Tuesday, October 25, 2011

"Parasitäre Bereiche wie Militär und Geheimdienste"


In Nordafrika etwa gibt es heute nicht genügend Stellen für die vielen gut Ausgebildeten. "Statt in produktive Arbeitsplätze zu investieren, haben die Regierungen parasitäre Bereiche wie Militär, Geheimdienste und Behörden aufgeblasen", so Klingholz.
Aus "Löwen vor dem Sprung?", GEO 11/November 2011, S. 145.

Der Ausdruck "parasitäre Bereiche wie Militär, Geheimdienste und Behörden aufgeblasen" ist hübsch gewählt. Er trifft auch auf so einige Regierungen zu, vor allem auf die der USA nach 9/11 und der darauffolgenden Wiederkehr der ewig gleichen und ewig gestrigen Politik der Angst. 'Parasitär' wurden auch schon die Mafia, gewisse Teile der Wirtschaft und die organisierten Religionen (Klöster) genannt. Die Anwendung auf das Militär und die Geheimdienste mag auf den ersten Blick unorthodox klingen, ist aber nicht unbegründet.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Identify the War Hawks!


In 1953, the CIA together with British colleagues orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh. (For more information on that budget-friendly US-coup d'état see The Mossadegh Project or the entry in Wikipedia). After having accomplished the coup under the smokescreen of a non-existing communist threat regarding Iran, the US installed their proconsul - the oppressive, brutal and corrupt monarch Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi whose regime lasted for 26 years. Unfortunately, only radical Islamists could break the US-backed rule. That is why we have the Mullahs in Iran since 1979.
Since then there have been rumors circulating from time to time about the next US invasion target being Iran. Recently, the alleged plotting to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States has been sold as bargain to allegations and blatant threats against this country - rich of oil, desert and culture, reigned by prosperous Mullah businessmen who dislike US influence in the region, and inhabited by people who unfortunately have not forgotten the Shah-regime. In fact, the warmongers are attacking again - partly pretty much the same perpetrators called "experts" as experienced before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In order to restrict the destructive consequences of persons propagating organized barbarism against people, it is very useful 1) to know who these persons are, (2) to expose them together with their propaganda and (3) to publicly kill their propaganda by the means of rational arguments.
To start the list of war hawks, here are five examples of unmistakable, clear and direct appeals to start war against Iran, at least partly based on the recent cock-and-bull story of the planned assassination of the Saudi ambassador on US soil.
(WARNING: If you click through the links given below beside the names of the authors, you might be shocked and disgusted because of the radical militarist contents offered, displaying the US as the chosen people, as a paranoia-driven and fear mongering nationalistic militarist state, incurably hegemonic, islamophobic, and superstitiously believing in their self-invented American Exceptionalism. But that's simply the environment these perpetrators come from. If you are a decent, sensible person, you might want to abstain from visiting most of these sites.)





Btw, the author names are equipped with a link leading to the Right Web, a website dedicated to the monitoring of "militarists’ efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy". The site offers an long list of warmongers, see Individuals)


William Kristol (founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, member of the board of trustees for the free-market Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, member of the Policy Advisory Board for the Ethics and Public Policy Center  - "dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy", a director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, board members of Keep America Safe and the Emergency Committee for Israel)
"There’s been plenty of talk. But of course no action. This Iranian regime has the blood of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan on its hands. It’s a sponsor and facilitator of terror organizations that have killed innocent Americans, Israelis, Iraqis, Afghans, Argentines, and many others. It’s a brutal dictatorship. And it’s seeking nuclear weapons while denying it’s doing so. It’s long since been time for the United States to speak to this regime in the language it understands—force. And now we have an engraved invitation to do so. The plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was a lemon. Statesmanship involves turning lemons into lemonade. [...] Congress should consider authorizing the use of force against Iranian entities that facilitate attacks on our troops, against IRGC and other regime elements that sponsor terror, and against the regime’s nuclear weapons program."


Jamie M. Fly (at present executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, before: director for Counterproliferation Strategy at the National Security Council, assistant for Transnational Threats Policy at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, researcher at the Republican National Committee, and The Council on Foreign Relations)
"As developments this week make abundantly clear, our disgraceful attempts to “engage” the despotic regime in Tehran — even as Iranians tried to overthrow their leaders in 2009 and even as Americans were dying in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hands of the Qods force — have failed. Fortunately, there is a template for action from President Obama’s predecessors in the Oval Office. An appropriate response would be targeted strikes against key regime facilities that support Iran’s illicit activities. [...] It is time to take military action against the Iranian government elements that support terrorism and its nuclear program. More diplomacy is not an adequate response."


Reuel Marc Gerecht (former case officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations once said that the Iranians "have terrorism in their DNA", a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; before: a director of the Project for the New American Century's Middle East Initiative and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute)
"Khamenei probably approved a strike in Washington because he no longer fears American military might. Iran's advancing nuclear-weapons program has undoubtedly fortified his spine, as American presidents have called it "unacceptable" yet done nothing about it. And neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama retaliated against Iran's murderous missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. [...] The White House needs to respond militarily to this outrage. If we don't, we are asking for it."


Andrew C. McCarthy (senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, serving as the director of the FDD's Center for Law and Counterterrorism, columnist for National Review)
"It is one thing to pretend that a jihadist campaign by a sub-sovereign terror network is just a crime spree for which trial in the civilian justice system is an adequate response.Iran, however, is a state actor — not even arguably amenable to court prosecution. A state aggressor must get a political response, not a legal one. There is a range of possible political responses, of course, but given its three-decade campaign of aggression, the response to Iran must be military — and decisive. The regime must be destroyed."


James Carafano (Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, deputy director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage FoundationHomeland Security expert, studied at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the US Army War College, and the Georgetown University - a private, Jesuit, research university)
"The U.S. is fully within it rights to conduct a proportional military response against suitable, feasible, and acceptable targets in Iran. (In many ways, the situation is similar to military operations conducted against al-Qaeda in Pakistan.)"

-------------------tbc---------------------------

Anybody offering links to similar martial quotes: Thanks a lot in advance!







Friday, October 14, 2011

The One Percent Warmongers

Arthur Ponsonby (1871-1946)
Here's a recommendation: If you want to get sensitive for all kinds of war propaganda lies, read Arthur Ponsonby's Falsehood in Wartime, Anne Morelli's  Principes élémentaires de propagande de guerre in quick succession, then inform yourself about the most famous case of warmongering by now - the Incubator Lie (Nayirah), sit back and relax while watching Colin Powell's infamous speech before the UN General Assembly (but don't forget to enjoy one or the other documentation about it) and finally remember Susan Rice's Viagra Hoax - it's only a few months ago! If this doesn't help, you're a hopeless case. If this does not give you a clue that, historically, politicians "have rarely been above the average, either morally or intellectually, [but] often below it", you will never be prepared for the worst.


This selection of crude propaganda hoaxes consists only of a small fraction of all the lies that led to wars or have been spread during wartime. If children and young people study a historiography defining wars as the main framework of history of mankind, then these lies ought to be studied in the first place.


Due to the very obvious incredibility of the "alleged plotting to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States", even mass media infotainment production around the world could not resist announcing serious doubts. "Why didn't the Iranians use tried and tested Hizballah networks and keep Iranian nationals, much less unknown Mexican narcos, out of it?" A deputy to the German Bundestag called the alleged plot "highly irrational, it wouldn't make any sense to attack this ambassador who is not even a big shot in the Iranian system, despite of all the rivalry between both countries. It doesn't make sense to perform such an action on the territory of a state, because it would be clearly the strongest possible provocation which would also carry the strongest possible reactions. This irrationality must not lead to an irrational response." [translation by base2014]


But irrational fiction has convinced whole populations in the the past and has led to military barbarism throughout history. The crux with propaganda lies is that they go a long way in the human mind, just as advertisement does. After a while the remembrance of the alleged plot on American soil will fade away, but the previous ones as well as the next one will add up to a pile of bias. For example, who still remembers the chock-and-bull story of "Iran digging mass graves for US troops in case of invasion", told by some unknown ominous "General Hossein Kan'ani Moghadam", just a little bit more than one year ago? Forgotten, but somehow still present. The picture of "le visage du diable (or l'affreux de service)" becomes clearer and clearer, political steps are taken one after the other, and finally they say war is inevitable.


Throughout history, wars have always been incited only by a handful of warmongers and war profiteers. The propaganda lies applied - even more surprisingly - only slightly differ from each other through time. Nevertheless - and this can be called another tragedy of human beings - virtually the same war propaganda lies are successfully applied over and over again to outwit whole populations and to postpone civilization.



Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Cheap As War Propaganda Might Be


When FBI Director Robert Mueller mentioned that the alleged plotting to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States "reads like the pages of a Hollywood script", he was right. It does. We remember all the dumb Hollywood fabrications illustrating "the Arabs" as devious Bedouin bandits, nervous pistols waiving around gangsters and weapon dealers, secret sleeper cells in the cosy American-Dream neighborhood and sinister sheikhs sponsoring blood-thirsty unshaved fanatic dark-skinned Muslim terrorists (see examples in the below video). Iranians are not Arabs? So what!

This time, the ludicrous Hollywood script brings us additional features like the ominous Quds Force trying to export Iran's Islamic revolution to American soil, collaborating with the most powerful Mexican drug cartel "Los Zetas" by drowning the last remaining - peace spreading - superpower of the world into a sea of opium smuggled from the Middle-East through Mexico. C'mon - you can't be serious!

War propaganda was never so cheap since Colin Powell's lying before the UN General Assembly and Dick Cheney's fabulous 1% rule.

Any evidence presented to the public? No. What for? Any reasonable motive to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the US? Ah, yes, the Islamic Revolution. Well, c'mon! A more realistic view of the Mullah regime in Iran would be that of Corporate Iran (much like the US). The Mullahs are more rich business men than anything else.

The reason why Mueller described this tale as "reads like the pages of a Hollywood script" was probably because he felt embarrassed by being forced from higher level officials to announce such 1%-nonsense against any rationality.

On the other side - how ridiculous this recent war propaganda may sound to thinking people - the threat of another US-war in the Middle-East region may be real, this time with Israelis participating or - as some bloggers suggest - under their direction. Why? Because of "the uncertainties and dangers of the Arab Spring" for Israel. (Remember Chomsky: "The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.")


Monday, October 10, 2011

"Words of Emptiness and Exclusion, of Elitism and Trend"



Asked to give a talk on the Middle East last week, I read on my invitation: "We want to bring visionaries, innovators, doers, funders, connectors, and their community into one space...With all of these people gathered into one space, it's inevitable that sparks will happen, ideas will find momentum, and positive change will take [sic] birth."
   Now I have not the slightest intention of participating in this particular "space". I won't have anything to do with an invitation written in so clichéd a language, including all the trappings of pseudo-academese psychobabble and happy-clappy optimism. These are words of emptiness and exclusion, of elitism and trend, of a conference held for the sake of holding a conference. Of nothing.
Robert Fisk - The never-ending war against cliché and jargon

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Egypt: Revolution in progress - Empire - Al Jazeera English

In addition to the previous posting, this Aljazeera discussion gives you further insights into the ongoing efforts to establish a socially balanced society in Egypt after the overthrow of Mubarak:
Egypt: Revolution in progress - Empire - Al Jazeera English
(Click here for a transcript)

It's also highly recommendable to compare the current situation with the times shortly before the revolution started. Here's a report on the elections in Egypt in 2010 illustrating the typical absurdities of a fake democracy:

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

News from Egypt


Do you remember the Egyptian Revolution? Shouldn't the elections already been held in September? And what about the emergency law (since 1981), has it been already abolished? What happened after the first televised day of the trial against Mubarak? Is it going on? How did some people storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo? You might be surprised ...



Other posts concerning Egypt on base2014: