There are 2 articles in this post. After the main news article there is an op-ed piece about the future of Iran's society.
June 23, 2009
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Hours after a warning from the powerful Revolutionary Guards not to return to the streets, about a thousand protesters defiantly gathered in central Tehran on Monday and were quickly dispersed in an overwhelming show of force by police who used clubs and tear gas.
The protesters, far fewer than the numbers who had attended mass rallies last week, turned out despite the warning, on the Guards’ Web site, that they would face a “revolutionary confrontation” if they continued to challenge the results of the June 12 election and their country’s supreme leader, who has pronounced the ballot to be fair.
Even so, Iran’s most senior panel of election monitors, in the most sweeping acknowledgment that the election was flawed, said Monday that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, according to a state television report.
The discrepancies could affect some three million ballots of what the government says was 40 million cast, giving the official victory to the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The authorities insisted that the discrepancies did not violate Iranian law. The Guardian Council, charged with certifying the election, said it was not clear whether they would decisively change the result, which placed Mir Hussein Moussavi — who contends the election was stolen from him — in a distant second.
He has urged his supporters to continue their defiance, but he could face arrest for doing so.
“Moussavi’s calling for illegal protests and issuing provocative statements have been a source of recent unrests in Iran,” Ali Shahrokhi, head of parliament’s judiciary committee, semi-official Fars news agency reported, according to Reuters. “Such criminal acts should be confronted firmly.”
He added: “The ground is paved to legally chase Moussavi.”
Mr. Moussavi, the more moderate of the candidates, used a posting on his Web site Sunday night to urge his supporters to demonstrate peacefully, despite warnings from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that no protests of the vote would be allowed.
“Protesting to lies and fraud is your right,” Mr. Moussavi said.
In an apparent response, a Guards statement Monday told protesters to “be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces” if they took their protests into a second week, news reports said.
The Basij is a militia accused by the protesters of brutally repressing demonstrations that culminated in a day of bloodshed on Saturday that ended in the deaths of at least 10 protesters, according to the state television.
The Guards told demonstrators Monday to “end the sabotage and rioting activities,” calling their protests a “conspiracy” against Iran. The warning echoed remarks by a Foreign Ministry spokesman who blamed western governments and media for the unrest.
The official result gave Mr. Ahmadinejad 63 percent of the ballots — an 11-million vote advantage — to Mr. Moussavi’s 34 percent. Turnout was put at 85 percent.
At a news conference Monday, Hassan Qashqavi, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, called the turnout a “brilliant gem which is shining on the peak of dignity of the Iranian nation.”
He accused unidentified western powers and news organizations, which are operating under extremely tight official restrictions, of spreading unacceptable “anarchy and vandalism.” But, he said, the outcome of the vote would not be changed. “We will not allow western media to turn this gem into a worthless stone,” he said.
Mr. Qashqavi drew comparisons with American election results.
“No one encouraged the American people to stage a riot” because they disagreed with the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, he said. Britain’s Foreign Office said Monday that because of the continuing unrest it would evacuate the families of staff members based in Iran. A spokeswoman, who spoke in return for anonymity under civil service rules, said the violence in Tehran “had a significant impact on the families of our staff who have been unable to carry on their lives as normal.”
Quoted earlier by Press TV, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the 12-member Guardian Council denied claims by another losing candidate, Mohsen Rezai, that irregularities had occurred in up to 170 voting districts.
“Statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100 percent of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80 to 170 cities are not accurate — the incident has happened in only 50 cities,” Mr. Kadkhodaei said.
But he said that a voter turnout in excess of the registered voting list was a “normal phenomenon” because people could legally vote in areas other than those in which they were registered. Nonetheless, some analysts in Tehran said, the number of people said to be traveling on election day seemed unusually high.
The news emerged on the English-language Press TV Web site late Sunday as a bitter rift among Iran’s ruling clerics deepened. As increasingly violent protests have swirled through Tehran since the elections, Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered the Guardian Council to investigate the opposition’s allegations of electoral fraud. The council itself has offered a random partial recount of 10 percent of the ballot.
Mr. Kadkhodaei said the Guardian Council could recount votes in areas where irregularities were said by the opposition to have occurred. But “it has yet to be determined whether the possible change in the tally is decisive in the election results.”
The opposition has alleged a total of 646 electoral irregularities and is demanding that the vote be annulled. But in a sermon at Friday prayers last week Ayatollah Khamenei mocked the idea that the huge margin attributed to Mr. Ahmadinejad could have been won through fraud.
On Sunday, the police detained five relatives of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who leads two influential councils and openly supported Mr. Moussavi’s election. The relatives, including Mr. Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, were released after several hours.
The developments, coming one day after protests here in the capital and elsewhere were crushed by police officers and militia members using guns, clubs, tear gas and water cannons, suggested that Ayatollah Khamenei was facing entrenched resistance among some members of the elite.
Though rivalries have been part of Iranian politics since the 1979 revolution, analysts said that open factional competition amid a major political crisis could hinder Ayatollah Khamenei’s ability to restore order.
There was no verifiable accounting of the death toll from the bloodshed on Saturday, partly because the government has imposed severe restrictions on news coverage and warned foreign reporters who remained in the country to stay off the streets.
It also ordered the BBC’s longtime correspondent expelled and Newsweek’s correspondent detained.
State television said that 10 people had died in the weekend clashes, while radio reports said 19. The news agency ISNA said 457 people had been arrested.
In the network of Internet postings and Twitter messages that has become the opposition’s major tool for organizing and sharing information, a powerful and vivid new image emerged: a video posted on several Web sites that showed a young woman, called Neda, her face covered in blood. Text posted with the video said she had been shot. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the video.
The Web site of another reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, referred to her as a martyr who did not “have a weapon in her soft hands or a grenade in her pocket but became a victim by thugs who are supported by a horrifying security apparatus.”
Mr. Moussavi was not seen in public on Sunday but showed no sign of yielding. In his Web posting, he urged followers to “avoid violence in your protest and behave as though you are the parents that have to tolerate your children’s misbehavior at the security forces.”
He also warned the government to “avoid mass arrests, which will only create distance between society and the security forces.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from London. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo.
June 23, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Iran’s Children of Tomorrow
By ROGER COHEN
TEHRAN — They are known mockingly as the “Joojeh Basiji” — the “chicken Basiji.” These are the militia scarcely old enough to manage more than a feeble beard. Teenagers, brainwashed from early childhood, they have been ferried into the capital in large numbers, given a club and a shield and a helmet and told to go to work.
I saw them throughout downtown Tehran on Sunday, seated in the back of grey pick-ups. I saw them, sporting sleeveless camouflage vests, in clusters on corners, leaning on trees, even lolling shoeless on the grass in the central island of Revolution Square.
They were far from alone in a city in military lockdown. Elite riot police with thigh-length black leg guards, helmeted Revolutionary Guards in green uniforms and rifle-touting snipers composed a panoply of menace. The message to protesters was clear: Gather at your peril.
That threat had already been rammed home Saturday evening, when a student named Neda Agha Soltan was killed by a single shot. Her last moments were captured on video that has gone global. Martyrdom is a powerful force in the world of Shia Islam. Mourning on the 3rd and 7th and 40th days after a death form a galvanizing cycle.
Neda is already another name for the anger smoldering here, whose expression, in my experience, has been bravest, deepest and most vivid among women. She could become Iran’s Marianne.
Tehran, cradled in its mountainous amphitheater, is holding its breath. Sunday was quiet and Monday dawned quiet but between them the defiant cries of “Death to the dictator” and “Allah-u-Akbar” reverberated between high-rises once again.
In this pregnant lull, I keep hearing three questions: Will Mir Hussein Moussavi lead? How powerful are the internal divisions of the revolutionary establishment? And what is the ultimate goal of the uprising? On the answer to them will hinge the outcome of this latest fervid expression of Iran’s centennial quest for pluralistic freedom.
After the shootings Saturday that took several lives, Moussavi seemed absent. The bespectacled revolutionary leader thrust now into defiance was silent. People risking their lives craved guidance. Disappointed in 1999 and 2003 by the legalistic kowtowing of the reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami, they feared resignation redux.
Then, early Monday, Moussavi spoke. “Protesting to lies and fraud is your right,” he said, referring to the preposterous manipulation of the June 12 election and laying down the gauntlet again to the once sacrosanct pronouncements of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader invested by the Islamic Revolution with an authority close to the Prophet’s. Last Friday, Khamenei said: “I want everyone to end this sort of action.”
Khamenei also said, “Trust in the Islamic Republic became evident in these elections.”
In fact I believe the loss of trust by millions of Iranians who’d been prepared to tolerate a system they disliked, provided they had a small margin of freedom, constitutes the core political earthquake in Iran. Moderates who once worked the angles are now muttering about making Molotov cocktails and screaming their lungs out after dusk.
Moussavi is trying to calm their rage and coax the multiple security forces to his side. Restraint was the core appeal of his Monday statement. He urged his followers to avoid violence and adopt parental forbearance before the “misbehavior” of security forces — an appropriate reference given all the teenage thugs out there.
I think Moussavi is right to avoid extreme positions even as Khamenei has deliberately radicalized the conflict. He’s right because his moderation fans internal divisions that seem rampant. Any counterrevolutionary stance, at least at this point, would have the opposite effect.
Which brings me to the fight within. On Sunday, I saw Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of the establishment’s embittered éminence grise, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He told me his father, who despises President Mahmoud Adhmadinejad, is fighting a furious rearguard action to have the election annulled by the Guardian Council, the 12-member oversight body that will pronounce this week on the election’s legality.
The ruling had seemed a formality, given Khamenei’s summary dismissal of a recount and the loyalist composition of the body, but the Council is now talking about irregularities in 50 cities and discrepancies that could affect 3 million votes. Out of a total of 40 million votes, that’s a significant number.
There are rumblings from the influential parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, who is close to Khamenei but not Ahmadinejad. With Rafsanjani, Khatami and the defeated conservative former Revolutionary Guard leader, Mohsen Rezai, the dissenting front has breadth. Rezai, who officially won 680,000 votes, says more than 900,000 voters have written to him with their ID numbers saying they cast their ballot for him.
The third question — the strategic goal of the uprising — is increasingly fraught. Khamenei said, “The dispute is not between the revolution and the counterrevolution,” and that all four electoral candidates “belong to the system.” He was right, if his words had been spoken the day after the vote.
Ten days on, however, the brutal use of force and his own polarizing speech have drawn many more Iranians toward an absolutist stance. Having wanted their votes counted, they now want wholesale change. If Moussavi wants to prevail, he must keep his followers tactically focused on securing a new election. That’s essential because it’s the one position the opposition within the clerical establishment will go along with.
Whatever happens now, all is changed utterly in Iran. Opacity, a force of the Islamic Republic, has yielded to a riveting transparency in which one side confronts another. The online youth of Iran will not be reconciled to a regime that touts global “ethics” and “justice” while trampling on them at home.
I received this from an anonymous Iranian student: “I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to be killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow!”
And she concludes: “I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so that they know we were not just emotional under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mogols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children.”
I bow my head to the youth of Iran, the youth that is open-eyed, bold and far stronger and more numerous than the near-beardless vigilantes.
19 June 2009
In New York, Number of Killings Rises With Heat
June 19, 2009
By ANDREW W. LEHREN and AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/nyregion/19murder.html?hp
A young boxer was shot dead outside a Bronx bodega at 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday last August. Weeks later, a 59-year-old woman was beaten to death on a Saturday night on the side of a Queens highway. On the last Sunday in September, violence exploded as five men were killed in a spate of shootings and stabbings between midnight and 6 a.m.
Seven homicides in New York City. None connected in any way but this: They happened during the summer months, when the temperatures rise, people hit the streets, and New York becomes a more lethal place.
There were more homicides in September than in any other month last year: 52. Next highest was August, with 51. Variations, of course, exist. There were 48 homicides last March, for instance.
Still, the prime time for murder is clear: summertime. Indeed, it is close to a constant, one hammered home painfully from June to September across the decades. And the breakdown of deadly brutality can get even more specific. September Saturdays around 10 p.m. were the most likely moments for a murder in the city.
The summer spike in killings is just one of several findings unearthed in an analysis by The New York Times of multiyear homicide trends. The information — detailing homicides during the years 2003 to 2008 — was compiled mainly from open-records requests with the New York Police Department, and a searchable database of details on homicides in the city during those years is available online for readers to explore at nytimes.com/nyregion.
Of course, the dominant and most important trend involving murder in New York has been the enormous decline in killings over the last 15 years, to levels not seen since the early 1960s.
Still, hundreds of people are killed every year in the city, and The Times’s findings provide insights about who is killed in New York, as well as who does the killing, where murders occur and why.
Women, for instance, are less likely to be either victims or killers. Those who were killed — at least 73 women were in 2008 — were almost always murdered by someone they knew — boyfriends, husbands or relatives. From 2003 to 2008, the number of women killed each year by strangers was in the single digits — excluding cases in which the police do not know if the killer knew the victim. Last year, as few as eight women died at the hands of strangers.
Brooklyn — as it has since at least 2003 — led all boroughs in the number of homicides last year, with 213. Last year, the 73rd Precinct, which includes the neighborhoods of Ocean Hill and Brownsville, had the largest death toll, 31. The bloodiest block in Brooklyn was in the 77th Precinct, in Crown Heights, bounded by Schenectady Avenue, Sterling Place, Troy Avenue and St. Johns Place. But the borough with the most homicides per capita was the Bronx.
More often than not, the weapon of choice is a firearm. Each year the percentage of people killed by firearms hovers around 60 percent. Though slightly less than in recent years, at least 56 percent of last year’s homicides were committed with these weapons.
Of all the trends to emerge, the time for killing was among the most enduring.
In New York, the trend goes back well before the years covered in the database — at least as far as 1981, according to an analysis of reports by the city medical examiner’s office done by Steven F. Messner, a criminology professor at the State University of New York at Albany. And he believes it stretches back much further than that.
Nationally, in the early 1980s, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed a decade’s worth of homicide data across the nation, and found that while suicides peak in the spring, homicides swell between July and September.
A prime reason murder peaks during this time has to do with the routines of people’s lives, according to Professor Messner.
“Homicides vary with social acting,” he said. “It evolves from interactions.”
Summer is when people get together. More specifically, casual drinkers and drug users are more likely to go to bars or parties on weekends and evenings, as opposed to a Tuesday morning. These people in the social mix, flooding the city’s streets and neighborhood bars, feed the peak times for murder, experts say.
And the trend occurs in other cities, in places like Chicago, Boston and Newark, according to criminologists.
Some of the same trends are on display around Christmastime and are believed to be behind the slight increases in murder that occur then, criminologists say.
Thomas D. Nerney, who retired in 2002 as a detective in the New York Police Department’s Major Case Squad, said the patterns were well known within the department.
Assigned as a detective in Brooklyn from 1972 to 1986, he said that on a hot summer night or in the holiday season, a similar set of factors seemed to be behind the killings: a chance to socialize and to drink or use drugs.
He recalled the late 1970s and early ’80s in Brooklyn, when the heavier homicide caseloads seemed to come as neighborhoods got hotter.
“We had so many of them,” Mr. Nerney said. “They would be on rooftops. There might be somebody who lured someone somewhere; you would have a sex-related killing or a revenge killing. Rooftops or backyards.”
The Times analysis, when compared with Professor Messner’s findings from 1981, shows that increasingly, more victims were killed between midnight and 8 a.m. in recent years than in the past.
According to the professor’s study of homicides in Manhattan, 29 percent of the 1,826 victims in 1981 were killed between midnight and 8 a.m. More recently, from 2006 through 2008, 39 percent of all homicide victims were killed during those hours, the Times analysis shows.
Also, as the number of homicides has shrunk, the data shows that more are occurring on weekends. From 2003 to 2008, 36 percent of all victims were killed on Saturday or Sunday, the analysis shows.
Failing to understand the basic connection between time of year and homicide rates can lead law enforcement agencies to faulty conclusions about what is happening in the streets — and it can affect their strategies.
In St. Louis, a 1990s-era gun buyback program begun each fall was thought by some to be behind a drop in violence. But as Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, studied the program’s impact, he found that the annual crime reductions were more attributable to the normal seasonal ebbing in homicide and assaults.
In New York, Vincent Henry, a retired police sergeant who now teaches criminology and who has studied the department’s Compstat program, in which computerized data is used for more efficient policing, said that time was one of many factors in making decisions about staffing and when and how to deploy officers.
But that was not always the case.
In the early 1990s, police managers altered the working hours for various groups of detectives, including those tracking narcotics cases and those seeking to arrest criminals wanted on open warrants.
It seemed to the top officials at the time that too many officers were keeping bankers’ hours — ending their shifts at dusk and taking weekends off — and not working closely enough with counterparts.
Jack Maple, a former police deputy commissioner who helped develop Compstat, wrote a book, “The Crime Fighter,” in which he detailed the issues of the day. He described the shortfall this way: “Unfortunately, the bad guys work around the clock.”
And in the summer months, the bad guys tend to be deadliest.
By ANDREW W. LEHREN and AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/nyregion/19murder.html?hp
A young boxer was shot dead outside a Bronx bodega at 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday last August. Weeks later, a 59-year-old woman was beaten to death on a Saturday night on the side of a Queens highway. On the last Sunday in September, violence exploded as five men were killed in a spate of shootings and stabbings between midnight and 6 a.m.
Seven homicides in New York City. None connected in any way but this: They happened during the summer months, when the temperatures rise, people hit the streets, and New York becomes a more lethal place.
There were more homicides in September than in any other month last year: 52. Next highest was August, with 51. Variations, of course, exist. There were 48 homicides last March, for instance.
Still, the prime time for murder is clear: summertime. Indeed, it is close to a constant, one hammered home painfully from June to September across the decades. And the breakdown of deadly brutality can get even more specific. September Saturdays around 10 p.m. were the most likely moments for a murder in the city.
The summer spike in killings is just one of several findings unearthed in an analysis by The New York Times of multiyear homicide trends. The information — detailing homicides during the years 2003 to 2008 — was compiled mainly from open-records requests with the New York Police Department, and a searchable database of details on homicides in the city during those years is available online for readers to explore at nytimes.com/nyregion.
Of course, the dominant and most important trend involving murder in New York has been the enormous decline in killings over the last 15 years, to levels not seen since the early 1960s.
Still, hundreds of people are killed every year in the city, and The Times’s findings provide insights about who is killed in New York, as well as who does the killing, where murders occur and why.
Women, for instance, are less likely to be either victims or killers. Those who were killed — at least 73 women were in 2008 — were almost always murdered by someone they knew — boyfriends, husbands or relatives. From 2003 to 2008, the number of women killed each year by strangers was in the single digits — excluding cases in which the police do not know if the killer knew the victim. Last year, as few as eight women died at the hands of strangers.
Brooklyn — as it has since at least 2003 — led all boroughs in the number of homicides last year, with 213. Last year, the 73rd Precinct, which includes the neighborhoods of Ocean Hill and Brownsville, had the largest death toll, 31. The bloodiest block in Brooklyn was in the 77th Precinct, in Crown Heights, bounded by Schenectady Avenue, Sterling Place, Troy Avenue and St. Johns Place. But the borough with the most homicides per capita was the Bronx.
More often than not, the weapon of choice is a firearm. Each year the percentage of people killed by firearms hovers around 60 percent. Though slightly less than in recent years, at least 56 percent of last year’s homicides were committed with these weapons.
Of all the trends to emerge, the time for killing was among the most enduring.
In New York, the trend goes back well before the years covered in the database — at least as far as 1981, according to an analysis of reports by the city medical examiner’s office done by Steven F. Messner, a criminology professor at the State University of New York at Albany. And he believes it stretches back much further than that.
Nationally, in the early 1980s, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed a decade’s worth of homicide data across the nation, and found that while suicides peak in the spring, homicides swell between July and September.
A prime reason murder peaks during this time has to do with the routines of people’s lives, according to Professor Messner.
“Homicides vary with social acting,” he said. “It evolves from interactions.”
Summer is when people get together. More specifically, casual drinkers and drug users are more likely to go to bars or parties on weekends and evenings, as opposed to a Tuesday morning. These people in the social mix, flooding the city’s streets and neighborhood bars, feed the peak times for murder, experts say.
And the trend occurs in other cities, in places like Chicago, Boston and Newark, according to criminologists.
Some of the same trends are on display around Christmastime and are believed to be behind the slight increases in murder that occur then, criminologists say.
Thomas D. Nerney, who retired in 2002 as a detective in the New York Police Department’s Major Case Squad, said the patterns were well known within the department.
Assigned as a detective in Brooklyn from 1972 to 1986, he said that on a hot summer night or in the holiday season, a similar set of factors seemed to be behind the killings: a chance to socialize and to drink or use drugs.
He recalled the late 1970s and early ’80s in Brooklyn, when the heavier homicide caseloads seemed to come as neighborhoods got hotter.
“We had so many of them,” Mr. Nerney said. “They would be on rooftops. There might be somebody who lured someone somewhere; you would have a sex-related killing or a revenge killing. Rooftops or backyards.”
The Times analysis, when compared with Professor Messner’s findings from 1981, shows that increasingly, more victims were killed between midnight and 8 a.m. in recent years than in the past.
According to the professor’s study of homicides in Manhattan, 29 percent of the 1,826 victims in 1981 were killed between midnight and 8 a.m. More recently, from 2006 through 2008, 39 percent of all homicide victims were killed during those hours, the Times analysis shows.
Also, as the number of homicides has shrunk, the data shows that more are occurring on weekends. From 2003 to 2008, 36 percent of all victims were killed on Saturday or Sunday, the analysis shows.
Failing to understand the basic connection between time of year and homicide rates can lead law enforcement agencies to faulty conclusions about what is happening in the streets — and it can affect their strategies.
In St. Louis, a 1990s-era gun buyback program begun each fall was thought by some to be behind a drop in violence. But as Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, studied the program’s impact, he found that the annual crime reductions were more attributable to the normal seasonal ebbing in homicide and assaults.
In New York, Vincent Henry, a retired police sergeant who now teaches criminology and who has studied the department’s Compstat program, in which computerized data is used for more efficient policing, said that time was one of many factors in making decisions about staffing and when and how to deploy officers.
But that was not always the case.
In the early 1990s, police managers altered the working hours for various groups of detectives, including those tracking narcotics cases and those seeking to arrest criminals wanted on open warrants.
It seemed to the top officials at the time that too many officers were keeping bankers’ hours — ending their shifts at dusk and taking weekends off — and not working closely enough with counterparts.
Jack Maple, a former police deputy commissioner who helped develop Compstat, wrote a book, “The Crime Fighter,” in which he detailed the issues of the day. He described the shortfall this way: “Unfortunately, the bad guys work around the clock.”
And in the summer months, the bad guys tend to be deadliest.
Ruling Cleric Warns Iranian Protesters
Below this article are the first hand accounts from readers of the NYT blog,so keep on scrolling for more info!
June 20, 2009
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/world/middleeast/20iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — In his first public response to days of mass protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opposition supporters on Friday to stay off the streets and raised the prospect of violence if the defiant, vast demonstrations continued.
Opposition leaders, he said, will be “responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if they do not stop further rallies.
He said he would never give in to “illegal pressures” and denied their accusations that last week’s presidential election was rigged, praising the officially declared landslide for the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”
He spoke somberly for more than an hour and a half at Friday Prayer to tens of thousands of people at Tehran University, with Mr. Ahmadinejad in attendance. His sermon was broadcast over loudspeakers to throngs in the adjoining streets, and the crowds erupted repeatedly in roars of support. Opposition supporters had spread the word among themselves not to attend.
“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to a rendering by the BBC. “This questions the principles of election and democracy.”
There was no immediate response from opposition leaders.
The ominous speech sharply increased the confrontation between Iran’s rulers and supporters of the main opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who have accused the authorities of rigging the vote and called for or encouraged the huge silent marches in Tehran for the last four days. No rally was planned for Friday, and opposition supporters did not appear to be gathering impromptu.
But on Saturday, a group of reformist clerics loyal to the former President Mohammed Khatami planned to demonstrate against the election results, saying they had been given rare official permission. Some news reports, however, said that the gathering had been banned.
Ayatollah Khamenei instructed dissenters to pursue their complaints about the June 12 ballot through legal channels, insisting that the turnout — officially put at 85 percent — showed it to be a reflection of the national will.
Reiterating his Saturday affirmation of the official election results, he said that the participation, as officially reported, had shown “the hand of the Lord of ages supporting such a great development.”
“This is a sign of God’s mercy for this nation. The fate of the country should be decided in ballot boxes, not on the streets,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, framing his position as a commitment to the law and the orderly functioning of government.
“If we break the law, we will have to do it in every election and no election would be immune,” he said. “This is wrong. This is the beginning of dictatorship.”
He said that the margin of victory — 11 million votes — accorded to Mr. Ahmadinejad in the official tally was so big that it could not have been falsified.
“How can 11 million votes be replaced or changed?” he said. “The Islamic Republic would not cheat and would not betray the vote of the people.”
Some Iranians, who spoke in return for anonymity for fear of official reprisals, said the sermon showed that Iran was in the grips of what one person called “an all-or-nothing showdown” between the authorities and reformists.
Iranians had been looking to the ayatollah’s appearance for clues as to whether the authorities were prepared to bend to opposition demands. But he showed no readiness to countenance their demands that the election be annulled or to veer from the line he has taken since he endorsed the vote almost as soon as the results were made known last Saturday.
Ayatollah Khamenei blamed “media belonging to Zionists, evil media” for seeking to show divisions between those who supported the Iranian state and those who did not, while, in fact, the election had shown Iranians to be united in their commitment to the Islamic revolutionary state.
“There are 40 million votes for the revolution, not just 24 million for the chosen president,” he said, referring to the official count that gave Mr. Ahmadinejad more than 60 percent of the ballot.
He said the election “ was a competition among people who believe in the state.”
He also spoke of the religious roots of “our revolutionary society.”
“Despite all the diversions, our people are faithful,” he said, but urged young Iranians to lead more spiritual lives. “The youth are confused. Being away from spirituality has caused confusion. They don’t know what to do.”
He accused what he called arrogant Western powers, particularly Britain and the United States, of showing their hostility to the Iranian Islamic revolution in remarks casting doubt on the election. And he warned them not meddle in Iran’s affairs, accusing them of failing to understand the nature of Iranian society.
The British government, which the supreme leader singled out as the “most treacherous” of the Western powers, responded swiftly, summoning Iran’s ambassador in London to the Foreign Office to complain. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, cautious until now in its comments on the Iranian election, stepped up his public criticism.
“We are with others, including the whole of the European Union unanimously today, in condemning the use of violence, in condemning media suppression,” he told a news conference after a European Union summit in Brussels.
“It is for Iran now to show the world that the elections have been fair...that the repression and the brutality that we have seen in these last few days is not something that is going to be repeated,” Mr. Brown said, Reuters reported.
Throughout the week of protests, Iran’s leaders have offered conciliation, while simultaneously wielding repression.
On Thursday, for instance, the government offered to talk to the opposition, inviting the three losing presidential candidates to meet with the powerful Guardian Council.
But the government’s offers of modest and reluctant concessions have been accompanied by continued arrests of prominent reformers and efforts to stifle the flow of information by limiting Internet access and pressuring reporters to stay off the streets.
It was not clear whether Iran’s government, made up of fractious power centers, was pursuing a calculated strategy or if the moves reflected internal disagreements, or even an uncertainty not apparent in Ayatollah Khamenei’s address.
“Most analysts believe the outreach is just to kill time and extend this while they search for a solution, although there doesn’t seem to be any,” said a political analyst in Tehran, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “This will only be a postponement of the inevitable, which is indeed a brutal crackdown.”
It was not clear what role was being played by a former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who supported Mr. Moussavi and is in a power struggle with Ayatollah Khamenei. There were unconfirmed reports Thursday that two of his children had been banned from leaving the country because of their role in helping the protesters.
Ayatollah Khamenei devoted a section of his sermon on Friday to rebutting what he said were accusations of corruption leveled against Mr. Rafsanjani. But, he said, he believed President Ahmadinejad’s approach to foreign and social policy was “closer to what it should be.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo, and Neil MacFarquhar and Sharon Otterman from New York.
June 19, 2009, 7:56 am
Friday: Updates on Iran’s Disputed Election
By Robert Mackey
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/friday-updates-on-irans-disputed-election/
To supplement reporting by New York Times journalists inside Iran on Friday, The Lede will continue to track the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election online, as we have for the last several days. Please refresh this page throughout the day to get the latest updates at the top of your screen (updates are stamped with the time in New York). For an overview of the current situation, read the main news article on our Web site, which will be updated throughout the day.
Readers inside Iran or in touch with people there are encouraged to send us photographs — our address is: pix@nyt.com — or use the comments box below to tell us what you are seeing or hearing.
Update | 11:08 a.m. Since opposition leaders decided to call off a planned protest during Friday prayers, some Iranian bloggers are pointing to video and photographs shot earlier this week to keep their momentum going online. One blogger uploaded this photograph to TwitPic on Friday of a Farsi-language placard the blogger translates as: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. Mahatma Gandhi.”
Other bloggers who seem to be writing from inside Iran point to this video, showing highlights from Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, which has been subtitled for English speakers:
Update | 11:02 a.m. A blogger who seems to be writing from Iran noted in two updates an hour ago on the Twitter feed Oxfordgirl that speculation is widespread that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and former president of Iran, may not have appeared at Friday prayers in Tehran because he is working behind the scenes to overturn the election results:
Who not at Friday Prayers: Rafsanjani.
Where is Rafsanjani? He is organising the demise of Ahmadinejad.
Update | 10:52 a.m. In an article for The New Republic earlier this week, Abbas Milani, a professor of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, looked more closely at the power struggle that seems to be unfolding inside Iran’s clerical establishment. Mr. Milani wrote that the country’s Supreme Leader may come to regret throwing his support so firmly behind Mr. Ahmadinejad:
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — whose rule has been absolute and whose words have been the law of the land–is facing the most public challenge to his authority. His two decades since succeeding Ayatollah Khomeini have been defined by a tendency to keep his options open, a verbal dexterity that allowed him to skirt tough political positions, and an appearance of impartiality in Iran’s fierce factional feuds. His caution has been the key to his success and survival.
But Khamenei has thrown this caution to the wind by unabashedly favoring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Four years ago, his support was instrumental in getting the little-known Ahmadinejad elected president. Even as criticism of the president has been on the rise in the country over the past year, Khamenei reportedly promised Ahmadinejad and his cabinet four more years at the helm.
Mr. Milani added:
What makes this moment different from past incidents of confrontation between the regime and the people is that, this time, many pillars of the regime are part of the opposition. Aside from Mousavi, who was prime minister for eight years, Rafsanjani, former president Mohammad Khatami, former speaker of the parliament Mehdi Karubi, and many other past ministers and undersecretaries are now leading the movement demanding new elections. Moreover, since the demonstrators come from all walks of life, it is more difficult than in the past to accuse them of immaturity or youthful impertinence, or of falling prey to the designs of the “Great Satan.” [...]
The regime still has the capacity to contain the disgruntled demonstrators and maybe even co-opt their leadership. But the majestic power of large peaceful crowds, tasting the joys of victory embodied in acts of civil disobedience, and brought together by the power of technologies beyond the regime’s control, is sure to beget larger, more confident, and more disciplined crowds. When people defied Khamenei’s orders by gathering en masse on Monday, the regime’s armor of invincibility–so central to the regime’s authoritarian control–was cracked. Without it, the regime cannot survive, and reestablishing it can come only at the price of great bloodshed.
Update | 10:23 a.m. On the BBC’s dot.life technology blog, Rory Cellan-Jones posts this interesting look at how, and why, Iran’s Internet service may have been slowed but not stopped entirely.
Update | 9:59 a.m. Not all of our readers support the opposition, or our effort to report on events in Iran. Here is what a reader named Siyamak wrote in the comments thread below after Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech on Friday morning:
I heard Khamenei speak and I liked what he said which I found fair and balanced. Stop interfering with Iran!
Update | 9:55 a.m. One of our readers asks if The Times, by passing on messages about plans for opposition rallies is helping the Iranian authorities to block them. Obviously we have no first-hand knowledge of whether that is the case or not, but there are plenty of reports that suggest that Iran’s government is directly reading (and perhaps even writing) messages posted on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook by bloggers supporting the opposition movement in Iran. We also know that the rallies seem to have been organized, in part, through the use of these social-networking tools. It is also clear that each day some of the first and most powerful news of the rallies has come from the photographs and video posted online by anonymous users of these services.
The larger point, however, is that Iranian bloggers may be posting this information, often in English, on these sites precisely so that they can be easily picked up and reported by news organizations outside the control of Iran’s government. Whatever the thinking is, it is a fact that, given the nature of the Web, no information posted on these Web sites is private, whether it is described or reported on by news organizations or not. What we do know is that the people posting these messages on their anonymous social-networking accounts are making them public by doing so, and that they frequently ask that the messages be passed on. In a sense “re-tweeting” is a kind of reporting.
Importantly, we also have not seen any messages at all from bloggers who appear to be inside Iran asking that their text messages, photographs of video not be reported by news organizations. A reader of The Lede points out that one blogger writing on Twitter, under the alias Oxfordgirl, wrote earlier today in an update: “u can use my name in RTs.”
It would seem likely that if Iran’s opposition bloggers wanted to keep this information secret they would not post it online at all.
With that in mind, here is a message sent to us this morning by one of our readers, who uses the alias gb and says that he has been in touch with his family in Shiraz:
I talked to my mom today about yesterday’s sit-in in Shahe Cheraq.
She said the main problem is that it’s really hard to get the word out about where and they are meeting. She said she really didn’t know where untill an hour before and some people were arriving when the whole thing was ending.
They are going to meet tomorrow in Daneshjoo Square (formerly Alam square).
Here is video and a photograph of that protest on Thursday at the Shah-e-Cheraq shrine in Shiraz.
Update | 9:21 a.m. Since the Supreme Leader again stated on Friday that a partial recount of ballots is all that is required to settle this dispute, while the opposition says the whole process was tainted and demands a new vote, it might be worth looking at who will be doing the recount.
The New Republic pointed out this week that this man, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati Massah, “leads the Guardian Council, which runs elections and maintains the power to veto any parliamentary action it views as violating Islamic law.”
According to the New Republic’s description of him, it is not hard to understand why the opposition has little faith in a review led by him:
A hard-liner, he has called for America’s destruction multiple times, as well as George W. Bush’s decapitation. He formally endorsed Ahmadinejad, and he will run the Guardian Council’s election recount.
That information comes from a useful slide show on The New Republic’s Web site, which includes photographs and information on some of the key figures in Iran’s complex power structure who may right now be engaged in a struggle for control inside that labyrinth.
Update | 9:16 a.m. Two hours ago the blogger Persiankiwi, who has had consistently good information on the protests this week, reported via Twitter that another opposition rally is planned for Saturday:
Confirmed - Saturday Sea of Green rally - Enghelab Sq - 4pm - Mousavi, Karoubi and Khatami will attend -
Ten minutes ago the same source added:
confirmed - the Gov has refused to issue a permit for Sea of Green march at 4pm on Saturday in Tehran
Update | 9:10 a.m. The same YouTube channel that has the video of the singing at Thursday’s rally in Tehran also includes these two video clips of Mir Hussein Moussavi among his supporters:
Update | 9:07 a.m. As the opposition in Iran tries to remain united, they will point to video like this, apparently shot at Thursday’s mass rally in Tehran’s Imam Khomeni Square, of the crowd singing a patriotic song:
The YouTube user who uploaded this video says that points to this translation of the song’s lyrics on Wikipedia.
Update | 8:58 a.m. In an interview with Foreign policy magazine on Thursday, the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who is speaking for Mr. Moussavi’s campaign in Europe, made this interesting comparison between the events of 1979 and 2009 on Iran’s streets:
There are some similarities and some differences. In both situations, people were in the streets. In the [earlier] revolution, there were young people in the streets who were not as modern as the people are today. And they were in the streets following the lead of a leader, a mullah — in those times Ayatollah Khomeini. Now, the young people in the streets are more modern: They use SMS; they use the Internet. And they are not being actually led by anyone, but they are connected to each other.
In an e-mail message sent to BBC Persian on Friday, subsequently translated from Farsi and posted online, an anonymous reader of that Web site who says he is one of the opposition protesters in Iran seemed to endorse Mr. Makhmalbaf’s reading:
Whether Mir Hossein Mousavi wants it or not, we will take our vote back. This is a youth movement, it’s our movement and we will not have these men [ie all the politicians] take credit. They are threatening us with violence and they are holding Mir Hossein [Mousavi] responsible. If one drop more blood is shed from anyone, the leader of the nation will be responsible.
Update | 8:54 a.m. Here is what one student in Tehran, identified only as Behrooz, told the BBC in response to Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech on Friday:
We all know that Mr Ahmadinejad did not get 24 million votes. But Ayatollah Khamenei has just repeated that statistic as true. There’s clearly a power struggle going on between Mr [Hashemi] Rafsanjani [a former president and head of an influential body which elects the supreme leader] and Mr Khamenei. I think in the end this can only be good for us, although I think today’s speech makes it more dangerous for us to protest.
We just have to keep the demonstrations so big that they cannot attack us. If the crowd is just 2,000 strong, they can scare us with 200 soldiers. But if we are a million, what can they do?
I don’t think the Guardian Council will agree to a new election. They don’t want to lose prestige. They will agree to a recount which gives the same result.
I voted for Mr [Mehdi] Karroubi because he was the one with the best plan to change this rotten system. Maybe nothing will change for now, but I do think this is the start of some sort of revolution. Hopefully not a destructive one like in 1979. As long as we are in the street, people will know we are not satisfied.
For the moment Mr Rafsanjani is silent, and we don’t know what he’s doing. But he’s a very powerful man. He’s the leader of the Assembly of Experts which selects supreme leader. He brought Khamenei to power, so he will be the one who brings him down.
Another response, on the BBC’s Web site, comes from computer programmer in Mashhad, identified as Arash, who said:
People are being beaten up in Mashhad. There have been no demonstrations in the past two days. People wait until night to go on the roofs and shout “Allahu akbar” ["God is great] to show their support for the opposition. People from here go to Tehran to demonstrate, to be part of the bigger, safer crowds.
Update | 8:42 a.m. In his sermon on Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei attacked what he called attempts by foreign governments to stir up opposition to the election results. He seemed to be saying that reports by foreign media outlets are actually veiled attempts to overthrow his regime. Reporting on what was in part an attack on the corporation itself, the BBC, which maintains an active Farsi-language news service, explained:
He said the election was a “political earthquake” for Iran’s enemies - singling out Great Britain as “the most evil of them” - whom he accused of trying to foment unrest in the country.
“Some of our enemies in different parts of the world intended to depict this absolute victory, this definitive victory, as a doubtful victory,” the Supreme Leader said.
In its own way, the BBC was quick to strike back - passing on reaction to the Supreme Leader’s speech from users of its Web site who claimed to be inside Iran.
Update | 8:38 a.m. In a post on Bits, the New York Times’s technology blog, Miguel Helft reports:
“There is a huge amount of interest about the events in Iran,” said Franz Och, principal scientist at Google, who has been leading the development of Google Translate. “We hope that this tool will improve access to information in Iran and outside,” Mr. Och said in an interview. [...]
In a blog post, Mr. Och warned that the service is not perfect, so mistakes are possible. It is optimized to translate between Persian and English, but Google is working on improving translation between Persian and the other languages in Google Translate.
Update | 8:30 a.m. The automatic translation tool introdcued by Google on Friday was quickly used by supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi. One hour ago, Mousavi1388, a Twitter feed maintained by opposition supporters, reported:
Mousavi’s official news site GhalamNews in now available in English thanks to @GOOGLE, see http://is.gd/16b2j
In reference to reports from Twitter that we cite, we should note that, after consulting several experts, The Times has decided to include the user names for the Twitter posts that are quoted here and elsewhere on NYTimes.com. We concluded that the user names would better allow readers to judge the source and value of the posts that are quoted. The user names are already publicly available on Twitter and accessible, along with all content created on Twitter, through Twitter’s search index and on any number of third-party search engines.
Update | 8:20 a.m. Iran’s authorities are no doubt hoping that images broadcast on Iranian state television this morning, of the Supreme Leader speaking to a large number of loyal followers at Tehran University — including incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — will give many Iranian citizens the impression that the opposition protests are doomed to failure. Largely shut out by state television, and barred from speaking to the foreign press, the opposition will continue to rely on citizen journalists within the movement to get word of its protests out to other Iranians and the world through the Internet.
To that end, their efforts may be aided by the introduction of two new tools from Google and Facebook, announced on Friday. Google has sped up the release of automatic translation software that will help with translations of Internet messages to and from Farsi. On Google’s official blog, the company explained:
Today, we added Persian (Farsi) to Google Translate. This means you can now translate any text from Persian into English and from English into Persian — whether it’s a news story, a website, a blog, an email, a tweet or a Facebook message. The service is available free at http://translate.google.com.
We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa — increasing everyone’s access to information.
Pointing to the importance of their social-networking site in Iran, Facebook announced that they have made the entire site available to users who speak no English:
Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared has been in Persian—the native language of Iran—but people have had to navigate the site in English or other languages.
Today we’re making the entire site available in a beta version of Persian, so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language.
If your browser is set to Persian, you should automatically see the Persian version of Facebook.
Update | 8:11 a.m. According to a Reuters report, there were tens of thousands “gathered in and around Tehran University to hear Khamenei’s Friday prayer sermon.” The news agency added:
People chanting slogans and holding posters of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, the father of the 1979 Islamic revolution, packed streets outside the university.
Update | 8:00 a.m. Iran’s Press TV, an English-language satellite channel financed by the Iranian government, reports that the nation’s Supreme Leader made no concessions after days of massive street protests:
Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said high turnout in the election, which witnessed more than 40 million Iranians casting their votes, was a great manifestation of people’s solidarity with the Islamic establishment. Addressing Friday prayers congregation, Ayatollah Khamenei said that last Friday’s election indicated a ‘common sense of responsibility’ of the Iranian nation to determine the future of the country. [...]
The Leader said the high voter turnout in the election was a ‘political quake’ for the enemy and a ‘real celebration’ for the friends of the country. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will by no means betray the votes of the nation,” the Leader said, adding the legal system of the election will not allow any ballot rigging in Iran.
Ayatollah Khamenei, however, maintained that the Guardian Council, the body tasked with overseeing the election, would look into the complaints of the candidates who are unhappy with the election results.
The Leader also added that the establishment would never give-in to illegal demands, urging all presidential candidates to pursue their complaints through legal channels. Ayatollah Khamenei called for an end to illegal street protests aimed at reversing the result of the election.
Update | 7:54 a.m. The BBC has this video of Ayatollah Khamenei’s stern rebuke to the protesters on Friday, which was broadcast by Iranian state television.
Update | 7:51 a.m. As Nazila Fathi reports from Tehran, Iran’s ruling cleric took a firm stand against the opposition protests during a televised sermon on Friday:
In his first public response to days of protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opponents Friday to stay off the streets and denied opposition claims that last week’s disputed election was rigged, praising the ballot as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”
In a somber and lengthy sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, he called directly for an end to the protests by hundreds of thousands of Iranians demanding a new election.
“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “This is challenging democracy after the elections.” He said opposition leaders would be “held responsible for chaos” if they did not end the protests.
June 20, 2009
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/world/middleeast/20iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — In his first public response to days of mass protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opposition supporters on Friday to stay off the streets and raised the prospect of violence if the defiant, vast demonstrations continued.
Opposition leaders, he said, will be “responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if they do not stop further rallies.
He said he would never give in to “illegal pressures” and denied their accusations that last week’s presidential election was rigged, praising the officially declared landslide for the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”
He spoke somberly for more than an hour and a half at Friday Prayer to tens of thousands of people at Tehran University, with Mr. Ahmadinejad in attendance. His sermon was broadcast over loudspeakers to throngs in the adjoining streets, and the crowds erupted repeatedly in roars of support. Opposition supporters had spread the word among themselves not to attend.
“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to a rendering by the BBC. “This questions the principles of election and democracy.”
There was no immediate response from opposition leaders.
The ominous speech sharply increased the confrontation between Iran’s rulers and supporters of the main opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who have accused the authorities of rigging the vote and called for or encouraged the huge silent marches in Tehran for the last four days. No rally was planned for Friday, and opposition supporters did not appear to be gathering impromptu.
But on Saturday, a group of reformist clerics loyal to the former President Mohammed Khatami planned to demonstrate against the election results, saying they had been given rare official permission. Some news reports, however, said that the gathering had been banned.
Ayatollah Khamenei instructed dissenters to pursue their complaints about the June 12 ballot through legal channels, insisting that the turnout — officially put at 85 percent — showed it to be a reflection of the national will.
Reiterating his Saturday affirmation of the official election results, he said that the participation, as officially reported, had shown “the hand of the Lord of ages supporting such a great development.”
“This is a sign of God’s mercy for this nation. The fate of the country should be decided in ballot boxes, not on the streets,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, framing his position as a commitment to the law and the orderly functioning of government.
“If we break the law, we will have to do it in every election and no election would be immune,” he said. “This is wrong. This is the beginning of dictatorship.”
He said that the margin of victory — 11 million votes — accorded to Mr. Ahmadinejad in the official tally was so big that it could not have been falsified.
“How can 11 million votes be replaced or changed?” he said. “The Islamic Republic would not cheat and would not betray the vote of the people.”
Some Iranians, who spoke in return for anonymity for fear of official reprisals, said the sermon showed that Iran was in the grips of what one person called “an all-or-nothing showdown” between the authorities and reformists.
Iranians had been looking to the ayatollah’s appearance for clues as to whether the authorities were prepared to bend to opposition demands. But he showed no readiness to countenance their demands that the election be annulled or to veer from the line he has taken since he endorsed the vote almost as soon as the results were made known last Saturday.
Ayatollah Khamenei blamed “media belonging to Zionists, evil media” for seeking to show divisions between those who supported the Iranian state and those who did not, while, in fact, the election had shown Iranians to be united in their commitment to the Islamic revolutionary state.
“There are 40 million votes for the revolution, not just 24 million for the chosen president,” he said, referring to the official count that gave Mr. Ahmadinejad more than 60 percent of the ballot.
He said the election “ was a competition among people who believe in the state.”
He also spoke of the religious roots of “our revolutionary society.”
“Despite all the diversions, our people are faithful,” he said, but urged young Iranians to lead more spiritual lives. “The youth are confused. Being away from spirituality has caused confusion. They don’t know what to do.”
He accused what he called arrogant Western powers, particularly Britain and the United States, of showing their hostility to the Iranian Islamic revolution in remarks casting doubt on the election. And he warned them not meddle in Iran’s affairs, accusing them of failing to understand the nature of Iranian society.
The British government, which the supreme leader singled out as the “most treacherous” of the Western powers, responded swiftly, summoning Iran’s ambassador in London to the Foreign Office to complain. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, cautious until now in its comments on the Iranian election, stepped up his public criticism.
“We are with others, including the whole of the European Union unanimously today, in condemning the use of violence, in condemning media suppression,” he told a news conference after a European Union summit in Brussels.
“It is for Iran now to show the world that the elections have been fair...that the repression and the brutality that we have seen in these last few days is not something that is going to be repeated,” Mr. Brown said, Reuters reported.
Throughout the week of protests, Iran’s leaders have offered conciliation, while simultaneously wielding repression.
On Thursday, for instance, the government offered to talk to the opposition, inviting the three losing presidential candidates to meet with the powerful Guardian Council.
But the government’s offers of modest and reluctant concessions have been accompanied by continued arrests of prominent reformers and efforts to stifle the flow of information by limiting Internet access and pressuring reporters to stay off the streets.
It was not clear whether Iran’s government, made up of fractious power centers, was pursuing a calculated strategy or if the moves reflected internal disagreements, or even an uncertainty not apparent in Ayatollah Khamenei’s address.
“Most analysts believe the outreach is just to kill time and extend this while they search for a solution, although there doesn’t seem to be any,” said a political analyst in Tehran, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “This will only be a postponement of the inevitable, which is indeed a brutal crackdown.”
It was not clear what role was being played by a former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who supported Mr. Moussavi and is in a power struggle with Ayatollah Khamenei. There were unconfirmed reports Thursday that two of his children had been banned from leaving the country because of their role in helping the protesters.
Ayatollah Khamenei devoted a section of his sermon on Friday to rebutting what he said were accusations of corruption leveled against Mr. Rafsanjani. But, he said, he believed President Ahmadinejad’s approach to foreign and social policy was “closer to what it should be.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo, and Neil MacFarquhar and Sharon Otterman from New York.
June 19, 2009, 7:56 am
Friday: Updates on Iran’s Disputed Election
By Robert Mackey
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/friday-updates-on-irans-disputed-election/
To supplement reporting by New York Times journalists inside Iran on Friday, The Lede will continue to track the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election online, as we have for the last several days. Please refresh this page throughout the day to get the latest updates at the top of your screen (updates are stamped with the time in New York). For an overview of the current situation, read the main news article on our Web site, which will be updated throughout the day.
Readers inside Iran or in touch with people there are encouraged to send us photographs — our address is: pix@nyt.com — or use the comments box below to tell us what you are seeing or hearing.
Update | 11:08 a.m. Since opposition leaders decided to call off a planned protest during Friday prayers, some Iranian bloggers are pointing to video and photographs shot earlier this week to keep their momentum going online. One blogger uploaded this photograph to TwitPic on Friday of a Farsi-language placard the blogger translates as: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. Mahatma Gandhi.”
Other bloggers who seem to be writing from inside Iran point to this video, showing highlights from Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, which has been subtitled for English speakers:
Update | 11:02 a.m. A blogger who seems to be writing from Iran noted in two updates an hour ago on the Twitter feed Oxfordgirl that speculation is widespread that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and former president of Iran, may not have appeared at Friday prayers in Tehran because he is working behind the scenes to overturn the election results:
Who not at Friday Prayers: Rafsanjani.
Where is Rafsanjani? He is organising the demise of Ahmadinejad.
Update | 10:52 a.m. In an article for The New Republic earlier this week, Abbas Milani, a professor of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, looked more closely at the power struggle that seems to be unfolding inside Iran’s clerical establishment. Mr. Milani wrote that the country’s Supreme Leader may come to regret throwing his support so firmly behind Mr. Ahmadinejad:
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — whose rule has been absolute and whose words have been the law of the land–is facing the most public challenge to his authority. His two decades since succeeding Ayatollah Khomeini have been defined by a tendency to keep his options open, a verbal dexterity that allowed him to skirt tough political positions, and an appearance of impartiality in Iran’s fierce factional feuds. His caution has been the key to his success and survival.
But Khamenei has thrown this caution to the wind by unabashedly favoring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Four years ago, his support was instrumental in getting the little-known Ahmadinejad elected president. Even as criticism of the president has been on the rise in the country over the past year, Khamenei reportedly promised Ahmadinejad and his cabinet four more years at the helm.
Mr. Milani added:
What makes this moment different from past incidents of confrontation between the regime and the people is that, this time, many pillars of the regime are part of the opposition. Aside from Mousavi, who was prime minister for eight years, Rafsanjani, former president Mohammad Khatami, former speaker of the parliament Mehdi Karubi, and many other past ministers and undersecretaries are now leading the movement demanding new elections. Moreover, since the demonstrators come from all walks of life, it is more difficult than in the past to accuse them of immaturity or youthful impertinence, or of falling prey to the designs of the “Great Satan.” [...]
The regime still has the capacity to contain the disgruntled demonstrators and maybe even co-opt their leadership. But the majestic power of large peaceful crowds, tasting the joys of victory embodied in acts of civil disobedience, and brought together by the power of technologies beyond the regime’s control, is sure to beget larger, more confident, and more disciplined crowds. When people defied Khamenei’s orders by gathering en masse on Monday, the regime’s armor of invincibility–so central to the regime’s authoritarian control–was cracked. Without it, the regime cannot survive, and reestablishing it can come only at the price of great bloodshed.
Update | 10:23 a.m. On the BBC’s dot.life technology blog, Rory Cellan-Jones posts this interesting look at how, and why, Iran’s Internet service may have been slowed but not stopped entirely.
Update | 9:59 a.m. Not all of our readers support the opposition, or our effort to report on events in Iran. Here is what a reader named Siyamak wrote in the comments thread below after Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech on Friday morning:
I heard Khamenei speak and I liked what he said which I found fair and balanced. Stop interfering with Iran!
Update | 9:55 a.m. One of our readers asks if The Times, by passing on messages about plans for opposition rallies is helping the Iranian authorities to block them. Obviously we have no first-hand knowledge of whether that is the case or not, but there are plenty of reports that suggest that Iran’s government is directly reading (and perhaps even writing) messages posted on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook by bloggers supporting the opposition movement in Iran. We also know that the rallies seem to have been organized, in part, through the use of these social-networking tools. It is also clear that each day some of the first and most powerful news of the rallies has come from the photographs and video posted online by anonymous users of these services.
The larger point, however, is that Iranian bloggers may be posting this information, often in English, on these sites precisely so that they can be easily picked up and reported by news organizations outside the control of Iran’s government. Whatever the thinking is, it is a fact that, given the nature of the Web, no information posted on these Web sites is private, whether it is described or reported on by news organizations or not. What we do know is that the people posting these messages on their anonymous social-networking accounts are making them public by doing so, and that they frequently ask that the messages be passed on. In a sense “re-tweeting” is a kind of reporting.
Importantly, we also have not seen any messages at all from bloggers who appear to be inside Iran asking that their text messages, photographs of video not be reported by news organizations. A reader of The Lede points out that one blogger writing on Twitter, under the alias Oxfordgirl, wrote earlier today in an update: “u can use my name in RTs.”
It would seem likely that if Iran’s opposition bloggers wanted to keep this information secret they would not post it online at all.
With that in mind, here is a message sent to us this morning by one of our readers, who uses the alias gb and says that he has been in touch with his family in Shiraz:
I talked to my mom today about yesterday’s sit-in in Shahe Cheraq.
She said the main problem is that it’s really hard to get the word out about where and they are meeting. She said she really didn’t know where untill an hour before and some people were arriving when the whole thing was ending.
They are going to meet tomorrow in Daneshjoo Square (formerly Alam square).
Here is video and a photograph of that protest on Thursday at the Shah-e-Cheraq shrine in Shiraz.
Update | 9:21 a.m. Since the Supreme Leader again stated on Friday that a partial recount of ballots is all that is required to settle this dispute, while the opposition says the whole process was tainted and demands a new vote, it might be worth looking at who will be doing the recount.
The New Republic pointed out this week that this man, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati Massah, “leads the Guardian Council, which runs elections and maintains the power to veto any parliamentary action it views as violating Islamic law.”
According to the New Republic’s description of him, it is not hard to understand why the opposition has little faith in a review led by him:
A hard-liner, he has called for America’s destruction multiple times, as well as George W. Bush’s decapitation. He formally endorsed Ahmadinejad, and he will run the Guardian Council’s election recount.
That information comes from a useful slide show on The New Republic’s Web site, which includes photographs and information on some of the key figures in Iran’s complex power structure who may right now be engaged in a struggle for control inside that labyrinth.
Update | 9:16 a.m. Two hours ago the blogger Persiankiwi, who has had consistently good information on the protests this week, reported via Twitter that another opposition rally is planned for Saturday:
Confirmed - Saturday Sea of Green rally - Enghelab Sq - 4pm - Mousavi, Karoubi and Khatami will attend -
Ten minutes ago the same source added:
confirmed - the Gov has refused to issue a permit for Sea of Green march at 4pm on Saturday in Tehran
Update | 9:10 a.m. The same YouTube channel that has the video of the singing at Thursday’s rally in Tehran also includes these two video clips of Mir Hussein Moussavi among his supporters:
Update | 9:07 a.m. As the opposition in Iran tries to remain united, they will point to video like this, apparently shot at Thursday’s mass rally in Tehran’s Imam Khomeni Square, of the crowd singing a patriotic song:
The YouTube user who uploaded this video says that points to this translation of the song’s lyrics on Wikipedia.
Update | 8:58 a.m. In an interview with Foreign policy magazine on Thursday, the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who is speaking for Mr. Moussavi’s campaign in Europe, made this interesting comparison between the events of 1979 and 2009 on Iran’s streets:
There are some similarities and some differences. In both situations, people were in the streets. In the [earlier] revolution, there were young people in the streets who were not as modern as the people are today. And they were in the streets following the lead of a leader, a mullah — in those times Ayatollah Khomeini. Now, the young people in the streets are more modern: They use SMS; they use the Internet. And they are not being actually led by anyone, but they are connected to each other.
In an e-mail message sent to BBC Persian on Friday, subsequently translated from Farsi and posted online, an anonymous reader of that Web site who says he is one of the opposition protesters in Iran seemed to endorse Mr. Makhmalbaf’s reading:
Whether Mir Hossein Mousavi wants it or not, we will take our vote back. This is a youth movement, it’s our movement and we will not have these men [ie all the politicians] take credit. They are threatening us with violence and they are holding Mir Hossein [Mousavi] responsible. If one drop more blood is shed from anyone, the leader of the nation will be responsible.
Update | 8:54 a.m. Here is what one student in Tehran, identified only as Behrooz, told the BBC in response to Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech on Friday:
We all know that Mr Ahmadinejad did not get 24 million votes. But Ayatollah Khamenei has just repeated that statistic as true. There’s clearly a power struggle going on between Mr [Hashemi] Rafsanjani [a former president and head of an influential body which elects the supreme leader] and Mr Khamenei. I think in the end this can only be good for us, although I think today’s speech makes it more dangerous for us to protest.
We just have to keep the demonstrations so big that they cannot attack us. If the crowd is just 2,000 strong, they can scare us with 200 soldiers. But if we are a million, what can they do?
I don’t think the Guardian Council will agree to a new election. They don’t want to lose prestige. They will agree to a recount which gives the same result.
I voted for Mr [Mehdi] Karroubi because he was the one with the best plan to change this rotten system. Maybe nothing will change for now, but I do think this is the start of some sort of revolution. Hopefully not a destructive one like in 1979. As long as we are in the street, people will know we are not satisfied.
For the moment Mr Rafsanjani is silent, and we don’t know what he’s doing. But he’s a very powerful man. He’s the leader of the Assembly of Experts which selects supreme leader. He brought Khamenei to power, so he will be the one who brings him down.
Another response, on the BBC’s Web site, comes from computer programmer in Mashhad, identified as Arash, who said:
People are being beaten up in Mashhad. There have been no demonstrations in the past two days. People wait until night to go on the roofs and shout “Allahu akbar” ["God is great] to show their support for the opposition. People from here go to Tehran to demonstrate, to be part of the bigger, safer crowds.
Update | 8:42 a.m. In his sermon on Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei attacked what he called attempts by foreign governments to stir up opposition to the election results. He seemed to be saying that reports by foreign media outlets are actually veiled attempts to overthrow his regime. Reporting on what was in part an attack on the corporation itself, the BBC, which maintains an active Farsi-language news service, explained:
He said the election was a “political earthquake” for Iran’s enemies - singling out Great Britain as “the most evil of them” - whom he accused of trying to foment unrest in the country.
“Some of our enemies in different parts of the world intended to depict this absolute victory, this definitive victory, as a doubtful victory,” the Supreme Leader said.
In its own way, the BBC was quick to strike back - passing on reaction to the Supreme Leader’s speech from users of its Web site who claimed to be inside Iran.
Update | 8:38 a.m. In a post on Bits, the New York Times’s technology blog, Miguel Helft reports:
“There is a huge amount of interest about the events in Iran,” said Franz Och, principal scientist at Google, who has been leading the development of Google Translate. “We hope that this tool will improve access to information in Iran and outside,” Mr. Och said in an interview. [...]
In a blog post, Mr. Och warned that the service is not perfect, so mistakes are possible. It is optimized to translate between Persian and English, but Google is working on improving translation between Persian and the other languages in Google Translate.
Update | 8:30 a.m. The automatic translation tool introdcued by Google on Friday was quickly used by supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi. One hour ago, Mousavi1388, a Twitter feed maintained by opposition supporters, reported:
Mousavi’s official news site GhalamNews in now available in English thanks to @GOOGLE, see http://is.gd/16b2j
In reference to reports from Twitter that we cite, we should note that, after consulting several experts, The Times has decided to include the user names for the Twitter posts that are quoted here and elsewhere on NYTimes.com. We concluded that the user names would better allow readers to judge the source and value of the posts that are quoted. The user names are already publicly available on Twitter and accessible, along with all content created on Twitter, through Twitter’s search index and on any number of third-party search engines.
Update | 8:20 a.m. Iran’s authorities are no doubt hoping that images broadcast on Iranian state television this morning, of the Supreme Leader speaking to a large number of loyal followers at Tehran University — including incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — will give many Iranian citizens the impression that the opposition protests are doomed to failure. Largely shut out by state television, and barred from speaking to the foreign press, the opposition will continue to rely on citizen journalists within the movement to get word of its protests out to other Iranians and the world through the Internet.
To that end, their efforts may be aided by the introduction of two new tools from Google and Facebook, announced on Friday. Google has sped up the release of automatic translation software that will help with translations of Internet messages to and from Farsi. On Google’s official blog, the company explained:
Today, we added Persian (Farsi) to Google Translate. This means you can now translate any text from Persian into English and from English into Persian — whether it’s a news story, a website, a blog, an email, a tweet or a Facebook message. The service is available free at http://translate.google.com.
We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa — increasing everyone’s access to information.
Pointing to the importance of their social-networking site in Iran, Facebook announced that they have made the entire site available to users who speak no English:
Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared has been in Persian—the native language of Iran—but people have had to navigate the site in English or other languages.
Today we’re making the entire site available in a beta version of Persian, so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language.
If your browser is set to Persian, you should automatically see the Persian version of Facebook.
Update | 8:11 a.m. According to a Reuters report, there were tens of thousands “gathered in and around Tehran University to hear Khamenei’s Friday prayer sermon.” The news agency added:
People chanting slogans and holding posters of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, the father of the 1979 Islamic revolution, packed streets outside the university.
Update | 8:00 a.m. Iran’s Press TV, an English-language satellite channel financed by the Iranian government, reports that the nation’s Supreme Leader made no concessions after days of massive street protests:
Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said high turnout in the election, which witnessed more than 40 million Iranians casting their votes, was a great manifestation of people’s solidarity with the Islamic establishment. Addressing Friday prayers congregation, Ayatollah Khamenei said that last Friday’s election indicated a ‘common sense of responsibility’ of the Iranian nation to determine the future of the country. [...]
The Leader said the high voter turnout in the election was a ‘political quake’ for the enemy and a ‘real celebration’ for the friends of the country. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will by no means betray the votes of the nation,” the Leader said, adding the legal system of the election will not allow any ballot rigging in Iran.
Ayatollah Khamenei, however, maintained that the Guardian Council, the body tasked with overseeing the election, would look into the complaints of the candidates who are unhappy with the election results.
The Leader also added that the establishment would never give-in to illegal demands, urging all presidential candidates to pursue their complaints through legal channels. Ayatollah Khamenei called for an end to illegal street protests aimed at reversing the result of the election.
Update | 7:54 a.m. The BBC has this video of Ayatollah Khamenei’s stern rebuke to the protesters on Friday, which was broadcast by Iranian state television.
Update | 7:51 a.m. As Nazila Fathi reports from Tehran, Iran’s ruling cleric took a firm stand against the opposition protests during a televised sermon on Friday:
In his first public response to days of protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opponents Friday to stay off the streets and denied opposition claims that last week’s disputed election was rigged, praising the ballot as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”
In a somber and lengthy sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, he called directly for an end to the protests by hundreds of thousands of Iranians demanding a new election.
“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “This is challenging democracy after the elections.” He said opposition leaders would be “held responsible for chaos” if they did not end the protests.
Justices Rule Inmates Don’t Have Right to DNA Tests
June 19, 2009
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/us/19scotus.html?_r=1&hp
WASHINGTON — Convicts do not have a right under the Constitution to obtain DNA testing to try to prove their innocence after being found guilty, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
In a 5-to-4 decision, the court found against William G. Osborne, a convicted rapist from Alaska. But the decision does not necessarily mean that many innocent prisoners will languish in their cells without access to DNA testing, since Alaska is one of only a few states without a law granting convicts at least some access to the new technology.
“DNA testing has an unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty,” the majority conceded, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “The availability of new DNA testing, however, cannot mean that every criminal conviction, or even every conviction involving biological evidence, is suddenly in doubt.”
In addition, the majority reasoned, it is not so much up to the federal courts as it is to the state legislatures to establish rules “to harness DNA’s power to prove innocence without unnecessarily overthrowing the established criminal justice system.”
The majority appeared to have been influenced by the fact that 46 states and the federal government have enacted laws that allow some inmates access to DNA testing, and there is nothing to prevent the remaining states from changing their laws. In addition to Alaska, Alabama, Massachusetts and Oklahoma do not explicitly allow the testing.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a dissent expressing his dismay that the majority had chosen to approve of Alaska’s denial of the evidence sought by the defendant. “The DNA test Osborne seeks is a simple one, its cost modest, and its results uniquely precise,” Justice Stevens said.
Since 1992, 238 people in the United States, some who were sitting on death row, have been exonerated of crimes through DNA testing. In many of those cases, the DNA testing used to clear them was not available at the time of the crime.
But several aspects of the Osborne case did not make the defendant a sympathetic one, so perhaps his case was not the ideal vehicle for those hoping that the nation’s highest court would find a constitutional right to “post-conviction” DNA testing — that is, after the normal appeals have been exhausted.
The victim in the Osborne case was a prostitute who was raped, beaten with an ax handle, shot in the head and left in a snow bank near Anchorage International Airport in 1993. She recalled that a condom was used in the assault against her, and one was found near the scene. An ax handle similar to the one used to club the victim was found in the defendant’s room.
The victim identified Mr. Osborne as one of her assailants, and he was also incriminated by another man who was found guilty in the attack.
Moreover, Mr. Osborne later confessed to the Alaska parole board, which released him after he had served 14 years of a 26-year prison term for kidnapping, assault and sexual assault. Later, the defendant said he confessed not because he was guilty, but in the hope of getting out of prison sooner. After his parole Mr. Osborne was convicted of a home invasion and is awaiting sentence for that crime.
Thursday’s ruling in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, No. 08-6, reversed a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Joining Chief Justice Roberts in the majority were Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
The dissenters, besides Justice Stevens, were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter.
A paradox in the case, at least to a layman, is the fact that Mr. Osborne’s lawyer at the time of the trial declined to pursue the most advanced DNA testing available — for fear, she acknowledged later, that it would prove his guilt.
Even though the latest DNA testing could establish whether the defendant raped the prostitute, attorneys on both sides have sometimes spoken ambiguously, or at least without iron-clad clarity.
When the case was argued on March 2, Kenneth M. Rosenstein, an assistant state attorney general, said that an Alaska law governing post-conviction relief could allow Mr. Osborne access to DNA evidence if he would swear to his innocence.
But would he?
“I assume he certainly would,” said his lawyer, Peter Neufeld.
But Mr. Rosenstein declined to say whether the state would resist the defendant even if he did so swear.
Justice Scalia said he was struck by the absence of a full-throated declaration of innocence from the defendant, and quoted from a sworn statement Mr. Osborne had submitted to the state courts: “I have no doubt whatsoever that retesting of the condom will prove once and for all time...”
Here, Justice Scalia observed, a listener would expect to hear the words “my innocence.” But the defendant did not say that, saying instead “either my guilt or innocence.”
Mr. Neufeld, a co-founder of The Innocence Project, which works to free wrongly convicted prisoners, issued a statement on Thursday calling the ruling “deeply flawed and disappointing,” but predicting that it may not have wide effect.
“Most people who need DNA testing to prove their innocence will not be affected by today’s ruling, but the small number of people who are impacted may suffer greatly,” he Neufeld said. “As a result of this decision, more innocent people will languish in prison and some may die in prison because they were prevented from proving their innocence.”
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also issued a statement expressing disappointment,
“We should make every effort to promote DNA testing in our criminal justice system — whether before or after trial — in order to help ensure that only the guilty are convicted, never the innocent, and that the guilty do not walk free to commit more crimes,” said Mr. Leahy, a former prosecutor.
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/us/19scotus.html?_r=1&hp
WASHINGTON — Convicts do not have a right under the Constitution to obtain DNA testing to try to prove their innocence after being found guilty, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
In a 5-to-4 decision, the court found against William G. Osborne, a convicted rapist from Alaska. But the decision does not necessarily mean that many innocent prisoners will languish in their cells without access to DNA testing, since Alaska is one of only a few states without a law granting convicts at least some access to the new technology.
“DNA testing has an unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty,” the majority conceded, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “The availability of new DNA testing, however, cannot mean that every criminal conviction, or even every conviction involving biological evidence, is suddenly in doubt.”
In addition, the majority reasoned, it is not so much up to the federal courts as it is to the state legislatures to establish rules “to harness DNA’s power to prove innocence without unnecessarily overthrowing the established criminal justice system.”
The majority appeared to have been influenced by the fact that 46 states and the federal government have enacted laws that allow some inmates access to DNA testing, and there is nothing to prevent the remaining states from changing their laws. In addition to Alaska, Alabama, Massachusetts and Oklahoma do not explicitly allow the testing.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a dissent expressing his dismay that the majority had chosen to approve of Alaska’s denial of the evidence sought by the defendant. “The DNA test Osborne seeks is a simple one, its cost modest, and its results uniquely precise,” Justice Stevens said.
Since 1992, 238 people in the United States, some who were sitting on death row, have been exonerated of crimes through DNA testing. In many of those cases, the DNA testing used to clear them was not available at the time of the crime.
But several aspects of the Osborne case did not make the defendant a sympathetic one, so perhaps his case was not the ideal vehicle for those hoping that the nation’s highest court would find a constitutional right to “post-conviction” DNA testing — that is, after the normal appeals have been exhausted.
The victim in the Osborne case was a prostitute who was raped, beaten with an ax handle, shot in the head and left in a snow bank near Anchorage International Airport in 1993. She recalled that a condom was used in the assault against her, and one was found near the scene. An ax handle similar to the one used to club the victim was found in the defendant’s room.
The victim identified Mr. Osborne as one of her assailants, and he was also incriminated by another man who was found guilty in the attack.
Moreover, Mr. Osborne later confessed to the Alaska parole board, which released him after he had served 14 years of a 26-year prison term for kidnapping, assault and sexual assault. Later, the defendant said he confessed not because he was guilty, but in the hope of getting out of prison sooner. After his parole Mr. Osborne was convicted of a home invasion and is awaiting sentence for that crime.
Thursday’s ruling in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, No. 08-6, reversed a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Joining Chief Justice Roberts in the majority were Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
The dissenters, besides Justice Stevens, were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter.
A paradox in the case, at least to a layman, is the fact that Mr. Osborne’s lawyer at the time of the trial declined to pursue the most advanced DNA testing available — for fear, she acknowledged later, that it would prove his guilt.
Even though the latest DNA testing could establish whether the defendant raped the prostitute, attorneys on both sides have sometimes spoken ambiguously, or at least without iron-clad clarity.
When the case was argued on March 2, Kenneth M. Rosenstein, an assistant state attorney general, said that an Alaska law governing post-conviction relief could allow Mr. Osborne access to DNA evidence if he would swear to his innocence.
But would he?
“I assume he certainly would,” said his lawyer, Peter Neufeld.
But Mr. Rosenstein declined to say whether the state would resist the defendant even if he did so swear.
Justice Scalia said he was struck by the absence of a full-throated declaration of innocence from the defendant, and quoted from a sworn statement Mr. Osborne had submitted to the state courts: “I have no doubt whatsoever that retesting of the condom will prove once and for all time...”
Here, Justice Scalia observed, a listener would expect to hear the words “my innocence.” But the defendant did not say that, saying instead “either my guilt or innocence.”
Mr. Neufeld, a co-founder of The Innocence Project, which works to free wrongly convicted prisoners, issued a statement on Thursday calling the ruling “deeply flawed and disappointing,” but predicting that it may not have wide effect.
“Most people who need DNA testing to prove their innocence will not be affected by today’s ruling, but the small number of people who are impacted may suffer greatly,” he Neufeld said. “As a result of this decision, more innocent people will languish in prison and some may die in prison because they were prevented from proving their innocence.”
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also issued a statement expressing disappointment,
“We should make every effort to promote DNA testing in our criminal justice system — whether before or after trial — in order to help ensure that only the guilty are convicted, never the innocent, and that the guilty do not walk free to commit more crimes,” said Mr. Leahy, a former prosecutor.
17 June 2009
New Protest Builds as Iran Expands Its Crackdown
June 18, 2009
By NAZILA FATHI and SHARON OTTERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/world/middleeast/18iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Tens of thousands of protesters massed in central Iran again Wednesday to demonstrate against the disputed presidential election, as the government expanded its crackdown on journalists to try to block their coverage of opposition activities.
The protesters marched silently down a major thoroughfare, some holding photographs of the main opposition candidate in Friday’s vote, Mir Hussein Moussavi. Others lifted their bare hands high in the air, signifying their support for Mr. Moussavi with green ribbons tied around their wrists or holding their fingers in a victory sign.
The scope and description of the demonstration was provided by participants who were reached by telephone, as well as photographs taken by participants and journalists, despite warnings by the authorities against reporting on the event. All accredited journalists in Iran have been ordered to remain in their offices.
It was the fifth day of unrest since election officials declared a landslide victory for the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents American interests in Tehran, to complain of “interventionist” statements by American officials, state-run media reported. America and Iran broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
President Obama said a day earlier that it would be counterproductive for the United States “to be seen as meddling.” But he has also said he was “deeply troubled by the violence” in Iran and that democratic values needed to be observed.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, without being specific about which comments they were reacting to, expressed displeasure, the official IRNA news agency reported. The Canadian chargé d’affaires was also summoned.
Despite the government’s attempts to block communications among the opposition, calls for more mass defiance continued.
In a message on a Web site associated with him, Mr. Moussavi called on his supporters to rally again on Thursday, and to go to their local mosques to mourn protesters killed in the demonstrations, officially numbering seven. His call directly challenged Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had urged Mr. Moussavi to work through the country’s electoral system in contesting the election results.
Iranians using the Internet messaging service Twitter had already spread the word about the silent demonstration Wednesday.
The sense of threat against the opposition was growing. Reuters reported that Mohammadreza Habibi, the senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, had warned demonstrators that they could be executed under Islamic law.
“We warn the few elements controlled by foreigners who try to disrupt domestic security by inciting individuals to destroy and to commit arson that the Islamic penal code for such individuals waging war against God is execution,” Mr. Habibi said, according to the Fars news agency. It was not clear if his warning applied only to Isfahan, where there have been violent clashes, or the country as a whole, Reuters said.
The government’s new restrictions were directed at blocking communications between opposition supporters and any news coverage of their activities.
The Associated Press reported that the powerful Revolutionary Guards threatened to restrict the digital online media that many Iranians use to communicate among themselves and to send news of their protests overseas. In a first statement since last Friday’s vote, the Revolutionary Guards said Wednesday that Iranian Web site operators and bloggers must remove content deemed to “create tension” or face legal action, The A.P. said.
In Paris, Soazig Dollet, a spokeswoman for Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group, said at least 11 reporters had been arrested since the elections and the fate of 10 more was unclear since they may either be in hiding or under arrest.
On its Web site, the organization said Aldolfatah Soltani, a lawyer and human rights activist, had been detained along with “10 or so opposition activists, politicians and civil society figures” in Tehran and three other cities — Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz.
On Tuesday, the government revoked press credentials for foreign journalists and ordered journalists not to report from the streets. On Wednesday, government officials telephoned or sent faxes to reporters in Tehran working for foreign news organizations ordering them not to venture outside to cover events being held without an official permit. That included rallies by supporters of Mr. Moussavi and news conferences or other public events held without the government’s approval, reporters in Tehran said. At least one newspaper has stopped printing.
Government officials told journalists that they were at risk on the streets following an incident on Tuesday when a photographer was stabbed and wounded while covering a rally. Two well-known analysts, Sayeed Leylaz and Mohammad-Reza Jalaipour, were detained Wednesday and were likely to be held for several days, associates and family members said.
Defying the restrictions, new amateur video surfaced outside of Iran on Wednesday, apparently showing a government militia rampaging through a dormitory area of Tehran University late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
Support for the protests came from some unusual quarters. Five Iranian soccer players, including the captain, Ali Karimi, wore green wristbands in an apparent sign of support for Mr. Moussavi at a World Cup Asian qualifying match in South Korea, The A.P. said, quoting state television.
The Fars news agency also reported that the partial recount of votes ordered Tuesday by the Guardian Council, the 12-member body of jurists which supervises elections and holds veto power over legislation in Iran, had begun. A recount of votes in Kermanshah, a Kurdish province, showed that “there has been no irregularity,” the news agency reported.
The recount, intended as a effort to meet the opposition’s concerns, has failed to halt the unrest. On Tuesday, a large protest by thousands of supporters of Mr. Moussavi stretched for miles along a major thoroughfare in Tehran. The marchers, dressed largely in black and green, marched mostly in silence, some carrying signs in English asking, “Where is my vote?”
Despite the media crackdown, extraordinary accounts about the protests in Tehran and other cities have reached the outside world. On Tuesday, many Web sites posted a wrenching video that purported to show the shooting death of a student in Isfahan in a shooting by pro-government militia members. Other videos showed limp and bleeding demonstrators in Tehran after the unprecedented protests of hundreds of thousands on Monday.
Worry over the future of Iran, a country crucially important for its oil, its proximity to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, its nuclear program and its ties to extremist groups, spilled over its borders.
In Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations atomic energy watchdog, said in a BBC interview that he believed Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons technology “to be recognized as a major power in the Middle East.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran and Sharon Otterman from New York. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.
By NAZILA FATHI and SHARON OTTERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/world/middleeast/18iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Tens of thousands of protesters massed in central Iran again Wednesday to demonstrate against the disputed presidential election, as the government expanded its crackdown on journalists to try to block their coverage of opposition activities.
The protesters marched silently down a major thoroughfare, some holding photographs of the main opposition candidate in Friday’s vote, Mir Hussein Moussavi. Others lifted their bare hands high in the air, signifying their support for Mr. Moussavi with green ribbons tied around their wrists or holding their fingers in a victory sign.
The scope and description of the demonstration was provided by participants who were reached by telephone, as well as photographs taken by participants and journalists, despite warnings by the authorities against reporting on the event. All accredited journalists in Iran have been ordered to remain in their offices.
It was the fifth day of unrest since election officials declared a landslide victory for the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents American interests in Tehran, to complain of “interventionist” statements by American officials, state-run media reported. America and Iran broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
President Obama said a day earlier that it would be counterproductive for the United States “to be seen as meddling.” But he has also said he was “deeply troubled by the violence” in Iran and that democratic values needed to be observed.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, without being specific about which comments they were reacting to, expressed displeasure, the official IRNA news agency reported. The Canadian chargé d’affaires was also summoned.
Despite the government’s attempts to block communications among the opposition, calls for more mass defiance continued.
In a message on a Web site associated with him, Mr. Moussavi called on his supporters to rally again on Thursday, and to go to their local mosques to mourn protesters killed in the demonstrations, officially numbering seven. His call directly challenged Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had urged Mr. Moussavi to work through the country’s electoral system in contesting the election results.
Iranians using the Internet messaging service Twitter had already spread the word about the silent demonstration Wednesday.
The sense of threat against the opposition was growing. Reuters reported that Mohammadreza Habibi, the senior prosecutor in the central province of Isfahan, had warned demonstrators that they could be executed under Islamic law.
“We warn the few elements controlled by foreigners who try to disrupt domestic security by inciting individuals to destroy and to commit arson that the Islamic penal code for such individuals waging war against God is execution,” Mr. Habibi said, according to the Fars news agency. It was not clear if his warning applied only to Isfahan, where there have been violent clashes, or the country as a whole, Reuters said.
The government’s new restrictions were directed at blocking communications between opposition supporters and any news coverage of their activities.
The Associated Press reported that the powerful Revolutionary Guards threatened to restrict the digital online media that many Iranians use to communicate among themselves and to send news of their protests overseas. In a first statement since last Friday’s vote, the Revolutionary Guards said Wednesday that Iranian Web site operators and bloggers must remove content deemed to “create tension” or face legal action, The A.P. said.
In Paris, Soazig Dollet, a spokeswoman for Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group, said at least 11 reporters had been arrested since the elections and the fate of 10 more was unclear since they may either be in hiding or under arrest.
On its Web site, the organization said Aldolfatah Soltani, a lawyer and human rights activist, had been detained along with “10 or so opposition activists, politicians and civil society figures” in Tehran and three other cities — Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz.
On Tuesday, the government revoked press credentials for foreign journalists and ordered journalists not to report from the streets. On Wednesday, government officials telephoned or sent faxes to reporters in Tehran working for foreign news organizations ordering them not to venture outside to cover events being held without an official permit. That included rallies by supporters of Mr. Moussavi and news conferences or other public events held without the government’s approval, reporters in Tehran said. At least one newspaper has stopped printing.
Government officials told journalists that they were at risk on the streets following an incident on Tuesday when a photographer was stabbed and wounded while covering a rally. Two well-known analysts, Sayeed Leylaz and Mohammad-Reza Jalaipour, were detained Wednesday and were likely to be held for several days, associates and family members said.
Defying the restrictions, new amateur video surfaced outside of Iran on Wednesday, apparently showing a government militia rampaging through a dormitory area of Tehran University late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
Support for the protests came from some unusual quarters. Five Iranian soccer players, including the captain, Ali Karimi, wore green wristbands in an apparent sign of support for Mr. Moussavi at a World Cup Asian qualifying match in South Korea, The A.P. said, quoting state television.
The Fars news agency also reported that the partial recount of votes ordered Tuesday by the Guardian Council, the 12-member body of jurists which supervises elections and holds veto power over legislation in Iran, had begun. A recount of votes in Kermanshah, a Kurdish province, showed that “there has been no irregularity,” the news agency reported.
The recount, intended as a effort to meet the opposition’s concerns, has failed to halt the unrest. On Tuesday, a large protest by thousands of supporters of Mr. Moussavi stretched for miles along a major thoroughfare in Tehran. The marchers, dressed largely in black and green, marched mostly in silence, some carrying signs in English asking, “Where is my vote?”
Despite the media crackdown, extraordinary accounts about the protests in Tehran and other cities have reached the outside world. On Tuesday, many Web sites posted a wrenching video that purported to show the shooting death of a student in Isfahan in a shooting by pro-government militia members. Other videos showed limp and bleeding demonstrators in Tehran after the unprecedented protests of hundreds of thousands on Monday.
Worry over the future of Iran, a country crucially important for its oil, its proximity to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, its nuclear program and its ties to extremist groups, spilled over its borders.
In Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations atomic energy watchdog, said in a BBC interview that he believed Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons technology “to be recognized as a major power in the Middle East.”
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran and Sharon Otterman from New York. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.
15 June 2009
Netanyahu Backs Palestinian State, With Caveats
June 15, 2009
By ISABEL KERSHNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html?hp
JERUSALEM — The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday endorsed for the first time the principle of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but on condition that the state was demilitarized and that the Palestinians recognized Israel as the state of the Jewish people.
In a much-anticipated speech meant in part as an answer to President Obama’s address in Cairo on June 4, Mr. Netanyahu reversed his longstanding opposition to Palestinian statehood, a move seen as a concession to American pressure.
But he firmly rejected American demands for a complete freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the subject of a rare public dispute between Israel and its most important ally on an issue seen as critical to peace negotiations.
And even his assent on Palestinian statehood, given the caveats, was immediately rejected as a nonstarter by Palestinians.
In a half-hour speech broadcast live in Israel, Mr. Netanyahu, the leader of the conservative Likud Party, laid out what he called his “vision of peace”: “In this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other.”
But Mr. Netanyahu insisted on “ironclad” guarantees from the United States and the international community for Palestinian demilitarization and recognition of Israel’s Jewish character.
Given those conditions, Mr. Netanyahu said, “We will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state.” He also said that no new settlements would be created and no more land would be expropriated for expansion, but that “normal life” must be allowed to continue in the settlements, a term he has used to mean that limited building should be allowed to continue within existing settlements to accommodate “natural growth.”
While this position did not diverge from Mr. Netanyahu’s previous statements, he delivered it on Sunday in the context of a speech he had billed as a major foreign policy address, one he had personally urged Mr. Obama to watch. It came 10 days after Mr. Obama bluntly rejected “the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements” in his address to the Muslim world in Cairo.
The White House reaction was positive, if limited, focusing on what it called “the important step forward” of Mr. Netanyahu’s support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a statement, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, reiterated the president’s vow for a two-state solution that “can and must ensure both Israel’s security and the fulfillment of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for a viable state,” and he said that Mr. Obama “welcomes Prime Minister Netanyahu’s endorsement of that goal.”
Indeed, in moving closer to the American and international consensus for a two-state solution, Mr. Netanyahu risked alienating right-wing ideologues within his party and his governing coalition. Ron Dermer, the prime minister’s director of communications and policy planning, said that in accepting the notion of a Palestinian state, Mr. Netanyahu had “crossed a personal Rubicon.”
Citing the biblical vision of Isaiah of swords beaten into plowshares, Mr. Netanyahu said of the Palestinians, “We do not want to rule over them, to govern their lives, or to impose our flag or our culture on them.”
But beyond the idea of a state, he seemed to offer little room for compromise or negotiation.
He referred repeatedly to the West Bank, the territory presumed to comprise the bulk of a future Palestinian state, by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria, declaring it “the land of our forefathers.”
Mr. Netanyahu made no mention of existing frameworks for negotiations, like the American-backed 2003 peace plan known as the road map.
He did not address the geographical area a Palestinian state might cover, and he said that the Palestinian refugee problem must be resolved outside Israel’s borders, negating the Palestinian demand for a right of return for refugees of the 1948 war and for their millions of descendants.
He insisted that Jerusalem remain united as the Israeli capital. The Palestinians demand the eastern part of the city as a future capital.
“Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about negotiations, but left us with nothing to negotiate as he systematically took nearly every permanent status issue off the table,” Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, said in a statement. “Nor did he accept a Palestinian state. Instead, he announced a series of conditions and qualifications that render a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian state impossible.”
Palestinian negotiators have long refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, contending that it would prejudge the refugees’ demand for a right of return and would be detrimental to the status of Israel’s Arab minority.
Mr. Dermer, the communications director for Mr. Netanyahu, said that Palestinians’ recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was “not a precondition” for negotiations. But, he said, “there will not be an agreement without that recognition.”
Mr. Netanyahu delivered his speech to an invited audience at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv. The university is an academic bastion of Israel’s national-religious camp.
Timed to coincide with the Israeli evening television news, the speech was rich in Zionist rhetoric and seemed aimed as much at Israelis as at the Obama administration. Experts said it was unlikely to cause a political earthquake here, since it largely expressed the consensus in Israel.
“It was a balanced speech that the coalition can live with,” said Prof. Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center.
Contrary to the expectations of many here, Mr. Netanyahu did not make the threat of a nuclear Iran a focal point, though he described it as one of the greatest challenges facing Israel, along with the global economic crisis and forging of peace.
He called on Arab leaders to meet with him to discuss peace, and for Arab countries and entrepreneurs to help in lifting the Palestinian economy and to engage in regional projects with Israel.
Regarding Gaza, where the militant Islamic movement Hamas holds sway, Mr. Netanyahu said it is up to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority to establish the rule of law there and “overcome” the group.
Mr. Netanyahu announced a week ago that he would deliver a major policy speech, leading to feverish speculation up to the last minute of what it would contain. The Israeli leader spent much of the last week in consultation with political partners and potential rivals and met twice with the country’s experienced and popular president, Shimon Peres.
Mr. Peres said in a statement that the speech was “true and courageous” and that it constituted an opening toward “direct negotiations for both a regional peace and a bilateral peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
By ISABEL KERSHNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html?hp
JERUSALEM — The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday endorsed for the first time the principle of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but on condition that the state was demilitarized and that the Palestinians recognized Israel as the state of the Jewish people.
In a much-anticipated speech meant in part as an answer to President Obama’s address in Cairo on June 4, Mr. Netanyahu reversed his longstanding opposition to Palestinian statehood, a move seen as a concession to American pressure.
But he firmly rejected American demands for a complete freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the subject of a rare public dispute between Israel and its most important ally on an issue seen as critical to peace negotiations.
And even his assent on Palestinian statehood, given the caveats, was immediately rejected as a nonstarter by Palestinians.
In a half-hour speech broadcast live in Israel, Mr. Netanyahu, the leader of the conservative Likud Party, laid out what he called his “vision of peace”: “In this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other.”
But Mr. Netanyahu insisted on “ironclad” guarantees from the United States and the international community for Palestinian demilitarization and recognition of Israel’s Jewish character.
Given those conditions, Mr. Netanyahu said, “We will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state.” He also said that no new settlements would be created and no more land would be expropriated for expansion, but that “normal life” must be allowed to continue in the settlements, a term he has used to mean that limited building should be allowed to continue within existing settlements to accommodate “natural growth.”
While this position did not diverge from Mr. Netanyahu’s previous statements, he delivered it on Sunday in the context of a speech he had billed as a major foreign policy address, one he had personally urged Mr. Obama to watch. It came 10 days after Mr. Obama bluntly rejected “the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements” in his address to the Muslim world in Cairo.
The White House reaction was positive, if limited, focusing on what it called “the important step forward” of Mr. Netanyahu’s support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a statement, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, reiterated the president’s vow for a two-state solution that “can and must ensure both Israel’s security and the fulfillment of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for a viable state,” and he said that Mr. Obama “welcomes Prime Minister Netanyahu’s endorsement of that goal.”
Indeed, in moving closer to the American and international consensus for a two-state solution, Mr. Netanyahu risked alienating right-wing ideologues within his party and his governing coalition. Ron Dermer, the prime minister’s director of communications and policy planning, said that in accepting the notion of a Palestinian state, Mr. Netanyahu had “crossed a personal Rubicon.”
Citing the biblical vision of Isaiah of swords beaten into plowshares, Mr. Netanyahu said of the Palestinians, “We do not want to rule over them, to govern their lives, or to impose our flag or our culture on them.”
But beyond the idea of a state, he seemed to offer little room for compromise or negotiation.
He referred repeatedly to the West Bank, the territory presumed to comprise the bulk of a future Palestinian state, by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria, declaring it “the land of our forefathers.”
Mr. Netanyahu made no mention of existing frameworks for negotiations, like the American-backed 2003 peace plan known as the road map.
He did not address the geographical area a Palestinian state might cover, and he said that the Palestinian refugee problem must be resolved outside Israel’s borders, negating the Palestinian demand for a right of return for refugees of the 1948 war and for their millions of descendants.
He insisted that Jerusalem remain united as the Israeli capital. The Palestinians demand the eastern part of the city as a future capital.
“Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about negotiations, but left us with nothing to negotiate as he systematically took nearly every permanent status issue off the table,” Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, said in a statement. “Nor did he accept a Palestinian state. Instead, he announced a series of conditions and qualifications that render a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian state impossible.”
Palestinian negotiators have long refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, contending that it would prejudge the refugees’ demand for a right of return and would be detrimental to the status of Israel’s Arab minority.
Mr. Dermer, the communications director for Mr. Netanyahu, said that Palestinians’ recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was “not a precondition” for negotiations. But, he said, “there will not be an agreement without that recognition.”
Mr. Netanyahu delivered his speech to an invited audience at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv. The university is an academic bastion of Israel’s national-religious camp.
Timed to coincide with the Israeli evening television news, the speech was rich in Zionist rhetoric and seemed aimed as much at Israelis as at the Obama administration. Experts said it was unlikely to cause a political earthquake here, since it largely expressed the consensus in Israel.
“It was a balanced speech that the coalition can live with,” said Prof. Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center.
Contrary to the expectations of many here, Mr. Netanyahu did not make the threat of a nuclear Iran a focal point, though he described it as one of the greatest challenges facing Israel, along with the global economic crisis and forging of peace.
He called on Arab leaders to meet with him to discuss peace, and for Arab countries and entrepreneurs to help in lifting the Palestinian economy and to engage in regional projects with Israel.
Regarding Gaza, where the militant Islamic movement Hamas holds sway, Mr. Netanyahu said it is up to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority to establish the rule of law there and “overcome” the group.
Mr. Netanyahu announced a week ago that he would deliver a major policy speech, leading to feverish speculation up to the last minute of what it would contain. The Israeli leader spent much of the last week in consultation with political partners and potential rivals and met twice with the country’s experienced and popular president, Shimon Peres.
Mr. Peres said in a statement that the speech was “true and courageous” and that it constituted an opening toward “direct negotiations for both a regional peace and a bilateral peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
Top Cleric Calls for Inquiry as Protesters Defy Ban in Iran
June 16, 2009
By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/world/middleeast/16iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central Tehran on Monday to protest Iran’s disputed presidential election in an extraordinary show of defiance that appeared to be the largest anti-government demonstration in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
The march began hours after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for a inquiry into opposition claims that the election was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The ayatollah’s call — announced every 15 minutes on Iranian state radio throughout the day — was the first sign that Iran’s top leadership might be rethinking its position on the election. Mr. Khamenei announced Saturday that the election results showing a landslide victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad were fair, but on Sunday he met with Mir Hussein Moussavi, the former prime minister and moderate who was the main opposition candidate, to listen to his concerns.
As evening fell, Iranian state television reported that shots had been fired at protesters, and Reuters, quoting an Iranian photographer, reported that the gunfire had apparently come from a compound used by the pro-government Basij militia. At least one person was reported to have been killed.
It was impossible to independently confirm these reports, which came after a day during which government security forces stood by at the edges of the avenues, allowing the demonstrators to stream past.
The silent march was a deliberate and striking contrast with the chaos of the past few days, when riot police sprayed tear gas and wielded clubs to disperse scattered bands of angry and frightened young people. In Isfahan, south of the capital, more violence broke out on Monday, with police attacking a crowd of several thousand opposition protestors with sticks and tear gas, and rioters setting fires in parts of the city.
The broad river of people in Tehran — young and old, dressed in traditional Islamic gowns and the latest Western fashions — marched slowly from Revolution Square to Freedom Square for more than three hours, many of them wearing the signature bright green ribbons of Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, and holding up their hands in victory signs. When the occasional shout or chant went up, the crowd quickly hushed them, and some held up signs bearing the word “silence.”
“These people are not seeking a revolution,” said Ali Reza, a young actor in a brown T-shirt who stood for a moment watching on the rally’s sidelines. “We don’t want this regime to fall. We want our votes to be counted, because we want reforms, we want kindness, we want friendship with the world.”
Mr. Moussavi, who had called for the rally Sunday but never received official permission for it, joined the crowd, as did Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former president. But the crowd was so vast, and communications had been so sporadic — the authorities have cut off phone and text-messaging services repeatedly in recent days — that many marchers seemed unaware they were there.
“We don’t really have a leader,” said Mahdiye, a 20-year-old student. “Moussavi wants to do something, but they won’t let him. It is dangerous for him, and we don’t want to lose him. We don’t know how far this will go.”
The protestors said they would continue, with another major rally planned for Tuesday. But it was too soon to tell whether Mr. Khamenei’s decision to launch a probe, or the government’s decision to let the silent rally proceed, would change the election results. Many in the crowd said they believed the government was simply buying time, and hoping the protests would dissipate, as smaller protest movements have in 1999 and 2003.
“Anything is possible,” said Hamid, a 50-year-old financial adviser who, like many protesters, declined to give his last name because he feared repercussions. “If the people insist on this movement, if it continues here and in other parts of Iran, the pressure will build — and maybe Ahmedinejad will be forced to resign.”
In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, said the United States is “deeply troubled” by the unrest in Iran and is concerned about allegations of ballot fraud. But he stopped short of condemning the Iran security forces for cracking down on demonstrators and said Washington does not know whether the allegations of fraud are, in fact, true.
In Moscow, meanwhile, an official at the Iranian Embassy said that Mr. Ahmadinejad had delayed a visit to Russia that was to have started Monday. The meeting, in Yekaterinburg, is of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that includes Russia, China and four Central Asian countries. He now plans to travel on Tuesday, the official said.
As concern about the vote spread among Western governments, the European Union’s 27 member states planned to issue a joint call on Iran to clarify the election outcome, Reuters reported. The French government summoned the Iranian ambassador to register concern about the fairness of the vote, and Germany planned to follow suit.
The Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, told reporters in Luxembourg, “There is a need to clarify the situation and to express our concern that a sector of the population are having difficulties in expressing its opinion.” In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called for a “transparent examination” of reports of irregularities.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he had been “closely following the situation” and welcomed the announcement that there would be some manner of investigation. “The genuine will of the Iranian people should be fully respected,” he said.
Earlier, Reuters said stick-wielding supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad clashed with marching backers of Mr. Moussavi. Other reports said some of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s followers paraded outside the British and French Embassies in Tehran following remarks by political leaders in London and Paris casting doubt on the Iranian leadership’s conduct.
There were reports of considerable violence overnight on Sunday, as opposition Web sites reported that security forces raided a dormitory at Tehran University and 15 people were injured. Between 150 and 200 students were arrested, by these accounts, but there was no immediate confirmation of the incident from the authorities. There were also reports of official action against students in the cities of Esfahan, Shiraz and Tabriz.
Iran’s Interior Ministry announced on Saturday that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won about 63 percent of the vote, after a hard-fought election campaign and the rise of a broad reform-oriented opposition that clearly had rattled Iran’s ruling elite. Opposition leaders have catalogued a list of what they call election violations and irregularities in the vote, which most observers had expected to go to a second-round runoff.
Opposition members from all the major factions were arrested late Saturday and Sunday and included the brother of a former president, Mohammad Khatami, opposition Web sites reported. Some were released after several hours.
In a press conference on Sunday, Mr. Ahmadinejad had dismissed the protestors as soccer hooligans who had lost a match, in a comment that appears to have stoked their determination.
“People feel really insulted, and nothing is worse than that,” said Azi, a 48-year-old woman in an elegant yellow headscarf who participated in the massive Monday rally. “We won’t let the regime buy time, we will hold another march tomorrow.”
At nightfall, as people moved off the streets amid reports of violence, large numbers of Tehranis took to their roofs for a second night, chanting “God is great!” and “Death to the dictator!” in neighborhoods across the city.
Reporting was contributed by Clifford J. Levy from Moscow, Alan Cowell from Paris, Sharon Otterman from New York, Victor Homola from Berlin, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/world/middleeast/16iran.html?_r=1&hp
TEHRAN — Hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central Tehran on Monday to protest Iran’s disputed presidential election in an extraordinary show of defiance that appeared to be the largest anti-government demonstration in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
The march began hours after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for a inquiry into opposition claims that the election was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The ayatollah’s call — announced every 15 minutes on Iranian state radio throughout the day — was the first sign that Iran’s top leadership might be rethinking its position on the election. Mr. Khamenei announced Saturday that the election results showing a landslide victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad were fair, but on Sunday he met with Mir Hussein Moussavi, the former prime minister and moderate who was the main opposition candidate, to listen to his concerns.
As evening fell, Iranian state television reported that shots had been fired at protesters, and Reuters, quoting an Iranian photographer, reported that the gunfire had apparently come from a compound used by the pro-government Basij militia. At least one person was reported to have been killed.
It was impossible to independently confirm these reports, which came after a day during which government security forces stood by at the edges of the avenues, allowing the demonstrators to stream past.
The silent march was a deliberate and striking contrast with the chaos of the past few days, when riot police sprayed tear gas and wielded clubs to disperse scattered bands of angry and frightened young people. In Isfahan, south of the capital, more violence broke out on Monday, with police attacking a crowd of several thousand opposition protestors with sticks and tear gas, and rioters setting fires in parts of the city.
The broad river of people in Tehran — young and old, dressed in traditional Islamic gowns and the latest Western fashions — marched slowly from Revolution Square to Freedom Square for more than three hours, many of them wearing the signature bright green ribbons of Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, and holding up their hands in victory signs. When the occasional shout or chant went up, the crowd quickly hushed them, and some held up signs bearing the word “silence.”
“These people are not seeking a revolution,” said Ali Reza, a young actor in a brown T-shirt who stood for a moment watching on the rally’s sidelines. “We don’t want this regime to fall. We want our votes to be counted, because we want reforms, we want kindness, we want friendship with the world.”
Mr. Moussavi, who had called for the rally Sunday but never received official permission for it, joined the crowd, as did Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former president. But the crowd was so vast, and communications had been so sporadic — the authorities have cut off phone and text-messaging services repeatedly in recent days — that many marchers seemed unaware they were there.
“We don’t really have a leader,” said Mahdiye, a 20-year-old student. “Moussavi wants to do something, but they won’t let him. It is dangerous for him, and we don’t want to lose him. We don’t know how far this will go.”
The protestors said they would continue, with another major rally planned for Tuesday. But it was too soon to tell whether Mr. Khamenei’s decision to launch a probe, or the government’s decision to let the silent rally proceed, would change the election results. Many in the crowd said they believed the government was simply buying time, and hoping the protests would dissipate, as smaller protest movements have in 1999 and 2003.
“Anything is possible,” said Hamid, a 50-year-old financial adviser who, like many protesters, declined to give his last name because he feared repercussions. “If the people insist on this movement, if it continues here and in other parts of Iran, the pressure will build — and maybe Ahmedinejad will be forced to resign.”
In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, said the United States is “deeply troubled” by the unrest in Iran and is concerned about allegations of ballot fraud. But he stopped short of condemning the Iran security forces for cracking down on demonstrators and said Washington does not know whether the allegations of fraud are, in fact, true.
In Moscow, meanwhile, an official at the Iranian Embassy said that Mr. Ahmadinejad had delayed a visit to Russia that was to have started Monday. The meeting, in Yekaterinburg, is of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that includes Russia, China and four Central Asian countries. He now plans to travel on Tuesday, the official said.
As concern about the vote spread among Western governments, the European Union’s 27 member states planned to issue a joint call on Iran to clarify the election outcome, Reuters reported. The French government summoned the Iranian ambassador to register concern about the fairness of the vote, and Germany planned to follow suit.
The Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, told reporters in Luxembourg, “There is a need to clarify the situation and to express our concern that a sector of the population are having difficulties in expressing its opinion.” In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called for a “transparent examination” of reports of irregularities.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he had been “closely following the situation” and welcomed the announcement that there would be some manner of investigation. “The genuine will of the Iranian people should be fully respected,” he said.
Earlier, Reuters said stick-wielding supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad clashed with marching backers of Mr. Moussavi. Other reports said some of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s followers paraded outside the British and French Embassies in Tehran following remarks by political leaders in London and Paris casting doubt on the Iranian leadership’s conduct.
There were reports of considerable violence overnight on Sunday, as opposition Web sites reported that security forces raided a dormitory at Tehran University and 15 people were injured. Between 150 and 200 students were arrested, by these accounts, but there was no immediate confirmation of the incident from the authorities. There were also reports of official action against students in the cities of Esfahan, Shiraz and Tabriz.
Iran’s Interior Ministry announced on Saturday that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won about 63 percent of the vote, after a hard-fought election campaign and the rise of a broad reform-oriented opposition that clearly had rattled Iran’s ruling elite. Opposition leaders have catalogued a list of what they call election violations and irregularities in the vote, which most observers had expected to go to a second-round runoff.
Opposition members from all the major factions were arrested late Saturday and Sunday and included the brother of a former president, Mohammad Khatami, opposition Web sites reported. Some were released after several hours.
In a press conference on Sunday, Mr. Ahmadinejad had dismissed the protestors as soccer hooligans who had lost a match, in a comment that appears to have stoked their determination.
“People feel really insulted, and nothing is worse than that,” said Azi, a 48-year-old woman in an elegant yellow headscarf who participated in the massive Monday rally. “We won’t let the regime buy time, we will hold another march tomorrow.”
At nightfall, as people moved off the streets amid reports of violence, large numbers of Tehranis took to their roofs for a second night, chanting “God is great!” and “Death to the dictator!” in neighborhoods across the city.
Reporting was contributed by Clifford J. Levy from Moscow, Alan Cowell from Paris, Sharon Otterman from New York, Victor Homola from Berlin, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
12 June 2009
Review: Garbage Dreams
WorldChanging Team
June 11, 2009 9:37 AM
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009977.html
By Carissa Bluestone
In the first few minutes of Garbage Dreams, after being informed that Cairo has no citywide waste-removal system, we get an aerial view of Mokattam, the city’s largest “garbage village.” Any surface not draped with hanging laundry is piled high with the waste collected by 60,000 Zaballeen, Cairo’s informal sanitation workers.
“Recycling village” is more accurate: In ad hoc workshops cloth is ground down to pulp and plastic is shredded into confetti. This raw material is then brokered through middlemen to foreign markets that don't have strict standards on reusing low-grade materials.
The film follows three boys (Adham, 17, Nabil, 18, and Osama, 16), and Laila, a social worker and teacher at the village’s Recycling School. We meet the Zaballeen in the midst of crisis: Cairo’s decision a few years ago to outsource waste management to contractors from Italy and Spain has seriously threatened the Zaballeen’s livelihood. At one point, Nabil estimates that the foreign companies have reduced his haul by 75 percent.
Garbage Dreams has been getting a lot of attention since its March premiere at South by Southwest -- in April, director Mai Iskander accepted the 2009 REEL Current Award at the Nashville Film Festival from none other than Al Gore. Iskander certainly deserves praise for giving a voice to a community that is at once a vital part of a megacity’s ecology and a marginalized target of scorn, but it’s her first feature, and not without its weaknesses. The focus on the boys’ coming-of-age woes, though compelling, means there isn’t a lot of space for data; at times the grousing about the “foreign companies” seems a bit vague and it's difficult to understand just how the whole system works. The government’s unwillingness to incorporate the Zaballeen into their plan is no secret (read about the controversy here, here and here), and the subsequent failures of their short-sighted approach have been similarly well documented, but without the perspective of the decision-makers or of third parties, we're missing an analysis of whether a program that relied solely on retraining the Zaballeen would actually solve Cairo’s growing garbage problem. Lastly, although it’s clear the Zaballeen feel disrespected by the government and by Cairo society, we don’t get the full picture of the institutionalized racism that these mainly Coptic Christian people face. (A point that has much recent significance: In the wake of the swine flu panic, the Egyptian government ordered the culling of all pigs in Cairo — most of which belonged to the Zaballeen and were the key mechanism in disposing of the organic waste collected.)
What Garbage Dreams does really well, however, is showcase the enthusiasm and ingenuity of the Zaballeen, who have counterparts in almost every megacity. The younger generation is resentful of the government’s dismissal of their recycling expertise (the film estimates that the Zaballeen recycle 80 percent of garbage collected, whereas the multinational companies recycle a paltry 20 percent). They are clear-eyed about the need to modernize their techniques in order to remain part of the solution. Mokattam’s Recycling School, a product of UNESCO funding and Proctor & Gamble-sponsored microloans, not only teaches safe recycling practices, but also literacy and the skills necessary to create and grow businesses: how to read maps, use computers, and understand contracts. The school is currently raising funds to secure a permanent space and expand the campus in order to include the education of girls. In one of the film’s best segments, Nabil and Adham travel to Swansea, Wales on a sponsored program to glean lessons from a modern recycling system. The trip yields a revelation — source separation — which Adham explains at a community meeting. It is quickly adopted as a first step towards modernization, and the group goes door to door persuading their clients to presort organic and nonorganic waste.
The film works equally well as an expose on the “squalor” of a garbage village and an unsentimental slice of Global South life, but the larger significance of Garbage Dreams is the missed opportunities inherent in globalizing waste management. Cairo has been underserved by its multinational contractors — the only one that’s had a reasonably smooth run is an Italian company that has tried to incorporate the existing Zaballeen systems. In the meantime, most of the Zaballeen are barely scraping by -- having been unable to regain the licenses and prized routes they used to work; many resort to scavenging, which is technically illegal. (In this way, the film tangentially brings up the question: Who owns our garbage? The Zaballeen, with their decades years of garbage collection traditions, and life among discarded shampoo bottles and shredded plastic bags can certainly assert figurative ownership of Cairo’s waste; however, when the multinationals show up that ownership is perfunctorily transferred.)
If, when creating its waste-removal system, the city had tapped the immense community capital on its outskirts, where would Cairo be right now? How much more efficient would the city be at trash removal, and how much more optimistic would the Zaballeen be regarding their community’s place in the 21st century?
Carissa Bluestone is a freelance editor based in Seattle. She was a contributer to Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century.
June 11, 2009 9:37 AM
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009977.html
By Carissa Bluestone
In the first few minutes of Garbage Dreams, after being informed that Cairo has no citywide waste-removal system, we get an aerial view of Mokattam, the city’s largest “garbage village.” Any surface not draped with hanging laundry is piled high with the waste collected by 60,000 Zaballeen, Cairo’s informal sanitation workers.
“Recycling village” is more accurate: In ad hoc workshops cloth is ground down to pulp and plastic is shredded into confetti. This raw material is then brokered through middlemen to foreign markets that don't have strict standards on reusing low-grade materials.
The film follows three boys (Adham, 17, Nabil, 18, and Osama, 16), and Laila, a social worker and teacher at the village’s Recycling School. We meet the Zaballeen in the midst of crisis: Cairo’s decision a few years ago to outsource waste management to contractors from Italy and Spain has seriously threatened the Zaballeen’s livelihood. At one point, Nabil estimates that the foreign companies have reduced his haul by 75 percent.
Garbage Dreams has been getting a lot of attention since its March premiere at South by Southwest -- in April, director Mai Iskander accepted the 2009 REEL Current Award at the Nashville Film Festival from none other than Al Gore. Iskander certainly deserves praise for giving a voice to a community that is at once a vital part of a megacity’s ecology and a marginalized target of scorn, but it’s her first feature, and not without its weaknesses. The focus on the boys’ coming-of-age woes, though compelling, means there isn’t a lot of space for data; at times the grousing about the “foreign companies” seems a bit vague and it's difficult to understand just how the whole system works. The government’s unwillingness to incorporate the Zaballeen into their plan is no secret (read about the controversy here, here and here), and the subsequent failures of their short-sighted approach have been similarly well documented, but without the perspective of the decision-makers or of third parties, we're missing an analysis of whether a program that relied solely on retraining the Zaballeen would actually solve Cairo’s growing garbage problem. Lastly, although it’s clear the Zaballeen feel disrespected by the government and by Cairo society, we don’t get the full picture of the institutionalized racism that these mainly Coptic Christian people face. (A point that has much recent significance: In the wake of the swine flu panic, the Egyptian government ordered the culling of all pigs in Cairo — most of which belonged to the Zaballeen and were the key mechanism in disposing of the organic waste collected.)
What Garbage Dreams does really well, however, is showcase the enthusiasm and ingenuity of the Zaballeen, who have counterparts in almost every megacity. The younger generation is resentful of the government’s dismissal of their recycling expertise (the film estimates that the Zaballeen recycle 80 percent of garbage collected, whereas the multinational companies recycle a paltry 20 percent). They are clear-eyed about the need to modernize their techniques in order to remain part of the solution. Mokattam’s Recycling School, a product of UNESCO funding and Proctor & Gamble-sponsored microloans, not only teaches safe recycling practices, but also literacy and the skills necessary to create and grow businesses: how to read maps, use computers, and understand contracts. The school is currently raising funds to secure a permanent space and expand the campus in order to include the education of girls. In one of the film’s best segments, Nabil and Adham travel to Swansea, Wales on a sponsored program to glean lessons from a modern recycling system. The trip yields a revelation — source separation — which Adham explains at a community meeting. It is quickly adopted as a first step towards modernization, and the group goes door to door persuading their clients to presort organic and nonorganic waste.
The film works equally well as an expose on the “squalor” of a garbage village and an unsentimental slice of Global South life, but the larger significance of Garbage Dreams is the missed opportunities inherent in globalizing waste management. Cairo has been underserved by its multinational contractors — the only one that’s had a reasonably smooth run is an Italian company that has tried to incorporate the existing Zaballeen systems. In the meantime, most of the Zaballeen are barely scraping by -- having been unable to regain the licenses and prized routes they used to work; many resort to scavenging, which is technically illegal. (In this way, the film tangentially brings up the question: Who owns our garbage? The Zaballeen, with their decades years of garbage collection traditions, and life among discarded shampoo bottles and shredded plastic bags can certainly assert figurative ownership of Cairo’s waste; however, when the multinationals show up that ownership is perfunctorily transferred.)
If, when creating its waste-removal system, the city had tapped the immense community capital on its outskirts, where would Cairo be right now? How much more efficient would the city be at trash removal, and how much more optimistic would the Zaballeen be regarding their community’s place in the 21st century?
Carissa Bluestone is a freelance editor based in Seattle. She was a contributer to Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century.
11 June 2009
Hate Crimes and Extremist Politics
Personally, I can not even believe that this is a real conversation, and I've seen it on CNN as well. Would restricting people's civil rights really make them act any different? No, it would only make them act out more in defense of what they are losing. Extreme actions are the reasons there are more terrorist attacks in other countries, because non-violent options like communicating have been restricted. Sure there are nutbags, but there always will be and there isn't any way to stop that! Do I personally like hate speech? No, I believe in allowing people to live their lives as best befits their belief system, but the idea of the government defining what speech is lawful and what isn't terrifies me! If we can't talk than we are no better than extremists who have given up speaking for violent actions.
June 11, 2009, 12:29 pm
BY: The Editors
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/hate-crimes-and-extremist-politics/
The killing of George Tiller, the abortion doctor in Wichita, Kan., and the attack on the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington yesterday have raised questions yet again about the role that extremist propaganda sites play in inciting violence among some militant believers. In both cases, the suspect arrested was well-known among fringe “communities” on the Web.
Most legal scholars and many experts on extremist violence in the U.S. oppose reining in of such sites, or restrictions on extremist speech generally. Should the United States consider tighter restrictions on hate speech? In the meantime, how should law enforcement agencies respond?
Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld, criminal justice professor
Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates
Eric Hickey, criminology professor
Edward J. Eberle, comparative law professor
Eugene O’Donnell, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don’t Overreact
Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld is a professor and chairman of the criminal justice department at California State University, Stanislaus. She is the author of “Hate Crimes: Causes, Controls and Controversies.”
Although violent extremism is nothing new, either in the United States or abroad, it continues to present several daunting challenges to those who wish to prevent it.
Some of those challenges are legal. It is often difficult to balance the protection of civil liberties, especially freedom of expression, with the desire to avoid bloodshed. Those charged with enforcing the laws have sometimes overstepped the bounds of their authority—and have infringed upon First Amendment rights—when they have attempted to investigate or silence extremists.
Some challenges are policy related. How many resources ought to be allocated to fighting the terrible but uncommon instances of hate-fueled violence? Furthermore, a very large majority of those who attack others because of their victims’ race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or other characteristics are not hard-core bigots who join supremacist groups or expound their views in websites or manifestos. Even if we could somehow focus effectively on people like James Von Brunn or Scott Roeder, most bias crimes would continue unchecked.
In recent years, extremist propaganda has been cloaked so as to appear more mainstream and less radical.
And some challenges are empirical. We still know only a little bit about what factors influence a small number of people to act on their hatreds. There is, unfortunately, no shortage of extremist propaganda. In recent years, much of that propaganda has been cloaked so as to appear more mainstream and less radical. Some white supremacist groups claim that they don’t hate anybody, they simply love white people. Extremist political parties that recently won seats in the European Parliament did so on anti-immigration and economic platforms not very different from those of the more conventional parties. It is unclear to what extent extremist rhetoric, whether veiled or not, inspires violent behavior.
One thing that ought to be remembered is that attacks like the murder of George Tiller and the shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum are rare. We should take care not to rush blindly into creating “solutions” that are ill-suited to the real problems, that result in poor distributions of scarce resources, or that violate basic freedoms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Link Between Theory and Violent Action
Chip Berlet is a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a group based in Somerville, Mass., that studies extremist and authoritarian movements. He is co–author, with Matthew N. Lyons, of “Right-Wing Populism in America.”
The alleged shooter at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum spread historical white supremacist views and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories through a Web site that included the hoax document “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and a link to a Holocaust denial Web site.
The attack demonstrates why it is a mistake to ignore bigoted conspiracy theories. Law enforcement needs to enforce laws against criminal behavior. Vicious bigoted speech, however, is often protected by the First Amendment. We do not need new laws or to encourage government agencies to further erode our civil liberties. We need to stand up as moral people and speak out against the spread of bigoted conspiracy theories. That’s not a police problem, that’s our problem as people responsible for defending a free society.
Demagogues and conspiracy theorists use the same four “tools of fear.” These are 1) dualism; 2) scapegoating; 3) demonization; and 4) apocalyptic aggression.
It is the combination of demagogic demonization and widespread scapegoating that is so dangerous.
The basic dynamics remain the same no matter the ideological leanings of the demonizers or the identity of their targets. It is the combination of demagogic demonization and widespread scapegoating that is so dangerous. In such circumstances, angry allegations can quickly turn into apocalyptic aggression and violence targeting scapegoated groups like Jews or immigrants. Meanwhile, our ability to resolve disputes through civic debate and compromise is hobbled.
Apocalyptic aggression is fueled by right-wing pundits who demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation. Some angry people in their audience already believe conspiracy theories in which the same scapegoats are portrayed as subversive, destructive or evil. Add in aggressive apocalyptic ideas that suggest time is running out and quick action mandatory, and you have a perfect storm of mobilized resentment threatening to rain bigotry and violence across the United States.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Infiltrate and Monitor Hate Groups
Eric Hickey is a professor in the Department of Criminology, California State University, Fresno.
Unlike the more common mass murderers in American society who usually are individually motivated by mental illness to kill, extremists have their own niche of chaos. To date, acts of hate murder (akin to random acts of hate violence where killing does not occur) are sporadically committed by only a handful of offenders yet they represent groups of individuals who share common hatred toward other groups based upon religious beliefs, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
What can be done to identify extremists who may be preparing to carry out acts of violence? We need to do a better job of infiltrating and monitoring their groups. Police often are aware of such individuals because they are vocal and do not hide their hate, and they often use the Internet or even hold public rallies to espouse their views. It’s during times of economic stress and social and political change that hate groups tend to attract those who feel marginalized or threatened.
In our democratic society we pride ourselves on being allowed the freedom to gather and espouse whatever we wish so long as we do not incite others to commit acts of violence. But we also, as a society, have the right to monitor such groups to ensure public safety.
The problem in doing that is we create a less democratic society. Or, we can provide more security for potential targets and institute gun control measures like those in Canada and England. Neither of these options, however, will do much to stop violent acts, even though they give us a greater sense of security.
Another approach is to create more public awareness of these groups and solicit public assistance in identifying anyone who may be at risk for acting out. But these “big brother” campaigns serve mostly to heighten public fears but ultimately do little to stop hate crimes. Watchfulness and adherence to rule of law is really the only way to keep hate-based crimes to a minimum. One only has to look around the world to see far worse situations.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What Speech Laws Say
Edward J. Eberle is a professor at the Roger Williams University School of Law and author of “Dignity and Liberty: Constitutional Visions in Germany and the United States.”
The United States is perhaps the only country in the world that allows for protection of hate speech. Much of this has to do with the idea that a free exchange of ideas is important and that allowing speech — even hate-filled speech — can be a safety valve that helps prevent outbreaks of violence.
Under this view, speech needs to be regulated only when it will present a clear and present danger, as when it is a direct incitement to violence. The only exception to this is obscenity, which is unprotected speech even when there is no concrete demonstration of harm.
More restrictive speech laws in other nations reflect different values placed on dignity and personal reputation.
By contrast, most other countries of the world consider hate speech to be an unprotected category of speech. This is the case in all the European countries, like Germany, France, Britain, etc., and also Canada.
That view reflects the different values those legal systems place on factors like the norm of human dignity and personal reputation as well as the experience of the Holocaust. In the U.S., we follow an individualist model of a right to self-determination and expression. For the Europeans and others, there is also a right to speak your mind, but there are some bounds based on respect of others.
One of the leading cases in Germany is the “Holocaust Denial Case” (1990) where the Constitutional Court upheld the denial of a group’s right to protest that Germans had never persecuted Jews or committed the Holocaust. The court stated that this was hate speech, a denigration of a group based on ethnicity and race. In a different case, “Denial of Responsibility for World War II” (1994), the court found that a book observing that Germany was not responsible for World War II was protected speech, as this was a work of research and history and was not defamatory. In a major Canadian case, the constitutional court there ruled that a high school teacher could be censured and fired for using hate speech in the classroom.
Yet most European countries find obscenity to be protected speech unless it demeans women, harms youth or incites violence. As with most things, there are underlying social norms that guide the complexion of the law.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Mental Health Factor
Eugene O’Donnell is a lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He was a former officer in the New York Police Department, a prosecutor with the district attorney offices in Brooklyn and Queens, and a police academy instructor.
It is impossible to ignore the mental health dimension in the Holocaust Museum attack and an earlier assault at the Federal Reserve headquarters by James von Brunn. There may also be serious mental health issues with Scott Roeder, the killer of Dr. Tiller.
Extended post-release mental health supervision should be explored — in some cases, for the whole life of the ex-convict.
There is a gaping hole in our mental health infrastructure which will not be easy to fill, but needs urgent examination and action. Far too many potentially dangerous people are left to fend for themselves. Even when there are concerned family members or friends in their lives, these guardians are often worn out from trying to help, or do not know where to get dependable care.
We continue to leap at the chance to declare actions criminal despite the fact that attacks like this museum shooting are rooted in an extremely irrational and bizarre world view, and are thus outside the scope of traditional criminal notions of “punishment” and “correction.” And of course, even where the criminal justice system is utilized, extended post-release mental health supervision needs to explored, in some cases for the whole life of the ex-convict.
This is not to trivialize the danger of domestic hate groups which certainly exist and need to be ceaselessly monitored. But local police departments have mostly extricated themselves from the business of spying on individuals suspected of political extremism. This is because many departments were accused of abuses in conducting surveillance on, for example, members of the Communist Party and individuals tied to black nationalist activities. In some places, including New York City, police departments cannot even be present at or record rallies conducted by persons espousing hateful objectives.
As always, protecting the rights of an individual, while safeguarding society as a whole, presents an exquisite challenge, with the dangers of stifling individual expression balanced against the wider harm than can occur if we do not get that balance right.
June 11, 2009, 12:29 pm
BY: The Editors
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/hate-crimes-and-extremist-politics/
The killing of George Tiller, the abortion doctor in Wichita, Kan., and the attack on the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington yesterday have raised questions yet again about the role that extremist propaganda sites play in inciting violence among some militant believers. In both cases, the suspect arrested was well-known among fringe “communities” on the Web.
Most legal scholars and many experts on extremist violence in the U.S. oppose reining in of such sites, or restrictions on extremist speech generally. Should the United States consider tighter restrictions on hate speech? In the meantime, how should law enforcement agencies respond?
Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld, criminal justice professor
Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates
Eric Hickey, criminology professor
Edward J. Eberle, comparative law professor
Eugene O’Donnell, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don’t Overreact
Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld is a professor and chairman of the criminal justice department at California State University, Stanislaus. She is the author of “Hate Crimes: Causes, Controls and Controversies.”
Although violent extremism is nothing new, either in the United States or abroad, it continues to present several daunting challenges to those who wish to prevent it.
Some of those challenges are legal. It is often difficult to balance the protection of civil liberties, especially freedom of expression, with the desire to avoid bloodshed. Those charged with enforcing the laws have sometimes overstepped the bounds of their authority—and have infringed upon First Amendment rights—when they have attempted to investigate or silence extremists.
Some challenges are policy related. How many resources ought to be allocated to fighting the terrible but uncommon instances of hate-fueled violence? Furthermore, a very large majority of those who attack others because of their victims’ race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or other characteristics are not hard-core bigots who join supremacist groups or expound their views in websites or manifestos. Even if we could somehow focus effectively on people like James Von Brunn or Scott Roeder, most bias crimes would continue unchecked.
In recent years, extremist propaganda has been cloaked so as to appear more mainstream and less radical.
And some challenges are empirical. We still know only a little bit about what factors influence a small number of people to act on their hatreds. There is, unfortunately, no shortage of extremist propaganda. In recent years, much of that propaganda has been cloaked so as to appear more mainstream and less radical. Some white supremacist groups claim that they don’t hate anybody, they simply love white people. Extremist political parties that recently won seats in the European Parliament did so on anti-immigration and economic platforms not very different from those of the more conventional parties. It is unclear to what extent extremist rhetoric, whether veiled or not, inspires violent behavior.
One thing that ought to be remembered is that attacks like the murder of George Tiller and the shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum are rare. We should take care not to rush blindly into creating “solutions” that are ill-suited to the real problems, that result in poor distributions of scarce resources, or that violate basic freedoms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Link Between Theory and Violent Action
Chip Berlet is a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a group based in Somerville, Mass., that studies extremist and authoritarian movements. He is co–author, with Matthew N. Lyons, of “Right-Wing Populism in America.”
The alleged shooter at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum spread historical white supremacist views and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories through a Web site that included the hoax document “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and a link to a Holocaust denial Web site.
The attack demonstrates why it is a mistake to ignore bigoted conspiracy theories. Law enforcement needs to enforce laws against criminal behavior. Vicious bigoted speech, however, is often protected by the First Amendment. We do not need new laws or to encourage government agencies to further erode our civil liberties. We need to stand up as moral people and speak out against the spread of bigoted conspiracy theories. That’s not a police problem, that’s our problem as people responsible for defending a free society.
Demagogues and conspiracy theorists use the same four “tools of fear.” These are 1) dualism; 2) scapegoating; 3) demonization; and 4) apocalyptic aggression.
It is the combination of demagogic demonization and widespread scapegoating that is so dangerous.
The basic dynamics remain the same no matter the ideological leanings of the demonizers or the identity of their targets. It is the combination of demagogic demonization and widespread scapegoating that is so dangerous. In such circumstances, angry allegations can quickly turn into apocalyptic aggression and violence targeting scapegoated groups like Jews or immigrants. Meanwhile, our ability to resolve disputes through civic debate and compromise is hobbled.
Apocalyptic aggression is fueled by right-wing pundits who demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation. Some angry people in their audience already believe conspiracy theories in which the same scapegoats are portrayed as subversive, destructive or evil. Add in aggressive apocalyptic ideas that suggest time is running out and quick action mandatory, and you have a perfect storm of mobilized resentment threatening to rain bigotry and violence across the United States.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Infiltrate and Monitor Hate Groups
Eric Hickey is a professor in the Department of Criminology, California State University, Fresno.
Unlike the more common mass murderers in American society who usually are individually motivated by mental illness to kill, extremists have their own niche of chaos. To date, acts of hate murder (akin to random acts of hate violence where killing does not occur) are sporadically committed by only a handful of offenders yet they represent groups of individuals who share common hatred toward other groups based upon religious beliefs, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
What can be done to identify extremists who may be preparing to carry out acts of violence? We need to do a better job of infiltrating and monitoring their groups. Police often are aware of such individuals because they are vocal and do not hide their hate, and they often use the Internet or even hold public rallies to espouse their views. It’s during times of economic stress and social and political change that hate groups tend to attract those who feel marginalized or threatened.
In our democratic society we pride ourselves on being allowed the freedom to gather and espouse whatever we wish so long as we do not incite others to commit acts of violence. But we also, as a society, have the right to monitor such groups to ensure public safety.
The problem in doing that is we create a less democratic society. Or, we can provide more security for potential targets and institute gun control measures like those in Canada and England. Neither of these options, however, will do much to stop violent acts, even though they give us a greater sense of security.
Another approach is to create more public awareness of these groups and solicit public assistance in identifying anyone who may be at risk for acting out. But these “big brother” campaigns serve mostly to heighten public fears but ultimately do little to stop hate crimes. Watchfulness and adherence to rule of law is really the only way to keep hate-based crimes to a minimum. One only has to look around the world to see far worse situations.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What Speech Laws Say
Edward J. Eberle is a professor at the Roger Williams University School of Law and author of “Dignity and Liberty: Constitutional Visions in Germany and the United States.”
The United States is perhaps the only country in the world that allows for protection of hate speech. Much of this has to do with the idea that a free exchange of ideas is important and that allowing speech — even hate-filled speech — can be a safety valve that helps prevent outbreaks of violence.
Under this view, speech needs to be regulated only when it will present a clear and present danger, as when it is a direct incitement to violence. The only exception to this is obscenity, which is unprotected speech even when there is no concrete demonstration of harm.
More restrictive speech laws in other nations reflect different values placed on dignity and personal reputation.
By contrast, most other countries of the world consider hate speech to be an unprotected category of speech. This is the case in all the European countries, like Germany, France, Britain, etc., and also Canada.
That view reflects the different values those legal systems place on factors like the norm of human dignity and personal reputation as well as the experience of the Holocaust. In the U.S., we follow an individualist model of a right to self-determination and expression. For the Europeans and others, there is also a right to speak your mind, but there are some bounds based on respect of others.
One of the leading cases in Germany is the “Holocaust Denial Case” (1990) where the Constitutional Court upheld the denial of a group’s right to protest that Germans had never persecuted Jews or committed the Holocaust. The court stated that this was hate speech, a denigration of a group based on ethnicity and race. In a different case, “Denial of Responsibility for World War II” (1994), the court found that a book observing that Germany was not responsible for World War II was protected speech, as this was a work of research and history and was not defamatory. In a major Canadian case, the constitutional court there ruled that a high school teacher could be censured and fired for using hate speech in the classroom.
Yet most European countries find obscenity to be protected speech unless it demeans women, harms youth or incites violence. As with most things, there are underlying social norms that guide the complexion of the law.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Mental Health Factor
Eugene O’Donnell is a lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He was a former officer in the New York Police Department, a prosecutor with the district attorney offices in Brooklyn and Queens, and a police academy instructor.
It is impossible to ignore the mental health dimension in the Holocaust Museum attack and an earlier assault at the Federal Reserve headquarters by James von Brunn. There may also be serious mental health issues with Scott Roeder, the killer of Dr. Tiller.
Extended post-release mental health supervision should be explored — in some cases, for the whole life of the ex-convict.
There is a gaping hole in our mental health infrastructure which will not be easy to fill, but needs urgent examination and action. Far too many potentially dangerous people are left to fend for themselves. Even when there are concerned family members or friends in their lives, these guardians are often worn out from trying to help, or do not know where to get dependable care.
We continue to leap at the chance to declare actions criminal despite the fact that attacks like this museum shooting are rooted in an extremely irrational and bizarre world view, and are thus outside the scope of traditional criminal notions of “punishment” and “correction.” And of course, even where the criminal justice system is utilized, extended post-release mental health supervision needs to explored, in some cases for the whole life of the ex-convict.
This is not to trivialize the danger of domestic hate groups which certainly exist and need to be ceaselessly monitored. But local police departments have mostly extricated themselves from the business of spying on individuals suspected of political extremism. This is because many departments were accused of abuses in conducting surveillance on, for example, members of the Communist Party and individuals tied to black nationalist activities. In some places, including New York City, police departments cannot even be present at or record rallies conducted by persons espousing hateful objectives.
As always, protecting the rights of an individual, while safeguarding society as a whole, presents an exquisite challenge, with the dangers of stifling individual expression balanced against the wider harm than can occur if we do not get that balance right.
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