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By David Peterson at Aug 21, 2007 |
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I am not certain when the very first time was that
a senior U.S. Government official tried to link Tehran
to the Iraqi resistance's successful use of "explosively
formed penetrators" (EFPs and the like -- recall the
earlier term "improvised explosive devices," or IEDs)
against the occupying forces. But I distinctly recall one famous occasion on February 2, 2006, when the then-director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte told the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence that "Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-Coalition attacks by providing Shia militants with the capability to build IEDs with explosively formed projectiles similar to those developed by Iran and Lebanese Hizballah." So let's count this as the first instance -- even if somebody can name an earlier one -- and proceed from here.
Okay then. What this means is that it's already been more than 18 months since the Washington regime expanded its propaganda campaign against Iran, from the grave and globally-marketed charge that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons (ca. early 2003 -- basically, for as long as U.S. forces have been militarily occupying Iraq) to the more recent charge that Tehran is arming and training "terrorist" forces that are killing U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians and preventing a peaceful, free, and democratic Iraq from developing. Or as U.S. Major General Rick Lynch has been telling every news agency that'll quote him, Iran's Revolutionary Guard is "facilitating training of Shiite extremists," and "Iranian munitions are making their way into the hands of Sunni insurgents," to quote the Washington Post's version of Lynch's remarks from the "Green Zone." So that by now "we've got to spend as much time fighting the Shia extremists as Sunni extremists," in Associated Press's rendering of the same briefing.
To date, the Washington regime has succeeded in lining up several powerful states (esp. Britain, France, Germany, and Japan), a majority of the Board of Governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the UN Security Council behind the first of these anti-Iran campaigns. But with opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq fairly widespread among the same centers of power -- though due overwhelmingly to the success of the resistance inside Iraq, and nothing else -- the Washington regime has faced a much more difficult task at making the second set of charges stick.
Catastrophically, even this appears to be changing, as the will and the focus and the energy that it requires to counter on a daily basis a truly committed, even fanatic gang of liars keeps wearing down the resistance to their latter set of lies.
Thus, though we read that Major General Rick Lynch's "mission is to block the flow of weapons and fighters into the Baghdad area" (quoting Associated Press again), surely another part of the Major General's mission includes marketing the allegation that Iran's Revolutionary Guard is sponsoring the "terrorists" who are killing U.S. troops inside Iraq.
Yet, as Lynch admitted to the American Forces Press Service ("Power, Influence Dictate Patterns of Violence in Central Iraq," Tim Kilbride, August 20), "The enemy's got this amazing capability of filling the void. If we go to an area and we conduct an operation and we leave, in about 48 hours he now controls that area again. So you just can't let him rest."
Lynch's remarks -- he's obviously a "counterinsurgency" kind of guy -- are straight out of the Vietnam War era, and we dare not miss the lesson they betray.
Forty years ago, what remarks such as these meant was that the entirety of South Vietnam was "VC," that is, was against the occupying military and the puppet regimes it had established in Saigon. So, too, within Iraq today, what remarks such as these tell us is that the bottom two-thirds of Iraq --beneath Kurdistan, that is -- are controlled by "Al Qaeda" or by the "insurgents" or by the "terrorists" -- but not by the occupying military and the puppet regime it has established in the "Green Zone." Which certainly excels at killing. But which possesses zero legitimacy. And enjoys zero loyalty. Except that which it purchases through bribes and fear.
Just as all of the South was opposed to the U.S. military occupation of Vietnam, all of the southern two-thirds of Iraq are opposed to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq.
The reason the "enemy" moves back in after "we leave" is simply because they already live there.Once upon a time, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD." And "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." ("Secret Downing Street memo," July 23, 2002.)
Working, therefore, from this now five-year-old account of the old set of lies, expressed so elegantly by Matthew Rycroft in his memorandum for his boss, and leaked unto posterity, the question of the hour that every last one of us ought to be asking is what "intelligence" and what "facts" are now being fixed around the policy of destabilizing the Islamic Republic of Iran, if not overthrowing it outright?
Does it not appear that if a U.S. military attack on Iran is ever launched, it, too, will be justified by the conjunction of Iran's alleged support for the "terrorists" attacking U.S. forces inside Iraq and Iran's alleged WMD programs?
And does it not also appear that, five years after the Downing Street memo, almost nobody has learned a single thing about how the Washington regime operates?
"Secret Downing Street memo," Matthew Rycroft, July 23, 2002 (as posted by the London Times)
Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence, John D. Negroponte, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate, February 2, 2006
S/PRST/2006/15 -- S/PV/5043, March 29, 2006
S/RES/1696 -- S.PV.5550, July 31, 2006
S/RES/1737 -- S/PV.5612, December 23, 2006
S/RES/1747 -- S/PV.5647, March 24, 2007"Iran's Nuclear Threat," Massimo Calabresi, Time Magazine, March 8, 2003
"U.S. general says Iranians crossing into Iraq to train militia fighters," Kim Gamel, Associated Press, August 18, 2007
"Iranian agents training militias in Iraq-US general," Ross Colvin, Reuters, August 19, 2007
"Power, Influence Dictate Patterns of Violence in Central Iraq," Tim Kilbride, American Forces Press Service, August 20, 2007
"Kurds flee homes as Iran shells villages in Iraq," Michael Howard, The Guardian, August 20, 2007
"Iran Trains Militiamen Inside Iraq, U.S. Says," Megan Greenwell, Washington Post, August 20, 2007
"U.S. stays firm on sanctions against Iran," Brian Knowlton, New York Times - IHT, August 21, 2007
"Tougher on Iran," Editorial, Washington Post, August 21, 2007"Bush's New War Drums for Iran," Ray McGovern, ConsortiumNews.com, August 21, 2007
"Cheney & Iran: Here We Go Again?" Juan Cole, Informed Comment, August 30, 2007"Open Letter to the World on the U.S. Threat to the Peace," ZNet, March 31, 2007
"American Power, Iran, and the New York Review of Books," ZNet, June 3, 2007
"Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entities," ZNet, August 16, 2007
"'By the Conjunction of Terrorism and WMD'," ZNet, August 21, 2007
Afterword. Five relevant paragraphs reproduced from John D. Negroponte's Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence, which he presnted before the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, February 2, 2006 (pp. 12-13).
Although regime-threatening instability is unlikely, ingredients for political volatility remain, and Iran is wary of the political progress occurring in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan. Ahmadi-Nejad's rhetorical recklessness and his inexperience on the national and international stage also increase the risk of a misstep that could spur popular opposition, especially if more experienced conservatives cannot rein in his excesses. Over time, Ahmadi-Nejad's populist economic policies could—if enacted—deplete the government's financial resources and weaken a structurally flawed economy. For now, however, Supreme Leader Khamenei is keeping conservative fissures in check by balancing the various factions in government.
Iranian policy toward Iraq and its activities there represent a particular concern. Iran seeks a Shia-dominated and unified Iraq but also wants the US to experience continued setbacks in our efforts to promote democracy and stability. Accordingly, Iran provides guidance and training to select Iraqi Shia political groups and weapons and training to Shia militant groups to enable anti-Coalition attacks. Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-Coalition attacks by providing Shia militants with the capability to build IEDs with explosively formed projectiles similar to those developed by Iran and Lebanese Hizballah.
Tehran's intentions to inflict pain on the United States in Iraq has been constrained by its caution to avoid giving Washington an excuse to attack it, the clerical leadership's general satisfaction with trends in Iraq, and Iran's desire to avoid chaos on its borders.
Iranian conventional military power constitutes the greatest potential threat to Persian Gulf states and a challenge to US interests. Iran is enhancing its ability to project its military power in order to threaten to disrupt the operations and reinforcement of US forces based in the region—potentially
intimidating regional allies into withholding support for US policy toward Iran—and raising the costs of our regional presence for us and our allies.
Tehran also continues to support a number of terrorist groups, viewing this capability as a critical regime safeguard by deterring US and Israeli attacks, distracting and weakening Israel, and enhancing Iran's regional influence through intimidation. Lebanese Hizballah is Iran's main terrorist ally, which—although focused on its agenda in Lebanon and supporting anti-Israeli Palestinian terrorists—has a worldwide support network and is capable of attacks against US interests if it feels its Iranian patron is threatened. Tehran also supports Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups in the Persian Gulf, Central and South Asia, and elsewhere.
Update (August 30): Barnett Rubin speculates with respect to a possible U.S. military strike against Iran that the White House is engaging in some "test marketing" just like it did with respect to Iraq some 12-to-18 months prior to launching the full-scale invasion in March 2003. "Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient," Rubin explains. "According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions." ("Post Labor Day Product Roll-out: War with Iran," Barnett Rubin, Informed Comment Global Affairs, August 29, 2007.)
Rubin adds that his friend "summarized what he was told this way:"They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."
It kinda figures. Doesn't it? I always tell my friends to remember to emphasize the three major categories of the war-propaganda to which the Washington regime (i.e., taking into account the whole corporate-state-media-NGO nexus) would resort, once its principal decision-makers determined that sufficient momentum had been attained so that there couldn be no turning back from an attack on Iran:
1) Allegations about Tehran's support for "terrorism" inside Iraq, as well as its octopus-like support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and whomever else the Washington-regime manages to tack-on (e.g., Pan Am Flight 103 back in December 1988).
2) Allegations about Tehran's nuclear-weapons program, as well as Tehran's "defiance" of the "international community" and Security Council resolutions demanding that Tehran cease uranium-enrichment and other specific programs.
And, last but not least:
3) Allegations about Tehran's violations of its citizens rights, the Islamic regime's repression of women, its arbitrary and unjust repression of dissidents, and the like.
None of these three sets of allegations needs to be 100 percent false to count as war-propaganda -- this depends on whether the Washington regime wants war (rather than simply to demonize a targeted enemy state), and whether and how thoroughly it selects from and arranges information about the target in a manner such that it stirs up paranoia and hatred towards it. But the fact remains that the Washington regime directed all three categories of war-propaganda at Iraq prior to launching the March 2003 invasion. And despite the critical findings of post-invasion inquiries about the fraudulence of Charges One and Two where Iraq was concerned, and the critical leak in Britain of documents such as the so-called "Secret Downing Street memo" (July 23, 2002), the regime has managed to resuscitate all three of these war-propaganda themes with respect to Iran. (For sources and comments dealing with the post-invasion inquiries, see Here - I and Here - II.)
As the serial invader of Afghanistan and Iraq threatens to attack yet another country in the region -- in fact, a country geographically sandwiched in-between the other two countries -- we've been watching it resort to the exact same sales pitches that it used previously.
Indeed. Among Western intellectual circles, No. Three appears to enjoy the greatest amount of "traction." (Compare "Release Haleh Esfandiari" to see exactly what I mean.)
For Your Archives (September 3): When the rightly notorious quote from the former White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card, which first entered the public realm on page A1 of the September 7, 2002 New York Times, under the half-illuminating, half-in-the-bag headline, "Traces of Terror: The Strategy. Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq" (i.e., the second being the illuminating half), was first reported, the Times reported it exactly like this:"Post Labor Day Product Roll-out: War with Iran," Barnett Rubin, Informed Comment Global Affairs, August 29, 2007
"'By the Conjunction of Terrorism and WMD'," ZNet, August 21, 2007
White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.
The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before President Bush's vacation in Texas last month. It was not hastily concocted, they insisted, after some prominent Republicans began to raise doubts about moving against Mr. Hussein and administration officials made contradictory statements about the need for weapons inspectors in Iraq.
The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.
"From a marketing point of view," said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, "you don't introduce new products in August."
A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq, which could come early next year.
("Traces of Terror: The Strategy. Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq," Elizabeth Bumiller, New York Times, September 7, 2002.)
Reply to Persona non grata
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 31, 2007 12:42 PM
SK:
Another great find: Malalai Joya (as interviewed over Denmark's DR2 - TV).
Based on what I can find (and it does not appear that any major U.S. print medium has mentioned her name since June 10), Malalai Joya, a member of the House of People in Afghanistan's National Assembly from Farah Province, and, I believe, the first woman elected to the National Assembly since the U.S. invasion and "regime change" in late 2001, had been expelled from her seat for making unflattering remarks about her fellow countrymen.
According to The Independent ("Afghan MP expelled for calling parliament ‘worse than a zoo'," May 22), among her gems was the following, spoken during an interview over the Tolo TV channel in Afghanistan: "A stable or a zoo is better, at least there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk. This parliament is worse than a stable or a zoo." (Other versions of the remarks are in circulation. For example: "This is a word that fits -- a cattle house is full of animals, like a cow giving milk, a donkey carrying something, a dog that's loyal. They are worse than cows and donkeys -- they're dragons.")
Joya was ousted in late May after a tape of this interview was played in the House of People. From what I've read, the other members invoked Rule 70 of the National Assembly's procedural rules, and ousted her on this basis. But it seems to be a violation of Article 101 of the Afghan Constitution, which states that "No member of the National Assembly is legally prosecuted due to expressing his views while performing his duty." (See "The National Assembly," Ch. 5 of the Constitution of Afghanistan.) Unless, that is, the word 'his' really is to be taken as referring exclusively to male members of the National Assembly.
At the time that Joya was ousted, Australian TV quoted NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, who explained that "Afghanistan is still one of the front lines in our fight against terrorism," and added that therefore it was his "strong conviction that that front line should not become a fault line. And that is why it's so important that all 26 NATO allies are committed of Afghanistan and that the whole international community for the longer term stays committed to that nation." ("Death toll angers Afghan government Death toll angers Afghan Government," Australian Broadcasting Corporation, May 22, 2007.)Malalai Joya appears to be quite popular in Australia and Canada. But judging by where material about her is reported, it also appears that Joya is largely ignored in the States.
Too bad she can't immigrate to the States and run for the Senate here.
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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Persona non grata
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 31, 2007 00:08 AM
The clip of Madalyn was from 1970.
btw, here is a "very courageous and impressive woman" who won't be getting an invitation from Robert Zoellick to take up a well paid job in DC anytime soon (English starts around 2:30). Any guesses on why that might be the case?
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The tele- evangelists
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 30, 2007 20:59 PM
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Reply to SK (Thu, 2007-08-30 15:00)
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 30, 2007 20:42 PM
SK:
Great video clip of Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Her anecdote about the Apollo astronauts' "spontaneous" religious expression -- straight from NASA's and Madison Avenue's flight plan -- was great. Looked like the 1970s. Was it?
Still. I wouldn't break-down the four figures you've cited the way you do. Richard Dawkins in particular seems mistreated here. ("The real enemies of reason," Dan Hind, The Guardian, August 23, 2007 -- though I am sticking with Dawkins' written work, not TV documentaries in which he appears.) I believe that Hind makes some great points -- though they are about what it's like to live in a strategically disenlightened prison cell, like that very narrow strip of territory I refer to as the Captive American Mind. But this isn't really about Dawkins. It's about that strategically disenlightened prison cell.
On the other hand, Ayaan Hirshi Ali strikes me as a crass huckster. Try rewriting a few of her barbs so that they come out in the end against her hosts rather than against her hosts' enemies. Then let's see how popular she is.
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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Re: Reply to Reply:
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 30, 2007 15:00 PM
One other possible way of classifying this motley crew could be that Dawkins isn't as obsessed with Islam as Hitchens, Sam Harris and Hirsi Ali are. One could make a further subdivision and classify Hitchens and Hirsi Ali, contra Harris, as trophies of the right because of their having morhphed into mouthpieces of Neocons (e.g. Wolfowitz) and/or xenophobic far-right politicos (e.g. Pim Fortuyn who was given to calling Muslims "goat fuckers").
At any rate, none of these self-promoters--Hirsi Ali in particular given her history of whole cloth fabrication--comes close to matching the integrity of someone like Madalyn Murray O'Hair. This despite her eccentricities and peculiar hangups, some of which can be observed in this clip of a talk she gave at my university many a moon ago. Most of her dire warnings never came true and as long as no-nonesense folks like Dick Cheney and James Baker are anywhere near the helm--as their ilk always has been, and with the sobering example of the risks of letting upstarts gain power in Germany before them now as well--will never come true.
The more important point, instead of getting sidetracked by the over the top rhetoric of these media personalities, was made poetically in reponse to Dan Hind's recent article this way:
The "stupid faces" comment was made by the self styled fighter against intolerance here.
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Reply to SK
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 30, 2007 12:30 PM
SK:
To be honest, on questions related to religion and all of that alleged God-stuff, I wouldn't lump either Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins in the same category as Sam Harris and especially not Ayaan Hirshi Ali. And even insofar as we limit ourselves to the critique of the God-stuff, I think Dawkins' work stands out. Though perhaps -- I'd have to look more closely -- Dawkins' criticism of religion is, as Michael Fitzpatrick noted in his book review ("The Dawkins delusion," Spiked online, Dec. 18, 2006), "resolutely ahistorical" and misdirected. In 2007, people don't engage in mock cannibalism because they suffer from individual psychological maladies; and the fact that the pharisees who guard the DSM have never reserved a place of honor for this particular masscult only adds to the list of reasons for us to be skeptical about this "den of gorillas, themselves obsessed and persecuted, which, to palliate the most frightful states of human anguish and suffocation, have merely a ridiculous terminology, a worthy product of their tainted brains."
I know that I've mentioned it elsewhere. But Hitchens' atheism has become the very last reasonable element of his work that we still can count on. Otherwise, it's Snoopy and the Red Baron.
Back to religion and the God-stuff: The Faith Central weblog at the London Times assembled something they called "The Word according to Dubya: 50 religious insights from George Bush" (August 9, 2007 -- though they say they derived it from the DubyaSpeak.com website). Clearly I can't vouch for the authenticity of each of the 50 quotes attributed to the Commander-in-Chief. (Though 100 percent of them are probably checkable.) But even if most of them are in the ballpark-accurate, the United States of America is a global disgrace for electing people such as this to the office of the president, and its citizens have no one other than themselves to blame.
Now to my point in bringing this up. -- Don't you think that it's high-time for American voters to adopt an atheism - test for all political candidates? You know. Something adapted from Nietzsche. -- Every potential candidate would have to answer a question that reads something like this:
And if a candidate doesn't strongly agree with this statement (or something like it expressing the same points), they'd fail the atheism - test, and be rejected as unfit for public office.
After administering this atheism - test to the each of the candidates for the presidency in 2008, how many do you think would survive?David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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Reply to Frederic
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 30, 2007 11:30 AM
Frederic:
Good to hear from you. As always.
What you mention here, I've also noticed. It is a safe bet that the reason the aligned media (i.e., aligned with American Power, as opposed to more independent sources) report the devastation of Iraq in this manner simply follows from the locus of responsibility for it: Since the primary agency is white-ethnic Judaeo-Christian Washington and London -- as opposed to Black Arab Muslims in Khartoum, say, or the Iranian clerical-types in charge of "Tehran's notorious Evin prison" -- the media that are aligned with this agent make its responsibility disappear beneath the manner of reporting it you've noted -- disembodied, and without a perpetrator.
Until the next suicide bomber strikes. Then the aligned media place the agency front and center. Probably without exception.
Like the great old phrase expressed it: When "we" are the guilty culprits, shit happens. But when the enemy does something?
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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Re: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for example
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 28, 2007 21:21 PM
There is a long history of European secular critique of religion in which Judaism served as Christianity's stand-in because of the latter's hegemony. George Mosse covered well the politics of this type of “enlightened” onslaught. He also discussed response of Western European Jewry to this new breed of vituperation–-ad-hoc tactics ranging from self-hating assimilationism to messianic religious nationalism. It looks like Islam is serving the same kind of proxy role for the self-proclaimed defenders of "Englightenment values" in our age like Sam Harris and Ayhaan Hirsi Ali. Interestingly, our understanding of the Englightenment itself has been illuminated by recent historiography such as the work of Roy Porter who observed about the Enlightenment that it "always involved clashing interests", and "could be deployed for radical ends or equally by sections of the propertied".
The greatest (or worst, depending upon your point of view) achievement of publicists and commentators like Hirsi Ali is to recast political problems into the deterministic language of religious schisms. As a Northern Irish commentator noted about the polemics emanating from another of this breed:
Dan Hind's recent book on the "real enemies of reason" is certainly a welcome corrective to bombast and histrionics (well-recompensed and well-publicized) from the likes of Hirsi Ali, Hitchens, and Dawkins.
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for example
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 28, 2007 12:49 PM
SK:
In contrast to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom the State Department's Robert Zoellick called a "very courageous and impressive woman" and "welcome to come to the United States," and this past Sunday's New York Times's Women's Fashion Magazine told us is "in America now, still speaking out against radical Islam and its dire treatment of women" ("Let the Dames Begin," S.S. Fair, August 26), to date, how many of the estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees or the 2 million internally displaced Iraqis do you suppose the U.S. Government has welcomed into this country?
Between zero and four million, what's your best guess?
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
Postscript. Interesting, is it not, how the U.S. Government and the establishment media embrace figures such as Hirsi Ali? That's a form of reality-avoidance, too. The enemy of Washington's enemies is Washington's and the U.S. media's celebrity dissident -- or at least exploitable as such, on a temporary basis.
And when they're no longer sufficiently exploitable?
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Re: Shazam!
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 28, 2007 00:38 AM
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Shazam!
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 27, 2007 23:02 PM
SK:
About the extremely interesting Norma Khouri affair (i.e., she became a best-selling author in numerous countries for her 2002 book Forbidden Love, wherein she faked an account of the "honor killing" of a woman-friend of hers in Amman, Jordan, even though her parents had moved the family from Jordan to the States when she was only three, and spent her entire life in the States until migrating to Australia early this decade): What a beautiful tale about how screwed-up the English-speaking world is! (See, e.g., "Bestseller's lies exposed," Malcolm Knox, Sydney Morning Herald, July 24, 2004; "We were inseparable, says hoaxer's Chicago flatmate," Malcolm Knox, Sydney Morning Herald, July 27, 2004; "The false identity that helped provide a moral case for war," Ihab Shalbak, Sydney Morning Herald, August 4, 2004; "How Norma made a dishonourable killing," Caroline Overington, Sydney Morning Herald, August 21, 2004; and "Hits and Misses," Nada Jarrar, The Guardian, November 19, 2004.)
When the discredited Khouri fled her home in Australia for the States in 2004, don't you think the reason was that she knew from experience that there are so many hucksters in the States, she'd fit right back in? ("A true history of American hoaxes," Simon Catterson, The Age, January 26, 2006.)
Plus, to repeat the so-called "Secret Downing Street memo" (July 23, 2002): "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD." And "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Clearly, this formula needs to be amended to take into account not just the deliberate lies told by the Western political leaderships, but also the artifacts that their culture-industry produces. So long as the artifact (a) flatters the imperial powers while (b) demeaning their targets, the artifact is bound to be warmly embraced. So, the Americans want to militarily subjugate states A,B,C,…, justified by the conjunction of the target states' alleged sponsorship of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction programs -- or, by the fact that their political and clerical leaderships don't spend their time reading Nabokov, Habermas, and assorted post-structuralists. And whichever artifacts seem to corroborate Western prejudices alleging the pre-enlightened and even downright backwaters of states A,B,C,…, they rise in value accordingly.
Shazam!
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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Reply to Reply to "Psychiatrics"
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 27, 2007 17:51 PM
As the first reviewer for Wretched of the Earth at amazon.com put it:
btw, my post entitled 'Psychiatrics' from yesterday never appeared. Given that this site is undergoing some "improvements", one feature that I would like to see is tagging via keywords to help with future indexing and browsing. For example, all posts related to 'neocolonialism' could be searched for by same tag, instead of ad-hoc phrase based searches which will inevitably miss out something or other. Just my 2c.
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Reply to "Psychiatrics"
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 27, 2007 10:02 AM
SK:
Now this is a great analysis:
In the history of lies that the imperial powers have told themselves about their right to subjugate others, the already-existing prejudices held by the home community are always the best reservoir to tap. (Also see Nada Jarrar's commentary on this sickening affair.)
About Fanon: We really should start linking some of his work, and discussing it further. -- So, just to get a start, let me reproduce some items that I collected three years ago (e.g., "The Song Remains the Same," ZNet, September 3, 2004):
Though I should also add the same caveat here that I mentioned back then: That from the standpoint of history, what academics call postcolonial studies (and similar honorific titles betraying a penchant for prefixes) are very poorly conceptualized. Question: Do you suppose we are living in more of a post- or a neo- colonial world? In my opinion, it's the latter. And it is high-time that the laborers in this academic field break the chains of postcolonial studies, and recognize, at long last, that the one true growth market stretching out ahead of them isn't postcolonial studies, but neocolonial studies.
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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Psychiatrics
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 27, 2007 00:07 AM
Michael Haneke's recent movie Caché takes a devastating look at the suppressed history of "hidden" events in the lives of children of a lesser god.
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Reply to SK
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 26, 2007 22:47 PM
SK:
Never heard of Maz Jobrani before. But this comedian beats the pants off of Azar Nafisi (an Iranian-American academic abducting a lot of young Iranian women to serve within Western - Orientalizing harems); Sacha Baron Cohen (a Jewish man playing an Arab jerk (while only pretending to play a jerk from Kazakhstan, so that he can better get away with it and not have to answer for playing an Arab jerk)); and Irshad Manji (a performance artist straight out of central casting, playing a Westernized - Orientalizing identity-politicking lesbian cheerleader against whomever the imperial powers happen to attack in the Middle East).
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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Here's something that might
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 26, 2007 21:48 PM
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Thanks for your kinds words
By Abdolian, Farhad at Aug 25, 2007 08:18 AM
Hi Peter,
Thank you very much for your kinds words.
>To be honest, I don't believe that "BeBe" intends his/her comments to be taken seriously.
I am not sure, the language in his respond is very similar to the oens used on FreeRepublic and other right wing discussion groups. That is why I thought s/he is serious.
As for your article, I really enjoy your articles a lot, you have a good view on the American politicians and their "game".
One important issue that is being forgotten in this discussion was a news that came up about an Iraqi factory for IEDs, but the news was never broadcast anywhere and removed from almost all the web sites except WashingtonPost (you need to be registered) and Daily Kos and this site that I linked to from my blog.
Also, there was an interesting article on Z-mag a few months ago about the IED Lies that covered the start of the IED campaign against Iran byt an un-named Pentagon official.
And when it comes to the western reaction to IRI's HR abuses, sadly, the Iranians in exile are playing in the hand of the foreign powers to make Iran a perfect dictatorship that is worse than Saudi Arabia, Myanmar or Lybia. But for us, it is important to highlight the problems and ask for support from people who have absolute no interest in solving our problems, but are more than happy to use them to achive their own goals and we are dumb enough to foloow them and support them.
IRI is a brutal dictatorship that needs to be treated like one, but neither United Stated nor the United Kingdom are in no possition to critisize a government who is doing almost what "friend" dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Lybia, Tadjikistan and Uzebekistan are doing, but they still receive support and money from the western powers.
I am afraid this is a very dangerous time we live in. The mad man in the White House today and his dooms-day cult surrounding him are not interested in solving any problem, as they claim, their existance depends on the on-going conflict and the more troubles there is in the region the happier, richer and more successfull they are. That is why we have to be very afraid of the last months of this crazy man, he WILL attack Iran and will leave the trouble to the next president who has no choice other than calling for a draft and invade Iran.
I hope I am wrong, but it seems that there is not level that this madness can not reach. Every time I think this is the maximum madness, things gets even worse.
Keep up the good work and hopefully we maybe able to make a minir difference in this world.
Best regards,
/Farhad
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Reply to SK
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 22, 2007 22:18 PM
SK:
I had forgotten about the film 300. (Never saw it, anyway.) But not the June 2006 Pew or other similarly designed surveys. (That is, "Iran and the nuclear question." But also see the spring 2006 Questionnaire, esp. questions such as #41 (pp. 19-21), which attempts to gauge different people's sense of threats to the peace in the world, and #42 (pp. 22-25), which does the same for the kind of stories the news media around the world have selected to report to people. (Sorry that I can't simply reproduce some of it here. But invariably the tables mess up.)
By the way: Speaking of hateful propaganda, has anybody caught even a few minutes of the series currently running on the U.S.-based Cable News Network, God's Warriors (August 21-23)?
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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Interesting also how
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 22, 2007 21:19 PM
Interesting also how little threatened Iran's neighbors and other Asian countries are by Iran's supposed imperial ambitions or even it's supposed nuclear weapons program. In Iran's two largest neighbors, Turkey and Pakistan, majorities think Iran will only ever use nukes for defensive purposes--if it ever manages to develop nukes of its own, that is. It's only in far off lands where people line up to see hateful propaganda like 300 that large majorities take seriously notions like Iranian imperialism.
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Reply to Farhad Abdolian
By Kissenger, Clark at Aug 22, 2007 14:28 PM
Farhad Abdolian:
Am impressed by the comprehensiveness of your weblog, "To Be or Not to Be." Thanks for sharing it.
To be honest, I don't believe that "BeBe" intends his/her comments to be taken seriously.
But just to clarify something: I've excerpted the five paragraphs from John D. Negroponte's prepared remarks before the Senate's Select Comittee on Intelligence because simply linking to them inside a 26 page document might not be sufficiently helpful to readers trying to find them. (See Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence, February 2, 2006 (pp. 12-13).)
But my opinions about the substance of Negroponte's remarks are clear from the blog ("'By the Conjunction of Terrorism and WMD'"). As the serial invader of Afghanistan and Iraq threatens to attack yet another country in the region -- in fact, a country geographically sandwiched in-between the other two countries -- the potential aggressor resorts to the exact same sales pitches that it used previously: Iran's alleged support for "terrorism" inside Iraq and Iran's alleged "WMD" program.
And if we had to add a third sales pitch to these other two, doubtless it would be allegations about Tehran's violations of its citizens rights, the Islamic regime's repression of women, its arbitrary and unjust repression of dissidents, and the like.
Indeed. Among Western intellectual circles, No. Three appears to enjoy quite a lot of "traction." (Compare "Release Haleh Esfandiari" to see exactly what I mean.)
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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DSM and the rest of your comedy!
By Abdolian, Farhad at Aug 22, 2007 10:20 AM
>the Downing Street Memo has been widely discredited
Really? I must have missed that. Do you have any link to such widely dismissals?
>It is not the smoking gun haters of the civilized world
Oh Jeeze, that is a new word, "haters of the civilized world". Like those who hate torture, illegal rendition, unlawfull prisonment of people who are not or can not be charged with any crime, rape torture and murder of inocent people? Yes, these are the thing "we" the haters HATE. And that is what has been the result of your gun without a smoke.
>Iranian colonialist
That is the funniest, most hilarious name calling of Iran I have ever read. Iranian colonialists! Whoa, I think I have to go back and re-read our history books to find reference to Iran's colonial history!
Loved your comment, keep them coming, you saved my day!
/Farhad Abdolian
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First, the Downing Street
By X, Mr. at Aug 21, 2007 21:11 PM
First, the Downing Street Memo has been widely discredited and thus proves nothing. It is not the smoking gun haters of the civilized world believe it to be because it has never been verified.
Second, I can't help but notice that you shy away from Negroponte's Feb 2006 comments. Those comments show exactly why the Iranian colonialist and imperialist Islamic intentions must be curtailed.
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