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stellauk -> RE: Who is Killing Iranian Nuclear Scientist? (1/20/2012 8:40:18 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
quote:
ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Who knows precisely where the disinformation (from both sides) starts or stops, or even if it applies in this instance?
However, the claim was that the Soviets "were entirely responsible* for the entire "Nuclear Free" movement back in the 80s". There are an awful lot of peace activists in Europe and elsewhere who would take issue with, if not pour scorn, on that particular claim.
* my emphasis.
You can argue the details if you wish, but I was in Europe at the time, and was particularly interested in those events, which is why I mentioned them.
I'd suggest if you wish to argue the details, spend some time learning about them, and if you want to argue that the Soviets were only 98% responsible instead of 100% responsible, feel free.
The fact is that many Soviet supported front groups and useful idiot organizations could be used for multiple purposes at multiple times. The "Nuclear Free Europe" program that I'm discussing was a dedicated program funded and directed by the Soviets for a very specific purpose: keeping American Pershings out of Europe.
Firm
Firm
I'm not going to dismiss your theory entirely, even though I feel it improbable.
I say this because I have a different understanding of how things in Europe are structured and even today in many respects it's still as divided between East and West as it was during the Cold War.
You have quite rightly drawn reference to the 'Nuclear Free Europe' program put together by the Soviets but this had little influence outside the former Soviet Bloc and there is not really any connection with many of the other organizations further west who are against nuclear weapons and the siting of American unclear bases on European soil.
You mention the 'useful idiot organizations', does this include organizations such as CND and the Polish Solidarity movement? I doubt very much that the Polish Solidarity movement would have wanted to have anything to do with the Soviets given that the primary objective of Solidarity, i.e. to bring down communism, which had a lot of international support at the time and was a major international influence itself in achieving those political and social changes.
You might also like to research a bit more into the careers of US politicians on the right such as Newt Gingrich who was following the politic of Reagan, Thatcher and Walesa, and see how unrelated this was to that what Mikhail Gorbachev was trying to achieve.
Then you have the splintering of the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) which was the political party which rose out of Polish Solidarity and the influence of the International Republican Institute on that process in the late 1990's at the end of the Jerzy Buzek government and how that led to the formation of various right wing political parties such as the Law and Justice party set up by the Kaczynski twins all aligned with the Polish Catholic Church and the break away Citizen's Platform (PO) where original Solidarity members such as Aleksander Hall and Adam Michnik went in a different direction from Lech Walesa himself and the Kaczynski twins.
Indeed then you have the the fact that Bush saw Poland as an important ally in the war on terrorism and invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and one of the first units sent to the Middle East together with Wladyslaw Cimoszewicz was the elite GROM crack Polish commandos (similar to the UK's SAS and US equivalent).
At this point you might ask yourself, why is the United States so interested in Poland as an ally? Particularly when Poland remains the only European member state (AFAIK) excluded from the US Visa Waiver Program - so it can't be an interest in the Polish cheap labour workforce of migrant workers - well not as much as the Blair government was which was why he was so much in favour of the accession of the former Soviet Bloc states into the European Union.
I am aware of the fact that some military bases in Poland were taken over when Poland joined NATO in 1995 but I cannot say how many are American and I doubt that would be public information anyway. It's some time since I worked for the Polish Ministry of Defence and Industrial Development Agency and since coming back to the UK I have not maintained much of an interest in Polish politics.
But then you also have to look at the actual situation which is going on in Iran itself at the moment.
Away from here I do quite a bit of advocacy work for the human rights organization United4Iran and currently the NCADP mainly on death penalty issues and contacting various organizations and politicians whenever there are execution alerts - which are frequent at the moment as Iran as overtaken the US as the second leading per capita state after China in the number of people it executes - Iran has a terrible human rights record, some of those executed are foreign nationals and it can be soul-destroying work because even when you think there's been a stay of execution the condemned prisoner can disappear and there is no guarantee that they are executed anyway in secret.
It's also important to remember that these Iranian nuclear scientists may not actually be nuclear scientists connected with nuclear weapons at all but bonafide physicists and nuclear scientists interested in the development of nuclear power for humanitarian and non-military purposes.
I can give the example of the killing of one such scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi (from an article by Jon Leyne, the BBC correspondent for Iran) where immediately after his killing the Iranian media were quick to point out that Dr Mohammadi was a nuclear scientist killed by Zionists, revolutionaries and agents of 'the global arrogance'.
However I for one would strongly suspect propaganda seeing what could be a very clear implication to lay the blame for the killing on a Western plot to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program.
What makes me suspicious is that these details are usually reported immediately after the killing has taken place where in normal circumstances such information would likely take hours, even days to emerge.
Then there are other things which emerge. For example in the killing of Dr Mohammadi cited above it was revealed that not only was his field quantum physics but that his name eppeared on a list of 240 academics pledging support for Mir Hossein Mousavi who was the leading opposition candidate in the previous disputed presidential elections.
Another thing you have to bear in mind is that Iran is very much isolated in the international community and international relations are notoriously difficult. This was something I learned last year during a meeting of the local Labour Party which guested Stephen Twigg MP, who is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs and who served in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office under the Blair government, but who seemed to have little or no awareness of what is actually going on in Iran at the moment.
Therefore to be honest I very much doubt that it is former Soviets or Russians behind the killings of Iranian nuclear scientists and I am also somewhat sceptical that the US and Israel could be behind the killings.
I would even go as far as to strongly doubt that it is Iranian nuclear scientists who are being killed. I feel is more likely the case that these are Iranian scientists and physicists, i.e. bona fide academics who are being systematically murdered by Iranian secret services and counter-revolutionaries and the media are buying the stories of the Iranian media either through a lack of more credible sources or as a way of deflecting attention away from the indifference shown to the struggles of Iranian people under their current regime.
This might give you something to consider.
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