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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Protest in Cairo Notes Another Anniversary

As Reuters reports, protesters were cleared from Tahrir Square on Tuesday night, after a day of demonstrations dedicated to the memory of dozens of activists who were killed by the security forces on this date two years ago.

Pierre Sioufi, an activist blogger who has documented the waves of uprising from an apartment above the square since 2011, reported late Tuesday on his @Kikhote Twitter feed that the square had been cleared.

Earlier Tuesday, hundreds of protesters had marched to the square to note the anniversary of deadly clashes in 2011 on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, at the edge of Tahrir. They marched past fresh graffiti on the walls in the form of pink and red camouflage.

In advance of the commemoration, a police spokesman promised to defend those marking the anniversary, without noting that the protesters who died were mostly killed by police gunshots. The activist film collective Mosireen set the spokesman’s statement against footage of officers firing at protesters on Mohamed Mahmoud two years ago, and again last year, when more were killed on the first anniversary of the clashes.

Video of the deadly clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in Cairo in 2011 and 2012, edited together with a statement from the police in honor of those killed by the police.

The journalist Sarah El Sirgany noted that the police continue to deny that their forces were responsible for killing the protesters in broad daylight during the clashes in 2011, despite apparently clear video evidence.

Video posted online by the independent Cairene newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm showed that, at one stage in the evening, many of the protesters paused to watch Egypt’s doomed attempt to qualify for the World Cup, which was projected onto screens in the square.

Al-Masry Al-Youm video of protesters and soccer fans in Tahrir Square on Tuesday night.



Protest in Cairo Notes Another Anniversary

As Reuters reports, protesters were cleared from Tahrir Square on Tuesday night, after a day of demonstrations dedicated to the memory of dozens of activists who were killed by the security forces on this date two years ago.

Pierre Sioufi, an activist blogger who has documented the waves of uprising from an apartment above the square since 2011, reported late Tuesday on his @Kikhote Twitter feed that the square had been cleared.

Earlier Tuesday, hundreds of protesters had marched to the square to note the anniversary of deadly clashes in 2011 on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, at the edge of Tahrir. They marched past fresh graffiti on the walls in the form of pink and red camouflage.

In advance of the commemoration, a police spokesman promised to defend those marking the anniversary, without noting that the protesters who died were mostly killed by police gunshots. The activist film collective Mosireen set the spokesman’s statement against footage of officers firing at protesters on Mohamed Mahmoud two years ago, and again last year, when more were killed on the first anniversary of the clashes.

Video of the deadly clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in Cairo in 2011 and 2012, edited together with a statement from the police in honor of those killed by the police.

The journalist Sarah El Sirgany noted that the police continue to deny that their forces were responsible for killing the protesters in broad daylight during the clashes in 2011, despite apparently clear video evidence.

Video posted online by the independent Cairene newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm showed that, at one stage in the evening, many of the protesters paused to watch Egypt’s doomed attempt to qualify for the World Cup, which was projected onto screens in the square.

Al-Masry Al-Youm video of protesters and soccer fans in Tahrir Square on Tuesday night.



Attack in Beirut Through the Lens of Hezbollah TV

Raw footage of the deadly bombing in Beirut on Tuesday, acquired by The Associated Press from Al Manar, a satellite television channel operated by Hezbollah.

As our colleagues Hwaida Saad and Anne Barnard report from Beirut, the deadly bombings at the gate of the Iranian Embassy in the Lebanese capital on Tuesday were immediately interpreted there as a form of retaliation for Iran’s intervention in the civil war in neighboring Syria.

That was abundantly clear in the way the attacks were reported by Al Manar, a satellite news channel operated by Hezbollah, the militant and political organization supported by Iran that represents Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim community. Since Hezbollah’s fighters began crossing the border into Syria, they have helped to tip the balance of power back in favor of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, and away from the mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents supported by their sectarian allies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

One Manar report â€" which included extremely graphic images of those wounded in the attack on the diplomatic compound in south Beirut â€" featured a statement from Ali Ammar, who represents Hezbollah in the Lebanese Parliament, bemoaning the fact that, he said, this violence was “supported by some Arabs.”

An Arabic-language video report on the bombings in Beirut on Tuesday broadcast by Al Manar.

Another member of Hezbollah’s political wing, the agriculture minister Hussein Hajj Hassan, also appeared in the Manar report, calling the bombings “an addition to the record of terrorist, criminal acts by these killers.”

More graphic footage of the attack’s victims from Al Manar â€" meaning “The Beacon” in Arabic â€" was also broadcast by Al Alam, the Iranian government’s Arabic-language satellite news channel.

Graphic footage of the attack in Beirut broadcast by Al Alam, an Iranian satellite news channel.

Hezbollah, which was nurtured by Iran as a militant force to combat Israel during its occupation of southern Lebanon, has rejected criticism of its intervention in Syria by claiming that the Assad government is an important ally in the “resistance” to the Jewish state. In the introduction to the Manar report, a journalist asserted that the bombings at the Iranian compound, in a part of Beirut largely under the control of Hezbollah, “serve the interests of the enemies and Zionists.”

Another report on the attack, from Iran’s English-language satellite news channel Press TV, began with a direct defense of Hezbollah’s military intervention in the Syrian civil war. “Hezbollah believes,” a reporter on the scene told Press TV viewers, “and I think that’s a very acceptable argument, that its acts, and its involvement in Syria, have actually prevented such explosions from increasing … in number.”

A video on the bombings Tuesday in Beirut in a report from Press TV, the Iranian government’s English-language news channel.

It was only Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria, the Press TV reporter suggested, that had prevented Sunni jihadists bent on eliminating members of all other Islamic sects from staging more attacks on the Shiite community in Lebanon.

The Lebanese-Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid, who lives and works in Beirut, described some of the other local television coverage of the attacks in a post for The New Yorker’s News Desk blog. “Apart from vaguely blaming Israel, which is the usual move after an unsolved attack,” she wrote, “some local TV pundits and politicians have pointed out that the bombings may be an attempt not only to punish Hezbollah for fighting in Syria, but also to try to split it from its base.” She explained:

The idea is that Hezbollah’s supporters will blame the group for the car bombs in their neighborhoods, and put pressure on it to withdraw from the fight across the border.

That’s highly unlikely for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the pain threshold for Hezbollah’s followers is high. The party â€" which has formidable military, political and social services branches â€" has done much to elevate the status, power and prospects of a once-downtrodden, destitute Shiite community. Hezbollah offers schools, hospitals, employment programs, agricultural initiatives and other assistance to its supporters. After the monthlong war with Israel in 2006, which left the mainly Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut a mountain of rubble and ruins, Hezbollah rebuilt the area. It wasn’t unusual at the time to hear mothers who had lost their children in Israeli bombings to stoically and fervently proclaim that they accepted their painful sacrifice, and would pay it again with their remaining children.



On YouTube, Iranian Minister Says ‘Join Us’ in Ending Crisis

A video statement was posted on the Iranian minister’s YouTube account on Tuesday.

As soft piano music plays in the background, the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, strides through a vast, elegant hallway, skips down carpeted steps and pushes through glass-paneled doors. Then, seated, he looks directly at a video camera and asks: “What is dignity? What is respect? Are they negotiable? Is there a price tag?”

He adds: “Imagine being told that you cannot do what everyone else is doing â€" what everyone else is allowed to do. Will you back down? Would you relent? Or would you stand your ground?”

Those are scenes from the opening segment of a new video posted on a Youtube account listed under Mr. Zarif’s name on Tuesday: a slick five-minute production that lays out little new about Iran’s position on its right to pursue nuclear energy but which is notable for its timing and context.

On Wednesday, a third round of talks are set to resume in Geneva between Iran and six world powers. Western diplomats hope to complete an accord that would halt Iran’s nuclear efforts for six months while negotiators pursue a more comprehensive agreement that would ensure that Tehran’s program is solely for civilian purposes, as my colleague Michael R. Gordon reported last week.

In recent weeks, Mr. Zarif has repeatedly sought to set the tone and context of the meetings through videos, television appearances, and his Twitter account, a reflection of his increasing use of social media to reach out to the West. Mr. Zarif spoke in English in the video on Tuesday, with subtitles in Farsi, French, Turkish and Arabic in four other versions, but there were reminders that the authorities continue to block access to YouTube to citizens inside Iran.

Mr. Zarif is Iran’s chief negotiator in the talks with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council along with Germany, known as the P5+1. He has used Twitter diplomacy during the previous rounds of negotiations as a way to answer critics or set the record. The latest round of talks are set to start on Wednesday and will continue at least through Friday.

In the video released on Tuesday, Mr. Zarif did not mention the nuclear talks directly, but he repeated that the dignity of Iranians needed to be respected and decisions should not be imposed on the country. He continued, in part:

For us Iranians, nuclear energy is not about joining a club or threatening others. Nuclear energy is about a leap, a jump toward deciding our own destiny, rather than allowing others to decide for us. For us, nuclear energy is about securing the future of our children, about diversifying our economy, about stopping the burning of our oil, and about generating clean power.

It’s about (the) Iranian nation moving forward as an equal in a new realm defined by peace, by prosperity, by progress.

What would you do if you were told this is not an option. Would you back down?

Rights are not granted and since they are not granted, they cannot be seized. This does not mean that we have hit a dead end. There is a way forward, a constructive path toward determining our destiny, to advance, to make progress, to secure peace, to go forward. The choice is not submission or confrontation.

This past summer our people chose constructive engagement through the ballot box, and through this they gave the world a historic opportunity to change course. To seize this unique opportunity we need to accept equal footing and choose a path based on mutual respect and recognition of the dignity of all peoples, and more so on the recognition that no power, however strong, can determine the fate of others. This is no longer an option.

Join us in ending an unnecessary crisis and opening new horizons. My name is Javad Zarif, and this is Iran’s message.