GREEEEEEEEEEEEN! Turns To Blue

Well, that could be black-and-blue, for all we know.

Last week, in GREEEEEEEEEEEEN!, we offered the story of the heroics of members of the Iranian Soccer Team, wearing green wrist bands (or arm bands), during their match in the World Cup qualifier round.



Today, the other shoe (soccer and otherwise) dropped;

Iran bans election protest footballers

Their gesture attracted worldwide comment and drew the attention of football fans to Iran's political turmoil. Now the country's authorities have taken revenge by imposing life bans on players who sported green wristbands in a recent World Cup match in protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.

According to the pro-government newspaper Iran, four players – Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka'abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been "retired" from the sport after their gesture in last Wednesday's match against South Korea in Seoul.

[snip]

Most of the players obeyed instructions to remove the armwear at half-time, but Mahdavikia wore his green captain's armband for the entire match. The four are also said to have been banned from giving media interviews.

The fate of the other two players who wore the wristbands is unknown. None of the team members were given back their passports upon returning to Tehran after the match, which ended in a 1-1 draw – a result that ended Iran's hopes of qualifying for next year's tournament.

[snip]

Ahmadinejad, a known football fan, has taken a close interest in the sport's affairs. In 2006 Iran was banned from international competition by the world governing body Fifa after claims of improper interference by his government. The ban was later lifted.

This year the national team coach Ali Daei was sacked, reportedly on Ahmadinejad's orders, after a 2-1 home defeat by Saudi Arabia.

Oh, boy ...

It is going to come to the Iranian Regime, sooner, or later, that they should be paying attention to the final stanza of lyrics, of ''Bein' Green' (from Ray Charles) that we posted previously;

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder green and it'll do fine, cause' it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be

From the rooftops ... Allah Akbar!

I Wonder Where They Learned This Trick?

I guess, in war, or revolutions, you either have to win, or die.

Otherwise, you get hit with a bill.

Here's a good head-shaker for you;

Iranian military said to charge family of dead son 'bullet fee'

The family of Kaveh Alipour, a 19-year-old Iranian killed amidst protests in Tehran, was allegedly charged a "bullet fee" by Iranian security forces, according to a report Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal.

"Upon learning of his son's death, the elder Mr. Alipour was told the family had to pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a "bullet fee"—a fee for the bullet used by security forces—before taking the body back," relatives purportedly told the Journal.

Details of Alipour's death remain unclear -- he was apparently not part of the protests and may have been killed in crossfire.

Because the slain Kaveh Alipour was an innocent bystander, is there a discount? ... Does the family get to haggle? ... Can the family go out to eBay, or Overstock, find a suitable replacement bullet, and, would the Iranian Regime accept that as payment?

Before you shake you head too much, where did we hear of something like this before?

Hmmmm ...

Oh yeah, The Bush Grindhouse!

Pentagon Demands Wounded Soldier Return Re-enlistment Bonus

Just in time for the holidays, there's a special place in Hell just waiting to be filled by some as-yet-unknown Pentagon bureaucrat. Apparently, thousands of wounded soldiers who served in Iraq are being asked to return part of their enlistment bonuses -- because their injuries prevented them from completing their tours.

From Pittsburgh's KDKA;

A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

"I tried to do my best and serve my country. I was unfortunately hurt in the process. Now they're telling me they want their money back," he explained.

These dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds don't miss a trick, do they ...

It's like Joe Pesci said in Casino, "Always the dollars ... Always the fuckin' dollars ..."

Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reasons There Was More Votes Than Voters In Iran

News Item: Worst. Damage Control. Ever

10. Looking back over the old Shah of Iran's playbook, to see what went wrong

9. Surprisingly, Ralph Nader got about 4% of the over-vote

8. Ballot-stuffing teams didn't stop to watch Susan Boyle

7. It was a sign, for Ahmandinejad to get almost a 2-1 ratio of votes, that he successfully employed Karl Rove's New Math

6. Ken Blackwell was seen, hanging around the Vote-Counting room

5. Supreme Leader didn't want to spend the money to do the "purple-finger" thing

4. Was a condition, for Ahmandinejad to name Dick Cheney as the head of his committee to vet the Vice President slot

3. CIA got wires crossed, thought Obama White House wanted to keep Ahmandinejad in office

2. Actually, some of the Die-Bold machines crashed, as a 3-1 ratio for Ahmandinejad was what was planned

1. Since everyone is using Twitter, thought that everyone got 140 votes each


Bonus Iran Riffs

Prairie Weather: "Oops. We screwed up. But that doesn't change the results of the vote."

Steve Benen: WHEN STRONG VOTER TURNOUT IS TOO STRONG...

NYT: Iranian Guards Issue Warning as Vote Errors Are Admitted

Robin Wright: In Iran, One Woman's Death May Have Many Consequences

James Joyner: 'Watching the Fall of Islamic Theocracy'

Steve Clemons: Khamenei's Mystique Shattered in Eyes of Iranians

GREEEEEEEEEEEEN!

"It's Now All of Iran!"

Somebody Check Jim Baker's Passport!

Isfahan

Along with it being another cumbersome day on the homefront, I have to be honest, it was rather depressing, the news coming out of Iran today.



CNN has been on-the-case (albiet, doing mucho reporting on posts from Twitter, Facebook and others). Perhaps we need to come up with a new code, being, if "RT is "Re-Tweet", that CNN has been engaged in "RBRT" (Rebroadcasting Re-Tweets).

Which is a few boatloads more that MSNBC has been doing.

If they are not just flat-out obtuse, than the MSNBC suits must be in a coma, running their infamous "Doc-Blocs", while Tehran burns.

Surely, if one is not missing, there must be a white woman in distress among the Iranian throngs.

How to stay on top of the breaking news there, guys ...

Here's some posts you should check out, to get a handle on what's going on, and, to see, that this is far past the rigged election, they be remaking the country over there ... Just what comes out at the end is what we have to shake the Magic 8-Ball to see...

There's two people that have been doing yeoman work;

Andrew Sullivan - Live-Blogging Day 8

Nico Pitney - Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising

Two posts, worth reading, from Al Giordano;

Tehran’s Freedom Square Will Be “the Palpitating Heart of the World”

Iranian Bus Workers Join the Resistance



The Flying Monkeys, and Right Wing Freak Show are throwing their feces around ...

Steven Benen takes apart The Cheney Fluffer, and Little Billy Kristol in "DO THEY KNOW THE OTHER SIDE EXISTS?..."

Mike Madden, of Salon, has Mousavi: "I am prepared for martyrdom"

Carnegie Endowment Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour: Is Mousavi willing to risk "slaughter" in the streets?

Larisa Alexandrovna: Iran's protest not as bloody as feared and US double standards...

Anonymous, on Salon: Khamanei weeps, he tells us there was no vote rigging, and he seems to give a green light for a crackdown

And, Juan Cole turns it over his Informed Comment to Jeffery Lyons (Reuters Tehran bureau chief from 1998-2001, is the co-author of Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in 21st-Century Iran. His latest book, The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization, was published earlier this year by Bloomsbury Press), for a "man behind the curtain" view, with "Lyons: Khamenei's Past Power Play against the Clerics May Weaken him Now in Confronting the Reformers"

The Respite

Back in the early 1960's, the Duke Ellington Orchestra embarked on a State Department-sponsored world tour, primarily hitting the Middle East, in what later would be heard in his "Far East Suite";

The album's title is something of a misnomer, since only one track – "Ad Lib on Nippon", inspired by a 1964 tour of Japan – is strictly speaking concerned with a country in the "Far East". The rest of the music on the album was inspired by a world tour undertaken by Ellington and his orchestra in 1963, which took in Beirut, Amman, Kabul, New Delhi, Sri Lanka, Tehran, Madras, Mumbai, Baghdad, and Cairo (visits to Istanbul, Nicosia, Cairo, Alexandria, Athens, and Thessaloniki were postponed when the news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy reached the tour party).

One of the tunes, "Isfahan" became a jazz standard, and here it is;

Duke Ellington - Isfahan



Hopefully, tomorrow, we'll be back in-the-groove ...

From The Rooftops ... Allah Akbar!

"It's Now All of Iran!"

There's a great post on Juan Cole's Informed Comment, that is well worth reading.

We don't have Mousavi supporters, it's now all of Iran...

That they came to Azadi, a place where thirty years ago the Revolution pivoted towards victory was fitting, for as much as the election campaign had been about who best represented the revolutionary values of Iran, Islam, and the late Imam, the push and pull of the past few days between opposition and Ahmadinejad forces has been a struggle to lay claim to authenticity. Authenticity that lies in the imagined and lived past, places, and practices of the Islamic Republic. It is as if whomever can get to the important places and rituals first and stay there, hang onto them, will win. So at night, beginning at 9 pm, we hear shouts of "Allah Akbar!" from the rooftops, just like in the fall and winter of 1978-1979. We have marches to sacred spots like Azadi and appeals by all sides to the memory of Khomeini...

In the crowd there are families, young and old. One cannot help but notice the large presence of women of all ages. The typical daily life of the capital is out here together, the homes, sidewalks and boulevards abandoned for this shared space. There is word that the crowd is millions strong; we know that it stretches eastwards to Imam Hussein Square. It is an incredible occasion---by comparison the state-organized 200,000 strong anniversary march that takes place every February starts from around Ferdowsi Square, several kilometers closer in to Azadi.

[snip]

There are new signs as well. Written in English, "Where is My Vote?" (I can't help myself, the idea for an Al Gore-Mir Hossein Mousavi buddy film pops into my mind, "Dude, Where is My Vote?"). Another: 2 x 2 = 24 million, a play on the bogus economic measures touted by Ahmadinejad during the debates, now updated to reflect the equally dubious election results.

[snip]

As I have noted before, what is remarkable about the Mousavi and opposition marches is the orderly disorder. These are not rallies or events in the manner that we are accustomed to in the United States. There are no official Mousavi volunteers guiding the crowd to the designated rallying points, college interns filled with coffee and day-old pizza. The movement is self-directed. Mousavi had asked his supporters to march but to march respectfully, to not give any excuse for violence. The crowd is abiding. Along the nearly kilometer length of a basiji base, the cry goes up: Shoar nagoo! Don't shout slogans! Hands are up held up instead. It is quiet. Here and there a voice, unable to restrain itself, begins to scream "Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!" He is met instantly with hisses and whistles---saket! saket! quiet! quiet!---and the voice falls silent again.

Todd Gitlin, over on TPMCafe calls the post "Reading Gatsby in Teheran"

There's some other significant news coming out, notably, McClatchy's "Iran's senior ayatollah slams election, confirming split", which Think Progress's Wonk Room also covers, in "Montazeri: ‘In This Day And Age, One Cannot Hide The Truth From The People’"

Andrew Sullivan has a bevy of good info on his site.

Robert Baer, the former CIA Operative, has "Khamenei on the Ropes?"

And, the United States is, in one small way, giving its' support, by way of the State Department wheeling-and-dealing with Twitter, to delay it's scheduled maintenance shutdown, so as the Iranian's could maintain communication;

Twitter maintained service during Iranian elections after US State Dept request ...Twitter, the social networking website, postponed a scheduled maintenance shutdown after a US State Department request that it keep publishing during the Iran election protests

State Department to Twitter: No Fail Whale for Iran

Lastly, Salon has "What they saw at the Green Revolution - A photographic record of the Iranian election and its aftermath, through Monday's bloody street protests", with the accompanying slideshow.