.png)
The Sun 30 Sept 09
by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
LEADERS of the rich nations have turned their fire on Iran, quite rightly. Last week came news
that the Islamic Republic had been building a secret uranium enrichment plant near Qom. Then the junta fired test missiles. Unlike Iraq under Saddam, there are, in Iran, nuclear developments
that could lead to weapons of mass destruction. It is not an immediate but a future danger, say credible intelligence experts and indeed Barack Obama himself.
Suddenly the president has got uncharacteristically belligerent, instructing Iran to open up all its nuclear facilities for inspection if it wants to avoid “a path that is going to lead us to confrontation”. In May, Obama stood in Washington with the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, who we were told was there to seek assurances that there would be no shift from the conventional US position of total and unconditional support for Israel’s policies right or wrong, known and clandestine.
The US, China, Britain, France, Russia and Germany meet in Geneva tomorrow and, by that time, Iran will be expected to submit to international scrutiny. As a supporter of the now crushed and broken reformers in Iran, I back the ultimatum to the fanatic and bellicose Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But what about that camel in the room? The one we all see but can’t point out? What about the only power in the Middle East, also fanatic and aggressive, which has a stockpile of weapons enough to obliterate the region? Listen people, we need to talk about Israel. And soon. Like now.
I have been in contact with a young Iranian woman who wore a green scarf and lipstick on the streets of Teheran, whose uncle is being tortured in prison there for demonstrating against the results of the election. Somehow she escaped from the country and is in Britain briefl y before going on to the US to make a new life. Let us call her M.
Nobody could hate Ahmadinejad more than M; she hates the whole regime, the treacherous leaders who betrayed the people. When she speaks she often gets asthmatic. But yet, but yet, she finds her passions rising for her country this week because of fears of military strikes by Israel and the manifestly unfair way that Israel is indulged. “I will go back if they attack my country, even if they put me to jail,” M says. “That is my duty. Israel is the enemy of peace and America gives them money to get more arms. I don’t want Iran to have these terrible weapons, but Israel must also be stopped.”
The big powers are moving tentatively towards global de-nuclearisation, taking small but significant steps to show they do want everyone to pitch in. Obama’s decision to shelve the European defence missile programme shows serious intent, so too Gordon Brown’s announcement that Britain would cut down from four to three its Trident missile-carrying submarines. There was a moment this spring, albeit fleeting, when Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington’s chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus breaking the 40-year-old silence and US complicity in its accumulated, un-inspected arsenal. Her reasonable appeal provoked apoplexy in a nation that assumes special, indeed exceptional, treatment.
In the 1960s, Israel successfully hid its weapons from US inspectors. In 1986, Israeli nuclear technical assistant Mordechai Vanunu revealed information about the concealed stockpiles and has been punished ever since. Hubristic Israel no longer cares to deny that it has hundreds of atom and hydrogen bombs and devastating biological “tools”. Netanyahu has been warning he will destroy the Iranian sites if his country feels the danger is real. Now he has just what he wanted, another crisis in the Middle East, to keep up the idea of plucky, vulnerable, endangered little Israel.
Alarmingly, even the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz is on his side. History has made too many Israelis fear all humanity in perpetuity and that fear brings out the worst in that nation. It has predictably rejected the long, sober, unbiased UN report on the last assault on Gaza chaired by Richard Goldstone. He accused Hamas of crimes against Jewish civilians and charged Israel with grave crimes, the breaking of the Geneva convention, punishing and terrorising unarmed civilians.
I have some images of these victims sent to me by a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist. Children turned to ash, blistered mothers weeping, and on and on. There still is no respite for the hungry and dying in Gaza. If Israel can mete out such treatment and not be called to account, just think what the state feels entitled to do to Iran.
The Israeli human rights activist Gideon Spiro bravely asks that his country be subject to the same rules as Iran and all others in the Middle East: “Rein in Israel, compel it to accept a regime of nuclear disarmament and oblige it to open all nuclear, biological and chemical facilities and missile sites to international inspection.” The US has leverage because it maintains and funds Israel. If Obama shies away from this, there can be no moral justification to go for Iran or North Korea or any other rogue state. And the leader whose election and dreams gave hope to millions thereby hastens the end of the world. – The Independent
Akmar says:
IMU has a corner for free copies of The Sun newspaper. And everyday i'll take a copy for myself. What i have been observing so far is The Sun looks like a pro-Israel newspaper. Sorry to say that, but that's my opinion. It's up to the readers whether or not to trust.
My arguments are they always feature brief news abt the imaginary country; be it the PM of Israel admitted to the hosp, or Israel doesn't want to cancel their invasion plan into Palestine. All the news are written such that ignorant readers will feel that Israel is just like any other country in the world, as The Sun did not provide ANY counter-argument to say that Israel is not a country that has a right to exist.
But luckily, this piece of article was published.
And I love it.
But that doesnt mean i'll change my view towards The Sun.
Israel, an imaginary country built on the land of the Palestinians, doing purely evil things on the oppressed and being backed up by the-so-called most powerful nation on earth, the Americans.
Am i too direct?
Perhaps.
But that's the truth....
-AkMaR-
3 comments:
no country named Israel...!?
Your knowledge of Israyhell already surpasses what 99% of people know about the Zionist entity occupying Palestine.
And you have correctly judged the dirty 'state' of Israel to be a fake state.
It is a tragedy that those behind Israyhell are able to use their financial might to spread their propaganda (which has had global reach for some years now) to the effect that the 99% who know nothing about it, think it's a state like any other.
Don't forget though the involvement in the British in all this. They are probably more guilty than the Americans. Israyhell is a British invention, what with the The sykes-Picot agreement and the ridiculous Balfour declaration.
The French also share some blame. They built that nuclear power plant at Dimona and Israyhell has supposedly used it to build a few hundred nuclear warheads including thermonuclear weapons, and the British again illegally shipped them the heavy water via Norway to build those bombs.
The British, French, Americans. All Imperialists who just can't shake the habit, now having their strings firmly pulled by the Zionist slime that is busy crippling the United States.
Well done for yet another honest, thoughtful and informative post. It is refreshing to see another person not fall for such dirty illusions.
The truth of the matter is...
from WhatReallyHappened via Aangirfan...
1. Last Spring, Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington's chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel refused.
2. The United Nations passed a resolution calling on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.
3. The IAEA asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.
4. Iran's formal notification to the IAEA of the planned construction of the backup fuel-rod facility underscores that Iran is playing by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Iran has signed.
5. Iran allows IAEA inspections of all its facilities.
6. Contrary to face-saving claims, it appears that the US and Israel were both caught off guard by Iran's announcement. The reasoning is simple. Had the US or Israel announced the existence of he new facility before Iran's notified the IAEA, it would have put Iran on the defensive.
As it is now, the US and Israel seem to be playing catch up, casting doubt on the veracity of Israel's claims to "know" that Iran is a nuclear threat.
7. The IAEA and all 16 United States Intelligence Agencies are unanimous in agreement that Iran is not building and does not possess nuclear weapons.
8. In 1986, Mordachai Vanunu blew the whistle and provided photographs showing Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons factory underneath the reactor at Dimona.
9. Israel made the same accusations against Iraq that it is making against Iran, leading up to Israel's bombing of the power station at Osirik. Following the invasion of 2003, international experts examined the ruins of the power station at Osirik and found no evidence of a clandestine weapons factory in the rubble.
10. The United Nations has just released the Goldstone Report, a scathing report which accuses Israel of 37 specific war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza earlier this year.
Israel has denounced the report as "Anti-Semitic (even though Judge Goldstone is himself Jewish), and the United States will block the report from being referred to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, thereby making the US Government an accessory after-the-fact.
We all need to be Joe Wilson right now. We need to stand up and scream, "LIAR!" at every politician and every talking media moron that is pushing this war in Iran. And we need to keep dong it until they get the message that we will not be deceived any more.
Israel wants to send your kids off to die in Iran, and YOU are the only one that can stop them. Please forward this comment to your social networks.
c/o edo
http://edo-theinsoundfromwayout.blogspot.com/
Post a Comment