Iran’s Attempt to Brainwash its Middle Class

Iran is overhauling its education system to rid it of Western influence, the latest attempt by the government to fortify Islamic values and counter the clout of the country's increasingly secularized middle class.

Starting in September, all Iranian high school students will be introduced to new courses such as "political training" and "living skills" that will warn against "perverted political movements" and encourage girls to marry at an early age, Education Ministry officials say.

How long will it be before our government breaks out their playbook and take notes on how this works? I’m sure Homeland Security can use some pointers in forcing us ‘rowdy misfits’ into lockstep with their new policies.

Many students, professors and parents fear that the plans will undermine Iran's traditionally high academic standards. The three years of academic and curricular purges that followed the revolution, they say, stalled the intellectual development of Iranian youths. I think they are justified in their fears. I can’t think of one dictatorial regime that has any high level of education. But then with Allah on their side they don’t need education right? Having intelligent people running free in the streets just is not conducive to their ruling masters plans.

That country is going to implode if the ministry tries to get this misguided pipedream off the ground.

"It is not what we teach students which makes them support somebody or not," said Sadegh Zibakalam, a professor of political science at Tehran University. "How they act depends on how they are being treated by those in power."

What is the Final Solution in Afghanistan?

Chris Floyd of the blog Empire Burlesque made the observation that militarist nationalism (often called "patriotism") is always, in one way or another, a "Final Solution."

He continues: “Set foot on that road, and you will get there. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in this generation -- but you will get there. The blood-and-iron logic of domination -- of self-assertion and self-aggrandizement at the expense of all others -- will take you there.

The choice is simple, the choice is stark, the choice is laid upon us all.”

I could not agree more. If we continue on our current path in Afghanistan how can we hope to attain anything other than creating a never-ending treadmill of resentment and lost lives.

The war in Afghanistan has become an aimless absurdity. It began with a reason, to find Osama bin Laden. Or so we were told.

Since then, he ‘may have’ moved into Pakistan. No one knows for certain.

Is it really necessary to continue this seven year long bled letting against a bunch of religious extremists and drug lords many of whom have safe haven in Pakistan, only for the occasional victory? Victories that soon are negated by retaliatory actions of many of the same people we are there to ‘bring into the 21st century’.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s corrupt government skims the very drug trade that funds the indigenous forces NATO forces are fighting against and will therefore never lift a governmental finger to stop it.

The U.S. needs to back away from this messy effort quickly. The lofty goal to create a stable, secure nation-state in hopes of suppressing the spread of the Taliban’s control is miserably implausible. The historical situation is that Afghanistan has been ruled by regional tribal coalitions, often at each others throats, uniting only when a foreign nation enters the fray.

We need to change tactics IF catching Osama bin Laden is truly our goal. And I am willing to bet it is not.

Our troops are dying over an unachievable goal to basically ‘rehabilitate’ a government that refuses to participate in NATO’s game plan. And as long as the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan are complicit in their harboring of jihadis and continue to profit from the drug trade the idea of this being a ‘winnable’ war is pure folly.

Frederick Douglass once said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand, it never did and it never will.” Our choice is clear, until the citizens of the world stand united in demanding an end to this stalemate and call for an alternative to using the military to force our ideas onto these nations instead of using diplomacy to work out a more stable solution towards peace, the few countries willing to put their citizens in harms way will continue to pay a bloody price with no hopes of achieving anything worthwhile.

Israeli Army T-Shirts Mock Gaza Killings

clipped from news.sky.com The Israeli army is at the centre of a second controversy over the moral conduct of its soldiers in as many days. The revelations centre on t-shirt designs made for soldiers that make light of shooting pregnant Palestinian mothers and children and include images of dead babies and destroyed mosques. The t-shirts were printed for Israeli soldiers at the end of periods of deployment or training courses and were discovered by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. One, printed for a platoon of Israeli snipers depicts an armed Palestinian pregnant women caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, with the disturbing caption in English: "1 shot 2 kills". Another depicts a child carrying a gun also in the centre of a target. "The smaller, the harder," read the words on the t-shirt. According to a soldier interviewed by the newspaper, the message has a double meaning: "It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally and also the target is smaller."

This is truly reprehensible. The sentiment displayed on these shirts serves to perpetuate the animosity and hatred these two nations have for each other. Anyone who condones this type of behavior is undermining any chance to seek a peaceful resolution to their differences.

Having said that, and judging from past behavior between these two, I don’t believe for a minute that either side truly wants to find peace with each other but to so blatantly display and promote the killing of pregnant women and children is beneath contempt for human life. And there in lies a major problem this world needs to deal with.

So, What Did Israel ‘Win’ in This War?

I call it a war, in keeping with everyone else’s description, but really it was a tantrum, plain and simple. And who can blame Israel? Hamas are like gnats at a picnic that constantly pester you until you finally have enough and have to do something about it. And who can blame Hamas for their part? Israel acts as a feudal lord trying to keep his subjects under his thumb by sparingly allotting food, supplies and territory to them.

Will they now peaceably co-exist as neighbors?

Do they now have Hamas assurances that they will not call for Israel’s total destruction?

Did they win over Palestinian ‘respect’ through their display of overwhelming military might?

Only time will reveal the answers to these questions.

Any ‘benefits’ that may have been ‘won’ from this war will, at best, be felt only temporarily. While Hamas crawls back into their mosques to lick their wounds and bury their dead, their collective ego and pride will not mend so easily.

Bullying may get immediate results but it tends to have the nasty side effect of creating more enemies. And let’s understand first and foremost that whatever animosity these two held towards each other before this conflict began, this war did nothing but create even more. The Israelis cannot force acceptance from Hamas just because the Israeli militarily outclasses them.

Both sides are to blame for the continuation of hostilities towards each other. Neither wants to give up an inch of territory. Neither wants to give one bit of concession to the other. Neither wants the other to live in peace.

Did Israel ‘win’ peace for their efforts?

Aristotle once said “We make war that we may live in peace.” If that was true, our problems would have stopped millennia ago.

Hamas War Crimes: the CNN Strategy

Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor, posted a comment in the National Post on Wednesday Jan 7, 2009 that brings up some very interesting points.

He begins by reminding us that Israel is protecting its citizens from deadly Hamas rockets, (rockets that lack any guidance system which leaves them randomly effective with results so ‘deadly’ that out of the estimated 1,750 launches since their introduction in 2001 have killed 13 Israelis and 2 Palestinians).

He later informs us that the number of genuinely innocent civilians killed by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza is lower than the collateral deaths caused by any nation in a comparable situation. With this statement, he is setting the stage for his coming remarks by reminding us that civilian deaths are inevitable during war and that the number of ‘genuinely innocent civilian’ deaths falls within acceptable limits. I don’t agree with the notion of an ‘acceptable’ innocent civilian death rate.

He points out that there is more protest directed against Israel when it inadvertently kills approximately 100 civilians in a just war of self-defense than against Arab and Muslim nations and groups that deliberately kill far more civilians for no legitimate reason through the use of suicide attacks. He backs this up by saying more Arabs and Muslim civilians are killed every day in Africa and the Middle East by Arab and Muslim governments and groups with little or no protests.

He claims bias when he mentions there has been no protests against the cold-blooded murders by Hamas and its supporters of dozens of Palestinian civilians who allegedly "collaborated" with Israel. Indeed, Hamas and Fatah have killed far more Palestinian civilians over the past several years than have the Israelis, but you wouldn't know that from the media, the United Nations or protesters who focus selectively on only those deaths caused by Israeli military actions.

Hamas is playing Russian roulette with its children. Their use of human shields, in the way Hamas uses the civilian population of Gaza, is a war crime. No question about it. They are committing other crimes against humanity as well, such as: firing rockets at kindergartens, playgrounds and hospitals; hiding behind its own civilians when firing at Israeli civilians; refusing to build bunkers for its own civilians. Every human shield that is killed by Israeli self-defense measures is the responsibility of Hamas, but you wouldn't know that from watching the media coverage.

The media is being manipulated. They set up TV cameras to transmit every image of dead Palestinians, especially children and exaggerate the number of civilians killed by including as "children" Hamas fighters who are 16 or 17 years old and as "women," female terrorists.

Hamas declared war on Israel, long before this latest conflict, calling for its complete destruction and is now interpreting current world-wide protest against Israel as pro-Palestinian and therefore are emboldened to continue fighting using any despicable and unconscionable means at its disposal to bring down the Israeli nation.

Dershowitz is decidedly pro-Israel, but the fact remains that Israel is using their technologically advanced military against what amounts to sticks and stones, by comparison. This current conflict is the result of Israel forcing Palestinians to live in a cramped strip of land and blockading food and medical supplies into the area. When Hamas fired their unsophisticated rockets at Israel as protest, Israel fought back with a lopsided and heavy-handed offense. This is what the world is protesting against.

U.S. and Israel are creating terrorists

It seems the U.S. and Israel have been the ‘bully’s on the block’ for far too long. They both take strong actions against terrorism while enlisting the very same tactics. Do they think that because they are so big no one can stop them? Are they too big to fail? I don’t think so.

This latest escalation in brutality between Israel and Hamas is a reminder that each desires the complete extermination of the other. Hamas openly calls for the genocide of Israel and Israel, being the more powerful of the two, actively carries out the threat. Despite any third parties’ attempts to broker peace between these two, they both actively participate in breaking down any and all gains made in reaching a cease-fire.

Hamas indiscriminately fires rockets into Israel fully realizing that innocent children could be killed. Israel launches targeted missile-strikes knowing full well that innocent children are being killed. Each views this ‘unfortunate’ side effect of their never-ending war as the successful elimination of future enemy forces.

Israel has, once again, committed severe violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Convention. A Russian news outlet, Russia Today, listed the violations with complete disregard for their commission of these same violations against Georgia. The obvious hypocrisy has been lost on them.

The violations are:
Collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Targeting civilians – the air strikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

Disproportionate military response – the air strikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei called for all Muslims to come to the defense of their Palestinian brothers. He said they are “duty-bound to defend” Palestinians under siege by Israeli bombardment and even claimed that anyone who dies while defending Hamas will be declared ‘martyrs’.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-arab-protests29-2008dec29,0,6042138.story

Any world figure who issues a ‘call to arms’ and declares it is an ‘obligation’ to do so and declares those who die in the conflict as martyrs needs to be ostracized from civil society, for he holds just as much criminal culpability as both Israel and Hamas.

I read something someone on Clipmarks wrote, “How to make a terrorist: kill his family, destroy his home, show no mercy”.

The outcome of this type of behavior can only be to create more enemies. Does each side believe that through the constant onslaught of violence the other side will suddenly become completely submissive to them? Have we not learned anything from history? Peace does not grow out of violence.

Hamas is an admitted militant society. They are open and honest about this description. Israel on the other hand does not want to admit that they have become exactly the same thing. The U.S. chastises Hamas for their hatred towards Israel, the U.S. backs Israel. How can we Americans continue to back a terrorist regime? Our brothers and sisters have died and continue to die fighting against terror and yet our politicians back a terrorist society.

This senseless fighting needs to come to an end, in Gaza, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Using our vote to cleanse our government of those who support genocide and the policies of collective punishment should be one of our greatest priorities in every election cycle. The psyche of this nation cannot afford to continue to tolerate anyone who sees violence as a viable solution to the world’s problems.

The U.S. and Israel are creating terrorists. We are bringing about our own demise. Killing each other over territory, resources, revenge, political ideology, religious dogma, is leading us towards the apocalypse. If there will be nobody left, what is the point?

Another attempt to rewrite history

George W Bush is in Israel this week with plans to broker a peace deal in a region that knows nothing but war and hate, and subscribes heavily to revenge as a matter of national policy.

That region will never know peace. This attempt to paint himself as a stalwart of foreign policy and a ‘friend to the world’ will fail as badly as his attempt to present himself as an environmentalist after signing one weak, lame piece of environmental legislation. And the very fact that he thinks just by taking this one action will reverse the effects his illegal actions had on Iraq just proves how much faith he puts in Americas gullibility.

Mr. president, your record on foreign policy is abominable. Do you honestly think the American history books will portray you as a peace activist by virtue of this one trip in this final year of your eight year term? You think you will be exonerated for your crimes against the constitution and the American public by shaking hands with foreign dignitaries in their own land?

The bloody shadows of Iraq and Afghanistan, the campaign of hate against Iran, the threat of World War III, the destabilization of relations with Russia, the egotistical stance against any attempt to combat global warming, these are not the earmarks of a master of foreign relations.

The spying on American citizens in our own homes, the replacing of military leadership until you found one that agrees with you, the rewriting of scientific finding until they matched your personal beliefs, the refusal to do anything meaningful to alleviate environmental pollution, the blatant appointments of under-qualified personnel to key administration posts, the denigration of habeas corpus, the weakening value of our dollar, the selling out of the cornerstone of our economy (Wall Street) to foreign investors, exposing CIA operatives, covering up crimes under the guise of executive privilege, profiteering from war under the threat of terrorist attacks on our shores.

Just what good have you done for this country? This list of crimes against the American people is disgusting, sir. And this doesn’t even begin to address the crimes and short comings of your personal life that were overlooked due to your ties with your father.

If you had not been born into such a wealthy politically powerful family, I have no doubt your life will have ended up an alcoholic wreck depending on the very charities your political party turns its back on, cowering from the police state you have managed to foster. You could very well have become a victim of the very egregious record number of Texas death row inmates you helped populate as Texas governor.

The best thing to happen to this country will be the collective departure of you and your administration from public office. It cannot happen soon enough.

You and your puppet masters may attempt to rewrite history, sir, but the majority of people in this country know you and Dick Cheney for what you really are, sad remnants of an old west mentality of shoot to kill and declare yourself as the moral, law-abiding authority.

Cheney is ‘getting it up’ over war with Iran

This rhetoric and war speak is scaring the hell out of me. It should be scaring every peace loving human on this planet. I have called time and time again for this Bush/Cheney team to be censured and kicked out of office for the danger they present to this country and the world.

Dick Cheney continues his advocacy for “teaching Iran a lesson” for standing up against the United States attempts to put Iran firmly under its thumb.

His paranoia is barely containable as he seeks to spread his hate towards Iran with his remarks in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. "Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions."

He attempts to get the entire international community on his side to further bolster his belief that he is right.

Iran has stated repeatedly they do not want a nuclear weapon. How much plainer can they say it?

He said Iran's efforts to pursue technology that would allow them to build a nuclear weapon are obvious and that "the regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time."

Dick, it is only ‘obvious’ to you, you paranoid freak. The only thing that is obvious to the rest of the world is that Iran is building nuclear power plants to provide clean nuclear power as they have said all along.

Cheney’s paranoia is a page out of McCarthyism. He refuses to allow him to believe Iran. His ‘attack first’ mind-set will allow him to kill innocent men, women and children in an attempt to find some little bit of evidence to prove his ill conceived justification for going to war. And his ego will take the whole world with him.

This is the same cowboy mentality that decimated the American Indian when the white man criminally declared this land as theirs.

Cheney is escalating U.S. rhetoric against Iran to support President Bush's warning, at a news conference Wednesday, that a nuclear Iran could lead to World War III. This is rhetoric that I am sure Cheney fed Bush in the first place.

Bush/Cheney paranoia is what is leading us towards World War III and to use a most foul and odious tactic as the threat of a world war is an obvious attempt to gain support for his blind ambition of world democratic dominance. They should both be severely chastised for implanting, in the world conscience, this most abhorrent possibility of a nuclear world war.

"I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush said.

No! If you're interested in avoiding World War III, you keep communication lines open and talk out your fears and differences instead of threatening to kill innocent people unless you get your way. This diplomacy you uncouth red-neck.

Bush's spokeswoman later said the president was not making any war plans but rather "a rhetorical point." One part of this statement is true, Bush doesn’t make plans, Cheney does.

It is disgusting to Americas sense of dignity to have to employ a spokesperson to come along behind the president of the U.S. to ‘cleanup’ his words in order to make his thoughts more palpable. The image is already there, the seed for world war has been planted. These two, Bush/Cheney, are getting more dangerous every time someone listens to their poisoned thoughts. And we are only fooling ourselves if we believe their hype that it is Iran that is forcing a showdown because they won’t bow down to U.S. led international pressure. The world community needs to ‘slap these guys down’ and educate them on how to be more diplomatic and less confrontational.

Cheney states the ultimate goal of the Iranian leadership is to establish itself as the hegemonic force in the Middle East and undermine a free Shiite-majority Iraq as a rival for influence in the Muslim world.

No! It is the ultimate goal of the U.S. leadership to establish itself as the hegemonic force in the Middle East and undermine the ability of free nations to practice their own sovereignty, free of U.S. meddling.

Cheney believes Iran's government seeks "to keep Iraq in a state of weakness to ensure Baghdad does not pose a threat to Tehran."

No! U.S. government, Bush/Cheney, seeks to keep Iraq in a state of weakness to ensure Baghdad and Tehran do not pose a threat to U.S. oil interests.

Cheney accused Iran of having a direct role in the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and said the government has "solidified its grip on the country" since coming to power in 1979.

Iran has never had a grip on Iraq’s government. Mr. Cheney you are rewriting history. Another Cheney lie designed to get the American people and the entire international community to back him.

Iran is frightened of the prospect of U.S. military buildup in Iraq as a stepping stone to ‘democratize’ Iran. It is in their interest to keep the U.S. threat away from themselves. Get the hell out of Iraq and all of these problems go away!

Only after Iran has actually started the process of making nuclear weapons can anyone truthfully say they are making weapons. Until then it is only speculation and to attack them based solely on speculation will make the U.S. the true criminal.

Congress has debated Bush/Cheney’s intentions toward Iran but debate is all they will ever do, because Congress is nothing more than a ‘pit of spineless dogs’ that will ‘beg and rollover’ on White House command.

Last month the Senate approved a resolution urging the State Department to label Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Guess who planted this brilliant idea into Congress’s weak little minds.

On what grounds did they based this action on? On the word of a military whose top brass has been hand picked to allow only political ‘yes’ men who will eagerly bend over to do the White House bidding.

Democratic Senator Jim Webb of Virginia said he feared the measure could be interpreted as authorizing a military strike in Iran, calling it Cheney's "fondest pipe dream."

Could not have said it any better myself.

Bush is fooling only himself

A headline says that Bush argues Iraq report does not signal war is lost.

Of course he will say this. If he admits the report is accurate then he would have to admit to failure. If he admits failure then he will have failed his daddy’s honor. And let’s face it, this is the true reason George the Second so callously took this nation to war. His own misguided ‘sense of honor’ to right the wrong in what his daddy should have done during his little war. Clearly, George the First should have taken out Saddam Hussein when he had the chance. But honor would not allow him to. George the Second is not ‘hindered‘ with honor. This is why he was chosen by the political powers to ‘right this wrong’. He used American soldiers to ‘assassinate’ a foreign head of state. Something this country has sworn never to do. Sure, no one walked up to Saddam and placed a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. He used the anger of the Iraqi people under the promise of a democratic government to do it.

George the Second has sent many American soldiers to their deaths to carry out his goals and he continues to cost even more American lives because he refuses to quit.

George the Second is not man enough to stand on his own and admit he made a mistake in going after Saddam. That would require that he admit to lying to the American people when he ‘interpreted’ another report to meet his agenda. That report, which came from our very own CIA, told him there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He chose to believe otherwise. Now, instead of admitting he was wrong and stopping this senseless taking of Americans lives and of Iraqi lives and of destroying a once beautiful nation and culture, he stubbornly sides with military advisors who will never admit defeat and who clearly have their own agenda (which is to go down in the history books as the greatest warriors ever. This is what all military leaders aspire to. Hell, it’s the only thing they can aspire to.)

He thought he could pull a ‘John Wayne’ and save his daddy’s honor and the honor of the American people. He is too blind to see that he has done nothing more than to eroded even further the perception of what America truly stands for. Since you Bushites have ‘forgotten’ what America stands for, let me tell you.

We stand for freedom. In fighting to maintain our freedom, we have earned honor. Sadly, we are not honoring ourselves by fighting in Iraq. We are not honoring ourselves by fighting in Afghanistan.

I love America. I salute and praise our brave American soldiers. They do only what they are told to do and go where they are told to go. I write these essays in an attempt to find the right words to express how we are failing the memory of all of those who have fought wearing the American military uniform during times when our freedom was in jeopardy. Our freedom is not in jeopardy in Iraq. Our freedom is not in jeopardy in Afghanistan. If we ‘lose’ the fight in these countries we do not ‘lose’ any freedom.

Our honor is what is at stake in these countries, but only because George the Second keeps us in these places. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, and the rest of the world know the reason we are fighting in these countries. They know that honor has nothing to do with it. We are still in Iraq because a handful of American financial interests are still making lots of money. We are still fighting in Afghanistan because we are trying to get revenge against Osama bin Laden. We are ‘winning’ shamelessly in Iraq and failing miserably in Afghanistan. Neither of these deployments bring honor to the American people.

We don’t need the military to restore honor to the U.S. The military is but one part of the overall makeup of a true America, not the only one, George. We broke away from a nation that was ruled by tyrants, such as yourself, intent on spreading their form of government throughout the world. We broke away because we were tired of suffering at the hands of a ruling class elite that refused to represent what ‘we the people’ wanted.

The people who formed America over 200 years ago wanted nothing of spreading their form of rule to the rest of the world. They wanted nothing more than to live their lives in peace without being taxed to death and without having to live under the watchful eye of a government who is supposed to protect us. Are our taxes too high? For what we get in return for those taxes, the answer is a resounding yes! Do we live under the watchful eye of the government? When we have to worry about what we say to one another for fear of being hauled into jail and interrogated under the auspice of some ‘terrorism law’ that this president wants to enforce, the answer is another resounding yes! Is this government protecting us? When it has become unsafe for Americans to travel anywhere in the world because of our governments policies, then the answer is a resounding no!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is not the America I wish to live in.

When this president, any president, can override judicial decisions, interpret reports differently from what experts say in order to meet his own agenda, circumvent laws by ‘presidential decree’, or decide that ‘we the people’ don’t really know what is best for us then we need to remove that president lest we fall into the feudal system days of pre-America, land of the free.