Iran and U.S. Ready to Talk

Again, it’s hard to be too optimistic about Bush and Ahmadinejad, but both are being overcome by more pragmatic forces inside their own countries. A few hours after David Ignatius published this article saying Iran and U.S. are both ready to talk, Solana stated that Iranians are ready to engage. Solana is meeting Rice in a few days and will certainly convey Iranians’ willingness for dialogue with the U.S. to her. So, if nobody acts stupid, the 27-year old deadlock can finally come to an end, soon.

Why should the two countries talk? In case you can’t figure it out, the U.S. is stuck in the Middle East and needs Iran, and Iran needs to come out of isolation and play a serious role in world economy.

Who’s going to benefit? Iranian people because their lives can improve economically. The U.S. can also pressure the government (as a friend that is) to open up the society a bit. Iran can help clean up the Middle East of Sunni/Wahabi extremists and convince Shi’as to play a more constructive role for peace and security in the Middle East.

I known I’m being way too optimistic, but why not?! Let’s cheer up and be happy about this, at least before somebody screws it up!

By the way, these talks will only be meaningful if they are open, direct and transparent. Any kind of secret deal like the Iran-Contra affair (which is probably in some of these dirty politicians’ minds) will be really evil and should be seriously prohibited.

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Bayrou holds a candlelight of hope in France

Francois Bayrou has announced that he will not endorse any of the two candidates of the French presidential elections, has severely citicized Nicolas Sarkozy’s policies of intimidation, concentration of power and undermining democracy in France, as well as Royal’s unrealistic and unsustainable social programs, while praising her better intentions.

He announced the creation of a new party under his leadership, the Democratic Party of France. This party will

“defend the idea that it is the responsability of France and Europe to concentrate their efforts on the fight against global warming, the defense of biodiversity and the development of the Third World, particularly Africa. This new party will defend democracy as its value and its ideal, as values are the things that give meaning to the life of humans and the societies they form.

Francois Bayrou also accepted a televised debate with the Socialist candidate, Segolene Royal, one that she had demanded.

Amidst the horrors of fascism that is coming back to haunt societies from North America (Bush, Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Fukuyama, Huntington, etc. in the USA, Harper and Ignatieff in Canada) to Europe (Blair and Cameron in the UK, Sarkozy and Le Pen in France, Merkel in Germany) to the Middle East (Ahmadinejad in Iran, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebenon, Musharraf in Pakistan, Olmert in Israel and the untouchable Saudis and Al Qaeda in Arabia), men like Bayrou remind us that there are still forces standing for liberty and against this emerging fascism and trying to push it back.

Watch Bayrou’s announcement.

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Politics, Iran, Nuclear, Middle East, War on Iran, Bush, Ahmadinejad, Racism, Sarkozy, Hezbollah, Tehran, Bayrou, French Elections, UK, Blair, Britain, Mullahs

Fascist ideas alive and growing in France

The results of the first round of French elections are out and Jean-Marie Le Pen has ostensibly been defeated. Yet, the man who finished first, did so by stealing Le Pen’s ideas and reselling them along with a much better image and a mighty apparatus to advertise them.

Nicolas Sarkozy did not push Le Pen aside by undermining his fascist ideas, but instead by normalizing, legitimizing and advertising them, bringing them to the open and placing them on the list of his propositions.

In the aftermath of his presidential defeat today, Le Pen announced,

“Nous avons gagné la bataille des idées, la nation et le patriotisme, l’immigration et l’insécurité ont été mis au coeur de la campagne par des adversaires qui, hier encore, écartaient ces notions d’un air dégoûté”

“We have won the battle of ideas, the nation and patriotism; immigration and insecurity were placed at the heart of the [presidential] campaign by some adversaries who, not a long time ago, would push these notions aside with disgust.”

He is clearly referring to Sarkozy and he’s right. Sarkozy’s victory, given the kind of ideas he represented during his campaign, would be yet another clue that brutal fascism and dark utilitarianism are on their way back to plague “the West,” and with it “the Rest.”

I had said before and say again that the man who represented hope, optimism, change and future for France was Francois Bayrou. His failure to win presidency is accompanied by his success to increase the number of his voters over 3 times and thereby emerge as a mighty political force in France. His relative success shows that the unfortunate process that is slowly undermining the ideas that Western nations used to represent is reversible.

Bayrou should not support either of the candidates, since that would undermine the incredible momentum he and his party have gained in brushing aside all political gibberish and standing for what’s right. But it would perhaps be wise for him to indirectly support Segolene Royal by speaking of some of her ideas (or at least emphasizing the ones he likes) and thereby make sure France doesn’t become an enslaved member of the new brand of Anglo-Americanism.

Let’s hope Segolene Royal will win the second round of French presidential elections.

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Politics, Bush, Racism, Sarkozy, France, Bayrou, French Elections, UK, Blair, Britain

Miles for Peace

A group of Iranian NGOs have decided to organize a tour in which Iranian cyclists will ride around Europe and North America to “convey Iranian people’s message of peace, friendship and solidarity to the rest of the world.”
The message they would like to communicate is,

We Iranians are peace-loving people;; we aspire for a genuine and sustainable peace, for our own nation as well as all other members of the great family of humankind. We view such peace as the divine essence of humanity.

The peaceful and humanitarian nature of the Iranian people is well reflected by a poem of our great 13th century national poet; Saadi, which is carved on the main entrance of the United Nation Organization:

Of one essence is the human race
Thusly has creation put the base

One limb impacted is sufficient
For all others to feel the mace

We Iranians, love all other nations. It was one of our ancient kings Cyrus (who lived more than 2500 years ago) who set the example, motto and criterion as to how to treat strangers in war and in peace.

We Iranians wish to be a constructive member of the international community. we believe that :

* Humanity is an indivisible entity
* The world is home to all humans
* No man and no nation are needless of other men and other nations
* No nation is superior or inferior to any other nation.

We Iranians desire to contribute to the enrichment of culture and science and to the sustainability of peace for our nation as well as all others.

We believe that every success in every field by any individual in any part of the world belongs to the human community as a whole. In the same way, we believe that any form of aggression and moral transgression anywhere in the world, brings shame and disgrace to all humans and has a devastating impact on the entire body of human society. That is why each one of us has to take responsibility vis-à-vis all world events. We hope that governments across the world respect and uphold this universal longing of man for peace.

Please support their cause by signing this petition.

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Politics, Iran, Nuclear, Middle East, War on Iran, Bush, Ahmadinejad, Persian Culture, Iranian Society, Iraq, Persia, Tehran, Persian Gulf

Why Brit soldiers should exaggerate

There’s a post here by Cyrus F. posing this question at the end:

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman claims these are “staged” statements. But what would the marines lose? Would they face an uncertain period of time apart from their families and loved ones? Would the costs of telling the truth be so high for them that not even one would confirm his or her statements made in Iran? Does the Iranian spokesman really expect the sane people of the free world to believe him instead of 15 free men and women?

It’s a fair question. I do think that the British servicemen/woman who were captured by Iran where under some sort of pressure to make the kind of statements they did, particularly Turney’s 2nd and 3rd letters.

However, I also think that they should and probably did exaggerate their bad treatment by the Iranians. The reason is that criticism of their behavior has been pretty outrageous. Take this article for instance by a British conservative who thinks that the sailors’ confessions questioned, not only the cause of the war on Iraq and the Royal Navy, but the entire British culture.

An American general has gone as far as saying,

Well, they’re idiots, he [the sailor who apologized at length on Iran TV] and the other 14 are, have to be, because there’s no excuse for this kind of behavior.
I can tell you that they wouldn’t take me without firing a shot. I would take as many with me as I possibly could.
They weren’t in captivity more than 28 microseconds before they started … briefing, in front of a big map about where they were, and apologizing, and so on—absolutely despicable behavior, deplorable behavior.
They are going to have—and they should have—a lot to answer for when they finally get home.
They acquitted themselves horribly and dishonorably.

So these sailors and marines, who do need some sort of a future in their military/navy jobs can’t live with the embarrassment of what they did, unless they provide plenty and exaggerated accounts as to why they made such statements. (We all have sort of an idea how merciless the higher-ranks can be in the military environments, and we can see how seriously upset a part of the British public has become with how the Iranians showed the other face of ‘the lion’).

Now, why would these soldiers/marines, who were obviously not physically-tortured or held captive for more than a few days, sell their pride and cooperate to that extent with their captors?

Here’s what I think: they just realized how the ‘brutal enemy’ treated them reasonably well, compared that with how their bosses treat the enemy’s captives and doubted their cause even more than before.

What’s the merit in standing for a cause that has no value, for a bunch of lies, for a group of greedy, power-hungry thieves at the expense of one’s own life and some other poor folks’ future?

This is the question a lot of these soldiers might be asking themselves at one point or another, and that’s why they could never fight like Iranians did against Iraq or the Vietnamese did against the U.S.

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The Brits’ attempt to cover up the mess

The way Iran treated the 15 British sailors/marines who were in disputed waters with a clear mission, and their happy release has made Blair, Bush and the rest of the Cons in the West pretty mad. So mad, in fact, that they’re now trying to divert attentions to Iran’s alleged role in Iraq.

But the fact remains, the way the repressive theocracy in Iran treated its captives, compared to how the ‘civilized’ world treats its Muslim suspects, e.g. Abu Ghuraib, Guantanmo Bay, your local police office or immigration bureau, has made it clear to many people how untruthful their leaders and how misguided their own perceptions about Iran and the Middle East might be:

Iran treated those trespassing naval officers humanely. They were returned happy and healthy — to an extremely embarrassed Tony Blair and his government full of pasty-faced criminal minds. The UK media yesterday were so desperate to twist the embarrassment of the officers’ safe return into another headline about how violent Muslims are that the 4 ‘coalition’ soldiers killed in Iraq yesterday were ridiculously linked to the peaceful release of these vacationers.

And then in a remarkably sadistic pirouette of spin, Blair attempted to portray the Iranians as the main culprits responsible for the deathpit that has become Iraq.

This show has only one remaining audience: the idiotic members of the citizenry of the US and UK where voting is no longer a democratic action, but a knee-jerk reaction to manufactured hatred and fear.

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Les jours tristes

It’s hard, hard not to sit on your hands
And bury your head in the sand
Hard not to make other plans
And claim that you’ve done all you can all along
And life must go on

It’s hard, hard to stand up for what’s right
And bring home the bacon each night
Hard not to break down and cry
When every idea that you’ve tried has been wrong
But you must carry on

It’s hard but you know it’s worth the fight
‘Cause you know you’ve got the truth on your side
When the accusations fly, hold tight
Don’t by afraid of what they’ll say
Who cares what cowards think, anyway
They will understand one day, one day

It’s hard, hard when you’re here all alone
And every else has gone home
Harder to know right from wrong
When all objectivity’s gone
And it’s gone
But you still carry on

‘Cause you, you are the only one left
And you’ve got to clean up this mess
You know you’ll end up like the rest
Bitter and twisted, unless
You stay strong and you carry on

It’s hard but you know it’s worth the fight
‘Cause you know you’ve got the truth on your side
When the accusations fly, hold tight
And don’t by afraid of what they’ll say
Who cares what cowards think, anyway
They will understand one day, one day, One day

Lyrics of Les jours tristes, by Yann Tiersen. Album: C’etait ici.

Ahmadinejad: Iran’s Enrichment Reaches Industrial Scale

I don’t know what exactly he means by industrial scale, but he has apparently claimed that Iran is now enriching uranium on an industrial scale.

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Chomsky on Iran

Read the entire article, and note the last few paragraphs:

It is easy to understand an observation by one of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, knowing it to be defenseless, he noted, “Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.”

Surely no sane person wants Iran (or any nation) to develop nuclear weapons. A reasonable resolution of the present crisis would permit Iran to develop nuclear energy, in accord with its rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but not nuclear weapons. Is that outcome feasible? It would be, given one condition: that the U.S. and Iran were functioning democratic societies in which public opinion had a significant impact on public policy.

As it happens, this solution has overwhelming support among Iranians and Americans, who generally are in agreement on nuclear issues. The Iranian-American consensus includes the complete elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere (82% of Americans); if that cannot yet be achieved because of elite opposition, then at least a “nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include both Islamic countries and Israel” (71% of Americans). Seventy-five percent of Americans prefer building better relations with Iran to threats of force. In brief, if public opinion were to have a significant influence on state policy in the U.S. and Iran, resolution of the crisis might be at hand, along with much more far-reaching solutions to the global nuclear conundrum.

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Israel says it could live with a nuclear-armed Iran

Once again, Neocons and Co. seem to get it wrong. Israel has considered the possibility of coexistence with a nuclear-armed Iran, and they believe that it is plausible.

Could such a “balance of terror” be established in the Middle East? Ephraim Kam seems to believe so, perhaps in underestimating the danger of a proliferation that risks spreading in the region if the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) flies into pieces with the appearance of the “Iranian bomb.” Nonetheless: In counterpoint to the gung-ho American scenarios, the dispassionate approach of Israel’s principal strategic institute is rather reassuring.

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Politics, Iran, Nuclear, Middle East, War on Iran, Bush, Ahmadinejad, Israel, Tehran, NPT, Persian Gulf