Dave wrote:You are a cancer upon any thread you deign to enter which is why no one here takes you seriously at all.
Only fools take you seriously, Dave.
NoRapture, to me, is a worthwhile poster. I could never say the same of your simpleminded garble. It's amazing that you find posting insults at all entertaining or informative. Go play with yourself or something, and leave the scholarship to the scholars.
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Well, it seems GandalfTheGrey is misrepresenting the anti-imperialist wing of POFO.
As it stands, many people following the pre-Iranian news noticed how Israel and the U.S. heightened their, as Ahmadinejad would later call it, "psychological warfare" on Iran. That is, Israel, if we all remember, unleashed a poll result that said how Israelis would not approve of Iran's nuclear capabilities and so forth. Later on, there was a huge protest over Ahmadinejad's victory, and the West covered it like it were very relevant and important. What is interesting to note is the following:
A more recent example of double standards can be seen in the reaction to the last general election in Kenya in December 2007, which preceded the election in Zimbabwe by a couple of months. On 30 December 2007 the Electoral Commission of Kenya declared Kibaki the winner of the hotly disputed Presidential election and he was hastily sworn in. The State Department (the US Ministry of Foreign Affairs) quickly congratulated Kibaki and called on Kenyans to accept the outcome, even as international election observers expressed doubt about the tallying of the presidential ballots, and Kenyans took to the streets to dispute the presidential results. It has now come to light that the International Republican Institute had conducted, on the behest of the US government, an exit poll in Kenya and found that Raila Odinga won the election by six percentage points. The Institute, which received funding from the US government, had signed a contract to the effect that it would consult with the US embassy before releasing the exit poll results, taking into account the poll’s technical quality and ‘other key diplomatic interests’. As it turned out, the exit poll results were withheld seemingly on an order from the US government, only to be released one year later, when they cannot have an impact! Releasing the exit poll results on time might have helped the situation, either by forcing the Electoral Commission to seek a more accurate ballot tally, or by shortening the power-sharing negotiation and thus saving some lives. But the exit poll would have also strengthened the hand of Raila Odinga, the opposition presidential candidate, who ‘was viewed sceptically by some in Washington because of his flamboyant manner and his background: he was educated in East Germany and named his son after Fidel Castro’ (New York Times, January 30 2009). Obviously to the US, independence of mind is considered far worse a crime than subverting the will of the people expressed through the ballot box, and the US had no qualm in contributing to the subversion through a tactical withholding of key information from the public and by rushing to congratulate the ‘winner’ in a clearly flawed election.
That is, in an election in which a candidate lost, the U.S. didn't care about the outcome and instead congratulated the candidate and silence the reports contesting it. There were huge protests in Kenya, too, and reasonably so, yet there was no news coverage on it.
The fact is that the U.S. does not care about 'democracy' and when it does there is no 'democracy' taking place. The U.S. installs candidates in elections and pays for their successes for future harmful-to-country favors. Not only should the Western candidate be opposed on the grounds of 'harmful-to-country' allowances being made, if the West continues to interfere with the internal political processes of other nations, they'd do better without a ballot as there is no 'democracy' when other nations intervene in the process.
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Here I finish with an author who had much unison with me, who I quoted earlier in this response to you and whose essay I leave for you and others to discuss
here.UNIVERSALITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY
International efforts to promote democracy and human rights must be accepted and encouraged, but these must not be allowed to be used abusively as a selective instrument of punishing governments that chart out an independent path for their own people. We must laud human rights activists who tirelessly campaign against injustices anywhere, but we must also be wary of governments that use the noble cause of human rights to push for hegemony which itself negates the very essence of human equality and justice. A litmus test for the misuse of the human rights agenda is the extent to which one allows double standards in one’s position. Human rights and democracy are universal values and must be championed everywhere, in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Tanzania, the US, Zimbabwe, everywhere, without bias and without ulterior motives of promoting right wing politics or the so called liberal imperialism.
As for Zimbabwe, let us ask ourselves these questions: How many governments in Africa would survive a free and fair election if the UK and its allies selectively employ the same strategy they used against the Zimbabwean government? Is it any surprise that African governments seem to be more accountable to foreign powers than to their own citizens? Is a world order in which governments of some countries are more accountable to foreign powers than to their citizens a democratic world order? How can one fight for democracy within a country and at the same time ignore an undemocratic world order, an order that in its very essence undermines democracy in the same countries we wish to democratise? If there is to be an international campaign and action for human rights and democracy, as there ought to be, shouldn’t it be a universal campaign and action rather than a selective one?
The fact is that the U.S. interferes in other nations for its own reasons. Ahmadinejad won the election and should be the leader of Iran. Further, the student protests of, at best, 10,000 is nothing with the sixty-six million Iranians. The Wests' coverage of this is clearly self-interested and their psychological warfare and, as we see with British instigators and so forth, their involvement is undemocratic and undermining of Iran's self-determination and national interests.
It's not imperialism to believe in democracy, but when an election is unfair, really, opposing the unfair factor is what an outside observer ought do.
- By Pants-of-dog
- By FiveofSwords
- By Rancid