As much as one wants to shoot the messenger bearing bad news, there is an equal and opposite desire to toast and celebrate the messenger bearing the news we have longed for.
And be sure, sometimes the messengers will gather to salute, toast, congratulate and celebrate each other. That adds to the chances that we will appreciate the messenger.
I risk having myself and this diary attacked for flagrant "killjoyism", for being the wettest blanket at a sunny picnic. I feel it is incumbent to get this card out and on the table first.
I hope for, desire and crave for the peaceful and immediate emergence of a new Iranian regime highly reflective of the views of its population.
My secret and awful wishes are that the new regime in Iran is more secular than the median of Iran's more fervent sector, and that it remains unhelpful to multinational oil conglomerates who never liked me anyway, and remains a voice for a just settlement for Palestinians.
All that aside, like most of you, I am watching world shaping events unfold through the eyes of American based television and cable news operations. Should I worry? Should you?
Let's talk.
This diary attempts to be not too naive and not too cynical. In doing so I hope you will reply with reasons to be less or more suspicious.
I have at this time no specific episode or incident on which to build a case for doubt about the nature and content of the coverage of Iran's post-electoral coverage. This point is freely granted.
My problem is, and has been for years, the track record of the very same media corporations which I am relying upon currently.
The four major broadcast networks and the three main cable news providers and their various spin-off channels, the two main news wire services and the newspapers who subscribe to them.... we at DKos trust. It seems.
Why?
In the run up to the first Gulf War, those outlets listed above that were in business at the time told me, in earnest, about the incubators.
Bush '41 repeated what he knew from the media about incubators.
Prior to the story of the incubators I was unimpressed with Kuwait. I had read enough to know that there was nothing a Kuwaiti would bend over and pick up if he could hire a Bengali or Filipino to do it for him. This was a country whose "guest workers" outnumbered its citizens.
This was a country whose income, if divided by Marxist equity would be a nation of billionaires. This was a country of devout Muslims whose elite partied the Iraqi occupation away in Cairo or Abu Dhabi. The odds that Kuwait drilled oil diagonally into Iraqi reserves seemed or did not... I put at 50-50. Most reading I did on the topic came in at the same odds.
Previously the corporate media encouraged my dislike of Iran. So when Saddem Hussein warred against Iran for years and years and years with promises of financial assistance from the Sunni states and backing from the USA ... I felt the ambiguity and confusion. Did you have a favorite?
It seems there was fear that Iran might roll into and beyond Iraq to spread Ayatollah Khomemie's revolution. The Saudis and Kuwaities may well have promised to help Saddem hold the line with cash and higher international oil prices. Kuwait may have reneged and acted the part of the ingrate. But how am I to know for sure? Most of what I gleaned comes from the news sources mentioned above and books from journalists.
Reminder time. I support and endorse and crave an immediate and peaceful transition to liberal secular democratic norms in Iran.
Well, they lied to me before.
Yes, you CNN. AP. CBS. ABC. NBC. You carried lies as if you they were the truth.
The story of the incubators, is the one that got me off the fence. I really didn't think Kuwait was worthy. The only argument I could make was that the UN ought not stand by and see one of its members states disappear. I think that violates the charter. But then the UN usually violates its charter.
But I really disliked Kuwait more than Iraq. Funny that way. Something about "entitlement" bugs me. But incubators changed my opinion and I became an advocate for war and the Desert Storm that followed.
That card played to flip me was a fraud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The Rendon Group, a company that fostered and presented the fraud, a company with good Democratic Party credentials, much like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle once had, was selling horse manure and lies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
And so while BUSH 43 waited to introduce a new product in the fall of 2002.. the invention of ground to invade Iraq.. a new cascade of lies and frauds were transmitted to me and you via the same media outlets.
It seems if a country is Middle Eastern and has strategically significant oil reserves, journalism, truth and what we see and hear begin to diverge.
I hope and wish for an immediate and peaceful transition to liberal democratic freedoms in Iran.
BUT:
I suspect the election numbers are fraudulent. I do not know.
I'd like to see Iran's current regime fall even if the election results that were reported were accurate because I dont like those results.
The size and importance of crowds and protesters seems magnified if they are NOT inside America and if they serve American foreign policy goals.
Iranian protests are not usually of interest to America. They are now.
The size and importance of crowds, the energy and determination of protesters against the invasion of Iraq .. whether in NYC or Paris, London or Cairo... were NOT important enough to warrant coverage.
The cutting off of traditional media sources by Iran appears unjustified. It likely is. I have to trust our media on that one. The new Twitter-Facebook connection is a wonderful tool for immediate communication and yet defies all rules for verifiable journalism standards. It is easily altered and manipulated. That doesn't mean it is being altered and manipulated. But I am being asked to trust that it is not. By ...
People who have lied to me before. At exactly the moment I am sorting out what seems right and fair.
The mainstream media needs to recognize that any reluctance to believe things they tell us in earnest is well earned. You lied before.
America has covert intelligence operatives. Iran is a target. That is in the public record.
Both of the leading candidates' sides in the Iranian election pre-emptively declared victory before the results were announced.
If I was in a Graham Greene style fictional US intelligence operation in Iran I'd be encouraging protests discreetly. I will assume they don't act like my imagination does. I just get this stuff from reading history.
I have heard several sentences today on Cable news that make my heart sink. This one I heard almost word for word... "We cannot confirm this but we are quite sure that things like this may have happened."
May Iran move to becoming a modern constitutional liberal secular state immediately and peacefully. I want this.
I want to trust the TV stations and wire services that put the story in front of me. They may be telling me the exact truth. It is THEIR fault that I cannot trust them.
When you wake up the morning after an election and you know deep down that something is not right... you can do one of two things.
The people of Iran did one of those two things.
If the people of America had done the same... and they most assuredly did not march on Ohio en masse... the same news services would be in vocal condemnation of everything they immortalize today.
And remain sure... if the next American revolution breaks out on a weekend.. MSNBC will be exploring jail cells or sharing Keith Morrison's sense of grief about a 20 year old crime.
Thinking that MSNBC is somehow "ours" when it is run on the very cheapest of exploitation of market strategies of them all..??? Pathos.
Selah.