Good morning, and welcome...

.... to the new fascist world, soon to be a nearly uninterrupted arc stretching from Vladivostok to Dakar if Ahmadinejad gets nukes, which he probably will, thanks to North Korea and its sponsors and Pakistan.

Extreme?

I don't believe Ahmadinejad could get away with his brutal repression without the consent of Moscow and Beijing, both countries with a great deal of experience in unlawful detentions, torture, murder of honest journalists, and the cowing and silencing of their captive populations.

You can thank Bush and Cheney in part for, among other things:

Making Iraq the threat, creating a weak Iraq that is no check at all on Ahmadinejad's ambitions and strengthening the Shi'a hardliners in both countries;

Destroying America's credibility on issues like unlawful detention and torture;

Looting the treasury and resources of America and putting it in hock to the Chinese government; and

Not pressing forward with an urgent alternative energy plan that would deprive oil rich faschos of revenue (which is understandable, given that Bush and Cheney are oil-rich faschos themselves).

Our best hope now? Conserve energy, drive less, walk, ride a bike, take public transportation, and bring the price of a barrel of oil down. Go green, in every current sense of the word, in every way possible. Promote and use alternative energy whenever you can, even if it means solar heating your water in black barrels or garbage bags. If we have the political will to do this, we'll all be happier later.

That Green wave in Tehran? They are marching for all of us.

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A good analysis today of the internal workings and current fractures in the Iranian government here.