Jun 15th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
At Least One Protester Killed by Iranian Security Forces
I’m not going to try to provide up-to-the-minute coverage of the situation in Iran, but it seems worth noting that at least one of the 100,000+ protestors demonstrating in Iran today was shot dead by security services. BBC Persian is reporting as many as four dead. And with shots being fired, there’s no telling how bad the bloodshed may get. I think it’s probably counterproductive for foreign governments to try to back Moussavi directly in this dispute, but certainly everyone ought to be in a position to condemn shooting at unarmed demonstrators.
54 Responses to “At Least One Protester Killed by Iranian Security Forces”
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June 15th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
How do you say ‘Tiananmen’ in Farsi?
June 15th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
“How do you say ‘Tiananmen’ in Farsi?”
Azadi, apparently. The irony of course is that it means freedom.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
The violence is apparently the result of the conservative militias prowling the streets. The Army and police are supposedly standing by, neither defending nor attacking the protestors today.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
That person was shot not by security services but by pro-government militia who were firing from a building that was under attack – had been set fire to – by a pretty pissed-off crowd. Doesn’t excuse it, obviously, but does put it in the right context. If anything, the fact that hundreds of thousands of people marched through Tehran past long ranks of armed police and soldiers almost entirely without incident is far bigger news.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Non-violent protest gets you nowhere in situations such as these.
Storm them. Behead them. Set fires.
Stop standing around on the streets and Twittering.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
What is amazing is how quickly the protests have taken off. It was months before the 1978 protests reached this size. And it took more than a year to depose the Shah. I’m not sure we’re seeing the start of a revolution, but just remember that the last one started out much smaller. And it was against a government with broad support in the Western World.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Fascists look their best when dangling from lampposts.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Calvin Klein wearing hipsters seem to have found their ideological mates, Persia-style.
There is no evidence of fraud. All the actual violence has been on the reformers’ side, a side funded by the CIA. Most of the protesters are just being sore losers to a historic election that means a new era of Freedom for the Iranian people.
Anti-Iranian Tehran liberals are no more representative of the country than San Francisco ACORN vote-fraudsters are to America.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Apropos of Matt’s earlier post on the poor MSM coverage of this event in the US, I just picked this up from the NYT Lede. Fantastic reporting from Channel 4 news:
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/violence+at+iranaposs+election+protest+/3213457
CNN has Amanpour. It’s hard to see why they can’t get her on TV more often to report these events as they’re happening on the ground.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Amateur troll.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Anon, since you’re so big on evidence, where’s the evidence that the CIA is funding Mousavi and co?
June 15th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Amateur troll.
Professional quality, though.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Calvin Klein wearing hipsters seem to have found their ideological mates, Persia-style.
Hector, is that you?
June 15th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Scorecard:
2/10 for believability. What perspective are you supposed to be coming from? An ACORN-obsessed winger wouldn’t work. But a Ahmenadijebad apologist wouldn’t harp on ACORN.
9/10 for nuttiness, though.
9.5/10 for the clever combination of memes, an extra half point for the hipster thrown in. Shows you know your audience.
8/10 for suitability to the post and speediness in delivery.
I’m going to go ahead and call it the troll of the thread!
June 15th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Hector, is that you?
Their Calvin Klein jeans! And their … their decadent Disco music!
Anti-Iranian Tehran liberals are no more representative of the country than San Francisco ACORN vote-fraudsters are to America.
All ACORN is trying to do is get poor people to vote, why do people pick on them? I mean people voting is a good thing right? It’s pretty innocuous.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
All ACORN is trying to do is get poor people to vote, why do people pick on them? I mean people voting is a good thing right? It’s pretty innocuous.
If poor people being unable to vote was good enough for the Founding Fathers, then it’s good enough for me.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
“I mean people voting is a good thing right?”
Not if you’re a Right Winger. Their policy is to prevent people who might vote Democratic from voting.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Can someone show dumbass the headline?
‘Enkew.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Re: Anon, since you’re so big on evidence, where’s the evidence that the CIA is funding Mousavi and co?
Oh, none at all. Just the pesky little fact that the CIA has funded more pro-capitalist, pro- U.S. movements than I can count. Lady Chamorro in Nicaragua. Yushchenko in the Ukraine. Sakashvili in Georgia. A whole revolving door full of corrupt Italian politicians back in the day (some of them in collaboration with the Sicilian Mob). Alessandri in Chile. The drunk Yeltsin in Russia. The mob of corrupt businessmen, neofeudal landlords, and Croatian fascists that is the Bolivian opposition. The secessionist oligarch opposition in Venezuela. If Mousavi is really innocent of CIA collaboration, he’s a rarity.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Re: What is amazing is how quickly the protests have taken off. It was months before the 1978 protests reached this size. And it took more than a year to depose the Shah. I’m not sure we’re seeing the start of a revolution, but just remember that the last one started out much smaller. And it was against a government with broad support in the Western World.
This scares me, Fostert, it really does. I’m trying to decide which is the greater threat to the world, Islam or Cosmopolite Liberalism. It’s a difficult decision. I am as yet neutral, but I’m trying to figure out which side I support, Ahmadinejad or Mousavi.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Re: Anon, since you’re so big on evidence, where’s the evidence that the CIA is funding Mousavi and co?
Actually, I tend to doubt there was much CIA money involved here. Remember, the very big and public backer of Mousavi was former President Ayatollah Rafsanji, who “acquired” a billion dollars or so while holding political office. Why in the world would his favored candidate need to ask for CIA money with all huge risks. All the NYT and other news stories during the campaign emphasized that Ayatollah Rafsanjani was pouring huge amounts of his own money into the campaign, and Ahmadinejad cleverly made Rafsanjani’s vast wealth and corruption his key theme during the close of the campaign, which probably made a huge difference.
It’s a little like Oligarch Boris Beresovsky decided to go back to Russia from London and challenge Putin for the presidency. Despite the endless claims of the WSJ, I doubt if he’d win…
June 15th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
You still have to wonder why this event gets so much coverage in the media (check Sullivan’s blog, it’s hilarious; to him, it is Tiananmen-Berlin Wall-Obama’s election all rolled into one). There are presumably billions of people in the world who would like to live in a liberal democracy, but instead live under the rule of dictators and only get to vote in sham elections.
Why the obsession with Iran? It seems to me neocons and the right-wing want to push the narrative of ‘Iran is a theocracy ready to be liberated’ to promote their next war, so the left feels obliged to counter it with even more coverage.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
I don’t know which is weirder: that you consider Islam a “threat,” or that the slavering Caliphate hordes of your imagining might be slightly less terrifying to you than an open and productive urban culture.
It’s like the two dumbest boogeymen of the American culture wars are trying to see which can make you shriek the loudest.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
I think it’s more that the American left can empathize with a people trying to escape the rule of a jingostic idiot who’s propped up by theocrat hypocrites and the hick vote.
I know I can.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
JM,
Fine, ‘Jihadism’. Islam is a _ideological_ threat to Christianity (in the same way that Unitarianism is), but it’s not necessarily a sociological or political threat. The political threat consists in an expansionist Islamic ideology that we can call Jihadism.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
I count at least two dead, judging from photographs on TPM (a body in dark slacks) and Sullivan’s page (man in light slacks with what looks to be a bullet to the head). There are reports of at least three dead.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Remember when conservatives used to pretend to be interested in democratic reform in the Middle East?
That was totally annoying. I like it better now, when they’re not pretending.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
You know, Hector, that had occurred to me, but considering your track record on this site, I really had to wonder.
@Danton:
unconfirmed claims of five students murdered last night, i.e., before today’s violence (and in addition to what ever the anti-cosmopolite thugs are doing in the dormatories tonight).
June 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Remember when conservatives used to pretend to be interested in democratic reform in the Middle East?
That was totally annoying. I like it better now, when they’re not pretending.
Remember when anti-war folks were upset a dictator was removed from power in Iraq??? Wish Saddam was still there right? He’d get like 99% of the vote. Even the Kurds and Shia majority! Those were the days.
Bush did back elections in Palestine over Sharon’s objections and we got Hamas. B/c Israel and Fatah didn’t produce.
Bush did kick Syria out of Lebanon and we got decent elections there. In Kuwait women got elected to parliament for the first time. And the purple fingers in Iraq which antiwar people mocked. And Iran has the example of neighboring Turkey where there are regular elections and democracy. No doubt they were inspired by those examples and the “color revolutions.”
June 15th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Why oh why:
You still have to wonder why this event gets so much coverage in the media (check Sullivan’s blog, it’s hilarious; to him, it is Tiananmen-Berlin Wall-Obama’s election all rolled into one). There are presumably billions of people in the world who would like to live in a liberal democracy, but instead live under the rule of dictators and only get to vote in sham elections.
So fatalistic. You must be a spoiled Westerner. Just like with the antiwar people and the Iraqis. Tough shit you have to live with a dictator. Rotten luck.
Sullivan is a hilarious drama queen though. That’s why he needs to take so many mental health breaks.
But still I don’t think you recognize the importance of Iran. Say if Iran and Israel had a “nuclear exchange” and oil prices spiked and the global economy tanked, you wouldn’t be able to afford to buy gas to go to the movies on Friday night.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
No, and neither do you. Removing Saddam was incidental to the invasion, and produced negative improvement.
… and then pushed Fatah into civil war, yes.
So much for conservatives’ support of democratic reform.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Poptarts does an impressive job of listing the failures of the alleged ‘pro-democracy’ Bush warmongering presidency in the Middle-East:
Remember when anti-war folks were upset a dictator was removed from power in Iraq??? Wish Saddam was still there right?
Actually I think the “anti-war folks” were upset at the lies used to justify a disastrous war; and further upset by the hundreds of thousands Iraqis killed, with no prospect of real democracy in the future, purple finger or not.
Bush did back elections in Palestine over Sharon’s objections and we got Hamas. B/c Israel and Fatah didn’t produce.
A fine example of ‘pro-democracy’ at work. Khamenei seems to follow Bush’s lead regarding elections.
Bush did kick Syria out of Lebanon and we got decent elections there.
No, Lebanon kicked Syria out of Lebanon, and not very far. And there have been “decent elections” there for a while now.
In Kuwait women got elected to parliament for the first time.
Wow! Kuwait is a splendid example of democracy, just like our good friends Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
And Iran has the example of neighboring Turkey where there are regular elections and democracy.
Ataturk was clearly inspired by Bush’s speeches.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Say if Iran and Israel had a “nuclear exchange”
See? That is what it is all about. Presenting Iran as a terrifying country and a grave nuclear threat, where the uniquely (in the world) oppressed people only ask for a little outside military help before mad ayatolahs launch nukes on Tel-Aviv, Juno and London. Nevermind the other countries in the region or Africa (remember that continent?) who live under equally appalling or worse regimes.
I’m afraid it won’t work this time though. I have never felt happier that John “Bomb bomb Iran” McCain lost.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Why oh why
Actually I think the “anti-war folks” were upset at the lies used to justify a disastrous war; and further upset by the hundreds of thousands Iraqis killed, with no prospect of real democracy in the future, purple finger or not.
Actually I think antiwar people like you don’t give a shit about Iraqis and whether or not they live in a dictatorship. You just hate Bush and Republicans. It was their war so they personally killed hundreds of thousands. For the oil. Or the Jewish lobby. or something.
I’ve found a lot of antiwar people don’t give a shit about democracy in the Middle East. That’s why their comments on Iran are a little hollow.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Why oh why
See? That is what it is all about. Presenting Iran as a terrifying country and a grave nuclear threat, where the uniquely (in the world) oppressed people only ask for a little outside military help before mad ayatolahs launch nukes on Tel-Aviv, Juno and London. Nevermind the other countries in the region or Africa (remember that continent?) who live under equally appalling or worse regimes.
You are paranoid. Who’s asking for military help? The Iranian opposition? No. The opposition really arent’ that different on those matters than the current gov. You’re misinformed.
What about Africa? Zimbabwee? You don’t give a shit about them either. Let em rot. They’re another badguy who conservatives hate so we must defend them, right? Like Saddam.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
“Islam is a _ideological_ threat to Christianity”
How is Islam a threat? Islam poses a threat to Christianity only if it is obviously superior. And I’m sure you don’t think that. To me, the two religions are pretty equal in their validity, and they will both be around for a very long time. Now obviously, Islam poses a barrier to any attempt to forcibly convert the entire world to Christianity. But such an attempt would seem to be the biggest threat to Christian ideology. The worst periods in Christian history have been when forced conversion was the norm. In the end, it’s all silly to me. Few religions actually even bother to try to convert people from other religions. Christianity is the only major exception (although Islam obviously had their periods of aggressive conversion). I don’t have Hindus and Buddhist coming to my door to convert me. It’s only the Christians, and they are really annoying.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
“I’ve found a lot of antiwar people don’t give a shit about democracy in the Middle East.”
No, many of us believe that democracy is something that should come from the people, not from foreign invasion. We believe that democracy doesn’t work well when forced upon people. And let’s face it, Iraq is not exactly a splendid democracy. It’s still quite unstable, and wouldn’t last a month without American troops propping it up. What’s might be happening in Iran is the way a real democracy gets founded.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
That’s a great way to dumb it down to personalities and not have to defend a disastrous policy, which doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re dumb enough to believe it.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Hector defines “cosmopolite liberalism” as 1) wanting elections to be conducted fairly, and 2) wanting slight social reforms in your theocratic state. Pretty wild! That’s like the Summer of Love to Hector.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I’ve found a lot of antiwar people don’t give a shit about democracy in the Middle East. That’s why their comments on Iran are a little hollow.
Well, “antiwar people” don’t think war is a very good way to promote democracy. You disagree even though the Iraq War was a disastrous mistake, and the cause of democracy has been deeply hurt by its hideous misuse during the Bush years. Only a lunatic would still praise Bush for his ‘pro-democracy’ empty rhetorics after all these years.
What about Africa? Zimbabwee? You don’t give a shit about them either. Let em rot. They’re another badguy who conservatives hate so we must defend them, right? Like Saddam.
Well, I’m the one who brought up African countries in the first place, but it’s interesting that you give Zimbabwe as an example. It is almost the only African country where human right violations are regularly reported in the media, presumably because they involve a lot of anti-white violence.
Anyway, what would you suggest to promote democracy in Iran or Zimbabwe, besides righteous “anti-war folks” rants? (because we were so wrong!)
June 15th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
I can’t believe Poptarts is actually defending the Iraq war as a good idea. After hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. Poptarts, I’ll go on record as thinking political liberalism is not the best form of government for most Middle Eastern countries, and I have utter contempt for your ‘color revolutions’ and all that they stand for. Nothing but bloody CIA meddling and US neoimperialism on behalf of dependent capitalism.
Fostert,
Islam has a greater power to convince people, because it is a simpler, more reasonable religion than Christianity. Much like Arianism was also simpler and more reasonable than Christianity. It’s like Jefferson’s Christianity, Christianity without the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, or the Clergy.
June 15th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
No, I don’t remember a single anti-war person upset about Saddam being removed from power. I can go back and find example after example of your lot proclaiming that they supported democracy in the Middle East, and you won’t find a single example of an anti-war person wishing Saddam was still there, or being upset that he was removed.
You see, Poppy, the argument technique of placing two arguments in parallel only works if they’re actually in parallel.
June 15th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Oh my God. There have been elections in Lebanon for decades, you twit. The Prime MInister, Hariri, whose assassination was the spark for he LEBANESE uprising in which the LEBANESE kicked out the Syrians was an elected Prime Minister. Do you imagine George Bush made the sun start rising in 2001, too?
June 15th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Well, here’s our big test. Here we see a completely indigenous democratic reform movement in a Middle Eastern country that is oppressed by a dictatorship, without the slightest involvement by Bush or the Republicans, and what do we see?
We see those anti-war people siding with the protesters as they demand democratic change, and we see the warmongering neocons like Poptarts, who still has the nerve to declare that his lot are the only ones who care about democracy in the Middle East, siding with the thugs and running down the protesters.
Open and shut case. One side supports democracy in the Middle East, and the other uses it as a pretext for launching wars and abandons it when it’s no longer convenient.
June 15th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Thsi turn this around:
I think neocon assholes liek Poptarts don’t give a shit about the Iraqi people, they just hate dirty fucking hippies and get a hrad on wtaching stuff get blown up.
There see how it easy it is when you can read the other guys mind and make him into whatever strawman you want?
Here is my final word on this: Poptrats fuck you and the fucking horse you rode in on. You and assholes like you are responsible for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead.
I want everyone to have democracy and fully support the Iranians who are fighting for it now, but that is the key they are fighting for it. Not having it imposed on them by an outside military. I have a guess that Iran will be a flourishing democracy long before Iraq precisely becasue we are staying out of their way.
June 15th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
The best interpretation of events I can take away so far is that there is no official policy to shoot protesters, or to overtly harm them, and these few shooting incident(s) are the result of clashing between protesters and militia.
We’ve seen here worse violence here in America.
It’s in our interest though to see Iran become a responsible competitor and member of global society, so they need to resolve this internal conflict peaceably, much as they seem to have been doing so far, including ordering the review of the election results, and investigating any shootings or over-the-top, unjustified violence against protesters, or any movement towards better relations between us and them is going to stall or reverse.
We have to have some standards for cooperation, so we observe closely the events as they unfold.
As for the news sensationalism, this is obviously a propaganda effort by someone other than Mouslavi, and the obvious culprits would be Israel and us in that order, and I told myself a long time ago that I would no longer look the other way, let the wool be pulled over my eyes, that if you’re going to speak truth to power, you have to do just that, not shade it for propagandistic reasons, or it’s just one propaganda against another, with the supposedly liberal one lying to itself.
Where’s the coverage of Georgia?
June 15th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
How do you say “Kent State” in Farsi?
Once again, when was the last time Matt posted about the Israeli police or military beating up kids, torturing kids in detention centers, or for that matter, bombing the shit out of Gazan civilians?
Yet, he has time to complain about some obviously out of control Iranian cops shooting Iranian protestors, which is hardly a fucking surprise given Fisk’s report from Tehran the other day with cops beating the crap out of people (which is WHAT COPS DO WORLDWIDE, you MORON!)
Double standards, anyone?
June 15th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
President Obama actually quite forcefully though subtly challenged the Iranian regime today, in his comments on events there. Instead of opining on whether he thought the elections were fraudulent, he focused on the issue of whether the regime’s response to the protests was legitimate, suggesting that violence against peaceful protesters (his deft reframing of the issue of violence) was against a universal value, the right to dissent. He also said “…there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed…” In other words, the Mousavi presidential campaign lifted the people’s hope that their voices would count, and now they feel betrayed. Obama’s test of a satisfactory outcome could therefore be defined this way, as if it were a statement to the regime: If what you do from now on sharpens that sense of betrayal, you will lose your people’s trust and thus your legitimacy. How could another Ahmadinejad anointment be anything but another betrayal? Every one of us with access to blogs or the media — and especially to Iranian bloggers — should keep repeating Obama’s equation and give it specific political content, because the part of the regime not glued to Ahmadinejad needs to see that they have only one way to regain the people’s trust, and that’s to order a re-vote.
Right now the movement in the streets is based mainly on political rage — it doesn’t have a concrete goal. If the goal were a Guardian Council order for a re-vote, it would paint the regime into a corner — courtesy of Obama’s equation.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Re richard Steven Hack
And of course, Mr. Hacks’ solution to his perception of the cops is to assassinate police officers. With his mouth that is, he too big a yellow belly to do it himself.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
“when was the last time Matt posted about the Israeli police or military … bombing the shit out of Gazan civilians?”
I believe he did so the last time it was happening, this past winter. So what are you talking about?
June 15th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
SLC,
Mr. Hack has also proposed assassinating me, Haim Saban, and Michael Savage, remember. He doesn’t confine his violent fantasies to cops.
Really, I’m surprised that Mr. Hack’s parole officer has not gotten word of his threats to innocent bystanders.
June 16th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Seriously about RSH? Man, Josh Friedman better watch his back.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Re Hector
I don’t think that Mr. Hack is still on parole.
June 16th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Correct. My supervised release was up several years ago.
Actually, I don’t remember advocating assassinating Haim Saban – that was probably Don. But I probably would if I thought about it. Most Zionist freaks ought to be shot in the head, along with Christian freaks and neocons and statists of most stripes.
So, Hector and SLC – yeah, they deserve a bullet in the head for being fascist morons.
However, Josh Friedman merely needs to be blackballed in Hollywood for being a crappy show runner.