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fuck them both.

So, if I'm in a room with W, Ahmadinejad, and Pipes, and I only have 2 shoes to throw....

Throw both shoes at Pipes, AND kick him in the junk. The other two are morons and patsies.

You could perhaps angle W and Pipes so that a single shoe would strike W's junk, then ricochet and hit Pipes' junk. Save the solo shoe for Adme...de...ned, ach, amedin... uhh... that one...

Plus, W and Ahmadinejad are or were heads of state. You'll get in much less trouble for assaulting Pipes.

Can we get Cheney in the room, too?

I have the solution! Toss shoes at two of them, knock them out, then remove shoes from the comatose douchebags to toss at any remaining ambulatory douchebags.

I'm confused: Pipes didn't even talk about Obama in the article. It may be that he has a bad idea, here, but I'm not sure what your criticism of that idea is.

Isn't that basically the tenets of Keynesian Economics?

I thought if it were a Keynesian stimulus I'd have to pay one guy to toss a shoe at the other guy, and then pay the victim to make a new shoe for the guy who lost his shoe in the toss.

Who do you think Pipes think will be "lulled to sleep". A non-Ahmadinejad candidate could be negotiated with, Ahmadinejad, not so much. That's what bothers Pipes.

I alternate between cynical amusement and righteous infuriation regarding the sham elections in so many parts of the world.

Again, where are you reading that? What Pipes says is bothering him is that a softer face on a hardline regime would give "many people" (not just Obama, note he said "many people) a false sense of security.

Reading that this is an attack on the President and that he's somehow anti-negotiation is like finding a message in your Alpha-Bits.

Reality is of no concern when considering the motivations of a political analyst. Of course the Presidency of Iran is meaningless. But do you suppose Pipes, who has been consistently beating the drum for a war with Iran for well over a year now and who has no compunctions about using Ahmadinejad's comments (even the ones that were later shown to have been taken out of context) as justification for that fact. The dude is a McCarthyesque hack.

You really think that he was talking about anyone other than Democrats (especially the Democratic President) in that? Especially when he's made pointed remarks about how "bleeding heart liberals" will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran?

Regardless, Pipes is hardly worth listening to. Besides being a warmonger, he's also been one of the more useful proponents of the whole "secret Muslim" nonsense, mostly owing to his ability to make remarks that solidify the feelings of conspiracy mongers even as he phrases his arguments in such a way that they can slip into polite society.

Some of the speculation I'm seeing is that the clerics AND the elected officials have been sidelined by the military. Ahmadinejad came from the Revolutionary Guard, while Mousavi was Prime Minister in the days of Khomeini and enjoyed support from clergyman and former President Rafsanjani. Those are hardly impeccable reformist credentials, even if he does represent a more open-minded faction these days. However, those are very much the credentials of a guy who's willing to change slowly, consulting with the clergy. Ahmadinejad, OTOH, is a fire-breather and saber-rattler.

Hard to say for sure whether that speculation is correct, but Iranian politics is a lot more complicated than the politics of some undemocratic regimes. There are several power centers jostling behind the scenes, and so the guy who talks religion might sideline the clerics while the clerics support a nominal reformist, because their nominal roles in the official flowchart do not represent the actual divisions and struggles.

the Illustrated Pipes?

http://www miamiherald com/opinion/jim-morin/image_media/1094677.html

Over at the Agitator, Radley has provided a link to this website which features what are supposed to be pictures of the protests in Iran.

About 4 pictures down, there are POLICE officers swinging batons at some women near a wall. You know they are POLICE officers because POLICE is clearly printed in white block Roman letters on the back of their riot jackets.

I'm not ready to call a rat, here, but it seemed strange that the word was written in block roman letters, rather than the local script and language. (Farsi Persian, IIRC, EDIT: Right language, wrong name.)

Now, it is possible that the word POLICE, like the word STOP on a stop sign has become a sort of international ideogram that is used and recognized uninversally. but I don't have sufficient information to say that this is so. I know that I've seen Polizei in Germany and Policia in Spain, but those usages are close enough to the English usage that there is no trouble discerning the meaning.

Can any of you who have travelled beyond Europe give some insight on this?

(OTOH, maybe they got the uniforms at a police surplus discount store.)

Dunno know about Iran but I do know that when I lived in Korea, many of the police uniforms had "POLICE" and the Korean equivalent both on them. I saw plenty of native coverage of various riot type incidents and the riot shields had both as well. I also saw on the local news a couple of units of National Police (basically just national riot squads) that had only English on the front and the native script only in a small size.

This is actually more likely than you might think. I've sent a message to an Iranian friend to ask, though. She'll be able to verify that they wear the stuff and possibly give some reasoning as to why.

they seem legit enough to me. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out that stuff is ordered on a police website somewhere.

I saw a video on BBC that also had a guy wearing a uniform with POLICE (Roman letters, not Farsi). Static images are easier to fake than video, and the video had the shaky amateur quality to it.

In a capitol city, with people from around the world, it wouldn't surprise me if they use the English word as well as the local word, just to make it clear that the armed man in ninja gear is a cop instead of, um, well, what the hell else would he be?

Fascinating story in this morning's LA Times: Some protestors fled to the safety of an apartment complex, and the elders of the apartment complex were able to negotiate to get the police to go away and not raid the complex. Now, no doubt those kids are screwed as soon as they leave, but in the US the SWAT team would just shoot the elders (see: Johnston, Kathryn) and claim it was self-defense.

I'm sure that Iranian cops have their own equally fucked-up ways of doing things, but I was just surprised by the contrast in this particular situation.

My Iranian friend just got back to me, here's the deal; during the Shah's reign, they bought all kinds of riot gear from the west, all of which had English lettering because they wanted to be modern and thought that was the way to do it. When the Shah fell, the new regime took over all the old stuff, including the riot gear. They've replaced some of it in the interim period, but since there's not much call for riot gear outside of either riots or the Macomb County Sheriff's Office, and because the Shah laid in a huge supply of the stuff to help him maintain power, there's a lot of it and it's still in fairly good condition, which means they tend to pull the mothballed stuff out when something big happens rather than looking into replacing it.

Also, she says that they're calling in assistance from Lebanon to help maintain control. Given the funding patterns and who their allies are in-country, it's very likely Hezbollah members are most of the support that's coming their way. A lot of people over there who have time to think about it are apparently wondering what effect that'll have on Hezbollah support when this is all over.

Cheney? So everyone can get shot in the face? Count me out.

Y'know, I went to RTFA expecting to seethe at the vile idiocy of it and was rather let down.

One chunk of Pipes's point is that the Iranian president's powers are limited in such a way that it doesn't make a whole helluva lot of difference who wins it. Especially not with regard to the issue he's most concerned with, Iran's nuclear program.

The other chunk is the "lulling to sleep" thing. FWIW, he claims this already happened under the Iranian president before the current one, whose term ran from 1997 to 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Khatami), so it woulda been W as much as or more than evil Dem Clinton who would have been doing the lulled sleeping last time, so, no, I don't especially see it as a veiled attack on Obama per se (though he does take the opportunity to pre-emptively slam liberal bloggers for disagreeing with him, apparently oblivious to how rather unique his sentiment is).

All that said, one wonders why the election was rigged and why a lot of Iranians care so much about it if it means so little. I can think of potential reasons for the latter, not so much the former.

I also wonder, as I've long wondered, what the hell we can do about Iran's nuclear ambitions anyway that doesn't have some especially notable downsides.

Anyway, luckily, what he says won't actually affect anything in Iran. And if he really is itching for war, this can only help discredit him. Not a good PR move, unless all he wants is attention from his base.

A perfectly decent ninja minding eir own business.

For those who might not be aware, "Anonymous" has gotten in on the act.

after the way those guys eradicated scientology, the mullahs better be quaking in their boots!

I'd just like to point out that the presidency in the US is really powerful, but it doesn't really seem to matter who wins it here either.

Oh, and I know the idea is always controversial, but it really is an important question to ask... Has anyone else out there wondered if a democratic Iran might be more of a security threat to the United States?

I mean, just judging from our own recent history, saber rattling and bomb dropping can be really popular in the short term sometimes, you know?

But... but... but... Ken! Democracies don't attack other Democracies! Everyone knows that! It's like two positive magnet ends.

I would tend to think the effect of democracy on Iran would fall somewhere between nothing and panacea. Unlike Ken, I do think democracy is a good thing, even if, like The Beatles, a good thing can still be overrated. Even if our governments continued to snarl at each other, my biggest hope for Iranian democracy is that the Iranian people would have some degree of more freedom. I know it doesn't always work that way, but I do think that's the overall trend. And I do think there's a lot of restrictions being enforced on the majority by a powerful minority there. If there's anything worse than tyranny of the majority it's tyranny of the minority.

But philosophical abstractions about the pros and cons of democracy aside, I don't know how much reform the election of a "reform" candidate can really effect. They need an overhaul of their entire system, and it's ultimately up to the military whether they'll allow it if the people demand it and force the military to choose between giving into them or shooting them. The Soviet Union was overthrown because the military wouldn't shoot its own people. Communist China was not because its military would (though I've heard troops from the sticks had to be brought into the capitol just for that purpose). People in Iran have to put their lives on the line and get the military to back down for them to get real reform (not a job I'd like to be tasked with). Maybe it'll help to have a reformer in the presidency, but not necessarily. And then once they get real reform, hopefully the majority can be nice(r) to each other and get along with ours to boot. We'll see.

As for our country, sure it matters who wins the presidency. At least a little bit. It's not supposed to matter more because he's not supposed to be all powerful. And it matters in a very limited and pro and con way to libertarians because, well, we all know about that.

any thoughts on this?
[url]http://www.washingtonpost .com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000004.html[/url]

My heart goes out to the protesters... The whole situation just makes me sick.

On the bright side, if Bush were still in office, we'd probably be invading Iran right now...

Actually, he'd probably issue an ultimatum that the only way for Iran to avoid military action by the US is for them to allow in election observers to investigate.

And then he'd send Jeb and Katherine Harris.

Pipes isn't a big truck...

Took me a minute to get that one.

I need help with that one.

He's a series of tubes.

I was struck by a hunch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes

Am I the only one that finds the current conservative critiques of the left re: Iran kinda ... stupid? Before the Iranian election, they were all hot and bothered about bombing Iran to the stone age. Now they're mad that the administration is being cautious and doing pointless gestures like shading their Twitter avatars green.

Mo, I'm confused about whether you're talking about the US conservatives or the left.

He's talking about some American conservatives, who from last year up through last month in some cases, were absolutely convinced that not bombing Iran immediately would lead to terrorists with nuclear weapons, but who now are some of the most ardent supporters of people who they wanted dead or subjugated not even a few months ago.

Correct.

well, it's simple: bombing people leads to freedom. now that they're messing with people they don't like, they don't need bombs to lead to freedom. unless they do.

I think the better conservative critique would be that conservatives (conveniently, when a Democrat is in office) recognize the reality that the President cannot change things with a few magic words, and now they are bitching because the President won't offer the Iranian resistance...a few magic words.

This is a superficial analysis. If it is a fact that those particular conservatives are worried about that particular regime gaining nuclear weapons, then supporting this current crop of dissenters make sense if you realize that conservatives didn't have a problem with Iranians, they had a problem with the Iranian theocratic state.

now, of course, the rejoinder to the conservative point of "we don't want dead Iranian civilians! We just want regime change" is that you "cannot have one without the other." But I don't find anything incongruous about the behaviors Mo is pointing out. They are actually internally consistent.

I think you're assumming WAY too much good-faith on the part of Bushbot conservatives there, yo.

I do not think so. I really have yet to find anybody who is so categorically heartless that they actually wish to see innocents die. Granted that some might chest thump and say things that sound like that in the open, but...yeah, they're not genocidal.

I dunno, this sounds pretty genocidal.