It is not designed to convince, but to browbeat and intimidate. The editorial is one more indication that an assault on Iran is being planned for sooner, rather than later.
An assault on Iran
An editorial in Monday’s Australian entitled “Endgame for Iran” is another sign that the vast resources of the Murdoch global media empire are being mobilised to support a new US war of aggression against Iran. A similar editorial headed “A nuclear Iran is not an option” appeared in the same newspaper last week, along with an opinion piece in the London-based Times entitled “What a shambles over Iran” and continuing agitation by Fox News commentators in the US.
The message is: Iran has flouted UN deadlines, it is building nuclear weapons, time is running out, diplomacy is a dangerous waste of time and military action is an urgent imperative. The same theme has dominated recent speeches by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld over the past week, reflecting a definite shift in the Bush administration. Its purpose is to demonise the Tehran regime and whip up a climate of fear and hysteria to justify US military action against Iran. Murdoch and his editorial boards have not missed the cue.
The Australian editorial contemptuously dismissed the efforts of the UN and the European powers to resolve the nuclear standoff through diplomatic means. “In watching the slow dance between Iran and the rest of the world over Tehran’s nuclear program, two things are becoming ever more clear. Iran’s theocratic despots are hell-bent on acquiring atomic weapons with which to threaten Israel and control events in the Middle East and beyond, and large swaths of the world appear prepared to let them have their wish,” it declared.
The argument is riddled with cynicism and hypocrisy. In the Australian’s upside-down view of the world, the Iranian regime is the chief threat to peace, seeking through military might to “control events in the Middle East and beyond”. In fact, the description applies most appropriately to the United States, which in the name of its phony “war on terror” has occupied Afghanistan, illegally invaded Iraq and backed the criminal Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The Bush administration makes no bones about its determination to “control events” in the region. Standing amid the ruins of Lebanon, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice openly declared that Washington’s aim was to fashion “a new Middle East”.
Just as in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, the propagandists for the Bush administration have no hesitation in building their case on lies. The Australian has provided no proof for its sweeping accusation that Tehran is “acquiring nuclear weapons”. In place of hard evidence, it offered the specious argument that Iran, with its vast reserves of oil and gas, had no need for nuclear energy, therefore must be constructing atomic bombs. It was not the present regime, however, that initiated Iran’s nuclear programs, but the former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with US backing. It was also the Shah who argued that the country’s oil and gas should be reserved for exports and who, in the 1960s, drew up plans for a network of 23 nuclear power stations, also with US support.
It is possible that sections of the Iranian regime have ambitions to build nuclear weapons, but after three years of inspections the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no proof. All of its findings are presented in the negative: it is unable to verify that Iran has no weapons programs. Even if Tehran were “hell-bent” on building atomic bombs, its current facilities are completely inadequate. A heavy-water research reactor at Arak capable of producing plutonium is not due to be completed until 2009. Iran’s enrichment plant at Natanz still has only one cascade of 164 gas centrifuges operating, well short of the many thousands required to produce significant amounts of highly enriched uranium. Even the CIA in last year’s leaked National Intelligence Estimate judged that Iran required a decade to manufacture nuclear weapons. None of this, however, stops the Australian from baldly asserting: “With every day that ticks by, Tehran comes that much closer to being able to build either a dirty bomb or a full-scale atomic fission weapon.”
The sense of panic that permeates the Australian editorial is bound up with the profound political crisis engulfing the White House. The US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have become unmitigated disasters, the US-backed Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon was a debacle and, at home, there is broad hostility to the Bush administration, particularly over the continued US military presence in Iraq. Yet, far from pulling back, the US is preparing to lurch into another military adventure. Its agenda is nothing less than the assertion of American hegemony over the resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia and the stirring up of war fever to intimidate domestic opposition and justify further attacks on basic democratic rights.
The Australian’s real venom was reserved for “the large swaths of the world” that stand in the way of the Bush administration’s plans—Russia and China, which have opposed any punitive measures against Iran, and the European powers, which continue to string out negotiations, as well as those in the American establishment who have expressed concern at the consequences of reckless militarism for US interests. The editorial speaks for a US administration that senses its profound isolation and feels, with mid-term elections due in November and the end of Bush’s second term just two years off, that it is running out of time.
As it did during the US wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, the newspaper painted the latest target of aggression as “evil” and Iranian Mahmoud President Ahmadinejad as the new Hitler. Lashing out at the Bush administration’s opponents, it declared: “In this regard the current climate feels reminiscent of the late 1930s, when many in the West supported Germany’s right to rearm having had its pride wounded by the Treaty of Versailles, or even the 1940s when some felt the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was simply blowback for US oil sanctions on Imperial Japan.”
But, like Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran is not an imperialist power. Unlike Japan and Germany in the 1930s, it does not have the military capacity to seriously threaten the United States, even if it were to build a handful of atomic weapons. The most accurate parallel to the Third Reich and the Japanese imperial regime is the Bush administration itself, which seeks to offset the economic decline of the United States and to resolve its deepening social contradictions by using its military strength to bully its rivals and establish unrivalled US dominance over critical resources. The apologists for Hitler’s regime in the 1930s were to be found among the most right-wing layers of the political establishment—today’s admirers and supporters of the Bush administration.
The Australian portrays Ahmadinejad in apocalyptic terms as a man who regards himself as the “hidden” iman, the herald of the end of the world, in order to justify its conclusion that war is the only way. “[D]iplomatic threats and sanctions could have the perverse effect of emboldening Mr Ahmadinejad,” it insisted, ignoring the fact that the Iranian regime has, throughout the past decade, indicated a willingness to negotiate an end to the standoff with the United States. The US, on the other hand, has repeatedly ruled out talks with Iran. In discussions with European powers, one of Tehran’s key demands has been for a security guarantee, which the Bush administration has continued to rule out with the stock phrase—“all options are on the table”.
Now, the Australian declares: “[T]he world’s only option is military, though the window of opportunity for strikes against Iran’s nuclear program is rapidly closing as the regime plays for time and hardens its facilities. US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may each have been weakened by mistakes and miscalculations in Iraq and Lebanon respectively. But they may also have no choice but to act, since no one else in the world seems prepared to.”
The purpose was not to advise Bush and Olmert. As Murdoch’s editorial staff are well aware, the White House and the Pentagon have been engaged for well over a year in drawing up detailed plans for a massive air campaign against Iran. Speaking on the Democracy Now radio program last month, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh explained that the White House regarded Israel’s war on Lebanon as the necessary precursor to a war on Iran.
Asked about current US plans to bomb Iran, Hersh replied: “Well, you can’t apply rationality to it, because I think it’s simply something Bush and Cheney want to do. As I said earlier, they want to take out Iran. They don’t want to talk to it. They believe it’s, you know, the axis of evil cubed. And so, frankly my real worry is what’s going to happen—I think nothing’s going to happen before this election. That’s impossible. My real worry is what’s going to happen when George Bush is a lame duck.”
Hersh has written a series of extensive articles in the New Yorker based on top-level sources in the Pentagon and the CIA detailing the plans for a military assault on Iran, including chilling discussions about the use of nuclear weapons. As the Australian editorial implies, far from the setbacks in Lebanon and Iraq being a brake on these preparations, they have become a further spur to action. The most fascistic sections of the American establishment stridently declare that the US cannot win in Iraq without taking the fight to Syria and Iran.
In his article last month entitled “The Real War,” Michael Ledeen of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute set out the twisted logic of militarism. “Even if we continue to win every battle in every region of Iraq and Afghanistan, we will only prolong the fighting... But if the mullahcracy is replaced by a government empowered by the tens of millions of pro-American and pro-democracy people now oppressed by the evil terror masters in Tehran, the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan would quickly be transformed into a operation with the balance of power overwhelmingly on the side of the governments,” he declared.
In this absurd fantasy world, the “evil terror masters in Tehran” are responsible for all the problems confronting the Bush administration. Remove them and the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran would welcome American soldiers with open arms. This is the line of the Australian. It is a recipe for unending war to suppress the resistance of the peoples of the Middle East to US ambitions. It is not designed to convince, but to browbeat and intimidate. The editorial is one more indication that an assault on Iran is being planned for sooner, rather than later.
See Also:
US prepares to escalate conflict with Iran
[2 September 2006]
US spy agencies pressed for "intelligence" to justify war against Iran
[28 August 2006]
US administration rejects Iran's offer of "serious negotiations"
[24 August 2006]
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/sep2006/iran-s09.shtml
The message is: Iran has flouted UN deadlines, it is building nuclear weapons, time is running out, diplomacy is a dangerous waste of time and military action is an urgent imperative. The same theme has dominated recent speeches by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld over the past week, reflecting a definite shift in the Bush administration. Its purpose is to demonise the Tehran regime and whip up a climate of fear and hysteria to justify US military action against Iran. Murdoch and his editorial boards have not missed the cue.
The Australian editorial contemptuously dismissed the efforts of the UN and the European powers to resolve the nuclear standoff through diplomatic means. “In watching the slow dance between Iran and the rest of the world over Tehran’s nuclear program, two things are becoming ever more clear. Iran’s theocratic despots are hell-bent on acquiring atomic weapons with which to threaten Israel and control events in the Middle East and beyond, and large swaths of the world appear prepared to let them have their wish,” it declared.
The argument is riddled with cynicism and hypocrisy. In the Australian’s upside-down view of the world, the Iranian regime is the chief threat to peace, seeking through military might to “control events in the Middle East and beyond”. In fact, the description applies most appropriately to the United States, which in the name of its phony “war on terror” has occupied Afghanistan, illegally invaded Iraq and backed the criminal Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The Bush administration makes no bones about its determination to “control events” in the region. Standing amid the ruins of Lebanon, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice openly declared that Washington’s aim was to fashion “a new Middle East”.
Just as in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, the propagandists for the Bush administration have no hesitation in building their case on lies. The Australian has provided no proof for its sweeping accusation that Tehran is “acquiring nuclear weapons”. In place of hard evidence, it offered the specious argument that Iran, with its vast reserves of oil and gas, had no need for nuclear energy, therefore must be constructing atomic bombs. It was not the present regime, however, that initiated Iran’s nuclear programs, but the former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with US backing. It was also the Shah who argued that the country’s oil and gas should be reserved for exports and who, in the 1960s, drew up plans for a network of 23 nuclear power stations, also with US support.
It is possible that sections of the Iranian regime have ambitions to build nuclear weapons, but after three years of inspections the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no proof. All of its findings are presented in the negative: it is unable to verify that Iran has no weapons programs. Even if Tehran were “hell-bent” on building atomic bombs, its current facilities are completely inadequate. A heavy-water research reactor at Arak capable of producing plutonium is not due to be completed until 2009. Iran’s enrichment plant at Natanz still has only one cascade of 164 gas centrifuges operating, well short of the many thousands required to produce significant amounts of highly enriched uranium. Even the CIA in last year’s leaked National Intelligence Estimate judged that Iran required a decade to manufacture nuclear weapons. None of this, however, stops the Australian from baldly asserting: “With every day that ticks by, Tehran comes that much closer to being able to build either a dirty bomb or a full-scale atomic fission weapon.”
The sense of panic that permeates the Australian editorial is bound up with the profound political crisis engulfing the White House. The US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have become unmitigated disasters, the US-backed Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon was a debacle and, at home, there is broad hostility to the Bush administration, particularly over the continued US military presence in Iraq. Yet, far from pulling back, the US is preparing to lurch into another military adventure. Its agenda is nothing less than the assertion of American hegemony over the resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia and the stirring up of war fever to intimidate domestic opposition and justify further attacks on basic democratic rights.
The Australian’s real venom was reserved for “the large swaths of the world” that stand in the way of the Bush administration’s plans—Russia and China, which have opposed any punitive measures against Iran, and the European powers, which continue to string out negotiations, as well as those in the American establishment who have expressed concern at the consequences of reckless militarism for US interests. The editorial speaks for a US administration that senses its profound isolation and feels, with mid-term elections due in November and the end of Bush’s second term just two years off, that it is running out of time.
As it did during the US wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, the newspaper painted the latest target of aggression as “evil” and Iranian Mahmoud President Ahmadinejad as the new Hitler. Lashing out at the Bush administration’s opponents, it declared: “In this regard the current climate feels reminiscent of the late 1930s, when many in the West supported Germany’s right to rearm having had its pride wounded by the Treaty of Versailles, or even the 1940s when some felt the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was simply blowback for US oil sanctions on Imperial Japan.”
But, like Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran is not an imperialist power. Unlike Japan and Germany in the 1930s, it does not have the military capacity to seriously threaten the United States, even if it were to build a handful of atomic weapons. The most accurate parallel to the Third Reich and the Japanese imperial regime is the Bush administration itself, which seeks to offset the economic decline of the United States and to resolve its deepening social contradictions by using its military strength to bully its rivals and establish unrivalled US dominance over critical resources. The apologists for Hitler’s regime in the 1930s were to be found among the most right-wing layers of the political establishment—today’s admirers and supporters of the Bush administration.
The Australian portrays Ahmadinejad in apocalyptic terms as a man who regards himself as the “hidden” iman, the herald of the end of the world, in order to justify its conclusion that war is the only way. “[D]iplomatic threats and sanctions could have the perverse effect of emboldening Mr Ahmadinejad,” it insisted, ignoring the fact that the Iranian regime has, throughout the past decade, indicated a willingness to negotiate an end to the standoff with the United States. The US, on the other hand, has repeatedly ruled out talks with Iran. In discussions with European powers, one of Tehran’s key demands has been for a security guarantee, which the Bush administration has continued to rule out with the stock phrase—“all options are on the table”.
Now, the Australian declares: “[T]he world’s only option is military, though the window of opportunity for strikes against Iran’s nuclear program is rapidly closing as the regime plays for time and hardens its facilities. US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may each have been weakened by mistakes and miscalculations in Iraq and Lebanon respectively. But they may also have no choice but to act, since no one else in the world seems prepared to.”
The purpose was not to advise Bush and Olmert. As Murdoch’s editorial staff are well aware, the White House and the Pentagon have been engaged for well over a year in drawing up detailed plans for a massive air campaign against Iran. Speaking on the Democracy Now radio program last month, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh explained that the White House regarded Israel’s war on Lebanon as the necessary precursor to a war on Iran.
Asked about current US plans to bomb Iran, Hersh replied: “Well, you can’t apply rationality to it, because I think it’s simply something Bush and Cheney want to do. As I said earlier, they want to take out Iran. They don’t want to talk to it. They believe it’s, you know, the axis of evil cubed. And so, frankly my real worry is what’s going to happen—I think nothing’s going to happen before this election. That’s impossible. My real worry is what’s going to happen when George Bush is a lame duck.”
Hersh has written a series of extensive articles in the New Yorker based on top-level sources in the Pentagon and the CIA detailing the plans for a military assault on Iran, including chilling discussions about the use of nuclear weapons. As the Australian editorial implies, far from the setbacks in Lebanon and Iraq being a brake on these preparations, they have become a further spur to action. The most fascistic sections of the American establishment stridently declare that the US cannot win in Iraq without taking the fight to Syria and Iran.
In his article last month entitled “The Real War,” Michael Ledeen of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute set out the twisted logic of militarism. “Even if we continue to win every battle in every region of Iraq and Afghanistan, we will only prolong the fighting... But if the mullahcracy is replaced by a government empowered by the tens of millions of pro-American and pro-democracy people now oppressed by the evil terror masters in Tehran, the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan would quickly be transformed into a operation with the balance of power overwhelmingly on the side of the governments,” he declared.
In this absurd fantasy world, the “evil terror masters in Tehran” are responsible for all the problems confronting the Bush administration. Remove them and the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran would welcome American soldiers with open arms. This is the line of the Australian. It is a recipe for unending war to suppress the resistance of the peoples of the Middle East to US ambitions. It is not designed to convince, but to browbeat and intimidate. The editorial is one more indication that an assault on Iran is being planned for sooner, rather than later.
See Also:
US prepares to escalate conflict with Iran
[2 September 2006]
US spy agencies pressed for "intelligence" to justify war against Iran
[28 August 2006]
US administration rejects Iran's offer of "serious negotiations"
[24 August 2006]
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/sep2006/iran-s09.shtml
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
flurpin HECK
09.09.2006 08:29
kite-lean gross-V-nor
e-mail:
copito@bushinternet.com
"what muslims really want"
09.09.2006 21:05
"Did you see that program -what muslims really want- ?" he said, eyes lit up.
An inward sigh. Another loved one replied in disgust "I suppose the next week they broadcast -what jews really want- ?"
My first hesitated for a second, potentially destroyed by the logic of the reply, but years of zionist propaganda would not be wasted. In a flash, he remembered that he is nominally atheist, so all organised religion is the work of the devil (notice my little joke there), and hence the clear and present racist bias of the TV station is dismissed as irrelevant to his point.
I say nothing, remembering how proudly he informed me months back that no way would he be watching "Road to Guantanamo Bay" (which, for those of you that did not see it, was made as pro-US as possible by Channel 4 given the story it covered).
Shortly afterwards, the conversation deteriorated, with me calling the first beloved the kind of things that any of you that have read my previous comments might expect.
However, love allows such things, and shortly afterwards, we turned to the topic of his "all humans are but machines" atheism, a mind-control trick long exploited by zionist flavoured communism and socialism (true socialism is based on getting people to value themselves, NOT devalue themselves).
I find the mass media so racist and repugnant these days that I can rarely bear more than a few minutes. Even if I did listen, my response would be atypical versus that of the intended target. For this reason, talking with people who soak up the lies and propaganda like a sponge is invaluable, BUT SO BLOODY DEPRESSING.
The first mentioned beloved impresses himself these days by proudly stating that his circle dismisses Blair's latest round-up of claimed 'terrorists' as a phoney publicity stunt, and that anyway, Blair is nearly gone. This surface position might seem promising, if everything that lay beneath was not exactly what Blair has required from 'his' people for years now. All of his underlying assumptions and instincts are exactly those that Blair has spent billions to program in.
***HE*** trusts the status quo. No World War yet in his lifetime, so the concept of World War becomes, literally, impossible. As an 'impossible' thing, it requires no thought. Death and destruction he does accept, but as the natural fate of those Humans stupid enough to be born non-British.
For me, such people act as the "weather vane". His mind has changed much over the Blair years, but only because Blair has needed differing things from his natural constituents, depending on the circumstances of the time. Now I feel a mind that strikes me as identical to how the minds of the masses of Germans that empowered Hiltler must have been, on the eve of his invasion of Poland. Funny, because many of you will hold the mistaken view that a large number of Germans must have wanted the invasion, in order for it to happen.
All that Blair has to do now is find the courage to make his move. Boxing himself in (with the final stage of "OPERATION JAM TOMORROW") is a psychological ploy to force the act of 'courage'.
Following the progression of propaganda and political activity, we know that the "GO" moment is almost upon us. Seymour Hersh telling us that the attack on Iran is not imminent is to many of us further proof of the exact opposite (please tell me that you never took this stooge at face value). The aftermath of the Iran attack, unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, is not going to be a problem to Blair, because EVERYTHING changes after Iran. Blair and Bush (or more likely, Blair and Hillary Clinton) will use the power they have accumulated to create whatever reality suits them in their respective nations.
Where do 'death camps' come from? The desire to mass murder people? Well, in the first place, no. At the beginning, the 'New Order' creates a mass of new rules, and the bodies to enforce these rules. Existing court and prison systems do not suffice to handle all the new 'thought criminals', many of whom cannot be formally 'tried'. The answer is simple. Create 'concentration camps', and stick your 'dissidents' in them. A few weeks or months later, and these 'concentration camps' nicely evolve into 'death camps'.
Those monsters that gave active backing to the Israeli holocaust in Lebanon are already demanding that people who call Israel and its supporters WAR CRIMINALS should be placed in such camps. Elsewhere on the newswire, you can read how a resident of Brighton that supported Israeli terrorism because they represent her 'master-race' was able to have Blair's uniformed thugs attack a protest against Israeli genocide in Lebanon.
How many times did racist German women call the gestapo to have them attack jewish protests against the persecution of jews in nazi Germany? We live in a nation whose actions parallel those of Hitler's Germany exactly. The names have changed, but the vile crimes are exactly the same.
If there is a difference, it is that large chunks of the so-called 'left' today are apologists for Israel and its supporters (and many of these apologists are actually embedded racists, working on behalf of their 'master-race').
The article talks about Murdoch's media empire, and indeed it is true, this zionist scumbag is Blair's main WORLDWIDE propagandist, but Murdoch is a blunt instrument. At every local level, there are usually more subtle and evil propaganda operations. So, for us for instance, we have the vile racist garbage pouring from The Guardian, the BBC, and Channel 4, often coated with a flavour to fool the mental taste-buds of the simple-minded 'liberal'. Murdoch plays a key part here, for such simple-minded lefties are so proud of NOT reading The Sun or The Times, they fail to notice how easily THEY are targetted by tailored propaganda.
Indeed, I have suggested before that for many left-wing people, choosing to read The Sun or The Times makes more sense because then 1) you NEVER forget that what you are reading is propaganda, and 2) what you are reading will piss you off, and make you more determined to make a difference.
Anyway, those of us on the left that want a fair and decent world can see just how rotten the leadership of many left-movements are, by watching those leaders care more about written attacks against Israel and its supporters, than they do against Blair and Israel's holocaust of Iraq, Lebanon, the Occupied Territories, and soon Iran.
And to end by returning to my title, and reference to a TV program intended to enable genocide, may I point you all to a piece of writing as repugnant and disgusting as any written by church leaders within nazi German that supported Adolf Hitler.
I would like to believe that this is a sick joke, on a phoney site created to bring the church of England into disrepute. I guess that Blair needs to send Reverend Robert Reiss to the US right away so that he can tell those US 'soldiers' that raped the little girl, and massacred her family, that they were doing god's work, and regardless of 'bad people' like myself, they have earnt their annointed place in heaven.
QUOTE
And in the face of remarks or cartoons considered to be hostile to Islam there was a marked lack of respect for the principle of freedom of speech that has, for many years now, been a significant feature of this country.
UNQUOTE
Well I'll use that 'free speech', Reiss, to say NEVER have I read words that so clearly contain the racist glee at Blair's mass murdering atrocities across the globe. It is said that the pope supported the nazis during WW2, and although I don't know that for certain, I wouldn't be suprised if it were true. However, Reiss, it screams out from every one of your vile words that the greatest pleasure you receive in life is counting the millions of muslim victims of Blair's crimes against humanity, and doing everything you can to glorify such crimes. Your dark god is Blair, Reiss, and it is clear that you would follow this monster as he murdered every last muslim on this Earth, complaining only if he gave too many of them a quick death, rather than burning them alive with phosphorus, poisoning them with DU, destroying their schools, hospitals, museums, farms and factories, raping their children, torturing their sons and on and on.
"What Robert Reiss really wants" is a program that would make even the strongest of us sick to our souls. The sermon itself was illegal under the laws of this nation (not that I would agree with those Blair made laws), although the monster that gave it is well aware that the possibility of punishment for inciting racist genocide against muslims in the UK is exactly ZERO. How many speechs EXACTLY like this were given in Rwanda in the days leading up to the genocide there?
Of course, christian religious leaders count for exactly zero in the UK at this point in history (and thank god for that). But here is the point of my story. "What muslims really want" did its job far more effectively than any nazi propaganda film, and Blair hasn't really got started yet.
twilight