Chomsky on Obama, "Change," and American Democracy

Iran VIII: Sparse Updates & Torture

Information on Iran has been dwindling in American news outlets since the death of Michael Jackson came to dominate the 24 hour news cycle. Further embarrassing is that coverage of events in Iran remain sparse even after the story of the deceased King of Pop started to recede.

Human Rights Organizations have also reported relatively little, but have updated their coverage nonetheless:

Amnesty International has issued a report concerning the recent crackdown on protests intended to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the Student Protests of July 18, 1999. The 1999 protests opposed the closing of reformist newspaper and saw over 1,200 students arrested, 5 of which remain missing. The report briefly describes the July 18, 2009 commemorative protests and the state's response:

At least 200 demonstrators are reported to have gathered along Enghlab Avenue, around the gates of Tehran University, only to be confronted by a large presence of anti-riot police and plain-clothed security officials, possibly including members of the notorious Basij militia, who used baton charges and tear gas to disperse them.

Human Rights Watch has published a report calling attention to the "prolonged harsh interrogation" of prisoners taken in the course of repressing the protest movement which continues to oppose the fraudulent June 12 elections in the face of overwhelming state violence. The report includes a prisoner's account of his treatment by Iranian authorities:

"On the first day, while blindfolded, the interrogator took me to a parking garage. They kept everyone standing for 48 hours with no permission to sleep. On the first night, they tied up our hands and repeatedly beat us and other prisoners with a baton. They kept cursing at the prisoners. The atmosphere was very frightening. Everyone had wet themselves from fear and stress. There were children as young as 15 and men as old as 70; they'd be begging and crying for mercy, but the guards didn't care.

The report goes on to note attempts to force prisoners to confess to conspiring with foreign powers, adding "What better excuse [to retroactively justify violent repression of protesters] does it need than confessions of foreign plots, beaten out of detainees?"

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.

The Onion: Sex Change and Gay Marriage

Conservatives Warn Quick Sex Change Only Barrier Between Gays, Marriage