In a conversation with a peace studies professor recently, I showed him the flier the local United Jewish Federation was using to announce an upcoming talk on US-Iran relations.
The focal point of the flier was a flame-colored mushroom cloud on a black background; white block letters on the black ground declared:
Nuclear Iran: A Threat to Humanity
The professor first-- and urgently-- scanned the list of organizations supporting this fearmongering message to assure himself that no organization that he endorsed was part of the event. Then he said to me,
Demonization destroys the ability to think critically.
Either our government understands that and deliberately and intentionally is attempting to destroy the ability of the American people to think critically about US relations with Iran, which is itself a heinous crime, or our government does NOT understand that demonization destroys the ability to think critically, in which case our government is incompetent and needs to be reminded, forcefully, by we, the people, that we will NEVER AGAIN be propagandized into a position of moral repugnance.
The Bush administration is on notice: NEVER AGAIN.
NEVER AGAIN
NEVER AGAIN should the American people tolerate the deliberate economic, political, social, and military destruction of a sovereign nation that has not first attacked the US.
NEVER AGAIN.
That means that we Americans who demand that NEVER AGAIN will we allow our government to cause civilian suffering through the imposition of economic, political, social, or military acts, must oppose, vocally and strenuously, Senate bill 970. Carah Ong has been monitoring this closely on her blog, Iran Nuclear Watch, where she mentioned "A third American war crime in the making," Paul Craig Roberts recent article on the new round of illegal and immoral warmongering of the Bush administration.
NEVER AGAIN.
If my country bombs, or even continues its equally homicidal economic sanctions against Iran, it will not be because I did not do everything in my power to try to stop it. I try to educate people on Iranian culture, and try to point out the massive inconsistencies and lies and hatefulness in the neocon arguments for aggression against Iran.
In a panel discussion sponsored by The Israel Project several days before the Annapolis conference, David Wurmser said, "Iran getting nuclear weapons is not the problem; the problem Iran poses is that the Arab states have been humiliated for so long, and Iran shows them they do not have to remain humiliated.... that negotiation keeps Arabs in the Middle East in a state of humiliation, but that Hezbollah (financed by Iran) beat Israel....that is the problem Iran poses."
Nuclear Iran is not the problem, it is the pretext.
The problem Iran poses to the world is its support of anyone who opposes Israel's continued theft of land that does not belong to Israel.
Take a look at the people who are behind economic sanctions against Iran: Bibi Netanyahu and his neocon minions in the US, who, by controlling vast reservoirs of campaign financing, manage to pull EVERY candidate for president into their maelstrom.
Yesterday I watched a few minutes of a Frontline program about soldiers in Iraq ? Afghanistan ? not sure -- so much of what is the focus of even the "good" TV journalism is all about killing and militarization, as was this program.
Our children are growing up in a climate of killing and militarization. Barry McCaffrey did not even twitch a muscle when he said on C-Span this morning that "the US killed thousands of Sadr's men." McCaffrey had earlier said, "I'm just a Catholic boy," and somehow that part of his brain does not communicate with the part of his brain that says "the US killed thousands of Sadr's men," as if that's a good thing, as if killing people is a good thing that makes their families want to cooperate with Americans in the further destruction of their country. If our leaders do not understand that demonization, and killing, is NOT a good thing, then all hope is lost.
I had just selected an armload of Persian fairy tales from the Juvenile section of the local library -- so far unmilitarized.
Last night I turned off "Frontline" and read myself to sleep with "The Persian Cinderella" and "The Magic Grove."
Awaiting my next sleepless night are:
"The Seven Wise Princesses;"
"The Peasant and the Donkey;" and a collection of
Persian Folk and Fairy Tales retold by Anne Sinclair Mehdevi.
Fairy tales are one way of understanding and humanizing Iran.
And humanizing Iran, learning truths, facts, and realities about Iran rather than repeating mindless, dehumanizing propaganda, is the best antidote I know to ensure that NEVER AGAIN will my country destroy another sovereign people on illegal and immoral premises.
NEVER AGAIN.
UPDATE:
This article by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich just hit my inbox:
Bankrupt and Audacious
by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich(CASMII Columns)
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
How can a morally bankrupt nation induce the world to punish a law-abiding state and by so doing, violate not only international law, that of the nonproliferation treaty (NPT), but the Geneva Conventions? Sanctions are warfare. It cost Iraq over half a million innocent lives, a genocide, in preparation for the ‘shock and awe’ that was to come. America and her co-conspirators violated all Geneva Conventions when the sanctions were imposed – lives were snatched -"collateral damage" they called it. This rogue state, America, in violation of all laws, God’s and man’s, is dictating to the world, demanding that all countries join it in its march towards more infamy – total moral bankruptcy, to claim yet more lives.....