Thoughts on the Revolution... If you care to comment, email me at bradley@wogsland.org with "Political Vloggery" in the Subject line. All links are good on the day of posting, but you know how some tend to die after a while.

'Tis the season for ant-swarming... This morning on my daily walk (oh so weird sans chien) I saw five separate swarms of 100s to 1000s of ants driven from their subterranean homes for reasons which are unknown to me and perhaps them as well. Perhaps their queen has died or confusion has ensued upon the birth of a second. It is not unusual to see some ants gathered around a stray piece of food, and it is not difficult to understand the reason for their actions, but there was no food amongst these blankets of ants. One cannot help but consider the parallels with current events in Tehran. Thirty years ago Iranians swarmed into the streets in protest of a despotic regime, and Khomeini was only too happy to return from France to lead them. Back in 1917 Lenin took a train back to Russia to lead the revolution toward communist ends. In 1765 Bostonians took to the streets in protest of the Stamp Act and Sam Adams organized them to go after only the appointed British stamp collector and royal governor lest he approve a new one, a course of action soon followed in the other colonies. In 1915 Gandhi returned to India to start his Satyagraha to convince the British to quit India. For whatever reasons we ants may swarm, in the end it is the resolve and goals of the leaders on both sides which determines the outcome - revolution or a revolt put down. So will Tehran 2009 be another Prague Spring or Tienanmen? Mousavi, the character western media has paraded about in the dramatis personae of opposition leader was absent at first but seems to have grown stronger in his resolve as the uprising has continued. More telling has been the actions of Ahmadinejad - like the Shah in 1979 he is safely out of the country with an ally, in his case Russia rather than the US, but the message it sends is no doubt the same. Unless we soon see tanks with Arabic (or Cyrillic) lettering on the side I think the outcome will be the same as three decades ago.