"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Iranians are not sitting idly by and watching their election be stolen by right-wing thugs
Posted by Jill | 6:41 AM
If there is anything good to come out of the debacle that is the election in Iran, it may very well be the sight (which of course you have to find online, because the mainstream media are still all hopped up on the Letterman/Palin foofarah) of Iranian citizens taking to the streets in an attempt to take their country back from election-stealing thugs. Not only does this show that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is NOT the true face of Iran, but it also shows us how you protect your democracy.

Steve Clemons reports on a meeting he had with a well-connected Iranian:
He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious -- Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a "charade."

But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.

My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

Likewise, he said, Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Mousavi know this -- and thus are using all of the instruments at their control within Iran's government apparatus to fight back -- but given Khamenei's embrace of Ahmadinejad's actions in the election and victory, there is no recourse but to try and remove Khamenei. Some suggest that Rafsanjani will count votes to see if there is a way to formally dislodge Khamenei -- but this source I met said that all of these political giants have resources at their disposal to "do away with" those that get in the way.

He predicted that the so-called reformist camp -- who are not exactly humanists in the Western liberal sense -- may try and animate efforts to decapitate the regime and "do away with" Ahmadinejad and even the Supreme Leader himself.

I am not convinced that this source "knows" these things will definitely happen but am convinced of his credentials and impressed with the seriousness of the discussion we had and his own concern that there may be political killing sprees ahead.

If these predictions come to pass, it would not surprise me if we see U.S. intervention in Iran, but not for the reasons Dick Cheney wanted it. The dilemma for the U.S. is how we respond if the sort of "political cleansing" described above takes place, creating a genocide based on political alliance rather than ethnicity.

Meanwhile, if you want to find out what is going on in the U.S., you have to search the blogs and the international press, because the U.S. press is busy elsewhere. Aside from a photo album of pictures from Iran, MSNBC.com's lead stories as I write this are the political risks of Obama's spending (General Electric can't WAIT for Newt Gingrich to become president) and how the coach of the L.A. Lakers is "on the verge of immortality." CNN's coverage at least has the Iranian election front and center, but follows it with a large-type headline "Are you at Bonnaroo?" Now I'm as interested in Bonnaroo as the next jam band fan, but seriously...does it really matter that much against Iran on the verge of explosion and North Korea threatening nuclear war? The New York Times' web site does have the situation in Tehran as its first headline, but it's overshadowed by a photo of three east Asian young men who have founded a Web site that matches Harvard alumni willing to lend money to cash-strapped students. And over in the belly of the beast, the Faux Noise site, there's a photo with the caption 'NUCLEAR WAR' in the same Impact font used in creating LOLCat pictures. To give the devil his due, at least their two lead-ins are the twin debacles of Iran and North Korea. Things are at a sorry pass indeed when of the largest traffic conventional media sites of the U.S. media, only Fox News seems to have its priorities straight. Of course one of the links gleefully speculates that if Ahmadinejad prevails, that spells a death knell to any idea of "engagement" with Iran, much the way Larry Kudlow was grinning from ear to ear on the night of September 11, 2001, because the attacks meant an end to talk of a Social Security "lockbox."

At least the increasingly tabloidy Huffington Post recognizes the importance of the story.

Overseas, the media situation is less embarrassing. Robert Fisk at U.K. Independent:
First the cop screamed abuse at Mir Hossein Mousavi's supporter, a white-shirted youth with a straggling beard and unkempt hair. Then he smashed his baton into the young man's face. Then he kicked him viciously in the testicles. It was the same all the way down to Vali Asr Square. Riot police in black rubber body armour and black helmets and black riot sticks, most on foot but followed by a flying column of security men, all on brand new, bright red Honda motorcycles, tearing into the shrieking youths – hundreds of them, running for their lives. They did not accept the results of Iran's presidential elections. They did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 per cent of the votes. And they paid the price.

"Death to the dictator," they were crying on Dr Fatimi Street, now thousands of them shouting abuse at the police. Were they to endure another four years of the smiling, avuncular, ever-so-humble President who swears by democracy while steadily thinning out human freedoms in the Islamic Republic? They were wrong, of course. Ahmadinejad really does love democracy. But he also loves dictatorial order. He is not a dictator. He is a Democrator.

Hmmmmm.....sound like a certain recent former president we know? No wonder Bush hated Ahmadinejad so much. It was like looking in a mirror.

Labels: ,

3 comments
Bookmark and Share
3 Comments:
Blogger Bob said...
Ahmadinejad is a true face of Iran, just as George W. was a true face of the United States. Sure there are others. But I don't see the potential for democratic reform in Iran. Ever since the revolution we've been over-estimating the Iranian middle class.
6/14/09, 3:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
"The dilemma for the U.S. is how we respond if the sort of "political cleansing" described above takes place, creating a genocide based on political alliance rather than ethnicity."

We should respond by offering financial assistance to a UN mission but the US needs to stay out or we will be the target of all of the adversaries !
6/15/09, 6:55 PM  
Blogger jurassicpork said...
Uh huh, uh huh. My point exactly.
6/15/09, 9:30 PM  
Post a Comment
<< Home