Check out this al-Jazeera report:
Does anybody in Iran seriously think that Russia's stance towards the Iranian Gucci Revolution can influence the outcome of the struggle for power in Iran?
Of course not.
Sure, Russia sells technology and weapons to Iran, but such contracts are dwarfed by the oil contracts many other countries signed with Iran. So what is the big deal here?
The big deal is, of course, that the top Guccis are all actively courting the rabidly russophobic regimes in the USA and Israel, while the "street-level" demonstrators have clearly fully absorbed the anti-Russian propaganda of the West. "Death to Russia" is not so much an expression of grievances (real or imagined) towards Russia's policies, as it is a kind of oblique "pledge of allegiance" to the USraelien empire and its political agenda.
Showing posts with label Rafsanjani's "Gucci Revolution". Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rafsanjani's "Gucci Revolution". Show all posts
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Absolutely brilliant piece by Eric Walberg - MUST READ!
June was a busy month for two of Washington’s real ‘Axis of Evil’. Venezuela’s Chavez completed his nationalisation of oil and Iran’s Ahmedinejad stemmed a Western-backed colour revolution, leaving both bad boys in place, muses Eric Walberg
What drives US foreign policy? Is it primarily the domestic economy, as it logically should be, or, as many argue, the powerful Israel lobby, or as other argue, the need to secure energy sources? Of course, the answer is all three, in varying degrees depending on the geopoltical importance of the country in question. And woe to any country that threatens any of the above.
Russia is perhaps a special case, as US politics was dependent for so long on the anti-communist Cold War that ideologues found it impossible to dispense with this useful bugaboo even after the collapse of Communism. But it was not only Sovietologists like Condoleezza Rice that perversely prospered from this obsession, but the US domestic economy itself, which was transformed into what is best described as the military-industrial complex (MIC). It would take very little to placate today’s Russia -- pull in NATO’s horns and stop pandering to the Russophobes in Eastern Europe -- but that would hurt the MIC and would hamper the US plans for empire and oil. So it remains an enemy of choice, though not part of the Axis of Evil.
This crude characterisation by Bush/Cheney lumped North Korea, Iraq and Iran together as the worst of the worst. With the US invasion of Iraq, the current score is one down, two to go. But North Korea is a red herring. It is merely a very useful Cold War foil, beloved of the MIC, justifying its many useless, lethal weapons programmes. A popular whipping boy, a bit of innocent ideological entertainment.
Without Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and ignoring Korea, we are left with Iran. But Bush could easily have added Venezuela to his list, as it is these two countries that pose the greatest real threat to the US empire. Both have charismatic leaders who not openly denounce US and Israeli empire but do something about it. And both have large, nationalised oil sectors. Chavez’s successful defiance of the US has directly inspired Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to elect socialist leaders and given Cuba a new lease on life. Ahmedinejad has defied the many Israel-imposed bans on supporting the Palestinian resistance and even publically questioned the legitimacy of Israel itself. These bold and principled men are thereby pariahs, albeit useful ones for the MIC, along with their Cold War ghost Kim Jong Il.
That is the catch. While the empire officially frets, the US military-based economy thrives on its official enemies. It would collapse without them. This is the supreme irony to be noted by observers of what can only be described as the bizarre and contradictory world of US foreign policy.
Venezuela and Iran are indeed threats to the US empire. President Hugo Chavez not only thoroughly nationalised the oil sector after the crippling strike led by oil executives in 2002-03, but proceeded to use the revenues to transform his country, putting it on the albeit bumpy road to socialism -- subsidised basic goods, mass literacy and free health care. He has even been providing poor Americans with discount gas. “The oil belongs to all Venezuelans,” Chavez emphasised to reporters last month in Argentina, after the government announced it was taking over oil service companies along with US-owned gas compression units, adding to the heavy oil projects Venezuela took over in 2007. Natural gas looks like it will be next. The point of this is to “regain full petroleum sovereignty,” that is, full political sovereignty. No more attempted colour revolutions for Venezuela.
Which brings us to Iran. When Mahmoud Ahmedinejad took office in 2005, with the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he tried to wrest control of key ministries, especially oil and the government’s National Iranian Oil Company (NOIC), from the Rafsanjani/ Mousavi capitalist elite, replacing officials with his own choices -- primarily from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It was not till 2007 that he was able to install his candidate for oil minister, also head of the NIOC, Gholamhossein Nozari. Like Chavez, he proceeded to use state oil revenues to consolidate his base among the poor, something which the so-called reformists under his predecessor Mohammed Khatami or earlier nonreformists under Rafsanjani/ Mousavi were not noted for.
While Hashemi Rafsanjani was parliamentary speaker with Mirhossein Mousavi his prime minister in the 1980s, younger Iranians, including Ahmedinejad, were fighting in the IRGC (many martyring themselves) in the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Rafsanjani became Iran ’s first president in 1989 and added to his family’s vast fortune, much of it connected with oil, during his privatisation programme when he opened the oil industry to private Iranian contractors. This continued under the “reformist” Khatami, who took over the presidency in 1997.
Ahmedinejad’s ascendancy in 2005 on a platform to fight and eliminate the “oil mafia” confirmed the IRGC as the underlying force confronting Rafsanjani and the reformists. Throughout the 2009 electoral campaign, Ahmedinejad attacked his opponents as leaders of the corrupt elite, now trying to claw back control.
The elite had had enough, and the election ruckus last month was their last stand against the clearly populist, essentially leftist Ahmedinejad (in the West labelled a “hardliner”). Some pundits call Ahmedinejad’s decisive win a coup d’etat by the IRGC, but the recent demonstrations in Teheran look eerily similar to those in Caracas in 2002-03 when Venezuelan society was paralysed by its economic elite, mobilising its own Gucci crowd, strongly backed by the US, protesting a populist president’s determination to use oil revenues to help the common people. Chavez risked his life in the process, but his careful planning foiled the plotters and he survived to carry out his agenda. Whether Ahmedinejad can do the same, and to what extent the IRGC is a vehicle for promoting social welfare is a drama which is only now unfolding.
The Western media has uniformly denounced the Iranian elections, with no real evidence, as fraudulent, much as it denounced the many elections that Chavez had to undergo in the face of US-inspired strikes and even a military coup, before the opposition and its US backers relented. The US has generously financed Iranian expatriate dissidents and has penetrated Iranian society with the clear intent to overthrow Ahmedinejad, exactly like they did in Venezuela, though it is rarely mentioned in the Western press.
The US policy of using soft power to undermine unfriendly governments is well known to both Latin American socialists and Iranian clerics. Khamenei insisted in his sermon last week that Iran would not tolerate the green “colour revolution” underway. No wonder that Ahmedinejad, Chavez and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are such good friends. They have much in common.
In similar electoral contests in Latin America between nationalist-populists and pro-Western liberals, the populists have consistently won in fair elections, so the results in Iran should come as no surprise. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Lula da Silva in Brazil, all of whom have consistently polled 60 per cent or more of the vote in free elections. The people in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national security over alignments with military empires.
The parallel between Iran and Venezuela coincides with a flowering of relations between Iran and Latin American countries as it seeks a way out of the US-imposed blockade. Iran will help develop Bolivia’s oil and gas sector, has opened a trade office in Ecuador, and entered into agreements with Nicaragua, Cuba, Paraguay, Brazil and, of course, Venezuela. Council of Hemispheric Affairs analyst Braden Webb reports that “Venezuela and Iran are now gingerly engaged in an ambitious joint project, putting on-line Veniran, a production plant that assembles 5,000 tractors a year, and plans to start producing two Iranian-designed automobiles to provide regional consumers with the ‘first anti-imperialist cars’.”
Perhaps what upsets the US most about Ahmedinejad is his continued attempts to establish an Iranian Oil Bourse in the Iranian Free Trade Zone on the island of Kish, an idea which Chavez heartily approves of. The bourse is meant to attract international oil trading to the Middle East and to help move international trade away from the dollar as the oil currency, currently accounting for 65 per cent of trade. Over half of Iran’s oil business is now conducted in euros, despite the EU’s support for the US boycott. An indication of just how evil the US considers this move is the fact that his Evil Axis colleague Saddam Hussein was executed not long after switching his accounts to euros. Note that Kim Jong Il remains comfortably in place despite his own penchant for euros.
Both the Venezuelan and Iranian thorns have incensed Washington for daring to use their oil revenues to redistribute wealth in their societies and then organise resistance to US hegemony in their respective neighbourhoods. They are examples which continue to inspire and which pose a threat to US imperial policy, both international and domestic. For what better way to solve all the ills of US society -- lack of secure health care, poverty, violence -- than dismantling the MIC and initiating a foreign policy based on peace rather than war?
The big difference between these two thorns, of course, is Islam and Iran’s interference with the US-Israeli agenda. Now that the oil companies have resigned themselves to Venezuela’s new assertiveness, they and their government spokesmen are not so concerned with trying to overthrow Chavez. However, the extra weight of the Israel lobby in Washington makes sure that another Iranian revolution remains at the top of the list of Obama’s things-to-do.
Another curious difference is that US attempts to turn Venezuela’s neighbours against it backfired, as they came to Chavez’s defence and followed his example, while similar efforts to conspire against Iran have had considerable success.
The schism in both Venezuelan and Iranian societies is very real and is being taken advantage of by the US and friends, who are doing their “best” to engineer a collapse of the populist governments to make room for more US-friendly colour revolutions. But there is too much Yankee baggage for this to work anymore. It is time for a colour revolution at home.
***
Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/. You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com
What drives US foreign policy? Is it primarily the domestic economy, as it logically should be, or, as many argue, the powerful Israel lobby, or as other argue, the need to secure energy sources? Of course, the answer is all three, in varying degrees depending on the geopoltical importance of the country in question. And woe to any country that threatens any of the above.
Russia is perhaps a special case, as US politics was dependent for so long on the anti-communist Cold War that ideologues found it impossible to dispense with this useful bugaboo even after the collapse of Communism. But it was not only Sovietologists like Condoleezza Rice that perversely prospered from this obsession, but the US domestic economy itself, which was transformed into what is best described as the military-industrial complex (MIC). It would take very little to placate today’s Russia -- pull in NATO’s horns and stop pandering to the Russophobes in Eastern Europe -- but that would hurt the MIC and would hamper the US plans for empire and oil. So it remains an enemy of choice, though not part of the Axis of Evil.
This crude characterisation by Bush/Cheney lumped North Korea, Iraq and Iran together as the worst of the worst. With the US invasion of Iraq, the current score is one down, two to go. But North Korea is a red herring. It is merely a very useful Cold War foil, beloved of the MIC, justifying its many useless, lethal weapons programmes. A popular whipping boy, a bit of innocent ideological entertainment.
Without Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and ignoring Korea, we are left with Iran. But Bush could easily have added Venezuela to his list, as it is these two countries that pose the greatest real threat to the US empire. Both have charismatic leaders who not openly denounce US and Israeli empire but do something about it. And both have large, nationalised oil sectors. Chavez’s successful defiance of the US has directly inspired Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to elect socialist leaders and given Cuba a new lease on life. Ahmedinejad has defied the many Israel-imposed bans on supporting the Palestinian resistance and even publically questioned the legitimacy of Israel itself. These bold and principled men are thereby pariahs, albeit useful ones for the MIC, along with their Cold War ghost Kim Jong Il.
That is the catch. While the empire officially frets, the US military-based economy thrives on its official enemies. It would collapse without them. This is the supreme irony to be noted by observers of what can only be described as the bizarre and contradictory world of US foreign policy.
Venezuela and Iran are indeed threats to the US empire. President Hugo Chavez not only thoroughly nationalised the oil sector after the crippling strike led by oil executives in 2002-03, but proceeded to use the revenues to transform his country, putting it on the albeit bumpy road to socialism -- subsidised basic goods, mass literacy and free health care. He has even been providing poor Americans with discount gas. “The oil belongs to all Venezuelans,” Chavez emphasised to reporters last month in Argentina, after the government announced it was taking over oil service companies along with US-owned gas compression units, adding to the heavy oil projects Venezuela took over in 2007. Natural gas looks like it will be next. The point of this is to “regain full petroleum sovereignty,” that is, full political sovereignty. No more attempted colour revolutions for Venezuela.
Which brings us to Iran. When Mahmoud Ahmedinejad took office in 2005, with the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he tried to wrest control of key ministries, especially oil and the government’s National Iranian Oil Company (NOIC), from the Rafsanjani/ Mousavi capitalist elite, replacing officials with his own choices -- primarily from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It was not till 2007 that he was able to install his candidate for oil minister, also head of the NIOC, Gholamhossein Nozari. Like Chavez, he proceeded to use state oil revenues to consolidate his base among the poor, something which the so-called reformists under his predecessor Mohammed Khatami or earlier nonreformists under Rafsanjani/ Mousavi were not noted for.
While Hashemi Rafsanjani was parliamentary speaker with Mirhossein Mousavi his prime minister in the 1980s, younger Iranians, including Ahmedinejad, were fighting in the IRGC (many martyring themselves) in the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Rafsanjani became Iran ’s first president in 1989 and added to his family’s vast fortune, much of it connected with oil, during his privatisation programme when he opened the oil industry to private Iranian contractors. This continued under the “reformist” Khatami, who took over the presidency in 1997.
Ahmedinejad’s ascendancy in 2005 on a platform to fight and eliminate the “oil mafia” confirmed the IRGC as the underlying force confronting Rafsanjani and the reformists. Throughout the 2009 electoral campaign, Ahmedinejad attacked his opponents as leaders of the corrupt elite, now trying to claw back control.
The elite had had enough, and the election ruckus last month was their last stand against the clearly populist, essentially leftist Ahmedinejad (in the West labelled a “hardliner”). Some pundits call Ahmedinejad’s decisive win a coup d’etat by the IRGC, but the recent demonstrations in Teheran look eerily similar to those in Caracas in 2002-03 when Venezuelan society was paralysed by its economic elite, mobilising its own Gucci crowd, strongly backed by the US, protesting a populist president’s determination to use oil revenues to help the common people. Chavez risked his life in the process, but his careful planning foiled the plotters and he survived to carry out his agenda. Whether Ahmedinejad can do the same, and to what extent the IRGC is a vehicle for promoting social welfare is a drama which is only now unfolding.
The Western media has uniformly denounced the Iranian elections, with no real evidence, as fraudulent, much as it denounced the many elections that Chavez had to undergo in the face of US-inspired strikes and even a military coup, before the opposition and its US backers relented. The US has generously financed Iranian expatriate dissidents and has penetrated Iranian society with the clear intent to overthrow Ahmedinejad, exactly like they did in Venezuela, though it is rarely mentioned in the Western press.
The US policy of using soft power to undermine unfriendly governments is well known to both Latin American socialists and Iranian clerics. Khamenei insisted in his sermon last week that Iran would not tolerate the green “colour revolution” underway. No wonder that Ahmedinejad, Chavez and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are such good friends. They have much in common.
In similar electoral contests in Latin America between nationalist-populists and pro-Western liberals, the populists have consistently won in fair elections, so the results in Iran should come as no surprise. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Lula da Silva in Brazil, all of whom have consistently polled 60 per cent or more of the vote in free elections. The people in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national security over alignments with military empires.
The parallel between Iran and Venezuela coincides with a flowering of relations between Iran and Latin American countries as it seeks a way out of the US-imposed blockade. Iran will help develop Bolivia’s oil and gas sector, has opened a trade office in Ecuador, and entered into agreements with Nicaragua, Cuba, Paraguay, Brazil and, of course, Venezuela. Council of Hemispheric Affairs analyst Braden Webb reports that “Venezuela and Iran are now gingerly engaged in an ambitious joint project, putting on-line Veniran, a production plant that assembles 5,000 tractors a year, and plans to start producing two Iranian-designed automobiles to provide regional consumers with the ‘first anti-imperialist cars’.”
Perhaps what upsets the US most about Ahmedinejad is his continued attempts to establish an Iranian Oil Bourse in the Iranian Free Trade Zone on the island of Kish, an idea which Chavez heartily approves of. The bourse is meant to attract international oil trading to the Middle East and to help move international trade away from the dollar as the oil currency, currently accounting for 65 per cent of trade. Over half of Iran’s oil business is now conducted in euros, despite the EU’s support for the US boycott. An indication of just how evil the US considers this move is the fact that his Evil Axis colleague Saddam Hussein was executed not long after switching his accounts to euros. Note that Kim Jong Il remains comfortably in place despite his own penchant for euros.
Both the Venezuelan and Iranian thorns have incensed Washington for daring to use their oil revenues to redistribute wealth in their societies and then organise resistance to US hegemony in their respective neighbourhoods. They are examples which continue to inspire and which pose a threat to US imperial policy, both international and domestic. For what better way to solve all the ills of US society -- lack of secure health care, poverty, violence -- than dismantling the MIC and initiating a foreign policy based on peace rather than war?
The big difference between these two thorns, of course, is Islam and Iran’s interference with the US-Israeli agenda. Now that the oil companies have resigned themselves to Venezuela’s new assertiveness, they and their government spokesmen are not so concerned with trying to overthrow Chavez. However, the extra weight of the Israel lobby in Washington makes sure that another Iranian revolution remains at the top of the list of Obama’s things-to-do.
Another curious difference is that US attempts to turn Venezuela’s neighbours against it backfired, as they came to Chavez’s defence and followed his example, while similar efforts to conspire against Iran have had considerable success.
The schism in both Venezuelan and Iranian societies is very real and is being taken advantage of by the US and friends, who are doing their “best” to engineer a collapse of the populist governments to make room for more US-friendly colour revolutions. But there is too much Yankee baggage for this to work anymore. It is time for a colour revolution at home.
***
Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/. You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com
Monday, June 29, 2009
Ahmadinejad orders probe into Neda's 'suspicious' death
Press TV reports:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has asked the Judiciary chief to conduct a through investigation into the death of Neda Aqa-Soltan, an Iranian woman who was shot dead in Tehran's post-vote protests.
In a letter to Iran's Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi on Monday, Ahmadinejad called for a serious probe into the "suspicious" death of Neda and recognizing elements behind her killing.
"Neda Aqa-Soltan was shot dead in one of Tehran's streets on June 20 by unknown elements in a completely suspicious way," said the president.
"Amid vast propaganda by foreign media and many other evidence about the heartfelt event, it seems definite that opponents of the Iranian nation interfere (in Iran's internal affairs) for their political misuse," he added.
Neda, 26, became a symbol of post-election street rallies in Iran and an international icon in recent days after graphic videos of her death grabbed the attention of world media outlets.
Her death first became suspicious after revelations that she was killed by a small caliber pistol -- a weapon that is not used by Iranian security forces.
-------
Note: I suppose now we have heard it all. First, we were told that Neda was killed by a "Basij thug" sniper "hiding on a rooftop". Then that she was killed by a "Basij thug" "sniper on a motorbike". And now we are told that she died from a small caliber pistol (no doubt fired by a "Basij thug"). Except that a small caliber pistol cannot be fired accurately at ranges over 50 meters max. If this really was a pistol shot, then the entire "Basij thug" thing is collapsing and what we are left with it a typical false flag operation. More details about the rather strange circumstances of her death can be found here.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has asked the Judiciary chief to conduct a through investigation into the death of Neda Aqa-Soltan, an Iranian woman who was shot dead in Tehran's post-vote protests.
In a letter to Iran's Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi on Monday, Ahmadinejad called for a serious probe into the "suspicious" death of Neda and recognizing elements behind her killing.
"Neda Aqa-Soltan was shot dead in one of Tehran's streets on June 20 by unknown elements in a completely suspicious way," said the president.
"Amid vast propaganda by foreign media and many other evidence about the heartfelt event, it seems definite that opponents of the Iranian nation interfere (in Iran's internal affairs) for their political misuse," he added.
Neda, 26, became a symbol of post-election street rallies in Iran and an international icon in recent days after graphic videos of her death grabbed the attention of world media outlets.
Her death first became suspicious after revelations that she was killed by a small caliber pistol -- a weapon that is not used by Iranian security forces.
-------
Note: I suppose now we have heard it all. First, we were told that Neda was killed by a "Basij thug" sniper "hiding on a rooftop". Then that she was killed by a "Basij thug" "sniper on a motorbike". And now we are told that she died from a small caliber pistol (no doubt fired by a "Basij thug"). Except that a small caliber pistol cannot be fired accurately at ranges over 50 meters max. If this really was a pistol shot, then the entire "Basij thug" thing is collapsing and what we are left with it a typical false flag operation. More details about the rather strange circumstances of her death can be found here.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Check out this debate and make up your own mind
The "theocracy of the Mullahs". This is how the Western corporate press like to refer to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Well, judge for yourself and check out this special report about the fraud allegations in Iran and ask yourself the simple question: does this sound like the TV of a fanatical dictatorial state?
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Analyses of All Alleged Rigging Proofs in Election
by Zainabia for Shiachat
Different elements raised DOUBTS about the recent Elections of Iran (2009). Let us analyze them one by one.
Objection 1: How it is possible that some Areas got more than 100% Votes?
This is "The Biggest" proof which is presented in order to blame these elections to be rigged.
Iranian Government confirmed it and then made it clear the reasons why some areas could have more votes than 100%. Unfortunately Western Media all together neglected this clarification and put false words in Iranian Government's mouth that it accepts the rigging of 3 million votes. This is absolutely a lie and disinformation by Western Media. Iranian Government never said that it is Rigging, but it gave the valid Facts and Reasons for this phenomenon.
Let us leave these Satanic Propaganda tactics of West, and let us concentrate on the reality. Following are the Valid Facts why some areas could have more turnout than 100% Voters:
1. Even according to Western Media, the total turnout in these elections was 85% countrywide.
2. Iranian Presidential Elections are not held on "Area" bases.
Any voter could vote any where in the country, and it is not obligatory for him to go back to his "Registered Town" in order to cast the vote.
3. There were two reasons of presence of over 100% Voters in few Areas. Firstly due to Summer, and secondly due to week-end many people (/Tourists) went to resorts which are mainly situated near Caspian See (and these were mostly the areas where turnout was more than 100%)
4. Please also note that in some of these Areas (with more than 100% turnout), Mr. Mussavi got the majority votes.
5. Please also note that parts of Population from "Undeveloped Areas" migrate to "Developed Areas" for jobs and earnings. So, although they stay in Areas where they do their jobs but they are not registered there but in their home towns.
Therefore, let us use two terms (1st) Local Population, which is registered in that respective town (2nd) Non-Local Population, which is not registered in that respective town.
6. What does 85% turnout means? It is an "Average" of total votes casted countrywide.
It means that in some Areas "Local Population" casted 60-70% Votes (less than 85%), while in other Areas "local Population" casted 90-95% votes (more than 85%)
Now let us consider those Areas where "Local Population" casted 90-95% votes. Now add in it the numbers of "Tourists" and "Non-Local Population" which stay there for jobs and earnings. This simply shows there is nothing to wonder if turnout was more than 100% in some Areas.
7. You remember that at the end of election time, there was a lack of Ballot Papers at some places. It means numbers of voters came to cast their votes on that day was almost equal or more than the registered voters in that area. Voting times had to be extended 4 times in some areas.
8. In Elections of 2005, the turn out was only 59.6%. Even then in Areas of "Zorgan" and "Morv" turn out was more than 100% in last elections.
9. Iranian Government offered the other Candidates for recount of 10% Ballot boxes. It means there could be recounting in all these 50 alleged areas where claims are being made of rigging due to the fact of more than 100% voting.
10. Even much more to this that first time in last 30 years Iranian Government issued the complete list of number of vote per box after which opponents are left with no lame excuse for going for Road Politics. [Link].
Objection 2: It is impossible for Ahmadi Nejad to get 24.5 Million Votes
This propaganda is done by some of "Western Professors". They claim themselves to be experts of examining election results on bases of scientific methods. One such professor is Dr.Walter R. Mebane who prepared the following data on bases of his Scientific Voting Techniques and claimed that it is impossible for Ahmadi Nejad to get 24.5 Million Votes.
With respect to Dr. Walter and other Western Professors, let us bring down the things from "Mathematical Equations" to "Real Ground Realities". And this ground Reality says there is absolutely no problem in Ahmadi Nejad's getting 24.5 million votes.
The best way of getting answer to this question is to look at the results of Elections of 2005. Following Table is taken from wikipedia.
The present Elections of Iran resembles very much to the 2nd Round Eelctions of 2005 while right from first day it was clear that real competition was only between Ahmadi Nejad and Mussovi. From 2nd round elections of 2005, it becomes clear that:
1. Ahmadi Nejad got 17.3 million Votes in last elections [While Mussave has got only 13.3 million votes in present elections]. Here you could see for yourself who could be the possible winner.
Note: Last elections of 2005 were conducted under the reformist government of Khatami and Ahmadi Nejad got no power to do any type of rigging, but still he got 17.3 million votes.
2. The turn out in last elections was only 59.6%. But despit this low turn out Ahmadi Nejad got 17.3 million votes. In present Elections, the turn out is huge 85%. This means that it is 25.4% more turn out in present elections.
Therefore, if we add 25.4% to 17.3 million votes of Ahmadi Nejad, then it gives us the figure of 24.6 million votes (and this is the same number approx. which Ahmadi Nejad got on the field in present elections)
3. People of Iran knew Ahmadi Nejad & his Policies much better in these elections as compared to last elections. Now question is how does it effect the votes? In order to get answer to this, let us once again look at the last elections of 2005.
In first round elections of 2005, people knew very less of Ahmadi Nejad and his Politices. So in first round he got only 19.4% Votes (i.e. 5.7 million votes only). But till 2nd round things changed and People knew Ahmadi Nejad and his Policies better and therefore we saw a huge jump in his support and it raised to 61.7% votes in comparison to 19.4% (i.e. 17.3 million votes as compared to 5.7 million votes).
4. So, situation is this that after 4 years of government of Ahmadi Nejad, people saw how much Ahmadi Nejad did for the poor people of Iran and how his policies directly benefited them. We are not going in details of his work in this area, but simply due to policies of Ahmadi Nejad and his simple way of living, he got not only votes from religious people, but also from the poor classes of Iranian people.
So, there is nothing to doubt if Ahmadi Nejad got 24.5 million votes in present elections.
Objection 3: Pre-Election Surveys showed that Ahmadi Nejad was not leading the race
This objection is not true. Even the foreign neutral pre-election surveys showed that Ahmadi Nejad was leading the race with 2 to 1. Let us quote briefly from Washington Post, which writes:
Objection 4: Mr. Mussavi submitted a List of Pre-Election complaints
This is a funny objection.
A counter question to Mr. Mussavi: "Why didn't he object upon these pre-election irregularities before Elections? Instead of objecting and presenting these complaints before elections, he actually claimed victory only after one hour of closure of voting. And afterwards within few hours (even before ending of official counting and results) he directly called his followers to "Stage Resistance".
Upon complaint of Mr. Mussavi, the Iranian Guardian Council Authorities launched the investigations and after complete investigations they say:
Actually, they themselves know it very well that Ahmadi Nejad has won with such huge difference that there is absolutely no DOUBTS in his victory. Please also note that:
Objection 5: Elections were fraud while Results were started to be announced after only few hours
Please note that the official final results were announced at 4 pm the next day, 16 hours after the closure of voting. Nevertheless, it was true that results started coming just few hours after the closing of voting. But does it really constitute a proof of Rigging?
There were a total of 45,713 ballot boxes that were set up in cities, towns and villages across Iran. With 39.2 million ballots cast, there were less than 860 ballots per box. Why would it take more than an two to three hours to count 860 ballots per poll? After the count, the results were then reported electronically to the Ministry of the Interior in Tehran.
Objection 6: Ballots ran out at some places and not every one got the chance to vote
This is again misleading objection.
There was huge turn out and it's "Average" was 85%. This means in some areas there were 70-80% votes (less than 85%) and in some areas 90-95% Votes from Local Population. And while Non-Local Population was also allowed to vote anywhere in any polling center, therefore at some centers turn out was over 100%. This is the main reason of running out of ballots. So, the educated West could now please tell us how it constitute Rigging? It may be termed as not sufficient measures for preparation of elections, but certainly not as Rigging.
Secondly, even if all the people who did not vote, had actually voted for Mousavi (a virtual impossibility), that would be 6.93 million additional votes, much less than the 11 million vote difference between the top two candidates.
Objection 7: How Ahmadi Nejad did well in Sunni Areas?
It is a misconception that there are any kind of Shia/Sunni problems in Iran. It is only Saudi backed Wahabi Media which normally propagate such disinformation. There is only minor problems along border of Pakistan, while in remaining whole Iran Ahle-Sunnah have very brotherly ties with their Shia brethern.
Let me quote once again from the poll carried out by a western news organization. It was jointly commissioned by the BBC and ABC News, and conducted by an independent entity called the Center for Public Opinion (CPO) of the New America Foundation. (This is same report of Survey which has been mentioned above by Wahsington Post and which predicted 89% voters turnout in recent elections and 2:1 lead for Ahamadi Nejad). On Issue of Shia/Sunni in Iran, it's survey says [LINK]:
Rigging is also claimed while Ahmadi Nejad got more Azeri Votes than Mussavi. This is not strange while Irani-Azeries is a very religious soceity and religion plays more role here than race. Secondly Ahmadi Nejad lived in this province for several years, worked hard, got good relations with Top people there and could also speak the Turkish-Azeri language without any problem. And he ran a very good election compaign here. Contrar to Ahmadi Nejad, his rival Mr. Mussavi has not been to these areas for a long long time and ran his election compaign poorly.
Another fantasy theory is how Ahmadi Nejad got more votes than Mr. Mussavi in Tehran. It is not complete truth. Mr. Mussave actually won the elections in main Tehran City. But there are poor neighbourhoods around Tehran and here Ahmadi Nejad got huge majority of votes.
Conclusion
There is not a single "Hard Proof" of any rigging in elections. All the proofs that have been presented, they are based only and only upon "Conjecture Theories". Opponents & Western Media trying it's best to encourage the unrests and Civil War in Iran by doing a lot of biased coverage and neglecting the realities. They want Iranian poeple to solve their differences on the roads instead of sitting down on the Table and look at things rationally on bases of ground realities.
Different elements raised DOUBTS about the recent Elections of Iran (2009). Let us analyze them one by one.
Objection 1: How it is possible that some Areas got more than 100% Votes?
This is "The Biggest" proof which is presented in order to blame these elections to be rigged.
Iranian Government confirmed it and then made it clear the reasons why some areas could have more votes than 100%. Unfortunately Western Media all together neglected this clarification and put false words in Iranian Government's mouth that it accepts the rigging of 3 million votes. This is absolutely a lie and disinformation by Western Media. Iranian Government never said that it is Rigging, but it gave the valid Facts and Reasons for this phenomenon.
Let us leave these Satanic Propaganda tactics of West, and let us concentrate on the reality. Following are the Valid Facts why some areas could have more turnout than 100% Voters:
1. Even according to Western Media, the total turnout in these elections was 85% countrywide.
2. Iranian Presidential Elections are not held on "Area" bases.
Any voter could vote any where in the country, and it is not obligatory for him to go back to his "Registered Town" in order to cast the vote.
3. There were two reasons of presence of over 100% Voters in few Areas. Firstly due to Summer, and secondly due to week-end many people (/Tourists) went to resorts which are mainly situated near Caspian See (and these were mostly the areas where turnout was more than 100%)
4. Please also note that in some of these Areas (with more than 100% turnout), Mr. Mussavi got the majority votes.
5. Please also note that parts of Population from "Undeveloped Areas" migrate to "Developed Areas" for jobs and earnings. So, although they stay in Areas where they do their jobs but they are not registered there but in their home towns.
Therefore, let us use two terms (1st) Local Population, which is registered in that respective town (2nd) Non-Local Population, which is not registered in that respective town.
6. What does 85% turnout means? It is an "Average" of total votes casted countrywide.
It means that in some Areas "Local Population" casted 60-70% Votes (less than 85%), while in other Areas "local Population" casted 90-95% votes (more than 85%)
Now let us consider those Areas where "Local Population" casted 90-95% votes. Now add in it the numbers of "Tourists" and "Non-Local Population" which stay there for jobs and earnings. This simply shows there is nothing to wonder if turnout was more than 100% in some Areas.
7. You remember that at the end of election time, there was a lack of Ballot Papers at some places. It means numbers of voters came to cast their votes on that day was almost equal or more than the registered voters in that area. Voting times had to be extended 4 times in some areas.
8. In Elections of 2005, the turn out was only 59.6%. Even then in Areas of "Zorgan" and "Morv" turn out was more than 100% in last elections.
9. Iranian Government offered the other Candidates for recount of 10% Ballot boxes. It means there could be recounting in all these 50 alleged areas where claims are being made of rigging due to the fact of more than 100% voting.
10. Even much more to this that first time in last 30 years Iranian Government issued the complete list of number of vote per box after which opponents are left with no lame excuse for going for Road Politics. [Link].
Objection 2: It is impossible for Ahmadi Nejad to get 24.5 Million Votes
This propaganda is done by some of "Western Professors". They claim themselves to be experts of examining election results on bases of scientific methods. One such professor is Dr.Walter R. Mebane who prepared the following data on bases of his Scientific Voting Techniques and claimed that it is impossible for Ahmadi Nejad to get 24.5 Million Votes.
With respect to Dr. Walter and other Western Professors, let us bring down the things from "Mathematical Equations" to "Real Ground Realities". And this ground Reality says there is absolutely no problem in Ahmadi Nejad's getting 24.5 million votes.
The best way of getting answer to this question is to look at the results of Elections of 2005. Following Table is taken from wikipedia.
The present Elections of Iran resembles very much to the 2nd Round Eelctions of 2005 while right from first day it was clear that real competition was only between Ahmadi Nejad and Mussovi. From 2nd round elections of 2005, it becomes clear that:
1. Ahmadi Nejad got 17.3 million Votes in last elections [While Mussave has got only 13.3 million votes in present elections]. Here you could see for yourself who could be the possible winner.
Note: Last elections of 2005 were conducted under the reformist government of Khatami and Ahmadi Nejad got no power to do any type of rigging, but still he got 17.3 million votes.
2. The turn out in last elections was only 59.6%. But despit this low turn out Ahmadi Nejad got 17.3 million votes. In present Elections, the turn out is huge 85%. This means that it is 25.4% more turn out in present elections.
Therefore, if we add 25.4% to 17.3 million votes of Ahmadi Nejad, then it gives us the figure of 24.6 million votes (and this is the same number approx. which Ahmadi Nejad got on the field in present elections)
3. People of Iran knew Ahmadi Nejad & his Policies much better in these elections as compared to last elections. Now question is how does it effect the votes? In order to get answer to this, let us once again look at the last elections of 2005.
In first round elections of 2005, people knew very less of Ahmadi Nejad and his Politices. So in first round he got only 19.4% Votes (i.e. 5.7 million votes only). But till 2nd round things changed and People knew Ahmadi Nejad and his Policies better and therefore we saw a huge jump in his support and it raised to 61.7% votes in comparison to 19.4% (i.e. 17.3 million votes as compared to 5.7 million votes).
4. So, situation is this that after 4 years of government of Ahmadi Nejad, people saw how much Ahmadi Nejad did for the poor people of Iran and how his policies directly benefited them. We are not going in details of his work in this area, but simply due to policies of Ahmadi Nejad and his simple way of living, he got not only votes from religious people, but also from the poor classes of Iranian people.
So, there is nothing to doubt if Ahmadi Nejad got 24.5 million votes in present elections.
Objection 3: Pre-Election Surveys showed that Ahmadi Nejad was not leading the race
This objection is not true. Even the foreign neutral pre-election surveys showed that Ahmadi Nejad was leading the race with 2 to 1. Let us quote briefly from Washington Post, which writes:
The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.You could read whole article where they are presenting their DATA based on scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces (i.e. not only Tehran). It should be an eye-opener to those who still blame these elections to be rigged and for fraud.
Objection 4: Mr. Mussavi submitted a List of Pre-Election complaints
This is a funny objection.
A counter question to Mr. Mussavi: "Why didn't he object upon these pre-election irregularities before Elections? Instead of objecting and presenting these complaints before elections, he actually claimed victory only after one hour of closure of voting. And afterwards within few hours (even before ending of official counting and results) he directly called his followers to "Stage Resistance".
Upon complaint of Mr. Mussavi, the Iranian Guardian Council Authorities launched the investigations and after complete investigations they say:
“After 10 days of examination, we did not see any major irregularities,” Guardians Council spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai told the state IRNA news agency, rejecting opposition allegations that have brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets. “We have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had. I can say with certainty that there was no fraud in this election.”Fact is depites so much crying from Mr. Mussavi & Western Media, they are still unable to bring even a single reliable proof of any type of Rigging.
Actually, they themselves know it very well that Ahmadi Nejad has won with such huge difference that there is absolutely no DOUBTS in his victory. Please also note that:
- Mr. Mousavi got almost minimum of 2 representative at more than 95 percent of all the centers.
- At each center, 14 observers including the candidate's observers oversaw the entire process, including inspection of empty boxes at the outset and their sealing at the end, with four locks, and then all signed a certificate of proper election, i.e., Mousavi's own men have certified the clean process.
Objection 5: Elections were fraud while Results were started to be announced after only few hours
Please note that the official final results were announced at 4 pm the next day, 16 hours after the closure of voting. Nevertheless, it was true that results started coming just few hours after the closing of voting. But does it really constitute a proof of Rigging?
There were a total of 45,713 ballot boxes that were set up in cities, towns and villages across Iran. With 39.2 million ballots cast, there were less than 860 ballots per box. Why would it take more than an two to three hours to count 860 ballots per poll? After the count, the results were then reported electronically to the Ministry of the Interior in Tehran.
Objection 6: Ballots ran out at some places and not every one got the chance to vote
This is again misleading objection.
There was huge turn out and it's "Average" was 85%. This means in some areas there were 70-80% votes (less than 85%) and in some areas 90-95% Votes from Local Population. And while Non-Local Population was also allowed to vote anywhere in any polling center, therefore at some centers turn out was over 100%. This is the main reason of running out of ballots. So, the educated West could now please tell us how it constitute Rigging? It may be termed as not sufficient measures for preparation of elections, but certainly not as Rigging.
Secondly, even if all the people who did not vote, had actually voted for Mousavi (a virtual impossibility), that would be 6.93 million additional votes, much less than the 11 million vote difference between the top two candidates.
Objection 7: How Ahmadi Nejad did well in Sunni Areas?
It is a misconception that there are any kind of Shia/Sunni problems in Iran. It is only Saudi backed Wahabi Media which normally propagate such disinformation. There is only minor problems along border of Pakistan, while in remaining whole Iran Ahle-Sunnah have very brotherly ties with their Shia brethern.
Let me quote once again from the poll carried out by a western news organization. It was jointly commissioned by the BBC and ABC News, and conducted by an independent entity called the Center for Public Opinion (CPO) of the New America Foundation. (This is same report of Survey which has been mentioned above by Wahsington Post and which predicted 89% voters turnout in recent elections and 2:1 lead for Ahamadi Nejad). On Issue of Shia/Sunni in Iran, it's survey says [LINK]:
Iranian Shiite Muslims Think Favorably of Sunni Muslims,Objection 8: About Azeri Province and Tehran
Christians, Americans and others
... For Iranian citizens of the Islamic Republic, 87 percent of who in our survey
identified themselves as Shiite, views of both Sunni Muslims and Christians were
overwhelmingly favorable—with only 8 percent voicing an unfavorable view of
Sunnis and 11 percent of Christians. (Opinions on Jews were divided, though
more are favorable than unfavorable.)
Indeed, Iranian views of Sunnis and Christians, as well as non-Iranians generally,
are quite accepting—more so than the corresponding views of their neighbors,
such as in Saudi Arabia, according to our TFT survey there.
Iranians clearly distinguish between countries and policies they do not like (US
and Israel), and people they do like (Christians, Americans, Arabs, Sunni
Muslims and Jews). Iranians are favorable to Christians by a 6:1 margin, Sunni
Muslims by a 9:1 margin, Americans by a 2:1 margin and Jews by a 5:4 margin.
In fact, Iranians are as favorable to Americans as they are to their Arab
neighbors. The high favorability of Sunni Muslims among Iranians (higher than
for Arabs generally) demonstrates that Shiite/Sunni issues are not the primary
force driving a wedge between Iranians and their Arab neighbors.
Rigging is also claimed while Ahmadi Nejad got more Azeri Votes than Mussavi. This is not strange while Irani-Azeries is a very religious soceity and religion plays more role here than race. Secondly Ahmadi Nejad lived in this province for several years, worked hard, got good relations with Top people there and could also speak the Turkish-Azeri language without any problem. And he ran a very good election compaign here. Contrar to Ahmadi Nejad, his rival Mr. Mussavi has not been to these areas for a long long time and ran his election compaign poorly.
Another fantasy theory is how Ahmadi Nejad got more votes than Mr. Mussavi in Tehran. It is not complete truth. Mr. Mussave actually won the elections in main Tehran City. But there are poor neighbourhoods around Tehran and here Ahmadi Nejad got huge majority of votes.
Conclusion
There is not a single "Hard Proof" of any rigging in elections. All the proofs that have been presented, they are based only and only upon "Conjecture Theories". Opponents & Western Media trying it's best to encourage the unrests and Civil War in Iran by doing a lot of biased coverage and neglecting the realities. They want Iranian poeple to solve their differences on the roads instead of sitting down on the Table and look at things rationally on bases of ground realities.
Friday, June 26, 2009
A frightening sense of deja vu
There is no doubt in my mind that what we are witnessing today is the biggest strategic psyop campaign since the war in Bosnia. Clearly, the conduct of such a campaign is expensive and very labor intensive, and I don't think that the USraelian Empire would be wasting such resources just like that. There is definitely a "phase two" coming next.
The more I look at what is happening in Iran, the more I see striking parallels with another war which I had the opportunity to follow, day by day, minute by minute (I was, at the time, a military analyst).
The Serbs in Bosnia were extremely confident that neither the USA nor Europe had the guts to fight them on their own turf. They also could count, or so they thought, on the help of their fellow Serbs from Serbia (Yugoslav Federal Forces). They new that the Bosnian Muslims had a numerical advantage over them, but the counted on their superiority in artillery to offset that disadvantage. The Serbs, who during WWII had successfully resisted against the combined forces of the German Nazis, Croat Ustashe and Bosnian Muslim SS just did not feel really threatened, least of all by the dispersed forces of UNPROFOR. But they did not count with the sophistication of the Empire who, instead of stupidly sending its jarheads into Bosnia, attacked the Serbs with a multi-dimensional strategy.
First, the Serbs were very successfully demonized. The word "Serb" soon began evoking images of concentration camps, torture, rape, executions, baby shooting snipers, etc. A number of false-flag attacks were staged, including at the Markale market in Sarajevo. Any information which deviated from the official line (such as the report of UNPROFOR intelligence section in Sarajevo which concluded that the Serbian forces could not have fired a mortar into that market) was immediately thrown down the memory hole.
Second, pressure was put to essentially co-opt Milosevic. That was done in a very low key, but the basic idea was that he would be allowed to remain in power in Serbia if he agreed to betray the Bosnian Serbs. Needless to say, being the Communist leader which he was, Milosevic agreed. Suddenly, the Serbs faced an embargo in which the Federal Republic had joined in.
Third, the Empire organized, armed, and trained Croat forces (the Empire never really trusted the Muslims in Bosnia) to first seize the so-called "UNPAs" (UN protected areas) in Croatia and then to attack the remaining Serbian forces in Bosnia. For this purpose, all the heavy weapons of the Serbs (yes, the ones they had counted on the offset their numeral disadvantage) were placed in storage which left the Bosnian Serbs with only small arms.
Lastly, when the joint US-Croatian forces attacked, Milosevic pulled back his brigades leaving the Bosnian Serbs to face the combined onslaught of the NATO airforces, the Croat mechanized troops and the Muslim infantry with little more than rifles. At that point, resistance was futile.
The doubleplusgoodthinking world shed very few tears over the Bosnian Serbs. In particular, Muslims worldwide had so thoroughly bought into the Imperial propaganda that they totally failed to see that the only real crime of the Bosnian Serbs (at least in the eyes of the Empire) had been to refuse to comply with the diktats of the Empire. The sole word "Srebrenica" was good enough to stop any fact-based and logic driven analysis of what had really happened when that city fell to the Serbian forces.
As for Milosevic, having outlived his utility for the Empire, he was dumped and immediately attacked through the war in Kosovo (which, by the way, was conducted *exactly* as the war in Bosnia had been). And again - the world bought into the bullshit spewed by the US Psyops.
Now, it is absolutely clear that Iran is next.
Like in the case of the Bosnian Serbs, the Empire has successfully created a political lever INSIDE Iran. Today, Mousavi has been instantly re-branded as a "liberal" (a laughable claim for anybody actually knowing this gentleman's full biography) and he is used against the Iranian government exactly as Milosevic had been used against Karadzic. Like Milosevic, Mousavi (and his puppeteers Rafsanjani and Montazeri) probably thinks that if he (they) come to power the Empire will let him (them) stay in power.
As for the Ahmadinejad/Khamenei camp, they probably feel that the USraelians will not dare attack Iran. I hope and pray that I am wrong and that they do understand the current psyop campaign for what it is - a first phase for a real war.
The public opinion in the West has learned exactly NOTHING from the previous US Psyop campaign. It is buying into the current propaganda 100%, in particular the Left which just need to be gently nudged into an ideological paradigm to immediately be outraged and condemn some putative "bad guy".
The one big difference between the Bosnian Serb situation and the one in Iran is that in the former case the lever was far more powerful than its object: Milosevic had far more economic, political and military power than Karadzic. In Iran the lever (Mousavi) is far weaker than the government. Unlike the Serbs who could only count of their own small forces, the Iranian government knows that it can use the Pasdaran to control the situation. So as long as the Empire does not find a lever INSIDE the Pasdaran, I predict that the strategy will fail. But if one such high-level traitor is found inside the IRGC all bets are off.
One thing the US psyop campaign has already achieved: with the demonization of the government it has carefully prepared the world's public opinion for an military operation overthrow the "regime". After all, just image that the "Basij thugs" who killed Neda* will do against their "neighbors" (the "I" word will not be used outside the USA) if they are armed with nuclear weapons!!!
I hope that the Iranian government has learned the lessons from the Imperial wars in Bosnia, in Kosovo and in Iraq and that it will fully prepare itself to simultaneously fight on two fronts: external and internal. On the internal front, it needs to make a huge effort to explain to its own population what is happening and externally it must continue to seek deter the Empire by all possible means. Lastly, it must be prepared to face a long war combining internal destabilization, terrorist attacks, economic sabotage, guerrillas and airstrikes.
There is one battle which I think cannot be won: the Western public opinion is clearly too stupidifed by the corporate media to ever get it right. The eagerness with which even presumably intelligent people have bought into the Imperial propaganda clearly proves that whenever the Empire wants to strike it will get a strong majority of its public opinion to believe *any* nonsense needed to demonize the target. As Einstein observed:
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former."
The Saker
-------
*The image of the poor Neda is now serving the same function as the famous (and faked) image of the emaciated man behind barbed wire in a "concentration camp" in Bosnia (a British TV crew staged that shot in Bosnia. Read "The Picture That Fooled The World" for details). This "icon" of the "resistance" will serve to outrage people even if it turns out that the shooter had nothing to do with the government.
The more I look at what is happening in Iran, the more I see striking parallels with another war which I had the opportunity to follow, day by day, minute by minute (I was, at the time, a military analyst).
The Serbs in Bosnia were extremely confident that neither the USA nor Europe had the guts to fight them on their own turf. They also could count, or so they thought, on the help of their fellow Serbs from Serbia (Yugoslav Federal Forces). They new that the Bosnian Muslims had a numerical advantage over them, but the counted on their superiority in artillery to offset that disadvantage. The Serbs, who during WWII had successfully resisted against the combined forces of the German Nazis, Croat Ustashe and Bosnian Muslim SS just did not feel really threatened, least of all by the dispersed forces of UNPROFOR. But they did not count with the sophistication of the Empire who, instead of stupidly sending its jarheads into Bosnia, attacked the Serbs with a multi-dimensional strategy.
First, the Serbs were very successfully demonized. The word "Serb" soon began evoking images of concentration camps, torture, rape, executions, baby shooting snipers, etc. A number of false-flag attacks were staged, including at the Markale market in Sarajevo. Any information which deviated from the official line (such as the report of UNPROFOR intelligence section in Sarajevo which concluded that the Serbian forces could not have fired a mortar into that market) was immediately thrown down the memory hole.
Second, pressure was put to essentially co-opt Milosevic. That was done in a very low key, but the basic idea was that he would be allowed to remain in power in Serbia if he agreed to betray the Bosnian Serbs. Needless to say, being the Communist leader which he was, Milosevic agreed. Suddenly, the Serbs faced an embargo in which the Federal Republic had joined in.
Third, the Empire organized, armed, and trained Croat forces (the Empire never really trusted the Muslims in Bosnia) to first seize the so-called "UNPAs" (UN protected areas) in Croatia and then to attack the remaining Serbian forces in Bosnia. For this purpose, all the heavy weapons of the Serbs (yes, the ones they had counted on the offset their numeral disadvantage) were placed in storage which left the Bosnian Serbs with only small arms.
Lastly, when the joint US-Croatian forces attacked, Milosevic pulled back his brigades leaving the Bosnian Serbs to face the combined onslaught of the NATO airforces, the Croat mechanized troops and the Muslim infantry with little more than rifles. At that point, resistance was futile.
The doubleplusgoodthinking world shed very few tears over the Bosnian Serbs. In particular, Muslims worldwide had so thoroughly bought into the Imperial propaganda that they totally failed to see that the only real crime of the Bosnian Serbs (at least in the eyes of the Empire) had been to refuse to comply with the diktats of the Empire. The sole word "Srebrenica" was good enough to stop any fact-based and logic driven analysis of what had really happened when that city fell to the Serbian forces.
As for Milosevic, having outlived his utility for the Empire, he was dumped and immediately attacked through the war in Kosovo (which, by the way, was conducted *exactly* as the war in Bosnia had been). And again - the world bought into the bullshit spewed by the US Psyops.
Now, it is absolutely clear that Iran is next.
Like in the case of the Bosnian Serbs, the Empire has successfully created a political lever INSIDE Iran. Today, Mousavi has been instantly re-branded as a "liberal" (a laughable claim for anybody actually knowing this gentleman's full biography) and he is used against the Iranian government exactly as Milosevic had been used against Karadzic. Like Milosevic, Mousavi (and his puppeteers Rafsanjani and Montazeri) probably thinks that if he (they) come to power the Empire will let him (them) stay in power.
As for the Ahmadinejad/Khamenei camp, they probably feel that the USraelians will not dare attack Iran. I hope and pray that I am wrong and that they do understand the current psyop campaign for what it is - a first phase for a real war.
The public opinion in the West has learned exactly NOTHING from the previous US Psyop campaign. It is buying into the current propaganda 100%, in particular the Left which just need to be gently nudged into an ideological paradigm to immediately be outraged and condemn some putative "bad guy".
The one big difference between the Bosnian Serb situation and the one in Iran is that in the former case the lever was far more powerful than its object: Milosevic had far more economic, political and military power than Karadzic. In Iran the lever (Mousavi) is far weaker than the government. Unlike the Serbs who could only count of their own small forces, the Iranian government knows that it can use the Pasdaran to control the situation. So as long as the Empire does not find a lever INSIDE the Pasdaran, I predict that the strategy will fail. But if one such high-level traitor is found inside the IRGC all bets are off.
One thing the US psyop campaign has already achieved: with the demonization of the government it has carefully prepared the world's public opinion for an military operation overthrow the "regime". After all, just image that the "Basij thugs" who killed Neda* will do against their "neighbors" (the "I" word will not be used outside the USA) if they are armed with nuclear weapons!!!
I hope that the Iranian government has learned the lessons from the Imperial wars in Bosnia, in Kosovo and in Iraq and that it will fully prepare itself to simultaneously fight on two fronts: external and internal. On the internal front, it needs to make a huge effort to explain to its own population what is happening and externally it must continue to seek deter the Empire by all possible means. Lastly, it must be prepared to face a long war combining internal destabilization, terrorist attacks, economic sabotage, guerrillas and airstrikes.
There is one battle which I think cannot be won: the Western public opinion is clearly too stupidifed by the corporate media to ever get it right. The eagerness with which even presumably intelligent people have bought into the Imperial propaganda clearly proves that whenever the Empire wants to strike it will get a strong majority of its public opinion to believe *any* nonsense needed to demonize the target. As Einstein observed:
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former."
The Saker
-------
*The image of the poor Neda is now serving the same function as the famous (and faked) image of the emaciated man behind barbed wire in a "concentration camp" in Bosnia (a British TV crew staged that shot in Bosnia. Read "The Picture That Fooled The World" for details). This "icon" of the "resistance" will serve to outrage people even if it turns out that the shooter had nothing to do with the government.
The latest Hollywood-like nonsense from the Guccis
Haaretz reports:
Mousavi's supporters plan to release thousands of balloons on Friday with the message: "Neda you will always remain in our hearts", in memory of the young woman killed last week who has become an icon of the demonstrations.
I bet you the balloons will be green too, and that the BBC will reports "millions" of them along with reports of "Basiji thugs" assaulting anyone suspected of possessing a balloon....
In the meantime, the anti-Iranian hysteria in the Western corporate media and, alas, the Left leaning free media is reaching a paroxysm, and rumor, no matter how idiotic, is reported as a fact.
Mousavi's supporters plan to release thousands of balloons on Friday with the message: "Neda you will always remain in our hearts", in memory of the young woman killed last week who has become an icon of the demonstrations.
I bet you the balloons will be green too, and that the BBC will reports "millions" of them along with reports of "Basiji thugs" assaulting anyone suspected of possessing a balloon....
In the meantime, the anti-Iranian hysteria in the Western corporate media and, alas, the Left leaning free media is reaching a paroxysm, and rumor, no matter how idiotic, is reported as a fact.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Some victims are more equal then others
A heartbroken and outraged Barak Obama announced announced today that he was deeply saddened by the death every single one of the 20 people who where killed in the clashes in Iran (including the 8 Basijis killed by gunfire?).
He had nothing to say about the 60 people killed in Pakistan in the latest strike by US drones.
Some victims are "more equal than others" I suppose.
Orwell would be proud of Obama.
He had nothing to say about the 60 people killed in Pakistan in the latest strike by US drones.
Some victims are "more equal than others" I suppose.
Orwell would be proud of Obama.
Better late then never, I suppose
Mohsen Rezaee has withdrawn his complaint and declared that
"The current political, social and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase, which is more important than the election"
Words of wisdom for sure, too bad he did not come to that conclusion as soon as it had become apparent that
a) Ahmadinejad had won by a huge, unfakable, margin
b) That the USraelian Empire and the Guccis would use any pretext to destabilize Iran
c) Violent riots would engulf the streets
Here is what I wrote about Mousavi on the day following the election:
He must know that he lost this election and that, in fact, Ahmadinejad won by an un-fakable landslide. Still, he choose the destabilize his own country at a moment when that country is facing a possible military aggression from abroad. What does that tell you about Mousavi? It tells me that he is objectively the tool of yet another US backed destabilization campaign. It matters little whether Mousavi himself is a paid CIA agent, or whether his entourage is carefully using his ego to push him towards the kind of action he has taken now. The bottom line is still that Mousavi is now hurting his country and helping to destabilize it.
All this, of course, also fully applies to Rezaee and Karroubi.
Call me cynical, but I can't help notice that Rezaee decided to withdraw his candidacy when it became rather clear that this entire Gucci Revolution was headed nowhere. Now, with at least 17 Iranians dead, Rezaee's newfound "patriotic" stance is welcome, for sure, but only as a case of "better late then never".
"The current political, social and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase, which is more important than the election"
Words of wisdom for sure, too bad he did not come to that conclusion as soon as it had become apparent that
a) Ahmadinejad had won by a huge, unfakable, margin
b) That the USraelian Empire and the Guccis would use any pretext to destabilize Iran
c) Violent riots would engulf the streets
Here is what I wrote about Mousavi on the day following the election:
He must know that he lost this election and that, in fact, Ahmadinejad won by an un-fakable landslide. Still, he choose the destabilize his own country at a moment when that country is facing a possible military aggression from abroad. What does that tell you about Mousavi? It tells me that he is objectively the tool of yet another US backed destabilization campaign. It matters little whether Mousavi himself is a paid CIA agent, or whether his entourage is carefully using his ego to push him towards the kind of action he has taken now. The bottom line is still that Mousavi is now hurting his country and helping to destabilize it.
All this, of course, also fully applies to Rezaee and Karroubi.
Call me cynical, but I can't help notice that Rezaee decided to withdraw his candidacy when it became rather clear that this entire Gucci Revolution was headed nowhere. Now, with at least 17 Iranians dead, Rezaee's newfound "patriotic" stance is welcome, for sure, but only as a case of "better late then never".
Short Iran situation update
First, two interesting articles:
The Iranian Election and the Revolution Test by George Friedman for Startfor
and
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? by Esam Al-Amin for Aimislam.com
Then, here is an excerpt from an email I got from a friend whom I asked to verify the "Iranian charge $3'000 for "bullet fee" story:
--------
That story has been blown out of proportion. Yes the Baseej has been a bit over zealous by attacking the protesters but there has been many incidents against them that has gone unreported for instance on Saturday the protesters put fire to the natural gas line going into an office of Baseej and blew it up completely killing 5-6 baseejis.
$3000 issue is bogus and Iran has never claimed such money nor they have denied the mourning rituals or ceremonies to happen. Yes they may have asked people to keep them low key to avoid public attention which then prompts the Western attention as in the case of Neda. CNN and BBC had a field day with that and this is what is being touted. If you notice that since the protesters have been clamped down on they have used this one case to win sympathy all over the world. People are reacting very emotionally and backing Mousavi due to their blind emotions. And this is due to the spin being added by the Media on this story too.
-------
Frankly, charging $3'000 for a China-style "bullet fee" would make getting killed unaffordable for most Iranians (except the Guccis I suppose). Seriously, when I read the WSJ "bullet fee" thing, immediately thought that this was a typical kind of propagandistic nonsense which US psyops have been feeding us since the election.
One more though: as far as I know, the government did not engage the Pasdaran to crush any riots, which tells me that the cop+Basij combination, combined with the *threat* of engaging the Pasdaran, was enough to deal with the riots. That, in turn, suggests to me that we might be getting a bloated image of the actual level of rioting and violence.
The Guccci coup d'etat might be loosing momentum
The Iranian Election and the Revolution Test by George Friedman for Startfor
and
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? by Esam Al-Amin for Aimislam.com
Then, here is an excerpt from an email I got from a friend whom I asked to verify the "Iranian charge $3'000 for "bullet fee" story:
--------
That story has been blown out of proportion. Yes the Baseej has been a bit over zealous by attacking the protesters but there has been many incidents against them that has gone unreported for instance on Saturday the protesters put fire to the natural gas line going into an office of Baseej and blew it up completely killing 5-6 baseejis.
$3000 issue is bogus and Iran has never claimed such money nor they have denied the mourning rituals or ceremonies to happen. Yes they may have asked people to keep them low key to avoid public attention which then prompts the Western attention as in the case of Neda. CNN and BBC had a field day with that and this is what is being touted. If you notice that since the protesters have been clamped down on they have used this one case to win sympathy all over the world. People are reacting very emotionally and backing Mousavi due to their blind emotions. And this is due to the spin being added by the Media on this story too.
-------
Frankly, charging $3'000 for a China-style "bullet fee" would make getting killed unaffordable for most Iranians (except the Guccis I suppose). Seriously, when I read the WSJ "bullet fee" thing, immediately thought that this was a typical kind of propagandistic nonsense which US psyops have been feeding us since the election.
One more though: as far as I know, the government did not engage the Pasdaran to crush any riots, which tells me that the cop+Basij combination, combined with the *threat* of engaging the Pasdaran, was enough to deal with the riots. That, in turn, suggests to me that we might be getting a bloated image of the actual level of rioting and violence.
The Guccci coup d'etat might be loosing momentum
Monday, June 22, 2009
Sniper or biker?
Check out this piece from Ynet news:
Wait!
I though that she had been shot by a Basij sniper "hiding on a rooftop"...
Or was the "Basij thug" riding his motorcycle while hiding on a rooftop?
And since when do snipers operate from motorcycles anyway?!
Well, I guess we will probaly never find out who exactly shot Neda, other than that we can be quite certain that he/she was a "Basij thug"...
And then the articles also says this:
What "falsified photographs"? Does Ynet mean to say that somebody in the "reform camp" actually falsifies photographs? Maybe Ynet is a covert "supporter of the regime"?
Seriously, it is becoming clear that Neda was an innocent bystander who probably caught a lost bullet and that she had nothing to do with any political riots. I can't wait to get more details about whom the Tehran cops actually arrested.
More to come soon, I am sure.
In the meantime check these two recent articles about the "stolen elections" canard (here and here).
(...) she was not affiliated with any political camp. "Neda's goal was not Mousavi or Ahmadinejad, but her homeland. It was important to her that the homeland advance a step forward."
Neda Sultani was shot by a Besij snipers, who were apparently riding on motorcycles, on Amir Abad Street in Tehran on Saturday. The video that has been circulating on the Internet, making the young woman into a symbol of the Iranian reformist opposition, shows her last moments before being shot in the company of her father (...)
Wait!
I though that she had been shot by a Basij sniper "hiding on a rooftop"...
Or was the "Basij thug" riding his motorcycle while hiding on a rooftop?
And since when do snipers operate from motorcycles anyway?!
Well, I guess we will probaly never find out who exactly shot Neda, other than that we can be quite certain that he/she was a "Basij thug"...
And then the articles also says this:
In reference to the falsified photographs depicting Neda wearing a green headband that were distributed on the Internet, apparently by Mousavi supporters, Makan said that she was not politically affiliated with either side of the current struggle.
What "falsified photographs"? Does Ynet mean to say that somebody in the "reform camp" actually falsifies photographs? Maybe Ynet is a covert "supporter of the regime"?
Seriously, it is becoming clear that Neda was an innocent bystander who probably caught a lost bullet and that she had nothing to do with any political riots. I can't wait to get more details about whom the Tehran cops actually arrested.
More to come soon, I am sure.
In the meantime check these two recent articles about the "stolen elections" canard (here and here).
Unambiguous statement on Iran situation by President Hugo Chavez
Al-Manar reports:
"We call on the world to respect Iran because there are attempts to undermine the strength of the Iranian revolution," Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in his weekly radio and television address on Sunday.
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's triumph was a triumph all the way. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad's triumph and through that weaken the government and the Islamic revolution. I know they will not succeed," Chavez said.
The leftist leader said he had called Ahmadinejad after the elections to express his solidarity. The Venezuelan foreign ministry issued a statement blasting "the fierce and unfounded campaign from outside to discredit" the Iranian president.
-------
Comment: hopefully the folks on the Left who so far have bought into the Imperial psyop campaign will listen to Hugo Chavez' words. VS.
"We call on the world to respect Iran because there are attempts to undermine the strength of the Iranian revolution," Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in his weekly radio and television address on Sunday.
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's triumph was a triumph all the way. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad's triumph and through that weaken the government and the Islamic revolution. I know they will not succeed," Chavez said.
The leftist leader said he had called Ahmadinejad after the elections to express his solidarity. The Venezuelan foreign ministry issued a statement blasting "the fierce and unfounded campaign from outside to discredit" the Iranian president.
-------
Comment: hopefully the folks on the Left who so far have bought into the Imperial psyop campaign will listen to Hugo Chavez' words. VS.
The power of the "Basij Thug" (UPDATED!)
The War of Words:
The "Basij" is a paramilitary organization founded by Ayatollah Khomeini which is subordinated to the "Pasdaran" (Army of the Guards of the Islamic Revolution - a very powerful elite military force independent from the Iranian armed forces) and which was used in major assault operations during the Iran-Iraq war. Nowadays, the Basij are an auxiliary force for emergency situation which range from disaster management to law and order and riot control. As such, they often loathed by opponents of the Iranian regime.
Anybody who has been keeping up with the recent news from Iran must have noticed, albeit mostly possibly, that the Basij are almost invariably described as "Basij thugs". But where did that idea of Basij being "thugs" come from?
Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that indeed, the Basij are composed almost exclusively of thugs, nasty thugs at that, and that they use every opportunity to beat, maim, molest and abuse innocent Iranians. And then, let's ask this simple question:
What kind of knowledge do those in the West who write about "Basij thugs" have that the Basij are, indeed, thugs? Let me repeat, I am not arguing here that the Basij are not thugs, I am only asking where to those who throw around the words "Basij thugs" get their info from?
[Now please, those of you who did use that expression on my blog, do not rush to google in order to try to find proof of Basiji thuggery. Now is too late. No, my question was different. Did any of you actually do some serious research to establish the thuggish nature of the Basij *before* you used the words "Basij thugs"?]
The reality is that the entire concept of "Basij thugs" has exactly the same roots as, say, "Serbian Chetnik" or "Palestinian terrorist". While there are undoubtedly Basiji thugs, Serbian Chetniks and Palestinian terrorists out there, the use of these terms by people who have only second hand knowledge of Basijis, Chetnicks or Palestinians is a modern form of Orwell's "two minute of hate" - they serve to disconnect any rational thought and make a fact based and logic driven analysis impossible.
The Empire has always excelled in carefully framing the debate and giving the gullible public well identified targets for outrage and hatred. In the case of Iran, the millions invested by Uncle Shmuel in its strategic psyop campaign are now handsomely paying off.
The War of Images
By now we probably all have seen the terrible images of the young lady shot in the streets of Tehran. (If not, you can see these images here). The videos are identified as "Shot by Basij" and "Basij shoot to death a young woman". Here is the text which is circulated with the videos:
At 19:05 June 20thPlace: Karekar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st.
A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim's chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes. The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gass used among them, towards Salehi St.
Amazingly, a number of absolutely basic questions are *not* asked about this shooting:
1) "Shot by" - what kind of evidence is there that the shot came from the person identified as the shooter since the same text says that this person was hiding. Maybe somebody else was hiding also? Is there any ballistic evidence identifying the guy on the roof as the shooter?
2) "a Basij member hiding on a rooftop". How do we know that he was Basij?! Did he somehow identify himself after the shooting? (not before, since he was, quote "hiding").
3) "He could not miss her". Shooting down from a rooftop? What was the approximate distance and weapon used?
4) "He aimed straight at the heart". Wow! Not only are we told who shot the lady, but we even know what the shooter was aiming at. Now how could anybody know this unless the shooter was interviewed before or after the shooting. Also, this "Basij thugs" is clearly a elite marksman using a sniper rifle.
5) "I am a doctor". Wait - from all of the above I was under the impression that the author of this text was not a medial doctor, but a ballistics expert. Either that, or a psychic...
We will probably never find out what really happened that day. And maybe the lady was shot by a a member Basij. But then, maybe not. Could have been another shooter, could have been a totally missed shot by somebody with only very basic weapons skills, could have been a lost bullet, or it could have been a carefully orchestrated incident, with an elite marksman carefully aiming at a young lady (not a masked men or an old woman dressed in black - these would not make for adequate victims) with just the right folks standing nearby to take the seminal images proving the "barbarity of the Basij thugs unleashed by the corrupt regime of the Mullahs against the liberty-aspiring Iranian youths".
Those familiar with what happened in Venezuela during the famous scene of "Chavez' thugs shooting at unarmed peaceful demonstrators on a bridge in Caracas" know exactly what I am talking about here. Those who have not seen this video can order it here or download it from the Internet.
Lastly, nobody is asking the age old question: Cui Bono? Who has the most to gain (or the most to loose) from all this?
UPDATE1: The anwer to this question has kindly been provided by, of all things, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in its article "Iran turmoil likely to benefit Israel":
Like the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly two decades ago, the outcome of the post-election unrest in Iran could be of major strategic significance for the Middle East and for Israel.Israeli analysts see three possible scenarios:
* President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ruling ayatollahs use force to reassert the authority of their regime.
* Ahmadinejad's presidential rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, sweeps to power on a wave of popular support and reforms what still remains an essentially clerical regime.
* The unrest takes on a dynamic of its own, driving the ayatollahs from power.
In each scenario, Israel stands to benefit.
(Make sure to follow the link above and read the rest. It's a great read)
We don't even ask whether the action of one man (the putative "Basij thug" on the rooftop) tell us anything at all about the regime in power. After all, innocent people have been shot by law enforcement officials in every single country on the planet, even the most democratic one.
Any time you give guns to a large amount of people you will be giving guns to a certain percentage of clumsy idiots and/or morons who like the power and authority a gun gives them. I can almost guarantee you that sometime this week, some Basiji shot *himself* by mistake. The same would have happened in any country. Does any of this tell us anything useful or relevant about Iran?!
This is the real power of the "Basij thug". No, not the actual Basij member (whether thug or not), but the power of the idea of the "Basij thug". This concept achieve as suspension of thought, a kind of blind acceptance of a carefully tailored narrative which then explodes into a "two-minute of hate" kind of hostility towards the object of this debate-framing technique.
If anything, the current events in Iran have shown that the Western public has learned exactly *nothing* about how it has been manipulated for many decades already. The Empire is using the exact same techniques and, amazingly, it still achieves the exact same results. The gullible comemierdas (as they are so aptly called in Spanish) still are eager to gobble down whatever the Empire wants them to feed on.
No wonder our Imperial masters despises us and treats us like slaves. We deserve it.
The Saker
PS check out Craig Paul Roberts' latest article "Iran Falling to US Psyops" and listen to his recent interview on this topic.
UPDATE2: PressTV has just reported that the Tehran police denied that *any* shots at all were fired by its personnel on Sat. (thought whether this includes Basijis is unclear). PressTV is also reporting that some "armed vandals" have killed several people and that these "vandals" were arrested. (Not that any such denials or reports will have the slightest impact on those who have already decided that they 'know" who shot the young lady).
Mousavi's untenable complaint
by Kaveh L. Afrasiabi for Middle-East online
I am a political scientist not a lawyer but after 8 grueling years of self representing in a civil conspiracy case against Harvard University all the way to the US Supreme Court, I have learnt how to separate hearsay from scentilla of evidence from hard evidence, which is what is needed, and plenty of that, in order to overturn a national, tightly monitored elections.
Unfortunately, despite natural sympathy for the reformist movement in Iran, as someone who worked closely with former president Mohammad Khatami's Dialogue Among Civilizations, I am inclined to dismiss Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi's allegation of rigged elections, simply because he has not carried the burden of proffering solid evidence.
First, speak of irregularities. On June 12, at 11 pm one hour after the closure of voting stations Mr. Mousavi held a press conference and declared himself "the definite winner" citing "received information throughout the country." Of course, no one conducted any exit polls and the Mousavi camp that has been complaining about the breakdown on communication because of textmessaging shutdown and the like, has some explaining to do why their candidate prematurely declared himself the winner, when the incremental results from the election officials, posted every couple of hours on the website of Interior Ministry that night, consistently put Ahmadinejad ahead (just as various polls had predicted including one by a Washington-based Terror-Free-Tomorrow)?
Second, since then both Mousavi and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard in her interview with BBC, have passed off unreliable hearsay about what they heard from their supporters in the provinces as reliable evidence. That simply doesn't wash.
Third, Mousavi's campaign aide, filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, has claimed that Mousavi had received an official call congratulating him for being the winner. That could have been, from the HQ of Tehran's election organization, since Mousavi won the votes in Tehran, with a solid majority vote. Could it be that Mousavi self-servingly misinterpreted that as the news that he had won the national election? Well, only time will tell.
What's beyond dispute, however, is that Mousavi's official complaint to the overseeing Council of Guardians is thin on specifics and is peppered with allegations of pre-election improprieties, which do not substantiate his rigged elections wild claim. A deconstruction of this two page document sheds much light on the fundamental weakness of Mousavi's case for new elections:
Item 1: It has nothing to do with the voting process and is exclusively concerned about the television debates and Ahmadinejad's blunt statements about some regime dignitaries accusing them of corruption and nepotism;
Item 2: Again, deals exclusively with issues raised in the debates, accusing Ahmadinejad of insulting the late ayatollah Khomeini and endangering national security by revealing some state secrets;
Item 3: complaint that some representatives of Mr. Mousavi and the other candidates were not accredited by the Interior Ministry and were as a result unable to monitor the voting. The problem with this is that in and of itself this does not prove a fraud, and missing here is any reference to the thousands of "independent monitors" selected by the candidates who were accredited and were on site at various voting centers throughout the country. Truly, if Mousavi had a legitimate complaint he would have backed his complaint with an appendix documenting his observers' allegations. Yet, throught the complaint there is not one reference to such specific observations.
Item 4: It accuses the Interior Ministry of not hand counting all the votes and declaring the results "while some centers were still counting the votes." This is certainly a cause for concern, but then again, in light of the fact that some of those centers were in Tehran, where Mousavi got the majority of votes, discounts the possibility of fraud, especially a major faud involving a minimum ten million votes, that gave Ahmadinejad the edge over Mousavi.
Item 5: It claims that hundreds of voting centers had insufficient election forms and in some cases there were "a few hours delay." This again is not a proof of fraud in a high turn out election that brought out some 40 million voters. A counter-point is that so many centers extended their hours to accommodate the long lines of voters. Also, it claims that in some places the actual tally was higher than the registered voters. What is missing here is the pertinent fact that in some of those places, such as Yazd, Mousavi was the winner -- does this mean that we should now accuse Mr. Mousavi of voter fraud?!
Item 6: It states: "In addition to the above violations, on the day of voting, I wrote more than 80 letters to Mr. Kadkhodai the speaker of Council of Guardian." There is no mention of the content of those letters, and clearly the purpose here is to convey the impression of being in possession of more evidence than proffered in this complaint, as if washes with the elections laws and their stringent requirement of documenting all the evidence of voting violations in one complaint to the Council.
Item 7: It states: "Mr. Ahmadinejad during his excess time with the state radio and television that was illegally alloted to him predicted counter-secruity activities and implicitly claimed victory and accused his rivals of conspiracy. Accordingly, the headline news of Raja News, IRNA and Fars, as well as that of Kayhan newspaper, predicted his victory a few hours prior to the finish of voting." Actually, it was Mr. Mousavi himself who one hour after the closure of voting declared himself "the definitive winner" and there was nothing implicit about that. Again, this has nothing to do with what is demanded of Mr. Mousavi in terms of hard evidence to prove a fraudulent elections.
Item 8: Here, Mousavi's complaint accuses Mr. Ahmadinejad of violating the laws prohibiting the political involvement of the country's armed forces and militias (basiji). This is a serious allegation, but not germane to the complaint of voter fraud. Besides, Mousavi himself is guilty of the same tort, given the fact that his own election headquarters had a division for mobilization of basijis!
In conclusion, it appears that Mousavi, the war time politician, has taken a page or two from that era's "war of maneuver" that, I hasten to add, sent thousands of young Iranians to Iraqi killing fields. But, politics is not a zero-sum extension of war by other means and Mr. Mousavi should respect the will of majority of Iranians who re-elected president Ahmadinejad, instead of continuing with his ill-founded allegations that have marred a uniquely open and competitive race simply because it yielded the 'wrong winner' who is antithetical to western, and Israeli, interests.
(1) http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/?q=afrasiabi
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/06/18/DI2009061801702.html
http://www.allthingscnn.com/2009/06/who-runs-iran.html
- Iran's disputed election - 17 June 09 - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as9Upfn3R7g&feature=channel_page
Riz Khan - Iran's disputed election - 17 June 09 - Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnw3vaDF78&feature=channel_page
I am a political scientist not a lawyer but after 8 grueling years of self representing in a civil conspiracy case against Harvard University all the way to the US Supreme Court, I have learnt how to separate hearsay from scentilla of evidence from hard evidence, which is what is needed, and plenty of that, in order to overturn a national, tightly monitored elections.
Unfortunately, despite natural sympathy for the reformist movement in Iran, as someone who worked closely with former president Mohammad Khatami's Dialogue Among Civilizations, I am inclined to dismiss Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi's allegation of rigged elections, simply because he has not carried the burden of proffering solid evidence.
First, speak of irregularities. On June 12, at 11 pm one hour after the closure of voting stations Mr. Mousavi held a press conference and declared himself "the definite winner" citing "received information throughout the country." Of course, no one conducted any exit polls and the Mousavi camp that has been complaining about the breakdown on communication because of textmessaging shutdown and the like, has some explaining to do why their candidate prematurely declared himself the winner, when the incremental results from the election officials, posted every couple of hours on the website of Interior Ministry that night, consistently put Ahmadinejad ahead (just as various polls had predicted including one by a Washington-based Terror-Free-Tomorrow)?
Second, since then both Mousavi and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard in her interview with BBC, have passed off unreliable hearsay about what they heard from their supporters in the provinces as reliable evidence. That simply doesn't wash.
Third, Mousavi's campaign aide, filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, has claimed that Mousavi had received an official call congratulating him for being the winner. That could have been, from the HQ of Tehran's election organization, since Mousavi won the votes in Tehran, with a solid majority vote. Could it be that Mousavi self-servingly misinterpreted that as the news that he had won the national election? Well, only time will tell.
What's beyond dispute, however, is that Mousavi's official complaint to the overseeing Council of Guardians is thin on specifics and is peppered with allegations of pre-election improprieties, which do not substantiate his rigged elections wild claim. A deconstruction of this two page document sheds much light on the fundamental weakness of Mousavi's case for new elections:
Item 1: It has nothing to do with the voting process and is exclusively concerned about the television debates and Ahmadinejad's blunt statements about some regime dignitaries accusing them of corruption and nepotism;
Item 2: Again, deals exclusively with issues raised in the debates, accusing Ahmadinejad of insulting the late ayatollah Khomeini and endangering national security by revealing some state secrets;
Item 3: complaint that some representatives of Mr. Mousavi and the other candidates were not accredited by the Interior Ministry and were as a result unable to monitor the voting. The problem with this is that in and of itself this does not prove a fraud, and missing here is any reference to the thousands of "independent monitors" selected by the candidates who were accredited and were on site at various voting centers throughout the country. Truly, if Mousavi had a legitimate complaint he would have backed his complaint with an appendix documenting his observers' allegations. Yet, throught the complaint there is not one reference to such specific observations.
Item 4: It accuses the Interior Ministry of not hand counting all the votes and declaring the results "while some centers were still counting the votes." This is certainly a cause for concern, but then again, in light of the fact that some of those centers were in Tehran, where Mousavi got the majority of votes, discounts the possibility of fraud, especially a major faud involving a minimum ten million votes, that gave Ahmadinejad the edge over Mousavi.
Item 5: It claims that hundreds of voting centers had insufficient election forms and in some cases there were "a few hours delay." This again is not a proof of fraud in a high turn out election that brought out some 40 million voters. A counter-point is that so many centers extended their hours to accommodate the long lines of voters. Also, it claims that in some places the actual tally was higher than the registered voters. What is missing here is the pertinent fact that in some of those places, such as Yazd, Mousavi was the winner -- does this mean that we should now accuse Mr. Mousavi of voter fraud?!
Item 6: It states: "In addition to the above violations, on the day of voting, I wrote more than 80 letters to Mr. Kadkhodai the speaker of Council of Guardian." There is no mention of the content of those letters, and clearly the purpose here is to convey the impression of being in possession of more evidence than proffered in this complaint, as if washes with the elections laws and their stringent requirement of documenting all the evidence of voting violations in one complaint to the Council.
Item 7: It states: "Mr. Ahmadinejad during his excess time with the state radio and television that was illegally alloted to him predicted counter-secruity activities and implicitly claimed victory and accused his rivals of conspiracy. Accordingly, the headline news of Raja News, IRNA and Fars, as well as that of Kayhan newspaper, predicted his victory a few hours prior to the finish of voting." Actually, it was Mr. Mousavi himself who one hour after the closure of voting declared himself "the definitive winner" and there was nothing implicit about that. Again, this has nothing to do with what is demanded of Mr. Mousavi in terms of hard evidence to prove a fraudulent elections.
Item 8: Here, Mousavi's complaint accuses Mr. Ahmadinejad of violating the laws prohibiting the political involvement of the country's armed forces and militias (basiji). This is a serious allegation, but not germane to the complaint of voter fraud. Besides, Mousavi himself is guilty of the same tort, given the fact that his own election headquarters had a division for mobilization of basijis!
In conclusion, it appears that Mousavi, the war time politician, has taken a page or two from that era's "war of maneuver" that, I hasten to add, sent thousands of young Iranians to Iraqi killing fields. But, politics is not a zero-sum extension of war by other means and Mr. Mousavi should respect the will of majority of Iranians who re-elected president Ahmadinejad, instead of continuing with his ill-founded allegations that have marred a uniquely open and competitive race simply because it yielded the 'wrong winner' who is antithetical to western, and Israeli, interests.
(1) http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/?q=afrasiabi
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/06/18/DI2009061801702.html
http://www.allthingscnn.com/2009/06/who-runs-iran.html
- Iran's disputed election - 17 June 09 - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as9Upfn3R7g&feature=channel_page
Riz Khan - Iran's disputed election - 17 June 09 - Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnw3vaDF78&feature=channel_page
Iranian Elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax
by Prof. James Petras for GlobalResarch.ca
“Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation... Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion.”
Financial Times Editorial, June 15 2009
Introduction
There is hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously fabricating an ‘electoral success’ in Lebanon despite the fact that the Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote.
The recently concluded, June 12, 2009 elections in Iran are a classic case: The incumbent nationalist-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (13.2 million votes).
Iran’s presidential election drew a record turnout of more than 80% of the electorate, including an unprecedented overseas vote of 234,812, in which HM won 111,792 to MA’s 78,300. The opposition led by HM did not accept their defeat and organized a series of mass demonstrations that turned violent, resulting in the burning and destruction of automobiles, banks, public building and armed confrontations with the police and other authorities. Almost the entire spectrum of Western opinion makers, including all the major electronic and print media, the major liberal, radical, libertarian and conservative web-sites, echoed the opposition’s claim of rampant election fraud. Neo-conservatives, libertarian conservatives and Trotskyites joined the Zionists in hailing the opposition protestors as the advance guard of a democratic revolution. Democrats and Republicans condemned the incumbent regime, refused to recognize the result of the vote and praised the demonstrators’ efforts to overturn the electoral outcome. The New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, the Israeli Foreign Office and the entire leadership of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations called for harsher sanctions against Iran and announced Obama’s proposed dialogue with Iran as ‘dead in the water’.
The Electoral Fraud Hoax
Western leaders rejected the results because they ‘knew’ that their reformist candidate could not lose…For months they published daily interviews, editorials and reports from the field ‘detailing’ the failures of Ahmadinejad’s administration; they cited the support from clerics, former officials, merchants in the bazaar and above all women and young urbanites fluent in English, to prove that Mousavi was headed for a landslide victory. A victory for Mousavi was described as a victory for the ‘voices of moderation’, at least the White House’s version of that vacuous cliché. Prominent liberal academics deduced the vote count was fraudulent because the opposition candidate, Mousavi, lost in his own ethnic enclave among the Azeris. Other academics claimed that the ‘youth vote’ – based on their interviews with upper and middle-class university students from the neighborhoods of Northern Tehran were overwhelmingly for the ‘reformist’ candidate.
What is astonishing about the West’s universal condemnation of the electoral outcome as fraudulent is that not a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form has been presented either before or a week after the vote count. During the entire electoral campaign, no credible (or even dubious) charge of voter tampering was raised. As long as the Western media believed their own propaganda of an immanent victory for their candidate, the electoral process was described as highly competitive, with heated public debates and unprecedented levels of public activity and unhindered by public proselytizing. The belief in a free and open election was so strong that the Western leaders and mass media believed that their favored candidate would win.
The Western media relied on its reporters covering the mass demonstrations of opposition supporters, ignoring and downplaying the huge turnout for Ahmadinejad. Worse still, the Western media ignored the class composition of the competing demonstrations – the fact that the incumbent candidate was drawing his support from the far more numerous poor working class, peasant, artisan and public employee sectors while the bulk of the opposition demonstrators was drawn from the upper and middle class students, business and professional class.
Moreover, most Western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran extrapolated their projections from their observations in the capital – few venture into the provinces, small and medium size cities and villages where Ahmadinejad has his mass base of support. Moreover the opposition’s supporters were an activist minority of students easily mobilized for street activities, while Ahmadinejad’s support drew on the majority of working youth and household women workers who would express their views at the ballot box and had little time or inclination to engage in street politics.
A number of newspaper pundits, including Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, claim as evidence of electoral fraud the fact that Ahmadinejad won 63% of the vote in an Azeri-speaking province against his opponent, Mousavi, an ethnic Azeri. The simplistic assumption is that ethnic identity or belonging to a linguistic group is the only possible explanation of voting behavior rather than other social or class interests.
A closer look at the voting pattern in the East-Azerbaijan region of Iran reveals that Mousavi won only in the city of Shabestar among the upper and the middle classes (and only by a small margin), whereas he was soundly defeated in the larger rural areas, where the re-distributive policies of the Ahmadinejad government had helped the ethnic Azeris write off debt, obtain cheap credits and easy loans for the farmers. Mousavi did win in the West-Azerbaijan region, using his ethnic ties to win over the urban voters. In the highly populated Tehran province, Mousavi beat Ahmadinejad in the urban centers of Tehran and Shemiranat by gaining the vote of the middle and upper class districts, whereas he lost badly in the adjoining working class suburbs, small towns and rural areas.
The careless and distorted emphasis on ‘ethnic voting’ cited by writers from the Financial Times and New York Times to justify calling Ahmadinejad ‘s victory a ‘stolen vote’ is matched by the media’s willful and deliberate refusal to acknowledge a rigorous nationwide public opinion poll conducted by two US experts just three weeks before the vote, which showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin – even larger than his electoral victory on June 12. This poll revealed that among ethnic Azeris, Ahmadinejad was favored by a 2 to 1 margin over Mousavi, demonstrating how class interests represented by one candidate can overcome the ethnic identity of the other candidate (Washington Post June 15, 2009). The poll also demonstrated how class issues, within age groups, were more influential in shaping political preferences than ‘generational life style’. According to this poll, over two-thirds of Iranian youth were too poor to have access to a computer and the 18-24 year olds “comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all groups” (Washington Porst June 15, 2009).
The only group, which consistently favored Mousavi, was the university students and graduates, business owners and the upper middle class. The ‘youth vote’, which the Western media praised as ‘pro-reformist’, was a clear minority of less than 30% but came from a highly privileged, vocal and largely English speaking group with a monopoly on the Western media. Their overwhelming presence in the Western news reports created what has been referred to as the ‘North Tehran Syndrome’, for the comfortable upper class enclave from which many of these students come. While they may be articulate, well dressed and fluent in English, they were soundly out-voted in the secrecy of the ballot box.
In general, Ahmadinejad did very well in the oil and chemical producing provinces. This may have be a reflection of the oil workers’ opposition to the ‘reformist’ program, which included proposals to ‘privatize’ public enterprises. Likewise, the incumbent did very well along the border provinces because of his emphasis on strengthening national security from US and Israeli threats in light of an escalation of US-sponsored cross-border terrorist attacks from Pakistan and Israeli-backed incursions from Iraqi Kurdistan, which have killed scores of Iranian citizens. Sponsorship and massive funding of the groups behind these attacks is an official policy of the US from the Bush Administration, which has not been repudiated by President Obama; in fact it has escalated in the lead-up to the elections.
What Western commentators and their Iranian protégés have ignored is the powerful impact which the devastating US wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan had on Iranian public opinion: Ahmadinejad’s strong position on defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition.
The great majority of voters for the incumbent probably felt that national security interests, the integrity of the country and the social welfare system, with all of its faults and excesses, could be better defended and improved with Ahmadinejad than with upper-class technocrats supported by Western-oriented privileged youth who prize individual life styles over community values and solidarity.
The demography of voting reveals a real class polarization pitting high income, free market oriented, capitalist individualists against working class, low income, community based supporters of a ‘moral economy’ in which usury and profiteering are limited by religious precepts. The open attacks by opposition economists of the government welfare spending, easy credit and heavy subsidies of basic food staples did little to ingratiate them with the majority of Iranians benefiting from those programs. The state was seen as the protector and benefactor of the poor workers against the ‘market’, which represented wealth, power, privilege and corruption. The Opposition’s attack on the regime’s ‘intransigent’ foreign policy and positions ‘alienating’ the West only resonated with the liberal university students and import-export business groups. To many Iranians, the regime’s military buildup was seen as having prevented a US or Israeli attack.
The scale of the opposition’s electoral deficit should tell us is how out of touch it is with its own people’s vital concerns. It should remind them that by moving closer to Western opinion, they removed themselves from the everyday interests of security, housing, jobs and subsidized food prices that make life tolerable for those living below the middle class and outside the privileged gates of Tehran University.
Amhadinejad’s electoral success, seen in historical comparative perspective should not be a surprise. In similar electoral contests between nationalist-populists against pro-Western liberals, the populists have won. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and even Lula da Silva in Brazil, all of whom have demonstrated an ability to secure close to or even greater than 60% of the vote in free elections. The voting majorities in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national security over alignments with military empires.
The consequences of the electoral victory of Ahmadinejad are open to debate. The US may conclude that continuing to back a vocal, but badly defeated, minority has few prospects for securing concessions on nuclear enrichment and an abandonment of Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. A realistic approach would be to open a wide-ranging discussion with Iran, and acknowledging, as Senator Kerry recently pointed out, that enriching uranium is not an existential threat to anyone. This approach would sharply differ from the approach of American Zionists, embedded in the Obama regime, who follow Israel’s lead of pushing for a preemptive war with Iran and use the specious argument that no negotiations are possible with an ‘illegitimate’ government in Tehran which ‘stole an election’.
Recent events suggest that political leaders in Europe, and even some in Washington, do not accept the Zionist-mass media line of ‘stolen elections’. The White House has not suspended its offer of negotiations with the newly re-elected government but has focused rather on the repression of the opposition protesters (and not the vote count). Likewise, the 27 nation European Union expressed ‘serious concern about violence’ and called for the “aspirations of the Iranian people to be achieved through peaceful means and that freedom of expression be respected” (Financial Times June 16, 2009 p.4). Except for Sarkozy of France, no EU leader has questioned the outcome of the voting.
The wild card in the aftermath of the elections is the Israeli response: Netanyahu has signaled to his American Zionist followers that they should use the hoax of ‘electoral fraud’ to exert maximum pressure on the Obama regime to end all plans to meet with the newly re-elected Ahmadinejad regime.
Paradoxically, US commentators (left, right and center) who bought into the electoral fraud hoax are inadvertently providing Netanyahu and his American followers with the arguments and fabrications: Where they see religious wars, we see class wars; where they see electoral fraud, we see imperial destabilization.
“Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation... Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion.”
Financial Times Editorial, June 15 2009
Introduction
There is hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously fabricating an ‘electoral success’ in Lebanon despite the fact that the Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote.
The recently concluded, June 12, 2009 elections in Iran are a classic case: The incumbent nationalist-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (13.2 million votes).
Iran’s presidential election drew a record turnout of more than 80% of the electorate, including an unprecedented overseas vote of 234,812, in which HM won 111,792 to MA’s 78,300. The opposition led by HM did not accept their defeat and organized a series of mass demonstrations that turned violent, resulting in the burning and destruction of automobiles, banks, public building and armed confrontations with the police and other authorities. Almost the entire spectrum of Western opinion makers, including all the major electronic and print media, the major liberal, radical, libertarian and conservative web-sites, echoed the opposition’s claim of rampant election fraud. Neo-conservatives, libertarian conservatives and Trotskyites joined the Zionists in hailing the opposition protestors as the advance guard of a democratic revolution. Democrats and Republicans condemned the incumbent regime, refused to recognize the result of the vote and praised the demonstrators’ efforts to overturn the electoral outcome. The New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, the Israeli Foreign Office and the entire leadership of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations called for harsher sanctions against Iran and announced Obama’s proposed dialogue with Iran as ‘dead in the water’.
The Electoral Fraud Hoax
Western leaders rejected the results because they ‘knew’ that their reformist candidate could not lose…For months they published daily interviews, editorials and reports from the field ‘detailing’ the failures of Ahmadinejad’s administration; they cited the support from clerics, former officials, merchants in the bazaar and above all women and young urbanites fluent in English, to prove that Mousavi was headed for a landslide victory. A victory for Mousavi was described as a victory for the ‘voices of moderation’, at least the White House’s version of that vacuous cliché. Prominent liberal academics deduced the vote count was fraudulent because the opposition candidate, Mousavi, lost in his own ethnic enclave among the Azeris. Other academics claimed that the ‘youth vote’ – based on their interviews with upper and middle-class university students from the neighborhoods of Northern Tehran were overwhelmingly for the ‘reformist’ candidate.
What is astonishing about the West’s universal condemnation of the electoral outcome as fraudulent is that not a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form has been presented either before or a week after the vote count. During the entire electoral campaign, no credible (or even dubious) charge of voter tampering was raised. As long as the Western media believed their own propaganda of an immanent victory for their candidate, the electoral process was described as highly competitive, with heated public debates and unprecedented levels of public activity and unhindered by public proselytizing. The belief in a free and open election was so strong that the Western leaders and mass media believed that their favored candidate would win.
The Western media relied on its reporters covering the mass demonstrations of opposition supporters, ignoring and downplaying the huge turnout for Ahmadinejad. Worse still, the Western media ignored the class composition of the competing demonstrations – the fact that the incumbent candidate was drawing his support from the far more numerous poor working class, peasant, artisan and public employee sectors while the bulk of the opposition demonstrators was drawn from the upper and middle class students, business and professional class.
Moreover, most Western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran extrapolated their projections from their observations in the capital – few venture into the provinces, small and medium size cities and villages where Ahmadinejad has his mass base of support. Moreover the opposition’s supporters were an activist minority of students easily mobilized for street activities, while Ahmadinejad’s support drew on the majority of working youth and household women workers who would express their views at the ballot box and had little time or inclination to engage in street politics.
A number of newspaper pundits, including Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, claim as evidence of electoral fraud the fact that Ahmadinejad won 63% of the vote in an Azeri-speaking province against his opponent, Mousavi, an ethnic Azeri. The simplistic assumption is that ethnic identity or belonging to a linguistic group is the only possible explanation of voting behavior rather than other social or class interests.
A closer look at the voting pattern in the East-Azerbaijan region of Iran reveals that Mousavi won only in the city of Shabestar among the upper and the middle classes (and only by a small margin), whereas he was soundly defeated in the larger rural areas, where the re-distributive policies of the Ahmadinejad government had helped the ethnic Azeris write off debt, obtain cheap credits and easy loans for the farmers. Mousavi did win in the West-Azerbaijan region, using his ethnic ties to win over the urban voters. In the highly populated Tehran province, Mousavi beat Ahmadinejad in the urban centers of Tehran and Shemiranat by gaining the vote of the middle and upper class districts, whereas he lost badly in the adjoining working class suburbs, small towns and rural areas.
The careless and distorted emphasis on ‘ethnic voting’ cited by writers from the Financial Times and New York Times to justify calling Ahmadinejad ‘s victory a ‘stolen vote’ is matched by the media’s willful and deliberate refusal to acknowledge a rigorous nationwide public opinion poll conducted by two US experts just three weeks before the vote, which showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin – even larger than his electoral victory on June 12. This poll revealed that among ethnic Azeris, Ahmadinejad was favored by a 2 to 1 margin over Mousavi, demonstrating how class interests represented by one candidate can overcome the ethnic identity of the other candidate (Washington Post June 15, 2009). The poll also demonstrated how class issues, within age groups, were more influential in shaping political preferences than ‘generational life style’. According to this poll, over two-thirds of Iranian youth were too poor to have access to a computer and the 18-24 year olds “comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all groups” (Washington Porst June 15, 2009).
The only group, which consistently favored Mousavi, was the university students and graduates, business owners and the upper middle class. The ‘youth vote’, which the Western media praised as ‘pro-reformist’, was a clear minority of less than 30% but came from a highly privileged, vocal and largely English speaking group with a monopoly on the Western media. Their overwhelming presence in the Western news reports created what has been referred to as the ‘North Tehran Syndrome’, for the comfortable upper class enclave from which many of these students come. While they may be articulate, well dressed and fluent in English, they were soundly out-voted in the secrecy of the ballot box.
In general, Ahmadinejad did very well in the oil and chemical producing provinces. This may have be a reflection of the oil workers’ opposition to the ‘reformist’ program, which included proposals to ‘privatize’ public enterprises. Likewise, the incumbent did very well along the border provinces because of his emphasis on strengthening national security from US and Israeli threats in light of an escalation of US-sponsored cross-border terrorist attacks from Pakistan and Israeli-backed incursions from Iraqi Kurdistan, which have killed scores of Iranian citizens. Sponsorship and massive funding of the groups behind these attacks is an official policy of the US from the Bush Administration, which has not been repudiated by President Obama; in fact it has escalated in the lead-up to the elections.
What Western commentators and their Iranian protégés have ignored is the powerful impact which the devastating US wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan had on Iranian public opinion: Ahmadinejad’s strong position on defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition.
The great majority of voters for the incumbent probably felt that national security interests, the integrity of the country and the social welfare system, with all of its faults and excesses, could be better defended and improved with Ahmadinejad than with upper-class technocrats supported by Western-oriented privileged youth who prize individual life styles over community values and solidarity.
The demography of voting reveals a real class polarization pitting high income, free market oriented, capitalist individualists against working class, low income, community based supporters of a ‘moral economy’ in which usury and profiteering are limited by religious precepts. The open attacks by opposition economists of the government welfare spending, easy credit and heavy subsidies of basic food staples did little to ingratiate them with the majority of Iranians benefiting from those programs. The state was seen as the protector and benefactor of the poor workers against the ‘market’, which represented wealth, power, privilege and corruption. The Opposition’s attack on the regime’s ‘intransigent’ foreign policy and positions ‘alienating’ the West only resonated with the liberal university students and import-export business groups. To many Iranians, the regime’s military buildup was seen as having prevented a US or Israeli attack.
The scale of the opposition’s electoral deficit should tell us is how out of touch it is with its own people’s vital concerns. It should remind them that by moving closer to Western opinion, they removed themselves from the everyday interests of security, housing, jobs and subsidized food prices that make life tolerable for those living below the middle class and outside the privileged gates of Tehran University.
Amhadinejad’s electoral success, seen in historical comparative perspective should not be a surprise. In similar electoral contests between nationalist-populists against pro-Western liberals, the populists have won. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and even Lula da Silva in Brazil, all of whom have demonstrated an ability to secure close to or even greater than 60% of the vote in free elections. The voting majorities in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national security over alignments with military empires.
The consequences of the electoral victory of Ahmadinejad are open to debate. The US may conclude that continuing to back a vocal, but badly defeated, minority has few prospects for securing concessions on nuclear enrichment and an abandonment of Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. A realistic approach would be to open a wide-ranging discussion with Iran, and acknowledging, as Senator Kerry recently pointed out, that enriching uranium is not an existential threat to anyone. This approach would sharply differ from the approach of American Zionists, embedded in the Obama regime, who follow Israel’s lead of pushing for a preemptive war with Iran and use the specious argument that no negotiations are possible with an ‘illegitimate’ government in Tehran which ‘stole an election’.
Recent events suggest that political leaders in Europe, and even some in Washington, do not accept the Zionist-mass media line of ‘stolen elections’. The White House has not suspended its offer of negotiations with the newly re-elected government but has focused rather on the repression of the opposition protesters (and not the vote count). Likewise, the 27 nation European Union expressed ‘serious concern about violence’ and called for the “aspirations of the Iranian people to be achieved through peaceful means and that freedom of expression be respected” (Financial Times June 16, 2009 p.4). Except for Sarkozy of France, no EU leader has questioned the outcome of the voting.
The wild card in the aftermath of the elections is the Israeli response: Netanyahu has signaled to his American Zionist followers that they should use the hoax of ‘electoral fraud’ to exert maximum pressure on the Obama regime to end all plans to meet with the newly re-elected Ahmadinejad regime.
Paradoxically, US commentators (left, right and center) who bought into the electoral fraud hoax are inadvertently providing Netanyahu and his American followers with the arguments and fabrications: Where they see religious wars, we see class wars; where they see electoral fraud, we see imperial destabilization.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’?
by Paul Craig Roberts for Information Clearing House
A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Terhan. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events.
The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.
As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.
There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs' lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money. In my opinion, Ahmadinejad's attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs.
Commentators are "explaining" the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad's win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government.
On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”
On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”
A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”
The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine.
It requires total blindness not to see this.
Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/027782.html For example, neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ‘green revolution’ prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests.
Timmerman goes on to write that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘color’ revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.” Timmerman’s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”
A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Terhan. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events.
The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.
As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.
There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs' lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money. In my opinion, Ahmadinejad's attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs.
Commentators are "explaining" the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad's win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government.
On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”
On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”
A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”
The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine.
It requires total blindness not to see this.
Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/027782.html For example, neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ‘green revolution’ prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests.
Timmerman goes on to write that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘color’ revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.” Timmerman’s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”
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