OMG: solid rocket booster seperation

This is absolutely amazing to watch. Separation of the Space Shuttles' right solid rocket booster occurs as 0:33, touchdown at around 4:47.

Also, NEW CATAGORY! OMG!

Hitler, Michael Jackson, Grammar and Sarah Palin

Hitler is sad that Sarah Palin resigned. Really, Really sad. He had a similar reaction to the passing of Michael Jackson.

Also, if you ever meet Hitler it would be wise to never ever correct his grammar, it makes him mad.

Howard Zinn: Fourth of July Commentary

In 2000, Howard Zinn issued a "Fourth of July Commentary." He begins with the admission that "I cannot comment more meaningfully on the Fourth of July than Frederick Douglass did when he was invited in 1852 to give an Independence Day address."

Zinn then goes on to cite Douglass at length, concluding with quoting the following passage:

"Go and search wherever you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, American reigns without a rival...."

Foucault on the 1979 Iranian Revolution and "Revolt"

Given current events in Iran, Michel Foucault's thoughts on the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which produced the current Iranian regime, and the nature of revolt hold special relevance today.

In "Useless to Revolt?", Foucault addresses the nature of revolts in terms of their ability to interrupt the functioning of social systems and the inability of established authorities to eliminate their possibility entirely.

An excerpt:

Revolts belong to history. But, in a certain way, they escape from it. The impulse by which a single individual, a group, a minority, or an entire people says, “I will no longer obey,” and throws the risk of their life in the face of an authority they consider unjust seems to me to be something irreducible [to the rules of thought and action which define social systems]. Because no authority is capable of making it utterly impossible: Warsaw will always have its ghetto in revolt and its sewers crowded with rebels. And because the man who rebels is finally inexplicable; it takes a wrenching-away that interrupts the flow of history, and its long chains of reasons, for a man to be able, “really,” to prefer the risk of death to the certainty of having to obey.

All the forms of established or demanded freedom, all the rights that one asserts, even in regard to the seemingly least important things, no doubt have a last anchor point there, one more solid and closer to experience that “natural rights.” If societies persist and live, that is, if the powers that be are not “utterly absolute,” it is because, behind all the submissions and coercions, beyond the threats, the violence, and the intimidations, there is the possibility of that moment when life can no longer be bought, when the authorities can no longer do anything, and when, facing the gallows and the machine guns, people revolt.

In "What are the Iranians Dreaming About?", Foucault addresses the 1979 Iranian Revolution as "political will" determined to approach problems of government, e.g. domestic abuse of power and repression on behalf of the US and British installed neo-colonial regime, through an Islamic "political spirituality" rather than modern, 'scientific' Western modes of politics. He thereby seems to interpret the Revolution as an attempt to construct an alternative to western governmental systems and a method of resisting their colonization of world-society as it continues through 'globalization.' (For his thoughts on western "political rationality" see "Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of Political Reason").

An excerpt, pardon the length:

I do not feel comfortable speaking of Islamic government as an "idea" or even as an "ideal." Rather, it impressed me as a form of "political will." It impressed me in its effort to politicize structures that are inseparably social and religious in response to current problems. It also impressed me in its attempt to open a spiritual dimension in politics.

In the short term, this political will raises two questions:

1. Is it sufficiently intense now, and is its determination clear enough to prevent an "Amini solution," which has in its favor (or against it, if one prefers) the fact that it is acceptable to the shah, that it is recommended by the foreign powers, that it aims at a Western-style parliamentary regime, and that it would undoubtedly privilege the Islamic religion?

2. Is this political will rooted deeply enough to become a permanent factor in the political life of Iran, or will it dissipate like a cloud when the sky of political reality will have finally cleared, and when we will be able to talk about programs, parties, a constitution, plans, and so forth?

Politicians might say that the answers to these two questions determine much of their tactics today.

With respect to this "political will," however, there are also two questions that concern me even more deeply.

One bears on Iran and its peculiar destiny. At the dawn of history, Persia invented the state and conferred its models on Islam. Its administrators staffed the caliphate. But from this same Islam, it derived a religion that gave to its people infinite resources to resist state power. In this will for an "Islamic government," should one see a reconciliation, a contradiction, or the threshold of something new?

The other question concerns this little corner of the earth whose land, both above and below the surface, has strategic importance at a global level. For the people who inhabit this land, what is the point of searching, even at the cost of their own lives, for this thing whose possibility we have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crisis of Christianity, a political spirituality. I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong.

Also, and this is important, according to a really, really reliable source, the following is 100% true:

Foucault easily bested anarchist degenerate Noam Chomsky in a televised debate using a winning combination of convoluted denials of reality outside of meaning and the [bald-head] [defensive formation]. The debate topics were human nature, the just society, and [looking awesome on television]. Foucault professed not to believe in human nature, justice, heterosexuality, paper, AIDS or death, turning Chomsky gay. Captain Obvious interjected that Foucault was ranting like a paranoid, a suggestion that was easily rebutted by Foucault's awesome baldness.

Revisit their debate and make up your own mind.

The Onion: Sex Change and Gay Marriage

Conservatives Warn Quick Sex Change Only Barrier Between Gays, Marriage

Iran VII: Night Raids

Beginning on or around June 22, Basij paramilitary forces began conducting "night raids" against private residential properties across Iran, Human Rights Watch reports in a news release entitled "Iran: Night Raids Terrorize Civilians."

The raids have two apparent objectives. First, the raids have aimed to disrupt nighttime rooftop protests:

"While most of the world's attention is focused on the beatings in the streets of Iran during the day, the Basijis are carrying out brutal raids on people's apartments during the night," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Witnesses are telling us that the Basijis are trashing entire streets and even neighborhoods as well as individual homes trying to stop the nightly rooftop protest chants."

The reports later clarifies by adding, "residents throughout Tehran and in other cities in Iran have carried out nightly rooftop protest chants of "God is Great" (Allahu Akbar) and other similar slogans." Both the nighttime rooftop protests and their featured chant of "God is Great" were iconic features of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in which the current regime took power.

Like other acts of protest repression, the nighttime raids have deployed violent tactics. According to an eyewitness:

"In my neighborhood, downtown Tehran, there were protesters who escaped into people's homes when the Basijis chased them. The Basijis who were chasing them then knocked harshly on the doors. The residents were too afraid to open the doors. Then the Basijis sprayed a mark on the door with spray paint. A few minutes later, they came back and attacked the marked houses, breaking down the doors and entering them. They beat the owners, and broke the windows in the house and of their cars."

Others witnesses to such raids report Basij forces have used armed force, "firing live rounds into the air, in the direction of the buildings from which they believe the shouting of ‘Allahu Akbar' [God is great] is coming from."

Second, evidence indicates the raids have aimed to limit domestic access to foreign news sources:

Security agents are also forcing residents in Tehran to take down their satellite dishes, which allow them to view foreign media, one of the few sources of uncensored information in the face of the severe government restrictions on domestic media in Iran.

An eyewitness account:

"Five policemen knocked on the door of our apartment building. People went to open the door and asked them what they wanted. The police said they wanted to come and destroy the satellite dishes on the rooftop. The landlord asked them if they had any permission documents to do this. The policemen replied that there was no need for any documents because the stairs and the rooftops aren't private property; they are common (shared) property. Then they threatened the landlord, ‘If you want us to go get permission documents, we'll come back later with them, but then we will also search the apartments as well.' They were trying to intimidate the landlord, so he let them in. Then they went to the rooftop and threw the dishes into the street. The landlord told me they behaved so harshly with him there was no room to complain."

Untitled Debate and Discussion

Slavoj Zizek, sometimes laughed at on this blog (here) , and Bernard-Henry Levy, have a prolonged discussion and sometimes debate on a variety of issues. Most of which deal directly with current affairs, including 1968 as a marker for social change, consumerism, the 2005 French riots, liberalism, fundamentalism, the "left", Israeli-Palestinian conflict, torture, charity and "Islamofascism."

The discussion may be navigated by topic here.

Worth noting is how moderate Zizeks positions are when debating, seemingly much more so than what is found in his writings and 'solo appearances.'

Iran VI: More Details on Violence and Repression Available

Reports out of Iran offer more grim details of the escalating use of state force.

Human Rights Watch published a June 23 report, entitled "Iran: Violent Crackdown on Protesters Widen", which details the increase of violent repression in both its scale and character. Insight into the tactics of state security forces are offered, which have resulted in "At least 10 people [dead] in clashes between protesters and security forces on June 20, and at least 100 were wounded" and are undoubtedly a contributing factor to the smaller size and number of protests,

Special riot police officers, Revolutionary Guards, and members of the volunteer Basij paramilitary deployed in overwhelming force throughout the capital Tehran and other Iranian cities, preventing protesters from gathering, and responded with immediate violence to any attempts by protesters to mount further demonstrations. In the ensuing clashes between the security forces and unarmed demonstrators, eyewitnesses said security forces used live ammunition as well as tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters.

The same report notes some known conditions to those taken prisoner,

According to relatives contacted by Human Rights Watch, many detainees are being held in incommunicado detention, without access to their lawyers or their families, and without formal charges against them, in violation of international human rights law that applies to Iran, which requires everyone arrested to be "promptly" informed of any charge against them.

More information is also becoming available to the English-speaking world regarding targeted arrests. June 24 saw some 70 university professors arrested, according to the Tehran Broadcast. Reporters without Borders reports 33 journalists have been arrested as of June 21 in an article which lists each by name and significance.

While the repression widens, the brutality of violence seems to worsen.

CBS' Iran Watch, which has maintained a number of sources inside Iran even after all foreign journalists have been requested to leave, has first hand accounts of the character of violence currently taking place,

"It turned into a blood bath ... they threw some people off the bridges ... after the Basijis came, they began to use tear gas, sticks and shooting."

The Wall Street Journal reports the families of victims of fatal shooting injuries are being charged 3,000 dollars to repay the state for the cost of the bullet before the body is released for burial.

Beyond the decrease of protests, indications that state surpression has been effective are found in Mohsen Rezaei, the second opposition candidate along with Mir-Hossein Mousavi, withdrawing his challenge to the election results, now calling them a "clear sample of religious democracy" as reported by Press TV. While Mousavi and not Rezaei has been at the center of the opposition movement, it is a clear sign that the movement is losing important friends.

Iran V (Commentary): Endgame?

While reports remain muddled, it appears an endgame is nearing in Iran. Evidence indicates the protest movement is failing in its primary objectives of:

1. First, ensuring the Guardian Council, the body responsible to certify election results, declares the election results to be invalid;
   
2. Second, building a sustained, broadly supported protest movement that includes diverse segments of the population.
   

Instead, the movement appears to be succumbing to state suppression, but in this looming 'defeat' lies what is sure to be a long-term victory and progressive contribution to social change.

Regarding the first objective, CNN reports the Guardian Council on June 22 rejected any prospect of nullifying the election results, claiming "irregularities were reported before the balloting -- not during or after." Today, June 23, the Council has begun scheduling the inauguration of incumbent President Ahmadinejad, 'winner' of 62.63 percent of the 'vote.'

Regarding the second objective, CBS' Iran Watch cites a STRATFOR Global Intelligence paper, "The Iranian Election and the Revolution Test", and its analysis of the ability of the protest movement to incorporate broader segments of the population, ultimately concluding the movement was unsuccessful in expanding beyond the initial participating demographic of the so-called "twittering class".

The global media, obsessively focused on the initial demonstrators — who were supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponents — failed to notice that while large, the demonstrations primarily consisted of the same type of people demonstrating. Amid the breathless reporting on the demonstrations, reporters failed to notice that the uprising was not spreading to other classes and to other areas. In constantly interviewing English-speaking demonstrators, they failed to note just how many of the demonstrators spoke English and had smartphones. The media thus did not recognize these as the signs of a failing revolution.

Later, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke Friday and called out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they failed to understand that the troops — definitely not drawn from what we might call the “Twittering classes,” would remain loyal to the regime for ideological and social reasons. The troops had about as much sympathy for the demonstrators as a small-town boy from Alabama might have for a Harvard postdoc.

Yet, the fact that the protest movement is occurring de facto achieves a major victory, one which may turn out to be of world-historical significance in the mid- to long-term process of systemic social change of the nation and region. The Tehran Bureau, an independent news and commentary source on Iran, comments in "Iran Makes History Again" that

The levers of economic, military, ideological, bureaucratic, and police power are very tightly controlled by the existing elite in Iran, which makes the protests all the more remarkable. The potential for significant ramifications in Iran and the wider Middle East is great, given the role that Iran plays throughout the region. Of the two most significant events that impacted on the entire Middle East in the last two generations — the Arab loss in the June 1967 war and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 — the Iranian revolution has probably had wider and greater impact in the long run. Iran impacts on many parts of the region, because of its ideological influence and logistical support to Islamist movements in the Arab world, combined with its leadership of the “resistance front” of regional forces that defy and challenge the United States, Israel and conservative Arab regimes.

Thus, the protests have demonstrated the essentially contested nature of the power structure of authoritarian Islamic government, both as the material capacities and ideological content of its state institutions and managerial elite classes. While these protests have relied almost entirely on a narrow demographic, as noted above, Iranian clerics, an indispensable part of the governing class in Iran, have in very small numbers begun to march with protesters. This is a strong indicator that the regime and its ideology are deeply contested not only within the "twittering class," but within the elite sectors of society which have the "levers" of power "tightly controlled"; however, given the small numbers of clerics engaged in supporting the opposition, this split appears to be relatively contained, limited, and mostly nascent for the time being.

As such, current events in Iran are part of a process whereby the national and regional political consciousness is recognizing the legitimacy of post-1979 cultural and political authority as not guaranteed, desirable, or invulnerable and, in fact, to be contingent upon the ability of the state to subordinate the population by way of the "levers" mentioned above. The widespread dissent has already demonstrated this subordination to be no longer willful on behalf of the population, instead relying in part on the use of force on behalf of the state. All other, more preferable and effective "levers" have failed, evidence that the balance of power is shifting in favor of the governed and away from the governing. Afterall, state force is not an act of governing as such, it is violence intended to adjust the social order in such a way that the other, primary governmental "levers" may once again return to effectiveness and government may again resume.

The lasting impact of the protest movement is likely to be establishing the population, both as it thinks of itself and how it is thought of by governmental elites, as empowered to contest to what extent, if at all, it will be subordinated to the will of the state and thereby its capacity to shape the future of the nation.

While the protest movement may be falling short of its primary objectives, the fact that is occurring shows elite and state power have lost much more.

Iran IV: 'Iranian Protesters Stay One Step Ahead in the Cyber World'

Amnesty International has updated its Iran coverage by issuing a blog rather than a full report, further indicating human rights organizations are unable to ascertain information that meets their credibility standards.

The blog briefly summarizes attempts on behalf of the government to limit information, particularly internet access, and attempts on behalf of the protesters defeat such government measures. Even more interesting, and a major contribution to understanding the current affair, is the inclusion of a graph which measures internet activity within Iran over the course of the crisis (see above). Further, it contains a number of useful links.

The blog is copied and pasted bellow:

In the face of a tightening government grip on all things viral, Iranians have managed to circumvent the communication restrictions laid upon them to tell the world their story in ways previously thought to be reserved only for social networking. For anyone who has so much as glanced at the news during the past week, Twitter has been the name of the game for Iranian protesters.

With a limitation of 140 characters per post, only the most pertinent information is tweeted—rally locations, real-time updates, and details only those on the ground can see. While sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been blocked off before, Iranians have continued to gain access to them via proxies, servers that allow users to access another site through them. Proxy sites are continuously being updated in an effort to stay one step ahead of the Iranian government’s filtering apparatus.

The Iranian government’s strategy for blocking the flow of information appears to be two-fold. Foreign news services have all been asked to leave (just this morning, the BBC reporter Jon Leyne, one of the few reporters left, was given a similar request) and the internet speed has been slowed to a snail’s pace. According to the Wall Street Journal, limiting bandwidth in this manner is meant to discourage and frustrate users so much that they’ll give up.

This strategy is, for now, not working. Iranians have harnessed the internet in ingenious ways—from their Twitter posts to uploaded YouTube videos. All major news networks have caught on to the phenomenon, allowing the messages coming out of Iran to truly reach the entire world.