*** A Letter From Iran to the US Congress ***
DriftingByTheStorm
Posts: 8,684
A letter from Iran to the US Congress
by Mehrdad (Khalil) Shahabi (source: iranian)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Honorable Ladies & Gentleman!
It was with great dismay that I, and many of my fellow Iranians in Iran and abroad, learnt of the regrettably widespread support by you in the U.S Congress, for the Resolution HR 362. This resolution which imposes a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to stop all shipment of refined petroleum products from reaching Iran and to inspect all vessels approaching or leaving Iran, is an act of war waged on our country and the Iranian nation.
If passed, this resolution, would be yet another instance in a chain of flagrant violations of international law committed by the US and a war crime under the United Nations Convention on Genocide, executed against one of the most peaceful nations on earth who has not attacked any other nation, at least, for the past two and half centuries, a nation that has suffered a most brutal eight- year-long war of aggression by the ruthless dictator, Saddam Hussein, with the full political, financial, intelligence and military support of the United States, including the provision of the WMD.
Whereas the surviving victims of Saddam’s chemical attack on Halabja in the Iraqi Kurdistan and on Iran (in which thousands of innocent civilians were massacred)are still dying in agony, and the US hireling, Saddam, was conveniently disposed of as the witness and the executor of such crimes after the US “Mission” was “Accomplished” in 2003, the main perpetrators are still at large to move on from the bloodbath in Iraq to a genocide in Iran.
From a teenage admirer of the US and its culture in the early 60s who was deeply saddened by the assassination of JFK, I, and many people of my generation, have grown disillusioned and disgusted with the iron-fisted policies of your country unleashing wars of aggression, waging coups and toppling democratically-elected governments all over the world, installing ruthless regimes in developing countries and giving your full blessing to the massacres of their peaceful political opponents (1953: Iran, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh; This US-engineered coup became the blueprint for many of the future black operations. 1954: Guatemala, president Jacobo Arbenz. 1965: Indonesia, president Dr. Sukarno, with more than a million people massacred, many on the basis of execution lists supplied by the US embassy in Jakarta. 1960s: Congo, Dr. Patrice Lumumba. 1960s: Greece. 1973: Chile, Dr. Salvadore Allende. 1976: Argentina; then Panama, Haiti … just to name a few. You well know that the terror list goes on).
The recent revelations by Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker magazine, of the US Congress secretly funding of Bush’s request for 400 million dollars to escalate major covert operations in Iran involving assassinations, abductions, fomenting and supporting ethnic unrest and terror campaigns by such despised terrorist groups as MKO, to force a regime change, is a full circle since the 1953 US overthrow of the popular and democratically -elected government of Dr. Mossadegh in Iran. Under the circumstances, it is fully understandable why the US has exempted itself from prosecution under the International Criminal Court.
Honorable ladies and Gentlemen! The United States’ deeds towards Iran and the larger Middle East, rather than “promoting democracy”, have earned it the reputation of the “The Assassin of Democracy".
We, the recipients of your terror, tie our hopes only on the conscientious efforts of the peace-loving and humane American individuals and organizations in the anti-war movement to open your eyes to the catastrophic consequences of signing on to resolutions which usher incalculable human suffering and war. The pending Resolution HR362 is a war resolution which would potentially conflagrate your manufactured conflicts in the Middle East and the chain of its uncontrollable reactions and reprisals would spread and burn the globe. Violence breeds violence, ladies and gentlemen! Learn from the history! Learn from your recent mistakes. Do not flare up an unending chain of hostilities, to then naively and cynically question: "Why do they hate us?".
Perhaps a second go at Joseph Heller's brilliant Catch 22 is a timely read.Remember Yossarion's wonder at people on the ground raising their fists and shouting when he was flying up there only to do his job of bombing!! Let us not doubt for a moment that only acting wisely and humanely on the part of US statespersons would bring back respect and admiration for what US once stood for.
If your belief and love for "Democracy" and a “Free World” is sincere and genuine, then please respect the spirit of of democracy and the rights of other nations to live with dignity, to decide their destiny free of foreign interference, and to prosper as you do. A genuine celebration of your "Independence Day" would require celebrating the spirit of independence and respecting the independence of other nations too. Only God knows how, in the 21st Century, the US would have treated the poor Tom Paine whose "Common Sense" we have translated into Farsi and is just about to reach Iranian readers. If the American public and the US Congress do not reign in this ruthless hostility towards our nation, we wonder whether those who might escape becoming your “collateral damage”, would still be interested in reading on American ideals of liberty or whether they would rather spit us (the translators) in the face for propagating American “values” and “ideals”.
I sincerely hope that your wisdom, common sense and sound judgment would prevail over the elaborate false propaganda and agitations aimed at manufacturing a most vicious consent. This consent, if given, could not only devastate our lives, but would also, ultimately, be to the great detriment of the US itself.
Yours, with hope and in anticipation,
Mehrdad (Khalil) Shahabi, Tehran
AUTHOR
Mehrdad (Khalil) Shahabi is a writer and translator, based in Tehran. His joint translations with Mir Mahmoud Nabavi (Confessions of an Economic Hit Manby John Perkins and Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism & Its Triumphs edited by John Pilger) have been timely additions to the political literature in Iran, well received and widely reviewed. His further works to appear shortly in Iran include a foreword to Common Sense by Tom Paine (translated by Mir Mahmoud Nabavi).
by Mehrdad (Khalil) Shahabi (source: iranian)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Honorable Ladies & Gentleman!
It was with great dismay that I, and many of my fellow Iranians in Iran and abroad, learnt of the regrettably widespread support by you in the U.S Congress, for the Resolution HR 362. This resolution which imposes a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to stop all shipment of refined petroleum products from reaching Iran and to inspect all vessels approaching or leaving Iran, is an act of war waged on our country and the Iranian nation.
If passed, this resolution, would be yet another instance in a chain of flagrant violations of international law committed by the US and a war crime under the United Nations Convention on Genocide, executed against one of the most peaceful nations on earth who has not attacked any other nation, at least, for the past two and half centuries, a nation that has suffered a most brutal eight- year-long war of aggression by the ruthless dictator, Saddam Hussein, with the full political, financial, intelligence and military support of the United States, including the provision of the WMD.
Whereas the surviving victims of Saddam’s chemical attack on Halabja in the Iraqi Kurdistan and on Iran (in which thousands of innocent civilians were massacred)are still dying in agony, and the US hireling, Saddam, was conveniently disposed of as the witness and the executor of such crimes after the US “Mission” was “Accomplished” in 2003, the main perpetrators are still at large to move on from the bloodbath in Iraq to a genocide in Iran.
From a teenage admirer of the US and its culture in the early 60s who was deeply saddened by the assassination of JFK, I, and many people of my generation, have grown disillusioned and disgusted with the iron-fisted policies of your country unleashing wars of aggression, waging coups and toppling democratically-elected governments all over the world, installing ruthless regimes in developing countries and giving your full blessing to the massacres of their peaceful political opponents (1953: Iran, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh; This US-engineered coup became the blueprint for many of the future black operations. 1954: Guatemala, president Jacobo Arbenz. 1965: Indonesia, president Dr. Sukarno, with more than a million people massacred, many on the basis of execution lists supplied by the US embassy in Jakarta. 1960s: Congo, Dr. Patrice Lumumba. 1960s: Greece. 1973: Chile, Dr. Salvadore Allende. 1976: Argentina; then Panama, Haiti … just to name a few. You well know that the terror list goes on).
The recent revelations by Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker magazine, of the US Congress secretly funding of Bush’s request for 400 million dollars to escalate major covert operations in Iran involving assassinations, abductions, fomenting and supporting ethnic unrest and terror campaigns by such despised terrorist groups as MKO, to force a regime change, is a full circle since the 1953 US overthrow of the popular and democratically -elected government of Dr. Mossadegh in Iran. Under the circumstances, it is fully understandable why the US has exempted itself from prosecution under the International Criminal Court.
Honorable ladies and Gentlemen! The United States’ deeds towards Iran and the larger Middle East, rather than “promoting democracy”, have earned it the reputation of the “The Assassin of Democracy".
We, the recipients of your terror, tie our hopes only on the conscientious efforts of the peace-loving and humane American individuals and organizations in the anti-war movement to open your eyes to the catastrophic consequences of signing on to resolutions which usher incalculable human suffering and war. The pending Resolution HR362 is a war resolution which would potentially conflagrate your manufactured conflicts in the Middle East and the chain of its uncontrollable reactions and reprisals would spread and burn the globe. Violence breeds violence, ladies and gentlemen! Learn from the history! Learn from your recent mistakes. Do not flare up an unending chain of hostilities, to then naively and cynically question: "Why do they hate us?".
Perhaps a second go at Joseph Heller's brilliant Catch 22 is a timely read.Remember Yossarion's wonder at people on the ground raising their fists and shouting when he was flying up there only to do his job of bombing!! Let us not doubt for a moment that only acting wisely and humanely on the part of US statespersons would bring back respect and admiration for what US once stood for.
If your belief and love for "Democracy" and a “Free World” is sincere and genuine, then please respect the spirit of of democracy and the rights of other nations to live with dignity, to decide their destiny free of foreign interference, and to prosper as you do. A genuine celebration of your "Independence Day" would require celebrating the spirit of independence and respecting the independence of other nations too. Only God knows how, in the 21st Century, the US would have treated the poor Tom Paine whose "Common Sense" we have translated into Farsi and is just about to reach Iranian readers. If the American public and the US Congress do not reign in this ruthless hostility towards our nation, we wonder whether those who might escape becoming your “collateral damage”, would still be interested in reading on American ideals of liberty or whether they would rather spit us (the translators) in the face for propagating American “values” and “ideals”.
I sincerely hope that your wisdom, common sense and sound judgment would prevail over the elaborate false propaganda and agitations aimed at manufacturing a most vicious consent. This consent, if given, could not only devastate our lives, but would also, ultimately, be to the great detriment of the US itself.
Yours, with hope and in anticipation,
Mehrdad (Khalil) Shahabi, Tehran
AUTHOR
Mehrdad (Khalil) Shahabi is a writer and translator, based in Tehran. His joint translations with Mir Mahmoud Nabavi (Confessions of an Economic Hit Manby John Perkins and Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism & Its Triumphs edited by John Pilger) have been timely additions to the political literature in Iran, well received and widely reviewed. His further works to appear shortly in Iran include a foreword to Common Sense by Tom Paine (translated by Mir Mahmoud Nabavi).
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
lets try this:
Balanced News Source Says:
Iran threat: We will burn American navy and set Israel alight if attacked, says Khamenei aide
Israeli Propaganda Says:
Iran Threatens to Burn Out Israel, U.S. Navy
lol.
:rolleyes:
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Speaking nonsense: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121607841801452581.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
***********************
"We've laid the groundwork. It's like planting the seeds. And next year, it's spring." - Nader
***********************
Prepare for tending to your garden, America.
And what were the results of last week's missile crisis in the Gulf? Tensions rose, strengthening Tehran's embattled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And oil prices shot from $136 a barrel to a record $147.
That $11-a-barrel spike alone translates into $25 million a day in fresh revenue for Ahmadinejad and Co. And as the United States imports 13 million of the 20 million barrels we daily consume, that $11 spike in price translates into $143 million more sucked out of the U.S. economy every day -- into the coffers of Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and OPEC.
Can we not see who benefits and who pays for this war talk?
Every day the war drums beat, the mullahs get richer and we get poorer. Which raises the question. Was this mini-missile crisis cooked up by the mullahs to rip off Uncle Sam? For by week's end it appeared the Americans had been had, big-time.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27521
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
That's an interesting take on this. Never thought of it as economically beneficial to the Iranians.
This is because he understands world history.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Pat Buchanon is a nut in his personal ideology, but as a political commentator he is usually spot on.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Here is Pat Buchanon's article from last week. Mr. Buchanon knows his history and applies this to present day:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27466
No More Blank Checks for War
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted: 07/11/2008
After the assassination of the archduke in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, Austria got from Kaiser Wilhelm a "blank cheque" to punish Serbia. Germany would follow whatever course its ally chose to take. Austria chose war on Serbia. And World War I resulted.
On March 31, 1939, Britain gave a blank check to Poland in its dispute with Germany over Danzig, a town of 350,000 Germans. Should war come, Britain would fight on Poland's side.
Poland refused to negotiate, Adolf Hitler attacked, and Britain declared war. After six years, the British Empire collapsed. Germany was burnt to ashes. Poland entered the slave quarters of Joseph Stalin's empire.
Lesson: No great power should ever give to a small ally or client state a blank check to drag it into war.
This raises the question: Has President Bush given Israel a blank check?
A year ago, Israel attacked and smashed an alleged nuclear reactor site in Syria. In April, Israel held a five-day civil defense drill. In June, Israel sent 100 F-15s and F-16s, with refueling tankers, toward Greece in a simulated attack. The planes flew 1,450 kilometers, the distance to Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.
On June 6, Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, "If Iran continues its nuclear weapons program we will attack it."
Ehud Olmert returned from a June meeting with Bush to tell Israelis, "George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on the matter before the end of his term."
Is Israel bluffing, or in dead earnest?
For while Israel can do damage to Iran, she cannot defeat Iran without using nuclear weapons. But any attack Israel launched against Iran would require U.S. complicity, and any Israeli war with Iran would almost certainly require the United States to do most of the fighting to win or end it.
Thus, if George Bush does not want war with Iran, with two U.S. wars already, he must inform the Israelis in unequivocal terms that the United States opposes any Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran, and will not assist but denounce any such attack.
If Bush believes war with Iran is vital to U.S. security, he should make that case to Congress. To allow Israel to start a war we do not want would be an abdication of his duty as president.
Clearly, among the reasons Israel conducted its dress rehearsal for war was to maximize pressure on Iran to halt enriching uranium. Bush may well have welcomed the added pressure.
But as the Iranians have insisted, they are entitled, under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty they signed and Israel did not, to enrich uranium for fuel in power plants. Tehran has declared it will not be the only nation to surrender its legal rights under the NPT. And in response to the Israeli military exercises, Tehran conducted its own missile-firing exercises this week.
If neither side yields, confrontation is inevitable. Perhaps soon.
For we are only four months from the election, and Israel is pawing the ground to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
Is this Bush's back door to war with Iran?
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen, in Israel a week ago, returned to say a "third front" in the Middle East, with Iran, would be "extremely stressful" to U.S. forces.
He is saying that U.S. ground forces probably cannot now cope with another war, with a nation three times as large as Iraq.
Asked about Israel taking unilateral action, Mullen replied, "This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don't need it to be more unstable." But Mullen is not the president. What did Bush tell Olmert? Does Israel have a green light, a yellow light or a red light?
Should Israel attack Iran and Bush deny complicity, he would no more be believed than were Britain and France in 1956. Then, the Israelis stormed into Sinai, and Britain and France said they were intervening to separate the warring nations and secure the Suez Canal. Outraged, Ike ordered the British, French and Israelis alike to get out of Suez and Sinai. They did.
President Bush must step up to the plate.
If he believes sanctions are not succeeding and Iran's nuclear program must be halted, he should go to Congress for authority to neutralize the facilities. If he has not so concluded, he should tell Israel it is not to start a war that U.S. airmen, sailors, soldiers and Marines will have to finish.
America needs to restore that absolute freedom of action in matters of war and peace she once had, before entering the skein of entangling alliances that now encumber the republic.
No ally, no client state, should ever be allowed to drag America into a war she has not chosen, constitutionally, to fight.
No more blank checks for any nation.
[Sorry Drift didn't realize this posting was on Resolution 362]
Fuck man, if people on a message board can figure this shit out why is it those in power seem to not be able to comprehend that what they do now affects what happens in the future?
- They know things we do not (intel).
- They have an agenda to force a specific reaction
- They're very dim.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Here's the question - what do you do about the Iranian situation? What do you do about their nuke program?
Stuff White People Like #666
Making Unsubstantiated Hyperbole
The Iraninans do NOT have a "nuke program".
All they want is to accquire peaceful nuclear POWER technology so that they can internaly power their own country if\when their desserts run dry of oil.
The reason America is hot to go murdering Iranians is that their government has already set up an Oil Bourse,
and it is only a matter of time (short time) before the bourse is on line to sell straight up REFINED CRUDE.
Wikipedia: Iranian Oil Bourse
It is a race against time for America, and it's already dying dollar, to get Iran, before it kills our dollar!
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Awesome usage of SWPL!
Okay, the official version is that the nuclear program is for power only. Then we get into is it really, or is it for both purposes, etc.
You might want to check out this movie, which is now a classic, as it has a good bit of information on Iran, our covert CIA involvement with them, and why they REALLY hate us so much.
THE SECRET GOVERNMENT: THE CONSTITUTION IN CRISIS
If I opened it now would you not understand?
And I'm Veronica Corningstone, Tits McGee is off tonight...
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
that's politics. you ever notice how the best predictor of us threat levels is bush's approval rating? scaring people is always a good way to get people rallying around the leader. dubya was a lame duck president already on his way out until 9/11. he's played that into 2 wars and 2 terms. we're just mad iran figured out how to play the game too.
Denny Crane!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3051418.stm
U.S. Shifts Policy, To Send Envoy To Iran Nuclear Talks - 17 Jul 2008
http://www.netnewspublisher.com/us-shifts-policy-to-send-envoy-to-iran-nuclear-talks/
Amazing what a little show of strength can achieve!