Second Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Editorial Notes:

Each quarter, there is one 5-week gap between meetings. Whenever there is a 5-week gap, we have two Short Quizzes.

The coinciding of this quarter’s 5-week gap with Thieves of State provides an opportunity to explore why Thieves of State ignored Iran, especially in view of how important Iran is to all of the Arab countries that are discussed in Thieves of State.


1. “Day of Rage” was the name given to Valentine’s Day 2011 by whom? Why?

2. What was The Green Revolution?

3. Was The Green Revolution part of The Arab Spring?

4. Does our author discuss Iran? Or Iran’s Green Revolution? Or the relationship of Iran’s Green Revolution to The Arab Spring which she discusses in detail?

5. Is Iran Persian or Arab? Do its citizens speak Arabic or Farsi? Is Iran closer culturally, ethnically, etc., to Arab countries than other Asian countries such as Islam’s largest country, Indonesia?

6. Who was/is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

7. Was Ahmadinejad the leader of the Tehran students who, on the heels of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, captured the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on 11/4/1979 and held for 444 days most of the 66 American diplomat/citizen hostages -- and then released them on 1/20/1981 at the exact moment Ronald Reagan completed his 20-minute Inaugural Address in order to avoid giving Reagan an excuse to invade Iran and overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran?

8. Was Ahmadinejad the President of Iran 2005-2013?

9. Was Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 6/12/2009 fraudulent? Was that the cause of The Green Revolution?

10. Did The Green Revolution involve millions of protesters in more than 3 dozen Iranian cities and last for more than 8 months?

11. Was it brutally put down, primarily by the Supreme Leader’s Revolutionary Guards with mass arrests accompanied by torture and rape of those arrested, putting internet and other communications out of commission, etc., etc.?

12. Was the effectiveness of such tactics enhanced by the memory that following a 1988 attack by The People’s Mujahedin of Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the summary execution of 30,000 prisoners?

13. Does the President of Iran have any power or is he (there has never been a female candidate for President) merely a puppet of The Supreme Leader?

14. Did President Obama do anything more than offer a few words in support for The Green Revolution?

Did the Spokesperson for Mir-Hossein Mousavi (the main opposition candidate in the 2009 election who, incidentally, had been Prime Minister of Iran 1981-1989, and who refused to accept the results of the 2009 Presidential election and instead created/led The Green Revolution) criticize President Obama’s claim that the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi “may not be as great as has been advertised” with some choice comments in an interview for Foreign Policy Magazine?

16. So, getting back to Q-1, did Mir-Houssein Mousavi and The Green Revolution proclaim 2/14/2011 as The Day of Rage in support of The Arab Spring?

17. Has Mousavi been under house arrest ever since?

18. And wasn’t Ahmadinejad ineligible to run in the 2013 Presidential election?

19. Since Ahmadinejad’s apparent unpopularity in 2009 was due to a great extent to his treatment of farmers, isn’t the effectiveness of the Supreme Leader’s actions to neutralize the threat of The Green Revolution reminiscent of how Stalin dealt with the mortal threat to the Soviet Union caused by the failure of his farm-collectivization program in the 1930’s to enable Stalinism to flourish in the USSR for another 55 years?

20. So if Stalinism could survive an even worse catastrophe for 55 years, why do we hear the Obama Administration constantly saying that it doesn’t matter if Iran acquires nuclear weapons and it doesn’t matter if Persian Iran conquers its Arab neighbors militarily because Iran will become a civilized nation in 10-15 years?

21. And, as we have studied many times in the past, won’t such a policy force Egypt, Turkey and The Gulf State Six (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman) to EACH acquire nuclear weapons AS EACH HAS ALREADY ANNOUNCED IT WILL DO AS SOON AS IRAN GOES NUCLEAR? And that the incessant threats to annihilate various countries issued by Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei indicate that he will probably start a nuclear war in no time flat? And that since virtually all of the world’s agricultural fertilizers come from petrochemicals and since 50% of the world’s oil & gas comes from the Persian Gulf or downwind from the P.G., 50% of the world’s 7 billion population will probably become unsustainable overnight?

22. So why do you think that our author turned a blind eye to Iran?

23. And how do you think the themes of her book apply to Iran?