The Benghazi Circus: Is There Anything There?

Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi! (to the tune of "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia"). Meme floating around Facebook.

Question: Why has there never been a coup d'etat in Washington, D.C.?
Answer: Because there is no U.S. embassy there.

Not a new joke, but appropriate in the light of this week's congressional hearings into the "terrorist" attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last September 11. Republicans are up in arms, trying to implicate President Obama and now former Secretary of State and presumed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in something resembling a scandal. Increasingly shrill, Republican politicians and conservative pundits are claiming that there's something here worse than Watergate, the actual scandal back in the early 1970s that revealed illegal activities in President Nixon's reelection campaign.

It's obvious the primary Republican motivation is "gotcha," a continuation of their base, and often deeply racist, campaign against the country's first black president. We're all used to seeing how when Obama says "yea," they say "nay." It's a tiresome spectacle, especially because Obama's underlying positions are often much closer to those of the Republicans than anyone cares to acknowledge. But it seems to me clear that the Obama administration is indeed engaged in a fairly clumsy attempt to muddy the waters over the Benghazi incident. There's some leaked e-mails showing an attempt to get the administration talking points just so, and an effort to explain the odd spectacle of Obama's sleazy U.N. diplomat Susan Rice being shuttled around the talk show circuit to soft-peddle what was, from their perspective, a minor diplomatic disaster.

Of course there's the standard Republican hypocrisy. One need only recall the unheeded message "Osama Bin Laden determined to strike inside the U.S." from a presidential briefing in August 2001, that George W. Bush was never seriously held responsible for; or the hundreds of large and small attacks on American diplomatic properties that have taken place in the last couple decades. And there's little discussion of Republicans cutting back on the budget for diplomatic protection. So in one sense, scandal, schmandal. This is a routine Washington sideshow. These are all sleazebag politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, looking not for truth but looking to make — or cover up — hay.

But I think it's a fair question to ask why the Obama administration stuck to a trivially unimportant talking point, that the Benghazi consulate was spontaneously attacked during a protest against a crude anti-Islamic American film rather than attacked as part of a planned action by enemies of the United States.

Iranian revolutionaries display captured evidence of CIA spying at the occupied US embassy in Tehran

Question: What do you call the destruction and burning of a U.S. embassy?
Answer: A good start.

I think two things happened in Benghazi that the administration would not care to admit. First, that post-NATO regime change Libya was full of people not so apparently grateful for U.S. intervention; and secondly that the so-called U.S. Benghazi Consulate was something more than just a diplomatic installation. Indeed it seems that one of the objectives of the Benghazi attackers was to liberate prisoners who were being held at the consulate. The question must be asked: Was the Benghazi Consulate actually a CIA black site?

As the exposure of the nest of spies in Tehran back in 1979 by heroic Iranian students revealed, so-called American diplomatic installations are actually and commonly hotbeds of espionage and subversion. For decades and decades all over the world, U.S. embassies were hosts to coup plotters and schemers to manipulate foreign governments to the will and interests of the United States. In the post-911 era of the so-called war on terror, it would surprise noone to learn that the web of CIA black sites — off-the-public-grid facilities where suspected "terrorists" could be held, interrogated, tortured, or worse, often with the assistance of local repressive secret police agencies — would include American facilities in hotspot countries like Libya. There's already a public record of the CIA working with repressive governments, ironically including Libya's Gaddafi who it eventually helped overthrow, and Syria's Assad, to interrogate suspected terrorists. It would seem to me shocking and counter-intuitive to think the Benghazi consulate was NOT such a blood-soaked station of international repression.

The new Libyan government was embarrassed by the attack on Benghazi (the state-department socialists of the North Star blog, big supporters of the NATO intervention, even ran an embarrasing apologia for the attack.) With the establishment of a U.S. drone base in neighboring Niger, one suspects that spying eyes will be quick to foil any future "terrorist" attack against U.S. interests in Libya.

The real lesson of Benghazi is that U.S. imperialism has a proven record of covert and open manipulation of foreign governments. As far as I'm concerned, the destruction of the consulate there was another case of chickens coming home to roost. To me the real outrage is that other U.S. diplomatic facilities elsewhere all over the world are engaged at this very minute in acts of subversion, control and exploitation. That's what imperialism does, and that's not a truth one should expect to come out of the congressional Benghazi circus.

Perhaps there's some perverse pleasure to be taken in watching corrupt, war-mongering politicians in Washington bloody each other: I for one have no interest in choosing between creepy racist Republicans and Hillary Clinton/Susan Rice/Barack Obama. But ultimately scandals like this one are ugly spectacles that demoralize and depoliticize people. One day we'll put all those buildings in Washington, built by forced labor of black slaves, to good use.

The State of Obama

What a difference a year makes, but I just can't join the chorus of finding anything President Obama said last night in his third State of the Union address interesting or acceptable. Why pretend you're happy with crumbs when you can see that there's a whole cake there for the taking?

After listening to Rmoney, Swingrich, the hateful Rick Santorum and the kooky racist Ron Paul for several weeks, of course at first one is struck hearing Obama's intelligent, measured words by a sense of relief. He's trying to connect with people, and mostly in a positive way. The dogwhistle of blaming poor people or black people or immigrants or gays (yes, Rick Santorum, that would be you) for the nation's woes is gone. The intentional lies are notably absent, or at least prettier. He invokes fairness. He brings up eminently reasonable proposals. He doesn't sound like a carnival barker (hi Newt!), and his emotional range usually seems genuine instead of learned in front of a mirror while listening to Ronald Reagan tapes (hi Mittens!).

But we are so numbed by the extreme-right horror show on the Republican side of the aisle that I think it's too easy to be distracted by our wishful thinking into missing what is actually going on.

Last night President Obama beat the same war drums we're used to from Republicans. That line about "all options being on the table" regarding Iran — recently echoed, by the way, by liberal darling Elizabeth Warren — is an actual threat to pre-emptively attack a foreign sovereign state. It's based on stale warmed-over hype recipes from the Bush era about Iraq. And speaking of George W. Bush, even that warmongering mass murderer called for a democratic Palestinian state in his last State of the Union address. Last night Obama mentioned only the American commitment to Israel, the country currently engaged in massive ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in both the Occupied Territories and Israel proper. Obama is actually war mongering. He is actually engaged in covert wars and assassinations. How could it get worse than that?

Obama doesn't brag about the policies of repression and the stifling of dissent that his government is deeply pursuing. But the fact that he didn't mention them in his speech doesn't mean they're not happening. We cannot just look away and pretend that these things could be worse. They're already about as worse as they can be. He signed the NDAA that potentially guts due process. He had a teen-aged American citizen assassinated along with his more notorious American citizen father. His law enforcement agents have waged campaigns of harassment against peace and international solidarity activists. Many believe the fall's national campaign of repression against Occupy encampments was coordinated from the very top halls of so-called law enforcement. When he uses the nebulous term "immigration reform," what he really means is deporting more of our neighbors.

To those of us who wished for real national healthcare in this country, in his speech last night Obama bragged about his health insurance reform being kept in the private profit-making sphere. We can't keep telling ourselves that we had to give up the so-called public option only because of congressional horse-wrangling over votes: the truth is we didn't get it because Obama didn't want it. He's not lying to us: we're lying to ourselves.

In his speech he parroted the same ridiculous small government/tax-cutting rhetorical nonsense the Republicans play. He is absolutely pandering to Republicans. And while it could be argued that mere pandering is harmless, remember how just this last year his administration abandoned environmental protections and advances in contraception. Over and over we tell ourselves that Obama is pandering to the right when it's actually the left that is being pandered and condescended to. And oh yes, that payroll tax holiday he keeps waving about: that is the death of Social Security as we know it. We won't find that out till later, of course.

He can claim that he wants "fairness" but I'm not seeing it. The deck is still stacked in favor of what we euphemistically call "Wall Street." And let's be clear: this is not because Obama is a bad person as the Republicans would have it, but because he is a creature of the 1%. He is acting in his own interests, and in the interests of his friends and colleagues. You and I are not included in that list, no matter how many folksy e-mail appeals to wish Joe, Jill & Michelle a happy birthday that you receive from the Obama reelection campaign. It's really time to stop projecting values on Obama that he just doesn't have.

Almost two weeks ago my local Brooklyn occupy group, Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park, had a wildly successful event for Martin Luther King's birthday (I promise a full report soon). I gave a short presentation toward the end of the program. These are from my notes for my remarks:

"2012 is an election year, and somebody is going to promise you that your life will be better if you vote for them. You're free to vote for whoever you like, but my guess is that you're going to be disappointed. Because democracy, the people exercising the right to live and work together fairly and justly, is not really about elections.
History does not remember Dr. King running for office. History does not record who Dr. King voted for. What History remembers is Dr. King leading the people to go out in the street to take what belongs to them. Dr. King showed us the links between big issues like racism and injustice, enforced poverty and the outrages of war. But he also showed us the importance of coming together right here in our own communities to fight for what is right. If you're waiting for a politician to save you you're going to be waiting a very long time. This is up to us."

Again and again we are disappointed in who we vote for. Hell, I argued for supporting Obama last time around even as I suspected this disappointment would return. For three years now I've also watched self-identified progressives struggle with Obama. Over many issues in the last three years anger welled up against him from the left. I am embarrassed that at times I argued against that anger. And yet now as the likes of Rmoney and Swingrich gather like bathroom mildew, these progressives return to the circle of wagons around Obama.

We think it will be worse under the Republicans than under Obama. But is that really true? What if the worse is already true. When Obama is looking to compare himself to... Teddy Roosevelt, this is a sign that we should heed. For people who think of themselves as 21st-century progressives that is called aiming very very low. I read a bitter comment on a blog today: Obama supporters "would defend Hitler, if he had only been a Democrat: 'He only killed 6 million Jews... hell look how many he left alive!'" A little harsh perhaps, but it makes a certain point. Where does the constant need to apologetically find Obama's silver lining come from? Weakness, I think.

I'm actually not at the point of telling anyone not to vote. I guess in some ways I still hold the position that since elections will have one of two winners, it's not more harmful voting for a lesser evil than wasting a dollar on a lottery ticket, in the off chance it winds up making a slight difference. But I am more and more convinced that as long as we devote our energy to a game that is designed to disappoint us, we will get only what we're asking for. Asking for a lesser evil is still asking for evil. Why not ask for something one actually wants? Excuse me, why not take what one is actually entitled to! In 2008 this seemed like an abstraction. In 2012, with the sea change in consciousness called Occupy Wall Street, it doesn't seem like an unimaginable goal to make the elections irrelevant. Maybe, just maybe, we're no longer weak.

I'm not going to spend the months between now and November fretting about the election. I'm going to spend it trying to organize my community, trying to spread the possibilities of the Occupy movement. Obama's not going to save us. We're going to save ourselves.

Sabre-rattling on Iran Starting Up Again

The details are as sordid and questionable as they always are, but once again the news is filled with politicians, media outlets and various government propagandists advocating for an attack on Iran.

It's all very simple: Iran is virtually encircled by the American military. The nuclear arsenals of two nations, both proven aggressors, are pointing straight at Teheran. Israel is trying very hard to dominate a losing conversation about the Middle East. War is a guaranteed distraction, and the sabre-rattling should be recognized for being something quite different than actual concern about weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. and Israel are freaked out because they don't want to lose their bullying leverage over countries with less sophisticated arsenals than they have.

It doesn't matter how repressive or allegedly undemocratic the Iranian government is, it has the right to defend its country against attack.

If there is a nuclear proliferation problem in the Middle East, the problem starts in Israel and ends in the U.S.A.

NO ATTACK ON IRAN!

Did You Hear the One About the Iranian Used Car Dealer?

An Iranian used-car dealer in Texas has a relative in the Iranian military and they're actually super spies who tried to hire the Mexican mafia to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. because, well, just because. I mean, everybody knows ALL IRANIANS ARE TERRORISTS!!!11!. And the news just happened to break the same day President Obama's jobs bill was defeated in its first test vote in Congress strangely pushing that event off the headlines. And strangely Secretary Hillary Clinton and various members of Congress are now rattling sabers against Iran again instead of commenting on the U.S.-supported Yemeni dictatorship gunning people down in the streets. And just a couple weeks ago it turned out the U.S. sold bombs to Israel that would be perfect to destroy, say, an underground nuclear facility in Iran.

Suuurrrre. I believe it's all happening just like the government says it is. Don't you?

Budget Cuts Force Obama Administration to Recycle Tired Old Li(n)es

A few years ago the headline "Rumsfield Hypes Al Qaeda to Ward Off More Defense Cuts" would have surprised no one. And yet there it is today: "Leon Panetta Hypes Al Qaeda to Ward Off More Defense Cuts." Note the difference: Leon Panetta, Obama's new Democratic Secretary of Defense. Yes, Panetta is complaining that the debt ceiling deal threatens the military budget, according to the Times: "Mr. Panetta warned that if a Congressional panel could not reach agreement on cuts to the nation’s deficit, “it could trigger a round of dangerous across-the-board defense cuts that would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our ability to protect the nation.” At a follow-up news conference, an unnameable Pentagon official said "“I would expect them to focus on entitlements and taxes,” the official said. He added that although “they have the right to focus on whatever they want,” more than $400 billion in budget cuts to the Pentagon would “go from the hard and manageable to the not-so-manageable.” In other words, the Bush, er, OBAMA, administration is arguing that cuts should be made to social programs instead of defense spending.

And yes, this was just days after Panetta was declaring that Al Qaeda was "almost defeated." More news from the Malabar Front, no doubt! Mission accomplished!

Oh yeah and how is that war in Afghanistan going? Have you noticed how whenever anything bad happens there now it's "NATO" this or "NATO" that? The American media is in shameful collaboration with the U.S. government attempting to divert attention from the fact that America owns the war in Afghanistan just as the Soviet Union once did. Here's the good news: It's only civilian deaths! "Although the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan has steadily risen in the past year, with a 15 percent increase in the first half of 2011 over the same period last year, NATO deaths had been declining — decreasing nearly 20 percent in the first six months of 2011 compared with 2010." Well, that was until the Taliban shot down a "NATO" (American) helicopter killing thirty "NATO" (American) soldiers. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end!

When Panetta was confirmed to replace outgoing Secretary (and Bush appointee) Robert Gates, the first thing he did was rush off to Iraq and begin to rattle tired, worn sabres against Iran. He also has begun to twist the arms of the dysfunctional Iraqi government to get them to "request" that American forces stay behind after the scheduled departure to deal with the Iranian "threat." All of a sudden the administration is recycling the years-old Bush trademark claims that Iraqi IEDs originate in Iran and that Iranian leaders are now cooperating with Al Qaeda. It's just so pathetically transparent. Did the disgusting Panetta find a bunch of undated memos in his new desk and just decide they would make him sound like a tough guy?

Then there's this fascinating article in the NY Times today, "Moral Flip-Flop? Defining a War." It's about a top State Department legal adviser going through hoops to suggest the President has the right to do whatever he wants in fighting a war. The subject of the article is one of those Bush lawyers like John Yoo? Not even close: alleged liberal icon Harold Koh, the architect apparently of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's policy of not consulting congress before attacking the sovereign nation of Libya.

So much for the victorious anti-war candidate.

Anti-American Art: Four-Way Fight

Here's a modern mural, in English, from Tehran in the Islamic Republic of Iran. "Down with USA & Israel" and "His excellency the leader: Imam Khomeini's followers are always supporting palestinians and fight their enemies." That's a combination American flag/Star of David on the left. The center depicts the Al Aqsa Mosque and Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem (Al Quds), the Holy Kaaba in Mecca, and I believe another mosque in Iran. The portrait on the bottom is the invalid founder/leader of the Palestinian Hamas organization Sheik Ahmed Yassin assassinated by Israel in 2004. The quadraplegic civilian leader and spiritual figure was attacked by a helicopter gunship and the bodyguards and civilians around him were also killed. And yet somehow it is Hamas and not the Israeli government that is on the list of terrorist organizations. Which is why you see that combo star and stripes up there.

Anyway, neither Hamas' nor Iran's politics are my cup of tea, but the Palestinians are free to choose their own manner of resistance and pick their own friends. I'd rather they chose the path of secularism and socialism, but who am I.

(Photo snagged from the "Murales Politicos" website.)

When you turn on the lights...

...the cockroaches scatter. Congrats to Wikileaks for their bravery in releasing thousands and thousands of secret government espionage cables! It's official: the governments of the world are allied with each other against the people of the world.

Among the revelations: the conservative Arab monarchies all want the U.S. to attack Iran. American diplomats are all spies. The Fatah leadership of the Palestinian Authority and the Egyptian government gave their tacit assent to the genocidal Israeli attack on Gaza two years ago. The government believes its Afghan puppet, Hamid Karzai, is deranged, yet continues to funnel billions of dollars through him. U.S. foreign policy is basically slaved to Israeli policy. Looking good, America!

Anti-American Art: Occidental Geometry

This is from a mural in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I found it on a picasa stream of Iranian murals linked at the fascinating Spanish-language blog "Murales Politicos/Political Murals" which collects photos of political wall art from around the world. Among the murals documented are left-wing, right-wing and nationalist murals from Spain, Latin America, Palestine, and many other places. This one, date unknown but probably more or less current, shows the outline of a pistol filled in with the colors of the American flag against traditional Islamic/Persian geometric forms. It's ludicrous, really, that such fear and fervor has been whipped up in the United States about Iran. Regardless of its often-repressive brand of state power backed by religion, its less than perfect democracy, and its leader prone to making bombastic generalizations, Iran is a small country compared to the United States: a small country with the most powerful military machine in the world kicking around at its gates. Who, exactly, is the bigger threat to peace in the middle east, the U.S. or Iran? The historical record seems pretty clear.

Anti-American Art: UN Dismembership

This stamp was issued by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1983. It shows a sword with the icon of the Islamic Republic dismembering a hand labelled "Veto" emerging from the United Nations building in New York. Each finger of the clawed hand is named with a country on the Security Council: UK, USA, USSR, France and China. Iran was then defending itself against an invasion by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in a conflict that took hundreds of thousands of lives.

I was unable to figure out which security council veto of which UN resolution this stamp is protesting; the UN security council passed several resolutions urging cessation of hostilities. But I did discover that all the security council nations were involved in arming Iraq, including the United States under President Reagan. It might come as a surprise to anyone naive enough to actually believe the U.S. was twenty years later attacking Iraq for suspected WMD, but the U.S. vetoed numerous resolutions attempting to curb development and use of chemical and nuclear weapons. (The US also vetoed a resolution in 1981 that "Affirms the right of every state to choose its economic and social system in accord with the will of its people, without outside interference in whatever form it takes." Ouch!)

Anti-American Art: Jet Shot Down by Terrorists

1988 stamp from the Islamic Republic of Iran marking the "Disastrous U.S. Missile Attack Against Iranian Air Liner." Iran Air Flight 655, a civilian Airbus jet flying from Tehran to Dubai with 290 people aboard was shot down by the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes on July 3 of that year, killing everyone. The Vincennes somehow thought the passenger plane was an attacking Iranian fighter and shot it down. The government of Ronald Reagan paid compensation to the families of the victims but maintained that the Vincennes was acting properly in defending itself from attack. The lives of 66 children were among those cut short.

The stamp shows a stylized American gunboat decked out in the US flag launching a SAM against the Iranian jet, and the Persian Gulf going up in flames.

Is it any wonder with the world's most lethal superpower prowling its waters armed to the teeth with a proven trackrecord of attacking innocent civilians why Iran would want the latest weapons to defend itself?

June 29 Is Fedaii Memorial Day

This poster of Fedaii Memorial Day was published in a magazine supportive of the Organization of Iranian People's Fedayee Guerrillas (OIPFG) back in the 1980s or early 1990s. It honors three martyrs of the struggle against the US-supported Iranian kingdom active in the 1960s and 1970s: Hamid Ashraf, Shirin Fazilatkalam, and Bizhan Jazani. I post it here not to endorse the specific politics or role of the OIPFG, but as a reminder that the struggle for social justice in Iran has deep roots; that generations of heroes have sacrificed themselves without surrendering to either religious fundamentalism or the false choices presented by predatory America.

The OIPFG was one of the major Marxist groups fighting against the Shah; when I was a college student right before the successful Islamic Revolution, exiled Iranian students held regular and powerful demonstrations at American universities in support of the ongoing struggle in Iran. I remember at first seeing almost entirely supporters of the OIPFG and OMPI (Organization of the Mojahedin of the People of Iran, a group that attempted to combine socialist and Islamic tendencies that today is more widely known as the MEK, or Mojahedeen-e-Khalq). At some point the supporters of these two organizations started to be dwarfed by supporters of the Iranian Muslim Students Association, and it was clear the nature of the struggle in Iran had undergone a significant change. (If you're a careful watcher of the movie "Cabaret," set in a Nazifying Germany in the 1930s, you'll notice the brilliant art direction has the background graffiti starting out all communisty, and by the end of the movie it ends up being all nazi. Watching this happen to the Iranian student milieu was kind of like that; I'm not actually trying to make the parallel between Nazi and Muslim just to say that the social ferment of Germany went from radical left to radical right as it seemed to have done in Iran).

The OIPFG was among the many many Iranian Marxist and Socialist organizations that were violently repressed by the new Islamic Republic. As the unforgettable 1979 Women's day chant went, "In the Dawn of Freedom There Is No Freedom." Having endured assassination of comrades, imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Shah's SAVAK secret police, many secular Iranian revolutionaries soon fell at the hands of the Islamic Republic's forces of repression.

Anyway, Hamid Ashraf was an OIPFG leader killed by government agents after they broke up clandestine meeting in 1976. Shirin (Mo'Azed) Fazilatkalam was a woman revolutionary tortured to death by SAVAK in 1975. Bizhan Jazani was a theoretician of the revolutionary student and guerrilla movement in Iran; he was executed outside Evin prison in 1975.

May the future hold fewer martyrs.

Anti-American Art: Jimmy Carter's Oasis of Doom

Iran issued this stamp and special envelope in 1986 to mark the sixth anniversary of the "Defeat of the Direct American Military Attack on Iran" at Tabas in 1980. The grim stamp shows a downed helicopter and an American corpse; the envelope's decorative cachet shows a burning American flag. This year marked the thirtieth anniversary of the doomed Tabas raid.

Ordered by then President Carter, the so-called Operation Eagle Claw was an attempt to rescue the American hostages captured in the occupation of the Embassy in Tehran. An American taskforce tried to establish a secret base in the desert near Tabas: A helicopter collided with a C-130 troop transport and eight soldiers were killed; the mission was aborted. The Islamic Republic bragged that even God was on their side, He having sent a sandstorm out of nowhere to repulse the small American invasion.

Anti-American Art: Paper Trail

This 1985 stamp from the Islamic Republic of Iran marks the anniversary of the "Takeover of U.S. Den of Espionage," the occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran shortly after the victory of the Islamic Revolution. It shows the US embassy crest shattered to reveal the mark of the CIA; the background filled with facsimiles of intelligence documents stamped "TOP SECRET." The captured documents turned out to be a treasure trove of classified information, revealing among other things a detailed report on US espionage inside Israel and a report of the deposed Shah's contacts with Israel about acquiring nuclear weapons. An earlier stamp with a similar theme was featured on The Cahokian back in April.

Anti-American Art: Den of Spies

You may recall it as the Iran Hostage Crisis. In Iran they remember it, probably more accurately, as the "Takeover of the U.S. Spy Den." This was the first of many stamps issued later on various anniversaries to mark the occasion of the seizure of the US embassy in Teheran by militants shortly after the victory of the 1979 Islamic revolution. Here, an illustrated version of a photo montage: the crowd crashes the gates, a US flag burns, and one of the embassy staff is blindfolded. From the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1982.

Stop U.S. Threats Against Iran, redux

I've said this before, and I am saddened to have to say it again: Nuclear weapons are evil. So are warplanes, machine guns, artillery, missiles, grenade launchers, mines. But as long as Israel and the United States have nuclear weapons pointed against Iran, as long as American naval and air forces encircle that country, as long as American politicians (yesterday it was Bush and Condi Rice, today it is Obama and Hillary Clinton) threaten Iran, Iran has as much a right to these machines of war as the U.S. does.

I don't like the Iranian government; the Islamic Revolution hijacked and derailed the real revolution against the Shah back in 1979. But dealing with the Iranian government is the work of the Iranian people. I don't like nuclear power, either; but until irrational capitalism with its profit motive gives way to more rational systems that can explore safer technologies like solar power, Iran has as much right to nuclear power as anyone else.

The saber ratting against Iran needs to stop. And the media need to be reminded that it's not Iran starting a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, it's Iran responding defensively to the one that the Israelis have long already begun.

"we will obliterate them"

Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Nice way to go after Jewish votes? To prove you're tough? How about answering with truth like, "Iran doesn't actually have nuclear weapons." Or saying, "The middle-east should be nuclear-free."

It's tragic, really, how beholden to Israel politicians are. Even Barack Obama has taken some really disgusting positions on the subject. When former President Carter recently visited with Hamas leaders in exile in Syria, even Obama condemned him for meeting with "terrorists."

Will Israel be the destruction of any progressive movement in the US?

True Colors

So Hillary Clinton showed her true colors and voted for a resolution sponsored by ultra zionist senator/pig Joe Lieberman calling Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. The resolution was a thinly veiled carte blanche to the Bush Administration to support his drive to provoke war with Iran.

Once again, as she proved by authorizing Bush's attack against Iraq, Hillary shows herself to be no friend of the anti-war movement. She is a right-wing hawk with a thin veneer of progressivism. Vote for her if you want 4 more years of worsening war. This vote was not about bipartisan cooperation, it was an outrage, a vile spineless caving to Bush's latest military adventure. Any Senator who voted for it should be voted out at the next opportunity.

Gays in Iran

Some of the gay blogs I read are hot with discussion of Iran after Ahmedinejad's visit to NYC. I've been mostly pretty disappointed in the quality of the discourse. So many people are sucked in to the lies and distortions of the Israel lobby and US propaganda.

Anyway, here's a link to an excellent article going a little deeper into the question of gays in Iran that suggests it's not all black and white.

Let Ahmedinejad Visit Ground Zero!

Iranian President Ahmedinejad is coming to New York City next week to speak at the UN. He requested permission to make a formal visit to the World Trade Center site to pay his respects. Not only has the city denied his request, but the Bush administration and a host of politicians have rushed to condemn Ahmedinejad, casting aspersions against Iran as though it was somehow involved in the Al-Qaeda attack.

Among the politicians taking this disgusting war-mongering distortion was none other than Hillary Clinton. She's quoted as saying "It is unacceptable for Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who refuses to renounce and end his own country's support of terrorism, to visit the site of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in our nation's history."

Wait a minute! Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact it quickly offered its condolences to the US, and in fact collaborated with the US in hunting down several so-called Al Qaeda terrorists. Iran has long been an enemy of Al Qaeda. The right-wingers (and I include Hillary Clinton on this list) are desperately trying to tar Iran with some brush that would cover their plans to widen the war in Iraq. In the war-mongerers' sick book of racist duplicity they're hoping to demonize Iran so that when U.S. missiles fly against yet another innocent population, Americans will close their eyes to the bloodshed and lend their complicity to another war of aggression.

The accusations of Iranian terrorism are a complicated smokescreen involving Israel. Just let it be said that the Israelis and Americans have killed a lot more innocent civilians than so-called Iranian-backed terrorists.

Ahmedinejad's desire to pay his respects to the fallen of 9/11 should be seen as an olive branch. I for one, as a citizen of New York City, extend my own hand to accept it.

disgusting racist americans deserve what they ask for

From a cartoon in the Columbus Dispatch. Picked it up from Lenin's Tomb. (thanks)

More proof that the disgusting americans who voted George Bush into office twice deserve to be the victims of the hornet's nest they stir up.

Sometimes I hate this country.