Norman Transcript

It's good to see that Woodward, OK invited George W. Bush to their 4th of July celebration. Some days I feel sorry for this poor lonely man. His dream of being rich and famous took him to be the leader of our great nation. My satisfaction as a Oklahoma farmer and rancher is the rain that comes in July or August to carry a cow herd till fall.

I wonder what Bush will say in his 40 minutes speech. I'm sure it will be sprinkled with patriotism, independence and how we were only attacked once during his presidency.

Maybe he'll talk about how going to war in Iraq helped move oil from less than $25 to $147 a barrel. If oil could go to six times it's price, maybe cattle could go to $6 a pound or each cow could have six calves in one year.

That $4 a gallon fuel put many people behind on their stretched mortgages and kind of turned our economy into a tail spin. That money ended up in the pockets of his campaign contributors, so it should be a fair trade.

I doubt if he will talk about 4,300 American soldiers killed in Iraq or the 30,000 maimed for life. Or the haunting memories of thousands of others who watched it all happen.

The Iraqi people suffered the greatest loss of property and life, but I doubt if there is time to mention them in a 40 minute speech.

He could touch on torture for a few minutes. Bush said America did not torture which is partly true because most Americans would not torture a fellow human being. Bush and Cheney had to torture to back up faulty intelligence and extract information to suit their story of why we invaded Iraq. So that must mean it's okay.

I often wondered why a man would commit suicide to kill my son in Iraq. I guess if we treated his son, brother or cousin in a sub human way with our torture techniques, it would compel him to take revenge at the first American he could find.

The war is depressing to all but Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and others who profit. So my guess is, Bush will stick to our independence or maybe mention SEC watching Madoff, or how he firmed up the banks with our tax dollars.

The story of how the big banks failing would cause a major economic collapse reminds me of another story he told about weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

On second thought, I've heard his stories before and I'm short one family member because of him. So, I'll pass on George's speech this 4th of July.

Tulsa World

I am Warren L. Henthorn, father of lost soldier Jeffrey S. Henthorn, lost in Iraq 8 Feb 05.

I understand former President Bush is coming to Woodward OK on the 4th of July. Should he be welcomed? No.

This President lead the our military forces into a war of choice, a war that should not have happened, a war that has cost the lives of 4300 plus of U.S. soldiers, 35,000 plus injured, some hurt for the rest of their lives, and countless thousands of Iraqi people killed and wounded.

Does anyone remember the Vietnam war? Another war of choice, 58,000 dead, countless lives ruined to this day, should we celebrate President Bush's legacy? I think not.

If you think you have no involvement in this folly because you have no family members in this war, guess again. Where do you think our current economic problems came from? Ten billion dollars a month that you and your children will have to pay for sooner or latter to support a war that should never have happened. Soldiers walking our streets with mental problems from the horrors they saw, wounded soldiers dependent for the rest of their lives on us. You and yours will be paying for this also.

It's time to think about the reality of Bush's time in office, the military and economic mess he got us into and hold him responsible for it.

FBI Interrogation of Saddam Hussein, March 13, 2004

[…]

(S) Regarding limitations placed on the Iraqi military during this time period [when Iraqi troops were crushing the post-Gulf War uprising in 1991], Hussein asked, "What do you mean by limits?" Hussein denied that the Geneva convention applied to this situation, claiming it only applied to wars. Hussein claimed that with respect to the internal conflict, the Geneva Convention applied only to situations when an occupying power is another country. He claimed that the Geneva Convention was applicable [sic] to attempted coups or internal unrest involving crimes such as burning and looting.

[…]

Presidential Order Signed by George W. Bush on February 7, 2002

[…]

I ... determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world ...

I determine that the Taliban detainees are unlawful combatants and, therefore, do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva.

[…]

FBI Interrogation of Saddam Hussein, March 3, 2004

[...]

(S) The invasion of Kuwait was accomplished within two and a half hours, equivalent to that previously estimated. Hussein stated it should have taken no more than one hour. He believes it should have occurred more quickly than originally estimated due to support from the Kuwaiti people. Hussein reiterated a previous statement to the interviewers that Iraq was asked by the Kuwaiti people to invade their country in order to remove the Kuwaiti leadership. When asked to clarify how the Kuwaiti citizens communicated their desires to the Iraqi government prior to the invasion, Hussein stated some, not all, Kuwaitis felt this way. He added, "We felt they were asking."

[...]

Dead Certain by Robert Draper

[...]

"What reaction do you expect from the Iraqis to the entry of U.S. force in their cities?" Bush wanted to know.

"The Iraqi will welcome the U.S. forces with flowers and sweets when they come in," volunteered Makiya ... The other two [Iraqis] agreed that American troops would face immediate jubilation.

Bush was ready to believe this.

[...]

Huffington Post

The contested election in Iran received widespread attention from both the traditional U.S. media and new media sources including blogs and micro-blogs such as Twitter. Americans wishing to show solidarity with the Iranian people tinted their Twitter avatars green and also wore the trademark color of resistance. The media told us this was all part of a new digital form of solidarity.

And yet this solidarity movement starts and stops with this specific Iranian election. There was no such media-led solidarity movement during the 2003 contested election in Azerbaijan or Egypt's contested 2006 election.

Likewise, there is no solidarity movement in the U.S. media for the people of Honduras where President Manuel Zelaya has just been ousted during a military coup. The media has not aggressively pursued this story despite the fact that the US is highly influential in Honduras, and the coup was led by General Romeo Vasquez, who is himself a graduate of the US Army School of the Americas. Independent journalist Jeremy Scahill reports that the School of America graduates "maintain ties to the U.S. military as they climb the military career ladders in their respective countries."

There is little media interest in the Honduras story even though it seems the US government had advanced knowledge of the coup. The New York Times reports that "[U.S. government] officials began in the last few days to talk with Honduran government and military officials in an effort to head off a possible coup," but stopped short of closing the US-funded Joint Task Force-Bravo base where Honduran military forces are trained.

There is little media interest in the Honduras story even though it seems Zelaya fell out of favor because he failed to dance to the United State's favorite tune: Free Trade, Counterpunch's Nikolas Kozloff writes

Officially, the military removed Zelaya from power on the grounds that the Honduran President had abused his authority. On Sunday Zelaya hoped to hold a constitutional referendum which could have allowed him to run for reelection for another four year term, a move which Honduras' Supreme Court and Congress declared illegal. But while the controversy over Zelaya's constitutional referendum certainly provided the excuse for military intervention, it's no secret that the President was at odds politically with the Honduran elite for the past few years and had become one of Washington's fiercest critics in the region.

Zelaya committed his first sin when he began to criticize the media and owners of sweatshops which "produced goods for export in industrial free zones." Kozloff reports that Zelaya began to adopt some socially progressive policies that included a minimum wage, drug legalization, and bilateral relations with Cuba. Zelaya sealed his fate when he joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, an alliance of leftist Latin American and Caribbean nations headed by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

The Hondurans have reacted to this coup with as much gusto as the Iranians did during their supposed election fraud. The military has shut down public transportation and put up roadblocks to prevent protesters from reaching the capital. ¡Presente!'s Kristin Bricker writes that unknown numbers of citizens have taken to the streets, and she even includes photos in her report that are available for the taking by any network (CNN, MSNBC, FOX).

Somehow, the U.S. media isn't picking up on these details. A democratically elected president has been ousted by a military strongly supported and trained by the US government as apparent punishment for his adoption of progressive ideals. Where is the outrage, or at the least, the intrigue? Where are the solidarity movements?

The hashtag #Honduras quickly disappeared from Twitter's Trending Topics. It was replaced by Wimbledon, Michael Jackson, and Iran. Since Twitter siphons news from traditional media sources, it's only logical to assume that the focus on Honduras has diminished in the micro-blogging world because it has vanished from the U.S. media.

The media is highly selective in its pursuit of solidarity movements. Iran: good, Honduras: bad. Surely, the media can take five minutes off from obsessively reporting every macabre detail of Michael Jackson's death to cover a military coup.

Commondreams

OK, if this wasn't personal enough just yet for me, it just got a whole lot more so. And if you think for one instant that in this nation at this point in history and with this popularly elected President and Democratic Congress you will be treated for a heart attack simply because you might die if you are not treated, think again. And if you think having insurance helps, think some more.

On Friday, my husband was denied a blood test because a computer record from some distant time past and some other state showed he had a $7 balance with LabCorp. I am not making this up.

My husband had a heart attack this week. He woke up one morning sweating profusely and with a heart rate dropping. I watched his color turn first ruddy then ashen, and then he felt as though he was going to pass out. He would not allow me to call 911 as he slowly began to feel sick to his stomach and he believed his symptoms were digestive rather than cardiac.

We have learned over the years to wait to seek care - it is expensive to do otherwise and dooms us to the endless loop of bills and collection notices and more damage to our already badly bruised credit rating. So we always wait to seek care until there seems to be no other option. We are not alone. Millions of Americans do the same. We do not want to use the emergency rooms or doctors' offices. We don't want anything to do with the whole mess.

We moved to Maryland in March, but have fought Humana insurance and Medicare transfer since then to even make sure my husband can get any care at all. And, by God, we were paying the premiums the whole time the insurance folks hemmed and hawed and stalled. It took three months to get that all straightened out, during which time they repeated over and over, "we're not denying treatment," and technically I suppose they weren't as they want us all just to get out our checkbooks and debit cards and pay up. And in the meantime, my husband waited for any doctors' appointment and got meds by calling back to Chicago to get prescriptions refilled.

My husband is a cardiac patient and a vascular patient with a complicated medical history and needs follow-up care on a regular basis. He is a responsible guy who has always maintained his insurance coverage and who avoids seeking care unless it is needed. He does not seek to overuse or abuse the system. To stay relatively healthy, he needs regular check-ups and decent intervention when necessary.

But, I insisted my husband follow up in the way we all are told is more sensible and cost effective. He went to a primary care doc on Wednesday who shuffled him off to a cardiologist after a visit barely long enough to be billed as an "extended, new patient visit." An EKG showed the grim reality. "Abnormal, negative T-waves. Inferior infarct."

Blood work was ordered in advance of the cardiologist visit set for Friday. He was to fast overnight, see the cardiologist and then get his blood drawn. Seems to be progressing, eh?

Well, only until he sat down in the LabCorp office to get his blood drawn. The LabCorp employee typed in my husband's Social Security Number, and promptly told him he could not have his blood drawn or have his test administered until he cleared up his old bill with LabCorp. The bill? $7. That's right -- $7.

And my husband has been covered by insurance for many years. But now he sat - post myocardial infarction or heart attack - being told by a laboratory employee that he would be denied care due to an unpaid $7 bill. He did not have $7 with him. He was fasting. He tried to explain. They did not budge. They did call the supervisor. She confirmed and stood her ground for LabCorp. No test for Larry Smith. He owes $7.

David King, the CEO of LabCorp, made $8.2 million in 2008. He's one of the people and LabCorp is one of the companies President Obama is celebrating who will help transform our nation's healthcare system. Indeed. And LabCorp's political participation committee donated funds to several candidates in 2008, including Sen. Max Baucus and Sen. Charles Grassley, both of the Senate Finance Committee that is working on the nation's healthcare reform.

Lest we think the insurance giants are the only people hurting, harming and killing Americans like my husband as they shore up their profits, follow the money in this story alone. One doctor's office, another doctor's office, one insurance company and finally a lab - all worked together to make what they could individually off my husband and then ultimately denied his care for $7. Everybody got their bite of the apple and then left him in the dust as they moved on to the next source of revenue, oops, I mean the next patient.

Where do we stand today? Still no blood work drawn. Waiting for next week to see what we can do to set the tests and exams the cardiologist ordered before she got busy with another patient. Did my husband return to the doctor's office to tell them what happened and ask for their help? Yes. And he said not one person, not one, would reach into their pockets and give him the $7 or pick up the phone and try to help him resolve this. So what was his life worth? $7.

We'll get the tests done somehow. But the point is, we'll have to fight for it. And his heart will be stressed more and so on and so on and so on. This is the travesty of healthcare in this nation. And this Congress and this President are so damned concerned with their own political futures they cannot even see this reality for the rest of us. I am so angry.

And don't tell me that a single payer - publicly funded and privately delivered system -- wouldn't stop heart attack patients from being denied care due to old debts of $7. It's the only system that could stop that sort of abuse.

The LabCorp supervisor who denied Larry Smith's test on Friday, June 26, in Elkridge, Maryland, is named Shirley Smith (no relation to Larry) at LabCorp's Maryland office: 410-365-1264. LabCorp's customer service line for billing can be reached at: 1-800-845-6167.

Donna Smith is a community organizer for the California Nurses Association and National Co-Chair for the Progressive Democrats of America Healthcare Not Warfare campaign.

Down with Tyranny

When I returned from covering the Iranian elections recently, I was surprised to find my email box filled with progressive authors, academics and bloggers bending themselves into knots about the current crisis in Iran. They cite the long history of U.S. interference in Iran and conclude that the current unrest there must be sponsored or manipulated by the Empire.

That comes as quite a shock to those risking their lives daily on the streets of major Iranian cities fighting for political, social and economic justice.

Some of these authors have even cited my book, The Iran Agenda, as a source to prove U.S. meddling. Whoa there, pardner. Now we’re getting personal.

The large majority of American people, particularly leftists and progressives, are sympathetic to the demonstrators in Iran, oppose Iranian government repression and also oppose any U.S. military or political interference in that country. But a small and vocal number of progressives are questioning that view, including authors writing for Monthly Review online, Foreign Policy Journal, and prominent academics such as retired professor James Petras.

They mostly argue by analogy. They correctly cite numerous examples of CIA efforts to overthrow governments, sometimes by manipulating mass demonstrations. But past practice is no proof that it’s happening in this particular case. Frankly, the multi-class character of the most recent demonstrations, which arose quickly and spontaneously, were beyond the control of the reformist leaders in Iran, let alone the CIA.

Let’s assume for the moment that the U.S. was trying to secretly manipulate the demonstrations for its own purposes. Did it succeed? Or were the protests reflecting 30 years of cumulative anger at a reactionary system that oppresses workers, women, and ethnic minorities, indeed the vast majority of Iranians? Is President Mahmood Ahmadinejad a “nationalist-populist,” as claimed by some, and therefore an ally against U.S. domination around the world? Or is he a repressive, authoritarian leader who actually hurts the struggle against U.S. hegemony?

Let’s take a look. But first a quick note.

As far as I can tell none of these leftist critics have actually visited Iran, at least not to report on the recent uprisings. Of course, one can have an opinion about a country without first-hand experience there. But in the case of recent events in Iran, it helps to have met people. It helps a lot.

The left-wing Doubting Thomas arguments fall into three broad categories.

1. Assertion: President Mahmood Ahmadinejad won the election, or at a minimum, the opposition hasn’t proved otherwise.

Michael Veiluva, Counsel at the Western States Legal Foundation (representing his own views) wrote on the Monthly Review website:

“[U.S. peace groups] are quick to denounce the elections as ‘massively fraudulent’ and generally subscribe to the ‘mad mullah’ stereotype of the current political system in Iran. There is a remarkable convergence between the tone of these statements and the American right who are hypocritically beating their chests over Iran's ‘stolen’ election.

Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, James Petras wrote:

“[N]ot a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form has been presented either before or a week after the vote count. During the entire electoral campaign, no credible (or even dubious) charge of voter tampering was raised.”

Actually, Iranians themselves were very worried about election fraud prior to the vote count. When I covered the 2005 elections, Ahmadinejad barely edged out Mehdi Karoubi in the first round of elections. Karoubi raised substantive arguments that he was robbed of his place in the runoff due to vote fraud. But under Iran’s clerical system, there’s no meaningful appeal. So, as he put it, he took his case to God.

On the day of the 2009 election, election officials illegally barred many opposition observers from the polls. The opposition had planned to use text messaging to communicate local vote tallies to a central location. The government shut down SMS messaging! So the vote count was entirely dependent on a government tally by officials sympathetic to the incumbent.

I heard many anecdotal accounts of voting boxes. arriving pre-stuffed and of more ballots being printed than are accounted for in the official registration numbers. It seems unlikely that the Iranian government will allow meaningful appeals or investigations into the various allegations about vote rigging.

A study by two professors at Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, took a close look at the official election results and found some major discrepancies. For Ahmadinejad to have sustained his massive victory in one third of Iran’s provinces, he would have had to carry all his supporters, all new voters, all voters previously voting centrist and about 44% of previous reformist voters.

Keep in mind that Ahmadinejad’s victory takes place in the context of a highly rigged system. The Guardian Council determines which candidates may run based on their Islamic qualifications. As a result, no woman has ever been allowed to campaign for president and sitting members of parliament were disqualified because they had somehow become un-Islamic.

The constitution of Iran created an authoritarian theocracy in which various elements of the ruling elite could fight out their differences, sometimes through elections and parliamentary debate, sometimes through violent repression. Iran is a classic example of how a country can have competitive elections without being democratic.

2. Assertion: The U.S. has a long history of meddling in Iran, so it must be behind the current unrest.

Jeremy R. Hammond writes in the progressive website Foreign Policy Journal: “[G]iven the record of U.S. interference in the state affairs of Iran and clear policy of regime change, it certainly seems possible, even likely, that the U.S. had a significant role to play in helping to bring about the recent turmoil in an effort to undermine the government of the Islamic Republic."

Eric Margolis, a columnist for Quebecor Media Company in Canada and a contributor to the Huffington Post, wrote:

“While the majority of protests we see in Tehran are genuine and spontaneous, Western intelligence agencies and media are playing a key role in sustaining the uprising and providing communications, including the newest electronic method, via Twitter. These are covert techniques developed by the US during recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that brought pro-US governments to power.”

Both authors cite numerous cases of the U.S. using covert means to overthrow legitimate governments. The CIA engineered large demonstrations, along with assassinations and terrorist bombings, to cause confusion and overthrow the parliamentary government of Iran’ Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. The U.S. used similar methods in an effort to overthrow Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002. (For more details, see my book, Dateline Havana: The Real Story of US Policy and the Future of Cuba.)

Hammond cites my book The Iran Agenda and my interview on Democracy Now to show that the Bush Administration was training and funding ethnic minorities in an effort to overthrow the Iranian government in 2007.

All the arguments are by analogy and implication. Neither the above two authors, nor anyone else of whom I am aware, offers one shred of evidence that the Obama Administration has engineered, or even significantly influenced, the current demonstrations.

Let’s look at what actually happened on the ground. Tens of millions of Iranians went to bed on Friday, June 12, convinced that either Mousavi had won the election outright or that there would be runoff between him and Ahmadinejad. They woke up Saturday morning and were stunned. “It was a coup d’etat,” several friends told me. The anger cut across class lines and went well beyond Mousavi’s core base of students, intellectuals and the well-to-do.

Within two days hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating peacefully in the streets of Tehran and other major cities. Could the CIA have anticipated the vote count, and on two days notice, mobilized its nefarious networks? Does the CIA even have the kind of extensive networks that would be necessary to control or even influence such a movement? That simultaneously gives the CIA too much credit and underestimates the independence of the mass movement.

As for the charge that the CIA is providing advanced technology like Twitter, pleaaaaaase. In my commentary carried on Reuters, I point out that the vast majority of Iranians have no access to Twitter and that the demonstrations were mostly organized by cell phone and word of mouth.

Frankly, based on my observations, no one was leading the demonstrations. During the course of the week after the elections, the mass movement evolved from one protesting vote fraud into one calling for much broader freedoms. You could see it in the changing composition of the marches. There were not only upper middle class kids in tight jeans and designer sun glasses. There were growing numbers of workers and women in very conservative chadors.

Iranian youth particularly resented President Ahmadinejad’s support for religious militia attacks on unmarried young men and women walking together and against women not covering enough hair with their hijab. Workers resented the 24 percent annual inflation that robbed them of real wage increases. Independent trade unionists were fighting for decent wages and for the right to organize.

Some demonstrators wanted a more moderate Islamic government. Others advocated a separation of mosque and state, and a return to parliamentary democracy they had before the 1953 coup. But virtually everyone believes that Iran has the right to develop nuclear power, including enriching uranium. Iranians support the Palestinians in their fight against Israeli occupation, and they want to see the U.S. get out of Iraq.

So if they CIA was manipulating the demonstrators, it was doing a piss poor job.

Of course, the CIA would like to have influence in Iran. But that’s a far cry from saying it does have influence. By proclaiming the omnipotence of U.S. power, the leftist critics ironically join hands with Ahmadinejad and the reactionary clerics who blame all unrest on the British and U.S.

3. Assertion: Ahmadinejad is a nationalist-populist who opposes U.S. imperialism. Efforts to overthrow him only help the U.S.

James Petras wrote: “Ahmadinejad’s strong position on defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition….”

“Ahmadinejad’s electoral success, seen in historical comparative perspective should not be a surprise. In similar electoral contests between nationalist-populists against pro-Western liberals, the populists have won. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez of Venezuela, [and] Evo Morales in Bolivia.”

Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry wrote on its website:

“The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela expresses its firm opposition to the vicious and unfounded campaign to discredit the institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, unleashed from outside, designed to roil the political climate of our brother country. From Venezuela, we denounce these acts of interference in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while demanding an immediate halt to the maneuvers to threaten and destabilize the Islamic Revolution.”

From 1953-1979, the Shah of Iran brutally repressed his own people and aligned himself with the U.S. and Israel. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran brutally repressed its own people and broke its alliance with the U.S. and Israel. That apparently causes confusion for some on the left.

I have written numerous articles and books criticizing U.S. policy on Iran, including Bush administration efforts to overthrow the Islamic government. The U.S. raises a series of phony issues, or exaggerates problems, in an effort to impose its domination on Iran. (Examples include Iran’s nuclear power program, support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and support for Shiite groups in Iraq.)

During his past four years in office, Ahmadinejad has ramped up Iran’s anti-imperialist rhetoric and posed himself as a leader of the Islamic world. That accounts for his fiery rhetoric against Israel and his denial of the Holocaust. (Officially, Ahmadinejad “questions” the Holocaust and says “more study is necessary.” That reminds me of the creationists who say there needs to be more study because evolution is only a theory.) As pointed out by the opposition candidates, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric about Israel and Jews has only alienated people around the world and made it more difficult for the Palestinians.

But in the real world, Ahmadinejad has done nothing to support the Palestinians other than sending some funds to Hamas. Despite rhetoric from the U.S. and Israel, Iran has little impact on a struggle that must be resolved by Palestinians and Israelis themselves.

So comparing Ahmadinejad with Chavez or Evo Morales is absurd. I have reported from both Venezuela and Bolivia numerous times. Those countries have genuine mass movements that elected and kept those leaders in power. They have implemented significant reforms that benefitted workers and farmers. Ahmadinejad has introduced 24% annual inflation and high unemployment.

As for the position of Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez, they are simply wrong. On a diplomatic level, Venezuela and Iran share some things in common. Both are under attack from the U.S., including past efforts at “regime change.” Venezuela and other governments around the world will have to deal with Ahmadinejad as the de facto president, so questioning the election could cause diplomatic problems.

But that’s no excuse. Chavez has got it exactly backward. The popular movement in the streets will make Iran stronger as it rejects outside interference from the U.S. or anyone else.

This is no academic debate or simply fodder for bored bloggers. Real lives are at stake. A repressive government has killed at least 17 Iranians and injured hundreds. The mass movement may not be strong enough to topple the system today but is sowing the seeds for future struggles.

The leftist critics must answer the question: Whose side are you on?


UPDATE: A Response From Jeremy Hammond

Jeremy Hammond, bristling at the implication that he's a leftist, responded to Reese's post at his blog at the Foreign Policy Journal.

Labels: CIA, Iran, Reese Erlich, twitter

Iran's torture practices are even worse than the beatings on YouTube. Daily Beast contributor and human rights lawyer Scott Horton on the nation's most notorious torturer.

Daily Beast

Since June 14, Iran has witnessed a mass popular uprising against a fraudulent election, which bears some close comparisons with the one that toppled the shah in 1979. But the enthusiasm and resolve of the Green Revolution has been held in check by the brutal tools of a sophisticated police state that learned from the shah’s equivocation. The tools used so far and those now in planning allow us to sketch the outlines of the Khamenei police state. They also allow us better to understand what the opposition means when it calls for the restoration of the rule of law in Iran.

Organized Police Violence

Iran’s theocratic state has a number of police organizations that serve overlapping but different functions. It has conventional police officers, who are frequently characterized by protesters as more moderate and restrained. An informal, youthful paramilitary police called the Basij have carried much of the brunt of the effort to suppress demonstrators. The Basij are controlled by the Iranian Republican Guard and are under the authority and control of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei—with personal loyalty to Khamenei a principal criterion for recruitment of members. Before the uprising, the Basij’s major function consisted of enforcing rules of public morality—requiring women, for instance, to wear the hijab in public, collecting and destroying pornography, and monitoring for and destroying satellite dishes. The use of truncheons and physical brutality are Basij signatures.

These informal militias have been boosted dramatically in recent weeks with fresh recruits who have been told that the demonstrators are bent on toppling the state. They have been given full license to use harsh force to put the demonstrations down. Roozonline, a Farsi Internet newspaper, recently featured an interview with one of the new recruits. Here’s a summary by The Guardian’s Robert Tait of the interview:

“The man, who has come from a small town in the eastern province of Khorasan and has never been in Tehran before, says he is being paid 2m rial ($200) to assault protesters with a heavy wooden stave. He says the money is the main incentive as it will enable him to get married and may even enable him to afford more than one wife. Leadership of the volunteers has been provided by a man known only as ‘Hajji,’ who has instructed his men to ‘beat the counter-revolutionaries so hard that they won’t be able to stand up.’ The volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces such as Khuzestan, Arak, and Mazandaran, are being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran. Other volunteers, he says, have been brought from Lebanon, where the Iranian regime has strong allies in the Hezbollah movement. They are said to be more highly paid than their Iranian counterparts and are put up in hotels. The last piece of information seems to confirm the suspicion of many Iranians that foreign security personnel are being used to suppress the demonstrators. For all his talk of the legal process, this interview provides a key insight into where Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believes the true source of his legitimacy rests.”

Iranian authorities deny that orders have been issued to use lethal force against the demonstrators, but at a minimum many dozens of cases have been recorded in which protesters or individuals in crowds were shot or beaten to death. One particularly gruesome incident reported on June 25 near the Iranian parliament documented a militiaman wielding an ax to hack victims to pieces. Apparent evidence of his work can be viewed here.

Police suppression techniques include use of tear gas and helicopters dumping burning liquid on protesters (likely tear gas compounds suspended in water). Police also use cameras and other imaging devices to make images of the protesters for use in their later identification and arrest. The regime also uses torture.

Torture and Forced Confessions

What happens to the thousands of protesters who are being carted away by the police and militia? The Iranian state has long had a predilection for torture; the overthrow of the shah and arrival of the Islamic republic produced only a slight modulation of the techniques.

Salon.com has recently published a detailed account of a 17-year-old who was seized last week by Basij militiamen and tortured:

“One of them asked me if [the former reformist president] Khatami would come save us, while they were breaking my fingers and cutting the finger webs. Although I swore a thousand times that I had not voted and had never participated in any demonstration, they didn’t care and just kept beating me hard. I fainted once or twice but there were 20 some of us who fainted every time their bones were broken, and as soon as they gained their consciousness, the riot police started beating them again. I was trying to contract my muscles to avoid further bone fracture. This continued till around 1 p.m., when they took us to another place, where security guards were in charge. We were then interrogated by the militia. Again, they kept beating me although I told them that I have never participated in any demonstration. In general, they were less harsh than the previous ones. In the evening, we were transferred to a police station where normal police with green uniforms hung us by our hands (you can see the signs of the string around my wrists on the pictures), they hung some of us upside down and started beating us again.” (The Salon.com account is accompanied by photographs evidencing the injuries the narrator sustained and can be viewed here:

Torture is generally being applied with two primary objectives—to force prisoners to identify others involved in the demonstrations and coerce false confessions. The protesters are compelled to state that they went to demonstrations against the government because they fell under the influence of foreign media (aping comments by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other government figures, pointing to the Persian-language service of the BBC as a particularly favored whipping boy). On June 23, Iranian state television produced a parade of apprehended demonstrators who offered up crudely staged confessions. “I think we were provoked by networks like the BBC and [Voice of America] to take such immoral actions,” one young man stated. A woman followed him, saying that she “was influenced by VOA Persian [service] and the BBC because they were saying that the security forces were behind most of the clashes.”

As usual, torture is used to develop false information that works as domestic propaganda. The claim that foreign news services are the principal instigators serves several goals. First, it will provide a basis for criminal charges against protest leaders like Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Under Iran’s Law of Discretionary Punishment (Qanon-e Ta’zir), “consorting with foreign powers” is a crime subject to severe punishment. It can and frequently is elevated to a more formal criminal charge of “espionage,” in which case the death penalty can be sought. But in the Iranian system, insulting government leaders, convening unlawful meetings, and making false statements to the government are also punishable crimes. Second, it can provide a basis to prosecute not only the protester who made the confession, but also those who were identified by him or her as participants. But most important, it is used to fuel the Khamenei regime’s propaganda that the opposition is controlled by evil foreign powers, especially the United States and Great Britain. The notion of a grave threat from abroad is the whip that Iranian governments have used since the reign of Ayatollah Khomeini to silence critics and govern with an iron fist.

Swift Justice

Rumors surge in Tehran about how the regime will deal with the protesters who are now being held. A special court will be created, it is widely expected. In the Iranian system, the courts are creatures of the supreme leader, and judges are generally clerics known for their personal loyalty to him. Special-purpose courts can be created and unwound as it suits the leader.

One name now circulates: Saaed Mortazavi, nicknamed the “Butcher.” Mortazavi is now expected to be given the protesters’ cases with a special mandate to deal with them swiftly. Mortazavi is a well-known name in Western circles. As the prosecutor-general of Tehran, he has demonstrated a penchant for going after bloggers and those who traffic in the Internet, as well as a special disdain for Barbie dolls, which he sees as insidious tools of Western corruption.

Mortazavi is associated with one case in particular, that of Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi, who was arrested in 2003 after she took pictures of the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran. Kazemi died in prison and a medical examination revealed “obvious signs of torture, including a skull fracture, broken nose, crushed toe, missing fingernails, broken fingers, signs of brutal rape, marks from flogging, deep scratches on her neck, and severe abdominal bruising.” The Iranian government insisted her injuries were self-inflicted. Kazemi’s case was handled personally by Saaed Mortazavi.

The Long Wait and the Bullet Fee

In Iran today, families that have lost a loved one—disappeared without a trace—search hospitals, morgues, and police stations asking after the missing son or daughter. The Los Angeles Times reports on the hundreds who assemble every day at the gates of Evin Prison, seeking news of a missing person. Occasionally, the dreaded news is confirmed: There is a body to be picked up. Then the final indignity comes: the bullet fee. The Wall Street Journal reports on one such case:

“At the crack of dawn, his father began searching at police stations, then hospitals, and then the morgue. Upon learning of his son’s death, the elder Mr. Alipour was told the family had to pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a ‘bullet fee’—a fee for the bullet used by security forces—before taking the body back, relatives said. Mr. Alipour told officials that his entire possessions wouldn’t amount to $3,000, arguing they should waive the fee because he is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War. According to relatives, morgue officials finally agreed, but demanded that the family do no funeral or burial in Tehran. Kaveh Alipour’s body was quietly transported to the city of Rasht, where there is family.”

This marks the revival of a practice from early days of the Islamic republic, when the death penalty was applied rampantly against those considered enemies of the regime. Their families were frequently asked to pay the costs associated with the execution in order to gain release of the body for a funeral. The bullet fee well symbolizes the harshness of a brutal police state that cloaks itself in the trappings of religion.

Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.

Center for International Policy

Thousands of indigenous people from the Amazon jungle of Peru accomplished the unthinkable early this month. Their movement to save the Amazon and their communities forced the Peruvian government to roll back implementing legislation for the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that would have opened up the vast jungle to transnational oil and gas, mining, and timber companies.

The decision did not come without blood. Police attacked indigenous roadblocks and sit-ins in Bagua in Northern Peru, killing some 60 indigenous protestors, members of a 300,000 strong interethnic association of Amazon groups. The Peruvian government claims that 24 police officers and nine civilians died in the violence. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur, and other human rights and environmental organizations throughout the world have initiated investigations into the massacre.

Peru's Congress, deep in a political crisis of national and international legitimacy, voted 82 to 12 to repeal Legislative Decree 1090, the Forestry and Wildlife Law, and 1064, the reform to permit changes in agrarian land use without full prior consent.

As President Alan Garcia went on national television to admit errors in not consulting with the indigenous groups of the Amazon, Daysi Zapata, representative of the association celebrated the triumph:

"Today is an historic day, we are thankful because the will of the indigenous peoples has been taken into account and we just hope that in the future, the governments attend and listen to the people, that they don't legislate behind our backs."

Zapata called to lift roadblocks and other actions throughout the country, while anticipating more battles to come over the repeal of seven related decrees, reinstatement of legislators suspended for protesting government actions, and the safe return of the president of the association, Alberto Pizango, forced to seek asylum in Nicaragua.

Indigenous women fought at the forefront of protests against the displacement of indigenous communities in the Amazon in the interests of foreign-led development plans. A Spanish sub-titled video of an Aguaruna mother provides a rare glimpse of how the Amazon communities view these plans—even if you don't understand her language, her anguish and anger cut straight to the heart. Other videos taken by journalists who risked their lives as police fired on demonstrators, quickly circulated in the cyber world, raising global indignation.

Washington's "New" Trade Policy Leads to Amazon Massacre

The recent clash between indigenous peoples and the Peruvian national police sends a powerful message from the Amazon jungle straight to Washington. The enormous social, political, and environmental costs of the free trade model are no longer acceptable.

In addition to the dead, hundreds remain missing and reports that the police threw the bodies of the protestors in the river to hide the real death toll have begun to circulate. Survival International and Amazon Watch have deplored the violence, the subsequent crackdown on NGOs in Peru, and the role that the free trade agreement played in the crisis.

In May 2004 the U.S. and Peruvian governments began negotiations for a free trade agreement and signed the bilateral agreement on December 8, 2005. The signing provoked the first round of widespread protests, led by small farmers. Demonstrations against the agreement continued up through the signing of the ratified version by former President Bush and President Garcia in January of this year; four protestors were killed in 2008.

No doubt exists about the connection between the protests, the executive decrees, and the U.S. free trade agreement. In his televised mea culpa, Garcia began by stating that the repudiated measures were designed to eliminate illegal logging and informal mining (by legalizing it in the hands of transnationals, according to critics) and was "a demand of ecologist and progressive sectors in the North American Congress in negotiations to pass the Free Trade Agreement."

The U.S.-Peru trade agreement is held up as a model of the new trade agreement developed through a compromise between free-trade Republicans and Democrats with growing anti-free trade constituencies. To avoid the negative connotations of free trade agreements it was redubbed a "Trade Promotion Agreement" and incorporates environmental and labor standards into the text. These are the standards Garcia says he was complying with when he passed the decrees to open up 45 million hectares of Peruvian jungle to developers.

The Democratic leadership in Congress pushed the new model that looks remarkably like the old model, although the majority of Democrats voted against it. At the Pathways to Prosperity meeting, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton hailed the agreement as "good environmental stewardship"—just four days before Peruvian police shot indigenous activists protesting invasion of the Amazon jungle.

The Obama administration has so far avoided commenting on the conflict. But neither the battle for the Amazon nor the debate over free trade's role in indigenous displacement and environmental destruction are likely to go away any time soon, despite repeal of the decrees. A planetary lung and a legendary reserve of culture and biodiversity, the Amazon region embodies conflicting values and views of human progress.

For Peruvian President Alan Garcia, in an editorial in El Comercio, the jungle is currently just a big waste: "There are millions of hectares of timber lying idle, another millions of hectares that communities and associations have not and will not cultivate, hundreds of mineral deposits that are not dug up, and millions of hectares of ocean not used for aquaculture. The rivers that run down both sides of the mountains represent a fortune that reaches the sea without producing electricity."

Garcia argues that indigenous peoples, just because they were born in the Amazon, do not have special land-use rights on the land. Instead, the Amazon should be carved up into large plots and sold to investors with the capital to exploit it. The Peruvian government coveted the free trade agreement with the United States because, along with the required changes in national legislation, it opens up the Amazon to foreign investment.

In contrast, the indigenous communities and their supporters seek to conserve the Amazon jungles and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures, all of which would be threatened by exploitation, bio-prospecting, and patent law changes under the FTA.

This contest between oil wells and jungles, foreign engineers, and Amazon inhabitants has spread to the rest of Peru and the world. On June 11, tens of thousands of people marched in support of the indigenous protests in cities and towns across the country, chanting, "In defense of the jungle—the jungle is not for sale." Simultaneously, demonstrators hit the streets to show support for the indigenous communities in cities throughout the world.

And it follows similar battles in other countries. In Mexico, hundreds of thousands of farmers marched to protest NAFTA's agricultural chapter; in Colombia, indigenous and farm organizations marched to oppose a U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement; in Costa Rica, nearly half the population voted against CAFTA; and in Guatemala, CAFTA protesters were killed in the streets.

Yet somehow these voices never make it into the U.S. trade debate. The assumption that a free trade agreement is a gift to a developing country continues to be enforced by a U.S. government refusal to listen to voices other than national economic elites. Meanwhile, the New York Times echoes accusations that foreign countries or terrorist organizations have duped these thousands of women, farmers, indigenous groups, and workers into opposing progress.

As long as providing clear access and mobility for transnational companies and financial capital is accepted as the sole measure of progress, concerns for the earth and human beings with little economic power and a different view of development won't be part of the discussion. We have to rethink the free-trade model and listen to the men, women, and children on the bottom of the economic ladder who sacrifice their lives to help save the Amazon jungles they call home. We owe them an enormous debt.

The global crisis compels a new vision of sustainable growth and social equity. The Obama administration has noted the need for changes—reviewing trade policy should be at the top of the agenda.

Laura Carlsen (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org) is the Director of the Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org) for the Center for International Policy in Mexico City.

Z Magazine

In recent days, we continue witnessing the magnificent demonstration of millions of people from all ages, genders, and national and religious minorities in Iran. They request that their basic human rights, particularly the right to freedom and to choose independently and without deception be recognized. These rights are not only constitutional in most of the countries, but also have been protected against all odds.

Amid such turmoil, one witnesses threats, arrests, murders and brutal suppression that one fears only to escalate on all its aspects, resulting in more innocent bloodshed, more protests, and certainly no retreats. Iranian society is facing a deep political-economical crisis. Million-strong silent protests, ironically loud with un-spoken words, have turned into iconic stature and are expanding from all sides. These protests demand reaction from each and every responsible individual and institution.

As previously expressed in a statement published on-line in May of this year, since the Vahead Syndicate does not view any of the candidates support the activities of the workers' organizations in Iran, it would not endorse any presidential candidate in the election. Vahed members nevertheless have the right to participate or not to participate in the elections and vote for their individually selected candidate.

Moreover, the fact remains that demands of almost an absolute majority of the Iranians go far beyond the demands of a particular group. In the past, we have emphasized that until the freedom of choice and right to organize are not recognized, talk of any social or particular right would be more of a mockery than a reality.

The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company fully supports this movement of Iranian people to build a free and independent civil society and condemns any violence and oppression.

In line with the recognition of the labour rights, the Syndicate requests that June 26 which has been called by the International Trade Unions Organization 'Day of action' for justice for Iranian workers to include the human rights of all Iranians who have been deprived of their rights.

With hope for freedom and equality

The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company