Secret Police Open Fire At Opposition Demo In Tehran

by - Mon Jun 15, 2009 22:22

Baseej-e Mostaz'afin, (literally "Mobilization of the Oppressed);" and officially "Nirouye Moqavemate Basij" ("Basij Resistance Force")

It is the largest "student union" in Iran and a volunteer-based Iranian paramilitary force founded by the order of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on November 1979. The Basij are subordinate to, and receive their orders from, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Tweeter reports earlier today that they were taking up firing positions have been linked to from the BBC and added to the wikipedia page on the group in the subsection "human rights controversies".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basij#Human_rights_controv...rsies
http://twitter.com/azarnoush http://twitter.com/change_for_iran

The protests have spread to Rasht, Mashad, Shiraz, Ahvaz, Zahedan, and Urmia cities. Internet access has been reported as slowing down to a trickle and four hours ago the mobile phone network was tweeted as being down in Yazd city.

by maverick Tue Jun 16, 2009 08:20

to those who supported the struggle in Gaza recently, let's hear the Hamas leaders comments on the "election" in Iran:

"The results of the elections in Iran show the wide public support for Iran's policy of challenge," said Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas spokesman in Gaza, in a statement.

sources:

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/80837/-hamas-welcomes....html

by righteous pragmatist Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:58

We are witnessing the fall of the theocracy and the emergence of multi-party elections.
This has been made possible by the emergence of Shia parties in Iraq next door which made full and successful advantage of the fall of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi democratic parliamentary revolution is strong vibrant and dynamic and its influence has spread to Iran.
The Iranian elite, intelligentsia and middle classes are asking if it can work for their former enemies in Iraq, then surely it can work for them?
A democratic Iran will be better able to engage with America and Israel.
Iran can still be a nuclear power, it can still be a regional ecnomic and military power and the emergence of a democratic society there can make that goal possible.
Nations beknighted by dictatorship and shambolic government are taking advantage of a globalised world to recover their former glory in the ancient world.
Advanced civilisations existed in Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, nations which today are experimenting and breaking free of the shackles of the past.
We are living in truly exiting times.

by Chicherin Tue Jun 16, 2009 17:45

The Basij are indeed a militia and both they and the Secret Police have fired on the crowds.

Here are some reports, more at the links:

Sources estimate that at least one thousand demonstrators have been detained in the past few days. Given the space limitations of the Evin prison, these detainees have been brought in through the visitation hall instead of the normal front entrance. The have been taken through the long corridor that leads to Section 240 of Evin prison.

Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that hundreds of protestors detained in the recent riots have been transferred to Evin and Kahrizak prisons. Reliable sources have reported the number of detainees to be in the hundreds and some have estimated over one thousand. Given the space limitations of the Evin prison, the detainees have been brought in from a side entrance that normally leads to the visitation hall and taken through a long corridor to Section 240 of the prison.

http://hra-iran.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=a...d=293

Are protests going on only in Tehran or there are demonstrations in other cities in Iran?

The breakouts firstly started in Tehran and was on the same day that the votes were announced, however at the moment all the cities in Iran, and i have to say in most of the cities in Iran the situation might even be worse than Tehran.

People even have started to attack the military guards and they have taken control over some of the cities.

It has been reported that in other cities, the military guards and the epeople are armed and that the students are being attacked intensivly.

Here, media reported that Mir-Hossein Mousavi is arrested by authorities and has not been seen since the election results. Is this true? And by informations You have, whats going on with Mousavi, is he safe, and did he make any public announcements and statements?

Mousavi is part of the sovereignty, he for many years was in the military and was with Ahmadinejad and the current leader, where he was making decisions.

At the begining when the Islamic republic was being formed,and when the political prisoners were being killed, Mousavi was the prime minister and was working for Khameneyi.

He has participated in all the inhuman behaviours of the Islamic republic.

Todays slogans, and also whats being heard does not mean that Mousavi is honest.

People are aware that by chosing mousavi they not making the situation perfect by thet are protecting it from getting even worse than it is.

Afterall no danger is threating Mousavi, and even now there are armed forces around his house and in case of anything serious from people, thay will attack.

http://www.necenzurirano.com/index.php?option=com_conte...mid=1

by gurgle Tue Jun 16, 2009 18:10

At the moment the Iranian tweets are top of the list of the most searched term on that website which has made the decision (a geo-political one at that) to not refresh its pages thus allowing people to read outdated tweets. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23IranElection

I very much doubt we are the last commentator wrote "witnessing the fall of the theocracy and the emergence of multi-party elections." I very much suspect that's how the right wing especially the in the USA would like to spin this. Arguing that on long last with seven dead on the streets of Iran, the Bush / Cheney recipe for imposing democracy is working. But it might be worth remembering where the theocracy came from. The Islamic republic overthrew the Shah who in turn had overthrown a liberal multiparty democracy in what is recognised as the first CIA regime change of the post WW2 period, "Operation Ajax", the brainchild of Kermit Roosevelt Jr (not to be confused with the muppet frog) whose success was such that he authored a detailed book on the operation which was indeed the first book written by a CIA chap on CIA stuff with CIA support. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Roosevelt,_Jr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

IF we briefly peruse the tweets on nodes such as the aforementioned Azarnoush http://twitter.com/azarnoush we see people are discussing this very much in terms of the Islamic Republic, its legal system, its institutions etc. We can't get too carried away because The Shiraz University rector has resigned in protest. The fact is, as reported widely in Europe and even on the Irish Times, the leader of the opposition Mousavi asked his supporters to not attend a planned protest at 13h30 Irish time today to avoid more deaths than the estimated seven so far. This contrasts with his statements at the beginning that he would be responsible For as we know his followers went out on the street all the same.

responsible was spoken in Farsi and understood in Farsi by both followers and Iranian government alike. They did not understand it as we do - with its 5 general definitions : answerable for action, capable of responding, primary cause or agent, trustworthy or accountability. They understood in Farsi as it was spoken. & if you can understand the wealth of difference between the language of most ancient poetry and our winsome Latin rooted "responbility" then you really will delight in this page & the plethora of interpretations it suggests http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/fa....html for ____(arabic script of Farsi word follows :

ﺩﻨﻤﻭﺭﺒﺍ
)

Since then Mousavi has offered to go on IRIB TV (the very same channel who have been accused of manipulation reports on the voting count as can be seen on the gallery here http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92697?comment_limit=0&c...47961 )

They haven't announced a decision yet.

by B Traven Tue Jun 16, 2009 19:09

Its totally wrong to suggest that the fall of the Theocracy is a right wing spin. Especially when this comes from a communist group which equally opposes US Imperialism & Political Islam. Maybe the Theocracy will not fall but the responsibility for the deaths on the streets of Iran lies with the Mullahs.

by gurggle Tue Jun 16, 2009 21:30

Nobody ever suggests that the late Polish pontiff be held post-humously responsible for the 8 deaths which occured during his mobilisation of supporters, curiosity seekers and mere gawkers that Irish September of 1979. Indeed hardly anyone cares to remember the glib excuses that when so many people are assembled a death is regrettably statistically predictable. The supporters of Mousavi who know enough English to extraordinarly see bent the usual process of updates on our throwaway Western tech-toy social networks do not appear by any chance to oppose either the theocracy or champion leftist change but they have claimed total attendances of two million people across the Iranian state in the last 36 hours = more than went to papal mullah mass with the leather strap and bells and incense on in 1979 so there politcial activity has seen less deaths. Oh you'd quibble they weren't old people pushed to the extremes of their care by fervent zealous religious nuts who forewent proper hydration such as Ireland's 1979 but are clearly different because they were shot at by militia members in a society where everyone bears the right to arms and accidental deaths due to firearms are accordingly high.

Mousavi is the ex-prime minister of the Islamic republic and in no way can be described as a Joe Higgins awaiting a true recount of the electorates' franchise to usher in a new revolution, a new Persia, a new era of Twitter popularity or a new inspiring people powers' victory.

the Indymedia Global Network pioneered razorwire mobile telephone trans-national networks in the last ten years before either twitter existed or the verb/noun "tweet" was accepted.
Most of the updates sent on days of key political protest value were in fact utterly worthless exageration.

= The west is being duped by its own prejudices.

by gurgle tweet Tue Jun 16, 2009 21:59

from the online geeky magazine on internet stuff "Wired's Danger room" :-

More and more of Iran’s pro-government websites are under assault, as opposition forces launch web attacks on the Tehran regime’s online propaganda arms. What started out as an attempt to overload a small set of official sites has now expanded, network security consultant Dancho Danchev notes. News outlets like Raja News are being attacked, too. The semi-official Fars News site is currently unavailable. “We turned our collective power and outrage into a serious weapon that we could use at our will, without ever having to feel the consequences. We practiced distributed, citizen-based warfare,” writes Matthew Burton, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who joined in the online assaults, thanks to a “push-button tool that would, upon your click, immediately start bombarding 10 Web sites with requests.” But the tactic of launching these distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attacks remains hugely controversial. The author of one-web based tool, “Page Rebooter,” used by opposition supporters to send massive amounts of traffic to Iranian government sites, temporarily shut the service down, citing his discomfort with using the tool “to attack other websites.” Then, a few hours later, he turned on the service again, after his employers agreed to cover the costs of the additional traffic. WhereIsMyVote.info is opening up 16 Page Reboot windows simultaneously, to flood an array of government pages at once. Other online supporters of the so-called “Green Revolution” worry about the ethics of a democracy-promotion movement inhibitting their foes’ free speech. A third group is concerned that the DDOS strikes could eat up the limited amount of bandwidth available inside Iran — bandwidth being used by the opposition to spread its message by Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. “Quit with the DDOS attacks — they’re just slowing down Iranian traffic and making it more difficult for the protesters to Tweet,” says one online activist.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/web-attacks-exp...ttle/

& just to think both sides look to the Lord of the worlds [PBUH] everyday without asking him why he never mentioned social networks in His final revelation. Heck he didn't say it was ok to put someone on a life support machine either deftly avoiding the sticky question of when to take them off.....

tweet is a great word, aint it?

by B Traven Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:57

Apologies. I thought you were referring to an Iranian Communist, I now see you were responding to RP!

Mousavi in power was a butcher, but the people on the streets may brung things further than he or Ratsandwich desire.

by gurgle tweet - (iosaf) Thu Jun 18, 2009 22:45

Mousavi on the street today :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mousavi1388/sets/721576195...64479
http://tehranlive.org/

One of the biggest problems I think people in the west like us (or at least me) on the indymedia or citizen information sharing and horizontal liberty buzz, are having is the lack of Farsi translation tools coupled with a mistrust of some the people knocking around the place who do speak Farsi. For example on these very pages of IMC Ireland over the years I have brought attention to the former head of the Music department in TCD who was music tutor to the Shah's kids. Such people have dodgy connections and agenda. & their kind of website mightn't be the one Iranians in Iran would expect us to get data from. After all Ahmed Chabali of the Iraqi exiles and head of the US lobby Iraqi National Council practically bent over backwards to support the US/UK/Berlusconi/Aznar invasion of his homeland guaranteeing them he could lead a liberal democratic government.......

Whilst on the other side of reality (our understanding and interpreting the internet) the ending of journalist visas is obviously pissing off the people who like to package up our news and sell it us in between advert breaks and dollops of reality shows or property supplements.

We now see that the US government asked Twitter to postpone the refreshing of its pages which I described up the page. Which considering that the USA would already have passed all the tweets through the NSA building in Maryland and then after consideraiton burnt almost all onto their equivalent of hard diskdrives kept far away in nuclear blast proof mountains several degrees below zero (yes that's really where your emails go) was really generous of them.

Were the USA sharing this data with us? Was that a demonstration of Obama era soft power?

you could almost imagine the white house staging the swatting of a fly....

Interesting links for those who can read Farsi or simply look at pictures and maps :

http://www.ayandeh.com/ tells us some constituencies reported over 95% turn-out. Hard to believe?
the swiss are getting involved in bending the internet (fair enough they invented it) as far as I can tell this group are bouncing data out of Iran http://pici.picidae.net/index.php?id=-1
blogs are being co-ordinated now by lots of different people intent on adding quality to reports.
http://www.iraniansblogs.com/

But really, as a friend (Irish) who was passed through Iran told me a few weeks ago, the loosest visa requirements are expected of South Americans. Irish people this year enjoyed double the stay they had been allowed in 2007. Whereas Argentinians and Cubans could stay as long as they spent money.

The best information might soon come from Cuban dissident networks.

what a small world we live in....................

by gurgle tweet - ( iosaf ) Fri Jun 19, 2009 13:46

Since yesterday's comment in which I lamented the lack of online translation tools for the Persian language, Google has added Farsi to its package you can read their reasoning on the Googleblog here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/google-translate....html

This now means we can expand all our links to include genuine websites representing the views and opinions of those Iranians who do not communicate in a European langauge or Arabic.

Meanwhile Microsoft has refused to turned on its Messenger service in the Iranian state. Webwatchers (as opposed to phalocentrics) will remember that in accordance with US sanctions organised by the US Treasury's "United States Office of Foreign Assets Control", Microsoft has denied "Messenger" to users in Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea last month. http://niacblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/cutting-off-co...time/

by gurggle tweet Sat Jun 20, 2009 23:36

Obama's words :-
“Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

“Martin Luther King once said: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

It is my suggestion that the concept of "bearing witness" be understood not as an expansion of the previous "the whole word is watching" refrain familiar to those who studied civil rights protest in the USA of the 1960's but also for its deeper moralistic and religious tones. The hadith or saying of the Islamic prophet muhamud being widely reported as a statement of Mousavi that he is willing for martyrdom also deals with the importance of "bearing witness".

It must be noted that the US response has been very cautious and well illustrates the difference between the current White House Regime's style of "soft power" and that of its predecessor's "hard power".

It is accepted in the beltway (a name for the Washington political & lobbyist community who number approximately 350,000 people employed to do, make, hide, move or influence politics) that the USA does not accept the Election results. However, the approach of the Obama regime has been to talk of "the world watching" and discreetly influence the Twitter company to not refresh its pages and it might also be presumed encourage Google to launch a beta version of a persian or farsi language translator tool this week. It is accepted amongst analysts that this tactic and position has been adopted to avoid confrontation with other states in the region or complicate relations with the new and difficult government in Tel Aviv.

However, the British state in its official form and its partner institution of arguably more global influence than the Queen's english, the BBC have taken a clear stance. The launch of the BBC's persian service on satelite to the region in the last year fuel paranoias within the Iranian state a fact which is acknowledged by the BBC itself on its pages covering these events. Diplomatic relations between London & Tehran are souring by the hour. Though younger readers might not remember the bad days of the Iranian embassy siege when the SAS were sent in or the better days when butter sales were up and the only talking point was renaming Tehran's "Bobby Sand street".

It is my suggestion that the concept of "bearing witness" be understood not as an expansion of the previous "the whole word is watching" refrain familiar to those who studied civil rights protest in the USA of the 1960's but also for its deeper moralistic and religious tones. The hadith or saying of the Islamic prophet muhamud being widely reported as a statement of Mousavi that he is willing for martyrdom also deals with the importance of "bearing witness".

True to form though for people who quote scripture so cleverly - it's other people who actually die on the street. Like this little girl who made it onto Youtube. Just like Susan Boyle :-

Caption: Video Id: pr7d-N0bgVs Type: Youtube Video
she bore witness. the world watched.was she ready for martydrom? her veil dropped.she died

by gurgle tweet - ( iosaf doing his thing & becoming a barstool Iran expert) Sun Jun 21, 2009 23:47

* you don't need to read Persian to appreciate the point being made on this Farsi language blog, which shows quite convincingly how official state media photos of the rally in support of Ahmadinejad in the last week was manipulated. The image which appeared in Iranian newspapers has had its "crowd padding" sections circled in colours so you can see how several sections of crowd were cut & pasted to give the impression of a higher turnout. This site http://www.mehrnews.com/en/ which is run by the same editor as the "Tehran Times" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehr_News_Agency) carried an image which is examined by Iranian freelance photographer Mohammad Kheirkhah, (23) who works for United Press International since June 2005 prior to which he worked the Iranian; Quran News Agency, Fars News Agency & Iranian Labour News Agency. His work has been published by: Time, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and Newsweek among others. Which is a pretty wide spread and initially frees him up from suspicion of bias.
http://kheirkhah.ir/?type=dynamic&lang=1&id=683

* Following on from the difficulty posed by the reporting of Mousavi's quotation of a Hadith yesterday, which was diffused through tweeter in a transliterated western alphabet and then quoted by US iranian lobbies, but could not be found as it was transliterated through any usual web search, until people (as I did) converted it into standard arabic spelling http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92779?comment_limit=0&c...54231 (substitution of "w" for "v" etc) - An Iranian blogger and tweeter is now encouraging people to transliterate differently http://www.coolzaban.org/index.php/site/article/67/

* Workers in the region are responding to their comrades in Iran As is clear from recent postings on IMC ireland and the thrust of the HOPI group and their forthcoming Saturday protest, the disenfranchised and indentured labour force of Dubia are reported as beginning actions not only in solidarity with Iranians but also in protest at the mass lay off of 500,000 "guest workers" (slaves) which occured yesterday.

* the Pirate Bay (where I blog indeed) has decided to show its internet support and is reported as lending tech support and assistance. The fact that this small act of kindness has been so tweeted is just one small indication of the lifestyle and aspirations which the Iranian urban population who are mostly under 30 have. & yes - they dance and drink & let their hair down.

* As news of the new ease with which people can understand (or dangerously misinterpret) the Persian language spreads in Iran - the list of blogs and opinions gathering under reformist umbrellas grows.

The reformist umbrella now is no longer carried by Mousavi alone.
It has extended to cover civil rights - labour unions - ethnic minorities - discontented muslim clerics.

* some of the reformist voices are to be found outside of Iran and one interesting perspective is coming from the UK. http://www.webneveshteha.com/

* on which note the most senior imam or ayatolah other than the supreme leader has made a statement condemning the repression and calling for more serious treatment of the electoral complaints from the "council of guardians".

* now let's get paranoid & remember for the eldest or learn for the youngest, how of the 5 hottest crisis situations or regions on the planet during the cold war and threat of nuclear anihilation, the claiming of Iran by either or any sphere was one of the hottest. Indeed the film "threads" on nuclear holocaust survival which all Irish and British people saw in the 80's began with the destabilisation of Iran and Soviet displeasure. This site discusses the role today's Russia might play in not only Iran but Azerbaijan (that frontier region I mentioned in connection with terrorism subplots yesterday).
http://bamdadkhabar.com/2009/06/post_1916/

* and to be fair with the paranoia let us see things from the other Iranian perspective. For surely there are many who are aghast at the attack on the Ayatolah's tomb and are unsure of the nature of the economic reforms proposed by Mousavi yet also hear the nightly chanting on the rooftops and owe allegiance to either their faith or their union. The main target of the Iranian state rhetoric has been the UK. The British were the first embassy to take in injured. The BBC desk chief has been given 24 hours to leave which expire pretty soon. Before most readers will get to peruse this comment. IT might be fair to cast minds back and recall how in 1953 the BBC inserted a codeword at the request of MI6 in accordance with the joint CIA / MI6 "operation ajax" to overthrow the then liberal democratic state of Iran. The Shah of Iran was understood to be listening to the radio for the time check and the announcer inserted "exactly" before the midnight hour. After this agreed signal, the Shah knew his coup d'etat had full backing and Kermit Roosevelt Jr's "operation ajax" became history. Of course the Shah didn't turn out to be nice and friendly, generous or kind. & so the Ayatolah overthrew him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax this titbit was revealed (Sort of) but not admitted to in a radio documentary from the very same BBC in 2005 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_2...shtml and is understood by many to justify the hostility of the Iranian regime and furthermore the Iranian people to the BBC and justify the illegalisation of its Persian service last March http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/21/iran.bbc.persian/ It might also ask one to wonder why did it take so long for the BBC to get together a persian language service - since it's only been on the go for less than a year.

For their part the BBC rather coyly have this to say :- ["........Iran has singled out Britain and the BBC in its widespread condemnation of what it calls meddling by foreign powers in its affairs. In the days following the 12 June election, BBC Persian TV was disrupted by "deliberate interference" from inside Iran, the corporation said. In response, the BBC increased the number of satellites that carry its BBC Persian television service for Farsi-speakers in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan......"] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8111638.stm

I provided not only the new satelite positions in previous comments but also went to the effort to informing readers that the BBC had not only changed frequency but physical satelite. They really are keen & eager.

But as their commentator Hugh Sykes notes whilst telling us about dancing young Iranians :- [".......Another accusation from the Iranian leadership is that British "meddling" is behind some of the vote-rigging protests. You can't prove a negative, but my sense is that the British are doing all they can to avoid meddling. When the UK (and America) interfered before, conspiring to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953, the law of unintended consequences came fully into play. The blowback from that case of meddling is still being felt more than half a century later. The 1953 coup led to more than two decades of repression under the Shah, and sowed the seeds of the Islamic revolution that sent Mohammed Reza Pahlavi into ignominious exile 26 years later. I doubt the British want to risk anything like that happening again. ........"] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8111695.stm

chastened as well as keen & eager.

* The Iranian revolutionary guard are reported on state media to be stepping up their search for cyber saboteurs Now this I touched on last Tuesday ( c/f http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92719?&condense_comment...53943 ) & it is really important to get right :- Alas, the Iranian state is spot on when it says most of the "Denial of Service Attacks" originated from north America or Europe. & not only did that web-traffic use up bandwith early on in this civil rights crisis, it is now giving the regime another verifiable reason to speak of outside inteference. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=98376§ionid=35...20101

* Universities in Kurdistan & the afore much mentioned Azerbaijani provinces are reported as being attacked and two university professors detained. This of course must be understood as a precursor to the Kurdish general strike proposed for this Tuesday.
& extension of the ethnic element which honestly is worrying me more than middle class kids dancing in Tehran. Because you've no idea what they dance to. An occasional user of IMC ireland, well known to many of us hippy merry Donegal dude (who still has my jacket by the way) visited Iran in the last year and was intrigued to be talked to about the Irish musician "Chrisie". He thought they were waxing lyrical about Christie Moore. It transpired they were all fans of Chris De Burgh..........you remember?........lady in red.........who will pay the ferryman..........patricia the stripper.........(she probably belongs on a Berlusconi thread).

= We're talking about human beings just like us even if they don't have as sophisticated taste in music or as tasteful concert promoters.
___________________________________________

more later.