President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s alleged landslide victory has seen mass demonstrations brake out in Tehran amid accusations the election outcome was rigged.
News has managed to trickle out of Iran about the protests, despite the best efforts of officials to suppress information. Satellite, Internet, and telephone communications have all been massively disrupted by authorities, eager to prevent any reporting of events.
Iranian’s have described the capital as a “militarized zone”. It is reported that as many as 100 people have been killed on the streets of Tehran due to clashes with the police. Police are confiscating cameras from people to stop them from sending images outside of Iran.
The primary cell phone network in Tehran was cut off Saturday evening, while the government is apparently blocking several popular websites, including Facebook and YouTube. Persian blogs including Tehranbureau, have been shut down and blocked.
Telephone communication between Tehran and the rest of Iran have been completely disconnected. This corresponds with the beginnings of the arrests of the opposition. Up to 100 members of Iranian reformist groups have been arrested accused of orchestrating violence.
Presidential election candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has also been placed under house arrest. He was detained on his way to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s house, intending to submit a formal request to the Guardian Council to cancel the election result. He reportedly urged the Iranian nation to continue nationwide protests in a peaceful and legal way.
Users on Twitter and Facebook posted updates on the civil unrest. Twitterers were quick on re-tweeting news on Iran and covering what CNN wasn’t. The “#cnnfail” tag was the third most tweeted topic on Saturday night.
There are a number of perspectives emerging regarding the elections of Iran, according to this article things may not be what they seem.
President Obama has said about Iranian elections:
The US has repeatedly undermined and even forcibly removed all democratically elected governments of Iran through out recent history. Iran’s population, 70% of whom are under 30 years of age, crave free and progressive living. For well over ten years, democratic grass roots organizations for workers unions, women’s rites etc, have flourished in Iran. The problem is that external forces such as the US, keep orchestrating upheaval and the people then turn to hardliners for protection.
Prior to Ahmadinejad, President Seyed Mohammad Khātamī governed from 1997 – 2005. He was elected on a platform of liberalization. He rejected the idea that there must be clash of civilizations between the Muslim and Western Worlds and wanted to return rites to women. Upon his victory, there were jubilation's on a massive nation wide scale.
Eventually undermined by conservatives, reforms failed, and people looked for a return to hardline leadership. The US was actively involved in the undermining of President Khātamī, despite so much good will from the people of Iran towards the US. Mourning and a candle light vi dual was held in Tehran for 9/11 victims after the attacks. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei backed the US in Afghanistan, without whose support, the new US installed Afghan government could not have taken hold.
But in 2002, GW Bush declared Iran to be part of an axis of evil which came as a complete shock to Iran. The result was in 2005, support for hardliners against the US put Ahmadinejad into office. Reformers didn’t even run that year, many of whom became anti American themselves.
Although Islamic republic rule in Iran by a Supreme Leader has always been oppressive, US installed dictators of the past have been no less brutal in human rites abuses.
The modern day story of Iran starts in 1951 with the first elected official appointed Prime Minister by popular demand, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh. Prior to 1951, Iran’s oil reserves had been controlled for around 50 years, by the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (formerly the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now the BP – British Petroleum Company).
The British government derived more revenue from taxing the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), than the Iranian government derived from royalties. AIOC finally offered fifty-fifty profit-sharing in February 1951, but it was too late, sentiment for nationalization of the oil industry had become widespread. On March 15, the Majlis (Parliament) voted to nationalize the oil industry. In April, the Shah (Iran’s Monarch), yielded to pressure from the Majlis, as well as demonstrations in the streets, by naming Mosaddegh Prime Minister.
Britain was not amused; it imposed a worldwide embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil. In September 1951, Britain froze Iran's sterling assets and banned export of goods to Iran. It challenged the legality of the oil nationalization and took its case against Iran to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The court found in Iran's favour.
In June 1953, the Eisenhower administration approved a British proposal for a joint Anglo-American operation, code-named Operation Ajax, to overthrow Mosaddegh. Kermit Roosevelt of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), travelled secretly to Iran to coordinate plans with the Shah and the Iranian military, which was led by General Fazlollah Zahedi.
CIA director, Allen W. Dulles, approved $1 million to be used "in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadegh."
Iranians working for the C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against Mossadegh's government.
Two days after the coup, CIA funnelled $5 million to Iran to help the government they had installed consolidate power.
The Shah ruled Iran with an iron fist for 26 more years, in close contact with the United States; he installed fear upon the population with his secret police, the SAVAK, created by the CIA and Mossad. The SAVAK tortured, imprisoned and exterminated dissenters.
Shah critic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was exiled for 14 years. After many protests, the Shah declared martial law and banned protests, resulting in even bigger protests that saw Iran crippled. Removal of the Shah was demanded along with the return of Ayatollah Khomeini.
After this revolution of 1979, 52 diplomats were taken hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran, for what ended up totaling 444 days. This was the very Embassy that the CIA used in 1953 to organize the coup against Prime Minister Mosaddegh. The fear was the US would try another overthrow.
America, not about to accept their Shah puppet being overthrown in the manner in which they had installed him, supported Iraq in a war against Iran from 1980 – 1988.
Being the true democracy that it is, the US not only equipped Iraq with everything it needed for this battle, but at the very same time, sold arms to Iran, something to do with a need for covert funds in another overthrow, in another part of the world, financing the Contra Rebels fighting the Nicaraguan Sandinista government.
Does any of this sound familiar? CIA eradicates a popular peoples government, installs a puppet dictator, dictator realizes self autonomous desires, dictator tells the US to go fcuk itself, US declares dictator a danger to freedom, US invades or otherwise wages war against the dictator’s hapless population.
News has managed to trickle out of Iran about the protests, despite the best efforts of officials to suppress information. Satellite, Internet, and telephone communications have all been massively disrupted by authorities, eager to prevent any reporting of events.
Iranian’s have described the capital as a “militarized zone”. It is reported that as many as 100 people have been killed on the streets of Tehran due to clashes with the police. Police are confiscating cameras from people to stop them from sending images outside of Iran.
The primary cell phone network in Tehran was cut off Saturday evening, while the government is apparently blocking several popular websites, including Facebook and YouTube. Persian blogs including Tehranbureau, have been shut down and blocked.
Telephone communication between Tehran and the rest of Iran have been completely disconnected. This corresponds with the beginnings of the arrests of the opposition. Up to 100 members of Iranian reformist groups have been arrested accused of orchestrating violence.
Presidential election candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has also been placed under house arrest. He was detained on his way to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s house, intending to submit a formal request to the Guardian Council to cancel the election result. He reportedly urged the Iranian nation to continue nationwide protests in a peaceful and legal way.
Users on Twitter and Facebook posted updates on the civil unrest. Twitterers were quick on re-tweeting news on Iran and covering what CNN wasn’t. The “#cnnfail” tag was the third most tweeted topic on Saturday night.
There are a number of perspectives emerging regarding the elections of Iran, according to this article things may not be what they seem.
Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular.Also suspicious is the way in which some world leaders are reacting when normally their consciousness allows them to politically ignore the worst human rights abuses being carried out all over the globe at any given time.
Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran’s election.
- They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
- Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
- “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
- With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
- Half of them had the exact same profile photo
- Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.
I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran
I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.
Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.
President Obama has said about Iranian elections:
“I am deeply troubled by the violence that I’ve been seeing on television,” “I think that the democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent - all of those are universal values and need to be respected, and whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they are rightfully troubled.”Another factor to consider is that hardline Governments in Iran do enjoy good support because of anti American points of view, and with good reason.
The US has repeatedly undermined and even forcibly removed all democratically elected governments of Iran through out recent history. Iran’s population, 70% of whom are under 30 years of age, crave free and progressive living. For well over ten years, democratic grass roots organizations for workers unions, women’s rites etc, have flourished in Iran. The problem is that external forces such as the US, keep orchestrating upheaval and the people then turn to hardliners for protection.
Prior to Ahmadinejad, President Seyed Mohammad Khātamī governed from 1997 – 2005. He was elected on a platform of liberalization. He rejected the idea that there must be clash of civilizations between the Muslim and Western Worlds and wanted to return rites to women. Upon his victory, there were jubilation's on a massive nation wide scale.
Eventually undermined by conservatives, reforms failed, and people looked for a return to hardline leadership. The US was actively involved in the undermining of President Khātamī, despite so much good will from the people of Iran towards the US. Mourning and a candle light vi dual was held in Tehran for 9/11 victims after the attacks. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei backed the US in Afghanistan, without whose support, the new US installed Afghan government could not have taken hold.
But in 2002, GW Bush declared Iran to be part of an axis of evil which came as a complete shock to Iran. The result was in 2005, support for hardliners against the US put Ahmadinejad into office. Reformers didn’t even run that year, many of whom became anti American themselves.
Although Islamic republic rule in Iran by a Supreme Leader has always been oppressive, US installed dictators of the past have been no less brutal in human rites abuses.
The modern day story of Iran starts in 1951 with the first elected official appointed Prime Minister by popular demand, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh. Prior to 1951, Iran’s oil reserves had been controlled for around 50 years, by the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (formerly the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now the BP – British Petroleum Company).
The British government derived more revenue from taxing the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), than the Iranian government derived from royalties. AIOC finally offered fifty-fifty profit-sharing in February 1951, but it was too late, sentiment for nationalization of the oil industry had become widespread. On March 15, the Majlis (Parliament) voted to nationalize the oil industry. In April, the Shah (Iran’s Monarch), yielded to pressure from the Majlis, as well as demonstrations in the streets, by naming Mosaddegh Prime Minister.
Britain was not amused; it imposed a worldwide embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil. In September 1951, Britain froze Iran's sterling assets and banned export of goods to Iran. It challenged the legality of the oil nationalization and took its case against Iran to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The court found in Iran's favour.
In June 1953, the Eisenhower administration approved a British proposal for a joint Anglo-American operation, code-named Operation Ajax, to overthrow Mosaddegh. Kermit Roosevelt of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), travelled secretly to Iran to coordinate plans with the Shah and the Iranian military, which was led by General Fazlollah Zahedi.
CIA director, Allen W. Dulles, approved $1 million to be used "in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadegh."
Iranians working for the C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against Mossadegh's government.
Two days after the coup, CIA funnelled $5 million to Iran to help the government they had installed consolidate power.
The Shah ruled Iran with an iron fist for 26 more years, in close contact with the United States; he installed fear upon the population with his secret police, the SAVAK, created by the CIA and Mossad. The SAVAK tortured, imprisoned and exterminated dissenters.
Shah critic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was exiled for 14 years. After many protests, the Shah declared martial law and banned protests, resulting in even bigger protests that saw Iran crippled. Removal of the Shah was demanded along with the return of Ayatollah Khomeini.
After this revolution of 1979, 52 diplomats were taken hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran, for what ended up totaling 444 days. This was the very Embassy that the CIA used in 1953 to organize the coup against Prime Minister Mosaddegh. The fear was the US would try another overthrow.
America, not about to accept their Shah puppet being overthrown in the manner in which they had installed him, supported Iraq in a war against Iran from 1980 – 1988.
Being the true democracy that it is, the US not only equipped Iraq with everything it needed for this battle, but at the very same time, sold arms to Iran, something to do with a need for covert funds in another overthrow, in another part of the world, financing the Contra Rebels fighting the Nicaraguan Sandinista government.
Does any of this sound familiar? CIA eradicates a popular peoples government, installs a puppet dictator, dictator realizes self autonomous desires, dictator tells the US to go fcuk itself, US declares dictator a danger to freedom, US invades or otherwise wages war against the dictator’s hapless population.
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