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Unheard Voice

-- Hanif Yazdi is an Iranian student in Dhaka. Last week, his grandfather was one of the hundreds arrested by the Iranian state in response to election protests. His op-ed addressed to the Bangladeshi people came out today in Daily Star:

Iran Protests
“I never, not in my wildest dreams, imagined that the first time I would vote in an Iranian election, I would be doing it in Bangladesh. On June 12, 2009, I voted at the Iranian embassy in Dhaka. I was proud to play my part, proud to ride a wave of hope that was sweeping our world. More than anything, I believed that this election would bring us a more just, humane, and representative government. The days that followed revealed in no ambiguous terms that the Iranian government had declared war on our people. The officials who were charged with representing us, and the police who were sworn to protect us, have betrayed our trust. No matter what your political beliefs, or what you think of the Iran elections, no government has the right to treat us this way.” -- /snap/ [link]

The netstrike against Iran seems to be ceasing, as some protestor's websites are reporting that "the electronic sit-in may be affecting networks other than the intended target sites". That's arguably true, considering most of the netstrike protest comes from the outside.

Meanwhile the article "A Deeper Look at The Iranian Firewall" gives us an update about protocols (or are those just ports?) being blocked.

As isolation seems to increase progressively, the resource of external proxy servers becomes more and more important to reach the outside, as outlined by the article "The Proxy Fight for Iranian Democracy".

Niac-blog

-- A friend of NIAC passes on this message, perhaps the most detailed description of yesterday that I’ve seen anywhere, from the perspective of a young woman in Tehran.

Tehran, 4.30 local time, Enghelab Street -

I meet with my students on Saturdays for a private class. We cook and eat together, then talk of philosophy. This time there is no class. We only try to keep up our morale. We are very determined but scared. That is how I can describe most of the people who came out to attend the demonstration today. After the Supreme Leader’s fierce speech at the Friday prayers, we knew that today we would be different. We feel so vulnerable, more than ever, but at the same time are aware of our power. No matter how strong it is collectively, it will do little to protect us today. We could only take our bones and flesh to the streets and expose them to batons and bullets. Two different feelings fight inside me without mixing with one another. To live or to just be alive, that’s the question.

There is another student who would have her lunch with us, but is not coming to the demonstration. She’s too scared and while pretending to be in control bursts into tears. She says she hates to see people suffer. We tell here we have suffered for years. She says she doesn’t want people to die. I tell her tens of thousands die each year on the roads in Iran, at least this time it would be for a good cause. She says we are elites and can save ourselves for better times when we can be more useful. We reply there is no difference between people when we are all in such a condition.

We finish the lunch and sit to read poems of Mirzadeh Eshgi." /snap/ [link]

Netstrikers from all over the world are targeting governmental websites in Iran, with an on-line protest that is rapidly bringing down their frontend servers.

Websites like this are popping up on various internet servers and will presumably gather millions of clicks in the coming days, this might actually silence all "official" communication channels, reaching the point when bloggers voices will actually have more outreach than state, corporate and religious powers.

The netstrike protest form was born in the nineties by initiative of the pro-Zapatista Electronic Civil Disobedience group as well the European Counter Network in Italy who made the first on-line demonstration against French nuclear tests in Mururoa and police brutality at anti-G8 rallies.

MadEast

-- "Dear Friends
Please pass these lines to those who are not here, can’t open their eyes and especially for those parachute reporters who should be more thorough while coming to Iran and making reports.

“I can’t remember having found any hard evidence and proof while the world was deciding sanctions against Iran on the eventual non-peaceful Nuclear program, so how come that this time all analysts and reporters still seek for a hard proof to finally believe that there was a fraud in the elections?” My Grandma

Aren’t these evidences enough?
1 – Many are justifying the rallies as a bad-loser manner of the urban Iranian and believe that as Ahmadinejad is well supported from the country-side of Iran he probably got the majority of the votes. Such analysts should study more to see that only 30% of the whole nation are living in the country side . So among the 46 million Iranians qualified to participate in the elections, there are only 13.8 million country-side voters. If all of them did really vote for Ahmadinejad (which is of course unlikely) there is still a 10 million gap to reach the 24 million counted votes for Ahmadinejad.
2 – The whole protests aren’t just limited to Tehran and cities such as Shiraz, Mashad, Isfahan, Tabriz, Ahwaz… are also among the protesting regions. Sure is that small cities are definitely unable to contribute on the same scale as controlling and of course confronting it is much easier for the police and militia.
3 – Only 1.5 hours after closing the polls, 5 million votes were already counted and within 4 hours almost 65% of the whole 39 million votes were settled. The polling system in Iran is manual.
4 – About an hour after closing the polls, state news agencies congratulated Ahmadinejad’s win with a dominant majority." -- /snap/ [link]

Libération

-- Pour Arash Salehi, journaliste iranien, la période de relative liberté d'expression en Iran a laissé place à une atmosphère de terreur.

Arash Salehi, 31 ans, est un journaliste iranien. Il travaille actuellement à Radio Free Europe, un réseau (radio/internet/tv) basé à Prague. Suite à l'élection d'Ahmadinejad en 2005, il a quitté l'Iran pour venir travailler en France, puis aux Pays-Bas et en République Tchèque.

D'après votre expérience, est-il difficile d'exercer le métier de journaliste en Iran?
En temps normal, on peut écrire ce que l'on veut dans la presse iranienne. Si la télévision d'Etat est une machine de propagande, tout comme certains journaux, l'existence de différentes factions en Iran permet tout de même un pluralisme. Karoubi, par exemple, a son propre journal. Pendant les mandats de Rafsandjani et Khatami, les journalistes avaient la possibilité de critiquer le gouvernement. Cette atmosphère de débat et d'opposition au gouvernement n'est pas un phénomène nouveau. Mais, il n'y a pas de garanties. Aujourd'hui, tu peux être arrêté si tu franchis certaines lignes rouges. Ainsi, il n'est pas sans dangers de critiquer le Guide suprême ou d'écrire sur le programme nucléaire iranien... -- /snap/ [link]

The Daily Star - Bangladesh

[Dhaka] -- "Tiananmen + Twitter = Tehran"
- Facebook status line

SOMETIME on June 12th, the official news is announced: "Landslide for Ahmadinejad". Then, just as quickly, other news starts coming out, louder, drowning out the state machine. Data analysis showing votes between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, as announced in six waves, in a correlation ratio of 0.995, a statistical near-impossibility. Professor Mebane's analysis, showing 9 locations with abnormal outliers. Results that defy political alignments (Mousavi losing in Tehran, which is flashpoint for anti-Ahmadinejad vote), ethnic loyalties (Azeri candidate Mousavi losing in Azeri capital Tabriz, Lur candidate Mehdi Karoubilosing in Luristan) and demographic shifts (young, women, first-time voters).

So far, all this is familiar. Election fraud stretches from Pakistan to Burma to our near and far, Southern and Northern neighbours. Sometimes outrage over stolen elections is large enough to topple the government and force a re-election (Bangladesh). But other times, protests fade as the government waits until protestors are exhausted (Mexico).

June 13th to 16th, the attrition confrontation plays out differently. In 1968, protestors against the Vietnam War fought Chicago police and chanted at TV cameras "the whole world is watching". In 2009, the whole world is watching online, 24/7. The stage for Iranian activists are the streets, but also Twitter-Facebook-Flickr-Blogspot, and the censors can't stop any of it. As the Bangladesh government discovered after blocking YouTube, censorship isn't what it used to be. Just as we used proxy sites to get to YouTube (until our government gave up), Iranians are using anonymizers like Torproject.org. An Iranian tells The Independent: "The regime, can block Facebook today but they can't do it forever."

From the moment the Mousavi protestors hit the streets, Reddit, Digg, Flickr, LiveLeak, Facebook are flooded with links. Basij thugs beat protestors, and within minutes Youtube 's Mousavi1388 channel ("Iranian professionals and students") has the mobile phone video online. Nothing is outside the camera frame. -- /snap/ [link]

Many sources within and around the huge Iranian blogsphere are reporting problems in navigating on the Internet, using social networking websites and mobile phones.

Here is an update about recent changes of Iran's Internet routing table, showing that most connectivity carriers have been blocked, while the majority of the traffic keeps flowing via Turkey.

The topic spawned a huge discussion thread on Slashdot, counting more than 600 comments...

TehranLive

[Tehran] -- "Finally i could upload the videos of clash and conflict between protestors to election results and riot police forces and somewhere Basij forces. The delay is because of very low bandwith of internet at these days in Iran.

You can see the photos here and here."

/snap/ [link]

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

تحيه للجميع..  يرجى ايصاله لمن تعرفون من الاصدقاء العرب والاجانب
 لاهميته بعد ان تم انجازه من قبل الايطاليين 
وهو عمل ضخم تحقق بعد جهد سنوات من قبل مختصين على مستوى دولي

Uskowi on Iran

-- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being declared the winner of Iran’s presidential election with nearly 35% margin over nearest competitor Mir Hossein Mousavi, with Karrubi and Rezaie receiving only 2% of the vote. The numbers do not add up. All the indications pointed to a very tight race between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Winning with 35% margin over Mousavi was unimaginable.

The questions is, if the government wanted to rig the votes in favor of Ahmadinejad, why did it need to show a margin of 35%. It would have been more believable if the margin was fixed at 1 or 2%. Here we might be witnessing not only an act of fraud on the part of the government, but a deliberate move to openly challenge and agitate the political opponents and the millions of ordinary young people who came out in droves on the city streets of Iran to register their unhappiness with the current situation.

The government seems to be challenging the opponents to come out again in anger in order to clamp down hard on them. The danger is for the IRGC and the Basij to raise their arms against the people in the coming hours and days.

To this analyst, the government’s move has all the hallmarks of a coup. -- /snap/ [link]

:::: Washington Post ::::
Iran Election In Dispute as 2 Candidates Claim Victory

AfghanLord

[Kabul] -- "I am excited and impatient as well. I bought a Kawasaki motorbike 250cc offroad just a few days ago. With this I am going to travel to Bamyan and in central Afghanistan. It is a Japanese used dirt bike which currently is in a good condition. I am going to do a tour, passing through several districts and province to reach my village. My mother is sick and i promised to see her weeks ago. This time I am doing a quick tour with this motorbike and I hope to do it again but with a friend of mine who is still trying to make his mind." /snap/ [link]