Sounds like fun, wish I were there

I'm still mourning my decision not to go to Iran.

My decision seems easier to accept when I read about "bloody ethnic unrest" in Southwest Iran... it's far from anywhere we had been planning to go, but still.

I especially enjoyed reading about recent events in Iran on this ridiculously right-wing website (check out the Amazon links in the right-hand column: Natan Sharansky...Michael Novak...or—hey—DVD on Reagan's courageous War against Evil, anyone?)

ANYWAY, what struck me most about the reports posted here was how much the Bush administration apparently has in common with the government of Iran--I think Bush should really re-examine his priorities, because Iran could be a really great ally for him. Let's look at the facts:

1. Both have shut down Al-Jazeera stations which they claimed were stirring up Arab anger (well, to be more precise, Bush bombed the Al-Jazeera station in Kabul, but let's not split hairs).
   
2. Both have sent the army to fire on unarmed demonstrators.
   
3. Both accuse domestic troublemakers of being in league with foreign enemies.
   
4. Both create ecological problems for their neighbors.
   
5. Both threaten their enemies with nuclear power.
   
6. Both make a hobby of killing Iraqis, and seem to be none too fond of Arabs in general.
   
7. Both try to use control over oil to manipulate others.
   
8. Both believe they have a special relationship with God.
   

See? Natural allies. Someone should tell the president... I'm sure if he knew he would change his policy immediately.

That ridiculously right-wing site has a link to another ridiculously right-wing site, which alleges that 400 members of al-Qaeda are hiding out in Iran, supported by the government. Yeah. That's about as likely as them hiding out in the US supported by the government. By which I mean to say, that stranger things have happened...

...but it would definitely be pretty strange for Iran to support al-Qaeda. First, because al-Qaeda is a hard-core Sunni organization that considers Shi'ites (=Iran) to be deluded heretics; second, because Iranians were vocally angry about the persecution & slaughter of the Hazari—the Persian-speaking Shia group in Afghanistan, i.e., "cousins" of Iranians—by al-Qaeda's erstwhile ally, the Taliban.

Ooh, I could do this all night. But I promised myself I would finish one thing tonight. Gotta get back to work. (Besides, if I keep babbling on about politics I'll bore my 1.3 readers into abandoning me! Can't have that!)

from an unlikely source

thomas friedman is an idiot whom I loathe. but he has some good quotes in his latest piece...he talks about how he just woke up to the fact (as did I and a lot of other people) that it's not actually true that people across the U.S. "share the same core values" (Barack Obama's words on election night, which made me cry because that's when I realized we don't). A few days before election, someone explained to me for the first time (well, via the radio) that there is a sizeable group of people who do not feel that the Bill of Rights is our finest and most fundamental document--rather, they feel it's a terrible mistake, that the Puritans had the right idea and that veering away from theocracy was where the U.S. went wrong.

So Friedman writes, "We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is," and, "people were not voting on his performance. It seemed as if they were voting for what team they were on.This was not an election. This was station identification."

And best of all, "I felt as if I registered to vote, but when I showed up the Constitutional Convention broke out."

Of course, he loses me completely in his last paragraph where he talks about how Bush will prove his greatness only if he can handle "our entitlements crisis...., upgrade America's competitiveness, [and] prevent Iran from going nuclear." (The only person I've recently heard point out that Iran, like anyone else, has the right to defend itself, is, of all people, a survivor of the Iranian hostage crisis, which began 25 years ago today.) Oh, and additional @#$*&#$ to Joe Klein for saying we should overturn Roe v Wade. Jesus h christ. Yeah, exactly.