What good is the United Nations, anyway?

I always thought that the purpose of the United Nations was for countries which recognize each other to come together for the furtherance of peace. That it was meant to be a platform for raw hate and threats of violence seemed anathema to that purpose.

But this week Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - head of a government which has done more to sponsor terrorism than any other during the past thirty years and which has consistently threatened the safety of the United States - has addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations. And once again Ahmadinnerjacket or whatever the heck his name is, has vowed to wipe the country of Israel off the map.

There are two questions that I can neither find suitable answer to or rid my gray matter of. First: Why the hell are we letting Ahmadinejad/Ahmadinnerjacket into the United States? I don't buy into the notion that the United Nations is "neutral international ground". Ahmadinejad is not only the head of a government which has sworn itself as an enemy of the United States, but there has been substantial evidence in recent years that he was involved in the taking of hostages from the American embassy in 1979.

Imadinnerjacket should have been arrested the moment he landed. He certainly should not have been given free parking for his Air Iran jet at Andrews Air Force Base: the same place where Air Force One is kept and maintained.

Second: Why does the United Nations tolerate and even invite the presence of such a man and the government he represents, when neither have demonstrated that they have any intent of civilized and peaceful co-existence with their neighbors?

I understand that in the history of mankind, and no doubt for all the millenea to come, nation will disagree with nation. Sometimes those disagreements come to martial clash of arms. I've never been so foolish as to believe the United Nations could ever bring about total peace on Earth: that would be a miracle left to God Himself, so fallen and inept is the nature of man.

Even so, that whole "swords into plowshares" thing, I thought the United Nations took that seriously. And cheering the mad ravings of a genocidal lunatic is the furthest thing from diplomatic civility in the pursuit of peace!

It's like this: either the United Nations demands that its member states acknowledge and respect the right of each other to exist and to utterly strive to avoid war, or the United Nations stands for nothing more than being a colossal joke sitting on the East River in Manhattan.

One of the bigger criticisms of the League of Nations was that it was too weak to have prevented World War II. Might future history books record that the United Nations was incapable of reigning-in one of its members from igniting World War III?

If not, and if the United Nations is tolerating such behavior even now... then what good is the United Nations at all?

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Why is Jar Jar Binks helping the Iranian military?

The government of Iran is really trying to goad us into attacking them this time.

Never mind their nuclear facilities: look at what showed up in an OFFICIAL photo from Iran's government-controlled Mehr News Agency...

You may have to click it to see it depending on what device you're using. But anyhoo: there's Jar Jar Binks, the much-maligned Gungan hippie that Ahmed Best portrayed in the Star Wars prequels, amidst the clouds of exhaust from Iran's ballistic missile test (which is also obviously Photoshop-ped).

Iran had better tread carefully. I mean, Osama Bin Laden was found to be cavorting with Sesame Street's Bert shortly after 9/11... and we all know how that turned out for Bin Laden a year ago, aye?

Tip o' the hat to my girlfriend Kristen for passing this along :-)

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Iran is now a "nuclear state"

So declared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today in Tehran on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the revolution that put the current regime in power.

Ahmadinejad's basis for this announcement is that Iran is "capable" of producing weapons-grade uranium.

By the same token, the fact that I used to launch Estes model rockets as a kid means that I can declare myself to be a space-borne superpower.

(I'm just sayin'...)

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Iranian government using THE LORD OF THE RINGS to stifle protests

In one of the more bizarre stories to come out of Iran in the past week or so, it's being reported that the country's state-run Channel Two is running a marathon of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, intending to keep protesters off of Tehran's streets and watching the adventures of Frodo and Sam instead. The average citizens of Iran are quite fond of movies from the United States and Europe, but usually only get to watch them once or twice a week on television. Since the protests began, Iran's ruling regime has increased it to two or three movies per day.

Methinks that this might not be a good move on the part of the Iranian government, especially since one of the bigger messages of The Lord of the Rings is that "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future" :-)

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Twitter making Internet news finally come into its own right now in Iran

Twenty years ago this month, the broadcast of the crackdown on the pro-democracy protesters in Beijing by the Chinese government was widely hailed as the moment that international television news coverage like that of CNN became a serious factor at long last.

That was CNN in 1989.

In 2009 it is Twitter, of all things, that is marking the end of television's dominance of the news.

Here's the Twitter feed for most of the "tweets" about what's going down in Iran. At this hour there's a massive rally in Tehran by anti-Ahmedinejad protesters. The police have opened fire and killed at least one person. Just about everything we know about all this is coming from regular people who are sending live reports via Twitter.

Remember this well, folks. June 2009 is when people in Iran took hold of the power of "you media" and played it to the hilt. This is real revolution in more ways than one happening at this moment.

I hope this kind of exuberance spreads to more countries. Including my own :-)

EDIT 2:12 p.m. EST: I made a link to this blog post on the same Twitter feed (#iranelection) and right now, The Knight Shift is getting SLAMMED with more international visits than I have ever seen in the five-plus years of this blog's operation (along with quite a few folks from across the United States).

So a hearty hello to everyone who's finding their way here this afternoon, and here's raising up some thoughts and prayers for our friends in Iran who are taking their destiny into their own hands. May they be an inspiration for us all!

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Iranian irony

I find it a sad commentary that many Americans are watching the people of Iran rejecting the farce of that country's elections a few days ago...

...when we ourselves for the most part are all too accepting of how managed and controlled our own nation's elections are.

Could we ever take to the streets and demand real freedom to choose a destiny apart from that which the two-party kleptocracy and its willing associates have determined for us?

Few things would make me happier than to see the American people wake up and demand that.

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Iran launches first satellite

Just six months after initial tests of the delivery vehicle, Iran has launched its first satellite into space. Early this morning a Safir-2 rocket lifted off from a launch facility somewhere in Iran, and shortly afterward successfully inserted the Omid satellite into low-Earth orbit.

Naturally, some folks on this side of the pond are worrying about Iran using its newfound spaceborne capability to rain nuclear fire down on Washington D.C. or Tel Aviv. But I don't see too much to fret about... yet, anyway. What Iran did today is much more in the league of what the Soviets did with Sputnik. It's a few magnitudes order of greater sophistication to build a working ICBM.

That said, as someone with a life-long interest in aerospace efforts - no matter who it is who's doing the effortin' - I shall be keeping an interested eye on Iran in the near future.

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Kettle calling pot black: U.S. condemns Iranian elections

I wish a lot more people could understand and appreciate the irony of this. I don't have any love for the Iranian government, but for officials of our own to be this blatantly hypocritical doesn't reflect well on us, either. From Reuters...

U.S. says Iran election results are 'cooked'
Fri Mar 14, 2008 7:52pm EDT

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, at loggerheads with Tehran over its nuclear program, cast strong doubt on the fairness of Iran's parliamentary elections on Friday and said any outcome of the poll would be "cooked."

"In essence the results are cooked. They are cooked in the sense that the Iranian people were not able to vote for a full range of people," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said of the poll.

Iranians voted on Friday in an election likely to keep parliament in the control of conservatives after unelected state bodies barred many reformist foes of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the race.

"They are given the choice of choosing between one supporter of the regime or another supporter of the regime," McCormack told reporters. "They were not given the opportunity ... to vote for somebody who might have had different ideas."

(snip)

Mr. McCormack, let's get serious: your own country the United States doesn't even allow its citizens to vote for "a full range of people". Between the Democrats and Republicans conspiring with each other by limiting ballot access, and a complacent corporate media helping them along, the people of our own country more often than not have little choice but to vote for "one supporter of the regime or another supporter of the regime".

Mr. McCormack, shut up sir. You and many others have a lot of nerve in condemning another country's political process, when the one that you help support in your own country is just as damnably corrupt.

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