Jun 15 2009
When the Traditional Media TM seem too slow, or too far from the event, or too stilted, or too unwilling, it’s time for citizen journalism to take over. Journalism in 140 characters is a tough order. But it works. And it’s far, far ahead of the Trad sources.
To follow the events in Iran as they unfold, just click this tweetgrid.
This is great stuff.
h/t to TPM for photo
Jun 15 2009
The revolution may not be televised, but it will be Twittered.
Right now, people in Iran are fighting and dying for their freedom:
IRAN is on fire! ppl are fighting in ALL CITIES for their VOTE and against the DICTATORSHIP! #iranelection,RT pls
# sources from Tehran: ppl are killed, ppl are in blood, tehran is hell. #iranelection #cnnfail15 minutes ago from web
“sadatabad, tehran. violent street battles between Basij and people. cars on fire.” @iran09 #Iranelection
RT @StopAhmadi It’s getting rough in Rasht tonight. Armed forces waiting for ppl to make their move to beat them #IranElection
There is fight in Shiraz between people and police in Mollasadra, Sinama Sadi and other down town streets. #iranelection
Hospitals around Tehran surrounded by secret police who refuse to let people with injuries get through, humanity at its worst #iranelection
It is near morning there now, and the regime appears to have spent last night, among other things, attacking university dorms in Tehran and elsewhere:
all university’s own security and personnel already evacuated by police, there are only us students in here right now. #iranelection
@mohamadreza: they push ppl & students into the dorms then throw tear gas, sometimes attacking them with anything they have
@IranRiggedElect sources: “tear gas in the dorm. It’s un-uniformed police and riot guards. at least 100 students arrested.”#iranelectionabout 2 hours ago from web
to other sources: this isn’t the police! police is still outside! we’re under attack by Ansar-Hezbolah. #iranelection
@Change_for_Iran:typing as fastest as I can in bth English&Farsi,Still we need outside help,I really don’t want to be captured by Ansar
@Change_for_Iran: some students with urgent need of medical attention calling out to all ppl who can help don’t leave us #iranelection
They attacked protestors students in Guilan university. Blood and violence here… #IranElection
unconfirm: Shooting @ Tehran Univ. Dorm. Militia has attacked the student like 8 years ago
Friend: 17 y/o killed infront of me couldn’t get to him in time guards beating us up went to hospital but he stopped moving #iranelection
Students:”50 of our friends are in jail now. We were beaten. We expect Mousavi to stand up to this,we support him” #iranelection
The students and others are fighting back:
eyewitness: It’s 3am in Iran and ppl are still fighting on the streets. #iranelection #cnnfail
Guards are Shootings in Tehran and Police car being attack by protesters …
is there any end to police’s motorcycles?! how much more we should burn?! #iranelection
@iran09 best way to #counter-attack the riders: carry some MOTOR OIL! http://tinyurl.com/nz43zg #iranelection
@Ghattavi students hold two militias as hostage, loads of motor oil is spread on the streets [to make bikers slip]
Hackers toolkit for taking down Iranian propaganda websites. VERY EASY TO USE: http://sharebee.com/31922799 #iranelection
wwowowowowo!!!!! IRIB.ir id down!!!! #iranelection #WeWin #cyberattack
Mousavi has called for a demonstration tomorrow @ 4:00 pm (7:30 am EST) followed by a general strike on Tuesday. The regime says the demonstration is illegal and there are reports of Revolutionary Guard tanks moving into the capital. No one doubts what is at stake:
4pm all across IRAN RT @persiankiwi tomorrow we march. Will biggest in world history. 10 mill march tomorrow.@flashpolitique we are moving either toward a north korean style dictatorship or a more open and democratic society
black joke:”George Orwell has requested to change his book’s name from 1984 to 1388.”(it’s year 1388 in iran. calendar) #iranelection
Stay tuned….
Jun 15 2009
Iranian filmmaker Makhmalbaf reports on phone call from Ministry of Internal Affairs to Mousavi HQ
Bio: Persian: (born May 29, 1957, Tehran) is an Iranian film director, writer, editor, and producer. He is currently the president of the Asian Film Academy. Makhmalbaf’s films have been widely presented in international film festivals in the past ten years. The multi-award-winning director, belongs to the new wave movement of Iranian cinema. Time magazine selected Makhmalbaf’s 2001 film, Kandahar, as one of top 100 films of all time. In 2006, he was a member of the Jury at the Venice film festival.
Makhmalbaf’s Interview on Radio Farda
June 13, 2009, 12:00 AM
Translated for The Real News Network
Makhmalbaf:
Yesterday, twenty agents in civilian clothing attacked press offices of Mousavi’s campaign at Gheitarieh. They broke all communication devices and attacked the campaign staff, including Mr. Kharazi and Mr Amirzadeh. They beat up the staff and when the people confronted them, they fired tear gas at the crowd. These were agents in civilian clothing! Then the agents attempted to runaway. About seven of them were captured by the people and were kept at the campaign headquarters. Next the police arrived at the headquarters and demanded to have custody of the seven captives and said “We would punish these lawbreakers ourselves.” . “No, we need this to be court documented; we know that after the election, you will lose them”, said Mr. Amirzadeh.
[I think here he is referring back to before this recording begins. This has to do with the reports from the early counts at the polls indicating that Mousavi is the winner]
The Ministry of Internal Affairs contacts press offices of Mousavi’s campaign to prepare a message for declaring victory on Sunday which is Hazrate Zahra’s birthday. Mr Mousavi said that “within the next couple of hours I will declare victory and the celebrations would be on Sunday, which is Hazrate Zahra’s birthday and Mother’s Day [in Iran]”. Afterwards Mr. Khamenei is notified that Mr Mousavi has won the election. At first he says fine, you can communicate this to the people, but the message propagation and broadcasting should be well managed [and controlled].
Jun 14 2009
Dennis Ross is Barack Obama’s special advisor on Iran. Dennis Ross is a pro-Israel hawk. The dude made almost a million bucks last year making speeches to wingnut welfare think tanks. Last year, Ross made more than $100,000.00 for shoveling propaganda on Fox News alone. Ross’s only interest in negotiations with Iran is to get them out of the way quickly in order to neutralize a public clamoring for peaceful negotiations, i.e., “alas, we tried negotiations, but that failed,” so that the US can go “kinetic” and bomb the bejeezuz out of the Iranians.
By Robert Dreyfuss’s account, Dennis Ross is the last guy who should be in charge of negotiations with Iran.
Widely viewed as a cog in the machine of Israel’s Washington lobby, Ross was not likely to be welcomed in Tehran–and he wasn’t. Iran’s state radio described his appointment as “an apparent contradiction” with Obama’s “announced policy to bring change in United States foreign policy.” Kazem Jalali, a hardline member of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, joked that it “would have been so much better to pick Ariel Sharon or Ehud Olmert as special envoy to Iran.” More seriously, a former White House official says that Ross has told colleagues that he believes the United States will ultimately have no choice but to attack Iran in response to its nuclear program.
Dennis Ross is a hardcore wingnut to the bone. Dennis Ross pals around with war-mongering wingnuts, like Paul Wolfowitz and Andrew Marshall, and helped Martin Indyk of AIPAC fame launch the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
Jun 14 2009
crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
We were ROBBED in Bush v Gore 2000. The Supreme Court was the Supreme Council for one ruling. We were told to stop counting and declare George W. Bush President, and so it was.
Imagine if Obama v McCain was this election and the SCOTUS robbed us again, what would you have done?
It is like that in Iran everyday, and now more than ever.
After viewing the farce that is Democracy in Iran over the past few days I think it is very important that Americans who believe in an open Democracy fully support Iranians who want the same for themselves.
Therefore, I invite you to offer your full support for the Iranians who voted for candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the hopes of the next generation of Iranian “Change”!
This is what winning hearts and minds is all about.
People around the world who want a more Democratic society should be fully supported by Americans no matter where they are from or what their faith is. This is even more true in cases where elections are rigged and the will of the people are suppressed by the powers of a status quo that lacks empathy for the people they wish to control.
May 02 2009
Reminder more or less that May 1 is the International Worker’s Day and early American labor rights protesters initiated it. It’s an American tradition – not a Communist tradition. And it’s a pagan tradition from the dawn of time.
I hope you all had a great May Day. As I post this it’s still May 1 from the CDT zone westward. For those who saw the original post, you can just skip it or get refreshed. For those who haven’t seen it, it has some interesting background on the history of the day.
Herewith, a recycled essay:
May 1.
A lot of Americans have apparently been brainwashed during their formative years. Especially the crowd over at the site that shall not be named. The vast majority associate the first day of the month of May as a Soviet Communist celebration day. Then again a sizable number of Uhmericans think Saddam Hussein was complicit in the 9/11 atrocities. Oh, and the wiretapping started after 9/11 and not like late February or early March of 2001.
May first was a holiday before there was a May. It’s a cross-quarter day. That means it falls about halfway between a solstice and an equinox. Back before keyboards, laser mice and high-speed internet connections people used to notice these things. The only thing that emitted light, besides fire, was in the sky. You can check out the sky anytime. Just click here. Cool, huh? And you didn’t have to let go of your mouse to do it.
So back in the days of stone knives and bearskins, and I’m not talking about the Star Trek episode where Spock and McCoy have to build a time-machine thingie with 1930s tech, or even the dark ages of eight bit processors, RAM limits of 65536 bytes and machine code, I’m talking real stone and real bear. Hell, sabre-tooth tiger and wooly mammoth times. Back when chipped flint was high-tech. In the time of neo-pagans (not to be confused with the neopaganists of today).
Together with the solstices and equinoxes (Yule, Ostara, Midsummer, and Mabon), these form the eight solar holidays in the neopagan wheel of the year. They are often celebrated on the evening before the listed date, since traditionally the new day was considered to begin at sunset rather than at midnight.
Festival name Date Sun’s Position
Samhain 1 Nov (alt. 5-10 Nov) ? 15° ?
Imbolc 2 Feb (alt. 2-7 Feb) ? 15° ?
Beltane 1 May (alt. 4-10 May) ? 15° ?
Lughnasadh 1 Aug (alt. 3-10 Aug) ? 15° ?There are Christian and secular holidays that correspond roughly with each of these four, and some argue that historically they originated as adaptations of the pagan holidays, although the matter is not agreed upon. The corresponding holidays are:
* St.Brigids Day (1 Feb), Groundhog Day (2 Feb), and Candlemas (2 or 15 Feb)
* Walpurgis Night (30 Apr) and May Day (1 May)
* Lammas (1 Aug)
* Halloween (31 Oct), All Saints (1 Nov), and All Souls’ Day (2 Nov)Groundhog Day is celebrated in North America. It is said that if a groundhog comes out of his hole on 2 February and sees his shadow (that is, if the weather is good), there will be six more weeks of winter. February 2nd marks the end of the short days of winter. Because average temperatures lag behind day length by several weeks, it is (hopefully) the beginning of the end of winter cold.
It’s been Groundhog Day in Iraq for five seven years now. But who’s counting?
UPDATE: we’ve been lobbing explosives into Afghanistan since Clinton’s time. The definition of insanity is repeating the same act and expecting a different result. Our MIC PWOT is insane – but it keeps their funding flowing while we lose our jobs and homes.
It’s 2010 now and nothing has really changed that much, has it? I hope you enjoyed this May Day. It’s a day for Working Class Heroes.
There’s more:
Apr 16 2009
If correct, this is important and good.
MJ Rosenberg, Director of Policy Analysis, Israel Policy Forum, is reporting that the Obama adminsitration will take a tough line on peace in the mideast.
Yedioth Achronoth, the largest circulation daily in Israel, reports today that President Obama intends to see the two-state solution signed, sealed and delivered during his first term.
Rahm Emanuel told an (unnamed) Jewish leader; “In the next four years there is going to be a permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it doesn’t matter to us at all who is prime minister.”
snip
He also said that the United States will exert pressure to see that deal is put into place. “Any treatment of the Iranian nuclear problem will be contingent upon progress in the negotiations and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory,” the paper reports Emanuel as saying. In other words, US sympathy for Israel’s position vis a vis Iran depends on Israel’s willingness to live up to its commitment to get out of the West Bank and permit the establishment of a Palestinian state there, in Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
http://israelpolicyforum.ngpho…
I have criticized the Obama adminstration on a few things, but this is a big, big change and is essential for pulling back Ameircan Empire.
We need a secure and peaceful Israel and Palestine. I expect a lot of Democratic Party blowback on this, as AIPAC and others start atacking.
On this one, President Obama is right.
Mar 05 2009
Crossposted from Antemedius
Yesterday we saw historian and US foreign and military policy analyst Gareth Porter talking with The Real News about Obama’s Plan For Not Leaving Iraq and the President’s announced intentions of leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq while trying to sell it as a withdrawal.
Today Porter, again talking with Paul Jay, talks about the geopolitical realities of the situation viv a vis Iraq, the entrenched vested interests of Petraeus and Odierno who both seem more interested in their own egos and legacies than anything resembling reality, and says that in spite of the U.S. efforts to create a U.S. – friendly regime, he concludes that history has already bypassed Obama’s plans for Iraq as much as five or six years ago and the undeniable geopolitical fact of Iraq is that the US will have to leave Iraq to a government that tilts more to Iran than to the US.
Real News – March 5, 2009 – 12 min 38 sec
The Geopolitical Fact Of Iraq
Porter: The US will have to leave Iraq to a government that tilts more to Iran than to the US
Feb 09 2009
The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.
Building consensus within America’s body politic and national security establishment for a new way forward with Muslims worldwide is a formidable challenge. Many Americans still don’t appreciate the complex nuances of Muslim society and remain stubbornly Islamophobic almost seven and half years after 9/11. Equally formidable is earning the goodwill of Muslims worldwide following the Iraq War as well as American atrocities perpetrated upon Islamic detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Hopefully, President Obama’s historic election has finally opened a path for constructive conversation about how America can most effectively engage the Muslim world.
The CIA’s former point man on Islam, Emile Nakahleh, has vigorously entered this conversation with his new book, A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations With the Muslim World (Princeton University Press). From 1991 to 2006, Nakahleh served as the director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA. He holds a PhD in international relations and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Jan 12 2009
Original article, by Patrick Martin, via World Socialist Web Site:
Front-page reports in two leading US newspapers Sunday signal a ratcheting up of US pressure on Iran and the preparation of American public opinion for a new round of US military aggression.
