This channel has been showing a test pattern for quite a while now. After the events of last year, standard blogger fare seemed a bit… yeah. Conditions in Iran have not gotten any less oppressive or violent towards anyone who might be a Green sympathizer, and it looks like it will be a long time before it ends, one way or another.
While I hope to discuss any new developments as they may occur, it’s time broaden focus a bit. Hopefully this space will get a bit more active now.
I haven’t been active on the blog recently since I’ve been running a proxy and trying not to draw too much attention – running rather counter to the purpose of a blog, I know. More on that later, as the Iran proxies may soon be superceded.
But I’ve just run across this bit of ridiculousness and have to share. If, as I did, you think this is a joke, you can read up on the thing on the official company website as well. Really, I have nothing to add. Read the article and join me in my speechlessness.
The Guardian has a story today that reiterates the idea of a small senior council replacing the position of Supreme Leader. The proposed stucture would be
…to replace Khamenei as the supreme leader with a small committee of senior ayatollahs, of which Khamenei would be a member.
Other Western media outlets such as the NY Times report that while unrest is no longer visible in the street, Iranians have not moved on and forgotten. Meanwhile, the Right urging for action still don’t get it, as in the WSJ article:
On the contrary, failing to support the regime’s critics will leave us with an emboldened Ahmadinejad, an atomic Iran, and dissidents that are disenchanted and critical of us.
What are they basing this sweeping declarative on? Other than wishful thinking, I mean? When have the dissidents done anything besides express the understanding that Iran needs to succeed in this internally, without being discredited as puppets of outside interference? The Journal may be able to willfully forget the last 50 years of Western maneuvering against Iran, but I do not think the people in Iran are so easily fooled.
The idea that Ahmadinejad will be “emboldened” by our lack of meddling is also laughable. It betrays a mindset that still thinks fist-shaking and harsh language from the West cows the world into aceding to our demands. It displays an arrogance and an ignorance of reality that isn’t supported by any facts coming out of Iran relating to Ahmadinejad – whose theft of the election seems likely to have occurred preceisely because he isn’t impressed with Western rhetoric – or to the dissidents themselves, who are enduring more than we in the West will ever have to face to keep their revolution unified and home-grown.
I wonder what all these armchair revolutionaries thought of the brave Iranian people when they were suggesting such inanities as “Mini-nukes: ‘Safe for Civilians,’” a couple years back.
Can anyone verify this translation, source… and date? I can’t help staring at that “88.” There seems to be a lot of people accepting this as real, but I’m not sure that’s all I want to go by.
I hope this is recent and genuine. With the avalanche of the climate bill, “Sanford and Hun” (I think that one was the NY Post’s fault. Yes, I gigglesnorted) and Michael Jackson’s death, the Western media has clammed up regarding Iran. Some coverage of stronger language from Obama, and yet more debate about getting involved. One twitterer notes, however, Obama refers several times only to “Mister” – never “President” – Ahmadinejad.
This video is being retweeted all over right now. I guess we’ll see something about it in the mainstream media tomorrow, when they catch up.
The LA Times has a story on the ruling, citing major points from majority and dissenting opinions. The facts around this case boggle my mind, as does Thomas’ dissenting “logic.”
Let’s look at the sequence of events here:
Now let’s consider Thomas’ words:
Officials had searched the girl’s backpack and found nothing, Thomas said. “It was eminently reasonable to conclude the backpack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in a place should thought no one would look,” Thomas said.
So it is “eminently reasonable” that, if in response to a baseless accusation you find no evidence, clearly the target is a criminal mastermind. Are you fucking kidding me?
You may be tempted to smirk at Clarence Thomas being so dedicated to the idea of searching a 13-year-old’s underwear – clear late-night talk show fodder, yes. The insidious nature of this idea is quite serious, however.
Thomas warned that the majority’s decision could backfire. “Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he said. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.”
The fact that this man has any power over our legal system at all continues to horrify me. The only possible logical interpretation of this statement is that every school should institute daily cavity searches immediately. The preteen agents of chaos will clearly be undermining the very fabric of our society, if word of this ruling gets out, by shoving Advil up their ass. We must think of the children by violating them!
Thankfully, the high court has struck down this idiocy on its own (lack of) merits. Thomas’ dissent amounts to the NeoCon idea that no right or privacy is protected, because someone out there might one day go a step further than we currently allow for. This is an endgame of no rights and no privacy, and another tired repetition of “if there’s no evidence, it just means the obviously guilty criminal is rly smrt!”
“The innocent have nothing to hide” doesn’t mean the same thing in Thomas’ world as it does in mine, I think…
These have been some of the hottest rumours since the election. Where is Rafsanjani, what is he doing? Speculation continues in the Western media, and I’m sure I’d be lying if i said we didn’t all really, really hope this to be the case.
In such a context, the inhuman brutality of these last days makes twisted sense. The Leader must squash the will of the revolutionaries, pretend life is normal and everything’s fine, defuse Rafsanjani’s momentum and remove incentive from his potential allies. This might have succeeded early on, but I think this will only backfire now. There has been too much violence, too much repression and too many direct insults to all Iranians for things to be allowed to stand. The revolutionaries do not seem about to suddenly go away, as much as the Leader might wish them too. And they are not anti-Islamic, as much as he wants to paint them so. Like all true revolutionaries, they are patriots. They cannot be wished away.
I feel that today’s violence was so horrific, the depth to which the regime sank so low, that to call out any particular detail would be to soften any I omit.
Instead, I urge anyone reading this to find the tweets, look for the sources, read google news and memeorandum and anything else you can find; check the BBC, the Guardian, CNN, and the bloggers. Don’t limit yourself. Read people you’d normally disagree with. Compile your own impressions. Brace yourself. It will not be a pleasant journey. And you will read a lot of conflicting reports. But mostly you will be sickened and angered.
Tomorrow, according to many reports, is a day that Mousavi has called for a major rally. Tomorrow the hired Hezbollah terrorists, imported thugs, and Basiji murderers will try to kill their way out of an inevitable revolution. Tomorrow the Iranian people will show the regime that the desire for freedom, once kindled, cannot be extinguished with self-deluded rhetoric, nor truncheons, nor all the guns in the world.
Tomorrow, I fear in the pit of my stomach, they will suffer again for what they know is right.
And I hope will all my being that tomorrow is finally the day that the local police forces and the army decide enough is enough. I hope that the true patriots of this new generation of Iranian get the support they have earned from Rafsanjani, from the Revolutionary Guard, from the mullahs who know this is not the path they intended to set out on. Iran and the West will have to heal our terrible history, but that comes later. First they must be free and self-determined.
It is 10pm EDT as I write this. It is therefore 4:30am in Tehran. Those who can are sleeping. In a few short hours, a pivotal day will begin. Tonight, while America sleeps, Iran will refuse to give up freedom’s dream.
It’s looking like the worst violence so far against the Iranian people took place today. It’s approaching 3 AM in Tehran now, and much of what I’m seeing in the west are copies of each other.
This stands out, however, in a report from CNN:
Iran is saying that the 26-year-old woman whose death Saturday has emerged as an emblem of the government’s crackdown against protesters might have been shot by “mistake,” the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported Wednesday.
The report said the investigation into the death of Neda Agha-Soltan is continuing, “but according to the evidence so far, it could be said that she was killed by mistake. The marksmen had mistaken her for the sister of one of the Monafeghin who had been executed in the Province of Mazandaran some time ago.”
If you recall, the regime initially sought to avoid blame for Neda’s death by casting her shooter as a MEK, a hated terrorist group that sided with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Now, even as they are apparently clubbing, shooting, and axing people in the street, they’re changing their story.
The regime keeps twisting in the wind, increasingly aware that no one with a brain is buying their bullshit any more. They invent more excuses and recast events over and over, while they respond to the people on the ground with the only method they know: mindless, over the top brutality.
I want the people to fight back. I don’t want them to have to endure any more massacres. They’ve made their point; they’ve bled enough. Is there really anyone left who thinks these next-generation revolutionaries have some evil ulterior motive? I can’t watch another minute of this. The Basiji…. I haven’t felt this level of revulsion for a group of my fellow humans since Tianamen Square.
All hell seems to have broken loose in Iran today. There’s too much, and I’m still picking through threads of probable truth, likely rumor, and outright fabrication. For now, here’s a summary. Go to memeorandum and/or your favorite news outlets and do some sifting.
In brief: the Infowar is heating up considerably. Many instances of state brutality, but there may be growing instances of active resistance as well. More dead. Outside security that’s been brought in may be Hezbollah! Rafsanjani may be working behind the scenes, or he may be laying low, or he may be about to strike, or it may all just be wishful thinking. The sharpest rumour, unconfirmed, was that of a failed assassination attempt on Mousavi, “assassin is killed.” More Mullahs are breaking from the regime. Many are speaking as if the position of Ayatollah was already irrelevant, and are discussing the form of its replacement. There is possibly a national strike: the State media has reported 30% absenteeism and threatens anyone who doesn’t show with immediate firing, so this may be true.
And more beatings, and more blood.
I will try to make more sense of this all later tonight.
MediaMatters has a story on Fox’s coverage of Gov. Sanford’s news conference. The Governor has been in the news for days now, having disappeared to “do some writing;” no, he’s “off hiking alone;” well actually, “he was in South America;” and now, it seems, he was having an affair. No specific links because you can’t help but stumble over the story; check memeorandum and pick your favorite.
What’s interesting, if you check that screen cap of the Fox broadcast, is that it carries the caption SC GOV MARK SANFORD (D).
Governor Sanford is a Republican. And by “interesting” i mean “disgusting.”
MediaMatters notes that this is not the first time they’ve mislabelled a troubled Republican. Like rats deserting a s(t)inking ship, the Right Wingnuts can’t even stomach standing by their own any more. Yesterday, the best they could do after Obama’s press conference was call him “testy,” harp on his smoking, and spout conspiracy theories about the HuffPost reporter’s presence. This is cited as proof that Obama will doom us all, Democrats are evil, and we need to flee back to the loving arms of the NeoCons before it’s too late. Today, with an AWOL Governor returning to admit he’s been having an affair, they… pretend he’s a Democrat.
This is what passes as damage control from the media masterminds at Faux News nowadays? Try to fool people into thinking he’s the Hated Enemy? Maybe they’re hoping South Carolina won’t remember what party their own Governor is in..? All Dems are bad; anyone bad must be a Dem.
Really, that’s all you got, Fox?
Enjoy your growing irrelevance.
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