Month: December 2009

Juan Cole notices an underemphasized detail from yesterday's protests:

The report of attacks on banks makes me think that there is an economic dimension to this uprising. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's profligate spending had provoked very high inflation last year, up to nearly 30%. Although the government maintains that inflation is now running 15%, that is still a hit that average families are taking, on top of the high prices of last year. And, many economists suspect that the true rate is higher than the government admits.

Inflation hurts people on fixed incomes or people who cannot easily raise the price for the services they offer. Since much of the economy is locked up in government-owned companies or semi-public 'foundations' (bonyads), some controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and others by elite pro-regime clerics, there may be a monopoly effect operating from the huge public sector that limits private merchants' and entrepreneurs ability to raise prices. Being 15-20 percent poorer every year would make a person angry.

Enduring America is up and live-blogging:

0930 GMT: Rah-e-Sabz has more [link] on what appears to be a Government raid on the offices of the Assembly of Teachers and Researchers of Qom. Earlier it was reported that Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi, the head of the Assembly, was arrested.

0845 GMT: The Regime (Tries to) Strike Back. Unconfirmed reports that, in addition to the arrest of prominent reformist Ebrahim Yazdi, Iranian authorities have detained Mir Hossein Mousavi’s advisors Mohammad Baghriyan and Ghorban Behzadian-Nejad.

Even state-run television puts the figure as high as 15.

Josh Shahryar wrestles with the retaliatory violence displayed yesterday:

For the first time in 200 days, the Iranian people decided that enough was enough. If the government was going to send goons, then they were going to deal with them the way goons are dealt with. We had seen burning homes, bleeding protesters and protesters being dragged across streets. This time around, we saw burning police cars, bleeding Basijis and riot police being dragged and beaten.

As a human rights activist and an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, I am strictly opposed to violence. What went on in Iran yesterday was anything but peaceful. Protesters fought back and they fought back hard. The level of violence against protesters may have been high, but it was answered – maybe not as violently, but clearly it was.

This prompted many of my friends and colleagues to question their support for the Green Movement. After all, we were expecting a non-violent revolution – one spurred by peaceful protests.

But let us not forget. There is a difference between unprovoked acts of violence against individuals and self-defense. Did we really expect the Iranian people to just sit back and allow the government to kill, maim and arrest people ad infinitum? What would I or you do if someone used violence against us for six months over and over and over again? Are we going to go out and present ourselves as living targets for shooting practice?

(Photo: An Iranian police officer is taken away by people after allegedly being beaten by opposition supporters during an anti-government protest in Tehran on December 27, 2009.  -/AFP/Getty Images)

As reports of today's unrest start to trickle in, here is one final clip from Sunday's historic protests. The image quality is fairly low, but the dramatic details (gun shots, tear gas, chanting, charging the security forces) come through loud and clear:

A reader writes:

I believe you're a bit too bold in your claim of "Massive MSM Fail." You only criticize cable news yet the headline of your post implies a failure of the whole of the mainstream media, which I don't believe is the case. The New York Times featured the story prominently on its home page all day with robust blogging from The Lede. The Washington Post and LA Times both featured the stories prominently on their home pages as well at least for at least part of the day. We need to extricate cable news from the rest of the MSM and understand cable as a beast unto itself.

Your criticism of cable news is justified, however. Their response surprises me, quite frankly. You would think this would be the perfect story for cable to cover: tons of quite captivating footage, constant new developments (wave that breaking news banner proudly), and enough uncertainty to allow for hours of speculation, err, I mean analysis. It's exactly the kind of story CNN is built to cover and can cover quite well if it wants.

Another writes:

You have to wonder with the MSM: what exactly are they doing with all of their famed resources?

Where is all of their amazing technology, their reporters and analysts, their infrastructure? Isn't the point that they alone can cover the truly important stories because of the reach these resources uniquely give them? What a fricken waste! How can they be beat so badly by a bunch of (amateur) bloggers? Where is John King and his famous wall now – and who cares?

One could understand this sort of information and reporting lag happening way back in the 1960s, but not in this day and age. But then, resources isn't really the problem with their coverage is it? Their massive fail is really about their narcissism, provincialism, and arrogance. They are like astronomers who have the world's greatest telescope… pointed in the wrong direction or turned backwards. They're so clueless they don't even know what they should be looking for!  I find the whole thing incredibly depressing.

Another:

I saw that CNN had some coverage Sunday night (around 10:00 EST) with Drew Griffin anchoring, including an Iranian expert and showing a lot of the footage, so they weren't totally out to lunch. They spent a fair amount of time going over the day's events.

Another perspective on that dramatic scene from yesterday involving the police station that caught fire:

The seemingly dead protestor appears to have been hit by that car at the end of the clip. Can any of our Persian-speaking readers make out any details from the men by his side?

While Iran erupts, National Review has many many posts blasting Janet Napolitano for an idiotic interview she gave today and calling for her resignation and yet more posts trying to use the Detroit terror attempt to attack Obama. There is one post about Iran this whole pivotal weekend, and it's by Jonah Goldberg, and it begins with the priceless words:

This should be getting more play.

Conservatism's current priorities: using any terror attack to hurt the president? Check. Watching freedom-fighters risk their lives for regime change in the most critical country for US foreign policy in the Middle East? Zzzzz. Imagine what Reagan would have thought. And weep.

Via EA:

Another clip from yesterday shows what appears to be the same van getting flipped by the crowd:

Details to note: a protestor raises a black helmet, a few protestors hold what appear to be photos of a bloody victim, and a protestor waves a green flag of victory.

Readers keep emailing me to tell me that as far as cable news is concerned, today's events might as well be happening on Mars. I cannot confirm this because when real news happens, the last place I look is the cable news channels. But I cannot say I am surprised. Since this does not have a cheap and easy way to splice into the red-blue fight, they have no idea of how to cover it. One reader writes:

Along with the avalanche of news coming out of Iran (if you know where to look), you wouldn't know by watching the news that there is a conflict that is significantly more than "low intensity" going on in Yemen right now. For instance, did you know that Saudi Arabia has suffered more than five hundred casualties in the last two months fighting a tribal insurgency in Yemen and is launching significant air strikes into Yemen? That's in addition to the strikes launched by the Yemeni Air Force against militants that may or may not have killed the American citizen who was in communication with Nidal Hasan, Anwar al-Awlaki.

And God knows what we are doing directly in Yemen these days.

You wouldn't know any of this if all you watched was CNN, Fox or MSNBC.

You'd think that if the so called war on terror were as life and death as Pete King or Pete Hoekstra would lead us to believe, the press would do a better job covering the titanic events in the Middle East, especially when terrorists are going to this country called Yemen that none of the cable news networks have heard of before for training and logistical support. 

The press is like a cat chasing a laser pointer, pouncing on the illusion in front of them,  pretending that all events occur in an historical vacuum (historical being defined as as far back as the Dawn of Man or as recent as the last news cycle) and that if it doesn't affect a non-uniformed American directly, then it is as good as never happening.

Another: