Iran VII: Night Raids

Beginning on or around June 22, Basij paramilitary forces began conducting "night raids" against private residential properties across Iran, Human Rights Watch reports in a news release entitled "Iran: Night Raids Terrorize Civilians."

The raids have two apparent objectives. First, the raids have aimed to disrupt nighttime rooftop protests:

"While most of the world's attention is focused on the beatings in the streets of Iran during the day, the Basijis are carrying out brutal raids on people's apartments during the night," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Witnesses are telling us that the Basijis are trashing entire streets and even neighborhoods as well as individual homes trying to stop the nightly rooftop protest chants."

The reports later clarifies by adding, "residents throughout Tehran and in other cities in Iran have carried out nightly rooftop protest chants of "God is Great" (Allahu Akbar) and other similar slogans." Both the nighttime rooftop protests and their featured chant of "God is Great" were iconic features of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in which the current regime took power.

Like other acts of protest repression, the nighttime raids have deployed violent tactics. According to an eyewitness:

"In my neighborhood, downtown Tehran, there were protesters who escaped into people's homes when the Basijis chased them. The Basijis who were chasing them then knocked harshly on the doors. The residents were too afraid to open the doors. Then the Basijis sprayed a mark on the door with spray paint. A few minutes later, they came back and attacked the marked houses, breaking down the doors and entering them. They beat the owners, and broke the windows in the house and of their cars."

Others witnesses to such raids report Basij forces have used armed force, "firing live rounds into the air, in the direction of the buildings from which they believe the shouting of ‘Allahu Akbar' [God is great] is coming from."

Second, evidence indicates the raids have aimed to limit domestic access to foreign news sources:

Security agents are also forcing residents in Tehran to take down their satellite dishes, which allow them to view foreign media, one of the few sources of uncensored information in the face of the severe government restrictions on domestic media in Iran.

An eyewitness account:

"Five policemen knocked on the door of our apartment building. People went to open the door and asked them what they wanted. The police said they wanted to come and destroy the satellite dishes on the rooftop. The landlord asked them if they had any permission documents to do this. The policemen replied that there was no need for any documents because the stairs and the rooftops aren't private property; they are common (shared) property. Then they threatened the landlord, ‘If you want us to go get permission documents, we'll come back later with them, but then we will also search the apartments as well.' They were trying to intimidate the landlord, so he let them in. Then they went to the rooftop and threw the dishes into the street. The landlord told me they behaved so harshly with him there was no room to complain."

Untitled Debate and Discussion

Slavoj Zizek, sometimes laughed at on this blog (here) , and Bernard-Henry Levy, have a prolonged discussion and sometimes debate on a variety of issues. Most of which deal directly with current affairs, including 1968 as a marker for social change, consumerism, the 2005 French riots, liberalism, fundamentalism, the "left", Israeli-Palestinian conflict, torture, charity and "Islamofascism."

The discussion may be navigated by topic here.

Worth noting is how moderate Zizeks positions are when debating, seemingly much more so than what is found in his writings and 'solo appearances.'

Iran VI: More Details on Violence and Repression Available

Reports out of Iran offer more grim details of the escalating use of state force.

Human Rights Watch published a June 23 report, entitled "Iran: Violent Crackdown on Protesters Widen", which details the increase of violent repression in both its scale and character. Insight into the tactics of state security forces are offered, which have resulted in "At least 10 people [dead] in clashes between protesters and security forces on June 20, and at least 100 were wounded" and are undoubtedly a contributing factor to the smaller size and number of protests,

Special riot police officers, Revolutionary Guards, and members of the volunteer Basij paramilitary deployed in overwhelming force throughout the capital Tehran and other Iranian cities, preventing protesters from gathering, and responded with immediate violence to any attempts by protesters to mount further demonstrations. In the ensuing clashes between the security forces and unarmed demonstrators, eyewitnesses said security forces used live ammunition as well as tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters.

The same report notes some known conditions to those taken prisoner,

According to relatives contacted by Human Rights Watch, many detainees are being held in incommunicado detention, without access to their lawyers or their families, and without formal charges against them, in violation of international human rights law that applies to Iran, which requires everyone arrested to be "promptly" informed of any charge against them.

More information is also becoming available to the English-speaking world regarding targeted arrests. June 24 saw some 70 university professors arrested, according to the Tehran Broadcast. Reporters without Borders reports 33 journalists have been arrested as of June 21 in an article which lists each by name and significance.

While the repression widens, the brutality of violence seems to worsen.

CBS' Iran Watch, which has maintained a number of sources inside Iran even after all foreign journalists have been requested to leave, has first hand accounts of the character of violence currently taking place,

"It turned into a blood bath ... they threw some people off the bridges ... after the Basijis came, they began to use tear gas, sticks and shooting."

The Wall Street Journal reports the families of victims of fatal shooting injuries are being charged 3,000 dollars to repay the state for the cost of the bullet before the body is released for burial.

Beyond the decrease of protests, indications that state surpression has been effective are found in Mohsen Rezaei, the second opposition candidate along with Mir-Hossein Mousavi, withdrawing his challenge to the election results, now calling them a "clear sample of religious democracy" as reported by Press TV. While Mousavi and not Rezaei has been at the center of the opposition movement, it is a clear sign that the movement is losing important friends.

Iran V (Commentary): Endgame?

While reports remain muddled, it appears an endgame is nearing in Iran. Evidence indicates the protest movement is failing in its primary objectives of:

1. First, ensuring the Guardian Council, the body responsible to certify election results, declares the election results to be invalid;
   
2. Second, building a sustained, broadly supported protest movement that includes diverse segments of the population.
   

Instead, the movement appears to be succumbing to state suppression, but in this looming 'defeat' lies what is sure to be a long-term victory and progressive contribution to social change.

Regarding the first objective, CNN reports the Guardian Council on June 22 rejected any prospect of nullifying the election results, claiming "irregularities were reported before the balloting -- not during or after." Today, June 23, the Council has begun scheduling the inauguration of incumbent President Ahmadinejad, 'winner' of 62.63 percent of the 'vote.'

Regarding the second objective, CBS' Iran Watch cites a STRATFOR Global Intelligence paper, "The Iranian Election and the Revolution Test", and its analysis of the ability of the protest movement to incorporate broader segments of the population, ultimately concluding the movement was unsuccessful in expanding beyond the initial participating demographic of the so-called "twittering class".

The global media, obsessively focused on the initial demonstrators — who were supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponents — failed to notice that while large, the demonstrations primarily consisted of the same type of people demonstrating. Amid the breathless reporting on the demonstrations, reporters failed to notice that the uprising was not spreading to other classes and to other areas. In constantly interviewing English-speaking demonstrators, they failed to note just how many of the demonstrators spoke English and had smartphones. The media thus did not recognize these as the signs of a failing revolution.

Later, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke Friday and called out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they failed to understand that the troops — definitely not drawn from what we might call the “Twittering classes,” would remain loyal to the regime for ideological and social reasons. The troops had about as much sympathy for the demonstrators as a small-town boy from Alabama might have for a Harvard postdoc.

Yet, the fact that the protest movement is occurring de facto achieves a major victory, one which may turn out to be of world-historical significance in the mid- to long-term process of systemic social change of the nation and region. The Tehran Bureau, an independent news and commentary source on Iran, comments in "Iran Makes History Again" that

The levers of economic, military, ideological, bureaucratic, and police power are very tightly controlled by the existing elite in Iran, which makes the protests all the more remarkable. The potential for significant ramifications in Iran and the wider Middle East is great, given the role that Iran plays throughout the region. Of the two most significant events that impacted on the entire Middle East in the last two generations — the Arab loss in the June 1967 war and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 — the Iranian revolution has probably had wider and greater impact in the long run. Iran impacts on many parts of the region, because of its ideological influence and logistical support to Islamist movements in the Arab world, combined with its leadership of the “resistance front” of regional forces that defy and challenge the United States, Israel and conservative Arab regimes.

Thus, the protests have demonstrated the essentially contested nature of the power structure of authoritarian Islamic government, both as the material capacities and ideological content of its state institutions and managerial elite classes. While these protests have relied almost entirely on a narrow demographic, as noted above, Iranian clerics, an indispensable part of the governing class in Iran, have in very small numbers begun to march with protesters. This is a strong indicator that the regime and its ideology are deeply contested not only within the "twittering class," but within the elite sectors of society which have the "levers" of power "tightly controlled"; however, given the small numbers of clerics engaged in supporting the opposition, this split appears to be relatively contained, limited, and mostly nascent for the time being.

As such, current events in Iran are part of a process whereby the national and regional political consciousness is recognizing the legitimacy of post-1979 cultural and political authority as not guaranteed, desirable, or invulnerable and, in fact, to be contingent upon the ability of the state to subordinate the population by way of the "levers" mentioned above. The widespread dissent has already demonstrated this subordination to be no longer willful on behalf of the population, instead relying in part on the use of force on behalf of the state. All other, more preferable and effective "levers" have failed, evidence that the balance of power is shifting in favor of the governed and away from the governing. Afterall, state force is not an act of governing as such, it is violence intended to adjust the social order in such a way that the other, primary governmental "levers" may once again return to effectiveness and government may again resume.

The lasting impact of the protest movement is likely to be establishing the population, both as it thinks of itself and how it is thought of by governmental elites, as empowered to contest to what extent, if at all, it will be subordinated to the will of the state and thereby its capacity to shape the future of the nation.

While the protest movement may be falling short of its primary objectives, the fact that is occurring shows elite and state power have lost much more.

Iran IV: 'Iranian Protesters Stay One Step Ahead in the Cyber World'

Amnesty International has updated its Iran coverage by issuing a blog rather than a full report, further indicating human rights organizations are unable to ascertain information that meets their credibility standards.

The blog briefly summarizes attempts on behalf of the government to limit information, particularly internet access, and attempts on behalf of the protesters defeat such government measures. Even more interesting, and a major contribution to understanding the current affair, is the inclusion of a graph which measures internet activity within Iran over the course of the crisis (see above). Further, it contains a number of useful links.

The blog is copied and pasted bellow:

In the face of a tightening government grip on all things viral, Iranians have managed to circumvent the communication restrictions laid upon them to tell the world their story in ways previously thought to be reserved only for social networking. For anyone who has so much as glanced at the news during the past week, Twitter has been the name of the game for Iranian protesters.

With a limitation of 140 characters per post, only the most pertinent information is tweeted—rally locations, real-time updates, and details only those on the ground can see. While sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been blocked off before, Iranians have continued to gain access to them via proxies, servers that allow users to access another site through them. Proxy sites are continuously being updated in an effort to stay one step ahead of the Iranian government’s filtering apparatus.

The Iranian government’s strategy for blocking the flow of information appears to be two-fold. Foreign news services have all been asked to leave (just this morning, the BBC reporter Jon Leyne, one of the few reporters left, was given a similar request) and the internet speed has been slowed to a snail’s pace. According to the Wall Street Journal, limiting bandwidth in this manner is meant to discourage and frustrate users so much that they’ll give up.

This strategy is, for now, not working. Iranians have harnessed the internet in ingenious ways—from their Twitter posts to uploaded YouTube videos. All major news networks have caught on to the phenomenon, allowing the messages coming out of Iran to truly reach the entire world.

Iran III: Email Khamenei?

Amnesty International is facilitating a "direct action" campaign in which volunteers email Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, "expressing concern" over the state's response to the protest movement. Participation is simple, easy, and quick - just click here.

The campaign uses an already prepared letter, which may be edited, of course. It appears the information contained in the letter is several days old, as the totals listed are now much higher. For instance, CNN reports June 20 alone saw 457 arrests, much higher than the number of 170 given in the letter as "since 12 June."

The letter appears as follows:

I am writing to you to express my concern over the use of violence by security forces responding to protests over the election results following the 12 June elections in Iran. Large numbers of people have been severely beaten by riot police on motorcycles who wield truncheons and night sticks. Furthermore, up to five students at Tehran University were reportedly shot dead on Sunday 14 June and another person was reportedly shot when security agents opened fire on a demonstration on behalf of Mir Hossein Mousavi on 15 June. Several other people were injured by gunfire.

I am also concerned that at least 170 people have been detained by authorities since 12 June, including the brother of former President Mohammad Khatami. Furthermore, the Iranian authorities have attempted to prevent the flow of information by blocking cell phone, text messaging, email and web sites.

I urge you to insure that security agents will exercise restraint in the use of lethal force to respond to protests, and to refrain from beating people for exercising their right to freedom of expression and association. I also urge that those detained for peacefully expressing their opposition to the election results be released. I finally urge you not to restrict the right to freedom of expression and association, by permitting peaceful public protests and by not interfering with communications.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Iran II: a few 'confirmed' developments

The revolt in Iran continues. Due to state suppression of the media and internet, information is scarce and confused. After long hours of cross-checking various sources in an amateur attempt to corroborate reports, a number of developments seem more clear than others:

The June 12 Iranian Presidential Elections have now been acknowledged by the Guardian Council, the state's highest judicial authority, to have been fraudulent, as reported on CBS' Iran Watch.

Human rights organizations' ability to report, typically the most reliable source of information on such events, have been rendered more or less ineffective for the time being, the largest of such organizations having last published reports two days ago, as opposed to the sometimes hourly updates during the Gaza Crisis earlier this year.

Human Rights Watch last filed a report two days ago, June 19, confirming reports of "scores" of opposition journalists, intellectuals, politicians, etc. have been detained by the Iranian state in the prosecution of "widespread arbitrary arrests." In a report released the same day, Amnesty International put the number of detained persons at around 200, including eight high ranking politicians involved with opposing incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Further, the report from Human Rights Watch outlines aspects of government tactics which have deployed force to repress the protest movement,

plainclothes agents used sticks, metal rods, and firearms to "attack the lines of peaceful participants before the arrival of the security forces."

"Other signs of the nationwide crackdown", the report goes on to note,

"include attacks by security forces and state-sponsored militias on university student dormitories (a traditional stronghold of opposition protesters)

Meanwhile, CNN reports as many as 150 people have been killed according to unofficial estimates - official estimates place the number much lower, at 19.

Iran I: Death and Repression

Warning: this footage is horrific



I was intending not to post anything pertaining to the current rebellion in Iran. This footage changed my mind. The death of the woman is attributed to state sponsored paramilitary forces.

While little information is available on the scale and degree of state violence and repression in Iran, the use of force involved has been escalating and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that opposition leaders “would be responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if protests continued, the New York Times reported.

I'm sifting through human rights organization sources to be posted shortly.

Edit: the murdered woman has been identified as "Neda," a 26 year old philosophy student.

Electrelane - Eight Steps

The song "Eight Steps" from Electrelane's album entitled "Axes."

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses II: the happy valium video edition

A previous post introduced Louis Althusser, Marxist political philosopher, and his work on ideology. In case you haven't read "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", or if you have but need to be cheered up because the world is now appears to be a grim and dark nightmare, I found this upbeat, flowery video that presents the primary concepts of the work:

Immanuel Wallerstein interview on the End of Capitalism and the Future

Immanuel Wallerstein, founder of world-systems theory, discusses his views on global social change and the nature of social systems.

His theoretical propositions serve as interesting abstractions through which to view contemporary social issues and crisis, particularly those relating to political economy -- e.g. Fuck, the economy got fucked up, man.

One Example of Zizek Making Sense!1!!

Slavoj Zizek, taken as a good laugh a number of times on this page, makes a marvelous point! To add my own two cents to the above, it therefore follows that lack of criticism towards oneself and the world is the practice of hate, to put it somewhat badly.

Gen. Wesly Clark on neoconservative foreign policy

General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, discusses the neoconservative "policy coup" under the Bush Administration after 9/11.



"Whether you're a democrat or republican, if you're an American you ought to be concerned about the strategy of the United States in [the Middle East] - what is our aim, what is our purpose, why are we there, why are Americans dying in this region? That is the issue."

Despite the fact that this was from some years ago, it is still relevant to unpacking the very recent past.

This person will help us fuck ourselves in the next 20 years

Jonathan Krohn, author of Define Conservatism and fourteen year old boy, is some sort of genius who is heavily indoctrinated into American political culture; unless he liberates his excessive mind powers from the two party system we will surely all die at his hands.

French People can Speak English and Sometimes it can be Worth Listening (if erections don't make you to commit violent acts against your will)

Michel Foucault's book Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison was referenced in a previous post . For those that were interested in the book, have read it, or were caught by some of its primary concepts, such as power or panopticism, may be interested to hear Foucault's own discussion of the work.

Unfortunately, the audio cannot be embedded for reasons known only to the youtube Gods, so please accept the following links:

Part I
Part II

Also, and this is important, Dick will make you smack somebody. It's true.

Chomsky (again): the Villification Industry

A good couple of minutes on elite intellectual culture and political power. Pardon the multiple Noam postings, but he's old so...

Noam Chomsky: The Torture Memos

Noam Chomsky, a prominent political commentator and linguist often cited here, recently responded to the declassification of the 'torture memos' - memos between senior members of the Bush Administration pertaining to torturing suspected terrorists and associated personalites.

Chomsky's comments have two main thrusts. First, the memos reveal the political objectives of torture under the Bush Administration:

The torture memos released by the White House elicited shock, indignation, and surprise. The shock and indignation are understandable -- particularly the testimony in the Senate Armed Services Committee report on Cheney-Rumsfeld desperation to find links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, links that were later concocted as justification for the invasion, facts irrelevant. Former Army psychiatrist Maj. Charles Burney testified that "a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results"; that is, torture. The McClatchy press reported that a former senior intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue added that "The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime ... [Cheney and Rumsfeld] demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration... 'There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder'."

Second, Chomsky places the current debate on the morality of torture in the context of historical elite intellectual and political culture as it has concerned the relationship between the moral character of the United States and the moral quality of its actions:

Occasionally the conflict between "what we stand for" and "what we do" has been forthrightly addressed. One distinguished scholar who undertook the task is Hans Morgenthau, a founder of realist international relations theory. In a classic study written in the glow of Camelot, Morgenthau developed the standard view that the US has a "transcendent purpose": establishing peace and freedom at home and indeed everywhere, since "the arena within which the United States must defend and promote its purpose has become world-wide." But as a scrupulous scholar, he recognized that the historical record is radically inconsistent with the "transcendent purpose" of America.

We should not, however, be misled by that discrepancy, Morgenthau advises: in his words, we should not "confound the abuse of reality with reality itself." Reality is the unachieved "national purpose" revealed by "the evidence of history as our minds reflect it." What actually happened is merely the "abuse of reality." To confound abuse of reality with reality is akin to "the error of atheism, which denies the validity of religion on similar grounds." An apt comparison.

The full text of his commentary may be found here.

The Onion: Obama and Denny's

Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny's