Iran Election Wrap Up – Moon of Alabama

June 26, 2009

Iran Election Wrap Up

It seems the Iranian election is now officially decided:

"After 10 days of examination, we did not see any major irregularities," Guardians Council spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai told the state IRNA news agency, rejecting opposition allegations that have brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets.

"We have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had. I can say with certainty that there was no fraud in this election."

Well – who to believe? Unless we see some real proof of fraud I am content to believe that there was none.

The result is disappointing for the millions who voted for Mousavi and took to the streets in those big demonstrations. Pat Lang predicts:

I think there is likely to be a sine curve of resistance that fluctuates between relative quiet and street action. This will eventually either eliminate this [ruling] clique or cause a massive change in its policies.

I am not so sure. The last days' street action were mostly youth riots that can be seen on and off again in any normal state and with the usual outcome. They are no danger to the government.

Most Iranian people, after thinking through the issue in calm, will probably also wonder about the absence of any proof for fraud. So there is a chance that this really may quiet down. Some changes in Ahmadinejad's policies could help too. It will be interesting to see what modifications he will make in his cabinet.

To prevent a repeat of such protest, Iran should try to make the election process even more transparent. Publishing the local results immediately after the local counts are done by hanging them out at the front of each election place would certainly help to bring more clarity. Then, when the central tally is made and publish together with all local results on a website and in newspapers, everyone can compare and recalculate the totals.

We still do not know how much the whole protest was initiated from the outside. Those $475 million of U.S. government money invested into regime change in Iran certainly had some effects we may never learn about. What is certain is that official 'western' propaganda media like BBC Farsi and Voice of America's Farsi service did their very best to prepare and support the election fraud claims in Iran. In parallel the general 'western' mass media followed that claim to influence the 'western' public mind. Their lockstep has reached an amazing perfection that Hitler's best troops would have been proud of.

This week has been bad for Iran's international image in the 'west', but overtime the public will forget the issue. Therefore the people who want to attack Iran are preparing a new campaign. Lang again:

The war parties in the US and Israel have taken up a new propaganda theme. They are now saying that a "military coup" by the IRGC and other "radicals" has taken place and that the resulting regime is no longer under the influence and control of the Shia 'ulema. The new theme insists that the new "coup junta" symbolically headed by Khamenei is even more dangerous and more likely to rashly use nuclear weapons as an expression of their lunacy.

This is an obvious attempt to twist the situation in the best agitprop tradition for the purpose of obtaining American popular consensus for war against Iran.

Ahmadinajad is a fool and he will undoubtedly play into the hands of the propagandists.

Lang knows the neocons, but I am not so sure about his judgment about Ahmadinejad. Ahmedinejad is first and foremost a smart politician. Iran has term limits and he can not be reelected as president. He now has no pressing need to keep up the vote winning rhetoric he used over the last years. I expect him to now take a much calmer and more realist rhetoric approach towards international issues.

MoA has seen a lot of comments on the Iran election issue. I am really proud of all your comments even when, in the heat of the discussions, some drifted too much towards personal accusations. The various threads and discussion certainly gave room for everyone to look at every side of the issue. What counts in the end are facts. Opinions can be derived from those. In my personal view Arnold Evans' conclusion is very fact based and his opinion will likely survive historic scrutiny.

To the people of Iran: I wish the very best for you. I hope your wounds, partly deepend by outer interference, will heal fast. Stay proud and confident in your abilities and independence.

Posted by b on June 26, 2009 at 16:24 UTC | Permalink

Comments

If you’re are trying to insult me, my knowledge or my religion at least give it the slothrop go and use a bit of prose or some really bad-assed lingo…
No. Not trying to insult you. I guess i’m just jaded and desensitized by all the shallow atheism that masquerades as wisdom and superiority out there.
Yes, the Abrahamic religions have a bad habit of saying “go out and kill the unbeliever”. But there are quite a few religions out there that preach pacificism, or at the very least non-violence: Buddhism comes first to mind, Baha’i and Sufism also, and then various sects of Christianity (Quakers, Shakers, Mennonites, various esoteric and monastic orders, etc.). I’m sure there are others.
I didn’t mean to pounce upon you, there. I just defaulted to my curt tone when i sensed a vast over-generalization being made about something that deserves a kinder estimation.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 27 2009 17:49 utc | 101

All we have to back up the claim of “intention” is a comment made by Feith that he didn’t care. Furthermore, there was no advantage for occupying forces to permit the looting.
Bullshit.
Kickbacks, kickbacks, kickbacks.
Military personnel are highly stratified, and a commanding officer of any section can authorize a great deal simply by turning a blind eye and assigning troops elsewhere.
Those antiquities were looted and then immediately flown out of the region, either smuggled out on military planes or on private jets in neighboring countries.
Either way, the US bears responsibility. Simply claiming that there isn’t any evidence the US was involved isn’t enough; it was its responsibility — legally, morally, and academically — to guarantee the safety of those human treasures.
Begging off with a shitty little Pentagon lie is beneath you, sloth.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 27 2009 17:53 utc | 102

I fully agree with you, David, China_Hand has become a really puerile jackass.
For that, you have yourself to thank, Parviz.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 27 2009 17:56 utc | 103

tangerine
what i have said – given the relatively small numbers of this movement in real terms – it can actually synthesise into a civil rights movement movement that can actually be absorbed within iranian jurisprudence. i do not think that is an outlandish claim
what i have been most angry about – is the silence, the overwhelming silence – about the menace iran has been under. sanctions, bombings, destabilisation programmes. that from 2001 she was placed in the so called axis of evil. & there has been planning for a long time to interfere practically with iran affairs including armed intervention. that too is not an outlandish claim
these recent demonstations have hidden the reality of the very real menace itan lives under. i have not suggested invasion – though given certain circumstances, that is not outside the realm of possibility. the only real reason it has not happened is the pure incompetence of the empire – that everything it has touched militarily has turned to shit & it cannot afford to widen the war. at moments it has been the only reason war has not been waged. israel still thinks it can make targeted attacks on iran like it carries out its targeted assassinations elsewhere
the destabilisation’s main programme it would appear to me is to delegitimise iran so a more agressive approach can be taken. there has been planning for this as seymour hersh & other reliable informants have told us. destabilisation does not fall from the sky. it has a concrete reality & many 100 of millions invested in it. these are facts openly asserted in public spaces
so this idea – that the demonstrations possess only an internal resonance – goes very far from the real circumstances in iran today. & yes in that instance i will defend her even if i have no special empathy, for those ruling her. recent history has told us that there are many rafsanjani’s prepare to profit from the loss of their people. egypt has sold her destiny for a few coins from the empire’s pockets
so i have reiterated again & again – what is the international context of what is happening ?
what has the empire’s plans been right up until this election ?
what role has international media played in relation both to the international situation & the internal one ?
what is the prehistory to a possible iranian attack – & there is a lot in public from kissinger, brezinski, wolfowitz but also from more recent planners within the state dept & especially the pentagon ?
are there elites within iran today who would benefit from international or imperial intervention ?
given the complete failure of the imperial project in iraq & given the empire’s compulsion to control the world’s oil assets – is it outlandish to see control of iran as a way to redeem that failure of that project ?
i have asked repeatedly – if the situation – is as described by parviz – then why do we not see a general strike, or even something resembling a general strike – nearly all tyrannies have been impotent before such strikes – even when such states possessed overwhelming force
despite many many many repititions – we have seen nothing – & it cannot be practically said that repression is the signal reason for not seeing it – history teaches us well this point that repression in front of such an attempt is doomed to failure
i don’t think iran is doomed to failure because she possesses the support of the masses of people – both the urnan working class & rural workers – it is self evident – if that was not so the demonstrations would have turned into an insurrection – & in reality they were similar demonstrations to ones we see in europe – they have become smaller & smaller
an war might take place within the elites – possibly even a violent one but not so paradoxically – iran will witness an integration of wider civil rights within her proper jurisprudence, within her own constitution. that is the lesson i think the govt of iran will take because her frailties need to be transformed into strengths. contrary to all mythology iranian society & governement have been shown to be reasonable especially at a time when in the west the machinery of state repression is present in a way that is unparalled for them in the last 40 years. how anyone could possibly interpret the incarceration of more people in the united states than all the rest of world put together beggars belief. to not understand that is to not understand the machinery of repression. & since one of our friends here does research for that machinery – i find it a little unbelievable
tangerine, in essence – i think what will happen in iran will happen organically unless there is foreign intervention

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 27 2009 18:47 utc | 104

no it’s not china_hand2 – you will find not only does sloth serve as our resident apologist for the crimes of empire but he is the primary theorist of the ir non existence. for him there are no million dead in iraq, for him there are not 4 million external & internal exiles, he is the proponent that the intellectuals & scholars of iraq are just doing dandy, that the people of iraq have never had it better, they have electricity, water sewage schools – we are just fools because we are too dumb to see that iraq lives under such beautiful conditions. he is the principal presenter of an argument that says the arabs themselves are the source of their own problems, because of their ingerent violence & their love of civil war
& if indeed there are foreigners whom are guilty – they are for slothrop – the pensioner from lyon, the schoolteacher from frankfurt, the student from milan, on & on
so don’t be surpriised if he sounds like addington or feith – i think he works directly from their ‘intellectual’ heritage

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 27 2009 18:59 utc | 105

I don’t quite know how we got on to the rather O/T sub-thread of the looting of Iraqi culture, but China @101 and sloth @95 should read what I wrote @73. breal was correct, I did take part in the affair.
China is right that the US is guilty of criminal negligence, under international law. They should have protected the cultural institutions, and they did not.
But he is wrong that the antiquities were whisked out of the country, and vast profits made. Actually it seems to have been a failure from that point of view. Very little has appeared on the international market. I put that point a couple of months ago in a lecture to an audience of specialists in cultural heritage, and nobody demurred.
Anyway, b, you might like to think about another thread on Iraq. We’re coming up to June 30th, and the withdrawal of US troops from the cities. Is the US really going to withdraw from Iraq, as promised? That should be good for a debate.

Posted by: Alex_no | Jun 27 2009 19:12 utc | 106

much appreciated, alex_no @ 73
– – –
question now for parviz –
you wrote “what Dragonfly and other Iranians have been writing” (#67)
where did dragonfly ever state that they were iranian?
afaik, s/he has only provided

a disclaimer:
1. I am not a Jew, nor American nor Israeli, nor the Iranian opposition abroad.
2. I am a practicing statistician and political economist. So I might know a thing or two about these matters.
3. I have studied, lived and worked in Iran for three decades. The nature of what I used to do is irrelevant to this discussion.

Posted by: b real | Jun 27 2009 19:16 utc | 107

@ 100 I agree with your initial take on Parviz’s diatribe – it is remarkably insensitive to disparage the rich religious and cultural tradition(s) that is Islam by reducing it to a non-critical advocacy of violence against ‘others’ through a selective citation of the Koran. For the sake of analogy, is it not the rational secular societies of modern Europe that inaugurated the charnel house of mass slaughter that was WWI and II and of course the so-called cold war -which was anything but cold for El Salvador, Afghanistan, Congo, South Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Iran and so on. Can we look to the Bible of say the King James version to make sense of the bestiality of 20th century Europe?
“We no longer believe in Europe. We no longer have faith in its political system or in its philosophies. Worms have eaten into its social structure as they have into its very soul. Europe for us – we backward, ignorant, impoverished people – is a corpse.” – Adonis
Many in Europe and former European colonies, the West, did subscribe to Adonis’s general admonition and fought to create societies that had greater potential for sustaining human dignity. The human (civil) rights movement in the 1960s USA is one instance and we are the better for it.
The association of Islam (as a monolithic religion) with a violent behavior expressed collectively or through the state against non-believers is not tenable. We need historical context and relation to politics for why, say, Saudi Wahhabi’s persecute Shia Saudi citizens as “non-believers” or how Iran’s Islamic Republic politicizes Islam. Islam has too many currents to be so bundled into such an impoverished caricature.
If the aim is to understand political Islam then that requires contextualizing it within politics and history and not in a religious ghetto. It is a necessity to de-link Islam as a religious spiritual system, Islam as an ideology of empire and its historical development and the politicization of Islam as a modernist political movement (which is intimately related to ‘secular’-liberalism).
That being said are all Islamists fundamentalists as in literal interpreters of the Koran? I’d say that many Islamist movements are actually nationalists and anti-establishment i.e. in Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, etc. and in terms of their political and social visions some do offer a progressive politics in the language of Islam. What of the social and political criticisms that have always existed within Islamic traditions? What of Ibn Rushd’s criticisms of Islam and championing of women’s rights in Islamic Cordoba (before Europe existed) demanding Muslim women be socially, politically and economically equal to men? Even in contemporary Iran muslim scholars argue for social justice and equality on the basis of their interpretations of Islamic thought, so why the need to set up Islam as a ossified religion without a legal and intellectual heritage fraught with criticisms and opposing interpretations?
As for globalist and nationalist Islamist ‘nuts’ such as AQ and the Taliban they are a product of modern societies and the most ‘secular’ of modern states – the cancer of tortured societies and diabolical imperialist alliances. You’d NEVER find their genesis and social evolution from the Koran better read up on some secular literature to see how these ‘nuts’ got their start and how they are currently being used and cracked.
I wonder how such a derisive, uncouth and uninformed characterization of Islamic culture would register in Tehran or Isfahan or any number of places in Iran? Is this the world view that underpins the schism of the elections – a minority ‘secular’ modern Iranian population looking to the corpse of Europe for its future vis-a-vis ‘religious’ traditional rural and poor urban Iranians that look towards the outdated past to maintain a conservative social order?
@75 outraged – thanks for the excellent piece.

Posted by: BenIAM | Jun 27 2009 19:23 utc | 108

outraged @ 75
yes thank you & to beniam –
adonis for me is one of our greatest living poets

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 27 2009 20:17 utc | 109

benIAM@107
through a selective citation of the Koran
Parviz has a perfect right to selectively quote the Qur’an. The Qur’an is the word of God, and He cannot be wrong. That is different from the Bible, which is a human composition, inspired by God, and thus could have errors in it, through failure of understanding. Christian fundamentalists do take the Bible as the literal word of God, but they are wrong. The situation is not the same in Islam.
I am not a Muslim, by the way.

Posted by: Alex_no | Jun 27 2009 20:19 utc | 110

All religious text are selectively quoted (regardless of religious tradition)and for the most part I feel the Bible and Qur’an are nothing more than books of quotes self-centered freaks search through to find ideas to preach to those too dumb to think for themselves.
I hate to write such a disparaging remark about organized religion but it seems religion has been the favorite way to negatively color a population’s view of other humans.
Think of the Catholic conquest of central and south america… Death, death and more death just because some dude came home and found his wife had been raped by G_d and she couldn’t get an abortion. Isn’t that what all christian religion is based on, the rape of Mary by the big DUDE… Poor Joseph, that must have been a hard act to follow.
I like the love thy neighbor and do on to others, but once you get past that you find the text if full of awful horrific violence done either by god or for god.
And guys still go off to battle with their little symbolic religious jewelry to protect them. Shit.
Cathrine LeRoy’s Nikon stopped a big hunk of shrapnel from killing her. Maybe we should all worship Nikon?

Posted by: DavidS | Jun 27 2009 20:45 utc | 111

I wouldn’t disagree with DavidS@110 rubbishing religious texts in general. However, if you are a believer, in Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism, or whatever, there is a difference. In Islam, the Qur’an is directly the word of God, whatever sect you belong to. So you can quote it in any circumstances. In Christianity, only fundamentalists claim that the Bible comes directly from God; others admit that it is a human construction, inspired by God, and could have errors, due to fallible human interpretation of God’s wishes. So they are free to interpret the Bible as they wish.
It is, by the way, no good rubbishing Islam for saying that the Qur’an is the word of God. That claim has the same value as the amazing Christian claim that Jesus was the son of God. The two claims are the extreme pretensions of the two religions. The one has as much value as the other.

Posted by: Alex_no | Jun 27 2009 21:54 utc | 112

parvis
it’s quite strange. i think i have always imagined you as a young buck – a banker or engineer in his early thirties

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 27 2009 22:32 utc | 113

alex_no
being the son of communists the only sacred text i knew was ‘the holy family’ by marx & engels & i was fortunate to be able to read the ‘sacred texts’ as a student. there is a lyricism in the qur’an i find extraordinarily moving. the bible i love as the dark, very dark work it is. wm blake reproduces some of that darkness & transforms it into light. talmudic texts i have found difficult mechanically – i’ve never been much good with maths at any level practical or abstract & there seems to be a lot of transcedental maths there – the upinishads of the hindus & the buddhist & taoist text are very seductive – as texts
i suppose i am revealing too much – but in working amongs communities of the dispossesed for decades – i have used & make much use of the hagakure i’m not sure if that means i’ll bloom into a fascist in my last days – but i feel its resonance (the french translation is very good) with the communities i work with. after hegel’s holy work – its a little troubling – the master/servant thang – but hopefully it is simply transformed into a text about turning fragility into force & to create souplesse with the terrifying energies of today

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 27 2009 22:52 utc | 114

all to say i have never felt oppressed by these texts – that in the material cosmologies of our everyday life they are not my enemies & they may indeed in some moments offer real reflection. i find this same space in under the volcano by malcolm lowry & in one of the most beautiful texts of the modern era – louis althusser’s ‘lettres à franca’
no doubt slothrop will find it necessary to mock me but happily i am unmoved by such vanities

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 27 2009 23:02 utc | 115

& i’m so old parviz i thought yuri gagarin was the son of god

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 27 2009 23:18 utc | 116

alex_no, you’re the only one who really got my message. It is not ‘Apostasy’, and certainly not punishable by death, to disagree with things written in the Bible, especially as much of it has been debunked by science and is reduced now to a battle between ‘scientific argument’ and ‘personal belief’.
But to argue with the ‘Word of God’ requirs automatic beheading, stoning or whatever.
Also, as you correctly point out, the Koran derives its entire strength from purportedly representing the ‘direct’ word of God relayed through his prophet, so the numerous discrepancies and obvious self-contradictions are totally ignored by ‘true believers’.
THIS explains its violent nature, and explains why Muslims are so fanatical about preventing a ‘Reformation’ of the type that occurred in Christianity, because such a movement ‘per se’ would destroy the Koran’s most important premise, i.e., that it was dictated by God to an illiterate Mohammed (who then recited it to his followers who cobbled it together long after his death …!).

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 28 2009 5:08 utc | 117

r’giap, probably my energy and enthusiasm fooled you into thinking I was half my age! I’ve never felt a day older than 18 because I’m doing ten different things simultaneously, including commenting at MoA 😉

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 28 2009 5:08 utc | 118

b real (107), I would bet my bottom Dollar she either has at least one Iranian parent or has dual nationality. The fact she’s not part of the Iranian opposition abroad doesn’t mean she isn’t Iranian. How could you conclude from her Disclaimer that she isn’t Iranian?

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 28 2009 6:40 utc | 119

parviz – i haven’t necessarily concluded anything, however i find the choice of words in the disclaimer odd in that, rather than clearly state “i am an iranian”, dragonfly ambiguously offers “I have studied, lived and worked in Iran for three decades.”
my reading of that leans toward the assumption that dragonfly is no longer working in iran (based on questions posed to you) and is not a natural iranian, which is why i was asking if there was a time they clarified this one way or another.

Posted by: b real | Jun 28 2009 6:53 utc | 120

Chavez, Obama, AhmadiNejad, Nasrallah, Putin all owe their success to the ability to cobble “grass-roots” energy out of overlooked sections of the population. In particular, Nasrallah & Putin have further advanced their agenda’s by fashioning home-grown socio-economic leverage along the same conceptual lines as Lee Kuan-Yew.
all of these leaders share the ability to find a balance between looking inwards & looking outwards on multiple planes. Looking to find the right synergies. Steve Biko might have been one of the group if he had survived.
all of these synergists inevitably end up creating their own local multi-polar worlds knowing they will live or die by their ability to manage it ?

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Jun 28 2009 7:06 utc | 121

A probable pointless post, but I feel at least at THIS moment the bar feels mellow… nice to not have to read a bunch of angry post to catch up.
I really wish the world’s humans could do at least two group hugs a year; six or seven billion people all hugging– it’s kind of a scary image, but I think it would do more good than one more sunday of guys in suits preaching hate.
I covered the hands across america and I remember going down to the beach, where they were going to do the hand holding and finding a massive line of people all holding hands. It was a cool idea, I wish it would have caught-on as a national holiday.
I know that soon there will be a passionate debate heating the threads, but for what it’s worth, this moment is nice:)
I wish you all sweet dreams or happy mornings, let us hope today the aliens who started this whole earth mess get back and deal with some of the problems… I’m tired of the warmongering and I truly fear for my nation and its people that there are some big changes on the horizon. I only hope that any change that comes from these times, is changing us into a more just and understanding civilization.
To think otherwise leads my mind off the cliff of hopelessness and I refuse to be hopeless.

Posted by: DavidS | Jun 28 2009 7:13 utc | 122

Very little has appeared on the international market.
The treasures are in private collections, being traded privately among the super-rich, who are waiting for the time to arrive when they can unveil them and start trading them openly, or use them as political leverage against a nascent oil-trading nation desperate to regain its heritage.
They were investments. No sane thief would try to publicly pawn off those pieces now.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 28 2009 8:47 utc | 123

@Alex_no:
Parviz has a perfect right to selectively quote the Qur’an. The Qur’an is the word of God, and He cannot be wrong. That is different from the Bible, which is a human composition, inspired by God, and thus could have errors in it, through failure of understanding.
The Qu’ran as a whole is the Word of God.
Nobody claims that only one sentence is, and the others aren’t.
So if God says “Jews are the chosen people, and you must protect them, unless they attack you first, and then the Jews must be killed”, but someone says “God told us the Jews must be killed,” then they are clearly distorting the Word of God by selectively editing the text. That would be one form — and a very extreme one, subject to the most severe punishment — of Apostasy.
So no; Parviz not only doesn’t “have the right” to selectively quote the Word of God. In fact, he is obligated not to do so, under punishment of death.
Differences in opinion about the best way to interpret and implement the Word of God is why we have such vast differences between the Shia and Sunni, Sufi and Salafi, Twelvers and Seveners, Takfiri and Barelvi, and so on.
I am certain that in the debates and sermons that originate in these various groups, many responses include the admonition that one may not selectively quote the Qu’ran.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 28 2009 9:03 utc | 124

So no; Parviz not only doesn’t “have the right” to selectively quote the Word of God. In fact, he is obligated not to do so, under punishment of death.
More drivel posing as expertise from someone who has probably never read the Koran.
People are allowed to quote whatever part of the Koran they wish to prove a point. Fatwas are usually based precisely on SELECTIVE Sorahs and Ayehs from the Koran. That’s what the Marjeye Taghleed (Source of Emulation) is all about. Stop writing rubbish.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 28 2009 9:34 utc | 125

Brilliant commentary of the type that hasn’t been highlighted on one-sided MoA threads, showing what REALLY happened in Iran:

“Will the Cat above the Precipice Fall Down?”

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 28 2009 9:39 utc | 126

Brilliant commentary of the type that’s been smothered by endless ‘chafe’ on MoA threads, showing what REALLY happened in Iran:
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran

Some time ago, Germany’s excellent 3Sat television channel broadcast an arresting report about Tehran. The crew drove through the main street from the North of the city to the South, stopping frequently along the way, entering people’s homes, visiting mosques and nightclubs.
I learned that Tehran is largely similar to Tel Aviv at least in one respect: in the North there reside the rich
and the well-to-do, in the South the poor and underprivileged. The Northerners imitate the US, go to
prestigious universities and dance in the clubs. The women are liberated. The Southerners stick to tradition, revere the ayatollahs or the rabbis, and detest the shameless and corrupt North.
Mousavi is the candidate of the North, Ahmadinejad of the South. The villages and small towns – which we call the “periphery” – identify with the south and are alienated from the north.

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 28 2009 10:00 utc | 127

Parviz @ 11 in – Iran Election Wrap Up- thread:
the nation’s biggest butcher (Public Prosecutor Mortazavi) has been appointed to supervise the torture of prisoners in the same manner as his people dealt with Zahra Kazemi
Oh the liberal from Iran is now crying tears for Zahra Kazemi? it wasn’t that long ago when I revealed that her death happened under your beloved reformists when they were in power that you wrote this:
Just woke up. Sam comparison of the murder of an illegal (unaccredited) reporter — who was taking photos outside a top secret facility whose walls carried warnings all around that any photographers would be shot — with the cold-blooded murder of peacefully protesting Neda, armed not even with a camera, is the biggest red herring I’ve come across in the past few days.
She was not illegal, she was not unaccreditted and she wasn’t taking photos of a prison but in fact a student protest which your beloved reformers crushed. You discredit her when it is convenient for your side and you slime her when it is convenient for your side. And I still can’t believe that you are still pushing the ludicrous story of foreign Arabs on the streets of Tehran suppressing Iranians. You think the people on this board are not aware of the shockwave that would produce in Iran?

Posted by: Sam | Jun 28 2009 10:41 utc | 128

US ‘has agents working inside Iran’

Brent Scowcroft said on Wednesday that “of course” the US had agents in Iran amid the ongoing pressure against the Iranian government by protesters opposed to the official result of its presidential election.
But he added that he had no idea whether US agents had provided help to the opposition movement in Iran, which claims that the authorities rigged the June 12 election in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president.
“They might do. Who knows?” Scowcroft told Josh Rushing for Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines programme.
“But that’s a far cry from helping protesters against the combined might of the Revolutionary Guard, the militias and so on – and the [Iranian] police, who are so far completely unified.”

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 28 2009 10:48 utc | 129

Sam, you are the biggest liar on this blog. Zahra Kazemi was caught photographing outside top-secret Evin prison, she did NOT have a reporter’s licence to report in Iran. What she DID have, according to her own lawyer, were classified documents that she had no right to be in possession of.
I think this is something that even Loyal will confirm.
I never approved of her torture and murder. All I was saying, before you tried to twist my words, was that there was literally no comparison between Kazemi’s actions, which suggested either spying or trying to make a name for herself on her return to the States (Pulitzer?), and Neda who was walking peacefully and unaggressively when she was murdered.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 28 2009 11:40 utc | 130

From Wikipedia, which despite its Zionist background, coinfirms my statements on Kazmi:
“According to Shirin Ebadi – an Iranian lawyer and former judge who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, and later became the main representative of Kazemi’s family at the trial over Kazemi’s death – when a prison staff member saw Kazemi taking photographs he demanded that she give him her camera, as photography is prohibited in front of the prison (which everyone in Iran knows as there are skull and crossbones signs and “No Photography” plastered all over the walls of the prison. She knew she was doing something highly illegal and highly dangerous).

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 28 2009 11:48 utc | 131

Even Wikipedia confirms Moratzavi’s hand in this, so how can you dispute my criticism of Mortazavi’s role in the current purges?
One of the two Iranian intelligence agents charged with her death was acquitted in September, 2003. The other agent, Mohammed Reza Aghdam-Ahmadi, was charged with “semi-intentional murder” and his trial opened in Tehran in October, 2003. In the same month, the Iranian parliament condemned Saeed Mortazavi, a Tehran prosecutor, for announcing that Kazemi had died of a stroke. On July 25, 2004, Aghdam-Ahmadi was acquitted.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 28 2009 11:48 utc | 132

So now you beieve the hardline Iranian government version of the (s)election but not the hardline Iran government’s version of the Kazemi murder. How convenient. Keep it up, Sam. Heckuva job.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 28 2009 11:50 utc | 133

The curious case of Iran’s Mujahedin

David Shariatmadari: A group of senior British politicians claims the Iranian Mujahedin are Iran’s best hope of reform. Are they right?
-snip-
So who are they? And how come you’ve never heard of them?
Well, the People’s Mujahedin, otherwise known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq, called monafeqin (hypocrites) by their detractors and either PMOI, MKO or MeK for short, have been around for nearly half a century. Their origins can be traced to the radical politics of the years before 1979, and their early history is one of ideological twists and turns, schisms and betrayals. To cut a very long story short, they lost out to supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini in the early days of the revolution and in response to a bloody crackdown began a paramilitary campaign against the fledgling republic. During the Iran-Iraq war they were given refuge by Saddam Hussein and allowed to mount attacks on Iran from within Iraqi territory, where they still maintain a settlement, now known as Ashraf City. Reports suggest they were involved in the suppression of the Kurdish uprising after the 1991 war. In 2001, they renounced all military activity. Despite this, they were put on the EU’s terror blacklist in 2002, a decision which was reversed in 2008.
Since their exile from Iran, they’ve spent a great deal of time trying to win westerners over to their cause, and the single-mindedness of some of their supporters has proved remarkably effective. The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, which lobbies on the group’s behalf, counts among its members a surprisingly large number of peers and MPs, many of whom, judging by their parliamentary interventions and speeches, seem to have an understanding of Iran’s history based entirely on the standard PMOI line.

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 28 2009 11:54 utc | 134

Okay Parviz so you want to use wikpedia as proof that your claims are true so lets see if they really are shall we? Was she “illegal as you claimed:

Traveling back to her birth country using her Iranian passport, Kazemi was allowed into Iran to take photographs of the possible demonstrations that were expected to take place in Tehran in July, 2003.

Well according to your own source you are a liar. She was not an “illegal but an Iranian travelling under an Iranian passport. Was she an “(unaccredited)” reporter — who was taking photos outside a top secret facility whose walls carried warnings all around that any photographers would be shot:

The demonstrations did materialize but were effectively crushed after the sixth day by a massive deployment of security forces and paramilitary vigilantes, or “plainclothesmen.” Following the clampdown, an estimated 4000 students “had gone missing” and were thought to have been arrested for protesting and taken to Evin prison, Tehran’s political prisoner detention facility. As was customary after such events, family members of the missing gathered outside of Evin prison in north Tehran in hopes of learning what had happened to their children. On June 23, 2003, Kazemi drove to the prison to take pictures of these family members, possessing a government-issued press card that she thought made it permissible for her to work around Tehran, including at Evin.

Top secret facility my ass it was a political prison where oppenents of your reformers were jailed for demonstrating against them. The same thing you are claiming the current demonstrations in Iran are all about. The government issued her a press card so where do you get “unaccredited”? Where does it say that anyone taking pictures of the prison would be “shot”? According to your source she wasn’t even taking pictures of the prison but of the family of the protestors wanting to know what happened to their children. And know you are claiming she was a spy caught with “classified documents” post 130:
Sam, you are the biggest liar on this blog. Zahra Kazemi was caught photographing outside top-secret Evin prison, she did NOT have a reporter’s licence to report in Iran. What she DID have, according to her own lawyer, were classified documents that she had no right to be in possession of.
Where did you get that accusation from Parviz. Oh let me guess your own wikpedia source states it clearly:

The Evin prison staff, whom the Kazemi family’s lawyers consider a party in the beatings that led to Kazemi’s death, say that she had been in a sensitive area, photographing parts of the prison. Several days after her arrest, hardline newspapers began running stories of her arrest “calling her a spy who had entered the country undercover as a journalist.”

And you claim to be some kind of liberal when you take the side of the “Evin prison staff” that killed her and the “hardline newspapers” that accussed her of being a spy? You sir are no liberal. No liberal would ever defend the Shah or defame a human rights activist as you have. You are a poser and an agitator.
I never approved of her torture and murder. All I was saying, before you tried to twist my words, was that there was literally no comparison between Kazemi’s actions, which suggested either spying or trying to make a name for herself on her return to the States (Pulitzer?), and Neda who was walking peacefully and unaggressively when she was murdered.
Zahra Kazemi was filming peacefully and unaggreively in support of family members of political prisoners when she was arrestted and totrured to death by your pals who you are trying to defend. And she wasn’t going to return to the “States” she was a legal citizen of Canada that clearly opposed the actions of the US government. You’ll make up anything if it supports your preverted story.

Posted by: Sam | Jun 28 2009 23:06 utc | 135

I have no time for you any more. You know nothing about Iran and haven’t a clue how dangerous it is to film anywhere near Iran’s most notorious Evin prison which you euphemistically call A ‘DETENTION FACILITY”! How about calling it an ‘EDUCATIONAL FACILITY’?
You twist my words incessantly, so that when I say these bastards are even more brutal than the Shah it means I’m suddenly a ‘Shah supporter’, while you refer to the rapists/murderers of Zahra Kazemi as “your pals who you are trying to defend”!!!
You are so pathetic it isn’t even funny any more, defending a President who denies both the Holocaust and the existence of homosexuals, a regimne that openly subverts the Koran by creating a religious dictator and who tortures/stones/murders/executes women prisoners in good ‘ol 7th century style.
You are one shamelessly hypocritical specimen of a human being, defending animals just so long as they suit your purportedly ‘anti-imperialist’ goals. Goodbye and good riddance.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 29 2009 4:53 utc | 136

I strongly recommend everyone read the link in #134 above, plus the
following outstanding article by a foreign observer of Iran:

Breaking news: Whitehouse Names New Shah Czar for Iran

The Obama administration’s desired form of government would be a
Constitutional Monarchy, with the Head of State being Reza Pahlavi, the wastrel
scumbag son of the former wastrel scumbag Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – a virtual
chip off the old corrupt block who ran away to hide in the 1978-79 Islamic
revolution and never came back.
Much as the criminal enterprise known as the Bush administration had Hamid Kharzai
ready to fill the Afghan presidency in 2001 and renta-crook Ahmed (watch yer
pockets) Chalabi ready for Iraqi leadership in 2003 – O’Barmy’s advisors now have
Pahlavi ready to be King – and Kansas-born slimeball Skunky Sobhani as his Prime
Minister.

(Satire)

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 29 2009 5:15 utc | 137

Parviz @ 136:
You are one shamelessly hypocritical specimen of a human being, defending animals just so long as they suit your purportedly ‘anti-imperialist’ goals.
Uh lets see – you have been fiercly arguing that the butcher of the Islamic Revolution that presided over killing more liberals than any other Iranian President since the revolution should have won the Precidency. You have been arguing that a cleric that suppressed and imprisoned liberal protestors was the greatest Presidency since the revolution. You have been arguing that the Reformers would be the greatest thing since sliced bread for Iran even though they have every intention of maintaining the theocracy that you claim you are against. You slander your own people more than anybody on this board and you want to call me a hypocrite? You espouse liberalism to suck up to the crowd here but openly support those that would suppress them. There is a reason why so many people on this board have turned against you Parviz. There was a time when I felt lonely confronting you and even had to endure attacks from some of the regulars. The election opened their eyes to who you really are. Think about it. I defend liberals Parviz and I don’t care what country they come from and I will attack those that kill, torture, arrest or slander them. You included.
Goodbye and good riddance.
Don’t slam the door on your way out.

Posted by: Sam | Jun 30 2009 6:06 utc | 138

Back to Main