Iran: Are We on the Edge of the Cliff?

It has occurred to me that there may be a second reason (in addition to political grandstanding) for the Bush “surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq. What if the U.S. administration anticipates attacking Iran in the near term? Wouldn’t it make sense to bolster U.S. forces in Iraq, whose border with Iran was the site of fierce warfare in the past?

Perhaps the American government anticipates nothing beyond an air attack on Iran, but in war the unexpected always happens. I can picture Iranian ground forces rolling into Iraq if the U.S. attacks Iran. American troops and helicopters already mired down in their struggle against the Iraqi resistance would face all-out war on an eastern front. Let us hope that sanity prevails, and that neither the U.S. nor Israel attacks Iran, but in addition to building up its naval forces in the area, the U.S. government is also building up its troop strength in Iraq.

This post is going to be choppy, but I want to include several recent reports concerning Iran, all relevant but presented without any particular continuity.

The following report may or may not be accurate – or its release may have been psychological warfare -- but the facts have been published in several places.

GlobalResearch.ca :

“American military operations for a major conventional war with Iran could be implemented any day. They extend far beyond targeting suspect WMD facilities and will enable President Bush to destroy Iran's military, political and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons.

“British military sources told the New Statesman, on condition of anonymity, that "the US military switched its whole focus to Iran" as soon as Saddam Hussein was kicked out of Baghdad. It continued this strategy, even though it had American infantry bogged down in fighting the insurgency in Iraq.

“The US army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerised plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).”

From another report: The BBC said that Bush has ordered plans for air strikes to disable Iran’s entire military structure. Senior officials in Washington have pinpointed targets including missile bases, command and control centres and air defences. Action would also be triggered if Tehran is close to developing nuclear weapons. Four nuclear sites would also be hit. US military strategists claimed the air attacks could be carried out without affecting ongoing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some 30 US warships are already in the Gulf.

A presidential candidate makes the mistake of implying Israel could cause a problem -- from Peter Bart's column on Senator John Edwards' comments in Hollywood:

“The aggressively photogenic Senator John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes [to a Hollywood gathering] last week until, during question time, he invoked the "I" word — Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. As a chill descended on the gathering, the Edwards event was brought to a polite close.”

There went Hollywood, Candidate Edwards.


Meanwhile, a delegation of more savvy American senators arrived in Israel this week. The senators are members of a joint Senate-Knesset committee (can you imagine such a thing in America?) headed by Senator Jon Kyl, who is close to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The cozy get-together is described in the “Jerusalem Post” (Feb. 20). Note especially the reference to Iran.

“Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) said Monday as he led a bicameral delegation from the United States to discuss security issues with Knesset members. ‘In all of the years that I have been coming to Israel, one thing stands out to me above all others as crucial to the security of this country - and that is the need to deal with Iran,’ Kyl told The Jerusalem Post. The senator, who has a close relationship with Bush, serves as head of the US-Israel Joint Parliamentary Committee on National Security with MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud)."

Senator Kyl Prays


Though Iran is years away from creating a destructive nuclear device, even assuming it intends to work toward creating one, Israel constantly uses as an excuse for a threatened "preemptive" nuclear strike on Iran a statement attributed to its president that “Israel should be wiped off the map.” Here is some very instructive information from the author of the blog “Not the Country Club” (see my Links), who has published lengthy translations of the Iranian president’s statements:

“One of the weapons that Ahmadinejad's enemies have resorted to has been to mistranslate his statements. Incredible as it may seem, he never said "Israel should be wiped off the map." For one thing, the phrase "wipe off the map" does not exist in Farsi. What he in fact said was this: "The regime that occupies Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." This was a quotation from the Ayatollah Khomeini. As Ahmadinejad himself explained, what he meant was that he hopes some day there will be a new system of government in Israel/Palestine, the same way that a new system replaced the old Soviet government.”


I’m going to conclude with quotations from “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” (Feb. 19). MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER HEAD, CIA BIN LADEN UNIT, was speaking of the lack of justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and of the pointlessness of antagonizing Iran:

“Well, this administration, sir, seems to be afraid of almost anything that moves. And certainly Iraq was a containable country. The Iranians are no threat to the United States unless we provoke them. They may be a threat to the Israelis. They‘re not a threat to the United States.

“The threat to the United States, inside the United States, comes from al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to address the threat to America, that‘s where it is.”

If every American would heed and remember these words, thousands of Americans and Iranians will be living normal lives in the years to come rather than perishing in another Bush/Israel-built meat grinder:

“Iranians are no threat to the United States unless we provoke them. They may be a threat to the Israelis. They‘re not a threat to the United States.”

The Persistence of Dishonesty

The advertisement below sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? But read on. The ad is an astonishing piece of misrepresentation:

****
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53865

“Jan 27, 2006

“JOAN PETERS TO MAKE RARE APPEARANCE

"Author of 'FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL' to address myths of Mideast

“WASHINGTON – Joan Peters, author of the best-selling, critically acclaimed history of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine, 'From Time Immemorial,' is confirmed as a presenter at News Expo 2007 – the Washington, D.C., conference like no other ever produced.
Peters joins WND Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein, columnist Ann Coulter, WND founder and Editor Joseph Farah and managing editor David Kupelian, author of the best-seller, 'The Marketing of Evil.'
Peters' book struck the world like an earthquake when it was first published in 1984 – shattering many of the myths and misconceptions involving the origins of the Mideast debate. Based on seven years of meticulous research and fearless reporting, Peters documented the complex history of the region and in so doing deftly and authoritatively contradicted common misperceptions about the role and strategy of each side of the struggle.”
****

No wonder it’s a “rare” appearance. Her book is a fraud.

I wrote about Joan Peters on VIEW FROM THE MOON on January 18, and some of what I’m publishing today is lifted from that earlier post. The point is that her book, “From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine”, published in 1984, has been widely acknowledged for years to be inaccurate, even fraudulent.

Her book tries to justify Zionism (the takeover of Palestine by Jews from other countries) by proving the constant presence of Jews in Palestine, contrary to the truth. As one critic put it:

“The thesis of this book is that when the state of Israel came into existence Palestine was largely unpopulated, except for a few Jews who had been there for many centuries; just a desert really, made to bloom by the ingenuity and hard work of Jews who subsequently arrived. Consequently the Palestinians we find there today must have arrived recently, freeloaders, no doubt attracted by the modern state built by the efforts of said hard-working Jews. And consequently Israel has a right to send them back where they came from.

“In fact, the book is rubbish. It was exposed as a fraud by several critics, including Norman Finkelstein (whose exposé is included in Blaming the Victims, edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, also available via Amazon) and later Oxford University's Albert Hourani.”

A less forthright reviewer explained: “Much of Mrs. Peters's book argues that at the same time that Jewish immigration to Palestine was rising, Arab immigration to the parts of Palestine where Jews had settled also increased. Therefore, in her view, the Arab claim that an indigenous Arab population was displaced by Jewish immigrants must be false, since many Arabs only arrived with the Jews." Peters concludes, therefore, that many of the refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war were not native Palestinians. She has repeatedly been proven wrong.

Professor Norman Finkelstein (see “Links” on this blog) calls Ms. Peters’ book a “monumental hoax,” and “the most notorious source of historical bias on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever published in the English language . . . “

Not one critic now accepts her thesis as valid.

“The New York Review of Books”: “Everyone familiar with the writing of the extreme [Zionist\ nationalists of Zeev Jabotinsky's Revisionist party would immediately recognize the tired and discredited arguments in Mrs. Peters's book. I had mistakenly thought them long forgotten. It is a pity that they have been given new life."

Even a friendly reviewer, Daniel Pipes, wrote: “‘From Time Immemorial’ quotes carelessly, uses statistics sloppily, and ignores inconvenient facts. Much of the book is irrelevant to Miss Peters's central thesis. The author's linguistic and scholarly abilities are open to question.”

For a lengthy discussion of the criticisms of Joan Peters' book, see Paul Blair's six-part article published in 2002 beginning at http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2135.

Blair writes in his Conclusion:

“From Time Immemorial is work of propaganda, with all the bad connotations that term carries. Peters' case rests upon distortion and fabrication. Time and again, she misconstrues sources in a tendentious manner. She cribs uncritically from partisan works. She conceals crucial calculations, and draws hard conclusions from tenuous evidence. She speculates wildly and without ground. She exaggerates figures and selects numbers to suit her thesis. She adduces evidence that in no way supports her claims, sometimes even omitting "inconvenient" portions of the citation. She invents contradictions in sources she wishes to discredit by quoting them out of context. She "forgets" undesirable numbers in her calculations. She ignores sources that cast doubt on her conclusions, even when she herself uses those sources for other purposes. She makes baseless insinuations and misleading claims.”

Noam Chomsky wrote in his 2002 book, “Understanding Power”:

“From Time Immemorial ... was a big scholarly-looking book with lots of footnotes, which purported to show that the Palestinians were all recent immigrants ... And it was very popular — it got literally hundreds of rave reviews, and no negative reviews: the Washington Post, the New York Times, everybody was just raving about it. Here was this book which proved that there were really no Palestinians! Of course, the implicit message was, if Israel kicks them all out there's no moral issue, because they're just recent immigrants who came in because the Jews had built up the country. ... That was the big intellectual hit for that year: Saul Bellow, Barbara Tuchman, everybody was talking about it as the greatest thing since chocolate cake. Well, one graduate student at Princeton, a guy named Norman Finkelstein, started reading through the book. He was interested in the history of Zionism, and as he read the book he was kind of surprised by some of the things it said. He's a very careful student, and he started checking the references — and it turned out that the whole thing was a hoax, it was completely faked: probably it had been put together by some intelligence agency ... [The Mossad?]

“Every major journal, the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review, the Observer, everybody had a review saying, this doesn't even reach the level of nonsense, of idiocy.”

How strange, then, that on January 22, 2007, Joan Peters’ discredited propaganda hoax should be trumpeted as “critically acclaimed” and “based on seven years of meticulous research”.

Joseph Farah, director of “News Expo 2007” and co-founder of the website which published the advertisement, WorldNetDaily, says:

“We're very excited about the appearance of Joan Peters. This presentation alone will make News Expo a spectacular, one-of-a-kind, can't-miss event.”

Surprise!

"Israel's prime minister said Sunday that Israel and the United States have 'completely identical' positions on a new Palestinian government."

Playfuls.com, February 18.

NOW We Have the Proof!

“Bush Says Iran Is Source of Deadly Bombs”


On February 12, ”Not Paying Attention” I (and a few million other people) expressed doubts about the “evidence” exhibited by anonymous American officials that Iran is supplying the Iraq resistance with weapons.

Must we now reconsider our reaction? The Highest Source has spoken on this very day. I am emphasizing his proofs with capital letters.

NYT
“WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 -- President Bush said today HE IS CERTAIN that elements of the Iranian government are supplying deadly roadside bombs that kill American troops in Iraq, even if the innermost circle of the government is not involved.

“Mr. Bush said IT HAD BEEN ESTABLISHED BEYOND A DOUBT that a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force is supplying Shiite groups inside Iraq

“WE KNOW THAT,” Mr. Bush said at a White House news conference.

“Mr. Bush rejected the idea that the intelligence about the Quds Forces might be no more reliable than that about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. “I CAN SAY WITH CERTAINTY. . . blah, blah, blah.”

Yes, the Highest Source has spoken, but without an iota of evidence. Unfortunately, he is the Highest Source of Lies, not the highest source of truth. I wish some historian would tell me if Bush is not the most prolific and persistent liar in the history of the American presidency.

His administration is a fountain of lies, and yet his lies are so easily seen through and so easily shown to be false that most eight year olds can get away with their clumsy falsehoods better than Bush can . . . and yet he’s still doing it!

He is one of the great practitioners of the Big Lie, which I discussed on my other blog, FLIGHTS OF PEGASUS, January 12. (Sources are given there.)

The “Big Lie” technique consists in telling a lie so colossal that no one would believe anybody would have the nerve to try to pass off such a monstrous fabrication as the truth. The lie is so big that it must be true. The masses of people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed and afraid to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even when the facts which prove a Big Lie to be a lie are brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. “For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world.”

Add to the Big Lie analysis what I wrote in “Not Paying Attention”: The main reason that Bush is able to float his lies on the sea of American public opinion is that most Americans don’t pay attention. They parrot the slogans they are told are respectable, and they believe in a few simple “facts” which are usually falsehoods.

So, while those of us who pay attention marvel that a man who has been repeatedly exposed as a liar can have the effrontery to stand up and lie again, and even to expect us to take him at his word as he has done in previous lies, there are plenty of Americans who even now are nodding their heads and parroting what he says.

The Hypersensitive "One Issue" Mentality Strikes Again

The attack on Mitt Romney by the executive director of a Jewish organization struck me as not only laughable but also an excellent example of what I call the “one issue mentality” of many Jews. The “one issue mentality” measures and judges everything according to how it could affect Jews. The “effect on Jews” is the one issue. When Romney chose to announce his candidacy at a place supremely symbolic of American enterprise, The Ford Museum, which also happens to be in Romney’s home state, a Jewish organization applied the “one issue” test and decided that for Jews it was undesirable that Romney should make his announcement in a place honoring Henry Ford. Had Romney sought expert advice, he might be announcing his candidacy at a “Holocaust museum” or the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The Jewish group’s criticism is not only silly; it will backfire. Now many people who never knew that Ford published a newspaper and a book critical of Jewish influences will read those very publications online! I’ve supplied a link below.

Here’s the news report.

From Forbes.com, Feb 12
The National Jewish Democratic Council "is deeply troubled by Governor Romney's choice of locations to announce his presidential campaign," executive director Ira Forman said in a statement.
"Romney has been traveling the country talking about inclusiveness and understanding of people from all walks of life," Forman said. "Yet he chooses to kick (off) his presidential campaign on the former estate of a well-known and outspoken anti-Semite and xenophobe."
Forman said Romney's "embrace of Henry Ford and association of Ford's legacy with his presidential campaign raises serious questions about either the sincerity of Romney's words or his understanding of basic American history."

Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Romney, said the candidate will go ahead with his announcement as planned.
"Governor Romney believes our country needs to put innovation at the forefront if we are to ensure a stronger, safer and more prosperous America," Fehrnstrom said. "The Ford Museum embodies that bold, innovative spirit."

Here you can read the actual articles from Henry Ford’s newspaper, “The Dearborn Independent”, which were collected into a book: The International Jew
— The World’s Foremost Problem



I suggested above that Ira Forman’s complaint would backfire by awakening a new generation to Henry Ford’s anti-Jewish ideas, and that’s true, but I question that “backfire” is the correct word. It is common knowledge (and I have seen private documents revealed in lawsuits which verify the fact) that some major Jewish organizations deliberately instill fear of antisemitism into the minds of Jews generally so that they will contribute money to the organizations which promise to protect them.

Here is more wailing, from Israel, on the same tune:

”Ha’aretz” It is worth reading because of its other complaints.

Not Paying Attention

The main reason that Bush & Co., including supporting operatives like Fox News, are able to float their lies on the sea of American public opinion is that most Americans don’t pay attention.

First, the majority of Americans simply aren’t very interested in what their country does internationally. They have the vaguest idea where countries like Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Afghanistan are. A woman once said to me with a dismissive gesture, “Africa is down that way somewhere.” These are the people whose interests don't go beyond their own families, romances, jobs, health, homes, clothes, vehicles, television entertainment, and favorite sports teams.

The result: Most Americans are abysmally ignorant about everything which is important to their political leaders, to the powerful lobbyists such those which make up the Israel Lobby, and to the heads of international corporations such as armaments manufacturers and Big Oil.

But wait, it gets worse. Our rulers are happier with an indifferent population than with an informed one, but a population which accepts the beliefs it is told to accept makes the rulers even happier. After all there are elections to consider, and the need for acquiescence to taxation – especially the vast thefts from the workers needed to finance wars – and the hunger for people to join the military. And, ultimately, it is crucial to persuade people that they are better off with what they have than they would be if they rebelled.

In order to create opinions, people are bombarded every day with propaganda posing as “news” and “opinion". It follows, unfortunately, that even the terminally ignorant and uninterested have opinions. They parrot the slogans they are told are respectable, and they believe in a few simple “facts” which are usually falsehoods.

Here's the main point I want to make: If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, very little knowledge is even more dangerous. Because they are not interested and aren't paying enough attention, the mass of people believe that they have been presented with proof of facts when they have been presented with no such thing. Witness the lies which led much of the populace to enthusiastically support an invasion of Iraq. Even though reality has dampened that enthusiasm, I’ve heard that there are still Fox News followers who believe that Iraq was behind 9/11, that Sadaam Hussein was friendly with Al Qaeda, and even that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” and was on the fast track to making a nuclear bomb. It is amazing how a Big Lie can outlive all proof to the contrary!

The root of the trouble is that people don’t question and don’t distinguish between proof and mere assertion. Like a microorganism that can distinguish only between light and dark, they cannot sort out the gray areas where the truth lies. They listen to a burst of double-talk and obediently come away with a “fact” and an opinion.

Here is the example which triggered my diatribe. On Sunday, an anonymous group of US officials showed journalists what they said was proof that Iranian agents had smuggled weapons to Iraq, including "explosively formed penetrators". The officials refused to allow reporters to name them or to record their briefing, but instead just released pictures of weapons.

NYT
“BAGHDAD, Feb. 11 — Senior United States military officials on Sunday literally put on the table their first public evidence of the contentious assertion that Iran supplies Shiite extremist groups in Iraq with some of the most lethal weapons in the war.”

Comment: Persons who pay attention are immediately on guard because they remember the completely fabricated “evidence” that has us mired in Iraq. To the dodos, however, the message is already clear: Iran is supplying America’s enemies in Iraq with lethal weapons! Iran is killing our boys!

“Never before displayed in public, the weapons included squat canisters designed to explode and spit out molten balls of copper that cut through armor. The canisters, called explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s, are perhaps the most feared weapon faced by American and Iraqi troops here.”

Comment: Wow! Canisters! Never before displayed in public! Even though they could have been made in Cincinnati, here they are, on display. That must prove something.

Watch for the weasel words and innuendo, some of which I’ve put in caps:

“Officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the OFFICIALS SAID link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories. The officials also ASSERTED, WITHOUT PROVIDING DIRECT EVIDENCE, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was AN INFERENCE BASED ON GENERAL intelligence assessments.”

Skepticism came naturally to the New York Times reporter, but by now the dodos have stopped reading.

“That inference, and the anonymity of the officials who made it, seemed likely to generate skepticism among those suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to find a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and perhaps even trying to lay the groundwork for war with Iran.”

If the dodos had read this far, they would be attacking the reporter as an unpatriotic swine.

The officials “also LEFT MANY QUESTIONS UNANSWERED, INCLUDING PROOF THAT THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT WAS DIRECTING THE DELIVERY OF WEAPONS.”

“The officials were repeatedly pressed on why they insisted on anonymity in such an important matter affecting the security of American and Iraqi troops.

“The officials also WERE DEFENSIVE ABOUT THE TIMING of disclosing such incriminating evidence, since they had known about it as early as 2004.

“The officials asserted WITHOUT SPECIFIC EVIDENCE that the Iranian security apparatus, called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force controlled delivery of the materials to Iraq. And in A FURTHER INFERENCE, the officials asserted that the Quds Force, sometimes called the I.R.G.C. - Quds, could be involved only with Iranian government complicity.”

So, we have “proof” presented by persons who kept their identities secret who made various “assertions” which were “not based on direct evidence” but instead were based on “inferences ” which were based on “general assessments”. The anonymous “officials” “left many questions unanswered,” including questions about proof “that the Iranian government was directing the delivery of weapons.” They made other assertions “without specific evidence” -- sometimes based on inferences based upon inferences, one of the least trustworthy attempts at “evidence”.

The officials were also “defensive about the timing” of the disclosure of their so-called evidence, which has been around for three years. It appears that the “evidence” was dusted off to support the recent crescendo of anti-Iran war drums heard in Washington and Israel. The display on the tables was flimsy innuendo in the service of propaganda, not evidence that could support action.

So, the dodos now know for a fact that Iran is supplying weapons which are being used to kill our troops.

The final dangerous addition to this mix is patriotism. A former acquaintance of mine thought I was insane for not believing, before the Iraq invasion, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He has admitted I was right but he has not lost his “patriotism”, and he still feeds on the same kind of Bush/neocon lies that poisoned his brain before his country invaded Iraq.

If I asked him today, “If the US were Iran and Canada was Iraq, and the Chinese had invaded Canada, wouldn’t you think the US would be interested in 'interfering' and supplying weapons to the Canadians?”, he would say, “Sure.”

I once asked him these things:

If Israel had been created in California instead of Palestine, based on a 3000 year old book, with the backing of Chinese military force, do you believe that America should fight to take California back? He said, “Of course.”

Would you object if Russia attacked us because we have weapons of mass destruction? He answered, “Of course I'd object!”

If Cuba had nuclear weapons and the US didn't, do you think the US would be justified in creating nuclear weapons? He replied, "Absolutely!"

My punch line is that when I asked him, “How can you apply a different set of standards to what the US does than to what other countries do?” his hesitant but loud reply was,

“Because we’re Americans, dammit!"

You can't argue with that kind of logic.

Defending Against a Supertyrant

As I’ve written before, one of the predictable effects of U.S. foreign policy under George II is the drawing together of other nations in defensive alliances against the Americans – and the heightening of military defenses by individual countries. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin spoke on the latter point in Munich yesterday, blaming U.S. policy for inciting other countries to seek nuclear weapons to defend themselves from an "almost uncontained use of military force.”

"Unilateral, illegitimate actions have not solved a single problem; they have become a hotbed of further conflicts," Putin said at a security forum attracting senior officials from around the world. "One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way."

“It is the almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations" that is forcing countries opposed to Washington to seek to build up nuclear arsenals. "It is a world of one master, one sovereign. ... It has nothing to do with democracy," he said. "This is nourishing the wish of countries to get nuclear weapons. This is very dangerous; nobody feels secure anymore, because nobody can hide behind international law."

"What is a unipolar world? No matter how we beautify this term it means one single centre of power, one single centre of force and one single master. It has nothing in common with democracy because that is the opinion of the majority taking into account the minority opinion. People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don't want to learn it themselves."

So true. Putin spoke bluntly, but even diplomatic words can’t disguise the natural law that nations threatened by a strong potential aggressor (“You are either with us or against us, and you’ve seen what we do to countries that are against us”) seek to increase their strength in order to defend themselves.

One way to increase defensive strength in today’s world, as Putin said, is acquire or increase nuclear arsenals. North Korea reacted to fear of a U.S. attack by taking that route, and it may have been effective. Iran is threatened overtly by nuclear-armed Israel as well as by Bush. Iran knows that Israel has never shown the slightest respect for international law and has aggressively bombed not just neighbors like Lebanon but also countries as far away as Iraq. Just as Putin knows that the Bush United States wants to be the uncontested bully of the world, Iran knows that Israel wants to be the uncontested bully of the Middle East. We see the “Putin Principle” in action as Iran builds up its military power and seeks at least civilian uses of atomic energy. Iranian officials are saying on this day that Iran has no aggressive designs against Israel, and that is no doubt true, but Israel does not respond with similar reassurances to Iran.

The Bush/Israeli way is to use deadly force unrestrainedly against any challenger or even potential challenger, without regard to how many people are killed. World politics have sunk to the lowest possible level: The strongest country openly declares that it, and its dwarfish Iago astride Palestine, will dominate all the other countries of the world, attacking them with nuclear weapons if necessary.

Faced with that situation, nations which feel threatened will increase their strength not only by adding muscle to their own military, but also by forming alliances. The main area of alliances which I see in the making is that part of the Earth which includes Russia, China, and Iran. Afghanistan and Pakistan are in the same geographical area, which includes the potential power of the “Heartland” of Geopolitical theory. Those countries don’t have to love one another to draw together for mutual defense. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Another area for natural alliances for defense against U.S. abuse of power is Latin America. The seeds are visibly sprouting now.

This is going to be a long-term process. We shall see.