Baithak World May 24: Noam Chomsky, Headlines, Brodner, RealNews

But for Iranians their history is that for over 50 years, literally without a break, the U.S. has been torturing Iranians. In 1953 the U.S. overthrew the parliamentary government and installed a brutal tyrant, the Shah, and kept supporting him while he compiled one of the worst human rights records in the world -- torture, assassination, anything you like. In fact, President Carter, when he visited Iran in December 1978, praised the Shah because of the love shown to him by his people, and so on and so forth, which probably accelerated the overthrow. Of course, Iranians have this odd way of remembering what happened to them and who was behind it. When the Shah was overthrown, the Carter administration immediately tried to instigate a military coup by sending arms to Iran through Israel to try to support military force to overthrow the government. We immediately turned to supporting Iraq, that is Saddam Hussein, and his invasion of Iran. Saddam was executed for crimes he committed in 1982, by his standards not very serious crimes -- complicity in killing 150 people. Well, there was something missing in that account -- 1982 is a very important year in U.S./Iraqi relations. That is the year in which Ronald Reagan removed Iraq from the list of states supporting terrorism so that the U.S. could start supplying Iraq with weapons for its invasion of Iran, including the means to develop weapons of mass destruction, chemical and nuclear weapons. That is 1982. A year later Donald Rumsfeld was sent to firm up the deal. Well, Iranians may very well remember that this led to a war in which hundreds of thousands of them were slaughtered with U.S. aid going to Iraq. They may well remember that the year after the war was over, in 1989, the U.S. government invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to come to the United States for advanced training in developing nuclear weapons. Excerpt from We Own The World by Noam Chomsky

Headlines

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle: Unearthed: News of the Week the Mainstream Media Forgot to Report
Huffpollstrology: Candidates' Horoscopes, Polls And More For May 24
On the poverty line: Has “a dollar a day” had its day?
Manufacturing a Food Crisis
Lessons learned in Afghanistan: U.S. Diplomat Is Accused of Delivering Cash to Opposition
The Most Savage Shock Jock of Them All
Amy Goodman: Presidential Race Ignores Arms Race
THE ROVING EYE : The Mosul riddle
SEX IN DEPTH : Asia: The land of raising sons
Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice
In the land of believers
Why the world would be a better place if women ruled
John Updike delivers annual Jefferson lecture
Israel's democratic lessons
The World Must Die So That Israel Can Be Saved
Banning the cluster bomb
Grain and bear it
Robert Schlesinger: Whose radioactive reverend is worse? McCain's or Obama's?
McCain's Medical Records: The AP Report
HBO's "Recount" Takes on the 2000 Election (Sunday 9 pm EST)
Clinton 'regrets' Kennedy assassination reference in defending her candidacy
New Newsweek Poll
B.C. apologizes for Komagata Maru incident
Wife: Saudi activist taken by secret police
CZECH REPUBLIC: Read the Papers And Fear the Muslims
Faux News Means (Wink, Wink) Business!
Books: Volumes to Go Before You Die
The Same Apartheid, a Different Suzman
Straight Talk Egg-Spress
The Rebellion Within: An Al Qaeda mastermind questions terrorism.
REQUEST: Advice for American journalists going to South Asia for the first time
The Price of Survival: What Would It Cost to Save Nature?
Egypt's Answer to Food Crisis: We Will 'Reclaim Desert Areas'
Canada violated Khadr's rights, Supreme Court rules

Two weeks from tomorrow, June 7, is the opening of "Raw Nerve" at the Norman Rockwell Museum in beautiful Stockbridge, MA. God knows what America's best-loved illustrator would say about this alien invasion. Director Laurie Norton Moffatt and curators Stephanie Plunkett and Chuck Sable may have to answer for a lot in the next life, but have been a perfect delight to work with in this one. Drawgers and non-Drawgers extremely welcome all summer (drop me an e- if you'll be in the area that night).

Brodner's Cartoon du Jour: What Must They Be Thinking?

Doonesbury@SLATE

Paul Jay presents RealNews

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