The main thing that gives Muslim extremism credibility where it has credibility is that it has at times seemed to be the only cohesive faction willing to resist the US and Israel's oppressions and depredations.
No reform movement in Iran can get anywhere as long as it appears to effectively support US belligerence against Iran. The Green Movement is as fatally flawed as similar US-manipulated 'democracy' movements in Ukraine and Georgia have turned out to be.
As you know, Suleiman is just another brutal US patsy, so this attempt by Obama to 'help' is nothing but an invitation to the people of Egypt to jump from the frying pan into the fire.
So corrupt and dishonest you are. Mubarak isn't defying the US. He can't. We own his ass, and you know it. Like the regime in Honduras, he is doing what he is told to do.
We need to stop accepting the Israeli claim that Palestine must be demilitarized as legitimate. A demilitarized Palestine is not sovereign, and everyone knows that. It's nothing more than legalized apartheid. A UN peacekeeping force as a buffer could be an option. But a demilitarized Palestine is not.
That's nice of Turkey, but as far as Iran is concerned, the horses are long gone from the stable. Turkey has already helped Israel with training for an attack on Iran, and has already helped get Israeli jets to Georgia and Azerbaijan, according to reports. Saudi Arabia appears to have granted overflight to Israel, as indicated not only reports, but also by the concentration of US missile defense on the western half of the Persian Gulf, presumably as a bulwark against Iranian retaliation, which presumably would be for overflight. The supposed rift between Turkey and Israel, like the supposed rift between the US and Israel, is all just posturing, to provide plausible deniability when Israel begins the attack on Iran.
Typically coopted fake alternapundit defends Panetta's blatant attempt to keep the Terra stirred up as an actual opinion by Panetta. Naturally, during the Bush years, fake Obamopologistic alternapundits would have seen right through the terra-mongering, but that's all different now...
Yes, by all means, let the oil industry, which is making massive money off both sides here, define the 'best' way of dealing with this situation. I'm sure they'll be happy to do this for months more, if not years (just as the military industrial complex is happy to define the options in our various wars of conquest and our hyper-aggressive foreign policies, and the Insurance wing of the FIRE sector is happy to continue to health solutions, just as Wall Street Megabanks are quite happy to continue to define financial options for america and the world...).
Of course that makes sense in the world of an alternapundit shilling for the corporatist Democrats, where one painstakingly helps to build a beautiful world of no expectations from the obnoxious People, a world in which we all know that 'serious people' line up to receive the blessing of the lastest rationalizations handed out with talking points, now that 'the adults are in charge', and anyone real can be safely marginalized as a 'wingnut tea partier' or a ' nasty lefty'...
The appointment of Petraeus means yet another escalation by Obama. But not to worry, his obeisant Dims and Fauxgressives will support him no matter what.
How can Obama have a realistic goal, when the overall parameters and goals of US policy are not only unrealistically obsessed with US "interests", very broadly defined, but are in fact never overtly stated. What exactly are we trying to achieve in any of our military adventures? To try to get at this is invariably dismissed as 'conspiracy theorizing', so we are left to try to make sense of overtly stated goals that are patently
dishonest. In such an environment, realistic and clearly defined goals don't even begin to be a possibility. To try to say why we are there and what we are trying to do, and how we are trying to do it is like trying to build a tower out of sand.
Credit where credit is due - this is a good piece. Note that Palestinians are required to conform to Zionist demands regarding what they believe and think, but Zionists recognize no mutuality there, no need to recognize the ideas of those they oppress. So it's all about Might Makes Right. And the Might they have is might they wouldn't have without US backing, but that's a whole other story.
Russia has been playing games with Iran for years. They keep stringing Iran along about the s-300 and the Bushehr reactor, which is always just months away from coming online - no doubt there are always 'technical problems' ... and it's become more and more obvious that Russia has never meant to follow through on any of its agreements with Iran, including the Caspian Sea security umbrella much bruited several years ago.
But here's the real kicker, which I suspect Iran is just now waking up to: by continually failing to bring the Bushehr reactor online, Bushehr being the reactor that - as I understand it - Iranian enriched uranium is intended for, at least initially, Russia has apparantly willfully left Iran sitting on a stockpile of uranium . It is this very stockpile that is consistently cited as the main public reason to suspect Iran's nuclear intentions. But Russia and the US both have played a huge role in obstructing Iran's attempts to develope actual nuclear energy plants. So the whole case against Iran effectively rests on a stockpile that has essentially been caused by US-Russian obstructionism.
In other words, it's a blatantly circular case.
What are Russia's motivations? This isn't easy to figure, but it appears that when Putin spoke of a multi-polar world, what he really meant 5 bigshots on the Security Council (plus Germany and Israel) telling everyone else the time of day, mostly following the US' lead (assuming appropriate bribes, such as a nice new pipeline from Russia to Europe...)...
The reform movement in Iran will survive and will become stronger and stronger, and it will succeed one day, but - while surely you are right that US and Israel threats and humiliations against Iran strengthen the notorious hardliners in Iran - it would be quite amusing, were it not so utterly disgusting and nauseating, that you continue to try to sell us delusions, that Mousavi is not a hardliner in his own right, with blood (including US blood) on his hands; that Rafsanjani is not a hardliner in his own special way, the richest man in Iran with green green green eyes for the privatization of Iran's oil; that the Green Coup wasn't blatantly yet another US manipulated popular uprising, which betrayed the real longing for reform in Iran, with all-too-obvious parallels to the 1953 'uprising', though with far more legitimate, large numbers caught up in it.
In fact, the blatant manipulation of the reform movement in Iran made it all too easy for the hardliners to crack down. What would happen if a reform movement in the US was all-too-obviously sponsored in part by Russia and China? We all know what would happen. There would be blood running in the streets if such a movment did manage to organize a million people to march on DC. Apparent US manipulation of the Green Coup was a horrible betrayal of the people of Iran, and for the western corporatized media to participate in hyping that extravaganza of geo-political manipulation was predictable, but for western liberals to champion the Green Coup as they did was a horrific choice to double down on all that betrayal. Where were all those damn bleeding hearts when much more authentic reform movements, but ones not backed by US manipulations and western media hype, and ones not clad in designer jeans, met bloody defeats in Thailand and Honduras?!!!!!!! Where was all the damn facebook solidarity then?
For those who care about oppression in the Middle East and Central Asia, the time of the Green Coup would have been a damn good time to talk about oppression in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel... does anyone think for a moment that a reform movement was ever remotely possible in those countries? Of course not. And it would have been a good time to talk about how US manipulated Color Coups in places like Ukraine and Georgia didn't work out so well for the people who had to actually live in those countries, though it seemed to be a good deal for US geopolitical manipulations.
But hey, maybe we can put all that seemingly flamingly hypocritical facebook love for Iran's Green Coup down to the enthusiasm at the sight of people standing up for something . Still, one would have thought that thoughtful and experienced pundits would have recognizing that pouring out decontextualized hate against the Iran regime, in its struggle for survival, was maybe not so wise considering that such hate turned out to be exactly the sort of demonization that scuttled any possible Left antiwar resistance to Obama's hardline Iran policy. That's assuming that thoughtful and experienced pundits oppose ginned up wars and recognize that relentless confrontations between the US and Iran do more harm to reformers to Iran than anything else.
Reform WILL triumph in Iran, but no damn thanks to the hypocrisies of Democrats in the US. If you want to point fingers of blame for the deaths and oppressions in Iran, don't stop with the hardliners there so endlessly flogged by US political and media elites. Start looking at US 'democracy promotion' programs that 1)don't promote democracy, that 2)sometimes put innocent human beings in harms way by associating true reformers with notorious US subversion programs. Then start looking at US political elites, of both parties that continue to root US foreign policy in notions of 'national interest' that really amount to latter day mercantilism, and in the ever-present methodology of threatened or inflicted Regime Change.
Stop romanticizing the Green Coup, stop demonizing Iran's leadership (they are bad, in many ways, but woefully par for the course, globally), and focus on opposing the Dems' and Obama's determination to hype the confrontation with Iran. It is that confrontation that blocks reform in Iran.
This is an excellent piece. Well done - though it's important to recognize that, while Israel is ahead on the curve to out and out fascism, the US and UK are not far behind, and they operate on a much, much, much larger scale. In particular, the reaction of the Obama administration to the Flotilla Massacre makes it painfully obvious that this movie will be coming to a theater near you. They may be offended a bit by the bad publicity, but they aren't offended by the principle.
The pattern that we see repeatedly, with both US and Israeli deployment of force, is that a situation which maximizes the potential for violence is apparently deliberately set up, and then soldiers are sent into it. Something like this seems to have occured at Abu Graib, for example. An extreme situation is arranged, unclear orders are given, and hyperviolence predictably erupts. The result is maximal ability to blame the grunts.
It's just not credible that the folks who 'planned' this operation did not understand that their approach to the Mavi Marmara would create a situation with great violence potential. They almost certainly counted on it. The one guy who did most of the killings is the most obvious candidate for scapegoat, should the pr situation deteriorate to the point where Israel's hard line leaders need one, though presumably it won't get to that, and right now they are doing the usual 'support the troops' bit.
Incompetence is the oldest cover there is. Oops, I didn't mean to hit you, my hand slipped. Oops, I didn't mean to create conditions conducive to hyperviolence on the Mavi Marmara. It just sort of happened.
The Israeli leadership wanted violence, presumably to intimidate future flotillas.
That's funny, because we see the same brutality and WORSE from US troops in Afghanistan all too often, or rather , we don't see it, because it's hidden. But some of it leaks out ... but have you forgotten that because it's OUR evil and not Israel's evil? Where the hell do you think the evil in Israel's political world comes from? Do you suppose massive annual support from the US to the hardline establishment in Israel could have anything to do with it?
If you live in the US, you are living in the belly of the beast. What you are seeing in Israel's actions is the fire the beast breaths out. More of that fire can be seen in Afghanistan.
Whatever our differences here in America, and God knows our differences are deep deep deep, we can surely agree on one damn thing - NO GOVERNMENT MURDERS ONE OF US AND GETS AWAY WITH IT. Not Iran. NOT ISRAEL.
Compassionate Democrat is as meaningful a phrase as Compassionate Conservative. No, wait, it's a much less meaningful phrase, because Liberals are supposedly bleeding hearts, but as Obama has proven, with his war crimes so well supported by the Libs, Liberals like to see others bleed. Only, their pieties, instead of being 'we are killing them for their freedom' are more like ' we are killing them to save the women'.
The main thing that gives Muslim extremism credibility where it has credibility is that it has at times seemed to be the only cohesive faction willing to resist the US and Israel's oppressions and depredations.
No reform movement in Iran can get anywhere as long as it appears to effectively support US belligerence against Iran. The Green Movement is as fatally flawed as similar US-manipulated 'democracy' movements in Ukraine and Georgia have turned out to be.
The military is in command. That means Egypt isn't free. The struggle goes on.
And then there is the deeper issue: how is it Clinton's business to tell Egyptians what to do?
As you know, Suleiman is just another brutal US patsy, so this attempt by Obama to 'help' is nothing but an invitation to the people of Egypt to jump from the frying pan into the fire.
So corrupt and dishonest you are. Mubarak isn't defying the US. He can't. We own his ass, and you know it. Like the regime in Honduras, he is doing what he is told to do.
Netanyahu Warns of Eastern Front
We need to stop accepting the Israeli claim that Palestine must be demilitarized as legitimate. A demilitarized Palestine is not sovereign, and everyone knows that. It's nothing more than legalized apartheid. A UN peacekeeping force as a buffer could be an option. But a demilitarized Palestine is not.
Unlike the Democratic Party, with its prescription of Imperial War abroad and police state at home...
... but yes, a Dem apologist must take every chance to bash the GOP, otherwise folks might notice the stench coming from the Dems...
Congress cuts Civilian Aid by $4 bn.
why don't those people appreciate how much we are helping them?
That's nice of Turkey, but as far as Iran is concerned, the horses are long gone from the stable. Turkey has already helped Israel with training for an attack on Iran, and has already helped get Israeli jets to Georgia and Azerbaijan, according to reports. Saudi Arabia appears to have granted overflight to Israel, as indicated not only reports, but also by the concentration of US missile defense on the western half of the Persian Gulf, presumably as a bulwark against Iranian retaliation, which presumably would be for overflight. The supposed rift between Turkey and Israel, like the supposed rift between the US and Israel, is all just posturing, to provide plausible deniability when Israel begins the attack on Iran.
Typically coopted fake alternapundit defends Panetta's blatant attempt to keep the Terra stirred up as an actual opinion by Panetta. Naturally, during the Bush years, fake Obamopologistic alternapundits would have seen right through the terra-mongering, but that's all different now...
Yes, by all means, let the oil industry, which is making massive money off both sides here, define the 'best' way of dealing with this situation. I'm sure they'll be happy to do this for months more, if not years (just as the military industrial complex is happy to define the options in our various wars of conquest and our hyper-aggressive foreign policies, and the Insurance wing of the FIRE sector is happy to continue to health solutions, just as Wall Street Megabanks are quite happy to continue to define financial options for america and the world...).
Of course that makes sense in the world of an alternapundit shilling for the corporatist Democrats, where one painstakingly helps to build a beautiful world of no expectations from the obnoxious People, a world in which we all know that 'serious people' line up to receive the blessing of the lastest rationalizations handed out with talking points, now that 'the adults are in charge', and anyone real can be safely marginalized as a 'wingnut tea partier' or a ' nasty lefty'...
As British, Poles, Dutch Plan Exit
The appointment of Petraeus means yet another escalation by Obama. But not to worry, his obeisant Dims and Fauxgressives will support him no matter what.
How can Obama have a realistic goal, when the overall parameters and goals of US policy are not only unrealistically obsessed with US "interests", very broadly defined, but are in fact never overtly stated. What exactly are we trying to achieve in any of our military adventures? To try to get at this is invariably dismissed as 'conspiracy theorizing', so we are left to try to make sense of overtly stated goals that are patently
dishonest. In such an environment, realistic and clearly defined goals don't even begin to be a possibility. To try to say why we are there and what we are trying to do, and how we are trying to do it is like trying to build a tower out of sand.
Credit where credit is due - this is a good piece. Note that Palestinians are required to conform to Zionist demands regarding what they believe and think, but Zionists recognize no mutuality there, no need to recognize the ideas of those they oppress. So it's all about Might Makes Right. And the Might they have is might they wouldn't have without US backing, but that's a whole other story.
Russia has been playing games with Iran for years. They keep stringing Iran along about the s-300 and the Bushehr reactor, which is always just months away from coming online - no doubt there are always 'technical problems' ... and it's become more and more obvious that Russia has never meant to follow through on any of its agreements with Iran, including the Caspian Sea security umbrella much bruited several years ago.
But here's the real kicker, which I suspect Iran is just now waking up to: by continually failing to bring the Bushehr reactor online, Bushehr being the reactor that - as I understand it - Iranian enriched uranium is intended for, at least initially, Russia has apparantly willfully left Iran sitting on a stockpile of uranium . It is this very stockpile that is consistently cited as the main public reason to suspect Iran's nuclear intentions. But Russia and the US both have played a huge role in obstructing Iran's attempts to develope actual nuclear energy plants. So the whole case against Iran effectively rests on a stockpile that has essentially been caused by US-Russian obstructionism.
In other words, it's a blatantly circular case.
What are Russia's motivations? This isn't easy to figure, but it appears that when Putin spoke of a multi-polar world, what he really meant 5 bigshots on the Security Council (plus Germany and Israel) telling everyone else the time of day, mostly following the US' lead (assuming appropriate bribes, such as a nice new pipeline from Russia to Europe...)...
Cole at Tomdispatch
The reform movement in Iran will survive and will become stronger and stronger, and it will succeed one day, but - while surely you are right that US and Israel threats and humiliations against Iran strengthen the notorious hardliners in Iran - it would be quite amusing, were it not so utterly disgusting and nauseating, that you continue to try to sell us delusions, that Mousavi is not a hardliner in his own right, with blood (including US blood) on his hands; that Rafsanjani is not a hardliner in his own special way, the richest man in Iran with green green green eyes for the privatization of Iran's oil; that the Green Coup wasn't blatantly yet another US manipulated popular uprising, which betrayed the real longing for reform in Iran, with all-too-obvious parallels to the 1953 'uprising', though with far more legitimate, large numbers caught up in it.
In fact, the blatant manipulation of the reform movement in Iran made it all too easy for the hardliners to crack down. What would happen if a reform movement in the US was all-too-obviously sponsored in part by Russia and China? We all know what would happen. There would be blood running in the streets if such a movment did manage to organize a million people to march on DC. Apparent US manipulation of the Green Coup was a horrible betrayal of the people of Iran, and for the western corporatized media to participate in hyping that extravaganza of geo-political manipulation was predictable, but for western liberals to champion the Green Coup as they did was a horrific choice to double down on all that betrayal. Where were all those damn bleeding hearts when much more authentic reform movements, but ones not backed by US manipulations and western media hype, and ones not clad in designer jeans, met bloody defeats in Thailand and Honduras?!!!!!!! Where was all the damn facebook solidarity then?
Oppression continues in Honduras as the anniversary of the Coup approaches ...
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44306
For those who care about oppression in the Middle East and Central Asia, the time of the Green Coup would have been a damn good time to talk about oppression in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel... does anyone think for a moment that a reform movement was ever remotely possible in those countries? Of course not. And it would have been a good time to talk about how US manipulated Color Coups in places like Ukraine and Georgia didn't work out so well for the people who had to actually live in those countries, though it seemed to be a good deal for US geopolitical manipulations.
But hey, maybe we can put all that seemingly flamingly hypocritical facebook love for Iran's Green Coup down to the enthusiasm at the sight of people standing up for something . Still, one would have thought that thoughtful and experienced pundits would have recognizing that pouring out decontextualized hate against the Iran regime, in its struggle for survival, was maybe not so wise considering that such hate turned out to be exactly the sort of demonization that scuttled any possible Left antiwar resistance to Obama's hardline Iran policy. That's assuming that thoughtful and experienced pundits oppose ginned up wars and recognize that relentless confrontations between the US and Iran do more harm to reformers to Iran than anything else.
Reform WILL triumph in Iran, but no damn thanks to the hypocrisies of Democrats in the US. If you want to point fingers of blame for the deaths and oppressions in Iran, don't stop with the hardliners there so endlessly flogged by US political and media elites. Start looking at US 'democracy promotion' programs that 1)don't promote democracy, that 2)sometimes put innocent human beings in harms way by associating true reformers with notorious US subversion programs. Then start looking at US political elites, of both parties that continue to root US foreign policy in notions of 'national interest' that really amount to latter day mercantilism, and in the ever-present methodology of threatened or inflicted Regime Change.
Stop romanticizing the Green Coup, stop demonizing Iran's leadership (they are bad, in many ways, but woefully par for the course, globally), and focus on opposing the Dems' and Obama's determination to hype the confrontation with Iran. It is that confrontation that blocks reform in Iran.
Good reading of the situation.
- The Israeli Ministry of Truth
This is an excellent piece. Well done - though it's important to recognize that, while Israel is ahead on the curve to out and out fascism, the US and UK are not far behind, and they operate on a much, much, much larger scale. In particular, the reaction of the Obama administration to the Flotilla Massacre makes it painfully obvious that this movie will be coming to a theater near you. They may be offended a bit by the bad publicity, but they aren't offended by the principle.
Likud Vows it will Not Arrive
The pattern that we see repeatedly, with both US and Israeli deployment of force, is that a situation which maximizes the potential for violence is apparently deliberately set up, and then soldiers are sent into it. Something like this seems to have occured at Abu Graib, for example. An extreme situation is arranged, unclear orders are given, and hyperviolence predictably erupts. The result is maximal ability to blame the grunts.
It's just not credible that the folks who 'planned' this operation did not understand that their approach to the Mavi Marmara would create a situation with great violence potential. They almost certainly counted on it. The one guy who did most of the killings is the most obvious candidate for scapegoat, should the pr situation deteriorate to the point where Israel's hard line leaders need one, though presumably it won't get to that, and right now they are doing the usual 'support the troops' bit.
Incompetence is the oldest cover there is. Oops, I didn't mean to hit you, my hand slipped. Oops, I didn't mean to create conditions conducive to hyperviolence on the Mavi Marmara. It just sort of happened.
The Israeli leadership wanted violence, presumably to intimidate future flotillas.
That's funny, because we see the same brutality and WORSE from US troops in Afghanistan all too often, or rather , we don't see it, because it's hidden. But some of it leaks out ... but have you forgotten that because it's OUR evil and not Israel's evil? Where the hell do you think the evil in Israel's political world comes from? Do you suppose massive annual support from the US to the hardline establishment in Israel could have anything to do with it?
If you live in the US, you are living in the belly of the beast. What you are seeing in Israel's actions is the fire the beast breaths out. More of that fire can be seen in Afghanistan.
It was a military assault in international waters against a peaceful ship, and a US citizen was killed, apparently execution style.
... and virtually the entire American media and political establishment is either defending Israel on this, or singing praises.
That means we are as brutal and vicious a society as Israel has become.
NATO HQ Seething
The question is whether the US wants real partnerships in the ME, or to dominate. If it want's to dominate, Israel is the indispensable ally.
So there's no real question here. Does US policy in the ME look like partnershipping, or 'we are the big dog, give us the bone'?
Whatever our differences here in America, and God knows our differences are deep deep deep, we can surely agree on one damn thing - NO GOVERNMENT MURDERS ONE OF US AND GETS AWAY WITH IT. Not Iran. NOT ISRAEL.
Compassionate Democrat is as meaningful a phrase as Compassionate Conservative. No, wait, it's a much less meaningful phrase, because Liberals are supposedly bleeding hearts, but as Obama has proven, with his war crimes so well supported by the Libs, Liberals like to see others bleed. Only, their pieties, instead of being 'we are killing them for their freedom' are more like ' we are killing them to save the women'.