"You have scorned our intelligence agencies — you tweet “intelligence” in quotes the same way that we should eventually use quotes around the word “president” when it precedes your name — and you have continued your assault on the press.”
See “Donald Trump and the Tainted Presidency”, Charles M. Blow,
New York Times, 2017-01-09.
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Monday, January 16, 2017
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Quote of the day: sex is more sinful than killing
"The real scandal is that we're scandalized by sexual escapades, not by the license to kill given to the CIA's drone program." - a paraphrase inserted in bold in "Real spies don't behave like Bond. Or do they?", David Rothkopf, Star Tribune, 2012-11-14, originally published in Foreign Policy as "Shaken, Not Stirred by CIA 'Values'", 2012-11-12.
I just find it amazing that we are willing to upset people's lives to suit our own purposes, whether it is with subpoenas to ransack houses of people we don't like or with drones to demolish houses of people we don't like.
I just find it amazing that we are willing to upset people's lives to suit our own purposes, whether it is with subpoenas to ransack houses of people we don't like or with drones to demolish houses of people we don't like.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Foreign policy rhetoric can bite you back
There are tabloids and there are tabloids! There's the National Inquirer and then there's the Onion. They both make up stories to titillate their readers. The Inquirer makes up stories hoping its readers will believe them. The Onion makes up stories hoping readers will see the irony in them.
One such unbelievable ironic story is "New Breeding Program Aimed At Keeping Moderate Republicans From Going Extinct".
You know, I know, the writers know that there is no such program. But given the way that so many Republicans who don't fall in lockstep with the ALEC program are being sidelined, don't you wish there was a way to bring back Republicans who think for themselves.
The story that inspired the title of this entry is "Iran Worried U.S. Might Be Building 8,500th Nuclear Weapon". The Onion has Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi parroting much of the rhetoric that the U.S. has used to describe Iran. Unfortunately, U.S. military policy based on short-term goals too often loses sight that U.S. actions may be causing more problems than they solve. Remember, the U.S. toppled the democratically elected Mossadegh of Iran and supported the Shah; then Iranians toppled the Shah and got the ayatollahs. The U.S. hasn't forgiven Iran for the capture of the Embassy and Iran has forgiven the U.S. for the installation of the Shah.
One such unbelievable ironic story is "New Breeding Program Aimed At Keeping Moderate Republicans From Going Extinct".
You know, I know, the writers know that there is no such program. But given the way that so many Republicans who don't fall in lockstep with the ALEC program are being sidelined, don't you wish there was a way to bring back Republicans who think for themselves.
The story that inspired the title of this entry is "Iran Worried U.S. Might Be Building 8,500th Nuclear Weapon". The Onion has Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi parroting much of the rhetoric that the U.S. has used to describe Iran. Unfortunately, U.S. military policy based on short-term goals too often loses sight that U.S. actions may be causing more problems than they solve. Remember, the U.S. toppled the democratically elected Mossadegh of Iran and supported the Shah; then Iranians toppled the Shah and got the ayatollahs. The U.S. hasn't forgiven Iran for the capture of the Embassy and Iran has forgiven the U.S. for the installation of the Shah.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Keeping up with events in Egypt
If you are a news freak who couldn't get enough news about Iran in 2009, your best source on Egypt is Al-Jazeera. The English version on the web is at
http://english.aljazeera.net/
For the latest, check out the blogs. There is also plenty of commentary from many sources and perspectives. One I found particular interesting is "The triviality of US Mideast policy" by Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center. He relates how the headmaster of his school was unknowingly made irrelevant by an anti-Vietnam War protest. Similarly, events have made most of U.S. Mideast policy irrelevant and outdated.
P.S. Cairo time is 8 hours ahead of Central Standard Time.
http://english.aljazeera.net/
For the latest, check out the blogs. There is also plenty of commentary from many sources and perspectives. One I found particular interesting is "The triviality of US Mideast policy" by Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center. He relates how the headmaster of his school was unknowingly made irrelevant by an anti-Vietnam War protest. Similarly, events have made most of U.S. Mideast policy irrelevant and outdated.
P.S. Cairo time is 8 hours ahead of Central Standard Time.
Monday, August 10, 2009
A book review: Iran, A People Interrupted
Hamid Dabashi, an Iranian-American professor of Iranian Studies, has written an interesting 200-year history of Iran, its culture, and its politics, both geo-political and internal. I find his writing in this book to be arrogant, opinionated, full of big words, extremely interesting, and very important. Sometimes I wondered if I would even finish it when I got lost in some of his concepts. But I read several pages most nights and made it through and I'm glad I did.
I will return it to the Duluth Public Library 2009-08-11. If you are interested in borrowing it, its call number is 955.05 D11i.
For starters about arrogance, he writes in his introduction:
"I promise you by the end of this book, you will know more about Iran than the U.S. Department of State, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, and five other neocon think tanks–not to mention the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Islamic Culture in the Islamic Republic of Iran–all put together. I know things they do not know, or do not care to know, or would rather forget, or never learned, or would not tell you." (p. 11)
But considering the arrogance of the people in these institutions who pretend to understand a complex history and a complex people, I feel he is justified. Do I know more than they do after reading his book? In some respects, yes. I do know that war, torture, and execution are not going to do the Iranian people and a lot of other peoples any good. But many of the so-called experts think that these undemocratic and irreligious actions will bring greater glory for their causes.
As an example of the complexity that these experts do not understand, Dabashi writes:
"Iranian political history is a Trojan horse. Inside its belly is a hidden force never noted either for what it is or for its catalytic effect on that political history. The hidden force is the power of the imagination, the force of defiant intellect. Any attempt to reduce the cosmopolitan pluralism of Iranian political culture to an Islamist, nationalist, or socialist absolutism is at once analytically ludicrous and politically catastrophic. More than anything else, such lame and lazy reductionism distorts the inner grace and overriding power of a thriving culture that outsmarts its tyrant rulers and career opportunistic observers alike." (p. 125)
Geopolitics often damages the ships of the high and the mighty. With their grand designs treating others as mere pawns, they do not recognize that the pawns are icebergs. So it was with the U.S., first overthrowing an elected prime minister of Iran, then treating the Shah as a great ally, then using the Afghani resistance to fight the Soviets and to contain Iran, and finally then having the Afghani resistance turn against the U.S. and having the Iranian mullahcracy turn inward.
As part of this grand design of geopolitics, the high and the mighty indulge in demonizing those who oppose them, for example, George W. Bush and others calling any resistance to their grand design "the enemy". Is it any wonder that many of the rulers of Iran are paranoid about the U.S.? Especially when Bush included Iran in the "Axis of Evil". His and his advisors' ignorance of internal Iranian politics undercut reformers who had been making gains. Now these reformers were considered traitors.
BTW, Dabashi wrote this book in 2007, two years before the recent election in Iran. An election followed by the resistance of a culture that was often outsmarting its tyrant rulers.
Dabashi predicted the current turmoil as one of two possibilities of failure with the election of Ahmadinejad. "At worst, he will abuse the hopes and aspirations invested in him and resume an Islamic reign of terror over those young yuppie voters with their stylish hairdos, chic scarves, and sexy sunglasses–in which case he will turn them and their innocent semiotics of resistance into the real inheritors of the moral authority of Shi'ism. ... [Shi'ism] is alway on the side of the tyrannized and discredits those who are in power..." (pp. 233-234)
I have many more notes, but I'll finish with Dabashi's last sentence:
"...the only way that Americans can help promote democracy in Iran and anywhere else in the world is by first and foremost restoring and safeguarding it in their own country." (p. 263)
I will return it to the Duluth Public Library 2009-08-11. If you are interested in borrowing it, its call number is 955.05 D11i.
For starters about arrogance, he writes in his introduction:
"I promise you by the end of this book, you will know more about Iran than the U.S. Department of State, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, and five other neocon think tanks–not to mention the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Islamic Culture in the Islamic Republic of Iran–all put together. I know things they do not know, or do not care to know, or would rather forget, or never learned, or would not tell you." (p. 11)
But considering the arrogance of the people in these institutions who pretend to understand a complex history and a complex people, I feel he is justified. Do I know more than they do after reading his book? In some respects, yes. I do know that war, torture, and execution are not going to do the Iranian people and a lot of other peoples any good. But many of the so-called experts think that these undemocratic and irreligious actions will bring greater glory for their causes.
As an example of the complexity that these experts do not understand, Dabashi writes:
"Iranian political history is a Trojan horse. Inside its belly is a hidden force never noted either for what it is or for its catalytic effect on that political history. The hidden force is the power of the imagination, the force of defiant intellect. Any attempt to reduce the cosmopolitan pluralism of Iranian political culture to an Islamist, nationalist, or socialist absolutism is at once analytically ludicrous and politically catastrophic. More than anything else, such lame and lazy reductionism distorts the inner grace and overriding power of a thriving culture that outsmarts its tyrant rulers and career opportunistic observers alike." (p. 125)
Geopolitics often damages the ships of the high and the mighty. With their grand designs treating others as mere pawns, they do not recognize that the pawns are icebergs. So it was with the U.S., first overthrowing an elected prime minister of Iran, then treating the Shah as a great ally, then using the Afghani resistance to fight the Soviets and to contain Iran, and finally then having the Afghani resistance turn against the U.S. and having the Iranian mullahcracy turn inward.
As part of this grand design of geopolitics, the high and the mighty indulge in demonizing those who oppose them, for example, George W. Bush and others calling any resistance to their grand design "the enemy". Is it any wonder that many of the rulers of Iran are paranoid about the U.S.? Especially when Bush included Iran in the "Axis of Evil". His and his advisors' ignorance of internal Iranian politics undercut reformers who had been making gains. Now these reformers were considered traitors.
BTW, Dabashi wrote this book in 2007, two years before the recent election in Iran. An election followed by the resistance of a culture that was often outsmarting its tyrant rulers.
Dabashi predicted the current turmoil as one of two possibilities of failure with the election of Ahmadinejad. "At worst, he will abuse the hopes and aspirations invested in him and resume an Islamic reign of terror over those young yuppie voters with their stylish hairdos, chic scarves, and sexy sunglasses–in which case he will turn them and their innocent semiotics of resistance into the real inheritors of the moral authority of Shi'ism. ... [Shi'ism] is alway on the side of the tyrannized and discredits those who are in power..." (pp. 233-234)
I have many more notes, but I'll finish with Dabashi's last sentence:
"...the only way that Americans can help promote democracy in Iran and anywhere else in the world is by first and foremost restoring and safeguarding it in their own country." (p. 263)
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
If our government can torture foreigners...
...what's to stop it from torturing us?
Reflection on reading "Torture Retorts" in the New York Times "Opiniator", 2009-04-22.
Reflection on reading "Torture Retorts" in the New York Times "Opiniator", 2009-04-22.
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