http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh

When by far the world's most powerful country, militarily, overthrows the democratically elected leader of another country and installs a "Shah" who is in turn given absolute social control in return for economic/military obedience -- and this is done in the name of "democracy" and "American exceptionalism" -- the people have no other means of real internal connection than religious and sectarian affiliations.

The Iranian people were *denied* access to enlightened means of change by a foreign power, the USA, which subjected them to a foreign controlled absolute dictatorship, in the name of "democracy" and "freedom" and "The American Way". So what the hell should Americans rightfully expect the result would be? Should Americans rightfully expect the result to be a "democracy" as defined by the slow march of the enlightenment? Really?

Or should Americans wonder, instead, how their own country got so far off the rails as to not even notice the contradictions here, to not have a clue how to think about the resultant political opposition to their military rule?

After all these years shouldn't Americans be coming to terms with the seriousness of their past transgressions against their own self-proclaimed ideology, the self-proclaimed ideology that they hold is somehow "exceptional".

there today to the fifties, go right on ahead and try. Mossadeqh was about as "Democratically elected" as Putin, if we really want to put a label on him. He was the USSR's guy (you think the Tudeh ran on love and pale moonlight? Really?), the Shah was ours. What we did wasn't cool, but the Shah has been gone since 1978. They've had over thirty years to get their shit together, and it's NOT happening, quite obviously.

That was then, and this is now--and now they are hanging poets in prison. They're hanging gay people in the streets. They are murdering people for the "crime" of being addicted to drugs.

So what, pray tell, is your point? There was a Cold War going on, and plenty of people behaved badly. Why are you dragging in the fucking "Waaah, AMERICANS!!!" argument from more than a half century ago to try to distract from or justify the hanging of human beings for the "crime" of being the "Enemy of God" in the frigging Twenty First Century?

While you're at it, why don't you whine "Waaaah! USSR and UK!!!" After all, they INVADED Iran during WW2 to prevent them from allying themselves with the Germans.

WTF is wrong with your priorities? I'm sure your "argument" (such as it is) brings comfort to the families of the dead, who didn't even get the damn bodies back, and haven't yet been told where their loved ones are buried.

because the democratically elected gov't that was overthrown wasn't "ours", it was "theirs", whereas the military dictatorship installed is certainly "ours". And besides, there was a cold war going on so everything "we" did was copacetic, and it all happened in the past and what happens in the past stays in the past, having no causal properties.

I should catch up with the times, since nowadays the US has a War on Terror going on, and so everything is copacetic... such a different reason.

WTF is wrong with your VALUES?
Do you even know what 'democracy' and 'coup overthrowing a democracy' mean?

excoriated for errors of judgment, even if the perpetrators of the errors are long dead, we have nothing more to discuss. You obviously did not read what I wrote, and you're doubling down with a BS "explanation," and you're just so doggone proud of yourself, too.

America, shitty as it can be in some instances, doesn't hang people for being enemies of God. The don't hang people for being gay or drug users, either.

So WTF IS wrong with YOUR values? Why are you excusing Iran for these crimes?

Are you still excoriating America for slavery and denying women the vote? I'll bet you are, because, ya know...America...BAD!

Get with the present day-or not. I don't care. And try relating your responses to the OP, rather than running off on huffy tangents about past sins. Or don't.

Your lack of care towards the hanged is quite obvious. Clearly, they deserved their terrifying fate...."cuz...America!!!"

Same shit goes down in Saudi Arabia and it attracts a lot less attention.

Then of course there is this..

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/28/267899476/55-bodies-are-exhumed-at-reform-school-site-in-florida

You know nothing, yet you pretend to know all. You're tiresome and wrong.

And again, distracting from the OP with "outrage" that is entirely unrelated.

You're as transparent as glass.

You're the one who's transparent.

So much outrage for what someone does on the other side of the planet and so little for what goes on in our own little corner of the world.

It's such a relief to find someone worse than our own screwed up country so we can point the finger at them and feel better about ourselves.

Iran was not under control of the Mullahs until the US and UK started mucking around with Iranian politics, funny how that works.

Iran was not under control of the Mullahs until the US and UK started mucking around with Iranian politics, funny how that works.


Yeah, funny how you make stuff up to suit your argument.

Did you know that Persia (Iran) was mostly sunni before the Safavid Dynasty? How do you suppose they became shi'a? By osmosis?



You don't have a right to your own invented 'facts.'

in countries half a world away that it isn't at war with, killing entire families, men, women and children.

Recall when a short time ago Iran stood up before the entire planet at the UN and lied about why it was going to war against a country half a world away, then proceeded to bomb that once modern country into the stone age, killing over 100,000 people and creating over 2 million refugees, using depleted uranium weaponry that is continuing to cause death and and horrendous birth defects to this very day. Add to this how Iran then blamed the citizens of the country it destroyed, saying that it was actually a "civil war" and that Iran was actually engaged in "nation building" and "infrastructure building" - rather than arming both sides.

As you can see from the above, Iran is purely evil and even today its professional "pundits" are "debating" how to "justify" a drone strike on an Iranian Christian Terrorist Extremist half a world away, who they say is an immanent Existential Threat to Iran.

Add to that the Iranian black sites spotted all across the world, where Iranian doctors aid Iranian torturers in keeping victims alive for as long as possible in situations of such extreme pain that it took over 5 decades of research to invent the techniques, justifying that by claiming that the victims are "Christian Terrorists". How can anyone say that Iran is "nice" when, after being called out on the pure evil of their torture murdering policies, their leader said "we have to look forward, not back", and declined to investigate or clean house, instead actually promoting these neo-mengeles to do their dirty work at higher levels.

And some people actually try to exonerate Iran as being *the* world leader for democracy, freedom, justice, and apple pie - saying that Iran is "exceptional" in those regards. Go figure...

So, given all that and so much more, one has to explain something about "people in glass houses" when an Iranian "news pundit" smacks down on the God-fearing USA for executing mentally challenged prisoners, etc.

and which installed King Washington Fink as puppet, and how Fink immediately opened US natural resources to a preferred Iranian regime of exploitation, setting up a US-wide Iranian bureaucracy giving Iran a total advantage over Americans in all aspects of US economic/military governance.

As MADem says, the US overthrew King Fink in '79, holding bureaucrats of the Iranian embassy hostage against an Iranian counterattack, so the US has had *35 years* of freedom to show that they've learned how to govern their sorry ass country according as the high Iranian standards -- so the US has no excuse for having the highest per capita prison population in the world, over twice the rate of Iran. ...

Myself, I just LOVE to throw stones in glass houses! Better yet, grenades! The explosions of glass are better than anything in the movies...

A guy was hanged in an unnamed prison for being a poet, charged with the crime of insufficient religiosity.

And you've got to avoid talking about that by flinging shit any which way you can.

You can't justify the conduct, so you play games.

This isn't about America, it's about Iran. And "ha ha ha" isn't that funny! Not!

Your accusations that I'm some immoral monster because I criticized your simplistic view on the political background of Iran - not so much.

lather-rinse-repeat whine about "Murica."

And you don't know your Persian history, either.

Someone will, understandably, say that something "bad" happened in a foreign country and they are attacked over and over because they dared discuss another part of the world since, of course, the US is the worst country in the world and all verbiage needs to be about that and that alone?

But down-thread people are allowed to say the Iranian leadership are murderers without attack.

Would it help if people who wish to discuss something horrible that happens elsewhere in the world had a preface that says something like "The US is a horrible country that deserves to be destroyed" then go on to discuss something happening elsewhere? Probably not. Discussing anything outside this country is probably always going to be a risk.

I don't know why people get all shirty and assumptive; I can't see into their hearts and minds. Some folks just love to paint USA as the Great Shatan--they think it cements their "liberal bona fides." I sometimes wonder if that kind of stuff isn't an exercise in extreme trolling, because they plainly don't have a clue as to what life is like day to day there. I'd love to have a magic wand and transport those folks to a new life in say, Tabriz or Shiraz, and let them see how much they love the reality of life in the Islamic Republic.

I do know that things are not good there, and I'm not talking about access to consumer goods or things of that nature. Truth to tell, anything you want, you can get in Iran if you have the money. There are rich people there, who have allied themselves with the powerful ulema (and who are none too religious themselves but they can play the game), and there are people who are struggling. The very poor remind me of the teabaggers, identifying with their oppressors, believing that one day they'll be rich (or get their reward in paradise). It's a crazy place where they do more nose jobs nowadays than they do in Los Angeles, designer clothing, expensive jewelry, and racy lingerie can be bought in certain shops that the morality cops are told to avoid, even high end booze can be found if one is rich enough to afford it, but a woman will be beaten bloody on the street if she shows too much hair or her manteau is too snug.

And season to season, it's hard to know what the "rules" are--are they cracking down lately, or are they using a light touch? It is a huge guessing game and people often talk cryptically, or just don't mention certain topics, because those topics "cross the line" from safety into a danger zone, and who knows who will betray you one day.

It's not a way to live. Killing poets for being mean to God is not my idea of sanity and there's just no excuse for it...

I feel very bad for the people of Iran. I always have. There is no excuse for murdering the poet, or any number of innocent people the leadership there murders.

The US has played a unscrupulous role in who Iran's leaders have been in the past 100 years and the fear and reaction to those crimes is what empowers the right wing leaders who are there now. Rightwing nuttbaggery feeds on fear. We see that in every country.

MADem wasn't 'attacked'. They had a footnote added to their post on a discussion board where you can do that.

And the OP had shit-all to do with the USA. It had everything to do with the murder of a poet and another for being "insufficiently religious."

Some people can only see the world through the prism of USA. They think USA is "all that" and that everyone holds their breath waiting for what they'll say or do. That's not reality, but it does seem to ruin some people's day to realize that. Also, anyone who knows anything--even the slightest, tiny little thing--about Iran understands why the whole drumbeat for war meme just won't happen. That's just sop for the absolute morons on the far right (and apparently the left, too). Persians are very nationalistic (they make the USA USA bellowers look low key) and they put aside their differences when attacked. There are lots of them and they don't mind conscripting children, either; they'll pull out the chem weapons, they'll IED up the yin-yan, they don't find Geneva controlling. Further, they just won't stop once they get a mind to do something--ask the families of martyrs from the last great war. On both sides of the border. Talk to the widows and the mothers. They'll tell ya.

Are you suggesting USA will go to war over the death of a "Persian Arab?" Hell, they are a minority in Iran--I am amazed this guy's situation even got any coverage in the western press.

So, great big eye roll and have a nice day.

No, I don't!



But that comment (which can be translated to I don't agree with your opinion so I am going to engage in pointless, personal snark) says a lot about you, now, doesn't it?

You want a good content-to-words ratio.

You might try re-evaluating your priorities. Carping at people over the internet, on a board where you can hit a button and IGNORE that person, because you don't like the way their posts are constructed is pretty doggone, well, pathetic. Almost pity-inducing. What a way to feed a need!

That's the sort of thing people without control over their real lives might do--try to manipulate the behavior of strangers with snark and rudeness as a way to try and raise their own self-esteem.

The funny thing is, you probably want to take your own advice - particularly with regard to meaningful content.

.....which is nothing at ALL like modern day government sanction killing of "unbelievers"

battle.

By the way, how dare you defend our worthless country? You probably don't even hate white males the way you know you should. Shame on you!

Last edited Mon Feb 10, 2014, 03:44 PM - Edit history (1)

Dr Morsy like (Dr Salvadore allende of chile) was removed by a US backed coup. The new Egyptian regime has no legitimacy except the gun. I am afraid that Egypt will get an extremist government in response to this coup after 20 years as it happened in Iran.



Killed thousands of demonstrators


Same old dark glass schtik classical dictator

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/3/four-killed-in-clasheswithpoliceinegypt.html

You are rewriting history. Or reading too many conspiracy theories out of "Press TV" or Pootie's RT.

Why did the U.S. go to bat for Morsi?


State Department Calls For Morsy Release.

US Senators Urge Egypt to Release Morsi.

USA has cut military aid and FMS as well.

The irony of extremist religious stupidity boggles reason to its core. There is no value in such putrescence of the mind. Let their thousands of years of delusion be damned to hell.

Horrific.

It's a step up, lately, I suppose. Usually they're hanged at dawn in the public square, or at high noon in the middle of town...from a crane...right before prayers. An audience is rounded up; hangings serve as a cautionary tale.


K/R--it's an unsavory subject matter but it needs visibility.

This is an unspeakable crime. The only one that man was an "enemy" of is the assholes who sentenced and murdered him. They silenced him because he made sense. Fuckers.

Must not be a very powerful god if he needs humans to carry out his dirty work.

If god really wanted to send a message, he'd show up and do his own killing, the coward.

I guess the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal didn't want to find out.

Nah, couldn't be. Invisible omnipotent beings are rather difficult to hit.

Okay, so it's an ethnic fight. Those never make any sense either.

Could be Irish Catholic vs. Protestant or any other such madness.

about "Pres Obama waging war on religion." And, they are waging war on Women, Minorities, the Poor, and the Middleclass. Damn all the backward, Neanderthal shit.

Iranians take that shit seriously. fuck.

The 15th century called, they want their sense of tolerance and perspective back...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashem_Shabani

There is absolutely nothing religious about this.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

to these PTB. Ain't religion a great tool to use to cover ALL types of threats against the state? "Enemy of god"???? Is this a great world or what?

We had a chance a couple years ago but dropped the ball.

I guess we'll have to wait for the Hillary administration to take meaningful action.

Some societies are simply more backward and barbaric.

and religious leaders are expert fear mongers.

There aren't enough
poets
to hang
any of them.

Poets reach for G*d

Politicians should be sent
to meet Him.

The isn't much reasoning for this murder by their government.

We destroy ourselves just as fast as we destroy other species and our ecosystem.

They would probably love to execute some of those dirty atheists for casting aspersions on their perfect God.

Lou

... stolen from a Broadway play, which stole it from an old sermon.

Anyway, yeah God could smite the poet with that long reach advantage.

I'd be taking God no matter what the odds Vegas was giving.