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Article   Protesters swarmed Tehran's main cemetery and fanned out across a large swath of the capital Thursday, defying truncheons and tear gas to publicly mourn those killed during weeks of unrest, including a young woman whose death shocked people around the world.The protests marked the 40th day since the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan was captured on video and posted on the Internet. For Shiite Muslims, the 40th day has religious importance, often an occasion for an outpouring of emotion and grief.
 TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Marching in dramatic silence, many with tape over their mouths, hundreds of thousands of Iranians kept alive public support for opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi Wednesday even as the government stepped up efforts to thwart daily protests calling for a new presidential election. More protests are expected Thursday after Moussavi, in a message on his Web site, called for an afternoon "ceremony of mourning," which he planned to attend. Referring to those who have died or been wounded "as a result of illegal and violent clashes" with his opponents, Moussavi urged people to gather in mosques and holy sites and wear "mourning symbols" in a show of sympathy and support for the families.  What we’re witnessing in Iran over the last several days is the power of nonviolence. Unarmed Iranians by the hundreds of thousands, and across all ages and classes, have flocked to the streets of Tehran, defying bans and brutal paramilitary squads, to demand one simple thing: that their votes be counted fairly. The democratic longing, and the democratic thronging, shows no signs of letting up. “Every day, the number of people attending the protests is increasing,” says Camelia Entekhabifard, author of Camelia: Save Yourself by Telling the Truth—A Memoir of Iran. “It’s drawing people from all generations and societies, from the very cultured to the very traditional. This is a national movement.”
Otpor was formed on October 10, 1998 in response to repressive university and media laws introduced earlier that year. In the beginning, Otpor's activities were limited to University of Belgrade.In the aftermath of the NATO airstrikes against FR Yugoslavia in 1999 regarding the Kosovo War, Otpor began a political campaign against the Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević. This resulted in nationwide police repression against Otpor activists, during which nearly 2000 were arrested, some beaten. During the presidential campaign of September 2000, Otpor launched its "Gotov je" (He's finished) campaign which would galvanize national discontent with Milošević and eventually result in his defeat. Some students who led Otpor used Serbian translations of Gene Sharp's writings on nonviolent action as a theoretical basis for their campaign.Otpor became one of the defining symbols of anti-Milošević struggle and his subsequent overthrow. By aiming their activities at the pool of youth abstinents and other disillusioned voters, Otpor contributed to one of the biggest turnouts ever for the September 24, 2000 federal presidential elections.Having succeeded in persuading a large number of the traditional electorate to abandon Milošević was another one of the areas where the smear-proof Otpor played a key role. Milošević had in the past succeeded in persuading the public that his opponents were spies and traitors, but on this occasion, it backfired, as the beatings and imprisonments during the summer of 2000 further cemented the decision to vote against the regime in many voters' minds While he pretends to deceive the International Community that there is a democracy in Venezuela though electoral fraud and an accommodating opposition, on Friday March 2, 2007, Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez started his massive communist indoctrination in Venezuela, which is not only limited to schools, but all the country, including the military, Government institutions, State owned companies, and even private enterprises. Indoctrination will end up being enformced by Law in Venezuela. ORVEX has lauched an S.O.S. for Venezuela around the World. Freedom and Democracy are wiped out in Venezuela, and it has to be stopped.For Venezuelans, their only resource now is to activate "legitimate disobedience", based upon Article 350 of the Venezuelan Constitucion of 1999, which states:"The people of Venezuela, faithful to their own republican tradition, to their own struggle for independence, peace, and freedom, will not acknowledge any regime, legislation or authority that goes against the values, principles and guarantees of Democracy or jeopardize human rights.""Legitimate disobedience" is part of the Non violent Struggle promoted by ORVEX in Venezuela. Article 350 justifies it, even though it is obvious that Dictator Chavez will not recognize it. A good news for Venezuelans in that theory which claims that power is in the hands of those who have the largest capability to exercise violence IS FALSE. That is why, for example, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. could attain their objectives without using violent means. Also, the Serbs could get Milosevik out of power through a non-violent struggle.In the mean time, our Non-Governmental Orgaqnization ORVEX has started to tell the World the truth about the Fraud in the Presidential Elections of December 3, 2006 in Venezuela, so that Hugo Chavez cound be rejected by the International Community, and new elections be held in Venezuela with the help of the U.N. and the leaders of the nations of the Free World.Do not underestimate Chavez. He is a danger to the Free World. Help us in our effort to show the world that Chavez is a Fraud.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators crowded downtown streets today calling for the resignation of Serbia's President as the first effects of United Nations sanctions were being felt. The President, Slobodan Milosevic, criticized the sanctions imposed on Saturday, saying Serbia was not responsible for the fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which continued today. "This is the price we have to pay for supporting Serbs outside Serbia," Mr. Milosevic said early this morning after he cast his vote in elections for the Yugoslav Parliament. "As far as the accusations that we have committed aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina are concerned, surely every citizen of Serbia knows that they are ridiculous. We have not committed any aggression against Bosnia." Election Boycotted Mr. Milosevic appeared tired as he voted today. All major opposition parties were boycotting the elections in Serbia and Montenegro, the only remaining Yugoslav republics, and the Serbian Orthodox Church denounced the vote. Polls opened just hours after the United Nations Security Council imposed the economic sanctions. [ Bush Administration officials Sunday expressed deep reluctance to use military force to enforce the sanctions, saying Washington's immediate goal was to force the Serbian-backed military to lift its two-month blockade of Sarajevo. Administration officials said they wanted to assess the effects of the embargo before taking any further steps to punish Yugoslavia. Page A8 ] The first outward signs of the embargo were lines forming at gasoline stations in the Belgrade area and the disruption of air links. Flights Are Canceled This morning, hundreds of stranded travelers milled around Belgrade Airport watching the word "Canceled" click up next to one departing flight after another on the large black timetable. Within hours, only flights for Paris, Copenhagen, Moscow and London were left and it was unclear whether they would actually depart. Yugoslavia also has been disqualified from the European soccer championship in Sweden as a result of the United Nations embargo. The peaceful demonstrators, many dressed in black, took over downtown Belgrade streets for about three hours this afternoon, unfurling a mile-long black banner along the city's main shopping thoroughfare before protesting outside the television station, the hub of the Serbian Government's propaganda network. Demonstrators jeered and shouted "Slobo Must Go!" outside the republic's Presidency Building, referring to President Milosevic. The demonstration was the largest anti-Government gathering in Serbia since violent protests in March 1991 brought Yugoslav Army tanks to Belgrade streets. Bombing of Belgrade "I am against the war and the regime that has sucked our sons into war," said a Yugoslav Airline flight attendant, laid off last week after 30 years on the job because of the cancellation of the airlines' landing rights by the United States and Canada. "I want to show the world that all Serbs are not the same," she said. "We all expect to be bombed, and we remember when the Americans bombed Belgrade in 1944." Slobodanka Karic, a 50-year-old health worker, said, "It's only a matter of time before the armed conflict comes to Belgrade. The international community should stop all the armed attacks by all sides, and then the Communists must be removed." The demonstrators scoffed at today's elections, calling them a "farce." Reports on Turnout Election officials reported only a 38 percent turnout at Serbian polling stations at 2 P.M., and by evening were asserting that 60 percent of the electorate had voted. In Montenegro, turnout reports ranged from 6 to 60 percent. About 7.3 million people are eligible to vote. Final results are not expected until Wednesday. Western diplomats said a weak turnout would not necessarily be interpreted as a vote of no confidence in Mr. Milosevic, who rose to power through the Communist Party's apparatus and has deflected criticism and held power by appealing to Serbian nationalism and controlling the republic's large enterprises and most influential media. Serbia's main opposition parties, the Serbian Renewal Movement, Democratic Party and Serbian Liberal Party called for the boycott because they said the Government pushed through the country's new Constitution without adequate discussion, allowed only a short period for campaigning and refused to end its virtual monopoly on the country's main television channel. 'Duty to Liberate Serbia' The leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, Vuk Draskovic, said: "The Serbs' enemies are not in London, New York, Paris or Moscow. They are right here in Belgrade. It's our duty to liberate Serbia." "The Serbian people are not guilty," Mr. Draskovic said. "Sanctions are needed against the regime, not the people." The Serbian Orthodox Church denounced the Serbian and Yugoslav Governments last week, disassociated itself from the new Constitution and the elections and called for the formation of a government of national salvation. Only the renamed Communist Party of Serbia and Montenegro, two ultra-nationalist parties, and several dozen tiny political groups ran candidates. Successor to Old Yugoslavia The elections were scheduled after the new Yugoslavia was formed on April 27 in an attempt to claim the status of the successor to the Yugoslav Federation as well as its assets. Government leaders say the elections are important because they will allow the Yugoslav Government to begin functioning normally again after huge gaps were torn in the Legislature and administration by the secession of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. Officials of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo today won agreements from Serbian leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina's government for a new cease-fire scheduled to begin on Monday at 6 P.M. local time, an official in Sarajevo said. The cease-fire agreement provides for the evacuation of a besieged Yugoslav Army barracks in the city center. Bosnian Serb forces this morning continued their bombardments of Sarajevo, while Yugoslav Army and Bosnian Serb forces also shelled the historic port city of Dubrovnik, lobbing about 17 shells into the walled Old Town. More than 2,300 people have been killed and 7,700 wounded since the Serbs began their military campaign to seize most of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The fighting has driven well over 700,000 people from their homes. If any New Yorker were to become the theoretician for a new secessionist movement, it figured to be Kirkpatrick Sale.Mr. Sale, 70, was a campus rabble-rouser at Cornell in the 1950s long before Berkeley made being one fashionable, a model for a character in Richard Fariña’s classic ’60s novel, “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me,” a writer who worked briefly with his college pal Thomas Pynchon on a musical called “Minstral Island.” For half a century, he’s written more or less from the left on issues of decentralization, the environment and technology — in praise of Luddites, envisioning with dread the rise of the Sun Belt, lambasting Christopher Columbus as a despoiler of the American Eden and predicting environmental doom in a way that is making him at the moment look more prescient than cranky.And though he once described the personal computer as the devil’s work (its efficiencies producing more “social disintegration, economic polarization, and environmental devastation”), there he was Tuesday at his modern Adirondack-style house in the woods looking in delight at the inbox on his laptop.“Look at this,” he said. “There are 177 more messages from people who want to get on our mailing list. There’s nothing that has brought right and left together like this.”“This” was the Second North American Secessionist Convention, held Oct. 3 and 4 in Chattanooga, and attended by 15 delegates representing 25 states, plus 40 sympathetic observers. It followed, amazingly enough, the First North American Secessionist Convention, held the year before in Burlington, Vt.In this country, secession has not had the greatest odor since the 1860s, when it produced a movement now seen as racist, violent and a loser. But the spirit of Mr. Sale and his pro-secession Middlebury Institute actually has more to do with Vermont.There, a group called the Second Vermont Republic has become a small-bore local phenomenon, with its call for a “genteel revolution,” opposed to “the tyranny of Corporate America and the U.S. government,” and committed to “the peaceful return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic and more broadly the dissolution of the Union.” Hence those “U.S. Out of Vt!” T-shirts. Similarly, the language of the convention’s Chattanooga Declaration decries excess corporate and governmental power, says that the deepest issues of the time go beyond left and right and declares that liberty can survive only if political power is returned to local communities and states. “The American Empire is no longer a nation or a republic,” it says, “but has become a tyrant aggressive abroad and despotic at home.”Even those ill-disposed toward the idea of an independent Vermont, Hawaii or Alaska or to the new Confederacy envisioned by the League of the South might see some logic here. Back in 1981, the journalist Joel Garreau published “The Nine Nations of North America,” mapping out how economics, geography and culture really made it more logical for the United States, Canada and Mexico to be nine nations than three. Mr. Sale argues that the big theme of contemporary history, from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the evolution of the United Nations from 51 nations in 1945 to 192 now, is the breakup of great empires. And some on both left and right agree that the only cure for a federal government that’s too big and too powerful is to make it less big and less powerful.His relentlessly bleak vision is that catastrophic events, long term (collapsing dollar, out-of-control oil prices, climate change) and short term (Iraq, Katrina, government-sanctioned torture), will produce the downsizing of America, secession movement or no.“The virtue of small government is that the mistakes are small as well,” he said.Still, he concedes, there are a few roadblocks. Another 177 e-mail messages might feel like a revolution, but in that big, bad, computer-fueled world it’s just another tiny blip in the din. Local control might look fine in green, crunchy Vermont but perhaps looks less fine if it meant Southern states maintaining segregated schools and water fountains through the ’60s. Who is going to pay your Social Security, build interstate highways or finance NASA? And just how to make secession happen — legally and geographically — is, he concedes, still a work in progress. One option might be state by state, but then there are those Neo-Confederates in the South, or advocates of independent New England, Cascadia (Washington, Oregon, British Columbia) or New Acadia (Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and the four Atlantic provinces of Canada).Mr. Sale was asked what nation he’s prepared to live in.“I’d like the Hudson Valley,” he said. “I’d even include New York City, the whole Hudson watershed. It would be rich in resources and culturally unified. That’s the whole point of secession. If you want to leave a nation you think is corrupt, inefficient, militaristic, oppressive, repressive, but you don’t want to move to Canada or France, what do you do? Well, the way is through secession, where you could stay home and be where you want to be.”Of course, there might be problems here, too. What about the poor orphaned folks in distant Buffalo or Rochester or the vast empty acres upstate? What if the city didn’t want to join and wanted to be its own smug Cosmopolitania instead? Where would the Bronx, the one borough on the mainland, end up?Oh, well, life’s difficult.“You would call it Hudsonia,” he said, warming to the thought. “That’s the thing about secession. It fires up the imagination like nothing else.”
Protest and Persuassion
Protest and Persuassion
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