American Morning
What's on Tap, Tuesday June 23, 2009
Here are the big stories on the agenda today.
- The death toll is now nine in a horrific rush hour train crash in Washington. The impact leaving one train on top of the other. Witnesses say one car folded like an accordion.
- Election officials in Iran are now saying there's no way they'll throw out election results, essentially saying “tough” to tens of thousands of already-enraged election protesters. And the country's state-run media says President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be sworn into office between July 26th and August 19th. That headline – fresh in President Obama's mind as he prepares for his fifth news conference since taking office, live on CNN this afternoon at 12:30 et. We’ll speak exclusively to the former Shah of Iran’s son, about the struggle in his country, and what the U.S. should and should not do.
- Governor takes a hike. The governor of South Carolina ditched his security detail more than five days ago. He missed Father's Day. Even his wife said she had no idea where he was! Why Governor Mark Sanford literally decided to take a hike!
- Power of Neda. Sometimes a moving or still image has the power to change history, from Kent State to Tiananmen Square. And now, “Neda,” the apparent victim of a sniper’s bullet on the streets of Iran. Carol Costello on whether this stirring image can change history.
- Jon Bon Jovi is helping a lot of people go home again through his volunteer work. He's also an ambassador for the Entertainment Industry Foundation, Hollywood’s leading charity. Yesterday he made a special appearance to an audience of more than 4,500 service leaders who were kicking off a multi-year campaign to help make service and volunteerism a national priority. American Morning’s John Roberts had a chance to sit down with one of rock and roll’s biggest names. Don’t miss it.
More Peace Corps? Obama and the Truth-o-meter
Is President Obama keeping his campaign promise to double the size of the Peace Corps?
That's just one of the statements we ran through the Truth-o-Meter with Bill Adair, founder and editor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact.com.
President Obama too hands off on Iran?
President Obama is taking a lot of heat from Republicans and conservatives for not being more critical of the Iranian government as protesters face violence from security forces in Tehran.
Citing sources in the administration, the New York Times reports Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would like him to take a stronger stand.
Expert: Protesters want civil rights, not revolution
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/06/22/intv.dabashi.cnn.art.jpg caption="Hamid Dabashi tells CNN Iranian protesters want civil rights not revolution."]
More election protests are expected today in Iran. Some say the massive show of support for the opposition candidate signals a revolution in the making.
Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, doesn’t quite see it that way. He spoke to John Roberts on CNN’s “American Morning” Monday.
John Roberts: Let me ask you first of all, the declaration from the Guardian Council that yes it appears there were some voting irregularities; some three-million more votes were cast than people eligible to vote, but at the same time they say it wouldn't affect the overall outcome of the election. What effect do you think that will have on the demonstrators today?
Dabashi: Well it simply acknowledges that there are certain irregularities as Mr. Moussavi and other opposition candidates have indicated. To what degree this will satisfy Moussavi’s camp and other oppositional figures remains to be seen. In his Friday sermon, Mr. Khamenei in effect prejudiced the decision of the Guardian Council by siding completely with Ahmadinejad and saying that his position is very close to me. So I don't believe whatever the conclusion of this particular round of calculations by the Guardian Council might be is going to have much effect on the demonstrations…
These scenes you're seeing coming from Iran…it is important for your audience to know the reason you see these scenes of confusion and chaos is these people have been denied their constitutional right for peaceful protest. Under Article 27 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, Iranians are entitled to peaceful protests and not even under the condition of so-called national security are they to be denied their constitutional rights. So it is really the custodians of the Islamic Republic who are in violation of their constitutional right rather than the other way around.
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Commentary: Iran conflict isn't class warfare
Hamid Dabashi is the author of "Iran: A People Interrupted." He is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. His Web site is www.hamiddabashi.com/
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/06/22/art.hamid.dabashi.jpg caption="Hamid Dabashi says it's wrong to view the conflict in Iran as a battle of the middle class vs. the poor."]
By Hamid Dabashi
Special to CNN
(CNN) - In a short essay that Abbas Amanat, a scholar of 19th-century Iran at Yale University, was asked to write for The New York Times on the current crisis in Iran, he asserted that what we are witnessing is "the rise of a new middle class whose demands stand in contrast to the radicalism of the incumbent President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and the core conservative values of the clerical elite, which no doubt has the backing of a religiously conservative sector of the population."
This learned position of a leading scholar very much sums up the common wisdom that Iranian expatriate academics are offering an excited public mesmerized by the massive demonstrations they witness on their television sets or computer screens and eager to have someone make sense of them.
In part because of these hurried interpretations, the movement that is unfolding in front of our eyes is seen as basically a middle-class uprising against a retrograde theocracy that is banking on backward, conservative and uneducated masses who do not know any better. While the illiterate and "uncouth" masses provide the populist basis of Ahmadinejad's support, the middle class is demanding an open-market civil society.
Keep reading this story »
Filed under: Commentary • Iran