Unclubbable Man Joins World’s Most Exclusive Club

June 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Senate | 1 Comment 

Robert Nedelkoff has examined the mathematics of Senator-Elect Franken’s “victory.”

The Wall Street Journal today examines the ethics of the Franken camp’s found-votes recount strategy:

What Mr. Franken understood was that courts would later be loathe to overrule decisions made by the canvassing board, however arbitrary those decisions were. He was right. The three-judge panel overseeing the Coleman legal challenge, and the Supreme Court that reviewed the panel’s findings, in essence found that Mr. Coleman hadn’t demonstrated a willful or malicious attempt on behalf of officials to deny him the election. And so they refused to reopen what had become a forbidding tangle of irregularities. Mr. Coleman didn’t lose the election. He lost the fight to stop the state canvassing board from changing the vote-counting rules after the fact.

This is now the second time Republicans have been beaten in this kind of legal street fight. In 2004, Dino Rossi was ahead in the election-night count for Washington Governor against Democrat Christine Gregoire. Ms. Gregoire’s team demanded the right to rifle through a list of provisional votes that hadn’t been counted, setting off a hunt for “new” Gregoire votes. By the third recount, she’d discovered enough to win. This was the model for the Franken team.

Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don’t end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.

In politics, as in life, you make your own luck.  Republicans tend to take a half-hearted —not to say half-assed— approach to the rough and tumble of electoral politics.  This is through excesses of timidity rather than of virtue, to be sure — but the result is the same.  And the word for the candidate who comes in second is still “loser.”

As far as the Senate Democrats who have so eagerly awaited the arrival of this new colleague — good luck to them.  I suspect that they may soon be experiencing a case of the “be careful what you wish for” syndrome.  As Robert Nedelkoff indicates, the world’s most exclusive club will now be welcoming an unclubbable man.  During my several years at Late Night with David Letterman and Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, I only dealt with a handful of people who were truly  unpleasant and disagreeable.  The soon-to-be Junior Senator from Minnesota was a member in bad standing of that unappealing club.

Magic Number Or Misery For The Democrats?

June 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Congress | 2 Comments 

This morning the Minnesota Supreme Court handed down its decision in favor of Al Franken in his eight-month battle with incumbent Senator Norm Coleman over the narrow margin of the election to determine the occupant of Minnesota’s seat in Capitol Hill’s upper chamber. Soon after, Coleman announced that, instead of taking his battle to the level of the Federal courts, he would concede defeat, leaving the way open for the onetime Stuart Smalley to take his seat.

(Richard A. Baker, the Historian of the Senate, was quoted as saying that Franken’s swearing-in would mark the first time a professional comedian had ever become a Senator. It’s hard to read that statement with a straight face. For example, for two terms in the 1950s and the 1960s one of our Southern states was represented by a very amiable gentleman, now deceased, who did not make much of a legislative mark, but was renowned in some circles for his habit of throwing empty bourbon bottles out of the window of his quarters in the Senate Office Building after consuming their contents. If Rick Perlstein can guess who that was, he gets a free steak dinner from me.)

On the surface, Franken’s victory looks like the ultimate triumph for the Democrats. Thanks to Arlen Specter’s defection from the Republican side of the aisle they now hold 60 seats, the supposed filibuster-proof majority. But Franken’s arrival, as no doubt many Democratic senators – perhaps even one as obtuse as Harry Reid – are aware, constitutes a mixed blessing at best.

As I said once or twice at TNN earlier this year, Franken’s career has been spent doing and saying things more or less antithetical to the usual background of a United States Senator. For well over thirty years he made his living being provocative and, not infrequently, insulting. The snide, snarky remark is sure to come more readily to his lips than genial words of consensus. Once he goes on C-Span and opens his mouth – and, indeed, he will be one of the Senators handling the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor – he is sure, sooner or later, to come up with utterances that will provide prime fodder for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and all their colleagues in the worlds of talk radio and cable TV commentary. Before long, even our Vice President might seem the model of thoughtfulness and discretion.

So a major task facing the Democrats, if they want to improve their numbers come 2010 rather than lose seats, will be to find some way to muzzle old Al at the right moments – before the watchword across the media becomes: “….and doggone it, people don’t like him.”

Journalism 101 With Bob Woodward

June 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under New Media, News media, TV News Personalities, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

Youtube is setting up a kind of journalism school of the internet, featuring clips in which various eminences of the Fourth Estate attempt to explain their profession in the space of five or six minutes. The project is being undertaken with the cooperation of many of America’s surviving dailies, and the “faculty” includes many names not widely known outside their particular cities except by their peers in the profession.

But some of the names that have been recruited for the project so far are known from coast to coast, and beyond: Arianna Huffington, Tavis Smiley, Katie Couric….and Pulitzer-winning Bob Woodward. Woodward’s clip is chock-full of old photos of himself, Carl Bernstein and Ben Bradlee striking the poses familiar to all students of the cinema of the late Alan J. Pakula). Over these images, the reporter’s voiceover describes how he got started breaking local stories, until the day he and his partner Carl came across a “metro” subject that, well, jes’ grew.

It all makes one wonder when the Youtube academy will include a clip in which Bernstein offers his sage reminiscences about the art of ordering Brandy Alexanders at just the right moment when investigating a sizzling story in mixed company, back in the days when the art of journalism involved far more than poking around with a computer.

Where Was Hitchens In The Early Seventies?

June 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, News media, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Christopher Hitchens takes a look at the latest release of Nixon recordings at Slate. For the most part, his remarks about President Nixon, Dr. Henry Kissinger, and Rev. Billy Graham are precisely what one would expect him to say – especially when he presents variations on the remarks found in his best-selling book God Is Not Great.

But one sentence leaps out from the article:

At least nobody ever accused Nixon or Kissinger of having any sort of sex life while in office—the distinctly dank reek of the absence of same can be detected throughout the taped records.

Well….liberal and radical (and, oftentimes, conservative) pundits and journalists accused Dr. Kissinger of all manner of things during his tenure as National Security Advisor. But an absence of libido was never among the charges leveled at the man who gave the world the maxim “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

To answer the question in this post’s title, at the time Dr. Kissinger was often photographed with ladies as notable as Barbara Walters, Gina Lollobrigida, Marlo Thomas, Candice Bergen, Samantha Eggar, and Jill St. John on his arm (before he remarried in 1973), Hitchens was working on the staff of the New Statesman. His duties there would likely have required him to examine English-language newspapers not only from London (where the Fleet Street press constantly ran photos of Kissinger with various lovelies) but all over the globe (including papers in which many more pictures could be found). It’s difficult to believe that Hitch’s eye never wandered away from the editorials and news articles to see the abundant visual evidence of Kissinger’s appeal to the opposite sex.

And where President Nixon is concerned, allow me to quote Barbara Walters’s words about her interview with him from her 1970 book How To Talk To Practically Anybody About Practically Anything: “I find that he has sex appeal— he’s slim and suntanned and . . . well, he’s just sexy, that’s all. And I call that charming.”

(Yes, younger readers of TNN, despite what you read in the papers or at DailyKos, there were presidents with “sex appeal” between Kennedy and Obama.)

The Strike Has Been Called

June 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | 2 Comments 

This just breaking on Twitter, amidst dwindling crowds and a crackdown on communications throughout Iran, Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard have called for a general strike:

The Facebook pages of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard called for an Islamic National Strike late Tuesday night.

Mousavi’s page updated first, about 7 p.m. local time, stating, “Strike: The manner of a man is better than his goverance. Help to bring this message back to IRAN.” Three hours later the status updated to “Dont underestimate the power of National islamic Strike.”

And early Wednesday, around 2 a.m. local time, both he and his wife’s pages updated to “Islamic Strike, help to spread the Voice out to fight the Bullets.” The message was posted twice in a row on both accounts.

There is no way to be sure Mousavi or his campaign staff are behind the accounts at this time. His page was utilized heavily leading up to Election Night and he now has more than 107,000 supporters. It has been used in the past since the election to let people know about upcoming events and demonstrations.

Text in Persian next to the updates ask people to spread the word via any means possible. A document written in Persian is attached, but it is an image file, so BT was unable to immediately translate it. Many are saying on Twitter that the file provides details on the strike. Some say the strike is to be held next Monday through Thursday and others say July 15-17.

It’s unclear how the word will spread as the Iranian government has utilized technology from the French Nokia-Siemens to monitor calls and censor the web, but many continue to use satellite communication to tune into Voice of America (VOA) and BBC Persia.

“The New Nixon” Improves “Nixonland”

June 30, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Nixonland Nitpicks | 5 Comments 

In an interview with the editor of the History News Network, Nixonland author Rick Perlstein tips his hat to TNN:

I actually quite appreciated most of what was said at the New Nixon blog. New Nixon blogger Jack Pitney made several useful corrections in particular I was able to incorporate into six subsequent printings.

President Obama Comes Out Strong For Iran Honduras

June 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Iran, Latin America | 1 Comment 

Somebody phone Mir Hossein Mousavi President Obama has found his inner jingo.

Obama said yesterday that the ‘coup’ against Honduras’s leftist President Mel Zelaya was illegal, recalling America’s dark past of not standing for fledgling Latin American democracies when they didn’t act in their larger neighbor’s  interest.

This reaction is a stark contrast to Obama’s remarks about Iran’s election ‘irregularities’ in which he didn’t want to be seen as meddling and said there was no way of investigating foul-play because international observers weren’t present. Then, Obama recalled our shameful past of meddling in sovereign nations. Charles Krauthammer explains:

Now Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is threatening a military invasion.

Featured Articles — June 30, 2009

June 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Iraq: Mission Not Yet Accomplished By Jawad Al Bolani, Washington Post
Today is the deadline by which U.S. troops are to withdraw from major Iraqi cities. This clear line in the sand must provide some relief to many Americans, whose sacrifice has been extraordinary

Obama, Like Carter, is No ‘Realist’ By Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post
For a brief moment it seemed that US President Barack Obama was moved by the recent events in Iran. On Friday, he issued his harshest statement yet on the mullocracy’s barbaric clampdown against its brave citizens who dared to demand freedom in the aftermath of June 12’s stolen presidential elections.

The Court Changes the Game By Linda Greenhouse, The New York Times
THE law of employment discrimination today is not what it was before 10 a.m. Monday, when the Supreme Court ruled against the City of New Haven for scrapping a fire department promotional exam that appeared to favor white test-takers.

Justices Reject Sotomayor Position 9-0 By Stuart Taylor, National Journal
The Supreme Court’s predictable 5-4 vote to reverse the decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and two federal appeals court colleagues against 17 white (and one Hispanic) plaintiffs in the now-famous New Haven, Conn., firefighters decision does not by itself prove that the Sotomayor position was unreasonable.

On Race, The Slog Goes On By George Will, Washington Post
Although New Haven’s firefighters deservedly won in the Supreme Court, it is deeply depressing that they won narrowly — 5-4. The egregious behavior by that city’s government, in a context of racial rabble-rousing, did not seem legally suspect to even one of the court’s four liberals, whose harmony seemed to reflect result-oriented rather than law-driven reasoning.

Iran: The Whole World is Watching By Jon B. Alterman, World Politics Review
Four decades ago, when police and national guardsmen attacked protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the protesters shouted, “The whole world is watching.”

A Coup In Honduras By Roger Noriega, Forbes
Meeting in urgent session in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, the Organization of American States (OAS) issued a demand that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya be restored to power, calling his ouster earlier that day “an unconstitutional alteration of the democratic order.” The OAS Permanent Council proclaimed that it would not recognize any government resulting from that “coup d’état.” Pretty strong stuff–but too little, too late.

Berlusconi Is The New Sarkozy

June 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs | 1 Comment 

Joshua Keating, the editor over at Foreignpolicy.com explains that just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s frivolous courtship with supermodel Carla Bruni was on the cover of every French tabloid it became an opportunity for him to augment his presence on the international stage. Italian President Silvio Berlusconi had apparently been taking notes:

But instead of focusing on improving his domestic standing, Sarkozy looked abroad. He embarked on a whirlwind round of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, Caucasus, and Africa, making the most of his term as EU president. He’s also emerged as Europe’s leading campaigner for international financial regulation, an ironic twist for the leader who was once attacked by French leftists for his “anglo-saxon” economic philosophy.

And while the Bruni jokes haven’t gone away, he’s certainly more respeted on the world stage than he was a year ago, his approval ratings (while still low) have improved significantly, and his party earned a commanding victory in the recent European parliament elections.

So all this international travel may ultimately pay off for Berlusconi. Though it should be noted that his approval ratings have barely fallen at all during the current round of scandals. Having his own media empire certainly helps. No such luck for Sarko.

Schoenfield: The Case For Meddling

June 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Intelligence, International Affairs, Iran | 1 Comment 

Gabriel Schoenfield writing at The Wall Street Journal wants the CIA to get back in the business of covert support and subsidies for parties who want to reduce tensions with the United States:

In the late 1940s through the late 1950s, the U.S. faced similar problems in various locales around the world. One of them was Italy, where there was a very real danger that the highly organized Italian Communist Party — benefiting from huge covert subsidies from the Kremlin — would come to power via the ballot box. Soviet funds had enabled that party to build a dense network of paid organizers that operated in every region and created front groups in every sector of society, from farmers to veterans to students.

The prospect of Italy becoming the first country in Europe to fall to Communism via subversion rather than direct force of Soviet arms was not, at the height of the Cold War, something the U.S. could abide. So the CIA was instructed, first by Harry Truman and then by Dwight Eisenhower, to stop it. It was the challenge presented by Italy’s vulnerability in its 1948 election that prompted the fledgling spy agency to create its Office of Policy Coordination. The banal-sounding name was a cover for what was an aggressive tool of covert political propaganda and paramilitary operations.

Over the course of the 1950s, the CIA secretly funneled money to forces in Italy’s political center. This enabled democratically oriented parties to match the Italian Communist Party activist for activist. When revealed years later, the policy was subjected to scathing criticism. But it had worked. Fragile Italy remained democratic in the 1950s and is a stable democracy today.

Harsh criticism of such operations — beginning in the 1970s when all the CIA’s secrets spilled out — is what prompted the U.S. to dismantle its capabilities in covert political action. Interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, legions of agency critics said, was both immoral and illegal.

As a matter of law, the critics are right. Such covert action is indeed illegal. But legality is beside the point. Espionage is by definition illegal and yet all countries engage in it. This is what the Soviet Union did in Italy, and it is what Iran, by organizing terrorist structures in the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere, has been doing intensively for 30 years.

As for the moral issues involved in covert operations, they are the standard ones of balancing means and ends. Self-defense is the basic right of every state; open warfare is certainly permitted to uphold it. Covert warfare, so long as it is similarly defensive, is no different. Yet throughout our history, a higher moralism has periodically come along and led us to shun intelligence operations, as when Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson famously declared that “gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail.” Stimson then shuttered his department’s code-breaking operation just as terrible storms were beginning to gather across both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Today, as a breaking point in the Islamic Republic appears to recede from view as a result of brutal violence, the U.S. appears utterly powerless to influence the course of events. Yet how much better off both Iran and the world would be if the CIA, operating covertly through local friendly forces, could have helped, say, to spark a general strike to topple the ruthless regime of the ayatollahs.

Iran Certifies Election Results, Rasfanjani Has Votes To Oust Khamenei

June 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | 1 Comment 

After offering a 5-day extension to investigate vote-rigging claims, the Guardian Council has certified the June 12 election results igniting unrest on the streets of Tehran:

Late Monday, hundreds dared to defy the government’s ban on street protests, marching down the main road through Tehran, called Vali Asr. Witnesses said that there was a human chain of government-aligned militia blocking their path. The government has barred all independent coverage of events in Iran, jailing hundreds of journalists and revoking the credentials of hundreds more. When news of the certification broke, the streets rang with furious chanting.

Earlier Monday, state television said the Guardian Council had begun a random recount of 10 percent of the ballots in Tehran’s 22 electoral districts and in some provinces. Opposition candidates refused to participate by sending observers, and the recount aroused new skepticism when the official news agency IRNA said that in one district, the hardline incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won even more votes than in the first official count.

On Monday night, state media suddenly announced that the Guardian Council had finished the recount and officially confirmed the declared landslide for Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is launching a judicial inquiry into the ’suspicious’ death of Neda Soltan in attempt to remake the narrative as a Zionist plot:

President Ahmadinejad called for an investigation into the killing of Neda Agha Soltan, pressing the government’s contention that the young woman who has become an icon of government repression of protestors was killed by a foreign agent.

Finally, the billionaire and very powerful cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rasfanjani has called for a probe into the elections and according to the Jerusalem Post might have enough votes to oust Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei:

Meanwhile, the Al-Arabiya satellite television news channel quoted a “high-ranking” source in Qom claiming that Rafsanjani, a key supporter of Mousavi, has garnered enough support among leading Iranian clerics to remove Khamenei, but that an announcement is being delayed amid differences on who or what should replace the supreme leader. There was no independent confirmation of this report.

Rafsanjani is known to have met with the Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani’s representative in Iran, Javad Shahrestani. Some sources have raised the unlikely possibility of Al-Sistani, who has been quoted as saying that “Islamic jurisprudence holds the killing of a single human being is like the killing of all humanity,” issuing a fatwa condemning the regime brutal response to post-election protests.

Al-Sistani is said by some sources to have an ongoing feud with Ahmadinejad. He reportedly refused to see Ahmadinejad when the latter visited Iraq in March 2008, having never previously refused to meet an Iranian leader.

Rafsanjani called on Sunday for a systematic and just probe into claims of fraud in the June 12 national elections, Reuters reported.

But in the increasingly slim possibility Khamenei goes down it won’t be without a fight:

The Tabnak news agency, quoting Etemad newspaper (belonging to Karroubi) stated that the Keyhan newspaper has stopped publishing Ayatollah Javad Amoli´s column. This has been a permanent feature of the newspaper for a number of years.

This is yet another sign of the growing rift between the clergy and Ahmadinejad. It must be noted that Ayatollah Amoli (relative of Aki Larijani) was a supporter of Ahmadinejad. In fact it was at his house where Ahmadinejad was filmed talking about his holy moment a the UN when he felt an aura surrounding him.

However, due to Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei´s efforts to reduce the power of the clergy, relations soured. In fact, according to Rooz daily, prior to the elections, Ayatollah Amoli belonged to a group of clergy who issued a fatwa stating that cheating in elections are forbidden (haram).

Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, Ahmadinejad´s messianic ally, issued another fatwa saying that it is permissible (halal) to cheat, if its in the interest of the regime. Keyhan sides with Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.

This development is yet another important indication of the chasm created between Tehran and Qom. How much has this caused? The results will become evident when the question of finding a replacement for Khamenei arises, or when Khamenei dies. The hand over of power, and how smooth or hard it will be, is going to be a good yard stick to measure the damage.

Meddling In Honduras

June 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Barack Obama, International Affairs, Iran, Latin America, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

The Organization of American States (OAS) and the Obama administration are condemning the military ‘coup d’etat‘ in Honduras that placed popularly elected President Mel Zelaya to exile in Costa Rica yesterday.

According to Mary Anastasia O’Grady in today’s Wall Street Journal opinion page, it was Zelaya — who is a member of Venezuelan dictator for life Hugo Chavez’s leftist coalition of Latin American states  — who was aiming to subvert the democratic process, attempting to circumvent Congress and re-write the Constitution to rescind presidential term limits. The military was just upholding their constitutional obligations:

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya’s next move will be. It’s not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating “the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter” and said it “should be condemned by all.” Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya’s foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. “We won’t go backwards,” one sign said. “We want to live in peace, freedom and development.”

The administration’s swift condemnation of the Honduran military is in fact an interesting development. Rather than apply the ‘measured’ and neutral approach maintained in the aftermath of Iran’s rigged elections, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are picking sides, calling on the military to respect ‘democratic norms.’

This new found idealism has thus far not been reserved to regimes whose motives run antithetical to U.S. interests. Interesting for an administration that has wrapped itself in the shroud of realism.

Hugo Chavez, who has repeatedly trumped up charges and jailed his political opponents  has not been rebuked or sanctioned for violating the Inter-American Democratic Charter. And the administration has made it an all but foregone conclusion that Cuba will be brought out of its isolation even though dozens of dissidents and journalists remain imprisoned by the Castro brothers.

It took several more murders and beatings on the streets of Teheran for President Obama to finally admit the futility of the ‘engagement’ charade and speak out — albeit in relatively general terms –  against the brutality of Iran’s clerical-military apparatus. This wasn’t before drawing a moral equivalency between the Khamenei backed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the leader of the people’s democracy movement, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

The message President Obama is sending is clear, his diametric shift in public diplomacy is now predicated on the perceptions of those traditionally contemptuous of American power, with the hope that our diminished presence will limit our role as occassional whipping boy. Hopefully he’ll come to grips with the reality that our emasculation will make us a permanent one.

Featured Articles — June 29, 2009

June 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Why We Need a Second Stimulus By John B. Judis, The New Republic
Our country’s unemployment rate, which has risen every month this year, now stands well above the worst case scenario of the Treasury Department’s stress tests. Yet we are inundated each month with reports that, in spite of a rising rate of unemployment, the slump has “bottomed out” or is even over.

Losing His Mojo? By Rich Lowry, The New York Post
Starting with his win in the Iowa caucuses in January 2008, he has been, if not the one we’ve been waiting for, the one best suited to tap the wellsprings of public sentiment and capitalize on political circumstances for his own and his party’s benefit.

The Power of Iran’s Iron Fist By Dieter Bednarz, Der Spiegel
Tehran is in a state of emergency as the government continues its increasingly brutal crackdown against protesters. Hardliners and opposition politicians are searching for a compromise behind the scenes, but Iran’s supreme leader is refusing to make any concessions.

New Rift Opens Over Rights of Detainees By Jess Bravin, The Wall Street Journal
The Justice Department has determined that detainees tried by military commissions in the U.S. can claim at least some constitutional rights, particularly protection against the use of statements taken through coercive interrogations, officials said.

Stonewall Plus Forty By Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker
The most improbable of America’s mass movements for civil rights—improbable at the time, inevitable in retrospect—got its start at a most improbable hour in a most improbable place.

3,000 Protesters Clash With Police, Local Employees From British Embassy Detained

June 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Smaller protests continue as Mir Hossein Mousavi vows not to back down from his challenge of the June 12 election results. The report is here.

Superior

June 28, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

No  one ever accused RN of perfection.  Throughout his career, reporters and cartoonists dwelt on his mistakes, his quirks, even his physical flaws: recall Garry Wills’s long, bizarre description of his face in Nixon Agonistes. As Eamon Javers wryly notes in Politico, the current president has a different image:

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

June 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | 3 Comments 

The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time, forty years ago in 1969, when Richard Nixon became POTUS.

GET BACK (THE BEATLES WITH BILLY PRESTON) performed by THE BEATLES

Forty years ago this week, the Number One song in America was (as it had been since 24 May) the Beatles’ “Get Back.”

Pace maker and peace maker: Billy Preston recording with the Beatles in the January 1969 “Get Back” sessions at Abbey Road studios in London.

By the beginning of 1969, when the Beatles went into the studio to begin work on a new LP and film project —in which the making of the album would be recorded in documentary style— the tensions that would soon tear the band apart were already at work.

George was unhappy and quarreling with Paul; Ringo felt unappreciated; and Yoko Ono was now silently shadowing John in an impassive-aggressive way that even today still seems more than slightly creepy.

In fact the atmosphere was so poisonous that, when George Harrison found keyboard player Billy Preston hanging out in the lobby of the Apple offices, he immediately invited him to join the band in the studio. As Harrison later recalled, Preston “came in while we were down in the basement, running through ‘Get Back,’ and I went up to reception and said, ‘Come in and play on this because they’re all acting strange’. He was all excited. I knew the others loved Billy anyway, and it was like a breath of fresh air. It’s interesting to see how nicely people behave when you bring a guest in, because they don’t really want everybody to know that they’re so bitchy… He got on the electric piano, and straight away there was 100% improvement in the vibe in the room. Having this fifth person was just enough to cut the ice that we’d created among ourselves.”

In fact, “Get Back” is attributed to “The Beatles with Billy Preston” — the only such shared credit in their entire catalog.

The concept of the new album —which was tentatively titled “Get Back”— was, precisely, to get back to the band’s earlier, simpler roots in terms of songs, arrangements, and production. This was to be a straightforward studio album minus the bells and whistles and overdubs that had started with Sgt. Pepper.

McCartney gave it the title by adlibbing “get back to where you once belonged” — referring to the song “Sour Milk Sea,” written by Harrison and recorded by Apple artist Jackie Lomax, which expressed the lyrical imperative “Get back to where you should be.”

So the phrase “Get Back” perfectly expressed the project’s intention and purpose of getting back to musical roots and basics. And during the extended jam-sessions-cum-rehearsals that became known as the “Get Back Sessions,” the band played scores of songs. But Lennon, who otherwise liked the song, claimed that every time McCartney sang the words “get back,” he glared at Yoko Ono. Lennon told Playboy in 1980: “I’ve always thought there was this underlying thing in Paul’s ‘Get Back.’ When we were in the studio recording it, every time he sang the line ‘Get back to where you once belonged,’ he’d look at Yoko.

Paul McCartney’s attempts to mock and/or satirize Tory MP Enoch Powell’s infamous “River of Blood” anti-immigration speech provided both the backstory and the genesis of “Get Back.”

In the wake of the American riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., British Tory MP Enoch Powell made an inflammatory speech about the threat he claimed Britain was creating as a result of admitting the numbers of immigrants that would end up creating, in Britain’s insular society, the destructive problems that were endemic in America.

Powell was a classicist, and what the press immediately dubbed the “River of Blood” speech was named for one particularly vivid image came from Virgil’s Aeneid:

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

It had been on Paul McCartney’s mind to address this bitterly-raging immigration debate —which was particularly focused on immigration from Pakistan— by sending up Powell’s rabble-rousing words.

At one of the “Get Back” sessions, McCartney improvised a “Commonwealth Song.” There is only one rough take of it, and the lyrics are fragmentary and only intermittently intelligible. But the message was clear: “You’d better get back to your Commonwealth Homes.”

You can hear the “Commonwealth Song” here at 3.28.

Commonwealth Song

Immigrants, immigrants had better go home,
Tonight Commonwealth… [Labor Party Prime Minister Harold] Wilson said to the immigrants,
You’d better get back to your Commonwealth homes,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he said you’d better get back… home!

Now Enoch Powell said to the folks,
He (inaudible) to the colour of your skin,
He said he don’t care what it’s…
So Ted Heath said to Enoch Powell he said you better get off…,
Enoch… Enoch you better go home!

So Wilson said to the Premier, come on we gotta swing,
We gotta go back to the summat or the other
So Enoch Powell said to Wilson/Heath by… the Commonwealth!

If you don’t want trouble then you better go back to home!

Then John Lennon sings:
I went to India, I’ve been to old Calcutta and I’ve had enough of that,
I’m coming back to England-town.
(Paul: Yes, welcome!)
And dirty Enoch Powell and he’s had enough of coloured men.

Paul: Commonwealth!
John: Yes?
Paul: Can you hear me Commonwealth?
John: Yes!
Paul: Well Enoch Powell you gotta go back to home!

The “Commonwealth Song” was a discrete composition that remained unformed and unrefined. The melody (even where the lyrics talked about going back home) has nothing to do with the melody of “Get Back” which emerged for “No Pakistanis” — another even less subtle McCartney attempt at sending up Powell.

Once again the song was spontaneous and fragmentary.

…was a Puerto Rican… living in the USA.
Get back! Oh, get Back! Get back to where you once belonged.

…don’t dig no Pakistani’s taking all the people’s jobs.
Oh, get back! Get Back! Oh, get back to where you once belonged.

…was a Pakistani…
don’t dig no Pakistanis taking all the people’s jobs.
So, get back! Get back! Get back to where you once belonged.

As the song ends, the “Get Backs” are given an over-the-top satiric fierceness.

There was only one take of the “Commonwealth Song” and “No Pakistanis” at the “Get Back” sessions, which indicates that they were incidental jams that might have been intended to work through some ideas, or that might simply have been intended to relieve the tension and pass the time. This became relevant seventeen years later when the Get Back sessions became public and, despite the evidence at ear and the common sense of the situation, McCartney was accused by some of racism.

By way of explanation —and defense— he told Rolling Stone magazine:

When we were doing Let It Be, there were a couple of verses to “Get Back” which were actually not racist at all – they were anti-racist. There were a lot of stories in the newspapers then about Pakistanis crowding out flats – you know, living 16 to a room or whatever. So in one of the verses of “Get Back,” which we were making up on the set of Let It Be, one of the outtakes has something about “too many Pakistanis living in a council flat” — that’s the line. Which to me was actually talking out against overcrowding for Pakistanis… If there was any group that was not racist, it was the Beatles. I mean, all our favorite people were always black. We were kind of the first people to open international eyes, in a way, to Motown.

Once “Get Back” gelled, the lyrics took a completely different direction.

Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn’t last
Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
For some California grass

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, Jojo
Go home

Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Get back, Jo

Sweet Loretta Martin thought she was a woman
But she was another man
All the girls around her say she’s got it coming
But she gets it while she can

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, Loretta
Go home

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Oooh…

Get back, Loretta
Your mama’s waiting for you
Wearing her high-heel shoes
And her low-neck sweater
Get back home, Loretta

The eleventh take (of fourteen) from the January 27th recording session was released in the UK as a single on 11 April, and in the US on 5 May. It immediately shot to Number One on the charts in both countries (for five weeks in England and a month in the States.)

As with all things Beatles, the exegeses of the song’s meanings are extensive. Tucson, Arizona, was the home town of McCartney’s fiancé Linda Eastman. Some thought that Jojo referred to a popular bar; others thought it referred to Ms. Eastman’s first husband Joseph, who had abandoned her and their daughter.

McCartney has claimed that the final lyrics are purposely ambiguous and mean nothing in particular. As he told a biographer: “Many people have since claimed to be the Jo Jo and they’re not, let me put that straight! I had no particular person in mind, again it was a fictional character, half man, half woman, all very ambiguous. I often left things ambiguous, I like doing that in my songs.”

Three days after the recording session, the Beatles went to the roof of their Apple offices on London’s tony Savile Row for what would turn out to be their last public performance.

They did three slightly differing versions of “Get Back” — and might have done more had the neighbors’ complaints not brought the police — and inspired McCartney’s extemporaneous addition: “You been out too long, Loretta! You’ve been playing on the roofs again! That’s no good! You know your mommy doesn’t like that! Oh, she’s getting angry… she’ll have you arrested! Get back!”

On 12 March, McCartney married Linda Eastman at the Marylebone Registry Office; on 20 March, Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar. By that time the “Get Back” project had already been shelved and the dissolution of the band had begun. But all four members liked the title song so well that they agreed to its release as a single.

Against the Beatles’ wishes, Capitol Records hired producer Phil Spector to produce an album from the “Get Back” sessions. Spector made a new mix of “Get Back” in March 1970, and an LP —now titled Let It Be— was released —a year after the single— on 8 May. To the original 11th “Get Back” take of 27 January, Spector added dialog from the rooftop session. Now McCartney is heard saying “Thanks, Mo” — referring to Ringo’s wife Maureen who was cheering enthusiastically. And Lennon closes with: “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the band and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition.”

Here is Spector’s sweetened and revised version — the twelfth and last track on Let It Be.

The original, unreleased, version can be heard on several bootlegs and, legally, on the 2003 release Let It Be…Naked.

Alan W. Pollock’s invaluable and inimitable “Notes on ‘Get Back’” answer any and all questions about the song. His conclusion is sad and wise:

In hindsight you’ll notice how the release of several Beatles singles seemed carefully timed as if to serve as a musical road sign, offering the observant follower a clue to the new direction ever so slightly ahead of the actual bend in the road. To the extent that you can trace this pattern you have to wonder how much of a conscious decision lay behind it.

“Get Back” (b/w “Don’t Let Me Down”) surely belongs to this group of singles. But whereas singles like “Paperback Writer” / “Rain” or “Penny Lane” / “Strawberry Fields Forever” each signal a compositional or stylistic leap in their wake, “Get Back” is musically rather simple stuff by comparison; its particularly enduring significance being more closely related to the chronicled history of the group per se.

As we all know, the combined album and film project named after this song was fated to end up as the painfully sad and the at times excruciatingly well documented commentary on the group’s inevitable breakup. The final edit and mixdown of the “Get Back” materials was aborted and indefinitely postponed in midstream until, almost a year later, long after the recording of the valedictory “Abbey Road” album, it was eventually post-produced and re-edited in order to be released under the transmographied title (not to mention, aptly reworded overarching message) of “Let It Be”.

Featured Articles — June 28, 2009

June 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

The Flaw in Obama’s Israel Policy By David Ignatius, Washington Post
Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, seemed perplexed during his visit to Washington this month: At a time when America and Israel agreed on all the big issues — from Iran and North Korea to Afghanistan and Pakistan — how could the little issue of Israeli settlements on the West Bank get in the way?

Americans Will Regret Health Care ‘Fix‘ By George Will, Washington Post
“In the beginning,” says a character in a Peter De Vries novel, “the earth was without form and void. Why didn’t they leave well enough alone?” When Washington is finished improving health care, Americans may be asking the same thing. Certainly the debate will compel them to think more clearly about this subject.

Republicans in the Wilderness By Thomas Sowell, Detroit News
A Gallup poll last week showed that far more Americans describe themselves as “conservatives” than as “liberals.” Yet Republicans have been clobbered by the Democrats in both the 2008 elections and the 2006 elections.

What happens next in Iraq? By Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer
As U.S. troops pull back Tuesday, new violence is likely, maybe progress.

The Wall Isn’t Falling By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek
Whenever we see the kinds of images that have been coming out of Iran over the past two weeks, we tend to think back to 1989 and Eastern Europe. That time, when people took to the streets and challenged their governments, those seemingly stable regimes proved to be hollow and quickly collapsed. What emerged was liberal democracy. Could Iran yet undergo its own velvet revolution?

Negotiate With Who? By Amir Taheri, The New York Post
PRESIDENT Obama remains adamant about his policy of “engagement” with Iran. Yet he may soon find it hard to find a credible interlocutor in Tehran.

Which State Security Branch Rules Tehran’s Streets? By Nahid Siamdoust, Time
Two weeks after the contested results of Iran’s Presidential elections led to widespread street riots and demonstrations across the country, the Islamic Republic pronounced its harshest threat yet to protesters. At the official ceremony for Friday prayers, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a hard-line cleric who often delivers the sermon, said those who agitate on the streets were “waging war against God,” a crime that carries the death sentence.

Happy Negotiations!

June 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Today, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rebuked President Obama’s remarks about the brutality inflicted on the Iranian people by their own government:

“It is enough,” he said. “Do not disgrace yourself further by such language and behavior.”

Ahmadinejad also said he will take a tougher stance against the West in the next four years of his presidency:

“Without a doubt, Iran’s new government will have a more decisive and firmer approach toward the West,” Ahmadinejad said. “This time the Iranian nation’s reply will be harsh and more decisive,” to make the West regret its “meddlesome stance,” he said.

The word ‘meddlesome’ — or at least its root — was stolen right out of President Obama’s mouth:

“It’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling — the U.S. President meddling in Iranian elections.” Obama said at a White House Press conference with South Korean President Lee.

And unfortunately the word ‘regret’ was used to leverage Obama’s tentative stance on the people’s revolution and his passive invitation to corner America’s foreign policy into being defined by its enemies’ perceptions.

Funny because the mullocracy doesn’t mind being meddlesome at all. Nor do they ever regret it.

Liddy, Hunt, And The Power Of Song

June 27, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Music, Nixon Administration figures, U.S. History, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

What are the citizens of Vermont doing, now that the United States is being remade along the lines most of them seem to favor, and they no longer have to plot to secede from the Union to join Canada?

Well, tonight, and next Tuesday, some of them will be going to see a new musical at the Paramount Theater in Rutland. The show is called Room 16, by the youthful team of Stephen Sislen (composer and co-lyricist) and Ben H. Winters (book writer and co-lyricist), and its subject is nothing less than the Watergate break-in. From what I could gather in these articles from the Rutland Herald and Vermont Public Radio’s site, the show focuses on the relationship of the break-in’s two main planners, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.

The brief description of the musical at ASCAP’s site gives an indication of the plot: “though initially wary of each other, the two soon become successful co-conspirators…and pals.” Not much different from The Producers, in other words, and we all know what a massive success that show proved to be.

Last year Room 16 was featured in an ASCAP/Disney workshop in New York, and Youtube has clips of three songs from it: “Room 16,” “After November,” and “Under Control.” Watching these clips, it’s quite apparent that Sislen has a superior gift for melody in the grand Broadway tradition and that he and Winters can produce lyrics on the same high level. (Indeed, their songwriting style somewhat brings to mind Liddy’s favorites, John Kander and Fred Ebb of Cabaret fame.) It’s hard to say to what degree the show’s book would follow the historical record, but then again, The King And I and The Sound Of Music are not exactly models of fidelity to the facts.

No word yet on when or if the show will reach Broadway, but considering that John Adams’s Nixon In China is probably the most produced opera from the second half of the twentieth century, Room 16’s chances of further success may be quite good.

Moonwalking With Steve Martin

June 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Comedy, In Memoriam | 2 Comments 

At the New Yorker, actor and comedian Steve Martin writes a humorous and affectionate tribute to the late Michael Jackson:

As a dancer, Michael Jackson was great. He was like Fred Astaire. This video, a parody of the “Billie Jean” video, was done for “The New Show,” which was a prime-time NBC program that Lorne Michaels did in 1983-1984, when he wasn’t producing “Saturday Night Live.” This was the opening—it was the first piece on the first episode of the show. Michael Jackson had recently done what I consider to be his life-changing performance on the Grammy Awards, where he did the Moonwalk and threw his hat offstage. He was just brilliant. Then the “Billie Jean” video came out. And this was a parody of that.

I’m not sure whose idea it was; it might have been Lorne’s. Pat Birch choreographed it. The hard move was that little leg twist that he did. You really have to throw your leg. I did it a thousand times in about three days. And a couple of weeks later I noticed—er, I have a pain here. The pain lasted about two years, then it went away on its own.

Here is Martin’s priceless attempt:

The Great Purge

June 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

The U.K. Times is reporting that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will crackdown on opposition beyond the scope of his constitutional power:

Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, are bracing themselves for a purge if, as expected, he returns to office following the country’s bitterly disputed presidential election.

His defeated rival, Mir Hos-sein Mousavi, who came a distant second in a poll he insists was rigged by the regime, has continued to defy what he has called “huge pressures” to halt his campaign for a new vote.

Last week his communications with the outside world were severely restricted, his web page was taken down and his newspaper was closed, with 25 of its employees arrested.

Supporters said they feared Mousavi could become another Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader who has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest.

Continue reading.

It’s The Security Forces Stupid

June 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

People power can be potent, but its limits have become evident on the streets of Tehran today.

Accordingly, David Sanger writes in this version of New York Times Magazine the fate of the theocratic regime hinges on the loyalty of the security services:

Still, a common thread is clear: It is the security services on which the regime’s fate ultimately hinges. If they decide their best interests lie with the powers that they have protected, and that have protected them, they will stick it out. If they decide they are more likely to prosper under new leadership, power can collapse at the speed of a show trial.

There have been reports of ambivalence, reluctance, and outright defection from the state police and the Revolutionary Guard, but I wouldn’t expect a widespread culture change in the state security apparatus anytime soon.

Primarily, the vast countrywide network of Basij militiamen would lose the mystique and martyr-like status gained from the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War should the regime become anything but hard-line Islamist and anti-West.

For their brutal methods used against peaceful dissidents, they could also be brought up on war crimes charges, effectively making their relinquishment of power all the more problematic.

TNN Weekly Weekend Reward

June 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Weekly Weekend Reward | Leave a Comment 

This week’s Reward was a recent gift from an old friend: the O’Neal Twins’ rendition of Prof. Ronnie Felder’s gospel classic “Jesus Dropped the Charges.”  It’s hard to decide which is more brilliant — the infectious tune or the tight and clever lyrics — but no decision is required.

The O’Neal Twins —Edgar on the piano and Edward as lead vocalist— were born in St. Louis on 17 August 1937.  In 1969 they were voted the World’s Greatest Gospel Duo by the National Association of Television and Radio Artists.  In 2004 they were inducted into the International Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

I was guilty
Of all the charges,
Doomed and disgraced.
But Jesus,
With His special love,
Saved me by His grace.
He pleaded,
And He pleaded,
He pleaded my case.

Jesus dropped the charges,
Jesus dropped the charges,
And now I’m saved through grace and faith.

I was guilty
For oh so long
Lived in sin too long.
But Jesus,
With His special love,
Reached down with His arms so strong.
He picked me up,
Turned me around,
Gave me a brand new song.

Jesus dropped the charges,
Jesus dropped the charges,
And to Him I belong.

He dropped the charges,
Jesus dropped the charges,
Although I was wrong.
He dropped the charges,
Jesus dropped the charges,
Showed me right from wrong.

He dropped the charges,
Jesus dropped the charges,
He cast them all away.
At Calvary I heard Him say:
“Case dismissed, case dismissed —
Saved by grace.”

Edward O’Neal passed away in 1990; Edgar died in January 2008.

Featured Articles — January 27, 2009

June 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Iran’s Second Sex By Roger Cohen, The New York Times
From Day 1, Iran’s women stood in the vanguard. Their voices from rooftops were loudest, and their defiance in the streets boldest. “Stand, don’t run,” Nazanine told me as the baton-wielding police charged up handsome Vali Asr avenue on the day after the fraudulent election. She stood.

Silence Has Consequences for Iran By Jose Maria Aznar, The Wall Street Journal
If there hadn’t been dissidents in the Soviet Union, the Communist regime never would have crumbled. And if the West hadn’t been concerned about their fate, Soviet leaders would have ruthlessly done away with them. They didn’t because the Kremlin feared the response of the Free World.
The prescience of protest By Natan Sharansky, The Los Angeles Times
Once again, the world is amazed. As with the seemingly sudden appearance of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, or the gaudy, grand-scale collapse of the Soviet empire at the end of that decade, the massive revolt of Iranian citizens has elicited the unmitigated surprise of the free world’s army of experts, pundits and commentators. Who would have known?

Iraq on the knife’s edge By Peter Feaver, Foreign Policy
With all the excitement further east, it is almost possible to forget that the coming week will be a momentous one for Iraq. Almost possible, but not quite, because tragically, Iraq still generates more than its fair share of newsworthy events.

When There’s a Will By Greg Sheridan, The Australian
BARACK Obama has become ahero to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, a poll published in The Jerusalem Post shows a minuscule 6 per cent of Israelis believe Obama’s administration and policies are pro-Israel.

What will happen when U.S. combat troops withdraw? By Fred Kaplan, Slate
By June 30, all U.S. combat troops are scheduled—in fact, they’re required—to be withdrawn from all of Iraq’s cities, towns, and villages.

What the Energy Bill Really Means for CO2 Emissions By Bryan Walsh, Time
With a razor-thin margin of just seven votes, the House of Representatives on Friday evening passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act — the first bill to put a fixed and declining cap on U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. Republicans and Democrats in the House spent much of the day sparring in sharp language over the bill, which will reduce U.S. carbon emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% below by 2050.

A Different Kind Of Inauguration

June 26, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Entertainment, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Michael Jackson was always a keen reader of comic books, and in the 1980s he was often referred to in them. Comicbook.com takes a look at some aspects of his association with the comics world. It’s been widely reported that in his last weeks the Gloved One enlisted the help of TV’s Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, to help get in shape for the marathon series of London concerts he planned to undertake next month before tragedy struck.

But did you know that Jackson reportedly once met with Stan Lee to discuss buying Marvel Comics – the whole shebang? With Spidey and the Fantastic Four in the hands of MJ, the whole course of history might have been changed.

And speaking of Marvel, back in the early ’70s it had a short-lived title called Spoof, somewhat in the tradition of the 1950s Mad. The cover of issue #3 (for January 1973) featured the first appearance of Jackson on the front of a comic book. He was depicted with his brothers, Bob Dylan, the former Beatles, Elvis, the Stones, and the Osmonds in the grandstand of that year’s Presidential inauguration in Washington, watching as John Lennon swore in David Cassidy as Chief Executive. The foreground of the cover showed Spiro Agnew casting a baleful glance at Richard Nixon and saying, “You had to lower the voting age to 18.” (The scene was clearly inspired by that wacky old movie Wild In The Streets.)

Send Green Balloons To The Sky

June 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

(H/T: Andrew Sullivan)

From Voice of America:

Groups of Iranians visited a Tehran cemetery Friday and released green balloons to pay tribute to a young woman named Neda Agha Soltan they say was killed by Iranian security forces.

Strong Statements From Obama And G8

June 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

President Obama railed against the Iranian regime’s treatment of dissidents:

In Washington, President Obama accused Tehran of violating “universal norms, international norms,” and saying that the bravery of the Iranian people is “a testament to their enduring pursuit of justice.”

He also said that he doesn’t take Mahmoud Ahmedinjad seriously:

At the news conference on Friday, President Obama dismissed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s gibe. “I don’t take Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran,” he said. “And I’m really not concerned about Mr. Ahmadinejad apologizing to me.”

Rather, Mr. Obama said, the Iranian president should “think carefully about the obligations he owes to his own people. And he might want to consider looking at the families of those who’ve been beaten or shot or detained.”

The G8 also came out with a statement but with some reservations to appease Russia:

At a meeting in Trieste, Italy on Friday, the foreign ministers from the Group of Eight issued a joint statement saying they “deplored post-electoral violence which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians” and urged Iran to respect human rights, including freedom of expression. Along with the United States and Italy, the group includes Japan, Russia, Canada, France, Germany and Britain.

The statement called on Iran to “guarantee that the will of the Iranian people is reflected in the electoral process,” but it said the door must remain open to dialogue with Tehran on its contentious nuclear program, news reports said.

The joint statement was a compromise between some European countries seeking a harder line, and Russia, whose foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said at a news conference in Trieste that while Moscow wanted to express its “most serious concern” over use of force in Iran, “we will not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs.”

“Our position is that all issues that have emerged in the context of the elections will be sorted out in line with democratic procedures,” The Associated Press quoted him as saying. Unlike other G-8 members, Russia has recognized the election result and played host to Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Guardian Council: Election Healthiest Since Revolution

June 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Not very encouraging news:

“The reviews showed that the election was the healthiest since the revolution,” Mr. Kadkhodaei said. “There were no major violations in the election.”

The statement fell short of formal certification. But it offered further evidence that despite mass demonstrations and violent confrontations with those who call the election a fraud, the authorities are intent on enforcing their writ and denying their adversaries a voice.

Initially, three losing candidates registered complaints of electoral irregularities, but one of them, Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, withdrew his objections on Wednesday. Mr. Moussavi said Thursday he had come under pressure to drop his complaint.

Absent international observers, the Guardian Council will conduct a courtesy 10 percent recount to validate the fraud:

“The reviews showed that the election was the healthiest since the revolution,” Mr. Kadkhodaei said. “There were no major violations in the election.”

The statement fell short of formal certification. But it offered further evidence that despite mass demonstrations and violent confrontations with those who call the election a fraud, the authorities are intent on enforcing their writ and denying their adversaries a voice.

Initially, three losing candidates registered complaints of electoral irregularities, but one of them, Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, withdrew his objections on Wednesday. Mr. Moussavi said Thursday he had come under pressure to drop his complaint.

Mousavi: Khamenei And Ahmadinejad Have Blood On Their Hands

June 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Mousavi on his Twitter page — at the very least — said as much implicity:

Mir Hossein Mousavi says he holds those behind alleged “rigged” elections responsible for bloodshed during recent protests. #IranElection

Cleric: Rioters Waged War Against God

June 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Before President Obama enters into nuclear disarmement talks with the current regime, he should take a listen at the vitriolic statements from the Khamenei crowd. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami (no relation to former President Mohammed Khatami) is the latest no to draw any nuances at today’s Friday prayers:

Khatami, a member of the powerful Assembly of Experts, said the judiciary should charge the leading “rioters” as “mohareb” or one who wages war against God.

“They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely,” he said. Under Iran’s Islamic law, punishment for people convicted as “mohareb” is execution.

Forget Taxes – What About Death?

June 26, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Culture, Faith, History, News media, Religion | 2 Comments 

Daniel Defoe, early eighteenth century novelist (Robinson Crusoe), pamphleteer, and part-time spy, is usually credited with the first use of some form of the phrase about the certainty of both death and taxes. Benjamin Franklin borrowed from Defoe and refined it: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” And, in Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell included a play on the now famous maxim: “Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.”

Columns such as mine talk a lot these days about taxes – maybe too much. But we certainly don’t talk enough about death, except when someone famous or beloved, sometimes both, passes on.

How many times have you heard the idea that bad things come in “threes?” Well, recently it seems we have transcended that. Ed McMahon passed the other day; so did Farrah Fawcett, now comes the death of pop icon Michael Jackson. The first two events seemed to be sadly imminent for sometime, one because of chronic health issues due to age, the other because of a battle – valiantly fought – with cancer. Mr. McMahon was 86, the former Charlie’s Angel was 62; Michael was 50.

There was Stephen Johns, the kind and generous security guard who opened a door at the Holocaust Museum recently, only to be gunned down by a hateful excuse of a man. And just the other day, a memorial service was held here in the Washington, D.C. area for Jeanice McMillan, the Metro train operator who perished after gallantly trying to stop her train from crashing into another. By all accounts, the lady was a hero. Then, of course, there are the eight others who died in that rail tragedy. Among them, Retired Major General, David Wherley, former commander of the D.C. Army and Air National Guard, and his wife, Ann, along with LaVonda King, a 23-year old mom on her way to pick up her two boys from daycare.

Of course, any morning newspaper is filled with death notices, names that mean something to relatively few as compared to what happens when someone famous dies. So, why is it that we find ourselves moved – even a little emotional – when we hear of the passing of someone we only knew from afar? Is it just because of the whole overdone 24/7 news coverage, looping stuff over and over and talking ad infinitum about a person?

I actually think something else is at play. Something deeper. Something instinctive. Something that is directly tied to how we are all wired.

Centuries ago, a king whose name is synonymous with wisdom, but who actually did a lot of dumb things – that being another story – reflected:

Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties. After all, everyone dies – so the living should take this to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us. A wise person thinks a lot about death, while a fool thinks only about having a good time. – Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 (New Living Translation)

Solomon wasn’t talking here about some kind of morbid fascination with the details of death. He was referring to the quite healthy idea of stopping to think through the meaning of death. It is the ultimate area for personal reflection. We all identify with dying, death, and grief – whether we like, or want, to admit it.

So, as I watched the around the clock coverage of the passing of Michael Jackson, I found myself moved, not because I was a big fan – far from it. I liked the old Jackson Five stuff and when he sang to that rodent named Ben, but as he grew up and out there, I lost interest. This is not meant to demean or disparage the deceased, not at all. I feel for his family and his fans.

And I also hope that moments like this help all of us to think about what life means and what death is. We have birth certificates (those of us who can find them), but I have never seen one with an expiration date. Death comes in all shapes and sizes.

As a young minister starting out 31 years ago, the first funeral I conducted was for a stillborn baby, whose mother had gone into labor at the church baby shower. Three days later, I was called upon to officiate the service for a 93-year old man. Since then, my work has thrust me into moments somewhere between those age parameters.

I have given eulogies before thousands. And I have comforted an audience of one – a grieving mother – at a service for her son, a Vietnam vet who took his own life. I cried when she was given the flag.

Being a trumpet player, I have played taps in the distance. Being a preacher, I have shared words of comfort as best I could, always with the nagging sense that they fell short, because, well, they did. Being a human being, I have wept, even if my tears were tempered by my Christian faith and hope. Jesus himself wept, though knowing that his deceased friend, Lazarus, would momentarily rejoin the living.

Do I think celebrity-driven grief is overdone? Yeah probably, but I know it is easy for us to become myopic these days, obsessed with something out of proportion to how it actually impacts our individual lives. I also find myself somewhat put off when people can’t seem to find emotion in them when something sad – writ large – happens.

You see, when I think of Ed McMahon’s passing, I think of my elders, some who have long since left this earth, and others who are moving toward that inevitable moment. When I think of Farrah Fawcett, I can’t help but think of my mother, who passed several years ago in her 60s, after a lengthy and valiant battle with cancer and its complications.

Identification.

What do I think of when I focus on Michael Jackson’s passing? I think of a little boy with such talent, and then the man he grew into. He was obviously someone who struggled on several levels, and seemed to have so many unhappy moments, in spite of a global fan-base and the fleeting nature of material success.

As a student of history – and as an amateur historian, as well – I know that there is a time and place for the analysis of a life: the good, bad, and ugly. But it’s not during the wake. There should be a time and space to mourn, especially for those who really knew him. It is unseemly to sift cynically through a man’s life – and I imagine there is a lot there that would not match my values – in the immediate shadow of his passing. History can be written later, revealing things and teaching lessons.

Was Michael Jackson a bad or good person? I have my thoughts (rooted in scripture), others may think differently. But that he was a broken and hurting person, most would agree. When Jesus announced his ministry in Capernaum, quoting from Isaiah chapter 61, he did not indicate that he was on the scene to root out the bad people, but he did talk a lot about the broken and needy. And in the verse after the great John 3:16, Jesus talked about how he wasn’t sent to condemn the world, but to redeem it.

This is not an exercise in semantics, nor is it an attempt to water anything down. Jesus didn’t need to condemn, because the righteous law of God had been doing that all along. God is a judge and will judge according to righteousness. His righteousness. Defined by Him. It will be very real. In fact: “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27 New King James Version)

For now, the most compelling lesson for us as we note the passing of some famous people is to approach it all like Solomon: “A wise person thinks a lot about death, while a fool thinks only about having a good time.”

Words And Deeds

June 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under International Affairs, Iran, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Robert McFarlane writes about “Obama, the Neocons and Iran.”

President Barack Obama has made clear his wish to engage Iran’s government. But he ignores a fundamental question. What, beyond conversation, does engagement mean?

Dealing with Iran, the president needs to use all the tools of diplomacy at his disposal. First, the president needs to strengthen our position by adding partners. Mr. Obama should sit down with moderate Arab states. He should listen to their views and forge an agreed regional security strategy. Such a strategy should include a vigorous program of support for the Iranian opposition, based on a well-funded program of broadcasts and other communications into Iran. This would help the opposition become better organized and grow. Recent surveys reflect that Iran is the most “wired” nation in the Middle East. Nearly 35% of its population is connected to the Internet.

Further, Mr. Obama must raise awareness among our European and Asian allies of how serious a threat to regional peace Iran has become. He should then launch an effort at the United Nations Security Council to impose strong sanctions on anyone supplying gasoline to Iran. This will underline what should be our commitment to defang Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Barack Obama is seeking to craft a doctrine of effective realism, a doctrine that advances our own interests and those of democratic aspirants throughout the world. It will stand or fall on his actions toward Iran in the weeks and months ahead.

Featured Articles — June 26, 2009

June 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Iran’s Revolution Needs a Leader By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post
Iran today is a revolution in search of its Yeltsin. Without leadership, demonstrators will take to the street only so many times to face tear gas, batons and bullets. They need a leader like Boris Yeltsin: a former establishment figure with newly revolutionary credentials and legitimacy, who stands on a tank and gives the opposition direction by calling for the unthinkable — the abolition of the old political order.

A loyalist discovers the horror of the regime. By Joshua Muravchik, National Review
Mohsen Sazegara was one of the youngest figures near the helm of Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. Serving first as a press attaché to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in his exile command center outside of Paris, Sazegara went on to hold a series of high positions in the early revolutionary government — chief of national radio, commander of the Revolutionary Guard, cabinet aide, and head of the Industrial Development and Renovation Organization — all while still in his twenties.

Democracy Promotion Is Not a Choice for America By Michael Gerson, Washington Post
In early 2005, the advance of freedom in the Middle East had an air of inevitability. Hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Beirut to demand an end to Syrian occupation. Eight and a half million Iraqis voted with purpled fingers. Even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak permitted a multiparty election. People talked of an “Arab spring.”

Has Britain Replaced the U.S. as Iran’s ‘Little Satan’? By Adam Smith, Time
If the number of protesters on the streets of Tehran has thinned in recent days — a result of the bloody crackdown by police and militia that continued in parts of the capital on June 24 — there’s little sign of a letup in Iran’s overseas offensive. British passport holders “had a role” in the violent clashes sparked by Iran’s disputed election on June 12, Iranian Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei told the Fars news agency on June 24.

Not Enough Audacity By Paul Krugman, The New York Times
On one side there’s Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues — and ability to explain those issues in plain English — is a joy to behold.

Obamacare not as easy as ABC By Jay Ambrose, The Orange County Register
President’s statist proposition will be more than just another competitor on the field.

The Climate Change Climate Change By Kimberley Strassel, The Wall Street Journal
Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

Ed, Farrah, and Michael

June 25, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, In Memoriam | 1 Comment 

Within a forty-eight-hour period the world lost three figures in the world of entertainment. Farrah Fawcett, in the days when she had Majors appended to her name, was the nation’s most popular sex symbol a year or so after Richard Nixon left the White House. Ed McMahon’s work with the late Johnny Carson spanned eight presidencies (if one includes their late 1950s game show Who Do You Trust?) but for many viewers their true heyday came in the early 1970s, when no weekday in the Nixon era was complete without at least a few minutes watching Ed holler “Heyyy-yo!” or hearing him intone the magic words, “I hold in my hand the last envelope.”

But both of these deaths were inevitably overshadowed by the unexpected passing of Michael Jackson. It would take thousands of words to come close to describing the triumph, tawdriness, and tragedy of his 40-year career but it is worth mentioning that it all started in the Nixon years, with “I Want You Back” in the fall of 1969. Indeed, his first big solo recordings, like “Ben” (which was nominated for an Oscar), happened during the thirty-seventh President’s first term.

May their families be comforted in their time of sorrow.

Karoubi Calls Mourning Ceremonies Off

June 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Via Al-Jazeera:

Mehdi Karroubi, the candidate who finished fourth in Iran’s presidential poll, has called off a planned ceremony to mourn the deaths of at least 19 people killed in protests over the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“Despite all the efforts exerted by the sheikh of reforms [Karroubi] to prepare a site for the mourning ceremony, the ceremony will not take place on Thursday,” the website of his Etemad Melli party said.

“It is very unfortunate that in this situation, even political leaders such as Karroubi are not given a site to hold a mourning ceremony,” it said.

Etemad Melli said that Karroubi hoped to hold the ceremony next week, but observers said the postponement appeared to be another sign that the government was beginning to bring the protests under control.

Split In The Sepah?

June 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

John Simpson has an eye-opening article in the BBC with first hand accounts and interviews of defections to Mousavi in the Revolutionary Guard and the civil ministry:

He’s done some pretty dreadful things in his life, from attacking women in the streets for not wearing the full Islamic gear to fighting alongside Islamic revolutionaries in countries abroad.

And yet now, in the tumult that has gripped Iran since its elections last week, he’s had a change of heart.

He’s become a backer of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate who alleges fraud in the elections. He’s saved up the money to send his son to a private school abroad, and he loathes President Ahmadinejad.

He’s not the only one.

I had to leave Iran last Sunday, when the authorities refused to renew my visa. But before I left, another former senior Revolutionary Guard came to our hotel to see us.

“Remember me,” he pleaded. “Remember that I helped the BBC.”

I realised that even a person so intimately linked to the Islamic Revolution thinks that something will soon change in Iran.

The 11 extraordinary days I spent there was my 20th visit in 30 years. I’ve been reviewing the material we recorded, taking a second look at what was really going on.

I think that these last weeks may turn out to be as momentous as the Islamic Revolution I witnessed there 30 years ago.

The Revolutionary Guards with second thoughts illustrate some of the deeper forces driving a crisis which I believe could change Iran forever.

and:

After we were ordered to leave Iran, we went around to the Ershad, the Islamic Guidance Ministry, which supervises foreign journalists.

We expected to be scolded and intimidated. But, in fact, the body language of the person who spoke with us was bizarrely apologetic.

Neda Soltan’s Doctor

June 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Dr Arash Hejazi Is risking his life by giving this interview to BBC. He also has an interesting revelation about Neda’s killer. But most importantly he doesn’t want the world to forget the terror on the streets this past Saturday:

The “Miracle on Grass”

June 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Sports | Leave a Comment 

Landon Donovan and US teammates celebrate the “stunning” 2-0 victory over Spain in Blomfontein.  (AP photo by Antonio Calanni)

George Vecsey reports for The New York Times:

The stunning 2-0 victory by the United States over Spain —the best team in the world— is probably the greatest victory by the men’s national soccer team.

And when you think of it, the victory Wednesday is probably the second-biggest upset by an American team, behind only the 1980 Miracle on Ice by the hockey team over the Soviet Union in the Olympics.

Those Soviets were state-supported professionals, beaten by amateurs from the United States. On the field in South Africa on Wednesday, everybody was a professional, although just about every Spanish player is employed at a higher level than his American counterpart.

This shocking match in the Confederations Cup in Bloemfontein was the equivalent of those one-off thrillers, like Gonzaga or Davidson beating one of the giants of American college basketball.

Laughing Matters

June 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under International Affairs, Iran | Leave a Comment 

In its own (foxlike) dumb way, the Daily Show ended up making a serious point last week with one of Jason Jones’ reports from inside Iran.  The three interviewees in the segment “Persians of Interest” —Freedom Party leader Ebrahim Yazdi, novelist and Newsweek contributor Maziar Bahari, and former Iranian Vice President Muhammad Ali Abtahi— were all subsequently arrested in the roundups of dissidents.

After the Jones report was broadcast, Jon Stewart interviewed Dr. Yazdi’s Brooklyn-based son.

Montazeri: Suppression Could Start A Revolution

June 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

The Ayatollah who was supposed to succeed Khomenei rattles off his two cents indicating further rifts among the clerics:

(AGI) – Teheran, 25 June – Grand Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri, the most prominent dissident clergyman in Iran, warned that repression of street protests could uproot the foundation of Iran’s Government “no matter how powerful it may seem.” Montazeri, 87, proclaimed three days of National mourning for the dozens of demonstrators killed in the protests against the regime. In the past he was seen as the favourite to the succession of Ruhollah Khomeini but he was disgraced after criticizing the number of executions carried out after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. He was in prison from 1997 to 2003 after denouncing the excessive concentration of power in the hands of the Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Rasfanjani Planning To Oust Khamenei?

June 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Babak Sarfaraz at The Nation:

Khamenei’s anguished sermon on June 19 was not provoked simply by the popular uprising in the streets. According to a well-placed source in the holy city of Qom, Rafsanjani is working furiously behind the scenes to call for an emergency meeting of the Khobregan, or Assembly of Experts–the elite all-cleric body that can unseat the Supreme Leader or dilute his prerogatives. The juridical case against Khamenei would involve several counts. First, he would be charged with countenancing a coup d’état–albeit a bloodless one–without consulting with the Khobregan. Second, he would stand accused of deceitfully plotting to oust Rafsanjani–who is the Khobregan chairman and nominally the country’s third-most-important authority–from his positions of power. Third, he would be said to have threatened the very stability of the republic with his ambition and recklessness.

Rafsanjani’s purported plan is to replace Khamenei’s one-person dictatorship with a Leadership Council composed of three or more high-ranking clerics; this formula was proposed and then abandoned in 1989 by several prominent clerics. Rafsanjani will likely recommend giving a seat to Khamenei on the council to prevent a violent backlash by his fanatic loyalists. It is not clear if Rafsanjani will have the backing of the two-thirds of the chamber members needed for such a change, though the balance of forces within the Khobregan could be tipped by the events unfolding in the streets. As a symbolic gesture, Rafsanjani is said to favor holding the meeting in Qom–the nation’s religious center, which Khamenei has diminished–rather than in Tehran, where it has been held before.

Mousavi Under House Arrest

June 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

After a 48 hour absence, Mousavi just updated his twitter account:

The Living voice of the Movement was heard again”Allahu Akbar”.This Friday, We all are going to send GREEN BALLOONS to the sky #iranElection

All in all, Tehran was pretty much quiet today, but there are some interesting developments behind the scenes.

Earlier Thursday, a defiant Mir Hossein Mousavi was placed on house arrest Thursday after a meeting with 70 social scientists Wednesday. The professors were later detained and all but 4 were released.

Mousavi also slammed the Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a statement on his website. The LA Times reports:

“I am not only prepared to respond to all these allegations but am ready to show how election fraudsters joined those who are truly behind the recent riots and shed the blood of people,” he said in comments that appeared on his website and were distributed to supporters via e-mail. “I am not prepared to give up under the pressure of threats or personal interest.”

Mousavi’s forceful remarks appeared to show that he was willing to risk his standing as a pillar of the Islamic Republic to take on Iran’s powerful leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. And they seemed aimed at securing his position at the head of a broad and youthful movement seeking reform.

At least some of his comments were apparently delivered in a meeting Wednesday with a group of 70 social scientists, who were later arrested and taken to an unknown location.

Khamenei vowed Wednesday that he would not reconsider the lopsided official results, which have spurred infighting among the Islamic Republic’s elite and street violence between pro-government forces and demonstrators.

Though the cleric is usually considered beyond public reproach, Mousavi seemed more than willing to take on Khamenei, who broke with tradition by openly taking sides in the country’s factional political rows.

“The leadership’s support to the government under normal circumstances is helpful,” Mousavi said. “However, if the leadership and the president are the same, it will not be in the interests of the country.”

Rezai: Complaint Withdrawal Was Protest

June 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Many viewed third place opposition Mohsen Rezai’s election complaint withdrawal as a blow to the uprising, but Rezai’s spokesperson says it was done because of his disgust for the Interior Ministry and the Guardian Council:

Another opposition candidate, Mohsen Rezai, who won far fewer votes than Mr. Moussavi and was regarded as the most hard-line of the opposition candidates, formally withdrew complaints about electoral irregularities on Wednesday.A representative of Mr. Rezai said that he had withdrawn the complaint in disgust because the Guardian Council and the Interior Ministry never undertook even the limited recount they said they would. The representative, Ali Ahmadi, said that more than 200 of Mr. Rezai’s men were ready to monitor the recount but “the Guardian Council and the Interior Ministry never started the recount in any of the provinces or polling stations,” the tabnak Web site reported.

Ahmadinejad Calls Obama The New Bush

June 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Well I knew this was coming. Though President Obama has made sure — at least vocally — that his foreign policy wasn’t going to resemble the ‘failed’ Bush years, he has nevertheless made it clear that America’s standing was dependent on the Iranian regime not to define him as the bad guy. President Obama shouldn’t have expected Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and Co. to be so kind:

After the official presidential results were announced, giving Mr. Ahmadinejad an 11 million-vote margin, President Obama was initially cautious in his response. But he has gradually adopted a much tougher stance, saying Tuesday he was “appalled and outraged” by events in Iran.

“Mr. Obama made a mistake to say those things,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said Thursday at a ceremony to open a petrochemical plant.

The election had brought a chance for a “new start in international relations” in which Iran would “speak from a different position based on dialogue and justice,” he said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency,

While Iran believed Britain and other European countries had a “bad record” in their relationship with Iran, he said, “we were not expecting Mr. Obama” to “fall into the same trap and continue the same path that Bush did.”

He also demanded an apology from President Obama for his most recent statement. “I hope you avoid the interfering in Iran’s affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian people find out about it,” he said.

But as he assailed the American leader, Mr. Ahmadinejad also faced a new challenge at home.

President Obama wanted to appear humble, as a post colonial, post imperial image for America, all while endorsing the legitimacy of a regime he deferentially calls the “Islamic Republic.” In his Cairo speech and more recently he frequently sold short America’s reputation by invoking the 1953 coup against Mohammed Mossadegh, Operation Ajax. All the while the Iranian people never sold America short, and continue to make pleas for our support.

Now President Obama doesn’t have devious motives. He wasn’t against Mir Hossein Mousavi as some suggest. He just figured that if he projected a more humble foreign policy, he could limit backlash against American presence in the Islamic world. He also wanted to stay true to his campaign promise of engagement with the theocratic Iranian regime seeing them as a pivotal player to the Middle East peace process.

President Obama also became adamant about playing it safe, believing that if he put his support behind the people’s movement and they failed at regime change, he would limit America’s options and wouldn’t be able to bring Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to the peace table to neutralize their nuclear program.

Unfortunately by following the course of humility he is continually boxing himself into the diplomatic track which Khamenei and Ahmadinejad will apparently have no part of and which — ironically — they are now demanding an apology for. To his credit President Obama did say the recent turn of events were “not encouraging in terms of the path this regime may try to take.”

As Christopher Hitchens noted on Tuesday, President Obama is also risking close ties with the Iranian people by not lending his pulpit to those sacrificing their lives for freedom on the streets of Tehran to Isfahan.

President Obama would do well to inspire hope for the Iranian people to change their country. At the very least, the regime would be continually weakened politically (it is reported that only 105 of 290 parliamentarians attended Ahmadinejad’s victory party last night), providing an opportunity for President Obama to leverage the power and prestige of his Presidency against those committed to a policy of terror and de-stabilization. Such a move would also undercut the oppressive regime’s supporters throughout the Middle East, Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as all any mujaheddin who claim — of all things at this moment — to be the vanguards of the oppressed.

President Obama can always return to the negotating table, but revolutions are a once in a lifetime event.

Featured Articles — June 25, 2009

June 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Iran’s Embattled Supreme Leader: A Test for Khamenei By Robin Wright, Time
The fate of Iran’s Islamic revolution now rests in the hands of an enigmatic cleric who is little understood at home, let alone by the outside world. For the past 20 years, pictures of Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, with his oversize glasses, black turban and untrimmed white beard, have adorned shops, government offices and living-room walls throughout Iran.

The Prescription From Obama’s Own Doctor By Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times
As a society, we trust doctors to be more concerned with the pulse of their patients than the pulse of commerce. Yet the American Medical Association is using that trust to try to block a robust public insurance option as part of health reform.

ObamaCare Isn’t Inevitable By Karl Rove, The Wall Street Journal
Americans are increasingly concerned about the cost — in money and personal freedom — of the president’s nanny-state initiatives.

Heartless: The disturbing glee at Mark Sanford’s downfall. By John Dickerson, Slate
Mark Sanford is no longer missing, but he’s obviously lost. The South Carolina governor’s press conference was excruciating: apology, followed by self-flagellation, followed by apology. It was like watching a man light himself on fire. I thought about his kids mustering up the courage to watch it on YouTube some day.

Bet on the Followers of Neda By David Ignatius, Washington Post
On one side you have all the instruments of repression in Iran, gathering their forces for a crackdown. On the other you have unarmed protesters symbolized by the image of Neda Agha Soltan, a martyred woman dying helplessly on the street, whose last words reportedly were: “It burned me.”

Hillary Is Wrong About the Settlements By Elliot Abrams, The Wall Street Journal
Despite fervent denials by Obama administration officials, there were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. As the Obama administration has made the settlements issue a major bone of contention between Israel and the U.S., it is necessary that we review the recent history.

An Iranian Revolution That’s Not Over Yet By Ramin Ahmadi, Forbes
The 2009 Great Iranian Revolution has a lot in common with its earlier 1979 version. The students and middle-class youth are the engine of the movement and, rich or poor, are putting their lives at stake.

Iran’s Democrats Deserve Full Support By Gary Kasparov, The Wall Street Journal
Regardless of its short-term outcome, the Green Revolution in Iran is already a tremendously important event. Iranian citizens are risking their lives to defend their votes and giving the lie to the idea that democracy cannot sprout in hostile soil without external influence. This is of great relevance to people living in autocracies, especially in Russia, my home country.

Free to Be a Kurd By Asli Aydintasbas, The New York Times
On hillsides across southeastern Turkey, you often see the national slogan — “Happy is one who can say I am a Turk” — in giant letters that can be read from miles away.

From imam to dictator By Asim Siddiqui, The Guardian UK
Islamic leadership, if it denies the sovereignty of the people, as in Iran, is no different to any other kind of dictatorship

Mousavi Spokesman To World: Don’t Recognize Ahmadinejad

June 24, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

I’m still waiting for the Iranian people to channel Mossadeq,  but so far Andrew Sullivan and others who continue to advocate the reverse psychology of non-support for the people of Iran (and who inflate and broadcast America’s moral failings to our enemies) must be disappointed. They will also be disappointed by this video appeal from Mousavi spokesperson and filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf:

Do I dare say that Mr. Makhmalbaf is advocating for some American support? Some key quotes:

We need to continue protesting in front of the embassies and lobby the issues pertaining to the people of Iran – with help from world government, journalists and citizens.

We need the world to recognize Ahmadinejad as the leader of a coup d’etat and not the leader of Iran, It this happens we will be successful.

Is President Obama listening?

A Rift To Big To Fail?

June 24, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | 1 Comment 

Laura Secor at The New Yorker writes that though the protests have dwindled and communication has jammed, there are irreparable rifts within the clerical leadership, a Supreme leader that is politically discredited, and enough wind in the sails of the people’s uprising:

It is clearly true that Iran’s élites are disunited, but to place great emphasis on this fact is misleading. Factional differences have riven the Iranian political establishment since the Islamic Revolution itself, and sometimes quite dramatically, as during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, from 1997 through 2005. As for Rafsanjani, about whose possible role much has been made, he has been a rival of Ahmadinejad since losing the presidency to him in 2005; this has increasingly driven him toward the reformist camp, where he has been accepted only partially and reluctantly. None of these cleavages are new. In a country that does not tolerate political parties or associations in its civil society, the contest for power, and over the future of the political system, has been largely confined to the establishment itself. Khamenei has spent much of his twenty years in power checkmating his rivals inside the system and discrediting them with their supporters outside the system.

What is new today is not that cracks have opened inside a monolithic system, or even that particularly powerful figures, like Rafsanjani, have broken onto the side of the reformers. What is new is the fierce mass movement from below, which is not confined to students and intellectuals but seems to span demographics and age groups. Even while exercising legal rights, nonviolent methods, and issuing constant appeals to Islam and to the ideals of the revolution, this movement has openly defied Khamenei, the Basij, and the Revolutionary Guards, by ignoring the threats of bloodshed and mayhem. Nothing like that has happened in thirty years. In the late nineteen-nineties, Khatami, like Mousavi, had the wind at his back in the form of a very large wave of popular support, but he made it clear to his followers and to Khamenei that he would not directly defy the Supreme Leader or question the system. When activists challenged the system during the Khatami years, they found themselves isolated, a diminishing crowd without political support or mass mobilization to defend them. And so Mousavi has done a remarkable, unprecedented thing in challenging the Supreme Leader—but in doing it, to borrow a phrase from his June 20th speech, he followed his supporters.

That is not to diminish the historic nature of Mousavi’s decision. One Iranian who spoke of it to me seemed frankly gobsmacked—doesn’t Mousavi know that if he loses this battle, his life, and his family’s life, is finished now in the Islamic Republic? But it is all the more remarkable to consider that Mousavi and his movement are acting not as pawns in an internal argument between Khamenei and Rafsanjani. Rather, they have brought a tidal wave of pressure to bear on a regime of which Khamenei has just attempted to seize total control. It is the élites who have been forced to choose sides. Maybe some of those figures will reverse course, as Mohsen Rezaiee (Ahmadenijad’s main conservative challenger) has already done, if they feel Khamenei is winning the battles in the streets. But even if they lose, Mousavi and his supporters will have permanently changed the landscape of protest in Iran by breaking what had once seemed an impermeable barrier of fear.

Luke Nichter On Dean’s Nixon Library Appearance

June 24, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under John Dean At The Nixon Library, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library, Nixon in the News, U.S. History, Watergate, Yorba Linda | 1 Comment 

At www.nixontapes.org, Luke Nichter of Tarleton State University (who was extensively quoted in the AP article Frank Gannon discusses below) takes a look at John Dean’s appearance at the Nixon Presidential Library last week. (This post also appears at History News Network, where it is accompanied by a comment by Maarja Krusten, whose thoughtful remarks have so often appeared at TNN.)

Chilling Audio: “You should stop this, you should help the people of Iran who demand freedom.”

June 24, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

From CNN, a woman in Tehran obviously distressed, laments today’s massacre at Baharestan Square and begs America to do something:

As these unfortunate developments unfold, Andrew Sullivan — in the spirit of partisanship — still stubbornly believes that any repudiation of what Bush might do is the best policy.

Hot Dog Diplomacy Axed

June 24, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran | Leave a Comment 

Via Fox News:

The White House says invitations to Iranian diplomats to 4th of July celebrations around the world, have been rescinded.

“Given the events of the last few days, those invitations will be no longer extended,” announced Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Wednesday.

The State Department last month told its US embassies that they could invite “representatives from the government of Iran” to 4th of July events.

Gibbs said “not surprisingly, based on what we see in Tehran, no one has RSVP’d”

Given the events of the last few days, will the President still hold talks with Ahmadinejad and Khamenei over Iran’s nuclear program?

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