Two weeks ago a memo was leaked from inside the Trump administration showing how Secretary of State and DC neophyte Rex Tillerson was coached on how the US empire uses human rights as a pretense on which to attack and undermine noncompliant governments. Politico reports:
The May 17 memo reads like a crash course for a businessman-turned-diplomat, and its conclusion offers a starkly realist vision: that the US should use human rights as a club against its adversaries, like Iran, China and North Korea, while giving a pass to repressive allies like the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
‘Allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries. Otherwise, we end up with more adversaries, and fewer allies,’ argued the memo, written by Tillerson’s influential policy aide, Brian Hook.
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So we all know what this song and dance is code for. Any evil can be justified in the name of “human rights.”
In October we learned from a former Qatari prime minister that there was a massive push from the US and its allies to topple the Syrian government from the very beginning of the protests which began in that country in 2011 as part of the so-called Arab Spring. This revelation came in the same week The Intercept finally released NSA documents confirming that foreign governments were in direct control of the “rebels” who began attacking Syria following those 2011 protests. The fretting over human rights has occurred throughout the entirety of the Syrian war, even as the governments publicly decrying human rights abuses were secretly arming and training terrorist factions to murder, rape and pillage their way across the country.
We’ve seen it over and over again. In Libya, western interventionism was justified under the pretense of defending human rights when the goal was actually regime change. In Ukraine, empire loyalists played cheerleader for the protests in Kiev when the goal was actually regime change. And who could ever forget the poor oppressed people of Iraq who will surely greet the invaders as liberators?
In 2007 retired four-star General Wesley Clark appeared on Democracy Now and said that about ten days after 9/11 he learned that the Pentagon was already making plans for a completely unjustified invasion of Iraq, and that he was shown a memo featuring a plan to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
So it’s an established fact that the neocons have had Iran in their crosshairs for a good long time.
This is all coming off the back of the nonstop CIA/CNN narrative being advanced that Iran is a top perpetrator of state-sponsored terrorism, which is just plain false. I have a lot of Trump-supporting followers, and I would like to stress to them that the group of intelligence veterans who authored this memo about Iran is the same group who released a memo dismantling the bogus Russiagate narrative; these are good people and you can trust them. I encourage you to read it.
Trump is lying when he says Iran is “the Number One State of Sponsored Terror.” This is the same exact script they run over and over and over again, and people are falling for it again like Charlie Brown and the football. It is nonsensical to believe things asserted by the US intelligence and defense agencies on blind faith at this point, especially when they are clearly working to manufacture support for interventionism in a key strategic location. In a post-Iraq invasion world, nothing but the most intense skepticism of such behavior is acceptable.
Luckily, because a full scale invasion of Iran would be far more costly and deadly than the invasion of Iraq, support for this will need to be manufactured not just in America but within an entire coalition of its allies. This will be extremely difficult to do, but by God they are trying.
Please keep your skepticism cranked up to eleven on this Iran stuff, dear reader, and be very loudly vocal about it. My Trump-supporting readers especially, I implore you to think critically about all this and look closely at the similarities between the anti-Iran agenda and the other interventions I know you oppose. Together we can kill this narrative and spare ourselves another senseless middle eastern bloodbath.
Reprinted with permission from CaitlinJohnstone.com. Support Caitlin’s work here.
It’s the Balkans that matter most.
It’s always the Balkans.
Trump approving McCains wettest wildest dream three weeks ago (arms sales to the stooges in Kiev) won’t help the situation on bit either.
Ya I was pretty disappointed in that too. I know that people all over the world are going to kill each other, often for stupid reasons, but it would be nice if our hands were clean. I’d rather the weapons used didn’t say ‘made in America’ on them.
It’s often useful to try to imagine ourselves in a similar situation as we have put the Russians. If there was some kind of internal conflict in Mexico, and Russia was down there arming the anti American opposition, the US govt wouldn’t stand for it. Especially if, as in Ukraine, they were arming the side that overthrew the elected government there. We would call it a declaration of war. Yet we do the same thing in Ukraine and expect everyone to stand aside and do nothing.
Just reflect on how well the policy of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” worked out in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and a myriad of other such places. We need a new “game plan” folks, this old shit isn’t working and when it does it bites us in the arse!! Convert “Foreign Aid” to “US Homeland Aid” and screw all the folks who don’t like us and vote against in the bullshit UN. “Walk softly and carry a big stick” now who said that? That policy is proven to work, maybe we need Teddy back?
Trump will not let a good crisis go to waste.
Most assuredly, this is a teachable moment.
INVADE IRAN, DONNIE!! Just do it. Swoosh. You’ll have mission accomplished in three weeks. Four, tops. We are all Iranians today.
seems that this audience needs the /sarc tag
human rights ; fundamental rights, especially those believed to belong to an individual and in whose exercise a government may not interfere, as the rights to speak, associate, work, etc.
human rights for thee but not for me if I read my tea leaves correctly
If it gets before Congress, we all have to call DC and our so-called Congressional rep’s., just like I/We did when Obama/Hitlery wanted to attack Syria. The majority of US citizens were against Obama/Hitlery on Syria.
Additionally, the Brits refused Obama’s entreaties to attack.
Both of these actions stopped our troops from invading Syria (on behalf of IsraHell).
We almost bombed Damascus after the 2013 false flag gas attack, but Americans said “fuck no” so fast it mad the neocons blink.
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2018/01/03/u-s-envoy-calls-emergency-u-n-session-iran-protests/
Anon….from your link:
“The people of Iran are crying out for freedom,” Nikki Haley said at a news conference.
Looks like the US wants to provide Iran ‘freedom’ just like we gave to Libya and Syria, and Iraq.
Methinks it represents ‘freedom from living’.
I think the protests in Iran are mostly organic (so far). Their odds of success in removing the clerics from power fall in direct proportion to US rhetoric and action.
How would you know? Why would you think that?
the freedom is, of course, a power vacuum that will be “miraculously” filled by a puppet gov that immediately demands a central bank for any and all “rebuilding” contracts.
while the people may well desire freedom; the people are seldom organized enough to put together their own govt after the fact and definitely not when there is a fully backed puppet by western armaments.
If Trump, Hillary and McCain all agree on something, you know it’s what Israel wants.
These people can’t handle freedom. At least 50% of them still have stone-age ideas about everything, including killing the other 50%. First they have to give up their insane extreme Mooslim beliefs. Then they have to get an economy. Maybe in 100 years they will be ready.
What I know for certain is that the US doesnt give a flying fuck about freedom for Iranians. What it wants (because its what Israel and Saudi Arabia want) is for Iran to be neutered as a regional power. Breaking up the country would do it, but I don’t see that happening. A very destructive civil war would do it. War would do it, but that is the highest cost/risk option. They want Iran to look like Syria, Iraq and Libya do… in ruins.
But as you’ve pointed out, the US has absolutely no influence in Iran so nothing it does in relation to it is of any consequence at all.
Trump and Haley: Shut Up About Iran
Michael S. Rozeff
The U.S. government has chosen to be against Iran’s government. Neocon Elliott Abrams says “We should be expressing support” for protests. Given his record and views, we therefore can be quite sure that this is exactly what should not be done. Mere support sounds “moderate”, but it’s only a first step, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The full Abrams and neocon agenda on Iran and many other foreign lands, shown clearly by his record is full neocon, meaning intervene, interfere, use any means, make war if need be, so as to influence, control and dominate these regions. The agenda is to expand the American empire.
Nikki Haley refers to Iran as a “dictatorship”. She says that “a long-oppressed people [is] rising up against their dictators.” Actually, Iran has a system of elections. Their institutions vet candidates, to be sure. In America, our institutions also vet candidates, our Supreme Court has immense power over laws, and our deep state and agencies wield considerable undemocratically-restrained power.
Do Trump, Haley and Abrams actually know who is protesting and why they are protesting? Are they so sure that a governmental system more to their liking will result if the existing form of government is destroyed? How can they possibly know what the result of a power struggle will be? They have to be assuming that the U.S. will institute a regime to its liking, in one way or another because they cannot be assuming that such a regime will magically arise on its own. How do they know that they are not promoting a full-scale civil war as they did in the case of Syria? How do they know that destabilizing Iran will produce a wonderful democratic system with checks and balances and liberty and justice for all? How do they know that such a newborn, if it ever could arise, will be better for the Iranian people? How do they know that Islamic extremists and suicide bombers won’t infiltrate and further destabilize the country?
Once the U.S. expresses such strong anti-regime and pro-protest support, won’t the next steps be to arm forces that are anti-regime? If protesters are already attacking police stations and police, aren’t Trump, Haley and Abrams conscience-bound to provide them with material support? Maybe Trump already is doing this. One cannot in good conscience encourage unarmed people to attack armed forces and die in the process. Most revolutions are bloody affairs. The end of the Soviet Union is the exception.
The Trump-Haley agenda on Iran is American dominance. It has three focal points: oil, Israel and Russia. Democracy and freedom are not the focal points. They are merely proposed means to the end of control. The U.S. is aligned with Israel and Saudi Arabia against Iran. The U.S. long accepted the non-democratic Shah as ruler of Iran. The U.S. would accept another Shah, a decidedly non-democratic result, but that’s not in the cards. What it’s after as its means to control is some sort of “modern” democracy, to overturn the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah. However, such a means is an absurdly naive expectation and simplistic goal. This has been shown in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Democracies do not arise from the ashes of broken states, either automatically or by the hand of the U.S. Death, destruction, bombings, terror havens, refugees, hardship, disease and civilian deaths are the consequences.
“As of March 15, 2016, IHRDC estimates that there are 821 individuals imprisoned in Iran for the exercise of fundamental rights.” Under the Shah, there were more: “According to official statistics, Iran had as many as 2,200 political prisoners in 1978.” The Shah was the U.S. man in Iran. In America, drugs are politicized. The number of drug-related political prisoners runs into hundreds of thousands. Let’s not forget the thousand and more people in America injured and killed by police using excessive force. Is this what gives Trump, Haley and Abrams the right to pontificate about the Iran regime and associate it with terrorism?
The Shah was overturned via a revolution that amalgamated various dissident groups to create a state, the Islamic Republic of Iran, that has now lasted almost 40 years. Do you think that Trump, Haley and Abrams have any real clue as to what sort of situation they are fomenting through their words and deeds as they aim to overturn the Islamic Republic of Iran? It is my belief that they should shut up.
Why post this?
As you stated just yesterday, the US has no influence on Iran.
So it wouldn’t make any difference at all whether they “shut up” or not.
One only need ask ‘who benefits?’
Americans certainly do not.
Why should we waste our blood and treasure in pursuit of what is solely an Israeli foreign policy objective?
Particularly when the Israeli subversives, and their collaborators, infesting our country and government are actively working against American interests?
Well let’s see. Iran is a modern nation of 80 million peeps. Clearly it has enormous pent up demand…the unemployed aren’t buying much shit. If Trump really gave a fuck about MAGA, he would be more concerned with MIGA. Instead of threatening and sanctioning it, he would be encouraging American companies to invest in it and trade with it.
Anerica has no ability to influence Iran, you’ve said so yourself.
What’s your problem? I never said the US has no ability to influence Iran. I said that due to its words and actions, it currently has no influence. It has declared Iran and its people as an enemy.
A war with Iran is not logistically feasible option. It’s not going to happen unless we foster a guerilla war some how . That would not likely be successful. We are just stirring shit hoping to keep them preoccupied with something besides USA.
Saudi Arabia? Not a chance. They can’t even take out Yemen.