Interesting retroject on Iranian elections
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…
No doubt something is happening in Iran; but vote fraud may not be as big (or accurate) an aspect as it seems.
Here are a couple of others today from AT on the Iranian elections.
Bhadrakumar and Escobar.
skol:
Also Al Giordano with some interesting insight here.
15 June 2009, 8:43 pmKim Sky:
Moon of Alabama points to “Debs in Dead” analysis:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2009/06/debs-take-on-iran.html#more
Paraphrasing, Debs states that the current situation in Iran is one where the US-warmongers are attempting to organize a color revolution. [much more a good read]
As for Al Giordano’s analysis, he seems to believe a legitimate twitter/internet opposition movement is forming in Iran. AND that the example for this new type of “revolution” was created during the 2002 attempt on Chavez.
I think he’s wrong on both points. The story so far seems to resemble very closely a number of US-orchestrated Color Revolutions. As for his claim that the Internet saved Chavez, it is true a few internet sites had some contrary information about the coup, but made no contribution to the counter-coup. 1. The army was there, aware and ready to expose the coup-plotters, 2. the masses from the slums don’t have internet, and came down from their hills to assist in anti-coup protests, 3. some folk did seize a television station.
16 June 2009, 2:45 pmKeith:
Mr. Giordano informs me that the aforementioned Washington Post column “is utter trash,” offering a compelling retort by Juan Cole:
http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/terror-free-tomorro-poll-did-not.html
While I’m not quite as eager as Al to compare Iran’s nascent “Green Revolution” of today with Venezuela’s popular counter-coup of 2002 (the former, need one point out, smiled on by transnational capital, the latter, not so much), I’m intrigued by what kind of breathing room a bourgeois-pluralist movement could open up for the left in Iran, Mousavi’s promises of “economic liberalization” aside. Me thinks a deeper examination of the current position of Iranian trade unions and civil society, particularly the involvement of women, is in order.
17 June 2009, 5:20 amskol:
Maybe he’s wrong, but the ramifications if there weren’t a constant twitter feed? It’s hard to say one way or the other I suppose, but that’s not a risk worth investigating.
However, there has been no indication from these feeds that this is a US-orchestrated coup; the only indication that the US “helped out” is when the state dept. asked Twitter not to go down for its scheduled maintenance. So make no mistake, I’m not being naive and assuming the US doesn’t want regime change. The simple message to Twitter belies that alone. Aside from that, the fact that their revolution (by any other name) is based off a color isn’t much evidence.
Given the economic conditions of Iran – and the obvious observation that this is by-and-large a middle-class protest; given the utter cynicism of officials handling of the election (which probably would’ve had Ahmedinejad winning anyway); given the deaths so far, perpetrated largely by the militias; given the power the revolutionary guard holds; and given that, at the end of the day, Khamenei will still be the guy at the top, regardless of who becomes president… (and Mousavi isn’t that great a guy in the first place)
I can’t help but think that some folks want proof that the US really is kicking the bucket, and that that proof will be bloodshed, bloodshed, bloodshed, like hammering some point home. Not a whimper, but a Bang. And I’ll be honest: a sick part of me wants to see that. I’m a sucker for conspiracy theories and worlds set in concrete gray. I want the cause and consequence. Just to live through it.
But I don’t see that being played out here. The MoA article manages to make the imperialist case one way or the other by conferring the agency of Iranians to the US empire in the case of Moussavi, or by conferring the agency of Iranians to the vote-rigging Mullahs desperate to leave the US empire out of the picture in the case of Ahmedinijad. How does Iran – or any other country – escape this cycle of either being at the end of American guns or at the end of American puppet strings?
My cynicism aside, that may be a worthy question. That it isn’t being asked is the real cynicism.
17 June 2009, 6:44 amSean:
I am curious as to why Al Giordano is read by anyone, for anything. One may as well ask Jim Carville or Rahm Emanuel to offer an opinion. Every time I read Al Giordano, between the lines I see this message — you WILL support Democrats! you MUST support Democrats! even when they do wrong! even when they wrong YOU!
Frankly, I don’t have time for people engaged in that sort of delusional perspective, who are engaged in advocating a lie. Our host here, he is not a delusional advocate for lies. He sees reality. Can’t say the same for Giordano.
17 June 2009, 10:04 amMichael Anderson:
Kim beat me to it….this has got U.S. Intelligence Community written all over it. The U.S. (i.e. Mr. Obama) faces some difficulty in dealing with Iran government. From Statfor:
“Ahmadinejad enjoys widespread popularity. He doesn’t speak to the issues that matter to the urban professionals, namely, the economy and liberalization. But Ahmadinejad speaks to three fundamental issues that accord with the rest of the country.
First, Ahmadinejad speaks of piety. Among vast swathes of Iranian society, the willingness to speak unaffectedly about religion is crucial. Though it may be difficult for Americans and Europeans to believe, there are people in the world to whom economic progress is not of the essence; people who want to maintain their communities as they are and live the way their grandparents lived. These are people who see modernization — whether from the shah or Mousavi — as unattractive. They forgive Ahmadinejad his economic failures.”
Sounds vaguely familiar…like some large areas in the U.S.
“Perhaps the greatest factor in Ahmadinejad’s favor is that Mousavi spoke for the better districts of Tehran — something akin to running a U.S. presidential election as a spokesman for Georgetown and the Lower East Side. Such a base will get you hammered, and Mousavi got hammered. Fraud or not, Ahmadinejad won and he won significantly. That he won is not the mystery; the mystery is why others thought he wouldn’t win.”
Looking at Giordano’s video, it seems that the Iranian population, despite their seeming differences, may be a bit more homogeneous than we here (care to) imagine. The news this morning is trumpeting some kind of a split in the mullahs’ positions on a recount, but I’m not betting on anything substantially changing. Ahmadinejad went to Russia for the BRIC conference, and THAT is the big news.
Damn, that Iranian oil looks more attractive all the time, don’t it?
17 June 2009, 10:24 amStan:
No time at all right now, but I posted Escobar and Bhadrakumar because they give some insights into the domestic political dynamics of Iran, something seldom seen here. Right and left alike seem compelled at all times to pass judgement on personalities — Ahmadinejad is good, or bad. Us foreign policy is good, or bad. Even Giordano is good, or bad.
These are not descriptions; they are ideological genuflections. You cannot simply put a plus sign or a minus sign next to each part of a disarticulated account. There is class tension in Iran, obviously, and Ahmadinejad is more popular with the poor. For those who reflexively idealize the poor, or the working class, as a matter of ideological genuflection, these complexities are very inconvenient.
A short history of the USDOS, USAID, the US CIA, NED nexus is in order for those unfamiliar with the chicaneries of this constellation. And whether the media are giving us a useful account, a complete account, a spin-account is something we have to determine by collection and comparison of evidence, not by ad hominem dismissals.
Gotta go to work.
18 June 2009, 5:47 amSam:
In a general way, most people don’t know how to think, if by thinking is meant an interest and an effort to maintain objectivity and impartiality (something too few people even believe in), and conduct an honest inquiry as to what might be the essential versus secondary data and distinctions, cultural and other contexts, proper analyses and syntheses, rather than, “ideological genuflections” that correspond rather to subjective tastes, predilections, prejudices, conventionalities, and simple downright mental sloth and careless hastiness. We live in a mentally super-saturated, garrulous culture in which any fool feels her or his opinion is as good as anyone else’s, and where few are willing to undertake the hard work of mastering a subject, or have the honesty to admit they lack the requisite qualifications.
18 June 2009, 2:09 pmHenry:
A very Iranian coup
By Chris Cook
f you look at recent events in Iran through the lens of oil, money and power, you won’t go too far wrong.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF17Ak01.html
———————–
The IRGC shakes its iron fist
By Shahir Shahidsaless
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF19Ak04.html
18 June 2009, 2:40 pmHenry:
The Eurasian Pipeline Calculus
by F. William Engdahl
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14007
18 June 2009, 2:44 pmHenry:
https://www.stratfor.com/campaign/welcome_john_mauldin_readers_40?utm_source=JMF&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WIPAJMF090618140400
Stratfor video
Iran Elections, Israel and the US
18 June 2009, 8:31 pmJeremy:
For an different analysis of the “twitter revolution” Read here:
America’s Iranian Twitter Revolution
“Twitter may be as irrelevant to Iran as it is good for the promotion of Twitter itself, and for the self-flattery of some ardent Twitter users who believe that their tweets and their green-tinted avatars will change the world, or at least Iran. The revolution will not only be tweeted, it will be fast and easy, and it will be led by Americans themselves, “for Iran”.”
18 June 2009, 10:02 pmSean:
Stan — I guess I did sound strident on Giordano. I suppose that’s my frustration speaking. There’s a whole lot of moral flexibility from the Obama supporters these days, I keep wanting them to use Chris Floyd’s WIBDI test.
WIBDI = What If Bush Did It?
19 June 2009, 9:48 amMichael Anderson:
Looks like the mullahs have agent provocateurs for enforcing behavior just like we do:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/world/middleeast/19basij.html?hp
19 June 2009, 9:55 amm.c.:
Sam: This is perhaps my favorite political quotation of all by Thomas Jefferson.
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, liberals and serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, whigs and tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all.”
Letter to Henry Lee (10 August 1824)
19 June 2009, 1:13 pmskol:
WIBDI is begging the question. I’d like to see proof that the U.S. is involved in a substantive way aside from the general power-plays we’d expect.
More to the point: In what way would these protests be different if the U.S. weren’t involved? How do you separate the wheat from the chaff?
19 June 2009, 4:36 pmm.c.:
Let’s accept Jefferson’s statement on face value for a moment. The elite/oligarchy/professional experts; of course act Wisely in their own [narrow] interests. But are they usually wise when it pertains to the Common Good of all? He’s implying that concentrated power isn’t only unethical, it’s dangerous.
19 June 2009, 6:31 pmHenry:
Re: the Jefferson quote.
This is, in a way, sheer demacratic demagoguery, and hardly constitutes an essential way of viewing humanity–except of course for Jefferson’s rhetorical purposes. Democracy can mean just about anything you please nowadays, and it is hard, historically, to argue with Plato (using his correct definition of the term) that it is the stage before tyranny. “The people” is the collectivity. It is by definition a passive receptacle, which can be for good or ill, as history, again, amply proves. It is perfectly meaningless to “trust the people” pure and simple. Which people? Under what circumstances? For what motives? Etc.
Democracy can have meaning in the context of a relatively homogeneous and small group of people, as in a New England village. Quite different is the case of vast heterogenous industrialized collectivities numbering in the millions and, on the whole, led by the nose by corporate and other power interests, and whose mentality has been debased by what passes for entertainment these days.
19 June 2009, 8:27 pmSean:
skol — You’re correct that it’s beside the point, but that’s so only if you know there’s no difference. Once you know there’s no difference, what you seek is a real substantive change. But many Obama supporters are still basking in the fact that Obama won, and that Obama isn’t Bush. I’ve seen/read it time after time, Obama supporters not criticizing Obama for the same things that they pilloried Bush for, and that means they’re using a double-standard. Before those people can get to the point of wanting substantive change, they have to be willing to see that merely switching to Obama is NOT that substantive change. What I was saying about Giordano, although I was blowing things a bit out of proportion by being so broad-brush, is that I’ve read Giordano essays where he’s soft-pedaling on his examination of Obama and Obama’s aims. I agree with you though, skol. I seek substantive changes and from where I sit it’s not enough to use WIBDI. But that’s because I’m past the point of partisanship. WIBDI is a device to get people past partisanship.
Sam’s post at 18 June, 2:09 pm is a whole lot closer to how I see things. Good one, Sam.
20 June 2009, 11:04 amm.c.:
Well, in the real world of politics there are rarely absolutes. Change usually comes gradually. In Plato’s Athens & other Greek city states, slavery was allowed and women weren’t allowed to vote or serve on juries, much less hold public office. Things change….
20 June 2009, 12:09 pmskol:
Ah, thank you Sean and Sam. I understand now
I was thinking only vis-a-vis the Iranian situation. I just care more for what’s going on over there than I do what the U.S. establishment thinks about it. Which I suppose isn’t the best position to be in for engaging in anything substantive within my power
20 June 2009, 1:51 pmStan:
Things do change. But graduation is not the end of the story. This equilibrium is punctuated by events, bifurcation points — crisis points with unpredictable outcomes — at which the direction of history irrevocably changes, before it again resumes a period of relative equilibrium. That’s because many of the gradual changes are running counter to each other, like a slowly shifting faultline underground, and the radical change happens when a breaking point is reached.
Self-organization takes over again afterwards, of some kind. But in a direction that was not totally determined by the past trajectory of events.
Politics is the study of power, and the dark arts of its acquisition. But its very hard to generalize beyond that. Power is inflected — like everything we know — by the reciprocating feedback loops between ecology, culture, and personhood. Once you begin to open the lid on “power,” these three oceans come pouring out over you; and our simplifications sound evasive and kind of desperate.
We’ve reified politics. We’ve come to think that “what is familiar is actually necessary.”
Elections and policy and the personalities that predominate in these arenas are familar, so we begin to believe that only through these bodies and practices will anything change, or that we’ll be safe, depending.
In Iran, there are several things going on at once, it seems. The elections served as a flash point, but I’m hearing precious little from any quarter (tho I haven’t had much time to look) about those gradual trends in Iranian society that have now come into contradiction with a certain tectonic force.
I know this, because I know the world at least that much: This is not about good guys and bad guys.
Obama and his retinue are geting briefed on this stuff, I guarantee. So should we. Because some of it is reasonably predictable once we begin to apprehend the real secular realities that overdetermine the events in this region. What is predictable is that Obama is (1) a good student, and (2) the chief executive of a flailing super-state. If he’s a good student, and we’re good students, then we’ll likely understand the same historical forces as a result of our study, and all we need to know is what Obama’s criteria for action will be.
Chief Executive Priorities: (1) Don’t let large numbers of Americans starve, or they will act out politically and unpredictably. (2) Resecure the bases of US global power sufficient to ensure adequate flow from the periphery to keep that domestic population calm. (3) Get elected again.
I’d be glad to sit down with Obama and read bible verses (where I’d point out a few things about “peacemakers”); but until his conversion, a certain realism makes me bet that he will behave exactly and consistently according to those priorities.
The idea, however, that I or others might be able to “influence” Obama is our perennial political delusion, and one that sucks all the rest of our popular energy into the vortex of electoral efficacy. Having an idea about what might happen is important in the same way that background information is for an intelligence briefing. That does not in any way mean that what we do has to be based on our confusing the familiarity of elections with their necessity for anything we might want or desperately need to do. Most of the things we need to do first are things we can do on our own, right now.
All of those things require us to make peace with one another. We have become a culture of antagonisms; and that makes us very suggestable.
PS – Good article on Iranian election track story.
20 June 2009, 1:52 pmskol:
Just want to register my thanks with your comment, Stan. It explains a lot, I think.
The tl;dr seems to be: “woah now, step back… there are limits to how we can explain this.” I’m guessing now that a lot of folks are watching this unfold through a vicarious lens (I have, I think); and with that projections of ourselves into a situation we can’t comprehend contextually.
And I think the limits can be passed only if this is realized, and by then we can only use empirical evidence to avoid those projections. So what’s the best way to get an empirical understanding?
21 June 2009, 9:40 amStan:
FULL
The irony is in the link.
21 June 2009, 12:23 pmStan:
The median age in the US is 37. The median age in Iran is 26. We could start with that, seek employment statistics, ethnicity maps, etc.
21 June 2009, 1:37 pmSean:
What strikes me as the most crucial obstacles to an average American understanding what’s happening in Iran are these points:
1) Iran is a culture that is thousands of years old. America is 233 years old.
2) In Iran, there is no serious division between religion and government. America has a Constitutional prohibition that is often ignored, but there are still barriers to theocratic government here. I realize many fear and see a “conservative Christian” bent to American government, even though I do not agree with that perception. I believe that here, religion is a tool used to sway the hyper-religious and less-educated Americans.
3) The attitudes toward money, toward lending money, toward manipulation of money are radically different in Iran. This may be the most significant factor in “westernized” Iranians’ perspectives. Islam is nowhere near as friendly toward interest, especially the usurious type that is commonplace in America… and Islam is the dominant force in Iran.
4) Apart from the 3 foregoing points, most Americans don’t know a damned thing about Iran, and therefore have no real ability to put themselves in the shoes of an Iranian and thereby comprehend what is happening there. How many Americans realize that Iran = Persia? How many people who have Persian rugs in their upscale houses, yet eagerly badmouth “Islamic fundamentalist crazies,” are aware of how ignorant they are and how hypocritical they are in those perspectives? Very very few, I’d bet.
21 June 2009, 4:48 pmHenry:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14040
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”
Is This the Culmination of Two Years of Destabilization?
by Paul Craig Roberts
21 June 2009, 8:07 pmskol:
Regarding Point 2: I’ve been watching (and watching and watching) what’s been going on over there, through blogs like (gasp) Andrew Sullivan, Giordano, some folks at Huffpo…
And, particularly in the case of Sullivan, he seems to be arguing that this is not just a problem of legitimacy for Khamenei et. al., but for the entire Islamic Republic. The irony (or not) is that he has been compiling the bulk of the twitter feeds coming in from Iran, and the word “secular” has not – to my recollection – been mentioned in any tweet, nor has the legitimacy of the principles of their government.
So there’s another case where folks need to step back and just WONDER about what is going on, and not judge it.
22 June 2009, 2:02 amStan:
Both Bhadrakumar and Escobar are back this week (see the links). One is a former diplomat, the other a kind of gonzo indy journalist with a lot of area experience.
Escobar sez:
Bhadrakumar:
Two entirely different perspectives, so where are the common threads?
Bhadrakumar lays certain stress (as a geopolitician) on the Saudi dog in this fight.
Still, I’d be interested in what a good urbanist — like Matt Lassiter or Mike Davis — might have to offer on shifts in rural-urban populations, dislocations, etc., and even a Martinex-Alier-style account of thermodynamic flows that correspond to urbanization, the demographic evolutions that correspond to those flows, and the main ecological shifts that are going completely unremarked.
A nice Marxist account would be helpful, too, if it can extricate itself from the tendency to polemicize and exagerate — emerging relations of production, class contradictions, and more on the popular bases of the cast of political heavyweights in Iran.
A gender analysis would also be helpful; but again, liberal feminist canards have been so abused as propaganda weapons to enemize Islam, that unless that gender account is one predicated on a nuanced and honest assessment of power instead of ideological commitment to an indefinably abstract “equality,” it is unlikely to shed much more light on these goings-on (liberal feminism has certainly passed its use-by date here in the core, where it has collapsed in the face of consumerism). I don’t think we ought to underestimate, as we genertally do, how determinative is gender-identity in the decision-making of leaders, and how often their decisions are influenced by their own perceptions of male-gender-identity among the masses (where patriarchy is a default position). All of the diplomatic/political calcualtions of political leaders everywhere apparently include attention to how these things are performed and appreciated-as-performance in exchanges that would not be out of place in a boys’ schoolyard. “Does this look weak?”
22 June 2009, 6:21 amStan:
Ah, this from MoA (to rest my gender case):
FULL LINK
22 June 2009, 12:20 pmskol:
Well, duh :-p
Is it just me, or has the White Male “progressive left” Progressive Left (that’s their nickname, but they came up with it themselves) been shooting itself in the foot over this? It seems to me that this is an excellent opportunity to start wedging in some of the more radical parts of thought, since this moment in history is so undeniably confusing. Familiar context is slipping out from underneath everyone, in one way or another.
Just a thought.
22 June 2009, 12:32 pmStan:
Ask and ye shall receive.
Old pal Louis Proyect answers the call.
22 June 2009, 2:56 pmm.c.:
I originally meant plutocracy instead of oligarchy, but either one works.
22 June 2009, 3:02 pmskol:
Feel like I’m hijacking – please do not consider it as such. I’m still a n00b with weird questions to mundane things. Relatively speaking, of course.
What I had meant was: How do we understand the underlying context? Is there such a thing as an empirical expression of context? Because I had just seen this on youtube and it explained to me things that no numbers can explain. Or am I wrong? Am I not getting context? (what does that even mean, ugh!)
22 June 2009, 3:15 pmSean:
skol –
It may help to understand that the majority of the “progressive” and “liberal” people in America are essentially corporatist and imperialist people who just like a happy face painted on fascism and imperialism. Because they don’t really question either the corporatocracy in America, or the imperialist drive of those corporations that run the country, their take on any socio-economic-political matter is weak, tepid excuse-making. Watch them, they’ll take positions that assume the USA has the right to meddle in Iranian affairs. And what gives the USA that right? Nothing! It’s assumed to exist as a “right” because of the imperialist/corporatist perspective that underlays the “progressive” and “liberal” slants on domestic and global affairs.
I think that’s why Stan is saying that it would be good to get a Marxist take on this, because Marxists pretty well reject imperialism, and most of them reject corporatism… although lately I’ve seen a few self-proclaimed Marxists toying with an unspoken corporatism.
23 June 2009, 12:20 amStan:
As Hornborg noted, Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism is the first systematic semiotic account of political economy. I couldn’t care less about “marxist programs” or position statements, etc etc. But a marxist focus on relations of production is an account with the mask (commodity fetishism) off; and therein is, imho, their most important revelatory contribution. Systems analysts, word stystems analysts, feminist analysts, et al, each makes a revelatory contribution, none complete (there is no ‘complete’).
I am very wary these days of taking on wholesale the perspective of anything that ends with “ist,” because this kind of metanarrative laid out in a very systematic way tends to ignore the inherent danger — as De sez — that if all you own is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail.
What people in the US think about the Iranian elections is not particularly interesting either right now; what we do is. But what Iranians are thinking and doing is very interesting… and that’s the hard part to infer without correcting our own various forms of ignorance about Iran.
Are we saying that Americans are “weak”? Liberals are “weak”? They haven’t “manned up”?
23 June 2009, 5:30 amskol:
I don’t think that was the intention. But it’s so easy to equivocate. Actually, what with the progressive left (that Sean remarks upon) taking this “weak” stance all over the frakking place, wouldn’t it be good to start a war…
(Ugh, I’m way behind myself. Dunno how to backpedal from that war statement, short of redacting it, so I’ll just keep it there as some sort of evidence I haven’t quite grasped)
…start a war (sorry) against macho-speak equivocation? Particularly as there are dozens of competing (<–?) theories and everyone is getting confused. That’s my mwahaha moment of the day.
23 June 2009, 8:42 amSean:
Heh, I like the use of “manned up” there, Stan!
As I said over on Chris Floyd’s blog, it’s sorta counter-productive to pay attention to “the left” or “the right” (or their “-ist” equivalents) because all such focus on labels does is distract. I make use of the terms “fascist” and “corporatist” to refer to a perspective that assumes corporations should rule rather than people. To me that perspective is inhumane because corporations may be –as a legal construct only– claimed to be separate from the people they employ and the people who own them, but in truth there is no distinction. A corporation cannot run itself. It requires people to run it. People own the corporation, and when they cause the corporation as an entity to do this or that, it is the directors and officers who are causing those acts — not the corporation as its own separate entity, driving itself. As a lawyer I understand the legal formality of what is a corporation; as a human I abhor that distinction as artificial, and designed to separate people from power and authority over their own economic, social and political destinies.
Present “political analysis” offered by mainstream American and British sources is not analysis at all — it is much like “economics,” it is a form of excuse-making for the current power structure in place in the USA and UK — a structure which finds each nation’s power in the hands of large business entities, and not in the hands of the individual citizens. Individual citizens no longer have much say in their own political, social, economic destinies in the USA and UK. The only way to have such control is to go along, and assume that the power structures represent optimum human systems. I cannot make that assumption for myself, and I always wonder how others manage to make it for themselves.
23 June 2009, 10:43 amSean:
PS:
I like what Dennis Perrin said recently at his blog. Usually he’s offering a comic slant on things, a black humor take on the ugly reality. But he offered a more serious take in his entry called “Revolting.” There he applauded the Iranians for actually trying to take back some power. In the same entry, he made this observation:
Who but jaded observers sniff at people struggling for political breathing space? States are violent, coercive entities, and I’m sympathetic to those who have the guts to directly confront their rulers, though as repressive tools and mechanisms are refined, rebellion from below seems less and less possible, primarily in larger countries.
The part that ends with “…primarily in larger countries” is something I would attribute to the switch in political control from individual people, to large entities such as PACs and corporations.
23 June 2009, 10:50 amm.c.:
Correct protocol(?) would be to go to the UN General Assembly and ask them to pass a resolution with widespread international support for a UN inquiry into Iranian voting irregularities. No? The UN taking the lead. The US, UK, Israel, Sarkozy in France, Harper in Canada, Berlusconi in Italy, Merkel in Germany, maybe a few others don’t want this path because I bet the UN GA vote wouldn’t even be close in their favor. No wonder the Neo Cons & their Neo Lib fellow travelers don’t like the UN unless its for window dressing for something they’re already going to do like sending Colin Powell or Tony Blair to give some Smooth, Self-Righteous speech
23 June 2009, 12:05 pmNLK:
Not to change the subject, Stan, but I think you might be interested in reading this paper here.
STAN: A refinement by Hornborg. Recent! Wow, thanks!
23 June 2009, 3:00 pmMichael Anderson:
A link from Al-Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/06/2009624225744811593.html
US ‘has agents working inside Iran’
The US cannot do a great deal in regard to the tense situation in Iraq, Scowcroft said [AFP]
The US has intelligence agents in Iran but it is not clear if they are providing help to the protest movement there, a former US national security adviser has told Al Jazeera.
Brent Scowcroft said on Wednesday that “of course” the US had agents in Iran amid the ongoing pressure against the Iranian government by protesters opposed to the official result of its presidential election.
But he added that he had no idea whether US agents had provided help to the opposition movement in Iran, which claims that the authorities rigged the June 12 election in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president.
“They might do. Who knows?” Scowcroft told Josh Rushing for Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines programme.
“But that’s a far cry from helping protesters against the combined might of the Revolutionary Guard, the militias and so on – and the [Iranian] police, who are so far completely unified.”
Limited options
Scowcroft’s admission that Washington has agents stationed in Iran comes a day after the US president issued tougher rhetoric against the government in Iran.
Barack Obama’s sterner tone came after days of deadly clashes between the opposition and Iranian security forces and militias.
Obama has been criticised by US conservative politicians for not taking a stronger line against Tehran amid the government crackdown, but Scowcroft, a former adviser to presidents Gerald Ford and the senior George Bush, said the US could only do so much.
“We don’t control Iran. We don’t control the government, obviously,” he said.
“There is little we can do to change the situation domestically in Iran right now and I think an attempt to change it is more likely to be turned against us and against the people who are demonstrating for more freedom.
“Therefore, I think we need to look at what we can do best, which is to try to influence Iranian behaviour in the region.”
At least 19 people have been killed in post-election violence in Iran, which broke out at the scene of protests questioning the veracity of the poll results.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad, has rejected the official results of the vote and has called for a fresh election to be held, while Mehdi Karoubi, another defeated candidate in the election, has called the new government “illegitimate”.
But the Guardian Council, Iran’s highest legislative body, has said that there were no incidences of major fraud in the vote and has declared that the official results will stand.
25 June 2009, 3:41 am