Al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and the Taliban’s Mullah Muhammad Omar — Washington’s principal enemy leaders in the Afghan war — are not only alive, free and still taunting the White House after all these years, but appear to believe they now have the upper hand in Afghanistan.

Bin-Laden’s purpose has always been to draw the United States ever deeper into armed conflict with Islamic society in order to degrade America’s image, undermine its economy, and gain recruits. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan played directly into al-Qaeda’s hands, as will Washington’s effort to widen the Afghan conflict, especially as it stabs into Pakistan and alienates its masses of people in the process.

So far the two wars launched by President George W. Bush have cost the U.S. the antagonism of much of the Muslim world, serious erosions of its own democracy and reputation, and over a trillion dollars. Even if the wars end soon, says Nobel Prize economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, the overall expenditure — including everything from long term care for severely injured troops to interest on the war debt — will exceed $3 trillion, enough to end world poverty and hunger.

Speaking about Afghanistan this summer, President Barack Obama declared: “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity.” Many war opponents argue that it is indeed a war of choice, and that international police work would have been far more successful and just.

We’ll discuss this later in the article, along with the fact that the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, and for that matter the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy, need not have occurred had Washington taken less warlike actions in the key year of 1978, as well as 2001 and 2003. The fact that the U.S. has intervened deeply and for long periods over the past 31 years in a civil war in poverty-stricken, virtually pre-industrial Afghanistan, is probably not understood by many Americans.

Upon assuming office, President Obama instructed the Pentagon to devise a winning strategy for Afghanistan. Within weeks the White House agreed to a new war plan submitted by Gen. Stanley McChrystal that was supposed to lead to a U.S. victory. In March, Obama expanded the Afghan war when he heeded a Pentagon request and ordered 21,000 more U.S. troops to join the battle.

Several months later, however, McChrystal reported that the situation has deteriorated to the point where the war — ever more clearly displaying its neocolonial aspect — “will likely result in failure” within a year unless his forces increase by a minimum of 45,000 troops and a maximum of 80,000.

Obama has been engaged in “rethinking” war strategy since receiving the general’s verdict several weeks ago. He is expected to soon decide whether to deploy a larger number of additional troops to join 68,000 American fighters already scheduled for Afghanistan and about 50,000 NATO soldiers. This total presumably includes the 13,000 troops Obama also deployed without informing the American people, until the Washington Post broke the story in mid-October.

The White House is investigating two options for continuing the conflict — both of which would intensify the war and spread it more deeply into Pakistan. As briefly summarized by The Economist Oct. 17 they are “manpower-intensive counter-insurgency (COIN), which aims to win over the Afghan population and build a stable government; and counter-terrorism, which seeks to deal narrowly with threats to the West, mainly through air strikes or raids by Special Forces.”

McChrystal, who appears to be supported by top Pentagon brass, backs COIN, which includes a counter-terrorism aspect as well as “winning the hearts and minds” of the Afghan people, an effort that utterly failed when tried in Vietnam, and will fail in Afghanistan. Vice President Joseph Biden and some other administration advisers back the lower intensity counter-terrorism option without greatly expanding the number of troops or engaging in “nation building.”

If McChrystal’s minimum request is accepted it means a combined U.S.-NATO force of over 160,000 troops, not including scores of thousands of “contractors” doing duties previously performed by soldiers until recent years.

Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector who testified before the war that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, had this to say about McChrystal’s request for more troops in a Truthdig.com article Oct. 29:

McChrystal operates under the illusion that American military power can provide a shield from behind which Afghanistan can remake itself into a viable modern society. He has deluded himself and others into believing that the people of Afghanistan want to be part of such a grand social experiment, and furthermore that they will tolerate the United States being in charge. The reality of Afghan history, culture and society argue otherwise. The Taliban, once a defeated entity in the months following the initial American military incursion into Afghanistan, are resurgent and growing stronger every day. The principle source of the Taliban’s popularity is the resentment of the Afghan people toward the American occupation and the corrupt proxy government of Hamid Karzai. There is nothing an additional 40,000 American troops will be able to do to change that basic equation.

At this stage the U.S, NATO and their Afghan forces enjoy at least a 12-1 advantage in troop strength against the opposing forces, not to mention air power, drone attacks and an enormous technological, logistics and communications advantage. This increases to 20-1 if McChrystal’s minimum kicks in — and that’s evidently still not enough to defeat the insurgency. The latest word from the White House and Pentagon is that the new strategy may devolve to holding Afghanistan’s 10 largest cities and leaving the countryside to fend for itself, except for air strikes.

Our guess is that Obama will view the issue politically, as well as militarily, and being an inveterate centrist will try to merge both positions, increasing the number of troops but fewer than McChrystal desires. No one knows for sure, but he is intentionally creating suspense to magnify the importance of his eventual plan.

The Washington Post reported Oct. 26 that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently conducted theoretical war games to examine “the likely outcome of inserting 44,000 more troops into the country to conduct a full-scale counterinsurgency effort aimed at building a stable Afghan government that can control most of the country. It also examined adding 10,000 to 15,000 more soldiers and Marines as part of an approach that the military has dubbed ‘counterterrorism plus.’”

Complicating the situation, Washington’s hand-picked Afghan leader, President Hamid Karzai, is presiding over a thoroughly corrupt government and an alienated population. His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is a drug lord and wheeler-dealer extraordinaire, who has been on the CIA’s payroll since the beginning of the war, along with innumerable warlords and disreputable officials. The UN has ascertained that last August’s elections were so fraudulent, mainly by far from Karzai’s side, the a run-off election was set for Nov. 7 between the incumbent and his independent rival, Abdullah Abdullah, M.D., who won 30.5% of the vote.

On Nov. 1, Abdullah — who had long been associated with the U.S.-supported Northern Alliance, for which he was a deputy foreign minister at one time — announced his withdrawal from the second round voting. He attributed his decision to the refusal by the government and election commission to accept his recommendations for changing balloting rules to prevent foul play.

The Obama Administration has been far more critical of Karzai than Bush, and it is said to have preferred a Karzai-Abdullah power-sharing arrangement to Karzai alone. Since Abdullah withdrew without calling for an election boycott or public demonstrations on his own behalf, he may yet end up associated with the new government in some fashion.

Even though the election affair has not transpired precisely the way Washington wished, it will have little impact on White House war plans. President Obama, who heretofore identified Afghanistan as the main danger, not Iraq, now says the danger has spread to Pakistan as well — an unanticipated but logical result of the Bush wars. The tribal areas of Pakistan are the target of increased U.S. air power, missile attacks, pilotless drones, and Special Forces engagements.

The Obama Administration is exerting heavy pressure on the Islamabad government of President Asif Ali Zardari, and investing another $7.5 billion in new aid, to intensify efforts to crush al-Qaeda, the Pakistan Taliban (which was only formed in 2007) and other groups in the mountainous western section of the country. This has created increasing anti-American sentiment among the masses of people in Pakistan who think Zardari is a virtual puppet of Washington. In a public opinion poll last August, some 60% of the Pakistani people view the U.S. as the greatest threat to their country compared to India or al-Qaeda.

In order to prevail in Afghanistan — or in Af-Pak, as the two-front war is described — President Obama evidently is considering a major compromise with the Taliban. Associated Press reported Oct. 9 that “President Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan’s political future,” both locally and in the central government. In addition the White House and Pentagon will seek to bribe the Taliban to stop attacking U.S. troops, as was done with the Sunni resistance in Iraq, by inducing former opponents to get on Washington’s payroll. The Pentagon is putting aside $1.3 billion to pay Taliban effectives who wish to “reintegrate into Afghan society.”

Most Americans have little understanding of what’s going on in Afghanistan, and no knowledge of the complex events that led up to President Bush’s bombardment and invasion in October 2001, weeks after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. The fact is that today’s war in Afghanistan is one of several disastrous consequences of U.S. interference in Afghanistan starting in 1978.

Land-locked, rugged, Texas-sized with a population of about 29 million, and strategically located where the rich geopolitical resources of the Middle East and Central Asia converge, Afghanistan gained independence from colonial Great Britain in 1919. A monarchy was established in this desperately poor country until overthrown by a military coup in 1973. Another coup took place in April 1978, this time led by left forces and military officers determined to enact reforms to “bring Afghanistan into the 20th century.”

The resulting ruling group, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), set about introducing modernizing reforms, including laws conferring equality upon the country’s oppressed women, and improving the lot of working people and subsistence farmers. The law granting rights to women was observed in Kabul and some big cities, but usually ignored elsewhere in territory controlled by the warlords and Islamic fundamentalists.

The PDPA’s immediate establishment of closer relations with the neighboring Soviet Union set off alarm bells in Washington, which feared Moscow would gain an important pawn in the Cold War geopolitical chess game. Within months President Jimmy Carter and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski decided to subvert the new leftist regime by “secretly” aiding right-wing warlords and ultra-orthodox religious groups who were beginning an armed struggle to overthrow the PDPA government.

The planning was fully operational by mid-1979. Working with the Pakistani intelligence agency over the years, the CIA poured a minimum of $8 billion into the coffers of warlords and fundamentalist fighting groups. By early 1979, CIA operatives started training the mujahedeen (the collective name of the Muslim fighters) at camps it set up in Pakistan, then in Afghanistan itself. The U.S. also supplied them with sophisticated arms (such as Stinger antiaircraft missiles), military advisers, and logistical information for the next decade.

Writing in Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, journalist-author Ahmed Rashid said the training camps “became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism.” In the words of William Blum in his book, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, “The war had been a rallying point for Muslim zealots from throughout the world…. Thousands of veterans of the war… dispersed to many lands to inflame and train a new generation of terrorists ready to drink the cup of martyrdom.”

Among the recipients of U.S. largess and support in the mid-1980s was Osama bin-Laden and his new group of mostly foreign fighters in Afghanistan that by 1988 was formally titled al-Qaeda. (The name means, “the Base,” a reference to their training camp.) Bin Laden — the scion of a wealthy Saudi Arabian family — also received support from Pakistan and from sources in Saudi Arabia.

By the summer of 1979, the right wing rebel forces were becoming a serious threat to the Kabul regime, which eventually requested that Moscow send troops to defend the regime. One year and nine months after the PDPA took power, the Red Army began arriving in December 1979. (We specify the exact time period because the Western mass media often suggest that deep U.S. involvement began after, not at least a half year or more before, the arrival of Soviet troops, and rarely mention their presence was requested by the Kabul government.

As Brzezinski bragged many years later, Washington’s plan from the beginning was to create conditions that would oblige the Soviet Union to become militarily involved in Afghanistan’s civil war, and suffer the same fate as the U.S. in Vietnam in the earlier 1970s. It worked. In time the Red Army found itself sinking in the quagmire that earned Afghanistan the title “Graveyard of Empires.”

For the next several years following the arrival of Soviet troops, the White House — now occupied by the rightist Reagan administration — continued to build up the rebel forces, many of which had fought each other before the 1978 coup. In time they were joined by up to 40,000 jihadist recruits from over 40 countries in the Muslim world. During the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan began to cynically describe the warlords and fundamentalist armies as “freedom fighters.”

Moscow began to withdraw in 1987 and completed the project by early 1989. The left wing government held on until it was brutally crushed in 1992. The subsequent four years of civil war between the various rebel forces — in which up to 65,000 people were killed in Kabul — resulted in a Taliban victory in 1996. The earlier reforms were quickly abolished, particularly those freeing women, and a draconian form of Islam was imposed throughout the country. The Taliban — which is a national organization as opposed to international al-Qaeda, was formed in 1994 by Mullah Omar and consisted of the most orthodox Afghan jihadists. The name Taliban means “religious students.”

The consequences of the Carter/Reagan intervention in Afghanistan made it possible for 19 Al-Qaeda operatives armed with box cutters to hijack four airliners to attack symbols of U.S. military and financial power in Washington and New York in the late summer of 2001.

The political reasons behind 9/11 included opposition to America’s support for the suppression of the Palestinians; anger over the 1991-2003 U.S.-UN sanctions that caused over a million Muslim deaths in Iraq, half of them children; Washington’s manipulative intervention in Middle East since the end of World War II; and the Pentagon’s stationing of troops in Muslim countries, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Even after the 9/11 tragedy, the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan need never have occurred. It was a result of Bush’s bizarre decision to define the attack as a declaration of war against the United States instead of a gross criminal act by a small non-state organization of perhaps up to 1,000 active adherents only partially based in Afghanistan and largely composed of non-Afghans.

The rational alternative — worldwide police work, sanctions, homeland defense and other stringent measures — would certainly have been more successful against al-Qaeda, and far less costly for the United States, than eight years of fruitless war. Bush spurned this alternative not because war was a “necessity,” as the Obama Administration alleges, but to pursue neoconservative imperialist objectives for obtaining hegemony in the region under Bush’s banner of an endless “global war on terrorism.”

Further, just before the invasion, Taliban leader Omar told the U.S. he would turn over bin-Laden to a third country if Washington didn’t attack Afghanistan, as Bush was about to do. Mullah Omar had one condition: he asked the White House to provide evidence that the al-Qaeda leader was actually guilty. Bush’s response: “There’s no need to negotiate…. There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty.”

As the American attack started, CIA teams were already on the ground in Afghanistan, once again paying off their old retainers, the warlords, with thick packages of $100 bills to intensify the civil war against the Taliban in concert with the invading Americans. At least $70 million was distributed in the first months of the war, mostly to the Northern Alliance, the big loser for power in Kabul in the ’90s.

Bush followed the Afghan adventure with a second war of choice in March 2003 — the transparently unjust and illegal invasion of Iraq. It turned into a costly stalemate but 120,000 U.S. troops remain in the country, and the Iraqi people continue to suffer mass privation and pain.

Afghanistan is not Washington’s “good war,” though it is now characterized in that fashion not only by the Republican right wing but by President Obama and many Democrats who were critical of “Bush’s” Iraq war. These are often the same “peace” Democrats who supported their own party’s unjust three-month bombardment of Yugoslavia (Serbia) in 1999. Obama was viewed as a peace candidate in the elections because he was critical of the Iraq war, though he nonetheless always voted as a senator to fund both wars, and made it clear he wanted to fight in Afghanistan.

Now that a Democratic president is directing the war, Bush’s campaign against Afghanistan for regime-change and long-term U.S. occupation has become a new type of “humanitarian intervention.” This has gravely weakened the American antiwar movement, which is largely based on Democratic voters, but may not be permanent. Many Democrats of the Vietnam era eventually turned on President Lyndon Johnson after two or three years to the extent that he could not run for reelection. Then, again, that was during a decade-long period of mass movements for social change in America, as opposed to the conservative reaction that has basically continued for some 30 years.

In our view, as we wrote in 2001 just after the invasion: “If any brutal right-wing regime deserved to be overthrown by its own people, the Taliban is the perfect choice. But for the imperial superpower to arrogate the task to itself, with its planes, missiles, self-interest and hypocrisy, bodes ill for the long-suffering Afghan masses and the region in general. Indeed, this projection of U.S. military power deeper into strategically important Central Asia brings Washington closer to its goal of hegemony over the neighboring Islamic former Soviet republics, now discovered to be awash in oil and gas reserves.”

Afghanistan is now Obama’s war. Speaking to a military audience recently, he sounded rather like his predecessor when he declared that fighting the war was necessary because “those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again.” So far, Obama’s troop buildup has inspired more attacks from the Taliban and other oppositional forces in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the situation can only get worse in proportion to the number of U.S. troops sent to the region.

What is Washington’s actual mission in the Af-Pak war? In a statement May 19, Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the U.S. Central Command, declared that “The mission is to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and other transnational extremists.”

This evidently is why President Obama is widening the war in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. But is this necessary? The White House acknowledges that there are at most 100 members of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan at this point, but indicates that more have been driven across the border to Pakistan, without specifying how many.

Is it up to 500 perhaps? Could it be high as 1,000 adherents to al-Qaeda and other “transnational” extremists? For some reason the Pentagon doesn’t say, though it certainly must have a good estimate. In Afghanistan there are many thousands who are associated with the Taliban and similar groups, but these organizations operate strictly within their own borders, as does the Pakistani Taliban, and in no way have threatened to attack the United States.

Does it really require the killing of many hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, trillions of American dollars, and the fixated attention of our entire society to deny al-Qaeda a possible safe haven where they can plot to attack the United States? Wouldn’t it be better and far less costly to rely upon international police work, high technology surveillance, tight homeland security, sanctions if absolutely needed, and other means short of war, fair and foul, at Washington’s disposal?

Can it plausibly be denied that this would have been the better alternative in 2001, given the disastrous failure of Bush’s wars? In our opinion the answer is of course not, and it’s the better alternative in 2009 as well. What’s to prevent the Obama Administration from accepting this non-military alternative today, now that the neoconservatives are out of power? Two reasons present themselves: politics and international policy.

In terms of politics: Obama and the Democratic Party would rather wage these self-defeating wars than to be accused by the know-nothings of “cutting and running,” of being “weak on defense,” and of “lacking patriotism.” They fear these right-wing attacks will cost them elections in today’s highly conservative America, so instead of fighting back politically they bend the knee further to militarism and war.

In terms of international policy: Since the end of World War II — and particularly after the implosion of the USSR and the socialist camp two decades ago — the U.S. has functioned as the world’s dominating hegemon based on its willingness to use overwhelming military strength to extend its economic and political parameters throughout the world. A large number of Americans have been duped into believing it’s all being done to spread democracy and to keep people safe from the terrorists.

What has this gotten America lately? The U.S. is a declining superpower in deep economic difficulties. The recession, foreclosures and unemployment are crushing tens of millions of American families. Even without a recession, economic inequality is rampant; government social services are primitive; the civil infrastructure is becoming a shambles; the healthcare system remains a wreck, although a relative improvement may be forthcoming; and our political system, where the choices are confined to the right and center, needs an overhaul.

Meanwhile Washington’s wasting a trillion dollars a year on past, present and future wars “to save the world” (the $680 billion Pentagon budget Obama just signed is only part of it).

Antiwar critic Andrew Bacevich, a fairly conservative former Army officer and currently a professor and author of several important books on the military and U.S. policy, wrote an article in Commonweal Aug. 15 that contained a couple of paragraphs that fit in here:

“If the United States today has a saving mission, it is to save itself. Speaking in the midst of another unnecessary war back in 1967, Martin Luther King got it exactly right: ‘Come home, America.’ The prophet of that era urged his countrymen to take on ‘the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.’

“Dr. King’s list of evils may need a bit of tweaking — in our own day, the sins requiring expiation number more than three. Yet in his insistence that we first heal ourselves, King remains today the prophet we ignore at our peril. That Barack Obama should fail to realize this qualifies as not only ironic but inexplicable.”

We profoundly agree with this quote except for “inexplicable.” Obama has a number of attractive qualities, but he is a centrist in a political party of the center/center-right — an improvement over the competing mass party of the right/neocon-right/far-right, but hardly the politician to lead the struggle Bacevich suggests. Just getting him to avoid widening the unnecessary Af-Pak war any further, much less ending it, is daunting enough.

A majority of the American people want an end to the war, including a large majority of Democratic Party voters — and Obama says he is susceptible to public pressure. The problem is that the Democrats, who constitute the base of the U.S. peace constituency, left the movement in droves after their party won the elections. They don’t want to publicly protest Obama’s actions when he is under continual Republican attack on everything but the war.

This could change as the war continues and casualties mount, but it will have to be a major change with millions of people out in the streets demanding peace. Until then, the informal coalition of Republicans who vigorously uphold the war and “peace” Democrats who won’t stand against it will provide the White House with the public support it needs to continue the war indefinitely.

The U.S. decision to support the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan in 1978 ultimately changed history in ways very costly to the peoples of the region and the United States. We dread to imagine the unintended consequences that will emerge from President Obama’s continuing display of American imperial hubris in the Af-Pak war.

Are you really in the bottom 98% if you make under a million, Papi?

— the author’s son

If you’re not into a redistribution of wealth in the U.S., that’s okay. You should read this anyway. If you’re not against U.S. wars overseas or torture, that’s okay. You should read this anyway. Why? In short, because Ban Ki-moon, a relatively conservative Secretary General for the U.N., has asserted that if the world’s nations don’t come to an unprecedented agreement on the environment at Copenhagen this December “it’s all over.” As in end of the world as we know it. And since I can guarantee you that the gathering in Denmark will NOT produce what’s necessary in time, this article — assuming that Ban Ki-moon is “off” by a couple of years respecting deadline — just might provide salvation of a sort.

The proposal below, Plan 98, tries to address multiple issues, but whether or not we embrace this or that particular issue together, you can count on this piece being worth the heartbeats to read because at heart it tries to motivate you — us all — to stop our ecocidal momentum. You’ll pick up on that pulse in the piece if you stick with it to the end. From there you can tweak things as you will, rejecting this, running with that.

There are a number of organizations/citizens who stand to benefit enormously by my proposal below. They include anti-war activists, health care advocates, supporters of immigrants, animal rights people, human rights groups, environmentalists of all (or most) stripes, feminists, sweatshop protesters, ALL groups concerned with the welfare of children, living wage fighters, prison reformers, union members, socially-conscious entrepreneurs, organic farmers, overburdened parents, disgruntled educators, writers, opponents of police brutality, artists, those who hate Monsanto unconditionally, and many others. Many, many others.

If readers can’t immediately connect the dots between Plan 98 and the above, I’ll be happy to go over the synapses.

As per the superrich and wealth and income distribution in America (The figures are worse today!), I recommend that the top 2% of the country’s population (holding almost all of the nation’s “financial wealth”) be forced to release a small portion of their fluid reserves immediately so that the lower 98% of our population benefits at once. The powers that be held emergency sessions to make sure that this and that financial institution did not fail, as they say. They can (They really can!) do the same thing for the purpose of — virtually overnight — ensuring that the bottom 80% of the U.S.. population goes from sharing only 7% of the country’s financial wealth to holding… double that!* Citizens who are in the top 20% at present (in terms of financial wealth) but NOT in the top 2% will also gain somewhat, though not as much.

*Not so that consumerism can be increased. Rents could be paid, mortgages. A tooth pulled.. Sight restored. Funerals financed. That sort of thing. Okay, maybe the purchase of one harmonica. [You don't want to lose your sense of humor here.]

How we will determine who falls into what category — all the devilish details — can be worked out easily enough. Enough with anal-retentive game plans, sphincter tight ordering! The first fun, (loose) order of business is to see who’s on board with what can easily be labeled (and dismissed prematurely) as a socialist idea. [Never mind that many of our major (destructive) corporations and the Pentagon, among other elements in society, are subsidized (and have been for quite a long time) very socialist-like.] With Plan 98 we’re focusing on benefiting the vast majority of our population, but NOT to the same over-the-top degree as corrupt corporations et al. have profited along (hidden) “socialist” lines.

PLEASE don’t worry about some underprivileged person getting something for nothing on occasion. The top 2% that we’re targeting get away with way more — Like murder and unprecedented theft! — on a regular basis, at more of a cost to society than the poor of this nation could possibly drain from our common coffers if they worked at exactly that 24×8.

No immigrant, Mexican or any other, could possibly be as illegal in this country as the U.S. abominations abroad are illegal. And there is no standard by which any immigrant presence in this country can count as remotely comparable to our immoral atrocities conducted abroad. Not just in terms of the wantonly horrific, unnecessary military aggression, but — also — with regard to our dumping of toxic waste into the environments of other nations via routine Pentagon practice.

Like Green Day asks: Do you know your enemy?

The U.S. military is arguably the single greatest polluter on earth. So cutting out what we’re doing in Columbia, what we’re trying to pull off in Africa, what we intend to do further in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan and Iran… well, that would go a long way toward making this a better world. Increasing safety to boot.

The lifestyle of the Super Rich — the upper 2% — is killing the earth. I’m sure I don’t have to delineate how they’re contributing, to what enormous extent. Our wars, war-related prep/experimentation, and Pentagon indiscretions are doing their number on the planet too… and keep the vast majority of the country — unnecessarily — without necessities.

If you can rise above the self-serving fears those two have inculcated in you (through our educational system, media fare, etc.), and come up with your own definition of what being patriotic is, or what life is all about… then perhaps you’ll want to embrace Plan 98.

Now here’s where we get practical, hands on. Here’s where you go to work… beyond what’s your work*… without your present work suffering.

*Even if 50% of the country were doing “good work” individually, it wouldn’t be enough. Something must be done on a large scale in solidarity. And with that 5% or 10% would be enough… if a lot of them were from California.

If you help us to put TOSCA’S twelve unaffiliated, non-politician citizens into the Governor of California’s office (so that they can serve together on an equal basis¹ ) in 2010, I promise you that we’ll take our best shot at dismantling/undermining the electoral system as it stands, our ecocidal environmental momentum as it moves, and abominable U.S. practices on all fronts.

Things are clearly getting worse daily. The only chance we have, I believe, is for everyone to get behind helping us to put a dozen radical citizens into the Sacred Seat in Sacramento, California for the purpose of helping the public to self-educate about the need for a revolution.

It won’t work?

That’s what they always say. But, then, right now there’s 98% (of others) who just might get it. So that it could be made — forced — to work. A 2% California solution giving them time/urging them to get on board too… to see what might happen, could happen.

In spite of the hypnosis going on, I like the disgruntled odds. And I LOVE the potential payoff.

1. In lieu of a single self-serving careerist (once again).

Now that the elections have been called by the coup perpetrators, the Frente Nacional de Resistencia has also called for the boycott of the elections. The non-recognition of the elections and the simultaneous continued mass movement in the streets for a new Honduras is a most important phase in the battle. Workers’ and employees’ unions, women activist groups, peasants, students, intellectuals and other sections of the society are all in the forefront. The Honduran putschists are hoping to legitimize the coup through the holding of the elections.

Supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya take part in a rally to protest against the military coup in Tegucigalpa on July 1, 2009. Deposed Zelaya on Wednesday delayed his return to Honduras to reclaim the presidency for the weekend, after the Organization of American States gave the country 72 hours to reinstate him as president. AFP PHOTO/Yuri CORTEZ (Photo credit should read YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

Political forces not connected with the military regime are also joining forces with the mass movement. The Resistance has gained so much prestige that it has succeeded in winning the adherence of a wide range of political forces. For example, on July 18 (over one and a half months ago), in an interview with Prensa Latina’s Raimundo López, the presidential candidate (at that time) for the Partido de Unificación Democrática (UD) and current deputy César Ham stated that that there is “a pre and post-coup Honduras.” His statement, in very few words, crystallized the current situation in Honduras and provides the historical context. The UD has joined the Frente Nacional de Resistencia in the streets. In fact two of UD’s leading members were assassinated by the military regime. On August 31, according to a Prensa Latina report, Ham and others UD members confirmed that they are boycotting the elections. Other non-traditional and even some sections of the traditional political forces are doing the same. “The grassroots movement,” Zelaya said [as reported in The Nation, September 4, 2009], has only one purpose, the transformation of Honduras, including deep structural changes. “This movement is now very strong. It can never be destroyed,” he said.¹ On September 5, when the people’s resistance against the military coup was going on for 70 days, the Frente Nacional de Resistencia was analyzing its next actions.

Post-coup Honduras has now joined the movement that has been spreading like wild-fire across South America, even if its elected President Zelaya is not in the country at this time. This grass-roots South American movement represents a push in favour of people’s power and against neo liberal policies and US domination. The goal is to use the ballot box in order to bring about radical change in their respective countries. The election of constituent assemblies and the writing of new modern constitutions have already been accomplished in several countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Others such as Nicaragua, El Salvador and Paraguay, just to mention a few, have taken the path to re-found their nations. Cuba is the pioneer, even if change took place in entirely different historical conditions and with different means. The 1959 triumph of the Revolution and its resulting complete revolutionary transformation had its roots in the nineteenth century Cuban Mambisi tradition. Amongst other characteristics, it consisted of people writing their own constitutions as a Republic in Arms while Cuba was still a colony of Spain.

Honduras was known as an example of what the US deprecatingly and arrogantly described as a banana republic. Honduras is the third poorest nation in all of South America and the Caribbean. Honduras is highly illiterate as was the case in Bolivia before election of Evo Morales and the re-founding of the political system there. However, it is these people of Honduras who are now giving lessons to Washington as to what is needed, that is a new modern constitution.

The political and economic situation in the US is so bad that given its immense foreign debt even some American commentators refer, tongue-in-cheek of course, to the US as a banana republic. The US was the scene of two fraudulent elections victories under the Bush family. How is it that a program for health reform results in a strongly divided nation with citizens at odds with each other, while right-wing extremist opponents to the new health scheme are even threatening violence? While in theory slavery and official racial discrimination have been eliminated in favour of civil rights, racism is not only still rampant, but it is on the increase in the society. Americans of Latino origin are increasingly the victims of racist attacks from the major media, trickling down into the society. Racism is institutionalised. Even President Obama is the victim of right-wing racist threats and attempts at intimidation. While there was a move to impeach former Vice-President Cheney (something which never was capable of being executed) for war crimes and lying to his fellow citizens in order to lead them into a war, there are now rumours that Cheney may be a candidate for the 2012 presidential elections! If Cheney turns out to be only a non-candidate, he is definitely leading the charge at this time for a return to Bush-era politics. The Washington Post openly supports torture and coincides with the Cheney position.² The full story of September 11 is still to be revealed by the US government. The US is the biggest arms and drugs dealer in the world. All of this and much more take place in the murky swamp in conformity with, and/or the violation of, the US Constitution.

The peoples in the south are advancing. Would not the most progressive and forward-thinking sections of United States society take this movement into account and thus reflect upon the need for a new constitution in the US itself which would assure the citizens control over their destiny and over foreign policy? (The same question applies to other countries in the north.)

The people of Honduras, for their part, are certainly for a constituent assembly and a new constitution: Poetic justice for the inhabitants of a “banana republic.” During the period leading up to the coup, President Zelaya was leading his people towards a new situation. That is why he was ousted. However, post-coup Honduras has changed the country. The movement since June 28 is even more profound and going beyond pre-coup Honduras. This country is now more than ever part of this vast movement in South America for new economic, anti neo-liberal policies and political institutions, while being against US domination, pillage of its natural resources, and installation and extension of military bases. Honduras may have its ups and downs in the near future, but in the long-run, the trend is irreversible – as it is throughout the south which is today rising up.

1. Zelaya Speaks, by Tom Hayden
2. How a Detainee Became An Asset: Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding

Two U.S.-financed polls published during the past week showed support for Karzai falls well short of the 51 percent of the vote necessary to avoid a runoff election. A poll by Glevum Associates showed Karzai at 36 percent, and a survey by the International Republican Institute had him at 44 percent of the vote.

Those polls suggest that Karzai might have to pad his legitimate vote total by much as 40 percent to be certain of being elected in the first round.

But Karzai has been laying the groundwork for just such a contingency for many months. By all accounts, he has forged political alliances with leading Afghan warlords who control informal militias and tribal networks in the provinces to carry out a vote fraud scheme accounting for a very large proportion of the votes.

Karzai chose Muhammad Qasim Fahim, the ethnic Tajik warlord who had been vice-president and defence minister in his government until the 2004 elections, as his running mate. In return for their support, he promised Hazara warlords Haji Muhammad Moheqiq and Karim Khalili that new provinces would be carved out from largely Hazara districts in Ghazni and Wardak provinces, as reported by Richard Oppel of the New York Times.

The socio-political structure of Afghanistan remains so hierarchical that warlords can deliver very large blocs of votes to Karzai by telling their followers to vote for him, and in some provinces – especially in the Pashtun south – by forcing local tribal elders to cooperate in voter fraud schemes.

The system in which warlords pressure tribal elders to deliver the vote for Karzai was illustrated by a village elder in Herat province who said he had been threatened by a local commander with “very unpleasant consequences” if the residents of his village did not vote for Karzai, according to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

As early as last May, the country’s independent election monitoring organisation, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), had documented a suite of voter registration practices that laid the groundwork for massive voter fraud.

FEFA observers, who observed voter registration in 194 of 400 voting registration centres in four provinces during one stage of the process, found that nearly 20 percent of the voters registered, on average, were under age – in many cases as young as 12 years old.

It is now estimated that 17 million voter registration cards have been issued, which means that nearly 3.5 million cards may have been issued to children.

FEFA observers also found rampant distribution of multiple voting cards. During the third phase of registration, they observed at least four incidents of such abuses in 85 percent of the centres. The voter registration staff was seen handing out cards even before applicants had been registered.

In one case, the FEFA observers saw about 500 voting cards being given to a single individual.

Another element in the Karzai scheme involves the registration of women without their actually being physically present, often on the basis of lists of names given to the registration officials. The list system for registering women was found in 99 percent of registration stations in Paktika province and 90 percent of those in Zabul and Khost provinces.

During the final phase of the registration, many centres were found to be allowing males to take the registration books home, where they supposedly obtained the fingerprints of the women.

In some of the most insecure and traditional provinces, such as Logar and in Nuristan, more than twice as many cards were issued to women as to men in 2009, and in Paktika, Paktia and Khost, 30 percent more women were registered than were men.

In Kandahar, women represent 44 percent of those with voting cards. The young female MP Fawzia Koofi told The Australian that such levels of women registered could not be genuine.

The result has been to create a vast pool of voting cards, very few of which will be used by women to vote.

Reports by journalists about the acquisition of voting cards by the local strongmen indicate that this distribution of voting cards to people who would not vote was part of a plan to stuff the ballot boxes to increase the vote for Karzai.

The Times of London quoted a tribal elder in Marja district of Helmand province last week as saying that the warlord and former governor Sher Mohammad Akhudzada was organising the vote for Karzai in the province, and that he and other tribal elders were responsible for buying voting cards from voters who had registered.

Independent analyst Alex Strick van Linschoten, who is based in Kandahar, has reported schemes using police to purchase voter registration cards in several districts in the province.

Writing in the New York Times magazine Aug. 9, Elizabeth Rubin reported that an unnamed political figure in Kandahar told her in June he had manufactured 8,000 voter “fake” registration cards that had sold for 20 dollars each.

Some observers believe that various factors may constrain Karzai’s effort to use warlords to swing the election. Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald E. Neumann told IPS he is counting on the use of indelible ink on the voters’ fingers to make it impossible for people to vote more than once.

He recalls, however, that the “indelible” ink used in the 2005 election turned out to be washable after all.

Neumann also hopes the existence of the Election Complaints Commission, an independent body with three international members nominated by the United Nations, will be a check on massive vote fraud.

That body investigates complaints of voter fraud and has the right under Afghan election law to order the invalidation or recounting of votes or even the conducting of new polling where it finds evidence of fraud. But it has no sub-national presence and will be heavily dependent on the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), which handles all the documentary evidence pertaining to such complaints.

More problematic is the fact that the IEC is not “independent” of the Karzai regime at all. Its seven members were all appointed by Karzai, and its chairman has made no secret of his partisan support for the president.

The IEC will likely seek to cover up complaints of major fraud, and the complaints body may not be able to do much about it.

Neumann put the odds of an election that would be “good enough” in the eyes of the Afghans at “50-50″.

But counterinsurgency specialists are more pessimistic. Larry Goodson of the U.S. Army College, who was on the U.S. Central Command team that worked on a detailed plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year, told IPS, “The reality is there is going to be a lot of cheating and fraud.”

Goodson said the danger for the United States in the Karzai election plan is that it “could be perceived by Afghans as promoting the legitimisation of someone who is widely perceived as illegitimate.”

Australian counterinsurgency specialist David Kilcullen, who will shortly become a senior adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, declared at the U.S. Institute of Peace Aug. 6, “The biggest fear is Karzai ends up as an incredibly illegitimate figure, and we end up owning Afghanistan and propping up an illegitimate government.”

“In 1979, after the devastation of a decade under the tyrannical President Macias, then-Lieutenant Colonel Obiang took control of the government and was named President of the Supreme Military Council.”

What did Obiang do while working under Macias’ orders to stop the decade old devastation?

“In 1969 –the official history continues – Obiang becomes the National Guard Liuetenant, with all the forces and military quarters based in Malabo under his control.”

He became commander in chief of the Armed Forces in 1975, and “in 1979 a presidential decree made him vice-minister of the Popular Armed Forces.”

What did Obiang do in these 30 years to avoid another dictatorship?

In 1982, “Obiang became President of the Republic for an initial seven-year term. He was re-elected to additional terms in 1989, 1996 and 2003. (…) President Obiang won re-election once again in 1996. Infrastructure and housing is now being rebuilt more quickly as new water, sewage and drainage are being installed and hundreds of miles of new roadways are being built to connect all of Equatorial Guinea’s cities and towns. Healthcare and education also top the agenda as new, modern state-of-art hospitals and clinics are being built and staffed and teachers are being trained to better teach students.”

Buried under this mountain of promises about public works, lies one certain fact: Obiang wins election after election with more than 95% of the votes. In the 2002 presidential elections he got 97%, in the 2004 legislative and local elections he won 98 out of the 100 parliament seats plus 237 out of the 244 country’s municipalities. In the 2008 legislative elections he got 99 seats.

The main difference between the deposed president and the current one, is that Obiang knows how to read the signs of the times and to adapt himself accordingly. This has allowed him to hold on to power for thirty years, count on foreign support and enrich himself enormously thanks to the oil industry, also under his control.

The past thirty years can indeed be described as golden thirty years for Obiang, but not for the great majority of Equatorial Guinea’s inhabitants. Country reports published by the World Bank, the European Union and some of the United Nations agencies, let alone those by non governmental organisations, especially those devoted to human rights and human development, present a quite different reality.

Obiang is willing to play the democratic game in front of the international community, because in each game he marks the cards and keeps the best while deals the rest.

If appearances have to be kept up of regular elections, of honouring international treaties, of adhering to foreign initiatives on transparency, accountability and good governance, for Obiang this is no problem. He lets the opposition win a parliamentary seat, he signs international treaties only to honour them in the breach, and varnishes his masterwork with glowing propaganda about the government’s good works.

Obiang has many good friends who just happen to govern powerful countries. These convince public opinion that Obiang’s scam is legitimate and only needs a few tweaks and minor improvements. To that end, they offer technical assistance and cooperation, while making clear there is no great urgency. Since oil production started in Equatorial Guinea in the mid 90s, his friends have become even more reliable than ever, despite knowing the reality all too well:

The 2004 Department of State report on Equatorial Guinea accurately summarised its political situation: “Citizens did not have the ability to change their government peacefully.”

In 2009 the Department refers to the country as a “nominally multi-party Republic with strong domination by the executive branch.”

For his part, Obiang thinks it wise to take preventive measures. He sends soldiers and policemen to assassinate, kidnap and torture his “enemies”, and in general to make life difficult for political opponents.

In spite of this and of the fact that there is no shortage of people willing to get their share of the enormous oil cake in exchange for loyalty, some still remain who do not give up. Some of these string along with Obiang’s pretense of democracy. Others prefer to try and oust him.

Considering their actions so far, it can safely be said that Obiang has clearly defeated them all. He intimidates, persecutes and entertains members of the first group, according to his whims. He attacks members of the second whenever he can. These have managed to discomfit him once, but Obiang’s friends and luck have been on his side.

Neither group of the opposition can claim that their respective strategies have come anywhere close to achieving their goals. The reverse is true, as chances of success seem to be inversely proportional to the increase in their actions.

Playing Obiang’s democracy game is not an easy task. If a player does not perform as expected, other players will not take them seriously. Equatorial Guinea’s leader of the parliamentary opposition declares again and again to the international community, to the media, to various international political institutions, that his party plays by Obiang’s rules and also reassures the world that his party will only use non-violent means to achieve power.

But if the international community does not demand that Obiang play by internationally accepted rules to stay in power, why does the opposition think they have to do so? It seems the international community accepts opposition to Obiang as long as its leaders give up their people’s right to resist the Obiang regime’s human rights violations.

Philosophers dealt with the problem of using legitimate violence against an aggression many centuries ago. Since the 13th century it is accepted that “in the case of a deadly attack, there is more obligation to protect one’s own life than the attacker’s.”

If a political party which opposes a never ending dictatorship renounces legitimate defence against its violence, it is delegitimizing itself, because it actually helps the dictatorship it claims to oppose. When this party seeks support from international actors, despite their party’s poor record of resistance and even knowing full well their petition will be met with indifference, they are digging their own political grave.

It is true that a legitimate defence requires another condition, namely that there are reasonable chances of success. In this respect it has to be noted that it is all about not giving up the right to legitimate resistance. Further, there can be no likelihood of success if the possibility of resistance is totally abandoned.

The non-parliamentary opposition, made up of several small groups, has not renounced political violence. But its failure, too, is obvious and due mainly to lack of popular, militant support, to splits and internecine fighting and other shortcomings.

The option of a coup d’état has not yielded useful results. Nor is there much chance that it will. The lack of a popular militia and bad planning, along with the use of foreign mercenaries, explain the failure. Day after day, Obiang increases his own security, and he can count on foreign support. It seems that only a palace coup, like the one Obiang himself authored 30 years ago, is likely to succeed.

It can be said that the opposition too, like Obiang, have placed their hopes in foreign hands. The difference between the two camps is that European and North American Presidents and Prime Ministers prefer oil in their own countries to ensuring human rights in Equatorial Guinea.

The struggle carried out by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) is illuminating. The oil plunder plus the damages it causes to the Delta physical conditions and to its inhabitants’ health, together with the government’s repression, are the reasons the MEND mentions to explain its attacks against the interests of the foreign companies that benefit from the oil industry with the consent of the government.

What is taking place in Nigeria, taking into account its much bigger size, is similar to what happens in Equatorial Guinea: “Since 1970, $350 billion in oil revenue has flowed to Nigeria, yet 75% of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day. (…) Nigerian governments have negotiated joint ventures with multinational companies for unregulated oil production since 1958. Over 50 years of exploitation in the Niger Delta has resulted in systematic human rights abuses and environmental devastation.”

Against this the MEND has declared its aims: reparations for environmental damage and also control of the Delta’s natural riches. It has also made public its means: “Leave our land while you can or die in it. Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil.”

In recent years, its achievements have been made known. The government, heeding a request by the big oil companies, sent the army to violently repress the Delta people protests, which resulted in thousands of dead, tortured and prisoners.

Popular resistance, however, kept up the struggle and the MEND was created. It has forced cuts in oil production from almost two and half million barrels per day to less than one and a half.

Unlike what is taking place in Equatorial Guinea, the Nigerian government does not despise the MEND. This is not a gift from the government –it maintains its military actions against the guerrillas- but the MEND, through its resistance, has placed itself in a position that deserves its enemy’s respect. Nowadays, both camps are holding conversations.

Meanwhile, Obiang represses the opposition parties that he so despises. At the same time, the only opposition leader with a seat in parliament, made public a communiqué after the attack against the president’s palace in Malabo that took place last February, the 17th, 2009, which was disingenuously attributed to the MEND by the government.

The party “congratulates the State Security and Armed Forces for their quick and efficient response and declares its support and solidarity with them.” It also reiterates once again “that (the party) rejects all movements aimed to achieve power through violence.”

While the Equatorial Guinea parliament unanimously declares the MEND “a terrorist group made up of mercenaries with evil intentions and recommends maximum repression,” Nigeria president has offer the MEND an amnesty. This offer is supported by many, including Nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka.

Equatorial Guinea politicians, both in power and in opposition, might do well to pay attention to what Soyinka’s said about Nigerian politicians: “In tandem with his predecessor Olusegun, President Umaru Yar’Adua must be made to recognize that he shoulders a moral and political responsibility for failure to make a decisive breakthrough in the quest to terminate hostilities in the Delta region. Much of the toll of death and destruction could, and would have been avoided if only these two rulers had lived up to their charge.

These words, of course, are also relevant to those in Europe and North America who “accompany Obiang in his efforts to improve democracy in Equatorial Guinea” and to those who claim to support the opposition camp in its political activity.

Near the beginning of the film, we meet Angel Dillard, a statuesque wife, mother, songwriter, singer, farmer, and pro-life advocate. Dillard is a Christian woman raised to be a critical thinker, which led her to the Republican Party.

Dillard and her family attend the Baptist church services of senior pastor Terry Fox — an avowedly anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-ACLU, and anti-Islam minister. It would be contradictory to describe this individual as pro-life given that he applauds the pro-death penalty. Fox’s strident pulpit causes a split in the church, and Fox finds himself a new parish in a fledgling amusement park.

A contrasting character is the 73-year-old crusty, straight-talking, liberal and artist provocateur M.T. Liggett. Said Liggett, “Gay marriage!? Who gives a shit? It’s none of my business. Abortion; it’s the same thing …”

Two camps are clearly delineated. Liggett respects individual autonomy — that no group has the right to impose its standards of behavior on another group. On the other hand is the view expressed by Brittany Barden, a volunteer campaigner with the Republic Party, that the United States is “meant to be a Christian nation; that is what the founding fathers intended.”

Bob Lippoldt, a substitute teacher and pro-life advocate, frames the liberals as “anti-Christian.”

Yet, Julie Burkhart, a pro-choice advocate, said, “I believe in what Jesus had to say … but I’m not a Christian.”

The pro-life versus pro-choice battleground occupies a chunk of the film, including the six-week so-called Summer of Mercy when pro-choice advocates targeted abortion clinics. This morphed into a well-organized and successful political movement. The long-time Kansan Democratic representative (1977-1994) Dan Glickman was the electoral target of the pro-lifers, and he was defeated.

When Glickman voted for NAFTA, he alienated many workers. Glickman noted that he had fared worst in blue-collar Democratic districts.

Bespectacled Dale Swenson, a former Boeing worker described a schism in the Democratic Party between “working class Democrats” and “Democrats of the leisure class.”

Swenson reasoned, “There’s nothing left within the Democratic Party for me to vote for if they are going to keep targeting the working class. If I’m in the crosshairs of the Democratic Party, then I’m not any worse off in the Republican Party.”

Donn Teske is a cigar-chomping, struggling farmer, farmer union president, and father. He detests the Bush administration but distances himself from the Democratic Party. He calls himself a Populist without a party.

Teske laments the current dog-eat-dog competition among farmers: “I’ve had friends who said, ‘I can’t wait until he goes broke so I can get my hands on it [the farm].’”

The separation between the two camps is wide. Dawn Barden, Brittany’s mother, deplores secular universities for having an alleged prejudice against Christian students. Dawn Barden claims that 80 percent of Christians leave the faith after studying at a secular college. Unexplored is why. Is not the testing of faith and its affirmation part of being a Christian? Was not Abraham tested? Was not Job tested? Is steadfastness to the faith not at the root of being a Christian?

Frank Thomas explores the radical Kansan political roots. The now defunct Populist Party had its origin in Kansas. Thomas refers to the socialist colonies of the nineteenth century as “My Kansas.” He calls for Liberalism to return to its roots. The question unanswered is: who will represent these roots?

Who are the liberals today? Thomas did not call for the development or strengthening of a “third party” movement. Instead of a future vision of progressivism, the film eulogizes the passage of worker parties in Kansas.

Frank wrote in his book, “For us it is the Democrats that are the party of the workers, of the poor, of the weak and the victimized. Understanding this, we think, is basic; it is part of the ABCs of adulthood.”¹ Implied was that by voting for Democrats the economic interests of regular Kansans would be served. Confining our analysis to recent decades, however, shows that the Clinton presidency and the Obama presidency have not protected the average Americans’s economic interests.

I wondered how Frank could get it so wrong — especially after how he recognized and depicted the economically self-defeating habit of middle America to vote for Republicans? Frank knows that the Democrats abandoned much of their base.

The film depicts the Democrats as a house divided. Fox’s church was a house divided. Jesus’s – and subsequently Lincoln’s – admonition about division is undiscussed, but it hangs heavy in the film.

Thomas points out that many in the working class voted for Bush in 2004 and at the top of their agenda were moral issues – but Bush’s agenda was economic, as in tax reform (to benefit the wealthy).

The film ends with the electoral defeat of the Republicans in 2008. God had not blessed the Republicans and neither did God bless the theme park venture nor the investments of Fox and many parishioners.

The Democrats are, for the time being, resurgent. Recently, however, Obama and the Democrats compromised on their committment to workers on the Employee Free Choice Act.

For this writer, the Democrats are a part of the corporate political duopoly that serves capitalist interests that exploits the workers, the poor, the weak, and the victimized. Understanding this, I submit, is basic.

The film explored the Kansan historical flirtations with populism and socialism. It did not delve deeply into Democratic politics like the book. What’s the Matter with Kansas? explores what drives middle-class Kansans and why they vote as they do. It is an illuminating film insofar as the political duopoly goes. Notably absent from the film was discussion of prospects for a credible “third” party movement on the political scene.

What’s the Matter with Kansas? will have its world premiere at Film Society of Lincoln Center on 6 August, at which point the DVD will also be released.

1. Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Metropolitan Books, 2004):1.

In one prominent example, on June 7, five days before Iran’s presidential election, the website Tehran Bureau reported:

In an open letter, a group of employees of Iran’s Interior Ministry (which supervises the elections) warned the nation that a hard-line ayatollah, who supports President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has issued a Fatwa authorizing changing votes in the incumbent’s favor.

According to Tehran Bureau, the letter stated:

After several polls taken by the government in May that indicated a rapid loss of support for the President, an ayatollah, who used to speak about political philosophy in Tehran’s public Friday prayers, held a confidential meeting with the elections’ supervisors. Quoting the Bagharah Soureh, verse 249, of the holy Quran, to justify vote fraud, he stated that,

“If someone is elected the president and hurts the Islamic values that have been spread [by Mr. Ahmadinejad] to Lebanon, Palestine, Venezuela, and other places, it is against Islam to vote for that person. We should not vote for that person, and also warn people about that person. It is your religious duty as the supervisors of the elections to do so.”

According to Tehran Bureau’s translation, the letter said,

“After the meeting the elections supervisors, who had become happy and energetic for having obtained the religious fatwa to use any trick for changing the votes, began immediately to develop plans for it.”

Tehran Bureau adds that despite this alleged plot,

The letter ends by saying that a huge turnout by the people will nullify these unlawful attempts to rig the elections, and will save the nation from another four years of Mr. Ahmadinejad governance.

No author attribution is given for this article at Tehran Bureau. The site provided the text of the letter in Persian. But they offer nothing in the way of verification of its authenticity, and the letter itself is preceded by a brief introductory note. Similarly, no author for this introduction is given.

Did someone at Tehran Bureau write the introduction in Farsi? Or did they merely pass along the introductory note along with the text of the letter from another source? Why is the author’s name not given? Why is no source given? They offer not even the slightest hint of how they came by this letter. They say this is an “open letter”, so what, then, would be the problem with naming the source? Did these employees of the Interior Ministry who allegedly wrote the letter post it on a website somewhere? Did they publish it in a newspaper? Did they e-mail it directly to Tehran Bureau? Or did it perhaps originate from an opposition group, such as, perhaps, the campaign office of Mir Hossein Mousavi?

What’s more, if an ayatollah issued a “fatwa”, an opinion on matters relating to Islamic law, ordering the election to be rigged to result in a win for Ahmadinejad, why haven’t we heard about this elsewhere? While the claim has been widely circulated in alternative media and on blogs, the mainstream media has been silent on this one.

So who issued this “fatwa”? The letter as presented by Tehran Bureau simply says that it was “an ayatollah, who used to speak about political philosophy in Tehran’s public Friday prayers”. Tehran Bureau inserts its own speculation as to who this “ayatollah” is:

The reference to the “political philosophy preaching” person is clearly pointing to Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, who used to do the preaching in Tehran’s Friday prayers. He is a reactionary cleric and the spiritual leader of the President and the hard-liners in the Basij militia and the armed forces.

From this report, the claim that Ayatollah Yazdi issued a fatwa commanding that the election be rigged to give Ahmadinejad a win would be circulated around the internet, asserted as fact, despite the total lack of verification or corroboration.

Tehran Bureau

Who is Tehran Bureau? Originally, it was a blog hosted by Blogspot.com. Tehran Bureau was announced in a press release on February 26 – little more four months prior to the election. The press release stated:

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, M.S. ’05, M.A. ’06, has launched Tehran Bureau, an online news magazine. The blog-style site aims to separate fact from misinformation about Iran by having specialized, bilingual journalists from around the world report on the country.

There’s a little more about others involved:

At present, Niknejad divides her time between New York City and Boston. Fariba Pajooh is the chief correspondent in Tehran, while Jason Rezaian will cover the Iranian presidential campaign from the capital city. Leila Darabi ‘06 will contribute reporting from New York City. Other reporters are based in Isfahan in Iran, Dubai, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Florence and Berlin. Thor Neureiter will develop video for the Web site. Most of Tehran Bureau’s staff is bilingual.

And a little more about Niknejad:

Niknejad, who was born in Iran and lived there until age 17, is a lawyer-turned-journalist. As an M.S. student at the Journalism School, she specialized in newspaper reporting. The following year, Niknejad earned an M.A. in journalism with a focus on politics.

She has reported for the Los Angeles Times, TIME Magazine, California Lawyer and PBS/Frontline. Most recently, she was a staff reporter for the new English-language newspaper The National in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Niknejad is a syndicated columnist with Agence Global and a freelance producer and consultant on Iran to ABC News.

The press release concludes with this interesting statement (emphasis added): “A recurrent theme in Tehran Bureau’s coverage this year will be revolution and exile.”

The blog still exists in part. But the only content remaining there is the text of the “fatwa” letter.

Curiously, the domain TehranBureau.com is owned not by Niknejad, but by Jason Rezaian. Even more curiously, that domain name was created on June 12, 2008 – exactly one year to the day before Iran’s presidential election, and months before Niknejad says she set up Tehran Bureau in 2008, which was several months before she actually announced the launch of Tehran Bureau on Blogspot, which was prior to its actual move to TehranBureau.com.

And yet, despite having had the name registered for a year before the election, there’s no indication the domain was actually in use before Niknejad’s Tehran Bureau came along. The site is new enough that it doesn’t show up in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and Alexa shows little to no traffic to that domain until April, with a sharp spike in June as a result of their coverage of the election.

“Not an opposition news organization”

Tehran Bureau’s About page states:

Tehran Bureau is an independent news organization. It is not affiliated with or funded by any government, religious organization, political party, lobby or interest group. Yet it’s reporting has been most favorable to Mousavi. A prominent theme is that the election was stolen; a theme of which the alleged “fatwa” letter is but one example. Either in spite or because of this, Niknejad and Tehran Bureau have gotten some prominent and positive media attention.

In a June 17 op-ed in the Guardian entitled “Diaspora Iranians spreading the message”, David Mattin speaks of “the ‘green wave’ that was sweeping” Iran, which, the author and his friends “thought” would “install Mir Hossein Mousavi as president”. He adds towards the end:

For diaspora Iranians, then, the answer may lie in projects such as the brilliant Tehran Bureau, a news website that connects journalists, bloggers and photographers in Iran with those in the diaspora, set up by American-Iranian journalist Kelly Golnoush Niknejad.

So Tehran Bureau is considered an “answer” for Iranians who support Mousavi and the “green” revolution, the color Mousavi chose to represent his reformist party for the campaign.

The Associated Press called Tehran bureau “a must-read for many who closely followed the disputed re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

NPR called Tehran Bureau “one of the most reliable sources for news” on Iran while “the government of Iran cracks down on journalists there”. Noting the site’s success, NPR notes, “Tehran Bureau gets quoted now in the New York Times and has become well-known and respected.”

In an interview with NPR, Niknejad explained that she “just started posting” information “as fast as I could.” “The information was raw,” she said, and she “didn’t have time to sculpt it into stories”, so she would “just copy and paste to put out information.”

This method of copying and pasting information was similarly used by prominent commentators Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic’s “Daily Dish” and Nico Pitney of the Huffington Post, both of whom were live-blogging events following the election and both of whom relied heavily on anonymous or unknown sources, such as Twitter users. The overriding theme of both Sullivan’s and Pitney’s blogs was the fraudulent nature of the election and the brutal response by the government attempting to silence those protesting the vote. Their respective blogs became rumor mills, flooded with completely unverifiable information, but always favorable to Mousavi and his supporters.

NPR notes that “Niknejad also knows her site is big enough now to be noticed by the Iranian government. She publishes most reports without bylines.” As noted previously, the piece on the “open letter” was published without author attribution. So here, despite being characterized as “one of the most reliable sources for news” by the mainstream media, we have an acknowledgment that Tehran Bureau would simply “copy and paste” information about events in Iran without attribution or sourcing.

A June 20 piece in the Boston Globe called Tehran Bureau “a go-to source” for news on Iran. It notes that the site is “edited from Niknejad’s parents’ living room in Newton”, a Boston suburb, and quotes Niknejad saying, “Everybody thinks this is some kind of extensive bureau, but it’s just me”.

But it’s not “just” Niknejad. As we’ve seen, the site is actually owned by someone else, who registered the domain months before Niknejad launched her blog, which then was only later moved to the domain owned by Jason Rezaian.

The Boston Globe article quotes Niknejad saying, “Tehran Bureau is not an opposition news organization.” The article explains:

The English-language site has generated a lot of attention over the past few weeks as tensions escalated over allegations of electoral fraud by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government. When demonstrators were shot and communication with the West was curtailed in a government clampdown, Tehran Bureau’s stream of news alerts and Twitter feeds became a valued source of information cited by The New York Times and other Western news organizations.

The Globe offers some further information about Niknejad:

Niknejad’s family emigrated from Iran to San Diego when she was 17, after living through the Iranian Revolution and the first stage of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. She went on to study law, and then got two master’s degrees from the Columbia Journalism School. Her parents moved to the Boston area seven years ago. She has not returned to Iran since she left in 1984, but she found herself pulled constantly toward her native land, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks. This past September, she returned to Boston from nearly a year of reporting for an English-language newspaper in Dubai – a major Persian Gulf listening post for events in Iran – and resolved to launch a blog.

The “listening post” of Dubai

Dubai certainly is a “major Persian Gulf listening post for events in Iran”. The State Department called Dubai a “natural location” for a regional office due to its “proximity to Iran and access to an Iranian diaspora.”

That was in a State Department cable discussing the creation of the Office of Iranian Affairs (OIA) under the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. The OIA sought to “reach out to the Iranian people” and recruit more Iran experts and Persian-speaking officers into the Foreign Service, the Intelligence and Research Bureau (INR), and other branches of the State Department.

According to the cable, the Dubai office of the OIA would be modeled on the listening station in the Latvian capital of Riga to gather information on the Soviet Union during the 1920s.

The Iranian media has called the OIA the “regime-change office”. A State Department official based in Dubai denied that, saying “It is not some recruiting office and is not organizing the next revolution in Iran.”

As British writer Claud Cockburn famously said, “Never believe anything until it’s officially denied.”

The leaked State Department cable said that the Deputy Director of the Dubai station would be responsible for seeking “ways to use USG programs and funding to support Iranian political and civic organizations” and “to alert Washington on [the] need to issue statements on behalf of Iranian dissidents.”

And a State Department senior official told CNN that the purpose of the OIA was “to facilitate a change in Iranian policies and actions”.

The OIA was established in 2006 under funding from Congress allocated “to mount the biggest ever propaganda campaign against the Tehran government,” in the words of the Guardian. The Christian Science Monitor reported candidly that the “implicit goal” of the funding was “regime change from within”.

The Obama administration has continued support for Iranian dissident groups through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has been soliciting applications for $20 million in grants to “promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in Iran” even while President Obama insists that the U.S. “is not at all interfering in Iran’s affairs”.

In a report on the funding, USA Today observed that “The State Department and USAID decline to name Iran-related grant recipients for security reasons.” In other words, the Obama administration doesn’t want the strings attached to Iranian dissident groups to be seen, a policy much more in line of critics of the Bush administration’s overt financing for the promotion of regime change.

It’s reasonable to assume that the UAE remains a central hub for U.S. efforts to further the U.S. policy of regime change, enshrined in law under the guise of the Iran Freedom Support Act, which authorizes the President “to provide financial and political assistance (including the award of grants) to foreign and domestic individuals, organizations, and entities working for the purpose of supporting and promoting democracy for Iran.”

In another example, the State Department subcontracted an initiative to develop a news website to provide information to Iranians through new media and to recruit Iranian journalists to contribute to the effort to “promote democracy”, the usual euphemism.

Obama’s “hands-off” approach has been looked upon much more favorably than Bush’s overt support for Iranian groups seeking regime change by the leadership of opposition groups themselves. Niknejad has herself been a critic of the Bush administration’s overt strategy for regime change.

Niknejad has written elsewhere that she was “the diplomatic affairs correspondent for a new English-language newspaper” in the capital of the UAE.

In what has been called a cold war between Iran and the United States, the UAE has emerged as a Vienna of sorts – a place where America’s Iran-watchers can mingle with thousands of Iranians. One hub for this is the expanded Iran Desk at the U.S. consulate in Dubai, the more cosmopolitan UAE city-state up the coast from the capital. If Iranians are suspicious of journalists, it’s partly because our reporting jobs can seem like the perfect cover to gather intelligence.

As they often are. She criticized the Congressional funding for the OIA, however, saying:

Things got worse the following year, when the Bush administration asked Congress for tens of millions of dollars to secretly fund NGOs and activists to destabilize the Iranian government. It stoked government paranoia and became an effective tool in the hands of officials who have used it to stifle dissent and spread fear.

The objection, in this widely shared criticism of the Bush administration, generally isn’t that the U.S. is engaging in such activities, just that by doing so in such a blatant and open manner it actually undermined the efforts of Iranian dissident and opposition groups struggling to accomplish a change of government in Iran. In other words, the U.S. shouldn’t be perceived as interfering in Iranian affairs. The implied corollary is that if the U.S. is going to interfere, it should do so in a manner that allows it a measure of plausible deniability – something the U.S. didn’t have under Bush.

Niknejad offered a little more information on the English-language newspaper she was writing for:

At that time, the circumstances in the UAE were stacked against me. The paper I was writing for had no name and was still months away from being published. As we started dry runs, I wrote stories on deadline for a paper with no name that no one outside the newsroom saw.

As noted in the press release announcing the launch of Tehran Bureau, the paper she was referring to is The National out of Abu Dhabi, owned by the Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC). According to the ADMC website:

Abu Dhabi Media Company is a vertically integrated media company created in 2007 as a public joint stock company from the assets of Emirates Media Incorporated…. The company is headquartered in Abu Dhabi with offices in Cairo, Dubai and Washington D.C.

Emirates Media Incorporated (EMI) was established in 1999 by the government of the UAE under the Ministry of Information and Culture. Financing for EMI includes funding includes grants. The Minister of Information Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayid described it by saying, “the Government has relinquished formal control over the country’s largest media group. Emirates Media Incorporated now enjoys editorial and administrative independence. It remains somewhat dependent, however, on government funding, while ownership is still officially vested in the government.”

In 2006, EMI worked with the BBC World Service to set up Radio Al Mirbad to broadcast information covering southern Iraq while it was still occupied by the British military. The BBC’s Persian service, of course, has been accused by Iran of fomenting unrest such as by encouraging protests to dispute the election results.

“We stand with them and support them”

On one hand, Niknejad says Tehran Bureau is “not an opposition news organization”. On the other hand, a principle source for her reporting on events in Iran is a member of the Mousavi election campaign, a fact she revealed during an event coordinated to teach people how to show “solidarity” with pro-Mousavi Iranians.

Niknejad is a member of The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA). On June 23, AMEJA held a teach-in to discuss the ongoing events in Iran following the election. The teach-in was webcast on the Voices from Iran website, which was created the day prior to the event and which has little content other than an embedded video of webcast, hosted on USTREAM.

During the event, the terms “pro-Mousavi” and “pro-democracy” were curiously used synonymously, despite an admission at the beginning that calling Mousavi’s campaign “pro-democracy” was perhaps “wishful thinking”.

The first speaker at the event was Arang Keshavarzian, Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He spoke on how the protests that erupted following the election were “not spontaneous”, but rather organized by the young volunteers who gravitated to Mousavi’s campaign and had learned how to organize and distribute information prior to the election. Various organizations were also involved, such as women’s organizations, journalist organizations, youth organizations, and others. The protests, he said, were an “outgrowth” of the campaigning in early June.

One prominent organization campaigning for women’s rights in Iran is the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF) in Washington D.C., a recipient of funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, which in turn is mandated financing under U.S. law from the Congress, despite its pretense of being a “non-governmental organization”.

Another group that has received substantial funding from NED is the National Iranian American Council, which has been granted money in part to carry out a “media training workshop” to train participants in public relations and otherwise support groups both within and outside Iran.

Interestingly, Keshavarzian also listed “election irregularities” included in the “fatwa”, including the charge that mobile polling stations the printing of a large number of extra ballots were suspicious activities. He also stated that Mousavi’s campaign headquarters had been attacked, and that all these things were evidence of fraud. Every one of these claims can be traced to Tehran Bureau.

Even more interestingly, he said that the Mousavi campaign had showed great foresight in their pre-election efforts. “Their narrative that they constructed prior to the election fit in nicely into the events after the election”, he said. Presumably, this includes the narrative that the election would be stolen that he had just outlined from information that had appeared before the election took place, such as the “fatwa” letter.

As Paul Craig Roberts has observed, “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.”

When Iran declared the results of the election early, the charge was made that “the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted”.

Another speaker, journalist Kouross Esmaeli, also a member of AMEJA, addressed the question of how to show “solidarity” with Mousavi’s supporters protesting in the streets. “We stand with them and support them,” he said. But he also urged caution against the perception of U.S. interference and said that any connection of the protests with U.S. “imperialism” would taint them and serve only to undermine them.

Perhaps the most interesting comments, though, came from Niknejad. She explained more about her reporting of events in Iran and her sources from which she would “copy and paste” onto Tehran Bureau. She explained that she used Facebook and other social networking sites for information, until the Iranian government shut such websites down. Then “it was very difficult for us”, she said, to get information.

But she did mention one source that was able to continue to provide information. “I was connected to someone that I know very well”, she explained, “and that I trust very much, who works – who happens to work – at the Mousavi campaign. So we were getting, you know, almost like minute by minute updates on what was going on there.”

Among the information received from the source at the Mousavi campaign was that the campaign headquarters was “stormed by militia” (evidence of election funny-business, remember, from the previous speaker), of which Niknejad emphasized, “I knew it was coming from a very credible source”.

Niknejad also explained how, based on the information this source who “happens” to work for the Mousavi campaign (purely a coincidence), it looked like “Mousavi was winning” early on. This just “happens” to fit perfectly with the “narrative” constructed by the Mousavi campaign early on to be used following the election in order to try to discredit the election and to call for its result to be nullified (surely another strange coincidence).

Niknejad also rightly observed how the information Tehran Bureau would “copy and paste” from sources such as someone working for Mousavi’s campaign was picked up off of Twitter and posted on other blogs, making “Tehran Bureau a source of information” about the election and subsequent events.

Niknejad also claimed that Tehran Bureau was “hacked”, the implication being that it was targeted by the Iranian regime. She explained that when she tried to log on and do other things with the site, it became very slow.

There’s a much simpler explanation for this, which is the enormous increase in bandwidth the new site was faced with (visible in a dramatic spike on Alexa) very suddenly at the time of the election. This alternative explanation would also fit with what she said next, that they had a company called MidPhase that put the website back up. In other words, Tehran Bureau changed hosting plans – no doubt to a plan on a new server that included more bandwidth allocation.

But the claim that the website was “hacked” by the Iranian government fits in much more nicely with the constructed “narrative”.

Another interesting point was made during the question and answer session. One of the panelists warned, without so much as a hint of recognition of the irony, to be wary because there is a lot of “misinformation” coming out on Facebook and Twitter – from the Iranian regime. We have to find sources that we trust, therefore, the panelist continued, like Tehran Bureau, which gets its information from trusted sources like members of Mousavi’s election campaign. Again, there was no indication whatsoever that the speaker was aware of the irony.

The differentiating variable becomes clear: information sympathetic towards the Iranian regime is deemed not credible while information sympathetic towards Mousavi and his reformist supporters is considered trusted. This is simply a matter of faith.

The ‘Fatwa’ letter and ‘talk of a ‘green revolution’

The Guardian on June 8, a day after Tehran Bureau had posted the “open letter” claim, reported another useful part of the “narrative” constructed prior to the election: “Experts agree the higher the turnout the greater the chance that Mousavi will unseat Ahmadinejad, possibly in a second round run-off. Iran’s interior ministry said it was hoping for a record turnout among the country’s 46 million voters.”

So if it turns out there is a high turnout and Ahmadinejad wins, it must therefore be a dubious result, if we trust the unknown “Experts”. This part of the “narrative” is eerily similar to the assertion in the “fatwa” letter itself that a high turnout could serve to counteract the regime’s alleged attempts to fix the election. And the Guardian report refers to that letter in the very next sentence: “But there was no response to a report that ministry employees were instructed to rig the election results on the basis of a fatwa – religious edict – from a pro-Ahmadinejad ayatollah.”

Tehran Bureau is the named source of this “report”.

On June 9, still three days before the election, the website Rooz ran an article on the “fatwa” entitled “Mesbah Yazdi’s Decree to Rig Votes”. The website is published by a self-described “reformist journalist” as a part of the Iran Gooya media group.

Rooz has prominent ad links to WashingtonTV, a “Washington, D.C.-based news site” offered in both English and Persian. Curiously, that website was launched in early May, barely a month before the Iranian presidential election. And that site’s “About” page interestingly states:

With the approach of Iran’s tenth presidential election, to be held on 12 June 2009, the site is also devoting a special section to daily updates of news and events on the election.

It also states that “WashingtonTV has writers and contributors in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, including contributions by citizen journalists from inside Iran.” The website is registered by Proxy, Inc. through GoDaddy.com, Inc. This is a means of protecting the privacy of the registrant.

Why would a legitimate news organization want to hide its organizational information? If you do a WHOIS lookup of the New York Times website, for example, you’ll see that it is registered to “New York Times Digital, 620 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10018, US”. There are administrative and technical contacts. The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, CBS News, etc., are all registered to their respective news corporations, with organization street addresses and contact phone numbers and e-mail address.

There is some contact information available on the WashingtonTV website. The phone numbers are all area code 202, Washington, D.C. In fact, they’re all the same number, 470-3030. The News Desk, Video Production Lab, Advertising Department, Editors, and more are all the same phone number, with only three different extensions between them.

There is also a mailing address given. However, it’s to a P.O. box with ZIP code 20043-4151. A lookup of ZIP code 20043 on the U.S. Postal Service website reveals that this ZIP code is a “Special Case”. What are special cases? They include cases where “The ZIP CodeTM is used for a specific company or organization.” It could also be a military ZIP Code: “Military – This is a military specific ZIP code for an APO/FPO (Air/Army Post Office or Fleet Post Office) or a domestic military installation.” Or it could be: “PO Box Only – This ZIP Code is for a specific PO Box.”

In other words, this ZIP Code doesn’t exist, except for by use by a single organization, the U.S. military, or a single P.O. Box – or a perfect cover, perhaps, for an intelligence black propaganda or PSYOPS operation.

Rooz is also registered through a proxy. While there are numerous proxy services available (many servers provide them), it happens to also be by Proxy, Inc. through GoDaddy.com.

As already noted, Rooz’s “About” page states, confusingly, that it is published by “an independent and reformist journalist”, but also states that the “Publisher” is “Iran Gooya media group, registered in France on January 21, 2005”.

Gooya is a website that has come up repeatedly in my investigations into numerous claims that have been made throughout the events that followed the election. The site’s homepage has prominent ads for BBC Persian, the Voice of America Persian News Network, and Radio Farda.

The VOA and Radio Farda are operated out of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and are prohibited from broadcasting into the U.S. because it would violate the Smith-Mundt Act, which forbids USIA (the Ministry of Propaganda, if we drop the Orwellian euphemism) from being used “to influence public opinion”.

Gooya is similarly registered through the same proxy as Rooz. Its news website similarly features ads for BBC Persian, the VOA Persian, and Radio Farda.

Returning to the alleged “fatwa” letter, Rooz reported:

Following the discovery of a “Fatwa” (”religious decree”) issued by ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi which sanctions cheating in Friday’s presidential election and was published in an open letter written by a group of Ministry of Interior employees, the heads of the Election Supervision Committees established by reformist candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi sent a letter to the head of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Jannati, warning about the possibility of manipulating election results.

This article states that the alleged letter “has been signed by a number of Ministry of Interior employees”. Interestingly, the text of the letter at Tehran Bureau had no signatures. Rooz adds: “The letter does not reveal the identity of the seminary school professor, but describes the qualities of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s spiritual guide, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi.”

According to the translation of the letter, the “fatwa” supposedly issued by Yazdi stated:

If someone is elected president whereby Islamic principles that are currently on the rise in Lebanon, Palestine, Venezuela and other parts of the world, start diminishing, it is Haraam [forbidden by Islam] to vote for that person. We shouldn’t vote for that person and we should inform the people not to vote for him either, or else. For you, as administrators of the election, everything is permitted to this end.

The “fatwa” also appeared in an article in Newsmax by Kenneth Timmerman. Writing a day before the election, Timmerman followed the “narrative”: “As the wildest campaign of the past 30 years winds down, Iranians are worried that their votes won’t decide the result of the election Friday. Instead, they fear, the unelected officials at Iran’s Interior Ministry in charge of counting those votes will sway the outcome.”

Timmerman provides some further insightful information about the “fatwa” letter:

Supporters of “reformist” candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, with the backing of the Persian Service of Voice of America, claim to have discovered a secret “fatwa” or religious ruling issued by a radical cleric close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They contend that it encourages bureaucrats at the Interior Ministry to do “whatever it takes” to get their man elected…. The “fatwa” was revealed in an open letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from a pro-Mousavi group of Interior Ministry officials, who asked him to intervene to keep the election fair.

Thus, if Timmerman is correct, the “open letter” was an example of a “copy and paste” job by Tehran Bureau of information propagated by the Mousavi campaign and the VOA.

Timmerman also reported that while there was a movement among opposition groups both in Iran and the U.S. (and elsewhere) to boycott the election, the VOA had “urged Iranians to go to the polls no matter what” in coverage slanted towards Mousavi:

Well-respected parties, including the Iran Nation’s Party, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, Marze Por Gohar (Glorious Frontiers), and others have called for a boycott. But in recent weeks, editors and supervisors at the Voice of America’s Persian Service have banned them from the airwaves.

“It would be one thing if they just closed their eyes,” Roozbeh Farahanipour, a spokesman for Marze Por Gohar, told Newsmax. “But it’s as if the State Department and Voice of America had become campaign advisers to Mousavi.”

Some Iranians believe that has happened.

Saeed Behbehani, the owner of Mihan TV in suburban Washington, D.C., says he recently spoke with a well-known Iranian-American businessman who boasts of his ties to the State Department and who just returned from a trip to Dubai. The businessman said he met with Mousavi’s campaign manager, Mehdi Khazali.

“The day after they met, VOA put Khazali on the air,” Behbehani said.

Some of the VOA broadcasters themselves are upset at how slanted the U.S.-taxpayer funded network has become.

Timmerman also had this prescient comment (again, recall this was one day prior to the election): “And then, there’s the talk of a “green revolution” in Tehran, named for the omnipresent green scarves and banners that fill the air at Mousavi campaign events.”

The “green revolution” as it has since come to be called, refers to protestors who support Mousavi and charge that Ahmadinejad’s win was the result of electoral fraud. Why would there be talk of a “green revolution” before the election results were announced? Unless, of course, it was all part of the “narrative”, planned beforehand to lead to the protests – which were “not spontaneous”, we may recall – in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime.

Timmerman continues with a perhaps even more extraordinary acknowledgment about the role of the NED (emphasis added):

The National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting “color” revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques.

Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.

And Kenneth Timmerman, as Daniel McAdams has pointed out, is perhaps in as good a position as anyone to know. He’s the President and CEO of The Foundation for Democracy, “established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.” He’s also the author of the book Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran.

The claim of the “fatwa” was picked up by Jeremy J. Stone and repeated in the Huffington Post in a piece entitled “How the Iranian Election Was Stolen”. Stone touts the report from Tehran Bureau as evidence for his assertion that the election was stolen:

According to an open letter of early June by a group of employees who work on elections in the Interior Ministry — after May polls showed that Ahmadinejad would lose the election – [Iranian Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah] Yazdi gave the Interior Ministry employees a Fatwa, a religious degree, authorizing the changing of votes.

Muhammad Sahimi likewise repeated the claim at Antiwar, stating matter-of-factly that the results of the election had been “rigged” and describing it as an “election coup”. The men behind this “coup” have as their “spiritual leader” Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, the person who allegedly issued the “fatwa” for the elections to be rigged. Sahimi states without qualification (and without a source) that: “Two weeks before the elections Mesbah issued a secret fatwa – which was leaked by some in the Interior Ministry – authorizing the use of any means to reelect Ahmadinejad, hence giving the green light for rigging the elections.”

This is the only piece of evidence in the entire article to support the assertion that the election was “rigged”.

“As loony and baseless as possible”

The Iranian regime, of course, has claimed that the U.S., Britain, and Israel are behind the claims of a fraudulent election. “Americans and Zionists sought to destabilize Iran”, asserted Intelligence Minister Mohseni Ejei, rejecting allegations of vote rigging.

While remarks from Iranian government officials are certainly not evidence for it, it nevertheless certainly remains a perfectly plausible explanation, despite a strong tendency by commentators in the U.S. media, both mainstream and alternative, corporate news and blogs, not only to dismiss the possibility, but to portray the very suggestion as an absurdity.

Noted journalist Fareed Zakaria explained this phenomenon quite candidly. He begins with an acknowledgment:

And it is worth remembering that the United States still funds guerrilla outfits and opposition groups that are trying to topple the Islamic Republic. Most of these are tiny groups with no chance of success, funded largely to appease right-wing members of Congress. But the Tehran government is able to portray this as an ongoing anti-Iranian campaign.

Notice his use of the word “portray”. The Iranian regime “is able to portray” an ongoing anti-government campaign “as an ongoing anti-Iranian campaign.” Again, the issue isn’t what the facts are, but what the perceptions are. Zakaria then praises President Obama’s response to events in Iran, saying, “In this context, President Obama has been right to tread cautiously — for the most part — to extend his moral support to Iranian protesters but not get politically involved.”

Remember, it’s not that funding “guerilla outfits and opposition groups that are trying to topple the Islamic Republic” isn’t being “politically involved”. It’s simply that Obama has wisely, and not without success, created the perception of being politically detached. With this as his framework, Zakaria concludes:

Ahmadinejad is also a politician with considerable mass appeal. He knows that accusing the United States and Britain of interference works in some quarters. Our effort should be to make sure that those accusations seem as loony and baseless as possible. Were President Obama to get out in front, vociferously supporting the protests, he would be helping Ahmadinejad’s strategy, not America’s.

So, accusations that the U.S. is interfering in Iran are true. But acknowledging that would be strategically unwise. “Our effort” – and by “our” Zakaria presumably includes journalists like himself – should not be to report the truth (drawing the obvious corollary), but to work to discredit anyone who observes that the long arm of the U.S. has certainly not been withdrawn from Iranian affairs.

There is a vast amount of unverified or, in some cases, verifiably false information floating around, often originating from sources with a clear bias. Tehran Bureau’s use as a primary source someone who is a member of the Mousavi campaign is just one notable example. Information from such sources is then spread around the internet, sometimes with viral effect, without attribution or sourcing and with a completely uncritical eye. This is often on account of the commentator’s own bias, such as the assumption of the teach-in Niknejad participated in that we should express “solidarity” with the “pro-democracy” – that is to say, the “pro-Mousavi” – movement.

Our effort should not be to take sides in an election campaign in a foreign sovereign nation, but rather to make the best effort to be objective and, far from reporting only that information which suits our own personal political ideology, to discern from the available information in an effort to learn the truth.

Regrettably, numerous commentators on recent events in Iran obviously disagree, preferring instead the creed of Fareed Zakaria.

In a manner reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s New Cold War policies, Obama has vastly increased the military budget, increased the number of combat troops, targeted new regions for military intervention and backed military coups in regions traditionally controlled by the US. However Obama’s roll-back strategy occurs in a very different international and domestic context. Unlike Reagan, Obama faces a prolonged and profound recession/depression, massive fiscal and trade deficits, a declining role in the world economy and loss of political dominance in Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia and elsewhere. While Reagan faced off against a decaying Soviet Communist regime, Obama confronts surging world-wide opposition from a variety of independent secular, clerical, nationalist, liberal democratic and socialist electoral regimes and social movements anchored in local struggles.

Obama’s roll-back strategy is evident from his very first pronouncements, promising to reassert US dominance (‘leadership’) in the Middle East, his projection of massive military power in Afghanistan and military expansion in Pakistan and the destabilization of regimes through deep intervention by proxies as in Iran and Honduras.

Obama’s pursuit of the roll-back strategy operates a multi-track policy of overt military intervention, covert ‘civil society’ operations and soft-sell, seemingly benign diplomatic rhetoric, which relies heavily on mass media propaganda. Major ongoing events illustrate the roll-back policies in action.

In Afghanistan, Obama has more than doubled the US military forces from 32,000 to 68,000. In the first week of July his military commanders launched the biggest single military offensive in decades in the southern Afghan province of Helmand to displace indigenous resistance and governance.

In Pakistan, the Obama-Clinton-Holbrooke regime successfully put maximum pressure on their newly installed client Zedari regime to launch a massive military offensive and rollback the long-standing influence of Islamic resistance forces in the Northwest frontier regions, while US drones and Special Forces commandoes routinely bomb and assault villages and local Pashtun leaders suspected of supporting the resistance.

In Iraq, the Obama regime engages in a farcical ploy, reconfiguring the urban map of Baghdad to include US military bases and operations and pass off the result as “retiring the troops’ to their barracks”. Obama’s multi-billion-dollar investment in long-term, large-scale military infrastructure, including bases, airfields and compounds speaks to a ‘permanent’ imperial presence, not to his campaign promises of a programmed withdrawal. While ‘staging’ fixed election between US-certified client candidates is the norm in Iraq and Afghanistan where the presence of US troops guarantees a colonial victory, in Iran and Honduras, Washington resorts to covert operations to destabilize or overthrow incumbent Presidents who do not support Obama’s roll-back policies.

The covert and not-so-invisible operation in Iran found expression in a failed electoral challenge followed by ‘mass street demonstrations’ centered on the claim that the electoral victory of the incumbent anti-imperialist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a result of ‘electoral fraud’. Western mass media played a major role during the electoral campaign exclusively providing favorable coverage of the opposition and negative accounts of the incumbent regime. The mass media blanketed the ‘news’ with pro-demonstrator propaganda, selectively presenting coverage to de-legitimize the elections and elected officials, echoing the charges of ‘fraud’. The propaganda success of the US-orchestrated destabilization campaign even found an echo among broad sections of what passes for the US ‘left’ who ignored the massive, coordinated US financing of key Iranian groups and politicos engaged in the street protests. Neo-conservative, liberal and itinerant leftist ‘free-lance journalists’, like Reese Erlich, defended the destabilization effort from their own particular vantage point as ‘a popular democratic movement against electoral fraud.’

The right/left cheerleaders of US destabilization projects fail to address several key explanatory factors:

1. None, for example, discuss the fact that several weeks before the election a rigorous survey conducted by two US pollsters revealed an electoral outcome very near to the actual voting result, including in the ethnic provinces where the opposition claimed fraud.

2. None of the critics discussed the $400 million dollars allocated by the Bush Administration to finance regime change, domestic destabilization and cross border terror operations. Many of the students and ‘civil society’ NGO’s in the demonstrations received funding from overseas foundations and NGO’s – which in turn were funded by the US government.

3. The charge of electoral fraud was cooked up after the results of the vote count were announced. In the entire run-up to the election, especially when the opposition believed they would win the elections – neither the student protesters nor the Western mass media nor the freelance journalists claimed impending fraud. During the entire day of voting, with opposition party observers at each polling place, no claims of voter intimidation or fraud were noted by the media, international observers or left backers of the opposition. Opposition party observers were present to monitor the entire vote count and yet, with only rare exception, no claims of vote rigging were made at the time. In fact, with the exception of one dubious claim by free-lance journalist Reese Erlich, none of the world’s media claimed ballot box stuffing. And even Erlich’s claims were admittedly based on unsubstantiated ‘anecdotal accounts’ from anonymous sources among his contacts in the opposition.

4. During the first week of protests in Tehran, the US, EU and Israeli leaders did not question the validity of the election outcome. Instead, they condemned the regime’s repression of the protestors. Clearly their well-informed embassies and intelligence operative provided a more accurate and systematic assessment of the Iranian voter preferences than the propaganda spun by the Western mass media and the useful idiots among the Anglo-American left.

The US-backed electoral and street opposition in Iran was designed to push to the limits a destabilization campaign, with the intention of rolling back Iranian influence in the Middle East, undermining Tehran’s opposition to US military intervention in the Gulf, its occupation of Iraq and, above all, Iran’s challenge to Israel’s projection of military power in the region. Anti-Iran propaganda and policy making has been heavily influenced for years on a daily basis by the entire pro-Israel power configuration in the US. This includes the 51 Presidents of the Major America Jewish Organizations with over a million members and several thousand full-time functionaries, scores of editorial writers and commentators dominating the opinion pages of the influential Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times as well as the yellow tabloid press.

Obama’s policy of roll back of Iranian influence counted on a two-step process: Supporting a coalition of clerical dissidents, pro-Western liberals, dissident democrats and right-wing surrogates of the US. Once in office, Washington would push the dissident clerics toward alliances with their strategic allies among pro-Western liberals and rightists, who would then shift policy in accordance with US imperial and Israeli colonial interests by cutting off support for Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Venezuela, the Iraqi resistance and embrace the pro-US Saudi-Iraq-Jordan-Egypt clients. In other words, Obama’s roll-back policy is designed to relocate Iran to the pre-1979 political alignment.

Obama’s roll back of critical elected regimes to impose pliant clients found further expression in the recent military coup in Honduras. The use of the high command in the Honduras military and Washington’s long-standing ties with the local oligarchy, which controls the Congress and Supreme Court, facilitated the process and obviated the need for direct US intervention—as was the case in other recent coup efforts. Unlike Haiti where the US marines intervened to oust democratically elected Bertrand Aristide, only a decade ago, and openly backed the failed coup against President Chavez in 2002, and more recently, funded the botched coup against the President-elect Evo Morales in September 2008, the circumstances of US involvement in Honduras were more discrete in order to allow for ‘credible denial’.

The ‘structural presence’ and motives of the US with regard to ousted President Zelaya are readily identifiable. Historically the US has trained and socialized almost the entire Honduran officer corps and maintained deep penetration at all senior levels through daily consultation and common strategic planning. Through its military base in Honduras, the Pentagon’s military intelligence operatives have intimate contacts to pursue policies as well as to keep track of all political moves by all political actors. Because Honduras is so heavily colonized, it has served as an important base for US military intervention in the region: In 1954 the successful US-backed coup against the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz was launched from Honduras. In 1961 the US-orchestrated Cuban exile invasion of Cuba was launched from Honduras. From 1981-1989, the US financed and trained over 20,000 ‘Contra’ mercenaries in Honduras which comprised the army of death squads to attack the democratically elected Nicaraguan Sandinista government. During the first seven years of the Chavez government, Honduran regimes were staunchly allied with Washington against the populist Caracas regime.

Obviously no military coups ever occurred or could occur against any US puppet regime in Honduras. The key to the shift in US policy toward Honduras occurred in 2007-2008 when the Liberal President Zelaya decided to improved relations with Venezuela in order to secure generous petro-subsidies and foreign aid from Caracas. Subsequently Zelaya joined ‘Petro-Caribe’, a Venezuelan-organized Caribbean and Central American association to provide long-term, low-cost oil and gas to meet the energy needs of member countries. In more recent days, Zelaya joined ALBA, a regional integration organization sponsored by President Chavez to promote greater trade and investment among its member countries in opposition to the US-promoted regional free trade pact, known as ALCA.

Since Washington defined Venezuela as a threat and alternative to its hegemony in Latin America, Zelaya’s alignment with Chavez on economic issues and his criticism of US intervention turned him into a likely target for US coup planners eager to make Zelaya an example and concerned about their access to Honduran military bases as their traditional launching point for intervention in the region.

Washington wrongly assumed that a coup in a small Central American ‘banana republic’ (indeed the original banana republic) would not provoke any major outcry. They believed that a Central American ‘roll back’ would serve as a warning to other independent-minded regimes in the Caribbean and Central American region of what awaits them if they align with Venezuela.

The mechanics of the coup are well-known and public: The Honduran military seized President Zelaya and ‘exiled’ him to Costa Rica; the oligarchs appointed one of their own in Congress as the interim ‘President’ while their colleagues in the Supreme Court provided bogus legality.

Latin American governments from the left to the right condemned the coup and called for the re-instatement of the legally-elected President. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, not willing to disown their clients, condemned unspecified ‘violence’ and called for ‘negotiations’ between the powerful usurpers and the weakened exile President – a clear recognition of the legitimate role of the Honduran generals as interlocutors.

After the United Nations General Assembly condemned the coup and, along with the Organization of American States, demanded Zelaya’s re-instatement, Obama and Secretary Clinton finally condemned the ousting of Zelaya but they refused to call it a ‘coup’, which according to US legislation would have automatically led to a complete suspension of their annual ($80 million) military and economic aid package to Honduras. While Zelaya met with all the Latin American heads of state, President Obama and Secretary Clinton turned him over to a lesser functionary in order not to weaken their allies in Honduran Junta. All the countries in the OAS withdrew their Ambassadors…except the US, whose embassy began to negotiate with the Junta to see how they might salvage the situation in which both were increasingly isolated – especially in the face of Honduras’ expulsion from the OAS.

Whether Zelaya eventually returns to office or whether the US-backed junta continues in office for an extended period of time, while Obama and Clinton sabotage his immediate return through prolonged negotiations, the key issue of the US-promoted ‘roll-back’ has been extremely costly diplomatically as well as politically.

The US backed coup in Honduras demonstrates that unlike the 1980’s when President Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada and President George Bush (Papa) invaded Panama, the situation and political profile of Latin America (and the rest of the world) has changed drastically. Back then the military and pro-US regimes in the region generally approved of US interventions and collaborated; a few protested mildly. Today the center-left and even rightist electoral regimes oppose military coups anywhere as a potential threat to their own futures.

Equally important, given the grave economic crisis and increasing social polarization, the last thing the incumbent regimes want is bloody domestic unrest, stimulated by crude US imperial interventions. Finally, the capitalist classes in Latin America’s center-left countries want stability because they can shift the balance of power via elections (as in the recent cases in Panama, Argentina) and pro-US military regimes can upset their growing trade ties with China, the Middle East and Venezuela/Bolivia.

Obama’s global roll-back strategy includes building offensive missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, not far from the Russian border. Concomitantly, Obama is pushing hard to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, which will increase US military pressure on Russia’s southern flank. Taking advantage of Russian President Dimitry Medvedev’s ‘malleability’ (in the footsteps of Mikail Gorbechev) Washington has secured free passage of US troops and arms through Russia to the Afghan front, Moscow’s approval for new sanction against Iran, and recognition and support for the US puppet regime in Baghdad. Russian defense officials will likely question Medvedev’s obsequious behavior as Obama moves ahead with his plans to station nuclear missiles 5 minutes from Moscow.

Roll-Back: Predictable Failures and the Boomerang Effect

Obama’s roll-back strategy is counting on a revival of right-wing mass politics to ‘legitimize’ the re-assertion of US dominance. In Argentina throughout 2008, hundreds of thousands of lower and upper-middle class demonstrators took to the streets in the interior of the country under the leadership of pro-US big landowners associations to destabilize the ‘center-left’ Fernandez regime. In Bolivia, hundreds of thousands of middle class students, business-people, landowners and NGO affiliates, centered in Santa Cruz and four other wealthy provinces and heavily funded by US Ambassador Goldberg, Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy took to the streets, wrecking havoc and murdering over 30 indigenous supporters of President Morales in an effort to oust him from power. Similar rightist mass demonstrations have taken place in Venezuela in the past and more recently in Honduras and Iran.

The notion that mass demonstrations of the well-to-do screaming ‘democracy’ gives legitimacy to US-backed destabilization efforts against its democratically-elected adversaries is an idea promulgated by cynical propagandists in the mass media and parroted by gullible ‘progressive’ free-lance journalists who have never understood the class basis of mass politics.

Obama’s Honduran coup and the US-funded destabilization effort in Iran have much in common. Both take place against electoral processes in which critics of US policies defeated pro-Washington social forces. Having lost the ‘electoral option’ Obama’s roll back looks to extra-parliamentary ‘mass politics’ to legitimize elite effort to seize power: In Iran by dissident clerics and in Honduras by the generals and oligarchs.

In both Honduras and Iran, Washington’s foreign policy goals were the same: To roll back regimes whose leaders rejected US tutelage. In Honduras, the coup serves as a ‘lesson’ to intimidate other Central American and Caribbean countries who exit from the US camp and join the Venezuelan-led economic integration programs. Obama’s message is clear: such moves will result in US orchestrated sabotage and retaliation.

Through its backing of the military coup, Washington reminds all the countries of Latin America that the US still has the capability to implement its policies through the Latin American military elites, even as its own armed forces are tied down in wars and occupations in Asia and the Middle East and its economic presence is declining. Likewise in the Middle East, Obama’s destabilization of the Iranian regime is meant to intimidate Syria and other critics of US imperial policy and reassure Israel(and the Zionist power configuration in the US ) that Iran remains high on the US roll-back agenda.

Obama’s roll-back policies in many crucial ways follow in the steps of President Ronald Reagan (1981-89). Like Reagan, Obama’s presidency takes place in a time of US retreat, declining power and the advance of anti-imperialist politics. Reagan faced the aftermath of the US defeat in Indo-China, the successful spread of anti-colonial revolutions in Southern Africa (especially Angola and Mozambique), a successful democratic revolt in Afghanistan and a victorious social revolution in Nicaragua and major revolutionary movements in El Salvador and Guatemala. Like Obama today, Reagan set in motion a murderous military strategy of rolling-back these changes in order to undermine, destabilize and destroy the adversaries to US empire.

Obama faces a similar set of adversarial conditions in the current post-Bush period: Democratic advances throughout Latin America with new regional integration projects excluding the US; defeats and stalemates in the Middle East and South Asia; a revived and strengthened Russia projecting power in the former Soviet republics; declining US influence over NATO military commitments , a loss of political, economic, military and diplomatic credibility as a result of the Wall Street-induced global economic depression and prolonged un-successful regional wars.

Contrary to Obama, Ronald Reagan’s roll back took place under favorable circumstances. In Afghanistan, Reagan secured the support of the entire conservative Muslim world and operated through the key Afghan feudal-tribal leaders against a Soviet-backed, urban-based reformist regime in Kabul. Obama is in the reverse position in Afghanistan. His military occupation is opposed by the vast majority of Afghans and most of the Muslim population in Asia.

Reagan’s roll back in Central America, especially his Contra-mercenary invasion of Nicaragua, had the backing of Honduras and all the pro-US military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Brazil, as well as rightwing civilian government in the region. In contrast, Obama’s roll-back coup in Honduras and beyond face democratic electoral regimes throughout the region, an alliance of left nationalist regimes led by Venezuela and regional economic and diplomatic organizations staunchly opposed to any return to US domination and intervention. Obama’s roll-back strategy finds itself in total political isolation in the entire region.

Obama’s roll-back policies cannot wield the economic ‘Big Stick’ to force regimes in the Middle East and Asia to support his policies. Now there are alternative Asian markets, Chinese foreign investments, the deepening US depression and the disinvestment of overseas US banks and multi-nationals. Unlike Reagan, Obama cannot combine economic carrots with the military stick. Obama has to rely on the less effective and costly military option at a time when the rest of the world has no interest or will in projecting military power in regions of little economic significance or where they can attain market access via economic agreements.

Obama’s launch of the global roll-back strategy has boomeranged, even in its initial stage. In Afghanistan, the big troop build-up and the massive offensive into ‘Taliban’ strongholds has not led to any major military victories or even confrontations. The resistance has retired, blended in with the local population and will likely resort to prolonged decentralized, small-scale war of attrition designed to tie down several thousand troops in a sea of hostile Afghans, bleeding the US economy, increasing casualties, resolving nothing and eventually trying the patience of the US public now deeply immersed in job losses and rapidly declining living standards.

The coup, carried out by the US-backed Honduran military, has already re-affirmed US political and diplomatic isolation in the Hemisphere. The Obama regime is the only major country to retain an Ambassador in Honduras, the only country which refuses to regard the military take-over as a ‘coup’, and the only country to continue economic and military aid. Rather than establish an example of the US’ power to intimidate neighboring countries, the coup has strengthened the belief among all South and Central American countries that Washington is attempting to return to the ‘bad old days’ of pro-US military regimes, economic pillage and monopolized markets.

What Obama’s foreign policy advisers have failed to understand is that they can’t put their ‘Humpty Dumpty’ together again; they cannot return to the days of Reagan’s roll-back, Clinton’s unilateral bombing of Iraq, Yugoslavia and Somalia and his pillage of Latin America.

No major region, alliance or country will follow the US in its armed colonial occupation in peripheral (Afghanistan/Pakistan) or even central (Iran) countries, even as they join the US in economic sanctions, propaganda wars and electoral destabilization efforts against Iran.

No Latin American country will tolerate another US military putsch against a democratically elected president, even national populist regimes which diverge from US economic and diplomatic policies. The great fear and loathing of the US-backed coup stems from the entire Latin American political class’ memory of the nightmare years of US backed military dictatorships.

Obama’s military offensive, his roll-back strategy to recover imperial power is accelerating the decline of the American Republic. His administration’s isolation is increasingly evidenced by his dependence on Israel-Firsters who occupy his Administration and the Congress as well as influential pro-Israel pundits in the mass media who identify roll-back with Israel’s own seizure of Palestinian land and military threats to Iran.

Roll back has boomeranged: Instead of regaining the imperial presence, Obama has submerged the republic and, with it, the American people into greater misery and instability.

The classic “outside agitators” can not only foment dissent through propaganda, adding to already existing dissent, but they can serve to mobilize the public to strongly demonstrate against the government. In 1953, when the CIA overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, they paid people to agitate in front of Mossadegh’s residence and elsewhere and engage in acts of violence; some pretended to be supporters of Mossadegh while engaging in anti-religious actions. And it worked, remarkably well.¹ Since the end of World War II, the United States has seriously intervened in some 30 elections around the world, adding a new twist this time, twittering. The State Department asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance shutdown of its service to keep information flowing from inside Iran, helping to mobilize protesters.² The New York Times reported: “An article published by the Web site True/Slant highlighted some of the biggest errors on Twitter that were quickly repeated and amplified by bloggers: that three million protested in Tehran last weekend (more like a few hundred thousand); that the opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi was under house arrest (he was being watched); that the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid last Saturday (not so).”³

In recent years, the United States has been patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with warships, halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas or for other illegal reasons, financing and “educating” Iranian dissidents, using Iranian groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran, kidnaping Iranian diplomats in Iraq, kidnaping Iranian military personnel in Iran and taking them to Iraq, continually spying and recruiting within Iran, manipulating Iran’s currency and international financial transactions, and imposing various economic and political sanctions against the country.⁴

“I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran’s affairs,” said US President Barack Obama with a straight face on June 23. Some in the Iranian government [have been] accusing the United States and others outside of Iran of instigating protests over the elections. These accusations are patently false and absurd.⁵

“Never believe anything until it’s officially denied,” British writer Claud Cockburn famously said.

In his world-prominent speech to the Middle East on June 4, Obama mentioned that “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” So we have the president of the United States admitting to a previous overthrow of the Iranian government while the United States is in the very midst of trying to overthrow the current Iranian government. This will serve as the best example of hypocrisy that’s come along in quite a while.

So why the big international fuss over the Iranian election and street protests? There’s only one answer. The obvious one. The announced winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Washington ODE, an Officially Designated Enemy, for not sufficiently respecting the Empire and its Israeli partner-in-crime; indeed, Ahmadinejad is one of the most outspoken critics of US foreign policy in the world.

So ingrained is this ODE response built into Washington’s world view that it appears to matter not at all that Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s main opponent in the election and very much supported by the protesters, while prime minister 1981-89, bore large responsibility for the attacks on the US embassy and military barracks in Beirut in 1983, which took the lives of more than 200 Americans, and the 1988 truck bombing of a US Navy installation in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons. Remarkably, a search of US newspaper and broadcast sources shows no mention of this during the current protests.⁶ However, the Washington Post saw fit to run a story on June 27 that declared: “the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms.”

Can it be that no one in the Obama administration knows of Mousavi’s background? And do none of them know about the violent government repression on June 5 in Peru of the peaceful protests organized in response to the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement? A massacre that took the lives of between 20 and 25 indigenous people in the Amazon and wounded another 100.⁷ The Obama administration was silent on the Peruvian massacre because the Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, is not an ODE.

And neither is Mousavi, despite his anti-American terrorist deeds, because he’s opposed to Ahmadinejad, who competes with Hugo Chavez to be Washington’s Number One ODE. Time magazine calls Mousavi a “moderate,” and goes on to add: “It has to be assumed that the Iranian presidential election was rigged,” offering as much evidence as the Iranian protestors, i.e., none at all.⁸ It cannot of course be proven that the Iranian election was totally honest, but the arguments given to support the charge of fraud are not very impressive, such as the much-repeated fact that the results were announced very soon after the polls closed. For decades in various countries election results have been condemned for being withheld for many hours or days. Some kind of dishonesty must be going on behind the scenes during the long delay it was argued. So now we’re asked to believe that some kind of dishonesty must be going on because the results were released so quickly. It should be noted that the ballots listed only one electoral contest, with but four candidates.

Phil Wilayto, American peace activist and author of a book on Iran, has observed:

Ahmadinejad, himself born into rural poverty, clearly has the support of the poorer classes, especially in the countryside, where nearly half the population lives. Why? In part because he pays attention to them, makes sure they receive some benefits from the government and treats them and their religious views and traditions with respect. Mousavi, on the other hand, the son of an urban merchant, clearly appeals more to the urban middle classes, especially the college-educated youth. This being so, why would anyone be surprised that Ahmadinejad carried the vote by a clear majority? Are there now more yuppies in Iran than poor people?⁹

All of which is of course not to say that Iran is not a relatively repressive society on social and religious issues, and it’s this underlying reality which likely feeds much of the protest; indeed, many of the protesters may not even have strong views about the election per se, particularly since both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are members of the establishment, neither is any threat to the Islamic theocracy, and the election can be seen as the kind of power struggle you find in virtually every country. But that is not the issue I’m concerned with here. The issue is Washington’s long-standing goal of regime change. If the exact same electoral outcome had taken place in a country that is an ally of the United States, how much of all the accusatory news coverage and speeches would have taken place? In fact, the exact same thing did happen in a country that is an ally of the United States, three years ago when Felipe Calderon appeared to have stolen the presidential election in Mexico and there were daily large protests for more than two months; but the American and international condemnation was virtually non-existent compared to what we see today in regard to Iran.

Iranian leaders undertook a recount of a random ten per cent of ballots and recertified Ahmadinejad as the winner. How honest the recount was I have no idea, but it’s more than Americans got in 2000 and 2004.

By what standard shall we judge Barack Obama?

Many of my readers have been upset with me for my criticisms of President Obama’s policies. Following my last two reports, more than a dozen have asked to be removed from my mailing list. But if you share my view that the numerous atrocities US foreign policy is responsible for constitute the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity and happiness, then I think you have to want leaders who are unambiguously opposed to America’s military adventures, because those interventions are unambiguously harmful. There’s nothing good to be said about dropping powerful bombs on crowds of innocent people, invading their land, overthrowing their government, occupying the country, breaking down the doors of the citizens, killing the father, raping the mother, traumatizing the children, torturing those opposed to all this … Barack Obama has no problem with this, if we judge him by his policies and not his rhetoric.

And neither does Al Franken, who’s about to become a Democratic Senator from Minnesota. The former Saturday Night Live comedian would like you to believe that he’s been against the war in Iraq since it began, but he’s gone to Iraq four times to entertain the troops. Does that make sense? Why does the military bring entertainers to soldiers? To lift the soldiers’ spirits. Why does the military want to lift the soldiers’ spirits? A happier soldier does his job better. And what’s the soldier’s job? All the charming things listed above. Doesn’t Franken know what these guys do? He criticized the Bush administration because they “failed to send enough troops to do the job right.”¹⁰ What “job” did the man think the troops were sent to do that had not been performed to his standards because of lack of manpower? Did he want them to be more efficient at killing Iraqis who resisted the occupation?

Franken has been lifting soldiers’ spirits for a long time. This past March he was honored by the United Service Organization (USO) for his ten years of entertaining troops abroad. That includes Kosovo in 1999, as imperialist an occupation as you’ll want to see. He called his USO experience “one of the best things I’ve ever done.”¹¹ Franken has also spoken at West Point, encouraging the next generation of imperialist warriors. Is this a man to challenge the militarization of America at home and abroad? No more so than Obama.

Tom Hayden wrote this about Franken in 2005 when Franken had a regular program on the Air America radio network:

Is anyone else disappointed with Al Franken’s daily defense of the continued war in Iraq? Not Bush’s version of the war, because that would undermine Air America’s laudable purpose of rallying an anti-Bush audience. But, well, Kerry’s version of the war, one that can be better managed and won, somehow with better body armor and fewer torture cells. This morning Franken was endorsing Sen. Joe Biden’s proposal to send 5,000 NATO troops to close the Syrian-Iraq border, bring in foreign trainers for the Iraqi officer corps, and put Iraqis to work cleaning up the destruction of our invasion. … Now that Bush has manipulated us into the invasion, Franken thinks we have no choice but to … stay until we crush the insurgents. It’s a humanitarian excuse for open-ended American occupation. And it’s shared widely by the professional political and pundit class who think of themselves as the conscience of the American establishment and the leadership of the Democratic Party.¹²

I know, I know, I’m taking away all your heroes. But such people shouldn’t be your heroes. You can learn to see through the liberal, Democratic Party apologists for the empire. Only a week ago, documents released by the Nixon Library in California revealed that five days before US and South Vietnamese troops made their surprise invasion of Cambodia on April 29, 1970 — which elicited widespread, angry protests in the US, resulting in the fatal shootings by the National Guard of students at Kent State University in Ohio — President Richard Nixon got approval for the invasion from the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Stennis of Mississippi. Stennis told the president: “I will be with you. … I commend you for what you are doing.”¹³

Long live the Cold War

President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown in a military coup June 28 because he was about to conduct a non-binding survey of the population, asking the question: “Do you agree that, during the general elections of November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political constitution?” One of the issues that Zelaya hoped a new constitution would deal with is the limiting of the presidency to one four-year term. He also expressed the need for other constitutional changes to make it possible for him to carry out policies to improve the life of the poor; in countries like Honduras, the law is not generally crafted for that end.

At this writing it’s not clear how matters will turn out in Honduras, but the following should be noted:

The United States, by its own admission, was fully aware for weeks of the Honduran military’s plan to overthrow Zelaya. Washington says it tried its best to change the mind of the plotters. It’s difficult to believe that this proved impossible. During the Cold War it was said, with much justification, that the United States could discourage a coup in Latin America with “a frown.” The Honduran and American military establishments have long been on very fraternal terms. And it must be asked: In what way and to what extent did the United States warn Zelaya of the impending coup? And what protection did it offer him? The response to the coup from the Obama administration can be described with adjectives such as lukewarm, proper but belated, and mixed. It is not unthinkable that the United States gave the military plotters the go-ahead, telling them to keep the traditional “golpe” bloodiness to a minimum. Zelaya was elected to office as the candidate of a conservative party; he then, surprisingly, moved to the left and became a strong critic of a number of Washington policies, and an ally of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, both of whom the Bush administration tried to overthrow and assassinate.

Following the coup, National Public Radio (NPR) showed once again why progressives refer to it as National Pentagon Radio. The station’s leading news anchor, Robert Siegel, interviewed Johanna Mendelson Forman, of the conservative think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies:

Siegel: “There hasn’t been a coup in Latin America for quite a while.”

Forman: “I think the last one was in 1983.”

Siegel did not correct her.¹⁴

This is ignorance of considerable degree. There was a coup in Venezuela in 2002 that briefly overthrew Hugo Chavez, a coup in Haiti in 2004 that permanently overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and a coup in Panama in 1989 that permanently overthrew Manuel Noriega. Is it because the US was closely involved in all three coups that they have been thrown down the Orwellian Memory Hole?

1. William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 9.
2. Associated Press, June 16, 2009.
3. New York Times, June 21, 2009.
4. See Seymour Hersh, New Yorker magazine, June 29, 2008; ABC News, May 22, 2007; and Paul Craig Roberts in CounterPunch, June 19-21, 2009 for descriptions of some of these and other anti-Iran covert activities.
5. White House press conference, June 23, 2009.
6. The only mention is by Jeff Stein in “CQ Politics” [Congressional Quarterly], online, June 22, 2009, “according to former CIA and military officials.”
7. Center for International Policy (Washington, DC) report, June 16, 2009.
8. Time magazine, June 29, 2009, p.26.
9. AlterNet.org, June 14, 2009; Wilayto is the author of In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. Peace Delegation’s Journey through the Islamic Republic.
10. Washington Post, February 16, 2004.
11. Star Tribune (Minneapolis), March 26, 2009.
12. Huffington Post, sometime in June 2005, but it may no longer be there.
13. Washington Post, June 30, 2009.
14. NPR, All Things Considered, June 29, 2009.

Since his election in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, under the guidance of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has overseen a regime dedicated to the privatization of state-controlled industries. The intention of the regime, as stated by the newly appointed Governor of the Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Seyyed Shams Al-din Hosseini, is to privatize 80% of state-owned industries by 2010. This mandate was made real just prior to the disputed elections as a state-owned bank, Saderat, announced it would offer 6% of its shares to private investors (Press TV, 6/8/09). Other significant privatizations during Ahmadinejad’s reign include the postal service, two other state-run banks, Tejerat and Mellat, and, in February 2008, a 5% bloc of shares in the publicly owned steel maker, Foulad-e Mobarakeh, was sold out in eight minutes (Iran Daily, 2/14/08). In total, since 2005, 247 enterprises have been processed by the Iran Privatization Organization, the state-ministry specifically charged with overseeing privatizations (Iranian Privatization Organization website).

Khamenei has propelled the process forward. While Ahmadinejad crafted just enough populist rhetoric to provide headlines, the Supreme Leader issued a letter in 2006 ordering the sell-off of banking, mining, industrial, and transport companies — 80% across the board. Ahmadinejad’s ministers have aggressively followed suit. In September 2008, Labor Minister Mohammad Jahromi described the fact that so many of the country’s resources are located in the public sector as an “obstacle” to growth (Iran Daily, 9/29/08). Heidari Kord-Zangeneh, Ahmadinejad’s deputy finance minister and head of the Iran Privatization Organization, drew pro-market policies together with the myth of anti-imperialism. “We are going to activate our private sector and our private banks,” he exclaimed, “in order to fight against these [US] sanctions.” He punctuated this with a pre-election promise, “I promise that if I am here for the next two years, between 80 and 90 percent of the government will be sold” (Iran Daily, 2/12/08).

Ahmadinejad’s supposed anti-Western approach stops short when it comes to allowing foreign investors to penetrate Iran’s economy. His Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Davoud Danesh-Jafari boasted at a 2008 meeting of the Islamic Development Bank that foreign direct investment in Iran had increased by 138% since 2007. (Iran Daily, 2/17/08) Some 80 projects had been initiated during that period. Key to this capital penetration was the 2004 acceptance of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Article VIII Obligations (IMF Press Release, 9/14/04). Under this provision, Iran agreed to refrain from imposing restrictions on currency transactions and other elements essential to capital flow.

While Ahmadinejad has been the implementer of privatization policies, the reform camp was its architects. Central to this process was the creative violation of Article 44 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This article mandates that key sectors of the economy remain in public hands. It represented the radical-populist edge of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Parliamentary legislation in 2004, near the end of the regime of reformer Mohammad Khatami, created the first breech in Article 44. The legislation called for a “change in the role of government from direct ownership and management of enterprises to policymaking, guidance and overseeing” (Iranian Privatization Organization website). The one consistent voice pushing this process forward is Khamenei, whose tenure as Supreme Leader encompasses both reformer and populist presidential regimes.

The IMF has hailed this process describing Iran in a 2007 position paper as, “Managing the Transition to a Market Economy.” The Fund has had a constant presence in the country since 1945, surviving even the turbulent 1979 Islamic Revolution. IMF officials have employed the usual equation of debt and technical assistance to enforce their pro-market agenda. The next phase, according to IMF planners, of market transition is to “curb the growth of internal demand” through the reduction of state subsidies. Ahmadinejad’s Central Bank appointee, Al-din Hosseini, indicated a shared sentiment, “The government plans to implement a strategy that involves significant reforms, the most important of which is the reform aimed at better subsidy system” (IMF Meeting, 10/13/08).

Pro-market privatizations have been combined with harsh restrictions on worker’s ability to organize in order to advance Ahmadinejad’s neo-liberal restructuring of Iran. Although Iran is technically a member of the International Labor Organization, and thereby mandated to allow free trade unions, workers are restricted from forming independent unions. Under the constitution, they are only allowed to join ideologically-centered Islamic Worker’s Councils, which hold no right to deal with worksite issues or collectively bargain. Despite these legal restrictions, privatization and soaring inflation have resulted in a series of escalating confrontations between workers and security forces.

In March 2007, thousands of schoolteachers spilled out into the streets in front of Parliament demanding that their collective grievances be heard and their salaries increased. They were attacked by security forces and their leaders received prison sentences of up to five years. Such repression did not deter Mahmoud Salehi, a baker, from making his annual demand to celebrate May Day. Salehi was found guilty of “acting against national security” and imprisoned. This year, in a small preview of the post-election street protests, Ahmadinejad’s security apparatus was used to repress 2,000 workers who attempted to organize a May Day celebration.

But the real foil to Ahmadinejad’s pro-market policies is a middle-aged bus driver from Tehran. Mansour Osanloo, acting as the president of the 17,000 worker-strong Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, led a 2005 strike in which drivers refused to accept fares in protest of working conditions and rising fares. The strike was immediately criminalized with Osanloo and fellow leaders placed under arrest. Undeterred, Osanloo led another strike attempt in 2006. He was again arrested and today sits in a cell in Iran’s notorious Evin prison — a living testament to both the courage of Iranian workers and the repressive nature of the regime.

Soon to be joining Osanloo in Evin are thousands of protesters who have also been criminalized by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei’s regime because of their protests over the stolen election. While it is difficult to describe a candidate with as many establishment credentials as Mousavi as a reformer, it is easy to see how the demonstrations on the street have rapidly progressed beyond his campaign. Slogans have moved from “Mousavi get our votes back” to “Death to the Dictator.” With this shift come possibilities for more radical measures. Automotive workers at Khodro Automobile Company have pledged resistance, university students are conducting sit-ins, and the Bus Drivers Union has issued a call for international solidarity.

Meanwhile, somewhere deep inside Evin prison, clandestine communications may be being initiated between a jailed bus driver and a newly minted student radical or an ailing baker and young rock-throwing worker. These actors need little help in understanding that Ahmadinejad’s regime, despite all his populist rhetoric, has worked hand-in-hand with IMF privatizers. After failing to deliver on his populist rhetoric, Ahmadinejad has stolen the election. Now, his only recourse is state repression. On the streets, something far more brilliant is underway — an open-ended emancipation project demanding nothing less than political freedom.

The crackdown intensified five days after the June 16 demonstration of up to 2 million people in Tehran protesting the disputed re-election claim of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Offices were shut down as large numbers of workers stayed away from their jobs.

This great outpouring recalled the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran, the hated US-backed dictator. Many protesters revived the anti-Shah chant, “Down with the dictator.” Video and photos of the great mobilization inspired people around the world who support democracy and social justice, and set off alarm bells for despots in the Middle East. While the Iranian protests began over a stolen presidential election, their increasing size and intensity raises the possibility of revolutionary change in Iran and beyond.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared during Friday prayers June 19 that there would be “bloodshed and chaos” if the protests continued. “Street challenge is not acceptable,” he declared.

The basij militias, paramilitary groups that patrol the streets for supposedly un-Islamic behavior, such as immodest dress by women, made good on Khamanei’s threats, attacking supporters of reformist presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi the following day.

One killing captured on video — the shooting of 21-year-old Neda Agha Soltan on June 20 — quickly came to symbolize the human toll of the vicious crackdown. But as with previous attacks, protesters fought back, even though their numbers were smaller than previous protests.

As a university professor wrote of his decision to demonstrate that day, along with students:

“After the Supreme Leader’s fierce speech at the Friday prayers, we knew that today we would be different. We feel so vulnerable, more than ever, but at the same time are aware of our power. No matter how strong it is collectively, it will do little to protect us today. We could only take our bones and flesh to the streets and expose them to batons and bullets. Two different feelings fight inside me without mixing with one another. To live or to just be alive, that’s the question.”

He added:

Here’s a true battleground. And this time, it’s huge. Columns of smoke rise to the sky. You can hardly see the asphalt. Only bricks and stones. Here, people have the upper hand. Three lanes, the middle one separated by opaque fences, under construction for the metro.

The workers have climbed up the fences and show the V [for victory] sign. They start throwing stone and timber to the street to supply the armament. I tell myself, “Look at the poor, the ones Ahmadinejad always speaks of.” But the president’s name is no longer in fashion. This time, the slogans address the leader, something unheard of in the past three decades. It’s a beautiful sunset, with rays of light penetrating evening clouds. We feel safe among people moving back forth with the anti-riot police attacks.

That day, using batons, chains, knives and occasionally bullets, the basij injured and arrested hundreds of people. Security personnel also added to the death toll among protesters, which official reports put at 19 as of June 22.

The overwhelming security presence on the street, along with violent attacks on university dormitories and arrests of prominent opposition figures, made protest increasingly difficult the following days — police even prevented a funeral service for Neda Agha Soltan.

Despite the repression, the mass movement that took shape around Mousavi’s election campaign has already been transformed into a broader fight for democracy. It will not dissipate anytime soon, whatever the intention of the candidate and his handlers.

In Tehran, protesters unable to mount street protests have taken to literally shouting from the rooftops at night to show their continued defiance. The mass demonstrations may have subsided owing to the crackdown, but the movement has not been crushed. The movement may be regrouping, but it has not disappeared.

This pressure has pushed Mousavi, a moderate former prime minister, into the unlikely role of champion for democratic reform.

A Facebook page attributed to Mousavi stated that he is “ready for martyrdom” and called on his supporters to carry out a general strike if he is arrested. And in an open letter to supporters issued June 21, Mousavi declared that, if allowed to stand, Iran’s election fraud would validate criticisms that Islam and democracy were incompatible:

If the high volume of cheating and vote manipulation that has put a fire to the foundations of people’s trust is itself introduced as the proof and evidence of the lack of fraud, the republicanism of the regime will be slaughtered and the idea of incompatibility of Islam and republicanism would be practically proven.

Such statements reflect the enormous pressure that the mass movement has put on the reformist leader. “Poor Mousavi, we took the easel away from his hands and gave him a gun,” one supporter joked to the Financial Times, in a reference to the candidate’s turn to painting while he was out of the public eye for most of the last two decades.

Yet it is far from clear that Mousavi is willing to use the “gun” of wider mobilizations and general strikes to force a recount of the stolen election or a rerun vote, let alone thoroughgoing democratic reforms. As an establishment politician and an integral member of the Iranian ruling class, he will be extremely reluctant to call forth the semi-underground labor movement that has waged intermittent strikes and protests since 2004.

Iranian reformers — like, for example, former President Mahmoud Khatami — have always oriented to educated and upper-class liberals while pursuing economic policies detrimental to workers and the poor. As a result, Ahmadinejad was able to strike a populist pose to win the 2005 presidential elections — with the help of vote fraud to get into a runoff election, which he won handily against Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful cleric, former president and one of the richest men in Iran.

In office, Ahmadinejad was anything but a friend to the working class. He pursued policies of privatization to enrich his coterie around the national security apparatus and ruthlessly suppressed efforts at organizing independent unions. He tried to maintain popularity through a nationalist stance, defending Iran’s nuclear energy program against pressure from the West.

And in the run-up to the June 12 vote, Ahmadinejad made much-publicized handouts to the poor and bonuses for government employees to boost turnout for the election. He apparently assumed that middle-class liberals, disillusioned by Khatami’s failure to stand up to attacks on pro-democracy activists, would stay home, as they had in 2005.

By 2009, Ahmadinejad faced a challenge from both Mousavi and Rafsanjani. These former rivals (Rafsanjani had ousted Mousavi by abolishing the post of prime minister in 1989) made common cause to stop Ahmadinejad from consolidating power.

The Iranian president, with the backing of Khamenei, had systematically installed figures from the basij and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) into key positions in government and the national oil company, displacing or squeezing the big capitalists around Rafsanjani, who jealously guard that turf. Beyond personnel questions, however, Iranian capitalists are leery of Ahmadinejad’s half-baked “development” projects that used state oil revenues to consolidate his base among the poor, rather than spending the money on strategic investments.

For his part, Mousavi was seen as an ideal candidate for the power brokers around Rafsanjani as well as the reformists. Having stressed the social justice side of Islam while prime minister during the Iran-Iraq war, he can appeal to workers and the poor in a way that Rafsanjani never could. He also has credentials as a hard-liner: as prime minister, he presided over the execution of as many as 5,000 political prisoners.

Nowadays, though, Mousavi portrays himself as a liberal by championing the rights of women and national minorities, an effort that helped revived an interest in politics among Khatami’s voters.

Mousavi’s support, which surged into the streets of Tehran and other cities in the days before the election, forced Ahmadinejad to resort to massive vote fraud to claim victory.

According to a study by the British think tank Chatham House, the number of votes cast in the provinces of Mazandaran and Yazd exceeds the total number of eligible voters. The authors estimate that if Ahmadinejad really won 62 percent of the vote claimed by the authorities, he would have had to won the votes of all new voters, all the votes of his last centrist rival, plus 44 percent of those who voted for reformist candidates in 2005. This is so unlikely as to be absurd.

As the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, said on television June 20, “A majority of people are of the opinion that the actual election results are different from what was officially announced,” adding, “Although the Guardian Council is made up of religious individuals, I wish certain members would not side with a certain presidential candidate.”

As popular pressure mounted, the head of the 12-member Guardian Council, the body of clerics that approves election candidates, issued a surprising report June 22 that votes supposedly cast in more than 50 Iranian cities were actually higher than the number of eligible voters.

The Guardian Council’s announcement contradicts the earlier claim by Khamenei that Ahmadinejad had won a “definitive victory,” and marks a retreat from the council’s earlier position that it would only review 10 percent of the ballots.

Now there are even doubts that the council will uphold the election results when it makes its final ruling in the coming days. This vacillation partly reflects the influence of Rafsanjani, one of the most powerful members of the Guardian Council. But if the council reverses course and annuls the election or orders a recall, it will be because the clerics fear a revolutionary upsurge. Having hijacked a workers’ revolution to take power 30 years ago, the clerics understand full well the risks they face.

At the same time, Rafsanjani is rumored to be trying to assemble an emergency meeting of the 86-member Council of Experts, which chooses Iran’s supreme leader. The apparent aim is to remove Khamenei from power, which would decisively weaken Ahmadinejad as well.

Adding fuel to the fire is Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, the country’s senior cleric, who endorsed protests to “claim rights.” According to religious criteria, Montazeri should have been the successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding leader of the Islamic Republic in 1979, but was shoved aside and later placed under house arrest for several years.

In short, the competing factions of the Iranian ruling class are hesitating before they make irrevocable choices that could shatter the Islamist regime.

For Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, the question is whether a crackdown would succeed in drowning resistance in blood, or provoke a wider revolutionary challenge to their rule. For Mousavi and Rafsanjani, the choice is whether to accept a humiliating deal that would greatly diminish their power, or encourage the rebellion, and try to ride it to victory.

Meanwhile, the potential for far broader struggle for democracy is apparent. The Tehran bus drivers’ union, which has fought to improve wages and conditions, despite the beatings and arrests of union leaders, issued this statement June 20:

The fact that the demands of the vast majority of Iranian society go far beyond those of unions is obvious to all, and in the previous years, we have emphasized that until the principle of the freedom to organize and to elect is not materialized, any talk of social freedom and labor union rights will be a farce.

Given these facts, the Autobus Workers Union places itself alongside all those who are offering themselves in the struggle to build a free and independent civic society. The union condemns any kind of suppression and threats.

To recognize labor union and social rights in Iran, the international labor organizations have declared the Fifth of Tir (June 26) the international day of support for imprisoned Iranian workers as well as for the institution of unions in Iran. We want that this day be viewed as more than a day for the demands of labor unions to make it a day for human rights in Iran and to ask all our fellow workers to struggle for the trampled rights of the majority of the people of Iran.

With hope for the spread of justice and freedom,
Autobus Workers Union

It’s impossible to predict the next turn of events in Iran. But what is clear is that the struggles of the Iranian working class — not the maneuvers at the top of society — are the key to taking the movement forward.

The huge demonstrations of the first week reflected lack of confidence in Iran’s electoral system, not merely because the regime can easily fabricate the result, but also because, at base, this system is far from reflecting the will of the people. Political parties are outlawed, so the choice is among personalities. In order to prevent the election of anyone who is anti-regime, every candidate must be approved by the “Committee for Preservation of the Constitution,” whose task is to ensure fidelity to Islamic rule.

Among 475 initial candidates this time (including 42 women), only three men were permitted to challenge the incumbent. Thus anyone who wanted to depose Ahmadinejad had to vote for one of these. As it turned out, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had been prime minister under the Ayatollah Khomeini, garnered support from most of those who were fed up with Ahmadinejad and his patron, the supreme religious authority in Iran, Ali Khamenei.

What caused hundreds of thousands to pour into the streets and risk their lives? How did it happen that the Supreme Authority lost his authority? Iran is an enormous exporter of oil, like several other third-world nations, and its economic situation is no better than theirs. It is no accident that the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, came out in support of Ahmadinejad. Both countries produce oil; both suffer from chronic unemployment, rising inflation and poverty that cries to the heavens. Chavez is the idol of the masses. Ahmadinejad too, by his way of dressing and talking, his anti-imperialist positions and his relentless enmity toward the US and Israel, presents himself as a revolutionary and a friend to the poor.

It seems, however, that many Iranians remain unimpressed by Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric. More than anything, they are troubled by the suppression of human freedoms, the cruel subjugation of women, and the imposition of Islamic fundamentalism as a way of life. If we add the economic backwardness of Iran and the religious bureaucracy’s control of its oil revenues, we get a ticking bomb. When the regime uses terror against the Iranian people, this will only speed the moment of explosion.

For the fact is that thirty years since the ousting of the Shah, the Iranian Islamic Republic has not succeeded in providing its people with a decent life. Ahmadinejad plumes himself with the feathers of the poor, but the location of those who vote for him shows Iran’s failure to propel its society beyond the poverty line. According to the meager information we have, it was the urban population — the focus of economic and cultural power in every modern society — that voted against Ahmadinejad. The poor, living in remote villages throughout the country, may form the electoral majority, but their contribution toward building the society is small. What’s more, where there is no freedom of assembly and the regime is all-powerful, nothing is easier than to buy the loyalty of those who live on charity.

The Iranian protest movement is not a foreign import. Nor does it resemble elitist, reactionary protest movements like the orange revolution in Ukraine. Iran’s green movement reflects an authentic will to change an oppressive regime that has impeded the country’s economic, social and cultural development. But this movement has a problem. It lacks leadership. Mousavi has been a channel, to be sure, for expressing revulsion from the regime, but he cannot encompass the unorganized currents that have now begun to flow. For this reason the regime will succeed, temporarily, in suppressing the demonstrations and imposing its will on the people.

Yet the green movement will prove to be a landmark. The division within the regime between the reformists and the conservatives did not first emerge as a result of the demonstrations: rather, it made them possible. That division has existed ever since the death of Khomeini in 1989. It was expressed in the election of reformist candidate Muhammad Khatami to two terms, from 1997 until 2005. But Khatami disappointed his constituents. Against the determined opposition of the Supreme Authority, Ali Khamenei, he failed to implement the reforms he’d promised: to eliminate corruption and bring more democracy.

Within the religious establishment there is division between Khamenei and Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s wealthiest persons, who is considered an important religious authority. Rafsanjani is influenced by the disappointment of the people, especially the urban middle class. By continuing to alienate them, he knows, Khamenei courts disaster. Rafsanjani holds that the government must express the will of the classes that constitute the society’s economic and cultural base. The conservatives, on the other hand, see any departure from religious law as dangerously corrosive.

All the democratic forces in Iran, including the Communist Party (which is underground), called on the people to support Mousavi in the recent elections. They accurately gauged the mood of the masses: that behind Mousavi a broad movement has gathered, whose strategic aim is to topple the totalitarian regime. This internal division opens a new horizon for the Iranian people after thirty years of arrests and assassinations directed against the leaders and parties that deposed the Shah. Iranians may hope at last to rebuild their parties and trade unions toward the creation of a democratic Iran.

The hesitant support of US President Barack Obama, the cynical pronouncements of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu (who broadcasts his shock at the firing on protesters in far-off Tehran but never in nearby Bil’in), the crocodile tears of the Shah’s son in Washington – need not mislead us. The Iranian people have no wish to sit again on Uncle Sam’s lap, lining up against the Arab world. The Iranian people have no wish to exchange the present dictator for a new Shah. The Iranian opposition knows what colonialism means. It sees what goes on in the occupied Palestinian territories. It sees what globalization has wrought among the peoples of the world. It will not move backward. Its whole will is to bring the Iranians, schooled in struggle and disappointment, as a free people into the family of peoples.

The revolution of 1979 against the Shah was never intended to usher in a Shiite dictatorship, but the Ayatollahs co-opted it. The lesson has been learned, and the new Iranian movement will know how to guard basic rights and freedoms.

There is a direct connection between what is happening in Iran and what is happening in the US. Until recently, who dreamed that Americans would elect an Afro-American president? The Obama Effect reverberates through the Middle East. He has overthrown the Bush policy, which created abysmal hatred against America — a hatred well exploited by the Iranian regime and its allies.

We should bear in mind, though, that Obama was not elected to make peace in our region, rather to rescue America from the worst economic crisis in eighty years. The American people seek liberation from the free-market fundamentalism of the neo-cons, while the Iranian people seek liberation from religious fundamentalism. The concurrence of these two movements is no coincidence. One process feeds the other and is fed in return. George W. Bush used Iran to frighten Americans, while Ahmadinejad used Bush’s America to strengthen his hold on Iranians. Now both societies have exhausted their political-economic systems. Obama’s election expresses the American will for change, and the outcome of the Iranian election brings hundreds of thousands into the streets. In America the crisis is more purely economic. In Iran it is political and economic. Yet these two very different processes, in two very different societies, belong nonetheless to the same historical moment: it is a moment of systemic change, with societies converging toward democracy and social justice.

The events in Iran are not foreign imports, just as the events in America are anchored in deep internal change. The world is going through a process that will alter an entire system, where predatory capitalism has lived in friction with an Islamic fundamentalism bent on correcting “the evils of the West.” It is not just the free-market system that has reached a dead end. The Islamic “resistance” too has exhausted itself, in Lebanon and Palestine as well as Iran. Events in Iran send shock waves through all the Arab regimes that deny basic rights to their citizens. Iranian women are an example for Arab women, and Iranian workers are an example for Arab workers whose right to form unions is denied. This is the real “Iranian bomb.” Israel must fear it, and America too — for Obama is counting on the old alliances with Arab dictators. The development of this “bomb” will take time, no doubt, but Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Tzippi Livni ought to read the writing on the wall: the years of the Occupation are numbered; it will become increasingly anachronistic as Arab masses take to the streets, challenging their regimes in the name of democracy and human rights. Thirty years ago the Iranian revolution changed the face of the Middle East toward fundamentalism. Today, on the streets of Tehran, appear the first glimmers of real democracy.

Since the Iranian authorities are so wonderfully efficient and super speedy at vote counting — so much so that they could announce the full results of tens of millions of votes in less than two hours after the closing of polling stations, then surely they could have just taken one more, day and counted all the votes one more time, just to make sure; with different campaigns’ representatives present, etc., no?

Yeah, I know. That’s just an insane idea! Better to just attack peaceful demonstrators in the streets, shoot and kill people and precipitate a huge and uncontrollable crisis of legitimacy.

Here’s another good one. The Press TV’s(Iran) man was being grilled by a BBC anchorman about the report of irregularities (in more than 50 cities) that the Interior Ministry had just released, and the Press TV man was adamant that these were not ‘irregularities’ but rather, in the language of the ministry, ’statistical miscalculations.’ Interesting choice of words. For, you see, vote counting falls within the realm of arithmetic, and mostly one function of it only: you know, adding up (the votes). Statistics, on the other hand, fall within the realm of predictions (of trends). So, they are actually saying that the announced results were basically predictions they made, and very optimistically wishful ones at that, of how the voters in different localities could have, would have, or might have voted!

* * *

Getting back to reality, the situation on the streets of Iran has moved far beyond bean counting, and increasingly more radical slogans are being raised on the streets. This has got the system seriously worried, hence their extreme crackdown.

The larger political questions are enormous. Most essentially, how clear is the strategic vision here and how portentous can this spontaneously erupted movement be? Let us not lose sight of the fact that the people took to the streets as a result of an unexpected insult of an ‘outcome’ of a sham election they willingly participated in. That makes for a highly contradictory movement. These contradictions cannot last long without some serious consequences. The more radical and more clear-sighted of the Iranian working classes have harbored very few illusions regarding this system’s capability for being reformed in any meaningful way.

So, the spark for the movement came from a politically ambiguous place; but the insult was great enough to spark a big reaction. And when people who have been enduring a harsh dictatorship finally take to the streets, there are a whole lot of stored-up-in-pressure-cooker grievances that will come pouring out. Hence, the dynamic situation.

As I have said before, here were the people in their millions willing to play along with the fantasy that the system could be reformed, ever so slightly, all of it within the theocratic setup. All they were asking for was that the government take its own propaganda seriously and respect the “Republic” part of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and additionally give them some slack on the “Islamic” part. They were even willing to use the system’s own tools (the fraudulent voting procedures), with all their faults, in order to very politely request some minor changes. No radical demands at all. Quite conservative, in fact.

And when even that was not only withheld, but an actual electoral coup was organized and carried out in broad daylight in order to forever block any idea of the possibility of ANY change, or any talk of change . . . well, the people had to see things clearly since there was no other way of seeing things.

And still, in case it was unclear, came the final nail in the head from Khamenei, in the now-infamous address in his first post-elections Friday prayer sermon, where he defended the election results as absolutely fair, claiming that the ‘nation’ had a perfect electoral system which, he claimed in no uncertain terms, “it is absolutely impossible to cheat.”

[As mentioned above, The Interior Ministry did later admit to "some irregularities," to the tune of three million votes.]

Khamenei did a lot in that address: by putting a stamp of absolute approval on the electoral coup, he practically changed the ruling system. But also, he reminded the “nation”, in case they had forgotten, that he himself was in fact the absolute ruler, the final arbiter of all matters personal and political, and that was that. His speech, mannerism and general rhetorical posture were replete with indications that Ahmadinejad is actually nothing but his puppet. And, of course, Khamenei also cleared the way for the brutal crackdown by the shock troopers and all the other “legal” means at the disposal of the Iranian state’s machinery of oppression.

That made things boldly and doubly unambiguous, which helped people to see the ball, not just in their court, but coming fast at them, only a few feet away now, and it was a canon ball or a bomb, not a ball. As a result, the more radical voices are coming out and raising sharper slogans.

Most significantly, the Iranian people have not been shaken or intimidated too much by the vicious and cowardly attacks by the state’s machinery of oppression: a methodical intimidation machine with knife wielding thugs to disrupt peaceful mass demonstrations and create chaos and mayhem (the first round of deaths were mostly by knife wounds), with snipers shooting at people in the streets below, with black uniformed, stick wielding motorcycle gangs running at people, with government goons ransacking university student dorms, killing scores and taking countless students to secret prisons, with government-provided ambulances delivering the dead and the injured to unknown locations.

Most of the ‘reformist’ ‘leaders’ are absent, silenced, cowed, or else cutting deals behind the scenes, yet people are moving on their own. Which is a good development. People en masse have to come to see that the ‘reformists’ are actually part of their problems, if we are to have some fundamental changes in the long term.

More increasingly, there are people raising the slogan of “Death to Khamenei,” indicating the emergence of more radical segments of the population — as opposed to “Death to the dictator,” which Mousavi supporters voice, maintaining their ambiguity toward the ‘Dear Leader’ Khamenei, at least for now. And, as a result, we have seen reports — from the streets of Iran, as well as from demonstrations abroad in London and Paris, for example — of Mousavi’s people trying to put a leash (preferably a heavy lid) on any alternative, more radical opposition voices.

Meanwhile, more militant labor unions, having struggled for their most basic rights for the entirety of the life of the Islamic “Republic”, were quick to come out in support of the people’s movement and in defense of people’s rights, even though most of them had boycotted the elections. These unionists, throughout the years, have consistently and correctly characterized any participation in sham elections as legitimizing the system. But, as true radicals throughout history have done, they understand deeply the necessity of solidarity and they are standing with the people, supporting their demands for fairness, and in absolute and unambiguous opposition to the criminal state violence.

The Iranian people’s movement is also creating its own publications in abundance. We have already seen how an entire generation has turned into street journalists using the electronic means at their disposal. But, traditional platforms for political news and analysis such as newspapers (in hard copy and cyber forms) are also spreading fast. One of the more inspiring ones is Khiaban (The Street), which has already had (I think) five issues published and distributed, both online and hard copies on the streets. It has a definite left wing approach, with connections to the labor, the students and the women’s movements.

Another innovative publication is dedicated to identifying (and spreading news of the identities of) the plainclothes undercover thugs who have been attacking the people. These thugs have been knifing people, using chains and brass knuckles, separating individuals from the demonstrations, taking them to back alleys and doing their business, in the most cowardly fashion. And now people are coming up with their own defense.

But, if this is to remain a mass movement, the immediate task is to respond to the state oppressive crackdown in creative ways that further the political struggle by changing the dynamic of the unfolding events. I think a general, nationwide strike is the most appropriate tactic now. Since the security forces are occupying the streets in huge numbers, by simply refusing to come out at all, by staying home, by not going to work, to classes, by making the streets look ghost-like, by bringing the country to a virtual halt and preventing business-as-usual to get back on track, such a move can be a most effective psychological, as well as a political, tactical victory.

But, of course, going by the increasing number of lines of demarcation emerging, on the one hand between the secularists and the system’s supporters, and on the other between the two factions of the ruling elite and their respective followers among the people, it will be anybody’s guess what the next move will be.

But one thing is for sure, the Islamic Republic of Iran, in its current militaristic-repressive formation and at this historical moment, has very little if any legitimacy for an absolute majority of the Iranian people. That is a fact now and will not change. And that is thanks to the daring move made by a people who took to the streets, even though they were misled and delusional about the possibilities for real change within the existing system. Just goes to show how quickly political dynamics can change as soon as the people rise up and enter the political arena. They had had it up to their ears with oppression, with arbitrary intrusions of the state and their murderous ways, and they decided to pave their own way out of that hell.

On June 26, people around the world will be standing in solidarity with the Iranian people’s movement for justice. Please join them and show your brotherly and sisterly love.

Inside Iran, advocates for reform and human rights have long pleaded for the U.S. government to keep out of Iranian affairs. After the CIA organized the coup that overthrew Iran’s democracy in 1953, Washington kept the Shah in power for a quarter century. When I was in Tehran four years ago, during the election that made Mahmoud Ahmadinejad president, what human rights activists most wanted President Bush to do was shut up.

But Bush played to the same kind of peanut gallery that is now applauding the likes of Sen. John McCain. The Bush White House denigrated the 2005 election just before the balloting began — to the delight of the hardest-line Iranian fundamentalists. The ultra-righteous Bush rhetoric gave a significant boost to Ahmadinejad’s campaign.

Denunciations and threats from Washington are the last thing that Iran’s reform advocates want. And Iranians certainly don’t need encouragement from Uncle Sam to do what they can to bring about democratic change.

John McCain doesn’t get it. And neither does Hugo Chavez.

Of course, Chavez has practical reasons for his warmth toward Ahmadinejad. (Practitioners of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” usually do.) While sharing Washington as a common adversary, their oil-rich countries have the makings of a world-shaking energy bloc. And they’re on similar pages with well-founded antipathies toward institutions like the World Trade Organization, the IMF and the World Bank.

But human rights — whether food, shelter and healthcare or freedom of speech, press and elections — should not be matters of winks and nods.

As voting began in Iran on June 12, Chavez praised Ahmadinejad as “a courageous fighter for the Islamic Revolution, the defense of the Third World, and in the struggle against imperialism.”

Nine days later, with a bloody crackdown on Iranian protesters gaining momentum, Chavez declared that “Ahmadinejad’s triumph was a triumph all the way.” The Venezuelan president condemned those “trying to stain Ahmadinejad’s triumph and through that weaken the government and the Islamic revolution.”

I’m among millions of progressive North Americans who admire much of what Chavez has been doing for economic equity and social justice in Venezuela. But that admiration is no reason to be quiet when Chavez makes common cause with repression in Iran.

Meanwhile, in the United States, we have nothing to be smug about. The day after President Obama toughened his criticisms of Iran’s rulers at his June 23 news conference, a venerable human-rights organization named the Quixote Center was noting that more than 1,200 people had sent letters and faxes asking the Obama administration “to denounce the violent repression of peaceful protests organized in response to the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement” — a massacre of indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon.

What happened during that massacre on June 5? “A hundred people were wounded by gunshot, and between 20 and 25 were killed,” the Center for International Policy reports.

“The Obama administration,” the Quixote Center noted, “remains silent on the massacre in Peru.”

But the fact of some hypocrisy from President Obama does not change the fact of some idiocy from President Chavez.

On Wednesday (June 24), the Associated Press reports, “Chavez reiterated his support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a close ally, and said he is ‘completely sure’ Ahmadinejad fairly won re-election on June 12.”

For good measure, Chavez ascribed the protests in Iran to Washington and its allies. “He said protests and violence that have rocked Iran since the contested vote appear part of a recurring strategy by U.S. and European intelligence agencies to destabilize enemy governments.” Chavez declared: “From my point of view, that’s what’s happening in Iran.”

It seems to be beyond the vision of both Hugo Chavez and John McCain to see that vast numbers of Iranian people, fed up with repression, are able to grasp the historical moment on their own while opposing the regime. The last thing they need or want is “help” from the U.S. government as they struggle for a democratic future.

Iran’s presidential elections on June 12 were positioned to represent another fight between Middle Eastern ‘moderates’ vs. ‘extremists’. That depiction, which conveniently divided the Middle East — according to the prevailing US foreign policy discourse — to pro-American and anti-American camps was hardly as clear in the Iranian case as it was in Palestine and most recently in Lebanon.

Ahmadinejad’s main rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi served as Iran’s Prime Minister for 8-years (between 1981-1989) during one of Iran’s most challenging times, its war with Iraq. He was hardly seen as a ‘moderate’ then. More, Moussavi was equally adamant in his country’s right to produce atomic energy for peaceful means. As far as US interests in the region are concerned, both Ahmadinejad and Moussavi are interested in dialogue with the US, and are unlikely to alter their country’s attitudes towards the occupation of Iraq, their support of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine. Neither is ready, willing or, frankly, capable of removing Iran from the regional power play at work in the Middle East, considering that Iranian policies are shaped by other internal forces beside the president of the country.

This is not to suggest that both leaders are one and the same. For the average Iranian, statements made by Ahmadinejad and Moussavi during Iran’s lively election campaigns did indeed promise major changes in their lives, daily struggles and future. But yet again, the two men were caricatured to present two convenient personalities to the outside world, a raging nuclear-obsessed man, hell-bent on ‘wiping Israel off the map”, and a soft-spoken, learned ‘moderate’ ready to ‘engage’ the West and redeem the sins of his predecessor.

Unfortunately for the Obama administration, the first negative image — tainted as such by mainstream media, and years of image manipulation by forces dedicated to the interest of Israel – won. The election outcome in Iran presents the young Obama with a major challenge: if he carries on with his diplomatic approach and soft overtures towards Iran, ruled by a supposed Holocaust-denier, he will certainly be seen as a failed president, who dared to perceive Israel’s interests in the region as secondary; on the other hand, Obama cannot depart from his country’s new approach towards Iran, a key player in shaping the contending forces in the entire region.

In some way, Ahmadinejad’s victory was the best news for Israel. Now, Tel Aviv will continue to pressure Obama to ‘act’ against Iran, for the latter, under its current president is an ‘existential threat’ to Israel, a claim that few in Washington question. “It is not like we rooted for Ahmadinejad,” an Israeli official told the New York Times on the condition of anonymity a day after it was clear that Ahmadinejad won another term in office.

But considering Israel’s immediate attempt to capitalize on the outcome of the elections makes one wonder if the defeat of Iran’s ‘moderate’ camp was not a best-case scenario for Israel. Iran will continue to be presented as the obstacle in future peace in the Middle East, allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to avoid any accountability as far as the ‘peace process’ is concerned. In fact, with an ‘existential threat’ not too far away, few in Washington would dare challenge Israel’s settlement policies in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, or its deadly siege on Gaza, or in fact its confrontational approach to Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the latter seen as an ‘Iranian-backed militia.’

Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom was one of the first top officials in Israel to exploit the moment on June 13. The results of Iran’s elections, he said, “blow up in the faces of those who thought Iran was built for a genuine dialogue with the free world on stopping its nuclear program.” Ostensibly, Shalom’s message was directed at a small audience in Tel Aviv, but his true target audience, was in fact Obama himself.

Obama’s overtures towards Iran were not necessarily an indication of a fundamental shift in US foreign policy, but a realistic recognition of Iran’s growing influence in the region, and the US’ desperate and failing fight in Iraq. It was Obama’s pragmatism, not a moral-shift in US foreign policy that compelled such statements as that made on June 2 in a BBC interview: “What I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations. On the other hand, the international community has a very real interest in preventing a nuclear arms race in the region.”

For Israel, however, Obama’s rhetoric is a deviation from the past US hard-line approach towards Iran. What Israel wants to keep alive is a discussion of war as a viable option to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions and to eliminate a major military rival in the Middle East.

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

Ahmadinejad’s victory will serve as further proof that diplomacy with Iran is not an option, from the point of view of Israel and its supporters in the US. Whether Obama will proceed with his positive rhetoric towards Iran is to be seen. Failure to do so, however, will further undermine his country’s interests in the Middle East, and will prolong the cold war atmosphere of animosity, espoused by a clique of neoconservative hard-liners throughout the Bush administration of past years.

In 1906, as a result of that national surge demanding true legitimacy from the rulers, Iran established the first parliament on the Asian continent, and forced an absolutist monarchy into accepting constitutional rule by a parliament chosen by the people.

That parliamentary system, by 1920, had been overthrown by Reza Shah, and an absolutist dictatorship was reestablished, which in turn was overturned by the people by the close of 1940s, and by 1951 the people had regained their relative sovereignty. In 1953, that too was overthrown by a coup carried out by the CIA against our popularly elected Prime Minister, Dr. Mossadegh, and the second phase of the Pahlavi dictatorship ensued, which lasted until 1978.

Ever since the establishment of theocracy in 1979, we have witnessed repeated occurrences of mass uprisings in Iran. The last major wave was in 1999, led by university students, and was swiftly crushed by the government (at the time headed by a ‘reformist’, Mohammad Khatami).

So, throughout the twentieth century, we as a nation did not stop grappling with the hugely complex social problem of legitimacy of the state, as different dictatorships arose and established themselves as newer, more effective machineries of oppression, and as we struggled against them. That fight continues today.

When reality happens in equally painful and delightful leaps, such as we are witnessing now, and as it speeds right past rigid minds standing by with gaping mouths, mouthing knee-jerk, reflexive thoughts not considered at all, we salute reality!

And hope we can keep up.

* * *

One left-seeming analysis being presented about the election results in Iran is the ‘class analysis,’ epitomized by a few articles that have appeared in recent days (no names necessary, since that makes things personal, and I’m trying to keep it political here). I even heard the ‘class analysis’ (sic.) used on the BBC! The BBC’s approach was actually not too different from those presented by some on the US left.

Real class analysis looks for and explains historical and materialist trends in a society (‘materialist’ meaning here, containing real social substance); all else is superficial journalism.

Not taking into account Iran’s complex social history at all — and amazingly enough not even considering the very context of a theocratic setup as relevant, superficial journalism’s entire argument is constructed on a presupposition never examined: that Iran is just another regular country, with a generally democratic-looking system, with its own peculiar way of holding elections, which we must respect, run as best as they can (of course, they have problems, but who doesn’t?); but, all in all, there’s regular opportunity for people to express their choices, just like in the US (and God knows America has deep problems of its own with democracy). So, no matter how disappointed the losers in the Iranian elections, they simply ‘should bite the bullet,’ and move on.

At least eight people (some reports from inside Iran claim 32) have indeed taken bullets. These are peaceful, unarmed demonstrators shot dead (and there are video clips to prove this, thanks to the resourcefulness of our people) by sharp shooters from windows overlooking streets where peaceful demonstrations were being attacked by plain-clothes government vigilantes breaking up massive spontaneous, again, peaceful demonstrations expressing outrage at an excessively oppressive machine that had just stolen their votes in broad daylight.

Why the need for attacking peaceful demonstrations if the elections were truly won cleanly? Why the need to arrest and detain hundreds of people, of political leaders and intellectuals of the reformist camp? Why the need to disrupt communications?

But, I am digressing.

Along with the ‘bite the bullet’ attitude, some analysis must be presented, of course, since we are writing a political piece. So, let’s see what it is. It is claimed that, first of all, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got exactly the same proportion of votes as he did in the 2005 election when he beat Hashemi Rafsanjani. But, since that’s the only historical reference looked up by lazy journalism, all the social changes that have happened between then and now lose their significance in the accounts of superficial observers.

A crucial thing missed here is that back in 2005, there too were loud claims of vote rigging against Ahmadinejad, who had been greatly helped by the Revolutionary Guards’ and the Basijs’ disciplined mobilization for vote getting. Those complaints died out eventually. But, from right after the 2005 elections, it became clear to Iran observers that major political maneuvering had begun between, on the one hand, the elite siding with the powerful Hashemi Rafsanjani and, on the other, those siding with the conservatives aligned with Khamenei, whose front man is Ahmadinejad. In this year’s elections, Hashemi Rafsanjani lent his political weight to the reformists who, just like the Democrats in the US, are the only ones with realistic, if not the best, chances of inspiring large participation in the elections.

It was for these very reasons that the reformist factions knew very well that major vote rigging would be tried again. If it could be done twice in the US, it sure as hell could be done twice in Iran. And for these very reasons, for months before the election day the reformists had studied well the procedures in place, looking for flaws, had found plenty, and had proposed remedies aplenty, all of which had been turned down. So, going into the ring, they knew they were stepping into a fixed match.

Ahmadinejad’s camp, sure enough, was prepared, both for the ballot-casting day and for the lead-up. They used the first-ever live TV debates between presidential candidates in Iran the same way a sensationalist lawyer would in some courtroom scene in a TV series. Picture a closing presented in a case looking bleakly headed south; lawyer strikes out by throwing a complete and utter Hail Mary pass: espousing the most astonishing stories, filled with accusations and innuendoes, muddying the water to the nth degree, making it all sound like he really didn’t want to say any of this, but was forced to reveal the truth, no matter how rude, for justice must be served. Amen!

And we saw how they conducted the actual ‘elections’. (For those interested in facts: even Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, the most senior cleric in Iran, a huge, lifelong fan of theocracy, came out in defense of the opposition, stating that nobody in their right mind would believe the announced results.)

To get back to the class analysis thing . . . For the ‘class’ part of the analysis, it is stated that Ahmadinejad’s constituency, beyond the ideological armed forces of Revolutionary Guards and the Basijis, consists of the working class, the peasantry and the poor; in short, the way more numerous classes. In other words, in this highly simplistic picture, ALL the Iranian working classes, all the peasants, and all the poor were unanimously behind Ahmadinejad.

This is a very improbable claim. Its TV version was backed by repeated loops of reportage by CNN- and BBC-type news agencies, right before the elections, when their film crews were sent to a few rural spots that had benefited from the Ahmadinejad government’s handouts, where enthusiasm was displayed for him. These scenes from a handful of villages, in a country whose rural population adds up to about 33% of 70 million people, are definitely not representative of the larger picture of rural Iran.

The real rural Iran is beset by desperation, more than anything else, and most likely can’t be bothered with any such niceties as ‘elections’ (Iran’s rural population has historically been very deeply apolitical). Due to government mismanagement, consistent over the thirty years of this regime’s existence, farming infrastructure has been deteriorating steadily, leading to a huge migration from the country to the city. In the past 30-year period, the urban-to-rural ratios have exactly reversed.

During the same period, the population of Iran has grown very rapidly also; it literally doubled from 35 million to 70 million. Yet, another factor: all these demographic transformations were occurring in a country whose government relies on the sale of oil as a main source of revenue (more than 50% of its income. I’ll explain why this is important, below).

Add another historical-transformational trend: with the rise of theocracy by 1979, and considering that the mullahs are tightly allied with the merchant (bazaari) classes, the overall stewardship of the national economy was transferred from the hands of the industrial to that of the commercial bourgeoisie. Consequently, commerce, buying and selling, instead of production, has become the more significant economic activity.

Except for military (and related) industries, of course. There, successive governments have consistently invested well. But, just about all other branches of industrial capital, mostly private, have not had an easy time of developing; definitely not nearly as rapidly as the population growth coupled with rural-urban migration would require, in order to maintain a stable employment level and to have some, even if modest, economic growth rate.

Remember that oil, as an industry, is not labor intensive at all; it is highly capital intensive. So, though it brings in the dough for the state, as an industry it doesn’t employ a significant workforce. (In any event, most oil workers in Iran enjoy a very healthy tradition of leftist thinking and have proven their progressive mettle in many historical battles. You can bet they are not deluded on a mass scale.)

The socio-historical trends mentioned above (the doubling of the population, plus the mass migration from rural to urban areas, plus a much lowered rate of development of labor-employing industries) all add up to a huge number of buyers and sellers of lots of things, haggling constantly, hustling endlessly and, much more importantly, this has led to endemically excessive rates of part-employment and underemployment, creating a situation in which millions of people must weave at least two, three (at times more) jobs, just to keep their head above water, just to make a living. All of which becomes much more painful under hellish inflation rates, which shot up rapidly during Ahmadinejad’s rule.

Now add to that already socially heady mix the insults thrown in by a highly intrusive dictatorship that claims to hold power and authority over your most private acts even, and what you get is a lot of very hard working people who can get really pissed off very easily, and very quickly. Do you see where this is going?

Now, let’s bring it back to the elections. The situation in Iran has changed dramatically in the four years of Ahmadinejad’s presidency. The world in general has changed dramatically in four years. The economic situation in Iran has gotten far worse, not only because of Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement (which has no doubt had its effects), but also intensified by all the above-mentioned trends, plus the effects of the sanctions, and all of these within a worldwide depression of the last two years.

But, and this is important, the economic deterioration during Ahmadinejad’s first term occurred in a time of very high oil income for the government, making it more difficult to explain away the economic troubles as general results of the world depression. In the four years of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, Iranian state income was nearly twice as much (in oil revenues) as it was during Khatami’s eight years.

So, a majority of the Iranians were quite rightly very disillusioned with Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement. No amount of radical sounding rhetoric can hide these things. No wonder then that he felt compelled to hand out potatoes to the abject poor, to avert starvation. But his sacks of potatoes, or insurance for the rural poor, as welcome and necessary and popular as they are (even if they didn’t cover everybody in need), are mere Band-Aids on a shotgun wound after the horse was dead.

* * *

We come to the final element to be considered when providing a ‘class analysis’ of the Iranian political life: The most class-conscious, the most politically active of the Iranian working classes are by far the most anti-government. How do we know this? We know this because they invariably end up in jail.

It is interesting that articles claiming to be presenting a ‘class analysis’ completely ignore the significance of all the jailed labor leaders in Iran, and ignore the anti-labor posture consistently displayed by all governments in Iran’s modern history: that the current government is structurally anti-labor is well understood by those segments of Iran’s working classes not ideologically in the service of the regime.

Why else would the government bother imprisoning a mere bus driver, Mansoor Osanloo? (for his and others’ info, see here) How much of a political threat can a bus driver be? Them be shaky foundations, indeed, that tremble at the sight of organized bus drivers. Osanloo is the head of the bus drivers’ union in Tehran, and has been a political prisoner, in and out of jail (currently in) for the past five years. That’s just one example. There are lots more (and you can read about some of them (in Farsi) here and here; if you can’t read Farsi, find an Iranian friend).

The most organized of the working classes represent a significant portion of the class of people affected most deeply and painfully by a badly managed capitalist economy. This has political consequences. Vast numbers of Iranian working people have turned apathetic, and simply do not participate in the political machinations of the system. When they do participate in significant numbers, as was the case in these last elections, it is because they see a realistic chance for using the differences between the rulers for opposing the establishment candidate, and perhaps winning some concessions from this oppressive system; demands that are likely to inspire participation among the lower middle classes and the middle classes.

Incidentally, the so-called ‘middle classes’ are working classes. They are simply more likely to be the better educated, better paid part of the working classes. That’s all. The fact that the word ‘middle class’ was invented by Americans to suppress the perception of actual existence of classes in North America is something to be studied in its own place, but, as somebody said once, “A rose is a rose by any name.”

So the most fundamental distinction to bear in mind is that those segments of the working classes who do participate in the electoral process in Iran are by no means representatives of a homogenized class, and thankfully cannot automatically be assumed as representing all the working classes, all the peasants and all the poor.

Just like all other classes in Iran, the working classes are also divided in many ways: between believers (in theocracy) and secularists, between supporters of the system and opponents of the system, between the different camps of the system, and our working classes, too, contain large segments of non-participants and non-believers who occasionally like to show up and cast protest votes.

And another thing: Just because somebody is from the working class (in any country) does not mean they are universal angels, and whatever they exhale is divine. Remember that the European fascists’ most numerous support-base was among the working classes. And the American leftists should be well familiar with the phenomenon known as ‘Reagan Democrats’: i.e., white working class people who voted against their class interest.

* * *

The one crucial thing to bear in mind is that these ‘elections’ would not be called elections by anybody in the American left if those exact electoral procedures — complete with the allegiance to the Bible as the requirement to participate — were replicated in the US, overseen by a government run by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell (yes, back from dead) and their amalgamated gang of the American televangelists and their social support networks and vigilantes. If you can do the mental switch and still find that you have no problem participating in such Christian evangelist-conducted ‘elections’, then go ahead and call the Iranian ‘elections’ elections. Call it a horse, for all I care.

The reality is that the situation in Iran has by now moved beyond the technicalities of the electoral procedures; the Iranian people have forced the situation into one of a crisis of legitimacy for the regime.

The Iranian people sensed a deep fracture within the ruling establishment — something that was clearly expressed in astonishing language and tone in the televised-for-the-first-time live debates between the candidates — and they have seized their chance to use the divide between their rulers to their own advantage.

The people may have taken to the streets under the excuse of the elections, and may have been encouraged by the rhetoric of the ‘reformist’ camp in favor of some breathing room in the suffocating political and cultural atmosphere imposed on them, but they have forced the debate further. They are openly, and in millions across the country, questioning the legitimacy of the establishment, represented at the moment by Ahmadinejad. The people, in short, have moved beyond Mousavi and the reformists, but are still willing to go along with the tactics formulated by reformist leaders . . . for the moment.

We will see how things unfold. Most likely, a heavy hand is just around the corner, trying on some spiked gloves. For the time being, though, hundreds of thousands of people in Iran are opting not to ‘bite the bullet’ and move on, but to make a movement and, even, take bullets. A much more courageous stand that generates a lot more inspiration!

Salute!

So, let’s put things in some context.

The presidential elections of June 12 were held within a theocratic system. In this system, in order to run for a political office, candidates must swear allegiance to the theocratic setup. From its inception, therefore, the theocracy has divided the entire population into two major political groups: khodi (literally meaning ‘of us,’ those who support the theocracy) and the gheyre-khodi (the others). This is the exact language used, and participation in the elections are reserved purely for the benefit of the khodis (those who believe in the system), who have been divided into different camps from the beginning of the theocracy. In older days, they were split between the left wing, conservative and the pragmatist camps, and more recently the opposing factions have changed some of their tactics and underlying economic policies, and are organized into the ‘conservative’ and ‘reformist’ camps. Within each camp, there are further divisions.

Within this setup, I for one can state without qualifications that ‘elections’ cannot mean anything but a contest between candidates that are absolutely acceptable to a theocratic establishment. This, in turn, means that ALL elections, to varying degrees, are stolen elections, since the participation of a huge majority of Iranians as candidates, by the theocratic Constitution, has been preempted from way in advance. The right of participation in presidential elections in Iran, for the past three decades, has been stolen and securely put aside as the privilege of a tiny minority of men only.

* * *

Now, let’s look at the circumstances of these particular 2009 ‘elections’, bearing in mind again that the election process was and has always been un-free to begin with.

First, let’s look at one particular opinion poll that is claimed to have predicted a landslide win by Ahmadinejad: the poll taken by The Center for Public Opinion.

This poll, taken between May 11 and May 20, indicates 34% support for Ahmadinejad and 14% for Mousavi; Karrubi and Rezaee receive respectively 2% and 1%. However, 27% of those polled did not know whom they supported. Of those who ‘did not know,’ more than 60%, according to their answers to other questions, were characterized by the pollsters as ‘reformist minded.’ Further, 22% of the respondents are unaccounted for (apparently 15% refused to answer any questions, but the remaining 7% is unexplained). That brings the potential split between the two leading candidates at about 45% for Ahmadinejad and about 30% for Mousavi (discounting the 22% unaccounted).

Further, as the pollsters admitted when releasing their findings, the most likely scenario was, in their view, one in which a second round would be necessary, since they couldn’t see anybody having the potential to sweep the elections in the first round.

Another major factor ignored is that the opinion poll was conducted between May 11th and 20th. In politics, a lot happens in a three-week time period. The presidential campaigns (particularly of the ‘reformists’) really took off during the last three weeks, and particularly the last ten days of the campaign period. We know how opinion polls of equivalent elections in the U.S., for example, go on daily and hourly until the very last hours of campaigning. No such follow-up data were available here, and the most telling data (those from ‘the eve’ of the elections) are totally missing. Anybody observing the elections could see how much more raucous the campaigns got as the closing of the campaign period approached.

Now, I will not go into the veracity of the kind of knowledge you can get based on an opinion poll of a mere 1,001 people (220 of whom are unaccounted for) in a country with an eligible electorate of more than fifty-five million people.

Likewise, I won’t over-generalize my own paranoia about total strangers calling to ask very directed questions (even when it happens in the U.S.). But, I can easily imagine that if I were sitting in my living room in Iran and got a phone call from a total stranger claiming to be a pollster, I’d be very unlikely to give any truthful answers that might piss off somebody listening in on my phone conversation, a very realistic fear felt by just about everybody in Iran.

So, at least in my book, all the above considerations taken together mean that the actual numbers (of supporters for Mousavi and Ahmadinejad) must have been closer than suggested by the above opinion poll, meaning much closer than the 2-to-1 outcome in favor of Ahmadinejad. In the least, I can be sure that a ‘landslide’ was not a highly probable outcome.

But, we can also look at the behavior of the functionaries of the ruling class in Iran for better indications of whether or not ‘vote rigging’ took place.

Before the June 12 elections, both Karrubi and Mousavi drafted and proposed to the Guardian Council a set of additional protocols for assuring a clean process during the elections. Obviously they had realistic fears of fraud. But the Supreme Leader rejected the adoption of any extra precautions, insinuating that the election procedures were transparent enough as is, in effect chiding the two candidates for casting doubts on the cleanliness of the procedures already in place.

Some of the procedures, however, were in fact very faulty. According to reports, prior to the elections, “Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi sent a letter to Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, chair of the country’s powerful Guardian Council, citing discrepancies in the run-up to the election. According to the letter, the actual number of ballots printed for the first round of voting is 59.6 million, but the Interior Ministry officially says the number is 56 million.” (“Reformist candidates complain of too many ballots,” Inter Press Service, June 10, 2009) Meaning, there were at least a few million extra ballots hiding somewhere. Given that more than fifteen million eligible voters did not vote, that amounts to about eighteen million ballots that could be had fraudulently.

The same report also states: “Ali Akbar Mohtashami Pour and Morteza Alviri, of the Mousavi and Karroubi campaigns’ committees on poll supervision, also said that the number of electoral stamps circulating is ‘twice the number of polling sites plus 10 percent.’ These extra stamps were a particular worry since, it was argued, any attempted vote rigging could be organized, “through use of extra ballots and stamps and through use of additional boxes and mobile ballot boxes, especially as we have been informed that soldiers’ birth certificates have been collected at military bases.”

Also, from the above-cited IPS report: “Saeed Razavi Faghih, a spokesperson for the Karroubi campaign, told IPS, ‘Inviting the [pro-Ahmadinejad] Revolutionary Guard Corps to supervise ballot-box security instead of the police has raised serious doubts for us.’” And these were some of the red flags thrown up before the elections.

Other inconsistencies:

The Iranian filmmaker, Makhmalbaf, who worked with Mousavi’s campaign, in interviews to different news outlets, including BBC and Radio Farda, has claimed that Mousavi’s campaign received phone calls from interior ministry on the night of the election day informing them that they looked bound for victory, telling them they could go ahead with preparing their victory speech, but also asking them to not gloat too much, so as to not humiliate Ahmadinejad supporters. If Ahmadinejad were headed for a clear ‘landslide’, why would the interior ministry make such a phone call?

Another suspicious move was Ahmadinejad campaign’s statement on the night of the elections, declaring that his victory was supported by the other conservative candidate in the race, Mohsen Rezaee. The next day, however, it became clear that was the opposite of truth, as Rezaee came out expressing serious doubts about the announced results, and by Sunday (June 14th) he along with Mousavi filed a complaint with the Guardian Council (responsible for certifying election results), demanding that he wants to see the serial numbers for the ballots cast. He must know a thing or two about how you can get cheated. And again, this is Mohsen Rezaee we are talking about: a former head of the Revolutionary Guards, a staunch supporter of the theocratic system in Iran — no imperialist stooge.

Another irregularity was that, as per usual, the results were not certified (before being announced) by the Guardian Council, constitutionally recognized as the body responsible for overseeing the elections, for double checking all the ballots and announcing the official results, usually after a three-day period (to clear up any possible complaints).

What did happen was an announcement made by the Interior minister (not the Guardian Council) in a very hurried form, and despite the fact that there were loud complaints still unresolved regarding the elections just held. Subsequently, when reformist supporters took to the streets to express their outrage, more than a hundred reformist leaders were detained over the weekend.

The very loud and public objections voiced initially by Mousavi are now voiced by all three candidates who ran against Ahmadinejad. They are also joined by a large number of parliamentarians and groups of clerics, even in Qom, the most conservative of all theocratic bastions.

Given that within the already highly restrictive electoral procedures, the establishment’s conventional protocols were changed so much so that it has created such a large outcry, one is quite right to suspect something was done to tilt the results, in an unfair fashion, toward a pre-determined outcome.

So, it is certainly not the case that Mousavi, America’s candidate, and his middle class, designer-eyeglass-wearing supporters were the only ‘sore losers.’ A large part of the establishment is up in arms. Otherwise, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei would not have felt it necessary to issue a public statement insisting that the Guardian Council look ‘carefully’ into the allegations of vote fraud.

News reports are now saying that the Guardian Council will indeed look into the matter. According to PressTV, “The spokesman of Iran’s Guardian Council says the body will issue its ruling on the results of the country’s presidential elections within 10 days.”

* * *

Now, it is of course true that imperialist mainstream media have their own agenda and will take advantage of the situation on the streets of Iran. But, what is new there? All manner of media will (as they always do) look at any situation in Iran and agitate their respective audiences in whichever direction they please.

And we on the left also have to do our part in contextualizing the events. Just because the imperialist media are screaming foul, it does not mean that everything to do with the just-concluded ‘elections’ were A-OK. Also, the flip side is, I doubt very much that a large segment of the Iranian ruling theocrats are collaborating with the imperialists to overthrow themselves!

So, we need to see what is going on. I think to call it a soft-coup is actually more appropriate than to call it vote rigging. ‘Vote rigging’ has meaning when the election process is at least half-free; when explicit religious requirements are put upon candidates before they can even run for office, this does not meet the minimum requirements for an honest election process. What happens in Iranian elections is a very careful selection process, first carried out from above by the Guardian Council, followed by a vote-getting process, which approves one of the already selected.

So, ‘rigging’ votes is explicitly inscribed into the elections, period. A majority of the Iranian population is legally banned from running for the office of president (no women allowed, ever). I am therefore at a loss to see such a process as anything but fundamentally rigged.

Those on the Left in the U.S. who are screaming in defense of the ‘integrity’ of the elections in Iran, and talk about our duty to ‘respect the decision of the Iranian people’ assign unrealistic characteristics that do not exist in the Iranian elections.

I wonder how the U.S. Left would characterize any elections in America which, first and foremost, required of the candidates an explicitly avowed allegiance to the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ (with a particular denomination’s scriptures, mind you), and banned all women, all other religious tendencies, and ALL secularists from running for the post of president? The fact that the Left cannot mentally juxtapose the two situations points in my view to latent racism. The thinking is akin to absolute cultural relativism, which assumes that surely those rag-heads over in Eye-ran don’t mind a theocracy. “After all, it is in their culture!”

Well, it is not in our culture, and we do mind theocracy. The evidence of it is on the streets of Iran right now.

* * *

There is a history to remember here; the history of skin-shedding that this theocracy has witnessed. Here, I am not talking about all the thousands of the opposition members executed, or jailed and tortured or else chased away. I am talking about the internal purges.

One famous coup d’état against one of their own that took place very early in the life of the Islamic Republic occurred in June 1981, with the ‘impeachment’ of Banisadr, the first post-revolution president, by the parliament at Khomeini’s instigation. (Banisadr went underground and eventually escaped from Iran and currently lives in France) Later, in April 1982 there was a coup against Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, a close aid to Khomeini during his exile in France, and a foreign minister. He was accused of plotting to kill Khomeini and summarily executed.

There was also a famous coup against Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, one-time designated successor to Grand Ayatollah Khomeini for the position of Supreme Leader. Montazeri had both revolutionary and impeccable religious credentials (as a Grand Ayatollah, which is like a PhD in the field). Despite (because of?) his supremely high qualifications, he was causing constant headaches for the heads of the theocratic setup. In an interview published in Keyhan, “in early 1989, [Montazeri] criticized Khomeini in language that is said to have sealed “his political fate”:

The denial of people’s rights, injustice and disregard for the revolution’s true values have delivered the most severe blows against the revolution. Before any [post-war] reconstruction, there must first be a political and ideological reconstruction . . . This is something that the people expect of a leader.

Further, when after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, a massive wave of rushed political executions engulfed Iran’s political prison houses, Montazeri was among the most high-ranking critics of these mass killings. The Wikipedia entry for him explains further:

Still worse was the publication abroad and broadcast on BBC of [Montazeri's] letters condemning post-war wave of executions in March [1989]. Montazeri also criticized Khomeini’s fatwa ordering the killing of author Salman Rushdie, saying: “People in the world are getting the idea that our business in Iran is just murdering people.

By the end of March 1989, Khomeini had heard enough, and declared that Montazeri had ‘resigned’ from his position. Montazeri went off graciously asking his supporters to not utter a word in his support. Khamenei, at the time a mid-ranking Hojatoleslam (equivalent of an undergrad degree), was speedily promoted in religious ranks to an Ayatollah so as to qualify him for the position of vali-e faqih (guardian jurist), and that’s how the current Supreme Leader Khamenei got to be supreme.

We can conclude, then, that skin shedding, metamorphosis, periodical transformations and adaptations to the perceived conditions in the world are a systemic characteristic of the rulers of the Iranian theocracy.

The reason I say that a ‘coup’ is more appropriate to talk about than ‘vote rigging’ is because it’s more realistic. I think the government of Iran realizes that despite Obama’s reconciliatory gestures, the overall posture of the imperialists toward Iran has not changed fundamentally, so they don’t view this as a time to lower their guards.

The system, as it is, cannot be reformed without some major pain. The most basic reforms of any kind and magnitude would open up a wide spectrum of socio-political spheres that need serious reconsideration. More importantly, any reform of the existing constitution will eventually have to be approved first by the Guardian Council (a non-elected, appointed body), and eventually by the Supreme Leader. This means, that unless the post of the Supreme Leader, along with any structures standing above the parliament, are abolished (in effect, destroying the system), all attempts at ‘reform’ will remain highly moot.

So, from the regime’s point of view, it is best that any talk of ‘reforms’ stop for the time being (if not forever), so that the state can concentrate on more existential worries. Hence, the speedy announcement of the results, since it was already decided what was to be the outcome.

That is how I can understand the ‘rigged elections’ that put an end to the hopes of the ‘reformers’ and approved the continuation of the Ahmadinejad presidency. All of this, of course, may change with the deliberations of the Guardian Council, although the overturning of the elections’ outcome is not very likely.

Completely missing from Keller’s piece and many other pieces in the US mainstream media (and liberal magazines like the Nation) is any genuine attempt to analyze both the class nature of the different candidate’s supporters and the role Washington plays in the media’s perception of Iranian politics. Keller’s most honest analytical statement in his entire piece: “Saturday was a day of smoldering anger, crushed hopes and punctured illusions, from the streets of Tehran to the policy centers of Western capitals.” Keller and his fellow journalists accept that the desires of Western capitals, especially Washington, should be important to Iranians. While this may certainly be the case among a small number of the intelligentsia and business community in Iran, the fact is that the West, especially Washington, is still not very popular among the Iranian masses. Not only are they aware of decades of western intervention in their affairs, the fact that thousands of US troops continue to battle forces in two of Iran’s neighbors makes Washington unwanted and detested. Why should they do anything to please it? Yet, in the minds of the US news media, it is Washington’s needs that dominate all discussion.

As for the class analysis. Rightly or wrongly, Ahmadinejad seems to appeal to the majority of peasants and workers in Iran. Just like Marat and the Jacobins appealed to the peasants and urban poor during the French revolution while Brissot and the Girondins appealed to the merchants and educated classes, Ahmadinejad’s support comes from those who need bread while Moussavi’s comes from those with plenty of bread and now want more civil liberties. While it is arguably true that Ahmadinejad’s policies have caused as many economic policies as they have solved, the fact remains that his supporters believe in his 2005 campaign call to bring the oil profits to the dinner table. Mr. Moussavi’s statements regarding the eventual reduction of commodity subsidies that benefit the poor may have hurt him in that demographic more than his supporters acknowledge. In a Washington Post article published the day before the election, it was noted (along with the fact that Ahmadinejad won the 2005 election with a “surprising” 62% of the vote) that his economic policies included the distribution of “loans, money and other help for local needs.” One of these programs involved providing insurance to women who make rugs in their homes and had been without insurance until Ahmadinejad came to power. Critics, including Moussavi, argue that his “free-spending policies have fueled inflation and squandered windfall petrodollars without reducing unemployment.” There are other elements at play here, including the fabled corruption of certain unelected leaders in Iran and the role the international economic crisis plays in each and every nation’s economy–a factor from which Iran is not immune. In addition, the particular nature of an Islamic economy that blends government and private business creates a constant conflict between those who would nationalize everything and those who would privatize it all.

In regards to what this means for relations between Washington and Tehran–they will continue down whatever path Mr. Obama wishes them to go. Tel Aviv, which criticized the election results, would not have changed its desire to quash Tehran no matter who won. Indeed, the fact that Ahmadinejad was re-elected makes it easier for Tel Aviv to continue demonizing the only genuine threat to its dominance of the region. The bottom line, however, is that the president of Iran really has no power in the course Iranian foreign policy takes. That power remains with the Council of Guardians and the legislature. Mr. Obama would do well to continue his attempts to negotiate without conditions. He would also be wise to end any covert activity against the Iranian government currently being conducted. The western media would do well to inform themselves on the real nature of Iranian politics and society instead of taking the viewpoint that what’s best for Washington is best for Tehran. Then again, that media should consider the non-Washington viewpoint in all of its international coverage.

For the left, the answer is clear. The situation in Iran has changed. The apparent popularity of Moussavi and other officially reocgnized reformers showed this before the election. The dispute over the truth of the election results proves this even further. However, neither Ahmadinejad or Moussavi represent a genuine move away from the power of the bazaar class and its appointed clerical council. The desire for more civil freedoms must be coordinated with the need for economic justice. Both of these aspirations seem to be currently at odds. It seems apparent that only a leftist movement is capable of bringing the two together in a nation divided between its cities and its countryside;its middle class and its workers and rural dwellers. This was the case prior to the takeover of the Iranian revolution by socially conservative religious forces in 1980 and it could be the case again.

The EP cannot be dismissed as irrelevant, as many hasty commentators tend to claim. This perception is also widespread among the people, who tend to consider European institutions, including the EP, as dark venues for technocrats who are only interested in rubbish, like determining what the maximum size of eggplants should be. Such claims, it should be said, are sometimes not too far from the truth. European institutions and mechanisms are difficult to grasp, even for experts. As members of the Commission are mostly technocrats and the Commission enjoys the exclusive right to introduce bills, and the EP does not have an exclusive role in the decision-making process, but shares it with the Council and deals with issues that in most cases are economic and commercial, and popular control is very feeble due to the lack of a real European public opinion, EU institutions are prey to lobbies of all sorts. The European Community and European Union are two distinct but somehow overlapping entities. European institutions have developed over time through the approval of various, complicated treaties. The European Constitutional Treaty, which has, however, never been ratified, was a monstrous entity consisting of hundreds of pages and articles, which incorporated the previous treaties.

Now, it is true that the EP is dissimilar from classic Parliaments (for example, MPs do not have the right to introduce bills within the assembly, as only the European Commission can do it), and that it does not have a say on each and every issue. Nevertheless, the EP has been constantly expanding its powers, following the drafting of several pan-European treaties. However, the highest expression of its (rather limited) powers is the approval of the EU budget, although the EP has the last word on non-compulsory spending, whereas the Council (made up of Ministers from each member State, who shift depending on the issue under discussion: for example, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council consists of all the Economic and Finance ministers in Europe), which could be quite incorrectly considered as some sort of German-style Upper House, has the last word on compulsory spending, that is, all the expenses resulting from European treaties, and is therefore the most important part of the budget. However, it is also true that some three-quarters of EU issues are decided through the co-decision procedure, which means that a bill (a term that might sound incorrect, as binding EU legislation does not consist of Acts of Parliament, but, rather regulations and directives) has to be passed by both the Council and the EP. EU legislation is directly applicable all over the Union, in the case of regulations and detailed directives, or needs to be given execution through state legislation, in the case of directives. EU legislation is therefore binding on member States and their citizens, and prevails over clashing State legislation, just like federal law prevails over state laws in the US. It has been estimated that between 70 and 80 percent of all member states’ legislation is decided upon at the European level. Thus, it is undeniable that the role of the EP, and the European Union in general, is crucial.

The European Constitutional Treaty, in addition to making the Nice Charter of fundamental rights part of the acquis communautaire, amongst other things, would have also conferred upon the EP the power to appoint the President of the Commission. However, as unanimous ratification of the treaty was required, its rejection in popular referenda in France and Holland brought the process to a halt. The ensuing Lisbon Treaty, a different version of the Constitutional Treaty that was drafted after the negative referenda, expanded the co-decision procedure, thus giving the popular assembly a say on further matters. The Treaty, however, was rejected in Ireland in June 2008. A new referendum is due to take place during the upcoming fall. Still, the EP already enjoys very relevant powers.

Why, then, is Europe seen as a far-away entity? Why do political leaders spurn the EP, and stick with State assemblies? Would a US politician, for example, give up his seat at the federal Congress for one, say, at the New York State Lower House? Why did only 43 percent of the voters show up in polling stations (with lows, in States like Slovakia, of 20 percent), when, normally, in state Parliamentary elections, even when voting is not compulsory (as is the case of Belgium), no less than 70-75 percent of the people go to the polls? And, finally and more importantly, as this will define EU policies for the next few years, why did these few voters severely punish the Socialists and the Left in general, with the exception of the Green party, and rewarded Conservatives and extreme right-wing, quasi-Fascist xenophobic parties?

All these elements are certainly linked. Although the EP enjoys relevant powers, it nonetheless does not have any say on those fundamental issues that make the headlines on papers and ignite widespread political debate, that is, a common foreign and economic/fiscal policy. These remain local, although some sort of coordination, or at least talks among States exists. The events preceding the Iraqi war are a clear example: part of Europe, notably Germany and France, which Donald Rumsfeld defiantly termed as “Old Europe”, sided together against the intervention; and then Britain, Italy, Spain and most of the new Eastern members, despite widespread popular opposition, joined the US in its mad Iraqi effort. The EU has a High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, who is nevertheless tasked with not much more than a coordinating role. He is no minister, of course.

The Constitutional Treaty provided for the creation of a “Union foreign minister”, a name that gave many the shivers, especially the British; the Lisbon treaty changed that name back to “High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy”. In the end, the substance does not change: the coordinating role would be strengthened, but the typically “diplomatic” name shows what the reality is: all foreign affairs decisions, and only for issues included in the treaties, are made unanimously, and EU member States preserve their sovereignty and do as they wish, as in Iraq. There is no common army, nor common embassies. Just coordination. If there has always been little hope of achieving a common foreign policy due to British opposition, this proves practically impossible now after the entry of euroskeptical, pro-US ultras in the East (although, it must be said, all euroskepticism vanishes when it comes to cashing in European funds). This adds to immigration policies. Passports have the same color, but they are issued by member States (although it says European Union on the cover). Short-term visas are common for the Schengen area (which means that if you intend to go to France, then Germany and England, for example, you’ll need two different visas), but long-term ones are issued by Member States. Only EU citizens are allowed to move to another member State and work there; the same does not apply to foreign residents. However, there is no such thing as a “European citizenship”: you are an EU citizen if you are a citizen of a Member State. Decisions on the granting/loss of citizenships are still made at the state level. All States act selfishly with regard to immigration: when illegal immigrants are found on a State’s territory, the first goal of State authorities is trying to understand whether they came from some other Member State, in order to send the immigrant back there. When immigrants come by sea, quarrels between member States over who should send ships to save these people before their boat sinks, and land them for identification, take place almost daily (Italy and Malta being, for obvious reasons, the most contentious ones). In particular, Italy, after recently signing an agreement with Libya, where immigrants are normally tortured and raped, has adopted a policy of direct repulsion. This means that people are not even landed: they are taken from their boats and embarked on Italian military ships, and then carried back to Lybia, where they are likely to be incarcerated for years, whatever their nationality, age, sex, thus without even verifying whether they are entitled to political asylum. Europe, though officially protesting against this practice, silently applaudes. In the end, no matter what one thinks of immigration policies, in this case as well each State is on its own. The lack of a common policy dealing with what happens around Europe does not help.

The crisis has helped deepen these xenophobic feelings, which are directed also at fellow Europeans, not necessarily Asians or Africans. The lack of a common response to the crisis has made things worse. Last January, “British jobs for British workers” became a widespread slogan at the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire, an economically depressed area of Britain , where construction jobs had been regularly awarded to Portuguese and Italian workers: the typical war among the poor. The lack of a common European response to the crisis can only result in such episodes. And the reason why there is no common response is not just nationalism and selfishness but, above all, the lack of legal instruments to pursue a common economic policy.

The Euro-zone (therefore, only those member States that have adopted the Euro as their currency) has a common monetary policy, which is decided upon by the European Central Bank, located in Frankfurt. The ECB decides on interest rates. However, the ECB represents the den of monetarism in Europe. Modelled on the German Bundesbank, its main concern is price stability. Therefore, this “philosophical” approach resulted, before the economic crisis, in the constant growth of interest rates in order to keep inflation at bay. This, however, made loans and mortgages more expensive, thus heavily affecting people’s everyday life, especially the millions of Europeans with variable-rate mortgages. The monetarist approach is also well visible in the Stability Pact, which provides that each State’s annual budget deficit should be no higher than 3 percent of GDP, and the national debt lower than 60 per cent of GDP or close to that value. This has tied the hands of many European governments, due to the massive size of their national debts (Italy represents the perfect example, with a national debt equivalent at the moment to 113 percent of the GDP and growing). The fact that interest rates are now around 1 percent should not fool anybody: as soon as the crisis is over, the Central Bank will start pushing interest rates up one more time.

A common monetary policy alone is not enough, however. The EU does not have a common economic policy: each Member State has been pouring money into its own economy, in different amounts. The crisis has struck very badly in Spain , which based its recent growth on a real estate bubble that has, obviously, burst (unemployment is now 18 percent). Ireland and Greece have also been hit with particular violence. “Healthier” Western Member States have refused to bail out the crisis-devastated Eastern part of the Union. Last 22 February, European G20 members decided, during a summit in Berlin, to entrust the IMF with the bailout of Eastern Europe. What this means is obvious: IMF policies will have to be enforced in Eastern members, with the obvious, notorious effects. No need to repeat them here, as they are well known.

Also, there is no common taxation system. States like Ireland and Latvia based their impressive growth on fiscal dumping, as most of Eastern Europe. As chance would have it, the crisis has been more violent wherever deregulation and laissez fair had been brought to the extreme. The response, however, has not been European: it has been local.

Thus, if the European Union does not have those powers which typically characterize a sovereign country, and these powers remain within state Parliaments, it is obvious that well-known political leaders will rather keep their office in their home States (unless the aim is getting rid of them, as when Romano Prodi’s candidacy to the presidency of the European Commission was strongly hyped by the Italian ruling center-left coalition after his resignation as Prime Minister). If European politicians are therefore a bunch of complete unknowns, dealing with policies which deeply affect the people, but are not at first as visible and are not given coverage in the media as the ones state Parliaments deal with, will the people discuss European matters? Will a European public opinion ever arise? Will European issues be part of the electoral campaign? The answer can only be no, and the issue, as it is clear, is not only linguistic. Indeed, European electoral campaigns mostly concentrate on local issues; and European elections are a test for political parties or coalitions ruling a specific Member State, especially when state parliamentary elections are near (like in Germany, where the Bundestag will be renewed on 29 September). Perhaps, the only party that based its electoral campaign entirely on European issues was the French Green Party, which won an astounding 18 percent of votes. Low turnouts are the result of such apathy, and prove that disaffection with the EU is constantly growing. Paradoxically, the highest turnout was at the first EP election, in 1979, when the turnout was 63 percent, a rate that has been constantly diminishing. Nowadays, perhaps, the only cases when the people talk about Europe are when referenda for the ratification of treaties are held in Member States. In those cases, turnouts tend to be higher.

As said, disaffection is growing. It is growing, because in the past there was, especially in Member States like Italy and Germany, widespread enthusiasm about this project. Now, after having achieved a common currency, it is not clear what Europe is, nor what it will become. Europe ’s institutions appear stalled. The balance was very unstable when members were fifteen. Opening to Eastern members without a previous reform and strengthening of institutions has been a terrible, tragic mistake. What is clear, however, is Europe’s obsession with competition, deregulation, high interest rates and cuts to social spending, and its subjugation to the United States and Israel on most foreign policy issues (that is, States go on their own and cannot build a common policy, but Europe as a whole gets the blame). What is clear is that leftist parties are far too often hardly distinguishable from conservative ones, both locally as well as at the European level. One typical example is the bipartisan approval of the Bolkestein directive, although in a watered-down version. The original version aimed to create a common market of services, and, in doing so, created the “country of origin principle”, according to which a company or individual may provide services in another Member State on the grounds of the laws of its country of establishment/origin, and without registering with the regulators in the host Member State. That would have obviously created social dumping, especially in the case of citizens of States with more lax labor laws operating in States with more stringent ones. The principle has been left over, although no “country of destination principle” has replaced it, and therefore it will be up to the European Court of Justice to determine jurisprudentially which labor laws should be applied in specific cases.

The Left is usually deeply affected by abstentionism. That explains the collapse of the Socialists, who have tumbled from 27.6 percent to 21.9 percent of votes, thus going from 194 to 159 seats (although it should be said that the seats available for this election were 736 instead of 785 of the previous election). This has been particularly true where the economic crisis has been more violent, like in Spain; where the leadership has long been compromised, as in Britain; where the Socialists have had a subordinate role and have endorsed centrist policies, as in Germany; or where their opposition to the ruling party or coalition is completely insubstantial, in particular because of internal divisions, as in France and Italy. Not strangely, the least damaged Socialist parties have been the Scandinavian ones. Even the scandal-ridden Socialist Party in Greece was the most voted party, due to the disastrous management of the economic crisis and the countless scandals of the ruling conservative party.

Conservatives, however, won in all major EU member States, which was perhaps due more to the weakness of Socialist parties than the strength of conservatives. Italy continues to represent a pathological anomaly in Europe, where a completely unsubstantial opposition is opposed to the Prime Minister’s unlimited control of the media.

As it is normal in a time of crisis, right-wing, xenophobic parties won support in many sectors of the population, particularly Geert Wilders’ Dutch far-right Freedom Party (PVV) (17 percent of votes, second party in Holland behind the Christian-Democrats). Also, the Italian Northern League confirmed its strength, and in Austria two anti-immigrant far-Right parties won an unprecedented 17.7 percent of the vote. The far-Right Danish People’s Party won two seats and 14.4 per cent of votes. Hungary’s far-Right Jobbik won three seats for the first time. Britain even elected Nick Griffin, the leader of the (Fascist) British National Party. All these parties have a least common denominator: no to the EU; no to foreigners; no to Islam; no to Turkey in the EU.

The extreme Left basically held and lost a few seats, although votes were widely dispersed when separate lists were presented, such as in France or, even worse, in Italy (at least 8 percent of votes were disgracefully wasted on three separate lists, none of which was able to reach the 4 percent threshold). Amidst this leftist disaster, the Greens have enjoyed great success, increasing their seats from 42 to 52, probably a sign of stronger environmental awareness on the part of Europeans.
Now, what future expects Europe? The economic crisis is expected to deepen, and this will certainly exacerbate nationalism and xenophobia. War is luckily a bygone possibility, a thing of the past. Protectionism is often invoked, but it is not a possibility, especially when we consider that Europe exports massively abroad. There is only one possibility for Europe: sticking together, and talking with one voice. But it has to be the voice of the people, rather than lobbies and monetarism. In a sense we are together, but what degree of unity do we want? Is what we have now satisfactory? Are we afraid of a European federation? Europeans are probably afraid of this Europe, an amorphous entity incapable of making decisions, especially when it matters, as well as standing up to the world’s superpowers when it comes to defending the values that have characterized most Europeans for the past 50 years: in particular, a belief in the active role of government and social safeguards for the mitigation of social inequalities stemming from capitalism (what the Germans call “social market economy); a belief in human rights; the awareness of the importance of defending the environment as well as protecting typical local products and producers; and a faith in multipolarism and in peace amongst nations and the refusal of war as an instrument to solve international disagreement. Allowing extraordinary renditions on Europe’s territory, backing the bombing of Gaza uncritically, pushing the economy towards the Anglo-Saxon model, trying to standardize those local products Europeans have been making for thousands of years, are just few examples of the things Europeans do not want and today’s EU is doing. A stronger Parliament and the creation of a real government would help Europeans become more European, while still preserving their differences when they should be preserved, and better defend popular interests as common policies in the aforementioned fields would lead to higher transparency and more in-depth debates at the European level. The extreme Left as well as the Socialists could have an important role in this, in proposing a different idea of Europe. But when the Left apes the Right, voters will punish the former and vote for the original version (the latter). Let us hope the Left has grasped the lesson this parliamentary election has taught.

Most definitely, these are superficial likenesses, but they could also point to deeper parallels. For one, both political systems protect and prolong the rule of an absolute minority. Another deep similarity is that in both political setups, exclusively for the participation of the ruling elites (no matter how many factions they come in), a certain level of ‘democracy’ (meaning here, tolerance) is institutionally allowed/required.

Now to the superficial similarities. In these presidential elections, Iranians have a ‘candidate of change’ (yes, literally the same slogan) in the person of Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Now, this is very interesting, since Mir-Hossein Mousavi, currently a member of the ‘reformist’ camp in Iran, was the prime minister (when the post existed) from 1981 to 1989. Back then he was a member of the ‘left wing’ due to his advocacy for a state run economy. Nowadays, he has changed indeed and supports all manner of privatization (as do all ‘reformers’).

Mousavi’s premiership coincided with the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), during which his economic management carried the country through very rough times. Among other innovations, he introduced the coupon system that made sure everybody received the minimum ration of needed nutrients during those hard times.

Mousavi’s premiership also coincided with the bloodiest period of post-revolutionary internal violence against the people in Iran. Not only was the country engulfed in a World War I-type of high-fatality military conflict for eight years (which required active-to-the-point-of-forceful recruiting of people to send to the fronts), the new regime was also going through its consolidation; a period that has historically included eradication of internal opponents. During this period, thousands of dissidents were jailed, tortured and executed in summary executions after phony ‘trials’.

In one ominous event, at the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq war, in the summer of 1988, according to human rights organizations in and outside Iran, between two and five thousand political prisoners were summarily executed. Among the executed were some who had served their sentences, or could qualify for early release. But, in a deliberate move to ‘clean up’ the political prisons, the government (headed partly by Mousavi) pushed for rushed executions of thousands of these prisoners.

Beside Mousavi’s ‘Elections for Change’ slogan that mirrors Obama’s, another interesting parallel is how Mousavi is situating himself to breach some of the divide between the so-called reformists with the conservatives; just like Obama promising to represent the Democrats and Republicans (not necessarily all the people, mind you).

In elaborate speeches, Mousavi has been mesmerizing university audiences thirsting for anything other than stale lectures filled with long quotations from Koran in Arabic verse, which most people don’t understand, riddled with militant-sounding speechifying typical of the ideological conservatives. Mousavi has been spreading the news that, unlike others, he believes that ‘principled orthodoxy’ (osool-geraa’ee) and ‘reformism’ are but two sides of the same coin, and both are needed for an Islamic society to thrive in the modern world. He calls himself a ‘conservative reformer’ or a ‘reformist conservative’, and does not care which particular way you say it. Mousavi, the ‘change candidate’, is the ‘reformist’ candidate with the biggest following supposedly, and with the best chance of ousting the incumbent president Ahmadinejad.

Another trend that has traveled well across the oceans is the ‘Anybody But’ phenomenon. This year, it finally reached our shores, and we now have the much awaited, ‘Anybody but Ahmadinejad!’ In many ways, he is Iran’s George W. Bush. Just as much as Bush was hated by all but the most dedicated American right-wingers, Ahmadinejad is hated by all but the most dedicated Iranian right-wingers (the Basiji’s and the Revolutionary Guards).

And just like George Bush Jr., Ahmadinejad is un-liked so thoroughly that he has split the Iranian conservatives. There are as many (if not more) conservatives against him as there are for him; hence, the decision by another conservative, Mohsen Rezaee, a former Revolutionary Guards chief commander, to run for the presidency in these elections. Some other bigwig conservatives who have chosen to distance themselves from Ahmadinejad include: Ali Larijani (former chief nuclear negotiator), Mohammad Reza Bahonar (first deputy speaker of Majles), and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (current Tehran mayor).

Indeed, Ahmadinejad is so not-liked by some conservatives, that he has driven some to the ‘reformist’ camp, presumably to assure Ahmadinejad’s ouster. According to reports, “some major figures in the conservative/principlist camp, led by Mr. Emad Afrough, the Tehran deputy to the 7th Majles (the parliament), announced the formation of a committee in support of Mr. Mousavi.”¹

In short, just like Bush Jr., Ahmadinejad is too much of a divider, does not play well with others, is an anti-unifier of first degree, and that has become a source of deep worry in the Iranian elite establishment.

Naturally all this has really pissed off the Bush-like incumbent, who is just as testy with criticism, and he’s been getting it non-stop for his entire presidency, and with particular vigor during the past few months. In his first nationally televised debate with his ‘reformist’ rival candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the sitting president and candidate Ahmadinejad seemed to have opted for an all-out accusatory posture against all three candidates running against him, claiming, “I am not just running against one candidate. I am opposed by all three candidates,” intoning victimhood.

Of course, he is a fighter and vowed to continue his fight (to paraphrase him) for people and against an unjust gang of about 150 or so people, who, for the 24 years before his administration, controlled the government and tried to establish themselves as autocratic overlords, deciding what’s good for the country and for the people and what’s not good for them, and slowly yet deliberately derailing the Iranian society from the righteous path set by Imam Khomeini (bless his bygone soul), until the will of the people intervened in 2005 and put him, Ahmadinejad, at the helm of the country in order to correct the path of the state, to expose the corruption, and to redirect the country to the path of justice and equality.

The ‘reformists’, though, are not about to let go of a historic opportunity to fool the public in their own fashion, yet again. The ‘reformists’ are (and this is the other silly similarity) the Iranian ‘lesser evils’, and they seem to have sensed that the ‘Anybody but Ahmadinejad’ is putting enough wind in their sails.

[Note: In a constitution that bans from public life any and all political parties not explicitly vowing allegiance to an Inquisition-type theocracy, it is impossible to identify 'elections' as anything but an opportunity to examine different degrees of political meanness. What we have there is a clear, unadulterated case of a cyclical, meaningless 'choice' that comes around every so often between really bad and much worse.]

Be that as it is, a spectacle, especially a political one, can be appreciated by the peoples of many a different country, for any number of reasons. The accusations the politicians throw at each other reveal quite a lot. Likewise, claims made of extravagant successes could be quite entertaining to hear and read about. The more divisive political things look, in short, the more thrilling; especially for the endemically powerless. Participation can indeed be considered tempting, especially when the powerful are visibly squirming in their seats, begging to be voted in. To feel, even for a moment, that you really matter is a powerful opiate, on which politicians of all colors bank on.

Where Ahmadinejad has made loud claims of victory — e.g., pushing forth Iran’s nuclear program — the ‘reformists’ hit back with the assertion that the nuclear program started some 25 years ago (when the ‘reformist’ candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, was the prime minister), and that Ahmadinejad should stop pretending as if he was the sole creator of the nuclear program.

Where the ‘reformists’ have piled on the accusations of economic mismanagement, Ahmadinejad has hit back with (I’m paraphrasing here): “It does not take a mere four years to be in such economic mess. Did it all just start with my government? Was there no unemployment before my government? Was there no inflation? Was I handed a spotless Garden of Eden created by you (Mousavi) and your reformist colleagues, which has now turned into ruins?”

As for some of the foreign policy ‘victories’ claimed by Ahmadinejad, the ‘reformists’ point to Iran’s pariah status in some diplomatic circles, to Ahmadinejad’s unnecessarily inflammatory rhetoric regarding the Jewish Holocaust, as well as to his adventurous overtures to leftist Latin American leaders in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba. (Funny how readily Ahmadinejad buddies up to and has official dinners with leftist leaders abroad, yet the leftists who are unfortunate enough to be living inside Iran, should they dare speak up for anything, invariably end up in jail!)

Reformists, like good politicians and clerics anywhere, adept at sophism (safsateh), know a thing or two about electioneering rhetoric, and they definitely know a thing or two about sinister moves. So, they confidently object to Ahmadinejad’s ‘wild behavior’ and question why, instead of venturing across the globe to Latin America in search of glory, could not Ahmadinejad have been repairing/building more pragmatic regional connections and cooperation? And instead of over-vehemently beating his chest in defense of the dignity of the people of Gaza, the ‘reformists’ counter that he should have been paying more attention to the country’s economy and the sullied dignity of the Iranian people subjected to a direction-less Ahmadinejad government that only knows how to blow hot air, and not how to attend to people’s real needs.

It must be admitted, having watched the debate between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, this particular presidential debate was way more interesting to watch than the American ones I have suffered through, all filled with quasi-elaborations over sweet nothings and lock-jawed stabs clothed in self-righteous slick remarks.

It is very interesting for sure to hear a sitting president openly accusing all the administrations prior to him, all 24 years of them, of corruption, and to claim that he has documents proving this charge, and to promise that, if reelected, he would bring all the wrongdoers to justice and return all the looted wealth back to the public treasury.

Such open accusations, effectively condemning the entire governing structure, surely cannot be tolerated for too long by any ruling elite. Ahmadinejad’s major problem is that, though he really is clearly telling the truth (not the bit about the ‘150 people dominating everything’ part, but the general truth) about the deeply corrupt nature and reality of the Iranian state, he himself is part and product of that state.

Ahmadinejad’s electoral problems, though, have less to do with ‘the truth’ and more with practical reality: besides the ideological armed forces of the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards, his urban social base is not numerous enough, especially given that the structural deformities of the Iranian economy prevent any president working within the current capitalist setup in Iran to deliver much needed economic relief to the Iranian lower working classes, to the unemployed or under-employed, and to the abject poor.

As a result, those outside the ideological armed forces, who were previously persuaded by his promises of economic equality, are mostly disillusioned with his presidency and unlikely to give him much enthusiastic support. It may be this very fact that compels him to grasp at whatever straws are at hand, and promise retribution against those allegedly stopping his efforts to help the people. That, at least, seems to be his story and he is not letting go of it. This, in hopes of energizing people who are outraged by lack of economic relief, and in hopes of getting them fired up enough to vote him into office, once more. And, besides, who knows how clean the elections are anyway?

As spectacles go, I’d say this one has shaped up to be quite entertaining so far. The sad truth, though, is that a majority of people in Iran would not find it funny at all. For those who are planning on voting this time around, claiming that this is THE MOST IMPORTANT election EVER in Iran (something that was claimed on the occasion of previous elections), these elections and the ouster of Ahmadinejad, or his reelection, is dead serious. And for those who are disenfranchised in Iran, a majority, the farce presented as ‘elections’ is as deadly serious as severe heartache, blood and tears.

1. ”The Hard-Liners in a Panic.”