Case in Point

I’m borrowing the methodology of the diarists at Dkos for today’s offering as it illustrates the point I made in yesterday’s post.

In today’s NY Times you will find this editorial:

Editorial

Iran's Sham Democracy

Published: June 17, 2005

Today's presidential election in Iran is an affront to true democracy, just as the past record of the front-running contender, Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is an affront to true moderation. As President Bush rightly noted, the voting was effectively rigged in advance by the council of unelected clerics that decided who would and who wouldn't be allowed to run. And this is for a presidency, remember, that has no power to do anything the unelected clerical establishment does not want done, as amply demonstrated by the frustrating eight-year tenure of the departing incumbent, Mohammad Khatami.

While anyone here can ‘run’, a candidate that wants to win their party’s nomination must first ‘sell’ themselves to the party’s main contributors in that invisible selection process known as fundraising. The person with the largest ‘war chest’ usually wins this rather flagrant popularity contest by promising to ‘repay’ the contributions in the form of political favors.

As for Mr. Rafsanjani, his moderate reputation is plainly undeserved. His two previous presidential terms, from 1989 to 1997, were scarred by state-sponsored terrorism at home and abroad.

Like Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the US warship The Maine, 9/11 could very well turn out to be another inside job. Abu Gharib and Gitmo being likened to parts of the Soviet era gulags speak for themselves. It’s this kind of two-faced journalism that has US citizens up in arms over the media’s coverage of the news.

Yet Mr. Rafsanjani now claims to stand as the sensible centrist alternative, between a right-wing former police chief and a reformist pediatrician whom the clerical council allowed to run at the behest of Iran's real ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

While the evangelicals don’t have a ‘Pope’ (or an Ayatollah for that matter) the current degree to which religion has been mixing with politics lately makes that fact moot. Those who claim to speak for God have no place in the decision making process of a ‘free’ nation…yet here they are!

These manipulations have tempted millions to stay home, so as not to legitimize this sham exercise. They should steel themselves and vote anyway. Boycotting the election would benefit only the most antidemocratic forces on the clerical right.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Either way their ‘vote’ is meaningless as ‘the people’ will not be allowed to use it to decide issues, the exact same set of circumstances that we face here.

For all of its multiple flaws, this election is the best tool available to the Iranian people to indicate which way they want their troubled country to head over the next four years. Its outcome will affect how Iran is run and how it deals with the world.

Herein lies the ‘thrust’ or warning of this article:

Particularly important is the nuclear weapons issue, now even more critical in light of the latest disclosure that Tehran has been experimenting not just with enriched uranium but also with an alternative nuclear bomb fuel, plutonium.

Despite repeated reports that Iran doesn’t have any bomb making capabilities, the media continues once again to doggedly build a case for something that doesn’t exist.
More plainly put, a heap of Plutonium or enriched Uranium does not a bomb make.

Some European leaders have been quietly rooting for Mr. Rafsanjani, who is close to the top ayatollahs, in the hope that he would be most able to reach an acceptable nuclear deal and then sell it to the clerical establishment. There is little in his record to justify such hopes. The world would be better off if Western leaders used their little influence to press for more authentic democracy in Iran.

Looks pretty ‘authentic’ from here. The power elite has a firm grasp on the process. The only thing the public is allowed to do is ‘select’ who will make decisions in their name without their ever being consulted.

This is the same ‘process’ found in every so-called democracy. At the end of the day, the entire election process changes nothing, it’s all window dressing because ‘the people’ never get to determine even one issue for themselves.

Make no mistake about it good citizen. We are in the exact same position as the people of Iran.

Gone are the days when you could just shrug it all off, the days when politics were something that took place on a different planet, only occasionally intruding upon your world.

Big brother now watches us far too closely. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

When they kick down your front door, how you gonna go? Face down on the pavement or waiting on death row?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner