My aunt sent me a set of photos over the internet. They purported to show a little girl being punished for stealing in Iran. The photographs showed the little girl with her arm being forcibly held out while a car was running over it in order to break it.
The pictures were accompanied by some virulent anti-Iranian text.
I say “purported to show” and you already know what my attitude to these photographs is likely to be.
They may have been faked. They could have been mocked-up in Photoshop, or the result of a staged enactment.
Even assuming they were showing something real, there is nothing in the photographs to indicate where they may have been taken. It could have been Iran. It could have been Turkey. It could have been any one of a dozen different countries in the region.
For those of you sceptical of my scepticism, I would just like to remind you of the lies that got us into Iraq, and that German soldiers in the First World War were accused of bayoneting babies.
I think we all know by now that we are being set-up for a new war, this time against Iran.
If you think the war in Iraq was a disaster, just you wait. A war against Iran would be apocalyptic to say the least.
Unlike Iraq - which was a country already on its knees from years of sanctions, continual bombings and the bloody after-effects of the previous devastating war – Iran is a fully-functioning advanced radical state with a motivated and armed population. It would not be such a push-over.
Iran has always been the real enemy, having dumped the American-backed Shah in their Islamic revolution, and having backed some of the key anti-American/ anti-Israeli forces in the region, like Hamas and Hezbollah, for a number of years.
It is also almost certainly backing some of the Sh’ia based militias in Iraq, something that will no doubt provide the justification for any future attack. But - it has to be said - complaints about “interference” from an occupying power about a regional neighbour is patently absurd. It would be like Nazi Germany complaining about “interference” by Britain in the affairs of Vichy France during the Second World War.
The Americans have already built a small army base on the Iranian border, supposedly to stop incursions into Iraqi territory. This is a joke. You only have to look at the map to know this.
There are 200 American troops in that base. The idea that they can have any effect on cross-border incursions in a desert region along such an extensive border is laughable.
More likely they have been put there as an act of provocation.
There are also British troops on the southern border, so expect to see a re-enactment of the capture of British sailors earlier this year.
British troops are being used as bait in a nasty propaganda war, which will, almost certainly, turn into a real war in the end.
Scary times ahead.
The pictures were accompanied by some virulent anti-Iranian text.
I say “purported to show” and you already know what my attitude to these photographs is likely to be.
They may have been faked. They could have been mocked-up in Photoshop, or the result of a staged enactment.
Even assuming they were showing something real, there is nothing in the photographs to indicate where they may have been taken. It could have been Iran. It could have been Turkey. It could have been any one of a dozen different countries in the region.
For those of you sceptical of my scepticism, I would just like to remind you of the lies that got us into Iraq, and that German soldiers in the First World War were accused of bayoneting babies.
I think we all know by now that we are being set-up for a new war, this time against Iran.
If you think the war in Iraq was a disaster, just you wait. A war against Iran would be apocalyptic to say the least.
Unlike Iraq - which was a country already on its knees from years of sanctions, continual bombings and the bloody after-effects of the previous devastating war – Iran is a fully-functioning advanced radical state with a motivated and armed population. It would not be such a push-over.
Iran has always been the real enemy, having dumped the American-backed Shah in their Islamic revolution, and having backed some of the key anti-American/ anti-Israeli forces in the region, like Hamas and Hezbollah, for a number of years.
It is also almost certainly backing some of the Sh’ia based militias in Iraq, something that will no doubt provide the justification for any future attack. But - it has to be said - complaints about “interference” from an occupying power about a regional neighbour is patently absurd. It would be like Nazi Germany complaining about “interference” by Britain in the affairs of Vichy France during the Second World War.
The Americans have already built a small army base on the Iranian border, supposedly to stop incursions into Iraqi territory. This is a joke. You only have to look at the map to know this.
There are 200 American troops in that base. The idea that they can have any effect on cross-border incursions in a desert region along such an extensive border is laughable.
More likely they have been put there as an act of provocation.
There are also British troops on the southern border, so expect to see a re-enactment of the capture of British sailors earlier this year.
British troops are being used as bait in a nasty propaganda war, which will, almost certainly, turn into a real war in the end.
Scary times ahead.
2 comments:
The photos you saw might well have been faked but there are certainly human rights abuses taking place in Iran. What else do you expect from a tin-pot Islamic shithole ?
I was at university with an Iranian student. He described the country as "like medieval England".
I'm only surprised that the Yanks didn't invade after the revolution and their diplomats were taken hostage at the US embassy in Tehran.
Another thing. The UN weapons inspectors found parts for nuclear centrifuges in Iraq. Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium to weapons grade material. Iran has over 30 centrifuges in operation.
I hope that a peaceful solution can be found.
The thing to remember about Iran is that it was once a democracy, before that was overthrown and replaced by the American puppet the Shah. You think there are human rights abuses in Iran. There might well be, but no more, i suspect, tha in that "tin-pot fundamentalist christian shithole" known as the United States, and certainly a good deal less than when the Shah ruled over the country. But the problem, as I see it, has less to do with the internal nature of these regimes, than how you go about international diplomacy. Creating a war - let's face it - because a previous invasion is going tits-up and endagering the whole world is not the wisest of courses for our already beleaugured and endagered planet.
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