The Israeli lobby and their rightwing stooges in governments in North America keep feeding us images of a nuclear-armed, Dark Ages Iran, steeped in Sharia law and bloodlust. Look at this graph. It's from the World Bank. It concerns backward Iran. Something is up there. From the time the Iranian people turfed out the Shah to today it has risen from just over 40 per cent to just under 100 per cent today. What have those dastardly Mullahs been up to? Care to guess?
Well, this graph depicts female, 15-24,
literacy rates in Iran over the past four decades since the country regained independence. Today 60 per cent of university students in Iran are female. Dwell on that for a minute and then tell me that Iran is a country driven by Islamist fanatics out to set the world on fire.
It's not hard to find Iranian refugees in Canada. Some fled the Shaw, some fled the theocracy and some fled today's regime. Good people and good Canadians all.
ReplyDeleteHow do you pick sides in this circumstance?
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ReplyDeleteWhat I don't understand is that Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads according to Jimmy Carter. Why there is not a word about it from the west.
ReplyDeleteOnly people of European background and American background rule the country - white. Local Jews (of dark colour) are discriminated against. Especially refugees from Africa are treated worse than in Southern U.S. What a great democracy??
We shouldn't have to pick sides, unless there is a direct threat to the Canadian people. I don't ever recall Iran threatening Canada, unless I totally missed that?
ReplyDeleteCanada has so many different races living here. You have to be careful of whom you insult and anger.
The most anger we can see is, Harper bringing over foreigners, to take Canadian resource jobs. There are oven a million Canadians looking for jobs. 270 Canadians laid off in the tar sands. They walked right past the foreigners, that were being given their jobs. 300 were laid off, some time back.
There is considerable anger towards Communist China for taking BC mining jobs from the BC miners. However, this all Harper's doing.
The Chinese now want, their culture and history taught in our schools. What about all of the other races in this country?
That is the one country, we don't want on our Canadian soil. Nor do any other countries. Communist China is the menace around the globe.
Rumley, I think we should return to our old role, the one that served so many so well, as 'honest broker.' Harper's red meat coven took that as a sign of weakness when, in reality, outsourcing your foreign policy to a patron nation's service is the real measure of weakness. Sure, it's easier to demonize as we have and still do to Iran. Sure it's easier to commit soldiers than to 'commit diplomacy' but, at the end of the day, the world isn't reeling from any shortage of soldiers.
ReplyDeleteLD, you're right. I read a thoughtful analysis out of Israel recently that noted how many conscientious Israelis are coming to nervously realize that time is running out for the Israeli state where it will have to choose to face its end or expel its Palestinians and purge the rest from the West Bank also. That's a direct consequence of so many decades of thwarting any meaningful resolution. Israel's hard liners who, with the aid of their Christian fundamentalist allies in North America, have painted their country into an ugly corner.
Anon, racist as your anti-China comment sounds, it's not. Around the world the Chinese are known for bringing their own workers in when they set up shop. It's one of the reasons why so many African countries are having serious second thoughts about accepting Chinese aid and development.
ReplyDeleteI've never been especially anti-Iran, but that graph still surprises me.
ReplyDeleteIt does a lot to dispel the twisted image we're force fed about Iran, PLG.
ReplyDeleteThe education stats suggest a country that's poised to move forward. We knew there was a powerful and growing, secular youth movement that supported democratic reform and we were warned that we risked driving them
to support the Mullahs if we threatened their homeland. The neo-cons ignored it and made Iran their Gulf whipping boy with predictable (perhaps even desired) results.