Lawn Care and WTF's

[Political Waves]

Maybe it's just me -- maybe I'm so connected to the energetic changes that are pushing us forward that I'm as sensitive as a March hare when I read some of the stuff that springs up like unsightly fungus on the political lawn, causing me to twitch and jump. Some of these things simply no longer belong there -- not on MY grass. Consider:

The Supreme Court has denied the right of DNA access to inmates, even if they pay for it themselves; thank the Righty judges for their 5-4 decision. So that means we don't actually care WHO did the deed, as long as we have someone locked up? 17 death row inmates freed thanks to DNA evidence might argue that point. Wrongfully imprisoned citizens won't keep the Righty judges sleepless, of course, but possible rapists and murderers wandering the streets won't either? WTF??

Dan Froomkin, my go-to guy each morning, has been let go from the Washington Post. Month after month, WaPo has been taking a right-turn by increments -- today, it published anti-Obama op/ed's by Wolfowitz and Krauthammer, united in some sort of NeoCon frenzy. The Post recently hired on NYT's rejected Righty-shill, Bill Kristal. Perhaps it will turn into the MSM edition of FOX News; new polls show they will have approximately 25% of available readers, then. This from the paper whose outstanding integrity gave us Woodward and Bernstein? WTF??

The public option in health care is being diminished by the Congressional winky-dinks and making me nuts; I just wrote a brief e-note to Obama urging his resolve on this, he's got astonishingly high bi-partisan support from the public. I don't think this is one of those things he'll cave on; he's defined h/c as a priority, and I figure he'll get his hands in this at some point. Tom Daschel has come out against public option, which doesn't surprise me much, I've always thought he was a slippery one. Still, it's a boon that he couldn't pass muster in the Secretarial appointment; and perhaps the entire point of the high standard Obama set has been to weed out those who play by the Old Rules. Next, I'll write my Congress-critters; you can do same, here. The h/c providers are similarly reptile-brained and Mullah-like, in my opinion; and no public option at all, for fear they'll show up the corporates? WTF!

Aren't you tired of people limiting your options because they assume they're in charge of your fragile future and you don't mind at all? Who do these people think they are ... Mullahs? It strikes me again today that the lizard-brained Mullah-like rhetoric just continues to flow as if we're all listening, on the same page and impressed by their Alpha-dog domination. We ain't. The I'm-Yer-Daddy punishing patriarchy thing is dying; Obama and others like him have written a new definition of fatherhood, just in time for Fathers Day '09. And that IS change we can believe in!

James Redfield, over at the Global Prayer Project, enlisted us to pray for whistleblowers this week; heck of an idea, huh? Tomorrow, the Iranian people will defy the Ayatollahs declaration NOT to gather and will likely face a military presence; let's pray that each and every soldier sent to flatten the movement raises his baton and sees the face of his child/brother/mother in front of him.

And if you thought Obama was slick whacking a fly, Mr. Miagi-like, the other day -- his message to Khamenei just couldn't have been more non-threatening, benign ... and powerful: "... the world is watching."

Heart must win if we are to rise above what's reptilian and stunted; it's time now. Here's link to my weekly, on that topic.

Happy Fathers Day, guys ... Good Solstice to each of you ... and incidents of progress and satisfaction in keeping your lawns fungus-free and your hearts wide open.

Allahu Akbar, may their God give them grace.

Jude



A Twitter Word Cloud From The Revolution
19 Jun 2009
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/a-twitter-word-cloud-from-the-revolution.html

Mourning Rally Biggest Demonstration Since Monday in Tehran;
Khamenei to Address Nation
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Friday, June 19, 2009
http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/mourning-rally-biggest-demonstration.html

Thoughts On Khamenei's Speech
Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish
19 Jun 2009 10:06 am
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/thoughts-on-khameneis-speech.html

I think we find one clue to why he rigged the vote count so crudely. His argument that a majority of eleven million was too big to allow for any irregularities suggests he believed that a big lie was the only one that would work. But if you utter a big lie, you had better hope it could persuade some. It appears to have persuaded no one but a few fools at the Washington Post and the executive editor of the New York Times.

And the endless attempt to blame all this on Britain and the US and the "Zionists." This is a regime that is so hermetically sealed, so rigid in its dogma, so brutal in its ideology it probably believes its own lies. It is, as David Brooks notes today, very, very fragile. When every piece of data requires a reassertion of doctrine in order to banish reality from people's minds, government becomes impossible. All that is possible is brute force and terror.

I fear deeply what is about to happen. But I also sense that the Gandhi-strategy of the majority is a winning one. If they can sustain their numbers and withstand the nightly raids, and if they can overwhelm the capital tomorrow in another peaceful show of strength, then they can win. And the world will change. This is their struggle now, requiring the kind of courage that only God can provide. Their God, my God, the God of the Torah and the Koran and the Gospels.

Something is happening in Iran. ++


The Iranian Uprising is Home Grown, and Must Stay That Way
Stephen Zunes, Common Dreams
6/19/09
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/19

The growing nonviolent insurrection in Iran against the efforts by the ruling clerics to return the ultra-conservative and increasingly autocratic incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinjead to power is growing.  Whatever the outcome, it represents an exciting and massive outpouring of Iranian civil society for a more open and pluralistic society.
 
Ironically, defenders of Ahmadinejad’s repression are trying to blame everyone from the U.S. government to nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp to various small NGOs engaged in educational efforts on strategic nonviolent action as somehow being responsible for the popular uprising in Iran.  It appears to be based upon the rather bizarre assumption that millions of Iranians would somehow be willing to pour out onto the streets in the face of violent repression by state security forces only because they have been directed to do so by people from an imperialist power which overthrew their last democratic government and subsequently propped up the tyrannical regime they installed in its place for the next quarter century.
 
Even putting aside the bizarre spectacle of self-proclaimed “leftists” coming to the defense of a right-wing fundamentalist autocratic like Ahmadinejad, this claim ignores several key factors:

1) Neo-conservatives and other American hawks were hoping for a victory by the hard-line incumbent to justify their opposition to President Barack Obama’s tentative steps at rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.
 
2) Opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and the vast majority of his supporters are strongly nationalist, anti-American, anti-imperialist, and would neither desire nor accept U.S. support.
 
3) There has been a longstanding Iranian tradition of such largely nonviolent civil insurrections against imperialist powers and autocratic rulers and no outside power is needed to convince the Iranian people to rebel.

The Neo-Cons Supported Ahmadinejad

The only people happier than the Iranian elites over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's apparently stolen election win Friday, were the neoconservatives and other hawks eager to block any efforts by the Obama administration to moderate U.S. policy toward the Islamic republic.

Since he was elected president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has filled a certain niche in the American psyche formerly filled by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi as the Middle Eastern leader we most love to hate. It gives us a sense of righteous superiority to compare ourselves favorably to these seemingly irrational and fanatical foreign despots.

Better yet, if these despots can be inflated into far greater threats than they actually are, these supposed threats can be used to justify the enormous financial and human costs of maintaining American armed forces in that volatile region to protect ourselves and our allies, and even to make war against far-off nations in "self-defense."

The neocons have not been subtle about their desire for Ahmadinejad to continue playing this important role. For example, right-wing pundit Daniel Pipes, at a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation just before the election, said that he would vote for Ahmadinejad if he could, because he prefers "an enemy who is forthright, blatant, obvious."

Last week, just two days before the Iranian election, Congressional Republicans -- in an apparent effort to provoke a nationalist reaction which would enhance the chances of Iranian hard liners – tried to push through a floor vote to strengthen U.S. sanctions against Iran.

It is interesting how some of the very foreign policy hawks who just last week were dismissing Mir Hossein Mousavi's expected victory as irrelevant since, in their view, there was essentially no meaningful difference between him and Ahmadinejad, are now among the most self-righteous in denouncing the apparent fraud and the most outspoken in their pseudo-outrage at the results.

Their worst-case scenario for these American hawks would be a nonviolent insurrection that would topple Ahmadinejad and allied hard-line clerics and the development of a more pluralistic and representative Islamic Republic in Iran. . Neither the neocons nor Iran's reactionary leadership want to see that oil-rich regional power under a popular and legitimate government. Indeed, the neocons and Iranian hard-liners need each other.

The Nationalist Nature of the Opposition
 
Mousavi – despite his disagreements with Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the years -- has been very much part of the establishment. Indeed, Mousavi would not have even been allowed to run for president otherwise, since the Council of Guardians routinely forbids anyone who is seen to not sufficiently support the country’s theocratic system to participate.
 
Yet, Mousavi attracted a large and enthusiastic during the course of the campaign which may have led the ruling clerics to fear that the momentum of his incipient victory could result not just in limited reforms, like those attempted under former president Mohammed Khatami, but revolutionary change. The size and intensity of Mousavi’s final campaign rally, in which he referred to Ahmadinejad as a “dictator” -- which, by extension, implied an indictment of the system as a whole -- may have tilted the clerics into believing they could not take the risk of allowing the anticipated results to be verified. Despite his candidacy displaying a personality and style closer to Michael Dukakis than Barack Obama, Mousavi came to represent the change so many Iranians, especially young people, desperately desired and appeared determined to make happen.
 
Even among Iranians dedicated to the principles of the Islamic Republic, many now see their country essentially as a police state, recognizing that Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics are little more than corrupt self-interested politicians who have manipulated their people’s religious faith for the sake of their own power.
 
However strong their opposition to the current regime, the democratic and reformist opposition simply does not trust the United States, which overthrew Iran’s last democratic government in 1953, armed and trained the Shah’s brutal security apparatus, backed Saddam Hussein in his bloody war against their country, imposed strict economic sanctions on their country, and has hypocritically obsessed about their civilian nuclear program while supporting such neighboring states as Israel, Pakistan and India despite their developing nuclear arsenals.

While Congress in recent years has approved millions of dollars in funding to support various Iranian opposition groups to promote “regime change,” most of these groups are led by exiles who have virtually no following within Iran or any experience with the kinds of grassroots mobilization necessary to build a popular movement that could threaten the regime's survival. By contrast, most of the credible opposition within Iran has renounced this U.S. initiative and has asserted that it has simply made it easier for the regime to claim that all pro-democracy groups and activists are paid agents of the United States. 

Feeling pressure from Iranian democrats and major Iranian-American groups regarding such counter-productive efforts, Obama and the Democrats have since ended this controversial program.  Ironically, Republicans are now attacking the administration for having somehow abandoned Iran’s pro-democracy struggle while Ahmadinejad and his supporters are citing the now-discarded effort as proof of U.S. complicity in the current uprising.
 
Generations of Struggle
 
Most Iranians – who have traditionally been very proud of their political, social and cultural history – would find it rather bizarre to learn that some Western bloggers, ignorant of that very history, are insisting that the recent protests are a result not of their own anger at an apparent stolen election and continued autocratic rule, but simply because some Americans have told them to.
 
In reality, uprisings like the one witnessed in recent days have occurred with some regularity in Iran since the late 1800s.  Indeed, the idea of Americans having to teach Iranians about massive nonviolent resistance is like Americans teaching Iranians to cook fesenjan.
 
In 1890, unpopular concessions on tobacco and other products to the British led leading Shia clerics to call for nationalist protests and a nationwide tobacco strike, which succeeded forcing the Shah to cancel the concession in early 1892.
 
 In 1905, in opposition to widespread corruption by the Qajar dynasty and allied regional nobles and a series of other concessions to Russian and other foreign interests, an uprising initially led by merchants and clergy ensued which would continue for the next six years.  In what became known as the Constitutional Revolution, many thousands of Iranians engaged in peaceful protests, boycotts and mass sit-ins, along with occasional riots and scattered armed engagements.  The result was significant political and social reforms, including the establishment of an elected parliament to share power with the Shah and anti-corruption measures. 
 
A CIA-sponsored coup in 1953 ousted the elected nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh and his nationalist supporters and returned the exiled Shah to power as an absolute monarch. Through mass arms transfers from the United States, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi built one of the most powerful armed forces ever seen in the Middle East. His American-trained secret police, the SAVAK, had been thought to have successfully terrorized the population into submission during the next two decades through widespread killings, torture and mass detentions.  By the mid-1970s, most of the leftist, liberal, nationalist, and other secular opposition leadership had been successfully repressed through murder, imprisonment or exile, and most of their organizations banned.  It was impossible to suppress the Islamist opposition as thoroughly, however, so it was out of mosques and among the mullahs that much of the organized leadership of the movement against the Shah’s dictatorship emerged. 

Open resistance began in 1977, when exiled opposition leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for strikes, boycotts, tax refusal and other forms of noncooperation with the Shahs regime.  Such activism was met with brutal repression by the government. The pace of the resistance accelerated as massacres of civilians were answered by larger demonstrations following the Islamic 40-day mourning period.  In the months that followed, Iranians employed many of the methods that would be used in the unarmed insurrections that toppled dictatorships in the Philippines, Latin America, Eastern Europe and elsewhere in subsequent years: mass demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, contestation of public space, and the establishment of parallel institutions.

Despite the bloody image of the revolution and the authoritarianism and militarism of the Islamic Republic that followed, there was a clear commitment to keeping the actual insurrection largely nonviolent. Protestors were told by the leadership of the resistance to try to win over the troops rather than attack them; indeed, thousands of troops deserted, some in the middle of confrontations with crowds. Clandestinely smuggled audio cassette tapes of Ayatollah Khomeini speaking about the revolution played a key role in the movements mass mobilization, and led Abolhassan Sadegh, an official with the Ministry of National Guidance, to note that “tape cassettes are stronger than fighter planes.” Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches, circulated through such covert methods, emphasized the power of unarmed resistance and noncooperation. In one speech, he said, “The clenched fists of freedom fighters can crush the tanks and guns of the oppressors.” There were few of the violent activities normally associated with armed revolutions such as shooting soldiers, setting fires to government buildings or looting. Such incidents that did occur were unorganized and spontaneous and did not appear to have the support of the leadership of the movement.
 
In October and November of 1978, a series of strikes by civil servants and workers in government industries crippled the country. The crisis deepened when oil workers struck at the end of October and demanded the release of political prisoners, costing the government $60 million a day. An ensuing general strike on November 6 paralyzed the country.  Even as some workers returned to their jobs, disruption of fuel oil supplies and freight transit, combined with shortages of raw materials resulting from a customs strike, largely kept economic life in the country at a standstill.

Despite providing rhetorical support for an improvement in the human rights situation in Iran, the Carter administration continued military and economic support for the Shah’s increasingly repressive regime, even providing fuel for the armed forces and other security services facing shortages due to the strikes.

Under enormous pressure, the oil workers returned to work but continued to stage slowdowns. Later in November, the Shah’s nightly speeches were interrupted when workers cut off the electricity at precisely the time of his scheduled addresses. Massive protests filled the streets in major cities in December as oil workers walked out again and an ongoing general strike closed the refineries and the central bank. Despite thousands of unarmed protesters being killed by the Shah’s forces, the protesters numbers increased, with as many as nine million Iranians taking to the streets in of cities across the country in largely nonviolent protests.  The Shah fled on January 16, 1979, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile two weeks later. He appointed Mehdi Bazargan prime minister, thus establishing a parallel government to challenge the Shahs appointed prime minister Shapur Bahktiar. With the loyalty of the vast majority clearly with the new Islamic government, Bahktiar resigned February 11.

One element that contributed to people’s willingness to mobilize under harsh repression was the value of martyrdom in Shia Islam. The movement’s emphasis was to “save Islam by our blood.” Indeed, there are interesting parallels between the legacy of martyrdom inspired by early Shia leader Imam Hossein with the Gandhian tradition of self-sacrifice.  As demonstrated by their subsequent rule, the Iranian revolution’s leadership – unlike Mohandas Gandhi – clearly did not support nonviolence as a principle, but recognized its utilitarian advantages against the well-armed security apparatus of the Shah’s regime.

While the revolution had the support of a broad cross-section of society (including Islamists, secularists, nationalists, laborers, and ethnic minorities), Khomeini and other leading Shia clerics strengthened by a pre-existing network of social service and other parallel institutions consolidated their hold and established an Islamic theocracy.  The regime shifted far to the right by the spring of 1981, purging moderate Islamists including the elected president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr and imposing a totalitarian system.  
 
A New Revolution?

Now, a new generation if Iranians is rising up in the tradition of previous generations using largely nonviolent tactics to challenge their oppression.  Those out on the streets in Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, and other cities are not just middle class intellectuals but also represent a broad cross-section of the poor and working class and include both the majority Persians as well as other ethnicities as well. 
 
It is not clear whether the opposition can successfully organized a “people power” revolution which have succeeded in ousting autocrats who attempted to steal elections in such countries as the Philippines in 1986, Serbia in 2000, or Ukraine in 2005 or whether – as in Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Mexico – the regime will remain in power.  
 
In any case, it is clearly as home-grown indigenous struggle. Any effort by the United States (which has allowed one --and possible two--stolen elections to stand in recent years) to intervene will only hurt the pro-democracy movement.  Given the history of U.S. interventionism in Iran, Obama's cautious approach will do more to help those in the current popular struggle than anything more explicit, despite Republican demands to the contrary.

The future of Iran belongs in the hands of the Iranians and the best thing the United States can do to support a more open and pluralistic society in that country is to stay the hell out of the way. ++


Does This Mean War Between Israel and Iran Can Be Averted?
Johann Hari, London Independent
June 16, 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/does-this-mean-war-betwee_b_216401.html

Are we witnessing an anti-1979 -- a democratic uprising against the Ayatollahs by the grandchildren of the revolution? On the streets of Tehran, many of the massed millions are chanting: "We will die - but count our votes." The religious police are trying to teargas and truncheon this cry into submission, with the possibility of a Tehran Tiananmen hanging in the city's smog. But for today, the secret policemen are in panic, and the Ayatollahs are in retreat.

The Iranian Revolution was, from its first gasps, a marriage between two incompatible urges: theocracy, and democracy. Only now are they two finally unravelling. The Shah - the torturing dictator installed, armed and adored by the C.I.A. - was overthrown by a chasm-wide coalition stretching from communists to Islamists. My parents lived in Iran at that time, and they remember the raw hatred of the Shah that was felt by bearded Mullahs and hijab-free feminists alike. Almost everybody rose up in 1979.

But once the Shah was toppled, one wing of the revolution hijacked it. The Grand Ayatollah Khomeini installed himself as the Supreme Ruler, and started killing off the democratic wing of the revolution. But splinters of democracy remained in the constitution, like shards of glass after an explosion. Alongside the theocrats, there was an elected President and Parliament. For thirty years, the clerics have smothered these institutions, blocking most candidates from running, and - on the rare occasion when a reformist gets through - preventing him from changing much.

But now that system has over-reached by blatantly falsifying the election results in order to keep their preferred candidate in power. The official results show Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh winning by huge margins in the strongholds of the opposition - Tehran and Tabriz. It's as if George Bush in 2000 claimed to have won not only in Palm Beach County but also in Massachusetts and San Francisco. As soon as the polls closed, Ahmadinejadh said he had won by 64 percent - precisely the amount that was later 'counted.' Either he has superhuman powers of prediction, or he had a role in the result.

Inside Iran, shifting power from the clerics to the people would free millions of women. Today, a woman's testimony is worth half a man's in court. A woman can only inherit half as much as her brother. A woman invariably loses her children in a divorce case, and while she can be dumped in a second by her husband, if she wants a split, it can take up to a decade. The late surge to the reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi was driven in large part by women enthused by his wife's call for an end to this vicious
misogyny.

But what about outside Iran? This uprising could avert the disastrous war between Israel and Iran that was looking increasingly probable until today. The leaderships of the two non-Arab countries in the Middle East have increasingly resembled each other as they embark on a long, dark tango towards bombing. With Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman on one side and Ayatollah Khameini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the other, both countries are led by paranoid strongmen who are traumatised by their country's histories and scrambled by a political strain of post-traumatic stress disorder.

We can't understand the mindset that is driving both sides - and could be about to change - unless we delve into the past.

The current Iranian leaders' pursuit of enriched uranium is a response to a long history, too often scrubbed from Western textbooks. By the 1950s, Iran had developed a thriving democracy, and its people decided - rationally, correctly - to take control of its own oil and use the profits for its own people. The governments of the West ruled that this was unacceptable: it's our oil under their soil, dummy. So they toppled the democracy and installed a dictator. From 1953 to 1979, this dictator was paid by the Americans, Brits and friends to suppress the Iranian population and keep the petrol pumping. Khameini is one of the many people he jailed and tortured.

When the Iranians rejected "our good friend", we paid for Saddam Hussein to attack their country using chemical weapons. Ahmadinejad saw some of this mass slaughter - death toll: one million - as a young volunteer. That's why they feel nervous when they see US bases encircling them from Turkey to Afghanistan to Iraq. And that's why they want at least nuclear power and perhaps (although there are some doubts, even in the C.I.A.) nuclear weapons. We mustn't offer a second of excuses - but we should understand why they are acting this way.

Meanwhile, Israel - with its own memory of its people being subject to near-annihilation in the gas chambers of Europe - sees something different.

When they watch Ahmadinejad inviting a jamboree of Jew-haters to Tehran for a deranged Holocaust denial conference, or hear his massed supporters chant for "death to Israel", they begin to suspect that Ahmadinejad would use these weapons if he had them, and therefore they must bomb to stop him.

There were, thankfully, always a number of flaws with this theory. If Ahmadinejad and Khameini (whose finger would be on the button) are so determined to kill the Jews that they are prepared to kill themselves and everyone they know in a nuclear holocaust, why are the 30,000 Jews living in Iran alive and well? Wouldn't they start there? Hasn't Ahmadinejad's disgusting Holocaust denial been attacked within Iran - by the man who probably just won the election? And if Israel bombed the more than 40 sites where Iran's nuclear programme is spread across the country, wouldn't they just kill many of the people marching against Ahamdinejad today? Wouldn't this create support for a bigger, bolder nuclear programme tomorrow by vindicating the fears that Iran is left vulnerable to attack without the bomb?

Yet it's not hard to see how each side has talked itself into a paranoia they can't back down from. Khameini and Ahmadinejad won't let international inspectors in to see their full programme, much less control it, pointing out that the CIA used information gathered by inspectors in Iraq to know where to bomb. Netanyahu, in turn, has convinced himself that Ahmadinejad is an incarnation of the genocidal anti-Semitism that stalked Europe down the centuries. His rhetoric becomes as crazed as hmadinejad's. When asked how he sees Iran, he replied: "Remember Amalek." The Amalekites are the primordial enemies of the Jews in the Torah. In 1 Samuel 15, God says, "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

Irrational fear and tribal-religious manias are now driving both sides - and until this week, a violent show-down looked ever-more-likely.

But the uprising in Iran offers a radically different route. If the Iranian political system can be made to bend to the will of the Iranian people, we will see there is a peaceful solution that has been waiting for us all along. The most detailed study of Iranian views - carried out by the independent Centre for Public Opinion - found that 94 percent of Iranians want nuclear power, and 52 percent want the nuclear bomb. But there's a crucial clause. More than 70 percent agree that if the US and EU offer a peace package where they guarantee there will be no invasion and instead bring aid and investment, they will let inspectors closely monitor their nuclear power programs and renounce nuclear weapons for good.

This is a way out of the ratchet of fear. It averts a bombing campaign that would spread another bush-fire of mutual loathing through the world, and forestalls the risk of an endless Gazan Missile Crisis at the heart of the Middle East. It's not inconceivable that a deal could be struck with a weakened Ahmadinejad still in power, but it would be far more likely under a reformist with the people at his back.

But how can the Iranian people get there? It's plain what kind of Iran they want to build: some 70 percent of them want every position of power in their political system, including the Supreme Ayatollah, to be directly elected. They don't just want a rerun of this election: they want to expose the entire corrupt gerontocracy to election. The Islamic Republic would be dramatically reformed from within, without the wrenching risks of abolishing the entire system and starting again.

The Mullahs won't go quietly. They may go down fighting. But the demographics ensure Ahmadinejad's side will lose in the long-term. Another 70 percent of Iranians are under the age of thirty, and the vast majority are growing up in the cities, linked via Twitter and Facebook to a world beyond. They have developed huge subcultures of bloggers and rappers expressing their rage at the "morality police" who monitor their behaviour at every turn. While the hardcore Islamist constituency - the old and the rural - shrivels, the reformist constituency is swelling.

There's only so long you can suppress an angry, wired population much younger than you. IPods beat i-slamism in the end. But will they prevail before another Middle Eastern war born of irrational fear begins? ++


"I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours."
~ Barack Obama

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