http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF16Ak02.html

“The MSM sites” !. As Justin Raimondo himself would say: Ha, Ha, Ha!

Frankly I did not read to the end of the article. The stench of hypocrisy was to much to bear. For example Pepe Scobar says that the ballot boxes were not even opened before the votes in favor of Ahmadinejad were circulated and announced on the the state TV. Actually, 95% of the boxes, over 40,000 boxes, hold the signatures of representatives of Mr. Mousavi confirming the validity of the vote inside the boxes. And there is the same number of signatures from the same people confirming the validity and robustness of the resealed boxes. Mr. Mousavi has not officially and publicly requested a vote recount or random examination of the boxes in the presence of his representatives or himself. He has just called publicly and repeatedly for annulment of the vote. No wonder. Well, actually I stopped reading after this:

“Even a former Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Ayatollah Mohajerani, went on the BBC Persian service to say the Supreme Leader was not infallible, and should be replaced in case of “dishonesty”.”

Pepe Scobar is in such a rush to dethrone Ayatollah Khamenei that he just writes down the best he can the name he has heard, mistaking so amateurishly “Ata’ollah” for “”Ayatollah”. Mr. Mohajerani is not a member of the clergy. “Ata’ollah” is the first name of Mr. Mohajerani. It is just an ordinary name. So much for the roving bullshit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataollah_Mohajerani

The Western media, and naturally Pepe Scobar included, have made much of the supposed knowledge about the source of “hatred” and mistrust that the Iranians feel about the West. In particular they have an unwritten claim to some sort of scholarship on the coup that overthrew Dr. Mossadegh. They mention Dr. Mossadegh as if it washes them of any future mischief and immediately jump on the same CIA financed trucks that carried the prostitutes and thugs from the less reputable parts of old Tehran to the door of Dr. Mossadegh’s home.

As once a dying father told his son: “I do not need a sermon. Just don’t shit on my grave”.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/06/18/irans-green-revolution/

However, this article by Justine Raimondo takes the cake. The “unofficial memo” that was circulated, and is linked to by Raimondo be way of a San Francisco Examiner article is a forgery. It is produced by the same people who have forged the Niger uranium documents, and the documents on the infamous laptop with which America and its “allies” are accusing Iran with nuclear weapons ambitions. One would have hoped that Raimondo, the great political detective would again take a step back, and look at it as is his usual habit. But no, he indulges in that forgery. According neocon forgeries are sometimes good, and sometimes not. It depends on which part of the equation they sit. From now on. The fact that they are produced by the same neocons, is of no consequence.
I am sure that if Cheney gets to visit Iran again to follow up on his unofficial negotiations with Rafsanjani and friends, he may even find time to laud your site as a beacon of freedom too, right along the rest of MSM. He may even bring his daughter along. Well done, Raimondo. You are Mainstream now, too.

In the Black and White world of Raimondo, outside America there exists only Israel and everything else, and inside America there is only neocons and nonneocons. In the nonCheney-esque (Ha, Ha, Ha), world of Raimondo, no nation has the right to think of its own interests. In that world, they are required by the purest of “Universal American Libertarian” oxymoron of an ideology to only guard and adjust their path with that of the interests and well being of the neocon battered “Fortress of Freedom”, America.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, will you please welcome Professor Justin Raimondo, the first Libertarian Internationalist. (Err, in your best French accent please!)

(Cheney-esuqe, wasn’t that? Ha, Ha, Ha)

“In the June 15, 2009 issue of Washington Post, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty wrote that “The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin — greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election.”

However, scrutiny of the data posted at Terror Free Tomorrow (www.terrorfreetomorrow.org) fails to support Ballen and Doherty’s interpretations. Their findings, from a telephone survey conducted four weeks before the election, are based on the responses of only 57.8% of the 1,731 people who were successfully contacted by telephone from outside of Iran. Among these, 34% said they would vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 14% for Mir Hussein Mousavi, 2% for Mehdi Karoubi, 1% for Mohsen Rezaie, and 27% did not know. (These figures add up only to 78% in the Ballen report.) In other words, of 1,731 people contacted, well over half either refused to participate (42.2%) or did not indicate a preferred candidate (15.6%) While we cannot guess at the political preferences of this nonresponding/ noncommitting group, we do know from these data that just 19.7% of all those contacted indicated they planned to vote for Ahmadinejad. This polling figure is very low for an incumbent – particularly for a self-described populist candidate – and cannot be responsibly interpreted as representing a clear harbinger of election victory.”

when I see the iranian soccer team wearing green to show solidarity I’d say we have entered a new phase.

my impression now is that the reformers, who were cynically used by mousavi and co to get votes/power have turned the tables on everyone mainly via TWitter. they have been having these rallies for years but they weren’t covered by the media and were thus, easy to put down.

now unless the iranian governmetn wanted to look like absolute monsters, they have no choice but to let them go on which will lead to fundamental changes for the country.

my hope is this “revolution” will be better managed than the ones in ukraine georgia and elsewhere where people risked life and limb protesting only to put incompetents in charge of a country who subsequently blow the whole thing.

China I think might be a better sort of template: stable but significant change

The Jerusalem Post engages in a bit of retroactive alteration of its June 14th article, apparently in response to the piece “Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter. UPDATES” by the website ChartingStocks.net

The J-Post even penned an article rebutting the charges made by the site.

But why the Jersualem Post would even bother to alter its article and write a response to the allegations made by ChartingStocks.net is a question that is the most interesting (and damning).

“In response to our recent post, which traced the bulk of the #IranElection twitter spam back to an article in JPost rather than “Iranian Students”, the Jerusalem newspaper has removed the evidence by altering their June 14th article (luckily, we kept the screenshot). JPost has also written a response to our allegations.”

“JPost Removes the Evidence and Issues a Response #IranElection”
http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/06/jpost-removes-the-evidence-and-issues-a-response-iranelection/

Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashableand TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.

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”

Continued at…

Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter. UPDATES
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_56061.shtml

Geez, people, why is it some of you see the US govt under every bush and tree? We are all aware of the US government’s meddling in the last century, but you guys treat them like they are an all powerful God who can control and see everything (which ironically is what the government WANTS you to think, they think it’s wonderful when you fear them having more power than they have, it’s like that South Park episode where Eric Cartman finally asks Bush if he did 9-11, and Bush admits that the real conspriacy is getting people to think that he did in fact do it to so they would think government was able to actually pull something off instead of blunder like it always does.