Probe behind the headlines of the occupation of Iraq with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Chris Hedges, journalist Laila Al-Arian, bestselling author Jeremy Scahill and Seymour Hersh as they discuss the war, the plight of Iraqi civilians and the role of private mercenaries. The event is a dual book launch for Hedges’ and Al-Arian’s Collateral Damage and Scahill’s Blackwater (in paperback).
On the parallels with Vietnam what went unspoken was the likelihood that the US will blithely slaughter 3m more in Iraq simply in order to try and save face.
Such was the case in SE Asia where millions died long after US strategists realised the resistance could not be defeated.
The unspoken subtext in the deliberations of these venerable left gatekeepers of course was their shared sense that they have lost control of their own government.Their collective prestige as commentators derives from their perceived ability to decode the messages disseminated by the shadow government that has replaced it.
Of all those present it is Hersh who has derived most kudos from his insider contacts with the shadow government.Thus we saw him sighing coyly about his insider knowledge of what the Cheney cabal is capable of and the horrendous risks it might be prepared to take in attacking Iran.
Only Hedges seemed aware that in order for the machinations of the shadow government to reach their apocalyptic climax some new terror attack would need to take place.The aforementioned subtext had been broached at this point though Hedges did not vouchsafe whether the forthcoming terror attack would be real or of the far more likely synthetic variety.Perhaps he and the venerable Nation invitees there gathered thought it didn’t matter which!
After all they have to date allowed the administration to launch a civilisational war and build an entire international system on the basis of a monstrous falsehood.
Such is the rather absurd parallel universe now inhabited by the establishment left.When they consider the final catastrophe into which their government might plunge the Middle East and the possible ramifications thereof elsewhere-it doesn’t matter whether the instigating event is real or synthetic.
Predictably without one 9/11 sceptic on the Nation panel we were short-changed and are left once again to discover for ourselves that the provenance of the attacks of 9/11 will be shared by that of the one that likely precedes any forthcoming one on Iran.
Whatever happens these guys and the Nation will be the first to get the story.
Where from?
Why,from Sy Hersh of course!
This orientalist trobadours of the likes of Hersh and Fisk along with the western leftishits are complict in the crimes. They turn a blind eye to the Iranian occupation of Iraq and its horrendouscrimes commited in the in the heart of the Arab civilisation. The Persians are the only winner in this war with the elimination of the progressive strong Iraqi model that shut Iran off the Arab world wioth its malignant sectarian and medieval agendas.
This clown Hersh parrots the lies about the legtimate Iraqi govebnrment and the martyr of the Arab nation Saddam Hussien. However they they deliberately ignore the retardment , crimes and ethnic persecution of Arabs, Azeris and Blalushic practised in the Khomeinist republic of Mullahs in Qum.
Anti Arabism is just part of the western mentality. But when it comes o Iran case is totally diffrent. They always hilight Persian elements in the Islamic civilisation despite of being trivial when compared to Arab ones or the Mghuls. Weh Muslim scierntist is Arab they just mention that he is Muslim , but when he is Persian they don’t say muslim but use the term Persian!!!!!!!!
and the collaboration of the
Your Problem is not Iran , but Jordan and Egypt.
Instead of being jealous of the Iranian Revolution , start one to liberate these lands following the model of the Hizbollah Victory in Lebanon.
If you can give me a solid theses as to how the liberating of your land from US supremecy constitutes a medieval agenda i would be glad to hear it.
LOL
Are you equating the passivity and weakness of Jordan and Egypt,to the actual occupation of Iraq by thejealous envious Khomeinist Iran. Are you denying the American Iranian alliance in the in the occupation of Iraq- which is confirmed by Khatamy. Are you defending the Quds brigdes and and iranian itlaa3aat that are wiping out Iraq and tearing it aprt and dividing it along sectarian lines?
BesidesJordan and Egypt are Arabs like Iraqis and not a lot of grudged enemielike Iranians!!
No.
What i am saying is that your energies are best spent liberating the arab World from US compliant regimes.
The Iranians have had their revolution,the only Arabs to follow their model are the Shia Arab Hizbollah who have defeated the US and Isreal.
Being jealous of the Iranian revolution is rather like being jealous of Pol Pot!
You’re suffering from delusions of agency methinks.
Wake up from your fairy tale slumber Rumples!
Khomeini did not make a revolution he was a front man put in from outside by powerful external forces with an agenda that bore no relation to liberation but far more resembled its very antithesis.What happened in 1979 was not Iran freeing herself from US domination but a dark ages conspiracy engineered by the Carter administration in collusion with the British to prevent a fast modernizing Middle Eastern state mounting a challenge to US dollar-based hegemony.
That state,Iran to wit,was to be taken out of the equation altogether and flung back to the middle ages by US-backed Islamists.
Surveying the ruins within months of the Khomeini take-over:oil production had plummeted to less than half a million barrels per day;nuclear energy projects
and contracts with the US,France and W Germany had been scrapped;the steel industry especially the Isfahan plant where 7000 students were given vocational training and the most advanced high technology gas reduction equipment was in use went into sharp decline along with other major plants.
Within a year of his “revolution” Khomeini was sending the nation of martyrs he had boasted of creating to die on battlefields in their hundreds of thousands to repel the invasion by Iraq that had been encouraged by Washington.
This was not liberation.It came to be called Iranization and has been used as a threat by US elites against recalcitrant states pursuing advanced technology and independent foreign policies ever since.
Some agency!Someliberation!
Anyway back to the topic, are Arab energies not better directed to having a revolution in Egypt or Jordan?
Thanks for admitting (finally) that it was Saddam that invaded Iran with US and US arab client state support.It is this policy that set the Arab world backwards , it is this very combination that is also trying (and thankfully failing) to undermine the Hizbollah model for the liberation of Arab lands from US client regimes.
Dear Rumples
Er,did you just miss your cue yet again?
You were telling us how the Arabs were all jealous of the Iranian revolution.
In your infinite wisdom you neglected to provide any evidence whatever that the cultural,economic,political and social transformation undertaken by the Khomeini regime produced anything that might positively recommend it to any of its Arab neighbours.
Perhaps you could enlighten us also,oh Venerable One,as to just who else,apart from the Anglo-US elites who sponsored it,might profit from adopting the Khomeini course?
The silence is deafening!
How about making the areas under your control outside the orbit of US Foreign Policy , or its client Arab states?
Or do you prefer the Status Quo in the Arab World?
Do you , or do you not accept that to improve the lot of the Arab World Egypt and Jordan require a revolution?
Its a simple enough question , now lets have your bluster….
If the revolution you have in mind is of the Khomeini variety I should think most Egyptians and Jordanians would demure quite emphatically from the prospect!
But then the idea of embracing the “rule of faith and persuasion” by 200,000 mullahs extolled by Iranian President,Bani-Sadr,at that time,and volunteering for the Cambodianization of one’s country will not likely have many takers among free-thinking people anywhere.
Only in fairy stories do white knights on horseback come to save us.In the real world such saviours often have unlikely sponsors who do not as it turns out have a nation’s best interests at heart.
The people of Egypt and Jordan and indeed of most Arab countries have learnt to be wary of such figures and they need no lectures from outsiders or indeed from people named after characters in fairy tales!
Paragraph 2 and 3 in your last post describe perfectly the the main problems of the Picot-Sykes dismemberment of Arab lands and the regimes of Hussein and Mubarak perfectly that solidify it.Hence the need for radical change
Ok , how about the the Great Arab Shia revolution of Hizbollah that has defeated the US; Israel and militias of Arab client states.Surely that model is worth persuing.
Are you equating the passivity and weakness of Jordan and Egypt,to the actual occupation of Iraq by thejealous envious Khomeinist Iran. Are you denying the American Iranian alliance in the in the occupation of Iraq- which is confirmed by Khatamy.
You are right about the US-Iranian convergence of interest. At present the Iranian proxies are consolidating with US assistance, eliminating even their Shia rivals along the way. But you seem to overlook the fact that the invasion and the occupation wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the material assistance of other Arabs in the region. Don’t forget where most of US forces are based and where the attacks were launched from. It was not Iran, but Qatar, Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain and UAE.
What happened in 1979 was not Iran freeing herself from US domination but a dark ages conspiracy engineered by the Carter administration in collusion with the British to prevent a fast modernizing Middle Eastern state mounting a challenge to US dollar-based hegemony.
Those Brits and Americans must be truly omnipotent if they could pull off something like that. I bet thats why the invasion and occupations of Iraq/Afghanistan have been such a breeze.
The problem with this kind of narrative peddled by US-UK left is that it projects their own history of unrelieved failure on to a people which did challenge, confront and defeat their oppressor. But when someone starts holding up the Shah as the face of modernization, then that makes any further argument rather superfluous.
That those in power conspire is undeniable; but that is not to say that they always succeed.
The idea that what happened in Iran in 1979 was a people’s revolution over foreign oppressors is rather endearingly romantic.It is not,however,a narrative most Iranians would recognise.
What actually took place was somewhat more sinister.The events that transpired bear no comparison with Afghanistan and Iraq because the US never contemplated putting troops on the ground in Iran.Although a bungled operation with which we are all familiar as a standard feature of US interventions did occur when Carter sought to extricate the American hostages.
Denying that autocrats like the Shah are capable of promoting modernization is rather like suggesting that Stalin never sought an industrial take-off in Soviet Russia.Modernization is not a monopoly enterprise carried out solely by democratic leaders.
The history of Anglo-US subversions is certainly not one of omnipotence but if my memory serves me right they did manage to pull off something like what happened in Iran in 1979 in the very same place in 1953 didn’t they?
Funny thing was Khomeini was on the streets in 1953 too.Demonstrating against Mossedegh.Like those who sponsored him later,Khomeini and his MB friends despised Mossedegh just like they and the Americans and British would come to despise the Shah-and for the same reason.
Still await your views to the very important question of what is to be done for Egypt and Jordan and whether the the Great Arab Shia revolution of Hizbollah that has defeated the US; Israel and militias of Arab client states.
Surely that model is worth persuing in those 2 places.
History suggests that autarchy and modernization are often complementary phenomena.
In NDCs like Iran was in 1979 the two co-existed in much the same way as they did in Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany in the 1930s.The raison d’etre of elites is to preserve their place at the commanding heights of the socio-economic pyramid and enhance their prestige.These priorities come well in advance of making any democratic concessions to their domestic populations.
Enhancing their prestige means modernizing,making alliances and building up the means to defend the state against external threats.
Elites in NDCs always run the risk that any support they enjoy from powerful sponsors may be withdrawn if they overstep the boundaries strictly delimited by these sponsors.
Such was the case with the Shah’s Iran and their erstwhile sponsors the US and Israel.
The face of modernization in the Shah’s Iran actually belonged to his PM Amir Abbas Hoveda.Hoveda
extolled the virtues of a “Shah and Peoples Revolution” that would industrialize without recourse to the class warfare that had been engendered by the process in Western states.He renounced nationalism and chauvinism in favour of the advance to the Great Civilisation along the road charted over the 3 previous decades of economic planning,investment in infrastructure and higher education.
With Iran’s oil,possibly the largest natural gas deposits in the world,solar energy and nuclear power complemented by innovation in petrochemicals and pharmaceutics Hoveda envisaged a technological revolution driven by state/private investments.
That Hoveda as a member of Iran’s elite saw no contradiction between this vision and the police state run by the Shah becomes clear in Abbas Milani’s biography.Evidently each Wednesday,in a scene that probably reprised Stalin’s meetings with Beria,Hoveda would meet SAVAK chief Sabeti where the latter would discuss his murderous plans for any women demonstrators his police could arrest.
Elites have worked like this down the ages and doubtless they would find it extremely amusing today to discover that people assume that because they ran police states they must abjure from holding up modernization as a desirable course on which their countries should embark.
And finally…….
Still await your views to the very important question of what is to be done for Egypt and Jordan and whether the Great Arab Shia revolution of Hizbollah that has defeated the US; Israel and militias of Arab client states is a model to follow.
I don’t get it. You still have to take the 240v that comes out of the microinverter and transform/rectify it to charging voltage for the batteries. So the microinverter just adds another 8% loss to the system, compared to a DC-out MPTT controller like FlexMax 80. Also, much of Andalay’s propaganda is bogus — nobody in their right mind has 600 VDC wiring, shadows on one panel don’t affect the output of other panels, etc. Yeah, this system makes sense if all you want to do is pretend to sell electricity back to the grid (note: they might buy it, but it doesn’t really go anywhere except into heat at the first transformer), but if you actually want to USE the generated electricity, a conventional system is much more efficient.