Having said that, I’m happy to educate you on some of your less delusional opinions. For the rest I can do naught apart from suggesting that you don’t give too much credit to a bunch of neo-con loonies in the future.

Should you believe the Iranian state TV? No, you shouldn’t. Especially now as it’s the organ of the coup government. It’s been showing forced “confessions” for the last few days. It has been accusing every student/activist/politicians who is demanding the elections to be nullified as a stooge of western imperialism and of being in the pay of BBC and Voice of America. A bit like you, basically.

Mousavi declared his own victory after receiving news of his victory from election commission. That is before they decided to change their opinion and rig the result. This claim has never been repudiated by the relevant officials. I’ll list the other evidence of cheating if required.

As for your claims that the protests has been orchestrated from outside, well, that is based as much in reality and evidence as the “45 minutes dossiers”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1552784/Bush-sanctions-black-ops-against-Iran.html

President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert “black” operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed. Mr Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilise, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/06/432543.html
The US and Britain are already at war with Iran, have been at war with Iran for a number of years now and are funding anti-Iranian terrorist groups inside Iran in preparation for the fallout that will occur after overt military action is commenced. Not my words, the words of high ranking CIA officials, Defense department officials, former UN officials and retired US air force Colonels………………………..Can we believe Iranian state news? Is Britain and/or the US engaging in covert intelligence gathering in Iran? The answer is we don’t have to believe Iranian state news because it is a well established fact that a covert intelligence war is already being waged with Iran and has been ongoing for many years now.

In an article entitled The US war with Iran has already begun [1], written back in June 2005, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, addressed this very issue and described how intelligence gathering, direct action and the mobilizing of indigenous opposition is all being carried out already by CIA backed US special forces.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=War_in_Iran
Escalating the push for “regime change” with new CIA “non-lethal” “covert operations”

According to ABC, officials said the “non-lethal” CIA “plan ‘takes the place of proposed U.S. military action against Iran, reportedly advocated by Vice President [Dick] [[Dick Cheney|Cheney.”

http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/199929

Breaking News: National Endowment for Democracy (NED) behind the failed “Green Revolution” in Iran.
Iran Falling to US PSYOPS?
June 21, 2009
By Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/090621_iran.htm
President Obama called on the Iranian government to allow protesters to control the streets in Tehran. Would Obama or any US president allow protesters to control the streets in Washington, D.C.?

There was more objective evidence that George W. Bush stole his two elections than there is at this time of election theft in Iran. But there was no orchestrated media campaign to discredit the US government.

On May 16, 2007, the London Daily Telegraph reported that Bush regime official John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/027782.html
Arch neo-conservative Kenneth Timmerman spilled the beans on activities of the other arm of US meddling overseas, the obscenely mis-named National Endowment for Democracy, in a piece written one day before the election, stating curiously that “there’s the talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” Interesting. I wonder where that “talk” was coming from. Timmerman did not appear to be writing from Iran………………….Timmerman went on to write, with admirable candor and honesty, that:

“The National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting ‘color’ revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques.

“Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”

Yes, you say, but what does a blow-hard propagandist like Timmerman know about such things? Well, he should know! His very spooky Foundation for Democracy in Iran has its own snout deep in the trough of NED’s “open covert actions” against the Iranian government.

How does the “Foundation for Democracy in Iran” seek to “promote democracy” in Iran with our tax dollars? Foundation co-founder Joshua Muravchik gives us a hint in his subtly-titled LA Times piece, “Bomb Iran.”

http://www.nypress.com/article-7513-back-in-the-ussa.html
“Modern observers look back at the early Soviet days and wonder how it is that people could possibly have believed those fantastic tales they read about in the state papers–the lurid descriptions of fascist terrorists and wreckers who conspired to poison reservoirs and turn up rails and put broken glass in sausage in the most faraway, seemingly irrelevant places in Siberia and the far north. The answer probably is that they wanted to believe them. Because that was what was in their hearts. It wasn’t a lie that was being put over on them. It came from them.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06192009.html
By Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration

The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the release of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick……………………On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”

The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine. It requires total blindness not to see this.

And I suppose you are going to tell me that the US and Britain never would overthrow a government for control of oil in Iran.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

The Secret History of the CIA in Iran

The Central Intelligence Agency’s secret history of its covert operation to overthrow Iran’s government in 1953 offers an inside look at how the agency stumbled into success, despite a series of mishaps that derailed its original plans.

Written in 1954 by one of the coup’s chief planners, the history details how United States and British officials plotted the military coup that returned the shah of Iran to power and toppled Iran’s elected prime minister, an ardent nationalist.

Life is a funny thing Soon

Still your put down really made me laugh

The point is that there you are thinking should they or shouldn’t they but unless you’ve had your head in a bucket of crap for the last 5 years or so you would know full well that this has been orchestrated from outside.

The point is that none of the candidates were radical and it is not clear that any would have changed much therefore little reason to cheat on the elections. In the land of the Ayatollahs Who the hell cares who the President is?

What’s the bet that if they pull this off all previous contracts i.e.Russia’s Gazprom will be will be annulled and new American oil firms will be installed. Only this time the oil and gas will be bought in the ground and the Iranian people will find themselves short of a gallon or two while it goes on it’s merry way to the west. After all couldn’t have all those young Iranians using it all. After all we’ve got to do something about the Export land model http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/export_land_model

Nothing much will change Just another set of sons of bitches will be installed and everyone will be happy for a moment then back to reality.

A bit like Obamas America I suppose.

I challenged one of their reporters outside embassy a couple of days later and she told me its normal practice to “only report official statements coming from official sources”. I must have dreamed all those BBC reports on numerous Zimbabwean elections.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/22/dabashi.iran.myths/index.html

Haha…how naive. As a Farsi-speaking person who has been following the events on a daily basis and who had high hopes for this TV service, BBC Persian has been, since the election, probably the second most conservative if not openly toeing the government line news channel out there. After Iranian state TV.

This a regime which believes if a woman dies a virgin she will go to Heaven. Therefore , before they murder a female victim they force her to marry a guard who then rapes her. There are people who criticise the Conservatives for being too conservative with regard to social values .
The clergy reduce women to the status of chattels. Iranian women seeing other women being free and wanting such freedoms is the threat the clergy fear.

I found it on a (more to the point of this thread) recommended view list whilst watching George Galloway’s video, defending the liberties of Iran and Ahmadinejad. He’s gone too far now, hasn’t he?

As for Afghanistan I don’t find it surprising that there is no consensus amongst liberals. Defeating the Taliban should surely be an aim which liberals should support, OTOH there are real doubts about whether this is a practical possibility, and about some of the tactics being used. And of course military intervention in other countries is something about which we should of course we observe extreme caution.

That is because most Neo cons are like school bullies. Notice how few of them go to war or send their own kids to fight in their wars for profit. They are a bulling elite who think everybody is there to serve their own greedy agenda.

And when you see who Cameron has aligned his party with in the European parliament, a bunch of bible bashing, anti abortion. anti gay fascists it tells you where the modern Conservative party is mirroring the nuts of the Republican party.

While of course that is true to any sensible govt, it should be remembered that the neo cons like Cheney think “govt deficits don’t matter.” Also, part of the Neo con agenda is to bankrupt western govts so that there is no money to spend on welfare. The more you spend on war the less to spend on social security.

As for Dale, the man is an idiot. He just regurgitates Neo con talking points. He and his little gang were pushing the Nazi’s were left wing bullshit a few weeks ago. This just happens to be the same bullshit the American Right wing has been pushing in America for the last couple of years.

He does not have an original idea in his head. He just repeats the nonsense of the American right wing loons.

Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan already cost a cool £3.3 billion each year (officially) – who knows what the real figure is.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/13/budget.defence?gusrc=rss&feed=politics

And with the news that the British govt is now copying the American neo con idea of privatising war by hiring private contractors to carry out much of the work it is a lucrative business opportunity. Welfare for WASPS.