>Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, as well as co-author of The New Color Line and The Tyranny of Good Intentions. I haven’t read any of his books, but his article Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran – Why the US Wants to Delegitimize the Iranian Elections, published by Counterpunch, is worth considering.

How much attention do elections in Japan, India, Argentina, or any other country, get from the U.S. media? How many Americans and American journalists even know who is in political office in other countries besides England, France, and Germany? Who can name the political leaders of Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Japan, or even China?

Yet, many know of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. The reason is obvious. He is daily demonized in the U.S. media.

The U.S. media’s demonization of Ahmadinejad itself demonstrates American ignorance. The President of Iran is not the ruler. He is not the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He cannot set policies outside the boundaries set by Iran’s rulers, the ayatollahs who are not willing for the Iranian Revolution to be overturned by American money in some color-coded “revolution.”

Iranians have a bitter experience with the United States government. Their first democratic election, after emerging from occupied and colonized status in the 1950s, was overturned by the U.S. government. The U.S. government installed in place of the elected candidate a dictator who tortured and murdered dissidents who thought Iran should be an independent country and not ruled by an American puppet.

The U.S. “superpower” has never forgiven the Iranian Islamic ayatollahs for the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s, which overthrew the U.S. puppet government and held hostage U.S. embassy personnel, regarded as “a den of spies,” while Iranian students pieced together shredded embassy documents that proved America’s complicity in the destruction of Iranian democracy.

The government-controlled U.S. corporate media, a Ministry of Propaganda, has responded to the re-election of Ahmadinejad with non-stop reports of violent Iranians protests to a stolen election. A stolen election is presented as a fact, even thought there is no evidence for it whatsoever. The U.S. media’s response to the documented stolen elections during the George W. Bush/Karl Rove era was to ignore the evidence of real stolen elections.

Full article here.

>Earlier on, when I’ve written about Ahmadinejad, I’ve discussed his honest and straight-forward questions to George W. Bush (read his letter to the man here), his thoughts about the Holocaust and his relationship with the United States. I’ve never written about Ahmadinejad and his relationship to his people. It it obvious that he is an asshole opposed by many, and that the election was a fraud (or was it, really?). But he’s also worshipped by many.
However, when seeing what’s going on in Iran right now I hope that people will understand the need of civil rights and use their right to vote. I also hope that people will understand the importance of honest media.

Still, that doesn’t change my opinion about Ahmadinejad regarding what I’ve written earlier, because that’s a whole different ball game.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranian supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi demonstrate in Tehran on Monday, June 15, 2009.

Supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wave Iranian and religious flags during a victory celebration in central Tehran June 14, 2009.

A supporter of defeated presidential candidate Mousavi is beaten by government security men as fellow supporters come to his aid during riots in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009.

The best way to get photos and updates seems to be Twitter:
#iranelection
#Tehran
etc…
Nima Dervish updates regularly in Swedish here.