It just seems like the sort of thing that should be pointed out.

I’ve had two posts in two days about Iran, so I figured I’d round everything out with a third before I moved on to another topic.

It probably goes without saying that I generally support the Iranian opposition movement.  I’ve never been too enamored with religion, and in my mind theocratic rule may be the least desirable of all possible governing systems.  And even though the Green Revolution’s central candidate, Mousavi, is anything but a radical, It’s nice to see a some organized movement standing up to theocratic authoritarianism.

Yet, last week while Western media was talking about sanctions against Iran for restarting a Uranium enrichment project, Iranian media was covering Ahmadinejad’s triumphant declaration to a “pro-government crowd in Tehran” that the country “had successfully enriched uranium to higher levels than before,” [WSJ] declaring Iran a “nuclear state.” [AP]  Meanwhile, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that “it’s time for ‘foreign enemies to wake up and abandon futile efforts to subjugate’ Iran.” [AP]

Pretty much every media account I’ve seen describes some version of this anti-Western, nuclear-themed propaganda push before detailing the violence that Iranian police and paramilitary forces then unleashed upon the opposition.

But it wasn’t just violence this time.  Unlike the Iranian government’s response to last summer’s protests, the opposition last week was met with huge pro-government rallies that had in all likelihood been put together by the government.  The AP article cited above quotes one opposition protester as saying, “There were 300 of us, maximum 500. Against 10,000 people…It means they won and we lost. They defeated us. They were able to gather so many people.”

Essentially, the Iranian government has taken a two-pronged approach to the unrest: heavy state sanctioned violence and other penalties for opposition “activists and lawyers [who] have lost their jobs or been prevented from continuing their education,” combined with the creation and direction of pro-government protesters backed by paramilitary groups and spurred on by nationalistic, pro-nuclear propaganda.

The Wall Street Journal describes the scene pretty well:

These residents said much of the city had the feel of martial law, with heavy security deployed throughout the city and many shops closed. Government forces fanned out across the capital in force Wednesday, with Revolutionary Guard Corps troops lining streets where demonstrators had signaled they would gather.

Early Thursday, government supporters massed at Azadi Square, where Mr. Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had enriched its first batch of uranium for use in a medical-research reactor. Mr. Ahmadinejad on Sunday ordered Iranian scientists to start the process, to a 20% purity benchmark from Iran’s stock of lower-enriched uranium.

Given all of this, a short time under sanctions might actually benefit Iran to some degree by giving them even more propaganda material.  And if the government is gambling that it can always get any sanctions lifted (with Russian and Chinese help) by agreeing to the US-French-Russian fuel-swap proposal, it might be a risk they are willing to take.  At best, there will be no sanctions, and Iran can say that they beat the West and use that for propaganda.  And, at worst,  the sanctions themselves could become a powerful, nationalistic distraction.  (Provided, of course, that Iran is able to negotiate its way out of them again…that would be the main gamble here.)

But whether or not Iran is thinking in these terms, serious economic sanctions would make it even more difficult for members of the opposition to make ends meet in their private lives, which is not likely to further enamor them to the West.  Sanctions would provide a daily reminder for conservatives and moderates of what they can expect from the west, and, as a result, they would push moderates even closer to the government and away from the opposition.  Additionally, the Iranian government has been saying for months that the Green Revolution is all a Western plot.  Even if people haven’t bought it up till now, the desire for someone to blame for why there’s no longer any gasoline and the store shelves are all empty could be a strong motivator to get on the side of the government.

In a nut shell: We need to find a way to deal with the enriched Uranium issue that doesn’t involve sanctions.  The US, Russia, and France have a proposal for how to handle this.  Iran has its own proposal for how to handle it.  If neither one is acceptable to everyone, then everyone involved needs to sit down and find a third option.  Or a fourth option.  Or a fifth.

Finding a solution to this that doesn’t force the Iranian people to suffer, doesn’t demonize the West in their eyes or feed into nationalistic propaganda, and doesn’t kill the only opposition movement in this authoritarian country really should be our prime goal.

To clarify Secretary Clinton’s comment, the article quotes state department spokesman PJ Crowley.  He says:

Given the current trajectory that Iran is on – the fact that it still has centrifuges spinning, and the fact that it is unwilling to constructively engage the international community – we have to assume that Iran is pursuing a nuclear programme.

Given all the steps that Iran has taken and all the actions that Iran refuses to take, we can only begin to draw the conclusion that Iran’s intentions are less than peaceful.

Essentially, the state department just decided that Iran was building weapons.  An odd thing for them to do given that just last week The New York Times wrote that:

The level of purity Iran says it is seeking is significantly lower than the 90-percent levels needed for weapons. The Western concern is that enrichment to 20 percent would enable Iran to produce weapons-grade uranium in a comparatively short time, nuclear experts say. But it remains far from clear that Iran has the capacity to enrich fuel to that level.

And The Wall Street Journal wrote:

It is still unclear how quickly Iran would be able to refine significant amounts of low-enriched uranium to the 20% purity level necessary for use in the medical reactor. U.S. officials openly questioned this capability Tuesday.

But whatever.  When you’re just making stuff up, I supposed previous, published musings don’t matter.

Similarly, why are The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both quoting Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who called for “crippling sanctions” against Iran, which “must be applied right now.”? He was quoted in both papers even though: 1) Israel is not a party to the discussions with Iran, 2) Israel has not provided any evidence that Iran is (or is capable of) building nuclear weapons, and 3) Article IV of the NPT protects all signatory’s “inalienable right…to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes…”

The only conclusion I can come up with is that in the minds of everyone writing about foreign affairs (on both the left and the right) Israel is naturally good and Iran naturally is bad.  I’m not saying that I think the inverse is true.  (It’s not; the Iranian government is quite obviously run by homicidal jackasses.)  And I’m not saying that Iran should be able to develop nuclear weapons.  (It shouldn’t–no governments should, Israel and Iran included–and the NPT, which allows for any peaceful action Iran may take, prohibits it.)

But when one country refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but is nonetheless assumed to have offensive nukes, I don’t see any reason why it should be consulted as source for possible punishments to another country which has signed the treaty, which doesn’t have nukes, and which is appearing to be enacting legal, legitimate, and peaceful nuclear policies.  This is especially true since, as The New York Times puts it, “The spokesman for the I.A.E.A. said Iran’s declared nuclear facilities were among the most closely monitored in the world after Canada and Japan,” and that “…it remains far from clear that Iran has the capacity to enrich fuel to [20%],” let alone to the 90% it would take to make a bomb.

It would seem to me that if you are worried that your political opponents will use threats of death, destruction, and mayhem to limit one set of rights, you wouldn’t want to use the same threats to limit another.  It would seem…

To be fair, I think that the inverse of the conservative position (supporting trials for people like Abdul Mutallab but insisting on strict weapons bans) is an equally contradictory one held by the mainstream left.  It’s just this particular contradiction has been very loud recently, and no one seems to be calling anyone out for simultaneously holding opposing opinions.

One poll reveals that 36% of Americans have a “positive image” of the word “socialism” while 58% have a negative one.  (6% had apparently never heard either term enough to form an impression of them.)

A second poll says that 37% of Americans are worried that the government won’t regulate businesses strongly enough, but 57% are worried that government regulations will be too strong.  (Again, 6% were obviously busy trying to figure out the difference between their asses and various holes in the ground, and didn’t hear the question.)

Given that these two separate surveys pulled in such similar numbers for such similar questions, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that just over one-third of the country has a basic left-leaning outlook as the basis of their political ideologies, and, conversely, just over half leans to the right.  (And, of course, 6% of Americans are apparently too stoned at any given time to tell the difference between a newspaper and a microwave burrito.)

If these numbers do accurately represent the basic ideological divide in the US, it would go a long way to explain why Democrats always seem to be pushing towards the right, and talking about the “center” and “compromise,” while Republicans have taken to consolidating their message and punishing dissent within their ranks.  If just over half of Americans tend towards the right, it is up to the Democrats to lure potential voters away from the Republicans.  Likewise, it’s up to Republicans to hold their lines.

Even better than the comic is the caption when you scroll over it on the xkcd page.  It’s funny how way back in 1985 Orson Scott Card was able to get the Internet so right and yet so wrong.

1. The rights and freedoms granted in the Constitution apply as rights only to individual, natural persons.  With regard to corporate entities these rights may be restricted or repealed by Congress, by the legislature of any state, or by any local government at any time through the normal legislative process.
2. Individual, natural persons within the United States retain all their Constitutionally protected rights and freedoms regardless of the status of these rights for corporate entities.  The rights of individuals may never be restricted or repealed, except as explicitly provided for in the Constitution.

I’m not sure if Section 2 is necessary, but I’d feel pretty dumb if I accidentally got everyone’s rights eliminated due to poor phrasing or an unexpected interpretation of the amendment.  Kind of like how Texas may have accidentally outlawed marriage, which I think is hilarious, but it’s still a lesson for anyone messing around with the law.  Also, I figured it couldn’t hurt to reestablish that our civil rights apply to everyone “within the United States” and not just to citizens.  Some people seem to have forgotten that.

The first was that I will be very interested to see what happens when this investigation gets going.  It’s the same thing I said when the ACORN videos came out, so it seems that this O’Keefe character just pulls stunts that require significant amounts of time to be resolved.  The accusation in the nola.com article that they had “a listening device in a car blocks from the senator’s offices,” is interesting, but seeing as how I haven’t been able to confirm it with any other newspaper, I have to call it unsubstantiated for now.

The second was simply the phrase, “That’s cute.  He’s like a little G. Gordon Liddy.”  Just my bias, I guess.