Saturday, November 20, 2004

The Blogging of the President

President Thabo Mbeki: Wired to the World
The Blogging of the President

While chastising him for the length of his posts, South African investigative magazine noseweek (paid subscription required to access articles) gives President Thabo Mbeki's weekly blog an extremely favourable review. And so it should. Amid the noise surrounding reports that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's allegations of Iran's nuclear proliferation program rest on 'intelligence' from walk-in sources—much like his Iraqi WMD stories, the unassuming South African leader this week blogs the quiet voice of reason.

Though diplomatic, Mbeki is incisively blunt and, in titling his entry Give Peace a Chance, calls the United States on its attempts to engineer war with Tehran. With Iran agreeing, subject to December 2004 negotiations, to work with several EU countries in adhering to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), U.S. propaganda has been ramped up (why does one find this agreement only on French diplomatic or Arabic sites?). Powell, whose shoes will soon be filled by fork-tongued Condi Rice and, God forbid, John Bolton, is currently doing duty as neocon propagandist in chief.

Mbeki, seeking observation of protections guaranteed Iran in terms of the NPT (including the peaceful use of nuclear power), notes: "We have been very concerned that the dispute relating to Iran should be solved without confrontation. Apart from anything else, we were and are convinced that such a confrontation would further undermine global peace and the possibility of reducing global tension, against the interests of all countries and peoples."

Reminding readers of South Africa's membership of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board, the blogging president recalls our country's experience of U.S. nuclear doublespeak.
Before our liberation in 1994, the US Government engaged our movement in discussions aimed at persuading us to discontinue the programme for the production of the missiles the apartheid regime had intended to use for the delivery of the WMDs. We agreed to this and kept our side of the bargain. The US Government had undertaken to provide the new democratic government in our country with the resources we would need to ensure the redeployment to other high-tech projects of the scientists, engineers and technicians who had been involved in the missile development programme. Sadly and regrettably, the US Government never gave us a single cent of the money it had promised, which necessarily impacted negatively on the development of science and technology in our country.
That was ten years ago. Several years later, South Africa sent its nuclear disarmament team to Iraq to assist the Iraqis and the IAEA assess and monitor compliance. The team found Iraq willing to work "unreservedly" with UN weapons inspectors and advised the IAEA accordingly.
Unfortunately this advice was ignored. Had it been respected, it would not have required a war to establish that there were no WMDs in Iraq.
When it comes to the Bush administration, the South African president's certainly a damned side more diplomatic than Madiba. He is, however, intellectually more astute and cutting. In short, he knows how to twist the blade. Pointing to Israel's aggressive refusal (going back to the 1981 bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor) to accede to Iran's South African-backed request to render the Middle East a nuke-free zone by way of implementing a two-state solution in Palestine, he highlights the irony of the U.S. permitting South Africa, under the apartheid regime, to ship up to 1,000 metric tons of yellow cake to Iran under CIA frontman and lickspittle, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. He goes further, hammering the Western media now trumpeting Powell's allegations.
Scepticism about Iran's commitment not to produce nuclear weapons was stated as recently as Thursday, 18 November. An editorial in the 'International Herald Tribune' said: "Nobody knows whether Iran is really ready to give up its ambitions to have nuclear weapons. For now, there is no real assurance that Iran is not secretly moving ahead with enrichment experiments at a still secret location."

It is precisely this kind of speculation, driven by one strategic goal or another, whether stated or not, that led to the 2003 Iraq war.
'Nuff said. The South African president, roundly condemned in the mainstream press for spending either too much time abroad or too much time on the Internet, is a peculiar man. Unlike most leaders, but much like his predecessor, he is both a team player and a person who thinks for himself. With so-called progressives in America dead in the water, the Bush cabal is free to do as it pleases. And with Israel being supplied U.S. bunker busters in December, the neocons have their sites set on Iran. Let it not be said, when the United States overreaches itself in that country, that South Africa remained silent.

Note: For a good backgrounder on U.S. aggression towards Iran, read the first instalment in a two-part series by Flogging the Simian.

That Iraq is only stage one in a much larger global strategy has repeatedly been made clear by neocons and foreign policy hawks inside and outside the administration. In February [2003], Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that the administration would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea just as soon as Iraq was defeated.

Michael Flynn | The right flexes muscle with new U.S. agenda

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