Working on Iran

Is the Obama sanctions approach working?

Iran's parliament on Thursday approved President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's $462 billion annual budget, the official IRNA news agency reported, a drop in real terms from last year as international sanctions took their toll. 

Iran's currency has lost much of its value in recent months due to sanctions designed to curb the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, which the West suspects is a cover for making atomic bombs, a charge Tehran denies.

... 

The value of the rial began to slip in January, after U.S. President Barack Obama imposed fresh sanctions against the country's central bank and speculation rose over a possible military strike against Iran by Israel and the United States. 

The European Union has also toughened financial sanctions and on January 23 placed a ban on Iranian oil imports, but gave companies until July 1 to wind down their existing business. ... 

Tehran resumed nuclear talks with major powers in mid-April after more than a year and a second round of talks is scheduled for May 23 in Baghdad.
... 

The country is undergoing what the government has called major economic surgery, in the form of cuts to the multi-billion dollar subsidies which for years have held down the price of essential goods like fuel and food. 

Inflation is now officially running at about 20 per cent, although economists say prices of the goods most Iranians worry about are rising at a much faster rate. 

"This budget will deflate the economy. To have what is almost zero growth with a growing population like Iran's, in real terms the country is going to contract severely. It is a truly bad situation," added Emadi.

Once again...underestimated by his opponents.

Better News in the Middle East

Possibly good news -- the chances of Israel unilaterally attacking Iran may have just lessened:

According to the media reports, Netanyahu forged an agreement with opposition leader Shaul Mofaz of Kadima shortly before parliament was set to vote to disperse.

Parliament Speaker Reuven Rivlin, a veteran of Israeli politics, said he had never seen such a last-minute political upheaval. “This is good for Israel because it brings stability, he said on Army Radio as he left parliament before sunrise.

The appointment of Mofaz, a former military chief and defense minister, is significant in Israel’s standoff with Iran, as he has been a vocal critic of Israel striking Iran’s nuclear sites on its own.

In the meantime, that pesky Al-Qaeda has evidently been foiled again:

The CIA and overseas intelligence partners disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to blow up civilian aircraft using an advanced explosive device designed by the terrorist network’s affiliate in Yemen, U.S. officials said Monday.
...

U.S. officials said the FBI is examining the device — modeled on the “underwear bomb” used in an attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009 — to determine whether airport security systems would have detected it.

U.S. officials said the CIA and other agencies tracked the plot for about a month before moving to seize the device in recent days in the Middle East outside Yemen, where the bomb was built.

Does Obama have another foreign policy or anti-terrorism success to achieve before the November election?

Leaky Ships

I'm concerned that the WikiLeaks diplomacy bomb released today will lead to some sort of crackdown on Internet freedom and provide misdirection in support of anti-Net Neutrality legislation. I'm worried that the sharing of information between government agencies that began after 9/11, which was in part allowed to happen by a lack of inter-agency information exchange, will be squelched.

On the other hand, I'm loving this:

According to Le Monde (in translation), a cable relayed to Washington a conversation between the emir of Qatar and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) last February: "Based on over 30 years of experience with the Iranians, the emir concluded the meeting by saying that we shouldn't believe but one word in a hundred that the Iranians say." The prime minister of Qatar told Kerry later that trip that Ahmadinejad told him: "we beat the Americans in Iraq, the final battle will be in Iran."

The president of the Upper House of the Jordanian Parliament, Zeid Rifai, was said in a cable (translated) to have told the U.S. that "the dialogue with Iran will go 'nowhere', adding: 'bomb Iran or live with a nuclear Iran: the sanctions, the carrots, the incentives, have no importance.'"

The Omanis were similarly concerned, according to cables relayed by the New York Times, as an Omani military official told officials that he could not decide which was worse: "a strike against Iran's nuclear capability and the resulting turmoil it would cause in the Gulf, or inaction and having to live with a nuclear-capable Iran."

The United Arab Emirates' deputy defense chief, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, called Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "Hitler" to U.S. officials, also "stressed 'that he wasn't suggesting that the first option was 'bombing' Iran,' but also warned, 'They have to be dealt with before they do something tragic.'"

The Saudis, the Bahrainis and even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were all similarly inclined, as has been widely reported -- El Pais reported that Mubarak's hatred for Iran was called "visceral" and the New York Times reported the existence of cables referring to the Saudi king's "frequent exhortations" to engage in military action against Iran. The Bahrainis, too, are said to be keen to see Iran's nuclear program halted, and King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa is said to have blamed problems in Iraq and Afghanistan on the Iranian government -- and both Kuwaiti and Yemeni officials reportedly told U.S. diplomats similar things about Iranian involvement in fomenting dissent in their own countries.

For far too long the Arab countries in the Middle East have acted like it's Israel against Iran and "Not I! Not I!" What these leaks prove is that there is certainly reason for common ground between Israel and it's neighbors, that they are not afraid of Israel but, rather, Iran, and that their hypocrisy knows no bounds on this issue.

I'm also not against the reported (by Forbes) revelations to come from WikiLeaks regarding the evil at the high end of the contemporary banking industry:

“You could call it the ecosystem of corruption,” he says, refusing to characterize the coming release in more detail. “But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest.”

Oh, and by the way, nobody knows what they hell is really going on in North Korea.

World Class President

He gets Ukraine to divest itself of highly enriched uranium, making the world a little safer from terrorists who might get hold of it.

His new START treaty is widely approved by the U.S. public -- 70%, to be exact.

He gets China to agree to push sanctions on Iran. He pisses off the Iranian leadership with his new policy.

Per Russian Premier Medvedev, who has his own worries about terrorists getting powerful bombs, he's great to work with:

MEDVEDEV: He's very comfortable partner, it's very interesting to be with him. The most important thing that distinguishes him from many other people – I won't name anyone by name – he's a thinker, he thinks when he speaks. Which is already pretty good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You had somebody in your mind, I think. (LAUGHS)

MEDVEDEV: Obviously I do have someone on my mind. I don't want to offend anyone. He's eager to listen to his partner, which is a pretty good quality for a politician. Because any politician is to a certain degree a mentor. They preach something. And the ability to listen to their partner is very important for the politician. And he is pretty deeply emerged in the subject, so he has a good knowledge of what he's talking about. There was no instance in our meetings with Mr. Obama where he wasn't well prepared for the questions. This is very good. And after all, he's simply a very pleasant man with whom it's a pleasure to deal with.

President Barack Obama: Making America healthier and the world safer.

Do you really think there's going to be somebody more qualified and suited to the job than him in two years?

More Evidence?

A reliable source that change in Iran is not only on the way, but underway?

Q: Do you expect a collapse of the government any time soon?

A: The government has already collapsed. There's going to be big changes very soon. Believe me, it will happen soon. I can promise you that I will meet you for the next interview in Teheran very soon. However, I am afraid that the transition won't be peaceful. You see what has happened during the religious ceremony called Ashura a few days ago. They killed so many people, 11 to be exact, not eight as was reported by the western media.

We want to keep our country as the Islamic Republic of Iran, but religion and politics must be separated. We want to change the structure of the government. The good clerics should help the people and the government, while the bad ones should be ousted from government. If you look back at history, several hundreds years ago, the church controlled everything in Europe. We are experiencing the same situation. Some of the top Ayatollahs have a lot of power.

Q: What will it take to remove the people in power?

A: We are working on it. The western media could help us if they could talk directly to the Iranian people, to tell them the truth. This would help. The Iranian media don't belong to the people. They are controlled by the government which is using them to spread lies.

Q: You said you worked closely with the current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Could you be more specific?

A: I have been working with him for almost 19 years. I saw him frequently, sometimes 10 times or more in one day. We were very close. I was a protector of the leadership apparatus. I was head of a committee for strengthening the Islamic State and preventing anything from weakening it. I helped him too much. He used to be a good, open-minded man until he started a close relationship with Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a spiritual adviser to a group of hard-line fundamentalists. He is a very crazy man who hates Israel and the United States especially. Unfortunately, President Ahmadinejad is one of his big fans as well.

Q: Tell us about the clergy. Are they divided?

A: The Ayatollahs are very much divided. They have so many problems between each other. There are many Ayatollahs who have different views. However, the ones in the government have the power, not the others.

It is impossible to change Iran in a religious way. Iranian people are, have been and always will be religious people. However, I believe that politics and the religion might be divided soon.

Q: What is the feeling within the military? Can the government rely on them? Are they loyal?

A: At this moment, the government cannot rely 100% on the Iranian Army and even on the Revolutionary Guards, who are more powerful. There are now only a few hard-line religious people inside the Revolutionary Guards who are against the people.

There are some people inside the Revolutionary Guards who are against the government and side with the people. The government is aware of that. And the same applies to the Iranian Army. Many of them are now on the people's side. Many of them are now against the government, but they are afraid to say it openly because they might have problems.

As for the relationship between the Army and the Revolutionary Guards, theoretically they are united, but in a reality, they are not. They don't like or trust each other. The government trusts and gives more support and benefits to the Revolutionary Guards than to the Army. Some agents of the Revolutionary Guards are placed inside the Army to watch them both officially and secretly.

Tick...tick...tick...

A Peek into the Future?

Note to Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from Cormac McCarthy:



You can't stop what's coming...or can they?

More Cable News FAIL

You wouldn't know it from the mainstream media, but there have been major developments in the Iran citizen uprising this weekend. The regime forces killed the nephew of the man likely robbed of electoral victory by the fascist regime earlier this year (which sparked the uprising to begin with) and citizens throughout the country are in the streets -- and getting beaten mercelessly by the brutal basji (paramilitary police).

I'm blogging on Blackberry tonight so you'll have to find your own way to Andrew Sullivan's blog or any other covering this ongoing and mounting civil disobedience, but while cable news remains mired in endless empty plane terrorist cycling, at least the White House is speaking out with a change in tone from earlier this year, coming down hard against the Iranian government for thie violent subjugation of their people.

The next few days will begin a cycle of mourning for Mousavi's nephew, who was an important man as in line for iman, and hardset against the current government. Fascists lose when they create the wrong martyrs. Here's to this one leading to their demise.

Storm Warning

Reasons why an attack on Iran by Israel is a baaaaad idea.

Thanksgiving Fascism

Thankful to live in a country that doesn't confiscate Nobel Prize medals.

Winning Diplomatic Path?

Here?

Here?

Iran in his Headlock

President Barack Obama made an public announcement today just before the G20 Summit with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicholas Sarkozy that Iran has been building a nuclear facility they've kept hidden thus far. Iran had gotten wind that this was coming and tried to get out in front of it, but it's a loser's game.

This means that:

• Whatever Iran policy the Cheney Neocon Administration had been running was a MASSIVE FAIL.

• Whatever the Obama Admnistration has been doing to repair our position in the world is working.

Per one of Andrew Sullivan's readers regarding what must be Neocon panic today:

It must drive them nuts to see a clear, if limited, victory for a strategy that is diametrically opposed to their own. Their ideology being discredited by events, and so they characteristically fall back into blind fits of intransigence, like screaming, foot-stomping children.

That Goldberg emailer fails to see what has happened. Obama has known about this facility from day one. At Cairo, he reached out the Muslim world, undermining the Iranian regime's ability to engage in arm-waving, fear-mongering anti-Americanism. He built himself a triumvirate with Brown and Sarkozy, who actually have an intelligence presence in Iran. He used that presence to build an airtight case. He cut a deal with the Russians. He reached out to Iran, knowing that they would likely reject or ignore his overtures. Then, when Ahmadinejad comes to New York, having to face Western journalists, Obama announces the the existence of the Qom facility, turning the spotlight on Iran when they are unable to hide behind state-controlled media. Obama, cool and calm, pulled off a near-perfect diplomatic pincer.

I'm looking forward to what happens next.

Quds Day Subverted

The annual Quds Day in Iran, something I'm quite against since it is the government-mandated anti-Israel day, was different this year. On Friday Holocaust-denying election-stealer Ahmadinajad gave his usual hateful speech, but the people used the traditional rallies as a means to protest the regime, which was responded to by state violence:

Supporters of the Green Movement gathered at 7 Tir square (a major intersection) and began moving toward Tehran University, where the Friday prayers and Ahmadinejad’s speech were to be held. Mehdi Karroubi joined the demonstrators and walked with them all the way to the vicinity of Tehran University.

To prevent the Green Movement’s supporters from penetrating Tehran University, public buses had been used to block all the streets around the campus. Security forces, the Basij militia, and plainclothes agents used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the demonstrators.

Former president Mohammad Khatami joined the demonstrators close to Palestine square, a short distance from the campus of the University of Tehran. He was then attacked by a mob led by Abolfazl Shariatmadari, son of Hossein Shariatmadari, the hard-line managing editor of Kayhan, the mouthpiece of the hardliners and security forces. Khatami was rescued by the people, and sustained minor injuries. He was then taken away.

The protesters, seeking as fairly elected representation -- something that some Americans take for granted -- don't appear to have been cowed by the horrific violence, both on the streets and in the prisons, dealt by the Basra:

In some cases, protesters stood their ground, hurling stones at security forces and chasing them to engage in bare-fisted sparring, witnesses said. “People seemed less fearful compared to previous demonstrations,” one participant said. ”This time, they were fighting back.”

Throughout the day, regular police officers reportedly stayed on the sidelines for the most part.

Police officers even protected the demonstrators in one instance cited by an eyewitness. ”Plainclothes forces attempted to attack a group of protesters carrying a long green banner, but the police intervened and prevented physical confrontation.”

Take a look -- green protest:



The thugs and regime-lovers they're up against:



More pix here. It's amazing the difference in the two sides. The opposition is completely male, segregated, and looks like the sorry past, while the so many of the protesters are women, always there.

Here's opposition leader (and likely the real election winner) Mousavi's supporters and aides repelling the thugs:



Ditto the supporters of protesting ex-President Khatami, where Basra tried to pull off his turban to humiliate him, and failed.

It's tougher than ever for a fascist regime to keep the lid on over the long haul, not with 2009's social media capabilities.

Still bad in Burma, though, and getting worse.



Death to tyrants and the thug class they license.

Colors

Ever since the beginning of the democratic rebellion over the sham election in Iran, with the simple and effective green color association, I've thought of the newly deceased Corazon Aquino, Cory to her people, who by some historical accident ended up leading the "people power" overthrow of dictator Ferdinand Marco in the Philippines in 1986, and her trademark yellow dress:

Mrs. Aquino played the dutiful wife as her husband’s political star rose. In less than 20 years he became the country’s youngest elected mayor, governor and senator, emerging as one of the chief potential rivals of Mr. Marcos, who was then president.

When Mr. Marcos declared martial law in 1972, extending his presidency beyond its two-term limit, Mr. Aquino was arrested and charged with subversion and illegal possession of firearms. He spent the next seven years behind bars. During that time, Mrs. Aquino’s political education began in earnest. As her husband’s only link to the world outside, she memorized his messages and statements and passed them on to the press.

In 1980, Mr. Marcos allowed Mr. Aquino to go to the United States for a triple-bypass heart operation. Mr. Aquino accepted academic posts at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the family settled in Newton, a suburb of Boston, for what Mrs. Aquino later recalled as the happiest three years of her life.

But despite warnings from Mr. Marcos’s powerful and eccentric wife, Imelda, Mr. Aquino pursued a sense of mission and returned to the Philippines on Aug. 21, 1983. He was escorted from his airplane by two soldiers, who gunned him down on a side stairway leading to the tarmac.

Mr. Marcos was widely blamed for the assassination, although no proof has emerged, and a huge antigovernment protest took place at Mr. Aquino’s funeral.

It was at his funeral, dressed in black and standing beside his open coffin, that Mrs. Aquino became a national symbol, showing the dignity and composure that would characterize her most difficult moments as president. Her popularity reached its peak during her presidential campaign against Mr. Marcos in January 1986, when she was surrounded by enthusiastic crowds chanting, “Cory! Cory! Cory!”

Cory Aquino, who survived six coup attempts during as many years in office, may not have been a perfect President of the country but she was what was needed to vanquish Marcos, who's name goes down in history as a crazy egomaniac asshole. Her reputation as a good leader is secure, and it shows how wise, compelling leadership can arise from where least expected.



With the traditionally commemorated 40th day after Neda's slaughter by Iranian basiji or Revolutionary Guard having turned into a police riot at her funeral this week, the eyes of the world are once again turned towards the movement there, if more fleetingly this time than last. There need to be some high-level army defectors as there were for Cory, but these people are not giving up in their quest for a fair democracy, even if they risk their lives:



Power to the people.

Up on the Roof

The sweet sounds of rebellion against a fascist regime, collected. For example:



Per The Drifters:

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me
Let me tell you now

Allah-o-Akbar, baby.

Health Break

There's more crucial political activity going on that just the citizen's protest in Iran, although that's the doozy on the world stage. So while this isn't an entire break from that history-in-the-making (see below), I wanted to bring attention back to the fight for a public health option in the U.S., being fought tooth-and-nail by Republicans and the health insurance companies that love them.

This is assuming that single payer national healthcare -- the kind where you walk into any hospital without an insurance card, where there's no cash register let alone huge computerized bill to go with it, as in Canada, France, England, Germany, Sweden, and every other industrialized Western country -- is not going to happen here. And a basic public option, a check against the rapacity of the private insurance companies, won't happen if powerful people like this guy have their way:

The South Carolina Republican, appearing on ABC's "This Week," set a firm line in the sand when discussing the creation of a public option for insurance, insisting that such a proposal would not pass the United States Senate.

"The reason you are not going to have a government-run health care pass the Senate is because it will be devastating for this country," he said. "The last thing in the world I think that Democrats and Republicans will do at the end of the day is create a government-run health care system."

And later, in favor in a supposed "compromise" that would still provide no public option and still leave your health insurance fate and choices in the hands of the for profit industry that has been denying coverage and dictating both doctors and treatments for over thirty years:

"I think this idea needs to go away," Graham said of a public plan, "and replace it with something maybe like [Senator] Kent Conrad's proposal."

The audicity of nope: "I think this idea needs to go away." You can't ban an idea, Senator, and you can't ban it as a major policy consideration if nearly 3/4 of all Americans favor it:

The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed.

Republicans in Congress have fiercely criticized the proposal as an unneeded expansion of government that might evolve into a system of nationalized health coverage and lead to the rationing of care.

But in the poll, the proposal received broad bipartisan backing, with half of those who call themselves Republicans saying they would support a public plan, along with nearly three-fourths of independents and almost nine in 10 Democrats.

So if you want it, drop a quick line with some of the folks on this list at the bottom of this post.

Meanwhile, in extremist news, Operation Rescue has the gall (beyond chuzpah) to hold a memorial service for unborn children at the site of Dr. George Tiller's closed clinic, closed because of the assassination of Dr. Tiller that they at least indirectly encouraged in their rhetoric, and in some sort of communication with the killer.

And in lethal fascist extremism on the other side of the globe, the situation in Iran is anybody's guess, with rounds of arrests, dozens if not more killings of civilians, and a suddenly empowered population that may not be stoppable. Like in this movie-like clip from a standoff Saturday, the only tonic after watching Neda die the same day -- definitely play to the end:

Battle w/ Police - Tehran, Iran - June 20th 2009
by mightier-than

Keep the faith.

Death to Tyrants

Blood for blood. Unless he's able to secure some sort of reclusive retirement or expatriation, Supreme Leader Khamenei signed his own death warrent on Saturday. Perhaps Achmedinejad's as well. It won't be tomorrow and maybe not this week, but by unleashing the fascist thug class on the peacefully demonstrating masses and committing murders now committed to YouTube, the genie is out of the bottle. The people have no reason to back down. The regime is beyond corrupt -- it is actively against them, like a Tsar or the Shah.

A young woman killed on camera in an extremely disturbing video (link in http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html somewhere -- am blogging by Blackberry tonight) and her supposed name, Neda, has become the rallying cry of the martyr. The video is horrifying, the Twitter hash tag is bourne, #neda.

The protesters are shouting "Kill the dictator" now.

Godspeed.

The Courageous and the Showdown

At 4:00pm Saturday Tehran Time, which is 7:30am New York Time, there will likely be the largest protest rally yet against the corrupt fascist leadership of Iran. The government has turned on SMS messaging again, which may mean disinformation to try and squelch nationwide protests, and the Supreme Leader Khamenei used hardline rhetoric on Friday when he led mass prayers:



There will be blood. And the average citizen protesters, the courageous, know it:

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”

Here's what's happening for two hours a night with participants chanting "allahu akbar" and one or two other key phrases, protesting in the dark:



Four potential endgame scenarios here. No telling if one of these will actually be the result, or what the cost in human suffering and repression might be.

In the meantime, photos: look courage in the face.

History in Action

Your daily dose:



I know that, if they achieve it, Iranian freedom will not be exactly the same as for the U.S. It doesn't matter in the long run -- more democratic freedoms minimize other chances of War.

Gobama.

Iran: It's On

It was on today, Wednesday, as the streets filled to new record numbers. Check out these mindblowing photos. Want to watch a new media star being born? Check out Nico Pitney's running updates from inside Iran via Twitter and YouTube, also in communication with Iranian Americans who have family in Iran.

And Andrew Sullivan, continuing to outdo himself covering action on the ground, in the U.S. foreign policy intellectual sphere (if that's how one can refer to some die-hard Neocons) and questions of what's happening on the inside. Like whether the powers-that-be are already testing out scapegoating Ahmadinejad by using his current trip to Moscow against him. Seems that Russian influence is a bugaboo in Iran, not entirely dissimilar to how American influence is viewed -- traitorous.

Much hinges on the highly influential cleric class, if the Revolutionary Guard doesn't arrest all the more democracy-minded ones first. But the streets have a life of their own, with information about the next rally passed person-to-person at each mass demonstration, and potentially the biggest one of all coming up on Thursday -- the first rally of mourning.

Moussavi called it to honor those killed this past week in the struggle, and everyone is being asked to wear mourning clothes. It will be a sea of black and, I'm expecting, a sea of silence as has been typical so far, the most scathing indictment of the regime of all. Silence not only reinforces the decency of the protesters, it makes any provocation by the fascist forces stand out, hence minimizing the chance of them happening. You can't heat to violence if you aren't raising your voice.

This is a brilliant move because this is exactly how the Islamic Revolution was won back in 1979, per Reza Aslan on Rachel Maddow:
What's really fascinating about what's happening right now in 2009 is that it looks a lot like what was happening in 1979. And there's a very simple reason for that. The same people are in charge -- I mean, Mousavi, Rafsanjani, Khatami, Medhi Karroubi, the other reformist candidate -- these were all the original revolutionaries who brought down the Shah to begin with, so they know how to do this right.

And so what you're going to see tomorrow is something that was pulled exactly out of the playbook of 1979, which is that you have these massive mourning rallies, where you mourn the deaths of those who were martyred in the cause of freedom. And these things tend to get a little bit out of control, they often result in even more violence by the security forces and even more deaths, which then requires another mourning rally which is even larger, which then requires more violence from the government, and this just becomes an ongoing snowball that can't be stopped.

That's how the Shah was removed from power, was these mourning ceremonies. And so Mousavi very smartly calling for an official -- not a rally -- but an official day of mourning tomorrow. I think we're going to see crowds that we haven't even begun to see yet, and then follow that, on Friday, which is sort of the Muslim sabbath, the day of prayer, which is a traditionally a day of gathering anyway. This is just beginning, Rachel, this is just the beginning.

Good. Because, in the name of all that's decent, a regime that can do this must fall:

One medical student said he and his roommate blocked their door with furniture and hid in the closet when they heard the militia's motorcycles approaching. He heard the militia breaking down doors, and then screams of anguish as students were dragged from their beds and beaten violently.

When he came out after the militia had left, friends and classmates lay unconscious in dorm rooms and hallways, many with chest wounds from being stabbed or bloody faces from blows to their heads, he said. The staff of the hospital where the wounded students were taken, Hazrat Rasoul Hospital, was so shocked that they went on strike for two hours, standing silently outside the gate in their white medical uniforms.

You know what happens to tinpot dictators when the people they've been oppressing get their hands on them.

Enjoy history in the making:

Revolutions Update

The power of nonviolent protest is that, when the world is watching it makes the violence of the oppressors a self-indictment. Dignity vs. the cowardice of state brutality, in the streets, where everyone can see. Gandhi invented it, Dr. King imported it, the Palestinians have yet to learn it, and the Iranian citizens peacefully, even silently protesting their government's blatant fascism, have somehow organized without normal electronic media enough to be using it:

What I saw today was the most elegant scene I had ever witnessed in my life. The huge number of people were marching hand in hand in full peace. Silence. Silence was everywhere. There was no slogan. No violence. Hands were up in victory sign with green ribbons. People carried placards which read: Silence. Old and young, man and woman of all social groups were marching cheerfully. This was a magnificent show of solidarity. Enghelab Street which is the widest avenue in Tehran was full of people. I was told that the march has begun in Ferdowsi Sq. and the end of the march was now in Imam Hossein Sq. to the further east of Tehran while on the other end people had already gathered in Azadi Sq.

The length of this street is about 6 kilometers. The estimate is about 2 million people [Cole: Western press reporting was up to 500,000 people]. On the way, we passed a police department and a militia (Baseej) base. In both places, the doors were closed and we could see fully-armed riot police and militia watching the people from behind the fences. Near Sharif University of Technology where the students had chased away Ahmadinejad a few days ago, Mirhossein Mousavi (the reformist elect president) and Karrubi (the other reformist candidate spoke to people for a few minutes which was received by cries of praise and applause.

I felt proud to find myself among such a huge number of passionate people who were showing the most reasonable act of protest.

Protesting like this:



There's beatings and killings and round ups and purges happening all over -- on campuses, with human rights groups, even singers. The Revolutionary Guard and Basij irregular thugs -- all the 1979 Revolution paramilitary groups -- are the fascist forces, whereas some police are having their guns taken by the government and the army is supposedly neutral. But there's also internal rifts emerging at the highest levels.

The two big stories thus far are the society rising up en mass and across many different demographic lines in nonviolent protest, and how new social media technology has both publicized and organized the civil movement. Per NYU Professor Clay Shirky, this is the tipping point:

What do you make of what's going on in Iran right now.
I'm always a little reticent to draw lessons from things still unfolding, but it seems pretty clear that ... this is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media. I've been thinking a lot about the Chicago demonstrations of 1968 where they chanted "the whole world is watching." Really, that wasn't true then. But this time it's true ... and people throughout the world are not only listening but responding. They're engaging with individual participants, they're passing on their messages to their friends, and they're even providing detailed instructions to enable web proxies allowing Internet access that the authorities can't immediately censor. That kind of participation is reallly extraordinary.

Which services have caused the greatest impact? Blogs? Facebook? Twitter?
It's Twitter. One thing that Evan (Williams) and Biz (Stone) did absolutely right is that they made Twitter so simple and so open that it's easier to integrate and harder to control than any other tool. At the time, I'm sure it wasn't conceived as anything other than a smart engineering choice. But it's had global consequences. Twitter is shareable and open and participatory in a way that Facebook's model prevents. So far, despite a massive effort, the authorities have found no way to shut it down, and now there are literally thousands of people aorund the world who've made it their business to help keep it open.

And on the news media of yore:

There was fury on Twitter against CNN for not adequately covering the situation. Was that justified?
In a way it wasn't. I'm sure that for the majority of the country, events in Iran are not of grave interest, even if those desperate for CNN's Iran info couldn't get access to it. That push model of one message for all is an incredibly crappy way of linking supply and demand.

CNN has the same problem this decade that Time magazine had last decade. They simultaneously want to appeal to middle America and leading influencers. Reaching multiple audiences is increasingly difficult. The people who are hungry for info on events of global significance are used to instinctively switching on CNN. But they are realizing that that reflex doesn't serve them very well anymore, and that can't be good for CNN.

Lose the influentials, watch the rest erode away.

Just ask MySpace.