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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| The meaning of the Tehran spring |
| 2009-06-16 |
| By Pepe Escobar It is 1979 in Tehran all over again. From Saturday to Sunday, the deafening sound deep in the night across Tehran's rooftops was a roaring, ubiquitous "Allah-u Akbar" (God is great). Then, in 1979, to hail the Islamic revolution; now, in 2009, to signify what appears to be the hijacking of the Islamic revolution. Then, the revolution was not televised; it was via (Ruhollah Khomeini) radio. Now, it is being broadcast all across the world. Let's cut to the chase: what Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi qualified as "this dangerous charade" and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "the sweetness of the election", or better yet, a "divine assessment", has all the non-divine markings of intervention by the Iranian Republican Guards Corps (IRGC). This follows President Mahmud Ahmadinejad officially gaining 64% of the vote in defeating Mousavi in what in the days before Friday's vote had widely been called as a very close race. Scores of protesters equating Ahmadinejad with Augusto Pinochet in 1973's Chile might not be that far off the mark. Call it the ultra-right wing, military dictatorship of the mullahtariat. This is emerging as a no-holds-barred civil war at the very top of the Islamic Republic. The undisputed elite is now supposed to be embodied by the Ahmadinejad faction, the IRGC, the intelligence apparatus, the Ministry of the Interior, the Basij volunteer militias, and most of all the Supreme Leader himself. The elite wants subdued, muzzled, if not destroyed, reformists of all strands: any relatively moderate cleric; the late 1970s clerical/technocratic Revolution Old Guard (which includes Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami and Mousavi); "globalized" students; urban, educated women; and the urban intelligentsia. Even fighting a cascade of political and economic setbacks, for the past three decades the regime has always been proud of the Islamic Republic's brand of popular democracy, and its alleged legitimacy. Now the revolution enters completely uncharted territory as thousands of people have taken to the streets in protest against the result. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #3 See also TOPIX > IRAN's TIANENMEN MOMENT. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-06-16 02:40 |
| #2 "A Basiji center in north Tehran seems to have been captured by protesters on Sunday night. This means the green revolution having access to weapons. " Key graf. As for the stolen election in 2000 in the US? Fuck you. It was a narrowly averted stolen election by vote fraud Democrats. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2009-06-16 02:00 |
| #1 GUAM PDN > seems PALAU may not only accept GITMO Uighurs, but also a similar number of MYANMAR REFUGEES??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-06-16 00:31 |