2225 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. This could be interesting — Hossein Marashi, cousin of Hashemi Rafsanjani’s wife and a Vice Secretary-General of the Kargozaran Party. has been arrested.
2220 GMT: Edward Yeranian of the Voice of America offers an analysis, “Iranian Government Releases Prisoners for Persian New Year”, with contributions from EA staff.
2215 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Women’s rights activist Somaiyeh Farid was arrested on Wednesday. Farid was at Evin Prison enquiring about her husband, Hojat (Siavash) Montazeri, who was arrested on 5 March.
Imagine this scenario: within the space of a single day, two deadly bombs hit two different cities in two different countries. The death toll from each bomb is dozens killed and dozens more injured. Both bombs are placed by arms of the same terrorist organization.
Now suppose these two cities were in France and Spain. The two countries would immediately share all the information they with each other to find a solution to a shared problem. It’s common sense. But sadly in this case, the two countries are Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have not understood this logic of sharing information, even after years of being subjected to such terrorist attacks.
On 12 March, suicide bombings in the Pakistani city of Lahore killed 72 people and injured dozens. On 13 March, a bomb ripped through the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, slaying more than 30 people and wounding dozens more. More bombs exploded in the following days.
Given the damage and deaths from today’s earthquake off the coast of Chile and the declaration of a Tsunami Warning, EA is “mirroring” the LiveBlog of Josh Shahryar:
There is a live stream from Chile (in Spanish) on latest developments. The country is three hours behind Greenwich Mean Time:
Continued activity but no drama — CNN is loudly filling time. We’re handing over to the Hawaii live stream. Readers are invited to send in any information.
Forget all the talk and newspaper articles, which EA correspondents like Josh Shahryar took apart on Saturday, about this conflict being settled in favour of a heavy-fisted Government. While the opposition is still considering its next moves, there was more than enough to show that 1) this is far more than a simple narrative of Government putting down the Green Movement and 2) that Government is far from secure in its supposed victory.
First, the less dramatic — frankly, quite mundane — but significant political move. The “ambiguous” Hashemi Rafsanjani is no longer ambiguous. His statement at the Council reaffirmed his basic position of siding with the Supreme Leader, but equally important were his call for unity and the need to make changes to ensure the security of the Iranian system.
Every so often, I read the news about Iran and it reminds me of growing up as a refugee in Pakistan.
The latest reminder came on 11 February, my birthday, which happened to be the Islamic Revolution’s birthday as well. The occasion brought Green protesters and government supporters to the streets. The government, holding its one mass gathering in the western part of Tehran, blocked off all entries with hundreds, perhaps thousands of security forces. It then transported foreign journalists to the rally and back again, instructing them to write. about their rally and nothing else.
Some pundits have recently tried to compare the recent upper middle-class mobilizations against the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to the ones occurring in Iran since last summer’s Presidential election. As proof of the similarities, the author notes the technological aspects of the mobilization, such as activity on Twitter. He furthermore notes that Venezuela is “a population subjugated to ill-planned economics, a strongman unwilling to leave power, and a government ever more keen to restrict its citizens’ rights to freedom of speech”.
This is a very superficial analysis of events that can be overturned with a range of empirical evidence. However, I will confine myself to some obvious facts. For instance, the Chavez Government hasn’t resorted to executions of opposition members like the Islamic Republican regime in Iran. The “curbed free press” of Venezuela isn’t actually that curbed. In no other country in the recent years has the ruling class shown its teeth so openly against a popular reformist government, through “Chilean” methods like assassinations, employer lock-outs, and pot-beating upper middle-class housewives. What Western media reports also fail to show are the (even if somewhat modest) attempts of the Chavez Government to support the growth of communal radio programmes that are intended to challenge the corporate media monopoly. Read the rest of this entry »
First, it was watching retweets of news from Iran in Spanish. Then I slowly started seeing “hashtags” for both Iran and Venezuela in the same tweet. Finally, I saw the Twitter account of a collective. Reading the profile helped me grasp the enormity of what I was witnessing: a student movement like Iran’s is relying on the Internet to inform people of what is happening inside Venezuela.
A few months ago, as I was tweeting about a protest in Iran and live-blogging, I noticed former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations Diego Arria, a Venezuelan, tweeting information about the protest in Iran. While it surprised me to see such a revered diplomat taking key interest in Iran’s Green Movement, I soon also began to witness mass support from Venezuelan students for the Iranian cause. But most interesting and heartening to me was that they have been on Twitter and other social media outlets for more than a year fighting for their own rights as well.
For those who oppose the rule of President Hugo Chavez, theirs is a story much similar to Iran’s: a population subjugated to ill-planned economics, a strongman unwilling to leave power, and a government ever more keen to restrict its citizen’s right to freedom of speech. As protests rocked Venezuela two weeks ago, news of the protests made its way out not only on the backs of the traditional mainstream media outlets but also on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Photobucket, and other websites once used for entertainment, killing time, or just plain ol’ finding a date.
Another urgent request for help from three orphanages in Port-au-Prince within a mile of Port-au-Prince. Joanne Stocker of Help Haiti Heal has updates on both:
The orphanages are Foyer Notre Dame Nativite in Fonta Mara Orphanage, Foyer Notre Dame Nativite in Fonta Mara Orphanage and Foyer des Filles de Dieu Orphanage (Home for the Girls of God). If you have any means of getting these children out of harms way and providing them with more supplies, please do so.
(This request is especially intended for the US troops who’ve been helping out greatly with the search and rescue efforts, as well as other relief efforts inside the Haitian Capital.)
If you would like to help – and it would be greatly appreciated – please check the full information on these orphanages by CLICK HERE or contacting Joanne of Help Haiti Heal.
Please help if you can – at least 55 little girls have already died in these orphanages in the past few days.
2225 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. This could be interesting — Hossein Marashi, cousin of Hashemi Rafsanjani’s wife and a Vice Secretary-General of the Kargozaran Party. has been arrested.
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