There are still only a few Leftists who continue to believe that the revolution in Iran and the Ayatollah’s regime was something that deserves support from the Euro-American Left (I suspect that their psychological profiles are similar to those of the last few ardent Stalinists who hung on through the 1950s and 1960s and refused to acknowledge the horrors perpetrated by the Soviet tyranny). Nevertheless, they — as well as anyone who thought that Iran was well on its way to becoming a liberal democracy under a reformist regime — should consider the following: feminist filmmaker Tahmineh Milani has been arrested at the order of the reactionary Revolutionary Court on charges that her film The Hidden Half insults Islamic values and slanders the 1979 revolution [Independent Media Center]. The arrest is part of a broader campaign restricting dissent which has closed several dissident newspapers and imprisoned several activists, but Milani’s arrest marks the first time that artists have been targeted.

For further reading:

• GT 5/17/2001 reports on the decision by the Guardian Council of Iran that women cannot run for president under the revolutionary constitution

Steve Lohr highlights some interesting parallels between the emerging technological privacy movement and the early days of the environmental movement in the 1960s [NY Times]. A couple of brief notes:

• Who says that there has been no book on privacy with the impact of Silent Spring? After all, there are few political books as well known and as shattering as George Orwell’s 1984, a book which is in large part about the destruction of privacy through State technological surveillance and control.
• It’s worth noting that a deeper parallel between the two movements rests in their mutual fears of technology being turned into an instrument of exploitation and control: for the environmentalists, of nature; for the privacy advocates, of individual people. They both come out of a strong background of populism and autonomous self-government.
• For hands-on information on protecting your privacy online, check out Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Privacy Now! campaign, security.tao.ca — oriented towards leftist / anarchist activists doing political work online, and SafeWeb — an online anonymizer.

In the in a shocking development file: The Guardian Council of Iran has rejected the candidacy of all 45 women [Independent Media Center] who applied to run for the Presidency of Iran. The Iranian constitution states that all Presidential candidates must be political men, which the Guardian Council interprets to mean: No Girls Allowed. Of course, here in the US we don’t need a Guardian Council. The power structures of the Demopublican parties, and their stranglehold over electoral politics, have done a fine enough job of blocking women from running for President over the past century despite all of the progress of women’s liberation. But you can buck the system: Vote Woodhull in 2004!

Freedom of expression online is again under assault, as the FBI and Secret Service have begun to target the Seattle IMC in intimidating fishing expeditions, demanding that they turn over server logs despite the fact that federal agents have admitted that the IMC itself was not suspected of any criminal activity and there was no violation of US law. Thankfully, a sane judge has lifted the gag order that was imposed on Seattle IMC, so they have been able to publish their side of the story; federal sources leaked information about the story with impunity before the gag order was rescinded, showing that apparently the FBI’s only concern was to be able to spin the story as it pleased without backtalk.

In other good news, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is standing up for the IMC on this one, and the FBI’s fishing expedition is so blatant and poorly constructed that it will hopefully be laughed out of court. But this sets a very troubling precedent for the revival — or continuance, really; it never much stopped — of the FBI’s repressive surveillance against activist organizations. As the left / anarchist activist coalition grows in power, power brokers are getting scared. You could see this already in the Summit of the Americas, World Economic Forum, etc. buckling down into cities temporarily turned into militarized police states. The growing willingness of the free world’s states to use these kind of repressive tactics is something that we really have to keep a watch on, and fight back against.

Teen crime down, but more girls are going to jail [Salon], often for no clear reason other than overt gender bias. As it turns out, young women are much more likely to be arrested than young men if they are committing public disturbance or other behavior that cops can attribute to boys being boys. The message: Shut up, girls, and be good! Go on out there and have some fun, boys.