FG

Video shows the downside for thugs when a regime fails

by FG on Tue Jul 31, 2012 09:47 AM PDT

 A You Tube video shows a roomful of well beaten members of the captured al-Berri clan who once gleefully tortured and murdered people for Khamenei's twin dictator, Bashir Assad.   Notice the bruises and fear on their faces.  They know they are soon to die for their crimes.  It's fine to torture and kill the people and gloat over it so long as you can be certain doing so will keep you on top.  The video clearly suggests  what happens when that assumption turns out to have been wrong.  If a regime makes itself hated enough, it doesn't matter how many tanks or planes it owns, how big its army (drawn from the people) or how many once-feared secret police it has on the street. It will go down when rage trumps fear and the latter types--like the dicators who ordered such crimes--risk being torn to pieces with no mercy shown.   The world has a hard time sympathizing with their fate.   SEE:  //www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedd...  

Jubilation as rebels force

by FG on Tue Jul 31, 2012 09:18 AM PDT

Jubilation as rebels force Assad troops to flee base

//www.independent.co.uk/n... 

Three of the bodies were stuffed in a meat refrigerator which had been without power for over a week; one had his hands tied in what looked like an execution position; another had almost made it to the door to escape when he was shot through the chest. These were soldiers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, killed as they tried to flee from a base under siege from rebel fighters.... 

Foreign Journalist: Regime Is Not Winning in Aleppo

by FG on Tue Jul 31, 2012 08:59 AM PDT

Foreign Journalist: Assad's Offensive in Salaheddin has had no success so far.

The Independent was the first international news organisation to enter Salaheddine since Bashar al-Assad's regime began its offensive to clear the main opposition stronghold in the city

 //www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-people-who-live-on-aleppos-fiercest-frontline-have-fled-only-the-fighters-remain-7988037.html

 

Other Recommended reading

by FG on Mon Jul 30, 2012 07:33 PM PDT

Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union [Hardcover] by Robert Robinson

 

 //www.amazon.com/Black-Red-Years-Inside-Soviet/dp/0874918855

Nobody who reads this book ever forgets it.  It is indeed hard to put down, as several reader reviews note at Amazon.

Fascinating book about a non-political black man who survived the purges, unlike others who emigrated at the same time.  His lack of interest in political issues saved his life, especially when Stalin's agent provocateur's tried to get him to "bite" by expressing any opinion useful for arrest.  By contrast, all thge political emigres he once knew would die in Stalin's purges. all died at the regime's hand.  

The writer describes his efforts to leave in the post-Stalin era and how a famous black American entrertainer and admirer of communism refused to help when asked onthe grounds the author was a "lying and a "traitor" making up stories to besmirch a good cause.   

You'll have to find that one in a library or buy it used.  

***

 

EXECUTION BY HUNGER by Miron Delot

//www.amazon.com/Execution-Hunger-The-Hidden-Holocaust/dp/0393304167/ref=pd_sim_b_2 

Short, dramatic and highy readable account of how Stalin deliberately starved to death 7 to 10 million people after they refused to collectivize.   You wouldn't believe how sadistic Stalin can be.  He thought of everything.

Stalin made it illegal to shop in stores, hide a potato or pick up a piece of grain or a stick of wood (for firewood) off the ground.  A 10-year-old caught doing so would be shot on the spot for stealing state property.  Anticipating everything, Stalin ordered the execution of people's pets which were then thrown in a pile under guard until the bodies got too rotten to eat.  The next chapter began somehting like this: "And then he went after the nightengales, the unofficial bird of the Ukraine. 

***

Any book by Marshall Goldman,  Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and Associate Director of the Harvard Russian Research Center.

He was once nicknamed "the bad boy of Soviet Studies because in the early eighties--even prior to the Gorbachev Era, he wrote a damn good book (very readable) describing why the Soviet Union was virtually certain to collapse soon.  Most experts snickered.   If you can find it, it's still worth reading especially in a country like Iran where some old leftists still dream of a "people's state."  Marshall was right on the nose.  For anyone who still thinks communism is a viable economic system, this one is a must.

The title:  The USSR in Crisis: The Failure of an Economic System (1993)

If you want something current check out the following as well as Marshall's biography on Wikopeida:

Petrostate: Putin, Power and the New Russia (Oxford University Press, April 2008).

I haven't read that but plan to do so.  Marshall can be damn good.  Iranians need to bear in mind that what happens to Putin's Russia could have major effects on the Islamic Republic, just as Assad's downfall would.   

I'd be surprised if Putin were to fall befoe Khamenei.  Iran appears to be a dead duck once Assad is out of the picture.  lEven so I know one factor working against Assd is that for a number of reasons, oil production is expected to increase substantially in a few years which would drive prices down.  Russia, like Iran, is overdependent on one item (oil) for most of its revenue.  Like Iran, it has trouble attacting foreign investors (bribery and corruption are a major problem there).