video clips seemingly from the 3rd Nov. 2009.

Update 2: The blog, Revolutionary Road, has plenty of good material, especially the Bridge Journal.

No Plugs For Nazi Nick.

Well, that’s what I have been told:

A protest has been organized for Thursday, 22 October 2009, between 17:00 – 19:00, at BBC Headquarters, Wood Lane, London W12 7RJ (White City tube).

For more info see the Facebook group, Say no to the BNP on Question Time

Links On Steroids.

Bob has an amazing set of Iran related links.

Update 1: Elsewhere on the web, Tendance Coatesy has a good piece on the Labour Party:

“Behind the scenes stuff, and the ‘policy-making’ forums, had at least some role. His goal, modest in the extreme, was to have a word in the ear of Ed Balls. About an alternative to a planned Academy take-over in Felixstowe. Which just about sums up life as a humble petitioner in the Court of Brown.”

Mean While In That Theocratic Dictatorship.

No TUC motion on Iran? Nothing about the fiddled election?

Nothing about the anti-Jewish racist, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Nothing about neo-nazi shindigs in Tehran?

Nothing about the attacks on Mansour Osanloo and other trade unionists?

Nothing about the street protests in Iran?

Nothing about the very nature of the dictatorship in Tehran?

Still, brave Iranians took their fight straight to Ahmadinejad as he was spouting more Holocaust denial, the Guardian reports:

“Iran’s opposition Green movement put on a powerful show of strength today against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the hardline president repeated his notorious claim that the Nazi Holocaust was a “lie” designed to justify the existence of Israel.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in central Tehran to shout “death to the dictator” despite a heavy security presence and official warnings to the opposition not to hijack the Quds (Jerusalem) Day rally, the regime’s annual display of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Rebellion In The Air

According to a radio report they had to hide the precise location of Ahmadinejad’s confirmation for fear of protests, but they still happened, as the Washington Post reports:

“The sober ceremony, in which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accepted an awkward kiss on the shoulder in a show of fealty from Ahmadinejad, was notable for the absence of prominent political and religious figures, as well as relatives of the country’s late revolutionary leader and opposition presidential candidates, who continue to dispute the results of the June 12 election.

Afterward, witnesses reported unrest in central Tehran, and security forces deployed to prevent government opponents from demonstrating against a second four-year term for Ahmadinejad. Riot police and pro-government Basij militia turned out in force on main streets and squares, where groups of protesters attempted to gather and where motorists honked car horns in a show of opposition, witnesses said.

“I heard people honking in their cars, and security forces shot tear gas,” said one witness in a phone call from a shop on Vali-e Asr Street. “Everything became chaotic. There was shooting, and I saw them arresting an old woman.”

The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that opposition presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi showed up at a demonstration against the inauguration, joining about 100 supporters at a street intersection before riot police broke up the gathering. Iranian state television charged that Karroubi, 71, a Shiite cleric and former parliamentary speaker, was “egging on the hooligans,” who chanted slogans such as “death to the dictator!” “

Over at HOPI.

HOPI has more videos of the struggle in Iran and a piece about Alireza Davoudi:

“Hopi activists have just received the sad news that Iranian activist Alireza Davoudi died yesterday from a heart attack resulting from the extreme torture he was subjected to in the Islamic Republic’s jails. This is a sad loss to our movement and our hearts go out to his family, comrades and friends.”

Shirin Ebadi Take On Events.

Shirin Ebadi has strong views on the forthcoming show trials in Tehran, the Times reports:

“
“The European Union should withdraw ambassadors,” said Ebadi, a lawyer, stabbing the air with her index finger, furious about the arrests that followed the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The election of Ahmadinejad, who is due to be sworn in this week, continues to be strongly contested. Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main opponent, claims the election was stolen. Yesterday, opposition activists arrested in the weeks after the elections appeared in court in Tehran for the first time, charged with conspiring against the regime.

Although most had been arrested at home, and were intellectuals or politicians whose offence can only have been criticism of the regime or support for Mousavi, they were charged with crimes such as attacking military sites and government buildings.

About 100 prisoners sat grimly in court, some dressed in grey prison uniforms, many of them prominent reformers allied to the opposition, including Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former government spokesman, and Mohsen Mirdamadi, the leader of the largest reform party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front. The press was banned from the hearing and there were no lawyers present.

Ebadi was out of the country on a speaking tour when the protests erupted. She has remained abroad on the advice of her lawyers at the Centre for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran, which she founded.

They have told her that she is more useful to the opposition cause abroad, pressing the case of the prisoners.

Her absence from the country clearly rankles. “Tehran is my home,” she said firmly. Immaculately made up, with short, coiffed hair, she is determined to combat what she sees as injustice in her country. “I will go back to Tehran despite the fact that my family, my husband and my daughter, have been threatened.” “

She was a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2003.

Show Trials Begin.

The theocracy in Iran has started its prosecution of protesters in the wake of the fiddled election, the Guardian has more:

“The first trials of opposition political activists and protesters arrested after June’s disputed Iranian presidential election began today.

Up to 100 defendants were reported by Iranian media to be appearing before a court in the capital, Tehran, accused of violence following the 12 June vote.

The election sparked days of protests as thousands of Iranians took to the streets to denounce the official results, which declared victory for the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

This is a statement from the reformist camp, via Google translation, make of it what you will.

The Huff Post suggests that they are not allowed lawyers and there is no jury.

Locked Up Lawyers.

The repressive state in Iran made a preemptive move against Human Right’s lawyers according to HRW:

“(New York, July 26, 2009) – Iranian authorities continue to arrest prominent human rights lawyers in an attempt to prevent them from representing reform supporters detained following Iran’s disputed presidential election, Human Rights Watch said today. Other lawyers have been threatened.

“Iranian authorities are trying to create an atmosphere of fear among all lawyers who agree to defend political prisoners,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “Many reform supporters arrested after the presidential elections have been denied access to their lawyers, and now they’re finding the lawyers imprisoned with them.”

On July 15, 2009, plainclothes security forces seized human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr on the street while she was walking to attend Friday prayers. On July 21, security forces telephoned Mohammad Seifzadeh, another leading human rights defense lawyer, and threatened to take steps (which they did not specify) to prevent him from continuing his human rights activities.

Hadi Esmaielzadeh and Manijeh Mohammadi were among other human rights lawyers who were questioned by the security section of the Tehran prosecutor’s office a few days after the June 12 election. Seifzadeh, Esmaielzadeh, and Mohammadi are all members of the Human Rights Defenders Center (HRDC), a prominent human rights organization led by Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, which security forces have threatened to close on a number of occasions in recent years.

“They told me not to cooperate with Shirin Ebadi,” Seifzadeh, who is a board member of HRDC, told Human Rights Watch.”

Iran and Technical Odds and Sods

A few technical bits that have occurred in the last month or so, firstly Iran:

“Around a quarter of Iran’s 65 million people are believed to have Internet access. Iran has long used filtering to restrict certain news and political or pornographic Web sites. However, since the election, the number of blocked sites has increased.

Besides Twitter and YouTube, the BBC’s Farsi-language news site is still blocked, and Web sites associated with opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi — who says he won the election — are constantly shut down. In the last week, two new Mousavi sites have been created after others were targeted.”

Breaking the silence of suffering children.

The Tiny Core distribution has a lot of potential, and 8.2 of Antix Linux is out.

Finally, tethering seems to be popular amongst smart phone owners. Basically, the mobile device is used as an external modem for a netbook/laptop, probably connected via a USB cable and the smart phone then provides the onward link to the Internet either via 3G or Wifi.

Update 1: Thanks to ganselmi for reminding me about Nokia’s role:

The Guardian explains:

“The mobile phone company Nokia is being hit by a growing economic boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement begin targeting a string of companies deemed to be collaborating with the regime.

Wholesale vendors in the capital report that demand for Nokia handsets has fallen by as much as half in the wake of calls to boycott Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for selling communications monitoring systems to Iran.”

Wired continues:

“According to the Journal, a system installed in Iran by Nokia Siemens Networks — a Finland-based joint venture between Nokia and Siemens — provides Iranian authorities with the ability to conduct deep-packet inspection of online communications to monitor the contents and track the source of e-mail, VoIP calls, and posts to social networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. The newspaper also said authorities had the ability to alter content as it intercepted the traffic from a state-owned internet choke point.”

Update 2: The Iranian State’s measures to control access to the Internet largely failed, thanks to the ingenuity of Iranians, but the fight over the web still goes on, and Iranians have a new ally: Haystack

“Haystack is a new program to provide unfiltered internet access to the people of Iran. A software package for Windows, Mac and Unix systems, called Haystack, specifically targets the Iranian government’s web filtering mechanisms.

Similar to Freegate, the program directed against China’s “great firewall,” once installed Haystack will provide completely uncensored access to the internet in Iran while simultaneously protecting the user’s identity. No more Facebook blocks, no more government warning pages when you try to load Twitter, just unfiltered Internet.”

Their blog is here with updates.

Boston Vigil.

Over at Iranian Freedom ganselmi describes events in Boston on the global day of action for Iran.

25th July 2009.

United 4 Iran has an inspiring video for the 25th July global day of action:

Iran Still Simmering.

The Gulf Daily News reports:

“TEHRAN: The wife of Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said yesterday her 62-year-old brother was among those detained after last month’s disputed election in what she called a futile attempt to pressure her husband and herself.

Zahra Rahnavard also warned authorities that Iranians would not believe any “forced confessions” from her brother.

Her comments were the latest in a series of defiant statements by Mousavi and his allies, who insist the June 12 presidential election that declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winner was rigged.

“We have tried all legal and peaceful means to try to win his release along with other detainees,” Rahnavard, a prominent artist and academic who campaigned for her husband in the election, told ILNA news agency.

Metro News has more:

“Rahnavard on Thursday said the Iranian people would not believe any “forced confessions.” Of her brother, she said, “accusations of provoking riots or connections to foreigners … are unimaginable.”

She warned those that are making accusations against detainees that “a divine anger will catch them and the nation will reject them.”

Rahnavard, a former dean of Tehran’s al-Zahra University, campaigned alongside her husband in the election, a rarity for a candidate’s wife, which made her a star among women and student supporters. Her original name is Zohreh Kazemi but she changed it in the 1960s when she became an activist against the U.S.-backed shah, and she was a prominent activist in the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power.

Mousavi, meanwhile, sharply criticized what he called the increasing power of security forces in the postelection crackdown. Iran was “heading in the direction of becoming more militarized, more security-dominated, something no one will welcome,” he said.

“The security forces must move in the framework of the constitution to minimize the loses in this near-coup d’etat atmosphere,” he said Wednesday, according to ILNA. He said he would release a political platform soon calling for “activating neglected parts of the constitution” that ensure the people’s voice is heard and that security forces’ powers are kept in check. He did not elaborate.”

Death To The Dictator

The Iranian people will not be stopped, AP reports:

“TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Thousands of protesters streamed down avenues of the capital Thursday, chanting “death to the dictator” and defying security forces who fired tear gas and charged with batons, witnesses said. Turning garbage bins into burning barricades and darting through choking clouds of tear gas, the opposition made its first foray into the streets in nearly two weeks in an attempt to revive mass demonstrations that were crushed in Iran’s postelection turmoil. “

Protests 9th July 2009.

Why Mass Protest In Iran Is True Politics Worth Supporting

This is an excellent piece from a pair of translators and philosophers based in Tehran, Morad Farhadpour and Omid Mehrgan:

“In the past two weeks, the majority of people in Tehran and other cities in Iran (including Shiraz, Ahwaz, Tabriz, Isfihan) have been on the streets, protesting against the theft of the presidential election by a handful of state’s agents at the top level. It was not a rigging in the usual western sense, no added votes or replaced ballot boxes, the election went on properly, the votes were taken and probably even counted, the figures transmitted to the ministry of interior, and it was there that they were totally disregarded and replaced by totally fictitious figures. That is why all the opposition forces (Sazman-e-Mojahedin-e-Enghelab, Mosharekat party…) together with people called it a coup d’état.

Global public opinion and, especially, the body of (leftist) intellectuals, Inspired by recent events in the middle Asia and east Europe, mostly regard this Iranian mass protest as another version of the well-known, newly invented, neo-liberal, U.S.-sponsored, colour-coded revolutions, as in Georgia and Ukraine. But is it the case in Iran? This article intends to clarify the issue, to reveal the properly political essence of current mass movement, and to demonstrate that this movement has the potentiality of a self-transcendence, of surpassing its actual demands, of traversing its current phantasy. To do this, we shall first examine the contemporary tradition of radical politics in Iran. Without these references, the current movement, which truly deserves this title, can not be understood correctly.”

Read on.