Are the Ayatollahs learning that hell hath no fury like 34 million women scorned, forced out of the workplace, harassed and humiliated by religious police for three decades? I have noticed some of the bravest protestors in Iran have been women, including a few who have been without headscarves and showing a great deal more of their figures than the regime would approve. Roger Cohen of the NY Times has noticed this, too.


.... Iran's women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I've seen them urging less courageous men on. I've seen them get beaten and return to the fray.

"Why are you sitting there?" one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday.

"Get up! Get up!"

The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.

The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed.

"We didn't know they could do this much," said a network engineer in Tehran. "Now we know they have powerful things that allow them to do very complex tracking on the network."

Nokia Siemens Networks provided equipment to Iran last year under the internationally recognized concept of "lawful intercept," said Mr. Roome. That relates to intercepting data for the purposes of combating terrorism, child pornography, drug trafficking and other criminal activities carried out online, a capability that most if not all telecom companies have, he said.

I guess that I'm just afraid that a lot of good people are going to die for no reason. Or at least not enough of a reason to die for.

Azadeh Moaveni, born in Palo Alto of Iranian parents in 1976 and co author Iran Iran Awakening with Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi had this to say about the extent of the repression. .


The weight of discrimination against women is felt most profoundly through Iran's legal system, but Moaveni said Ahmadinejad added to the hardship by clamping down on women's lifestyles. He mandated the way women dress and even censored Web sites that dealt with women's health, Moaveni said. A woman would be hard-pressed to conduct a Google search for something as simple as breast cancer.

Another Iranian woman not allowed to use her education who has taken to the streets.



ARTEMIS, a 41-year-old Tehra-ni woman, is the proud holder of a law degree, but one who has never been allowed to work. She was clear about why she joined the million-plus men, women and children who took to the streets of Tehran last Monday.


"People want freedom and justice," she said. "They stole the vote. No one in his right mind believes this result."


She said she had been afraid to voice criticism before. "The neighbours listen to you, and people go to prison just for what they say, or what they write. But this is contagious. What you are seeing, all these people, this comes from 30 years of oppression and now we have had enough."

I dont know, something seems wrong about this coverage to me. First of all they are some of the most highly trained fighters in the world and yet they face massive crowd control with little more than batons?

Originally posted by crisko

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler

Originally posted by colloredbrothers
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

---

The goal is to get the other pres. in power. And everyone fighting there has this goal, In my eyes this is a revolution.

They are not calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Revolutionary Government but demonstrating against the electoral outcome of one politician to it.

They are shouting "Death to the Dictator" , "Death to Khamenei" (the supreme leader).

So ya, sounds like they are revolting to me.