Buzzflash
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Mixx it!
RedditTens of thousands of people appeared on Tehran's streets today, again, despite Ayatollah Khamenei's clear warning that they'd be met with force and violence.
According to reports from various quarters, the demonstrators have added a new chant to their repertoire: "Death to Khamenei!" If so, another red line -- and an extremely explosive one -- has been crossed.
Thousands of troops from the Revolutionary Guards, the police, and the Basij paramilitary force -- the mosque-based, devout followers of Khamenei -- blockaded Revolution Square in Tehran today, the proposed site of the main opposition gathering, and they used tear gas, metal batons, and water cannons to keep people out of the square.
It's unclear whether the show of force will quell the protests. The energy is there. Video from Tehran overnight showed that the skies over the city echoes last night with cries of "God is Great!", in what has become the movement's call to arms. (It's a direct echo of the anti-Shah revolution in 1979.) According to the Guardian, the regime has managed to stall the protests, and it reports that both Mir Hossein Mousavi and Medhi Karrubi, the reformist candidates on June 12, are wavering about open defiance of a regime bent on violence:
The momentum of Iran's "green revolution" - triggered by allegations of electoral theft earlier this month - appeared to stall yesterday, as thousands of plain clothes and uniformed security officials swamped Tehran, using tear gas and water cannon on a hard core of about 3,000 demonstrators.
The paper reports a "climate of fear growing in Iran," adding:
In the first indications that the extraordinary week of protests might be coming to an end, Karoubi's Etemad-e Melli party said plans for their participation in the rally yesterday had been scrapped for lack of a permit. "Because of not obtaining permission, the rally today has been cancelled," a party spokesman said yesterday. An ally of Mousavi said the politician had urged his supporters not to march on Saturday or Sunday.
But other reports say that Mousavi has called for a general strike, and that he has said that he is prepared for martyrdom:
Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said he was "ready for martyrdom," according to an ally, in leading protests that have shaken the Islamic Republic and brought warnings of bloodshed from Iran's Supreme Leader.Mousavi also called on Saturday for a national strike if he is arrested, a witness said.
The showdown is building.
Here's President Obama's latest:
The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.
Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples' belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.
Share this article
Robert Dreyfuss
A chronicle of America's adventures in foreign policy and national security.
RSS
I think the important question here is if these protests were occuring here. For the cause of lets say healthcare, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, transparency in government, gay rights and all the other issues that the current administration was elected to address and haven't addressed.
And if we elected a President who has reneged on these promises for change and we had the balls to demonstrate what would be the casualities here? Would the national guard and local police be arresting us and shooting us down in the streets? Of course they would. But we will never have the chance to know. Because the American People are a bunch of cowards who have no idea how to go about the sacrifice necessary to bring about the change we want.
Watch your T.V. and see how people who really have a concern and are willing to sacrifice their lives for what change they see.
And then go hide in your house and feel the guilt of a coward.
Posted by chaoszen at 06/20/2009 @ 2:22pm
Shame on America..
Posted by chaoszen at 06/20/2009 @ 2:25pm
Or let's say a large demo were being organized in NYC to protest multibillionaire Bloomberg's buying of an illegal 3rd term as mayor ... what would Mike do? (Forget Jesus, just Mike, he's the boss.)
It would make multibillionaire Mike's restrictions on antiwar demos look almost gentlemanly.
Posted by sloper at 06/20/2009 @ 2:39pm
It is amazing how cowardly and pathetic Americans have become. We stopped standing up for our rights and ignore the fact that so many have been taken away or restricted. The bush/cheney appointmented dictators of 2000 should never been allowed to enter the White House. They have damaged and disgraced our nation and the republican run media is largely to blame.
Posted by Tiger2Lover at 06/20/2009 @ 2:57pm
It is amazing how cowardly and pathetic Americans have become. We stopped standing up for our rights and ignore the fact that so many have been taken away or restricted. The bush/cheney appointmented dictators of 2000 should never been allowed to enter the White House. They have damaged and disgraced our nation and the republican run media is largely to blame.
Posted by Tiger2Lover at 06/20/2009 @ 2:57pm
chaoszen: Thanks for standing up...
Posted by Tiger2Lover at 06/20/2009 @ 2:58pm
But we will never have the chance to know. Because the American People are a bunch of cowards who have no idea how to go about the sacrifice necessary to bring about the change we want.
Watch your T.V. and see how people who really have a concern and are willing to sacrifice their lives for what change they see.
And then go hide in your house and feel the guilt of a coward.
Posted by chaoszen at 06/20/2009 @ 2:22pm
No, they wouldn't be demonstrating because only 1-3% of Americans are on the fringe left like you are Chaozen.
Posted by antisocialist at 06/20/2009 @ 3:07pm
Here is the way it looks to me. Mousavi claimed _before the elections_ that only if the election was rigged could he lose. That was a tip-off that he was going to pursue the same strategy that the so-called revolutions in the Ukraine and Georgia used. Mousavi claims the elections were rigged, perhaps they were. But the problem is that no one has come forward with tangible evidence that they were. If Mousavi has so much support all over Iran, surely some, many people would come forward with proof of rigging. Apparently, no one has except for the so-called "Mousavi letter", which is not believable. So Mousavi is left with repeating over and over again that the elections were rigged. Trouble is that repetition will not make it so, though of course many people may come to believe it. Mousavi should produce evidence that there was vote rigging or accept that he lost the elections. Bourgeois, designer dressed, English speaking Teheran does not represent all of Iran. It is not likely that these people are going to pull off the coup d'état which Mousavi appears to be attempting. Oh yes, one last comment, if I were Iranian, I would invite Obama to butt out, or go to the devil. Have we not had enough of "liberal interventionism"?
Posted by mikhailovich at 06/20/2009 @ 3:22pm
I salute the brave men and especially the extremely brave women who are standing up for their rights.
This is yet another clear example of a Religious dictatorship. Another clown who talks to God (sound familiar?). I freely express my support for secularization of the world.
Posted by jlenahan at 06/20/2009 @ 3:47pm
No, they wouldn't be demonstrating because only 1-3% of Americans are on the fringe left like you are Chaozen. Posted by antisocialist at 06/20/2009 @ 3:07pm
Impotent whining is not a central pillar of leftist politics.
Posted by TomAgnew at 06/20/2009 @ 4:04pm
"We stopped standing up for our rights and ignore the fact that so many have been taken away or restricted" (Toger2Lover)
Well said but the US citizenry is so dumbed down that they don't know what you are talking about.
Obama has just fallen in the trap and spoken out, calling the Iranian Government's (tear gas)response "violent and unjust".
Question for Mr Obama: What would you call the torture that you swear the US does not practice, but does so nevertheless, at Bagram, Afghanistan, and at the still continuing rendition program if not violent and unjust? How about indefinite detention Mr Obama? Is that just? The US has no moral authority anymore. It's the Pot calling the Kettle black.
Posted by mystic at 06/20/2009 @ 4:22pm
Obama really has no moral authority to lecture Iran on anything. Just a few weeks ago he was hugging and praising the brutal dictators of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The average Egyptian living under Mubarak's iron fist could care less about Obama's Cairo speech or what he has to say to Iran.
Posted by Communard115 at 06/20/2009 @ 4:35pm
No, they wouldn't be demonstrating because only 1-3% of Americans are on the fringe left like you are Chaozen.
Posted by antisocialist at 06/20/2009 @ 3:07pm
you always have the most interesting statistics.
Posted by frosty zoom at 06/20/2009 @ 4:57pm
the cream rises to the top...
Posted by A_Pax_On_Your_Houses at 06/20/2009 @ 5:27pm
The crowds are of such size that their "movement" is beyond the point of no return.
The violence now being perpetrated on them will turn these demonstrations into a full fledge and bloody remolution.
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-dawn-for-iran.html
Posted by PacificGatePost at 06/20/2009 @ 6:18pm
No, they wouldn't be demonstrating because only 1-3% of Americans are on the fringe left like you are Chaozen.
Posted by antisocialist at 06/20/2009 @ 3:07pm
On what plane would that be?
The left is now the jarority, which is why the democracts control both Houses and the White House.
The GOP on the other hand, are less popular in this country that Russia and Venezuela.
You're losing grip with little grip you ever had with reality.
Posted by Shingo at 06/20/2009 @ 6:51pm
Chaozen. No, they wouldn't be demonstrating because only 1-3% of Americans are on the fringe left like you are
Posted by antisocialist at 06/20/2009 @ 3:07pm
Thanks for that reassurance Liberty. Having read the first few posts here I was coming to the conclusion that America was a refuge for raving madmen.
I think we need to see the protests in Iran in the context of the culture and their inadequate understanding of what democracy is. Apart from the obvious disappointment of Mousavi's supporters there is the issue of temperament so that the demonstrations need to be seen as an exciting event, for the participants, with the seductive attraction of a tinge of danger in it. Thus we need to think in terms of politics and entertainment combined.
That of course is not for we more phlegmatic people of European stock but for crazies like Chaos (zen) and T2L, who obviously normally must live drab boring lives to get a kick out of the contemplation of such silly little confrontational games in your country over pretty irrelevant issues.
Protest it might be but democracy Western style, where the ballot box is supreme, it is not.
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/20/2009 @ 6:53pm
Have we not had enough of "liberal interventionism"?
Posted by mikhailovich at 06/20/2009 @ 3:22pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Oh really! I'm sure you're including Bush/Cheney's "liberal interventionism" in that question.
Posted by jarshadow at 06/20/2009 @ 7:00pm
Posted by chaoszen at 06/20/2009 @ 2:22pm: You sure are out there on a lonely limb...Americans are anything but cowards. The Iranians are revolting for their freedom. We have had our freedom for a long long time and have fought to retain and protect it when the need arises. This effort in Iran may or may not make it but things over there have changed forever.
Bush, Cheney and the whole country were challenged on 9-11 and rose to the occasion with a vengence. They never took their eye off the ball and it has paid off. We can only hope our own young president has the where-with-all and the steel to push when necessary - and he Will be tested.
Posted by pyeatte at 06/20/2009 @ 7:16pm
Here is an article that suggests a better way of developing democratic systems of governance in places like Iran. The protest certainly highlighted the problem but change is more likely to come about by building a national consensus:
http://tinyurl.com/nqsdu2
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/20/2009 @ 7:16pm
We aren't so much cowardly as lazy. I mean seriously, most Americans would be happier being arrested at a protest than walking twenty blocks to participate in one. That's why the anti-abortion/anti-gay contingent is so successful at long haul protests. They think masochism is a virtue, bring on the sun, rain and snow.
Posted by Pogge at 06/20/2009 @ 7:39pm
Hey I got an idea. Have a little paper thing when you check out of Walmart, "Want an immigrant to stand in for you at the _____ protest tomorrow? Only a dollar."
As long as the fill in the blank was either "Lynch the illegals" or "Kill the babykillers" this would work amazingly well.
Posted by winyahn at 06/20/2009 @ 8:13pm
They don't "hate us for our freedoms" anymore, but instead our "unconscious soft power has never been stronger", because "technology, films, music and the rise of the English language all mean the West dominates the world almost without thinking".
Mr. Moore needs to put down the hookah...
Posted by snowball666 at 06/20/2009 @ 7:38pm
Read that as meaning useful enculturating (if there is such a word) tools. And we don't have to speak one of those funny foreign languages either. Makes it real easy.
Horses for courses though. For me bim bash boom was about all that was likely to effect change in Iraq. That is one way to go about the great project.
Iran and other parts might be more amenable to "technology, films and music made more seductive when expressed in our beautiful, adaptable and universal mother tongue (mine anyway-not sure if American qualifies- Moore is a pommy after all).
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/20/2009 @ 8:42pm
#
Posted by pyeatte at 06/20/2009 @ 7:16pm:
How do you know the Iranians are revolting for their freedom? When 1 million Americans came out and marched against the Iraq war, they were ignored, but when half than many march in Tehran, it's a revolution.
Our freedom has not been challenged since our independence, but Americans are probabyl yher most fearful and anxiety ridden people on the planet, soi it remains to be seen how brave we really are.
Bush and Cheney dropped the ball before and after 911. They ignored the warnings before the atatck and after the atatck, they manipulated the fear of the public to push for a war against someone who was no threat to use, while taking our eye off the ball in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden is free - what more proof is there that they took their eye off the ball.
Posted by Shingo at 06/20/2009 @ 9:29pm
antisocialist !!! Listen up jackass!! If this forum were mine, you and your pathetic, weak, frightened of the dark communist, republicans would be banned from here. Instead, YOU chose a LIBERAL BLOG to spew your bullshit and lies!!! Nearly all of what YOU say is either distorted or lies! America elected liberals 40 years ago! Are you so ignorant that you cannot accept that fact! You are a typical, flatEarth, frightened coward like most of your kind. Bobby Kennedy would have been the next president had he not been tragically killed. He was a LIBERAL, and not like Clinton or Obama. A true liberal. MOST of America believes in LIBERAL policies. 1. Healthcare for everyone. 2. Freedom of Speech 3. Jobs programs 4. Affordable housing 5. Laws that prevent corporations from price gouging 6. Equal rights and pay for all sexes and no discrimination against gay and lesbian couples.
What you are antisocialist is a communist, who has wrapped himself in the flag who's meaning you no nothing about. You stand for lies. You most definitely are an American traitor who really has nothing to offer anyone, but lies and deceit. You sound like Rush, of Hannity or cheney or any lying republican coward who thinks that they can lie on public air waves and that they will not be called out on it!!!
Posted by Tiger2Lover at 06/20/2009 @ 9:40pm
The fact that republican, do nothing cowards actually have the balls to say that America would never stand up to tyranny is insane in itself. In 2000, they actually accepted the illegally appointed bush and cheney as their leaders, though the public did NOT elect them!!! 5 republican judges did!!! But when anyone challenged this wrong, they went insane. When will America accept as a fact, that the republican is a traitor, a liar, a criminal, a person who puts companies first, a person who puts people last!!! This is the truth. We all know this.
Posted by Tiger2Lover at 06/20/2009 @ 9:45pm
"Americans are cowardly"?
According to Naomi Wolff's prescient brilliant "The End of America"--written in 2007,and worth a reread, all of the ten steps towards dictatorship have been accomplished, and one of them is to "invoke an external threat", like "Islamofascism" let's say (Tom Friedman's favourite word, still).The Italian fascists used this tactic, Weimar Germany also. The demonization of the Iranian regime continues this trend. Bin Laden was murdered according to Benazir Bhutto (BBC interview just before she was assassinated),so he's out. I wouldn't say Americans are cowardly, but scared? Explain their fear of Gitmo terrorists released on their doorstep any other way. We don't protest for the same reason.Fascism is slowly incremental, says Wolff, and we're not terrorists so what do we care? As long as people think "it can't happen to us" they'll support torture, and barbaric as it is, they do overwhelmingly. Cowardly is the wrong term though.
Posted by mystic at 06/20/2009 @ 9:48pm
REPUBLICANS CASTRATED THEMSELVES! You sneak in here, take advantage of a liberal blog that does not censor you stupid lies and insane ideals... You look fucking crazy, like bush trying to look intelligent as shit literally spews out of his mouth. The world thought we elected him. We DID NOT! For 8 years, we were under house arrest by a group of do nothing republican cry babies who put companies ahead of people. Nothing has changed, now that you are impotent. You, and you alone, castrated yourselves.
Posted by Tiger2Lover at 06/20/2009 @ 9:52pm
democracy Western style, where the ballot box is supreme.
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/20/2009 @ 6:53pm
hahahahaha.
Posted by frosty zoom at 06/20/2009 @ 10:12pm
Bush, Cheney never took their eye off the ball and it has paid off.
Posted by pyeatte at 06/20/2009 @ 7:16pm
for the chinese.
Posted by frosty zoom at 06/20/2009 @ 10:13pm
"technology, films, music and the rise of the English language all mean the West dominates the world almost without thinking".
Posted by snowball666 at 06/20/2009 @ 7:38pm
eww....
Posted by frosty zoom at 06/20/2009 @ 10:15pm
when expressed in our beautiful, adaptable and universal mother tongue
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/20/2009 @ 8:42pm
english?!?!?
por favor.
Posted by frosty zoom at 06/20/2009 @ 10:18pm
In stark legal turnaround, Obama now resembles Bush
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is morphing into George W. Bush, as administration attorneys repeatedly adopt the executive-authority and national-security rationales that their Republican predecessors preferred.
In courtroom battles and freedom-of-information fights from Washington, D.C., to California, Obama's legal arguments repeatedly mirror Bush's: White House turf is to be protected, secrets must be retained and dire warnings are wielded as weapons.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/70383.html
Posted by frosty zoom at 06/20/2009 @ 10:32pm
I'll be the first to admit that most liberals are cowards. But the fact is, violent protests don't work very well, except to start a war, that is. We on the left are winning, however, and the mood of the country is far more liberal than it was 9 years ago. There's no rightward turnaround in sight and the only real question is whether the fascists still in government or the fascists elsewhere can manipulate events in order to impose more crackdowns on freedom.
Posted by DejaVu at 06/20/2009 @ 10:43pm
Posted by Tiger2Lover at 06/20/2009 @ 9:52pm | ignore this person | warn this person
James von Brunn! How did you escape? Is it really you or......aw you had me going for a minute you're really Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad! I should have known its muslims that hate christians the most!
Posted by BigPasture at 06/20/2009 @ 10:43pm
President Barack Obama is challenging Iran's government to halt "all violent and unjust actions against its own people."
His comments Saturday came as a postelection crackdown against protesters in Tehran grew more violent.
Police in the Iranian capital beat protesters and fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands who rallied in open defiance of Iran's clerical government. At least seven people have died since the unrest began days ago.
Obama said in a statement that the universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected. He said the U.S. "stands with all who seek to exercise those rights."
At least now I know what a "neocon" is since the Obamanation that makes desolation seems now to represent the perfect example with his Iranian decree!!!!
Somebody let Tiger2Lover know that the "republican mind control machine" has been successfully integrated in the Obamanation that makes desolations brain!
Posted by BigPasture at 06/20/2009 @ 10:46pm
"Americans are cowardly"?
According to Naomi Wolff's prescient brilliant "The End of America"--written in 2007,and worth a reread, all of the ten steps towards dictatorship have been accomplished, and one of them is to "invoke an external threat", like "Islamofascism" let's say (Tom Friedman's favourite word, still).The Italian fascists used this tactic, Weimar Germany also. The demonization of the Iranian regime continues this trend. Bin Laden was murdered according to Benazir Bhutto (BBC interview just before she was assassinated),so he's out. I wouldn't say Americans are cowardly, but scared? Explain their fear of Gitmo terrorists released on their doorstep any other way. We don't protest for the same reason.Fascism is slowly incremental, says Wolff, and we're not terrorists so what do we care? As long as people think "it can't happen to us" they'll support torture, and barbaric as it is, they do overwhelmingly. Cowardly is the wrong term though.
Posted by mystic at 06/20/2009 @ 9:48pm
Thank you for all that. You are aptly named. But what on earth does it mean?
Is it not just possible that Naomi Wolf is a double agent? What if she were to turn up on your door step with a Sieg Heil? We non-cowardly scaredies cannot be too careful can we.
Of course it is quite possible she is quite bonkers like a few here we won't name but I suppose that discovery would take all the fun out of it.
Others here who imply they were "locked up" and possibly castrated (probably accounts for their shrillness) but by others and not self inflicted, during the recent reign of King George, obviously should have been. Hopefully they are talking to us from their present place of confinement.
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/20/2009 @ 11:00pm
Don't be silly, lrejones54. For Christ sake, read the f* book. It's our bible. I've just reread it and every word has come true. Enough proof? This is mandatory reading. Read it on the bus, on the subway. Let people see you reading it.
Posted by mystic at 06/20/2009 @ 11:05pm
Don't be silly, lrejones54. For Christ sake, read the f* book. It's our bible. I've just reread it and every word has come true. Enough proof? This is mandatory reading. Read it on the bus, on the subway. Let people see you reading it.
Posted by mystic at 06/20/2009 @ 11:05pm
I will. I will. Would you please tell her that. But please, please don't send her to my door step. I don't mind you coming as long as you give me fair warning.
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/20/2009 @ 11:24pm
Big Pasture: You are the kook with the mask. Did you vote republican recently? Seems so. Your messages are without meaning, as most republicans are. You basically are a steady stream of shit talk. You have nothing intelligent to say. It's bla, bla, bla.. I mean, you did support chimpy, didn't you!! You have to live with the fact that YOU, as a white racist, are the minority, and the black man has finally beaten your ass with his superior intelligence! It must be driving you insane!!!
Posted by Tiger2Lover at 06/20/2009 @ 11:46pm
"But please, please don't send her to my door step" (lrjones4) I like your sense of humor. Actually Naomi Wolf's book arms you with knowledge as to what the hell is going on. It is the ABCs that explain the BS that is happening. The book is short, easy to read and devastating. It's more scary to hide your head in the sand which is what most Americans are doing, convinced that Obama will reverse everything to a blissful utopian America. She wrote it before Obama was elected, but it is even more topical and relevant today. The "End" of America is the "End" of the America that we all remember. It's over. We are all in this together, and we need to help each other.
Posted by mystic at 06/20/2009 @ 11:56pm
Posted by mystic at 06/20/2009 @ 11:05pm
Engineers don't get much time to read the feminists. That's why they come to places like this to broaden their education.Thanks to your adoration I checked out the sexy looking Naomi (could have been an old picture admittedly) on abortion also. Wonder how that consistently tees up with her expose of "dreaded" Nazism advancing in America. That could form Step Eleven:
"In publishing an article in The New Republic that fiercely criticized contemporary pro-choice rhetoric, Wolf staked out a qualified pro-choice position. She argued that the movement had "developed a lexicon of dehumanization" and urged feminists to accept abortion as murder and defend the procedure within the ambiguity of this moral conundrum. She continues, "Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die."[35]
Wolf finishes her article by speculating that in a world of "real gender equality," passionate feminists "might well hold candlelight vigils at abortion clinics, standing shoulder to shoulder with the doctors who work there, commemorating and saying goodbye to the dead." (wiki)
Agree with her that it is murder but less impressed with the rest which is a possible indicator of her own incipient "Nazism". The Nazis used to do this sort of thing with old people, Jews, Jewish pregnant women gypsies, gypsy pregnant women and homosexuals etc. What thinks the Mystic?
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/21/2009 @ 12:11am
You have to be a schizophrenic off your meds to be a Repug. For the last 8 yrs all iranians have been portrayed as terrorist recruiters and trainers.
They villified the entire nation without so much as a disclaimer that there were aspects of the iranian society which were moderate or even liberal. Now they expect US to beleive they are concerned (Empathtic, compassionate) about the woes of the protesters.
Are the they Crazy or do they think we all are? What these Repugs are ginning up with their BS is just another excuse to start a Blood for Oil War…‘We will be greeted as Liberators'..Of their oil, too.
Posted by Shingo at 06/21/2009 @ 05:55am
Here is a very surprising analysis by a strong left wing (or so I thought) critic of GW Bush when he was president. I expected something different but it is very much along the lines of the Dreyfus et al approach re the political corruption of the present regime in Iraq. A bit on the 2005 election for Mask who may need to revise his theory about the Bush v Obama effect:
"Iran leaves our cynical elders blind to reality"
June 22, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/na6abu
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/21/2009 @ 10:17am
.... regime in Iran... (not Iraq)
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/21/2009 @ 10:19am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNTjhctvIuk
try not to be too cynical. especially after the Cuba article
Posted by A_Pax_On_Your_Houses at 06/21/2009 @ 10:51am
Chicago school economy and Pinochet oppression and mass murder of thousands of innocent people , use of water cannons against people , calling people who disliked the regime terrorists ,etc…………… Ahmadinejad and free trade, vast privatizations and mass murder of thousands of people and imprisoning whoever dares to stand up against him , use of water cannon against people , calling people who dislikes the regime terrorists ,etc………….
I am an Iranian student who thinks developmentalim is the only way out for countries such as Iran from the mess our people are all stuck in right now .
Posted by angoor at 06/21/2009 @ 11:17am
To pretend that the mean-green-Mousavi-machine is somehow the Velvety Revolving Door to Western-style democracy in the ME is no less visually impaired.
Posted by snowball666 at 06/21/2009 @ 11:02am
I think he said something along those lines and that Mousavi was not the most liberal candidate. On my reading of Burchell I thought he was aiming his arrows firstly at the vote counters.
On the face of it it seemed to me that the working class, generally being more religiously and socially conservative would have got Ahmadinejad over the line.
The consensus left, right and centre, doesn't seem to support my brilliant analysis, in that those who counted the votes were, it seems, having fun with the numbers. The 2005 election in which Ahmadinejad got 19% in the first round and 60+% in the run-off probably lends strength to the view that the vote counters are corrupt comedians who took the Iranians for fools.
If they don't want this sort of trouble they shouldn't let the brighter ones go to university or at least should keep them away from things like stats and mathematics.
I think despite what has been said here, your recent His Majesty did think the Iranians like all humans had this burning desire for freedom and democracy that would win out in the end. I picked that up in a few of his quotes about Iran. My guess is that unlike Clinton re Iraq and those Dec (?) 1998 missiles aimed at Baghdad which scored the death of one of Iraq's top artists and not much else, Iran was not on his radar for military strikes of any kind.
Interesting to know where Burchell got the inside gen on Hillary. Haven't seen that elsewhere.
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/21/2009 @ 11:45am
Congress and President Bush (Obama has not rescinded these efforts) --both put policies in place to destabilize and overthrow the Iranian regime. However, US activism in this area might well be counterproductive.
Regime change was tried in 1953--CIA overthrew democratically elected Mosaddeq government. We didn't like that the Iranians nationalized their oil. Installed our man, the Shah, he being a despot, he was overthrown by the people now in charge. It seems oil is a big thing there-and here. Me, I'd stay out of there and let the Iranians settle it.
Posted by hkaplan at 06/21/2009 @ 11:57am
Who knew that the internet could have such a powerful effect on the politicians. Does it work here as well? Didn't do it for the run-up to the US Iraq invasion, (the internet voted no), or for the prospects for single -payer health care reform (internet votes for single-payer).
Posted by hkaplan at 06/21/2009 @ 12:00pm
Vociferous support the principles of democracy and respect for the sovereignty of other nations should not be considered mutually exclusive.
Posted by snowball666 at 06/21/2009 @ 11:57am
Quite happy with that as long as the sovereignty doesn't reside solely in the hands of one barbarous, brutal and repressive leader. That was one place where it could be argued that a bona fide sovereign nation or people had not existed for a few decades.
Can be a useful propaganda adjective to stir up the unthinking though. I'll give you that.
Posted by lrjones4 at 06/21/2009 @ 12:12pm