By Allah, what balls
It seems Khamenei and his cronies photoshopped the Ahmadinejad rally yesterday to inflate the crowd numbers, which had already been inflated by Basij militiamen and other Regime ringers. It's not surprising, really: manipulation of images has long been a trick of authoritarian regimes (now you see Trotsky, now you don't). But they may have more trouble photoshopping this:
Those are players from the Iranian football team in tonight's World Cup qualifier against South Korea wearing green to support the protesters. Alas, the team drew, which means they may have played their last international in a while. Let's hope they get to play another. (UPDATE: They missed out on qualification because Saudi Arabia drew with North Korea.)
P.S.: Also, tangentially, I saw a Christopher Hitchens column on the Iranian 'elections' the other day that included this:
And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that "the genuine will and desire" of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with.
Leave aside the merits, such as they are, of his point (I interpreted Clinton's statement as making clear, insofar as the opaque diplomatic language allowed, US support for the protesters). It's that unnecessary 'pathetic' that bothers me. What eventually put me off Hitchens' journalism wasn't his support for the Iraq War, his libels against anyone who disagreed, his humourlessly stupid, sexist article on 'why women aren't funny', or any of the other typical reasons. It was his promiscuous use of the word 'sinister'. Everything was 'sinister'. Search 'Christopher Hitchens and sinister' at Slate, where he has written a weekly column for only five or six years, and you get 49 results, most of them directly from his columns. Sinister things can be 'sinister'; and then pretty unsinister things can be sinister too. It debases the word, and it betrays an obtuse unsubtlety in his approach to writing about subjects. It's as if he can only write at a certain extremity of denunciation and invective, jogging his pen with violent, indiscriminate dislikes.
Hilary Clinton is not 'pathetic', nor was she being 'pathetic' in her statement. You don't even have to be at all fond of her to acknowledge this. Someone like the lickspittle old Clintonite and former Fox News election analyst Lanny Davis - now he's pathetic. But Clinton herself certainly isn't. And Hitchens would do well to stop using the props and stays of prejudice, narrow-mindedness and general bad thinking. Leave that to the mullahs.
Those are players from the Iranian football team in tonight's World Cup qualifier against South Korea wearing green to support the protesters. Alas, the team drew, which means they may have played their last international in a while. Let's hope they get to play another. (UPDATE: They missed out on qualification because Saudi Arabia drew with North Korea.)
P.S.: Also, tangentially, I saw a Christopher Hitchens column on the Iranian 'elections' the other day that included this:
And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that "the genuine will and desire" of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with.
Leave aside the merits, such as they are, of his point (I interpreted Clinton's statement as making clear, insofar as the opaque diplomatic language allowed, US support for the protesters). It's that unnecessary 'pathetic' that bothers me. What eventually put me off Hitchens' journalism wasn't his support for the Iraq War, his libels against anyone who disagreed, his humourlessly stupid, sexist article on 'why women aren't funny', or any of the other typical reasons. It was his promiscuous use of the word 'sinister'. Everything was 'sinister'. Search 'Christopher Hitchens and sinister' at Slate, where he has written a weekly column for only five or six years, and you get 49 results, most of them directly from his columns. Sinister things can be 'sinister'; and then pretty unsinister things can be sinister too. It debases the word, and it betrays an obtuse unsubtlety in his approach to writing about subjects. It's as if he can only write at a certain extremity of denunciation and invective, jogging his pen with violent, indiscriminate dislikes.
Hilary Clinton is not 'pathetic', nor was she being 'pathetic' in her statement. You don't even have to be at all fond of her to acknowledge this. Someone like the lickspittle old Clintonite and former Fox News election analyst Lanny Davis - now he's pathetic. But Clinton herself certainly isn't. And Hitchens would do well to stop using the props and stays of prejudice, narrow-mindedness and general bad thinking. Leave that to the mullahs.