[Peace-discuss] Bill Blum' Anti-Empire Report…

[Morton K. Brussel]

The Anti-Empire Report

July 3rd, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
Much ado about nothing?

What is there about the Iranian election of June 12 that has led to it  
being one of the leading stories in media around the world every day  
since? Elections whose results are seriously challenged have taken  
place in most countries at one time or another in recent decades.  
Countless Americans believe that the presidential elections of 2000  
and 2004 were stolen by the Republicans, and not just inside the  
voting machines and in the counting process, but prior to the actual  
voting as well with numerous Republican Party dirty tricks designed to  
keep poor and black voters off voting lists or away from polling  
stations. The fact that large numbers of Americans did not take to the  
streets day after day in protest, as in Iran, is not something we can  
be proud of. Perhaps if the CIA, the Agency for International  
Development (AID), several US government-run radio stations, and  
various other organizations supported by the National Endowment for  
Democracy (which was created to serve as a front for the CIA,  
literally) had been active in the United States, as they have been for  
years in Iran, major street protests would have taken place in the  
United States.

The classic "outside agitators" can not only foment dissent through  
propaganda, adding to already existing dissent, but they can serve to  
mobilize the public to strongly demonstrate against the government. In  
1953, when the CIA overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed  
Mossadegh, they paid people to agitate in front of Mossadegh's  
residence and elsewhere and engage in acts of violence; some pretended  
to be supporters of Mossadegh while engaging in anti-religious  
actions. And it worked, remarkably well.1 Since the end of World War  
II, the United States has seriously intervened in some 30 elections  
around the world, adding a new twist this time, twittering. The State  
Department asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance shutdown  
of its service to keep information flowing from inside Iran, helping  
to mobilize protesters.2 The New York Times reported: "An article  
published by the Web site True/Slant highlighted some of the biggest  
errors on Twitter that were quickly repeated and amplified by  
bloggers: that three million protested in Tehran last weekend (more  
like a few hundred thousand); that the opposition candidate Mir  
Hussein Mousavi was under house arrest (he was being watched); that  
the president of the election monitoring committee declared the  
election invalid last Saturday (not so)." 3

In recent years, the United States has been patrolling the waters  
surrounding Iran with warships, halting Iranian ships to check for  
arms shipments to Hamas or for other illegal reasons, financing and  
"educating" Iranian dissidents, using Iranian groups to carry out  
terrorist attacks inside Iran, kidnaping Iranian diplomats in Iraq,  
kidnaping Iranian military personnel in Iran and taking them to Iraq,  
continually spying and recruiting within Iran, manipulating Iran's  
currency and international financial transactions, and imposing  
various economic and political sanctions against the country.4

"I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of  
the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran's  
affairs," said US President Barack Obama with a straight face on June  
23. Some in the Iranian government [have been] accusing the United  
States and others outside of Iran of instigating protests over the  
elections. These accusations are patently false and absurd."5

"Never believe anything until it's officially denied," British writer  
Claud Cockburn famously said.

In his world-prominent speech to the Middle East on June 4, Obama  
mentioned that "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States  
played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian  
government." So we have the president of the United States admitting  
to a previous overthrow of the Iranian government while the United  
States is in the very midst of trying to overthrow the current Iranian  
government. This will serve as the best example of hypocrisy that's  
come along in quite a while.

So why the big international fuss over the Iranian election and street  
protests? There's only one answer. The obvious one. The announced  
winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Washington ODE, an Officially  
Designated Enemy, for not sufficiently respecting the Empire and its  
Israeli partner-in-crime; indeed, Ahmadinejad is one of the most  
outspoken critics of US foreign policy in the world.

So ingrained is this ODE response built into Washington's world view  
that it appears to matter not at all that Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's main  
opponent in the election and very much supported by the protesters,  
while prime minister 1981-89, bore large responsibility for the  
attacks on the US embassy and military barracks in Beirut in 1983,  
which took the lives of more than 200 Americans, and the 1988 truck  
bombing of a US Navy installation in Naples, Italy, that killed five  
persons. Remarkably, a search of US newspaper and broadcast sources  
shows no mention of this during the current protests.6 However, the  
Washington Post saw fit to run a story on June 27 that declared: "the  
authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been  
selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving  
government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic  
reforms."

Can it be that no one in the Obama administration knows of Mousavi's  
background? And do none of them know about the violent government  
repression on June 5 in Peru of the peaceful protests organized in  
response to the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement? A massacre that took the  
lives of between 20 and 25 indigenous people in the Amazon and wounded  
another 100.7 The Obama administration was silent on the Peruvian  
massacre because the Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, is not an ODE.

And neither is Mousavi, despite his anti-American terrorist deeds,  
because he's opposed to Ahmadinejad, who competes with Hugo Chavez to  
be Washington's Number One ODE. Time magazine calls Mousavi a  
"moderate", and goes on to add: "It has to be assumed that the Iranian  
presidential election was rigged," offering as much evidence as the  
Iranian protestors, i.e., none at all.8 It cannot of course be proven  
that the Iranian election was totally honest, but the arguments given  
to support the charge of fraud are not very impressive, such as the  
much-repeated fact that the results were announced very soon after the  
polls closed. For decades in various countries election results have  
been condemned for being withheld for many hours or days. Some kind of  
dishonesty must be going on behind the scenes during the long delay it  
was argued. So now we're asked to believe that some kind of dishonesty  
must be going on because the results were released so quickly. It  
should be noted that the ballots listed only one electoral contest,  
with but four candidates.

Phil Wilayto, American peace activist and author of a book on Iran,  
has observed:

     Ahmadinejad, himself born into rural poverty, clearly has the  
support of the poorer classes, especially in the countryside, where  
nearly half the population lives. Why? In part because he pays  
attention to them, makes sure they receive some benefits from the  
government and treats them and their religious views and traditions  
with respect. Mousavi, on the other hand, the son of an urban  
merchant, clearly appeals more to the urban middle classes, especially  
the college-educated youth. This being so, why would anyone be  
surprised that Ahmadinejad carried the vote by a clear majority? Are  
there now more yuppies in Iran than poor people?9

All of which is of course not to say that Iran is not a relatively  
repressive society on social and religious issues, and it's this  
underlying reality which likely feeds much of the protest; indeed,  
many of the protesters may not even have strong views about the  
election per se, particularly since both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are  
members of the establishment, neither is any threat to the Islamic  
theocracy, and the election can be seen as the kind of power struggle  
you find in virtually every country. But that is not the issue I'm  
concerned with here. The issue is Washington's long-standing goal of  
regime change. If the exact same electoral outcome had taken place in  
a country that is an ally of the United States, how much of all the  
accusatory news coverage and speeches would have taken place? In fact,  
the exact same thing did happen in a country that is an ally of the  
United States, three years ago when Felipe Calderon appeared to have  
stolen the presidential election in Mexico and there were daily large  
protests for more than two months; but the American and international  
condemnation was virtually non-existent compared to what we see today  
in regard to Iran.

Iranian leaders undertook a recount of a random ten per cent of  
ballots and recertified Ahmadinejad as the winner. How honest the  
recount was I have no idea, but it's more than Americans got in 2000  
and 2004.

For the complete report see
http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer71.html

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