The Largest Minority

June 24th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

h/t Rebel Reports

June 19th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University, Khamenei backed the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the president after the June 12 election.

“Candidates were put forward into public eye, everyone could judge for themselves … they have identified the person they wanted,” he said.

Khamenei refuted accusations of vote rigging, and insisted the poll was an “absolute and definitive victory”.

Ruling out fraud behind Ahmadinejad’s victory, he said “the Islamic establishment will never manipulate people’s votes and commit treason.

“The legal structures and electoral regulations of this country do not allow vote rigging.”

He said that any doubts concerning the results must be investigated through legal channels and called on supporters of defeated candidates to cease street protests, adding, “otherwise they will be responsible for its consequences, and consequences of any chaos”.

Farzad Agha, an Iranian analyst, told Al Jazeera: “This clearly is a threat to the demonstrators and supporters of the opposition candidates … He is saying that if you continue we will deal with you.”

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June 16th, 2009 by Guest

originally posted at Lenin’s Tomb

I think it’s a consensus on the liberal-left in the US and UK that the Iranian elections were fixed. If they are right, we are watching a bloodless coup turn into a bloody one, as protesters have been beaten and are now being shot at and killed by cops. One of Mousavi’s supporters alleges he was told that a coup was coming. If they are not right, we are still faced with a state busily beating and killing the opposition. The Iranian state is still detaining ‘reformist’ MPs, censoring newspapers, shutting down access to social networking sites (although people are still finding ways to Twitter), and behaving as if for all the world it had every reason to act guiltily. It is not inherently implausible that Ahmadinejad got 63% of the vote, and it has to be shown that there was a fix. The fact that Ahmadinejad used state oil revenues to fund programmes for the poor can be approved or derided, but it arguably gave large numbers of people an interest in voting for Ahmadinejad against his more explicitly neoliberal rival. It gave him a base among some of the working class and bazaaris. Still, it is hardly implausible either that some vote-rigging went on, if only to make the win decisive enough to avoid a run-off.

So, the first question that occurs is, why should the ballots be rigged? This is skated over in a lot of the commentary as if the answer were obvious - Mousavi advocated reform, duh! However, Mousavi is hardly a dangerous candidate for the Iranian ruling class: rather, he represents a powerful faction of it. True, he was once on the ‘Islamic Left’ back in the 1980s, and it was due to the support of the left-leaning majles that he was made prime minister against Khomeini’s preferences. Today, however, he is a centrist allied to the ‘Modern Right’. His solutions to Iran’s problems of accumulation and development are impeccably neoliberal. This is why he got the backing of the old crook, cynic, capitalist and Iran-Contra arms dealer, Hashem Rafsanjani. He supports privatization, and wants to reform Article 44 to assist the process. He supports strong counter-inflationary policies. Of course, he would like to take a slightly less ‘hard line’ with respect to the US. Indeed, like other would-be ‘reform’ candidates, his campaign tried to channel Obama - with some success since his wife, who spearheaded some important reforms in the late 1980s, was cast as the Michelle Obama of the campaign. Still, he isn’t an outsider by any means. His candidacy wasn’t struck off, while those that offend the Council of Guardians usually are. He wasn’t excluded from the debates, as far as I can find out. He wasn’t excluded from the polls, some of which put him ahead, and some behind. Why should he have suddenly become so dangerous that the Iranian state, or powerful sectors within it, would risk a stupid fix? The answer could only be that by tapping a popular demands for reforms, the candidacy might have unleashed a movement that seriously frightened some factions in the ruling class.

The next question is, what can come of the protests? Whatever the motivations of Mousavi, we have an enormous number of people on the streets, with a clear demand for political reform. They took to those streets, reportedly ignoring warnings that the police were carrying live ammunition. This means they are brave, certainly, and also confident in their numbers. Already, Khamenei has ceded the question of investigating the elections, which it seems clear he didn’t want to do. The Iranian state may kill people, but these protesters are already starting to win. They can make gains far beyond the very limited promises that Mousavi made in order to excite progressive layers. (As far as I can tell, Mousavi was mildly critical of some state repression of television channels, and promised to ‘review’ legislation that could be harmful to women - hardly a tribune of the oppressed). So, whatever the truth about the claims of a fix, these protests can do nothing but good. They may, in addition to getting rid of some particularly onerous forms of oppression, open up a space in which the left can operate more freely, and in which the labour movement can assert itself more forcefully.

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June 14th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

June 9th, 2009 by Guest

A CNN headline, reporting Obama’s plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads “Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.” Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.

Keeping just to Israel-Palestine — there was nothing substantive about anything else — Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to ‘point fingers’ at each other or to “see this conflict only from one side or the other.” There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.

Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.

Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as “an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.” How should the Obama administration see it? Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the Initiative reiterates the long-standing international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on the international (pre-June ‘67) border, perhaps with “minor and mutual modifications,” to borrow U.S. government usage before it departed sharply from world opinion in the 1970s, vetoing a Security Council resolution backed by the Arab “confrontation states” (Egypt, Iran, Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab Peace Initiative except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political settlement. Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition. The Initiative cannot be a “beginning” if the U.S. continues to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them.

In the background is the Obama administration’s goal, enunciated most clearly by Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the “moderate” Arab states against Iran. The term “moderate” has nothing to do with the character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to U.S. demands.

What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: “Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).” All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable.

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June 4th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Perhaps it’s time to cut funding to Israel.

Obama is undeniably pro-Israeli, so you may be asking, “What more do the Jews in this video want?” Nothing short of complete eradication of all Muslims. Ironic isn’t it? Despite the overuse of Goldwin’s Law these days, comparisons between Zionists and Nazis are frighteningly valid.

Zionists frankly don’t want peace. They want all the land they think they’re entitled to (which extends far beyond Israel) and think any negotiation is unacceptable. Putting Libertarian conspiracy theories about 9/11 aside, Zionists actually do pose a huge threat to the President’s life and US security. If I were Obama I’d be keeping a close eye on Rahm Emanuel’s father, a former Irgun terrorist, and I’m only half-joking when I say that.

A militant Israeli state served our imperial interests for decades, but now that we can no longer sustain our empire we face perhaps the largest example of “blowback” we have ever seen. So how do we quell a Zionist monster we’ve been feeding for decades? Backing international law regarding Israel would be a good start. Supporting the Palestinian Right of Return would turn Israel from a right-wing “Jewish State” which breeds extremism into a democratic one which respects human rights.

h/t Allison Kilkenny who also has a great piece on why Obama’s Cairo speech was a failure.

June 1st, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Being the superpower that it is, the United States has a way of turning populist movements militant. Anything that poses a threat to US hegemony is spun as a threat to freedom which must be destroyed. Campaigns for human rights and social justice are easily turned into militant resistance campaigns in order to defend themselves against Uncle Sam and his big stick.

Nevertheless, resistance groups like Hezbollah and Hamas have managed to keep social services a central role in their party’s programs, outdoing their US-backed opponents of the March 14th bloc and Fatah Party respectively in providing both welfare and security to their people. Both Hezbollah and Hamas have constructed hospitals and schools, and run news services, orphanages, soup kitchens, libraries, and relief programs - everything Western critics say the Lebanese and Palestinian governments should be doing to raise the standard of living of their people.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah remains the only real defense the Lebanese have against Israel, and observers say they’re going to win the June 7th elections. That should be good news for anyone who really supports democracy, yet our current US administration is less than thrilled.

Despite hopes that someone with the name Barack Hussein Obama would actually have a more nuanced approach to the Muslim world, our current president has shown no better an understanding of Islamic political movements than his illiterate, flag-waving predecessor. The Bush Administration lumped all Muslims together. Legitimate political parties like Hamas and Hezbollah, which represented resistance against foreign aggression within their homelands, were considered a threat equal to borderless terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, which had no interest in politics and little support in the Muslim world. By continuing to exclude groups like Hezbollah and Hamas from the democratic process, the US government is creating all the conditions necessary to turn pragmatic political parties into militant forces.

In his most recent visit to Lebanon, Joe Biden stated that Washington was committed to meeting the needs of the Lebanese army, but that US aid was completely dependent on the outcome of the election. In other words, vote the right way or we will allow Israel to destroy you. You’d think a true beacon of democracy would support the outcome of any democratic election regardless of who the winner was.

This is exactly the same policy Washington had for the Palestinian elections in 2006 between Fatah and Hamas. When Palestinians actually voted for the party that addressed their concerns about security and social services, US and European aid was cut off and a coup was set into motion. Even now, President Obama is working with Fatah as if it’s the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people while ostracizing Hamas from talks concerning the future of Palestine.

Resistance parties address legitimate concerns that our US-backed puppets do not. Simply throwing more money their way so that they can maintain control will not lessen the tension that decades of US imperialism have built. We can either support democracy by letting go of our colonies or be destroyed in trying to maintain our hold on them. To quote JFK: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

May 23rd, 2009 by Manila Ryce

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon’s custody more horrific than anything made public so far. “If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse,” Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse.

Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko’s media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:

“Debating about it, ummm … Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

“It’s impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we’re dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there’s enough out there, they can’t (Applause). …. So it’s going to be an interesting election year.”

Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong’s blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: “[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, ‘You haven’t begun to see evil…’ then trailed off. He said, ‘horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.’ He looked frightened.”

So, there are several questions here: Has Hersh actually seen the video he described to the ACLU, and why hasn’t he written about it yet? Will he be forced to elaborate in more public venues now that these two speeches are getting so much attention, at least in the blogosphere? And who else has seen the video, if it exists — will journalists see and report on it? did senators see these images when they had their closed-door sessions with the Abu Ghraib evidence? — and what is being done about it?

(Update: A reader brought to our attention that the rape of boys at Abu Ghraib has been mentioned in some news accounts of the prisoner abuse evidence. The Telegraph and other news organizations described “a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, is said to show Iraqi guards raping young boys.” The Guardian reported “formal statements by inmates published yesterday describe horrific treatment at the hands of guards, including the rape of a teenage Iraqi boy by an army translator.”)

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