This is not a joke.  

Sarah Palin has announced she will resign as governor of Alaska within a few weeks.  She will not run for re-election (well duh, but that's the order the news report put the news down in).

Not much info on this yet as you can see at "CBS News: Sarah Palin To Resign As Alaska Governor" , but remember that she like Mitt Romney had expressed interest in running for Senate seats.  Palin in Alaska and carpetbagging Holy Mitt in Nevada (yeah, you know the state with Vegas and Reno). 

It appears that they've learned somewhere that the Senate was a good stepping stone to the presidency.  I wonder where they got that idea.

But isn't it typical that the Republicans reach once again for the style rather than the substance, for a cheap trick rather than good solutions for Americans who aren't rich and in a position to profit from the sword brandishing of the War Party. 

To really work politics so that the country is better for most people they should seek a different position and start from there.  A position in which one serves the public by utilizing help from many interested people while trying to make sure everyone benefits.

I have two words for you governors:  "Community Organizer"  I'm sure some worthwhile nonprofit is hiring somewhere. 

xI'm a bit disappointed with Mike Scheuer here.  He himself seems to be advocating wanton killing by the United States.  This is the man who decried Bill Clinton's rendition program (which did stay within the law, only  renditioning people legally indicted in whatever country to which they were delivered) because some may have been tortured.  Mr. S explained that, as a Christian he couldn't condone sending a person, even an indicted subject to a possible enhanced interrogation situation. 

But as to the CIA man's remarks: I would say we have seen what kind of violence is not adequate to stop terrorists from attacking Americans, at least in other nations, and that is the kind that have killed from hundreds of thousands to millions (depending on where you get your statistics) of civilians in two Middle East wars, including many many children and the parents they depend so much upon.

So when it seems (and he doesn't directly say in this excerpted dialogue though I doubt the Glenn Beck Show staff left in any mitigating statements) that Sheuer is advocating enough extreme violence to stop terrorism dead in its tracks I think a rational person would wonder how many innocent lives that will cost.

Besides the cutting, I believe many host-friendly guests tailor the remarks they make on talk shows where they are one on one with the host to only cover that which is mostly acceptable to the host.   And I'm sure "Mike" needs the money from the spot and possibly has a book out or is going to have one published and needs his name before the public to get a decent amount of money from it. but still, I'm pretty sure the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit (Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" introduced us \ to "Mike" and news reports after Sheuer left the CIA told us his real name) is having a bit of a problem trimming that beard in the mornings which would involve looking at himself in the mirror.

But then Glenn Beck 'splains it all to us:  Not having and attack by Bin Laden (or other Muslim terrorists) upon our shores is prood that Bin Laden is successful in weakening America, or somehow equivalent to a the major attack from which our government is actually protecting us.

Ouch!

Now I have to go get my head to stop spinning around from trying to sort that out.

1984 is really alive and well on Fox News and in right wing commentary.

Steve jobs wasn't just traveling through Memphis Tennessee missing and needing a new liver when he stumbled upon just the right organ which needed a new body.  Memphis is a locale with a high local availability rate on livers so the Apple chief made sure to become a local boy as often as possible by traveling to the area a half dozen times this year.   No word on whether he also learned guitar, as well.

Details at Bloomberg News "Jobs Travel to Liver Transplant Mecca Shows Organ System Flaws".

Of course, people could wonder about those who don't have the means to travel to Memphis multiple times like that.

Now, of course, once could argue that Jobs is an important person who has done much, but I guess I'd want to know what he's done for the majority of the world, those of us who can't afford an IPod let alone an IPhone.

Until he can say "There's an  AP for that" about income disparity and the medicine and money game, is he really serving the world or just the affluent?

Expat Iranians in Dubai Light Candles for Neda Asha Soltani

Picture allowed via Creative Commons license.  Thanks to "Current News Stories" at flickr.com   No further contribution nor support of this blog by photographer/artist is implied.

The Iranian leaders are lying about the death of poor Neda Agha-Soltan and there is proof right in their own words.

Andrew Sullivan records from an interview by Wolf Blitzer of  Iranian Ambassador Mohammed Hassan Ghadir:

BLITZER: Are you seriously accusing the CIA of killing Nada?

GHADIRI (through translator): We say that the bullet that was found in her head was not a bullet that you could find in Iran. These are the bullets that the CIA and terrorist groups use. Of course they warned that there would be a bloodshed in these demonstrations and then they could attribute that to the Islamic republic. This is part of a common act of CIA in various countries.

BLITZER: Do you really believe that, Mr. Ambassador? You're a distinguished diplomat representing Iran. This is a very serious accusation that you're making, that the CIA was responsible for killing this beautiful, young woman.

GHADIRI (through translator): I'm not saying that the CIA had done this. There are different groups. Could be intelligence services, could be CIA, could be the terrorists. However, these are the people who do these things.

Okay, I've now read note that the original CNN piece did point out the problem with that claim that Neda was shot in the chest, not the head.  Another report I read said the bullet hit the heart and lungs.  I heard heart first, but suspected lungs too because of the way the blood flowed from her mouth and nose in the end. (I'm not a doctor, but obviously the heart has no outlet to the mouth and nose.)

I know Islam has various rules about bodies and especially, I assume, women, but they didn't need to view or manipulate the body to identify the actual location of the bullet.  They only had to watch the video.  The blood did not come from the head at first. Therefore the shot didn't hit the head.  So their claim to have found a bullet in Neda's head shows right away that the government is lying.

They never found a bullet in the head to decide it was a foreign bullet in the head.  This comes from the ruling mullahs that back Ahmadinejad, I imagine, and shows the arrogance of power found especially in leaders of the faithful.  People are supposed to believe  through faith, not looking for evidence in the real world, and that leads some clergy to start creating fantastic lies that are not corroborated by the writings of their faith, nor by the evolving morals of their society.  They've been allowed to push what they thought as the truth for so long that they begin to push for the 'truth' that will make them more wealthy and/or powerful or at least to retain their power.

This is a world wide problem and one of the best reasons I know to explain to people why having a 'benevolent' Christian dictatorship is a really bad idea.  Most benevolent Christians I knew thought attacking Iraq was a good idea at the first because they trusted benevolent (in their eyes) Christian George W. Bush who trusted God who put pictures and Bible sayings on the reports from his Department of Defense showing the president that the Big Guy Upstairs wanted him to wage war.

Blogger Paulo Coelho writes that the doctor who tried to save Neda's life after she was shot in the heart and lungs has fled Iran and gone to London apparently fearing reprisal.

Dr. Arash Hejazi apparently feared for his life after being identified at least among some people inside and outside Iran.

See "The Doctor ".

The news service Al Arabiya which has been banned is making a decent guess at a best case scenario on what can be done to help Iranians recover their democracy, at least a reduced form of it.

The service suggests that Ahmadinejad might use Robert Mugabe's  tricks to subdue a group representing the majority of voters and initialy employing a brutal crackdown and other manipulations to force Mousavi to accept the lesser role in a power sharing agreement in "How the ‘Mugabe option’ figures in Khamenei’s strategy ".

It would be disheartening to think that Mousavi and his followers should have to take a minor portion of power since they seem to have won the election or at least won a way to a second round. The Al Arabiya piece notes that the Iranian people have used their presence on the street to effect a real regime change bdfore (well duh!) and others have noted that Iranian leaders that seem to be in line with the wishes of some of the most powerful leaders who engineered the 1978-79 revolution.

Nicholas Kristoff noted in an online q&A session I can't find again that the key is with whom the military or at least the major portion will side.  Does that include the extra military militia which seem to have firearms, too.  Some of them appear to be non Iranians, maybe even Hezbullah according to people on Twitter align with protestors.  Some of those who are in the streets chanting  have been protecting riot police who get isolated and attacked.  But will those without a stake in the people of Iran switch.  Apparently the regime hopes that won't happen. Still one wonders how much killing a person is willing to do for a paycheck.

From what I'm hearing and reading apparently Iran has gone ahead with a hard suppression of demonstrations.  I'm skeptical that a crackdown could be as brutal as the one in Zimbabwe where Mugabe's people actually let the families and followers of the opposition starve and drink tainted water that killed thousands in his morbid determination to retain power.  I don't think even Ahmadinejad has that much greed for power in him.

 Still I understand that for families in Iran who are feeling the effects of the crackdown, the effects could be devastating.  

Yet there may be hope that some of this could ease within months if the reformists can get the Khameini-Ahmadinejad to return to putting the people first.

We saw the pictures early on of protestors protecting Basij if the security people got isolated.  You would hope that would have had more of an effect.  I read somewhere that there are 300,000 of them, some armed, some on motorcycles, some with guns, and some in uniforms, but some in plaincloths and with nothing but truncheons or hoses.  I saw photographs of the protective efforts of protestors, (unless they were some of the planted plain clothes intelligence presonnel).  

Gary Sick quotes a woman from Tehran's call showing though that people were beginning to talk and bargain with  the Basij and that the Basij were responding.   But the rest of the mini report shows the big danger of the reduced protests.  Their is such a huge intelligence factor in Iran that a smaller presence in the demostrations leaves them packed with spies and Basij.

Still the piece showed how women could protect men who seemed in danger of being beaten by rushing up and surrounding the Basij involved and telling them not to beat the man.  And amazingly the Basij were answering back and explaining that they weren't going to beat him.

That's conversation, that recognizing the other's humanity.  That's what moves the military to side with the people.

And apparently that's what scared the hardline mullahs.*  They had seen this before in 1979 and this time they were on the wrong side.

See Gary's Choices "Don't mess with Iran's women! "

(If you read the piece you'll see that at the demonstration on which the lady from Tehran reported, there were actually more Basij and intelligence agents than real protestors so the leaders soon knew what was going on.)

As anti minority intimidation is increasing the US Supreme Court led but Chief Justice John Roberts has refused to uphold the protection of civil rights in an important challenge to the Civil Rights Act.  A Texas district has won the right via a lower court to opt out of the 1960s law, and the high court refused to overturn the decision, but left the matter for a later day.  (Good, as long as we can keep the War Party out of control we could have a chance to uphold the original law later.)

Justice Thomas (RW puppet that he is) dissented with the refusal to rule on the case obtusely saying he'd stash that thing in the round file as fast as he could.

With the right cooking up new schemes every election to keep minorities from vote we need the voting rights in all its strength to be upheld and honored.

See  details of orginal report on  today's action on the voting rights bill at AP "High court rules narrowly in voting rights case ".

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Pictures of scenes at demonstrations are getting out of Iran. 

We link to some sources below

Picture above used w/ permission via CC license (attribution). Thanks to 'harrystaab' at flickr.com.  No support nor further contribution to this blog by photographer/artist is implied. Click on image to go to original source.

Early on there was the picture of the lone woman defying advancing security troops some have called Tehran's Tiananmen Square Moment.

This Picassa account apparently has many pictures.  I have linked to picture 210 of 500 which is a good one itself, but also notice that apparently 'Life' magazine, a publication that specializes in pctures would like to use some of this person's images.  That's quite an endorsement as 'Life'is known for printing the best looking pictures from the most important events of the day.  I hope they worked something out with this photographer.

 .faramarz's photostreams at Flickr have lots of pictures.  Here is a page from which many of his streams are linked. .faramarz's photos appear to be offered under Creative Commons license (attribution) so can be used by others by acknowledging the source.

Mousavi1388 account at Flickr on the other hand is all copyright protected but free to look.

And our friend .faramarz has a slide show here.  

Searching flickr for iran and protests I don't see much more, but you're welcome to try either at flickr.com or one of the Creative Commons types from this page .

After a while in this video they begin to chant "Marg Bar Diktator" which means "death to the dictator".  It has been quite common in demonstrations so I thought you might like to know.  If you click on the video you will go to the YouTube site which explains the first chant you hear.  In other videos you will hear a call and response (and I'm probably mispelling this, but I've seen it spelled in various ways) Allah o Akbar which containing Allah appears to be religious and was used quite a bit in the 1979 revolution.

Some experts are saying that the current uprising has progressed as much as 3 months worth of the 1979 revolt in little over a week.  

Here's hoping that the Iranian people can achieve their best governance without  much more waiting or bloodshed and strife though I'm sure they are determined and capable of winning it at some time.