Insight on Iran
Windows on Iran is a blog written by Fatemeh Keshavarz, a woman who resides and teaches in Saint Louis. She has just released another entry, another "window" on Iran.
CNN beating the drums for war against Iran
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone dissects a recent "news" broadcast by CNN, the story being that, even in the absence of any evidence, the United States should be preparing for attacks by Iran:
As a journalist, there’s a buzz you can detect once the normal restraints in your business have been loosened, a smell of fresh chum in the waters, urging us down the road to war. Many years removed from the Iraq disaster, that smell is back, this time with Iran. You can just feel it: many of the same newspapers and TV stations we saw leading the charge in the Bush years have gone back to the attic and are dusting off their war pom-poms. CNN’s house blockhead, the Goldman-trained ex-finance professional Erin Burnett, came out with a doozie of a broadcast yesterday, a Rumsfeldian jeremiad against the Iranian threat would have fit beautifully in the Saddam’s-sending-drones-at-New-York halcyon days of late 2002.
On respecting dead enemy soldiers
At the Washington Post, Sebastian Junger points out the contradiction made salient by the news that American Marines urinated on several dead Taliban fighters:
For the past 10 years, American children have absorbed these moral contradictions, and now they are fighting our wars. The video doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me incredibly sad — not just for them, but also for us. We may prosecute these men for desecrating the dead while maintaining that it is okay to torture the living. I hope someone else knows how to explain that to our soldiers, because I don’t have the faintest idea.
Why Americans are at war in the Middle East
Glenn Greenwald keeps unveiling stunning information about U.S. foreign policy. The following video by General Wesley Clark is jaw dropping, especially in light of the events that have unfolded since the conversations he reveals. The bottom line is that a pro-war U.S. foreign policy is repeatedly enacted without any national debate. The U.S. considers the Middle East to be U.S. property. How else can you explain that we are operating armed drones in six Muslim countries, and that politicians are actively discussing the "need" to invade Iran?
View inside Iran
This is not the views of Iran that the American Government wants you to see. They would prefer that you see a grotesque cartoon version of Iran that makes you scream for wide scale military violence. When the Soviet Union aimed thousands of long-range missiles tipped with nuclear bombs at us, we acted with restraint and some intelligence, like adults, but we apparently no longer have that capacity.