Syria Video Special: The Friday Protests --- Set 2

Jabal az-Zawiya in Idlib Province in northwest --- “Jabal az-Zawiya does not want the army to enter":

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Iran Analysis: Ahmadinejad, Larijani, and the Supreme Leader Wrestle in an Oil Slick (Tait)

For years he has treated it with imperious disdain. But now, with his political capital hemorrhaging, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is being subjected to a relentless assault by Iran's parliament with the apparent approval of the country's most powerful cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

The attacks come in the wake of a bruising public power struggle between the two men and appear to be part of a concerted move by Khamenei to weaken a president he once treated as a protege.

The latest in a series of anti-Ahmadinejad ambushes came on May 25 when the parliament voted to investigate allegations that the president misused state funds as effective bribes by giving $80 each to 9 million voters before the 2009 presidential election.

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The Latest from Iran (27 May): Debating Reform and the Green Movement

1830 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch (see 1235 GMT). Do you think former President Hashemi Rafsanjani is making an allusion here: "After removal of [former President Abolhassan] Bani Sadr, unity was created among the people"?

1430 GMT: Ahmadinejad's Men. More pressure on 1st Vice President Hamid Baghaei and Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai....

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Syria Video Special: The Friday Protests

Latakia:

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Egypt, Yemen, Syria, & Beyond LiveBlog: Challenging the Regimes

Tahrir Square in Cairo today. See our separate video entry, "Syria Video Special: Friday Protests"

1536 GMT: Security forces attempted to break up protests in Banias, Syria, and protesters respond by throwing stones.

1530 GMT: Besides the armed conflict (and truce) between Saleh and Yemen's largest tribe (noted below), and beyond the massive protests in Sana'a (noted below), there were also large protests elsewhere in Yemen. This video shows protesters in Taiz's Freedom Square chanting "The people want to prosecute the butcher."

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Justice in America: A Decent Decision Defies the Supreme Court's Limpet-Like Ideology

In recent years, the US Supreme Court has taken a predictable course with right-wingers on the bench imposing their ideology, but Monday brought a notable change.

In a 5-4 ruling, the State of California was ordered to reduce its overcrowded prison population by 30,000. The ruling followed displays in court of photographs of inmates crowded into an open gymnasium-style rooms and “telephone-booth-sized cages without toilets".

In the 1980s, California imposed a "three strikes rule" for offenders. If you were found guilty of a third felony, there was an automatic sentence of 25 years, regardless of the nature of the offence. Sentencing discretion was removed from judges.

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Syria 1st-Hand: The Protester Who Videoed Himself, Then Disappeared (Beach)

In most countries it would have been inconsequential. But for Ahmad Biasi, a young man from a small town in north-west Syria, the simple act of filming himself in his home town captivated the Syrian protest movement, made him a symbol of the nationwide insurrection – and may have put his life in danger. 

It began when he was filmed in a video uploaded onto YouTube last month. Just days before, another film had been broadcast on news networks around the world, purportedly showing Kalashnikov-waving security forces beating and stamping on prisoners who had been captured in the town of Al-Bayda, close to Banias in north-western Syria. Ahmad Biasi had been among those being beaten and kicked by gun-toting security men in the original video.

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Israel Special: The Annotated Version of Netanyahu Speech to US Congress (Friedman)

Israel has no better friend than America, and America has no better friend than Israel [and don't you let Obama forget it]. (Applause.) We stand together to defend democracy [except when, like with Egypt, we have mixed feelings about it]. We stand together to advance peace [except when your president asks me to do things I don't want to do]. We stand together to fight terrorism [and anyone who suggests that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in any way provides a rallying cry for extremism, well, they are anti-Semites trying to delegitimize of Israel].

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Yemen, Syria, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Battle of Sana'a

Footage from inside the compound of Yemeni opposition tribal leader Sheikh Sadeq al-Ahmar, taken by Tom Finn of The Guardian, showing the destruction from regime shelling and treatment of an injured tribesman

2035 GMT: Thanks to James Miller for taking the LiveBlog through the afternoon.

More on the story, which began circulating yesterday, that the Libyan regime is offering conditions for a cease-fire and talks with the opposition....

"We have received a message from the Libyan government seeking an accord for a possible ceasefire," a spokesman for the office of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, said on Thursday.

The initiative came from Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi. He said at a news conference in Tripoli, "We are ready for a ceasefire. The solution cannot be a military one. There must be debate among Libyans far away from bombs."

But al-Mahmoud set one important condition: "Muammar Qaddafi is the leader of the Libyan people. If Muammar Qaddafi goes, all the Libyan people go."

The Independent of London reported on Wednesday that it had a copy of a letter from al-Mahmoudi to foreign governments, proposing an immediate ceasefire to be monitored by the United Nations and the African Union, unconditional talks with the opposition, amnesty for both sides in the conflict, and the drafting of a new constitution.

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The Latest from Iran (26 May): Paving the Way for Dictatorship?

Footage of the blaze at the Abadan oil refinery on Tuesday

2015 GMT: A Fire at the Refinery. Siemens AG, Germany’s largest engineering company, has denied that it supplied compressors for Iran’s Abadan oil refinery, where a blast on Tuesday killed at least four people and wounded at least 25.

An Iranian newspaper had claimed that Siemens supplied the compressor that exploded, causing the blaze.

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