Month: December 2009

A reader writes:

While I appreciate your reader's insights, I completely disagree with his analysis.

This is not an unplanned, mindless resistance to dictatorship. This is an organized, grass-root uprising, with leaders and centers of command. Just considering the networks of information and organization, like the design, production and dissemination of fliers and notices, shows that this is not a random movement. I have heard this statement so many times, not just since the June election, but long before and these are primarily the words of those interested in re-establishing the pre-1979 leadership structure, i.e. monarchists, mojahedeen, toodeh, chapi, etc.

They are those who simply do not know or understand the context of the current movement; or those who favor reform, i.e. keeping the basic establishment, including the supreme leader, over a revolution, meaning a complete change of the governing system to a democracy.

Trust me, there are many leaders in Iran, despite the regime's best efforts to annihilate them; they either keep a low profile or the outside world knows very little about them until something happens to them.

A reader writes:

Ali was a seyyed … of the line of the Imam.

Western analysts do not actually understand the importance of the twin mantles of heredity and scholarship to the Shi'ia. This will start the martyrdom remembrance cycle … with Ali Mousavi as the Shaheed, the martyr. I predict this is the single event that will crush the tyrant regime of Khamenei and 'Nejad.

Killing a seyyed during Ashura? Gasoline on the fires of revolution. If Qom was not in the Green Wave before this will submerge them.

This is a martyrdom of far greater import than any killings so far….this is an exact parallel to the martyrdom of Imam Ali at the hands of Ummayyads. Husayn ibn Ali famously said he would prefer death to life under tyranny:

"… Don't you see that the truth is not put into action and the false is not prohibited? The believer should desire to meet his Lord while he is right. Thus I do not see death but as happiness, and living with tyrants but as sorrow."

And he pulls no punches:

“The sins that you have committed today cannot be forgiven by God. If you don’t have a belief in God, at least be a human.”

Kevin Sullivan thinks the coup regime is doing just fine, than you very much. And that today's uprising means nothing in the grand scheme of things. We'll see.

Marc Lynch looks at how the Christmas terrorist attack is playing in the Arab press:

The Arab media's indifference to the story speaks to a vitally important trend. Al-Qaeda's attempted acts of terrorism simply no longer carry the kind of persuasive political force with mass Arab or Muslim publics which they may have commanded in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.   Even as the microscopically small radicalized and mobilized base continues to plot and even to thrive in its isolated pockets, it has largely lost its ability to break out into mainstream public appeal.  I doubt this would have been any different even had the plot been successful — more attention and coverage, to be sure, but not sympathy or translation into political support.  It is just too far gone to resonate with Arab or Muslim publics at this point. 

A reader writes:

Today stands as another example of mainstream media's failure, especially cable news which is once again asleep at the wheel. As I'm writing this, CNN has a show about the Middle East peace process, hardly anything groundbreaking or for that matter newsworthy; MSNBC a taped documentary about prison life; and FoxNews continuing coverage of the latest airlines terrorist incident, which is to some extent understandable.

But if, out of 24 supposed hours of continuous news coverage, they can't find the resources to muster some decent coverage of events of such significance, then why bother?

I'm left to ponder if CNN would even bother to cover the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Tiananmen Square protests were they to happen today.

A different tack than last June:

"We strongly condemn the violent and unjust suppression of civilians in Iran seeking to exercise their universal rights," White House spokesman Mike Hammer said in a statement. "Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States. "Governing through fear and violence is never just, and as President Obama said in Oslo — it is telling when governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation."

Just read the twitter feed on CNN's pathetic coverage of the most significant event in world history now happening in front of our eyes. Another reader writes:

I only flipped over to CNN occasionally this morning and didn't see ANY of this, let a lone a mention of it!! (the coverage this morning was mostly about the latest terrorist attack amid bits of 'past year' previously taped stuff…once again CNN is on holiday…)

If you want actual news, don't switch cable on. Go to the blogs.

Do these people seem intimidated to you?