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Indybay Feature

Pics from Iran Mega Rally

by D. Boyer
Some pics from the rally held at the Civic Center in San Francisco for a Free Iran.
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§For a Free Iran
by D. Boyer
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§For a Free Iran
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§For a Free Iran
by D. Boyer
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§For a Free Iran
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§For a Free Iran
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§For a Free Iran
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§For a Free Iran
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§For a Free Iran
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§For a Free Iran
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KPFA's 7/25/09 6 p.m. news reports at
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/52695
2,000 showed up at this Democratic Party rally, a tiny rally by San Francisco standards. Iran is of course rich in oil and gas and US imperialism wants a government that will sing its oil profiteering tune upon command. Any rally where reactionary Democrats Attorney General Jerry Brown now running for governor and Cecil Williams (the preacher who is a proud member of the Democrats' election fraud team and a staunch supporter of anti-rent control Democratic mayor Gavin Newsom) are speakers is by definition a con job. For more on this election fraud machine, see:
http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium/
and
http://www.brasscheck.com/jonestown/

Meanwhile, the election fraud perpetrated in nearby Kyrgystan is supported by the US government. See:
"US outrage over “rigged” elections does not extend to Kyrgyzstan, " 7/25/09 at
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/pers-j25.shtml
Pertinent parts:
"The brazen rigging of an election, the repression of the opposition and the use of police violence and live ammunition against demonstrators has been met with silence and indifference on the part of the Obama administration and the US media."

"These events were taking place Thursday not in Iran, but rather in the landlocked Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan."

"When thousands of people took to the streets of Kyrgyzstan’s capital to protest the vote fraud, police attacked them with percussion grenades and tear gas, while firing live ammunition over their heads."

"In the run-up to the election, the OSCE said, “The distinction between the ruling party and the state was blurred.” Concretely, this meant that the offices of Bakiyev’s Ak-Zhol party were set up inside government buildings. Government workers and students were coerced into attending the party’s rallies under threat of being fired or thrown out of school."

"Campaign events by the opposition were blocked by the police and its leaders and supporters were subjected to a reign of terror. One of the opposition leaders, Emilbek Kaptagaev, reported being kidnapped by a group of men, one wearing a police uniform, taken to the edge of the capital and brutally beaten. He received a call three weeks later warning him that if he didn’t stop campaigning for the leading opposition candidate—former prime minister Almazbek Atambaev of the Social Democratic Party—he would get more of the same and worse."

"The opposition was virtually blacked out in the mass media. Three national television stations suspended all news coverage at the end of June as the vote approached. Over the past year, the government has carried out the systematic suppression of opposition newspapers, taking them to court on charges of libeling the president’s relatives, imposing massive fines and confiscating equipment."

"Earlier this month, the journalist Almaz Tashiyev, who had published articles critical of the government, suffered a fatal beating at the hands of eight policemen. It was the sixth violent attack on journalists this year and the second fatal attack since October 2007, when independent journalist Alisher Saipov was gunned down execution style. No one has been arrested for that killing."

"The electoral fraud hardly came as a surprise. During the run-up to local elections last year, the head of the Central election commission fled the country after saying that the president’s son had threatened her life."

"Human rights groups say torture of detainees in Kyrgyzstan is common. Among the more infamous cases is that of the arrest of 32 people last year at a protest in the town of Nookat. While awaiting trial, police beat them on the soles of their feet, poured hot and cold water on them and brought them to the brink of suffocation by putting plastic bags over their heads. When one of the women prisoners told her tormentors that she was pregnant, they assaulted her, causing a miscarriage."

"Last month, President Barack Obama sent a letter to President Bakiyev, praising his regime for its “efforts in stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan and the fight against international terrorism.”

"This remains Washington’s position. Why haven’t Obama and Hillary Clinton declared themselves “appalled” by the situation in Kyrgyzstan or saluted the “courage” of the demonstrators as they have in relation to Iran?"

"Obama’s letter was part of a negotiating process between Washington and Kyrgyzstan over the Manas air base, which has been used to supply US troops fighting in Afghanistan. The Bakiyev regime announced last February that it was shutting down the base, but then negotiated a deal unveiled earlier this month under which the US military will be allowed to stay in return for a nearly fourfold increase in rent."
In the U.S., election results are almost always announced within a few hours after the polls close.

In the Mexican presidential elections of 1988 and 2006, it took a long time to announce the results. But that was precisely because it took time to alter the count so that the "right" candidate won. I'm sure that, if the victory of Ahmedi Nijad had been announced after a long delay, the CIA/NED "color revolutionaries" behind the opposition would have said that the government delayed the results in order to falsify them!

BTW, did any of these Democratic Party hacks have the guts to organize a massive protest against the theft of the 2000 and 2004 U.S. Presidential elections, of which their party was the immediate victim? No! Why? Maybe because such protests, unlike this one, would NOT have been approved by Wall Street, the CIA and Mossad!
by confused
Whatever the results of Iran's elections are immaterial at this point. What is beyond dispute is that no government anywhere on earth has the right to crush its citizens' right to peacefully assemble and voice their dissent. Freedom of speech, assembly and freedom of the press are every person's right everywhere. Those are the most basic fundamentals of human liberty.

Governments that violently suppress their citizens' voices are governments that are afraid of their people and are afraid of losing their tyrannical grip on power. The fascists did it, the communists did it and now the Iranian theocrats are doing it. And if you're concerned about justice and liberty then you condemn their crackdown. It's just that simple. All this extraneous nonsense is just that, nonsense.
by repost
Whichever side the US government is on, it is best to be on the other side until you have good reason not to be there. The election in Iran, with 2 top contestants who are equally reactionary, is a case on point. If one crook perpetrated election fraud against the other, the workingclass still loses. The USA has constant election fraud perpetrated by both Democrats and Republicans, with the former operating in every big city, including San Francisco and the latter just did their act in 2000 and 2004 in the presidential elections. By the way, the votes take at least 2 weeks to count in most elections; what we hear about the morning after election day is a minimal count of some precincts, enough to predict the probable final result, but not a close result. Elections are certified 30 days after election day, so the counting can take 30 days.

As suspected, oil and gas rich Iran are being manipulated by the CIA, the arm of US imperialism to maximize the profits of the capitalist class around the world.
From:
"Eyewitness Iran: What is the true character of the demonstrations"
Monday, June 22, 2009
By: Mazda Majidi
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12383&news_iv_ctrl=1038
Eyewitness Iran: What is the true character of the demonstrations
Monday, June 22, 2009
By: Mazda Majidi

"Imperialists do not embrace true revolutionary movements"
Eyewitness Iran: What is the true character of the demonstrations
Monday, June 22, 2009
By: Mazda Majidi

"The eyes of the world have focused on Iran since the June 12 presidential election. The turnout was exceptionally high, with 42 million people, 85 percent of the electorate, going to the polls. Incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner with 63 percent of the vote. Ahmadinejad's chief rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, declared himself the winner and called the announced results fraudulent. Iran has since been the scene of large daily protests."

"A landslide victory by Ahmadinejad was not improbable. An op-ed piece by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty published in the June 15 Washington Post states that the election results conform to their pre-election polling."

""Our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin—greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election," Ballen and Doherty asserted."

"The survey of 1,001 respondents, conducted by phone between May 11 and May 20, had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. The study was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Neither the Fund nor the Washington Post could be accused of having a pro-Ahmadinejad bias."

"In bourgeois elections, the citizenry is offered a choice between candidates that are acceptable to ruling class interests. In Iran's elections, as in those of other countries, the candidates running for president were all acceptable options to the regime. All four had a long history of holding key posts. Ahmadinejad was the incumbent president; Mousavi was the prime minister of Iran in the first decade of the revolution; Mahdi Karroubi was a two-term head of Majliss (Iran's Parliament); and Mohsen Reza'i was a long-serving commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps."

From:
"US hawks want terrorists to take down Iran government" July 14, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14366
"Two hard-line US lawmakers have called for greater efforts to topple the Tehran government, going as far as to suggest support for anti-Iran terrorist groups."

"Democratic Representative and Chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, Bob Filner called, on June 26, for greater support for what he called "resistance groups" in Iran, putting a special emphasis on the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), UPI reported. "

"On Sunday, Former House Speaker and leading Republican hawk Newt Gingrich also called on the Obama administration to "sabotage" Iran's oil and gas industry to trigger an economic crisis - which he claimed would bring down the Iranian government. "

"[We] should use covert operations to create a gasoline-led crisis to try and replace the regime," he was quoted by UPI as saying."

"The idea of attacking Iran's oil industry is not a new concept in US politics as many leading analysts and politicians have already explored its feasibility and effectiveness, but outward talk of support for a group that is listed as a terrorist organization in the United States is a rare move. "

"The MKO, listed as a terrorist group in Iran, Iraq, Canada, and the US, has claimed responsibility for bombings, killings and attacks against Iranian government officials and civilians over the past 30 years. "

"The attacks include the assassination of the late president Mohammad-Ali Rajaei, prime minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar and judiciary chief Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti."

"The MKO is also known to have cooperated with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hossein in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds."

"The organization is also notorious for using cult-like tactics against its own members and for torturing and murdering its defectors."

"This is while a report by Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed that the US is already spending USD 400 million to fund covert operations inside Iran."

"Other than the MKO, other terrorist groups, such as PJAK and Jundullah, are believed to be the beneficiaries of the US plan."

"PJAK is an offshoot of the internationally-recognized terrorist group the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK that carries out its deadly operations in Iran's Western Kurdish populated regions."

"A 2006 article published by The New Yorker suggested that the US military and Israel provide PJAK separatists with equipment, training and intelligence to destabilize Iran. "

"A 2007 Sunday Telegraph report revealed that the CIA had created Jundullah and provided it with 'arms-length support' and 'money and weapons' to achieve 'regime change in Iran'. "

"Another report posted by ABC also revealed that US officials had ordered Jundullah to 'stage deadly guerrilla raids inside the Islamic Republic, kidnap Iranian officials and execute them on camera', all as part of a 'programmatic objective to overthrow the Iranian government'. "

From: "From Mossadegh to Ahmadinejad: The CIA and the Iranian experiment," by Theirry Meyssan, June 28, 2009,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14134
and
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=region&regionId=7

From: T"he Mousavi campaign in Iran and the lessons of past “color revolutions”
by Niall Green, July 4, 2009, World Socialist Website,
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/colo-j04.shtml

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