On Sunday 28th June 09 Peter Hitchens took part in a BBC programme entitled ’The Big Questions’. This is the second ‘Big Question’. The prog can still be seen in the UK, here.
In the UK the 27th June has long been 'Veterans Day'. This day was both a celebration of the contribution made by all those who have served in the Armed Forces and a means of raising public awareness of Veterans issues. It did not replace Remembrance day. It has now been renamed Armed Forces Day'. Nicky Campbell, the presenter, says it is “designed to thank the military for their public service in a joyful way” But he also reminds us that we don’t have a day for the health, fire or police services. That may be because without the efforts of our armed forces we wouldn’t have the freedom to arrange a health, fire or police service.
The debate ranged from a former Sgt. Major talking of his difficulty in getting credit and living a life outside the armed forces, but centred on politics and the difference in how British and American forces are appreciated at home. He said ‘In America the military walk around in uniform and people clap them’. Here in the UK, in the wake of the Iraq war, there have been reports of aggression towards people in military uniform and personnel were made to change out of uniform before being allowed on public transport. See news coverage here, here and comment here and here. Blog comments seem to suggest that the American military has also encountered unrest about war in the middle east and that UK military personnel have had to bear the brunt of deeply unpopular feelings about government decisions. However, America does seem to celebrate and appreciate their armed forces more than we do in the UK.
The debate recorded this anger, particularly regarding the Iraq war, and the context of Armed Forces Day (AFD) was not forgotten; the UK government sent ill prepared, un-resourced servicemen into illegal and unwinable wars. Peter Hitchens said that AFD shouldn’t be something politicians hide behind. But this had been introduced at a time when military action is deeply unpopular and rather than bridge the gap between illegal political directives and the people who have to carry them out the effect is to glorify the cause and play down unsound government decisions.
One officer tried to demonstrate the benefit of military action in Afghanistan with an anecdote. He told of them securing a school where a teacher had been shot in the head for teaching girls. But the case was put that the real beneficiaries of these wars are big American businesses. The infrastructure laid down are not schools but American pipelines. There may be small successes along the way, and one problem is that British military action and American are seen as the same by the occupied people. The general feeling is that the main motivation behind this war is not American altruism.
Alexander Linklater tells us that Christopher Hitchens, after the death of Mark Daily, “was conceding his “deeply pessimistic frame of mind about the war.” “ Peter Hitchens says that he finds it objectionable that a government that has starved the armed forces but uses them in futile and illegal wars has the nerve to stand up and say we should celebrate the armed forces. “It’s very Soviet, it seems to me, to have an Armed Forces Day.” he says “Celebrate the armed forces privately and personally by all means but not at the behest of Gordon Brown”.
Peter Hitchens claims he has a “naval family” (sounds like something rivalling Harry Faversham's). His father worked his way up through the naval ranks and “had a good war”. He was the son of a school teacher, left the navy when Peter was still in short trousers and was a college bursar for the greater part of Peters life. PH doesn’t mention this, Christopher did. As for the other grandfather, “we were always told he was "killed in the war", which is true in the sense that he was run over by a bus in the blackout”.
Anyone of a certain age had relatives in the armed forces as they had (hopefully) lived through two world wars. It was compulsory, you were called up. Instead of simply saying ‘my father was in the navy’ PH continually romanticises it with memories of “school holidays clambering over warships at Navy Days at Devonport or Portsmouth”. Well we all did that if you lived there. “Don't these people know” he writes “that a battleship was a great majestic thing, towering into the sky and deliberately designed to make anyone who saw it gasp with amazement?” Well it’s designed to do a job actually not to make middle aged men gasp with boyish amazement but if that’s what floats your boat..
I apologise to any Hitch-hens for sounding so pragmatic with regard to Peter’s obvious excitement over “enormous 15-inch guns” and “The strong rough stink of fuel oil” but he so often does something he asks us not to do: he sentimentalises the armed forces. This, if you know something of the Hitchens boys, is an unnecessary distraction from the very good and worthwhile things he has to say about the armed forces. And he said something in this debate I think worth listening to:
“Can we not sentimentalise the armed forces? What my father did, his specific job charged by the admiralty for 200 years, was ‘take, burn, sink and destroy the vessels of the King’s enemies’ that’s what you do. It’s not an international social services squad going round rescuing people from the folly of their own governments. We should stay in our own country until people come and attack us, whereupon we should be able to bash them very hard on the nose and send them away. That’s what the armed forces are for, not going elsewhere and telling other people what to do and how to live their lives.”
If only ambitious politicians did the above and did not use people as pawns in their own narcissistic game of success then the world would probably be a better place and we would be celebrating Armed Forces Day with no argument or debate.
As Wilfred Owen put it:
I, too, saw God through mud, - The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled. War brought more glory to their eyes than blood, And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.
Merry it was to laugh there - Where death becomes absurd and life absurder. For power was on us as we slashed bones bare Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.
I, too, have dropped off Fear - Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon, And sailed my spirit surging light and clear Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;
And witnessed exultation - Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl, Shine and lift up with passion of oblation, Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.
I have made fellowships - Untold of happy lovers in old song. For love is not the binding of fair lips With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,
By Joy, whose ribbon slips, - But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong; Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips; Knit in the webbing of the rifle-thong.
I have perceived much beauty In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight; Heard music in the silentness of duty; Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.
Nevertheless, except you share With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell, Whose world is but the trembling of a flare And heaven but as the highway for a shell,
You shall not hear their mirth: You shall not come to think them well content By any jest of mine. These men are worth Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.
On Sunday 28th June 09 Peter Hitchens took part in a BBC programme entitled ’The Big Questions’ which describes itself as “a series of moral, ethical and religious debates“. I will describe the three ‘Big Questions’ in three separate posts to separate discussion, if there is any. However, the three ‘Big Questions’ were:
1. Should Britain ban the burka? 2. Are our Armed Forces a cause for celebration? 3. Should Catholic priests be allowed to marry?
If you are in the UK you can watch them within the next 6 days here. This post deals with the first question.
The question generated a lot of heated discussion but the argument for the burka was introduced by a woman described as a ‘Pakistani British Citizen’ named Umm Hamza. Her reasons for wearing the Burka were that:
*It's her "own will" *"It’s God’s will" *"Out of your free will to choose to be a Muslim" (so religious belief is presumably a choice) *"Dressing modestly when you go out to avoid attraction" and to avoid "stirring passions" in men.
When she was asked if men should cover up to avoid stirring passions in women she seemed quite flummoxed by the question. She had no answer, except to say that it was a good question, and she referred to her faith, stating that wearing the burka was what she had been told was correct by a religious scholar. She also said that some religious scholars disagreed but she wanted to be closer to God, and to do that she tried to be like the prophets wives. Basically she wouldn’t question the merit of wearing the burka because she had been told that it is God’s will. Interestingly her mother also wore the burka.
PH asked: “ should all other women be dressed in the burka?” adding “it is their choice now but in the society you would presumably prefer it might not be”
UH: “I think it would be a safer society”
PH: “Isn’t this the problem with Islam, that it is a fact.. When it’s a minority religion it’s all very liberal and open and a matter of choice, but if it becomes the majority religion and controls society then the choice goes and people are told what to do and it isn’t your choice any more.”
However, PH argues for religion in society. That is why I have entitled this piece ‘How Much Religion is Too Much?’ Christopher Hitchens argues for a secular society and that Religion Poisons Everything. His little brother seems to have the view that there is no moral compass without it. Christopher says of ‘How Green Was My Valley’ that he “loved it all the more for its certainty and familiarity”. I wonder if Peter would say the same of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer ? What he does say is “in its regular, ordinary services of Morning and Evening Prayer that, with a sweet persistence, it softly asks the listener - who is also often a participant - to consider, reasonably and carefully, the alternatives to the bare, comfortless tedium of materialism, and to reflect on his place in the universe. The apparently simple phrases quietly slip into the mind and compel thought."
Is this indoctrination? And if so is all indoctrination bad? Is the moral guidance of the Church societies answer to the moral guidance of a parent? Or is Christopher Hitchens correct when he says it infantilises people and we don’t need it? Does it depend on the person? According to the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Steven Weinberg: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Umm Hamza responded to PH’s question that you can choose to be a Muslim. But in a Muslim society you are bound by their laws, as Sally Antia was when her husband reported her for adultery. I wonder if Peter Hitchens would think that this was a good thing for women? I can’t remember men being jailed for adultery in a Muslim society. Has it never happened? I doubt he would like us being ‘all free now’, so how much religion is too much? He says, in his new book, “Women have robbed themselves, by choosing easily available sex, of the great bargaining power which they used to possess during a few short, desirable years.”. I wonder after what age are we deemed to be undesirable? I can only imagine what it must be like to be locked in a lifelong marriage with such a man.
In 1969 Roy Jenkins said; "The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilised society". Some would say that what underpins civilised society is not permissiveness, but self-restraint and that what politicians failed to see was how the freedoms Jenkins espoused would lead to the degeneration of British society and the selfish, me-first libertinism of today. There is growing unrest about the degeneration of society, which sharpens as money becomes tighter for everybody. The less money we have the less generous to the ‘undeserving’ we feel. To the British who have the influence of a different cultural heritage, not self-restraint but imposed restraint seems better than the unfettered liberal society they see around them.
If there was more work in the UK, labour that encompassed all abilities and arranged their lives into daily chores where they needed a cooked meal for them when they got home, would society really be subject to the same stresses of today? The unemployed hang around the home or find things to argue about, make love or get drunk. We are a bored society supplied with income and a one-stop shop for all our needs. What else is there to do but squabble when there is no work? Is this when we need religion most? But the danger is that most religions subjugate women. Umm Hamza put the responsibility of men’s behaviour on the dress sense of women. In this I think she is wrong. The teaching of her religion is wrong. And remember the issue of Rape and Peter Hitchens's views on that.
There is a danger that in re-moralising society we re-subjugate women, and that would be bad. We need to keep the choices we fought for. As Bidisha said; “In every case of harassment the responsibility is on the perpetrator not the victim”. And to keep men from feeling passions and acting on them inappropriately, the answer is not to lock up or hide all the women, whether we are past it or not.
The burka is a symbol of commitment to a culture, a belief system, it’s not just a modest dress. There are already laws in the UK that should prevent wearing the burqa and niqab - it is illegal to go into a bank with the face covered by a crash helmet for example. But they are not enforced. Ahmed Versi, editor of the Muslim News (published in Britain), says “Britain is the best country in Europe for Muslims” because “we are freer here”. Peter Hitchens asks “does Islam seek to become the main religion in this country?” I think it does and if it succeeds we won’t have the choice of how much religion is too much. We won’t have many choices at all.
Islamophobia can be defined as an irrational fear of or bigotry towards Islam. Others define it differently. In 1997, the British Runnymede Trust defined Islamophobia as the "dread or hatred of Islam and therefore, to the fear and dislike of all Muslims," stating that it also refers to the practice of discriminating against Muslims. A 2007 article in Journal of Sociology defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism and a continuation of anti-Asian and anti-Arab racism.
However you define it, I'm certain of one thing: I've found some pretty disgusting examples of it on Youtube. Young people on Youtube are leaving Islamophobic hate spiel left and right. Not surprisingly, they are usually Christopher Hitchens fans and a quick check of their Youtube profile reveals they have a subscription to Pat Condell or have chosen favorite videos by the angry, ample-framed, alcoholic himself to which this weblog devotes its firepower. Check out some of these hate gems I've mined from the coal shaft of intolerance on my Youtube comment section:
Youtube user Jakester1111 says, "Islam is a cult created by a psychopath. It cannot be reformed. It must be eradicated..."
User XJTrecoX says Islam is comprised of "...cowards who justify murder and violence under the false pretext of religion..."
NoMuslimInEurope (Yes, that's actually his screen name) writes, "Islam doesn't belong here, Muslims are against democracy and human rights. It's a prehistoric religion that came from the dessert [sic]. Muhammed was a false prophet. Islam is nothing more than a death cult."
1Ademius writes, "I am a fan of logic and freedom of thought and speech; religion, in general, is a threat to common sense, but Islam is a threat to human rights with stone-age practices under totalitarian regimes that everyone else has to respect as just another culture. Evil will prevail if we do nothing."
The thing that's so scary about these comments is that they don't come from your typical bigots. They're not some illiterate, backwoods redneck, foaming at the mouth, shouting hate speech from under a Klan robe. These are reasonably intelligent young men, on the Internet, who are largely atheists and supposedly rational free-thinkers. What's happened to them?
They seem to be associating their blatant bigotry with some kind of enlightened discontent with religion. Do prominent atheists like Pat Condell or Christopher Hitchens realize the monster they're creating? Are people like Condell ever going to stop and say, "I'm thrilled you youngsters are as passionate as I am about atheism and the importance of overcoming religious superstitions, but um.... you do realize that people have a right to practice religion peacefully, right?" They don't ever seem to add that disclaimer. If anything, people like Condell and Hitchens seem to be fueling the fires of hatred in their young fans.
As an atheist, I can't help but agree that all religions are illogical and probably false- but since when does that negate freedom of religion? Did founding fathers like James Madison add a clause to the 1st Amendment that said, "*Unless you're one of those scary religions with fanatics and black robes!" Let's stop disguising Internet hate speech under the pretext of atheist enlightenment. Let's stop using skepticism as a way of denying freedom of expression for over a fifth of the planet. Call it for what it really is: Islamophobia.
But don't think calling them Islamophobes will do anything to hurt their reputation- or feelings. As cholerymorbilus writes, "I think ISLAMOPHOBE is a wonderful word! Islam should be regarded as the Nazism of our time, something to be feared and despised...dangerous small-minded assholes with a disgusting ideology. Islam should not be exempt from this because of the term 'religion.' I wish the founding fathers had known how cults and gangs would exploit this term."
I wish the founding fathers had made it MORE clear. Every religion has a right to peaceful practice.
The big Hitchens-William Lane Craig debate. I think it's great news that the Christianists consider this pompous mediocrity to be amongst their best and brightest stars. Craig is such an overrated and weak pseudointellectual that he makes Dinesh D'Souza look like Dostoevsky.
It's like he thinks that everyone hasn't heard the design argument before. All he does is state fallacious arguments like that, platitudes refuted centuries before he was born, and then calls it a day. Yawn.
Christians better start coming up with better apologetics soon, or the viral New Atheism is going to continue to spread.
Not sure if it was just in contrast, but Hitchens didn't actually come off too bad in this debate. Reports of his death at the hands of Craig were greatly exaggerated. He even had some new material to talk about in his opening statement for once in his miserable life.
Though not to worry Hitch-Hunters, we can be sure Chris strangled a kitten to death or something immediately after the debate.
Reverse racism and Supreme Court appointments: two great issues Hitchens has written about stupidly that go great together! Part of Hitchens's late-nineties "find a good Republican and vote for him" stump speech was that "there is always an important appointment coming up on the Court," so therefore, go ahead and vote for the reactionaries. Bad enough? Sure! But it was on the eve of his own 11th hour" I just want to be on the side that's winning" defection to the Obama Camp that Hitch wrote in a Slate piece decrying the mediocrity of Obama, that the Republican choice of Sarah Palin "has set up a screech from the liberals like nothing I have heard since the nomination of Clarence Thomas." Get it? They're LIBERALS and they're coming out against a black guy, get them a dose of Shelby Steele!"
As we are cruelly reminded in Jeffery Toobin's useful The Nine: Inside The Secret World of The Supreme Court the continuing presence of Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court is an ongoing scandal possibly unequaled in our times. The bloated, stupid, utterly bizarre Thomas has happily become the kept man of the reactionary right, and he engages in Judicial misconduct so audacious (accepting million and a half dollar deals from Rupert Murdoch) that we can hardly decry there being no safeguards against, so unfathomable are they in scope. Less forgivable is a press and a neutered Left who don't take their protests 20 decibels above screeching.
Thomas is, of course, a sad subject as well. Many who loath public sexual humiliation viewed his ordeal with sympathy, even when it became clear afterwards that he had lied his then less-formidable ass off. There was hope that he would find the character to rise above the fiasco and become a competent judge. The man is, quite simply, a horse's ass, lacking even the most basic grasp of a judge's role in the events of the day. Should we be lucky, the craven Uncle Tom Foolery of his career will one day be viewed as part of the last gasps of Jim Crow.
Indeed, the reverse racism card has looked mighty frayed in it's attempted applications in the Sotomayer debate, Hitch and Steele may be the friends of a con that has run it's course. Yet how well indeed, we can glean from "The Nine", it worked in it's day. Hitchens's allies on the right have packed the Court pretty effectively, and Hitch can claim a proud place in making Capital Punishment the law of the land is his adopted Country for the rest of his life. Or as Joan Walsh has speculated, "is anyone more repellent than Christopher Hitchens?"
I'm grateful to blogger Jamele for highlighting this quote from Christopher's latest Slate bit
"There is then the larger question of the Iranian theocracy and its continual, arrogant intervention in our affairs: its export of violence and cruelty and lies to Lebanon and Palestine and Iraq and its unashamed defiance of the United Nations, the European Union, and the International Atomic Energy Agency on the nontrivial matter of nuclear weapons."
So when Iran "intervenes" in Lebanon or Iraq this is arrogance, however when America does it is not?
I must admit, fellow Watchers to being a bit distracted from the Great Mans doings in the past few months, some of this was driven by the physical disconnect of doing millions of air miles, most by the dial-it-in quality of Hitchen's writing over the period. Moreover, Grey has been doing yeoman's service in maintaining the Watch.
Three things today conspired to shift my scrawny butt to post. They fall under the categories listed above.
Friends:Guess where Hitchen's "poor poms everyone picks on us" piece on Iran is approvingly cross posted? Let's see, which website is rapidly diminishing to the fading dregs of knuckle dragging conservatism? Which site is a favourite of SadlyNo? Where have the Buckley spawn and other "moderate" "RINOs" run away from? Yes, clever Watchers, our Chris is playing a Queenly role at NRO, National Review. The magazine that never met an enhanced interrogation it didn't like. For the probably the first time in it's existenceNRO linked to Slate. This is the online plague that usually mentions England only to point out it's dhimminitude or the fearful communist medical scheme.
Flunkies: There is an awful Canadian blog, "Five Feet of Crap" that posts the unmitigated revolting ravings of a intellectually and height challenged woman called Kathy Shaidle. In a piece I stumbled into today she lovingly reports and embroiders on a version of "Women cant be funny". "Most women don't have the balls (and, I would add, the brains) to be very funny: Now, it would take a moron to believe that this statement implies that ALL men are taller than ALL women. We’re just dealing with an accurate generalisation (a word that has become unfairly maligned these days by people who don’t understand ‘generalisation’ can be a mathematical term, just like when people who say ‘homosexuality is not normal’ aren’t always passing a moral judgement, but merely pointing out that being gay isn’t the statistical ‘norm’ - very different from saying ‘homosexuality is not natural’, which is an empirically false statement). (...) This is why all these ‘Blair Babes’ can’t hack it in parliament, feeling it’s too ‘confrontational’. They are the opposite of those exceptions who proved the rule, such as Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams, Ann Widdecombe and Margaret Thatcher, women who were not to be messed with because they didn’t moan about ‘ya-boo’ politics and relished a challenge, rather than timidly retreating from one."
Despite totally missing the point that most people who claim "gays are not normal" are relishing both meanings of the word for totally bigoted purposes. The article is a less erudite version of Chris' misogyny and quoted by a notorious rightwingfundie crackpot.
3. Fetishes: Finally someone who should be a fellow traveler of atheist Chris comes up with a perfect description of both Hitchens and all neoconsstate of mind.
"Just say no He took offense. It started out in college. You know, just experimenting with it. But he liked it. He liked how it made him feel. For a while it was just recreational -- weekends and parties and rallies and that kind of thing. But soon he was hanging out with some pretty hard-core users, with the kind of people who took offense all the time. They didn't need a reason or an excuse, it was just what they did. It was who they were. Soon he found he couldn't get through the day without it. Over the years he even learned to grow his own, to take the tiniest seeds of umbrage and nurture them into full-grown pretexts for outrage. The good stuff. Some of his old friends tried to stage an intervention -- to convince him that he had a problem, that his whole life had become consumed by his addiction. He didn't respond well. He just took more offense -- right there in front of them. Addicts, he told them, are always chasing diminishing returns. They're always needing more and stronger drugs to provide an ever-smaller high. But the stuff he was taking didn't work like that. His highs just kept getting stronger and stronger no matter how flimsy or insignificant the reason. You're not trying to help me, he screamed at them. You're just jealous. And he yelled at them some more, trying to get them to take offense too. They wouldn't touch it, of course, and just left quietly, looking sad. He took a hit of offense at that and sat back on the couch. They think I've got a problem, he thought, but they're the ones with a problem. Ohh. He inhaled deeply. Yes, yes that's it. His eyelids fluttered. It's because I'm better than them, better than all of them ... Four days later his landlord called the police, saying there was an offensive smell drifting into the hallway. They found him there on the couch. The official report from the medical examiner said it was an overdose."
I'm not sure how CW will cope under the new administration. The group he tied himself to is becoming an ever shrinking theocratic rump who can't be comfortable bedfellows. Perhaps it's a version of "friends with benefits". I cant imagine any other reason to crawl in bed with the walking dead that are the American Conservatives these days unless necrophilia was always a turn on.
Canned food and shotguns cartridges, folks! For those Brits who didn't think the ban on foxhunting was the last straw, the provincialization of Britain down to sub-Texan status and the coronation of Anthony Blair as President of Europe just might cause their synapses to snap. Or do we really have to wait until they force us to stop driving on the wrong side of the road and drink beer from half-litre glasses?
Peter Hitchens overdid his milk and cookies on Saturday night, and woke in the early hours of Sunday morning in a cold sweat from a nightmare in which Tony Blair was playing a role somewhere between Chucky of Child's Play fame and that old gent from the Carpathians that we Brits associate with Christopher Lee.
This set the scene for a tirade in equal measure against the European Union as Superstate and against "Eurosceptics" who don't realize that things have gone too far for "scepticism" to make a blind bit of difference, and that what the EU and its aspiring President really need is to be drowned in a wine lake, pelted with garlic cloves, impaled on a crucifix, and finally put out of their misery by driving stakeholder values through the heart.
Any day now you could wake up and find that you are subject to the rule of President-of-Europe Anthony Blair.
After the Irish and the Czechs have been clubbed into submission this autumn, the long-planned European Superstate will at last come into being. And Mr Blair is likely to be its Head of State. For those of a sensitive disposition, this means two horrible things happening at once.
It is bad enough that the ghastly Blair creature might rise from the political tomb, hands clasped in pious prayer, upper lip trembling with fake emotion, pockets crammed with money from the lecture circuit, drivel streaming from his mouth. That would perhaps be the only thing that might make the nation warm to Gordon Brown again.
But far worse is the awful truth, which so many have hidden from themselves, that Britain will from that moment cease to be an independent nation in any important way.
The EU will take on a ‘legal personality’ of its own, become a nation in its own right, one in which we are a subject province for the first time in more than a thousand years, less independent than Texas is of Washington DC.
And this is why I hate the people in politics and the media who call themselves ‘Eurosceptics’. What are they for? What good have they done? They stand about, mainly in the Unconservative Party, claiming to be concerned about the way the EU is swallowing this country.
But they refuse to take the one step that would actually make a difference. They will not call for this country to leave the EU. You will have to ask them why not. There is no reason Britain could not exist outside the EU, which sells more to us than it buys from us, drags us into trade disputes with the USA which are not in our interest, steals our fish, chokes our small business, mucks up our farms and milks us each year of incalculably large sums of money we could spend better ourselves.
There is every reason for us to go our own way, especially if we wish to preserve our unique laws and liberties against the fast-approaching ‘Stockholm Programme’ which aims to impose continental law on this country, together with a menacing set of surveillance powers quite beyond the control of our Parliament.
So the next time a ‘Eurosceptic’ presents himself to you for election, ask him why he won’t go the extra yard (not metre), and if he won’t do so, find a man who can. The time for scepticism is long past. What is there left to have doubts about? The thing is as bad as we feared. The time for secession has arrived.
In view of the extraordinary amount of singing from the same talking-point sheet by Christopher and much of the rest of the "blabosphere" about the possibility of election fraud in Iran, Hitchens Watch is doing its best to help sort out fact from fantasy by presenting a range alternative views that we think deserve a wider audience. — Greywolf
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers
by Esam Al-Amin
Since the June 12 Iranian presidential elections, Iran "experts” have mushroomed like bacteria in a Petri dish. So here is a quiz for all those instant experts. Which major country has elected more presidents than any in the world since 1980? Further, which nation is the only one that held ten presidential elections within thirty years of its revolution?
The answer to both questions, of course, is Iran. Since 1980, it has elected six presidents, while the U.S. is a close second with five, and France at three. In addition, the U.S. held four presidential elections within three decades of its revolution to Iran’s ten.
The Iranian elections have unified the left and the right in the West and unleashed harsh criticisms and attacks from the “outraged” politicians to the “indignant” mainstream media. Even the blogosphere has joined this battle with near uniformity, on the side of Iran’s opposition, which is quite rare in cyberspace.
Much of the allegations of election fraud have been just that: unsubstantiated accusations. No one has yet been able to provide a solid shred of evidence of wide scale fraud that would have garnered eleven million votes for one candidate over his opponent.
So let’s analyze much of the evidence that is available to date.
More than thirty pre-election polls were conducted in Iran since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main opponent, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, announced their candidacies in early March 2009. The polls varied widely between the two opponents, but if one were to average their results, Ahmadinejad would still come out on top. However, some of the organizations sponsoring these polls, such as Iranian Labor News Agency and Tabnak, admit openly that they have been allies of Mousavi, the opposition, or the so-called reform movement. Their numbers were clearly tilted towards Mousavi and gave him an unrealistic advantage of over 30 per cent in some polls. If such biased polls were excluded, Ahmadinejad’s average over Mousavi would widen to about 21 points.
On the other hand, there was only one poll carried out by a western news organization. It was jointly commissioned by the BBC and ABC News, and conducted by an independent entity called the Center for Public Opinion (CPO) of the New America Foundation. The CPO has a reputation of conducting accurate opinion polls, not only in Iran, but across the Muslim world since 2005. The poll, conducted a few weeks before the elections, predicted an 89 percent turnout rate. Further, it showed that Ahmadinejad had a nationwide advantage of two to one over Mousavi.
How did this survey compare to the actual results? And what are the possibilities of wide scale election fraud?
According to official results, there were 46.2 million registered voters in Iran. The turnout was massive, as predicted by the CPO. Almost 39.2 million Iranians participated in the elections for a turn out rate of 85 percent, in which about 38.8 million ballots were deemed valid (about 400,000 ballots were left blank). Officially, President Ahmadinejad received 24.5 million votes to Mousavi’s 13.2 million votes, or 62.6 per cent to 33.8 per cent of the total votes, respectively. In fact, this result mirrored the 2005 elections when Ahmadinejad received 61.7 per cent to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s 35.9 per cent in the runoff elections. Two other minor candidates, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaee, received the rest of the votes in this election.
Shortly after the official results were announced Mousavi’s supporters and Western political pundits cried foul and accused the government of election fraud. The accusations centered around four themes. First, although voting had been extended several hours due to the heavy turnout, it was alleged that the elections were called too quickly from the time the polls were closed, with more than 39 million ballots to count.
Second, these critics insinuated that election monitors were biased or that, in some instances, the opposition did not have its own monitors present during the count. Third, they pointed out that it was absurd to think that Mousavi, who descended from the Azerbaijan region in northwest Iran, was defeated handily in his own hometown. Fourth, the Mousavi camp charged that in some polling stations, ballots ran out and people were turned away without voting.
The next day, Mosuavi and the two other defeated candidates lodged 646 complaints to the Guardian Council, the entity charged with overseeing the integrity of the elections. The Council promised to conduct full investigations of all the complaints. By the following morning, a copy of a letter by a low-level employee in the Interior Ministry sent to Supreme Guide Ali Khamanei, was widely circulating around the world. (Western politicians and media outlets like to call him “Supreme Leader” but no such title exists in Iran.)
The letter stated that Mousavi had won the elections, and that Ahmadinejad had actually come in third. It also promised that the elections were being fixed in favor of Ahmadinejad per Khamanei’s orders. It is safe to assume that the letter was a forgery since an unidentified low-level employee would not be the one addressing Ayatollah Khamanaei. Robert Fisk of The Independent reached the same conclusion by casting grave doubts that Ahmadinejad would score third – garnering less than 6 million votes in such an important election- as alleged in the forged letter.
There were a total of 45,713 ballot boxes that were set up in cities, towns and villages across Iran. With 39.2 million ballots cast, there were less than 860 ballots per box. Unlike other countries where voters can cast their ballots on several candidates and issues in a single election, Iranian voters had only one choice to consider: their presidential candidate. Why would it take more than an hour or two to count 860 ballots per poll? After the count, the results were then reported electronically to the Ministry of the Interior in Tehran.
Since 1980, Iran has suffered an eight-year deadly war with Iraq, a punishing boycott and embargo, and a campaign of assassination of dozens of its lawmakers, an elected president and a prime minister from the group Mujahideen Khalq Organization. (MKO is a deadly domestic violent organization, with headquarters in France, which seeks to topple the government by force.) Despite all these challenges, the Islamic Republic of Iran has never missed an election during its three decades. It has conducted over thirty elections nationwide. Indeed, a tradition of election orderliness has been established, much like election precincts in the U.S. or boroughs in the U.K. The elections in Iran are organized, monitored and counted by teachers and professionals including civil servants and retirees (again much like the U.S.)
There has not been a tradition of election fraud in Iran. Say what you will about the system of the Islamic Republic, but its elected legislators have impeached ministers and “borked” nominees of several Presidents, including Ahmadinejad. Rubberstamps, they are not. In fact, former President Mohammad Khatami, considered one of the leading reformists in Iran, was elected president by the people, when the interior ministry was run by archconservatives. He won with over 70 percent of the vote, not once, but twice.
When it comes to elections, the real problem in Iran is not fraud but candidates’ access to the ballots (a problem not unique to the country, just ask Ralph Nader or any other third party candidate in the U.S.) It is highly unlikely that there was a huge conspiracy involving tens of thousands of teachers, professionals and civil servants that somehow remained totally hidden and unexposed.
Moreover, while Ahmadinejad belongs to an active political party that has already won several elections since 2003, Mousavi is an independent candidate who emerged on the political scene just three months ago, after a 20-year hiatus. It was clear during the campaign that Ahmadinejad had a nationwide campaign operation. He made over sixty campaign trips throughout Iran in less than twelve weeks, while his opponent campaigned only in the major cities, and lacked a sophisticated campaign apparatus.
It is true that Mousavi has an Azeri background. But the CPO poll mentioned above, and published before the elections, noted that “its survey indicated that only 16 per cent of Azeri Iranians will vote for Mr. Mousavi. By contrast, 31 per cent of the Azeris claim they will vote for Mr. Ahmadinejad.” In the end, according to official results, the election in that region was much closer than the overall result. In fact, Mousavi won narrowly in the West Azerbaijan province but lost the region to Ahmadinejad by a 45 to 52 per cent margin (or 1.5 to 1.8 million votes).
However, the double standard applied by Western news agencies is striking. Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern in his native state of South Dakota in the 1972 elections. Had Al Gore won his home state of Tennessee in 2000, no one would have cared about a Florida recount, nor would there have been a Supreme Court case called Bush v. Gore. If Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards had won the states he was born and raised in (South and North Carolina), President John Kerry would now be serving his second term. But somehow, in Western newsrooms Middle Eastern people choose their candidates not on merit, but on the basis of their “tribe.”
The fact that minor candidates such as Karroubi would garner fewer votes than expected, even in their home regions as critics charge, is not out of the ordinary. Many voters reach the conclusion that they do not want to waste their votes when the contest is perceived to be between two major candidates. Karroubi indeed received far fewer votes this time around than he did in 2005, including in his hometown. Likewise, Ross Perot lost his home state of Texas to Bob Dole of Kansas in 1996, while in 2004, Ralph Nader received one eighth of the votes he had four years earlier.
Some observers note that when the official results were being announced, the margin between the candidates held steady throughout the count. In fact, this is no mystery. Experts say that generally when 3-5 per cent of the votes from a given region are actually counted, there is a 95 per cent confidence level that such result will hold firm. As for the charge that ballots ran out and some people were turned away, it is worth mentioning that voting hours were extended four times in order to allow as many people as possible the opportunity to vote. But even if all the people who did not vote, had actually voted for Mousavi (a virtual impossibility), that would be 6.93 million additional votes, much less than the 11 million vote difference between the top two candidates.
Ahmadinejad is certainly not a sympathetic figure. He is an ideologue, provocative, and sometimes behaving imprudently. But to characterize the struggle in Iran as a battle between democratic forces and a “dictator,” is to exhibit total ignorance of Iran’s internal dynamics, or to deliberately distort them. There is no doubt that there is a significant segment of Iranian society, concentrated around major metropolitan areas, and comprising many young people, that passionately yearns for social freedoms. They are understandably angry because their candidate came up short. But it would be a huge mistake to read this domestic disagreement as an “uprising” against the Islamic Republic, or as a call to embark on a foreign policy that would accommodate the West at the expense of Iran’s nuclear program or its vital interests.
Nations display respect to other nations only when they respect their sovereignty. If any nation, for instance, were to dictate the United States’ economic, foreign or social policies, Americans would be indignant. When France, under President Chirac opposed the American adventure in Iraq in 2003, some U.S. Congressmen renamed a favorite fast food from French Fries to “Freedom Fries.” They made it known that the French were unwelcome in the U.S.
The U.S. has a legacy of interference in Iran’s internal affairs, notably when it toppled the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. This act, of which most Americans are unaware, is ingrained in every Iranian from childhood. It is the main cause of much of their perpetual anger at the U.S. It took 56 years for an American president to acknowledge this illegal act, when Obama did so earlier this month in Cairo.
Therefore, it would be a colossal mistake to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs yet again. President Obama is wise to leave this matter to be resolved by the Iranians themselves. Political expediency by the Republicans or pro-Israel Democrats will be extremely dangerous and will yield serious repercussions. Such reckless conduct by many in the political class and the media appears to be a blatant attempt to demonize Iran and its current leadership, in order to justify any future military attack by Israel if Iran does not give up its nuclear ambition.
President Obama’s declarations in Cairo are now being aptly recalled. Regarding Iran, he said, “I recognize it will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude, and resolve. There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect.”
But the first sign of respect is to let the Iranians sort out their differences without any overt –or covert –interference.
In Christopher's latest Slate bit he advances two notions
1. "Iranian leaders will always believe Anglo-Saxons are plotting against them."
2. "Coexistence with a nuclearized, fascistic theocracy in Iran is impossible even in the short run."
So war it is.
He also cautions, "try to bear in mind that one day you will have to face the young Iranian democrats who risked their all in the battle and explain to them just what you were doing when they were being beaten and gassed"
Lucky for our hero that he will never have to face any of the young Iraqis whose deaths he so blithely accepted as a price worth paying. As for the rest of us I'd argue that we support the people of Iran in their fight against tyranny while warning them about the Neo-Con vultures who are looking to use their movement as a pretext for another bloodbath.
No it's JibJab's latest shameless self-promotion video featuring the Commander in Chief. This is especially for Yoyo, Liz and Pip, just in case they haven't already been bombarded by it elsewhere. And it should shut up all those who complain that we never feature serious videos here. Caution, this takes a minute or two to load, but it's worth it for the animation.
Back in January 2003, Christopher Hitchens was already hard at work selling the case for launching a "pre-emptive" war against Iraq. In the first of what was to become a slew of columns on the same general theme, he explored the notion that starting such a war would not be "aggression", which on the face of it makes about as much sense as arguing that raping an uncooperative subordinate would not amount to "penetration", or that beating seven colors of shit out of the same individual would not be "violence". To do accomplish this considerable feat of casuistry, he attempted first to put the case for pre-emption into a historical context.
Warfare is an enterprise where, very noticeably, nice guys finish last. Franklin Roosevelt famously and pugnaciously said, after the "day that will live in infamy" in 1941, that it would count in the end not who fired the first shot but who fired the last shot. Nonetheless, it hurts to begin a war with the loss of a fleet, and not all countries are big enough to sustain such a shock. As a result, military historians and military strategists spend a good deal of time arguing over "pre-emptive" war and its near cousin "preventive" war.
Snapped out of its immediate context, "warfare is an enterprise" is a revealing turn of phrase that has much to say about its author. At first glance, the sentiment contrasts strongly with Smedly Butler's "War is a racket":
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
Smedley was a warrior, a patriot and a humanitarian, a guy who thought them on the beaches, etc., etc., as well as on the keyboard. He lamented that during his career with the army he'd been forced to work for gangsters, and he had no trouble distinguishing between legitimate enterprise and illegitamate racketeering.
Or compare Hitch's take with my personal favorite war quote, which comes from Jacob Bronowski. The remark occurs in a discusson the conflict between the nomadic and settled ways of life, but it is an example of a sweeping generalization that can be applied almost universally without losing its incisiveness:
Genghis Khan was a nomad and the inventor of a powerful war machine — that conjunction says something important about the origins of war in human history. Of course, it is tempting to close ones eyes to history, and instead to speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like the tiger, we still had to kill to live, or, like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organised war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and co-operative form of theft. And that form of theft began ten thousand years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus, and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide. (Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, p.87~88)
I admire Bronowski immensely. He was a proper scientist and a genuine intellectual. You'll find none of this "war is innate in us" or "we have a gene for pre-emptive invasion" claptrap among his well-considered ruminations on things that are important.
Of course, there need be no contradiction as such between an enterprise, a racket, and organized theft. Depending on your choice of nuance, they can all mean precisely the same thing. The Iconic Chicago gangster Al Capone described himself as a businessman and his rackets as enterprises. So perhaps Christopher's characterization of the impending "pre-empive" war against Iraq as "an enterprise" had a touch of Freudian slip about it. After all, as a dining companion of Paul Wolfowitz he must have known clearly enough that all the talk of WMD and the need to forestall future Iraqi acts of aggression was a six course meal of sinister piffle, balderdash and codswallop washed down with a bottle of Chateau le Bilge 1945. But Hitch had his brief, and he defended his clients' enterprise admirably:
In the present case of Iraq, a pre-emptive war is justified by its advocates on the grounds of past Iraqi aggressions and the logical presumption of future ones—which would make it partly retaliatory and partly preventive. This is fraught with the danger of casuistry since if no sinister weaponry is found before the war begins, then the war is re-justified on the grounds that it prevented such weapons from being developed. (And if the weapons are found, as one suspects they will be, after the intervention has taken place, then they could be retrospectively justified as needful for defense against an attack that was obviously coming.)
Surveying the bloody past, one can only wish for the opportunity to rerun the tape so that enough judicious force could have been employed, in good enough time, to forestall greater bloodshed. Everyone will have their favorite example. If only, for instance, the U.N. troops in Rwanda had been beefed up and authorized to employ deadly force as a deterrent. But tautology lurks at every corner, and the distinction between "pre-emptive" and "preventive" becomes a distinction without a difference, and only hindsight really works (and not always even then). The lesson is that all potential combatants, at all times, will invariably decide that violence and first use are justified in their own case.
One problem with the forestalling greater bloodshed defence is that one can never know if one's actions will lead to more or less bloodshed down the line. Another is that it permits the extermination of the entire human race on the grounds that this will eliminate any chance of subsequent human bloodshed. Moreover, the theory of pre-emption Hitch sketches out could have been taken directly from Monty Python's Llap-Goch sketch, which is summed up nicely at this link.
WHAT is LLAP-GOCH again? It is an ANCIENT Welsh ART based on a BRILLIANTLY simple I-D-E-A, which is a SECRET. The best form of DEFENCE is ATTACK (Clausewitz) and the most VITAL element of ATTACK is SURPRISE (Oscar HAMMERstein). Therefore, the BEST way to protect yourself AGAINST any ASSAILANT is to ATTACK him before he attacks YOU... Or BETTER... BEFORE the THOUGHT of doing so has EVEN OCCURRED TO HIM!!! SO YOU MAY BE ABLE TO RENDER YOUR ASSAILANT UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE he is EVEN aware of your very existence!....
Why WELSH Art? LLAP-GOCH was developed in Wales because for the average Welshman, the best prospects of achieving a reasonable standard of living lie with the acquisition of the most efficient techniques of armed robbery.
Rambling on, a potentially highly embarrassing official memo dating from January 2003 revealing a "US plan to provoke an invasion of Iraq" has just come to light, and it appears to show that the advocates of war, Messrs Bush and Blair, were well aware in advance that no sinister weaponry was waiting in Iraq to be found or pre-empted against, and that they lied about this knowledge. According to The Guardian:
A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.
The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.
Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.
The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be "brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president".
The five-page document, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, and copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, and the UK's ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines how Bush told Blair he had decided on a start date for the war.
Commenting on the revelation:
Lord Guthrie, a former chief of the defence staff under Blair, described the memo as "quite shocking". He said that it underscored why the Chilcott inquiry must be seen to be a robust investigation: "It's important that the inquiry is not a whitewash as these inquiries often are."
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"Purely because they don't like the BBC, because the BBC is not constantly masturbating the egos of Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah"
The young sexually immoral left-wing hippy and agnostic British blogger Futile Democracy has it in for the Ayatollahs, thinks Ahmadinejad is a dictator, worries that the Tehran protests could turn into Iran's Tiananmen Square, and is sure the election was rigged.
Well, we must all hope and pray (apart from the scientific materialists among us who regard such things are futile and the New World Order types who look upon the conflict as a cockfight) that a major massacre is avoided in Iran. But one ominous major difference between Peking 20 years ago and Tehran today is that the young Chinese students back then were remarkably peaceful compared to today's Iranian hotheads. For most of the six-week protest in which hundreds of thousands participated, there was little appetite for violence on either side, and hopes of a peaceful resolution were high. Then, on the evening of June 3, 1989, events took a terrible change for the worse:
As far as is known, the first violence came at around 10:30 P.M. on June 3 at Gongzhufen, some two miles west of Muxidi, where vanguard contingents of the assault force used about twenty armored personnel carriers (A.P.C.s) to crash through bus barricades that were blocking the circular intersection. A West German student living in Beijing at the time witnessed the incident and reports that many people were crushed to death as the A.P.C.s went through and soldiers fired indiscriminately at the crowd. A Finnish journalist who was also standing nearby reports seeing two soldiers with AK-47 assault rifles suddenly descend from the tenth truck of a convoy of fifty or so that drove through the gaps in the barricades. “They were torn to pieces” by the crowd, she says. “It was a horrible sight.” The pattern of the night’s conflict, then, was set from the start: Random and brutal killings by the army came first, followed swiftly by a small number of revenge killings of troops by distraught, and increasingly insurgent, citizens.
Why did the troops behave with such savagery? At Gongzhufen they had been alerted to the lethal realities of mass resistance, provoked by their violent invasion of the city and by their evident determination this time (in contrast to the halfhearted effort of May 20) to retake Tiananmen Square. Once they saw that terror tactics had conspicuously failed to subdue the crowds, the troops were fearful for their lives, and as they advanced slowly toward Muxidi, they responded by escalating the level of terror. From there on, the P.L.A. acted almost as if it were confronting Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap’s battle-hardened armies in the hills along the Sino-Vietnamese border rather than unarmed civilians. Local residents and Western journalists who visited the hospitals in western Beijing that night describe them as resembling abattoirs.
In a situation of escalating fear and terror, ordinary citizens are no match for the professionals. The Chinese Communist regime has never been bashful about exterminating people. Under the leadership of Mao Zedong (Mousey Tongue), it mass murdered its way into power and then mass murdered its way through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, cleansing China of more superstition, religion and other types counter-revolutionary thinking than even Richard Dawkins would be comfortable with, and causing about 80 million deaths in the process. While the violence and terror had much abated by the 1980s, the Party was not about to dissolve itself in the face of mass protests, a horrible miscalculation on the students' part that was to result in the violent deaths of possibly 2,000 mostly unarmed and mostly non-violent protesters, which Premier Deng Xiaoping (Dung Shall Pong) later quipped was "a small number for China". And by the way, the same regime remains in power in Peking today, sitting atop the greatest manufacturing powerhouse the world has yet seen.
Incidentally, the present Chinese leadership, who are too young to have been implicated in the Tiananmen Square massacre, are remarkable in being atheist materialists to man, having been born and raised free from the scourge of religion, and most of the individual leaders hold degrees in science or engineering. It is a government of rational technicians, just the sort of people I imagine Christopher Hitchens would like to see in power everywhere. And this government is not interested in subjecting itself to the approval of the masses, much preferring to rule through a consensus imposed from above - one of the few old established Chinese traditions that the revolutionary Communist dynasty saw fit to leave well alone.
The Iranian regime is in many ways the antithesis of the Chinese one, being avowedly religious, traditionalist, conservative and anti-Communist. Iran's political system is also obviously far more "democratic" than China's is, although this fact is very rarely stated in English language media, where emphasis tends to be placed on the repressive aspects of the Iranian system. The Iranian people can count on being able to vote, even if they can't necessarily count on their votes being counted. But is the current Iranian regime any more likely to dissolve itself in the face of mass protests than the Chinese Communist regime would be?
Up to a point, mass street protests are a form of communication between the ruled and the rulers. If they are wide enough, they may force the authorities to back down. After all, Iran is not China. However, the present Iranian regime achieved its power only 30 years ago through mass stree protests and armed revolution, and it is not likely to relinquish this power without a fight. And already, the issue is no longer the election result. It has become a matter of "Who runs the county: the mullahs or the students?" Also, it is unclear what the wishes of the Iranian "deep state", which may be using the situation covertly to bring about changes in the country. So before they push this conflict to the brink of an abyss from which there is no return, the people demonstrating day after day on the streets of Tehran had better ask themselves that old Dirty Harry question: "Do you feel lucky?"
As I see it, the most important issue is that even if the aim could be achieved, it is not worth risking the deaths of hundreds or thousands of Iranians in order to replace one Islamic president with another Islamic president. The protesters may be long on frustration and high on revolutionary fervor, but all this energy is not going to take them where they want to go. When the right spark hits the gasoline, all the twitterers and all the Western media encouragement of these protesters and all the other messages of support and solidarity may quite simply result in very real rivers of blood, and ordinary Iranians will be doing the bleeding. Studies of Europe in 1789, 1819, 1848, 1871, 1956 and 1968 reveal that 1989 was exceptional in achieving revolutionary change without much bloodshed. There is no reason to think that, if things come to a head, the Iranian regime will cede power without a fight.
Futile Democracy's latest post is on The BBC and Iran. In it, he tries to take a fair and moderate line on why Ayatollah Khamenei has called the British government the "most evil" in the Western World. And he comes up with the BBC's Persian language broadcasts as the main reason:
The Home Office has recently provided the funds to set up the BBC Persia Television Channel, even though the Iranian Government referred to it’s creation as “against National Security“. The Head of Intelligence within Iran, Gholam Hossein Mohseini Ejehi, stated of the new BBC Persia Channel “We don’t consider this channel to be appropriate for our security. We will take the necessary measures in this regard.” Member of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Karim Abedi said that the BBC were planning to recruit spies, through it’s new Persian Channel. In January 2009 The minister of culture and Islamic guidance, Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi banned all Iranian journalists from working for the BBC. Harandi went on to say “Considering the BBC’s history of creating chaos in Iran, and its efforts to set the various strata of Iranian society against each other, the presence of the BBC Persian TV in the Islamic Republic is deemed to be illegal."
Futile Democracy goes on to explain that the idea of the Beeb trying to stir up the Iranians against their government is not necessarily far fetched, because this is exactly what happened in 1953:
Churchill, the British Prime Minister at the time, used the BBC to push forward our agenda, and eventually using the BBC to provide the codeword “exactly” into a midnight time check, on BBC Persia Radio Service giving the go ahead from the UK Government for operatives inside Iran, to begin the coup. The coup was successful, and Modaddeq was subsequently replaced by Fazlollah Zahedi. So it isn’t necessarily as far fetched as one may first think, that the World’s largest broadcaster, the BBC could be used for the dirty work of the British Government.
Ultimately, however, he can't believe that the same forces are up to their same old tricks again, albeit with a few newer refinements such as twitter:
But the Cold War is over. There is no particular reason why the BBC needs to attack the Iranian government. The British Government, especially given the past couple of months, has far deeper problems on it’s hands, than the Iranian election. It would seem that in a World without Bush and Cheney, it’s much more difficult to blame America for propaganda’s sake. And so, they appear to have moved on, like propaganda whores jumping from one “enemy” to another, and we’re the target. Britain. Purely because they don't like the BBC, because the BBC is not constantly masturbating the egos of Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah.
And that, dear reader, is where Futile Democracy gives head to what FGFM might call "the Decent dodge". One is reminded of John Belushi confronting a machine gun-toting Carry Fisher down in that sewer and desperately blurting out excuses as to why he failed to turn up for the wedding ceremony. When our reasoning leads us into deeply inconvenient territory, most of us prefer to grasp at straws than follow the logic to its conclusion. But if you want a good practical reason for destabilizing, you need look no further than the struggle for control over the world's oil resources, about 10% of which are situated on Iranian territory. And, more generally, there is always a reason for the BBC to attack the Iranian government because, in keeping with what George Orwell told us, we have always been at war with Eurasia.
From the Department of Hitch Fandom, Obsequiousness Section, here's a rousing piece of hagiography from Rocket Kirchner that deserves a wide appreciation. Intriguingly, Kirchner is a Christian, a Socialist and an anti-imperialist who earlier this year penned a favorable short review of Chris Hedges' I Don't Believe in Atheists in which he slammed Hitchens and Harris as people "who don’t even know Arabic just want to see them obliterated in order to preserve a Utopian secularism." So his recent paean of praise for the popinjay should by no means be thought of uncritically as a one-dimensional piece of uncritical thinking.
In the age of dumbing down, smothering dissent, and one dimensional thinking in America, the ascendancy of contrarian and newly American citizen Christopher Hitchens is important to our mental landscape coast to coast. Hitchens is our new Menken. He is impossible as Menken. As brilliant. And as just plain pissed off. That is just why we need him.
Voltaire warned of blind consistency of thought. He knew that it led to blind action. America is so caught up in blind consistency that it is inconsistent in what really matters. Hitch has managed a lot of just plain elbow grease and guts to cut through it all and engage our nation on just about every subject under the sun. Hitchens has been around for along time, and I got to know his work in the 1980’s. But, his recent rise of popularity is actually reinvigorating thought in the States.
So just why is Hitchens so important? Well, one could say that he is all over the map on issues which makes him impossible to put in a category. He is a brilliant atheist challenging religious people everywhere all the time. He is the lone voice on the left for the War. He wrote a scathing book on Mother Teresa, made a case for smoking, and one against the Dali Lama, meanwhile seeking to bring Henry Kissinger to justice for crimes against humanity. He has refused to support Israel while taking on female comics, and will proudly drink Scotch on The Daily Show instead of morning coffee.
When an issue arises of any importance, once the pundits, the experts, and the press have spoken, the question that always follows in the minds of those who shape the minds and our culture is, “Yeah, but where does Hitchens stand on the matter?” And they know that he will have a stand on the matter because he is vigilant on basically everything. The thing about Hitch is he is not boring. love him or hate him where he stands, not only will he not bore you but he will give you an intelligent defence, and the man is sincere. That is a rare combination. He will leave you no place to hide. You must fight or be disqualified when he steps in the arena. AND WE NEED THAT FOLKS ! As a matter of fact, he never leaves the arena. Christopher Hitchens is a rock star. Period. We agree with Him and disagree with Him. Keep it up Chris.
Folks, this is quite simply most enjoyable Christopher Hitchens video you are ever likely to watch. In it, Hitch approaches Grocho Marxist levels of comic genius as he employs preemptive verbal strikes to cut off the thought processes of fellow commentators, talk show hosts, debate partners, and anyone else who threatens to get a word in edgeways. And along the way, he also gives the finger to Bill Mahler's audience, rolls his eyes at Daniel Dennet*, and accuses a nice old rabbi of genital mutilation. Just imagine playing this master of gamesmanship, lifemanship and oneupmanship at golf or tennis!
This really is as good as Hitch gets, and this delightful documentary is brought to us by that producer, director, editor and narrator supreme, JQisAwesome.
In this video, we get a timely reminder that just a couple of years back, ABC News spilled the beans on the Bush administration's terrorist support, I mean, covert action plans for destabilizing Iran. Although admittedly, this could all have been a clever ruse to lull the Ayatollahs into a false sense of insecurity.
Moving on, economist and "farther of Reaganomics" turned anti-imperialist libertarian dissident Paul Craig Roberts looks back to the CIA-backed 1953 coup and feels a touch of deja vu. So do I, and I wasn't even born then:
Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, tells the story of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mosaddeq, by the CIA and the British MI6 in 1953. The CIA bribed Iranian government officials, businessmen, and reporters, and paid Iranians to demonstrate in the streets.
The 1953 street demonstrations, together with the cold war claim that the US had to grab Iran before the Soviets did, served as the US government’s justification for overthrowing Iranian democracy. What the Iranian people wanted was not important.
Today the street demonstrations in Tehran show signs of orchestration. The protesters, primarily young people, especially young women opposed to the dress codes, carry signs written in English: “Where is My Vote?” The signs are intended for the western media, not for the Iranian government.
More evidence of orchestration is provided by the protesters’ chant, “death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad.” Every Iranian knows that the president of Iran is a public figure with limited powers. His main role is to take the heat from the governing grand Ayatollah. No Iranian, and no informed westerner, could possibly believe that Ahmadinejad is a dictator. Even Ahmadinejad’s superior, Khamenei, is not a dictator as he is appointed by a government body that can remove him.
The demonstrations, like those in 1953, are intended to discredit the Iranian government and to establish for Western opinion that the government is a repressive regime that does not have the support of the Iranian people. This manipulation of opinion sets up Iran as another Iraq ruled by a dictator who must be overthrown by sanctions or an invasion.
On American TV, the protesters who are interviewed speak perfect English. They are either westernized secular Iranians who were allied with the Shah and fled to the West during the 1978 Iranian revolution or they are the young westernized residents of Tehran.
Many of the demonstrators may be sincere in their protest, hoping to free themselves from Islamic moral codes. But if reports of the US government’s plans to destabilize Iran are correct, paid troublemakers are in their ranks....
Meanwhile, the BBC is now reporting that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has demanded an end to protests and told the losing candidates that if they want to keep bickering they should take the Al Gore route.
Mr Ahmadinejad was among the thousands of people who packed the campus and surrounding streets, punctuating the ayatollah's speech with chants.
Responding to allegations of electoral fraud, the ayatollah insisted the Islamic Republic would not cheat.
"There is 11 million votes difference," the ayatollah said. "How can one rig 11 million votes?"
He appealed to candidates who had doubts about the election result to pursue any challenges through legal avenues.
BBC Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne says that Ayatollah Khamenei appears to have staked everything on this election result and Mr Ahmadinejad.
It all points to heavy crackdowns if the protests continue, our correspondent says.
This video is of Christopher Hitchens takling-heading on the Kudlow Report (CNBC, 18 June 2009) about the "Iranian Election Unrest". It was put up by SaveOurSovereignty3, who has a very browseable YouTube site, and the link was supplied by Angrysoba. It's midnight here in Japan and I'm not allowed to listen to Hitch after 11 pm. Plus, I'm busy hunting centipedes tonight. A huge six-incher fell from the ceiling onto my head while I was watching a detective drama a while ago, and then it made a dash for safety behind the video cabinet. So I've already had quite enough excitement for one night.
Henry Kissinger, in an interview with BBC's Newsnight, has come out in favor of the US workng for "regime change in Iran from the outside" if the government that emerges there doesn't meet certain Kissingerian critera. It's amazing how often we find Henry and Hitch in church together these days sand inging from the same hymnbook. Imagine how carefully the pair them and their minders have to schedule their outings to ensure they don't wind up sitting on the same pew or taking holy communion together.
I am sure that Americans would favour the emergence from the present situation of a truly popularly based government and it is very appropriate for the president to make clear that that is what he favours. Now if it turns out that it is not possible for a government to emerge in Iran that can deal with itself as a nation rather than as a cause then we have a different situation, then we may conclude that we must work for regime change in Iran from the outside but if I understand the president correctly he does not want to do this as a visible intervention in the current crisis.
The BBC's coverage of the Iranian elections was never expected to be as fair, unbiased, or squeaky clean as its charter prescribes. But who would have thought things would get so blatant that Aunty would show a photo of a flag-waving crowd at a pro-Ahmadinejad rally and claim that they were Mousavi supporters? According to Paul Joseph Watson at Infowars.com, that's precisely what happened, and he has the pickies to prove it.
An image used by the L.A. Times on the front page of its website Tuesday showed Iranian President Ahmadinejad waving to a crowd of supporters at a public event.
In a story covering the election protests yesterday, the BBC News website used a closer shot of the same scene, but with Ahmadinejad cut out of the frame. The caption under the photograph read, "Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi again defied a ban on protests".
Still, perhaps with can forgive the BBC's latest indiscretions as they are in such a fine and noble cause.
Another old adversary of Hitch's who has become something of an ally on the Iranian election issue is Juan Cole, who has been blogging daily on events in Iran and attempting to tread a course between extremes of bias. His blog is well worth a read, and from it I learned that Hitch's "friends" the President of Iraq and the President of Afghanistan (Messrs Talibani and Karzai) have both "praised the alleged election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," which seems to indicate that the election was fair by regional standards.
For some useful background, here's a 2007 interview in which Noam Chomsky talks about the United States policy of "torturing" Iran. In it, Noam also admits to agreeing with the Bush administration on one point. If you want to know what it is, you'll have to watch the video.
"Well, that gap in the market is now closed, and in the end it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the horrible personality flaws of Decency's chief players, the woeful failure of the political causes they spun for and the military bloodbaths they wanted.
Harry's Place has long since been called out for the nasty, wingnut toilet that it is, and now even the reasonable posts they put up are so tainted by the lying bullshit the Saucers proliferate that no sane person would take them seriously. Professor Norm spends his evenings grousing and bitching like an aging drag queen; David Aaronovitch can't publish a recipe for beans on toast without attracting four thousand comments calling him a paid mouthpiece for the status quo.
Meanwhile, the Euston Manifesto continues to languish in obscurity and Ollie Kamm's output is recognised as the tepid, right wing bumfluff it is....
So the world's moved on, thankfully rendering the Decents and myself obsolete. The wreckage the Blairite project has left is going to be swept away and something new built in its place, but it seems clear it'll happen without the assistance of mid-life crisis-stricken ex-Trots demanding that the Left condemn every news story that plops into their email inbox, and calling anyone who fails to show sufficient enthusiasm for the task a Nazi."
With Hitch, the fix is always in, although for reasons of convenience he doesn't always acknowledge skulduggery at election times. On this occasion, though, he displays a positively Chauvinistic zeal to cry "foul!":
The obvious evidence of fixing, fraud, and force to one side, there is another reason to doubt that an illiterate fundamentalist like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have increased even a state-sponsored plebiscite-type majority. Everywhere else in the Muslim world, in every election in the last two years, the tendency has been the other way. In Morocco in 2007, the much-ballyhooed Justice and Development Party wound up with 14 percent of the vote. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the predictions of increased market share for the pro-Sharia parties were likewise falsified. In Iraq this last January, the local elections penalized the clerical parties that had been making life a misery in cities like Basra. In neighboring Kuwait last month, the Islamist forces did poorly, and four women—including the striking figure of Rola Dashti, who refuses to wear any headgear—were elected to the 50-member parliament. Most important of all, perhaps, Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah was convincingly and unexpectedly defeated last week in Lebanon after an open and vigorous election, the results of which were not challenged by any party. And, from all I hear, if the Palestinians were to vote again this year—as they were at one point supposed to do—it would be highly improbable that Hamas would emerge the victor.
There's no mystery behind the victory of the incumbant in Iran. The Iranians are just like any other nation under threat of foreign interference, intervention or invasion. When you push one, you push 'em all. I mean, how would you like Hitch and his mates telling you how your country should be run while holding a big stick? Not very happy, I shouldn't be surprised.
He is quite correct in his closing comment though. "Fascism at home sooner or later means fascism abroad. Face it now or fight it later. Meanwhile, give it its right name." Such a pity he doesn't recognize the tendency when it comes draped in the Stars and Stripes. But then again, myopia and a blocked nose are prerequisites for the career he's carved out for himself in Talkingheadland.
First the cop screamed abuse at Mir Hossein Mousavi's supporter, a white-shirted youth with a straggling beard and unkempt hair. Then he smashed his baton into the young man's face. Then he kicked him viciously in the testicles...
"Death to the dictator," they were crying on Dr Fatimi Street, now thousands of them shouting abuse at the police. Were they to endure another four years of the smiling, avuncular, ever-so-humble President who swears by democracy while steadily thinning out human freedoms in the Islamic Republic? They were wrong, of course. Ahmadinejad really does love democracy. But he also loves dictatorial order. He is not a dictator. He is a Democrator.
Now, on to some heavy outside-the-mainstream analysis from Les Blough introducing Moon of Alabama's "must-read" article at Axis of Logic: Iran: Some Dots You May Want To Connect
Before you start connecting the dots, consider this: 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.)
Mir Hussein Mousavi followed his script, declared to his followers that the election was invalid instead of graciously accepting defeat. CIA's shill, Manuel Rosales, did exactly the same thing in Venezuela when he lost large to President Chavez in 2006. The opposition came out and banged their pots and pans, then went home to bed. When Ahmadinejad reached out to Mousavi and his followers, offering to give them a part in the new government, Mousavi rejected the offer. Folks, these are not exactly marks of a real statesman, ready to lead a nation.
Yes, they'll succeed in smearing Iran and marring this election in the minds of those who prejudged them before they took place. The CIA/Mossad duo can be proud of the pain and confusion they've caused in Iran and worldwide. Now they've got some video of some angry Iranians to show their bosses for a pat on the head. But if they think that they can destabilise Iran by getting a few thousand Iranians out on the streets of Teheran, they're even dumber than I thought.
Not so unarmed after all, these protestors give as good as they get. It's all part of the rough and tumble of life in IslamoDemocratic Iran, where the bustle never ceases.
Ahmadinejad´s base is mainly rural poor and religious or urban poor and religious. The majority of Iranians are still religious and rural or urban poor. Under these conditions a Mousavi victory would have been highly unlikely.
The reaction of the mainline media and their support for Mousavi´s claim is not at all surprising, it´s a blatant and unconcealed effort to once again destabilize Iran, encouraging violent uprisings, not so different from what happened in the past to a certain Mohammed Mosaddeq and of course in line with the CIA sponsoring of terrorist groups who have been very active in the last weeks before the elections.
The motives of the alternatives are another matter, they are more moved by emotionally ingrained ideology, plain old Islamophobia...
As for Libertarians the opposition to a theocratic minded Islam is quite natural. Secularism or at least a strict division between church and state is part of libertarian culture. However while this concept is an integral part of our western culture and our democratic history, for the people of the Middle East it looks quite differently. For them western secular culture has so far only come with the additional baggage of western financial imperialism, a take-over of land and resources often with the additional help of military operation or covert war-fare by destabilization efforts. In the eyes of many Middle-Easterners the interests of the majority population to live independently and in dignity, allowing them to profit from their own´s countries resources can only be achieved or protected by political Islam.
In my opinion the people of developing countries should have the right to make their own choices in line with their own culture and history, develop their own way towards economic and social progress without self-righteous western interference. And do I have to remind you that on the democracy and human right level we in the West haven´t been doing so well lately either.
And as a P.S. on the situation of women´s rights in Iran: the admittance of female students at Iranian universities lies by about 60% (meaning only 40% males). This is surely higher than anywhere in the Middle East and possibly anywhere in the world. Female literacy rate of young women in Iran has risen to near 100% after the Islamic revolution and Iranian female scientists and inventors have received many international prizes.
Note those figures, folks. Now that secular Iraq has been destroyed in Hitch's crusade and handed over to the religious factions and the oil barons, Iran is the best place in the ME and possibly in the world for a woman to get a university education. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may well be illiterate — although its sometimes advisable to take Hitch's assertions like a Tequila Sunrise — with plenty of salt and a slice of lemon — but Iranian women certainly aren't.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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