Avaaz.org is an amazing organization that assists movements across the world by leveraging the power of the internet to raise funds. They are running a campaign to help get servers back online in Iran to help in the resistance there. Since watching what was happening in Iran during the past week or so, it was impossible not to have a feeling of helplessness. Many have been asking, "What can I do to help?"

Well, now Avaaz.org has given us a particular way to get involved.

$10 a piece - that's all it takes!

From the Avaaz.org website:

IRAN: BREAK THE BLACKOUT! Last week millions marched peacefully to protest apparent election-rigging. Now a crackdown has killed scores and left hundreds arrested -- while the internet and media blackout and cyber-surveillance threatens to stop all Iranians communicating freely.

We can't let that happen. Unless Iranians are able to share information freely over the coming weeks, their voices may be silenced for good. Let's help break the blackout -- people in Iran are asking us to re-open secure and anonymous communication channels for them, particularly anonymous web proxy services.

One small donation of $10 can fund enough bandwidth for Iranians to send hundreds of secure emails. If 10,000 or more of us can donate, we can scale up these services massively -- with more servers, bandwidth and advanced technical support. The next two weeks will be crucial --

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Tags: Avaaz.org, Iran

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The Iranian Revolution circa 2009 continues with these scenes from the ground:

From the NY Times:

The constant refrains in the chants are "Allah-o-akbar!" ("God is great!") and "Marg bar dictator!" ("Death to the dictator!").

As Borzou Daragahi explained in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, the first, religious chant that has become a rallying cry for the opposition in Iran this week, "harks back 30 years to the months before the Islamic Revolution. It was a way to reassure others that they weren't alone in feeling wronged and enraged. Today it motivates people to attend the peaceful marches that have become the largest acts of civil disobedience in three decades."

With more photos:

And then there's this aweful video of a young woman shot and killed on the street in front of the camera:

And finally, this eye-witness account from NY Times Op-Ed columnist, Roger Cohen:

The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. "I swear to God," he shouted at the protesters facing him, "I have children, I have a wife, I don't want to beat people. Please go home."

A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of "Join us! Join us!" The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.

Garbage burned. Crowds bayed. Smoke from tear gas swirled. Hurled bricks sent phalanxes of police, some with automatic rifles, into retreat to the accompaniment of cheers. Early afternoon rumors that the rally for Moussavi had been canceled yielded to the reality of violent confrontation.

I don't know where this uprising is leading. I do know some police units are wavering. That commander talking about his family was not alone. There were other policemen complaining about the unruly Basij. Some security forces just stood and watched. "All together, all together, don't be scared," the crowd shouted.

I also know that Iran's women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I've seen them urging less courageous men on. I've seen them get beaten and return to the fray. "Why are you sitting there?" one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. "Get up! Get up!"

Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of "Death to the dictator!" and "We want liberty!" accompanied her.

There were people of all ages. I saw an old man on crutches, middle-aged office workers and bands of teenagers. Unlike the student revolts of 2003 and 1999, this movement is broad.

Just off Revolution Street, I walked into a pall of tear gas. I'd lit a cigarette minutes before -- not a habit but a need -- and a young man collapsed into me shouting: "Blow smoke in my face." Smoke dispels the effects of the gas to some degree.

I did what I could and he said, "We are with you" in English and with my colleague we tumbled into a dead end -- Tehran is full of them -- running from the searing gas and police. I gasped and fell through a door into an apartment building where somebody had lit a small fire in a dish to relieve the stinging.

There were about 20 of us gathered there, eyes running, hearts racing. A 19-year-old student was nursing his left leg, struck by a militiaman with an electric-shock-delivering baton. "No way we are turning back," said a friend of his as he massaged that wounded leg.

Later, we moved north, tentatively, watching police lash out from time to time, reaching Victory Square where a pitched battle was in progress. Young men were breaking bricks and stones to the right size for hurling. Crowds gathered on overpasses, filming and cheering the protesters. A car burst into flames. Back and forth the crowd surged, confronted by less-than-convincing police units.

I looked up through the smoke and saw a poster of the stern visage of Khomeini above the words, "Islam is the religion of freedom."

Amazing stuff from Cohen, risking his life so that us in the West might see and hear what's going on over there. Very powerful reporting...

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Tags: Ahmadinejad, Iran, Iranian Revolution, Mousavi, Tehren

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There is obviously something very big and existential going on in Iran right now, and it almost makes the question of whether the election was fraudulent moot. There are now over 3500 videos on YouTube from Iran with many, more posts on Twitter. It's clear that the people there are fired up for change (see the video below). But did Ahmadinejad really steal the election?

Two correspondents from The New America Foundation came out with articles today making the claim that the election indeed was NOT fraudulent and that Ahmadinejad won fair and square. Could it be?

From Flynt Leverett comes this:

Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and "Iran experts" have dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud.

They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad's 62.6 percent of the vote in this year's election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the "Iran experts" over Friday's results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.

In particular, there was a final debate near the end of the two week campaign which heavily favored Ahmadinejad:

Like much of the Western media, most American "Iran experts" overstated Mir Hossein Mousavi’s "surge" over the campaign’s final weeks. More important, they were oblivious -- as in 2005 -- to Ahmadinejad's effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner. American "Iran experts" missed how Ahmadinejad was perceived by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates with his three opponents -- especially his debate with Mousavi.

Before the debates, both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad campaign aides indicated privately that they perceived a surge of support for Mousavi; after the debates, the same aides concluded that Ahmadinejad's provocatively impressive performance and Mousavi's desultory one had boosted the incumbent's standing. Ahmadinejad's charge that Mousavi was supported by Rafsanjani’s sons -- widely perceived in Iranian society as corrupt figures -- seemed to play well with voters.

Meanwhile, Patrick Doherty wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post where he details the result of a Western poll taken during 10 days before the election (and that disastrous debate result for Mousavi) which he claims shows that Ahmadinejad should have won by a wide margin:

The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.

Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, pre-election polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.

Not being a polling expert, it's difficult to dispute these findings, although the poll did suffer from 42% of the recipients not responding. If nearly half of the people you speak to hang up the phone, is the poll even legitimate?

Well, Juan Cole took a swipe at these findings, and although he makes sense, it's important to read the comments section, too, which are almost completely in favor of accepting these election results:

But as a mere social historian I would say that the poll actually tends to confirm some of my doubts about the announced electoral tallies.

The poll did not find that Ahmadinejad had majority support. It found that the level of support for the incumbent was 34%, with Mousavi at 14%. Here's the important point: 60% of the 27% who said they were undecided favored political reform.

But as one of the readers in the comments section wrote, who was considered a reformer? Ahmadinejad or Mousavi? And another reader asks:

Additionally, Moiussavi claimed victory before polls closed. Now this purportedly was because his campaign was notified by their Interior Ministry that they had won. Apparently the Moussavi campaign was OK with this. However, later when the result was announced the other way, all of a sudden the speed of the announcement meant that this "proved" fraud because there was no way the count could be done so fast. So, Moussavi ahead, sure they can count that fast; Ahmedinajad ahead (several hours later), no way they could count that fast.

He makes a damn good point!

...and yet we still have thousands of these heart-breaking videos to contend with:

So what is really going on over there? Could this be an existential moment for the regime, or will this all just die down in a week or so? Wouldn't it be nice to get the religious zealots out of politics and governing once and for all and give the people the freedom they deserve?

One thing for certain is that the technology of the early 21st century (YouTube, Twitter, etc), has changed forever the relationship between the people and their (repressive) government.

Georgia10 at DailyKos wrote a very eloquent post on this very topic:

The saying popping up over the last several hours has already become cliche: the revolution will not be televised, it will be Twittered. Stripping away the hyperbole of that statement and we are left with the very real and grounded fact that the way citizens across the world organize, react, and participate has forever been altered by the cornucopia of 21st century mediums, each of which presents a new platform for how citizens interact with and even select their government.

Read on...

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Tags: Ahmadinejad, Daily Kos, Iran, Iranian Revolution, Mousavi, rigged election

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This video from the BBC is just incredible.

And the BBC satellite feed is being jammed by the Iranian government, too...

And then there's this from Andrew Sullivan:

The news on attack on Tehran University's students seems accurate. The students were reportedly protesting on the streets near their dorm, when some and special forces plain-clothes militia attacked them, injuring and arresting some.

The students started their protest at 9:15 shouting slogans such as "we don't want a coup leader" and "down with the dictator" and "Seyyed-Ali (Khamenei's first name) Pinochet, Iran is not Chile."

When the students got attacked by the mob and the guard, they defended themselves by throwing rocks at them. The students are staying in TV rooms in the dorms due to fear of getting arrested in hospitals. More than 11 male students are injured some in bad condition. The militia and guard then attacked women's dorms injuring 11 female students. The internet in the dorms has been out since afternoon.

And then you have Flickr and Twitter helping us learn more about the situation.

We can only hold our breath that something positive finally comes from all of this bloodshed over there...

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Tags: Ahmadinejad, demonstrators, Iran, students

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Historic times in Iran:

From Andrew Sullivan:

Mock not. As the regime shut down other forms of communication, Twitter survived. With some remarkable results. Those rooftop chants that were becoming deafening in Tehran? A few hours ago, this concept of resistance was spread by a twitter message. Here's the Twitter from a Moussavi supporter:

ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and shout ALAHO AKBAR in protest #IranElection

Amazing...

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As this country stumbles around from issue to issue trying to find common ground upon which legislation can be written to help solve our problems, it's always important to look back to the founding fathers for guidance on how they forged this country from all the various competing factors. Richard Beeman's "Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution" is one of those revealing historical studies that plainly show how difficult it was to forge consensus. And yet they did:

We like to think of our nation's founders as men with unwavering fealty to high-minded principles. To some extent they were. But when they gathered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 to write the Constitution, they showed that they were also something just as great and often more difficult to be: compromisers. In that regard they reflected not just the classical virtues of honor and integrity but also the Enlightenment's values of balance, order, tolerance, scientific calibration and respect for other people's beliefs. On almost all issues that they faced -- with one very big exception -- this art of compromise served them well.

It's an awesome story that every American should read to understand how on earth this country has survived over 200 years with so many different competing interests. It's just fascinating...

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Tags: 1787, Ben Franklin, Philadelphia, Richard Beeman, US Constitution

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