Ayatollah Javadi Amoli Calls for Separation of Powers in Iran

Following the example of Ayatollah Ali Sistani in calling for a separation of religion and state is Ayatollah Amoli of Iran.

“When one person alone enacts, executes and judges the law, there will be problems” (Translated from Mowj news)

Amoli, who led the Friday prayers sermon in Qom, believes that the best way to resolve the current situation is a separation between the executive branch, the judicial branch and the Islamic jurist. Amoli said separation of powers is not a recent phenomenon and it existed before Islam. “Separation of powers does not belong to a particular century. Islamic and non-Islamic governments have it now, too,” he said.

The hard line Iranian clerics, politicians, and Republican Guard are WRONG! Islam in Iran is failing as a result of the hard line ideology and control by the government. Religion cannot survive when forced onto a population by repression, coercion, and censorship. That idea failed in Europe. It will fail in Iran…and elsewhere in the world.

But then do Ahmedinejad, the Supreme Leader, and other hard lie clerics really believe in the Qu’ran and the vision of Muhammad or are they more interested in retraining power in order to create chaos and disorder in the world? They believe that in bringing about chaos they will hasten the “end of days” and bring about the return of the Hidden Imam. Many people throughout the world are adherents of “hasten the end of days,” but only in Iran has this ideology been institutionalized by the ruling government.

They must be stopped. The rational, thinking, educated people of Iran must be supported; their voices must be heard. The free media must be pushed to keep their story front and center.

Famed Iranian film maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf Statement of Solidarity – Power to the people

It was rumored this morning on Twitter from Iran tht Mohsen Makmakbaf was arrested by the Iranian government. Mr. Makhmalbaf is Iran’s premier film maker. He spoke with Foreign Policy Magazine in Paris in which he discussed the election. On 6/23 in Italy, he made this video.

In this video: Lala Movahed, Mary Sadro, Nik Saidi, Nilofar Darougar
Videos Posted by IRAN

English Translation by IRAN, and not the author of this blog.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s statements on the situation in Iran has been released. He is very well-connected in Iran.

I have translated his words for the non-Farsi speakers.

Please take a moment out of your time to share this video and the translation. The translation is pretty accurate. I may have missed a metaphor or two…but I tried my best with the amount of Farsi knowledge I have:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1y9WmlPqoY

Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Translated Statement:

Iranians living in Italy and other parts of the world, I urge you to not give up, because the people in the line of fire are are not scared.

They are all chanting, “natarsim natarsim, ma hame ba ham hastim (Let’s not be afraid, let’s not be afraid. We are all in this together).

We haven’t seen this type of togetherness in a long time. This really has been our issue.

We are aware people, but we were afraid because the oceans of Iran had become mere water droplets.
In the past days, the water has been found again in the oceans. We have found our unity.

We need to continue protesting in front of the embassies and lobby the issues pertaining to the people of Iran- with help from world governments, journalists and citizens.

We need the world to recognize Ahmadinejad as the leader of a coup d’etat and not as the leader of Iran. If this happens, we will be successful.

We have already been successful. Iran’s history the past 30 years has been dissapointing. Now, our dissapointment has been expressed. We have found each other again.

Even with all the violence happening in Iran, the Iranian people are more kind to each other now. For example, some put their motorcylces on fire, destroy their vehicles, so the fuels of their vehicles suppress the effects of the tear gas.

They are defending each other.

Around the world, we see that people have put their differences aside.

Eveyrone is uniting their voices, chanting:

“What happened to our vote?”
“We want to vote again!”

We want to have the rights to our future.

I think that every Iranain in Iran is a commander, a force. Every Iranian outside of iran is a representative of the people in Iran, a reporter.

Every Iranian who gets killed in the streets is a martyr. They are also all media, filming with their cell phones and uploading the content onto Youtube.

We need to take these videos from Youtube and send out the links- send them to the reporters.
You can help the reporters who may not be able to find all the videos amongst the many being uploaded.

We need to work collectively to spread the information coming out from Iran.

We need to continue.

Friday night, at sunset, light a candle. Think about and respect the deaths of the brave. The Iranian people are planning to do the same outisde their houses, on their roofs, chanting: “Allah o Akbar.

They will be chanting “Allah o Akbar” to not prove their religion, but to voice the intolerable pressures put on them by the government.

Wearing the colour green is not to represent Mousavi, it is to represent a movement (democratic movement).

We are all supporters. Right now, none of us belong to any specific groups- we need to unite.

This is to speak out against Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, and 30 years of dictatorship in Iran. We want to take that closer step toward democracy.

We should follow the footsteps of Ghandi and Mandella.

We want the people of the West and the media to listen to the words of the Iranian people in Iran.

I am with you, we are all together.

pls share

However, we do share the same sentiments. Share this video; share the translation with the world.

Latest photos of Iran protest

Hamad Saber has posted pix of the protests, including days five and six. Go here to see them.

Preamble to Iranian Constitution

Just like the U.S., Iran has a Constitution which guarantees certain rights yo the citizens. What the current Iranian government is doing to its citizens, and demanding/recommending be done to its citizens violates their Constitution. What would happen anywhere in the free world if te sitting government violated their Constitutions? We in the U.S. know: we impeach the sitting president or vote out the administration. The Iranian people deserve better from their government. They deserve a government that follows the law and lives up to thier Constitution.

Here is the Preamble to the Iranian Constitution:

With regards to the intrinsic nature of this great movement, the Constitution guarantees to oppose any kind of despotism, intellectual, social, and as regards monopoly economics, and to struggle for freedom from the despotic system, and to entrust men’s destiny to their own hands.

Don’t become distracted by simple, irrelevant things. Keep the focus on Iran. Make sure the world is aware of every single violation of human rights and their Constitution that the government does and approves.

Iranian gov’t & media blame Britian for protests

I know. Nothing new there. Corrupt leaders always blame someone else when the people get sick and tired of repression and take to the streets. Today’s Guardian UK writes:

According to the BBC’s monitoring service, Iranian al-Alam television has been continually broadcasting “confessions” by two alleged members of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, also known as the People’s Mojahedin of Iran, a US-designated terrorist group opposed to the regime. Al-Alam claimed the two had admitted receiving instructions from the group’s “operations room in Britain” that included incitement of demonstrators and “sabotage attacks inside Iran”. Other channels have carried similar reports.

Raising this witch-hunt to a new heights of fantasy, Iran’s security forces are now claiming that unknown “terrorists” and “vandals”, rather than they themselves, were responsible for shooting and killing demonstrators in Tehran on Saturday. With relatively independent figures such as Ali Larijani, speaker of the Majlis (parliament), giving credence to talk of foreign plots, and with the Majlis’s foreign policy commission calling for a review of diplomatic ties with Britain, it’s possible on current trends that Britain’s ambassador may soon be packing his bags. Ominously, foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi refused today to rule out expulsion of foreign ambassadors.

I guess the guys running things in Iran think the rest of the world is stupid. Even Iranians don’t believe the propaganda being disseminated by their regime. However, the most interesting – shall we say, revealing – thing about the Iranian government’s blustery speech against Britian:

Unsourced reports are circulating, meanwhile, that British banks have frozen $1.6bn in funds belonging to Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the supreme leader. This supposed affront is cited as another reason for displeasure with Britain in high places.

And Ahmedinejad has the temerity to call Rafsanjani corrupt? $1.6 billion? Now that’s gotta be corruption of the first order. No wonder Khamenei doesn’t want Mousavi to take office – his son might lose wealth back to the people from whom it must have been stolen.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf: I speak for Mousavi. And Iran

In a letter published by the Guardian (UK), Mr. Makhmalbaf writes that he was given the responsibility, by Mir Hossein Mousavi, to tell the world what is happening in Iran.

They have asked me to tell how Mousavi’s headquarters was wrecked by plainclothes police officers. To tell how the commanders of the revolutionary guard ordered him to stay silent. To urge people to take to the streets because Mousavi could not do so directly.

The people in the streets don’t want a recount of last week’s vote. They want it annulled. This is a crucial moment in our history. Since the 1979 revolution Iran has had 80% dictatorship and 20% democracy. We have dictatorship because one person is in charge, the supreme leader – first Khomeini, now Khamenei. He controls the army and the clergy, the justice system and the media, as well as our oil money.

Mr. Makhmalbaf lays out the case for annulling the elections and why they must be annulled. He also goes on to speak about the person of Mousavi: who he was and what he is now.

Before the revolution, Mousavi was a religious intellectual and an artist, who supported radical change but did not support the mullahs. After the revolution, when all religious intellectuals and even leftists backed Khomeini, he served as prime minister for eight years. The economy was stable, and he did not order the killings of opponents, or become corrupt.

In order to neuralise his power, the position of prime minister was eliminated from the constitution and he was pushed out of politics. So Mousavi returned to the world of artists because in a country where there are no real political parties, artists can act as a party. The artists supported Khatami and now they support Mousavi.

Previously, he was revolutionary, because everyone inside the system was a revolutionary. But now he’s a reformer. Now he knows Gandhi – before he knew only Che Guevara. If we gain power through aggression we would have to keep it through aggression. That is why we’re having a green revolution, defined by peace and democracy.

From all I’ve read about Mousavi, he appears to be a person with whom the world can deal…and he will bring stability and prosperity to Iran. Let’s all hope that he continues to speak to the people of Iran, to give them courage in their fight against the mullahs for their freedom, and let’s all hope Rafsanjani manages to win enough supporters on the Council of Experts to block or remove Khamenei.

So the Republicans want to meddle…

Today, Tehran Bureau printed quotes from Tehran residents who stated their opposition to Republican/neo con calls to interfere in the domestic situation in Iran.

A voice from central Tehran earlier this morning (Sunday 21 June):

If Obama moves to support the demonstration in strong terms, this camp will lose and Ahmadinejad will gain ground; also it is not good to make an American domestic issue from an Iranian domestic issue. Yesterday was brutal, but not as brutal we still do not know how many were killed, but from the set up of the riot police it is apparent that they want to keep people off street with the least casualty possible. This is not a praise, it is to say that government does not want to escalate things.

If there is no demonstration today it does not mean it is over. This is just the beginning. The focus is on having an election.

You must see the people, this is a people united, all groups and sections are out there, war veterans, old revolutionaries, housewives. The first girl I saw beaten yesterday was wearing a chador, this is not a western thing here, this is a domestic issue in which Iranian people have the right to demand a new election.

From an academic listserv (Sunday 21 June):
“Message from an ordinary Tehrani”

Dear friend, if you have any contacts within the American Administration, please send them this message on behalf of us, ordinary Iranians in Iran (whose interests and concerns are very different from those of the exiled Iranians in the United States and in Europe who do not yet understand the mentality here and who have been cut off from the Iranian society for too long). Tell your contacts in the Administration that their point of view regarding Iran is by far the best position that an American Government has ever taken. We appreciate this and thank the President.

During the last two or three decades not one American president had “understood” Iran. All of them got caught in the traps of the mollahs, despite themselves having to play the bad cop .. but this time the intelligent president has decided not to join in their game, bravo.

It is normal that he is criticized vividly by most of the Los Angeles Iranians (and by most Republicans): since a long time they have been asking for just one thing : that America attack Iran and change the regime so that they get their possessions and their former jobs and privileges back, without wanting to know what today’s young Iranian wants here and now. It makes me think of the Cubans in Florida … they don’t consider the interests of their country but only what is due to them.”

It’s awfully strange that the Republicans and neo cons think it perfectly acceptable to meddle in the internal affairs of another country (around politics and elections), but remember what they all said when Europe and Japan said they hoped Obama was elected? Didn’t they say the election of a US president was wholly a domestic affair and that other countries should stay quiet and not interfere? Do I smell hypocrisy here?

At this time what the Iranians really want is not interference, but for the world to know what is going on and to say to the government of Iran that they have stolen the election and violated their own Constitution.

A Young Iranians hopes…

Yesterday’s Tehran Bureau published a letter from a young Iranian. This letter tells the story of the hopes and dreams of young Iran.

and four years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad started.

By the end of the four years, we were desperate for change. Hope materialized in the shape of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who happened to be the prime minister that now long gone 1984. But the totalitarians ruling the Dystopia swooped in and crushed that last bit of hope.

In Brecht’s “Life of Galileo,” Galileo’s students condemn him at the end of the court proceedings with these words: “Pity the nation that doesn’t have a hero.”

“Pity the nation that needs a hero,” he responds wisely.

My generation is tired of being disillusioned. We refuse to accept the status quo and we have risen up in defiance. I am not sure how long it will take for the totalitarians to crush our resistance. For now though, we’re holding up just fine. We’re holding up fine even though our brothers at Basij and the police are murdering their dear fellow Iranians. We’re holding up even though you bash us with clubs and batons and try to suffocate us with your tear gas.

A nation stands tall refusing to succumb that easily.

Yesterday among the crowds who were just back from the warzone with their wounds and anger and sadness, I spotted an old friend of mine.

“Welcome to 1984, my friend,” he said in great anguish.

I nodded in agreement; we’d come full circle.

He went on, “There we were facing the bloodthirsty riot police, hand in hand, like that ‘Brothers in Arms’ song from Dire Straits.”

It was in that moment that I realized why the French Revolutionaries added “Fraternity” to their revolutionary slogan.

“Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” indeed.

Both U.S. politicos and the Iranian government are wrong. Iranians are not all violent haters of the West, and the West is only influencing Iranians by being a model of democracy. Young Iranians want the democracy the West enjoys: the right to self-determination; the right to honest votes; the right of free press; the right to stand tall and be respected worldwide. Yes, democracy.

Text of Iranian open letter to Lebanese people

Open Letter to all my Lebanese friends
June 16, 2009
Dear Lebanese friend

I am sure you have seen the awful images circulated on the news and internet, images captured by millions of Iranians and sent out to the world, so at least someone could hear their side of story as well. Images and video shots that are ignored by the government run TV!

I hope you have seen the massive demonstrations in Tehran, people risking their life to come out and demand their constitution right. The right to a fair and free elections.

These people you see in the videos protesting are my borders and sisters, my family , my classmates, my childhood friends, they were born, raised and studied in Iran under the Islamic Republic. They are tired of a government that is policing their thoughts and dictating an ideology. An ideology witch doesn’t even match Islam !

We have heard multiple reports from all over Iran indicating that some of the police force that are hitting and killing peaceful protectors and break peoples cars and personal properties speak arabic, and they don’t even know farsi!

Yesterday it was confirmed that Hezbolah has sent 5000 troops to help Ahmadi nejad take over power in Iran. This troops were sent before the results of election was out! It clearly shows that Hezbollah and Ahmadi Nejad planned to take over Iran with the back up of Khamanei!

My dear Lebanese friend , hitting and killing defenseless people is not humane and defiantly not Islamic. When we heard your Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s congradulation statment to Ahmadinejad , it felt like being stabbed from the back!

Ahmadi nejad has sure tried to mislead a large group of people with his way of talking, and I admit he is good at this, but please open your eyes and your hearts see for yourself. this traitor is calling the protesters nothing but “dirt and dust” and opens fire in to peaceful protesters. His shameless police force even attached dorm rooms in every city killing defenseless students, and the burning the place down.

I am asking you to please send letters to your government and pressure them to condemn Ahmadinejad actions in Iran. Please write to Hezbolla’s members of parliaments in Lebanon and ask them to call back the 5000 troops. Ahmadi nejad is a criminal , don’t participate in his crimes.

Please help circulate this letter. This is a call for peace and a call for freedom

To see the original posting or read it in Arabic, go here.

Isfahan march – pix from today

TwitPic: Naghshe Jahan Sq / Esfehan / IRAN #iranelection

CLICK PIX TO GO TO ORIGINAL POSTING OF PIX AND SEE AT LARGER SIZE