Thursday, September 27, 2012 

Cameron's bizarro world.

There's only one thing to do when you've already made a fool of yourself at the UN: go one better and do much the same on the Letterman show.  Supposedly appearing to promote British business when it's clear to everyone that Cameron was just doing what Boris already had because that's how ultra competitive Old Etonian rivals roll, he didn't know who composed the dirge squeezed out for the last night of the Proms, or that Magna Carta in English means Great Charter!  What a pleb!  Did she die in vain after all?

Of rather more importance ought to be the similar crapola Dave served up before the general assembly.  This time last year the splendid NATO intervention in Libya was still going on, with the civilians in Beni Walid and Sirtre being "protected" through bombing raids and Gaddafi yet to be pulled out of his sewer and sodomised to death, so naturally we heard of how wonderful bombing countries with copious natural resources was.  12 months on and the best that can be said about Libya is that the militia allegedly responsible for the murder of the American ambassador Chris Stevens was flushed out of Benghazi with just 9 deaths in the process reported.  According to Cameron, this popular uprising was "inspiring", although strangely he failed to make mention of the deaths or how it reflects rather badly on the Libyan security services that it was armed individuals rather than themselves who carried the burden of doing so.

Mostly though Cameron dedicated his speech to setting up straw men arguments about the Arab spring and then knocking them down.  Anyone would have thought that as a country we had supported the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt from the very beginning, instead of all but ignoring the overthrow of Ben Ali and then only dumping Mubarak when his fall from power seemed inevitable, such was Cameron's fervour for what a wonderful thing the downfall of these authoritarian regimes had been.  We don't though support the complete democratisation of the Middle East, as that would obviously be against our interests.  Search for a mention of Bahrain in Cameron's speech and you'll find there isn't one, despite Cameron trying to claim that Somalia's election of a new president is somehow related to the protests that began last year.  That his election was by, err, other MPs rather than by the people themselves also went curiously unexplained.

Every country, you see, takes its own path.  Occasionally we intervene to help them along that path, but others can be left to make progress based around tradition and consent.  In Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE for instance, stability has been brought through either oil wealth, allowing the United States to use the country as a glorified naval base, or making certain areas a Westerner's playground, so long as they don't do anything silly like enjoy themselves too much in public.  That in all of these nations minorities or citizens as a whole are horribly repressed doesn't matter, as they're our friends and allies.

By far the most egregious part of Dave's sermon was this section:


The fact is that for decades, too many were prepared to tolerate dictators like Gaddafi and Assad on the basis that they would both keep their people safe at home and promote stability in the region and the wider world. In fact, neither was true. Not only were these dictators repressing their people, ruling by control not by consent, plundering the national wealth and denying people their basic rights and freedoms, they were funding terrorism overseas as well.



Now, can you possibly think of a country that fits this description exactly?  No, not Iran, as only relatively recently has that country lost all vestiges of being democratic.  It's the House of Saud's rule down to a T.  Except, Cameron can't possibly mean the Saudis, as we seem more aligned with them than ever.  Just as in the 80s when the Americans joined forces with the Saudis to fund the mujahideen in Afghanistan, so now we're promoting Sunni dominance of the region as a bulwark against Iran.  That this means equipping jihadis in Syria to battle against Assad, hijacking what had been a non-sectarian uprising, is just one of the compromises we have to make if we're going to ensure that stability remains.  It also means we'll have to turn a blind eye to the shooting dead of protesters in restive regions of SA, just as we said next to nothing about the crushing of the protests in Bahrain.


Quite how Cameron had the nerve to stand up and say the UN was stained by the blood of children killed in Syria is though something else.  No one can deny that the Assad regime bears full responsibility for the situation in the country as it stands, but to completely ignore the atrocities also being committed by the opposition forces we're supporting is an outrage.  Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, embedded with the FSA, reported this week on how a 16-year-old who said the wrong thing to the rebels was brutally tortured in front of him; if they're prepared to do that to someone who merely spoke out of turn, and in front of a Guardian journalist, then how they are treating those they're supposedly fighting for when there are no witnesses around?  The blocking of resolutions on Syria by China and Russia is partially down to how they were misled on Libya, when the imposition of a no fly zone was used by NATO as the authorisation for regime change.  The blame ought to be shared out equally, not just pinned on those who've dared to point out our hypocrisies.

Only then in this bizarro world of Cameron's imagining could it be Iran that's set "on dragging the region in to wider conflict".  The Saudi and Qatari funding of the FSA seems designed to weaken Iran, which in turn is undermining the stability of Lebanon.  Add in how Israeli politicians have been agitating for an attack on the country now for the last couple of years, with Benjamin Netanyahu today reaching new heights of fantasy, describing a nuclear armed Iran as comparable to a nuclear armed al-Qaida, and it's clear the exact opposite is the case. Iran is trying to consolidate its position in the region while our allies and ourselves are doing everything we can to push it back.

At least on Letterman Cameron only embarrassed himself.  Let loose on the world stage, delivering speeches in which he claims to be a liberal Conservative rather than a neo-con, he comes across as positively dangerous.  An independent British foreign policy seems as far away as ever.

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9/27/2012 10:20:00 pm | |

Thursday, September 22, 2011 

Mr Cameron goes to New York.

Yes, it's that time of year again. In what seems more and more choreographed with each passing twelve months, it's that bizarre version of musical chairs played out at the United Nations general assembly: Mahmoud Ahmadenijad takes the opportunity given to him to say something vaguely outrageous in front of the planet's dignitaries and television cameras, and out walk those who have somehow found the strength to sit through the terminally dull orations of those who went before him. It's an utterly pointless exercise, especially when Ahmadenijad's obsessions are so dull and if anything, far less controversial than the average tin-foil hat wearer's beliefs. As well as the usual allusions to the Holocaust and how the most well-documented event in modern history obviously didn't happen, he this year brought in a reference to the "mysterious September 11 incident", making him topical if nothing else.

Best practice would be to just treat Ahmadenijad's ravings as the delegates do every other speech: in silence while paying as little attention as they can. Instead the walkouts are ever more contrived, just as Ahmadenijad's reaching for a new sweet spot each year is. When you've already made reference to the lack of evidence underpinning the Holocaust and suggested the United States itself carried out 9/11, the only place left to go, other than Nibiru, the four horseman of 2012 or sovereign citizenry is back to slavery. Should it not be, Ahmadenijad asked, an obligation upon the slave masters or colonial powers to pay reparations to the affected nations?

With the day's cabaret taken care off, by happy coincidence next on was a certain David Cameron. Last year he was excused from attending as Glam Sam Cam had just given birth to Florence; this time, and sadly considering how many times he's had to return from holidays due to various emergencies, he couldn't find a reason not to turn up. With those who didn't walk out thoroughly warmed up by the Iranian president's knock-about antics, Cameron wasted no time in delivering his A material:

You can sign every human rights declaration in the world but if you stand by and watch people being slaughtered in their own country, when you could act, then what are those signatures really worth?

Well, quite. Obviously, this doesn't apply in all cases: Mexico for instance, where around 40,000 people have been murdered over the past four years in a drug war which gets grimmer with each passing week, where the complete dismemberment of the victims of the cartels is common place, and where 35 bodies can be dumped in the street in broad daylight (NSFW). Or Bahrain, where the Saudi-backed royal family (literally) flattened the uprising with nary a squeak of protest from those self-proclaimed upholders of humanity, Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy. Just because we can't possibly intervene everywhere, as we were so sonorously reminded early on in the Libya campaign doesn't mean we can't intervene somewhere, preferably somewhere which is close by and where it's determined the military operation is likely to be over fairly swiftly. This is of course why a month after the fall of Tripoli NATO is still diligently protecting the civilians of the new Libyan army by continuing to bomb the holdouts in Beni Walid and Sirte.

In fairness to Cameron, and to come out of full cynicism mode for just a second, he plays down the NATO role in the Libyan revolution ridiculously, giving all the credit to the forces which are now failing miserably to take the two remaining hold out cities. The reality is that if NATO hadn't taken what was a limited UN resolution putting in placing a no fly zone while calling for a ceasefire to be followed by negotiations, and instead used it to intervene in a incipient civil war and from there facilitate eventual regime change, then the two sides would now still be deadlocked, Benghazi protected but all the other major cities likely under Gaddafi control. Just as everyone can welcome the downfall of another hated dictator and human rights abuser, you still can't get away from the fact a UN resolution was at best very liberally interpreted and at worst was used as the fig leaf to overthrow a sovereign government. When Cameron then lectures everyone on what a good thing this was, it's little wonder that rather than slapping him on the back and congratulating him, China and Russia are rather put out, and their recalcitrance over Syria is directly related to it.

Naturally, having spoken so many fine words about how deserving the Libyans are of their new found freedom and how everyone must help them to build their democracy, Cameron comes to the unpleasantness over the Palestinian attempt to gain recognition from the security council of their state and remains sitting on the fence. Of course they must have a viable state of their own, but only when the Israelis agree to it. Never mind that the Palestine papers brutally exposed how there is no partner for peace when one side refuses to compromise, Israel knowing full well that it can continue to colonise the West Bank without fear of sanction from the US, making a return to the 1967 borders an impossibility, only negotiations between the two sides can settle the conflict. Any attempt to jump start them by doing the one thing they previously haven't tried is simply unacceptable. Don't these Arabs know their place, which is to make our leaders look good while the economy collapses, and then only speak when they're spoken to the rest of the time?

In this at least Ahmadenijad is honest. He acts like a buffoon and gives ridiculous speeches because he is a buffoon and is ridiculous. Our leaders instead simply make it up as they go along, condemning this and ignoring that, knowing all too well of the contradictions and weaknesses in their arguments. Consistency is impossible; get used to it.

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9/22/2011 11:59:00 pm | |

Thursday, August 19, 2010 

Intellectual blind spots.

Both left and right can have blind spots when it comes to certain favoured regimes or countries. Some on the left are always willing to overlook the negatives of the regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Gaza or even Iran, while the right does much the same when it comes to Israel or Colombia, and yes, I am generalising here. Our governments, bless them, have much the same attitudes when it comes such bastions of human rights as Saudi Arabia, which can never be sold enough weapons as long as the oil keeps flowing, and that's without bringing into the equation nations such as Pakistan, our relationship with which is a complete mess of contradictions and compromises.

This sort of thing though just makes you look like a useful idiot. Within a few pages of each other in today's Graun you have this report:

Venezuela has banned its press from publishing graphic images of crime and violence for one month, fuelling a row over censorship in the runup to elections.

A court yesterday imposed the "temporary" order on print media, citing a need to protect the "psychic and moral integrity of children and adolescents".

The ruling said: "For the next four weeks, no newspaper, magazine or weekly of the country can publish images that are violent, bloody, grotesque, whether about crime or not."


Then Seumas Milne on the "transformation of Latin America":

So expect a flurry of new claims that Chávez is a dictator who has stifled media freedom and persecuted bankers and businessmen, and whose incompetent regime is running into the sand. In reality the Venezuelan president has won more free elections than any other world leader, the country's media are dominated by the US-funded opposition, and his government's problems with service delivery stem more from institutional weakness than authoritarianism.

Yes, what could possibly have given that impression? It's the intellectual dishonesty more than anything which makes you want to scream: everyone can see that Venezuela is a vastly more equal country than it was when Chávez came to power, and the short-lived coup against him was proof if it was ever needed of what sort of opposition he has always faced; trouble is, he's since turned to using exactly the same sort of methods as they did then. He might not tick all the required boxes to truly be considered a dictator, but anyone suggesting the ban on publishing "graphic" images is anything other than censorship for a political purpose is spouting the equivalent of nonsense on stilts. You can support Chávez's aims without giving succour to his methods or even him personally, yet still so many have a fundamental problem with grasping such subtlety. Is it really so difficult?

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8/19/2010 08:38:00 pm | |

Monday, June 07, 2010 

There is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza strip.

Just something quick. Via Craig Murray, the incredibly arbitrary list of what has and what hasn't been allowed through the Israeli/Egyptian blockade of Gaza in the last month, based on the partial information Gisha has been able to compile (PDF):

This is of course the same territory which the Israelis claim isn't suffering from a humanitarian catastrophe. If it isn't, it's thanks to the tunnels if not run by then certainly controlled by Hamas, forcing the population into the group's hands, just the sort of tactic guaranteed to make them reject the militants and which is illustrative of so much Israeli policy.

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6/07/2010 10:25:00 pm | |

Monday, May 31, 2010 

The suicide of Israel.

I can't really put it much better than Flying Rodent already has, yet it's still worth dwelling on for a moment longer. Commentators like Melanie Phillips ("'Peace convoy'? This was an Islamist terror ambush" is her verdict) often write about the "suicide of the West", despairing of our apparent submission to Islamic extremists, our loss of faith in our Judeo-Christian heritage, and also, of course, our moral decadence. What though, is Israel's latest act of belligerence but yet further proof of the suicidal idiocy of the country's political and ruling class?

The only conclusion that can be reached is that Israel seems to imagine that it no longer needs allies, that it no longer needs friends, except for those that can be relied upon to repeatedly defend the indefensible, for which see the above. It's true that the country has acted this way in the past, such as when it attacked the USS Liberty, but that was during the Six Day War, or when it destroyed a Libyan passenger airline that had gone off course, but then no one cares about the Libyans and that was put down as another in Israel's long line of military "mistakes". The boarding of the Mavi Marmara is however the third such act of apparently shocking stupidity in 18 months: first the murderous assault on Gaza, having provoked Hamas into breaching a ceasefire which the Israelis openly admitted they had broken first, apparently purely for electoral benefit; next the almost comically inept if successful assassination of very minor player Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, earning rebukes and diplomatic expulsions from countries which didn't take kindly to Mossad yet again forging and stealing the passports of their civilians; and now a mindbogglingly foolish assault on a peace flotilla trying to deliver aid to the impoverished and long-suffering open-air prison which is the tiny strip of land known as Gaza.

It doesn't really matter whose side of the story is the most accurate, although it's instructive that the videos released by the IDF of the commandos coming aboard the Mavi Marmara show nothing of the arrival of the helicopters that delivered them, or of the boats involved in surrounding the vessels, when the people on the boats and indeed an al-Jazeera reporter on board one claimed that they were first fired upon. All the people around the world will see is the Israelis intercepting boats with an entirely peaceful purpose out in international waters, which means they were committing an act of piracy simply by attempting to get on board. And honestly, how did they think they were going to react to commandos apparently storming their vessel? Welcome them with open arms and sit down to discuss the rights and wrongs of the siege of Gaza? It's almost as if they were actively hoping that they were going to be mobbed, record it for the world to see and then claim that their motives were far from benign after all. It seems they weren't counting on the response being so unequivocal, but again it's notable that the worst that seems to have happened to those who went on board is that one suffered "serious head injuries" after he was thrown over a rail. Accounts still differ but at least 9 on the other side are known to have been killed. Again, that all communications with the vessels were successfully severed shortly after the assault began is instructive of how the Israelis only wanted their side of the attack to be seen.

As if relations between Turkey and Israel were not stretched as they were, the only Muslim country with which Israel has anything approaching diplomatic friendship with, they've now attacked a ship carrying the Turkish flag and also it seems killed mainly Turks. After royally pissing off the Americans earlier in the year by snubbing Joe Biden during a visit to the country, they've now once again showed how they can't be relied upon to act with anything even approaching civility towards those with honourable intentions, even if they disagree profusely with them on their methods and overriding philosophy. After first responding with the usual amount of biliousness and demagoguery we've come to expect from the Israeli government PR machine, that Benjamin Netanyahu has "expressed regret", as the prime ministers of Israel always do after they've committed yet another outrage, perhaps suggests that they've realised that they've gone too far this time. The Guardian today reports that the US has been making secret overtures to Hamas, over the heads of the Israelis, fed up with impasse between Israel and Fatah. After helping to create Hamas, Israel has strained every sinew to not recognise the Islamic faction; through its apparent determination to lose friends and alienate everyone, including its closest ally, it might yet be forced to deal with those who continue to refuse to so much as recognise the Jewish state. And if they are, they will only have themselves to blame.

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5/31/2010 08:17:00 pm | |

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 

The riddle of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

There's nothing quite like a good old fashioned assassination, is there? As the Western world ties itself in knots over whether or not torturing alleged terrorists is permissible or not, you can always rely on the Israelis, those paragons of morality, to just get on with the job. My personal favourite has to be the execution by Hellfire missile of Sheikh Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, which if you want to dig in the seedier side of the interweb you can find photographic documentation of. Yassin was undeniably a bloodthirsty anti-Semite who justified suicide bombings, but he was also a nearly blind quadriplegic. Politicians often call terrorists cowardly for targeting the public rather than any symbol of the state or a military installation, but I don't think there's an attack which more fits that description than murdering a myopic disabled man from a helicopter gunship with a guided missile and then openly celebrating what you've done.

The assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, for which Mossad is almost certainly responsible, is an just the latest kind of other targeted murder which Israel has routinely carried out in the past. By their usual "high standards" however, as exemplified by the bombs which killed Yahya Ayyash and Imad Mughniyah, this one seems likely to go down as a prime example, not perhaps of incompetence, as the killing itself went off without a hitch, but instead of hubris, with an intelligence agency imagining that it could do such a thing without leaving any trace being proved sorely wrong. Whether the images released of the "11 suspects" actually show Mossad agents or not is impossible to know, and if they do they you can be certain that Israel has already given them new identities and probably even a swift trip to the plastic surgeon, but it's the sheer, well, chutzpah of the entire operation: the CCTV footage of the man going into the toilet bald and emerging with a full head of hair and glasses smacks more of Dan Brown than it does the most ruthless and feared intelligence agency of a democratic country.

The only thing that makes you wonder just slightly about this being a Mossad operation is the use, not of false passports, which they've abused repeatedly in the past, most notably in their failure to kill Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, but the stealing of the identities of actual residents in Israel, even if they've retained the British citizenship. That just seems bizarre: did they seriously imagine that the relatively friendly Dubai authorities wouldn't put much effort into their investigation, or publicly release the names of those it wanted in connection with the killing? At the same time however, there just doesn't seem any rival organisation which has the resources or people to carry out such a hit, certainly not Hamas itself, and while Iran could have, there's been no motive put forward for why Hamas' itself or its erstwhile allies would have wanted to get rid of him. Al-Mabhouh was a weapon buyer and seller, which carries with it its own risks, but why would someone who wanted him dead authorise an operation involving so many people when one man with a gun would have been so much easier and also less expensive?

Israel has form in treating those who it considers to have acted traitorously extraordinarily harshly, as Mordechai Vanunu has found. What did these six do though to deserve such a fate? Those whose identities they stole may not be actual Israeli citizens, yet why put them at such a risk of reprisals, to not even consider the difficulties they're now going to face in travelling almost anywhere. Again, you would expect they'll be compensated or given new identities, but why not simply create them in the first place for the hit? Admittedly, that's far more difficult than simply taking one, but it seems that's what they did at the moment with those who travelled under false Irish passports.

The diplomatic row with London will swiftly blow over; after all, considering what our own courts disclosed just last week, our blessed intelligence services are hardly free from blemish. The point remains though that this was an especially reckless operation, conducted against a minor player in Hamas for no obvious material benefit, and one which has once again brought into focus the fact that Israel remains a nation prepared to authorise what others might well term acts of state sponsored terror. Does it hint at desperation within Israel at the current state of the peace process, or rather show just how out of control Mossad is becoming? Either way, the only losers in this are those that Israel is meant to be dedicated to protecting: both its own citizens and its sympathisers.

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2/17/2010 10:47:00 pm | |

Friday, August 07, 2009 

Greek tragedy.

Pakistani and American authorities were celebrating today after they had succeeded in cutting off the head of the hydra, also known as Baitullah Mehsud. The weapon used to decapitate the hydra, the pilotless drone, armed with the missile of Hades, aimed a successful strike against the beast's head, cutting it clean off.

Others were however sceptical at whether the cutting off of the Hydra's head would end its reign of terror. One expert said: "This is by no means the end. The cutting off of the Hydra's head will simply result in it growing back two where once there was just one. The only way to bring this battle to an end is not just to cut off the head, but also to scorch the ends where they would otherwise grow back. That is far more difficult."

Osama bin Hercules could not be reached for comment.

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8/07/2009 10:10:00 pm | |

Monday, June 22, 2009 

A new media martyr.


If the events in Iran are the first time that "citizen journalism" has truly come into its own, helped undoubtedly by the fact that the foreign media have for the most part been successfully banished from the streets, then Neda Agha-Soltan(i), a young protester apparently shot dead by a Basij militiaman has become the first most visible martyr, not just of the uprising, but also of the new media age.

Partly this is because the video of her death is both so horrifying and with it, so cathartic. Unlike many of the other videos which litter the internet which show death and violence, few if any so vividly show a life ebbing away, the soul breaking free of the corporeal body. As her eyes glaze over and as the blood, filling her lungs, is breathed out of her nose and mouth, there are few ends that could so disturb, galvanise and ensure that she will be mourned for years to come. It helps that we don't actually see her murderer, or the moment when she was actually shot; that would diminish the empathy that comes naturally, and instead direct the anger at the individual responsible rather than the state that he or she represents.

Undoubtedly, many will be uncomfortable with the fact that this revolution in filming and writing to the bottom means that we get the sort of material, such as the death of Neda, that broadcasters themselves will not generally show. The BBC have only shown grabs of her on the ground, and before the blood begins to pour from her mouth and nose. Some will argue that such censorship, or rather moderation, is not something to object to: after all, not everyone wants to see such material, even on the news, especially when children also might be watching. Yet it also means that we don't have the full picture, or see the brutality and violence at first hand which such crackdowns bring. Even when such material was more carefully veted however, some of the most iconic images of war remain from the Vietnam era: the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém, and the naked Phan Thị Kim Phúc running from a napalm attack still have the power, even today, to shock and awe.

Others will object that someone's death could be used in ways in which that person may not have wanted, or even how her family would want. Whether she was actually protesting may be in doubt; latest reports say that she left a car she was in for only a period of minutes, but that those minutes turned deadly does only illustrate just what those protesting are defying in order to demand that their votes count. It can't be denied that dying in such a way means that it becomes public property, by definition. Most would rather want their final moments to be private, but no one also would wish to die in such a way. When we lose the choice in how we pass from this world, we can only hope that our deaths are not prolonged and that we are surrounded by friends, although it remains a truism that everyone dies alone, regardless of method or cause. Neda's was not a lonely death, and the power of it may well yet further help the protests towards a brighter future for Iran as a whole. The idea of martyrdom and sacrifice is highly ingrained in both Shia and Persian culture, and despite our reservations, we can only hope that it further denies moral authority from both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. Regardless of how the next days and weeks pan out, she is unlikely to be forgotten.

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6/22/2009 09:49:00 pm | |

Monday, June 15, 2009 

An open letter to the Iranian youth: one solution, revolution.

Dear friends,

Very few of you are likely to actually read this, what with many internet sites being blocked by the authorities and with the language barrier, but those of us watching overseas with trepidation at the turmoil on the streets of your capital and other cities are both worried and optimistic in equal measure at the sudden eruption of what appears to the beginning of a movement against the lack of freedom which has become all the more burdensome since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.

That result was partially sparked by apathy. After two terms of the reformist inclined Khatami, his liberalising measures stymied and stopped in their tracks by the Guardian Council and your supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, it was little wonder that some of you were dismayed and simply didn't turn out. During that time there were protests against the rigidly conservative social mores and censorship imposed upon you, both in 1999 and 2003, both of which ended with more repression and the rounding up of the ringleaders, whilst the candidates who wanted change were denied the opportunity to stand in elections. You had seen what the response was to the slightest call for change, and no one will blame you for temporarily taking the eye of the ball.

It sometimes takes a polarising figure to set off in motion movements which have the potential to lead wherever you want to take them. If you'll forgive the already rather hackneyed comparison, Bush inexorably led to Obama. Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, serial liar, economic disaster and general buffoon, but highly appealing to those who have nothing to whom he offers much, similar perhaps to Hugo Chavez, also attractive but undoubtedly a centralising and double-edged personality, is what led you to coalesce around Mir Hossein Mousavi, someone previously unknown in the West, although our attention span at the best of times is not the greatest. Mousavi was not the most liberal and reformist inclined candidate, but was a happy medium; you knew that Mehdi Karroubi simply couldn't win. For those of us who have recently had to put up with everyone talking about "snouts being in the trough" because their MP claimed a few dinners with taxpayers' money, which it seems is all that we care about, the sight of the vast crowds turning out, the almost party atmosphere as the "morality police" stayed out of the way for the first time in years was inspiring and made us believe that you too were about to choose change.

Doubtless many of you were worried that Ahmadinejad would sneak home, Mousavi having only towards the end of the campaign gained the support that he needed, and if he had, similarly you would have almost certainly accepted it. We can't know for certain, but your response above all suggests that the vote was stolen. Why, the cynics will suggest, would the Guardian Council have allowed Mousavi and Karroubi to stand if they weren't prepared to potentially let them become president, when they could have denied them to begin with, but it seems simply that your rulers didn't expect you to turn out in numbers similar to 1997. How though could Mousavi have been beaten in his home state? Why was the result announced within 2 hours? Why did the Mousavi campaign believe, and indeed have been told that they had been the run away winners by the interior ministry only for it subsequently turn out the Ahmadinejad had won with 67% of the vote?

Your thoughts will almost certainly be turning back to 1979, or rather what you have been taught about it. The overthrowing of the Shah, supported to the hilt by the CIA, with his departure still recently bemoaned by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, was without doubt a wonderful thing. Sadly though, like many other revolutions, from the French to the Russian to the Chinese, the replacement has turned out to be little better than what came before, if not in some cases worse. While 1979 occurred because the people were united, whether they were religious or atheists, together they triumphed. It was then that those who objected to the establishment of a theocracy were purged, imprisoned and broken. Since then change has had to be incremental, and slight, and you have worked within those imposed boundaries, respecting what your parents and elders had achieved.

Isn't it now clear however, that those very constraints have become intolerable? They allowed you to vote for reform, and then they denied those elected to implement it the opportunity to do so. Now they have denied you the opportunity for your vote to even be counted. In its way, this has turned out to be to your advantage: the change that most of you want would probably have been denied had Mousavi been allowed to ascend to the presidency. Those of you who want to have the choice whether or not you wear the hijab, let alone other far more radical changes, would have almost certainly been left disappointed.

Even when it seems this clear, you are almost certainly scared and hesitant about the conclusion which you have independently reached. Would overthrowing the theocracy be not just disrespecting, but spitting in the face of your relatives and those who fought for that initial freedom, and also then while the West supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons during the war with Iraq, resulting in the deaths of a million? Certainly, there are millions within your country who are happy with the way they are ruled: otherwise no one would have voted for Ahmadinejad, or his even more conservative opponent. This will lead to fissure and disputes, almost certainly within your own families.

Yet the reward which you can now potentially acquire is worth both enduring the above and the lives of those who will fall and have already fallen in pursuit of the freedom you want. Some of you will wonder whether Ayatollah Khamenei's unprecendented offer of a inquiry into the vote is worth waiting for. You have now though a similarly unprecendented opportunity: the government is uncertain of how to react, even as reports come in of the shootings in the middle of the night. You may not have this chance again for years. Whether you want simply Mousavi to be president, or for this to be the end of the theocracy, you need to take to the streets in the same or even higher numbers as today, and stay there until you get what you want. Further action may well be required; you may well have to take arms up to defend yourselves, but you can be safe in the knowledge that the world is watching. It's unlikely now that another Tienanmen could take place: use that to your advantage. And remember, even if despite everything, the authorities win, you carry a new world in your hearts. That is what matters.

With fraternal love,
septicisle.

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6/15/2009 09:15:00 pm | |

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