Iran’s ambitions, which have cast a long shadow over the greater Middle East, may serve as a common bond keeping a frail peace process intact despite threats that have arisen even before the negotiations open Thursday at the State Department.

Iran’s nuclear program and spreading political influence through a swath of Sunni Arab countries have alarmed the region’s kings and elected autocrats for years.

ONOZ! Not the kings and autocrats!

As the clock ticks down…

Blue wire? Or red wire? Which one do I cut–BOOM!

…on predominantly Shiite Iran’s nuclear program, though, it becomes more urgent for Israel and its Arab neighbors to achieve peace and face together the shared threat to their security and political stability.

The dynamic brings an “enemy of my enemy” calculation to this round of talks, binding the Jewish state’s security interests to those of its Sunni Arab neighbors more tightly than in the past.

You don’t have to be an Iranian citizen to recognize that Iran is run by scary assholes. But could not the same be said by any other citizen in the Middle East, Israel included? And, ya know, it’s funny — just yesterday the President Who Cannot Be Doubted (except in the most ludicrous ways) announced the withdrawal of combat forces from a Middle Eastern country that some nation run by a religious zealot invaded illegally, destabilized, set up a torture prison, divvied up winnings to corporate pals, and threw into civil war. You’d think that might have some influence on the political climate of the region.

But let us not re-litigate the past. Let us move forward to a bright new tomorrow. “Turn the page,” as it was recently said.

Netanyahu will need Obama’s support if he decides to undertake a military strike against Iran, either before or after he carries it out. His willingness to stick with peace talks, which Obama has called a priority, would win him goodwill in what has so far been a stormy relationship between the two men.

All in good faith, then.

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But you were wrong. WaPo knows it’s all about the hairdo.

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Thanks to my old friend Michael for the tip.

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During this election cycle, Arizona politicians are touting the potential dangers of illegal immigration. Gov. Jan Brewer is one of the loudest voices.

She has made several statements to the national media, the validity of which CBS 5 Investigates could not confirm. The governor told one media outlet that almost all illegal immigrants are bringing drugs across the border. U.S. Border Patrol officials said that statement is false.

Brewer also said law enforcement officials have found decapitated bodies in the desert. Calls to all of Arizona’s border county medical examiners revealed no decapitated bodies have been reported to them.

A look at data from the FBI shows crime in Arizona is actually down. Murders in Phoenix have dropped by 50 percent since 2003. The violent crime rate across the state has dropped every year since at least 2004. Even the number of illegal border crossers is down. Border Patrol numbers show they are arresting half as many illegal immigrants as they did in 2004.

U.S. Attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, told CBS 5 Investigates, “If you’re not into drug trafficking and you’re not into human smuggling, you’re going to be safe. This is a safe place to live.”

Well, geez, what if I WANT to smuggle drugs and humans over the border? What about MY safety?

Meanwhile, Talk of the Nation gave way too much credence to the “anchor baby” hysteria driving the GOP and Dem wingnuts to demand a revision of the 14th Amendment. To be fair, the main guest was a thoughtful and patient opponent of such a revision, and most callers gave great arguments against it. But host Neal Conan’s “objectivity” failed to fact-check the reality behind the “anchor baby” term or psuedo-phenomenon. “Well, gee, one caller said she sees illegal aliens dropping babies all the time, so it must be true.” C’mon, man — prepare! Call bullshit when you see it! Sadly, this is probably the best treatment of the subject one can expect from the major news outlets.

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Sigh. Same shit, different decade. Twenty years ago, when I was indeed 20, Time Magazine ran a cover story on “twenty-somethings” — the first I had heard the term used — musing on the same questions. Back then there was much consternation among Baby Boomers and older generations that Gen Xers were a bunch of slackers, wearing ripped jeans and listening to Grunge™ music (a mostly white middle class stereotype then; other anxieties were visited upon the HipHop Generation of black youth). Same questions. At least the author of this new iteration acknowledges as much:

It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un­tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

Emphasis mine, highlighted to ask a simple question: Have you not noticed the gradual withering away of the middle class over the last 30-40 years? The diminished buying power of real wages? The loss of manufacturing jobs? The ridiculous cost of a higher education? The economic collapse of the Great Lake states? The third world poverty conditions of most of the southern (west and east) of the continental United States? All of these predate “the current economic doldrums” — indeed, one might suggest that they are factors contributing to them.

Not to mention the gambling away of pensions. Such are the activities of “grown ups”.

Economic factors are lightly addressed by this article, but much more attention is paid to sociological debates about “emerging adulthood”; a proposed protected status for people in their twenties (eek!); neuroscience of young adults,;”helicopter parents” stifling maturation; the privileged status of twenty-somethings “delaying” adulthood (contrasted with impoverished black youth who have not had the “luxury”); and so on. Some of this is interesting, even accurate material — certainly the neuroscience raises interesting questions — and I like the proposal “to start rethinking our definition of normal development and to create systems of education, health care and social supports that take the new stage into account.” That at least is a start to addressing fundamental economic and social inequalities that affect most young adults, regardless of individual paces of maturation.

Yet the article begins with a set of assumptions about adulthood and growing up that it takes as teleological endpoints, as goals for which all people in their youth must aspire. As a married father of two with a house and a professional career, I have obviously shared those aspirations; one could perhaps posit them as a “norm.” But shouldn’t we view these assumptions with some skepticism? There is an implication that if one has not conformed to certain social expectations, one has not “grown up.” The value of being childless (especially when you don’t want children), of being single, of refusing marriage, of contributing to society in other ways — these you will not find appreciated in this article. If they were, perhaps this issue of delayed “adulthood” would not seem so dire.

Or perhaps trivial. Are there not other values we can ascribe to maturity? It is really hard to read the news today and not think that adults are behaving no better than children in the playground. Albeit with deadlier weapons and more powerful instruments to oppress, manipulate, and exploit. The young adults quoted in this article who express a desire to simply “enjoy life” seem to have their shit together much more compared to idiots who blow themselves up in pizzerias or wage illegal wars for corporate profit. At the least, they are not increasing the amount of suffering in the world.

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Dr. Laura has announced she will end her show following criticism for her repeated use of the “N-word” at a black caller on her show. Classic white whining about her “First Amendment rights” and “some special-interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent.” She does “not want to live in fear anymore.” Remember, the worst thing you can do to a white person is point out their racism. Worse than the HOLOCAUST!!!

But don’t get her wrong: “I’m not quitting.” She is now “freer to say the things that I believe need to be said for people in this country.” Like, say, insisting black people not get so testy when they hear white people use the “N-word” with manic glee.

Somewhere Sarah Palin is winking with approval. Is this a kind of “going Galt” among right wing nutjobs? Quit a position of influence and responsibility in a petulant gesture with delusions of somehow leading the country without the power that position granted (governor, nationally distributed talk show). To Palin’s credit, she has turned her Facebook and Twitter accounts into platforms for launching disinformation campaigns that have had real effects on public policy — “death panels.” But I think that’s a one-trick pony. Schlessinger has none of Palin’s soap opera/divisive appeal.

I’m not saying Dr. Laura will go quietly into that dark night, of course. She’ll probably join Alan Keyes in the asteroid belt of conservo-cranks, floating around until some odd gravitational force dislodges them from their orbit and hurls them into the sun, where they’ll crash and burn.

UPDATE (8/18/2010): I knew the comparison between Dr. Laura and Sarah Palin was obvious, but never predicted Palin would latch onto it with pride.

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Iran has an “inalienable right” to produce nuclear fuel, the country’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has told the United Nations.

Speaking before the General Assembly, he invited other states and private companies to help with the programme.

He strongly criticised US arms policies and said Islam precluded Iran from having atomic weapons.

Under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is entitled to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Wikipedia has a more thorough history of the Iranian nuclear power issue. Props to Rojo for correcting me. I don’t want my mistake to throw another log on the bonfire of disinformation already putting smoke in our eyes.

So there is no proof that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program, and has publicly stated it does not want to. I think the source of my mistaken assumption that they had maintained a right — other than the constant buzz of fear and war-stroking among well-placed talking heads — is my own distrust of such pronouncements. Sure, Mahmoud, your religion forbids it. That’s not very convincing. General history of religious violence (by any religion you care to name) and the particular repressive application of violence against Iranian citizens by its own government make it hard for me to take claims of religious prohibition seriously. I don’t take U.S. efforts at nuclear arms reduction very seriously, either; we may cut them back as a good will gesture to other nuclear armed states, but we will never reach zero. That’s not in the interests of our militarized corporate state.

In other words, mistrust all around.

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Yet this is hypocrisy to which we’ve grown so accustomed that nobody seems to notice it any more. The nuclear club is meant to be exclusive. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty recognises the five permanent members of the UN security council as “nuclear weapons states”, committing them to act as bouncers at the club door. The treaty theoretically obliges these members to ditch their own nukes in the fullness of time – an aptly pompous expression, for an otherwise nuke-free world would make a rogue state with even one bomb so powerful that the chances of universal disarmament are zero. Ever since Hiroshima, we’ve been faced with the depressing fact that you cannot un-invent something.

You also cannot retain a device for yourself and then lecture others that they are not “entitled” to it. Iran is, alas, just as entitled to nuclear weapons as the US and Britain. Ditto North Korea. All the Obama administration has the moral and political right to assert is: “We don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons.” To which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would quite sensibly respond: “So what?”

Which, insofar as enrichment of uranium for domestic nuclear energy use goes, he has. Granted, the IAEA has been frustrated in its attempts to verify the existence of an Iranian nukes program at all, but Iran has maintained the right to develop one. And as I have said before, we can do nothing to stop them. Which doesn’t mean someone won’t try.

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The oil and gas companies are not the only ones who will profit from the postwar order in Iraq. The United States military and defense industry will make out well, too. Despite claims to the contrary, this is not the end of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. In addition to the several bases that will remain active, housing the soldiers and private contractors whose titles will change to advisors, there will be an indefinite state of dependency on U.S.-manufactured weapons and technology. Defense companies, such as ARINC will continue to make hundreds of millions providing Mi-17 helicopters and other military hardware and logistics to Iraq.

While the Ministry of Information does not advertise the reality of America’s enduring military presence in Iraq, it is quick to announce a civilian “surge” in the country. Along these lines, officials have been boasting about the massive U.S. embassy in Baghdad. “Along with the Great Wall of China,” said Ambassador Hill, “its one of those things you can see with the naked eye from outer space. I mean, it’s huge.” Indeed. At 104 acres, it is the largest U.S. embassy in the world. In addition to six apartment buildings, it has a luxury pool, as well as a water and sewage treatment plant. Stop for a second and reflect on these last two amenities. They give you some measure of what American officials really know but aren’t saying about the state of drinking water and sanitation in Iraq. The State Department has requested a mini-army to protect this Fortress America — including 24 Black Hawk helicopters and 50 bomb-resistant vehicles. Again, stop for a minute and ask yourself what this really suggests. The shadow army says a lot more than the official pronouncements do about the true state of security in Iraq.

We’ll be back. We have barely left. Think of the U.S. embassy in Iraq as a kind of well-armed anchor baby.

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Instead of “the hammer,” in the words of John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, America will rely on the “scalpel.” In a speech in May, Mr. Brennan, an architect of the White House strategy, used this analogy while pledging a “multigenerational” campaign against Al Qaeda and its extremist affiliates.

Yet such wars come with many risks: the potential for botched operations that fuel anti-American rage; a blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections; a weakening of the Congressional oversight system put in place to prevent abuses by America’s secret operatives; and a reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders and surrogates with sometimes murky loyalties.

This is the “realist” strategy proposed counter to the dominant neo-con pipe dreams of the Bush era now put into practice. It begs new definitions of realism, however. Anyone remember the enmity we incurred employing such tactics during the Cold War throughout Latin and South Americas, Africa and Asia? Indeed, as the NYTimes report notes, some of the same players who waged proxy wars in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, hiring such folks as Osama bin Laden as our proxy, are now crafting the covert war strategy.

Yet there is a difference: we have entered a new era of integrated violence by the corporate state. As the report notes, the CIA has become a “paramilitary organization” with little Congressional oversight; the Pentagon has taken a greater role in intelligence activity; and private contractors — a.k.a., mercenaries — assume more responsibility and power. All the while rules of engagement, intelligence verification and accountability wither away.

Also — significantly — there is the greater reliance on technology, a trend we have seen grow since the first Gulf War, when we learned our “smart bombs” were not so smart. Contra the Obama White House’s stated objective of fighting small scale, surgical conflicts with al Qaeda to reduce hostile blow-back from the world’s poor, there is a pattern: Less reliable information, more civilian casualties, less trustworthy informants with greater conflicts of interest, more anger among the survivors, more recruits for jihadist groups.

What do we make of this, Dr. Cox?

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