Hope is not a plan

This has been an interesting week in terms of local concerns about attempts by the Iranian government to influence the state of affairs in nearby nations in the middle east.

First, we have the seizure by the Israeli government of a cargo ship carrying a significant supply of arms, ostensibly from Iran to Syria, presumably with the longer-term goal of supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon. Curiously enough, rather than claim some other purpose for the arms, or that they have nothing to do with them, the official Iranian government position borders on insisting that the arms are not, in fact, weapons.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki held a joint news conference with his visiting Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem and dismissed the Israeli allegations.

"This ship does not carry Iranian weapons to Syria and does not contain military material to manufacture weapons in Syria. This ship carries imported goods from Syria to Iran."

Both this Iranian and the associated Syrian statement don't quite say that the arms aren't arms, but come awfully close. Unless one believes that the Israeli government staged the fairly extensive video of the ship's contents, however, they're pretty clearly weapons (interestingly, weapons with Spanish-language labeling, at least in the portions I've seen covered on video).

More on the claims and denials can be found in this BBC article and this al Jazeera article.

While Israel worries about Iranian government influence in Lebanon, the government of Saudia Arabia may well have pressured Nilesat and Arabsat to take Iran's Arabic language station off the air, following concerns about reporting by Al-Alam on Shia insurgents in Yemen that included language suggesting Saudi Arabia is involved. The Saudi government may be especially sensitive here following a Zaidi insurgent raid into Saudi Arabia.

We have to imagine that there will not at any point in all this be a Saudi-Israeli anti-Iranian pact (although SIAIP is a cute acronym).

At a rally today in favor of voting against their own self interest, a subset of Republicans were treated to this intellectually sound analysis from John Boehner:

"This bill is the greatest threat to freedom that I've seen in the 19 years I've been in Washington," he said.

Really?

Contenders for that crown in the last 19 years surely include al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, warrantless wiretapping, a resurgent Russia, and many others. Is Boehner really contending that a debate over the specifics of how Americans can have sufficient health care is a bigger threat to our freedom than having a dedicated group of terrorists attempting to kill us en masse? If so, he's changing the goal posts significantly from the prior Republican core message.

Maybe we can ask him about it.

Incidentally, it turns out that the proposed alternative plan will cover fewer people, which is what I suspected when I heard Boehner waffling about it on CNN Sunday morning.

Swiss Muslims have held an "open mosque" event ahead of a vote proposed by the Swiss People's Party that would ban the building of minarets in Switzerland, on the basis of their being a 'symbol of Muslim political power.'

This is, of course, the same Swiss People's Party that produced this entirely unoffensive poster about how dark people are going to murder white people.

Oh, wait, that's about how immigrants are a problem. Or something.

Given that Switzerland is already the land of alienation, where multi-generation families of non-European origin continue to not be welcomed as citizens, the SVP's attempted move feels superfluous at best. The BBC analysis suggests the vote is unlikely to pass, but it's yet another move made by people who don't understand that they won't get what they want by following their current plan.

BBC article

It's being reported today by the FSB that the derailing of the Nevsky Express in Novgorod was caused by an explosive placed on the tracks. This parallels a 2007 incident in which the same line was derailed by a similar IED.

The first Nevsky bombing was recently officially attributed to Ingush insurgents. Of course, as we've already seen, the list of suspects rounded up for a given crime in Russia does not necessarily have much relation to any evidence related to the crime.

Nonetheless, it wouldn't be shocking to image a Chechen or Ingushetian face behind bombing on a Russian rail line.

BBC article
al Jazeera article
ITAR-TASS article

57% of voters in a recent Swiss referendum voted for the SVP-backed anti-minaret legislation, on the basis of this utterly sound logic from the SVP:

"Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure - we don't have that in Switzerland, and we do not want to introduce it," Ulrich Schlueer, co-president of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets, said.

"Therefore, there's no room for minarets in Switzerland."

Indeed, Switzerland prefers to separate the pure and impure, or let's say the white and non-white, by having a harsh naturalization policy that lets individual neighborhoods vote with their racism and keep even third-generation residents from becoming citizens.

This continues the ongoing European trend of just not getting it on the issue of addressing immigrants and any potential problems associated with them. More divisiveness and exclusion is a sure-fire path to generating more problems. Of course, the SVP and their British co-racists in the BNP aren't concerned about inciting problems that might, in turn, lead to fear that will lead to reduced immigration. One might even guess that's their entire point.

Humorously, the BNP site currently says that they are "the only party which opposes mass immigration...". Good for you, guys. All I can say about mass immigration is that I live in California, and our economy is nearly as large as the U.K.'s with just half the population of your nation. We seem to be doing fine with our immigrants.

When they aren't trying to keep those scary foreigners out, the SVP spends its time being angry at the United States for pursuing tax evaders with accounts in Swiss banks.

al Jazeera article
BBC article