The Iranian National Assembly Elections, 2012

So ballot boxes in Iran closed today.

There are two major issues here: i) the role of assembly elections in Iran, ii) the boycott of those elections.

In electing the Majles-e-Shura, or parliament, Iranians went to the polls against a background of political upheavel in the world of their neighbouring Arab counterparts. These elections are free and fair insofar as they contain a ballot between mostly conservative factions. So not that "free and fair" by our standards at all.

Quite easily the most followed foreign news service in Iran is the BBC Persian news service, whose news provision has experienced a doubling in views by Iranians in the past year or so.

BBC Persian is an excellent service (if you can read the lingo) but sometimes it reads a little like The Shah's Broadcasting Service, given the apparent loathing of a much younger and obviously pro-western team of journalists towards the brutal regime now in power.

So firstly the reality: These elections will not change a great deal. Western outlets are inclined to say "Iranian elections never do", but the fact is that Iran has a vibrant and often vitriolic political landscape in which few figures beyond the Assembly of Experts (those 86 Islamic scholars who appoint the Supreme Leader) are safe from mudslinging and accusations both in the press and on tv. Contrary to the myth, Iranian national politics is not a world of silence and prison terms. Certainly it's a world of knowing when to not push your luck, but it's not 1950s Stalingrad.

Iran is not a totalitarian state. This often surprises westerners weaned on a diet of Cold War rhetoric; to be sure, you are not free to call for the destruction of the ruling regime, yet there is a certain zone of debate within the society where opposition is both expected and encouraged.

But it's On Their Terms!

Cross the line and, like the main opposition parties, you will find yourself under house arrest or worse. Mass executions of dissidents may be a thing of the past, but harrassment, rigged courts, and eventual imprisonment are not.

So, onto the boycott: under this curious breed of limited freedom, the candidates for election have been vetted already by the regime. There are two angles to this: i) They don't want a repeat of the mass urban rallies for democracy seen in recent years, ii) This election is about the growing troubles between Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad.

In a nutshell, the majority of reformist candidates seeking a western-style democratic nation will not be in these elections; the state has ensured that this is a contest between long-standing conservative enemies, not between newer foes from within the democratic 'Green Movement'. In a sign of the personal nature of the battle between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad, several of the latter's media machines (websites, radio stations, printing houses etc) were this week shut down by the apparatus of the state.

The battle is between Ahmadinejad's class warfare pseudo-socialism (heavily backed by young, religious, poor urban firebrands) and the hardline pseudo-rationalist conservatism of the ruling establishment.

The only hope for real participation by reformers that "western powers" would like to see in office was shattered by the decision by former Majles Speaker Mehdi Karroubi to entirely abstain from the vote in protest.

Karroubi is a remarkable man. Educated at the main seminary in Qom, he cut his political teeth in the nightmare years of the secular destruction of his world by the Pahlavi Shahs, who saw the clerical world of mullahs and Islamic politics as the last threat to their modernising, centralising power base. Almost certainly radicalised by the abortive clamp-downs on religious freedom by the ruling dynasty, Karroubi gained a reputation as a man of humanity in the face of vicious internice fighting which tore Iranian society apart in the Islamic Revolution in 1978/79. He has persistently condemned the ruling council, persistently called for greater freedoms in the press and general society, persistently called for the removal of laws which hold women back, and is now the only major voice of reform left among the ruling Islamic clerical system which contains all final, absolute executive power in the hands of Islamic Jurists - the Velayat-e Faqih political philosophy of Revolutionary Iran under Khomeini.

Karroubi is, therefore, the last remnant of the determined moderates such as Montazeri and Shariatmadari, men as utterly different from the horror of former Ayatollah Khomeini as one could imagine. Karroubi is a reminder to the world that Iran's popular revolution to oust the Shah in the seventies was never supposed to end in Khomeini's absolute reign of terror; it was supposed to remove the Shah and the crooks who ran Iran for 40 years with foreign guns, plundering the nation's treasury and enriching themselves alone. It was supposed to rid Iran of a foreign-backed tyrant, not replace him with a homegrown one.

Hence it's a tremendous pity Karroubi decided to boycott the elections. I don't think it was the right decision and I think an opportunity has been missed.

Yet here's the reality of it all: Karroubi spent years in prison under the Shah's regime, watched dozens and dozens of friends executed by the radical tyranny under Khomeini, has waited thirty years to become the head of the opposition movement, has recently seen his own family attacked and almost killed, and is not about to throw his entire life away on a whim. It's a true shame that the west doesn't balance all this nuclear proliferation crap with some reporting on Karroubi and his followers; they are truly courageous people whom the world should be reading about.

The press in the west is happy to report that Ahmadinejad denies the holocaust occurred, but it is strangely silent on reporting those figures in Iran who have publicly, loudly, and persistently mocked and derided Ahmadinejad on national television and radio in Iran's capital.

The election today is a battle between the pressured, disorganised followers of Ahmadinejad and the ruthless campaigners of the Supreme Leader. It's likely that some clericalist moderates will pick up votes, but on the whole this is an election aimed at silencing a president whom even the Supreme Leader is now clearly coming to see as a national embarrassment.

Don't expect to see champagne and mini-skirts in Tehran just yet, but the outcome of this election does indeed matter. If Ahmadinejad's party suffers badly it could spell the end of a truly bizarre political career that has so far survived a regional political renaissance.

But above all else I'd advise one position: Never assume that an asbolutely "free and fair" election in Iran would end in the absolute rejection of the traditionalist, Islamic, hardline parties of Iranian public life; Iran is not a nation likely to forget the often noble and self-sacrificial role that the clergy played in ridding the country of western colonialism under the Shah.

And whether you like it or not, Iranians will create the nation they want.

Oil price at 43-month high

So crude prices are now at a 43-month high.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17229025

The initial suggestion seems to be a "rumour" that an oil pipe in Saudi exploded. The Sauds deny this with an odd "nothing to see here" vein of non-statement which I find quite suspicious.

You may remember that just a month ago the Saudis, in typically over-the-top House O' Saud fashion, promised to mop up the shortfall in supply that would result if Iran were to cut the Straits of Hormuz. The promise was that Saudi Arabia had enough to turn the Iranian threat into a mere trifle.

Well the markets aren't buying it.

Stephen Chu (US Energy Secretary) refers to "spare capacity" in the oil supply but he is being horrifically disingenous if not downright stupid. Mr Chu knows full well that Iran is one of the top five oil producers and that China has no intention of playing America's games for it. In other words, what might be a squeeze in Iran could prove a collapse for the teetering US economy. 

With yet more evidence of western attempts to silence Iranian protestations over sanctions, it would seem highly likely that a major chink in the armour of Saud's bravura is now appearing.

Just recently, Press TV (Iran's English-speaking mouthpiece) had its license revoked in the UK under the spurious assertion that it did not have UK registration. Hmm...guess who else has no such "registration" in the UK? Try CNN and FOX.

So the upshot of it is this: Iran's brutal regime has already achieved their goal: to put far greater economic pressure on the west than the west can put on Iran.

Short of a no-holds-barred war against Iran (for which there is next to no support in Europe nor America) there is little that can be done beyond the common sense of minding our own business where Iran is concerned.

Martin Luther once wrote that war is only glorious to those who have no experience of it. In a similar vein, sanctions and imposed deprivation are only glorious to those whose own lives would remain untouched by poverty.

Ehud Barak and Israel's war with Iran

Apologies for the recent absence - interviews, presentations, flu etc. Now onto Iran and Israel: 

"If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I'd eventually join one of the terrorist organizations." Ehud Barak 

"[Ehud Barak's] knowledge of war has fed a passion for peace." Bill Clinton 

Ehud Barak is not a monster. During his period in office as Prime Minister of Israel he oversaw some of the most painful transitions in Israeli politics in the past six decades. He enacted certain steps twowards challenging the far-right extremists of Israeli politics and even had the guts to take on the violent extremists among the "settlers" occupying the Palestinian Authority lands; people that very few ordinary Israelis have any sympathy for.

Barak recently entered into a stream of public pronouncements against the Iranian regime which proposed the likelihood of a strike against its nuclear facilities to prohibit Iran from attaining nuclear capability.

As has been made clear by the Iranian military (easily the largest in the entire middle east), such a strike would be met with the most severe response imaginable. Israel has enough nuclear arms to attack every capital in the region yet demands no other nation near it have such capability. It has killed physicists and other scientists in Iran and Syria through illegal assassinations.

The simple military facts are these:  

• Israel cannot win a war against Iran, Syria, and North Korea (which recently threatened to act against Israel if Syria was attacked again - Cf. "Operation Orchard").
• Iran has thousands of missiles capable of hitting Israel, Israel has 42 missiles capable of hitting Iran - missiles Iran is actually armed to knock out before they reach their territory, thanks to Russian anti-missile defence shields.
• Iran has 70 million people and a colossal standing army.
• Israel has 6 million people and barely enough soldiers to man its own borders.

Given that the US military has already warned the US president that a)It cannot stop Iran attaining nuclear arms, and b)A regional war would crash the US economy it would seem that Israel has two options:

1. Ignore the right-wing and unilaterally declare a free Palestine
2. Fight a war of attrition that will temporarily damage Iran but utterly eradicate the Israeli state. 

Barak speaks of few options today because he serves a Netanyahu cabinet composed of some of the most dangerous ideologues to appear in Israeli politics in a generation. Among these is the hideous character of Avigdor Lieberman, the Russian-born Deputy Prime Minister of Israel and Foreign Affairs Minister who told Arab-Israeli members of Parliament:

"World War II ended with the Nuremberg Trials. The heads of the Nazi regime, along with their collaborators, were executed. I hope this will be the fate of the collaborators in [the Knesset]."

These are the people Barak must pander to in order to get anything done in Israel's cabinet of hawks.

Yet let's not completely absolve Ehud Barak of his role in this current debacle with the Iranians. As Minister of Defense he is exposed on a daily basis to operations undertaken by Mossad to deny Iran its sovereign right to pursue nuclear energy and to even pursue nuclear-armed capability; he is in a position to know full well that the Iranian regime is now attaining a greater approval rating among its own beleaguered population thanks to Israel's involvement in attacks inside Iran.

The US military has already spoken on the matter - there will be no ground war in Iran. It knows that any such tampering with the oil supply of China, Russia and India will see at least two of those nations supply the arms and technology Iran needs to respond in like measures.

For the time-being, the operations of the Israelis remain small-scale precision attacks within Iran against heads of arms industry technocrats. If Israel continues such operations then doubtless Iran will ramp up funding of Hezbollah and Hamas and we will see the return of horrific wars such as that in 2007 when Israel murdered over 1,400+ innocent men, women and children in Lebanon in response to less than ten Israeli deaths.

Israel currently preaches the virtue of restraint. If it does not follow its own sermons it will no doubt experience a return to the 1980s, and nobody wants to see that happen.

Senatus Moronus Quae Republicanus...

With a full year still left to laugh at the deplorable state of the American right, I find myself not so much laughing as simply stunned.

The current game among the candidates is, "Yeah, well if I'm elected president I'll not only bomb Iran, but I'll kill several babies with my bare hands!"

One week a GOP candidate says people without medicare should get over it and get a job (literally the exact choice of words made), the next week a GOP candidate is attacking gay people in the military, then another GOP goof is talking about defending the vicious state of Israel "against Iran" as though the business of the State Department is to risk all US troops' lives for this bizarre escapade out in the Negev.

I've been dedicating myself to practicing my speed reading of late and the results have been absolutely astonishing. I mention this because at long last I've managed to get halfway through Abbas Milani's remarkable biography of the Shah of Iran (just buy it), a book which calls to mind a billion questions regarding Mubarak, Al-Assad, Ben-Ali, etc.

The Shah was a truly tragic figure, in the dramatically pure sense of the term; his life promised much but delivered nothing but sorrow for himself and his country. When grilled about his abuse of Iran's secret service (to spy on the entire nation), he once famously retorted that when the people of Iran "start behaving like Swedes, I will behave like the King of Sweden".

The fact is that although there was nothing remotely regal about the Pahlavis (Shah Reza Khan Pahlavi was a soldier, thug, and not much else), Pahlavi-fils was a damned sight more sane than the regime currently winning the diplomatic wars in the middle east.

Yet what is immensely depressing about Khamenei is that although I would prefer to despise him, I can't help but admit that he has already won. Russia has confirmed that there will be "no ground war in Iran"; that if Israel continues to pressure the US to invade the Russians will "take action". Lord knows what they meant by "action", but the Russians are about the last straight-talking nation left on earth. If Russia so wished, she could crucify the Israeli economy within six months and it would barely cost the Russians a thing. It also strikes me, in finishing off Martines' superb biography of Savonarola, that Khamenei has merely succeeded in creating the state that a great many of our oh-so-civilised recent ancestors wanted to create.

For me, the most interesting recent event in the saga of Ahmadi-Nejad (yes, in Persian his name is two names) versus Khamenei was when the former burst out laughing during an interview with CNN when the interviewer suggested a ground war could occur.

Such guffaws of laughter do not for political certainties make, yet with the US financially incapable of launching another economy-busting oil war, Ahmadi-Nejad is possibly entitled to laugh at Israeli threats.

All this meandering brings me back to the Grand Old Party and their tragic parade of pizza moguls, semi-literate accidental senators, and religious fruitloops. There is, simply, a political naivete about the GOP front-runners that smacks decidedly of the most puerile and dangerous recesses of American politics. It is pure Bombs Away McClay stuff; a rattling of sabers in the dark in some desperate attempt to appear ever more "American" (belligerent) than the last guy who spoke.

Sometimes I just wish Rick Perry would get up in one of these debates and say, "Look, the economy is wrecked, US industry is being destroyed by the Chinamen, the British have slipped away from us out of embarrassment, and now the Arabs have told us where to get off. I don't know jack about global politics but I do know that wars are cool! So let's go get massacred in Iran!!"

[Crowd goes wild, Perry elected with 49.2% of popular vote, something said on news about "chits", everyone tunes in to watch the US army get obliterated in the oil fields of northern Iran].

America just looks so weak these days. So helpless and messy.

The US needs to drop Israel in a hurry.

Washington's Warning From Britain's Past.

At university, as a London-Irish boy fresh out of school, I had a lecturer tell me in front of the whole class(after asking where my family was from), that I should go study mining at the other campus because if I did so I'd be able to study the use of explosives: "useful knowledge if you're a Paddy", he added.

This was in the nineteen nineties. Being labeled an Irish terrorist in front of my friends, aged just eighteen. Even today, as I write these words, my heart rate picks up and I remember what went through my head that morning: "Yeah...maybe I should just join the IRA". The hatred I felt for that crass, bigoted old fool stayed with me for years. I don't much like it myself, but that's how you create terrorists out of good, honest kids.

A week later a male student from my halls of residence pinned a note to my door saying "Sign up here to join the IRA". It was the last decade in which it was acceptable in Britain to call Irish people terrorists "for a laugh". Always the excuse of "humour".

The current spate of anti-Muslim rhetoric in US politics is neither a new phenomenon nor is it any surprise.

When the Irish landed in America, cartoons depicting them as apes, monkeys and Jesuit spies out to crush America for Holy Mother Rome were printed in every "respectable" paper in the land. The Know Nothing Party launched a murderous campaign of violence and bloodshed against people they said were "anti-American" and "incapable of civilisation". How the times they aren't a'changing.

Once the Irish took over US urban politics, the army, and the police force (thereby utterly destroying the Know Nothings) the US press had to find a new enemy. It found the Jews, arriving in the 1880s, to be a perfect target. More cartoons, this time the enemy was an occultist, a thief, a perverter of descent Christian youth, and a banker out to take over America. Looking familiar, isn't it.

Then it was the turn of the gays and the actors and the writers, who were clearly all anti-American communists...out to take over America. McCarthy had great fun destroying lives, setting Hollywood against itself, banning books, and locking up innocent people on false charges.

Now America has the Muslims, and clearly these people are all bomb-carrying lunatics who wake up each morning and cry out with their first breath, "Sharia Law for America!!", right?

Wrong.

Most Muslims in the west are as dull, honest, hardworking and mundane as the rest of us. Most of them do a better job of looking after their extended families of parents, grandparents and elderly cousins. Most of them actually do better in school, according to the stats out there.

Yet I sense something positive in the middle of all these reactionary and ideological fires ripping at the heart of Muslim-American relations; I sense an American public now greatly lacking in trust of this phony "war with Islam".

The recent farce in Washington DC where a seemingly jovial and kind-hearted Iranian-American was arrested and accused of a bomb plot to kill the Saudi ambassador has been met by the majority of Americans with outright derision. The power of the internet to inform opinion has been at its zenith in all this, allowing people to connect with news sources which do not sit in the pocket of big business nor in the hands of a corrupted Congress, reliant as it is on lobby groups to get elected.

I'm one of the last members of the global Irish community to remember what it was like to be told I belonged to a bunch of murdering savages. I remember very well seeing racist, anti-Irish scrawls on London walls calling for the Irish to be sent home because we all supported the IRA. I remember people who were locked up for no reason under the much-despised Prevention of Terrorism Act which managed to become a recruiting shop for the IRA after hundreds of young men were arrested, beaten up in cells, then chucked back out onto the street after days of false arrest.

I'll never forget the day that I saw members of the IRA walk into a packed London pub and do the rounds collecting money. I remember it very clearly even though I must have been only 12 or so. You knew what was happening but if you asked about it you got a glance from a parent that could cut you in half. When, some time ago, I saw a similar event occur I was moved by the difference between the two occasions: this time around, the jar stayed empty and the calendars with republican quotes on them found no buyers; the peace process had ended the desire of so many Irish to have anything to do with "the cause".

Yet I remain certain that the current cycle of victimisation of Muslims in American politics will do to America precisely what the Prevention of Terrorism Act did to Britain: it will feed a generation of anger and resentment among younger Muslims which will leave America more at risk than before. I don't state that the FBI and CIA should sit back and do nothing, but the American president and his cabinet needs to be absolutely adamant with regards to any attempts by the idiocy of the Republican party in attempting to make Islam the latest scapegoat in a war promoted for the benefit of the state of Israel.

America has gone from being the hero of 1945 to the pariah of 2011, and with the year rapidly heading for a close, the signs of aggression toward a remarkably restrained regime in Iran are deeply disturbing.

Iran's leaders do not fear a war; they are among the last truly fundamentalist religious dictators on the planet and although among them are truly good men such as Mousavi and Karoubi, the central leadership of the Supreme Council is headed by men who have no fear of death and have shown themselves capable of sustained all-out war, just as they endured in the war with Iraq for eight solid, expensive years.

Whatever one thinks of Iran's desire to possess nuclear capability, one must remember that Netanyahu continues to pressure the US into conflict with Iran and he continues to cleanse East Jerusalem of Arab Muslims who have lived there for centuries before his people arrived. It can be said to be beyond doubt that Netanyahu seeks a continued assault against any nation which seeks justice in Palestine (regardless of its purposes) and in so doing he relies on the US taxpayer to pay for it all, as usual.

With daily talk of Iran now accelerating, this is a time for all of us to stop and ask what is truly going on in this extension of the Great Game. Are we, yet again, to be drawn into a false conflict or are we to make a stand against interference in the Islamic world?

Who really is our "enemy"? I rather fear that we are losing sight of the fact that, as in the past, our truer enemy is the faction which lusts for violence no matter what the cost.

Some Light Relief...

It's all death and disaster in the papers right now so I want you to laugh a little.

The following video is easily the best "bad language course" I've yet come across.

Having conquered the French language (with the help of a year in France working for The Bank), I decided to recently re-learn Persian. It's Indo-European (yes, citizens, Iranians are more closely related to you than they are to Arabs or Jews) so it's moderately straightforward when you get past the Perso-Arabic script (You've no idea how easy I just made that sound - there are over 150 different character combos to learn)

Well I found this random video on YouTube and you MUST watch the intro about "British accents". Once done, go straight to 4:40 and watch the world's most uncomfortable meal. From the look on the face of interlocutor number 2 you'd think "And the pepper?" was akin to "Shall we ask the Last Shah of Iran to come back to power?"

Then, for the greatest comic moment in history go to 5:20 and watch a conversation about "rest rooms" that literally made me spill coffee all over myself. Talk about Freudian disasters!! And trust me, beyond that it just gets funnier and funnier. I'd watch the whole series if I were you.

Enjoy!

Iran Versus Israel...the war that would end an Israeli state.

So in response to the unparalleled amount of truly misguided "Team America" talk being thrown around on the internet by people in the US who still (for some bizarre, messed up reason) think Israel is the US's responsibility, here are some hard facts about a war between Iran and Israel.

This war would cause atrocious loss of life and would stand as another mark of the incomparable stupidity of the human species. It would set the global economy back a generation.

1. Russia's Chief of Staff said in 2010 that any attempts by the US to become involved in a regional conflict involving Iran and Israel "Would be met with the most severe response".

2. Israel has roughly 42 missiles capable of hitting an Iran with a 70 million population

3. Iran has hundreds of mid-range missiles capable of hitting an Israel with a population of 6 million.

4. 42 missiles (even if primed with nuclear warheads) is not enough to destroy the armed forces of Iran nor Iran's war infrastructure. Iran is one of the biggest countries on earth in sheer geographic area and, contrary to general wisdom, nuclear missiles aren't as accurate or reliable as you would expect. As former Iranian defense minister, Ali Shamkhani, stated "The fact that Israel is threatening this war is the best indication of their lack of clear military strategy towards Iran".

5. Iran could sustain 70-80% damage to its defense infrastructure whilst still firing enough missiles to strike Tel Aviv. It would more than likely fire off a few dozen into neighbouring Saudi Arabia's oilfields, causing a meltdown in the oil markets and a US Dollar spinning out of control.

6. If Tel Aviv were struck it would be, in the words of US General David Hutchens, "all over".

7. Iran owns an upgraded S-200 Russian-built missile defense shield which would very easily prevent Israeli missiles from hitting their target. That would mean potential nuclear radiation raining down on Russia.

8. Iran is rapidly, with Russian help, attaining fully self-sustaining arms production. It has ramped up procurement of submarines including kilo class subs. It has joint arms tech projects with China. It is buying everything it can get its hands on.

9. Iran has one of the most dedicated and ruthless secret services on the planet.

10. Iran doesn't need "range" to be a consideration in a war with Israel - Syria is next door to Israel and would attack Israel the second any war broke out.

One could go on to list Israel's Jericho nuclear missiles or Israel's Arrow defense system but the basic point is this: Israel would be the only long-term loser in this Armageddon. Iran, Israel, North Korea et al can survive massive wars. Israel cannot.

If 200 Syrian and Iranian warheads land on Tel Aviv the government will be obliterated and Israel would be a nation without a leadership and without an economy.

If a single North Korean nuclear warhead landed on Tel Aviv, Israel as a nation would simply cease to exist. It has 6 million people and a fragile economy without any back-up funds to speak of. America has 14 trillion dollars of debt; it can't afford nation-saving projects any more - there simply isn't any money left.

In simplest terms, the "winner" of such a futile war would be the evil, despotic regime in Iran. The regime itself might be toppled by such a war, but that is not an eventuality they seem to fear. The regime would experience massive boosts in popular support and it would see Israel vanish as a regional force forever.

Bashar Al Assad would probably get to stick around too.

Iran Assassination Plot?? This Is A Remarkable Video...

The remarkable element in this is that this piece comes from Fox News. It is a superb piece of journalism and it deserves to be seen by anyone concerned about the lies and myths promoted by Israel, the AIPAC and State Department in order to push us into wars with non-existent enemies.

Before you watch this video, I want to say a couple of words about Iran and its sponsorship of assassinations.

I won't waste time condemning the Islamic Regime in Iran; it's brutal, sadistic and we all know it. End of.

But Iran's history of killing people abroad is not as profound and far-reaching as is so often portrayed. In the 80s, Iran's secret service murdered several high-ranking dissidents including the nephew of the Shah of Iran and the Shah's last prime minister, Bakhtiar, whom I apparently met when I was a teen but I've no memory of it - I met a lot of the Shah's people growing up. So yes, Iran did kill dissidents. But foreign government officials? Nah...no pedigree of Iran doing that whatsoever. Unlike Israel, Iran does not have a history of assassinating foreign enemies. It just doesn't.

The entire notion that Khamenei would allow such a shoddy and reckless assassination attempt in which a drunk Iranian US Citizen would use the Mexican drug cartels to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington is farcical. Iran's SAVAK has men all over Saudi Arabia and it could easily have planted a bomb there and avoid a diplomatic fiasco.

Like the majority of the American public, I don't buy this one bit.

Iran Plot to Kill Saudi Ambassador in America.

So that's the big story this week: Iran tries to kill ambassador Al-Jubeir in Washington DC.

I'm angry so I'll cut the crap.

Al-Jubeir met General Petraeus throughout 2007-2009 and we know as a matter of incontrovertible fact that that putrid sack of detritus (Al Jubeir, that is) informed the US government that the thief and tyrant running Saudi Arabia (I won't refer to him as a 'king') wished for the US to "cut off the serpent's head", a reference to Iran's sovereign government.

This will end in hot words and nonsense. No one can touch Iran - it's one of Russia and China's largest oil suppliers, Syria has a joint defense pact with Iran, and the North Koreans have emphatically threatened to nuke anyone who interferes with N. Korea's oil supply. So there's no need for long-winded foolishness about international diplomacy.

Consider it: The Saud family called for "severe US and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel ban and further restrictions on bank lending." The wikileaks cable releases also showed these people adding, "the foreign minister also stated that the use of military pressure against Iran should not be ruled out."

Over ONE MILLION innocent Iraqis died under the US sanctions against Saddam. THAT is what the evil, corrupt Saud family wants done to Iranians. 

Saudi Arabia, a land without basic human rights, has the nerve to call on the US to invade Iran leading to the horrific loss of innocent civilian life one sees in Iraq daily. If you knew anything about the Saud family you would know they are among the most vicious, murderous, evil clans to have ever walked upon the earth. They are thieves of the first order, robbing their people blind and blowing fortunes on extravagant trash while millions of children in this world starve to death or die of easily curable diseases.

Iran is no Disneyland, but they are entitled to hate the western world for what we did to them for a century.

I would not celebrate the death of the Saud ambassador but I certainly would not weep over his passing.

So long as women in Saudi Arabia are beheaded for adultery, or publicly flogged for driving, or banned from sitting in the faux-parliament then the Saud family (which has brutally crushed opposition in its land) is in no position to call anyone a "serpent".

Islam, The West, and thanking the Arabs for discovering the New World.

Islam and Science Link Here
 

Western right-wing conversation on Islam is about as useful as a pedal-powered wheelchair.

I haven't enough time and patience to write a full analysis of this latest  "Reds Under The Bed" mania which now grips the right-wing of western media but I wanted to address a couple of points which I think matter in the current climate. I could go into a massive, erudite thesis covering the Safavids and the Moghuls and Saladin and his treatises on war or the court of the Ottomans and their dhimmi rule but let's not; it's too early and I've things to do. So...Continue Reading This Article>>>

See what I mean about the rise and fall of empires?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/10/05/putin-returning-president_n_995619.html

This just backs everything I've said about the deadlock in American politics; the world has categorically moved on from a US-dominated global economy and the only people who are doing nothing about it are the Capitol Hill Brigade.

This news from Russia will doubtless see French, German and British finance ministers launch a whole range of relationship-building exercises which will further damage the US economy in the wake of 10 solid years of political chauvinism under Bush. It is absolutely no coincidence at all that it comes after another suicidal decision by a US president to back Israel in the UN against the wishes of the rest of the worlds governments. This has been timed to say to America's president, "Ok, so let's show you how irrelevant you are in the Security Council. Go ahead, veto another piece of the puzzle; we don't need you anyway".

British excellent relations with India, French close economic bonds with China, German diplomacy in Russia. 15% of UK trade is with the US and that figure is rapidly diminishing.

People in Washington are rushing their country into absolute decline by sidelining the US in just about every international organisation from the UN to NATO to the IMF. And they think this news doesn't prove what happens when you tamper with global political opinion.

British GDP per capita PPP is still head and shoulders above Russian GDP so it'll be a while yet before there is any serious impact, but who do you think the Arabs and Iranians would now prefer to sell their oil to? India recently agreed to pay Iran over £3 Billion in oil debt because Iran threatened to stop exports of oil to India; so if India (a 1 Billion person economy) does as Iran says, what hope is there for the US to resist the tide if the Middle East has its probable backlash after decades of interference which established Mubarak, the Shah of Iran, Israel and all the other despotic regimes out there?

Mythbusting Israel 101

 

So I'll cut to the chase. These are the biggest myths about the apartheid state of Modern Israel and what you can do to disarm those myths...

William Hague, Order of The Brown Nose...

Hague! I keeeel you!!

On the BBC World Service today I heard that awful clip of a teenaged William Hague (British Foreign Secretary) addressing a 1977 Conservative Party conference and cracking horrendously embarrassing jokes for old people to laugh at.

Post-nonsense intro, the currently 50 year old Mr Hague referred to an invasion of Syria as "not something that could be conceived of". I love that kind of mealy-mouthed sentence...

The First of Many....

Our obsessions in this life, as mortals, are determined by those things which either make us feel most alive or which most threaten our sense of self; for some the obsession is how they are seen by others, for some the obsession is what they possess. Consider for a moment those obsessions of your own - don't they revolve around that which makes you feel most alive or most in jeopardy?

Yet occasionally though, one finds in this life those rare folk who are obsessed with the health, wealth, and prosperity of others. They're not as rare as we seem to think, yet only a handful ever make it to the world stage: a Mandela, a St Francis, a Norman Finkelstein, a Bobby Kennedy; these characters exist in every Latin American shanty town and every lush plateu of Asia, and every sprawling western city or windswept Slavic plain, yet we do not know their names and doubtless never will. Yet be comforted, dear reader, to know that vast numbers of people alive today are willing to lay down their lives for the future prosperity and happiness of persons they will never meet. What a glory mankind so often is!

In starting this blog I do not know that I am a perfect example of what a man supposedly is, nor do I claim absolute knowledge of that which makes for a perfect world (if such a thing could ever exist). Yet I have, by virtue of my own reason and by virtue of my remarkable set of experiences in life, come to some absolutely fundamental and unchanging beliefs about our existence as humans. The first of which is very simple: every human life is sacred, inviolable, and no man has a right to take it away other than under the circumstances of a 'Just War'. A 'Just War' is exceptionally rare, dear reader.

The second principle is perhaps more fundamental than the first, for it gives it a rationale: Each of us depends on 'the other' for his or her existence; we are bound by a common destiny and a shared fate, which is to live here together in peace or die here together in angst. To allow injury to another is to commit that injury unto yourself.

This brings me, good reader, to the final of my fundamental principles of human life: So long as outrageous injustice is collectively done unto 'the other', this world can never be at peace.

It all looks so basic doesn't it? I suppose that is the beauty of complex and profound matters; that they ultimately reside in very simple principles.

When we look at the state of the world today we note, in this 21st century since the death of Christ, one glaringly obvious fact: the "Age of Reason" has yet to come to pass! Our global village has failed to grasp the basic concept that if you inflict agony and corruption on your colonised subjects you will one day reap the whirlwind. I refer very specifically to the current invented division between the Islamic East and the Christian West, a species of propagandist mudslinging so devious and bloody that the very core of what is 'true' in this new war has been lost to the man on the street, the Average Joe going about his daily life.

My hero, Robert F. Kennedy, once asked who the politicians of the U.S were, that they should decide which village or town in Vietnam should be destroyed, he asked whether such aloof and belligerent men as "Bombs Away" LeMay were like the gods of the Old Testament; throwing dice at the fate of mens lives.

We see today a Middle-East which has finally shaken off two centuries of western interference and yet which has another thousand miles to walk until it achieves self-empowerment. We see a Palestine brought to its knees through sixty years of the most unspeakable murder and violence by a people who continue to occupy their land. We see an Iran still reeling from the chaos inflicted on it when the CIA and MI6 destroyed the first democratic government in the entire region - when the 1950s government of Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup which put a young, inept, and foolish Shah in control of the first nation to be utterly exploited for its oil reserves.

In the latest round of games and nonsense we see a US government utterly out of step with world opinion, denying the majority verdict of its own people (the majority of US citizens are actually pro-Palestinian liberty according to the latest BBC poll). It is a US government which, through the cowardice of an Obama who promised so much, has landed the collective genius of western economics and politics in a sh*t storm so intense that the Chinese and Russians are laughing at the naivety and myopia of our politicians.

John Donne once wrote that "No man is an island, entire of itself....each man's death diminishes me, for I am a part of mankind". We know that wisdom in our deepest heart's core; we know that liberty and justice in the east will equate to peace in London, New York, Madrid and every other place ripped apart by terrorism. Yet we permit dull, paid-up, mealy-mouthed men in cheap suits to dictate a series of subversive wars and interventions which in the shortest of terms has secured cheaper oil, but in the longest of terms has left countless westerners dead and many millions more dead in the Arabic and Iranian zones.

We recall those few thousand western victims of terror yet turn a blind eye to the 100,000+ Palestinians massacred since the British were forced out of British Palestine by Israeli terrorists like the Irgun. We sing "My country tis of thee" or "Abide with me" at the going down of the military sun at the death of every corporal from Idaho and private from Glasgow, yet hide from the 900,000 Iranians and Iraqis killed by the Iran-Iraq War which was endlessly fed by American dollars and American arms to BOTH sides.

Not since Nasser lived has the Arabic world seen such a determined effort to end western interference in its life, and for those of us who have a basic understanding of the astounding contribution to art, science, philosophy and medicine that the Arabs have made it is a pleasing sight to see that they have in many regions achieved the beginnings of liberty without colossal bloodshed. Not only this, but unlike our own European history of liberation from Communism, the Arabs showed the world that freedom by sheer force of human dignity need not come at the price of tens of thousands of lives. Yet again, perhaps the West must learn from the East.

If you have come this far, I thank you for reading. My hope is to write on these and many other matters with a diligence I hope you will find rewarding, and at least with an integrity which I know is based on those simple principles of which I wrote.

I also hope to not be an incredible bore. I'm supposedly the possessor of a brilliant sense of humour, so we shall see if that ever rears its head, like some coiled snake leaping at a souk entertainer.

The world is still a beautiful place, and by your goodness you can redeem it with the smallest acts of kindness right through to the greatest acts of courage. After all, my friend, YOU are this world; YOU are mankind.

The good news in all this is so good it's hard to resist: you CAN change the world!