@elilake: "Shorter Khamenei: Ajad won, u are all going to take it, if u don't my goons will murder u." - posted by Ambers.
Archive
June 14, 2009 - June 20, 2009
Friday, June 19, 200919 Jun 2009 01:40 pm The Twitter RevolutionClay Shirky gives a lecture here. Before these current events. Worth watching. 19 Jun 2009 01:39 pm What About The Other Dictatorships?As'ad AbuKhalil doesn't appreciate Americans' double standards: I am in no way sympathetic to Moussavi. He is a man who suddenly discovered the virtues of democracy. When he was prime minister back in the 1980s, he presided over a regime far more oppressive than Ahmadinajad's. And why has no Western media really commented on his rhetoric during his own campaign: the man kept saying that he wants a "return" to the teachings of Khomeini. I in no way support a man who wants a "return" to the teachings of Khomeini. But Western media are always quick to pick villains and heroes: especially when one side is identified against Israel. I don't know whether the elections in Iran was stolen or not, and I would not be surprised if such a regime did that. But why do Western media express outrage over a stolen election in Iran but they don't even feign outrage over lack of elections in Saudi Arabia? So it is not about democracy or respecting the will of the people any way. Because Iran actually has a population capable of sustaining democracy; and Mousavi is as good as we'll get. I also suspect that all judgments about who these people are need to be held provisionally. These events are surely changing the mindset of everyone in that country, most of all Mousavi. In a moment of extreme flux, we have to look at intimations of the new, not recitations of the old. 19 Jun 2009 01:15 pm Ahmadi, The Basij Par ExcellenceA helpful piece about Ahmadinejad's Basij inheritance from John Lee Anderson at the New Yorker. Money quote: During the past four years, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president
and the reform movement dormant, the Basij has not been needed as shock
troops. Instead they have made their presence felt by periodically
throwing up traffic barricades on the streets of Tehran and stopping
cars to smell the breath of drivers for evidence of illegal alcohol
consumption, or to question couples about their marital status. These
Basijis are usually scruffy working-class men, and thus bring an
element of notional “class struggle” to the otherwise pragmatically
lived lives of the citizens of the Islamic republic. Not surprisingly,
among more educated and affluent Iranians, they are almost unanimously
despised.
In the mass demonstrations that have taken place this week, the
modus operandi of the Basijis has been brutal and predatory. They have
used the same tactics as packs of African wild dogs worrying a herd of
wildebeest. They choose their targets at the edges of the crowds, going
for the vulnerable and unwary stragglers, and moving in as a group to
reduce them with violence.
19 Jun 2009 01:08 pm The Genius Of OliphantThis gave me my first real laugh in a few days:
19 Jun 2009 12:52 pm Khamenei's DilemmaThe regime seems to think that the protests are occurring because the alleged losers are stirring them up. In fact, the crowds are way out ahead of the leaders. The things you hear about how Khamenei plans to deal with this crisis are so far not very promising. Ultimately, I think a compromise is being demanded of him, like a complete ballot recount or a new presidential election, that he cannot grant without so weakening his authority that he may lose it anyway. In such a game, he may think he has a better chance maintaining the regime by offering limited concessions coupled with a crack down on the stubborn. He may or may not be right about that.
19 Jun 2009 12:49 pm Mousavi Translated19 Jun 2009 12:45 pm Lessons Of The Supreme Leader’s SpeechChris Emery made a list. Number two: Saturday’s rally could yet be the greatest challenge the Islamic Republic has ever seen.
19 Jun 2009 12:31 pm The Khamenei-Neocon Agreement
This is the image they both want for for their own purposes. Yes, the coup-organizers will do this anyway, just as Khamenei just made up a statement by Obama for his crowds of pious apparatchiks. But it is revealing that this is the regime's main rhetorical weapon against the revolt. The people who gave us the Iraq war and the people who simply want to attack Obama risk empowering Khamenei some more. (Photo: Pro-government demonstrators burn an American flag at Tehran University, on June 19, 2009 in Tehran, Iran. By Getty.) 19 Jun 2009 12:30 pm How Popular Is Ahmadi?Hooman Majd, a few days ago: There is little question that Mr Ahmadi-Nejad enjoys the support of perhaps as many as 15m Iranians, but the results adding another 10m votes to his hardcore base beggar belief. Shock and awe? You bet. Except it is not working, now that the awe is only at the shameless arrogance of a president. Larison springboards off this, to discuss the vote totals released by the opposition. 19 Jun 2009 12:14 pm The Serbian PrecedentA reader writes:
19 Jun 2009 11:48 am A Pivot For Peace?A reader writes:
Continue reading "A Pivot For Peace?" » 19 Jun 2009 11:45 am What Should The US Say?Philip Klein speaks with Amir Fakhravar, who has been "jailed and tortured in Iran for advocating democracy and speaking out against the Iranian government" and remains in touch with reformers: “Right now, (Obama) could say, ‘America stands for freedom and democracy, and as a United States president, I want to stand behind all of the freedom fighters in the world that are fighting peacefully to have democracy and freedom,’” Fakhravar said. “That’s the American Dream. I don’t know why he didn’t say that. He said, ‘this is none of our business.’”
Actually, of course, he did state his support for nonviolence and freedom of expression. And when you see Khamenei's attempt to play the foreign interference card this morning, you see the deeper wisdom of Obama's approach. 19 Jun 2009 11:32 am Mapping The TurmoilAEI is tracking the number of arrests, deaths, and protesters in Iran. Good numbers are very hard to come by, so I would take these with a grain of salt. 19 Jun 2009 11:16 am Hacking AhmadiThis NIAC tidbit gladdens the soul: Iran’s Seda o Sima (State TV) internet site was hacked today.
The title was changed to state: “When will killing brothers end?” Below
is states: “Mr. Ahmadinejad, how long do we have to stand these images?
The kids of the people are getting killed day by day. How long do you
plan on carrying out this carnage? For the sake of power, you have
stepped on the dignity of the nation. What will be next after you have
killed and scarred the kids of this land?”
The website is currently down. 19 Jun 2009 11:03 am The Neocons AgainChait makes the obvious point: Today's Washington Post op-ed page has two more columns lambasting Obama for failing to embrace the demonstrators. Today's offerings are by Charles Krauthammer and Paul Wolfowitz.
Neither one of them even mentions, let alone answers, Obama's argument
for why embracing the demonstrators would be counterproductive.
19 Jun 2009 10:52 am Why Khamenei Thought He Could Get Away With It19 Jun 2009 10:43 am The Looming CrackdownFrom The Guardian's live-blog: The BBC's Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne reckons the speech was as hardline as it could have been, and that the Khamenei was basically threatening to "set the dogs" on the protesters. The New York Times talks of "shadowy Iranian vigilantes" vowing to taking bolder action against the protesters. The Huffington Post mentions unconfirmed reports of a plan to march on Rafsanjani's house in protest at his apparent support for the opposition.
19 Jun 2009 10:34 am Khamenei's Speech
Nico gets an e-mail: I am in Sweden and have so many iranian students around me. Today everybody was desperate after hearing Khamenei's speach. They didn't expect the leader to come to their side, but to search for a little more time and give a more ambiguous speach to the country. Now nobody knows what will happen, but they know that it will be bloody: either people will stop the uprising, in which case there there will be so much violence and arrests towards the people, or they will try to overthrow all the system, in which case there will be a bloody revolution, successful or unsuccessful. It is not so clear what people want to do now. My girlfriends' parents in Tehran say they think people will give up. Nobody wants to die, with families still remembering the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. But it all depends also on Moussavi-Kathami-Karroubi-Rafsanjani and what they will say. Are they ready to wage war to the country? The hope of everybody is in an internal split in the leadership, the deposition of Khamenei, or at least some big sectors of army joining the people, but everybody agrees this will be very difficult to realize. (Photo: Iranian men pray after listening to the Friday prayer sermon, delivered by the Islamic republic's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on June 19, 2009 at Tehran University. By Olivier Laban-Mattei/Getty.) 19 Jun 2009 10:18 am The Mood In IranA reader writes: I just got off the phone with my brother. He sounded defiant, and bitterly sarcastic. He was making fun of Khamenei; but he knew that things are gonna get tougher in the coming days. "Tomorrow, the goons are gonna be on the streets beating us". The "Supreme" had harsh words for The UK, supposedly the old puppet master, and claimed that the blood of the students [killed by the Basijis] are on the "perpetrators" of these events (meaning Moussavi). The best response is laughter. 19 Jun 2009 10:15 am Making Sense Of The RevolutionMy thoughts on why this is more like the American than the French version here. And on the media revolution here. 19 Jun 2009 10:12 am Auto Workers Strike In Khodro?Al Giordano has the latest. 19 Jun 2009 10:06 am Thoughts On Khamenei's SpeechI think we find one clue to why he rigged the vote count so crudely. His argument that a majority of eleven million was too big to allow for any irregularities suggests he believed that a big lie was the only one that would work. But if you utter a big lie, you had better hope it could persuade some. It appears to have persuaded no one but a few fools at the Washington Post and the executive editor of the New York Times. And the endless attempt to blame all this on Britain and the US and the "Zionists." This is a regime that is so hermetically sealed, so rigid in its dogma, so brutal in its ideology it probably believes its own lies. It is, as David Brooks notes today, very, very fragile. When every piece of data requires a reassertion of doctrine in order to banish reality from people's minds, government becomes impossible. All that is possible is brute force and terror. I fear deeply what is about to happen. But I also sense that the Gandhi-strategy of the majority is a winning one. If they can sustain their numbers and withstand the nightly raids, and if they can overwhelm the capital tomorrow in another peaceful show of strength, then they can win. And the world will change. This is their struggle now, requiring the kind of courage that only God can provide. Their God, my God, the God of the Torah and the Koran and the Gospels. Something is happening in Iran. 19 Jun 2009 09:52 am What Khamenei Is Up AgainstVia the Lede, some new video, said to be from yesterday's rally: And here is an email from an Iranian architecture student in response to Khamenei's provocative speech today:
19 Jun 2009 09:39 am A Twitter Word Cloud From The Revolution
19 Jun 2009 09:37 am Khamenei's Gauntlet
Live-tweets from the speech are here; the text itself is here. Yes, we were up all night. Scroll down. (Photo: An Iranian man holds a portrait of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a pro-government demonstration at Tehran University on June 19, 2009. By Atta Kenare/Getty.) 19 Jun 2009 09:25 am His Ceauşescu Moment?We can hope, can't we? 19 Jun 2009 09:22 am Quote For The Day II19 Jun 2009 09:10 am Poem For Friday
- Hafiz, the great Sufi poet from Shiraz (1315 - 1390), translated by Daniel Lazinsky. Painting by Mahmud Farshchian. 19 Jun 2009 08:56 am Hiatt Now Publishes Wolfowitz!The architect of one of the greatest mistakes in the history of American foreign policy, a man who was part of an administration that deployed torture against countless innocents and unleashed a sectarian war in Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands, an incompetent ideologue with blood on his hands, who has failed to take any responsibility for the catastrophes he helped bring to the world ... well, of course, this guy gets to lecture Obama on Iran in the op-ed pages of the Washington Post, alongside so many other neocons and Bush cronies who refuse to acknowledge error and refuse to take responsibility for the past. This is Washington, after all. And if you actually do take responsibility for your own writing and decisions, if you actually do hold people accountable, you get fired. Just ask Froomkin. 19 Jun 2009 08:47 am The Narrative Of TwitterJeff Tietz demonstrates why this unlikely form of communication, which I once derided, acquired a kind of poetic narrative through time. He takes persiankiwi and lays it out in one day. That's what we've tried to do with our collective, constantly up-dated tweet-file. It reads like a stream of constantly shifting consciousness. It is a kind of journalistic pointillism. And from a distance, it gains heft. It is history rendered in the collective, scattered mind, and it has never happened before - millions upon millions of tiny telegram messages sent to the entire world. 19 Jun 2009 08:47 am The Twitter Revolution, Ctd
John Cole has a new cartoon. 19 Jun 2009 08:41 am Bigger Than TiananmenMatt Steinglass sounds optimistic: What we’re looking at in Iran is really on a different scale. It’s certainly as large and sweeping as the revolutions that overturned the Milosevic government in Serbia or the Orange Revolution in Ukraine — both also touched off by botched elections. In fact, in every other case I can think of similar to this one, by the time the regime has arrived at this point, the game has been over. I don’t think any regime has put down a mass nonviolent revolt of this size, not in recent history anyway. It seems hard to imagine the regime using the kind of force it would take to get hundreds of thousands of people off the streets of several major Iranian cities. Continue reading "Bigger Than Tiananmen" » 19 Jun 2009 08:36 am A Hybrid Child Of The RevolutionTotten doesn't trust Mousavi: Mousavi himself probably doesn’t know what his agenda will be a week or a month from today if he’s still alive and out of prison. If he wins the internal power struggle, topples “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, and becomes president, he might end up more Khrushchev than Gorbachev. History, though, is moving at light speed in Iran. And human personalities can be powerfully transformed during volcanic upheavals where the stakes are victory or destruction.
19 Jun 2009 08:15 am Sticker ShockThe CBO report released on Tuesday estimated that the reform bill will be much more expensive than previously thought. Cohn summarizes: The (relatively) good news was the projected impact: The proportion of people without insurance would drop by two-thirds. But the price tag came in at $1.6 trillion over ten years. That was a lot higher than expected....It came one day after the CBO delivered another projection, this time to the Senate Health, Educaiton, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. That verdict was different: HELP's language, according to CBO, would mean outlays of just $1 trillion. But CBO also predicted the HELP bill would ultimately reduce the number of people without insurance by less than half. Ezra Klein frets. 19 Jun 2009 08:04 am The View From Your Window
Tehran, Iran, 9 am. 19 Jun 2009 07:31 am Google's Brilliant MoveThey just installed a Farsi translation feature to GoogleTranslate. We can now instantly translate Farsi tweets. We've already started. 19 Jun 2009 07:29 am Quote For The Day"In 1996 I went to Iran for Guardian Weekend. A doctoral student at the University of Tehran who was working with the team that was bringing the internet to Iran, told me that the internet would be the undoing of the regime," - Linda Grant, novelist. 19 Jun 2009 06:54 am Khamenei's Threat: "Who would be responsible if something happened?"
He's going for broke, and strapping Ahmadinejad to him:
Mousavi wasn't there; the crowds were bussed in and full of Ahmadinejad supporters. The full menacing text below:
Continue reading "Khamenei's Threat: "Who would be responsible if something happened?"" » 19 Jun 2009 06:08 am The Unserious Right, Ctd.Larison is tired of the GOP leadership's howling over Iran: All of this comes back to the problem of Republican denial about why they lost power. They are supremely confident about their views on national security and foreign policy, and they cannot conceive that a majority of the country would reject them because of the policies they advocated and enacted. Worse still, they remain wedded to the hectoring, moralistic and aggressive approach of the last administration, in which sanctions and condemnation are the only “soft” tools they understand. Continue reading "The Unserious Right, Ctd." » 19 Jun 2009 03:38 am Khamenei's QuandaryRadio Free Europe analyzes: [If] Khamenei feels Ahmadinejad’s election win has become so controversial, and created so much unrest, that it risks the stability of the regime, it is possible that Khamenei would support a new election or other way to end the crisis. However, in making such a choice, Khamenei has to weigh another factor, too. That is, the danger of alienating his own strongest support base whose face is now Ahmadinejad. This base includes the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards – the ideological armed organizations that were created by Khomeini to protect the Islamic Revolution’s core values. Continue reading "Khamenei's Quandary" » 19 Jun 2009 02:21 am Where Is Ahmadi?Ian Black scratches his chin: Analysts and diplomats say that the fact that Ahmadinejad has not been seen for three days as street protests and political turmoil rage suggests his position may have been weakened. Rallies backing him have been far less well attended than those organised by the Mousavi camp. “If he was feeling confident he would be more visible,” said Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, of London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
19 Jun 2009 01:27 am A Basij Killed?From NIAC: According to Iranian state media, (words in quotes are the language they used) 1 Basij has been “martyred.” He was killed by “thugs” (referring to the protesters who ran him over in Sa’adat Abad a northern well-off part of Tehran). According to state media, they have reported 8 deaths, one of them being a Basij and the others, according to them “thugs.”
Thursday, June 18, 200918 Jun 2009 11:26 pm Disinformation And Friday PrayersNIAC is confused: Earlier in the day, we saw a message posted on Mousavi’s facebook page saying “Mousavi & Karoubi ask supporters NOT to attend Friday prayers (which is being delivered by supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei).” We thought this was strange, since they were saying exactly the opposite just a little while ago. Now, Nico and the NYT both have commented about the same message going up on Twitter. Just as we were trying to figure out what was going on on Mousavi’s facebook page, the message was removed. This appears to be an organized attack on Mousavi and Karroubi’s facebook and twitter accounts to send misleading messages to supporters. We got the impression that they were trying to take these messages down as fast as possible, so we are pretty convinced they’re not legitimate. I think I have a better handle on what's going on. It seems as if a) the supposed Mousavi "request" for people not to attend prayers is a hoax, but b) Mousavi has decided to delay a planned Friday rally until Saturday.
18 Jun 2009 10:56 pm Twitting TwitterA useful reality check from Jack Shafer. Like all new technologies, it's valuable - as long as you understand its limitations. 18 Jun 2009 10:44 pm Mental Health BreakBike tricks filmed in 1899 and 1901: (Hat tip: Jason) 18 Jun 2009 10:40 pm The Purging Of Froomkin
A reader writes: I was stunned—and I mean that literally; I sat there for several seconds with my mouth hanging open—by the firing of Dan Froomkin from the Post, along with Fred Hiatt’s incredibly disingenuous assertion that it had nothing to do with his political leanings. Stunned. That’s the only word for it.
Froomkin has been one of the very, very few “mainstream media” bloggers that I have read on a regular basis for the last several years. He is cogent, interesting, thoughtful, intelligent, and provides a wealth of information. He is, in short, all that so many of the Post’s other columnists are not. It is staggering that so many mediocrities regurgitating Beltway talking points keep regular gigs of high exposure, while one of the few who actually bucks the inside-the-beltway common wisdom has to hit the bricks. (Or perhaps it’s not so staggering, is it?) The MSM is bewildered and in some cases angered by how some bloggers have shown up their eagerness to placate those in power. Froomkin had the feel of someone saying what he believed, wthout wondering what others thought. This violates Beltway convention. And so, in the end, they violated him. 18 Jun 2009 10:34 pm No Recognition Of Ahmadinejad, CtdAckerman gets an interview with Akbar Ganji, an Iranian dissident. He says: The Iranian people are saying the Ahmadinejad government is a coup d’etat government. They’re asking that no government accept the legitimacy of his government. This is what most people want, for no government to work with the Ahmadinejad government.
18 Jun 2009 10:31 pm Is It Over?Matt Steinglass reads the tea leaves: It’s just too big, it’s going on for too many days, it’s in too many cities, and it’s too all-embracing. The regime has completely lost control of the space of public politics, and the opposition has been very skillful in taking it over. You can’t allow your opposition to develop a message so simple that everyone can embrace it. When you have a situation where all anyone needs to do to signal they’ve joined the opposition is to step into the street and start walking, where all they have to do is cry “Allahu Akbar” and it means they want the President to resign and cancel the elections, you’ve lost.
18 Jun 2009 09:37 pm The Basij In IsfahanTerrorizing the people, invading their homes: 18 Jun 2009 09:30 pm The Roar Of SilenceBrian Ulrich gets an e-mail from a participant in today's rally from a professional listserv: About the march: it was entirely silent and peaceful. No riot police anywhere. Ferdowsi was entirely closed off but on Enghelab, cars were painfully trying to keep one lane open. The drivers were stuck in pretty bad traffic, but to the marchers waiving their V-signs to them, a great majority of them would smile and respond with the same. A bus driver was filming on Enghelab. When asked how far ahead and how far back the march stretched, he smiled and said: a long way. The crowd was mixed: young people mostly but a considerable number of parents with small children and elderly people, chadori women and even a mollah.
June 14, 2009 - June 20, 2009
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