Nikahang Kowsar on the latest political tension, spurred by the dispute between President Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps over smuggling....
The Supreme Leader tells the Dragon, "I didn't tell you that you shouldn't eat him, I said it's too early."
2040 GMT: Claimed footage of protesters throwing stones at security forces in Hama today:
1700 GMT: Activists of the Local Coordination Committees of Syria claim the death toll in Hama today is now at least 13, including a 15-year-old boy.
The activists also claim 67 people are in hospital with serious injuries, with another 200 treated and discharged.
Among those reported killed are Ahmad Bitar, Emad Mohammad Khallouf, Baha Halbosy Nahar, Hasan Saraqbi, Mohammad Swaid, Foad Al Mukhallalati, Maher Sharabi, Mohammad Qasem Owair, Mahmoud Mahalle, Omar AlDalati, a martyr from Yousfan family, Omar Bahah and Bilal Mohammad (15 years old).
2040 GMT: Back to the Revolutionary Guards. While the headline out of
the interview of the head of the Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari (see 1205 GMT), was his declaration that the judiciary has given the Guards the authority to deal with the "deviant current", the label applied to President Ahmadinejad's advisors.there is so much more to be considered....
First, the confirmation that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was behind the recent arrests of several members of the "deviant current": "The IRGC arrested and detained these people based on a recommendation by the judiciary. These people have not committed security crimes. However, they have committed economic and moral offences. The people that have been arrested had close ties to the main figures of the (deviant) current."
Given that Mehr published this as a two-part interview yesterday and today, did Jafari make his statement before or after the Supreme Leader told everyone to back off public disputes (see 0515 GMT)?
And then there was Jafari crossing into politics, setting preconditions for the return of "acceptable" reformists to the arena:
Members of the reformist camp who have not crossed the redlines can naturally participate in political campaigns. However, [former President Mohammad] Khatami's success in his activities depends on his stances....During the sedition incident [the 2009 post-election protest], Mr Khatami did not pass his test successfully and he showed a lot of support for the sedition leaders [Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi]. At the moment, he has not yet adopted a stance to distance himself from those actions. If he still intends to resort to political manoeuvres, I do not think people will forgive him. However there are other individuals [in the reformist camp] who have not crossed the redlines and they can actively participate in political campaigns.
And Jafari had a glance at foreign affairs, saying that the uprisings in Syria were started "artificially" and were different in nature from those in other countries of the region: "The movements in Syria were provoked by the Americans, because Syria is the only country of the region that has stood up to the US and Israel."
Last winter we covered the Belarussian regime's repression of protest after President Aleksandr Lukashenko was officially re-elected with 80% of the vote.
We return to the story as the regime moved to prevent demonstrations on Sunday, which officially is remembered for the liberation from Germany in World War II. Thousands of police and special forces were deployed in the center of the capital Minsk, and access to social media and websites was blocked. Dozens of activists, including Stanislav Shushkevich, Belarus' first post-Soviet leader, were reportedly detained, and others were called in by the intelligence services and warned not to protest.
What started as a sit-in has turned into an experment in democratic society. In the last four months, between 3,000 and 4,000 tents have been pitched in the streets of the university district in the Yemeni capital Sana'a. The tent city includes pharmacies and a makeshift hospital, four daily newspapers, auditoriums, a garden and hastily constructed cement memorials for the martyrs.
It is a city of citizens, a taste of what Yemen could become, a concrete utopia made of tarps, pallets, satellite dishes and a hodgepodge of power cables the protesters have audaciously connected to the grid in the ancient city. There is a "diplomats' tent" and a tent for actors; there are daily poetry readings and demonstrations; there is even a prison.
I am glad that they did not render a death sentence, for it was not outside the realm of possibility. When the law is not read and disregarded anything is possible....You take what comes your way.
2025 GMT: President v. Revolutionary Guards. Back to our main story of the day and our questions about how to interpret the statements of President Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps over "smuggling" (see 0800 GMT).
An EA correspondent gets to the point, "[IRGC Commander] Jafari wouldn't have reacted, if Ahmadinejad's allusions were not so obvious. Ahmadinejad's speech, between the lines, is completely apparent."
And one might add that the Supreme Leader wouldn't have reacted as well (see 1345 GMT)....
See also Iran Special: Ahmadinejad v. The Revolutionary Guards
2020 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The Speaker of Germany's Parliament, Norbert Lammert, has asked his Iranian counterpart, Ali Larijani, to pursue the release of photojournalist Maryam Majd, detained on the eve of her departure for the Women's Football World Cup in Germany.
Lammert denounced the arrest "not only as an attack on media freedom but also as a striking breach of internationally guaranteed freedom rights and human rights".
General Jafari & President AhmadinejadThe news was so unexpected that it took some hours to sink in. In a speech crticising Iranian groups who were importing commerical goods and avoiding customs duties, President Ahmadinejad had stared straight at the Revolutionary Guards: they were "brothers who are also smugglers".
Ahmadinejad had warned last month, amidst the increasing pressure on his camp with arrests of his advisors, that he could reveal information that would embarrass key officials within the Iranian establishment. Last weekend he told journalists that there was a "red line" against moves on his Cabinet and inner circle --- when State broadcaster IRIB censored the passsage, his staff posted the uncut video on the President's official website.
But to take on the country's most important military institution, one which many analysts have seen as a bulwark of Ahmadinejad's rise to power?
As a statue of Ronald Reagan is unveiled at the US Embassy in London today, I spoke with the BBC World Service's World Update about the myths surrounding the 40th President, considering how the dubious claim that he "won" the Cold War overtook all the difficulties and failures of his eight years in office.
Or, to re-phrase the great quote from the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the truth is in dispute, print the legend."
The discussion starts at the 50-second mark.
2040 GMT: Protest tonight in Homs in Syria:
2035 GMT: Notes of defiance in a New York Times summary of the regime's military incursion into Hama today (see 1030 GMT)....
“People here are ready with rocks,” said Omar Habbal, an activist....In past weeks, Hama, a city of 800,000 on the corridor between Damascus and Aleppo, has emerged as a symbolic center of the nearly four-month uprising against 41 years of rule by the Assad family. Protests have gathered momentum, with a remarkable demonstration of tens of thousands on Friday, and youths have turned out nightly to taunt the government in Aasi Square, which they have renamed Freedom Square.
Though some have ambitiously described the city as liberated, the city’s administration still functions, and the military remains in force on Hama’s outskirts.
Residents said about 20 military vehicles and several buses carrying armed men in plain clothes, arrived in the early morning. As they entered, some of the security forces chanted in support of President Bashar al-Assad; some residents in the streets responded with, “God is great,” a religious invocation meant as defiance.
“The whole city woke up to defend against the raid,” Mr. Habbal said.
Some activists said residents threw rocks, and others tried to build roadblocks and barricades with whatever was available — burning tires, stones and trash dumpsters.
The plainclothesmen carried out dozens of arrests, mainly on the outskirts. One activist said 43, another put the number at 65, though the estimates seemed more guesswork. Residents reported gunfire, but the forces soon retreated.
“The security forces entered, then they left quickly,” said a 24-year-old student who gave his name as Abdel-Rahman. Like many, he insisted on partial anonymity. “People are waiting. They can’t control Hama unless they wipe out the people here.”
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 19:01