Xenophile 08/04/2009 08:47 AM That sounds like PressTV's revenge for Western coverage/promotion of the astroturf revolution in Teheran.
Lemme see if I get it: a Saudi dissident quoted from the Arabic-language Iranian channel by the Iranian official press is the source. À consommer avec moderation.
Iranian media reported a failed coup attempt in Saudi Arabia on Sept. 3, citing an Arab publication. The details of the reports suggest, however, that they are unfounded. Tehran’s move to pick up the story is likely Iranian psyops against Saudi Arabia, designed to undermine global confidence in the stability of the world’s largest oil producer.
I gather that some Arabic language radio channels have been discussing a possible failed coup this past weekend in Saudi Arabia, possibly led by Prince Bandar.
Have you heard of E.I.R. Gmbh, aka Eirna.com? I know nothing about E.I.R. GmbH, so I'm not really in a good position to assess their veracity. I found this(dated July 16th) at their site in looking for info about the possible failed Saudi coup:
In the U.S., newly declassified documents from the files of the official investigatory Commission on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, give further evidence of the direct role of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services. One key document, a “Memorandum for the Record” dated April 23, 2004, confirms that a known Saudi intelligence officer, Omar al-Bayoumi, was working closely with two of the hijackers based on the West Coast, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.
This document summarizes an interview that Commission staffers Quinn John Tamm Jr. and Dietrich Snell had with an unnamed source, who was an FBI informant in the San Diego area, and who rented a room in his home to two hijackers during much of 2000. In the interview, the FBI informant confirmed the relationship between al-Bayoumi and the two hijackers.
However, the document omits one highly interesting piece of information, that is included in other 9/11 Commission documents, as well as in a 28-page synopsis suppressed by the Bush White House, on the role of al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan (another identified Saudi intelligence officer) in funding the two West Coast hijackers. That is, that Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, then Saudi Ambassador to the United States, and his wife, Princess Haifa, paid between $50,000 and $72,000 to al-Bayoumi who, in turn, passed on some of the money to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, to finance their rent, and their flight school attendance, previous to the 9/11 attacks. Note that Princess Haifa is the sister of Prince Turki bin-Faisal, who was the head of Saudi Arabian intelligence at the time of the 9/11 attacks – and resigned, suddenly, shortly thereafter.
The article goes on to mention that former FBI director Louis Freeh is now Prince Bandar's attorney, representing him in the BAE bribery case.(2003 Guardian link) Meanwhile this is the only link I found discussing a possible failed coup in Saudi this past weekend:
Green may be the current cool color in Western pop culture, but it seems the Mousavi-ites dubbed their movement the green revolution because green is the color is of Islam(!). Or maybe that's just an explanation for global public consumption, so that we don't get too suspicious of all those Iranian young people holding up signs in English. Members of the Anglo press are always flattered when people in foreign countries wave signs in English that speak of freedom, even those TV-types who until very recently had been advocating bombing the crap out of Iran, as Glenn Greenwald has recently pointed out.
(Perhaps especially the ones who had been calling for bombing you.) We don't care about you, just what you stand for, so be a dear and stand for something we understand...
To be honest, I find it awfully difficult to evaluate the current goings-on in Iran. Was the election stolen? I no longer assume that the talking heads on TV care about telling me the unvarnished truth, and given how many decades US elites have invested in meddling in the middle east, it's hard not to be skeptical. On one hand we're told that opposition candidate Mousavi held a narrow lead in Iranian election polling just before the vote. On the other hand, it's hard to know how reliable polling methods are in Iran, and the gap in access to technology between country and rural folk may be substantial. Remember the famous story of how the Literary Digest predicted that FDR would lose reelection in '36 because they relied on polls of persons with telephones, which skewed their results to the republicans? On the other, other hand, as it were, just because a phenomenon plays out the way foreign elites(with a history of meddling in Iran's internal affairs) might have desired, doesn't mean it's bogus.
I note that Xymphora is suspicious that Israel and the US have interfered with the events in Iran, spurring the protests on. Even though Xymphora is prone to see a Zionist conspiracy behind every bush, this strikes me as plausible.
We're getting lots of images of rioting, but in a country of 70 plus million, about 20 million of whom live in the Tehran metro area, the only images we're getting are from the capitol, as opposed to from where the other 50 million live. Pepe Escobar has recently noted [video link]that Ahmedinejad's strongest constituency has always been among the rural poor, i.e., people who are less likely to have internet access. Call them, pace Nixon, Ahmedinejad's "silent majority."
Obviously we don't really know if their election was stolen, and we don't know if it wasn't. Apparently the Iranian government will do a recount of some disputed votes, but one assumes this is more about preserving order and shoring up its legitimacy than intrinsic concern.
I'll admit I wonder, as Xymphora and others do, if outside forces are egging on the disorder. But I also wonder if Americans could be moved to stand up for their rights in a similarly bold way without it being borne out of manipulation by elites.(I suppose I'm over-using that word at this point.)
Maybe, in our post McLuhan, insufferably postmodern, SMS/RSS/Social networking age, it's both easier for authentic grassroots phenomena to catch fire-- and easier than ever to manufacture them. Good luck Iran, even when the West has lost interest in your green revolution, so-called or otherwise, and moved on.
I don't have a book of quotations handy, but I imagine somebody both cleverer and famouser than me has already observed that the things left undiscussed in a narrative are usually far more telling than the things spoken about. Off the top of my head, the best I can do is Gershwin's line from Porgy and Bess:
The things you're liable to read in the Bible, They ain't necessarily so.
American politics is arguably like that. For example, I think about the controversy about Samantha Power calling Hillary Clinton a monster back around five or six weeks ago. Even though it was undoubtedly a spontaneous event(as you probably recall, Power tried to qualify it as off-the-record), but the various players in the Obama and Clinton camps and the media immediately knew how to respond to this, as if a script was ready, questioning Obama's judgment in selecting Power as an adviser, insisting Power apologize or resign, Obama dutifully apologizing for her remarks, etc.
I wondered how many people out there in Real-People-Land even paid any attention to the whole dustup. Not terribly many, I'm guessing. I also wondered, why precisely does Power feel Hillary is a monster? Should I automatically assume it's for reason x or y, and weren't other people curious about Power's reason(s)? I realize this is one of those mutually and tacitly agreed upon things, the rolling out of a familiar script by which to deflect the impertinent questions of people like me, as per the nonplussed onlookers at the parade when the naked emperor goes by.
I'm guessing the answer to my question wasn't necessarily that interesting, that it had to do with Clintonian campaign tactics, but that's not really my point. When the Clintons and Obamas and the TV press and the Powers respond in the preordained, scripted ways, it seems designed to avoid the question, because once you have Sam Power's answer, inevitably other persons with other reasons for regarding Hillary as monstrous might gain some scrutiny, and the next thing you know some of those brains out there in Real-People-Land might start ruminating, and that would be-- I don't know, monstrous.
Likewise, this afternoon I watched the nightly news, and it seemed as if people just stopped dying in Iraq and Afghanistan(just like Somalia), nobody objected to China hosting the Olympics, nobody lost their house, nobody was kidnapped in Colombia, and nobody was waterboarded or forced to evade questions about torture. The only thing worth discussing was the Pennsylvania democratic primary, the most important primary, the most important event ever, since Reagan freed the hostages or Grant surrendered to Lee at Appomattox. The world dutifully stood still. (And yes, this kind of sarcastic trope about a single event being made to dominate the news isn't original either-- just hard to resist.)
There was a sound bite of Hillary Clinton telling a crowd that with her 10 point win, she'd pulled ahead in the popular vote viz-a-viz Obama, and a chart graphic saying that Obama was ahead of her by 600,000 votes, but that Hillary was counting the disputed primary votes from Michigan and Florida, which Obama hadn't contested. The Penn primary, and various prognostications about which states Obama could win in the general election versus ones Clinton could win, was of course pretty much the whole news show. (I watched CBS, but I imagine the others were pretty much the same.)
I saw nothing about the ABC interview HRC gave (admittedly on Monday morning) with Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America-- I heard about that through Raw Story. (But if you knew about it, how could you not wonder about its impact?)
“I want the Iranians to know, if I am president, we will attack Iran,”( if they launch nukes against Israel), Clinton said. “I want them to understand that. … We would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that.”
Clinton said she hoped her stern warning would serve as a deterrent from Iran doing anything “foolish and tragic.”
The quote in the Reuters article is somewhat misleading, suggesting in parentheses that she immediately added "if they attack Israel."(But to be honest, in referencing the video above, it looks as if it's been edited to take some pauses out.)
Again I find myself wondering about the people out there in Real-People-Land. Does the sickness of this register with them? You wonder how many people are even aware and paying attention to this, trying to be good citizens and keeping up with the news while they drown in the soporific horse-race minutiae of who would be more likely to beat McCain in Colorado or Tennessee, eventually giving up on the sucker's game of trying to stay informed.
Some of the articles about this have titles that say Hillary says she will obliterate Iran, while others note the "would be able" and reproduce the quote more accurately. I can't help but be reminded of Kerry's "for then against" position and Bill Clinton's tortuous question about what the word "is" means. If you look at the real-life pacing of her words and her body language, she has unamiguously threatened to attack Iran if she's elected. I think that's a violation of international law, and I'm sure that Mrs it takes-a-village has frightened a lot of ordinary people in Iran, including kids, who are now aware that one of the leading candidates of the opposition party is just as demented as George W. Bush.
In one way, however, the follow up by Cuomo and Clinton was even more disgusting:
Cuomo: Is it difficult to reconcile the logic of a statement like that, with the realities of what it would be like to make that desicion?
HRC: It is. It's very hard. And that's why you hope to deter such behavior.
Boo hoo. Isn't it horrible, when you have to kill thousands of people cause their gummint don't act right, the toll it takes on you? Years ago whenever the Labour party in Israel capitulated to demands from the right that they start yet another offensive against the Palistineans, somebody once referred to the rationalizing speeches offered in the Knesset as "shooting and crying." Only Mrs Clinton seems more gleeful than a good liberal should be about it.
The things you're liable to read in the Bible, They ain't necessarily so.
A campaign has been launched to build a permanent memorial to a bear which spent much of its life in Scotland - after fighting in World War II. The bear - named Voytek - was adopted in the Middle East by Polish troops in 1943, becoming much more than a mascot. The large animal even helped their armed forces to carry ammunition at the Battle of Monte Cassino. Voytek - known as the Soldier Bear - later lived near Hutton in the Borders and ended his days at Edinburgh Zoo. He was found wandering in the hills of Iran by Polish soldiers in 1943. They adopted him and as he grew he was trained to carry heavy mortar rounds. When Polish forces were deployed to Europe the only way to take the bear with them was to "enlist" him. So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign. He saw action at Monte Cassino before being billeted - along with about 3,000 other Polish troops - at the army camp in the Scottish Borders. The soldiers who were stationed with him say that he was easy to get along with. "He was just like a dog - nobody was scared of him," said Polish veteran Augustyn Karolewski, who still lives near the site of the camp. "He liked a cigarette, he liked a bottle of beer - he drank a bottle of beer like any man."
I'd really like to know if there is any polling data about how much credence the proverbial man on the street is paying to all this. We've had so much fuss about whether or not the polling in New Hampshire was accurate-- I think this poll would be more interesting.
this is the second version of my first video. I tried to make some of the transitions less abrupt, and added a couple of items, and the length went from 2:37 to 3:00. Constructive comments are welcome, even if you don't care for it. It's mainly an editing exercise, as I noted before, but I tried to impart a narrative as well.
Psychological warfare, according to Paul Linebarger of the School of Advanced International Studies, is a continuous process not controlled by laws, usages, and customs of war — covert, often disguised as the voice of institutions and media — a non-violent persuasion waged before, during, and after war.
Most countries, notes Linebarger, suffer from ideological confusion—an instability of basic beliefs. “In states anxious to promote a fixed mentality, the entire population lives under conditions approximating the psychological side of war. Allegiance in war is a matter of ideology, not of opinion.” Coordinated propaganda machines, he observes, include psywar, public relations, general news, and public education. “Psywar,” he warns, “has in private media facilities, in an open society, a constantly refreshed source of new material that, when selectively censored, can prevent non-governmental materials from circulating.”
As Kalle Lasn, publisher of Adbusters Magazine said when interviewed in the July 2001 issue of The Sun, “It’s impossible to live a free authentic life in America today …Our emotions, personalities, and core values have become programmed.” Lasn, a former advertising executive for thirty years, understands the power of propaganda as advertising. He also understands the keys to undermining this corrupting influence—persistent ridicule, and appeals to conscience.
I've wanted to discuss Ahmedinejad's recent reception at Texas A&M Columbia University, but Rob, John Caruso, and Dennis Perrin("Booga Booga") already do so pretty well.
In spite of his once having been chosen Time's man of the year, I'll bet most Americans don't know who Mohamed Mossadeq was. Likewise, I imagine most Americans don't know that British intelligence and our CIA overthrew Mr. Mossadeq after he nationalized Iran's oil companies and kicked BP out(the nerve!), forcing him out of office on August 19th, 1953, after he was democratically elected two years earlier, putting the Shah in his place.
Of course, given the general mendacity and sheer horribleness of most popular American news outlets, I can't entirely blame most Americans for being mystified by the question-- "why do they hate us?"
The leader of Operation Ajax was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior CIA officer, and grandson of the former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. While formal leadership was vested in Kermit Roosevelt, the project was designed and executed by Donald Wilber, a career CIA agent and acclaimed author of books on Iran, Afghanistan and Ceylon.
The CIA operation centered around having the increasingly impotent Shah dismiss the powerful Prime Minister Mossadegh and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi, a choice agreed on by the British and Americans after careful examination for his likeliness to be anti-Soviet.
The BBC spearheaded Britain's propaganda campaign, broadcasting the code word to start the coup.[1]
Despite the high-level coordination and planning, the coup d'etat briefly faltered, and the Shah fled Iran. After a short exile in Italy, however, the Shah was brought back again, this time through follow-up CIA operations, which were successful. Zahedi was installed to succeed Prime Minister Mossadegh. The deposed Mossadegh was arrested, given what some have alleged to have been a show trial, and condemned to death. The Shah commuted this sentence to solitary confinement for three years in a military prison, followed by house arrest for life.
In 2000, the New York Times made partial publication of a leaked CIA document titled, "Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953." This document describes the planning and execution conducted by the American and British governments. The New York Times published this critical document with the names censored. The New York Times also limited its publication to scanned image (bitmap) format, rather than machine-readable text. This document was eventually published properly – in text form, and fully unexpurgated. The complete CIA document ...[is now available on the web.] The word 'blowback' appeared for the very first time in this document.
[...] In 2000, then. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted that the coup was a "setback for democratic government" in Iran.[2]
Of course, speaking of history lessons, it would've been nice if the democrats running for president had made a passing refrence to Mossadeq in the debate this weekend, but perhaps that's expecting too much. A time travel-fantasy-- not 54 years, just a few hours, and me there in the audience, being given a chance to speak(and actually being miked by the teevee networks): I would say, when they failed to see why I wanted them to mention Operation Ajax and Mossadeqh, "but what about timeliness, and relevance?" And I imagine HRC and Obama just staring at me while the crickets chirped. Then after a sufficient pause, they'd go back to talking about why we need to stay in Iraq longer, and their avoidance of reminding people of the "off-the-table" discussion with respect to Iran would have nothingto do with the possible embarassment of the confluence with this particular anniversary, and (the apparently diminishing)possibility that bigshot lefty blogger might mention it. Nothing at all.
Meanwhile-- I've been working, off and on, on a couple of longer pieces, including one on the apparent build-up to war with Iran, which I mean to post in 2 or 3 days.
Incidentally, I didn't know about the BBC's complicity until I worked on this post. The link above also has another audio link to a radio program(-me) about their involvement, which is about 25 minutes long and pretty interesting.
About the BBC's code word: it was used in a sentence in a time check at midnight-- in other words, every midnight the announcer would say, "the time is midnight," except when he gave the signal to start the coup by saying "the time is exactly midnight."
(photo: AP/Vahid Salemi) caption: Rabe'e Naghizadeh, a victim of chemical attack on July 22 in 1988 by Iraq during its (1980-88) war against Iran, complains about her problems in Zardeh village, 420 miles (700 kilometers) west of the capital Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, June 26, 2007. The attack took place as the villagers and hundreds of pilgrims from other parts of Iran had gathered outside a shrine in Zardeh to attend a religious celebration.
AP story: ZARDEH, Iran -- Nineteen years after their mountain village was targeted by Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons, survivors still recall the attack that killed 275: Villagers wheezing, staggering blindly and vomiting blood, as birds dropped lifeless from trees.
Interviews with survivors of the mid-1980s Iraqi CW attacks against Iran that killed 5,000 Iranians then, and thousands more since. Those attacks were carried out with knowledge & tacit support from Rumsfeld, etc. But no 'justice' for the survivors...
"When I started researching this subject, I expected to find three types of sundown towns," Loewen recalled. "I expected to find small towns that were all-white because they'd expelled their black populations; suburbs that were all-white because they excluded blacks (and usually Asians and Jews, as well) from the very beginning; and then a third class of places that were all-white simply because African-Americans never got around to coming there.
"And what I discovered was that this third class is virtually non-existent. If you're an American who grew up in an all-white neighborhood, you need to realize that it was, almost certainly, all-white by intentional design."
There was a time when there were very few cities in America that didn't have a significant black population. "Between 1863 and 1890, they did live everywhere," Loewen asserts. Freed slaves spread far and wide throughout America, seeking to put down roots in places Jim Crow couldn't reach them. But reach them it did: within just a couple of generations, these towns began systematically harassing their black populations in a wide variety of ways designed to get them to move elsewhere.
"Between 1890 and 1940, there came what I call "the great retreat," said Loewen. Throughout the west and north, small towns and large cities -- some as large as St. Louis and Omaha -- expelled their African-American populations. ... [...] The term "sundown town" refers to the signs that some of these towns put at their city limits, which typically said things like "Whites Only After Dark." (Some of them were far less polite.) ... [...] Loewen, who encourages anyone with details about specific sundown towns to register their stories at his website, ticks off names and places in a rapid-fire staccato. Pierce City, MO drove out its black population in 1901. ... Anna, IL drove out its African-American population in 1909, and is still all white to this day.
Emphases mine. I usually try to avoid such lengthy excerpts, but I want very much to persuade you to go and read all of these pieces.(Part 3 in the works, apparently.)
Indigo wrote to Rob to let us know about Care2, whose URL has recently changed. Care2 is another website discussing Delara Darabi, the young Iranian lady I told you about before(also here), who is scheduled to be executed, and about whom an international effort and online petitions to stop said execution are afoot.
and a reminder, the English-language online petition is here.
It is worth re-reading the whole of this excellent article that the Guardian's Ian Kershaw published in February 2003. In it, Kershaw compiled the judgments that Avi and eleven other historians offered on the question of whether what Bush (and Blair) were facing in Iraq was another "Munich"-type challenge, or the first act of a Suez-type debacle.
Almost every time I post I feel I'm leaving something out. For example, I sometimes feel regret that I've never written about the situations in Afghanistan, or Darfur or Somalia, or the apparently deteriorating situation in Pakistan.
Earlier this week Rob wrote about the American predisposition towards incuriousness-- I fault the national-level press more than regular people, insofar as I think it's especially damning how the current unrest in Pakistan, the only Islamic country with actual nuclear warheads, is virtually invisible on the nightly news, presumably because their little general is a Bush ally, while the media is happy to carry water for the political forces who want to get people all worked up about war with Iran.
This is mainly, I suspect, because their president is an obnoxious loudmouth whom our president finds irksome. I occasionally wonder if Ahmedinejad is normally mild-mannered, but saw how Hugo Chavez managed to stave off an oil company jiggered recall election and how, seemingly unfathomably, George Bush,jr managed to get re-elected, and made a conscious desicion to be a chest-beating blowhard, having seen it work so well for the other two guys. I also think Chavez carries it off the best of the three, but it may be that I'm just flattered by his parents' choice in names.
(the banner above is supposed to take you here. I'll fix it later.)
from myspace's Help Delara bulletin: Subject: Delara's final appeal is filed
According to Etemaad newspaper, the final appeal to Iran's head of judiciary was filed by Delara Darabi's attorney. Abdolsamad Khoramshahi told the newspaper " In murder cases, confessions alone are unacceptable and only serve as a supporting cause to help the judge verify the facts. Delara only once in the beginning after her arrest- with a specific intention- accepted the responsibility of murder but for the past three years she has been screaming that her confession was false and she is innocent. Obviously reenactment of the crime scene which was promised by the judge who issued the death sentence would easily help discover the facts
Khoramshahi is hopeful that Ayatollah Shahrudi, head of Iran's judiciary would stop the death sentence.
where credit is due: earlier I said there was a dearth of discussion of Delara's situation in the blogosphere. First, let me praise Jonathan Schwarz and Avedon Carol for mentioning Delara's plight. I wrote to roughly a dozen bigshot lefty bloggers regarding ms. Delara, and Jon n' Avedon responded. You other guys, well, no X-mas cards for you. Coincidentally, I note that conservo majordomo Glenn Reynolds, whom I didn't contact, posted about Delara, here.
