Iran

But the Green revolution is very large.  Are the vast majority of protesters really free market fundamentalists? 

CMOT Dibbler wrote:

 Obama's advisors are as distant as we are from the issue.  The activist bloggers inside Iran are mainly bourgois and can't speak for the rural poor. 

Ufortunatley this complete and utter lack of solid information has not stopped us from grabbing hold of the few scraps of info we do have and tearing each other to shreds over a ton of speculation. 

It's as Ron Paul says, the people who say they believe in free trade do not and have actually used trade as a weapon to affect "regime change" around the world. If some government somewhere has a nationalist agenda and refuses to knuckle under to the neoliberal financial regime, then they are targeted for sanctions, 12-step colour revolution,  covert manouvering by Murder Inc. etc. I'm not sure why they would want to empower Ahmadinejad with re-creating the western menace through trade sanctions. But they've waged genocidal trade sanctions against Cuba for decades, and they know that Cubans will not go along with their shananigans either way. Iran does have an upper crust elite though, like Pakistan etc, and who are favourable to America and the coalition of western world elites and all alligned in the war on democracy.

I think Ahmadinejad and his government won the elections fair and square, and that the CIA should get the hell out of Iran and stop meddling.

Can we imagine a foreign government fomenting social unrest in 2000 America after crazy George II lost the popular vote count? Or when the Republican cabal rigged the 2004 elections? US hawks would have a fit and demand that the foreign government stop interfering in America's democratic process.

She rocks! *bump*

sanizadeh wrote:

Regardless of all efforts by the US and other powers, their influence on the events inside Iran has been at a minimum since 1979, and that includes now.  That was because the 1979 revolution triumphed with almost unanimous popular support. Then, for decades we were told that if we don't stay quiet and hold our dissatisfaction, the "enemy" would benefit. Well, That's just as much one could take. A government with no popular support will start gving away the nation's rights right and left, as Ahmadinejad's government has started to do so. Only a government based on true popular support can stand against outside threats. So bringing down this tyrannical regime is a prerequisite for protecting Iran against its enemies.  

The Iran/Contra scandal, the sanctions, that much of Iran's current actions and aliances (Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas) would seem to contradict you.

sanizadeh wrote:

CMOT Dibbler wrote:

 Why can't the unmentionable country just mind its own business?

Alright, prove to me that the sanctions are directly linked with the Iranian student protests.

He can't. Iran has been under full United States trade sanctions since 1995 under Clinton's order, as well as sanctins against companies that  invest in Iran's oil and gas industry, approved by US congress during Clinton. Bush and Obama have merely renewed the executive order year after year. However the impact of US sanctions are generally limited becuase since 1979 US has never been Iran's top trade partner.

Yet, despite crippling sanctions, the US still managed to interfere in Iraq and presented as its successor for an Iraqi government a man who had no popular support in Iraq or within opposition circles but who said what the US administration wanted to hear. None of that was really relevant to the US operation. The use of figureheads is for domestic politcial consumption. They will figure out who will govern and with what authority, with a Made in the USA constitution later. Those are details.

Left Turn wrote:

I'm inclined to agree with Doug here. While evidence has been presented in this thread that the US is funding some groups that oppose the current US regime, I do not believe that most of the protesters are coming out into the streets in support of these groups. It appears to me that most of the protesters are coming out to oppose the repressive actions of the Islamic regime in jailing, torturing, and killing dissidents, among other things. I highly doubt that most protesters have any idea whether or not the US is behind the groups that called for these actions.

The resistance of the Iranian people to the brutal Islamic regime is worthy of our support. Not necessarily those who will try to manipulate the situation, but definitely the sentiment of the Iranian people against this regime.

It doesn't matter why they are in the streets or what their motivations are. The question is who leads the opposition, who funds them, and whose interests do they serve? The mass of protestors will not govern Iran if they are successful any more than they governed Iran after 1979. They are pawns in a battle that may represent the legitimate interests of the mass of the Iranian people and might represent something darker.

The resistance of the Iranian people to the Islamic regime is worthy of our support but not if it will represent yet another betrayal that is guided by Washington and its allies as a means to a) gaining control of the world's largest natural gas reserves (and thus also bringing China's ambitions to heel) and c) ensuring Israeli military dominance of the region and US hegemony remains unchallenged.

My, God, do you people not read history or even follow current events? Why are our news media so obsessessed with the internal politics of Iran even as journalists are being tortured in Egypt for interviewing Canadians trying to enter Gaza, an open air concentration camp?

Use your freaking heads and learn your history. Legitimate democracy movements whether they happen in Iran, Egypt, Israel, or South Africa are never, NEVER!, supported by the USA. Not once. Not ever.

CMOT Dibbler wrote:

They didn't support Mandella?

The U.S. supported apartheid South Africa in border wars with Angola, Namibia, and Zambia from 1966 to 1989. Former US military personnel worked for apartheid South African Defence Force as assassins and mercenaries. The Yanks supported Ian Smith's Rhodesia in doing business with that country's corporate elites while Smith rounded up blacks and interred them in concentration camps referred to then as "protective villages" and rationed food to Rhodesians suspected of helping the rebels.

The Yanks and their imperialist partners in crime have meddled in Africa for a long time and continue to do so today. Africa is not home to a cornucopia of natural resource wealth and grinding poverty by accident or by their own design.

It's like Pinochet's supporters banging pots and pans in the streets of Santiago in the 1970's because they didn't want to accept the election results.

The protesters are fachists? Do you know that for sure?

FM: What do you think a truly legitimate peoples revolution would look like in Iran?   When should it take place? How should it take place?  Do we really honestly know who is leading the damn thing,  Or are we guessing?  Are There left wingers in the movement?   communists? feminists? anarchists?  

 Interesting thing...

The Americans have a strategic interest in Iran, but they are also very worried about the war in Yemen's North.  We don't see any North American media coverage of this event.  Why?  It involves a large  U.S.  client state(Saudi Arabia) and takes place in a region of the world  that is of both spirtual and economic importance to the west.  What are the reasons for ignoring it?     

Fidel wrote:

US hawks and their elitist friends in Iran are not happy with recent election results in that country, so they want to raise hell about it in the streets. It's like Pinochet's supporters banging pots and pans in the streets of Santiago in the 1970's because they didn't want to accept the election results. Democracy is the right's most hated institution and always will be.

1) I don't recall the Allende government mass arresting, torturing and executing the demonstrators; 2) Iran is not a democracy; 3) elitists don't go through torture and execution to fight for their freedoms; and 4) none of the leaders of this movement are Pinochet or even a US ally. In fact as I mentioned, this movement started from within the ideological ranks of the system itself (though it is far broader now).

Frustrated Mess wrote:

The Iran/Contra scandal, the sanctions, that much of Iran's current actions and aliances (Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas) would seem to contradict you.

If you brought those examples to contradict my point about foreign influence in Iran, the fact is that Iran/Contra and US sanctions had no political impacts inside Iran whatsoever.

Quote:

It doesn't matter why they are in the streets or what their motivations are. The question is who leads the opposition, who funds them, and whose interests do they serve? The mass of protestors will not govern Iran if they are successful any more than they governed Iran after 1979. They are pawns in a battle that may represent the legitimate interests of the mass of the Iranian people and might represent something darker.

Answers: Who lead the opposition? While Iranian reformists are a center of focus, practically no one at the moment has control over the movement. This has become a mass protest of people of various classes and groups against the tyrannical Iranian government. 

Perhaps you could be more specific: which of the current reformist leaders in Iran, can remotely be considered US allies? This is laughable to anyone who follows the Iranian affairs. This is a movement that started from within the ideological ranks of the system itself (even thogh it is far broader now).

Who funds it? the demonstrators have no TV station, practically no newspaper, no headquarters, nothing that requires funding. Rest assured if there was a shred of evidence that CIA money had played a role in the protest, the regime would have made it the center point of the trials that just wrapped up. Would not a money trail to outside be a golden evidence for a regime who is attributing the unrest to everyone from Bahai minority to zionists to imperialists to the British to Saudi fundamentalists to communists etc?

Whose interests do they serve? Their own. Unless you think anything that we people of 3rd world do, is somehow managed by you whitey supreme masters of the world, and that we have no roles but pawns!

BTW, stop trying to teach us about our own history. Shed this orientalist/colonialist mentality that somehow we are some sort of guinea pigs studied by you guys and that we should fit into your theories about the global affairs. The world is not revolving around you! You can learn about us by listening to us, not by lecturing us about what we should think and how we should behave to fit your prejudices.

That's why I have asked repeatedly here: there are many well known progressive/leftist Iranians that can never be accused of being at the service of Washington; take Hamid Dabashi, Saeed Rahnama and many others as example. How come all of them are in support of this movement? Can you name any major progressive Iranian figure who thinks like you do? Or perhaps you think you know something that all of them collectively missed?

CMOT Dibbler wrote:

which of the current reformist leaders in Iran, can remotely be considered US allies?

Rafsanjani?

First, Rafsanjani is hardly the person the protesters on the street listen to. Then, he is considered a pragmatist senior politician who advocates better relation with the world. If that makes him a US ally, I guess Chavez who had an embassy in Washington must be a neocon!

The fact is that global affairs are not the center of attention for Iranian protesters. We want a democratic government that makes our national interests its main objective. The assumption that somehow democratic governments are US allies is totally wrong, and in fact it is the opposite. As top Israeli officials mentioned  before election, they would love to see Ahmadinejad as president of Iran. No government in Iran has served the purposes of Israel and US and other foreign powers more than Ahmadinejad's government.

sanizadeh wrote:

Fidel wrote:

US hawks and their elitist friends in Iran are not happy with recent election results in that country, so they want to raise hell about it in the streets. It's like Pinochet's supporters banging pots and pans in the streets of Santiago in the 1970's because they didn't want to accept the election results. Democracy is the right's most hated institution and always will be.

1) I don't recall the Allende government mass arresting, torturing and executing the demonstrators; 2) Iran is not a democracy; 3) elitists don't go through torture and execution to fight for their freedoms; and 4) none of the leaders of this movement are Pinochet or even a US ally. In fact as I mentioned, this movement started from within the ideological ranks of the system itself (though it is far broader now).

1. That was a a brutal US-backed dictatorship that tortured and abducted socialists and union leaders in Chile, and very similar to the way a brutal US-backed Shah of Iran took care of democratic threats to his power

2. Who said that it Iran today has become a democratic country after decades of US and British meddling? Answer: Not me, and why would anyone come to this conclusion? 

3. Why would one necessarily have to be socialist or democratic minded in order to warrant torturing?

4. And so what gives the US-CIA a right to interfere in Iran politically as they have done so historically and admitting to doing on a continuing basis today?

CMOT Dibbler wrote:

But you still haven't said that the CIA and democracy are at cross purposes. Which makes me wonder about your personal views on democracy in general.

 

The CIA are a bunch of vicious, racist, capitalist, fachist, homophobic indecent, fashion impaired shit cocks.

Democracy is very important.

Have I past the test?    

No not quite. You've admitted to what the CIA represents in a kind of neutral-ish past tense without connection to this discussion of current events in Iran. And I'm simply trying to introduce a bit of reason and logic to this discussion. A country does not necessarily have to be socialist or leftwing in general in order to merit a CIA-orchestrated regime change, or at least, and attempted one regardless of outcome. The CIA has infiltrated leftwing organizations and civil society groups before. This is some of the method to their madness and how they operate today since being told to cover it up a little by the US senate select committee in the 1970's who advised this very undemocratic agency to be more discrete about their illegal activities around the world. We still have secret CIA prisons around the world, and executive death squads and CIA-Military black budgets of around $60-$80 billion a year that they admit to, but it doesn't mean that the CIA can not be deeply involved in the events occurring in Iran today.

Fidel wrote:

 They can't allow any such examples to exist anywhere in the world.

This is what you westerners think. You think you are controlling the whole world, and that anything that happens must have to do with your governments' will. In fact, it is mostly a mirage propagated by your governments to keep your empire together. The British instilled the myth in our countries that "even a leaf falling from a tree branch is decided in advance in London".

That's why there was a time that in our countries (the south, as you call it), leaders were viewed and judged solely based on their acceptance or challenge of the empires goals. The more uncompromising and challenging they looked, the better and more independent they were. If a country at some point collaborated with an empire, it was a servant. If it challeneged them, it was a rebel. No other choice. At the time it was deemed impossible for our nations to have goals and plans of their own. We were supposed to be either servants or rebels.

But that world has changed, and we have learned the falseness of this view. Even the British got a great kick in the butt in India. We no longer try to adjust our decisions based on your thinkings and goals. We don't care whether a certain decision would help your empire or would harm it. The only question for us is: how would that decision serve OUR nation. We can't become equals until we think of ourselves as equals. And that means, no more playing your servant/rebel game. You want a rebelion against your empire, do it yourself. We have more important things to do. Like toppling a tyrannical government.

They got rid of cruel and corrupt imperialist regimes Russia and China first half of the last century. Corporate jackals here in the west thought for sure they would get to hack off pieces of China and Russia for themselves way back when.

And Crazy George's imperialists were turfed from America in 1776. Crazy George was reincarnated through the doctor and the madman in the 1970's and again by the 2000's. In fact, they are all the same crazy George since Truman and Eisenhower. And even Mackinley and Teddy Roosevelt. There has been a long line of insanity in the White House as well as Sussex Drive since Sir John A. MacDonald. The A stood for asshole-deluxe.

Fidel wrote:

They got rid of cruel and corrupt imperialist regimes Russia and China first half of the last century. Corporate jackals here in the west thought for sure they would get to hack off pieces of China and Russia for themselves way back when.

And Crazy George's imperialists were turfed from America in 1776. Crazy George was reincarnated through the doctor and the madman in the 1970's and again by the 2000's. In fact, they are all the same crazy George since Truman and Eisenhower. And even Mackinley and Teddy Roosevelt. There has been a long line of insanity in the White House as well as Sussex Drive since Sir John A. MacDonald. The A stood for asshole-deluxe.

You didn't answer the question.    Maybe I should rephraise it.  Have their been any third world uprisings in the last 7 years(besides the Bolivarian revolution) which Babblers have supported.  Please avoid bate and switch tactics when answering.    

What is this, an interrogation? I refuse to be waterboarded. And in case the question does arise, I had nothing to do with either 9/11 or the CIA's creation of the dreaded SAVAK in 1970's Tehran.

Fidel, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, it was really a question for everybody. 

Unionist wrote:

sanizadeh wrote:

Fidel wrote:

 They can't allow any such examples to exist anywhere in the world.

This is what you westerners think. You think you are controlling the whole world, and that anything that happens must have to do with your governments' will.

Aw c'mon. Don't shatter my belief system:

The CIA runs everything.

They pulled off 9/11, to justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

No, the bastards let their Islamic Gladios pull it off on purpose, like they allowed Pinochet's DINA into the country,and who guided their fascist-alike visitors around Warshington for days before they murdered former economist in Allende's democratically elected government, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Letelier]Orlando Letelier[/url]

The CIA and their Gusano Gladios know all about hijacking planes and blowing up Cuban passenger jets with innocent people aboard. The bastards have actually boasted of their anti-Cuban terrorism and murder of innocent people before.

Unionist, are you saying that Murder Inc with a history of falsetto flagelato gladio and murdering scores of innocent people in this hemisphere over the years should be ruled out from the list of suspects who perpetrated 9/11?

What about Bush's and now presumably Obama's executive death squads running around the world murdering people? How about the renditions and torture? Is this all a figment of leftwing imagination, too?

What would Diefenbaker say besides, let's give an entire Canadian aircraft industry away? I think if Nortel existed then, he's have handed that off to the lowest foreign bidder, too.

Unionist wrote:

Fidel wrote:

Unionist, are you saying that Murder Inc with a history of falsetto flagelato gladio and murdering scores of innocent people in this hemisphere over the years should be ruled out from the list of suspects who perpetrated 9/11?

No, I'm saying that the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and many other countries have risen up in struggle in the past, and are doing so today, against oppression, both internal and external - that they have won in the past and will win today and in the future - and that any theory that the resistance is the handiwork of the Great White Powers is a theory in the service of those self-same powers. As for 9/11, I neither know nor care who perpetrated it, but I have a clear understanding of the need of some people to attribute it to the omnipotent U.S.

Oh Jeez, you're so not with it today. In case you haven't noticed, ordinary people in those countries have won nothing since shock and awe over Baghdad. Pakistanis are slightly better off than wretched Afghans who live in grinding poverty and despair after 30 years' worth of US meddling in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And before you tell us again that VietNamese won that war, too, I must protest. The VietNamese actually won very little. They were forced down the road of  capital in Clinton's time as they could no longer deal with the vicious trade sanctions. Cubans and Iraqis and North Koreans know all about vicious trade sanctions waged against them by a vicious empire claiming to support and advocate for free trade.

And then there are the horrible birth defects still occurring in Vietnam with genetic mutations passed on to this generation of VietNamese. And the defects are truly horrible to look at on the internet. Believe me, with your somewhat optimistic outlook on things in general, you don't want to see those photos. And I refuse to post them here no matter how much bullshit you preach here about this glorious war and glorifying the organized murder for the sake of romanticizing a terrible-awful situation for many millions of human beings in those countries, or reasons I simply can not fathom.

CMOT Dibbler wrote:

Aren't the protests big enough that they could include many decent, kind hearted people?

Isn't it possible that Iranians just had an election, and that Ahmadinejad actually won fair and square in spite of a lack of democratic alternatives?

US-managed elections in Afghanistan, otoh, produced no democratic winner because no one actually opposed the one time pro-Mooj Karzai and his government of corrupt warlords and war criminals. And the CIA and US Military are notorious for rigging elections. Those people, and apparently some babblers, too, are taking the CIA's line that election results in Iran should be overturned. Why? We want answers or else there will be a good waterboarding unless we get them. The truth would be nice but not entirely necessary, because we should all enjoy a good waterboarding that lasts for SIX YEARS at a place like Gitmo!! Or apprently any one of the CIA's secret horror prisons in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa or wherever.