Iran, Israel, The Big Lie and The Real Threat
A clearly argued and straightforward piece by Frank Scott below. On the news front, the Turkish Daily News ominously reports that ‘US poised to attack,’ claims Bulgarian agency, while in the USA, Virginian Senator Robert Byrd is warning against Bush itching for a war in NewsMax:
Top Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd is warning that the Bush administration is preparing to go to war with Iran.
In a e-mail message sent to activist Democrats, the West Virginia lawmaker – who is now President pro tempore of the Senate and third in line for the presidency after Dick Cheney and Nancy Pelosi – rails against President Bush’s plans for a troop surge in Iraq and declares:
“Not only does Mr. Bush intend to plunge us deeper into what is now clearly a civil war in Iraq, but he is now increasing his belligerence towards Iran and Syria. In his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush called out Iran no less than seven times.
“I fear that what we are seeing now is an administration intent on laying the groundwork for a wider war in the Middle East. That is why it is so important for us to reject Mr. Bush’s plan for more troops in Iraq. Once escalation in Iraq begins, there is no telling what ruinous consequences await this nation.” The e-mail – sent out under the banner of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – contains a link to a petition addressed to Bush, urging him to abandon his “escalation strategy.”
Also recommended: Simon Tisdall’s Bush ‘spoiling for a fight’ with Iran in the Guardian who writes about how the war pimping to contrive a casus belli has already commenced:
US officials in Baghdad and Washington are expected to unveil a secret intelligence “dossier” this week detailing evidence of Iran’s alleged complicity in attacks on American troops in Iraq. The move, uncomfortably echoing Downing Street’s dossier debacle in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, is one more sign that the Bush administration is building a case for war.
Iran, Israel, The Big Lie and The Real Threat
29 January 2007
By Frank Scott | Press Action
Attempting to portray Iran as a nuclear menace to Israel and the world, in that order, even though it has no nuclear weapons and Israel has hundreds, is not merely a sign of dementia. It is indication of near idiocy in a society that can be repeatedly manipulated into believing such totally crackpot notions that have no foundation in the material world but exist only in a world of superstitious psycho-fantasy.
The atrocity in Iraq continues, with greater opposition within the American ruling party, but no end in sight. It was made possible by reducing public consciousness to that of children in a day care center. But the latest assault on understanding material reality threatens even greater and more bloody injustice. If the continuing barrage of frenzied propaganda succeeds in casting Iran as global menace, and Ahmadinejad as global monster, there is no possible outcome but dreadful global failure.
Why this wild focus on Iran and its president? While many insist that only control of oil is at stake, the zealous core of opposition to the Islamic and Arab world remains the state of Israel, and its rabid supporters in the USA. It is hardly an either/or question, but even as oil’s importance is acknowledged, the enormous power of the Israeli lobby can continue to be denied only by those dense enough to deny global climate change.
Until recently, the existence and power of the lobby has gone unquestioned. This, in justified fear of its financial and political wrath, but also in guilty silence lest past tragedies befall the Jewish people again. How? The horrible experience of world war two has often distorted any sense of modern reality. In deference to memory of a terrible time for European Jews, we have allowed a longer lasting terrible time for those who had nothing to do with any part of that war.
Israel’s pristine status in American consciousness has meant near obliteration of the Palestinian people and most of the Arab and Islamic world as well. A great mass of humanity has been reduced to invisibility except as terrorists or religious fanatics, as they are depicted by Jewish organizations working to protect a colonial European State, and by the American political and media establishment.
The major rationale for Israel’s existence is the holocaust, the rabid persecution of European Jews by the Nazis in world war two. Perpetuation of the memory of this dreadful history has become the most powerful religious movement in the modern world, accorded the status of theocratic faith, not to be questioned by any, and to be ritually worshipped by all.
This has led to intellectual pogroms in Europe where those who dare to question any parts of the holocaust story are charged with heresy and imprisoned. Revenge is not only visited on the Palestinian people, who had nothing to do with any part of it, but on Europeans who audaciously use supposed democratic liberties in order to freely question history.
Treating a material event as a sanctified subject open to no investigation but that of true believers is a form of religious fanaticism. Where biblical mythology about virgin birth, the parting of the red sea, or immaterial spirits communicating with material beings are all subject to intellectual challenge, this historic event is placed above and beyond the human pale and any questioning of its substance treated as political blasphemy.
If this irrationalism were confined to a handful of individuals currently in prison, it would be serious enough. But when it becomes the root cause of moving toward potential nuclear war, it must be confronted before it leads to even more destruction than has already been created in its tsunami like waves of devastation.
Iraq and Saddam Hussein were deemed threats to Israel, and its supporters in the USA played a major role in bringing about the destruction of that nation and its leader. This was to protect a state still seen as a haven for a threatened people, even if the threats are almost entirely neuro-psychiatric and only become material as result of its pariah presence in the middle east. But present claims that Iran poses an even deadlier threat to Israel, and which induce a chorus of support from the American government, means this irrationalism in the service of collective neurosis needs to be confronted before it destroys not only collective sanity, but collective civilization as well.
Attempting to portray Iran as a nuclear menace to Israel and the world, in that order, even though it has no nuclear weapons and Israel has hundreds, is not merely a sign of dementia. It is indication of near idiocy in a society that can be repeatedly manipulated into believing such totally crackpot notions that have no foundation in the material world but exist only in a world of superstitious psycho-fantasy.
While many groups have been terrifying their members by depicting Ahmadinejad as bent on exterminating Jews, the Israeli lobby has been doing the same job on our government. This has led to congressional leaders and future presidential candidates lining up in support of this totally preposterous fiction. The purveyors of this notion are completely delusional, but rather than being sedated or institutionalized, they preside over and control some of our most powerful institutions. They wield frightening influence over an American public and could lead it to act in ignorant support of such hallucinatory fears.
Part of this dementia involves a very dangerous ethnocentric idea; that Jewish suffering was, is, and will always be a central aspect of human history, and must not only be acknowledged as such, endlessly, but also atoned for as such, endlessly. No criticism of this central point, especially as it involves the holocaust, can be treated with anything but contemptuous disregard for the rights of any who fail to toe this ethnocentric line. After Ahmadinejad dared to have Tehran host a conference on the holocaust, with revisionists who might be imprisoned in Europe allowed to speak their minds openly in Iran, he and his nation became a greater menace to that ethnocentric folly than Iraq and Saddam ever were.
When a supposedly enlightened civilization is threatening, once again, to attack another nation, in great part because of its alleged threat to the Jewish State and Jews, there can be no further denial on the part of the majority who will pay a terrible price. It is time to confine theological, biblical and metaphysical belief systems about the past to the imagination and the church, remove them from political economics, and face material reality before it is too late. Until rational, factual, scientifically provable conditions are confronted and dealt with, irrational and near stark raving insane fears could bring about even greater suffering for humanity than past ignorance has already caused. That rational analysis of our world leads to an unmistakable conclusion:
A Euro-Jewish and anti-democratic state in the middle east, and its extremist supporters in the USA, are a major threat to the global future. Israel, not Iran is the problem. Face it, and deal with it.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
Frank Scott writes political commentary that appears in the “Coastal Post,” a monthly publication from Marin County, California, and on numerous Web sites. He can be reached at [email protected].
Two words the describe Bush
Miseable Failure
Oops – Should be “Miserable”
I don’t give a damn for a man who can spell a word only one way.
Mark Twain
A major Int’l bank (one of the 5 biggest ones) and maybe others, but that i can’t confirm, have ordered its executives to stop any operation related with Iran.
This article is a clever dissection of the background of what is coming next. Thanks.
Many thanks for the link dear BlueBear. Its right up there with this priceless TV screenshot
And don’t you go worrying too much about spelun ;)
James, thanks very much for your comment. This important issue of financial sanctions to exert pressure has been reported as you know, but it seems to be eclipsed by the belligerent beating of war drums. That the US and Israeli governments are acting to apply this economic choke is unconscionable. The LA Times included mention of this in an article from January, from which I quote:
The following related articles may also be of interest:
***Israel tries to cut off Tehran from world markets
***The Plan for Economic Strangulation of Iran
***Major investment bank issues warning on strike against Iran
It looks like a well planned financial-war-attack against Iran. Personally I don’t think the US will start a military attack in Iran. I rather see a more ‘intelligent’ action to cause a civil war in Iran.
Well the fact that China and Russia have engaged with and invested in Iran adds to the number of reasons that mean that a possible US and or Israeli neocon attack is just plain stupid, apart from unconscionable.
So I hope you are right that a military attack is unlikely.
As for fomenting a civil war within Iran (the tactics used in Iraq, Palestine and perhaps even Lebanon), I can not at all agree with this. I think it would be calamitous for Iranians and no outside power has any business interfering in their country’s affairs. Of course, that won’t stop the false flag and black flag ops. They’ll try.
But it is an exercise in sheer folly.
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