The goal is to erode the pillars of support for the regime until loyalties shift, practical power begins to drain away, and the regime starts crumbling from within. Civil disobedience is thus not primarily aimed at demonstrating the moral superiority of the opposition movement — though that is admittedly one objective — but rather to disrupt the “normal” flow of commerce, politics, and everyday life. Clearly, a violent struggle against a much stronger foe has little chance of disrupting “normal” conditions except for fleeting moments, since violence gives the state license to stamp out its opponents with the full range of instruments at its disposal.

Moreover, violence he argues would only cede the religious “center,” which includes most clergy and millions of everyday citizens, to the hardliners. He then enumerates several critical strategic principles, including:

2. Co-optation: One of the most important goals must always be to co-opt elements of the regime’s forces to the movement’s side. We will NOT win unless this happens. The strategy of co-optation requires maximum attentiveness to the nature of our message and the language we employ. Any gestures that reduce the ability of those not currently part of the movement to shift their loyalties must be avoided. For example, “death to the Islamic Republic” chants, openly atheistic acts, and threats of violence are all deeply counterproductive.

3. Neutralization: Clearly, not all, and perhaps not even most, of the regime’s supporters can be won over. But that doesn’t mean they should all be counted as perennial enemies. We must convince some of them that this regime has no future, that they are much better off by disassociating themselves from it, and that they may continue to work and live as normal citizens as long as they do not try to dominate the rest of society again.

4. Persistence: Civil disobedience is a drawn-out process. The movement should prepare for the long haul and not expect the regime’s sudden, precipitous collapse. Of course, if such an event did occur, we would all be very happy, but we cannot build our strategy on such a model. To do so would be to court disaster. We should prepare for a drawn-out fight. Whichever side — the Green Movement or the regime — designs a strategy better adapted to a prolonged struggle will win in the end. The wave of demoralization that followed the events of February 11 would not have occurred had there been a more sober assessment of the situation and a clearer understanding of the nature of the struggle.

With regards to this final point, I’ve made a similar argument on this blog with regards to the antiwar movement here in the US, and how deflated many felt after the massive protests on February 15, 2003, failed to stop the invasion of Iraq.

The rest of this strategic think piece is worth a read, so check it out if you have the time.

From the first panel, I recommend watching Charles Kurzman from the University of North Carolina speak about “Cultural Jiu-Jitsu and the Iranian Greens,” as well as the talk on “Revolutionary Prefigurations” given by journalist Danny Postel (a good friend of this site). His suggestion that the Green Movement not put off addressing economic issues (like the “color revolutions” of Eastern Europe) was met with serious debate during the Q&A period—a phenomenon we are familiar with on this site. It was also nice to hear a lot of our hunches about the ambiguity of the Green Movement’s objectives and leadership echoed by the speakers.

I have yet to watch the other two panel presentations, but both look particularly useful to those studying social movements and nonviolence. The second is about “Everyday Resistance, Micropolitics and Solidarity” and the third is on “Ethical and Political Demands of the Green Movement,” which includes a presentation on “The Gandhian Movement in Iran.”

I plan on watching both and will add comments if anything strikes me. I hope others will join me.

• About 400 demonstrators gathered in Aldermaston England on Monday to block the entrances of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, where warheads for Trident submarines are made. Twenty-six were arrested, including Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire.

• About 1,200 Iranians signed a statement against a bill that would further curb women’s rights.

• Greek customs workers announced 48-hour rolling strikes yesterday—the day that was supposed to be the last of a three-day strike to protest government austerity measures designed to pull Greece out of a debt crisis.

• Belgian train drivers went on strike Tuesday to protest safety conditions after the collision of two commuter trains left at least 18 people dead.

• About 300 protesters, mostly doctors dressed in white coats, chanted “the health-care system is in danger” and waved soccer-style red cards in the direction of the building where Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia has his office.

• Some 600 workers shut down a pulp and paper mill in southern Finland on Wednesday to protest UPM-Kymmene Corp.’s plans to lay off 200 workers.

• Thousands of civil servants have marched through Athens, the Greek capital, as they went on a 24-hour strike in protest against the government’s plans to freeze wages, gather more taxes and reform pensions. The action left flights grounded and many schools and government offices closed, while public hospitals were expected to only take emergency cases. A two-million-strong federation of unions will also start a general strike Feb. 24.

• Ikea offered Wednesday to meet with labor union leaders after strikes shut down several stores in France — but only if six workers end a sit-in at its Paris office first. Workers walked off the job starting Saturday in protest over pay.

• Disneyland hotel workers  began a water-only fast Tuesday to protest what they describe as life-threatening safety issues on the job.  To show support for workers fasting outside the Grand Californian, over 300 people marched in front of Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel in Anaheim yesterday.

• In Iran, numerous opposition figures reported police harassment on Thursday, including the firing of tear gas and paint balls at protests in the capital Tehran.

• Also in Tehran, workers of Tohid Tunnel gathered in front of the entrance of the tunnel they work for in protest of unpaid salaries. The gathering resulted in the closure of the connections between north and south Chamran Freeway from Milad tower to the entrance of Tohid tunnel.

• Syracuse Peace Council members protested outside the Syracuse Air National Guard base on Tuesday against unmanned drones that are now being operated from the site.

• In Texas, dozens of prisoners have gone on a hunger strike at a Los Fresnos immigration jail in protest of inhumane conditions. It’s at least the third hunger strike at the Port Isabel Detention Center in less than a year.

• Tomorrow, citizens of Florida and Destin will have the opportunity to show their opposition to oil drilling off Florida’s coastline. Hands Across the Sand encourages Florida residents concerned with pending drilling legislation to gather on beaches at noon and hold hands forming lines in the sand against oil drilling in coastal waters.

• Thousands of Australians will let their tastebuds do the talking when they sit down later this month for “Vindaloo Against Violence”, a mass dining event to protest attacks against Indians.

Blurred Vision, a Canadian band comprised of two brothers originally from Iran, just released a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall, part II” with a slight lyrical twist that changes the song’s antagonist from controlling teachers to the repressive Iranian regime. The new chorus supports the many young people who protested Ahmadinejad’s reelection by demanding, “Hey Ayatollah, leave those kids alone.”

The music video goes a little further with its message, showing a fictional young Iranian woman on the run from what appears to be the Basij militia as she tries to upload footage from a protest on her iPhone. The video is inter cut with actual footage taken by Iranian protesters, depicting protesters getting beaten by government forces.

While it’s hard to criticize artists who clearly mean well and care more about their political message than their commercial appeal, there are a couple popular misconceptions being forwarded by this song and video. As we’ve written about before, the role of social media has been greatly overstated—not only does it provide questionable information from a small segment of the Iranian population (wealthy, educated city dwellers who dislike Ahmadinejad’s social welfare programs) but it’s also not a reliable way to organize protests given the government’s penchant for internet crackdown.

Like everyone else trying to follow Iran from afar, the members of Blurred Vision may be (pardon the pun) blinded by their desire to see Iranians win greater freedom and civil liberties to the point where they are overlooking and distorting key facts. In a CNN interview they refer to the June elections as “rigged”—something even the mainstream magazine Foreign Policy says is untrue, citing a recent report from the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

It’s important to point out these misconceptions because if furthered they could lead to several undesirable consequences, such as the justification for a US intervention or the installation of a new president without the fundamental changes to Iran’s political structure necessary for real change. As discussed in previous posts, the only way the Green Movement can hope to be successful is to support radical reform that incorporates not just the social reform everyone in Iranian society desires but economic reform that meets the needs of the poor.

• In Iran, more than 100 police and plainclothes officers broke up a gathering of the Mourning Mothers in Laleh Park Saturday afternoon. The group — formed by women whose children have been killed in recent anti-government protests — gathers every weekend at the park to call attention to the deaths.

• Hundreds in Hong Kong ringed the city’s legislature on Friday as public frustration mounted over government attempts to bulldoze through a high speed railway, an issue that has also catalyzed a fresh push for full democracy.

• Unionized workers of South Korea’s third-largest carmaker Kia Motors Crop. will hold a partial strike for four hours a day this week in a protest against wages.

• Ground staff striking at Geneva International Airport have voted to continue their week-long protest action over salary and work conditions.

• About 300 Egyptian workers at the fishing boats of Nea Michaniona (a village near Thessaloniki, Northern Greece) continue their strike, which began on Christmas, after blockading the small port of the village last week to protest a severe decrease in their income over recent months.

• Climate justice activists will converge outside the 2nd Annual Carbon Trading Summit in New York on January 12-13 to oppose market-based trading of greenhouse gas emissions credits and call for real solutions to the climate crisis.

• The mediamen in Indian administered Kashmir on Friday staged a sit-in to protest against the shooting of a photo-journalist by a police officer in Srinagar on Thursday.

• Waving signs reading: “We All Deserve the Freedom to Marry,” more than 200 gay-rights activists and union members representing hotel employees rallied outside the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego on Saturday in the latest protest over the owner’s support for a ban on gay marriage.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi is not a radical reformer, which means he’s not interested in doing away with the Islamic system. This should be a sign that the greater social freedoms sought by the protesters do not go hand in hand with his assumption of power. By resting their so-called revolution on the shoulders of a politician like Mousavi, Iranians may end up with little more than a kinder gentler oppressive regime.

Perhaps that’s something we Americans can relate to. The movement that helped usher President Obama into office was motivated by his message of hope and promise of change. But after almost a year in office, he has shown himself to be scarily similar to his predecessor. Even the harsh treatment of activists has continued—something the much-maligned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently called to attention in his own defense:

When asked about the “awful scenes of violence on the streets” of Iran during the crackdown on demonstrators who claimed that his election victory was a fraud, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, “the American police beat people in Pittsburgh, they arrest people and use batons and tear gas against people.”

Given this sad reality, we should all realize how little change actually occurs when a movement only seeks to replace a leader. For real revolutionary change to occur, the entire system of government needs to be overhauled as well. It’s not clear if that is a demand of the Iranian opposition movement. Right now it seems to be more about election fraud. Perhaps the movement will evolve to incorporate radical reform, as well as address the interests of the poor and marginalized—a characteristic of a strong nonviolent movement. When that happens, there will be no question that a tipping point has been reached.

• Iranian riot police fired tear gas in clashes with thousands of opposition supporters who shouted anti-government slogans during a Shiite mourning event on Saturday. On Sunday, at least 15 protesters were killed as the demonstrations, which at times turned violent, continued. 

• Students at several universities in Germany staged a campus sit-in over Christmas to protest the worsening of study conditions and rising fees.

• Members of two of Turkey’s largest unions started work after an hour-long delay Friday to protest layoffs and the closure of offices that resulted from privatization. They plan to continue holding one hour protests every week until the ruling party hears their demands.

• Palestinians have held a mass demonstration against Egypt’s construction of an underground wall along the border with the Gaza Strip which claimed its first victim on Friday.

• More than 200 workers organized a sit-in Thursday morning in front of the Social Affairs Center in Jabriya, Kuwait to protest the withholding of their salaries for more than seven months, bad housing conditions and not having their residency permits renewed.

• Rallies, hunger strikes and demonstrations continued for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday in the Telangana region of India, where the demand for a separate state keeps gaining momentum.

• Taxi drivers in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki went on strike Saturday to protest the murder of a fellow taxi-driver in the region of Pylaia on Christmas Day.

• The streets of Qom, Iran’s holy city and the center of its religious life, filled with tens of thousands of mourners on Sunday. They came both to honor a founding father of modern Iran, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, and to protest the government he had come to oppose.

• More than 3,000 female Burmese workers at a bra factory in Tak’s Mae Sot district again went on strike on Monday over an assault on two of an employee’s relatives by four security officers.

• In New York City, students left school early on Monday in a walk-out to protest the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to stop giving students free Metrocards. The youngsters left school at 2 pm and gathered in front of the MTA’s headquarters to demand that the agency find a way to fill its $400 million budget shortfall that won’t force students to pay to commute to city schools.

• Some 300 municipal staff began a sit-in at the Town Hall in Alcoy, Spain on Monday against the local government’s decision to sack nine workers, saying they will remain there until this afternoon.

• Over 5,000 indigenous, Afro-Colombian and farming community members are occupying the community center of Piñuña Negro in the department of Putumayo, Colombia. A crowd of all ages has gathered at the highest government office in the area—the Police Inspector’s office—to demand negotiations with local and national government representatives and an end to military and paramilitary harassment and coca eradication programs that are causing thousands of residents to be displaced.

• Hundreds of Palestinian citizens on Monday evening participated in a sit-in organized by Hamas Movement near Salahuddin terminal on the Palestinian-Egyptian borders in protest at the building of a steel wall on Gaza borders.

• A protest at the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) on Monday drew attention to the contribution of the New Zealand business to climate change. A sit-in occurred, blocking the entrance to the building, and police arrested nine activists. The protest featured ‘Radical Cheerleaders’, a samba band, and around 80 diverse protestors.

• The Islamabad Bar Association (IBA) on Saturday protested near Sihala police training college in Islamabad to urge the government to expel the US private security company Blackwater, which lawyers said was operating inside Sihala college.

• Greenpeace activists posed as the Four Horsement of the Apocalypse and rode through downtown Copenhagen yesterday to remind world leaders of the consequences of inaction on climate change. Each represented one of the potential impacts of climate change: death, pestilence, war and famine.

• The G77, a group which represents 130 developing countries, staged a walkout at the UN Climate summit yesterday to protest what they called inadequate aid offers from rich countries.

• Saharawi non-violent activist Aminatou Haidar, known by many as the “Saharan Gandhi” entered the 29th day of her hunger strike yesterday. Doctors say she may be hours away from death, a risk she is willing to accept unless her single demand—to be allowed to return to her country—is met.

• Iranian men are posting pictures of themselves on the Internet wearing women’s head scarves in an effort to protest the recent arrest of a male anti-government protester, who was shown in a press photo wearing a female garment. Bloggers believe the photo was manipulated to embarass the man. So they are showing that there is nothing wrong with women or veiling.

• Native Hawaiians staged a protest yesterday morning near the Hawaii State Capitol over alleged attempts by Hawaii’s U.S. senators to sneak the Native Hawaiian Recognition Act onto one of the large federal appropriations bills. They say it reduces Native Hawaiians to a tribal status and does not address the true issue of the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

• Dozens of children from a Jewish Sunday school marched from Boston Common to the Hyatt Hotel in center city, chanting denouncements of Hyatt’s firing of 98 housekeepers in August. Upon reaching the hotel, the leaders of the march read a statement to hotel workers before handing over a petition.

• 1,000 homeowners occupied the lobby of 1 Chase Plaza, in New York’s financial district, where JPMorganChase has offices, to protest the bank’s broken promise of modifying troubled mortgages.

• Gay rights activists marched in front of New York State Sen. Carl Kruger Brooklyn home Sunday to protest his decision to vote against gay marriage. Organizers of the event say they intend to protest at the homes and offices of many of the 38 senators who voted against the bill.

• British Airways cabin crew voted to strike for almost two weeks over Christmas and New Year in protest over cost-cutting measures introduced by the airline.