Uponnothing.co.uk

‘All options — including the military one — are on the table’

Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary

‘There is only one thing worse than military action, that is a nuclear armed Iran’

John McCain, Republican senator for Arizona

‘Obviously we don’t rule out any measures at all’

Tony Blair

The recipe of war is well proven, take a large dose of irrational fear, add to the international press to simmer for several months, sprinkle same press with half-truths, mis-truths, and outright lies, then allow public to stew on a low heat for several months. Once they have developed the correct taste for fear, add hysterical threats of weapons of mass destruction, mix with war on terror, and garnish with rotten diplomacy.

However, is this all really neccesary? How much does the public actually care what the government does?

There is no sign of intelligence or accurate reporting on Iran in the newspapers, on television or even over PBS radio. It is never made clear that Iran’s “defiance” is one orchestrated by the U.S. government, or that the “defiance” is limited to Iran’s development of nuclear energy, not a weapons program. When Americans hear “nuclear defiance” over and over, they conclude that Iran is making nuclear weapons. Instead of informing the people, the media drive them toward acceptance of another war.

This quotation may be about America, but it is equally apt to describe the standard of reporting here in the UK. The simple fact is that newspapers appeal to the base instincts of the UK populous, the public are not the passive receivers of any given news message, they are the active seekers of a message that matches their own outlook. The sad thing is people want drivel, they want trivia, they want a political outlook that is clearly defined in black and white, good and bad, with us or against us.

For the average person, admitting that black and white can mix to form numerous shades of grey, is to question their whole existence, and they’d rather just shove their fingers in their ears and watch another program on celebrities’ ice-skating/ballroom dancing/trapped in jungle/trapped on an island/trapped in a house. The majority of people in Britain don’t care, and they never will.

It is only the government and social elite who stand to profit from war, and therefore it is the role of the media to justify and glorify Britain’s involvement in foreign countries. Papers such as the Sun have become virtually a state controlled paper, whilst papers such as the Daily Mail may dislike the government, but they have a rabid distaste of anything foreign.

Americans are in many ways more in tune with the media message, more interested in war. Americans do care, but for all the wrong reasons. Patriotism in America fuels the ignorance of the masses that have to make all the sacrifices when Bush and friends decide to go to war. It is easy to get the American public excited and backing a war, and each speech Bush gives goes through all the basics:

mention that America is a ‘great nation’

praise the armed forces, and the sacrifices they make to ‘protect’ this ‘great nation’

pretend that America is under attack

say it will be just like the Second World War

and finally god bless America

Americans care about being Americans, and more often than not patriotism serves to deflect any criticism of the state that they might be pondering deep down.

However, these are of course sweeping generalisations, each country has its share of lights in these dark times, and some people are prepared to speak out, although this is usually in vain. The main problem is that war is so sanitised; the war on terror is fought in distant lands, and this foreign interventionism that is so rife today (but has always been a staple diet of power politics, and economic dominance) is seen as taking the war further away, protecting the homeland.

The only link that Blair and Bush will identify is that the war abroad ‘secures’ our ‘freedom’ at home: every sacrifice made, every innocent foreigner dead is justified as being necessary to secure the rights of the people living in the ‘free world’. The majority of us won’t have to fight this war; the majority of us won’t even know anybody who has to fight this war. As far as we are concerned the only sacrifice we have to make is accepting the loss of a few civil liberties.

It is this that is the real irony of the ‘war on terror’; the whole war is based on protecting the civil liberties that we all come to expect; yet the basis of the war on terror is the restriction of civil liberties. We have therefore been left with a war that is fighting civil liberties, in the name of protecting them – something so idiotic, so unbelievable, so very ‘Bush’, that of course the majority excepts that this is just the way things are.

The main thing is that the people who supported the war in Iraq - and those that still do - believe that we have some higher moral purpose, that death and destruction can be justified if it is in the cause of freedom and hope. But have they considered what freedom and hope actually is, and whose freedom and hope it is that we are actually fighting for?

The war in Iraq started in order to protect freedom and hope in the West – as Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction and was just 45 minutes away from killing us all. So we went to war to protect ourselves. Then of course we realised that the reasons for going to war were entirely false, so a change of tack was needed – and provided. We now realised that we weren’t going to war to protect ourselves, but rather to give freedom and hope to the oppressed Iraqis – never mind that it was Western politics that had enslaved them to Saddam Hussain in the first place (or that it was Britain that originally drew up the very borders of Iraq as we know it).

So in the end we had to fall back on the belief that the greater purpose was a war to export democracy, freedom, and perhaps even a little bit of Western modernity to those poor desert dwellers. This gave the enormous benefit of being a justification for further wars, if you export democracy once, then you can export democracy again and again and again.

But the truth is we only export violence, and we will only get back violence in return. Most rational people realise this, but rational people are firmly in the minority, and definitely are not involved in running the world. 9/11 cost the lives of over 3000 people; its response has cost the lives of over 100,000 people.

This is the tragic demonstration of the real value of human life in this world, we value our own lives immeasurably, a mixture of racial arrogance, and blind ignorance. Whilst we view the ‘unpeople’ – that is anyone not Western, not one of us, them – with contempt, if we even consider them as part of the equation. We view them largely as the enemy, millions of people that need to be placated in order that we may live our lives, rich, greedy, increasingly obese, and evermore paranoid.

The war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, still ongoing with fierce fighting, and many deaths and casualties, has led to Tony Blair and George Bush’s constant downplaying of the economic cost of the war. An estimation as to the economic cost of war has been made in a study by Linda Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, who estimate that the conservative figure (including direct costs and macroeconomic costs) of just over $1 trillion, with a moderate estimate of over $2.2 trillion. Taking the conservative figure that means that if 3000 people died as a result of 9/11 each one of those lives is now valued at $342,000,000.

Or put another way if 100,000 innocent people have died as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then we have spent $10,260,000 to kill each one.

Perhaps life is not so cheap after all. It will be even more expensive, yet paradoxically more worthless, once Iran is attacked; and most of us will be too busy watching shit TV to even care.

Diplomacy. What does this word actually mean? Is it the process of sorting out national and international problems through rational, peaceful, inclusive, arguments? Or is it the gunboat, or nuclear threat curtailing any arguments against largely Western nuclear hegemony?

Whatever it is in recent times it has been paid largely lip service by Western governments who have already decided on policy, but want to appear that they tried ‘everything they can to avoid using force… blah blah blah’, before sending in the Airforce and destroying yet another Nations sovereignty.

Still, when it comes to ‘other’ nations, i.e. anyone not ‘conducive’ to the continuation of ’stability’ in the Westo-centric vision of American dominance - with the larger EU countries acting as groupies - then they should use diplomcay to resolve all problems, and be grateful if we even give them a chance to talk round a table.

Diplomacy, such as Iran for example, a country that wants nuclear power, something that we will not allow, something about the creation of WMD (this time we are threatening a country when we know they haven’t even made any WMD’s!), yet we don’t really have any evidence of a nuclear missile program. I guess we have to just trust in the governments of the US and UK to provide us with valid, reliable intelligence, surely they wouldn’t lie to us… again… would they?

Well we are about to find out, ‘IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for electricity only, had told his agency it wants to restart centrifuges at Natanz to enrich uranium on a “small scale.”‘ and of course the Western world is up in arms, I mean its not as if we have a nuclear weapons program, or vast stockpiles of them, or that the US is intending to use them (again…) this time in Iran… oh.

The stench of extreme hypocrisy is hard to stomach whenever you read soundbites from the neo-conservative scum that fester in the Whitehouse, and of course this issue is no different:

“They shouldn’t do it because it would really be a sign that they are not prepared to actually make diplomacy work,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week.

“By cutting the seals, the Iranian leadership shows its disdain for international concern and its rejection of international diplomacy,” Schulte [the US ambassador to the IAEA] said.

Perhaps similiar to the disdain for international concern and diplomacy when you invaded Iraq? Or like the disdain for international concern and diplomacy when you go ahead and nuke Iranian nuclear sites.

Diplomacy. It’s just the stuff that happens whilst you plan the next war.

Tony Blair, complete and utter nonsensical twat (abbreviated to CUNT), continues to push the boundaries of unbelievable hypocrisy, and continues to smugly grin in ignorance. The subject is becoming a favourite for the international messiah: Iran. Blair’s comments basically assert that Iran is responsible for preventing progress in the Middle East because:

the regime is doing things that are completely unacceptable in the international community — like supporting terrorism, like meddling in Iraq, like trying to have a nuclear weapons program…

Sorry? ‘meddling in Iraq’, ’supporting terrorism’, having a ‘nuclear weapons program’? Is it me or is this exactly the same thing that America and Britain are guilty of? What is the difference Tony? Is it that Iran are trying to get nuclear weapons, whilst we are simply in the progress of upgrading them, is it that Iran may be sending small arms into Iraq, whilst we send in the heavy bombers, is it that they support the wrong kind of terrorism?

Surely there must be some kind of distinction between Iran and the UK for you to make that statement. But there is not, you made the statement because you are a joke, you live in a fantasy world, a world that simply does not exist.

That in this world you somehow run a country is an even bigger joke.

Not content with creating thousands of years of religious fueds, he has now inflicted on us a new Jesus: George Bush. Jesus was a son of a carpenter, George is a son of a bitch, but lets hope that the new Jesus meets a similiar fate, and is nailed to a cross within a week. But is it God that is to blame, or are the voices in his head thoseof the devil?

Either way, it is those that applauded Bush’s ridiculous speech are the real evil, may they all burn in hell.

Iran seem to be raising the stakes in the war of words regarding their pursuit of nuclear power:

“The Americans are trying to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran and transform its identity by using political and cultural instruments and their puppets, but they will suffer their biggest defeat from the voluntary Basij youth,’’ Khamenei said without elaborating. He did not elaborate in his address made during a visit to a Tehran base of the Basij, a corps of civilian vigilantes who enforce the Iranian regime’s Islamic strictures.

Bush issued his veiled threat after Iran resumed uranium conversion at its nuclear facility in Isfahan, a move that also prompted a warning from the UN nuclear watchdog agency. Bush has called for continued diplomacy to halt Iran’s nuclear programme, with resort to UN Security Council sanctions only if diplomatic efforts fail.

This response serves to add to the already tense situation, with diplomats uncertain as how to proceed following the revelations that traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Iran has stated that they still wish to continue negotiations with the European three, but the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still maintains that:

“Our policy is transparent and clear: we are after the nation’s lawful rights within the framework of international law and we will defend these rights seriously”

After Europe initially called off talks after Iran began enrichment activities, but now French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy has stated:

“We are suspending the negotiations,” he told France Inter radio. “But at the same time, we think it is still possible to talk to them … There is no reason to close the door on Iran.”

So hope remains that talked can be reopened, but it still seems unlikely that Europe would accept the legal right of Iran to pursue the nuclear activity that they wish, whilst America remain isolated from discussions, but clear that they would be prepared to assess all options available if the talks do break down. With Iran holding firm, and Europe and America equally unbending in their opposition to the Iranian stance, even if talks are reopened their failure seems simply a matter of time.

The talks that were planned for the 31st of August have been cancelled after Iran made the decision to resume nuclear fuel activities - which could eventually lead (in theory) to the production of nuclear weapons.

“We can’t continue with formal negotiations as if nothing happened,” said Jean-Baptiste Mattei, chief spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry. “The suspension of their fuel activities was the basis for our negotiations. By resuming some of those activities the Iranians have effectively suspended the agreement these talks were based on.”

Now that talks have finally broken down, something that was inevitable given that Europe was essentially trying to deny Iran basic rights over nuclear development, calls have once again been made to report Iran to the UN security council. However, the UN have again supported Iranian claims that Uranium was brought to, not made in Iraq, and that the report due to be issued soon by the IAEA would also support Iranian claims that a weapons program simply does not exist, as they have yet to find any evidence of it.

Now that that talking has ceased, is the next step action? Will Bush use the breakdown in talks to fuel his pre-emptive strikes? We’ll have to wait for word from the White House.

Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.

“The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions,” said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.

Scientists from the United States, France, Japan, Britain and Russia met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to U.S. and foreign officials. Recently, the group, whose existence had not been previously reported, definitively matched samples of the highly enriched uranium — a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon — with centrifuge equipment turned over by the government of Pakistan.

Iran has long contended that the uranium traces were the result of contaminated equipment bought years ago from Pakistan. But the Bush administration had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients.

So, some of the mud slung at Iran has proved to be bullshit, but will this report get as much press as the original allegations? It would be interesting to see if Bush will in time comment on the report once it becomes official, I suspect he will disregard it, perhaps with something along the lines of: ‘Well, the report is irrelevant really, it does not deter us from completing our mission “Operation Iranian Freedom”‘.

The negotiations between the European three (UK, Germany, France) and Iran seem to be at a critical point, and Iran should view this vindication as another reason why they should be allowed to pursue nuclear power, as is there legal right. This is further backed-up by the IAEA board, which in its third year of an investigation in Iran, has still not found any proof of a weapons program. Let us not forget that:

The IAEA had put together the group of experts in an effort to foster cooperation but also to eliminate the possibility that its findings would be challenged by the White House, officials said. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the White House rejected IAEA findings that cast doubt on U.S. assertions about then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s arsenal. The IAEA findings turned out to be correct, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

Read the full article from the Washington Post here…

Donald Rumsfeld, hardly an eloquent spokesman at the best of times, seems to be trying to stoop lower with each new sentence of bile that spews from his over-active mouth. Knowing that he needs to drum up support and ‘justification’ for a pre-emptive strike in Iran Donald has been busy recently highlighting the Iranian arms smuggling into Iraq to help the insurgency:

We know we’re finding Iranian weapons inside of the country… They don’t just get there by accidents. They don’t drive over the border

So why are they smuggling arms (if indeed they are at all, I trust no statement from any American government, as through the years history has proven them to be largely complete lies) to help an insurgency in Iraq? To take over of course! I mean it really is obvious, and a link we would all have made eventually, Donald’s just giving us a helping hand, he’s telling us that 1+1 = 3, when otherwise we would have struggled to get the right answer:

Rumsfeld… told reporters on the flight from Washington that “no one ought to be surprised” by the arms smuggling since Iran would like to replicate its own Islamic regime in Iraq.

“And we know that the system of government they have, with a handful of clerics running all over the place telling everybody what to do, is fundamentally inconsistent with the kind of constitution that is currently being drafted in Iraq,” he said.

So ignoring whatever constitution is being drafted in Iraq, America’s newest state, how does Donald differentiate from a ‘handful of clerics running all over the place telling everybody what to do’ with a handful of neo-cons running round telling everyone what to do (with a little help with some repressive ‘anti-terror’ laws of course)? I don’t think he can, and I don’t think he can blame Iran - even partially - for the insurgency in Iraq, when the only foreign military presence that is causing the insurgency is the military forces of the US and their stooges.

Still, the fact that the insurgency exists due to the invasion shows Donald that if you throw enough mud at a target - even if that mud is in fact bullshit - enough will stick to allow some good old American ‘democracy-spreading’ to take place.

Once again the Iran issue is brought to the fore, this time by Tompaine.com.

it was clear from the beginning of the negotiation that Iran was interested in not only economic and trade concessions and peaceful nuclear technology cooperation, but also security guarantees—sometimes referred to as non-aggression commitments…

Yet the talks are structurally flawed. As long as the United States stays out of the negotiations, the security guarantee, obviously, cannot include any commitment by the United States—the country of greatest concern to Iran. So it should not be a surprise that the offer was rejected.

Read the full article here…

More Media Lies About Iran - by Gordon Prather

After yesterdays lengthy look at the Iran ’situation’ and in particular the point about how the media were again responsible for very misleading scaremongering, as they were in the build up to the Iraq war, Gordon Prather has written this fine piece demonstrating just how removed from reality the press in America is.

Once again antiwar.com prove vital in the reclamation of truth from fiction.

Iran has been a common topic here at Uponnothing, being covered every now and again since May 13th. Since the very beginning discussion has focused on how the Bush administration and the Blair circle have created the atmosphere for some kind of ‘pre-emptive’ strike against another threat of weapons of mass destruction. The agenda has been promoted through general ignorance in reporting through mainstream media outlets, and hyped in the wake of the London bombings.

Some - most notably Antiwar.com - have tried to redress the balance and unravel the lies and half-truths that are seemingly leading to another war, a war on a far greater scale than the current Iraq conflict. However, the war in Iran seems to be drawing closer, with Bush giving his clearest hints yet that he is expecting force to be used:

In all these instances we want diplomacy to work and so we are working feverishly on the diplomatic route and, you know, we will see if we are successful or not. As you know I’m sceptical.

Of course, this kind of statement is very familiar to those now dissecting the build-up to the Iraq war, didn’t we hear way back in 2002/2003 how hard Bush and Blair were trying to pursue the diplomatic course - only to discover later that this was a complete lie, and the policy of war had already been decided. As ever lessons are never learnt by those responsible for future policies, simply because they have no desire to learn them. Instead the few dissenting voices are marginalised, and considered apologists for terrorists, or undemocratic states - something that is so easily done by the right-wing press regarding Iran.

Rather than question the Iranian pursuit of Nuclear power (the UN have today rejected claims that Iran is developing nuclear weapons), or their legal right to enrich uranium for generating power, the popular press seem more concerned with labelling the leadership in Iran as undemocratic extremists. Whilst at the same time they declare the population as half-terrorists - wanting to bomb us ‘civilised’ folks, and half-victims - wanting us ‘civilised’ folks to rescue them with some good old-fashioned Western ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’. Now, it cannot be disputed that Iran has a culture very different to ours,they have internal human rights issues regarding dissidents, and they enforce a very strict interpretation of Islam, but, none of these factors are any of our god damn business. They did elect their leader, and did so largely as a big F-you to Bush’s attempts to have his preferred candidate elected, anyway, how they run their country is up to them. I find it difficult to beleive that we would listen to Iran if they started to criticise the human rights issues in America, or the neo-con extremists in the White house, or the repression of dissidents through the Patriot Act.

The pursuit of the war in Iran seems to be largely driven by Bush at the moment, with Blair remaining fairly quiet on the subject. Germany - one member of the ‘EU three’ (France being the third) negotiating on the subject - has openly criticised Bush’s stance on the matter, something that naturally New Labour would never dream of doing. However, such criticism from Germany is ignoring the fact that they are part of the hypocritical negotiations taking place in the first place. Very few people seem to discuss the fact that the West is discussing options for strikes against a country simply because they may be pursuing uranium enrichment that could open the possibility of creating a nuclear weapon in around 10 years. Now, the desire to harness the power of the atom to generate energy is perfectly legal, and is based on the non-proliferation treaty, which was concluded in 1968 and entered into force on March 5, 1970.

The NPT acknowledged that five states had conducted nuclear weapon tests by January 1, 1967 (Britain, China, France, the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia), defining them as nuclear weapon states, with particular obligations under Article I not to transfer nuclear weapons or assist others to acquire them and under Article VI to pursue nuclear disarmament.

Now, basically the treaty was signed so that those nuclear powers could legally ensure that their powers as nuclear states would not be challenged or diminished by other states gaining access to nuclear weapons, and the legitimacy of the states that already had weapons was falsely solidified. The irony of nuclear states being responsible for stopping other states from having access to nuclear weapons seems to be little commented on with regards to Iran, instead we assume we have the right to the bomb, whereas those strange darkies over in Iran cannot be trusted with it.

Now, if people want to be worried about who can be trusted with Nuclear weapons then perhaps they should also cast an evil eye at the White house, where a war-mongering president with the IQ of a teabag draws up plans on nuking Iran, surrounded by sychophantic, power-hungry neo-cons. Not to mention that America - those peace-loving invaders of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc - have the dubious honour of being the first - and currently only - nation to have used Nuclear bombs against an enemy. Well, we say enemy, but i’m not really sure the 60,000 or so Japanese civilians killed in one blast can really be described as enemies, but that’s another question, and one that Americans rarely ask themselves.

Furthermore, the non-proliferation treaty has not stopped numerous nations getting hold of the magic bomb, and some of them have been developed with tacit agreement from the US and UK. The desire for countries to get nuclear weapons is easy to understand, it is the only way in which they can defend themselves from the aggression of the nuclear states - in particular America and the UK. Would NATO have plowed into Yugoslavia (causing, not preventing an humanitarian disaster) if Yugoslavia had nuclear weapons? Would Bush and Blair have concocted a series of lies to illegally invade Iraq, if Iraq actually had weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear weapons?

The answer is of course, no, not a chance in hell. Just look at how we treat those countries that we don’t like, but who have managed to develop Nuclear weapons - such as North Korea, i’m sure Bush and friends would love a ‘regime change’, ‘freedom’ trip into North Korea, but not if it means they might get nuked in return. The threat of war in Iran does not nullify their desire to get nuclear weapons, but makes it all the more neccesary for Iran to secure it’s borders against American invasion. For America to threaten war so cheaply actually serves to justify Iranian fears over American intentions, showing the ignorance of Bush, and making a mockery of his bullshit speeches of how he tries to avoid war through ‘diplomacy’. Bush’s idea of diplomacy is announcing an attack before it takes place.

I am not justifying Iran pursuing the development of nuclear weapons, however, I also refuse to justify the maintenance and expansion of current nuclear arsenals by those already classed as nuclear states. The nuclear states declare outrage at Iran having any desire to develop nuclear energy, in case they might create a bomb, yet we have no such moral outrage at the massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the US or UK, being added to at massive expense to the taxpayer.

Again, it is one rule for them, and no rules for us; and you can be certain our leader’s will strike Iran to keep it that way.

So it seems that talks with Iran have ‘failed’, meaning that they do not wish to give up their right under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to generate electricity. Suspicions abound about the secret desire of Iran to build nuclear weapons must be stopped, a rather hypocritical view considering the US and UK nuclear arsenal, along with our approval of strategic allies across the world acquiring nuclear weapons.

It seems the leaders of the ‘civilised west’ cannot grasp that owning vast amounts of nuclear weapons, and allowing our allies on different continents to acquire them, will lead to an arms race. After the illegal invasion of Iraq countries are fully aware that in order to avoid a ’shock and awe’ invasion they must acquire nuclear weapons.

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing–that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack–but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

Obviously the validity is hard to ascertain, but I certainly would not put it past the current American regime to carry this out.

Europe’s attempts at reaching an ‘acceptable’ agreement (meaning the hypocritical assertion that Iran should not be allowed nuclear weapons, or even nuclear power, but we can) have recieved a blow from Condi Rice. Interesting in the light of the recent posting by Mo on how Iran seems to be next target of America, in spite of its complete compliance above and beyond legal expectations in relation to its Nuclear program. If Iran is the next target, and another dubious reason is given for the strike then more terrorists are going to be created in the rubble, whilst Al Qaeda gain more breathing space from pursuit.

Read the full article by Gordon Prather here…