IMAGINE

Mohammad Alireza: you're a little slow on the uptake

 And you're being dishonest to boot. I didn't say (as you claim): It's okay for you to visit Counterpunch but you rabidly advocate that nobody else should  

However, there is a differnce between visting a given website to browse or read the articles and endorsing that website or the views expressed on that website (implicitly or explicitly). Counterpunch, as I mentioned before, is a cesspool of supporters of murderous tyrants. Got it?

To AMIR1973:

Let me get this straight. It's okay for you to visit Counterpunch but you rabidly advocate that nobody else should because of a few non-kosher articles that don't suit your political pallet, correct?

Is not censorship one of the central features of countries run by tyrants?

I suggest you broaden your

I suggest you broaden your reading material and take off your blinkers because reality has many shades of gray.

Israel doesn't want war either

"Iran doesn't want war, let alone iranian people. US doesn't want war, let alone American people! War is only in the benefit of Israel. Of course if it is waged by blood and furtne of Americans! " Disenchanted

Israel doesn't want war either. Who brainwashed our youths about Israel wanting the war?  Mullahs?

To AMIR1973:

So you disapprove of defenders of tyrants, do you? Let's name a few tyrants: Mubarak, the Saudi Royal family, Bahrain rulers, Saddam Hussien (when he was behaving himself)…..all defended by the United States and American corporate media like The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CNN, etc.

So, based on your logic these mainstream news outlets should not be read or watched because they defend tyrants.

Anybody with half a brain and some education is able to distinguish between nonsense and reality, and both can be found in ALL news outlets, including Counterpunch and the press outlets you listed.

I suggest you broaden your reading material and take off your blinkers because reality has many shades of gray.

Mohammad Alireza, my "allergy" is to defenders of tyrants....

Such as the IRI, Syria, USSR, and Cuba -- of which Counterpunch and its ilk (Press TV, Pravda, Russia Today, Xinhua, etc) are practitioners.

Just for you AMIR1973:

Given your allergic reaction to Counterpunch AMIR1973 I thought I'd post an item written by a former editor of the Wall Street Journal and former Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasurey under Reagan.

War Abroad; Austerity at Home

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has become a caricature of hypocrisy. Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against Iran and to convince Iran that “it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.”

If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to get on with the main point, Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo. Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?

Washington sends the FBI to raid the homes of peace activists and puts a grand jury to work to create a case against them for aiding a nebulous enemy by protesting Washington’s wars. The Department of Homeland Security unleashes goon cop thugs to brutalize peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Washington fabricates cases against Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Tarek Mehanna that negate the First Amendment by equating free speech with terrorism and spying. Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, pushes an ordinance that outlaws public protests in the City of Chicago. The list goes on. And in the midst of it all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington hypocrites accuse Russia and China of stifling dissent.

Washington’s grotesque hypocrisy goes unremarked by the American “media” and in the debates for the Republican presidential nomination. The corrupt Obama “Justice” Department turns a blind eye while goon cop thugs commit gratuitous violence against the citizens who pay the goon cop thugs’ undeserved salaries.

But it is in the War Crimes Arena where Washington shows the greatest hypocrisy. The self-righteous bigots in Washington are forever rounding up heads of weak states whose countries were afflicted by civil wars and sending them off to be tried as war criminals. All the while Washington indiscriminately kills large numbers of civilians in six or more countries, dismissing its own war crimes as “collateral damage.” Washington violates its own law and international law by torturing people.

On January 13, 2012, Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy Newspapers reported that Spanish judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez re-launched an investigation into Washington’s torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Prison. The previous day British authorities opened an investigation into CIA renditions of kidnapped persons to Libya for torture.

Rosenberg reports that although the Obama regime has refused to investigate the obvious crimes of the Bush regime, and one might add its own obvious crimes, “other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.”

There is no question that Bush/Cheney/Obama have trashed the US Constitution, US statutory law, and international law. But Washington, having overthrown justice, has established that might is right. No foreign government is going to send its forces into the US to drag the war criminals out and place them on trial.

The War Criminal Court at the Hague is reserved for Washington’s show trials. No foreign government is going to pay Washington several hundred millions of dollars to turn Bush, Cheney, Obama and their minions over to them in the way the US bought Milosevic from Serbia in order to create the necessary spectacle at the War Crimes Tribunal to justify Washington’s naked aggression against Serbia.

No government can be perfect, because all governments are composed of humans, especially those humans most attracted by power and profit. Nevertheless, in my lifetime I have witnessed an extraordinary deterioration in the integrity of government in the United States. We have reached the point where nothing that our government says is believable. Not even the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, the GDP growth rate, much less Washington’s reasons for its wars, its police state, and its foreign and domestic policies.

Washington has kept America at war for ten years while millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes. War and a faltering economy have exploded the national debt, and a looming bankruptcy is being blamed on Social Security and Medicare.

The pursuit of war continues. On January 23 Washington’s servile puppets–the EU member states–did Washington’s bidding and imposed an oil embargo on Iran, despite the pleas of Greece, a member of the EU. Greece’s final ruin will come from the higher oil prices from the embargo, as the Greek government realizes.

The embargo is a reckless act. If the US navy tries to intercept oil tankers carrying Iranian oil, large scale war could break out. This, many believe, is Washington’s aim.

It is easy for an embargo to become a blockade, which is an act of war. Remember how easily the UN Security Council’s “no-fly zone” over Libya was turned by the US and its NATO puppets into a military attack on Libya’s armed forces and population centers supportive of Gaddafi.

As the western “democracies” become increasingly lawless, the mask of law that imperialism wears is stripped away and with it the sheen of morality that has been used to cloak hegemonic ambitions. With Iran surrounded and with two of Washington’s fleets in the Persian Gulf, another war of aggression seems inevitable.

Experts say that an attack on Iran by the US and NATO will disrupt the flow of oil that the world needs. The crazed drive for hegemony is so compelling that Washington and its EU puppets show no hesitation in putting their own struggling economies at risk of sharply rising energy costs.

War abroad and austerity at home is the policy that is being imposed on the western “democracies.”

//www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/25/war-abroad-...

Oops...another article posted on Counerpunch. So it must be BAD and not read, at least according to AMIR1973.

How is your allergy doing?

NajafVisitor

Duly noted. Thanks for the clarification. However, the other two articles posted by Mohammad Alireza in the comment section and a number of prior articles posted or linked to by him have been from Counterpunch.

AMIR1973/Observations

This article is not from the Counterpunch website. It is from Commongrounds news. According to the link, it was originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

As If IR Criminals Care!

As If IR Criminals Care who they kill! As if they haven't killed tens of thousands of Iranians in cold blood! As if they did not provoke and prolong a war that killed a million Iranians and cost Iran US$500 billion! Why should they care about who gets killed if and when they acquire WMDs and use them!!!

Mohammad Alireza, please include articles from Press TV, Kayhan,

Russia Today, Pravda, Xinhua, Syrian and North Korean media too. Because Counterpunch alone is not sufficient for "independent" media voices (LOOLLL).....

A war between US & Iran only benefits ISRAEL!

     The way you portray it, it is all zealot mullahs fault! You forget that those in power in Israel are bunch of racist, warmongers whose appetite for power does not exclude manipulating or even eliminating the President of United States of America!

     Bavafa had many good points in his post. It's not about the destructive power of nukes -Of which Israel illegally has hundreds and Iran has none and in any case does not makes any sense for Iran to use it. Not just because Iran would be demolished in seconds but because, where is she going to hit it? Any attack would not only kill bunch of innocent Israelis it will evaporate Palestinians as well!-. It's about ending the status quo in Middle East and ending Israel undisputed hegemony of decades!

    Iran doesn't want war, let alone iranian people. US doesn't want war, let alone American people! War is only in the benefit of Israel. Of course if it is waged by blood and furtne of Americans! 

You are correct Amir jaan - thanks for the reminder

and yes...Iran has been in the "shadow of war" for the past 32 years--thanks to the IR.  That's their best survival tactic.

Khodeti--or in this case: khodetooneed! 

Iran in the Shadow of War

Given that few click on links I'm copy-pasting this article for those outside of Iran sitting in the comfort of their secure and safe homes:

Iran in the Shadow of War
by BEHZAD YAGHMAIAN

As the prospect of a deadly confrontation between Iran and the United States increases, the fate of 78 million Iranians remains absent in the calculus of war on both sides. Invisible in the current war discourse, Iranians are caught between a repressive government with a reckless and dangerous foreign policy, and an outside world largely uninterested in their voices and their lives. “We are trapped. We live under the heavy shadow of war,” a resident of Tehran told me.

The rhetoric of war is radicalizing the foreign policy environment in the United States, and empowering the hawks on both sides of the conflict. Promising military action to stop Iran has become a central campaign strategy by Republican presidential contenders. Toughness and readiness to wage war is becoming a prerequisite for victory in 2012, pushing the Obama Administration towards a riskier approach towards Iran.

On its part, the Iranian government is using the threat of war with the United States to repress its internal opposition and further reaffirm its grip over the society. The pro-government media is inundated with proclamations of victory of the Islamic Republic in the case of a war with the U.S. and its allies. Although the Iranian regime avoided actual confrontation with the United States in the past, the situation is substantially different now. Embattled by factional struggles, and weakened by an ailing economy, the dominant faction of the regime may welcome a limited war with the United States.

The road between a war of words and covert actions, and a real military confrontation may prove too short. The Strait of Hormuz has become an ammunition depot ready to explode by deliberate action, or a simple misjudgment. Meanwhile, there is no echo of the voices of the Iranian people in the media and policy circles. Their opinions of war and peace remain absent in the discussion of the conflict.

Iranians have been living with the daily economic and political consequences of an undeclared war. The current standoff is reawakening the horrifying memories of the eight-year war with Iraq: the deafening sound of sirens in the dark of the night, missiles destroying homes and schools, young men returning from the front on wheel chairs, and unending funerals.

The United States and its allies are using elaborate economic sanctions to drain the resources of the Iranian regime, ignite domestic revolt, and force the government to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Sanctions are, however, chocking the Iranian people. While the government continues enriching uranium, sanctions penalize the Iranian people through dizzying increase in the price of food, gasoline and other basic items in ordinary people’s basket of consumer goods. Food inflation in Iran is currently at 50%, more than double the official inflation rate.

Fear of new sanctions and war also created an exodus from the local currency to the dollar and other major currencies. The nearly 60% depreciation of the Iranian rial, and the embargo on Iran’s oil exports will further increase food and other consumer goods prices. The dire economic conditions of Iranians with fixed income is a painful reminder of standing in long line for hours to buy milk, oil, and other basic necessities during the war with Iraq.

While grappling with the economic consequences of sanctions, Iranians are facing the psychological effects and the potential social instability and violence of an undeclared war. The assassination of nuclear scientists and sporadic explosions in Tehran and elsewhere in the country are bringing back memories Iranians have been trying hard to forget.

In the years after the war with Iraq, Iran remained free of bombings, explosions, and other forms of violence that devastated Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Iranians cherish this stability while they oppose the Islamic Republic and its suppression of people’s basic rights. The eight years of war with Iraq were the most repressive years of the Islamic Republic.

The Escalation of the conflict with the United States will give new ammunition to the government to further repress Iran’s fragile and weakened democracy movement. While opposing their government, they remain fiercely against war, covert, or declared. The history of the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the images of the mistreatment of the locals—even the dead—by the U.S. forces should dispel any illusion that Iranian might support war.

Two years ago, after the rigged presidential elections of June 2009, Iranians poured into the streets of the capital in a remarkable theater of courage and defiance. Men and women, and young and older Iranians peacefully called for true democracy in Iran, and respect for the civil and social rights. Iranian protesters, meanwhile, presented a different image of their country to the rest of the world. Contrary to the confrontational foreign policy of their government, they spoke to the world in the language of peace, showing the desire to live in harmony with those outside Iran.

The peaceful protests of the Iranian people were violently put down by the government. A sense of paralysis and despair prevailed. Silenced by the state, the protesters retired to their private lives. Their silence should not, however, be read as a sign of support for military confrontation instigated by Iran, or the United States and others.

BEHZAD YAGHMAIAN is a professor of political economy at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and the author of Embracing the Infidel: Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Journey West and the forthcoming The Accidental Capitalist: A People’s Story of the New China (March 2012).

Yes, AMIR1973, it's from Counterpunch, your favorite site:

//www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/24/iran-in-the...

AO jaan,

they can't write or say anything without getting the Jews involved.  

I believe the correct spelling is Jooooooooooooooooooooz. Regards.

Create enemy and stay on power

Create enemy is what ruling mullahs are doing in order to stay in power.

   For 2500 we never had any problem with jews. In fact, our king Koroush Kabir was very supportive of jews. The friendship between people of Iran and Israel is necessary to overthrow Islamic criminal gang from Iran.

              Long live Iran and Israel  

One common trait of IR supporters

they can't write or say anything without getting the Jews involved.  

Vildemose: Lack of dignity is our biggest problem!

Vildemose: we need courage and not cowardness. I don't know any nation who have been so degraded by its rulers and yet does not want to fight it off like Iranians.

IR has ruled over Iranians because people like yourself are not prepared to pay price to fight IR. Do you think IR can be fought with afew nice or nasty words in Internet ? At the end of the day a courageous group of people will finish off IR like it happened in Libya  and people like you will not not be there when it comes to show courage and dignity.

When we take a position of

When we take a position of antiwar it is immediately assumed we support the regime, which makes things that much harder.

An honest antiwar position would put the blame for tensions with the US, Israel, and other countries squarely where it belongs, with the ruling Islamist terrorist tyranny. The ilk that you sympathize with (e.g. Counterpunch, CASMII, etc) are IRI apologists, because they consider the US to be the Great Satan and Israel to be the Little Satan. The IRI is just being "independent" and standing up to the Big Evil. Sound familiar?

To AMIR1973:

Why do you assume it is my job to defend the regime?

My interest is Iran and the Iranian people, which unfortunately is being ruled by superstitious, illegitimate, power hungry, criminals.

And when you folks outside of Iran advocate a military attack you are playing into their hands as this only strengthens them.

Change can take place in Iran but not in this atmosphere of warmongering.

When we take a position of antiwar it is immediately assumed we support the regime, which makes things that much harder. Why can't you understand this?

Mohammad Alireza: your articles & the Counterpunch website...

That you always link to are the height of stupidity, ignorance, hypocrisy, arguing in bad faith, defense of murderous tyrannies, and dishonesty. Counterpunch is a cesspool of propagandists and apologists for the Syrian regimes (like Assad's official spokeswomen, Buthana Shaaban), IRI (like the Press TV people who contribute articles), Stalinist regimes (like their frequent articles by Fidel Castro), and of course, Alexander Cockburn himself, who cheered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and whose father, Claud Cockburn (of whom Alexander is a huge admirer), applauded the crackdown on the Solidarity movement by the Polish communist dictatorship and whose close associate in Spain was Stalin's personal envoy. And like I said, you have no response whatsoever to my FACTS. Got it?

To: Mohammad

To: Mohammad Alireza

Parroting cliches about the Great Satan and Savama and An's talking points are getting to be too boring.

Let me tell you one thing, even if America goes through a deep depression, it will be able to bounce back..You know why?? Because it has the know-how to build everything from scratch. Because it is not a rentier-state and because its a pioneer in innovation and ingenuity.. Don't worry about America. We'll be just fine.

Again, Yawnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

To AMIR1973:

Your facts got drowned out by your stupid and ignorant title.

 To: Mohammad

 To: Mohammad Alireza

Yawn.........................Khodeti. You can slander and accuse people of being Mossad agents....Your Jewish friends???LOL

 A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

To vildemose:

When I wrote the above article back in 2007 I emailed a copy of it to my Jewish-American friends – numbering over a dozen -- and they all supported my views.

Slandering me by calling me anti-Semitic will be ignored as these days it's the knee-jerk reaction to anything that exposes Israel's Gestapo tactics and its apartheid policies.

As far as understanding America, well these days I don't think anybody understands America given the radical changes it is going through. But I'd say the two quotes below do a good job of describing America in 2012:

"mass unemployment, foreclosures, increasing poverty for the many (with corporate bailouts and bonuses for the egregious few); a criminal culture with the highest rate of homicide in the world and a corrections system that contains 25 per cent of all the world’s prisoners; a high incidence of violence throughout the culture, including crime, domestic violence, and warfare, along with movies, TV, and video games; a social numbness and clinically diagnosed “empathy deficit disorders”; consumption of two-thirds of the global market in antidepressants with at least 164 million users; a rank on the worldwide Happy Planet Index in 2009 of 150th; fully 25 per cent of American households had only one person, a rate of aloneness probably the highest in the world."

"The culmination of a hustling, laissez-faire capitalist culture is that everything gets dumbed down, that all significant questions are ignored, and that every human activity is turned into a commodity, and anything goes if it sells. What we have is domination by corporate media, politics via poll-driven sound bites, a foreign policy based on unilateralism and preemptive strikes, a failing newspaper industry, a poorly informed citizenry, the unemployed winding up destitute, weak (or no) mass transit systems, and a health care system that ranks thirty-seventh in the world."

//www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/23/the-decline...

Mohammad Alireza: I already work for Mossad

Mossad has a couple of vacancies and I am sure they will accept you both with open arms --- of course this assumes you are not already working for them.

It's nice to see that you have no response whatsoever to the facts I cited. Too bad for you  :-(

Arash Kamangir: You ought

Arash Kamangir: You ought to be ashmaed of yourself. Only a mentally disturbed person wish death on his own family...

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Even if Israel becomes

Even if Israel becomes IRI's best friend, it will not change the geopolitical calculus as far the US is concerned. Please get this through your anti-semitic head. You don't understand America, Mr. Mohammad Alireza...

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Any Attack from Israel and West is welcomed

All those of us who love Iran and have always wished the best for our country welcome any attack of any nature (armed or unarmed) against IR because we know IR will collapse under these attacks. The price to pay is high ( My family are aslo in Iran) but it will be worth it. IR has been a disgrace for Iran and we want it eleminated.

To Artificial Intelligence:

Pardon the mistake as my previous post should have been addressed to "I despise fascists"…

However, please note that the original article was written back in 2007 as pointed out in the note at the end.

The article does not cover the issue of IRI's responsibility in creating problems that could lead to war; it only is addressing the issue of pre-emptive military action by Israel to end IRI's nuclear activities.

However, the dynamics in Iran are changing fast and many are coming to the realization that a small radical faction is not only pursuing policies that are extremely dangerous but that this same group is directly causing the collapse of the economy.

The silver lining in this is that if enough Iranians realize this and are able to identify those responsible they may rise up in anger and throw these fanatics overboard.

Wishful thinking maybe, but if it's a choice between war and getting rid of this regime, Iranians will pick the latter.

To AMIR1973 and Simorg5555:

Mossad has a couple of vacancies and I am sure they will accept you both with open arms --- of course this assumes you are not already working for them.