Iran’s Election — A Debate

The only independent nationwide poll in Iran prior to the election was conducted by the New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow. In the light of the developments since division has emerged among the various analysts at NAF. Yesterday NAF organized a forum where the two camps debated their respective positions. I have yet to watch the whole thing, so I’ll watch it with you all and post comments latter. However, I didn’t like the fact that Steve Clemons posted on his Facebook page a rather silly piece by a woman disparaging Flynt Leverett. (You can find stats on the elections here.)

Iran’s recent elections have sparked riots in the streets of Tehran and intense debate in the media and policy communities around the globe. Join us as some of the world’s leading experts share their varied views on how to interpret current events in Iran, and what they mean for US policy toward Iran going forward.

Aid Agencies Slam Gaza Blockade

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Today marks the second anniversary of the criminal siege of Gaza. Here is a statement signed  by over 40 NGOs, humanitarian and UN organizations denouncing Israel’s blockade:

We, United Nations and non-governmental humanitarian organisations, express deepening concern over Israel’s continued blockade of the Gaza Strip which has now been in force for two years.

These indiscriminate sanctions are affecting the entire 1.5 million population of Gaza and ordinary women, children and the elderly are the first victims.

The amount of goods allowed into Gaza under the blockade is one quarter of the pre- blockade flow.  Eight out of every ten truckloads contains food but even that is restricted to a mere 18 food items.  Seedlings and calves are not allowed so Gaza’s farmers cannot make up the nutritional shortfall.  Even clothes and shoes, toys and school books are routinely prohibited.

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Where Is My Vote?

The Editor: In these parlous times it becomes imperative to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate solidarity. The following is based on principle and respect for the Iranian people, and its demand for transparency and accountability is one we share even if our own reading of the elections is different.(Also see Khatami and Moussavi‘s statements on the elections which have been translated by our good friend Naj).

The aim of the following appeal is to declare our support for the Iranian movement in its call for a new election and our opposition to any violent intervention on the protesters. We do so as independent academics and not as representatives of our many respective governments. We do so in the hope that the historical appreciation and respect of higher learning in most of traditional Iran will make our voice of solidarity heard within Iran.

Iranians participate in the democratic process
Iranians participate in the democratic process

June 21, 2009 — A week ago, Friday June 12, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of the Iranian presidential election. Immediately after, all other candidates, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and even the conservative Mohsen Rezaei, disputed the official results. So did some people who started several demonstrations to express their anger. More news fueled the suspicion of fraud at an unprecedented scale. On Monday June 15, and to the amazement of the world, millions of people – of all ages, classes, and backgrounds – were in the streets of Tehran demanding another election in what was the biggest demonstration since the revolution in 1979. A week later, despite the threats and beatings issued and ordered by the government, millions of people are still demonstrating, and the movement is growing and spreading to other cities.

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In praise of … John Berger

Even the Guardian  editors’ encomiums can’t escape the characteristic wishy-washiness. So they praise John Berger, in their usual weasly manner of course, and yet denigrate the politics which animates his fiction and gives it its distinctive edge.

John Berger
John Berger

John Berger’s most tangible influences were that tiny band of intellectuals who combined fine-art criticism with a social conscience: John Ruskin; Oscar Wilde; Walter Benjamin. Great writers all, and 82-year-old Berger is their equal. Indeed, that was true as early as 1972, when he published Ways of Seeing, the classic work of art criticism that became a founding text of cultural studies and still has a huge influence on art teachers and their students. What is most gratifying about the report we publish today is that Berger still holds to the humane, generous values set down in that book, rather than make that long, cliched voyage to being a reactionary with a dessicated heart. The archive of one of the greatest thinkers in postwar Britain – a Booker-winning novelist, an artist, a critic – would have fetched a usefully-high price from any number of American universities, but Berger has given it for free to the British Library. All he wants is for the BL’s representative to help him with some farmwork. That is a typically bit of puckishness from a man who, when he claimed the Booker for his novel G, delivered a tirade of an acceptance speech against the event’s corporate sponsors and promptly handed over half his prize money to the Black Panthers. Gestures like that distracted (how could they not?) attention from his aphorisms such as “Nobody had ever sworn in paint before Picasso”. A sharp, bold statement – but it is also generous, helping the reader see the work under discussion. Those same qualities are true of its author.

Guevara asks you to join the vegetarian revolution

PETA Lydia_Guevara

A bit of levity — though many of us take our vegetarian cause very seriously — to balance out the grim crises in Iran and elsewhere we’ve covered here in PULSE. Pictured is Lydia Guevara, granddaughter of Ernesto “Che”, in a campaign for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Yes, those bandoliers are of baby carrots. Launched first in Argentina, where Che Guevara was born, the campaign is PETA’s first for South America. And lest we forget, the biggest reason behind deforestation in the mighty Amazon is beef, a large chunk of it for export.

Death

*Warning – disturbing footage.*

Neda Soltani was killed by the Basij. This is cowardly and despicable. I hope the perpetrators are brought to justice and dealt with severely. It was reported the other day that some of the Basijis were being arrested. I hope that is true.

Death — by Harold Pinter

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

In Tehran, fantasy and reality make uneasy bedfellows

It appears Robert Fisk — who I have often referred to as the greatest living journalist — is trying to redeem himself for the overly credulous reporting in his last article (for which he was chided here yesterday). “It’s said that the cruel ‘Iranian’ cops aren’t Iranian at all. They’re Hizbollah militia”. These and other equally silly rumors Fisk lays to rest in this return to his usual uncompromising journalism.

Protesters attacked by the Basij
Protesters attacked by the Basij

At around 4.35 last Monday morning, my Beirut mobile phone rang in my Tehran hotel room. “Mr Fisk, I am a computer science student in Lebanon. I have just heard that students are being massacred in their dorms at Tehran University. Do you know about this?” The Fisk notebook is lifted wearily from the bedside table. “And can you tell me why,” he continued, “the BBC and other media are not reporting that the Iranian authorities have closed down SMS calls and local mobile phones and have shut down the internet in Tehran? I am learning what is happening only from Twitters and Facebook.”

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‘Israel is West’s first line of defense’

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Geert Wilders

The Dutch crypto-fascist MP Geert Wilders, who has been recently banned from the UK with the Home Office viewing his presence as a “threat to one of the fundamental interests of society“, says that the sequel to his first movie Fitna will focus on “how the forces of Islamization are specifically targeting Israel in a fight against all free societies.” In an interview with Haaretz, he not only commended Avigdor Liberman for his electoral succes and said he is “proud” of the similarities between his own Party for Freedom and Yisrael Beiteinu but calls the “two-state solution is an internal Israeli matter“. His “personal belief is that there is a two state solution for the Palestinians. One of those states is called Jordan.” Whilst such statements are nothing new from Wilders, the fact that he seized 15% (2nd place) of the vote in the Dutch European Parliament elections means that he’s becoming a political force to be reckoned with.

Israel will be a major part of Geert Wilders’ next film on Islam, the rightist Dutch legislator said last week in an interview for Haaretz. He praised Avigdor Lieberman, observing “similarities” between Yisrael Beiteinu and the Party for Freedom – a small movement which has grown to become Holland’s second most popular.

Wilders, a controversial anti-immigration politician, rose to international fame last year when he released a 14-minute film entitled Fitna, which attempts to portray what he considers as Islam’s “violent nature.” The film, which has been viewed by millions online, provoked mass protests throughout the Muslim world.

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Patrick Doherty on the Iranian Elections

Patrick Doherty
Patrick Doherty

Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio interviews Patrick Doherty of the New America Foundation on the Iranian election.

MP3 here. (17:52)

Patrick Doherty, Deputy Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, discusses the Iranian government crackdown that reinforces the perception of electoral fraud, the popular Iranian discontent with autocracy, the dearth of legitimate polling in Iran that increases uncertainty and how Ahmedinejad’s tough negotiating with the U.S. is seen by some as the Persian equivalent of Nixon going to China.

Striking the Right Balance – BBC Style

Just heard this extract from BBC Radio 4’s World this Weekend aired on Sunday via a listeners complaint read out on the Feedback programme today.

Shaun Ley: The World This Weekend, this is Shaun Ley. Hello. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has used a news conference this lunchtime to describe his re-election as President of Iran as an epic moment.  There have been more protest by opposition supporters and criticisms from Iran’s neighbours.

Daniel Ayalon, Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel: It is now high time for the international community to stop immediately the very dangerous and relentless campaign of Iran to achieve nuclear capabilities.

That’s the view from Israel. We’ll be hearing a US perspective and the son of the former Shah joins me live.

Its a good example of how the selection of expertise on the BBC frames its news and current affairs output. As the listener pointed out in his complaint, none of Iran’s actual neighbours were in fact consulted by the programme. Only Israel, the US and the son of its former puppet.