THE
ROVING EYE Welcome to the summer of
hate By Pepe Escobar
PARIS - Forty years ago, the world seemed
to be singing in tune. On June 1, 1967, in London,
The Beatles released their eighth and arguably
most influential album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band. It marked the beginning of
the Summer of Love - which, apart from Jimi
Hendrix mesmerizing flower-power children in
Monterey, California, also had room for the
escalation of the Vietnam War and Israel's
lightning victory in the Six-Day War.
Today, we have the sublime Patti Smith
singing covers of Hendrix
and
The Beatles, Iraq instead of Vietnam, and Israel -
along with elements in the administration of US
President George W Bush - mulling an attack on
Iran. Call it the summer of hate.
There
was a huge elephant in that Baghdad room where
ambassadors from the United States and Iran
smashed a 27-year-old iceberg and met this week -
and the name of the elephant is Israel. Manouchehr
Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, expressed
hope, on the record, that talks would continue in
case the Bush administration admitted its Middle
East policy had "failed".
The conservative
Iranian paper Jam e Jam - popular among young
Iranians - stressed in an editorial that now "it
is not possible anymore to oppose our country ...
The United States cannot do without Iran, which is
the new power in the Middle East."
Over
66-year-old, four-heart-operations Dick Cheney's
body, of course. And what about all those expenses
- the Stennis and Nimitz floating armadas now
"exercising" in the Persian Gulf, the relentless
Central Intelligence Agency black ops in Khuzestan
and Balochistan to "destabilize" the Iranian
government, and reports of the US attempting
industrial sabotage of Iran's nuclear program?
Bomb Iran ... A leading French
geostrategist has just returned from a stint in
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, visiting the
industrial-military establishment and all the top
Israeli think-tanks. He stresses three main
points.
1. For the Israeli establishment,
invading Iraq and deposing the already ineffective
Saddam Hussein system was a very bad move
(although they didn't think so in 2002).
2. Attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon in the
summer of 2006 was a very bad move. "We should
have done it, but with at least two divisions, to
smash them completely," said a retired general.
3. Now there is an unshakable consensus
that the real inevitable move will be to attack
Iran's nuclear installations - preferably
showering cruise missiles over the Natanz plant.
Whatever spinning rolls on, attacking Iran remains
the key tenet of the Ziocon (Zionists +
neo-conservatives) policy.
While the
Ziocons itch for another war, Iraq bleeds. From 20
to 50 bodies are found in the streets of Baghdad
every day. They don't even register in the news
cycle anymore. The Sadrists - who rule the Shi'ite
street - know that the overwhelming death squads
in Baghdad are from the Badr Organization,
straight from the US-friendly, Supreme Islamic
Council in Iraq-controlled seventh floor of the
Interior Ministry.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon
keeps invading Sadr City, calling air strikes on
houses and back streets, killing civilians and
arresting Mahdi Army "terrorist" commanders in
"secret cells" who allegedly smuggle explosive
formed penetrators from Iran (no credible evidence
is produced).
Washington nemesis Muqtada
al-Sadr, wearing a white shroud over his black
cloak, is spectacularly back, live from Kufa,
straight out of his carefully protected Najaf (not
Iran) seclusion. His nationalist, Islamic,
non-sectarian message embodies the Iraqi street:
"I renew my demand for the occupiers to leave or
draw up a timetable for withdrawal, and I ask the
government not to let the occupiers extend the
occupation even for one day."
Obviously,
no one paid attention in that Baghdad summit room.
Especially Washington, for whom Muqtada's
nationalist, trans-sectarian,
let's-work-with-our-Sunni-brothers appeal is the
sandstorm that renders the occupation blind.
Rock 'n' Roll Nigger Former
Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, currently the
director of the International Institute for the
Dialogue between Cultures and Civilizations,
recently visited Italy. He defended religion as a
way of liberation from oppression, and stressed
that the solution for the current crisis is "an
acceptance by the international community of our
role". The reformist impulse won't die in Iran:
"We've been trying to reform our country for 100
years now. Our future will be better if we disarm
the violent."
Iran at the same time is
deeply "reforming" Iraq - whatever the rhetoric
coming from the White House. Iranian cultural
influence on Iraqi youth is overwhelming - via the
financing of at least a cultural center or a
library in every village. The foremost foreign
language is now Farsi, not English. Girls are
exchanging the Arab hijab for the less
constraining Iranian chador. Iraq's
schoolbooks are now manufactured by Iranian
printing presses. Most of Iraq's oil, gas and
electricity is now provided by Iran.
But
there's no stopping the summer of hate - and not
only because of the torrid 50-degree-Celsius
temperatures. Iran will keep being linked by the
Ziocons to al-Qaeda. Iraq will remain the true
heart of darkness. Forty years after the Six-Day
War, the State of Israel will continue to smash
Palestine to bits, especially Gaza. Saudi funds -
channeled via billionaire Saad Hariri - and heavy
US military support to the army of the pitiful
Fouad Siniora government in Lebanon will be busy
spreading divide-and-rule, pitting Salafi-jihadis
against, supposedly, Hezbollah, but victimizing
helpless Palestinian civilian refugees instead.
The Ziocon plan is to provoke a civil war in
Lebanon, in which Hezbollah would be inevitably
convulsed, and profit from the opening to attack
Iran.
Patti Smith this week played an
amazing concert at the legendary Olympia in Paris,
where a little less than 40 years ago, after the
Summer of Love, Hendrix astonished the world.
Patti sang covers of Hendrix, The Beatles,
Jefferson Airplane, The Doors and Crosby, Stills
and Nash. But it was when she let her hair down
for her own "Rock 'n' Roll Nigger" that she really
brought the house down.
It was instructive
to see all those prosperous insiders/baby-boomers
- the (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy
generation - screaming their heads off again,
yearning to be "outside of society". Our summers
of love are now summers of hate. It fits; after
all, when faced by the Masters of War, as Patti
tells it, we are all rock 'n' roll niggers.
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