Archive - Feb 16, 2011 - Article

A One Night Stand?

What remains to be seen is if this movement will spread to the working classes who are increasingly dissatisfied because of economic conditions brought about by pressure from subsidy cuts as well as international sanctions. The success of the opposition movement relies less on the Internet than on the support of workers and the Bazaar who have so far not gone on strike to show their support for the opposition, despite repeated calls for them to join the movement after the fraudulent election results were announced in June 2009>>>

«فتنه»‌ای که نمی‌میرد

تظاهرات وسیع روز ۲۵ بهمن شگفتی‌های زیادی آفرید. گستره و کیفیت این تظاهرات هم رژیم را غافلگیر کرد و هم برای طرف‌داران جنبش سبز نامنتظره بود. پس از یک سال و اندی که از تظاهرات خیابانی جنبش سبز گذشته و رژیم همراه با سرکوب خونین و مرگبار جنبش بارها خبر «مرگ» آن را در بوق و کرنا گذاشته بود، یک‌بار دیگر جوانان جان بر کفی که از تحولات اخیر تونس و مصر قوت قلب گرفته‌اند به خیابان‌ها آمدند تا عملا بطلان افسانه «مرگ فتنه ۸۸» را به نمایش بگذارند>>>

Friends and Foes

Many Iranians, imitating the Egyptian and Tunisians, have opened Facebook pages in order to spark new street demonstrations. In fact, Facebook has been instrumental in organizing the demonstrations that have taken place this week, turning out thousands of protesters. Although there are no statistics on the exact number of Facebook users in Iran, it is estimated that about 700,000 Facebook users were active from February 2008 to June 2009>>>

Glorified Military Coup

How can one explain the jubilation of Egyptian people if what took place in Egypt was in essence a military coup d'état? One straightforward answer seems to be that the majority of Egyptians think of the army as a national institution and a force for good. Perhaps they still see it as the army of Gamal Abdel Nasser. However, there is another possible explanation for equating a military coup with a revolution: Egyptians had lowered their expectation of what a genuine revolution could achieve to the mere act of ousting Mubarak>>>

1000 beehejabs

The protests have shown that a lot of people are dissatisfied with the regime and want freedom. But what is freedom and is the current approach the correct way? The green movement is by its definition a social movement against social injustices. The method chosen to show discontent is to gather people and yelling "we want freedom", "death to X", "down with dictatorship" and clashing with security forces>>>