Time and Mr. Ahmadinejad
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Henry See
19 September 2006
Signs of the Times
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Time magazine went to Cuba and met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And while they were willing to print the man's words, they made sure that Time correspondent Scott Macleod put them in "context". In the case of Ahmadinejad, that means painting him as a crafty war-mongerer. Never-mind that Iran is fully within its rights as a signer of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop its nuclear industry. Never-mind that the United States of Pathocratic Corruption has singled Iran out, alone, as the target of its ire, while Brazil and India have proceeded apace with their own development.
It is the US and Israel who are making an issue of Iranian nuclear development, not because Iran is a threat to anyone if it is left alone, but solely because the US and Israel have decided to enforce a "regime change" in Iran, and 1) they need a pretext, even one that is as flimsy or even less so than Saddam's WMDs, and 2), were Iran in fact to develop nuclear weapons, the true war-mongerers, the US and Israel, would be the potential targets because of their less than innocent interest in toppling the government and installing their own puppet regime there. Were the rest of the world to agree with Bush's argument of "preventative defence", then Iran would have every right, according to Bush himself, to attack Israel, because Israel doesn't even attempt to conceal its desire to get rid of the current government there.
Therefore, in order to ridicule Ahmadinejad, nothing is too little to go unremarked. Notice this first comment, describing Ahmadinejad as he enters the room and sits for the interview:
"For a moment, he seems irked by the chair, perhaps because it makes him seem even smaller than his 5 ft. 4 in., but soon he's smiling, prodding, leaning forward to make his points."
Did you notice that: "perhaps because it makes him seem even smaller than his 5 ft. 4 in."? Do you really think that this is what is going on in Ahmadinejad's mind? Are we meant to associate Ahmadinejad with Napoleon, well known for his short stature? Are we meant to think that his "craziness", always implied, comes from his preoccupation with his small height?
Another comment fills the reader in on how to read his words:
"Ahmadinejad is a skilled, if slippery, debater. In his press conferences, he has shown himself to be a natural politician, gifted in the art of spin and misdirection."
You'd think he was describing his ownh president or vice president.
When I read the interview, as well as other interviews with the man, I find him to be quite reasonable. His arguments are logical, and he is willing to call out the interviewer on his own biases. Notice this response on the question of Israel:
TIME: You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?
AHMADINEJAD: People in the world are free to think the way they wish. We do not insist they should change their views. Our position toward the Palestinian question is clear: we say that a nation has been displaced from its own land. Palestinian people are killed in their own lands, by those who are not original inhabitants, and they have come from far areas of the world and have occupied those homes. Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way. Do you have any other suggestions?
TIME: Do you believe the Jewish people have a right to their own state?
AHMADINEJAD: We do not oppose it. In any country in which the people are ready to vote for the Jews to come to power, it is up to them. In our country, the Jews are living and they are represented in our Parliament. But Zionists are different from Jews.
This response and approach is extremely reasonable. The Zionists, through the complicity of their pathocratic brothers in Britain and the United States, stole Palestine from its rightful inhabitants. They erected the United Nations to give this theft the semblance of legality. The theft has continued since the founding of the Zionist entity in 1949. The Palestinians are being extinguished, drop by blood by drop of blood, and their land stolen acre by acre ever since. Ahmadinejad is proposing nothing more than allowing the people who live in Palestine to elect their own government, but that is too democratic a solution for a people who call themselves the "chosen people" of Yahweh and who refuse to live by the laws of the goyim.
Moreover, Ahmadinejad never said that Israel should be wiped away. That was a misquote, and under the conditions of the threat of war, it was undoubtedly an intentional misquote, that is, a lie. In the speech that was so misquoted, the Iranian president made essentially the same comment, that the people who wished to live there should decide for themselves.
Of course, suggesting that the state of Israel should be changed, that it should give way to a state of all of the people of Palestine, is "anti-Semitism".
"His incendiary statements--he has declared the Holocaust a 'myth,' has said Israel should be 'wiped away' and has called the Jewish state 'a stain of disgrace'--have made him the most polarizing head of state in the Muslim world."
As for his statement that Israel is "a stain of disgrace", what other conclusion can we come to when we look at its history? When we look at the continual murder of Palestinians, when we look even no further than the recent war against Lebanon, with the million cluster bombs dropped on civilian territories in the last days of the fighting, when Israel knew a cease-fire was only days away. What else is such an act if it is not a "stain of disgrace" for people of conscience. The conscious, methodical, and cold-blooded targeting of civilians, of woman and children, is that not unconscionable?
In the final part of the interview, that most objectionable of subjects was raised: the Holocaust. According to Time:
"He waved a hand dismissively when I couldn't grasp his logic in questioning the Holocaust. Asked to defend his claim that the Holocaust was a myth, he went on a rambling rant, claiming that those who try to do 'independent research' on the Holocaust have been imprisoned. 'About historical events,' he says, 'there are different views.'"
The following is the so-called "rambling rant" that was Ahmadinejad's response to the question:
TIME: Have you considered that Iranian Jews are hurt by your comments denying that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust?
AHMADINEJAD: As to the Holocaust, I just raised a few questions. And I didn't receive any answers to my questions. I said that during World War II, around 60 million were killed. All were human beings and had their own dignities. Why only 6 million? And if it had happened, then it is a historical event. Then why do they not allow independent research?
TIME: But massive research has been done.
AHMADINEJAD: They put in prison those who try to do research. About historical events everybody should be free to conduct research. Let's assume that it has taken place. Where did it take place? So what is the fault of the Palestinian people? These questions are quite clear. We are waiting for answers.
If this response strikes you as a "rambling rant", then you're probably very happy with the direction Mr. Bush is taking the world, or you should be.
Why is it only the relationship of the Jews to the Second World War that is off-limits? If a researcher tries to answer the question of "How many Poles were killed?" or "How many gypsies were killed?", he can publish as he pleases. Yet to question the official statistics is to invite imprisonment in some countries. Sixty million or more died during that global holocaust, and they had, as Ahmadinejad says, "their own dignities". But the dignity of tens of millions of non-Jews means nothing compared to one dead worshipper of Yahweh for those who eat of the poisoned apple of the "Chosen People".
Perhaps in his next interview, Ahmadinejad should point out the abundant documentation showing Zionist collaboration with the Nazis prior to and during the war. It served Zionist interests that "Jews" be persecuted, for such persecution was the only argument they had in favour of stealing Palestine from its rightful inhabitants. And while the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, Zionist terrorists were being armed in Palestine by the British under the guise of fighting fascism, when in reality, the arms were being used to terrorize the Palestinians and prepare for the war of colonization and ethnic cleansing that would lead to the establishment of the Zionist entity.
Since the false flag operation of 9/11, the US and Israel have unleashed a crusade against Arabs and Muslims. Afghanistan has been sacked. Iraq is being sacked and dismembered. Other false flag operations have killed innocents in Madrid and London. And, of course, while the world's attention was focused elsewhere, the genocide of the Palestinians has continued unabated. Through their deeds, the leaders of the US, Britain, and Israel have proved that they see war as the only way to implement their policies, backed by torture, the illegal detention of whomever they deem necessary, and the breaking of the laws of whatever country they are operating in.
And yet Time portrays the Iranian president as the one leading the world to war:
"Though pictures of the Iranian President often show him flashing a peace sign, his actions could well be leading the world closer to war."
What actions are those? Those of refusing to be cowed by the imperial designs set in Washington and Tel Aviv?
TIME: Why won't you agree to suspend enrichment of uranium as a confidence-building measure?
AHMADINEJAD: Whose confidence should be built?
TIME: The world's?
AHMADINEJAD: The world? The world? Who is the world? The United States? The U.S. Administration is not the entire world. Europe does not account for one-twentieth of the entire world. When I studied the provisions of the NPT [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty], nowhere did I see it written that in order to produce nuclear fuel, we need to win the support or the confidence of the United States and some European countries.
TIME: How far will Iran go in defying Western demands? Will you wait until you are attacked and your nuclear installations are destroyed?
AHMADINEJAD: Do you think the U.S. Administration would be so irrational?
TIME: You tell me.
AHMADINEJAD: I hope that is not the case. I said that we need logic. We do not need attacks.
Time spells it out: Iran must meet "Western demands", not those of the world. And when analysed, "Western demands" comes down to the demands of a very small group, the neocons in Washington, and the leaders of Israel.
The word "demands" is also interesting because it is in fact extortion. Iran is being told: "Stop your nuclear programme or we will wage war on your country". That sounds more like the local mafia don speaking than what would pass for statesmanship in a class on political science.
We live in a world where the "West" has become the "world", where "Zionism" has become the "West", where illegally attacking a sovereign state has become "preventative defence" and the kidnapping and torture of individuals has become "extraordinary rendition". The process of ponerization so well described by Andrew Lobaczewski in his book Political Ponerology is so entrenched that words have lost their original meaning. That Time can serve its readers such a loaded concoction under the label of objective reporting, and that it is taken down by its readers without a burp, illustrates the dire situation we face.
The distance between a Time report and objective reality is the distance we must cross if we are ever to live in a world free from lies.
Of course, we expect nothing different from Time magazine or anyone else in the mainstream media. We expect no different from the majority of what calls itself the "alternative media". We have all swum in this cesspool of lies our entire lies. We were raised to consider our assumptions as self-evident truths.
We are all infected with this evil.
The decision to align oneself with truth must be a conscious decision, and it demands a continual putting into question of everything one reads and hears. It demands a constant putting into question of one's own assumptions and beliefs. The sad fact is that it is work, a lot of work. It isn't easy, and it isn't comfortable. It is much easier to continue to be swept away by the many currents, mainstream or alternative, that prefer to go only so far, that prefer not to bring the ultimate struggle down to what is going on inside your own head, your own emotions, your own programming from your families and your schools.
The sacred cows of Time magazine are clear to see. Our own are much more difficult.
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