To go by the U.S. corporate news everyone in Iran is busy twittering their hatred of the mullahs and their love for America. Nothing could be further from the truth. Out of the 71 million people in Iran about 13,000 are on Twitter. To say they represent a rare and privileged demographic is akin to opining that the Pope is Catholic.
Yes,the Iranians desperately want reform. Like all political systems where the fulcrums of power are static theirs is stifled by corruption. And like every backward patriarchy in the world women are dying to be heard and killed for singing. We just can't (won't) hear them in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Did Ahmadinejad really win? No one really knows -- even in Iran. But it's ludicrous to think Mousavi intends to dismantle the system, unseat the mullahs and free the Persian women.
"There's a little bit of an analogy back to 2000, the Florida vote, and Al Gore taking it all the way to the Supreme Court, and finally accepting the Supreme Court's judgment to the disappointment of many who didn't want George W. Bush to be president at the time. It's not a completely fair analogy. The whole thing in 2000 was that, well, we have to accept the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court has obviously made a political decision and not a legal decision. But they made it to preserve the stability of the United States, the national interest of the United States. That's an argument I think that Khamenei and his supporters will make to the opposition."--Hooman Majd, Iranian-American journalist and former writer for Prime Minister, Khatami
NeoCon Reality Check
"This is not a rejection of the Revolution"--Mir Hossein Mousavi
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Friday, June 26, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Stirring Fury
It has become more and more apparent that the crisis in Iran has less to do with the contested election between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi than a showdown that had been long time coming. It pits a "conservative" zealot against a "moderate" billionaire, they being Khamenei, and Rafsanjani, two of the Islamic Revolution's most powerful clerics.
Which of the two set the pot to a boil is an open question. But as the saying goes-- be careful what you ask for. The Iranian people have awakened to the fact that while the ruling mullahs may have been chosen by God they are neither supreme nor infallible.
Mousavi, after a timid beginning, has seized the moment to ride the tiger ... or tame it?: "The people expect from their officials honesty and decency as many of our problems are because of lies ... The Islamic revolution should be the way it was and the way it should be. If the people's trust is not matched by protecting their votes, or if they are not able to defend their rights in a civil peaceful reaction, there will be dangerous ways ahead."
Dangerous indeed, but for whom? Robert Fisk offers some intriguing insights: In Tehran, there must have been five or six thousand Iranians wearing black, many of them carrying this toxic document in their hands, although they were far fewer than Monday's million-strong march and scarcely a fifth of their number reached Azadi Square from the centre of Tehran. Their enthusiasm to maintain their protest – led yesterday by a cavalry of a hundred or more motorbike riders – was cruelly treated by the organisers, who clearly had little idea whether they were supposed to direct them to a central venue or all the way out to Azadi. At times, they stood in the heat for more than a quarter of an hour while organisers argued about the route. This was no way to overthrow a government. What was significant, however, was that once more the security authorities chose not to confront the Mousavi demonstrators.
With any luck the poor will rally with the students and Mousavi's tentative gambit will clear the path for an authentic reformer. I suspect one candidate is the billionaire's "radical" daughter.
From Times of India: Faezeh Hashemi, renowned women's rights activist, former parliament deputy, head of women sports and daughter of Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani has been arrested.
Make no mistake, this struggle is a fight, long overdue, for the rights of Iranian women. Amandla!
Which of the two set the pot to a boil is an open question. But as the saying goes-- be careful what you ask for. The Iranian people have awakened to the fact that while the ruling mullahs may have been chosen by God they are neither supreme nor infallible.
Mousavi, after a timid beginning, has seized the moment to ride the tiger ... or tame it?: "The people expect from their officials honesty and decency as many of our problems are because of lies ... The Islamic revolution should be the way it was and the way it should be. If the people's trust is not matched by protecting their votes, or if they are not able to defend their rights in a civil peaceful reaction, there will be dangerous ways ahead."
Dangerous indeed, but for whom? Robert Fisk offers some intriguing insights: In Tehran, there must have been five or six thousand Iranians wearing black, many of them carrying this toxic document in their hands, although they were far fewer than Monday's million-strong march and scarcely a fifth of their number reached Azadi Square from the centre of Tehran. Their enthusiasm to maintain their protest – led yesterday by a cavalry of a hundred or more motorbike riders – was cruelly treated by the organisers, who clearly had little idea whether they were supposed to direct them to a central venue or all the way out to Azadi. At times, they stood in the heat for more than a quarter of an hour while organisers argued about the route. This was no way to overthrow a government. What was significant, however, was that once more the security authorities chose not to confront the Mousavi demonstrators.
With any luck the poor will rally with the students and Mousavi's tentative gambit will clear the path for an authentic reformer. I suspect one candidate is the billionaire's "radical" daughter.
From Times of India: Faezeh Hashemi, renowned women's rights activist, former parliament deputy, head of women sports and daughter of Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani has been arrested.
Make no mistake, this struggle is a fight, long overdue, for the rights of Iranian women. Amandla!
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Murder, Rape and Plunder INC.
Anglo/American covert operations intended to destabilize uncooperative governments is nothing new. Ever since the U.S./British-backed coup in 1953 that toppled Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, former colonies have understood that their continued "independence" relied on their remaining obedient little client states. This of course has proved quite unsatisfactory for the countries' citizens who imagined that their resources were finally going to be exploited for their benefit.
Faced with this dilemma, many adopted the approach of the Shah of Iran who to tamp down the rising discontent after Mosaddeq's removal formed a cadre of secret police, the notoriously brutal and hated SAVAK. The barely-known twist to Iran's sad story is that when the Ayatollah Khomeini took power after the country's 1979 "Islamic" revolution he rehired the very thugs that the CIA trained to run SAVAK.
Less cynical "third-world" leaders, lacking the stomach to torture their own people, are forced to try and run their cash-strapped governments in an atmosphere of threats and virtual anarchy. A situation that makes their first world masters not the least bit unhappy.
The more mayhem the easier it is to steal.
As former U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan said in 2003:
“The economic dimensions of armed conflict ... should never be underestimated. [P]rivate companies operate in many conflict zones or conflict-prone countries… private enterprises and individuals are involved in the exploitation of, and trade in, lucrative natural resources, such as oil, diamonds, narcotics, timber and coltan... Governments and rebel groups alike have financed and sustained military campaigns in this way. In many situations, the chaos of conflict has enabled resources to be exploited illegally or with little regard for equity or the environment.”
A darkly ironic aside is that while the West remains largely indifferent to the human slaughter taking place in the Congo, a coalition of U.S. zoos has launched a cell-phone recycling campaign to save the country's endangered gorillas.
Clearly the purpose of these ostensibly "political" covert missions is in direct contradiction to the Western press' trumpeted refrain that they are absorbed with "spreading democracy and supporting freedom." As Seymour Hersh points out in his latest New Yorker expose on the secret war being waged against Iran, "one possible consequence of the operations would be a violent Iranian crackdown on one of the dissident groups, which could give the Bush administration a reason to intervene,"
So when one reads that the Iranians have executed a Balochistan journalist for supposedly committing treason, without knowing whether or not the charge is true one can say with a measure of assurance that it was meant to send a message.
The vicious consequence of this cynical conundrum is that the very places, like Balochistan and the Congo, that deserve much more coverage have become too dangerous for even the bravest reporters.
And so the victims are left to languish or be sacrificed to the interests of either side who in the meantime are quietly sharing their ill-gotten gains. All the while another forgotten people die with their anger and frustration and we're left to showily wring our hands and pretend that good comes from doing great evil.
Faced with this dilemma, many adopted the approach of the Shah of Iran who to tamp down the rising discontent after Mosaddeq's removal formed a cadre of secret police, the notoriously brutal and hated SAVAK. The barely-known twist to Iran's sad story is that when the Ayatollah Khomeini took power after the country's 1979 "Islamic" revolution he rehired the very thugs that the CIA trained to run SAVAK.
Less cynical "third-world" leaders, lacking the stomach to torture their own people, are forced to try and run their cash-strapped governments in an atmosphere of threats and virtual anarchy. A situation that makes their first world masters not the least bit unhappy.
The more mayhem the easier it is to steal.
As former U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan said in 2003:
“The economic dimensions of armed conflict ... should never be underestimated. [P]rivate companies operate in many conflict zones or conflict-prone countries… private enterprises and individuals are involved in the exploitation of, and trade in, lucrative natural resources, such as oil, diamonds, narcotics, timber and coltan... Governments and rebel groups alike have financed and sustained military campaigns in this way. In many situations, the chaos of conflict has enabled resources to be exploited illegally or with little regard for equity or the environment.”
A darkly ironic aside is that while the West remains largely indifferent to the human slaughter taking place in the Congo, a coalition of U.S. zoos has launched a cell-phone recycling campaign to save the country's endangered gorillas.
Clearly the purpose of these ostensibly "political" covert missions is in direct contradiction to the Western press' trumpeted refrain that they are absorbed with "spreading democracy and supporting freedom." As Seymour Hersh points out in his latest New Yorker expose on the secret war being waged against Iran, "one possible consequence of the operations would be a violent Iranian crackdown on one of the dissident groups, which could give the Bush administration a reason to intervene,"
So when one reads that the Iranians have executed a Balochistan journalist for supposedly committing treason, without knowing whether or not the charge is true one can say with a measure of assurance that it was meant to send a message.
The vicious consequence of this cynical conundrum is that the very places, like Balochistan and the Congo, that deserve much more coverage have become too dangerous for even the bravest reporters.
And so the victims are left to languish or be sacrificed to the interests of either side who in the meantime are quietly sharing their ill-gotten gains. All the while another forgotten people die with their anger and frustration and we're left to showily wring our hands and pretend that good comes from doing great evil.
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