Netanyahu's speech. The vast network of American propaganda outlets devoting resources to demonizing Iran. Casting the Syrian and Iranian governments, Shi'ia Lebanese, Shi'ia anybody/anywhere as crazed mad men -- where did it come from?
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Wonderful example of propaganda.
Viewers are told that Iran provided "material support" for the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks. Iran also provided support for "Hezbollah and Al Qaeda" to carry out the attacks on the African embassies and the USS Cole.
Gee, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda merged.
Wow. Just that: wow. You can't construct a lie much bigger than that one.
While they're selling that on Iran, they might as well sell this:
Iran is a New Mongo, the planet from Flash Gordon.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei isn't the white bearded religious guy who councils restraint and sends personal messages to other religions' leaders. He's Ming the Merciless.
That is the NeoCon idea of Shia Islam. Every time out. More below the fold........
Here's the list of experts who comment one at a time as fires rage and Ahmadinejad riles up his audiences.
Shelley Berkley – Democratic Member of the United States House of Representatives from Nevada
Jon Kyl – United States Senator from Arizona [R]. Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security
Eliot Engel – Democratic U.S. Representative from the 17th Congressional district in New York. Member of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee.
R. James Woolsey, Jr. – Former Director of Central Intelligence
Clifford May – American journalist and President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Amir-Abbas Fakhravar - Iranian American writer, Student leader and former political prisoner. Research fellow and Visiting Lecturer at the Institute of World Politics
Claire Lopez – A former Senior CIA Clandestine Operations Officer with tours in Africa, Central/South America and the Balkans, with a focus on the USSR/Russia.
Frank Gaffney – Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy at the United States Department of Defense.
John Bolton – Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations
Dore Gold – President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations
Bernard Lewis – Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, one of America's foremost experts on the Middle East, and author of over 30 books on the Middle East and Islam.
Ken Timmerman – American journalist, and the founder of the Foundation for Democracy in Iraq.
Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff—Retired U.S. Navy Chaplain, offering eye-witness account of the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing
If you know the basic history of Iran from 1953 to 2010 then you will recognize the gross lies in their narrative. And the Marine BLT Barracks bombing happened on October 23, 1983. That had nothing to do with Hizb Allah/Hezbollah which was put together in the unique circumstances that presented as the Americans withdrew from Beirut in 1985.
In fact that attack was an act of war, responding to Ronald Reagan siding with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War. When Reagan supplied Saddam with materials he needed to keep large fighting forces in the field 24/7/365, the Iranians took it to mean that a state of war existed between our countries. (That is also international law.) Saddam was able to kill hundreds of thousands more Iranians because of Reagan's help. Reagan played a part in the deaths of 5,000 in Lebanon. They got their little piece of revenge killing 241 of ours.
Bad blood is real.
CIA overthrew their government. Reagan helped Saddam slaughter their people by the tens of thousands. And why would they forget? Reagan is far from a hero in Iran and Lebanon.
Chanting crowds in Tehran scream "Death to the Shah, death to America."
Of course there's no mention of SAVAK in the film. The Shah's secret police. No mention of torturing a million people during his reign. No mention of CIA overthrowing the previous democratic government. No mention of the Shah spending oil revenues on American high-tech weapons.
They're just crazy people. Listing family members killed by the Shah and then by Saddam with American help ??? That's insane. Of course it is.
Or not. Photographs persist.
The Emperor of Oil. There's no mention of the Shah spending $1 billion on a party in the desert photographed exquisitely by "Life" magazine in October 1971. The Shah celebrated his country’s 2,500th anniversary by throwing the most expensive party in the history of the world. Kings, presidents, sheikhs, billionaires from all over the world assembled for three days at the archeological site, Persepolis. Song birds from Europe. Food by the tons from Europe. A tent city with a massive fountain. Gold, ivory, silk by the kilometer. Nothing spared.
V.P. Spiro Agnew represented America. Fittingly, if you will.
By 1979 that was all gone. The Shah ousted. The most reactionary of the country's clerics in charge. And then Saddam Hussein was unleashed on them with Western weapons and shiploads of ammunition to run up the lists of the dead.
Today? Rabble rousing by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also faded from memory. The government of Iran has troops out fighting the Islamist Saudi proxies in Syria and Iraq -- the likes of ISIS, Nusrah Front/al-Qseda and Muslim Brotherhood/Free Syrian Army. Can't be all bad.