"Footage fr. today that will always haunt me is of the humane woman protecting Basij from being kicked to mush after he fell of his bike."
for the people of Iran
On both sides.

There was a US backed coup attempt against the democratically elected Palestinian leadership (Hamas). You and Josh Marshall, and your friend Laura Rozen, said nothing.
Marshall almost banned me for pointing out here that he named his first born son after the man who had the maps redrawn after the '67 war: Yigal Alon.
You called me "a hater" before you realized half my links were to Helena Cobban, a pacifist and a Quaker. That shut you up. And now Cobban is posting here. As is Philip Weiss. What's next Tony Karon? Norman Finkelstein?

Josh Marshall knows the future and he doesn't want to be on the wrong side of it. Sorry if I'm a cynic, but Cobban has been making the same argument for years. So why the change?

You're losing son. Every week you reformulate your arguments to make them seem inoffensive to popular opinion. But popular opinion is changing faster and faster. In one year support for Israel among Americans went from 71 to 44%

So why is it that Garveyism and the Back to Africa movement never gained the respectability that the Back to Arabia did? Racial separatism for blacks is considered to be racism in the popular imagination but why not Zionism?
That's a question for sociologists.

You're a racist, motherfucker, and you always have been. And after all the death in Gaza and the wall, and the rest, you hope for a harmless pro-Zionist Iran. But I trust Khamenei with the bomb more than Bibi. At least Khamenei even last week[!] said that nuclear weapons were un-Islamic. He said the bomb was Treif!! Do I believe him? I may, I may not. But I appreciate the thought.
I'll put it bluntly, asshole: the settlers are Nazis. Khamenei is only corrupt, and wrong. I choose your enemies over you. And I choose my friends over both. But I trust the assholes in Iran with the bomb as much or more than I trust the Israelis.
But of course I'm opposed to nuclear bombs and nuclear power- both. And I'm a secularist too.
You are a vile, shallow, narcissistic piece of shit. You're Joseph Lieberman on crack.
I'm tired of linking to Helena Cobban, and shoving her down your fucking throat. Now she can do it herself and you won't be able to say shit because unlike me she's cool headed enough to smile politely knowing that you're trapped into agreeing with her. I envy her her equanimity. But you know what? Now I can have my cake and eat it too.

So long motherfucker.

"walking on sattar khan, i noticed that most shops were pulling down their shutters. this was around 7 pm, which is a little early to close. they were probably afraid of rioters. a smallish man, who looked like he was a worker, walked alongside us and told every single shop to close down because the “agents” (police) were (i’m not sure if i heard this right) “closing them” or “attacking them”. he appeared to me to be a freak and just scaring people unnecessarily. some shopkeepers just ignored him. one juice stand guy took out a canister of pepper spray and told my friends and i (who were sipping juice we had bought from him) “who do you think i am? i’m ready for whoever wants to attack me.” ‘in the midst of the chaos, it was very interesting to see normal life continuing for many. i saw a “wedding car” pugeot decorated with flowers, with the bride and groom inside, stuck in traffic near some of the protesters. there were kids playing in the park near some basiji forces. and a barber was giving a man a haircut while all hell went down near his shop. near the highway, an old grey man brought out a hose and turned the tap to give water to the thirsty, along with a jug-full of iced water. tired protesters washed their hands and faces of dirt and tear gas, and drank from the jug. i’m certainly glad he was there.’

Google the author's name before you start calling be a pawn.

But now we're back to the relation of goals and principles. Will this uprising succeed or will it end up pushing progress back?

In the U.S., the full force of the State is used to block non-permitted protest. When there is outrage about police violence, the State loosens up. Massive protest would never be allowed to carry on for a week without a permit (see anti-Iraq war protests, the large ones permitted and all but ignored by U.S. dominant media).
In Iran, the State stayed more or less loose on non-permitted protests for a week. There were riot cops and Basiji paramilitaries but not a shutdown of protest activity. After a week it has begun to block them more forcefully.

You're inconsistent in your absolutes because your only absolute is your opinion: yourself and your country, right or wrong.

What will succeed? What will not? What is the morality, the ethos, behind the goal?
Iran is not a slave state. It's closer to a democracy than any state we support in the middle east outside Israel, which is a democracy as england is and was when it had an empire. Our closest allies in the region are the military regime in the west back and Gaza. Gaza remember is in lockdown. Rosenberg has spoken out on arab democracy as bad for Israel.

Run the numbers in your computer kid. I'm off to the rally.

But I don't go out of my way to argue for the overthrow of the "Jewish state." I just don't defend it or any government founded on Jus Sanguinis, especially one that is a modern fabrication built on expropriated land. And of course I support those whose land has been expropriated, not those who've taken it.

But Germany just changed its laws a few years ago. They should have been changed by the occupying powers in 1945.

We may not end up yet with a binational state in Israel/Palestine. I'm a realist about that. But it's the only outcome I would defend as just and good.
I prefer multi-ethnic states. I'm just modern that way.

Another thought:
If Ahmadinejad did actually win, and the reformists end up overturning the regime, our sympathy would essentially be going to a minority-rule regime of the privileged urban elites over the rural masses. In other words, exactly the kind of revolution that progressive Americans have generally been opposed to. The '60s and '70s Latin American revolutions so popular with the American left, for instance, were the exact opposite: peasant revolutions against urban elites.
Very interesting how globalization has essentially closed the age of the proletarian/peasant revolution and restored, on a planetary scale, the original revolutionary bourgeois of the 18th century.

And you cry for Iran.

Secularism:
---AP: 'God is Great' echoes throughout Tehran

TEHRAN, Iran – Tehran residents are climbing to their roofs and crying "God is Great!" in open defiance of Iran's supreme leader.

The late-night cries of "Allahu Akbar!" and "Death to the Dictator!" throughout Tehran Friday are a direct challenge to the cleric who has ultimate authority under Iran's constitution. They come hours after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned opposition supporters to stop protesting the June 12 election they say was rigged in favor of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi borrowed the tactic from the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asked Iranians to show unity against the U.S.-backed shah by shouting "Allahu Akbar" from their roofs.---

You sound like a Leninist cheering on the vanguard party. A small minority leading a revolution.
This whole damn thing seems more and more like a put on. What is there was no fraud and this was just an attempt to force a crackdown? And if the plan backfires the repression will increase.

But If the reformers win the conservatives and the liberals will have united against the reactionaries. The liberals by your definition of the term will not end up on top. And if they did it would be as dictators not democrats. But I suppose you imagine it would be a pro Israel dictatorship so that would be fine. with you and MJ Rosenberg.

You don't give a shit about the Iranian people.

"Some 48 hours following the stress and distress of the Iranian election results, a chat with my most trusted news source for inter-Iranian affairs: my grandmother. The force of right-wing populism didn’t die with Bush the Second. (My translation from original Persian.)

What on earth is going on in Tehran?"
READ AND LEARN
And to syvanen:
You don't know shit, because you don't pay attention,

You have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
Half the people marching are the equivalent of born again christians from Kentucky.
Others are liberals of the most mediocre sort, who were professional concern trolls of one sort or another until something gave in them. A smaller percentage are real social democrats and a smaller portion of them believe in equality of homosexuals. A smaller quantity than that actually are homosexuals.
And all this began with reports of fraud that may not have actually happened, at least at anywhere near the scale reported.

I'm glad I'm not in politics. The stupidity of people still amazes me. But Americans are a special breed.

There's been much discussion of the events at Tiananmen and the members of the student leadership who were seen as advocating a sort of mass suicide. The dream of the perfect.
Is that the sort of behavior you support? There's also been discussion of John Brown's attack at Harper's Ferry and whether that was a suicide mission. But it may have helped the cause. And the Palestinians are in rebellion, and one of their strategies involves suicides. So would you defend suicide bombings against the Iranian government?

General Giáp threw thousands and thousands of inadequately armed Soldiers against the Americans in the Vietnam War. They could be described as suicide missions.
They never won in the field of battle. [do you know that reference?] but they won the war.

Would it do any good? Would it move anything forward?
What's pathetic is that you think Hamas' strategy is nihilistic.
I may not agree with their calculations but thats what they are.
And helicopter gunships are weapons of terror; and have killed more Palestinians than Hamas as killed Israelis.
The question is how this can be resolved and progress can be made towards a more free Iran.
That's obviously not your major interest.
For Iran or Palestine.

You're playing with other people's lives; or you're encouraging others with more power than you to do so.
It's immoral. It's disgusting.

You're trying to fend of the neocons by way of romance.
You obviously haven't read what I've written and you haven't read the blog I linked to. Here she is again:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2009/06/iran-elections-protest-twitter-.html#more

I posted a link at the bottom of my first comment. I suggest you read it before accusing me of anything,