What You Do Not Know

Tags: , , Posted 2007-02-02 00:38 13 Comments

[Video Still]
These are images of Tehran, Iran you don't see everyday
(Right-click and hit “play” to start.)

(from, via, via, via, via)

Please copy the flash ani­ma­tion to your site if you’re embed­ding this (right-click, “Save Target As…” or “Save Link as…”).

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  • Bob says:
    2007-02-02 at 6:38 am

    Uh, I don’t see what do you want to mean with this movie. And how it is related to the title and the com­ment about Iraq war?

  • anon from USA says:
    2007-02-02 at 9:11 am

    I really like this. Bob, I got the impres­sion that it was sup­posed to make us think about how sim­i­lar Iran looks to parts of the US, and how dumb it would be to go to war. It would be dumb to go to war against Iran even if Iran looked very dif­fer­ent from the U.S., but it’s eas­ier when Iran just gets seen as “Middle-East-terrorist-evil-Arab.” This slideshow coun­ters that stereotype.

  • Mark says:
    2007-02-02 at 10:50 am

    Yusuf Islam, FKA Cat Stevens, is IIRC a sup­porter of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. He’s as illib­eral as they come at this point, and I con­sider it ironic that Western lib­er­als are will­ing to sac­ri­fice all lib­eral tra­di­tions in order to sup­port such extremists.

    I real­ize that I’m play­ing the Godwin card, but a sim­i­lar mon­tage could just as eas­ily have been con­structed around Germany in the 1930s. The major dif­fer­ence is that color pho­tog­ra­phy is more wide­spread today.

    I don’t want any­thing bad to hap­pen to inno­cent Iranians, but the best way they can avoid armed con­flict is to replace their gov­ern­ment them­selves, with­out rely­ing on exter­nal inter­ven­tion. If they con­tinue to do noth­ing more than plea for restraint from the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity until their apoc­a­lyp­tic lead­ers gain and use nuclear weapons, it will be too late.

  • James Cape says:
    2007-02-02 at 1:40 pm

    Mark:

    I am aware of Cat Stevens/Yusef Islam’s beliefs. I assume “Peacetrain” was part of a long-term Islamist deep-cover oper­a­tion designed to lure America into com­pla­cency before the final blow.

    Actually, ref­er­enc­ing the Nazis means I get to play the Goodwin card. It is also noth­ing but a red her­ring. The Iranian gov­ern­ment is not (AFAIK) mak­ing noises about the re-emergence of the Persian Empire, or send­ing troops into the Shiite areas of Iraq (and if you belief Bush about any­thing related to Iraq, you’re suck­er­ing yourself).

    I don’t want any­thing bad to hap­pen to inno­cent Americans either, but the best way they can avoid armed con­flict is to replace their gov­ern­ment them­selves, with­out rely­ing on exter­nal inter­ven­tion. If they con­tinue to do noth­ing more than plea for restraint from the world com­mu­nity until their apoc­a­lyp­tic lead­ers use nuclear weapons, it will be too late.

  • Adorable Girlfriend says:
    2007-02-02 at 1:58 pm

    AG doesn’t need to see the video. The war in Iraq and any in Iran are not justified.

    Enough with war. It’s passé and it’s weak.

  • Mark says:
    2007-02-02 at 4:52 pm

    I sus­pect “Peace Train” was included in an attempt to con­struct an arti­fi­cial bridge between mil­i­tant Islam and paci­fism. Really, the mul­lahs are all a bunch of peaceniks! Don’t fall for it.

    The Iranian gov­ern­ment is both spon­sor­ing denial that the Holocaust took place and mak­ing moves towards a sec­ond Holocaust. They’re effec­tively try­ing to pick up the baton that was dropped in 1945. Godwin’s Law is a pre­dic­tion (given enough time, some­one will draw an anal­ogy), but it’s not a valid rea­son to end dis­cus­sion, and the com­par­isons are some­times valid.

    Dubya has had the bomb for six years. He hasn’t used it. Ahmadinejad hasn’t yet had the oppor­tu­nity. I hope he doesn’t. Time will tell, it seems. If he launches a sec­ond Holocaust, will you have any regrets? Are peo­ple liv­ing in Tel Aviv and Haifa less inno­cent than those in this video?

    Based on what hap­pened in November, one can argue that the US pop­u­la­tion has already replaced much of the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment. I’ll be a bit sur­prised if a Republican is in the White House in two years. Then again, I’m not con­vinced replac­ing Dubya will pre­vent armed con­flict, though I expect it will effec­tively end US involve­ment in Iraq, regard­less of who wins in ’08.

  • James Cape says:
    2007-02-02 at 7:25 pm

    I’m not fool­ish enough to believe that mil­i­tant Islam is some­how paci­fist, or even that Islam is inher­ently peace­ful or freedom-loving. Without devolv­ing into a Dawkins-esque, equal-opportunity-offensive rant, I’ll leave the dis­cus­sion of faith at that.

    I am also not fool­ish enough to sus­pect that the mul­lahs who are adroit enough to have kept a tight lid on their soci­ety for 28 years are crazy enough to attack a nuclear-armed nation with a well-documented (and well-deserved) para­noia streak. The U.S. — crazy as it seems to be to me — is not crazy enough to attack a nuclear-armed North Korea, nor is India crazy enough to attack Pakistan (or visa-versa). Which brings me to a sec­ond point: Have you con­sid­ered why we have not taken a side in the Pakistan-India tiff, when both of those coun­tries are nuclear armed, run by mil­li­tant nation­al­ists, and have a near-constant bor­der dis­pute? The U.S. has per­sued a pol­icy of brib­ing both sides, which has the side-effect of giv­ing the U.S. a larger voice in their affairs — a voice used to keep a lid on Kashmir.

    Bush’s recent policy-shift in favor of “Nukular India” is widely (and cor­rectly, I should add) seen as an unmit­i­gated dis­as­ter. It was designed to be a pre­ven­ta­tive step against the rad­i­cal Muslims in the Pakistani intel­li­gence ser­vices — back­ing the other horse before a race has even been sched­uled. It’s pred­i­cated (as is your view of Iran, I should add), on the notion that the rad­i­cals will even­tu­ally sieze con­trol and so it makes more sense to sim­ply aban­don attempts to stop them in favor of plan­ning for a “favor­able” nuclear exchange. Of course, by betray­ing Musharraf, it weak­ens his con­trol over his gov­ern­ment, which makes a Muslim takeover that much easier.

    So far as the Holocaust, I’m obvi­ously not in favor of a sec­ond Jewish Holocaust; I’m sim­ply equally opposed to an Iranian Holocaust. And it is very, very well-understood that any attack by Iran on Israel would be met with nuclear ani­hi­la­tion. The “mul­lahs” may hate Israel. They may be anti-semites. But like most reli­gious lead­ers, they love being in charge even more. Bloodying their noses will not calm them down and make them see rea­son, nor does the path you sug­gest have any alter­na­tive but an even­tual genocide.

  • Mark says:
    2007-02-02 at 9:07 pm

    The path I sug­gest, need I remind you, is for the Iranian peo­ple to fix the prob­lem them­selves. Preemptive mil­i­tary action, which I hon­estly and sin­cerely hope can be avoided, might buy some time, but it will do noth­ing to desta­bi­lize the Iranian gov­ern­ment, which is the only way this prob­lem is going to be solved in the long run. Quite the con­trary, as Roozbeh has noted, it would likely only strengthen their gov­ern­ment. Stronger eco­nomic sanc­tions might be more effec­tive at under­min­ing pub­lic sup­port for the gov­ern­ment. It’s pos­si­ble that they’re already hav­ing an effect.

    I’m not entirely con­vinced of the ratio­nal­ity of Iran’s cur­rent lead­er­ship, espe­cially Ahmadenijad. If the Iranian peo­ple share my view, they had best take action. I’ve heard reports that the Iranian nuclear pro­gram has been expe­ri­enc­ing set­backs (e.g. gas cen­trifuges fail­ing cat­a­stroph­i­cally), and I would not be at all sur­prised if their nuclear sci­en­tists are engaged in some cal­cu­lated foot-dragging at the very least. I sus­pect that many of them don’t trust their cur­rent lead­er­ship with nuclear weapons.

  • James Cape says:
    2007-02-03 at 1:05 pm

    The path you sug­gest is to hope the Iranian peo­ple wage and win a rev­o­lu­tion against their gov­ern­ment, and attack them if they do not. If a coali­tion of China, Russia, and some future-militarized EU demanded the American peo­ple over­throw our gov­ern­ment lest they be “forced to act,” the American peo­ple would (under­stand­ably) refuse — and start bur­ry­ing guns and explo­sives in back­yards and for­est preserves.

    All gov­ern­ments are essen­tially con­crete dams, hold­ing back against the pres­sures and demands of the peo­ple within. Smart gov­ern­ments find ways to ale­vi­ate the pres­sures, dumb gov­ern­ments try to add more con­crete; either way, all gov­ern­ments even­tu­ally crumble.

    What you are sug­gest­ing is apply­ing pres­sure out­side the gov­ern­ment as is applied inside, and hop­ing it cracks. The sug­ges­tion is based on the belief that the net force applied to the struc­ture is the key to whether it breaks, while the real­ity is that it is the dif­fer­en­tial force that deter­mines whether it breaks. If peo­ple out­side the reach of a gov­ern­ment want to break it, they need to stop push­ing and start pulling. In the case of Iran it would be work­ing in the other direc­tion, pri­mar­ily by end­ing sanctions.

    So far as the rationality/irrationality of Iran’s cur­rently lead­er­ship, the onus on you is to prove they are irra­tional, since you’re the one advo­cat­ing war and rev­o­lu­tion because they are not.

  • Jesse says:
    2007-02-03 at 10:04 pm

    “They’re effec­tively try­ing to pick up the baton that was dropped in 1945.”

    That is silly bull­shit, which doesn’t merit much comment.

    “If he launches a sec­ond Holocaust, will you have any regrets?”

    And then we have the not so veiled accu­sa­tion of anti­semitism. Excellent.

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