"Where were the Greens of Tehran? 1. On the Internet reading about the Trojan
horse plan; 2. On YouTube learning about the 'action'; 3. Chatting online in
the afternoon about where to meet in the morning." - Iranian blogger Alireza
Rezaie.
"To ignore the democrats and fail to support them in clear and strong terms
would be a sign of poor political judgment ..." - Amir Taheri, Wall Street
Journal.
Iran's "democrats" (the Greens) were deafeningly silent as Iran celebrated the
31st anniversary of its revolution last week. Those actually in Tehran for the
occasion saw hardly any sign of them. The reason, according to Taheri, is that
the clerical "regime" is being replaced by a military dictatorship. (US
Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton apparently reads Taheri: she has taken now to parroting his
"military dictatorship". But it's not smart to believe Taheri, as explained
below.)
Taheri writes that "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] controlled
Tehran with the help of tens of thousands of club-wielding street fighters
shipped in from all over the country ... For the first time, the regime had to
transform Tehran into a sealed citadel [creating] an atmosphere of war in the
divided city."
Taheri adds: "With the Internet shut down and foreign radio broadcasts jammed,
the regime imposed its own version of events." Try telling that to the blogger
quoted above, who managed to post his comments on a popular Iranian website.
Taheri might also care to tell us where he got his information.
Not content with the foregoing hyperbole, Taheri tells us, mystifyingly, "An
opposition attempt at storming the Evin Prison, where more than 3,000
dissidents are being tortured, did not materialize. The would-be liberators
failed to break a ring of steel the IRGC threw around the sprawling compound."
(So ... was there an attempt or not? Or was this the only way to get "torture"
into this porridge?)
Taheri has been trying to convince American readers for a long time that
popular opposition is burgeoning in Iran and all that's needed to topple the
"regime" is a push by Washington. This is the same "expert commentator" who
told us about the "regime's" plan to force Jews to wear colored badges, a piece
of disinformation quickly withdrawn with much embarrassment by its publishers.
(See Yellow
journalism and chicken hawks, Asia Times Online, May 24, 2006.)
Apparently, Taheri is still color blind, and astonishingly still lecturing
Americans about political judgment and democracy, albeit in the Murdoch media.
We thought democracy had something to do with government by the people, not by
a small minority abetted by an outside power. The rudderless Green leadership,
for its part, has not enough democratic gumption even to abjure clerical
rule.
The people of Iran, meanwhile, celebrated the anniversary of the revolution
that ousted the epitome of dictators, the US-backed Shah of Iran. And the
"Trojan horse" - Greens who would infiltrate the crowds wearing ordinary
clothes before shedding them to reveal their true colors - remained a
cyber-concept with a digital "nay".
Allen Quicke is Editor of atimes.net
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