The iconic 1979 photograph shows two left-wing Iranian students, identified in historical accounts as Sahar Mohammadi (left) and Maryam Rafiei (right), celebrating the victory of the Islamic Revolution while holding a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini.... During Iran’s 1979 revolution, women joined millions of Iranians opposing the Shah. But the anger behind the revolution had been building for decades. In 1953, after Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry, British intelligence and the CIA helped orchestrate the operation that removed him and strengthened Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah then became one of Washington’s most important Cold War allies in the Middle East. By 1979, opposition to the Shah united an unlikely coalition of Islamists, liberals, nationalists and leftists. Many also viewed the monarchy as a symbol of decades of American and British interference in Iran. They succeeded in removing the Shah, but their alliance quickly fractured. Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters consolidated power, and many of the secular and left-wing groups that had participated in the revolution were eventually pushed aside. Many left-leaning and secular students supported the revolution believing it would bring freedom and modernity, but the new theocratic regime quickly turned on its political allies, executing thousands of dissidents, including Maryam Rafiei. The political affiliations of the women in this particular photograph are unclear, but the image captures the enormous optimism surrounding a revolution whose outcome many of its participants could not yet foresee. The photograph is often said to show Maryam Rafiei and Sahar Mohammadi. The identities are sometimes debated; history is not always careful with captions; but the symbolism attached to the image has become almost canonical. Two progressive students celebrating the revolution that toppled Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, smiling beneath a portrait of the man whose regime would eventually erase people just like them. It is the smile that lingers. In the winter of 1979, Tehran was briefly a city where incompatible dreams shared the same street. Marxists, liberal intellectuals, devout clerics, and student radicals marched together in opposition to the monarchy. For many on the left, the alliance with the Islamic movement was tactical, temporary; a revolutionary convergence that would eventually produce democracy. Instead, it produced the Islamic Republic. The same one that has now killed over 40,000 Iranian protestors this year within just 2 days and the body bags to show for it. Within two years after the 1979 revolution, the new state had consolidated power under the doctrine of clerical rule. Leftist newspapers were banned, universities purged, political parties dismantled. The revolution began devouring those who had helped create it. The viral story attached to the photograph says that Maryam Rafiei, was executed (beheaded) roughly a decade later during the 1988 Mass Executions of Iranian Political Prisoners. In that summer alone, thousands of prisoners, many of them secular leftists, were executed after brief interrogations inside Iranian prisons. Human rights groups estimate that between 4,000 and 5,000 people were killed in a matter of weeks. The another woman Sahar Mohammadi, is often said to have fled Iran and now lives in exile in Sweden. Whether every detail is perfectly documented matters less than the historical pattern the image evokes. The Iranian revolution did not merely defeat its enemies. It eliminated its allies. #archaeohistories

Vandaag in Amsterdam, op het Rokin: “Long live the 7th of October” Dit land is knettergek geworden.

Gaza-student Ahmed Masoud is amper twee weken in Nederland, maar hij mag zondag al spreken bij een demonstratie van Plant Een Olijfboom, naast de groten der aarde als Nasrdin Dchar en Abdelkader Benali. instagram.com/p/DeKgbU6gJZx/…

Another first-hand account of the true evil perpetrated by Hamas in Israel. It’s hard to stomach, but decent people everywhere must bear witness.