Juan Cole on Iranian Elections

As always, it is going to take some time to piece all of the evidence together. Fortunately, we have Juan Cole, one of the best middle eastern experts, to help give us some insight into what we know so far.

Here is a short clip from Cole's excellent post, which I encourage everyone to read:

I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.

But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene.

Was This a Military Coup?

A military coup? As always, everything flows back to the religious fundamentalists that rule Iran, but the idea that the military was responsible for yesterday and today's events are interesting.

Coup in Iran

It will take a while to piece all of the evidence together, but what happened in Iran has all the markings of a coup. I don't know if the mullahs reacted against the masses of people demonstrating in the streets this week, or if this whole election was a sham to uproot and eliminate dissenters. Or perhaps they simply panicked, and overreached. This could backfire for Iran's rulers, both in the short- and long-term.

Gary Sick takes you through the timeline leading to where we are now.

Also, it appears that the government has arrested Mousavi, Karroubi, Karbaschi, and Khatami's brother. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan, who's keeping up to date on everything.

Ghibli Blog Twitter Goes to Iran

I hope nobody minds that I've been devoting the Ghibli Blog's Twitter page. Normally, I keep my political leanings there to a minimum - this is an animation and movie website, after all - but the seriousness of the events in Iran need our full attention.

By all means, I encourage every single one of you to help spread the word about what is happening in Iran today. The Millenial Generation has the internet and the world at your fingertips. Use these tools to make a difference. Use your cell phones and your laptops. Use YouTube and DailyMotion. Use Twitter and Flikr. Use Facebook and MySpace.

Even if all you can do is help spread the word and share some videos, you will have helped bring about change. These moments happen only rarely, kids. You need to take advantage and do something now.

Peace and love, everyone!

The Ghibli Blog on Twitter

Talkin' About Green Revolution

Here's an idea for you to help out. It's a minor thing, yes, but changing history very often involves small, minor gestures. Wear something in green today, snap some pics or shoot some video, and then post them online. Share them on your Twitter or Facebook pages, post some videos on YouTube. Get a couple friends to join you.

Here are some photos of me from a couple months ago. I'm wearing the green scarf Marcee gave me. It's the new hip fashion among all the kids these days!

Iranian Elections Today

The Iranian elections are today. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for a green revolution. The rallies and marches during the past week have been wonderful to see. Thank goodness Bush and Cheney were never able to start another full-scale war with Iran. Another neocon war would have been a catastrophe.

I really shouldn't read too much into these elections as it relates to the US, but if Admadinajad (spell check?) is defeated at the polls today, it will be widely seen as a success for Barack Obama, and have profound effects upon the region. And regardless who wins, we should expect a thawing of relations between our nations, something which is long overdue.

As always, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, both the graphic novel and animation movie, are essential viewing for anyone curious to know more about modern Iran.

A Quick Thought on the Holocaust Memorial Shooting

Careful observers will note that there has been an rise in domestic terrorism and violence in the past few months. I don't wish to be grim, but we have seen this coming and we should expect more in the future. There has long been an extreme right bubbling just under the surface, usually white supremecist or neo-nazi groups, disaffected paranoid types, and those harboring various conspiracy fantasies about the government - see "black helicopters," "they're coming to take my guns," "9/11 was an inside job," and "Obama is a Muslim foreigner" for starters.

While it should be obvious that these recent violent episodes are not the fault of Republicans or conservatives, one of the more troubling developments in the last 10, 15, 20 years is how the GOP propaganda machine - Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill 'O Reilly, Fox News, etc - has stoked the fears of their listeners, and cynically appealed to extremism. This is nothing new, really. Richard Nixon's "southern strategy," which enabled the GOP to return to power a generation ago, was a cynical appeal to southern segregationists and Dixiecrats. That was a deal with the devil if there ever was one.

I don't believe the likes of Limbaugh or Fox News believe anything they spill out on a daily basis. It's just pure cynicism, stoking fears and paranoias for short-term political gain. And like any declining movement, the Republican Party has had to appeal more and more to hard-core elements who buy into the notion that Barack Obama is a socialist-communist-marxist-fascist out to destroy America, that his birth certificate is fake, that he's coming to take your guns, that he deliberately destroying the economy, yadda yadda yadda.

After eight disastrous years of George W. Bush, and nearly 40 years as the dominant power, the Republican brand is thoroughly vanquished. Where do you think all these independent voters have come from? They're disaffected Republicans, honest people who have grown weary of the direction their party has taken. I can't say I blame them. If I were a Republican, I'd be hopping mad every day at what Bush, Cheney, and Limbaugh have done to destroy my party. Now conservatives may find themselves out of power for a generation.

So what does this have to do with the shooting at the Holocaust Memorial? I'm certainly not blaming Republicans or conservatives. Bullets know no ideology. But I think it's time for those who continue to call themselves Republicans to think long and hard about the direction of their party, and the words of those who claim to be the leaders. Words have consequences, and you cannot continue to stoke fear and loathing in your followers every day, spewing paranoid fantasies and conspiracies.

I'm thinking of those McCain/Palin rallies during the campaign, which seemed to grow more unhinged as the weeks rolled on. These people were being whipped into a fury. They are constantly being told that Obama, the socialist, the communist, the fascist, the Muslim, the foreigner, the baby killer, is about to usher in the apocalypse, the very end of America. It's constant, endless whipping of fear - Orwell's "Two Minutes Hate" every single day.

The average Fox News viewer is not going to pick up a gun and start shooting people. But someone will. Someone who may be unhinged, who may not be smart, who may have carried bigotries and prejudices all their lives. And they're going to hear Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck, and just snap. Which leads to more tragedies and suffering.

Do I have to point this out? There has always been a dark underside to American politics, whether it was the Southern Strategy or Joe McCarthy or Jim Crow. We really don't need this insanity now. The economy is a wreck and the globe is melting down. We don't have time for this.

Interactive: Balance California's Budget

This is an extremely helpful interactive game on the LA Times website. You choose what decisions to make in order to balance California's $24 billion deficit, by any combination of spending cuts, raising taxes, and accounting gimmicks. This is an excellent method of communicating the state's crisis on a level anyone can understand.

In any event, without a major infusion of cash to the state, California is about to be crippled severely, and it may not recover for a very, very long time. For this, we can thank the two main culprits: Proposition 13, which requires a 2/3 majority to raise taxes, and the ballot initiative, which enables voters to approve endless spending projects.

If you think this budget shortfall is easy, go ahead. Give it a try and see how far you can get. What are you willing to part with? The bottom line is that there's going to have to be a major rethinking of how government is done in California...unless, of course, if you are a dogmatic supply-side conservative. Then these will be the golden years.

Deep Thought

Great. My family is now reading my blogs. That means I'm going to have to behave myself. Ignoring the daily rants of monsters like Limbaugh would certainly help keep me calm (one cup of Limbaugh is like four sugar-charged cups of coffee - it's like I'm getting an Oxycontin contact high).

On a slightly related note, there's a website that gives move ratings to your websites. Videogames of the Damned earns an "R" rating, while The Ghibli Blog is rated "G." That sounds about right, but I should really be posting my photos or artwork to up the "tasteful art" quotient of this site. Hey, it worked for the "Godfather" movies.

Evil Minds That Plot Destruction

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are monsters, and if you can't figure that out, something is seriously wrong:

One of the aspects of this job that both amuses and unnerves us is the way in which Rush finds new and inventive ways to out-crazy the crazy things he said the day before. What amuses us is the idea of pacing -- we're not even five months into Obama's first term, and Rush has spent the entirety of that time in high dudgeon, hurling every possible slur he can at the president and screaming bloody murder at even the slightest outrages. What's he going to do when a real controversy comes down the pike? But this rhetorical escalation is also unnerving, and yesterday, Fox News' Shepard Smith explained why. Smith, reporting on the tragic shooting at the Holocaust Museum, said he's receiving "more and more frightening" emails from people who are "way out there on a limb," and then read an example: "Shepard, how dare you tell us to get over Obama not being a U.S. citizen. Where is the birth certificate? Where? He won't show it, so why are you so trumped up to believe it? I cannot stand Hussein. He is a socialist Marxist who is at fast rate destroying our country." Look at the content of that email, which Smith called "frightening," and compare it to what Rush has said over the past week: Obama is "destroying the United States economy"; he "does not have a birth certificate"; he's a "socialist."

Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues

After dealing with (wingnut) family, the best way for me to get my sanity back is to throw on some Bob Dylan on the turntable and crank the volume. Thank God for this music. It gave me a voice when I was recovering from a Christian Fundamentalist, Rush Limbaugh worldview, and I had nobody around me to turn to for support. What a strange process, to learn to be kind and compassionate, and lose your paranoia and fear. But Dylan knew how to be rebellious and whip-smart. He's the Groucho Marx of rock 'n roll.

Birthers

I truly don't understand the Republican Party's appeal in pushing bullshit conspiracy theories.  Perhaps it's just an example of that old saying - history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.  It sounds like a lot of the paranoid fantasies from the Clinton era, but a lot goofier.  Are the "birthers" really supposed to be the future of the GOP?

To any wandering Republican, please, please - keep it up.  Keep foaming at the mouth about President Obama's fake birth certificate.  It's an election winner!

Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel

Elvis singing in his first television appearance in January, 1956. I'm spending the weekend playing Elvis records and making needledrops for Marcee, so here's a great chance to see the King of Rock 'n Roll in action.

Kill Bill

David Carradine was found dead today in a Bangkok hotel room. That's a shocker. He was so terrific in Kill Bill, and I was looking forward to a career revival ala John Travolta after Pulp Fiction. He will be sorely missed.

If I Were a Carpenter (1994)

This is one of my favorite albums from the last Great Year in Music, 1994. The idea of a Carpenter's tribute album might seem snarky or bizarre, but that sense of irony was absolutely perfect in the year that saw the deaths of Richard Nixon and Kurt Cobain. 1970s revisionism was at the heart of '90s rock, especially with the Seattle bands that brought us out of the dark abyss of phony hair metal and processed pop. So an album like this fit in perfectly.

That's probably why If I Were a Carpenter was the best tribute album of the '90s. These weren't merely retreads or simple cash-ins. It had a point. And it was a showcase for the sheer diversity of pop and rock of the time. History may only remember grunge, but this album lays testament to how wide and free the music was. It was a fantastic time for music, and 1994 was the fantastic peak to the decade.

Thank goodness for Bit Torrents, I say. This CD is impossibly hard to find anymore, and I've long ago sold off all of my discs (to my eternal regret, despite my devotion to vinyl LPs). Once again, the internet gives life to the Long Tails of the music world.

My favorites on this album? I really can't pick one. They're all terrific, every one of 'em. Sonic Youth did a bang-up job, as did Shonen Knife, Buffalo Springfield, Matthew Sweet, and 4 Non Blondes. Hey, even Babes in Toyland contribute a song, the goofy and carefree, "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft." You'd never expect such a fiery band to record something so silly, but it works perfectly. Just like this album.

This is the best kind of compilation album: the kind that makes you want to seek out all the bands and performers. Everyone on Carpenter were entering their glory days of success, and they all deserved their fame. Some persevered, some faded eventually, and some never got their chance. But this is the way of things. We all start out full of energy and hope when we're young. We don't yet know who will still be standing 15 years down the road. I can't believe it's been 15 years since that great, fateful year. Joy and sorrow, life and death, creating something new in the shadow of the old. And above it all, the death of Saint Cobain, whose rise and fall marked our era. Every rock album in 1994 after April 8 was a Cobain tribute album, and don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise.