Another 100 books you might enjoy - a post for Norm

Norm is gone, but Normblog is not. The ideas are vital, the words speak, intimacy with the mind endures.

Norman Geras’s last post on Normblog was titled A book list with a difference, or alternatively, 100 works of fiction you might enjoy. As a small tribute to him, I offer a complimentary list of fiction books. There is no overlap with his list as all of these come from the bookshelves of my children. They are still young and they have as yet read hardly any of Norm’s kind suggestions. Like his, this is not a ‘best of’ or a ‘must read’ list, but a list of books that we have enjoyed, some of which you may know, and some of which you might like to try.

The first one is by Ian Beck:

• Picture Book

This is an extraordinary book for the very young, its images simple yet intensely rich. As the children have grown older they have enjoyed many more of his books, for example his edition of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat, and a version of The Nutcracker written by Berlie Doherty, and more recently his Tom Trueheart children’s novels.

More picture books by a variety of authors:

In Blogland

It’s curtains for Drawn, the group blog on arts graphic. After a mere eight years founder John Martz has posted notice of the blog’s retirement after a mere eight year run. Charley Parker marks its passing on his Lines and Colors blog. I count myself fortunate to have once received mention in its pages, and will miss visiting.

Normblog, the blog of Norman Geras, is approaching its tenth birthday. Following a few quiet days, Norm today wrote a post about his illness, which has come as a shock to many of his online friends and admirers. David Hirsh at Engage has posted a list of favourite Normblog links. I wish him all the best, and note that even under such circumstances he still keeps up a better pace of posting than most of us.

Eliot Higgins of the Brown Moses Blog today announced the success of his fundraising campaign to allow him to continue blogging full time on the war in Syria. He has received a lot of press attention for his detailed analysis of the flood of online videos oan photos of the war. Scroll down this page to read more about his work. In his most recent post he asks three chemical weapons experts to take a critical look at some of the recent CW attack stories.

Added: a post from Bob, For Norm, from Jim D at Shiraz Socialist blog, The inspirational Prof Norm, and at Harry’s Place, Gene sends Best wishes to Norm Geras.

Horror and hand-wringing

(Updated at the end of the post.)

Arguments over intervention, whether in Afghanistan, Libya, or Syria, often seem over-familiar over time, with the same points being made irrespective of which conflict is being discussed.

One example is the type of argument that paints the foreign country as culturally inhospitable to democracy. Invoking Sweden as a contrast to the country in question is one way to highlight the abyss that separates us and them, as in “Why can’t Afghanistan be more like Sweden?” Like Sweden? Ridiculous, obviously. Using Jeffersonian as an adjective is another way of depicting democracy as intrinsically Western. It’s not their culture! They’ve not been raised on Rousseau, Burke, and John Stuart Mill like us Western citizens.

As if Western voters all brush up on Jefferson or Mill before heading to the ballot box.

In recent years one fortifying tonic against such xenophobic justifications for despotism has been Normblog, the pioneering political blog of Norman Geras. For example this post from 2006 which offers a snippet of Amartya Sen citing the aforementioned Mill:

Democracy, to use the old Millian phrase, is "government by discussion," and voting is only one part of a broader picture (an understanding that has, alas, received little recognition in post-intervention Iraq in the attempt to get straight to polling without the development of broad public reasoning and an independent civil society). There can be no doubt at all that the modern concepts of democracy and of public reasoning have been very deeply influenced by European and American analyses and experiences over the last few centuries (including the contributions of such theorists of democracy as Marquis de Condorcet, Jefferson, Madison and Tocqueville). But to extrapolate backward from these comparatively recent experiences to construct a quintessential and long-run dichotomy between the West and non-West would be deeply misleading.
.....
Since traditions of public reasoning can be found in nearly all countries, modern democracy can build on the dialogic part of the common human inheritance.

Here’s another Normblog post, this one from 2004. It excerpts portions of an interview with former Polish dissident Adam Michnik concerning Michnik’s support for the invasion of Iraq:

We [Michnick and other east European former dissidents] take this position because we know what dictatorship is. And in the conflict between totalitarian regimes and democracy you must not hesitate to declare which side you are on. Even if a dictatorship is not an ideal typical one, and even if the democratic countries are ruled by people whom you do not like. I think you can be an enemy of Saddam Hussein even if Donald Rumsfield is also an enemy of Saddam Hussein.
.....
It's simply that life has taught me that if someone is being whipped and someone is whipping this person, I am always on the side of those who are being whipped. I've always criticized U.S. foreign policy for forgetting that the United States should defend those who need to be defended. I would object to U.S. policy if it supported Saddam Hussein, and I have always criticized the United States for supporting military regimes in Latin America.
.....
I don't think it is utopian to want to install democratic rule in Iraq. If it won't be an ideal democracy, let it be a crippled democracy, but let it not be a totalitarian dictatorship.

That interview was published in Dissent magazine.

And this week we have Normblog recommending a post by former Dissent editor Michael Walzer. But instead of the old reliable tonic, we’re slipped a Mickey Finn. Geras quotes Walzer thus:

Many people have been criticizing President Obama for dithering over what to do in Syria. Not me; dithering seems an entirely rational response to what's going on there. The difficulty is that we don't really know what we want to happen - I mean we don't know which among the likely possibilities would be the least awful. Of course, readers of Dissent would be happy to see the victory of Syrians who have been studying John Stuart Mill or who take their cue from Swedish social democracy. But nothing like that lies anywhere on (or near) the horizon.

I despair.

Norman Geras couples this with a quote from Monday’s Human Rights Watch statement on Syria., focusing on the widely reported video of a Syrian Rebel commander apparently mutilating a corpse:

Human Rights Watch has reviewed graphic evidence that appears to show a commander of the Syrian opposition “Independent Omar al-Farouq” brigade mutilating the corpse of a pro-government fighter. The figure in the video cuts the heart and liver out of the body and uses sectarian language to insult Alawites. The same brigade was implicated in April 2013 in the cross-border indiscriminate shelling of the Lebanese Shi’a villages of al-Qasr and Hawsh al-Sayyed.

There’s no question that such corpse mutilation is a war crime. There’s no question that indiscriminate shelling of villages is a war crime. But if the question is, in Walzer’s words, “which among the likely possibilities would be the least awful,” then in trying to answer it we should look at the relative scale of atrocities by the various parties, and their relative susceptibility to pressure to stop.

This is not a nice task. It means for example comparing the mutilation of the dead soldier with a gruesome New York Times report of massacres by regime forces in Tartus province:

After dragging 46 bodies from the streets near his hometown on the Syrian coast, Omar lost count. For four days, he said, he could not eat, remembering the burned body of a baby just a few months old; a fetus ripped from a woman’s belly; a friend lying dead, his dog still standing guard.

It means for example comparing last month’s shelling of the Lebanese villages of al-Qasr and Hawsh al-Sayyed by the rebel Omar al-Farouq Brigade, killing two civilians and wounding three, with last month’s HRW report on Syrian government air and missile attacks on civilian areas of Aleppo:

During a recent seven-day mission to Aleppo, Human Rights Watch researchers documented five attacks that took place between March 18 and April 7, 2013:

• On April 7, an airstrike in the Ansari neighborhood of Aleppo killed at least 22 civilians, including 6 children.

• On April 3, a cluster bomb attack in the Sheik Sa’eed neighborhood of Aleppo killed 11 civilians, including 7 children.

• On March 29, a cluster bomb and ballistic missile attack in the town of Hreitan in northern Aleppo killed at least 8 civilians, including 2 children, and injured dozens more.

• On March 24, an airstrike in the town of Akhtarin in northern Aleppo killed 10 civilians, including at least 4 children.

• On March 18, an airstrike on Marjeh neighborhood in the city of Aleppo killed at least 33 civilians, including at least 17 children.

It means for example comparing rebel executions of prisoners, such as the three publicly executed in Raqqa this week apparently by Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamists, with Aleppo’s river of corpses, described in detail in this Guardian report by Martin Chulov.

It means asking which scenario holds the better chance of some measure of accountability, of a future Syria ruled by law: a victory by rebels, or by the regime?

Regarding the rebels, Time reports Brigadier General Salim Idris, head of the Syrian Military Council (SMC), which oversees, according to its leadership, about 90% of the rebel forces as saying “it is very clear that these kinds of behaviors, this cutting of bodies, is not allowed. If there is evidence that fighters from the FSA are doing something against human rights or international law, they will be brought before the court.”

As for the Assad regime, its chief backer in the UN Security Council, Russia, is blocking the possibility of referring both regime and rebel crimes to the International Criminal Court.

On one side is a fragile hope, more endangered with every day of war, on the other is no hope at all. Every day of dithering over Syria weakens that fragile hope further.

UPDATE: Norm has written a response, In defence of uncertainty (over Syria), and I thank him for it, especially given what a difficult time this is for him.

He clarifies that “there is not a balance of atrocity in this matter so far as I'm aware.” For Norm, the key point is “the crucial justifying condition that external intervention must have a reasonable chance of making a difference for the better.”

I explained my own views on what kind of intervention I believed was needed on just such a basis of likely consequences in March of last year. My view has not substantially changed since then, and I believe events since that time confirm the accuracy of much of my analysis.

Christopher Hitchens completes his life

Some links, first to blogs, then to periodicals and news organisations:

Tigerloaf: Christopher Hitchens is Dead

Shiraz Socialist: Hitchens is dead, and Now That’s What I Call Hitchens! and Irreplaceable

Harry’s Place: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011, and Another reason why God is not great, on Jerusalem and religious obstacles to peace, and A few thoughts on Christopher Hitchens, in praise of his post September 11th arguments, and cross posted from the Huffington Post, Sohrab Ahmari: Influence and conviction: Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

The Stark Tenet: Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

Fat Man on a Keyboard: One hell of a writer

The Poor Mouth: Christopher Hitchens RIP

Simply Jews: Christopher Hitchens RIP

Though Cowards Flinch: Christopher Hitchens: the life of a contrarian

Francis Sedgemore: So long Dude! Also: Of slippery slopes and greasy poles

Obliged to Offend: So long, Hitch

Normblog: Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011, also A brother’s tribute and Tributes in the Times

David Aaronovitch’s tribute in the Times is included in Mick Hartley’s post: Hitch is dead

Bob from Brockley recommends two posts, by Rosie Bell: Decline and fall, and by Noga: Chistopher Hitchens and his Vocabular Cornucopia

Max Dunbar: Why writing matters (and related to Max’s piece, a post from October at Why Evolution Is True: Mason Crumpacker and the Hitchens reading list)

Gauche: Obituaries - 27: Christopher Hitchens

At The Duck of Minerva, a Realist on a revolutionary, Patrick Porter: Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

Terry Glavin: The Lights Are On The Dunes, Comrade.

George Szires: Christopher Hitchens 13 April 1949 - 15 December 2011

More by Bob from Brockley: He was a friend of mine, and On reading obituaries of Christopher Hitchens

The Sad Red Earth: Christopher Hitchens, Glenn Greenwald, and the War of Ideas, in response to Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths, by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com

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The Daily Mash: Hitchens cancer not intelligently designed

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Salman Rushdie for Vanity Fair, February 2012 issue: Christopher Hitchens

A response to Salman Rushdie’s article by Mick Hartley, Hitchens, In Memoriam, echoed by Norman Geras, Rushdie right and wrong about Hitchens

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Juli Weiner, Vanity Fair: In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011, also a slideshow of photos from his life

Christopher Buckley on The New Yorker’s News Desk blog: Postscript: Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

George Packer, also on The New Yorker’s News Desk blog: Hitchens and Iraq

William Grimes at The New York Times: Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, With Wit

BBC News: Christopher Hitchens dies after battle with cancer. Related on BBC News: Christopher Hitchens talks to Jeremy Paxman, and Blair v Hitchens debate: Is religion a force for good?

Last updated 8 January 2012.

Like a bird on a stick . . .

 . . . on a bird,

on a stick,

on a bird,

on a stick,

on a bird . . .

P.S. While I’m here, those who would like more words to read than I’m currently writing could do worse than clicking over to Norm’s place. In recent days he has posted amongs other things  a very good and short piece on Bush and torture, with a follow up, two pieces on China as seen from King’s Cross and as seen from China, and on doing something less than arguing over possible justifications for war.

That last one is in response to an odd piece of writing on the Washington Post’s Political Bookworm blog by a professor with a book to sell, one Richard Rubenstein of George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. One interesting fact the professor presents his readers with is that “we are a religious people who will not fight unless first convinced that war is morally justified. This is why virtually every American war has spawned a significant anti-war movement.” Well fancy, the anti-war movement is primarily religious, did you know that?

On China as seen from the sea, the Information Dissemination blog is often interesting. For example this post on China’s strategic weaknesses, and an earlier one on the costs of rogue regimes.

Back to drawing now!

Anti-war and anti-peace protesters in multiple missile launch

Missiles miss target. From The Guardian:

Skirmishes broke out between protesters and police at the first public signing for Tony Blair's memoirs, with shoes and eggs hurled at the former prime minister.

Four men were arrested and charged with public order offences for their part in the protest this morning outside Eason's bookshop on O'Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland, which involved anti-war demonstrators and the Continuity IRA-aligned Republican Sinn Féin, who oppose the Northern Ireland peace process.

Protesters were outnumbered by paying customers, according to BBC News.

Mr Blair also appeared on Irish television during his visit, on The Late Late Show, more of a razzle dazzle affair than the earlier BBC interview, and with nicer looking chairs too.

Terry Glavin has reaction from Ulster Unionists: A Legitimate And Peaceful Request For Cheddar Cheese And Pineapple On A Stick.

Added Monday: Norm attempts a theory of Blair-hatred, and James Bloodworth shows it’s possible to write a list of Blair criticisms that doesn’t mention the war. On the Iraq war, General Dannatt reiterates his own criticism of Blair, a rather different one to that of the protesters.

Try Bob’s election guide

Thanks to Bob from Brockley for his Election Quick Links.

My voting intention is like Bob’s, and Oliver Kamm’s, and Norm’s, though my voting history is not as purist as the professor’s.

I will not be tripping lightly to cast my ballot, as in order to support my party of choice, Labour, I have to vote for a local candidate who opposed the policies that brought me to vote for them in the first place. And of course they also have quite enough policies that I loathe, policies that are far more relevant to some people’s lives than the ones I’m choosing to vote on.

The most depressing part of the campaign has been the fearful narrowness of the response to the whole calling a bigot a bigot business. Some very big investments have been made in bigotry over very many years here. Rather than push against, Labour under both Blair and Brown played along, calculating perhaps that this was a fight that couldn’t be won out in the open. Now it seem that it can’t be fought in private either.

Unlike many other EU citizens resident in the UK, as an Irish passport holder I have voting rights in national as well as local and European elections. I miss the Single Transferable Vote as used in Ireland. It gave the most potential possible for personal expression on a ballot paper, short of actually spoiling it. But I don’t miss it enough to do anything this time other than vote Labour. I’ll be walking with feet of lead on Thursday, and if I lived elsewhere my choice might be different.

Busy below decks

I don’t have much to offer today, but Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence has thoughtfully put together a long list of interesting sites to visit. More here.

In view of such helpfulness, it’s good to see so many Iranians offering the government useful lists of their own. Mir Hossein Mousavi has 5 items on his list of practical suggestions to help them out of their crisis. Tehran Bureau brings news of an even more generous list of 10 items provided by 5 Iranian religious intellectuals. And via Norm, news of 88 professors at Tehran University who also give their government some advice well worth taking.

Bewildering

Alec and Mick on the Nobel Prize for Good Intentions.

And in the comments at Harry’s Place, Mesquito responds:

Meanwhile, his government at this VERY MOMENT is bombing the shit out of the fucking MOON!

But Norm sees justification for the award.

Added, Yoni Brenner in the NYT: Norwegian Word.

Afghanistan: the worst-case scenario

Abu Muqawama on election fraud and counter-insurgency, parts one and two. An excerpt:

I think I have been pretty honest about the difficulties of the war in Afghanistan while at the same time making an argument for why we should continue and even intensify our efforts there. And I would like to think that - for a blogger on counterinsurgency strategy and operations - I have been pretty honest about the difficulty and limits of prosecuting counterinsurgency campaigns as a third party: to a large degree, your success is dependent upon what the host nation government does and fails to do.

The rest here.

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Brian Platt of the Canada-Afghanistan blog rounds up this week’s political punditry on the question of in or out, while finding his own confidence in the outcome ‘somewhat inexplicable’.

Part of the explanation for such confidence may be that, as expained in an analysis piece in The New York Times, there is no good clear option in Afghanistan other than this long haul at ground level. Here’s an excerpt from the article, Crux of Afghan Debate: Will More Troops Curb Terror?

“The notion that you can conduct a purely counterterrorist kind of campaign and do it from a distance simply does not accord with reality,” Mr. Gates told reporters last Thursday. “The reality is that even if you want to focus on counterterrorism, you cannot do that successfully without local law enforcement, without internal security, without intelligence.”

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, concurred, saying the argument that terrorism can be prevented essentially by remote control was “immensely seductive” — and completely wrong.

“We tried to contain the terrorism problem in Afghanistan from a distance before 9/11,” he said. “Look how well that worked.”

More.

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Meanwhile in the UK, Michael Portillo indulges in baby-talk on Afghanistan. Norm decimates his argument. Not a difficult job for him I’m sure, as Portillo indulges in rhetorical moves which have become all too familiar in recent years. One of them is the old chestnut about ‘imposing democracy,’ which I tackled earlier here. Another is the well-worn, to the point of threadbare, notion that to argue for military intervention in case A means one must also support military intervention in cases B, C, and D, because of some common factor between A, B, C and D. Norm deals with this neatly enough:

No, an ambition of political reform in Afghanistan does not in itself mean that 'we should invade China, North Korea, Burma and others'. There's no principle, whether in international politics or in life more generally, requiring that you must not undertake one good project unless you're willing to undertake every good project of the same kind. If there were, the world would be a worse place than it is; you couldn't do anything good, because it would obligate you to do more good than you could. As it is, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan furnished a casus belli by playing host to al-Qaida; winning the war that this led to involves a project of political reform. That the war could also be lost does not falsify this last proposition.

There is another objection to be raised as well. Finding a common factor between cases A, B, C and D does not mean they are identical. For example, China and North Korea possess nuclear weapons, the Taliban do not. Concluding that a particular strategy is possible and appropriate in case A does not pre-judge cases B, C and D unless they are identical, and there are no identical cases, as any grown-up experienced politician knows. So has Michael Portillo entered his second childhood, or is it that he regards his audience as infantile?

And then there’s Portillo’s trivialising of the fight for women’s rights in Afghanistan as trying ‘to make Afghanistan a democracy full of professional women in slinky jeans,’ well, what more would a feminist expect to hear from an old tory?

In contrast, one would hope that anti-war arguments from the left would at least show some solidarity on women’s rights. Um, how does the phrase ‘fluffy issues’ strike your ear?

See also Terry Glavin on women’s rights in Afghanistan and Sudan, and more on women in trousers from Flesh is Grass.

Imprisonment, torture, death, and life - 2

On Mohammad Mehdi Asghari, and on Fatemeh Barati, Kasra Sharafi, Mobina Ehterami, Kambiz Shoaee and Mohsen Imani. Both via Norm.

On Sohrab Erabi, also here and here. How Sohrab was killed.

On the death of Yaqub Barvayeh, on the death of Mehrdad Heydari, on fifty photographs to be identified, on arrests and more arrests.

Revolutions take time.

More from Tehran Bureau, Nico Pitney.

Related: Not now. Not ever.

Imprisonment, torture, death, and life.

Images from Palle Nielsen’s graphic adaptation of Orpheus and Eurydice. More on the artist at the end of the post.

18. Eurydice!

19. Machine-gun

20. No farther

21. Police officers of the Underworld

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From the New York Times, Friday 3rd, Marjane Satrapi writes that to die in Iran is not enough, she must live again in Iran.

The NY Times on Saturday 4th: Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares, a story of torture and forced confessions in Iranian prisons. Also, Clerical Leaders Defy Ayatollah on Iran Election.

Following on from that, Christopher Hitchens on the connectivity between Shi’ite dissent in Iran and Shi’ite clerics in Iraq. Related from earlier, Reject the rule of the dead, on Iraqi cleric and parliamentarian Iyad Jamal Al-Din.

Harry’s Place on the regime’s lies about Dr Arash Hejazi, witness to the murder of Neda Aga-Soltan. See also The Poor Mouth.

Azarmehr on those ever more ludicrous lies, and on the regime’s paid liars in the UK. More on Press TV from Harry’s Place, and they pass on the word, Prosecute the Traitors Working for Propaganda TV. 

Reporters without Borders on the detention and abuse of reporters in Iran, with updates here. Newsweek on detained journalist Maziar Bahari.

The Guardian attempts an accounting of the dead and the imprisoned.

Via DSTPFW, On the streets of Tehran.

Reza Aslan: Strike. Via Raye Man Kojast.

Norman Geras: Wanting the support of others.

Background: On Radio 4, a repeat of the three part series, Iran a Revolutionary State, first broadcast in 2006 as part of Uncovering Iran. Also on Radio 4, In Our Time on the Sunni-Shia split.

All my Iran posts here.

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Palle Nielsen (1920-2000) was a Danish artist who worked mainly in printmaking and drawing, usually in series, often with a loose narrative. His pictures were overwhelmingly of cities, and often of war, with a focus on civilians caught in the midst of urban warfare.

As a young man, Palle Nielsen worked in advertising and illustration before achieving success as a gallery artist. He was strongly influenced by the picture novels of Frans Masareel. Much of his work was consciously political. For me there are occasions where his message grates, but more often I find the strength of his art overwhelming.

His Orpheus and Eurydice (Orfeus og Eurydike) is a series of linocuts, 53 in part one, published as a book in 1959 by Hans Reitzel, Copenhagen. A second volume titled ISOLA an interlude (ISOLA et mellemspil), from 1970, continued the narrative in 42 further prints. A third part was never completed.

Images copyright © the estate of Palle Nielsen.

Western anti-imperialists go home!

Above: animation by Noureddin Zarrinkelk for UNICEF. Here’s an earlier film by him. And a short item on his recent visit to Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.

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On Iran and the Kitsch Left, this is my favourite of the posts I’ve read recently: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by Dave Osler.

More on that theme by Bob From Brockley: Iran and the left, continued, and Iran, drawing clear lines. See also Norman Geras, Peter Ryley, Terry Glavin and Francis Sedgemore.

In contrast, UCU does something right, from Martin, and a declaration of support for the protesters signed by Noam Chomsky even, along with very many others. (Via Bob.)

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Another recent item that stood out was by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, on the prescience of protest. (Via Norm.) An excerpt:

People in free societies watching massive military parades or vociferous displays of love for the leaders of totalitarian regimes often conclude, "Well, that's their mentality; there's nothing we can do about it." Thus they and their leaders miss what is readily grasped by local dissidents attuned to what is happening on the ground: the spectacle of a nation of double-thinkers slowly or rapidly approaching a condition of open dissent.

To see the telltale signs, sometimes it helps to have experienced totalitarianism firsthand. More than once in recent years, former Soviet citizens returning from a visit to Iran have told me how much Iranian society reminded them of the final stages of Soviet communism. Their testimony was what persuaded me to write almost five years ago that Iran was extraordinary for the speed with which, in the span of a single generation, a citizenry had made the transition from true belief in the revolutionary promise into disaffection and double-thinking. Could dissent be far behind?

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A lot has been written on the leading role of women in the protests, see for example links provided by Norm and Martin. See also Roger Cohen in The New York Times: Iran’s second sex. The closing paragraph:

I asked one woman about her fears. She said sometimes she imagines an earthquake in Tehran. She dashes out but forgets her hijab. She stands in the ruins, hair loose and paralyzed, awaiting her punishment. And she looked at me wide-eyed as if to say: do you understand, does the world understand our desperation?

And here’s Roger Cohen answering questions on his reporting from Iran, including criticism of his writings prior to the stealing of the election. For myself I find that criticism overdone.

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Background: from The New Yorker, February 2nd 2009, The Rationalist by Laura Secor, on a dissident economist’s attempts to reform the Iranian revolution.

See also her most recent New Yorker news blog contribution, Burning silence in Iran, on how events are being driven not by the splits at the top, but by momentum from below.

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Updates at The New York Times news blog from yesterday and today.

More also from Azarmehr, Raye Man Kojast, ModernityBlog, Harry’s Place and Flesh is Grass.

In fear of the people - 11

Normblog: Iran x 9.

Azarmehr: More defections from the Revolutionary Guards.

Roland Dodds: McCain is wrong about the Iranian upheaval.

From last week, Stephen Kinzer on Muhammad Mossadeq.

On that last one, I have no idea if the use of Mossadeq’s image by protesters that he describes is widespread, and while his reading of its meaning is probably correct as far as it goes, it also seems rather narrow. The invocation of Mossadeq seems more likely a signal directed internally rather than externally, as a claiming of national history by the protesters rather than a message to Obama on intervention.

Other signals clearly are directed externally, namely the flood of english language messages, via the net, and displayed by marching protesters. These people obviously do want engagement, though as the population in Iran are showing themselves to be the centre of ultimate power, so the greatest power for supporting their fight internationally is probably not in the hands of international political leaders, but in the hands of the people at large. Still, leaders do have a role to play, in not recognising the election, and in the clear declaration of principles that go beyond partisanship.

Today’s updates at The Guardian and The New York Times.

In fear of the people - 5

Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Marjane Satrapi speaking on Wednesday at the European Parliament in Brussels on behalf of the Moussavi campaign. More details at The New York Times.

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In the previous post I noted that The Guardian was the only UK national paper to lead on Iran yesterday. The paper’s news blog has also been excellent at providing rolling coverage. See here for today’s updates.

However, as Norm points out, the paper’s leading Stalin apologist Seumas Milne has proved as reliably wrong as ever. Like Galloway, it seems Milne never met an ‘anti-imperialist’ he didn’t like, no matter how murderous. Milne was The Guardian’s comment editor from 2001 to ’07 and is currently an associate editor. A paper that pays Milne’s salary is a paper I would be embarrassed to spend money on.

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More from today:

From Martin, We just want to be normal, ctd. 

From ModernityBlog, Not just rich kids in Iran.

Today’s updates from The New York Times.

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On the broader implications of events in Iran:

The Poor Mouth points to an article from AP on reaction in the Arab world.

Andrew Sullivan on making the Russian connection, follow up here, and here.

Talking of Russia and Caspian Sea oil and gas, if relations between Iran and the West change considerably, it would make the Russian threat to the Caucasus fuel route via Georgia much less critical.

Michael Totten on the view from Beirut.

A lot of focus has been put on what these events might mean for Israel regarding the Iranian regime’s support for Hamas and Hizbollah, its threats regarding Israel’s existence, its promotion of Holocaust denial, and its nuclear weapons programme. However another aspect to consider is the lesson that it is not Iran’s population that is the problem, in fact they are showing themselves to be the solution. There might be something to learn here regarding how security is to be achieved for Israel closer to home.

In fear of the people - 4

Via Martin, Raye Man Kojast? 

Via ModernityBlog, View from (outside) Iran 

More today from Azarmehr

Normblog: Ideas for you and me

At Harry’s Place, from the people who brought you photoshopped missiles, here come photoshopped Ahmadinejad supporters! And more posts today from Harry’s Place tagged Iran.

Michael J Totten points to Galloway’s propaganda, and to a debunking of it: A Regime Propagandist in Great Britain’s Parliament. More posts from Michael J Totten at Commentary.

At the news stand this morning, the only UK national paper leading on Iran was The Guardian. Incredible.

In fear of the people - 2

More on the stolen election in Iran:

Michael J Totten

Andrew Sullivan

Video on Tehran 24

Azarmehr

Jeff Weintraub

Mick Hartley

Norman Geras

Harry’s Place

The Big Picture from The Boston Globe

Print media roundup at the SWJ - scroll down to Iran

Hangover Monday

(With added links throughout the day.)

European elections: miserable results in the UK, and comparison figures from last time.

Comment from Oliver Kamm: The price of failure. From Marko Attila Hoare: We must defend our Britain and our immigrants from the fascist menace. ModernityBlog: Fascists, ferrets, and how to stop the far right. Bob from Brockley: Post-election depression. Fat man on a Keyboard: Doomed I tell ye.

Your Friend in the North tells how he cast his vote.

Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland are using the Single Transferable Vote system rather than a list system like Denmark or most of the UK, so counting is still going on. I miss the Irish system, it’s the most fun you can have with a ballot paper.

Danish results, gains for Socialists and far right Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party) at the expense of Social Democrats and Radikale Venstre (Social Liberal).  Here’s Politiken’s short english language report.

Lebanese elections: positive news, and comment from Abu Muqawama.

Iranian elections: further to the post below, here’s Norm: Stirrings in Iran.

Not elections: Martin marks the bicentennial of Thomas Paine’s death. See also a substantial item on the BBC News site.

More not elections: Americans for Bosnia continues a series of posts on “Washington’s War” by Michael Rose: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

The author of the book in question is General Sir Michael Rose, commander of United Nations forces in Bosnia from January 1994 to January 1995. Below is a depiction of him from Joe Sacco’s outstanding piece of journalism in comics form, Safe Area Goražde.

Click to enlarge.

Copyright © 2000 Joe Sacco.

Torture and terror

Norman Geras has two related posts that say most of what needs to be said:

Obama and the torture memos

Terror as accident

For myself, what I find strange about much of the animosity towards the phrase ‘War on Terror’ is that the words could be so useful in defining the moral and legal parameters of the current fight. To be against terror should mean to be against torture, against the illegal use of violence, illegal force, illegal detention.

It must be possible for states, and individuals, to use effective legal force to defend themselves and their allies. And it must be possible to detain enemy fighters in war until they are no longer a threat. But for a War on Terror to be all the name implies, it has to be a fight for the interlinked principles of universal human rights, rule of law, and democracy. All of the wrong decisions by the previous US administration on treatment of prisoners, from torture to confusion on legal status, were defeats in the War on Terror.

Added - ED Kain puts it well: stating the obvious.

Bags of money, up for grabs . . .

. . . and Pakistan, Pakistan, Pakistan. Also India, China, Russia, and, um, Iran? And hard, long, difficult, challenging, and hard.

Some words from two conversations about Afghanistan on the Charlie Rose Show. From last Monday February 16th, a discussion with Milt Bearden, Dexter Filkins, Craig Mullaney and Martha Raddatz (via this SWJ post on Craig Mullaney’s new book The Unforgiving Minute), and from last Friday February 20th, an interview with Richard Holbrooke.

Recently I posted on Afghanistan and tea drinking. Here’s a tea reference that’s more to the point, in words from General Petraeus earlier this month:

A nuanced appreciation of the local situation is essential. Leaders and troopers have to understand the tribal structures, the power brokers, the good guys and the bad guys, local cultures and history, and how systems are supposed to work and do work. This requires listening and being respectful of local elders and mullahs, and farmers and shopkeepers – and it also requires, of course, many cups of tea.

That quote was used to open a radio discussion on The Brian Lehrer Show with Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl, all about counter-insurgency and Afghanistan, broadcast on WNYC February 10th, again via the Small Wars Journal.

Also on that same SWJ post, a TV interview with Tom Ricks on The Daily Show. An excerpt from his new book The Gamble, about the surge strategy in Iraq, appeared in The Times on Saturday and attracted the notice of both Mick Hartley and Norman Geras. The headline was Emma Sky, British ‘tree-hugger’ in Iraq who learnt to love US military.

Out with the family on Wednesday, we chanced upon this exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society showing Victorian photographs and drawings of Afghanistan, with a few more recent images included as comparisons. The exhibition still has a few days to run. I would have liked to have spent longer, but Dan Dare beckoned us further down Exhibition Road.

One of the photos in the Royal Geographical Society exhibition turns up in a recent post at Ghosts of Alexander, ‘Afghanisation’, a rather unfortunate neologism.

Two links to close: returning to a favourite theme, from Roland, This is “Realism”? And good news on the Canadian home front via Terry, Jonathon Narvey: Cheer The Hell Up. Of course once you start linking to Terry and his friends it’s hard to stop, but enough is enough is too much.