Archives for June 2009

T.S. Eliot wrote at the end of “Hollow Men” in 1926, “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.” He may as well have been talking about the war George W. Bush launched in Iraq in 2003. The end of routine, independent patrolling of major Iraqi cities by US […]

The phase of mass protest in the aftermath of the controversial election results of June 12 has drawn to a close for the moment. Movement activists can no longer put tens of thousands of protesters in the street because the security forces are too well organized and too loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to allow […]

Mansoor Moaddel writes in a guest editorial for IC: The current civil uprising in Iran reflects not just a protest against a rigged election. Nor is it primarily a symptom of contentions for power or clashes between opposing perspectives on the nature of the Islamic regime. It is, rather, resistance against a political coup, whose […]

CNN is reporting that 5,000 dissidents marched silently on Shariati street near a major mosque in downtown Tehran, ostensibly in honor of cleric Mohammad Beheshti, who was killed in a bombing by the terrorist organization Mojahedin-e Khalq (Holy Warriors of the People) in 1981. But in fact they were protesting the stealing of the recent […]

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki maintained Saturday that Iraq is ready to provide its own security in the cities, as US troops cease patrolling. This despite the raft of bombings that kille about 200 people last week. Aljazeera English has video on the lack of political progress and the failure of reconciliation in Iraq. End/ […]

CNN says that Iran’s National Security Council met recently with opposition leaders Mir Hosain Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai. Ismail Kowsari, spokesman for the NSC, is said to have complained to Mousavi that his position, that the presidential election was stolen, is “illogical” and that he should not have repeated it after Supreme Leader […]

AP is reporting that opposition leader Mir-Hosein Mousavi has agreed to the Interior Ministry’s demand that he apply for a permit one week in advance for any demonstrations, and will cease calling for unlicensed rallies. This is an about-face on Saturday from his stance just 24 hours earlier, when he said that the election theft […]

As the dramatic events in Iran have taken the world focus off Iraq, the news that some 200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in bombings and other political violence during the past week has been overlooked by many in the West. On Friday, a bus station in Baghdad was bombed, killing 7 persons and wounding […]

Joan Baez adds her support to the Iranians campaigning for more rights, singing “We Shall Overcome” with Persian stanzas toward the end. End/ (Not Continued)