. . . or Stolen Truth?!
In my humble opinion,
the present media frenzy about the
so-called "stolen election" in Iran
is another deliberate and cynical example of
public misinformation,
serving the interests of US imperialism.
Remember the lies that led us into illegal wars in the past -
from Viet Nam to Iraq, and more?
Well, now they are at it again with Iran.
Want proof? Read the links below.
And also, ask yourself this very simple question:
Why, in all the mainstream media frenzy, are most commentators overlooking the Iran public opinion poll, conducted by reputable US experts 3 weeks before the election, that accurately predicted the final election outcome?!
Bruce McPhie
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A Hard Look at the Numbers
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election?
By Esam AL-Amin
Since the June 12 Iranian presidential elections, Iran "experts” have mushroomed like bacteria in a Petri dish. So here is a quiz for all those instant experts. Which major country has elected more presidents than any in the world since 1980? Further, which nation is the only one that held ten presidential elections within thirty years of its revolution? Continue
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Stolen Election in Iran?
An Inside View of Vote Fraud
By Maarten Doude van Troostwijk
Although not having been present at the recent presidential elections in Iran and thus not able to state on the basis of personal observation whether there was or wasn’t fraud committed, I was struck by the familiar refrain of some of the arguments by those in the Western media who seem to believe that the election must have been stolen by the incumbent. Continue
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Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’?
By Paul Craig Roberts
The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed.
This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote.
It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.
As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.
There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs' lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money. In my opinion, Ahmadinejad's attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs.
Commentators are "explaining" the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad's win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen.
However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government.
On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News:
“The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”
On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported:
“Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”
A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker:
“Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”
The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine.
It requires total blindness not to see this.
Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/027782.html
For example, neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ‘green revolution’ prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests.
Timmerman goes on to write that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘color’ revolutions . . . 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.”
Timmerman’s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”
Paul Craig Roberts
"....media’s willful and deliberate refusal to acknowledge a rigorous nationwide public opinion poll conducted by two US experts just three weeks before the vote, which showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin – even larger than his electoral victory on June 12...."
Iranian Elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax
By James Petras
"....More fundamentally, American “Iran experts” consistently underestimated Ahmadinejad’s base of support. Polling in Iran is notoriously difficult; most polls there are less than fully professional and, hence, produce results of questionable validity. But the one poll conducted before Friday’s election by a Western organization that was transparent about its methodology — a telephone poll carried out by the Washington-based Terror-Free Tomorrow from May 11 to 20 — found Ahmadinejad running 20 points ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted before the televised debates in which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived to have done well while Mousavi did poorly......"
Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It
By FLYNT LEVERETT AND HILLARY MANN LEVERETT
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Do We Really Care About Democracy?
#IranElection;
By Charting Stocks
After being victims of multiple false and propagandistic media campaigns one would think that we would be able to read between the lines when our mainstream media sources act in lockstep with one another...
When the mainstream media moves together in uniform, repeating the same talking points, it’s time to get suspicious, not complacent.
What about the 2006 (monitored) democratic election in Gaza in which the people resisted western threats and bribes and elected Hamas as their leader? We responded by punishing the people of Gaza and cutting aid to the region. Well, they committed a supreme crime. They voted the wrong way and must be punished for it. I’m waiting for a sympathetic #GazaElection hashtag on Twitter, though I won’t hold my breathe.
Have you heard ANYTHING from the mainstream media of the democratically elected governments that we REMOVED? The fact is that we don’t care about democratic elections.
Dr. Michael Parenti, is one of the nation's leading political scholars. In his book “Against Empire,” Parenti tells us that
“The United States has overthrown democratically elected governments in Guatemala, Guyana, The Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Syria, Indonesia, Greece, Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti, and numerous other nations were overthrown by pro-capitalist militaries that were funded and aided by the US national security state.”
The #IranElection hype has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with effecting US public opinion.
Why are “Iranian’s” microblogging in English and on Twitter (which they do NOT use)? According to Mehdi Yahyanejad, manager of a Farsi-language news site based in Los Angeles, “Twitter’s impact inside Iran is zero..here, there is lots of buzz, but once you look . . . you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves.” The Alexa rankings confirm that Twitter’s penetration in Iran is nearly 0%.
The United States is the last country on earth that Iran wants attention from. They certainly don’t want us involved in their elections.
We’ve already removed a democratically elected government in Iran during the 1953 coup d’etat of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq. I’d venture to guess that most of the people expressing sympathy for the “Iranian Students” on twitter would have a hard time finding Iran on a map. Those that could would quickly realize that on either side Iran’s borders lies 2 countries which we are very familiar with - Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of which are militarily occupied by our armies. Both ruled by our puppet governments.
Ask yourself - If Iran’s army invaded and occupied both Canada and Mexico, would we want their “Help”? Would we find popular Iranian websites and keep them informed of our nation’s vulnerabilities in their native Farsi?
The media campaign, however obvious it is to some of us, has probably been successful.
I’ll bet that if you poll the American people today (and they probably will), you’d find that 40-50% would support military involvement in Iran to “Help” with their elections.
I’d also assume that those 40-50% are the same people (more or less) who believed we invaded Iraq because of 9-11, another testament to the effectiveness of propaganda marketing.
North Korea: “Sanity” at the Brink
By Michael Parenti
The Pyongyang leadership seems to know something about US global policy that our own policymakers and pundits have overlooked. In a word, the United States has never attacked or invaded any nation that has a nuclear arsenal.
1 comment:
FROM BRUCE:
Thanks to a friend who emailed to inform me that, in fact, there have been references to the Iran public opinion poll published in various places, including The Washington Post.
This is part of my response -
Sorry, yes, I guess reference to that poll has been published in some places.
Perhaps my comment about it being ignored was more motivated by the lack of any reference I have seen to it on all the CNN & BBC World programmes I have watched, and all the mainstream news sites I have noticed from, for example, Australia.
I do not see everything, of course, here in Viet Nam, but so far I have seen, heard and read a great deal in which this important piece of background info (the pre-election Iran public opinion poll)has never been mentioned at all.
I was also influenced by the earlier post on ICH by James Petras, which I used on my blog, in which he wrote about the "...media’s willful and deliberate refusal to acknowledge a rigorous nationwide public opinion poll..."
I am glad to know it was in the Washington Post, and other places.
But has it been promoted as prominently as it should be?
I wonder how many people got it, in the avalanche of the media hype?
Anyway, sorry if my statement was not strictly correct, and thanks for pointing that out.
I hope it does not detract from the primary message I have tried to get across.
Thankyou for your reply, very much appreciated.
Best wishes from Bruce.
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