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(Rox - Soul/R&B/Reggae - Jamaica by way of Tehran, expressing in London)
Something a bit different tonight and something new coming out of the UK. Rox is half Iranian and Jamaican and she grew up in London. She's been gigging around a lot this past year and has signed a deal with Rough Trade and releasing new material, as we speak.
I don't know where this track, No Going Back is from, but it's good and well produced and shows off some considerable vocal skill on Rox's part.
Definitely someone to watch over the coming months.
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(Happily jumping out of the frying pan)
Thirty-one years ago today The Islamic Revolution in Iran declared victory. With fighting still going on in the streets, the provisional government of Shahpour Bakhtiar, loyal to the deposed Shah of Iran, collapsed and paved the way for a takeover by the forces of Ayatollah Khomeni and a victory for Islamic fundamentalism.
Things have changed in the 31 years since. The promise of change did just that, but it wasn't the change everyone had in mind. No, it managed to replace one repressive regime for another. And thirty-one years later there is rioting again in the streets.
Three reports today - the first from that day in 1979:
Ann Taylor (NBC News): “Iran’s religious opposition appears to be in control, with reports that the Bakhiar government has been toppled. But no official word yet on the resignation of the Prime Minister.”
The second, a report from earlier today via the BBC and their PM program on Radio 4:
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Eyewitness (to PM): “Wherever people gathered the security forces attacked them, and at times using their motorbikes, went right into the crowd. The security forces had batons which some of them were concealing under their sleeves. It was the same story both north and south of the river”
And the third, a news report earlier today from IRIB Radio in Tehran. IRIB is the government-run news service, so don't expect anything resembling objective reporting.
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One event that changed the landscape and, no doubt probably the destiny of the region, most likely forever, or at least for now.
The situation in Iran is still tense as demonstrators clash with government forces who reportedly kill the nephew of Mir Hussein Mousavi:
TEHRAN -- Security forces opened fire at crowds demonstrating against the government in the capital on Sunday, killing at least four people in the heaviest clashes in months, witnesses and websites linked to the opposition said.
The nephew of the opposition's political leader, Mir Hussein Mousavi, was allegedly killed, according to Parlemannews, a Website managed by a faction in the Iranian parliament which supports the opposition. "Ali Mousavi, 32, was shot in the heart at the Enghelab square. He became a martyr," the Rah-e Sabz Website reported.
Fierce battles erupted as tens of thousands of demonstrators tried to gather on a main Tehran street, with people setting up roadblocks and throwing stones at members Special Forces, under the command of the Revolutionary Guard Corp. They in turn threw dozens of teargas and stun grenades, but failed in pushing back crowds, who shouted slogans against the government, witnesses reported.
Fights were also reported in the cities of Isfahan and Najafabad in central Iran.
The protests coincided with Ahsura, one of the most religious festivals for Shiite Muslims. The slogans were mainly aimed at the top leaders of the Islamic republic, a further sign that the opposition movement against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed June election victory is turning against the leadership of the country.
At the Yadegar overpass, protesters shouted slogans such as "Death to the dictator" and "long live Mousavi." They fought running battles with security forces until a car filled with members of the paramilitary Basiji brigade drove at high speed though the make shift barriers of stones and sandbags that the protesters had erected.
About a dozen members of the Revolutionary Guards fired paintball bullets, teargas and stun grenades. When reinforcements arrived, they managed to push back the hundreds of protesters gathered at the crossing.
Similar scenes could be seen at several crossings of the central Azadi and Enghelab streets, witnesses reported. Large clouds of black bellowing smoke rose up as people honked their cars in protests.
"This is a month of blood. The dictator will fall," people shouted, referring to the mourning month of Moharram. Young men erected a flag symbolizing the struggle of the Shiite's third Imam Hussein, whose death was commemorated Sunday.
The Mousavis are putative descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, a sort of caste in Muslim societies called 'sayyid' or 'sharif.'
In fact, in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, one of the complaints of the crowd was that the Qajar monarchy had had sayyids beaten. So if beating a scion of the House of the Prophet can help spark a revolution, what about shooting one? And, oppositional film maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf maintains that Mousavi was killed by a death squad that came for him in a van rather than just falling victim to random police fire.
Killing a sayyid is a blot on any Iranian government. Doing so on Ashura, the day of mourning for the martyred grandson of the Prophet, Imam Husayn, borders on insanity.
Dallas Townsend (CBS News): In recent days U.S. Intelligence has detected the influx of a battalion of Soviet troops, about five hundred men, into Afghanistan.”
Oddly enough, the news warranted only a scant 16 second mention at the end of this CBS World News Roundup broadcast from December 16, 1979. The big news was still the ongoing Hostage drama in Tehran. We were, it seemed, a bit preoccupied to notice what the other hands were doing.
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(On a scale of bad to worse - eleven)
Continuing our odyssey of November 4th, we arrive at 1979. This one went from bad to worse in a matter of hours. And stayed that way for a record 444 days. The U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran is largely thought to be responsible for bringing the Carter Presidency down and it did prove to be one series of epic blunders after the next, culminating in a disastrous rescue attempt that only served to aggravate an already out of control situation and further ramp up the chants of "death to America". But in the early hours of November 4, it only seemed like a diplomatic problem.
Richard C. Hottelet (CBSNews): “Young Iranians described as students, acting with the blessing of Ayatollah Khomeni have occupied the American Embassy in Tehran and hold more than fifty hostages there. They demand extradition of the Shah, who is now under medical treatment in New York.”
COOPER: Breaking news on Iran. U.S. negotiators sitting across the table from Iranian diplomats today in Geneva, hammering out a deal that will allow inspection of a newly-suspected nuclear site.
Now, under the agreement, Iran would also ship all those non- weapons-grade uranium to other countries for further enrichment. But only enough enrichment to use in reactors, not in bombs.
Joining me now is Reza Aslan, author of "How to Win a Cosmic War" and a contributor to Daily Beast. Also Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford. And on the phone, Candy Crowley.
Reza, how big a deal is this?
ASLAN: Well, it's actually quite significant. I mean, one of the major issues that we had with Iran was its stockpile of low enriched uranium. And, frankly, eight years of an administration that refused to talk to Iran unless it stopped its enrichment process resulted in eight years of uninterrupted enrichment.
And in an afternoon, we managed to make some sort of agreement for Iran to reduce its nuclear stockpile, its enriched uranium stockpile by about 75 percent. So that's a fairly significant deal.
COOPER: Abbas, is there reason to be cautious about, A, their willingness to follow-through with this and, perhaps, the real significance of it?
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It didn't take long for the Villagers to fall in line, did it? Reality has no meaning. I'm not sure why Rush Limbaugh is getting nervous about the astroturfers. He's saying the teabagger protests are not bought and paid for: "It's not ginned up, it's genuine. It's real." Can't he see that they are falling right in line? Matthews certainly has.
And here's the way the overarching media narrative that supports it gets set:
Matthews: What do you make of this firestorm that's going on across the country. We've got pictures from Texas and Long Island and Philly. Every time a congressman calls a town meeting now, the people show up and it's like -- I don't know --- it's like Iran! It's like the streets of Tehran!
Michael Smerconish: People are hot. I sense it in the phone calls that I get every day. I think they're very nervous about what's going to come out of this debate about national health care, and Chris if I've heard once in the last couple of days, I've heard it 50 times: "if they can't get cash for clunkers straight, what in the world are they going to do with my national health insurance?"
Matthews: You mean they won't get the numbers right?
Smericonish: Yeah they won't get the numbers right and it smacks of bureaucratic ineptitude, that the federal government has blown through this money so quickly on a plan that seems so straighforward.
I also think that what going on is that many people don't understand the elements of this debate, so what do they know? They know that they have health insurance and they know that this enormous price tag is being assigned for the 45 million or so who don't have it. And frankly what they saying is, why can't we just write them a check and pay for it. It sounds like it could be less expensive.
Ok, neither Smericonish, a conservative, or Matthews, a Village dullard, mention that the "riots" are not exactly spontaneous uprisings, but are rather the result of well-financed astroturfing enterprises, much like the ones that were done to disrupt the Clinton rallies back in 1994. (In fact, the threat of violence was so great that they ended up cancelling them, which is something we may yet see this month.) Matthews who prides himself on being an historian of arcane political strategy throughout the ages seems to know nothing of what's happenening now or then.
Meanwhile, he lets Smerconish disseminate this summers "drill, baby, drill" --- that insipid "cash for clunkers" line that Jim Demint cloddishly threw out there on the Sabbath Gasbag shows --- with no explanation as to why it makes no sense at all. (After all, the program proved to be so popular that they need to extend it -- that's usually thought of as a success, not a failure. Everywhere but in the village, that is.)..read on
It goes on. Surely Jonathan Martin of the Politico will straighten all this out, right?
Here's Lawrence O'Donnell sitting in for Ed Schultz:
O'Donnell: AB, does it matter if these protests are organized or spontaneous? I mean, isn't it true that it's just the video that ends up on the local news that does the damage here?
AB Stoddard: It doesn't matter at all, and the fact is that the only goal for the Republicans right now is to scare people off this, to depress voter support for this so that when they come back in September it's even harder for the Democratic Party than the chaoes we just just witnessed on capitol Hill this month. All they have to do is just say, "this is going to be terrifying, this is a risky experiment." They don't have to be constructive right now. Remember who turns out in mid-term elections: the angry, ok? African Americans are not going to turn out at the rate they did last year and neither are young people. The people who carried marginal Democrats in in formerly Republican districts .. . It's going to be a very tough year for Democrats.
There you have it. The future is foretold. Journamalism isn't there to give the facts or tell the truth. It doesn't matter anyway, because "it's out there."
The only responsibility journos have is to to get it out there, dog.
(Please send me your videos of any town halls you go to at crooksandliarsvideos@gmail.com)
