A big event:
An Italian judge sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric in a symbolic ruling against "rendition" flights used by the former U.S. government.
The Americans were all tried in absentia after the United States refused to extradite them. But the verdict, the first of its kind, was welcomed by rights campaigners who have long complained the renditions policy violated basic human rights.
(Hat tip: Tehran Bureau)
Dramatic new footage of protesters stomping on posters of Khamenei and tearing down his likeness from billboards.
A reader writes:
My straight son worked for the marriage equality campaign in Maine. I just got off the phone with him. He is sad and started crying. Not for himself but for those whose rights have been taken away and those who have been fighting for those rights for years. I have seldom been so proud as a Mother. I told my son that we should be satisfied. People like us who work hard for our ideals and follow our hearts have nothing to be ashamed of.
I also don't believe that the campaign has anything to be ashamed of. I was worried about the early ads, but they improved. The campaign organization, by all accounts, was superb. The money was there. The enthusiasm was there. The turnout was spectacular in an off-year.
The hard truth is: people are still afraid of this, and our opponents knew how to target their fears very precisely. They have honed it to an art – their prime argument now is that although adults can handle gay equality, children cannot. And so they play straight to heterosexuals whose personal comfort with gay people is fine but who sure don't want their kids to turn out that way. One way to prevent kids turning out that way, the equality opponents argue, is to ensure that they never hear of gay people, except in a marginalized, scary, alien fashion. And this referendum was clearly a vote in which the desire to keep gay people invisible trumped the urge to treat them equally.
The truth about civil marriage – why it is the essential criterion for gay equality – is that it alone explodes this core marginalization and invisibility of gay people. It alone can reach those gay kids who need to know they have a future as a dignified human being with a family. It alone tells society that gay people are equal in their loves and in their hearts and in their families – not just useful in a society with a need for talented or able individuals whose private lives remain perforce sequestered from view.
This is why it remains the prize. And why our eyes must remain fixed upon it. In my view, the desperate nature of the current tactics against us, the blatant use of fear around children (which both worries parents and also stigmatizes gay people in one, deft swoop) are signs that what we are demanding truly, truly matters.
You can always tell what matters because it is the one thing our opponents are desperate to prevent. That is why, even in Washington State, even when they dilute marriage into "domestic partnership", the Christianist right is already promising to mount another referendum to repeal it again. They know that once civil marriage is accepted, the bigotry toward gay people has been dealt a terminal blow.
But guess what? Civil marriage is already here. It exists in several states already, it exists in the consciousness of an entire generation. It exists abroad in America's closest neighbor and in America's closest allies. The speed of the movement towards it is unprecedented in modern civil rights movements, even as it may seem crushingly slow to those who live under discrimination's weight. These defeats – even narrow defeats as in California and Maine – should not discourage us. The desperation and fanaticism of our opponents proves they know that this is the crucial battleground. And they're right.
But civil rights victories, the final and enduring ones, are always built on the foundations of defeats. Sometimes, the defeat of a minority's sincere aspiration to equality helps reveal the injustice of the discrimination and the cruelty of the marginalization. Sometimes, it helps show just how poorly treated we are, and galvanizes a community to fight back more fiercely as we saw in that amazing march on DC last month. That has certainly been true of previous civil rights movements. It is just as true of ours.
So congrats, Maine Equality. You did a fine job. Congrats, HRC. You helped. No congrats to Obama who is treating this civil rights movement the way Kennedy first treated his. But we don't need Obama.
We are the ones we've been waiting for. And we will win in due course, with a good spirit and keen arguments, and with passion and conviction in our hearts. We will win.
A reader writes:
I wouldn't put it on the Catholic Church in Maine. First of all, the Church in Maine is far more relevant with the voters who would have voted to repeal the law in the first place. Secondly, the Church is far from relevant in the socially liberal areas of southern Maine which is where one finds the majority of the state's voters. Socially, southern Maine is far more like an extension of Massachusetts than what people traditionally think of when they envision Maine. The Diocese might be housed in Portland, but the majority of Catholic voters can be found north of places like Bangor, in the lumber towns.
This doesn't exonerate the Church, but it does call into question your causal theory. I think the stronger force here is social stagnation. Most people in central and northern Maine live and die there, and rarely travel beyond it's boarders (with the exception of an occasional trek to the similarly rural areas of Canada). These are simply not Colbert Nation type voters.
Yes, but when the church makes its priests urge parishioners to deny people civil rights, it does make a difference.
In the interaction between a Basij and a young girl, you see everything you need about what tyranny is:
"Thought I’d share a newly developed recipe for Elephant Upside-Down Surprise Cake. First you take a congressional district that has had Republican representation in the U.S. House of Representatives since two decades before the Civil War, then add a teabag, pour on some hot steamin’ Sarah Palin, add a squeeze of Rush Limbaugh, then carefully strain the mixture until there is no trace of the moderate Republican. Then just wait and watch. Pretty soon you’ll have….Surprise! A Democrat! There you go folks. Dems across the land can now send thank you notes to Our Lady of Perpetual Meddling. Can’t wait to find out whose fault THIS one is going to be," – Mudflats.
Above is video said to be from Tehran University. Enduring America's snap analysis of today's events:
There are too many spontaneous and re-routed gatherings to say that the Green movement has been suppressed. And the footage that we are coming from outside Tehran, more than in previous rallies, indicates that there is a spread of the opposition.
[W]hile the quantity of protestors may be less than expected, the strength of the sentiment is not to be underestimated. Despite all the regime’s intimidation and threats, demonstrators are openly calling the Supreme Leader a “murderer” and stomping on his picture. Security forces may able to use tear gas and bullets in the air to keep them from the largest squares but they cannot remove them from the streets.
Via Global Voices, video said to be from today of guards attacking protesters. The attack starts around the 2:00 mark:
After the jump another video that the blog Raye Man Kojast captions as:
People chant: "don't be afraid we are all together" and "guns, tanks, and Basijis have no effect anymore."
at Revolutionary Road and Scott Lucas at Enduring America are both doing an incredible job keeping up with all the bits of info coming out of Iran. So are Matthew Weaver and Saeed Kamali Dehghan at The Guardian blog, a sample of which follows:
7.57am:
Unsurprisingly the state media is ignoring the opposition protests and focusing instead on the official anti-US rallies. Press TV claims: "Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life and many political persuasions have staged a rally at the site of the former US embassy in Tehran, better known in Iranian history as the 'den of spies'."8.06am:
One of opposition leaders Mehdi Karoubi has been seen in Hafte Tir Square, according to ABC reporter Lara Setrakian, citing a colleague. Callers to the dissident Iranian radio station ePersian radio also report seeing Karoubi among the protesters, according to translations from blogger Homylafayette.8.39am:
Police are wearing teargas masks for the first time, according to an email from a contact in Tehran. He also reports that the security forces are filming protesters and that most of the government buildings in central Tehran are closed.
9.04am:
Once again news of the protests in Tehran is spreading rapidly on Twitter as Trendsmap demonstrates.9.39am:
Karoubi has been roughed up by "agitators," according to the reformist website Mowjcamp. His body guard helped him leave the scene, it says.
9.51am:
A friend of a usually reliable source of Twitter has been hit in the eye by a plastic bullet and has been take to hospital.10.27am:
Security forces mainly paramilitary units from the Revolutionary Guard swept through an opposition march in central Tehran, clubbing some protesters and kicking and slapping others, according to Associated Press witnesses.10.39am:
New video purports to show protesters dressing bleeding head wounds after clashes with the security forces.
The Dish 
