“Iran is not what you think it is”

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":

 http://www.presstv.ir/program/139524.html

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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.

"Countdown to Zero": Hollywood movie promotes war on Iran

by Rady Ananda, 5 August 2010


Seductive, fascinating and frightening, Countdown to Zero motivates the public to support complete nuclear disarmament and to fear Iran, which is conveniently the next country the US wants to invade. Framed in no-nuke rhetoric, Countdown to Zero is not-so-subtle agitprop. The film relies on conventional geopolitics to whip up conventional audiences into another conventional state of panic. Islamo-terrorists just can’t acquire this technology! This is painfully similar to what we were told prior to the invasion of Iraq.


Director and writer: Lucy Walker
Producer: Lawrence Bender
Magnolia Pictures, Participant Media, The History Channel, World
Security Institute (89 mins.)
Website:  http://www.takepart.com/zero


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.

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Count down to zero is as is all Hollywood Movies--- the last censor to each and every film shown in America is the Pentagon. That is the same method of censorship that Germany had in the thrities and forties of last century. In a true democracy it is not the military that has the final censorship vote, but the collective agree of the peoples.

This obvious hatred that the Pentagon has for Iran is that the Iranian people are for independence and freedom from foreign control of their resources. Just as it hated and demonized Indo-China and secured its own censorship over the media then to prosecute their unjust wars of aggression and illegal violence, so they continue today. Too bad the U.S. population allows such obvious dictatorship over the truth of the worlds matter- in- motion.

Hopefully the U.S. Constitution can be rescued from Pentagon aggression and censorship of 'what the peoples can be allowed to see'. The U.S. Constitution says-- when an elected American Government no longer serves the needs of the American People, the people have the right and duty to reform (impeach) or to abolish it (revolution) and replace it with one that does serve the needs of the American people. Surely unjust aggressive wars for more pollution of coal, gas, oil, and atomic energy which is poisoning the planets livability, cannot be interpreted to be serving the American people.

Further the U.s. Constitution says that international treaties signed on to by the U.S.A. are to be treated as the supreme law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is signed on to the international treaties known as the anti-fascist covenants such as United Nations Charter----which says that the Charter is formed to make aggressive war just a long distant memory for the comming generations. Pentagon obayance is indeed Zero on that point.

Further the U.s. constitution is signed on to the international anti-fascist treaty called the Nuremburg Trials (1945-46) chaired by the U.S. Judge Jackson who wrote into international law that the planning and doing of aggressive war is the supreme international crime on the planet earth, as it actuates all other crimes high, low, big and small, setting in motion a chain reaction of events globally. He further says that it is the supreme international crime whether Germany does it or the U.S.A. does it.

The Geneva Conventions of war (1949) is also signed on to the U.S. Constituion and stipulates three obvious war crimes being committed by the U.S. Led Imperialist Military Coalition throughout the world's Holyland, 1) targeting and killing civialians, 2) torturing and killing prisoners of war, 3) collective punishment such as bombing villages, towns, and cities to rubble in case there is a militant amongst the peoples there. The peoples abiding in the middle east, have according to the Geneva Conventions, the right to resist foreign invasions and occupations, according to the Geneva Conventions of war, with legitilmate armed struggle.
All of these war crimes and illegal violences are not in the interest of the American peoples and must end now, and all troops and military of the U.S. A. must be withdrawn from all the countries they have invaded globally. That is the supreme international law which the U.s. is signed on to through their Constitution and must be implemented as the supreme law of the land.
Stopping the U.S. led aggression against Iran is part and parcel of the need to end the U.s. aggression against all the countries of Asia, and especially the Hoyland, now called the middle east. Might does not make right, Unilateralism does not serve the peoples, and Pre-emptives strikes are war crimes of the worst sort by the Nuremburg Trials. These articles of world law will be upheld completely and in appropriate times, and sooner rather than later, as the pollution caused by their violation is destroying the entire planets livability. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more pollution. Re-tool to the re-newables such as wind, tidal, and solar power!! Workers of the world, unite!!