Condemning the Egregiousness

I don't really feel like a track 1 today, so here is a classical piece I really love by Rachmaninoff; this is one of those songs that I can absolutely promise you will enjoy:



Sergei Rachmaninoff - Concerto No. 2 - II. Adagio Sostenuto (part 1 of 2)

What's new on the Iran front? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ironically been accusing Barack Obama of "meddling" because of his strong condemnation of the violence. Obama's criticism of violence may be hypocritical, but he could be doing a lot worse (see topic: the last 8 years). Ahmadinejad, whose shady election and immediate, violent clampdown on the media and any form of opposition constitutes the biggest act of "meddling" in the affairs of the Iranian people since the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadeq, actually has no room to talk this time, but I still personally don't think Obama should have said anything after his first statement ("This is an Iranian affair, etc.), if anything at all.

It's not to say that I don't "support" the protesters - even though that's completely meaningless in the first place; I can't very well get up and go to Iran (as much as I'd like to) and "support" them any more than I can support them here by wearing a green wristband and bringing it up in casual conversation with my roommate while he plays Civilization IV. When I was a young lad, my mom would ground me for doing various stupid things. I could "condemn" her egregious actions all I wanted but it would either have made her laugh or extend my sentence (depending on how big of a fit I threw). This doesn't exactly parallel the positions of Obama and Ahmadinejad, but they each have just as much power over the actions of the other - that is to say, no power at all.

I don't have to provide links for you to see what I'm talking about; just look at what has actually happened: Obama's condemnation of the clampdown on the opposition and the violence has 1) not put a stop to any violence, 2) actually given the government further justification for the clampdown against the foreign "meddlers," and 3) made us look like even bigger hypocrites because I'd be willing to bet that more people die every day as a result, direct or indirect, of our current wars than have died during the last two weeks in Iran (but I haven't seen any of these highly-paid, highly-respected columnists bringing up this little tidbit because the idea that our wars have a negative impact on humanity does not exist in our national political discussion). All this little "condemnation" episode has really been is a game designed to score points with various partisan bases. When you're president, even the president of the US, sometimes there just isn't anything you can do except tell the partisans that maybe if they were up to the task, they might have been elected to our nation's highest office. Anything else you do is going to be counter-productive when you're dealing with an authoritarian government in the midst of a military coup. And while we're at it, let's do something about #3.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to other topics; I suppose things are just going to get more and more Orwellian in Iran for the time being. This is what frightened governments look like: