Big Boys’ Rules

Oliver Kamm gets it right with regard to the controversy arising from Hillary Clinton’s remarks about obliterating Iran if it attacks Israel. Iran, indeed, should be quite pleased about them as they indictate that their country is not far off joining the big boys club and that club rules are starting to to apply to it. Kamm gets a bit carried away though at the end of his piece when he says that that the threat of nuclear obliteration should also apply to Iran if its attack was carried out through a proxy with a rudimentary “dirty bomb”.

A US government agency tells us that,

A dirty bomb is in no way similar to a nuclear weapon or nuclear bomb. A nuclear bomb creates an explosion that is millions of times more powerful than that of a dirty bomb. The cloud of radiation from a nuclear bomb could spread tens to hundreds of square miles, whereas a dirty bomb’s radiation could be dispersed within a few blocks or miles of the explosion. A dirty bomb is not a “Weapon of Mass Destruction” but a “Weapon of Mass Disruption,” where contamination and anxiety are the terrorists’ major objectives.

The use of a “dirty bomb” might be a very grave matter indeed but it would be something of a quite different order to an attack with conventional nuclear weapons. It seems very unlikely that, to put it no more strongly, a full nuclear response to such a use could ever be justified.

Iran And Foreigners

I have some things to say in the comments that follow this post over at The Cedar Lounge.

Ahorcados

Somos muy amigos de Chávez en este país – es amado por el gobierno por haber comprado nuestros bonos y por comentaristas progre e importantes sectores del público bien pensante por odiar a los Estados Unidos y por su antisemitismo - y Chávez es muy amigo del gobierno de un estado que acaba de ahorcar a un pibe de 20 años por haber tenido sexo con otros chicos cuando tenía 13 años. El silencio en los medios acerca de este crimen y la lenta masacre de homosexuales en Irán es realmente vergonzante.

Allegory

Referring to the Iranian director Mohsen Majmalbaf and his films in Pagina/12 today Luciano Monteagudo says,

.. he has always had a marked predilection for allegory, a mode of expression common in Iranian cinema and one that seems to form a basic part of the country’s culture.

Well, who knows? Maybe he is right. But there is another glaringly obvious possibility; the frequent resort to visual lyricism and allegory in Iranian cinema may have something to do with need to get permission from a committee of bearded bastards in turbans in order to shoot your film and get it shown. The hirsute loons believe that one book in particular contains all that anyone needs to know about cinema or anything else and without their thumbs up, it’s no dice. So, as your characters definitely aren’t going to be allowed to say anything interesting you’d better learn how to hint at what you actually want to say with endless shots of waves lapping onto the shore and the like.

Or to put it another way, in societies where the work of artists is subject to strict  censorship aimed at upholding a particular religion and  a theocratic regime we ought not to be surprised if a lot of the cultural products that come our way rely heavily on oh-so-subtle allegory.

Red Notices

The General Assembly of Interpol yesterday upheld its Executive Committee’s decision to publish Red Notices against five Iranians and one Lebanese wanted by the Argentine authorities in connection with the AMIA massacre. 76 countries voted in favour, 14 against and there were 26 abstentions.

The reaction of the Iranian Foreign Ministry was what we have come to expect from the Iranian regime. According to this report in La Nación its spokesman has condemned the decision, described it as unscrupulous and criticised Interpol for having given in to the “Zionist regime”.

It can’t be much of an intellectual challenge working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Iran. I mean, whenever anything happens in the world that is unfavourable to your country’s interests you don’t have to work up a sweat thinking about what really happened and what ought to be done about it; all you have to do is blame the Jews.