Gratuitous Googling Gets: "IRAN is also the only Muslim country where citizens responded to 9/11 with a spontaneous candlelight vigil..." (NY Times)

Iranian women hold candles during a night vigil held in Tehran last week in memory of the victims of the terror attacks on the United States.

MSNBC News

Inside Iran, a nation conflicted

Why is Tehran sending contradictory messages to the West?

By Jim Maceda
NBC NEWS

"TEHRAN, Iran, Oct. 3 — Iran is caught between opposing forces — both inside and outside its territory."

...

"But there is some hope. After news of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks spread to Tehran, hundreds of Iranians, students, merchants and housewives joined in a candlelight vigil in a downtown square. Many were crying. Three weeks later, I am still approached by ordinary Iranians, in restaurants, Internet cafes and on the street, telling me how sorry they are, and how worried they are about the “American war” that is about to begin, just next door."

[continued...]

SOURCE - http://www.msnbc.com/news/636871.asp?cp1=1





http://album.iranvajahan.net/Iran/from_time_online_edition

The New York Times

Those Friendly Iranians
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: May 5, 2004

"TEHRAN, Iran

Finally, I've found a pro-American country."

...

"Partly because being pro-American is a way to take a swipe at the Iranian regime, anything American, from blue jeans to "Baywatch," is revered. At the bookshops, Hillary Clinton gazes out from three different pirated editions of her autobiography.

`It's a best seller, though it's not selling as well as Harry Potter," said Heidar Danesh, a bookseller in Tehran. "The other best-selling authors are John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steel."

Young Iranians keep popping the question, "So how can I get to the U.S.?" I ask why they want to go to a nation denounced for its "disgustingly sick promiscuous behavior," but that turns out to be a main attraction. And many people don't believe a word of the Iranian propaganda.

We've learned to interpret just the opposite of things on TV because it's all lies," said Odan Seyyid Ashrafi, a 20-year-old university student. "So if it says America is awful, maybe that means it's a great place to live."

Indeed, many Iranians seem convinced that the U.S. military ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq are going great, and they say this with more conviction than your average White House spokesman.

One opinion poll showed that 74 percent of Iranians want a dialogue with the U.S. — and the finding so irritated the authorities that they arrested the pollster.

Iran is also the only Muslim country I know where citizens responded to the 9/11 attacks with a spontaneous candlelight vigil as a show of sympathy.

[continued...]

SOURCE - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/opinion/05KRIS.html?ex=1399089600&en=01eebe85ed3ddef6&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND





http://album.iranvajahan.net/albums/Iran/iran1.jpg

Chicago Tribune

Iranian presidential hopefuls talk of embracing U.S.

June 12, 2005

The Islamic Republic has sought quietly for several years to soften its image, buffing away the impression left by episodes such as the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Ordinary Iranians have long had a softer stance toward the West than their leaders; after the Sept. 11 attacks, Iranians held a spontaneous candlelight vigil in Tehran.

The difference today is that some aspiring leaders are changing their rhetoric as well.

With nearly two-thirds of the country's population born after the 1979 revolution, there is growing pressure for change. For many young Iranians, their financial and practical longing to join the world trumps their ideological conviction to stay isolated from it.

[continued...]

SOURCE - http://www.billingsgazette.com/newdex.php?display=rednews/2005/06/12/build/world/55-iran.inc





http://www.bestirantravel.com/culture/wtc-vigil.html

The New Yorker Magazine

SHADOW LAND
Who's winning the fight for Iran's future?

by JOE KLEIN
Issue of 2002-02-18 and 25
Posted 2002-02-11

On the evening of September 11, 2001, about two hundred young people gathered in Madar Square, on the north side of Tehran, in a spontaneous candlelight vigil to express sympathy and support for the United States. A second vigil, the next night, was attacked by the basij, a volunteer force of religious vigilantes, and then dispersed by the police. The vigils may have been the only pro-American demonstrations in the Islamic world after the terrorist attacks on the United States.

"It was what we all were feeling," said Arash, a young teacher I met; he had stayed home with his wife, Ava—these are not their real names—nervously watching the unimaginable television images from America. "But I was also worried: Would the Americans blame Iran for this? How would our government respond? Would we express sympathy and condemn the attacks, or would it be a Marg bar Amrika"—"Death to America"—"reaction? Finally, at ten o'clock, Khatami came on and expressed sympathy. What a relief!"

[continued...]

SOURCE - http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content?020218fa_FACT





http://www.bestirantravel.com/culture/wtc-vigil.html

Beliefnet

Bright Lights of Kindness

In London, thousands of people--including many Americans--lined the streets waving American flags for a special changing of the guard ceremony at which a military band played the U.S. National anthem. In Austria, church bells tolled together,

and in Tehran, Iran, several dozen Iranians held candlelight vigil in the main square, ignoring police orders to disperse.

SOURCE - http://www.beliefnet.com/story/87/story_8751_6.html

The Iranian

The unthinkable ally

If the US were to extend an arm of friendship to the growing student movement in Iran

By Baha Hariri
April 9, 2003

Present day Iran looks and feels very different from twenty years ago. The streets are frequently flooded with student protesters demanding democracy. After September 11th, thousands of Iranians turned out at a candlelight vigil in Tehran -- making Iran the only Muslim nation to hold such an event.

The economy is growing fast and is attracting large investments from Europe and Asia. The country also sits atop one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, the fuel of the future.

Despite all this, Iran continues to be cold-shouldered by the Bush Administration. At the same time we remain close allies with Saudi Arabia, one of the most corrupt and oppressive monarchies in the region.

[continued...]

SOURCE - http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2003/April/Iran/

From CNN: Former hostages allege Iran's new president was captor.

The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago.

SOURCE - http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/2005_06.html

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, and a hostage taker are seen in these 1979 photos.

CNN

Former hostages allege Iran's new president was captor

Takeover leader: Ahmadinejad 'absolutely' not involved

Thursday, June 30, 2005; Posted: 6:20 p.m. EDT (22:20 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago.

President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions."

"As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN.

"...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser."

Abbas Abdi, the man well-known to be the leader of the 1979 hostage-takers, told CNN that Ahmadinejad, the Tehran mayor, "absolutely was not" part of the event that involved the captivity of 52 people.

Abdi later became a supporter of reformist President Mohammed Khatami and was recently released from jail for advocating closer ties with the United States.

Iranian officials also deny Ahmadinejad was involved.

The November 4, 1979, embassy takeover followed protests demanding that the United States return the Shah of Iran to Tehran for trial. He had been overthrown by the Islamic revolution 11 months prior and was receiving cancer treatment in New York at the time.

The embassy seizure lasted 444 days and resulted in a botched rescue mission that left eight U.S. soldiers dead and the severance of U.S.-Iranian ties ever since.

[continued...]


[Ed note: two out of three photos available for this story were "disappeared" or "Orwellized" from the CNN/CIA site, possibly to a secret prison on our secretive Prison Planet. I can't "copy and paste" the remaining text below the missing photos either, but suffice it to say that former hostages Charles "Chuck" Scott and William J. Daugherty are sorely missed...]


CNN/CIA SOURCE - http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/06/30/iran.president/index.html











Peace by peace...
BK

_________________

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Black Krishna Brand

Philosophy - http://blackkrishna.blogspot.com/

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BONUS: The truth shall set oil of us free...


The Next War - Crossing the Rubicon

by John Pilger
Friday 10 February 2006

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021006A.shtml

"Next month, Iran is scheduled to shift its petrodollars into a euro-based bourse. The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn. America's military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China.

That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.

While the Pentagon has no plans to occupy all of Iran, it has in its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home to 90 per cent of Iran's oil. "The first step taken by an invading force," reported Beirut's Daily Star, "would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's oil supply." On 28 January the Iranian government said that it had evidence of British undercover attacks in Khuzestan, including bombings, over the past year.

Will the newly emboldened Labor MPs pursue this? Will they ask what the British army based in nearby Basra - notably the SAS - will do if or when Bush begins bombing Iran? With control of the oil of Khuzestan and Iraq and, by proxy, Saudi Arabia, the US will have what Richard Nixon called "the greatest prize of all."

[continued...]

SOURCE - http://100777.com/node/1536