Noam Chomsky: Season of Travesties: Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009

chomsky.info, July 9, 2009

June 2009 was marked by a number of significant events, including two elections in the Middle East: in Lebanon, then Iran. The events are significant, and the reactions to them, highly instructive.
The election in Lebanon was greeted with euphoria. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that he is “a sucker for free and fair elections,” so “it warms my heart to watch” what happened in Lebanon in an election that “was indeed free and fair Ñ not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.” Crucially, “a solid majority of all Lebanese — Muslims, Christians and Druse — voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri,” the US-backed candidate and son of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, so that “to the extent that anyone came out of this election with the moral authority to lead the next government, it was the coalition that wants Lebanon to be run by and for the Lebanese — not for Iran, not for Syria and not for fighting Israel.” We must give credit where it is due for this triumph of free elections (and of Washington): “Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 — and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing — this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.”

Two days later Friedman’s views were echoed by Eliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign relations, formerly a high official of the Reagan and Bush I administrations. Under the heading “Lebanon’s Triumph, Iran’s Travesty,” Abrams compared these “twin tests of [US] efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world.” The lesson is clear: “What the United States should be promoting is not elections, but free elections, and the voting in Lebanon passed any realistic test. … the majority of Lebanese have rejected Hezbollah’s claim that it is not a terrorist group but a ‘national resistance’ … The Lebanese had a chance to vote against Hezbollah, and took the opportunity.”

Reactions were similar throughout the mainstream. There are, however, a few flies in the ointment.

The most prominent of them, apparently unreported in the US, is the actual vote. The Hezbollah-based March 8 coalition won handily, by approximately the same figure as Obama vs. McCain in November 2008, about 54% of the popular vote, according Ministry of Interior figures. Hence by the Friedman-Abrams argument, we should be lamenting Ahmadinejad’s defeat of President Obama, and the “moral authority” won by Hezbollah, as “the majority of Lebanese … took the opportunity” to reject the charges Abrams repeats from Washington propaganda.

Like others, Friedman and Abrams are referring to representatives in Parliament. These numbers are skewed by the confessional voting system, which sharply reduces the seats granted to the largest of the sects, the Shi’ites, who overwhelmingly back Hizbollah and its Amal ally. But as serious analysts have pointed out, the confessional ground rules undermine “free and fair elections” in even more significant ways than this. Assaf Kfoury observes that they leave no space for non-sectarian parties and erect a barrier to introducing socioeconomic policies and other real issues into the electoral system. They also open the door to “massive external interference,” low voter turnout, and “vote-rigging and vote-buying,” all features of the June election, even more so than before. Thus in Beirut, home of more than half the population, less than a fourth of eligible voters could vote without returning to their usually remote districts of origin. The effect is that migrant workers and the poorer classes are effectively disenfranchised in “a form of extreme gerrymandering, Lebanese style,” favoring the privileged and pro-Western classes.

In Iran, the electoral results issued by the Interior Ministry lacked credibility both by the manner in which they were released and by the figures themselves. An enormous popular protest followed, brutally suppressed by the armed forces of the ruling clerics. Perhaps Ahmadinejad might have won a majority if votes had been fairly counted, but it appears that the rulers were unwilling to take that chance. From the streets, correspondent Reese Erlich, who has had considerable experience with popular uprisings and bitter repression in US domains, writes that “It’s a genuine Iranian mass movement made up of students, workers, women, and middle class folks” — and possibly much of the rural population. Eric Hooglund, a respected scholar who has studied rural Iran intensively, dismisses standard speculations about rural support for Ahmadinejad, describing “overwhelming” support for Mousavi in regions he has studied, and outrage over what the large majority there regard as a stolen election.

It is highly unlikely that the protest will damage the clerical-military regime in the short term, but as Erlich observes, it “is sowing the seeds for future struggles.”

As in Lebanon, the electoral system itself violates basic rights. Candidates have to be approved by the ruling clerics, who can and do bar policies of which they disapprove. And though repression overall may not be as harsh as in the US-backed dictatorships of the region, it is ugly enough, and in June 2009, very visibly so.

One can argue that Iranian “guided democracy” has structural analogues in the US, where elections are largely bought, and candidates and programs are effectively “vetted” by concentrations of capital. A striking illustration is being played out right now. It is hardly controversial that the disastrous US health system is a high priority for the public, which, for a long time, has favored national health care, an option that has been kept off the agenda by private power. In a limited shift towards the public will, Congress is now debating whether to allow a public option to compete with insurers, a proposal with overwhelming popular support. The opposition, who regard themselves as free market advocates, charge that the proposal would be unfair to the private sector, which will be unable to compete with a more efficient public system. Though a bit odd, the argument is plausible. As economist Dean Baker points out, “We know that private insurers can’t compete because we already had this experiment with the Medicare program. When private insurers had to compete on a level playing field with the traditional government-run plan they were almost driven from the market.” Savings from a government program would be even greater if, as in other countries, the government were permitted to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical corporations, an option supported by 85% of the population but also not on the agenda. “Unless Congress creates a serious public plan,” Baker writes, Americans “can expect to be hit with the largest tax increase in the history of the world — all of it going into the pockets of the health care industry.” That is a likely outcome, once again, in the American form of “guided democracy.” And it is hardly the only example.

While our thoughts are turned to elections, we should not forget one recent authentically “free and fair” election in the Middle East region, in Palestine in January 2006, to which the US and its allies at once responded with harsh punishment for the population that voted “the wrong way.” The pretexts offered were laughable, and the response caused scarcely a ripple on the flood of commentary on Washington’s noble “efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world,” a feat that reveals impressive subordination to authority.

No less impressive is the readiness to agree that Israel is justified in imposing a harsh and destructive siege on Gaza, and attacking it with merciless violence using US equipment and diplomatic support, as it did last winter. There of course is a pretext: “the right to self-defense.” The pretext has been almost universally accepted in the West, though Israeli actions are sometimes condemned as “disproportionate.” The reaction is remarkable, because the pretext collapses on the most cursory inspection. The issue is the right TO USE FORCE in self-defense, and a state has that right only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case, Israel has simply refused to use the peaceful means that have readily available. All of this has been amply discussed elsewhere, and it should be unnecessary to review the simple facts once again.

Once again relying on the impunity it receives as a US client, Israel brought the month of June 2009 to a close by enforcing the siege with a brazen act of hijacking. On June 30, the Israeli navy hijacked the Free Gaza movement boat “Spirit of Humanity” — in international waters, according to those aboard — and forced it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The boat had left from Cyprus, where the cargo was inspected: it consisted of medicines, reconstruction supplies, and toys. The human rights workers aboard included Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was sent to Ramleh prison in Israel — apparently without a word from the Obama administration. The crime scarcely elicited a yawn — with some justice, one might argue, since Israel has been hijacking boats travelling between Cyprus and Lebanon for decades, kidnapping and sometimes killing passengers or sending them in Israeli prisons without charge where they join thousands of others, in some cases held for many years as hostages. So why even bother to report this latest outrage by a rogue state and its patron, for whom law is a theme for 4th of July speeches and a weapon against enemies?

Israel’s hijacking is a far more extreme crime than anything carried out by Somalis driven to piracy by poverty and despair, and destruction of their fishing grounds by robbery and dumping of toxic wastes — not to speak of the destruction of their economy by a Bush counter-terror operation conceded to have been fraudulent, and a US-backed Ethiopian invasion. The Israeli hijacking is also in violation of a March 1988 international Convention on safety of maritime navigation to which the US is a party, hence required by the Convention to assist in enforcing it. Israel, however, is not a party — which, of course, in no way mitigates the crime or the obligation to enforce the Convention against violators. Israel’s failure to join is particularly interesting, since the Convention was partially inspired by the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985. That crime ranks high in Israel and the West among terrorist atrocities — unlike Israel’s US-backed bombing of Tunis a week earlier, killing 75 people, as usual with no credible pretext, but again tolerated under the grant of impunity for the US and its clients.

Possibly Israel chose not to join the Convention because of its regular practice of hijacking boats in international waters at that time. Also worth investigating in connection with the June 2009 hijacking is that since 2000, after the discovery of apparently substantial reserves of natural gas in Gaza’s territorial waters by British Gas, Israel has been steadily forcing Gazan fishing boats towards shore, often violently, ruining an industry vital to Gaza’s survival. At the same time, Israel has been entering into negotiations with BG to obtain gas from these sources, thus stealing the meager resources of the population it is mercilessly crushing.

The Western hemisphere also witnessed an election-related crime at the month’s end. A military coup in Honduras ousted President Manuel Zelaya and expelled him to Costa Rica. As observed by economist Mark Weisbrot, an experienced analyst of Latin American affairs, the social structure of the coup is “a recurrent story in Latin America,” pitting “a reform president who is supported by labor unions and social organizations against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite who is accustomed to choosing not only the Supreme Court and the Congress, but also the president.”

Mainstream commentary described the coup as an unfortunate return to the bad days of decades ago. But that is mistaken. This is the third military coup in the past decade, all conforming to the “recurrent story.” The first, in Venezuela in 2002, was supported by the Bush administration, which, however, backed down after sharp Latin American condemnation and restoration of the elected government by a popular uprising. The second, in Haiti in 2004, was carried out by Haiti’s traditional torturers, France and the US. The elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was spirited to Central Africa and kept at a safe distance from Haiti by the master of the hemisphere.

What is novel in the Honduras coup is that the US has not lent it support. Rather, the US joined with the Organization of American States in opposing the coup, though with a more reserved condemnation than others, and with no any action, unlike the neighboring states and much of the rest of Latin America. Alone in the region, the US has not withdrawn its ambassador, as did France, Spain and Italy along with Latin American states.

It was reported that Washington had advance information about a possible coup, and tried to prevent it. It surpasses imagination that Washington did not have close knowledge of what was underway in Honduras, which is highly dependent on US aid, and whose military is armed, trained, and advised by Washington. Military relations have been particularly close since the 1980s, when Honduras was the base for Reagan’s terrorist war against Nicaragua.

Whether this will play out as another chapter of the “recurrent story” remains to be seen, and will depend in no small measure on reactions within the United States.

Eric Walberg gives the real story behind Iranian protests

Whither the revolutions?
08/07/2009 01:01:00 PM GMT

By Eric Walberg

June was a busy month for two of Washington’s real “axis of evil.”

Venezuela’s Chavez completed his nationalization of oil and Iran’s Ahmadinejad stemmed a Western-backed color revolution, leaving both in place. What drives U.S. foreign policy? Is it primarily the domestic economy, as it logically

should be, or, as many argue, the powerful Israel lobby, or as others argue, the need to secure energy sources? Of course, the answer is all three, in varying degrees depending on the geopolitical importance of the country in question. And woe to any country that threatens any of the above.

Russia is perhaps a special case, as U.S. politics was dependent for so long on the anti-communist Cold War that ideologues found it impossible to dispense with this useful bugaboo even after the collapse of communism. But it was not only Sovietologists like Condoleezza Rice that perversely prospered from this obsession, but the U.S. domestic economy itself, which was transformed into what is best described as the military-industrial complex (MIC). It would take very little to placate today’s Russia — pull in NATO’s horns and stop pandering to the Russophobes in Eastern Europe — but that would hurt the MIC and would hamper the US plans for empire and oil. So it remains an enemy of choice, though not part of the Axis of Evil. This crude characterization by Bush/Cheney lumped North Korea, Iraq and Iran together as the worst of the worst. With the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the current score is one down, two to go. But North Korea is a red herring. It is merely a very useful Cold War foil, beloved of the MIC, justifying its many useless, lethal weapons programs. A popular whipping boy, a bit of innocent ideological entertainment.

Having knocked out Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and ignoring Korea, we are left with Iran. But Bush could easily have added Venezuela to his list, as it is these two countries that pose the greatest real threat to the U.S. empire. Both have charismatic leaders who not openly denounce US and Israeli empire but do something about it. And both have large, nationalized oil sectors. Chavez’s successful defiance of the U.S. has directly inspired Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to elect socialist leaders and given Cuba a new lease on life. Ahmadinejad has defied the many Israel-imposed bans on supporting the Palestinian resistance and even publicly questioned the legitimacy of Israel itself. These bold and principled men are thereby pariahs, albeit useful ones for the MIC, along with their Cold War ghost Kim Jong Il. That is the catch. While the empire officially frets, the U.S. military-based economy thrives on its official enemies. It would collapse without them. This is the supreme irony to be noted by observers of what can only be described as the bizarre and contradictory world of U.S. foreign policy.

Venezuela and Iran are indeed threats to the U.S. empire. President Hugo Chavez not only thoroughly nationalized the oil sector after the crippling strike led by oil executives in 2002-03, but proceeded to use the revenues to transform his country, putting it on the albeit bumpy road to socialism — subsidized basic goods, mass literacy and free health care. He has even been providing poor Americans with discount gas. “The oil belongs to all Venezuelans,” Chavez emphasized recently to reporters last month in Argentina, after the government announced it was taking over oil service companies along with U.S. -owned gas compression units, adding to the heavy oil projects Venezuela took over in 2007. Natural gas looks like it will be next. The point of this is to “regain full petroleum sovereignty,” that is, full political sovereignty. No more attempted color revolutions for Venezuela.

What brings us to Iran. When Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, with the backing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he tried to wrest control of key ministries, especially oil, and the government’s National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) from the Rafsanjani/Mousavi capitalist elite, replacing officials with his own choices — primarily from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It was not till 2007 that he was able to install his candidate for oil minister, head of the NIOC Gholamhossein Nozari. Like Chavez, he proceeded to use state oil revenues to consolidate his base among the poor, something which the so-called reformists under his predecessor Mohammad Khatami or earlier nonreformists under Rafsanjani/Mousavi were not noted for.

While Rafsanjani was parliamentary speaker with Mousavi his prime minister in the 1980s, younger Iranians, including Ahmadinejad, were fighting in the IRGC (many martyring themselves) in the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Rafsanjani became Iran’s first president in 1989 and added to his family’s vast fortune, much of it connected with oil, during his privatization program when he opened the oil industry to private Iranian contractors. This continued under the “reformist” Khatami, who took over the presidency in 1997.

Ahmadinejad’s ascendancy in 2005 on a platform to fight and eliminate the “oil mafia,” confirmed the IRGC as the underlying force confronting Rafsanjani and the reformists. Throughout the 2009 electoral campaign, Ahmadinejad attacked his opponents as leaders of the corrupt elite, now trying to claw back control.

The elite had had enough, and the election ruckus last month was their last stand against the clearly populist, essentially leftist Ahmadinejad. Some call Ahmadinejad’s decisive win a coup d’état by the IRGC, but the recent demonstrations in Tehran look eerily similar to those in Caracas in 2002-03 when Venezuelan society was paralyzed by its economic elite, mobilizing its own Gucci crowd, strongly backed by the U.S., protesting a populist president’s determination to use oil revenues to help the common people. Chavez risked his life in the process, but his careful planning foiled the plotters and he survived to carry out his agenda. Whether Ahmadinejad can do the same, and to what extent the IRGC is a vehicle for promoting social welfare is a drama which is only now unfolding.

Both the Venezuelan and Iranian thorns have incensed Washington for daring to use their oil revenues to redistribute wealth in their societies and then organize resistance to U.S. hegemony in their respective neighborhoods. They are examples, which continue to inspire and which pose a threat to U.S. imperial policy, both international and domestic. For what better way to solve all the ills of U.S. society — lack of secure health care, poverty, violence — than dismantling the MIC and initiating a foreign policy based on peace rather than war?

The big difference between these two thorns, of course, is Islam and Iran’s interference with the U.S.-Israeli agenda. Now that the oil companies have resigned themselves to Venezuela’s new assertiveness, they and their government spokesmen are not so concerned with trying to overthrow Chavez. However, the extra weight of the Israel lobby in Washington makes sure that another Iranian revolution remains at the top of the list of Obama’s things-to-do.

Another curious difference is that U.S. attempts to turn Venezuela’s neighbors against it backfired, as they came to Chavez’s defense and followed his example, while similar efforts to conspire against Iran have had considerable success.

The schism in both Venezuelan and Iranian societies is very real and is being taken advantage of by the U.S. and friends, who are doing their “best” to engineer a collapse of the populist governments to make room for more U.S.- friendly color revolutions. But there is too much Yankee baggage for this to work anymore. It is time for a color revolution at home.