donderdag 19 augustus 2010

De dreiging van Iran en het expansionisme van de échte As van het Kwaad

   

Monthly Review is een magazine dat mei 1949 in New York het levenslicht zag, in de volle Koude Oorlog hysterie. Het eerste nummer bracht het hoofdartikel “Why Socialism” van Albert Einstein. Het blad, dat zich onafhankelijk van elke politieke partij opstelt, sprak zich vanaf het begin uit voor socialisme en tegen Amerikaans imperialisme. Tijdens de McCarthy kruistocht tegen het communisme werden twee Monthly Review redacteuren zwaar op de korrel genomen, maar deze wisten met succes terug te vechten. Het blad speelde een belangrijke rol in de oppositie tegen het kapitalisme, imperialisme en materialisme van de zestiger jaren. MRZine, de webzine versie, stelt zich tot doel mondiaal een uitwisseling uit te bouwen met activisten en intellectuelen.

Op 16 maart 2010 publiceerde MRZine het artikel “The Iran Threat in the Age of Real-Axis-of-Evil Expansion” van de Amerikanen emeritus professor Edward S. Herman en onafhankelijk journalist David Peterson. Nu dit onderwerp zo nadrukkelijk in de Westerse media aan de orde komt - en dan ook nog eens onvolledig, misleidend en op sommige punten ronduit foutief - volgt hieronder de eerste alinea van dit artikel, alsook het hoofdstuk Concluding Note. De lezer wordt uitdrukkelijk uitgenodigd het rijkelijk van bronnen en voetnoten voorziene volledige artikel te lezen op MRZine.
Eerste alinea

It is intriguing to see how whoever the United States and Israel find interfering with their imperial or dispossession plans is quickly demonized and becomes a threat and target for that Real-Axis-of-Evil (RAE), and hence their NATO allies and, with less intensity, much of the rest of the "international community" (IC, meaning ruling elites, not ordinary citizens). If and when the need arises, any bit of news that is damaging to the targeted state will be fed into the demonization process -- and in the marvelous propaganda system of the West, the grossest distortions will be swallowed and regurgitated without much guilt or apology, even upon the exposure of exceptional gullibility and dishonesty. The dishonesty, gullibility, double standard, and hypocrisy are handled with an aplomb that Pravda and Izvestia could never muster in the Soviet era.

Concluding Note

The real threat that Iran poses to the United States and Israel is that of a local rival to Israel which might hamper Israel's dispossession and expansion program in the Palestinian Territories, as well as U.S. domination of this region of the world. From a global viewpoint, the real threat is that Iran's independence and refusal to grovel might lead to a war of aggression against it by Israel and/or the United States, and such a war could in turn spark an even larger conflagration. However, the nature of this latter threat is such that it can not be addressed by the "international community," which consistently defers to the power and demands of the Real Axis-of-Evil, as do the United Nations, the Security Council, and the IAEA.

That Iran poses an offensive threat to Israel or the United States is obviously a sick joke. Both Israel and the United States possess operational nuclear weapons and superior conventional forces -- and while they can attack Iran without facing unbearable retaliation, Iran cannot do the same and couldn't even do so if it developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons.

But if Iran did posses a small nuclear arsenal, it would be better able to defend itself, and Israel and the United States would have to act more cautiously -- their own regular cross-border attacks would have to be considered more carefully, and might be effectively deterred. Their longstanding domination of the Middle East, with its "stupendous source of strategic power, one of the greatest material prizes in world history," would be threatened. Thus Iran has no right of self-defense, let alone deterrence.

In short, while nuclear-armed Israel and its patron commit aggression, dispossess, and threaten more of the same, they have managed to transform nuclear-weapons-free Iran into the "threat" that the UN and IC worry about. The IAEA has never established that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continues to reject the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons as contrary to the religious beliefs of the Islamic Republic. Yet the mere possibility that Iran might switch its nuclear program to a military dimension, along with a lot of rhetorical heat from the West, have provided the basis for organizing a sanctions regime and potential U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. It has even provided a rationale for the installation of missile and anti-missile systems on the periphery of Russia and China, allegedly to counter the Iran menace! This is the triumph of chutzpah once again, as the Real Axis-of-Evil clears the ground for its ongoing programs of local dispossession and global expansion.
Het artikel van Herman en Peterson sluit goed aan bij de hier eerder gepubliceerde artikelen over dit onderwerp:
Noten
Wikipedia: “Socialisme” (met informatie over socialisme in de VS)
Professor en VS-kenner Bart Kerremans in De Morgen: “Hopen dat de stoel alsnog omvalt” (over Amerikaans socialisme)
Stephen Eric Bronner: "Socialism in America"
    

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