The hero who led Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution that threw off Soviet rule has a few thoughts on what is possible in response to Iranian protests, and the Mullahs’ crackdown”
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “is a man possessed. Unfortunately we are living at a time when a man possessed could easily inflict damage to a lot of people, due to modern technology.
“What is possible and what I would repeatedly warn against is the policy of compromise and the notion that if we don’t provoke evil, it will just go away by itself. On the contrary, that would just make it stronger.”
[Source: Bloomberg News. Hat tip Reason’s Hit and Run.]
PS: You might be interested in what I had to say about Vaclav Havel on the occasion of the political retirement of the great man.
PPS: An account by a young participant in the Velvet Revolution, at the time an apparently hopeless cause, might help to explain why young people are taking to Iranian streets in an apparently hopeless cause. She writes:
PPPS: Cartoonist John Cox reckonsI was then a teenager, with a twist - I knew that I had no control over my future and that I faced two choices only. In order to blend in, accept the evil around me in exchange for a semblance of a 'normal' life. Or follow in my parents' footsteps and forsake all that is considered good and rewarding in a healthy society, such as higher education, travel, even family and potentially freedom. I may have been very young but, alas, not young enough to be blind to the full horrors of such life. After all I had seen those around me living with similar decisions. As it happens, that choice was not real - having been part of the dissident movement, I was weighted, marked and tagged as the enemy of the state. I belonged to the dark forces undermining the society - a phrase so beloved of the communist media.
I remember the nervous elation of the 'now or never' moment, as we walked to the main square to meet thousands of others who felt the same. It was a powerful sensation to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people knowing that they are there for the same reason - an experience unprecedented in a fractured and diseased society under communism...
Charles Krauthammer is wonderfully succinct describing how the Obama administration is sitting the bench during Iran's tumultuous election fallout. Please read this excellent editorial.
I strongly concur. Read: Hope and Change -- but Not for Iran, by Charles Krauthammer.
18 comments:
Great blog. I linked back to an old Frank Lloyd Wright post of yours on mine.
Come off it, PC. Are you seriously suggesting that Krauthammer and the WP know more than Ruth who, so she says, discussed this with the US Consulate? What was it she said about Obama again? Oh yes -
"he is a lot smarter than you give him credit for."
huh.
Damn. Yes, you're right Sean.
I humbly, apologise for my foolishness.
I'm sure he *is* smart - it must take something to get to the top of a murderous and corrupt Chicago political scene and then jump to the White House with no significant achievements behind you, no career to speak of, and a documented past of hanging out with haters of life, freedom, and the American way. Clearly, "smart" just makes him a better-sounding intellectual and moral vacuum.
The US is under no obligation to help Iran (or to liberate slave pens, as *Rand* said). It's job is to protect its own (US) citizens.
And Krauthammer is as partisan far right as they come. Hardly objective, yet again.
Remember his - and his fellow travellers - 'Bomb, Bomb ,Bomb Iran'?
How quickly you forget these freedom songs.
Oh and the Consulate knows a great deal more than any of you about it. Which wouldn't be difficult.
Why is that the Americans will butt in on nearly any hostile international incident, wank on endlessly about human rights and democracy, yet sit by and watch Iran and Saudi Arabia do whatever the hell they want?
Ruth, you said that the Consulate knows a great deal more than any of you about it.
Did anyone of us dispute that? No. What is questionable, is that you appear to use your dinner at the US Consulate to brag that they told you things that goes more deeper than what we already seen on TV or the media in general. There is no doubt that they know a great deal more than any of us, but they wouldn't reveal the info to some Ruth nobody who doesn't have security clearance to have privy to the info. They would have talked to you about things that we already seen on TV and at the same time withholding any info that goes deeper than just that. Do you see the point here Ruth? You won't see it, since you have elevated yourself as a self-important person that somehow, you think that pub talk type conversation at the Consulate gives you info that we didn't already know about.
You don't know me, or my family, so I suggest you keep your ill-informed opinions to yourself.
I'm just saying - not bragging. We are entertained by - and entertain - the Consulate and his wife all the time. In fact we have been doing so for the last 15 years. Admittedly the Consulate is a political appointment and that colours their view on things, depending on who is in the White House.
It's no odds to me what you think about that.
Get past yourself, silly woman. Diplomatic entertaining is not the same as being privy to information, and, from a minor appointment to the edge of the earth.
Ruth, of course that I don't know you, or your family, but what I know for certain (100%) that you don't have a security clearance to be revealed classify info on Iran by the US consulate, because it is against their law. Even if the Consulate staffs are your brothers or sisters, they wouldn't reveal anything to you apart from them talking to you about general stuff that we know already from TV.
They wouldn't risk themselves being arrested by the US authorities for revealing classify info about Iran to some Ruth nobody. You may be Ruth somebody to them in terms of being invited regularly to dine with them over the past 15 years or so as you said, but that warmth of friendship doesn't translate to being privy to their classify info. In the domain of US classify info about anything, you and everyone else is Joe Public or Ruth nobody, ie, you're not privy to those info.
Now, it is time for you to debate with reason here and not use your inflated self-important to shut others down in the discussion for no other reason but you're so called well connected to the elite.
, so I suggest you keep your ill-informed opinions to yourself.
But..but..Ruth knows John Key! remember..
I think Beehive sounds like LGM.
You don't know anything about security clearance, and what and what is not required.
You all just suck up to PC simply becuase he hates Obama in the mindless manner of the Far Right.
His hatred goes against Objectivist principles regarding Iran, because he thinks the USA has the moral obligation to be altruistic in the 'freeing of slave pens' regardless of Iranian students stomping on Israeli and US flags today.
It's cheap political point scoring at the expense of principle - something he so often accuses Key of.
It's nonsense, anyway you look at it. Goodnight.
Ruth sounds like an attention whore pretty much.
Check this cartoon out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/getmoderated/3658461851/
Ruth
I am not the same person as Beehive. You are being dishonest.
Note that you have presented nothing of substance to dispute Beehive's point. That is, that as far as the US govt is concerned you are just a common nobody. As such you are not going to receive inside information of a substantive nature from them or their local officials. You are not a special case with access to anything that others (eg the general media) in the public domain has not already received. Got that?
Time to stop being such a stupid big noter- you bullshit artist you. How about you sit down, take a deep breath and a nice big cup of shut-the-fuck-up. You should do this because you are making a even bigger fool of yourself than previous efforts (your posts about the disasterous nature of your children, their friends and the dispute with the neighbours comes to mind).
Returning now to the substantive point at issue here. The 500lb gorilla in the room is the concept "freedom." That is the ideal that the USA owes its wealth and civilisation to. That is the ideal it was built upon and its people have generally strived towards. It would be thought that the President of the USA would take the opportunity to proclaim it and promote that ideal in regards to Iran.
One forceful speach is required at this point. It is something various of his predecessors understood and attended to when the opportunity presented itself. Interestingly this twisted Obama creature (who is on record as wanting to dispense with the Constitution he was sworn to uphold) fails to grasp the opportunity to speak up in favour of freedom. He fails to get out of his kennel and tell the World that it isn't OK for a pack of insane old mullahs to ruin other people's lives. He fails to tell the World that it isn't right for tyrants to use threats, force and murder to attain power over others. He fails to tell both groups of power mongers in Iran that their antics are in direct contradiction to the freedom of the citizens and that, therefore, they have no legitimacy. He fails to tell them to step aside. His failure is that failure to speak up.
What does Obama stand for? Clearly he doesn't stand for freedom. If he did he'd have been vigorously speaking up about it. After all, he is a reasonably good orator. He knows his talents and hasn't been averse to using them on matters that suit his politics. As President, his words carry much weight. He commands attention. Yet.... nothing.
Ruth, why not contrast this behaviour with what President Reagan said to the Communists regarding the freedom of the people. It's night and day.
And that's PC's point.
Now, dinner talk notwithstanding, surely you can grasp that?
LGM
PS This bit was priceless.
You write, "You don't know anything about security clearance, and what and what is not required."
As if you did!
Hillarious.
That put her in her place.
Ruth with your insider knowledge what do you make of this?
"Some U.S. embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being sent enormous amounts of U.S. cash to purchase currencies from those governments,
quietly. But not pound sterling. Inside the State Dept., there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that 'something' is about to happen ... within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days."
Harry Schultz via http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/
Boy it seems like a lot of important people wake up everyday with a schedule of breakfast, checking the paper, taking away peoples jobs, destruction and a war against reason, just because, ya know.
What horrible people.
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