The protests in Tianamen Square in 1989 failed to change China for two basic reasons: 1- the people who supported the protests had too small and vulnerable a support network, and 2- the government was willing to go farther in defense of their tyrannical prerogatives than the protesters were in defense of their nascient rights.

Of course, the recent history of tyranny verses democracy is not a particularly good one for the democrats. But that is not to say that it is impossible for pro-democracy supporters to win. The collapse of the communists dictatorships in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s are proof of that.

If democracy is to take root in Iran, it will do so only by the presence of a large, extensively well-connected and well-funded underground combined with an increasingly fragmented and cash-strapped government which the majority both hates and no longer fears enough to be cowed by it. As to which is stronger at any given moment... well, we are about to find out, aren't we...

... all of them are different. The historical circumstances are different. The political systems are by their nature complex and their future is truly unknown.

I am hoping for the abolition of religious regime in Iran, so obviously I am biased, but in general I have to say that at this moment the situation can go either way.

what bothers me is that the media hasn't learned their lesson, in the Tiananmen square crisis they broadcast images on the ground, showing the faces of the protestors. the Chinese police used those images to arrest the dissidents. call it a case of art imitating life, the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, referred to the photographer whose images of the Czech revolution fell into the wrong hands. Or was it life imitating art? It pains me a great deal to see the American press publishing those faces, while they routinely blot out T shirt logos and other copyright infringement images, which the law clearly states, are nonreproducable. I have held for a long time that the FCC could clean up the finance campaign problem in this country if they would treat the media outlets like the infomercial programs they really are, however this is a matter of life and death to dissidents in struggling democracies. their lives are hanging on that satellite signal, or the internet download.

In my first line, it should have said that "Iranian culture does NOT have many fascist overtones..."

That's just not the way that the culture operates.

It doesn't take much digging in either Iranian history or culture to know that this is a society that has many true fascist overtones that run it. Persians (of which I am 1/2) have always been ones to wait out the freaks until they pass, and this time will be no different. One of the other things that most people don't know about Iranians is that there is a combined, widely-accepted Shia/Zoroastrian tradition about the righteousness of the governed to demand accountability of the government. It's why people are tweaked about the elections in the first place.

I'm not going to rant and rave about American xenophobia and ignorance about cultures of their own. But there's a lot of that in play, when it comes to either Ahmadinejad or Khameni, or Rafsanjani. We can't conceive of how such a government could be anything other than fascist because we're fed a stream of vitriol regarding Iran that denies the reality of that country's 3000 years of civilization.

And China, another one of those ancient, very sophisticated cultures, is fundamentally different from Iran. Iranians are a messy bunch, and have over the millenia developed political sophistication to deal with difference. Chinese are much more suppression-oriented toward achieving their social harmony. Both have their upsides and downsides, but suffice it to say, you don't have to read much history to look at the difference in the way Iranians and Chinese treated their respective Shahs/emperors over the years.

I'm going to be bold and say that we'll see a negotiated, coalition government that will come out of this. It would totally match the Iranian personality, and reflect much about the way that Iranians handle their problems.

And when it is our turn to shrug off our corrupt corporate rulers, will we show the courage of the Poles, Chinese and Persians? Somehow, I seriously doubt it. We all stood by and allowed W. to steal two elections and we still don't seem to show any inclination to bend our elected representatives to our will; there is always money for war and billionaire bankers, but education, health care, renewable energy and jobs just never seem to be quite important enough. I am immensely proud of my Persian brothers and sisters for their valiant efforts. Whether they succeed or not they put us Americans to shame with their courage and I hope some of us can find inspiration in their attempt and begin to rescue our land from our home-grown scofflaws.

Part of the unspoken agreement in China has been that prosperity and a previously undreamed of standard of living would be exchanged for the continued power of the fascist Chinese government.

In Iran the economy is in terrible shape and many people are barely getting by. In the past "Dr. A" has tried to buy people off, but this has only resulted in inflation and a worsening economy. Even in an environment of high oil prices Iran will not have the ability to exchange prosperity for political freedom.

Reading the book "Honeymoon In Tehran" Iran most reminded me of a smaller, theocratic, version of the Soviet Union. Just as the Soviet Union could not survive economically in the long run, so it may be with Iran. Eventually the need for economic change produced some political change. Of course there is always Zimbabwe as a possible outcome. But Iran is very different and I don't think that this will be their fate.

Indeed. When the Polish government put down Lech Walesa's movement in 1981 they had Polish army uniforms ready for the Russian Red Army in case Polish troops wouldn't shoot (if necessary). One of the reasons monks led what became known as Burma's "Saffron Revolution" is that almost all Burmese are devout Theravada Buddhists. Killing a monk would consign a soldier to hell for eternity. Yes, the regime found a few willing to open fire but others turned up in Thailand to plead for asylum. They couldn't do it.

The Chinese were shocked the PLA could open fire on unarmed civilians. Their image of the PLA was the one presented last spring after the devastating Sichuan earthquake in which saving lives was their priority.

I had been in China that spring and spent time in Beijing. It was a giddy time as Andrew observed. There was a sense power, finally, belonged to the people.

I left Beijing in late May and went to Rome to write a report for the FAO. I don't speak Italian and had little access to anything other than the International Herald Tribune which carried the same story of Chinese protests day after day. I was actually en route home when the crackdown started. An immigration officer at JFK informed me, "They're killing people over there."

After I got home to LA I arranged to meet a Chinese friend for breakfast the next morning. We stopped and bought some Chinese newspapers in Chinatown which vastly inflated the casualties. By the time I pulled into the restaurant parking lot he was sobbing and I took him home. Later I realized he was weeping over the realization neither he nor his country would ever be the same.

Yet he, like many PRC nationals in the USA, quickly realized the crackdown was a way to get a coveted green card. Chinese students overseas could use someone else's spilled blood to claim they were at risk if forced to go back. Self-interest reasserted itself in no time.

That was what made the spring of 1989 so different, there was a sense Chinese could be better people. Communism and the shortage economy had brought out all the worst aspects of the culture such as seeking favors from officials and rudeness to and contempt for strangers. This had briefly melted away during the Beijing Spring. As the crackdown was in progress, ordinary people who would never have given up their seat on the bus for anyone else risked their lives to save complete strangers.

While China's growth since 1989 has been impressive, capitalism relies on economic self-interest. As a result, in this unregulated environment exploitation of labor has figured in heavily. Get rich quick scams abound and everyone seems to be out for what they can get.

Nonetheless, I don't see the mullah-led government in Tehran being able to jump start the economy in the same way Beijing did. Iran, even more than China, has a young population. For the government to survive, it's got to create jobs and lots of 'em. The Chinese relied on foreign investment, the Iranians can't do that.