Iran: The Crushing Significance of Little Things

That what was once, just before the election, a sign of hope, of genuine discussion and democracy, of exchange between two sides, the pro-Ahmedinijad side and the pro-Moussavi side, as reported by Joe Klein in Time, now has degenerated into a violent confrontation that threatens to undermine the very legitimacy of Iran's system of government - this is a study in the crushing significance of little things.

The Iranians weren't asking all that much: both sides simply want free and fair elections. The bugaboo here is not America's favorite whipping boy, Ahmedinejad, so much as it is the Ayatollah Khamanei, whose Friday speech changed the tone from possibly resolvable to totally insoluble conflict between two sides, framed by obvious lies about Iranian unity. By choosing the lie and forced violation of basic human rights, which is always a violation of a nation's sense of security, in this one speech, those few words, this apparently "small" moment of time has transformed a budding democracy into a totalitarian nightmare acting under the veneer of what had been its democracy. I do not believe this is the aim of Ahmedinejad, who has played the Robin Hood of Iran's underclasses whose more "fundamental" and fatalistic view of religion was a riveting political force and remains so. He actually accomplished some "democratizing" things during his mixed-record tenure. But it is the crackdown and the grip on power evidenced by Khamanei that has unleashed the Basij and other paramilitary/police forces as arms of brutal totalitarian acts of violence and suppression that has brought the world's condemnation and horror at what has happened to Iran.

This is particularly weird when viewed in the light of who the opposition is: Moussavi was a trusted aide of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic Republic. Khamanei appears to have reached the egotistical point of seeing anyone who appears to threaten his perceived "divine" grip on power as Enemy, and hence he has become more than what his title has previously entailed. He has become, as Supreme Leader, Iran's de facto dictator, with Ahmedinejad as his politically savvy enabler/front man. I hope this situation will change, but it appears to be getting worse.

JPost: US Airstrike on Iran Likely "Within Weeks"

According to this post, there's an actual airstrike against Iran in the works, probably something like W's Last Stand. Now, when everyone's all in a tizzy over Palindrome and the election. It may be just a well-placed rumor, and it doesn't make any sense, but knowing the recklessness of Bush/Cheney, it might just be true, and it might just help to blow this thing wide open before it hits the world:

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Dutch intelligence service, the AIVD, has called off an operation aimed at infiltrating and sabotaging Iran's weapons industry due to an assessment that a US attack on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program is imminent, according to a report in the country's De Telegraaf newspaper on Friday.

The report claimed that the Dutch operation had been "extremely successful," and had been stopped because the US military was planning to hit targets that were "connected with the Dutch espionage action."

The impending air-strike on Iran was to be carried out by unmanned aircraft "within weeks," the report claimed, quoting "well placed" sources.

According to the report, information gleaned from the AIVD's operation in Iran has provided several of the targets that are to be attacked in the strike, including "parts for missiles and launching equipment."

"Information from the AIVD operation has been shared in recent years with the CIA," the report said.

On Friday, Ma'ariv reported that Israel had made a strategic decision to deny Iran military nuclear capability and would not hesitate "to take whatever means necessary" to prevent Teheran from achieving its nuclear goals.

According to the report, whether the United States and Western countries succeed in thwarting the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions diplomatically, through sanctions, or whether a US strike on Iran is eventually decided upon, Jerusalem has begun preparing for a separate, independent military strike.

Are they playing the old "Israel, Bully to the World" bit? Is it telling that the Jerusalem Post is the one to "break" this "story" about something as impossible to verify as the Dutch intelligence service?

Cool It, Ladies, She's Worse Than You Think: Hillary May Out-Macho McCain

They say "older white women" are Hillary's strongest supporters. Well, I'm sure all those Boomer Ladies wouldn't be so hot about her if they actually heard her take on war.

If you're thinking there isn't a hair's-breadth of difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, think again. And think hard. Hillary Clinton represents the same empire, military-solves-all mentality that threatens to put our country on the fast track to total collapse. Is this the "Democratic" candidate you really want?


Hillary wants to play warmonger with Iran at a time when those with greater knowledge say that would be the worst possible mistake:

The book All the Shah's Men (authored by Stephen Kinzer, interviewed for truthout by Maya Schenwar) reminds us that, when it comes to Iran, the backseat is probably where we should be sitting. The US was responsible for the 1953 coup that toppled Iran's democratic government, replacing it with the repressive Shah regime, which hastened the Islamic Revolution of 1970s, inspiring the rise of radical groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Yet the US has not yet taken its Middle East history lessons seriously. Kinzer noted
that our attitude toward Iran and Iraq is symptomatic of the US's overriding
tendency toward using military force to shape economic policy - in this case,
oil management - to its advantage.
Kinzer's most recent book, Overthrow, shows how the "regime change" model has developed over the past 110 years. In our interview, he discussed the motivations behind that empire-driven mentality - and why, ultimately, it's doomed to fail.

Hillary has joined John McCain and the Republican-led warmongers into another dangerous and obviously disastrous adventure in threatening Iran. Her interest, presumably to "look tough", and bodes more of same if she took office.

And then here on Keith Olbermann's Countdown, Hillary extended her "as macho as McCain" new look, or should I say, same old outlook. Check this great diary on that interview. Here's a sample from that interview:

And one of the ways of testing it is to make it very clear that we are not going
to permit them, if we can prevent it, from becoming a nuclear power, but were
they to become so, their use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a
nuclear response from the United States, which personally I believe would
prevent it from happening, and that we would try to help the other countries
that might be intimidated and bullied into submission by Iran because they were
a nuclear power, avoid that fate by creating this new security umbrella."

To which author ab2kgi said on Dailykos,

This talks about using our nukes to defend an entire region, arguably the
most unstable in the world. Beyond the lunacy of offering our nuclear
arsenal to an entire region of the world, she misplaced a couple of facts along
the way. The most glaring of which is the last NIE(reported
on here) that stated that Iran suspended it's nuclear weapons program in
2003. She also seems to forget that meeting Putin had with Ahmadinejad(reported on here), where they stopped just short of "we will defend you if you are attacked."
It would seem that Russia is developing ties with Iran that would
certainly play into any nuclear intervention with Iran and would likely be our
demise should Russia attempt to launch nukes at us.

This kind of irresponsible machismo is exactly what women claim to be tired of and why we might like to have a woman president. But it does the exact opposite to exhibit the worst qualities associated traditionally with men in order to get their supposed votes. She promotes macho values in order to supposedly win as a woman. Possibly even worse yet, she doesn't even logically evaluate the absurd proposition that Iran could attack Israel with nuclear weapons. That kind of proposition is exactly the mindless concept held by many who still say "yes" to solving all the world's problems militarily. Are we going to take a giant step backward into neocon more-bang-less-buck land? Say "no" to Hillary and her nukefest-frenzied More of Same campaign.

Why Do 5 Former Secretaries of State Say Close Gitmo?

This just came in from truthout: Former Secretaries of State Colin Powell, Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher and Madeleine K. Albright all agreed that Guantanamo should be closed.

James Baker went on to say:

"It gives us a very, very bad name, not just internationally," he said. "I have
a great deal of difficulty understanding how we can hold someone, pick someone
up, particularly someone who might be an American citizen - even if they were
caught somewhere abroad, acting against American interests - and hold them
without ever giving them an opportunity to appear before a
magistrate."
The former secretaries of State also urged that the U.S. open a line of dialogue with Iran, each saying it was important to maintain contact with adversaries and allies alike.

Iran? And what about Iran? Do you mean we shouldn't take McCain's word and "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"?

Baker suggested the dialogue (with Iran) could center on a common dilemma,
saying a "dysfunctional Iraq, a chaotic Iraq, is not something that's in the
interest to Iran. There's every incentive on their part to help us, the same way
they did in Afghanistan."
Kissinger urged an open - if delicate - line of communication with
Iran. "One has to talk with adversaries," said Kissinger, who served the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Didn't think the old guy had it in him. Does that mean talk to .... terrorists, too? They are "adversaries", so "one has to talk" with them. So where were they when Gitmo was put in place as Our Torture Chamber?

Iran Internet Cut Off: Is It War Against Iran Oil Bourse?

Buzzing all over the net: 5 internet cables in the Middle East cut off, some only a few kilometers apart, interrupting internet connectivity to Egypt, India, Qatar, and mostly, yes, most completely, to Iran... although all this is in the fact-meets-speculation stage. One of many synopses:

A ship's anchor severed one undersea Internet cable damaged last week, it
was revealed on Thursday amid ongoing outages in the Middle East and South Asia,
but mystery shrouds what caused another four reported cuts.
There has been speculation that five cables being cut in almost as many days was too much of a coincidence and that sabotage must have been involved.

It's too early to really assess the situation, but the timing is definitely significant. Namely, Iran's announcement that it will not trade its oil in U.S. Dollars. The impact of such a move, especially if it's emulated by others, which is a real possibility, could bring disaster, as eloquently explained by Len Hart of Existentialist Cowboy:

Certainly, when oil is no longer traded in dollars, it is not only the
dollar that will collapse. It means that the US --on the bad end of a huge
balance of trade deficit --will no longer be able to afford to import goods or
services. For a nation that long ago (Reagan years primarily; See Vidal, cited)
gave up its role as a manufacturing nation, this collapse will be monumental,
catastrophic. The fact that oil had been traded in dollars was the only thing
propping up the dollar.

This, in turn, could lead to our overextended debtor nation still called America to an economic tragedy on an unprecedented scale. So cutting off the internet, in comparison, looks sort of like a desperate prelude to war. War on Iran's threat - its economic threat to our empire.

Monitoring the news today --it is clear that the Middle East cables were
deliberately sabotaged and the effect has been to cut Iran off the internet.
Isolating a nation by cutting off its systems of communication is a first step
preceding a military attack. Bush no longer cares about even the pretense of
pre-text! His charge that Iran has weaponized grade fuels is universally and
credibly debunked. The real threat is to the poohbahs of US empire --the
Military/Industrial complex.

The spectre of impending doom, however, will not just trickle down. It may just avalanche down.

That there was a demand for dollars because there was a demand for oil
meant that you could continue to buy imported goods with dollars. Now --imagine
a world in which no other country need "purchase" dollars in order to import
oil! What if oil producing nations agree to accept other currencies? What if
they refuse to accept dollars? Go to Wal-Mart or even your local supermarket.
Almost everything on the shelves is imported.

How are we going to afford our lifestyles if we have to import things we can't pay for? Will the dollar ultimately become worthless? And another issue: what will all the victims of our senseless wars fighting "monsters" like the bin Laden "Antichrist", all those millions of refugees, all those families robbed of their homes, what will they do to, or about, us - or shall I say, US?

With this hanging, unspoken, like a looming cloud overhead, an unknown possibility, and with all our money hanging on the petroleum trade, is there any question now why we are in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, fawning over Saudi Arabia while blindfolding everyone we can, in order to shore up an empire that collapsed decades ago by invading every oil-rich piece of earth we can manage to invade? Yet that only makes things much worse.

It's Republican mismanagement and squander on wars that devalued the dollar, and now when oil-producers don't want to trade in dollars they become Enemy Number One. It's sabotage time... But to the deluded Petrocorporate War machine, they're Hans Brinker putting his finger in the dam. Let's expose them before it's too late: it isn't even their dam.

Bush/Cheney gun for Ahmedinejad; But Saudis "Tool up" for War, Too - The Devil is on Both Sides?

Would You Buy a Nuclear War from This Man?

I want to nuke 'em, I want to nuke 'em NOW!

No? Well, congratulations! You already have! He's convinced Sweet Oxy-Condi to tag along on the nuke bandwagon, and pretty soon you, O Taxpayer of Little Faith, will be the proud owner of your Very Own Nuclear War! With that country about which I'm sure you know a whole hell of a lot, and for whom you feel the utmost ire & enmity, Iran!

Here's a slightly edited and worth-perusing excerpt from the "DownsizeDC" group, normally a libertarian group that endorses Ron Paul, is not so hot about socialized medicine, but really has it on the money on a number of issues, including the Department of Homeland Security and Patriot Act, two "Essentially Cheney" creations that really express his line of thinking ... and the American taxpayers are the catwalk!

Here's an area where both left, right, and middle may agree: duh... going to Armageddon and killing civilians unnecessarily is NOT a good policy.

"URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!

Subject: The immediate mortal danger of attacking Iran

There is increasing evidence that President Bush intends to bomb Iran. This would . . .

• Reverse the progress we have made with Iranian public opinion

• Further entrench the "hardliners" in the Iranian regime

• Further radicalize the Muslim population across the Middle East

• Recruit countless numbers of new terrorists
• Place us in a state of irreversible war with Iran and its people
• Threaten oil shipments from the Persian gulf

(Why would a Big Oil Administration want to threaten oil shipments?? Must be something even Bigger than Big Oil!)

(Regarding "radicalizing" - unlike the writer, I believe this is really alienating Muslims from a sense of free participation in world events, the response to which is to take action to "participate" from the "outside" - which is where they have been pushed. It becomes a case of Us vs. Them - and guess who started this? Us, of course! it's not "blowback" - it's just participation by those who are denied participation - by force, on both sides...)

The combined impact would be to destabilize the entire region, fostering bin Laden's goal of creating radical Islamist regimes throughout the area. Most chilling is the potential impact on Pakistan. If Pakistan's population becomes further radicalized because of U.S. attacks against Muslims the result could be the creation of an Islamist regime. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons, and elements of Pakistan's security service has close ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, dating back to the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

If President Bush bombs Iran the result could be exactly what he thinks he's trying to prevent -- nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. In addition, bombing Iran could slow that country's nuclear program, but it would not stop it. The Iranians could just begin again, with more secure underground sites, just like the Nazis did in response to allied bombing during World War II.

What would we do then? Use nuclear weapons? Vice President Cheney is said to already favor this!


There is nothing to be gained by bombing Iran, and everything to be lost. And yet, there are more and more reports that President Bush plans to attack Iran before he leaves office.


Worse yet, he already has Congressional authorization to do so because of the loose wording of previous war authorizations resolutions.


The whole world is at the mercy of President Bush's notoriously bad judgment, unless ALL OF US take action to constrain him. There is something we can do, in the short term, to stop an attack, and many things we can do in the long term to stabilize the situation and bring lasting security.In the short term . . .

• We must demand that Congress pass a resolution prohibiting an attack


• We must demand this of the Democrats even if the Republicans would resist


• We must focus extreme pressure on Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid


• We must work to turn key Republicans in the House, and especially the Senate


• We must recruit more people to apply more pressure
  

Even if all we got was a majority vote in the House, because the Republicans blocked action in the Senate, that might be enough to stay the President's hand.

For the long term . . .We must compel Congress to recognize the truth of what Congressman Ron Paul and official reports of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon assert. Blowback against U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is the main problem, which means pullback is the answer.


We must eliminate our footprint in Islamic countries. When we do that the process of radicalization will recede. This is the best path to peace and security for the American people. Specifically . . .

• We should exit Iraq, leaving the surrounding Islamic countries to create a settlement there


• We should renounce pre-emptive war and regime change, and adopt a policy of retaliatory deterrence
  
• We should recognize the government of Iran and establish formal relations with it


• We should apologize directly to the Iranian people for the 1953 C.I.A. coup and our support of the Shah


• We should lift trade sanctions on Iran to foster civil society there as a balance against extremism
  

Many facts form the basis of our proposals . . .We have a history of regime change in the Middle East, and especially Iran. We overthrew a democratic and secular Iranian government in 1953, and established the tyrannical Shah. The Iranians remember this. We have also just changed the regime in Iraq and placed Iran on the same target list.

Given these facts . . .You would want a nuclear weapon too, if you were part of the Iranian government!

We must take every possible step to make the Iranian regime feel secure, no matter how much we may dislike their form of government. It is possible . . .

• The Iranian government has repeatedly said that the main thing it wants from the U.S. is respect


• The Iranians have offered to defund Hezbollah as part of a broader settlement with the U.S.


• The Iranians have offered to help us against the Taliban in Afghanistan, which they also dislike


• The Afghanistan government favors Iranian aid against the Taliban, but we have blocked it.


• Our government has repeatedly snubbed Iranian overtures. We must stop doing this.

We recognized and negotiated with the Communists in China and the Soviet Union to good result, and we can do the same with the Iranians. We must remove the MOTIVATION for the Iranian government to develop nuclear weapons, and give them strong incentives for peaceful relations!

We must also bolster our relationship with the Iranian people. They have come to dislike their own government and are tending to have a neutral or even positive opinion of the U.S. After the 9-11 attack Iranians flooded the streets, demonstrating in support of America.

Bombing Iran would once again make us the enemy in the eyes of the Iranian people, when instead we could restore and foster their good opinion of us. It is important to repeat that we can do this by . . .

• Taking Iran off our enemies list
  
• Apologizing loudly and publicly for the 1953 coup and our support of the Shah


• Lifting trade sanctions!

Trade sanctions do not work. They cripple civil society and permit oppressive regimes to blame their own failings on foreign powers. They are counterproductive. We should end the sanctions unilaterally and bring Iran into the world community.
We have it in our power to enhance the peace and security of the whole world. All we have to do is stop provoking people. This does not mean that the radicals will stand down, but it does mean that the process of radicalization will slow, and perhaps even stop. But first . . .We must prevent an attack on Iran. Here's what we need to do . . .

• Send a message to Congress demanding a resolution prohibiting an attack


• Call the offices of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and demand a vote on this issue


• Call Nancy Pelosi at this number: 202-225-4965


• Call Harry Reid at this number: 202-224-3542
  
• If one or more of your Senators are Republicans, call them too

Pelosi and Reid are blocking a vote on this issue because they're afraid of appearing soft. We must give them the courage to do the right thing. Republicans in the Senate are the key to getting a vote in that chamber. We must make them fear public opinion. * Send your message to Congress*

Note: There are many movements against bombing Iran, notably also Gen. Wes Clark's. Why don't these all join together in one big anti-bombing bloc??????

Voodoo "Diplomacy"

Yes, it's official. There really is religion in politics. At least, in the Bush Administration, religion is King - with a crown. And I believe it's Caribbean. Yes, we're finally going to get back to tradition.

The tradition of voodoo. But not voodoo economics, no. That was Reaganomics. Bush &Co. are into effigies and pins. Will it work? We'll see - or so I fear. First, there was the Ahmadinejad doll, which was easy, because he kept helping himself to more pins. Then, there was the entire nation of Iran. Call it Mass Effigy Work. Iran as a nation, and the people in it, are all just one big doll, and the Bush administration the self-proclaimed Priestess. The pins? Big Media, of course. It's like one big urinal - the "contacts" take a "leak" and the urinal "flushes" it to the public. Are we not, to them, one great sewer? Don't you miss the days of the "melting pot"?

Here's some of the leaked "material" that accidentally got out of the "stream" - How? A thinking and mentally active reporter actually thought about and analyzed the "evidence" against Iran that has been gathered in the voodoo frenzied march to war on everyone on Some Special Someone's Dream List. As mentioned in this article:

"The Washington Post quoted one of the U.S. officials at the briefing as saying that there was no "widespread involvement" of the Iraqi government in supplying weaponry, thus implicitly conceding that some elements of the Iraqi government officials are indeed involved in the weapons traffic. By insisting that the Iranian government was involved, the Bush administration has conjured up the image of a smuggling operation so vast that it could not occur without official sanction. In fact, as Knights points out, the number of EFPs exploded monthly has remained at about 100, which clearly would not require high level connivance to maintain a flow of imports. The power point slides presented to the press in Baghdad ended with a slide that essentially confirms that the evidence points not to official sponsorship of cross-border weapons smuggling but to private arms trafficking networks. "

Regardless to whether or not we are convinced, it may be likely to happen. But that doesn't mean we can't pressure the government to avoid the potential disaster of such a stupendously, insanely destructive move.

Global Cannibalism

Some call it empire. Others call it international adventurism. Others call it a conspiracy. I call it global cannibalism. This is not the first time - who doesn't know that? Like a supernova, it usually happens when a national power is somehow in its death throes. This article cogently describes one aspect of global cannibalism, or I should say one example of it.

When one power needs more power and sees the world as its power base and source for resources - without regard to the fellow humans occupying and using various places and resources on the planet, and their rights thereto. Why call it cannibalism? Because since we are all human, this ultimately is self-defeating - "dog eat dog", you could say.