Beware anti-Iranian lies

by What? Mon Oct 05, 2009 21:34

I don't think the crowds in Tehran chanting 'death to the dictator' at Ahmadinejad on al Quds day were part of the Israeli propaganda machine.

Is this the same John Pilger who tried to convince us that supporting 'the resistance' in Iraq was progressive? http://dissidentvoice.org/Mar06/Ireland24.htm

by Feudal castrato Mon Oct 05, 2009 23:56

is one of the few real journalists with integrity left on the planet

Any country that is illegally attacked has a right to defend itself

In that context, john pilger is correct.

Furthermore:
If saddam hussein had been left in power and continued to kill his political opponents / enemies etc at the highest annual rate he ever achieved, it would have taken him > 200 years to kill as many people as the invasion did.(!!) But he might at best have lived only another 50 years, leaving plenty of scope for something better.

And his political opponents would not have included all that many defenceless women and children. And meanwhile if you minded your own business, you would have an education, good health service, running water and most of the trappings of civilisation. Even if you were a woman. And there would have been no gassing of the kurds if they had not been encouraged to rise up and topple saddam by the US. As for the US sponsored war on Iran..don't get me started

Saddam was a shitbag but he was still far better than what they have now. Their entire heritage was ransacked, there is little proper working infrastructure, It's one of the most dangerous places to live in the world and has become a breeding ground for fundamentalists.

If I was in Iraq, I'd be angry at the invaders too and especially if they killed people close to me and massacred people in haditha and fallujah and destroyed the whole way of life of my country, all for money, and corporate greed.

As for the crowds in Iran, You are cynically using a situation where people are rightly striving for reform to further your imperialist views. Most people including those in HOPI do not want any "help" from the imperialists in their quest to bring much needed reforms to Iran. "help" such as special forces openly acknowledged to be operating inside their country distributing arms and money and fostering violent dissent from extreme political groups. This if anything only gives an excuse to the government to crack down on protests etc.

Pilger has better eyes than you have evidently , and a better sense of right and wrong. May he long continue his fight to give a voice to the downtrodden and oppressed of this world. John, good on ya mate!

by What? Tue Oct 06, 2009 16:12

He is one of the few journalists on the planet whom you agree with.

Your 'if only the Kurds minded their own business' point is ridiculous. It's like arguing that since Apartheid South Africa was more peaceful it was essentially preferable to its current state (which may actually have a higher murder rate than Iraq).

Most of the killings in Iraq were carried out by 'the resistance'. They are not the downtrodden. They seek to impose their own will on their fellow Iraqis who were already suffering in a needless war. The right to resist illegal aggression? Does this entail the right to execute tennis players for wearing shorts? Killing barbers for shaving beards? Detonating bombs in Markets (where there are no 'imperialists'), waiting fifteen minutes and then detonating another so you can kill the people who work for the emergency services?

Where in my post did i express imperialist views?

My belief is that the government of Iran has earned its bad publicity. The protest movement in Iran may have had its 1905 moment, 1917 is yet to come. When it does you, Pilger and the rest of the pro-theocrat contortionists will have a lot of explaining to do.

Goodbye

by Feudal castrato Tue Oct 06, 2009 20:17

first of all, I never said "if only the kurds minded their own business" don't misquote me. it undermines your "argument"
(I consider the treatment of the kurds as one of the worst aspects of saddams rule BTW. That and the horrible US sponsored war on Iran.)

the "minding your own business" bit referred to your average normal citizen walking about in Iraq. Generally most people led normal lives in Iraq if they "minded their own business". Normal lives complete with running water, electricity, an education, and a secular society with equal rights for women.

The kurds in the kurdish region however were a special case I think.

I did say "And there would have been no gassing of the kurds if they had not been encouraged to rise up and topple saddam by the US." ( referring of course to what happened post GW I )

Rising up threatening the authority of a wounded and dangerous dictator militarily is quite different to "minding your own business" in a dictatorship. By orders of magnitude!!!

Rising up and trying to topple somebody like Saddam after Gulf WarI was not a good idea. They poor duped kurds only did this because they were encouraged by the leading statements of GW bush, they thought the US would come to their aid and help them achieve it. Fools. Instead the world had to watch as Saddam struggled to regain his battered authority and made an example of them. I maintain that they might not have risen up blatantly like they did if not encouraged to do so by the US. The US screwed the kurds royally. They knew exactly what would happen and didn't care. They bear a large part of the responsibility for what ensued. They may well have supplied Saddam with some of the chemical weapons he used too ( albeit originally for use on evil Iranians ). In the light of this their much publicised food drops in the mountains were a cynical publicity stunt

Likening the Saddam era Vs current Iraq to saying apartheid south africa was better than the current situation is a poor comparison

There are complex reasons for the high arbitrary murder rate in south africa
A quote from wikipedia to highlight this:
"Many of the inequalities created and maintained by apartheid still remain in South Africa. The country has one of the most unequal income distribution patterns in the world: approximately 60% of the population earns less than R42,000 per annum (about US$7,000), whereas 2.2% of the population has an income exceeding R360,000 per annum (about US$50,000). Poverty in South Africa is still largely defined by skin colour, with black people constituting the poorest layer. Despite the ANC government having implemented a policy of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), blacks make up over 90% of the country's poor but only 79.5% of the population.[1][2]"

To cap that, Eighty percent of farming land still remains in the hands of white farmers. So has apartheid really gone away totally? Perhaps in law but less so in practical terms
Oh and the raging HIV epidemic there does have a certain "what have I got to lose" element to it too, don't you think?

To make a revealing comparison, you must try to compare like with like. This is not a revealing comparison.

"Most of the killings in Iraq were carried out by 'the resistance'. They are not the downtrodden. They seek to impose their own will on their fellow Iraqis who were already suffering in a needless war. The right to resist illegal aggression? Does this entail the right to execute tennis players for wearing shorts? Killing barbers for shaving beards? Detonating bombs in Markets (where there are no 'imperialists'), waiting fifteen minutes and then detonating another so you can kill the people who work for the emergency services?"

I don't think it's quite as stereotyped or clear cut as your statements imply. It's complex.
regarding the market bombs, Yes such people are scumbags and such actions certainly throw the veracity of their exhorted religious beliefs into question. And strongarm saddam would have taken folk like them away, possibly tortured them and then shot them and buried them in a shallow grave. I don't agree with his approach at all but when compared to sanctions killing hundreds of thousands of children and women, indiscriminate bombing of civilians, displacement of over 1.5 million to syria, the total destruction of a countries history, the attempted stealing of it's natural resources, an the creation of the nightmare that is current Iraq, All on the pretext of the lie of WMD, then I reluctantly choose saddams rule as by far the lesser of 2 awful evils.

Iraq has been a complex place since ottoman times and for whatever reasons, the british did them no favours after world warI by dividing it up without considering ethnic and religious differences such as the assyrians and kurds and shi'ites and hence a powder keg was born. Funnily enough, Saddam kept all these forces in line and they didn't fight too much under his rule, whilst all the time he maintained a secular society with reasonable infrastructure, womens rights, all paid for by the oil. Now the place is crawling with fundamentalists who want sharia law. The assyrians are a displaced people, there are conservative forces in power, Iran's influence has greatly increased (and you don't like that do you?) and nobody is too happy there now except blackwater and haliburton. What precipitated this change? THE STUPID GULF WARS. Every sentient being on the planet was screaming "don't invade because you will open a can of worms and provoke a civil war". Such cries fell on deaf ears and what happened? Civil war in all but name ad the complete destruction of iraq.

Was saddam preferable? in my book, (and possibly pilgers?) yes. Not because he was a nice guy. He wasn't. But because the alternative was even worse. He held the tribal / religious forces exacerbated by the stupid british division of Iraq in check. Purely on a mathematical (body count) and quality of life basis (none at present!) . The figures speak for themselves.

Like I said, it would have taken Saddam >200 years to achieve a death rate like that of the last 10 years of strife in Iraq. Yet he only could have continued for at best 50 years (unlikely), leaving time and the possibility for something better to arise, meanwhile much better quality of life for most Iraqis, A secular society with it's own inherent forces of change, Much fewer deaths, more oil flowing, and the proud people of Iraq keep their history and heritage intact.

As for "where did I express imperialist views", well I guess I made what I thought to be a reasonable assumption. In my book, being in favour of the war on Iraq which was intended to topple Saddam (and you do seem to have been somewhat in favour of them going in after saddam) , destroy the mythical WMD's and "bring peace and democracy to the middle east", you are either an imperialist supporter in favour of the usual modus operandi of the west, or a gullible fool who believes what the nice harmless old puppet man in the white house says to the camera in the news and who prefers his propaganda with a little sugar on top in the mornings. That or you are an interesting contradiction. An enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a taco perhaps? :-) Out of politeness, Imperialist seemed to be the best I could say about your views. Perhaps you prefer gullible?

I do agree that the current REGIME in Iran has some problems. But special forces working inside another soverign country spreading dissent, weapons and cash about is not going to help the Iranian people make the changes they need to in their country. Troublemakers like the US special forces should just GO HOME and, to repeat my mantra: "mind their own business". Perhaps we can find agreement on this one reasonable point at least??

by pat c Wed Oct 07, 2009 11:01

The US presents a clear and present danger to the people of Iran. As Feudal Castro has pointed out, US Special Forces are working within Iran both militarily and politically. Make no mistake about it, some of the wilder Islamic militias who wish to impose an even stricter form of islam, especially in Baluchistan, are funded and armed by the US.

This is done under the guise of a National Liberation Movement. Some of the groups involved, Harakat Jundullah and Baluchistan Liberation United Front specialise in beheading hostages. Jundullah, which is a Sunni Militia, bombed a Shia Mosque in Zahedan at the end of May 2009, killing 25 people and injuring 80. In whose interest is it to stir up such sectarian hatred?

This is not to take away from the valid struggle of the Kurdish people in Iran. They have suffered horrific attacks from the the Iranian Regime and they deserve the right to Self Determination.

What is the real story about the "discovery" of the second nuclear fuel enrichment plant? The statements by Obama, Brown and Sarkozy about the plant, made at the G20 summit, were clearly intended to prepare the world for a new conflict in the Middle East. But it is not news. US and UK spooks knew about it for at least 3 years - Israel and France also knew about it and reported this to the International Atomic Energy Agency earlier this year. So what were Obama-Sarkozy-Brown up to on September 25? Could it be it was directed mainly to audiences in the US, UK and France, to convince them that, at a time of economic uncertainty, western leaders have to deal with a ‘major external threat’ posed by iran’s nuclear development? By Jingo! They found an Enemy!

This is not at all to excuse the Iranian Regime which is not progressive as some people think, it is quite clearlt capitalist and has been praised by the IMF. After 30 years in power iran’s Islamic regime has created one of the most unequal, corrupt societies of the region, where the gap between the rich and the poor is amongst the highest in the world. Factory closures due to privatisation continue. The telecom company was privatised and sold to the ‘revolutionary guards’ in the last week of September. Millions of Iranian workers have not been paid for months, while capitalists and the religious government keep telling them of Iran’s economic crisis and shortfalls in both the state and private funds, yet the Islamic regime seems to have sufficient funds to equip one more nuclear enrichment plant, paying billions for black market equipment.

Meanwhile the real struggle against the Islamic Regime continues. Students have protested at universities throughout Iran the largest being at Tehran University on September 27-28. Students shouted "Death to the dictator" and booed the new minister of higher education. Security forces retreated from the campus. On Tuesday September 29 students protested at Sharif University, once more causing the minister for higher education to abandon plans to speak. Security forces are also warning football crowds not to chant political slogans at matchs!

Workers in oil refineries in Iran have taken strike action in the last few weeks. These workers have two concerns: (1) that their strike should not benefit Moussavi (he is hated by these workers, some of whom remember his time in power); and (2) that their strike should not help US efforts for regime change from above.

The reason to oppose sanctions is clear but I think Yassamine Mather puts it better than me:

Hands Off the People of Iran has always condemned sanctions and threats of war against Iran. We oppose them not only because we want to see imperialism defeated, but because they increase patriotism and nationalism, thus helping the reactionary regime. The government will use the ‘threat of the enemy without’ to increase repression, to arrest and torture its ‘enemy within’. Sanctions disorganise the working class, as people are forced to squander their fighting energies on day-to-day struggles to keep their jobs and feed their families - Iranian oil workers are right to be concerned about going on strike at a time when sanctions will also target ‘imported refined oil’.
http://hopidisc.blogspot.com/2009/10/threats-over-urani....html

by Pete. Wed Oct 07, 2009 20:11

BBC Radio 4 has top Afghani's and Brit's now discussing the war.

Difficult topic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/

Good conversation.

If you missed it,
Radio 4 always podcasts afterwards.

by Fred Johnston Sat Oct 10, 2009 17:21

Obama has the Nobel Prize for Peace, so why should the world worry? I think for US presidents the criteria is if you don't actually invade a defenceless country in the first couple of months of office your entitled to a Nobel. Bush didn't know where Nobel was, so he didn't get one. Kissinger did, so they gave him a Peace Prize before he could bomb the place.

by Pete. Sun Oct 11, 2009 16:47

The other Nobel Prizes are awarded for "previous work".

The Peace Prize was always different.
There has always been an "aspirational" aspect to the peace prize.

The rule for winning it is:

"The person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".

Obama is holding peace congresses right now.

Obama's election uplifted the mood of the entire planet.

Unlike George Bush's election.
.