Fire in the Darkness

This chapter talks a little about how I went under cover inside Iran to develop a grassroots bottom up organization for democracy and human rights. I traveled across the country meeting with many different people in numerous cities. I also wrestled with military, police and generals commandos.

This is a flashback to when I first went to Washington DC and began work on human rights and democracy in Iran.

Chapter 11 is a flashback to the first time I return to Iran since I was four years old during the 1979 revolution. It is about my love life, an arranged marriage that went bad and how I fell in love with a country.

Chapter 10 is a flash back to the early years and life of Arman Soltani, a deaf blind cancer surviver fighting for democracy in Iran. Arman is now fighting glioblastoma multiform, the deadliest form of brain cancer, which doctor say there’s no cure for. Arman had brain surgera year ago which has also caused lesions in the brain and he now deals with seizures and black out. These chapters were recorded before the brain cancer. Soltani is developing a helthy living cancer retreat to support finding a cure for brain cancer and is working with others to establish a foundation to fight for democracy.

A two day nightmare stuck between two countries. This chapter describes how we were captured and held by the Turkish military and then sent walking back into Iran in the middle of the night towards landmines and gunfire.

This is part two of my horse adventure with smugglers and escaped from Iran. It talks about how we were hunted by the Turkish military and how we had to hide in a small stone hut.

The horse was malnourished and skinny. Never seen a horse fall before. But this horse was laying next to me on the ground after it slipped down a hill. This chapter talks about my adventures between Iran and Turkey. There is actual audio at the end from my dictaphone. Our midnight escape from Iran.

In this chapter, I connect with smugglers and hide in a Kurdish village and start my travel across the boarder into Turkey by horse back with one hundred refugees trying to escape Iran. A thirty minute trip turned into a two day fight for life and freedom.

Chapter 5 discribes how I hired smugglers from the Kirdish underground to get out of Iran and my experiences in a boarder city called Urumeh. Iran Flag The map shows Iran, an Islamic state between the Caspian Sea in the north and the Persian Gulf in the south. The country is officially named the Islamic Republic of Iran. Until the 1980s in the Western world, Persia was historically the common name for Iran.

Persia was a monarchy until 1979 when the last Persian Shah Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in a popular uprising, headed by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iran borders Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan. It shares maritime borders with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

With an area of 1,648,195 km², Iran is almost three times the size of France or somewhat smaller than the US state of Alaska.

Large parts of the country occupy the Iranian Plateau (or Persian Plateau, a geological formation in Western and Central Asia). A broad portion of Iran's coastal regions at the Persian Gulf is part of the Arabian plate.

The highest mountain in Iran is Mount Damavand at 5,610 m (18,410 ft), a potentially active volcano in the Alborz mountain range south of the Caspian Sea, about 70 km northeast of Tehran.

Most rivers in Iran are relatively short, shallow streams, the only navigable river is the Karun (Karoun) with a length of 725 km.

The country has a population of 82 million people (est. 2019). The largest city and capital is Tehran. Other major cities are Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj (a suburb of Tehran), Tabriz, Shiraz, Ahvaz, and Qom. Spoken language is Persian (Farsi, official). The official religion is Shia Islam.

Regions of Iran

Iran is divided into five regions with thirty-one provinces. The five administrative regions are Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, Kermanshah, and Mashhad.

Fight for freedom, democracy and human rights. Join the government, become part of the police and encourage cooperation from within. What fool doesn't want their nation to prosper? Podcast starts with a song by Basiji soldiers while we sat by a river relaxing and discussing the infiltration of the highest levels of the command structure. basiji is private militia kind of like the national guard in the United States but they’re a bunch of religious fanatics. Although many are forced to joined this organization in one way or another because it’s so integrated into the fabric of society. Like military service. It’s a social club.it’s supported by the mafia like tyrannical dictatorship. They do a lot of dirty work. A flash back about my experiences in a small village called Irankhah with an old man who gave us breakfast. It discusses the plan to develop a democratic alternative by developing a constitution and handbook for democracy in order to establish a true democratic nation that respects the rule of law and human rights. It talks about developing a grassroots bottom up movement that is connected and executed with planning, ideas, freedom and The political ideology of democracy.