From the great to the small. The Times of India reports that the daughter of one of Ahmadinejad’s main rivals has been arrested. “The daughter of Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and four relatives were arrested over their involvement in protests against alleged election fraud in Iran, the Fars news agency reported on Sunday.”
In other developments, here’s Youtube video of a girl dying from what is described as a Basij sniper round. Revolution is not a dinner party. It’s a game where you don’t get mad. You get even.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Meanwhile, President Ahmadinejad tells the US and Britain to butt out of Iranian affairs. “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United States and Britain on Sunday to stop interfering in the Islamic Republic’s internal affairs after its presidential election, the ISNA news agency said. “Definitely by hasty remarks you will not be placed in the circle of friendship with the Iranian nation. Therefore I advise you to correct your interfering stances,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying in a meeting with clerics and scholars.
Maybe he doesn’t want engagement. That’s a door that swings both ways.
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The only person who will feel left out of the “circle of friendship” is the N00b Pres.
As much as I feel for the ordinary Iranian people, if they are ever going to have any kind of free and democratic government, they will have to see this through – the thugs won’t leave willingly.
Just like here….
What’s that smell?
ACORN all around us.
“Definitely by hasty remarks you will not be placed in the circle of friendship with the Iranian nation.”
Oh yes, by all means let’s curry favor with this miserable murdering miscreant who, after all, represents the Iranian nation.
Except he doesn’t. We know it, and soon enough–Allah willing–he may as well.
Let’s hope that his arrogant “I advise you…” strikes our President as the presumptious affront it obviously is meant to be. Maybe Obama can read in these words what truly matters, that there are no words he may offer obsequious enough to matter.
Interesting…
For DECADES Iran has murdered citizens of other countries….
From funding, arming and training hezbollah, hamas & supporting the killing of it’s expat’s in other nations…
From supplying IED’s, weapons and personal in Iraq to murder Iraqis and American forces,,,
here is a message for the Iranian people and government…
PAYBACKS ARE A BITCH
To Mr. Ahmadinejad,
I advise you to consider our concern for the Iranian people in light of your concern for the People of Iraq. I advise you to view your call for an end to interference in Iran with the attentiveness your government has shown to the government of Lebanon. I further advise you to understand the historical ties, the code of Hammurabi, and spiritual ties that bind our nation to the desires of the people you subjugate by your immoral rule.
I advise you to consider that… We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —
Panama has some lovely estates where you might find a refreshing change from Moscow or Tehran.
Another reminder, if we needed one, that our Founding Fathers were really smart to include the Second Amendment along with the other nine.
We have seen faked photos come out of the Middle East, why not faked/staged videos as well?
Situations like this make it clear why autocratic governments disarm their people.
Separating Wheat from Clift’s Chaff.
In 1979, when the Iranian revolution was unfolding, Haqqani was in college in Karachi. In a show of solidarity with the Iranian people protesting the shah and shouting “Death to America,” Pakistani students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and set it on fire. As president of his university’s student union, Haqqani was pressed to lead an attack on the consulate in Karachi, but he resisted. “What I never said out loud is that burning down the consulate would have wrecked the wonderful library there, and deprived me of access to all the books I found so useful for my studies in international relations,” he later wrote.
Haqqani recalls how audiovisual aids suddenly appeared in the consulate library after Ronald Reagan was elected and invigorated U.S. propaganda efforts abroad. Reagan named Charles Z. Wick, a flamboyant movie executive, as director of USIA, the U.S. Information Agency. The media made fun of him; among his biggest Hollywood hits was Snow White and the Three Stooges, and he seemed bent on turning the world into a Disney movie lot. Reagan doubled the USIA budget, and Wick used the latest technology, which at the time was satellite television, to broadcast and market American ideas and values. Democrats were skeptical, and a decade later—when the Clinton administration was in power and having to placate Sen. Jesse Helms, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who hated anything that smacked of foreign aid—USIA got kicked to the curb, folded into the State Department. It’s been moribund ever since, along with the network of consulate libraries that Haqqani credits with helping shape his world view. You reap what you sow—another biblical admonition that seems appropriate.
They’re holding the daughter hostage, worried by the goings on in Qom.
For an America apparently unwilling to use military force to deter Iran’s regime from its malignant and terror-based ambitions on the global stage, this rebellion is the best chance that has come along in the 30 years since the Islamic revolution to see the Iranian regime collapse. Which could be a genuine game-changer for peace and progress in the Middle East, in a way that no amount of Obama’s speechifying and respect-offering and nuclear-haggling could possibly achieve.
For such a collapse to happen would almost certainly require that Iran’s pervasive and armed security forces flip sides, and go over to the demonstrators. That is far less likely to happen as long as major powers, especially the U.S., are busy offering or showing “respect” — to borrow one of Obama’s favorite words — to the current regime.
A must-read from Claudia Rosett. Maybe somebody could forward a copy to Pres. Obama?
http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/nothing-to-do-with-us/
We don’t really know where this is all going. But there are a couple of points to remember. Fighting an oppressive regime is for keeps. Those who oppose it risk everything. The second point is that this is the Iranian regime which the administration, only recently wished to make a deal with. How reliable could such a deal have ever been? And does it make any sense to do a deal with it, unless it has changed?
The demonstrations are in a sense a kind of information sample or window into the character of our potential counterparts, bought at great price. They indicate who we are talking to and how legitimate is their hold on power. Apart from moral considerations, the answer to that question is important because it establishes how stable any arrangement with them will be.
Personally, I have never believed that nuclear weapons were THE problem with Iran. Belgium can build nuclear weapons. Australia can build nuclear weapons. Canada can build nuclear weapons. Is anyone worried about Canada? The problem with Iran has always been the character of its regime. And by extension the character of the regime has always been the complicating factor in trusting it to make a deal.
W
the character of the regime has always been the complicating factor in trusting it to make a deal
And that character is????
Arab, and its god-form, Islam.
So we do know what is going on, strategically. We, the West, are asking for the death of Arab culture, and its god-form, Islam. And it is good; bye bye perfect man, bye bye misogeny, bye bye killing Neda whose only crime was to be a beautiful girl in western clothes.
And so, Arab culture dies, just another bio-diversity thingo that failed the evolutionary test. Killing women, wrapping them up in the “Sack of Freedom” aka the Burka, wasn’t conducive to the survival of the species.
Isn’t it only appropriate that the Persians are the ones who have kicked the Arab culture out first? Indonesia will be next. Too much money to be made by adopting the West.
The only question is: why do we pander to Arab culture? Is it reverse racism in extremis?
ADE
“…this is the Iranian regime which the administration, only recently wished to make a deal with. How reliable could such a deal have ever been? And does it make any sense to do a deal with it, unless it has changed?”
Any deal done with this regime would necessarily have been contingent on the ground rules established during the Reagan-Gorbachev era: Trust but verify.
The problem is, we could never trust the Iranian regime as presently composed without continual and intrusive internal inspections they almost certainly would never have allowed. Even assuming they would have consented to some kind of agreement, we almost certainly would very soon have found ourselves in a very similar situation as existed with Saddam Hussein and the U.N. inspections regime, meaning we could never be certain of just what was going on. And who wants to go through that nonsense again?
But the larger point going forward is this, I think. We are now at a point where, even assuming it prevails in suppressing the will of its own people, we cannot ever again engage in deliberations with this regime. Or, to put it more accurately, I suppose we could, but only at the expense of our founding principles and self-respect–not to mention the respect and trust of that part of the world still predisposed to respect and trust us.
ADE…
dont confuse PERSIA with Arabs..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Islam
“We cannot ever engage in deliberations with this regime…” Thanks #16, that sounds about right. For a number of reasons. Wretchard’s reason is the stone-cold one: the system is not stable, we have incontrovertible proof of that, and making a deal would be like writing on water. Your reason is the philosophical-political one: a deal would violate our principles and would confirm what Obama has already tried to demonstrate, namely that we are craven chumps without self-respect or any moral compass.
There is also a third reason, maybe a hybrid of the first two: the personal emotional one, of asking the American people, through their government, to shake hands that are still wet with innocent blood.
Obama has really backed himself into a corner here. Why am I not surprised?
Was double comment, sorry.
#7
Yours should have been a much more appropriate reply from our POTUS.
/wish we could send just one such strong-worded letter all those years ago, follow up with real kabooms….
Theocracies Are Doomed. Thank God.
Totalitarianism based on theology is destined to fail for the same reason other totalitarianisms fail:
because, as Jefferson said, “the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”
In an imperfect world, there will never be a complete end of theocracy any more than there will ever be a complete end to tyranny. Power will ebb and flow, regimes come and go. But in the main, history’s path leads to more liberty, not less—to what Jefferson thought of as the bursting of chains, a sound you could almost hear in the crisis of Tehran.
“But the larger point going forward is this, I think. We are now at a point where, even assuming it prevails in suppressing the will of its own people, we cannot ever again engage in deliberations with this regime. Or, to put it more accurately, I suppose we could, but only at the expense of our founding principles and self-respect–not to mention the respect and trust of that part of the world still predisposed to respect and trust us.”
—
Sirius:
And when did our man from Chicago, BHO, start caring about our founding principles and that (alien) Constitution based on negative rights?
And what does the respect and trust of Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and Reverend Wright have to do with us?
Doug, I know you well enough to know you are not this dense. Please post another comment to let others know you are just joking.
bobal said…
What Neda’s father said.
The image of Neda, a young Iranian woman, being shot and killed in the streets yesterday has become a rallying cry for Iranian reformists and their allies internationally.
A reader who couldn’t quite make out what her father was saying in the video understood after learning that her name is Neda.
He sent in the transcript:
“Neda, don’t be afraid. Neda, don’t be afraid. (There is yelling and screaming.)
Neda, stay with me.
Neda stay with me!”
–
-/
Atlas Shrugs
By which I mean, of course, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and Reverend Wright have forever forfeited the right to be considered part of the current conversation.
Yeah, Sirius, you’re right.
Isn’t Atlas’s reader’s contribution amazing?
God help us all.
Look to Qom for the next breaking story (updated)
6:00 PM ET — Where is Rafsanjani?
“According to an online reformist news source Rooyeh, Rafsanjani has been in Qom meeting some members of Council of Experts and a representative of Ayatollah Sistani.
According to the source that asked to remain anonymous, during this meeting they recounted memories of the days of the Revolution.
A reasonable purpose of these meetings, according to the source, is that Rafsanjani is looking for a majority to possibly call for Ahmadinejad’s resignation.
As one reader points out, Sistani is “one of the most respected Grand Ayatollahs within Shia Islam in the world. He’s Iranian (from Mashhad, same city as Khamenei), but spends most time in Najaf/Karbala in Iraq.”
The Shia clerics are not a monolithic bloc. And the clerics in Qom may hold the key to breaking this situation wide open.
ht – al-Bob
We know of what the Iranian regime is made.
We also know of what the US administration is made. We, meaning everyone, including enemies.
Obama? He is a vacuous twit. That comment about no violence was particularly vacuous, and would be listened to and spit upon by those who he was talking to. I suspect that line comes from him. The rest from State.
Since 2002-2003 there has been a war in Washington among the various foreign policy ideas. Bush went abroad with an evangelizing spirit. This wasn’t due to something within. It was a response to a middle east and foreign policy establishment worldwide that was mired in a dangerous unreality. You can talk to Assad and Moubarak and Abbas all you want. The reality is that they have no control, except negative control. The actions of the leadership of the middle east has set in motion movements and ideas that eventually killed 3000 US citizens.
The realists eventually won the day. The Rolodex is the thing. If a thug state has a restive population, help them keep control. If a thug state wants a war with someone, point them in a direction away from you and feed both sides. If someone gets a bit too big for their britches, whack them. Israel is a handy bait to feed the wolves.
Obama the vacuous twit he is bought this line, simply because it promised less distraction while he remade the US economy and government.
One can almost hear the gnashing in State and the White House. Reality has intruded again. That damn Bush set in motion events that cannot be encapsulated within a Rolodex.
Derek
Are the Ayatollahs of any stripe relevant?
These people are in the streets because of the governance by ayatollahs. I would suspect that the people’s attitude toward them would be at least skeptical in fields other than direct theology.
A question.
Where is Al Jazeera?
Derek
Herb:
I think they may be very relevant to those who are not having anything to do with the street protests.
—
“Many of the Shiite clerics in Qom never embraced the idea of either a supreme leader or a central role for clerics in the new Islamic republic. Iran’s revolution represented not just a political upheaval. It was also a revolution within Shiism, which for 14 centuries had prohibited a clerical role in politics. With clerics taking over government, many senior Shiite clerics feared that Islam would end up being tainted by the human flaws of the state. ”
—
UPDATE
UPDATEAP is reporting the arrest of Rafsanjani’s daughter (mentioned above) and 4 other relatives of the powerful former president.
Um…they’re not being very subtle, are they?
They know full well what Rafsanjani is up to and are making it clear to him that there will be consequences unless he ceases what he is doing.
Iran News
Feeblemind…if you’re referring to this video of the girl dying, you should know that there are other videos of this same death, with much more detail. It is the real deal. In one I’ve seen, the video is from a video camera, not a cell phone camera. You can see her face before the blood starts, and watch her confused look slowly fade to unconsciousness, and yes, death. It is not pleasant, to say the least.
Doug, couldn’t help noticing this bit from the Iran News link you offer:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States does not believe that the post-election uncertainty in Iran will complicate efforts to reach out to Tehran over its nuclear program, the White House said on Friday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Iran/idUSTRE55I4V920090619
You’re right, brother. God help us.
We who knew what he was are stunned.
Are true BHO believers still blind?
…the character of the regime has always been the complicating factor in trusting it to make a deal.
I know you meant Iran, wretchard, but to my horror, this episode lends support to what I thought might be wild charges that we can’t trust the Obama regime to make deals in our interest.
My stomach is tightening with the suspicion that he might sell us out to totalitarians in order to burnish his reputation as a “uniter.”
Just read this fascinating first-person account of events on the streets of Tehran yesterday. It is on the NIAC blog
http://niacblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/a-day-in-the-life/#more-2473
‘My stomach is tightening with the suspicion that he might sell us out to totalitarians in order to burnish his reputation as a “uniter.”’
* * *
What makes you think he has not already “sold us out” in the truest sense of the phrase in order to add their coinage to his election coffers? It seems obvious to me that one reason for him buying ice cream in order not to have to make any Presidential decisions on behalf of America is that Mr. Obama feels he “owes them one” … or a million.
Canucks with nukes? Yea, well..you can put me down as finding this worrisome. Especially if they are from the Maritimes, Quebec or Ontario. Sure would liven up Vermont politics though.
Ah, Mahmoud, Mahmoud, Mahmoud. Did somebody hurt your feelings? Did you expect Americans to act like good dhimmi boys and girls and do what we are told by you? What a crybaby you are, Mahmoud.
You threaten us with death every single week. You fund terrorists to kill children. But all we need to do to make you cry is say a few words you don’t like. Awwww… I guess I should feel so sorry for you, and on one level I do. I feel so sorry for you, Mahmoud, that you would become such a pathetic human being. It is so sad, Mahmoud, that your parents didn’t raise you to be any tougher than tissue paper.
Oh Mahmoud, you think you talk so tough, you think you are ten feet tall, you talk of wiping other people off the map. But all it takes is for a few Americans to say a few words and you start bawling like a baby. Mahmoud, you want to think you’re tough when people all over the world know you are just a wimp hiding behind the robes of your masters.
Neda was wearing jeans and sneakers. Western talismans. sigh.
I look at what is going on in Iran today, and I see a preview of coming attractions in America.
Some facts to keep in mind while so many of you are inebriated with glee over Iranian developments:
1. The color of the “freedom fighter” is green — a color deeply associated with the Islamist movement worldwide.
2. Their battle cry is “Allahuakbar” — the classic Jihad battlecry.
3. Their spokesman, Mousavi, was PM when Iran decided to pursue the nuclear project which is finally coming to dangerous fruition.
4. The Iranian revolution originally came to power under the fanatical zeal of young Iranian “students” in 1979 – many of whom were actually educated in the West. The current crop of Iranian students is, if anything, even more deeply steeped in the poisonous marinade of Islam than their predecessors. It strains sanity and credulity to assert that these students have somehow imbibed an impulse for “freedom” or “democracy” under the fascist Islamic regime, no matter how much erroneous swill has been retailed about “reformers” and “moderates” by Iranian apologists and “analysts” over the last three decades.
Projecting some kind of Western freedom movement onto these events borders on dangerous magical thinking — and I’m deeply uncomfortable at the prospect that so many on the right seem willing and eager to view unfolding events in Iran without the slightest sign of healthy skepticism or sane intellectual balance over the last week or so.
Morton Doodslag, of course you are right. We must resist this unhealthy impulse to overtly root for true hope and change. Instead our silent wish for the Iranians should be, “more of the same, more of the same…”
Obama is a Muslim. Therefore he’s against the US, against freedom, against Liberty, and for Ahmadinejad. Obama WANTS the worst possible regime, so he can go hug them, allow them their nukes, and give them the green light to nuke Israel (and perhaps the US).
Obama is NOT an American, culturally, and hates everything about America. He WANTS America nuked, attacked, so he can install a Vichy America dream regime. And his supporters, women and the media (but I repeat myself) want the same. Oh not all of them. But most of them.
A massive attack would in their view “break” America and punish the “evil White Males” who hold original sin and are beyond redemption, and thus allow the era of golden rainbows and unicorns to reign through Sharia and politically correct “green” and “anti-racist” initiatives. This is Bill Ayers dream come true, the true progressive/feminist/media/women’s utopia — complete with “Dead Kennedy’s” … “California Uber Alles” organic poison gas in the concentration camps. Except it will be Obama the not so secret Muslim instead of President Jerry Brown.
Obama NEEDS Nutjob. It’s why he’s dedicated to preserving him. So he can have Nutjob nuke us, surrender, and gain total control to make America a soft Islamic state mixed with PC-driven leftist utopias, with a heaping dose of anti-White Guy agendas.
It is not just Obama after all … his hugging of NutJob is embraced in the Press, among Leftists, among Liberals, and among his Female/Black/Hispanic/Gay coalition with fervor. They like what he’s doing. Because they want NutJob to win. Simple as that.
Morton Doodslag:
That was a good cautionary comment. A couple of points, though:
1. I’m not “inebriated with glee” over the bloody carnage in Iran.
2. I don’t know what kind of government the rebels would install. None of us can know that. It’s just that my default setting is to root for anyone who opposes a clearly despotic government, which is what Iran has now.
FWIW, I was in (American) college in the 1978-80 time frame. I knew a few Iranian students and became friends with a couple of them. I would like to get rid of the current Iranian government, but I hope we never have to go to war with Iran. They’re good and decent people, from the few examples I’ve known. And the women are stunningly beautiful. As Neda was, alas…
Morton: I doubt that anyone is starry eyed over what comes next if the Iranian government falls.
One must compare that to what happens next if the Iranian government doesn’t fall.
Derek
Morton -
Re: #3, I think Wretchard and others have pretty well addressed the “relationship” between Mousavi and the protestors, and Mousavi’s background. The point has already been discussed and acknowledged.
Re: #1 and #2, the color green has been associated with Islam itself for a long time. Not surprising that the Islamists would adopt it. So is every green-wearing Iranian protestor automatically an Islamist? Or is it possible that, in the body of 1+ billion Muslims, there might be more than one single absolute implication of the wearing of the color green?
Re: #4, your interpretation is possible, but it’s not the only interpretation. Instead of just assuming that the situations in 1979 Iran and 2009 Iran are comparable, and are therefore producing like-minded youthful radical Islamist fanatics, it seems to me that the assumption itself is something that warrants inquiry and discussion.
I would argue that the situations in 1979 and 2009 are different on a number of levels. First off, the Iranian leadership. Just how is the Western-backed, modernizing, secular-leaning, Israel-recognizing Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi the equivalent of Dinnerjacket and the mullahs?
Second, the Iranian youths in 1979 who ended up joining the revolution were raised, for the most part, in circumstances of relative (or real) Western-influenced freedom. Their radicalization was sold to them as anti-Western, return-to-Islamic-roots-and-identity, anti-establishment “liberation” from American influence. In reality, anti-Westernism turned out to be anti-freedom as well.
Anti-Westernism and anti-freedom ARE the establishment under which the current Iranian youths have grown up. Unlike their parents’ generation, they are in a far better position to know firsthand the actual experience of living under an Islamist theocracy, not just the rhetoric and propaganda thereof.
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is, do they love Big Brother? Have they been successfully and irrevocably propagandized? Are they, in Yuri Bezmenov-like parlance, a generation lost to brainwashing?
There are reasons to doubt that they are. Just one being, as buddy pointed out, the young women like Neda who wear jeans and sneakers.
If this is the case, then Iran would not be the first country to prove the observation that perhaps the best innoculation against tyranny is living under it.
Obama is a Muslim.
For what it’s worth, I personally don’t think he’s a Muslim in the sense of a devout believer. A devout Muslim wouldn’t go around saying he’s a Christian. I also don’t think TOTUS is a Christian, either. It was a handy banner under which to march while establishing his street cred in South Chicago. And he may well find certain Christian teachings here and there appealing. But truly born again? Not seeing the fruit, so IMO, no.
What I do think he is, is a transnationalist post-modernist (but perhaps that’s being redundant). Not culturally American, as you said. But not culturally *any* fixed thing, either (although my one bet on any scintilla of fixedness would be Chicago machine pol).
And this is precisely why he has the potential to be so destructive. He doesn’t even have to consciously want to see, or actively work for, America “nuked, attacked.” All he has to do is (a) instinctively believe that America, like Britain, is “just like the other 190 countries in the world” and therefore not inherently worth first consideration, benefit of the doubt, and tooth-and-claw defense, and (b) instinctively believe that war is the single worst possible outcome of any crisis situation.
Nothing I’ve seen from him has shown me that he does NOT subscribe to both (a) and (b).
Which is a serious problem.
And which is why our Founding Fathers in the Constitution required natural American citizenship of a president. It is absolutely critical that POTUS be someone who, unhesitatingly and to the marrow of his or her bones, self-identifies as American and sympathizes with the culture of Main Street. Because sometimes it is truly impossible to discern what the best course of action is, and all POTUS has to go on is his gut instinct. For the good of the country, that gut instinct needs to be American.
For all his faults (and they were/are legion), I never doubted the gut instinct of McCain in a dogfight.
Obama? The stuff that keeps you awake at night.
I don’t argue that the facts 1-4 so stated necessarily mean the “students” are Islamic fascists, but it’s a shorter line between such an inference and the facts than the line being drawn by most in the West viz. this insurrection.
I also want to make it clear that I am happy to see instability in any totalitarian regime, bit remain skeptical about the prospects of the downfall of Islamic fascism in Iran, (or any other Muslim gutter) as long as the totalitarian doctrine of Islam itself remains unchallenged or unmentioned in such a fight. Those “students” aren’t calling for “death to Islam”. Until they do, the end of their misery I’d nowhere in sight. It is slimly possible that the current insurrection may bring the day closer that Muslims confront the evil of their ideology, bit I seriously doubt it.
I will add a fifth, more speculative fact to the solid facts I name above:
5. I hear nothing from these protesters suggesting that they will be any less supportive of Iranian terror proxies in the ME, or supportive of the regime’s lust for nukes. Polls in the past (for what Iranian polls are worth) have indicated widespread across-the-board popular support for Iranian nukes.
So after the dust settles from the latest contretemp, we are very likely to see a continuation of the current Iranian agenda. why is that such good news? Until I see the face of the arrogant Iranian attitude kicked in, I remain a complete skeptic as to the prospects for this insurrection working out for our American or global non-Muslim interests. Still, the violence and instability inthis particular Muslim sewer is something.
As of the time of the Press Sec.s statement there was still a chance that the Great Leader Khamenei would reverse his disasterous course of actions regarding the elections. IF that was the case then yes, there was no reason to believe dealing with Mousavi would differ from dealing with Ahmadineajad except for the results that could be expected.
But Khamenei did not choose that the easy way out. Instead he called upon the people of Iran to agree that the democracy thing they were all doing was a sham and good for foreign relations only. Once he challenged the opposition to “like it or lump it”, as some wry observer translated his speech from Friday prayers, there was no turning back. At that time it was all in for the opposition, time to praise the lord and pass the ammunition, or at least what ever was available to the wave of green. Iran’s revolutionary government is corrupt and now it has proven itself to be an illegitimate and corrupt regime. There are ways to handle corruption, there is no way to deal with a blatantly bastardized leader. The opposition must now not only convince the rest of Iran of it illegitimacy of the current government, but also of the death of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. You see mr. Ahmadineajab and the rev. Khamenei killed it with their disregard of a modest modernity and their disrespect of the Iranian people. There is no other way to say it, the Revolution is dead, long live the revolution. I just hope it becomes more like the American Revolution, than the French version.
The face of the dead girl, RIP, is iconic in that it shows the life blood flowing from Iran at the hands of it leaders. Shot by a sniper, the girl apparently was there with her father, to witness history. It does not matter what Khamenei said about demonstrators reaping. It matters now that Iran’s Mothers are weaping for dead sons and daughters. Because the Grand Leader couldn’t be bothered to count ballots in a legitimate manner.
Nor could The Messiah come up with a statement or action that reflected a thread of humanity.
Morton,
I have read on the street accounts over the years of the disdain many of the young have for the regieme.
60% of college students are women.
We don’t know what the nature of the outcome would be if Mousavi and wife came to power, but it stretches credulity to think it would be as removed from the needs of the people as Iran under nutjob.
Especially after this.
“I look at what is going on in Iran today, and I see a preview of coming attractions in America.”
Oh, I think it’ll be much more fun when the streets of America rise up again to throw out the fascist overseers. We will all be armed and fully capable of shooting back for one thing, I’m pretty sure our military will not shoot at us upon the orders of President Pantywaist and his braying Secretary of State, and ACORN and other melanin-enhanced Obama supporter will take the opportunity to break into and loot anything that’s not protected by business owners bearing shotguns which will add a extra little fillip of interest to the proceedings.
Where will the media be? Hiding under their desks, of course, lest they also be dragged into the streets and hung upside down a la Mussolini. But they’ll hardly be missed since there will be so very many citizen journalists eager to take their place and do a better job at it from the get-go.
Then there was that meeting in Qom.
(see my #27 and #31 above)
“Many of the Shiite clerics in Qom never embraced the idea of either a supreme leader or a central role for clerics in the new Islamic republic. Iran’s revolution represented not just a political upheaval.
It was also a revolution within Shiism, which for 14 centuries had prohibited a clerical role in politics.
With clerics taking over government, many senior Shiite clerics feared that Islam would end up being tainted by the human flaws of the state. ”
Nahncee,
Not just Korean shopowners in LA for that affair, we’d be treated to the sight of Middle Eastern Quickshop managers nationwide defending our right to private property!
Dear feeblemind,
I will answer you at face value, assuming you are actually as ignorant of world events over the last decades as your question would suggest.
If you haven’t noticed, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Government immediately as it came to power began arresting, imprisoning, torturing and executing a very wide range of people it did not much care for:
Communists
Leftists (sympathetic to communism)
Union leaders, organizers, and members (connected to communism, secular socialist Left)
Teachers and professors who taught subjects regarded as inimical to Islam
Teachers, professors, administrators, and students who dissented from the Islamic Revolutionary rule, Shari’ah, et cetera.
Thieves (well, they just amputate their hands…)
Adulterous Women, and women who defy their fathers wishes, and women who are insufficiently modest or who wear Western fashions not modest Islamic Chador, Scarves, Burqa, or Hajib.
Homosexuals (Shari’ah generally holds that a homosexual should be killed if married, imprisoned for life if single.)
Un-believers, especially any who attempt to convert a Muslim away from Islam. This includes Jews, Catholics, Baptists, Zoroastrians, followers of Bahu’allah, Methodists, Presbyterians, Seventh Day Adventists, COGIC, etc.
Over thirty years, they have arrested and “disappeared” many tens of thousands of their own citizens.
Have you not seen the videotaped reports of homosexuals and adulterers hanged by their necks and left to rot dangling from Industrial Cranes in Downtown Tehran?
Have you not heard of the 1989 Fatwa (Islamic condemnation) of British author Salman Rushdie for his book titled “The Satanic Verses?” The Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini called for his execution for irreverence to Islam. A Fatwa calls for any Muslim to execute the offender, regardless of local laws, borders, etc., and defines the execution as a duty and and honor for the Muslim who carries it out. Mr. Rushdie was required to go into hiding for most of a decades, moving from one safe house to another, avoiding public appearances, and protecting his family from Islamic zealots.
Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran has openly been providing financial, technical, and staffing support along with weapons to Hizb’allah in Lebanon and foreign insurgents (non-Iraqi) who have been killing Shiite and Sunni Muslims throughout the region to advance Iran’s agenda. Oh, yeah… and they’ve been killing Coalition troops, too.
So, if you haven’t noticed these things, which have been widely reported in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and even the San Francisco Chronicle, you need to pay a little more attention.
The mullahs who rule Iran have been brutalizing their people for three decades, without giving a shit who might see. In fact, the more publicity their brutal tactics get, the better for them, since it gets the message to anybody watching that they’d better knuckle under.
You risk being shown to be either a total moron, or a visitor from Democratic Underground attempting to pose what would only seem a reasonable question to a total moron.
ADE @15
“Isn’t it only appropriate that the Persians are the ones who have kicked the Arab culture out first? Indonesia will be next. Too much money to be made by adopting the West.”
I like that you are decrying a delimited, geographically-distinct culture, “Arab culture,” instead of the expansive, unquantifiable demographic, “Muslims.”
More and more folks are discarding the old “it’s the Moozies” convention. Could this be a sign that the burqa is finally slipping off of the Baathist/Arab Socialist/Nasserite proxy-project?
With a lot of paid help from media (here I include academe; recall that Juan Cole and Edward Said are both overpaid talking heads with political scripts, just like Keith Olbermann) these miscreants had managed to conceal themselves in the folds and cleavage of the global Muslim flock for the last half-century. And, just as crab-lice hunker down when a light shines on ‘em, labeling these parasites “Muslim,” or “Islamist,” in a bid to isolate and derogate them only seemed to make them burrow deeper into the global Ummah’s jungle of follicles..
But now, it seems something’s changed. The mask could be slipping, or, in keeping with my parasitic metaphor, the pyrethrinoid of Iraqi democracy may be doing its steady delousing work.
And if it’s getting harder for the Baathists to hide amongst the world’s largest religion, then they’ll be easier to target when they break out into the open in Nairobi, Chicago and Caracas. A
And then maybe America can get on with our own Arab Project, duly begun under Bush I, that of putting the “I” back in Arab Islam.
Thanks for posing the question about Al Jazeera, Derek, in your post #30.
I went to their website, and found they had a compilation of RAW Youtube videos, especially the shooting of the young girl Neda (one with her face blurred, but the other untouched) along with some official footage with statements from Iranian officials.
Remarkably, the ENGLISH-language Al Jazeera does not paper over the stark contrast between the statements of Iranian officials describing the protesters as “terrorists” and the footage showing the protesters merely standing and milling around, FACES UN-COVERED, while the police and troops face them. In the compilation video, it was impossible to draw any sense that Al Jazeera was taking the side of the Iranian Revolutionary government.
Hooda Thunk?
Al Jazeera’s HQ is in Qatar, they actually have the reputation of airing multiple ME POV’s on issues in the ME. Even if it is pure bull, or patently propaganda. So it is really not a surprise at all, especially since the US Army went to great lengths to ensure the American take on stories got aired on Al J.
One thing I forgot in my #46 comment: If I recall correctly, Iran was the only country in the Middle East where the people held spontaneous pro-American street demonstrations after 9/11.
Needless to say, the government was not pleased.
“Obama is NOT an American, culturally, and hates everything about America. He WANTS America nuked, attacked, so he can install a Vichy America dream regime. And his supporters, women and the media (but I repeat myself) want the same. Oh not all of them. But most of them.”
The chances of an Vichy America being installed contingent on such attacks rely on whether or not the folks living in “flyover country” will allow such stupidity to stand. Such a move could very well open the door to a second Civil War. And it could earn Obama a bullet for his troubles. Which WILL guarantee a second Civil War.
Such a war will guarantee the Madison Avenue metrosexuals being relegated to refugees, cannon fodder, “strange fruits” and objects of ridicule and universal scorn. Female supporters of this “Vichy America” will be too busy searching for new safety and support systems among the rednecks and other flyover people.