Hmmmm ......

Just sayin'.

A Matter Of Trust

I doubt there are many who would deny how precipitously the reputation of the United States has fallen since Donald Trump ascended to the White House. Each day seems to bring forth new and outrageous stream-of-consciousness pronouncements from the Infant-in Chief, and certainly, his speech to the United Nations was no different other than the fact that this time it was scripted. The world, except for chief-cheerleader Benjamin Netanyahu, was singularly unimpressed.

While Trump was content to rail against North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Venezuela as unworthy of trust, the President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, offered some key observations about the U.S., observations that cut to the heart of a crucial consequence of having a giant id on the world stage. Americans are not generally receptive to being lectured to by other nations, especially when the lecture is delivered by a leader who says he would not be willing to sit down with Trump under the current circumstances. However, they would be very wise to listen carefully to his view of what will happen if the U.S. exits from the Iran nuclear deal.

In His Master's Voice?

I didn't realize that John Baird and Benjamin Netanyahu were so close:

The 2:20 mark especially shows their affinity:

A Voice of Sanity on Iran

Journalist and columnist Joe Klein offers some calm and sane commentary while others are clamoring for war against Iran:

H/t Roger Ebert

Crass Manipulation About Iran's Nuclear Intentions

Those who believe that the public is being as crassly manipulated about Iran as it was by the lies that served as prologue to the Iraqi invasion will find two recent articles of interest.

The first, entitled No defensible reasons to attack Iran, by Gwynne Dyer, pierces many of the fallacies being used to incite fervour for a war with Iran, while the second, Are We About to Get Embroiled in a Nightmare War With Iran? by Noam Chomsky, suggests who the real renegade states are.

For those who believe in the importance of critical thinking, I recommend both for perusal.

UPDATE: Click here to read Fareed Aakaria's thoughts on Iran.

Where In The World Is This?

What follows is a series of pictures, the link to which my son Matthew sent me. They are all pictures of the same country, the last one offering you the only real clue as to its identity. I urge you to look at each one slowly, and when you come to the end and discover its identity, ask yourself what your previous notion of its essential geography was, and consider why you have that notion.

I will have a few comments following the photos.

The last photo, of course, is the only real indication that these are pictures of Iran. What was your preconceived notion of the geography? If you are anything like me or my son, you probably thought of the country as a largely arid wasteland, a rather forbidding, uninviting and sterile country.

Continuing with my didactic tone, I have to pose one more question: Why do so many of us have that notion of Iran? A big part of the answer, it seems to me, is that, aided and abetted yet again by the bulk of the media, that is the image western governments want us to have. To view it thus is to predispose us to seeing Iran as the monster in the current drama being played out regarding its alleged nuclear weapons' program, upon which I have written two previous posts.

In any event, I regard these pictures as timely reminders for all of us to cultivate and practise the skill of critical thinking.

Should you wish to see more pictures of Iran, please click here.

More on Iran's 'Nuclear Program'

Yesterday I wrote a post linking to an article by Gwynne Dyer that suggests the rush to judgement about Iran's alleged nuclear-weapons' program needs to include the facts and not just recycled data and hysteria.

In a similar vein, I recommend a piece called Another nuclear shell game, written by Ramesh Thakur, the director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament at Australian National University. Published in today's Toronto Star, like Dyer, Thakur warns that there is no new evidence of nuclear-weapons development in Iraq, despite what the International Atomic Energy Agency is warning.

Says Thakur:

The new report lists efforts by Iran’s military to procure nuclear-related and dual-use material and equipment; to develop ways and means of producing undeclared nuclear material; to tap into clandestine networks for obtaining weapons-related information and documentation; and to work on an indigenous nuclear weapons design.

Importantly, however, all these activities took place before 2003. There is no fresh revelation. Even the pre-2003 assessment referred to weapons-relevant research by Iranian scientists, not to constructing a bomb factory. Hence the startlingly wimpish conclusion: There are “indications that some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device continued after 2003, and that some may still be ongoing.”

Of special significance for the critical thinker trying to objectively analyse the information is the fact that the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency has changed. Despite the fact that it is supposed to be a neutral agency, as it was under the leadership of Mohamed ElBaradei and chief weapons inspector Hans Blix who, you may recall during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction there, the agency is now run by Yukio Amano, described in the article as Washington’s choice because he was “solidly in the U.S. court” on Iran, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable.

As if demonstrating his allegiance to his political master, Amano adds that there is no conclusive proof that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and he “has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

How do you prove a negative? For U.S. and Israeli forces, the answer is a convenient, "You can't."

A Timely Warning From Gwynne Dyer

Author, historian and journalist Gwynne Dyer is offering a timely warning as the world seems to be going down the same uncritical path to bombing Iran as it did with Iraq and its non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Says Dyer, in an article entitled Iran: Here We Go Again?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The same intelligence agencies are producing the same sort of reports about Iran that we heard eight years ago about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions, and interpreting the information in the same highly prejudiced way.

Critical thinking is possible only with extensive access to information and the willingness to digest that information, something the popular media either refuse to do or are incapable of. I recommend a perusal of Dyer's article to those who want more than propaganda to guide their thinking.