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Monday, August 17, 2009

International Right About This

Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 9:26 AM

Might have been very wrong about Lord of the Rings (I read it correctly as the Lord of the Flies, a novel that I like, but refused to believe in what I was actually reading—sometimes I live too much in the head) but I was far from wrong about this:

Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, said Sunday that "we are far from even contemplating such things right now" when asked about reports of Israeli preparations for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Appearing on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," he said that "we are further reassured now that [Obama's] end of the year deadline" for reassessing relations with Iran "has been moved up to September."

Assessing the post-election reform movement in Iran, Oren said that "We know that certainly the Iranian people and even the Iranian leadership is not as monochromatic as we thought," but added, "what concerns us at the end of the day is not so much a change in personalities but a change in policies."

Back in the middle of June, in the middle of the protests that erupted in Iran, I wrote:

The world can see the country you [the hawks in Israel] want to bomb so badly. We see who your bombs will fall on. This is not a nation of Ahmadinejads.

The protests made it hard (if not impossible) to keep Iran in the "axis of evil" club.

Comments (13) RSS

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Where is fancy bred; in the heart or in the head?

Posted by Banna

on August 17, 2009 at 9:49 AM

I'm sure you're the reason they've changed their approach, Charles. Thanks.

Posted by Praise Be on August 17, 2009 at 9:51 AM

What would Frodo do?

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty

on August 17, 2009 at 9:56 AM

Didn't you hear Charles, John Brennan ended the war on terror, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009…

Posted by pragmatic on August 17, 2009 at 10:10 AM

Way to delete your other post, so that people can't see how wrong you were.

Posted by Foggen on August 17, 2009 at 10:10 AM

truth be told, israel wouldn't "drop bombs" on the iranian populace, they'd target iranian nuclear facilities.

Posted by Max Solomon on August 17, 2009 at 10:13 AM

@6 Yeah, good thing Iran's nuclear facilities are run entirely by robots.

Posted by Foggen on August 17, 2009 at 10:16 AM

@7 Not to mention all of the robots that populate the nearby areas, which would of course be immune to all the radiation from a Chernobyl-level event.

Posted by Foggen on August 17, 2009 at 10:21 AM

@6: That's why Iran is placing their nuclear facilities in elementary school basements.

Posted by Banna

on August 17, 2009 at 11:15 AM

Meanwhile, Pakistan and Pakistan actually have nukes, and might use them, or have them stolen, but we ignore the real threat while Israel and the Talibangelist neocons distract us.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on August 17, 2009 at 11:22 AM

The original post, made by Mr. Mudede around 12 pm, EST:

[via Google Reader]

Droit de Seigneur
from Slog by Charles Mudede

The Guardian reports:

The Nobel laureate Sir William Golding, whose novel Lord of the Flies turned notions of childhood innocence on their head, admitted in private papers that he had tried to rape a 15-year-old girl during his teenage years, it emerged today.

For those of us who hate the books that were produced by Golding's profoundly racist (and there profoundly criminal) imagination, this piece of information is not at all surprising.
[Image of Ian McKellan as Gandalf]

I'm a little confused by your original post and its cowardly retraction.

Does racism in LotR strip it of all other value? Does it make any disparaging stories about Tolkien that may surface more credible? Are criminals (if that's what you call Tolkein) worthless?

Is Ian McKellen implicated in Dr. Tolkien's crimes?

Conversely, does this revelation about Golding's monstrous past diminish Lord of the Flies' value?

Posted by jasonsewall on August 17, 2009 at 11:30 AM

Just as predicted by game theory:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/magazi…

Posted by Timrrr on August 17, 2009 at 12:04 PM

"we are far from even contemplating such things right now"

Could mean, "We're done with thinking about it, plans are made, just waiting for another shipment of sweet, sweet, GBU-28 bunker buster bombs from that mean, mean country that's always bossin' us around and never lets us do anything we wanna do, well, other than almost everything we feel like doing.

Posted by CP on August 17, 2009 at 5:03 PM