Killings of Iran’s scientists – an ethical test for Australia
these killings pose an ethical test for Australians too.
It’s easy to condemn terrorism when it’s carried out by official enemies. You don’t need much moral courage to stand up against Emmanuel Goldstein.
But Israel and the US are key allies of Australia, and, on almost every issue of import, our government marches in lockstep with theirs.
Killing Iranian scientists: when terrorism isn’t terrorism The Drum, JEFF SPARROW, 16 Jan 12, Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side…
George Orwell might have been describing almost exactly the Western response to the murder spree currently underway in Iran.
Last Wednesday, a motorcyclist attached a bomb to a car carrying a man called Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, killing him instantly, and injuring his two companions.
That was merely the latest atrocity inflicted upon individuals and facilities associated with nuclear physics in that country.
In December, seven people died in an explosion in Yazd. On November 28, a bomb seems to have gone off in nuclear facilities in Isfahan. On November 12, 17 people were killed by an explosion near Tehran. On July 23, a scientist called Darioush Rezaeinejad was shot through the throat outside his daughter’s kindergarten. On November 29, 2010, Majid Shahriari was killed in the same way as Roshan, with a bomb planted in his car. Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani was also attacked, but survived. On January 12, another motorcycle bomber killed Masoud Alimohammadi.
As Glenn Greenwald explains, if words have any meaning, this is terrorism, pure and simple – the systematic infliction of deadly violence launched against civilians and their families so as to create a climate of fear among Iranian physicists and other nuclear personnel.
It’s precisely conduct that, under other circumstances, we’re told, again and again, can never be justified.
“Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time and in every place,” explained George Bush in 2002, as he launched the War on Terror (to which Australia enthusiastically signed up).
“Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong.”…..
these killings pose an ethical test for Australians, too. It’s easy to condemn terrorism when it’s carried out by official enemies. You don’t need much moral courage to stand up against Emmanuel Goldstein.
But Israel and the US are key allies of Australia, and, on almost every issue of import, our government marches in lockstep with theirs.
In the end, it comes down to a simple question: do we endorse car bombings, or not? Do we believe any of the rhetoric that’s been mouthed for the last decade (“all terrorist acts are criminal and must be universally condemned,” etc)? If so, why won’t we speak out?….https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#drafts/134e3a9e2bf9b885
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1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
Hi Christina MacPherson,
2012-0703-0003
0ne has read this post very carefully … hopefully as carefully as it appears to have been written. When you read of one event in the news it is information. When a group of news items come together under the one keyword, it can become knowledge … a dangerous thing.
Regretfully there is little the 0ne can do at the moment, But now we are the Two. 0ne day we will be the many and maybe then the killings by this country who appears to have taken the mantle that Rome, London and others have once worn, will regret following Kissinger’s guidelines in his doctoral thesis of 1956.
Thank you for the knowledge.
Respectfully yours,
Kenieth Baker
ISA
Independant Society, Australia
Room 4, The Old Railway Hotel,
Boggabri NSW 2382
ISA is a not-4-profit organisation working to keep Australia working the Australian Way. “What is the best work, no work … chuckle.
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