Iran Feature: The Week in Civil Society --- Hunger Strikes, Hungry Families, and Ending Violence Against Women (Arseh Sevom)

More than seven million students of all ages have dropped out of school due to economic hardships. Anasthesia is no longer readily available. Family, friends, and supporters call on the human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh to end her hunger strike. “Let the silent observers take over,” they urge. Families go without needed nutrients, even more workers lose their jobs, and factories shut down. Civil society organizations call for an end to violence against women in Iran, pointing out that much of the violence is part of society. Labour organizations call on the government to fully investigate the suspicious death of the blogger Sattar Beheshti.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Insurgents Challenge the Regime in the Air

2122 GMT: Syria. The Free Syrian Army has captured yet another anti-aircraft base near Aleppo, this time near Assan, south of the city (map).

#Syria #Aleppo Rebels seized next air-defence near #Asan -using captured AA-guns immediatelyyoutube.com/watch?v=wOCxE8… wikimapia.org/#lat=36.057098…

— Mark (@markito0171) November 28, 2012

Another source suggests that this base is the headquarters of the 608 regime, though that is unclear. Still, there are plenty of videos that have been posted in the last few hours:

Another major victory? There's also a trend. The FSA is targeting relatively small anti-aircraft bases, capturing equipment that can be used against the Assad regime, but also looking for ways to confront the Assad airforce. Furthermore, there is a suspicion that they may have received encouragement to specifically target anti-aircraft bases, as this removes a threat to any foreign aircraft that could potentially engage in a no-fly zone.

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US Politics Analysis: Explaining the Fiscal Cliff and the Battle Over the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge"

Republicans are aware that President Obama has momentum on his side for increased tax revenues during the fiscal cliff discussions, but they believe that history and principle are on theirs. Will some of them break the Pledge to ensure that a compromise is reached? That has far more to do with if and how Democrats assure them over spending cuts than it does with media stories about their loyalty to one Grover Norquist.

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The Latest from Iran (28 November): Supreme Leader Declares, "We're Winning"

1835 GMT: Gaza Watch. Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has said that, more than a week after he made his request to enter Gaza, he is still awaiting an answer from Egyptian authorities.

Salehi saild he had spoken by phone and in person with Egypt’s Foreign Minister.

1505 GMT: Economy Watch. Kalemeh reports that 2400 workers of the Saveh Pipe Rolling Plant and other factories in northwestern Iran have been on strike since Sunday over six months of unpaid wages.

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Egypt Live Coverage: Protesters Fill Tahrir Square Again

Police fire tear gas at protesters near Tahrir Square in Cairo this morning

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1530 GMT: The head of the Constituent Assembly, Hossam el-Gheriyani, has said the final draft of a Constitution will be finished on Wednesday, and three other members said the document will be put to a vote on Thursday.

1420 GMT: The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist parties are now saying they will hold protests across Egypt on Saturday in support of President Morsi.

Mahmoud Ghozlan, the Brotherhood's spokesman, said, "We have called for pro-Mursi nationwide protests. The exact locations of the protests are currently being discussed."

Salah Abdel Maboud, a leading member of the Salafi Nour Party, confirmed that Islamists would stage protests on Saturday, including a possible gathering in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

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Egypt, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Will Morsi Give Back His New Powers?

2356 GMT: Syria. Another video claims to show the downing of a helicopter - with an interesting twist. In the video, this vehicle opens fire on a helicopter, but the pilots have already jumped out and their parachutes appear to be visible:

We believe this is the same helicopter we documented earlier today, shot down west of Aleppo. We believe that it was hit by a SAM missile, and then it took time to crash, then the pilots jumped, and then nearby anti-aircraft guns opened fire.

It should be noted that in another video men driving a vehicle such as the one in this video take credit for the downing of the helicopter. This video explains why both claims that the FSA shot the helicopter down with a missile and claims that they shot it down with machineguns are consistent.

2340 GMT: Syria. Things have calmed a bit in Damascus - according to sources in the opposition, residents were on edge after unusually high volumes of violence, but the probability of anything dramatic happening tonight is dropping.

By morning we will know answers: Is the airport closed? Is the regime reinforcing the center of the city or the Presidential Palace? Is the FSA prepared to take the fight for Damascus into its final stage?

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Syria Feature: Tales from the Cyber-War (Faris)

A CNN report from November 2011 on Syrian cyber-warfare

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Much has been written about the rebellion in Syria: the protests, the massacres, the car bombs, the house-to-house fighting. Tens of thousands have been killed since the war began in early 2011. But the struggle for the future of the country has also unfolded in another arena—on a battleground of Facebook pages and YouTube accounts, of hacks and counterhacks. Just as rival armies vie for air superiority, the two sides of the Syrian civil war have spent much of the last year and a half locked in a struggle to dominate the Internet. Pro-government hackers have penetrated opposition websites and broken into the computers of Reuters and Al Jazeera to spread disinformation. On the other side, the hacktivist group Anonymous has infiltrated at least 12 Syrian government websites, including that of the Ministry of Defense, and released millions of stolen e-mails.

The Syrian conflict illustrates the extent to which the very tools that rebels in the Middle East have employed to organize and sustain their movements are now being used against them. It provides a glimpse of the future of warfare, in which computer viruses and hacking techniques can be as critical to weakening the enemy as bombs and bullets.

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Iran Opinion: "The Riskiest Job" --- A Tribute to Imprisoned Lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh (Ebadi)

Not so long ago, my colleague Nasrin Sotoudeh was the lawyer so many of us human rights defenders in Iran would call when our government harassed us or put one of us, or one of our family members, in jail. Sadly it is now Nasrin who is in jail. The government's accusations against her include acting contrary to "national security", "propaganda against the state", and "membership" of the Center for Defenders of Human Rights, an organisation I founded in 2001. The government has also accused her of failing to wear hijab, the traditional Islamic covering for women. On some of these trumped-up charges she has been sentenced to 11 years in jail, and is now banned from practising law for 20 years.

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The Latest from Iran (27 November): Trying to Escape the Oil Squeeze

See also Iran Opinion: "The Riskiest Job" --- A Tribute to Imprisoned Lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh
The Latest from Iran (26 November): Noting the Crackdown on Dissidents

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2046 GMT: A Death in Detention. Iran Police Chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam has accepted partial responsibility for the death in detention of blogger Sattar Beheshti earlier this month.

Ahmadi Moghaddam, following up the claim of an MP on Monday, said investigations were examining why conditions in the detention centre in Robat Karim, southwest of Tehran, were "not favorable", why Beheshti was transferred from Evin Prison "during holidays", why the blogger was not allowed to take prescribed sedatives, and why he was kept at an "administrative section", where there were no monitoring cameras to record incidents.

However, Ahmadi Moghaddam insisted --- contrary to remarks from other Iranian officials --- that no traces of beating were seen on Beheshti's body. He maintained that the likely cause of death was "shock".

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Egypt, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Morsi Backing Away from His Decrees?

2140 GMT: Egypt. Mohamed al-Qamash, a journalist for Al-Siyasi magazine, has reportedly been arrested near the US embassy in Cairo. Qamash was reportedly in Simon Bolivar Square, near a protest for Gaber Salah who was killed on Sunday, when a fire broke out. According to the report, he was beaten and his cell phone was confiscated.

2105 GMT: Syria. Earlier today, the CFDPC, a coalition of activists who report on Damascus and its suburbs, posted this dire message, with accompanying video, about the largest suburbs west of Damascus, Darayya:

A new massacre was committed by regime forces that arrested and killed at least 30 displaced people who fled their homes in Daraya and found refuge in the nearby areas. The victims were also tortured.

The LCC has reported that there were 28 bodies, and they have identified 6 of them:

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