Category : middle east

There’s something thrilling going on in Iran.

You wouldn’t know it from the coverage on many mainstream media news outlets this weekend (Fox, CNN and ABC, I’m looking in your direction), but there’s a revolution going on in Iran!

It’s a good kind of revolution; pro-freedom, pro-democracy and mostly peaceful (though many protestors are being beaten by police and Hezbollah thugs). The people of Iran are standing up for truth and justice and they are not being intimidated by theocratic thugs and government lies.

It makes me wonder why our U.S. media isn’t really standing with the people of Iran. Maybe it’s because I’m getting cynical in my (heh) old age, but I think it has something to do with the loss of their favorite boogey-man. It’s getting harder and harder to portray Iranians as fanatical terrorists bent on the destruction of the West:

Perhaps the most moving scene involved a group of young demonstrators, displaying the green colours of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the defeated challenger, breaking into English and chanting: “We want freedom.”In an instant, these television pictures from Tehran delivered a stark reminder that Iran is not a backward country of medieval fanatics, but a modern nation with 70 million people, two thirds of whom are under 30 and have the same interests and aspirations as their Western counterparts.

These are my peers. My fellow-Twitterers. My friends. My brothers and sisters.

This is the real Iran:

No more distortions. No more hate. No more fear-mongering, Fox News! No more! We are the same, the Iranian People and those of us in the United States who still value and cherish freedom.

There is no difference between us beyond geography. Many of the Iranians even speak English and they are young and internet-savvy: they have been using Twitter to organize on the fly and there was a collective moan when Facebook was blocked. This is a youth movement that is cracking the edifice of lies that have served the hardliners on both sides for far too long.

Just don’t watch television if you want the real scoop:

Today, as global geopolitics is shaken to its core by events in Iran, I turned on cable news this morning, and saw endless ads for a Larry King Jonas Brothers “interview”, Morning Joe yukking it up discussing Kuwaiti massage therapists, a video of a tomato throwing contest on CNN, talk radio blowhard Bill Bennett…and occasionally a phone call from Christiane Amanpour in Tehran. I can’t even bring myself to turn on the network morning programs, I might vomit.

The mainstream media is rapidly smothering itself into a coma of irrelevance. Do they think we’re too stupid to get the news from somewhere else? Heck, I don’t even need the media at this point; I can get info directly from the participants in the struggle via Twitter.

Bloggers like Andrew Sullivan are covering the protests virtually nonstop. With the Huffington Post on the case, who needs the MSM?

At this point, Big Media is just playing catch-up. They were asleep at the switch for several days, but now seem to be paying attention again… but they are definitely not leading; they are following.

I should note that I’m taking it for granted that the election was stolen. They apparently did not even do a good job of it. From the numbers I’ve seen, Ahmadinejad didn’t even finish second! He finished 3rd, behind another reform candidate! Mousavi, the challenger and probable winner, was actually told by the Interior Ministry that he had won and to prepare his victory speech (which they insisted must be gracious and not boastful) before turning around and declaring Ahmadinejad the winner by a landslide. The numbers belie this laughable claim. The official results have Mousavi losing his home turf (preposterous) and big urban areas where he has polled higher than Ahmadinejad.

Let’s face it: This election was straight-up rigged. The Iranians know it and they’re not standing for it, which is more than I can say for Americans (*cough-2000-cough*). Now is our chance to repent for our laziness and apathy and support the democracy-loving Iranians with all our hearts!

I stand with the Iranian People in solidarity. We stand for Democracy, Freedom and Justice! May the winds of change bring peace and prosperity to Iran. Peace be upon you!

The intellectual cowards over at the head office of the St. Thomas University adminstration should be ashamed. They have shown themselves to be contemptible weaklings without the guts or the will to hear viewpoints they may disagree with. And this institution is supposed to be a vanguard of academic freedom? For shame.

What am I talking about? I’m referring to St. Thomas’ recent decision to withhold an invitation to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

St. Thomas never invited Tutu to speak, but declined to approve an invitation as part of the PeaceJam, an event the school has hosted for the past four years. PeaceJam officials have now arranged to have the South African archbishop and activist speak at its April event, which will be held at Metropolitan State University.

St. Thomas officials said that local Jewish leaders they consulted felt that Tutu had made remarks offensive to the Jewish people in a 2002 speech about Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Columbia University just made St. Thomas look like a bunch of backwater bush-league pussies. Nobody likes Ahmadinejad; that’s not the point. The point is the free exchange of ideas. If you don’t like what somebody says you don’t try to censor them, you use your freedom of speech to elucidate your opposition to said ideas. The president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, may have been a dick to Ahmadinejad, but at least he let the motherfucker speak. St. Thomas’ president, the Rev. Dennis Dease, won’t even let a fellow man of the cloth on campus. What a fucking pussy.

His lame-ass excuse “Teh Joos don’t like one speech he made dis one time!” is full of shit. What he means is “Some extreme-rightwing Zionist oppressor Jews don’t want nobody talking shit about the way they fuck over A-rabs in Palestine.” There, fixed it for you, Dease. (You can suck dees nuts)

In fact, Dease has been getting a lot of mail from Jewish groups saying, “Let this guy speak! We’re not anti-free speech! Why’d you listen to those assholes?!” [[ I’m paraphrasing in case you haven’t noticed ]]

So, you might be wondering what crazy-ass shit this Tutu guy was spewing that pissed off the hard-right fascist/zionist types. Well, he said the most offensive thing you can possibly say to a warmonger: “Peace is possible.”

Israeli Jew, Palestinian Arab can live amicably side by side in a secure peace. And, as Cannon Ateek kept underscoring, a secure peace built on justice and equity. These two peoples are God’s chosen and beloved, looking in their face back to a common ancestor Abraham and confessing belief in the one creator God of salaam and shalom.

Oh man, that is some whack shit! Who let this guy in here?

Then he reveals his true hatred for teh Joos:

I give thanks for all that I have received as a Christian from the teachings of God’s people the Jews. When we were opposing the vicious system of apartheid, which claimed that what invested people with worth was a biological irrelevance – skin color – we turned to the Jewish Torah, which asserted that what gave people their infinite worth was the fact that they were created in the image of God.

He calls teh Joos “God’s people.” We’re clearly dealing with a loose cannon here, folks.

Seriously, that’s what the whole speech is like. He criticizes the occupation of Palestinian lands, but he clearly has problems with the Israeli government, not the Jewish people.

I with many other Nobel Peace Laureates. I, after taking counsel with the then Bishop of Jerusalem, am a member of the Board of the Shimon Peres peace center in Tel Aviv. I am a patron of the Holocaust center in Capetown. I believe that Israel has a right to secure borders, internationally recognized, in a land assured of territorial integrity and with acknowledged sovereignty as an independent country. That the Arab nations made a bad mistake in refusing to recognize the existence of sovereign and in pledging to work for her destruction. It was a short sighted policy that led to Israel’s nervousness, her high state of alert and military preparedness to guarantee her continued existence. This was understandable. What was no so understandable, what was not justifiable was what Israel did to another people to guarantee her existence. I have been very deeply distressed in all my visits to the Holy Land, how so much of what was taking place there reminded me so much of what used to happen to us Blacks in Apartheid South Africa.

This guy sees echoes of Apartheid in Israel. He was there. He expresses viewpoints not too far from middle-of-the-road Democrats in America. When did expressing disagreement with a foreign government become a censorable offense? Oh that’s right; when you’re a boot-licking fascist who wants to kiss the ass of future dictator George Bush. I guess Dease thinks he can become the Tsar of Education under a future King George. (Or whatever. Maybe he’s just a fucking idiot, I don’t know.)

The scary thing here is not the shoddy treatment of a Nobel laureate. He’ll speak on another campus, one not controlled by Nazis. He’ll be fine. No, the scary thing here is how incredibly fucking normal, sane and mainstream his ideas are. If this is how a Nobel laureate is treated by The Powers That Be, how are the rest of the us going to be treated when the other jackboot falls and we’re under martial law? Tutu’s beliefs are almost exactly in line with mainstream Democrats, Independents and even many Republicans. The main difference is that he’s an archbishop, an Apatheid survivor and a international icon.

Where the fuck does that leave the rest of us?

The neocons push closer to war with Iran, as shown by the blunt comments made by El Presidente Cheney in Newsweek:

He repeated the Bush administration’s stance that the United States seeks to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program through diplomatic means, but that all options are on the table.

“I think most of the nations in that part of the world believe their security is supported, if you will, by the United States. They want us to have a major presence there,” Cheney said in an interview with Newsweek magazine, according to a transcript released by the White House on Sunday.

“When we — as the president did, for example, recently — deploy another aircraft carrier task force to the Gulf, that sends a very strong signal to everybody in the region that the United States is here to stay, that we clearly have significant capabilities, and that we are working with friends and allies as well as the international organizations to deal with the Iranian threat,” Cheney said.

Allow me to translate in case Captain Cheney’s comments were too subtle: “Iran, you best watch THE FUCK out, ya heard? We’re comin’ for your shit, so you might as well run now, bitches. Represent, sluts!!! We gonna fucks you up!”

The above is an official translation.

Cheney proceeded to whip out his dick and let the fucker smash on a table with a menacing thud:

Responding to other comments — including criticism from Brent Scowcroft, and others who have worked with Cheney in the past — he says, “Well, I’m vice president and they’re not.”

Yeah, you’re a big man, Dick. The whole article sounds like one big “fuck you” to everyone who’s ever criticized him… which means: just about everybody. I’m sooo glad he isn’t even bothering to hide his megalomaniacal tendencies or paranoid hatred of all who disagree with him. It’s refreshing.

Now, is anyone planning to remove Bush/Cheney from power soon? I dunno, like maybe the Democrats? They sure don’t seem to be moving very fast. They’d better hurry the hell up ’cause from the sound of things we’re gonna be having a blood kegger in Tehran by the end of the year. I’m sure Persian blood may not taste as sweet as Arab blood, but Cheney will still do a fucking kegstand on their country unless we get him the fuck out of office.

The neoconservatives like to point to “appeasement” by the UK during Hitler’s rise to power in order to justify their invasion of Iraq. I think we should use Chamberlain’s appeasement to justify removing Cheney from power before it’s too late. Appeasement of fascists is never a good idea. Cheney, as a fascist, should know.

In an interview in GQ Magazine, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel reveals that the Bush administration tried to get Congress to approve military action anywhere in the Middle East — not just in Iraq — in the fall of 2002 during the run-up the War in Iraq.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

GQ: It’s incredible that you had to ask for that.
Hagel: It is incredible. That’s what I said to Andy Card. Said it to Powell, said it to Rice. Might have even said it to the president. And finally, begrudgingly, they sent over a resolution for Congress to approve. Well, it was astounding. It said they could go anywhere in the region.

GQ: It wasn’t specific to Iraq?
Hagel: Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. I mean, is Central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything they wanted. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.

GQ: They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere they wanted in the Middle East?
Hagel: Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up, and put our language in it.

This is really chilling stuff. Right here, in front of our faces, we have evidence (from a Republican no less) that the Bush regime was planning a war of global aggression back in 2002. What more is there to say? The neocons have been planning a series of invasions for years (probably long before 2002) which would allow them to reshape and control the whole Middle East, from Iran and Syria to Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Iraq is only the first step; that’s why the neocons are so determined to stamp out opposition to the war.

Do you still think the talk of going into Iran is just talk? I’m betting battle plans have been drawn up and they are entering the final phase of preparations. The key is to trick us into war. Keep your eyes open for a false flag attack.

You’ve heard about global warming, massive ecological damage to the planet, blah blah blah… HURRY UP!!! Where’s the fucking death and destruction I’ve been waiting for? Not here, and that’s the problem.

I don’t think I need to go over the basics of global warming, environmental destruction, nuclear weapons, overpopulation, terrorism, Peak Oil, the neocons being in charge or the end of the Mayan calender in late 2012. You know about that shit, right? We’re living in an apocalyptic age. So here’s my question: Where the fuck is the apocalypse already?!!! I’m getting tired of waiting.

We all know it’s coming. It’s like the crappy twist ending to an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Everybody knows it’s a fucking alien or whatever. But this is like the Shyamalan movie that keeps going on and on and on and on and on and the fucking cheesy twist gimmick hasn’t showed up yet. Hell, you guessed what the twist will be about 3 hours ago, but the movie is stilllll going!! What the FUCK?!! Will the world just end already? Jeeze!

I want to see our wretched over-consuming, ultra-militarized American society collapse under its own weight. I want to see the fat and the weak die in the streets! Where’s the fucking blood, man?! I’m sick of our horrifically obese (physically, financially, politically) nation beating the living shit out of brown people in various parts of the world. When’s our turn?! You know it’s coming. The laws of karma demand it.

We deserve to burn for Iraq. We should all go to hell for letting this bullshit war continue. We deserve to die, like we’ve condemned the Iraqis to die. And the worst part is we continue to LIE to them and tell them we’ve liberated them! Jesus fucking Christ people, at least have the courtesy to tell them the truth while we’re raping their country of it’s precious natural resources! You’re gonna tell me all the goddamn flag-waving hicks who support this war ACTUALLY GIVE A FUCK about Iraqis?!!!! I will laugh in your ignorant face, you fucking gullible tool.

Our government is composed of the most evil, wicked and soulless men alive. Our government, along with the military-industrial complex, killed 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001 in order to trick us into going to war. And what has our reaction to this fascist take-over been?

“Ooohh, let’s see if Lost is on! The revolution can wait until after Survivor is over! Oh wait, I just want to read a retarded fashion magazine! I can’t wait until the new Wii is released! I’m a delusional fucking idiot who doesn’t know anything about politics! Let’s just let the country careen into a fucking ditch the size of the Grand Canyon! Who gives a fuck as long as I’ve got my botox, designer jeans, video games, reality TV, SUV, 401k, and a lot of other useless crap that makes me feel good for about 2 seconds so I can forget that my government is a satanic collective of Nazis bent on taking over the world’s resources while simultaneously lowering the world’s population through war, starvation and man-made diseases!”

Fuck all of you selfish fucks! And fuck me too for not having the balls to light myself on fire and run into the capitol building with a bomb strapped to my chest. Fuck all of us. We deserve to die. We are killing the planet with every piece of food we eat (fuck all of you self-righteous vegans for thinking you’re not guilty of the same thing! Plant flesh is just as sacred as animal flesh!). We kill it every time we drive a car, every time we turn on a fucking light, and every time we knock down a tree so we can build a goddamn strip mall with a 27 muthafucking acre parking lot!!!

Humanity is a fucking virus, and we’re killing the host. It’s time to die people.

DIE DIE DIE!!!!

When the next American civil war comes (and it will come — soon), it will be my honor to kill each and every last one of you fucking traitors who supports the war in Iraq and the Bush regime that perpetrated 9/11.

I suppose a lot of you are still in denial about 9/11. Understandable. Not everyone is a structural engineer. But there’s no more excuses. We have the power of the internet and people are still ignorant. I don’t think you need any help from me. Open Google and start researching. It’s only the future of our entire fucking country at stake, so please don’t complain about me calling you a useless traitor piece of shit if you decide to watch The Biggest Loser instead.

To some extent we are all absolved by the fact that this world was totally fucked up long before any of us were born. However, the time of excuses is running out rapidly. With the power of the internet at your fingertips you have NO EXCUSE for being an ignoramus anymore.

Do you think America is “teh koolest-est cuntree evar!!”? Then you are a fucking idiot. America has fallen. America is now the world leader in corruption, evil, terrorism, hatred and intolerance. The CIA is the premier terrorist organization in the world. They fucking own al-Qaeda — literally. The CIA started al-Qaeda during the 80’s to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. They are still being funded and controlled by the CIA. So fuck all of you shitheads who tell me I’m not patriotic enough. I love America — the REAL America, not the “Amerika” it has become (rather like evil Superman). We haven’t used the Constitution for anything except for toilet paper in almost 100 years. America is fallen. Amerika is now the Empire from Star Wars, and Dick Cheney is its Emperor.

Amerika is a place where you can get arrested for smoking a joint or wearing a T-shirt that says “Peace” on it, but if you’re the president you can send thousands of troops to die and kill in a foreign land based on lies and distorted intelligence and nobody can do shit about it. And half the people think it’s just fucking great. Amerika committed genocide while it was being born (ask the Native Americans about that one) but then it turns around and claims Saddam is evil for killing his own people… with WMDs that we gave him! (well, “sold to him” — Amerika is all about $$$$$). What the fuck are we supposed to make of this hypocrisy?!

And don’t get me started on all the fucking greedy businessmen who are so obsessed with money that they don’t give a second thought to destroying the environment if it helps the bottom line. The only thought that goes through their fat, ugly heads is: “How can I make sure I don’
t get caught?” Amerika drains the lifeblood from the earth, like a vampire. We are all a party to this wicked devil-dance. If you dance to their tune, you’re just as guilty as they are. Are you willing to bet your soul that George Bush is right? Do really fucking believe he gives a damn about the welfare of everyday Iraqis? Do you really believe businessmen when they say, “trust me, I care deeply about the environment and our workers’ safety and happiness.” Sucker. They don’t give a fuck. It’s all about PR. Just lie to the cameras and everything will be okay.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle lie. That’s all there is to it. Neither side can be trusted. And if there is someone in power who dares to speak the truth he will be ruthlessly co-opted or assassinated, post-haste. We’ve lost 2 Kennedys, MLK, John Lennon and Paul Wellstone to the machinations of the elite. The elite, by the way, are a sick bunch indeed. They are engaged in drug smuggling, terrorism, arms dealing, child abduction and molestation, torture, murder, satan-worship and God knows what else.

I’m not really saying I wish we all die tomorrow. I mostly just wish the global elite would. But since the reverse is more likely to happen, maybe I shouldn’t pin all my hopes on our coming destruction. But it doesn’t really matter what I think, does it? Oil will peak. The economy will crash. The environment will shed its parasites. Our government will collapse (every government eventually does). The only question is when? And what are we going to do about it?

Well, I for one, will be glad. Not because I like not being able to eat, drink, work, drive a car or turn on a light. That part will suck. No, I will enjoy it because there will be so much less ignorance and hubris in the world. I’m so fucking sick of the arrogance and suicidal stupidity of most Amerikans, and pretty much all of western civilization for that matter.

There’s an not-so-old saying the Middle East (ya know, the place we’re presently occupying, destroying, raping and terrorizing) that goes like this:

My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies in a jet plane.

His son will ride a camel.

Ya know, maybe the internet doesn’t make you smart. Those people didn’t need it to come up with that revelation, and here we are in Amerika with a quarter billion morons surfing the web. Maybe we will be smarter once we have nothing. Maybe the world will be a better place once we’re no longer in it.

October Surprise indeed! Check out this detailed story over at ConsortiumNews:

Having gone through the diplomatic motions with Iran, George W. Bush is shifting toward a military option that carries severe risks for American soldiers in Iraq as well as for long-term U.S. interests around the world. Yet, despite this looming crisis, the Bush Family continues to withhold key historical facts about U.S.-Iranian relations.

Those historical facts – relating to Republican contacts with Iran’s Islamic regime more than a quarter century ago – are relevant today because an underlying theme in Bush’s rationale for war is that direct negotiations with Iran are pointless. But Bush’s own father may know otherwise.

The evidence is now persuasive that George H.W. Bush participated in negotiations with Iran’s radical regime in 1980, behind President Jimmy Carter’s back, with the goal of arranging for 52 American hostages to be released after Bush and Ronald Reagan were sworn in as Vice President and President, respectively.

Keep reading. War-monger Bush isn’t done with Iran yet. This is gonna get worse before it gets better.

Do we have what it takes to stop the Bush Regime before it attacks again?

Truce in the Mideast!

About time. You see what you can do when you actually try to accomplish something? I feel awful for all those poor civilians and soldiers who died with Bush and the neocons dithered.

Now that the fighting is (hopefully) winding down, we can start looking at the systemic causes.

This is a major victory for peace-loving people, and a major defeat for the war machine. Somehow, I doubt the war machine will take this lying down. They will make sure tempers flare again — soon. We’re still gearing up for Iran, after all.

It’s only a matter of time.

InfoWars has an interview with Daniel Ellsberg on the coming war with Iran, the government’s involement in false flag terror attacks and more.

This may seem like some heavy shit, but Ellsberg knows a thing or two about the government. Daniel Ellsberg is the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers back in 1971. The Nixon Administration made his life a living hell and tried to track him down and put him on trial, or kill him. The New York Times was ordered by President Nixon to cease publication of anything related to the Pentagon Papers immediately, which sparked a case that went to the Supreme Court. The Court decided in favor the Times allowing further publishing.

Ellsberg knows what the government’s capable of; he used to help them come up with their crazy schemes as a military analyst for the RAND Corporation. He eventually used his access to leak documents providing an important insight into the government’s inner workings which revealed a contempt for “the public” and a sinister resistance to accountability or oversight. Also revealed were attempts to goad enemies into firing on us, including the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

In recent years Ellsberg has been arrested many times as he’s protested various government lies and atrocities. Now he’s joining a growing group of people including scholars, engineers, pilots and military officers who are questioning the events of 9/11. Of the upcoming war with Iran Ellsberg says:

If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country.

I urge you to do some research and consider the possibility that our government may have had forehand knowledge of the attacks — and the even more horrible possibility that the government was complicit and an active partner in the attacks.

We have to think about this before the War on Iran. We can’t let the Bush Administration and its neo-conservative masters take our rights — our lives — away from us so easily. If these allegations are true then we are dealing with a government far more ruthless and psychotic than most Americans realize.

Quite frankly, I’m nervous even publishing this post. But people are starting to speak out, including celebrities Charlie Sheen, Richard Linklater (who claims to have convinced Bruce Willis), Tom DeLonge (from Blink 182) and scholars/researchers like James Fetzer, Dr. Steven E. Jones, Michael Ruppert and many more. It seems that Hunter S. Thompson was researching 9/11 when he died. Strange that he would kill himself before finishing his inquiry, isn’t it?

We shouldn’t have to feel afraid of our government. We shouldn’t have to deal with government censorship and lies and terrorism carried out against its own people. I hope that the government didn’t really have any involvement…. but I know how these fascists work. 9/11 is a perfect 21st century Reichstag Fire. Cui Bono?

And if Iran somehow manages to “attack us” will the government declare martial law like Ellsberg says? How important is freedom to the Bush cabal? Do you really think that they will go to bat for regular people or do you think they will use the crisis to expand the government’s power? What’s to stop them from increasing the government’s powers to overtly totalitarian levels after our system of checks and balances has been stripped away in order to fight “The War on Terror“?

In a way, it doesn’t matter whether the government is behind the attacks or not. They’re so busy getting rid of our rights that it’s a moot point.

I guess the terrorists — whoever they are — have won.