vOice Mail

clipped from www.lucianne.com Iranians riot at election results as Obama's 3 a.m. call goes to voice mail

O Duce's true values are showing. And they ain't pretty.

The Storm

clipped from azarmehr.blogspot.com There is so much to post, I don't even know where to begin! but as I said on Aljazeera English, once the crowds reach 2 million that is it, there is no going back. This is the critical mass I have always talked about. This is what tips the balance, when people see such large numbers, their fear disappears and at the same time the riot guards become more unwilling to beat up the protesters and scared of their own future. We have now reached that point. So long as people lead with their demands and are not fooled by compromises designed to take the sting out of their momentum, then our day has finally come! Can you hear it? Can you hear it? This is the sound of heart beats We are about to create a storm you have never seen before....

Dictatorship O The Now

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Splotchy Boys

clipped from www.slate.com For a flavor of the political atmosphere in Tehran, Iran, last week, I quote from a young Iranian comrade who furnishes me with regular updates: I went to the last major Ahmadinejad rally and got the whiff of what I imagine fascism to have been all about. Lots of splotchy boys who can't get a date are given guns and told they're special. It's hard to better this, either as an evocation of the rancid sexual repression that lies at the nasty core of the "Islamic republic" or as a description of the reserve strength that the Iranian para-state, or state within a state, can bring to bear if it ever feels itself even slightly challenged. There is a theoretical reason why the events of the last month in Iran (I am sorry, but I resolutely decline to refer to them as elections) were a crudely stage-managed insult to those who took part in them and those who observed them.

Naming Mushrooms

clipped from www.slate.com what I saw with my own eyes at a recent Hezbollah rally in south Beirut, Lebanon. In a large hall that featured the official attendance of a delegation from the Iranian Embassy, the most luridly displayed poster of the pro-Iranian party was a nuclear mushroom cloud! Underneath this telling symbol was a caption warning the "Zionists" of what lay in store. We sometimes forget that Iran still officially denies any intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet Ahmadinejad recently hailed an Iranian missile launch as a counterpart to Iran's success with nuclear centrifuges, and Hezbollah has certainly been allowed to form the idea that the Iranian reactors may have nonpeaceful applications. This means, among other things, that the vicious manipulation by which the mullahs control Iran can no longer be considered as their "internal affair." Fascism at home sooner or later means fascism abroad. Face it now or fight it later. Meanwhile, give it its right name.

More Than Just Odd

clipped from action.firedoglake.com The Federal Reserve is an odd entity, a public-private chimera that controls the US monetary system and supervises the banking system.  The system is governed by a Board of Governors, with twelve regional reserve banks that serve a supporting role.  While the Governors are appointed by the President with confirmation by the Senate, the regional Reserve Banks have boards of directors chosen primarily by private banking institutions.  Right now, for instance, the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, as did Goldman Sachs Director Stephen Friedman.

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Hamstrung

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Obama has squandered [strategic opportunities] by demonizing Bush and the Iraq war for years. Imagine how powerful it would be for Obama (or, more likely, a surrogate) to be able to stand up and say to the Iranian protesters, "Under the USA, your neighbor Iraq held free and fair elections. The government of Iran went out of its way to demonize the US and undermine those elections. We are now seeing the results of that mindset come home to Iran as you are denied a voice by your government in your own elections. The US government stands behind all who seek free and fair elections." Of course, he can't say that with any legitimacy because he has spent years putting down Bush and Iraq. This is a classic example of why partisan bickering needs to be toned down; it hamstrings the new Administration. So frustrating to watch.

Stopped Clock Watch: Friedman Edition

clipped from www.nytimes.com Second, for real politics to happen you need space. There are a million things to hate about President Bush’s costly and wrenching wars. But the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades. “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic, and at that particular moment simple ideas were what was needed, even if he was disingenuous,” said Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star. “It was bolstered by the presence of a U.S. Army in the center of the Middle East. It created a sense that change was possible, that things did not always have to be as they were.” Fortunately, each one of these Islamist groups overplayed their hand by imposing religious lifestyles or by dragging their societies into confrontations the people didn’t want.

Doomed

clipped from hotair.com Much depends on the meaning of “accepts,” though, doesn’t it? I’m sure we’ll get some patented Hopenchange drivel tomorrow about “grave concerns,” etc, but if Iran’s kids are expecting The One to walk away from nuke negotiations in protest of the coup, they’re kidding themselves. For one thing, that’s something Bush would do, and of course Bush was never, evah right. For another, if Obama walks away then he’s essentially betting all his chips on a full-blown counterrevolution to erupt and topple the regime. If it doesn’t, or if it’s put down a la Tiananmen Square, Khamenei et al. will be in no mood to forgive and forget. Which means it’s either war to take out Iran’s nuke infrastructure or learn to stop worrying and love the Iranian bomb. Israelis are learning already!

Two What?

clipped from www.haaretz.com Arguably even more important if true give-and-take is to occur, Netanyahu succeeded overnight in taking back a very major concession that previous Israeli governments had made and turning it into a significant bargaining chip. For years - surely ever since Ehud Barak made his famous magnanimous peace offer - Israeli support for a two-state solution was more or less taken for granted. In a surprisingly short period, Netanyahu has put Israel into a position in which if it agrees to two states, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan will be able to say that they and Obama have wrested a major concession from Israel's "right-wing government." it is important to deal now with the question of whether advocates of the two-state solution really mean two states - exactly the issue Netanyahu raised. If the answer is a hobbled state, Netanyahu may be right that it better to call it something else. If it is to be a true state, security arrangements other than relying on the U.S. and NATO are called for.

Gates

clipped from www.slate.com About 200 riot police waited in the middle of the square. I headed down an alley, just steps away, where protesters had created a blockade of flaming garbage cans. The demonstrators pushed aside a garbage can, opening a path, and rushed forward. Simultaneously, baton-wielding police charged. The protesters hurled rocks, and the police responded by beating everyone who couldn't escape into one of the connecting alleys. Citizens, nearly all on the side of the protesters, left their front gates open just a little to offer those of us fleeing the police an escape route. As we caught our breath in someone's driveway, I asked a man in his mid-30s whether he had witnessed anything like this before. "Over the last two weeks," he told me, "between the debates, the number of people in the street last week, and the violence now—no. I've never seen anything like this."

Hall Of Fascists

clipped from andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com It would be interesting to see what Swiss Accounts are in the possession of the senior leadership of the IGRC and the Ministry of the Interior, as well as those who are members of the Pasadaran (I believe that is the correct term), the Iranian Secret Service. The question is-are matters really worse, is Iran truly in the hands of a fascist clique as the Israelis fear, or is this simply the Tattaglias and the Barzinis successfully having put Michael in his place so they can get the lion’s share of the Drug Trafficking money in New York? Remember, as Ledeen will tell you, the “reformist” guy was one of the hand picked candidates from the Council of Elders. Deck Chairs, meet Titanic. Great analysis once again by Kevin. The problem is that I am convinced that Jerusalem believes that a fascist coup is underway, and that there is a mortal threat to the Jewish people. Photo: Members of the Iranian hardline volunteer Basij militia enter Tehran's university

Civil War

clipped from andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com Steve Clemons debriefs a source well connected to Iran's elite: The scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries. My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

#CNNFail

clipped from news.cnet.com As the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran--thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their anger at perceived electoral irregularities--an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: "CNNFail." Even as Twitter became the best source for rapid-fire news developments from the front lines of the riots in Tehran, a growing number of users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN, a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East. For most of Saturday, CNN.com had no stories about the massive protests "CNN just loops the same stories endlessly, while ignoring the biggest story," posted Twitter user MediaButcher. "CNN needs to talk about the important things like Ms. California and who Paris Hilton is (sleeping with)," wrote Twitter user ArchivalQuality.

Shocking news.

Beeb Narrative(TM) Update

clipped from eureferendum.blogspot.com All this passed by the BBC, leaving Booker to report today that the election was a sham battle between rival factions of a regime as ruthless as any in the world, in which the real power is exercised by the gang of hard-line mullahs. He describes it as a "loathsome charade". As so it has come to pass that Tehran has erupted in riots at the "rigged" election. Defying official orders to stay off the streets, protesters shouted "Death to the dictator" and hurled rocks at riot squads. Police dispersed the crowds, beating up both male and female protesters. But by nightfall there were still sporadic disturbances across the capital, with palls of smoke rising across the skyline from burning tyres. Needless to say, the BBC maintains its spin to the last. Forced to report the riots, it still managed to head its report: "Ahmadinejad defiant on 'free' Iran poll", telling us that Ahmadinejad had defended his "completely free" re-election.

The Anti-PlatO

clipped from atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com I think Victor Davis Hanson nailed it back in November when describing the newly elected (not yet inaugurated) Obama's perception of the world: It's hard to make sense of all this. All I can make sense of is, he has a very different view of the world. This view is anti-platonic. And I say that, not to be condescending, but Plato said that the natural order of the world was chaos, it was war—peace was a parenthesis, it had to be achieved and worked at. I think in the Obama view that men like him that are charismatic, articulate, they can change the world because it's naturally a peaceful thing until people like George Bush rush in and through their stubbornness—"smoke 'em out dead or alive" vernacular—destroys it

Tweedle-Dee Update

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The National Socialism This Time

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Rush has been downright forceful in defending Israel, yet I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Jew defend him. It is frightening and sobering for me, as the child of Holocaust survivors, to see my co-religionists align with pals of unambiguous anti-semites like Rev. Wright. I let my wife choose to raise our kids as protestants, rather than have them risk the fate of my grandparents. American Jews have cast their lot as poorly as many German Jews did nearly a century ago. I can honestly say I never imagined in my blackest moments I’d see this. Yes, the mainstreaming of anti-semitism (disguised as being tough on Israel or “Zionists”) has proceeded apace, even while people on the right are the ones called Nazis.

The Coup

clipped from www.roozonline.com (TEHRAN 11P.M) In an interview, Mr. Mohsen Makhbalbaf, the distinguish movie director and spokesman for Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi, has declared that there has been a coup in Iran whereby the elections have been rigged, and people’s vote have been altered on a vast scale, in order to declare President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the “victor.” According to Mr. Makhbalbaf, in the early hours after voting had ended, the Interior Ministry had called Mr. Mousavi’s campaign headquarters to inform them that Mr. Mousavi would be the winner and, therefore, Mr. Mousavi must prepare a victory statement. Mr. Mousavi was, however, asked by the Ministry not to boast too much, in order not to upset Mr. Ahmadinejad’s supporters. Many of the president’s supporters are among the ranks of the Basij militia, and thus armed. But, just a few hours later, a center that had been set up by Mr. Mousavi in Gheytarieh (in northern Tehran) for monitoring the election and vote counting, was attacked by armed security agents.

The Madness This Time

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat. It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU's biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe.

Unintended Consequences (Part 83,389)

clipped from www.journalgazette.net Congress’ rush to embrace solar power is having some unintended consequences. It will turn over a large chunk of federal land to private energy companies, and it may involve withdrawing billions of gallons of water from sensitive desert habitat. By 2015, Congress wants the Interior and Energy Departments to place, on federal land, renewable energy projects that can generate at least 10,000 megawatts of electricity. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 has set off a frantic land grab as solar and wind energy companies rush to obtain permits for projects in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. As of mid-March, the Bureau of Land Management had received 158 applications for permits for solar power plants, covering more than 1 million acres of land. Most of the proposed plants are near the border of Arizona, California and Nevada. This area of the Mojave Desert seems perfect for solar power; it’s hot and flat and vast. What the Mojave Desert doesn’t have is water.

The Sheep Will Follow

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com "At present," notes the Economist, "there's enough capacity globally to make 90 million vehicles a year, but demand is little more than 60 million in good economic times" (emphasis added). Unfortunately, says Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum, America's president "can imagine a world in which the internal combustion engine is obsolete but not one in which GM is." So, doubling down on his predecessor's misbegotten policy, the president is acting strenuously to perpetuate some of America's portion of the excess capacity. A bemused Paulson, who was present at the creation of Bailout Nation with TARP funds, said while still in office: "Even if you don't have the authorities -- and frankly I didn't have the authorities for anything -- if you take charge, people will follow." This would not be happening were Congress awake, or were the courts properly active. Constitutionalists are not amused.

"Yes We Can", Mahmoud Edition

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Barack Obama found it “exciting” and Hillary Clinton saw it as “a positive sign”. A variety of useful idiots at home and abroad expressed similar illusions about the Iranian presidential election on Friday. Officially put at 85%, voter turnout was the highest in Iran’s history. Ahmadinejad won with 63%, collecting more votes than any of his predecessors. The results were arranged to give him a two-thirds majority among all categories of voters – men, women, young and old, poor and middle class, and in all of Iran’s 30 provinces. Whoever wrote the script also made sure that his three rivals, all veterans of the Khomeinist revolution, were roundly defeated even in their respective home towns. Ahmadinejad’s election slogan is “Ma mitavanim” (We can), like Obama’s “Yes we can”. Iran’s leader has been true to his slogan by showing he can fix the election results to the last detail. But can he cope with a restive population, a divided establishment and an economy heading for deep recession?

"Elections" In Iran

clipped from threatswatch.org Further identification to show the bearer is the actual person on the BC is not required. In addition, as Khalaii explains in great detail, Iran has no voter registration and no official accurate count of how many voters there really are (a convenient oversight), no voter identification verification, the voter must write the candidate's name on the ballot and 20% of Iran is illiterate, there are 'mobile polling stations' and not exactly impartial poll workers, among other reasons. We need not even consider that the candidates are each vetted by the Guardian Council, which ensures that no true moderates actually make presidential or parliamentary (masjid) ballots. With a back end so constructed for corruption, considering the democracy hijacking practices at the front end is merely an academic exercise. Or perhaps it's vise versa.

Blinding The Toothless

clipped from www.breitbart.com The BBC said Sunday that the satellites it uses to broadcast in Persian were being jammed from Iran, disrupting its reports on the hotly-disputed presidential election. The corporation said television and radio services had been affected from 1245 GMT Friday onwards by "heavy electronic jamming" which had become "progressively worse". Satellite technicians had traced the interference to Iran, it said. The satellites its uses in the Middle East to broadcast BBC Persian television to Iran were being affected, meaning that audiences in Iran, the Middle East and Europe would likely experience disruption. BBC Arabic television and other language services had also experienced transmission problems, the corporation said. "Any attempt to block BBC Persian television is wrong and against international treaties on satellite communication. Whoever is attempting the blocking should stop it now," said BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks.

Letter From Tehran

clipped from www.salon.com Matters soon escalated. A hapless "basiji" [volunteer paramilitary] was fingered by the crowd and began to receive a brutal punishment, being kicked, shoved, punched by what seemed like a thousand hands. Only the arrival of a phalanx of special riot police on motorcycles, batons swinging and decked out in what the New York Times referred to as black Robo-Cop gear, saved this man's life. By nightfall the situation had become worse. Iranians had become the very Palestinians their government has for so long supported. Rocks were prepared to throw at the police, storefront windows were shattered, stores were set on fire. The 22 of Khordad, June 12, will be an important date in Iran, particularly because, as I've noted, this vote wasn't just college students causing a ruckus. Grandmothers, fathers, daughters, and moms all showed up to stand for hours on end. They will not be just passive observers of what the "kids" are doing.

The Cheshire Cat

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com In the current solar minimum the number of spotless days has not been equaled since 1914 (2), see Figure 2. Some look at this figure and feel reassured; this has happened before. Others sense abnormality. Figure 2. Number of spotless days at cycle minima in the past. Why is a lack of sunspot activity interesting? During a period from 1645 to 1715 the Sun entered an extended period of low activity known as the Maunder Minimum. For a time equivalent to several sunspot cycles the Sun displayed few sunspots. Models of the Sun’s irradiance suggest that the solar energy input to the Earth decreased during that epoch, and that this lull in solar activity may explain the low temperatures recorded in Europe during the Little Ice Age (3). Figure 4. The maximum sunspot total field strength is plotted versus time We should mention, too, that the solar wind is reported to be in a lower energy state than found since space measurements began nearly 40 years ago (7). Will the Cheshire Cat Effect persist?

Fool In Chief

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com On Friday, President Obama had this to say about the election in Iran: We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran. Whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact there has been a robust debate hopefully will advance our ability to engage them in new ways. A day later, it seems clear that the election was fraudulent. U.S. officials have said as much off-the-record. They find it "not credible" that Mousavi would have lost the balloting in his hometown or that a third candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, would have received less than 1 percent of the total vote. So Obama has praised an election that appears to have been a travesty. It's difficult to see how either Iran's rulers or its dissidents can view him as other than a fool -- usefully so in the case of the rulers; criminally so in the case of the dissidents.

I Feel Like I Went To Sleep In One Country, And Woke Up In Another

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What A Real Protest Looks Like

clipped from pajamasmedia.com According to the comments, they’re chanting “Death to this liar government.” Works for me! ANOTHER UPDATE: Some Tehran street photos on Flickr, via reader Nathan Branch.

Nothing left to lose.

Freaking Flint's Faux Forest

clipped from pajamasmedia.com I don’t know, the meadows line is certainly terrific, but I liked: “Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity.” That line just absolutely captures the ‘can do’ spirit which exemplifies the American spirit - well, the heavily unionized and “what will the government do for us” version of it, not that ‘old-fashioned’ kind which built Flint in the first place… Hope and change!

If Only That D*mn W Would Stop Provoking The NorKorComs ... O Wait ...

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk North Korea declared it would turn its plutonium stocks into weapons material and threatened military action against the US and its allies after the UN security council imposed new sanctions to punish Pyongyang for last month's underground nuclear test. The country's foreign ministry today acknowledged for the first time that North Korea was developing a uranium enrichment programme and said it would be "impossible" to abandon its nuclear ambitions. In a defiant statement, it said that "the whole amount of the newly extracted plutonium [in the country] will be weaponised" and that "more than one-third of the spent fuel rods has been reprocessed to date".

And a big shout out to BJ for stocking them up with plutonium!

Jim Rogers: The Worst Is Yet To Come

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Another WTWT.

The Greenspan Letters

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The video equivalent of RTWT is WTWT. Fascinating.

Swirling Around The Drain

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The long-running Delphi bankruptcy is now entangled with the saga of GM. This week the Delphi bankruptcy provided a useful contrast to the trampling of creditors' rights in the GM and Chrysyler restructuring. A bankruptcy judge with the Dickensian name of Robert Drain pricks the balloon sent up by the government in the Delphi bankruptcy: U.S. bankruptcy court Wednesday sided with a group of Delphi Corp. lenders who said a government-led plan to sell the auto-parts maker's operations to a private-equity fund trampled on their rights. Judge Robert Drain ordered Delphi to hold an auction and allow bids to challenge the government-brokered sale to Platinum Equity. "What's so special about Platinum?" asked Judge Drain. "They're just guys in suits. Why can't the other guys in suits just pay more?"

A Familiar Ring

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Ahmadinejad is believed to have won the second round because of his populist views, specially those regarding the poor and their economic status. His reelection is largely believed to be the result of his anti-corruption agenda, his fight for justice, his courage in the international arena and Iran's advancement in different scientific fields, including the nuclear technology, during his first term in office. That description has, somehow, a familiar ring.

The O Duce Way

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Walpin, who by statute is supposed to be independent of White House control, ran afoul of Obama because he investigated a charity operated by former pro basketball player Kevin Johnson, a prominent Obama supporter. Apparently in retaliation for having put the heat on an Obama supporter, the President had Norman Eisen, a Special Counsel to the President, telephone Walpin and demand that he resign within an hour. Walpin, pointing out that he is not a political appointee and does not serve at the President's pleasure, declined to do so. So Obama fired him. By statute, Obama is required to give Congress 30 days written notice of his intention to fire an inspector general and set forth his reasons for doing so. Obama failed to comply with that aspect of the statute, merely saying that Walpin no longer has the President's "fullest confidence." That would be sufficient reason to replace a political appointee, but not to fire an inspector general.

The Answer Would Be Yes

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Now, all of a sudden, Mrs. Mousavi becomes a national political figure.   Other women have emerged from time to time to play public roles in political melodramas, but nothing like this has happened in the history of the Islamic Republic.  The very fact of her political role is explosive.  In many ways, it threatens the foundations of the system, for if women are granted equality with men (and this is one very clear message of the Mousavi campaign, it is demonstrated by her presence, by the words she uses, and by the enthusiasm she has inspired), the whole structure of the Khomeinist regime can be called into doubt. Everybody in Iran recognizes this.  The mystery is why she has been permitted to do it. Is this some diabolical trick, to once again lure the dissidents into the streets so that they can be crushed yet again by a crafty, murderous regime?