Still following the brilliant Huffpo blogger Nico Pitney, who wrote last night:
1:28 AM ET — The mourning rally. Thursday is gearing up to be a hugely significant day for the Green Uprising. Reza Aslan appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show tonight, and laid out the importance of what is going to happen:
What’s really fascinating about what’s happening right now in 2009 is that it looks a lot like what was happening in 1979. And there’s a very simple reason for that. The same people are in charge — I mean, Mousavi, Rafsanjani, Khatami, Medhi Karroubi, the other reformist candidate — these were all the original revolutionaries who brought down the Shah to begin with, so they know how to do this right.
And so what you’re going to see tomorrow is something that was pulled exactly out of the playbook of 1979, which is that you have these massive mourning rallies, where you mourn the deaths of those who were martyred in the cause of freedom. And these things tend to get a little bit out of control, they often result in even more violence by the security forces and even more deaths, which then requires another mourning rally which is even larger, which then requires more violence from the government, and this just becomes an ongoing snowball that can’t be stopped.
That’s how the Shah was removed from power, was these mourning ceremonies. And so Mousavi very smartly calling for an official — not a rally — but an official day of mourning tomorrow. I think we’re going to see crowds that we haven’t even begun to see yet, and then follow that, on Friday, which is sort of the Muslim sabbath, the day of prayer, which is a traditionally a day of gathering anyway. This is just beginning, Rachel, this is just the beginning.
Change is the keyword during a Saturn Return, and if it doesn’t come, there is often metaphorical blood spilled. Let us hope that in the case of Iran, it does not become too literal. There are so many ways in which we’re experiencing 1979 all over again. We’ve got to get it right this time. Pluto returning to Capricorn play a role in this massive upheaval and revolutionary tenor as well. More on that soon . . .
