It is a truism that victors write the history. Less acknowledged is that history once written even if false (also more usual than acknowledged) continues through the ages as propaganda. So it is with the Western portrayal of two members of Bush II's infamous 'axis-of-evil' – North Korea and Iran.
North Korea earned international ire with its recent nuclear test, and Iran has been the victim of hysterical propaganda by America and Israel, its two principal foes for several years now. Forgotten are the facts. For example, that North Korea was flattened by American bombing in the Korean civil war in which both North and South plotted attacks on each other with the former beating the latter to the punch. Not satisfied with merely flattening the North's cities and killing millions, the US went on to destroy the North's dams, flooding its rice paddies. Inspite of such crimes, it is North Korea that is regarded as the 'evil' nation. Such is the power of propaganda and the loathsome complicity of the North American media, who did not become evil just after 911 or before the invasion of Iraq.
As Eric Margolis has argued in 'American Raj', however, the North Korean leader may be much saner than imagined. His nuclear capability has been a successful deterrent against the American forces camped at the 38th parallel since the 1950s, although recently they have moved out of artillery range, alarming the North Koreans. So it is with Iran, which was invaded 4 times in the 20th century, and subjected to a proxy colonialism by the US with its puppet 'democrat' the Shah who between 1953 and his ouster in 1979 tortured, imprisoned and killed thousands of Iranians while keeping the Americans ecstatic by selling them Iranian oil for a song, and buying American weapons with the petty cash so earned. That is why Iranians had to be punished when they threw out American 'democracy' in 1979 and took 50 hostages. That is why Reagan/Rumsfeld and Thatcher had to supply the other great 'democrat' in the region, Saddam Hussein, with weapons so he could kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians in an 8-year war.
Iran must love punishment. It eschews dollars for euros, increasing pressure for ending the dollar's status as a reserve currency (pretty much toast anyway with the financial 'crimes' of the market fundamentalists who have manufactured the present economic crisis), and supports resistance movements in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq (Hamas and Hezbollah). It does so in the face of incomparable military superiority in just about every way of the Israelis (not just with their 200 nukes) - let alone the American colossus.
Another way of looking at this is that Iran is taking a principled stand against American and Israeli crimes of occupation. Iran is being encircled by these two powers and getting a few nukes may be the best deterrent for Iran, as Margolis persuasively argues.
As an American madman visits Toronto to give another speech full of lies, it is worth remembering that truth and victory rarely walk hand in hand.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
LETTER TO NATIONAL POST ON ALAN DERSHOWITZ'S ARTICLE OF MAY 15
On Friday May 15, the National Post published an 'edited excerpt' of Harvard law professor and famed apologist for Israel, to Canada's subcommittee on International Human Rights of the standing committee on foreign affairs and international development
Here is my response, sent to the Post for publication:
LETTER RE. ALAN DERSHOWITZ ARTICLE ON IRAN
1.'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers'. Shakespeare in Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78 .
2. Lawyers are liars. Age-old axiom.
Alan Dershowitz enjoys a near-legendary reputation as defender of high-profile (usually rich) clients. He is also a law professor at Harvard. But as Professor Chomsky has written, he is not to be trusted, especially on the question of Israel, and its supposed arch-enemy Iran. The age-old axiom quoted above arises from the centuries-old legal tradition of the 'adversary-system' of justice, by which lawyers with clearly defined interests (of their opposing clients) are allowed to represent (and usually twist) reality to argue a biased point of view, with the judge(s) and jury empowered to separate fact from fiction.
There is plenty of fiction in Professor Dershowitz's statement to the Canadian subcommittee on International Human Rights of the standing committee on foreign affairs and international development. The principal fiction is that Dershowitz takes Ahmadinejad's guilt as proven. A fundamental element of justice is the presumption of innocence. Dershowitz takes the distorted presentation of Ahmadinejad's statements by the American-dominated media as proven facts, rather than the propaganda they are.
It is true Ahmadinejad is virtually alone among international leaders in condemning Israel. But what he has been asking, publicly and repeatedly, is for a referendum of all Palestinian people – including the Israeli Jews from Europe who forcibly conquered (stole) land by displacing the local inhabitants – to determine the future of the political state of Palestine, from which the Zionist state of Israel was brutally created. For this Dershowitz seeks to silence Ahmadinejad, by painting him an 'international criminal' who incites genocide. Ahmadinejad incites no such thing. He calls for a political solution, a referendum. But Israel (and its sponsor America) cannot allow such a referendum for obvious reasons.
Here are some very inconvenient facts the liar Dershowitz fails to mention:
1.It is Israel that possesses over 200 nuclear bombs which can easily evaporate Iran in totality. It owns more nuclear weapons (land, air and sea-based) than Britain and France! Only America, Russia and China own more nukes, and this immense nuclear power Israel is being 'marketed' by the same corrupt and genocidal elite in America that are responsible for 700,000 Iraqi deaths under false pretences, as under threat from a nation that possesses no nukes. As Eric Margolis has argued in American Raj, even if Iran acquires some nukes, it can only be for defensive purposes, as it has no ICBM capabilities and in any event would be completely destroyed by Israel or the US if it attempted an attack on Israel.
It is precisely the American-Israeli axis of evil which seeks to deny Islamic nations access to nuclear energy, that drives ambitions to acquire nuclear bombs. A little like the 'forbidden fruit'. Israel has also been given every biological, chemical and conventional weapon (including the most sophisticated air-force in NATO barring the US) and has used them repeatedly (for decades) to commit genocides against the Palestinians, the most recent example being Gaza, and earlier ones including not only the West Bank, but Lebanon.
2. Many orthodox Jewish rabbi (see worldtorahjewry.com) in New York support Ahmadinejad's denunciation of Zionism, which they say has nothing whatsoever to do with the Jewish religion. They honored him during his 2006 visit to New York and expressed their support, a fact too inconvenient for the major American media to report.
(However, quite naturally many corrupt Jewish priests also exist, infected by Zionism and its powerful allures, principally wealth and power. Zionism is at least as obscene and criminal a perversion of Judaism as Islamic terror is of Islam, or as 'Christianity' has been ever since its founding, down to its latest crime - the invasion and occupation of Iraq by a supposed 'born-again Christian'.
With one crucial distinction: unlike Zionism, Islamic terror is not motivated by greed for lands and resources stolen from or belonging to others, but is a response to American, British and Israeli crimes. Islamic terror seeks justice, which American and British power are denying them, with international institutions like the UN largely helpless.)
America's arming of Israel is only partly at the behest of powerful Zionist lobbies in the US; it has more alarming and devious purposes in keeping Islamic oil flowing to America cheaply – at the point of a gun, the gun being Israel. And of course, Iran itself has been the victim of such imperialist policy since 1953 – another fact which is well-known but which no one talks about. The real facts, as Dr. Chomsky has oft written, are 'off the agenda', which is dictated by the real international criminals, the governments of America, Britain, and Israel. Such naked imperialism may soon plunge this planet in another global war, with consequences that would match our worst fears.
What remains to be seen is if the National Post will print this response. That will depend on whether or not it is owned or controlled by powerful Zionist interests.
Finally - what Dershowitz wants with his anti-Iran rant - is the genocide of Iranian people, through an American-Israeli invasion. America has been openly threatening Iran with obliteration for many years now, with even Democratic candidates like Hilary Clinton joining the chorus, and has also supplied Israel with the latest bombers which Israel has been using to conduct flights along the Iranian border, to rattle and provoke the Iranians.
One major advantage of America's occupying Afghanistan (the other being access to Central Asian oil) would be to 'encircle' Iran. Already threatened by Israel and US-controlled Iraq on the west, Iran would face a 2-front war if the US took over Afghanistan. But these invasion plans would be rendered ineffective if Iran were (like North Korea) to acquire a nuclear deterrent. But all of this is outside the biased purview of the loathsome liar Dershowitz. By his own argument, it is he who deserves to be prosecuted for inciting genocide.
Here is my response, sent to the Post for publication:
LETTER RE. ALAN DERSHOWITZ ARTICLE ON IRAN
1.'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers'. Shakespeare in Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78 .
2. Lawyers are liars. Age-old axiom.
Alan Dershowitz enjoys a near-legendary reputation as defender of high-profile (usually rich) clients. He is also a law professor at Harvard. But as Professor Chomsky has written, he is not to be trusted, especially on the question of Israel, and its supposed arch-enemy Iran. The age-old axiom quoted above arises from the centuries-old legal tradition of the 'adversary-system' of justice, by which lawyers with clearly defined interests (of their opposing clients) are allowed to represent (and usually twist) reality to argue a biased point of view, with the judge(s) and jury empowered to separate fact from fiction.
There is plenty of fiction in Professor Dershowitz's statement to the Canadian subcommittee on International Human Rights of the standing committee on foreign affairs and international development. The principal fiction is that Dershowitz takes Ahmadinejad's guilt as proven. A fundamental element of justice is the presumption of innocence. Dershowitz takes the distorted presentation of Ahmadinejad's statements by the American-dominated media as proven facts, rather than the propaganda they are.
It is true Ahmadinejad is virtually alone among international leaders in condemning Israel. But what he has been asking, publicly and repeatedly, is for a referendum of all Palestinian people – including the Israeli Jews from Europe who forcibly conquered (stole) land by displacing the local inhabitants – to determine the future of the political state of Palestine, from which the Zionist state of Israel was brutally created. For this Dershowitz seeks to silence Ahmadinejad, by painting him an 'international criminal' who incites genocide. Ahmadinejad incites no such thing. He calls for a political solution, a referendum. But Israel (and its sponsor America) cannot allow such a referendum for obvious reasons.
Here are some very inconvenient facts the liar Dershowitz fails to mention:
1.It is Israel that possesses over 200 nuclear bombs which can easily evaporate Iran in totality. It owns more nuclear weapons (land, air and sea-based) than Britain and France! Only America, Russia and China own more nukes, and this immense nuclear power Israel is being 'marketed' by the same corrupt and genocidal elite in America that are responsible for 700,000 Iraqi deaths under false pretences, as under threat from a nation that possesses no nukes. As Eric Margolis has argued in American Raj, even if Iran acquires some nukes, it can only be for defensive purposes, as it has no ICBM capabilities and in any event would be completely destroyed by Israel or the US if it attempted an attack on Israel.
It is precisely the American-Israeli axis of evil which seeks to deny Islamic nations access to nuclear energy, that drives ambitions to acquire nuclear bombs. A little like the 'forbidden fruit'. Israel has also been given every biological, chemical and conventional weapon (including the most sophisticated air-force in NATO barring the US) and has used them repeatedly (for decades) to commit genocides against the Palestinians, the most recent example being Gaza, and earlier ones including not only the West Bank, but Lebanon.
2. Many orthodox Jewish rabbi (see worldtorahjewry.com) in New York support Ahmadinejad's denunciation of Zionism, which they say has nothing whatsoever to do with the Jewish religion. They honored him during his 2006 visit to New York and expressed their support, a fact too inconvenient for the major American media to report.
(However, quite naturally many corrupt Jewish priests also exist, infected by Zionism and its powerful allures, principally wealth and power. Zionism is at least as obscene and criminal a perversion of Judaism as Islamic terror is of Islam, or as 'Christianity' has been ever since its founding, down to its latest crime - the invasion and occupation of Iraq by a supposed 'born-again Christian'.
With one crucial distinction: unlike Zionism, Islamic terror is not motivated by greed for lands and resources stolen from or belonging to others, but is a response to American, British and Israeli crimes. Islamic terror seeks justice, which American and British power are denying them, with international institutions like the UN largely helpless.)
America's arming of Israel is only partly at the behest of powerful Zionist lobbies in the US; it has more alarming and devious purposes in keeping Islamic oil flowing to America cheaply – at the point of a gun, the gun being Israel. And of course, Iran itself has been the victim of such imperialist policy since 1953 – another fact which is well-known but which no one talks about. The real facts, as Dr. Chomsky has oft written, are 'off the agenda', which is dictated by the real international criminals, the governments of America, Britain, and Israel. Such naked imperialism may soon plunge this planet in another global war, with consequences that would match our worst fears.
What remains to be seen is if the National Post will print this response. That will depend on whether or not it is owned or controlled by powerful Zionist interests.
Finally - what Dershowitz wants with his anti-Iran rant - is the genocide of Iranian people, through an American-Israeli invasion. America has been openly threatening Iran with obliteration for many years now, with even Democratic candidates like Hilary Clinton joining the chorus, and has also supplied Israel with the latest bombers which Israel has been using to conduct flights along the Iranian border, to rattle and provoke the Iranians.
One major advantage of America's occupying Afghanistan (the other being access to Central Asian oil) would be to 'encircle' Iran. Already threatened by Israel and US-controlled Iraq on the west, Iran would face a 2-front war if the US took over Afghanistan. But these invasion plans would be rendered ineffective if Iran were (like North Korea) to acquire a nuclear deterrent. But all of this is outside the biased purview of the loathsome liar Dershowitz. By his own argument, it is he who deserves to be prosecuted for inciting genocide.
Monday, May 11, 2009
THE TRANSATLANTIC 'SPECIAL' RELATIONSHIP
After the success of the 2006 film 'The Queen' in which Helen Mirren portrayed the reaction of the real Queen to Princess Diana's death, the latter invited the former to dinner at Buckingham. The actor declined, citing shooting commitments in the USA. Tabloids reported the real Queen's displeasure as something along the lines of "Who does this bitch think she is"?
The real Queen found solace from this snub - intended or not - by promptly visiting the White House of Bush II - valiant conqueror of the defenseless Iraq - and in a 'gala' dinner toasting the special transatlantic relationship noted that: "It is the moment to take stock of our present friendship, rightly taking pleasure from its strengths, while never taking these for granted. And it is the time to look forward, jointly renewing our commitment to a more prosperous, safer and freer world".
Here are some of the countries where the American-British 'commitment' for prosperity, security and freedom in the world has paid rich dividends (literally - for the weapons-manufacturers of these and other countries):
1. Iraq after 2003 invasion/occupation - 5 million people displaced and turned into refugees; 700,000 or more killed; infrastructure damage exceeding $1 trillion.
2. Turkey - 1997 recipient of US weapons aid used to displace millions of Kurdish people and kill and torture tens of thousands.
3. Colombia - 1999 recipient of $290 million in weapons aid, because it is the leading human rights violator in the Western hemisphere - used to displace 2.7 million people and kill and terrorize thousands.
4. East Timor - 1999 military & diplomatic aid by US/UK to Indonesia was used to kill 200,000 people, displace hundreds of thousands more, and destroy the tiny nation.
5. Kosovo - US-UK led 'NATO' bombing calculated to teach Milosevic that NATO was the boss in Europe, provoked the crimes that Serbian dictator Milosevic was later convicted of. Like Afghanistan, this nation too was abandoned after a few years by the West, encouraging the development of a Taliban-clone in Europe, taking advantage of the population's misery.
6. Afghanistan - the radicalization of this nation by the Taliban, armed by the weapons and missiles the CIA left there after the Soviets departed, and then destroyed in a criminal assault on it by the US after 911.
A truly impressive record of the achievements of the great American and British nations in making the world freer, safer, more prosperous and democratic. Naturally the brilliant parrots of the Western media and academy, trained at Harvard, Oxford and all the other elite institutions, praise these accomplishments as 'noble', 'altruistic', and 'humanitarian'.
Bravo to Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada, for setting the record straight!
The real Queen found solace from this snub - intended or not - by promptly visiting the White House of Bush II - valiant conqueror of the defenseless Iraq - and in a 'gala' dinner toasting the special transatlantic relationship noted that: "It is the moment to take stock of our present friendship, rightly taking pleasure from its strengths, while never taking these for granted. And it is the time to look forward, jointly renewing our commitment to a more prosperous, safer and freer world".
Here are some of the countries where the American-British 'commitment' for prosperity, security and freedom in the world has paid rich dividends (literally - for the weapons-manufacturers of these and other countries):
1. Iraq after 2003 invasion/occupation - 5 million people displaced and turned into refugees; 700,000 or more killed; infrastructure damage exceeding $1 trillion.
2. Turkey - 1997 recipient of US weapons aid used to displace millions of Kurdish people and kill and torture tens of thousands.
3. Colombia - 1999 recipient of $290 million in weapons aid, because it is the leading human rights violator in the Western hemisphere - used to displace 2.7 million people and kill and terrorize thousands.
4. East Timor - 1999 military & diplomatic aid by US/UK to Indonesia was used to kill 200,000 people, displace hundreds of thousands more, and destroy the tiny nation.
5. Kosovo - US-UK led 'NATO' bombing calculated to teach Milosevic that NATO was the boss in Europe, provoked the crimes that Serbian dictator Milosevic was later convicted of. Like Afghanistan, this nation too was abandoned after a few years by the West, encouraging the development of a Taliban-clone in Europe, taking advantage of the population's misery.
6. Afghanistan - the radicalization of this nation by the Taliban, armed by the weapons and missiles the CIA left there after the Soviets departed, and then destroyed in a criminal assault on it by the US after 911.
A truly impressive record of the achievements of the great American and British nations in making the world freer, safer, more prosperous and democratic. Naturally the brilliant parrots of the Western media and academy, trained at Harvard, Oxford and all the other elite institutions, praise these accomplishments as 'noble', 'altruistic', and 'humanitarian'.
Bravo to Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada, for setting the record straight!
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