State Violence in Iran Hits New Extreme

Without trying to diminish the earnestness and terror we hear in that clip, other reports from "trusted sources" deny that a "massacre" has happened:

http://niacblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/iran-updates-june-24/

I wonder if nonviolence is the appropriate tactic in Iran right now. It seems to me that the powers that be are willing to get as brutal as they need to to retain power. I think nonviolence was the right approach until now.  However, some of the evidence suggests that enough of those currently in power are reconciled to do whatever it takes.  

There are other higher ups that seem to be on the fence, and I think they will be cowed by Khamenei and Ahmadinejad's crowd. However, I think they could support the reformist/revolutionary movement if they were sure they would win.

Finally, the Rafsanjani/Mousavi/Karroubi/Khatami/Montazeri crowd is united and has been done such serious wrong that they could now turn to violence and retain their Moral Authority.

At the start of this I was optimistic that Khamenei would read the writing on the wall and acquiesce to the sea of green. It is too late now. Those in power are now war criminals that have nowhere to go.

The revolution in India was different, it was against Britian which was on the outside, they could leave.  The march for Civil Rights in the South ultimately required military/National Guard support from Washington.

I've seen the photos and videos today of murdered, dying, Iranians, some of them with terrible, gaping ax wounds. If that doesn't qualify as massacre against an unarmed citizenry, then I need to relearn the English language.

More on Baharestan:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/24/AR200906...

While the situation is certainly horrible and untenable, this call doesn't pass my smell test. That “genocide” “massacre” “Hitler” flourish at the end was a red flag for me. Especially when it was cemented with “you people should stop it” “long time we have been exposed to this” “and nobody takes action.”

The reformers have said for years that external US interference helps no one but the conservative Mullahs: it gives them a ready enemy that helps keep them in power. And Iranians aren’t locked up in Iran. They can travel. This caller implies by this request for help that she’s in prison.

Another thing: “long time we have been exposed to this” sounds Eastern European. I can almost see the shoulders shrug. Persian has a simple sentence structure. It starts with the subject.

PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: [translated] We ask the world to respect Iran, because they are trying to influence the strength of the Iranian Revolution. We ask the world to respect the triumph of President Ahmadinejad. It was a triumph in every respect. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad’s triumph and weakening the government and the Islamic Revolution. I know they are not going to achieve it. From here, we are sending our solidarity to the brotherly nation of Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, that’s Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Khamanei is a psychopathic butcher:

http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2009/06/unimaginable-horror-in-tehran...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5A3FOPY4hs&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.citizen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG5vu83lCiA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.citizen...

First of all, I found it odd that CNN would get something like that, and then at the end of the clip, my immediate reaction was, "That's a 'tell' and they overplayed their hand."

Yes, I admit I tend to jump to conspiracy thoughts too quickly, but unfortunately I've been correct in a number of these cases.

She begins yelling, "Do something!  You must stop this!" and all I hear is Neocons writing a script.  This felt like a PR operation to me, and having CNN reporters sitting around a newsroom with cameras ready to broadcast live this woman in the thick of killing in a country, where communications are spotty, at best seems very fishy to me.

If I'm wrong and this is real, I'll feel horribly, but that was my honest first reaction.

Whatever the case, remain vigilant and in solidarity with our Iranian brothers and sisters fellow organizers!  Don't get distracted.

according to a twitter, these are pictures of a strike in Saqqez bazaar (Kurdistan province). http://news.gooya.com/didaniha/archives/2009/06/089877.php

the story of that square is horrible. I read some of the tweets about it too and its so sad, and brutal. especially the stories of the axes. 

Do we know if the bazaar closings and/or the rumblings of the strikes have materialized at all?

This from Slavoj Zizek; sociologist, philosopher and leftist cultural critic.

Money graph:

"Whatever the outcome, it is vitally important to keep in mind that we are witnessing a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit the frame of the struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If our cynical pragmatism will make us lose the capacity to recognize this emancipatory dimension, then we in the West are effectively entering a post-democratic era, getting ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line."

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/06/433107.html

Would the following set of analogies be marginally true?

Khomeini = Lenin

Ahmadinejad/Khameini = Stalin

Mousavi/Rafsanjani = Trotsky

By the time Stalin came to power, it was fairly obvious that he wasn't the leader that Lenin had in mind for the revolution, but he had been so effective in isolating (eliminating) his opposition that it didn't really matter.

The comparison doesn't totally square, but there are some similarities there, namely, Stalin's ability to get as tough as he needed, and Trotsky's inability to do so. Lenin's approval didn't mean much when he was dead.

I fear that, by virtue of the fact that Ahmadinejad/Khameini will get as tough as they need to, we're in for a long slog.

This passage from Nico Pitney's Huffpo Blog @ 7:49 AM A letter from an Iranian:

I've also been getting a lot of "this is all the work of the British and American's" as if Iranians are to stupid or so low that they can't do anything for themselves. It must all be the work of foreign powers. I just hope that all this lead's to something, that people weren't beaten and killed for nothing. Once again I'm forced to sing Neil Young's Ohio in my head Which seems even more relevant after the video of a young woman dying in the street has swept the world) and hope for change.

"Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?"

I don't know what to think anymore, but I know I won't ever be the same. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/25/iran-uprising-live-bloggi_n_220...

This has taken me back to that May 4th day in 1970.  I was 12.  Then Life Magazine arrived.  I really grew up that day. 

 John Filo's iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteen-year-old runaway, kneeling over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller after he was shot by the National Guard.

photo/info via Wikipedia

Well, yes and no. Political analogies can often be more obfuscating than clarifying by leading you to wrong assumptions.

Iranian political history is much more complicated than that implies. Khomeini was much more of a legitimate leader than Lenin and had diverse revolutionary allies. At the beginning he agreed to a much more democratic system but subsequent events made that politically difficult and gave the bloodthirsty theocrats an upper hand. The whole bloody history after this is quite complicated.

Iran has not been totalitarian in the same sense that Stalin's Soviet Union was at all. People died by the millions under Stalin and he ruled by absolute terror. No movement like this would have been allowed. They simply would all be dead or in Siberia already.

In Iran I think that an attempt at Stalin style murder would most likely lead to civil war. Ahmadinejad fancies himself a real populist figure as well I believe. The nature of his backing and his alliances are based on shared belief than manipulation and terror.

We are in for a long hard slog one way or another. Khameini still has a strong hold on the most of the populace but it is not based on authoritarian terror in the same sense either.

Rafsanjani is also a rich and powerful man. They won't be able to just get rid of him. But it is true that the opposition in Iran does not have the kind of militant idealogy that would allow for violant revolt.

Nonviolence does not mean passivity.  It requires strategic organization and determined, long-term struggle.  Violence will only leave bitterness and destruction in its wake.  Nonviolence leaves a society ready to move forward with new hope and vision for the future.

I have outlined some of the methods that the Iranian opposition could apply for effective change:

"Nonviolent Guerilla Tactics Are Now Needed in Iran"  http://tinyurl.com/lf9erg

Perhap's Chávez's unfortunate loyalty to Ahmadinejad is due to a kind of "beware if ye fight monsters, lest ye become one" type of reaction: Norman Soloman, elsewhere a defender of Venezuela's president, points out that in going to bat for Ahmadinejad, Chávez is reinforcing the same paradigms that are the stock-and-trade of U.S. Republicans and Neo-conservatives:

It seems to be beyond the vision of both Hugo Chavez and John McCain to see that vast numbers of Iranian people, fed up with repression, are able to grasp the historical moment on their own while opposing the regime. The last thing they need or want is "help" from the U.S. government as they struggle for a democratic future.

Taken yesterday, Wednesday. As you can see, despite the harsh crackdowns and strong gov't efforts to keep information from circulating, people continue to take to the streets. Notice that the crowd swells as the original group pushes back the Basiji.

Has anyone else seen or heard about this letter [below]? It's up on a blog site published by an Iranian-movement backer, but I have not been able to independently verify it's the real deal at this point — though I suspect it is, since this blogger seems to be the authentic deal.

What's interesting about it, is that it is signed by a host of international intellectuals and academics, including the quite famous Noam Chomsky.

Given that Chomsky signed it, and assuming it's the real deal, it pretty much takes the wind out of the sails for those claiming that anyone who backs the Iranian people's movement is a CIA dupe — unless they want to claim an icon of the Left like Chomsky suddenly became such a dupe. 

Open letter of support to the demonstrators in Iran!

Khamenei's argument sounds familiar to anyone interested in the politics of collective action, since it appears to draw on the logic used by state authorities to oppose most of the great popular mobilisations of modern times, from 1789 in France to 1979 in Iran itself. These mobilisations took shape through a struggle to assert the principle that sovereignty rests with the people themselves, rather than with the state or its representatives. 'No government can justly claim authority', as South Africa's ANC militants put it in their Freedom Charter of 1955, 'unless it is based on the will of all the people.'

Needless to say it is up to the people of Iran to determine their own political course. Foreign observers inspired by the courage of those demonstrating in Iran this past week are nevertheless entitled to point out that a government which claims to represent the will of its people can only do so if it respects the most basic preconditions for the determination of such a will: the freedom of the people to assemble, unhindered, as an inclusive collective force; the capacity of the people, without restrictions on debate or access to information, to deliberate, decide and implement a shared course of action.

Years of foreign-sponsored 'democracy promotion' in various parts of the world have helped to spread a well-founded scepticism about civic movements which claim some sort of direct democratic legitimacy. But the principle itself remains as clear as ever: only the people themselves can determine the value of such claims. We the undersigned call on the government of Iran to take no action that might discourage such determination.

There's been some suggestion here that the testimony of the witness on CNN looks or smells like disinformation.

Well, since disinformation is designed to look or smell like information, it is often difficult to tell the difference between the two. I think we should be careful to conclude something is untrue just because it sounds like something different that was untrue in other lands or other cases.

Andrew Sullivan links to a Le Monde story that seems to corroborate what the eye-witness on CNN said:

"Then, all of a sudden, hundreds of Basiji came out of the Hedayat Mosque. They were dressed in black and carried batons, knives and axes! Can you believe that? They started to beat the people with their weapons. The shop keepers told me that they particularly took on the women and that they insulted them. [...]

I went then towards Saadi Street, where some shops were burnt. I was told that their proprietors had opened their shops to allow the demonstrators to enter and that they had been attacked by the Basiji. The shopkeepers also told me that the Basiji had pushed some people from the pedestrian bridge that overhangs Saadi Street. No-one knew the number of victims, but it must be high."

(His link to the Le Monde story is broken. If anyone can find the corrected link, please post it here.)

Here.