Telephones Cut Off, Mousavi Arrested, Rafsanjani Resigns

[Sweejak]

Thanks for the comments and observations about the media-pushed Twitter phenom; Sure makes ya wonder about how and why of it as a sophisticated psyop change-agent tool coopted by faux-democracy advocates, esp. the usual suspects. Sure gotta suspect a special branch of CIA tasked with maximizing Twitter's public opinion-shaping potential in so-called colour-revolutions.

Here is what our protectors said about Twitter in October

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10075487-83.html

[sunny]

Anybody else..



Maybe it's a southern thang.


Here is the thing. As much as I can sympathize with the protesters, (lord knows I wish we could have garnered such large and vocal crowds during the 2000 fiasco. Where I was, in front of the Federal Courthouse in Mobile, there were consistently about a dozen people chanting 'count the votes' and a couple hundred with pre-printed "Sore Loserman" signs spitting, hissing, and cursing at us) I feel they are playing right into the hands of Western powers who couldn't care less if their votes are counted, or if the women have to wear head coverings, or if they are imprisoned without charges and tortured. Indeed, if they keep it up Obama will eventually be coerced by widespread leftish sentiment due to both horrific crackdowns and natural sympathy with those seeking human rights, as well as neocon agitating, into bombing their beautiful country back to the Stone Age. At the very least and at a time when a united front is most needed to fend off their enemies, civil strife will cause a fatal weakening in the fight against the circling vultures.

[Sweejak]

Tarpley's segment on Iran. Flawed i think but worth the listen. About 1MB

http://bit.ly/grLDY

[MinM]

Thanks for the comments and observations about the media-pushed Twitter phenom; Sure makes ya wonder about how and why of it as a sophisticated psyop change-agent tool coopted by faux-democracy advocates, esp. the usual suspects. Sure gotta suspect a special branch of CIA tasked with maximizing Twitter's public opinion-shaping potential in so-called colour-revolutions.

Here is what our protectors said about Twitter in October

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10075487-83.html

http://TehranBureau.com and http://twitter.com/tehranbureau

[Sweejak]

TeheranBureau.com thinks Andrew Sullivan is a hero?

[Hammer of Los]

Thats a lot of very interesting comments with regard to the "twitter phenomenon" guys.

I wondered aloud to my wife a month or two ago as to why "twitter" was being so visibly and relentlessly pushed, especially by "journalists" at the BBC.

Here is a related article;

State Department comments on 'talks' with Twitter

I'm of a mind with nordic and the ever-eloquent starmanskye.

Oh, and marvellous posts from JackRiddler, as always.

This is certainly a story to watch, aint it?

[Sweejak]

I missed most of the twitter fan talk. There were some people I had subscribed to who drove me nuts but I took them off. I generally ignore the MSM and twitter acolytes.

It's just a tool IMO. Mimeographs in the 60's street, Faxes were used in China, cassettes in Iran in 1979, and the first so called twitter revolution was in Moldavia, not Iran. All media tech can be militarized. Non-violence can be militarized.

[justdrew]

well the first suicide bomb just went off...

A suicide bomber meanwhile struck a key regime monument — the south Tehran mausoleum of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, killing himself and wounding at least two people, state media reported.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/20/ ... n-streets/

and look at the technology the Iranian government is using...

“The robocops beat us up badly,” one protestor told AFP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan-i_Sabbah#Myths_and_Legends

[John Schröder]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/061809.html

Taking Sides in Iran

By Robert Parry
June 18, 2009

There are lots of good reasons for wishing that the bombastic Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be toppled by the political struggle playing out on the streets of Tehran, but there is still that troubling question of whether he actually won the election.

Many in the Western news media clearly have taken sides, favoring the more urbane Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the green-clad demonstrators protesting the official election results that show Mousavi losing to Ahmadinejad by a 2-to-1 margin.

The media’s distaste for Ahmadinejad is palpable. A “news analysis” coauthored by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller opened up with an old joke about Ahmadinejad looking into a mirror and saying “male lice to the right, female lice to the left,” a reference to his rise from the street rather than from a prestigious university.

Now, the Times editors and other Western commentators are adopting the position of Mousavi in rejecting the notion of a vote recount by Iran’s Guardian Council, which oversees elections. The Mousavi camp is demanding instead an entirely new election.

“Even a full recount would be suspect,” the Times wrote in an editorial. “How could anyone be sure that the ballots were valid?”

But the resistance of Mousavi and his backers to a partial or complete recount suggests something else, that they may fear that the recounted results would show Ahmadinejad winning. Mousavi may hope for a better outcome in a new election, especially if Iran’s powerful clerics tilt their allegiance toward him.

Despite the vehemence of Mousavi’s supporters regarding what they say is his rightful victory, they have reason to doubt their certainty. Some of the complaints about the Iranian election have become legend, but crack under objective scrutiny.

The complaint, for instance, about the hasty claim of an Ahmadinejad victory ignores the fact that Mousavi was out with a declaration of his own victory shortly after the polls closed. The partial results showing Ahmadinejad in the lead followed hours later.

Another favorite notion – that Ahmadinejad could not have carried Azeri-dominated districts because Mousavi was an Azeri – was countered by the findings of an extensive nationwide poll conducted by U.S. experts in mid-May showing Azeris favoring Ahmadinejad by about 2-to-1.

The poll – described in a Washington Post op-ed by two of its administrators, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty – also noted that some of the high-tech methods of communication that have been central to the Mousavi demonstrations in Tehran are not widespread throughout the country, with only 1 in 3 Iranians having access to the Internet.

Ballen and Doherty also discovered that – contrary to widespread Western impressions – Iranian youth overwhelmingly favored Ahmadinejad, that the “18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.”

Generally speaking, Mousavi’s support was concentrated among the urban middle class and the well-educated while Ahmadinejad was more the candidate of the poor – of which there are many in Iran. They have benefited from government largesse in food and other programs, and they tend to listen to the conservative clerics in the mosques.

Ahmadinejad also is viewed as less corrupt than many of his political rivals, the likes of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who has parlayed his political/religious standing into a vast personal fortune.

Indeed, Ahmadinejad may have scored some important political points in the closing days of the campaign by tying Mousavi to Rafsanjani, whose wealth and power make him a figure of disdain and distrust among many of Iran’s working-class and poor.

Abrasive Figure

Without doubt, Ahmadinejad is an abrasive figure who has damaged Iran’s international standing with intemperate denunciations of Israel and the West. But that doesn’t always look the same inside a country as it does from outside.

The United States experienced a similar phenomenon in 2004 when John Kerry took the so-called “coastal states” whose better-educated voters reflected the widespread international disapproval of the cowboyish George W. Bush, but many conservative Christians and less-educated voters in “flyover America” went for Bush in defiance of world opinion.

So, despite the hopeful conventional wisdom in the West about Mousavi’s victory, the truth may be that Ahmadinejad won by getting heavy votes from Iran’s poor and its religious traditionalists over Mousavi’s votes from the more sophisticated, reform-minded middle class.

And one of the problems facing President Barack Obama as he tries to figure out the best way to respond to Iran’s unrest is that U.S. intelligence agencies tend to believe Ahmadinejad won even if there were some irregularities.

That is one reason why even a partial recount might be helpful. Access by investigators to the ballots could help gauge how serious and widespread the election irregularities were.

By rejecting the opportunity of a recount, Mousavi – and his supporters including the New York Times editorial board – look like they’re afraid of the truth, that they would rather lay their bets on a new election than on a fair recount of the June 12 election.

From a policy standpoint, easing Ahmadinejad into retirement may make sense for the overall future of the region. His blunderbuss rhetoric has increased fears and sharpened divisions, making him a perfect foil for hardliners in Israel and neoconservatives in the United States who are itching to use force against Iran’s nuclear program and still fantasize about violent “regime change.”

But belief in democracy – the will of the people – is another value. So is honest, unbiased journalism that seeks the truth, rather than politically convenient results.

If the Iranian people really did vote for Ahmadinejad – and Mousavi’s demonstrators are seeking to overturn the will of the majority – shouldn’t the New York Times and the Western news media be supporting efforts to get at the facts, rather than picking favorites and rooting for one side?

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

[John Schröder]

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2 ... -terr.html

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.

Millions of dollars were spent on these three campaigns, most of it provided by Rafsanjani’s children and cronies who look at this kind of spending as a way of investing in the future government. The way this support was distributed among the candidates was very complicated and followed an elaborate pattern. Rezaee was asked to run in order to weaken Ahmadinejad’s support among the Revolutionary Guards, since he was the head of this force during the Iran-Iraq war. The reformist coalition were divided between Karrubi and Moussavi with the former receiving the support of reformist personalities like Karbaschi, Abtahi and Abdi and the latter receiving the support of reformist organizations and political parties (Mosharekat and Mojahedine Enghelab).

This dividing of resources by Rafsanjani was done to diversify and overlap the campaigns at the same time, while Rafsanjani and his children would remain in the background by only providing funds and logistical support to the anti Ahmadinejad camps. But things started to go wrong when opinion polls from inside Moussavi’s own campaign began to show a hardening of support for Ahmadinejad. That is when the nature of his campaign changed. The color green was picked as a protest color, and the rumors of voter fraud began circulating in the Moussavi campaign so as to continue the fight beyond election day.

The culmination of this happened days before the vote. In a letter written to the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Rafsanjani threatened to start a social volcano if Moussavi was not declared the “obvious winner”. (The letter in Farsi) This suspicious move, together with Rafsanjani’s wife’s comments after casting her vote--encouraging people to pour into the streets if Moussavi was not declared the winner-- show that the plans for social disturbances and support from the outside world was the opposition’s plan B, even before the election results were announced. The public confrontation between Rafsanjani and his family from the one side and Khamenei from the other side exposed for the first time the major role played by Rafsanjani and his family in the election.

The night of the election and only two hours after closing of the polls, Moussavi, under pressure by his campaign manager, advanced his prescheduled post-election press conference, planned for Saturday morning, and declared himself the winner in front of CNN, BBC and other foreign press reporters in Iran. There is no explanation for this move. This preemptive assumption of victory was done to sow the seeds of doubts and discontent before any results were even published.

The timing of this early press conference points to the fact that Moussavi’s camps were aware of the existence of warm ears outside of Iran waiting for any kind of news of doubts in Ahmadinejad’s victory. Otherwise, why wouldn’t Mousavi wait for the morning after to declare himself a winner?

In my opinion, the speedy announcement of results by the Interior Ministry, something that most people quote as the evidence of tampering with the votes, only took place to counterbalance Moussavi’s early declaration of victory. Had Moussavi waited, the results would have appeared more normal and acceptable. As I have already explained, the switch from plan A to plan B required the Moussavi camp to quickly dismiss Ahmadinejad’s victory and move on to challenge the results as soon as possible.

Here are questions that I and my friend Ali Sanaee have been circulating among Iranians to widen the debate about the election results:

1-What is the real material evidence of voter fraud? Moussavi had representatives in more than 95 per cent of the polling stations. Among nearly 6000 representatives who signed off on the polling results, only 220 of them were barred from attending polls, due to lack of identification papers. What happened to the rest?

2- Why did Moussavi and his friends begin to doubt the results a few weeks before the vote? If he had serious doubts about the honesty of the electoral system, why even bother to declare your candidacy? What is Moussavi’s pre-election evidence for fraud?

3- Why Did Moussavi change the time of his post-election press conference abruptly?

4- Why did Rafsanjani and Moussavi’s wives speak out about fraud right after casting their votes?

5-Why did the Western media, who are normally against Iran and pro Israel (CNN, Fox, Voice of America, BBC, Huffington Post, Roozonline, Radio Zamaneh and Radio Farda), describe Moussavi the frontrunner as soon as Moussavi’s camp began to cast doubt on the elections, weeks before the vote? What degree of coordination was there between Moussavi’s campaign and the western media about this message?

6-Why was the Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored survey, done by a credible team of investigators (Terror Free Tomorrow), not highlighted in the coverage of the election in the West?

[Sweejak]

With Friends like these....

SPEAKING FREELY
The American hand in Iran
By Trish Schuh
Dipping two fingers in red paint, Corsi waved a peace sign in solidarity "with the blood of oppressed Iranians" and called on "the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King". He declared, "I love the Iranian people. America does not hate the Persian people. We love the Persian people. We want peace and we love the Persian people." Corsi's voice then dropped to a whisper; "We stand here today and we pray in the name of the gods. I embrace Jesus Christ as my savior - and we also pray in the name of Allah, Zoroaster and the B'hai."

But Corsi has expressed very different opinions on Islam in the past. According to his own postings on FreeRepublic.com, on November 18, 2001 Corsi used a racial slur to define Arabs: "Ragheads are boy-bumpers [sodomizers] as clearly as they are women haters - it all goes together."

Using the incendiary style he perfected for "Swiftboat veteran" television attack advertisements, Corsi declares, "Islam is a peaceful religion as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered and the infidels killed." Comparing Islam to a disease, he added, "How's this for an analogy? The Koran is simply the 'software' for producing deviant cancer cell political behavior and violence in human beings' and Islam is like a virus. It affects the mind. Maybe even better as an analogy: it is a cancer that destroys the body it infects. No doctor would hesitate to eliminate cancer cells from the body." In April 2004 Corsi said, "Let's see why it isn't the case that Islam is a worthless, dangerous, Satanic religion. Where's the proof to the contrary?"

Surrounding Corsi at his walk were three dozen Los Angeles Iranian dissidents and pro-monarchists interviewed by an Orthodox Jewish journalist and by the CIA-backed Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Farda. The Los Angeles Times of March 20 revealed that "Tehrangeles" has become a crucial recruiting ground for Iranian expatriates who gather information for the US intelligence community. Also providing assistance are various Farsi language media which broadcast messages against the Iranian government into Iran.

According to the March 4 Los Angeles Times, the US currently spends US$14.7 million a year on Farsi "opposition broadcasts" into Iran. The Voice of America's Farsi service reaches an estimated 15 million Iranians with news programs and websites, and the Bush administration has recently requested an additional $5.7 million for 2006 to expand the hours of transmission.

Los Angeles Farsi radio station KRSI noted the similarity between current US efforts and the CIA's 1953 overthrow of Iran's democratically elected premier Mohammed Mossadeq. When asked if he was CIA-affiliated, Corsi replied: "No, I'm not. I've never held a government position, never had any government position at all. I've been in universities. I'm an author. I'm in business. I'm not related to the CIA. It's just not true."

But when later asked how he became so committed to Iranian liberation, he explained, "When I was a young man I was an expert in antiterrorism and political violence. I had a top secret clearance when I was in universities and I worked to assist the State Department and the government." Corsi's publisher, Cumberland House, states in his biography that Corsi's top secret clearance came from the government agency US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID has often served as a conduit for American covert operations funding, under humanitarian auspices.

This writer asked Corsi about the Iran Freedom Foundation's funding. He said the money came from sales of his book Atomic Iran and from private donations, adding that the IFF would apply for government funding when it became available.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GG06Ak03.html

[sunny]

Saturday, June 20, 2009 15:01 EDT
Obama calls for end to violence in Iran
With the situation in Iran heating up, the White House has issued a new statement from President Obama in which he takes his strongest rhetorical stance yet. It doesn't go as far as some of his critics have wanted, but it does lean more towards outright support of the protesters than his previous comments, and comes closer to outright condemnation of the Iranian government.

The full statement:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

― Alex Koppelman

Salon

[chiggerbit]

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that.

I don't.

[chiggerbit]

Well, except maybe with regards to global warming.

[sunny]

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that.

I don't.

Obama doesn't believe it or he would be hiding under his bed.