Iran election roundup #2

Bring out yer Twits, Bring out yer Twits
Police batter Protesters: Iran or Georgia?

U.S. State Department speaks to Twitter over Iran

VASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had contacted the social networking service Twitter to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians who are disputing their election.

Confirmation that the U.S. government had contacted Twitter came as the Obama administration sought to avoid suggestions it was meddling in Iran's internal affairs as the Islamic Republic battled to control deadly street protests over the election result.

For Comparison purposes only (i.e. To be completelly ignored by anyone that used Twitter to follow recent events in Iran):

Police in Georgia beat opposition protesters
Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:45am EDT

By David Mdzinarishvili

TBILISI (Reuters) – Masked police beat dozens of opposition protesters in the Georgian capital on Monday in the latest flare-up during a weeks-long street campaign against President Mikheil Saakashvili, witnesses said.

Dozens of black-clad police officers armed with truncheons confronted a protest of about 50 people at Tbilisi’s main police station demanding the release of six opposition activists detained since Friday, a Reuters photographer said.

He said several protesters and a photographer for the European Pressphoto Agency were severely beaten. Senior opposition official Zurab Abashidze was admitted to hospital.

Police seized cameras from photographers and cameramen, including a Reuters photographer. The cameras were later returned but the Reuters photographer’s images had been erased. Other photographers said their memory cards had been taken.

Tensions are running high in the former Soviet republic, after more than two months of opposition protests and roadblocks demanding Saakashvili quit over his record on democracy and last year’s disastrous war with Russia.

The volatile country of 4.5 million people sits on Russia’s southern border, at the heart of a transit region for oil and gas to the West.

“This is absolutely unacceptable,” protest leader and former Saakashvili ally Nino Burjanadze said of the violence. “We demand a response from our Western partners, to give their assessment of the situation.”

Saakashvili said he was tolerating a state of “lawlessness” and accused his opponents of trying to provoke him.

“They think Saakashvili is hot-headed, they insult (parliament speaker David) Bakradze and (Prime Minister Nika) Gilauri, and they try to make us crush them, “ he told a televised meeting of the parliamentary majority.

Police firing tear gas and rubber bullets dispersed the last mass demonstrations against Saakashvili in 2007. Watched closely by the West, authorities are wary of taking a hard line again, but analysts question how long the stalemate can continue.

“CRIMINALS AND BANDITS”

Both sides have traded blame for a spate of violent incidents, vying for the sympathy of Georgia’s Western allies.

The opposition said that statements by several Western embassies on Friday, in which they criticized opposition protesters for throwing rocks and bottles at Bakradze’s official car, had encouraged the government to take a hard line.


“The statements made by the U.S., French and Czech ambassadors clearly gave impetus to the authorities to act as criminals and bandits today,” opposition leader David Gamkrelidze said.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that protesters were hampering traffic and resisted police efforts “to unblock the entrance to the police station and restore traffic movement.” It said 39 protesters were detained.

US envoy praises Georgia’s handling of opposition protests

Jun 10, 2009

TBILISI (AFP) — A senior US envoy on Wednesday praised the government of the former Soviet republic Georgia for how it has handled weeks of opposition protests calling on President Mikheil Saakashvili to resign.

“We appreciated the way the government is dealing with the protests,” Philip Gordon, the US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, told a press conference in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

What the Georgians lack is of course an Army of Twits to get all hot and bothered on their behalf. That's the problem with Twits though. Never there when they actually could be useful.


US Defense Department sees protests as terrorism

Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as “low-level terrorism,” according to a letter of complaint sent to the department by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

:Low Level Terrorist?


I think that the democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected. — US President Barrack Obama commenting on the recent unrest in Iran

Twits out fer the lads . . .

See Also:
Iran election roundup

Update:

Perusing UrbanDictionary.com I found this:

Twitterolution: A revolution instigated, orchestrated and subsequently propagated and promoted by the WEB 2.0 Sensation Twitter.

Example: The protests seen in Iran against the disputed election is the World's first Twitterloution.

SO I sent this alternative definition to the people at UrbanDictionary.com:

Word: twitterolution

Definition: What occurs when a bunch of gullible twits are let loose on the internet to whip themselves into a frenzy regarding an election fraud that probably never occurred

Example: Boy, that was some load of twitterolution in Iran recently, weren't it?

They sent me a very rapid reply:

Editors reviewed your entry and have decided to not publish it.

A good blog on this subject:

Contrasting protest coverage Iran vs G-20 and Georgia

Iran, Iran, Iran. You would think this was the only news in the world. Odd isn't it?

Iran election roundup

Ahmadinejad Supporters
From June 30, 2008:

Report: U.S. ‘preparing the battlefield’ in Iran

VASHINGTON (CNN) — The Bush administration has launched a “significant escalation” of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country’s nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic’s government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

White House, CIA and State Department officials declined comment on Hersh’s report, which appears in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

Hersh told CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” that Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, which involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents

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From Thursday, 28 May 2009:

Iran: Many die in Zahedan mosque bombing

A bomb in a mosque in south-east Iran has killed at least 19 people and injured 60, the governor of Sistan-Baluchestan province said.
Although it occurred in a remote region, the explosion comes at a time of heightened political sensitivity nationally, with just over two weeks before the first round of the presidential election .

Fars news agency quoted witnesses saying the incident had been a suicide attack, and that a second bomb had been defused near the mosque. The reports could not be verified.

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Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter

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 -

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.

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Jones vs. Ross – Knock Out In The Third Round

. . . .The current Haaretz piece is headlined: “Why is Dennis Ross being ousted as Obama envoy to Iran?” The earlier headline was: “Was Dennis Ross ousted as U.S. envoy to Iran because he’s a Jew?”. If I remember correctly the earlier piece did not include the second paragraph of the current one which says Ross will in future “deal primarily with regional issues related to the peace process.”

We do not know why Ross was moved from that position. He should not have been put there in the first place because he is a. against talking with Iran, b. has never had success in achieving agreements in his earlier roles in the Clinton administration, c. has no experience on or with Iran at all.

Haaretz names several possible reason for this move. His open mistrust about talks with Iran, Irans alleged refusal to accept Ross in the negotiator role, his possible own dissatisfaction with his job and a rumored move of Ross to the National Security Agency where, a Haaretz source claims, he would work more directly under Obama.

The last claim sounds bogus to me. Ross does not have any experience as spy – at least not FOR the United States. The other ones are spurious too. Ross’ positions towards Iran was known before he was put onto the job. They can not be reason to now remove him.

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http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2009/06/iran-election-wrap.html

. . .. It seems the neocons were too smart for their own good, pissed off the Obama administration with their scheming, and paid the price of losing “Dennis Ross: (Ross was probably headed out the door anyway, but the timing of his departure is telling). It was always completely preposterous that the Obama guy in charge of negotiating with Iran was the co-founder – along with Richard Holbrooke, whose job it is to wreck Pakistan – of an institute dedicated to nuking Iran.

From the most dependable newspaper in the world, the Telegraph:

“Mr Mousavi’s cancellation of the protest came as sporadic disturbances continued around the Iranian capital, and reports circulated of leaked interior ministry statistics showing him as the clear victor in last Friday’s polls.

The statistics, circulated on Iranian blogs and websites, claimed Mr Mousavi had won 19.1 million votes while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won only 5.7 million.

The two other candidates, reformist Mehdi Karoubi and hardliner Mohsen Rezai, won 13.4 million and 3.7 million respectively. The authenticity of the leaked figures could not be confirmed.”

Try to remember that this is the Telegraph, not the Onion (a far more reliable news source).

Meanwhile, back in the real world, pollsters explain how the final results are quite credible. Mousavi, a politician who had been out of power for twenty years, entered the race at almost the last moment. The poll showed he didn’t even come close to Ahmadinejad amongst his own ethnic group. Ahmadinejad is considered to be personally completely non-corrupt, while a major supporter of Mousavei, Hashemi Rafsanjani, is infamous in Iran for his corruption.

Mousavi is also good pals with Manucher Ghorbanifar. Remember the meeting in Rome with Ledeen in which they cooked up the trickery which led to the disastrous American attack on Iraq? Remember the Niger documents? The connections to corruption and to the neocons make Mousavi’s recent actions quite understandable. He never thought he was going to win. He was in the election from the get go as part of a neocon/Zionist plot to destabilize Iran and make the election ‘illegitimate’ . . . .

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Ahmadinejad

Some Dots You May Want To Connect

Some U.S. officials who have dealt with Ghorbanifar praise him highly. Says Michael Ledeen, adviser to the Pentagon on counterterrorism: “He is one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known.” Others call him a liar who, as one puts it, could not tell the truth about the clothes he is wearing. . . .

On or about November 25, 1985, Michael Ledeen received a frantic phone call from Ghorbanifar, asking him to relay a message from the prime minister of Iran to President Reagan regarding the shipment of the wrong type of HAWKs. . . .

The administration’s reluctance to disclose these details seems clear: the DoD-Ghorbanifar meetings suggest the possibility that a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a “regime change” agenda not approved by the president’s foreign policy principals or even the president himself. . . .

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Axis of Logic

The attempt to discredit the elections and cause instability in Iran look very much like a scheme we've seen before - directly out of the CIA playbook. We've seen this pattern in so many elections in Venezuela, for example, I swear that even the Chavistas would be disappointed if it doesn't reappear next time around. After all, a little drama does add some excitement in elections where consistent landslide victories are won by presidents like Chavez and Ahmadinejad. So here we go again - the old Langley one, two, three:

1. Groom an opposition candidate to run against the guy you hate, pay him well and line up your media to back him.


2. During the campaign, sell him as the savior of the bourgeois opposition who lost their money in the revolution. Use your own pollsters and media propaganda to convince his followers that they are going to win by a wide margin.

3. When your guy loses, scream "FRAUD!" It's akin to yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre, inflaming all those disappointed bourgeois counter-revolutionaries. Get them out on the street, setting fires, playing the victim, waving flags, ready-to-go placards, banners, women crying in front of CNN cameras and men yelling angrily into Christiana Amanpour's microphone. Only this time, they're ready to burn their own flag instead of the U.S. flag. I tell ya, it makes great TV for a western audience.

(Incidentally, don't take Christiana's reports too seriously. The Amanpours, like many Iranian expats, led a privileged life under the Shah of Iran and lost their ill gotten wealth as a result of the Iranian revolution in '79. Naturally, Christiana was very upset. Later, she married James Rubin, an arch-Zionist, and regained her status, good money and even some fame, this time as a CNN reporter in service to the empire.) . . .

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See also:

Golden Straitjacket ? . . . more like Golden Steak-knife . . . . through the ribs