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Freedom, clarity & the Western defenders of the Iranian Revolution
R. B. Johannessen
The official figures show that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won some 62.6% of the vote in an election marked by a high turnout of 85%. These numbers are suspicious. They may be genuine, but then again they may be fraudulent. -How are we to know?
And then this: ”Death to America!”, ”Death to Israel!” and ”Death to Great Britain!” –Yes Ayatollah Khamenei does sound like Napoleon in Orwell’s ”Animal Farm”. -Why is this so?
1. Permanent war footing
Without going too far back, we want to mention the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran where the British and the Soviets invaded Iran in August/September 1941, the purpose of which was to secure Iranian oil fields and ensure supply lines. Iran was neutral and the enemy of no one, but the US and Britain wanted to secure Iranian oil for themselves. They ”feared” the Abadan Oil Refinery, owned by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, might fall into German hands. They attacked a peaceful country pre-emptively and for reasons of greed.
A few years later, it was about oil again. The popular Mohammad Mossadeq was elected prime minister and promptly started talking about nationalizing Iranian oil…The British would have nothing of it. They conspired with the US. Operation TPAJAX (Operation Ajax) was set in motion and Mossadeq was toppled in August 1953. A tragedy in itself, because this was a period where looking back we can see the possible development of Iran into a fully fledged democracy. It was not to be.
Worse was to come. The imperialistic plotters put their corrupt & venal stooge Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in power. The new Shah unleashed a terror regime on people in Iran. Iran had to suffer this for 25 long years before this horrible American/British imperial regime came to an end.
Then On February 1, 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran. The Ayatollah was already massively popular. But it didn’t last. According to Sepehr Zabih,
| some observers believe "what began as an authentic and anti-dictatorial popular revolution based on a broad coalition of all anti-Shah forces was soon transformed into an Islamic fundamentalist power-grab,"( Zabih, Sepehr, Iran Since the Revolution Johns Hopkins Press, 1982, p.2) |
But the Americans had not given up. They approached Saddam Hussein of Iraq and talked him into attacking Iran (The Imposed War) The US government also supplied Saddam with chemical and biological weapons.
So this is a brief background for what we see today in Iran. The country has been besieged by evil powers for seventy years and has been forced to live life on a permanent war footing. There has hardly been a moment of rest over the years. Is it too much to ask of readers of the controlled media here in the West to look back and take note of what happened in the US when the CIA & the Mossad demolished the World Trade Center, killing several thousand people with their terror? Voters in the US pulled sharply to the Right, giving unquestioning and uncritical support to a foolish scoundrel that squatted in the White House. Can we then expect democracy in a country that has been forced to live on a permanent war footing for the last seventy years? -I don’t think we can, nor do we have a right to do so.
2. Election Results & Western defenders of the Revolution
When it comes to the Iranian presidential election, the American and European media are hypocritically expecting, no, demanding democratic standards that they never adhere to themselves. -In the US systemic rigging is the norm.
Paul Craig Roberts rightly observes:
| But as in everything else having to do with American hegemony over other peoples, facts and truth play no part. Lies and propaganda rule. |
Yes, lies and propaganda rule, but it does not follow from this that 1) nothing is rotten in the state of Iran and that 2) a little scepticism is inappropriate.
It is not prudent of people to assume that because Iran has all these enemies, everything that happens in Iran must ipso facto be ok.
The official figures were announced by Iran's Interior Minister, Sadeq Mahsouli:
| - turnout was 85% of eligible voters - Ahmadinejad won with 62.63% - Mousavi was second with 33.75% - Rezaei got 1.73% - Karroubi had 0.85%, and - 1.04% of ballots were voided. |
Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh (who came in second) claimed that 14 million unused ballots were missing, leaving the results open to manipulation.
These are very high numbers for a democracy. In normal democracies, where peace is the norm and war something that seems to belong in the distant past, election results are less extreme and definitely more ambiguous. We also should remember that Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli is part & parcel of the system –the ruling establishment. Everything he says should be taken with a grain of salt.
So do we have any independent means of verifying the numbers and the voting process? I don’t think so. Can we say then that everything was fine & dandy? –No, not if we base ourselves exclusively upon official results.
But we may have other means of finding out: Pre-election polls. However, these are fraught with difficulties too. In Polling Predicted Intimidation - and Not Necessarily Ahmadinejad's Victory Nate Silver expresses his doubts:
| Regular readers will know how difficult it is to conduct a good poll in the United States. Take that difficulty to the fifth power, and you'll have some sense for how difficult it is to conduct a good poll in Iran. |
More importantly Nate Silver says:
| Well, indeed, Ahmadinejad has more than twice as much of the vote as his next-closest rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi. But he also only has 33.8 percent of the total vote. Between them, indeed, Ahmadinejad and Mousavi only have 47.4 percent of the vote. Where does the rest of the vote go? |
Yes, where indeed! So the question becomes: how do we know whether this election was rigged or not? The simple answer is that 1) we don’t know yet and that 2) we probably never will.
How do we deal with that? Do we jump into the fray, saying: ”The Numbers Are Credible!” (if we’re on the Left) and do we say ”Vote rigging!” (if we’re on the Right)? -Well, do we?
Why not simply admit that we don’t know? This information deficit feels uncomfortable. It’s like an itch that won’t stop. It feels like a vacuum. Feels like some empty space that we want to fill up, fill up with something, whatever.
On another level, we also feel distinctly uncomfortable with the controlled media and its array of embedded information agents (like Gary Sick, member of the Council of Foreign Relations) and we also have the problem of having all these Western defenders of the Revolution running around and saying hallelujah to elections that would be laughable anywhere else. -What to do?
3. Authoritarian mindset
The Iran issue is very good for one thing: to see clearly the difference there is between system defenders, right or left, and those who want a system that builds upon freedom and clarity. Bob Altemeyer has written a book, which he has published on the Internet. You can find it here if you want to read it.
It is about the authoritarian mindset on the political right and left. These people show:
| 1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society; 2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and 3) a high level of conventionalism. |
This means that whatever these people actually have available to them objectively, they will perceive & remember, speak or write according to preconceived ideas. This means that they may have a strong tendency to observe reality (whatever that may mean) in a slanted and selective manner, and to analyse observable facts in faulty ways. In short, they will tend to twist reality to suit the ideological model of society that they perceive to be supported by people they regard as important and powerful. -This is terrible! And it is not science.
Observing Iran, we objectively find:
Iran is a dictatorship. Iran is not a democracy. It is an oligarchy -a country run by a small number of people. These people happen to be a caste of Mullahs, which means that Iran is a theocracy as well. They need a figurehead for their secular government. Ahmadinejad fits the bill right now. These are facts.
It tentatively follows from this that the vote was rigged. This is not a fact but an inference.
Someone wrote to the Editor at The People’s Voice complaining about a comment (on TPV) that had stated that people in Iran wanted democracy. This person took the honesty of the election and the results for granted, and went on to define democracy:
| All indications are that Ahmadinejad won the vote, and he likely won it way above 50%. Even the BBC is beginning to state this. That is democracy as I understand the word. |
More than 50% would simply constitute a majority. 50% in a fraudulent election is neither a majority nor a proof of ”democracy”.
The same person referred to also announced that:
| The poor people in Iran like Ahmadinejad. Since being elected Ahmadinejad has introduced free health care for 22 million poor people. |
This is very touching! Cuba has an excellent health care system but is not a democracy.
None of these are valid ways to define democracy. -Some people don’t seem to understand that just because Ahmadinejad has ”given” millions to the rural poor, it does not follow from this that Iran is a democracy. (How could it be, considering the quite understandable permanent war footing?) Giving all these millions away is nice of Ahmadinejad of course, but this was not his money in the first place. This is not democracy. Nor is it freedom.
It IS, however, like childhood. Some parents have money, some don’t, some share their wealth with their children, some don’t. Some are nice, some are not. But whatever the case may be, their children are still dependent upon their parents, and they’ve not grown up yet. In an authoritarian two-dimensional world you either support this authority or that other one. These are the only ”choices”. In the childhood world of authorities.
In the world of freedom, however, we are not children anymore. We’ve grown up. This world is three-dimensional. We will tolerate just the bare minimum of a system in order to secure true freedom and a fair distribution of wealth. This world is frankly anti-authoritarian.
People on the Right are system defenders, and so are people on the Left. Both are basically authoritarian. It’s no good attacking one side and embracing the other. By doing so, we are enslaved in a silly mind game that leads to nowhere. Both Right & Left should be questioned. The only thing you want embrace is freedom. The only thing you want to fight for is clarity.
4. Conclusions
The evil hiss from the embedded information agents goes like this: ”Iran should be isolated!”
No, hell no! Iran should not be isolated. What we should do is help Iran defeat its enemies. This should be the main contribution from honest people in the West. We should also realize that democracy as we understand it is not possible at this time in Iran. People in Iran are among the most advanced and sophisticated in the world and will, no doubt whatever, develop democracy themselves when conditions are ripe for this. We don’t have to teach them democracy (we hardly practice ’democracy’ ourselves in our own countries). At some point this may lead to freedom.
But for now let us just realize that people in Iran are fed up with the dictatorship and the oppression -the Mullahs and the secret police. They want democracy. It's that simple. Now people are demonstrating in the thousands, filling up the streets. It is NOT the CIA & Mossad that have made them do this. They're doing this for and by themselves. They want change, just like people in America. -But unlike people in America, these people have courage, the courage to say: Enough is enough!
Knowing this, we still have to take note of some objective facts already mentioned:
The recent election results give out very high numbers –too high for a democracy. But then Iran is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship. It also is an oligarchy, a country run by a small number of people. These people happen to be a caste of Mullahs, which means that Iran is a theocracy as well. They need a figurehead for their secular government. Right now Ahmadinejad fits the bill. So the vote is rigged, from the bottom up. It is systemic. This is political theater, nothing but. Realizing this is clarity.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
Source: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/06/20/freedom-clarity-aamp-the-western-defende
Photo: Iranian soldier with gas mask in the battlefield, hunkering down in the ditches to protect himself from American made gas for chemical warfare. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Chemical_weapon1.jpg
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