Paul Heroux's Huffington Post apology for attacking Iran

This article,  although pretending to be well-reasoned is just one more case of Zionist propaganda against Muslim countries. The West, having drawn the "line in the sand", which is Israel, must work very, very hard to protect their investment above all safety and reason.

What is my evidence that this article is so over the top as to constitute a case of outright propaganda? First the claim that Iran is intransigent regarding the IAEA. It is not, and is cooperating with the IAEA, industriously. One need only read Section A of the latest IAEA Board of Governer's Report to realize this. In addition, Iran has pledged to continue working with the IAEA during the current special mission, which is ongoing. So is Iran instransigent regarding the IAEA? Absolutely not, and the evidence provided by the IAEA proves that it is not with all of Iran's energy and fuel generating stations under regular monitoring and surveillance by that organization.

Mr. Heroux states the painfully obvious, that, "Iran has the right under international law to a peaceful nuclear program (Iran signed the NPT) but considering that it is a very little step to go from nuclear energy to nuclear weapons has a lot of people worried. This boils down to an issue of trust." However, the West has clearly violated that trust beyond all credibility by hurting Iran's economy and imposing sanctions. The sanctions clearly show that Iran's willingness to refrain from developing weapons and submit to inspections is not working, and that it would logically be better off to protect its assets and future the best way it is capable of. The ambiguousness proposed by Mr Heroux is not a proper option. It merely incites the entire world to take sides and propels us towards a possible future Cold War II.

Why am I absolutely sure Mr. Heroux is a Zionist? Because he posted this comment, "When Israel struck Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2006, respectively, the strikes were effective in that neither country developed a nuclear program." Israel is widely believed to be the sixth country to have developed nuclear weapons, according to Wikipedia and other sources. There was never any need for Israel to develop a nuclear program in 2006, since they already had many warheads. The irony in this statement is extremely funny. Israel prepared itself for nuclear victory long before any regional threat emerged against it. This is the "real" reason the 6-day war was so abortive. However, in truth, Israel's neighbors dwarf it. If these neighbors were motivated, not merely interested, in attacking Israel, they could, simply by occupying it. This is the ugly fact against Zionism's threats so often made against other countries. Could Israel (pop. 7.5M)  launch its missiles and destroy much of the World? Sure it could, but it would at the same time, no longer exist if it were occupied by some of the much larger countries, which surround it. These are the real facts of the situation, not facts of Religion, nor facts about imagined weaponry. The United States is in a similar situation. We can, if we like pretty much destroy the entire World. We just need to be motivated. The only escape from this paradigm is to renounce the weapons. But, as in the case of Golem's Ring, we are addicted to them.

Finally, there is the "Blame Iran" argument, "Iran is likely to continue to have an antagonistic policy towards the West, a stance that is reciprocated towards Iran." 1956 saw the overthrow of Iran's democratic government and its replacement by a "Shah". Such interference in other nation's matters hardly ever occurs, but it did in the case of the U.S. vs. Iran, and they have a hard time forgetting it. Iran has taken plenty of opportunities to strengthen ties with the West, but where has it got them?

The absolute ugliness of the stories' pretext that that we are "Iran's victims" is horrible. Iran is the country hurt by Heroux' sanctions, and we would be better off by not punishing nations, but pursuing world peace by allowing all nations to survive peacefully and unmolested. Regardless of Heroux's misplacing the victim in the frog allegory, we must not allow our Xenophobia to force us into becoming such monsters as he is describing.

The Islamic Republic and the IAEA Swill

Hello, I've been away for a while, but I have a bone to pick this week. I noticed on the Republican debate that Ron Paul denounced IAEA  Board of Governor’s statement , so I wanted to read it myself. http://iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2011/gov2011-65.pdf

I think this document, based on the "Alleged Studies Documentation", provided to the IAEA by Israel, more than any other I've seen, shows how the process works here: The incredibly rich will always try to use the incredibly influential to influence the attitudes of the common person.

Here is the IAEA board of governers, baking a half-truthful account of how Iran has cooperated fully with them in almost every aspect of their work in recent years, and then presenting a weak attempt at updating Israel's old case that the fact that they were involved in nuclear weapons work in 2003 must prove that somehow they must still be doing it.

I can go into more details, but the bias of Section C and the Annex speaks for itself. Section A basically shows how the Iran has played by the rules and has had relatively good success in its nuclear development. The last parts of the document relies heavily on fallacy, and generally tries to force the point that having evidence of activity in the past is sufficient ground for eternal and infinite suspicion. The coup de gras, for me, though is the final graphic, which basically digests all the suspicion-based and unproven points made in the document regarding high-technology for nuclear or dual-use either developed in Iran, or taught about in Iranian Universities, such as fluid dynamics, and compares them with major defense-related non-nuclear weapons applications. My point about this graphic is that it is not a graphic about high technology for defense, it is a graphic that only deals with a few technologies which relate to nuclear weapons, therefore, the non-nuclear intersections are therefore guaranteed to be few.

I think this document has proven to me, more than any other I have seen, how money always follows politics and information, and you will always have individuals willing to make any kind of statement, or case, no matter how baseless, in order to influence common people to invest their blood and treasure in warfare, even against people who are not threatening and even though the benefits never outweigh the costs nor the risks. The only positive side in this is always profit, and only for those with a large enough share of the wealth to benefit well, the 1%.

Iranium

I saw Iranium (the movie). It was basically a talking head/pot boiler anti-Iran and anti-Islam statement that contrasts the American and Israeli nut jobs (the good guys) against Iranian politicians past and present (the bad guys).

Things I liked about it are: Since it is openly pro-America/Israel, it doesn't try to make the Shah into a saint, like some anti-Iranian films I've seen do, and the film tells the truth about practically every nation in the world preferring Iran to the US/Israel axis, at least on the principle that they are good guys and don't interfere with other countries.

The film also doesn't claim that Israel is that great; it merely states that Iran is so evil, that America should go to war with it by itself. On the negative side, besides only representing the views of the whack jobs, the film substitutes facts and footage from Al-Queda style terrorism in other countries (not even Shia) as substantiating their claims against Iran. I love the fact that one of the "Death to America" chants near the end was all women, while the film tries to make the case that Islam and Iran are anti-female.

The film is so one-sided, that it may actually recruit more whack jobs, but on the other hand it might also be a good hoot for people who know who these whack jobs are and understand the motivations and history behind American foreign policy.

The State of the Union Address

I think that President Obama did a lot of talking about what will occur over the next year and the problems confronting us as a nation. For me it was gratifying to have a president that was in command of so many facts and who understood the importance of each of these issues. What he said was an accomplishment was an accomplishment, in my opinion, but the majority of the speech was about the problems America needs to face now, and can't afford to ignore through partisan bickering.

I believe the spending cuts will result in an additional $130 billion dollars per year off the deficit for three years, based on my own calculations. I'm sure the net result can be estimated differently by different people, but the CBO will be coming out with its figures for the Congress sometime soon. If you don't like the president's proposal, it is like you believe nothing is better than something, which as a realist and not a defeatist, I simply can't believe in.

The curtain is not closed on health care reform. We will see plenty of action on this, and even if the Republicans are successful in their denial strategy, a filibuster will not stop passage of a final bill in the Senate.

In routes like Los Angeles to San Fransisco, driving is not a good alternative - it takes all day to drive. The bullet train is needed badly. Not having it as part of our infrastructure cripples our future. The states know the economy the best, and they are crying for it.

Student loan forgiveness is subsidized education, that's all. Dropping the loans after a period of good payment, is not only an incentive to make the payments, but an improvement in our higher education. I realize it's typical for a Conservative to say, "If I had to pay, everyone should always pay," but times change and so does the importance of higher education to our economy. We have an "intelligence infrastructure", which in the future will need more careful tending by our government than it has in the past.

I don't think that the State of the Union was a perfect moment, but taken together with his bipartisan initiative, it is like a "perfect storm" of movement, speech and intention to help our country in it's time of need.

Not Moscow, but not Iran either

Jeffrey Mankoff has indicated that Russia's position in regards to Iran has hardened and the US should now lay off them to become more effective (The Road to Tehran Does Not Lead Through Moscow http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-mankoff/the-road-to-tehran-does-n_b_284458.html). While this singular fact may be true, the article if full of other distortions and outright lies about the facts pertaining to Iran.

When Mohamed ElBaradei said "breakout capacity", he meant that Iran would, for the first time, have the ability to become self-sufficient in their nuclear fuel cycle, not anything more sinister, as Mankoff intimates. This is only how the most recent in a long chain of articles attacking Iran for imaginary nuclear weapons construction and deployment begins. The lie to this disproved assertion, which is being echoed over and over by U.S. Think tanks and pundits has been challenged by ElBaradei most recently during his statement to the IAEA Board of Governors on September 7, "I am dismayed by the allegations of some Member States, which have been fed to the media, that information has been withheld from the Board. These allegations are politically motivated and totally baseless. Such attempts to influence the work of the Secretariat and undermine its independence and objectivity are in violation of Article VII.F. of the IAEA Statute and should cease forthwith." There are no nukes, no nuclear weapons development, only lies, and distortions by those paid by government and the media.

The United States and its P6 partners get not one benefit from pursuing this ceaseless attack on Iran and its imaginary nukes, but two - the often essential political and economic benefits of pleasing the pro-Israel lobby, and keeping open the door to a possible 2nd Cold War and the immense defense income and profits that could derive from it. The economic stranglehold the pro-Israel lobby holds over U.S. and European Union politicians combined with the prospects of a continuation of the profitable Cold War, means that we will not likely see an end of this 21st century fantasy for a long time. Remember, we have over 3,000 nukes not being built, but currently deployed and waiting.

Fortunately, Iran has called the P6’s bluff and their serious call for a world free of nuclear arms http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=34271, submitted in their 5-page document, has a possibility of being heeded, if only Mankoff and his friends only don’t succeed in covering it up.

The FP Article, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/04/why_moscow_wont_stand_between_tehran_and_its_nukes makes transparent the ultimate goal of establishment foreign policy thinktanks such as CFR. The purpose of the policy of placing pressure on Iran at all costs, despite the evidence that Iran is not interested in building a nuclear weapon, is to restart the Cold War and all the profits it can bring.

"... the absence of effective international action on Iran's nuclear program ... will cause countries throughout Europe and the Middle East again to turn to the United States for protection and leadership."

This is not the kind of foreign policy we want or what we should have. The Obama Presidency should leave a legacy of International Relations free of Cold War tensions and war-mongering.

The Health Care Unplanning of the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is flying colors again attacking Health Care Reform. The fact that factions like the WSJ, the Insurance Lobby, and the Republican Party are attacking President Obama is because he is leading the change. This is 2009. America just voted for change, and now we have all the unhappy factions wishing they could turn back the clock and using any means necessary to try to "make it so".

Of course the changes include things like better care and service for the elderly, based on medical reports on what the elderly actually want and need. Well, let’s scare them out of wanting these changes; that should be easy! All we have to do is convince them that if they get better care, it will have to be rationed. Of course – what a stroke of genius! Because they really don't deserve the care, do they? No American does. We'll just make it look like striving for a better health care system, is like striving for a better nation, it can only make things worse!

This is the "common sense" of the WSJ and the factions. We are not into scare tactics! We are the Responsible Press, and the Conservative Responsible Republican Party! They are the Usurpers. We should not allow them to improve the lives of anyone, and how dare they save the economy! Did we ask them to? Hell no! The presumptiousness of limiting CEO salaries and bonuses! We will nip this Obama problem in the bud – by any means necessary!

We will tell people that the reformers are using too many non-political entities to control health care, and then write an editorial explaining that government control of health care means that the government must pay for health care. No matter how many safeguards are built into the system, we will insist that the government will rule with an iron hand, regardless if this is true for most other nations with government run plans. We will insist that because this is America, a large nation, we will fail if we rationalize any part of our economy! We are Republicans and we are smart and we know that stuff!

As the article mentions, Obama points out that an alarming amount of rationing is occurring in America today. The WSJ counters that restriction occurs in European Universal Health Care countries. The only difference must be that their babies and seniors aren’t dying as much as ours do. This fact alone should prove that even if there is some rationing in those countries it is not done as randomly as it occurs here.


The WSJ and the factions cherrypick facts to make foreign plans and Medicare look bad.: The French have limited CT-SCAN’s and MRI’s, without mentioning that they are limited throughout Europe for HEALTH REASONS. Medicare doesn’t pay for Virtual Colonoscopies, without mentioning that VC’s, while attractive to patients, are not the prefered procedure. Why in this issue is the WSJ a complete source of misinformation? And then, the coup de gras, the WSJ plays dumb, mentioning that Medicare cost is growing, one of the main indicators driving reform, and proposes that we fix it instead, by offering competitive plans (instead of repairing delivery, as President Obama proposes). Medicare already has competitive plans, but the plans offered by the insurance companies cost both, the seniors and the taxpayers much more than the option offered by government.

The final accusation, aimed partially at AARP, is made to sound like a indictment on all health care reform based on the fact that a publicly finianced Health Care component is part of President Obama’s system. But Medicare already is, and must continue to be, a publicly financed component, and the WSJ won’t explain why it is that Medicare recipients have the most hassle –free service in the U.S. today. I guess this would have something to do with not wanting reform, not wanting public anything, not even roads and drinking fountains, and being so complacent with the status quo and whatever the distribution of wealth happens to be at this moment in time, that any improvements leading to a better society had better be avoided like the plague.