Pat Lang posted a writing by Richard Sale, a former intelligence correspondent for UPI. It is about some neocon sentiment accusing Bush for leaving the "export of democracy" path.

I am shameless stealing some of the more general bits, of which I think that a lot of U.S. folks as well as others with imperialist tendencies, should glue them on their refrigerator doors.

Wilson believed that unless America actively spread its idea of democracy around the world, U.S. power might atrophy at home.

[…]

To me this is extremely dubious. There is little evidence that democracy is the most natural or foremost form of political association among human beings.

[…]

Cont. reading: Export Of Democracy

News & views threat …

If you don´t comment, …

Pope Bendict recently visited Auschwitz and he made some statements which I regard as plain wrong.

He said he came there,

"as a son of the German people, a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honor, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation."

Cont. reading: The Pope’s Sorry Excuse

Two current Washington Post pieces on Afghanistan are prototypes of balanced U.S. war reporting. One minimizes a huge U.S. loss in moral standing, the second exaggerates U.S. and coalition victories.

The first piece, by Washington Post staff, is: Anti-American Riots Erupt in Kabul After Traffic Accident.

Cont. reading: The War Will Soon Be Won

Various Sunday News Items:

Frank Rich endorses Gore. Parts of his Times Select column are liberated here

Mrs. Clinton does look like a weak candidate – not so much because of her marriage, her gender or her liberalism, but because of her eagerness to fudge her stands on anything and everything to appeal to any and all potential voters.
[…]

Cont. reading: Various News

Billmon:

It was at that point – when the results of all my worrying and frantic scampering around downtown Cairo were on the line – that I finally realized how silly I was being, acting like some cartoon stereotype of the Type A personality. If I was meant to ride the train to Luxor, I would: inshallah, if God willed it.

All’s Well That Ends Well

UPDATE (Oct 8, 2006): There are two follow up posts to this collection of materials about Amir-Abbas Fakhravar. The first continues the discussion on legitimate Iranian opposition that stated in the comments below, the second refers to the evolution of a Laura Rozen piece in Mother Jones.

The Mother Jones article establishes that Fakhravar is not a legitimate regime critic, but is an Ahmed Chalabi like neocon tool to manipulate an U.S. supported regime change in Iran. In the same piece two Iranian dissidents assert that Fakhravar has also been a spy for security forces while having been in prision in Iran.

You are welcome to follow the trail starting with my original post below.

—

A 30 year old Iranian "student" is currently making his circles in some conservative media.

Amir-Abbas Fakhr-Avar, sometimes also named Siyaavash or Siavash, had recent appearances in the New York Sun (May 9, 2006), the Telegraph (May 10, 2006) and the Sunday Times (May 21, 2006). Earlier, there were three National Review pieces about and interviews with him: July 18, 2005, December 5, 2005, February 13, 2006.

One can not deny a certain common tendency throughout these media outlets. So let me ask: Who is this guy?

Cont. reading: Is Fakhravar A Fraud?

by Noisette – (lifted from a comment)

I have just spent two hours or so reading the Iraqi blogs. And have come away more disturbed and puzzled than ever. (Besides fear sadness
outrage at the carnage.)

These bloggers are educated. Several hold down jobs, are
professionals, or were. Others are in school. All of them are smart.
They are all pretty social – get around, talk to people. They read
books. Thought Riot, for example, is 18 and quotes Churchill and Bismark. She is mystified at the amounts spent by the US on defense and the fact that they can’t control thugs. She shows clean hands by stating that ‘she is not into conspiracy theories’ and then goes on to wonder what or whose agenda is served by the ‘Iraqi Swamp.’ She has insight, as well: she calls Chalabi childish and funny, which is apt. She thinks Muqtada is as brainless as the melon she ate an hour ago.

But as a group, they are clueless.

Cont. reading: Transposed Ordinary Preoccupations?

If you don´t comment, …

My native German equivalent of NPR today had some sound bites of Al Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth". I was impressed. When it launches here, it will be a rallying cry — but to whom to rally?

Having also read about the movie on several blogs the recent days, I do recommend to you to view it. And please post your review of the movie in the comments.

Gore also presented the case for a campaign against global warming in a series of speaches. A video of his presentation to moveon.org is available here.

Cont. reading: An Inconvenient Candidate?

Slothrop, on the Ahmadinajad Eats Children thread, writes:

my challenge here is to seriously ask whether iran’s leadership deserves international sanction. if not, why not?

Given that Iran is under official sanctions from the US and under unofficial sanctions from European banks who have business in the US, my question is: "Why?"

Why sanction Iran and not other countries like Saudi Arabia, Brazil or Israel?

Is there any good reason to put these or even further sanctions on Iran at all?

If so, what sanctions do you prefer?

Billmon:

At first I thought the "jolie ville" sign at the top was some kind of reference to noted Davos groupie Angelina Jolie, but later I found out that it was the name of the restaurant inside the center. Which actually had pretty good food, but I would have still preferred Angelina.

Every Story Tells a Picture

Billmon:

There is, of course, more than enough hypocrisy to go around here. Mubarak comes to Sharm and talks about building democratic societies, while his Mukhabarat thugs back in Cairo stomp on peaceful protestors and arrest election judges for daring to demand that they be allowed to judge elections. The Cheney administration gently chides the Teflon Pharoah for rigging the vote, then rolls out the red carpet for Pharoah’s son — the eventual beneficiary of all that rigging. Congress critters get to pose as defenders of human rights, then go home and brag to the voters about how they tried to throw the darkies off the dole.

Cooking With Gas

Your news & views …

Billmon:

I got to within maybe two feet of it, when I turned my head and was startled to find I was practically nose-to-nose with a fish – a blue-finned beauty with a bright yellow face and a squared off head, like a mullet (the fish, not the Joe Dirt hairdo).

As entranced as I was by nature’s handiwork, I still like my personal space, and the fish was infringing on it. I don’t know why it came so close – maybe it was looking for a handout, or maybe it just had never seen a white whale before. …

Sharm El-Sheikh

Updated:

Billmon:

Protocols of the Elders of Persia

Earlier post by b:

The Canadian National Post had a news story yesterday, alleging that the Iranian parliament approved a law that would require Jews to wear "yellow ribbons". The brain-dead in the blogsphere were up in flames over this with a collective "Nazis" scream.

The story was based on a column in the same paper by one Amir Taheri. He claims:

The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate "the influence of the infidel" on the way Iranians, especially, the young dress. It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public

It is obvious where this comes from. Like Richard Perle, Michael Leeden and other fellow neocons, you can book Mr. Taheri for speeches through Benador Associates. 

As Juan Cole points out the story is false. The sole Jewish member of the Iranian parliament says:

"This report is a complete fabrication and is totally false," Maurice Motammed said in Tehran. "It is a lie, and the people who invented it wanted to make political gain" by doing so.
…
Mr Motammed said he had been present in parliament when a bill to promote "an Iranian and Islamic style of dress for women" was voted. "In the law, there is no mention of religious minorities," he added.

MPs representing Iran’s Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian minorities sit on all parliamentary committees, particularly the cultural one, he said.

"This is an insult to the Iranian people and to religious minorities in Iran," he said.

The National Post has replaced the original piece with a kind of retraction.
Anyhow, the intended damage is done. The moonies UPI picked it up. The New York Post puts it into a cover headline and we will see the lie returning again and again.

Next on the propaganda list is a story about religious food in Iran. Headline: "Ahmadinejad Eats Children".

Billmon:

Great Moments in Political Posturing

And Hayden, referring to Congress as "the second branch of government," punted all the interesting answers to a later, secret session.
Punting the Interesting Answers to the Secret Session, WaPo – Milbank, May 19, 2006

Article I – The Legislative Branch
Article II – The Executive Branch
Article III – The Judicial Branch
U.S. Constitution, March 04, 1789

Up to 1991, Twix, the candy bar by Mars Inc., was sold in Europe under the name Raider. When the name was globalized and changed to Twix, product sells fell dramatically and several chain stores delisted it. 

After some month into the debacle Mars launched a huge advertising campaign. The slogan for that campaign, Aus Raider wird Twix … sonst ändert sich nix (Raider becomes Twix … nothing else changes), has become a metaphore for somewhat botched introductions of "new" products by sole relabeling.

U.S. Moves to Weaken Iran, says the LA Times. The piece describes the State Department program run by Dick Cheney’s daughter Elizabeth and David Denehy, a former deputy directory of the CPA’s Office of Democracy and Governance in Iraq. They work on Voice of America programing in Farsi, financial support for opposition groups and they send special "Iran watchers" diplomats to countries with Iranian expatriats.

Writes the LA Times:

officials emphasize that this time around, State Department diplomats rather than Pentagon war planners are in charge

So this looks new, but further down we read:

The administration’s efforts are taking shape on the second floor of the State Department, where a new Office of Iranian Affairs has been charged with leading the push to back Iranian dissidents more aggressively, boost support to democracy broadcasters and strengthen ties with exiles.

Nearby at the Pentagon, an Iranian directorate will work with the State Department office to undercut the government in Tehran.
…
[T]he Pentagon’s directorate began with six full-time staff members. But they can draw on expertise throughout the government, providing access to potentially hundreds of specialists.

This new Iranian directorate is indeed a very well known shop:

At the Pentagon, the new Iranian directorate has been set up inside its policy shop, which previously housed the Office of Special Plans.
…
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable declined to name the acting director of the new Iran office and would say only that the appointee was a "career civil servant." Among those staffing or advising the Iranian directorate are three veterans of the Office of Special Plans: Abram N. Shulsky, its former director; John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst; and Ladan Archin, an Iran specialist.

The Office of Special Plans was, as you well remember, the place where the false Iraq intelligence was prepared and stovepiped into Cheney’s office.

Let’s look up the people named.

Seymour Hersh on Shulsky:

The director of the Special Plans operation is Abram Shulsky, a scholarly expert in the works of the political philosopher Leo Strauss. Shulsky has been quietly working on intelligence and foreign-policy issues for three decades; he was on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the early nineteen-eighties and served in the Pentagon under Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle during the Reagan Administration, after which he joined the Rand Corporation.

Karen Kwiatkowski on Trigilo:

Trigilio and I had hallway debates, as friends. The one I remember most clearly was shortly after President Bush gave his famous "mushroom cloud" speech in Cincinnati in October 2002, asserting that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction as well as ties to "international terrorists," and was working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons with "nuclear holy warriors." I asked John who was feeding the president all the bull about Saddam and the threat he posed us in terms of WMD delivery and his links to terrorists, as none of this was in secret intelligence I had seen in the past years. John insisted that it wasn’t an exaggeration, but when pressed to say which actual intelligence reports made these claims, he would only say, "Karen, we have sources that you don’t have access to." It was widely felt by those of us in the office who were not in the neoconservatives’ inner circle that these "sources" related to the chummy relationship that Ahmad Chalabi had with both the Office of Special Plans and the office of the vice president.

And Jeffrey Steinberg on Archin:

Ladan Archin, an Iraqi-American Wolfowitz protégé from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, who came to the OSP from the International Financial Corp. of the World Bank, and reportedly serves as a liaison to Ahmed Chalabi and the INC.

These people, who have worked on the Iraq campaign in the Office of Special Plans, have now moved on to the "Iranian directorate". Conveniently, they did not even had to change their rooms, only the door plates.

Aus Raider wird Twix … sonst ändert sich nix.

The former "WMD and terrorists" product was named Iraq and it sold quite well at its time. It has now been rebranded to Iran but it is prepared by the same people to the same recipe in the same old factory.

Now somehow I have the impression the traction for this new product seems to lack the enthusiasm and demand the old one had.

To a lot of people the old product did taste well at that time, but they still have this crappy stomach feeling. The serving was just a bit too big.

Even with the rebranding campaign underway, they just may not buy this product again.