It's the official Iranian election thread!

[Mandark]

Argh, you're not even reading my posts.

My point was, "fraud or not", that the protests have a chance of creating an impression in the minds of Iranian leaders that there is a reform movement that is sufficiently large and uncowed to be able to make demands of the political system.

It has nothing to do with the actual results of the election, and very little to do with the government's actions in the immediate aftermath.

[Dickie Dee]

It's pretty unfortunate that one of the features of a closed society is the lack of hard information for the opposition to latch onto. It seems like absent of that the opposition protests will be suppressd/dampened just long enough for them to fizzle out.

[huckleberry]

How much attention do elections in Japan, India, Argentina, or any other country, get from the U.S. media?  How many Americans and American journalists even know who is in political office in other countries besides England, France, and Germany?  Who can name the political leaders of Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Japan, or even China?

Yet, many know of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad.  The reason is obvious.  He is daily demonized in the U.S. media.

The U.S. media’s demonization of Ahmadinejad itself demonstrates American ignorance. The President of Iran is not the ruler.  He is not the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.  He cannot set policies outside the boundaries set by Iran’s rulers, the ayatollahs who are not willing for the Iranian Revolution to be overturned by American money in some color-coded “revolution.”

Iranians have a bitter experience with the United States government.  Their first democratic election, after emerging from occupied and colonized status in the 1950s, was overturned by the U.S. government.  The U.S. government installed in place of the elected candidate a dictator who tortured and murdered dissidents who thought Iran should be an independent country and not ruled by an American puppet.

The U.S. “superpower” has never forgiven the Iranian Islamic ayatollahs for the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s, which overthrew the U.S. puppet government and held hostage U.S. embassy personnel, regarded as “a den of spies,” while Iranian students pieced together shredded embassy documents that proved America’s complicity in the destruction of Iranian democracy.

The government-controlled U.S. corporate media, a Ministry of Propaganda, has responded to the re-election of Ahmadinejad with non-stop reports of violent Iranians protests to a stolen election. A stolen election is presented as a fact, even thought there is no evidence for it whatsoever.  The U.S. media’s response to the documented stolen elections during the George W. Bush/Karl Rove era was to ignore the evidence of real stolen elections.

Leaders of the puppet states of Great Britain and Germany have fallen in line with the American psychological warfare operation.  The discredited British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, expressed his “serioU.S. doubt” about Ahmadinejad’s victory to a meeting of European Union ministers in Luxembourg.  Miliband, of course, has no source of independent information.  He is simply following Washington’s instructions and relying on unsupported claims by the defeated candidate preferred by the U.S. Government.

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, had her arm twisted, too.  She called in the Iranian ambassador to demand “more transparency” on the elections.

Even the American left-wing has endorsed the U.S. government’s propaganda. Writing in The Nation, Robert Dreyfus’s presents the hysterical views of one Iranian dissident as if they are the definitive truth about “the illegitimate election,” terming it “a coup d’etat.”

What is the source of the information for the U.S. media and the American puppet states?

Nothing but the assertions of the defeated candidate, the one America prefers.

However, there is hard evidence to the contrary.  An independent, objective poll was conducted in Iran by American pollsters prior to the election. The pollsters, Ken Ballen of the nonprofit Center for Public Opinion and Patrick Doherty of the nonprofit New America Foundation, describe their poll results in the June 15 Washington Post.  The polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and was conducted in Farsi “by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award.”*

The poll results, the only real information we have at this time, indicate that the election results reflect the will of the Iranian voters.  Among the extremely interesting information revealed by the poll is the following:

    “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.

    “While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's principal opponent, Mir Hossein Moussavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.

    “The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our pre-election survey. During the campaign, for instance, Moussavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over MoU.S.avi.

    “Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.

    “The only demographic groups in which our survey found Moussavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.”

There have been numerous news reports that the U.S. government has implemented a program to destabilize Iran.  There have been reports that the U.S. government has financed bombings and assassinations within Iran. The U.S. media treats these reports in a braggadocio manner as illustrations of the American Superpower’s ability to bring dissenting countries to heel, while some foreign media see these reports as evidence of the U.S. government’s inherent immorality.

Pakistan’s former military chief, General Mirza Aslam Beig, said on Pashto Radio on Monday, June 15, that undisputed intelligence proves the U.S. interfered in the Iranian election. “The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful but hollow revolution following the election.”

The success of the U.S. government in financing color revolutions in former Soviet Georgia and Ukraine and in other parts of the former Soviet empire have been widely reported and discussed, with the U.S. media treating it as an indication of U.S. omnipotence and natural right and some foreign media as a sign of U.S. interference in the internal affairs of other countries.  It is certainly within the realm of possibility that Mir Hossein Moussavi is a bought and paid for operative of the U.S. government.
We know for a fact that the U.S. government has psychological warfare operations that target both Americans and foreigners through the U.S. and foreign media.  Many articles have been published on this subject. 

Think about the Iranian election from a common sense standpoint.  Neither myself nor the vast majority of readers are Iranian experts.  But from a common sense standpoint, if your country was under constant threat of attack, even nuclear attack, from two countries with much more powerful military establishments, as is Iran from the U.S. and Israel, would you desert your country’s best defender and elect the preferred candidate of the U.S. and Israel?

Do you believe that the Iranian people would have voted to become an American puppet state?

Iran is an ancient and sophisticated society.  Much of the intellectual class is secularized.  A significant, but small, percentage of the youth has fallen in thrall to Western devotion to personal pleasure, and to self-absorption. These people are easily organized with American money to give their government and Islamic constraints on personal behavior the bird. 

The U.S. government is taking advantage of these westernized Iranians to create a basis for discrediting the Iranian election and the Iranian government.

On June 14, the McClatchy Washington Bureau, which sometimes attempts to report the real news, acquiesced to Washington’s psychological warfare and declared: “Iran election result makes Obama’s outreach efforts harder.” What we see here is the raising of the ugly head of the excuse for “diplomatic failure,” leaving only a military solution.

As a person who has seen it all from inside the U.S. government, I believe that the purpose of the U.S. government’s manipulation of the American and puppet government media is to discredit the Iranian government by portraying the Iranian government as an oppressor of the Iranian people and a frustrater of the Iranian people’s will.  This is how the U.S. government is setting up Iran for military attack. 

With the help of Moussavi, the U.S. government is creating another “oppressed people,” like Iraqis under Saddam Hussein, who require American lives and money  to liberate.  Has Moussavi, the American candidate in the Iranian election who was roundly trounced, been chosen by Washington to become the American puppet ruler of Iran? 

The great macho superpower is eager to restore its hegemony over the Iranian people, thus settling the score with the ayatollahs who overthrew American rule of Iran in 1978.
That is the script.  You are watching it every minute on U.S. television.

There is no end of “experts” to support the script.  For one example among hundreds, we have Gary Sick, who formerly served on the National Security Council and currently teaches at Columbia University:

"If they'd been a little more modest and said Ahmadinejad had won by 51 percent," Sick said, Iranians might have been dubious but more accepting. But the government's assertion that Ahmadinejad won with 62.6 percent of the vote, "is not credible."

"I think,” continued Sick,  “it does mark a real transition point in the Iranian Revolution, from a position of claiming to have its legitimacy based on the support of the population, to a position that has increasingly relied on repression. The voice of the people is ignored."

The only hard information available is the poll referenced above.  The poll found that Ahmadinejad was the favored candidate by a margin of two to one.

But as in everything else having to do with American hegemony over other peoples, facts and truth play no part.  Lies and propaganda rule.

Consumed by its passion for hegemony, America is driven prevail over others, morality and justice be damned. This world-threatening script will play until America bankrupts itself and has so alienated the rest of the world that it is isolated and universally despised.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06162009.html

I know Paul Craig Roberts is a money guy but he raises good points about why anyone even cares about the elections in Iran. I don't necessarily agree with him on every point but he does have alot to say.

[Mandark]

A significant, but small, percentage of the youth has fallen in thrall to Western devotion to personal pleasure, and to self-absorption. These people are easily organized with American money to give their government and Islamic constraints on personal behavior the bird.

Roberts is just as invested in a pre-existing narrative as the people he's criticizing.  There's absolutely no evidence that US funding and support is behind the current protests.

It's the anti-imperialist left against the freedom-supporting liberals again.  We get to relive the pointless screaming matches over Reading Lolita In Tehran!  Wheeeeee!

[huckleberry]

I take it your not a fan of the anti-imperialist left?

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[Veidt]

Why is the world so interested in Iran all of a sudden?

[etiolate]

nuclear power + bloody images posted to web = interest

[Veidt]

I like it. Simple and effective.

[huckleberry]

Why is the world so interested in Iran all of a sudden?

I thought we were going to bring the light of liberty to N Korea first....guess I thought wrong.

[Mandark]

I take it your not a fan of the anti-imperialist left?

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Actually, I sympathize with them more than the Samantha Powers interventionist left.  The instinct for the US not to get involved in other people's politics is a good one.

It's just that some very vocal, confrontational people on both sides tend to shoehorn everything into their preferred narratives.  For the interventionists it's about oppressed good guys and the dictators who will curbstomp them in the abscence of American peacekeeping forces.  For the Counterpunch crowd, it's about legitimate foreign governments being threatened by the imperialist kings of capital and their minions. 

But goddam, read that thing you posted.  "The puppet states of Great Britain and Germany"?  Really?

I do have to take back the bit about Roberts being on the left, though.  A quick check shows that he regularly appears on LewRockwell (!) and VDARE (!!!).  Oh, and he's a Troofer to boot.  A real Renaissance man.

[huckleberry]

Regardless of his "Renaissance Man" status, which I agree goes a little too far... his statements about why the sudden interest in foreign elections for the usually flaccid American media still stands.


The sudden interest in the internal affairs of the Iranian political system from the media in this country - and their hard hitting in depth coverage smacks of the same great reporting concerning the internal affairs of Venezuela. I am not claiming that the opposition in Iran has no grievance - I am only agreeing with Roberts in that the way in which the media has filtered this down to bite sized right versus wrong.

Maybe their was fraud in the election.  I am not, and will not, claim otherwise.  But the absolute acceptance from our media that their just had to be fraud for the outcome to be what it was is way to simplistic.  Sure people yearn to be free - just look at our elections in 2000 and 2004....

[Phoenix Dark]

The American media demonizes Ahmadinejad? He does a pretty good job of demonizing himself

[huckleberry]

separating rhetoric from real threats should be the job for the media, no?


...thats not to say that Ahmadinejad helps his cause...of course, I doubt some of the more callous statements are for our audience at all.

[Mandark]

Arde0:  The mainstream media's coverage has oversimplified things badly, but Roberts goes only "a little too far"?  Really?  Let's recap his thesis:

1)  The current US political elite is bent on an invasion to topple Iran's government, as revenge for ousting the Shah.

2)  This elite directly controls the media and is using coverage to prep the public for the invasion.

3)  They also control the "puppet state" of Great Britain.

4)  They also control the "puppet state" of Germany (so leaving them out of the Coalition of the Willing was a real clever double-reverse or something).

5)  They also control the Iranian opposition movement.


He's wrong on so many levels.  Is there any reason to take this guy more seriously than, say, Bill Kristol?

[recursivelyenumerable]

4)  They also control the "puppet state" of Germany (so leaving them out of the Coalition of the Willing was a real clever double-reverse or something).

I guess you could say this resulted from a fissure within said elite that was healed (or resolved) with the election of Obama.

[huckleberry]

Mandar - ok, now I understand where you are coming from.  I am not trying to defend the article, and will not.  I only posted it because of his touching on the media handling of the election.  Maybe I should have posted these, more relevant and cogent, articles. 

The "Bomb Iran" contingent's newfound concern for The Iranian People
The Iranian Elections and the Faith Based-Media

I think you have me confused with someone who wants to go to bat for someone else's opinion or statements.  That is not what I want to do here.  Just presenting the idea that some people believe this whole thing to be way more interesting to Americans, and American media, than is credible to believe.

I see from your post why you wouldn't like the article based on the amount of sheer leftist rhetoric that he writes.  This does not represent my viewpoint...I hope you know that.  I am not a person who lives and dies on rhetoric from anyone. On the contrary, I value hard facts - which is something that is just absolutely not present in the current reporting on the Iranian situation in general, and the election in particular.  Hopefully the articles I posted above will better illustrate that.

[brawndolicious]

lol because the West should really intervene and force some more democracy.  Also, is it just me or do the Basiji's look like stereotypical nazi-literature jews?

[Mandark]

Arde0: Point taken.  Facts are being distorted all over, however.  Both Counterpunch pieces cite the Ballen/Doherty poll that had Ahmedinejad ahead of Mousavi 2 to 1, without mentioning that undecideds and supporters of other candidates totaled about 60%.

Anyway, the media here is covering it more because it's an event with a lot of conflict, good visuals, and an established starlet.

Ahmedinejad and Chavez gets coverage disproportionate to their actual power, and a lot of the blame should lie with editors, as well as hawkish pundits who are looking for villains.  But they've gone out of their way to position themselves as national and regional icons in the struggle against aggressive American hegemony.  The extra attention and outrage is something they've deliberately cultivated.

[Phoenix Dark]

wtf

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the strongest message yet from the U.S. government, the House voted 405-1 Friday to condemn Tehran's crackdown on demonstrators and the government's interference with Internet and cell phone communications.

Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas libertarian, cast the sole opposing vote.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_IRAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-06-19-11-23-59
FoC redeemed

[AdmiralViscen]

What's Paul's justification for that?!

[Flannel Boy]

What's Paul's justification for that?!

Many libertarians have a need to maintain ideological purity. Since he's clearly against foreign interventionism, he can't support a simple condemnation, believing it's a form of intervention.

[brawndolicious]

Well doing nothing for no reason is the price he has to pay for free publicity.

[Crushed]

world famous VAGINA-DOCTOR NO takes a stand for what's right. take that, filthy foreigners.

[The Fake Shemp]

19 people died in unrest Saturday in Tehran, hospital sources said. Unconfirmed reports put the death toll at 150.

Holy shit.

[Mandark]

If the protests continue, there's a good chance that number will seem very small.

I don't want to see them cowed into silence, but I don't see the regime letting this continue much further without violently squashing that.

[CurseoftheGods]

warning: very graphic



http://www.chillnite.com/young-iranian-protestor-is-shot-dead-in-tehran-very-graphic

[Kestastrophe]

 :'(

That's awful. Do you know where she was shot?

[demi]

I cant believe that's even on YouTube

[CurseoftheGods]

:'(

That's awful. Do you know where she was shot?

A friend of mine just sent me this link:

http://primarysources.newsvine.com/_news/2009/06/20/2951910-her-name-was-neda

All the info that's known about her right now.