Editorial note: The following is a rush transcript of an exclusive interview with Phil Wilayto, an author and activist based in Richmond, Virginia.
Wilayto is the co-founder of the community organization of Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. Wilayto is also the author of In Defense of Iran: Notes from a US Peace Delegation's Journey through the Islamic Republic and a board member of Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII).
See the full video interview at PRESS TV´s "Face to Face":
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Press TV : Can you tell us about your peace activities and campaigns in the US?
Phil Wilayto : The Defenders is primarily a community organization and we try to represent the interests of the poor and working people in Richmond, which is a predominately African American city and our membership is predominately African American.
But as we work on the issues of jobs, health, education, housing and so on, we also have to be aware that the government, that supposedly represents us, is acting in ways around the world that is causing problems for other poor and working people and the money they use for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places, is money that could be used at home to improve people's lives.
Therefore, we try to make the connection between the struggles for self-determination of the African American community at home and the struggles of other countries -- like Iran -- to determine their own destiny, free from outside aggression. So for us it is a natural connection between fighting for justice at home and peace abroad.
Press TV : You recently had a CASMII conference organized. Can you tell us about that meeting?
Phil Wilayto : I just participated in it [CASMII conference]. There has been a lull in the activities of the anti-peace movement for the last couple of years.
There are several reasons for that: People got their hopes up because of our presidential election and when Barack Obama was elected, people felt that he represented a fundamental change in policy and that maybe we didn't have to be so active on the issues of war because he had promised to end the wars in Iraq and elsewhere.
When that didn't happen, there was great disappointment. After a year and a half into his presidency, the peace movement has started to show some signs of life again.
There was a national conference called for Albany, New York, on the weekend of July, 23,24 and 25 that was to gather together as many of the peace organizations as possible and try to plan activities for fall and spring. It was expected that maybe about 250 people would show up; instead it was close to 800 people.
At this conference, The Defenders initiated, along with the Fellowship for the Reconciliation and other groups, a resolution to encourage all the peace organizations -- when they oppose the war in Iraq and Afghanistan -- to also include the demand of no war and sanctions against Iran. And that resolution passed unanimously.
That was not totally unexpected; but a second resolution condemning the Iranian government for internal policies was defeated overwhelmingly because the argument was made successfully that the Iranian people have the right to determine their destiny and the role of the US peace movement, which exists in the country that is threatening Iran, is simply to prevent war and the sanctions and get the US off Iran's back.
So that was a new development -- both in the size of the conference and the politics. It also, for the first time at a national peace conference, called for a complete end to all US military, political and economic support for Israel. That was very controversial; but it did pass with a very strong majority.
Press TV : This is your second trip to Iran, the first being in 2007. What made you think about traveling to Iran despite the "Iran is scary" general perception that is being propagated by the US media? How has your perception changed since?
Phil Wilayto : I do not do a lot of foreign traveling; but three years ago a series of events happened and tension was increasing between the US and Iran, and it looked like there might be a possibility of a US attack and there was a little more interest.
At that time we met members of the group CASMII and one of their members, who used to be a tour guide in Iran and is now an anthropologist and writer based in Washington DC, felt bad that more Americans did not visit Iran and see for themselves the reality of the country.
So he encouraged us to visit. We thought we would bring in about 15 people; but for various reasons, including fear, some folks decided not to come and we came down to five.
However, we had a good delegation. There were two US army veterans, one of them had been stationed in Iraq and now he is president of the board of directors of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and a woman, who is an environmental activist, and another old friend of mine from Milwaukee, who is a labor activist. So the five of us came over.
It was a tourist trip. We contracted with a local agency and we had an incredibly good guide, who had lived in the US and every day was a lecture on another aspect of Iranian society. As we drove across the desert from Shiraz to Yazd, he said, "Ok, today we are going to talk about Iranian history," "Tomorrow we are going to talk about Iranian religion," "The next day we are going to talk about Iranian politics."
When I came back from the trip, I did a lot of study about Iran and found out he was right. He was fairly self-educated about the topics.
Press TV : What was the most interesting thing you came across during the trip?
Phil Wilayto : Besides the political aspects of it, the fact that Iranian people like Americans. That was so widespread. We didn't have the slightest problem anywhere we went. In the country, everyone wanted to just come up and try out whatever little English they knew.
In Yazd, when we ran into 300 members of the Revolutionary Guard, I was walking behind the other folks in the delegation on the way to visit a wind tower and I looked over and a fellow was walking next to me and he was in green army fatigues and with a beard. He looked at me and I looked at him and he said, "Hello" and asked me where I was from. I said I was from the USA. He then stopped and took the little finger of his right hand and he hooked it around my little finger and he goes "Friends." I thought, "That's interesting!"
We then walked up a little further and we found the rest of our group and our guide talked to the guy for a minute and he [our guide] said the guy was a member of the Revolutionary Guard.
When we came out of the wind tower after our visit, there were around 300 Revolutionary Guard members in front, who were on a tour. They were between us and our van, so we five Americans had to walk through them and when we were walking through them, one of them [Revolutionary Guard members] said, "Hello" and we said "Hello" and he said "Where are you from?" and I am thinking "Canada" but then a member of our group yells out "USA" and all of a sudden they're looking at us; but someone said "Welcome" and they started calling "Peace, Hello, Welcome to our country."
I said to our guide "Tell them why we're here." Our guide told them that we're on a peace delegation to Iran trying to prevent a war and they're listening and they're going "Thank you, thank you." I don't know what would happen if five Iranians tourists ran into 300 Green Berets or Special Forces on a tour in Philadelphia. I don't know what kind of reception they'd get.
What this taught me is this -- and this is what we have been telling the American people: From the school children to the police officers to the college students to laborers to the Revolutionary Guard, no one in Iran obviously has been taught to hate Americans and no one was preparing the Iranian people to go to war with Americans. If the government is teaching children to hate Americans, some of that would pick up; but it wasn't like that at all. I got mobbed in Shiraz by 80 elementary school children -- surrounding me so I couldn't move, yelling, "We love you; we love America, Welcome." Just because they found that we were American.
Press TV : So Phil, this might be an elementary question, by the way, but I'd like to put it to you anyway; what is really feeding this storm of anti-Iranian media campaigns that are so prevalent in the United States?
Phil Wilayto : It is a coordinated campaign by the government and the large commercial media
Press TV : But large groups of people seem to be buying it; what makes it so believable for them?
Phil Wilayto : We have a very big problem with racism in the United States so there is a predisposition for people to believe bad things about other people.
The Iranian country, the government and people are projected as extremely foreign and different from "Americans" even though Americans are made of all kinds of people, themselves. I mean we have Iranians, we have Muslims and we have every nationality; but Iran's image in the United States is threatening, foreboding, medieval, dangerous, crazy -- and God forbid that they should get the bomb because then it is World War III.
Press TV : Speaking of the bomb, do you really think that Iran is after the A-bomb? And if not, why?
Phil Wilayto : I have a lot of friends, who said Iran would be crazy not to try to have the bomb; but as someone at the Tehran peace museum, a veteran of the eight-year war, told me three years ago, "If we had the bomb, they would leave us alone; if we try to get it, they are going to attack us." So that is a practical consideration; but these are the facts...
Press TV : ... And this was the time when the official opposition of the Iranian government -- as well as the Iranian leadership -- was that first of all, religiously we are not allowed to even think of that, and secondly, politically it is not useful and correct to have it, so it is out of the question and it is being categorically denied. Nonetheless, people over there in the US, the general average public, may not be buying it.
Phil Wilayto : They do not know because of the amount of propaganda. President Ahmadinejad has said Iran does not want the bomb; it wants a nuclear-free Middle East. The leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has issued a Fatwa, a religious edict, saying that nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction are forbidden by Islam because they kill innocent people. But the Americans say, "Well of course they would say that."
Iran is the most inspected country in the world as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog, on a constant basis with cameras and visits and then surprise visits, more than any other country in the world and there has never been one shred of evidence that Iran's nuclear program is designed for anything other than the production of energy for peaceful purposes -- electricity -- no proof whatsoever that Iran is trying to develop A-bomb.
So what is the issue? The issue is that Iran is an independent proud sovereign country that happens to control the third largest oil reserves in the Middle East, plays an increasingly powerful and influential regional role in the Middle East, that contains two thirds of the world's known oil reserves, and is an obstacle to the US expansion of power and domination of this very important area of the world and it (Iran) can't be allowed to remain, as in President Obama's words, "defiant." And I would add, defiant of the empire because it is a bad example.
It is not that the US can't live in peace with Iran; it means that it has to dominate it in order to live in peace -- not because Americans are bad people, but because they have an economic system that forces them to be Number One or else they're afraid of being Number 100. They're forced to compete and they're forced to dominate economically because of the internal contradictions of their system.
So the American people are caught in the middle. We don't want war; we don't want the Iraq war; we don't want the Afghanistan war. If we had a real democracy, our wish would be respected, but instead, we're faced with the possibility of a war with Iran that might erupt into to a nuclear war.
Press TV : How serious do you think the possibility of a war is?
Phil Wilayto : Logically, it shouldn't be a possibility. There's no need for it and it would be incredibly dangerous -- and probably set off a series of events that the United States couldn't control. This is not Iraq; this is not Afghanistan. This is a strong, relatively powerful country that has the ability to defend itself and to inflict damage on those who would attack it. Iran has not attacked a country in over 250 years. It isn't threatening anybody. It doesn't hope to have a nuclear weapon and it's not trying to develop one. Its military is set upon the line of defense -- not offense. It doesn't have any nuclear carriers to go buzzing around in Massachusetts or New Orleans or Seattle like the Eisenhower that sits out in the Persia Gulf; but it's a relatively powerful country that could defend itself.
So you'd think the US would say, "We're bogged down and losing two wars already; why do we want a third war?" The problem is the US has backed itself into a corner, the US government. You always have to draw the distinction between the government and the people. It has basically said to Iran, "Your program for nuclear energy is really a cover to develop nuclear weapons and your leadership has threatened to destroy Israel" -- which it has not, but that is what they say -- "and if you get the bomb we're all in trouble so stop enriching nuclear uranium. We recognize you have a right to enrich uranium under international law, but we want you to stop it because it is just a cover for your nuclear weapons." Iran says "No" and so the US says, "Well then we impose sanctions" and then Iran says, "OK" and the US says "Well then we do more sanctions."
Finally what are they [the US] going to do? Here is this gigantic world bully saying to this much smaller country, "You do what we say or you're in trouble," and Iran says, "We're going to do what is right for our country because we're a sovereign country; we don't bow down to anyone; we don't threaten anyone, but we're not going to be susceptible to threats."
At some point, the US has to say, "We'd better back off and find another way to negotiate or we have to follow through with that threat and crush Iran.
They backed themselves into a corner and there's a strong section of the US government that would like to say, "Let Israel do it."
Press TV : The US and EU have unilaterally imposed sanctions on Iran. The US has also engineered a Security Council set of sanctions on Iran, the fourth round of which, we're experiencing. Now these sanctions are said to be hurting the Iranian people and economy and they are meant to politically isolate Iran. Do you think Iran will be isolated and will end up giving up its sovereign right to pursuing its civilian-based nuclear program?
Phil Wilayto : Well, there are two questions there; First, do the sanctions hurt Iran? And second, is Iran going to be more politically and economically isolated as a result of the sanctions?
I think the history of the sanctions has shown that Iran has been able to find an opportunity in this challenge and Iran has been able to develop its industry and its technology and its science in order to counteract the effects of the sanctions. So it is probably more advanced in many areas of its economy than it would have been without the sanctions.
I don't think that is enough to say the sanctions are irrelevant. I think sanctions always put some economic pressure on a country. But Iran has taken very careful steps in order to develop relations with other countries. The United States is not the only game in town. Following World War II, it was, without doubt, the most powerful country. And after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it looked around and said, "Wow! We're the biggest kid on the block now and we should run everything."
But there are other global rivals. There's China, there's the European Union, there's Japan and there is, increasingly, India and Brazil -- countries that have the ability to be economic power houses, and while they're observing the sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council, they're not necessarily observing the sanctions that were more recently imposed by the United States and the European Union that were directed primarily at the oil and gas industries. So China and Russia are still honoring their economic commitments with Iran.
In the last two weeks that I have been in Tehran, there have been visits by the presidents of Guinea-Bissau in Africa and Cambodia. There has been a meeting between Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and there has been an outreach to Lebanon and the neighboring countries. and also a deepening of relationships with the progressive governments in Latin America.
I just read this morning that Iran is saying, "We're willing to deal with other countries in currencies other than the dollar," countries that can pay with their own currency and Iran will make up the difference if there is a loss of value there in anyway. So basically, they're saying, "Let us have a new world order based on cooperation among countries and not domination by one country."
Press TV : Do you think that America is up to this competition in a world, in which the US is no longer the sole decision maker?
Phil Wilayto : Well, I guess we're going to find out. There've been situations in which western countries were more or less in a balance of power; but countries develop at different speeds and different levels and every time one of them gets more influence or power or resources over another it wants to take advantage of that to expand its control of resources and markets and labor and that was the basis for World War I: re-organization of the world based on competition of the western powers, which is basically the result of the fact that they are based on the free enterprise system; you expand or die.
A capitalist country cannot just stay within its own level of development. It has to expand and compete and dominate other countries or capital will flow to wherever there is the greatest return.
I'm sure Barack Obama is a very nice person. He certainly is an improvement over George Bush; but Mickey Mouse would have been an improvement over George Bush. People like Barack Obama, but he can't change the fundamental contradiction that the United States has to dominate the world's oil supply because it's afraid that it it doesn't some other country will.
It's just like Churchill, who had no great interest in dominating the Middle East after World War I; he just didn't want France to dominate it. So because he didn't want France to dominate it, he wanted England to dominate it. That was before they realized how much oil there was and how important the oil would be to the modern world. It's the question of, 'If I'm not in charge, someone else will be and they'll treat me just like I'd probably treat them, so I'd better beat them first.' It is not a world order that's based on trust, respect and mutual interdependence. It's a world order based on dominance and all you can do in that situation is to remain strong.
So in order to prevent war and sanctions against Iran, Iran must remain strong militarily, Iran must be strong politically, it must be made united internally -- and I do not mean that there should be no decent evolution, or no debate or no progress.
The situation, as I understand it, is that every Iranian would defend Iran and no matter how they feel about the internal politics, they would rally around their country, because that is the history of the country. That was the history of the eight-year war. The American people have no desire for another war. So our job is to pressure our government to say we need jobs; not war with Iran. That's the message we need to get out.
Press TV : Finally, how do you see the future of relations between the US and Iran?
Phil Wilayto : Those of us in the peace movement, who have a little energy and some fire, are going to do everything we can to make sure that the American people have more contact with Iran; that they understand the reality of Iran, understand the incredible complexity of the society and begin to appreciate some of the things I have come to appreciate about Iran -- the warmth and generosity of its people, the fact that the government has a commitment to improving [the lives] of a lot of the poor and working people and a desire for peace.
If we can get that across, maybe we can overcome some of the contradictions in the US system and we want a world that is just and equal and cooperative and peaceful.
Press TV : Thank you for joining us here on Press TV.
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"Countdown to Zero": Hollywood movie promotes war on Iran
02.09.2010 13:02
Director and writer: Lucy Walker
Producer: Lawrence Bender
Magnolia Pictures, Participant Media, The History Channel, World
Security Institute (89 mins.)
Website:
In 2002, Condoleezza Rice warned the world, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Invading forces never found weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. They did find plenty of oil, though, which corporations seized for pennies on the dollar. [1] The same reason – WMDs – is now being used against Iran. When Zero mentions Islamo-terrorists seeking nuclear technology, it spotlights Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Repeatedly.
Zero features war hawks Tony Blair, Ronald Reagan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Baker, and Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, as well as spies and analysts, including Valerie Plame. Past or current members of the Carlyle Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations share the screen with well-financed groups ostensibly focused on nuclear nonproliferation.
Some of the film’s talking heads promoted, engaged in and/or profit from the “War on Terror,” which critics deem a euphemism for Western resource wars in the Middle East. James Baker, who served under both Bushes, makes a brief appearance. Until 2005, he legally represented the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm dominated by former heads of state who profit enormously on Middle East wars. [2]
Joe Cirincione of the Council on Foreign Relations (and of Ploughshares, a non-proliferation group) [3] delivers most of the Iran-is-bad message:
“Iran is the tip of the spear. It’s the big problem that we have to solve.”
This marks a 180-degree reversal from his position in 2007 when he described to Asia Times:
“ ‘a group of people inside the administration who view Iran as Nazi Germany’ and who are ‘constantly exaggerating’ the threat from Iran.” [4]
But that isn’t the only inconsistency.
Nine nations reportedly have nuclear weaponry: the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Of these, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea are not current signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). [5]
Leaving India and Israel free of criticism, Zero disparages nuclear members Pakistan and North Korea. Key information on these two nations presented in the film conflicts with other information publicly available – in some cases for over a decade.
First keep in mind that invading Iran is part of the “Long War” in which the US and its allies seek control of the entire region for access to its gas, oil and minerals. Long War proponent, Zbigniew Brzezinski, briefly appears in Zero. In 1997, he published The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. [6] Among those imperatives is the need to control Iran, a “primarily important geopolitical pivot.” [p.47]
Iran stands in the way. India does not. Neither does Pakistan or Israel. Brzezinski writes of the Central Asian states:
“Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.” (p.124, emphasis added)
Johannes Koeppl, a former German defense ministry and NATO official, called Grand Chessboard “a blueprint for world dictatorship.” [7] Iran is pivotal in those plans; Zero demonizes Iran. This is precisely the same fear mongering elites used when leading us into war on Iraq.
Zero isn’t even wholly anti-nuke; it only condemns nuclear arms. The film spends time, for example, on the Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear disarmament talks without mentioning what drove Gorbachev to the table: the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion. [8] The Ukraine government reports that the explosion released 100 times more radiation than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [9] But Zero doesn’t mention this or any other civilian nuclear accident. [10] The goal is not to ban all nuclear use, even though a nuclear power incident (by accident or sabotage) is just as deadly.
And, it presents absurdities. According to Zero, Osama bin Laden is alive and well and living in Pakistan, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also recently asserted. [11] Never mind that a dialysis-dependent man [12] on the run in rugged terrain for nine years would have likely died by now. [13] Elites refuse to give up their bogeyman.
A closer look into those nations that refuse to sign the NPT reveals different treatment by the US based on corporate investment deals. That difference is reflected in Zero. Though sanctions are applied against North Korea on the grounds it refuses to reach a nuclear accord, the U.S. trades nuclear technology with Israel, India and Pakistan, according to sources enumerated below.
A Look at India
It’s hard to take the nuclear powers seriously about disarmament, writes Russ Wellen in Foreign Policy in Focus. [14] India refused to sign not only the NPT, but also the Proliferation Security Initiative, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Missile Technology Control Regime. India is now gearing up its anti-satellite system for deployment by 2015.
In India’s Quest for Dual-Use Technology, [15] nuclear research scientist Matthew Hoey mentions an India defense paper “that demonstrated a clear interest within the Indian military of deploying not only a space-based [directed-energy] laser but also a hypersonic suborbital delivery system with global-strike capability.”
Yet, somehow, India escapes “rogue state” status, with its attendant economic sanctions. Wellen cites Hoey who reported that the Bush Administration lifted the 1998 sanctions against India for its nuclear tests, “and then progressively loosened export and commerce laws against India.” Going even further:
“[In 2008] the United States approached the Nuclear Suppliers Group … to grant a waiver to India to commence civilian nuclear trade.… The implementation of this waiver makes India the only known country with nuclear weapons which is not a party to the Non Proliferation Treaty … but is still allowed to carry out nuclear commerce with the rest of the world.” (emphasis added)
So why the focus on Iran in this film? Why no concern about India, with its internal “insurgencies” necessitating ‘Operation Green Hunt’ (as the natives call it)? Wellen explains:
“As Andrew Lichterman and M.V. Ramana write in Beyond Arms Control (2010, Critical Will), ‘… the nuclear deal is part of a broader set of [US-Indian] agreements [which] US-based multinationals are … hoping to use … as a wedge to further open India to foreign investment and sales.’ ”
Oh, corporate profits are at stake. Zero’s talking heads don’t condemn India for refusing to sign the NPT, likely because India has opened its tribal areas to multinational mining companies. [16] Once those pesky tribes are removed (via Operation Green Hunt), massive profits can be made in destroying ecosystems for the underlying minerals.
A Look at Pakistan
Nuclear member Pakistan also refused to sign the NPT, but its relationship with the US has been fitful. In 1979, President Carter suspended aid after discovering a nuclear enrichment facility. After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan later that year, aid resumed in 1981 under President Ronald Reagan. In 1990, President Bush suspended all aid after confirming that Pakistan had acquired a nuclear bomb. [17]
In good graces once again, Pakistan just learned it will receive $7.5 billion in aid from the US. [18] Since 2001, Pakistan has received at least $12 billion in aid and “military reimbursements” from the U.S.
While speaking at the Brecht Forum last year, [19] Noam Chomsky (not in the film) accused the US of facilitating both India and Pakistan’s development of nuclear weaponry.
“Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals were developed with Reagan’s crucial aid. And India’s nuclear weapons program got a major shot in the arm with the recent US-India nuclear agreement.”
Former CIA expert on Pakistan’s nuclear secrets, Richard Barlow, may be the source of Chomsky’s accusation. In the 1980s, Barlow blew the whistle “that senior officials in government were … breaking US and international non-proliferation protocols to … sell it banned WMD technology.” [20]
Zero makes no mention of US involvement in Pakistan acquiring nuclear capability. It tells us that China gave Pakistan a blueprint for a nuclear bomb, and that Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, provided the rest. We’re told that A.Q. Khan set up a “full service” nuclear trade “in the early 1980s.” CIA operative Valerie Plame then tells us that the US didn’t begin focusing on Khan “until the late 1990s,” long after Pakistan joined the nuclear club.
This is simply not plausible, even if Richard Barlow was not the expert on Pakistan nuclear secrets in the 1980s as he asserts. Someone in the US was watching Khan in the 1980s or Bush would not have had been inspired to suspend aid to Pakistan in 1990.
Another discrepancy between these two sources: Zero reports that Pakistan joined the nuclear club in 1990, whereas Barlow asserts it was in 1984, two years after Reagan renewed aid to the country. Regardless, US aid was not cut off until after Pakistan acquired the bomb.
A Look at Israel
Zero also does not condemn Israel for its nuclear program, despite its refusal to sign the NPT. The film asserts Israel has 80 nuclear weapons, which contradicts revelations made by nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, in 1986. [21] An independent nuclear physicist examined Vanunu and his documents and reported that, in 1986, Israel had enough material for 150 nuclear bombs. [22]
Of note, Obama expanded nuclear trade with Israel last month. [23]
Another absurdity asserted by Valerie Plame in Zero is that “Hamas is a terrorist organization.” But, since when is defending your homeland from invasion an act of terrorism? Take a look at this map of Palestine lands seized by Israel over the past 60 years:
Plame won global sympathy when the Bush Administration outed her as a CIA spy. [24] Then, it was that Iraq had obtained yellowcake uranium from Nigeria, which her husband, former US Ambassador Joe Wilson, refuted in a New York Times piece in 2003. [25] For this, she was outed as a spy. How ironic that she would now help advance the cause of war today with terrorist fear mongering – the same propaganda that Bush used.
Why even mention Hamas? Gaza’s popularly elected government clearly has no capability of acquiring and deploying WMDs. It’s barely alive under Israel’s military strikes and continual (and deadly [26]) blockade of food, medicine and building materials.
That statement – ‘Hamas is a terrorist organization’ – stands alone in the film, with no further comment. It’s pure psyops. The U.S.’s unending support [27] of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine [28] does more to create instability than it does to secure peace in the region.
A Look at North Korea
Zero mocks nuclear club member North Korea, using old black and white footage of a stern Kim Jong II, yet worries about its potential to trade nuclear secrets regionally. Its fears are realized as North Korea may be assisting Myanmar (Burma) in achieving nuclear capability, according to several sources reported in Bloomberg recently. [29]
Hillary Clinton just increased sanctions against North Korea for its continuing refusal to sign nuclear accords, but the US may have a tougher time in Myanmar, given Chevron’s lucrative arrangement with the military junta. [30] The Carlyle Group, with its many business interests in South Korea, [31] also held (and may still hold) business interests in Myanmar. [32]
Given US handling of India and Israel, and its massive infusion of cash into Pakistan, three states which have not signed the NPT, can we expect a similar pass on a nuclear Myanmar (but not North Korea) given corporate interests in that regime?
A Well-Made Film
Put aside for the moment Islamo-terrorist bashing, elite plans for invading Iran, and the deadly hypocrisy of the US using depleted uranium in Iraq after finding it did not have its own WMDs. Watching war hawks demand complete nuclear disarmament is sobering.
Filmmaker Lucy Walker uses potent imagery, like the tennis ball representing how much highly enriched uranium is needed to destroy an entire city.
She also shows numerous accidents with planes carrying nuclear weapons. Citizens do need to be concerned that nuclear accidents are possible. This is one of the supporting themes of the film. “If the probability isn’t zero, it will happen,” warns nuclear physicist Frank von Hippel.
Mentioned in Zero under “Accidents” is the B-52 flight over the US in 2007, which carried six nuclear warheads. News reports in the film assert, “nobody knew – not the aircraft’s crew, not the commanders on the ground.” Six nuclear warheads could never be loaded onto a plane and flown 1,500 miles across the U.S. without anyone having a clue. This was no accident.
One unintended message may be that rogue forces within the US military are a threat. Indeed, former UN Ambassador Gordon Duff recently speculated about such a frightening scenario. [33] Decommissioning the US arsenal is just as important as all other nuclear arsenals. The US, in fact, is the only nation confirmed to have used all three WMDs: nuclear, biological and chemical. This is a claim that not even the immortal Osama bin Laden can make.
“Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fallujah. And so it turns out that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though not until we arrived and started using them.” Bob Koehler, “The suffering of Fallujah.” [34]
As presented, the history of nuclear proliferation is morbidly fascinating. Rare video footage offers a glimpse into the eyes of Robert Oppenheimer, the man who understood – and yet created – the means to end life on Planet Earth. He admits that the technology will spread; that it cannot be made secure.
Mikhail Gorbachev also appears, calling for complete nuclear disarmament. He put it most succinctly in a 2007 article: “It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing year they make our security more precarious.” [35]
We can all agree on complete nuclear disarmament. We can all take Zero’s suggestion to pressure our public servants into bringing the number of nuclear weapons down to zero, a process begun in 1963.
But, let us also recognize war propaganda when it surfaces. The film’s sincerity in promoting complete nuclear disarmament is undermined by its transparent promotion of war on Iran and by its failure to condemn nuclear energy. By not condemning all nuclear power, Countdown to Zero misses a golden opportunity to unite peace activists with safe-energy ones to rid the world of such a dangerous, destructive technology. Nuclear fallout is deadly – whether from weapons or energy plants.
__________________
Rady Ananda
Homepage:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20484
Press TV
02.09.2010 14:12
Richard
Homepage:
http://brennybaby.blogspot.com
How does poking fun at Iranian culture help America lube the wheels of war?
02.09.2010 14:49
How Stephen Colbert's Poking Fun at Iranian Culture Helps America Lube the Wheels of War
by Ali Gharib, 19 August 2010
In early July, news came that the Islamic Republic of Iran decided to issue fashion guidelines for men. Unveiling a large poster showing headshots of a half dozen men, in frontal and profile views, the Iranian culture ministry announced that certain haircuts were immodest and violated the Islamic Republic’s national and religious sensibilities. The ban covered gelled spikes and mullets, and the poster showed six acceptable styles, all seemingly ripped from the 1950s (the side part, the comb-back, and even a little flop over the ears are acceptable). Recovering from a beer-imbued long weekend, complete with fireworks, Americans returned to work on Tuesday to find a slew of articles and blog posts on the new restrictions. Even Stephen Colbert got in on the action, declaring that Iran had approved his own hairstyle. Everyone had a good chuckle.
The reaction seems innocuous – just poking a little fun at what is, on its face, a ridiculous regulation on a whole nation of people thousands of miles away. But laughing at the expense of Iran is not quite as harmless as it seems – not when the U.S. has occupying armies on two sides of Iran’s borders, and a large chunk of the D.C. strategic establishment speaks belligerently about U.S. or Israeli bombing runs on the country of 65 million. There’s something crass about it, actually. The fact that Americans feel free to laugh about Iran in a climate where a former CIA chief tells CNN he thinks attacking Iran “may not be the worst of all possible outcomes” speaks to the likelihood that Americans administer their empire from their unconscious minds. Humor, of course, is a gentle way to convince people – propaganda for the unwitting part of the brain.
In the modern era, humor has worked again and again to dehumanize target countries as a standard part of war propaganda. In a democracy, where support of the population at large is supposedly a prerequisite for attacking another country, jokes are a common means of dehumanizing, demonizing and generally placing the population of the targets of the attack into the category of Other. Empathy plummets; and civilians in the aggressor state find it increasingly difficult to put themselves in the (Islam-approved) shoes of those on the receiving ends of the bombs.
Most troubling is that liberals and progressives – those you might expect, ostensibly, to oppose a U.S. attack on Iran – are just as likely to laugh the country to war as hawks. Maybe more: Hawks in the media, at neocon rags and mainstream outlets alike, take Iran far more seriously. Those liberals snickering about mullets play into the same sort of joking that occurred in the run-up to the Iraq War – dehumanizing the soon-to-be targets. But instead of the Butcher of Baghdad, today’s monsters are the “mad mullahs” in Tehran.
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Recently retired Prof. Hugh Rank, formerly of Governor’s State University, just south of Chicago, has done some of the best work around on "persuasion analysis," which dovetails nicely with studying war propaganda. What, after all, is war propaganda in a democratic society if not a means of persuading the civilian population to support a war and, if you’re lucky, enlist their sons and daughters in the effort? On his Web site on war propaganda, Rank defines war propaganda as “persuasion targeted at an internal audience,” with the emphasis in the original. (Demoralization of an enemy, to Rank, is “psychological warfare.”)
War propaganda breaks down into four categories (here’s Rank’s chart). You downplay things in the public discourse that make you look bad, and play up the good things you do. With regards to the propaganda’s targets, you ignore the other culture’s strong points, and play up its missteps. Intensifying the “bad” characteristics of others, says Rank, gets accomplished through “verbal aggression, words used to stir emotions” – think name-calling.
While Rank is focused on the more serious examples of intensifying the “bad” in others – “horror stories” and “atrocity pictures” – the prevalent use of humor over the past century fits right into this picture. Rank’s examples are used to “invite people to hate others and seek revenge.” Humor accomplishes the first stage of this simply by forcing a society to look at the potential enemies as “others,” at the very least creating an indifference to their fate.
“We have real social problems with killing in democratic societies,” Dr. Robin Andersen of Fordham University, who also works on persuasion analysis, told me. “In order to justify the killing you've got to take them outside of a human realm.” Andersen noted that part of the propaganda process is to make the internal audience – that which must support a war (or at least be indifferent to it) – lose their “compassion and empathy for the death and suffering” of the others by distancing oneself from the target society. Not every example of humor does this, but Andersen said one that certainly does is mockery.
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During World War I, as casualties mounted (eventually reaching 15 million people), Britain and U.S. needed to find a way to justify continued involvement in the war. “Anytime people noticed the deaths were going up,” said Andersen, “the propaganda went up too. The Germans were demonized.” There were spates of humorous cartoons depicting not just German soldiers, but German citizens, as club-wielding apes.
“To make fun of a country it requires an almost sort of distillation of a country into a form of stereotype and cliché,” said John Feffer, the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Among the examples that yielded the most harmful effects, one need look no further than Nazi Germany before and during World War II. At least three Nazi weekly humor magazines churned out material throughout the war. Sometimes the targets were Brits – Churchill as a gluttonous buffoon – but the most severe mockery (and the most severe consequences) were reserved for Jews. Cartoons continually depicted caricatures of Jews, with big noses and ears, and often with an unnatural and overwhelming desire for money. “Ignorant, lured by gold,” one cartoon from Der Stürmer read. Another called Jews “worms,” because they “creep up on what [they] want.”
Humor as propaganda does not need to focus on society or sectors of society as a whole – often, it can focus squarely on the leadership of a country. Take Kim Jong-il, the enigmatic "supreme leader" of North Korea. No doubt some of the ridicule of Kim comes from his own behavioral quirks. Feffer, an expert on the Korean Peninsula, said Kim’s appearance (short and plump, with poofy hair), his reticence to speak publicly, his film-buff habits (kidnapping actresses and movie directors), and his reported reputation for drinking and good eating make him an easy target. “These habits and predilections contribute to the kind of satirist’s portrait of him,” Feffer told me. “Of course, we have plenty of leaders in the democratic world with similar predilections – Bill Clinton with sex, and Bush with drugs and drink – but they have a team of public relations people who are constantly working to burnish their image.” Kim Jong-il is routinely savaged in political cartoons (see poofy hair) and his name alone – sometimes just a reference to North Korea – has become a punchline on late-night comedy shows.
While the U.S. hasn’t launched an invasion of North Korea yet, other leaders who have drawn the ire of the U.S. – e.g. Panama’s Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein – have not been so lucky, ending up on the wrong end of aggressive U.S. military campaigns to remove them from power.
In Noriega’s case, the propaganda focused on his character. Of course, the issue underlying the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama was not his alleged use of drugs or cross-dressing, but rather what Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s fear that once, according to a treaty, the Panama Canal fell into his hands, the U.S. would be frozen out of this essential waterway. But making Americans see Noriega as a dress-wearing, coke-blowing dictator was low-hanging fruit in the process of making the U.S. public support an invasion. “Many of the most outlandish stories turned out to be fiction,” said Peter Hart, activism director at the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). “You were supposed to be mad enough to want to do something about this guy but still view him as an incompetent boob.” Hart pointed me to an entry from a 1990 issue of Extra!, a magazine published by FAIR:
Unhappiness with the Pentagon did not keep reporters from promoting the U.S. Army-approved image of Noriega as a comic strip arch-villain. The Southern Command told reporters soon after the invasion that 110 pounds of cocaine were found in Noriega's so-called "witch house," and this played big on TV news and the front pages. When, a month later, the "cocaine" turned out to be tamales (Washington Post, 1/23/90, page A22), the government's deception was a footnote at best. The initial headlines of Noriega as drug-crazed lunatic had served their purpose: to convince the American people that he represented a threat to the Canal.
In another report from the same issue of Extra! picking through a book on Noriega for falsehoods, FAIR pointed to a description of the Panamanian military dictator as diminutive and having a “damp, limp handshake.” A sidebar from the book ran in Newsweek describing Noriega as bisexual, alleging that he would “perfume himself heavily on off hours and wear yellow jump suits with yellow shoes, travel the world with a male pal with whom he was widely rumored to be having a torrid affair, and surround himself with openly gay ambassadors and advisers.”
The Noriega example also illustrates the perils of dissenting from the pervasive mockery of someone the U.S. government has deemed an enemy. Sarah York who, as a 10-year-old in the late-'80s, struck up a letter exchange with Noriega, eventually going for a week to visit Panama as a guest of the general. The story is retold by the principles in an episode of the radio show "This American Life." York was herself labeled a propaganda tool of the Panamanian government – a 10-year-old called names by newspapers and radio hosts. One such host, she says, brought her to tears live on air by asking if she knew that “Noriega rapes girls her age.” These allegations were unfounded, as were other charges against Noriega, including the extent of his involvement in drug trafficking (a principle justification for the U.S. invasion). York, now grown, married and with children, shrugs at the suggestion that this childhood episode pressed her into her current life off the grid in the northern Wisconsin woods. But the reporter notes that there is no ambiguity in her new life, “no room for misinterpretation” – no accusations, no mockery.
The most recent U.S. propaganda success came with Iraq. But the joke campaign started way before George W. Bush and his neocon Middle East advisers even got into office. One joke from the 1990s set up Hussein as a misogynist, and while acknowledging Bill Clinton’s own sexual appetites, painted them as obviously lesser than Hussein’s. The same Web site goes after Iraqi civilians, depicting them as a society used to war with a set of jokes labeled: “SIGNS IRAQ IS GETTING USED TO THE BOMBINGS.” One such sign reads: “Students anxiously listen to the radio each morning to listen for school closings.” Never mind that school in the early days of Shock and Awe was strictly out of the question: What’s wrong with alluding to the fact that hundreds of Iraqi children are eagerly awaiting bombings to get out of classes? Who cares that their schools, their country, and their lives, are being shattered?
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Iran, on the other hand, is a propaganda success in waiting. President Barack Obama still seems hesitant to attack Iran, despite his capitulation to escalating measures like sanctions which are unlikely to stop Iran’s nuclear advance (correctly) and, therefore, represent only a checklist item on the neocon roadmap to war. Likely due to both his character (Obama the thoughtful, sober president) and his reluctance to start another Mid-East war, the administration is less engaged in demonization and mockery of Iran than the Bush cohort was in their rhetorical strikes against Iraq.
Nonetheless, a widespread network of hawks in the D.C. establishment – from think-tanks to press commentators – continue to use mockery and especially dehumanizing language in Iran. Just one recurring theme – Iran’s “mad mullahs” – yields nearly 40,000 hits on Google. Many of them come from right-wing sites, but the language sometimes filters into mainstream publications or television. Neither conservative nor mainstream outlets acknowledge that the slur "mad mullahs" casts a wide net over those "mullahs" who might be disengaged from politics (as many Shi’a clerics are for academic theological reasons) or those involved in reform politics. Mad mullahs encompasses even those religious leaders intimately involved in the opposition Green Movement, a cause célèbre among anti-regime types stateside.
During the 2008 campaign, it was John McCain who let the war jokes fly. One would think that if any Republican hawk would understand the gravity of going to war on the whimsy of a few belligerent ideologues, it would be McCain, who spent five and half years in a Vietnamese prison camp. That experience informed the isolationism in McCain’s early political career. But after his failed presidential run in 2000, McCain drifted even further into the orbit of neoconservatives – the prime movers and shakers behind the Iraq war, and today, those who press most ardently for military strikes on Iran. It was toward the latter end that McCain, asked about Iran on the stump, let loose a laugh line, parodying the Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann": “You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran? [Sings:] Bomb bomb bomb….”
Even the liberal and progressive press and blogosphere is not immune from demonizing the religious culture of Iran. Take the October 8, 2007, cover of the New Yorker, where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was shown on the toilet with a neighbor tapping his foot – a signal for gay cruising à la the Larry Craig scandal. The cover cartoon was riffing on an assertion Ahmadinejad made at an appearance at Columbia University that there are no gay people in Iran. Only, Ahmadinejad never made that assertion. Despite this ABC News headline that blares, “No Gays, No Oppression of Women in Iran,” if you scroll down to the actual piece, Ahmadinejad is actually quoted as saying: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like you have in your country.” (I speak Farsi, and that’s accurate.) The difference is subtle, and no sane person defends Iranian treatment of gays, but the statement remains true, that in Iran, there are not gay people in the same way that there are here in the U.S. – it is, after all, a conservative Muslim culture. Nonetheless, what better way to poke fun at a homophobe than to declare: "That guy is sooooo gay!"
The latest knee-slapper – regulated hairdos -- is just another rather meaningless cultural quirk. Strict adherence to Islamic codes of modesty, according to hard-line clerics in Iran, means no long hair. When the story broke in the West, many liberal blogs – rather than chalking the story up to a conservative culture – used it in a condescending tone, making light of the ban on mullets. Gawker called it “a move of government oppression we can sort of get behind.” Iphelgix at FireDogLake expressed the same sentiment, adding:
Now if only they instituted democratic reform, moved towards a non-secular society, protected women’s rights, protected reasonable freedoms for their citizenry and generally stopped being such an oppressive dick toward their own populace I might even consider moving there!
Daily Kos blogger "Bill in Portland Maine" even went so far, in a note that ended with a similar quip about mullets, to make light of the Iranian government’s having recently decided not to stone a woman for adultery: “Always remember: ‘Stoning in June, corn high soon. Stoning any time after, and you're just throwing money down the ol' shafter.’”
"It comes from all sides of the political spectrum,” Feffer of FPIF told me. With North Korea progressives were presented with an opportunity to burnish their “universalist” credentials – essentially saying, “We don't only criticize right-wing dictatorships, but we also criticize left-wing dictatorships and make fun of them as well.”
While not blaming Obama directly for the dehumanization campaign, FAIR's Hart points out that Iran has clearly been declared an enemy of the U.S., and “when the U.S. government declares enemies, it's a little difficult for people to push back against that.”
Hart is not surprised that some liberals and progressives are suckers for poking fun at potential bomb targets: “Politically these things don't always cut cleanly,” he told me. “If you can convince people who are nominally liberal about the need to invade Iraq and write in support of that idea, then why couldn't you get them to write about Iran.”
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It’s not a tiny leap from poking fun at a people to bombing them – but it’s not too far off either. Both are predicated on making a group of foreigners solidly "the other." And what better way to do this than pointing out differences and laughing at them. It’s a form of cultural judgment: "You can’t have long hair, and therefore are not as good as us." The same paradigm applies to burkas and headscarves, or, if you were in Pueblo, Colorado, perhaps, the ban on letting dandelions grow. Yes, that’s right, we have our own silly regulations, but you won’t hear about those. This isn’t about U.S., it’s about THEM. It’s what John Dolan, in a 2006 essay on cultural relativism for this Web site, derided as “the cozy simplicity of cheering for your tribe and sneering at all others”:
That's the reality of those "moral absolutes" right-wingers proclaim as the grounding of decent behavior: the absolute right to hack to death anyone who doesn't share your tribe's religion, table manners or musical taste.
[…W]hile Rush Limbaugh brags about how we're going to bring the culture of Missouri to Baghdad, his opponents in the Ivy Leagues and Berkeley were by no means in a position to say that this was a grotesquely provincial, wrong-headed enterprise.
They simply wanted it done in a kinder, gentler manner.
With even liberals guffawing away, it’s no surprise that humor as war propaganda seems to not ruffle anyone’s feathers. “I think political discourse has shifted rather substantially in the past four decades,” said Feffer. “We live in an irony-soaked environment. This was originally a purely American approach, but has, because of television (and the Internet) become a more general part of politics.”
While, 20 years ago, a satirical news show could only survive as a five-minute weekly segment on a comedy show ("Saturday Night Live"), today there are two stand-alone daily half-hour programs dedicated to skewering the news. Everything these days, says Feffer, is “essentially material for stand-up comedy.”
Ali Gharib
Homepage:
http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/10697
I don't agree with a lot in this article
02.09.2010 20:30
It used to be this way. But since Obama has come in charge, its changed a lot. Now it is a case of Iran saying something to try and fan the flames on the "evil USA". Then the USA ignore it, so Iran trys to say something even more shocking. They are like a little child trying to be a pain in the arse.
For instance, when Iran said it was going to build 2 centrifugal plants", the USA didnt say anything. So the next minute Iran said "OK, we're going to build 10!".
Iran have repeatedly tried to paint the US as an big evil bogeyman so that their goverment can rally their people into somekind of patriotic frenzy of building nuclear technology so that they can adopt a "we can show them" smugness.
voice of the truth
Ahmadinejad: US, Israel plan to attack at least two countries in the Middle East
05.09.2010 19:12
source:"Options in Dealing with Iran’s Nuclear Program", CSIS Report, March 2010
1) President Ahmadinejad: US, Israel plan to attack at least two countries in the Middle East within the next three months (26 July 2010)
2) U.S. House of Representatives bill expresses support for Israel’s right to use military force against Iran (22 July 2010)
from the archives:
3) Obama administration’s “2010 Nuclear Posture Review Report” threatens to use nuclear weapons against Iran (April 2010)
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excerpt from: ‘US psywar plan includes 2 hot wars’
Press TV, 26 July 2010
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the United States and Israel plan to attack two countries in the Middle East as part of a conspiracy to apply pressure on Iran.
“We have precise information that the Americans have devised a plot, according to which they seek to launch a psychological war on Iran,” Ahmadinejad stated in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Monday.
“They plan to attack at least two countries in the region within the next three months,” he added.
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excerpt from: H.RES.1553.IH
US Library of Congress website, 22 July 2010
“ [The U.S. House of Representatives] expresses support for Israel’s right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran, defend Israeli sovereignty, and protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within a reasonable time.”
[U.S. House of Representatives bill 1553 titled “Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.” The bill was referred to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs on 22 July 2010]
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from the archives:
excerpts from: 2010 Nuclear Posture Review Report
U.S. Department of Defense, April 2010
[emphasis added]
“ [T]he United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations. […]
In the case of countries not covered by this assurance – states that possess nuclear weapons and states not in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations (*) – there remains a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW [chemical and biological weapons] attack against the United States or its allies and partners.”
[2010 Nuclear Posture Review Report, U.S. Department of Defense, April 2010]
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(*) The US officially considers Iran as not in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), although Iran has not been so designated by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which enforces the treaty.
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related links:
US to Lebanon: Israel can completely destroy Lebanese Army within four hours
Dandelion Salad, 27 August 2010
UN “green light” for a pre-emptive US-Israel attack on Iran?
Security Council resolution transforms Iran into a “sitting duck”
by Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 11 June 2010
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dandelion salad
Homepage:
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/ahmadinejad-us-israel-plan-to-attack-at-least-two-countries-in-the-middle-east-within-the-next-three-months/