Riddle: 6 ships sail to Gaza. On entering territorial waters they’re stopped by Israeli Navy ships. 5 ships are mounted by soldiers quietly and with passive resistance. All the activists on those ships are well and everything is fine. 1 ship mounted by soldiers and has 7 soldiers wounded, some hard, 9 passengers dead and 20 passengers wounded.
What is the difference between the 5 ships and that 1 single ship? Maybe cause what happened on the other ships was passive resistance, on on the one ship, well, this happened:
Still look like peaceful activists? Sweet, caring people only worried about the situation in Gaza?
The soldiers were attacked by sticks, iron bars and chairs. Very clear in the film. At the beginning they’ve tried to defend themselves with the PAINTBALL GUNS they were given as a non-lethal weapon. Only after soldiers were badly wounded, thrown off the ship to a lower deck and apparently were SHOT at (2 of the soldiers suffer guns wounds) that the commander gave an order to use live ammo from the handguns they had as emergency.
This is just amazing. Twitter had a necessary maintenance scheduled for this evening, when they had to take the service down for a few hours. However, since twitter is one of the only channels of communication between Iran and the outside world, people had started tweeting, asking Twitter to wait with the maintenance.
A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).
Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide—we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.
It’s amazing how small amount of attention the traditional media is giving to this story in Iran. For far less than that the world media been plastering Israel for days. I understand reporting from Iran is problematic, but hey, that’s where the news are, so it’s your job to be there!
I really hope the Iranians won’t fail here. From Israel perspective maybe Ahmadinejad is better than Mousavi, since both will continue towards nuclear power and both are against Israel – only Ahmadinejad is blunt about it, which is good for us. Still, I cannon but support the young people in Iran who have been living under strict regime which had just completely destroyed any false feeling of justice and freedom.
I can’t do much to help them (and I’m sure they wouldn’t want me to, being from ‘The Small Satan’), but I can try a little to rise awareness and keep them in the headlines.
#CNNfail is not only CNN. I’d say all western governments so far had been proven very impotent. The only excuse is if they actually do try to do some secret operations to help the protesters.
What’s going on in Iran right now is HOPE, where none was before. It’s not much but it’s there and we have a responsibility to keep it alive. There are things beyond the Israeli-Arab conflict, and they include justice. If the ‘official world’ doesn’t pick that up, then we bloggers/twitters/real people of the world must do it.
Andrew Sullivan reports from twitter with many unofficial news and defenitly the place to visit for up to date news, Nico Pitney has a live blogging on the events, an interesting piece by Gary entitled Iran’s political coup is well worth reading.
Leave more links in the comments for places which update regularly. And again, best place at all time is #iranelection.
The situation in Iran isn’t good at all. In an effort to control the riots, the regime as placed all opposition leaders to Ahmadinejad in house arrest, the universities were filled with policemen and major activists in the reformists groups were arrested.
The twittersphere is also actively discussing how the traditional media fails to pick u on the Iranian story at all. Rinat states that #CNNfail is one of the more popular tags on twitter.
Check out Andrew Sullivan that has a post showing how the reports on the votes for Ahmadinejad through out the elections day present a linear graph…
I’ve found this Amir Sadeghi’s blog – Tehran Live – which has amazing pictures from yesterday’s riots.
Wow. I didn’t anticipate that. The Iranians took it seriously this time, there are widespread violent riots, cars smashed, fire started in garbage bins and other places. The media notes it’s the worst violence since the Islamic Revolution, which means it’s SERIOUSLY big.
Supporters of Mousavi are enraged by the blunt faking of the elections but the theocratic regime and people of Ahmadinejad.
So far Mousavi seems to take this rage to the street and doesn’t go down without fighting. He accused the religious leadership they are doing nothing when the people expect them to react (like the people don’t know they’re the ones behind this). This can turn real ugly real fast.
All I can say is that I admire the Iranian people that in spite of the police state they are living in, they have the courage to stand out and fight. Respect.
Update, Midnight
If there was a tiny bit of impression that Iran isn’t a dictatorship after fixing the elections, it has now gone completely. In an effort to contain the rage of the young, the theocratic regime has taken some radical steps – The cellular networks were shut down in most of the country, text messages and been completely halted, heavy censorship on the internet was issued, blocking Facebook, Twitter, sites of international news agencies and opposition parties in Iran, including the sites of Mousavi and the other 2 candidates for presidency. The country was always a dictatorship of the Mullas, but today it exposed her true face bluntly, without even a small mask. That regime must be topple.
Couldn’t stay with Interior design posts for too long before posting political issues, now could I?
I’ve watched the election in Iran with a bit of interest, though not too much. I figured Ahmadinejad is going to win, and besides, who cares who the president is when the real decisions are always made by the non-elected theocrats, anyway?
Well, seems the Iranian people care. The Israeli, US and European media is reporting big demonstration in Tehran after Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s rival, claimed his loss is a result of a big-scale, state-sponsored forgery.
The reports are of the possibly the biggest demonstrations in the past decade, violent clashes with the riot police are also reported. The government apparently also stopped all cellphone’s text messaging services in the country in an attempt to prevent people from organizing.
Here is a video which seems to be taken in Tehran today, showing the demonstrations:
I was visiting a friend yesterday when PM Olmert and DM Barak went on TV to announce what seems like a really weird cease fire. I understand no one really wants to talk with Hamas and give it legitimacy. Egypt, Jordan and Saudia didn’t even come to Doha for the Arab “summit” because Hamas-Damascus was there. But after the very successful operation Israel had done in Gaza, we could have gotten better terms.
At the current situation, Hamas is left as the government, but is not obliged to stop the hostilities. And then even announce they will keep at it. Right after the announcment of the cease fire 8 rockets were fired at Beer-Sheva.
Livni and Rice signing agreement against smuggling. Photo: AP
Just some (very) late night thoughts. From what I read, the cease fire formulating is going to be a bit complicated. Basically, Israel is signing agreements with other parties, that will in turn, have agreements with Hamas. Israel also do not trust Hamas (and rightly so, as they declare they oppose a cease fire) and put measures in place to deny it from smuggling in new arms.
It still needs to be seen how this whole thing will work out as Israel decided not to completely destroy Hamas, and let it continue to rule Gaza de-facto, only much weaker. From the very few things I’ve heard, the Palestinians in Gaza are desperate and afraid. they don’t care about Hamas, they don’t care about Israel, they just want quiet. Continue reading ‘The day after?’
I guess when you’re not really in Gaza it’s much easier to claim ‘the resistance is winning’. The hopefully-soon-assassinated Haled Mashaal and his gang arrived to the Arab meeting in Doha and declared ‘the resistance is only a little hurt but will not stop the fight’.
"No cease fire! We're winning! Israel is on it's knees!"
The reason they really reject the cease fire is that they’re not willing to have the cease fire last longer than a year. As in the truce, they only want a short break to rearm and continue the fight. Hamas claimed previously that they cannot sign more than a tactical temporary cease fire with enemies as Islam doesn’t allow it. Continue reading ‘Hamas Damascus refuses Cease Fire’
Well, cease fire talks or not, the coming weeked is shaping to be no different than the previous ones. In the past 30 minutes we had 34 sirens.
15:40 – While I was writing this post there was another siren. we ran to the secured room and heard 2 big booms not that far from us.
In Ashdod, where many of my close family live, 5 rockets had landed with direct hits in buildings. One was seriously wounded and a few people wounded lightly. In Kiryat Gat they also have 3 people wounded. Direct hits over there as well.
When they showed on the TV the place of one of the falls in Ashdod we suddenly realized it’s near my grandmother house (which passed away less than 2 years ago).
For all I care these are the dieing quivers of Hamas.
Holy Moses. So this is what’s going on in Anti-Israel demonstrations in London.
Radical Islamic mouthpiece Azzam Tamimi joins with British MP George Galloway in a profoundly hateful speech to a large crowd that screams its support for Hamas: (hat tip: LGF)
Two videos. One shows how Hamas deliberately targets civilians and use human shields – even kids,and one shows how IDF makes an effort (which doesn’t always work, that’s true) to avoid hitting non-combatants even if there are Hamas terrorist among them.
This is just amazing. Twitter had a necessary maintenance scheduled for this evening, when they had to take the service down for a few hours. However, since twitter is one of the only channels of communication between Iran and the outside world, people had started tweeting, asking Twitter to wait with the maintenance. 
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