Syria Special: Syrian Ambassador to US Responds to Accusations

As we noted yesterday, the Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations, Imad Moustapha, spoke on NPR, and he tells a very different story than the evidence that we have collected here. In our conversation with NPR's Andy Carvin and Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell, none of us have seen any video evidence that would support the Syrian government's claims, despite the fact that Moustapha claims there are hundreds of videotapes that the Syrian government has collected which show armed gangs killing innocent civilians.

Below we have posted the audio, one of our favorite excerpts (of which we have hundreds or thousands of counterexamples), and a link to the full transcript.

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Latest from Iran (8 September): Fearing Persian Spring

2020 GMT: Warnings of the Day (cont.). Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi appears to have put out a caution to the President's office and to MPs: "There are some currents that try to depict the guardian jurist [the Supreme Leader] as not having the final say and distinguish the decrees of the Leader as governmental and non-governmental ones....From the viewpoint of such currents, seizing the Presidential office and the Parliament is the only way of changing the regime, this is why they are trying to attract the people."

And last but certainly not least, the head of judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, has criticised "certain executive offices" which "create obstacles in the path of the fight against economic corruption".

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Syria, Libya (and Beyond) Liveblog: Protests in Homs Defy Violence

1859 GMT: This video reportedly shows the aftereffects of the shelling of Jabal al Zawiya, Idlib province, by Syrian forces yesterday. Cars are on fire, bullet casings litter the ground, and a nearby house is ransacked:

1836 GMT: This video, reportedly taken today, shows women in Taiz, Yemen, chanting, "Oh Sanaa revolt revolt, towards the Presidential Palace."

1748 GMT: More video, reportedly showing protests in Hama today. One of the signs clearly reads, "SOS."

1744 GMT: Now Lebanon describes this video: "A YouTube video purportedly filmed on Thursday in the Homs area of Bab al-Sibaa shows many soldiers deploying on the street as gunfire can be heard in the background":

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Iran Special: Mousavi's Moment Outside House Arrest "The Future is Bright"

According to reports received by Kalemeh, 200 days after their house arrest, Mousavi and Rahnavard were accompanied by a number of male and female security agents to the residence of one of their daughters.  This sudden and unprecedented visit, with all three of their daughters present, was the first time Mousavi and Rahnavard were allowed to leave the confounds of their house arrest in a period of seven months.

The future is bright…

In the meeting with his three children, Mir Hossein Mousavi made the following statement regarding the current developments in the country: “The future is bright.”  While pointing to the upcoming [Parliamentary] elections, the former Prime Minister during the eight-year holy war against Iraq stated: ”Given the current climate in our country, one cannot be hopeful regarding participation in the upcoming elections.”

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US Politics Opinion: Riffing on Rick Perry and the Republican Campaign's Stepford Wives

Evidently, Rick Perry favours teaching intelligent design as a "science". He supports the repeal of the 16^th Amendment, under which Congress imposes income tax. He is opposed to single sex marriage. 

The conversation got me thinking about this year’s class of Republican hopefuls for the Presidency. I’ve lost count, but as Tim Pawlenty ducked out and Rick Perry threw his hat in, I believe there are 16. If Sarah Palin joins in, that will make 17. But, male or female, politically --- and despite all the current furour about Perry's distinctive style --- they look like Stepford Wives to me.

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Libya Feature: The Caterer, The Memory Stick, and the Fall of Qaddafi's Tripoli (Nakhoul)

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime was delivered by a caterer, on a memory stick.

Abdel Majid Mlegta ran the companies that supplied meals to Libyan government departments including the interior ministry. The job was "easy," he told Reuters last week. "I built good relations with officers. I wanted to serve my country."

But in the first few weeks of the uprising, he secretly began to work for the rebels. He recruited sympathizers at the nerve center of the Gaddafi government, pinpointed its weak links and its command-and-control strength in Tripoli, and passed that information onto the rebel leadership on a series of flash memory cards.

The first was handed to him, he says, by Gaddafi military intelligence and security officers. It contained information about seven key operations rooms in the capital, including internal security, the Gaddafi revolutionary committees, the popular guards --- as Gaddafi's voluntary armed militia was known -- and military intelligence.

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Latest from Iran (7 September): Revolutions and Dervishes

More video claiming to show the security crackdown against protesters in Urmia on September 3rd

See also Iran Special: Mousavi's Moment Outside House Arrest "The Future is Bright"

Iran Video: Bringing Out the News, Remembering the Victims --- An Interview with Masih Alinejad
The Latest from Iran (6 September): Water Fights, Soggy Papers

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1800 GMT: Justice Watch. Mohammad Esmail Mollazehi, charged with “spying in an attempt to act against Iranian national security”, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Mollazehi was arrested in Zahedan in southeastern Iran in October 2010, charged with delivering information to a foreign embassy in Dubai." The embassy was not named.

The Zahedan prosecutor also said cryptically, “This individual also followed the files of certain detainees in Iran and was trying to release them.”

Because Mollazehi has no previous record, the 10-year sentence was reduced to four years in prison plus five years’ suspended sentence.

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Syria, Libya (and Beyond) Liveblog: Homs Under Siege

1939 GMT: More video claiming to show protests in Al Kiswah, Syria:

1929 GMT: Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the UN, spoke with NPR today. (Audio will be available here after 6 PM ET). NPR's Andy Carvin gives us a rolling a transcript, with commentary, including a back and forth with EA's James Miller and Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell, via Twitter:

Syrian ambassador to US: "Extreme fundamentalist Muslims are waging a war of insurgency" against

Syria ambassador: We've allowed reporters into Syria "time and again." Hmm.

Syrian ambassador on Syrians: "What unites us is far more than what divides us apart."

Syrian amb to man who says brother was killed. "This is unfortunate and I don't want to spend my time discussing preposterous stories."

Syrian man not buying it; he argues back. Ambassador ignores comments, complains media gives license to false stories.

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Syria Special: US Ambassador Ford - "Protesters, Not Terrorists"

US Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, is no stranger to getting directly involved in affairs in Syria's Arab Spring uprising. Ford has repeatedly tried to put himself in the line of fire, in places like Hama, in order to stop what he has described a the brutal killing of civilian protesters. Two weeks ago, Ford traveled to Jassem, another town that has been embattled for some time.

Just this morning, Ford released this statement on his Facebook page, stating unequivocally that the people being killed in Syria are primarily unarmed protesters, and not terrorists. Ford also acknowledged that some Syrian soldiers have been killed, though he did not say who killed them, and he argued that the scale of the crackdown far exceeded the scale of the threat:

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Iran Video: Bringing Out the News, Remembering the Victims --- An Interview with Masih Alinejad

BBC Persian's interview with our colleague Masih Alinejad, forced to leave Iran for Britain, about her efforts to continue reporting on the situation inside the country and to tell the stories of those who have suffered in the post-election violence: