Monthly Archive for December, 2005

Several articles follow warning of Israel’s plans to execute a pre-emptive strike against Iran with the diplomatic assistance of the United States, the sort of plan-to-fail diplomacy that constructed trap-doors only in its attempts to gain international approval of the immoral, illegal invasion of Iraq.

James Petras in Iran in the Crosshairs provides details of the plans for a unilateral attack on Iran by Israel and the United States’ manoeuvrings, despite officials in Israel’s military, intelligence and Labor Party essentially agreeing with the opinion of IDF Chief of Staff Daniel Halutz who “categorically denied that Iran represents an immediate nuclear threat to Israel, let alone the United States.” [Update: peacepalestine has an unabridged copy of Petras' article here.]

Jorge Hirsch in Nuking Iran With the UN’s Blessing further examines the legal framework comparing it to the charade that heralded Iraq as an imminent threat only minutes away from dispersing mushroom clouds across the United States. Here is Hirsch’s verbatim reproduction of Iran’s NYT ad since he was unable to find a copy of it anywhere on the web.

Gordon Prather in ElBaradei Isn’t Perfect highlights suggestions made by ElBaradei in his Nobel Prize lecture, defines the actual authourity of the IAEA, and subtracts the difference. For instance:

ElBaradei wants international control over operations producing nuclear material that could be used in weapons.

“I am hoping that we can make these operations multinational � so that no one country can have exclusive control over any such operation.

“My plan is to begin by setting up a reserve fuel bank, under IAEA control, so that every country will be assured that it will get the fuel needed for its bona fide peaceful nuclear activities.

“This assurance of supply will remove the incentive � and the justification � for each country to develop its own fuel cycle.”

Oh yeah?

Since 1975, Iran has been a partner in EURODIF, an international uranium-enrichment consortium, but has yet to receive either enriched uranium or the return of its billion-dollar investment.

Bill and Kathleen Christison in Let’s Stop a US/Israeli War on Iran provide a regional analysis in support of their argument that a nuclear-armed Iran is preferable to a pre-emptive strike waged against it by the U.S. and Israel. They urge antiwar activists globally to get in crisis mode. “Nothing else more dangerous to the world, to the Middle East, to the oppressed Palestinians, or to the true interests of the United States is happening today — anywhere.”

Excerpted from FOR’s Friendship Delegation to Iran: December 2005

Report 4: A Tehran synagogue, students and women activists

Inside the synagogue, we met with Morris Mottaned, who is in his second term as the Jewish representative to the Iranian parliament. According to Mr. Mottaned, Iran has the second oldest Jewish community after Israel, with Jews having lived in Iran for 2,700 years. There is a mausoleum for Esther and Mordechai in Hamadan, and for Daniel in Susa.

Before the Iranian revolution, there were more than 100,000 Jews living in Iran, but there are only about 25,000 left. Mr. Mottaned promised that the Jewish community in Iran would never disappear because they have such deep roots there.

We talked with Mr. Mottaned for nearly two hours. He made the following points during our discussion:

There are many misconceptions in the West concerning the lives and status of Jews in Iran.

As of two years ago, equality under the law was established for religious minorities, for example in inheritance.

For the first time in the history of Islam, there are funds budgeted for religious minorities.

Now there is equal opportunity for employment

The Iranian authorities no long question Jewish Iranians when they travel abroad.

There are Jewish elementary and high schools, and parents can choose whether to send children there or to Iranian schools. About 40% of Jewish parents choose the Jewish schools. The 60% who attend state schools can also attend Hebrew school once a week.

Iranian Jews serve in the military, and may ask to be posted close to home so that they can have access to kosher food and attend services.

Becoming a rabbi in Iran was traditionally something handed from father to son. However, in the last 50 years, Iranian rabbis have studied in the United States, England and Israel. There are three rabbis in Iran now, 20 synagogues in Tehran, and others in more than 15 cities.

How does Israel believe the lives and status of Jews in Iran will be improved by this pre-emptive strike, or doesn’t it matter? A status, by the way, that is more progressive than the one Israel affords their counterparts.

Lawrence of Cyberia in A Nation Without Mirrors and Bruce Cumings in We look at it and see ourselves note the same malady of self-serving bias behind the revisionism manufactured by the United States of Scare-merica it then uses against countries that dare throw monkey wrenches like independence into the cogs of its American empire bulldozer.

The root of this mass hysteria is “the common assumption that the US has been an innocent bystander” in global wildfires and takes to arms only in self-defence or in the rescuing of defenceless others. That this is still subject for debate mocks reason and the powers that be are laughing all the way to the World Bank and personal offshore accounts.

Here’s what made me laugh recently, one from a comic I’d never heard of before stumbling upon this routine on HBO as I channel-surfed for a sleep aid. Lewis Black, a regular on The Daily Show which I don’t watch even as a cure for insomnia, kept me up past my bedtime. In a bit on the Ugly American he recalls flying into the U.S. and being bombarded from all sides by messages proclaiming it to be the greatest place in the world. He guarantees that if someone stopped by your desk every morning to tell you he’s the greatest you would slay him by week’s end. He then cautions the audience not to be so sure the ads are true, that there are countries in the world that actually give their citisens shit – take Canada for example – where people get national health care.

If you support parasitic insurance companies and oppose medical care for the poor you’re probably not laughing. Take the Netherlands then, where in Amsterdam you might stop into this cafe for a toke but in America are thrown into the poke, and depending upon the calibre of legal representation you can afford may well be forced to do time on the racist wheel of justice. I lifted the photo link from Robert Archambeau’s A Monkey on a String, or: the Heart of Dutchness or why despite liberal drug laws some Dutch still complain the place is too conformist for their tastes. But back to Black’s routine.

He saws an old hymn on a sceptic’s fiddle that goes, “The Jews created guilt. The Catholics codified it. And the Protestants transformed it into tension.” But is Black a classicist mining tradition or setting the audience up for, “If they couldn�t find the weapons [of mass destruction], which is the reason we went to war, then why couldn�t they make something up? Why did they stop lying? My government has always lied to me, and I�m comfortable with that. They could have done it so simply. Just send two kids to Kinko�s and say you wanted a picture of a camel with a nuclear weapon on his back.” So-called rebels like Black who put the bias behind the lies on life support make it all the more insidious. Bill Maher does this repeatedly.

The other item that gave me a chuckle is the news that toy Chinook helicopters have become popular with Pakistani children thanks to the military’s earthquake relief efforts, a hearts and minds campaign that picked-up steam only after it was pointed out by many experts that the U.S. was missing out on a valuable opportunity. How difficult is it to grasp that dropping yellow food parcels identical to unexploded cluster munitions tends to make people hate you but providing aid and comfort fosters good will?

“Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, said that ‘the only way to win hearts and minds is if you deliver the goods. It’s not a PR campaign.’” Karen Hughes, go home.

Why is Supergirl Pamela aka Atlas fronting old images depicting victims of U.S. aggression as “a small glimpse into the barbarism being exacted on the Kurds in Iran.”

Is she a propagandist or been dealt a dose of kryptonite by one? Odds are on the latter.

Dear friends,

Not to ruin your holiday spirits, but the two news items below, both written by Israeli journalists and published in the Israeli newspapers are worth sharing. Both are exemplary of brave journalism.

As many in the world celebrate the Holy Land tonight, few, sadly, are aware of the reality of the people of the Holy Land. Few will be praying for the 6 children of Mr. Shawara. Few care to remember that Bethlehem is separated from Jerusalem by US-backed Israeli soldiers. Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Holy Land, to most, have lost any real meaning…they are only to be recited in chorus with no emotions or conscious.

Drink, be happy, be marry…when you’re done we will still be here…struggling to end what has become a globally-sanctioned occupation.

Wondering of the power of religion, when stripped of human meaning,

Sam
Continue reading ‘Spirits in Ruin’

22 December 2005

Reema Hijazi, a CNI intern for the Fall, just completed a review of the Palestinian textbook controversy — that never seems to end, despite the falseness of its premises — and her report is now available at the CNI website. CNI sent a copy to Sen. Clinton’s office, as well as to all the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and members of the House International Relations Committee Subcommittee on the Middle East.