Today's Stories

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

July 9, 2009

Ronnie Cummings
How Industry Giants are Undermining the Organic Foods Movement

Jonathan Cook
Two-State Solution, Israeli-Style

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Destablization, Inc.: Otto Reich and the International Republican Institute

James Bovard
McNamara's Other Body Count

Norman Solomon Afghanistan: the Escalation Scam

Allan Nairn
Indonesia Gets to Pick Its Killer

Andy Worthington
Revamping the Military Commissions

Tomas Borge
The Sadsack Soldiers of Honduras

Nadia Hijab
Palestinian Titanic

Paul Krassner
How Jeff Goldblum Didn't Die

Website of the Day
Dave Lindorff Wants Your Money--Will Give Good Reports

July 8, 2009

Saul Landau
In Amazonia

Dean Baker
The Green Shoots are Dead: Why the Economy Needs a Third Stimulus

Winslow T. Wheeler
Gates, Congress and the F-22

Eric Walberg
Obama in Russia

Ray McGovern
Is Texas Harboring a Torture Decider?

David Rosen
When Sadism Goes Systematic: Prison Rape as Policy

Dr. Mona El Farra
Gaza From a Distance

Ron Jacobs
McNamara and the Post: When Idiocy and Hubris Merge

Benjamin Dangl
High Stakes in Honduras

Alan Farago
How I Almost Pitched McNamara Into the Sea

Website of the Day
Ayatollah So

July 7, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
McNamara: From the Tokyo Firestorm to the World Bank

Uri Avnery
Israeli Court Rebukes Military

Brian M. Downing
Crossing the Helmand

Gary Leupp
Biden, Israel and Iran

Gregory A. Burris
My Brush With Homeland Security

David Macaray
When in Doubt, Blame a Labor Union

Laura Flanders
Obama Hushes Health Care Advocates

Alan Farago
Princple Over Principal

Greg Moses
Texas Patels Take Over Dallas Bank

Dan Bacher
Three Big Lies About the Peripheral Canal

Website of the Day
Tragedy at Toncontin

July 6, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Hussein's FBI Interviews

Diana Johnstone
Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Coup to Venezuelan Coup: Same Old Globalizers and Torture School Grads

Gary Leupp
Operation Khanjar Begins

Jonathan Cook
Israel Calls on Ultra-Orthodox Jews to Stop "Arab Takeover"

Tim Wise
Of Fireworks and False Memories

Franklin Lamb
Cynthia McKinney and the Kidnapping of the Spirit of Humanity

Charles R. Larson
Sarah Palin, Plain and Tall

Carlos Benemann
California's Bingo Bondage: Getting Paid in IOUs

Shepherd Bliss
The Soulless Machine: Caught in the Cellphone Snare

Jerry Kroth
Stuart Levey and World War III

Karyn Strickler
A Fell-Swoop Moment Missed

Website of the Day
The Rise in Military-Backed Public Schools

July 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Gob Smacked

Eamonn Fingleton
Detroit's Collapse: the Untold Story

Jeffrey St. Clair
Is the Bald Eagle Really Back?

Mike Whitney
Running on Empty

Pam Martens
The Parable of Michael Jackson's Debts

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Counter-Revolution Will Not be Tweeted

Paul Craig Roberts
The Big Whorehouse on the Potomac

Patrick Cockburn
The Haggling Over Iraqi Oil

Anthony DiMaggio
A Perilous Path: Iraq and the Language of De-Escalation

Roger Burbach
Honduran Coup: Target Left?

John Ross
Left's Grip on Mexico City Slips

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet Jim Demint: Coup Apologist

Gareth Porter
The Iran Canard

Andy Worthington
Finally, a Trial Date in the African Embassy Bombings Case

Saul Landau
Bad Times, Worse Habits

David Macaray
How We Spend Our Money

Adam Federman
The Recovery That Wasn't

Jane Slaughter Labor's Vague Rally for Health Care

Russell Mokhiber Black Caucus Muzzled on Israeli Kidnapping of McKinney

Robert Jensen
Beyond Independence

Robert Bryce
Hey, Paul Krugman, Here are 2.4 Billion More Climate Traitors

Belén Fernandez
The Situation in Honduras

Missy Comley Beattie
Would Jesus Pack Heat?

C. G. Estabrook
La Cina e Vicina

Stephen Martin
The Fog of Economic War

Charles R. Larson
Adichie on Her Own

Lorenzo Wolff
A Voice Like a Newsreel: the Soul of James Carr and the Civil Rights Movement

Kim Nicolini
The System That Hijacked New York

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Kazak and Stadler

Website of the Weekend
Paul Krassner v. Larry King

July 2, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Wall Street White House

Nikolas Kozloff
Spinning the Honduran Coup

Wendell Potter
Obama's False Friends of Health Care Reform

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California's Empty Wallet

Christian Christensen Iran: Networked Dissent?

Patrick Irelan
Lost in Patagonia

Binoy Kampmark Returning Iraq

Nicola Nasser
Ethnic Cleansing as State Policy

Brian Tokar
Climate Bill: Cap(italize) and Trade(Off)

Dan Bacher
Panama Canal North?

Website of the Day
Scheuer on Immigration: "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States."

July 1, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Iran and Us

Alberto Vallente Thorensen
Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal

Paul Craig Roberts
Pirates of the Mediterranean

Robert Weissman
150 Years

Manuel García, Jr.
The New Crisis in Aviation

Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete
Honduras, a Coup With No Future

Norman Solomon
The NYT and Troop Deaths: Abstract Quality Journalism

Franklin Lamb
Remembering Amnon Kapeliouk

Martha Rosenberg
When Doctors Boo

Diane Rejman
Mothers and Military Lies

Website of the Day
The Color of the Race Problem is White

June 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Debt Deflation Arrives

Esam Al-Amin
Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand

Benjamin Dangl
Showdown in Honduras

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Doctors Collude in Torture

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah After the Elections

George Wuerthner
Beetle Hysteria ... Again: the Truth About Bugs, Fires and Ecosystems

Todd Gordon
Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Repression

Ron Jacobs
Mark Sanford, Sexual Liberation and LGBT Equality

Kenneth Libby
Conditions for Citizenship

Julian Vigo
Feeling Michael Jackson

Website of the Day
Inside the Mega-Churches

June 29, 2009

Ishmael Reed
The Persecution of Michael Jackson

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup in Honduras: Obama's Real Message to Latin America?

Clifton Ross
Coups and Constitutions: From Bolivia to Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Why Iraq is Now the Most Corrupt Country on the Planet

Uri Avnery
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran

Conn Hallinan
Dealing With North Korea: Why Threats and Sanctions Will Backfire

James G. Abourezk
Where the Money Isn't Going

Ralph Nader
The Holes in Obama's Financial Regulation Plan

Carol Miller
Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love Medicare-for-All

Greg Moses
Jobs First

Website of the Day
Key Leaders of Honduran Coup Trained in the US

June 26-28, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Hate Crimes Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard

Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet the Retreads: Obama's Used Green Team

Doug Peacock
Elk River: History and the Yellowstone

Daniel Wolff
The Night Before: a Glimpse of the Lenape

Mike Whitney
What the Big Banks Have Won

John Ross
The New York Times and Stolen Elections

David Rosen
Cry, Hypocrite, Cry: the Tradition of Sex Scandals and American Politicians

Emily Ratner
Thoughts on Manhood From the Rafah Tunnel

Gareth Porter
Airstrike Report Belies "Blame Taliban" Line

Farid Marjai
Green, But Not Velvet

Nadia Hijab
The Rift in Iran: Memo to the "Do Something" Brigade

Paul Craig Roberts
Gun Control: What's the Agenda?

Fred Gardner
FDR's Real Defining Moment: Ending Prohibition

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Father's Day

Paul Watson
Fear and Loathing in Madeira

David Ker Thomson
Nothing

Farzana Versey
The Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Tramp

Geoff Berne
Obama and Charter Schools: The Showdown at Schottenstein

Todd Alan Price
Ohio: Birthplace of Charter Education ... and Opposition to It

Ramzy Baroud
People for Sale in a Hungry World

Jeff Sher
Health Care Showdown

Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All

Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value?

Glen Johnson
The Village and the Wall

Charlotte Laws
Hold the MSG!

Charles R. Larson
Dickens in Morocco, Sort Of

Kim Nicolini
The Erasure of Art

David Yearsley
Yankee Prof Takes on Dallas

Lorenzo Wolff
When the Songs Remain the Same

Poets' Basement
Larson, Davies, McLellan and Gardner

Website of the Weekend
Kayakers vs. Shell Oil

June 25, 2009

Kathy Kelly
Now We See You, Now We Don't

Jack Bratich
You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War: the Media and the Iranian Protests

Wendell Potter
The Health Insurance Industry v. Health Care Reform: a Former Insurance Industry Insider Tells All

Charles R. Larson
Don't Cry for Him, Argentina! GOP Sex Scandal of the Week

Alan Farago
The Tears of Mark Sanford

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Firms Accused of Profiting Off Holocaust

Gareth Porter
Khobar Bombings: Telltale Signs of Saudi Fraud

Bitta Mostofi /
Bill Quigley
"You Will Not Get Past Us"

David Macaray
Six Ways to Reinvigorate Labor

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard"

Website of the Day
Worst Slide Story

June 24, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One

Dean Baker
Making Financial Regulation Work

Andy Worthington
The Story of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco

James Bovard
Obama and the Torturers

Diana Gibson /
Ray McGovern
Torture Eats the Soul

P. Sainath
The Age of the Everyday Billionaire

Gareth Porter
Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing: Why Was Al Qaeda Excluded From the Suspects List?

Robert Alvarez
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross

Dave Lindorff
Medicare for All

Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi

Website of the Day
Protest as Terrorism

June 23, 2009

David Price
Obama's Classroom Spies

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reels Toward a New Era

James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella
Bi-Partisan Bull on Health Care: Three Ex-Senators Get It Up for the Health Care Industry

Dave Lindorff
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Puerto Rico: Biotech Island

Gary Leupp
Dennis Ross Moves to the White House

Brian M. Downing
The Erosion of the Mullahs' Monolith

Robert Bryce
Are Theocracies Doomed?

Nicholas Dearden
The G8 is Dead

Yousef Munayyer
Seeing Through Israeli Delay Tactics

Website of the Day
The Great White Father of America

June 22, 2009

Michael Hudson
Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers

Chris Floyd
Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan

Jack Z. Bratich
The Fog Machine: Iran, Social Networks and Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

Atash Yaghmaian
We Children of the Revolution

Laura Carlsen
Victory in the Amazon

Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran

Vijay Prashad
Gun v. Butter: Now You are Only Poor

Fred Gardner
Charles Lynch Gets a Year and a Day (No Thanks to Eric Holder)

Andy Thayer
The Blank Check: How We Got the Obama-DOMA Debacle

David Macaray
Unions and the Newspaper Crisis

Website of the Day
The Most Spied Upon Town in America?

June 19 - 21, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
I Become an American

Jeffrey St. Clair
Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

Patrick Cockburn
Who Will Control Iraq's Oil?

Al Giordano
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

Henry A. Giroux
The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

Anthony DiMaggio
The Electoral Façade

Paul Craig Roberts
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"

John Ross
46 Dead Mexican Toddlers: Sacrificed on the Altar of Neoliberalism

Gareth Porter
Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Bix Fix: Placating the Bankers, Again

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
40 Years After Stonewall: From Smash the Church to Going to the Chapel

Joe Bageant
Workers' Rights: No Balls, No Gains

Serge Halimi
Protectionism: We've Been Here Before

P. Sainath
Price of Rice, Price of Power in India

Jim Goodman
The Claim Deniers: Why the Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Health Care Waterloo

Rannie Amiri
Bush Jumps Over Maine, Carter Lands in Gaza

Robert Fantina
Iran, Obama and McCain

Harvey Wasserman
Big Nuke's Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Walter Brasch
They Got Away With Murder: 12 Angry White People

David Ker Thomson
This Moment's Bill of Rights

Charles R. Larson
No Voice: Telling Her Mother's Story

David Yearsley
Escape From the Torture Chamber

Kim Nicolini
When the Closet is the Culprit

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini and the Art of Ambiguity

Poets' Basement
Beatty and Kowitt

Website of the Weekend
Grown in Yellowstone, Slaughtered in Montana

July 16, 2009

Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Ahmadinejad, IranAir and the 15th Anniversary of the AMIA Bombing

By BÉLEN FERNÁNDEZ

Walking down Avenida Figueroa Alcorta in Buenos Aires the other day, I came across a succession of posters advertising “la penetración iraní en América latina” and featuring Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clasping hands. When I then came across the Iranian embassy and a monument in a park labeled “Plaza Irán,” as well, I became momentarily convinced that the posters might have a point.

Some confusion arose from the date on the monument, May 12, 1965, which placed its origins in an archaeological period of penetración estadounidense in Iran. Things slowly began to make more sense, however, as I continued walking and noted that the Chávez-Ahmadinejad posters were interspersed with posters featuring an unoccupied bed with white sheets and the proclamation: “85 ‘HASTA LUEGO’ CONVERTIDOS EN ‘HASTA SIEMPRE” [“85 goodbyes to be remembered forever”].

It turned out that the 85 “Hasta luego” were in fact the victims of the 1994 attack on the AMIA, the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, which was blamed with intermittent force on Iran in accordance with prevailing geostrategic interests of the United States. The fifteenth anniversary of the attack was to be commemorated on Friday, July 17, one day prior to the actual anniversary; passersby were invited to pursue further information at www.85vidasmenos.amia.org.ar/, in which the “85 vidas menos” translates as “85 fewer lives.” Not explained on the posters was whether their designer could not think of a more suitable image to commemorate bombing victims, whether viewers were meant to infer that their own beds could be penetrated at any moment by Iranians, or why there were no commemorative websites for recent events in Gaza, such as 1300 vidasmenos.

I returned home to find that my own bed was still unmade, although it was presumably not the fault of terrorists, and that the AMIA link consisted of a black page with suggestions in white as to the variety of sentiments that might have been expressed by companions of the 85 victims had they known the 85 would never be seen again. Suggestions include “I love you,” “I hate you,” and “You have a nice smile.” To one side of the written suggestions is a YouTube video with additional suggestions of hypothetical situations tragically thwarted by the bombing, such as “un beso apasionado que nunca llegó” [“a passionate kiss that never took place”], juxtaposed with the sound of attack.

The AMIA website offers another less artistic page devoted to the anniversary, which explains that, given the present situación sanitaria in Argentina and the discouragement of congregations of human beings, a large physical reunion at the AMIA building on Friday is being postponed in respect of “el valor supremo del cuidado de la vida.” The contrasting lack of value placed on life by Iranians is underscored once again by the fact that they continue to visit Latin America with no regard for the swine flu epidemic.

Iranian visits are tracked in the July 2 article in Veintitrés Internacional magazine that corresponds to the Chávez-Ahmadinejad posters on Avenida Figueroa Alcorta. The article begins with an observation attributed to the Miami Herald, according to which Ahmadinejad must love the tropics based on the fact that he has spent more time in Latin America than did George Bush. Not established in the article is when the ex-US president became the standard against which travel frequency to places other than Crawford, Texas, should be measured; also not established is that the observation about Ahmadinejad actually hails from a Miami Herald column of September 2007 by Andres Oppenheimer, the journalist who once predicted that Castro's Final Hour would fall in 1992, or 1993 at the latest. The column’s publication date might explain Oppenheimer’s failure to address the fact that there were no Iranian officials present at the June 2009 meeting of the Organization of American States, which was nonetheless attended by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.

During his Latin American jaunt, Ayalon had regurgitated Oppenheimer’s warning about the possibility of air travel between Venezuela and Iran (AYALON: “We know that there are flights from Caracas via Damascus to Tehran”). He also regurgitated the fact that Iranian agents blew up the AMIA, although he got the year wrong, and neglected Oppenheimer’s alert regarding the opening of an Iranian embassy in Bolivia and the stationing of “about 20 Iranian officials” at the embassy in Nicaragua. The author of the Veintitrés Internacional article, on the other hand—a certain Ely Karmon, who is unsurprisingly “Investigador Académico Senior en el Instituto Internacional de Contraterrorismo (ICT) y en el Instituto de Política y Estrategia (IPS) del Centro Interdisciplinario (IDC)” in Herzliya, Israel—proves more adept at the art of regurgitation, partly because his senior academic investigatory techniques include plagiarism.

It became clear in the fourth paragraph of Karmon’s lengthy piece, before he had even begun reiterating the existence of the Caracas-Tehran flight, that my sense of déjà-vu was an effect of the fact that Karmon had almost exactly replicated an entire section of Oppenheimer’s column. Compare Oppenheimer’s English version with Karmon’s Spanish:

“What is Ahmadinejad looking for in Latin America?

First, he is seeking Latin American support to counter U.S. and European pressures to stop Iran from developing nuclear capabilities. Venezuela and Cuba were, alongside Syria, the only three countries that supported Iran’s nuclear program in a February 2006 vote at the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency.

Second, Ahmadinejad wants to strike back at the United States in its own hemisphere. Iran may want to be able to finance anti-American groups and possibly destabilize U.S.-friendly governments in order to negotiate with Washington from a position of greater strength. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran seems to be saying: ‘You got into my neighborhood; now I’m getting into yours.’

Third, Ahmadinejad’s popularity at home is falling, and he may want to show his people that he is being welcomed as a hero abroad.”

VS.

“¿Qué busca Ahmadinejad en América Latina?

En primer lugar, busca el apoyo de América latina para contrarrestar las presiones de Estados Unidos y Europa y evitar que Irán desarrolle capacidades nucleares. Venezuela y Cuba fueron, junto con Siria, los tres únicos países que apoyaron el programa nuclear iraní en la votación de febrero de 2006 en la Agencia Internacional de Energía Atómica de Naciones Unidas. En segundo lugar, Ahmadinejad quiere contraatacar a Estados Unidos en su propio hemisferio y, tal vez, desestabilizar a los gobiernos amigos de Estados Unidos a fin de negociar, con Washington, desde una posición de mayor fortaleza. En tercer lugar, la popularidad en su propio país de Ahmadinejad está cayendo y quiere mostrar a su pueblo que, en el exterior, es recibido como un héroe.”

The only perceptible alteration of the text is Karmon’s exclusion of the sentence: “Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran seems to be saying: ‘You got into my neighborhood; now I'm getting into yours.’” The exclusion prevents readers from wrongly assuming that the practice of neighborhood penetration was not invented by the Islamic Republic.

Karmon proceeds to explore indicators of penetration such as that Farsi is now being taught at Venezuelan universities while a number of Iranian engineers have learned basic Spanish. The late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci had also expressed dismay at curricular evolution, and at the fact that people named Mustafa or Muhammed were permitted to study chemistry and biology at US universities despite the threat of biochemical war. Fallaci’s proposed blueprint for counteracting the Islamic penetration of Europe was meanwhile to explode mosques on Italian territory; as for destruction wrought by less frequent Latin American visitors than Ahmadinejad, the White House archives provide a transcript of George Bush’s speech at a Miami celebration of Cuban independence day in 2002, the introduction to which was as follows:

“THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Sientese. Voy a hablar en Espanol hoy -- (applause) -- pero no. No. (Laughter.) No quiero destruir un idioma que bonita, y por eso voy a hablar en Ingles. [I don’t want to destroy a beautiful language so I’m going to speak in English.] (Laughter.)

Bush would prove the following year that his concern for the preservation of Iraq was inferior to his concern for the preservation of the Spanish language, which was nonetheless called into question later in his speech when he translated “the entire world” as “the todos.” He did, however, accurately translate his secretary of state as “señorita Arroz”; the concern of White House transcribers for the English language was in the meantime evident via Bush’s transcribed proclamation that “I can’t -- listen, every time I see and here [sic] Gloria Estefan sing, it makes my heart feel better.”

Further curious linguistic arrangements occurred during Bush’s glorification of Emilio, a Cuban-American college student who assisted mentally challenged Cuban-American children in addition to cleaning parks:

“The reason I bring up Emilio is I say oftentimes to Americans who want to -- how best they can participate in our country, how best to fight evil is to do some good; is to love a neighbor like you’d like to be loved yourself. If you’re interested, if you’re interested in helping define our nation to the world, and if you’re interested in resisting evil, do some good. And that’s what Emilio does.”

Ely Karmon continues to manage the fight against evil in other arenas, contributing evidence of the Iranian origins of the attack on the AMIA and of Iranian-Venezuelan collaboration in the production of tractors. He at times speaks about Néstor Kirchner as though he is the current president of Argentina, with confusion possibly stemming from the fact that Karmon’s notes are from the Oppenheimer column of 2007 and that Cristina Fernández presumably collaborates with her husband.

As for confusion surrounding the AMIA bombing, one example is that only one out of 200 witnesses to the attack saw a white Renault van, the purchase of which Argentine intelligence attempted to pin on an Iranian cultural attaché who had then supposedly allowed it to be filled with explosives. The predilection for white vans in US efforts to isolate undesirable regimes had also been observed in the UN investigation of the Hariri assassination, which involved a white Mitsubishi van and a primary witness who was a convicted criminal.

Oppenheimer informs us that “the growing presence of obscure Iranian ‘diplomatic personnel’ in Venezuela, Nicaragua and other countries in the region raises questions over whether Iranian agents will soon start slipping into other countries to support terrorist or totalitarian groups.” Karmon updates the threat of slippage with the information that Evo Morales has ceased requiring visas from Iranian travelers to Bolivia and that a US intelligence official has revealed in the Los Angeles Times that Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have decided to capture Jews in South America and smuggle them to Lebanon. Capture is supposedly being facilitated by Venezuelan airport workers who provide information on Jewish travelers; the ease of intercontinental slippage is confirmed by the LA Times article, which reminds us that there are weekly IranAir flights from Tehran to Caracas.

After dabbling in plagiarism of the LA Times, Karmon rambles on through the possibility that Hassan Nasrallah might decide, based on “la inmunidad práctica del pasado,” that Latin American terrain might be used to exact revenge for the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh. Karmon fails to address other past instances of practical immunity and adds to the credibility of Hezbollah’s designs by referencing recently thwarted vengeful attempts in Azerbaijan and “un país europeo no identificado.”

Karmon reviews the dangers posed by the “exportación de la enseñanza ideológica chiita radical y religiosa” and its potential influence on the social structure of Latin America, which will certainly be more difficult to maintain when the barrios of Caracas convert to Shiism. The article concludes with the question of what will happen if Iran, at the request of Chávez, decides to deploy long-range missiles in Venezuela; no mention is made of what sort of range Israeli weapons have.

Ely Karmon’s article in Veintitrés Internacional complies with AMIA’s stipulation that the fifteenth anniversary of the bombing be commemorated with minimal physical congregation of prospective swine flu transmitters. We are left to wonder why Karmon does not take it upon himself to extend his campaign against Iran to discredit the president of Honduras, as well, by exposing flight options from Tegucigalpa to Tehran via London—which are of course only feasible when the Honduran airport is open.

Belén Fernández can be reached at belengarciabernal@gmail.com.

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Yellowstone Drift:
Floating the Past
in Real Time
by John Holt
Introduction by Doug Peacock

Click here to Buy!

Spell Albuquerque:
Memoir of a
"Difficult Student"
By Tennessee Reed

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont