Full Version: Snuffymith's Blog-Sept. 17 - Nov. 29, 2007
Common Ground Common Sense > National & International News > Op-Ed Articles from the Mainstream Media > Op-Ed Articles from the Mainstream Media Archive
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Pepe Escobar: Hitler' does New York He was also clever in preempting ear-splitting rumors of a next war: "Talk about war is basically a propaganda tool." One of his key points may not have made an impact in the US, but resonated widely around the world, and not only in the Muslim street: "We oppose the way the US government tries to rule the world"; there are "more humane methods of establishing peace
Peace and Hillary Clinton Clinton said she will vote against funding unless she sees Bush change direction in Iraq. That's vague enough to allow her to vote for funding again if it's needed. Ted Koppel reported on NPR several weeks back that Clinton's military advisor said she plans to still occupy Iraq at the end of her second term, should she be elected. She has never disputed this, and is never asked about it.
Syria-Israel bombing incident: The beginning of a new conflict?
13/09/2007 11:12:00 PM GMT
(AFP) Israeli officials admitted that Israel regularly carries out such missions over Syria.
Israel's "unacceptable maneuvers" in Syria showed its bad faith toward peace efforts.
By Emma Sabry
Last week, Syria announced that Israeli warplanes violated its airspace and dropped "munitions" onto deserted areas after being shot at by Syrian air defenses, a move that raised speculation over a possible escalation into war between the two countries.
Many Arab analysts say Israel's violation of Syria's airspace only serves to heighten tensions in the region. The Israeli over-flights came as a surprise for many Syrians; especially because it's reported to have happened in the country's north, close to the Turkish border, and not in the south, where Syria and Israel share a border.
Over the weekend, Turkey requested an explanation from Israel about fuel tanks found near the Turkish border with Syria. Turkish TV also showed pictures of where the Israeli fuel tanks were found.
Syria and Israel remain technically in a state of war, and peace talks collapsed in 2000 over the fate of the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau seized by Israel during the 1967 Middle East War. Syria often says that it wants peace with Israel through negotiations, but insists that the Jewish state must abandon the Golan Heights in return for any peace deal. On the other hand, Israel uses Syria's moral support for Lebanese and Palestinian resistance groups as a pretext for not holding any peace talks with Damascus.
Despite the continued tensions, both countries have generally kept the border area quiet. So why did Israel decide to fuel tensions now?
According to an article on the Associated Press, Israel has a number of reasons to fly over northern Syria: to gather information about long-range missiles pointed at Israel, to test Syrian air defense, or to try out a possible air route to Iran.
Whatever Israel's reasons are, the violation of Syrian airspace in a summer where the two countries seem to have oscillated from possible war to possible peace talks left Syrian officials jittery.
On Sunday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told reporters: "We are prepared to defend ourselves against any attack that Israel may plan, but our basic priority is a comprehensive peace."
Syria's Information Minister Mohsen Bilal also said that Israeli warplanes "intervened in our airspace... which they should not do -- we are a sovereign country and they should not come into airspace."
Syria is "giving serious consideration to its response... to this aggression", he warned.
And on Wednesday, the Syrian government formally complained to the United Nations about the Israeli over-flights. Describing the incident as a flagrant violation of Syrian airspace, Syrian ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, said: "Israel is seeking military escalation. We are exerting efforts so that we don't fall into this trap… We are dealing with the matter with utmost keenness, precision and responsibility."
Meanwhile, the Arab League said such "unacceptable maneuvers" showed Israeli bad faith toward peace talks in the region, especially at a time when the U.S. is preparing to host a conference involving Israel and its neighbors, with a view to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Many Arab commentators saw the Israeli over-flights as a follow-on from Israel's war in Lebanon last summer. "This is the beginning of a Syrian-Israeli conflict," said Sateh Noureddine, columnist with Lebanese newspaper as-Safir.
In Israel, the government didn't comment on the incident. However, some officials admitted that Israel regularly carries out such missions over Syria. Israeli minister Raleb Majadele said that the Israel air force enters Syria's airspace on a daily basis, adding that Syria overreacted this time.
Yesterday, an unnamed U.S. official also confirmed to AFP news agency that Israeli fighters had carried out an attack on an unspecified target in Syria, adding that the attack was a warning to Syria not to re-arm Hezbollah. "The Israelis are trying to tell the Syrians: 'Don't support a resurgence of Hezbollah in Lebanon,'" he said.
If Israel violates Syria's airspace regularly, then why did Thursday's operation end differently?
Was Syria's military response different from before, or was the difference only that it protested publicly? Did it show Syria's defenses have improved with Russian hardware bought since Israel's war in Lebanon? Were the Israeli pilots just careless? Or did they deliberately provoke a Syrian response?
For Lebanese commentator Sateh Noureddine: "It was no mistake ... that the Israelis reached that area. It was ... a test for Syria's military, political and psychological defenses…. As for Syria's announcement, that is a warning that any other step like that can be considered as the start of a war."
According to Reuters, Israeli analysts also condemned the violation. A former Israeli diplomat who has worked for a resumption of peace talks with Damascus said he was worried by a "very aggressive" Israeli message after a summer in which speculation on both sides of a surprise attack by the other has mingled with public offers of renewed negotiations.
Reuven Pedhatzur, an analyst and former Israeli pilot, wrote in Haaretz that, despite high tensions with Damascus, whoever ordered the mission failed to grasp its consequences and risked provoking a "pre-emptive strike."
Referring to Syria's role in the 1967 war, Pedhatzursaid: "Like 40 years ago, the two sides could lose control of the situation and war could break out through a misunderstanding of the other side's intentions."
Eyal Zisser, another Israeli analyst, praised Syria in an article published on the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. "Any misunderstanding could lead to conflagration. However, the Syrian announcement was surprising in its moderation."
He added that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had shown such "moderation" before, in that warnings of retaliation had not come to actual conflict.
Retired senior Israeli diplomat Alon Liel, who has worked with Syrian officials to promote negotiations, said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert risked escalating the situation at a time when both sides had a chance to talk peace:
"I see here an Israeli message that is very aggressive," Liel said. "And I'm worried."
13/09/2007 11:12:00 PM GMT
(AFP) Israeli officials admitted that Israel regularly carries out such missions over Syria. Israel's "unacceptable maneuvers" in Syria showed its bad faith toward peace efforts.
By Emma Sabry
Last week, Syria announced that Israeli warplanes violated its airspace and dropped "munitions" onto deserted areas after being shot at by Syrian air defenses, a move that raised speculation over a possible escalation into war between the two countries.
Many Arab analysts say Israel's violation of Syria's airspace only serves to heighten tensions in the region. The Israeli over-flights came as a surprise for many Syrians; especially because it's reported to have happened in the country's north, close to the Turkish border, and not in the south, where Syria and Israel share a border.
Over the weekend, Turkey requested an explanation from Israel about fuel tanks found near the Turkish border with Syria. Turkish TV also showed pictures of where the Israeli fuel tanks were found.
Syria and Israel remain technically in a state of war, and peace talks collapsed in 2000 over the fate of the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau seized by Israel during the 1967 Middle East War. Syria often says that it wants peace with Israel through negotiations, but insists that the Jewish state must abandon the Golan Heights in return for any peace deal. On the other hand, Israel uses Syria's moral support for Lebanese and Palestinian resistance groups as a pretext for not holding any peace talks with Damascus.
Despite the continued tensions, both countries have generally kept the border area quiet. So why did Israel decide to fuel tensions now?
According to an article on the Associated Press, Israel has a number of reasons to fly over northern Syria: to gather information about long-range missiles pointed at Israel, to test Syrian air defense, or to try out a possible air route to Iran.
Whatever Israel's reasons are, the violation of Syrian airspace in a summer where the two countries seem to have oscillated from possible war to possible peace talks left Syrian officials jittery.
On Sunday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told reporters: "We are prepared to defend ourselves against any attack that Israel may plan, but our basic priority is a comprehensive peace."
Syria's Information Minister Mohsen Bilal also said that Israeli warplanes "intervened in our airspace... which they should not do -- we are a sovereign country and they should not come into airspace."
Syria is "giving serious consideration to its response... to this aggression", he warned.
And on Wednesday, the Syrian government formally complained to the United Nations about the Israeli over-flights. Describing the incident as a flagrant violation of Syrian airspace, Syrian ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, said: "Israel is seeking military escalation. We are exerting efforts so that we don't fall into this trap… We are dealing with the matter with utmost keenness, precision and responsibility."
Meanwhile, the Arab League said such "unacceptable maneuvers" showed Israeli bad faith toward peace talks in the region, especially at a time when the U.S. is preparing to host a conference involving Israel and its neighbors, with a view to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Many Arab commentators saw the Israeli over-flights as a follow-on from Israel's war in Lebanon last summer. "This is the beginning of a Syrian-Israeli conflict," said Sateh Noureddine, columnist with Lebanese newspaper as-Safir.
In Israel, the government didn't comment on the incident. However, some officials admitted that Israel regularly carries out such missions over Syria. Israeli minister Raleb Majadele said that the Israel air force enters Syria's airspace on a daily basis, adding that Syria overreacted this time.
Yesterday, an unnamed U.S. official also confirmed to AFP news agency that Israeli fighters had carried out an attack on an unspecified target in Syria, adding that the attack was a warning to Syria not to re-arm Hezbollah. "The Israelis are trying to tell the Syrians: 'Don't support a resurgence of Hezbollah in Lebanon,'" he said.
If Israel violates Syria's airspace regularly, then why did Thursday's operation end differently?
Was Syria's military response different from before, or was the difference only that it protested publicly? Did it show Syria's defenses have improved with Russian hardware bought since Israel's war in Lebanon? Were the Israeli pilots just careless? Or did they deliberately provoke a Syrian response?
For Lebanese commentator Sateh Noureddine: "It was no mistake ... that the Israelis reached that area. It was ... a test for Syria's military, political and psychological defenses…. As for Syria's announcement, that is a warning that any other step like that can be considered as the start of a war."
According to Reuters, Israeli analysts also condemned the violation. A former Israeli diplomat who has worked for a resumption of peace talks with Damascus said he was worried by a "very aggressive" Israeli message after a summer in which speculation on both sides of a surprise attack by the other has mingled with public offers of renewed negotiations.
Reuven Pedhatzur, an analyst and former Israeli pilot, wrote in Haaretz that, despite high tensions with Damascus, whoever ordered the mission failed to grasp its consequences and risked provoking a "pre-emptive strike."
Referring to Syria's role in the 1967 war, Pedhatzursaid: "Like 40 years ago, the two sides could lose control of the situation and war could break out through a misunderstanding of the other side's intentions."
Eyal Zisser, another Israeli analyst, praised Syria in an article published on the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. "Any misunderstanding could lead to conflagration. However, the Syrian announcement was surprising in its moderation."
He added that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had shown such "moderation" before, in that warnings of retaliation had not come to actual conflict.
Retired senior Israeli diplomat Alon Liel, who has worked with Syrian officials to promote negotiations, said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert risked escalating the situation at a time when both sides had a chance to talk peace:
"I see here an Israeli message that is very aggressive," Liel said. "And I'm worried."
President Ahmadinejad and the Distortions of Politics
Ray Hanania, Arab News IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to America this week to address the United Nations and found himself the center of an American media storm. The Iranian president is routinely demonized... Full Story
Ray Hanania, Arab News IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to America this week to address the United Nations and found himself the center of an American media storm. The Iranian president is routinely demonized... Full Story
Iran launches scathing attack on US
The American and Israeli delegations were not in chamber to hear Ahmadinejad's speech [AFP] Iran's president has launched a blistering attack on the US and the UN Security Council, but says his country is ready for constructive talks with anyone. In his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said the issue of Iran's nuclear programme was "closed" and a matter to be handled by the UN nuclear watchdog.
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Ahmadinejad accused Washington of arrogance and human rights abuses, speaking at the same spot where his American counterpart, George Bush had earlier spoken of the primacy of human rights and freedom.
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Without specifically naming them by name, Ahmadinejad said Washington and its allies had been had bullying Iran - who they accuse of trying to develop nuclear weapons - and pressing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Your Views
"The countries that feel threatened ... should prepare for defence, and even counterattack"
Adolfo Talpalar, Stockholm, Sweden
Send us your views
"Fortunately, the IAEA has recently tried to regain its legal role as supporter of the rights of its members while supervising nuclear activities," Ahmadinejad said. "Today, because of the resistance of the Iranian nation, the issue is back to the agency, and I officially announce that in our opinion, the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed and has turned into an ordinary agency matter," he said. "Of course Iran has always been and will be prepared to have constructive talks with all parties," he added.
In a 40-minute speech, the Iranian leader went on to accuse Washington of human rights abuses in its "war on terror" with allusions to CIA imprisonment and interrogation programmes in foreign countries, and detention in camps such as Guantanamo Bay. "Unfortunately human rights are being extensively violated by certain powers, especially by those who pretend to be their exclusive advocates," Ahmadinejad said. "Setting up secret prisons, abducting persons, trials and secret punishments without any regard to due process, extensive tapping of telephone conversations intercepting private mail … have become commonplace and prevalent," he added. He also criticised the US-led invasion of Iraq, which he said was "occupied under the pretext of overthrowing the dictator and the existence of weapons of mass destruction". "Unfortunately, we are witnessing the bitter truth that some powers do not value some nations or human beings and the only things that matter to them are themselves, their political parties and their groups. "In their view, human rights are tantamount to profits for their companies and their friends. The rights and dignity of the American people are also being sacrificed for the selfish desires of those holding power," he added. US silent But the US delegation was not in the chamber to hear the criticism. And Bush gave no more than a passing mention to Iran in his speech earlier, even though his administration is calling for stronger sanctions against Tehran. In video
In fact, Bush's address was notable for what he did not say - barely a mention of Iraq either, where the US is seeking greater UN input. Like the US, the Israeli delegation did not stay to hear Ahmadinejad's speech as the Iranian president also blasted Israel as an "illegal Zionist regime". "For more than 60 years, Palestine, as compensation for the loss they [Jews] incurred during the war in Europe, has been under occupation of the illegal Zionist regime. "The Palestinian people have been displaced or are under heavy military pressure, economic siege or are incarcerated under abhorrent conditions. The occupiers are protected and praised, while the innocent Palestinians are subjected to political, military and propaganda onslaughts. "The people of Palestine are deprived of water, electricity and medicine for the sin of asking for freedom, and the government that was freely elected by the people is targeted," he said. The Iranian leader also criticised the UN Security Council for being an exclusive club answerable to no one. He said members of the club were the aggressors in war – Iraq – or failed to stop aggression in war, referring to Lebanon. Warning that those in power were in the "sunset of their times", he urged them to "leave the path of arrogance and Satan, to that of God". "This means moving to purity, honesty, justice, and respecting human dignity."
The American and Israeli delegations were not in chamber to hear Ahmadinejad's speech [AFP] Iran's president has launched a blistering attack on the US and the UN Security Council, but says his country is ready for constructive talks with anyone. In his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said the issue of Iran's nuclear programme was "closed" and a matter to be handled by the UN nuclear watchdog. bodyVariable350="Htmlphcontrol1_lblError";
Ahmadinejad accused Washington of arrogance and human rights abuses, speaking at the same spot where his American counterpart, George Bush had earlier spoken of the primacy of human rights and freedom.
bodyVariable300="Htmlphcontrol2_lblError";
Without specifically naming them by name, Ahmadinejad said Washington and its allies had been had bullying Iran - who they accuse of trying to develop nuclear weapons - and pressing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Your Views
"The countries that feel threatened ... should prepare for defence, and even counterattack"
Adolfo Talpalar, Stockholm, Sweden
Send us your views
"Fortunately, the IAEA has recently tried to regain its legal role as supporter of the rights of its members while supervising nuclear activities," Ahmadinejad said. "Today, because of the resistance of the Iranian nation, the issue is back to the agency, and I officially announce that in our opinion, the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed and has turned into an ordinary agency matter," he said. "Of course Iran has always been and will be prepared to have constructive talks with all parties," he added.
In a 40-minute speech, the Iranian leader went on to accuse Washington of human rights abuses in its "war on terror" with allusions to CIA imprisonment and interrogation programmes in foreign countries, and detention in camps such as Guantanamo Bay. "Unfortunately human rights are being extensively violated by certain powers, especially by those who pretend to be their exclusive advocates," Ahmadinejad said. "Setting up secret prisons, abducting persons, trials and secret punishments without any regard to due process, extensive tapping of telephone conversations intercepting private mail … have become commonplace and prevalent," he added. He also criticised the US-led invasion of Iraq, which he said was "occupied under the pretext of overthrowing the dictator and the existence of weapons of mass destruction". "Unfortunately, we are witnessing the bitter truth that some powers do not value some nations or human beings and the only things that matter to them are themselves, their political parties and their groups. "In their view, human rights are tantamount to profits for their companies and their friends. The rights and dignity of the American people are also being sacrificed for the selfish desires of those holding power," he added. US silent But the US delegation was not in the chamber to hear the criticism. And Bush gave no more than a passing mention to Iran in his speech earlier, even though his administration is calling for stronger sanctions against Tehran. In video
In fact, Bush's address was notable for what he did not say - barely a mention of Iraq either, where the US is seeking greater UN input. Like the US, the Israeli delegation did not stay to hear Ahmadinejad's speech as the Iranian president also blasted Israel as an "illegal Zionist regime". "For more than 60 years, Palestine, as compensation for the loss they [Jews] incurred during the war in Europe, has been under occupation of the illegal Zionist regime. "The Palestinian people have been displaced or are under heavy military pressure, economic siege or are incarcerated under abhorrent conditions. The occupiers are protected and praised, while the innocent Palestinians are subjected to political, military and propaganda onslaughts. "The people of Palestine are deprived of water, electricity and medicine for the sin of asking for freedom, and the government that was freely elected by the people is targeted," he said. The Iranian leader also criticised the UN Security Council for being an exclusive club answerable to no one. He said members of the club were the aggressors in war – Iraq – or failed to stop aggression in war, referring to Lebanon. Warning that those in power were in the "sunset of their times", he urged them to "leave the path of arrogance and Satan, to that of God". "This means moving to purity, honesty, justice, and respecting human dignity."
Jacob Hornberger’s Blog [Blog Archives]
Lessons from Ahmadinejad’s Visit to Columbia University
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The controversy over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University holds at least two valuable lessons for the American people:
First, as Glenn Greenwald (one of the speakers at our upcoming June 2008 conference) points out, state officials are threatening to reduce the taxpayer money given to Columbia to punish the school for hosting Ahmadinejad.
Why is that an important lesson? Because it shows the real purpose of state-funded education — it serves as a means of control. As every dole recipient will tell you, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Either the state-supported school stays in line or it’s threatened with a reduction or loss of its dole. No doubt Columbia University officials are quaking in their boots right now because that’s what being on the dole does to people. Losing one’s dole is one of the most frightening prospects for a dole recipient, especially one who has been on the dole for a long time.
I had a related experience with this issue of dole-control many years ago with respect to my alma mater, VMI. The feds were forcing VMI to admit women and VMI had the chance of going off the state dole in order to maintain its independence, which many VMI alumni, including me, were recommending. Unfortunately, the school officials decided that going off the dole was too scary and so decided to remain on the dole and, of course, under federal control.
Hillsdale College learned the dole-control lesson many years ago. Hillsdale has long refused to go on the dole, but that wasn’t good enough for the feds. They claimed that because Hillsdale students were accepting federal grants and loans, that meant that the feds could control Hillsdale’s admission policies. So, Hillsdale simply barred its students from accepting federal funds and went out and raised the necessary funds voluntarily. Hillsdale is still free of both the dole and federal control.
The second lesson in the Ahmadinejad visit is the power of federal propaganda to get Americans all hyped up over the latest “threat” to their “national security.”
During the Cold War, the big threat was communism, and the feds focused everyone’s attention on how there were communists everywhere — Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America, the State Department, and of course under everyone’s bed. The result was that Americans lived under a constant fear that the communists were coming to get them, which meant that most everyone favored ever-growing expenses for the military-industrial complex.
After the Cold War and throughout the 1990s, the feds focused everyone’s attention on Saddam Hussein, whom they called the “new Hitler.” Throughout that period, Americans were all hyped up about Saddam’s WMDs and how Saddam was intent on coming to get them, conquer America, and run the public schools.
After 9/11/2001, federal propaganda focused on Osama bin Laden, and everyone’s fears were transferred from Saddam to Osama. But then the feds began focusing on invading Iraq and so they shifted people’s fears away from Osama back to Saddam. So, thanks to federal propaganda, people began conjuring up visions of Saddam’s mushroom cloud as the “smoking gun,” thereby supporting the invasion of Iraq.
And now the “new Hilter” is Iran’s Ahmadinejad. The feds have now reshifted people’s focus to him, arguing that Iran is the new threat to world peace, threatening to attack Israel, Europe, the United States, and the world. Never mind that Iran hasn’t actually attacked anyone or even threatened to do so. Why let facts interfere with federal propaganda?
Do you ever wonder whether there might be a causal relationship between state-supported schools (including public schools) and the mushy, malleable mindsets that are so suspectible to federal propaganda?
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Lessons from Ahmadinejad’s Visit to Columbia University
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The controversy over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University holds at least two valuable lessons for the American people:
First, as Glenn Greenwald (one of the speakers at our upcoming June 2008 conference) points out, state officials are threatening to reduce the taxpayer money given to Columbia to punish the school for hosting Ahmadinejad.
Why is that an important lesson? Because it shows the real purpose of state-funded education — it serves as a means of control. As every dole recipient will tell you, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Either the state-supported school stays in line or it’s threatened with a reduction or loss of its dole. No doubt Columbia University officials are quaking in their boots right now because that’s what being on the dole does to people. Losing one’s dole is one of the most frightening prospects for a dole recipient, especially one who has been on the dole for a long time.
I had a related experience with this issue of dole-control many years ago with respect to my alma mater, VMI. The feds were forcing VMI to admit women and VMI had the chance of going off the state dole in order to maintain its independence, which many VMI alumni, including me, were recommending. Unfortunately, the school officials decided that going off the dole was too scary and so decided to remain on the dole and, of course, under federal control.
Hillsdale College learned the dole-control lesson many years ago. Hillsdale has long refused to go on the dole, but that wasn’t good enough for the feds. They claimed that because Hillsdale students were accepting federal grants and loans, that meant that the feds could control Hillsdale’s admission policies. So, Hillsdale simply barred its students from accepting federal funds and went out and raised the necessary funds voluntarily. Hillsdale is still free of both the dole and federal control.
The second lesson in the Ahmadinejad visit is the power of federal propaganda to get Americans all hyped up over the latest “threat” to their “national security.”
During the Cold War, the big threat was communism, and the feds focused everyone’s attention on how there were communists everywhere — Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America, the State Department, and of course under everyone’s bed. The result was that Americans lived under a constant fear that the communists were coming to get them, which meant that most everyone favored ever-growing expenses for the military-industrial complex.
After the Cold War and throughout the 1990s, the feds focused everyone’s attention on Saddam Hussein, whom they called the “new Hitler.” Throughout that period, Americans were all hyped up about Saddam’s WMDs and how Saddam was intent on coming to get them, conquer America, and run the public schools.
After 9/11/2001, federal propaganda focused on Osama bin Laden, and everyone’s fears were transferred from Saddam to Osama. But then the feds began focusing on invading Iraq and so they shifted people’s fears away from Osama back to Saddam. So, thanks to federal propaganda, people began conjuring up visions of Saddam’s mushroom cloud as the “smoking gun,” thereby supporting the invasion of Iraq.
And now the “new Hilter” is Iran’s Ahmadinejad. The feds have now reshifted people’s focus to him, arguing that Iran is the new threat to world peace, threatening to attack Israel, Europe, the United States, and the world. Never mind that Iran hasn’t actually attacked anyone or even threatened to do so. Why let facts interfere with federal propaganda?
Do you ever wonder whether there might be a causal relationship between state-supported schools (including public schools) and the mushy, malleable mindsets that are so suspectible to federal propaganda?
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
The Sino-Russian Alliance: Challenging America's Ambitions in Eurasia - by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2007-09-23 As a result of the US drive to encircle and ultimately dismantle China and Russia, Moscow and Beijing have joined hands in creating an effective counter-alliance.
VIDEO: America's "Long War" - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2007-09-22 From the Truman Doctrine to the NeoConservatives: The Implications of the US Military Agenda
Iraq: A Bush Family Jihad?- by Felicity Arbuthnot - 2007-09-25
The Republicans' Iraq ProblemIraq has become a liability the Republican Party can hardly afford. But George W. Bush intends to leave the Grand Old Party (and the Iraqis, and the US military) ‘twisting slowly in the wind’ through 2008 and the 2008 election - as he refuses to change course, says Robert Dreyfuss.
The Wider Dilemma of IraqOne effect of the US invasion of Iraq is the influence of powerful non-Arab nations - the United States, Israel, Iran and Turkey - in determining the future of the Arab world. A reaction from the Arab world would be natural, notes Rami G. Khouri.
Happy Birthday, Saudi ArabiaThe nation of Saudi Arabia is 77 years old - richer and more internationally prominent than ever. But there are still many rights denied to women. The country powers most of the automobiles on the planet, but its women citizens aren't allowed to drive - or vote, says Mona Eltahawy.
Happy Birthday, Saudi ArabiaThe nation of Saudi Arabia is 77 years old - richer and more internationally prominent than ever. But there are still many rights denied to women. The country powers most of the automobiles on the planet, but its women citizens aren't allowed to drive - or vote, says Mona Eltahawy.
Britain warns of Iraq 'contagion' in Mideast
British Foreign Secretary underlines need for urgent solution to Israel-Palestinian conflict.
British Foreign Secretary underlines need for urgent solution to Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Bollinger Forgot to Stand Up for the U.S.
Tue Sep 25, 2:30 PM ET President Lee C. Bollinger of Columbia University and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran met Monday on a field of rhetorical battle at Columbia.
Wake Me At Armageddon
Posted by Patrick Foy on September 24, 2007
Cheney and Bush will not be impeached and they cannot be stopped from attacking Iran. There is no way a Democratic-controlled Capitol Hill in 2007-2008 is going to impeach Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Why? Simply because a Democratic-controlled Senate in 2002 authorized the launching of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and has funded the enterprise every foolhardy step of the way. In plain English, if they tried to impeach Cheney-Bush over the enterprise of Iraq, the Democrats would be impeaching themselves. And both sides know it. [Read More]- Two Presidents Make Fools of Themselves at ColumbiaI never understood why Columbia invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak in the first place. I am all for…
Open Fire
By Paul W. Schroeder
Americans still don’t understand that the Iraq War didn’t go wrong. The war was wrong.
Once More into the Breach
By Justin Logan
Will the neocons’ Iranian PR campaign bomb?
By Paul W. Schroeder
Americans still don’t understand that the Iraq War didn’t go wrong. The war was wrong.
Once More into the Breach
By Justin Logan
Will the neocons’ Iranian PR campaign bomb?
Iranian President Vows To Resist U.N. Sanctions Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashes out at the United States, other "arrogant powers," accusing them of mistreating Iran for pursuing nuclear energy.
Robin Wright and Peter Baker
Robin Wright and Peter Baker
Iran President Vows to Ignore U.N. Measures
By WARREN HOGE Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, said Tuesday that he considered the dispute over his country’s nuclear program “closed.”
Video: President Bush Addresses United Nations
What happened during the reported Israeli raid of Sept. 6, 2007? Netanyahu says he knows, and that it is 'stunning.' Even President Bush tersely refused to comment about it in any way during his press conference a few days ago.
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http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1035.htm
September 23, 2007
‘Ship of Giants’ Said Attacked By Israel in Strike on Syria
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
One of the most unusual reports we have seen, to date, on the Middle East war comes to us today from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) on the reported Israeli Air Force strike on Syrian territory, and which, if accurate, does indeed explain Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s top adviser, Mossad veteran Uzi Arad’s statement to the American Newsweek News Service on this raid, and who is quoted as saying, "I do know what happened, and when it comes out it will stun everyone."
Western media reports on Israel’s raid into Syrian territory continue their attempting to link this strike with alleged nuclear material coming from North Korea to Syria, and which in some reports say that Israeli commandos seized ‘[i]nuclear material’. [/i]
[i]Syria continues, to this day, their stringent denials of an Israeli airstrike, of any kind, on its territory; North Korea, likewise, has issued a denial of transferring nuclear material to the Middle East. [/i]
[i]Israeli officials, with the exception of the statement made by Benjamin Netanyahu, continue to maintain both a media blackout and an ‘[i]official’ silence on the September 6th raid. [/i][/i]
[i][i]However, and according to these SVR reports, in the early morning hours of September 6th, an American Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft patrolling along the Syrian-Iraqi border alerted Israel’s Air Force to the entry of a [i]‘suspected non-terrestrial’ aircraft into Syrian airspace near the city of Aleppo 350 km north of Damascus... [/i][/i][/i]
[i][i][i]Full article:
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1035.htm [/i][/i][/i]
-----------------------
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1035.htm
September 23, 2007
‘Ship of Giants’ Said Attacked By Israel in Strike on Syria
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
One of the most unusual reports we have seen, to date, on the Middle East war comes to us today from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) on the reported Israeli Air Force strike on Syrian territory, and which, if accurate, does indeed explain Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s top adviser, Mossad veteran Uzi Arad’s statement to the American Newsweek News Service on this raid, and who is quoted as saying, "I do know what happened, and when it comes out it will stun everyone."
Western media reports on Israel’s raid into Syrian territory continue their attempting to link this strike with alleged nuclear material coming from North Korea to Syria, and which in some reports say that Israeli commandos seized ‘[i]nuclear material’. [/i]
[i]Syria continues, to this day, their stringent denials of an Israeli airstrike, of any kind, on its territory; North Korea, likewise, has issued a denial of transferring nuclear material to the Middle East. [/i]
[i]Israeli officials, with the exception of the statement made by Benjamin Netanyahu, continue to maintain both a media blackout and an ‘[i]official’ silence on the September 6th raid. [/i][/i]
[i][i]However, and according to these SVR reports, in the early morning hours of September 6th, an American Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft patrolling along the Syrian-Iraqi border alerted Israel’s Air Force to the entry of a [i]‘suspected non-terrestrial’ aircraft into Syrian airspace near the city of Aleppo 350 km north of Damascus... [/i][/i][/i]
[i][i][i]Full article:
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1035.htm [/i][/i][/i]
MILITARY PHOTOS OF 9.11 - SOME WE'VE NEVER SEEN
Posted By: Rayelan <Send E-Mail>
Date: Tuesday, 25 September 2007, 3:16 a.m.
Here's the link...
http://www.scribd.com/doc/282415/Awesome-M...the-Twin-Towers
Someone needs to download these photos and save them just in case something happens to this site.
You can't save the photos in the normal way. You have to take screen shots and then paste them into Photoshop before you can save them.
Here is the photo gallery you will find on this page:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/282415/Awesome-M...the-Twin-Towers
There are tools at the top that allow you to make the photos larger or smaller. At the above link is an audio link that describes these photos.
Today there is a full page ad in NYT sponsored by IRANALERT.ORG saying
"President Ahmadinejad:
As you arrive at the United Nations, Don't Underestimate Americaa's Resolve.
You threaten us anad our alalies with destruction. You support terror worldwide. You parade missiles bearing "Death to America" banners. That's why Americans agree including every leading democratic and republican candidate for President."
"Iran must not have a nuclear weapon." George Bush
"Let's keep our eye on the first prize; preventing Iran from developing
Nuclear weapons." Senator Joe Biden
"We cannot permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons." Senator Hillary
Clinton
"Iran cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons." Former Senator John
Edwards.
"I strongly believe...Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons."
Senator Chris Dodd
"Allowing Iran, a radical theocracy that supports terrorism and openly
threatens its neighbors, to acquire nuclear weapons is a risk we cannot
take." Senator Barack Obama
"We need to be absolutely clear that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, and
we need to be absolutely credible when we say what we will do about it..."
Governor Bill Richardson
"All nations must work together to prevent the mullahs in Tehran from
carrying out their genocidal threats against America..."
Senator Sam Brownback
"My bottom line is that we can't let them become nuclear."
Former Mayor rudolph Giuliani
"Iran currently poses an unacceptable threat to Israel, to the entire
region, to the United States, and to all peace-loving peoples throughout
the world," Former Governor Mike Huckabee
"Iran may be the single gravest threat that America has faced since the
end of the cold war." Senator John McCain
"It is time for the world to plainly speak three truths: One, Iran must be
stopped. Two, Iran can be stopped. And three, Iran will be stopped."
Former Governor Mitt Romney
"We need to ... use every means at our disposal, starting with serious and
painful international sanctions, to prevent Iran's rulers from becoming the
nuclear-armed blackmailers they want to be." Former Senator Fred
Thompson.
"President Ahmadinejad:
As you arrive at the United Nations, Don't Underestimate Americaa's Resolve.
You threaten us anad our alalies with destruction. You support terror worldwide. You parade missiles bearing "Death to America" banners. That's why Americans agree including every leading democratic and republican candidate for President."
"Iran must not have a nuclear weapon." George Bush
"Let's keep our eye on the first prize; preventing Iran from developing
Nuclear weapons." Senator Joe Biden
"We cannot permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons." Senator Hillary
Clinton
"Iran cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons." Former Senator John
Edwards.
"I strongly believe...Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons."
Senator Chris Dodd
"Allowing Iran, a radical theocracy that supports terrorism and openly
threatens its neighbors, to acquire nuclear weapons is a risk we cannot
take." Senator Barack Obama
"We need to be absolutely clear that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, and
we need to be absolutely credible when we say what we will do about it..."
Governor Bill Richardson
"All nations must work together to prevent the mullahs in Tehran from
carrying out their genocidal threats against America..."
Senator Sam Brownback
"My bottom line is that we can't let them become nuclear."
Former Mayor rudolph Giuliani
"Iran currently poses an unacceptable threat to Israel, to the entire
region, to the United States, and to all peace-loving peoples throughout
the world," Former Governor Mike Huckabee
"Iran may be the single gravest threat that America has faced since the
end of the cold war." Senator John McCain
"It is time for the world to plainly speak three truths: One, Iran must be
stopped. Two, Iran can be stopped. And three, Iran will be stopped."
Former Governor Mitt Romney
"We need to ... use every means at our disposal, starting with serious and
painful international sanctions, to prevent Iran's rulers from becoming the
nuclear-armed blackmailers they want to be." Former Senator Fred
Thompson.
ptember 24, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
A Separate Peace
Leaving the country to save it
by Leon Hadar
Casablanca, Sept. 17, 2010—The international conference that opened in this beautiful city yesterday is expected to put some final touches on a United Nations-sponsored accord on the future of the new state being set up in Mesopo-tamia, the Confederation of Iraq and Kurdistan (CFIK). The agreement was reached in early July, following months of negotiations in Bern, Switzerland, where the Arab League, Iran, and Turkey, together with representatives of the main ethnic and religious groups in Iraq that have been fighting over control of the country, accepted the formula proposed by the two lead mediators, U.S. Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke and French Foreign Secretary Bernard Kouchner.
The agreement calls for the division of the former Iraq into two political entities—the Islamic Republic of Iraq (IRI) and the Kurdish Republic (KR)—that are delineated by the Inter-Entity Boundary Line and together form the decentralized CFIK. The accord also stipulated that the CFIK "belongs" to eight constitutive ethnic groups—Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen, Armenians, Persians, Shabaks, and Lurs—and provides for the protection of these groups through regional and international guarantees and the presence of international peacekeeping troops from NATO and the Arab League.
The accord also safeguards the rights of religious groups including Shi'ites, Sunnis, Christians, Jews, Bahá'ís, Mandaeans, and Yezidis. The Sunnis residing in the IRI will be granted limited political autonomy in the provinces where they constitute a majority, mostly in provincial towns and rural villages in the Sunni Triangle. Local forces, augmented by police and military units from the Arab League and Pakistan, will help maintain security. Baghdad will be declared an "open city" for five years, with UN peacekeeping troops securing law and order. Eventually, the city will be reinstituted as the capital of the CFIR.
"The agreement reached in Bern is testimony to the willingness of all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, as well their neighbors in the region, to overcome deep-rooted differences," Secretary Holbrooke said during a speech here three days ago. After expressing his gratitude to President Hillary Clinton—"at the other Casa Blanca" ("Casa Blanca," of course, is "White House" in Spanish)—and to French President Nicolas Sarkozy for their contribution to the success of the conference, the U.S. chief diplomat turned to his French counterpart and, to the laughter of the audience, delivered the famous line: "Bernard, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
No one is expecting a "beautiful friendship" to dawn any time soon over Mesopotamia, where a civil war raged for nearly five years following the bombing of the Al-Askari Mosque in February 2006. More than 1.5 million Iraqis lost their lives, along with some 100,000 foreigners. The fighting also turned about 10 percent of Iraq's 27 million citizens into refugees, as they fled ethnic cleansing operations by both Sunni and Shi'ite guerrillas.
Iraq now resembles Bosnia and parts of the former Yugoslavia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s, when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and could defend themselves.
But notwithstanding the tragic loss of life and the destruction that has taken place in Iraq, the dire predictions by former President Bush and his top aides —that the consequences of withdrawal would be cataclysmic—were not realized after the administration started to withdraw American forces in early 2008. Bush was forced to make that decision in November 2007, after most of the Democrats and close to half of the Republicans in Congress adopted a plan that called for drawing troops down to 80,000 by the following November and dispensing with most of the rest by the end of 2009.
In fact, as experts point out, the peak of the civil war in Iraq occurred before the start of the U.S. withdrawal around December 2007, when more than 2 million Iraqis had already left their homes and close to a million had been killed in the fighting. The U.S. pullout, which made it less likely that the Shi'ites could count on the Americans as their protectors of last resort, helped produce a military stalemate between Sunni and Shi'ite forces. The Iraqi security forces, which are mostly Shi'ite, could not fight to maintain control of Sunni areas, and Sunni insurgent groups quickly took over the Sunni areas. At the same time, the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi security forces deployed to Sunni areas fled and returned to their families in Baghdad and in southern Iraq. In the aftermath of the Shi'ite pullout from Sunni areas of Iraq, the Sunni insurgent forces were not large enough to enter Shi'ite-dominated areas of Iraq or to try to win control of the central government.
Moreover, the rapid achievement of battlefield equilibrium made it less likely that either the regional protectors of the Sunnis (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan) or of the Shi'ites (Iran) would become directly involved in internal Iraqi conflict. If anything, the American withdrawal produced incentives for the Saudis, Iranians, and the Turks to convene a Persian Gulf Security Forum (PGSF) to help co-ordinate their response to the situation in Iraq.
The only outside military intervention occurred in June 2008, when the Kurdish military took over Mosul and declared independence, and Turkish troops, after receiving a green light from the PGSF, occupied the Kurdish region. The Turks agreed to withdraw only after the Kurds, during negotiations under American auspices, reversed their decision to declare independence and promised to guarantee the rights of the Turkmen community in exchange for greater political autonomy in a future Iraqi confederation. At the same time, the Sunnis' decision to accept limited political autonomy and not to form their own republic reflected their recognition that they lacked control of any sources of oil revenue.
Progress will be slow, but extending the American occupation would have only drawn out the civil war and prevented Iran from co-operating with Saudi Arabia and Turkey to bring stability. The agreement reached in Bern helped to formalize the equilibrium among Iraq's communities and accelerate the evolution of Iraq into three separate, self-governing regions.
Asked to comment on these developments, former Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "I don't like to brag, but I predicted five years ago that the insurgency in Iraq was in the last throes."
_____________________________________
Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies.
September 24, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
A Separate Peace
Leaving the country to save it
by Leon Hadar
Casablanca, Sept. 17, 2010—The international conference that opened in this beautiful city yesterday is expected to put some final touches on a United Nations-sponsored accord on the future of the new state being set up in Mesopo-tamia, the Confederation of Iraq and Kurdistan (CFIK). The agreement was reached in early July, following months of negotiations in Bern, Switzerland, where the Arab League, Iran, and Turkey, together with representatives of the main ethnic and religious groups in Iraq that have been fighting over control of the country, accepted the formula proposed by the two lead mediators, U.S. Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke and French Foreign Secretary Bernard Kouchner.
The agreement calls for the division of the former Iraq into two political entities—the Islamic Republic of Iraq (IRI) and the Kurdish Republic (KR)—that are delineated by the Inter-Entity Boundary Line and together form the decentralized CFIK. The accord also stipulated that the CFIK "belongs" to eight constitutive ethnic groups—Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen, Armenians, Persians, Shabaks, and Lurs—and provides for the protection of these groups through regional and international guarantees and the presence of international peacekeeping troops from NATO and the Arab League.
The accord also safeguards the rights of religious groups including Shi'ites, Sunnis, Christians, Jews, Bahá'ís, Mandaeans, and Yezidis. The Sunnis residing in the IRI will be granted limited political autonomy in the provinces where they constitute a majority, mostly in provincial towns and rural villages in the Sunni Triangle. Local forces, augmented by police and military units from the Arab League and Pakistan, will help maintain security. Baghdad will be declared an "open city" for five years, with UN peacekeeping troops securing law and order. Eventually, the city will be reinstituted as the capital of the CFIR.
"The agreement reached in Bern is testimony to the willingness of all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, as well their neighbors in the region, to overcome deep-rooted differences," Secretary Holbrooke said during a speech here three days ago. After expressing his gratitude to President Hillary Clinton—"at the other Casa Blanca" ("Casa Blanca," of course, is "White House" in Spanish)—and to French President Nicolas Sarkozy for their contribution to the success of the conference, the U.S. chief diplomat turned to his French counterpart and, to the laughter of the audience, delivered the famous line: "Bernard, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
No one is expecting a "beautiful friendship" to dawn any time soon over Mesopotamia, where a civil war raged for nearly five years following the bombing of the Al-Askari Mosque in February 2006. More than 1.5 million Iraqis lost their lives, along with some 100,000 foreigners. The fighting also turned about 10 percent of Iraq's 27 million citizens into refugees, as they fled ethnic cleansing operations by both Sunni and Shi'ite guerrillas.
Iraq now resembles Bosnia and parts of the former Yugoslavia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s, when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and could defend themselves.
But notwithstanding the tragic loss of life and the destruction that has taken place in Iraq, the dire predictions by former President Bush and his top aides —that the consequences of withdrawal would be cataclysmic—were not realized after the administration started to withdraw American forces in early 2008. Bush was forced to make that decision in November 2007, after most of the Democrats and close to half of the Republicans in Congress adopted a plan that called for drawing troops down to 80,000 by the following November and dispensing with most of the rest by the end of 2009.
In fact, as experts point out, the peak of the civil war in Iraq occurred before the start of the U.S. withdrawal around December 2007, when more than 2 million Iraqis had already left their homes and close to a million had been killed in the fighting. The U.S. pullout, which made it less likely that the Shi'ites could count on the Americans as their protectors of last resort, helped produce a military stalemate between Sunni and Shi'ite forces. The Iraqi security forces, which are mostly Shi'ite, could not fight to maintain control of Sunni areas, and Sunni insurgent groups quickly took over the Sunni areas. At the same time, the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi security forces deployed to Sunni areas fled and returned to their families in Baghdad and in southern Iraq. In the aftermath of the Shi'ite pullout from Sunni areas of Iraq, the Sunni insurgent forces were not large enough to enter Shi'ite-dominated areas of Iraq or to try to win control of the central government.
Moreover, the rapid achievement of battlefield equilibrium made it less likely that either the regional protectors of the Sunnis (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan) or of the Shi'ites (Iran) would become directly involved in internal Iraqi conflict. If anything, the American withdrawal produced incentives for the Saudis, Iranians, and the Turks to convene a Persian Gulf Security Forum (PGSF) to help co-ordinate their response to the situation in Iraq.
The only outside military intervention occurred in June 2008, when the Kurdish military took over Mosul and declared independence, and Turkish troops, after receiving a green light from the PGSF, occupied the Kurdish region. The Turks agreed to withdraw only after the Kurds, during negotiations under American auspices, reversed their decision to declare independence and promised to guarantee the rights of the Turkmen community in exchange for greater political autonomy in a future Iraqi confederation. At the same time, the Sunnis' decision to accept limited political autonomy and not to form their own republic reflected their recognition that they lacked control of any sources of oil revenue.
Progress will be slow, but extending the American occupation would have only drawn out the civil war and prevented Iran from co-operating with Saudi Arabia and Turkey to bring stability. The agreement reached in Bern helped to formalize the equilibrium among Iraq's communities and accelerate the evolution of Iraq into three separate, self-governing regions.
Asked to comment on these developments, former Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "I don't like to brag, but I predicted five years ago that the insurgency in Iraq was in the last throes."
_____________________________________
Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies.
September 24, 2007 Issue
My answer to the question: "You don't really think the U.S. will
attack Iran, do you?"
This is adapted from a series of talks I gave last week at Purdue,
sponsored by the Lafayette Area Peace Coalition.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naima...-c_b_65927.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/26/105737/075
--
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy's current estimate of Iraqi deaths due to violence
since the U.S. invasion - now more than a million:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
attack Iran, do you?"
This is adapted from a series of talks I gave last week at Purdue,
sponsored by the Lafayette Area Peace Coalition.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naima...-c_b_65927.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/26/105737/075
--
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy's current estimate of Iraqi deaths due to violence
since the U.S. invasion - now more than a million:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
America's New Religion
By James Kunstler
Okay, here's the big problem in America; we made this unfortunate set of choices to create the drive-in utopia, the happy-motoring utopia. America's oil consumption is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. We're not going to be able to continue this living arrangement and that makes it, by definition, the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.
But we like things the way they are. So we will not change our behavior until conditions force us to change. We Americans have put so much of our resources, so much of our wealth, so much of our spirit into constructing and assembling this energy-intensive infrastructure for daily life, that we can't imagine letting go of it.
But get this; no combination of alternative fuels or systems for running them will allow us to run Walt Disney World, Wal-Mart, and the interstate highway system. We're not going to run those things on any combination of solar, wind, nuclear, bio-fuel, used French fried potato oil, dark matter, or all the other things that we're wishing for, or even a substantial fraction of it.
I'm not against alternative fuels or making investment in alternative systems. But what you need to know is we'll probably be disappointed in what they can actually do for us. They can do things for us, but not the things that we're wishing they can do for us. One of the main implications of "the long emergency," therefore, is that we're going to have to downscale everything we do. So the 3,000-mile Cesar salad will not be with us that much longer.
Let's talk about the thing that the American people really do believe: when you wish upon a star your dreams come true. This is what adults all over America believe. This is a nice thought for children, but it's not a good thing for adults to believe. So what we've got now in the US is a tremendous amount of delusional thinking, especially around the issues of energy, and especially around what we're going to do in the face of a probable energy crisis. And this delusional thinking is joined by a second idea – many people think that the leading religion in America is Evangelical Christianity, but it's not. The leading religion is the worship of unearned riches.
This religion has now become normative throughout America.
But this is a bad religion. The reason that it's a bad idea to believe this is because it's based on the fundamental unreality that it's possible to get something for nothing. That's why it has been a very bad idea to promote legalized gambling all over America for the last 30 years. I am not an Evangelical; I'm not a Christian. I'm not a campaigner for social reform, but I believe that legalized gambling is one of the most pernicious things that we've done to ourselves in society in my lifetime. It promotes the idea that it's possible to get something for nothing. And when you join that idea with the idea that "when you wish upon a star your dreams come true," you get a really dysfunctional, delusional country, unable to conduct a coherent discussion about what's happening to us.
One of the reigning delusions is that energy and technology are the same things. If you run out of one, you just plug in the other. I had a very interesting experience about a year and a half ago. I was invited to give a talk at the Google headquarters, and I went down to the Silicon Valley, to the Google suburban office pod. The whole building was tricked-out like a kindergarten. They had the knock-hockey sets and the computer game consoles and the Lucite boxes with the gummy bears and the yogurt-covered pretzels. And you know, the impression I had was, "Wow! This is really a child-like kind of atmosphere!"
And then the Google employees came into the auditorium. These were Google millionaires: young people who had gotten in on the ground floor pretty early: engineers and executives, and had been paid in stock and stock options. And they had become millionaires by the age of 27 and they were dressed like skateboard rats. Their ass-crack was showing; they had the sideways cap on – dressed like nine-year-olds. And I gave my talk and they all got up afterwards for comments and questions. There were no questions whatsoever, just one uniform comment from 17 people, and the comment was, "Dude, we've got like technology." Subtext: you're an "expletive deleted".
That experience was very instructive for me because I began to understand a few things about where we are as a nation. What we've got at the highest level of American high-tech enterprise are people who believe that technology and energy are the same. (How much trouble does that tell you we're in?) And I think you can account for this ignorance in the following way: these are people who have become tremendously, personally, successful from moving little pixels around on a screen with a mouse. So they assume that that activity will solve all the problems of the world. But guess what? We're not going to change out the hardware on the $2.7 trillion dollar fleet of Boeings and Airbuses all around the world. We're not going to change them out to run on some other kind of energy. We're either going to run these things on liquid hydro-carbons or we're not going to run them at all.
This is the most important thing I've got to tell you today: the only conversation that's going on around America is how are we going to run the cars by other means than gasoline. That's across the whole political spectrum and from the lowest ranks of society to the highest. From the dumb people, the NASCAR morons, clear up to the Ivy League.
But we've got to have a conversation about a lot of other things besides how we're going to run the cars. We have to make other arrangements for living. We have to behave differently in the Western World, but particularly in North America. We're going to have to do farming differently; we're going to have to do commerce and trade differently; we're going to have to do schooling differently; we're going to have to learn to make some things in our own countries again.
The thing that Thomas Friedman calls globalism and regards as a permanent condition of life: guess what? It's not a permanent condition of life; it's a set of transient economic relations that exist because we have been living in a period of extraordinarily cheep and abundant energy and extraordinary relative peace between the great powers. And that's why we have globalism. When neither of these conditions obtain anymore, we will not have globalism and we will not have those trade relations any more.
One other thing; we're going to have to occupy the terrain of North America differently. Suburbia is going to fail. You can state that categorically: It's going to fail in terms of investment and it's going to fail in terms of utility.
To be continued...
By James Kunstler
Okay, here's the big problem in America; we made this unfortunate set of choices to create the drive-in utopia, the happy-motoring utopia. America's oil consumption is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. We're not going to be able to continue this living arrangement and that makes it, by definition, the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.
But we like things the way they are. So we will not change our behavior until conditions force us to change. We Americans have put so much of our resources, so much of our wealth, so much of our spirit into constructing and assembling this energy-intensive infrastructure for daily life, that we can't imagine letting go of it.
But get this; no combination of alternative fuels or systems for running them will allow us to run Walt Disney World, Wal-Mart, and the interstate highway system. We're not going to run those things on any combination of solar, wind, nuclear, bio-fuel, used French fried potato oil, dark matter, or all the other things that we're wishing for, or even a substantial fraction of it.
I'm not against alternative fuels or making investment in alternative systems. But what you need to know is we'll probably be disappointed in what they can actually do for us. They can do things for us, but not the things that we're wishing they can do for us. One of the main implications of "the long emergency," therefore, is that we're going to have to downscale everything we do. So the 3,000-mile Cesar salad will not be with us that much longer.
Let's talk about the thing that the American people really do believe: when you wish upon a star your dreams come true. This is what adults all over America believe. This is a nice thought for children, but it's not a good thing for adults to believe. So what we've got now in the US is a tremendous amount of delusional thinking, especially around the issues of energy, and especially around what we're going to do in the face of a probable energy crisis. And this delusional thinking is joined by a second idea – many people think that the leading religion in America is Evangelical Christianity, but it's not. The leading religion is the worship of unearned riches.
This religion has now become normative throughout America.
But this is a bad religion. The reason that it's a bad idea to believe this is because it's based on the fundamental unreality that it's possible to get something for nothing. That's why it has been a very bad idea to promote legalized gambling all over America for the last 30 years. I am not an Evangelical; I'm not a Christian. I'm not a campaigner for social reform, but I believe that legalized gambling is one of the most pernicious things that we've done to ourselves in society in my lifetime. It promotes the idea that it's possible to get something for nothing. And when you join that idea with the idea that "when you wish upon a star your dreams come true," you get a really dysfunctional, delusional country, unable to conduct a coherent discussion about what's happening to us.
One of the reigning delusions is that energy and technology are the same things. If you run out of one, you just plug in the other. I had a very interesting experience about a year and a half ago. I was invited to give a talk at the Google headquarters, and I went down to the Silicon Valley, to the Google suburban office pod. The whole building was tricked-out like a kindergarten. They had the knock-hockey sets and the computer game consoles and the Lucite boxes with the gummy bears and the yogurt-covered pretzels. And you know, the impression I had was, "Wow! This is really a child-like kind of atmosphere!"
And then the Google employees came into the auditorium. These were Google millionaires: young people who had gotten in on the ground floor pretty early: engineers and executives, and had been paid in stock and stock options. And they had become millionaires by the age of 27 and they were dressed like skateboard rats. Their ass-crack was showing; they had the sideways cap on – dressed like nine-year-olds. And I gave my talk and they all got up afterwards for comments and questions. There were no questions whatsoever, just one uniform comment from 17 people, and the comment was, "Dude, we've got like technology." Subtext: you're an "expletive deleted".
That experience was very instructive for me because I began to understand a few things about where we are as a nation. What we've got at the highest level of American high-tech enterprise are people who believe that technology and energy are the same. (How much trouble does that tell you we're in?) And I think you can account for this ignorance in the following way: these are people who have become tremendously, personally, successful from moving little pixels around on a screen with a mouse. So they assume that that activity will solve all the problems of the world. But guess what? We're not going to change out the hardware on the $2.7 trillion dollar fleet of Boeings and Airbuses all around the world. We're not going to change them out to run on some other kind of energy. We're either going to run these things on liquid hydro-carbons or we're not going to run them at all.
This is the most important thing I've got to tell you today: the only conversation that's going on around America is how are we going to run the cars by other means than gasoline. That's across the whole political spectrum and from the lowest ranks of society to the highest. From the dumb people, the NASCAR morons, clear up to the Ivy League.
But we've got to have a conversation about a lot of other things besides how we're going to run the cars. We have to make other arrangements for living. We have to behave differently in the Western World, but particularly in North America. We're going to have to do farming differently; we're going to have to do commerce and trade differently; we're going to have to do schooling differently; we're going to have to learn to make some things in our own countries again.
The thing that Thomas Friedman calls globalism and regards as a permanent condition of life: guess what? It's not a permanent condition of life; it's a set of transient economic relations that exist because we have been living in a period of extraordinarily cheep and abundant energy and extraordinary relative peace between the great powers. And that's why we have globalism. When neither of these conditions obtain anymore, we will not have globalism and we will not have those trade relations any more.
One other thing; we're going to have to occupy the terrain of North America differently. Suburbia is going to fail. You can state that categorically: It's going to fail in terms of investment and it's going to fail in terms of utility.
To be continued...
May 26, 2007 'Wiped off the Map' – The Rumor of the Century
by Arash Norouzi Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's president has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map." Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made.
On Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at a program, reportedly attended by thousands, titled "The World Without Zionism." Large posters surrounding him displayed this title prominently in English, obviously for the benefit of the international press. Below the poster's title was a slick graphic depicting an hour glass containing planet Earth at its top. Two small round orbs representing the United States and Israel are shown falling through the hour glass' narrow neck and crashing to the bottom.
Before we get to the infamous remark, it's important to note that the "quote" in question was itself a quote – they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomenei, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office.
The Actual Quote:
So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in Farsi:
"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "regime." pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).
So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh" is not contained anywhere in his original Farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's president threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." despite never having uttered the words "map." "wipe out" or even "Israel."
The Proof:
The full quote translated directly to English:
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."
Word by word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).
Here is the full transcript of the speech in Farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad's web site
The Speech and Context:
While the false "wiped off the map" extract has been repeated infinitely without verification, Ahmadinejad's actual speech itself has been almost entirely ignored. Given the importance placed on the "map" comment, it would be sensible to present his words in their full context to get a fuller understanding of his position. In fact, by looking at the entire speech, there is a clear, logical trajectory leading up to his call for a "world without Zionism." One may disagree with his reasoning, but critical appraisals are infeasible without first knowing what that reasoning is.
In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West's apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the "Zionist regime" was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world's struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.
Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on the region via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:
(1) The Shah of Iran – the U.S. installed monarch
(2) The Soviet Union
(3) Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise." This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.
The Origin:
One may wonder: where did this false interpretation originate? Who is responsible for the translation that has sparked such worldwide controversy? The answer is surprising.
The inflammatory "wiped off the map" quote was first disseminated not by Iran's enemies, but by Iran itself. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official propaganda arm, used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. International media including the BBC, Al-Jazeera, Time magazine and countless others picked up the IRNA quote and made headlines out of it without verifying its accuracy, and rarely referring to the source. Iran's Foreign Minister soon attempted to clarify the statement, but the quote had a life of its own. Though the IRNA wording was inaccurate and misleading, the media assumed it was true, and besides, it made great copy.
Amid heated wrangling over Iran's nuclear program, and months of continuous, unfounded accusations against Iran in an attempt to rally support for preemptive strikes against the country, the imperialists had just been handed the perfect raison d'être to invade. To the war hawks, it was a gift from the skies.
It should be noted that in other references to the conference, the IRNA's translation changed. For instance, "map" was replaced with "earth." In some articles it was "The Qods occupier regime should be eliminated from the surface of earth." or the similar "The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth." The inconsistency of the IRNA's translation should be evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language.
The Reaction:
The mistranslated "wiped off the map" quote attributed to Iran's president has been spread worldwide, repeated thousands of times in international media, and prompted the denouncements of numerous world leaders. Virtually every major and minor media outlet has published or broadcast this false statement to the masses. Big news agencies such as The Associated Press and Reuters refer to the misquote, literally, on an almost daily basis.
Following news of Iran's remark, condemnation was swift. British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed "revulsion" and implied that it might be necessary to attack Iran. U.N. chief Kofi Annan cancelled his scheduled trip to Iran due to the controversy. Ariel Sharon demanded that Iran be expelled from the United Nations for calling for Israel's destruction. Shimon Peres, more than once, threatened to wipe Iran off the map. More recently, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, who has warned that Iran is "preparing another holocaust for the Jewish state" is calling for Ahmadinejad to be tried for war crimes for inciting genocide.
The artificial quote has also been subject to additional alterations. U.S. officials and media often take the liberty of dropping the "map" reference altogether, replacing it with the more acutely threatening phrase "wipe Israel off the face of the earth." Newspaper and magazine articles dutifully report Ahmadinejad has "called for the destruction of Israel." as do senior officials in the United States government.
President George W. Bush said the comments represented a "specific threat" to destroy Israel. In a March 2006 speech in Cleveland, Bush vowed he would resort to war to protect Israel from Iran, because, "the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our ally Israel." Former presidential advisor Richard Clarke told Australian TV that Iran "talks openly about destroying Israel." and insists, "The president of Iran has said repeatedly that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth." In an October 2006 interview with Amy Goodman, former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter referred to Ahmadinejad as "the idiot that comes out and says really stupid, vile things, such as, 'It is the goal of Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.'" The consensus is clear.
Confusing matters further, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pontificates rather than give a direct answer when questioned about the statement, such as in Lally Weymouth's Washington Post interview in September 2006:
"Q: Are you really serious when you say that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth?
"A: We need to look at the scene in the Middle East – 60 years of war, 60 years of displacement, 60 years of conflict, not even a day of peace. Look at the war in Lebanon, the war in Gaza – what are the reasons for these conditions? We need to address and resolve the root problem.
"Q: Your suggestion is to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth?
"A: Our suggestion is very clear:... Let the Palestinian people decide their fate in a free and fair referendum, and the result, whatever it is, should be accepted.... The people with no roots there are now ruling the land.
"Q: You've been quoted as saying that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Is that your belief?
"A: What I have said has made my position clear. If we look at a map of the Middle East from 70 years ago...
"Q: So, the answer is yes, you do believe that it should be wiped off the face of the Earth?
"A: Are you asking me yes or no? Is this a test? Do you respect the right to self-determination for the Palestinian nation? Yes or no? Is Palestine, as a nation, considered a nation with the right to live under humane conditions or not? Let's allow those rights to be enforced for these 5 million displaced people."
The exchange is typical of Ahmadinejad's interviews with the American media. Predictably, both Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CNN's Anderson Cooper asked if he wants to "wipe Israel off the map." As usual, the question is thrown back in the reporter's face with his standard "Don't the Palestinians have rights?, etc." retort (which is never directly answered either). Yet he never confirms the "map" comment to be true. This did not prevent Anderson Cooper from referring to earlier portions of his interview after a commercial break and lying, "as he said earlier, he wants Israel wiped off the map."
Even if every media outlet in the world were to retract the mistranslated quote tomorrow, the major damage has already been done, providing the groundwork for the next phase of disinformation: complete character demonization. Ahmadinejad, we are told, is the next Hitler, a grave threat to world peace who wants to bring about a new Holocaust. According to some detractors, he not only wants to destroy Israel, but after that, he will nuke America, and then Europe! An October 2006 memo titled "Words of Hate: Iran's Escalating Threats" released by the powerful Israeli lobby group AIPAC opens with the warning, "Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian leaders are issuing increasingly belligerent statements threatening to destroy the United States, Europe and Israel." These claims not only fabricate an unsubstantiated threat, but assume far more power than he actually possesses. Alarmists would be better off monitoring the statements of the ultra-conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who holds the most power in Iran.
As Iran's U.N. Press Officer, M.A. Mohammadi, complained to the Washington Post in a June 2006 letter:
"It is not amazing at all, the pick-and-choose approach of highlighting the misinterpreted remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in October and ignoring this month's remarks by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that 'We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state.'"
The Israeli government has milked every drop of the spurious quote to its supposed advantage. In her September 2006 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni accused Iran of working to nuke Israel and bully the world. "They speak proudly and openly of their desire to 'wipe Israel off the map.' And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective to imperil the region and threaten the world." Addressing the threat in December, a fervent Prime Minister Ehud Olmert inadvertently disclosed that his country already possesses nuclear weapons: "We have never threatened any nation with annihilation. Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"
Media Irresponsibility:
On December 13, 2006, more than a year after The World Without Zionism conference, two leading Israeli newspapers, the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, published reports of a renewed threat from Ahmadinejad. The Jerusalem Post's headline was Ahmadinejad: Israel will be 'wiped out', while Haaretz posted the title Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference: Israel will 'soon be wiped out'.
Where did they get their information? It turns out that both papers, like most American and western media, rely heavily on write ups by news wire services such as the Associated Press and Reuters as a source for their articles. Sure enough, their sources are in fact December 12th articles by Reuter's Paul Hughes [Iran president says Israel's days are numbered], and the AP's Ali Akbar Dareini [Iran President: Israel will be wiped out].
The first five paragraphs of the Haaretz article, credited to "Haaretz Service and Agencies." are plagiarized almost 100% from the first five paragraphs of the Reuters piece. The only difference is that Haaretz changed "the Jewish state" to "Israel" in the second paragraph, otherwise they are identical.
The Jerusalem Post article by Herb Keinon pilfers from both the Reuters and AP stories. Like Haaretz, it uses the following Ahmadinejad quote without attribution: ["Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added]. Another passage apparently relies on an IRNA report:
"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," Ahmadinejad said at Tuesday's meeting with the conference participants in his offices, according to Iran's official news agency, IRNA.
He said elections should be held among "Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."
Once again, the first sentence above was wholly plagiarized from the AP article. The second sentence was also the same, except "He called for elections" became "He said elections should be held..."
It gets more interesting.
The quote used in the original AP article and copied in the Jerusalem Post article supposedly derives from the IRNA. If true, this can easily be checked.
There you will discover the actual IRNA quote was:
"As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated."
Compare this to the alleged IRNA quote reported by the Associated Press:
"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom."
In the IRNA's actual report, the Zionist regime will vanish just as the Soviet Union disappeared. Vanish. Disappear. In the dishonest AP version, the Zionist regime will be "wiped out." And how will it be wiped out? "The same way the Soviet Union was." Rather than imply a military threat or escalation in rhetoric, this reference to Russia actually validates the intended meaning of Ahmadinejad's previous misinterpreted anti-Zionist statements.
What has just been demonstrated is irrefutable proof of media manipulation and propaganda in action. The AP deliberately alters an IRNA quote to sound more threatening. The Israeli media not only repeats the fake quote but also steals the original authors' words. The unsuspecting public reads this, forms an opinion and supports unnecessary wars of aggression, presented as self defense, based on the misinformation.
This scenario mirrors the kind of false claims that led to the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, a war now widely viewed as a catastrophic mistake. And yet the Bush administration and the compliant corporate media continue to marinate in propaganda and speculation about attacking Iraq's much larger and more formidable neighbor, Iran. Most of this rests on the unproven assumption that Iran is building nuclear weapons, and the lie that Iran has vowed to physically destroy Israel. Given its scope and potentially disastrous outcome, all this amounts to what is arguably the rumor of the century.
Iran's president has written two rather philosophical letters to America. In his first letter, he pointed out that "History shows us that oppressive and cruel governments do not survive." With this statement, Ahmadinejad has also projected the outcome of his own backwards regime, which will likewise "vanish from the page of time."
by Arash Norouzi Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's president has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map." Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made.
On Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at a program, reportedly attended by thousands, titled "The World Without Zionism." Large posters surrounding him displayed this title prominently in English, obviously for the benefit of the international press. Below the poster's title was a slick graphic depicting an hour glass containing planet Earth at its top. Two small round orbs representing the United States and Israel are shown falling through the hour glass' narrow neck and crashing to the bottom.
Before we get to the infamous remark, it's important to note that the "quote" in question was itself a quote – they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomenei, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office.
The Actual Quote:
So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in Farsi:
"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "regime." pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).
So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh" is not contained anywhere in his original Farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's president threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." despite never having uttered the words "map." "wipe out" or even "Israel."
The Proof:
The full quote translated directly to English:
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."
Word by word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).
Here is the full transcript of the speech in Farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad's web site
The Speech and Context:
While the false "wiped off the map" extract has been repeated infinitely without verification, Ahmadinejad's actual speech itself has been almost entirely ignored. Given the importance placed on the "map" comment, it would be sensible to present his words in their full context to get a fuller understanding of his position. In fact, by looking at the entire speech, there is a clear, logical trajectory leading up to his call for a "world without Zionism." One may disagree with his reasoning, but critical appraisals are infeasible without first knowing what that reasoning is.
In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West's apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the "Zionist regime" was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world's struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.
Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on the region via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:
(1) The Shah of Iran – the U.S. installed monarch
(2) The Soviet Union
(3) Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise." This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.
The Origin:
One may wonder: where did this false interpretation originate? Who is responsible for the translation that has sparked such worldwide controversy? The answer is surprising.
The inflammatory "wiped off the map" quote was first disseminated not by Iran's enemies, but by Iran itself. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official propaganda arm, used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. International media including the BBC, Al-Jazeera, Time magazine and countless others picked up the IRNA quote and made headlines out of it without verifying its accuracy, and rarely referring to the source. Iran's Foreign Minister soon attempted to clarify the statement, but the quote had a life of its own. Though the IRNA wording was inaccurate and misleading, the media assumed it was true, and besides, it made great copy.
Amid heated wrangling over Iran's nuclear program, and months of continuous, unfounded accusations against Iran in an attempt to rally support for preemptive strikes against the country, the imperialists had just been handed the perfect raison d'être to invade. To the war hawks, it was a gift from the skies.
It should be noted that in other references to the conference, the IRNA's translation changed. For instance, "map" was replaced with "earth." In some articles it was "The Qods occupier regime should be eliminated from the surface of earth." or the similar "The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth." The inconsistency of the IRNA's translation should be evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language.
The Reaction:
The mistranslated "wiped off the map" quote attributed to Iran's president has been spread worldwide, repeated thousands of times in international media, and prompted the denouncements of numerous world leaders. Virtually every major and minor media outlet has published or broadcast this false statement to the masses. Big news agencies such as The Associated Press and Reuters refer to the misquote, literally, on an almost daily basis.
Following news of Iran's remark, condemnation was swift. British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed "revulsion" and implied that it might be necessary to attack Iran. U.N. chief Kofi Annan cancelled his scheduled trip to Iran due to the controversy. Ariel Sharon demanded that Iran be expelled from the United Nations for calling for Israel's destruction. Shimon Peres, more than once, threatened to wipe Iran off the map. More recently, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, who has warned that Iran is "preparing another holocaust for the Jewish state" is calling for Ahmadinejad to be tried for war crimes for inciting genocide.
The artificial quote has also been subject to additional alterations. U.S. officials and media often take the liberty of dropping the "map" reference altogether, replacing it with the more acutely threatening phrase "wipe Israel off the face of the earth." Newspaper and magazine articles dutifully report Ahmadinejad has "called for the destruction of Israel." as do senior officials in the United States government.
President George W. Bush said the comments represented a "specific threat" to destroy Israel. In a March 2006 speech in Cleveland, Bush vowed he would resort to war to protect Israel from Iran, because, "the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our ally Israel." Former presidential advisor Richard Clarke told Australian TV that Iran "talks openly about destroying Israel." and insists, "The president of Iran has said repeatedly that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth." In an October 2006 interview with Amy Goodman, former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter referred to Ahmadinejad as "the idiot that comes out and says really stupid, vile things, such as, 'It is the goal of Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.'" The consensus is clear.
Confusing matters further, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pontificates rather than give a direct answer when questioned about the statement, such as in Lally Weymouth's Washington Post interview in September 2006:
"Q: Are you really serious when you say that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth?
"A: We need to look at the scene in the Middle East – 60 years of war, 60 years of displacement, 60 years of conflict, not even a day of peace. Look at the war in Lebanon, the war in Gaza – what are the reasons for these conditions? We need to address and resolve the root problem.
"Q: Your suggestion is to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth?
"A: Our suggestion is very clear:... Let the Palestinian people decide their fate in a free and fair referendum, and the result, whatever it is, should be accepted.... The people with no roots there are now ruling the land.
"Q: You've been quoted as saying that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Is that your belief?
"A: What I have said has made my position clear. If we look at a map of the Middle East from 70 years ago...
"Q: So, the answer is yes, you do believe that it should be wiped off the face of the Earth?
"A: Are you asking me yes or no? Is this a test? Do you respect the right to self-determination for the Palestinian nation? Yes or no? Is Palestine, as a nation, considered a nation with the right to live under humane conditions or not? Let's allow those rights to be enforced for these 5 million displaced people."
The exchange is typical of Ahmadinejad's interviews with the American media. Predictably, both Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CNN's Anderson Cooper asked if he wants to "wipe Israel off the map." As usual, the question is thrown back in the reporter's face with his standard "Don't the Palestinians have rights?, etc." retort (which is never directly answered either). Yet he never confirms the "map" comment to be true. This did not prevent Anderson Cooper from referring to earlier portions of his interview after a commercial break and lying, "as he said earlier, he wants Israel wiped off the map."
Even if every media outlet in the world were to retract the mistranslated quote tomorrow, the major damage has already been done, providing the groundwork for the next phase of disinformation: complete character demonization. Ahmadinejad, we are told, is the next Hitler, a grave threat to world peace who wants to bring about a new Holocaust. According to some detractors, he not only wants to destroy Israel, but after that, he will nuke America, and then Europe! An October 2006 memo titled "Words of Hate: Iran's Escalating Threats" released by the powerful Israeli lobby group AIPAC opens with the warning, "Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian leaders are issuing increasingly belligerent statements threatening to destroy the United States, Europe and Israel." These claims not only fabricate an unsubstantiated threat, but assume far more power than he actually possesses. Alarmists would be better off monitoring the statements of the ultra-conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who holds the most power in Iran.
As Iran's U.N. Press Officer, M.A. Mohammadi, complained to the Washington Post in a June 2006 letter:
"It is not amazing at all, the pick-and-choose approach of highlighting the misinterpreted remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in October and ignoring this month's remarks by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that 'We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state.'"
The Israeli government has milked every drop of the spurious quote to its supposed advantage. In her September 2006 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni accused Iran of working to nuke Israel and bully the world. "They speak proudly and openly of their desire to 'wipe Israel off the map.' And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective to imperil the region and threaten the world." Addressing the threat in December, a fervent Prime Minister Ehud Olmert inadvertently disclosed that his country already possesses nuclear weapons: "We have never threatened any nation with annihilation. Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"
Media Irresponsibility:
On December 13, 2006, more than a year after The World Without Zionism conference, two leading Israeli newspapers, the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, published reports of a renewed threat from Ahmadinejad. The Jerusalem Post's headline was Ahmadinejad: Israel will be 'wiped out', while Haaretz posted the title Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference: Israel will 'soon be wiped out'.
Where did they get their information? It turns out that both papers, like most American and western media, rely heavily on write ups by news wire services such as the Associated Press and Reuters as a source for their articles. Sure enough, their sources are in fact December 12th articles by Reuter's Paul Hughes [Iran president says Israel's days are numbered], and the AP's Ali Akbar Dareini [Iran President: Israel will be wiped out].
The first five paragraphs of the Haaretz article, credited to "Haaretz Service and Agencies." are plagiarized almost 100% from the first five paragraphs of the Reuters piece. The only difference is that Haaretz changed "the Jewish state" to "Israel" in the second paragraph, otherwise they are identical.
The Jerusalem Post article by Herb Keinon pilfers from both the Reuters and AP stories. Like Haaretz, it uses the following Ahmadinejad quote without attribution: ["Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added]. Another passage apparently relies on an IRNA report:
"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," Ahmadinejad said at Tuesday's meeting with the conference participants in his offices, according to Iran's official news agency, IRNA.
He said elections should be held among "Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."
Once again, the first sentence above was wholly plagiarized from the AP article. The second sentence was also the same, except "He called for elections" became "He said elections should be held..."
It gets more interesting.
The quote used in the original AP article and copied in the Jerusalem Post article supposedly derives from the IRNA. If true, this can easily be checked.
There you will discover the actual IRNA quote was:
"As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated."
Compare this to the alleged IRNA quote reported by the Associated Press:
"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom."
In the IRNA's actual report, the Zionist regime will vanish just as the Soviet Union disappeared. Vanish. Disappear. In the dishonest AP version, the Zionist regime will be "wiped out." And how will it be wiped out? "The same way the Soviet Union was." Rather than imply a military threat or escalation in rhetoric, this reference to Russia actually validates the intended meaning of Ahmadinejad's previous misinterpreted anti-Zionist statements.
What has just been demonstrated is irrefutable proof of media manipulation and propaganda in action. The AP deliberately alters an IRNA quote to sound more threatening. The Israeli media not only repeats the fake quote but also steals the original authors' words. The unsuspecting public reads this, forms an opinion and supports unnecessary wars of aggression, presented as self defense, based on the misinformation.
This scenario mirrors the kind of false claims that led to the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, a war now widely viewed as a catastrophic mistake. And yet the Bush administration and the compliant corporate media continue to marinate in propaganda and speculation about attacking Iraq's much larger and more formidable neighbor, Iran. Most of this rests on the unproven assumption that Iran is building nuclear weapons, and the lie that Iran has vowed to physically destroy Israel. Given its scope and potentially disastrous outcome, all this amounts to what is arguably the rumor of the century.
Iran's president has written two rather philosophical letters to America. In his first letter, he pointed out that "History shows us that oppressive and cruel governments do not survive." With this statement, Ahmadinejad has also projected the outcome of his own backwards regime, which will likewise "vanish from the page of time."
Dress Rehearsal for War
Ahmadinejad's visit revives the War Party's sinking fortunes by Justin Raimondo Just when you thought the War Party was down, and nearly out, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did them the favor of paying a visit to New York, the town that trademarked rudeness. This gave the usual suspects an opportunity to rehearse, so to speak, for the coming war with Iran.
Every symphony has a prelude, and this one – Götterdämmerung II? – has as its central theme the villainous caricature of an Iranian president who denies the Holocaust and threatens to "wipe Israel off the map." The opening act was Ahmadinejad's Columbia University performance, preceded by a long, hectoring introduction by university president Lee Bollinger, who took the opportunity to assuage his critics by preparing what he doubtless thought would be an ambush. Except it didn't turn out that way. Instead, Ahmadinejad came out looking rather more sympathetic than he appeared going into that lion's den.
The Iranian president, Bollinger barked, "exhibits all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." He declared his guest "ridiculous," and questioned whether Ahmadinejad would "have the intellectual courage to answer my questions."
As is typical of war propaganda, the axis of AIPAC and its allies in the sensationalist media have cherry-picked choice quotes from Ahmadinejad's long presentation. The Iranian country bumpkin's denial that homosexuality exists in Iran was of particular interest – after all, this is America – and subject to widespread ridicule. It's funny, if your taste in humor is rather dark – who's in the mood for jokes with all those war clouds gathering on the horizon? – because of the apparent misunderstanding underlying his curious statement. As I've written elsewhere, "homosexuality" doesn't mean the same thing in the Middle East and North Africa as it does in the Anglosphere, and so this is a matter of cultures in collision, and has more to do with differences in language than anything else. In any case, the usual allowances we make for foreigners, who might not understand our customs and mores, were not made for the university's distinctly dishonored guest.
However, if you actually go and read the transcript of Ahmadinejad's remarks, what quickly becomes apparent is that he rose to meet Bollinger's challenge and did indeed answer the questions posed to him. Whether this required "intellectual courage," or merely a desperate desire to somehow avert what seems to be an imminent attack on his country by the mightiest military machine on earth, is open to speculation, and I'll leave that to others. Suffice to say that the Iranian president's faltering political fortunes at home – where the economy is on the downtick, in spite of the rising price of oil – were certainly given a much-needed lift by the extraordinary display of vitriolic self-righteousness with which he was greeted in the Big Bad Apple.
The Iranian response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks was among the most demonstratively sympathetic: Tehran saw candlelight vigils and official expressions of mourning and grief. Yet Ahmadinejad's simple request to pay his respects at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan was denied and roundly denounced: how dare he imagine he'd be allowed to make a simple human gesture!
In answering Bollinger's accusation that he denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of Israel, Ahmadinejad denied his denialism and, instead of regaling his audience with the theories of the Holocaust "revisionists" he invited to Tehran last year, made a point of emphasizing the political and ideological uses of the Holocaust:
"Given this historical event, if it is a reality, we need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not. After all, it happened in Europe. The Palestinian people had no role to play in it. So why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price of an event they had nothing to do with?
"The Palestinian people didn't commit any crime. They had no role to play in World War II. They were living with the Jewish communities and the Christian communities in peace at the time. They didn't have any problems.
"And today, too, Jews, Christians, and Muslims live in brotherhood all over the world in many parts of the world. They don't have any serious problems.
"But why is it that the Palestinians should pay a price, innocent Palestinians, for 5 million people to remain displaced or refugees abroad for 60 years. Is this not a crime? Is asking about these crimes a crime by itself?"
In America, and much of the English-speaking world, the answer to this last is "apparently so."
Bollinger aspired to be the Gen. Petraeus of academia, averring that Iran is "funding terrorism" and supplying arms and other support for a "proxy war" against U.S. soldiers, including "providing safe transit to insurgent leaders like Moqtada al-Sadr and his forces." Except that Sadr is hardly an "insurgent," or else how does the learned Bollinger explain the news that the 32 elected representatives of the Sadrist movement in the Iraqi parliament have only recently withdrawn their support for the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki? The Shi'ite cleric who rules Sadr City is the leader of a legal organization, one of four major components of the ruling United Iraqi Alliance that swept into power in the wake of the famous purple-finger elections.
Is it too much to expect a leading academic authority figure to do his homework before he gets up in front of the class and makes a fool out of himself?
Answering the Bush-Bollinger canard that he's funding terrorism, the Iranian president turned the tables on his interlocutors, pointing to the toll taken by terrorists in his own nation, and referring to if not actually naming the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a group that has committed terrorist acts against both Iranians and Americans, and which is being harbored in Iraq by U.S. forces. This is not to mention the insurgent groups aided by the U.S. in Iranian Kurdistan and among the Sunni tribes to the east. Said Ahmadinejad:
"We don't need to resort to terrorism. We've been victims of terrorism, ourselves. And it's regrettable that people who argue they're fighting terrorism, instead of supporting the Iranian people and nation, instead of fighting the terrorists that are attacking them, they're supporting the terrorists and then turn the fingers to us."
Touché.
The interrogation of Ahmadinejad by the moderator varied a bit from Bollinger's indictment. On the question of Israel, for example, the latter merely accused him of calling for Israel's physical destruction – a contention effectively debunked, I think, by the estimable Juan Cole – while the moderator opened the proceedings with: "The first question is: Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel as a Jewish state?"
In other words, what we're talking about is not a threat to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean, as is typically claimed by the Lobby, but the threat of a popular referendum, with one option being a binational Palestinian state, as Ahmadinejad described the official Iranian position. Tony Judt takes a similar position, as do many other liberal Westerners. Are they to be burned in effigy, too? What's notable, however, is Ahmadinejad's point that Jews live in peace in Iran, with representation in the elected parliament – which is more than can be said for the plight of Jews in Iraq, where, last we heard, there were eight left in Baghdad, once a thriving center of Jewish culture.
Ahmadinejad is no worse than any number of U.S.-supported despots in the region, including Hosni Mubarak: at least he isn't grooming his son to succeed him in office. Iran is hardly a Jeffersonian republic, yet its electoral process – which involves a real contest – is a lot freer than Egypt's.
What is particularly galling is to witness the sad spectacle of a university president being used by this administration to stage its carefully choreographed pro-war morality play. Bollinger acted as an echo chamber for the neoconservative ideologues who are playing the same deceptive game they did so well at in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yet there is no concrete evidence that the Iranians are arming Sadr or any of the other militias, which are all funded and operated by the parties of the ruling UIA coalition. These militias were given safe haven and succored by Tehran during Saddam's reign, and good relations no doubt persist. What else did the Americans expect would happen after they "liberated" the Shi'ite majority from the depredations of a Sunni dictatorship? It's notable that the various Iranian diplomats arrested by the U.S. occupation forces have all been defended by the Iraqi government as legitimate.
The irony of the debate around whether Columbia should have invited Ahmadinejad is that it's raging in a country whose chief executive has announced that that he's exporting "freedom" around the world. The real meaning of this "freedom," however, was aptly expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who declared:
"I think that Columbia University made a mistake. … With Hitler there was a dialogue. [British Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain went to talk to him. What did it help? It helped cover the fact that Hitler prepared concentration camps and death camps. I don't accept the university's explanations, because if a university is a platform where lies are permissible, then it is not academic. … So all of yesterday's show was wretched."
The Republican candidates for president with one exception took the Israeli position, and no wonder: in his Columbia peroration, the supposed madman who wants to nuke Israel and the U.S. denounced politicians who seek nuclear weapons as "retarded." No doubt we'll see an alliance between AIPAC and the mentally handicapped in denouncing these insensitive remarks.
It's notable that Hillary Clinton, along with the usual lineup of GOP warmongers, joined the chorus of derision that greeted Ahmadinejad's desire to pay his respects to those who fell on 9/11. "If I were the president of a university, I would not have invited him, but I did not express an opinion about the decision made by Columbia," Clinton said. "Obviously I was very much against his desire to go to Ground Zero. I thought that was absolutely out of bounds and unacceptable and thankfully it was not permitted."
It's typical that the cold, cold Hillary, ice goddess – and potential war goddess – would fail to understand the typically human desire to sympathize with and honor the victims of a tragedy. This does not bode well for a future Democratic administration that will come under immediate pressure from the Lobby to confront Tehran.
The extraordinary din of catcalls and pure hatred that greeted Ahmadinejad upon his arrival in our country is like the Two-Minutes Hate in George Orwell's 1984, a novel that continues to remind us of the author's preternatural prescience. As a prelude to the bombing of Iran and the commencement of the Third Gulf War, this week's orgy of vitriol sets the tone for what is to come.
Ahmadinejad's visit revives the War Party's sinking fortunes by Justin Raimondo Just when you thought the War Party was down, and nearly out, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did them the favor of paying a visit to New York, the town that trademarked rudeness. This gave the usual suspects an opportunity to rehearse, so to speak, for the coming war with Iran.
Every symphony has a prelude, and this one – Götterdämmerung II? – has as its central theme the villainous caricature of an Iranian president who denies the Holocaust and threatens to "wipe Israel off the map." The opening act was Ahmadinejad's Columbia University performance, preceded by a long, hectoring introduction by university president Lee Bollinger, who took the opportunity to assuage his critics by preparing what he doubtless thought would be an ambush. Except it didn't turn out that way. Instead, Ahmadinejad came out looking rather more sympathetic than he appeared going into that lion's den.
The Iranian president, Bollinger barked, "exhibits all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." He declared his guest "ridiculous," and questioned whether Ahmadinejad would "have the intellectual courage to answer my questions."
As is typical of war propaganda, the axis of AIPAC and its allies in the sensationalist media have cherry-picked choice quotes from Ahmadinejad's long presentation. The Iranian country bumpkin's denial that homosexuality exists in Iran was of particular interest – after all, this is America – and subject to widespread ridicule. It's funny, if your taste in humor is rather dark – who's in the mood for jokes with all those war clouds gathering on the horizon? – because of the apparent misunderstanding underlying his curious statement. As I've written elsewhere, "homosexuality" doesn't mean the same thing in the Middle East and North Africa as it does in the Anglosphere, and so this is a matter of cultures in collision, and has more to do with differences in language than anything else. In any case, the usual allowances we make for foreigners, who might not understand our customs and mores, were not made for the university's distinctly dishonored guest.
However, if you actually go and read the transcript of Ahmadinejad's remarks, what quickly becomes apparent is that he rose to meet Bollinger's challenge and did indeed answer the questions posed to him. Whether this required "intellectual courage," or merely a desperate desire to somehow avert what seems to be an imminent attack on his country by the mightiest military machine on earth, is open to speculation, and I'll leave that to others. Suffice to say that the Iranian president's faltering political fortunes at home – where the economy is on the downtick, in spite of the rising price of oil – were certainly given a much-needed lift by the extraordinary display of vitriolic self-righteousness with which he was greeted in the Big Bad Apple.
The Iranian response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks was among the most demonstratively sympathetic: Tehran saw candlelight vigils and official expressions of mourning and grief. Yet Ahmadinejad's simple request to pay his respects at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan was denied and roundly denounced: how dare he imagine he'd be allowed to make a simple human gesture!
In answering Bollinger's accusation that he denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of Israel, Ahmadinejad denied his denialism and, instead of regaling his audience with the theories of the Holocaust "revisionists" he invited to Tehran last year, made a point of emphasizing the political and ideological uses of the Holocaust:
"Given this historical event, if it is a reality, we need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not. After all, it happened in Europe. The Palestinian people had no role to play in it. So why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price of an event they had nothing to do with?
"The Palestinian people didn't commit any crime. They had no role to play in World War II. They were living with the Jewish communities and the Christian communities in peace at the time. They didn't have any problems.
"And today, too, Jews, Christians, and Muslims live in brotherhood all over the world in many parts of the world. They don't have any serious problems.
"But why is it that the Palestinians should pay a price, innocent Palestinians, for 5 million people to remain displaced or refugees abroad for 60 years. Is this not a crime? Is asking about these crimes a crime by itself?"
In America, and much of the English-speaking world, the answer to this last is "apparently so."
Bollinger aspired to be the Gen. Petraeus of academia, averring that Iran is "funding terrorism" and supplying arms and other support for a "proxy war" against U.S. soldiers, including "providing safe transit to insurgent leaders like Moqtada al-Sadr and his forces." Except that Sadr is hardly an "insurgent," or else how does the learned Bollinger explain the news that the 32 elected representatives of the Sadrist movement in the Iraqi parliament have only recently withdrawn their support for the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki? The Shi'ite cleric who rules Sadr City is the leader of a legal organization, one of four major components of the ruling United Iraqi Alliance that swept into power in the wake of the famous purple-finger elections.
Is it too much to expect a leading academic authority figure to do his homework before he gets up in front of the class and makes a fool out of himself?
Answering the Bush-Bollinger canard that he's funding terrorism, the Iranian president turned the tables on his interlocutors, pointing to the toll taken by terrorists in his own nation, and referring to if not actually naming the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a group that has committed terrorist acts against both Iranians and Americans, and which is being harbored in Iraq by U.S. forces. This is not to mention the insurgent groups aided by the U.S. in Iranian Kurdistan and among the Sunni tribes to the east. Said Ahmadinejad:
"We don't need to resort to terrorism. We've been victims of terrorism, ourselves. And it's regrettable that people who argue they're fighting terrorism, instead of supporting the Iranian people and nation, instead of fighting the terrorists that are attacking them, they're supporting the terrorists and then turn the fingers to us."
Touché.
The interrogation of Ahmadinejad by the moderator varied a bit from Bollinger's indictment. On the question of Israel, for example, the latter merely accused him of calling for Israel's physical destruction – a contention effectively debunked, I think, by the estimable Juan Cole – while the moderator opened the proceedings with: "The first question is: Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel as a Jewish state?"
In other words, what we're talking about is not a threat to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean, as is typically claimed by the Lobby, but the threat of a popular referendum, with one option being a binational Palestinian state, as Ahmadinejad described the official Iranian position. Tony Judt takes a similar position, as do many other liberal Westerners. Are they to be burned in effigy, too? What's notable, however, is Ahmadinejad's point that Jews live in peace in Iran, with representation in the elected parliament – which is more than can be said for the plight of Jews in Iraq, where, last we heard, there were eight left in Baghdad, once a thriving center of Jewish culture.
Ahmadinejad is no worse than any number of U.S.-supported despots in the region, including Hosni Mubarak: at least he isn't grooming his son to succeed him in office. Iran is hardly a Jeffersonian republic, yet its electoral process – which involves a real contest – is a lot freer than Egypt's.
What is particularly galling is to witness the sad spectacle of a university president being used by this administration to stage its carefully choreographed pro-war morality play. Bollinger acted as an echo chamber for the neoconservative ideologues who are playing the same deceptive game they did so well at in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yet there is no concrete evidence that the Iranians are arming Sadr or any of the other militias, which are all funded and operated by the parties of the ruling UIA coalition. These militias were given safe haven and succored by Tehran during Saddam's reign, and good relations no doubt persist. What else did the Americans expect would happen after they "liberated" the Shi'ite majority from the depredations of a Sunni dictatorship? It's notable that the various Iranian diplomats arrested by the U.S. occupation forces have all been defended by the Iraqi government as legitimate.
The irony of the debate around whether Columbia should have invited Ahmadinejad is that it's raging in a country whose chief executive has announced that that he's exporting "freedom" around the world. The real meaning of this "freedom," however, was aptly expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who declared:
"I think that Columbia University made a mistake. … With Hitler there was a dialogue. [British Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain went to talk to him. What did it help? It helped cover the fact that Hitler prepared concentration camps and death camps. I don't accept the university's explanations, because if a university is a platform where lies are permissible, then it is not academic. … So all of yesterday's show was wretched."
The Republican candidates for president with one exception took the Israeli position, and no wonder: in his Columbia peroration, the supposed madman who wants to nuke Israel and the U.S. denounced politicians who seek nuclear weapons as "retarded." No doubt we'll see an alliance between AIPAC and the mentally handicapped in denouncing these insensitive remarks.
It's notable that Hillary Clinton, along with the usual lineup of GOP warmongers, joined the chorus of derision that greeted Ahmadinejad's desire to pay his respects to those who fell on 9/11. "If I were the president of a university, I would not have invited him, but I did not express an opinion about the decision made by Columbia," Clinton said. "Obviously I was very much against his desire to go to Ground Zero. I thought that was absolutely out of bounds and unacceptable and thankfully it was not permitted."
It's typical that the cold, cold Hillary, ice goddess – and potential war goddess – would fail to understand the typically human desire to sympathize with and honor the victims of a tragedy. This does not bode well for a future Democratic administration that will come under immediate pressure from the Lobby to confront Tehran.
The extraordinary din of catcalls and pure hatred that greeted Ahmadinejad upon his arrival in our country is like the Two-Minutes Hate in George Orwell's 1984, a novel that continues to remind us of the author's preternatural prescience. As a prelude to the bombing of Iran and the commencement of the Third Gulf War, this week's orgy of vitriol sets the tone for what is to come.
President:
IAEA to discuss Iran nuclear issue from legal aspect The issue of Iran's peaceful nuclear program is discussed by the UN nuclear watchdog from legal aspect, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday evening. »
Tuesday 25 September 2007 - 11:36
President Ahmadinejad meets Jewish rabbis in New York President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Monday afternoon met with a group of Jewish rabbis who gave him a silver grail as a sign of friendship. »
Tuesday 25 September 2007 - 04:40
President Ahmadinejad addresses students at Columbia University-full text In the Name of God »
Tuesday 25 September 2007 - 17:13
Ahmadinejad:
Justice essence of human nature President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a message that justice and defense of human dignity are the innate characteristic of all human beings. »
Tuesday 25 September 2007 - 15:20
Certain US media keep Americans away from truth, president Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that the US has turned to a large prison where the media are keeping the American people away from truth. »
IAEA to discuss Iran nuclear issue from legal aspect The issue of Iran's peaceful nuclear program is discussed by the UN nuclear watchdog from legal aspect, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday evening. »
Tuesday 25 September 2007 - 11:36
President Ahmadinejad meets Jewish rabbis in New York President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Monday afternoon met with a group of Jewish rabbis who gave him a silver grail as a sign of friendship. »
Tuesday 25 September 2007 - 04:40 President Ahmadinejad addresses students at Columbia University-full text In the Name of God »
Tuesday 25 September 2007 - 17:13 Ahmadinejad:
Justice essence of human nature President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a message that justice and defense of human dignity are the innate characteristic of all human beings. »
Tuesday 25 September 2007 - 15:20 Certain US media keep Americans away from truth, president Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that the US has turned to a large prison where the media are keeping the American people away from truth. »
Iraq
Is Keeping Troops in Iraq in America’s Best Interests?In this September 18 debate hosted by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, Carnegie President Jessica T. Mathews and Ambassador Chas. W. Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and president of the Middle East Policy Council, argue against keeping troops in Iraq, while American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Resident Scholar Frederick W. Kagan, an architect of the “surge” plan, and Reuel Marc Gerecht, AEI resident fellow, argue in favor. The event was moderated by Margaret Warner, PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Click here for video and transcript.
After Iraq: U.S. Strategy in the Middle EastGeneral Petraeus' report to Congress and the current discussion about Iraq are focused on how many troops are deployed there, how effective they are, and when they're coming home. But what's missing from the popular debate is a discussion of what comes next. Carnegie President Jessica T. Mathews, Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall, and CFR's Ray Takeyh tackled this issue in a seminar moderated by Democracy: A Journal of Ideas Co-Editor Kenneth Baer.
Click here for event video and transcript.
Russia
