Rebel Radio | broadcasting an alternative point of view

I dislike national anthems and other displays of nationalism (see my post on flags). Tonight I watched the Eurocup and guess what the Spanish national anthem entailed? It pretty much covered the same stuff as the German national anthem. And even though I didn’t understand either one, I think it’s safe to assume that each talked about how great their countries are while also mentioning glory, honor, history, pride, etc. It’s the same material in just about any national anthem and I think it’s all pretty silly. That’s it. Good night.

Here we have Bush III (aka John McCain) getting punked really badly. Enjoy the delicious video here.

I wish I had taken more interest in him while he was alive: “Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians,” he explained in a routine that challenged all the premises of today’s half-a-loaf reformers. “Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.’” Read on here.

may not be on point on many issues, but he’s spot on here: “French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for an end to Jewish settlement construction on Palestinian land, in an address to Israeli MPs. He told the Israeli Knesset that without this there would be no lasting peace in the Middle East… He encouraged Israel to support a proposal, ‘backed by many members of your Knesset’, for the adoption of a law that would encourage settlers to leave the West Bank in exchange for compensation and relocation in Israel.” [Mind you, there are more than 400,000 illegal Israeli settlers/colonists living on Palestinian land in the West Bank. They control most of the territory and important water supplies.]

So I posted Schauleh Sahba’s first cut of the video here not too long ago. Recently, the final version was announced, see it here. To learn more about the video, go here. Thanx to Schauleh for letting me be a part of the video and its anti-war message.

Today is the first day the State of California is issuing license certificates to same-sex couples. Be proud… I am. If you don’t like the idea of gay marriage, then don’t participate in one. It’s really that simple. By the way, I hate flags, I really do, but I like the one below.

…just as long as it gets to continue to build Jewish-only settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. Here, we have Secretary of State Rice, now that she’s at the end of her term, expressing concerns over the endless settlement building: “‘I am very concerned that at a time when we need to build confidence between the parties the continued building and settlement activity has the potential to harm the negotiations going forward.’ Israel announced last week it would build 1,300 new housing units in east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their future capital. The announcement brought to more than 3,000 the number of homes Israel has approved for construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank since the renewal of peace talks late last year. The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as part of a future independent state.Israel differentiates between east Jerusalem, which it annexed in 1967, and the West Bank, whose status remains unresolved.” [The only real difference is that Israel builds settlements at a faster rate in Jerusalem than elsewhere, but nevertheless is seeking to preclude a viable Palestinian state in both the W. Bank and Jerusalem through that settlement building.  In other words, when Israel says it wants peace, it’s really just an empty slogan. The facts on the ground say something altogether different.]

BBC News: Last December American intelligence agencies said they had “high confidence” that in late 2003 Iran had stopped trying to build nuclear weapons. That seemed to end much of the talk about an American - or Israeli - attempt to destroy the facilities that Iran has developed for what it insists is a purely peaceful nuclear programme. Plenty of influential people in the Middle East, Europe and the United States think an attack on Iran would have consequences potentially as disastrous as the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It would also send oil prices, already through the roof, into orbit. But the talk has started again. Negotiations with Iran - and sanctions against it - have not stopped it enriching uranium, which its critics say is being done to make a bomb. Read on here.

Excerpt: “…the 42-year-old author confessed that ‘I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. ‘Rowling came up with two themes, captured neatly in the title of the address itself: ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.’ Failure came fast. ‘A mere seven years after my graduation day,’ she said, ‘I had failed on an epic scale.’ Shattered by the end of a brief marriage, jobless, and a single mother, Rowling said she was ‘as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.’ But adversity uncovered personal strengths that immediate success or comfort might never have revealed: her strong will, ‘more discipline than I had suspected,’ she said, and ‘friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.’ Failure also stripped away the inessential, said Rowling, who signed her first (and very modest) book contract in 1996. What was essential had remained. ‘I was set free,’ she said. ‘I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored; and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.’ Rowling finished writing the first Potter book in Edinburgh coffee shops. ‘Rock bottom,’ she said, ‘became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.’

…has won the Democratic Party’s nomination! It was no easy task beating not just Hillary but the entire Clinton Machine but he did. Congratulations America! Here is a clip from his amazing victory speech in St. Paul.

CNN: Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, targeted Sen. Barack Obama again Monday over the Illinois senator’s approach to Iran and the Middle East. But a new poll released by Gallup Monday suggests McCain may be out of step with the majority of Americans when it comes to U.S.-Iranian relations. Fifty-nine percent of Americans surveyed thought it was a good idea for the President of the United States to meet with the President of Iran. When Iran is taken out of the equation, an even higher percentage – 67 percent – responded that they thought it would be a good idea for the president to meet with leaders of countries considered enemies of the United States. Of the three remaining major presidential candidates, only Sen. Barack Obama has said he would meet personally with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the leaders of other countries regarded as enemies of the United States by the Bush administration. The Gallup survey was conducted May 19-21 and based on telephone interviews of 1,013 adults nationally. It has an overall margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

A couple weeks ago the MIT Persian Student Association and the Harvard Iranian Student Association screened Bam 6.6 and it made me really really miss Iran.  The documentary is about the Bam earthquake, the destruction it wrought on Bam’s residents, and the story of an American couple traveling through Bam when the earthquake struck. Although the two were victims of the tragedy, the documentary also chronicles how despite the chaos and destruction, they were received, welcomed, and taken care of.  It is the story of human beings treating each other with humility and friendship at a time of death and scarcity of resources. See the trailer here.

this type of American liberation for Iran. No but really, a picture does speak a thousand words and here we have some American liberation in Iraq.

I’ve been home in southern California for a few days now enjoying the beginning of the summer break. Today, my mother and I were channel surfing and came across this documentary about Iranians selling their kidneys to people struck with fatal diseases. It was horrifying to see unfortunate people opting to sell an organ in order to free themselves from indebtedness or to start anew. At the same time, it was heart wrenching to see people dying to get a new kidney and not having enough money to buy one. According to the video, the buyer pays the equivalent of $2,000 and the state adds $1,000 to buy a donor’s kidney. Can you really put a price on your kidney? If so, does $3,000 suffice? No, according to the sellers/donors as they all seemed to be in need of more money but agreed to the bargain out of desperation. At the same time, $2,000 is a lot of money for an ordinary Iranian to fork over, especially when the average monthly salary is $200 (according to the documentary)… and I thought I had problems.

This anti-war video is most pleasing, especially since it was made in the Bay Area and I recognize some of the people in it. It would be great to see this as an advertisement on television. Please distribute the link by sending it to everyone, especially non-Iranians. To learn more about the video, go here.

I can’t stop watching this performance on Britain’s version of American Idol. It’s pure entertainment and it’s already received more than 5 million views. Enjoy. Oh, and here’s the newest trailer to The Dark Knight. It’s the film I’m most excited about this movie season.

Memritv is a complete tool, but sometimes you can make good use of it. Here is a thorough explanation as to why the level of violence in Iraq dropped from horrible to very bad, which really doesn’t say much if you ask me. On a side note, I’m just finished up a course with Professor Roger Owen on Iraq’s 20th century history and I must tell you, the country’s history is depressing… but not nearly as depressing as its current status. FYI, this blogger was against the war from DAY ONE and is still against the war.

In celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary, I’d like to say that I’ve grown to dislike flags (and other overt symbols of nationalism) tremendously. As one of my peers recently told me, they say nothing more than “not you.” By the way, have you noticed that countries and regimes that have legitimacy problems are always putting their flags in your face? It’s sort of the same idea behind Bush’s inauguration day. He was sworn in using not just one bible, as is customary (unfortunately), but an entire stack of them. I assume he was trying to buy legitimacy through religion, as the way in which he won the presidency was highly controversial. It’s the same idea behind an International Day festival at Harvard Law School early this semester. Every nationality that set up a booth had no more than one flag on display but the Israelis, of which their entire state has legitimacy issues, had like 20 flags hanging from the wall, ceiling, and the table. But I must admit, as much as flags (and other overt symbols of nationalism) annoy me, I take exception with the Palestinian flag as it is a flag denied.

In marking Israel’s 60th anniversary, I think it’s prudent to acknowledge some of its most glaring accomplishments.

The Wachowski brothers’ first film since the Matrix Trilogy, Speed Racer, comes out this Friday (It’s also Emile Hirsch’s first film since Into the Wild). Be excited. See the trailer here. And Hillary was spanked yesterday creating more pressure for her to quit her bid. She insists on carrying on but I wonder if people will continue to donate to her campaign when so many consider it a lost cause. She’s already lent her campaign more than $11 million.

In any case, it’s been a decent day. Now if only Israel would stop celebrating its 60th anniversary and admit that its only real milestone is that it has succeeded in 60 years of ethnic cleansing, then I would be complete for the day. I just had to add that bit because I went to a lecture by Daniel Pipes yesterday on campus and I was floored by the revisionism.

I’m not going to lie, Michael Moore endorsing Obama’s candidacy greatly legitimizes his campaign even further in my book. Michael Moore has so much credibility in my eyes that any endorsement from him is as good as gold. See his interview on Larry King Live here.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president. “No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president’s disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark,” said Keating Holland, CNN’s polling director. “Bush’s approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22 percent and 24 percent, respectively], but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s,” Holland said. “The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 67 percent disapproval in January 1952.” While Gallup polling goes back to the 1930s, it wasn’t until the Truman years that they began surveying monthly approval ratings. CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider adds, “He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974.” he poll also indicates that support for the war in Iraq has never been lower. Thirty percent of those questioned favored the war, while 68 percent opposed it. “Americans are growing more pessimistic about the war,” Holland said. “In January, nearly half believed that things were going well for the U.S. in Iraq; now that figure has dropped to 39 percent.” The numbers on the Iraq war come on the five-year anniversary of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, when he proclaimed that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” The record-low support for the war in a CNN poll could be one reason behind the president’s unpopularity, but it probably is not the only one. “Support for the war, the assessment of the economy and approval of Mr. Bush are all about the same — bad,” Schneider said. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted by telephone from Monday through Wednesday among 1,008 adult Americans.The poll’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The new “Favorite Films” section on the right is a work-in-progress and I will continuously be adding to it and updating it. Each title is linked to the film’s trailer. In marking the new addition to the site, I’d like to cut tape with the greatest trailer ever made.

I just finished reading Charles Kurzman’s The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. It is much like Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men in that the entire book focuses on the unfolding of a major historical event. Kurzman’s book is devoted to the play-by-play unfolding of the Iranian Revolution, which as far as I know, is the first book to look at the revolution with such an approach. It’s definitely worth your while. Here’s an excerpt I thought was noteworthy: “It is almost unheard of for a revolution to involve as much as 1 percent of a country’s population. The French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolution of 1917, perhaps the Romanian Revolution of 1989 - these may have passed the 1 percent mark. Yet in Iran, more than 10 percent of the country marched in anti-shah demonstrations on December 10 and 11, 1978. Photographs of these events showed massive avenues filled for miles, not just in Tehran but throughout Iran. So many people marched, according to the French reporters Paul Balta and Claudine Rulleau in Tehran, that ‘there is no one at the windows to watch the processions pass.” The British ambassador Anthony Parsons, looking out his office window - apparently unseen by Balta and Rulleau - said that the processions took all morning to pass by: ‘The street is wide but it was filled from pavement to pavement and from top to bottom as far as the eye could see for a period of three or four hours. And it was only one of the many feeder roads to the main procession route.’

Foreign journalists estimated the crowd in Tehran at 500,000 to 1 million strong on December 10, and 500,000 to more than 1 million the next day. Opposition publications estimated 2 to 4 million in Tehran on the 11th, plush 700,000 to 1 million each in Isfahan and Mashhad, 500,000 to 700,000 in Tabriz, 400,000 in Rasht, 300,000 in Ahwaz, 250,000 to 300,000 in Shiraz, 200,000-300,000 in Abadan, 200,000 in Qom, 150,000 in Khorramshahr, more than 100,000 in Arak and Kermanshah, and tens of thousands in each of a dozen more cities - a total of 6 to 9 million. Even discounting for exaggeration, these figures may represent the largest protest event in history.” (Kurzman, 122)