It's an (English) dog's life
by William Bowles l williambowles.info
If I remember correctly, my mother told me that it was the outbreak
of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 that prompted her to join the British
Communist Party. The parallels with Libya today are not lost on me.
Spain was the place that Hitler used to perfect aerial bombardment with
Guernica as our testament to that particular piece of barbarity, just as
today the Empire uses entire countries as target practice and to try
out new weapons systems on 'them'.
The parallels with the destruction of Libya don't end there. Franco's
insurrection could never have succeeded without the military support of
Hitler's Germany and the alleged 'neutrality' of the Western powers
that effectively isolated the Republican government. Even the Soviet
Union's role, ostensibly supporting the Republican government, was
motivated by a similar nationalist thinking to its vacillation over
Libya and with the same, predictable and lamentable results.
"I had to leave my dog in Iran"
- UK ambassador, BBC News, 2 December 2011
People were so incensed by Franco's attack on the democratically
elected (and avowedly socialist) Republican government that from around
the world people joined the International Brigade to fight Fascism.
Frankly, I'm still trying to get my head around how our populations
can stand by and watch the world go to hell and not lift a finger to
stop our barbarian leaders start WWIII.
The parallels with 1936 obviously end here.
Yet in many other respects the Western imperialists are going down
precisely the same road as they did in the 1930s and essentially for the
same reasons: intra-capitalist rivalries being one of the main factors
and not coincidentally it's still their former socialist rivals, Russia
and China that are once more the 'enemy', even if it's presented to us
in the West as Iran or Libya.
Countries that are mere stepping stones to
world conquest as far as the Empire is concerned. The maps tell it all,
with both Russia and China once more
encircled by the Empire.
To stop Iran, lean on China - TODAYonline
So it seems that even if you embrace market capitalism, it doesn't
protect you from the wrath of the Empire, something Russia at last seems
to have grasped (relearned?) this particular fundamental of
Imperialism. Is it too little, too late?
I'm torn over how to respond to the latest rumours that the Empire is
about to bomb/invade Iran, after all we have witnessed the dogs of war
howling pretty much every year for the past six years and each time I
never believed (correctly) that attack was imminent and wrote as such.
Iran Continuing on Nuclear Path - Fox News
Yet these 'rumours of war' are crucial components in the softening up
process, softening up our domestic populations that is, even if it
takes years to carry out. Preparing us for yet another 'humanitarian'
war. Do I believe the Empire will actually lose the will to live and
bomb Iran and kick off WWIII as some pundits
are averring? If history is to be the judge then yes, imperial hubris
being what it is. We have to remember that the West is not dealing with real
people, centuries of racist ideology have made sure of that. One might
even argue that the 'us' and 'them' view of the world is so deeply
embedded in our culture that it's impossible to view the world in any
other way.
The point about these ever-so predictable howls about 'the other' is
that they are classic Goebellian diversionary propaganda pieces (the
model being the Reichstag Fire), always
occurring at 'convenient' times eg, economic meltdown, domestic
embarrassments or whatever event is currently exposing the political
elites and threatening to reveal the underlying relationship between
crisis and capitalism. As regular as clockwork, whether it be terrorist
bomb plots, or a flu virus, they serve to divert attention away from
more pressing events.
Israel to attack Iran by Christmas – report — RT
The British media say Israel may launch an aerial strike on Iranian
nuclear facilities in a matter of months. The offensive will receive
support from the US, the speculation goes.
Of course as usual, the source of these rumours of impending war are unnamed:
The Daily Mail cites British government sources as saying that the cabinet expects Israel to attack Iran “sooner rather than later.”
/../
“We’re expecting something as early as Christmas, or very early in the New Year,” a Foreign Office source is cited as saying.(ibid)
Is this for real? If it were so, do you really expect me to believe
that they would announce it to the world? This is clearly also for
Iranian consumption, all part of the psyops war being waged by the
Empire.
This is why those of us who live in the so-called developed
countries experience an almost complete disconnect from the vast
majority of the planet's peoples. Living within the Empire's (no longer
so seductive embrace), our view of the world is transformed into that of
the oppressor's. Morality, ethics, law, right, wrong, justice, you name
it, are no more than words to be manipulated by a complicit media in
the service of Empire. In our world they all mean one thing: they
justify our centuries-long exploitation of the planet and its peoples.
How to overthrow Iran's regime without war or sanctions - Christian Science Monitor
Two sets of 'rules', one for 'them' and one for us. Is it any wonder
therefore that we stand idly by while the Empire trashes the planet,
over and over again?
More to the point; as a writer and concerned citizen of the planet
also living within this mirage, how to break through and communicate the
sheer horror of what we, citizens of Empire are complicit in?
The Debate Over A Nuclear Iran - By Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation
It's one thing to unpack the media's role in the entire sordid affair
or to analyse the political economy of capitalism: what's wrong with
it, why capitalism can offer no solution to the economic and
environmental crisis that confronts us.
But as OWS and indeed the entire 'anti-capitalist' movement are
revealing, we offer no concrete alternatives except slogans. It's all
against and nothing for. To be fair, OWS does call for economic justice,
an end to wars and so forth (though this is by no means unique to OWS)
but not how to achieve it.
But I'll go as far as to say that the Occupy Movement and especially its implications
are the number one reason why Iran became a burning issue once again.
As always, timing is crucial. Effectively the Empire is conducting a
propaganda war on several fronts simultaneously. And not just a
propaganda war as the destruction of Libya demonstrates. But the Libya
campaign was preceded by a years-long propaganda war that had
prepared our domestic populations well for the eventuality of the 'evil
dictator's' downfall. And perhaps it was the infamous Lockerbie bombing, which more than any other fabrication that sealed Gaddafi's fate (though at the time, Iran was the preferred culprit, accused by yet another defector.[1])
So too with Iran, even if the casualties seem light:
VIDEO: 'I had to leave my dog in Iran'
Dominick Chilcott, Britain's Ambassador to Iran, has told the BBC that
his dog was left behind when the British embassy in Tehran was attacked.
-- BBC News 2 December 2011
But in another one the BBC's sleight-of-hand titles we read:
Iran attack 'had state support'
Tuesday's attack on Britain's embassy in Tehran had the "acquiescence
and the support of the state", says the UK's former ambassador to Iran.
-- BBC News 2 December 2011
Though the opening para is somewhat more circumspect:
The ruling regime in Iran are likely to have supported an attack on the UK's embassy in Tehran, the British ambassador to the country has said.[my emph. WB] (ibid)
In fact, the BBC News' Website Iran stories (16 in all) since 30
November had, aside from the dog and and two more, two themes: the
trashing of the UK embassy in Tehran and the eviction of the Iranian
embassy in London.[2] No other explanation is offered to the reader,
it's more 'received opinion' presented as fact. The BBC's treatment of
the embassy trashing reeks of the Big Lie; the same headlines repeated
over and over again. History is obliterated in the process. Iran is
reduced to a convenient simplistic cipher. They are longer people and
worse, they hate dogs, or so the BBC's story implies (and you know how the English feel about dogs).
As with Libya's 'humanitarian crisis', it's now an a priori
assumption by the BBC and the rest of the complicit media that Iran has a
bomb or is in the process of making one. The (inconvenient) facts are
dumped as being irrelevant as 'those dog-hating Iranians are not to be
trusted' regardless of the facts.
By further tightening the screws on Iran the occupation of an embassy
(or something similar) was pretty much a foregone conclusion. The
groundwork has been laid for an attack, if not soon then at some time in
the future, triggered perhaps by yet another provocative move by the
Empire, maybe in the Persian Gulf. Job done.
The headlines that I've sprinkled through this text illustrate
precisely what I mean about the filter through which the world is seen.
The Christian Science Monitor for example sees nothing wrong
with it's head: "How to overthrow Iran's regime without war or
sanctions", far from it, it actually thinks it's being 'liberal' and
'even-handed' on the issue! Or the Todayonline's "To stop Iran,
lean on China" head. It's the presumption inherent in all these stories
of our right to judge and to determine the fate of entire nations just
as we have done for the past five centuries.
Notes
1. "A man claiming to be a senior Iranian intelligence service
defector has said that Iran, not Libya, masterminded the Lockerbie
bombing." -- 'Iran blamed for Lockerbie bomb', BBC News, 5 June 2000
2. At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, it strikes me that the timing
of the trashing of the UK embassy in Tehran is just a little bit too
convenient. A provocation? It also came at the same time as a
CIA/Mossad/MI5 spy ring was broken in Iran and Lebanon. Coincidence? And
yet another bombing at an Iranian nuclear? site. Coincidence? All
designed to lead toward creating a pretext for an attack should Iran put
a foot wrong in its response to these provocations. Something the
Iranians are all too familiar with as the overthrow of Prime Minister
Mossadegh in 1953 revealed:
"[In] 1953, the British and American governments initiated a joint
Anglo-American plan for the covert overthrow of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh,
the of Iran. The plan called Operation AJAX with Kermit Roosevelt, the
CIA Mideast Agent in charge (a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a
distant cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt). "So this is how we will
get rid of the madman Mossadeq in Iran" announced John Foster Dulles to a
group of top Washington policy makers in June 1953."
Conspiracy? You bet! Done in secret, hidden from us and the Iranian
people, Operation AJAX is your classic conspiracy, meeting all the legal
requirements that the word represents.
