Anastasia has it right — “It seems very weird and off, somehow, to be writing about the arts of the Muslim world (or anything else, for that matter) instead of what is going on Iran right this minute.” Check Andrew Sullivan, Nico Pitney, The Lede and many others for ceaseless, awe-inspiring updates.
Just thought I’d note that Glenn Greenwald is adopting a maddeningly passive, wait-and-see attitude on Iran, subtly undermining the protest movement and giving more benefit of the doubt to Khameini’s fascist regime than he has ever given to the Obama administration, which he hammers on a daily basis for backsliding on liberty.
I’m going to leave the debate about whether Iran’s election was “stolen” and the domestic implications within Iran to people who actually know what they’re talking about (which is a very small subset of the class purporting to possess such knowledge).
The election was stolen, Mr. Greenwald, not “stolen.” In fact, it wasn’t even an election. Fair enough, let’s defer to the experts — but instead of recycling the cliche that the Iranian protesters are all “middle class and cosmopolitan” and Ahmadinejad’s ranks are filled with the noble, rural poor (in fact, the pro-Ahmadi rallies are being photoshopped by the regime to appear larger), let’s pay attention to experts like Trita Parsi, who note that Mousavi’s supporters hail from a range of class backgrounds.
Again, Greenwald continues to blast the Obama administration, mercilessly, on issues of torture accountability, indefinite detention, government secrecy and etc. Right now in Iran, the torture is happening in broad daylight, on the street. And Greenwald stuffily tells us to keep calm.
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