American control of Iran began in 1941 when the United States provided military aid to allow the British to invade Iran to seize its oil. Britain could no longer pay Iran royalties on oil production, so decided to steal it.
The British joined the Soviets to invade and partition Iran, in the same manner the Germans had joined the Soviets to partition Poland in 1939.
The United States pretended it was neutral in this conquest, but massive American military aid made this invasion possible. During the World War II, Iran was occupied by some 30,000 American troops.
Americans filled key positions in Iran’s government, so the nation functioned as a colony of the American empire.
After the war ended, most American troops were withdrawn, but thousands of soldiers and civilians remained to advise the Iranian government, military, and police to support the dictator they had installed.
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With anti-statist paranoia and acts of vandalism now part of the coronavirus crisis in the UK, in one outrageous video sent to me by a friend (I will not produce it, due to the responsibility to prevent the spread of false information) a British man denounced the virus as a hoax. What is most shocking is that he included (17 years on!) an appeal to the fact the Iraq War was based on lies.
The continued disbelief towards any government statements and guidance shows, despite attempts to put Tony Blair’s shame to rest or somehow apologize for his supposed mistakes, the grave injustice of the Iraq War has still not been resolved. Instead, the failure to punish Blair sent the message that deception and conspiracy are the rule rather than the exception for the statists, with Tony Blair only being an example of what the British state continues to be. The image of the craven, dishonourable, lying villain who once led the Labour Party has only grown more in people’s minds every year Blair continuously eluded punishment. Rulers believed they ruled over goldfishes, but the citizens have not forgotten anything. On the contrary, their suspicions have only grown to target ever more politicians.
It is the role of the state to calm the people, to possess agencies and departments that offer the most impartial and well-intentioned information. Throughout the handling of the coronavirus outbreak, there is no doubt that the British government has indeed been true to its word. Its guidance has been appropriate, its measures aimed genuinely to save the resources of the National Health Service. However, it is not enough to tell the truth sometimes. If the rages of the citizenry are to be appeased, the government must refrain from deception at all times. If it can’t, its downfall must be witnessed by that same citizenry or their distrust will only increase and their cooperation will decrease.
It is a fact that the British government has not sufficiently apologized for the 2003 War on Iraq, nor offered sufficient compensation to its victims. Its supposed investigation of the crime in the Chilcot Inquiry is considered to be a farce by anyone remotely interested in seeing the issue addressed properly. The criminals even continue to be celebrated and followed dearly by other politicians, and their criminal policy continues to remain in effect the policy of the state as the “war on terror” still fails again and again year after year, decade after decade, civilian death after civilian death. That continued trail of terrorism and destruction is, as far as Britain’s involvement is concerned, still the fault of Tony Blair and other staunch pro-US individuals in the British political scene.
The best way to put an end to the distrust towards the state, both at home and abroad, is to clean the stain of dishonour – to sacrifice our former great statesman for the greater good of stability and order. Clearly, as a man who took great leaps and risks in the interests of national security, Blair himself would be the first to support the proposition as follows. The appropriate solution has already been trialled by the British Parliament in the case of other citizens whose terrorism was undeniable. Tony Blair and the others of his former cabinet should be quickly stripped of British citizenship, deported to Iraq as terrorists, and forced to face justice in the courts in that country. Once this selfless sacrifice for our country clears up our image around the world and actually protects us (unlike the pointless loss of so many brave soldiers) Americans may be then inspired to deport George W. Bush and other selfless patriots who are so willing to give their lives for the cause of national security.
In the interests of long-term internal stability, there needs to be a proper acknowledgment by the British state that the 2003 War on Iraq was an unprecedented crime based entirely on lies and deceit, and its criminal perpetrators must be investigated by an appropriately empowered committee and brought to justice. As well as continuously infuriating Muslims across the world, our inexplicable failure to make Tony Blair pay the price has the potential to turn entire generations of British people against the state, as they view almost everything it says with suspicion.
Letting politicians lie with impunity and allowing them to wander freely for years afterwards is undoing centuries of accumulated trust in political institutions within only decades, and is far more damaging to society than allowing individual soldiers to get away with war crimes. It sets the state against the people in a way that is very difficult to resolve. In the end, it entails elevated risks to government employees and others forced to act on the front lines as the public face of liars despite also being victims of these liars. One cannot even deliver the most basic policies without facing constant distrust, and the constant and increasingly common refrain that the government is lying. Such distrust ultimately leads the government employees to sympathize more with the disgruntled citizenry and less with their employer, too, creating many hairline fractures running to the very foundations of what the state actually is.
At one point or another, it is the job of a state to be pragmatic. As with this virus, the state must take decisions that serve a greater order and a greater good, and not necessarily what is comforting. Tony Blair is not useful in the UK, and would be a useful agent for Britain’s safety if placed on trial in Iraq. Whatever the outcome, it would help protect the lives of all British people around the world, who would be at decreased risk of terrorist activity. It would help restore the trust British people have in their government, and would deflate wild and potentially harmful conspiracy theories. It would function as a genuine apology for what we did, and there would be no doubt that there are consequences for abusing one’s office to tell lies.
Excerpts from the interview, April 2, 2020; translated by Tom Sunic.
… A few years ago I wrote that only in a state of emergency one can take full measure of somebody. Now we know where we are at. A statesman makes decisions, gives orders and requisitions. Macron, however, relies on the advice of “experts” who, as a rule, never agree with each other.
… There was a wish to include in the logic of the (free) market a sector which by definition lies outside the free market. Public services have been systematically weakened and destroyed. Now it is us who are paying the price. And this is just the beginning, because the confinement will last for weeks, if not for months. We are not at the end of the beginning, much less at the beginning of the end.
… At the start, as a rule, everyone stands together. However, as we arrive at “the day after” and when the time comes for accountability, the people’s judgment will show no mercy. If this matter ends up, as I suspect it will, in a social crisis of huge magnitude, then the Yellow Vests movement will look like, more than ever before, as a dress rehearsal. We can now clearly see that it will be most difficult for the working class and the middle class to put up with [coronavirus] confinement.
… [The European Union ] didn’t commit suicide for the simple reason that it had already been dead. One of the merits of the crisis has been to allow everybody to see its dead body. Faced with the epidemic the leaders of the European Commission are showing signs of shock. They are now going to release funds which will be distribute by “helicopter,” after ramping up the monetary printing press. But in real terms nothing comes of it. It was not Europe that came to the rescue of Italy, but China, Russia and Cuba. Fidel Castro’s posthumous revenge!
… [The economic crisis ] will last much longer than the current epidemic; it will do far more damage and kill far more people. If it goes hand in hand with a global financial crisis, we will be witnessing then a tsunami: an economic crisis and therefore a social crisis, financial crisis, health crisis, ecological crisis, migration crisis. In 2011 I published a book called Au bord du gouffre (On the Brink of the Abyss). It seems to me that we have arrived there now.
… We should also anticipate political and geopolitical consequences of staggering proportions. The unfolding of the epidemic in a country such as the United States, whose health system, organized of course in a liberal fashion, is one of the world’s least performing, will be challenged to play a decisive role. It must be followed very closely (the global epicenter of the epidemic today is New York). The United States will likely come out of it much weaker than Russia and China, its only two rivals for the time being. Again, we are only at the beginning…
“The Fear of the Coronavirus, and the Reality of the Flu,” by Simon Murray, HCPLive, February 10, 2020. The final sentence says the outbreak “serves as a surrogate for a good deal of xenophobia and fear of the country [China] itself.”
Several articles reported that the flu had, at the time, killed more people than the virus. Today, journalistsatmanypublicationsareslamming President Trump for having compared coronavirus to the flu, but their colleagues did the same thing. Vox didn’t just compare coronavirus to the flu, but said the new disease might “look more like the common cold than like SARS.”
Vox shamelessly deleted an article that assured readers we wouldn’t get “a deadly pandemic.”
Thismattersbecause many journalists now refuse to cover President Trump’s press conferences. They say the briefings are “falsehood-filled,” to use New York Magazine’s phrase. They want a monopoly on information, which is not reassuring when they are so reliably unreliable.
President Trump made the same mistake many journalists did, and he didn’t act strongly when he should have. However, he did ban travel from China and imposed a quarantine on returning travelers.
On January 31, Joe Biden attacked President Trump’s “hysteria xenophobia [sic], hysterical xenophobia.” In March, Bernie Sanders said if the choice were his, he wouldn’t close the borders; he would listen to “scientists” instead.
This all seems ridiculous now that we are trapped in our own homes. It would have been better to have one large wall around the whole country rather than countless little ones inside it.
The press also heaped scorn on President Trump for offering “false hope” when he mentioned the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
Twitter removed a tweet from Laura Ingraham that claimed there were “very promising results.” Once again, a tech company decided what people should read.
President Trump didn’t say it was a cure. He said there was promising evidence, but the New York Times tried to blame him when a couple foolishly drank fish-tank cleaner. The husband died and his wife barely survived. “The drug, known as chloroquine phosphate or chloroquine,” wrote Neil Vigdor in The New York Times, “has been bandied about by President Trump during White House briefings on the coronavirus pandemic as a potential ‘game changer’.” But President Trump had not recommended that specific chemical — chloroquine phosphate — something the Axios news site admitted when it deleted a tweet blaming him.
On April 2, thousands of doctors reported in a poll that hydroxychloroquine actually is the most effective known treatment for coronavirus. A small study from China reported it is effective in treating patients with mild cases. A test of the drug’s preventive power is also underway. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom many Democrats want to be their presidential nominee, has already begun a larger clinical trial. It’s wrong to claim hydroxychloroquine works, but President Trump wasn’t just making things up. If he was selling “snake oil,” so is Andrew Cuomo.
President Trump should have done more to prevent this crisis. His claim that it could be over by Easter was stupid. Of course, had he done what was necessary, journalists would have said he was using Nazi tactics. Some do anyway.
The Forward claimed that President Trump referring to a “foreign virus” is “as dangerous as coronavirus itself” and “straight out of the Nazi playbook.”
If only. Had he done so a few months ago, I could take my family out to dinner instead of being stuck in my house.
In an emergency, we need to know whom we can trust for accurate information. President Trump sometimes exaggerates, dissembles, or outright lies, but so do journalists, usually because they want to attack the president. Worse, many journalists believe they should decide what we should know.
Whoever is right, our economy has collapsed, millions are unemployed, thousands are dead, and people are wearing masks just to go to the grocery store. You can make a strong case that if President Trump had taken “racist” measures sooner, we would have avoided the worst. Of course, if Joe Biden thinks “hysterical xenophobia” was the problem, Democrats would have made a terrible hash of things.
Journalists have power — more than most politicians. Read their stories from the last few months, and see how they used that power.
Nationalism isn’t “as dangerous as coronavirus.” Nationalism could have stopped the virus. I’m frustrated with President Trump, but I’m furious with these journalists.
By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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