Barbara Slavin on C-Span's Washington Journal

The editor of this Youtube vid has selected only the callers who express the view that Israel is the source of all the troubles in the current American campaign.



I appreciate this clipping service because I cannot tolerate more than a few minutes of the Washington Journal program on C-Span (which is free to cable subscribers across the United States). Many of the citizens who call in to Washington Journal are well informed, but many sound like they dropped out of school before the eighth grade. On average the discourse is not very enlightening.

I'll recycle an old post about Barbara Slavin from Ressentiment. I didn't know who she was until I caught her wonking on some Washington circle jerk think tank show where the neocons outnumbered the sane journalists about 20 to one - about the same as the general population.

Barbara regurgitates much of the AEI-style conventional wisdom about Iranian designs on the Middle East, but she's one of the only ones who argues for opening diplomatic channels and trying something else besides military strikes. Where I find fault with Barbara's world view however, is that she does not question the foundations of American imperial designs on the region, nor any of the typical rationalizations for American adventurism. While she provides an extremely nuanced view of Iran culture and politics, she remains completely in the dark about American motives.

I doubt if she would be invited to participate in main stream media discussions if she did question American rationalizations, but at least there is one journalist who is trying to think outside the box.

Barbara argues in her book Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation that both the American and the Iranian regimes are using projections of the other to keep themselves in power and to further their own agenda. The more Americans bang the war drums the more Iranians are forced to rally round the current regime.

A book reviewer writes at Amazon

How many Americans know how the Iranian system of government works? Are Americans aware that Iran's population is mostly under thirty and restless? Do Americans realize that Iran is more complex than their mere portrayal as an Islamic fascist state? One wonders if Americans have thought about the internal dynamics of Iranian society? Sadly, most Americans don't realize that a hunger for democratic reform exists in Iranian society and war will likely only rally their people to the regime which oppresses them.

Our newspapers, television, radio and online sources are busy quoting outrageous statements from the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and America's fear about their nuclear program. Jingoistic sound-bites on both sides have dwarfed sensible, thoughtful and fact based commentary.

Thankfully, Barbara Slavin has written a book that presents a holistic view we Americans are typically not exposed too. Using her remarkable access to people such as Madeline Albright, Condelezza Rice, Iranian reformers like former President Mohammad Khatami, longtime establishment figures such as Ali Rafsanjani, as well as dissidents like Akbar Ganji and everyday citizens, allows Slavin to shed sunlight on a nation most Americans know very little about. She was the first newspaper journalist to interview Iranian President Ahmadinejad.

We also learn about the tantalizing opportunities for reconciliation not seized by three successive American administrations.

Overall, Slavin's prose is anecdotal but fact based. Her book makes truth accessible and truth about Iran has been in short supply. Hopefully, her book will also make truth fashionable again.

For more information about Slavin's book and insights into Iran, listen to a podcast interview I had with her at the weblog, Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Bush-Hitler: Hypnotizing the masses

By Russell M. Drake 07/21/04 -- Said by some to be more dangerous than Osama bin-Laden, he has been condemned as a "war maniac," called a "moron" by the Canadian prime minister’s chief spokeswoman, ridiculed as "The English Patient" for his struggles with language, and likened to Adolf Hitler.

Of all the labels hung on George W. Bush, the hardest to shake may be the comparison with Hitler.

Perhaps the clearest likeness between the two men lies in their use of emotionally induced hypnosis to plant in the mass consciousness an image of themselves as protectors of their subjects from threats to national survival both inside and outside the fatherland. Read more ...

Bush Vs. Hitler

David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of PRAVD:

But the disconcerting advantages the Bush dictatorship enjoys over Hitler's are the scientific advances that have made the implementation of fascism much easier. New technologies have given the government Orwellian capabilities. Programs now exist to decipher every stroke made on a computer keyboard, to spy upon people from great distances, to create databases designed to blacklist and harass those who don’t obsequiously genuflect before official dogma, and to install microchips into vehicles, and even into people, to monitor their every move. In addition, advances in genetics provide the opportunity to establish a “master race,” simply by denying insurance or other medical care to those with genetic proclivities to certain diseases, and to create DNA databases that will enable the government to categorize and/or spy upon individuals with certain genetic predispositions.

There is also the glut of “recreational” technology to keep Americans inactive and thus ill-informed: computer games, videos and DVDs, 24-hour sports broadcasts, hundreds of television channels available through cable or satellite, and a media enamored with a “cult-of-celebrity” to distract the populace with superficialities (innocuously called “infotainment”) while social injustices are ignored and freedom and democracy decimated. In fact some social critics recently noted the irony that more outrage had been generated over the methods used to select a champion in college football than the methods used to elect a president. Read more ...

31 Similarities between Hitler and Bush

Edward Jayne
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 29, 2004
When President Bush decided to invade Iraq, his spokesmen began comparing Saddam Hussein to Adolph Hitler, the most monstrous figure in modern history. Everybody was therefore shocked when a high German bureaucrat turned the tables by comparing Bush himself with Hitler. As to be expected, she (the bureaucrat) was forced to resign because of her extreme disrespect for an American president. Read more ...

Compare and Contrast

In a January 2003 issue of the CounterPunch, Wayne Madsen (a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist) wrote:

Adolf Hitler would be proud that an American President is emulating him in so many ways. Hitler, it will be remembered, routinely ignored his military, other world leaders, and the clergy. Bush seems to think that this policy, which ultimately failed for Hitler, will work for him. Read more...

Thanks Naj

Thanks for the invitation to blog.

I think it's important to get direct talks going between bloggers in Iran and the U.S. because dialog is the only means we have to avert the tragedy that the Bush Administration is calculating against Iran.

I've written elsewhere that I find it very difficult to justify everything that Iran's leadership is doing, but the way I prioritize things that is not any of my business. It's the business of Iranians to change Iran. And it's the business of Americans to change the United States.

I think we can see which of us has the taller order here. The American psychosis is much further advanced and we have all the money and all the guns and all the lawyers. And supposedly we're the smart ones what with our universal availability of education and out ubiquitous democratic ideals.

Regimes need an endless supply of bogey men to maintain themselves in power.

There's some kind of internet law which says that the first person who mentions Nazis in a political discussion loses the argument. And that applies here also. We have to extend the Holocaust analogy beyond credibility to make it plausible for most people.

What the United States is planning for Iran is not comparable to the Holocaust, because the Holocaust was a product of European fascism and not the cause of it. It was a symptom of a larger phenomenon rather than the cause of it.

If we want to look for parallels between the Nazi phenomenon and current events in the United States, we have to look deeper than just the administration. Hitler's territorial expansions where justified to make more living space for German speaking people. The amazing thing is not that Hitler made such a transparent declaration of war on Poland. What is amazing is that most of the Germans were predisposed to believe it.

This is where we find a similarity between the Nazi phenomenon and current events in American politics. Iran just happens to be handy, just as Poland was handy. It has less to do with the actual rationalizations against Iran which are being broadcast over the loudspeakers in the media and more to do with America's deep seeded need to dominate the entire Middle East.

Of course I'm just rambling on here about things I've been thinking and observing, so feel free to stop reading at any time. Nothing that I'm saying hasn't been hundreds of times in thousands of other blogs.

A recent Zogby poll indicates that 52% of Americans would support a pre-emptive military strike against Iran. Drill down into the vid links and you will hear exactly what the American people are being told about the Iranian bogey man. The message is ubiquitous and completely unchallenged except by esoteric diplomats and thinkers who are not often invited into discussions on mainstream media.

Note the conspicuous absense of anyone like Noam Chomsky or anyone with any sense in the Zionist American media. We only invite people who forward our agenda to participate in "mass" media.

Compare the Zogby poll with this episode of Jay Leno's Jaywalking with Senator Dole to understand how 52% of Americans could formulate any thoughts whatsoever about American foreign policy. A synopsis for the low-bandwidth readers: Jay interviews teachers and students visiting the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and asks them basic questions about American government, questions anyone who wants to apply for citizenship would have to answer to become a citizen, like how many senators each state has. One teacher cannot name the monument she is taking her students to see, which she is standing right in front of.

Hello World!

This blog is inspired by the recent drumbeat for war on Iran, on the accusation that if not contained, Iran will pose a threat for WW3, and Holocaust2!

You are invited to contribute your thoughts and writings, with a focus on parities and disparities between Germany of 1933, USA of today and Iran of tomorrow.

Please send an email to "neoresistance at gmail dot com" to be added to Author's list.

If you have written on the topic before, please leave a link!

United for peace, all the best!
Naj