Authorities Shoot Iranian Protesters

[Buford_Julep]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmmixxfKggk

[SUMG]

Warning: This is graphic.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/06/...-protester.html

Edited June 20, 2009 by SUMG

[KingDL1]

Warning: This is graphic.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/06/...-protester.html

A great country to have nuclear power. You go Obama!!!

[Censored by Laurie]

A great country to have nuclear power. You go Obama!!!

Did I see a guy wearing a Kent State t-shirt? Irony.

[eulesseagle]

Should the United States step into a situation, with the revolutionaries, who would like to overthrow the authoritarian government? Naturally, the correct answer would be, yes. If yes by affirming revolt and a possible subsequent overthrow of the government and we do nothing are we faced with the same situation as what happened at the Bay of Pigs if it fails. We promised military support which we did not deliver leaving Cuban freedom fighters dead on the beach thinking that the U.S. would physically support them.

Authoritarian rulers have just about always used brutal force to impose the rule of government on the people. Power politics at its worst. Just take a look at our own history. However, most recently the '53 East German uprising after Stalin died......the '56 Hungarian revolt.....'68 Czech uprising.....'81 in Poland against Solidarity.....'89 at Tiananmen Square and now ..... '09 in Terahn.

Each instance, over a "relative" course of a short period of time, the revolts demonstrated the will of the people toward freedom. IMHO, when people are willing to lay down their lives and fortunes, for this seven letter word, in mores cases than naught freedom will prevail and a new government will take the place of authoritarianism.

The next question is "if" the Iranian Army, en mass, will totally, shut down the uprisings or if in the case of Tiananmen Square some units of the military will refuse to massacure its own people? Again, IMHO, if the army, en mass, begins to slaughter their people to uphold the integrity of this nation state then power will rule until a more organized uprising occurs and possibly with the army and other civilian underground forces. If segments of the army refuses to fire and slaughter innocent civilians then this may signal the coming of the end of this government. How long before the government capitulates? all hypothetical.........days? months?? years???

These are interesting developments, today, where the speed of the internet gets so much information to so many in such a short time.

[CMJ]

The Khameini & Ahmedinedjad folks are kind of in a pickle at this point. I have a suspicion the harder they try and crack down, the worse it'll get for them from the citizens. If Mousavi is killed he'll definitely be turned into a martyr. If he's arrested he probably will as well.

I doubt this will be like Tiananmen Square because of the way martyrdom is thought of in the Muslim world. The Chinese government could break the spirit of protests by rolling tanks on them. I think it'll have the opposite effect here.

[SUMG]

Pretty interesting. From what I gather......this is some of the Twittering (Tweeting) from Iran:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23iranElection

Well and some of it is...Americans and others using Twitter. But I found it interesting some of the info that was on there....about how injured should go to the Canadian embassy...for example.

Edited June 20, 2009 by SUMG

[SUMG]

http://www.demotix.com/iranelection

[CMJ]

Pretty interesting. From what I gather......this is some of the Twittering (Tweeting) from Iran:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23iranElection

Well and some of it is...Americans and others using Twitter. But I found it interesting some of the info that was on there....about how injured should go to the Canadian embassy...for example.

Yeah, I've been following the twitter feeds off and on. Most foreign embassies seem to be accepting injured. The first I saw mentioned was the Dutch Embassy about 3-4 hours ago.

[UNTflyer]

Should the United States step into a situation, with the revolutionaries, who would like to overthrow the authoritarian government?

No.

[eulessismore]

No.

Got to agree with you here. We couldn't help ourselves or our purported beneficiaries.

[CMJ]

I agree as well. They wouldn't trust us anyways. We did afterall help stage a coup in the 1950's for our benefit.

Edited June 21, 2009 by CMJ

[KingDL1]

I agree as well. They wouldn't trust us anyways. We did afterall help stage a coup in the 1950's for our benefit.

I am not sure what happened in the 50s was a coup, Iran was pretty unstable at the time.

[CMJ]

Whether you think it was a coup or not doesn't matter(and most people seem to think Operation AJAX was a coup) - the Iranians think it was. Sure other countries in the Middle East don't like us either, but Iran doesn't TRUST us. We can't have a "Reagan Berlin Wall moment" when the country thinks we took out a democracy to put a pro-western dictator on the throne for a quarter of a century.

[eulesseagle]

No muslim country is going to "trust" the great satin. Does it really matter if the coup took place in the '50s? Evidently what is ocurring today is a revolt from an extreme theocracy to a democracy of some sort, maybe. The current Iranian leadership can say no to reform and kill more people in their uprisings or they may relent and give the people more freedom. Either way, IMHO, they lose. One, if they choose to control power they will expect more uprisings until an overthrow will happen by force or Two, the more freedom the autocratic theocracy gives to the people the more freedom they will want as was the case in Poland in the '80. Western European countries and in particular the United States have staged coups to set up so called democratic regimes in lieu of communistic regimes or other types of unpopular socialist style governments since WWII and in many instances before. What else is new??

The question is what is worse....a western style regime change or a communistic or Islamic or some other repressive govt holding repressive power by force of massacre, usually followed by arrests, trials & execution then the lucky ones going to re-education camps. Look what the commies did to Eastern Europe, South VietNam & Cambodia. Who trusts whom? Besides when the power change happened between the Shah ---- if you agreed with his policies and how he ran the country or not because he did go after the Kurds ---and the radical islamists in power today....at least the Shah did not kill the protesters in the streets.

Who trusts who today?

Edited June 21, 2009 by eulesseagle

[CMJ]

What I'm saying is - to Iranians we don't have the moral authority if we encourage a revolution that we had in Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe we didn't topple a soverign nation's government because we were afraid that democracy was going to align itself with an enemy. Reagan could say "tear down this wall" and not look like a hypocrite. Any President or Prime Minsiter from Great Britain would look like one if they meddled too much in this.

Edited June 21, 2009 by CMJ

[eulessismore]

I am not sure what happened in the 50s was a coup, Iran was pretty unstable at the time.

The CIA's own site seems to agree with it being a coup, and finds validity in George W. Bush's sad conclusion that our search for stability in the Middle East, including Operation Ajax, didn't bring us safety. Their review of "All the Shah's Men" doesn't dispute the author's presentation of the facts, although they do question his "maudlin" treatment of Mossadegh, the deposed Iranian Prime Minister, and criticize Mossadegh for failing to understand the Anti-Communist concerns of the United States and Britain.

Personally, I have enjoyed the company of Iranians I have met in work and social settings. I had a recent master's graduate originally from Iran working for me on a temporary basis once at the City of Dallas. Looking back, it's interesting that he said most Iranians liked the United States because they have (after a fashion) been a democratic country, BECAUSE of the leadership of Mossadegh. Check out the following for what the CIA says about the book which chronicled Ajax shortly after the primary documents became declassified:

CIA review of "All the Shah's Men"

[eulesseagle]

What I'm saying is - to Iranians we don't have the moral authority if we encourage a revolution that we had in Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe we didn't topple a soverign nation's government because we were afraid that democracy was going to align itself with an enemy. Reagan could say "tear down this wall" and not look like a hypocrite. Any President or Prime Minsiter from Great Britain would look like one if they meddled too much in this.

CMJ-

If we tried to topple an Eastern European country after WWII it would have been called WWIII. Look at the events leading to the Hungarian Revolt of '56. We encouraged the revolt and backed off when the revolt occured setting up the same senario as the Bay of Pigs.

[CMJ]

CMJ-

If we tried to topple an Eastern European country after WWII it would have been called WWIII. Look at the events leading to the Hungarian Revolt of '56. We encouraged the revolt and backed off when the revolt occured setting up the same senario as the Bay of Pigs.

You're not listening to what I'm saying. It's TOTALLY DIFFERENT when you overthrow a democratic government. Of course if we had overthrown an Eastern European country it wouldn't have been the same because they were communist. I'm not a moron.

If we say we are for democracy(which we do all the time), but overthrow a democracy - we can never be taken seriously by that country again. At least not for a long, long time. That is why even if you asked most of those protestors on the streets if they want our help - they'd probably say no.

Eastern Europe didn't have a reason to doubt our sincerity for being for democracy when we stated it. Iran does.

Clear?

Edited June 21, 2009 by CMJ

[FirefightnRick]

The people over there need to quit throwing rocks and find them some weapons.

Rick

[eulessismore]

The people over there need to quit throwing rocks and find them some weapons.

Rick

I think if they had some weapons they'd be using them.

Foreign intervention doesn't seem foreign to the modern Iranian nation, but hasn't really helped those who needed help all that much. A link to a story about an American who tried to help them rise up against an early 20th Century Shah:

An American martyr to Iranian constitutionalism.

[KingDL1]

My dad is a retired Airline pilot and he had a buddy from Iran of that era, who had joined the airline industry here in the 60s. He told us lots of stories about the days in Iran. But he always painted the USA as doing the best thing for Iran. He said that it was getting pretty turbulent and crazy there in the early 50's, I don't really know its been a long time since I heard the stories but he was very passionate about them. He said the Shah took Iran to modern time women were educated and going to universities, and how sad he was when the Muslim revolution took over Iran and sent most of the country back to the middle ages. It was a constitutional monarchy, not a dictatorship by the way. Unfortunately he died some 10 years ago, I would love to pick his brain today and refresh his stories in my mind. But one thing I remember clearly was he disliked Carter and he thought the revolution in 1979 was about the worst thing that could happen to his country.

[TheTastyGreek]

CMJ-

If we tried to topple an Eastern European country after WWII it would have been called WWIII.

That's not what Pattakos, Makarezos, and Papadopoulos thought.

And they were right.

[UNT90]

The people over there need to quit throwing rocks and find them some weapons.

Rick

Weapons for citizens to defend themselves against their own government? Na, just need more gun control.

Don't underestimate the underlying influence of what has happened in Iraq to what is now happening in Iran. Educated Iranians have watched free elections in Iraq and now want the same for their country. Our involvement in Iraq has much more influence with these educated Iranians than what happened in 1953. Whatever our government decides to do, it needs to follow through with what promises it makes to the Mousavi movement, otherwise we do repeat the mistakes of the past.

[CMJ]

The people over there need to quit throwing rocks and find them some weapons.

Rick

This was NBC's Richard Engel(who is by far their best Middle East coorespondent IMHO)'s comment today on this issue-

The information war is one war. But [the regime]is much more concerned about a real war. And the only people who are armed in this country, in Iran, are most of the ethnic minorities -- the Baluchis, the Kurds, the Arab populations. So if this protest movement spreads deeply into those areas, then you have a real significant threat against the regime. That is why you are seeing the regime try and say don't participate, this is a foreign-inspired coup, these people in the streets are rioters and terrorists who will be dealt with accordingly