Great Movies
This seven-minute 2008 propaganda film from the Iranian Intelligence Ministry (Ahmadinejad regime), begins with a White House conspiracy involving an animated Senator John McCain (aka Mr. Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb-Bomb Iran) and George Soros. It's kind of hard to tell who is who, but isn't it remarkable to see them cooperating at all? They discuss a plan to "contact authors, intellectuals, and influential people in society who have common interests with us" -- as well as "NGO's that share our goals" -- to expand on the mind-altering efforts used at international scientific conferences and harness the power of satellite TV to bombard the Iranian people with "regime change" propaganda.
The second part is a live-action espionage Afterschool Special about a young man who falls in with a bad crowd who conspire through such subversive technologies as e-mail to "pass on the instructions we get from satellite TV" and please their "friends in America." (The internal use of Twitter and Facebook were apparently not perceived as significant threats to the government at the time.)
The worst thing the U.S. could do right now is to feed Ahmadinejad's disinformation machine by lending credence to the government's claims that the protesters are not citizens with legitimate complaints but American tools with hidden agendas.
(tip: The Plank)
UPDATE below...
From Nico Pitney, who along with Andrew Sullivan has been providing the best live-blogging coverage of Iran for more than a week now:
4:05 PM ET -- Thanks to President Obama. The National Iranian American Council republishes a letter from an "ordinary Tehrani."
Dear friend, if you have any contacts within the American Administration, please send them this message on behalf of us, ordinary Iranians in Iran (whose interests and concerns are very different from those of the exiled Iranians in the United States and in Europe who do not yet understand the mentality here and who have been cut off from the Iranian society for too long). Tell your contacts in the Administration that their point of view regarding Iran is by far the best position that an American Government has ever taken. We appreciate this and thank the President.
During the last two or three decades not one American president had "understood" Iran. All of them got caught in the traps of the mollahs, despite themselves having to play the bad cop .. but this time the intelligent president has decided not to join in their game, bravo.
It is normal that he is criticized vividly by most of the Los Angeles Iranians (and by most Republicans): since a long time they have been asking for just one thing: that America attack Iran and change the regime so that they get their possessions and their former jobs and privileges back, without wanting to know what today's young Iranian wants here and now. It makes me think of the Cubans in Florida ... they don't consider the interests of their country but only what is due to them.
