Monthly Archives: October 2009

Letter to an Iranian Expatriate on the Iranian Question By Zahir Ebrahim

October 23, 2009

I composed this letter especially with you in mind, dear Iranian expat. living in the West. I feel it might be of at least some interest to you. Please share it with your many Persian as well as Occidental friends, colleagues, co-workers, and also family members living in the West. It examines the Iranian Question which has been prominent in the Western newsmedia ever since 911. But of late, the war-rhetoric is rapidly ratcheting up in many a public relations campaign of the Mighty Wurlitzer and is imperiling almost everyone’s commonsense.

Many (but surely not most) Iranians living in the West since the Iranian Revolution, are the ‘Shah’ vintage. What that pertinently means is that some among them are easily harvested as dupes, patsies, and ‘native informants’ to speak against, and work against, their own native nation in the name of bringing it “democracy”, disarming it of its self-defense options, and what have you. This is of course called “secular humanism” in the West, and “enlightened moderation” in Musharaf’s Pakistan. Most Iranian authors on the proverbial left, i.e., those dissenting with empire’s barbarianism, are often quite anti-Iran in Iran’s present dispensation.

For them, to oppose the crimes of empire is not necessarily to also not share in its aspiration of bringing Iran the West’s ‘white man’s burden’, its ‘la mission civilisatrice’, or in plain language, “democracy” western style. A perfect example of this ideological subversion disguised as lauded dissent is http://velvetrevolution.us (see http://www.velvetrevolution.us/#091609 ), even assuming it isn’t a “Soros” or “CIA Revolution”. Many native as well as second generation Iranians are part of this Hegelian dialectics seeded game, knowingly or unknowingly, as patsies or mercenaries, only they can tell.

I have unfortunately discovered that most Iranian authors become either inadvertently aligned with the hectoring hegemons which naturally colors their outlook/analysis/perspective on Iran to shades which are entirely under the same primary color scheme of the aggressors who wage endless wars – some obviously loud ones with signature-bombs, but many more silent ones by way of deception – or are outright ideological mercenaries and work against Iran. Here is an example of each. Surely one can come up with one’s own favorite names in each category.

Someone who is ostensibly an anti-imperialist: the young Dr. Trita Parsi ( see http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/component/comprofiler/userprofile/tritaparsi.html ). Same with the highly celebrated elder academic and dissent-chief Dr. Juan Cole (a Bahai) on Informed Comment ( see http://www.juancole.com ). If you forensically examine their work, it remarkably retains all the same sacred-cow axioms of empire, and mainly disagrees (dissents) with the empire in the “How” and to “what extent”. In their often erudite commentaries, they analyze the blood drenched puppet-shows enacted by the empire in great depth, analyze its impact upon the victims, analyze the victims’ options, sometimes blame the victims intransigence, but to my knowledge, never proclaim, for instance, that 911 was an inside job, that the prime-mover of all the tensions and threats to the world is “imperial mobilization” and therefore, its prime harbingers, the Hectoring Hegemons, are the main problem as supreme war criminals; that they would all hang at Nuremberg; and the issue is not with Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, who are all its victims, or militant Islam, radical Islam, etc. which is a manufactured boogieman only to sustain its new transformational war, World War IV. See for instance, this response to Juan Cole’s belated ex post facto discovery in March of 2008 that the invasion of Iraq was a conspiracy! Whereas, the un co-opted, or perhaps only the ordinary plebeians, protesting in the streets seem to know that even in 2001-2003, before it became a fait accompli.

An example of someone who is unabashedly an imperialist, like the Afghani-born neocon Administrator of Afghanistan and Iraq, Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, and Pakistani-born neocon Ambassador of Pakistan and Hudson Institute Fellow, Hon. Husain Haqqani, is the pathetic war-mongering native-informant son of the distinguished Iranian Sufi-Muslim scholar Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Dr. Vali Nasr. This pathetic excuse for a hominid, like all the rest of the war-mongers, is routinely published by the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs magazine and is the Iranian version of Islamophobe Daniel Pipes cheerleading the mantra of “clash of civilizations” ( see for instance Foreign Affairs article: “When the Shiites Rise” reprinted at http://www.mafhoum.com/press9/282S26.htm ).

In my experience, between the two categories, they together often color even the lenses of well meaning Iranians in the West, never mind the mostly ignorant Westerners, especially the Americans. There are numerous Iranians I know who don’t seem to comprehend modernity at all. In fact, sadly speaking, despite their high education and affluent lifestyles, I have found them to be no different in their perceptions than many an ordinary mainstream American. What is most pathetic, I find that they have a few things also in common with “Uncle Tom” in their apologetics. Similar patterns, unfortunately enough, also exist among the expat. communities of Pakistanis, Arabs, Turks, and other minority immigrant communities whose native nations are under assault by their adopted nation.

The best example of the latter is the well known whistleblower Sibel Edmonds of Turkish/Iranian origin, and the new darling of Western dissent. To illustrate the convoluted interlocking of dissent-space with the pernicious bringing “democracy” aims of empire, the co-founder of the aforementioned VelvetRevlution.us is among Sibel Edmonds most ardent exponents as the founder of bradblog.com where he prominently features her travails. Here are my two letters of March 18 and March 27, 2008 to Sibel Edmonds regarding her whistleblowing-revelations. Indeed, I was recently accused by an MIT co-alumnus for not being patriotic to America, for not being grateful enough to America for providing me with much success (Preface). The master social science of manufacturing consent and dissent can victimize and/or co-opt even the smartest of people under its Hegelian Dialectics of Deception.

Below are some contrarian but rather humble writings from Project Humanbeingsfirst pertinent to Iran. These differ from the aforementioned acclaimed authors’ in their initial premise, which automatically leads to acutely differentiating war-mongering aggressors from their pathetic victims, and higher order independent variables from lower order dependent variables in the calculus of foreign policies of conquest vs. rights to self-defense and exercise of self-determination. These also keep in mind the pithy maxim attributed to the Head of the CIA for Counter-Intelligence Operations from 1954-1974, James Jesus Angleton: “Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the state”. This maxim is true for ALL states, but more so for the sole-superpower out for “full spectrum dominance” in cold blood.

Note that these few writings are only a sampling of the perspectives being brought to bear on global crises. All of Project Humanbeingsfirst’s work covers modernity, and beleaguered Iran, like beleaguered Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, the entire Brzezinski’s “Global Zone of Percolating Violence” in Central Asia, and also of course the United States people, is an integral part of that as its victim. Also note that Iran has just proposed, in a very small measure, what was outlined in the Missing Link in August 2007 and the Press Release May 2008.

I hope this alternate perspective is useful to you. One does not have to agree with all points of detail in these writings in order to benefit from them. If one only perused what one generally agreed with, it would shortly reduce one to merely reading and quoting one’s own self (as G. Edward Griffin puts it). FYI, the author’s bio is here in case anyone is interested.

With Best Wishes,

Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org

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Source URL: http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/10/letterto-iranian-expat-by-zahirebrahim.html

Last Updated: 10/26/09 12:00 pm 1499

Related: Manufacturing a revolution or genuine aspirations?

Three days in Iran, Boston Globe Big Pictures, January 2010 http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/three_days_in_iran.html

Amateur Video From Tehran Appears to Show Shots Were Fired at Protesters, The New York Times Lede, January 2, 2010 http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/amateur-video-from-tehran-appears-to-show-shots-were-fired-at-protesters/

Iranian TV Sees Conspiracy in Neda Video, The New York Times Lede, January 7, 2010 http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/iranian-tv-sees-conspiracy-in-neda-video/

Author’s response to ‘Keeping the Green Movement Alive in Iran’, AFP, January 08, 2010 http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1-/12595-keeping-the-green-movement-alive-in-iran.html#pc_9389

Iranian scientist assassinated as US steps up war threats, 13 January 2010 http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/iran-j13.shtml

Editorial: The First Enemy Is Within – Fourth Generation Warfare, October 19, 2009 http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/10/editorial-enemy-within-4th-gen-warfare.html