CIA and Iranian elections

Ever since the Iranian election fiasco started, I found it very interesting that the mainstream American media has been nearly perfectly homogeneous about the outcome of Iranian elections, from Charlie Rose to Fox news, i.e., current Iranian administration are the thugs, Mousavi is the liberator. I don't remember hearing much from Ahmedijinad's supporters on any media outlet. Not that there was anything new about it since if American media and American gov't (in terms of Int'l issues) were a couple, they'd probably be ranked as the most harmonious couple ever lived! But I digress...

Here are a couple of links about CIA financing anti-state factions in Iran, during and before elections. I guess some things never change..

http://www.turnerradionetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60:iran-election-turmoil-financed-by-cia&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50

http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/cia-has-distributed-400-million-dollars-inside-iran-to-evoke-a-revolution/

Imran Khan, defeating Taliban, in Washington DC

For anyone interested in understanding the complex dynamics of Pakistani struggle with the Taliban, here is a crash course 101 http://pkpolitics.com/2009/06/20/defeating-taliban-imran-khan/

As they say, it's common sense stupid!

Note: I believe this is the article by Graham Fuller that Khan repeatedly refers to (which apparently disappeared from the US version of Int'l Herald) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-e-fuller/global-viewpoint-obamas-p_b_201355.html

Womenomics

If I were a reader, I'd read this book :)

I came across this interview on Charlie Rose and realized that these two women Katty Kay and Claire Shipman are saying pretty much what I have personally observed in work places.

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10349

Something along the lines of "women are different than men, we should not shun the differences but leverage them to our benefit".

By the way, I have never seen Charlie interviewing in this manner, seemed excited to the extent that he was cutting off the interviewees! Hahaha!!

Can Google wave be that wave of fresh breeze? Yes it can :D

Google wave is inarguably the best form of communication and collaboration tool that I have yet seen. I think, it has laid the foundation of beginning of the era where "email" as we know it today will become as redundant to our next generation as snail mail has become to us today.

I can't wait for it to roll out later this year!

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of limited capability of emails to effectively communicate and collaborate (including gmail), and having the need to go to tons of different websites and portals to evite, blog, send emails, chat and collaborate. Google wave seems to have addressed all of that in one!

To genuinely appreciate it you would have watch the demo, it's one hour 20 minute long http://wave.google.com/ but totally worth the watch! Mind you, this is probably the first over an hour long demo that I have actually watched. Otherwise, you can check a pretty well detailed review here http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-drips-with-ambition-can-it-fulfill-googles-grand-web-vision/

To highlight some of the features:

• Replacing current email + chat type applications with one called app "wave" and a neat way to have a group conversation, at an easy way to add/unadd/readd etc. individuals as appropriate
• Dynamically embedded polls and forms inside the message!
  
• 'Play' feature is like watching a little movie of what went on in terms of who responded to what/when etc.
• Drag and drop attachments!
• Collaboration of docs considered no different from sending a regular message (although I think this might have to change in the future)
  
• Real time updates of messages is simply beautiful, i.e., after you send a message, any changes you make to it will show to all the recipients in real time and vice versa!
• Contextualized spell checker
• And more...
  

There is so much more to it, I just can't wait for its release :)

Bill Moyers reporting on "Secret Government"

Secret agencies are known to be a necessary component of governments these days, be it the CIA of the US, ISI of Pakistan, RAW of India, Mosad of Israel, GRU of Russia and so on. Ideally speaking, there very existence is contrary to truely democratic spirit of nations, since what/how they do is meant to be hidden from the very people they represent, by definition.

However, even if we were to accept their existence on 'pragmatic' grounds despite their moral dubiousness, then the question becomes, where do we draw the line of what should be off limits even for these secret organizations?

As horrendous as things are that are reported in this 1987 video about Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Vietnam and others, it's no consolation that things have only gotten progressively worse since then. In today's context, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the 'hot topic' of political discussions. Ironically enough, CIA blames Pakistan's ISI for playing "double game" with the Taliban and the US, conveniently keeping silent over the latter's concerns over her largest rival's, India, newly found rapprochement with Afghanistan.

Secondly, while Obama has declared Iran to be a critical concern to "Middle East's, especially Israel's security", it was the CIA in 1953 that overthrew a perfectly legitimate and democratically elected government of Mosaddeq, leading to a religoius revolution in the country, resulting in today's Iran. All because Mosaddeq wanted to keep Iran's wealth to her own people by ending forgein oil companies' hegemony on their soil? Can we imagine what Iran would be today, had CIA not meddled in their affairs?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sstDwKTCpM