View Full Version : Iran on Fire
Most of this was going down over the Backroom holy day break, so here's a little catch-me-up on what's going down in Iran:
Moussavi anticipates his own death (http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301707,iran-opposition-leader-says-hes-ready-to-die-for-rights.html).
Bassejis being surrounded and overwhelmed by Greens. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ2urTPUGf0)
Khameni's jet is on standby to whisk him away. (http://www.shahrzadnews.org/index.php?page=2&articleId=2073&Language=en)
Warning: explicit content.
Bassejis running over protesters with a car. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pG7wEQAuUU) This sort of thing is not helping the cause of the ruling mullahs.
Good analysis (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/12/the-start-of-an-iranian-intifada.html):
At the beginning of the current period of opposition, which started soon after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial reelection, quiet periods of seeming normalcy occurred between what were less frequent demonstrations.
Judging from the events of Ashura, however, the protests now seem to carry the potential to turn into a full-scale civil disobedience campaign, not unlike the first intifada the Palestinians initiated against Israel in 1987. Such an uprising will mean continuous periods of strikes and civil disobedience, as well as more confrontations between members of the public and security forces.
The main factor contributing to the new status quo is the unrelenting policies of the Supreme Leader, which have pitted his philosophy of the Islamic Republic against longstanding Islamic institutions.
This is a battle that Khamenei will find extremely difficult to win. In fact, if developments continue in their current form, they can result in significant changes to the structure of his regime, or more drastically, lead to its total demise.
His decision to allow the Basij to mount an attack on mourners at Ayatollah Montazeri's funeral was one factor leading to the spread of opposition in rural areas, faster and more efficiently than any campaign the reformist camp could have orchestrated. Yes, members of the opposition tried to take advantage of the mayhem, but also many genuine mourners had come to pay homage to a Grand Ayatollah. To Ayatollah Khamenei's forces, they were all the same. To allow attacks against the residents of a holy city where the seeds of the 1979 revolution were planted was not just dead wrong from a religious perspective, it was politically counterproductive as well.
To make matters worse, the very next day, the Supreme Leader's forces attacked mourners attending a ceremony for Montazeri at Isfahan's Seyyed mosque, where inside members of the public were beaten. The Basijis also tried to assault Isfahan's former Friday prayers leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Jalaleddin Taheri, who had arranged the ceremony. However, his supporters protected him.
If the Shah had committed such an affront, one could have attributed it to his brute dictatorial secularism. But for the Supreme Leader of an Islamic Republic to order violence against Islamic institutions means turning against the very establishment that formed the foundation -- or the very DNA -- of the current regime.
Furunculus
01-05-2010, 16:15
best of luck to the iranian people.
rory_20_uk
01-05-2010, 16:25
Insha'allah
~:smoking:
This might just be bigger than the wall if it works. All I can say is good luck.
It took a year to overthrow the Shah. Hopefully the Iranians can knock down another dictator in under that.
cegorach
01-05-2010, 17:45
It is never easy, but the regime seems ripe to fall.
Of course the thugs of the Revolutionary Guards and their rising, economic influence is the major problem, but hopefully the anti-governmental activists are stubborn enough and numerous enough to win sooner rather than later.
I won't say brave enough because it is already a known fact.
Good luck brothers and sisters!
Major Robert Dump
01-05-2010, 18:46
But I thought we invaded Iran and toppled Saddam Hussein and the Taliban? WTF?
Well at least it's clear that Iran will either have some strong reforms or a new government in the next year or so. The regime blew their chance at reforms within the system in their handling of the post election mess.
I just hope this will mean an end to theocracy and authoritative government in Iran. A stable 'friendler' Iran would be such a big boost to security throughout the region it's a shame that the best thing for the US to do is stand and the sidelines and watch.
rory_20_uk
01-05-2010, 19:58
...the best thing for the US to do is stand and the sidelines and watch.
Almost always the case for any country in any similar situation: give the populace a means of communicating that can not easily be intercepted and then do nothing. Difficult to daemonise a foe when it's obvious you're first having to make one.
~:smoking:
Louis VI the Fat
01-05-2010, 21:57
Lies! Filthy lies! All of it!
You are all part of the British-Zionist attack on the glorious Islamic Republic of Iran! :no:
Watchman
01-05-2010, 22:33
You are all part of the British-Zionist attack on the glorious Islamic Republic of Iran! :no:Now the 'Muricans feel left out and ronery. :shame: Why do you hate freedom so ?
Why do you hate 'Merka, Louis?
Louis VI the Fat
01-05-2010, 22:42
Get with the times! The little Satan has overtaken the Great Satan. :smash:
Why Iran hates Britain so much
Britain has taken America's place as Tehran's most loathed nation. The antipathy goes back centuries, says Con Coughlin.
Not so long ago, Britain was held in such low esteem in Iran that it was simply dismissed as the "little Satan". So far as the ayatollahs were concerned, the real enemy was America, the "great Satan", whose love of liberty and free market capitalism was thought to pose the gravest threat to the Islamic revolution's survival.
It was for this reason that the American embassy, rather than the British, was occupied by the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran soon after Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in 1979, and its 66 staff held hostage. The expansive grounds of Britain's diplomatic mission, which hosted Winston Churchill during the Tehran conference in 1943, were briefly occupied by the Guards during Iran's revolutionary turmoil, but then evacuated because the mullahs did not regard Britain as being of sufficient importance to hold it to ransom.
But 30 years later it seems all that has changed as it is now Britain, rather than America, that finds itself on the receiving end of the ayatollahs' ire. After initiating last week's tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions, which saw two middle-ranking British diplomats expelled from Tehran for allegedly fomenting anti-government demonstrations, the Iranian authorities have arrested a further nine British embassy employees. Although some of the workers have since been released, there has been no let-up in the regime's anti-British rhetoric.
After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, launched the initial anti-British tirade by denouncing Britain as the "most treacherous" of the regime's enemies, there has been no shortage of prominent Iranians lining up to denounce the "devious" British. At the heart of the dispute is Tehran's insistence that British spies have been responsible for stirring up the worst street protests Iran has experienced since 1979. Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's Foreign Minister, even went so far as to accuse Britain of sending planes filled with agents to Iran "with special intelligence and security ambitions".
In the past, Iran's purges and executions have been directed against those accused of spying for America or Israel. But the emergence of Britain as the mullahs' latest bête noire suggests Anglo-Iranian relations are about to undergo another period of intense strain.
To some extent the decision by the Iranian regime to direct its anger against Britain is a consequence of President Barack Obama's impact on the international scene. During the Bush administration, when Washington regarded Iran as part of the "axis of evil" of rogue states, Tehran had no hesitation about denouncing Washington's attempts to undermine the Islamic revolution.But Mr Obama's arrival at the White House has signalled a new start in Washington's approach to Iran, with the American President offering to conduct face-to-face talks with Tehran if the regime agrees to "unclench its fist".
Similarly, Mr Obama's Cairo speech earlier this month, in which he spoke of a new beginning between the US and Muslims around the world, has already made a deep impression on the Middle East. The result of Lebanon's general election, in which the moderate, pro-Western parties defeated the radical, Iran-backed Hizbollah Islamic group, has been attributed to the "Obama effect".
Although the hardline conservatives who run Iran would be loath to admit it, Tehran is also starting to feel the pressure from the Obama administration, particularly over its nuclear programme. Soon Washington will seek to establish a dialogue with Iran to resolve the nuclear crisis, and the Iranian government is well aware that it will be far harder to say "no" to Mr Obama than it was to spurn Mr Bush.
The removal of America as the focal point of Iran's anti-Western rhetoric makes Britain, which remains America's closest ally in Europe, a ready-made replacement. And whereas the hostility between Iran and the US only goes back three decades – to Khomeini's revolution, to be precise – the climate of mutual suspicion, recrimination and antipathy that exists between London and Tehran dates back centuries.
Britain established trading ties with the kingdom of Persia in the early 17th century, but relations between London and Tehran encountered their first set-back in the early 19th century, when the Persians were forced to concede territory to Russia under the terms of the Treaty of Gulistan, negotiated by the British diplomat Sir Gore Ouseley. This was regarded as a humiliation by many Iranians, and the perception of Britain as a "wily fox" quickly took root within the country's political classes.
Relations further soured when Britain arbitrarily set Iran's borders with India in the 1860s, but matters came to a head in 1872 when the then shah awarded Baron Paul Julius von Reuter, the founder of Reuters news agency, a monopoly over virtually all of Iran's economic and financial resources. Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, described the "Reuter Concession", as it became known, as "the most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has probably ever been dreamt of, much less accomplished, in history".
Public outrage at the deal ultimately led to the constitutional revolution at the turn of the 20th century, which resulted in Iran adapting the principles of democratic government. But Britain's reputation for deviousness was further enhanced in the 1950s when British intelligence officers helped Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA station chief in Tehran, to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953.
Mossadeq, in common with many Iranians, wanted a more equitable distribution of Iran's new oil wealth, which was still overseen by the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. But when Mossadeq attempted to nationalise the oil business and depose the shah, the British and American governments authorised a counter-coup that restored the shah to power.
Of all the acts of imperial perfidy conducted by the British, it is the overthrow of Mossadeq's government that remains most deeply embedded in the Iranian psyche, to the extent that, in accusing Britain of stirring unrest over the recent presidential elections, the Iranian regime has no difficulty convincing its people of British complicity.
Nor is Britain entirely blameless of charges that it is actively supporting attempts to overthrow the Iranian government. The recently expanded BBC Persian Service, which is funded by the Foreign Office and has now added a television channel to supplement its radio broadcasts,
has contributed to suspicions in Tehran that the British Government
is plotting to undermine the Islamic republic.
The BBC insists it is doing nothing more than offering public service broadcasts to its international audiences, but the fact that the BBC was recently accused of broadcasting coded messages that indirectly led to the Shah's overthrow 30 years ago has done little to allay suspicions.
The presence in London of the People's Mujahideen Organisation, the main Iranian dissident group that regularly launches attacks against Iran, also adds to Tehran's sense of paranoia. At one point Britain tried to reassure Iran by placing the dissidents on its proscribed list of terror groups, but this failed after a successful appeal in Brussels.
Add to this the lead role Britain has played in enforcing UN economic sanctions against Iran – billions of dollars of Iranian assets are said to have been seized in London – and it is easy to see why the mullahs have been quick to make Britain a scapegoat for their own difficulties. And with Iran's newly re-elected president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisting that there will be no fundamental change in his position on the nuclear issue, Anglo-Iranian relations are likely to deteriorate even further in the months to come.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/concoughlin/5689752/Why-Iran-hates-Britain-so-much.html
CountArach
01-06-2010, 12:41
As always there is some amazing analysis at opendemocracy.net (http://www.opendemocracy.net/ahmad-alehossein/is-iran-heading-towards-another-revolution) - a site that anyone who is interested in international affairs and security should read. The whole thing is worth a read, but here are the key parts (I feel):
Participants have shown less concern about their stolen votes or the illegitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s government. They no longer see the possibility of reform through a less manipulated electoral politics. They clearly see the roots of problem in the structure of power, their contradictory constitution, the powerful anti-democratic institutions, and in the development of a militant-monetary mafia reinforced through the so-called privatization of public assets. However, the Iranian movement for democracy suffers from some significant shortages. Inconsistency in actions and the lack of effective leadership are among the underdeveloped aspects of the movement.
[...]
Today, almost six months after the election, the movement and the regime are both at the crossroads. On the one hand, isolated, violent street clashes are not going to change the regime even if they repeat over and over again. On the other hand, continuing the current extremely exclusionist policies towards the reformist opposition is becoming markedly unendurable. The post-election tensions have led to a chaotic and complex state where disloyalty, disunity, and disobedience are becoming norms. This will paralyse the state in implementing any effective economic policy to deal with growing economic challenges. While affecting foreign investment in Iran’s energy sectors (even by its close allies such as China and Russia), this will also make it dreadfully difficult for the government to execute effective economic reforms such as the removal of subsidies and raising taxes as these policies require significant public consent.
Whereas the protest movement was initially limited to metropolitan middle class, it has now expanded into lower classes, thanks to the government’s failure in tackling backbreaking economic challenges such as high inflation, stagnation, and unemployment. The vertical links across social classes have also been reinforced through the growing participation of religious figures. The Iranian traditional market (bazaar) which used to be the major source of income for many religious institutions has experienced a tremendous decline due to the growing monopolies shaped around the importation of less expensive goods and commodities in massive scales, particularly from China.
[...]
Not many choices are left for the opposition leaders to take as the movement has started to transform into more antagonistic, more autonomous, and less organized urban riots. In this situation the reformist opposition can retain its leading role if it either strongly pursues a win-win referendum solution through pragmatist fractions of the regime or calls for a national strike and gatherings in the public spaces once and for all. While the former option is more plausible and less feasible, the latter is less plausible and more feasible. Mousavi’s latest statement (No. 17) proves that he is not willing to pursue any of these options. Instead, he has stopped questioning the legitimacy of the government or election and demanded a higher level of responsibility as well as transparency in elections. His solutions to the crisis are once again very general in objective and vague in terms of strategy. His statement is understood by both the regime’s hardliners and the green movement activists as a retreat from his earlier position.
[...]
The system has lost its equilibrium and has become fragile to external pressures. However, as the nonlinearity of changes have become more and more prominent, it is not only the case that small changes in key issues can create immense transformations, but also that greater changes (like tightening sanctions) may not end up with significant effects in favour of democracy. The wisest policy for the West is an ‘active non-intervention’, one that credibly conditions economic and diplomatic relationships (and even nuclear negotiations) on the regime’s human rights and democratic records.
I'm not sure that I completely agree with this anslysis as what he is suggesting (a top-down organisation of the protest movement) is unlikely to lead to much substantive change, and I think that the protest movement will naturally develop these leaders themselves anyway in a far more organic fashion. However, parts of the analysis are undeniable and it is interesting to think about what the present regime's options are - they are few and far between.
Get with the times! The little Satan has overtaken the Great Satan. :smash:
Ah, Perfidious Albion, Sweet Land of Liberty.
CountArach provides a very interesting link.
Extra, extra, read all about it!
Grand Ayatollah Montazeri to be succeeded by Yousef Sane'i (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yousef_Sanei)
Who is Yousef Sane'i?
From what I've read, Marja Sane'i is one of the most competent possible spiritual successors to Ayatollah Montazeri. A few examples of what he's said:
On women in Islam
We believe that women in the Islamic society must enjoy their individual as well as social rights so that they can even occupy the highest positions such as presidential or leadership positions.
On non-Muslims
Therefore, I regard female and male, Muslim and Non-Muslim, Iranian and foreigner as equal. I have thoroughly discussed all points in this view and written on it. There are probably two laws regarding inheritance and divorce that may seem dubious.
Go Iran!
Furunculus
01-07-2010, 14:44
On non-Muslims
His view about non-Muslims (if they obey a holy religion) is that they are not najis and they equally deserve to go to Paradise if they follow their religion sincerely.
so still a nut-bag then, eh?
to quote someone else; being the tallest midget does not qualify one to be a basketball player..........
Vladimir
01-07-2010, 14:47
so still a nut-bag then, eh?
to quote someone else; being the tallest midget does not qualify one to be a basketball player..........
Yes but it's "these nuts" vs. "dee's nuts." Usually it's better to have the former.
His view about non-Muslims (if they obey a holy religion) is that they are not najis and they equally deserve to go to Paradise if they follow their religion sincerely.
Clear case of misinterpretation of what he means, exactly.
Strictly speaking, Zoroastrians aren't Ahl al-Kitab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Book) either, as they are not mentioned as such in the Qu'ran. However, Mehdi Karroubi and Ayatollah Montazeri had held a lot of respect for the Zoroastrians in Iran, and I'm sure Sane'i is no exception.
Good article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/middleeast/07leaks.html) today, seems like some of the MSM is able to get past the underwear bomber and report on things that, you know, matter:
Beatings, arrests, show trials and even killings have failed to discourage Iranians from taking to the streets in protest. But those same tactics may be taking a toll on the government itself, eating away at its legitimacy even among its core of insiders, Iran experts are saying. The evidence? Leaks.
They began in December. Leaks about private meetings of the intelligence services and Revolutionary Guards; an embarrassing memo from state-owned television on how to cover the protests; a note about how the security services have been using petty criminals to fill out the ranks of pro-government demonstrations.
There is no way to verify the accuracy of these leaks. But the government appears to have grown so angry and frustrated with what it calls a “soft war” to overthrow the state that it recently made it a crime to be affiliated with many foreign news outlets, dozens of nongovernmental organizations and opposition Web sites deemed “antirevolutionary.” [...]
“I think the purged and discontented officials are the sources of increasingly revealing leaks to the press and to the Green Movement of activities and plans by leaders of the regime,” said Abbas Milani, director of Iran studies at Stanford University and a critic of the government, referring to the opposition movement.
The leaks could be a symptom of disillusionment and, perhaps, of the supreme leader’s decision to marginalize all but the most loyal. Yet, while the leaks provide evidence of divisions, they cannot answer questions about how deep the rifts go or what they say about the trajectory of the crisis or the stability of the government.
Kralizec
01-07-2010, 17:53
Clear case of misinterpretation of what he means, exactly.
Strictly speaking, Zoroastrians aren't Ahl al-Kitab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Book) either, as they are not mentioned as such in the Qu'ran. However, Mehdi Karroubi and Ayatollah Montazeri had held a lot of respect for the Zoroastrians in Iran, and I'm sure Sane'i is no exception.
How about those of us who don't follow any religion at all? :brood:
How about those of us who don't follow any religion at all? :brood:
Ah, they'll get over it. Even the Christians did.
Furunculus
01-07-2010, 17:57
Clear case of misinterpretation of what he means, exactly.
Strictly speaking, Zoroastrians aren't Ahl al-Kitab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Book) either, as they are not mentioned as such in the Qu'ran. However, Mehdi Karroubi and Ayatollah Montazeri had held a lot of respect for the Zoroastrians in Iran, and I'm sure Sane'i is no exception.
all very well, provided those beardy nutcases in the religious militias don't pop around to my downtown tehran pad and try rearrange my face for me........................
i don't have that confidence.
Okay, here's a weird one: Op-ed in the NYT claims that there can't possibly be a revolution in Iran, because three questions (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/opinion/06leverett.html) haven't been answered:
First, what does this opposition want? Second, who leads it? Third, through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran?
Do we need to go into why this is absolutely specious, or can we let a historian (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/the-leveretts-have-a-point-ii.html#more) do the talking for us?
The Leveretts understand nothing about revolutions. This is important. They suggest that there can't be another revolution in Iran unless the opposition knows exactly what it wants, it has a visible leader in control, and it has a "process" for replacing the current government. How many modern revolutions have ever satisfied those conditions, beginning with the French Revolution?
Those that were really coups d'état did—Russia 1917, Iran 1979—but the most important revolutions in our lifetime have been the velvet ones; they were viral before the internet, succeeded in different and unforeseeable ways, and many were acephalic (word for the day). Thousands of leaderless East Germans climbed the wall of the Hungarian embassy, then walked across the border when a government official made a slip of the tongue. The wall fell. One day Romanians cowered before Ceausescu's Securitate, the next day they booed one of his speeches, and four days later he was dead. Game over.
The odds, the guns, the truncheons, and the will to brutality are all against the Iranian opposition today. They have to live with that, and so do we. The Leveretts for some bizarre reason, want to embrace it. The title of their June piece in Politico was "Ahmadinejad won. Get over it." Well, revolutions happen. Wake up.
all very well, provided those beardy nutcases in the religious militias don't pop around to my downtown tehran pad and try rearrange my face for me........................
Have you ever even read one statement by the reformist clerics in Iran? I'm pretty sure dismantling the basiji is an important aspect.
Furunculus
01-07-2010, 22:48
so when the man finds out i am a godless heretic, living a life of debauchery in downtown tehran, he'll be cool with it?
not what his statement says...................... :juggle2:
something about midgets and basketball, what was that phrase again?
so when the man finds out i am a godless heretic, living a life of debauchery in downtown tehran, he'll be cool with it?
not what his statement says......................
Ah, but there is a difference between indifference and persecution, isn't there?
First, what does this opposition want? Second, who leads it? Third, through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran?[/indent]
The First and the Third were not answered in the last Iranian revolution. And there are plenty of examples of protests like this which have been unco-ordinated and unorganised which have toppled a dictatorship (Indonesia, South Korea, many South American countries etc.).
Furunculus
01-08-2010, 01:01
Ah, but there is a difference between indifference and persecution, isn't there?
sure there is, is that what it will be when i next fly out to my tehran shagpad? are you really sure?
cos i heard all those horrid stories about nasty beardy men invading uni dorms and beating up students, and i'm not sure they'll just disappear like the tooth fairy when this knight with a shining koran turns up.............
please tell me it will all be ok?
cos i heard all those horrid stories about nasty beardy men invading uni dorms and beating up students, and i'm not sure they'll just disappear like the tooth fairy when this knight with a shining koran turns up.............
Don't act like you're suddenly forced to move to some remote village some threehundred kilometers east of Qom.
Ever heard of the saying "One step at a time"?
cegorach
01-09-2010, 09:21
Iran's state propaganda decided to 'tell the truth' about Neda's death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-JgvpyL3co&skipcontrinter=1
I don't know if I should laugh or curse. I wonder who will buy this nonsense that she was a foreign agent and faked her death.... :furious3:
Mehdi Karroubi survives assassination attempt
"There was an attempted assassination attempt against Mehdi Karroubi several hours ago, when the cleric and leading opposition figure arrived in Qazvin for a mourning ceremony of opposition supporters killed in protests.
One of Karroubi’s family members gave this first-hand account to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (http://www.iranhumanrights.org/):
“Members of the Basij and Revolutionary Guards gathered at their garrisons prior to Mr. Karroubi’s arrival. As soon as he entered Qazvin, they appeared. Their actions were fully coordinated with Fars News Agency. As soon as Mr. Karroubi entered the private home where he was staying, Fars News reported it. The coordination between the Revolutionary Guards and Fars News was extensive.
When the Basij and Revolutionary Guards members assembled to protest Karroubi’s presence in Qazvin, two bullets were fired at his car. Fortunately the car was bullet proof. The front windshield was much stronger and only cracked. Otherwise the bullets would have entered the car and caused serious injuries.
I believe the message to Mr. Karroubi is that he is not safe anywhere he goes and if he doesn’t restrict himself to his house, he will be targeted.”
Fars News is closely affiliated with the IRGC."
Source at the NIAC (http://niacblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/assassination-attempt-against-karroubi-fails/#comments)
At least one analyst sees the beginnings of an Islamic Enlightenment (http://www.tnr.com/article/world/the-greening-islam) coming out of Iran:
The Green Movement (and the Ayatollah Khamenei’s clumsy response to it) has exacerbated a split with Shiism. It has accelerated the development of profound and potentially far-reaching doctrinal innovations. The course of the coming months will determine the extent to which these innovations will transform Shiism and Iran. [...]
To varying degrees, thinkers and theologians identified with the democratic movement have been offering a new reading of Shiism that makes the faith more amenable to democracy and secularism. The most significant innovation—found in essays, sermons, books, and even fatwas—is the acceptance of the separation of mosque and state, the idea that religion must be limited to the private domain. Some of these thinkers refuse to afford any privileged position to the clergy’s reading and rendition of Shiism--a radical democratization of the faith. And others, like Akbar Ganji and Mostafa Malekian, have gone so far as to deny the divine origins of Koran, arguing that it is nothing but a historically specific and socially marked interpretation of a divine message by the prophet. The most daring are even opting for a historicized Muhammad, searching for the first time in Shia history for a real, not hagiographic, narrative of his life.
God bless 'em, and may they prosper.
“I wonder who will buy this nonsense that she was a foreign agent and faked her death”: Probably a lot of people, if I follow how many follow conspiracy theories in our world…:no:
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