Just beat it!

In this video, Muslim Reverie says about Mousavi:

The western media has been giving many non-Iranians the impression that he’s a secular reformist who is going to bring an American-style democracy to Iran. This is misinformation and untrue. Mousavi’s supporters are shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) on rooftops and they have mullahs and religious clerics supporting them

I disagree. Unfortunately, some right-wing western media and fairly so many middle eastern voices have sometimes given some other vague visions that the nominees of the main rivals of the Iranian presidential election, Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, are the same and Mousavi just knows how not to say wrong things in a wrong place. We Iranians know that like many other politicians inside Islamic Republic, Mousavi has changed a lot since 20 years ago. The world out there doesn’t realize it that much though.

Those analysts didn’t wanna believe that Iranians have voted for the reformist side and as soon as many were convinced that the election was rigged and Iranians “might” have voted for a reform, they started to say that: Well, Mousavi must be the same shit.

Mousavi was accepted by the guardian council being underestimated to be able to attract Iranian seculars’ support. Given the enormous turnout it should have been proven by now that he as a classic leader in Islamic Republic was even backed by the opposition to the whole regime; Those who used to boycott the election before as it is a procedure governed by IR.

Such a claim that there’s not a meaningful difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad is unfortunately accepted all over the place and has tendency not to update the old-fashioned exotic viewpoint towards Iran. A better effort is needed to enlighten.

Pixels per head

– How can you capture 3 million heads in a single shot with few mega-pixels?

This is what I’ve been asking myself nowadays.

After the Iranian disputed election and while Ahmadinejad was trying to compete with Mousavi to bring as many people as he can to celebrate his “victory”, millions of Mousavi’s supporters covered streets of Tehran. Before foreign journalists were kicked out of the land, they could cover both rallies and mentioned tens of thousands of supporters for each. That was a great job, however bringing a wrong impression abroad: There are two equally strong crowds in Iran, each claiming its side as the winner and both are “many”.

The point is that while based on some street capacity calculations Tehran’s mayor estimated hugest Mousavi’s rally as having 3 million attendants, Ahmadinejad was able to gather dozens of thousands around Vali-Asr square, including all bribed folk brought from the countryside.

I believe that the traditional shoe leather photojournalistic methods of capturing the crowd have shown their intrinsic inability to reflect a sound comparison. It’s impossible to cover millions of heads distributed over dozens of kilometers just in few digital shots or some high definition video-reports taken from the surface of the town.

While govermental militia is the only one who has access to helicopters over Tehran, for us the satellite photos are the only way to resolve this problem: We are much more and we should be able to prove that! Now given such an introduction does anyone have access to almost-live satellite photos taken of the earth. I remember that NASA had a public service which was used by fire extinguishers and was able to provide shots of the globe every – let’s say – second hour. I can’t find that service anymore.

Update: Marius F.’s email in this regard:

Hey dude!

I’ve been looking around and speaking to my #1 computer wizard about finding real time satelite photos from Iran where you get to see the rally, but i don’t seem to find anything like that. Probobly some of the pay-services got something like that, so I post some links for you that looks interesting.

http://satellite-earth.suggestsoft.com/
http://earth.google.com/
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

I think that it would be easiest to get in touch with someone inside NASA that has interest in the Iranian government and the election, and that is willing to get hold of satellite photos from Iran on that date and time where it all took place. Maybe you know someone, who knows someone, who know an Iranian guy who works there? 😉

Here’s some interesting sites for getting in touch with different satelite holding companies around the world and the people on top in NASA: Org.map of NASA, Other agencies around Europe and so on. It’s not as much as you would hope for, but its a start. Taking a couple of phone calls and start pulling strings would probobly get you somewhere.. Hopefully 🙂

p.s. Later update (18th of September): Finally Google maps updated Iran and now it at least shows the different locations that green supporters were stationed with the videos. 🙂

Planlegger Demonstrasjon i Trondheim

Intervjuet mitt med adressa av Mia Kristin Midtbø:

Iranere over hele verden samler seg under mottoet «Where is my vote?» Alireza Ashrafian (t.v.) og Nima Darabi ønsker å arrangere en egen demonstrasjon i Trondheim. Foto: LENA KNUTLI

De mener at valget i Iran ikke har gått riktig for seg. Nå ønsker iranere i Trondheim å protestere mot valgresultatet.

Nima Darabi, Mohammad Tavakoli og Alireza Ashrafian har samlet seg på en hybel for å planlegge en markering. Darabi og Tavakoli er doktorgradsstudenter ved NTNU, mens Ashrafian har gjort ferdig sin doktorgrad.

De siste dagene har de sett bilder av opptøyer og vold, og protester mot valgresultatet som førte til at president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fikk beholde makten. Flere av tilhengerne til opposisjonens hovedkandidat, Mir Hossein Mousavi, har blitt arrestert. De er urolige og spente over opptøyene i hjemlandet.
– Tror det er valgfusk

– Vi er sikre på at stemmene er endret. Derfor ønsker vi å samle folk til en markering. Dette er ikke en Mousavi-kampanje. Vi er imot det vi opplever som et fabrikkert valgresultat, sier Alireza.

Dette er også grunnen til opptøyene i Iran. Iranere over hele verden samler seg under mottoet «Where is my vote?»

De mener at stemmene ikke har blitt talt opp skikkelig. Det har heller ikke vært nøytrale valgobservatører til stede ved valget.

– Jeg og mange med meg tror at valgjukset var forberedt på forhånd. Noen aviser som støtter Ahmadinejad kunngjorde til og med valgresultatet før valget var gjennomført, sier Nima Darabi.

– Vi ønsker en markering fordi vi er imot valgfusk. Ikke fordi vi er skuffet for at vår kandidat ikke vant – det hadde vi ikke hatt noen problemer med. Det vi synes er farlig, er om valgresultatet blir manipulert og feilaktig presentert til regjeringens fordel, sier Alireza Ashrafian.

De har alle stemt i valget via forhåndsstemming her i Trondheim.

– 92 iranere avga stemme i Trondheim. Av dem var 86 stemmer for Mousavi, to for Ahmadinejad, og de resterende sju for andre kandidater, forteller Alireza Ashrafian.

Ønsker fredelig demonstrasjon

Nå ønsker iranerne i Trondheim å gjennomføre en demonstrasjon i Trondheim.

– Vi ønsker en rolig og fredelig demonstrasjon, sier Alireza til adressa.no.

De planlegger å samles foran realfagsbygget på NTNU Gløshaugen, der de vil gå rolig ned til sentrum. På Torvet vil de samles til en kort appell. De holder på å samle folk, og vet ennå ikke hvor mange som kommer til å stille opp.

Avhengig av når de får tillatelse fra politiet, kommer de til å ha markeringen i løpet av denne uken.

Nima sitter ved macen og sender ut informasjon og invitasjoner via Facebook og epost.

De har så langt ikke hatt kontakt med andre iranere i andre norske byer, men i løpet av intervjuet får de kontakt med kjente som planlegger lignende fredelige markeringer i Oslo og Bergen.

Vold og opptøyer

De har hyppig kontakt med familie og venner i Iran, som har vært vitner til demonstrasjoner, bruk av vold og tåregass fra politiet.

De forteller historier. Om internetthastighet som plutselig minker så det blir vanskelig å få kontakt med omverdenen, om folk som får kameraene sine ødelagt på gaten.

– Myndighetene har kontroll på alt.

– Det er demonstrasjoner i flere iranske byer. I dag snakket jeg med en venn. Det hadde vært en feiring for Ahmadinejad, og etterpå kom opposisjonen for å protestere. Politiet spredde mengden ved hjelp av tåregass, og brukte vold, sier Nima Darabi.

Nima snakker med en venninne på telefonen. Hun forteller om hvordan hun var ute på hovedgaten i Teheran under en valgappell dagen før valget, og noen i mengden tok fra henne kameraet og kastet det i bakken slik at det ble knust.

Litt senere får Nima enda verre nyheter. Venninnen Behnaz som er student i Teheran har sett en person bli drept på gaten.

Studentene er opprørte over volden og kaoset.

– Ahmadinejad har tusenvis av tilhengere, og de fleste er fredelige. Dessverre er det er et mindretall som står for det vi nå ser, sier studentene.

Senere NRK-1 sendt en rapport om protest vår (+):

December 6, “Student Day” in Iran

Back to 55 years ago and during the Shah era, when Iranian police agents fired and killed three students (two marxists and one nationalist) inside the campus of University of Tehran, the day 6th of December has been recognized as an official day in Iranian calendar called Student Day. Since then, before and after the revolution, Iranian students, both seculars and religious, celebrate this anniversary, protesting against the dictatorship and policies of the government.

This year the student organizers preferred the day after, December 7, to hold the protests. Therefore, today and yesterday, students at University of Tehran synchronized with other universities in the capital and other cities have held gatherings, calling in particular for the release of the imprisoned and re-admittance of the suspended students and the fired faculty. The students of other universities who were not allowed to pass into the university broke the western entrance gate to join the crowd and some are arrested. In spite of that all of the campus universities were fully surrounded by police, the state security forces, and intelligence and security agents, many of the students succeeded to attend. According to some attendants’ observations, the atmosphere has been violated more and the slogans have become fairly more anti-governmental being compared to the previous years.

A book called…

“The Road to Democracy in Iran”

I’ve met the author, Akbar Ganji, several times back home in Khordad newspaper, one of the dozens of reformist newspapers in the age of the Iranian former president. I’ve always been a fan of his brave investigations and an active reader of his many Persian books and articles since more than a decade ago. It was of course despite the fact that in the naturally conservative context of Iranian reformism, many of his close friends were blaming his radical approach, claiming that their own moderate solutions “to step back and pay less when fundamentals are coming forward” could be wiser. During these hard days the Iranian people are facing the results of such a wisdom, I think!

I just ordered this first English book by Ganji published by MIT Press and thus highly recommend it hereby:

Akbar Ganji, called by some “Iran’s most famous dissident,” was a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But, troubled by the regime’s repressive nature, he became an investigative journalist in the 1990s, writing for Iran’s pro-democracy newspapers. Most notably, he traced the murders of dissident intellectuals to Iran’s secret service. In 2000 Ganji was arrested, sentenced to six years in prison, and banned from working as a journalist. His eighty-day hunger strike during his last year in prison mobilized the international human rights community.

The Road to Democracy in Iran, Ganji’s first book in English, demonstrates his lifelong commitment to human rights and democracy. A passionate call for universal human rights and the right to democracy from a Muslim perspective, it lays out the goals and means of Iran’s democracy movement, why women’s rights trump some interpretations of Islamic law, and how the West can help promote democracy in Iran (he strongly opposes U.S. intervention) and other Islamic countries.

Throughout the book Ganji argues consistently for universal rights based on our common humanity (and he believes the world’s religions support that idea). But his arguments never veer into abstraction; they are rooted deeply in the realities of life in Islamic countries, and offer a clear picture of the possibilities for and obstacles to improving human rights and promoting democracy in the Muslim world.