It’s hard for some Americans to understand why the Obama administration is so determined to come to an agreement with Iran on its nuclear capability, given that huge Iranian rallies are constantly chanting “Death to America!” I know the chanting makes me unhappy, since I’m part of America, and I strongly oppose me dying.
But if you know our actual history with Iran, you can kind of see where they’re coming from. They have understandable reasons to be angry at and frightened of us — things we’ve done that if, say, Norway had done them to us, would have us out in the streets shouting “Death to Norway!” Unfortunately, not only have the U.S. and our allies done horrendous things to Iran, we’re not even polite enough to remember it.
Reminding ourselves of this history does not mean endorsing an Iran with nuclear-tipped ICBMs. It does mean realizing how absurd it sounds when critics of the proposed agreement say it suddenly makes the U.S. the weaker party or that we’re getting a bad deal because Iran, as Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham put it, does not fear Obama enough. It’s exactly the opposite: This is the best agreement the U.S. could get because for the first time in 35 years, U.S.-Iranian relations aren’t being driven purely by fear.
1. The founder of Reuters purchased Iran in 1872
Nasir al-Din Shah, Shah of Iran from 1848-1896, sold Baron Julius de Reuter the right to operate all of Iran’s railroads and canals, most of the mines, all of the government’s forests, and all future industries. The famous British statesman Lord Curzon called it“the most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has probably ever been dreamed of.” Iranians were so infuriated that the Shah had to rescind the sale the next year.
2. The BBC lent a hand to the CIA’s 1953 overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.
If the Reuters thing weren’t enough to give Iranians a grudge against the Western media, the BBC transmitted a secret code to help Kermit Roosevelt (Teddy’s grandson) lay the groundwork for an American and British coup against Mosaddegh. (BBC Persian also assisted by broadcasting pro-coup propaganda on the orders of the British government.) Soon enough the U.S. was training the regime’s secret police in how to interrogate Iranians with methods a CIA analyst said were “based on German torture techniques from World War II.”
3. We had extensive plans to use nuclear weapons in Iran.
In 1980 the U.S. military was terrified the Soviet Union would take advantage of the Iranian Revolution to invade Iran and seize the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. So the Pentagon came up with a plan: If the Soviets began massing their troops, we would use small nuclear weapons to destroy the mountain passes in northern Iran the Soviets needed to move their troops into the country.
So we wouldn’t be using nukes on Iran, just in Iran. As Pentagon historian David Crist put it, “No one reflected on how the Iranians might view such a scenario.” But they probably would have been fine with it, just as we’d be fine with Iran nuking Minnesota to prevent Canada from gaining control of the Gulf of Mexico. “No problem,” we’d say. “Nuestra casa es su casa.”
4. We were cool with Saudi Arabia giving Saddam $5 billion to build nukes during the Iran-Iraq war
You probably know that, after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, Iraq went all out (with our help) trying to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and actually used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers. What you probably don’t know is that Saudi Arabia was funding Saddam’s nuclear program with billions of dollars, and the Reagan administration knew all about it and didn’t care.
To understand how this looks to Iran, remember that at least 0.75% of Iran’s total population died during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the per capita equivalent today of 2.4 million Americans. For comparison’s sake, we still constantly talk about World War II — in which 400,000 Americans died, then 0.3% of our population — 70 years later.
5. U.S. leaders have repeatedly threatened to outright destroy Iran
It’s not just John McCain singing “bomb bomb bomb Iran.” Admiral William Fallon, who retired as head of CENTCOM in 2008, said about Iran: “These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them.” Admiral James Lyons Jr., commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the 1980s,has said we were prepared to “drill them back to the fourth century.” Richard Armitage, then assistant secretary of defense, explained that we considered whether to “completely obliterate Iran.” Billionaire and GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson advocates an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran — “in the middle of the desert” at first, then possibly moving on to places with more people.
Most seriously, the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review declared that we will not use nuclear weapons “against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.” There’s only one non-nuclear country that’s plausibly not in this category. So we were saying we will never use nuclear weapons against any country that doesn’t have them already — with a single exception, Iran. Understandably, Iran found having a nuclear target painted on it pretty upsetting.
6. We shot down a civilian Iranian airliner — killing 290 people, including 66 children
On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes, patrolling in the Persian Gulf, blew Iran Air Flight 655 out of the sky.The New York Times had editorialized about “Murder in the Air” in 1983 when the Soviet Union mistakenly shot down a South Korean civilian airliner in its airspace, declaring, “there is no conceivable excuse for any nation shooting down a harmless airliner.” After the Vincennes missile strike, a Times editorial announced that what happened to Flight 655 “raises stern questions for Iran.” That’s right — for Iran. Two years later the U.S. Navy gave the Vincennes’s commander the highly prestigious Legion of Merit commendation.
7. We worry about Iranian nukes because they would deter our own military strikes.
Our rhetoric on Iran seems nonsensical: Do U.S. leaders actually believe Iran would engage in a first nuclear strike on Israel or the U.S., given that would lead to a quick and devastating retaliation from those well-armed nuclear powers?
Even conservative U.S. foreign policy experts know that’s incredibly unlikely. They’re not worried that we can’t deter a nuclear-armed Iran — they’re worried that a nuclear-armed Iran could deter us. As Thomas Donnelly, a top Iran analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, put it in 2004, “the prospect of a nuclear Iran is a nightmare … because of the constraining effect it threatens to impose upon U.S. strategy for the greater Middle East. … The surest deterrent to American action is a functioning nuclear arsenal.”
This perspective — that we must prevent other countries from being able to deter us from waging war — is a bedrock belief of the U.S. establishment, and in fact was touted as a major reason to invade Iraq.
Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of "Globalistan" (2007), "Red Zone Blues" (2007), "Obama does Globalistan" (2009) and "Empire of Chaos" (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is "2030", also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.
Virtually the whole planet holds its collective breath at the prospect of Hillary Clinton possibly becoming the next President of the United States (POTUS).
How’s that humanly possible, as the (daily) Bonfire of The Scandals – relentlessly fed by WikiLeaks revelations and now converging FBI investigations - can now be seen from interstellar space?
It’s possible because Hillary Clinton, slouching through a paroxysm of manufactured hysteria, is supported by virtually the whole US establishment, a consensual neocon/neoliberalcon War Party/Wall Street/corporate media axis.
But History has a tendency to show us there’s always a straw that breaks the camel’s back.
This could be it – as revealed by WikiLeaks; March 2, 2015, the day when John Podesta wrote, “we are going to have to dump all those emails.”
That happened to be the exact same day it was revealed Hillary Clinton had used a personal email server as Secretary of State.
Yet this reveals only part of the puzzle. There’s got to be a response to Podesta’s email – which WikiLeaks may, or may not, leak in the next few days before the election. If the back and forth clearly shows intent (to mislead), then we’ve got a 100 percent smoking gun: the whole Clinton (cash) machine narrative – according to which Hillary just deleted "personal" emails – crumbles like the ultimate House of Cards.
Moreover, that would unveil what was from the start the privileged Clinton machine strategy: to thwart the subsequent internal State Dept. and FBI investigations.
As far as the Clinton machine is concerned, an interlocking influence peddling pile up is the norm. John Podesta also happens to be the founder of the Center for American Progress – a George Soros operation and prime recruiting ground for Obama administration officials, including US Treasury operatives who decided which elite Too Big To Fail (TBTF) financial giants would be spared after the 2008 crisis. DCLeaks.com, for its part, has connected Soros Open Society foundations to global funding rackets directly leading to subversion of governments and outright regime change (obviously sparing Clinton Foundation donors.)
Exceptional bananas, anyone?
The perfectly timed slow drip of WikiLeaks revelations, for the Clinton machine, feels like a sophisticated form of Chinese torture. To alleviate the pain, the relentless standard spin has been to change the subject, blame the messenger, and attribute it all to “evil” Russian hacking when the real source for the leaks might have come straight from the belly of the (Washington) beast.
At the Valdai discussion club last week, it took President Putin only a few sentences to debunk the whole Clinton machine narrative with a bang:
“Another mythical and imaginary problem is what I can only call the hysteria the USA has whipped up over supposed Russian meddling in the American presidential election. The United States has plenty of genuinely urgent problems, it would seem, from the colossal public debt to the increase in firearms violence and cases of arbitrary action by the police.You would think that the election debates would concentrate on these and other unresolved problems, but the elite has nothing with which to reassure society, it seems, and therefore attempt to distract public attention by pointing instead to supposed Russian hackers, spies, agents of influence and so forth.
I have to ask myself and ask you too: Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia can somehow influence the American people’s choice? America is not some kind of ‘banana republic’, after all, but is a great power. Do correct me if I am wrong.”
Reality, though, continues to insist on offering multiple, overlapping banana republic instances, configuring a giant black hole of transparency.
Anthropologist Janine Wedel has been one of the few in Clinton-linked US mainstream media acknowledging how Bill Clinton, while Hillary was Secretary of State, perfected his version of “philantro-capitalism” (actually a money laundering “pay to play” racket), a practice “by no means confined to the Clintons”.
And the racket prospered with inbuilt nuggets, such as Hillary being perfectly aware that prime Clinton Foundation donors Qatar and Saudi Arabia were also financing ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.
Huma, the Fall Princess
Now, less than a week before the election, we have come to the crucial juncture where the WikiLeaks revelations are merging with the FBI investigations - all three of them.
Exhibit A is this WikiLeaks bombshell; Peter Kadzik, who’s now in charge of the Department of Justice (DOJ) probe into the 650,000 emails found on the laptop shared by Clinton’s right-hand woman Huma Abedin and her estranged, pervert husband Anthony Wiener, is a Clinton asset.
Not only Kadzik was an attorney for Marc Rich when he was pardoned by Bill Clinton; Podesta – as also revealed by WikiLeaks - thanked Kadzik for keeping him “out of jail”; and it was Kadzik who gave Podesta a secret heads up on the Clinton email investigation.
The Clinton machine, starring a self-described virtuous Madonna, is actually a pretty nasty business. Huma and her family’s close connections to Saudi Arabia – and the Muslim Brotherhood – are legendary (that includes her brother Hassan, who works for Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi). Podesta, by the way, is a handsomely remunerated lobbyist for Saudi Arabia in Washington; that’s part of the Clinton Foundation connection.
Yet now, with Huma in the spotlight – still maintaining she didn’t know all those emails were in her and Wiener’s laptop - it’s no wonder Hillary has instantly downgraded her, publicly, to “one of my aides”. She used to be Hillary’s ersatz “daughter”; now she’s being framed as The Fall Princess.
And that brings us to the intersection of those three FBI investigations; on Hillary’s Subterranean Email Server (in theory closed by FBI’s Comey last summer); on the Clinton Foundation; and on Wiener’s sexting of minors. The FBI has been investigating the Clinton Foundation for over a year now. Let’s try to cut a long story short.
Last July, the DOJ – under Clinton/Obama asset Loretta Lynch - decided not to prosecute anyone on Emailgate. And yet FBI director Comey – who nonetheless stressed Hillary’s “extreme carelessness” – turbo-charged his no-denial mode on another investigation, as in the FBI “sought to refocus the Clinton Foundation probe.”
Soon we had Clinton Foundation FBI investigators trying to get access to all the emails turned over in the Emailgate investigation. The East District of New York refused it. Very important point; up to 2015, guess who was the US attorney at the East District; Clinton/Obama asset Lynch.
Enter an extra layer of legalese. Less than two months ago, the Clinton Foundation FBI investigators discovered they could not have access to any Emailgate material that was connected to immunity agreements.
But then, roughly a month ago, another FBI team captured the by now famous laptop shared by Huma and Wiener - using a warrant allowing only a probe on Weiner’s sexting of a 15-year-old girl. Subsequently they found Huma Abedin emails at all her accounts – from Humaabedin@yahoo.com to the crucial huma@clintonemail.com. This meant not only that Huma was forwarding State Dept. emails to her private accounts, but also that Hillary was sending emails from the “secret” clintonemail.com to Huma at yahoo.com.
No one knew for sure, but some of these emails might be duplicates of those the Clinton Foundation FBI investigators could not access because of the pesky immunity agreements.
What’s established by now is that the metadata in the Huma/Wiener laptop was duly examined. Now picture both teams of FBI investigators – Clinton Foundation and pervert Wiener – comparing notes. And then they decide Huma’s emails are “relevant”.
Key questions apply; and the most pressing is how the emails were deemed “relevant” if the investigators could only examine the metadata. What matters is that Comey certainly was made aware of the content of the emails – a potential game-changer. That’s why one of my sources insists his decision to go public came from above.
The other key question now is whether the DOJ – via Kadzik? - will once again thwart another investigation, this time on the Clinton Foundation. Senior, serious FBI agents won’t take that – massive euphemism – kindly.
The FBI has been on the Clinton Foundation for over a year. Now, arguably, they are loaded with evidence – and they won’t quit. Winning the presidency now seems to be the least of Hillary Clinton’s Bonfire of Scandals’ problems.
Through massive propaganda, Muslims are led to believe that there deep differences between Shias and Sunnis. To advance this agenda, crises are deliberately engineered that lead to bloodshed.
As this issue of Crescent International goes to press, there are battles of an apocalyptic nature in progress in both Iraq and Syria. These conflicts and their campaigns have undergone low- and high-intensity swings for the past 15 years in Iraq and for more than 5 years in Syria. But, currently, they have reached their highest pitch of combat operations in and around two major cities: Halab (Aleppo) in Syria, and Mosul in Iraq.
The Muslim peoples in all this are deprived of accurate information, leading them to believe what the corporate media mouthpieces want them to believe. And in this toxic presentation of internal Muslim affairs the overall impression that the politically brain-dead consumer of such information is that there is a war in progress, and this war is working its way to be an all-out war between Sunnis and Shi‘is. That is what the mainstream corporate media wants you and me to believe.
The fact of the matter is that there is no war between Sunnis and Shi‘is. What needs to be pointed out here is that there are two sources of this sectarian civil war presentation: one of them is the Zionist-imperialist mass media and the other one is the combination of Sunni and Shi‘i sectarians. These two external and internal elements are on the same wavelength: both of them are fueling intra-Islamic hatred and trying to prepare their constituents for a fight to the finish, a fight that will either wipe out the Shi‘is or wipe out the Sunnis! Thanks, but no thanks, to the void in the Muslim mind, where there is no trace of informed political analysis or any reference to the Qur’an and the Prophet (pbuh) these two narratives are taking their toll on many Muslims from Makkah to Morocco westward and from Madinah to Malaysia eastward. No one can deny this. There is a noxious brew of sectarianism that has taken hold in the minds of the misinformed and the uninformed. How do you deal with this venomous sectarian cant?
Easy. You identify the sectarians.
And let us not kid ourselves. There are sectarians on both sides. It is up to the Sunni Muslims to take the wraps off their own sectarians. Likewise, it falls upon the Shi‘i Muslims to blow the whistle on their own sectarians. In the meantime the culture of ignorance that has incubated this sectarianism has to be rolled back. When Muslims are provided accurate information they will not fall into a prefabricated sectarian trap.
Thanks, but no thanks, to the void in the Muslim mind, where there is no trace of informed political analysis
Mosul and Halab (Aleppo) are being bombed day in and day out because both Syria and Iraq, according to the Zionist-imperialist master plan, are arranged to bleed to death. Why, someone might ask? Because Zionist and imperialist interests dictate that life be sucked out of both Syria and Iraq. It would not have made any difference if the majority population in one country was Buddhist and the other was Hindu, or that one was predominantly Protestant or Catholic… as long as the population in Iraq and Syria are conceived as enemies of that ungodly permutation of Zionism and imperialism. No one should lose sight of the fact that Syria and Iraq both are being guillotined precisely because they are a future existential threat to the racist colonizers of the land of the prophets.
It is true that Iraq and Syria are hemorrhaging but the feeling of impending doom is to be found in the military garrison, otherwise known by some as Israel. And the only — and I repeat, the only — immediate existential danger that has shown the Israelis the “knockout stars” is Hizbullah. This valiant resistance movement (Hizbullah) is, by virtue of a consolidation of Islamic self-determination extending from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, the most serious military challenge the Israelis have ever encountered. By the admission of Israeli officials themselves, Hizbullah has more than 100,000 missiles. Hundreds of these missiles have a range of 250km or more. Some of them are equipped with highly explosive missile heads weighing hundreds of kilograms. These thousands of missiles are capable of reaching any military target within colonized Palestine. This would include strategic infrastructure such as power plants, atomic centers, Dimona, Ben-Gurion Airport, industrial complexes, military bases, and mixed military-civilian areas.
Whatever the Israeli military has, such as its much-vaunted anti-missile Iron Dome, will be on the defensive once thousands of missiles are launched every day. If this type of war breaks out, it would mean that the civilian population, which incidentally changes from civilian to military outfits on a regular basis, would be forced to live in shelters (if they can find them) for a long time — as this will be an extended war. The war in Syria of Israeli-American origins has unintended consequences for the top brass in Tel Aviv and Washington.
That war has given Hizbullah the much-needed military training and expertise to be better equipped to take on the Israeli chicken hawks. The Israelis and their enablers would want a coming war with Hizbullah to be over as quickly as possible.
No, I don’t think so. If Hizbullah was able to fight in Syria for five years and counting, it should be able to fight in Lebanon and Palestine for that period of time. And definitely the Israeli generals and their troops cannot sustain a war of that duration and magnitude, even in their own backyard. Hizbullah has ground-to-sea missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. Hizbullah has its own air defense capabilities.
Add to that their intelligence services and their cyberwar wherewithal for electronic warfare and we are talking about a force that puts the conventional Arabian armies to shame. Hizbullah is no rag-tag militia. Neither is it one that knocks on royal doors for handout riyals. Since the Zionist-imperialist-Arabian imposed war on it in 2006, Hizbullah has tripled its strength by one account. It is reported to have more than 40,000 men under arms — half of them are reserves who will be called to duty once the Israelis are foolish enough to fire the first shot.
In these circumstances the Israeli civilian and military leaderships would be expected to do all they can to extend the war in Syria and Iraq into an indefinite future. And if sectarianism is going to do the trick, then sectarianism it is. While these Zionist strategic satans are using their regional proxies and worldwide connections to play out a very bloody scenario to their north, they are cementing friendly relations to their south. Both the officials in Tel Aviv and Cairo are in the same trench when it comes to Islamic self-determination in Egypt and Arabia. To bring Egypt closer into the Zionist political divan the Zionists and their enablers (America and Arabia) are using ISIS and their likes to scare Egyptian officials into compromise positions.
The Zionist shayatin are a step ahead of everyone. They are using “Islamic ignorance” to combat Islamic self-determination. They are using ISIS and all its proliferating counterparts to abort the Islamic revival. They are setting ISIS and its swelling equivalents — and they are breeding like rabbits — to eventually take on Hizbullah. These Zionists are lodged deep down inside the Muslim psyche, so deep that they occupy Makkah and Madinah, even as the average Muslim has no clue. These Zionist manipulators have burrowed deep down inside the Egyptian establishment. They think that they have some type of strategic alliance with Egypt.
As far as Israeli national security, Egypt is second to the US in significance. Military and security cooperation have never been as they are today between Israel and Egypt. So much so that both Israel and Egypt now consider Hamas to be their number one enemy. Everybody talks about an Israeli blockade and sanction against Ghazzah but the Egyptian blockade and sanction hurts the most. Egypt refuses to allow its al-‘Arish port for transporting goods to and from Ghazzah. What then is the difference between the Egyptian al-‘Arish and the Israeli Ashdod?
The bottom line is that Israel is secure and self-confident when it comes to the Arabian armies and militaries. But when it comes to Hizbullah and Islamic Iran Israel needs its spies more than it needs its soldiers, it needs its (evil) specialists more than it needs its sergeants, and it needs its tranquilizers more than it needs its blitzes. For that reason it has thrown in all it has, in Syria and in Lebanon. And the sectarian divide turns out to be an Israeli war plan. Even their public statements and media presentations give them away,
The Sunni governments, the Sunni countries, the Sunni peoples” etc… are now in a matter-of-fact alliance with the “Jewish state”;
The enemy of my enemy is my friend; and
The “Iranian” enemy of Israel is the “Iranian” enemy of Saudi Arabia, the “Iranian” enemy of the Persian Gulf states, the “Iranian” enemy of the Arabian Peninsula states.
But all this does not go far enough… it does not serve the purpose. So, they do more by giving it the necessary combustible material as they replace political nation-states with religious denominations of a sectarian definition. And this is how we have today’s media sensation about Syria and Iraq.
You have to give it to them: the Zionists are so smart that they are having their enemies dig the Zionist grave. They are so twisted in their schemes that they cannot see the death trap they have in a roundabout way enthusiastically prepared for themselves,
But Allah came upon them [Yahud] in a manner they had not expected, and cast trepidation in their hearts: they destroyed their homes with their own hands as well as the hands of the committed Muslims (59:2).
One of the remarkable aspects of the American system is that people actually believe they have a say in how their president is elected. The media plays its role in pushing the establishment’s agenda to perpetuate the myth.
The US election cycle every four years has great entertainment value even if it is an exercise in futility as far as the people are concerned. They are led to believe that they decide who is to be president for the next four years. The fact is that this decision is made by the “enlightened elite” who consider the masses too stupid to know what is good for them. The American elite have a point: the masses are kept almost entirely in the dark about the true nature of government, who the real policy-makers are and how the US Congress functions and at whose beck and call.
It is safe to assume that the vast majority of Americans have not heard of Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or Jerry White, three other candidates in the presidential race. This is because the US establishment as well as the media controls the message. By excluding other candidates from television debates and refusing to provide them newspaper space, the impression is firmly planted in the minds of people that there are only two candidates: nominees of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Similarly, the issues raised in debates are carefully controlled. Thus, the people are not allowed even to think for themselves or bring up the issues that matter to them.
The Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton is the establishment’s candidate and every effort is made to project her. Her Republican rival Donald Trump is a loose cannon and although he has made his billions through the same controlled system, he is presenting himself as an “outsider.” Aware that he is likely to lose the election, he has alleged that the presidential election is “rigged” in favor of his rival. Trump is only partly right; the entire system is rigged. There is ample evidence from past elections. In the 2000 elections, thousands of African Americans were disenfranchised and while Al Gore, the Democratic candidate had a larger share of popular vote in Florida and there were calls for a recount, the conservative dominated Supreme Court handed the state to George Bush and therefore the presidency. A similar charade was enacted in 2004 when a list of 57,000 dead people compiled in Texas was used to disenfranchise people in Atlanta. If even half of one’s name appeared close to the list from Texas, he or she was disqualified in Atlanta.
Trump believes something similar is afoot but in reverse. He has urged his supporters to monitor polling stations carefully to prevent fraud. There is considerable risk that violence may erupt when he loses the election on November 8, as is widely believed he would.
Beyond voter-suppression and ballot rigging — only half of eligible voters ever bother to cast a ballot, hardly the hallmark of a great democracy — lies a much bigger problem: that of corporations buying candidates. It is said that America has the best democracy money can buy. Campaign spending by presidential and congressional candidates this year is likely to top $7.3 billion. While Trump himself is a billionaire, Hillary Clinton is beholden to Wall Street executives. Her speeches confirm this.
She is also a hawk on foreign policy and represents the militaristic wing of the American establishment. Clinton had made the scandalous statement after Muammar Qaddafi’s public lynching in Sirte, Libya in October 2011, “We came, we saw, and he died.” Ms. Clinton is also far more pro-Zionist than President Barack Obama, or her rival, Donald Trump.
To call America a democracy with all the faults that a democracy entails would be a gross injustice. America is ruled by an oligarchy in which the needs of ordinary people are totally ignored. After all, Obama had come to power amid great hopes. He had popularized the slogan, “Yes, we can.” Eight years after Obama falsely aroused such hopes, the vast majority of Americans has seen none. Their life is a perpetual cycle of misery. Even though America’s increasingly privatized prisons, warehousing mostly African Americans and other minorities, are overflowing with the shattered lives of its imperial legacy, the corporate thieves continue to plunder while the poor fall deeper into poverty. Obama has launched more drone strikes against people in distant lands than his rightly reviled predecessor. The only difference is that he does it with a smile while his predecessor did it with a scowl.
America’s political and economic systems are completely rigged. They are not meant to serve the people, notwithstanding the high sounding slogans that are uttered during every election cycle. The corporate media pundits make sure that people’s attention is focused on such issues as personal survival, baseball games, and alcohol and sex scandals. Even Bernie Sanders, the so-called socialist candidate, turned out to be a fraud. He thundered against Wall Street’s corporate thieves only to now be calling on his supporters to vote for Wall Street candidate, Hillary Clinton.
Need one say more about the US political system?
Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT).
Of the many and grave abominable crimes the House of Saud committed over the centuries: from the pillage of Karbala at the turn of the 19th century, to the destruction of Medina’s historical heritage, and the systematic disappearing of the Hijaz vibrant religious traditions, it is al-Saud’s latest stunt against Yemen’s Resistance Movement which echoes most vulgar and despicable.
Sitting atop its self-righteous Wahhabist throne, the kingdom claimed in late October that the Houthis of Yemen attempted to hit the holy city of Mecca in a missile attack. Grand-standing on their self-proclaimed religious sanctity – the so-called keepers of Islam, those so-called guardians of a tradition Wahhabism has tried so very hard to obliterate in the name of puritanism, manifested a lie into existence in a desperate bid to garner sympathies and deflect from their own ignominy … and the world went along with it.
Without so much a shred of evidence, against good conscious, and I would personally add against rational thinking, mainstream media acted Riyahd’s echo-chamber, crying outrage over an affront which never was.
Has the world lost its mind so completely that insanity can be served on a platter and called truth by the power of one lunatic regime? Are we seriously expected to rise to the defence of al-Saud for they have argued that Mecca’s sanctity was allegedly almost breached by those devilish Houthis, the kingdom has long branded as apostates for they speak a tradition its clergy abhor most of all?
Riyadh forbids you see any contention to its religious diktat. The House of Saud ambitions you see to imprint on Islam in the same manner it imprinted on the Hejaz as it branded its name on both a land and a people. Who are the Saudis today but the followers of al-Saud – this one house hailing from the sands of Nejd?
Crazy talks ….
But is it? Is it really crazy to look upon the political construct of Saudi Arabia and not recognise a blind hatred for all that denies al-Saud’s absolute power over mind and matter? Is it insanity to look upon the kingdom and recoil before the radicalism it rose upon the Islamic world while calling it holy?
Have you ever wondered what ires the kingdom so, that when it looks upon Yemen, Iran, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq it is heresy its clergy cries?
Have you ever considered that al-Saud’s real reproach against Shia Islam, is not theological but rather feudal? It is obedience the kingdom craves. It is political and religious absolutism Nejd want to forever commands so that the Shias of Muhammad could be renamed the Shias of Saud …
In this construct such names as Imam Ali, Imam Hassan, Imam Hussain and the long line of Imams which hail from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, the prophet of Islam have to be denied, rewritten, and altogether forgotten. It is legitimacy the kingdom demands to its name even though legitimacy was appointed to another. Another House … another blood line … another tradition, a Truth build not on fear and oppression but just liberation.
This charade Riyadh weaved against Yemen’s Resistance only serves to reaffirm its determination to pervert Islam’s holy sites and rise them a weapon when they should stand a call for Justice.
“There has been widespread condemnation of the attempt by Houthi militias to strike the Holy City of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Al-Resalah has reported. The Saudi government revealed on October 27, 2016 that its forces had intercepted a “ballistic missile” 65 kilometres from the city. It was fired by the Houthis, it claimed.
“The Houthis and Saleh’s militiamen did not care about the holy sites and targeted the city from where Islam sprang and to which all Muslims in the world turn their faces during their prayers,” commented Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.
Right on cue, Yemeni Foreign Minister in exile, Abdel-Malik al-Mikhlafi, accused the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh of “trying to ignite a regional war” by targeting “honourable Mecca.”
And then of course there was the Committee of Supreme Scholars in Saudi Arabia, “Targeting [Mecca and Madinah] is a massive crime.” It is, the Ulema added, evidence of Iran’s intention behind planting the Houthis in Yemen.
Hmmm … so let me recap that for you: any attack on the sanctity of Mecca and Medina – Islam’s two holiest of cities, constitute a crime so grave that it serves as proof of Iran’s guilt? Am I reading this correctly? Iran is guilty because only IT could imagine such a terrible attack against Islam? Is that an accusation or a drug-induced sectarian slur?
Has anyone bothered to acknowledge the fact that Yemen Resistance never actually targeted Mecca, or Medina for that matter? Why would Yemen even consider hitting Islam’s holy sites?
Unless of course Riyadh’s accusation is meant as a challenge of Yemen’s religiosity … Painting Yemen as the great big bad infidel would make things so much easier for the kingdom. Think about it: should Saudi Arabia succeed in dehumanizing the Yemenis, worse still, should it conflates its war against Yemen with a righteous Islamic crusade against dangerous heretics its officials would no longer have to rationalise their brutal genocide of civilian populations.
Should the world be made to equate non-Wahhabi Islam with criminality, Riyadh’s radical clergy could forever redact Islam’s traditions, and History to claim its interpretation holiest.
Has the world been hit by general amnesia?
Those very sites, Riyadh claims to defend against Yemen’s Resistance, it itself raided, looted and burnt. Of that of course no one makes mention of!
The religious tradition al-Saud claims to represent, speak for and protect, its princes and kings have perverted, sold and disappeared – to the point whereIslamic History has become sole property of the king.
So no Yemen’s Resistance Movement did not target Mecca or Medina … Yemen does not want to see Islam’s holy sites burn … if anything they would like Islam to be liberated from the yoke of tyranny.
If anyone has taken a sledge-hammer to both Mecca and Medina it is al-Saud Royals. Actually no it is much more than that! The Saudi monarchy has been responsible for the destruction of several religious traditions, and no power so far has dared offer but a whisper in condemnation!
Where was Muslims’ outrage when al-Baqee al-Baqee cemetery in Medina was reduced to rubbles? What does the world remember of the Christians of Najran and the Jewish tribes of Medina? Nothing of course since the kingdom disappeared all traces of their existence.
Who spoke against the violations Mecca has endured, and continues to endure under the “care” of the grand holy kingdom of Wahhabi Saudi Arabia?
How many holy doors were brought down, and martyrs made that we are not allowed to mention?
How many shrines, prophets’ tombs, churches, synagogues and mosques have been brought down by Wahhabism amid deafening silence?
By Catherine Shakdam – Director of Programs for the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies. This article also appeared in the Huffington Post
Alwaght- Participants at the World Assembly of Islamic Awakening conference in Baghdad have reiterated on the need to confront terrorism and Takfiri extremists.
The conference was hosted by the office of Sayyed Ammar al-Hakim, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) who has recently been elected as the leader of Iraq’s National Alliance. Secretary-General of the World Assembly of Islamic Awakening Ali Akbar Velayati also attended the event and said that the meeting was held to review different issues in the Islamic world and present strategies to remove the existing hurdles and challenges.
In his speech, Sayyed al Hakim expressed deep concern over crises facing Muslims, calling for dialogue among Islamic countries to find ways to tackle them. Al Hakim, leader of the largest political bloc in Iraq’s parliament, said Muslim nations are facing “decisive challenges”, like extremism.
He further called on Islamic countries to hold dialogue on their concerns and find ways to resolve them.
Hakim also pointed to the issue of Palestine as still being the main concern of the Muslim world and one that should be brought into the spotlight.
Islamic Awakening Alive Despite Enemy Plots
Addressing the gathering, Secretary-General of the World Assembly of Islamic Awakening said despite enemy plots to thwart the awakening movement in the region, Velayati said the movement is still vibrant and moving due to popular support among the masses.
"Despite all the existing difficulties, problems and crises that have been inflicted on the Islamic governments and nations, the wave of the Islamic awakening is moving forward despite all hurdles and challenges thanks to massive popular support,” he added.
Dr. Velayati who is also a senior adviser to Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution added that people’s active presence in the war of truth against falsehood is the key and effective element in Islamic-Arab revolutions inspired by the Islamic Awakening movement in the region.
"Today the Islamic Awakening movement is clearly visible all around the region thanks to Islam; and the Islamic values and the voices against arrogant and bullying powers are the first outcome of the Islamic Awakening in the region,” he said.
The senior Iranian official touched on the history of the awakening movement that has swept the Islamic states in north of Africa and the West Asia region, including Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. He said the movement started following US policy failure in the creation of the so called ‘New Middle East’ and the occupation Afghanistan and Iraq.
He pointed out that, “five years after the start of the Islamic Awakening movement, enemies and opponents of the movement have practically failed to fulfill their divisive plots and reach their goal to contain the movement despite their efforts to organize Takfiri groups as a rival force against the Islamic Awakening movement."
Dr. Velayati also noted that the failure of ISIS and other Takfiri groups in Syria and Iraq will create great opportunities for the Islamic world and boost the people’s spirit for confronting extremist and terrorist groups. He further slammed the Saudi regime for its covert role in all crises in the region, from Syria and Iraq to those in Yemen, Libya and elsewhere. Saudi Wahhabism is using its petrodollars to sow discord in the Muslim world, he added.
The senior Iranian official called for a return to true principles and values of the holy religion of Islam as the sole way out of regional problems.
Regulations to Curb Takfirism
In his speech during the conference, speaker of Iraq’s parliament called for legal measures to eradicate ideological roots of Takfirism.
Salim al-Jabouri stressed the need for collective “preventive” measures by Muslim countries to counter attempts at linking terrorism to Islam.
Highlighting the Iraqi parliament’s efforts in the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), he pointed to a proposal calling on Islamic and international bodies to introduce regulations to fight against the ideological roots of Takfiri currents.
Al-Jabouri, who is a Sunni Muslim, accused terrorists of attempting to spread their radical ideas in the name of religion.
He called for a meeting with the participation of Iraq, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to address their disputes, saying Muslim countries must take measures to counter terrorism.
The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, for his part, said there are countries that support terrorism for their own benefits while others are seeking to sow sectarian discord.
"ISIS did not come to existence overnight. Certain sides used to support the group," he said. Takfiri terrorists, he said, do not distinguish between Shiite and Sunni Muslims or abide by any principles, adding they are trying to sow sectarian divisions. Abadi said Iraq is capable enough to counter ISIS and terrorism, calling on the country to remain united. "We will hopefully fight and defeat the Takfiri terrorism," the prime minister added.
According to organizers, the Saturday conference in the Iraqi capital brought together 50 Sunni and Shiite Muslim scholars and intellectuals from 22 Muslim nations.
If the Reuters thing weren’t enough to give Iranians a grudge against the Western media, the BBC transmitted a secret code to help Kermit Roosevelt (Teddy’s grandson) lay the groundwork for an American and British coup against Mosaddegh. (BBC Persian also assisted by broadcasting pro-coup propaganda on the orders of the British government.) Soon enough the U.S. was training the regime’s secret police in how to interrogate Iranians with methods a CIA analyst said were “based on German torture techniques from World War II.”
3. We had extensive plans to use nuclear weapons in Iran.
In 1980 the U.S. military was terrified the Soviet Union would take advantage of the Iranian Revolution to invade Iran and seize the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. So the Pentagon came up with a plan: If the Soviets began massing their troops, we would use small nuclear weapons to destroy the mountain passes in northern Iran the Soviets needed to move their troops into the country.
So we wouldn’t be using nukes on Iran, just in Iran. As Pentagon historian David Crist put it, “No one reflected on how the Iranians might view such a scenario.” But they probably would have been fine with it, just as we’d be fine with Iran nuking Minnesota to prevent Canada from gaining control of the Gulf of Mexico. “No problem,” we’d say. “Nuestra casa es su casa.”
4. We were cool with Saudi Arabia giving Saddam $5 billion to build nukes during the Iran-Iraq war
You probably know that, after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, Iraq went all out (with our help) trying to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and actually used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers. What you probably don’t know is that Saudi Arabia was funding Saddam’s nuclear program with billions of dollars, and the Reagan administration knew all about it and didn’t care.
To understand how this looks to Iran, remember that at least 0.75% of Iran’s total population died during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the per capita equivalent today of 2.4 million Americans. For comparison’s sake, we still constantly talk about World War II — in which 400,000 Americans died, then 0.3% of our population — 70 years later.
5. U.S. leaders have repeatedly threatened to outright destroy Iran
It’s not just John McCain singing “bomb bomb bomb Iran.” Admiral William Fallon, who retired as head of CENTCOM in 2008, said about Iran: “These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them.” Admiral James Lyons Jr., commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the 1980s,has said we were prepared to “drill them back to the fourth century.” Richard Armitage, then assistant secretary of defense, explained that we considered whether to “completely obliterate Iran.” Billionaire and GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson advocates an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran — “in the middle of the desert” at first, then possibly moving on to places with more people.
Most seriously, the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review declared that we will not use nuclear weapons “against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.” There’s only one non-nuclear country that’s plausibly not in this category. So we were saying we will never use nuclear weapons against any country that doesn’t have them already — with a single exception, Iran. Understandably, Iran found having a nuclear target painted on it pretty upsetting.
6. We shot down a civilian Iranian airliner — killing 290 people, including 66 children
On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes, patrolling in the Persian Gulf, blew Iran Air Flight 655 out of the sky.The New York Times had editorialized about “Murder in the Air” in 1983 when the Soviet Union mistakenly shot down a South Korean civilian airliner in its airspace, declaring, “there is no conceivable excuse for any nation shooting down a harmless airliner.” After the Vincennes missile strike, a Times editorial announced that what happened to Flight 655 “raises stern questions for Iran.” That’s right — for Iran. Two years later the U.S. Navy gave the Vincennes’s commander the highly prestigious Legion of Merit commendation.
7. We worry about Iranian nukes because they would deter our own military strikes.
Our rhetoric on Iran seems nonsensical: Do U.S. leaders actually believe Iran would engage in a first nuclear strike on Israel or the U.S., given that would lead to a quick and devastating retaliation from those well-armed nuclear powers?
Even conservative U.S. foreign policy experts know that’s incredibly unlikely. They’re not worried that we can’t deter a nuclear-armed Iran — they’re worried that a nuclear-armed Iran could deter us. As Thomas Donnelly, a top Iran analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, put it in 2004, “the prospect of a nuclear Iran is a nightmare … because of the constraining effect it threatens to impose upon U.S. strategy for the greater Middle East. … The surest deterrent to American action is a functioning nuclear arsenal.”
This perspective — that we must prevent other countries from being able to deter us from waging war — is a bedrock belief of the U.S. establishment, and in fact was touted as a major reason to invade Iraq.
