Fresh Loaf

Moultrie resident Gerald Psalmond is sick and tired of people who believe in the separation of church and state. He’s so tired, in fact, he wrote a letter to The Moultrie Observer saying so:

Why is it that if you believe in another religion or do not believe in anything you don’t respect the believes of the majority of the people in this country? The old saying “when in Rome” comes to mind. If before a meeting in Iran a holy man says a prayer it’s’ok with me, before a game, before a camel race, it’s still ok with me. So for this is our country.

This being politically correct is so infantile it is sometimes funny. The ACLU should be disbanded in this country. They cause more conflict than any other group, they are minority run and controlled. The majority is what is supposed to rule in this country.

Not that it matters, but camel racing is not actually an Iranian pastime.

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Residents will return to the streets of Atlanta all this weekend to voice their support for Iranian democracy.

Locations for this weekend’s protests, which are supported by Amnesty International and the American Friends Service Committee:

Friday (today), June 26, 6:30 p.m.
Lenox Mall on Peachtree Street

Saturday, June 27, 6 p.m.
Roswell Rd. NE & Johnson Ferry Rd. NE, Sandy Springs

Sunday, June 28, 4 p.m.
CNN Center, Marietta Street at Centennial Park Drive

Last Saturday, nearly 200 residents gathered at the CNN Center in dowtown Atlanta to voice outrage over the violent crackdown on Iranians who contested the controversial re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. CL captured photos and video of the rally.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Iranians have got a lot going on.

A typical day for an Iranian consists of: waking up; being oppressed by a fanatical, corrupt, incompetent regime; going to work (if they’re lucky enough to have a job); getting oppressed; spending time with family; running some errands; enjoying an “Ugly Betty” rerun; and maybe some more oppression before bed.

On June 12, the nation collectively carved time out of this hectic schedule to cast votes in a presidential election.

Don’t be mistaken: Iran is not a democracy. It’s a theocracy with many democratic characteristics.
The country’s real ruler is “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He runs an unelected religious gang called the Guardian Council. They’re the government’s highest decision-making body. Among the Guardian Council’s powers: choosing who is allowed to run for public office.

It’s as if a committee consisting of a priest, a rabbi, a Protestant minister, an imam and David Copperfield had the power to strike U.S. political candidates from any ballot.

In other words, Iran’s election was fixed before the ballots were even printed. Fixed. Broken. Same thing.

But that’s not to say Iran’s elections are meaningless. As long as no one questions the primacy of the hats-n-beards on the Guardian Council, Iran actually allows free-ish political debate. Iran’s public political discourse is significantly more open than in the other large thugocracies of the Muslim Middle East, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (both of which are U.S. allies, by the way).

Massive pre-election rallies, as well as very long lines at polling places, strongly suggest the Iranian public is in the mood for change.

Any change will do at this point: change they need, change they can believe in, regime change, whatever. At this point, I’m sure a lot of them would settle for change for a dollar.

Why are so many Iranians eager to turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes?

Because by any objective measure, their current government is a disaster.

(more…)

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Metro Atlantans on Saturday will protest the recent Iranian election and its aftermath.

The event, which has been endorsed by Amnesty International and the American Friends Service Committee, begins at 5 p.m. outside the CNN Center at the intersection of Centennial Park Drive and Marietta Street

From a press release about the event:

“The demonstrations in Iran over the presidential elections have shown the potential for a fully democratic Iran,” said Peter Tadeo, a law student at Georgia State University. “Not only Iranians around the world, but many Westerners as well, have seen the blatant corruption in the so-called elections. I believe citizens of Atlanta should add their voices to the massive dissent in Iran to increase the pressure on the Iranian government.”

“The line has been clearly drawn,” added Ali Parman. “The current regime has murdered its own people because they disagreed with the government. A government which silences its own people with deadly force is no longer a democracy; it is now a dictatorship.”

Organizers of the rally say they are not supporting any candidate or political party in the Iranian election. “This is not for Ahmadi, not for Mousavi. It is for freedom,” said Ladan Mohkami, an Atlanta medical school graduate. “Freedom to vote, freedom of press – a true democracy.”

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>> PROFESSOR OBAMA: An interesting take on the first televised presidential conference suggests, though Obama’s grace under pressure was impressive, his demeanor didn’t convey the urgency his words implied.

>> Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is ready to play nice. Sort of. First America has to fulfill his extensive wish list of actions. Well, maybe if you stop calling the U.S. “The Great Satan. “

>> One in 20 American military servicemen are diagnosed as overweight or obese. How do you manage to get chubby in the military?

>> BAILOUT BONANZA: And the government continues to prove that in America money actually does grow on trees! If you’re already rich, that is.

>> Way to represent, Georgia. It just keeps getting worse and worse.

>> EPIC FAIL: Reinhardt was wrong. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

>> Uh, OK? In an unexpected turn of events, Shepard Fairey — Obama poster boy extraordinaire — sues the AP.

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Barack Obama’s not even president yet, but he’s already honoring his controversial campaign pledge to hold face-to-face meetings with America’s worst enemies. Last week he met with George W. Bush.

Bush gave Obama a tour of some of the White House, including the Oval Office, the Lincoln Bedroom, the Nixon Incinerator, the William Henry Harrison Office Supply Closet, etc.

The pair also discussed policy. Details were scant, but one of the topics likely was the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran.

Obama’s promise to reinvigorate U.S. diplomacy by actually allowing U.S. diplomats to be diplomatic has many hoping our dangerously hateful relationship with Iran might improve.

Improvement is a reasonable expectation. Short of all-out war, relations with Iran can’t get much worse. But don’t expect Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be sharing kabobs and O’Doul’s at the White House anytime soon.

The deep animosity between Iran and the U.S. predates the Bush administration. Heck, it predates Obama’s birth.

(Read the rest, or at least click the link to help artificially inflate our pageviews!)

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Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman chatting about the annual Iranian Film Today series taking place at the High Museum. Films include Unfinished Stories (Sat., Sept. 13), A Few Kilos of Dates for a Funeral (Fri., Sept. 12) and Persian Carpet (Sat., Sept. 6).

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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What a difference eight weeks make.

On May 15, President Bush mocked Americans who want diplomatic dialogue with Iran — comparing them to appeasers who bargained with Hitler:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Last night the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper announced the U.S. plans to open a diplomatic mission in Iran.

Why the about-face? Yo no se.

Maybe those Iranian missiles last week made a bigger impression on the White House than I thought.

Maybe President Bush finally realized that, when oil is at $140 per barrel, oil-addicted nations should try to avoid threatening to start war that could reduce the world’s daily supply of oil by 40%.

Maybe Bush started reading my column.

Whatever happened, I can’t imagine the McCain campaign is pleased with Bush’s flip-flop.

McCainiacs can’t attack Obama for wanting to talk with Iran when President Bush is opening diplomatic missions there.

Bush can do McCain a favor though and denounce himself as an appeaser.

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TESTY: Iran test-fires more missiles overnight, although maybe not as many as it claims.

TESTES: Jesse Jackson apologizes for his bizarre comments about Barack Obama caught by a Fox News microphone he didn’t know was on.

CONSERVATION PIECE: The Georgia DNR is working on buying 1,800 acres of land between Pigeon and Lookout mountains in North Georgia.

BRIAN NICHOLS TRIAL: Starts today.

DNA EVIDENCE: Clears JonBenet Ramsey’s parents in her 1996 killing, points to “unexplained third party.”

PEOPLE: Twenty thousand of them moved to Atlanta from 2006 to 2007, putting the city’s population at more than 500,000.

OUT OF THE BAG: A mysterious spotted wildcat was found and detained in Midtown early this morning. UPDATE: It’s an ocelot serval.

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Iran test-fired several ballistic missiles today. The event prompted the following headline from Reuters:

Iran tests missiles, heightening tension with West

When Israel rehearsed air strikes on Iran last month, this was the headline:

Israel appears to rehearse Iran attack: report

The U.S. has two carrier battle groups within striking range of Iran and is currently holding exercise of Iran’s southern coast. Here’s the Reuters headline for that:

U.S. holds navy exercise after Iran comments on Gulf

So, you see, when two nuclear powers, the U.S. and Israel, rehearse preemptive military strikes on Iran, tensions are not heightened.

When Iran test-fires nine missiles, tensions are heightened.

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HERSH REALITY: Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker that the United States is covertly preparing the battlefield in Iran.

MUGABE: Sworn in as “president” of Zimbabwe following his “win” in the “election.”

UGA IV: Will be buried in Sanford Stadium in Athens today.

CUMBERLAND ISLAND: Wildfire has consumed more than 1,600 acres.

MARTA: Time flies when you’re having gun.

OBAMA: To visit Atlanta July 7, part of his campaign’s strategy to reclaim the South for Democrats.

WRECKLESS ABANDON: A leaking shrimping boat off the Savannah coast becomes the first ship destroyed under legislation passed last year allowing authorities to seize abandoned vessels.

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The man who said that war with Iran “will not happen on my watch” is apparently no longer watching.

Admiral William Fallon, the U.S. military’s top commander of military forces in the Middle East, resigned.

In retrospect, the last sentence of this column may have been wishful thinking.

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From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels.

Apparently, Iranian military boats playing chicken with three U.S. Navy ships off Iran’s coast constitutes serious provocation.

Twice in 2007, U.S. carrier battle groups practiced maneuvers near Iran’s coast while American political leaders hinted at impending air strikes and/or invasion.

Apparently, that was not a serious provocation.

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PHIL WILAYTO (from left), SIMIN ROYANIAN AND ROSTAM POURZAL ARGUE AGAINST WAR WITH IRAN AT GEORGIA TECH: Phil’s way less blurry in person.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan going so gosh darned well, now’s the perfect time for the United States to expand the War On Terror™ franchise with an attack on Iran. The Iranian people are hankering for a heaping cup of regime-changey, smart-bombey goodness. They’ll greet us as liberators. It’ll be a cakewalk. A slam dunk. A cake dunk!

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, three peace-loving killjoys gave five presentations around town arguing against a war with Iran. Rostam Pourzal, Simin Royanian and Phil Wilayto say there’s no evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and that Iran is not a threat to the United States. They want the U.S. and Iran to settle their long-standing differences through — get this — negotiations. It’s just the sort of level-headed, fact-based approach to foreign policy that might end up ruining this country if we’re not careful.

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