6.24.2009

U.S. is VERY Interested in Iran Elections

Why the US Wants to Delegitimize the Iranian Elections

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.

How much attention do elections in Japan, India, Argentina, or any other country, get from the U.S. media? How many Americans and American journalists even know who is in political office in other countries besides England, France, and Germany? Who can name the political leaders of Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Japan, or even China?

Yet, many know of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. The reason is obvious. He is daily demonized in the U.S. media.

The U.S. media’s demonization of Ahmadinejad itself demonstrates American ignorance. The President of Iran is not the ruler. He is not the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He cannot set policies outside the boundaries set by Iran’s rulers, the ayatollahs who are not willing for the Iranian Revolution to be overturned by American money in some color-coded “revolution.”

Iranians have a bitter experience with the United States government. Their first democratic election, after emerging from occupied and colonized status in the 1950s, was overturned by the U.S. government. The U.S. government installed in place of the elected candidate a dictator who tortured and murdered dissidents who thought Iran should be an independent country and not ruled by an American puppet.

The U.S. “superpower” has never forgiven the Iranian Islamic ayatollahs for the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s, which overthrew the U.S. puppet government and held hostage U.S. embassy personnel, regarded as “a den of spies,” while Iranian students pieced together shredded embassy documents that proved America’s complicity in the destruction of Iranian democracy.

The government-controlled U.S. corporate media, a Ministry of Propaganda, has responded to the re-election of Ahmadinejad with non-stop reports of violent Iranians protests to a stolen election. A stolen election is presented as a fact, even thought there is no evidence for it whatsoever. The U.S. media’s response to the documented stolen elections during the George W. Bush/Karl Rove era was to ignore the evidence of real stolen elections.

Leaders of the puppet states of Great Britain and Germany have fallen in line with the American psychological warfare operation. The discredited British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, expressed his “serioU.S. doubt” about Ahmadinejad’s victory to a meeting of European Union ministers in Luxembourg. Miliband, of course, has no source of independent information. He is simply following Washington’s instructions and relying on unsupported claims by the defeated candidate preferred by the U.S. Government.

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, had her arm twisted, too. She called in the Iranian ambassador to demand “more transparency” on the elections.

Even the American left-wing has endorsed the U.S. government’s propaganda. Writing in The Nation, Robert Dreyfus’s presents the hysterical views of one Iranian dissident as if they are the definitive truth about “the illegitimate election,” terming it “a coup d’etat.”

What is the source of the information for the U.S. media and the American puppet states?

Nothing but the assertions of the defeated candidate, the one America prefers.

However, there is hard evidence to the contrary. An independent, objective poll was conducted in Iran by American pollsters prior to the election. The pollsters, Ken Ballen of the nonprofit Center for Public Opinion and Patrick Doherty of the nonprofit New America Foundation, describe their poll results in the June 15 Washington Post. The polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and was conducted in Farsi “by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award.”*

The poll results, the only real information we have at this time, indicate that the election results reflect the will of the Iranian voters. Among the extremely interesting information revealed by the poll is the following:

“Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.

“While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's principal opponent, Mir Hossein Moussavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.

“The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our pre-election survey. During the campaign, for instance, Moussavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over MoU.S.avi.

“Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.

“The only demographic groups in which our survey found Moussavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.”

There have been numerous news reports that the U.S. government has implemented a program to destabilize Iran. There have been reports that the U.S. government has financed bombings and assassinations within Iran. The U.S. media treats these reports in a braggadocio manner as illustrations of the American Superpower’s ability to bring dissenting countries to heel, while some foreign media see these reports as evidence of the U.S. government’s inherent immorality.

Pakistan’s former military chief, General Mirza Aslam Beig, said on Pashto Radio on Monday, June 15, that undisputed intelligence proves the U.S. interfered in the Iranian election. “The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful but hollow revolution following the election.”

The success of the U.S. government in financing color revolutions in former Soviet Georgia and Ukraine and in other parts of the former Soviet empire have been widely reported and discussed, with the U.S. media treating it as an indication of U.S. omnipotence and natural right and some foreign media as a sign of U.S. interference in the internal affairs of other countries. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that Mir Hossein Moussavi is a bought and paid for operative of the U.S. government.

We know for a fact that the U.S. government has psychological warfare operations that target both Americans and foreigners through the U.S. and foreign media. Many articles have been published on this subject.

Think about the Iranian election from a common sense standpoint. Neither myself nor the vast majority of readers are Iranian experts. But from a common sense standpoint, if your country was under constant threat of attack, even nuclear attack, from two countries with much more powerful military establishments, as is Iran from the U.S. and Israel, would you desert your country’s best defender and elect the preferred candidate of the U.S. and Israel?

Do you believe that the Iranian people would have voted to become an American puppet state?

Iran is an ancient and sophisticated society. Much of the intellectual class is secularized. A significant, but small, percentage of the youth has fallen in thrall to Western devotion to personal pleasure, and to self-absorption. These people are easily organized with American money to give their government and Islamic constraints on personal behavior the bird.

The U.S. government is taking advantage of these westernized Iranians to create a basis for discrediting the Iranian election and the Iranian government.

On June 14, the McClatchy Washington Bureau, which sometimes attempts to report the real news, acquiesced to Washington’s psychological warfare and declared: “Iran election result makes Obama’s outreach efforts harder.” What we see here is the raising of the ugly head of the excuse for “diplomatic failure,” leaving only a military solution.

As a person who has seen it all from inside the U.S. government, I believe that the purpose of the U.S. government’s manipulation of the American and puppet government media is to discredit the Iranian government by portraying the Iranian government as an oppressor of the Iranian people and a frustrater of the Iranian people’s will. This is how the U.S. government is setting up Iran for military attack.

With the help of Moussavi, the U.S. government is creating another “oppressed people,” like Iraqis under Saddam Hussein, who require American lives and money to liberate. Has Moussavi, the American candidate in the Iranian election who was roundly trounced, been chosen by Washington to become the American puppet ruler of Iran?

The great macho superpower is eager to restore its hegemony over the Iranian people, thus settling the score with the ayatollahs who overthrew American rule of Iran in 1978.
That is the script. You are watching it every minute on U.S. television.

There is no end of “experts” to support the script. For one example among hundreds, we have Gary Sick, who formerly served on the National Security Council and currently teaches at Columbia University:

"If they'd been a little more modest and said Ahmadinejad had won by 51 percent," Sick said, Iranians might have been dubious but more accepting. But the government's assertion that Ahmadinejad won with 62.6 percent of the vote, "is not credible."

"I think,” continued Sick, “it does mark a real transition point in the Iranian Revolution, from a position of claiming to have its legitimacy based on the support of the population, to a position that has increasingly relied on repression. The voice of the people is ignored."

The only hard information available is the poll referenced above. The poll found that Ahmadinejad was the favored candidate by a margin of two to one.

But as in everything else having to do with American hegemony over other peoples, facts and truth play no part. Lies and propaganda rule.

Consumed by its passion for hegemony, America is driven prevail over others, morality and justice be damned. This world-threatening script will play until America bankrupts itself and has so alienated the rest of the world that it is isolated and universally despised.

6.19.2009

R.I.P IZ THE WIZ

Graffiti artist 'Iz the Wiz' dies

Friday, June 19th 2009, 4:00 AM

Graffiti artist Michael (Iz the Wiz) Martin, a legendary figure who painted scores of subway trains during a prolific career, has died of an apparent heart attack, friends and blogs said yesterday. He was 49.

Martin collapsed at his brother's Florida home early Wednesday, and later died.

Known for his trademark "Iz" tag, Martin grew up in Queens and was a prominent figure among old-school graffiti artists and the hip-hop pioneers who hung out with them.

Just last week, he appeared at a Bronx art gallery where he painted lifesize replicas of subway cars for fans.

His career began in 1972 and spanned decades before the city virtually eliminated graffiti with new subway cars and stepped-up security.

Martin moved to Florida as his health declined in recent years and he had trouble paying rent and health care expenses, friends said.

Online message boards and graffiti appreciation sites were filled with condolence messages for Martin last night.

Martin once served as president of graffiti group The Master Blasters and the Queens division of Prisoners Of Graffiti.

Martin appeared in the documentary film "Style Wars" and portrayed a transit police detective in the film "Wild Style."

His work has been displayed in museums and galleries throughout the world, including a 2001 exhibit at the Queens Museum of Art.

dgoldiner@nydailynews.com

6.13.2009

Gracie Insider - DrowningTechnique

Getting drowned? Heres what you gotta do.

6.12.2009

Gracie Diet: Fruit Picking Techniques

Here is Rener Gracie one of my favorite Gracie instructors at the Gracie Academy. Trained me for 2 years about.

Start the Day With Downward Facing Dog



My time last week at the Green Yoga Conference inspired me to reconnect with the environment. Many yoga postures are meant to embody different animals and help us remember our connection to nature. In the next few weeks, I’ll share several simple postures to celebrate the natural world. You may already know many of them, but this time when you practice them, get in touch with your inner animal before you focus on whether you’re toning your tummy or trimming your thighs. Focus on the posture’s vibe—yogis call this bhvar. This week, work on the Downward Facing Dog pose. Try to envision yourself as a slightly sleepy pup, just up from a nap; it’ll help you really feel energized by this stretch. By channeling your thoughts in this manner, you’ll have a completely different experience with this everyday pose.



Begin on your hands and knees with your hands shoulder-width and parallel fingers pointing forward. Keeping your arms very straight, curl your toes under and lift your hips up and back away from your hands, creating one straight line between your wrists, shoulders, and sit bones. Allow your head to relax. Begin to press your heels into the floor. Don’t worry if they don’t make it—the act of trying to press them down strengthens the legs and pulls the weight of your body back. If you need to keep a slight bend in your knees for your lower back, that’s fine—just keep lengthening the spine. Take some long, deep breaths and get into the feeling of being a dog!