School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA) George Washington Univeristy 805 21st Street NW Room 309 Washington, DC 20052 Phone: 202-994-6227 smpa@gwu.edu
At first, it looked like an ordinary dictator’s response to a little criticism and a comparatively polite people’s request for a little consideration and power, but in 2011, what looked like a civil war masked the deeper, more prolonged, and vicious desire to sustain medieval absolute power — the power of the tyrant — against the entire Christian, humanist, and liberal experience and political philosophy of the western world.
Are there to be no differences between property and persons?
Are such malign narcissistic personalities, uniquely limited in conscience and that mysterious thing we call heart, to be given free reign to assert themselves as powerful primarily with false flag theater (e.g, “Moscow Apartment Bombings“, “Assad v The Terrorists”) followed by an expressed cruelty and sadism in power that encounters neither boundaries nor limits?
Know thy tyrants.
This east-west conflict between thieving barbarians and the just nobility of western civilization has been brewing in the post-WWII region in time, and the world that won’t massacre refugees is being drawn into the vortex.
Perhaps we should now ask about the nations watching from similar sidelines the horror on continuous display in Syria: where has been their courage, humanity, and resolve as Russian and Syrian air power directly bombed nearly two dozen hospitals and other medical facilities in the vicinity of East Ghouta, Syria?
Triebert, Christiaan, Evan Hill, Malachy Browne, Whitney Hurst, Dmitriy Khavin, Masha Froliak. “How Times Reporters Proved Russia Bombed Syrian Hospitals.” The New York Times, October 13, 2019, updated April 7, 2020.
The recent Russian rejection of an American initiative at the UN Security Council for the world community to express solidarity with the Iranian protesters in the face of the Islamist regime’s brutalities did not come as a surprise. In fact, given the history of Russia’s imperialistic behavior towards Iran, the rejection came as a natural move on the part of Putin. In this article I am going to make a survey of Russian imperialism in Iran and indicate what America can do to neutralize that threat and consequently bring Iran back to the West.
One more excerpt as a teaser to this reading highly recommended:
The Tudeh’s professed goal, according to Abrahamian (Iran Between Two Revolutions, 1982), was to “adapt Marxism to the local environment” so that in the end a Soviet-style Communist revolution can be brought about in Iran. In other words, as Iran was mostly a Shiite Muslim community, the Tudeh would use Shiite religious jargon and lore in order to attract the attention of the masses. This ploy would later play into the hands of the revolutionary Islamists who took over in 1979.
Detainees disappeared
Families of a number of detained protesters have not been able to obtain any information about their loved ones. Among them are Ashkan Absavaran, a 20-year-old male detainee, and Sepideh Farhan (Farahabadi), a young female. Ashkan Absavaran informed his family of his detention in a telephone call on 4 January. Officials of Evin prison told his family later that he had disappeared.
The IRGC and its affiliated paramilitary force, the Basij, have been mainly responsible for the heavy crackdown on the protesters. Having initially denied direct involvement in repressing the protesters, the IRGC commander declared on 3 January that they had taken action in three provinces. Furthermore, the IRGC has been responsible for torturing the detainees in order to make false confessions in Wards 2A and 240 of Evin prison.
For how long will Iran’s payoffs for murder continue to be accepted by the patronized of the state?
Noted on the Human Rights Day post:
In one of the above clips, Maryam Rajavi put the number of regime executed political martyrs at above 120,000, with 30,000 killed shortly after the taking of power in 1988.
Iran Protests, Dec 30, 2017 – chanting slogans against Khamenei in Tehran University – NCRI
Demonstrators were reportedly heard yelling slogans like “The people are begging, the clerics act like God”. Protests have even been held in Qom, a holy city home to powerful clerics.
Other demonstrators chanted “leave Syria, think about us” in videos posted online. Iran is a key provider of military support to the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Twenty-one hours ago:
#Update7 :protesters attacked the governor office of #Hamedan, chanting: “ Death to the Islamic Republic”, “We don’t want Islamic Republic”.#Qom chanting “Death to the Islamic Republic “, “Death to Hezbollah”, we don’t want an Islamic Republic”#Iranprotests#RegimeChangepic.twitter.com/GlsovMmygg
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly taken aim at Iran, denouncing its government as a “fanatical regime” and accusing it of violating an international agreement aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program, refusing to certify its compliance with the deal.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert also addressed the protests.
“The United States strongly condemns the arrest of peaceful protesters. We urge all nations to publicly support the Iranian people and their demands for basic rights and an end to corruption,” she said in a statement.
While the Laws of War may apply to contested space and recognize the division between the “occupier” and the “occupied” — and the “stronger” and the “weaker” for that matter — there’s something now absurd about the preoccupation with an occupation that treats the “occupied” better than their own leaders.
The law and the thinking behind it have become absurd as the conflict becomes redefined. I think I’ve done my part to harp on the Soviet / post-Soviet engineering of the conflict and get in the way of the memorization of political cant and disinformation that keeps the darned thing — and the Arab apartheid of the Palestinians and related exploitation of the main base by the leadership elite — cycling.
Maybe the cadre who most genuinely care about the Palestinian main base are figuring out the true history of the conflict — that would be a better preoccupation than the one to which too many have been and are still indoctrinated.
Related on BackChannels for Palestinian Cadre – A Module