For a socialist, not a “color” revolution in Iran

Dandelion Salad

by Peter Symonds
http://www.wsws.org
22 June 2009

The protests in Tehran over the weekend have served to highlight the limited social base of the political opponents of the dominant faction of the Iranian clerical regime. The opposition movement has not only failed to draw in broader layers of working people, but has markedly weakened.

From the outset, the color-coded campaign to replace incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Mir Hossein Mousavi has been a highly orchestrated political operation backed by the US and managed by dissident elements of the ruling elite—in particular, former president and billionaire businessman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—for their own ends.

There is nothing progressive in their aims. Insofar as they have differences with their erstwhile associates, Mousavi and his supporters are seeking to shift policies further to the right through a more rapid accommodation with the US and a drastic acceleration of the program of market reform. They make no appeal to working people, for whom such a program can only mean economic devastation, and base themselves on sections of the bourgeoisie and more privileged and frankly selfish layers of the urban middle classes.

[…]

via For a socialist, not a “color” revolution in Iran

see

Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away by Chris Hedges

What The Media’s NOT Telling You About Iran’s Police Brutality

Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’? By Paul Craig Roberts

CIA, Iran and the Election Riots

Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away, by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
June 22, 2009

Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.

What The Media’s NOT Telling You About Iran’s Police Brutality

Dandelion Salad

LeeCamp2
June 22, 2009

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Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’? By Paul Craig Roberts

Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away by Chris Hedges

RNC – St Paul-Minneapolis MN

DNC – Denver CO

Police State on Dandelion Salad

Police BrutalityActivism – Protests – Boycotts

Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’? By Paul Craig Roberts

Dandelion Salad

By Paul Craig Roberts
June 20, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Tehran. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events.

The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.

As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.

The Waning Power of Truth By Paul Craig Roberts

Dandelion Salad

By Paul Craig Roberts
June 19, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

David Ray Griffin, the nemesis of the collection of disinformation known as the 9/11 Commission Report, has taken up the question of Osama Bin Laden, Dead or Alive?

On the basis of the available evidence, Griffin concludes that bin Laden died in December 2001, most likely of kidney failure. He has been kept alive in the media by US government PSYOPS as a useful bogyman to justify America’s illegal wars of aggression. The messages received from bin Laden since his death appear to be conveniently timed fabrications designed to advance US government purposes.

Osama bin Laden is likely to become a mythical person, like the Georgia Tech student, George P. Burdell, who will be sighted from time to time over a period that exceeds the length of a human life.

It was less than one year ago that Americans were subjected to PSYOPS disinformation from their government concerning the Russia-Georgia conflict over South Ossetia.

Meddling in Iran by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
June 19, 2009

So the Republican Scream Machine, this time both in Congress and on the airwaves, are screaming that President Obama should “do something about Iran.” He should be going hammer and tongs on the issue of the obviously stolen election there. Of course if President Obama had done the foolish thing and proclaimed long and loud about what is happening inside Iran, the Republicans would be yelling at him for doing that. But that reality just reflects what the GOP is all about: Just Saying “No” to everything the President says “Yes” to. After all, you can’t blame them, can you? After all, they have nothing positive to offer.

So let’s analyze what previous U.S. meddlings in Iranian affairs have produced, all but one of them the product of Republicans and, in all cases, the product of Republican policies. Before we do that, let’s ask the question why the current GOP crop, the Georgites, and their political residue are so upset with the present Iranian government. After all, I said in BuzzFlash commentary some time ago, George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad have a lot in common.

Iranian Elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax by Prof. James Petras

Dandelion Salad

by Prof. James Petras
Global Research, June 18, 2009

“Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation… Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion.”
Financial Times Editorial, June 15 2009

Introduction

There is hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously fabricating an ‘electoral success’ in Lebanon despite the fact that the Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote.

The recently concluded, June 12, 2009 elections in Iran are a classic case: The incumbent nationalist-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (13.2 million votes).

Kucinich on Iran

Dandelion Salad

Kucinich2008
June 19, 2009

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A Different Perspective on the Iranian Elections by Gary Sudborough

Iran Faces Greater Risks Than It Knows By Paul Craig Roberts

For workers’ power and a socialist Iran by Peter Symonds

CIA, Iran and the Election Riots

Some observations on the Iranian presidential election and its aftermath by Phil Wilayto

Down With the False Revolution

UK Foreign Minister Miliband: The long thesis of the conspiracy by foreign powers against Iran is peddled vociferously by the regime

Propaganda Alert

compiled by Cem Ertür
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
19 June 2009

Quote:

“Obviously the long thesis of the conspiracy by foreign powers against Iran is one that is deeply ingrained in the popular imagination and peddled vociferously by the regime. The demonisation of the West, the United States, the UK to some extent, has been a feature of the last 30 years.”

[UK Foreign Minister David Miliband, BBC Radio 4 interview, 16 June 2009] [1]

Stand or Remain Complicit By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
June 18, 2009

I’m listening in disbelief as the MSM and the bloggers heap praise on the Iranian demonstrators while they encourage these people to keep on with the demonstrations and not to back down in the face of police and military power. It seems as if the American media is in complete solidarity with the Iranian dissidents. The advice coming out of America seems to suggest that American citizens are experienced in this type of struggle. The message we seem to be sending is that we Americans somehow know what they (the Iranians) must do in order to throw off the chains of servitude and make democracy work.

Does U.S. poll rule out fraud in Iran? + Thousands maintain Iran protests

Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews
June 18, 2009

Western media, along with thousands of Iranians protesting around the world, have formed a rough consensus over the six days since Iran’s Presidential Election that Ahmadinejad’s victory was the result of widespread fraud. However, a recent Op-Ed in the Washington Post references a rare public opinion poll in suggesting that the election may indeed have been fair. While there is not enough information to determine whether or not the election was rigged, this poll certainly doesn’t rule out the possibility. If only because the poll’s authors concluded prior to the election that the very same data predicted a relatively close vote. Yet today, those same authors are claiming that their figures demonstrate the validity of Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory.

A Different Perspective on the Iranian Elections by Gary Sudborough

Dandelion Salad

Posted with permission from the author, thanks, Gary.

by Gary Sudborough
http://www.indymedia.org.uk
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/06/432356.html
15.06.2009 19:09

Iran is in a very strategic location for the expansion of US imperialism and control of oil in the Middle East. Military Force by the United States has already been threatened, but has drawbacks. However, the CIA is an expert at fixing elections and stirring up violence and street demonstrations in other countries until an overthrow of that government occurs and one more favorable to US imperialism takes its place.

Iran Faces Greater Risks Than It Knows By Paul Craig Roberts

Dandelion Salad

By Paul Craig Roberts
June 17, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, tells the story of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mosaddeq, by the CIA and the British MI6 in 1953. The CIA bribed Iranian government officials, businessmen, and reporters, and paid Iranians to demonstrate in the streets.

The 1953 street demonstrations, together with the cold war claim that the US had to grab Iran before the Soviets did, served as the US government’s justification for overthrowing Iranian democracy. What the Iranian people wanted was not important.

Today the street demonstrations in Tehran show signs of orchestration. The protesters, primarily young people, especially young women opposed to the dress codes, carry signs written in English: “Where is My Vote?” The signs are intended for the western media, not for the Iranian government.

For workers’ power and a socialist Iran by Peter Symonds

Dandelion Salad

by Peter Symonds
http://www.wsws.org
17 June 2009

The political crisis unfolding in Iran raises fundamental issues for the working class. The outcome of last Friday’s presidential election has exposed a sharp rift within the country’s clerical regime between the backers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those of his chief rival, Mirhossein Mousavi.

No one should be hoodwinked by the “colour revolution” being carefully orchestrated by the Mousavi camp to overturn the election result and demand a fresh poll. While there are tactical differences between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, both are tested defenders of the existing regime and the interests of the Iranian bourgeoisie.

[…]

As it has in the past, US imperialism is seeking to exploit the political turmoil in Iran to bring about a modification of the regime more favourable to its economic and strategic interests—in the first place, to secure greater Iranian support for its neo-colonial occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

If Mousavi were to pull off his “colour revolution,” the first to bear the brunt would be the working class and the poor, as the new regime sought to rein in public spending, privatise state-owned enterprises and guarantee the profits of local businesses and foreign investors. The barely concealed class hostility of Mousavi and his well-heeled supporters to working people is summed in their open contempt towards Ahmadinejad’s meagre handouts to the poor.

[..]

via For workers’ power and a socialist Iran

see

CIA, Iran and the Election Riots

Are You Ready For War With Demonized Iran? By Paul Craig Roberts + Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It

Iran boils over by Lee Sustar

US Media Campaign to Discredit Iranian Election By Charting Stock

Some observations on the Iranian presidential election and its aftermath by Phil Wilayto

CIA, Iran and the Election Riots

Dandelion Salad

AntiDefm
June 14, 2009

Reference URL links:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world…
http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-in…
http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/ne…
http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publi…
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOn…
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOn…
http://www.euronews.net/2009/04/19/ob…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wor…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/…

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Are You Ready For War With Demonized Iran? By Paul Craig Roberts + Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It

Iran boils over by Lee Sustar

US Media Campaign to Discredit Iranian Election By Charting Stock

Some observations on the Iranian presidential election and its aftermath by Phil Wilayto

Presidential election in Iran: selected items from the British press