Duck! and Gather

Out of context, this seems like a reasonably interesting video. But in context, it’s moving and powerful. A regime would love nothing better than to find out who this poster is, and crush his skull. They’ve put up every roadblock they could think of up to stop this fellow from posting this video. But he still gets it out.

We’ve read these sorts of stories over and again in the past. But always, in the position of looking back toward a cold history.

But this time, history being made as I write this. I saw a poll on a site asking for a vote on what we think will be the future of Iran. 40% say the reactionaries will triumph, and crack down even harder. 40% say the reformers will prevail and bring light to this dark nation. 20% go ever farther than that.

What will decide the outcome of this nail-biter? The mood of the national army. And right now, nobody knows where that will be.

Amazing, these days in which we’re living.

Back in the summer of 2006, in the heat of the midterm elections, George Allen experienced his infamous “Macaca Moment” which was captured on video and posted on YouTube:

Up until that moment, Allen was considered not merely the favorite for the Senate seat for which he was running, but also for the Republican nomination for President in 2008. But that Macaca Moment derailed Allen’s political career altogether.

This dynamic revealed the truly profound power of YouTube. Up until that moment, YouTube was just the latest fad. A toy for the kids. But the Macaca Moment showed that YouTube reflected a seismic shift in all of public life, not to mention plenty within the private sphere too.

Well, the hashtag #iranelection is presently doing the same thing for Twitter. I think it’s a strategic mistake that Twitter hides that link behind a login requirement. Because the page behind that login gate is truly, historically profound.

Fortunately, Twitter is such a success story already that a growing cottage industry of third party tools and sites expands and embellishes the Twitter ecosystem. Here is a link to #iranelection allowing anyone to see what is going on there: http://wthashtag.com/Iranelection.

What is the #iranelection hashtag? Get on one of these links and find out for yourself. Check out history being made.

Gotta run. People are posting that the Iranian government is onto #iranelection now and is blocking it. Gotta see what’s trending. As I write, it’s 7:08 a.m. Tuesday morning in Tehran. Maybe some of the kids there are up and tweeting again. Hope they’re safe. See ya.

Boy, this is one unproductive day for me. Blog-o-rama. Many thoughts coming from this shooting today at the Holocaust Museum in DC. Here’s my next one:

I’m one of the people driving the up the viewer numbers on the stormfront.org discussion forums today. Probably the most important topic in those forums is one, originally posted back on March 20, 2004, entitled “White Racialist Treasure: James von Brunn“. Before today, that topic had drawn only 4 posts in total. But after the events of today, that topic now has 42 posts and counting.

One of the main themes of people posting today is the following: Why does the media focus on stories like this one, but then all but ignore horrific Black-on-White crimes? Reading through these posts, I have learned about a number of truly disturbing recent crimes against white people perpetrated by black people.

I’ll have to agree that these stories have been relatively “buried” by the media. To give an example, my Google personal home page lists the top 3 current stories on Reuters, and the top 3 current stories on the New York Times. I check these lists multiple times per day. I can’t remember stories about the horrific crimes mentioned by these Stormfront posters making their way into those two top-3 lists.

Why? Well, the Stormfront posters say that the reason for this is that the media is controlled by White-hating Jews.

I disagree. Instead, I’ll offer a different reason for this disparate treatment by the media. That reason is the following: the shooting in DC today was the Tip of an Iceberg; the crimes cited by the Stormfront posters are not. Tips of Icebergs are quite interesting; random human depravity is less so.

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OK. So I couldn’t summon the motivation to watch the whole 10 minutes of it either. But just skip forward to the last minute or so and you’ll get the flavor.

I found this fellow starting with a Google search for James von Brunn, and following the links. Mr. von Brunn has opened up a fissure in the firmament. Who needs the Southern Poverty Law Center and their list of Right wing nutjobs? The wackos are on the web!

Well, to end this post on a high, I did some searching to find info on Mr. von Brunn’s youngest son. Turns out this 88-year-old had a kid at 55. What a stud!

Anyway, that would make the kid 32 or 33 today. The kid’s name is Erik von Brunn. A little Googling, and ipso presto, we come upon a new blog written by someone named “Erik von Brunn”.

The picture of the fellow looks like somebody in his early thirties. Same guy?

I don’t know. But could be.

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In my last posting, I noted that in his lecture last night, Rick Santorum failed to once mention the “elephant in the room” of his talk. Santorum’s talk focused on the threat of radical Islamic fanatics getting hold of nuclear bombs and setting them off in our cities. The elephant in the room of his talk was Pakistan. That is, Santorum went on and on about Iran. But he never so much as even mentioned Pakistan.

In my last posting, I speculated on a reason why he ignored Pakistan. My answer is that Santorum has a gaping blind spot arising from his Christian fundamentalism. This post seeks to explore that answer further.

We start by noting that Santorum’s focus on Iran, and his ignoring of Pakistan, mirrors the public approach of Israel to those two countries. Indeed, in his talk, Santorum cited Israel’s positions on Iran to buttress his own arguments.

Like Santorum, Israel doesn’t have much to say about Pakistan either. Isn’t that interesting? Here is Pakistan, the home of the very sort of crazy Muslim fanatics who want to “push Israel into the sea” and to smite the “Great Satan” that is America. And here is Pakistan, an unstable country that has dozens of nuclear bombs.

To any citizen concerned with nuclear winter being caused by crazy religious nut-jobs, Pakistan is Ground Zero.

But not to Rick Santorum. Nor to Israel. Why is that?

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Went to a lecture tonight given by Rick Santorum at Stanford. My mother-in-law invited me. So I said: “Why not?”

Last I heard about Santorum was during those days when the Christian fundamentalists we’re pushing for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. I remember Santorum being quoted comparing gay sex with bestiality in his arguments against gay marriage. So heading to the lecture tonight, my expectations for this particular fellow were rather low.

But he exceeded my low expectations. In fact, I was impressed by him. I mean, having served as a “hatchet” guy for the reactionaries in Congress, I was surprised to learn that, since he was booted out of the Senate in 2006, Santorum has spent his time boning up on history, and engaging his intellectual enemies. Quite admirable of him.

Made me feel even better about America than before. I mean, here was a true believer of the reactionaries. A genuine fire-breathing asshole. And yet, in person, he comes across as nothing but a passionate, well-read, harmless goober, with a certain charm. If that’s a “bad” guy in America circa 2009, then this is one great country.

Well, this is all by way of saying that, boy, this dude seems to be missing something huge. It’s like this huge thing is sitting in his blind spot. He reads, and reads, and reads. He talks, and talks, and talks. He listens, and listens, and listens. And yet this huge thing is still in his blind spot.

Why can’t he see it? I think the reason for it is his own personal fundamentalism. I suspect that that aspect of him blinds him to the most obvious things.

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