Free Republic

Ali Jahanshahi, a young, tech-savvy British-Iranian, quit his job selling computers to come to New York with the ambitious goal of ousting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. More than just protesting Ahmadinejad's presence at the U.N. General Assembly this week, Jahanshahi said he came to trade know-how with other young Iranians who are using Internet "hacktivism" to send messages, videos and information to opposition sympathizers in Iran. "Iran's government tries to keep protesters from organizing online but we use tools to stay ahead of them," Jahanshahi, 20, said at a protest outside the United Nations. "We post videos, tweet messages and...

DALLAS – Agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the father of the "green revolution" who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in combating world hunger and saving hundreds of millions of lives, died Saturday in Texas, a Texas A&M University spokeswoman said. He was 95. . . . more at link

Now that all the obituaries have been written for the latest mass-uprising in Iran, it is time to revisit that continuing uprising. I was reading just yesterday a glib BBC report on how the mullahs had learned from the mistakes that cost the Shah his power in 1979. He was too lenient with the demonstrators of the day and let things, like mourning at funerals for the slain, get out of hand. The mullahs, we learn, have taken care not to repeat his mistakes, and have muffled the demonstrators through much more effective techniques, that maximize terror while minimizing fatalities....

Iran’s post presidential election protests are not evidence of a brewing revolution; rather they unmask a power struggle among the ayatollahs. The fracturing of the leadership has resulted in clear winners and losers internally and externally. Iranian authorities declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, the winner in the June 12th election with 63 percent of the votes. But Ahmadinejad’s opposition alleged election fraud which triggered sweeping protests followed by a bare knuckled government response and a tepid investigation. Last week, Iranian authorities imposed order to “secure the rule of law” according to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The ayatollah unleashed the...

Obama said in his latest hem-hawing, foreign policy bloviating, what-the-hell-is-he-talkin’-about press conference that “we need to have a vigorous debate” regarding Iran’s current tyrannical Muslim-based governmental crushing of young people who desire a touch of freedom. We need to debate? “We” who, BHO? I’m guessin’ he is talking about American liberals and conservatives because—from what I can deduce from the YouTube vids—it appears as if the Iranian dissidents aren’t looking for lively banter with the death dealing, lying through coffee-stained teeth religious whack jobs who look like a group of angry, homeless Santa Clauses on crack. A debate, Mr. O?...

So, as it turns out, U.S. President Barack Obama is not "God" when it comes to dealing with the Islamic world after all. This, contrary to that gushingly inane description of him by Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas, following Obama's June 4 speech in Cairo, seeking reconciliation with Muslims. Unfortunately, just eight days after giving that speech, Obama was confronted by Iran's deadly crushing of citizen protests over an election now widely seen both inside and outside Iran as hopelessly corrupt. This would be the same Iran Obama had just finished telling the world in Cairo he was prepared to work...

Iranian police clash with up to 3,000 protesters AP – In this photo taken on Monday, June 15, 2009, a woman passes Iranian police officers, as they stand guard … By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer Witnesses in Iran say police have clashed with up to 3,000 protesters near a mosque in north Tehran. They say security forces fired tear gas to disperse the crowd, and some demonstrators fought back, chanting: "Where is my vote?" Witnesses at the scene tell The Associated Press that some protesters claimed they suffered broken arms or legs in Sunday's clashes around the Ghoba...

The Obama administration will leave open the door for discussions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions even as demonstrators question the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, administration officials said Sunday. Ahmadinejad has accused the West of stoking unrest, singling out Britain and the United States for alleged meddling. Last week, Iran expelled two British diplomats, and Britain responded in kind. Iran, which detained nine British Embassy employees Saturday before releasing four, has said it's considering downgrading diplomatic ties with Britain. The U.S. has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since the aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979. On...

TRIBUTE TO NEDA AND ALL BRAVE IRANIAN WOMEN Please watch this great video that represents the depths of the depravity of the tyranical Islamic rule that the people of Iran, and particularly its women, suffer under. The likes of Khamanei & Ahmadinejad need to suffer the same fate of Benito Mussolini & Nicolae CeauÅŸescu. We cannot forget, or give up on the freedom fighters in Iran. Please remember them, remind your representatives of them, and support them in any way you can. Please join us at: Americans on facebook for Iranian Liberty

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Saturday to make the U.S. regret its criticism of Iran's postelection crackdown and said the "mask has been removed" from the Obama administration's efforts to improve relations. Ahmadinejad — with his internal opponents virtually silenced — all but dared Obama to keep calling for an end to repression of demonstrators who claim the hardline leader stole re-election through massive fraud. "You should know that if you continue the response of the Iranian nation will be strong," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to members of Iran's judiciary, which is directly controlled by the ruling clerics. "The response...

OBAMA TO IRAN: LET THEM EAT ICE CREAMJune 24, 2009 On Iran, President Obama is worse than Hamlet. He's Colin Powell, waiting to see who wins before picking a side. Last week, massive protests roiled Iran in response to an apparently fraudulent presidential election, in which nutcase Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner within two hours of the polls closing. (ACORN must be involved.) Obama responded by boldly declaring that the difference between the loon Ahmadinejad and his reformist challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, "may not be as great as advertised." Maybe the thousands of dissenters risking their lives protesting on...

This is an outstanding video interview of the man who tried to save Neda. It's about 19 minutes long but take the time to watch it.....one of the more shocking things to come out of it was that the crowd caught the gunman, and after taking his ID and picture let him go: [video at site] Meanwhile Threatswatch posted on the massacre in Baharestan Square yesterday by the Basij thugs, as told by a Iranian blogger: Bus loads of protesters were stopped and unloaded from their buses by "black-clad police" and literally herded. When the massing was sufficient, as the...

http://www.youtube.com/user/PNNVideo

<p>Late Sunday night and early Monday morning, some 300 police and members of the paramilitary Basij militia stormed the university’s dormitory, where students had protested against what millions of Iranians, along with most independent analysts, believe was a stolen election. Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the runaway winner, with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing his victory as a “divine assessment.”</p>

• Reports militia drafted in and paid to beat protesters • Ministers threaten to cut diplomatic ties with UK Bloody clashes broke out in Tehran today as Iran's supreme leader said he would not yield to pressure over the disputed election. The renewed confrontation took place in Baharestan Square, near parliament, where hundreds of protesters faced off against several thousand riot police and other security personnel. Witnesses likened the scene to a ­war zone, with helicopters hovering overhead, many arrests and the police beating demonstrators. One woman told CNN that hundreds of unidentified men armed with clubs had emerged from...

Just saw it on Fox News in a discussion about the role of camera pens in the Iran protests.

Just caught the nd of a phone interview on CNN.. A woman from Tehran was describing going to a protest today in front of Parlement, and the protesters were ambushed by Basiji streaming out of a masque, who bwgan massacring the protesters, beating them to death, shooting them..Still on now..the woman is crying as she begs us for help!

Is history repeating itself in Iran? Is the country replaying its 1979 revolution that ended 25 centuries of monarchy? With the current crisis showing no signs of abatement, these questions haunt many of those interested in Iran's future. At first glance, there are many similarities between the current revolt and the 1979 one. The first of these is the fact that the streets of Tehran and other major cities have become the principal arena for the power struggle. In 1979, a substantial segment of Iranian society had lost all faith in institutional politics. The parliament was discredited because it was...

The last eight years well intentioned people of different political beliefs, different religious faiths, and different cultural perspectives have been quietly asking themselves some vital questions. Is Islam a religion of peace? Is the goal of Islam violent global conquest or rather the persuasion of non-Moslems that Islam is the true religion? There are many good Moslems in our world, but is that because of Islam or in spite of Islam? These questions will be answered in Iran. There is no question (or there should not be) that the Iranian people -- actually, the different peoples of the nation of...

Whatever else former president George W. Bush got wrong, he was right about this at least: "The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder." (Speech to American Enterprise Institute, February 2003.) That is, foster liberty in the world’s most oppressive countries and watch the axis of evil bend, then break. Look at Iran today. True, the burden of proof is on anybody who wants to attribute a passion for liberty to Tehran’s crowds. At one point, more than a million people were thought to...

I'm Josh Shahryar AKA NiteOwl - iran_translator on twitter - and I've been immersed in tweets from Iran for the past several hours. I have tried to be extremely careful in choosing my tweet sources and have tried maximally to avoid listening to media banter. What I have compiled below is what I can confirm through my tweets to have happened in the past day and in the past week in Iran. Remember, this is all from tweets. There is NOTHING included here that is not from a reliable tweet. No news media outlets have been used in the compilation...

The young people of Tehran who threw themselves in frustration at the security forces seem to be the group that in the great High School Yearbook of the Civilizations would have been voted least likely to succeeded. They are a suppurating mass of social pathologies. Oil wealth has made prostitution an acceptable way for a young woman to earn university tuition. Perhaps 5% of the adult population is addicted to opiates. About two-fifths of them say they would emigrate given the chance.

Government authorities stepped up their crackdown on protesters Monday, as officials for the first time acknowledged evidence of voting irregularities in this month's presidential election, the issue that has sparked the largest street demonstrations since the Islamic Republic was established three decades ago. An initial probe into the June 12 presidential election has shown that the number of ballots cast exceeded the number of registered voters in 50 locales, a discrepancy affecting 3 million votes or more, according to the spokesman for the Guardian Council, a body of jurists and clerics in charge of safeguarding the country's constitution The council...

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.—Dietrich Bonhoeffer Question. Silence in the face of murder in the streets of Tehran and a government killing our citizens and soldiers. Vocal support for democratic elections and unseen consequences.

Iran's revolution has now run through a full cycle. A gruesomely captivating video of a young woman — laid out on a Tehran street after apparently being shot, blood pouring from her mouth and then across her face — swept Twitter, Facebook and other websites this weekend. The woman rapidly became a symbol of Iran's escalating crisis, from a political confrontation to far more ominous physical clashes. Some sites refer to her as "Neda," Farsi for voice or the call. Although it is not yet clear who shot "Neda", her death may have changed everything. For the cycles of mourning...

On May 4, 1970 members of the Ohio National Guard killed four students and wounded nine others at Kent State University. Some of the students were protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Others in the line of fire were just seeing what was going on, or walking to their classes. Iconic photos of the event appearing in newspapers and television galvanized the nation and inflamed the anti-war movement in the U.S. Millions of students protested and nearly 1,000 colleges and universities were shut down after the Kent State shooting. Yesterday, a young woman who was part of...

JUST after Iran’s rigged elections last week, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets, it looked as if a new revolution was in the offing. Five days later, the uprising is little more than a symbolic protest, crushed by the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Meanwhile, the real revolution has gone unnoticed: the guard has effected a silent coup d’état. The seeds of this coup were planted four years ago with the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And while he has since disappointed his public, failing to deliver on promised economic and political reforms, his allies now...

Riot Police attempt to hold the line and then start falling back. Riot Police retreat as protestors advance, and then the Polic break and run as protestors chase Please watch the video showing this. In a rock fight 10,000 protestors win "There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom. "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse...

If the people believe the election results are accurate, even if they disagree with the outcome, and Lord knows many Americans disagree with our outcome in November, you will almost never see this violence.

It's a letter by the Interior Minister, Sadegh Mahsouli, to Khamenei informing him of the steps taken to declare Ahmadinejad the winner of the election. The letter also includes the actual results as follows: Total votes: 42,026,078 Mousavi: 19,075,623 Karroubi: 13,387,104 Ahmadinejad: 5,698,417 Rezai: 3,754,218 Invalid votes: 38,716 (See letter HERE) AND (Whistleblower killed in suspicious car accident)Iran protests: live - 17 June 2009 | News | guardian.co.uk11am: The man who leaked the real election results from the Interior Ministry - the ones showing Ahmadinejad coming third - was killed in a suspicious car accident, according to unconfirmed reports, writes...

Change may be the word he made his own during the election campaign but President Barack Obama's uncertain and timid response to the Iran protests suggests he views it as a slogan with little application beyond America's shores. Just over two weeks ago, Mr Obama stood beneath the dome of Cairo University's Great Hall and gave a speech that stirred hearts throughout the Middle East and won him plaudits across the world. Promising a "new beginning" in relations between the Islamic world and the West, he proclaimed his "unyielding belief" in a set of universal principles. These included "the ability...

Protestors and demonstrators in Iran took to the streets defying orders from the Ayatollah Kahmanei to stay off the streets and were heard chanting "Death to Kahmanei". What most observers who understand internal Iranian politics are saying is what we are now seeing in Iran is unprecedented. It is Iran's single biggest taboo to challenge the authority of Iran's supreme leader and that is exactly what the demonstrators are doing. The consensus among those who understand the culture and politics of Iran is the demonstrators have crossed a point of no return. Robin Wright, who has written extensively on Iran...

Neda Agha Soltan, 27, was dubbed the Angel of Freedom after a video which appeared to show her being shot by a government sniper was posted on the internet. Graphic scenes show Neda – her name means "the call" – walking with her father among demonstrators, then separately when she was shot as well as attempts to save her life. Online posters of the woman covered in blood quickly emerged, included one modelled on a prominent image of Barack Obama during the last US presidential campaign. Some online posts speculated the image would rank alongside that of the unnamed man...

The moment of truth has come in Iran.  The Guardian Council and Ali Khamenei have played their last card — and it might be a trump.  The Revolutionary Guard has now threatened to meet the protestors in the streets and give them a “revolutionary confrontation”: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is threatening to crush any further opposition protests over the disputed presidential election and warns demonstrators to prepare for a “revolutionary confrontation” if they take to the streets again.The country’s most powerful military force ordered demonstrators to “end the sabotage and rioting activities” and said their resistance is a “conspiracy” against Iran.A...

... Her family scheduled a memorial service to be held in a mosque in northern Tehran, but the government forbade ceremony, and she was buried quietly on Sunday ... All mosques were given a direct order from the government barring them from holding any memorial services for Neda, and her family was threatened with grave consequences if anyone gathered to mourn her... Now reformist presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, one of the leaders of the democratic protests in Tehran, has called for a Thursday night memorial service for all protesters who have been killed to be held at the shrine of...

A commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has been arrested for refusing to obey Iran's Supreme Leader, according to reports from the Balatarin. General Ali Fazli, who was recently appointed as a commander of the Revolutionary Guards in the province of Tehran, is reported to have been arrested after he refused to carry out orders from the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to use force on people protesting the controversial re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Fazli, a veteran of the devastating Iran-Iraq war is also believed to have been sacked and taken to an unknown location. The Revolutionary Guards is...

You gotta love it. A liberal is a bit upset that us conservatives would have the gonads to cheer on protesters who attack the men of Basij. You know, the men who shot a innocent young girl in the heart for kicks. Right wing blogs cheer violence by Iran protestersWeasel Zippers calls it the "feel good video of the day." Gateway Pundit raves that it's the "best Iran protest video ever." Which video is he talking about? The one Fox ran where the protesters beat the living crap out of some Basij: The libs response? Personally speaking, I'm appalled that...

In its simplest philosophical explanation, the revolution in Iran is a battle of wills. Will the Mullahs impose their will on the protesters or will the protesters impose their will on the Mullahs? So far at least, the protesters are imposing their will on the Mullahs. On Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei laid down a very clear marker. In no uncertain terms, he demanded that all demonstrations would end. On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators defied those orders and went to the streets. The longer the demonstrators take to the streets the more they will be imposing their will onto the Mullahs

Demonstrations in the wake of Iran's presidential election are a sign that country's dissidents want the U.S. to get involved in the disputed contest, Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) asserted Monday. Bond, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, pushed back against President Obama's claim that the election is not a U.S. issue, and urged the administration to speak out more forcefully in favor of Iranian dissidents."We didn't have anything to do with this uprising; we're not trying to tell them who they should select," Bond said on CNBC Monday morning. "But when they have such obvious election fraud and...

The country's highest electoral authority, the Guardian Council, acknowledged on Monday that there were voting irregularities in 50 electoral districts, the most serious official admission so far of problems in the election. But the council insisted the problems do not affect the outcome of the vote. Earlier Monday, the elite Revolutionary Guard issued its sternest warning so far in the post-election crisis. It warned protesters to "be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces" if they continue their near-daily rallies. The Basij, a plainclothes militia under the command of...

Should the Green Revolution succeed in toppling the regime, it will be the greatest event since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It will prove to be a more decisive event than even the invasion of Iraq and will rival the attacks of September 11, 2001, in influencing the course of history. The stakes could not be higher. The regime could fall, resulting in the greatest victory in the war on terror to date, or the regime will survive, leaving behind tens of thousands of bloodied bodies, a discouraged population unlikely to take such risks again and bitter at the...

I knew about the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in the glorious year 1989, when the Iron Curtain crumbled. I can even remember the Singing Revolution in Estonia about the same time. But this is something new: a Silent Revolution. The huge throng that marched through the Iranian capital last Monday spoke nary a word, Theirs was a silent vigil for a liberty not so much lost as never gained, from Shah to Ayatollah. Whenever someone in the crowd would shout a slogan, others hushed him. The organizers of the march had prepared signs that read only: SILENCE! Only the sound...

EC sits down with Ryan Mauro, National Security Researcher for the Christian Action Network, to discuss the rapidly changing events in Iran.

Shortly after the Second World War, a “Green Revolution” began to transform agriculture around the globe, allowing food production to keep pace with worldwide population growth. By means of irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, and plant breeding, the Green Revolution increased world grain production by an astonishing 250 percent between 1950 and 1984, raising the calorie intake of the world’s poorest people and averting serious famines. The revolution’s benefits have tapered off, however, as the number of mouths to feed has grown ever larger and as conventional breeding of new plant varieties has produced diminishing returns. What’s needed is a new revolution....

A poor Iowa farm boy became one of humanity's greatest benefactors. --- Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970? You may be forgiven for not remembering, given some of the prize's dubious recipients over the years (e.g., Yasser Arafat). Well, then: Who has saved perhaps more lives than anyone else in history? The answer to both questions is, of course, Norman Borlaug. Who? Norman Borlaug, 92, is the father of the "Green Revolution," the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe in the 1960s. He is now the subject of an admiring biography by Leon Hesser... "The...

The past 50 years have been the most productive period in global agricultural history, leading to the greatest reduction in hunger the world has ever seen. The Green Revolution, as this period came to be known in the developing world, has kept more than one billion people from hunger, starvation, and even death. Many factors contributed to the Green Revolution. The doubling of the global area under irrigation was certainly important. But at the core was the development and application of new high-yielding, disease- and insect-resistant seeds, new products to restore soil fertility and control pests, and a succession of...

MOSCOW (AFP) - First there was a "rose" revolution, then an "orange" one, but while the "green" or Islamic revolt some see brewing in Uzbekistan may share a basic thirst for democracy, the outcome could be radically -- and tragically -- different, analysts said. ADVERTISEMENT The "people power" revolts in Georgia 18 months ago, then Ukraine last December caught the world's imagination. In both cases, huge, peaceful crowds forced the resignation of corrupt, vote-rigging governments. In came new, younger, Westward-looking leaders who vowed to put their ex-Soviet republics in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Then in...

Four decades ago, scientific doomsayers painted a bleak picture of the future. They claimed the world would be wracked by famine because dwindling resources would not be enough to feed an exploding population. They said nothing could stave off the looming famine. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, predicted in the 1968 book that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s and ’80s. One man proved them wrong — Dr. Norman Borlaug. The Nobel Peace-Prize-winning agronomist, who turns 90 today, is the man behind the “Green Revolution” — the boom in crop productivity and...