The Nobel Committee’s unexpected announcement that President Obama would receive this year’s Peace Prize was an extraordinarily atypical choice.  Not since the Committee awarded the 1971 prize to Willie Brandt, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (in recognition of his Ostpolitik strategy, which sought to engender a rapprochement between East and West Germany but which had not yet borne fruit) had the committee chosen hope over results.  Obama can only hope that the Committee’s optimism proves as prophetic as it did in the case of Brandt.

I would have prefered that the Committee select a human rights activist this year, particularly given the large number of candidates who are more than worthy of the honor.  In addition, Obama’s pragmatic approach to foreign policy has, at least to date, de-emphasized human rights in favor of other (albeit legitimate) goals.  When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said before her first trip to China that human rights would not be on the agenda, it set off alarm bells in the human rights community. Obama’s recent decision not to meet with the Dalai Lama during the latter’s recent trip to the United States didn’t help, nor did the Administration’s recent moves toward ending past Administrations’ policies of isolating Burma.

In each of these cases, pragmatists can make a plausible argument that human rights must take a back seat.  The problem is that when human rights regularly finds itself not only in the back seat but the rear view mirror, those risking their freedom (and sometimes their lives) to bring about peaceful change in their countries might start wondering whether the United States intends to remain their advocate and friend.

So in the spirit of hope — and acknowledging that, in our opinion, Obama will prove himself worthy of the honor here are five individuals/groups who could have benefitted much more than the President:

Saad Ibrahim, a renowned human rights activist and professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo.  Ibrahim is best-known leader of the Egyptian human rights movement and has helped inspire human rights movements throughout the Arab world.  Over the past thirty years, Ibrahim has spent countless months and years in jail. He founded the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, which focuses on democratization and political and social development.  Ibrahim and his colleagues were jailed once again in 2001 on trumped-up charges.  Ibrahim left Egypt in 2007, after serving 10 months of a seven-year sentence, when he obtained a foreign grant to study abroad.  In May 2009, an appeals court overturned his conviction and he returned to Egypt just two weeks before President Obama delivered his ground-breaking speech in Cairo.

Mir-Hussain Moussavi and the Iranian people.  As a candidate for President of the Islamic Republic of Iran during June 2009 elections, Moussavi found himself in the middle of a sudden peaceful uprising dominated by young Iranian voters after official election bodies and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei quickly declared incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner.  What took place in the days and weeks that followed, captured the imagination of the entire world, if not the Iranian government.  Iranians went into the streets by the thousands to protest what appeared to be a rigged election for Ahmadinejad.  Persuaded that change was truly afoot, Moussavi grabbed the reins of leadership by urging daily protests, joining many of them, protected by others who feared he would be arrested.  The protests continued, hundreds have been arrested and jailed.  But when an Iranian police sniper murdered Neda, the protests escalated with crowds chanting her name. (Historically, the Prize has not gone to the deceased.)

Dr. Sima Samar, a physician and women’s human rights activist from Afghanistan, who is the Chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and since 2005, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan.  Since the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, Dr. Samar has been working on behalf of the women and children.  After losing her husband when fleeing the Soviets in 1987,  Samar established ten clinics and four hospitals for women and children, as well as schools, serving more than 17,000 students.  She worked in refugee camps for diplaced Afghanis, distributing food aid, information on hygiene, and family planning.  She has been quoted as saying:  “I’ve always been in danger, but I don’t mind.  I believe we will die one day so I said let’s take the risk and help somebody else.”

Morton Tsvangirai, the prime minister of Zimbabwe, entered a sharing power agreement in February 2009 with controversial President Robert Mugabe after fighting against him and his despotic rule for ten years as the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change.  Mugabe’s despotic rule of Zimbabwe has produced a society increasingly in chaos, including a destroyed economy that had such high inflation that one of Tsvangirai’s first acts was replacing the Zimbabwean dollar with the U.S. one.  Only seven days following his election to the prime minister-ship, Tsvangirai’s wife of 31 years and his closest political advisor, Susan Tsvangirai, was killed in a car crash that is believed to have been orchestrated by Mugabe.  Tsvangirai has a tough path to cut for bedraggled Zimbabweans, especially with Mugabe loyalists controlling the attorney general’s office and all security mechanisms.  Yet since he has taken over the reins of government, industrial production jumped to the highest levels in years, evidenced by an economy that grew by 3.7 percent in the past year, according to the World Bank.

Liu Xiabo, Chinese dissident, academic and the co-author of the pro-democracy manifesto Charter 08, which called for expanded freedom of expression and elections in China, has been in prison since December 2008, although not formerly charged.  According to media reports. Liu’s imprisonment appears to be in violation of China’s rule of law which allows for six months in jail without charges, yet when the government was pressed by his legal counsel in June, officials responded that Liu’s case was being properly handled.  It is believed that Liu will eventually be charged with crimes based upon articles he published, but not because of his work on behalf of Charter 08.  Liu is no stranger to China’s prisons, as he was jailed for his participation in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests as well as repeatedly in the 1990s.  Despite this harsh treatment, Liu remains one of China’s most outspoken critics.

I do hope Obama is true to his promise that he will accept the Nobel for all those around the world who walk, march and agitate for justice and will continue to honor these brave souls in words, but also by his deeds.

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Please check out my latest Care2 post, which looks what a really, really, really crappy week Mahmoud Ahmedinejad just had.  Here’s a taste:

Now [the second nuclear facility] is not merely a small building in the desert.  Nope. It’s a Dr.-Evil’s-secret-complex-in-the-mountain kind of facility.  And the Administration went public at least in part to demonstrate to the Iranians that it had the intelligence capacity to find out about such stuff.  In response, Ahmadinejad canceled subsequent media appearances, including a press conference scheduled to take place this afternoon.

Maybe Ahmadinejad can convince the West that it’s an amusement park ride.

You can read the whole thing here.

If you’re curious where the photo comes from, check out my post from last summer about Iran’s secret missile photoshop project.

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Sometimes it’s better to just start with the video (h/t):

Ahmadinejad is a lot of things — a dictator, a liar, a hate-monger, a killer, and a buffoon.  Watching him smile while Couric showed him that picture eliminated any doubt in my mind that he is also a very dangerous psychopath.

Kudos to Couric for calling him out and doing it in the most devastating way possible.

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I had hoped to provide some analysis on Iran’s election, but I’m pretty late to the game and there’s already a lot of good commentary out there.  In fact, I think Michael Tomasky hits many of the points I would have made, particularly that what Ahmadinejad (and others running the country) did is tantamount to a coup:

The way the customs and normal practices were broken; the way the results were announced so prematurely; the way the internet and cell-phone capabilities were shut down; the way dissent is being shut down. These are anti-democratic practices to put it mildly, and they are hallmarks of coup-like behavior. In any case “coup” isn’t a legal term and there’s a bit of subjectivity in it.

And as to the results themselves. I mean, honestly, people. A guy who was polling at 39 percent a few days earlier got 64 percent?  Fine, fine, polls may be unreliable, but that is a new definition of unreliable.

Or consider this. According to figures, 11.2 million more Iranians voted this year than in 2005. And Ahmadinejad allegedly received 7.2 million more votes than he did in 2005. That would mean that the incumbent got about 65 percent of all new voters.  Really? In a country with double-digit unemployment, inflation near 25 percent, and the bulk of his populist promises from four years ago not only not delivered on but crashing to failure?

. . .If you’ve managed the economy that badly and the electorate bulges by about 28 percent (roughly speaking, 40 million to 29 million), I don’t care how adept you are at religious demagoguery, you are not getting 65 percent of that 28 percent.  If you can demonstrate to me that anything like this has ever happened anywhere, I will look into it and report back fairly. But I doubt you can. Remember, we’re talking 25 percent inflation.

I would likely have bought it, as would’ve most people, if they’d followed procedures and announced on Sunday morning that Ahmadinejad got 52 or 53 percent. So it’s not that I (and others) don’t imagine he could have won. It’s about the circumstances, and to some extent the highly improbable 64 percent number.

That was my first reaction as well:  64 percent?  Really?  You’d think that authoritarians would have figured out by now that if you’re going to steal an election you should at the very least look credible.

I’d find it interesting to see another number here:  what percentage of the electorate is in Tehran as opposed to other parts of the country?  If Iran is like many countries outside the West, a huge percentage of its population is in its largest city.  This is important for one simple reason:  Mousavi’s strength is primarily in Tehran.  If the population in the outlying regions is larger, then an Ahmadinejad victory is slightly more plausible.

The best way I can make this point is to pass on two photos from The Big Picture blog.  First, a voter in Tehran:

Next, a line of voters in Qom:

I want to be careful not to oversimplify this.  The Big Picture also has photos of a woman in full hijab voting in Iran.  And clearly Ahmadinejad had significant support in Tehran, particularly among older and male voters.   But as Tomasky noted, the notion that 65 percent of those who did not vote in the last election chose Ahmadinejad stretches credulity, particularly given the fact that his campaign never demonstrated any Obama-esque organizational capacity.

As I write this, the situation remains in flux.  Mousavi’s supporters continue to demonstrate, in defiance of a ban and despite beatings over the weekend, and Mousavi himself appeared at a major rally in downtown Tehran.  And Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni has urged an review of reports of irregularities (which may be a tacit recognition of the absurd outcome or may be merely a stalling tactic designed to slow down or stop the street demonstrations).

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall wonders whether Khameni’s call for a review of the results is the first crack:

On the face of it, Khamenei could call for a review and then decide that it all checks out and that’s the end of it. But it’s my experience that that’s not how these things play out. When regimes ride these crises out successfully they almost always do so with a united phalanx. You simply do not grant the premise of the critics. Force, much as we like to think otherwise, is often quite efective. (See Tienanmen [sic] Square.) Once you do, once you legitimize the premise of the protests, which can quickly shift the momentum of the drama, it’s a very slippery slope for the regime.

Perhaps more fundamentally, the people running the regimes aren’t idiots. They know the pattern too. And the decision to break the united front, to get into a discussion of the legitimacy of claims against the regime, usually signals internal dissension that is making that united stance unsustainable. In other words, this sort of development is perhaps not a cause of regime weakness but a symptom.

There’s some merit to his point, but as he himself notes, this might be a pro forma move designed to add further legitimacy to the results.

The other big unknown, of course, is the response of the Obama Administration.  To date, it’s been pretty muted, which some on the right have regarded as an abandonment of Iran’s pro-democratic forces.  But as Spencer Ackerman has noted, the Iranian-American community doesn’t want the Administration to say much right now, recognizing that anything other than a call for respect for human rights would in all likelihood be counterproductive.

UPDATE:  Via Andrew Sullivan, who has done extraordinary work tracking the events in Iran, raw video of today’s demonstration:

Photos:  Qom — AP/Kamran Jebreili; Tehran — REUTERS/Caren Firouz, both via The Big Picture and used under the principle of fair use.

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I’ve been holding off commenting on this story until I could hear about the results of the conference call the McCain campaign held this morning in response to this Washington Post article:

[S]ome of [Al-Qaeda's] supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to [their goals].  “Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush. . . .

In language that was by turns mocking and ominous, the newest posting. . .suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.  “It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda,” said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. “Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America.”

In response, the McCain campaign got foreign policy spokesman Randy Scheunemann and raving right-wingnut ex-CIA director James Woolsey on a call with reporters and bloggers.  Of course, the very fact they were holding a call probably indicates that there’s a problem.  Dave Weigel reports on the results:

Schneuemann and Woolsey attacked the paper for selectiveness and unfairness, listing supportive things said by American enemies like Ghadaffi about Obama that the Post never covered. Plus, according to Woolsey, there’s no way a serious Al-Qaeda blogger could support McCain.

This individual knows that an endorsement by him is a kiss of death, figuratively. He is not trying to help John McCain.

The first question: If this was a bad faith comment meant to hurt McCain, how do we know comments from Ahmedinijad about Obama aren’t meant to hurt the Democrat?   Woolsey:

Any major organization, itself, will not take the risk to depart from the party line.

Okay, let’s dissect this a bit.  If you are to believe the Wingnut Twins, the the Post’s alleged failure to cover past favorable comments by Ghadaffi and Chavez somehow makes their coverage of Al-Qaeda’s commentary on McCain somehow illegitimate.  This defies logic for several reasons.

To begin with, other outlets, including the Associate Press, reported the story as well.

Second, the Post, like every other media outlet, has reported on stories where the McCain campaign (and others) suggested that foreign leaders’ preference for Obama made him unfit for office.  Post columnists like Charles Krauthammer have hammered this home again and again.  And that doesn’t even touch on the mini-controversy caused by the fact that a Hamas spokesman at one point said he would favor Obama.

Third, the standard isn’t whether the Post covered it, but whether the McCain campaign itself thought similar stories were newsworthy.  McCain and his surrogates have hammered Obama on both his “no preconditions” speech and the Hamas story, among others.  The campaign and its stalking horses in the blogosphere have even brought up favorable comments by Obama’s supporters, trying to use his followers’ statement to link him to Chavez, the Castros, Ahmadinejad, and even Che Guevara. Only now, when the tables are turned, is this somehow off limits.

Fourth, what do you think whould have happened if the press reported that al Qaeda actually preferred Obama?  Woolsey and Scheunemann would be frothing at the mouth, and Schmidt and company would have a new ad up saying Osama hearts Obama.

Fifth,  John McCain has repeatedly criticized Obama for expressing a willingness to violate Pakistan’s sovereignty to “take out” Osama bin Laden.  It is Obama, not McCain, who has promised to redirect resources currently used in Iraq to win the war in Afghanistan.  It is Obama, not McCain who poses the greater threat to al Qaeda.  So to suggest that this was designed to hurt McCain because he is the bigger threat is to ignore the facts.

Last but not least, the CIA, among others, has noted that Osama bin Laden’s 2004 video, released four days before the Presidential election, played a significant role in pushing a number of undecideds toward Bush — which was exactly the result bin Laden wanted.  If, as Scheunemann and Woolsey would have you believe, al Qaeda fears McCain more than Obama, wouldn’t it make sense that they would avoid taking an action that would tilt the election toward McCain?

The McCain campaign can’t have it both ways.  They can’t argue that other foreign nutjobs’ apparent support for Obama proves he is unworthy to be President and then claim that these nutjobs’ support for McCain proves that he is the bigger threat to terrorism.  You also can’t suggest that al Qaeda’s support for you is fake and that Ahmedinejad, Chavez and others’ support for Obama is sincere.

Oh. Wait.  It’s the McCain campaign.

Inconsistency and double standards are their preferred tools.

Never mind.

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There’s been a proliferation of Palin humor today:

1.  Via the Channel 9 News blog in Chattanooga, TN

2.  Via Slog:  It’s Palin Bingo!

I still wish I had included Ahmadinejad in our version.

3.  Via numerous sources — first place I saw it was Political Wire — Sarah Palin’s cheat sheet:

Link to your favorite Palin pr0n humor in comments below.

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This is a fairly long post.  I hope you find it worthwhile.

I’m a big fan of Errol Morris, the terrific documentarian whose latest film, Standard Operating Procedure, is a devastating dissection of what happened at Abu Ghraib and how it reflects an Administration unconcerned with the Constitution, morality, or America’s standing in the world.

But liking Morris’s work doesn’t mean that I always agree with him.  Take his oped in today’s NYT, which concerns the recent (largely online) kerfuffle over doctored photos of an Iranian missile test.  To understand how wrong Morris is, we need to take a look at the photos in question.

But first, for those who aren’t aware of the controversy, a quick recap:  last Wednesday (July 10), Iran conducted a missile test.  Initial media coverage made it sound like Iran had significantly expanded its capacity to attack Israel and the United States:

Iran demonstrated its military force with the test-flight of nine long and medium-range missiles in the strategic Strait of Hormouz…. Tehran said the exercise was in retaliation to threats from the US and Israel over its disputed nuclear projects, which it claims are civilian.

Then people started taking a closer look at the photos released by the Iranians in conjunction with the test.  Let’s start with the one distributed by the Associated Press, among others:

Now here’s the version distributed by Agence France Presse (AFP):

Whoopsie!  One of these things is not like the other.

As reported on The Lede, a NYT blog, AFP subsequently withdrew their shot because it was “digitally altered.”  AFP said it got its version from Sepah News, the press arm of the Iranian Revolutionary National Guard, those paragons of truth, accuracy, and good reporting.

Now let’s return to what Morris had to say about the controversy:

[W]hat is the purpose of these Iranian missile photographs? They are clearly altered. The question remains: Why, and to what end?

The government of Iran could not have created a more self-serving controversy. It has focused our attention on Iranian military might more than ever. What will we remember — the digital manipulation of this photograph or the missiles streaking into the sky with their contrails of smoke? Will we ask about essential details — the range or the payload of these weapons? All we are left with is a threat in visual form.

The photographs tell us little about the real threat of Iran. The danger here is not in three missiles versus four. We do not understand the intentions behind the photograph — real or digitally manipulated. Is it a threat? A warning? Or a bluff? All we really know about the photograph is that the government of Iran wanted to get the attention of the world, and it succeeded.

Morris is a brilliant filmmaker and, from what I’ve heard, an equally talented photographer. But he totally misses the point here.  Iran is less ominous and scary as a result of this, not more.  At best they’re bumblers; at worst, they’re complete idiots.

Think I’m mistaken?  Just take a look at posts on sites like Boing Boing (”Iran:  You Suck at Photoshop”), and Wired’s Danger Room (”Attack of the Photoshopped Missiles”).   Netizens are having a field day not only mocking the Iranians but creating their own versions of the photo.  In fact, we should give Ahmadinejad credit here.  For one brief shining moment, liberal and conservative bloggers came together to abuse Iran.

The results are priceless.  Here are a few of my favorites (and yes, I know there are quite a few, but hey, it’s my blog):

Are We Lumberjacks:

Cowicide on Flickr:

Fark:

Snapped Shot:

The Mini Blog:

Are We Lumberjacks again (this is my personal favorite):

PolitiComix:

Fark, again:

And again:

And last but not least, Giant Ideas:

So in sum, the Iranians managed to take something that should have been deadly serious and turned it into one big SNL skit.  As “Farmer Dave,” a commenter on Boing Boing put it, “You know, if you’re going to play at the planet’s ‘adult table,’ you really, really, need to make sure you don’t have idiots in your propaganda office.”

But even that isn’t even the complete story:  there’s a very real possibility that the whole “crisis” is much ado about nothing.   Arms Control Wonk:

Yes, Iran has claimed that it is working on a longer, possibly two-stage [missle], with a 2,000 km range — but that ain’t what Iran launched.

Our intern — a clever kid from MIT named Nick Calluzzo — points out that the external dimensions of the tested Shahab-3 are identical to previously tested missiles. Which means the missiles are probably identical.

[Calluzzo:] “Based on analysis of the available launch footage, it is apparent that the missile launched yesterday is, in fact, an older, shorter range version [of the ] Shahab-3A…. [T]he missile launched today is just the same 1,200 km range Nodong-1 knockoff the Iranians have had functional since as early as 1998.”

So in other words, the Iranians just tested a missile that they’ve had in their arsenal for ten years.  Despite this, one of the four missiles “tested” didn’t fire properly.  So to cover up the fact that a decade-old system really wasn’t working properly, they decided to photoshop the results.

And guess what?  It worked.  Set aside the photoshopping issue for a moment and realize that the media ran with a story that wasn’t news.

Furthermore, reports of a second missile test on Thursday also were overblown.  Apparently the only missile tested was the one that didn’t fire on Wednesday — the one sitting on the ground in the AP version and photoshopped into the AFP version.

Now let’s put the cherry on this hot fudge sundae:  the Bush Administration has responded to this with their usual display of calm  and thoughtful deliberation complete hysteria:

[T]he US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said the [Iranian] “war games” justified America’s defence plans with bases in eastern Europe. She said the tests were “evidence that the missile threat is not an imaginary one…. Those who say there is no Iranian missile threat against which we should build a missile defence system perhaps ought to talk to the Iranians about their claims.”

Okay, let me think about this for a minute.  We are justifying a set of insanely dangerous policies as a result of a test of some missiles that Iran has had for ten freaking years.  A test where not all of missiles fired properly.  A test that demonstrated only that the Iranians’ photoshopping skills have progressed at a faster rate than their missile-building skills.

To be clear, I do think that Iran obtaining the bomb is a genuine national security threat.  But it does not even remotely help that argument when you start portraying a partially successful test of an old system as a clear and present danger.  Let’s keep our eye on the ball, people.  And Mr. Morris, please try to see the bigger picture here.

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