Friday, July 3, 2009

Iran: 'It's definitely not over'

Facebook pages for Mousavi and Zahra call for national strike
Breakingtweets: The message was posted twice in a row on both accounts. There is no way to be sure Mousavi of his campaign staff are behind the accounts at this time. His page was utilized heavily leading up to Election night and he now has more than 107,000 supporters. It has been used in the past since the election to let people know about upcoming events and demonstrations. Text in Persian next to the updates asks people to spread the word via any means possible... It is worth noting that Mousavi's Twitter account (@mousavi1388) has not yet posted about the strike.


Fatemeh Keshavarz, Windows on Iran: I have already told you about all the beautiful songs written in honor of the Green Movement... I would like to open this window with one of my favorites -- because it is not about the cruelties that have happened but about hope. It is called 'Zemestun sar umad' which means 'The winter has ended.' It is a new arrangement of an old and popular song. The images you see on the clip are from Mr. Mousavi's campaign, his visits to the war front during the eight-year Iran/Iraq war, and some earlier images from the 1979 revolution. One of the goals of the clip is to demonstrate Mr. Mousavi's deep roots in the Iranian social and political tradition. Enjoy!

Iarasetrakian: It's definitely not over. It's just going to be more drawn out, I think. It's becoming a lot more localized in a way. People just do what they can on their own with their circle of people. Demonstrations are smaller but in different places now. I don't know how widely circulated the information going around is but there's a pretty large amount. You can feel it with strangers, even, like taxi drivers. It's not that they're less pissed. If anything, they're more pissed. Because of the state and how blatantly they're lying...

It feels like martial law. There are checkpoints, they randomly pull over cars. They check the whole thing for cameras. Even if you're carrying a camera, they take that. So you're on edge because it's not normal -- the forces are everywhere. It's a very physical presence... The SMS network is still not going because they know that that is the number one way you are in communication... So it's not normal, yet, but daily life is going on. I've heard that the bazaar has slowed down. They've boycotted a lot of products that are advertised on state TV... Businesses are not running as usual, but people are still getting out and about.