Flag burning marks 1979 embassy seizure

Raw: Protesters Set US Flags on Fire in Iran: http://youtu.be/pD5u5XMeTlc/

Iranians chant 'Death to America' to mark embassy…: http://youtu.be/L_zrTFhZhJc/

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NOVEMBER 5, 2015

Thousands of Iranians burned the American flag and chanted slogans Wednesday as they marked the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by militant students 36 years ago.

The annual state-organized rally drew greater attention this year, as Iranian hardliners look to counter moderate President Hassan Rouhani's outreach to the West following a landmark nuclear deal reached with world powers in July. An Iranian official also chose the occasion to announce the arrest of an unspecified number of allegedly pro-American writers.

The hardliners fear Rouhani's efforts to improve relations will pave the way for the United States to undermine and eventually dismantle the Islamic republic formed after the 1979 revolution. On Nov. 4, 1979, militant students stormed the U.S. Embassy compound and took 52 Americans hostage after Washington refused to hand over the toppled U.S.-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, for trial in Iran. The students held the hostages for 444 days, and the two countries have had no diplomatic relations since then.

Protesters on Wednesday carried placards reading "political and security penetration is forbidden." They pumped their fists in the air, shouting "God damn America," and "No compromise, no surrender to U.S."

Others carried banners rejecting U.S. fast food chains McDonald's and Starbucks. Authorities recently closed a newly opened knock-off of KFC, saying it was unlicensed.

Hardliners view fast food outlets and other American products as part of a "cultural invasion" by the U.S. aimed at undermining Islamic rule and public morality.

Foreign firms are poised to return to Iran following the lifting of international sanctions under the nuclear deal, but it remains unclear whether American brands will be allowed in.

Wednesday's rally in Tehran also saw state prosecutor Ebrahim Raeisi announce that the intelligence department of the elite Revolutionary Guard had detained a number of writers.

"The intelligence and security forces identified and cracked down on a network of penetration in media and cyberspace and detained spies and writers hired by Americans," he told the rally, without elaborating. "Under no circumstances will we allow penetration of Americans in economic, social and cultural areas," he added.

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/touch/story.html?id=11493682/



President Carter Fact-Checks the Movie 'Argo': http://youtu.be/pt69Ya79veQ/

Carter, "American soldiers, should use rubber bullets! So nobody gets hurt."

It's a shame, that after the inauguration of Ronald Wilson Reagan, and after the release of the American hostages from Iran... That the limp wristed congress, didn't allow Iran to be turned into a giant obsidian ashtray in the desert.

But but but, we got a swell nuke deal....

Let's all sing, Cumbaya

Related news:

Oct 15, 2015 ... Ken Taylor, former Canadian ambassador to Iran, dead at 81. Diplomat was famous for his role in 'Canadian Caper' during Iran hostage crisis in 1979

The Calgary-born diplomat was most famous for his role in the 1979 covert operation called the "Canadian Caper," when he sheltered six Americans who escaped capture when a mob of Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took most people inside hostage in November 1979.

Taylor kept the Americans hidden at his residence and at the home of his deputy, John Sheardown, in Tehran for three months. Taylor facilitated their escape by arranging plane tickets and persuading the Ottawa government to issue Canadian passports.

In a statement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that Taylor "valiantly risked his own life by shielding a group of American diplomats from capture."

"Ken Taylor represented the very best that Canada's foreign service has to offer," he added.

There should be no surprise in any of this.

The United States and many other major Western powers have never completely accepted the Iranian revolution, or worked positively to understand it in any sincere way. That has the result that the revolution is still ongoing.

There are a lot of modern conflicts that are like this. The reason why no negotiations have been considered successful by pretty much anyone, is that the most fundamental concept for ANY negotiations to work, is usually not present.

And many of the more negative comments about Iran here in this little thread, illustrate this perfectly: as long as the "other side" isn't seen as being deserving of EQUAL RESPECT to those who want to deal with them, the conflicts will continue.

Yes let's all respect Iran. They are deserving of our undivided love and affection.

Ask any Iraqi whose family member died in a chemical weapons attack in the 1980-88 war with Iran.

Ask the families of 13 year old Iranian boys, whose lives were worth less than the tanks they walked through minefields in front of, near the end of that same war.

Ask the IAEA who more than once has found evidence of collusion between the Iranian nuclear industry and the military, including nuclear warhead design for ballistic missiles.

Ask the political dissidents how wonderful Iran is. For a country that wishes to be taken as an equal on the world stage, it still refuses to be tolerant of multi-faceted political discourse. The government pretends it wants dialogue until it can't win the argument. Then it simply throws you into the bowels of Evin prison. Home of endless beatings, raping of female prisoners, and where people who defy the state are sent to be broken.

The last general election saw the 12 unelected mullahs go on a bit of a tear, disqualifying 672 out of 680 candidates on purely arbitrary grounds. Political opposition? Yeah their party leaders were either under house arrest or in jail at the time of the election.

Death penalty in Iran? Big business. Almost 550 executions in 2012. That's like 10 a week, every week, all year long. Oh and lest you think it takes an adult crime to be executed, you'd be wrong. In Iran the age one can be executed at as you have been legally deemed to have reached puberty? For women NINE years old. For men, FIFTEEN years old. Yeah, that's fair.

So remind me again, why a country that is a religious theocracy, pays lip service to democracy, tortures and rapes political dissidents, and executes children is one I'm supposed to treat with respect as an EQUAL???

Don't be bringing all that common sense thinking here

Chief Big Ear and Brave Horse-Face really got shortchanged on that Deal!

Your anger blinds you to everything that I said, and everything that your own nations' history should have told you long ago.

RESPECT has nothing to do with LOVE, or with DESIRE TO BE LIKE someone else.

This is about the mechanics of war and peace, and of how people and nations act and react towards each other. Your attitude is designed to either completely destroy anyone and anything you disagree with, or make continuous war on it, with the result of a lot of ongoing casualties on your own side as well as theirs.

Ask yourself this, to perhaps awaken your own good sense just a bit: if another nation declared that the United States had a choice between becoming exactly like them in every way, or have a collection of powerful nations collude to prevent the United States from trading freely with the rest of the world, would that cause you to smile, rearrange your personal beliefs, and cheerfully allow that nation to establish it's own businesses in your cities and towns?

Do you think that the other nations of the world should have a say in how we punish our own criminals here? Should the American death penalty be abolished because some other nation is offended by it? Should we allow the religious laws of another culture to be applied to us?

Yes or no?

Igor quote,

Do you think that the other nations of the world should have a say in how we punish our own criminals here? Should the American death penalty be abolished because some other nation is offended by it? Should we allow the religious laws of another culture to be applied to us?

Yes or no?

NO

"" UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United
States has confirmed that Iran tested a
medium-range missile capable of delivering a
nuclear weapon, in "clear violation" of a United
Nations Security Council ban on ballistic missile
tests, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.""
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0SA20Z20151016

Respect is earned...and Iran cant be trusted, much less respected. And we dont even have to get into their state sponsored terrorism.
But hey, if someone wants to drop to their knees and pucker up and "respect" Iran's azz, feel free....I'll pass though.

Revolution?
That was a stinken Take-over by a Bunch of Fascist-Mullahs!
And Carter aided and abetted it!

Igor? You've assumed I'm American. Bad assumption. I'm Canadian. Adjust your thinking accordingly.

If you can't deal with the fact that I've called you out on the darker sides of Iranian society, I can't help you with that. Seek therapy if needed.

What I can do is simply point out the arrogance of a country who engages in such behaviours, and is asking the world to treat it as an 'adult' at the negotiating table, when it so clearly behaves like a spoiled 'child'.

Now it wants the world to respect it's 'right' to nuclear power, in a framework that allows it to engage in subterfuge, and will allow it to manifest it's institutional temper tantrums with an atomic mushroom cloud or two? For example Iran has noted it wants to wipe the UAE off the map because they refuse to call the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Iran. Really? Obliterate an entire country because it doesn't like your name for a body of water?

Sure.I don't see any reason whatsoever that we shouldn't allow this sociological experiment in trust to provide devastating weapons of mass destruction to a regime that's used them in the past. You know, using chemical weapons against Iraq.

In addition, we know the Iranians were working on SCUD missile chemical delivery systems. We know that because about a dozen of the Iranian general staff were killed in Syria when a SCUD missile exercise went very wrong. Syrian crews were trying to 'show off' to the Iranians by fueling the SCUD, and filling its warhead with VX nerve agent at the same time. Oooops. Things went boom and dozens were killed by the explosion and subsequent release of the VX.

Oh, and before you pull the "Well America used atomic bombs." card, realize they have been reducing their stockpiles for decades, and looking to maybe one day down the road to be done with nuclear weapons.

The only countries now who 'want' them, are emerging nations such as India and Pakistan. Also two countries with a temper, and who exercise their militaries in an ongoing 'warm' war in the mountains with artillery duels, and the occasional incursion over the border. As water supplies start to shrink in that part of the world, we may one day see a nuclear exchange between the two as they fight over what's left.

Wanna be emerging nations like Libya and North Korea have either acquired these weapons or attempted to. In the case of NK, it threatens to unleash them on almost a daily basis. It, along with Russia wanted to help Iran in proliferating nuclear weapons. Pakistan as well, helped NK get it's bomb. I don't think it's going to help regional stability for Iran to become nuclear. If it does, the Saudis will want bombs, and so on and so on.

All in all, a really bad idea for the Iranians to have access to nuclear weapons as far as I'm concerned. That's logic, not hate.

President Carter Fact-Checks the Movie 'Argo': http://youtu.be/pt69Ya79veQ/ Like he said. "The Canadians deserve 90% credit for that"

Several folks here are still completely missing the point of nations respecting each other, and what a lack of such respect leads to.

And it's not JUST a matter of the United States, and I never said it was. It's a matter of a NUMBER of nations joining together, and telling the Iranians that they don't have the right to decide the course of their own country's future.

That has nothing at all to do with whether or not any of us approves of anything another independent nation does or doesn't do.

Again, this form of international RESPECT has nothing at all to do with APPROVAL. I say again, since more than one person keeps missing this: respecting another nation has nothing to do with approving of them.

Again, this is a mechanical thing. A direct result of refusing to RESPECT that other nations can decide how to conduct their own internal affairs without consulting the world at large, and worse, actively working to prevent them from living as they wish to in their own lands, always tends to have the natural result that said people will become angry, and will resist or even attack in return.

This mess wasn't created recently. It goes back a very long ways. Each side is reacting again and again to the other, and restarting the hostilities over and over again. Repeating the anger and reciting the past grievances accomplishes nothing but renewal of the hostilities. Each side's arrogance is cited as proof that the other is entirely justified in anything at all that they do in turn.

<---- burning incense, waving a smoking sage wand around to cleanse the lack of respect from the international body politic, so that we may all love each other, hold hands and sing Cumbaya. (rolls eyes)

Pfffft. Instead, lights a Camel with no filter, reaches for a coffee made by an old man in the Nostalji Doner coffee house in Ankara, and horks up a loogie for world peace.

There's one way to start your day....