There are people all over the net spreading rumors that internet communication to/out has been cut, that Mousavi is under house arrest ([link:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/13/AR2009061300627.html|false]), that people are being killed, oh my God, so much bullshit drama from rumors that are starting nobody knows where.

People like Andrew Sullvan are churning out propaganda as quickly as he can type. Rupert Murdoch's papers are printing stories about unbelievable voilence and a ton of neoliberal & Israeli apparatchiks are running all over the net posting rumors and fanning the flames.

And it may be working. Unbelievable.

[hr]
[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
Mir-Hossein Mousavi's Iran/Contra Connection?

Reza Fiyouzat, Revolutionary Flowerpot Society

June 8, 2009

What do [link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ledeen|Michael Ledeen] (the American 'neo-conservative'), [link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir-Hossein_Mousavi|Mir-Hossein Mousavi] (the Iranian presidential candidate of 'change') and [link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi|Adnan Khashoggi] (the opulent Saudi Arabian jet-setter) have in common?

They are all good friends and associates of [link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuchehr_Ghorbanifar|Manuchehr Ghorbanifar] (an Iranian arms merchant, an alleged MOSSAD double agent, and a key figure in the [link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair|Iran/Contra Affair], the arms-for-hostages deals between Iran and the Reagan administration). In one or two, at most three, degrees of separation, these people hung out in the same circles and very likely drank to the same toasts.

You can find all kinds of trivia about Ghorbanifar in the Walsh Report on the Iran/Contra affair. In Chapter 8, for example, we learn:

"Ghorbanifar, an Iranian exile and former CIA informant who had been discredited by the agency as a fabricator, was a driving force behind these proposals [for arms-for-hostages deal];" or, "Ghorbanifar, as broker for Iran, borrowed funds for the weapons payments from Khashoggi, who loaned millions of dollars to Ghorbanifar in "bridge financing'" for the deals. Ghorbanifar repaid Khashoggi with a 20 percent commission after being paid by the Iranians," (see: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_08.htm).

Here is a bit from an article by Time magazine that shows Ghorbanifar's circle of associates; it is from a January 1987 cover story ([link:205.188.238.109/time/magazine/article/0,9171,963262-1,00.html|The Murky World of Weapons Dealers]; January 19, 1987):

"By (Ghorbanifar's) own account he was a refugee from the revolutionary government of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, which confiscated his businesses in Iran, yet he later became a trusted friend and kitchen adviser to Mir Hussein Mousavi, Prime Minister in the Khomeini government. Some U.S. officials who have dealt with Ghorbanifar praise him highly. Says Michael Ledeen, adviser to the Pentagon on counterterrorism: "(Ghorbanifar) is one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known." Others call him a liar who, as one puts it, could not tell the truth about the clothes he is wearing," (emphasis added).
This second bit is from Chapter 1 of Walsh Iran/Contra Report: (http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm)

"On or about November 25, 1985, Ledeen received a frantic phone call from Ghorbanifar, asking him to relay a message from (Mir-Hossein Mousavi) the prime minister of Iran to President Reagan regarding the shipment of the wrong type of HAWKs. Ledeen said the message essentially was "we've been holding up our part of the bargain, and here you people are now cheating us and tricking us and deceiving us and you had better correct this situation right away.''

(...)

"In early May, North and CIA annuitant George Cave met in London with Ghorbanifar and Nir, where the groundwork finally was laid for a meeting between McFarlane and high-level Iranian officials, as well as financial arrangements for the arms deal. Among the officials Ghorbanifar said would meet with an American delegation were the president and prime minister (Mousavi) of Iran and the speaker of the Iranian parliament," (emphasis added).

And to remind how Michael Ledeen became involved in the Iran/Contra affair in 1985, here is a bit from Chapter 15 of Walsh Report (http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_15.htm):

"(McFarlane) authorized Michael A. Ledeen, a part-time NSC consultant on anti-terrorism, to ask Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to check on a report that the Israelis had access to good sources on Iran. By early August 1985, Ledeen's talks had led to a direct approach by Israeli officials to McFarlane, to obtain President Reagan's approval to ship U.S.-supplied TOW missiles to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Beirut. McFarlane said he briefed the President, Regan, Shultz, Weinberger, Casey and perhaps the Vice President about the proposal in July and August 1985.40 McFarlane said that Casey recommended that Congress not be informed of the arms sales."

There you have it. Now, I'm no investigative journalist, so I'll leave it to the professionals to dig deeper into this.

But, I do have to wonder aloud: Seeing how we cannot ignore his 'neo-con' credentials and that Michael Ledeen maintained his very good relations with Ghorbanifar, (who at least used to be) a good friend of Mir-Hossein Mousavi (the 'candidate of change' in the Iranian presidential elections); and given the support that Mousavi's candidacy has been receiving from the American 'moderates', maybe this kind of 'change' is the 'regime change' the Americans have had in mind for Iran?


http://revolutionaryflowerpot.blogspot.com/2009/06/mir-hossein-mousavis-irancontra.html [/quote]

Said a student who is part of the "Mousavi movement": hes our Obama

ie the candidate of sons of privilege merrily text-messaging their way through life

Don't think its a "reimge change"..remember Khatami?

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
As prime minister from 1981 to 1989, Mousavi oversaw social austerity measures imposed to finance the Iran-Iraq war. At the time, he was a proponent of normalizing relations with the US and recognizing Arab regimes. In the lead-up to the American Iran-Contra scandal in the late 1980s, as the US and Israel sold weapons to Iran, Mousavi organized arms purchases from Israel and oversaw the repression of opposition to the negotiations with US officials on weapons—including the execution of prominent Iranian politician Mehdi Hashemi, who had led a Tehran demonstration against these covert arms deals.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/iran-j04.shtml[/quote]

This whole thing just reeks of Ukraine & Georgia. It's absolutely disgusting how neoliberals have been manipulating & agitating students.

It's not too hard to see through this bullshit. Meanwhile Iran is


http://www.undispatch.com/node/8414

"Mousavi, get my vote back for me"? Who scripts these things?

I don't remember Khatami. I had to google (again ;) )

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
During his two terms as president, Khatami advocated freedom of expression, tolerance and civil society, constructive diplomatic relations with other states including those in the European Union and Asia, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment.
...

On March 16, he (Khatami) announced he was withdrawing from the race in favor of his long-time friend and adviser, former Prime Minister of Iran, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0316/breaking23.htm [/quote]


What are you getting at? You're going to have to spell it out for me in crayon.

Iran: Riot in Tehran streets after election day

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m55094&hd=&size=1&l=e

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=98010&sectionid=351020101


The Leader of the Islamic Revolution has hailed the high voter turnout in Iran, calling on the entire nation to support the president-elect in achieving his mandate.

Speaking one day after Super Friday when more than 32 million people cast their votes in the country's 10th presidential election, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei congratulated the nation on their massive turnout.

"The participation of over 80 percent of Iranians at the polls and the 24-million votes cast is a cause for true celebration and god willing this will ensure the continuation of the country's progress and the maintenance of national security," Ayatollah Khamenei said in statement.

Friday's election witnessed incumbent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win 24.5 million of the votes -- nearly 62 percent.

Mir-Hossein Moussavi came second with 13.2 million votes, followed by Mohsen Rezaei with more than 630 thousand votes and Mehdi Karroubi with 320 thousand votes.

"The spirit of calm presented by the nation, in the face of enemy propaganda and the nation's mass participation was such that makes it indescribable in words," the Leader added.

The president-elect is the president of the entire Iranian nation and even those who were his rivals yesterday must now support and aid him, as this is a divine test for us all, Ayatollah Khamenei said.

Election battles turn into street fights in Iran
AP

By ANNA JOHNSON and BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writers Anna Johnson And Brian Murphy, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 17 mins ago

TEHRAN, Iran – Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with police in the heart of Iran's capital Saturday, pelting them with rocks and setting fires in the worst unrest in Tehran in a decade. They accused the hard-line president of using fraud to steal election victory from his reformist rival.

The brazen and angry confrontations — including stunning scenes of masked rioters tangling with black-clad police — pushed the self-styled reformist movement closer to a possible moment of truth: Whether to continue defying Iran's powerful security forces or, as they often have before, retreat into quiet dismay and frustration over losing more ground to the Islamic establishment.

But for at least one day, the tone and tactics were more combative than at any time since authorities put down student-led protests in 1999. Young men hurled stones and bottles at anti-riot units and mocked Ahmadinejad as an illegitimate leader. The reformists' new hero, Mir Hossein Mousavi, declared himself the true winner of Friday's presidential race and urged backers to resist a government based on "lies and dictatorship."

Authorities, too, pushed back with ominous measures apparently seeking to undercut liberal voices: jamming text messages, blocking pro-Mousavi Web sites and Facebook and cutting off mobile phones in Tehran.

The extent of possible casualties and detentions was not immediately clear. Police stormed the headquarters of Iran's largest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, and arrested several top reformist leaders, said political activists close to the party.The activists spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Mousavi did not appear in public, but warned in a Web message: "People won't respect those who take power through fraud."

Many backers took this call to the streets. Thousands of protesters — mostly young men — roamed through Tehran looking for a fight with police and setting trash bins and tires ablaze. Pillars of black smoke rose among the mustard-colored apartment blocks and office buildings in central Tehran. In one side road, an empty bus was engulfed in flames.

Police fought back with clubs, including mobile squads on motorcycles swinging truncheons.

The scuffles began when protesters gathered hours outside the Interior Ministry around the time officials announced the final election results showing a nearly 2-to-1 landslide for Ahmadinejad. Demonstrators chanted "the government lied" and waved the ribbons of Mousavi's "green" movement — the signature color of his youth-driven campaign.

"I won't surrender to this manipulation," said a statement on Mousavi's Web site. "The outcome of what we've seen from the performance of officials ... is nothing but shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran's sacred system and governance of lies and dictatorship."

The door for possible compromise was closed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He could have used his near-limitless powers to intervene in the election dispute. But, in a message on state TV, he urged the nation to unite behind Ahmadinejad, calling the result a "divine assessment."

There are no independent election monitors in Iran. Mousavi's claims, however, point to some noticeable breaks with past election counting.

The tallies from previous elections — time-consuming paper ballots — began to trickle in hours after polls closed. This time, huge chunks of results — millions at a time — poured in almost immediately from a huge turnout of about 85 percent of Iran's 46.2 million voters. The final outcome: 62.6 percent of the vote to Ahmadinejad and 33.75 for Mousavi, a former prime minister from the 1980s.

The U.S. refused to accept Ahmadinejad's claim of a landslide re-election victory said it was looking into allegations of election fraud.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she hoped the outcome reflects the "genuine will and desire" of Iranian voters. At a joint appearance with Clinton, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said his country was "deeply concerned" by reports of irregularities in the election.

Past Iranian elections were considered generally fair. In 2005, when Ahmadinejad was first elected, the losing candidates claimed irregularities at the polls, but the charges were never investigated.

"The majority of Iranians are certain that the fraud is widespread," said Tehran-based analyst Saeed Leilaz. "It's like taking 10 million votes away from Mousavi and giving them to Ahmadinejad."

Whether this is enough to spawn a sustained opposition movement remains an open question.

Much depends on how much they are willing to risk. The heartland of Iran's liberal ranks is the educated and relatively affluent districts of north Tehran. It's also the showcase for the gains in social freedoms that began with the election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997: makeup, Internet cafes, head scarves that barely cover hair and satellite dishes that are technically illegal but common.

The ruling clerics tolerate all that to a point — part of a tacit arrangement that the liberties stay as long as reformists remain politically meek. A real protest movement could threaten their coveted Western-looking lifestyle and risk a brutal response from groups vowing to defend the Islamic system.

The political chief of the powerful Revolutionary Guard has warned it would crush any "revolution" against the Islamic regime by Mousavi's "green movement" — drawing parallels to the "velvet revolution" of 1989 in then-Czechoslovakia.

Ahmadinejad accused the foreign media of producing coverage that harmed the Iranian people, saying "a large number of foreign media ... organized a full-fledged fight against our people."

Authorities also called foreign journalists with visas to cover the elections, including members of The Associated Press, and told them they should prepare to leave the country. Italian state TV RAI said one of its crews was caught in the clashes in front Mousavi's headquarters. Their Iranian interpreter was beaten with clubs by riot police and officers confiscated the cameraman's tapes, the station said.

"The massive demonstrations of police and army presence on the streets was designed to show that they were quite ready to kill protesters if they had to in order to impose order," said Patrick Clawson, deputy director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "On the whole, these guys in north Tehran who are terribly upset about what is happening are not ready to die."

Hadi Ghaemi, spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, denounced the outcome as "a Tehran Tiananmen" — a reference to China's brutal 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists — and urged the international community not to recognize the result.

There were also protests by Mousavi supporters in the southern city of Ahvaz in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan who shouted, "Mousavi, take our votes back!" witnesses said.

Mousavi called on his backers to avoid violence, but he is still talking tough about pressing his claims of election fraud. He charges the polls closed early but has not fully outlined all of his fraud allegations.

Unlike his ally Khatami, Mousavi is a hardened political veteran who led the country during the grim years of the 1980-88 war with Iraq. He also could join forces with the powerful political patriarch Heshemi Rafsanjani, who strongly opposed Ahmadinejad's re-election during the intense monthlong campaign.

Amjad Atallah, a Washington-based regional analyst, called it "one of the most existential moments" in Iran since 1979 Islamic Revolution.

"You can't overstate how important what is happening now is for Iran," he said.

In Tehran, several Ahmadinejad supporters cruised the streets at dawn waving Iranian flags out of car windows and shouting "Mousavi is dead!"

They were quickly overwhelmed by the Mousavi backers.

The protesters — some hiding their faces with masks — still wandered the streets after nightfall as some fires still burned. The pungent smell of burning rubber and smoldering trash lingered in some parts of the city.

Hundreds of anti-riot police blocked the streets leading to Tehran University's dormitory, home to thousands of students and the site of the 1999 student riots that marked the biggest disturbances in post-revolution Iran. University exams nationwide were postponed until next month.

Oddly, normal life was interspersed with the anger. People continued shopping and stores remained open.

With the Internet and mobile texting down, some Iranians turned to Twitter to voice their views.

"Very disappointed with Iran elections," said one entry."Apparently still a backward regressive nation."

Another: "Elections in Iran: stayed tuned as it gets interesting (& maybe scary)."

Ahmadinejad addressed a crowd in Tehran, but did not mention the unrest, saying only "a new era has begun in the history of the Iranian nation."

But there were no hints of any new policy shifts on key international issues such as Iran's standoff over its nuclear program and the offer by President Barack Obama to open dialogue after a nearly 30-year diplomatic estrangement. All high-level decisions are controlled by the ruling theocracy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090613/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_election

http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/curley_ap_exported.jpg
Tom Curley, president and chief executive of The Associated Press, speaks during the William Allen White Day program at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan., Friday, Feb. 6, 2009. Curley came to the University of Kansas to receive this year's national citation for journalistic excellence from the William Allen White Foundation. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

75% of the Iranian population is under 30.

This is not going to be pretty.

This is just one of the videos in your link (so more people can get an idea and go check it out)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0MkATcn04M

Need a laugh?

TimesOnline (I think Raw Story is linking to it as well):

Mullahs ‘rigged poll’ in fear of Barack Obama effect

...“The Iran election seriously complicates Obama’s game plan in the region,” said Steven Clemons, of the New America Foundation, a left-of-centre Washington think tank. “But if Ahmadinejad is sworn in and the situation gets relatively stable, nothing at all has changed in the equation that Obama set out during the campaign: we have to deal with our enemies – we must engage.”

There had been high hopes of an “Obama effect” in Iran, similar to the victory for a pro-western coalition in Lebanese elections this month in which Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed “party of God”, was defeated.

Obama had said that what had been true in Lebanon could be true in Iran as well – “you’re looking at people seeing new possibilities”.

Tehran drew a different lesson from Hezbollah’s defeat, according to Lawrence Korb, of the Center for American Progress, who was a foreign policy adviser to Obama during his election campaign. “The mullahs were afraid that if they went two-nil down, the United States and Europe would have taken a tougher line with them on the nuclear issue,” he said.

Korb argued that the regime had rigged the vote in response to Obama’s success in reaching out to Muslims on a visit to the Middle East this month. “It shows how concerned the regime is about his popularity in the Muslim world. They didn’t have to fake the results of the previous election.”...

[link:www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6493623.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093|TimesOnline] - UK

Success in reaching out?
People in the ME are not as stupid as media pundits here...

Heard it All Before: Obama’s Cairo Speech is Bush Foreign Policy
from International Political Will blog

The embarrassing praise and adoration that the media is pouring on Obama after his “speech to the Muslim world” in Cairo is proof that liberals no longer have a voice in public policy.

Instead, we are left with a pseudo-debate between the right and the center, with spin doctors trying to convince Americans (and even the Arab press) that what Obama said in Cairo was somehow different from what George W. Bush ever said.

Blow by blow comparison at the [link:www.internationalpoliticalwill.com/2009/06/heard-it-all-before/|link]

The U.S. on Saturday refused to accept hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim of a landslide re-election victory in Iran and said it was looking into allegations of election fraud.

Any hopes by the Obama administration of gaining a result similar to Lebanon's recent election, won by a Western-backed moderate coalition, appeared to be in jeopardy.

"We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran, but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at a news conference with Canada's foreign affairs minister, Lawrence Cannon.

Minutes after Clinton spoke, the White House released a two-sentence statement praising "the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians," but expressing concern about "reports of irregularities."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iZfgLuKrg3QBRltJ0qQMIzgIohdQD98Q476G0

Enthusiasm? Is that what they call it these days?

By the way, in case anyone here twitters here are some of the twitters I'm automatically ruling out.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]

@mohamadreza
@mousavi1388
@StopAhmadi
@IranRiggedElect
@tehranelection

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5843645 [/quote]

Good God. I just went to twitter and the minute I logged in, without going to any particular channel, without entering anything, there it was


"Dear Iranian People, Mousavi has not left you alone, he has been put under house arrest by Ministry of Intelligence"

posted, no cut and pasted, OVER AND OVER again by different people. And then they carry on a conversation about it.

http://www.internationalpoliticalwill.com/2009/06/heard-it-all-before/


Bookmarked. Thank you

and as for that other stuff :rofl:

About that "left-of-centre" Washington think tank, the New America Foundation

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
Donors:

David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Pew Charitable Trusts
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation


Board of Directors:

Eric Benhamou - Chairman & CEO, Benhamou Global Ventures and Chairman, 3Com Corporation
Scott Delman - Founder, Capital Z Investment Partners
James Fallows - Chairman, New America Foundation
Francis Fukuyama - Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University
Ted Halstead - Founding President & CEO, New America Foundation
Noosheen Hashemi - President, HAND Foundation
Laurene Powell Jobs - President of the Board, College Track
Kati Marton - Author and Journalist
Walter Russell Mead - Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations
Lenny Mendonca - Chairman, McKinsey Global Institute
Steven Rattner - Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group, LLC
Diane Ravitch - Research Professor of Education, New York University
Eric Schmidt - Chairman & CEO, Google, Inc.
Bernard L. Schwartz - Retired Chairman and CEO, Loral Space & Communications Ltd.
Anne-Marie Slaughter - Dean, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
Laura D'Andrea Tyson - Dean, London Business School
Christine Todd Whitman - President, Whitman Strategy Group
Daniel Yergin - Chairman, Cambridge Energy Research Associates
Fareed Zakaria - Editor, Newsweek International


Leadership Council:

Eric A. Benhamou - Chairman, 3Com Corporation & Palm Inc.; Chairman and CEO, Benhamou Global Ventures, LLC
Susan Chambers - Executive Vice President, Wal-Mart
Lewis B. Cullman - Founder & CEO, Cullman Ventures, Inc.
Laurene Powell Jobs - President of the Board, College Track
Peter Marber - Global Head of GEM Fixed Income and Currencies, HSBC Halbis Partners
Aria Mehrabi - Principal & Co-Founder, Pacific Star Capital
Lenny Mendonca - Chairmain, McKinsey Global Institute
Eric Mindich - Founder, Eton Park Capital Management
Steven Rattner - Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group, LLC
Eric Schmidt - Chairman & CEO, Google, Inc.
Bernard L. Schwartz -Retired Chairman & CEO, Loral Space & Communications Ltd.
Harry Sloan - Chairman & CEO, MGM, Inc.
Jonathan Soros - President & Co-Deputy Chairman, Soros Fund Management, LLC
John C. Whitehead - Chairman, The Goldman Sachs Foundation

Fellows:

[link:www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Noah_Feldman|Noah Feldman] (appointed in 2003 by the Coalition Provisional Authority as chief U.S. advisor to Iraq for the writing of the country’s new constitution; member- Task Force In Support of Arab Democracy )
[link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parag_Khanna|Parag Khanna] (worked as an analyst for the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum and the Brookings Institution. In 2007, he was a geopolitical advisor to the United States Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
[link:www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=James_Pinkerton|James Pinkerton] a graduate of Stanford University and a contributor to the Fox News Channel, worked in the White House under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush)
[link:www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mark_Schmitt|Mark Schmitt] is senior fellow (Mark Schmitt served as Director of Policy and Research for U.S. Programs at the Open Society Institute. Prior to this position, he ran OSI's funding program on political reform and state policy)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=New_America_Foundation [/quote]


Oh Lord, I just went to their YouTube Channel. Video number 1: "Democracy Promotion in the Age of Obama"

Sounds like the Project for a New Century of Hope Bunk

Tehran's main squares and streets have been crowded until the wee hours over this past week, as supporters of the upcoming election's two leading contestants roam the streets on foot and in cars, chanting, honking their horns, waving posters. On Tuesday night, a group of about 100 young men gathered on one side of Parkway Square, waving pictures of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and shouting slogans like, "Ahmadi, you're my life! You're my future president!" Facing them — separated by a line of police and plainclothes security officials — stood a crowd of young men at least twice the size. Dressed in green to express support for the moderate challenger Mir-Hossein Moussavi, they chanted back, "Death to this government that lies to its own people!" Scenes like these are emblematic of the country's main political divide in the run-up to Iran's presidential elections on June 12.

"There is a bipolarity in Iranian politics right now," says Mohammad Atrianfar, a political analyst in Tehran. "The change they were seeking in the U.S. is happening here, too. People are trying to unseat Ahmadinejad." There are also plenty of people who want the current President to stay, and Ahmadinejad has styled himself as the candidate of change itself, the anti-corruption revolutionary the Islamic Republic needs for its revival. But while an Ahmadinejad victory would mean more of the same populist economics and antagonism toward a "hostile" U.S., a Moussavi upset could herald the revival of reformist politics in Iran.

(snip)

On a recent Friday afternoon in south Tehran, an auditorium packed with some 6,000 Ahmadinejad supporters was filled with anthemic music as large video screens showed images of Iran's nuclear energy facilities and the recently launched Omid satellite — achievements that the Ahmadinejad administration prides itself on. Above the crowd, banners with pictures of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini and Ahmadinejad covered the walls.

Finally, Ahmadinejad appeared on stage amid a throng of aides, all male, all dressed in black. The crowd burst into chants exalting the president. Over the last four years, Ahmadinejad has cultivated an image as the leader of the downtrodden. At home, the hallmark of his presidency has been his visits to provincial towns and villages, always highlighting the plight of society's least privileged in his speeches. "We came to make a revolution from within the state," the president's aide Mehdi Kalhor tells TIME. "This was a revolution of the bare- footed."

With oil prices reaching a peak of $160 per barrel during his presidency, Ahmadinejad's government has collected about $280 billion in oil income over four years, as much as his predecessors did in their cumulative 16 years in office. He has used some of that money to distribute cash handouts across Iran, to facilitate loans to lower-income families, provide housing subsidies, and raise wages and pensions for government employees. "My parents are both retired teachers and yet they could barely sustain our household of seven," said an enthusiastic Amin Kazemi, a 19-year-old student of software engineering, at Friday's rally. "Since Ahmadinejad, both their salaries have gone up and we can live with dignity."


(snip)


For years, Ahmadinejad's government has talked about distributing "justice shares" from the profits of state-owned companies. A few weeks before the elections, for the first time, payments were made to 5.5 million of Iran's poorest. But the president's critics say he has pushed Iran's inflation rate to 25% with his "alms" policies. "They blame us for distributing potatoes," Ahmadinejad said from the stage. "I say you insult our people. They came to get potatoes, but what did they get to say 'Death to America'?" The crowd roared in approval, and the iron railing in the front row bowed as people strained to get ever closer to their president. "The people of Iran will never accept imperialism!"

There could not be more contrast between an Ahmadinejad campaign event — the stage occupied only by men, supporters dressed in black, the air filled with sentimental music and religious chants — and a recent rally for Moussavi, with supporters covered in shades of green bouncing to uplifting pop music and women standing on stage to represent him. At a recent Moussavi event attended by some 20,000 supporters — but not the man himself — banners carried phrases like "Government of Hope," "Justice" and "Freedom." A video showcased Iran's national icons, starting with heroes of the 1905 constitutional revolution through to the founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini. Missing in the genealogy was Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "For the first time in four years, we have an opportunity to protest this deceptive government," said Azar Sarikhani, 21, a student of applied mathematics. "We will never give up on the ideals we've had for more than a 100 years, ideals of democracy and rule of law. Freedom is a wish that never dies!"

(snip)

In his own speeches, Moussavi has talked of prohibiting the government from interfering in people's private lives, and allowing for people to participate in the public sphere. Ahmadinejad's government has clamped down on NGO activity, wary of the $75 million former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice allotted for "democracy promotion" in Iran.

(snip)

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1903125,00.html

Short documentary about the CIA involvement in installing the dictator Shah in Iran in 1953. This was when Iran attempted to take control of their OWN resources. The Shah ruled Iran with American support for 26 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y_TjO44Rx0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBs8WFNdSdQ

[hr]


1953
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/images/Tehranviolence53.jpg
Jim Pringle/ The Associated Press, 1953

Office equipment of a communist newspaper burns in a Tehran street
during pro-shah riot which swept the Iran captial August 19,1953.


Violence in Tehran, 19 August 1953
Associated Press, 1953

"The Director, on April 4, 1953, approved a budget of $1,000,000 which could be be used by the Tehran Station in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadegh." — [link:www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/iran-cia-intro.pdf|C.I.A. Document Part I, page 3]

"The purpose will be to create, extend, and enhance public hostility and distrust and fear of Mossadegh and his government." — [link:www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/iran-cia-intro.pdf|C.I.A. Document, Appendix B, page 15]


http://graphics.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600cia-timeline-pix.10.jpg
The Associated Press, 1953
A club-wielding Iranian woman joins other pro-Shah demonstrators on a
commandeered vehicle as they rolled through the streets of Teheran.


http://graphics.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600cia-timeline-pix.14.jpg
The Associated Press, 1951
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.


How a Plot Convulsed Iran in '53 (and in '79)
By JAMES RISEN
or nearly five decades, America's role in the military coup that ousted Iran's elected prime minister and returned the shah to power has been lost to history, the subject of fierce debate in Iran and stony silence in the United States. One by one, participants have retired or died without revealing key details, and the Central Intelligence Agency said a number of records of the operation — its first successful overthrow of a foreign government — had been destroyed.

But a copy of the agency's secret history of the coup has surfaced, revealing the inner workings of a plot that set the stage for the Islamic revolution in 1979, and for a generation of anti-American hatred in one of the Middle East's most powerful countries.

The document, which remains classified, discloses the pivotal role British intelligence officials played in initiating and planning the coup, and it shows that Washington and London shared an interest in maintaining the West's control over Iranian oil.

(snip)

The operation, code-named TP-Ajax, was the blueprint for a succession of C.I.A. plots to foment coups and destabilize governments during the cold war — including the agency's successful coup in Guatemala in 1954 and the disastrous Cuban intervention known as the Bay of Pigs in 1961. In more than one instance, such operations led to the same kind of long-term animosity toward the United States that occurred in Iran.

The history says agency officers orchestrating the Iran coup worked directly with royalist Iranian military officers, handpicked the prime minister's replacement, sent a stream of envoys to bolster the shah's courage, directed a campaign of bombings by Iranians posing as members of the Communist Party, and planted articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers.

But on the night set for Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh's overthrow, almost nothing went according to the meticulously drawn plans, the secret history says. In fact, C.I.A. officials were poised to flee the country when several Iranian officers recruited by the agency, acting on their own, took command of a pro-shah demonstration in Tehran and seized the government.

Two days after the coup, the history discloses, agency officials funneled $5 million to Iran to help the government they had installed consolidate power.

(snip)

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/WATgoingsonintheGulf.htm


More here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/aug/20/foreignpolicy.iran

And also an old, silent video
[link:www.thoughtequity.com/video/clip/524C126_023.do|A newspaper headline read "Mossadegh Flees Iran Riots, Shah Prepares Flight Home" as the Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi reads a document].

Dashing Fabricated Hopes: The Meaning of Ahmadinejad's Victory

It's been a little weird, if not embarrassing, to witness the reactions of the American press to the Iranian election in the last 24 hours.

There was the initial rush of expectation--that "change" was as much in the Iranian air as it had been in the American last fall, an equivalence so wrong on so many fronts that it managed to obscure the essential truth of the Iranian election: there never was a significant ideological difference between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi. Only a tonal one. But the Los Angeles Times was content to blare this headline: "[link:www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-election12-2009jun12,0,7170042.story|Iranians ready to decide presidency -- and maybe much more]."

There was the added irony of the LATimes' sub-headline: "The winner will play a key role in possible talks over Iran's nuclear program and support for militant groups," the implication being that if Mousavi were the winner, maybe he'd rein back the militants. But it was Mousavi who, as Iran's prime minister in the 1980s, helped build those militant groups into international terrorist forces, sending money, weapons and manpower to Lebanon to beef up Hezbollah and telegraphing their targets, including that string of American and European hostages Hezbollah held for most of the decade---and Mousavi traded for, haggling over anti-tank missiles and money with Oliver North and Bud McFarlane, in the infamous [link:middleeast.about.com/od/usmideastpolicy/f/me081109f.htm|Iran-contra affairs].

Still, the paper in Los Angeles, not to mention the New York Times and the Washington Post, have blithely referred to Mousavi as a "moderate" throughout the election campaign, accepting at face value his apparent conversion, if only because he kept his antipathy for the United States relatively silent.

But Slate's Samuel Rosner was [link:www.slate.com/id/2220283/|closer to reality]: The Iranian president isn't the one who decides Iran's fate, or foreign policy, or domestic policy, for that matter. It's Ali Khamenei, the "supreme leader," who does. But the big papers kept up the charade ("[link:www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/world/middleeast/12iran.html?_r=2&hp|As Iran Votes, Talk of a Sea Change]," went The New York Times), as if willing the fantasy.

The Times' executive editor, Bill Keller an old hand at foreign correspondence (he won a Pulitzer for somewhat blandish reporting from South Africa, if I'm remembering correctly) even sent himself to Tehran for a bit of trench writing (or to escape the fallout of his embarrassing performance in a [link:www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=230076&title=end-times|Daily Show bit]).

"(F)or those who dreamed of a gentler Iran," Keller [link:www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/world/middleeast/14memo.html?hp|wrote from Tehran], "Saturday was a day of smoldering anger, crushed hopes and punctured illusions, from the streets of Tehran to the policy centers of Western capitals. Iranians who hoped for a bit more freedom, a better managed economy and a less reviled image in the world wavered between protest and despair on Saturday."

All I can say is that they, and the amnesiac Western press, did it to themselves. A quarter of Iran's population is under 15, the median age is 26 (which means half the population is 26 or younger), which means the overwhelming majority of voters in Saturday's election have no memory of the 1980s when Mousavi was in charge of a country that was free neither economically nor in any other way. When others spoke of ending the Iran-Iraq war that had ravaged the country, Mousavi wailed, charging quitters that they were abandoning the ideals of the revolution.

This is the man the Kellers of the world so blindly put their hopes in.

So why was the West so self-deluded, both about Mousavi and the outcome of a foregone conclusion? I wish it was about misplaced hopes. No. It's something less honorable than that. It's about misplaced projections. It's about presuming that the West's agenda for Iran can somehow muscle its way over the agenda Iran reserves for itself. It's about reverting to pre-1979 assumptions that Iran would be as the West would want it to be. Which is to say that 30 years of history have taught the West next to nothing about Iran. That ignorance, those attitudes, those presumptions, are precisely why Iranians are still ready to vote for a man like Ahmadinejad, because for all his anti-Semitism, his belligerence, even his apparent stupidity on more than a few matters of state, he is the embodiment of an Iranian identity that brooks no imports, that needs no one else, certainly nothing western, not even (and above all not) Barack Obama, to define it. Mousavi would likely have been no different ideologically, but why chuck off a known quantity?

Reactionary editorial pages (what pages are left, anyway) will fold all over each other to claim that Iranians have embraced hate, that they've endorsed the destruction of Israel, that they've made their hostility clear. Stupid judgments, as I see them, if excusably America-centric: they're meant well. But they miss the point.

The point never has been for Iran to get a leadership the United States can deal with. That's the American perspective that's led nowhere for 30 years. The point is to get a leadership in the West willing to deal with whatever leadership Iran chooses for itself, on its own terms.

So here's where Obama's [link:middleeast.about.com/od/usmideastpolicy/a/me090424.htm|Norwuz message] will prove its worth (or not). Here's where Obama gets to show the Iranian people that he meant what he said. That he wants a dialogue, not just with the Iranian people, but with the Iranian leadership. Especially one chosen by the Iranian people. (At some point all those allegations of fraud are going to have to make way for the reality: if the United States could survive the fraud of 2000, so can Iran in 2009, though chances are Iran's fraud is less obvious than that of Bush v. Gore).

Obama can, of course, punt. Decide that he now has an excuse not to deal with Iran. But he doesn't. He has even less of an excuse today than he did yesterday. Unless he wants to play the fraudulent-election card and go down that slink to perdition. Somehow I can't imagine him doing that. I can't imagine him thinking that he would be dealing with anyone but Ahmadinejad after the election anyway: he knew that bumping off Ahmadinejad was a long shot. He knew, or should have known, that even if Mousavi would have replaced him, the policy differences would have been nil. At least Ahmadinejad gives Obama, as Ahmadinejad does Khamenei, a foil, if things go wrong. And Ahmadinejad, freed of a elections' burden, could maybe find his inner Nixon and make the leap across ideologies.

Who knows. This could be as big or bigger (because more authentic) a chance for a breakthrough than either side imagined. If both sides are willing to seize it. Here's how Obama could start: send a congratulations message to Ahmadinejad. Then get to work.


http://middleeast.about.com/b/2009/06/13/dashing-fabricated-hopes-the-meaning-of-ahmadinejads-victory.htm

Lebanon accuses Israel of election tampering


Lebanese telecommunication minister says Israel caused disruptions in cellular communication before and during Election Day. Country to file complaint with UN

Roee Nahmias Published: 06.10.09, 10:56 / Israel News


Lebanese Telecommunication Minister Gibran Bassil accused Israel on Tuesday of causing massive disruptions in cellular communication in the country ahead and on Election Day on Sunday.

At a press conference at his office Bassil claimed that inquiries conducted by his ministry revealed Israel was responsible for jamming cellular signals and interrupting communication among private users, defense officials, political activists and embassies.

Bassil said he asked Lebanon's foreign minister to issue a formal complaint with the UN regarding the alleged disruption.

"There are known sources of disruption from the sea and air," said Bassil, who claimed that he was the first to warn about the possibility of such attempts two months ago.

The problems, noted throughout the country and not just in the south, were registered mainly on the cellular networks, although landlines also suffered some disturbances, he added.

These accusations come in the heels of the recent exposure of an alleged "Israeli spy ring" in Lebanon.

This is not the first time that such allegations are being heard in the country. In the past Lebanese officials accused Israel of sending phone messages to Lebanese citizens as part of psychological warfare against them.


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3729089,00.html

Doesn't that sound *exactly* like what the hopes are for Mousavi? To be honest, however, we can't go too overboard with excitement over Ahmadinejad.

I like him because he came into the Empire's home turf and told them where to stick it in addition to calling the Emperor and all of his little Darth Vaders out as hypocrites, liars, murderers, thieves, and so forth. That ain't an everyday event.

But I'll tell you a little joke that tempers the discussion:
Q: how many anarcho-punks does it take change a lightbulb
A: punk can't change anything

The same applies to populists with burning appeals to national identity and a strong wellspring of Anti-americanism.

But nevertheless you know something is up when Ahmadinejad's name is mud and must by diktat be trampled underfoot every other sentence of every report while his rival is identified only as "The Rival". Not quite clandestine cloak-and-dagger by their standard, but it sure ain't peaches and cream

Incidentally, the gay divide is precisely a reflection of the class sympathies: amongst the students who want to drive imported cars there is no doubt a vibrant, militant (read" petulant) gay subculture. Amongst the working class (which even the BBC concedes is Ahmadinejad's "base")..not so much.

the blatherings about Iran that are everywhere. Even Juan Cole is pretty much following the line of the MSM.

One comment on another site which I haven't been able to verify and I wonder if anyone knows more about -
that past president Rafsanjani is the principle backer of Mousavi, and that Rafsanjani when he was president stole millions from the people.
Maybe this is very well-known, I'm not much of a student about Iran.

But if true I would like to be able to document it.
Can anyone verify this or direct me to a site?

thanks,
ellen

Nothing new for him -- he was a big supporter of Khatami four years ago..gotta be careful with him, especially on this topic

It stinks of one of those fake-ass "color revolutions" brought to you by the NED and CIA.

Mousavi urges Iran authorities to cancel election
AP

By ANNA JOHNSON and NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writers Anna Johnson And Nasser Karimi, Associated Press Writers – 19 mins ago

TEHRAN, Iran – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's main challenger is calling on authorities to cancel Friday's presidential election, saying it is the only way to restore public trust.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has accused authorities of election fraud, urged his supporters to continue their "civil and lawful" opposition to results showing Ahmadinejad won by a landslide. He advised police to stop violence against protesters.

Mousavi's statement was posted Sunday on one of his campaign Web sites. It is his first since two days of violent clashes between Ahmadinejad opponents and police erupted on the streets of Tehran.

Mousavi has claimed he was the true winner of the election.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Protesters set fires and smashed store windows Sunday in a second day of violence as groups challenging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election tried to keep pressure on authorities. Anti-riot police lashed back and the regime blocked Internet sites used to rally the pro-reform campaign.

Ahmadinejad dismissed the unrest — the worst in the decade in Tehran — as "not important" and insisted the results showing his landslide victory in Friday's vote were fair and legitimate. Along Tehran's Vali Asr street — where activists supporting rival candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi held a huge pre-election rally last week — tens of thousands marched in support of Ahmadinejad, waving Iranian flags and shouting his name.

The violence spilling from the disputed results has pushed Iran's Islamic establishment to respond with sweeping measures that include deploying anti-riot squads around the capital and cutting mobile phone messaging and Internet sites used by the Mousavi's campaign.

There's little chance that the youth-driven movement could immediately threaten the pillars of power in Iran — the ruling clerics and the vast network of military and intelligence forces at their command — but it raises the possibility that a sustained and growing backlash could complicate Iran's policies at a pivotal time.

President Barack Obama has offered to open dialogue after a nearly 30-year diplomatic freeze. Iran also is under growing pressure to make concessions on its nuclear program or face possible more international sanctions.

Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday he has doubts about whether the election was free and fair, as Ahmadinejad claims. He said the U.S. and other countries need more time to analyze the results before making a better judgment about the vote.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said his country is "very worried" about the situation in Iran, criticizing the Iranian authorities' "somewhat brutal reaction" to the election protests.

So far, Mousavi has issued mixed signals through his Web site before it was shut down. He urged for calm but also said he is the legitimate winner of Friday's election and called on supporters to reject a government of "lies and dictatorship." He has not been seen in public since a news conference shortly after polls closed.

In a second day of clashes, scores of young people shouted "Death to the dictator!" and broke the windows of city buses on several streets in central Tehran. They have burned banks, trash bins and piles of tires used as flaming barricades to block police.

Riot police beat some of the protesters with batons while dozens of others holding shields and motorcycles stood guard nearby. Shops, government offices and businesses closed early as tension mounted.

In a news conference, Ahmadinejad called the level of violence "not important from my point of view" and likened it to the intensity after a soccer match.

"Some believed they would win, and then they got angry," he said. "It has no legal credibility. It is like the passions after a football match. ... The margin between my votes and the others is too much and no one can question it."

About a mile away from Ahmadinejad's news conference, young Iranians set trash bins, banks and tires on fire as riot police beat them back with batons.

"In Iran, the election was a real and free one," said Ahmadinejad. "The election will improve the nation's power and its future," he told a packed room of Iranian and foreign media.

Ahmadinejad also accused foreign media of launching a "psychological war" against the country.

Iranian authorities have asked some foreign journalists — in Iran to cover the elections — to prepare to leave. Nabil Khatib, executive news editor for Dubai-based news network Al Arabiya, said the station's correspondent in Tehran was given a verbal order Sunday from Iranian authorities that the office will be closed for one week.

No reason was given for the order, but the station was warned several times Saturday that they need to be careful in reporting "chaos" accurately.

Iran restored cell phone service that had been down in the capital since Saturday. But Iranians could not send text messages from their phones, and the government increased its Internet filtering in an apparent attempt to undercut liberal voices. Social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter were also not working.

The restrictions were likely intended to prevent Mousavi's supporters from organizing large-scale protests. But smaller groups assembled around the city. About 300 Mousavi supporters gathered outside Sharif University, chanting "Where are our votes?"

About a dozen riot police used batons to disperse about 50 Mousavi supporters standing outside his campaign quarters.

On Saturday, Mousavi, a 67-year-old former prime minister, released a Web message saying he would not "surrender to this manipulation." Authorities responded with targeted detentions, apparently designed to rattle the leadership of Mousavi's "green" movement — the trademark color of his campaign.

The detentions include the brother of former reformist President Mohammad Khatami and two top organizers of Iran's largest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front: the party's secretary-general and the head of Mousavi's youth cyber campaign. Mohammad Reza Khatami and the two party activists were released Sunday.

Several others linked to Mousavi's campaign remained in custody, but the full extent of the arrests were not known.

Tehran deputy prosecutor, Mahmoud Slarkia, told the semi-official ISNA news agency that fewer than 10 people were arrested on the charge of "disturbing public opinion" through their "false reports" on Web sites after the election. He did not mention any names.

Iran's deputy police chief, Ahmad Reza Radan, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that about 170 people have been arrested for their involvement in Saturday's protests. He said 10 of those arrested were "main planners" and 50 were "rioters." The others were arrested for being at the site of the clashes, he said. Some of the detained were active in Mousavi's campaign headquarters or had relations with foreign media, he said.

"Police will not allow protesters to disturb the peace and calmness of the people under the influence of foreign media," Radan said on state television, which showed footage of the protests for the first time Sunday.

Mousavi's newspaper, Kalemeh Sabz, or the Green Word, did not appear on newsstands Sunday. An editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the paper never left the printing house because authorities were upset with Mousavi's statements.

The paper's Web site reported that more than 10 million votes in Friday's election were missing national identification numbers similar to U.S. Social Security numbers, which make the votes "untraceable." It did not say how it knew that information.

"Don't worry about freedom in Iran," Ahmadinejad said at the news conference after a question about the disputed election. "Newspapers come and go and reappear. Don't worry about it."

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, closed the door for possible compromise. He could have used his near-limitless powers to intervene in the election dispute. But, in a message on state TV on Saturday, he urged the nation to unite behind Ahmadinejad, calling the result a "divine assessment."

The U.S. has refused to accept Ahmadinejad's claim of a landslide re-election victory said it was looking into allegations of election fraud. There are no independent election monitors in Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday she hoped the outcome reflects the "genuine will and desire" of Iranian voters.

The European Union also said it was "concerned about alleged irregularities" during Friday's vote.

In Beirut, Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group — which is aided by Iran — congratulated Ahmadinejad and said the vote was conducted in an atmosphere of "freedom."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090614/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_election

the comment section is insightful

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=98077&sectionid=351020101

The landslide victory of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June 12 presidential elections has garnered a mixed response in the World political scene.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was among the first world leaders to congratulate his Iranian counterpart for the success of his re-election bid, in yesterday's poll which saw an unprecedented voter turnout of 85% .

"The victory of Dr. Ahmadinejad in the recent election is a win for all people in the world and free nations against global arrogance," Chavez said on Saturday.

Pakistan's President, Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai conveyed their separate congratulatory messages to President Ahmadinejad on Sunday.

In the Arab world, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa congratulated Ahmadinejad on his historic election win, saying that he hopes his re-appointment would promote better relations between Iran and Arab countries.

The Amir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, also lauded Ahmadinejad's re-election as Iranian president.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent a congratulatory message to his Iranian counterpart on Saturday, in whiched he wished the prosperity and wellfare of the Iranian people.

Mohammad-Mehdi Akef, Leader of Egyptian Ikhwan al-Muslemin, Palestine's Hamas Resistance, and Lebanon's Hezbollah Movement, hailed President Ahmadinejad on his victory in separate messages.

"The outcome of the June 12 elections in Iran show the immense popularity of Iran's policy," read a statement by Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.

"Ahmadinejad's victory proves his success in sponsoring and maintaining the people's interests and hopes and protecting them from the global threats," he added.

The Israeli officialdom, however, was quick to voice concern over Ahmadinejad's election victory.

"The problem presented by Iran for the international community is not personal, but derives from its policies," Israeli Foreign Minster Avigdor Liberman said in a statement.

Minister of Regional Cooperation Silvan Shalom said that "the election of Ahmadinejad sends a clear message to the world that the current policy has won widespread support and thus will continue".

During his first period in office, President Ahmadinejad, unlike his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, adopted a 'no compromise' policy over the country's civilian nuclear program which Israel and its Western allies insist must be halted.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also responded rather cautiously to Ahmadinejad's landslide win.

The EUropean Union-- which faced a disappointing record low turnout in its latest elections--has said it is concerned about the status quo in Iran after street protests broke out in the capital Tehran over election results.

Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon expressed serious reservation about Friday's historic polls and said Canadian embassy officials in Tehran are closely monitoring the election aftermath.

Friday's election witnessed incumbent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win 24.5 million of the votes -- nearly 62 percent.

Ahmadinejad's main challenger, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, came second with 13.2 million votes, followed by Mohsen Rezaei with more than 630 thousand votes and Mehdi Karroubi with 320 thousand votes.

Just throwing this out there. I admire Pepe's journalism more than most.

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3867&updaterx=2009-06-14+01%3A18%3A57

Iran has been hit by a political "earthquake": against worldwide expectations, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a landslide victory and a second term in the Iranian presidential election. At least that's what the Iranian regime says - to the disbelief of quite a few Iranians, not to mention the puzzlement of the world. Pepe Escobar argues this has been a mix of a very well organized state operation, and Ahmadinejad's real appeal to Iran's vast rural and working classes. The objective was to prevent a "threat" to the Iranian revolution principles from emerging, embodied by the "green revolution" of Mir-Hossein Mousavi's young supporters. The official margin of victory though, is simply not credible. The Iranian revolutionary system - embodied by top clerics and the Republican Guards - won. But will they get away with it?

Is that available in a bumper sticker do you know?

I will have to search, but I sure hope so. If not we can always make one here...

http://www.makestickers.com/

I love it too, very clever. :)

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Iran’s rulers amass fortunes through sleaze

(snip)

At the top slot comes, unsurprisingly to Iran observers, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose family rules over a vast financial and business empire. From the pistachio farms of his hometown Rafsanjan to huge oil trading companies, the ruling theocracy’s former president has used his power and influence to expand his wealth. Conservative estimates put his fortune at well beyond the 10 trillion Rial mark, the equivalent of $1.1 billion.

Most of the powerful cleric’s enormous wealth is vested in the hands of his sons and daughters, as well as other close relatives such as his brothers, nephews, and bother-in-laws, and son-in-laws. One of his villas was sold in 2004 for roughly 29 billion Rials. His brother, Mohammad Hashemi, the former chief of the state broadcasting corporation, owns the company Taha, which imports industrial-scale printers.

(snip)

http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5608 [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
(snip)

He is also the father of Iran's "privatization" program. During his presidency the stock market was revived, some government companies were sold to insiders, foreign trade was liberalized and the oil sector was opened up to private companies. Most of the good properties and contracts, say dissident members of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, ended up in the hands of mullahs, their associates and, not least, Rafsanjani's own family, who rose from modest origins as small-scale pistachio farmers.

(snip)

The 1979 revolution transformed the Rafsanjani clan into commercial pashas. One brother headed the country's largest copper mine; another took control of the state-owned TV network; a brother-in-law became governor of Kerman province, while a cousin runs an outfit that dominates Iran's $400 million pistachio export business; a nephew and one of Rafsanjani's sons took key positions in the Ministry of Oil; another son heads the Tehran Metro construction project (an estimated $700 million spent so far). Today, operating through various foundations and front companies, the family is also believed to control one of Iran's biggest oil engineering companies, a plant assembling Daewoo automobiles, and Iran's best private airline (though the Rafsanjanis insist they do not own these assets).

None of this sits well with the populace, whose per capita income is $1,800 a year. The gossip on the street, going well beyond the observable facts, has the Rafsanjanis stashing billions of dollars in bank accounts in Switzerland and Luxembourg; controlling huge swaths of waterfront in Iran's free economic zones on the Persian Gulf; and owning whole vacation resorts on the idyllic beaches of Dubai, Goa and Thailand.

But not much of the criticism makes its way into print. One journalist who dared to investigate Rafsanjani's secret dealings and his alleged role in extrajudicial killings of dissidents is now languishing in jail. He's lucky. Iranian politics can be deadly. Five years ago Tehran was rocked by murders of journalists and anticorruption activists; some were beheaded, others mutilated.

Some of the family's wealth is out there for all to see. Rafsanjani's youngest son, Yaser, owns a 30-acre horse farm in the super-fashionable Lavasan neighborhood of north Tehran, where land goes for over $4 million an acre. Just where did Yaser get his money? A Belgian-educated businessman, he runs a large export-import firm that includes baby food, bottled water and industrial machinery.

Until a few years ago the simplest way to get rich quick was through foreign-currency trades. Easy, if you could get greenbacks at the subsidized import rate of 1,750 rials to the dollar and resell them at the market rate of 8,000 to the dollar. You needed only the right connections for an import license. "I estimate that, over a period of ten years, Iran lost $3 billion to $5 billion annually from this kind of exchange-rate fraud," says Saeed Laylaz, an economist, now with Iran's biggest carmaker. "And the lion's share of that went to about 50 families."

(snip)


http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0721/056_print.html [/quote]


[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]

The front-runner among the presidential candidates is the embodiment of this programme: Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He is widely viewed as an opportunist and pragmatist, a sort of “Cardinal Richelieu” of the Islamic republic—unscrupulous, cunning and influential.

He was born in 1934 in Rafsanjani, the son of a pistachio plantation owner. In the 1950s he was a pupil of Khomeini in Quom. In 1963, he was arrested after the “white revolution” of Shah Pahlavi, who wanted to modernize Iran in the interests of native capital and the US. He was forced into military service, then arrested again in 1964 and detained for several years.

Unlike other Islamic fundamentalists, Rafsanjani is believed to have maintained contacts with the “People’s Mujaheddin” (MKO), and also with the Stalinist Tudeh Party. After his release, he officially became a priest, while unofficially acting as a fundraiser for Khomeini, who was now living in exile. Rafsanjani was a founding member of Khomeini’s Islamic-Republican Party (IRP) and became a member of the party’s executive committee.

After the fall of the Shah in 1979, he became a member of the Revolutionary Council, and then was appointed interior minister, charged with building up the country’s security forces and brutally suppressing left-wing groups. When Khomeini arrived in Iran, Rafsanjani was seen constantly at his side, appearing in the newspapers each day and thereby building up his public persona.

The Tudeh Party contributed much to his ascent, depicting Rafsanjani as the incarnation of the “Path of Imam Khomeini,” whom the party was supporting at the time.

In 1980, Rafsanjani became president of the parliament, and continued to develop his influence during the 1980-88 war against Iraq. Until 1986, he was considered to be a “radical,” calling for the extensive wealth of the Shah and other members of the elite who had fled to the West to be expropriated and placed under the control of the clergy and the state, which the clerics now dominated. There are reports that Rafsanjani and his friends and relatives also benefited personally. His clan is one of the richest families in Iran today.

Rafsanjani was unpopular among the bazaar merchants, who regarded him as the “socialist mullah.” He delivered fierce speeches on behalf of the “disenfranchised,” i.e., the numerous slum dwellers in the cities and the poor rural youth, who shed their blood on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war, and railed against “imperialism” and the “large and small Satan” (the US and Israel). At the same time, he concluded lucrative business deals with both countries, as was exposed in the “Iran-Contra” affair.

(snip)

Elected president of the Islamic Republic in 1989, Rafsanjani pursued a domestic programme of market reforms. In 1989-91, he denationalized hundreds of state enterprises, made foreign investment easier, and brought a series of technocrats into the government in the place of clerics. His government looked favourably upon the first Gulf War against Iraq.

(snip)

Elected president of the Islamic Republic in 1989, Rafsanjani pursued a domestic programme of market reforms. In 1989-91, he denationalized hundreds of state enterprises, made foreign investment easier, and brought a series of technocrats into the government in the place of clerics. His government looked favourably upon the first Gulf War against Iraq.

(snip)

Despite his unpopularity, Rafsanjani has not lost anything in wealth or power since his time as president. Quite the contrary. He is chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, which was established to resolve conflicts between parliament and the Council of Guardians.

According to an article in the German newspaper taz: “The man of God, who once earned a meagre living preaching heavenly redemption for believers, now possesses a fortune estimated at more than a billion US dollars. He is Iran’s largest exporter of pistachios. Together with his family, he owns several tourist centres both at home and abroad. His oldest son Mohsen is constructing the Teheran underground; his second son Mehdi is in the natural gas and oil business; his youngest son owns vast swathes of agricultural land; his two daughters Faezeh and Fatima are active in real estate both in Iran and abroad. Rafsanjani’s cousins, nephews and nieces own a considerable portion of the domestic automobile industry, as well as controlling much of the export of pistachios and saffron, and the import of vehicles, paper and machines. A considerable part of Iran’s black market is controlled by the Rafsanjani clan.”

In his election statements, Rafsanjani appeals to nationalism and says it is important to combat unemployment and poverty. At the same time, he calls for Iran to engage in market reforms and open itself up to the global economy. He has sent many conciliatory signals to the US. He told USA Today that he was one of the political figures in Iran capable of resolving the problems with the US, and called for a dialogue between the two governments.

The “reformists” have already signalled their support for him on this question. During his term of office, Khatami has repeatedly sought a rapprochement with the US, to a large extent unsuccessfully.

(snip)

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/iran-j13.shtml [div]

calling on authorities to cancel Friday's presidential election, saying it is the only way to restore public trust

You right wing asshole. You lost public trust a long time ago despite this charade the Western Twitter Film Industry is putting on.

urged his supporters to continue their "civil and lawful" opposition

God, I'm going to be sick. Ahmadinejab was projected to win because of HUGE rural support from people who don't want to see their country and security dismantled. The I-pod, Facebook, twitter crowd is made of of bourgeois thugs who need a shinier Porsche and are falling for a hard-right leader's sudden transformation and wedge crumbs.


Despite political differences with this Iran Contra ass, wow, he really doesn't care about his country. He'd rather see it burned to the ground for his buddies in DC than graciously concede.

This thing simply reeks.

Joe Biden said Sunday he has doubts about whether the election was free and fair

Yeah right, we saw that [link:www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1220444324673&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull|Friend-of-Israel] asshole front and center when the US elections were stolen in 2000.
What we didn't? You mean not a peep from his Iraq war-authorizing ass? Silly me.

youth-driven movement? For fucking shame. Manipulating young people in the former Soviet Union and now in Africa and the Middle East in true Soros resource-stealing manipulation.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said his country is "very worried"

Worried? The Darfur father of neoliberal "humanitrian interventions" & architect of the obscene destruction of Yugoslavia is "worried"? Jeez, let us all not sleep a wink.

Frankly, I can't even read any more of that tripe right now. Open dialog, change hope, yeah right...

Omg. This is simply TOO rich.


[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]

12:01 PM ET -- Joe Lieberman weighs in. One of the first official statements from a member of Congress, via email:

Through intimidation, violence, manipulation, and outright fraud, the Iranian regime has once again made a mockery of democracy, and confirmed its repressive and dictatorial character.

We as Americans have a responsibility to stand in solidarity with people when they are denied their rights by repressive regimes. When elections are stolen, our government should protest. When peaceful demonstrators are beaten and silenced, we have a duty to raise our voices on their behalf. We must tell the Iranian people that we are on their side.

For this reason, I would hope that President Obama and members of both parties in Congress will speak out, loudly and clearly, about what is happening in Iran right now, and unambiguously express their solidarity with the brave Iranians who went to the polls in the hope of change and who are now looking to the outside world for strength and support.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html
[/ul]

OMG. Someone bring us those chariots of fire.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land

Robert Fisk: Iran erupts as voters back 'the Democrator'

A smash in the face, a kick in the balls – that's how police deal with protesters after Iran's poll kept the hardliners in power

First the cop screamed abuse at Mir Hossein Mousavi's supporter, a white-shirted youth with a straggling beard and unkempt hair. Then he smashed his baton into the young man's face. Then he kicked him viciously in the testicles. It was the same all the way down to Vali Asr Square. Riot police in black rubber body armour and black helmets and black riot sticks, most on foot but followed by a flying column of security men, all on brand new, bright red Honda motorcycles, tearing into the shrieking youths – hundreds of them, running for their lives. They did not accept the results of Iran's presidential elections. They did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 per cent of the votes. And they paid the price.


"Death to the dictator," they were crying on Dr Fatimi Street, now thousands of them shouting abuse at the police. Were they to endure another four years of the smiling, avuncular, ever-so-humble President who swears by democracy while steadily thinning out human freedoms in the Islamic Republic? They were wrong, of course. Ahmadinejad really does love democracy. But he also loves dictatorial order. He is not a dictator. He is a Democrator.

Yesterday wasn't the time for the finer points of Iranian politics. That Mir Hossein Mousavi had been awarded a mere 33 per cent of the votes – by midday, the figure was humiliatingly brought down to 32.26 per cent – brought forth the inevitable claims of massive electoral fraud and vote-rigging. Or, as the crowd round Fatimi Square chorused as they danced in a circle in the street: "Zionist Ahmadinejad – cheating at exams." That's when I noticed that the police always treated the protesters in the same way. Head and testicles. It was an easy message to understand. A smash in the face, a kick in the balls and Long Live the Democrator.

Many of the protesters – some of them now wearing scarves over their faces, all coloured green, the colour of Mousavi's campaign – were trying to reach the Interior Ministry where the government's electoral council were busy counting (or miscounting, depending on your point of view) Friday's huge popular national vote. I descended into the basement of this fiercely ugly edifice – fittingly, it was once the headquarters of the Shah's party, complete with helipad on the roof – where cold chocolate lattes and strawberry fruitcake were on offer to journalists, and where were displayed the very latest poll results, put up at 10.56am Iranian time.

Eighty per cent of the votes had been counted and the results came up as Ahmadinejad 64.78 per cent; Mousavi 32.26 per cent; Mohsen Rezai (a former Revolutionary Guard commander) 2.08 per cent; and Mehdi Karoubi (a former parliament speaker) a miserable 0.89 per cent. How could this be, a man asked me on a scorching, dangerous street an hour later. Karoubi's party has at least 400,000 members. Were they all sleeping on Friday?

There were a few, sparse demonstrators out for the Democrator, all men, of course, and many of them draped in the Iranian flag because the Democrator – devout Muslim as he always displays himself – wrapped his election campaign in the national flag. Each of these burly individuals handed out free copies of the execrable four-page news-sheet Iran.

"Ahmadinejad," the headline read, "24 million votes. People vote for Success, Honesty and the Battle against Corruption." Not the obvious headline that comes to mind. But Mousavi's Green Word newspaper allegedly had its own headline dictated to it by the authorities – before they shut it down yesterday: "Happy Victory to the People." And you can't get more neutral than that.

Back on the streets, there were now worse scenes. The cops had dismounted from their bikes and were breaking up paving stones to hurl at the protesters, many of them now riding their own motorbikes between the rows of police. I saw one immensely tall man – dressed Batman-style in black rubber arm protectors and shin pads, smashing up paving stones with his baton, breaking them with his boots and chucking them pell mell at the Mousavi men. A middle-aged woman walked up to him – the women were braver in confronting the police than the men yesterday – and shouted an obvious question: "Why are you breaking up the pavements of our city?" The policeman raised his baton to strike the woman but an officer ran across the road and stood between them. "You must never hit a woman," he said. Praise where praise is due, even in a riot.

But the policemen went on breaking up stones, a crazy reverse version of France in May 1968. Then it was the young men who wanted revolution who threw stones. In Tehran – fearful of a green Mousavi revolution – it was the police who threw stones.

An interval here for lunch with a true and faithful friend of the Islamic Republic, a man I have known for many years who has risked his life and been imprisoned for Iran and who has never lied to me. We dined in an all-Iranian-food restaurant, along with his wife. He has often criticised the regime. A man unafraid. But I must repeat what he said. "The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad. Tabriz voted 80 per cent for Ahmadinejad. It was he who opened university courses there for the Azeri people to learn and win degrees in Azeri. In Mashad, the second city of Iran, there was a huge majority for Ahmadinejad after the imam of the great mosque attacked Rafsanjani of the Expediency Council who had started to ally himself with Mousavi. They knew what that meant: they had to vote for Ahmadinejad."


My guest and I drank dookh, the cool Iranian drinking yoghurt so popular here. The streets of Tehran were a thousand miles away. "You know why so many poorer women voted for Ahmadinejad? There are three million of them who make carpets in their homes. They had no insurance. When Ahmadinejad realised this, he immediately brought in a law to give them full insurance. Ahmadinejad's supporters were very shrewd. They got the people out in huge numbers to vote – and then presented this into their vote for Ahmadinejad."


But of course, the streets of Tehran were only a hundred metres away. And the police were now far more abusive to their adversaries. My own Persian translator was beaten three times on the back. The cops had brought their own photographers on to the pavements to take pictures of the protesters – hence the green scarves – and overfed plain-clothes men were now mixing with the Batmen. The Democrator was obviously displeased. One of the agents demanded to see my pass but when I showed my Iranian press card to him, he merely patted me on the shoulder and waved me through.

Thus did I arrive opposite the Interior Ministry as the police brought their prisoners back from the front line down the road. The first was a green-pullovered youth of perhaps 15 or 16 who was frog-marched by two uniformed paramilitary police to a van with a cage over the back. He was thrown on the steel floor, then one of the cops climbed in and set about him with his baton. Behind me, more than 20 policemen, sweating after a hard morning's work bruising the bones of their enemies, were sitting on the steps of a shop, munching through pre-packed luncheon boxes. One smiled and offered me a share. Politely declined, I need hardly add.

They watched – and I watched – as the next unfortunate was brought to the cage-van. In a shirt falling over his filthy trousers, he was beaten outside the vehicle, kicked in the balls, and then beaten on to a seat at the back of the vehicle. Another cop climbed in and began batoning him in the face. The man was howling with pain. Another cop came – and this, remember, was in front of dozens of other security men, in front of myself, an obvious Westerner, and many women in chadors who were walking on the opposite pavement, all staring in horror at the scene.

Now another policeman, in an army uniform, climbed into the vehicle, tied the man's hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs, took out his baton and whacked him across the face. The prisoner was in tears but the blows kept coming; until more young men arrived for their torment. Then more police vans arrived and ever more prisoners to be beaten. All were taken in these caged trucks to the basement of the Interior Ministry. I saw them drive in.

A break now from these outrages, because this was about the moment that Mousavi's printed statement arrived at his campaign headquarters. I say "arrived", although the police had already closed his downtown office – Palestine Street, it was called, only fitting since the Iranian police were behaving in exactly the same way as the Israeli army when they turn into a rabble to confront Palestinian protesters – and Mousavi's men could only toss the sheets of paper over the wall.

It was strong stuff. "The results of these elections are shocking," he proclaimed. "People who stood in the voting lines, they know the situation, they know who they voted for. They are looking now with astonishment at this magic game of the authorities on the television and radio. What has happened has shaken the whole foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran and now it is governing by lies and dictatorship. I recommend to the authorities to stop this at once and return to law and order, to care for the people's votes. The first message of our revolution is that people are intelligent and will not obey those who gain power by cheating. This whole land of Iran belongs to them and not to the cheaters."

Mousavi's head office in Qeitariyeh Street in north Tehran had already been besieged by the Democrator's loyal "Basiji" volunteers a few hours earlier. They had chucked tear gas at the windows. They were still smouldering when I arrived. "Please go or they will come back," one of his supporters pleaded to me. It was the same all over the city. The opposition either asked you to leave or invited you to watch them as they tormented the police. The Democrator's men, waving their Iranian flags, faced off Mousavi's men. Then, through their ranks, came the armed cops again, running towards the opposition. So whose side were the police really on? Rule number one: never ask stupid questions in Iran.

Last night, all SMS calls were blocked. The Iranian news agency announced that, since there would be no second round of elections, there would be no extension of visas for foreign journalists – one can well see why – and so many of the people who were praised by the government for their patriotism in voting on Friday were assaulted by their own government on Saturday.

Last night, the Democrator was still silent, but his ever-grinning face turned up on the posters of his supporters. There were more baton charges, ever greater crowds running from them. Thus was the courage of Friday's Iranian elections turned into fratricidal battles on the streets of Tehran. "Any rallies," announced the Tehran police chief, General Ahmad Reza Radan, "will be dealt with according to the law." Well, we all know what that means. So does the Democrator.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the blacksmith's son and former Revolutionary Guard, who, since his surprise victory four years ago, has seemingly gone out of his way to play bogeyman to the US. In his first term in office, Mr Ahmadinejad became known for his fierce rhetoric against America and Israel, his proud promotion of Iran's nuclear programme and persistent questioning of the Holocaust.

In Iran, he benefited from a surge in petrodollar revenues and has distributed loans, money and other help on his frequent provincial tours. But critics say his free spending fuelled inflation and wasted windfall oil revenues without reducing unemployment. Prices of basics have risen sharply, hitting more than 15 million Iranian families who live on less than $600 a month. He blamed the inflation, which officially stands at 15 per cent, on a global surge in food and fuel prices that peaked last year, and pursued unorthodox policies such as trying to curb prices while setting interest rates well below inflation.

During the campaign, in a series of bitter TV debates with his three rivals, he was repeatedly accused of lying about the extent of price rises. Mir Hossein Mousavi also accused Mr Ahmadinejad, 53, of undermining Iran's foreign relations with his fiery anti-Western speeches and said Iranians had been "humiliated around the globe" since he was first elected.

During Mr Ahmadinejad's first term, the UN Security Council imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, which the West suspects has military aims.

Mr Ahmadinejad, the first non-clerical president in more than 25 years, basks in the support of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called on Iranians to vote for an anti-Western candidate. The Ayatollah ultimately calls the shots in Iran, where the president can only influence policy, not decide it.

Mir Hossein Mousavi

Life for President Barack Obama would be a great deal easier if Mir Hossein Mousavi had won Iran's election. The man who was prime minister during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s says he would seek detente with the West, ask Mr Obama to debate at the UN with him, and floated the idea of an international consortium overseeing uranium enrichment in Iran.

On the domestic front, the 67-year-old architect and painter urged a return to the "fundamental values" of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He advocated economic liberalisation, and pledged to control inflation through monetary policies and make life easier for private business. He has also promised to change the "extremist" image that Iran has earned abroad under Mr Ahmadinejad and has hit out at his profligate spending of petrodollars and cash hand-outs to the poor, which, he says, have stoked rising consumer prices. He also advocated removing the ban on private firms owning TV stations.

Mr Mousavi has been politically silent for the past 20 years, but he broke new ground in Iranian campaigning by having his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a former university chancellor, not only join him on the stump but work for him. The couple even held hands at rallies, rare behaviour for politicians in the socially conservative state. His support was largely urban, and mostly young. He enjoyed also the backing of reformist former president Mohammad Khatami and apparent backing from Mr Khatami's pragmatic predecessor, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

He was widely expected to make a close-run thing of the election. But even as he was claiming a premature victory on Friday night, Mr Mousavi was alleging widespread malpractice in the conduct of the election. Where he goes from here – apart from into history – is far from clear.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-iran-erupts-as-voters-back-the-democrator-1704810.html

Wishful thinking from Tehran

Since the revolution, academics and pundits have predicted the collapse of the Iranian regime. This week, they did no better

Abbas Barzegar
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 13 June 2009 11.40 BST

I have been in Iran for exactly one week covering the 2009 Iranian election carnival. Since I arrived, few here doubted that the incumbent firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would win. My airport cab driver reminded me that the president had visited every province twice in the last four years – "Iran isn't Tehran," he said. Even when I asked Mousavi supporters if their man could really carry more than capital, their responses were filled with an Obamasque provisional optimism – "Yes we can", "I hope so", "If you vote." So the question occupying the international media, "How did Mousavi lose?" seems to be less a problem of the Iranian election commission and more a matter of bad perception rooted in the stubborn refusal to understand the role of religion in Iran.

Of course, the rather real possibility of voter fraud exists and one must wait in the coming weeks to see how these allegations unfold. But one should recall that in three decades of presidential elections, the accusations of rigging have rarely been levied against the vote count. Elections here are typically controlled by banning candidates from the start or closing opposition newspapers in advance.

In this election moreover, there were two separate governmental election monitors in addition to observers from each camp to prevent mass voter fraud. The sentimental implausibility of Ahmedinejad's victory that Mousavi's supporters set forth as the evidence of state corruption must be met by the equal implausibility that such widespread corruption could take place under clear daylight. So, until hard evidence emerges that can substantiate the claims of the opposition camp we need to look to other reasons to explain why so many are stunned by the day's events.

As far as international media coverage is concerned, it seems that wishful thinking got the better of credible reporting. It is true that Mousavi supporters jammed Tehran traffic for hours every night over the last week, though it was rarely mentioned that they did so only in the northern well-to-do neighborhoods of the capital. Women did relax their head covers and young men did dance in the street.

On Monday night at least 100,000 of the former prime minister's supporters set up a human chain across Tehran. But, hours before I had attended a mass rally for the incumbent president that got little to no coverage in the western press because, on account of the crowds, he never made it inside the hall to give his speech. Minimal estimates from that gathering have been placed at 600,000 (enthusiasts say a million). From the roof I watched as the veiled women and bearded men of all ages poured like lava.

But the failure to properly gauge Iran's affairs is hardly a new phenomenon. When the 1979 revolution shattered the military dictatorship of America's strongest ally in the region few experts outside of the country suspected that the Islamic current would emerge as the leading party.

(snip)

For over a week the same social impulses of anti-corruption, populism, and religious piety that led to the revolution have been on the streets available to anyone who wanted to report on them. Ahmedinejad, for most in the country, embodies those ideals. Since he came into office he has refused to wear a suit, refused to move out of the home he inherited from his father, and has refused to tone down the rhetoric he uses against those he accuses of betraying the nation. When he openly accused his towering rival, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanji, a lion of the revolution himself, of parasitical corruption and compared his betrayal to the alleged deception against the Prophet Muhammad that led to the Sunni-Shia split 1,400 years ago, he unleashed a popular impulse that has held the imagination of the masses here for generations. That Rafsanji defended himself through Mousavi's newspaper meant the end for the reformists.

In the last week Ahmedinejad turned the election into a referendum on the very project of Iran's Islamic revolution. Their street chants yelled "Death to all those against the Supreme Leader" followed by traditional Shia rituals and elegies. It was no match for the high-spirited fun-loving youth of northern Tehran who sang "Ahmedi-bye-bye, Ahmedi-bye-bye" or "ye hafte-do hafte, Mahmud hamum na-rafte" (One week, two weeks, Mahmoud hasn't taken a shower).

Perhaps from the start Mousavi was destined to fail as he hoped to combine the articulate energies of the liberal upper class with the business interests of the bazaar merchants. The Facebook campaigns and text-messaging were perfectly irrelevant for the rural and working classes who struggle to make a day's ends meet, much less have the time to review the week's blogs in an internet cafe. Although Mousavi tried to appeal to such classes by addressing the problems of inflation and poverty, they voted otherwise.

In the future, observers would do us a favour by taking a deeper look into Iranian society, giving us a more accurate picture of the very organic religious structures of the country, and dispensing with the narrative of liberal inevitability. It is the religious aspects of enigmatic Persia that helped put an 80-year-old exiled ascetic at the head of state 30 years ago, then the charismatic cleric Khatami in office 12 years ago, the honest son of a blacksmith – Ahmedinejad – four years ago, and the same yesterday.

Abbas Barzegar is a PhD candidate in religious studies at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/13/iranian-election

from the other place.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x456350

I noted, when these "color revolutions" started that the anti-Chavez, anti-Cuba, pro-Israel, pro-Iraq war neoliberals were always leading the charge. Go figure.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]The Pentagon and US intelligence have refined the art of such soft coups to a fine level. RAND planners call it ‘swarming,’ referring to the swarms of youth, typically linked by SMS and web blogs, who can be mobilized on command to destabilize a target regime.

-- F William Engdahl, [link:http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Color_Revolutions/color_revolutions.html|Color Revolutions, Geopolitics and the Baku Pipeline][/quote]


What's sad is that they can't wrap their minds around the fact that he has a very loyal and grateful following among the poorer & urban Iranians who comprise 70% of the population.

I wasn't aware that he introduced free health insurance, effectively making healthcare free, for 22 million poor people delivering on an important [link:www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/international/middleeast/23iran.html|campaign promise]. How does someone like Moussavi, who only campaigned in 4 provinces, all of them wealthy, expect to beat that? Expect to beat a man who visited all the provinces and is constantly moving his office to a new one?


I found an article written before the election, on Friday, June 12, 2009 that I'm going to post after this. I think it lays out very nicely what happened. It even predicted exactly what Moussavi's supporters are currently doing.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]A Polarized Iran Prepares to Go to Polls
Presidential Race Turns Into a Battle of Haves and Have-Nots, Old and New Guard

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 12, 2009

TEHRAN, June 11 -- A long column of provincial, working-class Iranians, clad in black and walking in flip-flops, streamed into a highway underpass, heading for a reelection rally for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Standing on a high ledge safely out of the way, a group of cosmopolitan youths looked down at the crowd of mostly out-of-towners. "Go back to the zoo!" shouted a teenager with gelled-up hair and a green T-shirt, a sign of support for Ahmadinejad's main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

"Sissies!" the marchers yelled back.

As Iranians go to the polls Friday to choose a president, the country is more deeply polarized than at any time since the Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah 30 years ago. After a bitter campaign that included personal attacks on some of Iran's leading families, both sides are preparing to contest the results, and many Iranians wonder whether the social and economic rifts exposed by the election will deepen.

"Some people think that only they are Iran," said Saeed Majidi, who had driven for hours on his 125cc motorcycle to hear Ahmadinejad speak at Tehran's Grand Mosque. "But those with jobs and money only represent 30 percent of the population.

"We are Iran," Majidi concluded, pointing at the crowd pouring into the tunnel, a sea of women with sunburned faces and bearded men with black horn-rimmed glasses. "Other presidents never cared for us. Ahmadinejad does."

Though he holds many of the levers of power, Ahmadinejad is proud of his status as an outsider. He says the country's political class has drifted away from its religious and revolutionary roots. Since his surprise election in 2005, he has constantly attacked Iran's post-revolutionary elites, contending that they long ago gave up fighting for the "barefooted" masses and began doing business deals from their villas on the slopes of affluent North Tehran.

Ahmadinejad has turned the Iranian economy upside down, making sure that advantages flow to the lower class. His government has increased state wages and pensions and has made health insurance free for 22 million people. He derides economists who blame him for high inflation and unemployment, saying that they are tied to the higher classes and that his goal is to "spread justice."

But his support does not come solely from the downtrodden. He is also backed by a small group of hard-line Islamic clerics and leaders of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps who share his resentment toward the West, his calls for Iran to occupy its rightful place as a world power and his championing of Iran's nuclear program.

His leading challenger is Mousavi, an urbane, soft-spoken architect who was prime minister from 1981 to 1989. Though out of power for two decades, Mousavi is in many ways the Iranian establishment's candidate. He represents an older generation of Islamic clergy and politicians who fought side by side with the leader of the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but whose power and positions have gradually been stripped away by Ahmadinejad and his associates.

Mousavi's political foot soldiers, in turn, are disgruntled middle-class youths, intellectuals, artists and academics who have been alienated by the current government's radical rhetoric and pervasive restrictions on personal freedom, such as police controls on the way people dress, the banning of books and the disciplining of dissident students.

Yet Ahmadinejad's main foil in the campaign has not been Mousavi. Rather, he has tried to turn the election into a referendum on the man whom he defeated in 2005 and who is not, formally, in the race this time: Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president and head of one of the country's most prominent families. In an apparently calculated move during a June 3 nationally televised debate with Mousavi, Ahmadinejad attacked Rafsanjani and his wealthy children, calling them "corrupt" and alleging that Mousavi was their puppet.

Rafsanjani responded with an open letter asking Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to intervene against Ahmadinejad's personal attacks. But Rafsanjani's son, Mehdi, seemed to confirm at least part of Ahmadinejad's claim, telling foreign reporters that the family had helped organize Mousavi's campaign and was planning to bring down Ahmadinejad.

The result is a confrontation not just between Iran's haves and have-nots, but between the old revolutionaries who seized power from the shah and a new cadre of radicals seeking to dislodge them.

"Our mistake has been that we have not dealt with the power seekers," said Mehdi Kalhor, Ahmadinejad's media adviser, using a label that Ahmadinejad's supporters often attach to those around Rafsanjani.

"They are like a bacteria in every empire. The Islamic revolution was a fight against these 1,000 ruling families," Kalhor added. "We now need to carry out the objectives of the revolution."

Each camp has warned that the other may be planning to seize power by nondemocratic means. Mousavi and another presidential challenger, Mehdi Karroubi, have jointly created a committee against vote-rigging and announced plans to post observers at all of Iran's approximately 45,000 polling places.

We will have our results before the Ministry of Interior does," predicted Morteza Alviri, Karroubi's representative on the committee.

Aides to Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, say Mousavi's backers plan to claim victory before the votes are fully counted and to mount a "color revolution" like the Rose Revolution that swept away the post-Soviet government of Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

"According to their plan, these people will make a heavy media atmosphere, claiming premature victory with rallies to mobilize their supporters," Gen. Yadollah Javani, head of the political office of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, predicted in an interview with the guards' magazine, Sobh-e Sadegh.

Special correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie contributed to this report.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061104106.html?sid=ST2009061104183 [/quote]


This just reinforces my conviction that this whole hoopla is a yuppie temper tantrum financed by the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. They are all over the net, each one posting stories more unbelievable than the others. Before leaving officeBush got over $400 million [link:www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh|to destabilize Iran]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
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.

-- Seymour Hersh, July 7, 2008, The New Yorker [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]The New York Times and the Iranian election 15 June 2009

The response of the US media to the Iranian election says more about the state of democracy and the so-called “free press” in America than it does about the state of democratic rights in Iran.

The coverage by the New York Times typifies a presentation of the victory of the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over his main challenger, former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, that abandons any pretense of journalistic objectivity. It is sheer propaganda aimed at discrediting the election result.

No sooner had Iranian authorities announced late Friday, US time, that Ahmadinejad had defeated Mousavi by a 30 percent margin than the Times and virtually the entire media proclaimed the election a fraud. The Times did not simply report the allegations by Mousavi that the election had been stolen, it embraced them wholeheartedly and uncritically.

It did so without undertaking any independent investigation. It brought forward no serious facts to substantiate the claim. Rather, it relied on allegations made by Mousavi and his supporters.

Already on Saturday, the Times made a video, which it posted on its web site Sunday, in which its leading foreign correspondent, Roger Cohen, breathlessly denounced the “hastily declared” victory of Ahmadinejad and gave the impression that Tehran had been placed under martial law, with droves of black-clad police roaming the city and beating oppositionists.

The only “evidence” Cohen was able to produce for his claim of a stolen election was the fact that the authorities had declared Ahmadinejad the victor “within hours” of the polls closing and that the official vote numbers had “scarcely varied” from the initial tallies.

Cohen’s video was supplemented by a front-page article on Sunday by the Times’ executive editor, Bill Keller, in which Keller cited uncritically the claims of opposition voters that Ahmadinejad’s reelection was “the imposed verdict” of the regime and a “coup d’état.” He adduced not a single fact to back these charges. In lieu of evidence, he reported the claim by “somebody’s brother who supposedly knew someone inside” that “vote counters simply were ordered to doctor numbers.”

The core of Keller’s argument that the election had been manipulated was what he called the “preposterous margin of victory” for Ahmadinejad. But he himself acknowledged in his piece that Ahmadinejad successfully appealed to the Iranian poor, a huge percentage of the electorate. And he acknowledged the severe disappointment of “Western leaders who had seen a better relationship with Iran as potentially helpful in resolving the problems of Afghanistan, Iraq and nuclear proliferation.”

The Times and the rest of the US media, directly reflecting the outlook of the government, had promoted the candidacy of Mousavi and depicted a rising tide of popular support that was certain to either sweep the “reformer” into office or obtain a close enough result to force a run-off contest with Ahmadinejad. In their function as conduits for the state and US imperialist policy, they were seeking to promote the notion that a victory for Mousavi would represent a triumph of democracy and open up a new chapter in US-Iranian relations. The only possible explanation for Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory, they immediately concluded, was fraud.

For anyone with a serious knowledge of Iranian society and politics, the decisive victory of Ahmadinejad could not have come as a surprise. Even Western newspapers that denounced the election admitted that the incumbent had strong support among urban workers and the rural poor—the vast majority of the population. Ahmadinejad has retained this constituency, despite the repressive and corrupt character of the regime, because of the absence of a socialist alternative.

On what mass base could Mousavi depend for a successful bid to unseat Ahmadinejad? The candidate of the Iranian liberal establishment, he campaigned as no less an ardent defender of Islamist clerical rule than Ahmadinejad. On domestic policy, he vaguely called for more openness, while opposing Ahmadinejad’s “populist” subsidies to the urban poor and the peasantry.

The media has not sought to explain why the mass of the Iranian people should be expected to support an advocate of the same free market policies that have produced a social disaster throughout the world. Mousavi’s most prominent backer, moreover, was Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a leading figure in the state apparatus and one of the country’s wealthiest men. Rafsanjani, notorious for his corruption, is despised by Iranian workers and the poor.

Mousavi’s actual electoral base did not extend beyond better-off-sections of the urban middle class, university students and businessmen.

There is another issue. What standing do the New York Times and the US media as a whole have to lecture Iran about democratic elections?

The Times accepted the theft of the 2000 US presidential election without a whimper. That was a presidential coup, and it was carried out in broad daylight, with Bush and the Republicans suppressing votes and the Supreme Court halting a recount in Florida that would have given the election to Al Gore, who had won the popular vote nationally. One need only recall the extraordinary events of election night 2000, when the networks suddenly reversed their call for Gore in Florida and declared the pivotal state for Bush.

The American elections are among the least genuinely democratic elections in what passes for the world’s democracies. Working and poor people are routinely denied the right to vote. The elections are dominated by corporate money and media manipulation. Third parties find it virtually impossible to obtain ballot status because of laws that are designed to maintain the monopoly of two big business parties.

The state of American democracy is summed up in the current mayoral election in the country’s largest city, New York. There, a multi-billionaire media tycoon, Michael Bloomberg, overturned a term limit law and is running unopposed for reelection.

The Times is silent about the historical record concerning US “support” for democracy in Iran. This includes the 1953 coup, organized by the CIA, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the Shah. From then until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the US backed the Shah’s torture regime and hailed it as the bulwark of the “free world” in the Persian Gulf.

The filthy role of the Times in seeking to discredit the Iranian election epitomizes the corruption of the American media and its integration into the state. The mass media serve ever more openly as instruments for the manipulation of public opinion in the interest of state concerns.

That the role of the Times as a conduit for US foreign policy aims is not limited to one country or one part of the world is underscored by another example of propaganda in the guise of news. Just two weeks ago, on May 30, the Times published a diatribe against another regime deemed by Washington to be an obstacle to US imperialist interests—that of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Headlined “Chávez Seeks Tighter Grip on Military,” the article retailed without substantiation claims of a massive crackdown by Chávez against dissidents within the military.

In this article, as in the articles published on the Iranian election, there is a large element of provocation. Such “news” items are written on assignment from US intelligence agencies. This corruption of the media is itself a critical expression of, and factor in, the advanced decay of American democracy.

The election in Iran underscores the necessity for an orientation to the Iranian working class on the basis of a clearly defined socialist and internationalist program as the only foundation for opposition to the reactionary bourgeois regime of the clerics.

The response of the US media to the election underscores the fact that the American working class can defend its democratic rights only by developing its own mass, independent socialist movement.


Barry Grey

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j15.shtml [/quote]

"The election will make it easier to gain international consensus for harsher measures if engagement fails," a Washington Iran hand said on condition of anonymity. "This fact helps in the near-term by putting outside-in pressure on the Iranian regime to reach accommodation with the West or face serious consequences, and builds genuine consensus for tougher measures to pressure the regime."

Came across the above paragraph which speaks pretty directly to US interests. they're are calling it a "good faith" effort.

I'm rolling on the floor here.

"reach accommidation". Why? Why must they "reach accommodation"? If they don't, we'll accuse them of hiding WMDs. Oh wait.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Rafsanjani's gambit backfiresBy M K Bhadrakumar

Jun 16, 2009

Iranian politics is never easy to decode. The maelstrom around Friday's presidential election intrigued most avid cryptographers scanning Iranian codes. So many false trails appeared that it became difficult to decipher who the real contenders were and what the political stakes were.

In the event, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei won a resounding victory. The grey cardinal of Iranian politics Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been dealt a crushing defeat. Is the curtain finally ringing down on the tumultuous career of the "Shark", a nickname Rafsanjani acquired in the vicious well of the Iranian Majlis (parliament) where he used to swim dangerously as a political predator in the early years of the Iranian Revolution as the speaker?

By the huge margin (64%) with which President Mahmud Ahmedinejad won, it is tempting to say that like the great white sperm whale of immense, premeditated ferocity and stamina in Herman Melville's epic novel Moby Dick, Rafsanjani is going down, deeply wounded by the harpoon, into the cold oblivion of the sea of Iranian politics. But you can never quite tell.

The administration of President Barack Obama in the United States could see through the allegorical mode of the Iranian election and probably anticipate the flood of destruction that would follow once vengeance is unleashed. It did just the right thing by staying aloof, studiously detached. Now comes the difficult part - engaging the house that Khamenei presides over as the monarch of all he surveys.

First, the ABC of the election. Who is Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmedinejad's main opponent in the election? He is an enigma wrapped in mystery. He impressed the Iranian youth and the urban middle class as a reformer and a modernist. Yet, as Iran's prime minister during 1981-89, Mousavi was an unvarnished hardliner. Evidently, what we have seen during his high-tech campaign is a vastly different Mousavi, as if he meticulously deconstructed and then reassembled himself.

This was what Mousavi had to say in a 1981 interview about the 444-day hostage crisis when young Iranian revolutionaries kept American diplomats in custody: "It was the beginning of the second stage of our revolution. It was after this that we discovered our true Islamic identity. After this we felt the sense that we could look Western policy in the eye and analyze it the way they had been evaluating us for many years."

Most likely, he had a hand in the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Ali Akbar Mohtashami, Hezbollah's patron saint, served as his interior minister. He was involved in the Iran-Contra deal in 1985, which was a trade-off with the Ronald Reagan administration whereby the US would supply arms to Iran and as quid pro quo Tehran would facilitate the release of the Hezbollah-held American hostages in Beirut. The irony is, Mousavi was the very anti-thesis of Rafsanjani and one of the first things the latter did in 1989 after taking over as president was to show Mousavi the door. Rafsanjani had no time for Mousavi's anti-"Westernism" or his visceral dislike of the market.

Mousavi's electoral platform has been a curious mix of contradictory political lines and vested interests but united in one maniacal mission, namely, to seize the presidential levers of power in Iran. It brought together so-called reformists who support former president Mohammad Khatami and ultra-conservatives of the regime. Rafsanjani is the only politician in Iran who could have brought together such dissimilar factions. He assiduously worked hand-in-glove with Khatami towards this end.

If we are to leave out the largely inconsequential "Gucci crowd" of north Tehran, who no doubt imparted a lot of color, verve and mirth to Mousavi's campaign, the hardcore of his political platform comprised powerful vested interests who were making a last-ditch attempt to grab power from the Khamenei-led regime. On the one hand, these interest groups were severely opposed to the economic policies under Ahmadinejad, which threatened their control of key sectors such as foreign trade, private education and agriculture.

For those who do not know Iran better, suffice to say that the Rafsanjani family clan owns vast financial empires in Iran, including foreign trade, vast landholdings and the largest network of private universities in Iran. Known as Azad there are 300 branches spread over the country, they are not only money-spinners but could also press into Mousavi's election campaign an active cadre of student activists numbering some 3 million.

The Azad campuses and auditoria provided the rallying point for Mousavi's campaign in the provinces. The attempt was to see that the campaign reached the rural poor in their multitudes who formed the bulk of voters and constituted Ahmadinejad's political base. Rafsanjani's political style is to build up extensive networking in virtually all the top echelons of the power structure, especially bodies such as the Guardian Council, Expediency Council, the Qom clergy, Majlis, judiciary, bureaucracy, Tehran bazaar and even elements within the circles close to Khamenei. He called into play these pockets of influence.

Rafsanjani's axis with Khatami was the basis of Mousavi's political platform of reformists and conservatives. The four-cornered contest was expected to give a split verdict that would force the election into a run-off on June 19. The candidature of the former Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Commander Mohsen Rezai (who served under Rafsanjani when he was president) was expected to slice off a chunk of IRGC cadres and prominent conservatives.

Again, the fourth candidate, Mehdi Karrubi's "reformist" program was expected to siphon off support from Ahmedinejad, by virtue of his offer of economic policies based on social justice such as the immensely popular idea of distributing income from oil among the people rather than it accruing to the government's budget.

Rafsanjani's plot was to somehow extend the election to the run-off stage, where Mousavi was expected to garner the "anti-Ahmedinejad" votes. The estimation was that at the most Ahmedinejad would poll in the first round 10 to 12 million votes out of the 28 to 30 million who might actually vote (out of a total electorate of 46.2 million) and, therefore, if only the election extended to the run-off, Mousavi would be the net beneficiary as the votes polled by Rezai and Karrubi were essentially "anti-Ahmadinejad" votes.

The regime was already well into the election campaign when it realized that behind the clamor for a change of leadership in the presidency, Rafsanjani's challenge was in actuality aimed at Khamenei's leadership and that the election was a proxy war. The roots of the Rafsanjani-Khamenei rift go back to the late 1980s when Khamenei assumed the leadership in 1989.

Rafsanjani was among Imam Khomeini's trusted appointees to the first Revolutionary Council, whereas Khamenei joined only at a later stage when the council expanded its membership. Thus, Rafsanjani always harbored a grouse that Khamenei pipped him to the post of Supreme Leader. The clerical establishment close to Rafsanjani spread the word that Khamenei lacked the requisite religious credentials, that he was indecisive as the executive president, and that the election process was questionable, which cast doubt on the legality of his appointment.

Powerful clerics, egged on by Rafsanjani, argued that the Supreme Leader was supposed to be not only a religious authority (mujtahid), but was also expected to be a source of emulation (marja or a mujtahid with religious followers) and that Khamenei didn't fulfill this requirement - unlike Rafsanjani himself. The debunking of Khamenei rested on the specious argument that his religious education was in question. The sniping by the clerics associated with Rafsanjani continued into the early 1990s. Thus, Khamenei began on a somewhat diffident note and during much of the period when Rafsanjani held power as president (1989-1997), he acted low key, aware of his circumstances.

The result was that Rafsanjani exercised more power as president than anyone holding that office anytime in Tehran. But Khamenei bided his time as he incrementally began expanding his authority. If he lacked standing among Iran's clerical establishment, he more than made up by attracting to his side the security establishment, especially the Ministry of Intelligence, the IRGC and the Basij militias.

While Rafsanjani hobnobbed with the clergy and the bazaar, Khatami turned to a group of bright young politicians with intelligence or security backgrounds who were returning home from the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war - such as Ali Larijani, the present speaker of the Majlis, Said Jalili, currently the secretary of the National Security Council, Ezzatollah Zarghami, head of the state radio and television and, indeed, Ahmadinejad himself.

Power inevitably accrued to Khamenei once he won over the loyalty of the IRGC and the Basij. By the time Rafsanjani's presidency ended, Khatami had already become head of all three branches of the government and the state media, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and even lucrative institutions such as Imam Reza Shrine or the Oppressed Foundation, which have almost unlimited capacity for extending political patronage.

All in all, therefore, the power structure today takes the form of a vast patriarchal apparatus of political leadership. Thus, perceptive analysts were spot on while concluding that Ahmadinejad would never on his own volition have gone public and directly taken on Rafsanjani during the controversial TV debate on June 4 in Tehran with Mousavi.

Ahmadinejad said, "Today it is not Mr Mousavi alone who is confronting me, since there are the three successive governments of Mr Mousavi, Mr Khatami and Mr Hashemi (Rafsanjani) arrayed against me." He took a pointed swipe at Rafsanjani for masterminding a plot to overthrow him. He said Rafsanjani promised the fall of his government to Saudi Arabia. Rafsanjani hit back within days by addressing a communication to Khamenei demanding that Ahmadinejad should retract "so that there would be no need of legal action".

"I am expecting you to resolve the situation in order to extinguish the fire, whose smoke can be seen in the atmosphere, and to take action to foil dangerous plots. Even if I were to tolerate this situation, there is no doubt that some people, parties and factions will not tolerate this situation," Rafsanjani angrily warned Khamenei.

Simultaneously, Rafsanjani also rallied his base in the clerical establishment. A clique of 14 senior clerics in Qom joined issue on his side. It was all an act of desperation by vested interests who have become desperate about the awesome rise of the IRGC in recent years. But, if Rafsanjani's calculation was that the "mutiny" within the clerical establishment would unnerve Khatami, he misread the calculus of power in Tehran. Khatami did the worst thing possible to Rafsanjani. He simply ignored the "Shark".

The IRGC and the Basij volunteers running into tens of millions swiftly mobilized. They coalesced with the millions of rural poor who adore Ahmadinejad as their leader. It has been a repeat of the 2005 election. The voter turnout has been an unprecedented 85%. Within hours of the announcement of Ahmadinejad's thumping victory, Khatami gave the seal of approval by applauding that the high voter turnout called for "real celebration".

He said, "I congratulate ... the people on this massive success and urge everyone to be grateful for this divine blessing." He cautioned the youth and the "supporters of the elected candidate and the supporters of other candidates" to be "fully alert and avoid any provocative and suspicions actions and speech".

Khamenei's message to Rafsanjani is blunt: accept defeat gracefully and stay away from further mischief. Friday's election ensures that the house of Supreme Leader Khamenei will remain by far the focal point of power. It is the headquarters of the country's presidency, Iran's armed forces, especially the IRGC. It is the fountainhead of the three branches of government and the nodal point of foreign, security and economic policies.

Obama may contemplate a way to directly engage Khamenei. It is a difficult challenge.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.



http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF16Ak05.html [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF] US escalating covert operations against Iran-reportSun Jun 29, 2008

(Updates with U.S. ambassador, previous NEW YORK)

WASHINGTON , June 29 (Reuters) - U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush's funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.

The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine's July 7 and 14 issue, centers on a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.

"The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money."

Hersh has written previously about possible administration plans to go to war to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, including an April 2006 article in the New Yorker that suggested regime change in Iran, whether by diplomatic or military means, was Bush's ultimate goal.

Funding for the covert escalation, for which Bush requested up to $400 million, was approved by congressional leaders, according to the article, citing current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. U.S. Special Operations Forces have been conducting crossborder operations from southern Iraq since last year, the article said.

These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of "high-value targets" in Bush's war on terrorism, who may be captured or killed, according to the article.

The U.S. ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, told CNN's "Late Edition" he had not read the article, but denied the allegations of cross-border operations.

"I'll tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else," he said in an interview from Baghdad on Sunday.

The scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which include the Central Intelligence Agency, have now been significantly expanded, the New Yorker article said, citing current and former officials.

Many of these activities are not specified in the new finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature, it said.

Among groups inside Iran benefiting from U.S. support is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People's Resistance Movement, according to former CIA officer Robert Baer. Council on Foreign Relations analyst Vali Nasr described it to Hersh as a vicious organization suspected of links to al Qaeda.

The article said U.S. support for the dissident groups could prompt a violent crackdown by Iran, which could give the Bush administration a reason to intervene.

None of the Democratic leaders in Congress would comment on the finding, the article said. The White House, which has repeatedly denied preparing for military action against Iran, and the CIA also declined comment.

The United States is leading international efforts to rein in Iran's suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, although Washington concedes Iran has the right to develop nuclear power for civilian uses.

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington; writing by Chris Michaud; editing by Eric Beech and David Wiessler)

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN29358834 [/quote]

11.06.09

Ahmadinejad Front Runner in Upcoming Presidential Elections; Iranians Continue to Back Compromise and Better Relations with US and West

Results of a New Nationwide Public Opinion Survey of Iran before the June 12, 2009 Presidential Elections

Executive Summary:

In a new public opinion poll across Iran before the critical upcoming June 12, 2009 Presidential elections, a plurality of Iranians said they would vote for incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v294/montages/tft_1.jpg

Iranians also continue overwhelmingly to favor better relations with the United States and would like to directly elect their Supreme Leader in a free vote. The desire for improved American relations and a more open and democratic system in Iran have been consistent findings in all our surveys of Iran over the past two years.

These are among the many results of a new nationwide public opinion survey of Iran conducted by [link:www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/|Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion ("TFT")], the [link:www.newamerica.net/events/2009/irans_next_president/|New America Foundation (see video)], and KA Europe SPRL ("KA").

Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, polls in Iran are either conducted or monitored by the Iranian government and other affiliated interest groups, and can be untrustworthy. By contrast, our poll -- the third in a series over the past two years -- was conducted by telephone inside Iran over May 11th to 20th, 2009, with 1,001 interviews proportionally distributed covering all 30 provinces of Iran, with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent. Full survey results and methodology follow. This survey tracks earlier nationwide surveys of Iran also conducted by TFT and KA in March 2008 and June 2007, which was the first to ask similar controversial questions since September 2002. Funding for the survey was provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The survey follows not only two prior polls of Iran, but also more than thirty similar surveys throughout the Muslim world by TFT since 2005.

Iranians Favor President Ahmadinejad's Re-Election

At the stage of the campaign for President when our poll was taken, 34 percent of Iranians surveyed said they will vote for incumbent President Ahmadinejad. Mr. Ahmadinejad's closest rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi, was the choice of 14 percent, with 27 percent stating that they still do not know who they will vote for.

(snip)

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/iran110609.html

The Iranian People Speak
By Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty
Monday, June 15, 2009

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.

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 Mousavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.

Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, preelection polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our preelection survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi 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 Mousavi.

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 Mousavi 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.

Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians -- including most Ahmadinejad supporters -- said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society.

Indeed, and consistently among all three of our surveys over the past two years, more than 70 percent of Iranians also expressed support for providing full access to weapons inspectors and a guarantee that Iran will not develop or possess nuclear weapons, in return for outside aid and investment. And 77 percent of Iranians favored normal relations and trade with the United States, another result consistent with our previous findings.

Iranians view their support for a more democratic system, with normal relations with the United States, as consonant with their support for Ahmadinejad. They do not want him to continue his hard-line policies. Rather, Iranians apparently see Ahmadinejad as their toughest negotiator, the person best positioned to bring home a favorable deal -- rather like a Persian Nixon going to China.

Allegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will serve to further isolate Iran and are likely to increase its belligerence and intransigence against the outside world. Before other countries, including the United States, jump to the conclusion that the Iranian presidential elections were fraudulent, with the grave consequences such charges could bring, they should consider all independent information. The fact may simply be that the reelection of President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted.

Ken Ballen is president of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward extremism. Patrick Doherty is deputy director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The groups' May 11-20 polling consisted of 1,001 interviews across Iran and had a 3.1 percentage point margin of error.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html

Sorry I posted another thread:
http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=95465
I had not seen yours before I posted.

Jamal Dajani


Senior Director and Producer of Mosaic News, Link TV
Posted: June 12, 2009 10:23 AM
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Saudi Arabia: A Player in Middle East Elections



It is a contradiction to mention Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy) and elections in the same sentence; however, no country in the Middle East, as of late, has been more invested in this democratic process than Saudi Arabia. For the record, election is part of the democratic process; Saudi Arabia is not.

According to some reports which have been circulating in the Arab media, the Saudis poured more money into the Lebanese parliamentary race that propelled the coalition of Sa'ad el-Hariri into victory than what was spent on Barack Obama's U.S. presidential bid. Lebanon, however, is a country of only four million.

While one cannot quantify the exact amount of money the Saudis spent or substantiate these reports, the Saudi influence is evident through the many media outlets the Kingdom owns or backs.

Saudi Arabia controls an impressive share of the Arab world's most influential media outlets ranging from top distribution newspapers such the London-based Asharq Alawsat, to the second most viewed television satellite station in the region Al Arabiya, which was founded by the brother-in-law of the late King Fahd. Saudi control of many Arab media outlets, directly and indirectly, has prompted a journalist friend of mine based in Egypt to refer to the Saudi monarch as his editor-in chief.

During the Lebanese Parliamentary Elections, the Saudi-controlled media focused its efforts on painting the Lebanese opposition lead by Hezbollah as an Iranian "proxy". The Kingdom dispatched a group of "experts" from one station to the other to warn about the spread of Iran's influence in the Arab world. The same sentiment was also disseminated through editorials in the various newspapers Saudi Arabia owned or had an interest in.

This past week, while still savoring the election victory in Lebanon of the March 14 alliance, the Saudi-controlled media has been concentrating its efforts on the Iranian Presidential Election. Al Arabiya, for example, has been constantly airing segments from the television debates by the presidential candidates and sound bites critical of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Saudi-run media has been favoring Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate, and has given him the edge in Tehran but neglected other provinces where it is a totally different story. In many instances, anchors on Saudi-controlled Arab media outlets could hardly restrain their glee whenever Ahmadinejad was criticized by his challengers.

In case you're wondering who the Saudis have been targeting through Arab satellite stations in Iran where Farsi is the official language -- approximately 6% of Iran's population are Arabic-speakers, the majority of whom live in Khuzestan. Saudi Arabia is hoping that they, along with other minority groups, will make the difference to deliver them another victory... this time against Ahmadinejad in Iran.

Update: The Iranian government has recently shut down Al Arabiya's offices in Tehran.

Jamal Dajani produces the Mosaic Intelligence Report on Link TV.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamal-dajani/saudi-arabia-a-player-in_b_214776.html

No worries about posting this elsewhere. I had this going in GD but felt awkward kicking up my own thread with each new addition so I moved it here. Spreading this info far and wide is good.

What I'm very concerned about is how easy it has been to manipulate not only the youth in Iran, but people here.

Do people not ask questions anymore? Twitter bomb indeed. As if the CIA had no idea what twitter was, they're experts at the rumor game. Shame on the Iranian elite. And shame on the people here who are swallowing all this twitter nonesense. I looked at Twitter so many times, just to get a pulse on this and the messages were rapidly being cut and pasted by different users. All of them desperate cries of "help, they're killing us!" "help, they've invaded the university and are destroying it!" (then you turn on CNN and what you see is those spoiled brats in the background of Amanpour's propaganda throwing their room furniture out the window).

What really shocks me is how many "new" posters have descended on sites like DU urging specific actions and spreading wild stories.

Great thread you posted. I'm at work now so I'm saving it for tonight.

:hi:

The more I read the stuff from Iranians whose English isn't either yuppie or CIA perfect, the worse this Mousavi fellow stinks.

I like him for the same reason and also, he really has done something for the poorer people. I was not aware that he gave over 22 million people free health insuranc. Also, my sense of fairness is outraged over the malicious demonization he's subjected to.

The first thing to look for with all these color revolutions is that divide. You think they'd write a new script. But why when this one still works like a charm?

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Q+A: Iran's oil supply and potential for disruptionMon Jun 15, 2009 10:33am EDT

DUBAI (Reuters) - The sharpest protests in years in Iran, the world's fifth biggest oil exporter, have had little impact on the oil price as yet. Analysts say events in Iran present an 'upside risk' for oil markets.

Is there any disruption to Iran's 2.1 million barrels per day oil exports?

None. Markets would likely react if protests and unrest escalated and spread to the oilfields or export terminals in the country's south, where most of its oil is produced and shipped. The majority of exports flow from its Gulf terminal at Kharg Island.

What would the impact of disruption be?

Disruption to Iran's oil exports would drive up the oil price as refiners that buy the Islamic Republic's oil would be forced to buy elsewhere. Strikes in the run up to the Iranian revolution in 1978 stopped the flow from the southern fields, and the country's capacity has never recovered to the 6 million bpd of before the revolution.

The disruption was keenly felt by top oil consumer the United States, which had to ration fuel. The shortfall ruptured global supply lines, sparked panic-buying and saw a sharp rise in oil prices that contributed to the U.S. recessions of 1980 and 1981.

Iran now pumps around 3.8 million barrels per day, or about 4.5 percent of global supply.

How would the oil sector deal with a shortfall?

OPEC producers with spare capacity would likely increase output. Saudi Arabia is the world's top oil exporter and holds most of the world's spare production capacity. It has around 4.5 million bpd spare and has ramped up output in the past to compensate for outages.

Refiners would also use oil in inventories. Inventories are brimming and the sector is in a more comfortable position to deal with an outage now than it has been for years. The global recession has cut demand by the most since 1981 and OPEC members have reduced supplies, leading to a build up in spare capacity.

Who buys Iran's oil?

Most of Iran's oil goes to Asia, with Europe taking the rest. U.S. refiners are banned from processing it due to sanctions. U.S. refiners have no direct supply from Iran, but would feel the effect of any price spike caused by disruption.

Japan is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, taking over 500,000 bpd or over 12 percent of Japanese supply. China comes next, with just under 500,000 bpd, or about six percent of its supply.

Which foreign oil companies are involved in Iran?

U.S. companies are banned from the oil and gas business in Iran. European companies scaled back operations and put new investments on hold as former U.S. President George W. Bush increased pressure on Iran over its nuclear dispute.

Norway's StatoilHydro (STL.OL) is operating at the country's giant offshore South Pars gas field and near completing a project there. Italy's Eni (ENI.MI) is finishing a development phase at the Darkhovin oilfield.

Russian giant Gazprom (GAZP.MM) agreed last year to take on more Iranian gas projects and has invested about $4 billion since 2007 in the country. Chinese firms have signed high profile deals but investment and work to date has been slow.

(Reporting by Simon Webb in Dubai, additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl in Tehran; editing by Janet McBride)


http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Oil/idUSTRE55E1VE20090615?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0 [/quote]

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Media group asks nations not to recognize Iran results
(CNN) -- Media rights group Reporters Without Borders is urging nations to not recognize the results of Iran's presidential election, citing censorship and a crackdown on journalists.

The nongovernmental group, which advocates freedom of the press, said it has confirmed the arrest of four reporters by Iranian authorities, including one who won the organization's press freedom prize in 2001.

In addition, the France-based group said, it has no information on 10 other reporters who have either gone into hiding or have been arrested.

"A democratic election is one in which the media are free to monitor the electoral process and investigate fraud allegations, but neither of these two conditions has been met for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's supposed re-election," the group said Sunday in a statement.

Independent observers were not allowed to observe the voting on Friday, and foreign reporters have been blocked from covering the ensuing demonstrations by supporters of Ahmadinejad's rival Mir Hossein Moussavi, who are claiming ballot fraud.

(snip)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/15/iran.election.media/?iref=mpstoryview [/quote]


About this utterly corrupt, agenda-driven, neocon/neoliberal shill reporters:

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Robert Menard, the Secretary General of RSF (Reporters sans frontières), was forced to confess that RSF's budget was primarily provided by "US organizations strictly linked with US foreign policy" (Thibodeau, La Presse).

[link:www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=NED|NED] (US$39,900 paid 14 Jan 2005)
Center for a Free Cuba ([link:www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=USAID|USAID] and NED funded) $50,000 per year NED grant. Contract was signed by Otto Reich
European Union (1.2m Euro) -- currently contested in EU parliament
[link:www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rights_%26_Democracy|Rights & Democracy] in 2004 supported Reporters Without Borders-Canada

"Grants from private foundations ([link:es.geocities.com/sucellus23/716.htm|Open Society Foundation], Center for a Free Cuba, Fondation de France, National Endowment for Democracy) were slightly up, due to the Africa project funded by the NED and payment by Center for a Free Cuba for a reprint of the banned magazine De Cuba."

(snip)

Principal focus of RSF activities
Cuba
Venezuela
Haiti

(snip)

"The man who links RSF to these activities is Otto Reich, who worked on the coups first as assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, and, after Nov. 2002, as a special envoy to Latin America on the National Security Council. Besides being a trustee of the government-funded Center for a Free Cuba, which gives RSF $50,000 a year, Reich has worked since the early 1980's with the IRI.'s senior vice president, Georges Fauriol, another member of the Center for a Free Cuba. But it is Reich's experience in propaganda that is especially relevant."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reporters_Without_Borders [/quote] [/quote]

Actually, I am ready for a red revolution!

I have been seeing the same insanity with some other sites egging on "the revolution". You would think that they would know better, but then, these are the same folks who bought into "change you can believe in" hook, line and sinker.

Looks like we stumbled upon some of the same sources. It will take me a while to wade through this thread. It is rich!

:hi:

Should the CIA Meddle in Iran Now?
By Jeff Stein | June 15, 2009 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A half century ago the CIA could bring down an Iranian prime minister with a few rent-a-crowds, well placed payments to key generals and a pliable replacement.

Could it do the same today?

Not likely, but events in Iran have often contradicted the prognostications of Westerners, especially at the CIA.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2009/06/should-the-cia-meddle-in-iran.html



Jeff Stein is the guy who first published the Jane Harman-AIPAC info.

Haaretz reported this morning that there was a rumor that Dennis Ross would be demoted. Not so, says the FP blog:

----------

UPDATE: Time magazine reports that Ross will be promoted to a senior advisor position at the NSC with an expanded portfolio. "The new White House position puts him closer to the center of foreign policy power, placing him in the top ranks of Obama's in-house aides," the magazine reports.]

Another official said he'd had an email from Ross just last night, which would seem to indicate that Ross's work helping craft U.S. government Iran policy continues apace. "I think he's going to stay right where he is and with the same responsibilities."

A couple U.S. officials who said they had no specific knowledge of the matter said they wondered if there might be something to the report.

But there were no signs Ross was being taken off the Iran portfolio; on the contrary, Ross would seem to have been strengthened inside the interagency process by the recent tumult in Iran, which some veteran Iran analysts describe as an attempted coup by hard-liners to preemptively declare incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of Friday's contested presidential elections.

Any move from the State Department to the White House would likely be a promotion, not a demotion.

Ross, along with the NSC senior director for Iran and the Persian Gulf Puneet Talwar, is a chief architect coordinating the crafting of U.S. Iran policy within the interagency process.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/15/ross_staying_on_iran_policy

"Ross's work helping craft U.S. government Iran policy continues apace..."

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Conversation with Grandma after Iran’s electionsJune 14, 2009

Some 48 hours following the stress and distress of the Iranian election results, a chat with my most trusted news source for inter-Iranian affairs: my grandmother. The force of right-wing populism didn’t die with Bush the Second. (My translation from original Persian.)

What on earth is going on in Tehran?
It was pretty quiet until the election results came in. It’s true that everyone was riled up and engaged in shouting matches at the voting stations — your grandfather voted for Mousavi but it took him 2 or 3 tries, it was so crowded — but it was run fairly.

What about you?
Well, there were 180 candidates. I figured, why should only 4 be given a chance to run? I didn’t vote in this election. It was illegitimate in my eyes. You can be illegitimate and fair at the same time.

How did the debates affect the outcome of the election?
They had a huge effect. First of all, personally speaking, I’ve watched every single debate, talk and analysis in nearly every waking hour since this all started. I go to bed at 1am or 2 am most nights.

There was a before and after effect for a lot of people. Before the debates, Mousavi had a strong chance, at least in Tehran. But it was like a see-change. After the debates, a lot of people who were going to vote for Mousavi came out for Ahmadinejad. A lot of people.

Why?
Because of Mousavi’s Rafsanjani connection. And you have to understand something. (Ahmadinejad) sways people. He says certain things — he says certain truths. He is not a thief. He is a horrible, horrible person, but he is not a thief. He says things directly.

So did Ahmadinejad rig the election? Did he steal 15 million votes?
He didn’t steal them. Yes, Mousavi won Tehran. But what about the provinces? We don’t have too few of them. Ahmadinejad went to the provinces and reached out to the poor. People there still worry about buttering their bread. He went to every single one.

But some candidates didn’t even win their own districts.
Yes. (Candidate) Rezai is from Ahvaz. But he barely won there. That tells you something about how the campaigns were run.

You have to be wackily smart to pull this off.
(Ahmadinejad)’s extremely smart. But unfortunately not a thief. Iran is not Tehran, Tehran isn’t even the size of the eye of the needle.

Every single countryside, province, Ahmadinejad had them. He was self-made in this election, he worked for four years holding babies and making visits to the countrside. You could have predicted these results.

There’s some interior cities that I haven’t even heard of. Zarak or Darak or something like that? He’d already been there.

What about all the communication breakdowns? Internet and cell phones…
There’s a certain amount of communication break anytime there’s a huge event or disappointment like this: All the telephone calls made outside and inside the country shut down the lines. If there was foul play different ministries could be to blame. Ahmadinejad is not omnipotent. It’s not like he has the power to shut everything down. He’s too damn smart to do that anyway.

From the outside, Mousavi seemed very popular for the past few weeks.
But how would a country bumpkin (dehati) know Mousavi? Ahmadinejad worked on himself for four years. His cranium’s been working since the beginning. I was really shocked anyone voted for him four years ago. But this year I wasn’t surprised at all, he showed himself as an honest, simple person, as incredible as that seems. The television images of his house show him growing greenery (sabzi) and tending chickens in his house.

Chickens!


http://southissouth.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/conversation-with-grandma-after-irans-elections/ [/quote]

[hr]

Note: In case anyone wonders about the author's 'agenda'
[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Iranian developments
Have not had time for posting especially about Iran: I just woke up at 2:30AM Oslo time. Not fun if you value sleep as I do. Typically, I support neither side in the Iranian situation: but I support those Iranians who are struggling against both sides. I have worried before about the impact of Ahmadinajad's stupid rhetoric on the Iranian public attitudes toward the Palestinian question. I worried that in the long run it will move the public away from solidarity with the Palestinians. Of course, there is so much hypocrisy in the Western coverage and official reactions to the developments. Most glaring for me was the statement by the secretary-general of the UN who insisted on the respect of the will of the Iranian people. Would that US designate utter such words, say, about Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and other dictatorships that are approved by the US? The role of Faqih in Iran undermines any claim of democracy in that country: but I am in no way sympathetic to Moussavi. He is a man who suddenly discovered the virtues of democracy. When he was prime minister back in the 1980s, he presided over a regime far more oppressive than Ahmadinajad's. And why has no Western media really commented on his rhetoric during his own campaign: the man kept saying that he wants a "return" to the teachings of Khomeini. I in no way support a man who wants a "return" to the teachings of Khomeini. But Western media are always quick to pick villains and heroes: especially when one side is identified against Israel. I don't know whether the elections in Iran was stolen or not, and I would not be surprised if such a regime did that. But why do Western media express outrage over a stolen election in Iran but they don't even feign outrage over lack of elections in Saudi Arabia? So it is not about democracy or respecting the will of the people any way.
Posted by As'ad at 6:15 PM

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/06/iranian-developments.html [/quote]

If the FP blog is correct, then he apparently did "well" on his assignment. Hard to tell right now though.


Also wanted to say hello again to all the good people here.

Pakistan general: US interfering in Iran affairs
Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:10:24 GMT

Former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig claims the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has distributed 400 million dollars inside Iran to evoke a revolution.

In a phone interview with the Pashto Radio on Monday, General Beig said that there is undisputed intelligence proving the US interference in Iran.

"The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election," he added.

Pakistan's former army chief of joint staff went on to say that the US wanted to disturb the situation in Iran and bring to power a pro-US government.


http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=98200&sectionid=351020401


This will likely make waves, although not in the MSM.

Edit: this dovetails nicely with the Seymore Hersh info in post #31.

I hope (well perhaps hope isn't the right word, it would actually be a nice comeuppance for these ruthless, cold-hearted SOBs) Ross, Emanuel, and the other Israel firsters inside the Obama Administration, didn't think it mattered (as to Iran's foreign policy) who's in charge of Iran's government (relating to a great many things that they are very concerned about). I assume they were not so naive and just wanted to foment chaos (kind of Che's foco theory, but using the CIA instead of Marxist guerillas) in the country...

Iran's poll did not worry Hezbollah
http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10323083.html

Iranians (at least the ones who voted for Mousavi) just want to have a glass of wine with a meal or at a social gathering (and young and single people want coed private gatherings/parties), they're not going to fall in line with the racist/fascist islamophobic Likudnik Israeli regime, or the interfering foreign power in the region, the United States, of course (that has no other major interest there then extracting the oil)...

to Israel whether Ahmadinejad or Mousavi are in power, as they are both easily demonized and neither one would change Iran's foreign policy significantly.

And i also agree that they wanted the election to be as chaotic and disruptive as possible. Although it seems to me notable that the early word from Haaretz implied that Ross had screwed something up and was being demoted.

Sometimes analyzing the US and Israel I feel like a damn Kremlinologist, counting the generals at a military parade...

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/06/western-primer-on-elections-in.html

Western Primer on elections in developing countries
Some Western principles in assessing elections in developing countries:

1) When the favored candidates win, the elections are free and fair. And when they lose, elections are certainly unfree and stolen.

2) Violent protests against elections that produce winners favored by the west, are to be strictly condemned and protesters are to be called terrorists, hooligans and mobs (can you imagine if Lebanese opposition supporters were to engage in violent protests against the election results in Lebanon), while violent protests against enemies of the US when they win elections (like in Moldova) are to be admired (and the protesters in those cases are called "democracy activists".

3) It is not against free elections to have Western governments interfere in elections and in funding candidates through Western groups for the promotion of democracy.

4) Candidates (or even dictators) who serve Western interests are automatically labeled as "reform candidates" (even the Saudi tyrant is referred to as "reform-minded"), while candidates who oppose Western economic and political interests are to be labeled enemies of reform.

5) Candidates who are not strident in their language about Israel are always favored.

6) Western observers of elections are always on hand to declare an election unfair and rigged if the favored candidates lose.

7) The corruption of pro-US candidates (like the March 14 bunch) is preferred to the non-corruption of, say, Mugabe.

8) The democratic credentials of dictators immediately improve if they change their policies toward the US and if they express willingness to serve US economic and political interests.

9) Countries where dictators do a good job in serving US economic and political interests need not hold elections.

10) If favored candidates can't guarantee electoral victory (like the PA tool, Abu Mazen whose term has expired months ago), they don't need to hold elections and will be treated as if they won an election anyway.

11) It is just not logical to assume that people in developing countries can freely ever decide to make choices that are not consistent with political and economic interests of the US.

12) Elections that are held under American and Israeli occupations are free and fair if the preferred candidates win.

"Pakistan's former army chief of joint staff went on to say that the US wanted to disturb the situation in Iran and bring to power a pro-US government."

When and where have I heard this before?

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3875

http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/nati-j16.shtml

By Joe Kishore
16 June 2009

The Nation magazine, the voice of left-liberal supporters of Obama, has quickly weighed in to support charges of vote-rigging and a “coup d’état” in Iran. The magazine has also given its full support to the candidacy of Mirhossein Mousavi, the principal rival of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In doing so, the Nation is joining hands with the rest of the American media, which has abandoned any pretense of journalistic objectivity in reporting the election. The allegations of fraud have been repeated without any independent investigation.

Robert Dreyfuss, the Nation’s chief commentator on foreign policy and national security, posted a blog entry under the headline, “Iran’s Ex-Foreign Minister Yazdi: It’s A Coup.” The article is dated June 13 and is time stamped at 7:24 AM—that is, about half a day after Iranian authorities released preliminary results from the election.

Mousavi had already declared the official results, showing a lopsided victory for Ahmadinejad, to be a fraud. Dreyfuss obviously accepted this claim uncritically. He could not possibly have conducted any independent investigation before he posted his blog. Nevertheless, the prominent link to Dreyfuss’ entry on the front page of the Nation’s web site is categorical, declaring, “A Rigged Election.”

-------

The promotion by the American media of Mousavi has been closely linked to the foreign policy interests of the Obama administration, which the Nation magazine has consistently supported. This is documented in the writings of Dreyfuss himself over the past week-and-a-half, beginning with a June 4 article written from Cairo entitled, “Obama Hits a Home Run.”

The “home run” refers to Obama’s speech that day in the Egyptian capital. The main aim of the speech was to provide a new face for American imperialism, one that would be better able to advance US interests in the Middle East. Dreyfuss declares, “Based on early returns from a decidedly unrepresentative sample of Arab public opinion, Obama hit a home run. I agree.”

On June 5, as he headed for Tehran, Dreyfuss penned another piece under the headline “Three Tests for Obama after ‘The Speech.’” The three tests were the Lebanese elections (held on June 7, which led to the victory of a US-backed coalition), the Iranian elections, and the future of Hamas and the Israel-Palestinian dispute.

On June 8 (“Iran’s Green Wave”), Dreyfuss openly solidarized himself with the development of a “color” revolution in Iran, a reference to the various US-backed movements in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union that have been aimed—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—at installing governments more amenable to US interests.

------------




This is a must-read.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/061509c.html

By Robert Parry
June 15, 2009

It’s fast congealing into conventional wisdom that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole re-election through fraud and that the so-called “green revolution” of Mir-Hossein Mousavi – which was based in the country’s intelligentsia and middle class – got robbed.

But a strong case can be made that the large turnout, which was estimated at about 85 percent, was the key to a genuine landslide for Ahmadinejad, who is viewed as a friend of more traditional Iranians from the working classes and among the rural peasants.

That is the assessment expressed by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty in a Washington Post op-ed citing their findings from extensive polling across Iran in mid-May that detected roughly the same 2-to-1 margin in favor of Ahmadinejad that emerged from the final tallies.

Ballen and Doherty also knocked down one of the central arguments cited by analysts who are claiming that Ahmadinejad committed fraud. That argument is that Mousavi, an Azeri, surely would have won Azeri-dominated districts which instead were recorded as going heavily for Ahmadinejad.

However, Ballen and Doherty reported that “our survey indicated … that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.”

Their poll also undercut the widespread media assumption about Internet-savvy youth backing Mousavi. They found that only 1 in 3 Iranians have access to the Internet and the “18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.”

Nevertheless, the rush to the “fraud” judgment among much of the U.S. news media is shaping the political realities that now confront both Washington and Tehran. One of the snap media judgments has been that Ahmadinejad’s “theft” of the election proves that hardliners in Israel and neoconservatives in the United States were right all along about the impossibility of dealing rationally with Iran, that President Barack Obama was the "big loser," and that force is the only option to employ against Iran.

It also has been curious to see U.S. news organizations care suddenly about legitimate elections when most of them ignored, ridiculed or covered-up evidence that George W. Bush stole the U.S. presidential election in 2000 and possibly in 2004 as well.

In Election 2000, Florida – a state controlled by Bush’s brother Jeb and Jeb’s cronies – was the scene of widespread election irregularities. Then, when a recount was attempted, the Bush campaign sent well-dressed hooligans from Washington to Miami to stage a riot aimed at intimidating vote counters. Finally, Bush got five partisan Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the counting of votes and award the White House to Bush.

Yet, the U.S. press corps was extraordinarily passive about this well-documented election theft. Even when it became clear that Al Gore won the popular vote and would have carried Florida if all legal ballots had been counted, major U.S. news organizations, including the New York Times and CNN, misrepresented the facts to protect Bush’s “legitimacy.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Gore’s Victory.”]

Similarly, serious irregularities in Election 2004, especially in the key state of Ohio, were never seriously investigated by the mainstream news media, which instead mocked Internet sites (including ours) and citizens groups as “conspiracy theorists” for citing some of the bizarre vote tallies favoring Bush. [For details, see our book, Neck Deep.]

Yet, when an election occurs in another country and an “unpopular” leader appears to win, an opposite set of rules apply. Anyone who doesn’t immediately accept the assumption of voter fraud is naïve; every “conspiracy theory” is cited respectfully while contrary evidence is downplayed or ignored, for instance the assumption about the Azeri vote that Ballen and Doherty debunked with their poll findings.

Another irony is that Iran's religious leaders now have ordered an investigation of the fraud allegations in a country not known for its democratic institutions. That is more than Americans got in 2000 and 2004.

Nice piece of research :research: into the twitter mania :hyper: supposedly coming from Iran. :politicalfuck:

http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/06/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter/

Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #IranElection
Monday, June 15, 2009 19:52
Posted in category Politics

iran1Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.

Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.

Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.

Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran’s election.

I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran

I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.

more at link: http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/06/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter

( thanks to bstender at du for the op info) :flowers:

What's next, taking down the Chinese communist government with the I Phone?

the destablizing. Maybe that intel agencies are using Twitter to provide an artificial narrative for the gullible, especially young people.

They tried this in Moldova... it didn't really work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwWHTXR9_mc&feature=related

Well I guess it beats trying to poison Ahmadinejhad's cigar or attempting to fit a bomb in a mollusk :devil2:.

638 ways to kill Castro
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/03/cuba.duncancampbell2

well, complete chaos is also in their interests.
But if Ahmadinejad had lost, who would their target be?
I guess they would saber-rattle at the "reformer" Mousavi too, but it wouldn't have the same ring.

protesting, apparently, and they are able to do it.

If the country was the harsh totalitarian police state that many want to claim, this could not be.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8476376

Thanks for the link to the clip about Moudova.

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=95640

Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Iran, Again: Begging for a Smell Test

…and it ain’t passing

Okay, I’ve been trying very hard to ignore the latest on Iran: Roxana’s highly publicized and dubious adventure (begging for a smell test), the pre-elections predictions making their way even onto the Sunday Talk Shows (A great Smell Test Indicator), and of course now, the intense and loud coverage of the post elections drama (The Smelliest of Alll)…

Why would I try to ignore this? Not because I am not interested in Iran, Iran Politics, or Iranians. Hey, I lived there for eight years. I speak Farsi as my second language. I had my primary education there. My Father is half Iranian, and through him, his family and friends, and his activities, I grew up with ‘lots of Iran politics’, not only in talk but in actual life. I witnessed the revolution unfold in 1978-79. In fact, along with my father, I participated in some demonstrations as an eight year old kid whose father was interrogated and tortured by the ruthless monarch, Shah. Contrary to what the US government has led citizens here to wrongly believe, the regime change in Iran did not occur through only Islamists. In the beginning, the liberals, the social democrats, the communists, socialists…many factions came together, united to get rid of the US-UK planted monarchy.

The country had its chance at having a democratic form of government, via Mossadegh. But hey, back then, the United States, driven by its Cold War, didn’t want democracies in that region. Are you kidding me??! Our business back then was ‘toppling democracies’; and replacing them with puppet monarchists, dictators, and the like. Back then we loved Islamic Fanaticism. It worked magically against the commie Soviets; Right?! So yes, due to my background, experience, education, family, friends, and past activities, Iran is not a subject I would ever ignore.

Back to ignoring the current publicity wave involving Iran. This one is no different than the previous wave towards the end of the Bush Presidency; only a tactic change, and this in a very sneaky and shrewd way. The ‘Nuke Scare’ didn’t quite work for the previous administration; neither domestically nor internationally. With Israel as adamant as ever, with President Obama as eager as his predecessor, only a bit savvier, and with the new neocons under new names and faces leading the way - and let’s not forget several disgruntled Iranian factions actively lobbying - it was about time to see the Iran topic resurface, but a bit differently. Thus, we have the new wave of recent publicity, although much more dangerous than before, since the appearance of the current method and operations do not seem nearly as bold as the old one - and so far it seems to be working and garnering public support for the neocon establishment and their agenda.

A recent survey which was conducted about three weeks before the elections showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin, even greater than his actual margin of victory in Friday's election.

Here is what Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty had to say about the legitimacy of the survey:

“Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, preelection polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.”


Are allegations of election fraud designed to further isolate Iran? Are they meant to be used to massage and shape domestic and international public opinion to lead the way for ‘further action’ on Iran? Let’s face it, the timing and the latest events don’t pass the smell test. We just had the ‘Free Roxana’ episode, with both the mainstream media and the alternative press carrying it as a campaign not dissimilar to Bush’s campaign on ‘Exporting Democracy’ to ‘oil-rich’ regions. This lady never actually denied working for Intelligence (based on my two CIA sources she indeed did), and in fact, in a way, she accepted the espionage charges brought against her by the Iranian government.

Remember the covert action program against Iran reported by Seymour Hersh? How about the report by Telegraph on how the US has been funding terror groups and other factions in Iran to create chaos? Do you think those are only ‘military’ operations?

With the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq the majority among our military leaders have been opposing another war in the region. The ‘Nuclear Iran’ campaign didn’t prove to be that fruitful for the previous administration in garnering public support to pave the way for our next attack in the next oil rich Middle Eastern country. And of course, using the same tactic would have been too much for the Obama administration to expect to have swallowed by the public. So what better alternative than pursuing a ‘Humanitarian & Democratization’ campaign to change the ‘hearts & minds’ of our people and garner ‘liberal’ support against Iran?

Give them a martyr self-declared reporter in the form of ‘Roxana.’

All of a sudden get on our high horse and preach vehemently on elections’ lack of integrity in Iran, never mind the same conditions exist in two thirds of the world’s phony democracies.

Start displaying a few selective pictures of ‘bloody noses and arms’ taken in Iran and cry ‘atrocities,’ never mind our 2000+ torture pictures with not only bloody and torn up bodies, but actual corpses.

What are they going to do next? Well, if they run out of ‘dramatic’ pictures, they may go back and recycle their favorite footages from the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979! They certainly love that one; nothing like it when it comes to inducing misinformed passion to bring about wrongly expressed patriotism in the form of consent to another war.

We have Ann Coulter of the Right - I just finished reading her recent typical hate mongering article which includes some bizarre garbage misinformation on Iran and Mossadegh. Talk about ignorance combined with psychotic behavior! Here is another one - equally twisted.

Then, there are those Ann Coulters of the left, writing about issues and an area they know zilch about, and whether intentionally or unintentionally they beat the war drums for their President of Change in need of a ‘pretext’ to bring to fruition the objectives put in place before him by the previous administration. I just checked out one of these popular ‘lefty’ blog sites, and here is the list of what this ignorant lady has been writing about (as a pundit) just in the past two weeks, all with a ‘pretense’ of expertise; preposterously and ignorantly analyzing and attacking the Iran elections, analyzing the health care bill, the current economic crisis, some Hoax Blogger Baby Scandal (I have no idea what it is, since I don’t read stuff like that), Dr. Tiller Analyses, Torture Pictures & DOJ, Mass Production of Food, Sarah Palin and why she is a ‘slut,’ Palin’s daughter and why she is a ‘slut,’ Iraq, Drinking Coke vs. Water…I guess you get my point, right? Of course it’s okay for anyone to write about anything. What is not okay is the pretense of expertise with the intention of propaganda when it is advertised and supported by an ‘agenda driven’ establishment…Can’t they please go back and chase Rove, Libby, etc.?!!!

Now your turn: What’s your take on the recent intensive coverage of Roxana followed by even more intense coverage of the elections in Iran by both the MSM and the blogosphere? Do they pass your smell test? If yes, please tell me how and why? If no, let me hear your points and arguments.

http://123realchange.blogspot.com/2009/06/iran-again-begging-for-smell-test.html

Just wanted to edit to say there's more links at the site full of good info. Thanks for starting this thread, Tinoire. There's a wealth of good info and analysis here!

The vast majority of the posters are implying that the author is anti-semitic. Figures.

I read the first 20 or 30 comments, and didn't see that. Hard to imagine that "the vast majority" of people are accusing others of Antisemitism.

I did see this:

[div class="excerpt"]Israel is NO Friend to America or the World..!!

Congressional members with dual American / Israeli Citizenships are TRAITORS, they should be lined up against a wall and SHOT…!!

Israel / Zionist Jews are the Blood Sucking Parasites of the World.
They are nothing more then Leeches, feeding on Humanity and sucking the life out of Mankind.

The sooner this World is rid of them the better we all will be.

“What’s the difference between an Israeli and a Catfish”?
One’s a Scum Sucking Bottom Feeder and the other is a Fish”

“Die You Scum Sucking Bastards, Die”[/quote]

He is going full force in supporting Mousavi.

Kind of strange, considering that Juan Cole was a Baha'i (he split with the Baha'i heirarchy, but he says he is still a believer), and Mousavi cracked down on Baha'is.

But Cole tends to have unusual views, perhaps because of his unusual background.

PLOT TO DESTABILISE IRAN

Mir-Hossein Mousavi is alleged to be a friend of Manuchehr Ghorbanifar (Iranian arms merchant, alleged MOSSAD double agent, and key figure in the Iran/Contra Affair)

We are not fans of the Ayatollahs in Iran.

We believe that they were put into power by the CIA and MI6.

WAS KHOMEINI AN AGENT OF THE US AND UK GOVERNMENTS?

Now, it looks as if the CIA and its friends are trying to toppple Ahmadinejad.

Or, at least, force Iran to negotiate.

Iran: Some Dots You May Want To Connect

In what ways has Iran upset the CIA?

In the past, Ahmadijedad has dared to criticise Israel.

Iran is becoming more friendly with China, Russia and India.

GANGING UP ON THE USA, IN YEKATERINBURG



According to Xymphora (Iran election wrap):

“Mousavi, a politician who had been out of power for twenty years, entered the race at almost the last moment. The poll showed he didn’t even come close to Ahmadinejad amongst his own ethnic group.

“Ahmadinejad is considered to be personally completely non-corrupt, while a major supporter of Mousavei, Hashemi Rafsanjani, is infamous in Iran for his corruption.

“Mousavi is also good pals with Manucher Ghorbanifar!

“Remember the meeting in Rome with Ledeen in which they cooked up the trickery which led to the disastrous American attack on Iraq?

“Remember the Niger documents?

“The connections to corruption and to the neocons make Mousavi’s recent actions quite understandable.

“He never thought he was going to win.

“He was in the election from the get go as part of a neocon/Zionist plot to destabilize Iran and make the election ‘illegitimate’, thus making it easier for the Jews to claim that the United States ‘had no negotiating partner’.”

New York City – photo by John Catolinatto

People Power only works when supported by the elite?

1. lets look at the UKRAINE.The Orange Revolution looks like a CIA operation to replace a set of pro-Russian oligarchs with a set of pro-American oligarchs.

Ian Traynor, in The Guardian 26 November 2004 (US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev Special reports …), described the Ukraine’s Orange Revolution as ‘an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing…

‘The Democratic party’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican party’s International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros’s open society institute. ‘

After the Orange Revolution, Mr Yushchenko personal popularity rating soon slumped to 20% as people realised they had been conned. ( Yushchenko scorned as Ukraine turns its back on the orange … )

What happened in Serbia was also planned, apparently, by the USA. (US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev Special reports …)

2. Now let us look at revolts in Eastern Europe, including Hungary and Romania.

In 1956 there was revolt in Hungary against the communist regime. There was no serious support for the rebels from the CIA and its friends and the revolt was crushed.

The 1989 revolt in Romania was successful.

An article apparently written by former Securitate officers (‘Was This Your Revolution? This is How It Was!’ Democratia, No. 36, 24-30 Sept. 1990) describes how the CIA and KGB organised the fall of Ceausescu.

Reportedly, key figures in the revolt were working for the CIA and KGB, including Militaru (allegedly a KGB-CIA double agent) and the former Securitate officer and adviser to Ceausescu, Dumitru Mazilu (allegedly a CIA agent), and Silviu Brucan (allegedly both a CIA and KGB agent).

Reportedly, just before the revolt, there were ‘massive arrivals of so-called Hungarian tourists in Timisoara and Soviet tourists in Cluj’.

3. What about the Philippines?

By the mid 1980s, the CIA had decided that Marcos was no longer the person to run the Philippines. The CIA wanted someone more ‘popular’. So a People Power movement was used to replace Marcos with Aquino.

4. Indonesia provides the best example of CIA-organised People Power.

At some point in the 1990s Suharto was seen by some Americans as having become too powerful and too independent minded.

Suharto was giving too many business contracts to his family and Chinese-Indonesian cronies, rather than to American companies like Ford.

Some people in the Pentagon considered the possibility of having a general such as Prabowo or Wiranto or Yuhhoyono take over.

In order to topple Suharto there would need to be riots.

In Indonesia, in the years 1997- 1998, there were riots in various parts of Indonesia. Some riots looked spontaneous and some looked as if they had been planned. (http://www.insideindonesia.org/edit50/riots.htm)

http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/plot-to-destabilise-iran/

And here:
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/06/very-rich.html

Here's a few:

...And wich proofs are you talking about? Your point is just filled up with antisemit insinuations about what are in fact fairly plausible stories….


Oh cooooooool! A stock market “expert” blubbering about “the evil Jews”!


This blog is hillarious. It’s still the Republicans fault and the Jews. Too funny.
The Supreme leader of the US is now in control but its those darn right wingers and Jews heh?

You can be a complete jewish while acting antisemitic.
And even if it is only Anti Israel - it is not better….

I think this site is an Iranian effort of the current regime to assign blame on, let me guess…. Israel of course….


Absolutely disgusting. You are no better than all of those people making “Jewish conspiracies”.


While I appreciate your investigative work, I don’t believe that you have a shred of hard evidence to back up these claims. Whether or not the vote fraud conspiracy is true remians to be seen, but at this point I think all that you have is just another conspiracy theory. Why not blame it on the Jews?

****

It wasn't the vast majority. Sorry. I stand corrected on that.

The problem is that when a thread contains vicious Antisemitism, and the rest of the posters fail to challenge that, or weave that seamlessly into their own narrative, even though they make no Antisemitic remarks themselves they are giving tacit approval to it. It is then completely understandable for people to see the entire discussion as Antisemitic. I know that as a person - and always one of the few - who does object to that, I am immediately seen as the enemy and attacked, and accused of being one of "them" who make accusations of Antisemitism for the purpose of shutting down the discussion or suppressing the truth.

If threads critical of the Obama administration were laced with blatantly racist posts, and no one objected, how would we see that? Would that not undermine the criticism of the administration, by strongly suggesting that the criticism was not what it seemed to be? How is this different?

June 17, 2009
Mohammad of Vancouver: Tehran is burning, and who is fueling the fires?

Mohammad of Vancouver (a Canadian-Iranian) has relatives in the streets of Tehran, but he says that Ahmadinejad likely won the election, and the west, with its "warm ears" for Moussavi, is choosing to hear what it wants from the demonstrations. And Ayatollah Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president, has manipulated the electoral crisis in Iran for his own gain.
Based on opinion polls conducted a few weeks before the election by Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT), Ahmadinejad was expected to win with even a larger margin than announced in the official vote. The polls were reported both in the Huffington Post and the Guardian and had several interesting findings. First, even if the majority of the undecided votes went to the reformist camp, it was still highly likely that Ahmadinejad could secure the 50% + 1 vote needed to avoid a run-off.
Second, more than half of the electorate had a neutral or favorable view of the economic situation, and there was a relatively-even split between those that felt who the president's economic policy positively contributed to the reduction of inflation and the unemployment rate and those who did not. Lastly, the vast majority of the Iranian electorate believe that religious expertise is a very important attribute of a successful president. While some may claim that bias or fear led to these results, these same Iranians were not afraid to answer extremely-controversial questions. For instance, a free press and free elections were seen as important issues that the government must address-- by pluralities of the electorate sampled.
In the actual vote as announced, Ahmadinejad performed 7 points poorer than in the poll by TFT.
Based on my own conversations with people inside Iran who were acting as election monitors, Ahmadinejad did well in the poor areas of Tehran, as well as the rural areas in central Iran and the northeast region of Khorasan and Mashhad. In the Facebook sphere, I am already seeing skepticism among some Mousavi supporters who are not buying into the whole “it is very obvious that the election was rigged” statement. The idea that “the results just don't make sense” is absurd. Mousavi did very well in Tehran, Yazd, Azarbaijan, and other ethnic-minority regions that he capitalized on while campaigning.
Nate Silver at 538.com agrees that the argument that the election was rigged is weak. (A subsequent post at 538 finds some of the Iranian regional numbers "fishy".)

But if the election results are not the problem, then what is?
To find the roots of the current crisis, one has to go back and look at the history of Rafsanjani’s presence in the political scene in Iran. Don’t forget that he is the second most powerful man in Iran and his family has amassed wealth beyond the borders of Iran. Rafsanjani also has a network of supporters outside of Iran that stretches from individuals, Iranian press and web sites outside of Iran all the way to the National Iranian American Council, whose positions are strikingly favorable to him.
Rafsanjani challenged Ahmadinejad in the 2005 elections and lost. Ever since then, he has been sabotaging Ahmadinejad’s plans of reforming the political and economic structures in Iran. He has been moving slowly from his moderate position to become the patron saint of the reformist camp. In this round of the election, Rafsanjani did not personally participate, but instead invited Moussavi, Karrubi and Rezaee (all three with historical ties to Rafsanjani) to throw themselves in the maelstrom of the anti-Ahmadinejad ring. The strategy was to create enough voter distractions so as to prevent Ahmadinejad from getting elected in the first round of voting.

rest at: http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/06/tehran-is-burning-but-who-is-fuelling-the-fires----based-on-opinion-polls-conducted-a-few-weeks-before-the-election-by-terr.html

Jun 19, 2009


Mousavi states his case
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate challenging Iran's authorities on the result of last week's presidential elections, is a masterful tactician who wants to overturn the re-election of his rival, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, with allegations of a massive conspiracy that he claims cheated him and millions of his supporters.

These supporters, identifiable by the color green they have adopted, have taken to the streets in the tens of thousands and on Thursday were to stage a "day of mourning" for what they say is a lost election. This follows a "silent" march through the streets of the capital on Wednesday. To date, at least 10 people - some



Iranian sources say 32 - have been killed in clashes.

Mousavi has lodged an official complaint with the powerful 12-member Guardians Council, which has ordered a partial recount of the vote. The complaint's main flaw is that it passes improper or questionable pre-election conduct as something else, that is, as evidence of voting fraud.

The protest, which seeks fresh elections, is short on specifics and long on extraneous, election-unrelated complaints. The first two items relate to the televised debates that were held between the candidates, rather than anything germane to the vote count.

There is also some innuendo, such as a claim that Ahmadinejad used state-owned means of transportation to campaign around the country, overlooking that there is nothing unusual about incumbent leaders using the resources at their disposal for election purposes. All previous presidents, including the reformist Mohammad Khatami, who is a main supporter of Mousavi, did the same.

More at link:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF19Ak02.html

March 31, 2008

In Zimbabwe, Opposition Follows Washington’s Plan

Filed under: Color Revolutions, Imperialism, Zimbabwe — gowans @ 10:36 pm

By Stephen Gowans

The color revolution in Zimbabwe (yet to be given a color) unfolds as other US- and British-government and foundation-directed color revolutions have unfolded in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine.

The revolution is what, in business circles, is called a turn-key solution. All you do is turn a key, and follow the plan.

The plan was developed by the US State Department, based on advice from “peace” and civil society scholars, and is cheered on by the same scholars who contributed to its development.

Here’s how the plan unfolds:

1. Elected officials in countries that won’t do Washington’s bidding are denounced a dictators. That the officials in these countries have won free and fair elections doesn’t matter. Doubt is raised about the legitimacy of the elections or the leaders are said to govern in an anti-democratic manner (Chavez) or both. This provides the US with the justification for step 2.

One of the most persistent critics of “anti-democratic” leaders abroad is US Vice-President Dick Cheney, whose commitment to democracy hasn’t dissuaded him from explaining that it doesn’t matter what the US public thinks of the war on Iraq – the administration does what it wants, not what’s popular. While the next administration will doubtlessly dismiss what’s popular in precisely the same way, there’s no movement afoot to get rid of the dictatorship where it’s needed most.

2. The US, Britain, and other Western countries provide financial support, expertise and other assistance to “civil society, the media, and opposition parties” to remove the “dictator.”

3. An election campaign is used as the setting to force the government to step down. The apparent inconsistency of a dictator holding elections is explained away as a hollow sham used by the dictator to claim legitimacy. (If the leadership is really dictatorial, and the elections really lack legitimacy in the eyes of voters, why are real dictators holding elections at all? Hitler, Mussolini and Franco didn’t. Why would real dictators do so now?)

4. The Western-supported media, civil society and opposition parties declare in advance, consistent with the dictator narrative, that the vote will be rigged. Western media dutifully trumpet this prediction.

5. Before the official vote is announced, the opposition and “independent” election monitors announce an opposition victory.

6. If the official vote tally contradicts the opposition’s claim of victory, the vote is denounced as fraudulent, and people are encouraged to move the battle to the streets.

Ian Makoni, election director for Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai explained two days before the vote:

[ul]“The lesson from 2002 (when the last presidential election was held) is we didn’t plan for after the vote. Everyone stayed at home and said we will go to the courts. What happened in Kenya was they knew there would be fraud and they were ready. We will be out on the streets celebrating when the polls close.”
Note that Makoni had already declared an opposition victory before the vote had even been held. It’s one thing to say the vote will be rigged – quite another to declare in advance of the poll that you’ve won.

Makoni continued: “It can turn into a protest easily. Zimbabweans are angry, they are desperate, they are ready to protest. It’s the turning point we are planning for.”
Opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa said that if the opposition isn’t declared the winner, Kenya will look like a picnic.

7. Public opinion is mobilized in the West by the media’s single-minded focus on the opposition and its civil society allies, completely excluding the government’s point of view.

Every major Western newspaper has based its reporting of Zimbabwe’s election in the last week exclusively on the point of view of the opposition and the civil society groups who share the same Western sources of funding. It’s as if in an election held in the United States, the media only covered the Republican candidates.

http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/in-zimbabwe-opposition-follows-washington%e2%80%99s-plan/

where the more left-wing of the candidates lost by a slim margin?

Or was the difference between the two candidates so small that the so-called leftist wasn't that much different from the official victor?

The NIAC blog - http://niacblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/post-election-iran-as-it-develops/ - reports that one of Congress’ most stalwart pro-Israel members, Howard Berman, and Mike Pence will propose a resolution to support the Iranian opposition:

According to CQ, the House will vote tomorrow on a bipartisan resolution expressing support for Iranian dissidents who have been demonstrating since the presidential election last week.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.) joined with Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) on a resolution condemning the violence against the protesters, the suppression of communication technologies, and affirming “the universality of individual rights.”

This measure is almost guaranteed to pass–probably with an overwhelming number of votes–which will unfortunately put the Congress directly at odds with the White House in responding to the crisis in Iran. Up to now, the President has been very cautious not to be seen as choosing one side over the other in the election dispute, saying he doesn’t want the US to become the story inside Iran. But the Congress seems poised to speak out more vocally on the subject, choosing to come down squarely on the side of the dissidents.

via http://www.richardsilverstein.com/

by Ramzy Baroud, editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/print/2009/952/op5.htm

In some way, Ahmadinejad's victory was the best news for Israel. Now, Tel Aviv will continue to pressure Obama to "act" against Iran, for the latter, under its current president, is an "existential threat" to Israel -- a claim that few in Washington question.

Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom was one of the first top officials in Israel to exploit the moment on 13 June. The results of Iran's elections, he said, "blew up in the faces of those who thought Iran was built for a genuine dialogue with the free world on stopping its nuclear programme."

What Israel wants to keep alive is a discussion of war as a viable option to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions and to eliminate a major military rival in the Middle East.

Senior fellow at the pro-Israeli American Enterprise Institute, John R Bolton expressed the war- mongering mantra of the pro-Israel crowd in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "What if Israel Strikes Iran?" He stated: "Many argue that Israeli military action will cause Iranians to rally in support of the mullahs' regime and plunge the region into political chaos. To the contrary, a strike accompanied by effective public diplomacy could well turn Iran's diverse population against an oppressive regime."

Ahmadinejad's victory will serve as further proof that diplomacy with Iran is not an option, from the point of view of Israel and its supporters in the US.

June 19, 2009
Dear Hillary,

China has never, ever held an election. When you visited the Chinese government in February 2009, you told them that human rights issues should never interfere with economic priorities. Then you used a Chinese proverb that people in the same ‘boat’ should ‘keep the peace on the crossing.’

There is a Persian proverb that says, ‘The chicken who eats figs has a crooked beak’ (مرغی كه انجير ميخوره نكش كجه ). I am not sure what that has to do with the current situation, but either you or the State Dept. might soon Twitter it to the Iranian nation, or ‘Tweeter’ it as CNN calls it. Besides, Iranians love it when American heads of state (or George Clooney) attempt to speak Persian.

Also, just four days before the election you warned Iran that the U.S. would not rule out a preemptive Israeli military strike. Actually you warned that it would go down ‘the way that we did attack Iraq.’ And you reasoned that if Iran did not halt its ‘nuclear weapons’ that it should fear ‘a battery of nuclear countries.’ Which sounded a little bit like the UCLA police department when it told that Iranian student to lower his ID card or get tasered.

Lastly, a few days ago at a press conference you said the U.S. would wait until it formulated a response to the Iran election. But Hillary: it was really hard to take you seriously. You were standing in front of an American and Israeli flag when you said it.

Sincerely.

P.S. You look as disappointed as this guy that Obama hasn’t announced a plan to bomb-bomb-Iran yet.

http://southissouth.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/dear-hillary/

because now I'm curious too

Absolutely disgusting.

How about the violence against innocent Afghans? Iraqis? Palestinians?

How about the CURRENT violence against Haitians during this week's elections where UN soldiers are preventing Lavalas members from running, from voting? And are shooting at people who attended the funerals of a Leftist priest?

http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/4301-haiti-un-peacekeepers-open-fire-on-jean-juste-funeral-protest.html


http://www.pacificfreepress.com/images/stories/new2/jean%20juste%20funeral%20Lanmo14.JPG
A young man identified as "Junior" lies in a pool of blood after Brazilian soldiers with the UN military mission reportedly opened fire. The UN has denied their involvement stating he was killed by a rock thrown from the crowd or hit with a blunt object. Eyewitnesses charge the UN with covering up the incident. - ©2009 Haiti Information Project

"The idol-breaker Ahmadi" and "Where are my votes?"

Posted: 20 Jun 2009 02:28 PM PDT

WRITTEN BY KOUROSH ZIABARI

From the most ardent enemies to the most cordial friends, everybody is now monitoring and commenting on Iran's 2009 Presidential Elections which eventually resulted in the re-election of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the extension of his mission for another four-year term.

The enemies confirmed their credulousness and myopia by garnering the hopes for a possible overthrow of the Islamic government after groups of frustrated people poured into the streets for some 6 days to protest what they called the "widespread fraud and manipulation" in the electoral results, and the friends which have been traditional and well-known for so long, including Lebanon, China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Azerbaijan and Qatar, demonstrated their loyalty by dispatching the immediate congratulatory messages.

Everything started when the Interior Ministry announced on Saturday night, June 13 that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected to take office for another four years, as he won a categorical majority of 63% of votes, blowing a heavy defeat to the reformist hopeful Mir-Hossein Mousavi, with a discrepancy of 11 million votes.

According to the official stats, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would become the most popular president of Iran since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, surpassing the invincible victory of ex-President Mohammad Khatami in 1997 where he had won 21 million votes for the first time in a Middle Eastern election.

The Interior Ministry declared the landslide victory of Mr. Ahmadinejad with 24.5 million votes whereas the majority of pre-election polls and surveys had indicated a narrow and close rivalry between the two main contenders, even expecting the likelihood of a second run-off round to determine the ultimate result. The National Election Commission also designated an infinitesimal minority of 330,000 votes to the other reformist candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, whose entire votes didn't exceed the total of 460,000 invalid blank votes.

The members at the national Electoral Campaign of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who were apprehensive about possible ballot-rigging in favor of the incumbent president since the commencement of campaigns and advertisements, held several rounds of emergency meetings to finds solutions, and the only answer they could find was to spearhead street demonstrations and rallies to protest.

Declarations of Mousavi

Mir-Hossein Mousavi issued several official declarations following the announcement of final results and sent various letters to the Supreme Leader, Guardian Council and Head of the Judiciary to lodge complaints about the "widespread fraud and manipulation" which he had witnessed.

The members of Committee for the Preservation of Electorate at the national campaign of Mir-Hossein Mousavi also issued cautions through its official website to warn against the ways "votes are being distorted" during the election hours. They objected that the electoral executives ask the voters to write down the name of Mir-Hossein Mousavi with "certain pens", demand them to put down the electoral number of Mousavi beneath his name while casting their ballot, expel the observer representatives of Mir-Hossein Mousavi from the polls, etc.

Once the results were announced officially, Mir-Hossein Mousavi called his fans and supporters to mount street demonstrations and hold gatherings by wearing green wristbands and headbands, the color which he had chosen as a religious symbol for his campaign.

The massive demonstrations, which the British papers, including the Daily Telegraph and Independent had described as the largest non-governmental rallies since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, lasted for 6 days, and left 7-15 fatalities, according to Iran's official media.

Rebels and non-political insurgents who were seeking an opportunity to spread violence and unrest amidst the political tensions, attacked the citizens, devastated public property, broke down the busses and other transportation facilities and reportedly killed 10 people. In order to prevent the expansion of protests and make the demonstrators stay off the streets and disallow the abusive movements of riots which the Supreme Leader said, "are separated from the electoral fans and supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi", riot police and plainclothesmen were brought to action, and according to the national intelligence services, a group of U.S.-linked terrorists who had planned to explode bombs in 20 populous spots of Tehran (the mega-capital of Iran with 10 million population) were detected.

In a joint letter to the Head of Judiciary System Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, the former President Seyed Mohammad Khatami and the failed reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi protested the "aggressive confrontation with people" and called for the immediate release of detainees who were arrested during the demonstrations: "according to the consistent reports, aggressive confrontation with the gatherings and ordinary people and attacking the residential complexes … are underway which are not in compliance with the accepted standards of the Islamic Republic and will have no impact other than the pessimism of society toward the (governmental) system."

"Upon your legitimate and religious responsibility and your sense of accountability toward the rights of citizens, we ask your majesty to take the necessary steps and actions to draw to a close this upsetting and provocative situation and prevent the violent row against the people", they added.

Leader's reaction

Iran's Supreme Leader was the first prominent figurehead to react to the "epic presence of the Iranian nation in the arena of elections". He sent an elaborate congratulatory letter to the nation and the President-elect a few hours after the official announcement of the final results. Ayatollah Khamenei appreciated the 85% turnout and the participation of 40 million people in the 10th presidential elections: "the supremacy and dignity which you recorded in the history of nation with your tranquility, serenity and maturity, and the unassailable inclination which you demonstrated amidst the spates of foes' psychological propaganda, does have such an importance that can not be described with a conventional and usual language."

He also alluded to the significance of "solidarity" and "astuteness" in the post-election season and added: "you proved that later than 30 years following the establishment of religious democracy in this country, you'll take part in the juncture more vibrantly and confidently than ever, ensuring both the friends and enemies of your continued path."

In another part of the letter, the Supreme Leader praised the nation for their unprecedented participation: "the elections of Khordad 22 (June 12) with the creative performance of the Iranian nation, set a new record in the long sequence of national elections. The 80% turnout on the ballots and the 24 million votes of people to the president-elect is a pure festivity which can guarantee the country's improvement and progression, national security and sustainable contentment with the divine patronages and assistances."

The Supreme Leader however toughened his tone a few days later and on the Friday prayers sermon, while the massive demonstrations and protests by the supporters of failed reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi were underway and the international pressure on Iran was surging. He warned the "behind-the-scenes planners of demonstrations" to end the rallies and stay off the streets, otherwise, he "would speak to the nation more frankly."

He advised the failed candidates to pursue their complaints through "legal venues", starting that: "the destiny of elections would be determined on the ballots, not on the palm of the streets."

In an unprecedented action, however, the Supreme Leader blamed President Ahmadinejad for attacking the former high-ranking officials of the country during the pre-election live televised debate with Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Ahmadinejad had accused the former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and the former Parliament Speaker Nateq Nouri of corruption and financial fraud: "It's not my procedure to name people on the Friday sermons, but I do it this time because they have been named (on the debates) ..I have known Mr. Hashemi for so long … our acquaintance dates back to some 50 years ago … Mr. Hashemi has been one of the most significant and principal people of the movement in the pre-revolution era … and went to the verges of martyrdom several times after the revolution … has been a companion of Imam Khomeini and after the demise of Imam Khomeini, was perpetually a comrade of the leader (himself)."

Other reactions

The hot presidential elections in Iran and its controversial aftermaths provoked different reactions from all around the world. In a low-profile and conservative approach toward the domestic disputes over the alleged fraud, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs expressed the happiness of the U.S. over the widespread enthusiasm and vibrancy which the elections have created in Iran and stated that U.S. is "impressed" by the vigorous debate and zealousness which the elections have caused among the young Iranians. It was the first time since the Iranian revolution of 1979 that a White House high-ranking official makes such friendly and positive remarks on the Iranian elections. However, he told the reporters that U.S. is "monitoring" the situations closely, and particularly, what he called to be the reported "irregularities".

The Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon, however, in line with the frequent condemnations of the last months, which he has been throwing at the Iranian state and people, expressed "deep concerns" over the "irregularities" and called for the immediate investigation into the "fraud and discrepancies".

Lawrence Cannon has been casting doubts and concerns over different issues in Iran over the past months, and the official website of the Canadian Embassy in Tehran is now flooded with his "deep concerns" on Iran's human rights record, elections, missile test, nuclear issue, etc. The only thing which he has never cast doubts or concerns about is the mistreatment of the Canadian Embassy in Tehran with the Iranian applicants and the rejection of 61% of the temporary resident visa applications in 2007.

Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva whose country has developed strong ties with Iran under President Ahmadinejad was among the first foreign leaders who sent congratulatory messages to Tehran. He denied the fraud possibility and told a press conference: "nobody has so far provided evidence of that, and the Iranian president was elected with a majority of 62%". He also confirmed the reports of his forthcoming travel to Tehran in order to "pursue the bilateral cooperation and build stronger partnerships."

The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish President Abdullah Gul also congratulated Mr. Ahmadinejad on his reelection during a phone call. The presidents of Russia, Belarus, Iraq, Lebanon, Armenia, Yemen and Venezuela also extended their felicitations to Ahmadinejad on his taking office for a second consecutive term.

The reality of Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Although Mir-Hossein Mousavi was implicitly warned by the Supreme Leader, the most powerful political and religious authority of the country, to cease his "street campaign-expedition" and "muscle-flexing" and pursue his demands and protests through "legitimate venues", and that's what the western media outlets are trying to distort and portray as a political confrontation between the reform movement and the leader's political alignment, the reality is thoroughly different.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi was the Prime Minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989 and served both of his two terms when Ayatollah Khamenei was president. He was the popular prime minister of the Late Imam Khomeini, the founder of Islamic Revolution, and had been praised by him frequently and on various occasions.

On the expiration of his first term, Ayatollah Khamenei was reluctant to endorse him as prime minister for a second time, as he believed that there are other competent individuals who can be put in the position. Some of the high-ranking clerics of that time, including the Major General Mohsen Rezaei (the former Commander in Chief of the IRGC) went to Imam Khomeini for meddling. They told Imam Khomeini that Mir-Hossein Mousavi (the prime minister of war years) is immensely popular among the combatants and those young warriors who are fighting with the forces of Saddam the dictator would get hope and energy from him. In order to persuade Ayatollah Khamenei to extend the mission of Mr. Mousavi as the Prime Minister, Imam Khomeini declared this historical sentence which perpetuated Mirhossein Mousavi as a prominent revolutionary figure in the contemporary history of Iran: "as a citizen, I announce that selecting anyone except this gentleman (Mir-Hossein Mousavi) is a treachery to Islam."

Mousavi has been introduced as a major reformist figure to the world; however, he seeks reform and change within the framework of the Islamic Republic of Iran and has always endorsed the role of Jurisprudent as the ultimate decision-maker which has "salvaged the country from coups" so far. Those western thinkers and pundits who portray Mousavi as an opposition leader and are trying to merge him with the anti-revolutionary movements inside U.S. and Israel are apparently in great error.

Over the past days, the Persian section of Radio Israel aired exclusive "emergency" programs to cover the "Iran crises" by inviting "experts" and "scholars" who would unanimously invite the supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi to storm into the streets, call for the transformation of the Islamic government and destabilize the routine transportation, business and daily life in every way by burning the public facilities, mosques, universities and shops. The peaceful and nonviolent demonstrations of the protesting youths and pro-reform supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi who were demanding their votes be officially "respected" by the authorities was soon mixed with the illicit and criminal actions of the U.S. and Israel-backed revolts and mutineers whose ultimate desire was to see a "velvet revolution" going on everywhere in Iran.

One of the most appreciable remarks by the Supreme Leader was that one which differentiated between the rebels with the supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi. In a personal meeting with Mir-Hossein, Ayatollah Khamenei cleared that the "account of rebels and violence-seekers is separated from "that of Mousavi's fans and those who devastate the public assets and private belongings of the people are carrying out the aggressive actions without any political purposes.

Ali Larijani, the moderate conservative Speaker of Parliament who is seen to be one of the most rational and reasonable figureheads in the conservatives' campaign also told the nation in a live TV speech that "those who under the mask of political fans of a certain movement or candidate impose damages to the public properties or paralyze the daily life of ordinary people are not among the protestors who want their votes to be preserved and virtuously."

He also added that the Islamic Republic of Iran respects the freedom of speech, the freedom of rallies and demonstrations, and vigorously pursues the claims of those candidates who believe that there have been irregularities with their votes: "the liberty of demonstrations should be respected, and those who are in charge of issuing certifications to legitimize the protesting rallies should cooperate and issue them constructively."

Larijani, who was one of the contenders of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 Presidential Elections also stressed that he had conducted "phone calls" with the authorities of the Guardian Council, the highest-ranking electoral body of Iran which vets and oversees the candidates for qualification into the final round of election and examines the ultimate credibility of votes, and made suggestions to them in order to facilitate the investigation of claims made by the failed candidates.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian media correspondent, freelance journalist and the author of Book 7+1. He is a contributing writer for websites and magazines around the world. He is a contributing writer of Tehran Times newspaper and collaborator with Tlaxcala. His articles and interviews have been translated into numerous languages, including Spanish, Italian, German and Arabic.

http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/mexi-a08.shtml

The social tensions underlying the mass protests in support of Lopez Obrador and demanding a full recount are on the rise. A year of bitter struggles by miners, metal workers, teachers and public employees underscores the highly volatile social and political situation in the country.

There are indications that the current state of affairs will not be tolerated for much longer. An editorial published on August 7 in Reforma, a conservative Mexico City daily that supports the PAN and Calderon, describes Lopez Obrador as a skilled politician who is taking advantage of a power vacuum resulting from the United States’ preocupation with crises in the Middle East, Venezuela, Afghanistan and North Korea that prevents Washington from intervening more aggressively in the Mexican election dispute on the side of the PAN. Contributing to the power vacuum, according to the newspaper, is the Mexican army’s reluctance to get involved in what it considers a purely political dispute. The editorial notes that several days ago, the armed forces rejected feelers from President Fox to step in to restore order.

The article decries the impunity with which the rallies and marches are taking place. It points out that there is no substitute for military repression to restore order.

Similar alarms are being raised in the United States. Despite a campaign by Lopez Obrador to reach out to US and European officials, US newspapers are becoming increasingly critical of the PRD candidate and his tactic of mobilizing popular support.

---------

PRD leaders indicate the Mexican embassy officials in the United States, Spain and other countries are openly lobbying for Calderon. The Bush administration has made no secret of its support for the PAN candidate. President Bush congratulated Calderon for his victory on July 4, two days after the election. Calderon has also been congratulated by Britain’s Tony Blair, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Canada’s Stephen Harper, Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguea Zapatero and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe.

US investors reacted with caution to the electoral court decision. Both the Mexican stock market and the Mexican peso increased slightly on Monday, reflecting expectations that this crisis will be resolved in Calderon’s favor.

Bernard Aronson, former undersecretary of state for inter-American affairs and an investment director for the US firm ACON Investments, declared in an interview with the Mexican daily La Jornada that while financial markets “clearly favored Calderon” before the election, since then, investors “are conserving their money.” He called Lopez Obrador a “step backward for Mexican democracy, though not a fatal one,” and warned that world financial markets would react negatively to “the possibility of social struggles and violence.”

------------


My impression is that the election was genuinely stolen, and that Lopez Obrador used the discontent to stage a largely ineffective protest movement that would "blow off some steam" and prevent Mexico from starting a real revolution.

Here is an analysis from DemNow-
http://tinyurl.com/2006-Mexican-election

"The party of populist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is demanding a full, vote-by-vote recount in Mexico’s closest-ever presidential race.

A preliminary count of the votes cast in Sunday’s election gave a slim lead to conservative candidate Felipe Calderon. But federal election officials acknowledged Tuesday that more than three million ballots–or eight percent of the total–remain uncounted. In the latest tally, Calderon leads Lopez Obrador by just over 0.6 of a percentage point, meaning the race is still too close to call.

On election night, both of Mexico’s major television networks said their exit polls showed a statistical tie. Two hours later both candidates claimed victory in Mexico City."
/snip/

I woke up this morning thinking about Mexico. The 2006 election was the first challenge to the PRI in something like 40 yrs (not sure - but a long time).
I'm looking around trying to learn more.
I thought that it was in these protests that the American Indymedia reporter (Will?) was killed. Maybe it was other protests.
Can anyone get on the Indy web site? I remember they had a lot about that, but my computer system doesn't recognize them and I'm afraid to over-ride.

It's really scary - this am I turned on the tv to see what Americans are waking up to and it is almost 24 hr Iran on cnn.
They now have a "face" of the protest - Neda, a teen killed, and they keep showing very graphic fotos.
One thinks of Rachel Corrie, Will, other young people killed, not to mention millions of un-named.
It's scary bec. I don't think the forces are going to let this rest until there is some confrontation. Sunday talk show - "Obama is spineless".

thanks,
ellen

well my brain kicked into gear and I remembered the young man's name. Shot to death by Mexican police, during protests in Oaxaca.

Where was cnn??

"Will, 36, a former East Village squatter and community gardens activist turned Indymedia reporter, was killed last Friday by paramilitaries in Oaxaca City as he was documenting the uprising against Ulises Ruiz, governor of the state of Oaxaca.

His final video begins with Will doing an interview about the insurgents’ fight to maintain control of a local radio station. There had already been gunfire from the paramilitaries that morning. Will then follows along with a group of Oaxacans who, despite sporadic gunfire, chase one of the paramilitaries into a building, then use a dump truck to ram an opening in it. At some point, either this paramilitary or another fires a shot that strikes Will in the abdomen. The tape ends in commotion, with Will crying, “Help me!” and others shouting, “Grab him!” as they try to pull him to safety. The camera is left on a ledge, still filming.

The video, which is in Spanish, can be viewed at http://indybay.org/newsitems/2006/10/28/18324298.php."

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_183/activist.html

edited to add: http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=14000

for more about Brad Will- this was an amazing guy!
"Will and Neary spent most of 2002 and '03 roaming the bubbling social landscape of Latin America. In Fortaleza, Brazil, they confronted the director of the InterAmerican Development Bank during riotous street protests. They journeyed to Bolivia, too, and interviewed Evo Morales, not yet the president, and traveled in the Chapare province with the coca growers federation. They hung out in Cochabamba with Oscar Oliviera, the hero of the battle to keep Bechtel from taking over the city's water system. Everywhere they went, they sought out pirate radio projects and offered their support.

In February 2005, Will was in Brazil filming the resistance of 12,000 squatters at a camp near the city of Goiana in Perembuco state when the military police swept in, killing two and jailing hundreds. On his videos, you can hear the live ammunition zinging all around him as he captures the carnage. Will was beaten and held by the police.

Undaunted, Will picked up his camera and soldiered back through Peru and Bolivia, and when the money ran out, flew back to New York to figure out how to raise money for the next trip south. He was hooked.

In early 2006, he tracked Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas' Other Campaign through the Mayan villages on Mexico's Yucatán peninsula before returning to New York, keeping tabs on the Other Campaign through the internet from his room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn."

"God, I'm going to be sick. Ahmadinejab was projected to win because of HUGE rural support from people who don't want to see their country and security dismantled. The I-pod, Facebook, twitter crowd is made of of bourgeois thugs who need a shinier Porsche and are falling for a hard-right leader's sudden transformation and wedge crumbs."

Gee, sounds familiar. Look out if they start sporting a logo that looks suspiciously like Pepsi ... and they may need a theme song. Builder Bob's is taken but maybe Handy Manny's "Fix It" would suffice.

Western companies help Tehran spy on protestors
June 22, 2009 · Leave a Comment


NSN Logo
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Numerous celebratory articles have appeared recently in several blogs that praise Western Internet firms for “help[ing] out the pro-democracy movement inside [Iran]”. These articles overlook Tehran’s extremely powerful Internet and telephone spying capabilities, which experts describe as “one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms”. Moreover, as intelNews reported last April, the Iranian government acquired these mechanisms with the help of some of Europe’s leading telecommunications hardware and software manufacturers, who were all too happy to supply Tehran with advanced means to spy on its own people. According to a new exposé by The Wall Street Journal, the Iranian government’s telecommunications monitoring and interception capabilities allow it to “examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale” and go “well beyond” the standard tactic of blocking user access to specific Internet sites. According to several insiders, Iran appears to be engaging in “deep packet inspection”, which enables the country’s internal security agencies “to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes”. What is more, these remarkable capabilities were afforded to Iran Telecom –Iran’s government-owned telecommunications provider– by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a lucrative engineering partnership between Finland’s Nokia Corporation and German hardware manufacturer Siemens AG, Europe’s largest engineering firm. Remarkably, as intelNews has noted before, the NSN sale of surveillance hardware to Iran appears to be perfectly legal, as there are “virtually no restrictions on the export [to Iran] of high-tech equipment [by Western firms] that can be used to monitor or control free expression”. So much for Western assistance to the Iranian reform movement.

http://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/01-163/



Now you know, if Western powers eagerly sold this technology to Iran, then they themselves must have computing power and surveillance tech that would make this look like a slide-rule.

""In an act fraught with symbolic significance, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the mausoleum of the father of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, while unrest continued across Tehran in defiance of a ban on demonstrations."" I wonder if Palestinian bombings were ever described as "fraught with symbolic significance." (thanks Nardine)

Posted by As'ad at 4:57 AM

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/06/washington-post-on-one-suicide-bombing.html



Amazing... the propaganda is so heavy they are almost cheering on suicide bombers.

By Bill Van Auken
22 June 2009

In its coverage of the recent political upheavals in Iran, the position of the Nation magazine, the self-styled voice of progressive politics, has become increasingly indistinguishable from that of the US political establishment.

Robert Dreyfuss, the magazine’s principal correspondent on the Iranian events—and on “politics and national security” generally—has parroted the unverified charge of a stolen election and characterized the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as his supporters, as a “virtual fascist movement.”

In a June 17 column entitled: “Battle Lines in Iran,” Dreyfuss, who had just returned from covering the election in Tehran, speculated on the trajectory of the Iranian “showdown.”

He wrote: “Thirty years ago, it was the decision of the Shah of Iran not to confront the revolutionaries with violence that allowed the anti-Shah movement to grow strong enough to oust the Shah. Then, as now, a relatively small number of deaths—‘martyrs’—triggered a traditional, Shiite forty-day cycle of memorial marches and ceremonial protests and led to a crescendo of protest by the end of 1978.”

This is an astonishing statement. While the number killed by the Shah’s troops and the notorious SAVAK secret police is disputed—the government today puts it at 60,000, while its opponents claim only about 3,000—there is no question that virtually every one of the demonstrations that erupted in 1978-79 saw scores, if not hundreds, of workers and students mowed down by automatic weapons fire in cities across the country.

SAVAK, trained by the CIA, was among the most sadistic secret police forces in the world, known for its systematic and hideous torture of anyone suspected of being an opponent of the monarchial regime. Its victims numbered in the tens of thousands.

How is one to account for this whitewashing of a brutal dictatorship by a journalist now posing as a champion of democracy? Who is this man?

-------

The book was put out by New Benjamin Franklin House Publishing Co., which had produced other volumes that year, including “What every Conservative Should Know about Communism,” written by Lyndon LaRouche.

Dreyfuss held the title of “Middle East Intelligence Director” for LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review, the flagship publication of what the Washington Post described in 1985 as a network which “had more than 100 intelligence operatives working for it at times, and copies the government in its information-gathering operation.”

Political Research Associates, a think tank that specializes in tracking the activities of the extreme right, wrote of Dreyfuss’s former employer: “The LaRouche organization and its various front groups are a fascist movement whose pronouncements echo elements of Nazi ideology.”

------

After being driven into exile by the revolution, Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi, the Shah's widow, told the West German magazine Bunte: “To understand what has gone on in Iran, one must read what Robert Dreyfuss wrote in the Executive Intelligence Review.” The magazine used the quote in its promotional advertising, aimed principally at corporate executives and right-wing politicians.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/drey-j22.shtml


:eek:



So... let me get this straight.

The Nation is employing the former head of Middle East Intelligence from the LaRouche organization... who is also best friends with the Shah's family... and this is coming from a magazine that is supposed to be on the "left?"

Wow.

but here's the link now http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/06/20/the-idol-breaker-ahmadi-and-where-are-my-votes/

You know I instinctively felt that some of this (especially the twitter revolution) involved US/Israeli shenanigans, but to read the background here is really eye-opening. This is a big part of why I signed up at this forum last year but never really posted because I was learning on this topic. Like many Americans I've been mostly exposed to one view of Israel, and never hear the other side of the story. This forum is absolutely invaluable in this regard, the research accumulated here is very educational.

He is seriously good.

Thanks for the high compliment.

When these Iranian kids realize they've been played, it isn't going to be pretty.

There needs to be more people like him.

:toast:

Britain warned of 'embassy siege'

Posted on » Tuesday, June 23, 2009


TEHRAN: Iranian MPs yesterday urged a review of ties with Britain over alleged election meddling as students planned a protest at the British embassy and warned of a repeat of the 1979 US embassy siege.

Centuries-old mistrust of British interest in Iran welled up once more as Iranian leaders alleged that London played a key role in fomenting the unrest that has swept the Islamic republic since the June 12 presidential election.

As the accusations mounted, Britain's Foreign Office said it is withdrawing the families of embassy staff and warned its nationals against "all but essential travel to Iran." Kazem Jalali, spokesman for parliament's foreign relations commission, told state-run television: "We asked the foreign ministry to reduce relations with Britain in our session with the foreign minister and his deputies."

Members of four Iranian student unions will stage a protest demonstration outside the British embassy in Tehran today, the Fars news agency reported.

It said the protest would target the "perverted government of Britain for its intervention in Iran's internal affairs, its role in the unrest in Tehran and its support of the riots."

...

Accusations against Britain have been flying since Friday when Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei singled it out for particular criticism, saying London was showing its "real face".

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Sunday accused Britain of plotting for two years against the election.

The foreign ministry took aim at the BBC, along with the Voice of America, saying they were Israeli agents who aimed to "weaken the national solidarity, threaten territoral integrity and disintegrate Iran."

The BBC's permanent correspondent in Tehran, Jon Leyne, was ordered expelled by the Iranian authorities which accused him of "supporting the rioters".

...

The office of Tehran's prosecutor general has said "unknown vandals" opened fire and killed people in post-election violence in the capital on Saturday, Iran's state Press TV said yesterday.

On Sunday, state television said 10 people were killed in clashes between police and "terrorists" during the previous night's unrest in Tehran.

A senior police official was also quoted as saying police had not opened fire.

Yesterday, Press TV, Iran's English-language channel, reported that some armed saboteurs had opened fire on civilians and killed people.

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=253856

He replied - he had disabled comments cuz so many were vicious.

figures.

Tue, 06/23/2009 - 11:43am

Since news reports surfaced over a week ago saying that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Special Advisor on the Gulf and Southwest Asia Dennis Ross would be moving to the National Security Council, questions have swirled around the opaque appointment shuffle, which has not yet been officially announced.

-----

The Cable has learned that deputy national security advisor Thomas Donilon, among others, is positioning Ross to assume an uber-senior NSC position overseeing Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East. The Iraq portfolio formerly assigned to holdover war czar Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute will be shifted to Ross, leaving Lute to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Puneet Talwar, the NSC's senior director for the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Iran, will report to Ross, as will Daniel Shapiro, the NSC's senior director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Under the new NSC structure, there will be no dedicated senior director for Iraq and there will be only two or three directors for Iraq, reporting to Talwar.

In January, when the new administration took office, Lute supervised two senior directors just for Iraq and six Iraq directors. Over the past few months, the size of the group has been reduced, and it now appears it will be further downsized as the Iraq portfolio shifts from Lute to Ross.

Sources worry that with the drop in manpower, and with Talwar and Ross both more focused on Iran, Iraq policy will suffer at a delicate transition time when Washington plans to draw down combat forces over the coming year.

National security advisor Jim Jones is said to be sensitive to the concerns, while Donilon is said to be pushing for the move, along with NSC chief of staff and longtime close Obama foreign policy aide Mark Lippert. Lippert and Donilon didn't respond to queries. Other officials declined to speak on the matter. (Wait for the announcement before interpreting the Ross move, suggested one.)

Ross's team at State includes Iran expert Ray Takeyh, Special Assistant Ben Fishman, State Department Senior Policy Advisor Elisa Catalano, and State Department Senior Science Advisor Alex Deghan.

(Science Advisor???)

The other group said to be concerned by Ross's perceived takeover of Middle East turf is the team of Middle East Peace special envoy George Mitchell, which now has to contend not only with resistance from all quarters of the region, but also a rival power center in the NSC that hasn't tended to see Middle East peace issues the same way.

Laura Rozen

I knew he would be back again! He's like Jason and the Terminator combined.
When are they going to learn? Nobody trusts him anymore, and I'm sure he was one of the main reasons Oslo failed, although we'll never know the whole story.