Anagram: Into The Abyss/ Baits Honesty

      

       It’s gonna be a bloodbath.  An absolute bloodbath.  The Guardian Council has backed the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Regardless of what the protesters and much of the rest of the world wants, the election wont be overturned, and Ahmadinejad is still President of Iran.  There are protests planned for Saturday In Tehran, and the council has made it clear that they will tolerate no more from these people.  The supreme leader, the Ayatollah has warned against demonstrations and it is believed he has given the green light to a crackdown on the protesters. This is, I believe the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. 

    That is, however only the case if the protesters, hearing the Ayatollah speak, are unmoved.  Or are moved to fight anyway by their belief in a higher cause, that of freedom. I think there will be those who will beckon the call and fight for what they believe is theirs, but whether that number is going to be in the hundreds of thousands or not i have no idea.  Time will tell.

     If they do show up, then no one can really be sure whether to say this is going to turn into another Tiananmen square, where estimates ranged from 241 dead and 7,000 wounded all the way to 10,000 dead, or not.  I want to think that cooler heads will prevail, but that seems pretty damned pie in the sky right now.  And if the usual 100,000+ people show up, and they are ready for a fight, and the police and militia show up, and you know they are going to be read for a fight, this is going to be a bloodbath that may well make Tiananmen square look puny by comparison.  I think the protesters can win, but that’s just me and my belief in the will that can be generated by the wish for freedom and the fight against tyranny.  Call me crazy, but i think 100,000+ people with the will to resist (and hopefully be smart enough to bring plenty of assault rifles and other such “accoutrements” to the party) can defeat Ahmadinejad’s forces, and even if i didn’t I wouldn’t want to dampen that spirit and say its impossible to win.

     A few words of advice to the protesters.  If you are going to fight, give them everything you got. They aren’t going to hold back, so don’t you hold back.  Bring plenty of guns, plenty of friends, and every ounce of crazy you got, if you show up, yer gonna need it.

    

      This is it for me here, except for a few quotes.  G’night.

Today’s Nuggets, by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Via Wikiquote:  The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one’s aim is to die a dog’s death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one’s aim.  We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one’s aim is a dog’s death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai. If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling. 

All of man’s work is a bloody business. That fact, today, is considered foolish, affairs are finished cleverly with words alone, and jobs that require effort are avoided. I would like young men to have some understanding of this.

Anagram: Incomplete Story/ Contritely Mopes

        

       This is a video from a few days ago.  I have been looking for actual video footage showing vote counts as they happened, but either they aren’t on youtube, or more likely, I just cannot find them.  I did however run into a spot here on wordpress that shows a 45,000 vote drop for one of the  minority candidates, and makes that the basis for a simple argument.  The numbers changed, went down a fair bit over a period of several hours, a truly odd thing to happen, this therefore means that those votes must have been stolen. And while i can definitely get behind this concept, i think this does need a rethink, at least for a moment on several levels.

       Mistakes can occur, and two screen shots do not and cannot from my perspective, give the entire story.  What happened between the time on these screen shots? Was there any acknowledgement of a miscount at any point? Nothing about that was said, no information given.  Is there proof, beyond the picture, that those votes were stolen and not merely miscounted? I cannot, do not and will not think anything positive here about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but 45,000 votes is merely a symptom.  Millions of votes had to be stolen for the results to come out the way Iranian state television and the council said it did. 

    I do in fact think that the election was rigged.  I have heard, and have no reason to doubt, that interior minister and  billionaire Sadegh Mahsouli, did in fact interfere with the election results to give Ahmadinejad the victory.   The problem I have with the above premise, that the picture is proof of the actual theft, is that it is incomplete and poorly thought out.  Mir Hossein Moussavi according to official counts, lost the election by over 13,000,000 votes.  The theft in the above mentioned wordpress article mentions only a dip of 45,000 votes, and no drop in votes for Moussavi.  There is a story that touches more deeply on the actual technique involved.     

    Let’s look at some journalism for a minute.  This story by the New Yorker gives no definitive proof.  This story, however, from the New York Times several days ago, is more definitive, and if correct would be a be the slam dunk that this story really needs.   Having someone show his ministry ID card and say they didn’t count the votes, they just wrote down “the name and the number”.  That is just plain amazing Chutzpah on the part of those who did this. Having an interior ministry employee say they had been planning on stealing the election for some time, purging those people of “doubtful loyalty” is the icing on the cake.

     The young man in the wordpress story got a little bit too excited over a picture which may well have been a mistake.  There are much more serious things going on here than a simple television mistake, which until someone proves otherwise, is all that that was.   Does anyone seriously think that Iranian television, and the interior ministry, and Mister Ahmadinejad would be dumb enough, or careless enough to plant the proof of theft right under the noses of the entire nation? Nonononono, these men are a great deal smarter than that.

    That’s about it from here, with the exception of a second viddy, and a few quotes.

     A viddy from Russia today, talking about the likelihood of a change happening in Iran, and Iran both from the Russian and international perspective.  A very valid point made in the final seconds of this video.  Moussavi will not be much different from Ahmadinejad on the nuclear question.  That is something to keep in mind as this story continues to unfold.

      

   I’ll be back with a second blog later, if possible.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, Via wikiquote:  Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.  Frederick Douglass

We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.   Hierocles

Anagram: Dangerously/ Load Gurneys

          Iranian riot police put to the run by angry locals.

     

        It’s amazing what you can catch if you’re paying attention.  It’s amazing what you can miss if you aren’t.  That second bit applies to CNN, Fox and MSNBC, who all apparently missed the big news of large scale riots after the election in Iran.  Word that I heard was that as Iran was burning and rioting, each of these networks completely dropped the ball. CNN had a rerun of Larry King live on, while MSNBC and Fox both dropped the ball and decided to simply continue their regular programming. 

       Check out the videos they could have shown if only they had been on the ball.  Check out some viddys embedded at briebart.tv. There are a total of 14 videos on this particular portion of this site. It is riveting and fascinating, in much the same way that an accident happening in front of you is riveting.  You know something nasty is going to happen, but you just… cant… turn… away. 

    You could have hit twitter and read live tweets from the battlefield as it were.  It was all over the web at the moment it was happening, but MSM, at least here in the United States, completely ignored it. You can still get live reports from the battlefield via twitter. 

     There is talk that Hezbollah fighters have been brought in.  Tis said that unarmed civilians have been fired upon and killed.  There is fear in the streets.  Looking at the viddys provided at Briebart and other places, I can see why.

     There is more on this, and the struggle, despite the show Mister Ahmadinejad and his backers put on in Tehran today.  Stay tuned to twitter for up to the minute news and live news straight from the source. 

     

    A big thank you to CNN and the other big boys for dropping the ball on this one. The whole world Should have been watching, but you left us in the dark, proving your uselessness in the face of superior reporting ability of people live on the ground using social networking tools. 

    That’s about it for that. As a matter of Fact, that’s it for this blog, except for one minor thought.  How do you think the Oil markets are going to react to this? I don’t know about you, but i’m expecting a price spike over this.  We’ll see, one way or the other.   Later!

Today’s Nuggets, Via Wikiquote:   If (problems) are decided through the use of force, everything becomes double-complicated….He who sows the wind will reap a hurricane and this will be a very strong storm in the whole Middle East region, which will strike painfully….All questions on international security have to be settled only through dialogue because using force will not lead anywhere.   Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Sometimes there’s truth in old cliches. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice.  Arundhati Roy

You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere.  Ursula Le Guin

Anagram: Ahmadinejad/ Me And A Jihad

          Before I begin, a Video from this morning on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” this is part one of an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

     

     The Iranian President is something of a charlatan.  More than ”something” of a charlatan. The man’s arrogance is beyond belief.  Example: at just before the 2 minute mark he says America ” Unilaterally cut relations with Iran”  Like that was on us, something we did, completely without any outside influence.  He forgets to mention that it was his people who took 44 Americans hostage and held them for over a year, who overthrew the Iranian Government, chased out the Shah, and brought Radical Islamic Fascism to the world stage with the Ayatollah.  And we don’t forget that HE was one of those students. 

     He also says a few other things here that really were completely off base.  The whole “Obama should have come” to the conference on racism things, when the man himself went up on the stage and spouted Holocaust denier bullshit.  How a man can talk about being anti-racist and with the same breath use the words “Against Zionism”, a deeply hateful term to my mind is beyond me

    But then again, no one should really be surprised by that, this is the same guy who says he wants to wipe Israel off of the face of the earth.   Mind you I am somewhat heartened to hear that the man would back a two state solution if Palestinians agree to it. 

      

    That’s that for The Iranian president.  I want to say more but… I prefer not to at this point.  There will be more when the time is right.

    In Other News, The United States has declared a public health emergency in response to the Swine Flu Outbreak, which has been diagnosed in 20 people here In the States, and has claimed over 80 lives and made over 1000 ill in Mexico.  The U.S. is releasing ¼ of their anti-viral stockpile in response to the outbreak.  

     The eight New York kids from queens did in fact test positive for the Swine Flu after going to Mexico on spring break, though it hasn’t been “officially determined” that the swine flu in fact came from there (where else could it have come from, Weehawken N.J.?).  But they are all, thankfully, fine, but the Washington post story I read on this did say that some members of the eight students families were also coming down with flu-like symptoms.  One wonders how many people those eight kids came in contact with between their arrival back in the states from spring break and when they found out it was in fact swine flu.

   That’s it for the Swine Flu from me.  A last viddy, a few quotes and I am done.

     Shifting gears quite a bit here.  Sen. Chris Dodd on the Ed Show, talking about freezing credit card interest rates. 

      

   That’s it from me.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, By Thomas Jefferson, via Wikiquote:   All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Anagram: Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do/ Food Riot Maladies

  Nothing about Solfege or Food Riots here.  Talk of the U.N. conference on racism here.

     

      I read the news some days, and some days it makes sense, and some days it just throws me off.   I have been reading for example a variety of stories about a conference on racism that is going to take place on Monday in Geneva.  I wrote about 700 words on said story, when I suddenly realized that the entire tack of the story I had written was in fact completely off base. 

     Oof and other such statements.  What I had written consisted basically of ripping the United Nations a new one for putting together a

Black and White

conference on Racism that was run ostensibly by anti-Semites.  THAT isn’t true,there are problems with the conference but that isn’t it, and the organization that I had directed a large portion of my ire towards, was responsible not for being anti-Semites, but FIGHTING anti-semitism. 

    I’m still scratching my head a little on this one, and that won’t due.  What I do know is that The United States won’t go because there is language in  the charter of the conference that is still too one sided and there is also language there that seems to point towards restrictions on freedom of speech.   The one sidedness I speak of is in fact anti-Israel, and there was a similar conference 8 years ago that both the United States and Israel walked out on due to an extreme anti-Israel slant.  In fact in that first conference the only nation mentioned by name was Israel.

    With all the evil perpetrated in the world using race as a backdrop, the ONLY nation to get publicly hung was Israel.  That is wrong, and pointed out the extremity of the anti-semitism of the first conference.  It is to not be party of a repeat of that, that a number of nations, from Italy, to Canada, The United States, Israel and several other nations have dropped out of the conference.

      I am hoping that something positive comes of the conference, the world needs to address the problem that is racism.  It would be nice if nations dealt with the people in a fair and equitable manner so that there would be no need for such conference.  But with the exit of the United States, and the announcement that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran coming, I highly doubt much good will come of it. 

    We shall see. 

  A second Video, a few quotes and I am done.

    The video is a second one from UN watch. Tis curious to watch delegates of some of the more oppressive regimes on this planet praise an anti-racism conference.

    

     That’s it for me.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, via wikiquote:  Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.  Bertrand Russell

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.  Martin Luther King Jr.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.   Herman Hesse