In other words, if 1989 is your analogy (and there are reasons it shouldn’t be), listen to the American president at that time. First do no harm. Publicly deplore the violence and remind Iran’s leaders of the universality of the right to free assembly and expression. But do not call for the regime’s overthrow, much less threaten to bring it about. It can be painful to do (mostly) nothing, but acting “flamboyantly”, as the elder Bush so memorably called it, would be worse.

Go read the whole post.

Just by virtue of comparison, other Iowa lib/progressive blogs recent average daily hit counts look like this:

• Iowa Independent 900
• Bleeding Heartland 350
• Century of the Common Iowan 34

Color me shocked about Common Iowan. So, I guess I’m a middling playa in the Iowa blogosphere. Perhaps later in the month I’ll do a more substantial survey to satisfy my curiosity about Iowa political websites in general.

Please feel free to post comments on the blog. I have my spam shields up to maximum. So, commenting requires registration and approval of comments. But I am pretty, um… liberal and really only bin spam. Behave and show good manners and we’ll all be cool.

Lastly, I would like to welcome the small influx of readers from Iran. The prayers of me and my family are with you. Your struggle is having an effect world-wide and forcing people to reevaluate how they think about Iran and Islam here in the heartland. A short anecdote:

Last night I was invited to a local men’s club. This club is probably as good a cross-sample of the male population of Eastern Iowa that you will find outside a tightly controlled focus group. Last night I heard from a number of people who I knew either by reputation or personally to have what I normally would consider pretty simplistic ideas about Iran and Islam… much influenced by the fear-mongering of the Bush years. (Caveat: I don’t know all of these people all that well, but I’m just going by baseline male 20-40-something, Iowan attitude and knowledge level gleaned from living here most of my life.) But from these people I heard a number of statements along the lines of, “I hope they can get it done.” “They look like normal people.” “Who knew Iran had elections?” and so on. This is a pretty profound shift. For most of these people two weeks ago if they thought about Iran at all it was probably in the mental context of “rag-heads,” or “bomb the fuckers,” or something along those lines.

Admittedly these are small steps. But the first thing one needs to do in a war is to dehumanize the enemy. For a long time in this country certain segments of the media and political actors have worked hard to dehumanize the Iranian people specifically, and Arabs and Muslims generally. The events of the last week and-a-half (and also to a certain extent the sufferings of the Pakistani’s this spring also) have begun to tear down that wall of ignorance and fear. In that sense then the people of Iran have already achieved a great victory for themselves and for the faith as well.

Pax Vobiscum

Now to finish my 1200 words and then off to San Francisco for a few days.

In 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church house door in Wittenburg, sparking the Protestant Reformation. This liberation of the faithful from the authority of Rome set the stage for the flowering of human freedom that led in turn to the Age of Enlightenment and eventually to the traditions of human freedom and democracy around which most of so-called Western Civilization is built.

It may or may not be coincidental that it is about 1400 years ago that Muhammed the Messenger (Peace be upon him.) recieved his first revelations from God from which was born the faith of Islam.

It is far too soon to tell where the mass movement in Iran will lead. However, I think we can draw one conclusion from them thus far. What we are seeing is the beginning of the end of Islamic theocracy in Iran and possibly on dictatorships throughout the Middle East.

As Andrew Sullivan wrote last night:

We have long wanted and needed a reformation of Islam and Islam’s relationship with politics. The two are connected: without some civil space for dialogue, how can anyone do the intellectual and theological work to forge a new Islam more compatible with democratic norms and individual freedom. Iran is beginning to show us how that can happen.

This will not look like Western democracy, but that’s the point.

This may yet end badly for Iran in the short term. But I think what we are seeing is the beginning of a years or decades long struggle to redefine Islam and the relationship of the people of the faith and their governments. That was, after all, one of the central effects of Christianity’s own (ongoing) reformation struggle. Such a reformation struggle in Islam can come none too soon. It is also most assuredly going to be as messy as Christianity’s.

Work is killing me. More soon.

In case you missed it, Iran had a presidential election on Friday. In Iran’s quasi-theocratic regieme the office of Presidnent is secondary to that of the Supreme (Religious) Leader, Ali Khameni, but does wield a lot of influence in economic and foreign policy. This is why Holocaust-denying, populist, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been such a pain the ass. Not just anyone can run in Iran. All candidates have to be approved by the religious council. So, this year’s four-way race was between Ahmadinajad, and three other candidates all approved by the establishment. One candidate however, emerged as a “reform” candidate. Mir Hossein Mousavi promised more engagement with the West, more progressive economic policies and improvements for the lot of women in Iranian society.

Long story short: Mousavi’s movement gained momentum in the last days of the campaign. Come election day turnous was a massive 80%. People either in the Khameni camp or in the Republican Guard started to anticipate the massive defeat they were about to be handed. They got nervous. Instead of massaging the numbers, arranging for a runoff — In Iran, if one candidate does not get 50%+1 in the first round there is a runoff between the top two — or otherwise stealing the election with a modicum of subtlety and believability, they panicked and apparently just started making up huge landslide numbers for Ahmadinajad all over the country.

Just two hours after the polls closed late Friday night (after being held open extra hours to accommodate the insane turnout) the government declared Ahmadinajad the winner with 69 percent to Mousavi’s 29 percent. Such a naked fraud as this was over the line, even in Iran and predictably the streets of Tehran filled.

All day yesterday there was a steady dribble of news out of Iran. Mousavi under house arrest. Mousavi supporter, former president and member of the Supreme Expediency Council, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani resigned. Bloody protests in the streets. Web sites and phone texting blocked, but Twitter unacountably not. All through the day and into the night as one twitterer spoke:
ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and shout ALAHO AKBAR in protest #IranElection.

And at 3:30 in the morning, Tehran rang to the cries of, “God is Great.”

Great stuff. This is the kind of thing that makes journalism careers.

Mainstream media coverage, especially the so-called 24 hour news networks — this story is tailor made for them — has been almost nonexistent. The old stalwarts are there of course. The NYT has excellent coverage on its blog, The Lede, along with the BBC and The Guardian.

But the real, up-to-the-minute stuff has been provided by native, Farsi-speaking blogs like that of the National Iranian-American Council and their blog as well as that of Andrew Sullivan and Juan Cole.

Above:A pro-Mousavi protester gives aid to a beleaguered Iranian riot policeman. Source: Getty Images, via The Atlantic Monthly.

Iran’s “Green Revolution” may well fizzle. The country has a seemingly endless capacity to eat its young. It ruthlessly put down student protests in 2003 and in 1995 and fed an entire generation into the meat grinder in its war with Iraq. But considering the huge strategic implications of these events, and the compelling visuals and overall storyline I am stunned that the TV and traditional media isn’t more all over this. But hey, its the weekend.

So, if things in Iran get really wierd and all of a sudden on Wednesday its all over the news and you are all like, “Where did that come from?” Just remember that the Internet has been working overtime while the rest of the media was sleeping.

Update:I originally wrote this up about 3 p.m Saturday afternoon. Since then, the regular news people have been trickling back into their offices and catching up. By Sunday morning, things are more what one would think the coverage levels would be like. Still, here’s your post of links to ongoing coeverage. The blogs listed above are probably still going to be the place to go to follow events in Iran.