Wednesday, June 24, 2009

LATEST IRAN NEWS, ANALYSIS & VIDEO

The video at the end was posted some hours ago and is a recent view of a Tehran demonstration. With that said let me take offense at the talking heads, mostly on CNN, who insist the Iran protesters are NOT against the regime but want a "vote recount"! But then again, even Fox News has little clue who they bring on to give opinion, including Mullah shill Trita Parsi, known for his bias to the islamic regime and long practised disinformation skills that flavor words with Mullah talking points. What vote recount? From already opened ballot boxes? Boxes already compromised in advance by being sealed outside any witnesses from the other candidates, whose representatives were supposed to witness their being empty and not preloaded. Any wonder why Supreme leader Khamenei has asked a 5-day truce and then he will order a recount? The video toward the end of the article has clear chants of slogans, one of which is a clear "death to the islamic republic". Listen for yourselves: "Marg bar..." means "death to". "jomhoori eslami" means "islamic republic" So: "marg bar jomhoori eslami" means "death to the islamic republic" Bye, bye talking heads deflecting the fact that the protesters do not want a regime change. Other chants in the video include: "I will kill the one who kills my brother (protester)" "Tonight it is revolution" "Woe! Wait till we are armed" (as were the pro-Khomeini supporters in 1979 when they broke into armories after the military went neutral). Some of those weapons were buried and even asphalted over for future use and calls are going out to bring them out and give them to the students to defend themselves. One Revolutionary Guard General, Ali Fazli, was arrested for disobeying the regime order to shoot on the populace. He has since been taken to a place unknown and has disappeared. A whole bunch of clerics are also opposing the regime and have issued fatwas (religious commands) to the Revolutionary Guard not to shoot demonstrators or suffer the consequences of going to hell instead of paradise. Whether as a result or independently, about HALF of the Revolutionary Guard Commanders are sympathising with the demonstrators and their troops are turning a blind eye to demonstrators as much as they can. One of these fell to his knees in tears begging the protesters to disperse. " I have a family, a wife and four children. I do NOT want to hit you or hurt but if I do not they will arrest me and execute me. Please, please go home or you will end up killing me for not hurting you." As you can see I am free flowing the facts as there is too much information coming in to sort out tidily. Other chants are: "Death to Bassijis" (easy to hear and understand) A voice says: "an ambulance is coming", another states "killing and more killing", another shouts: "move over, move over", another says: "get up here, come up here", another complains: "don't hit, don't hit!" The "death to " chants repeat. Now some of the shifting underfoot ground which indicates there will be a regime change - not completely perhaps, unless the current plan gets out of hand. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (pronounced kha-men-ey-ee not anything like Khomeini, Kho-mey-nee - wrong person) was a beggar at Mashhad (North-East Iran city) cemeteries begging for alms from those accompanying coffins being taken for burial. The Imam Reza (Saint of miracles) Shrine gave him monthly "care packages" to help him feed himself and his wife at the location on the "wrong side of the tracks" in the poorest part of the city. Still without two coins to rub together, he jumped on Khomeini's revolution bandwagon and because of his cousin Mir Hossein Moussavi (the current Green movement), who became Khomeini's Prime Minister, he found a favored place until Moussavi began to oppose Khamenei's ambitions. Bad blood came about and when Khamenei, still a low grade cleric, conspired with Khomeini's current Grave Keeper Ansari, and the sick Ayatollah Khomeini's son Ahmad Khomeini, while Ayatollah Khomeini was in a coma in hospital, to prevent Ayatollah Montazeri, previously chosen to succeed the dying ayatollah from attaining that position. And for Khamenei to take up that position. Moussavi, still Prime Minister opposed Khamenei, who after having Ahmad Khomeini suffocated at the hospital to have no witnesses, was given the Supreme Leader position based on second hand edict reputedly from the perhaps already dead or dying Khomeini (visitors forbidden) promptly eradicated the Prime Minister position and became sole 'head of state". To be given this post, already illegally despite Khomeini purported edict, he had to be not just an ayatollah (which he was not) but a Grand Ayatollah, as is Shia Ali Sistani of Iraq and as was Ayatollah Sadr of Iran, a firm critic of Khomeini before he disappeared strangely in Libya.
Note: Ali Sistani's personal representative Shahrestani is in Qom representing the Grand Ayatollah who has been approached to consider issuing a fatwa To be named a grand ayatollah, requires two other ayatollahs to proclaim you their spiritual mentor and guide. Hard to swallow for other senior clerics who knew his lowly status but two ayatollahs, Mesbah Yazdi ( who was considered a loony by Khomeini and told not to promote his Hojatieh 12th Imam philosophy, to which Ahmadi-Nejad is a fervent acolyte) and an Iraqi national, exiled inside Iran, Mahmoud Shahroudi (currently Chief Executive of the Judicial System - like Minister of Justice). Another Khamenei supporter at the time was Akbar Hashem-Rafsanjani, who at his peak was a middle level Hojat-ol-Eslam and now a self-proclaimed ayatollah. He became islamic iran's President and for personal gain (buying arms, oil revenues etc.,) prolonged the war with Iraq long after Iraq had asked for a truce and the Arab world had offered $400 million in reparations. None of which would go into Rafsanjani's personal pocket so he refused. .....Cut to today! Rafsanjani has budgeted some $100 million to keep the revolution going, not to change the regime completely but to remove Khamenei - preferably to hang him as a murderer but mostly to remove the Khomeini created "Velayate Faghih (Rule by religious jurisprudence), under which a Supreme Ruler functions and gains validity. Rafsanjani has been a busy bee and has acquired the written votes of 40 senior clerics aimed at removing the position of Supreme Leader and replacing with a five (5) member ruling Junta, not necessarily of clerics. As head of two major councils (Experts and also Guardians) Rafsanjani, not eligible by lowly clerical status to be a Supreme Ruler under Velayate Faghih sees himself as becoming the head honcho. Mousavi would certainly be one of the five members of the Ruling Council/Junta. Khamenei suddenly found himself in danger and allied himself with former Revolutionary Guard commander Ahmadi-Nejad, who has filled every government position during the past few years with former Revolutionary Guard officers. From the very top positions down to mid-low level posts. Nationwide. Cutting to the chase, believing the former colleagues of his choice for President would prevent/suppress any opposition, he blatantly rigged the election, gave it his holy blessing as a result approved by Allah -- and met the Iranian people! Who disagreed. On Sunday, Khamenei in total disbelief of the strength of the resistance to his plans and aware of his peril moved tanks into the Freedom Square and turned a nearby 100,000 capacity stadium into the anti-revolt operations center and moved there himself with about 12 family and entourage members. He has good reason to try to stay in power, receiving about 10% of isalmic iran's oil revenues as his "income". He has populated the area selectively with ruthless crack riot police, who will kill on his command and the worst of the worst Bassijis. From there he can make a quick getaway to a relatively close-by international airport and has a a bullet proof SUV standing by, engine running and reportedly an aircraft fueled with a crew on board on standby status. Engines will be running by the time he gets there. How far he and his family get depends on Rafsanjani, already a powerful antagonist but even more so if his junta gets approved. He appears to be planning to have Khamenei arrested and tried after being "decertified" as Supreme Ruler for his lack of clerical eligibility and killing of demonstrators. Here we come to the Revolutionary Guard (Passdar) and Bassiji difference. The paramilitary Revolutionary Guard came about under Khomeini's orders to replace the regular military forces he did not trust and though the structure remained till the present, they have been disarmed over the past year or two and are no longer a fighting force. The regular Army is now a sad step-sister and not a fighting force and the officer loyalty by no means points to the regime. Recently the Passdar has become increasingly disenchanted with Ahamdi-Nejad in particular and the regime in general as they see how bad the economy has become. Remember, they are not highly paid and have family and relatives who also suffer the horrible economy, already staggeringly high prices of goods which sometimes double overnight for dairy products, rice and eggs, on which much of the average Iranian lives. A tomato omelet, long a poor person's staple food is now out of reach with the current prices of tomatoes and eggs. To get votes, Ahmadi-Nejad travelled throughout the provinces buying support by giving away small gold coins and SACKS OF POTATOES to a hungry populace. Yes, potatoes they could not buy. Now on to the Bassiji. They originally consisted of the most naive, uneducated and gullible youths from the remotest villages, who would believe anything Khomeini decreed and trust he was the messenger of Allah and spoke for Allah. The knew nothing of the outside world and would kill if ordered to do so, though their main task was more as gophers with some military training. Gradually as the need to control the populace grew their number grew to about a million, scattered all over the country at some minimal rate of pay. Then last year, with discontent rising and the elections on the horizon a MILLION new conscripts were "hired", trained in crowd control and they were introduced into the "street control hit squads", who found which of them were likely to be tough on their fellow countrymen. The backbone of the Bassiji were mercenaries from surrounding Arab countries, from North African countries with jihadists like Algeria, Sudan and some Eastern European tough Moslems from Albania. The twist here is that the rigged election plot and the brutal crowd control and killings are not actually being run by Khamenei Sr., who has colon cancer and should have been dead by now, bu this middle son Mojtaba. He personally controls the mercenary contingents of the Bassiji and very recently imported 5,000 new Hezbollah/Hamas/Palestinian thugs. They are required to have body-builder, heavily muscled physique and be tall to easily intimidate the usually thin, sleight Iranian students who flock into the streets. Those are the main street thugs, generally refered to as the plain clothes agents (lebass shakhsi-ha). But there are some 10,000 mercenary riot hit men with shooting skills. They are the Bassiji shooters and are not required to be heavily built. as you may have seen some of them are snipers who shoot to kill protesters, or bystanders like Neda. They shoot selectively, aiming at the heart and head at targets they think will dishearten, shock or drive fear into others. Our reports put the recent shooting into crowds death toll at 37 for Tuesday bringing the recent total nationwide to over 500! Not the relatively few being reported. In fact reports reaching us from hospitals say that bodies of the dead and wounded are being quickly collected by regime operatives to hide this reality. Also the wounded are arrested and disappear. They are tortured to obtain the names of their friends or fellow resistance movement students, then taken out into the desert and left to die of their wounds or have graver wounds inflicted to make sure they die - eventually - miserably. Control of the Internet you have all heard about is not a gentle, electronic one. One student group which for five years had an internet site up and sharing information with other students nationwide suddenly had their webmaster/editor, a girl, snatched from in front of her house by bassiji agents, tortured and gang raped and her body thrown down in front of her parent's house as a warning. The group lost their safe house and had to move to another. Unfortunately five of their members were captured and under torture, one of who knew the password for their Internet gave it up, so the site was hacked and closed down. All five students were shot and their bodies dumped in the desert Again the safe house had to be abandoned and it's only a few days that the site is back up again. So with the above in mind, it's a matter of plans of mice and men (Rafsanjani et al) running into the wishes of the students and populace that has stood up to them. Mousavi's call for a general strike - now regardless of his being arrested - has not taken root because the regime has threatened any bazaar business that if they went on strike their permits to operate would be permanently cancelled. Former "reformist" president Mohammad Khatami urged the Mousavi demonstrators to simply flood the bazaar with their presence, blocking access to all others and thus putting the bazaar out of business without imposing the strike responsibility on the merchants. Meanwhile in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj there actually was a complete strike and all shops were shuttered. Reports indicate other cities will follow suit on Wednesday and on following days. Now watch the video below and hear the Death to the Islamic Republic for yourselves and realzie the populacw wants to get rid of the regime, while the Rafsanjani and Mousavi want to replace the current structure with another where they are in charge. Albeit with a less fanatical or retrictive theocratic flavor. And, by the way they will hand Ahmadi-Nejad alongside Khamenei for murdering innocent Iranians. Pot calling the kettle black but any port in a storm. A Passdar military coup was possible until half of the commanders aligned themselves with the demonstrators. ALSO FOR YOUR VIEWING OF COURAGE - wait for changes