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Source: http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/87/72087-004-CDFDD10E.jpg
Because raw imperialism can’t be defended, its defenders tend to be morons.
For example there’s the U.S. war on Iran, and therefore warrior for imperialism Fareed Zakaria vs. Iran. That country is suffering under the most brutal sanctions a corporate globalist hegemon can conjure, crushing the everyday hopes and lives of working and middle class Iranians. The victim’s duly elected president (the illegitimacy of the 2009 election is just more lies), although in most respects a bigoted right-winger himself, nonetheless consistently wins the debate with the intellectual warriors of corporate globalist imperialism. CNN a couple nights ago:
ZAKARIA: More with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I quote the Koran to him to show him that he might be wrong about something. …
Oh I bet you will ;->, looking forward to that Fareed …
ZAKARIA: You’re a student of history, and you said something that I was struck by in one of the gatherings that you were at. You spoke about Israel and you said it has no roots in history in the region. And I was wondering whether you really believe that because as you know, of course, Jews have lived there for thousands of years, and we know this, of course, because there are repeated references to the children of Israel in the Koran. There are 43 references to the children of Israel. In fact, one of them, chapter 17 Sura 104 says, we say onto the children of Israel, dwell in this land, live in this land, referring to the land that is now Israel. So do you dispute these facts or do you accept that there is some connection between the children of Israel and this land?
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): So we’re trying to fabricate to make the roots a connection? So you do not draw any distinction between the Zionists and the Jews?
ZAKARIA: I’m asking you.
AHMADINEJAD: I am — I have always maintained that the Zionist regime has no historical roots in the region. I — why would I say that the Jews have no historical root? They were also in Iran, a great many of them. So that means that Iran belongs to the Jews? Iran belongs to Iranians, whether they’re Jews, whether they’re Muslims or Christians. Please pay close attention here, sir. The borderline is quite thin. Zionism is a doctrine, is a school of thought, is an aggressive school of thought. It has nothing to do with the Jewish people. At the same time, the majority of those who are there now have come from other lands. They’re immigrants. Many of them recently converted to Judaism. So the way this regime took shape doesn’t matter. Yes, for a long time, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in Palestine with one another in peace and stability and they will continue to do so in the future. It is not a Jewish/Christian/Muslim fight. We’re speaking of a group of Zionists who came and gained the reins of power.
Change the subject Fareed, you just been floored! (By the way, does the Ahmadinejad you read in that final paragraph in any way resemble the corporate imperial media Ahmadinejad?)
33 Comments
Thanks. Interesting to hear.
Zakarias is a serial plagiarist.
Why anyone still pretends he is an honorable journalist is beyond me. We, the public, should not stand for it.
Zakaria threw the fight, comrade.
You will love this :
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/08/fareed-zakaria.html
Like your screen name by the way :-)
Any given day I will enjoy a royal smackdown of our mainscream/lamestream media pundits, regardless of who smacks them down. Glee !’
Last year someone asked Ahmadinejad about death penalty or something and he shot back pointing out that the state of VA had just then executed a mentally ill person. Something like that.
Nice try. What happened in 1947/1949 was that a mixed state with a minority of the Jewish religion, a majority of Arabs (both Muslim and Bahai) was proposed by the United Nations.
Most Jews lived in cities. Most Arabs lived in the countryside.
That deal was accepted by the Jews. It was rejected by the Arab countries surrounding what became Israel. Local Arabs never got to vote. Seven Arab countries declared war immediately when the colonial status was removed — they lost despite having 10 times the equipment.
Arab refugees who ran to the coast stayed in Israel and are doing quite well indeed. Arab refugees who ran north and east lost out, getting trapped in horrible refugee camps.
Blame the “Zionists” ??? O.K., fine.
Any smart Arab leader would have welcomed these new Jews as a gift from Europe, a means to modernize the whole of the Middle East in a couple of generations. Kiss them on both cheeks. Follow the advice of the Koran. Move forward !!! (Didn’t happen.)
fairleft,
Excellent post! Therein lies the heart of the problem, as Ahmadinejad described it.
The media has long conflated Judaism as the religion w/ Zionism as a political ideology (an extremist one, in my opinion), and understanding this distinction is crucial to understanding the underlying problem.
When Ahmadinejad said “He will wipe this Zionist regime from the page of time,” he meant this ethnic cleansing/apartheid system that sees every non-Jew within its borders as an existential threat. Meanwhile, the US media translated it to mean Holocaust against Jews.
NYTimes Roger Cohen, after hearing all the demagoguery against Iran, went there for himself to see how Iranians treated the Jews who lived there. His article inflamed American pro-Israel voices, because what he found completely contradicted everything they’d been selling the American public:
BTW, recc’d & Tweeted.
Almost forgot, here is the link to NYTimes Roger Cohen’s Iran article.
Is that why the settlements continue into territory that the Palestinians hold? Is that why orchards are uprooted and houses demolished? Is that why the likud driven govt holds territory from 1967? Is that why white phosphorous gas is dropped on civilians? Because of the influx of the population gift?
“…a mixed state with a minority of the Jewish religion, a majority of Arabs (both Muslim and Bahai) was proposed by the United Nations.” Do you have a reference for Bahai in Palestine? I’ve never heard of Bahai in Palestine. The population of Palestine around 1947 was majority Muslim, with minorities of Jews and Christians.
“Most Jews lived in cities. Most Arabs lived in the countryside.” Other than Europeans who began settling there in the 19th century, the Jews who historically lived in Palestine were Arab like most everyone else. Not sure what significance you find in the city-countryside distinction.
Regarding partition — there never was any “deal.” The partition plan was not even voted on by the Security Council, which dropped it, in part because the “plan” violated the UN’s own charter on the right of self-determination. At the time the Zionists illegally declared themselves a state, the UN GA was working on a plan for a trusteeship for Palestine.
“Seven Arab countries declared war immediately when the colonial status was removed — they lost despite having 10 times the equipment.” The Zionists had already been at war against the local, defenseless population for months — busy cleansing the area of non-Jews in order to create their Jewish-majority homeland. (Look up Plan Dalet.) They’re still at it. And “10 times the equipment” is old hasbara — the discredited David and Goliath myth. The Arab armies were vastly outnumbered by the Zionist terrorists, who were better trained and better equipped.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/381/myth.htm
As for “Arab refugees who ran to the coast stayed in Israel and are doing quite well indeed,” could you be referring to the coastal Palestinians who were forced out of their homes and into the nightmare of Gaza? The 75,000 Palestinians pushed into the sea from the port of Haifa? The 50,000 expelled from Jaffa?
Yes, the new Jews have done wonders to Palestine — grotesque pollution, destruction of farms, fields, towns, and businesses; murder, theft, racism, constant warfare, indefinite imprisonment without trial, an economy based on spying, weapons, and money laundering, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ethnic_Cleansing_of_Palestine
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Maps/index.html
The equating of one thing and and a different thing is transparently moronic, of course. So, for that drivel to control and drive the ‘Iran debate’ (are they monstrously evil but not insane, or monstrously evil and INSANE!?!) you need a degraded setting, everyone cowed or compromised … But that’s what we have here in the West, to the max in the U.S. And then there’s the innocent and sincere dolt Fareed, symbol of official Western intelligence.
When the great boxer Sonny Liston threw a fight, that was damned obvious. But I’ve never seen Zareed show any sweet debate or analytical skills, so how do I know when he’s throwing fights or trying his best?
LOL, I love the angry one!
The Zak got off easy. Normally Ahmadinnerjacket woulda beheaded him.
And BTW, Ahmadinnerjacket is a worthless piece of Nazi filth…just in case anyone forgot.
USA,Inc. needed a villain in the ME to further its hegemony while continuing to satisfy Israel and Saudi Arabia in their quest for regional dominance. Iran was selected. Apparently the Western powers were not content with removing Mossadegh by coup in 1953, installing the Shah and creating SAVAK, supporting Saddam’s Iraq in its war effort against Iran, including providing WMDs. Now we have all out economic warfare via sanctions and an extreme military presence in the region, while demanding that Iran prove a negative in.re. a nuclear weapon. All of these actions against a nation that is a signatory to and in compliance with the NPT.
USA,Inc. is the epitome of bellicosity.
Thanks for the post.
Just in case anyone’s forgotten, you are a blatant supporter of the Zionist govt. in Israel.
Thank you, fairleft!
Recommended.
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Putz.
Glen Greenwald hits the nail on the head.
Or and attack from Israel, which is more likely.
(Something I have been saying for years)
Did my use of the N word strike a nerve, Luddy baby?
Nah, Cahnman. But Putz sure did, eh?
Fuckin’ A.
Yeah, my foot fell asleep.
No, Zareed didn’t throw the fight. He’s just stupid. Maybe even as stupid as Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews. Ever see them on celebrity Jeopardy? They’re ignorant idiots.
Ahmadinejad isn’t stupid. He wouldn’t have survived so long in Iran if he was. He was up against a stupid man, and he knew it, what’s more.
I like you, man, and usually enjoy your posts. But don’t ignore Occam’s Razor.
Historically, Persians have always been very tolerant of Jews. Initially, they probably felt sorry for them. After all, it was Cyrus the Great of the First Persian Empire who freed the Jewish slaves when it conquered the Babylonian Empire.
The Persians were Zoroastrian then. The Jewish people thrived under their influence for centuries.
Then came the Diaspora. It was the Romans, never the Persians, who exiled most of the Jews from their ancient homeland(they obtained that homeland by conquest, same as the ancient Persians did theirs, but never mind).
Many of those exiled Jews fled to Parthia, now Iraq, which was once again conquered by the Sassanid Persians, who were still Zoroastrian and gave full religious freedom.
Not that much changed under the Arab Caliphate and the conversion of most Zoroastrian Persians to Islam. The People of the Book, be they Jews or Christian, were to be respected and allowed to worship as they pleased so long at they paid a tax. The tax, BTW, was a very effective conversion tool for Islam.
My point, and I think the President of Iran’s, is that Islam has never called for the extermination of the Jews. Only some Europeans, most of them raised Christians, ever called for that.
WashingtonDC post 1945 has been creating “villains” in ways that make villain rotation also possible when needed/desired. Americans post WW2 have not been the good guys time after time.
By choice.
Watch Zakaria’s punch, comrade. “You said something, somewhere about historic Israel being a fiction.” Fucker was wide open.
It’s better to be suspicious of such stupidity, comrade. Say, what do you think of that Ahmadinejad bullshit at the UN, with the Mahdi and One True Allah to sentence the Evil Empire? What a gas this guy is.
Sure, A-merka is possessed by evil in Gawd’s judgement but don’t you sense that Moe Ahmadinejad is poking a stick in Satan’s eye? That guy has chutzpah.
Ha ha ha, Ahmad-i-nejad! Shit. I guess Allah forgot about Iraq.
To answer your first question, I think Ahmadinejad elevated bullshit to an art form, in his own bullshit way. It was a stage show. As for the second, absolutely.
He’s got Silkworm missiles. Lots of them. He knows Iran can close the Persian Gulf to oil traffic for a long time if it wants to. The Pentagon knows this, even if they won’t publicly admit it.
He plays too hard to our orientalism. The whole production, Zakaria et al included, looks like a farce.
Ahmadinejad is no slouch,continually you see Ahmadinejad demolishing these corporate journalists.
Anyone remember how foolish Ahmadinejad made Scott Pelley looked during the GWBush Presidency.
but what it says is more about America,that these creeps that work for Corporate media are not journalist,they are Corporate robots put in front of a camera to shill for the wealthy.They have no adherence to facts.
Yeah. Doing their best to represent America the homeland of drones.