"All hangs in the balance" = SUPPORT FREEDOM IN IRAN!!!!!

This is from the AWESOME Pamela Geller's site,, Atlas Shrugs,,

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/

and when SHE tells us to send this out,, I sure as heck listen to this lady!

Pamela,, YOU ROCK!!!

and yeah,, this article,, everyone needs to see.

so let's MAKE IT VIRAL!!!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Every once in awhile I risk incurring Robert Tracinski's wrath by running his whole column from TIA Daily (which is worth the price of subscription).

Today is such a day, because it is so fundamentally important that everyone should read it and send it to their email lists. What is happening in Iran is historic. What started out as an election fracas is obviously so much more. The pity is that we have a pantywaist in the White House, eager to subjugate the US to Islamic interests. Pity that Bush isn't in the White House. This is what he hoped would happen. It did, five minutes too late.

Let me add Caroline Glick's analysis to the mix as well. Glick calls this "Israel's Rare Opportunity".

Israel would be building an important alliance with the Iranian people themselves. Contrary to what the mullahs would have us believe, Iranians by and large do not share the widespread hatred of Israel and the Jews that their regime promotes and the Arab world embraces. Over the years, Iranian regime opponents - from the students to the trade unionists to women's rights activists to minority Kurds, Azeris, Ahwaz Arabs and Baluchis - have all appealed to Israel for support. Israel Radio in Farsi, which broadcasts into Iran daily, has more than a million regular listeners.

Were Netanyahu to explain that the same mullahs who seek to disenfranchise and repress the Iranian people seek to destroy Israel with nuclear bombs; were he to call for Iran to stop financing Hamas and Hizbullah terrorists who are reportedly now deployed in Iran to brutalize the protesters, and instead invest in the Iranian economy for the benefit of Iran's people, he would be sending a message that already resonates with the people of Iran.
Finally, Israeli outreach to the Iranian people now struggling to overthrow the regime would expose the Obama administration's effective support for the mullahs against their people in all its absurdity and moral blindness. What's more, the administration would be unable to launch a counterattack. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama would be in no position to attack Israel for supporting Iranian dissidents demanding freedom. And their stammering reaction would make their attacks against Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria look ever more ridiculous.

And here is Robert Tracinski over at TIA daily:

TIA Daily is devoted to another round-up of news from Iran.

Charles Krauthammer has the best explanation I have seen so far of why this story is so supremely important to America's interests. Krauthammer asks us to imagine the impact if the Iranian regime is overthrown.

Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism—leave it forever spent and discredited.

In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005—the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt—was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and Iraq establishing institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect.

The exception—Iraq and Lebanon—becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

All hangs in the balance.

This makes the reaction of President Obama totally inexcusable. As Krauthammer puts it, "And what side is the Obama administration taking? None."

Ralph Peters describes the administration's reaction as a "Green Light for a Crackdown." And the crackdown is coming. The Guardian provides an overview:

Iran's government sought today to decapitate the opposition movement by rounding up ­hundreds of activists, journalists and intellectuals.

A total of 500 were reported to have been detained across the country, including well-known political figures from the 1979 Islamic revolution. The mass detentions combined with paramilitary raids on university campuses appeared to be part of a determined and sustained backlash on the part of a government that initially appeared to have been taken by surprise by the scale of the protests after the declaration that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won Friday's presidential poll.

The authorities also launched what appeared to be a concerted campaign to link the protests with foreign intervention, calling in the US and British ambassadors to complain about what Tehran called "intolerable" meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

So much for Obama not wanting America "to be seen to be meddling." We're going to be accused of meddling no matter what we do.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has a pretty good report on the role of the Shiite clergy, a significant number of whom might come out on the side of the protesters.

"If the clergy become Khamenei's enemy, just think about it," Mr. Kholdi said. "The shah made Qum [the main center of the Shiite clergy] his enemy, and they did not cease to plot against him until he was overthrown."…

The risk for the supreme leader and Mr. Ahmadinejad if the mullahs shift away from them is that the idea that the government carries an Islamic stamp of approval will be undermined.
The ranks of the government supporters will dwindle and the government claim that endorsing the results is a religious duty will collapse," said Abbas Milani, author of the book "Eminent Persians" and chairman of Stanford University's Iranian studies program.

It's hard to have a theocracy when it's opposed by the leading religious authorities.

It will be very difficult to tell what is happening in Iran, but not as difficult as it used to be. The New York Times describes how, with foreign journalists being ejected from Iran, YouTube and Twitter have become highly effective windows that shows the world what is going on. This may or may not be the "Twitter Revolution," as some are calling it; I doubt more than a small percentage of Iranians are actually using Twitter to communicate with each another. But those who can do so are using these communications services to communicate with the outside world.

So this definitely is the Twitter Revolution from our perspective.

What we do know is that there was another round of huge protests on Thursday:

Starting about 4 pm, thousands of people began gathering in Imam Khomeini Square in Tehran. The crowd quickly grew to hundreds of thousands, stretching beyond the borders of the square, one of the city's largest, and filling the surrounding streets, witnesses said.

The protest seemed to grow larger than demonstrations on previous days. But it was not as big as Monday's rally; that outpouring involved three million people, Tehran's mayor said Thursday, making it the largest protest since the Islamic Revolution in 1979…. [An earlier version of this story indicated that Thursday's rally was bigger than Monday's.—RWT]

As on previous days, the police kept to the sidelines. Although vigilante forces appeared, there were no immediate reports of clashes.

This same New York Times report indicates how high the stakes are getting. The only way out for the mullahs now is to launch a bloody Tiananmen-style massacre—but they are afraid of the consequences of such an open and bloody repression.

The path to resolution is so cloudy because Iran's political system is not based on coalitions or compromise. It has evolved into a winner-take-all contest, with each side holding competing views of what kind of country Iran should be: one in continuing opposition to the West, where individual freedoms are tightly restricted, or one more open to engagement with the world and greater civil liberties.

The Guardian also reports that the protest movement is not limited to Tehran: "Pro-Mousavi protests have also been reported in the cities of Isfahan, Rasht, Orumiyeh, Zanjan and Zahedan."

The real "must read," however, is a series of statements from protesters sent to a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Definitely read the whole thing, but here are a few highlights.
"Alireza"—last names have been withheld for obvious reasons—says:
At Ahmadinejad's "victory" ceremony, government buses transported all his supporters from nearby cities. There was full TV coverage of that ceremony, where fruit juice and cake were plentiful. At most, 100,000 gathered to hear his speech, including all the militiamen and soldiers.
We reformists have no radio, no newspaper, and no television. All our Internet sites are filtered, as well as social networks such as Facebook. Text messaging and mobile communication were also cut off during the demonstrations. And yet we had hundreds of thousands, if not millions….
Democracy is a long way ahead. I may not be alive to see that day. With eyes full of tears in these early hours of June 16, I glorify the courage of those who have already been killed. I hope that the blood of these martyrs will make every one of us more committed to freedom, to democracy and to human rights.

Negin" specifically addresses what the Iranians want from the rest of the world:
People want to be heard and supported by the rest of the world. They were sending messages to the West with their cameras. They were calling on Obama and Sarkozy to demand that the Free World not recognize this government. I saw a few women shouting: "Now it's your turn to support democracy and human rights."

"The fear is gone. Nothing seems to be an obstacle anymore. They can filter all the Web sites and shut down the Internet, SMS [text messaging] service, and mobile phones, but they cannot shut our mouths." This is what I hear all the time.

Note also in photos of the protest how many of the signs are in English, not Persian. This is an indication of how important the support of the English-speaking West is.
All of this is creating increased pressure on Obama to back the protesters more forcefully. The New York Times reports that Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are urging a stronger stance. The story also contains this gem:

Mr. Obama also drew criticism from politically neutral observers when he said in an interview on Tuesday with The New York Times and CNBC that from an American national security perspective, there was not much difference between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hussein Moussavi, his closest competitor in the election.

Either way," Mr. Obama said, the United States is "going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons."

So in contrast to Obama, what should we be doing?

President Obama has less backbone than the French, for crying out loud: Nicolas Sarkozy has said, "These elections are an atrocity." Aside from general statements of moral support, there is a lot we can do specifically. We can highlight the fates of specific people who have been targeted and imprisoned by the regime, as we did with Soviet dissidents like Andrei Sakharov and Nathan Scharansky during the 1970s and 1980s. And we can help the protesters materially, providing them with communications technology that will help them circumvent the restrictions imposed by the regime.

This is one of the suggestions Caroline Glick makes for Israel, describing this event as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Israel to forge an alliance with the people of a country that has been its worst enemy for decades. If this sounds far-fetched, consider this passage from a report in the Jerusalem Post, beginning with a quote from one of the Iranian protesters:
"The most important thing that I believe people outside of Iran should be aware of," the young man went on, "is the participation of Palestinian forces in these riots."

Another protester, who spoke as he carried a kitchen knife in one hand and a stone in the other, also cited the presence of Hamas in Teheran.

On Monday, he said, "my brother had his ribs beaten in by those Palestinian animals. Taking our people's money is not enough, they are thirsty for our blood too." It was ironic, this man said, that the victorious Ahmadinejad "tells us to pray for the young Palestinians, suffering at the hands of Israel." His hope, he added, was that Israel would "come to its senses" and ruthlessly deal with the Palestinians.

This reminds me of similar things I heard in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein also used the Palestinians as imported mercenaries in his war against his own people.

More will be happening in the next few days. Supreme Leader and chief theocrat Ali Khamenei is giving the main sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, where he is expected to unveil a threat against the protesters. He is also claiming that the attendance at his sermon will show the Iranian people's support—so the opposition is, of course, calling for a boycott. By contrast, on Saturday, a rally has been called by a group of reformist, relatively pro-liberty clerics. Wait and see the contrasting responses to these two events.

As Krauthammer reminds us, "all hangs in the balance."—RWT

UPDATE: House condemns Tehran crackdown on protesters
Rep. Mike Pence, who co-sponsored the resolution, said he disagrees with the administration that it must not meddle in Iran's affairs.

"When Ronald Reagan went before the Brandenburg Gate, he did not say Mr. (Mikhail) Gorbachev, that wall is none of our business," said Pence, R-Ind., of President Reagan's famous exhortation to the Soviet leader to "tear down that wall."

The House does what the White House should have. Shame on Obama. AP reports:
In the strongest message yet from the U.S. government, the House voted 405-1 Friday to condemn Tehran's crackdown on demonstrators and the government's interference with Internet and cell phone communications.

Ron Paul was the lone asshat.

The resolution was initiated by Republicans as a veiled criticism of President Barack Obama, who has been reluctant to criticize Tehran's handling of disputed elections that left hard-liner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power.

UPDATE: OBAMA CONTINUES TO AID AND ABET THE JIHAD BLOODBATH. He says the US will stay out of the Iran election. Now if only President Pantywaist would stay out of Israel.