Following the announcement of victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his main opponent Mir Hossein Mousavi in Iran's presidential election on June 12, the country erupted in turmoil as supporters of Mousavi flocked to the streets to protest what they claimed was a fraudulent election, while state security and militia forces cracked down on dissenters, sometimes violently. Iran claimed that the unrest was being fueled by foreign interference, a charge reported but generally dismissed in Western media accounts. But there is ample reason to believe that the U.S. likely had a hand in fomenting the chaos that has since plagued the country many commentators have compared to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah. The role of the U.S. in overthrowing the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and installing the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is by now well known. In his speech in Cairo last month, President Barack Obama even referenced the CIA-backed coup, acknowledging that "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government."[1] The U.S. lost their principle ally in the Middle East, however, when the Shah was in turn overthrown as a result of the Islamic revolution that swept the country in 1979, resulting in the clerical regime that continues to this day under Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who took over the title from the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Following the announcement of victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his main opponent Mir Hossein Mousavi in Iran's presidential election on June 12, the country erupted in turmoil as supporters of Mousavi flocked to the streets to protest what they claimed was a fraudulent election, while state security and militia forces cracked down on dissenters, sometimes violently. Iran claimed that the unrest was being fueled by foreign interference, a charge reported but generally dismissed in Western media accounts. But there is ample reason to believe that the U.S. likely had a hand in fomenting the chaos that has since plagued the country many commentators have compared to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah.
The role of the U.S. in overthrowing the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and installing the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is by now well known. In his speech in Cairo last month, President Barack Obama even referenced the CIA-backed coup, acknowledging that "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government."[1]
The U.S. lost their principle ally in the Middle East, however, when the Shah was in turn overthrown as a result of the Islamic revolution that swept the country in 1979, resulting in the clerical regime that continues to this day under Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who took over the title from the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as "low level terrorism." ACLU attorneys are calling the approach "an egregious insult to constitutional values" and have sent a letter to the Department of Defense demanding that the offending materials be changed and that the DoD send corrective information to all DoD employees who received the erroneous training.... Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course, the DoD asks the following: "Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?" To answer correctly, the examinee must select "protests." ... The Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course is an annual training requirement for all DoD personnel that is fulfilled through web-based instruction.
Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course, the DoD asks the following: "Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?" To answer correctly, the examinee must select "protests." ...
The Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course is an annual training requirement for all DoD personnel that is fulfilled through web-based instruction.
State Dept. Elective, AYM | Bratich | 22 June 2009
[State Department advisor Jared] Cohen's ccess should be even less surprising, given his role in State Department efforts to harness the power of social media. To wit, his role as press contact for the Alliance of Youth Movements. Launched in late 2008 with a Summit in NYC, the AYM gathered together an ensemble of media corporations, Obama consultants, social network entrepreneurs, and youth organizations, under the auspices of the State Department. Representatives came from Media Old (MTV, NBC, CNN) and New (Google and especially Facebook). The AYM produced a Field Manual and a series of How-to videos (How to Create a Grassroots Movement Using Social-Networking Sites, How to Smart Mob, How to Circumvent an Internet Proxy). The goal was to have youth leaders from around the world learn, share & discuss how to build powerful grassroots movements. ... One thing is clear: cyberwar has once again taken front stage. Here traditional ambitions meet new technical developments. And there's even an "old media" angle here. In November 2008 French authorities jailed readers and a suspected author of The Coming Insurrection for "associating with a terrorist enterprise". The Tarnac 9, as they've come to be known, were accused of being inspired by the manifesto/manual, pseudonymously penned by The Invisible Committee.
One thing is clear: cyberwar has once again taken front stage. Here traditional ambitions meet new technical developments. And there's even an "old media" angle here. In November 2008 French authorities jailed readers and a suspected author of The Coming Insurrection for "associating with a terrorist enterprise". The Tarnac 9, as they've come to be known, were accused of being inspired by the manifesto/manual, pseudonymously penned by The Invisible Committee.
Voila, 'a civil rights movement' | DemocracyNow! | 24 June 2009
AMY GOODMAN: Obama dismissed as, quote, "patently false" Iranian government accusations of the US role in instigating protests. He also addressed Republican criticism of his, quote, "timid" and "passive" response to events in Iran. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Yeah, I think that all of us share a belief that we want justice to prevail. But only I am the President of the United States. And I've got responsibilities in making certain that we are continually advancing our national security interests and that we are not used as a tool to be exploited by other countries. And so, I think that in the hothouse of Washington, there may be all kinds of stuff going back and forth in terms of Republican critics versus the administration. That's not what is relevant to the Iranian people.... AMY GOODMAN: We continue on Iran. We're speaking with Hamid Dabashi. He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Among other books is Iran: A People Interrupted. He was born in Iran himself. Your piece in the New York Times today is called "Looking for Their Martin Luther King." Explain. HAMID DABASHI: It's based on my reading of what I believe is happening in Iran. This, in my judgment, is a post-ideological generation. My generation was divided into third world socialists, anti-colonial nationalists and militant Islamists. These are the three dominant ideologies with which we grew up. But if you look at the composition of Iranian society today, 70 percent of it is under the age of thirty--namely, born after the Islamic Revolution. They no longer are divided along those ideological lines. And if you read their newspapers, if you watch their movies, if you listen to the lyrics of their underground music, to their contemporary arts, etc., which we have been doing over the past thirty years, this, to me, is a civil rights movement. They are operating within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. They don't want to topple the regime. If you look--come outside, from the right of the right, in the US Senate to the left, is waiting for yet another revolution to happen. I don't think this is another revolution. This is a civil rights movement. They're demanding their civil rights that are being denied, even within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. From their chants that they are doing in the streets to their newspapers, to their magazines, to their websites, to their Facebook, to their Twitters, everywhere that you look, this is a demand for civil liberties and not-- There are, of course, underlying economic factors, statistically. The unemployment in the age cohort of fifteen to twenty-nine is 70 percent. So this is not a class warfare. In other words, people that we see in the streets, 70 percent of them, that a majority of them are young--70 percent of them do not even have a job. They can't even rent a room, let alone marry, let alone have a family. So the assumption that this is a upper-middle-class or middle-class, bourgeois, Gucci revolutionaries on the side of Mousavi and poor on the side of Ahmadinejad is completely false. ... What this movement needs--anything is--from the United States is, because I see it as a civil rights movement, is the support of civil rights icons. Reverend Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton, these are the people who should come to its support, not official Americans. And as a result, President Obama's position has been very pitch perfect, very calibrated. That is, he endorses the civil liberties of these demonstrators, without taking sides, and consistently insisting that this is a domestic Iranian affair, because the fact is he may have to deal with Ahmadinejad.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Yeah, I think that all of us share a belief that we want justice to prevail. But only I am the President of the United States. And I've got responsibilities in making certain that we are continually advancing our national security interests and that we are not used as a tool to be exploited by other countries. And so, I think that in the hothouse of Washington, there may be all kinds of stuff going back and forth in terms of Republican critics versus the administration. That's not what is relevant to the Iranian people....
AMY GOODMAN: We continue on Iran. We're speaking with Hamid Dabashi. He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Among other books is Iran: A People Interrupted. He was born in Iran himself.
Your piece in the New York Times today is called "Looking for Their Martin Luther King." Explain.
HAMID DABASHI: It's based on my reading of what I believe is happening in Iran. This, in my judgment, is a post-ideological generation. My generation was divided into third world socialists, anti-colonial nationalists and militant Islamists. These are the three dominant ideologies with which we grew up. But if you look at the composition of Iranian society today, 70 percent of it is under the age of thirty--namely, born after the Islamic Revolution. They no longer are divided along those ideological lines.
And if you read their newspapers, if you watch their movies, if you listen to the lyrics of their underground music, to their contemporary arts, etc., which we have been doing over the past thirty years, this, to me, is a civil rights movement. They are operating within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. They don't want to topple the regime. If you look--come outside, from the right of the right, in the US Senate to the left, is waiting for yet another revolution to happen. I don't think this is another revolution. This is a civil rights movement. They're demanding their civil rights that are being denied, even within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. From their chants that they are doing in the streets to their newspapers, to their magazines, to their websites, to their Facebook, to their Twitters, everywhere that you look, this is a demand for civil liberties and not--
There are, of course, underlying economic factors, statistically. The unemployment in the age cohort of fifteen to twenty-nine is 70 percent. So this is not a class warfare. In other words, people that we see in the streets, 70 percent of them, that a majority of them are young--70 percent of them do not even have a job. They can't even rent a room, let alone marry, let alone have a family. So the assumption that this is a upper-middle-class or middle-class, bourgeois, Gucci revolutionaries on the side of Mousavi and poor on the side of Ahmadinejad is completely false. ...
What this movement needs--anything is--from the United States is, because I see it as a civil rights movement, is the support of civil rights icons. Reverend Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton, these are the people who should come to its support, not official Americans. And as a result, President Obama's position has been very pitch perfect, very calibrated. That is, he endorses the civil liberties of these demonstrators, without taking sides, and consistently insisting that this is a domestic Iranian affair, because the fact is he may have to deal with Ahmadinejad.
OMFG Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Pahlavi praised the statements and tone of President Obama, saying that any outside attempt to interfere in Iran's internal affairs "will give the tyrants the excuse they need to paper over their own differences and target every man struggling for freedom as a foreign agent." But he said there was a difference between interfering in a country's sovereign affairs and standing for principles of human rights and democracy. "We welcome that. This is effective. It is important," he said. "This is precisely what Iranians at home demand world leaders, particularly someone like President Obama, who after all his entire message of hope and change and affirmative action ... was a big inspiration to many."
But he said there was a difference between interfering in a country's sovereign affairs and standing for principles of human rights and democracy. "We welcome that. This is effective. It is important," he said. "This is precisely what Iranians at home demand world leaders, particularly someone like President Obama, who after all his entire message of hope and change and affirmative action ... was a big inspiration to many."
And in other news that's not ...
BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen said the protesters were talking about finding other ways to show their opposition, including strikes or civil disobedience. A spokesman for the US government said it "would not endorse" general strikes, but he added: "We've seen the beginnings of change in Iran."
