Iran: So what happens on the day after 22 Bahman? And what does it all mean?
We have three special reports and analyses this morning. Mr Verde sees the Regime’s win yesterday as pyrrhic: “For any regime, especially one that claims to be a popular republic based on Islam, pointing TV cameras at the right-looking crowd while beating the “wrong crowd” with all its might, especially on the anniversary of its formation, is not a victory.”
EA’s Scott Lucas considers the political significance of yesterday’s events, and concludes that, if President Ahmadinejad could be said to have won, then he “won ugly”. EA correspondent Mr Azadi, who was in close contact with sources in Tehran throughout Thursday, gives a detailed summary from eyewitness accounts. We have also highlighted Pedestrian’s snapshot and compelling interpretation that any “defeat” for the opposition yesterday was a tactical miscalculation rather than the end of the challenge to the Government.
We have posted an ABC TV interview with internet activist Mehdi Saharkhiz(of “Only Mehdi” fame) and will continue to add to yesterday’s video posts from Iran (set four can be viewed here), together with other TV coverage that has and will become available.
The regime’s propaganda machine drones on about nukes, nukes and more nukes, trying to divert attention away from internal squabbles and human rights issues. We’ll keep you updated on all the news our live weblog throughout the day.
Iran:We wonder whether Iran is entering a tunnel in the run-up to 22 Bahman (11 February, the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution) with an escalation of arrests and reports of detentions of family members of activists. Persian2English has posted a list of 56 political prisoners at risk of execution. At Friday prayers Ayatollah Kashani repeated his “unveiled threat” to protesters not to ruin 22 Bahman “for the rest of us”.
Persian2English reported that more than a thousand relatives of detainees gathered outside Evin Prison to commemorate Arbaeen, the 40th day of mourning after the religious occasion of Ashura. Demonstrators offered prayers and chanted “Allahu Akhbar (God is great)”.
The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, has written to the head of Iran Broadcasting to complain about the “censoring” of his grandfather’s speech. Ayatollah Khomeini’s words have allegedly been adjusted to present a more favourable view of the Government in the run-up to the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution.
Two high profile detainees (Hassan Rassouli and Abolfazl Ghadiani) were released on Thursday night on bail.
Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of Mir Hossein Mousavi, has issued a statement demanding the freeing of all political prisoners before 22 Bahman.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has issued a forceful statement on his blog on the post-election crisis, supporting protesters’ calls for human rights, democracy and the fundamental freedoms which “are not western prerogatives, but universal rights to which we are all entitled”.
We have new claimed video of protests in the southern city of Lars from Monday to Thursday.
Although one website (the students at Amir Kabir University) remains down, a new Green website Mizan Khabar, has been launched.
An Italian company has announced it will cease trading with Iran. We note with derision one American commentator’s agitated video “rant” about Iran’s rocket launch. Another video post shows the damage and injuries caused during the siege at Qoba Mosque in Shiraz yesterday.
All the latest news, with links to our stories and other news media sites, can be found in our live weblog.
Afghanistan: We’ve posted Anand Gopal’s moving article for TomDispatch, which tells the story of a young government employee to open eyes to America’s secret prisons in Afghanistan.
Israel and Syria: Israeli and Syrian officials have issued conflicting statements on the chances of an immediate peace between the two countries.
One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town’s bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost’s dust-doused streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaar-goers for ransom.
But the hunt turned up nothing. Spring and summer came and went with no sign of Ismatullah. Then one day, long after the police and village elders had abandoned their search, a courier delivered a neat, handwritten note on Red Cross stationary to the family. In it, Ismatullah informed them that he was in Bagram, an American prison more than 200 miles away. U.S. forces had picked him up while he was on his way home from the bazaar, the terse letter stated, and he didn’t know when he would be freed.
Tom Englehardt, writing at TomDispatch, goes beyond the headline “30,000 extra troops” of President Obama’s recent announcement to detail the extent of the US escalation and long-term commitment — despite Obama’s initial declaration of a “beginning to the end” of the military presence in July 2011 — to the intervention in Afghanistan (N.B.: All links in original article):
In his Afghan “surge” speech at West Point last week, President Obama offered Americans some specifics to back up his new “way forward in Afghanistan.” He spoke of the “additional 30,000 U.S. troops” he was sending into that country over the next six months. He brought up the “roughly $30 billion” it would cost us to get them there and support them for a year. And finally, he spoke of beginning to bring them home by July 2011. Those were striking enough numbers, even if larger and, in terms of time, longer than many in the Democratic Party would have cared for. Nonetheless, they don’t faintly cover just how fully the president has committed us to an expanding war and just how wide it is likely to become.
Despite the seeming specificity of the speech, it gave little sense of just how big and how expensive this surge will be. In fact, what is being portrayed in the media as the surge of November 2009 is but a modest part of an ongoing expansion of the U.S. war effort in many areas. Looked at another way, the media’s focus on the president’s speech as the crucial moment of decision, and on those 30,000 new troops as the crucial piece of information, has distorted what’s actually underway. Read the rest of this entry »
Writing for TomDispatch, Nick Turse reveals the extent of US military and corporate plans and operations for a long-term involvement in Afghanistan:
In recent weeks, President Obama has been contemplating the future of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. He has also been touting the effects of his policies at home, reporting that this year’s Recovery Act not only saved jobs, but also was “the largest investment in infrastructure since [President Dwight] Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s.” At the same time, another much less publicized U.S.-taxpayer-funded infrastructure boom has been underway. This one in Afghanistan.
While Washington has put modest funding into civilian projects in Afghanistan this year — ranging from small-scale power plants to “public latrines” to a meat market — the real construction boom is military in nature. The Pentagon has been funneling stimulus-sized sums of money to defense contractors to markedly boost its military infrastructure in that country.
In fiscal year 2009, for example, the civilian U.S. Agency for International Development awarded $20 million in contracts for work in Afghanistan, while the U.S. Army alone awarded $2.2 billion — $834 million of it for construction projects. In fact, according to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, the Pentagon has spent “roughly $2.7 billion on construction over the past three fiscal years” in that country and, “if its request is approved as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, it would spend another $1.3 billion on more than 100 projects at 40 sites across the country, according to a Senate report on the legislation.”
Since the 2003 Iraq War, Dahr Jamail has offered outstanding, provocative first-hand reports. For those who like simple outcomes, Jamail’s work is a nuisance, as it doesn’t fit the easy narratives of 1) Free, Happy, Prosperous Iraq or 2) Iraq Going to Hell in a Handbasket. For the rest of us, his accounts are invaluable.
Jamail’s latest article, in TomDispatch, is a tour of today’s Fallujah, a former Sunni stronghold and site of protracted battles between Iraqis and Americans from April 2003:
At least 70% of Fallujah’s structures were destroyed during massive US military assaults in April, and again in November 2004, and more than four years later, in the “new Iraq”, the city continues to languish….Unemployment is rampant, the infrastructure remains largely in ruins, and tens of thousands of residents who fled in 2004 are still refugees.
Iran: So what happens on the day after 22 Bahman? And what does it all mean?
Tom Englehardt, 
Writing for TomDispatch
Since the 2003 Iraq War, Dahr Jamail has offered outstanding, provocative first-hand reports. For those who like simple outcomes, Jamail’s work is a nuisance, as it doesn’t fit the easy narratives of 1) Free, Happy, Prosperous Iraq or 2) Iraq Going to Hell in a Handbasket. For the rest of us, his accounts are invaluable.
Entries (RSS)