Cognitive Dissidents

Anyone who reads this entry might be thinking I’m about to rant on about Big Brother propaganda and the USA.

You might even be expecting me to say something like the standard CND propaganda line presented at the last Anti-War rally in London.

The US is making charges about a covert nuclear weapons programme in Iran without presenting any credible evidence.

These charges are strikingly similar to the false accusations raised to justify the invasion of Iraq three years ago.

I agree – they are “strikingly similar” – but I don’t want to talk about that.

Today the “Big Lie” I want to nail is Iranian.

It’s not that I trust the US Government not to lie about WMD - Bush did it before and I’m sure he’d do it again – but I just can’t get a sensible answer to a sensible question out of the anti-war faction.

My question is very simple and goes like this:

Why would a country like Iran, which holds oil reserves of approx 132.5 billion barrels - roughly 14% of the world’s oil reserves, and which also holds 812 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves – 15.8% of the world’s gas reserves - choose to develop nuclear energy as an alternative power source - with the huge expense, environmental risk, and danger of political fallout?

In a country which enjoys an average of 8.5 hours of sunlight per day wouldn’t a solar solution be more ecologically and politically acceptable?

So far nobody has come up with a sensible answer that convinces me the Iranians are not developing nuclear weapons covertly under the cover of the “peaceful nuclear programme”.

But some of the anti-war faction are so blind they end up justifying the worst kind of appeasement - allowing Iranian access to nuclear weapons.

Every peace activist on the globe ought to be in the streets and elsewhere lobbying in support of something very simple: do not attack Iran, even if this means allowing Iran to develop its own nuclear weapons.

I don’t want a war either - but the idea of allowing the Iranian government to own nuclear weapons will not help me sleep securely in my bed at night.

It raises my level of paranoia and insecurity higher than they ever were in the “Old Cold War”.

Things are already bad enough with Israel, India and Pakistan developing nuclear weapons, the collapse of the Soviet Union allowing nuclear materials, expertise and possibly weapons to be sold to the highest bidders, and the threat of possible terrorist bio-chemical attacks.

Anyone who lived through the “Old Cold War” will be watching in dismay as we enter the “New Cold War”.

Now that we are in the New Cold War we can watch the propaganda and paranoia levels being raised – as the 21st century “USAxis” and “IslamAxis” go eyeball to eyeball before squaring up to each other in a war of words …

Ding! Ding! Seconds Out! Two Tribes …

Anyone else who is old enough to have lived through the pre-war years of the appeasement of Hitler when he was re-arming - despite the Treaty of Versailles - will be getting a profound and uneasy sense of deja-vu.

At that time the anti-war appeasement monkeys opined that:

(a) Hitler only wanted to protect himself from the Russians – so needed to re-arm

(b) The annexation of Austria, Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia were just Hitler “re-adjusting his borders” within traditional and historic limits

(c) That nice Mr. Hitler was an honourable man who had been democratically elected and would never think about going to war with England.

Any old excuse really – but the excuses were all just a load of appeasement monkey doo-doo.

It didn’t work then - it won’t work now.

We all know how that turned out – a bloody conflict that turned much of “Old Europe” into rubble - and caused an estimated 62 million deaths.

You see – I’d prefer “Jaw-Jaw rather than War-War” but sometimes we need to take action.

Now is about right - before the nuclear stakes become like poker chips on a gambling table - like the “Old Cold War”.

Anybody remember “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD)?

I remember MAD – and I don’t want to go there again.

The last thing our global culture needs is a new “missile gap”, a new “arms race” - or a "New Cold War".

So when peaceniks point out that WWII cost 62 million lives and argue “shouldn’t we try and stop WWIII now” – I have to agree with them.

We should try and stop war - but allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons will do nothing to prevent the 620+ million deaths that WWIII would cost.

I have to look at the facts – and the facts worry me more than any appeasement monkey suggestions from people who would normally oppose nuclear power at the drop of a hat.

Perhaps nuclear power is OK for the Iranians - right? But I’m a cynical old git – and I have a long memory.

Maybe I’m forgetting something.

After all “Islam is a religion of peace” - maybe it’s nothing like National Socialism after all – perhaps I’ve been reading too much Islamaphobic material that just emphasises the threat.

After all - that nice Mr. Ahmadinejad is a responsible leader of a democratic country – so even if we allowed the Iranians to have nuclear weapons they would never want to attack us would they?

I wonder what the Iranians have to say on the subject.

"The United States has the power to cause harm and pain. But the United States is also susceptible to harm and pain.

So if that is the path that the U.S. wishes to choose, let the ball roll"

That sounds like a nicely chilled out attitude to foreign policy.

I wonder what they think of Israel.

Our enemies on the one hand oppose our nation’s acquisition of nuclear energy and on the other hand want to divert the attention of other nations from the key issue of Palestine to give an opportunity to the Zionist regime to prolong its existence

One of the main reasons why the big powers oppose Iran on the nuclear issue is for the sake of the Zionist regime, so as to let this regime live on.

But they are unaware that not only will the Iranian nation continue in the path of obtaining nuclear energy till the end, it will not even for one instant divert its attention from the issue of Palestine

OK – I can cope with a bit of anti-Zionist ranting – but this next bit promotes a picture of Iran as a nation of peaceful people who can be trusted to use their nuclear weapons responsibly when they get them.

Do the removal of Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations," the ultra-conservative president said.

He once again called the Holocaust a "fairy tale" and said Europeans have become hostages of "Zionists" in Israel.

He also accused Europeans for not allowing "neutral scholars" to investigate in Europe and make a scientific report on "the truth about the fairy tale of Holocaust."

I could keep going - but you get the picture.

Ahmadinejad promotes beliefs such as “the fairy tale of the holocaust” that are not mainstream - to say the least – in most western democracies.

In fact you can be arrested and prosecuted for saying the same thing in many western European countries.

If there is one thing I do like about Ahmadinejad – he is such a reasonable man.

So we can rely on the Iranian leader to ensure that religious tolerance will be the norm in Iran.

I will stop Christianity in this country ...

If the Iranian leader is so tolerant – what about the role of women in Iran?

The gathering of hundreds of women in Tehran to mark the International Women's Day was brutally attacked by security forces on Wednesday, March 8.

A unique video clip from this barbaric act against a peaceful gathering has been provided to the Iranian Resistance.

The attached clip here shows clearly how women were attacked and beaten up by truncheons and forced to disperse.

I guess the rights of homosexuals in Iran are also guaranteed then?

The new wave of anti-gay repression in Iran came to world attention with the torture and hanging of two gay teenagers in the city of Mashad on July 19; they were each lashed 228 times before having the nooses placed around their necks.

No? Well surely the record of Iranian human rights must be better?

No one knows how many people are held in Iran’s prisons and secret detention centers for the peaceful expression of their views.

Over the past four years, as the window of free expression has closed in Iran, abuse and torture of dissidents have increased in Evin Prison’s solitary cells and secret detention centers.

Meanwhile, back in Tehran, enabling free speech is a priority for the government.

Hossein Derakhshan is on tour. In the past few years, he has become the public face of Iran's beleaguered bloggers, more than a dozen of whom have been arrested for their politics.

The crackdown has stifled Iran's exploding Web culture, and Derakhshan is making a swing along the Eastern Seaboard to drum up support for the bloggers back home.

So there we have it.

We can only conclude that Iran is a reasonable country that only wants to protect itself from its enemies, possibly re-adjust its borders a little, and would never go to war with us.

The Iranian nuclear program is entirely peaceful because they need to develop an alternative energy source and they don’t have any intention of developing nuclear weapons with any of the reprocessed material.

This is because they live in a very dark country – so they have no chance of developing alternative solar resources. (I have enquired about windmills but I haven’t had a reply yet).

Meanwhile democracy in Iran continues to flourish with freedom of speech, equal rights for all religions, and equal rights for women and homosexuals.

Tomorrow I was going to talk about the reality of Santa Claus – but in the “New Cold War” - there is no Sanity Clause.

---

Tags: cold war new cold war jihadis terrorism iran nuclear threat appeasement big lie appeasement monkeys

---