Perspective
Right now, lava is flowing out of the earth’s core and oozing out of a relatively tiny rock, the island of Hawaii, in the midst of the largest geographic feature on planet earth, the Pacific Ocean. Pretty nuts.
Also nuts is that the largest residential subdivision in the United States, Hawaii Ocean View Estates, is built on the southern rift zone of the largest active volcano on earth, Mauna Loa.
Finally, tomorrow is the day the batshit crazy Iranian Mullahs promised to bring an extra high level of smack down on the “Iranian people’s righteous indignation.” Read the whole thing. Excerpt below:
I believe that the Iranian regime has assembled the largest armed force in history to protect it from the Iranian people’s righteous indignation on Thursday the 11th. There will be hundreds of thousands of police, revolutionary guards, Basij, and people bused in from the countryside to Tehran.
Additionally, the regime is shutting down communications, especially in Tehran. Iranian Tweeters say internet is largely gone, and cell phones are not working. None of this is new, and in the past the dissidents have managed to beat the censors; it will be interesting to see if the mullahs’ trusted advisers (mostly Chinese) are more effective this time. They certainly have failed in China, and the Iranian authorities have demonstrated an almost supernatural ability to screw up their own plans.
A case in point: the political center of the city is Azadi Square, and workers have been stringing loudspeakers (and probably cameras) all over the square and the approach routes, in order to drown out the chants of the demonstrators. So today they tested the system by broadcasting the national anthem. Except it was the shah’s anthem, not the Islamic Republic’s.
On a related note, I found Brett Stephen’s recent WSJ article Seven Myths About Iran to be an interesting, contrarian read. Excerpt below:
(5) The Iranian regime is headed for the ash heap of history. The best policy is to do as little as possible until it crumbles from within.
Communist regimes were also destined for the ash heap. Unfortunately, it took them decades to get there, during which they murdered tens of millions of people. It matters a great deal to Iran’s people, and its neighbors, that the regime go quietly. But it also matters that it go quickly, and waiting on events is not a policy.
(6) The more support we show Iran’s demonstrators, the more we hurt their cause.
This was the administration’s view after the June 12 election, as it walked on tiptoes to avoid the perception of “meddling.” The regime accused the U.S. of meddling all the same.
But protest movements like Iran’s (or Poland’s, or South Africa’s) are sustained by a sense of moral legitimacy that global support uniquely conveys. When will American liberals get behind Iranian rights, as they have, say, Tibetan ones? Maybe when President Obama tells them to.
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