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June 23, 2009
Links June 23 09

Please add your links, views and news in the comments.

Posted by b on June 23, 2009 at 06:24 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Dubya-shaped recession? How fitting, he played a major role in shaping it.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jun 23 2009 6:44 utc | 1

in German
twitter the tool of freedom or surveillance?
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/479/472998/text/

Posted by: outsider | Jun 23 2009 7:43 utc | 2

Another old American custom transferred to Iraq in the age of global markets: The Fire Sale . You can use the Google translation tool to get a rough idea of the Arabic text, or look at the link to China News found within the first link. Note that the origin of the fire seems NOT to be as stated in the Xinhuanet link.
Apologies if this news has already been noted here.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 23 2009 8:43 utc | 3

I’m with animal spirits, but on the bright side, those on the bottom end of feudalism (most of us) will no longer be burdened with those oppressive income taxes.

Posted by: anna missed | Jun 23 2009 10:21 utc | 4

@HKOL – interesting – I totally missed that. Corrupt Iraq Health Ministry official burns down the house and flees to London. How many millions did he make?

Posted by: b | Jun 23 2009 11:03 utc | 5

The basic premise of the Washington Realist Report is wrong. It says about Moussavi:
“Sure, he seems more pragmatic, more likely to negotiate and compromise–but would he really change course 180 degrees?”
Nobody I know of has spoken about a 180 degree U-Turn. Iranians simply want some of the basic things Westerners take for granted and which I described to Arnold Evans in the previous thread.
Columnist Joe Klein was on CNN just now. He said he loves Iran and fully understands why all the people he met, many of them reformists, hate U.S. foreign policy. So the message is: More democracy with retention of independence.
The Washington Realist is being ‘unrealistic’ for imagining that things will change overnight, or even that people want things to change 180 degrees. He’s got the basics dead wrong.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 23 2009 11:23 utc | 6

from the coming neo-feudalism:
The poor and disenfranchised may even take to the streets at some point. Americans are pretty timid now, worried that they’ll be called terrorists and disappear in the night or be put on the no-fly list. Habeas corpus is gone. Last September Hank Paulson said we may need martial law. The government has been preparing for it. There are empty prison camps standing ready, according to reliable reports. (Many were built by Halliburton, allegedly.) The Katrina experience showed us what to expect: mercenaries will disarm the public; impose martial law; tell you to stay in your house or get shot. FEMA’s National Level Exercise scheduled for late July is supposedly a counter-terrorism drill, but I would bet it involves practicing how to impose martial law. Some believe the true purpose of the exercise itself will be to disarm the public. Lots of luck with that. That might provoke the first shots of a revolution. But perhaps that is the intent, to show force and discourage any further dissent. Like Iran now. Like China twenty years ago.

Posted by: Lizard | Jun 23 2009 11:57 utc | 7

We are starting to look on the conflict in Iran as Good vs. Evil again, which is just too damn simplistic.
The nuance behind it, as Paul Craig Roberts pointed out in his linked article, is one between two mullahs, and two interest groups: the disenfranchised and the priveleged.
The religious conservative side appeals to the disenfranchised, and are good at maintaining the appearance of credibility and moral integrity.
The progressives appeal to the upper end of siciety, but are tainted by corruption and interest-peddling.
We cannot know the extent to which these images correspond to the truth of the issues, but that is what politics are about.
Remember that Dubya, son of a president and millionaire, managed to appeal to the Joe Six-Packs of America while presenting his opponents as elitists.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jun 23 2009 12:22 utc | 8

Your last line was good, ralphieboy, but believe me, the conflict in Iran is broadspread and cuts across all classes and economic groupings. In fact, the ones benefiting most currently are the Baseej mercenaries who are doing all the physical damage.
Dr. Roberts, much as I admire him, is too simplistic in this case. He attributes it all to money (“enfranchised” and the “privileged”). In fact, many Iranians are ready to make financial sacrifices in return for more political and social freedom, which is why they remember the Khatemi presidencies so fondly in retrospect.

Posted by: Parviz | Jun 23 2009 13:01 utc | 9

Hi again to all.
Recommended:
America’s Iranian Twitter Revolution
And supplied by a commenter to the above blog:
Profile: The Kid at the State Department Who Figured Out the Iranians Should Be Allowed to Keep Tweeting

(snip)
Imagine our surprise, then, when we learned that, instead, it was a 27-year-old whiz kid whose job is to advise the State Department on how to use social media to promote U.S. interests the Middle East.
And imagine our further surprise when we learned this young gentleman wasn’t one of Barack Obama’s social media geniuses, but instead was a Condi Rice pick hired specifically to advise the State Department on young people in the Middle East and how to “counter-radicalize” them.
According to the New York Times, it was Jared Cohen, a member of the Policy Planning Staff, who contacted Twitter on Monday, inquiring about their plan to perform maintenance in what would be the middle of the day, Iran time. Following that contact, Twitter decided to postpone their maintenance so that it would take place in the middle of the night Iran-time, even though that meant it would be the middle of the day U.S. time.
(snip)

My apologies if these were already brought here…

Posted by: Alamet | Jun 23 2009 13:19 utc | 10

The recent Chatham House report on Iran’s election has received a lot of attention. Just to remind, Chatham House aka the Royal Institute of International Affairs is the UK counterpart of as well as the model for US’ CFR. It was intimately involved in the coup against Mossadegh.
Lord Terrington obituary

(snip)
Subsequently, after spending two years in industry and another two at the Nuffield Foundation, in 1951 he served as a diplomat again in Teheran, planning the clandestine Anglo-American Operation Boot to overthrow the intensely nationalist, anglophobic and unstable Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq.
Just as the operation was in full swing, Woodhouse was posted to South Korea. There he followed events in Teheran on a wireless set belonging to the British Ambassador who resented being deprived of the Test Match commentary.
Operation Boot went like clockwork, culminating, as Woodhouse put it, in a “grotesque procession” through Teheran, “headed by tumblers turning handsprings, weightlifters turning iron bars, and wrestlers flexing their biceps”. As onlookers gathered, the strange assemblage began to shout anti-Mossadeq slogans, which the crowd took up. Mossadeq was toppled soon afterwards.
(snip)
In 1955 he left the Service to become director-general of the Royal Institute for International Affairs at Chatham House.
(snip)

Posted by: Alamet | Jun 23 2009 13:29 utc | 11

thanks for those links, alamet. good to see you back.
another quote from that baynewser profile

“Iranian young people are one of the most pro-American populations in the Middle East,” Cohen told the New Yorker. “They just don’t know who to gravitate around… ”

Posted by: b real | Jun 23 2009 14:06 utc | 12

Everyone’s climbing onboard:
Iran’s Ex-Empress Speaks Out About Unrest
http://tinyurl.com/mqmhu5
Shah’s Son Backs Iranian Protesters
http://tinyurl.com/n6ohxk

Posted by: ensley | Jun 23 2009 14:34 utc | 13

Parviz,
PC Roberts pointed out that the mullah conflict is just one of the nuances that is lost on those who see the conflict in iran as Good vs. Evil.
And it certainly does cut across all strata of society, but it seems that the religious conservatives in iran often find their support from the same sources as the religious right in America.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jun 23 2009 15:11 utc | 14

Hi Parviz,
My hope is, as it is yours, that whatever revolution is taking place in Iran will bring only good things to you and your fellow countrymen. But this still don’t stop me from thinking, as Paul Craig Roberts thinks, that there’s a real and distinct possibility that this revolution is being funded by empire builders from the West, namely the neocons from the US and Israel. If this turns out to be so, then a Mousavi victory will mean that your country will only be exchanging one corrupt regime for another. But please know, aside from any doubts I may have about a Mousavi regime, that I still continue to trust your judgment on this, as I do on most other things, and that I only have your best interest at heart on whatever comes your way.

Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 23 2009 15:14 utc | 15

Cynthia,
it is not as simple as Mousavi=US Interests. His views might be less radical than the conservative opposition, but a president there is even more restricted in his authority than a US president.
It is a matter of the interests he represents. Right nos, the only interest that neocons and US conservatives have is in destabilizing Iran and making it look like a religious dictatorship.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jun 23 2009 17:13 utc | 16

(You’re welcome b real. Good to find MoA going strong as ever!)
Sad news from last week:
Widow of late Chilean president Allende dead at 94

Hortensia Bussi, the widow of Chilean President Salvador Allende who helped lead opposition to the military dictatorship that ousted her socialist husband in a bloody 1973 coup, died Thursday. She was 94.
(snip)

Rest in peace.

Posted by: Alamet | Jun 23 2009 20:57 utc | 17

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