Workers Run for Lives After Iran Petrochemical Explosion

A fire and explosion at Iran's largest oil terminal earlier this month reportedly killed 4 people. Iranian news agency IRNA said high pressure in a central boiler may have triggered the blast at a petrochemical plant on Khark Island. The fire was apparently caught on video in this clip, which also shows an explosion at 2:12 that sent workers running for their lives.



User name: 20071305
Location: Kharg Island, Iran
Date uploaded: August 1
Event date: July 25
Views: 312
Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

Iranian Merchant Strike Enters Second Week

Merchants at Tehran's main bazaar are refusing to open their stall doors for a second week, despite attempts by police and plainclothes operatives to force them back to work, PBS reports. Videos posted to YouTube show metal doors drawn closed throughout the Tehran bazaar.



User name: onlymehdi
Location: Tehran, Iran
Date uploaded: July 14
Event date: July 14
Views: 1
Click here to watch this video on YouTube.



User name: onlymehdi
Location: Tehran, Iran
Date uploaded: July 14
Event date: July 14
Views: 1
Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

Missing Iranian Scientist Flees to Embassy

An Iranian nuclear scientist who Iran claims was kidnapped by the CIA has taken refuge at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, DC, according to CNN, and asked to be taken back to Iran.

A man identifying himself as Shahram Amiri is seen in at least 3 videos uploaded to YouTube in June. In the first clip, he says he is in the US on his own free will. In another clip he reportedly says he escaped from American security agents in Virginia.

User name: shahramamiri2010

Date uploaded: June 7

Views: 68,182

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

User name: johnysmith201020

Date uploaded: June 25

Views: 13,873

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

User name: KamranIranian
Date uploaded: June 24
Views: 5,924
Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

Iran: Merchants Strike Against Tax Hike

Videos uploaded to YouTube show empty bazaars in cities across Iran, where merchants refused to open their stalls for three days this week in protest of planned tax hikes. "There is a growing sense that economic showdowns may be the next test for Iran's embattled leadership," the AP reported from Dubai.



User name: onlymehdi
Location: Hamedan, Iran
Date uploaded: July 9
Click here to watch this video on YouTube.



User name: onlymehdi
Location: Tehran, Iran
Date uploaded: July 9
Event date: July 8
Views: 109
Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

Israel Launches Spy Satellite

The Israeli government launched a spy satellite Tuesday night that defense officials said would upgrade the country's intelligence capabilities. Defense contractors told reporters it would help the military keep a closer eye on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.

The Ofek 9 satellite was launched from Palmachim Air Base, where bystanders recorded the lift-off.



User name: ramchuluch
Location: Palmachim Air Base, Israel
Date uploaded: June 23
Event date: June 22
Views: 9
Click here to watch this video on YouTube.



User name: talmonc
Location: Palmachim Air Base, Israel
Date uploaded: June 23
Event date: June 22
Views: 41
Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

A Year Later, Protests in Iran

Though opposition leaders have called off organized protests due to threats of violence, some activists are taking to the streets of Tehran to mark the one-year anniversary of the Iranian elections. The videos uploaded to YouTube show protests in Tehran and at the city's Sharif University:



User name: UNITY4IRAN
Location: Tehran, Iran
Date uploaded: June 14
Event date: June 14

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.


Videos in this playlist: 7

• Iran tehran 12 june 2010 lier where is your 63% shahrif uni
• Iran tehran sharif uni protest 12 june 2010
• TEHRAN: 22 KHORDAD 89 Tazahorat Dar Daneshgahe Sharif! Allaho Akbar!
  
• Iran tehran 12 June 2010 Sharif uni protest
  
• Iran tehran 12 June 2010 Sharif uni protest
• Iran Tehran 12 june 2010 clashes at tehran uni
• Iran tehran 12 june 2010 protest

UPDATE:  For more videos, browse onlymehdi's continuously updated playlist on YouTube.  

IRAN: Graphic New Video Shows Death of Neda

New footage posted to YouTube today depicts in graphic detail the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 27-year old woman shot in the chest June 20, 2009 during a protest of the Iranian presidential election. Two previous clips of her death, widely seen on the Internet, became a rallying point for protesters disputing the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a year ago tomorrow.

Though the person who shot the original footage of Neda's death is largely unknown (and even won an "anonymous" George Polk Award for journalism last year), in this new footage the identities of several of the documentarians are more visible.



User name: GreenRevolutionIran
Location: Tehran, Iran
Date uploaded: June 11
Event date: June 20, 2009
Views: 304

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

UPDATE: "Abducted" Iranian Scientist Says He's Safe

Yesterday, Iranian television broadcast a video that purportedly proving one of the country's nuclear scientists had been abducted by Saudi agents and taken to the US. In the video, which we posted here Monday, a man who identifies himself as Shahram Amiri speaks into a webcam, and as the BBC reports, claims he was drugged, tortured and forced to defect "with a laptop full of evidence about Iran's nuclear secrets."

Today, a new video from a man claiming to be Amiri was uploaded to YouTube. Speaking in Farsi, the man reportedly says he is safe and wants to continue living and studying in the US.



Jon Leyne, the BBC's Tehran correspondent, says: "It is a tale of two videos. A murky story, as might be expected when the Iranian and American secret services cross paths.
"Neither video is entirely convincing. The Iranian government version is poor quality, with the possibility that it has been manipulated. In the YouTube video, the man is looking beyond the camera, apparently reading a not very well written script.
"There ... seems to be an element, on both sides, of psychological warfare, not to mention propaganda, as each side plays up the quantity of inside information they have gleaned from inside each other's countries."

User name: shahramamiri2010
Date uploaded: June 7
Views: 1,094

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

Leaked video from post-election Iran, taken by the attacker

User onlymehdi just tipped us off to this video, which he says "shows the attack on the University a day after the election" back in June. He explains that "the difference between this video and others is this is shot with a handycam used by the people that attacked the university dorms. This video is a new video and is just leaked out. There is a lot of issues in Iran between the security forces, so this video was leaked somehow."

Hundreds of new protest videos flood YouTube on anniversary of Iranian revolution

Hundreds of fresh protest videos from Iran are appearing on YouTube today, as pro-reform protesters take to the streets in Tehran on the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. This marks yet another outbreak of protests since the disputed election last June.

Within hours of the protesters hitting the streets of Iran today, videos began streaming onto YouTube that document the large crowds chanting anti-government slogans and violent clashes with anti-riot police forces. Once again, these extraordinary videos provide an exclusive window into what's taking place on the ground, as foreign press have been banned from the country. YouTube remains blocked in Iran, but dissidents are passing videos to friends out of the country and using Internet circumvention technologies to post the footage, according to news reports and correspondence with those on the ground.

We're tracking the videos on Citizentube, and here's a selection that have come in so far today. A playlist can be found here.

A young man is dragged and beaten by members of the Basij police forces:




Protesters face-off against the the police:




Citizens flee from tear gas:




Security forces stand in the streets, armed and ready:




Protests in the Metro in Tehran:




Large groups gather in the streets to demonstrate:

UPDATE: This photo taken by GeoEye at 10:47 AM local time shows downtown Tehran filled with people. You can explore the area using this KML layer in Google Earth.

Olivia Ma, YouTube News & Politics, recently watched "Mass Rallies, Protests in Iran"

Access' Brett Solomon: Citizen media reaches the net despite Iran's lockdown

Back in December, we published a guest post from Brett Solomon, the Executive Director of Access (www.accessnow.org), an organization that uses crowdsourcing tools and techniques to help political movements mobilize on the web. Given the significance of the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, Brett is guest blogging for us again today.

- CitizenTube

+++++

Citizen media reaches the net despite Iran's lockdown

The fated February 11 Iranian democracy protests, timed with the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, have begun and with it a blanket of online and offline security clampdowns from the regime.

With reports of gmail being blocked and the internet throttled, the regime was hoping that citizen protest video would not make it online. They had also hoped that the only story would be Ahmadinejad's announcement that Iran would now be enriching uranium to 20% and that it had the capacity to enrich uranium to weapons grade level. To some extent this strategy appears to have worked.

Still, hundreds of clips are already uploaded, showing citizens standing firm against the regime. And importantly, videos demonstrating the naked brutality of the regime are uploaded, as is seen with this man being dragged and beaten by the militia:

In this clip, where you can see protesters and flashes of green, in cities beyond Tehran. This one from Esfahan:

Here we can hear protestors shouting “Marg bar Khamenei” (“Death to Khamenei)

With journalists being restricted to reporting on the Presidents speech, citizens armed only with rocks and mobile phones have been recording their opposition:

This is despite the fact that the Basij are out there in force. This clip showing them in the streets leading to Tehran’s Sadeghiyeh square:

but still the onlyMehdi youtube channel shows demonstrators successfully protesting there:

Reports of street battles have emerged where the militia are preventing protesters from gathering.

More images will stream in today, as the protests develop and the cat and mouse game continues.

- Brett Solomon, Executive Director, Access

Top Curators: the latest from Iran

A few channels to keep an eye on today if you're interested in the latest videos from the protests in Iran. These users are using their channels to aggregate videos from people in Tehran, and most of them upload several new videos every hour.

• Unity4iran
• ahriman46
• onlymehdi
• onlymehdii1
• TEHRAANN

Ready Set Revolution

Brett Soloman is Executive Director of an organization called Access (www.accessnow.org), which emerged after the disputed presidential elections in Iran in June 2009. Access and its members all around the world have played a critical role in collecting, curating and amplifying much of the video footage coming out of Iran over the past six months - despite the Iranian government's attempts to censor it. In the new information economy, in which over 20 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute, curation serves an increasingly important function, especially in the world of news and current events.

CitizenTube invited Brett to write a guest post about how his organization operates and what it takes for videos to travel from mobile phones in the streets of Tehran to individual computer screens around the world.

- CitizenTube

++++

Ready Set Revolution

By Brett Soloman

Regardless of how much the Iranian regime attempts to destroy the opposition on the streets, they can’t stop the flood of videos pouring out of Iran. We are working 24/7 to keep the floodgates open – and at this stage, it’s relentless.

Images of street protests, injured protesters and secret police swapping sides are on TVs, mobile phones and computer screens across the globe. This week’s images are a testament not only to the resilience of the Green movement (Iran’s democracy movement), but to the real power of video to propagate dissent at home.

It allows us in Iran and outside to see whether the protest movement is alive, where it is active and how the regime is responding. Our commitment to justice is recorded as plainly as their brutality.

Our organization, accessnow.org, works to safeguard protest videos seen below through from censorship and other forms of internet traffic engineering by the Iranian authorities. Here are a few that have been posted by one of our team Onlymehdi on his youtube channel. It was the 4th most viewed channel in the world after the protests on Sunday:

Right now our team is staying up in shifts to source and aggregate content. We receive videos from various trusted contacts in Iran – from activists, fired journalists, people on the streets. For some it is a risk to get online and send such files. Emails accompanying the videos tell of the urgency to have these images broadcast. We verify them, check their location, their dates of recording, and if there are any security risks with posting.

Releasing an important video to the world is like being a human rights defender and broadcaster all in one. Watch this video with caution:

Other videos we find, tagged Iran or Green Movement, which are vital for the world to see, but are hidden amongst videos of Britney Spears and Kanye West. This process is laborious but important. For example, releasing this video below, showing the brutality of the regime in callously running over an innocent citizen, would have happened without record or response without youtube:

Our job is also to propagate. The videos are uploaded to social media sites including Facebook and key Iranian sites like balatarin.com and Rahesabz.net. Most of the people watching our posted videos come from inside Iran – they are a lifeline to a community where all traditional sources of independent news are shut down. We also convert video to 3GP format as well. This allows videos to be watched on mobile phones and shared via blue tooth inside Iran.

Exclusive videos we have received and posted have headed up world bulletins on CNN, BBC and the New York Times. These videos are helping to change world policy. Obama’s condemnation of "the violent and unjust suppression of innocent Iranian citizens" has been cemented by the undeniable images. Finally the world’s governments are starting to pile in.

Because of the nature of these videos, and because of censorship and other forms of internet traffic engineering conducted by Iranian government, this process is extremely sensitive.

The battle is on the streets, but in a self perpetuating cycle, the videos not only report what took place but form the foundation for each next round in the fight for justice.

Brett Soloman

Executive Director

Access

The videos from Iran continue to roll in...

A few more notable videos have been uploaded today from Sunday's Ashura protests in Iran.

This video shows just how massive the turnout was - people crowd the streets as far as the eye can see:



Protesters allegedly capture anti-riot police in this video:



Several very badly wounded protesters can be seen in the streets here, with onlookers trying to help and screams ringing out in the background:



In this video, captured by someone in a building above the street, you can see Basiji officers wielding batons and reaching into a car window to grab the driver:

Two videos capturing police brutality in Iran

These two videos have just been brought to our attention - uploaded earlier today, though they appear to have been taken on December 27 during the massive Ashura protests. Both depict police forces in Iran violently lashing out against crowds of protestors. In the first video, a large group of people marching in demonstration through the streets scatter as police open fire on the crowd. The camera loses its focus as people begin screaming in panic and run for safety.

The second shows a police vehicle trying to run over citizens who are attempting to get out the way. Toward the end of the clip, a body can clearly be seen lying on the ground after having been hit by the car.

Warning that both of these videos are very disturbing.

New videos of December 29 Elm Va sanat Protest

From the looks of the newest videos being uploaded to YouTube with the tag "Iran", there have been more protests at the Science and Technology University in Tehran. Many of these videos are being labeled the "Elm Va sanat Protest"

Here's a playlist:

Graphic footage of injured protesters in Iran - discretion advised

A new stream of videos has been uploaded to YouTube that show protesters that have been badly injured or killed. This footage is quite graphic. We're embedding them here, as they have important educational and documentary value, but caution users before viewing them as the images within may be very disturbing.

Violent clashes between protesters and police in Tehran, Sunday

Today in Tehran, pro-reform activists and police security forces have clashed yet again in a new round of protests. According to reports, more than 300 protesters have been arrested and several have been killed.

Users have been uploading videos to YouTube documenting what's happening the streets.

Here's a playlist with a selection of the videos that have been uploaded today. We'll continue to update this list.

More from the Student Day protests in Iran

Videos have continued to come streaming into YouTube throughout the day, and we've been updating this playlist with new videos as they've been posted.

This wobbly footage appears to show a clash between riot police and citizens - and shots can be heard in the background:

This video, which we found via the New York Times' Lede blog, shows students protesting at Polytechnic University pulling down a gate that's holding them in:

High school students are also participating in the protests:

This video from earlier in the day shows protesters and the Basiji facing off on either side of a fence:

This video indicates that protests have continued into the night in Tehran:

New student protests in Iran to mark annual Students' Day

Videos documenting a new crop of protests in Tehran this morning are showing up on YouTube. This round of protests are being led by students, marking the annual Students' Day, which remembers the death of three students who were killed during a demonstration at Tehran University on Dec. 7, 1953.

Reports have come in to various news organizations that the Basij, the Iranian police forces brought in to silence protesters, have again used violent means to stop the pro-reform activists marching in the streets.

Here's a playlist of some of the videos that have been uploaded to YouTube today and were allegedly shot in the last 10 hours or so:

This video shows a group of Basij riding on motorcycles through Tehran:

This video shows students lighting a picture of Ayatolla Khameini (Iran's spiritual leader) on fire:

The New York Times Lede blog is live-blogging the events as they unfold in Tehran.