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.

Reply to WSJ Why U.S. Diplomacy Will Fail With Iran

This is my comment on Why U.S. Diplomacy Will Fail With Iran by Edward N. Luttwak.

Edward Luttwak doesn’t miss a beat here in relating all of Iran’s politics, history and policies to the US and Israel. Neither does he fail us for an instance in imagining that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s political dominance in many areas of Iraq could not be overwhelming, even aginst a strident, naive, psuedo-reformist opponent such as Mir-Hossein Mousavi. What all this right-wing analysis so au current in the press fails to appreciate is that while Mousavi is well to the left of Ahmadinejad is several respects, his positions are much less acceptable to the dominant right wing of Iran’s clergy than even Ahmadinejad’s, who is also seen by them as a potentially dangerous progressive. Another weakness in this analysis is that neither Mohammad Khatami nor Ahmadinejad were “chosen” by Ayatollah Khameni, as Mr. Luttwak alledges. Regardless of their strict control of media and the police, the fact is the Iranian clergy are still operating a type of theocratic democracy, no matter how lunatic it may appear to outsiders in love with their own democratic systems.

Add into the mix, Mr. Luttwak’s complete historical reinvention of the details of Operation Ajax, the incredible coup against Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953, and you have seen the value the neoconservative movement in America today. What we have here is exactly the view that Iran is anti-American, and anti-Israel, because, well, they’re bad, instead of recognizing that Iran is possibly, and continues to be, the the number one victim of America’s continuing plots to control it and many other countries in the middle east, and the recipient of continuing threats from Israel, a country well-known for its clashes with bordering peoples and military surgical strikes against “common enemies”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that America is “bad” either - it’s just that all belligerent countries are considered badly by their opposing belligerent countries. The main implied assertion by Luttwak that Iran “needs” the US to be an enemy is not at all substatiated: Remember when we were all “Imperialists”, and how quickly that changed once dialogue became possible?

I think I can do Mr. Luttwak one better in his analysis of the 2009 elections. Mir-Hossein Mousavi is, as we know, an old hand in Iranian politics, having served as prime minister of an almost completely totalitarian government from 1981 to 1989. The fact that he was available to oppose the phlegmatic and problematic Mr. Ahmadinejad in 2009 shows strong signs of being an “inside job”. The fact that he was allowed to stay under house arrest and maintain claims of election racketeering and stir up dissent on his website while 3,000 of his supporters were arrested, and in many cases, tortured or abused, also looks very fishy. It is still not clear whether he himself will be charged by his old cronies.

Mr. Luttwak wants to return to the good old days of sanctions, threats, and even better, nevertheless he doesn’t take into account is that our perception of Iran is based on our own sociological assumptions about their role in the world, based in turn, here, on the neoconservative world view. What is much superior, is Mr. Obama’s position of staying open to dialogue, and possibly achieve important gains for the Iranian people and ourselves. Even if Iran’s plans to develop nuclear energy are countered prematurely by Israel, or a combination of Israel and America, Iran will not suffer; it will, like Hezbollah, merely impose on its opponent whatever it perceives as a necessary countermeasure, damaging our interests, and sink back into the anti-American, anti-Israel morass it is in even deeper. This is the nature of limited war and sanctions: The opponent never really gets to change their position and appears to be the eternal enemy. Barack Obama’s Iran policy is the exact opposite and carries the possibility of transformation.