Telephones Cut Off, Mousavi Arrested, Rafsanjani Resigns

[John Schröder]

The Guardian Council noted that the total number of votes in the 50 cities and towns was about 3 million, and that even if you threw away all 3 million votes from all the people voting in the 50 cities and towns, it wouldn't affect the election result. Note that 3 million wasn't the difference between votes and voters, still less an estimate of the impact on the total, it was the total number of votes. The Guardian Council was simply making the commonsense argument that even if you take a number which is clearly much bigger than the likely impact of any discrepancy in the 50 towns, and throw that number away, it still doesn't come close to affecting the overall result. [emphasis added]

Yes, that's something many commentators have (willfully?) misunderstood. The day after the announcement, Hamburger Abendblatt (Springer) jubilated: "Guardian Council admits vote fraud: 3 million votes too many", on page one. I'm still waiting for them to even mention the Terror Free Tomorrow poll anywhere in their lousy paper. Actually, I'm still waiting to see it mentioned anywhere in any German paper (judging from Google News). Brings back to mind what Orwell said: the most powerful form of lie is the omission.

[John Schröder]

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/200 ... y-process/

Stay Out of Iran’s Evolutionary Process

by Philip Giraldi, June 25, 2009

Everyone is looking for something to say about Iran. The neoconservatives are predictably hailing the march of democracy on the streets of Tehran for reasons of their own, while hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham are calling on the Obama Administration to do something to help anyone tagged as a reformer. More moderate voices are generally supporting President Barack Obama’s initial show of restraint, avoiding any open support of either side, and only condemning the violence because it is disproportionate and due to the suffering it has caused. Still others are calling on the United States to avoid any interference of any kind. The non-interventionists themselves fall into two camps: the constitutionalists and libertarians believe that interfering in other people’s quarrels is intrinsically problematical because as John Quincy Adams said, "America does not need to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Realists argue that interventions by the United States rarely turn out well, citing the cases of Vietnam, Bosnia, Lebanon, Iraq, and Somalia and more.

Having spent much of my working life as an intelligence officer on the street in places like Istanbul, I am astonished at what passes for expertise in the debate over what to do about Iran. It is clear that even the few genuine experts on Iran don’t really know what is going on there because they are slaves to their sources of information, which tend to reflect their own philosophical viewpoints and are, in any event, narrowly based. It is conventional wisdom in most of the US media that the Iranian election was stolen, the result of massive fraud. But was it? Opinion polls conducted by a US-based organization several weeks before the polling predicted an Ahmadinejad victory. The president is hugely popular among poor rural Iranians and also enjoys overwhelming support for his defense of Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy. Elections are very complex affairs and how a talking head sitting in Washington, breathlessly interpreting grainy texting images, can even pretend to understand what is going on in Iran and why defies all logic, particularly if the expert in question speaks no Farsi and probably would have difficulty in locating Isfahan on a map.

Mir Hossein Mousavi is a reformer and modernist, isn’t he? Perhaps not. He has always been extremely conservative in his political alignments. As Prime Minister in 1981-9, he was regarded as a hardliner. He started Iran’s nuclear program, helped found Hezbollah and may have directed the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. He is, in reality, a defender of extremely corrupt vested interests. That he has attracted the support of the so-called "Gucci crowd" of twentyish twitterers does not mean that he has embraced western values. As president, he would not abandon nuclear energy and would not immediately begin to talk nice to Barack Obama. His reformer credentials are pretty much non-existent, the creation of a media and an engaged punditry that wants to explain the Iran crisis in terms that a European or American audience would find comfortable.

And then there is the corruption issue, Iran’s six hundred pound gorilla. Mousavi is heir to the corrupt Iran of the post- revolutionary period when the country was looted by the senior clerics cooperating with the business class, the bazaaris. Some intelligence sources believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been demonized by the western media, is actually the reformer in that he has taken on the country’s pervasive corruption with the full support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. Massive corruption has been business as usual in Iran, frequently managed by politicians who have called themselves reformers. Another so-called reformer, who is the money man behind Mousavi, is former Iranian Majlis speaker Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, nicknamed "the Shark." Rafsanjani is a billionaire who controls large sectors of the country’s economy, to include a chain of private universities which became the source of the young organizers who brought the twitterers out on the street.

If there was one thing I learned from twenty years of experience as a military intelligence and CIA officer it is that nothing is ever what it seems. If a situation appears to be clear cut, with good guys and bad guys arrayed against each other it is probably anything but. So maybe black and white comes out gray. All the more reason to step back. The interventionists from both left and right do not make it clear what the United States should do to help the "reformers." Perhaps that is just as well as the only options would be to hurl empty threats, start bombing, or initiate yet another CIA covert action to destabilize the regime, ignoring the lessons of the CIA’s 1953 debacle, and with the predictable and contrary result of actually strengthening the clerics and their rule.

Change by evolution is better than by revolution. Both metamorphoses are underway in Iran: one is immediate and reactionary and, perhaps necessarily, more graphic and even grim. The other suggests the possibility that long-lasting change might happening in Tehran — if outside influences do not upset the sensitive process of transformation. As is frequently the case, those who would do nothing probably have it right, whether arguing for constitutional reasons or as realists. Iran and its elections is an issue that we do not and cannot understand and it is ultimately an issue that has to be decided by the Iranian people. Rightly or wrongly, outside interference in what is taking place on the streets of Tehran will be exploited by the regime to deflect any legitimate criticism, making any change even less likely. The old Hippocratic advice to doctors to "do no harm" should perhaps be the best advice for the American political chattering classes and the media. Doing no harm regarding events in Iran is to stay out of it.

Courtesy of the American Conservative Defense Alliance

[John Schröder]

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogI ... Popup=true

I've been getting info from the ground, and the reports are covering one side only. Some among the protesters have been setting cars on fire, engaging in violence, etc. Certain entities who want to trigger more violence, harsher response, thus more international attention...

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp ... id=103405#
A woman whose face was pixilated said she had carried a "war grenade" in her hand-bag. "I was influenced by VOA Persian and the BBC because they were saying that security forces were behind most of the clashes," she said.
"I saw that it was us protesting ... who were making riots. We set on fire public property, we threw stones ... we attacked people's cars and we broke windows of people's houses."

Then, lately, this coverage of Shah's son. WTH?!! That criminal literally SOB who is dying to get a piece of this, his long-held dream of going back and getting his crown...

I keep saying 'wag the dog' because in Nashville they wrote a song for this woman. I truly feel sorry for the young life taken away like this; it's terrible...however, you see how they are exploiting it? Go and watch 'wag the dog' again. I almost looked for a 'kitten' in related pictures!!!!

It's almost like playing 'reverse psychology.' The administration sits back, appears cool, and let the people get fired up and demand action...so they will reluctantly respond to the public demand (made possible with intensive PR as we see) and 'do something.'

[Sweejak]

WRH posts this:
IRAN PROTESTS - THE FLAG OF THE SHAH
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/iranflag.php

[JackRiddler]

.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 89x5931061

Iranian Twitters Pause to Mourn Michael Jackson
Edited on Fri Jun-26-09 10:33 AM by Autumn Colors

It was a bit surreal last night on twitter when some of the most active, long-time Iranian twitters suddenly stopped talking about Iran and starting asking if it was really true that Michael Jackson had died.

Michael Jackson, at the height of his career, was much loved by young Iranians despite the best efforts of Islamic censors. @oxfordgirl posted that she remembered the Pasdaran arresting young men who dressed like him.

You could tell by the length of time they became distracted and talked about MJ just how big he had been over there in the 1980s (like everywhere else).

And so .... please view this video, "Beat It, You Fanatics":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvOx4avw8WY

.

[brekin]

Iranian envoy: CIA involved in Neda's shooting?

Story Highlights:
Ambassador to Mexico says CIA or other intelligence service may be to blame
CIA spokesman says idea is "wrong, absurd and offensive"
Envoy says foreign forces wanted to use bloodshed against Iranian government
Media aren't reporting on pro-Ahmadinejad demonstrations, he says

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/ ... index.html

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- The United States may have been behind the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman whose fatal videotaped shooting Saturday made her a symbol of opposition to the June 12 presidential election results, the country's ambassador to Mexico said Thursday.

Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, was shot to death in Tehran on Saturday.

"This death of Neda is very suspicious," Ambassador Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri said. "My question is, how is it that this Miss Neda is shot from behind, got shot in front of several cameras, and is shot in an area where no significant demonstration was behind held?"

He suggested that the CIA or another intelligence service may have been responsible.

"Well, if the CIA wants to kill some people and attribute that to the government elements, then choosing women is an appropriate choice, because the death of a woman draws more sympathy," Ghadiri said.

In response, CIA spokesman George Little said, "Any suggestion that the CIA was responsible for the death of this young woman is wrong, absurd and offensive."

Though the video appeared to show that she had been shot in the chest, Ghadiri said that the bullet was found in her head and that it was not of a type used in Iran.

"These are the methods that terrorists, the CIA and spy agencies employ," he said. "Naturally, they would like to see blood spilled in these demonstrations, so that they can use it against the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is of the common methods that the CIA employs in various countries."

But, he added, "I am not saying that now the CIA has done this. There are different groups. It could be the [work of another] intelligence service; it could be the CIA; it could be the terrorists. Anyway, there are people who employ these types of methods."

Asked about his government's imposition of restrictions on reporting by international journalists, Ghadiri blamed the reporters themselves.

"Some of the reporters and mass media do not reflect the truth," he said.

For example, he said, international news organizations have lavished coverage on demonstrations by supporters of Mir Hossein Moussavi, whom the government has said lost to the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by a landslide.

But those same news organizations have not shown "many, many demonstrations in favor of the winner," he said.

Further, he said, members of the international news media have failed to report on people setting banks and buses afire or attacking other people. "The only things they show are the reactions of the police," he said.

Because of restrictions on reporting in Iran, CNN has been unable to confirm many of the reports and claims relating to protests.

Ghadiri said it is only fair that security forces protect the lives and property of the Iranian people.

"If in America supporters of Mr. McCain had gotten out on the street and tried to burn the banks during the last election, do you think the police would just sit idly by and be a spectator?" he asked, referring to the GOP presidential candidate who lost the presidential vote in November to Barack Obama.

Ghadiri called on backers of Moussavi to "accept the majority's victory."

Ahmadinejad's overwhelming victory was no surprise, Ghadiri said, noting that a poll published in the United States three weeks before the June 12 elections showed Ahmadinejad with a commanding lead. "Why don't you show that?" he asked.

Ghadiri also addressed questions about the rapid reporting of the election results, which the opposition has cited as evidence that the ballots were not properly counted.

"It wasn't said that only four people counted the 40 million votes," he said. "There were tens of thousands of people in Iran who counted these votes. They declared that this is very simple."

[Sweejak]

Obama Moves to Fund Iranian Dissidents
Despite Claims of Not Meddling, US to Send $20 Million to Opposition

Despite President Barack Obama’s persistent claims that the United States is not meddling in the post-election furore in Iran, the administration is moving forward with plans to subsidize Iranian dissident groups to the tune of $20 million in the form of USAID grants.

The program is not new, and the solicitation for the grant applications actually came under the Bush Administration. But with the deadline for submissions just four days away, the administration has a convenient excuse to subsidize opposition and dissident groups under the guise of promoting “the rule of law” in Iran.The White House and the State Department both defended the program, insisting it did not run counter to the administration’s pretense of neutrality. The administration declined to provide details of exactly which opposition figures it had been funding, however, citing “security concerns.”

There is considerable criticism for this program, not just from the perspective of getting the US involved in the internal affairs of Iran, but also for the taint it places on various opposition groups and NGOs, whether they received any of the grant money or not.

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/06/26/obam ... issidents/

[JackRiddler]

.

$20 million?

Here's where I start reaching for what we've seen presented as the "neocon double cross" theory. What exactly is this money flow going to accomplish, except to provide a direct trail and bait to lure the Iranian authorities to their targets among the opposition.

This isn't without a certain historic context: the overall effect of US policy since WW2, at a few rare times even explicitly stated, has been to undermine left, secular nationalist and civil-society groups, while effectively promoting hardline and religious fundamentalist movements (partly in a negative but still effective way by designating them as official enemies, partly by allying and feeding them covertly and sometimes overtly). See the encouragement of the Kurdish and Shi'a uprisings by Bush Sr. right after the Gulf War of 1991, only to abruptly drop them and allow Saddam Hussein to fly attack helicopters in during the suppression, something that was even justified in op-ed pages as a necessity of not having an unstable, broken Iraq.

Or maybe it's just the amateur hour response to political pressure on Obama to "do something." Meanwhile, probably 20 or more times the amount has been put into ops and sabotage against Iran since the "Axis of Evil" declaration.
.

[AlicetheKurious]

As violence continues on the streets of Tehran, RebelReports has learned that former US National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft has confirmed that the US government has spies on the ground in Iran. Scowcroft made the assertion in an interview to be broadcast on the Al Jazeera program “Fault Lines.” When asked by journalist Josh Rushing if the US has “intelligence operatives on the ground in Iran,” Scowcroft replied, “Of course we do.” (See Video)

While it is hardly surprising that the US has its operatives in Iran, it is unusual to see a figure in a position to know state this on the record. New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh and Former Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter both have claimed for years that the US has regularly engaged in covert operations inside of Iran aimed at destabilizing the government. In July 2008, Hersh reported, “the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded.”

http://rebelreports.com/post/129610205/ ... nd-in-iran


Iranian envoy: CIA involved in Neda's shooting?

June 25, 2009 -- Updated 0005 GMT (0805 HKT)

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- The United States may have been behind the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman whose fatal videotaped shooting Saturday made her a symbol of opposition to the June 12 presidential election results, the country's ambassador to Mexico said Thursday.

"This death of Neda is very suspicious," Ambassador Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri said. "My question is, how is it that this Miss Neda is shot from behind, got shot in front of several cameras, and is shot in an area where no significant demonstration was behind held?"

He suggested that the CIA or another intelligence service may have been responsible.

"Well, if the CIA wants to kill some people and attribute that to the government elements, then choosing women is an appropriate choice, because the death of a woman draws more sympathy," Ghadiri said.

In response, CIA spokesman George Little said, "Any suggestion that the CIA was responsible for the death of this young woman is wrong, absurd and offensive."

Though the video appeared to show that she had been shot in the chest, Ghadiri said that the bullet was found in her head and that it was not of a type used in Iran.

"These are the methods that terrorists, the CIA and spy agencies employ," he said. "Naturally, they would like to see blood spilled in these demonstrations, so that they can use it against the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is of the common methods that the CIA employs in various countries."

But, he added, "I am not saying that now the CIA has done this. There are different groups. It could be the [work of another] intelligence service; it could be the CIA; it could be the terrorists. Anyway, there are people who employ these types of methods." ...

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast ... mbassador/


...Neda, wearing a baseball cap over a black scarf, a black shirt, blue jeans and tennis shoes, does not appear to be chanting and seems to be observing the demonstration.

Suddenly, Neda is on the ground -- felled by a single gunshot wound to the chest. Several men kneel at her side and place pressure on her chest in an attempt to stop the bleeding. "She has been shot! Someone, come and take her!" shouts one man.

By now, Neda's eyes have rolled to her right; her body is limp.

Blood streams from her mouth, then from her nose. For a second, her face is hidden from view as the phone camera goes behind one of the men. When Neda's face comes back into view, it is covered with blood.

Then, the teacher pleads with her by name. "Neda, do not be afraid, do not be afraid," he repeats. ...

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast ... index.html


Comment re: the web-site of the alleged witness and the one who allegedly filmed the shooting with his cell-phone, Neda's alleged "friend the doctor" Arash Hejazi, who claims to live in the UK but happened to be visiting Iran just in time to be with Neda when she was shot (the web-site has since disappeared):

this is probably one of the anti-iran sites, which are hosted in telaviv, but appear to be in Iran, thanks to the SeaMeWe-4 and FLAG submediterranean fiber-optic cable splices which were performed by the zioturds in 2007/2008.

I wonder if we see the same internet Iran, as the people from Iran, most probably not !

06/25/2009 - 13:51

Link



Please go to the link to check the comments:

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
HOW THE WRONG NEDA PHOTO BECAME IRAN'S FACE OF FREEDOM

On the evening of June 21, 2009, I, Dr. Amy L. Beam, was watching the unfolding events of Iran simultaneously at my computer and on Al Jazeera and CNN TV. I am in Europe. The TV newscasters kept repeating that this had become a Twitter Revolution in Iran. I've never before used Twitter to search for news, but this prompted me to. I logged onto twitter.com and searched for "Iran demonstrations". I saw the top search term was #iranelections so I searched for this and kept updating my search every minute. Twitters were pouring.

This is how I saw the Twitter posting that had a link to the youtube video of Neda being shot in Iran. It had just been uploaded. About 120 people had viewed it within several minutes. I was curious to know the dead woman's name so I emailed the person who uploaded the video. He thought the name was Neda Soltani. He explained that this video had been sent to him, outside of Iran, by the doctor who had been at Neda's side as she bled to death. The doctor's friend shot the video with his cell phone. The doctor also sent an explanatory note.

So I went immediately to Facebook and searched for Neda Soltani. A number of Neda profiles came up along with photos. Some had last names similar to Soltani. I decided I would try to eliminate the Neda's who were still alive, so I wrote to Neda Soltani, the beautiful Iranian woman wearing a patterned headscarf whose photo has become famous:

"Dear Neda,
I am trying to identify the Neda Soltani shot to death in Tehran June 20. I can only do this by process of elimination. Please reply if you get this. Thank you.
Amy"


She replied about an hour later:


"My Dearest Amy,

First, I should like to thank you for your compassion, and care.
It feels so good to know people around the world care for us!

I am not the one you are looking for, but I want you to know I am grateful.

Pray for the safety of my people.

Best,
Neda Soltani"


She and I then became "friends" on Facebook so we could post messages to one another. I also became friends with Hamed R. who is the man who uploaded the video file of the Neda who was shot to death.

The LIVING Neda Soltani (woman in the patterned headscarf) decided to do some research herself. She found a website written in Farsi about the Neda who was killed and she translated it from Farsi to English. She then posted this on my Facebook wall. And HERE'S WHERE THE MISTAKE WITH THE PHOTO HAPPENED:

For those of you familiar with Facebook, you know that whenever someone posts a message on your wall, the thumbnail profile photo and the name of the person doing the posting appears above his or her comment. So, of course, the name and photo of the living Neda Soltani appeared above the English and Farsi information about Neda Agha-Soltan, the woman who was killed.

Hamed R. and others who were viewed this posting on my Facebook wall by the living Neda Soltani made the unintentional mistake of thinking the photo of the person who posted the Farsi-English translation was the photo of the woman who was killed. So the photo of Neda wearing the patterned headscarf was copied and reposted EVERYWHERE within minutes and hours.

By the time I woke up June 22, the wrong photo of the living Neda Soltani was being displayed on TV, blogs, youtube videos, placards and banners around the world. Neda Soltani emailed me via Facebook begging for help to correct the mistake. I have spent hours posting corrections and asking people to remove her photo. Most people do; some people seem hell-bent on ignoring the truth and they insist on spreading this photo as the symbol of the Neda who was killed.

Some people changed their own Facebook profile photo to that of the woman in the headscarf and changed their name to Neda Soltani. One young man explained he did it three days after Neda's death to honor her memory. I am sure people meant no disrespect; they only wanted to honor her. When informed of the mistaken photo they removed it. However, as fast as one false "Neda Soltani" Facebook page is removed or corrected, another one appears.

The real, living Neda Soltani has removed her photo from her Facebook. However, now when you search for Neda Soltani on Facebook a whole list of profiles comes up. Thus, the REAL Neda Soltani, who is very much alive and very distressed, can no longer use her Facebook which was pretty much her main form of communication. If all these people who changed their Facebook names to Neda Soltani only knew what a problem they have caused for her, I feel sure they would remove the name. I know they only mean to honor the Neda who was killed.

Now the dilemma arises of knowing who is the real living Neda Soltani and do I really speak for her. I have screen shots of my Facebook private message postings between us but wish to keep them private. I communicate with her by private email now.

On June 23, Neda Soltani again emailed me the following. I have thought hard as to whether to share her private email, but in order to make people understand the gravity of this mistaken identity with her photo and her request to the world to correct the mistake, here is her email to me. I have removed some of the content to protect her privacy:

Dear Amy,
I'm having a hard time accessing facebook.
and to tell you the truth, I'm very scared!!!!
All around the world they are talking about my photo, which has turned into The symbol of liberty, rebellion, etc.
i'm in danger!
i don't know what to do!
thanks for ur caring compassion
i wish i could see u, and embrace u...
take care
neda

From the Comments section:

Dr. Amy L. Beam said...

I need to correct one thing in my blog. It was NOT Neda Soltani who translated an web page from Farsi to English and posted it on my Facebook. It was someone else and it has since been removed so I cannot retrace it. However, the posting did include the photo of the living Neda Soltani. This problem just continues to escalate and Neda simply wants her photo removed from all places and to be left to her privacy.

June 23, 2009 4:48 PM

Dr. Amy L. Beam said...

I would edit my own blog if I could figure out how. The edit for this blog will not work. I can neither change it nor delete it. I can only post a comment like any reader, even when logged into my account. Nice huh?

Note that my blog has an error in it. It was not Neda Soltani who translated a story from Farsi to English and posted it on my Facebook with Neda's photo. It was someone else and was deleted.

June 25, 2009 4:38 PM

http://wipoun.blogspot.com/2009/06/how- ... -face.html

[John Schröder]

http://counterpunch.org/ross06262009.html

Hyping Iran, Ignoring Mexico

The New York Times and Stolen Elections

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City.

A stolen election by an entrenched regime? Opposition charges that more votes were cast than ballots distributed to the polling places? That independent electoral observers were barred from witnessing the vote count? Demands for a recount to which election officials respond by offering to recount just 10% of the vote? A regime-controlled media that exalts the incumbent's victory and demonizes the loser? The use of alternative media by the opposition to get their side of the story out? Massive street protests by millions of peaceful demonstrators waving homemade signs and wearing bracelets displaying the color of their movement? At least 20 protestors gunned down by authorities and paramilitaries? Worldwide moral indignation stirred up by the international media?

Iran 2009? Yes!

Mexico 2006? Yes and no.

All aspects of the above scenario describe the Great Mexican Electoral Flimflam three years ago this July 2nd - save for the conundrum of worldwide moral indignation. Virtually ignored by the international media, the stealing of the Mexican presidential election by the right-wing oligarchy stirred little indignation anywhere outside of Mexico.

A comparison of coverage extended to both instances of electoral fraud by the New York Times, the "paper of record", is instructive.

NYT coverage of the upheaval in Iran has been overwhelming. During the first nine days of the electoral crisis, the Times ran at least one front-page story daily - from Election Day Friday, June 12th through Saturday, June 20th, the Iranian electoral sham occupied the right-hand column (the lead story) in the international edition on eight out of nine days. The Times also ran a second Iran story on the front page in six out of the nine editions reviewed - on four of those days, the stories were accompanied by a four and sometimes five column color photo, mostly of multitudes supporting the challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who made his mark in history back in the 1980s by receiving a Christian bible and a key-shaped cake from the emissaries of Ronald Reagan in exchange for funding the Nicaraguan Contras.

As the week wore on, many stories focused on street protests and violence inflicted by paramilitaries that reportedly left a score of demonstrators dead. In addition to the front-page stories, jumps ran inside over one or more pages daily, accompanied by additional photos.

The Times sent four by-lined reporters into Teheran for the festivities - Robert Worth, Michael Slackman, Neil MacFarquhar, and the Iranian Nazna Pathi, plus Eric Schmidt reporting from Washington. Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, flew to the Iranian capital to pen a daily journal. All of the Times' reporters in Teheran were housed in five-star hotels in the upscale north of the city where Mousavi has a substantial upper middle class base.

Meanwhile back in New York, the Times editorial board ran a pair of editorials during the first week of the upheaval decrying repression of peaceful protest and the purported vote fraud. At least seven op-ed screeds vilified incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose condemnations of Israel the Times assiduously combats, and celebrated the presumed victor Mousavi, albeit with varying degrees of caution.

In the wake of the tainted vote taking, the Times' conclusion that the election had been stolen was shared by many, including the veteran Middle East hand Robert Fisk, also reporting from Teheran. But writing in the London Independent on July 19th, Fisky began to have doubts. Popular support for Ahmadinejad in provincial cities and amongst the rural poor in the countryside, he speculated, could well have led to a landslide victory for the incumbent - although not perhaps by the 11,000,000 votes by which he claims to have thrashed the challenger.

The Mexican presidential election of July 2nd 2006 was perhaps the most starkly polarized in that neighbor nation's history pitting left against right, poor against rich, and brown against white-skin privilege, and the campaign was brutal, filled with invective and dirty tricks. The subtext of the election was Mexico's geopolitical standing - would it continue to be a slavish ally of Washington or join the anti-neo-liberal tsunami that was then sweeping Latin America?

In the run-up to the vote, the New York Times seemed to favor the candidacy of right-winger Felipe Calderon of the incumbent PAN party and turn up its nose at the leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the wildly popular mayor of Mexico City. Much like Iran, Mexico has a long tradition of electoral fraud. Unlike Iran, Mexico has a 1954-mile border with the United States of North America.

Covering the Mexican election for "the paper of record" were Ginger Thompson for whom the story would be her swansong after eight years in country (the Times plucked her from the Baltimore Sun) and rookie James McKinley, who came to Mexico from the NYT's Albany bureau. Bill Keller did not fly in for the party.

The Times ran a front-page curtain raiser on election eve but not in the right-hand column. A second front-pager July 3rd just above the fold reported that Calderon had a narrow lead and a July 5th dispatch also on the front page confirmed the right-winger's victory - although Mexican electoral authorities had not yet declared so. Little mention was made of Lopez Obrador's claim of fraud until a huge July 8th rally that packed a half million supporters into the great Mexico City Zocalo plaza. Unlike the New York Times coverage from Teheran, news of the enormous gathering ran inside - as would all subsequent Mexican election news even when Lopez Obrador's mobilizations were expanding exponentially to 2,000,000 participants (police reports) by July 30th, the largest outpourings of political protest in Mexican history. Thompson consistently cut the numbers in half.

Several months of parallel protests by teachers and indigenous militants in the state of Oaxaca during which 26 were killed by police and paramilitaries were not even reported by the Times. By August, as the disputed election went into the courts, coverage was reduced to international briefs - by then Thompson had left the country.

To its credit, the NYT editorial board in New York wrote one editorial obliquely questioning Calderon's minuscule .057% lead over the leftist, and ran two op-ed pieces that exposed the fraud in no uncertain terms. In this respect, Times coverage of the 2006 Mexican electoral fraud was considerably more balanced than back in 1988 when the then-long ruling PRI party stole the presidency from left-winger Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in a naked display of electoral thievery. Even emeritus correspondent Alan Riding's eyewitness accounts of vote-stealing could not convince the Times editorial board of PRI chicanery. The winner, the now-reviled Carlos Salinas, was labeled "a champion of the free market" and the election was characterized as "the cleanest in Mexican history."

For both this writer who covered the 1988 and 2006 electoral debacles in Mexico, and Dr. Alfredo Jalife, a National Autonomous University professor and geopolitical columnist for the left daily La Jornada who lived through them, the determining factor in the Times' highly-charged coverage of Iran 2009 and its ho-hum reportage on Mexico 2006 was easily discernable. "Mexico doesn't threaten Israel," Jalife observed in a recent phone interview.

The unabashed and uncritical defense of Israel is the underlying reason d'etre of the Sulzberger clan, publishers of the New York Times.

The Times' moral authority for determining the level of the egregiousness of electoral fraud in Iran and Mexico must certainly be questioned in light of the stealing of Florida 2000 by the Bushites and the scant attention the "paper of record" paid to voting machine tampering in Ohio in 2004. "What gives the gringos the right to pass judgment on other peoples' elections?" asks Berta Robledo, a pro-Lopez Obrador activist, over café con leche in downtown Mexico City.

The comparison of coverage of electoral fraud in Iran and Mexico comes at a curious juncture for the New York Ayatollahs now that the Times Corporation's biggest creditor and quite possibly its top shareholder outside of the royal Sulzberger-Ochs dynasty is a Mexican - the tycoon Carlos Slim, once the richest billionaire on the Forbes list but now relegated to third place behind Bill Gates and possibly Warren Buffet after suffering debilitating stock losses in the current suicide market.

These are dicey times at the Times: the paper is over a billion bucks in debt, first quarter losses in 2009 were a record $74.5 million, and the stock price is now worth less than the price of the paper's Sunday edition - stockholders' dividends have been suspended indefinitely. Meanwhile, major labor trouble is brewing as the NYT seeks to close down the Boston Globe for which it once paid more than $1,000,000,000 USD - the defiance of Guild members up in Beantown threatens to spread into the New York newsroom.

With the roof caving in on Wall Street and the newspaper industry gasping its last - advertising and readership have suffered the most precipitous drops since the Great Depression - the Times management sought out Slim in late 2008 to save the paper from itself. The Mexican's $250,000,000 loan gave the NYT a little breathing space but was achieved at an astounding 14% yearly interest rate which, if not paid off in six years, will entitle the Mexico City-based billionaire to between 16 and 18% of the Sulzbergers' precious preferred stock.

Carlos Slim, the son of a Lebanese immigrant who married into the Gemayel Maronite Christian clan (now aligned with Hezbollah, an Iranian Shiite proxy, back in the old country), has a Midas-like knack for picking up failing businesses for a song and parleying them into new fortunes. Slim's companies now comprise 40% of those trading on the Mexican stock market.

Both Slim and the Times management loudly proclaim that the Mexican magnate will have no editorial clout and indeed the only measurable change at least here in Mexico since its richest citizen made his move on the NYT is that the newsstand price of the international edition has shot up to $4 (53 pesos a day), twice the two bucks Americano the Times is charging in El Norte where the paper has decreed three price hikes in the past 18 months (from $1 to $1.25 to $1.50 and now $2.)

The story gets curiouser and curiouser. A February 9th in-house overview that appeared on the front page of the business section anticipated a rosy future for the ex-Old Gray Lady of 43rd Street (The Sulzbergers recently sold its new and costly all-glass Eighth Avenue high rise and now rents back office space on the premises.) In fact, the story suggested, the Times really didn't need Slim's bail-out but took it anyway because money is going to cost a lot more for the next few years. Scuttlebutt afoot in the newsroom reveals an alternative rationale: by pursuing the Slim loan, the Sulzbergers sought to dampen the aspirations of ex-movie and music mogul David Geffen to take over the paper and turn it into an NGO!

Such rumors often bloom in the hothouse ambience that stumbling giants exude. Slim's motives for snatching up a paper on the brink of bankruptcy similarly baffles industry insiders and in the spring of 2009 the New Yorker Magazine sent Lawrence Wright to Mexico to poke around inside Slim's skull - with uncertain results.

The Sphinx-like tycoon was not very communicative on long drives with the reporter through Mexico City (Slim drives himself but is closely followed by an SUV packed with armed-to-the-teeth bodyguards.) The richest man at least in Latin America told Wright that he really likes the New York Times. He first began reading it when he came to New York in his early 20s and, although he doesn't browse it every day - his Sanborn's department store and restaurant chain does not carry the NYT and Slim claims not to know how to use a computer to read the Times On-line - he admires the paper's reporting. Carlos Slim is a baseball nut, he confessed to Wright, and like the Times, a die-hard Yankee fan. He particularly enjoys studying the agate type: batting averages, earned runs, RBIs, home runs etc. Carlos Slim likes numbers.

The multi-billionaire also likes brands. Wright tells a story about how Slim went shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue and wound up buying 17% of the company, attracted mostly by Saks' choice Manhattan real estate. Similarly, Slim now holds 17% of Sears. He thinks the New York Times is a good brand.

Carlos Slim is also enamored of monopolies. Telmex, the Mexican phone company that Salinas gifted him with in 1990, has a virtual monopoly on Mexican telephone and Internet traffic and his American Movil is the most powerful cell phone carrier in Latin America with more than 200,000,000 subscribers and 70% of the market, another virtual monopoly.

Reading between the lines of Wright's interview, it seems crystal-clear that Slim - and the Sulzbergers - are banking on the decimation of the newspaper industry to turn the Times around. When and if the current tailspin bottoms out, the field will be winnowed down to a precious few survivors and the New York Times is going to be the tallest tree left standing. Slim and his new partners calculate that their market share will constitute a virtual monopoly. The resuscitation of a stronger-than-ever New York Times will of course greatly buoy Slim's prospects for recapturing the Numero Uno spot on the World's Richest Billionaire list. As Slim told the New Yorker, he likes numbers.

But what's good for Carlos Slim and the New York Times is not good for newspapering and even less so for those who seek to get to the bottom of such flimflam as electoral fraud in Iran and Mexico - those indeed who want real news and not the world-view of the Sulzbergers and their cronies which pretty much boils down to the defense of Israel at any cost. The brand of corporate journalism that the New York Times practices distorts such stories as Iranian resistance to electoral fraud and leaves Mexico 2006 in which millions took to the streets to defy the fraudulent election of a U.S. proxy, in the dust of history.

John Ross continues to do battle with the medical industry on the homefront. Ross's "El Monstruo - True Tales of Dread & Redemption In Mexico City" will be published by Nation Books in late 2009. If you have further information, write johnross@igc.org or visit www.johnross-rebeljournalist.com

[AlicetheKurious]

Not to quibble, I just skimmed the article, John, but:

At least 20 protestors gunned down by authorities and paramilitaries? Worldwide moral indignation stirred up by the international media?

Iran 2009? Yes!

Actually, the death toll in the Iran protests has been 12 alleged protesters and 8 alleged Basji government volunteers assigned to quell the protests.

The Times sent four by-lined reporters into Teheran for the festivities - Robert Worth, Michael Slackman, Neil MacFarquhar, and the Iranian Nazna Pathi, plus Eric Schmidt reporting from Washington. Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, flew to the Iranian capital to pen a daily journal.

NYT columnist Roger Cohen was also in Iran, so he could provide some first-hand reports about the "Basji vigilantes":

Since her death, public displays of mourning for Neda have been prohibited, the friend said.

A gathering of about 60 people at a mosque was broken up by members of the Basij, the pro-government vigilantes blamed for much of the violence against demonstrators, according to New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who observed the incident.

Link

No biggie, those just jumped out at me. I'll read it slowly now.

[AlicetheKurious]

Remember Jessica Lynch?

Who killed Neda Soltani? **

By Eric Verlo
NOT MY TRIBE - 6/22/2009 2:30AM MDT

The video footage is shocking. An attractive young woman watching the demonstrations in Tehran is struck by a sniper’s bullet and dies before several video cameras. The tragedy is projected unto Facebook and Youtube, with advocates hoping it will galvanize (American) public support for the brave reform movement in Iran. News accounts blame “Basij snipers” on the rooftops. Other protesters have been killed in confrontations with Iranian riot police, without the benefit of video witnesses, much like two million Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis et al.

Poor 27-year-old bystander Neda Soltani stood at the quite improbable convergence of bullet and camera –correction– cameras. I don’t have to suggest the scene was staged; whether or not the triggerman was an American is immaterial.

Think about just the improbability of your seeing this video. When was the last time the mainstream press has circulated a snuff film? The average person is embarrassed to watch a person die. It’s exploitative. Even when America was fixated on beheaded hostages, our television gatekeepers refused to broadcast the footage. Many horrific war killing moments have found their way unto Youtube, which antiwar activists could only hope would find wider distribution, if only to bring home the inhumanity of our soldiers’ deeds. It never happens.

The western press is running with this story because it demonizes the apparently naked inhumanity of Islam. Muslims stone women, hang gays, look: the bastards shoot their own people arbitrarily. Curiously our media doesn’t make hay with the hapless victims of US snipers.

The Neda Soltani snuff footage hit internet shores prepackaged with a smiling mug, and a name that translated means “the voice.” Could a casting director have picked a better title character to represent Iran’s repressed? The western press is even poised to outdo the Muslims in indignant piety, already lauding Neda as a martyr, whom we are informed should launch a thousand Shiite funeral processions. Western pundits compare Neda to the first Shiite martyr, the grandson of Mohammed himself.

Of course, also showing excessive Islamic sensitivity, western reporters readily dismiss the vanishing of Neda’s body, to the Muslim tradition of hasty burials. For the record, in case you missed it, Neda dies onscreen from an apparent gunshot. We do not see the bullet strike, nor now can anyone habeas corpus.

If the scenario was acted entirely, given the success with which the girl’s face is being made into an icon, young Neda’s life is probably as utterly expendable now as already depicted. You think you’re mourning Neda now, imagine her fate if this is a hoax.

OR the gunman could just as well have been a US black-op hit-man who had his eye on the videographers approaching innocent Neda. The US military has long admitted that special forces are already operating in Iran. If the Iranian forces are shooting civilian protesters, what’s the harm of helping them out where there’s a camera ready?

When we’re not meant to see it, the soldiers shoot the cameramen too.

It could be the work of Moussavi henchmen, who are our henchmen.

The Green Revolution, or TwitterTM Revolution, rebranded a “Social Media Revolution,” is a fabrication of the US pro-democracy agents working to destabilize Iran. They are hard at work in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Bolivia, and everywhere regimes threaten US globalization by enslavement. Remember the Orange Revolution? Any movement that is color-coded is the work of organizers reading US how-to manuals or attending OTPOR training seminars.

Where are the international voices decrying election fraud in Iran? No one other than the US and its stooges is asserting that populist leader Ahmadinejad did not win by a landslide. Only Iran’s urban middle class has taken to the streets of Tehran. And to protest what? Their minority standing in Iran?

The reformists in Iran are protesting democracy, not the failure of democracy. They are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard line against irreligious western economic and colonial policies which traditionally benefit the secular urban elite. “Pro-Democracy” is neoliberal for pro-capitalist plunder.

See: Shah’s Son Backs Iranian Protesters.

Like the “dissidents” of Cuba, the Green greenback-seekers are marching on the CIA’s dime, and being meted the fate of foreign provocateurs. I have no doubt the majority are idealists and are well-intended, but like the Kurds who rose against Saddam Hussein, the US has set them up for slaughter, the sooner to motivate western support for military aggression against their evil regime.

Our media pundits point out that the protest banners are written in English, a sign that the Iranians are desperate to appeal to American viewers. They dismiss Iranian accusations of the demonstrations being US-backed as pure paranoia, and ignore the most simple explanation behind the English slogans, and the websites and networks amplifying the message to English speakers: these materials are being crafted by USAID advisers. This is a propaganda campaign aimed at Western ears, to call for regime change in Iran.

Neda’s Theme is tried and true: Jessica Lynch, Roxana Saberi, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, Neda Salehi Agha Soltan. Onward Christian Soldiers.

The American public won’t believe another fiction about Kuwaiti babies dumped from incubators, or of Belgian children impaled on the bayonets of the evil Hun. So Madison Avenue has upped the amperage. Today’s television armchair adjudicators have to see innocent young women snuffed on film before our eyes. Provided to us by a press too otherwise prurient to show us the mass of death we deal everyday.

The Iranians in the streets, and poor pretty Neda, are being sacrificed by heartless US strategists. I doubt even an errant Iranian bullet can match the American military for cruelty.

http://www.notmytribe.com/2009/who-kill ... #more-8127

** Alice: See my post above -- her name is not Neda Soltani (this article uses the victim's correct name, Neda Salehi Agha Soltan, as the caption on the photo, but the photo is the one that has wrongly been published in the MSM as hers).

I would also add that MSM reporters claim that they've been unable to locate her family, but always quote unidentified "friends" and "neighbours" in their articles alleging nefarious deeds by the government of Iran.

On Edit: here's another essay, published by Workers World, entitled Who Killed Neda Agha-Soltan?

[John Schröder]

No biggie, those just jumped out at me.

Yes, I noticed that about the protesters, too. But overall the article is worthwhile, I think. The comparison between Mexico 2006 and Iran 2009 exposes the blatant hypocrisy of the US media (not only the NY Times) very clearly.

[JackRiddler]

.

Oi, check out this totally moronic disinformation thread on DU started by "nadinbrezinski" with an obviously photoshopped photo of a woman giving the finger to Ahmedinejad. All the cheerleaders have soft orgasms over her bravery, even after a thorough debunking of the photoshop job (see my post, No. 37). A bunch seem to think it doesn't matter if it's real, because, hey, it WOULD BE so cool if it was!

More post-reality, brought to you by TweetGoggleFace (tm).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 89x5935261

[Sweejak]

What's a good act without T-shirts?
http://pulsemedia.org/2009/06/26/the-re ... mmodified/