Earlier this week, Flynt spoke at a New America Foundation event, “Beyond Primacy Rethinking American Grand Strategy and the Command of the Commons,” which can be watched by clicking on the video embedded above. Flynt responded to a paper presented by two MIT doctoral students proposing a new American military posture. Flynt’s remarks focus on the foreign policy context for defense policy decisions; he argues that until the United States abandons its quixotic and counterproductive pursuit of hegemony in place like the Middle East, it will not be possible for Washington to take rational decisions about America’s military posture and defense policy. For those who want to go directly to Flynt’s remarks, fast forward to around the 30.33 mark on the video.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
fyi,
Re: Chatham House discussion of Iran’s nuclear programme. Peter Jenkins is pretty reasonable on the issue, and he posted a story on this site Sept. 13, 2010.
Humanist,
I find myself able to agree with many things you say. However, once you start talking about the Iranian religious establishment, or religion generally, you go way off base. As we have argued before, your personal bias against religion generally leads you to wrong conclusions about who and what the ulema in Iran stand for. For instance, you said:
“I have come to believe the present theocratic system with its medieval laws was imposed on Iranians by tricks via efforts of stooges of foreign powers. “
What is the basis for you coming to believe this to be the case? Do you have facts to support this ‘hidden hand’ conspiracy, or are you directed to this conclusion because you do not believe the Iranian leadership to be who they say they are? Is your problem with the Assembly of Experts? Which level of the Iranian government is responsible for the foreign conspiracy?
You appear to me to lack an appreciation for the potency of Islam. In your mind it should have died out long ago and the fact that it hasn’t means something or someone must be deceiving Muslim Iranians into holding on to their “childish” beliefs. This attitude or something similar will provide the energy for the condescension i brought up in the previous post.
All:
On Iran Nuclear Program – Chatham House
http://www.chathamhouse.org/events/view/176703
Were the first two speakers on speed?
They sounded like blithering idiots.
Photi
You say “Simply saying you respect someone’s beliefs does not make it so”.
I think your type of accusation, which is sometimes true, is not true in my case. I believe those who view humanity as another form of animality are aware of our weaknesses. Self-righteousness is one of the moronic features of primitive human beings. Those who base their ideologies on rationality try to avoid self-righteousness thus I fully respect other people’s beliefs. Since in absolute terms no one knows the truth.
This week, CERN scientists, in one of their experiments found out ‘mass can travel faster than speed of light’. If this is confirmed by other experiments it is going to fundamentally changes the whole foundation of modern physics. You see truth changes as we go along and with such understanding we all have to respect other people’s beliefs.
And usually if one tries to avoid self-righteousness he/she tries harder not to be arrogant. I just present my ideas here in RFI hoping someone proves me wrong or causes the modification of my ideas..
The purpose of this note is to tell you, first don’t get offended from my assertions since I am not alone, out there many are like me. Second come up with convincing reasons why I am wrong , then I’ll be truly appreciative as, in the past, I have been grateful to many who have been the cause of modification of my mind-set and third, I can assure you I never ever intentionally try to insult someone who doesn’t think like me..
Wish you all the best.
Dan Cooper,
I wrote a message for you in the previous thread. If you haven’t read it do so svp.
Fara,
Thanks. And some of the photos of Abbas reveal his very deep disappointment at the foolish statements ushering forth from Obama’s mouth during his UN speech.
kooshy,
Great post. False stories do get planted in newspapers, and it is fairly well known now that Israeli diplomats conspire with officials of powerful Jewish organisations to plant false stories about Iran in newspapers.
Yes, I doubt Iraq wants to see a change of gov’t in Syria.
I recommend David Gardner’s comments in the Financial Times Sept. 22nd, concerning frantic Israeli effort to block Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN with “1967″ borders. (ft.com)
paul says: September 21, 2011 at 11:03 pm
The Iranian leaders are from humble origins.
They are enforcing the culture of the humble people of Iran (circa 1975) on the rest of the population in the name of Islam.
They force people to live multiple lies.
They restrict the electoral list to (Pharisee) Muslims.
They bother and harass people – specially young people from better social classes.
This has been their policy since 1979 – Islamization as defined by the pietous low class Muslims of Iran – their political base.
Well, many people are fed up and the vote for Mousavi was a protest vote against the social mal-practics of Islamic Government.
Humanist says: September 21, 2011 at 10:12 pm
I am not against Science; I am opposed to scientism. The idea that all problems are resolvable within the scope of empirical sciences is something that I cannot accept.
I also do not believe that they shed any light on human condition, specially the pretensions of neuro-scientists and evolutionary biologists I find particularly silly.
Humanist says:
September 21, 2011 at 10:12 pm
“fyi
Re: your September 19, 2011 at 10:50 pm comment
I understand why you are so opposed to science. I think when avid believers of supernatural beings get a fatal disease most times they rush to find the best doctor (who is educated in a scientific field) even if he/she is an ardent and aggressive atheist. The faithful hardly go to a clergy asking for divine interventions or for prayers. Isn’t that hypocritical?
I believe we all must have flexible open minds and base our beliefs on facts or on newly found scientific deductions not on what we were told when we were small children.
My mind and yours ride on different curves of thoughts. I completely disagree with the whole content of your comment yet I fully respect your beliefs…”
Humanist,
Simply saying you respect someone’s beliefs does not make it so. You may say you respect the believer, but the constant hum of your condescending tone towards the Muslims betrays how you really feel. In your mind the believers are all a bunch of rubes and you are here to save us. I understand your point of view and i reject it.
Science explains some of the methods of God, it does not attempt to prove or disprove God himself.
My understanding of science leads me to a greater appreciation of God’s Glory.
Bring forth all the science you want, each time I will be saying Subhanallah!
For the record
Who was it? Wasn’t it an American white house official in the last administration, who said, in this new American century we make our own realties, looks like the newspaper of records the NYT (the American Pravda), out of frustrations and pressure being generated from the department of Information can’t accept the actual reality and in process, is making her own wishful stories, like how they reported the made up story bellow, which was strongly denied by the Iraqi government a few hours later.
Here is what this dreamers
Iraq Calls for Change of Syrian Regime
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and YASIR GHAZI
Published: September 20, 2011
:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/world/middleeast/iraq-tells-bashar-al-assad-of-syria-to-step-down.html
————————————————————
Iraqi official denies Baghdad urging Assad to resign
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/09/21/167932.html
By Al Arabiya with agencies
“The media advisor to Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “absolutely” denied statements reported by The New York Times this week that the Iraqi government urged the Syrian president to step down.
Ali al-Moussawi said these statements, which are allegedly made by him, are incorrect, and added that “it is neither the nature nor the followed-discourse of the Iraqi government to intervene in internal affairs of other countries,” AFP reported.”
I think we should be very careful about labeling Iranians who oppose the government there, who are ‘pro-west’, as progressive. What does “progressive” really mean? Does the Western society these ‘green movement’ folks supposedly want really represent progress in any meaningful sense? Perhaps in some ways, but perhaps not in others. If they manage to bring about a pro-west government in Iran, so to speak, they might find that the gap between rich and poor in their country would swiftly widen. Would that be progress? They might find that their government might turn on the Palestinians. Would that be progress?
Perhaps women would have more rights, which would surely be progress, but then they might find that the hyper-sexed culture of the west would begin to take over. Would that be progress? And the economy might not only allow women to work, but might FORCE women out of their homes into the job market. That is precisely how it now is in the West. To work or not to work is no longer a choice at all for most women in the ‘modern’ world. THEY HAVE TO work if they want to keep the rent paid and food on the table. A social movement that was sold to people as choice turned imperceptibly into no real choice.
Not everything that is labeled progress is really progress. Real human progress cannot be so easily labeled by political talking heads and McPundits. If we want to get at it, we have to stop talking in easy labels.
fyi
Re: your September 19, 2011 at 10:50 pm comment
I understand why you are so opposed to science. I think when avid believers of supernatural beings get a fatal disease most times they rush to find the best doctor (who is educated in a scientific field) even if he/she is an ardent and aggressive atheist. The faithful hardly go to a clergy asking for divine interventions or for prayers. Isn’t that hypocritical?
I believe we all must have flexible open minds and base our beliefs on facts or on newly found scientific deductions not on what we were told when we were small children.
My mind and yours ride on different curves of thoughts. I completely disagree with the whole content of your comment yet I fully respect your beliefs. However I don’t find it appropriate to occupy the valuable space of this site to explain in detail why I disagree with you, since I am sure it is hard to changer your mind. In the past couple of times I’ve tried and failed.
I assure you in writing the above I had no intention of offending you. If I did apologies are in order.
Dan Cooper
re: your September 20, 2011 at 8:39 pm post
I always read your comments. Most of the time I fully agree with ALL of your remarks.(This is unusual since I am an unusually skeptical mortal) However this time in your commentary I do not fully agree with you on one major issue:
I think the underlying strong desire of some of the protestors in June 2009 is a genuine admiring aspiration. Generally most of the protestors were deceived by a grand historic lie of ‘stolen election’. They used that allegation as an excuse and poured to streets to voice their objections, accumulated grievances and the resultant outrage.
I am atheist yet I knew from day one there was no fraud (as my early June 2009 comments on Huffington Post and Payvand.com show I was urging Iranians to accept the will of majority and alerting them avoiding to be used as pawns)
I think months later what we witnessed on February 11, 2010 in Iran was a historical event. Since soon after the election the progressive Iranians had found out they were fooled and misdirected by local and foreign enemies of Iran. They promptly had accepted the wish of the majority and had joined Ahmadinejad supporters in that grand demonstration as a show of unity against Iran’s enemies. In my view that demonstration was the manifestation of outstanding political maturity or Iranians.
I strongly believe the progressive Iranians will continue to back the present theocratic regime until the threats of war are completely vanished. Then it will be time for a struggle (through non-violent means of course) to achieve their century old dream of complete independence and enjoyment from all possible civil freedoms.
I believe Iranians are now socially hardened and ripened adults. They definitely deserve a truly advanced federal democracy founded on the basis of equality and universal social justice.
I have come to believe the present theocratic system with its medieval laws was imposed on Iranians by tricks via efforts of stooges of foreign powers. Since many materialistic Iranians can be easily bought,I strongly believe Iran is still swarmed by spies and stooges of many institutions and countries like no other place in the Middle East (with possible exception of West Bank). Recently I read in a blogg (or saw on a video) about Saudis too have their own covert organization in Iran probably similar to the ones established decades ago by UK, US, Israel, Russia and in smaller scale by other Europeans.
Ever wondered why Khamenei didn’t put Mousavi in jail for his obvious act of treason in 2009? I have come to believe the answer to that question lies on the links between the Iranian authorities and one or more of the above mentioned foreign intelligence agencies.
Anyhow….keep up your good work here.
Wish you all the best.
James Canning says:
September 21, 2011 at 7:09 pm
“Ira Glunts at Mondoweiss quotes Haman Ashrawi (of Palestinian UN delegation): “I did not believe what I heard [in Obama's UN speech]; it sounded as if the Palestinians wsere occupying Israel.””
In Obama’s UN speech (at about 24:10), see how the fellow sitting next to Abbas (Palestine’s table) shakes his head as he disapproves what Obama says.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPq6tO-ASUM
US threatens Pakistan over Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/us-threatens-pakistan-over-iran-pakistan-gas-pipeline/
Ira Glunts at Mondoweiss quotes Haman Ashrawi (of Palestinian UN delegation): “I did not believe what I heard [in Obama's UN speech]; it sounded as if the Palestinians wsere occupying Israel.”
BiBiJon,
And Obama in effect said Iran threatens to “wipe Israel from the map”. More rubbish from the president of the US.
BiBiJon,
In Obama’s speech, he in effect said that the US was obliged to invade Iraq due to 9/11 attacks. Complete cr*p, of course.
Robert,
Oman does its best to reduce tensions in the Gulf, and I think Oman sees the release of the “hikers” as removing an irritant.
BiBiJon,
Yes, I see that foolish Republican contenders for the presidency are falling all over themselves, in effort to portray Obama as unsupportive of Israel. No matter what Obama does to enable continuing oppression of the Palestinians by Israel.
I too hope for a good speech by Ahmadinejad along lines you indicate.
I use “rich and powerful Jews” as shorthand; the structure of American business and politics is obviously much more complicated. Few would argue that “rich and powerful Jews’ do not largely dictate the news agenda of major US newpapers and other news media, in matter related to Israel, the Middle East, etc etc.
anyone know why Oman pay the sum to get the hikers free in Iran? Does Oman get some F-16 in return by the US or whats the deal?
BiBiJon says: September 21, 2011 at 3:04 pm
There is no need to be critical of Mr. Obama.
He is helping Iran.
James Canning says:
September 21, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Dear James,
This is way beyond ‘rich Jews’.
Obama’s speech (link below) contained 6 references to ‘peace is hard’. He said no fewer than 5 times that he is only interested in ‘peace that lasts’, and defined peace as something other than absence of war.
I’ve heard this kind of talk before. When the US was giving Israel the widest berth possible to pound Lebanese and Gazan civilians, they blocked a ceasefire motion with the excuse of wanting a lasting peace.
He could not be clearer I’m afraid. He has told the world, that US’ last option, war, is now her only option. Or else, he thought to himself screw the UN, and made a re-election campaign speech to blunt criticisms likely to spew out of the Republican primaries. In case of the latter, I cannot blame him. He is going to be tarred and feathered at the UN anyway, what does he have to lose? Credibility? What credibility?
I hope Ahmadinejad tomorrow spells out Iran’s initiative for a five-year IAEA supervision of Iran’s nuclear program, and repeats one more time that Iran has no intention of attacking, or otherwise “wiping off” any apartheid shit-hole on the planet.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/full-transcript-of-obama-s-speech-at-un-general-assembly-1.385820
In the Daily Telegraph today, Con Coughlin says it is in Israel’s best interests for Palestine to be recognised by the UN. Coughlin is a long-time supporter of Israel.
(telegraph.co.uk)
BiBiJon,
Regrettably, Obama is a stooge of powerful Jewish interests in the US, who will take the Democrats out of power in the US Senate if Obama backs Palestinian statehood with 1967 borders.
fyi,
I agree with you many foolish American strategic planners continue the mindset of the Cold War. A big reason is that this “thinking” – - actually, non-thinking – - justifies gargantuan “defence” spending (and the scr*wing of the American taxpayers). It also helps to “protect” Israel (and scr*w the American taxpayers to achieve that object).
Speechless except to say, I had thought the US’ credibility would suffer as a result of the impending veto. Clearly Obama could not wait so he decided to fill his speech to the rim with hypocrisy and say goodby to credibility already.
At this point, the veto will not even be news, nor would anything else Obama does in the remainder of his term in office.
fyi,
Yes, absolutely, the absurd notion of trying to have Iraq serve as a frontline against Iran, really needs to go into the rubbish bin. As I like to point, Jacques Chirac of France told Tony Blair, before the idiotic US/UK invasion, that the result of the invasion, assuming destruction of the Sunni power structure, would be a Shia government friendly toward Iran. And Chirac knew the Middle East (and North Africa) well. Fools, really, within the Obama administration, and out of it, continue to push this fantasy (of Iraq as a bulwark against Iranian “expansionism”).
Just watched Obama deliver his speech to the UN general assembly. I’m speechless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPq6tO-ASUM
James Canning says: September 21, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Dr. Cordesman relfects a certain line of thinking amony US Strategists and Planners.
What he is not addressing is that there is no way in hell to turn Iraq into a front-line state in containing Iran.
That game is over – the Shi and the Sunni Kurds will not support it.
Because it means Iraqis have to die for US strategic interests.
It is not even certain that a Sunni Arab state in Iraq would automatically assume an anti-Iran posture to help US, or Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait.
But clearly US planners are not even willing to admit to these salient facts that I have enumerated above.
They are still thinking in terms of Cold War confrontation with USSR in across Europe.
fyi,
Yes, I agree Obama has a moral duty to support the Palestinian UN effort. And that the US should favor UN recognition with 1967 borders. As a favor to Israel, in fact.
But rich and powerful Jews will allow no such thing.
fyi,
The piece by George Friedman you linked seems to argue that Obama deceived the anti-war crowd, about his intentions concerning Afghanistan, in order to get elected. This is too simplistic. Joe Biden opposed the trebling of US troops in Afghanistan. General Petraeus, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates argues in favor. Clinton and Gates have track records of being poor strategic thinkers. Obama appears to have blundered in Afghanistan becausee he worred about domestic political fall-out. Same reason he did not pull all US troops out of Iraq right away. Which he should have done.
James Canning says: September 21, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Mr. Obama could cast a vote for the Palestinian state and revolutionize US position among Muslim states.
That he will not do so is something that no doubt will be discussed by future historians and debated for a long time to come.
[Mr. Obama is an individual who has been elected to the position of the Highest Magistrate of the United States. He is a moral agent. He is going to make a moral choice. His moral choice will reflect on the United States.]
fyi,
Obama wanted to be a “foreign policy president”, and to see Palestine admitted to the UN, better relations with Iran and the people of the Middle East, etc etc. Rich and powerful Jews said “no”.
fyi,
Cordesman puts out yet again his rituation incantation about “containing Iran” and confronting Iranian expansionism etc etc. His views are welcome to the armaments manufacturers who need to continue to scr*w the American taxpayers.
Writing in the Finacial Times today (“The perils of the Palestinians’ big moment at the UN”), Michael Herzog of Winep claims that the UN resolution would endorse the “maximalist” Palestinian position on refugees. This claim is the opposite of that made by some Hamas leaders, who say the UN resolution would undermine the right of return.
All:
Dr. Cordesman’s Assessment
http://csis.org/files/publication/Iraq_and_US_Strategy_in_the_Gulf_14.9.11.pdf
All:
Dr. Friedman on the next 14 months:
“The world, therefore, is facing at least 14 months with the United States being at best reactive and at worst non-responsive to events. Obama has never been a foreign policy president; events and proclivity (I suspect) have always drawn him to domestic matters. But between now and the election, the political configuration of the United States and the dynamics of his presidency will force him away from foreign policy.
This at a time when the Persian Gulf is coming to terms with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the power of Iran, when Palestinians and Israelis are facing another crisis over U.N. recognition, when the future of Europe is unknown, when North Africa is unstable and Syria is in crisis and when U.S. forces continue to fight in Afghanistan. All of this creates opportunities for countries to build realities that may not be in the best interests of the United States in the long run. There is a period of at least 14 months for regional powers to act with confidence without being too concerned about the United States.”
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110919-obamas-dilemma-us-foreign-policy-and-electoral-realities
fyi- YES Iran is standing on its two feet more stable than Israel. It’s Iran which received praise for its economic policies from Zionist-controlled IMF – while American Rep. Ron Paul believes “Israel is parasite state”.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/iran%e2%80%99s-economic-wmd/
hans – In a true democratic country – its citizen who give priority to interests of a foreign country over the interests of their own motherland – are viewed as traitors and sometimes punished for their crimes. However, it’s not what is happening in the so-called ‘world’s greatest democracy’, whose great majority of lawmakers work for a foreign entity, Israel.
Tehran did not ‘crackdown’ on the Green Movement protesters until they turned their protests into riots and anti-Islamic Revolution slogans for the pleasure of their US-British-Israeli sponsors.
YES, Iran’s President is not what you read in the Jewish-controlled mainstream media.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/ahmadinejad-beyond-the-zionist-propaganda/
BiBiJon says: September 21, 2011 at 9:55 am
You are correct and James Canning is wrong.
This is war and the Axis Powers have threatened the business owners with severe consequences if they trade with Iran.
One of the lessons of Iran-Iraq War was that Iran had to stand on her own two feet.
Apparently, that lesson was lost on very many people in Iran who thought that they could have normal intercourse with EU, or India, or Arab states, or Japan.
They are now being taught that lesson anew.
James Canning says:
September 20, 2011 at 7:38 pm
“I think the reason some of the countries losing out on extensive business opportunities in Iran, do not yell bloody murder (or whatever), is that they actually are concerned about Iran’s enriching to 20%.”
Also …
James, are you falling in the same trap eloquently described as “assume the worst about the intentions on the other side and to act in a way that would make sense only if that assumption were true, even though we don’t know it to be true.” ?
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/the-road-not-taken-toward-iran-5881
Ismail Haniya: ‘Abbas’ UN bid is a scam’
Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larjani said on Monday that any decision on Palestine must be made in consultation with people’s elected government of Hamas in Gaza. “The two-state solution is not going to resolve the issue of Palestine,” he said.
“Israel got what it wanted, its man running Palestine who’ll show up in New York on Friday in the same role – a collaborationist traitor, not a man Palestinians can trust. The man whose son Yassar, a millionaire businessman, openly admits collaborating with Israel,” wrote Stephen Lendman on September 19, 2011.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/ismail-haniya-abbas-un-bid-is-a-scam/
James Canning says:
September 20, 2011 at 7:38 pm
“I think the reason some of the countries losing out on extensive business opportunities in Iran, do not yell bloody murder (or whatever), is that they actually are concerned about Iran’s enriching to 20%.”
James, the latest pretext is as much of a pretext as all the prior pretexts.
Photi says:
September 21, 2011 at 4:03 am
“Interestingly, at the very end of the interview, Zbigniew states that what he just said (ie, his view on poverty, the Middle East etc) will make many people mad.”
Photi, also interestingly, Zbigniew had just returned from a couple of international conferences abroad. I suspect he did a fair amount of listening, as a result he had an epiphany: US is AWOL on the international scene, on the human scene, and on the planet’s ecology.
Many nations cam be AWOL and be hardly missed. US on the other hand belongs right in the thick of things. Her absence is jarring. US’ challenges, like that of all other countries, requires a polity, a vision, that transcends petty domestic squabbles, and is informed by a larger arc of time, bigger slice of geography, and truer to the ‘self-evident’ essence of humanity.
BibiJon,
The interview you posted earlier with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski from MSNBC’s Morning Joe Show was well worth sitting through. Although i would humbly disagree on a couple of the doctor’s details, I thought his overall analysis on America, poverty, and foreign policy and the Middle East and Israel in particular was a sober analysis of ‘what is wrong with us’.
In regards to the Middle East, he says the US has no strategic direction and that “It’s a tragic situation in which blind people, looking at today, and mostly at yesterday, are leading and determining what is to be done.
Look, some years ago America entered the Middle East because the people there wanted us instead of the French and British imperialists. We had Iran on our side, we had Saudi Arabia on our side, we had Egypt on our side, we had Turkey on our side, and we were close to Israel.
Look where we are today–we are practically isolated and Israel is isolating itself increasingly.
This is a self-destructive policy. And, you can translate it into some sort of a domestic calculus but that is a short-term calculation.”–Dr. Brzezinski at around 4:35 on the video linked below.
He goes on to say that Netanyahu himself is self-destructive.
Interestingly, at the very end of the interview, Zbigniew states that what he just said (ie, his view on poverty, the Middle East etc) will make many people mad.
Are there any sighted ones left in America? Mr. President, Mr. Netanyahu is not the boss of you! This is getting ridiculous.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/ns/msnbc_tv-morning_joe/#44532986
We all witnessed how the oppositions misused this freedom and manipulated the electoral process with help and assistance of the entire western media, which resulted in riots. The crackdown was absolutely necessary because the security of the entire country was at stake.
I have time for treachery, but no time for traitors, yes the crackdown was absolutely necessary, in fact it might have been just a tad too gentle. Iran is lucky to have an elected President like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man of the people. If I was an Iranian I would be campaigning to have the constitution changed to enable the President to run for more then 2 terms of office. There are dark days ahead, he is the best person for the job.
Dan Cooper says:
September 20, 2011 at 8:39 pm
“Knowing how proud the Iranians are about their independence, I believe there is only one option remains.
Dan,
Your statement should be the mantra for the next week or year for any American official who entertains the slightest notion of attacking Iran. Iraq was a walk in the park compared to what the American military will face in Iran. The war will be all the more tragic considering just how useless this war is for American interests.
Flynt Leverett’s main point in the posted video (at least as i understood it) was that America needs to confront and then reject America’s impulse to hegemony. There are better ways (eg “off-shore balancing”) to protect America’s vital strategic interests which do not require occupation of other people’s land.
However, according to Leverett, the impulse to hegemony is driven by “powerful forces in American political culture, powerful forces in American politics that like hegemony…If you want to argue against American hegemony you are really up against some pretty formidable opposition, but [...] that is the argument that needs to be engaged and won” in order to re-think the US military posture (Flynt says he does not think there should be a troop on on the ground in the Persian Gulf region).
“Until we get to the point where..there is not this critical mass of influential elites in both parties who want to deploy military forces for “political and social purposes” rather than strategic ends, until we get to that point we are…just the next step way…from another …stupid intervention.” <<Flynt Leverett
This one’s for those rabid Islamophobe bigots among us.
http://www.naturalnews.com/033629_vaccinations_parental_consent.html
As if anything even remotely near this sort of outrage is even imaginable in Iran. How is this even *possible* in a democracy? Answer: its not.
Very nice post, Dan.
You are absolutely right about the choices that Iran faces, and of course our Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and all of those he entrusts with the levers of power realize this also.
And you are also correct about the fact that the amount of freedom afforded a people is usually in inverse proportion to the amount of threat the system as a whole is under. Given the fact that the most powerful military-congressional complex in the history of the world is hell-bent on destroying the independence of this country, it is amazing that Iranian are afforded all the freedoms that they are. I shudder to think how this government would treat its citizens if it was under an equivalent amount of pressure. What would the TSA and DHS not to mention the FBI and local law enforcement do if outside forces were providing billions of dollars, training and logistical support to militias from Arizona and Texas to Idaho and Montana? The TSA has started to do body pat downs at football games, for chrissake – and this is at a time where there is zero chance of an organized attack of any sort. Fact: a US citizen is more likely to die of being hit by lightning or by slipping in the bathtub and breaking his neck, than die from a terrorist incident. Like I said in an earlier post today, the country has just gone nuts; and the lunatics want everyone to fall in line behind them while they destroy what is left of the world with their unbridled Cancer Capitalism.
God help us all.
وقتی من راهنمایی و دبیرستان بودم، نماز اجباری بود. در واقع می اومدن دنبالت که آقا بیا برو نماز. جدیدا شنیدم که تو تهران زنگ نماز هست ولی اجباری نیست(شهرستان رو یادم رفت بپرستم.اصلا اهمیتی نداشت). اون موقع ها تعداد کسانی که خونه هم نماز می خوندن خیلی خیلی کم بود. خیلی ها کلا بدون مسع کشیدن می رفتن صف نماز…خم و راست شدن الکی…(اجبار کردن ملت به دروغ و دورویی چیز عجیبی تو اون سیستم نیست.این هم یکی از اونها). البته جمهوری اسلامی هم احمق نیست. فکر می کنم این اختیاری بودن(در عین وجود اجباری زنگ نماز) فشار مضاعفی رو به دانش آموزانی که واقعا نماز می خونند وارد می کنه از طرف بقیه نماز نخونها. به این ترتیب، جمهوری اسلامی یه تعداد حداقلی رو می تونه نگه داره (حالا ممکنه بعدا بعضی از اینها بشن سبزاللهی اون یه مسله دیگست!). من فکر کنم دلیل دوباره اجباری کردن نماز این باشه وگرنه سیستم می دونه با قبلا اجباری بودن نماز کسی واقعا نماز خون نشده.
In today’s Iran, security is paramount and much more important than civil rights.
If one understands the international politics and the world order, one can easily comprehend that Iran is in a very volatile and dangerous situation.
There are so many CIA and Mossad backed groups active in Iran as we speak,
There are powerful governments behind these groups and their ultimate objectives are:
“Dividing Iranian people”, “de-stabilizing its government”, “regime change” and
Establishment of a puppet government sympathetic to Israel and USA.
By now, any persons with a bit intelligent should recognise that 32 years of sanctions has nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program but everything to do with weakening Iran economically in order to turn its people against their government.
During the election Ahmadinejad gave freedom, people were expressing themselves freely in the streets of Tehran, there were televised presidential debates, and such events were unprecedented in Iran’s political history.
We all witnessed how the oppositions misused this freedom and manipulated the electoral process with help and assistance of the entire western media, which resulted in riots.
The crackdown was absolutely necessary because the security of the entire country was at stake.
If the Iranian government gives too much freedom, these vultures will pounce again and destabilise the country as soon as they smell freedom.
It is laughable when our government with its own atrocious human’s right record uses the notion of human rights to demonize the Islamic republic.
Iran’s human right is not perfect but comparatively speaking is one of the best in the Middle East.
Many Iranians believe that a secular democracy is the best solution for Iran but I strongly believe that:
Even if Iran develops one of the best secular democracies in the world but refused to recognize the criminal Zionist regime in Israel and refuses to give up its independence, the USA would have crippled it exactly the same way as it is trying to cripple the Islamic Republic now.
IfI were an Iranian, I would rather stay with the status quo rather than allow western countries to turn Iran into another hell like Iraq.
Remember what the USA and the Britain did to Iran’s only democracy back in 1953, they destroyed Mosadegh’s democratically elected government.
In the current world order, there are two options left for Iran:
Stay independent as they are now and fight to the bitter end,
Or
Be slave to western countries.
Knowing how proud the Iranians are about their independence, I believe there is only one option remains.
Israeli ‘Vengeance’ strikes Ankara
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/israeli-vengeance-strikes-ankara/
I think the 50 million estimate of people who have gone mad in the US is definitely on the low side. The whole country has gone nuts. Today Mitt “Magic Underpants” Romney, in an effort to outdo that other Texan idiot Perry, criticized the Barry White administration’s stance towards Palestine, saying that the administration has “thrown Israel under the bus.”
Who *are* these insane people? What rock do they crawl out from under? How on earth do they get elected to office? And when is this nightmare going to end??
BiBiJon,
Madeleine Albright on March 17, 2000 said “It’s time for Iran and the US to reestablish relations.” She said same thing in January 1998. Cyrus Vance has also worked toward that goal.
BiBiJon,
I think the reason some of the countries losing out on extensive business opportunities in Iran, do not yell bloody murder (or whatever), is that they actually are concerned about Iran’s enriching to 20%.
But I understand that most Swiss and German businessmen oppose the sanctions.
fyi,
I do wish the government of Pakistan would tell the Obama administration to stick it up their noses, if they do not like the extension of the Iranian gas line to Pakistan.
fyi,
Pakistan has scores of millions too many people. Idiots in the US Congress tend to block assistance with birth control programmes in foreign countries.
I doubt the Saudis oppose the extension of the Iranian gas line to Pakistan. But I am happy to hear info to the contrary.
So-called “Grand Strategy” is PR scam, to enrich armaments manufacturers, their agents and stooges, and of course to justify “protecting” Israel.
Kathleen,
Yes, Jimmy Carter does “tell it like it is”, so rich and powerful Jews told Obama he could not have Carter appear in person at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.
The Wall Street Journal today (Sept. 20th) had usual rubbish. Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Council for World Jewry, said it was time the US approached Turkey with a stick as well as a carrot. (“Turkey’s Erdogan: Mideast Troublemaker”).
And David Rivkin and Lee Casey argued that “support for UN recognition [of Palestine] might not rise to the level of an act of aggression against Israel.” The editorial page editor lets few days go by without Jewish propaganda in favor of Israel, against Iran, against the Palestinians, and in favor of idiotic levels of “defence” spending.
did you listen to Rachel Maddows interview with Carter? She dips her toes in. Now granted she approaches the issue very safely spinning from Israel and the I lobbies perspective. She ask Carter about whether he was concerned about the Israeli embassy being attacked in Egypt? Keeps her safe or clearly that is her concern (she has repeated the Israeli lobbies false claims about Iran, she and Richard engel have endlessly covered violent Libyan rebels carrying guns , killing for their freedom while ignoring peaceful Palestinian protest totally) But she does have Carter on and he says “In the last 30 years Israeli’s have not complied with any of their promises considering Palestinian rights or withdrawing from the occupied territories”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/16/7801919-rachel-maddow-interviews-former-president-jimmy-carter?threadId=3224383&commentId=58209361#c58209361
She plays it very very safe but she does interview Carter and he tells it like it is
James Canning says: September 20, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Only “stupid” in so far as stupidly pushing an untenable Grand Strategy.
Pakistan will implode – not because of Taliban or neo-Salafi extremists, but because the state is buffetted by poverty the solution to which is against US or Saudi Arabian interests.
BiBiJon says: September 20, 2011 at 3:21 pm
The key passage is this:
“… while the US regularly reiterates its opposition to the project, it has done little to offer serious alternatives.”
The alternative to IPI for both Pakisatn and India are massive and sustained black-outs.
Servility will gain Pakistan nothing.
Her leaders played the US game in 1980s in Afghanistan 0- a war that was not theirs – and damaged Pakistan by destablizing and militarizing the NWFP.
One leader worse than the other.
James Canning says:
September 20, 2011 at 3:24 pm
I don’t know if you got the reference to the infamous Albright (it’s worth it) ‘dual containment’?
Anyways, these unilateral, non-UN-approved sanctions are all ‘dual containment’. To prohibit countries from buying/selling goods and services to Iran, is depriving not just Iran, but every other country potentially at the other end of the transaction.
Why so affected nations are not screaming blue murder about being ‘contained’, I know not.
Unknown Unknowns says: September 20, 2011 at 2:26 pm
Very good news indeed for the Iranian Leaders.
BiBiJon,
fatemi is quite right, that US renewed opposition to gas line to Pakistan from Iran is disappointing, but not surprising. Typical stupidity from Obama administration.
Unknown Unknows,
The jog is not up for Jewish control of Israel within its 1967 borders. An idiotic “annexation” of the West Bank might help to create conditions, decades from now, that possibly would result in loss of control of the country by the Jews.
But Israel is not going to annex the West Bank. Instead, Israel will attempt to define the border unilaterally, by growing the illegal colonies of Jews.
Someone needs to spell dual containment for Tariq Fatemi. No I don’t mean Iran and Iraq. I mean Iran, and Pakistan.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/256429/disappointing-though-not-surprising/
BiBiJon:
Yes: the ZOG has turned Congress into a Theater of the Absurd.
There will be a mass Exodus of Jews on a Biblical scale from Palestine back to their European and American homelands before the end of this decade. It has already started, in drips and drabs; although the rush for US passport applications by Israeli Jews is nothing to scoff at.
I do believe that the jig, as you so eloquently put it, is up in Palestine as well; only its not falling down at free-fall speed, as the Moslems do not have that kind of pyrotechnic savvy or the requisite access, for that matter.
Unknown Unknowns says:
September 20, 2011 at 2:26 pm
The Palestinian parliament should adopt a resolution to support Canadian annexation of Illinois.
Unknown Unknowns,
Yes, if millions of Jews in Israel would choose to relocate in other countries, the remainder could live in Palestine as a respected minority. But it will not happen.
Unknown Unknowns,
Is it the “right thing to do”, to advocate a policy that has zero chance of success?
James:
Continuing my train of thought: And not only that (the right of return), but it is imperative for the Jews that remain, after power is shared according to the demands of demography (the transition in Lebanon which has been under way for some time now, and which will see its zenith soon, insha’llah), that the behavior of these remnant Jews (I don’t know how else to put it) be in accordance with that of their historic aboriginal counterparts, the ‘Old Yishuv’; i.e., that they live within the bounds and norms of a respected minority, like the abos have done for over a millenium before them.
Ameen.
Unknown Unknowns,
Whites in South Africa were outnumbered by blacks, by ten to one. Jig was up. Blacks were in a position to kill enough whites (or drive them out of the country) to make the ratio 12-1. Then 15-1.
James: when you say “… [and] there is no way Israel can be forced to allow the return of millions of non-Jews within pre-1967 borders,” it is the same kind of thinking that used to say that there was no way that the whites in South Africa can be prevailed upon to cede power.
Of course there is a way. Because it is the right thing to do.
Wa law karaha’l mushrikun.
UU,
And Boehner is indeed an idiot also, as well as an eager stooge of the Zionist lobby in the US.
Unknown Unknowns,
Yes, Congressman Joe Walsh is indeed an idiot, along with 50 million other Americans.
I recommend Scott McConnell’s account of his demonstrating against Netanyahu at Aipac annual convention in Washington this year (“Going Pink for Peace”).
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/going-pink-for-peace001/
And on the other end of the spectrum, (where the 50 million insane Americans dwell – surely a ‘conservative’ number ;), there is this:
U.S. Republicans submit resolution giving Israel right to annex West Bank
Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) introduces House resolution that supports annexation if the Palestinian Authority continues to push for UN vote.
By Natasha Mozgovaya
September 20, 2011 “Haaretz” — U.S. Representative Joe Walsh (R-IL), introduced on Monday a resolution (with 30 co-sponsors) to support Israel’s right to annex the West Bank in the event that the Palestinian Authority continues to push for vote at the United Nations.
He was quoted as saying that “it’s clear that the United States needs to make a very strong statement. I would argue that the president should make this statement, but he’s not capable of making it. So, the House needs to make this statement, if the [Palestinian Authority] continues down this road of trying to get recognition of statehood, the U.S. will not stand for it. And we will respect Israel’s right to annex Judea and Samaria.”
Meanwhile on Sunday, Congressman John Boehner (R-West Chester) delivered the keynote address at the Jewish National Fund’s 2011 National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. Boehner said that it is the U.S.’s duty to stand by Israel “not just as a broker or observer – but as a strong partner and reliable ally.”
Unknown Unknowns,
I agree Ali Abunimah is eloquent on behalf of the Palestinian cause, and I read his pieces regularly. However, I think he is quite wrong about the two-state solution being “dead”, because the Palestinians will continue to insist on right of return to Israel proper (that is, within “1967 borders”).
All Arab countries accept the 2002 Saudi peace plan and tacitly agree there is no way Israel can be forced to allow the return of millions of non-Jews. Within pre-1967 borders.
I find Ali Abunimah to be one of the most eloquent voices for al-Haqq (Truth & Justice) in Palestine. Here’s a link to his article on the upcoming vote on Friday:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29159.htm
And this is a link to his blog, Electronic Intifada:
,http://electronicintifada.net/
Empty:
My library is in Tehran, and so I cannot give you the reference to where Kadivar made that statement. But I can narrow it down for you a little, if it helps. I read it in one of two articles, published in that large-format monthly (whose name escapes me, sorry). It was either his famous article regarding traditional (shar’ee) Islam’s positions which are at variance with the universal declaration of human rights, or his other less famous but more interesting article regarding the various positions of mujtahids through the ages on velaayat, absolute or otherwise. In that article he mentions one mujtahid who held that even the prophets did not have absolute velaayat over the ommat. When reading that, all those years ago, I remember thinking about one of the most fascinating and in my view most important stories of the Koran, which is the story where Khezr (Khidhr, if you prefer Library of Congress orthography for transliterating the Persian language, which I don’t) is sent to teach Moses a lesson. Moses makes the wrong evaluation of Khezr’s actions and decisions on no less that three occasions, before Khezr clues him in. The moral of the story, which is about the fallibility of ‘inerrant’ prophets (let alone postlapsarian man) is simply fantastic, when you dwell on it a while.
But anyway, irrespective of the Kadivar source, if you come across that passage of the late Imam’s in your travels, do let us know more about it (where it can be found, and the context). I would be most grateful.
James Canning says:
September 20, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Yes, Bollinger received a threat http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=238318
But, as Gary Sick notes in his blog, the dinner was at AN’s hotel which he holds every time he comes to NY to make himself available to all and sundry that might want to ask him questions.
This whole ‘disinformation’ was yet another setup job by the media to allow a 90 year-old to proclaim paternity! AN was going nowhere near Columbia. But, now it has been twisted into the all powerful Lobby forcing Columbia to cancel. It is funny. Don’t be duped.
BiBiJon,
Iran’s composed and dignified response, for years, to the murders perpetrated by Israeli agents, is highly commendable.
And most Americans are not even aware Israeli assassinates Iranian scientists, and tries to manipulate the IAEA to enable such assassinations to take place.
Michael Moore told the Financial Times recently that “50 million Americans are insane”. Probably quite true.
Unknown Unknowns,
The dinner should take place off-campus. If it happens. Lee Bollinger buckled under ferocious attack from rich and powerful New York Jews. But his behavior was disgraceful.
James:
I think it is beneath Ahmadinejad to return to Columbia after the shoddy way he was treated by its president a few years back. The guy invites him to speak, then treats him with the utmost disrespect, behavior unworthy of any invited speaker, let alone a head of state.
When it comes to acting as a responsible power, there is just no comparing Iran and the US.
=========================
(Reuters) – Iran will not retaliate against its enemies who killed Iranian nuclear scientists but wants international action to help prevent further attacks, its envoy to the U.N. atomic agency said
“We want not only our scientists, we want all scientists of the whole world, to be protected,” But, Soltanieh said, “the Islamic Republic of Iran is not going to retaliate.”
From http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/20/us-nuclear-iran-assassinations-idUSTRE78J4IT20110920
Empty says: September 20, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Not “Arrogance” but “Confidence”.
[Islam is not a Police State.]
Fior and James (and our resident Encyclopedia on things Jewish):
Your knowledge of the Jewistani shenanigans continues to impress. Few people have even heard of the wonton murder of US sailors aboard the USS Liberty, let alone the details of the cover-up and the pressures that were brought to bear. And I was not aware of the fact that the USS Cole incident was also a false flag, and that charges against the poor soul who had been tortured in Gitmo for its sake had been dropped by the Barry White administration. I would say ‘Incredible!’, but alas, we are living in an era in which it is not.
Thank you for your continued contribution to my continuing edutainment.
BiBiJon,
I think it was generous for Ahmadinejad to offer to attend the dinner with 15 students of foreign policy from Columbia University. Didn’t Lee Bollinger receive threats?
Fiorangela,
Great post! I might add that American sailers being shot to pieces by the Israeli warplanes, on the USS Liberty, could see the pilot’s faces (because they were so close). And wasn’t the US flag on the ship as big as a house? And Israel claims it was a mistake!
My understanding is that Mossad agents told Johnson that rich Jews in the US would end his war in Vietnam if Johnson did not cover up the deliberate Israeli attack on the American ship.
Clint,
Thanks for linking Seymour Hersh’s article (quoting ElBaradei, and citing the 2007 and 2011 NIEs on Iran). Richard Siverstein does what he can to call attention to this piece. (He played key role in exposing Aipac/Winep conspiracy with Israeli diplomats to plant false stories about Iran in US newspapers.)
James Canning, As Israel was strafing the Liberty and LBJ ordered US support to stand down, Johnson was entertaining an ardent zionist Hollywood multi-millionaire and major Democratic party donor and his wife at the White House. The couple remained very close to LBJ for the remainder of his time in Washington.
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/10/90418.php
fyi,
RE: Finally you have begun to think for yourself.
It does appear that you have not been reading what I have been writing. Rather, you have been just reading what your filters have allowed you to see. I’m afraid to say that your arrogance is unsurprising.
Rehmat,
It is interesting how little attention is given to the fact Israel imported 100,000 “Jews” from Ethipiopia. The CIA flew tens of thousands of black Africans to Israel, on condition they agree to observe Othodox Judaism.
One reason the Ethiopians were needed, I understand, is that Israelis wanted household servants who were not Muslims.
A break for optional prayer is as unremarkable as the pledge of allegiance and playing the national anthem (Francis Scott Key’s wartime opus) in k-12 schools across the land.
fyi’s frequent unvarnished Islamophobic rants is a disgrace.
Empty says: September 20, 2011 at 12:45 pm
You wrote:
“I do know, however, that it is accepted that a prayer that is performed because of pressure (بدون نیت خالص) [without pure intent to pray] is not accepted by God.”
Finaly yiou have begun to think for yourself.
It is a start.
Fiorangela,
During the intentional Israel attack on the USS Liberty, in June 1967, Lyndon Johnson ordered the relief squadrons back to their carriers. The Navy planes were going to the assistance of the American sailors being murdered by the Israelis, and Johnson ordered them back! Lyndon Johnson, Cyrus Vance, and other officials conspired to cover up the Israeli crime, and to deceive the American public.
Unknown Unknowns,
I have not read that and would be interested to see where it is written. I do know, however, that it is accepted that a prayer that is performed because of pressure (بدون نیت خالص) [without pure intent to pray] is not accepted by God.
BiBiJon,
Yes, an idiotic US war with Iran would result in the sinking of the Iranian navy, and great destruction. But what would this accomplish? Less than nothing.
US steadily weakens itself with insanely high levels of “defence” spending.
What has Obama accomplished in Afghanistan, with the hundreds of billions of dollars he has thrown into the war (due to cr*p advice from General Petraeus, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates)?
We all have a responsibility to watch this film
Click
here to see
“The War You Don’t See (2010)”
This is a documentary by John Pilger one of the most honest, conscientious, reliable and deeply respected journalists of our time.
Off Topic, bu Ahmaed Rashid has excellent commentary in today’s Financial Times, on confusion within Obama administration regarding how to deal with Afghanistan. Ryan Crocker gets a good bashing. (
fyi says,
I take it that you do not believe that people have a right to Not Pary, Not Fast, and Not Wear Hijab
It is not surprising that your take of all that I said is as such. خب هر فرد به اندازۀ عقلش درک می کند. [People's conception is based on their mental capacity for comprehension.] May we all be granted deeper understanding of that which is before us.
Empty:
I certainly don’t want to involve myself in this debate which seems to be building between you and fyi, but it did remind me of a curious statement of Mohsen Kadivar’s, which I read many, many moons ago. This was at least 10 years ago, way before he had his change of heart and finally left the country. It was, actually before his imprisonment. He alleged that the late Imam Khomeini, in writing, has stated that the ambit of a person’s ijtihad abilities (sorry for the clumsy paraphrase) extends to his ability to determine whether or not prayer is incumbent upon him or her.
Do you know anything about this? If so, a source reference would be greatly appreciated.
Empty says: September 20, 2011 at 11:58 am
Thank you for your comments.
I do not believe that I am twisting things or misrepresenting them.
This is part and parcel of the same Nikbat that has tried – since 1979 – to segregate the Iranian Universities.
The same Line of Thinking that recently proposed segregating Elementary School and High School Text books based on sex.
I take it that you do not believe that people have a right to Not Pary, Not Fast, and Not Wear Hijab.
You best gather some of your ilk and start working on those Collars the possibility of which I discussed a few months ago.
You know, the High-Technology electronic device that will be fastened around the neck of every Muslim from birth.
A device equipped with embedded electronics (say custom FPGA chips and Non-Volatile Memory) that will punish every minute deviation from prescribed Islamic Orthodoxy (prescribed by whom? By Fallen and Falliable Men who lived 1200 years ago) by electrical schock and pain.
Is it not common Muslim belief that Man is the Slave of God?
What could be then more fitting than putting the slave’s collar around every Muslim?
An excellent application of the Science and Technology developed by the post-Christian (and therefore Godless) Westerners to advance the cause of Islam, no?
Befarma.
“We have information that NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish High Command are in fact drawing up plans for the first military step into Syria,” [Michel] Chossudovsky [of The Center for Research on Globalization] said [on RT]. “And we also know that NATO is in fact recruiting mujahedeen and jihadists to assist them in their campaign in these various countries.”
This Barry White is sure turning out to be one doosey of a president.
fyi,
That to take what is reported to have been possibly said by an امام جمعه expressing an opinion and twisting it to convey falsely that prayer has become mandatory in schools (i.e. an official law and government policy) amounts to falsification and deception (if done intentionally) and mistake (if done unknowingly).
Do people have a right not to pray, not to fast, and not to wear hijab?
1. As I have expressed before, I only believe in God’s right to everything. حق فقط مخصوص خداست. We as human beings, I believe, have responsibilities toward ourselves, our society, and toward all creation based on the limits set by God. For example, I do not believe I have a right to life. I believe it is God’s right to give or take my life. I do, however, have the responsibility not to take life (my own or others) unless as it is specified in Quran since I believe Quran is the word of God.
2. How different people conceive those responsibilities and try to exercise them based on personal and/or collective styles is often trial and error. Not everyone is enlightened. If the approach is not in accordance with God’s will, it will show itself sooner or later. I believe one of our responsibilities is to be truthful.
A yes/no answer will suffice.
I make the decision how to answer a question posed to me as I find appropriate not as it is dictated to me by the one who poses the question.
Empty says: September 20, 2011 at 11:18 am
Thank you for your comments.
Please note the statement further down on that Web page where we read:
به طوریکه چندی قبل امام جمعه شهرستان اردستان با انتقاد از نحوه برگزاری نماز جماعت در برخی مدارس گفته بود: «در برخی مدارس اصلا معلمان در نماز جماعت شرکت نمیکنند و دانشآموزان هم به اجبار به نماز جماعت میآیند به طوریکه دو نفر باید اطراف آنها بایستند تا فرار نکنند.»
My broader question to you is this:
Do people have a right not to pray, not to fast, and not to wear hijab?
A yes/no answer will suffice.
fyi,
So we are going against the Prohpeht in Iran, who stated: “There is no force in Religion.” ;http://www.fardanews.com/fa/news/162375/
You are spreading a lie. زنگ نماز [Ring for prayer] is specific time allocated for the prayer at the time of اذان [prayer time and at the time of adhan]. To allow for that time is now a policy not forcing people to pray as the title and the content of the article falsely suggest. I know first hand that there are people (students, teachers, and administrators) in Iranian schools that believed and wanted to engage in نماز اول وقت [perform the prayer on time rather than late] but could not do this because there were classes that were being held right then and they had to teach/be in class, etc. It has taken a great effort on their part to be able to have this option.
May God help us all to be more truthful in our words and deeds.
BiBiJon says: September 20, 2011 at 9:57 am
He is accurate but expediency will always win.
Look for more destruction before things change.
Right now, Mr. Khamenei has identified NATO, US, Israel, France, UK, and Italy as enemies of Muslims.
This is a tough position and indicates that Iranian leaders have reached the conclusion that their confrontation with those states and organization is indefinite.
We are back – politically – in the days of Iran-Iraq War.
In regards to US, he is accurate.
All:
(In Persian) – Nekbat Islamic – Oppression by any other name
Forcing high-school students to pray in schools.
Shame, shame, shame.
So we are going against the Prohpeht in Iran, who stated: “There is no force in Religion.”
http://www.fardanews.com/fa/news/162375/اقامه-نماز-در-مدارس-راهنمایی-و-متوسطه-اجباری-شد
Any comments on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/44532986#44532986
Interview with Dr. Zbigniew Brzenzski on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
yes, Rehmat, I did omit the attack on the USS Cole.
Interesting that “Al Qaeda” claimed responsibility for the bombing, that an alleged Al Qaeda operative, Nashir, was captured and is imprisoned at Guantanamo, that he was tortured and waterboarded by CIA, and that the Obama administration has dropped charges against him.
Rehmat says: September 20, 2011 at 7:44 am
Holy Quran also does not mention circumcision of men (as a sign of covenant with God) but that is de rigour Muslim practice.
The Holy Quran also does not explicity condemn homosexuality or the usage of mind-altering drugs.
The list continues.
hans says: September 20, 2011 at 6:28 am
Silly and empty accusations.
Iran bears no responsibility regarding what is transpiring in Libya.
Persian Gulf says:
September 19, 2011 at 11:17 pm
The US has been spending 100s of billion$ on her military every year for a very long time. Consequently, she has amassed a mulch-trillion $ military, which is, by orders of magnitude, more valuable than any other asset that the nation possesses.
This military behemoth is at the core of the meaning of the term ‘global power’.
Various regional, or local actors ultimately are unaffected by the reach of the ‘global power’ as demonstrated by Sunni insurgents in Iraq, or the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. Regional powers too are able to extract a pound flesh by investing a penny in defense/deterrence.
Iran, for example, effectively controls the Persian Gulf, and anything that moves through it as well as oil production facilities on PG’s southern shores. According to Robert Baer there is no doubt the US easily can beat Iran militarily, but at a cost of $12/galon gas.
There I think is the point of the paper being discussed in the video. Namely, what is the US getting in return for her military expenditure. And, Flynt’s point that what is US’ purpose in the first place.
Fiorangela – You missed an Israeli spot – Bombing of USS Cole….
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/yemen-red-sea-and-israel/
Empty – autopsy is not HARAM in Islam as it’s not mentioned in Holy Qur’an which is the only authority to differentiate between HALAL and HARAM. However, autopsy was not practiced during the Prophet’s (PBUH) life, therefore, it could be interpreted in either way.
The ZIONIST LIE in OBL’s burial is the “dumping of dead body” into Sea, river or lake is against not only Islamic but also biblical traditions.
While listening to Shrifinson emphasize that US HAS maritime dominance, IS reactive, CAN count on allies to come to its aid should other powers challenge US maritime dominance, I tried to recall those occasions when US maritime was threatened in the past 50 years.
On June 8, 1967, the US spy ship Liberty was torpedoed by Israeli forces in the Mediterranean. 34 American sailors were killed. President L Johnson made no response to the deliberate strafing and killing of US citizens and sailors.
In 1984-1988, during the “Tanker Wars,”
“Iraq attacked Iranian tankers and the vital oil terminal at Kharg island. Iran struck back by attacking tankers carrying Iraqi oil from Kuwait and then any tanker of the Gulf states supporting Iraq. . . .Iran . . . moved it’s shipping port to Larak Island in the straights of Hormuz.
In 1987 Kuwait persuaded the US to offer protection to its tanker fleet . . . US warships soon began patrolling the gulf and on 17th May 1987 an Iraqi super-Etendard aircraft fired two exocet missiles at the USS Stark thinking she was an Iranian warship. . .[T]he Stark’s defences did not function and 37 US sailors died. Iraq apologised for the incident and this was accepted. To ensure a repeat of the incident didn’t happen again US, Iraqi and Saudi forces collaborated . Iran with some justification accused the US of helping Iraq and this was not helped when on 3rd July 1988 an American warship shot down an Iranian airliner in error. Iran then started sowing the Gulf with anti ship mines and several ships were hit, including the USS Samuel B. Roberts in April 1988. Once again the US retaliated by destroying Iranian warships and patrol boats . . .” :http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_tanker.html
That is, the casualties suffered by the US were inflicted by an ally of the US.
In Oct. 1985 the Rotterdam cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked in the Mediterranean by Palestine Liberation Front gunmen who demanded the release of prisoners held by Israel. An American citizen, Leon Klinghoffer, was killed.
“[A]fter two days of negotiations, the hijackers agreed to abandon the liner in exchange for safe conduct and were flown towards Tunisia aboard an Egyptian commercial airliner.
United States President Ronald Reagan ordered that the plane be intercepted by F-14 Tomcats from the VF-74 “BeDevilers” and the VF-103 “Sluggers” of Carrier Air Wing 17, based on the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga,[3] on October 10 and directed to land at Naval Air Station Sigonella, a N.A.T.O. base in Sicily, where the hijackers were arrested by the Italians[4] after a disagreement between American and Italian authorities. The other passengers on the plane (including the hijackers’ leader, Abu Abbas) were allowed to continue on to their destination,[5] despite protests by the United States. Egypt demanded an apology from the U.S. for forcing the airplane off course.
Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi claimed Italian territorial rights over the NATO base. Italian Air Force personnel and Carabinieri lined up facing the United States Navy SEALs which had arrived with two C-141s. Other Carabinieri were sent from Catania to reinforce the Italians. It was the gravest diplomatic crisis between Italy and United States and was resolved five hours later.”
In other words, although US allies negotiated diplomatically, the US broke faith with the negotiated resolution and intervened militarily, causing strains between US and both allies Egypt and Italy.
In April 2009, The American flagged Maersk Alabama was seized by four Somali pirates 280 miles southeast of the Somali port city of Eyl. The Somali pirates demanded a ransom;
“The 20 crew members of the Alabama had received anti-piracy training from union training schools, and had drilled aboard the ship a day previously. Their training included the use of small arms, anti-terror, basic safety, first aid, and other security-related courses.[6][7] When the pirate alarm sounded early on Wednesday, 8 April, Chief Engineer Mike Perry brought 14 members of the crew into a “secure room” that the engineers had been in the process of fortifying for just such a purpose. As the pirates approached, the remaining crew fired flares; in addition, Chief Engineer Perry and 1st A/E Matt Fisher swung the ship’s rudder, which swamped the pirate skiff.[8]
Nonetheless, the ship was successfully boarded. Chief Perry had initially taken main engine control away from the bridge and 1st A/E Matt Fisher had taken control of the steering gear. Chief Perry then shut down all ship systems and the entire vessel “went black.” The pirates captured Capt. Phillips and several other crew members minutes after boarding, but soon found that they could not control the ship.
Chief Perry remained outside the secure room lying in wait, knife in hand, for a visit from the pirates who were trying to locate the missing crew members in order to gain control of the ship and presumably sail it to Somalia. Perry tackled the ringleader of the pirates and took him prisoner after a cat-and-mouse chase in a darkened engine room.[8]
The crew attempted to exchange the pirate they had captured[9] for the captain, but the exchange went awry and after the crew released their captive, the pirates refused to honor the agreement. Taking Capt. Phillips with them, they fled in one of the ship’s covered lifeboats with nine days of food rations.[10]
The Alabama was then escorted from the scene under armed guard . . .
A stand-off ensued between the USS Bainbridge and the [4] pirates [who held Maersk Alabama's Captain Richard Phillips, hostage in a 28-foot lifeboat, adequately stocked with food and water but lacking a toilet or ventilation.[14] The lifeboat was shadowed by the destroyer USS The Bainbridge, equipped with rescue helicopters and lifeboats, [which] stayed several hundred yards away, out of the pirates’ range of fire. A P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft secured aerial footage and reconnaissance. Radio communication between the two ships was established. Four foreign vessels held by pirates headed towards the lifeboat. A total of 54 hostages were on two of the ships, citizens of China, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines, Tuvalu, Indonesia and Taiwan.[15][16]
On 10 April 2009, Phillips attempted to escape from the lifeboat but was recaptured after the captors fired shots. The pirates then threw a phone – and a two-way radio dropped to them by the U.S. Navy – into the ocean, fearing the Americans were somehow using the equipment to give instructions to the captain. The U.S. dispatched other warships, including the guided-missile frigate USS Halyburton and the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer, to the site off the Horn of Africa. . . . Negotiations were ongoing between the pirates and the captain of the Bainbridge, who was under the direction of FBI hostage negotiators. The captors were also communicating with other pirate vessels by satellite phone.[15]
However, negotiations broke down hours after the pirates fired on the USS Halyburton, not long after sunrise Saturday in the Indian Ocean. The American frigate did not return fire and “did not want to escalate the situation”. No crew members of the USS Halyburton were injured, as the shots were fired randomly by a pirate from the front hatch of the lifeboat. . . .
On Saturday, 11 April 2009, the Maersk Alabama arrived in the port of Mombasa, Kenya under U.S. military escort. An 18-man security team was on board.[11] The FBI then secured the ship as a crime scene.[19]
Commander Castellano stated that as the winds picked up, tensions rose among the pirates and “we calmed them” and persuaded the pirates to be towed by the Bainbridge.[20]
On Sunday, 12 April 2009, . . . when Commander Frank Castellano, captain of the Bainbridge, determined that Phillips’ life was in imminent danger . . . President Barack Obama had previously reaffirmed Navy standing orders to take action if it was determined the hostage’s life was in immediate danger. . . .U.S. Navy SEAL snipers, reportedly from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group,[25] on the Bainbridge’s fantail opened fire and killed the three pirates remaining in the lifeboat with a simultaneous volley of three shots. . . . At the time, the Bainbridge had the lifeboat under tow, approximately 25 to 30 yards astern.[26]”
A fourth pirate, Abduhl Wal-i-Musi,[27] was aboard the USS Bainbridge negotiating a ransom and was taken into custody.[27]
. . . Abduhl Wal-i-Musi was brought to New York to face trial on charges including piracy under the law of nations, conspiracy to seize a ship by force, conspiracy to commit hostage-taking, and firearms related charges. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 33 years, 9 months in prison on 16 February 2011.[30][31]
This event ended with the action of 12 April 2009.[1] It was the first successful pirate seizure of a ship registered under the American flag since the early 19th century.[2]“
On May 30-31, 2010, the Comoros-flagged Mavi Marmara, which had been purchased by a Turkish charity group IHH, was sailing in international waters in the Mediterranean, toward Gaza, bearing peace activists intent on breaking the blockade of Gaza. Israeli forces boarded the ship and killed nine of the passengers, including a 19-year old American-Turk, Ferkun Dogan. Israeli forces took the Mavi to an Israeli port where it was held until July 23, 2010.
The US government has made no response to the killing of an American citizen.
Executive summary:
In five incidents over the past 44 years, 73 American lives have been lost at sea in hostile action. America’s allies were responsible for killing 72 of those American citizens. The United States did not retaliate, nor even demand accountability of the killers of those 72 American citizens.
In defense/retaliation of Iranian attempts to protect its access in the Persian Gulf, US military forces downed a civilian Iranian airplane, killing over 230 civilians aboard. The US military in the Persian Gulf harried and destroyed several other Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf.
The United States government DID renege on a negotiated resolution of a maritime incident involving the Achille Lauro, resulting in diplomatic strains between the US and her Egyptian, Italian, and NATO allies.
In response to an incident in which US commercial shipping was threatened by asymmetrically equipped Somali pirates, no American lives were lost; massive US firepower was deployed, and the pirates were killed by a Navy SEALs team.
The obvious question to Messrs. Shifrinson and Alwani is, Who protects the rest of the world from the over-armed under-principled actions of the United States?
hans – I don’t remember reading Iran’s condemnation of “Black Jewish Sheep” in Israel – so why are you worried about Black Muslim shhep in Libya?
In 2007, Israel daily Ynet, exposed Jewish racism by both Ashkenazi and Sephardim communities against Ethiopian and other Black Jewish communities in Israel.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/jewish-racism-against-jews-in-israel/
Islamic Iran’s foreign policy is not based on race like the White and Jewish suprematists have.
Sakineh Bagoom,
In the case of OBL, US claimed that autopsy is haram in Islam, and that’s why they dumped him in the ocean the next day. Did the accident you are talking about happen outside of a Muslim country?
Imam Khomeini had a term for that, “این اسلام, اسلام امریکایی هست..از نوع امریکایش هست” American-style Islam.
Clint says:
September 20, 2011 at 5:32 am
“Please God can we get an objective media for Xmas?”
Sorry, No! You’ll get the usual lump of coal.
http://garysick.tumblr.com/post/10423972519/ahmadinejad-and-columbia-university-the-inside-story
hans says:
September 20, 2011 at 6:28 am
Please provide a reference to any official Iranian commendation of, or excuses for crimes in Libya.
This is what the Government of Iran supports
Black life is cheap. Iran needs the NAM, the NAM will remember Iran and it’s religious bigotry.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient who spent more than a decade as the director of the IAEA, recently told investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that he had not “seen a shred of evidence that Iran has been weaponizing, in terms of building nuclear-weapons facilities and using enriched materials … I don’t believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran.”
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Hersh-6-6-11.pdf
also:
:http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH16Ak03.html
Please God can we get an objective media for Xmas?
*please assume quotes “” around the italics below. ;)
James Canning says:
September 19, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Unknown Unknowns,
There have been various statements from Hamas, regarding Palestinian initiative for UN recognition of 1967 borders.
I think Hamas’ past offers of a 99-year truce indicate a willingness to accept Israel within “1967″ borders. Subject to certain conditions.
James,
Hamas speaks for the resistance. Their positions are necessarily oblique, their defenses are up. The fact they are willing to put up a 99-year truce speaks volumes. I am no Hamas expert, what is the proof for that willingness?
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/202312-1
US Policy towards Iran, from 4 years ago. With all the brouhaha about the changing of the guards, change you can believe in, and the supposed reaching out to “The Islamic Republic” of Iran, et cetera ad nauseum, has anything changed? If not, why not? Whose in charge here? (Besides Alexander Haig, of course, for those of you who remember as far back as the Reagan assassination attempt.)
Watching the video posted here highlights, as per the core concern of this blog, the sheer asymmetry of power that exists between Iran and the U.S. I think people like Eric mentioned this point in the past. people like “fyi”, however, often emphasize on the fact that power is local.
I am now wondering which argument is more close to the analysis given in this video. the question for the huge disproportionality of power between the two is: why has Iran not bowed to the U.S power? or is she not that important (or left out for the balance of power)?
Too much emphasis on the locality of power, on the other hand, ignores the very extend and magnitude of the U.S power. it’s true, the U.S is a declining power. but relative to who? if it is that local why bother about all these? why should people get together for an event like this and talk about a topic like this?
I kind of feel it’s the second guess of the former pluasibility. this can easily be seen in the intellectual investments the U.S makes (no insult) for Iran’s issue. even the holders of this blog are not very long time Iran experts as we probably see for other areas of high importance for the U.S. most of Iran experts have so far shown inconsistency in basic policy recommendation. many lack fundamental understanding of Iranian system, history, culture….
Humanist says: September 19, 2011 at 10:40 pm
While I am not unsympathetic to your aspirations, I cannot ahere to any of your fantasies of a scientific Utopia.
“Game Theory” is irrelevant to human condition, the only people who believe that it models human action are those that have learnt it in schools and remained so.
When the father murders his gang-raped 10 years old daughte – raped by the Iraqi soldeirs – in order to uphold his family’s Honor – you go tell him about Game Theory and Rationalistic Scientism.
While Mr. Canning here is oftern in Outer Space you seem to be not in this world at all.
Men are in the state of Fall, no amount of science will rescue them from that.
And only the dead have seen the end of war.
Was this video about saving the declining American Empire? If so, that is an impossibility. No single nation deserves to rule others or rule the world. Many big headed despots or colonial entities have tried it in the past and, in the long run, all have failed.
The imperial or militaristic jargons used in this video were swaying my mind towards appalling realities of our time such as rampant capitalism, hegemony, wars, neocons etc. Flynt briefly discussed US hegemony and presented its history in the Persian Gulf region. He was sharp, right to the point and rational. Most of what he said were music to my ears however he too used the loaded phrase of ‘American vital interests’ without further explanation. No one can object with such interests if they do not conflict with interests of others. The problem is they often do and when they do serious problems start to sprout out.
Regarding this video in the following I try to point out a few of my thoughts in an unorganized and overlapping way: I already admit some of these comments might border the zone of simplistic and idealistic wishful thinking:
- Watching the video made me envision two imaginary bright characters spending long times to research and write a book on how to save Christianity and maintain (or spread) it worldwide with less expenditures. The book containing all kinds of maps and data about the distribution and location of churches, mosques, synagogues and temples all over the world, number and composite of congregations and so on. The last chapter of the book being about how to (drastically) reduce all the related costs of maintaining Christianity and saving it against Islam or other competing religions.
If one objectively researches religion(s) then his/her work might deserve a high rank but if the work is on why voodoo is declining or on any dying phenomenon then I won’t be enthusiastic to hear the details.
– Profound scientific arguments always not only win over fallacious arguments they also stay valid for a long time, sometimes for centuries or millenniums. However seemingly scientific or pseudo-scientific arguments dip to invalidity quickly, metaphorically, before the ink of the last word of their dissertation is dried out. Sometime these types of works contain facts, numbers, analysis and arguments (where each of them is indisputable) on a subject which is quickly becoming obsolete. Is the topic of this video one of those?
Although facts and figures in this research raise no objection , since they are used to justify an unjustifiable argument I am critical. This work also lacks a vision (expected from any serious work) which is in accordance to historical forces that can benefit ALL members of humanity not only the US.
– I deeply dread the current deregulated global capitalism which is probably the number one enemy of our humanity. I think the current Global Capitalism has crossed the critical line and now has become uncontrollable. It now looks like a run-away terrain that is destined to destroy all life forms on earth as Noam Chomsky in his thoughtful book of ‘Hegemony or Survival’ has described. In such an alarming context, the US imperialism which in many ways is a component of this destructive capitalism could’ve been researched from the angle of survival of all of us. Apparently the authors of this report didn’t see what is really at stake. They just stuck to a narrow tribal topic.
Old ways have failed all of us miserably, before it is too late completely new practical, intelligent, and constructive ways must be found urgently. Anyone who cant see the urgency must be blind.
– European and American empires have atrocious records of folly, racism and brutality. These empires were glorified and justified on absurd premises such as ‘survival of the fittest’, ‘exceptionalism’ etc. Many scholars believe, in reality, empires are just a form of ‘organized theft’ The destructive attitudes of the empires can be demonstrated using computer simulations where the empires are compared to alternative rational systems of cooperative coexistence.
If instead of exploitation, enslaving and pillage, the secularized methods of some of Jesuit Priests in 17th century (as shown in The Last of Mohicans movie) were sincerely used to treat the ignorant and technologically undeveloped natives as their unconditional ‘equals’ the whole world would have been a much better place. This is because under the cooperative approach, in time, both sides would have benefitted not only in the material domains but also in enjoying living peacefully together with far less distress. For further verification of the above assertion one can use Game Theory that can prove the accumulated ‘gains’ in the cooperative approach would have been colossal for the time-span of last two, there centuries when European colonialism was in full swing.
Why scientific attention is not directed towards EXTREMELY important topics such as the immense benefits of coexistence and utter folly of wars and empires. Publication of a thesis and an extensive Computer Simulation on war versus cooperation can wake up the entire world.
– As I have commented here before the new scientific discoveries in the field of Molecular Biology proves “the genetic diversity inside members of any particular race is more pronounced than the diversities among the different races”. This fact, viewed from the perspective of potentials for underdeveloped societies, implies all human beings, as far as creativity and intelligence is concerned possess practically the same potential. (In the mind of likeable Steven Pinker Jews are the exception. I wonder what he would’ve said if he was able to see the far horizons of ingenuity. British thought Indians were not as smart, now they are sending their difficult software problems to India)
We are all equal, no one has the right to occupy other people’s homes, steal their belongings and subject them to immensely painful humiliations.
– As I have commented before in this site, science now proves nationalistic and racist convictions are all utterly nonsensical. Nazis believed Germany is Above All since Aryan race is a super race. Similarly the Japanese believed in Kokugaku perceptions, Arabs being sure Allah prefers them to Ajams (non Arabs), or orthodox Jews believing they are God’s chosen people. All of the above fall in the same deplorable pit of nonsensical thoughts where American Exceptionalism also resides there.
History shows all of those self-glorified people, when in position of power, created enormous devastations and heinous cruelties both for the outsiders and for themselves.
Science repeatedly is providing the modified reasons why some tribes remain technologically undeveloped. Now all agree it is not because of their DNA, it is rather grounded on different aspects of their past and present cultures.
– The rate of change in global scientific arena is not linear, rather it resembles an ultra-exponential rate. For example the number of inventions and discoveries in the field of Chemistry in 1992 alone was more than all the findings in chemistry from the beginning of history up to 1991.
With the advent of TV, satellite dish, computer, Internet, social media and sophisticated communications, the rate of social and political changes also is non-linear. In the West, probably there are many still alive who, when they were young, attended colonial meetings when the topic of discussion was ‘Indians, Africans or Middle Easterners have inferior cognitive capacities thus they don’t need (as many?) schools or any center for the higher education’.
Social, economic, political and all other aspects of humanity are changing exponentially. It is getting ever-increasingly harder for hegemonists to deceive or control the masses even when sophisticated approaches derived from the Game Theory are employed.
– I have studied wars for years. I think in this age of splitting atoms, computers and Gene Splicing the most moronic, and the most barbaric side of humanity is in how nations engage in wars and how imperialists (who always have the deadliest weapons) execute wars of aggression. Wars, defensive or offensive always cause enormous sufferings and are always destructive. Overall, wars are indeed truly reprehensible and moronic from any angle you look at them.
Perpetually in the capitalist states the competing profit crazy money-lovers invent new more sophisticated and more deadly weapons for killing human beings and destroying their resources. War or Defense Ministries buy these tools of mass murder with hefty prices thus this foul cycle continues non-stop with ever-accelerating momentum.
Instigation of any war is a supreme crime(Jackson, Nuernberg). Indeed threatening with deadly weapons, using military superiority to bring to submission the weaker adversaries etc are on the list of the grandest crimes against our humanity.
– Many other aspects of militarism are equally disgusting (volumes have been written about them) especially when we know now that, if the disputing parties try to be rational and fair, then for any international dispute there exists at least one peaceful resolution optimally benefitting both sides.
Many scholars are convinced that Game Theory and Complex Computer Simulations can also prove that there exists no unresolvable international dispute provided the likes of neocons and Cheneys do not partake in the negotiations .
– There are no good guys and no bad guys. Via the school of Determinism we learn, most probably, we have no free will as can be seen here (Free Will vs Determinis)
We can only alter or provide environs where crimes can be reduced or prevented. Without such intelligent interference various problems continue to cause aggravation for all. Scandinavians, in order to create a civil society engineered it where social justice is the paramount concern. After some time (a decade or so?) they could send their young children alone to neighborhood park with no attendant and no worry.
US is way behind. In the US judges convict a pot smoker to get raped in prison or a billionaire and a homeless get a thicket of $30 fine for violating a traffic rule. This means, for the same offense one can gets 5 million times more punishment than the other. Not so in Scandinavia, couple of years ago a traffic offence cost a rich man in Finland over $900000.
New Scientific finding should be insightfully used to further understand the processes of criminal acts and establish mechanisms to eliminate the underlying causes of any type of crime including wars. .
This is getting too long. There are so much more to address.. I just add one more important point:
– One might question “how is possible some who are sitting on thrones of power are so stupid and cruel, how come the likes of Cheney are preoccupied with American domination and repeatedly talks about ‘American lives’ as if Iraqi, Afghan or other lives don’t matter at all. Unfortuanately there are so many of these thick headed imbeciles around yet fortunately their number is bound to dwindle.
One might ask why they can’t comprehend that: :
- Times are now changing with exponential rate. Now oppressed people have access to TV or satellite dish and SEE stuff they couldn’t see a few decades ago.
- Masses of informed oppressed people are willing to fight with nail and teeth or if necessary blowing themselves up in order to dispel the occupiers. No sophisticated weapon can match the power of self-sacrifice of masses of people.
- The humanity is now more mature than a century ago. A grand step of unity was taken by Germany and France to stop the lunatic perpetual wars and the drive for unity is ever-growing.
- The world will see more and more peaceful protests guided by the spirit of Gandhi and Mandela.
- Old ways of ‘the one who has the bigger bomb wins’ are over. Humanity is seeking new non-violent ways to solve its problems with intelligent dialogue.
- There is unacceptable gap between the rich and the poor. Over 90% of the wealth of the world is in possession of 3%. In US many go to bed hungry while some rich snobs brag the wines on their dinner table never costs less than $5000 a bottle.
and so on……this list is way too long.
How come they don’t comprehend why the tools of yesterday aren’t cutting today…they can’t fathom the oppressed people of yesterday look exactly the same tody but their minds, that drives their actions have changed drastically.
How come they can’t feel the subconscious intense desire of humanity to stop the madness of the past by converting military tanks to tractors, to spend military trillions for providing food, shelter, health and education for all.
How come they are so dumb they can’t sense the people subconsciously need CHANGE that could provide them badly needed inner tranquility and outer peace.
This list is also too long
T he reaction for humanity for actions of the lunatics who pull the strings is going to be a phenomenal historic revolt…..something that, with high probability, is going to happen in lifetime of many of us. Isn’t time to prepare our surroundings for that day?.
fyi says:September 19, 2011 at 9:42 pm
fyi, this is assuming that he WAS killed by the navy seals and hasn’t been dead forever.
Anyway, I was being facetious.
Sakineh Bagoom says: September 19, 2011 at 8:05 pm
US dropped the body in the ocean to remove the possibility of the late Mr. bin Ladin’s remains ever becoming a sacred relic or shrine.
Sakineh Bagoom says: September 19, 2011 at 8:05 pm
US dropped the body in the ocean to remove the possibility of the late Mr. bin Ladin’s remains ever becoming a sacred relic or shrine.
US-Iran Hot-line: Another tale of disinformation
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/us-iran-hot-line-another-tale-of-disinformation/
Empty says: September 19, 2011 at 3:18 pm
“sending them to the پزشک قانونی for further autopsy”
Empty,
In the case of OBL, US claimed that autopsy is haram in Islam, and that’s why they dumped him in the ocean the next day. Did the accident you are talking about happen outside of a Muslim country?
Those who have not yet taken the measure of Richard Silverstein (Seattle blogger who revealed Aipac conspiracy to set up war with Iran) should read:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/05/05/confronting-islamophobia-a-major-seattle-conference-promotes-religious-tolerance
BiBiJon,
Thanks for link to Jim Lobe’s story, re: poll touching on the way forward in dealing with Iran. And interesting that Turkey and Germany have the same result, with UK just behind. (50%, 50%, 46% not favoring military action against Iran)
BiBiJon,
Aipac has tried to set up war with Iran for many years now. As Stephen Walt observes, the story is getting out to the American public, that the Israel lobby is doing a disservice to the US and even to Israel itself, by preventing sensible American foreign policy in the Middle East, in matters pertaining to Israel.
I think the power of the Israel lobby in American politics, regrettably, is at an all-time high. And this is due to the fact the economic power of Jews in America, has grown greatly in recent years.
Let’s hope the power of Aipac, Winep etc will wane. But I would not recommend holding one’s breath waiting for it to happen.
James Canning says:
September 19, 2011 at 5:23 pm
James, for wha it’s worth, I have a contrarian view. I interpret AIPAC, et al’s increasingly manic efforts against Iran as a sign of its decreasing traction among the US population.
Occasionally I am served up an opinion survey which confirms that view.
“While 54% of U.S. respondents favored military action [against Iran]this year, that is 10% less than when the choice was posed to them by the GMF poll one year ago.”
From http://www.lobelog.com/transatlantic-poll-on-iran-nukes/
10% fewer, despite AIPAC’s 100% extra effort is a sign to me that Arab Spring, Islamic Awakening, etc. has a transnational, human, spiritual arc that encompasses all peoples. In that regard, I partially agree with Hans: An awakening is an awakening.
BiBiJon,
Re: Averroes, it is interesting to note that the most complete set of his works was printed (in Latin) in Venice in latter 16th century. Venice was largely outside the control of Rome, so it was a favorable place to print material that might be challenged.
Unknown Unknowns,
There have been various statements from Hamas, regarding Palestinian initiative for UN recognition of 1967 borders.
I think Hamas’ past offers of a 99-year truce indicate a willingness to accept Israel within “1967″ borders. Subject to certain conditions.
BiBiJon,
Thanks for link to Stephen Walt’s piece. And of course I agree, that Friedman is openly deploring the malevolent influence of Aipac and other elements of the Israel lobby because it is becoming so obvious to many people. But not to Rick Perry, the would-be moron in the White House.
And why, one might ask, are American newspapers giving so little coverage to the conspiracy by officials of Aipac & Winep, to plant false stories about Iran in hopes of setting up a war?
UU,
Great post. And incidentally, housing prices in several parts of Wales have risen considerably faster than in most of England, over the past ten years. Wales is coming into fashion. And Bertrand Russell was a citizen of the world.
hans,
RE: I am for a state without control by religion.
Could you give an example of a state which is not controlled by “a” religion?
RE: I have travelled extensively to Islamic countries from secular to conservative.
That’s excellent. Traveling could be very useful and I hope you continue your travels.
RE: What I am also against is the Islamic Awakening according to the definition by the SL.
Do you think he doesn’t have the right to express his opinion? Or, do you believe that he should define it not in accordance to what he believes to be true but in accordance with some other standard?
RE: I was in Iraq (never in Iran) and I am sure that the females of Iraq are not as equal today then they used to be under Saddam (I have never supported him BTW) this is what I object….
Equal to what? Please explain.
The people rebelling are against the current capitalist model and should not to be subjugated by religion.
1. Do you think those people believe themselves to be subjugated by religion? If so, could you show how your reached that conclusion?
2. Could you give specific examples of models of governance in which people are not subjugated in some form?
BibiJon,
RE: any discernible truth to what fyi says @ September 19, 2011 at 10:34 am “it was the Ash’arite Mutakallimuns who won the day and destroyed free thought in Muslim world.”
Well, he needs to clarify what he means by “free thought” before we could determine whether or not it has been destroyed and by whom.
That reminds me….there was this accident in which a whole bunch of people get killed. The road patrol in charge of collecting the dead bodies and sending them to the پزشک قانونی for further autopsy gets to work and wraps, bags, and tags them one by one and have them transported. In the midst of these, he gets to an injured one among the dead who makes a lot of noise and says that he is not dead and is very much alive. The patrol says, “تو هم مردی ولی گرمی حالیت نیست.” [you're dead, too, but you're too caught up in the moment to realize it.]
Hey, VoT, nice of you to chime in. Yes, I knew of Ralph from the KPFA airwaves over Berkeley and the Bay Area generally for several years before I finally got to meet him in a 9/11 Truth Film Festival several years ago in Oakland, at the Grand Theatre, where I also met David Ray Griffin for the first time. Ralph is a true Berkeleyite who has remained true to his left values, while the whole country has taken an incredible turn to the right. He used to be on KPFK regularly with Bonnie Faulkner of Guns & Butter fame (who was one of the main organizers of this year’s 9/11 Truth Film Festival). Amy Goodman is still there as the Left Gatekeeper, and she has been buying in to this “liberation” of Libya nonsense of late too, after that lackey, Juan Cole, the Baha’i, but it was clear from the chatter at the festival that the mood in KPFA is changing, and they are having Truthers on their airwaves more and more.
And ah yes, the GORGEOUS Ms. Lezgee, or I should say *MRS.* Lezgee, worse luck! How can we forget her? We can’t!! I congratulated her when she first had Webster Tarpley on her show, and recommended she try to get Professor Hamid Algar on. Unfortunately, since I am in a country where Press TV is for all intents and purposes censored, I have not been able to follow her illustrious and stellar career as closely as I would like.
James:
Yes, while what you have said is true, it does not take into account that even though Russell spent the majority of his life in England, he *loved* Wales, made his home there, and although he never retired (he worked till the very end of his very long and fruitful life), he spent his last years in the house and country that he loved.
Anyway, it is not an important question. But you are right: just because someone is born and dies in a place, does not mean that he considered himself to be of that place. Knowing old Bertie, he probably considered himself a citizen of the world in his younger socialist days, then changed his mind a hundred times since. LOL.
Dear UU , what a coincidence.
The other day on PressTV , I noticed a man , an American , who was commenting in the GORGEOUS Homa Lezgee Show . He appeared a bit ‘freaky’ and I was only able to catch his name , as the show was ending and I began searching for him in Google.
It was Ralph Schoenman , who turns out to be the former personal secretary to Bertrand Russell and became general secretary of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
I am sure you know him . If so please let us know more.
I read portions of his book : “The Hidden History of Zionism ”
//http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/author.htm#top
I was amazed by his inside knowledge , and I also found this video :
http://www.archive.org/details/snowshoefilms_RalphSchoenman_911AFalseFlagOperation
James Canning says:
September 19, 2011 at 1:56 pm
As the man said, “The elephant has been in the room for a long time, but now it has the spotlights on it and it’s wearing a pink bikini too. It’s hard to miss,”
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/18/well_duh
Thanks BiBiJon for that link. It was a great speech, by a great hero. May IAEA be transformed according to his vision.
But enough of iAea. I’m off to iKea for some kitchen supplies :o)
Unknown Unknowns,
Yes, born in Wales. Died in Wales. What did Bertrand Russell consider himself to be?
The great Duke of Wellington, when asked why he regarded himself as English when he was born in Ireland, would say: “Just because a man is born in a barn does not make him a horse.” By contrast, George Canning, who knew Wellington well, regarded himself as Irish even though he was bord in England. And he died in England.
BiBiJon,
I wonder if Steven Chu has read the various reports about Israeli diplomats conspiring with American Jews in various think tanks, and conspiring with American politicians, to plant false stories about Iran in American newspapers? The FBI has been monitoring the conspiracy for years now.
BiBiJon,
apparently Steven Chu sees it as part of his job decription to help Aipac, Winep and other Jewish organisation conspiring to set up war with Iran, to demonise Iran? “Longstanding pattern of denial, deceit and evasion’? To be a whore of the warmongers? Thanks, Steven Chu.
fyi says “In this instance you are correct: the late Earl Russell was an Englishman and not Welsh.”
Well, tell that to the Welsh Mountains where his ashes were scattered, after he died of influenza on 2 February 1970 at his home, Plas Penrhyn, in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, Wales, and after that, if it still hasn’t sunk in, tell it to the good people at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire, Wales, where he was born.
*
Russell’s Views on the creation of the state of Israel
In an essay titled ‘On Israel and bombing’ written in 1970, Russell says:
“…The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East. We are frequently told, “We must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis.” What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.
All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict. Justice requires that the first step towards a settlement must be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June, 1967. A new world campaign is needed to help bring justice to the long-suffering people of the Middle East.”
Ahmadinejad could not have put it better.
Iran’s response to US Energy Secretary Steven Chu at IAEA’s general conference where he leveled: “Iran has continued to engage in a longstanding pattern of denial, deceit and evasion”, was delivered by assignation attempt survivor, Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereydoon Abbasi.
His speech can be found at http://www.isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1850941&Lang=E
Unknown Unknowns,
And yes, the 3rd Earl Russell was born in Wales and died in Wales, but he was of English parentage. British is fine, of course, if you prefer.
UU,
Perhaps one would say “Hellenistic” for the Greek (or Macedonian) influence in Persia after the conquest by Alexander the Great. Very powerful culturally, in the Middle East (and as far as what is now Pakistan), for many centuries.
Unknown Unknowns,
The great Duke of Wellington was born in Ireland and regarded himself as an Englishman.
Was Muhammad Ali, the first Khedive of Egypt (and ruler also of the Hejaz, Crete and the Soudan) an Albanian? He was born to Albanian parents in Macedonia.
hans:
Iranian identity is comprised of three main elements: pre-Islamic, Islamic and modern (some would say Hellenic or Western). Islam is by far the more dominant of the three. But this is not by way of answering your question, Is Islam native to Iran?
My answer is, you are still asking the wrong question. It is not about you, or what you decide is or is not native or democratic or progressive or whatever other neurosis-de-jour. It is what Iranians themselves think and feel. Now having said that, I would not advise you to go out and ask a bunch of Iranians whether they think Islam is native to them or their country, as they would think you have lost your mind, and they would quickly report you to Dr. UU, who would reluctantly have to add you to the list of patients needing psychiatric help.
Unknown Unknowns,
Yes, bravo Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell. He and most of the British aristocracy wanted Israel out of the recently occupied territories. As did the UK government.
James Canning says: September 19, 2011 at 12:55 pm
In this instance you are correct: the late Earl Russell was an Englishman and not Welsh.
On 31 January 1970, Russell issued a statement which condemned Israeli aggression in the Middle East and called for Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied in 1967. This was Russell’s final political statement or act. It was read out at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo on 3 February 1970, the day after his death.
from the pages of Wikipedia.
James:
No, Russell was decidedly NOT an “English” aristocrat. He was Welsh. He was born in Wales and he died in Wales. Call him British if you must, but not English.
Regardless, he was a great thinker.
The Hamas position according to the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/world/middleeast/hamas-voices-issues-with-palestinian-bid-for-united-nations-membership.html?_r=1
On Saturday, the branch of Hamas based in the Syrian capital, Damascus, issued a statement objecting to the United Nations move, expected later this week, because it was “unilateral,” meaning that Hamas had not been included in the decision.
The application, it said, was an extension of Fatah’s “path of compromise and insisting on dialogue while distancing itself from resistance and holding strong cards. We affirm our deep conviction that resistance is the main path that must be pursued together with political and public struggle.”
UU,
And Bertrand Russell’s grandfather was prime minister.
Unknown Unknowns,
Betrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, was an English aristocrat from one of the ancient English noble families. He was a cousin of the Duke of Bedford etc etc etc.
Rehmat,
If al-Jazeera were “pro-Israel”, it would be available in the US. Why do you think al-Jazeera is not available in the US?
Rehmat,
No Arab country would attack Israel even if there were no US bases in Turkey or Qatar.
And Qatar favors Palestinian unity, as well as UN membership. And Qatar would like to see an end to occupation of West Bank and Golan Heights.
fyi says “If you and your ilk were indeed so cognizant and aware of the “Gnostic” knowledge and mystical traditions of Islam, you would have been able to recognize the true import of the Histories of Jesus; as Revelation and not Hadith. But you and your ilk were too timid, too narrow-minded, and too ignorant to deduce that as an implication of Sufi Thought. In fact, you had to wait to learn of that from I.”
*
Learn of that from I?
OK, OK, wait. Don’t tell me! We know you were the Abdaarchi (Chief Bottlewasher) in the Iranian Embassy in Bangladesh (or was it Burkina Faso?), during the reign of marhoum Mammad Damagh, but your current occupation… hmmm… its coming to me, its coming to me… yes, yes of course. You have become one of those Tehrangelesi TV Born-Again ex-Moslem Bible-thumpin’ Evangelists who go about converting confused young men and women from their religion to Jeeeeeeeeeeeezus! You get your regularl stipend from your CIA handler (who assures you that 9/11 was the brain child of those “nasty Arabs” – he likes to play on your false sense of pre-Islamic Iranian Bogus Pomp), you get your cut from the collections in Church, you get the extra cash the AIPAC fronts stuff in your pockets when they visit, and you get a nice kickback every time one of the saved receives his Baptismal Rite of Citizenship.
Not a bad living for a retired Abdaarchi.
Fara says:
September 19, 2011 at 11:40 am
Safety procedures at Fukushima? No.
Unaccounted weapons grade nuclear material? No.
Possible, probable, maybe intention of Iran theoretically building nukes at some point in the future? Yes, yes, and yes! That is where IAEA should be spending time, expending credibility, and doling out every conceivable accusation.
yukiya amano’s Japanese nationality, and being a wikileak-confirmed stooge of neocons has not marred his sense of priorities, honest.
@Unknown Unknowns says:
September 19, 2011 at 11:29 am
What you need to bear in mind, dear hans, is that the atheistic socialism of the Ba’th Party of Iraq and yes, of Syria too, are systems of thought and of governance that are not native to those lands.
Is Islam native to Iran?
Fara says:
September 19, 2011 at 11:40 am
Does anybody know where these N-materials are?
*
Possibly in a holding cell in Falseflagistan?
fyi @ September 19, 2011 at 11:22 am
Geez, was it something I said?? :D
fyi says:
September 19, 2011 at 11:35 am
Chasing ambulances to make a sociological point, and then affix it to a religion? Fyi, your hatred of women is clear. Your bedazzled gaze, and fawning towards science, technology and industry of the West could not be funnier seeing as it comes from one who claims Kinetic energy converts to heat and cuts through like a hot knife would with butter.
Take your meds.
I forgot the ref to my post on September 19, 2011 at 11:40 am
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/19/headlines
Does anybody know where these N-materials are?
“U.S. Cannot Account For Nearly Three Tons of Nuclear Material Shipped Overseas
A new report has found the U.S. government cannot account for nearly three tons of nuclear material it has shipped overseas. According to the Government Accountability Office, the United States cannot confirm the whereabouts of some 5,900 pounds of highly-enriched uranium and separated plutonium, enough material to make dozens of nuclear weapons. The United States relies on foreign nations to track the material once it is shipped overseas but, according to the GAO, nearly half of the international sites mandated to hold the dangerous material fail to meet International Atomic Energy Agency security guidelines.”
hans says: September 19, 2011 at 11:01 am
I am suggesting to you that a secular system of governance is not possible in Muslim polities.
That the centrality of Islam must be first acknowledged before any further attempts at improvement of these polities are made.
In my view, the status of women in Islam will never become analogous to those of women in Northern European states, such as Sweden or Denmark.
If I recall correctly, women of Scandinavia could vote in the elections of councils even at the time of the Vikings.
Once one accepts the limits of the empirical reality, then one can at least search for policies that are practical.
[A month ago, 3 young me were executed in Kermanshah, Western Iran.
They had kidnapped a pre-pubescent girl and repeatedly raped her and used their cell phones to record that.
Next, they released the girl with a message to the parents for ransom, else they would release the pictures via the Internet and thus “Destroy the Honor” of that family.
The family contacted the Iranian police and the young men were found and arrested.
They were tried and sentenced to death and the executions were carried out last month.
I suppose in Denmark these men would be locked up for a few years and then would have been let go.
The girl was lucky that her family did not kill her – they were progressive parents.
30 years ago, during the early days of Iran-Iraq War, a man brought her 10-year old daughter to be buried there too.
He was from the border town of Qasr Shirin.
She had a bullet wound to the head.
He related how the invading Iraqi soldiers had gang-raped her.
Next, he asked for a hand gun for those soldiers which they gave him.
He then shot and killed her own daughter in order to salvage his Honor.
Presently he was in Kermanshah to bury his daughter.
Such is the world as we find it my friend.
Israel is not happy with Qatar
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/israel-is-not-happy-with-qatar/
BiBiJon:
Thank you so very much for your kindness. As Sir Charles Chaplin has kindly and correctly observed, ‘It is far more important to be kind than to be correct.’
hans: “BTW @UU I am old enough to be many peoples grandfather, honest!”
Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! LOL. But seriously, as you know, I was talking in spiritual terms, the age of your soul… What you need to bear in mind, dear hans, is that the atheistic socialism of the Ba’th Party of Iraq and yes, of Syria too, are systems of thought and of governance that are not native to those lands. They were adopted for many different reasons, not the least of which was the interference of foreign (British and French) powers. We are at a time in the history of that region of the world where the people are re-examining the basic assumptions of the (colonial) past. Where that re-evaluation will lead God only knows, but it is sure to be something closer to the self-identity of the people of that region, and to that extent, therefore, it is and will remain, an “Islamic” Awakening.
Now, as for your statement that you are not anti-this or anti-that. All I would advise you is to evaluate a country’s political system not in terms of how “free” the women (or men, for that matter) are, but by the criterion of whether that system is indigenous or not. And in cases where the indigenous values clash with those of the rest of humanity, whether the rest of humanity (NOT “The International Community) is teaching by example, charity and kindness, or is interfering in a coercive or invasive manner.
Those, in any case, are my criteria.
But
Unknown Unknowns says: September 19, 2011 at 11:07 am
If you and your ilk were indeed so cognizant and aware of the “Gnostic” knowledge and mystical traditions of Islam, you would have been able to recognize the true import of the Histories of Jesus; as Revelation and not Hadith.
But you and your ilk were too timid, too narrow-minded, and too ignorant to deduce that as an implication of Sufi Thought.
In fact, you had to wait to learn of that from I.
And please, speak of things you know something about; there is a small but living form of Christian and Jewish mysticism in the West. They are aware of Gnostic Knowledge (although it is not a living presence there in the West.)
And in the final analysis, all of these are tools for living. What did mystics of Iran accomplish over the last 500 years that truly elevated Iran, or Islam? What was their accomplishments that could go and confront Empricial Science that were developed in the West?
Enough said.
hans says:
September 19, 2011 at 11:01 am
Hans, no disrespect intended; Only perspective.
Define “control” for me. Lets narrow it down to Switzerland. what “controlled” the feeling that 4 minarets in the entire country wass already too much to bear?
Why is/isn’t the Swiss form of control better than 80 democratically elected theologians selecting and supervising a leader to be the arbiter of nation’s sensitivities in the affairs of a state?
fyi:
You have, again, I’m afraid to have to report, strayed out of your depths.
In order to make the statements that you have made regarding Al-Ghazali, kalam, and the stupor of Islamdom, you must first be cognizant of the fact that kalam (speculative theology) was one branch (and the much smaller one) of Islamic thinking about the God. The much more important branch was hikmat (experiential or gnostic theology, or theosophy to use the traditional word by which it was rendered before Madam Blavatsky usurped the word). That is a whole world that the West (and therefore you) know(s) nothing about. It is a world in which the instrument of reason is afforded its proper epistemic ambit, but where other faculties of cognition and perception are given their proper priorities.
I’m sorry, but if I were to overhear someone talking like you in a party, I would give him a wide berth as I would not want accidentally to get caught up with someone who 50 years ago read Russell’s *History of Western Philosophy* (or worse, its illustrated digest, *The Wisdom of the West*), and then read Will Durant’s *The Story of Philosophy*, and felt as a result that he knows everything there is to know about Philosophy and The Meaning of Life.
When you wax eloquent in your mind about these topics, know that to the rest of us it sounds like that most irritating of sounds that is emitted when you run a fingernail against the grain of a chalkboard. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!
@Empty, BiBiJon & fyi, UU
I am not anti Islam nor anti Iran ( in fact very pro Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), I am for a state without control by religion. I have travelled extensively to Islamic countries from secular to conservative. What I am also against is the Islamic Awakening according to the definition by the SL. I was in Iraq (never in Iran) and I am sure that the females of Iraq are not as equal today then they used to be under Saddam (I have never supported him BTW), this is what I object. The people rebelling are against the current capitalist model and should not to be subjugated by religion.
BTW @UU I am old enough to be many peoples grandfather, honest!
Unknown Unknowns says:
September 19, 2011 at 10:40 am
If there’s a day I don’t learn something valuable from you, I’ll mark it on my calendar.
I agree with all three of you, Empty, BiBiJon & fyi. Hans is young and means well, and has not been around as long as an old soul like me, whose measure of time is aeons.
*
Turtles All The Way
A basic concept that ignorant bigots like Dawkins don’t understand is that religion is that substance that we reach when we hit the rock bottom of our beliefs. It is our identity, the sense of who we are, and how we orient ourselves in the world in which we find ourselves. It is the framework within which all other questions are formed. In this definition of the word, atheism, agnosticism, radical skepticism, empiricism and its twin sister, logico-positivism, and of course the usual suspects of Hegelianism, Marxism, National Socialism, Fascism, Capitalism, Liberal and Social Democracy – all these are religions. Secular humanism. Oops. I’d forgotten that one :D Eric Voegelin, the great German-American Historian of ideas and religion called all these movements and intellectuo-spiritual formations ‘modern forms or manifestations of gnosticism’ (I paraphrase). That is his Christian bias; fine.
The fact that these formations and belief systems, with few exceptions, are modern and hence (by definition) lack a tradition means that they have not had sufficient time for self-examination, which in time would reveal each belief system to be one among many in a whole universe of diverse beliefs, and while not giving up its position of primacy (or even exclusivity to the Truth), such examination would nonetheless allow that other cultures and civilizations have a right to determine what their truth is. Ignorant bigots like Dawkins have not reached this basic stage of human development, and in this sense I consider him and his ilk to be pre-Islamic (in the sense of Jahiliyyah), as Islam set straight the tradition that had been marred by the Constantinian version of Christianity and the Nicene Creed (which only recognized one religion, one truth within the realm) and declare the validity of other belief systems just as the great kings of Persia had held before Mohammad (peace be with him and with his purified family), where each nation was free to practice its own religion and way of life. “Let there be no compulsion in religion”, the Qur’an declared. And again there was light. The light that had been put out by the Constantinian monism of the Nicene Creed, which resulted in the Holy Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, the Renaissance reaction, and, it seems, a feeble and Quixotic attempt at hegemony, which of course is bound to fail.
The reason Hamann and Herder and the early German Romantics were the first to grasp the significance of Hume’s critique of the Age of Reason is because they saw how it not only limited the jurisdiction of reason, but indeed left no room to think of Rationalism as a system or even methodology that was no more ‘rational’ than any other, including, of course, religious ones. One of Hume’s critiques was that if you hold a position based on reason, and you are asked to give your reason for that belief, and you give it, you are then susceptible to being asked to provide a reason for *that* reason et cetera ad infinitum, so that you must ultimately admit that you have no more reasons to offer and that therefore your “reason” is ultimately unreasonable.
That Omega-point, if you will, has traditionally been called God – the point beyond which you go goo goo ga ga, like a child. It is the ‘unspeakable’ or some such fancy term that Rudolph Otto used (and Eliade and Tillich after him). The atheistic religions of modernity must needs refer to that point every now and again in their travels, and as they cannot use the word God or its known derivatives, they use words like ‘singularity’, ‘asymptote’, and the ever-popular ‘Big Bang’. In their “Once Upon a Time” story or Creation Myth, the answer to the question “What was there before the Big Bang” is given variously as this, that or the other, but the answer is invariably couched in the religious taboo of discouraging such questions.
The great Welsh philosopher, Sir Bertrand Russell is said to have been giving a lecture on the motion of the heavenly bodies, on gravity, and on how Einsteinian general relativity changed the Newtonian conception of the physical universe. It is said that an old lady in the audience spoke up at some point in the lecture, saying,
“But Sir Russell, EVERYone knows that the Earth sits on the back of a turtle!”
Nonplussed, Russell quipped, “Ah yes, but what does the turtle sit on?”
“Oh no,” she said, ‘you can’t get out of it that easily, its turtles all the way down!”
Empty Jan,
any discernible truth to what fyi says @ September 19, 2011 at 10:34 am
“it was the Ash’arite Mutakallimuns who won the day and destroyed free thought in Muslim world.”
BiBiJon says: September 19, 2011 at 10:09 am
All true but it was the Ash’arite Mutakallimuns who won the day and destroyed free thought in Muslim world.
Example of their reasoning in connection with Sharia (religious law):
Conformance to the precepts Sharia is obligatory since that leads to (Moral) Righteousness.
In order to be (morally) Righteous, one must conform to Sharia Sharia.
The result, of course, was the Dark centuries that followed Ibn Rushd in almost all of Islam except a small group of Shia thinkers who kept the fire of philosophy burning.
And thosse few were Persians that kept alive only an elaboration of the Ancient Iranian Philosophy of Light – Hekmat Khowsrawani.
The rest of Islamic world took a deep breath and went to sleep until the Europeans came and began kicking and slapping it until it woke up.
Of course, being woken up in such a rude manner is never pleasant. But instead of going back and examining their own intellectual history for defects, they started blaming the Europeans (and lately the Americans) for being so Un-Just/Un-Kind/Imperialistic etc.
Thank God for Axis Powers and Israel; they will keep kicking Muslims and defeating them – teaching them eventually how to reorganize and fight.
God clearly won’t help lazy slackers.
fyi says:
September 19, 2011 at 9:49 am
Empirically:
Abu’l-Walid Ibn Rushd, better known as Averroes, stands out as a towering figure in the history of Arab-Islamic thought, as well as that of West-European philosophy and theology. In the Islamic world, he played a decisive role in the defense of Greek philosophy against the onslaughts of the Ash’arite theologians (Mutakallimun), led by al-Ghazali (d. 1111), and the rehabilitation of Aristotle.
A common theme throughout his writings is that there is no incompatibility between religion and philosophy when both are properly understood. His contributions to philosophy took many forms, ranging from his detailed commentaries on Aristotle, his defense of philosophy against the attacks of those who condemned it as contrary to Islam and his construction of a form of Aristotelianism which cleansed it, as far as was possible at the time, of Neoplatonic influences.
In the Western world, he was recognized, as early as the thirteenth century, as the Commentator of Aristotle, contributing thereby to the rediscovery of the Master, after centuries of near-total oblivion in Western Europe. That discovery was instrumental in launching Latin Scholasticism and, in due course, the European Renaissance of the fifteenth century. Notwithstanding, there has been very little attention to Averroes’ work in English, although greater interest has been shown in French, since the publication of Ernest Renan’s Averroes et l’averroisme in 1852.
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/360618.Averroes
BiBiJon says: September 19, 2011 at 9:30 am
That outside of Islam there is nothing to be used as a framework to guide the civic, political, cultural, emotional, intellectual, religious life of Muslim polities can be no doubt.
It is open to observation by anyone who cares to look at the world the way it is.
Thus, it is an empirical fact.
fyi says:
September 19, 2011 at 9:25 am
Empirically speaking?
Emphatically speaking, surely.
hans says: September 19, 2011 at 6:55 am
Empirically speaking, for Mulsim polities, outside of Islam there is not Morality, no Culture, no Civilization and no Peace.
Without Islam, an Arab might tell you, “he is nothing”.
Those who deny this basic fact are either dangerously deluded or are pursuing an anti-Ilsam agenda that has much chance of success as a snow ball’s chance in Hell.
Islamic Bigotry
==============
Up is down, down is up:
Blacks’ reverse racism!!!! Islamic social/political movements are religious bigotry!!!!
————————————————–
One of the misconceptions out there is that there is even such a thing as a remotely rational, intellectual treatment of religion in general and Islam in particular in western discourse.
How anyone who harbors a visceral hatred of a particular religion (which conveniently is not his own clan’s) and associated symbolisms, can possibly claim to be thinking objectively is beyond me.
Richard Dawkinss: “I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.” Notice the rational intellectual has nothing viscerally negative to say about thong and bikinis.
Read more: ,http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1301750/Fury-Richard-Dawkinss-burka-jibe-atheist-tells-revulsion-Muslim-dress.html#ixzz1YOsjmCDY
Richard Dawkinss: “Given that Islam is such an unmitigated evil, and looking at the map supplied by this Christian site, should we be supporting Christian missions in Africa? My answer is still no, but I thought it was worth raising the question. Given that atheism hasn’t any chance in Africa for the foreseeable future, could our enemy’s enemy be our friend?”
h/t Nima Shirazi ,http://www.raceforiran.com/iran%E2%80%99s-2009-presidential-election-two-years-on#comment-50450
Swiss Ban Building of Minarets on Mosques
=====================================
“Of 150 mosques or prayer rooms in Switzerland, only 4 have minarets, and only 2 more minarets are planned. None conduct the call to prayer. There are about 400,000 Muslims in a population of some 7.5 million people. Close to 90 percent of Muslims in Switzerland are from Kosovo and Turkey, and most do not adhere to the codes of dress and conduct associated with conservative Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, said Manon Schick, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International in Switzerland.”
From ,http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/world/europe/30swiss.html
On Liberation theology and Latin America, Philip Berryman’s 1987 book “Liberation Theology: essential facts about the revolutionary movement in Latin America and beyond” would be a useful read. I think it will convince anyone who does not have a visceral hatred of the ‘other’, to realize all religions have something to say about social justice.
But, hey, hyphenated words stick like tar to some minds. For some Islamic-terrorism works a charm; others favor Islamic-fascism; our very own Hans likes to promote Islamic-bigotry as a blunt instrument to libel brown people. Whatever. Just please don’t pretend you’re hailing from some super-rational Valhalla.
Would anyone care to speculate what was the purpose of the Emir of Qatar visit to Iran just before the invasion of Libya? We all know the Emir is a puppet of Washington. What was he trying to broker?
Hans says,
…why should people’s uprising have anything to do with religion.
1) Because religion has a lot do with the current uprisings in the region both as an inspiring force and as a methodology.
2) It is not a question of “should”, it is a question of “is”. Just observe where gatherings occur and listen to predominant voices. Ask yourself why is that the most prominent gatherings and culmination of uprisings and protests happen on Fridays; why is that people line up to pray on the streets….
This is Egypt …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f19QjJN6fk What does the video tell you?
This is Libya …;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf9UcNznMUE What does the video tell you?
During the 80’s in South and Central America did the people talk about Christian Awakening during their struggle against imperialism?
Different region, different people, different cultures….do you wish people in Muslim nations behave as those in South America?
Referendums must be held to determine the peoples choice of political and religious choice.
Do you have any evidence that the outcome of any referendum held would be any different than what has been shown over and over and over again by elections, polls, etc.? For example, do you have evidence to show that those who are praying on the streets in Egypt would vote for secular, non-Islamic laws?
I think if a referendum was held today in Iran the people would not accept a theocracy run constitution.
Would you mind providing reliable evidence from which you have made this determination?
Giving a religious tint to the people’s struggle is pure religious bigotry.
Giving secular/atheist/agnostic tint to Muslim people’s struggle is bigotry. Full Stop.
@fyi says:
September 18, 2011 at 10:21 am
Furthermore, he is also trying to limit the polical choices available
psot-Arab Spring and orient them towards Islam, of which he is the Leader.
This is exactly it, why should people’s uprising have anything to do with religion. During the 80′s in South and Central America did the people talk about Christian Awakening during their struggle against imperialism? Referendums must be held to determine the peoples choice of political and religious choice. I think if a referendum was held today in Iran the people would not accept a theocracy run constitution. Giving a religious tint to the people’s struggle is pure religious bigotry.
A friend forwarded this little tidbit — anyone here have more info?:
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, and the executive director of the Council for the National Interest:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/tapping-the-israeli-embassy/
“What the FBI uncovered was a massive and highly focused campaign referred to by the Israelis as “perception management,” but which the CIA would refer to as a covert action.
Much of the activity was illegal or incompatible with the role of foreign diplomats in the United States, which is why Leibowitz took action after his supervisors refused to proceed with prosecution. The focus was on Iran, with Israeli officials intent on preparing the American public for war against the mullahs. They were spreading disinformation on Iran’s nuclear program, promoting international sanctions, and trying to obtain Washington’s support for an ultimatum on the nuclear program as a final diplomatic gesture that would be turned down by Iran, leading to war with the U.S. playing the lead role. The Israeli Embassy’s activities consisted of drafting articles and editorials that were placed with an accommodating media, paying journalists to write pieces making the same points, and working closely with groups like WINEP and AIPAC to present policymakers with a coordinated list of arguments for war. At least one congressman from Indiana was approached directly by Israeli intelligence and agreed to host an anti-Iran conference as well as to introduce legislation tightening Iran sanctions. The recorded telephone conversation between an Israeli intelligence officer and Rep. Jane Harman in April 2009, in which she agreed to intervene on behalf of accused AIPAC spies Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman in exchange for chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, was also part of the special FBI counterintelligence operation.
Leibowitz’s concern that the illegal activity would not be prosecuted by the Justice Department proved correct. No Israeli or American named in the extensive FBI investigative dossier has been in any way punished.”
Rehmat,
On your blog you state: “Both Hamas leadrs and Tehran are not in favor of a land-locked Palestinian state on 20% of pre-1948 Palestine. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Sunday said his country rejects the separation of Palestine and calls for a free referendum for the Palestinian people to determine their own fate.”
The facts on the ground have virtually made a two state solution impossible. A two-state trending into a bi-national one state solution is likely the best solution for all parties involved. If push came to shove and Israel had to make a choice between one state or two, their actions indicate one state will be their preference. Clearly this has been the goal all along with their settlement policy.
The UN recognition of a Palestinian state is aimed at bolstering future negotiations so that they take place between sovereign peers–between the State of Palestine and the State of Israel. The Occupier and Occupied dynamic has been rejected.
All:
Dr. Alterman’s testimony:
http://csis.org/files/media/csis/congress/ts080605alterman.pdf
Unknown Unknowns says: September 19, 2011 at 12:04 am
You obviously do not have detailed knowledge of the Arabs in Israel.
fyi says:
September 18, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Those Arabs are probably the best governed Arabs in the entire world.
Discrimination against Arabs with Israeli citizenship, however, is rampant.
*
What did I tell you about taking your meds, dearie?
All:
On Mr. Obama’s policy in regards to Palestine
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/obama-s-historic-opportunity-1.385084
All:
HAMAS Position
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hamas-we-may-back-palestinian-state-that-does-not-recognize-israel-s-existence-1.385176
All:
If you want some sort of durable arrangement for the war in Palestine, you will need the HAMAS deal – 2-state solution is a pipe-dream concoted by Axis Powers to keep the Arab leaders sucking on that pacifier.
The events of the last 10 years have destroyed the illusion of two-state-for-two-people.
I think the status quoa will continue while the possibility of the HAMAS deal becomes more and more remote.
Politically, the Peace Camp (if any) among Muslims will become insignificant while the war parties will increase in number.
Things will get ughly.
Photi says: September 18, 2011 at 8:52 pm
Israel’s record of treatment of her Arab citizens is not bad.
Those Arabs are probably the best governed Arabs in the entire world.
Discrimination against Arabs with Israeli citizenship, however, is rampant.
The apartheid regime starts with the Occupied Territories.
James Canning says: September 18, 2011 at 5:50 pm
HAMAS will not accept Israel as being legitimate.
HAMAS position is tantamount to the destruction of State of Israel.
If I were Israeli leaders, I would take the 99-year HAMAS cease-fire deal.
James Canning says: September 18, 2011 at 5:49 pm
I said EU-US projects.
Humpty Dumpty, our very own ovate calcareous and chitinous exoskeleton-endowed ovum, recommends
http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/
for those who are still on the fence on the question of whether he was *pushed* or ‘had a big fall’.
fyi says:
September 18, 2011 at 4:38 pm
“I beleive that it is in the national interest of the Iran to wreck as many of the US-EU Projects as possible.”
“There is no other way.”
I TOTALY AND UNRESERVEDLY AGREE WITH YOUR STATMENT.
James Canning says:
September 18, 2011 at 1:13 pm
“Probably it would be more accurate to say that a belief that all men are equal in the eyes of the law, is a basic concept of a democracy. But of couse this situation is not what obtains in Israel.”
Would it be more accurate? The friends of Israel in the US like to celebrate the close bonds the American nation has with Israel based on mutual principles and values. They are like us they claim.
Don’t the friends of Israel envision themselves to be an outpost of freedom and American democratic ideals in a region of tyranny?
We had a Civil War and Rights movement to prove to our American selves that all men are created equal. If israel wants to claim they are like Americans, they need to be like the Americans of today instead of the Americans of Alabama circa 1850. If the Israelis indeed are like Americans, they will one day have an Arab for Prime Minister. I have a difficult time buying into the argument that zionism can never change. It is a man-made ideology, of course it can change. Surely the Israelis are human, surely they can reason that the current path they are on is leading to their ultimate destruction and is severely taxing the American good graces being offered them. If the Israelis want to be like Americans, All men are created equal. I
Bolton: ‘Obama is no friend of Israel’
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/bolton-obama-is-no-friend-of-israel/
Reza & James:
With respect to Reza’s (rhetorical) question, “How much more stupid can this get? How much more desperate can this get?” I give you bushtheliberator’s response (from the last thread):
bushtheliberator says:
September 16, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Are you still upset that the Surrender Monkeys failed to ” snatch defeat from victory ” So sad. O-Bambi, the Reluctant Neo-Con,will be gone by’13 ; then the A-Team Neo-Cons can focus on #2 in the Axis of Evil,the Islamic (NOT !) Republic (NOT !) of Iran.
I’m afraid that the answer to that question is that the fat lady will not sing until we have The Crusades II followed by The Inquisition II – not the dress rehearsal, but full blown, on the scale that only the weaponmakers of modernity have made possible.
James: “I have actually had reasonably well-informed Americans ask me in the past few weeks, how the US could defend itself “against the Muslims” if the US did not have Israel in the Middle East. I suspect they watch Fox News.”
The answer to those ignorant (or uninformed, if you prefer) Americans is that America *had* not enemies in the middle east before the creation of the Catastrophe.
Similarly, the answer to the willfully ignorant knaves who go on about Ahmadinejad’s “plan” to “wipe Israel off the map” isn’t the tepid Juan Cole-esque refrain that Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated or taken out of context. The answer is that the Zionist entity *should* be wiped off the map (like the Apartheid entity before it was), just as the Zionist entity wiped Palestine off the map with its Anglo-American co-facilitators in that god-forsaken day in 1948 in the UN building in New York, where some of those chickens came home to roost.
Thomas Friedman of The New York Times today (Sept. 17th) has a column conceding that the Israel lobby is so powerful in the US, in the run-up to an election, that it can force the US to act against the best interests of the US, and Israel, at the UN. (Referring to Palestinian statehood bid) Glenn Greenwald has a piece on this at Salon.com
Reza,
I have actually had reasonably well-informed Americans ask me in the past few weeks, how the US could defend itself “against the Muslims” if the US did not have Israel in the Middle East. I suspect they watch Fox News.
Reza,
Reza Kahlili claims that “the world is facing another mad dictatorship in an Iran bent on mass destruction”, and of course puts emphasis on the fact Iran is enriching to 20%. Fox News rubbish, to be sure, but no doubt it does frighten many foolish Americans.
Israeli porn hits the Dead Sea
http://rehmat2.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/israeli-porn-hits-the-dead-sea/
fyi,
Hamas has given strong signals it will accept Israel within pre-1967 borders. Subject to certain conditions, of course. Surely Iran should accept any deal with Israel that is accepted by the Palestinians themselves.
Iranophobia has reached new levels.
This article from an “ex-CIA spy” claims that Iran is preparing to nuke Israel and to kill 200 million Americans with an an electromagnetic radioactive bomb.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/18/must-america-accept-nuclear-iran/
How much more stupid can this get? How much more desperate can this get?
(Ok, it is Fox News….but still).
fyi,
Do you think Iran should try to wreck Russian, Chinese and Brazilian projects, in Libya, in order to damage the UK, Spain, Italy etc.?
James Canning says: September 18, 2011 at 1:42 pm
What you are stating is that the war in Palestine will continue indefinitely into the future.
Even at this late time; the HAMS deal is on the table.
This could buy sometime until the next war.
James Canning says: September 18, 2011 at 1:16 pm
I haev no position on Libya or its oil & gas concessions.
I beleieve Libya is going through an unstable period.
I beleive that it is in the national interest of the Iran to wreck as many of the US-EU Projects as possible.
There is no other way.
Empty says “Iran’s suggestion to the US would be something in the line of: “stop dominating other nations; stop oppressing other nations; stop your aggressions against other nations; and try to maintain mutually peaceful relationship with others; stop your hegemony.”
I would think they would add to that advice by stating that the US Government should stop dominating and oppressing its own population first. Charity, after all, begins at home :o)
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4?op=1#ixzz1YJ4BtJwf
Photi,
RE: what is the international system as Iran perceives it? Where is her place among all the others? For that matter, Where is America’s place in the international system as Iran perceives it? Is there a point of reconciliation between the “West” and Iran and the Muslim world generally? The War with Islam is *definitely* not in the American national interest.
Iran’s foreign policy is guided by specific article in the constitution. I am listing translation/interpretation of a few of the relevant articles here. Although, I think there are other articles that directly and/or indirectly affect how Iran devises and operationalizes its foreign policy. To the best of my knowledge and given the realities of the world we live in, Iran has continued to maintain its fidelity and commitment to the constitution regardless of internal and external pressures to do otherwise. I hope this is useful and somewhat answers some of your questions.
Chapter 1, Article 11 In accordance to esteemed Quranic verse: ان هذا امتکم امته واحدة و انا ربکم فاعبودون All Muslims are one Ummah thus the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is obligated to base its overall policy on unity and collaboration among all Islamic nations and do its utmost toward achieving political, economic, and cultural unity in the Islamic world.
Chapter 10 {Foreign Policy} Article 152: The Islamic Republic of Iran is based on full rejection of seeking domination of other nations or being dominated by other nations; the preservation of full independence and complete territorial integrity; defense of the rights of all Muslims; rejection of any type of commitment to hegemonic powers; and the maintenance of mutually peaceful relations with all non-belligerent States.
Article 153: Any agreement that may pave the way for foreign domination over natural, economic, military, and cultural resources of the nation and any other aspects of the national life, is forbidden.
Article 154: The Islamic Republic of Iran holds human happiness [سعادت بشری] as its ideals for human society and recognizes independence, freedom, and governance based on justice and truth to be the right of all human beings. Therefore, while diligently refraining from all forms of interference in the internal affairs of other nations, it supports the just struggles of the mustaḍ‘afūn [oppressed] against the mustakbirūn [arrogant powers] in every corner of the globe.
Article 155: The Islamic Republic of Iran may grant political asylum to those who seek it unless they are determined to be traitors and saboteurs in accordance to the law.
Source: ;http://www.lums.ac.ir/Files/allami/ganoon-asasi-iran.pdf
What is Iran’s suggestion for how America should get out of the quagmire we are now in?
Based on Iran’s constitution and prior claims, I am making an educated guess that Iran’s suggestion to the US would be something in the line of: “stop dominating other nations; stop oppressing other nations; stop your aggressions against other nations; and try to maintain mutually peaceful relationship with others; stop your hegemony.” Again, I am just guessing this.
Arnold says “If so, we are entering a new world now.”
That is indeed good news. But I would say that we entered the new century in the February of 1979, and that the fall of (naa)Mubarak’s Egypt and its inevitable aftermath are just one domino in the cascade, which includes the turn of Turkey’s gaze eastward, and will no doubt include the fall of the House of Sa’ud before the the decade’s out, insha’llah.
For those unfamiliar with the work of John Perkins, of “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” fame:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fG8_5HWqan4
Elections are scheduled for Egypt!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14965279
Even more than Bushehr, this is the good news I’ve been waiting for. I don’t like how the elections are drawn out over months. That leaves opportunities for manipulation and intervention, but so far we haven’t seen any. If there are actual election problems, I’m sure, or at least I hope Egyptians will be able to correct them.
Here’s hoping they’re actually held on schedule.
If so, we are entering a new world now.
James says: “Too few people are even aware of the FBI programme to monitor the conspiracy of the Israeli gov’t to set up war with Iran, by duping the American public with planted false news stories, etc.”
Too true, but what difference does it make, ultimately, if when these conspiracies are exposed, nothing is done about them by the ZOG?
fyi,
Almost all experts on the Israel/Palestine problem agree there is no chance the Jews would relinquish control of the army, police, security services, the courts, etc.
fyi,
We should bear in mind that Iran offered to accept Israel within its pre-1967 borders, during the effort to restore normal relations (fostered by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran). Back in 2001-03.
Rehmat: This one’s for you.
If I wanted to listen to an asshole, I’d fart.
Sorry, ladies… the line was just too good not to pass on.
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/if-i-wanted-to-listen-to-an-asshole-id-fart/
fyi,
Do you oppose oil and gas operations in Libya by Russian and Chinese companies? By Brazilian companies? Italian companies?
Erdogan was quite right to say that the remaining troops of the Gaddafit government should put down their arms. Or do you disagree?
Photi,
Probably it would be more accurate to say that a belief that all men are equal in the eyes of the law, is a basic concept of a democracy. But of couse this situation is not what obtains in Israel.
Unknown Unknowns,
My understanding is that there is an effort in the Jewish community in Seattle to smear the blogger who received the raw intelligence from Liebowitz. This suggests that a criminal conspiracy to involve the US in yet another illegal war in the Middle East, on the basis of false pretenses, is something many Jews do not want to hear about or know about, or understand.
Unknown Unknowns says: September 18, 2011 at 11:59 am
You are right that the two-state solution is dead.
Axis Powers killed it back in 1999.
Excluding the 99-year HAMAS Cease-Fire deal, the way forward is only resistance and war until the last vestige of the apartheid regime in Palestine is removed.
Politically, one has to devise a confessional system of representative governance for the area between the Western bank of the Jordan River all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. A system very similar to that of Lebanon (and the future Syrian Republic.)
Unknown Unknows,
Good to see Philip Giraldi’s piece posted on this site. Too few people are even aware of the FBI programme to monitor the conspiracy of the Israeli gov’t to set up war with Iran, by duping the American public with planted false news stories, etc.
Aipac and Winep are at the heart of the criminal conspiracy.
Unknown Unknowns,
The Palestinian initiative at the UN would result in recognition of Palestine with 22% of what was Mandate Palestine in 1947.
The idea is to prevent Israel from taking more than the 78% included within pre-1967 borders.
Dave:
Here is another unsung American hero (born in occupied Palestine, of all places):
The article is hot off the American Conservative press and is too good and too short for me not to paste it in its entirety.
*
Tapping the Israeli Embassy
By Philip Giraldi
September 17, 2011 — ” American Conservative” — Shamai Leibowitz, an FBI Hebrew translator, was arrested in May 2010 for revealing restricted information consisting of five reports classified “secret” to an unidentified blogger. He confessed—explaining that he had been trying to reveal illegal activity—repented, and was sentenced to a minimum term of 20 months in prison. He has now been released. There was considerable speculation over what Leibowitz, a left-wing, Israel-born dual national, had actually revealed. A New York newspaper claimed that the information had gone to a “pro-Palestinian Arab group.”
In reality, Leibowitz, who had top-secret clearance, was working as the translator for an undercover FBI counterintelligence team operating out of Calverton, Maryland. The FBI was tapping into all the telephone lines and cell phone numbers associated with diplomats and intelligence officers working out of the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the United Nations in New York. The Israelis practiced good communications security when they were on their phones speaking English, but they were reportedly extremely reckless when speaking Hebrew because they believed that they could not be understood. The FBI compiled a thick dossier on Israeli diplomats and spies and was able to establish linkages to a number of other targets of interest. Analyzing the Hebrew recordings, Leibowitz identified a number of hidden relationships with U.S. government officials and the media, as well as advocacy groups like AIPAC and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
What the FBI uncovered was a massive and highly focused campaign referred to by the Israelis as “perception management,” but which the CIA would refer to as a covert action. Much of the activity was illegal or incompatible with the role of foreign diplomats in the United States, which is why Leibowitz took action after his supervisors refused to proceed with prosecution. The focus was on Iran, with Israeli officials intent on preparing the American public for war against the mullahs. They were spreading disinformation on Iran’s nuclear program, promoting international sanctions, and trying to obtain Washington’s support for an ultimatum on the nuclear program as a final diplomatic gesture that would be turned down by Iran, leading to war with the U.S. playing the lead role. The Israeli Embassy’s activities consisted of drafting articles and editorials that were placed with an accommodating media, paying journalists to write pieces making the same points, and working closely with groups like WINEP and AIPAC to present policymakers with a coordinated list of arguments for war. At least one congressman from Indiana was approached directly by Israeli intelligence and agreed to host an anti-Iran conference as well as to introduce legislation tightening Iran sanctions. The recorded telephone conversation between an Israeli intelligence officer and Rep. Jane Harman in April 2009, in which she agreed to intervene on behalf of accused AIPAC spies Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman in exchange for chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, was also part of the special FBI counterintelligence operation.
Leibowitz’s concern that the illegal activity would not be prosecuted by the Justice Department proved correct. No Israeli or American named in the extensive FBI investigative dossier has been in any way punished.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
Copyright © 2008 The American Conservative
Photi:
I’m sorry to have to put in in these terms, but what you pasted is a sick liberal Zionist’s fantasy.
This is the bitter, stark reality on the ground that the Moslem umma faces every waking day:
Iran: State of Palestine Must Include Israel
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in Tehran today that Iran would reject any move to recognize a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The Palestinian Authority is seeking the international recognition of Palestinian statehood alongside Israel with pre-1967 borders that will include the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Iran advocates a single Palestinian state that includes Isreal.
“We will never recognize the Zionist Entity and this is our solemn position ever since the success of the Islamic Revolution,” Salehi said [IRNA, 18 September].
“The issue of recognizing Palestine as an independent state could be on the schedule of the next UN General Assembly meeting, but Palestine cannot be left to split into two parts as many believe,” Salehi added. “Our official position is that Palestine is the property of all Palestinians and we will not, under any circumstances, agree to its division.”
*
And this is why Iran’s position, as is usually the case, is the correct one:
http://www.voltairenet.org/Who-wins-from-the-Palestinian
The last two paragraphs of which read,
Either outcome will keep the Palestinian people colonised, discriminated against, oppressed, and exiled. This entire brouhaha over the UN vote is ultimately about which of the two scenarios is better for Israeli interests. The Palestinian people and their interests are not even part of this equation.
The question on the table before the UN, then, is not whether the UN should recognise the right of the Palestinian people to a state in accordance with the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would grant them 45 per cent of historic Palestine, nor of a Palestinian state within the June 5, 1967 borders along the Green Line, which would grant them 22 per cent of historic Palestine. A UN recognition ultimately means the negation of the rights of the majority of the Palestinian people in Israel, in the diaspora, in East Jerusalem, and even in Gaza, and the recognition of the rights of some West Bank Palestinians to a Bantustan on a fraction of West Bank territory amounting to less than 10 per cent of historic Palestine. Israel will be celebrating either outcome.
Dave:
Thanks to the link to that wonderful clip. As you say, Baskerville was indeed a martyr for for the cause of truth and justice, which recognizes no boundaries, be they national, racial, tribal, cultural or indeed religious. The presence of the likes of him and Morgan Shuster in our history obviate the depths to which the depravity of the United States’ hegemonic foreign policy has dragged a once august and beloved country.
Uri Avnery at Counterpunch. On the subject of what could have been. Democracy has certain inalienable principles, one of those being that all men are created equal. If the Israelis ever realize this self-evident truth there might be a chance for peace. The quotes begin with Avnery expressing the optimism he felt at the end of the 1948 war. There is much more at the link:
“While recovering from my wounds and still in uniform, I met with several young people, Arabs and Jews, to plot our course. We were very optimistic. Now everything seemed possible.
What we were thinking about was a great act of fraternization. Jews and Arabs had fought each other valiantly, each fighting for what they considered their national rights. Now the time had come to reach out for peace.
The idea of peace between two gallant fighters after the battle is as old as Semitic culture. In the epic written more than 3000 years ago, Gilgamesh, king of Uruk (in today’s Iraq) fights against the wild Enkidu, his equal in strength and courage, and after the epic fight they become blood brothers.
We had fought hard and had won. The Palestinians had lost everything. The part of Palestine that had been allotted by the UN to their state had been gobbled up by Israel, Jordan and Egypt, leaving nothing for them. Half the Palestinian people had been driven from their homes and become refugees.
That was the time, we thought, for the victor to stun the world with an act of magnanimity and wisdom, offering to help the Palestinians to set up their state in return for peace. Thus we could forge a friendship that would last for generations.
18 years later I brought this vision up again in similar circumstances. We had won a stunning victory against the Arab armies in the Six-Day war, the Middle East was in a state of shock. An Israeli offer to the Palestinians to establish their state would have electrified the region.
I AM telling this story (again) in order to make one point: when the “Two-State Solution” was conceived for the first time after 1948, it was as an idea of reconciliation, fraternization and mutual respect.
…
When the Two-State Solution made its extraordinary march from the vision of a handful of outsiders (or crazies) to a world-wide consensus, it was this context in which it was viewed. Not a plot against Israel, but the only viable basis for real peace.
This vision was firmly rejected by David Ben-Gurion, then the undisputed leader of Israel. He was busy distributing new Jewish immigrants across the vast areas expropriated from the Arabs, and he did not believe in peace with the Arabs anyhow. He set the course that successive Israeli governments, including the present one, have followed ever since.
On the Arab side, there was always support for this vision. Already at the Lausanne Conference in 1949, an unofficial Palestinian delegation appeared and secretly offered to start direct negotiations, but they were roughly rebuffed by the Israeli delegate, Eliyahu Sasson, on direct orders from Ben-Gurion (as I heard from him later).
Yasser Arafat told me several times – from 1982 to his death in 2004 – that he would support a “Benelux” solution (on the model of the union between Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg), which would include Israel, Palestine and Jordan (“and perhaps Lebanon too, why not?”)
…
Imagine that in the coming UN debate something incredible happens: the Israeli delegate declares that after due consideration Israel has decided to vote for recognition of the state of Palestine.
The assembly would gape in disbelief. After a moment of silence, wild applause would break out. The world would be electrified. For days, the world media would speak of nothing else.”
Baskerville: American Martyr of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution:
http://www.jadidonline.com/images/stories/flash_multimedia/Baskerville_tabriz_test/bas_high.html
hans says: September 18, 2011 at 3:51 am
I think you are underestimating Mr. Khamenei.
He has a very firm grasp of geopolitics – or perhaps he is being well advised.
Since outside of Islam there is no framework for civic, religious, or political culture, he is trying to reclaim the Arab Spring for Islam.
He is free to do so and thus limit the scope of Western-oriented Arabs who might try to push for unworkable Western models down in this or that country. Furthermore, he is also trying to limit the polical choices available psot-Arab Spring and orient them towards Islam, of which he is the Leader.
Iranians cannot fight in Libya and push the Axis Powers out, they have to defeat them on the level of ideas.
Thank God for the Palestinian bid for Statehood in UN.
Hegemony or not hegemony?
=======================
I’m late, I’m late for very important date. Would love to know the answer, but too busy growing our GDPs, building up our defenses, deepening our networks of international commerce.
Best wishes,
-The rest of the world
hans – sorry to burst your ‘Iranophobia’ baloon – Libya was an ISRAELI PROJECT – just like the regime changes in Syria and Lebanon.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/who-is-behind-turmoil-in-libya/
United Nations is holding the 10-year commemoration (Durban III) of a global UN conference on combating racism (Durban I, 2001) in its headquarters in New York on September 22, 2011. Over a dozen western governments have announced to boycott the conference because Iranian President Dr. Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel remarks in the past. The Israel hasbara brigade has called Durban III, the ”Qaddafi Associates” meeting!!
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/durban-iii-ahmadinejad-and-the-lobby/
This is what Iran’s theocracy, parliament and the Supreme Leader supports
What Really Happened in Libya? – Mahdi Nazemroaya on GRTV
Is this Islamic Awakening? God help us non Islamic people! I think the only reality politician in Iran is the President. Time to ask the people if the SL should really be involved in politics.
Another case of just because.
Just because you drive a BMW or a Benz doesn’t make you a better driver.
Just because you go to MIT doesn’t make you any smarter about the “other.”
Just because you have written a paper about US policy doesn’t make you privy to all that goes on behind closed doors, the hard men, and the decisions they make.
Just because the US increasingly acts outside the law locally and internationally doesn’t mean there won’t be retribution.
Just because you have 11, down from 13, carriers, doesn’t mean you are invulnerable to a noor missile.
Just because the US is a hegemon, doesn’t mean it is going to last long enough to see it through.
Just because Ray Takeyh writes articles doesn’t mean he is not a total sell out.
Just because I haven’t read these two’s paper I am going to hold back my judgment. I think I heard one say, they are young and impressionable, but he said it so cockily that sounded like, we are in-the-know, you don’t need to bother teaching us anything.
Why am I writing this? Just because!
James Canning says: September 17, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Britain, like France, Germany, and Italy will vote against the Palestinian state.
No doubt.
That is a vote against Islam; that Jews can apply apartheid policy to a (now) predominantly Muslim population with impunity.
As I said before, these are excellent developments for the Iranians, weakening any Shia-Sunni divisions by showing how the Shia stand for the rights of oppressed Muslims of Palestine while Sunni political leaders can only wring their hands and beg the Christian Potentates to do something.
Once again, Scott Lucas is focusing on “regime” instability due to expressions of political activism. Demonstration does not a revolution make.
You are a warmonger Scott cloaked in the shroud of human rights.
http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2011/9/17/iran-feature-is-civil-disobedience-taking-off-tait.html
Flynt:
Nice tie.
fyi,
Tell me again what “empire” is being sought by the US in the Middle East. An opportunity to scr*w the American taxpayers, so Israel can scr*w the Palestinians? This is an “empire”? Or utter lunacy?
Are Takeyh and Pollack unable to grasp the fact Obama wrecked his overtures to Iran by suggesting he would attack Iran militarily? And is it fair to say the Israel right or wrong crowd, in his own administration, made a mess of Obama’s programme?
Photi (and Reza),
The US spent about $1.2 trillion last year on “defence”, and most of the money was quite frankly squandered. And yes, the wars in the Middle East are doing little to enhance the national security interests of the American people. In fact, much “defence” spending actually works to undermine American national security. And ISRAEL is a large part of the explanation.
fyi,
Several European countries would have an easier time in opposing American efforts to manipulate their foreign policy, to enable Israel to continue screwing the Palestinians, but the Iranian enrichment to 20% is a considerable handicap.
fyi,
Let’s see how the vote goes in the UN General Assembly, and how many EU countries vote in favor the Palestine resolution.
I am of course concerned at the degree to which the Israel lobby not only compromises American national security, but also damages the national security interests of European countries.
fyi,
The UK wants an end to the Israeli oocupation of the West Bank. Why is that taking Britain on a “collision course” against Islam?
Photi,
Obama’s problem is that he needs support from Democrats in the Congress and Senate, and those Democrats depend upon rich Jews to finance their election campaigns. And these rich Jews keep telling Obama he must allow Netanyahu to lecture him publicly in the White House, spit in his face, etc. etc.
kooshy,
Do Pollack and Takeyh find it difficult to see that Iran wants an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights? Or, do Takeyh and Pollack prefer not to focus attention on this issue?
Photi says: September 17, 2011 at 1:12 pm
I am defining the inevitable but only the most likely outcome in the near future.
Axis Powers used to be on collision course with Iran on Palestine (and on Persian Gulf and on the nuclear issue).
Now the Axis Powers are on collision course with Islam on the issue of Palestine.
In the absence of political dialogue among all Middle Eastern states and the leader of the Axis Powers – the United State – on the disposition of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, war will always be the only alternative.
This absence of dialogue leaves the Axis Powers with no other instrementality of state power to exercise effectively except war.
Since war is the most likely event in the future for the Middle East, it also makes it imperative for the Iranian leaders to prepare to defend their country by all means necessary.
Things will get ugly.
James,
President Obama should give back his $$$billion dollars in campaign money and pledge to be President of the United States until two weeks before the election. At that point he can run one nationally televised campaign ad to layout his platform and to demonstrate to Americans why he should be President for four more years. Special interests are derailing genuine American national interests. If the president gives up the money he is much more free to do the job he was elected to do.
James Canning says: September 17, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Please give examples of European policies in regards to Palestine and Iran which qualitatively distinguishes them from those of US.
A thug is raping a young woman in a dark alley. There, in the corner, is EU holding the flash light, urging the Thug to be a bit more gentle and less rough.
Afterwards, EU is there to provide band-aide and hand-holding to the victim; advising her that she should have grinned and borne it without putting up a fight.
That is the sum-total of EU policy.
Photi,
Good comments to FYI. To be blunt, rich and powerful Jews told Obama to be kind to Israel even if Netanyahu spits in his face. Or else.
fyi,
There are considerale difference of opinion within the EU and within Nato, but you do your best to smooth those differences over, and to make it easier for the Zionist expansionists to demonise Iran.
fyi,
“I expect that US will eventually knock at the Iranians’ door in order to be re-admitted into the good graces of Muslims world-wide. We are not there yet, more wars and more blood-shed awaits us as more Muslims will die due to Western policies. At that time, of course, the deal that would have been possible in 2007 will not be on the table and the cost that Axis Powers have to pay will be considerably higher.”
isn’t this arbitrarily defining the inevitable, and then succumbing oneself to it? why not define the inevitable as realizing (on the American side) the folly of this war and retreating from the Muslim world beforehand?
Adding more bloodshed to the already considerable amount which has already been shed is psychotic. Reason and logic seem to have lost all traction with American politicians.
I honestly (and now clearly naively) thought President Obama was going to re-introduce reason to the foreign relations discourse. Come next week the chance of that coming true will evaporate at the UN. So unfortunate.
fyi,
I agree with you that Obama’s stated goals obviously could not be achieve without working with Iran. Aipac and other elements of the Israel lobby have subverted Obama’s programme and intentionally injured the national security interests of the American people. Because they want Israel to keep the West Bamk and the Golan Hei8ghts.
R S Hack,
Israel has been offered peace and recogntion by all Arab countries for the past nine years, and foolishly failed to take up that offer due to delusional belief much or even all of the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, can be kept permanently. Israel can be a rich country within its pre-1967 borders. Delusional Zionist expansionism puts it at risk.
Photi says: September 17, 2011 at 11:42 am
The international system – realy an inter-state system – is certainly dominated by Axis Powers.
But their power is not supreme.
Every single state has some power, some more than others, and could exercise that independent power.
Iran has land and mari-time borders with 15 other states. It cannot be isolated. She sells oil and imports and exports lots of other stuff. Her citizens come and go to many different countries of this world.
She is empathically not isolated in the sense that there is now an basence of intercourse with other states.
What the Axis Powers have achieved, since 2007 and even earlier, has been the exclusion of Iran from the political settlements of the Middle East. They aimed to harm Iran and pursue their own interests against those of Iran.
The events in Afghanista, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Palestine since 2007 and the more recent events of the so-called Arab Spring have – in my opinion – demonstrated that the infeasibility of their “Isolate & Shun Iran” policy.
While they have forced Iranians out from certain areas, Iranains have came back from the back-door and entrenched themselves in – pursuing their own policy of “Isolate & Shun Axis Powers” policy.
Given the asymmetry of power between Iran and the Axis Powers, one would have expected Iranians to have folded.
However, power is local and Iranian played their hand very well indeed while Axis Powers went from one phyrric victory to another.
In 2009, Mr. Ahmadinejad observed that without cooperation with Iran, Mr. Obama’s stated goals in Persian Gulf, in Palestine, in Non-proliferation, and in Central Asia cannot be achieved.
The Americans and Europeans evidently thought otherwise and proceeded to precisely achieve what he ahd told them that they could not, without Iran. They failed.
Now we are witnessing the general disarray of the Axis Powers Palestine Policy; a veto of State of Palestine in UNSC or voting against it there is an emotional slap in the face of Muslims world-wide that Iranian leaders will exploit to the hilt.
Today, Mr. Khamenei made a speech in which he observed that “the Western block is maintaining her position via war, violence, and trickery” and urged Muslims “…not to turst US, NATO, and the criminal regimes of UK, France, and Italy..”
I expect that US will eventually knock at the Iranians’ door in order to be re-admitted into the good graces of Muslims world-wide. We are not there yet, more wars and more blood-shed awaits us as more Muslims will die due to Western policies. At that time, of course, the deal that would have been possible in 2007 will not be on the table and the cost that Axis Powers have to pay will be considerably higher.
We shall see.
[No state can wage a successful war against any religion; such a policy is suicide for that state.]
Empty says:
September 17, 2011 at 11:17 am
Empty, your post here is i think answering many of my questions which i posted afterwards. The analogy you give about drunks and driving is accurate and i can relate to it in a personal way. I should go back inshallah and read it several times.
It is difficult to reason with drunks, so where is the beginning of the discussion?
*And by “Iran” i should have been more clear. I am sure there are a multitude of opinions in Iran, i was curious as to what some of those are or your (empty’s) particular take on the matter is.
Empty,
Well then, the joke is on me. My ears are wide open, what is the international system as Iran perceives it? Where is her place among all the others? For that matter, Where is America’s place in the international system as Iran perceives it?
Is there a point of reconciliation between the “West” and Iran and the Muslim world generally? The War with Islam is *definitely* not in the American national interest.
What is Iran’s suggestion for how America should get out of the quagmire we are now in?
Photi says: September 17, 2011 at 11:33 am
“Defense of Commons” is a fatuity cooked up by Western propagandists to obfuscate the exercise of their military and political dominance over areas over which they have neither de facto nor de jur sovereignity.
The equivalent term used by Imperial Japan was “Co-prosperity Sphere”.
You should not fall into the linguistic traps; these are froms and expressions of the “Will to Empire”.
And only defeat or economic hardship is going to alter its quest.
Typo….there should be no “on”…
Photi,
I think there is no contradiction in what fyi stated. “Attempts” could be made to carry out a plan but that does not mean they have been successful. The US and her allies have been quite on unsuccessful in isolating Iran despite their very well-funded attempts.
fyi,
“The international system has not excluded Iran; that paradigm is not accurate.
The Axis Powers have tried to isolat Iran, locally and globally.”
The “Axis Powers” control the international system. There is no difference between excluding and isolating. Your statements above contradict themselves (and in such close proximity!)
fyi,
The Islamic position then is Muslim dominance over Muslim lands? Sounds so reasonable to me, but the degree of Islamophobia in the US causes American policy makers to fear Muslim sovereignty.
The defense of the Commons has more to do with a strong Navy and Airforce, away from the lands, as per the way Josh in the video described it.
Photi says: September 17, 2011 at 10:21 am
The international system has not excluded Iran; that paradigm is not accurate.
The Axis Powers have tried to isolat Iran, locally and globally.
They have failed in their reaching that goal but they have harmed Iran.
At the same time, the War in Palestine is being used by Iran to further destroy Axis Powers position.
The world of Islam will not tolerate a (Western) Christian & Jewish agenda.
While watching the video, I found myself drawing several parallels between the presentations and the field of health behavior. Quite a few health behavior models deal with figuring out why some people engage in extremely risky and dangerous behaviors and where and how to intervene. A few of elements in those health behavior models could be applied to the US foreign policy [unhealthy] behaviors discussed in the video.
Health Belief Model and Transtheoretical Model of Change (or Stages of Change Model) were two in particular that could be used to neatly frame the content of the video.
Briefly, Perceived susceptibility [i.e. one’s perception of how vulnerable or invulnerable one is to hazardous consequences of a high risk behavior] and perceived severity [i.e. one’s perception of how bad/severe is the harm should it occur as a consequence of a risky behavior] in health belief model are observed to be way off in people (especially adolescents) who are engaged in extremely high risk behaviors (like drunk driving, drug overdose, binge drinking, high risk sexual activity, etc.). Consistently, people who engage in these high-risk activities have a distorted perception of risk and highly inflated and unrealistic optimism about the consequences of their risk behaviors. They tend to believe that they can, for example, get behind the wheel while drunk and there would be little chance of a car crash and even if there were to be one, no substantial harm would come to them, their friends riding with them and/or any potential third parties.
The wheels of the US foreign policy, it so appears, is in the hands of a bunch of intoxicated adolescents with “low perceived susceptibility” and “low perceived severity,” An initial wise step is to get those damned keys out of their hands and kick them from behind the wheel. This can be done. It requires courage, will, and unity among a few sober adults. At least have a designated driver for while till perceptions are changed.
Second is working diligently on the policy makers’ and the population’s perception. Perceptions are [correctly and incorrectly] engineered. The unrealistic optimism among most US policy makers and the population about the US’s power and a sense of entitlement are fostered through different channels. One mode has been discussed in this forum quite a few times. In 2011, for example, we have : X-Men: First Class; Transformers: Dark of the Moon; Thor; Capitan America: The First Avenger; Green Lantern [Inc.]; The Green Hornet; Griff the Invisible, etc. Good “booster injections” are prepared for 2012 which include: The Dark Knight Rises; The Amazing Spider-man; The Avengers (this is a good one since it brings a bunch of “super heroes” together ); Men in Black (MIB) III; Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance; Dredd, etc.
Another part of the video, [I thought this point was very clearly raised by Flynt Leverett] could be linked to Stages of Change also known as Transtheoretical Model of Change health behavior model. This model maintains that right program/plan must be offered at the right “stage” if it hopes to be successful. That is, to an alcoholic person who is at a pre-contemplation phase [that is, he has not even admitted that he has a problem] you cannot recommend specific locations and schedules of AA meetings (analogous to something that the two gentlemen were offering in their papers) . In that, I found myself agreeing that the paper that was presented in fact jumped ahead and was premature. At the same time, to get converts from those policy makers and members of the public who have high perceived barriers (i.e. one’s perception that there are too many strategic barriers to a particular behavior change plan), this paper could be useful and must target those folks as its intended audience.
These were just a few initial thoughts…..thanks for posting the video.
Reza,
I think you are right to point out that America has options. The US officials can move away from the warpath and by doing so they will increase America’s security. Ron Paul makes the distinction between military spending and defense spending. It is the military spending that is breaking America in more ways than the financial.
From the Flynt Leverett Video, the first speaker, Josh, talked about American dominance over “The Commons” and how this dominance (presumed to be the Guarantor of Global Stability) can be maintained much more cheaply than is currently the case. Essentially i think his argument is that most other nations in the world have a shared interest in not contesting American dominance in this sphere (ie, The Commons).
However, at a regional level, most nations consider it meddlesome at best when American troops put their ‘boots on the ground’, and that when nations develop their defense capabilities in order to negate the need for American ‘Peacekeepers,’ this resistance should not be seen as a challenge to American dominance over the Commons because again, most Nations benefit from the stability American control over the Commons brings.
For the Iranians on this board, how does that make you guys feel? Is this whole talk of “The Commons” just another way of expressing American exceptionalism? For Iranians, Where precisely is your resistance to American dominance? Is it at the level of the Commons, or is the resistance at the level of the regional hegemon (as discussed by Flynt Leverett)?
It is my personal opinion that globalization before the internet was an option. With the advent of the internet however, globalization has become inevitable. And the current globalization is obviously not only in the economic sphere, but the globalization is occurring in social, religious, cultural and intellectual spheres as well.
So i guess what i am trying to say is that i can buy into this idea of “The Commons” and can see how in the interests of international stability there needs to be a power who is able to maintain Order. This is easy for me to say though, because i am American and i am not the one being dominated.
What is the Iranian perspective on the Commons? Do they accept this American dominance over the Commons sphere, or is the concept more bologna?
Do Iranians perceive any benefit in that scenario?
Would Iranians be more inclined to support this scenario if the Islamic Republic was not so viciously ostracized by the “International” community?
The most basic question for Iran–is it the international system itself, or is it the exclusion of Iran from that system by the “Gatekeepers”?
The US seeks global dominance. We The People need to change that. That’s not what our nation was founded for, and we all know it
American Jewish Lobby showed its racist nature again. Like each year, this year too – it has blasted Manhattan’s Warwick Hotel for allowing Iran’s President Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stay at the hotel during his visit to address the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The head of anti-Muslim Jewish group, United Against a Nuclear Iran, former US ambassador at UN, Mark D. Wallace, sent a note to Warwick Hotel to reconsider.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/ahmadinejad-to-expose-%e2%80%98evildoers%e2%80%99-at-united-nations/
It is ironic that the more you use power and throw your weight about, the less power you end up having. The last 20 years have only served to weaken U.S dominance rather than to preserve and maintain it. There is a real danger that the U.S is heading the same way as the USSR unless it gives priority to critical economic and social problems at home. The debt must be brought under control: I think defense spending should and can be slashed by $2trn over the next 10 years without imperiling American security and interests.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/depleated uranium URANIUM-NEWS.COM/depleated uranium/children I hope i am wrong but i believe God will make the US pay for this in his own time and way.
@Voice of Tehran says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:29 am
I am not predicting Armageddon, what I predict is based on the Mayan calendar. Watch the price of silver very carefully see it fluctuate if it goes below $36 my prediction will be incorrect. However if it stays consistently above $36 then they is chaos in the financial markets with Greece defaulting, EU, USA in a mess. You know about JPM and Silver! This whole Islamic Awakening is a very calculated move and Iran is falling into it’s trap because of religious bigotry. As they say Turkey is speaking with a forked tongue.
hans says:
September 17, 2011 at 4:34 am
Can you also predict the exact date of ” Armageddon ” please , but before replying take The damned CHILL PILL , as advised earlier by Dr. UU , who nowadys gives out a lot of wise prescriptions .
My take on the Middle and Near east is that between now and 22 Sept 2011 jostling and posturing by all concerned parties will take place. Iran’s choice is between Syria and Turkey and indirectly NATO and Israel. While Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his group support Syria, the theocracy will support Turkey. This will cumulate on the 28 Oct 2011 or near about when Syria, Lebanon will be attacked. Iran realising it’s folly of supporting Turkey will be drawn to this war. There is something going on in Iran I am not sure what, but it does not bore well to sideline Ahmadinejad. The rest of the politicians are amateurs in relation to him. This nonsense about the “Islamic Awakening” will lead Iran to it’s capitulation!
Richard Steven Hack, thanks for the link; worthwhile essay by Max Ajl.
video on the same topic, “Can Israel Change,” by Prof. Haim Bresheeth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIj0l6C5VqE
Bresheeth returns to the same theme that Dr. John Dower and Sanho Tree emphasized in their discussion of Dower’s “Cultures of War,” namely, that dehumanization of the Other is that which makes it possible to kill them. :http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Dower
Bresheeth spends a few minutes discussing Nazism and correlating Israel’s problems to Nazism; next, he correlates Israelism today with South African apartheid. He concludes that “the time for understanding Israelis is over.” Israelis cannot change; the only response of an ethical person is to support the just goals of the Palestinian people. (Which is what Iran states that it does.)
Bresheeth’s comments have some bearing on two aspects in the topic of this thread.
The opening argument is quite disturbing; its underlying assumption is that the US has the right to rule — imperium — and as the strongest power on the globe, gives itself leave to choose its allies and enemies, the latter being an absolute requirement to sustain the militarized imperial system.
A closing comment that Flynt Leverett made was also important (at 1:19). He referenced a remark that neocon and McCain pres. campaign advisor Kori Schake made on a panel discussing a book by Bob Haste (??). Flynt remarked that “Schake will likely have a place in Pres. Perry’s administration in 2013;” then he explained Schake’s remark:
Bob’s argument is, The way we have been fighting the war on terror is the dumbest way possible, because Terror is the asymmetric strategic response to an occupying power. Bob argues that US should be an off shore balancer.
Although Schake agreed with Bob’s analysis, she would not go along with his endorsement of off shore balancing because “off shore balancing does not take account of the political and social purposes for which we deploy military forces in places like Afghanistan and iraq. And until we get to the point where there’s not this critical mass of influential elites in both parties who want to deploy military forces for political purposes and not strategic ends, we are still one degree away from another stupid intervention.”
The first MIT speaker in the video (whose name I didn’t understand — Clemons, that MIT speaker, and Samir seemed to be playing elocutionary Beat the Clock) seemed oblivious to the reality that the participants — and subjects — of “Grand Strategy” are human beings with hopes and dreams of their own. Like the Israelis of Bresheeth’s analysis, the first MIT speaker was completely caught up in his (sophomoric) narrative and is likely beyond “change.” Similarly, John Dower argues in “Cultures of War” that in its strategies against Germany and Japan in WWII, and also in response to 9/11, the US failed to acknowledge that the Other, the Adversary (which would be, in the case of the MIT boys, the “designated/must-have adversary”), has its own perspective and rationale under which it resists the acts of the aggressor (or, in the case of the MIT boys, the “Grand Strategy Controllers.”)
The West’s “critical mass of elites” are similarly caught up in a “political and social” web of hubris, and they will resist change until it is forced upon them.
What is even more worrisome is that as the US executive increasingly ignores and erodes democratic checks on his powers to act in the international arena, not only the Rest of the World but even the citizens of the home nation of the Unipolar “controlling” Grand Strategist are mere pawns at the mercy of an out of control superpower.
A few observations regarding the latest paper by the duo losers (self-admitted in the same article) Pollack and Takyeh posted earlier by FYI
http://www.twq.com/11autumn/docs/11autumn_Pollack_Takeyh.pdf
Firstly I believe these two bozos have no sense on how the Iranians, specially the Iranian strategic planners think and act. Obviously Pollack is a raised American and has no clue, but even Ray who’s a born Iranian has no clue on how Iranians think and calculate, obviously, since he was trained and raised based on a western strategic thinking he can’t understand the Iranian mentality outside of Kabab. But here is what they write.
“It is even possible that Iran’s officialdom does not make the type of
Cost-benefit assessments common to their Western counterparts”
I can’t believe this two losers after so many wrong observations they still write a junk like this, someone should tell this Iran experts that if this is what you really believe you have no understanding of Iranian mentality and thinking, if you think that the current leaders of Iran have no assessment to calculate cost benefit, perhaps Takyeh should research to understand what drives the principal of Taghyeeh in shieh Islam.
Now read this one
“Iran is a land that revels in ambiguity, opacity, and complexity. Its regime has
taken those traits to their illogical extreme, making it exceptionally difficult for
outsiders to perceive Iranian motives and intentions clearly especially in real
time.”
Oh really, then perhaps after all they do understand how cost benefit works, maybe and just maybe that’s why they are not crystal clear to make your job easy, but someone should ask you two, do you really think this is all that opaque to the Iranian policy maker and planers as well. I think not.
Or this next line it sounds like that these two clowns have missed the whole wikileaks episode, is just funny how they get to be published, I happen to want to think this is due to lack of having an alternative on part of US policy makers. Sorry for you guys you may have to wait for a new another century coming soon.Good Luck
“U.S. intelligence and diplomatic personnel should make clear that
they are open to meeting Iranian opposition figures and even to providing
assistance, if the opposition groups themselves are willing to accept it.”
Flynt Leverett:
Also, in regards to your comments at the very end – the only feasible possibility for the alteration of the current US Grand Strategy lies in her deteriorating finances and those of her allies.
“Hunger will tame them.”
While the unemployment in the US is higher than Israel – US ambassador in Tel Aviv, Daniel Shapiro, told Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) recently: “
“In 2010 alone the U.S. imported $21 billion of Israeli goods and services; that’s 10 percent of Israel’s GDP. American companies and their representatives here directly employ about 60,000 Israelis; that’s fully 2 percent of Israel’s entire workforce. This figure does not include the many thousands more that are supported by American companies here as subcontractors or in downstream businesses”.
No wonder, Israel’s current account balance is 29th in the world; the US comes in at 196th.
Economy – US: A-minus; Israel: A-plus
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/economy-us-a-minus-israel-a-plus/
Brilliant piece here. Read it:
Social Origins of Israeli Unrest
:http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2648/social-origins-of-israeli-unrest-
Israel may be doomed not merely because of its military and geopolitical policies or its Arab demographics but because Zionism per se was impossible economically and socially – and the cracks are showing.
It is a given that like many of their neo-libracon (an invented word for the cross-cutting hegemony promoters to protect the patron oligarchs), Mr. Pollack and Mr. Takyeh will continue to argue for more of the same failed policy.
No one will hold them to account for their past failures. If they are asked to account, they will proclaim that it is “work in progress” and not failure. Most importantly, like all other “dependencies” and “addictive behaviors”, they will continue to insist … “trust us, we know what we are doing!”
I recommend an old episode of “Sledgehammer” to these gentlemen – just for a bit of reflection!
Michael Scheuer had worked with CIA for 22 years. He is an authour and a former Fellow at Ziocon think thank Jamestown Foundation from where he was fired for criticizing US-Israel special relation and Israel Lobby’s (AIPAC) power over moulding US foreign policies in the Muslim world.
“I damned those who identify critics of the relationship as anti-American, anti-Semitic, or, in my case, according to AIPAC leader Morris J. Amitay, a man who would make Mein Kampf “required reading” at the CIA,” says Michael Scheuer.
In an article entitled The Consequences of Defeat Iraq and Afghanistan he wrote:”US soldiers and Marines were fighting the rearguard actions of two lost wars against Islamist militants. Having been blocked by the leaders of both parties from winning in either Iraq or Afghanistan, these young men and women are now dying in a pair of lost causes that are being prolonged by political considerations relevant to the 2012 presidential election”.
http://rehmat2.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/michael-scheuer-us-lost-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan/
Flynt Leverett:
Mr. Pollack – a propagandist of the War against Iraq – is joined by Mr. Takyeh:
http://www.twq.com/11autumn/docs/11autumn_Pollack_Takeyh.pdf
Per the article, their own Carrots-and-Sticks approach – adopted by US – has failed and more sticks are needed.