There is an acceptable face of protest in Iran, in Venezuela and the myriad other countries marked for western regime change, and there is an unacceptable face.
So true! And we also won't be shown the Mossad infiltrators who are setting buses and cops on fire. What people in the west sees is highly curated and biased.
In late 1969, as a clueless young American, I found myself impulsively traveling overland from Europe to Southeast Asia - a journey that changed my life. It was the Shah's Iran of all the countries I traveled through that was the most vicious police state with the palpable fear of its citizens evident everywhere. I remember the relief we both felt when my companion and I crossed the border into Afghanistan.
The imperialists use the same formula time and time again, exploiting divisions in political views between populations, staging coups to topple democratically elected leaders and replacing them with leaders loyal to the interests of the imperialists rather than the people they are supposed to represent. Even if the imperialists happen to share some truthful information as you correctly point out, it is never the full story - it is always extremely biased. Unless we on the Left choose to share the whole story and challenge the biased reporting by media serving the imperialists, we ought to keep quiet. Never must we allow ourselves to be used by these imperialists to help them manufacture consent for the atrocities they wish to visit upon the country in question.
Nate, you write "...you, as a consumer of western media, will never see the unacceptable face."
What bugs me is that people COULD see the "unacceptable" (to the Empire Masters) face if they wanted to. Despite the increasing strangulation of online media, the truth is out there. We can find it with a few moves our fingers. How great is that compared to when I was growing up in the U.S. when there were only three TV networks, lots of (corporate-owned) newspapers, magazines and half-hearted radio news bulletins? If one looked, there were small-circulation publications such as I.F. Stone's mag. So easy now!
But people don't WANT to know. Some turn their eyeballs to the corporate media sources, but most turn away. Reality is too messy for them to contemplate. I talk about current events all the time in real-life casual conversation. (I don't beat it to death because I'm not a boor) But most folks don't engage. I've had people say with a bit of pride in their voices "I don't pay attention to the news." Ignorance Is Strength! Covid, Ukraine, the Gaza genocide, climate change, Peak Oil... Ostriches rule! Only, real ostriches would be eaten by hyenas if they were as foolish as depicted in the "head in the sand" trope. Humans are stupider than mythical flightless African birds! And there are plenty of two-legged hyenas waiting to pick us off...
As someone whose father was born in Tehran, as someone who lived there as a kid, as someone who helped her relatives flee in 1979-80 with the clothes on their back when I was a college student, as someone whose adult daughter went there in 2015 and reported the current climate of the average Iranian, and someone who still has family who lives there, I can tell you that a lot more than “some” Iranians want this regime gone AND they do not want the Shah’s son to come back AND they don’t want the US involvement. To characterize the current regime there as having large support by the people is categorically wrong. And by the way, I have seen pro-government demonstrations on tv, and most Iranians know what that like in our current regime, you do it or face the “consequence”.
They don’t have to “force”…decides of fear does it for them. Ever wonder why abused women stay in their marriages? why republicans and maga keep rationalizing trump?
Disingenuous analogy. 70% of Iranian women have a higher education qualification. Iran produces more female STEM graduates than the USA. To suggest that it is mere fear that forces people onto the streets to defend the government assumes that these material improvements play no part in their calculation and strips people of all agency, reducing everything to often nebulous notions of ‘freedom’
What material improvements are you referring to? Their economy is shit, even their government won’t deny it. Education? One only needs to look at the Harvard/Yale graduates and Supreme Court judges who defend trump. Higher education is not a protective factor from fear or conspiracy thinking. And to discount fear (loss of family, property, career, and one’s own life) as a driving force in human psychology (for better or worse), is naive. I can also refer to reports that prior to the blackout, agents of the government were randomly showing up at ppl’s doors to “request” they remove their posts. The ppl know they are being watched. How did Hitler gain power? Because good ppl were afraid of what would happen if they spoke out. It wasn’t just Jews that were sent to camps. I am sure some Iranians ARE clinging to this regime, change itself is scary. But to think they are in a majority is a distortion, to put it mildly. We can talk about US involvement, and we can agree on that as wrong, historically and now. But let me ask you this. If we could wave a magic wand and remove the trump, would we welcome white Christian nationalists instead?
"What material improvements are you referring to? Their economy is shit, even their government won’t deny it."
So, you're saying sanctions work.
"Education? One only needs to look at the Harvard/Yale graduates and Supreme Court judges who defend trump. Higher education is not a protective factor from fear or conspiracy thinking."
So what are you saying? Do you reject education?
"But let me ask you this. If we could wave a magic wand and remove the trump, would we welcome white Christian nationalists instead?"
Hey Finster, just as aside and a semi-compliment, because I don't have any other way to get a message to you, I like this comment. It's more thought-out than your usual "What'cha gonna do about it?" I see your nym on all sorts of sites such as Moon of Alabama, Ian Welsh, Larry Johnson and possibly others. (I read a lot) Have you been banned at Naked Capitalism due to non-stop nihilism? Anyway, as much as I'm annoyed by the kneejerk negativity of your routine response, I sadly say you're right. When the Amerikkkan Empire and its vassals do something that shocks the consciences of everyone who's not a sociopath, and it doesn't get smashed back hard, then yeah, the abuses will continue. Anything except violent counter-moves is laughed off by the empire that's now using violence as its first move in every case.
Thing is, I wish I were wrong. I wish I had answers. If I did, I'd be meowing like a fiend.
But if I were to start confusing my wishes with reality, I'd be lucky if I were just "dead" and not "dead as a result of some gruesome medical experiment".
Starting with the first - the point of sanctions is turn the target's economy to shit. Seems that they worked. Whatever next? Blaming a robbery victim for not having any cash on hand?
"cancer drugs" and surely vaccines.... yes the Iranians ( who are too "undeveloped" to be healthy) surely need these to join the "developed" world into perpetual disease and slavery.
The Khazarian Jews puppets who are Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, are accelarating the moves for giving their so wished WWIII to their masters. I only can see a viable solution that is not mine but with whom I agree totally and I quote:
"I know of only one way to prevent the World War Three that is now imminent: make Israel pay for it. If in the final position of authority of one of the targeted nations, I would call in the Israeli ambassador and inform him that if my nation were forced into a war with the US, I would of course respond. However, my first retaliation would be not against the US but against Israel, that I would apply a necessary portion of my arsenal to ensure that Israel would remain uninhabitable for 500 years and that Satan’s Third Temple would never be built. It is my thesis that Israel is too important to these people to be sacrificed, and that faced with such a threat deemed credible, they would back off. With everything I know, I do not believe a third world war can be otherwise prevented.
I will of course be accused of anti-Semitism, but this is not about me; it is about a small handful of Jewish European bankers and industrialists who want a third world war to destroy the old order before the new can be installed. These people must be named and their objectives exposed. In any case, in a judicial debate of offending a few hundred people or starting a third world war, which is the greater crime?"
You may remembe how I, Arlene Johnson, Publisher/Author, praised you for the truth about why Maduro was kidnapped recently, but what you have written here is categoricaly opposite to what my research proved that garnered me an A for my independent study done in 1987 for a professor had her Ph.D. when I was just about to graduate with my BA that June. You can read that at http://www.truedemocracy.net/sample/
Then, in my 2018 book, in which this aforementioned link appears, is the fact that the British government gave the Shah of Iran an excellerant to kill him off of the cancer that he had. That's why they didn't tell the British people the truth in 1979. And that is why I wrote my 2018 book entitled The Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi: Victim of His Times ISBN 978-09725798-3-4 comments of which are at https://arlenejohnson.livejournal.com followed by ordering information, and for which I have a special offer which several Brits have taken advantage of which is £20.00 with free P&P, becaue I know for a fact that the Iranian people want Reza Pahlavi to return to Iran. He and his wife and children, plus Her Majesty Empress Farah Pahlavi have been exiled for 47 years, not to mention Ali, the gentleman who taught me this true history, has been exiled from Iran, being forced to live in Los Angeles, California all these years.
So true! And we also won't be shown the Mossad infiltrators who are setting buses and cops on fire. What people in the west sees is highly curated and biased.
Yes. Both Israeli and US politicians have admitted that Mossad is on the ground
Of course they were. So what?
War on Iran is now baked in the cake.
In late 1969, as a clueless young American, I found myself impulsively traveling overland from Europe to Southeast Asia - a journey that changed my life. It was the Shah's Iran of all the countries I traveled through that was the most vicious police state with the palpable fear of its citizens evident everywhere. I remember the relief we both felt when my companion and I crossed the border into Afghanistan.
Thank you Nate.
The imperialists use the same formula time and time again, exploiting divisions in political views between populations, staging coups to topple democratically elected leaders and replacing them with leaders loyal to the interests of the imperialists rather than the people they are supposed to represent. Even if the imperialists happen to share some truthful information as you correctly point out, it is never the full story - it is always extremely biased. Unless we on the Left choose to share the whole story and challenge the biased reporting by media serving the imperialists, we ought to keep quiet. Never must we allow ourselves to be used by these imperialists to help them manufacture consent for the atrocities they wish to visit upon the country in question.
Goddamn right. Thank you.
Precisely
Nate, you write "...you, as a consumer of western media, will never see the unacceptable face."
What bugs me is that people COULD see the "unacceptable" (to the Empire Masters) face if they wanted to. Despite the increasing strangulation of online media, the truth is out there. We can find it with a few moves our fingers. How great is that compared to when I was growing up in the U.S. when there were only three TV networks, lots of (corporate-owned) newspapers, magazines and half-hearted radio news bulletins? If one looked, there were small-circulation publications such as I.F. Stone's mag. So easy now!
But people don't WANT to know. Some turn their eyeballs to the corporate media sources, but most turn away. Reality is too messy for them to contemplate. I talk about current events all the time in real-life casual conversation. (I don't beat it to death because I'm not a boor) But most folks don't engage. I've had people say with a bit of pride in their voices "I don't pay attention to the news." Ignorance Is Strength! Covid, Ukraine, the Gaza genocide, climate change, Peak Oil... Ostriches rule! Only, real ostriches would be eaten by hyenas if they were as foolish as depicted in the "head in the sand" trope. Humans are stupider than mythical flightless African birds! And there are plenty of two-legged hyenas waiting to pick us off...
As someone whose father was born in Tehran, as someone who lived there as a kid, as someone who helped her relatives flee in 1979-80 with the clothes on their back when I was a college student, as someone whose adult daughter went there in 2015 and reported the current climate of the average Iranian, and someone who still has family who lives there, I can tell you that a lot more than “some” Iranians want this regime gone AND they do not want the Shah’s son to come back AND they don’t want the US involvement. To characterize the current regime there as having large support by the people is categorically wrong. And by the way, I have seen pro-government demonstrations on tv, and most Iranians know what that like in our current regime, you do it or face the “consequence”.
So, in the midst of everything, the "regime" can expend enough
time and resources to force a million people into the streets?
They don’t have to “force”…decides of fear does it for them. Ever wonder why abused women stay in their marriages? why republicans and maga keep rationalizing trump?
Disingenuous analogy. 70% of Iranian women have a higher education qualification. Iran produces more female STEM graduates than the USA. To suggest that it is mere fear that forces people onto the streets to defend the government assumes that these material improvements play no part in their calculation and strips people of all agency, reducing everything to often nebulous notions of ‘freedom’
Perhaps. That's not for "us" (or Israel) to decide or "fix," in any case.
What material improvements are you referring to? Their economy is shit, even their government won’t deny it. Education? One only needs to look at the Harvard/Yale graduates and Supreme Court judges who defend trump. Higher education is not a protective factor from fear or conspiracy thinking. And to discount fear (loss of family, property, career, and one’s own life) as a driving force in human psychology (for better or worse), is naive. I can also refer to reports that prior to the blackout, agents of the government were randomly showing up at ppl’s doors to “request” they remove their posts. The ppl know they are being watched. How did Hitler gain power? Because good ppl were afraid of what would happen if they spoke out. It wasn’t just Jews that were sent to camps. I am sure some Iranians ARE clinging to this regime, change itself is scary. But to think they are in a majority is a distortion, to put it mildly. We can talk about US involvement, and we can agree on that as wrong, historically and now. But let me ask you this. If we could wave a magic wand and remove the trump, would we welcome white Christian nationalists instead?
"What material improvements are you referring to? Their economy is shit, even their government won’t deny it."
So, you're saying sanctions work.
"Education? One only needs to look at the Harvard/Yale graduates and Supreme Court judges who defend trump. Higher education is not a protective factor from fear or conspiracy thinking."
So what are you saying? Do you reject education?
"But let me ask you this. If we could wave a magic wand and remove the trump, would we welcome white Christian nationalists instead?"
False dichotomy much?
Hey Finster, just as aside and a semi-compliment, because I don't have any other way to get a message to you, I like this comment. It's more thought-out than your usual "What'cha gonna do about it?" I see your nym on all sorts of sites such as Moon of Alabama, Ian Welsh, Larry Johnson and possibly others. (I read a lot) Have you been banned at Naked Capitalism due to non-stop nihilism? Anyway, as much as I'm annoyed by the kneejerk negativity of your routine response, I sadly say you're right. When the Amerikkkan Empire and its vassals do something that shocks the consciences of everyone who's not a sociopath, and it doesn't get smashed back hard, then yeah, the abuses will continue. Anything except violent counter-moves is laughed off by the empire that's now using violence as its first move in every case.
Yeah, Yves doesn't like me. Whatever.
Thing is, I wish I were wrong. I wish I had answers. If I did, I'd be meowing like a fiend.
But if I were to start confusing my wishes with reality, I'd be lucky if I were just "dead" and not "dead as a result of some gruesome medical experiment".
Hilarious. Not worth a response.
All I did was use your own words.
Starting with the first - the point of sanctions is turn the target's economy to shit. Seems that they worked. Whatever next? Blaming a robbery victim for not having any cash on hand?
The Architecture of a Crisis Manufactured by Hostile Foreign Powers.
An exclusive exposé on the hidden forces, intelligence networks, and propaganda machinery fueling turmoil in Iran.
https://felixabt.substack.com/p/the-architecture-of-a-crisis-manufactured
"cancer drugs" and surely vaccines.... yes the Iranians ( who are too "undeveloped" to be healthy) surely need these to join the "developed" world into perpetual disease and slavery.
FODA!!! Muito bom.
Dear Sir,
The Khazarian Jews puppets who are Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, are accelarating the moves for giving their so wished WWIII to their masters. I only can see a viable solution that is not mine but with whom I agree totally and I quote:
"I know of only one way to prevent the World War Three that is now imminent: make Israel pay for it. If in the final position of authority of one of the targeted nations, I would call in the Israeli ambassador and inform him that if my nation were forced into a war with the US, I would of course respond. However, my first retaliation would be not against the US but against Israel, that I would apply a necessary portion of my arsenal to ensure that Israel would remain uninhabitable for 500 years and that Satan’s Third Temple would never be built. It is my thesis that Israel is too important to these people to be sacrificed, and that faced with such a threat deemed credible, they would back off. With everything I know, I do not believe a third world war can be otherwise prevented.
I will of course be accused of anti-Semitism, but this is not about me; it is about a small handful of Jewish European bankers and industrialists who want a third world war to destroy the old order before the new can be installed. These people must be named and their objectives exposed. In any case, in a judicial debate of offending a few hundred people or starting a third world war, which is the greater crime?"
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/21329/
You may remembe how I, Arlene Johnson, Publisher/Author, praised you for the truth about why Maduro was kidnapped recently, but what you have written here is categoricaly opposite to what my research proved that garnered me an A for my independent study done in 1987 for a professor had her Ph.D. when I was just about to graduate with my BA that June. You can read that at http://www.truedemocracy.net/sample/
Then, in my 2018 book, in which this aforementioned link appears, is the fact that the British government gave the Shah of Iran an excellerant to kill him off of the cancer that he had. That's why they didn't tell the British people the truth in 1979. And that is why I wrote my 2018 book entitled The Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi: Victim of His Times ISBN 978-09725798-3-4 comments of which are at https://arlenejohnson.livejournal.com followed by ordering information, and for which I have a special offer which several Brits have taken advantage of which is £20.00 with free P&P, becaue I know for a fact that the Iranian people want Reza Pahlavi to return to Iran. He and his wife and children, plus Her Majesty Empress Farah Pahlavi have been exiled for 47 years, not to mention Ali, the gentleman who taught me this true history, has been exiled from Iran, being forced to live in Los Angeles, California all these years.
Sincerely,
Arlene Johnson
It works.