Fair is Fair

This story from OpEdNews.



Headlined on 3/23/08:
Obama's Minister "Hates America" But When My Father Said the Same Sort of Things He Became a Hero To The Republicans

by Frank Schaeffer

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father--Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer--denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were very much like things pastors on the right say too.

[...]

The hypocrisy of the right attacking Obama, because of his minister's
words, is staggering. When my late father and I were the guests of Jerry Falwell at Liberty Baptist College, Falwell said to us quite casually and seriously, while speaking of the "homosexual problem," that: "If I had a dog that did what they do I take it out and shoot it." And when it came to saying God was damning America he and Pat Robertson sided with the 9/11 hijackers by saying the terrorist's actions served America right and were God's punishment. Yet John McCain went to Liberty Baptist College and spoke for Falwell, in order to "mend fences" with the Religious Right. He said he no longer believed that Falwell was "an agent of intolerance." And Rudi Giuliani gladly accepted Robertson's endorsement. So much for the Republican "mainstream."

This cuts left too. Fair is fair. So where are the clips--playing incessantly next to Hillary Clinton's picture--of her antiwar friends and Bill Clinton's fellow draft dodger members of the New Left, cursing and damning America during Vietnam War protests and since? The company that Bill and Hillary kept in the late 1960s through the 1970s was defined by damning America and sometimes by rooting for the North Vietnamese. Clinton said he "loathed" the military. We still made him commander in chief.

[...]

Want to play this smear-by-association game? Okay, while McCain was a prisoner of war a bishop in his church was rooting for McCain's torturers. Episcopal Bishop Moore, in his autobiography, Presences: A Bishop's Life in the City, wrote that the end of the Cold War had left the United States "like a wounded rooster crowing on the top of the dung heap." Blaming "corporate greed and lust" as well as "unbridled
nationalism" for manufacturing causes for war, Moore cursed America as often as he served communion.

If we want to get really silly let's ask this: McCain is an Episcopalian so where are the clips of the anti-American rantings of Bishop Moore and not a few other Episcopalian pastors and bishops, next to McCain's picture? How can McCain be a member of that denomination?

[...]

I think Obama is worth fighting for. History has thrown America an unlikely lifeline. Do we have the decency, the sense, the last glimmer of sanity needed to open hearts to change?

Obama offers civility in the midst of a national bar fight. Obama speaks in complete sentences, well-turned paragraphs, offers thoughts with intellectual depth, nuance, humility and compassion. Obama is a reasoned essay cast before sound-bite swine who seem ready to tear anything that falls into their sty to shreds.

What's good for the goose, is good for the gander.

Thanks, and a tip o' the hat to Betmo, at Life's Journey.

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CASMII's fact sheet about the Iran-US Standoff

we occasionally see bits and pieces of these scattered about our own media, usually in the blogosphere, but rarely in traditional media outlets...

(note: the 20 items listed below are excerpts... to read the 20 in their entirety, go here... they are also available in a downloadable PDF format...)

1. There is no evidence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran . The US and its allies pressure Iran to prove that it is not hiding a nuclear weapons programme. This demand is logically impossible to satisfy and serves to make diplomacy fail in order to force regime change.
2. Iran 's need for nuclear power generation is real. Even when Iran 's population was one-third of what it is today, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, negotiating on behalf of President Gerald Ford, persuaded the former Shah that Iran needed over twenty nuclear reactors.
3. The "crisis" over Iran 's nuclear programme lacks the urgency claimed by Washington . Weapons grade uranium must be enriched at least to 85%. A 2005 CIA report determined that it could take Iran 10 years to achieve this level of enrichment. Many independent nuclear experts have stated that Iran would face formidable technical obstacles if it tried to enrich uranium beyond the 3.5% purity required for electricity generation.
4. Iran has met its obligations under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran voluntarily accepted and enforced safeguards stricter than IAEA's Additional Protocol until February 2006, when Iran 's nuclear file was reported, under the pressure from the US , to the Security Council. (The US , by contrast, has neither signed nor implemented the Additional Protocol, and Israel has refused to sign the NPT.)
5. Iran has given unprecedented concessions on its nuclear programme.
6. Enrichment of uranium for a civilian nuclear programme is Iran 's inalienable right. Every member of the NPT has the right to enrich uranium for a civilian nuclear programme and is entitled to full technical assistance.
7. The Western alliance has not tried true diplomacy and relies instead on threats.
8. The UN resolutions against Iran , in contrast to the treatment of the US allies, South Korea , India , Pakistan , and Israel , smack of double standards. For example, in the year 2000, South Korea enriched 200 milligrams of uranium to near-weapons grade (up to 77%), but was not referred to the UN Security Council.
9. Iran has not threatened Israel or attacked another country. The track records of the US , Israel , the UK and France are very different. These so called “democracies” have a bloody history of invading other countries. Iran 's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has declared repeatedly that Iran will not attack or threaten any country. He has also issued a fatwa against the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons and banned nuclear weapons as sacrilegious.
10. The US “democratization” programme for Iran is a hoax. Although violations of human rights and democratic freedoms do occur too often in Iran , the country has the most pluralistic system in a region dominated by undemocratic client states of the US . It is sheer hypocrisy for the US, which turns a blind eye to the gross human rights abuses by its allies, such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Libya, and Egypt, to misrepresent its agenda in Iran as a “democratization” programme.
11. There are no legal bases for Iran 's referral to the UN Security Council. Since there is no evidence that Iran is even contemplating to weaponize its nuclear programme, no grounds exist for this sidelining of the IAEA.
12. Dr ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, has said that more sanctions are counterproductive. Economic sanctions on Iran will harm the people of Iran , as they were devastating to Iraqis, resulting in the death of at least 500,000 children. Sanctions would not however bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. Instead, any kind of sanctions, including the so-called "targeted" or "smart" sanctions, are viewed by the Iranian people as the West's punishment for Iran 's scientific progress (uranium enrichment for reactor fuel).
13. Sanctions are not better than war; they can be exploited as a diplomatic veneer and a provocative prelude to military attack, as they were in Iraq .
14. A US attack on Iran is imminent. The end of George Bush's presidency in 2009 could be a serious set back for the NeoCons' hegemonic dreams to control the energy resources in the region. He is unlikely to leave office bearing the legacy of failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and particularly leaving Iran a stronger player in the region.
15. Foreign state interference in Iran violates the UN charter. According to Seymour Hersch, the US is running covert operations in Iran to foment unrest and ethnic conflict for the purpose of regime change.
16. Reports of nuclear attack scenarios against Iran can serve to raise the public's tolerance for an act of aggression with conventional military means. People of conscience and sanity must not only condemn even contemplation of a nuclear attack, but also denounce any conventional attack.
17. Bombing cannot end Iran 's nuclear programme. Since Iran already has the expertise to enrich uranium up to the 3.5% grade for a fuel cycle, no degree of bombing will halt Iran 's civilian nuclear programme.
18. An attack on Iran will unite Iranians against the US and its allies. A great majority of the public in Iran support the country's right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.
19. A nuclear attack on Iran would fuel a new nuclear arms race and ruin the NPT. Any military intervention against Iran will lead to a regional catastrophe and expanded terrorism.
20. The cause of democracy in Iran will suffer gravely if the country is attacked. President Bush's "axis of evil" rhetoric severely undermined the reformist movement in Iran at a time when the country's president promoted Dialogue Among Civilizations.

about casmii...

Mission Statement

CASMII is an independent campaign organisation with the purpose of opposing sanctions, foreign state interference and military intervention in Iran.

Statement of Purpose

The on-going demonization of Iran as part of the "axis of evil" first initiated by George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Speech, together with the more recent, growing threats of sanctions and military action by the US and Israel against Iran, all continue to seriously escalate international tension.

They are likely to lead to a catastrophe even more horrifying than the present disaster in Iraq, threatening international peace and security. The future of Iran, and its political system and leadership, must be determined solely by the collective will of the Iranian people themselves and not through foreign state interference or intervention.

Increasing international tensions and conflict are destructive to the causes of peace, justice and democracy. We appeal to people of all faiths as well as to people with a secular outlook and those of all political and ideological persuasions, to join us in building an effective international campaign for peace and dialogue, and against sanctions, foreign state interference, destabilization and military intervention in Iran.

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Speaking of Uruguay...! They want Kissinger in connection with Operation Condor...!

i'd no sooner put up the last post than i ran across this...

An attorney for a victim of Uruguay's 1973-1985 dictatorship has asked his government to request the extradition of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger over his alleged role in the notorious Operation Condor.

Condor was a secret plan hatched by South American dictators in the 1970s to eliminate leftist political opponents in the region. Details of the plan have emerged over the past years in documents and court testimony.

operation condor was the group behind many of the ugly, murderous dictatorships that have plagued latin america in the last 30-40 years, including argentina, bolivia, brazil, chile, paraguay, and uruguay...

Operation Condor ... was a campaign of state terrorism and intelligence operations implemented by right-wing dictatorships that dominated the Southern Cone in Latin America from the 1950s to 1980s, heavily relying on numerous assassinations. The systematic counter-terrorism aimed both to deter democratic influence and ideas disseminated in the region and to control active or potential opposition movements against these governments. This organized counter-terrorism caused an unknown number of deaths, due to the covering up of the different governments involved. According to the "terror archives" discovered in Paraguay in 1992, 50,000 persons were murdered, 30,000 "disappeared" (desaparecidos) and 400,000 incarcerated.[1][2]. There have recently been some attempts of prosecutions against those responsible for this repression, to varied degrees.

[...]

The operation was jointly conducted by the intelligence and security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the mid-1970s.

Operation Condor, which took place in the context of the Cold War, was given at least tacit approval by the United States which feared a Marxist revolution in the region. The targets were officially leftist guerrillas, but in fact included all kinds of political opponents, including their families and others, as reported by the Valech Commission. The "Dirty War" in Argentina for example, which resulted in 30,000 victims, targeted mostly trade-unionists. Chilean MIR members, activists of the Catholic left-wing Peronist group the Montoneros, members of the Argentine MTO (the "All for the Country Movement") or Uruguayan Tupamaros were among those targeted.

It appears that Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well-aware of the Condor plan.

henry is a cold-blooded bastard and richly deserves to face the music for his long years of getting away scot-free... maybe, just maybe, we're going to see some accountability... it'd be nice of the u.s. would get on the bandwagon as well... too much going on in the u.s. with the current crop of home-grown evildoers, i guess...

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