So, last Sunday (the 28th), Tiffany and I went to watch the (gay) Pride Parade here in Chicago. It was our first year going and one thing that I found pleasantly surprising was how many stereotypes were pretty much blown to pieces by the marchers. Here are some pictures I took challenging conventional wisdom on […]
Ever since I broke the Belkin astroturfing scandal earlier this year, people periodically send me emails about other companies who are also trying to pay people to write fake positive reviews of their products on sites like Amazon.com (they range from automated computer backup services to coffee machines). I’m always happy to publish these accounts […]
The Iranian government has used state television to accuse those who protesting the results of the (almost certainly) fraudulent June 12th election as violent hooligans bent on destroying private property. “Promoting anarchism and chaos and vandalism, supported by Western powers and Western press, is not acceptable at all,” an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said today, […]
The above video from Tehran is remarkable for two reasons. The first reason is pretty obvious: it shows Iranian protesters vastly outnumbering hardliner government stormtroopers and forcing them to retreat on Saturday June 20th, a day that Ayatolla Khamenei proclaimed that no protests would be tolerated.
The second reason that this video is somewhat remarkable is […]
Nice going. I wish I could say that the rest of Tehran looked as good as this… This next one is really something to watch for a couple of different reasons: it starts off with a few interesting things: a man wearing a suit flashes a peace sign to the camera, and a woman can […]
Except for the last item in this post (which is an official statement from Obama), everything here is information gathered from Iranian Twitter users I’ve been following, and should be taken as unconfirmed rumors.
– The Fatemiyeh Hospital in Tehran has recorded 200 injured and between 30 and 40 people dead today in state-instigated violence that […]
One or two readers may know that my dad, Misagh Parsa, is a professor of sociology at Dartmouth, an expert on revolutions, and from Iran himself. He just had an interesting background article about the current situation published at Gozaar, an online journal about human rights and democracy in Iran:
The Islamic regime is also vulnerable […]
At the end of the first act of the musical Les Miserables is a song called One Day More, in which the full ensemble sings about their hopes and fears for the coming day which will see many of them dead. The Tony-winning production was of course based on the book of the same name […]
Because of the urgent situation in Iran and the global interest it has produced, Google has added a Farsi to English translator (it also works English to Farsi) to its web offerings. The Google team writes:
We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google […]
Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Tehran for the fifth straight day on Wednesday.
The NYT remarks on how difficult shutting down the now-daily protests may be for the Iranian regime:
[The government’s] intimidation tactics have been on display over the past few days with little result, as Iranian state news reports of seven people killed […]
So, a couple of updates on the Iranian election situation:
- Hundreds of thousands of pro-Mousavi demonstrators gathered in Tehran today, as all “normal” internet service providers were said to have been shut down by the regime.
- The likely winner of the election, Mousavi, let out from house arrest, addressed the crowd and told them to […]
“We in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be respected.”
The President strikes exactly the right note in discussing the extent of US involvement and how important it is to let the Iranian people decide their own […]
On the surface, this is good news:
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran’s supreme leader ordered Monday an investigation into allegations of election fraud, marking a stunning turnaround by the country’s most powerful figure and offering hope to opposition forces who have waged street clashes to protest the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
State television quoted Ayatollah Ali […]
Supporters of Mousavi run from riot police in Tehran
Reports indicate that internet access has been severely curtailed in Iran, as has access to phone services and some journalists have been beaten or otherwise censored. Still, the evidence of massive, unadulterated fraud in Iran’s presidential election this weekend is as plain as day. Not only does […]
Great news:
The Senate struck a historic blow against smoking in America Thursday, voting overwhelmingly to give regulators new power to limit nicotine in the cigarettes that kill nearly a half-million people a year, to drastically curtail ads that glorify tobacco and to ban flavored products aimed at spreading the habit to young people.
President Barack Obama, […]
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