Photo: Behrouz Mehri (AFP/Getty)"It was crazy," says Ali Shekouri, a 32-year-old businessman who pursued three dicey strategies before obtaining a local beagle. "After a while I didn't know if I was buying a dog or dealing in an international drug trade."
When Mr. Shekouri set out to buy a puppy last year, a friend first took him to a small electronics shop in downtown Tehran near the grand bazaar. In actuality, it was a front for a middle-aged man selling dogs. After enduring a one-hour intense interview to make sure he wasn't an undercover cop, Mr. Shekouri was whisked away in a car to the kennel's secret location. During the ride, he says, he was blindfolded.
Masked security personnel in effect turned the Salmaniya Medical Complex hospital and other health facilities into detention centers where many injured and sick persons, particularly those apparently wounded by security forces, feared to seek treatment for fear of ill-treatment and arrest and where many medical staff feared to work. Security forces forcibly moved patients, sometimes against medical advice, within and between hospitals and held them incommunicado. Medical staff and families of protesters injured and killed by the security forces were unable to learn the whereabouts of detained patients. In at least four cases, officials in hospitals or police stations later called families to inform them that their relatives had died and that the families should retrieve their bodies from the hospital.
I thought Arab bloggers began with grievances and turned to the Internet to address them. But sometimes, apparently, it's the other way around. Al Omran said he started blogging just to practice his English. Once online, he met bloggers outside Saudi Arabia, learned about politics, and developed an interest in human rights. He said the same thing has happened to other bloggers in the region. Merlyna Lim, a scholar of social transformation at Arizona State University, described a similar dynamic in Egypt: Young people went online to keep up with their friends and youth culture. In doing so, they became politicized.
1950 GMT: Clamping Down on a Cleric. Security forces have raided the home of Ayatollah Amjad while the cleric is on a three-day trip to Malaysia.
Ayatollah Amjad has been increasingly critical of the Government since January.
1935 GMT: Elections Watch. Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, has pulled back from a blanket ban on the reformist parties Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution, saying that their dissolution has not been declared by the courts.
"Cells" need outlets and actions to represent them not as isolated pockets of activists but as part of a large, widespread challenge to those who claim authority. Mousavi and Karroubi also put forth a self-serving naivete on this issue: "We are the Media" is an essential call, but it has to be connected to representatives --- students, politicians, lawyers, advocates of gender rights, unionists, and other activists --- who can put out a message with resonance.
So far the "New Green Manifesto" is reliant on that wider appeal through an overseas site with a "niche" readership. And that for the moment --- as the representatives' latest statement highlights, with its narrow response to critics abroad --- limits any impact of the "several recommendations for the reform and strengthening of the Green Movement".
We are not out to establish a fringe movement or to obtain some form of leadership of this movement. One goal was to give a warning that those of us on the ground here in Iran see that the Green Movement is fading, and rather quickly. The other goal was to stress that there is more to the Green Movement than the Internet sites and chat rooms—there are some cells on the ground that need to be expanded. These cells—under some form of leadership based outside the country—and not these endless Internet chats, will be the backbone of the movement and create the conditions for transformation of our constitution so that all institutions are directly elected by the people.
Poster for Majid Tavakoli2030 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. An activist reports that reformist Ahmad Reza Ahmadipour was arrested today in Qom in a raid of his home.
1920 GMT: Denial of the Day. Saeed Mortazavi, an advisor to President Ahmadinejad, has denied any responsibility for the Kahrizak prison abuses and deaths, which occurred while Mortazavi was Tehran Prosecutor General.
Families of post-election victims --- including prominent conservative Abdolhossein Ruholamini, the father of the slain Mohsen Ruholamini --- have complained that Mortazavi, who was technically suspended from his duties by a court, has not been punished for his part in the affairs.
Claimed video of Syrian troops joining demonstrators in Al-Bukamal on Saturday (see 0440 GMT)
1929 GMT: Activists are reporting that security forces have used live gunfire against protesters in Daraa, Barza (southwest of Jisr al-Shughour), and in the LCCS is reporting that armed cars, driven by secret police (Shabiha) have opened fire in Homs:
"Cars belonging to armed shabiha roam the besieged neighborhoods and open arbitrary gunfire especially in Bayada & Khaldieh districts, gunfire from checkpoint present at Zenoubia School in Khaldieh"
1922 GMT: An activist has posted these graphic pictures, claiming to show casualties in Sana'a today.
1913 GMT: An in Sana'a, violence has broken out. There are reports of deaths, including a family of five. According to Reuters:
Fighting between government forces and opposition supporters erupted in Yemen's capital Sanaa on Monday, killing six people, opposition sources said. The fighting was the first to break out in Sanaa since President Ali Abdullah Saleh flew to Saudi Arabia for treatment after sustaining severe burn wounds when an attempt to assassinate him was made in June....
One clash began when demonstrators seeking to increase pressure on Saleh to quit marched outside a square where they have been camped for months, said the sources, who declined to be identified.
'Hundreds of youths marched out of the sit-in area, but were confronted by security forces and gunmen in civilian clothes who fired on them. They killed one protester and wounded eight others,' said one source.
In northern Sanaa, a family of five was killed by shelling during clashes between Republican Guard forces and pro-opposition tribesmen, opposition and tribal sources said.
1905 GMT: We've often spoken of the 3 fronts in Yemen, protesters v. Saleh, tribes v. Saleh, and the Yemeni government v. radical muslim insurgents, including members of Al Qaeda. As if the situation there could get any more complicated...
Ahmad Wali KarzaiThe man who finally killed Karzai was someone he trusted with his life. Not only was Sardar Mohammed a close confidant, but he also worked as an informant for the CIA, according to relatives, Karzai’s friends and the Afghan intelligence agency.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 8:44
Photo: Behrouz Mehri (AFP/Getty)"It was crazy," says Ali Shekouri, a 32-year-old businessman who pursued three dicey strategies before obtaining a local beagle. "After a while I didn't know if I was buying a dog or dealing in an international drug trade."
