Today is the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The Dog was 12 years old way back then and remembers his impressions of the time. Without knowing all of the history and politics behind the revolution the impression to a tween was that the Shah was not someone who you could like, but the students around Ayatollah Khomeini were really happy and joyful.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

That impression changed when members of the Revolution stormed our Embassy and took the diplomats there hostage for so long. Being a kid on the cusp of puberty, the Dog’s emotions were easy to swing and jingoism has a dark luster that even adults find hard to resist.

For most of the Dog ’s life, the impressions of Iran and its political system have come from the outside. The view of a country, which underwent a revolution that was religiously based, taints the point that it was a revolution against a monarchy and in favor of a form of democracy. True it is a theocratic democracy and that makes an atheist from the country that which founded the idea of separation of church and state shudder in horror, but it is a democracy none the less.

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What to do when the government shoots at you?

by Diana Sweet, RawStory, January 02, 2010

An amateur video apparently taken with a cell phone has surfaced on YouTube that appears to contradict the Iranian government’s claim that its security forces didn't shoot at protesters last Sunday during demonstrations that left at least eight people dead, including the nephew of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

As first reported by The Los Angeles Times on Saturday, the video not only shows a gunman opening fire on demonstrators - it also gives an eye-opening look at a growing air of defiance by Iranian opposition.

A man in plain clothes is seen and heard opening fire on the crowd as another man can be heard shouting out "Dishonorable Basiji!" blaming a member of Iran's Basij militia for firing the shots.

With shots fired, you would expect the demonstrators to flee and seek cover, but instead, they decide to fight back.

"Attack!" someone in the crowd calls out, and the crowd runs off in pursuit of the gunman as the video, less than a minute in length comes to an end.

Originally published at Asia Times

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from Brazil and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad from Iran. What is this - the new axis of evil? No - Luladinejad is a new axis of business.

As Ahmadinejad was coming from a visit to the Brazilian parliament in Brasilia on Monday, Lula was waiting for him, virtually alone. The embrace by Lula was sudden, spontaneous, extremely warm; it's fair to assume Ahmadinejad was not expecting it. Those who saw it interpreted it as a graphic message.

Ahmadinejad did mean business: he traveled with 200 Iranian businessmen. In the long run, Brazil wants to export to Iran not only meat, grains and sugar, but also trucks and buses. And Iran wants to invest heavily in the oil industry, petrochemicals, agriculture, minerals and real estate. Lula will visit Iran in March or April 2010, also with a business caravan.

Lula and Ahmadinejad signed agreements on energy, trade and agricultural research in the latest round of what is becoming an increasingly warm embrace between Latin America and the Middle East.

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By Bitta Mostofi, November 4, 2009

Today marks the 30th year since the 444 day Iran Hostage Crisis began in 1979. On this day the media traditionally offers us images of Iranians burning American flags and effigies of Uncle Sam. We are reminded of the great chasm of mistrust and misunderstanding that has marked the last three decades of US-Iranian relations.

But, in the past year both Americans and Iranians have asked for something new. Americans have elected a president that promises to pursue diplomacy and Iranians have given birth to a popular democratic movement. So, we should not use this 30th anniversary of the hostage crisis to simply re-live tragedy and tension. Rather, today Americans have an opportunity to honestly reflect on our relationship with Iran and think about how to move forward.

For the past 30 years our government has dealt with Iran through policies of isolation and sanctions.

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Originally published at Asia Times

For the (Western) news cycle, what stood out from United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Russia this week was an "appeal for cooperation" and a "challenge" for Russia to open up its political system, embrace "diversity" and shelve Cold War thinking.

Who's fooling whom? One might be forgiven to picture a torrent of laughter echoing in the Kremlin's corridors - later washed down with prime Stoli vodka - especially considering Washington's current poor standing in the world, as well as those usual suspects, "Western values"; and the fact that Russian intelligentsia has been pointing out for years that it is Washington hawks who are still in fact mired in the Cold War. Such a pity that Iran hawk Hillary did not cross paths with chess master Vladimir.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had better things to do - he was away in Beijing for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). In Beijing, Putin bluntly told the US not to intimidate Iran, stressing that more sanctions were "premature"; what was needed was an "agreement". Hillary was thrown by judo expert Putin - and she did not even see it coming. Yet Hillary still had time to spin on American TV that if the "international community" approved more sanctions on Iran, Russia would follow.

That's not what Putin - or Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov - said, or what the leadership in Beijing thinks.

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In the lead up to the 2003 Iraq invasion any good journalist on the day Powell told the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction would have been able to debunk Powell's claims the same day.

Former chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter spoke in Tokyo the same day Powell made his presentation at the UN and told the Foreign Press Association of Japan that everything Powell had said that day in the UN was a lie, and it later turned out that Ritter was right. Ritter's speech that day was covered by Associated Press (AP) on video and wire services.

Every news organization in the world got Ritter's speech via AP, and virtually none of them published it. Rather the world press simply let Powell get away with his lies that helped lead to an illegal invasion that by some counts resulted in over a million Iraqi deaths, along with the more than 4000 US Troop deaths and tens of thousands of US Troop maimings.

Ritter is now making similar warnings about the drumbeats for war with Iran and debunking the false claims that Iran is well on the way to producing a nuclear bomb, which by the way if Iran did produce and use against Israel would likely immediately result in Iran's total destruction by Israel with their stockpile of by some counts 200 or more nuclear weapons.

We are being asked by a US Administration, Military Industrial Complex, and world press propaganda campaign, to believe that Iran is suicidal as a justification for attacking them.


Real News Network - October 6, 2009
Ritter on Iran
Scott Ritter challenges idea that Iran is close to producing a nuclear weapon

Originally published at Asia Times - Also see: Part 1: Iran and Russia, Scorpions In A Bottle

HONG KONG - Does it make sense to talk about a Beijing-Tehran axis? Apparently no, when one learns that Iran's application to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was flatly denied at the 2008 summit in Tajikistan.

Apparently yes, when one sees how the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat in Tehran and the collective leadership in Beijing have dealt with their recent turmoil - the "green revolution" in Tehran and the Uighur riots in Urumqi - reawakening in the West the ghostly mythology of "Asian despotism".

The Iran-China relationship is like a game of Chinese boxes. Amid the turbulence, glorious or terrifying, of their equally millenarian histories, when one sees an Islamic Republic that now reveals itself as a militarized theocracy and a Popular Republic that is in fact a capitalist oligarchy, things are not what they seem to be.

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Originally published at Asia Times - Also see: Part 2: Iran, China and the New Silk Road

HONG KONG - Things get curiouser and curiouser in the Iranian wonderland. Imagine what happened last week during Friday prayers in Tehran, personally conducted by former president Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, aka "The Shark", Iran's wealthiest man, who made his fortune partly because of Irangate - the 1980s' secret weapons contracts with Israel and the US.

As is well known, Rafsanjani is behind the Mir-Hossein Mousavi-Mohammad Khatami pragmatic conservative faction that lost the most recent battle at the top - rather than a presidential election - to the ultra-hardline faction of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei-Mahmud Ahmadinejad-Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps. During prayers, partisans of the hegemonic faction yelled the usual "Death to America!" - while the pragmatic conservatives came up, for the first time, with "Death to Russia!" and "Death to China!"

Oops. Unlike the United States and Western Europe, both Russia and China almost instantly accepted the contested presidential re-election of Ahmadinejad. Could they then be portrayed as enemies of Iran? Or have pragmatic conservatives not been informed that obsessed-by-Eurasia Zbig Brzezinksi - who has US President Barack Obama's undivided attention - has been preaching since the 1990s that it is essential to break up the Tehran-Moscow-Beijing axis and torpedo the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)?

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With demonstrations taking place around the globe, in support of basic human rights in Iran, those in Iran who chose to participate were attacked by government forces. From the Associated Press:

Iranian police and pro-government militia attacked and scattered hundreds of protesters in a rare demonstration in Iran's capital Saturday, witnesses said.

The protests were in response to the demonstrations being held around the world calling for the Iranian government to release opposition activists, one of the witnesses told The Associated Press.

Protesters in Vanak and Mirdamad districts chanted "death to the dictator" and "we want our vote back" before they were attacked and beaten by police.

The international demonstrations, in more than 110 cities, are still taking place. As I wrote yesterday, this is a cause that should unite us all, including our Republican lurkers. It is not about lobbying various governments, and it is not about lobbying our own government. It is a statement by people for the people of Iran. Click this link, to find out where and when demonstrations are being held.

From the official website:

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Matt Renner is an editor and Washington reporter for Truthout. He can be reached at Matt@truthout.org. This article was originally published at Truthout.

An air of fear and uncertainty continues to grip the population of Tehran. State repression, propaganda, swirling rumors of violence and a murky political battle hold an anxious citizenry hostage.

Were declarations of a second Iranian revolution premature? Are we witnessing an overthrow of a theocratic government, sparked by possible election theft and a subsequent popular protest movement? Will there be further protest? More violence? Will a new government be formed, bringing openness and international cooperation, or will the hardliners win and push Iran further into isolation and toward war? These are questions for later.

Also see: Matt Renner | The Rooftops and Streets of Tehran

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