A couple quick things I want to point out:
1) We have been talking about a growing “youth movement” in Iran for 30 years. Wouldn’t all those “youth” have grown up and taken over the country by now?
2) Watch how things are reported. Take this article for instance. The first TWO words are “hard-line” and describe Ahmadinejad, while “pro-reform” is used to describe challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi in the first paragraph. Nearly every article you read in Western newspapers contains something similar, Financial Times calls A a “fundamentalist” and M “more moderate.”
There is a name for this; framing. The article establishes a frame through which you see the world and then paints the picture.
3) Now notice a pattern in reporting. It actually follows a rather similar trend in reporting of our own elections.
a) Turnout expected to be ENORMOUS and unprecedented due to the ((historic)) nature of the race. Every election is historic either because of the race, gender, creed of the candidate. The uniqueness of the race “old rivals, bitter rivals, resurrection of a flawed or fallen candidate etc.” or simply because it could change things from one leader to another.
b) That turnout represents large voter interest which MUST mean the vote is going to be very close;
“If no candidate gains more than 50 per cent of the votes today, which seems very likely.” Quote from the previously linked FT article.
c) The unique nature of the election is giving huge fears of election rigging. Weird “signs” of rigging like asking for more ballots for this, unprecedented election are presented. Of course more ballots are needed if turnout is high. If more ballots were not requested it would be used as a sign of rigging.
With this chain of events readers are left to interpret the picture through the frames already established. Who would be more likely to rig an election, a “moderate, reformer” or a “fundamentalist, hard-liner”?
In the weeks leading up to the election I kept reading that support for the “reformist” candidate had been growing and an unprecedented close election was on the way. How was this known? Well, I have no idea. I did not see opinion polling. Instead I saw fluff like the reform minded one likes to tweet, use Facebook & go on YouTube. MUST be clearly connecting with that growing “youth movement” & brings to mind the “small donors” of 2008, doesn’t it?
The only real “polling” was showing a clear win for the fundamentalist, hard-liner, holocaust denier but that was reported in “state-run” media and was always rejected in Western stories or news reports. Since any alternative media was shut down, no clear picture could be reported. SO our media just went with the story that the race must be close because of the “historic” nature. No evidence, just seemed right to the and it is what was being seen by “watchers” of the elections. Who were the “watchers” why policy experts for think tanks and “experts” who were current and former Government, military and intelligence officials. Surely THEY had no axe to grind and no agenda.
So what am I getting at here? Don’t believe what you read. Now that the election has taken place “BOTH SIDES” are claiming victory. Shocker. Those handy suggestions that vote rigging would be involved? Yeap, calls are coming out that vote rigging happened. Predictable? You bet!
It never seemed likely to me that Ahmadinejad wouldn’t. Frankly I don’t believe free elections ever truly take place in Iran anyway. Yet even if they did I never saw actual evidence that the vote would go any other way. I just saw a lot of suspicious Western reports that suddenly made it seem as though this “reformer” who has been out of the limelight for a few decades was capturing the same tired “youth” vote that is talked about whenever “reform” is discussed in Iran. A youth movement that always seems to talk big before any major action by the government in Iran is taken and then suddenly disappears.
Now I for one am more than supportive of any and all attempts to overthrow the reigning government in Iran. I would like Ahmadinejad & the theocracy that really runs the establishment to be sent to the fiery pits of hell. If propaganda and misinformation spread into that nation help us reach that goal, great. I just personally am getting a little tired of that propaganda being presented as real news in this country. It is further evidence that all of the news we read and hear, especially what is reported about ourselves, is a lie or at best a distortion of the truth.
It is interesting to me that the left believes the case for War in Iraq was a conspiracy pushed by the Bush administration and supported by the media; yet everything they read about Obama and the evil of capitalism is true. It is interesting to me that the right believes a “liberal media” is out to assassinate the character of every Republican candidate and destroy capitalism but trusts that the altruistic vision presented by the military-industrial-media complex is righteous.
What I am saying is that as our military might and our economy collapse and our foundation is buckling under the weight of growing challenges from the world, honest assessments of ourselves and the challenges we face may be paramount to our own survival. Yet the only vehicle for delivering those assessments, en mass, is beyond corruptible and the populace of our nation beyond gullible.
There is a great deal to be learned from what is transpiring in Iran right now and what has transpired in our own country over the last few years. Sadly, our nation has been so polluted by propaganda and misinformation I don’t know that any of us are capable of education.
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