Don’t forget, boys and girls, we have our regular meeting of Drinking Liberally tonight at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis. Six to nine or so.
We have a big box of stuff from the mother ship at Living Liberally to start giving away: some books, a DL t-shirt, a Blue State Coffee baseball-style cap, some bumper stickers, etc. I’ll think of some games or riddles to determine the winners. The loot will be doled out over the next few weeks.
Apparently he knows lobbyists. Campaign finance law? Not so much.
Minnesota’s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosures Board fined Entenza $500 for taking a campaign donation from General Mills lobbyist Lee Anderson during the last session of the Legislature.
That’s a no-no.
And a pretty simple one for gubernatorial candidates to avoid: Is the Legislature in session? Yes ___ No ___. If the answer is “yes,” DON’T TAKE THE MONEY. You’d think the Man From Cheerios would know better, too.
The linked AP articles goes on to say:
Entenza has faced campaign finance issues before, including a 2006 fine of more than $28,000 accepting donations above state limits while running for attorney general.
Spot, you mean that Entenza was fined 28K+ while running to be the most senior law enforcement officer in the state?
Guess so, grasshopper; we’ll have to look into it.
Second runner up – submitted by Jeff Fecke
Paul Wellstone is a Democrat
And I am a Democrat
We must work together
To Re-elect
Bill Clinton
First runner up – submitted by Phoenix Woman
Be sure to follow the link to the video.
Winner – Exhibition Category – Spot
The Accidental Senator
Ken’s winning entry is a send up of the famous Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias.
Here’s the winner:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Norm Coleman, (former) Senator of Senators:
Look on my political career, ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains (except professional hockey). Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level snows stretch far away.
On learning that he had won, Ken penned an illustration to accompany the epitaph.
Notice the wingtips. And the cross-country skier and the little snowman.
Congratulations all and thanks for your participation.
A winner has been chosen in the Norm Coleman Political Epitaph Contest. The winner has been notified, and the award will be made public on Monday. Thank you all for your participation.
Do you remember, boys and girls, in the early days of the Bush Administration the secret energy task force headed by the Vice President? And how we all thought it was just trying to figure out a way around all those bothersome environmental types? But we were thinking way too small:
It was believed then that Cheney's secretive task force was focusing on ways to reduce environmental regulations and fend off the Kyoto protocol on global warming.
But Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, later described a White House interest in invading Iraq and controlling its vast oil reserves, dating back to the first days of the Bush presidency.
In Ron Suskind's 2004 book, "The Price of Loyalty," O'Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq's oil fields would be carved up.
Even at that early date, the message from Bush was "find a way to do this," according to O'Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.
The New Yorker's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated February 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." [The New Yorker, February 16, 2004]
That’s from a recent truthout.org article by Jason Leopold.
Now there’s an interesting word: “cooperate.”
Let’ see what that “cooperation” produced:
It began more than six years ago with a lie, followed by another lie, and another lie, and then two more, ten more, a hundred, a thousand, an avalanche of lies from heads of state and hatchet men and well-fed media types more interested in getting the interview than in getting the facts.
It began with lies like this:
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
- Dick Cheney, Vice President Speech to VFW National Convention 8/26/2002
... and this:
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
- Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Adviser CNN Late Edition 9/8/2002
... and this:
"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
- Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Press Briefing 1/9/2003
... and this:
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."
- Colin Powell, Secretary of State Remarks to the UN Security Council 2/5/2003
... and this:
"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
- Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense ABC Interview 3/30/2003
It began with George W. Bush standing before both houses of Congress and an international television audience for his January 2003 State of the Union address and stating that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al-Qaeda connections and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program.
Pretty impressive cooperation, wouldn’t you say, boys and girls? That’s William Rivers Pitt, also in truthout.org.
You know how people say You can’t make this up? Apparently you can.
Spot is sorry to drop this one on Dave on the eve of the Fourth of July, when Dave is undoubtedly busy sharpening and polishing his ornamental spear for the parade or some such, but these truthout.org articles came out in the last couple of days, and Spot thought they were interesting, especially taken together.
After he puts the silver polish away, Dave will no doubt deliver an impassioned defense, pointing out that many Democrats voted for the Iraq war and were therefore collaborators. We won’t quibble about the meaning or intent of the resolution that Congress passed, nor whether the Dems who voted in favor were collaborators or dupes, but you have to draw the conclusion that many anti-war types did early on: it was about oil.
Several weeks ago, Stewart, an emissary from the Lafayette, Indiana, Drinking Liberally chapter, came to Minneapolis and to our meeting and presented our chapter with a National Review paperweight, given to Dan Quayle and signed by William F. Buckley himself.
Stewart was inspired to bring the paperweight to us symbolize a kind of passing of the loser-Republican torch from Dan Quayle to Norm Coleman. As Stewart says, the paperweight was picked up in a thrift store shortly after Quayle’s mother dropped it off in a box of her son’s memorabilia.
We cemented a sister-chapter relationship with toast and jeers.
Spot has to wonder whether scenes of Laurie Coleman schlepping boxes of Norm memorabilia around to the thrift stores in town will now become a common sight.
I’ll put up a picture of the paperweight, with the Buckley inscription legible, in the sidebar when I get a chance.
Here’s the headline on a recent KSTP web article:
Some Retailers Unaware of New Minn. Flag Law
Here’s a little about the law from the article:
American flags made in China? Some say it's unpatriotic, but it's also illegal in Minnesota. It's a new law that even some national retailers are not aware of.
5 EYEWITNESS NEWS alerted the manager of the St. Paul Pier 1 store that the tiny, China-made U.S. flags it is selling for 95-cents are not allowed under a 2007 state law. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS checked four Twin Cities Pier 1 Imports and found the flags in all of them.
In a statement to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, Pier 1 said "We are unaware of the Minnesota state law that you brought to our attention. We will investigate this issue and make adjustments in order to comply with any applicable Minnesota state law."
"If anything that should be made in this country, it's the flag," said DFL Rep. Tom Rukavina, who introduced the bill. He hopes other companies will get the message too.
"They should have known the law. The department of commerce or somebody should enforce the law and make sure they get a little slap on the wrist so it doesn't happen at another store," said Rukavina.
Sorry, Tom, and Spot really means sorry, but you can’t restrict interstate commerce that way. There is absolutely no legitimate regulatory purpose. Want flame resistant flags to keep protesters from burning themselves? Then write a law addressed to the flammability of flags. Want the flags to be reflective so that motorists will see late-night Fourth of July revelers along the roads in the dark? Then require them to be reflective. These might still be impermissible burdens on interstate commerce, but you could at least make them with a straight face.
But the state of Minnesota may not have a foreign policy. Foreign and interstate commerce is regulated by the feds. The Interstate Commerce Clause could take care of this law with a small wave of the Mighty Paw. [The Mighty Paw is the Invisible Hand’s opposite number.]
In fact, this would be a good one for Lee McGrath’s Institute for Justice. No actual civil liberties are involved here: just dollars — or maybe yuan — yearning to breathe free. Perfect.
When it gets later in the evening and Spot wants a post to show some effort for the day, Scott Horton’s No Comment is usually a good place to turn for something to pass along.
There have been several posts over the last few years here at the Cucking Stool about the Nuremberg Defense: I am not guilty of war crimes because I was following the orders of my superiors. Although the Nuremberg Tribunal convened after the Second World War held that it was no defense, it continues to be raised by persons trying to shift the blame for their conduct to others.
Horton tells us about one of the latest examples:
According to a translation by the Associated Press, [former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon] Lady has set up a defense that sounds remarkably familiar: he was just following orders.
”I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors,” Lady was quoted as saying by Il Giornale. “It was not a criminal act. It was a state affair. I find consolation in reminding myself that I was a soldier, that I was at war with terrorism, and that I could not discuss the orders I received,” he was quoted as saying. “I have worked in intelligence for 25 years, and almost none of my activities in these 25 years were legal in the country in which I was carrying them out.”
Lady was apparently against the action that was taken — kidnapping an alleged al Qaeda operative off the streets of Milan in one of those special renditions you’ve heard so much about — but Horton reminds us that it really doesn’t make any difference:
From a number of reports, Lady was intensely critical within CIA circles of the proposed effort to snatch Abu Omar. As it turns out, Italian prosecutors were on the verge of arresting and prosecuting Abu Omar before the CIA interceded. Chief Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro stated that the criminal case against Abu Omar was demolished by the CIA action. But Lady opposed the action, noting that it would be understood by the Italians as a crime and would badly damage the relationship with a NATO ally which was supporting the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Lady assessed the situation with perfect accuracy. It’s a shame that his bosses in Langley didn’t listen to him. However, “only following orders” is also known as the Nuremberg defense, and the problem is that it is no defense at all. [Spot’s italics]
Unlike the United States, persons can be tried in Italy in absentia, as Lady and 25 other Americans are over this affair.
Six to nine at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis.
New York Times picture
And remember: epitaph, not obituary.
Update: Here’s one, but it is only entered in the exhibition category:
Paid no rent
Saw no evil
Now he’s out
On his schnozzle
Further update: There’s a couple of good ones in the comments already. Keep ‘em coming! One more for the exhibition category:
Here lies the Accidental Senator
And yet another update: There are several excellent entries in the comments. Please keep them coming, and try, if you can, to get them in by Thursday afternoon (deadline remains the same: Friday afternoon). The ones that are in will get an airing at DL tomorrow night just to get some crowd reaction to help the judges. This isn’t going to be easy.
It’s been news for nearly a half an hour now that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Al Franken. But before the rejoicing begins in earnest, and too much beer and champagne are drunk, and too much confetti is thrown into the air, consider this:
For all of the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the trial court that Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled under Minn.Stat. § 204C.40 (2008) to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota.
That’s the judgment at the end of the Supreme Court’s 32 page opinion.
Hey, that’s great, Spotty! When’s the swearing in ceremony?
Not so fast, grasshopper. The judgment lacks one teensy little thing: an order to Governor Pawlenty to sign the certificate. He’s said he would, unless blah blah blah. Of course, blah blah blah is in the eye of the beholder.
If he refuses to sign the certificate, on whatever pretext: that he’s unsure of the correctness of the decision, Coleman says he’s going to appeal to the federal courts, whatever; the governor’s failure to sign is not likely to have legal consequences. Why? Because the governor has not been given an order from which he could be found in contempt.
It may not be over yet.
Update: The grasshopper asked why the Court didn’t include an order to the governor and the secretary of state in its judgment. Spot’s pretty sure that Al Franken’s lawyers would have asked for one. The best answer is probably the reluctance of the Court to provoke a constitutional crisis. That’s understandable, but it seems like a dereliction of the Court’s duty to declare what the law is and to enforce it.
Further update: It is reported that Norm Coleman has awakened and smelled the unmistakable aroma of coffee.
And Spot forgives the Supreme Court for not wanting to pick a constitutional fight with the governor.
"Sadly, there is a cost to this kind of freedom."
Lee McGrath, just this morning at the Federalist Society Continuing Legal Education seminar, when asked about the need for regulation - or not - of the financial markets in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal.
Mr. McGrath also explained how he'd have no trouble whatsoever having a surgeon from a non-accredited medical school operate on his heart.
More later if I get a chance to revisit my thoughts on the morning.
"Any time you have leading figures who are engaged in behavior that is sad and troubling and hypocritical, other people are going to look at that and say, 'Hmm, they don't walk the walk.' And so the words and the actions don't ring true," said Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn. "It certainly hurts the brand."
Pawlenty added: "I think I can make a contribution, in a positive way, for trying to rebuild this party. And it needs it."
That’s a quote from a Strib web article Sunday, commenting on Governor Pepsodent’s appearance on the Sunday morning talk shows. One of the commenters to the article wrote: “I’ll give him this: the man can smell opportunity.”
So can a jackal.
Pepsodent was talking about the recent revelations of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford playing with an Argentine fire cracker and earlier stories about an extra-marital affair of Sen. John Ensign of Nevada which he admitted were true.
Still, if the personal rectitude card is all you’ve got, Spot guesses you have to play it.
Update: Forgot the graphic attribution: Ken Avidor. This formerly appeared in Law & Politics.
Last February, Kip Sullivan came to Drinking Liberally in Minneapolis and spoke about single-payer healthcare and the bill that was pending in the Minnesota Legislature at the time. The discussion about single payer is still relevant and timely, so here it is again.
Yesterday, MNO posted about Hal Turner getting all worked about the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals failing, in his view, to enforce the District of Colombia v. Heller decision holding a chicken in every pot and heat in every home in DC. As MNO points out, Turner has been charged on a criminal complaint and accused of threatening assault and murder of members of the federal judiciary in retaliation for the judges’ performance of their official duties.
One wonders if ‘ol Hal can blog from prison. Probably not.
The judges on the panel who wrote the unanimous opinion were Frank Easterbrook, who currently serves as chief judge, William Bauer and Richard Posner. Easterbrook and Posner are both well-known conservative federal judges. Richard Posner is one of King Banaian’s little tin gods, as a matter of fact, although he recently wrote some things that probably tarnished him in Banaian’s eyes.
Anyway, the 7th Circuit held that the District of Colombia and the states were different species of fish; a due respect for the difference and for the fact that the Supreme Court opinion left open the question of application to the states required leaving gun control ordinances in place:
Judges on the panel included well-known conservatives Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner, as well as another Republican appointee, William Bauer. Easterbrook wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year in District of Columbia v. Heller overturned a handgun ban in the federal enclave of Washington, D.C., on Second Amendment grounds, but left open the question of whether the amendment applied to the states.
The issue is "for the justices rather than a court of appeals," Easterbrook wrote.
And so it is. You have to wonder though, if this experience will influence these judges in the future as more of the rantings and ravings of the gun suckers comes before the court.
Blogger and occasional Internet talk show host Harold Charles "Hal" Turner was arrested by federal agents today at his New Jersey home on charges that he threatened on his website to murder three judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Prosecutors say the material--which allegedly provided photographs and addresses for the three jurists--included statements such as "these judges deserve to be killed," reports the Chicago Tribune.
Turner, 47, also is accused of posting a map of the federal courthouse in Chicago in which the three work--and, in reference to the 2005 murders by a disgruntled litigant of the mother and husband of a Chicago federal judge, stating that another such "lesson" is needed, reports the Associated Press.
Yesterday, Spot posted about the post-election violence in Iran in Let’s just compare numbers of dead people. Here’s Juan Cole, on the US reaction to the Iran political demonstrations:
But there are dangers here. Obama will likely be as helpless before a crackdown by the Iranian regime as Eisenhower was re: Hungary in 1956, Johnson was re: Prague in 1968, and Bush senior was re: Tiananmen Square in 1989. George W. Bush, it should be remembered, did nothing about Tehran's crackdown on student protesters in 2003 or about the crackdown on reformist candidates, which excluded them from running in the 2004 Iranian parliamentary elections, or about the probably fraudulent election of Ahmadinejad in 2005. It is hard to see what he could have done, contrary to what his erstwhile supporters in Congress now seem to imply. As an oil state, the Iranian regime does not need the rest of the world and is not easy to pressure. So Obama needs to be careful about raising expectations of any sort of practical intervention by the US, which could not possibly succeed. (Despite the US media's determined ignoring the the Afghanistan War, it is rather a limiting factor on US options with regard to Iran.) Moreover, if the regime succeeds in quelling the protests, however odious it is, it will still be a chess piece on the board of international diplomacy and the US will have to deal with it just as it deals with post-Tiananmen China.
Spot would add George W. Bush and Georgia to the list. Oh, the Georgians begged for help all right, just as the Iranian students appear to be. But it won’t be coming any time soon. One of the first rules of gun boat diplomacy is to never invade some place where you might get you butt kicked or at least seriously bloodied. Better to stick with places like Grenada or Panama or Iraq (which turned out a lot bloodier than the Bush Administration expected). And before you pop off Dave, do you think we really would have invaded Iraq — and embedded journalists to help us watch the show — if we seriously believed it had substantial stock piles of WMD, ready to use?
So bluster is cathartic, but it could also be stupid and worse: sinister. Cole continues:
And, the more Obama speaks on the subject, even in these terms [quoted in Cole’s post], the more he risks associating the Mousavi supporters with a CIA plot. Iranian media are already parading arrested protesters who are 'confessing' that 'Western media' led them astray. In nationalist and wounded Iran, if someone is successfully tagged as an agent of foreign interests, it is the political kiss of death.
The fact is that despite the bluster of the American Right that Something Must be Done, the United States is not a neutral or benevolent player in Iran. Washington overthrew the elected government of Iran in 1953 over oil nationalization, and installed the megalomaniac and oppressive Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, who gradually so alienated all social classes in Iran that he was overthrown in a popular revolution in 1978-1979. The shah had a national system of domestic surveillance and tossed people in jail for the slightest dissidence, and was supported to the hilt by the United States government. So past American intervention has not been on the side of, let us say, human rights.
More recently, the US backed the creepy and cult-like Mojahedin-e Khalq (People's Holy Warriors or MEK), which originated in a mixture of communist Stalinism and fundamentalist Islam. The MEK is a terrorist organization and has blown things up inside Iran, so the Pentagon's ties with them are wrong in so many ways. The MEK, by the way, has a very substantial lobby in Washington DC and has some congressmen in its back pocket, and is supported by the less savory elements of the Israel lobbies such as Daniel Pipes and Patrick Clawson. I am not saying they should be investigated for material support of terrorism, since I am appalled by the unconstitutional breadth of that current DOJ tactic, but I am signaling that the US imperialist Right has been up to very sinister things in Iran for decades. . . .
Here’s a Charlie Krauthammer quote, repeated from my post yesterday:
WASHINGTON – Millions [?] of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.
Isn’t that just perfect, boys and girls? Good luck! Godspeed! Our people in Tehran will give you some signs, printed in English for you to wave to impress western media!
Cole makes one other point that is well worth noting:
Moreover, very unfortunately, US politicians are no longer in a position to lecture other countries about their human rights. The kind of unlicensed, city-wide demonstrations being held in Tehran last week would not be allowed to be held in the United States. Senator John McCain led the charge against Obama for not having sufficiently intervened in Iran. At the Republican National Committee convention in St. Paul, 250 protesters were arrested shortly before John McCain took the podium. Most were innocent activists and even journalists. Amy Goodman and her staff were assaulted. In New York in 2004, 'protest zones' were assigned, and 1800 protesters were arrested, who have now been awarded civil damages by the courts. Spontaneous, city-wide demonstrations outside designated 'protest zones' would be illegal in New York City, apparently. In fact, the Republican National Committee has undertaken to pay for the cost of any lawsuits by wronged protesters, which many observers fear will make the police more aggressive, since they will know that their municipal authorities will not have to pay for civil damages.
The number of demonstrators arrested in Tehran on Saturday is estimated at 550 or so, which is less than those arrested by the NYPD for protesting Bush policies in 2004.
Anybody who was in the Twin Cities the week of the RNC last summer knows what it was like.
Guys like Krauthammer, Pipes, and William Kristol would love to see the destabilization of Iran as a pretext to an invasion. But all they are likely to get is a bloody mess.
A thump of the tail to Jesus’ General for pointing this one out:
Spot’s rather late to the discussion about the aftermath of the Iranian election. There isn’t much to add, but maybe a little comparison of death tolls is in order. Numbers of the fatalities are hard to come by in the case of Iran; there is the heart-wrenching and galvanizing YouTube of the young woman felled by a bullet. According to one Iranian human rights organization, the death toll now stands at 32. Many more are surely injured.
But compare:
Bomb Kills at Least 60 in Baghdad Market:
BAGHDAD — A bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded Wednesday evening in Baghdad’s Sadr City, killing at least 60 people in a popular clothes and vegetable market as it was thronged with shoppers who had waited for sundown before venturing into the hot summer weather, according to the Iraqi interior ministry.
It was at least the third bombing in two weeks to result in double digit casualties in Shiite communities [never mind Fallujah]. On Saturday, a truck bomb in Taza, a Shiite Turkmen area in northern Iraq, killed at least 68 people. Earlier in the month, a car bomb exploded outside Nasiriya, the capital of a predominantly Shiite province in southern Iraq where bombs are rare, killing at least 28 people and inciting a near riot among survivors who threw stones at the police, blaming them for lax security.
But Spot, Iraq is so yesterday.
Yes grasshopper, you’re right. But what about this:
U.S. Drone Strike Said to Kill 60 in Pakistan:
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An airstrike believed to have been carried out by a United States drone killed at least 60 people at a funeral for a Taliban fighter in South Waziristan on Tuesday, residents of the area and local news reports said.
Details of the attack, which occurred in Makeen, remained unclear, but the reported death toll was exceptionally high. If the reports are indeed accurate and if the attack was carried out by a drone, the strike could be the deadliest since the United States began using the aircraft to fire remotely guided missiles at members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The United States carried out 22 previous drone strikes this year, as the Obama administration has intensified a policy inherited from the Bush administration.
They must have all been Taliban, Spot; our missile wouldn’t kill innocent civilians.
If you say so grasshopper. Hard to tell from the air, though. But just doing a rough comparison, these two incidents have resulted in roughly four times the death toll than that reported by the Iranian organization. But it’s the Iranians that have got guys like Tom Friedman and Charles Krauthammer excited into incontinence.
Why do you suppose that is?
Krauthammer writes:
WASHINGTON -- Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.
Millions? Well, I told you that Charlie was excited. Both Friedman and Krauthammer would have the US egg the demonstrators on. Easy enough to do when you don’t have any skin in the game. But consider:
Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, tells the story of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mosaddeq, by the CIA and the British MI6 in 1953. The CIA bribed Iranian government officials, businessmen, and reporters, and paid Iranians to demonstrate in the streets.
On American TV, the protesters who are interviewed speak perfect English. They are either westernized secular Iranians who were allied with the Shah and fled to the West during the 1978 Iranian revolution or they are the young westernized residents of Tehran.
The 1953 street demonstrations, together with the cold war claim that the US had to grab Iran before the Soviets did, served as the US government’s justification for overthrowing Iranian democracy. What the Iranian people wanted was not important.
Today the street demonstrations in Tehran show signs of orchestration. The protesters, primarily young people, especially young women opposed to the dress codes, carry signs written in English: “Where is My Vote?” The signs are intended for the western media, not for the Iranian government.
More evidence of orchestration is provided by the protesters’ chant, “death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad.” Every Iranian knows that the president of Iran is a public figure with limited powers. His main role is to take the heat from the governing grand Ayatollah. No Iranian, and no informed westerner, could possibly believe that Ahmadinejad is a dictator. Even Ahmadinejad’s superior, Khamenei, is not a dictator as he is appointed by a government body that can remove him.
The demonstrations, like those in 1953, are intended to discredit the Iranian government and to establish for Western opinion that the government is a repressive regime that does not have the support of the Iranian people. This manipulation of opinion sets up Iran as another Iraq ruled by a dictator who must be overthrown by sanctions or an invasion.
The Infowars article continues:
Many of the demonstrators may be sincere in their protest, hoping to free themselves from Islamic moral codes. But if reports of the US government’s plans to destabilize Iran are correct, paid troublemakers are in their ranks.
And Tommy and Charlie and a lot of Republicans are flogging the story for all they and it are worth; a lot of people are buying it. Bomb bomb bomb; bomb bomb Iran.
Imagine, if you will, the public reaction if Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez had offered words of support for the protesters at the Republican National Convention last year, or they had condemned the decision in Bush v. Gore and encouraged people to hit the streets. There are a lot of people in Iran who remember 1953 and life under the Shah and who are not likely to view interference — or even the perceived interference — of the US in their domestic politics charitably. Who could blame them?
And it’s not as though the neocon dream has exactly worked like, well, a dream so far. It really isn’t very smart to try to destabilize one of the larger, wealthier, and more military powerful states in the region.
But that doesn’t mean we won’t try.
A thump of the tail to techno.
