Messages In This Digest (11 Messages)

7.: NATO-Russia Relationship: One-Way Street From: Rick Rozoff

8.: U.S.-Saudi Military Deal And Global Military Expenditure From: Rick Rozoff

9.: Afghanistan: Karzai Trades Barbs With U.S. And NATO From: Rick Rozoff

10.: Polish Troops Trained In U.S. For Afghan War Deployment From: Rick Rozoff

11.: Iran And Honduras In The Propaganda System: Part 2 From: Rick Rozoff

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1.: Arabian Sea: Center Of West's 21st Century War

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 6:28 pm (PDT)

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/arabian-sea-center-of-wests-21st-century-war

Stop NATO
October 25, 2010

Arabian Sea: Center Of West's 21st Century War
Rick Rozoff

A quarter of the world's nuclear aircraft carriers will soon be in the Arabian Sea.

The Nimitz class nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the region on October 17 to join the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, which in turn had arrived there on June 18 as part of a regular rotation.

The Charles de Gaulle, flagship of the French navy, the country's only aircraft carrier and the sole non-American nuclear carrier, will soon join its two U.S. counterparts. The U.S. possesses half the world's twenty-two aircraft carriers, all eleven supercarriers (those displacing over 70,000 tons) and eleven of twelve nuclear carriers.

Regarding the unscheduled deployment of a second American aircraft carrier to the region, a CBS News report stated:

"Air strikes in Afghanistan are up 50 per cent and now Defense Secretary Gates has ordered a second aircraft carrier, the USS Lincoln, into the fight.

"Two carriers operating off the coast of Pakistan means about 120 aircraft available for missions over Afghanistan. And that's not counting U.S. Air Force missions flown out of Bagram and Kandahar." [1]

The countries bordering the Arabian Sea are Somalia, Djibouti, Yemen, Oman, Iran, Pakistan, India and the island nation of Maldives.

USS Lincoln and USS Truman are currently assigned to the Fifth Fleet's area of responsibility, which encompasses the Northern Indian Ocean and its branches and offshoots: The Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the eastern coast of Africa south to Kenya, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.

The nations on the Red Sea and Persian Gulf are, in addition to those mentioned above, Egypt, Eritrea, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan and Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, respectively.

The Fifth is the first fleet established in the post-Cold War period, recommissioned in 1995 after being deactivated in 1947. (Similarly, the Fourth Fleet, which is assigned to the Caribbean Sea and Central and South America, was reactivated two years ago after being decommissioned in 1950.)

It shares a commander and headquarters with U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (CENTCOM) at Manama, Bahrain, across the Persian Gulf from Iran. CENTCOM was the last regional military command launched by the Pentagon during the Cold War (1983) and its area of responsibility stretches across what has been referred to as the Broader Middle East from Egypt in the west to Kazakhstan, bordering China and Russia, to the east.

The Fifth Fleet and Naval Forces Central Command are jointly in charge of five naval task forces operating in and near the Arabian Sea which patrol several of the most strategic chokepoints on the planet: The Suez Canal linking the Mediterranean Sea, where the U.S. Sixth Fleet and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Operation Active Endeavor hold sway, to the Red Sea. The Bab Al Mandeb connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. The Strait of Hormuz between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.

Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150) is a multinational naval group established in 2001 with logistics facilities in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti and operates from the Strait of Hormuz to the Gulf of Aden and past the Bab Al Mandeb to the Red Sea and south to the Indian Ocean nation of Seychelles. Last year the Pentagon secured a military facility in Seychelles, its second in an African nation, where it has deployed Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), PC-3 Orion anti-submarine and surveillance aircraft, and 112 Navy personnel. Other nations currently contributing ships and personnel to CTF-150 are Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Pakistan, South Korea and Thailand. Recent participants also include Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain and Turkey.

Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151) was launched in January of 2009, operates in the Gulf of Aden and the Somali Basin and covers an area of 1.1 million square miles. Twenty nations are scheduled to participate in the U.S.-led task force and Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea and Turkey have already enlisted. Its commanders to date have been from the U.S., Britain, South Korea and Turkey.

Combined Task Force 152 (CTF-152) operates from the northern Persian Gulf to the Strait of Hormuz, between the areas of responsibility of CTF-150 and CTF-158, and is part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Combined Task Force 158 (CTF-158) operates in the northern-most part of the Persian Gulf, is also part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and consists of British and Australian as well as U.S. ships. Its main tasks are to oversee Iraqi oil installations and to create an Iraqi navy under the Pentagon's control.

The U.S. has divided the world between six regional military commands and six navy fleets. The Arabian Sea is covered by three of the Pentagon's overseas military commands - Central Command, Africa Command and Pacific Command - to provide an indication of the importance attached to the region.

In addition to the Fifth Fleet's and Naval Forces Central Command's headquarters in Bahrain, Central Command also maintains command, forward deployment, air and training bases and facilities in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf in addition to 56,000 troops and air, naval and infantry bases in Iraq.

Several months before the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and on the Pentagon, the U.S. signed an agreement with the small nation of Djibouti (with a population of 725,000) to take over a former French base, Camp Lemonnier, which is now a United States Naval Expeditionary Base hosting the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa, assigned to Africa Command since the latter was activated two years ago. The Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa's area of responsibility takes in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen, with the Indian Ocean nations of Comoros, Mauritius and Madagascar effectively included.

In early 2002 the U.S. deployed 800 special operations troops to Camp Lemonnier to conduct covert operations in Yemen across the Gulf of Aden from Djibouti. There are now in the neighborhood of 2,000 U.S. troops in the country and 3,000 French troops there in what has been described as France's largest overseas military base. In the beginning of this decade Germany deployed 1,200 troops to Djibouti along with forces from Spain and the Netherlands. Britain added troops in 2005.

In total, there are as many as 8-10,000 military personnel from NATO nations in Djibouti. The Pentagon has used Camp Lemonnier, the port of Djibouti and the country's international airport for attacks in Yemen and Somalia, and French troops in the country assisted Djibouti in its armed conflict with neighboring Eritrea in 2008. France uses the country to train its troops for the war in Afghanistan and the Pentagon used it to support the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet ordinarily has one aircraft carrier, serving as the nucleus of a carrier strike group, assigned to it. With USS Lincoln joining USS Truman in the Arabian Sea this month it now has two. USS Lincoln is accompanied by a guided missile destroyer and "brings more than 60 additional aircraft to the theater in support of Operation Enduring Freedom." [2]

USS Truman's strike group includes four Aegis class destroyers equipped for Standard Missile-3 anti-ballistic missiles, a guided missile cruiser and the German frigate FGS Hessen. Carrier Wing 3 attached to the aircraft carrier includes three strike fighter squadrons, a Marine fighter attack squadron, and airborne early warning, electronic attack and helicopter anti-submarine squadrons.

Since passing though the Suez Canal on June 28 until late last month Carrier Wing 3 had "completed more than 3,300 aircraft sorties and logged more than 10,200 flight hours, with more than 7,200 of those hours in support of coalition ground forces in Afghanistan." [3] There are 7,000 sailors and marines attached to the USS Truman carrier strike group.

Beforehand, shortly after entering the Mediterranean Sea in May, USS Truman engaged in joint interoperability exercises in Marseille with its French fellow nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. French warplanes landed on the Truman's deck and American ones on Charles de Gaulle's.

The French carrier was returned to port for repairs on the day it set sail for "a four-month mission to support the fight in Afghanistan," but "will recover lost time at sea and its itinerary is not likely to change."

Its new mission, the first since 2007, "is to take it to join the fight against piracy off Somalia in the Indian Ocean and the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

"The new mission of the ship is to join the fight against pirates that is taking place off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean [where a] NATO mission is ongoing." [4] Nuclear aircraft carriers are a curious choice for contending with piracy.

The NATO deployment in question is Operation Ocean Shield, inaugurated in August of 2009 and extended to the end of 2012. Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 and Standing NATO Maritime Group 2, which have also visited Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and participated in joint naval maneuvers with Pakistan on the eastern end of the Arabian Sea, rotate for the operation in the Gulf of Aden.

The U.S.'s Operation Enduring Freedom encompasses sixteen nations in all - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen - and NATO's efforts parallel and reinforce the Pentagon's across the width of the Arabian Sea from the Horn of Africa to South and Central Asia.

At its summit in Istanbul, Turkey in 2004, NATO launched the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative to build military partnerships with the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - and has conducted military exchanges and cooperation with them in the interim. [5] The United Arab Emirates has supplied NATO with troops for the war in Afghanistan and hosts a secret air base for the transit of troops and equipment to the war zone.

In May of 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy opened a military base in the United Arab Emirates, the first permanent French base in the Persian Gulf and the first overseas base in 50 years. Including a navy and air force base and a training camp, it was seen at the time as a show of force against Iran which contests the Abu Musa island in the Persian Gulf with the Emirates.

NATO forces also operate out of bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The North Atlantic Alliance has launched several helicopter gunship attacks inside Pakistan since late last month and on September 30 killed three Pakistani soldiers.

There are 120,000 troops from almost 50 nations serving under NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

This year NATO has airlifted Ugandan troops to Somalia for the armed conflict there.

The Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier en route to the Arabian Sea to support the war in that country as well for operations off the coast of Somalia was commissioned in May of 2001. Seven months later it sailed to the Arabian Sea to support Operation Enduring Freedom and the war in Afghanistan. On December 19 of that year Super Étendard attack jets and Rafale Ms fighters took off from its deck to conduct bombing and reconnaissance missions, in all over 140.

The following March Super Étendard and Mirage warplanes assigned to Charles de Gaulle carried out air strikes before and during the U.S.-led Operation Anaconda.

When the French carrier arrives in the Arabian Sea this month it will be accompanied by two frigates, an attack submarine and a refuelling tanker, 3,000 sailors and 27 aircraft: Ten Rafale F3 fighters, 12 Super Étendard attack jets, two Hawkeye early warning planes and three helicopters.

According to the commander of the group, Rear Admiral Jean-Louis Kerignard, "the force would help allied navies fight piracy off the coast of Somalia and send jets to support NATO in the skies above Afghanistan.

"The ships will also train alongside allies from Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, Greece and the United Arab Emirates and make two stopovers at the French base in Djibouti before returning to France in February 2011." [6]

With USS Lincoln and the USS Truman carrier strike group, there will be three carriers, ten other ships, an attack submarine and as many as 150 military aircraft in the Arabian Sea. That is in addition to the five warships of the NATO Maritime Group 1 in theater, 14-15 ships with CTF-150 and perhaps dozens more with CTF-151, CFT-152 and CTF-158. A formidable armada covering the sea from one end to the other.

In the north of the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman and into the Persian Gulf, on October 21 the U.S. announced a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia for advanced fighter jets, helicopters, missiles and other weaponry and equipment," according to a Western news agency "the largest US arms deal ever." [7]

Last month the Financial Times disclosed that Washington plans to sell $123 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. This January reports surfaced of White House plans to sell Patriot missile batteries to Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Navy also patrols the Persian Gulf with Standard Missile-3 interceptor missile-equipped warships. [8]

On the eastern end of the Arabian Sea, on October 23 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a $2 billion, five-year military aid package for Pakistan, and President Obama's scheduled visit to India next month is reported to include massive arms deals that will effect the U.S. supplanting Russia as India's main weapons supplier.

The monumental expansion of arms sales and the buildup of naval and air power in the Arabian Sea region are unprecedented. They are also alarming to the highest degree.

The West, America and its NATO allies, are escalating military operations across the area, from Asia to Africa to the Middle East. The theater of operations has recently broadened from South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula with drone and helicopter attacks in Pakistan and air and cruise missile strikes in Yemen.

A war that started at the beginning of the century is in its tenth year and gives every indication of being permanent.

1) CBS News, October 18, 2010
2) Navy NewsStand, October 17, 2010
3) Navy NewsStand, September 26, 2010
4) Associated Press, October 14, 2010
5) NATO In Persian Gulf: From Third World War To Istanbul
Stop NATO, February 6, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/nato-in-persian-gulf-from-third-world-war-to-istanbul
6) Expatica, October 13, 2010
7) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October 21, 2010
8) U.S. Extends Missile Buildup From Poland And Taiwan To Persian Gulf
Stop NATO, February 3, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/u-s-extends-missile-buildup-from-poland-and-taiwan-to-persian-gulf
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2.: U.S., NATO Troop Deaths In Afghanistan Near 600 For 2010

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 6:29 pm (PDT)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69N0ZN20101024

Reuters
October 24, 2010

Foreign troop deaths in Afghanistan near 600 for 2010
By Jonathon Burch

KABUL: Total foreign military deaths in Afghanistan in 2010 neared 600 with the death of another service member on Sunday, an unwelcome figure that will likely weigh heavily on Western leaders amid declining support for the war.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Sunday one of its service members was killed by a homemade bomb in the south of country, bringing the total to 599 since the beginning of 2010.
....
With more than two months to go, 2010 is already the bloodiest for Afghan and foreign troops and civilians since the overthrow of the Taliban in late 2001. In all of 2009, a total of 521 foreign troops were killed.

The rising casualties offer little encouragement for U.S. President Barack Obama, who has promised a strategy review in December after mid-term elections a month earlier in which his Democrats face a backlash from an increasingly skeptical public.

Afghanistan will also be a major topic of discussion at a NATO summit in Lisbon next month, with European NATO members under pressure at home to justify their continued commitment.

PUBLIC DOUBTS

Disputes over the Afghan war have already brought down a Dutch government in February and a German president in May and, facing growing public doubts about the war at home, U.S. leaders have sought to lower expectations of what can be achieved.

The Netherlands formally ended its mission in August following strong public opposition to the war and earlier this month, days after four of its soldier were killed in an ambush Italy said it could begin pulling out troops from next summer.

NATO member Canada, which has suffered the third highest losses behind the United States and Britain, has announced it is ending its combat mission next year.

According to www.icasualties.org, an independent website that monitors foreign troop deaths, 2,169 troops have died since 2001, more than half of those in the past two years alone.

The United States has suffered by far the most casualties, with at least 1,348 deaths. British losses total at least 341, with the remaining 480 shared among the other 44 ISAF partners.

The United States also has the largest number of troops in Afghanistan -- nearly 100,000 -- with other nations contributing roughly 50,000.

Nearly half of foreign troop deaths have occurred in southern Helmand province and neighboring Kandahar, where thousands of U.S. and Afghan troops launched an operation in September to disrupt strongholds in the Taliban's heartlands.

June 2010 was the bloodiest month of the war with 103 killed as foreign forces pushed ahead with operations in Helmand and Kandahar. Another 88 were killed in July.
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3.: Clean Sweep Of Balkans: Macedonia, Montenegro Head Toward NATO

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 6:30 pm (PDT)

http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/newsbriefs/setimes/newsbriefs/2010/10/24/nb-06

Southeast European Times
October 24, 2010

Macedonia, Montenegro reaffirm commitment to EU, NATO bids

SKOPJE, Macedonia: Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and visiting Montenegrin counterpart Milo Djukanovic reaffirmed on Friday (October 22nd) friendly relations between their countries and voiced Skopje's and Podgorica's commitment to European and Euro-Atlantic integration.

Djukanovic voiced hope that Macedonia and Greece will find soon a solution to their name dispute, as the issue is important to regional stability.
....
(RTCG, Portal Analitika, MIA, Makfax - 22/10/10)
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4.: U.S.-NATO Air Strike Kills Four Afghan Civilians

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:15 pm (PDT)

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/148062.html

Press TV
October 24, 2010

US-led strike kills four Afghan civilians

Amid growing discontent over the rising number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, a US-led airstrike has resulted in the death of four more civilians the country.

Local witnesses say at least four people, including an Afghan child, were killed in the US-led airstrike in the central province of Wardak.

The incident comes as two Afghan students were killed at the hands of American troops on Saturday in the region.

Afghan officials have repeatedly demanded a halt to the attacks. Civilian casualties caused by NATO attacks have been a major source of tension between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the US-led foreign forces in the country.

The attacks have killed large numbers of civilians since the 2001US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of the country.

Hundreds of civilians have lost their lives in the US-led airstrikes and ground operations in different parts of the war-ravaged country over the past months.

A large number of civilians have fallen victim to the air raids since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The loss of civilian lives at the hand of foreign forces has dramatically increased anti-American sentiments in Afghanistan.
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5.: Afghanistan: 150,000 Foreign Troops Only Eliminate 0.2% Of Narcotics

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:15 pm (PDT)

http://rt.com/Politics/2010-10-22/drug-production-afghanistan-ivanov.html

Russia Today
October 22, 2010

â€œ150,000 troops eliminate mere 0.2 per cent of drug production in Afghanistanâ€

Afghans are practically left to deal with the drug problem on their own, says Russiaâ€™s drug control chief, Viktor Ivanov.

RT caught up with the head of the Federal Service for the Control of Narcotics, Viktor Ivanov, for more insight into current developments of international dialogue over fighting the Afghanistan drug production problem.

RT: They [the United States] refuse to take the step suggested by Russia which is perfectly logical â€" to eliminate the poppy fields. Why is this so, do you think?

Viktor Ivanov: You see, in fact the United States is analyzing the connection between the illicit drug production and terrorism in Afghanistan. In August 2009, the US Congress Foreign Relations Committee released a report titled Drugs, Insurgency, and Terrorism. And in this report, the US Congress made an assessment of the volumes of illicit drug production by Taliban, the major insurgency movement, at $150 million.

Yet, it should be noted that the entire volume of illicit drug production in Afghanistan is estimated at $65 billion. So we can see that the Taliban's share in the entire output is only 0.2 per cent. Thus obviously itâ€™s not the main producer. However, the international security forces say that they will eliminate only those drug production sites and facilities which are related to the Taliban. In other words, all the 150,000 military personnel will be employed in eliminating a mere 0.2 per cent of the total illicit drug production. And it's suggested that the remaining 99.8 per cent is to be taken care of by the Afghan authorities.

RT: Which they are not going to do?

VI: Which they cannot do, of course. Revenues from drug production are $65 billion, and the Afghan governmentâ€™s annual budget is $12 billion, and 90 per cent of this amount comes from financial aid.

RT: What do Americans say to this idea? Because it makes perfect sense.

VI: We have not heard any definitive answer. NATO's Secretary General Mr. Rasmussen, for example, Deputy Secretary General Claudio Bisogniero, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee Admiral Di Paola all said that if the UN Security Council makes that decision, we will do this.

RT: Why wouldn't the Security Council make that decision? It has decided that it is a threat to global security.

VI: The UN Security Council's decisions are made when all member states agree on something. We need all members to vote in favor of considering drug production in Afghanistan a threat to international peace and security.

RT: But they wouldn't do thatâ€¦ America wouldn't do that, any other countries?

VI: On October 13th the Security Council passed Resolution 1943, but it recognized this not as a threat to international peace and security, but as a threat to international peace and stability. But such phrasing is not legally binding. Only the "threat to international peace and security" is legally binding. So we are also dealing with legal juggling here.

RT: Theyâ€™ve been in Afghanistan for nine years trying to establish democracy, but drug trafficking interferes a lot with it. My question is: do they understand that it undermines their goals in Afghanistan and makes them a failure?

VI: Of course they understand. But nonetheless, they refuse to eliminate plants containing drugs, especially considering the fact that European countries participating in this campaign do not share their views on this issue. Under pressure from the electorate they are in favor of ending the military campaign in this country.

RT: Can you say more about that? Russia thinks that itâ€™s a big threat to global security.

VI: Itâ€™s no longer a threat only for Russia. Itâ€™s a factor which has been influencing the situation for a long time, and which leads to the elimination of the young population mostly aged up to 35 years old. Itâ€™s the group of people who suffer the most from drug addiction to Afghan opiates.

This age group is leading in terms of the death toll, as it is reaching 40,000 deaths annually. Losses are immense. But we also estimate it as a threat to the rest of the world.

The drug production issue in Afghanistan crossed the borders of this country long ago. The amount of drug trafficking is huge; itâ€™s about 150 billion doses and injections.

Drugs are brought from outside the countryâ€™s borders, which creates trans-national global traffic routes. The three main routes are: the first is along the Balkan route towards the EU countries, the North route which is called the Northern Silk Route â€" since the times when the merchant Afanasyev was making a route to India â€" and the Southern Route across Pakistan to India and China and then via seas and oceans all around the world.

Going across the territory of different states drug trafficking has its impact on the political life of the countries making the political, military, law enforcement and business elites corrupt and causes organized crime. If traffic routes are operating for a long time, they consolidate organized crime, which slowly arranges it into cartels which start fighting for control over these flows and tries to penetrate into politics to find a protector. Thatâ€™s how terrorist manifestations and terrorism emerge.

RT: Whatâ€™s the way to easily eliminate the fields with drug containing plants? Supposing the Security Council made a decision and NATO started acting.

VI: The thing is that the disease is at an advanced stage already. If we compare this case to oncology, itâ€™s the fourth stage. And yet, this issue can be resolved.

It requires a comprehensive approach which would include both the elimination of drug fields and encouraging agricultural cultivation of other plants and crops, as well as continued effort in restoring Afghanistan's economy. The existing framework of the country's economy today consists of the 142 business units which were established with the help of our country. Aside from those, all that Afghanistan has is humanitarian aid and illicit drug production. And of course the approach must include the peaceful settlement process. This is the key, because today we can see that a consolidation process is under way in the opposition, resulting in growing armed resistance both to the local government and authorities and to what the Afghans call the occupying forces.

RT: Thank you very much.

VI: You are welcome.
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6.: U.S. Soldiers Injured In Afghan Grenade Attack

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:15 pm (PDT)

http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2010/10/24/two-us-soldiers-injured-wardak-attack

Pajhwok Afghan News
October 24, 2010

Two US soldiers injured in Wardak attack

KABUL: Two US soldiers were injured in a hand grenade attack on a military vehicle in Syedabad district of central Maidan Wardak province on Sunday.

A government official, who did not want to be named, told Pajhwok Afghan News that the attack took place in the Salar area of the district early Sunday morning. Two American servicemembers were injured while the attacker managed to escape, the official said, without giving further details.
....
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the attack in the main market of Salar. He said one American soldier was killed and two others wounded.
....
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7.: NATO-Russia Relationship: One-Way Street

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:15 pm (PDT)

http://rt.com/Politics/2010-10-22/nato-russia-summit-cooperation.html

Russia Today
October 22, 2010

Russia-NATO relationship is one-way traffic
Nadezhda Kevorkova

[Exceprts]

What does NATO offer Russia, and what does Russia get in reality? Would Russia be willing to help NATO stay afloat by participating in its projects? What is the price of improving relations with its Western partners?

Dmitry Medvedev has expressed his preliminary agreement to visit the NATO summit in November. He announced this to Merkel and Sarkozy at the meeting in Deauville. However the president of Russia expressed a wish to clear up the issue of how exactly NATO is planning to change its concept of missile defense in Europe.

Military expert Aleksandr Khramchikhin thinks that the threat that Iran and North Korea allegedly pose, which is often discussed by supporters of Russia-NATO relations becoming closer, is a myth. He estimates the combat and political state of the alliance as low and does not see Russia in this bloc.

RT: Why did NATO voice its idea to have a joint missile shield with Russia only now?

Aleksandr Khramchikhin: Obviously, it did so because of the upcoming NATO summit. I donâ€™t see any other reasons.

RT: But NATO summits happen regularly. Yet there were no such suggestions before. Dmitry Rogozin, Russiaâ€™s envoy to NATO, says that the idea of involving Russia in NATO projects has never been popular; on the contrary, there was a tendency to exclude Russia. Why does NATO involve Russia in its projects now?

AK: NATO is clearly looking for a raison d'etre. The organization has been looking for it since 1991, when the enemy it was created to fight against ceased to exist. Until recently, eastward expansion was deemed as the only purpose for NATO's existence. It was sort of a goal in itself. But now the project is obviously no longer relevant. It brings more problems than benefits. So the next and the only existing option is to involve Russia. Unless this project gets underway in the nearest future, they will have to dissolve NATO.
....
RT: Those who are trying to pull Russia into a joint missile defense project claim there will be a shield to protect both Russia and Europe from Iran and North Korea. But do these countries pose any threat to Russia and Europe?

AK: As for North Korea, the idea is so absurd that there is nothing to comment on. I donâ€™t even know who would buy it. How can NATO protect Russia from North Korea? North Korea is in the Far East, and NATO is in Europe.

I donâ€™t see how Iran can be a threat either. Firstly, Iran canâ€™t mass-produce even conventional intermediate-range missiles, let alone missiles with nuclear warheads. And secondly, even if Iran gets such missiles, I have no clue as to why Iran should suddenly attack Russia or Europe.

The Iranian threat is nothing but an artificial geopolitical invention. And the threat coming from North Korea is sheer nonsense.

RT: Do you think that perhaps NATO is talking about cooperation and joint projects in order to ruin Russian-Iranian relations and get Russia involved in a war with Iran?

AK: That is true to some extent. But thatâ€™s not the main thing. The main thing is that Russia is being involved in a NATO project on NATOâ€™s terms. In other words, we start doing something we are not interested in, while NATO gets a new raison dâ€™etre. NATO gets more funds â€" a lot more, and NATO bureaucrats roll in money again.

RT: What does Russia expect to receive from the deal? Russia is still only considering the offer and expects certain compromises. What are they?

AK: As far as I understand, we wonâ€™t get anything in return. All we get is a more confident relationship with the West, which is not bad, but thatâ€™s not enough.

RT: But there is some bargaining going on. For example, Russia hopes the United States will reconsider its plan to deploy a missile defense system in Europe.

AK: I donâ€™t know what is there to change. So far, there is no missile shield in Europe. So, there is nothing to change. There is a project which has already been completely changed. Bush had one project, and now Obama has an altogether different project. However, in reality nothing has been done, and now the project is under discussion again. So, if Russia joins it, that will be a different project again.

RT: What is the purpose of the military reform which is currently conducted in Russia? Closer cooperation with NATO?

AK: No, the purpose of the military reform, if there is one, has nothing to do with cooperation. In fact, we never expected to have military cooperation with anybody. We donâ€™t cooperate with anybody. We donâ€™t have any real allies. We should clearly realize that.

Military reforms are always launched in connection with some events outside the country, because armed forces exist to counter external threats. The purpose of the current reform is not cooperation, especially with NATO, because it started after the war with Georgia when Russia-NATO relations were at their worst.

RT: What about the upcoming reform of NATO? Can Russia benefit from it?

AK: Itâ€™s not clear yet what kind of reform it will be, because NATO hasnâ€™t yet adopted its new concept.
....
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8.: U.S.-Saudi Military Deal And Global Military Expenditure

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:21 pm (PDT)

http://www.countercurrents.org/muzaffar241010.htm

CounterCurrents.org
October 24, 2010

The US-Saudi Military Deal And Global Military Expenditure
By Chandra Muzaffar

The US plan to sell US 60 billion dollars worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia will not contribute to peace and security in the Middle East.

The biggest arms deal ever in history, it provides for the sale of jet fighters and helicopters to oil-rich Saudi Arabia over a period of 15 to 20 years. US officials have stated that it will enhance the security of its key allies in the region, especially in the context of the alleged threat from Iran. The Saudis, according to Pentagon sources, are worried about Iranâ€™s missile arsenal.

Independent political analysts, however, do not regard Iran as a threat to its Arab neighbours. While the rhetoric of some of its leaders may be belligerent, Iranâ€™s diplomatic moves since the late nineties have been aimed at strengthening its ties with states in the Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia.

There are perhaps other motives behind the US-Saudi deal which have not been highlighted in the mainstream media. The sale reinforces US military hegemony in a region that it perceives as vital for its triple interests - Israel, oil and geopolitical control. Since the sale is huge, it will help to fill the coffers of corporate weapons manufacturers at a time when the US economy is in deep trouble

But the consequences for the Middle East could be dire. It could encourage both friends and foes of the US to increase their military expenditures.

This could ignite an arms race in the region. An arms race in turn could intensify tensions in the Middle East which is already a cockpit of conflict. An arms race could also skew national priorities and lead to the subordination of other goals such as the eradication of poverty or the elimination of illiteracy, or the minimization of corruption.

This is why countries in Asia should be careful about expanding their military budget. They should not allow weapons manufacturers and arms merchants--- supported by political leaders--- to dupe them into making unnecessary military purchases. This danger is all the more real today than in the past since some of the countries in the region are rich and maybe the targets of those who are hell-bent on pursuing their business-cum-political agenda.

Indeed, escalating military expenditure is a global challenge. Global military expenditure in December 2009 stood at 1.5 trillion US dollars. This represents a six percent increase in real terms over 2008. Compared to 2000, it is a 49 percent increase!

Worse, the entire UN budget--- the budget of the body charged with maintaining global peace--- in 2009 was only 1.8 percent of global military expenditure in that year.

It is significant that the US alone accounted for 46.5% of global military expenditure in 2009. The respected Swedish peace institute, SIPRI, observes that massive US military expenditure is one of the contributory factors to the decline of the US economy since 2001.

There is no doubt at all that global military expenditure has to be curbed and controlled for the good of humankind. It will be no easy task. For the vested interests that sustain military budgets in most countries are powerful. Nonetheless, we have to persevere. Perhaps for a start, governments with low military budgets and anti-war, pro-peace civil society groups should come together to plan the mass mobilization of public opinion against mammoth military spending.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and Professor of Global Studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

For a few years after the end of the cold war in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, global military expenditure decreased but it has now increased to 2.7 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) which translates into US 225 dollars per person in the world.
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9.: Afghanistan: Karzai Trades Barbs With U.S. And NATO

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:21 pm (PDT)

http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2010/10/24/karzai-trades-barbs-us-nato

Pajhwok Afghan News
October 24, 2010

Karzai trades barbs with US & NATO
by Javed Hamim Kakar

KABUL: President Hamid Karzai on Sunday had testy exchanges with ambassadors of several Western countries on the issue of private security companies, saying he would no longer accept foreign dictates.

At a special meeting, President Karzai categorically told foreign envoys his position remained unchanged on the dissolution of private companies which he said had established a parallel government in Afghanistan - something he would not allow.

A participant confided to Pajhwok Afghan News an angry president, who rejected calls from US and British ambassadors to suspend the decree disbanding security firms until mid-November, stormed out of the meeting.

At the outset, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry asked the president to spell out his stance in a day or two, the source revealed. The diplomat reportedly wanted to share the presidential view on the subject with key donors and NGOs.

While responding to the envoy's demand, Karzai accused the security companies of involvement in robberies, intimidation of Afghans and assaults on people's dignity. "I'll choose people's dignity over anything else, including reconstruction projects," he was quoted as telling Eikenberry.

The president sought a list of reconstruction schemes that needed special security arrangements from private firms. But International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Commander Gen. David Petraeus refused to provide such details, the official added.

His refusal irked the president, who blasted foreigners for doing clandestine things in Afghanistan. Karzai told the diplomats he would resist "economic blackmail and political warnings" and was determined to bring transparency to all projects across the country, the source disclosed.

Ambassadors Karl Eikenberry (US), William Patey (UK), Ambassador Rüdiger König (Germany),ISAF Commander Gen. David Petraeus and NATO's special civilian representative, Mark Sidwell, were among the foreign officials who attended the meeting.

Karzai has issued a four-month deadline for dissolving all foreign and Afghan security companies, a move he believes will help stabilise Afghanistan.

"I addressed the problem five years ago but our international friends warned of halting development projects," Karzai was quoted in a statement issued from the Presidential Palace in Kabul.

"I again raised the issue three years ago and international community representatives asked for an additional two years. But now the Afghan government is determined to dissolve the companies," Karzai told the foreign envoys.

Japan's deputy ambassador also took part in the meeting. After the meeting became tense, he reportedly handed the president a list of the reconstruction schemes his country had executed in Afghanistan.

The president told his interlocutors to convey their security concerns about the implementation of projects to the government. Karzai would continue to meet foreign officials who expressed concerns over the presidential decree banning the security firms, the statement added.
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10.: Polish Troops Trained In U.S. For Afghan War Deployment

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:37 pm (PDT)

http://www.newstrib.com/articles/news/local/default.asp?article=23905&aname=Polish+soldiers+train+in+Marseilles

LaSalle News Tribune
October 22, 2010

Polish soldiers train in Marseilles
By Kemp Smith

A group of Polish soldiers trained at the Marseilles National Guard Center on Thursday with the Bilateral Imbedded Staff Team A7 or BEST A7 team which will deploy to Afghanistan next January.

The team works closely with the Afghan military to help them become a more effective military force. The BEST A7 team trains through the State Partnership Program with members of the Polish military both here and in Poland to build relationships with coalition members.

Among the training Thursday was simulation to learn how to react if a vehicle was hit with an improvised explosive device or IED disabling the vehicle and bringing the occupants under attack. Each of the troops had to exit the vehicle and move into two firing positions.
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11.: Iran And Honduras In The Propaganda System: Part 2

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:46 pm (PDT)

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/hp241010.html

Monthly Review
October 24, 2010

Iran and Honduras in the Propaganda System:
Part 2, The 2009 Iranian and Honduran Elections
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
As we stated at the outset of Part 1,1 there is no better test of the independence and integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras in 2009 and 2010.
Iran held its most recent presidential election on June 12, 2009. This followed a typically short three-week campaign period between the four candidates who had been vetted by Iran's Guardian Council out of a list of some 475 hopefuls, but a campaign that nevertheless was open and adversarial and energized Iran's electorate unlike any other in the 30-year history of the Islamic Republic. A record-high 85% turnout returned the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office with a reported 62.6% of the votes cast.2
Sixteen days later, on June 28, a coup d'état was executed in Honduras that overthrew the country's democratically-elected President José Manuel Zelaya. Almost five months to the day after this, on November 29, the coup regime carried out national elections long scheduled for this date. The constitutional government of Honduras never served another day in office.3
The winner of Honduras' presidential election with 56.6% of the votes was the National Party's Porfirio Lobo Sosa. Both Lobo and the second-place finisher with 38%, Elvin Santos Lozano of the Liberal Party, were supporters of the coup, and both opposed the restoration of the ousted Zelaya. Opponents of the coup as well as Zelaya himself had called for Honduran voters to boycott the elections, and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal estimated turnout to be only 49% (some independent estimates ran lower4), after the Tribunal falsely reported turnout as high as 62% on election night.5
For many years leading up to Iran's June 2009 election, Iranians had suffered the consequences of U.S. and allied invasions of countries that border Iran to the east (Afghanistan) and to the west (Iraq), U.S. and Israeli threats and attacks by proxy forces, U.S.- and ultimately UN Security Council-imposed economic sanctions, and even an open U.S. destabilization campaign to foster regime change inside Iran.6 It follows that any Iranian presidential election that did not serve regime-change ends would be judged seriously defective by U.S. and Western officials -- that efforts would be taken to discredit Iran's election results and to delegitimize any government formed on their basis.
On the other hand, the coup in Honduras was engineered by a deeply entrenched oligarchy and involved the military, members of parliament, and the judiciary, and it removed a populist president from office. It was also implemented with advance notice to U.S. officials, and received their ex post acceptance and approval as well;7 after the coup, Washington even declined to withdraw its ambassador from Honduras. It follows from this official acquiescence to the coup, and violent suppression of democracy, that the November elections would not be denounced as a fraud. Instead, U.S. officials asserted that the mere holding of elections was an "important part of the solution to the political crisis in their country,"8 and urged other states to accept this "solution" as well, to normalize relations with Honduras' new government -- and to "start from zero," in the revealing words that U.S. President Barack Obama used in a letter to the president of Brazil.9
Legitimizing versus Delegitimizing Elections in the 1980s
In covering both the Iranian and Honduran elections, the establishment media followed closely the lead of the U.S. government, furiously assailing Iran's election as stolen and a sham, and quietly accepting Honduras' elections as a meaningful step forward. For the Newspaper of Record, Iran's election was "Neither Real Nor Free" (June 15), but Honduras' election was "clear and fair" (December 5).10
This is in a long tradition of media propaganda service in dealing with foreign elections. In fact, the media's performance on Iran and Honduras in 2009 was a throwback to their performance on El Salvador and Nicaraguan during the elections held in these countries in the 1980s. The Salvadoran elections of 1982 and 1984 were held under a regime of extreme state terrorism, with thousands of civilians killed, obligatory voting, no freedom of assembly or press, and no peace or dissident candidates on the ballot. But as these elections were sponsored by the U.S. government, and were designed to show the U.S. population and the world that U.S. intervention was justified, and that the United States was supporting a "fledgling democracy," the media swallowed them whole. The media featured the high voter turnout, without noting that voting was required by law and was carried out under a system of ongoing state terrorism.11 The New York Times found that
the "most remarkable" fact of El Salvador's 1982 elections was the "determination of so many Salvadorans to participate. . . . The Salvadoran turnout marks a significant achievement" -- not for Salvadorans, however, but for the "Reagan Administration [which] may be learning how to use its enormous diplomatic influence in the Caribbean."12 It was not until 1989 that the Times reported the existence of the military's "1981 death list," which in retrospect it called a "symbol of the army-linked repression that turned criticism of the right into a capital offense, the armed forces [having] put a bounty on the heads of 138 leftists by publishing a list of their names and describing them as wanted traitors."13
On the other hand, the Nicaraguan election, held by the Sandinista government in November 1984, was opposed by the U.S. government, which did not want the Sandinistas legitimized and therefore sought to discredit it. Although the Nicaraguan election was a model of democratic practice compared with that in El Salvador, here again the media followed the official party-line and suddenly became uninterested in voter turnout but attentive to basic electoral conditions that they ignored in El Salvador (where they were much worse than in Nicaragua).14 As early as July 1984, Ronald Reagan had likened the Sandinistas' proposal to hold elections to a "Soviet-style sham." Sure enough, five months later, after the election was held, the New York Times found that "Only the naive believe that [the] election in Nicaragua was democratic or legitimizing proof of the Sandinistas' popularity. . . . The Sandinistas made it easy to dismiss their election as a
sham."15 In fact, by taking a strong, categorical position against anything related to the Sandinistas, it was the U.S. government that made it easy for the Times to dismiss the Nicaraguan election.
Media Coverage of the 2009 Iran and Honduran Elections
The 2009 coup in Honduras was a throwback to the 1954 U.S.-organized overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and the 1964 military coup in Brazil, which removed an elected social democratic government and installed a military dictatorship, with the enthusiastic support of the liberal Democratic government of Lyndon Johnson. The Obama government's support for the coup and coup regime in Honduras is thus in a great Democratic tradition. We may recall that there has been a great deal of talk in recent years about the new era of "humanitarian intervention" and the "responsibility to protect" in this post-Soviet age, in which, according to Michael Ignatieff, the United States has once again "changed course" and abandoned its earlier tendency to align with cooperative dictators, and now favors "democracy promotion."16 But the Honduras case shows that so-called democracy-promotion is an instrument of policy, not
a generally applicable principle, and will be used or set aside in accord with perceived real interests.
The U.S. government and media response to the Honduras case also raises some questions about the meaning and integrity of their intense focus on, and harsh treatment of, the election in Iran. There is no question that in 2009-2010, a sizable fraction of Iran's domestic opposition to Ahmadinejad and critics of the clerical regime in general have been motivated by genuinely democratic and liberal aspirations. But is it not revealing that so many of the foreign, Western-based campaigners in the name of Iran's "pro-democracy" and "reform" movement paid so little attention, first to the coup in Honduras and to the military and security apparatus's violent repression of opponents of the coup, and then to the "demonstration elections" that the coup regime carried out in November, the results of which were officially sanctioned by Washington?
It is also of interest that in Iran, the major government repression came after the June 12 election, and was directed against Iranians who rejected the official results. But in Honduras, violent repression preceded the November 29 elections (and appears to have greatly escalated since17), and was and remains directed against opponents of the coup regime and its overthrow of the democratic order. Nevertheless, whereas Iran's relatively open and hotly contested presidential election, with credible albeit disputed results, was rejected out-of-hand in the metropolitan centers of the West, and generated a huge bandwagon process of denigration, Honduras' coup-consolidation elections were quietly accepted, subjected to little criticism, inspired no bandwagon effect against them, and few public displays of "solidarity" with the massive grassroots opposition to the coup -- in particular, the more than 1.25 million Hondurans who have added their signatures to
the Sovereign Declaration for the Popular and Participatory Constituent Assembly, a demand that the 1982 Constitution be rewritten, over which Zelaya was deposed?18
As we can see from Table 1, Western newspapers were very sensitive and alert to the topic of human rights in the immediate aftermath of Iran's presidential election, and used phrases such as "human rights abuses" and "human rights violations" a total of 89 times during the first 30 days after the election. But though the human rights of Hondurans were also under severe pressure and widespread abuse after the June 28 coup, as well as before and after the demonstration elections staged by the coup regime on November 29, these same phrases were used by Western newspapers only once in the 30 days leading up to the Honduran elections,19 once in the 30 days after the elections,20 and zero times in the 30 days after the coup.
Table 1. Differential media usage of the phrases "human rights abuses" and "human rights violations" in two countries where dissidents were repressed by their own governments21

Newspaper coverage

Iran's presidential election, June 13 - July 12, 2009 (first 30 days after)
89

The Honduras coup d'état, June 29 - July 28, 2009 (first 30 days after)
022

The Honduras elections, October 31 - November 29 (last 30 days through the date of the election)
1

The Honduras elections, November 30 - December 29, 2009 (first 30 days after)
1
Table 1 thus captures quite dramatically the different levels, not of human rights abuses in Iran as opposed to Honduras, but of U.S. and Western interest in and expressed solidarity towards the respective victims of human rights abuses in each country during four specific periods in 2009. In these two cases, sensitivity and alertness towards the human rights of Iranian and Honduran citizens followed the guidance of establishment leaders and reveals a starkly dichotomous pattern: Iranian victims of human rights abuses received a great deal of attention, but Honduran victims did not. This was also dramatically displayed in the intense and indignant treatment of the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran, and the lack of interest in the murder of Isis Obed Murillo in Honduras or the murder of at least 24 Honduran activists (see Table 1 and Table 2 in Part 1), showing that Iranians were "worthy" victims in 2009-2010, whereas Honduran victims were
"unworthy."
Was the Iran Election Stolen?
In thinking about the treatment of the Iran election it is also important historical context: the last time the United States was really happy with Iran was when that country was ruled by a U.S.-sponsored dictator, the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah was actually encouraged to develop a nuclear capability, apparently quite acceptable for a U.S.-client dictator, but not for a regime, dictatorial or not, that is not under proper control. The U.S. support of the Honduran coup and coup-organized election also strongly suggests that official U.S. concern over the fairness of the 2009 Iran election was larded with hypocrisy and covered over the real agenda -- destabilization and regime change.
Among many foreign critics of Iran's election, it is believed that the massive street protests beginning June 13 showed that Iranians themselves preferred the main challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi over the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and that the mechanics of the election, character of the vote returns, and speed with which the final results were announced all showed that the election was stolen. But these criticisms do not withstand close examination. As we have pointed out in detail elsewhere,23 a series of independent public opinion polls taken both before and after the election asked Iranians either who they were going to vote for, or who they in fact had voted for. Almost invariably, these reports show Ahmadinejad receiving some 2 votes for every one vote given to Mousavi. These results range from a low-end of 1.75-to-1 in a poll carried out between June 19 and 24, 2009, to a high-end 3.93-to-1 in a poll carried out from August 27 to
September 10, 2009; the actual ratio of Ahmadinejad's official victory over the challenger Mousavi's was 1.85-to-1. Thus numerous polls carried out by respectable organizations using familiar and widely accepted polling techniques show Ahmadinejad winning a popular vote with numbers not far off from those of the official results. None of these polls even remotely suggest a Mousavi victory, or even a race too close to call. The results also parallel those of the second-round runoff election of June 2005, in which Ahmadinejad defeated Ali Akbar Rafsanjani by 62% to 32% (or 1.94-to-1).24
Of course, the establishment media and Western-based Iran campaigners have preferred citing the U.K.-based Chatham House allegations of "irregularities" in Iran's official results, and its claim that the Interior Ministry's allocation of 1.85 votes to Ahmadinejad for every one vote given to Mousavi was "problematic" and "highly implausible."25 We believe that Western media and intellectuals gravitated to Chatham House's analysis while ignoring independent polling data for the simple reason that Chatham House served up the requisite negative view of the official result -- and these other sources, such as the joint effort by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and WorldPublicOpinion.org,26 did not. Hence, whereas Chatham House's "preliminary" analysis was cited frequently in the Western media, the PIPA-WPO analysis based on no fewer than 12 different opinion surveys, released on February 3, 2010, was ignored.27
But Chatham House's Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran's 2009 Presidential Election, released to considerable fanfare just nine days after Iran's election, did not engage in any direct independent polling or provide any answer to the conflicting results of the actual polls -- and, perhaps most revealing of all, has never been followed-up by a non-"preliminary" analysis.
Even more important, however, is the fact that the allegations advanced as evidence of fraud in Iran's official results, and therefore of a stolen election, wither under close scrutiny. In a self-published analysis, Eric A. Brill28 assessed each of the major complaints made against Iran's 2009 election results, whether by Mousavi and his supporters or by Western analysts, including Chatham House. As regards the Chatham House assertion that Iran's Interior Ministry reported higher vote totals in several provinces than there were citizens eligible to vote ("excess voting"), Brill countered that Iran's so-called "vote anywhere" rule meant that local turnout could legitimately exceed 100% of the eligible voters in a given area, and though the "2009 turnout was the highest ever for an election (85%), it was well under 100% -- and far short of the 98% turnout for the 1979 referendum held to ratify the creation of the Islamic Republic." As an earlier
critique of the Chatham House allegations pointed out, the same "excess voting" phenomenon "also happened in previous elections where there too was a very high turnout, such as in [the] 1997 presidential election. . . ." That year, one of the West's favorite Iranian political figures, Mohammad Khatami, was elected to his first term, "which none would dispute as being fraudulent."29
Brill also showed that, out of Iran's approximately 45,000 polling stations (including some 14,000 mobile stations that traveled to voters whose remote locations would have discouraged their participation), the Mousavi campaign placed observers at more than 40,000 of them (7,500 more than observed the election for Ahmadinejad), and not only did these Mousavi observers sign off on the official results at each polling station where they were present, none of them has ever retracted their assent, despite the Mousavi campaign's highly publicized allegations of vote fraud. Among Brill's other crucial points, he reminds us that, in 2009, Iran started reporting separate vote counts for each of the 45,000 polling stations, and that any disputed totals reported by the Interior Ministry need only be compared to each of these polling stations' totals. If they had real reasons to allege massive fraud, Mousavi's observers could have checked the official counts in
this manner and publicized the difference -- but they did not.
"The Guardian Council," Brill writes, "claims that it asked Mousavi 'time and time again to provide the council with any evidence of examples about the discrepancy' in ballot-box counts, but that 'no documents or evidence were received'," -- and "Mousavi has not disputed this, nor has he ever cited a discrepancy for any of the . . . ballot boxes in the 2009 election." "Since the necessary data have long been available to compare ballot-box counts," Brill concludes, "only two explanations for Mousavi's silence come to mind: either no such discrepancy exists, or no one has bothered to check." Either way, it is the allegations of fraud that fare badly.30
Chatham House did not publish a report on the quality of the November 29, 2009 elections in Honduras, and in line with the official U.S.-U.K. agenda as well as establishment media interests, Chatham House took no interest in Honduras. Table 2 shows that whereas the staged election in Honduras, carried out under a state of siege and with no alternative candidates comparable to Mir Hossein Mousavi available to Honduran voters, came and went with virtually no media assertions of fraud or indignation over a stolen election, allegations of fraud and of a stolen election in Iran were frequent. Thus in a large sample of newspaper coverage, use of various negative words that suggest fraud (e.g., rigged, stolen, sham, and the like) for each election shows that the ratio of such word usage to describe the 2009 elections in Iran and Honduras ran 76-to-1. Institutionalized bias could not be more blatant.
Table 2. Differential attributions of "fraud" (etc.) to two presidential elections in 2009: Iran and Honduras31

'phony'
'rigged'
'stolen'
'fake'
'farce'
'sham'
'fraud'
Totals

Iran presi-dential election, June 12, 2009
0
1,005
182
19
9
40
875
2,130

Honduras presi-dential election,
Nov. 28, 2009
0
1
0
0
10
1
16
28
Foreign Involvement in the Iran and Honduras Elections
It is important to Western ideologues to downplay any foreign involvement in the rise of Iran's oppositional and protest movement, and any U.S. involvement in the Honduran coup, repression, and demonstration election. If that involvement was large, it would make the Iranian opposition appear a bit compromised, serving to a greater or lesser degree as agents of the Western regime-change program rather than a strictly indigenous democratic movement. As the U.S.-based International Center on Nonviolent Conflict's Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall cynically cautioned in 2003, for a destabilization campaign to be maximally effective in Iran, it "should not come from the CIA or Defense Department, but rather from pro-democracy programs throughout the West."32 In Honduras' case, on the other hand, evidence of a U.S. role in the coup and U.S. support for the coup regime's November 2009 election would be recognized as a throwback to traditional U.S. gunboat
diplomacy and support of military-oligarchic dictatorships throughout the hemisphere.
There is no doubt that Iranian opposition to the clerical regime and to Ahmadinejad was based on serious internal dissatisfaction and required no outside support to make a strong electoral showing for the main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi. But external influence was far from negligible, and played a significant role in how events inside Iran were represented to the world and then back again into Iran via major foreign media such as BBC Persian and Voice of America Persian.
Some of it was also indirect and easy to underestimate. Thus one frequently prescribed tool in the regime-change playbook is to "tighten sanctions on the Iranian economy and publicize the connection between regime belligerence [against the United States] and economic malaise,"33 and Iran has suffered income losses from externally imposed sanctions and the diversion of resources based on open U.S. and Israeli threats of attack and active support of terrorist groups and actions. Indeed, three decades earlier, U.S. sanctions and U.S.-sponsored contra terrorism in Nicaragua prior to the 1990 election helped cut per capita income by one-half, and though the New York Times found the Sandinista election loss in 1990 a "devastating rebuke" and a testimony to U.S. patience and fair play,34 there can be little doubt many voters chose Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in the belief that her victory would end the patient U.S. assault.
But the direct interventionism in Iran was also conspicuous. Beginning in 2006, large sums of money were openly voted by Congress for interfering in Iran,35 and numerous National Endowment for Democracy, Agency for International Development, and other sources funded "democracy promotion" programs that supplied telecommunication tools and propaganda to help anti-government groups and parties. Many NGOs, partly funded by Western governments, played the same role. Ackerman's ICNC participated in training sessions held in Dubai in 2005 that instructed Iranian dissidents on the techniques used in "successful popular revolts in places like Serbia," the New York Times reported. "This was like a James Bond camp for revolutionaries," one participant said.36 As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted in a major policy address at Georgetown University in December 2009, "We can help change-agents gain access to and share information through the internet
and mobile phones so that they can communicate and organize. With camera phones and Facebook pages, thousands of protestors in Iran have broadcast their demands for rights denied, creating a record for all the world, including Iran's leaders, to see. I've established a special unit inside the State Department to use technology for 21st century statecraft."37 In March 2010, the Treasury Department lifted export restrictions on various mass-market software to Iran, Cuba, and the Sudan that will increase the power of Internet and cell phone users to circumvent government control in these countries. 38 Across the board, the publicly-expressed rationale repeats a single message: "viral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day."39
So the U.S. government's role as a "change-agent" in Iran included many forms of intervention in the 2009 election and protest process. To cite one further example of how the U.S. government aided the opposition there, a State Department official famously emailed Twitter impresario Jack Dorsey on the third day after Iran's election to urge Dorsey to keep Twitter from undergoing a scheduled maintenance shutdown; Dorsey and Twitter complied.40 Such interventions, direct and indirect, educational, "democracy promotion," other informational and propaganda efforts, and the provision of technical assistance to Iranians, all helped make the protest less than perfectly indigenous, as the protesters cooperated and interacted with foreign agents pursuing an explicit and long-standing post-Shah agenda of destabilization and regime change.
It is interesting to see how outwardly oriented the protest movement in Iran was. A large fraction of the tweeting and standard text-messaging was carried out in English, not in the indigenous languages of Iran.41 The same was true of many of the signs on display in the protest photos shown in the West. This appeal to foreigners was undoubtedly intended to bring foreign pressure to bear on the Iranian government and to discredit it for a variety of possible ends. The discrediting and delegitimizing parts of this campaign were accomplished with a great deal of success, in large part because of the receptivity of both Western establishment as well as the left to anything that denigrates the Islamic Republic of Iran.42
Nothing like this was to be found in official, NGO, and media treatment of Honduras. Hillary Clinton barely touched on Honduras in her Georgetown University lecture in December 2009: She boasted of "publicly denouncing" the coup in Honduras -- highly misleading, as it took the Obama administration 67 days (through September 3) before someone within its ranks actually referred to Zelaya's ouster as a "coup,"43 and by its actions from the June 28 date of the coup onwards, there was never any doubt that the real change-agents in Honduras supported by the Obama administration were the oligarchy and military-security apparatus. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the Obama administration supplied a single cell phone to the true democratic opposition in Honduras. And there were no tweets and other information and protest flows from the "citizen journalists" and samizdat-protesters in Honduras welcomed into the waiting arms of the Western media. As
Table 3 shows, a large sample of newspapers produced an enormous (approximate) 2,000-to-11 disparity in items that mentioned the public protests in Iran or Honduras in connection with one or more of the newer telecommunication tools such as the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the like.
Table 3. Differential media interest in the role of some newer electronic communications technologies in two countries where political unrest was met by government repression: Iran and Honduras44

Newspaper coverage

Iran: The first 30 days of protests following the June 12, 2009 presidential election (June 13 - July 12)
Approx. 2,000

Honduras: The first 30 days of protests following the June 28, 2009 coup d'état (June 29 - July 28)
11
Even more striking, however, whereas a large fraction of the items in the first row that dealt with Iran's protests featured quite prominently the role played by these tools in organizing protests and in resisting and circumventing Iranian government efforts to quell the protests and to silence dissent, in the 11 items on Honduras reported in row 2, these same tools were treated in passing -- not as samizdats in the hands of Honduras' democratic opposition to the coup. Instead, the exact same technologies that Western policymakers and reporters and commentators lauded for helping to pry open greater democratic spaces inside Iran were virtually ignored when the focus turned away from a regime opposed by the United States and its allies and towards a coup regime supported by the United States. And this pattern held true even during the overlapping period between the protests in Iran and the protests in Honduras. "The government television station and
a television station that supports the [ousted] president were taken off the air," the New York Times reported from Honduras on the morning after the coup. "Television and radio stations broadcast no news. Only wealthy Hondurans with access to the Internet and cable television were able to follow the day's events."45 But, typical of Western media coverage of Iran's protests, the Times quoted James K. Glassman, an under secretary of state for public diplomacy in the Bush administration, and now the executive director of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. "What we saw in Iran is that the private sector played a very important role in disseminating information there," Glassman told the Times. "Companies like Twitter and Facebook facilitated a lot of the activity in Iran."46
There was clearly a class element involved in the protests in Iran and Honduras. The protesters in Iran were heavily middle and upper class, people who could afford and would have cell phones and could speak English. The situation was reversed in Honduras, where the coup and demonstration-election candidates were oligarchy-based, and the protests were organized by the poorer masses, whose Spanish-language pro-democracy messages (even when translated into English by a few dedicated solidarity activists) were tuned out by Western elites, governments, media, and NGOs, what with even liberals and the left being overwhelmingly preoccupied with Iran. So the alignment is a familiar one to students of U.S. history: On the one hand, the United States sided with an oligarchy in Latin America to carry out an anti-democratic coup, and the establishment U.S. media accommodated this policy with their apologetics on behalf of the coup regime and their suppression
of the voices of Honduras' real democrats. On the other hand, the United States pursued a regime-change agenda in Iran against its clerical regime, exploiting a highly Westernized, rebellious middle- and upper-class minority to help destabilize its target, again with sure establishment media support and worldwide amplification of protest voices, but this time even the support of a new kind of Western political configuration -- call it the democracy-promotion left.
Concluding Note

The Christian Science Monitor's caption (19 June 2009) simply reads: "A woman wearing an Iranian flag uses a mobile phone on the streets of Tehran on Tuesday. Reuters." The caption fails to point out that the Iranian flag was the symbol of the Ahmadinejad campaign during the 2009 presidential election (in contrast to the color green adopted by the Mousavi campaign), so the "woman wearing an Iranian flag" in the photograph must have been an Ahmadinejad supporter, on her way to or from the unity rally organized by her fellow Ahmadinejad supporters on Tuesday, 16 June 2009. Needless to say, the corporate media took no interest in her opinion or those of her ideological sisters. -- Ed.
During the peak of Iran's street demonstrations in June 2009, Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society summed up the role played by the newer telecommunication technologies and software applications there: "[S]ocial media at this point is most useful at making that what is a local struggle become a global struggle. I think that is what is happening here. It is helping people globally feel solidarity and it's keeping international attention on what's happening. It's giving people a sense of involvement that they otherwise wouldn't have. . . ."47 An accompanying photograph (see the box on the right) depicted several Iranian woman with their backs turned towards the camera, and another Iranian woman sitting to their rear, facing the camera and holding a mobile phone; apparently, she was text-messaging.
But Zuckerman's explanation misses the crucial selectivity of this global role now played by the new "social media." As we have observed throughout Part 1 and now Part 2 of this analysis, the moment the accusation of vote fraud in Iran (however unsubstantiated) triggered massive street demonstrations in protest of a "stolen" election, foreign news media were riveted to these events, and featured the stolen-election line as well as reports about Iran's pro-democracy, reformist movement for several weeks. So, yes, in this case, people around the world (but especially in the metropolitan centers of the West) expressed solidarity towards Iran's protestors, as the Western media kept people's attention focused on struggles inside Iran and propagated questions globally about the legitimacy of the regime.
When we turn to Honduras, however, this pattern breaks off, and the existence of so-called social media contributed nothing. For as we just saw, during the first 30 days after the coup, the signature "social media" were barely mentioned in reports about Honduras. But this was not because the Internet and blogs, mobile phones, text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, and digital videographic capabilities were inaccessible to Hondurans who opposed the coup and who demanded the restoration of their democratic rights. Rather, this was because the same Westerners who featured these capabilities when discussing Iran shut down mentally and morally when Honduras was concerned and ignored its democratic movement. In dramatic contrast to those who struggle for democracy and social justice inside Iran, the local struggles of Hondurans were prevented from becoming a "global struggle," far fewer people outside of Latin America expressed solidarity with
Hondurans, and international attention (but especially in the metropolitan centers of the West) faded almost immediately.
At a conference called "Cyber Dissidents: Global Successes and Challenges" in April 2010,48 presenters attended from a number of countries where telecom + apps have been used to circumvent government censorship and repression. Non-U.S. speakers were featured from opposition movements in Iran, Syria, China, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela.49 Evidently, whereas regimes that the United States targets for destabilization produce "cyber dissidents" of interest to U.S. conference organizers,50 the conference managed to miss voices of opposition from any country where repressive regimes are supported by the United States (Honduras included).
Just as there are "worthy" victims, there are also "cyber dissidents" who become of great interest to the enlightened West, as in Iran. Early this year, a George Polk Award (for journalism) was given in the new category of videography to the "anonymous individuals" who digitally recorded the shooting death of Neda Agha-Soltan on a street in Tehran in June 2009, and then uploaded the video to the Internet, YouTube, and beyond, along with the message "Please let the world know." "The video became a rallying point for the reformist opposition in Iran," the Polk Award's panel of advisers explained in giving the award to otherwise anonymous recipients.51

The murder of Isis Obed Murillo

Video by Angel PalaciosBut there are also "unworthy" victims, who find it difficult, if not impossible, to establish any kind of recognition of their "dissident" status in the West, and who receive little, if any, help in publicizing their struggles against repressive status quos, as in Honduras. Thus, as we showed in Part 1, the individuals who recorded and then uploaded to the Internet and YouTube the video images of the July 2009 shooting death of the Honduran protester, Isis Obed Murillo, not only received no Polk or any other award, but these images failed to become a rallying cry within the Western media and among human rights campaigners -- even the same campaigners for whom the images of Neda's death were recognized as the "most significant viral video of our lifetimes."52

The world never heard.
Indeed, this dichotomous pattern is long-standing and reflects the structure of power in the global system. It shows not the slightest sign of being overcome -- or even significantly reduced -- by the spread of "social media" and the refurbished, empire-friendly ideology of "democracy-promotion."

Endnotes
1 See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "Iran and Honduras in the Propaganda System -- Part 1. Neda Agha-Soltan Versus Isis Obed Murillo," MRZine, October 5, 2010.
2 Following the elimination of invalid votes, the handling of complaints, and a 10% vote recount by Iran's Guardian Council in the second-half of June 2009, the final results as reported by Iran's Interior Ministry on June 29, 2009 were as follows: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 24,525,491 (62.6%); Mir Hossein Mousavi, 13,258,464 (33.8%); Mohsen Rezai, 656,150 (1.7%); and Mehdi Karroubi, 330,183 (0.8%).
3 See Honduras: Human Rights and the Coup d'État, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, December 30, 2009, especially "The 'fourth ballot box'," para. 82-87.
4 See "Honduran Election Results Still Need to be Scrutinized," Council on Hemispheric Affairs, December 15, 2009. This article reported that on the night of the election, the "U.S.-backed Honduran civil society coalition, Hagamos Democracia (Making Democracy, HD)" estimated the voter turnout rate to be 48.7% and "claiming 99% accuracy." Also, the "pro-Zelaya National Front of Resistance against the Coup calculated a 65-70% rate of abstention by counting the number of voters entering polling stations and comparing that figure to the number of individuals who were registered to vote," which is to say, a voter turnout rate of 30-35%.
5 See Jesse Freeston, "Honduran Elections Exposed," The Real News Network, December 8, 2009. "The coup government, not officially recognized by any country in the world, was hoping to gain international legitimacy by demonstrating a large turnout at the polls," Freeston explains. "That 62% figure appeared at 10 p.m. on election night, after the Electoral Tribunal's computer system broke down for three hours. . . . So where did the 62% number come from? A high-ranking official at the Electoral Tribunal told me off-camera that the president of the tribunal, Saul Escobar, on the night of the election announced the number out of nowhere. When I asked the official to say that on camera, they responded: do you really want me to get shot? The coup regime's announcement that more than 60 percent of Hondurans voted on election day has been enough to drastically change the dynamics of the situation. Governments that previously stated the elections
were illegitimate now consider them a triumph."
6 See, e.g., Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "The U.S. Aggression Process and Its Collaborators: From Guatemala (1950-1954) to Iran (2002-)," Electric Politics, November 26, 2007; and Seymour M. Hersh, "The Bush Administration Steps Up Its Secret Moves against Iran," New Yorker, July 7, 2008.
7 See, e.g., Eva Golinger, "Washington and the Coup in Honduras: Here Is the Evidence," Postcards from the Revolution, July 15, 2009; and Michaela D'Ambrosio, "The Honduran Coup: Was It A Matter of Behind-the-Scenes Finagling by State Department Stonewallers?" Council on Hemispheric Affairs, September 16, 2009. In a letter signed and circulated by the deposed President José Manuel Zelaya on the one-year anniversary of the coup, Zelaya himself stated: "The United States was behind the coup d'état. The intellectual authors of this crime were an illicit association of old Washington hawks and Honduran capitalists with their partners, American affiliates and financial agencies." ("Zelaya: Coup Was Planned by U.S. Southern Command," Agence France Presse, June 28, 2010.)
8 See Ian Kelly, "Honduran Elections," U.S. Department of State, November 29, 2009.
9 See Alexei Barrionuevo, "Obama Writes to Brazil's Leader about Iran," New York Times, November 25, 2009. "President Obama sent a letter on Sunday [Nov. 22] to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil reiterating the American position on Iran's nuclear program, a day before Iran's president made his first state visit to Brazil. . . . On Honduras, Mr. Obama justified American support for a presidential election there after the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in June. Mr. Obama said in his letter that the situation would 'start from zero' after the [Nov. 29] election, the Brazilian official said."
10 "Neither Real Nor Free," Editorial, New York Times, June 15, 2009; "The Honduras Conundrum," Editorial, New York Times, December 5, 2009.
11 See Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections: U.S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador (Boston: South End Press, 1984), Ch. 4, "El Salvador," pp. 93-152.
12 "Democracy's Hope in Central America," Editorial, New York Times, March 30, 1982.
13 Lindsey Gruson, "A Fingerhold for Dissent in Salvador," New York Times, March 17, 1989. Also see Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections. As these authors noted, in March 1981, the military of El Salvador "published a list of [some 138] 'traitors' responsible for the country's woes -- essentially a death list. . . . There ensued an increase in violence under a state of siege, with many thousands of civilian murders and the emergence of a society whose most revealing feature was the daily search for and removal of mutilated bodies" (pp. 117-118). Under conditions such as these, El Salvador held both its March 1982 and March 1984 elections.
14 See Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, 2nd Ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), Ch. 3, "Legitimizing versus Meaningless Third World Elections: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua," pp. 87-142.
15 Steven R. Weisman, "Reagan Predicts Nicaraguan Vote Will be 'Sham'," New York Times, July 20, 1984; "Nobody Won in Nicaragua," Editorial, New York Times, November 7, 1984.
16 Michael Ignatieff, "Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs To Spread?" New York Times Magazine, June 26, 2005. For bland lies told in the service of American Power, it would be hard to surpass Ignatieff's work overall and this essay in particular.
17 See, e.g., Kari Lydersen, "Welcome to the New Honduras, Where Right-wing Death Squads Proliferate," AlterNet, April 27, 2010; and Kari Lydersen, "Violence Against Honduran Resistance Movement, Unionists Continues," In These Times Blog, October 11, 2010.
18 See "Frente Nacional de Resistencia supera la meta de un millón 250 mil firmas," September 13, 2010. (For an English translation, see "1,250,000 Signatures for the Refounding of Honduras," Quotha, the personal website of the U.S. academic Adrienne Pine. Pine translates the opening two paragraphs of the article from the website of the National Front of Popular Resistance in Honduras as follows: "The National People's Resistance Front FNRP today exceeded its goal of one million 250 thousand signatures on the Sovereign Declaration for the Popular and Participatory Constituent Assembly, and for the return of Presidente Manuel Zelaya Rosales, Father Andrés Tamayo and the rest of those Hondurans who have been expatriated and are in political exile. The Front today, Sunday, reached one million 269 thousand 142 signatures, earlier than the deadline for their collection, this September 15th, the day on which the 189th anniversary of Honduran
independence from the kingdom of Spain will be celebrated.")
19 Namely, in Ginger Thompson, "Region Finds U.S. Lacking on Honduras," New York Times, November 28, 2009.
20 Namely, in Elizabeth Malkin, "Fate of Ousted leader Clouds Election Result in Honduras," New York Times, December 1, 2009.
21 Factiva database searches carried out under the "Newspapers: All" category on October 7, 2010. The exact search parameters were as follows: For Iran: rst=tnwp and atleast2 Iran* and (human rights abuse* or human rights violation*) for the two time periods specified; and for Honduras: rst=tnwp and atleast2 Hondur* and (human rights abuse* or human rights violation*) for the three time periods specified.
22 About the zero in the third row for the first 30 days after coup d'état in Honduras (June 29-July 28, 2009): In fact, Factiva produced 8 matches. But upon checking each of them, we determined that all mentions of human rights abuses in articles also mentioning Honduras referred to human rights abuses that either had occurred in the past in Honduras or that had occurred elsewhere in Latin America. For this reason, we've excluded these from our total, leaving us with zero. Thus, for example, Simon Romero wrote in the New York Times about "countries like Chile, Argentina and Brazil, where bitter memories linger over human rights abuses by military officials that toppled civilian rulers in the 1960s and 1970s" ("Rare Hemisphere Unity in Assailing Honduran Coup," June 29, 2009). Similarly, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported that "The coup in Honduras brings back bitter memories in Latin America, where for years military officials toppled
civilian rulers at will, unleashing horrific human-rights abuses" (Marina Jimenez, "Honduras coup at odds with new politics in Americas," July 1, 2009). In London's Independent, Hugh O'Shaughnessy reported that in 2001, "Democratic Senator Chris Dodd attacked Mr. [John] Negroponte . . . for drawing a veil over atrocities committed in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, by military forces trained by the US. Mr. Dodd claimed that the forces had been 'linked to death squad activities such as killings, disappearances and other human rights abuses'" ("Democracy Hangs by a thread in Honduras," July 19, 2009). Richard Collie wrote in the Korean Times that "since World War II, the School of the Americas (SOA), founded in Panama but now based in Fort Benning, Ga., under the new guise of 'Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation' . . . has its grubby finger prints all over a long list of political assassinations, coups and human rights abuses in
the region" ("Iron Fist, Velvet Glove: Obama and Honduras," July 20, 2009).
23 See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "Chutzpah, Inc.: 'The Brave People of Iran' (versus the Disappeared People of Palestine, Honduras, Afghanistan, Etc.)," MRZine, February 20, 2010.
24 For the results of Iran's June 24, 2005 presidential runoff, see Ali Akbar Dareni, "Iran Council OKs Presidential Vote Results," Associated Press, June 29, 2005.
25 See Ali Ansari et al.,Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran's 2009 Presidential Election, Chatham House (U.K.), June 21, 2009, p. 3, p. 10.
26 See Steven Kull et al., An Analysis of Multiple Polls of the Iranian Public, PIPA-WPO.org, February 3, 2010; Steven Kull et al., Iranian Public on Current Issues: Questionnaires, PIPA-WPO.org, February 3, 2010; and the accompanying Press Release.
27 Factiva database searches carried out under the "Newspapers: All" category on August 25, 2010. The exact search parameters were as follows: For the Chatham House analysis: rst=tnwp and Iran and (Chatham House or Ali w/2 Ansari) for the period June 21, 2009-December 21, 2009; and for the second PIPA-WPO analysis: rst= tnwp and Iran and (Program on International Policy Attitudes or worldpublicopinion) for the period February 3, 2010 - August 3, 2010. We found zero reports on the PIPA-WPO survey released on February 3, and 150 reports either on the Chatham House study that criticized Iran's election results or that invited Ali Ansari to comment on Iranian affairs.
28 Eric A. Brill, Did Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Steal the 2009 Iran Election?, Self-Published Manuscript, last updated August 29, 2010. Also see Alvin Richman, "Post-Election Crackdown in Iran Has Had Limited Impact on the Minority Expressing Strong Opposition to the Regime," PIPA-WPO.org, February 18, 2010.
29 See Reza Esfandiari and Yousef Bozorgmehr, A Rejoinder to the Chatham House report on Iran's 2009 presidential election offering a new analysis on the results, Self-Published Manuscript, August, 2009, p. 2
30 Brill, Did Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Steal the 2009 Iran Election?.
31 Factiva database searches carried out under the "Newspapers: All" category on August 25, 2010. The time-periods searched began four-weeks-to-the-day (or 28 days) prior to each election, and continued through four weeks (or 28 days) after the election, for a combined search period of 57 days each. The exact search parameters were as follows: For Iran: rst=tnwp and Iran and (election* or vote*) w/10 ((phony or phony) or (rig or rigg*) or stole* or fake* or farc* or sham or fraud*) not (Afghanistan or Honduras)) for the period May 15-July 10, 2009; and for Honduras: rst=tnwp and Honduras and (election* or vote*) w/10 ((phony or phoney) or (rig or rigg*) or stole* or fake* or farc* or sham or fraud*) not (Afghanistan or Iran)) for the period November 2-December 28, 2009.
32 Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, "The Nonviolent Script for Iran," Christian Science Monitor, July 22, 2003.
33 James K. Glassman and Michael Doran, "The Soft Power Solution in Iran," Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2010. As Glassman and Doran continue: "Despite Iran's oil wealth, the economy has for years been in miserable shape thanks to bad management, corruption and the squandering of funds on Arab terrorist groups and the nuclear program. The slogans of the [Green Wave] protestors demonstrate that they are connecting the dots between the regime's foreign policy and economic privation."
34 See "The Morning After in Nicaragua," Editorial, New York Times, February 27, 1990; and "Nicaragua's Second Revolution," Editorial, New York Times, April 25, 1990.
35 The September 30, 2006 Iran Freedom Support Act directed the executive branch to destabilize Iran (which it had been doing anyway), but the Act left the actual sums of money to be used for this purpose to its discretion. Quoting the Act: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President is authorized to provide financial and political assistance (including the award of grants) to foreign and domestic individuals, organizations, and entities working for the purpose of supporting and promoting democracy for Iran. Such assistance may include the award of grants to eligible independent pro-democracy radio and television broadcasting organizations that broadcast into Iran" (Sec. 302(a)(1), "Assistance to Support Democracy for Iran"). For contemporaneous reporting on the actual dollar-sums involved, see Robin Wright, "Iran on Guard Over U.S. Funds," Washington Post, April 28, 2007.
36 Negar Azimi, "Hard Realities of Soft Power," New York Times Magazine, June 14, 2007.
37 Hillary Rodham Clinton, "Remarks on the Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century," (Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.), U.S. Department of State, December 14, 2009.
38 See Mark Landler, "U.S. Hopes Export of Internet Services Will Help Open Closed Societies," New York Times, March 8, 2010.
39 Hillary Rodham Clinton, "Remarks on Internet Freedom" (at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.), January 21, 2010.
40 See Brad Stone and Noam Cohen, "Social Networks Spread Iranian Defiance Online," New York Times, June 16, 2009; Mark Landler and Brian Selter, "Washington Taps Into a Potent New Force in Diplomacy," New York Times, June 17, 2009; and Mike Musgrove, "Twitter Is a Player in Iran's Drama," Washington Post, June 17, 2009.
41 See Golnaz Esfandiari, "The Twitter Devolution," Foreign Policy Blog, June 7, 2010. Also see the analysis by Malcolm Gladwell, "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted," New Yorker, October 4, 2010. Esfandiari summed up the real contribution of the newer telecommunication technologies and software applications less in terms of their impact on Iranian life, than in terms of their impact on the Western consumers of non-Iranian media: "Twitter played an important role in getting word about events in Iran out to the wider world. Together with YouTube it helped focus the world's attention on the Iranian people's fight for democracy and human rights. New media over the last year created and sustained unprecedented international moral solidarity with the Iranian struggle."
42 In the past, we've analyzed at great length both Western-establishment as well as left-denigration of the Islamic Republic of Iran. For one example of the former, see Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "The Iran Versus U.S.-NATO-Israeli Threats," MRZine, October 20, 2009; and for one of the latter, see Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "Riding the 'Green Wave' at the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and Beyond," MRZine, July 24, 2009. In the case of Iran in particular, the alignment between the Western establishment and the Western left (or faux left) is striking.
43 See Ian Kelly, "Termination of Assistance and Other Measures Affecting the De Facto Regime in Honudras," U.S. Department of State, September 3, 2009. On this day, this State Department spokesman's exact words were: "The Department of State announces the termination of a broad range of assistance to the government of Honduras as a result of the coup d'etat that took place on June 28."
44 Factiva database searches carried out under the "Newspapers: All" category on October 7, 2010. The exact search parameters were as follows: For Iran: rst=tnwp and atleast2 Iran* and (internet or facebook or youtube or twitter or sms or text-messaging or mobile communication*) not Hondur* for the 30-day period specified; and for Honduras: rst=tnwp and atleast2 Hondur* and (internet or facebook or youtube or twitter or sms or text-messaging or mobile communication*) not Iran* for the 30-day period specified. Note that in row 1, column 2, we report the total as "approximately 2,000."
45 Elizabeth Malkin et al., "Honduran President Is Ousted in Coup," New York Times, June 29, 2009.
46 Julie Creswell, "How to Start a Company (And Kiss Like Angelina)," New York Times, July 12, 2009.
47 Yigal Schleifer, "Why Iran's Twitter Revolution Is Unique," Christian Science Monitor, June 19, 2009.
48 See the website for the Conference on Cyber Dissidents: Global Successes and Challenges, George W. Bush Presidential Center, April 19, 2010.
49 See "Speaker Biographies," George W. Bush Presidential Center, April 19, 2010.
50 In keeping with this pattern, the "Cyber Dissidents" conference also invited Oscar Morales Guevara, the founder of One Million Voices Against FARC -- a Facebook group that, like official U.S. policy, supports the regime in Colombia, while propagating worldwide opposition to the main rebel force that opposes it.
51 See the George Polk Award for Videography, "2009 Award Winners," Long Island University. Also see Brian Selter, "Honoring Citizen Journalists," New York Times, February 22, 2010.
52 Here quoting the State Department's Jared Cohen, in Jesse Lichtenstein, "Digital Diplomacy," New York Times Magazine, July 18, 2010.

Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and has written extensively on economics, political economy, and the media. Among his books are Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge University Press, 1981), The Real Terror Network (South End Press, 1982), and, with Noam Chomsky, The Political Economy of Human Rights (South End Press, 1979), and Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon, 2002). David Peterson is an independent journalist and researcher based in Chicago. Together they are the co-authors of The Politics of Genocide, recently published by Monthly Review Press.

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