Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Fw: Understanding Islamic Iran

 

Understanding Islamic Iran - Forums powered by Reason and Principle
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=me_iran&Number=294066534#Post294066534
Understanding Islamic Iran [ Post 294066534 ]

   Category: News & Opinion (Specific)  Topic: Regional: Middle East: Iran
   Synopsis:
   Source:
   Published: January 1, 2001  Author: Simon Jone
   For Education and Discussion Only.  Not for Commercial Use.


What is clear is that actively destabilizing Iran is shaping up to be the key to the neocon strategy of eliminating any 'third way' for Islamic countries, ALL of which are in crisis, whether it be direct occupation by the US (Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar et al), or stuck in an authoritarian time-warp, either secular (Syria, Egypt, et al) or religious (Saudi Arabia and Iran).

Of them all, Iran is the only one that has made substantial steps towards some kind of representative democracy. Despite its own traumatic upheaval and revolution in 1979, PLUS invasion by Iraq and a raging civil war next door in Afghanistan, not to mention an ongoing vicious insurgency supported by the US in Iraq, its human rights record is without a doubt the best of the lot. It has a healthy independent culture - its cinema is the envy of the world, and it is eager to reach out. We must act to bring it in on our side.

We are the victims of the mainstream press in our view of Iran. While the pro-Palestine, anti-Bush/ Iraq war movement is 'progressive' in the West, the same 'movement' in Iran is dubbed by our newspeak as 'reactionary'. We are told that Iran is a basket-case economy, with high unemployment and corruption. But in fact the Iranian revolution produced many quasi-socialist features: the nationalization of banks, prohibition of interest, and '4-year' plans. Education and health care are also state-provided. Importantly, the currency is not part of the international speculative system and is state-fixed. These advantages over a neoconned IMF-produced economy are not to be scoffed at. Just ask Argentina.

We are bombarded by negative human rights reports by Amnesty International and the State Department. But in recent years, along with a genuine democratic upsurge, hundreds of NGOs have been formed. (1) A perusal of Amnesty International's reports shows a very passionate and vocal opposition, defiantly organizing, striking, and speaking out. Of course, this means lots of arrests (look in the mirror!), but it seems the Thermador is over - the execution of political dissidents has stopped, replaced by lots of angry threats and then reprieves and amnesties. Death penalty - yes, floggings - yes. Amputations (mercifully) - no longer (AI).

It's not an American-style secular democracy. In Islam, whether we like it or not, there is no 'separation of church and state'. That doesn't mean it's inherently bad. Unlike Christianity, which disdains the material world and gives Caesar his due, for Islam the mission of mankind is to build a just moral and spiritual order on earth. Bravo!

Take a break from our 'embedded' press. The Iran English Daily is free online and it admits the alignments politically are much more subtle than just conservative vs reformers. Khatami is popularly called the Iranian Gorbachev these days, and indeed, in many respects he is a political Trojan Horse, privatizing and working closely with the IMF/WB.

If we advocate secularism (and the IMF road) for Iran, say, in the interests of human rights, it's clear whose 'human rights' will flourish: the current elite's. The gap between the rich and poor will rapidly widen, and there will be no room for social welfare. Clearly many protesters are naively pro-western - our pop culture is a powerful cultural Trojan Horse in Iran, as it is around the world. Apart from a few brave human rights dissidents, the keenest discontents (though not marching with the hot-blooded students) I'm sure are the budding capitalists, who crave the commercial freedom of the West, and are eager to join the American Empire as a junior partner. Be sure they will be the first to send their profits offshore, scoop up state industries, and repress workers and students when the last remnants of morality are swept from the economy. Those are not MY allies, thank you very much.

No, rather than rooting for the reformers to take what little morality is left out of their economy and join the Great Satan's imperial marketplace, I would argue we could even learn a thing or two from Iran about putting morality back into our economy. Don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating compulsory prayer at work or mass conversion to Islam. Rather, social justice for God's children.

The point with approaching a country like Iran is to show as much respect and understanding as possible, to be willing to deal at least nominally with the powers-that-be rather than just going for the high profile Hashem Aghajaris (who often have their own personal agendas), and to make any criticisms in a non-threatening way.

In 1947, as the anti-communist hysteria picked up steam in America, Einstein told the Overseas News Agency: "At present, the non-democratic countries constitute less of a threat to healthy international developments than the democratic nations, which enjoying economic and military superiority, and have subjected scholars to military mobilization." Just replace non-democratic (i.e., Communist) with Muslim for an update. We are the problem these days, not Iran. It is our intellectuals who have largely sold out to the budding empire. It is our troops who are invading other countries.

The peace movement, we are told, is the second superpower now, so let's not shrink from developing our diplomacy skills, be it stopping bulldozers in Palestine or reaching out to members of Washington's latest Axis of Whatever. To paraphrase Churchill: "I'd make a pact with the devil himself to defeat imperialism."

Say it together now: "WE ARE THE NEW SUPERPOWER." Let's show some solidarity with the most powerful anti-imperialist country around, which has no designs on other nations, is actively striving for peace - and is very much in the sights of the US war machine for these very reasons. This should be our latest stop in the struggle to turn the tide of US militarism and get back on the road of peace and disarmament. Our activism must be based on building trust, even when we disagree on many issues with our potential allies. Maybe Iran can even provide a positive example for such deathbed cases as Afghanistan and Iraq.

(Simon Jone is US-Jewish columnist residing in Tashkand (Uzbekistan)







posted by carol wolman @ 3:12 PM   0 comments

Re: [ImpeachBushNOW] Welcome to the End Times!

 
----- Original Message -----
From: NT
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 4:11 PM
Subject: [ImpeachBushNOW] Welcome to the End Times!

Welcome to the End Times!

www.StreetProphets.com  --- Sat Oct 15th, 2005 
No one can really argue these are not the End Times, can they? Well sure they can, but why bother? Just because the End Times seem to last forever, doesn't mean these are not the End Times.

Hell, you got your wars, famine, pestilence and you got more death and destruction than you can shake a stick at. The Four Horsemen of the Apockylipse are barreling down the homestretch neck and neck like Man `O War, Secretariat, Ruffian and Seabiscuit on steroids.

You see, before any of the born-again Christian, evangelical, fundamentalist, religious right gobbledygook can make any sense; you've got to appreciate and believe we are in the End Times. It is the key to understanding the politics of abrogation and abdication embraced by the End Time adherents.

 

I first knew we were in the End Times back in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected President. Even Ronnie could see the signs:

"For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons."

Ronnie loved talking about this stuff:

"[T]heologians had been studying the ancient prophecies -- what would portend the coming of Armageddon-- and have said that never, in the time between the prophecies up untiI now, has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this."

Hell, no wonder the religious right wants to canonize the guy and name every street, library and airport after him. He's one of them.

During an October 1984 Presidential debate, the Commander-In-Chief was asked to clarify his position on the matter. Which he kind of dodged:

REPORTER: Mr. President, I'd like to pick up this Armageddon theme. You've been quoted as saying that you do believe deep down that we are heading for some kind of Biblical Armageddon. Your Pentagon and your Secretary of Defense have plans for the United States to fight and prevail in a nuclear war. Do you feel that we are now heading, perhaps, for some kind of nuclear Armageddon? And do you feel that this country and the world could survive that kind of calamity?

REAGAN:    Mr. Kalb, I think what has been hailed as something I'm, supposedly, as President, discussing as principle is the result of just some philosophical discussions with people who are interested in the same things. And that is the prophecies down through the years, the Biblical prophecies of what would portend the coming of Armageddon and so forth. And the fact that a number of theologians for the last decade or more have believed that this was true, that the prophecies are coming together that portend that. But no one knows whether Armageddon -- those prophecies -- mean that Armageddon is a thousand years away or day after tomorrow. So I have never seriously warned and said we must plan according to Armageddon.

Don't know what Ronnie was worried about; why he had to go all cautious on us like that. In 1984 he was a shoe-in for reelection.

Anyway, that's when I knew the End was near.

It's the key to understanding the religious rights' politics of global warming and their hostility toward nature. Cause, you know, if you've seen one redwood; you've seen them all.

As Glenn Scherer reminds us:

Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

Holy Moly that explains a lot. And it's important to remember we are NOT talking about just loony-fringe groups. Also quoted by Scherer was a TIME/CNN poll conducted in 2002 that found "59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks."

People under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the Apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the Rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a Word?

Read Glenn's whole article at Grist.org. It will blow your freaking head off.

And have you looked at the Rapture Index lately? It's at 159. The highest it's been is 182 right after 911. You don't think when this bird flu thing hits with a vengeance it's not going to reach 200? We're already at the "fasten your seatbelts" stage.

The Purpose For This Index
The Rapture Index has two functions: one is to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and the other is to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting.

The Rapture Index is by no means meant to predict the rapture, however, the index is designed to measure the type of activity that could act as a precursor to the rapture.

You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

Rapture Index of 85 and Below:  Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 85 to 110:     Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 110 to 145:    Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 145:        Fasten your seat belts

BTW - you know when the rapture index was at its lowest? December 1993; during the good old days when Bill Clinton was President, the index was at a somnolent 53.

There is a point to this diary; I just haven't gotten there yet.

Have you seen this? It's one of my favorite all time finds.

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

Okay, the Observer was a little over the top. The report wasn't really secret; though it was bit supressed. But, as the folks at Grist say in an equally alarming article entitled, Pentagoners:

Commissioned by esteemed Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall, the report paints a scenario under which global warming could pose a threat to the world "greater than terrorism" -- complete with mega-droughts, widespread famine, and rampant rioting. But while it has sounded alarms on Capitol Hill, it hasn't provoked so much as a peep from the White House.

When Muckraker contacted White House Council on Environmental Quality spokesperson Dana Perino for a statement on the report, she responded, "I haven't seen it, I haven't read it, and I don't want to make any comments on the matter. As I understand it, this is a 'what-if' scenario -- not a diagnosis, not a prophecy, and not a foundation for new policy."

Perino directed Muckraker to Navy Lieutenant Dan Hetlage, a Pentagon spokesperson who said, "We did not expect any White House response to the Pentagon on this report. Andrew Marshall is our Yoda, our big thinker who peers into the future. But it's all speculation. It was very ethereal, very broad in scope. It wasn't like, 'Oh, wow, that totally debunks the president's stand on global warming,' because it was merely a thought exercise. We don't have a crystal ball. We don't really know."

When pressed to explain the point of a "thought exercise" that can have no policy implications, Hetlage said, "People should feel comforted that we are thinking about contingencies." Cold comfort, one might think, in the absence of any plan to avoid such contingencies.

Well, excuse me, but has Yoda ever been wrong about anything? It just seems to me if the Pentagon is warning the Earth is going to hell in a hand-basket during the next twenty years and instead of doing something about it, the White House of George W. Bush ignores the warning and does the opposite of helping; doesn't that say a lot about Bush's expectations for the future?

He's not the War President: he's the Apocalypse President.

And okay, FINALLY, here is the point: Harriet Miers.

The President said he chose Miers for who she was and a large part of who she was is her religious beliefs.

And since the President brought it up, isn't it now fair-game to ask Miers whether she believes in Biblical prophecy and if these are the End Times?

Ann Banks has done some serious research on the religious right and she sent me this message the other day, in response to exchanges about the Miers nomination on HuffPo. Food for thought:

"The nomination of Harriet Miers underlines how important it is for the reality-based community (that's us) to gain a more nuanced understanding of fundamentalist Christianity.

Never mind where Miers attends church, what precisely are her religious beliefs? Now that the President has identified them as among her primary qualifications, we'd better find out.

Christian fundamentalists debate one another on the fine points of eschatology, throwing around terms like premill (pre-millennial) and post-trib (post-tribulation.) Yet whatever their differences, most believe that life on earth is on a downhill slide that cannot be arrested by human effort, but only by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. In this grim credo, natural disasters (especially when occurring in godless places like New Orleans and Pakistan) are possible harbingers of imminent celestial glory.

...Where does Harriet Miers stand on these issues? Is she a premillennial dispensationalist, to use the term of art? Does she believe we are living in the End Times? If the answer is yes and if she is confirmed, we are in a world of trouble. Roe v. Wade will be only the beginning."

We know Miers is pro-business and business is usually anti-environment. But, with a pro-business, End Times enthusiast on the bench; aren't we doubly screwed?

It's one thing to believe whatever. It's quite another to force others to live with your beliefs through legislation and judical fiat.

If you believe in the Rapture and the End Times; amen. But for those of us who merely believe in a loving and merciful God; can you please not destroy everything before you go?

Some of us like it here.



"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth." - F.D.R.

 
 
 

Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ImpeachBushNOW




SPONSORED LINKS
United state patent United state citizenship United state grant
Trademark united state United state army United state military

YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS



posted by carol wolman @ 7:54 AM   0 comments