Revolution in Iran goes underground, but continues
“A senior Iranian cleric has called on the government to punish the leaders of the country’s post-election protests cruelly and without mercy.
In a sermon at Tehran University on Friday, Ahmad Khatami described the demonstrators as rioters who wage war against God (”moharem”), a crime in Islamic law, punishable by death.
He also accused foreign journalists of instigating the protests.
Meanwhile, the relatives of citizens detained by authorities sent a letter to the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Shahrudi, and Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani, expressing concern for the detainees’ well-being. The letter says they are concerned the detainees, who include prominent reformist politicians, are being pressured to confess to crimes. Iranian authorities have arrested hundreds of people since the election.
… Defeated presidential candidate and reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi vowed on Thursday to resist pressure to end his challenge of the election outcome. He also urged supporters to continue protests in a way that will not create tension.
The Washington Post quoted Khatami as saying “I want the judiciary to . . . punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson. … They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely.”
The good news, what there is of it, is that turmoil apparently continues within Iran’s ruling elite. Another top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, yesterday talked of the need for national reconciliation, an approach that would seem to imply some negotiation or concession from the government.
“Definitively, something must be done to ensure that there are no embers burning under the ashes, and (to ensure) that hostilities, antagonism and rivalries are transformed into amity and cooperation among all parties,” he said.
And according to the BBC, 290 members of the Iranian Parliament were invited to join a “victory celebration” in honor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Only 105 showed up.
In other words, while outward expressions of dissent in Iran have been crushed through violence, it’s not over and may not be over for years. The structure of power has cracked, even if it has not yet fallen.
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114 comments Add your comment
Brad Steel
June 26th, 2009
12:04 pm
Someone cue the Whiner for a stupid cynical comment…
Normal
June 26th, 2009
12:07 pm
I wonder what “We shall overcome” is in their language? Just askin’…
Redneck Convert
June 26th, 2009
12:16 pm
Well, if they had a Supreme Court over there, they could rule that Amanutjob won the election and that would be that. It worked over here, it ought to work over there. Have a good p.m. everybody.
Doggone/GA
June 26th, 2009
12:19 pm
“I wonder what “We shall overcome” is in their language? Just askin’…”
ما بايد غلبه بر
ty webb
June 26th, 2009
12:19 pm
Anybody remember the great political scientist Tim Robbins, during the run up to the Iraq war, at a press conference, stating that a chilling force is sweeping the US stifling dissent. Did I mention he said this at a press conference. There were microphones there to record and play his words for all the nation to hear. Many media sources covered his speech. Well, in light of the current situation in Iran, all that sounds pretty ridiculous now…doesn’t it?
Normal
June 26th, 2009
12:25 pm
Doggone: Thanks! We should make tee shirts…just sayin’
USinUK
June 26th, 2009
12:27 pm
Normal and Doggone … you guys should go into business!! (and how very appropriate that quote is, Normal – good one!)
Normal – I also replied downstairs about the general public’s relationships with the military
@@
June 26th, 2009
12:28 pm
Just like here in the U.S., ain’t it?
The power struggle takes place within the ruling elite.
Nothing new.
getalife
June 26th, 2009
12:28 pm
They have some Tehran Tims like Baghdad Bob spewing nonsense blaming the CIA for Neda. The world have seen the Iranian people fight for civil rights and the regime showing their true colors.
The world sided with the Iranian people and perhaps they should study the civil rights movements in our country.
Normal
June 26th, 2009
12:31 pm
USinUK…I saw and I thanked you!
Doggone/GA
June 26th, 2009
12:32 pm
“you guys should go into business!! ”
All thanks to an online Persian-English translator!
USinUK
June 26th, 2009
12:32 pm
Normal –
http://www.concernedjournalists.org/talking-journalism-robert-bateman
a little about Bob
Normal
June 26th, 2009
12:37 pm
Non-violent civil disobedience should be their method. Remember in Birmingham Ala., Police Chief Bull came down on Martin’s demonstrators like a ton of bricks and those pictures showed the nation how it really was and ended up helping the civil rights movement win…
Normal
June 26th, 2009
12:39 pm
USinUK: a little about Bob-Thank you. I put it my favorites…
Doggone/GA
June 26th, 2009
12:42 pm
“Non-violent civil disobedience should be their method”
All that is true…BUT, in Birmingham it was a bit harder for the Police Chief’s white officers to pretend to be violent demonstrators. In Iran they can get away with it…they, so to speak, blend in better.
USinUK
June 26th, 2009
12:44 pm
Normal –
“Remember in Birmingham Ala., Police Chief Bull came down on Martin’s demonstrators like a ton of bricks and those pictures showed the nation how it really was and ended up helping the civil rights movement win…”
I agree wholeheartedly – which is why Obama’s statement that the whole world is watching resonated so well.
again, 70% of the Iranian population is under 30 and educated. the majority of their university population is women. those are NOT demographics that have the democratic bit in their teeth – the rule of the mullahs will not stand much longer.
The Truth is Way Out There
June 26th, 2009
12:45 pm
Well, if they had a Supreme Court over there, they could rule that Amanutjob won the election and that would be that. It worked over here, it ought to work over there. Have a good p.m. everybody.
You are most certainly correct. The Supremes did rule that a nut job was to be our president.
USinUK
June 26th, 2009
12:45 pm
heading home for the night … then packing for VACATION!!! (woowoo!!)
see you guys in a week … I’ve left food in the fridge … no wild parties
I Report :-) You Whine :-(
June 26th, 2009
12:46 pm
The structure of power has cracked
Yeah, cracked some heads.
Dream on bookman, Nothing has come of this, Evin prison is still bustling, women will still be buried in the ground and stoned to death, Imawhackjob will be taunting Obozo mercilessly.
This is what you call a start?
eewwww
clyde
June 26th, 2009
12:51 pm
Update on Neda.
The Iranis have blamed her murder on a British Journalist whom they kicked out of the country.They are trying to make her a martyr for the government’s cause.Her family has been evicted from their home.The government has apparently buried her in an unknown location.Her family was forbidden to mourn her publicly.I’ve picked up this info on several sites the past few days.How much is true I don’t know for sure.
Doggone/GA
June 26th, 2009
12:52 pm
“the rule of the mullahs will not stand much longer.”
But they won’t go quietly either.
Normal
June 26th, 2009
12:53 pm
AW USinUK, that’s no fun….gee!
Normal
June 26th, 2009
12:54 pm
BRUTUS! Welcome back…
Doggone/GA
June 26th, 2009
12:54 pm
“Her family has been evicted from their home”
“Her family was forbidden to mourn her publicly”
I’ve seen these 2, at least, reported in several places.
“They are trying to make her a martyr for the government’s cause”
I don’t think it’s going to work. They’ve already lost control of the story.
The Truth is Way Out There
June 26th, 2009
1:04 pm
I know that I would not want to be one of the infamous 185. Dissidents! Every one of them. And, blasphemers for speaking out against the leaders. Much like the way people here spoke out against Bush. I guess it is a good thing that we don’t have a bunch of religious whack jobs in charge here. Otherwise… .
Joey
June 26th, 2009
1:11 pm
Did Sarah Palin really say when speaking to the Alaskan National Guard and in response to Kerry’s disappearing governor joke:
“John, why the long face?”
Now that is humor.
Ripped Lees, Believe it or Not
June 26th, 2009
1:15 pm
Someone unearthed a fossil of a pre-historic Republican.
Normal
June 26th, 2009
1:16 pm
The Iranis have blamed her murder on a British Journalist whom they kicked out of the country.
—————————-
Why are they blaming the Brits? Seem to me, they would blame the CIA.
Wide Mouth for Andy
June 26th, 2009
1:18 pm
This reminds me of when I threw my feces at a cop car during a Bush protest, they cops didn’t trample me but they did say ew.
I was a little lib hero for a day.
ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Doggone/GA
June 26th, 2009
1:19 pm
“Seem to me, they would blame the CIA.”
No…the CIA started the demonstrations, remember? /snark
I Report (-: You Whine )-:
June 26th, 2009
1:28 pm
The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)
The collapse of the “consensus” has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.-WallStreetJournal
So what is Obozp doing? Fixing to wreck the US economy just like we said he would.
Real
June 26th, 2009
1:34 pm
So, any further questions naming Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the “axis of evil” in 2002? Extending a hand to these nations seems to only get it mauled…
And we all recognize that the global war on terror is dead; it’s now termed by PresBO as “overseas contingency operations”. And enemy combatants” are also now called “persons” whom the president “has the authority to detain.”
PresBO’s new terms and definitions related to taxes and redistribution of wealth are equally a hoot!!!
Yup, change we can believe in….
Normal
June 26th, 2009
1:39 pm
I threw my feces …I hope you washed your hands before you ate anything…just sayin’
ILG
June 26th, 2009
1:39 pm
And you believe something that Inhofe says?
Normal
June 26th, 2009
1:41 pm
Brutus…Please explain to me how the global warming argument has anything to do with wreaking the economy…I don’t get it…Just askin’…
mike
June 26th, 2009
1:42 pm
I think that having a democracy in Iraq has helped encourage this revolution, as the neocons predicted. I also think that Obama’s posture towards Iran so far has also encouraged this revolution and history might look at at the Bush and Obama administrations as the best bad cop-good cop routine of all time.
Ripped Lees, Believe it or Not
June 26th, 2009
1:43 pm
Did someone say something about the CIA and crack heads. Well, I heard they’re into Afghanistan these days. A little exchange program — Viagra for poppy seeds. Things got a little too public down in South America and that just won’t do when one is supposed to be doing covert stuff.
Ripped Lees, Believe it or Not
June 26th, 2009
1:51 pm
Brutus…Please explain to me how the global warming argument has anything to do with wreaking the economy…I don’t get it…Just askin’…
For someone capable of offering a logical explanation, I would be tempted to say “Well, this should be interesting.” Then again, if this someone were able to offer a logical explanation, then would we have ever reached this point. I think not.
Bosch
June 26th, 2009
1:52 pm
Wow. Have y’all heard? Michael Jackson died.
mm
June 26th, 2009
1:54 pm
Whiner,
What happened to your prediction that the northern US would not have a summer this year? Does 90 – 100 degrees count as summer in your “mind”?
Pennsylvanian
June 26th, 2009
1:54 pm
Normal – I think he said wreck the economy? Referring to the Cap and Trade bill that will cost about $1B.
Ripped Lees, Believe it or Not
June 26th, 2009
1:56 pm
Welcome back, Rip Van Bosch.
Pennsylvanian
June 26th, 2009
1:57 pm
Oops, sorry, make that about $1 TRILLION.
Bosch
June 26th, 2009
1:58 pm
Tacky, Luckovich, tacky.
Normal
June 26th, 2009
1:59 pm
Pennsylvanian
June 26th, 2009
1:57 pm
—————–
I still don’r get it. If there is no global warming, why do we need cap and trade? So confusin’…
Normal
June 26th, 2009
1:59 pm
Michael Jackson, who?
getalife
June 26th, 2009
1:59 pm
Mike’s on CNN pimping his toons.
Normal
June 26th, 2009
2:02 pm
Just a little aside about Michael Jackson…I always thought that any skinny little dude who ran around with one glove on and sang “Beat it” just had to be weird. Is it just me?
Ripped Lees, Believe it or Not
June 26th, 2009
2:02 pm
The Iraq war is costing us about a trillion and all we got out of that is a bunch of dead people and reinforcement of a bad reputation for being an imperialist nation. At least something like Cap and Trade actually deals with things closer to home and it may even help with little things over the long haul like job creation and a cleaner environment and less dependence on foreign oil. Then again, if the Republicans consider those to be bad things, maybe they could offer up some better alternatives.
mm
June 26th, 2009
2:02 pm
For you undereducated neocons – Cap and trade has been in effect for years. Obama is just tightening the cap. If you don’t use all of your emission credits, you can sell them. If you run out, you can buy them from someone else. Bottom line, the amount of polution being allowed is being lowered 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Stop listening to the morons.