Pedestrian

Here is a video of the gathering.

And here’s another

(the students are chanting: basijiyeh Russiyeh, digar asar nadarad (Russian basijis are no longer going to be able to silence us)

WTF?!

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Dolmeh refers to stuffed vegetables – tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc. I miss my mom’s dolmeh

I don’t know why this person has ketchup on his/hers. I’ve never seen Iranians eat their dolmeh with ketchup.

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Today, at the University of Ahvaz

Hamid Rasaee is a thug. AKA a member of the Iranian parliament. Up at the podium, he’s  compared Khatami to Bush and has said: “the followers of Bush in Iran hide behind Khatami’s aba [clerical robe].”

He was the MP who signed a letter asking the judiciary to prosecute Karoubi and Mousavi (he claimed that “more than 100 MPs had signed it.”) Later, they turned out to be around 30 signatures. He has also vocally supported the assault on Karoubi, Beheshti, etc.

According to AyandehNews, he was at the University of Ahvaz (Khuzestan) today to give a speech at the opening of a “soft warfare” conference which was to cover the velvet revolution and was greeted by screaming students wearing green and throwing empty water bottles and green peppers (?) at him. He was not able to give his speech, and only resorted to talking back to the students.

He said: “the point of this meeting was to show the real face of the dictators. To show who is trying to silence whom. We believe in the exchange of ideas and respect other people’s viewpoints but here, I am greeted with shouts of liar. We are allowing you to express your view and thus we are not dictators.”

Here the students shouted: “clumsy fool, go back to Tehran!” and he responded: “If Rasaee was a clumsy fool, 40 million people would not have have given you a slap in the face” [referring to the 40 million Ahmadinejad votes.] And here students shouted: dorooghoo, 63 darsadet koo? [liar, where is your 63%?]

To which he replied: “the liar is the person who walks into the university under the label of being a student but then bullies everybody and does not have the ability to constructively debate his opponents.”

In response to “Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein” he said: “The “Ya Hossein” that American stations promote is worse than Israel.”

Here, students started fighting amongst themselves and Rasaee referred to something new the students were shouting: “We don’t want your fake votes.  You can keep your votes, we don’t want American votes.”

When students shouted: “Down with Russia” he said: “We did not vote for Russia.”

Students started throwing water bottles and green peppers at him and he reacted by DRINKING the water and EATING the pepper!

One student wearing green shouted: “this reaction is your fault. Forty million slapped you in the face, not us!”

Here the university’s Basij shouted: “shut up and sit down!”

The student shut back: “speaking to murderers is haram.” [religiously not permitted]

Rasaee replied: “if it’s haram, then why did you speak to me? This means hypocrisy that you say one thing and do another.”

Students wearing green started shouting: “get up and leave!” and the basijis shouted: “down with traitors!”

In reponse to the students shouting: “toop, tank, basiji, digar asar nadarad [cannons, tanks and basijis can no longer silence us] he said: “Mousavi called himself a basiji, but he had support from Israel. American and Israeli basijis can not silence us. Al Zaidi threw a shoe in Iraq. It’s not important who throws what. It’s their ideas that matter. I’m proud of the fact that you throw peppers and water bottles at me, with the ideology you represent. An American Hossein is at one with Yazid [for explanations see previous post]. If the students say foul things, do not pay any attention to them, laugh at them.”

Here, the students wearing green left the room and he said: “good, now we have rational students. There are certainly rational students in this room who disagree with me but who have manners and we will pray for the rest of the students so that god may give them manners.” The students started shouting: “daneshjoo mimirad, zellat nemipazirad” [the student is willing to die and will not accept humiliation.]

Rasaee responded: “Russia is no different than the United States. Thus, Down with Russia. Neither East nor West only the Islamic Republic. [Khomeini's famous line] In response to the green’s shout of : “Down with [death to] you!” he said: “death is just. What is important is whether your enemies will be happy with your death or not. If a basiji like me dies, that will make America upset [huh?] thus, this was a just death. Imam Hossein was a murderer, but he killed traitors so it was just. We do not want to fight you, because we know you have been tricked.”

“Those who support Mousavi say: neither East nor West, only a Democratic Iran. Don’t you believe in Islam? That was Imam’s famous word and it was the traitors who said: Neither East nor West, only a democratic Iran. Traitors are those who, instead of repeating Imam’s Islamic Republic chant Democratic Iran.”

Here, a green student said: “I want to point out there things here. Freedom of expression must exist everywhere, not only in places where you want it to be and permit it to be, it can’t be confined to this room and democracy isn’t something where you can allow only in places you choose. Second, so why is that after all those years of serving the Imam, you suddenly call Mousavi a traitor and a dictator?” Rasaee responded: “Democracy means that one viewpoint allows another to express itself” and the students shouted: “torture and confessions will no longer silence us.”

Rasaee said: “if Hajjariyan and Atriyanfar and Abatahi confessed under torture, than they do not have the credentials to lead. Because they do not have the will. Shariati and martyr Saidi were resilient under torture, and they did not talk. How do we know that when [Abtahi, etc] were shouting out: fraud! they weren’t being tortured then? and that those words weren’t lies as well? A devout student will never shout out this way, and will always have manners and will always be searching for the truth. He lives his life with rationality and integrity and respects the university.”

This was going to be a conference on “soft warfare” but although most of the seats were occupied by the university’s basij forces, the conference was canceled.