The Damning Letter?

There's been a lot of rumors swirling around about how Ahmadinejad actually came in third. No source has been given, at least not until now.

On iReport, there is a picture of a letter that was supposedly sent by the Interior Ministry to the President, saying both how the results were concocted and what the numbers really were. They match the ones from the rumor.

Of course, the letter could be fake. I don't really believe that Ahmadinejad came in third after Karroubi. But this is definitely more than just some twitter meme.

Edit: By the by, the man who supposedly leaked this died in an incredibly suspicious "car accident." Draw your own conclusions.

Never Mind The Fact That Mousavi Lost His Hometown

...or that Karroubi somehow managed to get less votes than he has campaign workers. No, according to these two jokers, Ahmadinejad legitimately won because they found one poll to cherry-pick that supports their position. And because he speaks Azeri well, he surely beat their native son, despite that not having any resemblence to previous results in the region.

According to the most recent Iranian figures—which are probably doctored to forestall critics—Karoubi still only won 5% of the vote in his province. Um, no.

Anyway, I'm sure Juan Cole will have a response up. Nico Pitney at Huffpo also doesn't find it particularly compelling. Me, I'm just not sure why these guys would write something like this, not now. "Get over it?" When Basij are gunning people down in the street? How deluded are you?

Edit: It was always possible that Ahmadinejad won. That's what's both bizarre and horrific about this mess—that they didn't need to do what they did. What I suspect is that the fix was in to the point that it didn't matter what had really happened. They were never going to bother counting those votes in the first place.

Re-Edit: Ah. If what I've read between the lines in this blog posting is true, This is about the anti-Rafsanjani faction leveraging its western allies. That's why the cherry-picked poll from "Terror-Free Tomorrow" is popping up in multiple places without cross-crediting. I imagine there's some intense email lobbying going on right now. Not that Phillip Weiss is one of those allies, he's just relaying a comment, but the comment being relayed speaks volumes.

Assembly of Experts Emergency Meeting

What I had expected has come to pass: Rafsanjani has convinced the Assembly of Experts to have an emergency meeting.

As I've said innumerable times, this is the primary battlefront. Eighty-six clerics will probably decide the fate of this. The Assembly's only job is to evaluate, instruct, hire and (if necessary) remove the Supreme Leader. If they're meeting, that's what this is about.

If they indicate to Khamenei that he is in danger of losing their confidence (the most likely scenario), he will have to either leave Ahmadinejad twisting in the wind by calling for re-election or at least force him to call off the Basij...which amounts to roughly the same thing. If they just sack him, then Montazeri will probably be the next Supreme Leader, the reformists become ascendant, and the world will quite literally change overnight.

If they give him a pass, then that will be the tipoff to both Khamenei and Ahmadinejad that they enjoy clerical support, and the protesters will have a much more difficult struggle ahead of them.

But Rafsanjani leads the body, and if there weren't a problem, they wouldn't be having this meeting. So that latter option is unlikely.

Personally, from what I understand of Iran and Khamenei, it may be that the country would be better off with another leader. Removing Khamenei would be a signal that the Supreme Leader is not omnipotent, and lead to more careful, discerning head clerics in the future, ones who recognize that they are not the Republic.

But, as always, this is Iran's story. This is their choice.

Ignorance or Fear?

No, I'm not talking about Ahmadinejad. I'm talking about the neocons, who--as the earlier Ledeen piece and this bizarre NYT opinion piece reveals--who are writing things that are demonstrably not true, based on poor reasoning. To claim that the protests are merely "symbolic", for example, is just so bizarre as to beggar belief; it's as if they wrote the piece right after the election, and had to edit in a short dismissal of the millions-strong protests in order to save their article.

But then again, they may just be scared. After all, the U.S. had nothing to do with this. THEY had nothing to do with this. Their pet terrorists (excuse me, "freedom-fighters") had nothing to do with this. Their beloved, ineffective exiles had nothing to do with this. This came from the people who actually have to live and work and interact with others in Iran, not from some cozy sinecue at AEI where you can play the warrior to distract you from your rapidly expanding gut, and make you feel like you haven't wasted your life.

They had a good thing going. I can see why they'd be scared to lose it. But the rest of us should be scared if they don't.

(H/T Sully, who kinda also fit in this category but has come around nicely.)

Potential Twitter Breakdowns and How You Can Help

I'm not sure how long Twitter is going to remain a useful source of information. More and more, it seems like it's being flooded with nonsense: either nonsense from spammers hoping to make a quick buck, nonsense from barely-concealed Iranian government proxies, or nonsense from well-meaning folks who are retweeting whatever catches their eye, without an eye to its veracity. Already the #iranelection tag is deprecated, and it seems to have split between several others. (I won't post them, just in case, but following key Iranian bloggers like Persiankiwi will reveal them.) If this keeps up, the white noise will make the whole thing useless.

I'm just a humble blogger, so all I can offer is advice: if you cannot contribute to the discussion, leave it be. Twitter is a participatory medium, but hashtags are a ramshackle organizational tool to begin with, and your attempts to show your support by adding them are just going to make it worse. If you want to show your support, by all means tweet (or twitter or whatever) your support. And if you seriously think that something deserves a "re-tweet" and hasn't been RTed in the last while, then do it.

Edit: If you do re-tweet them, strip out their names. I know you want to credit them, but you could be endangering them. So don't do it.

But otherwise, let the people of Iran get the word out. This is their story. Not yours.

Third Analytic

This time, I can probably make it simple. Ahmadinejad made a big mistake by pulling the Basij into this. The arresting, shocking footage was exactly what the protesters needed to make this whole thing about their struggle. Whether Mousavi or Ahmadinejad won the election is almost immaterial at this point: the repression itself is stripping away his legitimacy.

There are two things to look out for right now: the army, and the 'net. The question of whether or not the Army is going to get involved looms over this whole thing. They said they were "neutral", but I've read accounts implying that there's some internal strife going on there, and it may well continue. Conflict within the army makes it far harder to turn them against others, however, so that may be good news for the protesters in-and-of itself.

Whether they'll be able to keep up connections with the outside world is a better question. You've probably already seen #iranelection practically turning on itself from fears of Iranian monitoring, and that's going to keep up. That may scare away actual Iranian twitterers, and lets be honest: they're the story here, not the rest of us. But there are indications that it's getting harder and harder for Mousavi supporters to get online, period, or even carry around a laptop without getting it smashed. Will Iran slowly go dark over the next few days? And can anybody do anything about it?

I hope enormously that it doesn't go dark. That may be the only thing preventin harsher repression. Those cameras and "tweets" need to stay on.

Tomorrow (Tonight?) is the strike. We'll find out the answer to the military question, at least. And, I suppose, we can move on from there.

Girl gets shot in Tehran

So I was wrong about a picture ending up on Twitter showing a girl having been shot.

It's a video.

Seen On Twitter Just Now:

"ill kill who killed my brother"

No link, the person doesn't want to be named.

Basiji Responsible for Violence?

According to one of Sully's readers:

I finally got through and spoke with my family in Tehran. My cousin, who studies at the University, had the following report:

"Life has come to a halt. There were at least 2-3M in the streets today. I've never seen such anger. We are not going let this go. They've closed all the universities (during final exams) and have started a purge. Many of our professors are missing and student organizers are moving constantly to avoid detainment. The police is just watching and the army has declared neutrality. The violence is 100% caused by the BASIJ and thugs who are roaming the streets. They seem to be targeting girls, swinging with clubs and chains. Its disgusting but we are protected by numbers. Get the word out-- the more of us stand together, the safer each individual will be. The reports of the university attacks yesterday are true. We don't know how many were hurt or killed."

This suggests both that the Revolutionary Guard are behind this (the Basij would never act without their go-ahead) and that the other organs of the state are ambivalent at best.

If the army and policy are demonstrating their ambivalence, though, Ahmadinejad and Khamenei could be in bigger trouble than I thought. Especially that "targetting girls" thing. That's going to inflame anger, especially if those disturbing pictures going around Twitter start featuring young Iranian women.

Gunfire on People at Mousavi Rally

Source is Huffpo, Sully, and various Twitters on #Iranelection.

The regime just made a terrible, terrible mistake. I had discounted the possibility of insurrection. I'm not discounting it anymore. The pretense of normalcy and stability could be kept up as long as it was simply police suppression. That's gone now.

This is rapidly spiraling out of control.

It's Not Just in Tehran, and What's Next?

Two bits, both from the running thread on Huffpo.

First, video showing that the protests are NOT just happening in Tehran:



That's from Ardabil, in the Northwest.

Second, an analysis by Laura Rozen about what's coming next.

Iranian opposition presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi is planning a march of his supporters at 4 p.m. Monday in Tehran, Iranian sources said. He apparently went to see the supreme leader Sunday to seek a permit for it, but one hasn't yet been obtained. If he is prevented from getting permission, he has said he plans to march to the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomenei, an act that Iranians say the authorities of the Islamic Republic would be disinclined to prevent.

Iranian sources said former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is in Qom, seeking to persuade clerics not to certify the Iranian elections.

Another presidential candidate, Mohsen Rezai, the former head of the Revolutionary Guards, issued a statement today saying he wants to have the ballots examined, Iranian sources said.

On that latter point, I was under the impression the ballots had been destroyed. That would make a recount impossible. The very impossibility of the recount would be damning, but they didn't think that far ahead.

As to the other two... they were predictable. There aren't a lot of endgames here. One is an out-and-out revolution, but as I said earlier, I find that unlikely. Revolutions and civil wars require a number of predictable elements, and while some exist in Iran—like a huge gap between people's self-perception of their status and what they believe should be their status—others aren't. Among others, the alternative elite structure that forms the backbone of a revolution as a prospective government just isn't appearing. Mousavi, Rafsanjani, Karrobi and the rest still have stakes in the current system, and nobody else appears to be in any kind of position to take over.

(Certainly MEK isn't.)

What this suggests is that they are going to attempt to use the strife to convince the power-holders in the current system, the Mullahs, that neither Ahmadinejad nor Khamenei are fit to rule in their name. Mousavi and Karrobi are doing that by not backing down and ensuring that the protesters aren't going to back down either. Rafsanjani is doing that by approaching the Mullahs in the Assembly of Experts as the spokeman for his moderate faction, and trying to convince them to see things his way.

(If they don't certify the results, it will be a clear indication that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei have earned their ire.)

The big problem for the Iranian state is that the rest of the world is clearly not happy. Yes, the regional powers have congratuated Ahmadinejad, they could care less about elections, but Obama's indicated as much "concern" as is possible without perverting the situation and both Canada and Germany have indicated that they find both the election and the repression troubling at best. France isn't impressed, and I'm sure more will come as time passes.

That will limit any possible crackdown. If they just kill Mousavi and turn the situation into a bloodbath, their opponents will claim vindication and they'll find themselves in an even worse position than they were before. The nuclear program will be difficult-to-impossible to carry out and they will be unable to leverage humanitarian arguments when reacting to any possible strike. Other states will also take it as a sign of weakness and instability.

But without that option, I'm sure they're wondering just what the hell they can do. These people clearly aren't intimidated, or at least not enough. A recount simply isn't going to happen. And Mousavi shows no interest in backing down. So even if Rafsanjani is unsuccessful, the state will have enormous problems settling this down. They may even be unsuccessful; I may be wrong about revolution.

And, I'm sure, Rafsanjani is going over all of this with the Mullahs. They want a peaceful, orderly country. Khamenei may not be worth sacrificing that indefinitely. I'm sure Ahmadinejad isn't.

Right now, it's in their hands.

Cole on Iran: It's About Culture, not Class

On various blogs discussing the Iranian situation right now, there's been an argument over whether or not the west has, perhaps, been "snowed" by wealthy people in North Tehran. Maybe Ahmadinejad really did as well as he seemed thanks to his support by the poor and religious, and this response is just the wealthy and their children acting out in frustration.

Juan Cole knocks that one down:

Some comentators have suggested that the reason Western reporters were shocked when Ahmadinejad won was that they are based in opulent North Tehran, whereas the farmers and workers of Iran, the majority, are enthusiastic for Ahmadinejad. That is, we fell victim once again to upper middle class reporting and expectations in a working class country of the global south.

While such dynamics may have existed, this analysis is flawed in the case of Iran because it pays too much attention to class and material factors and not enough to Iranian culture wars. We have already seen, in 1997 and 2001, that Iranian women and youth swung behind an obscure former minister of culture named Mohammad Khatami and his 2nd of Khordad movement, capturing not only the presidency but also, in 2000, parliament.

Khatami received 70 percent of the vote in 1997. He then got 78% of the vote in 2001, despite a crowded field. In 2000, his reform movement captured 65% of the seats in parliament. He is a nice man, but you couldn't exactly categorize him as a union man or a special hit with farmers.

The evidence is that in the past little over a decade, Iran's voters had become especially interested in expanding personal liberties, in expanding women's rights, and in a wider field of legitimate expression for culture (not just high culture but even just things like Iranian rock music). The extreme puritanism of the hardliners grated on people.

The problem for the reformers of the late 1990s and early 2000s was that they did not actually control much, despite holding elected office. Important government policy and regulation was in the hands of the unelected, clerical side of the government. The hard line clerics just shut down reformist newspapers, struck down reformist legislation, and blocked social and economic reform. The Bush administration was determined to hang Khatami out to dry, ensuring that the reformers could never bring home any tangible success in foreign policy or foreign investment. Thus, in the 2004 parliamentary elections, literally thousands of reformers were simply struck off the ballot and not allowed to run. This application of a hard line litmus test in deciding who could run for office produced a hard line parliament, naturally enough.

But in 2000, it was clear that the hard liners only had about 20% of the electorate on their side.

By 2005, the hard liners had rolled back all the reforms and the reform camp was sullen and defeated. They did not come out in large numbers for the reformist candidate, Karoubi, who only got 17 percent of the vote. They nevertheless were able to force a run-off between hard line populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative billionaire. Ahmadinejad won.

But Ahmadinejad's 2005 victory was made possible by the widespread boycott of the vote or just disillusionment in the reformist camp, meaning that fewer youth and women bothered to come out.

So to believe that the 20% hard line support of 2001 has become 63% in 2009, we would have to posit that Iran is less urban, less literate and less interested in cultural issues today than 8 years ago. We would have to posit that the reformist camp once again boycotted the election and stayed home in droves.

No, this is not a north Tehran/ south Tehran issue. Khatami won by big margins despite being favored by north Tehran.

So observers who want to lay a guilt trip on us about falling for Mousavi's smooth upper middle class schtick are simply ignoring the last 12 years of Iranian history. It was about culture wars, not class. It is simply not true that the typical Iranian voter votes conservative and religious when he or she gets the chance. In fact, Mousavi is substantially more conservative than the typical winning politician in 2000. Given the enormous turnout of some 80 percent, and given the growth of Iran's urban sector, the spread of literacy, and the obvious yearning for ways around the puritanism of the hard liners, Mousavi should have won in the ongoing culture war.

And just because Ahmadinejad poses as a champion of the little people does not mean that his policies are actually good for workers or farmers or for working class women (they are not, and many people in that social class know that they are not).

So let that be an end to the guilt trip. The Second of Khordad Movement was a winning coalition for the better part of a decade. Its supporters are 8 years older than the last time they won, but it was a young movement. Did they all do a 180 and defect from Khatami to Ahmadinejad? Unlikely. The Iranian women who voted in droves for Khatami haven't gone anywhere.

Bolding mine, and it pretty much sums it up. There's no way that these results make sense, even without looking at Karoubi's comically low vote count. It was always possible that Ahmadinejad was going to win, and I honestly believe he could have.

But we don't know who won. That fact is all we do know. And for the people of Iran, that was more than enough to stop supporting this regime.

Edit: And what the HELL is going on in his comment thread? There's endless ranting about "Obamabots" and obvious spinning for Ahmadinejad and Iran. I'd buy it if it seemed to come from honest Ahmadinejad supporters, but it seems like it's coming from this bizarre mindset where Ahmadinejad MUST be popular since he takes potshots at the U.S and affects a populist image. It's quite possible to enjoy popular success and take shots at the U.S. Hugo Chavez does it, and his elections are routinely verified as legitimate by international observers. But that's simply not what happened here.

There's also a lot of wanking on about how "America shouldn't lecture them until it cleans its own house". Maybe. But people like Cole aren't telling Iranians what to do. They're explaining why Iranians are reacting as they are, and why the spin is unlikely at best. Americans shouldn't dictate what Iranians do, but that's not what's happing here, either.

You're allowed to be against both Iranian election fraud and the excesses of the American right, folks. They aren't mutually exclusive.

Michael Ledeen Remains Completely Useless

I tell you, the worst thing about this story is the right-wing idiots who think it somehow proves them right. Case in point: Michael Ledeen.

There ain't much here that ain't nonsense. Whining about people criticizing "neoconservatives" by using silent digs about how disagreement is anti-semitic, putting scare quotes around "reformer" like a tool, taking potshots at Roger Cohen for being the first to notice the "Green Revolution" (while Cohen risks his ass on the streets of Tehran, writing some of the best mainstream coverage out there)...

...and, as always, giving completely destructive advice.

Ledeen is castigating Obama for not having come out on the side of "Iranian Freedom." Ledeen should damned well know that if Obama had breathed a word about this in the Cairo speech, it would have served as a massive boost to Ahmedinejad's credibility and legitimacy. We wouldn't have even got this far.

Ledeen should also damned well know that if Obama pushes too hard now, it will make Iranians feel that the protesters are American tools, and not an expression of genuine Iranian outrage. He DEFINITELY should know that chattering about "the Mullahs" as a unit is demonstration of deep ignorance about how Iran works and the conflicts within its religious class.

But, then again, Ledeen has never given any indication that he knows anything. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

Meanwhile, check out the Roger Cohen piece. He knows what's going down.

Clemons

From Steve Clemons, a source states just how serious this is:

Last night in London after appearing on Keith Olbermann's show, I got an email from a well-connected Iranian who knows many of the power figures in the Tehran political order asking to meet me. I told him that the only place possible was Paddington on the way to Heathrow -- and there we met.

He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious -- Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a "charade."

But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.

My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

Likewise, he said, Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Mousavi know this -- and thus are using all of the instruments at their control within Iran's government apparatus to fight back -- but given Khamenei's embrace of Ahmadinejad's actions in the election and victory, there is no recourse but to try and remove Khamenei. Some suggest that Rafsanjani will count votes to see if there is a way to formally dislodge Khamenei -- but this source I met said that all of these political giants have resources at their disposal to "do away with" those that get in the way.

He predicted that the so-called reformist camp -- who are not exactly humanists in the Western liberal sense -- may try and animate efforts to decapitate the regime and "do away with" Ahmadinejad and even the Supreme Leader himself.

I am not convinced that this source "knows" these things will definitely happen but am convinced of his credentials and impressed with the seriousness of the discussion we had and his own concern that there may be political killing sprees ahead.

This is not a vision he advocates -- but one he fears.

Bolding is mine. if this IS true—and I see little reason to believe it isn't—this will most certainly get uglier because Rafsanjani and Moussavi have, quite literally, nothing at all to lose. Removing Khamenei strikes me as almost impossible, but this series of events he has endorsed has seriously, seriously damaged his country's stability and reputation. They may have no choice.

That also provides a guiding motivation for the protests. The greater the instability, the greater the anger, the more pressure the Assembly of Experts will feel to do something about it before their country becomes ungovernable. An out-and-out revolution is extraordinarily unlikely, but the system does provide a mechanism for replacement of the Grand Ayatollah, and if he falls Ahmadinejad goes too.

Protest Trap?

This just gets worse. The latest on the twitter feed is that Mousavi supporters are being deliberately mislead to believe that the candidate has been released, and is headed to the ministry...so that they'll attempt to join him and can be dealt with en masse.

The US Needs to Keep its Distance

Andrew Sullivan is right in stating that the U.S. should make no overt move towards either condemning or endorsing what Ahmedinejad and his allies did. It would throw everything off, and serve as a means by which the faltering leadership can reunite itself with its angry citizenry.

I think Obama's savvy enough to understand that, too. Bush would have jumped in, because his tone-deaf, delusional neoconservative advisers would have counseled him to do so and he wouldn't have known any better. Obama's people are smarter, and so is he.

Meanwhile, what the hell is going on with western coverage of this story? The networks seem uninterested, and even a lot of otherwise-solid bloggers seem to be either keeping their distance or giving it one desultory entry and moving on to wrangle over DOMA or the public option or Larry Summers or whateverthehell. TPM has been really solid, as has Huffington and Sully, but when I signed off earlier, I had thought I'd return to an absolute blizzard of coverage.

I mean, you see something like this:



And, honestly, everything else just kind of fades into the background. Or so I thought.

Edit: Then again, the beating heart of this has been, of all things, a single Twitter hashtag: #iranelection. I'm not terribly fond of the whole premise of Twitter, and that whole 140 character thing is obviously not up my alley. But as a link farm, it's hard to beat.

Iranian Analysis Time

All right, time to pull back for a moment and play analyst.

There are two dimensions to this story: the election, and the reaction. The salient elements to the election are pretty straightforward: Mousavi was supposed to be either easily beaten by Ahmedinejad or be an unobjectionable "moderate" reformist. For whatever reason, the election moved in a much more vicious direction, and Mousavi started to become a lightning rod for the same sort of revolutionary imagery and attitudes that propelled a lot of the "color revolutions" over the past few years, and arguably the Obama campaign.

This clearly scared the Powers That Be into a panicked spate of election fraud, and they either didn't know or didn't care that they would get found out. At this point, though, it's pretty clear that they did get found out. There are still those hemming and hawing over whether or not the numbers might be legit, but they're being drowned out by those who apply both political knowledge and commons sense to come up with near-irrefutable evidence of fraud. All of these are known factors, or at least unknown things that can be known. In the intelligence biz, those latter things are what they mean when they talk about "secrets".

The other dimension is the reaction. That, in intelligence-speak, is a "mystery", because its full nature is unknown and can't be known yet. We've got the incredible riots in Tehran and, if Twitter can be believed, across the whole damned country. That came hand-in-hand with brutal police suppression and Iranian telecommunications getting nearly completely shut down.

But that's what happened. This reaction will continue for many days, weeks, and months to come. So the question is what sort of reactions are going to happen. It's a "mystery", as I said, so nobody can be 100% confident. But I'll break down what I expect.

First, the telecommunication blockade will be ineffective, and they will continue to get information out to the outside world. The twitterers and bloggers are getting through the blockade, and I imagine more will as time goes on, considering the relative age and expertise of the protesters vs. their censors.

Next: both the riots and crackdowns will get worse. The nature of this event is such that the government's illegitimacy cannot be denied. If the system permitted no election at all, that would almost be better; the people would be used to it and have to be converted to expect anything else. But all these people expected their votes to matter, and even Machiavelli knew that people who perceive a loss of assumed rights get really, really angry about it.

The opposition are scared and feel isolated, but since the wall will be ineffective, they'll be able to communicate with one another and the outside world. They'll be reminded that they are not alone.

Thirdly, the regime's future. This is a tougher call. This debacle is a huge blow to Khamenei. It has hurt the legitimacy of the Grand Ayatollah in the eyes of too many Iranians, and the way that it will be exploited by Iran's enemies (see next point) is going to cause a lot of Ayatollahs to become very cross indeed. Neither he nor Ahmedinejad will come out of this unscathed.

Whether they will come out of it at all is really hard to see. I don't expect a revolution; I don't think the elements are in place for it, especially from a strategic and tactical angle. But I don't completely discount it either, especially if it is accompanied by a "push from within" by those within the Assembly of Experts who are unhappy with the situation.

Finally, this is an unquestionable gift to Israel's right and American neoconservatives. It's hard to overstate just how much of a life-saver this is for that entire school of thought. Had the election happened honestly, whether or not Ahmedinejad would have won would have been almost immaterial. It still would have been "democratic" enough that the bright-line distinction between "Democratic West" and "Totalitarian Iran" that neoconservatives depend on would be hard to make, and neoliberal arguments about reform would have carried the day.

As it is, Iran looks like a banana republic. WORSE than a banana republic. They will easily be able to use this ridiculous farce to make the case that Iran's leaders have become completely unglued, and that Iran's people want America to come in and save them. That would be an absolute disaster, but it just became significantly more plausible thanks to this nonsense.

That may be the best argument for a revolution, or at least an ousting of the Ahmedinejad/Khamenei faction: because no matter how much damage it does, it'd be less than whatever the American neoconservatives would inflict.

New Footage

This is also from saeed valadbaygi, showing night protests in Iran. This is likely to be his next "liveblog" entry.

Edit: These videos are actually from prior to the election. But they're still worthwhile.



I'll also embed some of the other videos in the series:





Here's a really good view from the entrance to the tunnel:



All of these come from a YouTube poster named Agilint.

Iranian Monitor Also Says: "Rigged"; Rafsanjani Still Head of Assembly of Experts

More Sully:

Yes, the president of Iran's own election monitoring commission has declared the result invalid and called for a do-over. That is huge news: when a regime's own electoral monitors beak ranks, what chance does the regime have of persuading anyone in the world or Iran that it has democratic legitimacy? Second:

Stratfor is reporting that Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Council, has resigned. Though unconfirmed, the report is saying that Rafsanjani is resigning from his position as head of the Expediencey Council, NOT his position as the leader of the Assembly of Experts, which has oversight responsibility over the office of the Supreme Leader and would be responsible for naming Ayatollah Khamenei’s successor.

I have little to add to this, except to note that the Assembly gives Khamenei his authority, so it would make sense that he wouldn't give up that position. Stratfor can be a bit dicey at times, this is likely accurate.

Nate Silver is also arguing that the infamous "chart" may not be impossible after all. He has a point, but his commentators are pointing out some rather questionable assumptions he made; he definitely had to do some backflips to make it possible. And he acknowledges that this only may justify "The Chart"; the problem of regional votes that Juan Cole brings up is acknowledged as very real, and very serious.

Juan Cole Breaks it Down

Here's the Perfessor on why it's fraud:

Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen

1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.

2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers.

3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.

4. Mohsen Rezaie, who polled very badly and seems not to have been at all popular, is alleged to have received only 670,000 votes, twice as much as Karoubi.

5. Ahmadinejad's numbers were fairly standard across Iran's provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations.

6. The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results.

I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.

But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory.

The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.

They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.

This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran.

The reason for which Rezaie and Karoubi had to be assigned such implausibly low totals was to make sure Ahmadinejad got over 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off between him and Mousavi next Friday, which would have given the Mousavi camp a chance to attempt to rally the public and forestall further tampering with the election.

This scenario accounts for all known anomalies and is consistent with what we know of the major players.

In the past decade, reformers have always backed down in Iran when challenged by hardliners, in part because no one wants to relive the horrible Great Terror of the 1980s after the revolution, when faction-fighting produced blood in the streets. Mousavi is still from that generation.

My own guess is that you have to get a leadership born after the revolution, who does not remember it and its sanguinary aftermath, before you get people willing to push back hard against the rightwingers.

So, there are protests against an allegedly stolen election. The Basij paramilitary thugs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will break some heads. Unless there has been a sea change in Iran, the theocrats may well get away with this soft coup for the moment. But the regime's legitimacy will take a critical hit, and its ultimate demise may have been hastened, over the next decade or two.

What I've said is full of speculation and informed guesses. I'd be glad to be proved wrong on several of these points. Maybe I will be.

PS: Here's the data:

So here is what Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli said Saturday about the outcome of the Iranian presidential elections:

"Of 39,165,191 votes counted (85 percent), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with 24,527,516 (62.63 percent)."

He announced that Mir-Hossein Mousavi came in second with 13,216,411 votes (33.75 percent).

Mohsen Rezaei got 678,240 votes (1.73 percent)

Mehdi Karroubi with 333,635 votes (0.85 percent).

He put the void ballots at 409,389 (1.04 percent).

It really is the distribution issue that is most damning. I'd be willing to buy a Mahmoud blowout. But even results across all regions just don't happen.

Ayatollahs Calling for New Elections, Can't Get Dial Tone

Update over at Kos again by Clifflyon. A group of clerics is calling for new elections, and apparently the telephones have been completely cut off in Tehran.

Between 50 and 100 Dead So Far

According to TehranBureau. They have video. It's Facebook so I can't embed it, but it shows crowds running away, screaming, from police who beat them with truncheons whenever they get close.

There is also a blog by Saeed Valadbaygi showing images and video and being updated constantly

Edit: He posted up the video in question, here's the embed:

Iranian Internet to be Shut Down Completely?

I've been watching what's going on on Twitter, supposedly the only social network left in Iran, and somebody is saying that the entire Iranian Internet connection is about to be shut down.

...and now apparently Twitter is shut down.

Ahmedinejad's people must be terrified. So must the opponents. I fear that something horrible is about to happen.

Mousavi Arrested, Rafsanjani Resigns, Iranian Police Fleeing Demos

At least according to DKos, though keep in mind that that source has been off before:

UpdateII: Pyknet: Mousavi has been place under house arrest. He was arrested on his way to Khamenei's house. All communication has been shut off. Khamenei has issued a statement claiming that HE that he is leading this coup to SAVE the Islamic Government (Nezam)

Update: Sianat az ara (Protectors of Votes) Iran' Election Commission, have called the result fraud and are calling for new election. They pointed to the suspension of text messaging Thursday night and the disruption of phone service for the campaigns and pthers, and ballot shortages.
Sianat az ara is a group of election monitors chosen by the four candidates. Ahmadinejad campaign is rejecting the claim of fraud and dismissed the committee as pro-Mousavi.

It is almost 9:30pm in Iran. In the north (rich part) of Tehran, the curfew is being ignored.

Photos here. Mo' pix here.

Here's the video of the cops running:



This isn't going away.

Edit: Footage of police beating protesters on the BBC. Skip to a minute in.

Riots in Iran

According to MSNBC, who can't get any closer to the rioting than any other foreign journalists (who have all been asked to leave Iran), they're setting buses on fire, and clashes are happening between the police and protesters. The leaders are being rounded up and texts are being jammed. Video:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(Ignore the anchor chattering about "who voted for Ahmedinejad." They didn't. That's the problem.)

Iranian Impossibilitiy

Courtesy of Sully:



This is a picture of the ratio of Mousavi vs. Ahmedinejad votes throughout the counting process. The smooth, uncurving slope means that as votes for one were added, votes for the other were added in proportion; and THAT means that throughout the counting process the percentage by which Ahmedinejad was winning didn't change at all. Ever.

This isn't even unlikely. It's impossible.

And here's what the people think of it:

Iranian Elections: Rigged?

Well, aside from Ahmedinejad pulling off the biggest upset since Truman beat Dewey, the main opposition figure just got put under house arrest and his supporters are being dispersed with revolutionary guards with pepper-spray.

Draw your own conclusion.

Edit: I'm reading sources suggesting that there was identical vote percentages at each polling place: that is, 65% Mahmoud EVERYWHERE in Iran. That is literally impossible. Elections don't work that way.

Re-Edit: Mousavi isn't arrested. But it looks like the opposition is going to call this thing out. It depends on Khameini.

Edit 3: There's a good piece on MyDD about all this by Shaun Appleby. I won't reproduce it here, but Shaun's contention is that this is proof that Ahmedinejad's faction within the Iranian oligarchy has won out. He was able to bring around enough officials and power players to pull off this rigging game, and it's that control of the players that matters, not so much the election itself. The Mousavi /Rafsanjani/Khatami faction has lost its power to do anything about this, and so have proven their weakness.

I think that's correct as far as it goes. But the problem is that in places like Iran, you still need at least the illusion of a democratic process to take place. The elections in the past have been sketchy, yes, but still roughly accurate. This one beggars belief, and states to all and sundry that any future elections are absolutely meaningless. Even if Ahmedinejad has brought a good chunk of the oligarchy on board, he still has to worry about the public, and they could get very angry, indeed. If Iran becomes ungovernable, he'll have achieved nothing.

The Museum Shooting

You probably already know that a white supremacist named James Von Brunn shot up the Holocaust Museum Shooting In Washington D.C.

You may also know that he was a violent, crazed anti-semite with ties to the white power movement:

We've been tracking this guy for decades," said Heidi Beirich, director of research for the law center's Intelligence Project, which tracks hate crimes. "He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil."

The Rev. David Ostendorf, executive director of the Center for a New Community in Chicago, a national civil rights group, said von Brunn has described in his own writings a long relationship with Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby, the Spotlight Newspaper and a well-known white supremacist and anti-Semite.

But what you may not know is that, yep, he's a Freeper, as you can see from a cached posting to the site about the birth certificate thing posted on Huffpost. Among many others.

So what does that mean? Well, judging by their past behavior, I doubt the Freeps will moderate much. They have no reason to exist except as the barely-acceptable face of the psychotic right. They will probably become more extreme, if only as a defensive reaction.

But the mainstream right, the Fox News types, have a rather nasty conundrum on their hands. They can't condone this. They must condemn it. But in condemning it, they're just going to reinforce the arguments of those who claim that Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck 'n Co. have gone too far. They'll need to change their behavior somehow.

How could they do it, though? If they keep going as they are, it'll be easy to associate them with Von Brunn and the rest of the hatemongers. That won't affect their audience, but will discredit them in the eyes of hte public and poison their relationship with the rest of the media community. If they moderate, the vital center of discourse in America will shift radically to the left; it's their presence on the far right that has helped keep things as they are. They have to thread the needle between the two, and that's a subtle game that their type has never been especially good at.

All this is temporary, of course. They might just wait out the cycle and go right back to it. But right now, they're in a dilly of a pickle.

A Hill Divided Against Itself

So. Lieberman and Graham are wailing that they'll filibuster EVERYTHING unless the detainee picture publication ban gets passed. Meanwhile, Democratic Senators are saying that they'd never touch a public option for health care, whereas "blue dogs" Dems in the House are facing up to the fact that the House proposal is going to have one.

Oh yeah. The two houses of Congress are now officially at war with each other. Rahm, however you might have liked this little game up until now, playtime is definitely over.

(Yes, there are going to be Democratic Senators that aren't opposed to a public option. But Baucus and Nelson are the chief anti-public voices in the process, Landrieu is against it, and meanwhile the Senate voted near-unanimously in favor of the picture ban.)

Lieberman FOIA Amendment:Gone. But the Problem Remains.

And that's what happens when progressives get their shit together.
I think there's a positive side to all this. Obama's honeymoon is over. Conservatives never gave him one, but progressives aren't pleased either. They're VERY concerned with how he seems to be either trying to bridge the gulf between Republican and sane positions, or is just plain-and-simple ignoring the progressives that handed him so many primaries and caucuses. (Especially caucuses.)

And if you look at Matt Bai's NYT Magazine piece on the weekend, you see an administration that's more concerned with keeping the Senate naysayers happy than getting anything done. Even the House appears to be getting lost in the shuffle:

Here again, the stimulus process is illustrative, specifically at the point when negotiators for the two chambers met to reconcile the differences in their bills. A bipartisan group of senators led by Nelson and Collins had secured enough votes to hold up final approval of the bill, and they wanted it scaled back to under $800 billion — a symbolic threshold, really, but one that would slash billions in school construction and other programs from the final package. It was at this point that the White House, in the person of Emanuel and Orszag, inserted itself as arbitrator and effectively took charge of the process. For several contentious days and late nights, a frenetic Emanuel personally shuttled between the offices of Pelosi and Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, bargaining and cajoling and bullying his way toward a compromise. At a typically chaotic point late one evening, as one participant described it to me, Emanuel was standing in Reid’s office shouting at Pelosi over the speakerphone, then dismissed her to take a call from the president on his cellphone. Ultimately, the marathon process yielded a deal more to the centrist senators’ liking than it was to Pelosi’s; the bill Obama signed came in at about $787 billion...

...Some House Democrats I talked to have already begun to wonder audibly why they’re the ones who always have to surrender in Emanuel’s middle-of-the-night negotiating sessions. They accuse Reid and his lieutenants of repeatedly placating Republicans to avoid a filibuster, rather than taking a stand on principle now and then. Why not force centrist Democrats to vote against their party and let Republicans filibuster the agenda on national television? What would the voters think then?

The bolding is mine: it's an illustrative moment. Throughout the piece Rahm was siding with Senatorial centrists (and Reid, who is their puppet) over and over again. While the piece makes a big deal about how Obama doesn't want to leave people hanging, both Rahm and Obama seem to have forgotten that House Members have to get re-elected too. The fact that they're in safely Democratic seats won't matter if they're facing a primary challenger from the left instead of a general election challenger from the right. It may even be worse: look at their Republican counterparts, and look at how vocal progressives have been and the expectations that they may have.

If Congressional representatives want to keep their jobs, they'll need real, progressive laws and policies that they can take to their primary voters. That's as important as keeping a barely-Democratic Senator happy, especially in an electoral environment where Democrats are expected to win seats, not lose them.

And rest assured, Mr. President, the "change" that the people elected you to enact wasn't a more harmonious, considerate relationship with Capitol Hill. Don't forget that.

"March 14" Group Wins in Lebanon

Obama 'n Co. caught a break today, as the somewhat pro-Western "March 14" Alliance wins in Lebanon.

The alliance, known as the March 14 coalition, won the majority in the 128-member parliament with 71 seats, compared with to 57 for the Hezbollah-led coalition, according to official results announced Monday by the government. The results represent a significant and unexpected defeat for Hezbollah and its allies, Iran and Syria. Most polls had showed a tight race, but one in which the Hezbollah-led group would win.

The winners celebrated in the streets, setting off fireworks and driving around in motorcades honking hours before the official results were even announced, The Associated Press reported. The victory may have been aided by nearly unprecedented turnout. Preliminary results showed that about 55 percent of the 3.26 million registered voters cast ballots.

The NYT emphasizes that this is a victory of pro-Western types over Iranian influence; I'm not quite so sure. Juan Cole makes a few good points that the alliance may not be as laudible as it seems: some members have tried (and failed) to start their own militias, others were anti-American until fairly recently, and at least one has apparently been convicted of terrorism. But even Cole admits that this means that "maybe Obama will be able to make some headway after all."

Of course, that's if he wants to. The tenor of progressive responses to Obama's Cairo speech really do suggest that there are a lot of questions swirling around out there about his commitment to transparency, international convention, and the rule of law. The Cairo speech is being overshadowed by the "preventive detention" speech and the Abu Gharib photograph debacle, and I suspect that Obama can no longer take his "base" for granted. He needs to show them that the issues he campaigned on are still uppermost in his mind, or he may get a nasty shock when the vitriol from the right is matched by that from the left.

In that respect, this is a positive development. It will give him more latitude to make his actions fit his words. It's up to him to use it.

The Cairo Speech

I'll link to Kos for it, they've got video and a transcript over there.

It's solid. Acknowledging both America's mistakes in the region, the ideals that it has (that it doesn't always live up to), the need for change in its relationship with the Muslim world, all of that will almost certainly help. Saying "Islam is part of America" should be stating the obvious; but considering the pseudo-crusading tenor of the Bush administration's attitude towards foreign policy, it will make a difference.

The fact that he's not needlessly belligerent towards Iran and acknowledges their right to peaceful nuclear energy generation is a positive step, too: he's just stating what everybody else knows, and will help empower moderates in the upcoming Iranian election at exactly the time when it will do the most good. Certainly it helps separate him from the neoconservatives that preceded him, who seem to think of the NPT as a pretext for bombing the holy hell out of anybody who looks at them sideways, not a binding agreement between states.

And it was ballsy (no other word for it) to juxtapose the plights of the Israelis and Palestinians:

The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.

America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews – is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

That is in Israel’s interest, Palestine’s interest, America’s interest, and the world’s interest. That is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience that the task requires. The obligations that the parties have agreed to under the Road Map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them – and all of us – to live up to our responsibilities.

This isn't that out of step with previous administrations; Bush called for a two-state solution, as much as anybody else, though it's pretty clear nobody in his administration was serious about it. But to put these two things together is still surprising. Those who advocate for Israel's security using the holocaust as a warning seem to rarely discuss the Palestinians except as a military and "demographic" threat; those who scream for a Palestinian state often forget the very real reasons why the Jewish people would be desperate for a secure homeland to call their own, one where they cannot be oppressed or exiled. To acknowledge that the Palestinians have rights is not to deny Israelis their concern and vice versa, but in the nonsensical point-scoring game that is most "debate" on the issue, you'd never, ever see anybody address both. Obama does, to his credit.

Less to his credit is this paragraph:

This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.

Buddy, considering what you've been doing lately on issues like wiretaps, detainment, and FISA, I wouldn't be shooting your mouth off.

And that's the issue. Obama's building a worrying track record of high-flying rhetoric paired with disappointing action. Progressives are already getting peeved; one only need glance at Glenn Greenwald's website on any given day to see how much. Certainly any attempt at balance and real Islamic outreach will be hard to get past Congress, considering how AIPAC has been consolidating their Congressional Democratic support lately. But there have been any number of other issues where Obama could have taken the lead, and yet has acted timidly at best, or like some kind of doctrinaire Republican at worst. Sure, he's never been the full-bore progressive that some have claimed he has, and certainly isn't the socialist the howler monkeys on the right have screamed about. But he's contradicting his sound earlier positions for baffling reasons, and needs to remember who his real supporters are, and who will abandon him the moment the Republicans become relevant again.

It was a very nice speech. But it's about action, Mr. President.

You Gotta Be Kidding Me

Following up on his astonishing embrace of global warming denialism, here's George Will ranting about trains.

Why does he dislike trains? Well, apparently, because he just loves cars THAT much. And why love cars THAT much? Because of the gub'mint! "It subverted their agenda of expanding government—meaning their—supervision of other people's lives. Drivers moving around where and when they please? Without government supervision? Depriving themselves and others of communitarian moments on mass transit? No good could come of this."

Two problems with this. First, it's hilariously stupid. No, really, I started chuckling as soon as I read the passage. It quite literally doesn't pass the laugh test.

Second, car travel is closely and carefully regulated. You can't drive off the road, at least in many parts of the country. You have to stop at stop signs. You have to wait at stoplights. You can't go above a certain speed. You can't go below a certain speed. You can only drive in certain lanes, depending on what kind of vehicle you're driving and how many passengers you have. You need insurance, you need to be unimpaired, you need to wear a seatbelt... the list goes on.

And, naturally, you can't drive anywhere where you can't find parking, which is one of the major reasons one wouldn't want to drive in a city core to begin with. Public parking is limited (and gub'mint run!) and private parking is prohibitively expensive where and when you need it. Side-of-the-road parking is carefully limited. And because of parking issues, consumers are drastically limited in the sorts of places they can shop. Even if you wanted to shop at a small downtown boutique, the cost of parking and gas would make shopping anywhere other than those gargantuan power centers and shopping malls very difficult.

And because of sprawl (which Will characterizes as "low-density housing", a lovely euphemism if ever there was one) you must drive. You have no choice. Hope you like Wal-Mart.

I'd say, in all honesty, a cyclist is probably freer. Parking's generally trivial, maintainance costs are comparatively tiny, and most cities worth cycling in have accomodations for the things. Plus, exercise.

Freedom isn't what this is about. Will's just trolling, in the best example of internet trolls who somehow manage to reach print. He's hoping the left gets angry, and the right rallies around him and his invocation of "FREEDOM!" like some lightweight bowtie-clad William Wallace.

But, honestly, it just reminds the rest of us how irrelevant people like Will are. Opinion writers are ubiquitous in the post-blog mediascape—I've been at it longer than many, for what that's worth—and Will is neither skilled enough nor inventive enough to distinguish himself. He might as well be on Townhall, for all the sense he makes. I suspect, that's where any successor of his will be relegated as well.

North Korea's Nukes

So, yes, it's more likely now that the DPRK actually has nuclear capability, thanks to the earthquake-causing detonation detected underneath the "hermit kingdom" on Monday. And they've been following it up with regular launches of short-term missiles. Nobody's happy about this:

Although Monday's detonation did not appear to be a significant technical advance over Pyongyang's first underground test three years ago, it has triggered a faster and more negative response from other countries, including China and Russia, North Korea's historical allies. The missile firings are adding to the tension. .

South Korea said Tuesday that it would join a U.S.-led effort to intercept ships from countries like North Korea that are suspected of exporting missiles and weapons of mass destruction -- a step it had been reluctant to take in the past for fear of provoking its isolated neighbor into additional retaliation. North Korea has repeatedly said it would regard the South's participation in the security effort as a "declaration of war."

The U.N. Security Council moved quickly in an emergency meeting Monday to condemn the North Korean test, saying it constituted a clear violation of a 2006 U.N. resolution barring the communist state from exploding a nuclear weapon. The council's speedy response reflected what analysts called deep displeasure by Russia and China, and contrasted with protracted discussions that followed North Korea's April 5 launch of a long-range missile.

The Chinese government, North Korea's main economic patron, said it was "resolutely opposed" to the test and told Pyongyang to avoid actions that heighten tensions and return to multi-nation talks focused on dismantling its nuclear program. China's response Monday was significantly more pointed than it was to North Korea's first nuclear test, in October 2006.

President Obama, whose staff was informed of Monday's test about an hour before it took place and who had been briefed several times in the past week about the possibility, accused North Korea of "blatant violation of international law."

"By acting in blatant defiance of the United Nations Security Council, North Korea is directly and recklessly challenging the international community," Obama said in a brief statement outside the White House. "North Korea's behavior increases tensions and undermines stability in Northeast Asia. Such provocations will only serve to deepen North Korea's isolation."

You don't say.

China's clearly tired of this, and it looks like the South Koreans are feeling none-too-"sunshine" about it as well. But I'm not sure either mattered that much. (Japan's outrage certainly wouldn't, considering the North Koreans' relationship with that country.) Pyongyang is almost certainly smarting over the widespread perception that their previous nuclear test was a failure, and wants the world's attention to return to the DPRK and their successful development of nuclear capability.

They want that for the same reason they always have: more concessions at the bargaining table, and security against any outside invaders. Considering Kim Jong-Il's health situation, they may think they need it; there's likely to be a bitter battle over who gets the throne after he's gone. It's likely that Pyongyang is trying to prevent exploitation of that period of "weakness" by the DPRK's various perceived enemies. Those concessions will also be seen as necessary to sustain their grip on power; their fragile economy isn't getting any better, and exports of weaponry are only enough to sustain the military.

Will it work? I'm not sure. The Japanese, Korean, and Chinese responses are the ones that matter most. China can pull the plug on North Korea's economy in days if they so desire, and all involved know that. Their annoyance may hint at a serious threat of doing so in the future. South Korea joining American counterproliferation efforts is unlikely to start a "war", whatever Pyongyang says, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the South Koreans follow through.

It's Japan that concerns me. Nothing stokes the fires of Japanese nationalist outrage faster or fiercer than the DPRK; it was the flyover of a DPRK missile in 1998 that really sparked the movement to reform Japan's peace constitution and Japan's anti-nuclear principles, as well as Japan's extensive missile defense capabilities. You've already got one hothead in the LDP yelling about "preemptive strikes"; who's to say where things go as the reality of the situation sinks in.

The Tamil Tigers Surrendered

If Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa meant what he said about reconciliation, this could be a welcome step towards peace in Sri Lanka, and certainly the Tigers won't be missed much.

But the international community must keep a close eye on Rajapaksa and his regime. The appearance of anti-Tamil discrimination (or even ethnic cleansing) must be quickly revealed and decried, especially right now when the urge to "consolidate victory" will be at its strongest.

The Tamils deserve to be treated as full Sri Lankan citizens with full civil rights; there will be no lasting peace without that.

Japan's GDP Drops Like a Stone

Wow.

Japan's economy contracted at the fastest pace since 1955 as exports plunged and companies slashed production.

Japan's real gross domestic product, or the total value of the nation's goods and services, shrank at an annual pace of 15.2 percent in the January-March period, the government said Wednesday.

The result represents the steepest decline since Japan began compiling GDP statistics more than five decades ago. It also marks the fourth straight quarter of decline after the GDP fell 12.1 percent in the October-December period.
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On a quarterly basis, GDP fell 4.0 percent from the previous three-month period, according to the Cabinet Office's preliminary data.

Japan's first quarter results were markedly worse than other major economies, outpacing the euro zone's 2.5 percent quarterly decline and a 1.6 percent contraction in the U.S.

The world's second-biggest economy relied heavily on the rest of the world to buy its cars and gadgets to drive economic growth. Like the rest of Asia, it has been pummeled by the unprecedented collapse in global demand triggered last year by the U.S. financial crisis.

I can't even begin to imagine what this will do to Japanese society, especially coupled with the already-existing alienation with the old growth- and export-focused economy of the postwar era. The Post says that the numbers may have bottomed out, and I hope that's true, but the old system was on the bubble to begin with, and I think it's well and truly popped.

Japan could be going in a very different social and economic direction in the near future. Considering their newfound cultural impact on America, I wonder whether that will have an effect on the other side of the Pacific as well.

"I Have Seen the Future, and it Won't Work"

Savage piece about Chinese greenhouse gas emissions by Paul Krugman today. The situation isn't just bad, it's overwhelming:

China’s emissions, which come largely from its coal-burning electricity plants, doubled between 1996 and 2006. That was a much faster pace of growth than in the previous decade. And the trend seems set to continue: In January, China announced that it plans to continue its reliance on coal as its main energy source and that to feed its economic growth it will increase coal production 30 percent by 2015. That’s a decision that, all by itself, will swamp any emission reductions elsewhere.

So what is to be done about the China problem?

Nothing, say the Chinese. Each time I raised the issue during my visit, I was met with outraged declarations that it was unfair to expect China to limit its use of fossil fuels. After all, they declared, the West faced no similar constraints during its development; while China may be the world’s largest source of carbon-dioxide emissions, its per-capita emissions are still far below American levels; and anyway, the great bulk of the global warming that has already happened is due not to China but to the past carbon emissions of today’s wealthy nations.

I'm surprised the economist didn't mention sunk costs.

Anyway, going on:

It is unfair to expect China to live within constraints that we didn’t have to face when our own economy was on its way up. But that unfairness doesn’t change the fact that letting China match the West’s past profligacy would doom the Earth as we know it.

Historical injustice aside, the Chinese also insisted that they should not be held responsible for the greenhouse gases they emit when producing goods for foreign consumers. But they refused to accept the logical implication of this view — that the burden should fall on those foreign consumers instead, that shoppers who buy Chinese products should pay a “carbon tariff” that reflects the emissions associated with those goods’ production. That, said the Chinese, would violate the principles of free trade.

Sorry, but the climate-change consequences of Chinese production have to be taken into account somewhere. And anyway, the problem with China is not so much what it produces as how it produces it. Remember, China now emits more carbon dioxide than the United States, even though its G.D.P. is only about half as large (and the United States, in turn, is an emissions hog compared with Europe or Japan).

The good news is that the very inefficiency of China’s energy use offers huge scope for improvement. Given the right policies, China could continue to grow rapidly without increasing its carbon emissions. But first it has to realize that policy changes are necessary.

I suspect that it will have these changes imposed upon it. I would not be terribly surprised if protectionism and environmentalism come together and push through these "carbon tariffs" that Krugman was talking about.

Yes, the Chinese would be angry. But there are already questions arising about the extent to which unqualified free trade actually benefits a country or its people, and it may be the only way to provoke real climate change action in China- which will be necessary if "green jobs" are going to be sustainable in the west.

The Blue Dogs are Going to Be the Death of the Union

First they kill mortgage restructuring.

Now they've killed credit card interest rate limits.

And it's becoming clearer and clearer that they're going to kill any meaningful health care reform.

Is there ANY reason why people should believe that the Dems are going to every accomplish anything useful, when Reid either cannot, or will not, give his party the kind of cohesion that the Republicans enjoy as a matter of course?

Are the Dems even going to HAVE primaries anymore?

What a terrible bunch. What a dark day for America.

Kos and "Community"

Kos has an interesting take on a Howie Kurtz lament about the decline of media. Here's Kurtz:

Newspapers are probably dying as a mass medium, except perhaps for elite or specialized audiences. Cutting down forests, printing the product and trucking it across the region no longer make economic sense. What is lost is the sense of community when everyone read the daily rag.

This is what Kos quoted. I think this is a bit unfair, though, since it was in the context of these preceding grafs:

The online cacophony that would follow the demise of newspapers would be fast, furious and fun, insightful and opinionated. But let's face it: Who would pay for a Baghdad bureau, or even a bureau in Albany or Annapolis?

I still have the buffet mentality, the idea that news, sports, entertainment and so on can make for a tasty package. Buffet folks like to get a fill, a briefing, a contextual sense of what's important. But so many others in the iTunes age would rather cherry-pick, clicking on one story and rushing off, window shoppers who rarely come inside.

Now the argument makes a bit more sense. The internet really does change the way you engage with the news; it tends to make you focus more on individual stories and issues, removing the gestalt of stories you get with a physical newspaper. Couple these individualized stories with comment threads, and you have serious tunnel-vision.

But here is Kos' response:

Groan. This "sense of community" bullcrap has been also spouted about the rise of good television. You see, in the 60s, 80 percent of Americans watched one of the three networks' nightly news. I mean it was just the three -- ABC, CBS, and NBC. It was a world in which Walter Conkrite could turn on the war in Vietnam, and the rest of the country would follow suit. If you're a media type, that's the ideal -- unparalleled influence and access to a vast national audience.

But cable TV, and then satellite TV, became hugely popular because people weren't happy with the limited crap provided by those three networks. Now you have hundreds of channels, most focused on narrow niche topics that were otherwise ignored in years past. For example, as I type this I'm watching coverage of the Giro d' Italia on Universal Sports -- a network focused on less popular but niche-y sports like diving, international hockey, sailing, track and field, mountain biking and cycling. It's the first time I've ever been able to watch the second most important cycling event in the world on television, and all because of the creation of yet another niche network. So the more the merrier!

Same thing has happened in print, with niche media proliferating on the web, and people unhappy with their local coverage splintering off to read about the stuff they are most interest in. So that "sense of community" thing? It never existed. Newspapers have always served the wealthiest members of their communities -- the people that will buy the stuff that advertisers were peddling. So ethnic communities have always been underserved. In San Francisco, Asians make up over a third of the population -- the largest single ethnic group in the city -- yet the San Francisco Chronicle doesn't have a single Asian columnist in its stable. Do you think the Asian community sees the Chronicle as a member of its community? Of course not. And given they were traditionally a relatively poor immigrant community, the Chron had little interest in engaging that part of the city.

All around the country, you see the major metro dailies completely ignore entire chunks of their cities. Why do you think the New York Times writes story after story after story talking about those poor unemployed Wall Street types no longer able to buy caviar or $800 doll houses for their daughters?

The reason alternate media has taken off was because the traditional media didn't deliver a product people wanted. If people felt a "sense of community" from their newspaper, perhaps they may have stuck with the product. But they don't, hence it's easy to toss it aside for the countless alternatives at the public's disposal.

And these new niche publications online are a community of their own, based not on geographic proximity, but on shared interests.

So I have no idea what Kurtz is talking about when he decries the lose of "sense of community". I have found far more community online than I ever did in those dark, pre-internet days.

Well, first, of course YOU have, kos. You run the most successful liberal blog in the world, that has a giant dedicated community. Those people who aren't Markos Moulitsas may differ about how much community they've found online.

Markos also misses the point. Kurtz is lamenting the way that things like the news brought people together. Because everybody saw the same stories and heard the same takes, they had the same rough understanding of what was going on in the world. Yes, that understanding was often blinkered, xenophobic and overly conventional, but it was shared. Shared experiences are extraordinarily important.

Those shared experiences are gone. People are more atomized than ever, thanks to the abundance of choices of media outlets, with the attendant breakdown of what the hell "media" is supposed to mean. They often have little to do with their community; kos' assertions aside, it's the local media that have been taking it in the shorts. That segment of the alternative media that isn't either funded by hooker ads or wealthy sponsors has been having a rough time of it lately, and replacing it with bloggers simply isn't going to cut it. We aren't you, kos.

Sure, it means that people who have been underserved by the previous community's media outlets now have ones to call their own. And, yes, they read/watch/listen to it. But does that mean they've been included into the broader media? No, of course not. They're as isolated and atomized as everybody else, focusing on their own community at the expense of others.

Saying "well, the newspaper was only serving the elite" is just foolish, too. I don't disagree that that was the case. But even after all this time, the the "media outlets" and "communities" on the Internet are still dominated by wealthy white males. If you want to bring the poor in, then don't give them their own little playground to be subsequently ignored by the guys with the money. Bring in publicly funded media, the Yin to the atomized Internet's Yang.

I get what he's saying. I get why he's saying it. And certainly Markos should be the champion of internet communities, he's had whole conventions named after him. But tunnel-vision is part of the problem, kos. Not the solution.

Organic Explosion!

No, I'm not referring to some horrible carbon-based conflagration. (Though, come to think of it, they all are carbon-based.)

Instead, I'm referring to this interesting entry by Tristero over at Digby's place:

It's true: These days, "organic" hardly means what most of used to think it meant. And yes, "organic" doesn't take into account, for example, the environmental impact of shipping produce a gazillion miles. And the class/cost issues: let's not go there right now but let's also not forget these are real issues and they are profoundly complex and troubling.

Still, the above chart, which is part of a fascinating graphic accompanying this article points to an amazingly rapid surge of interest among a large group of Americans in eating food grown quite differently than the stuff industrial agriculture provides. Good.

Now, if more of us continue to insist on eating what Michael Pollan calls "food" instead of "food-like substances," and if more of us insist that that food be produced in a sensible fashion, you can bet your bippy there will be a backlash funded by the Smithfield Foods of this country And it will be cast as a culture war, between the" elite foodies" and real Americans - windsurfing versus red-blooded hunting redux. Remember the arugula wars? It's gonna get nasty.

So let me be clear. I see absolutely no reason why the US government should be in the business of encouraging your children to eat in a way that drastically increases their chances of becoming diabetic and obese. But, via an entirely whack food policy that's written in the best interests of big industrial food suppliers, that is exactly what is going on.

I like that term "food-like substances." Apt description of a lot of what's out there.

I also like this move to organics. I think it'll drop a fair bit, since organics really are more expensive than "regular" food a lot of the time. The precedent is still set, however, as demonstrated by the spectacle of spokespeople for Heinz talking about "reducing additives" and the public desire for "authentic foods." Organics aren't going anywhere.