A friend picked up my earlier post questioning a Persian translation by Michael Rubin and offered character notes for the novelist who finally puts the neocons in a story:
He has the conscience of a propagandist. Though his scholarly writings deal
with Iran, he is said to have close ties and deep interests in Kurdistan. Does
he know the languages he interprets, or possess any actual intimate knowledge
outside the Strategy Circuit of the Muslim nations he lays plans for the U.S. to
attack?
One's impression has been that if there are twelve active and energetic
persons–men of unquiet minds–working full time in pursuit of U.S. bombing of
Iran, or U.S. approval of Israeli bombing, Rubin is one of them; but–not yet
one of the better known. It is worth something to bring into the light of day
the political character of such a person.
The Right Web article as usual is precise and well-written and catches a great
many relevant facts.
Here is another digest of some value.
A young career; still in his thirties; but already overstimulated; he does not
pause to think.
One of his side-lights has been a Campus Watch style of reporting on Columbia
and Yale. He led the outside wing of a campaign against the appointment of Juan
Cole at Yale in 2006 which together with inside help defeated that appointment.
Incidentally, his place at the National Review is only one of many indications
of that magazine's complete loss of separate identity from the neoconservative
Commentary and The Weekly Standard.
A little league Richard Perle during the run-up to Iraq (just two years out of
graduate school but already a full-time propagandist); now by his lesser-known
status he bears at least one appropriate qualification for larger tasks: the
neoconservatives never quit, as Jim Lobe recognizes, but they can't
afford to throw exactly the same talent at the next war they want to
cause–Perle, the Kagan brothers, Kristol, Brooks. Rubin is less clever, he
gets into scrapes, but he will do the work.
"… character notes for the novelist who finally puts the neocons in a story."
That might serve as a good indicator for a society's state of health: can it discuss a novel about Jewishness.
Clearly it's at least a generation or two off for us. (What gentile would dare review it, and what Jew would dare let him?)
Michael Rubin basically runs the site called Irantracker.org a very recent project of them neocons with a job to "inform" people about Iran. If these people did not have much influence I wouldnt be worried but sadly they seem to manage quite well despite having "libearals" in the whitehouse.
Rubin wants Obama to simultaneously deploy more military resources against Iran, attack Iranian banks by saying they employ fraud, which, e.g., would make it hard for China to do business with them, and babble at the talk table. He'd gamble that Iran will wilt if the projected cost is too high, as it did when it ended its war with Iraq. I'm sure he thinks
Obama is naive.
"attack Iranian banks by saying they employ fraud"
that would be really quite funny since lately the line between professional Western "increase" management and fraud has been really fine. What made you add that?
I thought it was all about blockade: hindering business exchange and blocking assets.