Links for today

Ayatollah Montazeri (Persian)

Information about Neda Soltani, who died in 30 Khordad protests (Persian)

Rafsanjani in Qom discussing the dissolution of the Velayat-e Faqih (Persian)

Time: In Iran, One Woman’s Death May Have Many Consequences: the horrifying footage of Neda’s death and its potential repercussions. (English)

Iran in the Gulf: Will Ward is doing an excellent job translating Persian news publications into English as well as keeping abreast of latest information.

Former U of C student Rochelle Terman has an article in Al-Arabiya discussing the changes she has seen in Iran over the last 4 years.

BBC Persian with an interview with two important intellectuals, Abdolkarim Soroush and Ataollah Mohajerani. (Persian)

BBC Persian with some video footage of a clash between protesters and police.

More footage, this time in still photographs.

Photo Gallery of the latest protests in Chicago, Saturday, June 20.

Rafsanjani’s daughter Faezeh arrested

Fatemeh Keshavarz also has a very good blog with updates and analysis.

Juan Cole is also keeping us informed.

Rooz Online English
Rooz Online Persian, plus interesting article entitled چه نباید کرد that offers one idea of how protesters can most effectively realize their agenda(?).

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Two twitter sites, Iranbaan and Besalamati

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News:

Radio Farda
VOA Persian
BBC Persian
Balatarin is a great news aggregate.
Khatami’s site
Tabnak news aggregate.
Iran’s Press TV has both Persian and English sites. This is a government-run publication.

IRIB has no mention of the protests, either in English or in Persian, and IRNA is curiously down.

تظاهرات ۳۰ خرداد

The crackdown:

“If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians’ access to the internet down. Cut & paste & please pass it on.”

Embassies giving refuge to injured protesters
Finnish Embassy Corner Of Nilou St, Below Vanak Sq, Vali-e Asr Ave German Embassy: Avenue Ferdowsi 320-324 – British Embassy 198, Ferdowsi Avenue Tehran 11316-91144 Dutch Embassy No.36, Jahansouz Alley, Sarbedaran St., Ostad Motahari Norway: #412 8th Kohestan, Northern Pasdaran Ave Belgian Embassy No.3,Babak Alley, Shabdiz St.,Shahid Fayyaz Bakhsh Ave. Italian Embassy accepting injured at 81, Neauphle Le Chatea

WordPress blocking Fatemeh Keshavarz’s blog (what’s up with that?)

A photo blog with news being twittered/sms’d in
Minute by minute: This is really bad. There are some videos of people getting shot. I remember hearing about how shocked television watchers in the US were when a Vietnamese POW was executed live in the background while Dan Rather was speaking. Now mobile phones and cameras have made these events almost instantly accessible—provided the images get out.

Non-Iranian Facebookers are starting to tint their profiles green in support of the protests. Not sure what good it will do, but it’s nice to see at least some people are watching.

lebasshakhsi.blogspot.com is a blog where people send in photos of the Basij shooting at the crowd. The idea is to target them and take revenge. We’ve already seen some counter-attacks by protesters against real or perceived offenses by the Basij (garrisons being burned, vehicles destroyed, etc), and this call for vigilante justice clearly takes this a step further, with alarming implications. Let’s hope that some poor guy who happens to look like one of the people in this blog isn’t caught.

Andrew Sullivan did an interesting post where he simply gathered a (very long) sample of the tweets that have been popping up in preparation of the June 20th demonstrations.

Updates from the Tehran bureau

Analysis:

P Martin, at the Globe and Mail: Key points:
a) that this is a power struggle between elites
b) this conflict between Rafsanjani and Khamenei is much older than this election
c) with Khamenei squarely rebutting the reformists, he has dug in his heels and declared his stance. Unless the opposition concedes defeat, there’s no avoiding a violent collision at this point.

Rami Khouri

Le regine lussuriose

This is my BA thesis for the Italian department at the University of Colorado in Boulder, 2004. It is written in Italian, so I don’t expect too many people to look at this—but the main gist of it is that I looked at the changing interpretation of a particular story within the Divine Comedy from commentaries written in the 14th and 16th centuries. I found the circle of the Lovers, the second Circle of Hell, to be extremely interesting; the way Dante falls unconscious from grief at the plight of the damned is in stark contrast with his rather vindictive attitude towards other evil-doers down the road. It seems quite likely that he, like many compassionate souls who are forced to address the issue of divine justice, cannot help but be moved by the story of the lovers Paolo and Francesca, despite the fact that they obviously deserve to be punished. Furthermore, within the seven examples of the lust-battered ghosts, we have three men and four women. All four women are queens, Semiramis, Cleopatra, Dido, and Helen, but the three men—Achilles, Paris, and Tristan—are only warriors, princes, and knights. It seems that the women who fell into the vice of excessive love were also guilty of driving their kingdoms into the ground, whereas the princes lose no one but themselves.

Like Dante, the commentators had to come to grips with the placement of these seven figures (as well as Francesca and Paolo) in Hell, and they went about doing it in different ways. Is it bad for a queen to lust because of her political responsibilities? or is she more of a moral icon, a woman whose chastity reflects the upright standing of all those who follow her? I felt that the emphasis upon the social and political role these regine lussuriose, “lascivious queens,” shifted over time, probably due to social and political changes in Italian society itself.

Le regine lussuriose (PDF)

Hear me illustrious

This is just an inaugural post to get the ball rolling. It is a tremendous time, between the post-election tremors in Iran, my just having finished the first year of classes and getting ready to jump into teaching with Startalk, going to Egypt soon, and other things—I really just need to start writing again. So, here we go.