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Saturday
Jul042009

ARCHIVE Video: "Keeping the Peace" (30 June-2 July)

ARCHIVE Video: Rally at Qoba Mosque, Resistance, Violence (24-28 June)ARCHIVE Video: The “Neda” Footage and Protests (20-23 June)
ARCHIVE Video: The Protests in and Beyond Tehran

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The Audacity of Hope: 15 June Demonstration in Azadi Square, Tehran

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR2rH9E_cpw[/youtube]

2 July: Rooftop "Allahu Akhbars" in Tehran

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBd2bHCkXmk[/youtube]

Posted 2 July: The Televised "Confessions"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPgQX3NTvvw[/youtube]

1 July: Al Jazeera's (Temporary) Return to the Streets of Tehran

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2ILypZrhXI[/youtube]

30 June: Riot Police in Tehran Alleys

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjZ3G-_vbbE[/youtube]
Saturday
Jul042009

The Iran Crisis (Day 23): What to Watch For Today

The Latest from Iran (4 July): Breaking the Reformists? Not So Fast….
NEW Video: U2’s Concert Song for Iran

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IRAN FLAG The headline in The New York Times is blunt: "Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares". Michael Slackman summarises, "Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a “velvet” revolution."

Slackman's account, filed from Cairo, is accurate as far as it goes: detainees from former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi to journalist Maziar Bahari as well as the "common people" caught up in a foreign-inspired plot are declaring their guilt in print accounts or televised appearances. However, that account, based entirely on Government websites and a couple of interviews with former detainees, has a wider implication. The "reformist" movement is crippled, if not broken: "“If [the Iranian regime] talks about the velvet revolution 24 hours a day people don’t care. But if reformers and journalists say they are involved in it, it makes the point for them."

You don't look hard very far to find the other side of the story.

Far from conceding defeat in a series of confessions, opposition campaigners are continuing to press their challenge. Indeed, they are doing so by making the issues of detentions and confessions part of their cause. Presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi and former President Mohammad Khatami visited the families of detainees. Karroubi declared, "I'm ready for everything & will stand strong to the end." Speaking to Abtahi's relatives, he reassured, "He's physically well but held in a solitary cell."

The wider message? Protest not only remains; it is vital. "If we remain silent/stop protesting," Karroubi warned, "The situation become worse and much more difficult for the ones in prison."

And Mir Hossein Mousavi, on his Facebook page, hasn't given up. In the last 24 hours, his team has posted video of the non-violent, civil disobedience of students at Kashan University (also featured on "Revolutionary Road") and posted excellent guidelines to the use of "micro-media": "FIRE [your post]! You are the only competitor to all the exclusive media who may want to manipulate!" Mousavi has also highlighted the latest statements of Mohsen Kadivar and Ayatollah Yusef Sane'i.

The Sane'i criticism of the regime, posted in English on his website, is particularly important. "Confessions" cannot hide the extent of the debate amongst Iran's clerics. While this does not portend the toppling of the President, let alone the removal of the Supreme Leader or the end of the Islamic system, it does indicate that the public protest continues to interact with the concerns of influential religious figures about the current conduct of the Islamic Republic.
Saturday
Jul042009

Video: U2's Concert Song for Iran

The Latest from Iran (4 July): Breaking the Reformists? Not So Fast….
A Song for Iran? "Free My Land"

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Filmed on mobile phone at U2's concert in Barcelona's Nou Camp stadium on Thursday:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR8d1qM-GqE[/youtube]
Saturday
Jul042009

Transcript: Benjamin Netanyahu's 4th of July Message for the US (and Iran)

US ISRAEL FLAGSIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended a 4th of July celebration at the home of American ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, on Wednesday and put the notion of “freedom” at the center of his speech. At the same time, he put the positive alongsdie the menace of enemies and threat: “Freedom is our common value which makes our bonds unbreakable and the worst dangerous regimes of the world pursuing dangerous weapons must be stopped for the sake of our common bond: freedom. Otherwise, they will triumph over free societies, and so over our so-called ‘unbreakable’ bonds."

So, if Iran was unmentioned (and, of course, its diplomats had been "disinvited" from US celebrations because of the election crisis), Tehran was there in spirit. Indeed, you might say that it --- and its alleged nuclear weapons programme --- is Netanyahu's glue for the US-Israeli "unbreakable" bonds.

The transcript of Netanyahu’s speech:

In the year 1776, the world witnessed a new birth of freedom, the birth of the United States of America. The United States, the country that was referred to by its founders as the new Promised Land, the new Zion, became the bastion, defender and champion of freedom. The U.S. was a bastion of freedom in the 19th century as many millions of immigrants flocked to its inviting shores to search for a new life, to search for freedom. Etched on the base of the Statue of Liberty, the immortal words of Emma Lazarus, the American Jewish poet, who was incidentally a Zionist, said it all. They came “yearning to be free”.

The United States was a defender of freedom in the 20th century as it confronted and defeated history’s greatest tyrannies, and above all else, the Nazi tyranny. And over the last 233 years, the United States has been freedom’s greatest champion, all the while insisting that freedom is not something that only a privileged few countries can enjoy, but the birthright of every nation and every people. It’s not surprising therefore that our own birth of freedom would resonate so powerfully with the American people. After all, this was the reemergence of the Jews as a free and independent nation in our ancestral homeland, in the original Promised Land, the original Zion. This was why it took President Harry S. Truman only eleven minutes to recognize the newly born Jewish state, and this is why every American president since then, has expressed the deep friendship between our two countries, a friendship anchored not in transitory interests, but in eternal values and timeless ideals. And these common ideals of liberty and democracy, are the foundation of the deep and enduring bond between the United States and Israel, a bond that President Obama recently declared was unbreakable in his landmark speech in Cairo before the entire Muslim world.

In Israel evidence of this unbreakable bond is here for everyone to see. You can see it as you walk down the streets of Jerusalem, streets named after Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. You can see it if you visit the memorial to the slain U.S. President, John F. Kennedy in the outskirts of Jerusalem. You can see it in the agonized faces of Israelis who shared grief and sorrow with the American people in the terrible events of September 11th. You can see it in the smiling and admiring faces of Israelis every time the United States has an achievement or a success around the world and you can see it Mr. Ambassador, in the faces of all the people who came here to celebrate with you tonight.

So as the Prime Minister of one of the world’s most passionate democracies, let me say that we share a common heritage with the world’s greatest democracy. Throughout history, democracies have ultimately proven more powerful and more resilient than the dictatorships that threaten them. Eventually, the will of free people to defend their values and defend their societies proves unconquerable. Eventually, the will of un-free people to become free and live under democratic societies usually breaks through the concrete of tyranny. But the greatest danger facing our world today is that this historical consistency of the triumph and spread of democracy could change if the world’s worst regimes acquire the world’s more dangerous weapons. For the sake of peace, for the sake of our common security, for the sake of our common values, this must not be allowed to happen.

So Mr. Ambassador, as we celebrate your Independence Day with you, let us reaffirm our commitment to those powerful ideas that were promulgated two hundred and thirty three years ago, and later in Philadelphia, and that are so deeply shared by our two peoples. Let us reaffirm our commitment to roll back those who threaten our lives and our freedoms and let us reaffirm our commitment to advance the cause of peace in our region and throughout the world.

On behalf of the People of Israel, I send our best wishes to President Obama and to the American People. Happy Independence Day America and may God continue to bless America and our profound friendship. Chag Sameach. Thank you.
Friday
Jul032009

Video: All the Best Bits of Sarah Palin

Video: Sarah Palin Resigns as Governor of Alaska (3 July)

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrzXLYA_e6E[/youtube]