US Makes Stuff Up to Grease the Skids for War on Iran

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

19 April 19

 

Iran’s retention of archives related to its past covert nuclear weapons program (the Amad Plan), as well as its efforts to keep many scientists and technicians from that former weapons program working together under the continued leadership of the former head of that program, raise serious questions regarding whether Iran intended to preserve the option to resume elements of a nuclear weapons program in the future….

– US Department of State report, “Adherence to and compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments,” April 2019

ith absolutely zero good reasons for waging war on Iran, the Trump administration goes on making stuff up to lie the country into yet another war. The template looks like the Bush administration’s successful effort to lie the US into the Iraq War, the catastrophic effects of which keep unfolding.

The State Department report quoted above garnered some anti-Iran media headlines, but the total fact content is slim. The reports states as facts that Iran has an archive and that it has kept some of a scientific team working together. That’s it. There are no other alleged facts, damaging or otherwise.

There is a lot of speculation in service to fearmongering (nothing yet as egregious as then National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice saying – with no basis in fact – “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

The Trump people are working on it, but some are apparently dragging their heels for the sake of some sort of integrity. The State Department first posted its report online on April 15, then pulled it down, then re-posted it April 17 (the quote above is from that version), without yet explaining what was going on.

According to Reuters, the report “provoked a dispute with U.S. intelligence agencies and some State Department officials concerned that the document politicizes and slants assessments about Iran, five sources with knowledge of the matter said.” Reuters did not report any details of the supposed dispute. As a factual matter, the politicized and slanted assessments of Iran are confirmed by a straightforward reading of the text.

The larger issue in the report is international compliance with the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), to which there are 190 parties. Among the non-parties are nuclear-armed states India and Pakistan, as well as South Sudan. The report does not mention them, but has some sharp words for North Korea, Syria, and Russia. 

The State Department also omitted Israel, another nuclear-armed state that is not a party to the treaty. Besides being non-compliant, Israel is allied with the US in obdurate opposition to the NPT’s primary purpose of nuclear disarmament.

And in a bookend hypocrisy, the report omitted Saudi Arabia and the US suggestion to give them nuclear technology, which would surely be an NPT violation.

The release of the report follows Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s April 10 appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in support of State’s $40 billion budget request. In his written statement, with no supporting evidence, Pompeo submitted an article of faith that is at least partly false:

We know that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s authoritarian regime will continue to use their nation’s resources to proliferate conflict in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and beyond. It will continue to bankroll terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The United States will therefore work together with our allies and partners to counter Tehran’s aggressive actions to undermine peace and security in the Middle East and beyond.

Last time anyone checked, it was the US that invaded Iraq in a war of aggression that violated international law. It was Saudi Arabia, with US support, that attacked Yemen in a war of aggression that violates international law. In Syria, the country came apart because of multiple factors including a record drought, popular resistance to a dictator, and broad international interference of which Iran was not a major factor. Or, to put it another way, Pompeo lied, in service to his self-proclaimed Christo-fascist ideology.

Republican senator Rand Paul of Kentucky challenged Pompeo on the administration’s apparent march to war on Iran. After trying to sidestep the questioning, Pompeo asserted that the US could attack Iran based on the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) passed overwhelmingly in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. The only member of Congress to vote against this blank war-making check was Representative Barbara Lee of Oakland.

The AUMF requires some connection to the 9/11 attackers to be invoked. There has never been any credible evidence connecting Iran even indirectly to 9/11, which was carried out by mostly Saudi nationals. Nevertheless Pompeo deceitfully asserted: “There is a connection between the Islamic Republic of Iran and al-Qaeda. Period, full stop.”

“You do not have our permission to go to war in Iran,” Senator Paul rejoined, ignoring Pompeo’s assertion that the administration didn’t need anyone’s permission.

Two days earlier, on April 8, the Trump administration had advanced its economic war on Iran by designating a part of Iran’s government, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as a foreign terrorist organization. The deliberate provocation was based on little credible evidence. Pompeo cited alleged IRGC involvement in an earlier 1996 attack and a foiled plot in 2011, both of which involved Saudi targets. Another State Department official blamed Iran for American deaths in the Iraq War. The official party line demonizing Iran was parroted nicely in President Trump’s official announcement:

Today, I am formally announcing my Administration’s plan to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including its Qods Force, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft. The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign.

This designation will be the first time that the United States has ever named a part of another government as a FTO. It underscores the fact that Iran’s actions are fundamentally different from those of other governments….   

Actually, Iran’s actions are not fundamentally different from those of other governments, starting with the US, which carries out continuing terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and places we have yet to learn about. On April 16, Iran responded to the US terrorist designation by making one of its own against the region’s US Central Command, CENTCOM, whose favored terrorist tactics include death squads and drone strikes.

It gets worse for the US. According to Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, the designation of the IRGC is:

… a complete negation and violation of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and thus a war crime. It opens us up to reprisals against our own military forces. Under the laws of war, reprisals against military personnel are permissible. This is continuing down the path of Bush Jr. determining that the Taliban and al Qaida are not protected by the Geneva Conventions, which was rejected by the US Supreme Court in the Hamden decision…. Iran could now determine that US Special Forces, Seals, Green Berets, Rangers, etc., are terrorists and thus do not benefit from the Third Geneva Convention. Apparently, for that reason, the Pentagon was against it. [emphasis added]

CENTCOM’s own official description of Iran is free of Trumpish hysteria, while paying lip service to terrorist activities of more than 20 years ago. The detached CENTCOM summary concludes on a somewhat optimistic note:

The UN Security Council has passed a number of resolutions calling for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities and comply with its IAEA obligations and responsibilities, and in July 2015 Iran and the five permanent members, plus Germany (P5+1) signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) under which Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. 

This possibility of re-establishing regional peace and normalization was one of the first things the Trump administration needed no permission to try to destroy. The Trump administration violated international law with its action, since the Iran agreement is part of a UN Security Council resolution (that the US approved). The other members of the Iran agreement continue to try to hold it together, since Iran has met all its obligations under the agreement. The Trump administration falsely claims otherwise. Judged by its actions to date, the Trump administration will be satisfied with nothing less than Iranian capitulation, and if that requires genocide, so be it – all part of God’s plan.

Those persuaded that God is on the side of the US may be getting some perverse satisfaction from the brutal weather visited on Iran (also Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria) since the last week of March. Record rains have covered the region. Flooding has killed an estimated 80 Iranians while threatening and disrupting the lives of ten million. In an inhumanitarian triumph, US sanctions on Iran have blocked humanitarian aid to the flood victims. US sanctions are blocking cash support to the Iranian Red Crescent, the equivalent of the Red Cross. Iranian president Hasan Rouhani has called on the US to lift sanctions for a year to help Iran cope with its humanitarian crisis.

This natural disaster of climate change dimensions has been little reported in American media, a Swedish report in CounterPunch being an exception. In Iran, serious flooding has hit 28 of the country’s 31 provinces. The UN has been responding to the need, and as of April 13 reported that “Armenia, Azerbaijan, France, Germany, Japan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, Vatican have provided relief items to the Government of Iran in support of the response.” The US response has been limited to attacks and threats. Most US allies in NATO or the European Union remain AWOL, perhaps cowed by American threats to enforce US law in their home countries (that’s the way sanctions work). Last fall, the International Court of Justice (IJC) at the UN ruled that the US had to remove sanctions that target humanitarian trade, food, medicine, and civil aviation. The ruling enforced the terms of the 1955 Treaty of Amity between the US and Iran.

Secretary of State Pompeo promptly responded that the international court couldn’t tell the US what to do and, anyway, the US was quitting that treaty, “a decision, frankly, that is 39 years overdue.” Pompeo accused Iran of bringing a “meritless case” (that Iran won) and of “attempting to interfere with the sovereign rights of the United States.” The Christo-fascist sore loser added that “Iran is abusing the IJC for political and propaganda purposes.”

So it’s no wonder the North Koreans requested that the US remove Pompeo from further negotiations on denuclearization. They blame Pompeo’s “talking nonsense” and being “reckless” and “gangster-like” behavior for the failure of talks in February. The Koreans are looking for someone who is “more careful and mature in communicating with us.”

Surely Iranians would agree with that, and so should Americans.

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William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

By Naomi Klein, The Intercept

19 April 19

 

oday, The Intercept launches “A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” a seven-minute film narrated by the congresswoman and illustrated by Molly Crabapple. Set a couple of decades from now, it’s a flat-out rejection of the idea that a dystopian future is a forgone conclusion. Instead, it offers a thought experiment: What if we decided not to drive off the climate cliff? What if we chose to radically change course and save both our habitat and ourselves?

What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal? What would the future look like then?

This is a project unlike any we have done before, crossing boundaries between fact, fiction, and visual art, co-directed by Kim Boekbinder and Jim Batt and co-written by Ocasio-Cortez and Avi Lewis. To reclaim a phrase from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it’s our “green dream,” inspired by the explosion of utopian art produced during the original New Deal.

And it’s a collaboration with a context and a history that seems worth sharing.

Back in December, I started talking to Crabapple — the brilliant illustrator, writer, and filmmaker — about how we could involve more artists in the Green New Deal vision. Most art forms are pretty low carbon, after all, and cultural production played an absolutely central role during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s.

We thought it was time to galvanize artists into that kind of social mission again — but not in a couple of years, if politicians and activists manage to translate what is still only a rough plan into law. No, we wanted to see Green New Deal art right away — to help win the battle for hearts and minds that will determined whether it has a fighting chance in the first place.

Crabapple, along with Boekbinder and Batt, have been honing a filmmaking style that has proved enormously successful at spreading bold ideas fast, most virally in their video with Jay Z on the “epic fail” of the war on drugs. “I would love to make a video on the Green New Deal with AOC,” Crabapple said, which seemed to me like a dream team.

The question was: How do we tell the story of something that hasn’t happened yet?

We realized that the biggest obstacle to the kind of transformative change the Green New Deal envisions is overcoming the skepticism that humanity could ever pull off something at this scale and speed. That’s the message we’ve been hearing from the “serious” center for four months straight: that it’s too big, too ambitious, that our Twitter-addled brains are incapable of it, and that we are destined to just watch walruses fall to their deaths on Netflix until it’s too late.

This skepticism is understandable. The idea that societies could collectively decide to embrace rapid foundational changes to transportation, housing, energy, agriculture, forestry, and more — precisely what is needed to avert climate breakdown — is not something for which most of us have any living reference. We have grown up bombarded with the message that there is no alternative to the crappy system that is destabilizing the planet and hoarding vast wealth at the top. From most economists, we hear that we are fundamentally selfish, gratification-seeking units. From historians, we learn that social change has always been the work of singular great men.

Science fiction hasn’t been much help either. Almost every vision of the future that we get from best-selling novels and big-budget Hollywood films takes some kind of ecological and social apocalypse for granted. It’s almost as if we have collectively stopped believing that the future is going to happen, let alone that it could be better, in many ways, than the present.

The media debates that paint the Green New Deal as either impossibly impractical or a recipe for tyranny just reinforce the sense of futility. But here’s the good news: The old New Deal faced almost precisely the same kinds of opposition — and it didn’t stop it for a minute.

From the start, elite critics derided FDR’s plans as everything from creeping fascism to closet communism. In the 1933 equivalent of “They’re coming for your hamburgers!” Republican Sen. Henry D. Hatfield of West Virginia wrote to a colleague, “This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot.” A former DuPont executive complained that with the government offering decent-paying jobs, “five negroes on my place in South Carolina refused work this spring … and a cook on my houseboat in Fort Myers quit because the government was paying him a dollar an hour as a painter.”

Far-right militias formed; there was even a sloppy plot by a group of bankers to overthrow FDR.

Self-styled centrists took a more subtle tack: In newspaper editorials and op-eds, they cautioned FDR to slow down and scale back. Historian Kim Phillips-Fein, author of “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal,” told me that the parallels with today’s attacks on the Green New Deal in outlets like the New York Times are obvious. “They didn’t outright oppose it, but in many cases, they would argue that you don’t want to make so many changes at once, that it was too big, too quick. That the administration should wait and study more.”

And yet for all its many contradictions and exclusions, the New Deal’s popularity continued to soar, winning Democrats a bigger majority in Congress in the midterms and FDR a landslide re-election in 1936.

One reason that elite attacks never succeeded in turning the public against the New Deal had to do with the incalculable power of art, which was embedded in virtually every aspect of the era’s transformations. The New Dealers saw artists as workers like any other: people who, in the depths of the Depression, deserved direct government assistance to practice their trade. As Works Progress Administration administrator Harry Hopkins famously put it, “Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people.”

Through programs including the Federal Art Project, Federal Music Project, Federal Theater Project, and Federal Writers Project (all part of the WPA), as well as the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture and several others, tens of thousands of painters, musicians, photographers, playwrights, filmmakers, actors, authors, and a huge array of craftspeople found meaningful work, with unprecedented support going to African-American and Indigenous artists.

The result was a renaissance of creativity and a staggering body of work that transformed the visual landscape of the country. The Federal Art Project alone produced nearly 475,000 works of art, including over 2,000 posters, 2,500 murals, and 100,000 canvasses for public spaces. Its stable of artists included Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Authors who participated in the Federal Writers Program included Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and John Steinbeck.

Much of the art produced by New Deal programs was simply about bringing joy and beauty to Depression-ravaged people, and challenging the prevalent idea that art belonged to the elites. As FDR put it in a 1938 letter to author Hendrik Willem van Loon: “I, too, have a dream — to show people in the out of the way places, some of whom are not only in small villages but in corners of New York City … some real paintings and prints and etchings and some real music.”

There was more overtly political art too, like the highly controversial theatrical productions of Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here,” which opened in 18 cities. Some New Deal art set out to mirror a shattered country back to itself and in the process, make an unassailable case for why New Deal relief programs were so desperately needed. The result was iconic work, from Dorothea Lange’s photography of Dust Bowl families enveloped in clouds of filth and forced to migrate, to Walker Evans’s harrowing images of tenant farmers that filled the pages of “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” to Gordon Parks’s pathbreaking photography of daily life in Harlem.

Other artists produced more optimistic, even utopian creations, using graphic art, short films, and vast murals to document the transformation underway under New Deal programs — the strong bodies building new infrastructure, planting trees, and otherwise picking up the pieces of their nation.

FDR’s critics attacked the arts programs as propaganda, but participants responded that they were true believers. “We were all very ardent New Dealers,” recalled Edward Biderman, one of the celebrated painters in this period. “And when we found [New Deal policies] reflected in the art programs, we were even more enthusiastic.”

Just as Crabapple and I started mulling over the idea of a Green New Deal short film, The Intercept published a piece by Kate Aronoff that was set in the year 2043, after the Green New Deal had come to pass. It told the story of what life was like for a fictionalized “Gina,” who grew up in the world that Green New Deal policies created: “She had a relatively stable childhood. Her parents availed themselves of some of the year of paid family leave they were entitled to, and after that she was dropped off at a free child care program.” After free college, “she spent six months restoring wetlands and another six volunteering at a day care much like the one she had gone to.”

The piece struck a nerve with readers, in large part because it imagined a future tense that wasn’t some version of “Mad Max” warriors battling prowling bands of cannibal warlords. Crabapple and I decided that the film could do something similar to Aronoff’s piece, but this time from Ocasio-Cortez’s vantage point. It would show the world after the Green New Deal she was championing had become a reality.

Soon we had the script, co-written by Ocasio-Cortez and Lewis, who, as the director of our climate documentary “This Changes Everything” and strategic director of the climate justice group The Leap, thinks about the world after we win pretty much full-time. Next came the magic of Crabapple’s art and Boekbinder and Batt’s video design and direction.

Today, we launch the final result: a seven-minute postcard from the future. It’s about how, in the nick of time, a critical mass of humanity in the largest economy on earth came to believe that we were actually worth saving. Because, as Ocasio-Cortez says in the film, our future has not been written yet and “we can be whatever we have the courage to see.”

Please watch and share it. Our hope is that this piece will inspire more Green New Deal art. More than that, we hope it plays some small part in inspiring an actual Green New Deal. Science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson recently offered up this clarifying reminder about the stakes before us:

The future isn’t cast into one inevitable course. On the contrary, we could cause the sixth great mass extinction event in Earth’s history, or we could create a prosperous civilization, sustainable over the long haul. Either is possible starting from now.