By david swanson
October 1, 2012

A writer at the Atlantic named Conor Friedersdorf recently noted the level of evil many have been brought to support:

“Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can’t bring yourself to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn’t believe in Darwinian evolution, and they’ll nod along. Say that you’d never vote for a politician caught using the ‘n’-word, even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand. But these same people cannot conceive of how anyone can discern Mitt Romney’s flaws, which I’ve chronicled in the course of the campaign, and still not vote for Obama. Don’t they see that Obama’s transgressions are worse than any I’ve mentioned? I don’t see how anyone who confronts Obama’s record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might have concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I’d have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers.”

 

Not long ago, I attended a speech by Obama, along with thousands of his adoring cheerleaders formerly known as citizens. I asked him to stop killing people in Afghanistan, and the Secret Service asked me to leave.

But, just now, I got a phone call from the local Obama office. They had my name because I’d picked up a ticket to attend the speech. The young woman wanted to know if I would come help phone other people. I asked if she was familiar with the president’s kill list and his policy of killing men, women, and children with drones. She said she knew nothing about that but “respected my opinion.” She hung up. Objecting to presidential murder is now an opinion, and willingness to be aware of its existence is an appendage to the opinion. If you don’t object to presidential murder by Democrat, then you simply arrange not to know about it. Thus, in your opinion, it doesn’t exist.

Some of my friends at this moment are in Pakistan apologizing to its government and its people for the endless murderous drone war fought there by our country. They’re meeting with victims’ families. They’re speaking publicly in opposition to the crimes of our government. And my neighbors, living in some other universe, believe most fundamentally, not that one candidate will save us, not that the two parties are fundamentally opposed, not that a citizen’s job is to vote, not that war is all right if it’s meant well — although they clearly believe all of those things — but, most fundamentally, they believe that unpleasant facts should simply be avoided. So, in a spirit of afflicting the comfortable to comfort the afflicted, here are a few from recent days:

WAR IS A LIE

We know that in the past “defensive” wars have been intentionally launched by fraud or provocation. We know that many in our government want a war with Iran. We know that several years ago then-Vice President Dick Cheney proposed disguising U.S. ships as Iranian and attacking other U.S. ships with them. We know that then-President George W. Bush proposed disguising a plane as belonging to the United Nations, flying it low, and trying to get Iraq to shoot at it. We know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident, no evidence that Spain attacked the Maine, no doubt that the weapons and troops on board the Lusitania were public knowledge, no question that FDR worked hard to provoke an attack by Japan, and so on. And we know that Iran has not attacked another nation in centuries. So, it almost goes without saying that Washington warmongers are contemplating ways to get Iran to make the “first move.” Assassinating scientists hasn’t worked, blowing up buildings doesn’t seem to do it, cyber-war isn’t blossoming into real war, sanctions are not sanctioning armed resistance, and dubious accusations of Iranian terrorism aren’t sticking. Exactly what do we have to do to get ourselves innocently attacked by the forces of evil?

The Israel Lobby to the rescue! Patrick Clawson, Director of Research at the Washington Institute Of Near East Policy, blurted out the following on video this week:

“Crisis initiation is really tough. And it’s very hard for me to see how the United States president can get us to war with Iran. . . . The traditional way America gets to war is what would be best for U.S. interests. Some people might think that Mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us into World War II . . . . You may recall, we had to wait for Pearl Harbor. Some people might think Mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World War I. You may recall that he had to wait for the Lusitania episode. Some people might think that Mr. Johnson wanted to send troops to Vietnam. You may recall he had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode. We didn’t go to war with Spain until the Maine exploded. And Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the federal army until Fort Sumter was attacked, which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians had said would cause an attack. So, if in fact the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war. . . . I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean, look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down. Someday one of them might not come up. Who would know why? [LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE] . . . . We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier.”

This is serious advocacy for manufacturing a “defensive” and “humanitarian” war. This is not a war critic or a Yes Men prankster. The position of most elected officials in Washington, including the President, fits well with this. That position includes the ultimatum that Iran must cease doing what U.S. National Intelligence Estimates say it is not doing, namely building nuclear weapons. The goal at the bottom of all of this is war. The purpose of the war is not related to any of the excuses for it. The purpose is something else entirely. But it’s ugly, so it’s easier not to look.

HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION

We often forget that war is the worst thing there is. Hence our government’s shift in policy back to outsourcing a lot of the torture and insourcing the “cleaner” approach of assassination without torture. Hence, also, our common fantasy that war can be used to solve a problem that is somehow worse than war.

We also forget that torturing people can be crueler than experimenting on them. Torture has been given an acceptance in the United States during the past decade that “human experimentation” has not. So, we are still capable of a bit of shock when a story comes out like this one: During the 1950s and 1960s the U.S. Army sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide, apparently including radioactive particles, in poor neighborhoods in St. Louis and other cities, to test the results on the people who unknowingly breathed it.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. military’s Operation Paperclip brought nearly 500 Nazi scientists to the United States to work on U.S. weaponry. Many view their influence on the nascent military industrial complex as critical to its sadistic and sociopathic tendencies ever since. In fairness to the Nazis, it’s possible that they simply fit in well, serving the military of a nation with a long history of genocide, slavery, torture, and public deception.

I came across a member of Veterans For Peace this week who’s been struggling many years as a result of experimental vaccines and drugs given to hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers during the Gulf War. We also learned this week that every prisoner in the Guantanamo death camp has been given experimental drugs without their knowledge or at least without their consent.

And then there’s this: “Congressional Probe Reveals Cover-Up of ‘Auschwitz-Like’ Conditions at US-Funded Afghan Hospital”:

“A congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.-funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in, quote, ‘Auschwitz-like’ conditions. Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010 which show severely neglected, starving patients at Dawood Hospital, considered the crown jewel of the Afghan medical system, where the country’s military personnel are treated. The photos show severely emaciated patients, some suffering from gangrene and maggot-infested wounds. For TV viewers of Democracy Now!, please be warned: these images are extremely graphic and may be disturbing.”

NOTHING MORE EVIL

Here’s what I’m trying to get at. If you try to think of something more evil than what we are now doing, you’ll fail. Name your evil: destroying the earth’s climate? President Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen to single-handedly derail any process for protecting the earth’s atmosphere. The only way in which to fantasize about greater evil is quantitative, not qualitative. We could drop more bombs. We could starve more children. We could experiment on more prisoners. In fact, this is what Lesser Evilism amounts to. A Lesser Evilist today is not choosing less evil policies, but the same policies in what he or she hopes will be lesser amounts.

That might be a rational calculation within a polling place. But living it prior to and after an election, apologizing and cheering for one of two teams, as if self-governance were a spectator sport, is nothing other than complicity in the most hideous forms of cruelty and murder. That complicity is insidious. Evil begins to look like something else, because the Lesser Evilist, within his or her own mind, comes to view the Lesser Evil forces as good, if not glorious, if not saintly.

…………………………

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Ted Koppel’s Terrible Media Criticism
Posted on 09/25/2012 by Peter Hart, FAIR

TV news veteran Ted Koppel has done two pieces on NBC’s Rock Center that attempt to critique the partisanship of today’s media system. But what the reports really illustrate is that some people aren’t very good at playing media critic–especially when they feel obligated to suggest that “both sides” are equally at fault.

Koppel’s first report (9/13/12) looked at right and left watchdogs, “an industry out there on both sides monitoring and recording anything that could hurt the political opposition.” That “industry” consists of the liberal  Media Matters for America and the right-wing Media Research Center.

As Koppel explains, “You got people sitting there with headsets…waiting for someone to make a misstep.” He goes on to wonder whether the groups on both sides are “feeding the sausage machine.”

But his argument starts to fall apart right away, as he begins to tell the story of Georgetown law student and women’s health advocate Sandra Fluke. Koppel explains that radio host Rush Limbaugh’s famous remarks about Fluke–in which he called Fluke, among other things, a “slut”–seemed to be inspired by a column published by the Media Research Center. (The piece in question ran under the subtle headline “Sex-Crazed Co-Eds Going Broke Buying Birth Control, Student Tells Pelosi Hearing Touting Freebie Mandate.”)

Limbaugh’s comments provoked an outcry, which Koppel explained this way:

Bingo. Limbaugh had committed the kind of gaffe that fuels an entire industry, and he gave the Obama White House a gift that keeps on giving.

Well, maybe. Or he’s a sexist creep who said exactly what he wanted to convey to his audience–which isn’t really a “gaffe” at all.

Koppel explains that a “counter-gaffe” came soon thereafter, when CNN pundit Hilary Rosen said that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann “has actually never worked a day in her life.”

“I mean, this is a two-sided fistfight,” anchor Brian Williams explained as the segment closed. But it’s hard to see how the two sides can be equated. One side published a nasty hit piece on an individual, which was echoed by the most powerful radio talk show host in the country. Apparently the offense on the liberal side was noticing Limbaugh’s sexist drivel. The other example consisted of a dopey comment from a relatively obscure TV liberal mostly known for doing corporate PR.

The second installment (9/20/12) was no better, as Koppel attempted to explain how the media make all of this even worse by giving a platform to combatants on both sides.

Williams set up the show with the expected riff on how both sides do it. The secret tape of Mitt Romney at a fundraiser talking about the “47 percent” was the first strike, but then came “the counterattack from the right–the tape of Barack Obama from 14 years ago saying he believes in redistribution.” Actually, the Obama tape was deceptively edited; the rest of that passage includes Obama talking about how to “decentralize delivery systems” in order to “foster competition” and “work in the marketplace.”

Koppel starts his argument by suggesting the media have gone from the likes of Walter Cronkite to the Fox News Channel’s shouting conservative Bill O’Reilly (ignoring  the flourishing of far-right broadcasters well before O’Reilly). Actually, Koppel argues that “the bar for civility on cable television and talk radio has fallen so low that by comparison, O’Reilly seems almost reasonable.”

Indeed, if the show was meant to be ironic, then it succeeded; much of it was Koppel allowing O’Reilly to hold forth on incivility and the coarsening of the political dialogue. O’Reilly, true to his character, turns the discussion  back into a complaint about the forces arrayed against him: “I have been vilified to the extent that I have to have bodyguards almost everywhere I go.”

The Koppel segment wanted badly to show that “both sides” are contributing to this destructive cycle: “The partisan ranting is more widespread than ever,” he says. But for a supposedly two-sided problem, it seemed like they had trouble finding the left-leaning equivalent to far-right talk show hosts like Michael Savage and Mark Levin, save for a few fleeting clips from MSNBC.

The segment closed with a discussion that perfectly illustrated the problem with Koppel’s approach: Far-right shock pundit Ann Coulter posing as a media critic, alongside comedian Bill Maher–presumably a stand-in for the left. (“Smart, stubborn, and ideological opposites,” Koppel explained.)

Even though the pairing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, Maher wound up making the most coherent observation by challenging one of Koppel’s statements:

 KOPPEL: The bifurcation is really extreme. I mean, the left is further left and the right is further right.

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By: Paul Craig Roberts| September 29, 2012

In my last column, “A Culture of Delusion,” I wrote that “Americans live in a matrix of lies. Lies dominate every policy discussion, every political decision.” This column will use two top news stories, Iranian nukes and Julian Assange, to illustrate how lies become “truth.”

The western Presstitute media uses every lie to demonize the Iranian government. On September 28 in a fit of unmitigated ignorance, the UK rag, Mail Online, called the president of Iran a “dictator.” The Iranian presidency is an office filled by popular election, and the authority of the office is subordinate to the ayatollahs. Assange is demonized alternatively as a rapist and a spy.

The western media and the US Congress comprise the two largest whore houses in human history. One of their favorite lies is that the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, wants to kill all the Jews. Watch this 6 minute, 42 second video of Ahmadinejad’s meeting with Jewish religious leaders. Don’t be put off by the title. Washington Blog is making a joke. http://www.globalresearch.ca/horrifying-graphic-video-of-iranian-leader-savagely-abusing-jews/

Last week the news was dominated by the non-existent but virtually real Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, blatantly intervened in the US presidential election, demanding that Obama specify the “red line” for attacking Iran.

Netanyahu believes his maximum leverage over Obama, the president of the “world’s only superpower,” is just prior to the election. Israel cannot attack Iran on its own without the risk of Israel’s destruction. But Netanyahu reasons that if he attacks Iran the week before the US election, Obama will have to join in or lose the Jewish vote for not supporting Israel in states such as Florida, which has a large Jewish population and many electoral votes. If the election is close, Netanyahu, a person consumed by arrogance and hubris, might exercise his threat and attack Iran, despite the opposition of former chiefs of Israeli intelligence and military, the opposition party, and a majority of the Israeli people.

In other words, the outcome of the “superpower’s” presidential election might depend upon whether the sitting president of the “superpower” is sufficiently obedient to the crazed Israeli prime minister.

That the outcome of the US presidential election could depend upon the agenda of the prime minister of a tiny country that exists only because of US financial, military, and diplomatic support, especially the UN veto, should disturb those Americans who think that they are the “indispensable people.” How indispensable are you when you have to do what the Israeli prime minister wants?

The US media makes certain that this question never enters american minds. Americans have been told that if Iran doesn’t have nukes, it has a nuke weapons program. This is what the politicians of both parties, the media, and the Israel Lobby tell them. Americans are told this despite the facts that the CIA and the National Intelligence Estimate stick to the conclusion that Iran abandoned its flirtation with a nuclear weapon in 2003 and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran report no evidence of a nuclear weapons program and no evidence of any diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.

Moreover, what could Iran do with a nuclear weapon, other than use it against an aggressor? Any offensive use would result in Iran’s destruction.

Why do Americans believe Iran has nukes or is making nukes when the CIA says they are not? The answer is that Netanyahu says so, and the elected members of the US government in the House, Senate, and White House are afraid to contradict the Israeli prime minister, as are the American print and TV media. Some “superpower” we are! The “indispensable people” have to grovel in the dirt before Netanyahu. Americans are not even aware of their shame.

Iran, unlike Israel, signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Signatories to the treaty have the right to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy requires a low level of enrichment, 5% or less. The minute Iran announced a nuclear energy program, the Israeli government and its prostitutes in Washington lied that Iran was building a bomb. For exercising its legal rights under the treaty, Iran has been painted as a rouge criminal state and demonized.

A nuclear weapon requires 95% enrichment. To get to 5% from scratch and then to 95% is a long drawn out process. I think I first started hearing Israeli government claims of an Iranian nuke back in he 1990s of last century.

When Iran announced that, in view of the sanctions imposed by the US, sanctions that affect medical supplies, Iran was going to enrich uranium to 20% in order to supply itself with medical isotopes, the Israeli allegations that this would lead to a bomb resulted in Iran saying that the Iranian government was content for France or some other country to supply their medical isotopes and would not pursue enrichment beyond energy requirements. The US and Russia were also mentioned as suppliers.

According to the NY Times on September 29, 2011, “the Iranian president told the Washington Post and later, in basically the same terms, the New York Times: ‘if you [the United States and Europe] give us uranium grade 20 percent now, we will stop production.’” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/30iht-edvaez30.html?_r=0

On Israel’s orders Washington vetoed the Iranian concession. Solving the problem is not what the Israeli government wants. The problem has to be kept alive so that it can be used to foment an attack on Iran.

The Iranian nuke is one of those grand hoaxes, a lie designed to hide the real agenda.

What is the real agenda?

The real agenda hiding behind the hysterical concern about an Iranian nuke, is the rightwing Israeli government’s design on the water resources of southern Lebanon.

Twice the Israeli government sent the Israeli army into southern Lebanon to occupy and eventually annex the territory. And twice Hizbollah defeated and drove out the vaunted Israeli army.

The few thousand Hizbollah fighters were able to defeat the Israeli army, which is equipped and supplied by US taxpayers’ dollars while Americans are foreclosed out of their homes and left unemployed as Washington applauds the offshoring of their jobs, because Syria and Iran provide Hizbollah with financial support and weapons that destroy Israeli tanks.

Syria, of course, is currently resisting its destruction by Israel and its american puppet state. The overthrow of Syria hasn’t gone well, because the Russians and Chinese didn’t go along with it, like they stupidly did in Libya. But the far rightwing Israeli government has concluded that with american prestige involved in the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria, the deed will be done.

That leaves Iran. The Israeli government knows that it cannot be forthright and say that it wants Americans to go to war with Iran so that Israel can steal southern Lebanon. But if fear over nonexistent nukes can muster the Western populations to support an attack on Iran, Iran can be eliminated as Hizbollah’s supplier, and Israel can steal the water from Lebanon.

There is no discussion whatsoever of the real agenda anywhere in the US print and TV media. I doubt there is any discussion anywhere in Europe, which is a collection of American puppet states.

Will we get World War III for Christmas? Possibly, if the US election is close as it approaches. If the election is too close to call, Netanyahu might throw the dice and rely on Obama following his lead. Iran will be attacked, and the consequences are unknowable.

Let’s turn to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Like Iran, Assange has been demonized, not on the basis of facts but on the basis of lies.

Washington, which poses as a purveyor of human rights, has been mistreating if not torturing Bradley Manning since May 2010 without bringing him to trial in an effort to make Manning say that he and Assange constitute a spy team working against the US.

Assange is a celebrity, because Wikileaks publishes the news leaked to the organization that the Presstitute media suppresses. While in Sweden, Assange was picked up by two celebrity-hungry women who took him home to their beds. The women later bragged of their conquests on social media, but apparently when they found out that they were rivals, they turned on the “two-timer” Assange and made charges. One claimed that he had not used a condom as per her request, and the other claimed that she had offered one helping but he had taken two.

Whatever the accusations, the Swedish prosecutorial office investigated and dismissed the case.

Despite this known fact, the Western Presstitute media reports that Assange is a fugitive evading rape charges by hiding in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. Even RT, an alternative media voice, has fallen for this disinformation.

After Assange was cleared in Sweden, a female prosecutor has tried to reopen the case. There is no evidence for her to bring charges, so she demanded that England arrest Assange and extradite him to Sweden to be questioned.

Normally, people are not subject to extradition for questioning. Only people who have been formally charged are extradited. But this detail wasn’t of interest to the Presstitute media or to the British courts which ruled as Washington desired.

Opinions vary as to whether the female prosecutor who wants Assange for questioning is an ideological feminist who believes no heterosexual sex is legitimate or whether she is in the pay of Washington. But experts agree that once Assange is in Sweden he is certain to be turned over to Washington, which will demand his extradition on trumped up charges. Extradition on trumped up charges is difficult in England but easy in Sweden.

Assange offered to be questioned in London, but the female prosecutor refused. Now the Ecuadoran Embassy is offering to send Assange to the Ecuadoran Embassy in Sweden to be questioned, but Washington, London, and the Swedish prosecutor have refused. They want Assange without the protection of the asylum that Ecuador has granted him.

Washington has how made this obvious. John Glaser writing in Antiwar.com, September 26, 2012, reports: “Newly declassified documents have revealed that the US military designated WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange an enemy of the state, who can be killed or detained without trial.” http://news.antiwar.com/2012/09/26/declassified-documents-reveal-us-military-designated-assange-enemy-of-state/ See also http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/27/wikileaks-investigation-enemy

Assange is Washington’s enemy, because he let the truth get out. WikiLeaks is a journalistic enterprise, not a spy enterprise. It publishes information, some of which is leaked to it by whistleblowers, just as the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the New York Times. The information leaked to WikiLeaks has embarrassed Washington, because it shows Washington to be two-faced, a manipulator of other countries’ governments and medias, and overflowing with mendacity.

In other words, Washington is not the light upon the hill but the gates of Hell or Mordor.

Assange had best be careful. If he again speaks to supportive crowds from a balcony of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, he is likely to be shot down by a CIA sniper.

Approved by Obama, of course. Or his successor.

ABOUT PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

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By Barry Grey, wsws.org

The magnitude and monstrous consequences of a war on Iran would dwarf our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Within American ruling circles, it is well known that plans for war against Iran are far advanced, but there is a conspiracy of silence by both political parties and the media to keep this reality out of the presidential election. The intent is to drag the American people into yet another bloody war in the Middle East on the basis of false pretexts and lies, despite broad popular opposition to an attack on Iran.

Nothing reveals the anti-democratic and fraudulent character of the elections more clearly than the refusal to explain to the American people the military carnage that is being prepared in their name and allow them to express their democratic will.

Over the past week, a number of commentaries in the American and European press have warned of an attack by either Israel or the US, or both, against Iran in the near future, and a bipartisan group of former foreign policy officials, retired generals and former legislators has issued a report outlining the potentially catastrophic consequences of an unprovoked attack on the Persian Gulf country.

Some of the recent articles have the character of a pre-emptive political strike by ruling class figures wary of a war against Iran, while others suggest that such a war is necessary and inevitable. The confluence of such commentaries is itself an indication that detailed planning for war is underway.

At the United Nations on Tuesday, President Obama reiterated that the US will “do what we must” to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is pressing for greater US security guarantees to Israel, whose prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, has criticized Obama for not moving quickly enough to launch military action.

But beyond such general threats, the reality of advanced plans for war is being concealed.

The National Journal on Monday posted an article entitled “The Path to War with Iran.” The article, prompted by a conference held last Friday by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on the subject of US-Israeli coordination against Iran, began by noting the significance of Obama’s speech last March before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Obama announced a new policy that put the United States and Iran on a collision course from which neither has veered,” the author wrote.

“Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment,” Obama declared at the time. “I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon… I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”

Commenting on the implications of Obama rejecting a policy of “containing” a nuclear Iran, the author wrote: “Either Tehran would have to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program, or the president was all but pledging a preventive war to destroy it.”

He then noted that Washington has deployed the largest US naval armada to the Persian Gulf in years and that the US Senate last Friday passed a bipartisan resolution, cosponsored by more than three-fourths of the chamber, ruling out a strategy of containment in regard to Iran.

The article quoted David Makovsky, an Israel “expert” and senior fellow at the Washington Institute, saying that the next administration, whether headed by Obama or Romney, will be under “intense pressure” to launch a military attack on the oil-rich country. Patrick Clawson, an Iran “expert” and director of research at the Washington Institute, said that, “[R]ight now we are headed towards war.”

The German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung published an article on Monday headlined “Dangerous War Rhetoric” that began: “When everyone is talking of war, a spark is sufficient to ignite one.”

The article compared the current situation in the Middle East to the eve of World War I, warning, “From a European perspective, things seem much like Europe in 1914.” It went to say that war could be set off by “an unplanned incident between US and Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf, a miscalculation of the Israeli or of the Iranian military, or a significant terrorist attack.”

Albert Hunt, Washington editor at Bloomberg News, published an article in Newsday, also last Monday, headlined “Americans Deserve a Pre-Emptive Debate on Attacking Iran.” He began: “The last two presidents have misled voters on the cost of armed conflicts. Amid another election, the drumbeats of war are sounding again. This time the subject is Iran. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: Here we go again.”

Some of the disastrous consequences such a war could have were spelled out in a report released last week by the Iran Project, a bipartisan panel of former leading US diplomats, military officers and congressmen.

They wrote, “Even in order to fulfill the stated objective of ensuring that Iran never acquires a nuclear bomb, the US would need to conduct a substantially expanded air and sea war over a prolonged period of time, likely several years. If the US decided to seek a more ambitious objective, such as regime change in Iran or undermining Iran’s influence in the region, then an even greater commitment of force would be required to occupy all or part of the country. Given Iran’s large size and population, and the strength of Iranian nationalism, we estimated that the occupation of Iran would require a commitment of resources and personnel greater than what the US has expended over the past 10 years in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.”

The report pointed to risks of “all-out regional war” in the Middle East, of unidentified allies of Iran (such as Russia or China) acting to help Iran repel US attacks, and of a global economic collapse.

There is also the possibility that the US or Israel might employ nuclear weapons. During the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Hillary Clinton threatened to “obliterate” Iran.

The American ruling class has a long history of organizing wars of aggression behind the backs of the American people. President Lyndon Johnson ran for election in 1964 pledging to avoid a major war in Vietnam, even as he was planning to escalate the US intervention. He notoriously told the military brass, “Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war.”

In the 2000 presidential election, plans for an attack on Iraq were concealed by both Bush and Gore. In the 2002 mid-term election, the Democrats made a calculated decision, despite broad popular opposition to Bush’s war plans, not to discuss the advanced preparations for an invasion.

In 2008, Obama postured as an anti-war candidate, and proceeded once in office to continue the war in Iraq, expand the carnage in Afghanistan and extend US military aggression and subversion to Pakistan, Libya and Syria.

Whatever pledges of military action Obama and Romney may have given Netanyahu, they are for criminal acts of aggression carried out with contempt for US and Israeli public opinion. A recent poll by the Chicago Council for Global Affairs found 70 percent opposition in America to a US strike on Iran. Another poll found only 32 percent support in Israel for an Israeli strike.

This is a damning indictment of American capitalism and of the American political system. Even after hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and trillions of dollars squandered in unpopular wars for US control of the oil-rich Middle East, US imperialism is pressing ahead with plans for a new, even deadlier war.

The American people must be warned: A vast crime is being prepared behind your backs and in your name! Unless the war criminals in the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA are disarmed and held to account, ever-more bloody regional wars will coalesce into another global conflagration.

The working class is the social force that can prevent this, but only if it breaks free of the Democratic Party and the two-party system and takes the path of mass political struggle for the overthrow of the capitalism, the root cause of war, and the establishment of socialism.

Barry Grey is a senior political analyst with wsws.org, a socialist information resource of the Socialist Equality Party.

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By Julie Woestehoff, Black Agenda Report

The alleged “documentary,” Won’t Back Down, universally praised in corporate media as the true-to-life inspiring story of big-city parents fighting bad teachers, worse unions and failed, unresponsive public schools is pure right-wing propaganda. Financed by the same right-wing billionaire who paid for “Waiting For Superman,” its intention is to build support for “trigger” referenda on the ballot across the country which will greatly further the cause of school privatization.

Originally published in Substance News [4], the place to go for news of the movement to democratize public education and resist the corporate version of bipartisan “school reform.”  I saw the “Won’t Back Down” movie last night. The crowd loved it, and I would have liked it, too, if I hadn’t known why it was produced or been aware of the three big lies at the heart of the movie.

After all, it’s just a movie, right? And a successful feel-good movie at that. Not being at all connected to reality (despite the big announcement at the very beginning that it was “inspired by actual events”) shouldn’t matter, right? I mean, did “Coma” accurately depict the way medicine really works? Could scientists reproduce all the effects in the “Star Wars” movies? Would a celebrity impersonator like “Dave” really get away with switching places with a comatose president and make government serve the people again?  Of course not, and no one attacks those movies’ accuracy.

The difference here is that the producers of “Won’t Back Down” have publicly acknowledged that the movie was designed to sell parent trigger laws to parent and state legislatures. Our screening in Chicago was introduced by, among others, a staff member from New Schools for Chicago, which pushes charter schools. The “goody bag” we were all promised at the end of the movie ended up being a WBD totebag with a brochure for New Schools for Chicago in it. Oh, goody.

As propaganda, then, the movie’s lies are fair game.

WBD Big Lie #1: Teachers union contracts do not allow teachers to stay after school to give children extra help.  Anyone who has been in a public school for more than 10 minutes knows this is a lie. Teachers are there after school, before school, and during lunch and recess helping students.

But this lie is a critical dramatic device in the movie, Mom Maggie Gyllenhaal’s first major “aha” moment. When she runs into the classroom in the middle of what passes for a lesson in Terrible Teacher’s room, demanding that the teacher stay after school and tutor her child, the teacher says, “School ends at 3 pm.” Mom runs out of the room, a furious and defiant look on her face. Later conversations reinforce the lie that teachers are not allowed to stay after school to “give the children what they need.”

WBD Big Lie #2: School turnarounds result from parents and teachers voting to “change the school.”

The movie shows teachers agonizing over their vote on the”Fail Safe” program, the movie’s name for the parent trigger. But the real parent trigger laws DO NOT ALLOW TEACHERS A VOTE OR A VOICE. One could brush this difference off as mere dramatic license, but the movie depends completely on the alliance between Mom Maggie and Teacher Viola Davis, who is depicted as an angel of a teacher as well as a deeply loving mother. Yet the premise is a lie.

WBD Big Lie #3: Great schools are easy.

This was honestly the most idiotic part of the movie. Not that it’s easy to portray something complicated in movie language. But really. Mom Maggie goes to the district office. She has coffee with the receptionist who tells her about the “Fail Safe” law. Maggie’s takeaway? All you need to turn a school around is to “get one teacher, and stick it out.”

Later we see Mom With Two Part-Time Jobs and Dyslexia personally writing a 400-page proposal for the new school, which includes fun “ideas” from various teachers like “field trips” and “Shakespeare.” Hero Teacher Viola contributes the idea that the curriculum should be “integrated.”  Yes, it’s a movie. “Coma,” “Star Wars” and “Dave” didn’t have to prove that they were valid in the real world.

But when people use a movie to disrupt and potentially damage the real lives of real children and real adults, they do have to be held accountable to the rest of us.

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/movie-review-3-big-lies-won%E2%80%99t-back-down-movie

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