I can't say that I didn't expect this result. I expected it all along. But I didn't think they would do it so brazenly... ("Ahmadinejad Wins in Landslide"). Oh Please! With roughly 70% of the Iranian population being under the age of 30 and with young voters supporting the opponent Mousavi 2-1...sometimes 3-1... the results are pretty much a joke.
The danger of all this is that it creates the atmosphere for another major military conflict in the Middle East...at a time when the U.S. has its hands full playing Global Cop in other parts of the region. Not to mention the lunacy taking place with North Korea (partly the fault of U.S. policy). The phony election results in Iran will be used by the Mad Man of the Middle East, Benjamin Netanyahu, as an excuse to launch attacks on Iranian nuclear sites (attacks which won't knock out all of Iran's nuclear research and storage facilities). The chance of a military confrontation is an almost certainty at this point.... unless Obama can reach some sort of an agreement with Iran or unless Iran reaches a deal with the IAEA that satisfies the U.S., Israel and the UN Security Council. But this isn't likely. Israel will always be an obstacle to peace when it comes to Iran. Today, Netanyahu will give a so-called "Peace" policy speech (a "Peace" speech is an oxymoron if you're talking about Israel's foreign policy). There is nothing peaceful about Netanyahu's speech or about his intentions regarding foreign policy. Netanyahu is hoping to draw the U.S. into another conflict, so that he can use American blood to do his bidding. He sees Obama as a lightweight whom he can run over. The tail is definitely wagging the dog.
There's also the problem of Iran being a client State of Russia which is also a corrupt dictatorship. The Russians and the Chinese aren't likely to agree to any touch sanctions against Iran, meaning that an amicable solution is not likely to be reached via UN sanctions....because that tool probably isn't going to be available. Even if cosmetic sanctions were to be imposed... Russia, China and other nations friendly to Iran wouldn't honor their UN obligations. All of this raises the risk of military conflict.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
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5 comments:
The one thing this Iranian election has made clear:
American media is damn useless.
I'm getting all my information about Iran online, from foreign sources, or Blogs.
it was absolutely surreal to be checking on the hour at certain blogs to see what was going on, then to click to CNN, don't even ask about MSNBC or Fox, and to see nothing remotely corresponding to what was going on in Iran.
As I mentioned on my post about this, I'm not completely ruling out the possibility that (1) hardcore, traditionalist religiosity also played a role in Ahmadinejad's election and that (2) protestors only represent a subset of the the population.
But then again, watching the clearly rigged election in 2000 taught me a valuable lesson in electoral corruption.
The jury is still out for me, but Ahmadinejad's re-election IS very fishy.
Andre,
Comparing Florida to Iran just doesn't work. It's not even apples to oranges. It's more like comparing Apples to bricks. They aren't in the same category at all....the two situations are Worlds apart. You can't use a U.S. election of any kind for comparison to what takes place in Iran...which is not a modern Democracy and never has been. It's a dictatorship run by Muslim clerics....and the leaders of the 79 uprising. What little demonstrations of Democracy Iran had over the last 30 years has always been no more than what the clerics have allowed....and most of that has been cosmetic.
So you're confusing Iran with authentic Democracy... which is what we have in most Western Nations, including the U.S. (comparatively speaking...and with all its flaws. By Western standards the U.S. system is horrible...but when compared to thoroughly corrupt nations, such as the dictatorship in Iran...the U.S. system is great).
Voting in Iran is mostly ceremonial.
More on why this is a bad comparison...
1. The "voting" and the vote counting in Iran is controlled directly by Ahmadinejad's government...through his own Cabinet...in this case, through the Interior Ministry. In other words... Ahmadinejad counts the votes in an election for which he is a candidate. In the U.S. voting and vote counting is, of course, the responsibility of each of the 50 States...and monitors (both international and domestic) are allowed to observe at least part of the process.
2. Ahmadinejad's government (along with the clerics) decide who is going to stand for election. Several candidates were eliminated from the process early on by Ahmadinejad and the religious Council that guides politics in the Country. This is fairly routine in Iran. And did I mention that Ahmadinejad counts the votes?
3. Information/media in Iran is highly controlled. Opponents are routinely silenced on the airwaves and criticism of the government or the clerics is aggressively limited and controlled. Official news is State Controlled....and radio, cell phones and the internet can be limited at any time. This puts a limit on dissent and limits how well opponents can campaign. The Interior Ministry and the clerics can ban rallies whenever they see fit. There is no Human Rights, Civil Rights, or rule of law apparatus there like what you would find here. The things that we take for granted in this Country, aren't available in Iran.
4. International monitors are not allowed. (Official, reliable exit polling is not done by any credible third parties...such as the UN, the Carter Center, the EU, the OSCE - which sometimes monitors elections outside its normal jurisdiction- etc).
5. The security forces, the military, and the secret police in Iran are allied with Ahmadinejad. The hardline clerics are also supportive of him.
6. You assume that I rely on CNN, when the complete opposite is the case. I will occasionally use CNN as a source (rarely)...but that's not a source that I routinely rely on or trust. I read/listen to news sources from all over the globe.
In the end...the votes were already tainted before they were even cast...because the process was so tainted.
A couple of things:
(1) I never professed to be an expert in the Iranian political apparatus. So the nuggets you dropped about their electoral process won't be challenged from my end.
(2) My main contention was that there was commonality in the U.S. and Iranian electoral processes in that RELIGION dictated electability. Whether it was some evangelical nut in the Bible belt scaring American voters of if it was the strong hand of the Abadgaran party regulating things in Iran, a common demoninator was the dangerous cocktail of religion and politics.
(3) I have no idea WHERE the CNN stuff came from. As far as I can tell...unless you're referring to Rikyrah's comments earlier...your news sources never even came up. I don't know where you're trying to go with that one.
Andre,
I don't know where the Hell the CNN thing came from either. lol
I could have sworn I saw something somewhere about CNN. I may have misinterpreted something on your site. Anyway, sometimes my comments go off track. You'll have to pardon me.
I haven't been getting enough sleep lately.
You seemed to make the slight suggestion that our Florida 2000 was somehow equivalent to the situation in Iran. I was just trying to make the point that the two aren't equal.
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