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Vote Yourself Free is about raising awareness and making change through peaceful means. There's a lot wrong in the world, and there are a lot of people with a vested interest in you feeling weak and crappy about yourself. Let's break out of the system of control, and realize we're all worth a lot more than they think. I can't wait to hear your opinions and stories, and thank you for checking out mine. Check out the blog Free Independent Opinions for much more info: http://jenime.wordpress.com/

• Archived Blog Post

  Date / Time: 6/22/2009 4:53 PM UTC

  Mousavi
  

  http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/14/742314/-%5B169%5D-Mousavi-is-hardly-an-angel
  
  I support fully those in Iran working for reform as I have a viceral loathing of repressive regimes, however I was hardly bowled over by their candidate Mousavi.
  
  
  http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009613181040285185.html
  
  
  In order to win Mousavi had taken up the progressive slogans, which he had previously fought against. I was there at the beginning of the Islamic Revolution when he was the Prime Minister, and implemented many of the repressive measures which he now denounces.
  
  I (like many others) was thrown out of the university that Mousavi helped to shut down as part of the Cultural Revolution.
  
  http://www.alarabiya.net/views/2009/06/12/75720.html
  
  As seen on video leaked out of Iran on May 4, during a lecture at the University of Babolsar, students pressed candidate Mirhossein Moussavi (a “reformist” backed by former president Mohammad Khatami) about his role and actions as a former prime minster (1981-1989). In particular, they criticized Moussavi’s role in the execution of thousands of political prisoners in the infamous 1988 massacres in Iranian jails. This historical mass execution has been documented and recognized by Amnesty International (AI) in a public statement as well as an in house report. Although Moussavi made his best attempt to avoid the question, students by way of shouting slogans and holding up signs and pictures of those killed in 1988 pushed for answers when they said “At the time, you were the prime minister…what do you have to say now about your silence back then when all this was taking place? How may people did you kill yourself?” These types of remarks are no doubt extremely risky in a government that has a past reputation of eliminating opposition, especially public criticism, by way of blood curdling tortures and swift executions.
  
  http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1904194,00.html
  
  Was placed on the leadership council of Lebanon's Shi'ite militant group Hizballah by Ayatollah Khomeini when the group was founded in 1982.
  • Defended the seizure of 52 American hostages at the U.S. embassy in 1979. The hostages were held for more than 400 days; the two countries have not had normalized relations since
  "It was the beginning of the second stage of our revolution. It was after this that we rediscovered our true Islamic identity."
  —Defending the 1979 seizure of U.S. hostages at the American embassy in Tehran. (New York Times, Oct. 9, 1981)
  
  
  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4921
  
  Although many Iranian liberals - and a few Western analysts - see in Mousavi a potential reformist corrective to Ahmadinejad's excesses, the former prime minister, should he overcome long odds and win in June, is likely to tweak, rather than overhaul, the Islamic Republic. Think Leonid Brezhnev, not Mikhail Gorbachev.
  
  http://middleeast.about.com/od/iran/p/mir-hossein-moussavi-profile.htm
  
  
  Mousavi is not well known. But to call him a liberal is likely an overstatement. As Iran’s prime minister during the Iranian Revolution’s most formative years (1981-1989) he was a hard-liner closely allied with then-president Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, and a “firm radical,” as The Economist described him in 1988. Still, Mousavi’s 20-year absence from Iranian politics and his recent emphasis on moderation has the West, and young Iranians, beguiled.
  
  Mousavi’s reputation for radicalism was undiminished. When he introduced his cabinet in 1985, he boasted that his interior minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashami, was a religious conservative who’d built his reputation while building Hezbollah, the Party of God, in Lebanon.
  
  Mousavi’s parliamentary followers supported continuing terrorist operations in Lebanon.At the end of the Iran-Iraq war in August 1988, when Ali Rafsanjani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament at the time (and the current head of the powerful Assembly of Experts) suggested that Iran should accept some western help with reconstruction, Mousavi disagreed, claiming the move would betray the ideals of the revolution.
  
  Mousavi consistently favored state controls over the economy rather than free-market policies. Iran’s business class doesn’t like him. He had also opposed ending the Iran-Iraq war, claiming that "a large portion of the masses" were indignant over the cease-fire.
  
  Mousavi neither liked nor trusted Americans. He led Iran’s boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics to protest U.S. foreign policy from Central American to the Middle East. He opposed warming relations with the U.S. The arms-for-hostages dealings soured his impressions further. “Iran has friendly relations with many countries,” Mousavi said on Iranian radio on Nov. 5, 1986, “but negotiations with the United States in light of its crimes against the Islamic Revolution will never take place.” Of course, Mousavi was covering up (as the Reagan administration did) what had become public.
  
  Mousavi, like all other major Iranian politicians, is opposed to suspending the country’s nuclear-enrichment program. He does not equate nuclear enrichment with a nuclear weapons program, however, and seeks to pursue dialogue with the West from that principle. “I consider détente the principle to build confidence between Iran and other countries,” he told the Financial Times. “I think the recent discourse, which differentiates between nuclear technology and nuclear weapons is a good one. The more this differentiation is emphasized, the greater the possibility of détente.”
  
  References to Mousavi as a “reformer” and a “moderate” have been oddly reflexive in the Western press, and particularly the American press. The characterizations are at best premature, and likely outright fabrications—unless Mousavi himself has disassembled his ideology and reconstructed it of more moderate parts.
  
  That seems unlikely.
  
  Mousavi's more patrician tone and sharper intellect distance him from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and seduce a young generation that never knew his radicalism and apologies for terror and bloodshed. But his policies and ideology, his faithfulness to the Islamic revolution, his economic policies, and his anti-Americanism are all of a piece with Ahmadinejad’s. His election to the Iranian presidency may signal a change in tone, but not a change in policies.
  
  http://www.iranrights.org/english/memorial-case-1744.php
  
  This person, known only as Ashraf Mousavi, is one of 1000 people identified in a UN Human Rights Commission's Special Representative's Report, "Names and particulars of persons allegedly executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran during the period July-December 1988," published January 26, 1989.
  
  The report specifies that although 1000 names are mentioned, "in all probability" there were several thousand victims. "Most of the alleged victims were members of the Mojahedin. However, members of the Tudeh Party, People's Fedaiyan Organization, Rahe Kargar, and Komala Organization and 11 mollahs were also said to be among the alleged victims."
  
  http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/799/41171
  
  There is speculation that what is occurring is a version of the CIA-manipulated “colour revolutions” such as the 2003 “Rose Revolution” in Georgia and the 2004 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine.
  
  The US response to its puppet being overthrown and replaced by a new regime hostile to its interests was to encourage the neighbouring Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. The resulting eight-year war bled Iran, but failed to overthrow the regime.
  
  Thousands of leftists were rounded up in Iran during the war under the excuse of national security. When Mousavi was PM, thousands of such political prisoners were massacred.
  
  It remains to be seen whether the protests continue to deepen as an expression of deep-seated anger at the regime, or remain contained within the confines of a dispute between two figures in the ruling elite.
  
  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/19-11
  
  No matter who is the president of Iran, I would be killed if I was openly a homosexual. I would be denied all rights as a human being since homosexuality considered one of greatest possible sins under the Iranian Islamic regime. I would be considered a criminal and be killed because "there are no homosexuals in Iran!' That's odd, because some of my closest friends in Iran say they are gay, but stayed "in the closet" for fear of execution, No matter who is the president of Iran.
  
  Let us not forget that Mousavi was Prime Minister of Iran in the 1980s, when more than ten thousand political prisoners were executed after three-minute sham trials. He has been a part of the Iranian dictatorship system for the past 30 years. If he had not been, he would not be allowed to be a candidate in the first place.
  
  For these and many other reasons, I did not choose to vote and instead to boycott the election, along with many other Iranians. But this time, many Iranians who boycotted the vote in the last election voted in this one because of their profound disgust with President Ahamdinejad. I sympathise with them, but I believe that there exists no better option for the people of Iran than to entirely overthrow the Islamic regime that oppresses the country of my birth. I strongly support my people's movement against the ever-present dictatorship and violence infecting my country. I will scream, along with my compatriots, "Down with dictators!" "Down with murderers!" "Down with the brutal oppression that is the Islamic regime and all of its toxic, self-serving alliances."
  
  Long live freedom in Iran!
  
  Lila Ghobady is an exiled Iranian writer-journalist and filmmaker living in Canada since 2002. She has been involved with human rights since working as a journalist in Iran and has continued her work in Canada when she arrived as a refugee
  
  
  
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