Stop The Second Holocaust

Rest In Peace, Brother Tim

2010-04-18T03:08:00.000-07:00

Our contributor, Brother Tim, Blogger of Revelation will be much missed ...

The Cellar Door

2009-10-13T12:00:00.001-07:00

After it all falls
Falls away
After it all falls
Falls away
I will greet you.
The green ground is wet again in the St. Francis Forest,
It is weeping for what’s taken place,
And the deer look sad, like old bullfrogs
Sunk in the swamps puffing their throats.
I will meet you by the cabin,
By the moss-green cellar door with the rusty handle
And we will hold one another and the bullfrogs
Will bellow their melancholy.

The world’s gone mad, my dear,
And no one seems to care.
We’re happiest, it seems, breathing air the color of smoke
And swilling fury like a rabid dog tethered down.
But something’s changed; the gait of man,
Teeth show more than before,
As if we’re grinning underneath our howls,
Happiest when our foul fists crack against innocent flesh.
Something’s changed my dear, something awful.
In our quest for compassion, our search for ourselves,
We’ve come to greet the moon like beasts
And we’ve come to crave this ill-used madness
Like addicts of failure, sightless hunters of ruin.

After it all falls
Falls away
After it all falls
Falls away
And all this hate and foul-toothed cruelty fails
I will greet you. Meet you there
To hold hands
At the moss-green cellar door with the rusty handle.
And together we will bellow to the bullfrog’s melancholy.
And we will fall together, limbs touching wet fingers.
I will hold you close, my love, nearer than before
And I’ll be affectionate when I brush your golden hair.
Don’t be afraid!
I will greet you!
I will show you the beautiful things!
The deer will no longer look sad, the world
Shall no more it’s howling, the air will smile
And no one will seem to care!

Read all the Violent Verses

DVAM

The final September Song- Poems for hunger series

2009-09-30T11:41:00.001-07:00

(Artwork by Marcin Bondarowicz)

I think today is the end of all things conventional,
Whatever had been predictable yesterday, is no more.

Forks and spoons are too rusted to use,
Jutting out of us like some perished nightmare.
Dining room tables are being used for makeshift mausoleums,
(Leave the dead, don’t waste precious energy.)
Electricity went out this morning, water this afternoon.

It reaches everywhere; the world reeks of a decomposing.
There’s a deafening silence ticking down like a giant clock;
Nothing can be heard, save the monstrous, shrieking echo of silence
That swims over our heads like crop-dusters spitting flesh.

We are so goddamn frightened! Is this the end of the world?
Has our greed and apathy finally made its way back to us?
Have our closed hands and open mouths at last climbed inside our minds?
Where are all the loud children skipping home from school?
What day is this? What time is it? What has happened?

At night there will be fireflies and the moon to feebly reassure us.
Everything we’ve ever been told about death and hunger and this moment
Sounds stupid.
All the times we’ve been told of it or witnessed such present horror
Is now speechless.
Everything is so horrifyingly quiet! The mask of life itself is waning
Like leaves falling upon autumn’s sword.

To our hands, the children. To our feast, the world
Now shaking off its parasites with winter’s cold harmony.
Of our hands, the stillness. Of our hunger, the stench
Masking any good that has ever been grown in the field
Or expressed with the sustenance of any true and decent love.

Read all the September Songs

Help support Feeding America's Hunger Action Month

I Am The Voice

2009-09-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

......of one crying in the wilderness.
~John 1:23a

I can truly empathize with John the Baptist. I too, feel like the lone voice trying to bear witness to the truth.

I read scores of articles and news reports daily. When they are concerning Iran, there is one common thread: Macho Hubris. There are virtually no rational voices in the United States. With the latest news of Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, all I've heard, non-stop, is sabre-rattling, chest pounding, and the renewed beating of the war drums.

President Obama has now threatened Iran with military force. It was not an overt threat, by any means, but a threat nonetheless. He said, in effect, his 'preferred way was diplomacy, but military force would not be taken 'off the table'. It is up to Iran to make the next move. They will either comply with what we want or .........................' .

This is an almost verbatim recitation of what Geo W Bush said to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Basically, what he is asking them to do, is the same thing Bush demanded from Iraq: Prove a negative. And just as with Iraq, nothing Iran says, or does, will convince him otherwise.

He makes grandiose claims of 'intelligence gathering' from the U.S., Britain, and France. Remember, these are the same intelligence sources that swore on a stack of Bibles that Saddam had WMDs and imminent plans and capabilities for using them against us. We all know how that turned out.

The Congress has been complaining for months that we can't afford $900 billion for Health Care Reform in this country. Watch how fast they will be ready to cough up $1 trillion or more to attack Iran. We haven't even clawed our way out of the Iraq/Afghanistan hole we've dug for ourselves.

We're hearing the chicken-hawks heralding the good news that Russia and China will be with us. Don't believe it.

We have deceived ourselves into believing that we, and our 'allies', have the only intelligence gathering capabilities on the planet. We've heard how Russia was 'surprised' and 'upset' with this latest disclosure on Iran. Don't believe that either. Both Russia and China have very good intelligence gathering abilities. They are fully aware of what Iran is doing. In fact, they probably know more about Iran than we do. China has remained curiously silent on this. What does THAT tell you?

America has a knee-jerk personality with a need for instant gratification. We seem to be oblivious to the fact that Iranians and Russians are Masters at the game of chess. They have patience and think many moves in advance, something our checker-playing mentality can't seem to comprehend.

I don't know if Iran has nuclear weapons ambitions or not; but I do know this: They'd be damn fools if they didn't. Their biggest enemy, and threat, is Zionist Israel, which HAS nuclear weapons. They are surrounded by nuclear-armed States. India; Pakistan; U.S. (Iraq/Afghanistan); Israel; Russia; and China. How would you like to be the only one in your neighborhood without a gun?

Rather than bullying and coercion, we would do better at realizing WHY Iran would want nuclear weapons, and solving the problem from that perspective. Double-standards simply do not work. Put yourselves in the Iranian's sandals. THEY signed the NPT, while Israel; Pakistan; and India refused, and continue to refuse, signing on. Yet the U.S. not only allowed THEM to arm, but actually helped them (one of many Articles of the NPT we have breached). The irony is, Iran received much of it's uranium enrichment knowledge from Pakistan. Had we stopped Pakistan in it's tracks, it would have set Iran back decades. Had we stopped Israel, in all probability, Iran would not be so hell-bent on arming themselves.

Nuclear weapons are deterrent weapons. Notice how we no longer sabre-rattle and threaten North Korea. THAT is the sole reason America is against Iran being nuclear armed; we could no longer threaten and bully them. Iranians are human beings, just like all the rest of us. The Iranians are a highly intelligent people. They will not commit suicide and have their people and country laid to waste by using a pre-emptive nuclear strike on another. Iran has not attacked, nor invaded, any country in modern history; and it would be my guess, that they would not do so in the future.

My advice to America: Stop with all the arrogant hubris and bravado. Live and let live.

My advice to Iran: Be careful. You're dealing with some greedy folks who are only interested in your natural resources.

~~Cross-posted at the Blog of Revelation ~~

Give Peace a Chance,
Brother Tim

An inner dialogue with Rush and Glenn...

2009-08-27T23:54:00.001-07:00

Glenn Beck had Rush Limbaugh on his show to help him obscure his blatantly asinine remark that Barack Obama is a racist and to, I suppose, deflect from the fact that after he uttered this idiocy advertisers fled from his show like intelligent moths from a flame.

Here's what the two clowns actually said (transcript via Crooks and Liars)...

BECK: Oh sure, they're tearing me apart (liberals) but none of the facts! Write what you learn on this show down. Write these questions down and demand answers. Because it's not my America we're talking about here. It's all of ours -- left, right, Democrat, Republican -- all of our freedom of speech is on the ropes. And questioning your government is not only important, it is -- in a democratic republic, which I think we still have, it is required of you. Freedom of speech is under attack.

LIMBAUGH: This whole administration is as radical and far left as any that the country has ever had. And what they're trying to do here to communications is simply stifle dissenting voices. They're trying to wipe out any opposition. If you look at Barack Obama and his track record as a politician, it is to clear the playing field. He doesn't even like debating his opponents. He just wants to get rid of them.

BECK: If you watch MSNBC, I contend that you will see the future. Because they are laying the ground for a horrible event that will be -- eh, what they're laying the ground for, anything from the right, they're -- some awful event -- and I fear this government, this administration, has so much framework already prepared that they will seize power overnight before anybody even gives it a second thought!

And here is their INNER DIALOGUE...

BECK: They’re hurting my feelings, Rush, and they’re using facts to do it! You and I both know that democracy can only take a thimble full of facts each week or BAM- its full-bore addiction! If the little people would just write down every sacred word I say, which is all of them, this country, right, left, Demonazis, RepubliChrists, would be a better place for me to live! My freedom to speak lies without getting fired is under attack!

LIMBAUGH: Poor schmuck. Poor little, disheveled, Mormonite schlub. He’s got potential, but he’s not quite “loony tunes” enough for my adoring fans, but he can get there with my help. Me. Me. Grandiose me! I love me more than I love myself. Ha! I'm funny, too! Nobody is ever going to stifle my beautiful voice! And certainly not some Kenyanized negroid who’s not fit to be my driver, let alone leader of the free world! They're trying to wipe out any opposition, but I’ll be damned if they take my job! The coon-eyed magic negro better not come within two miles of my job or I’ll- I'll- I'll throw up on his Uncle Tom Penny Loafers! He wants to get rid of me! Me? Me? Me?
Sonofabitchbastardmothafuckingcoonpenisassholetitcocksuckingbitchniggerscumbagelitist nogoodboogereatercuntlickingtwatblowjobclitanuslover!

BECK: God! I love the resonance of his voice! If it weren’t against my better judgment I’d suck him off right this very- If you watch MSNBC, I contend you’ll see the future, and I’m not in it! Because they are laying the ground for a horrible event, my firing! No! No! I’m only a mini-god! I want to get to where Rush is! A full-blown-massive-god-of-the-airwaves! A hurricane force motherfucker! I must not get fired before I become a raging star? What would the women think of me then? I must become a bona-fide god! I’ve already laid the framework to overtake Rush and all of his loony tuners! I need more time goddamnit! I need more time! Now get off my throne, you liberal, Kenyan born, socialist, communist, brown-skinned, terrorist loving, uncircumcised, Marxist, nappy headed son of a bastard! GET OFF MY THRONE! GET OFF MY THRONE! GET OFFFFFFF MYYY THRRRRRONNNEEEEEEEEE!

More INNER DIALOGUE

Letter to Pastor Steve

2009-08-22T20:54:00.001-07:00

-Pastor Steve's Sermon followed by my letter in protest-

The same God who instituted the death penalty for murders is the same god who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals, sodomites and queers!

That's what it was instituted for, okay? That's God, he hasn't changed. Oh, God doesn't feel that way in the New Testament ... God never "felt" anything about it, he commanded it and said they should be taken out and killed.

You know why God wanted the sodomites in the Old Testament to be killed? You know why every good king of Israel, the Bible says they got rid of the sodomites in the land? You know, the good kings that came after the bad kings who had allowed the sodomites to infest their land, they had infiltrated ... King Asa got the sodomites out of the land, Jehoshaphat exterminated the sodomites that were left from the days of his father, Asa. Why? Because the sodomites are infectious, that's why. Because they're not reproducers, that goes without saying, they're recruiters.

How are they multiplying? Do you not see that they're multiplying? Are you that blind? Have you noticed that there's more than there were last year and the year before, and the year before that? How are they multiplying? They're reproducing right? No, here's a biology lesson: they're not reproducers, they're recruiters! And you know who they're after? Your children. Remember you dropped off your kids last week? That's who they're after. You drop them off at some daycare, you drop them off at some school somewhere, you don't know where they're at. I'll tell you where they're at: they're being recruited by the sodomites. They're being molested by the sodomites. I can tell you so many stories about people that I know being molested and recruited by the sodomites.

They recruit through rape. They recruit through molestation. They recruit through violation. They are infecting our society. They are spreading their disease. It's not a physical disease, it's a sin disease, it's a wicked, filthy sin disease and it's spreading on a rampage. Can't you see that it's spreading on a rampage? I mean, can you not see that? Can you not see that it's just exploding in growth? Why? Because each sodomite recruits far more than one other sodomite because his whole life is about recruiting other sodomites, his whole life is about violating and hurting people and molesting 'em.

I'm here to preach the Bible. And I'm sick to death -- hey, let me tell you something. Our country is run by faggots. You know who wrote this 700-billion-dollar bailout bill? You know who was the man who was the architect of the bailout? His name is Barney Franks, he is a pedophile, he has been arrested for uh, interacting with boys that are in their teenage years when he's in his 50s, it's in the news, he's been arrested for it. He is a pedophile, he is a homosexual, he has stood up in the floor of the sacred halls of justice and said, 'I am gay, I am a sodomite.'

That's Barney Frank, that's who just sold our country into fascism. That's who just sold our corporations to the government. That's who sold out our country, a faggot! And I'm here to tell you something! I'm not going to stand for it, and let a faggot run the church! It's bad enough that we've got a bunch of faggots running the government!

Gospel of Hate via Crooks and Liars

__________________________________________

-Letter in protest-

Dear Steve,
You, sir, are unquestionably a man of god.

Yes. Little "g". You are not a man of God or any other proper name for some supreme being in the sky; you are your own arrogant god; the god of self.

You emit depraved hatred as if you were a perpetual volcano pitching down lava. You use the “good” book, the bible, to thrust a malevolent ember into the skin of anyone and anything that you consider unworthy of your kingdom.

No. It is not the kingdom of God; it is your own fiefdom, your very own Eden, your own private, rather lonely, and most depraved paradise.

According to your logic, I feel that is is in your best interest that I urge you to cease your small-minded parade. See, Steve, the same God who instituted all of those arcane and, in my opinion, despicable laws also had something to say about judging others and greed. He also said that we should stone children who are stubborn, put to death everyone who curses his father or his mother, cut both off from their own people any man who lies with a woman during her period, forgo cutting the hair at the sides of our head or clipping the edges of our beards, cancel every seven years anyone's debt, if a man has a stubborn and rebellious son he should be stoned to death, we are not to plant our fields with two kinds of seed, we are to kill anyone who works on a Sunday, and wearing polyester is a sin, as well as eating shellfish, we should support slavery, women are not to be teachers, we shall not touch the skin of a pig, and there’s also something in the good book about taking His name in vain, which, by the way, seems to be your specialty.

Yes. Your specialty is taking the Lord's name in vain. See, it’s not about uttering the word “Goddamn” in any of its forms; it is about using His name as a mockery, as a means to an end, using it, not as, perhaps, a graceful instrument to teach, but as an instrument of terror. That’s right. You, Pastor Steve, terrorize people when you choose to bend, for your own individual ideal, the good book that they, your flock, live and breathe.

You go on in your ranting sermon to defame Barney Franks as if he were not one of your own kind- human. You denigrate all homosexuals. You slander so much more than the few labels you viciously spout in your unhealthy repertoire. You slander all of humanity, religious or otherwise, with your insufferable delusions and unsophisticated spirit.

You recruit and rape via the word of God. You recruit through the molestation of one of the holy books. You recruit through violation of God’s word. You are infecting all of society. You are spreading your disease. No. It’s not a physical disease, although it makes me physically ill to hear of it, it is, ironically enough, your “sinning”, your depraved indifference that transfers this horrible infection. It is your wicked, filthy indifference to humanity that is spreading like a wildfire during a summer drought. Can’t you see that you’re spreading gloom through the children’s spirits. I mean, can you not see that? Can you not see that it’s just exploding in growth? Why? Because each self-infected preacher recruits far more than one disciple for Christ, because his whole life is about recruiting disciples for Christ, his whole life is about violating and hurting people and molesting children’s spirits for Christ's sake!

I’m here to tell you the truth, not to preach the bible or any other predetermined doctrine. And I’m sick to death of soul sucking leeches! Let me tell you something; our country is infested with self serving men and women of a little "g" god. You know who spouted hatred regarding a fellow human being? You know who was the architect of such a foul sermon? His name is Steve Anderson; he is a molester of children's spirits! He should be arrested for defamation and ruination of the human spirit! For interacting with the people’s precious minds and turning their God into a monster! You should be arrested for being an innocent soul pedophile, a molester of the scriptures and rapist of the soul!

Surely you know the term, jihad, right? If by chance you don’t, you certainly should. You are calling for one against those that do not see life, or God, the way you do. You obviously want to wage a jihad, but I need to inform you that you should be careful what you wish for. You may not like or even recognize what you get.

One last observation, Steve, if I may... If, and I do mean if, if God does indeed look down upon us from heaven, if He indeed devises plans for those deemed “unworthy” of His grace, if He truly is the all vengeful and the all wrathful and the all forgiving and the all powerful and the all loving deity that you claim He is… I’m reasonably confident that you, dear Steve, have caught His eye.

Sincerely,
Mark R. Prime
(thepoetryman)

Uh oh... Hurricane Bill Turns Political

2009-08-21T17:10:00.000-07:00

Get ready for a new talking point, or screaming point, to emerge this week throughout the town hall meetings across the country.

Here is an example of what we are likely to begin hearing-

VERY OLD WHITE MAN: "This here Hurricane Bill is growing like the Mexican population! We, the true people of this land, are left with only one recourse, revolution!"

OLD GUY WITH HAT: "First the Death Panels, now this!? Bunch of no good terrorists! Over my dead body this Bill passes!"

NRA SPOKESPERSON: "We must inform congress that if this bill passes we will have no other choice but to begin attending any and all political events strapped to the gills with automatic assault rifles and any and all hand guns we can get our paws on!"

YOUNG GIRL: "Enough is enough! This is America, not Nazi Germany! We do not support an administration that has such little regard for life on the outlying coasts!"

NASCAR FAN: "In all my days I have seen many terrible bills pass through, but this one takes the cake! I won't stand for it! Who does this Obama think he is, president of the U.S. Weather Service?"

TORTURED BREATH

2009-08-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

ACLU video features prominent figures like Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone and a 9/11 family member reading from one of the infamous Bush administration legal memos used to justify the use of torture against detainees in U.S. custody. The video calls for accountability and the restoration of the rule of law.

The video includes appearances by Oliver Stone, 9/11 family member Patricia Perry, actors Rosie Perez, Noah Emmerich, John Doman and Reg E. Cathey, and musical composer Philip Glass, among others, reading directly from a memo authored by Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel under the Bush administration. The memo was released in April as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

For more information, visit:
http://www.aclu.org/torturedlogic (video)
http://www.aclu.org/torture

TORTURED COUNT (a poem by thepoetryman)
One-
I am trying to breathe.
I do not offer myself.
Everything flows over
Within this; my mouth.
Two, three-
The surge reveals a child.
A symphony of barbs pierce my rest.
What is asked of me
Will not be of the next.
Four, five-
Anyone that can hear me,
I will tell you something,
Anything to make it cease.
Earnest plea at death’s gate.
Six, seven-
Toss me in safety’s grave,
That is now my wish
Of you; my mind’s slayer,
Liberty’s perpetual destroyer.
Eight, nine
I’ll gladly give up my use;
The substance of my collection.
Feet elevated inside iron shoes,
Angels slithering to my side.
Ten…

© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

Imagine if AMeirca did this when Bush cheated

2009-06-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Man...Kind

2009-06-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

Killing puts abortion foes on defense
In worship he found his cause
In prayer he found his score
In murder he found his god

Obama hopeful on Mid-East peace
How simple it must sound
This wistful wishful flight among the fragile beams
Of stone and foul hatred.

Search Is On for Wreckage of Missing Air France Jet
Among protea, cycads, and pincushions and the stunning breath of petals
They surely float. The jagged Drakensberg Peaks, like broken teeth
Shimmering edges, dark lines, not bones, but fractured meadows.

Judge: Release Gitmo Docs
We say we’d die for our beloved country,
We proudly wave her colors and cry
At the thought of promised freedom,
Say we’d descend into the grave of valor-
But what of our torture?

4 Troops Killed In Bomb Strikes In Afghanistan
In the next battle,
The next black mound of sand
To blur our vision,
Will be war against the heart
Above our gut of reason.

We will reach up and touch
The fold of four stars.

U.N. human rights investigators enter Gaza
It’s such a madness of exploration
This “human right” mentioned now and again.
One would think that this was settled long ago.
A mad word, ‘investigation’; meaningless,
Since we’ll discover what we’ve always known.

Roeder, Home Grown Terrorist, Son of O'Reilly, In the Family of the Republican Christian Conservative Coalition
But then the dreams began,
Those that conjured your aggression;
Complicit nightmares blaring out,
Encouraging the language of your god.
Sleep deeply, then awake, ready to ambush your god
standing with its back to you.

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

(Read more Head-Lines)

The Lobby wants War with Iran!

2009-05-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

The Israel lobby has been running into a few problems lately, but it’s nothing they don’t think they can handle: a charge of treason, a strong suspicion of obstructing justice, and a gathering storm of criticism from a few dissident intellectuals and policy types. Nothing to get too exercised about.read the rest ...

Israel-Iran Range Study

2009-04-04T04:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to an interesting discussion on the study done by Abdullah Toukan and Anthony H. Cordesman on a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear development facilities.

Quoting a commenter from that blog entry:

An unprovoked unclear first strike? America and allies may have been able to get away with attacking Iraq on unfounded suspicions of WMDs but it had a number of factors in its favour. Firstly Saddam was a first order tyrant, secondly it was a conventional attack and thirdly - and of much greater importance - the US was too powerful to be held to account for its actions anyway.

Toukan & Cordesman mentioned the widely perceived application of double standards which some of the EU states have been abetting despite internal public opinion. While the US has been able to cover for Israel with SC vetoes etc. I doubt any country would even attempt to justify such a crime, apart [from] Israel and the US. If the US tried to claim justification or were shown in anyway to have had foreknowledge and failed to warn or try and prevent the attack I suspect they would find they had less friends than North Korea. - Link

Iranian reformers unite; seek ouster of Ahmadinejad

2009-03-16T12:49:00.001-07:00

Ahmadinejad may be losing support. Is it a new day for Iran?

clipped from www.nytimes.com

Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former president, has decided to withdraw from the June presidential race to support a political ally

“The most important goal is to prevent Mr. Ahmadinejad from re-election, not to get Mr. Khatami elected,”

Mr. Mousavi, who is also a painter and architect, stayed out of politics for the past two decades and had turned down calls to run as presidential candidate in previous elections. His wife, Zahra Rahnavard, was the dean of the prestigious women’s university, Al Zahra, from 1998 to 2006 and is close ally of Mr. Khatami.

President Ahmadinejad is supported by the conservative Iranian establishment, but his economic policies have unleashed economic inflation of over 25 percent, and two major setbacks last week suggested that he might be losing support ahead of elections.

Why bombing Iran won't work

2009-03-03T12:02:00.001-08:00

And some things that just might ...

clipped from www.niacouncil.org

"You can't bomb knowledge," said Robert Litwak, Director of the Division of International Security Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars [...]

[B]ombing ... Iran's nuclear sites will not deter future technological developments [...]

US military action ... would only trigger major responses worldwide, ... a worsening of the fragile state of Iraq and "a rally around the flag effect in Iran."

Washington will need to recognize that "what is politically serious in Washington is politically insignificant in Tehran." What the US has previously viewed as a big step toward normalization, such as allowing the importation of pistachios and carpets, has little weight in Iran [...]

Pres. Obama and other political figures have not recognized the need to use sensitive language when dealing with Iran.

Iran has expressed its disdain for phrases such as "carrots and sticks," that the US has repeatedly used [...]

[T]his mistranslates to say that the US plans to deal with Iran as a donkey, either reward it with carrots or
beat it into submission. "This will backfire on us," ... stated Robin Wright, journalist, author and public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Iran Nuke News is 86% US Media Hype

2009-02-22T19:39:00.001-08:00

Iran does not have the capability of enriching uranium to sufficient levels to become bomb-grade. Yes, it's enriched, but to only about 1/20th of the quality needed.

clipped from www.juancole.com

Iran Nuclear Program Hyped again

Note to mainstream media:

Iran cannot construct nuclear bombs with uranium enriched only to less than 4%. It needs to be enriched to something like 90% to make a bomb. Iran is not known even to have that capability, and no it cannot be done in 2 months (try a decade), assuming they were trying to do it, which our $40 bn. a year intelligence agencies say they are not. So all the silly articles on Friday about how iran now has enough enriched uranium to make a bomb are just illiterate. Moreover, the report in question actually says that Iran is slowing its enrichment activities.

h/t Jay McDonough.

Any hints on Mossad-Madoff allaiance?

2009-02-14T12:54:00.000-08:00

Please drop a line.
Facts are appreciated, but musings are also accepted (please specifically state "hypothetical").

Israeli boy rants: This is my land ...

2009-02-04T14:14:00.000-08:00

Secret IDF Database Reveals Truth Of Israeli Settlement Agenda

2009-01-30T18:06:00.000-08:00

Bottom line, 75% of settlements are illegal under Israeli laws, (and as Pulse points out Haaretz who reported this and the BBC who also cover it neglect to mention that 100% of settlements have been declared illegal by the World Court) and while publicly taking a stance against illegal settlements the government in fact is fully aware and complicit in their construction as this database reveals. The 'Middle East conflict' is an ongoing colonisation meeting resistance, until that is out in the open and challenged the 'conflict ' will continue as Palestinians are killed in order to take their land and Israelis are killed for occupying the stolen land. Short excerpt of the Haaretz story-

Just four years ago, the defense establishment decided to carry out a seemingly elementary task: establish a comprehensive database on the settlements. Brigadier General (res.) Baruch Spiegel, aide to then defense minister Shaul Mofaz, was put in charge of the project. For over two years, Spiegel and his staff, who all signed a special confidentiality agreement, went about systematically collecting data, primarily from the Civil Administration.

One of the main reasons for this effort was the need to have credible and accessible information at the ready to contend with legal actions brought by Palestinian residents, human rights organizations and leftist movements challenging the legality of construction in the settlements and the use of private lands to establish or expand them. The painstakingly amassed data was labeled political dynamite.

The defense establishment, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, steadfastly refused to publicize the figures, arguing, for one thing, that publication could endanger state security or harm Israel's foreign relations.

The official database, the most comprehensive one of its kind ever compiled in Israel about the territories, was recently obtained by Haaretz. Here, for the first time, information the state has been hiding for years is revealed. An analysis of the data reveals that, in the vast majority of the settlements - about 75 percent - construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued. The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents.

The information contained in the database does not conform to the state's official position, as presented, for instance, on the Foreign Ministry Web site, which states: "Israel's actions relating to the use and allocation of land under its administration are all taken with strict regard to the rules and norms of international law - Israel does not requisition private land for the establishment of settlements." Since in many of the settlements, it was the government itself, primarily through the Ministry of Construction and Housing, that was responsible for construction, and since many of the building violations involve infrastructure, roads, public buildings and so on, the official data also demonstrate government responsibility for the unrestrained planning and lack of enforcement of regulations in the territories. The extent of building violations also attests to the poor functioning of the Civil Administration, the body in charge of permits and supervision of construction in the territories.

Historical pretext of genocide in Gaza

2009-01-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

Marc Lord :

"[...]All the way back to Zephaniah chapter 2, verse 5:

For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up.

Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the Cherethites! the word of the LORD is against you; O Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant.

The scripture above was written circa 630 B.C. by one of the most obscure prophets of the Old Testament. "Philistines" is a Hebrew term derived from the root p-l-sh, or פלש‎, which means to invade, divide, or overwhelm.[...]"

sdrawkcaB nruT

2009-01-15T10:52:00.001-08:00

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

I have been witness to the four pillars and see no reason
to carry death there.
Doesn’t the world know that life moves for more than just
the sons of Abraham?

O! I see the stunned throats floating by in the dusk to
their stiff-limbed sleep
as metal rains down over the Jordan’s western prophet,
children dying there.

I am here, waiting, breathing in the dusk under the shadow
of the patriarch,
asking, can we again build the shrine inside the soul and
leave our flesh to time?

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Jewish Texts ("Turn backwards and you will see him.")

Saddam AND Khomeini: Reagan's buddies; Bin Ladin: Bush's brother; Hamas: Israel's child!

2009-01-15T07:57:00.000-08:00

In Feb 2007, Brendan O'Neill wrote about Israel's shifted preference from Hamas to Fatah in The American Conservative:

"... there is something bitterly ironic in Israel’s support for Fatah against Hamas—and it should be a lesson to governments everywhere that meddle in other states’ affairs. In the past, Israel supported Hamas against Fatah. Indeed, in the 1970s and 80s, Israel played a not insignificant role in encouraging Hamas’s emergence in the belief that such an Islamist group might help rupture support for the mass nationalist movement of Fatah. Twenty years later, Israel has switched sides, hoping that it can encourage Fatah to see off Hamas. It wants “moderate” Palestinians to take on the “extremist” Palestinians it helped create. Like America and Britain before it—both of whom have supported and armed Islamist movements in the Middle East in attempts to undermine secular nationalist parties—Israel is learning the hard way that it is one thing to let radical Islamists off the leash but quite another thing to rein them back in again. If you make monsters, you shouldn’t be surprised if they come back to bite you."

Now that is a fine observation ... but, let's see who is ripping the benefit of all this blood bath in the Middle East ... I'd point the finger to Saudi Arabia!

This story we all heard about ad-nauseam, right?

U.K. arms dealer secretly paid Saudi prince $2B: BBC

But How about this one:

The mastermind of Mumbai attacks was a buddy to Iran-contra arms dealers and a friend of CIA/Cheney's in their "fight" (hahha) against Bin Laden:
"WMR has learned from Asian intelligence sources that one of the accused masterminds of the gangland assault on Mumbai, the soft-spoken but extremely dangerous exiled Indian mobster and one-time Bombay local street tough, or “dada,” Dawood Ibrahim, was a key “unsavory” ally of the CIA and Cheney in the war against “Al Qaeda.” In fact, Ibrahim’s dalliances with the CIA go back to the Afghan mujaheddin war against the Soviets and coincide with the CIA’s alliance, at the time, with Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden, himself, was an “unsavory” CIA ally during the Balkan war when the CIA gave support to the Bosnian Muslim government. The CIA operation with “unsavory” elements brought Ibrahim and Bin Laden into the same big CIA tent, along with Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a key Iran-contra figure in George H. W. Bush’s global arms smuggling venture while he served as Vice President under Ronald Reagan. There have been reports that Ibrahim considers Khashoggi to be a hero figure.

When Ibrahim became convinced that certain U.S. government agencies, particularly the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), was working with India and Pakistan’s new government of President Asif Ali Zardari to have him extradited from Pakistan to India, he decided to use his considerable muscle to “teach” Delhi and Washington a lesson. Ibrahim was also not pleased with the U.S. Treasury Department’s freeze order on his financial assets."

And did we hear anything about a Saudi arms dealing billionaire by the name of Adnan Khashoggi?

In 2001 Timothy Noah drew attention to what he had previosly noted (here, here, and here) that (wikipedia) Adnan Khashoggi is connected to every shocking event that has occurred since 1960, usually by no more than one or two degrees. A partial list would include Iran-Contra, Wedtech, BCCI, the Marcos Philippine kleptocracy, the Synfuels fiasco, and the discovery of buried mustard gas in the pricy Spring Valley neighborhood of Washington, D.C. To these we must now add the tragic events of Sept. 11."

In 2003, Seymor Hersh of the New Yorker Reported:

"
At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the nineteen-seventies, the Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family, earning hundreds of millions in commissions and fees. Though never convicted of wrongdoing, he was repeatedly involved in disputes with federal prosecutors and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in recent years he has been in litigation in Thailand and Los Angeles, among other places, concerning allegations of stock manipulation and fraud. During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq."

Now, I would say that Saudis are not evil doers by "nature", but they are money lovers!

In fact, the ancestors of the Saudi kings right now were such decadant materialists that Mohammad had to uprise against them and call Muslims to Jihad! Remember folks, Jihads during Mohammad time were not called against Christians or Jewes, but against the "infidel" Arab rulers, against slavery ... speaking of which was one of the earliest trades Arabs did with the US of A: Slave trade!

so, following the money, what is Saudi arabia doing now?
BAILING OUT the crumbling economy!

Nov10, 2008; MELANIE PHILLIPS: Beware this Saudi deal to help bail out Britain

And no it is not the Saudi Arabians who are decadent! It is their co called ELITE: Take a look at the Arab News: Why should we Bail Out the US:

JEDDAH: According to reports published in Al-Seyassah, a Kuwaiti newspaper, and some other Gulf newspapers, the United States has asked four Gulf states for financial aid close to $300 billion to face the fallout of the financial crisis and help prevent its economy from sliding into a painful recession.

Washington is seeking $120 billion from Saudi Arabia, $70 billion from the United Arab Emirates, $60 billion from Qatar and $40 billion from Kuwait.

Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Barclays have all raised billions of dollars from the Middle East.

Gulf states have been helping and protecting the US economy for many decades i.e. having their currencies pegged to the dollar, quoting oil prices in US dollars, putting their entire surplus in passive investment in the US economy (they have lost over 40 percent of their assets because of the declining value of the dollar) and purchasing expensive weapons.

Many voices would like to drag the Gulf states into a confrontation with Iran as they did in the early 1980s when they convinced Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. Everybody knows the disastrous results. What happened to Iraq and to the entire region? Iran is not nuclear, Israel is nuclear.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states do not need the protection of other nations. They should depend on themselves and should not trust anybody but themselves for their protection. How could Saudi Arabia help the US auto industry and not help its own stock market that dropped over 80 percent from its value in the last 2 years? Saudi Arabia should help its citizens. Over 50 percent of Saudi families do not own homes. They rent homes.

Something to hang from a peace tree

2009-01-14T15:05:00.000-08:00

She is holding a child that she has never had. A limb is falling off of the child. A leg. Or an arm. There is a bullet in the child's eye. The bullet is silver. Blood is flowing into the child's mouth. The child is thirsty. The woman lets her drink the blood. Her left breast is blown up. In its place rests a big scar. You can see the heart through cracked ribs. With no breast, the child cannot be breast fed. With no breast she cannot even prostitute herself to find water or milk. The child is thirsty. The woman's heart is broken by the force of the smashed rib cage. The man is out; holding his penis out to the world; pissing on it, pissing it off. He is hoping that if he urinates enough, the earth, the ancestral land will purify it enough to save his child from thirst; or from the despicable sin of sucking on his own blood. Death doesn't come soon enough to the child whose limb is hanging, whose eyes is wounded. Death doesn't come soon enough to the woman whose breast is blown, whose broken rib cage has broken her pink heart. Death doesn't come soon enough to the man whose phallus is not irrigating the earth, is not starting a creek. Death is waiting in a corner to be sought. Death is waiting to be called upon. Death is waiting to be strapped into a belt. Death is not coming, death is to be sought. Death grins menacingly that she is the port to freedom, the port to heaven. Death is water, death is food, death is freedom, death is a belt, death is the last piece of pride, the last bit of dignity left.

The woman's breast is blown. Her wombs is a ball of fire. She is pregnant with pain. And she is holding a child with a falling limb, with a bleeding eye, and with thirsty lips that are getting used to the salty taste of the blood ... blood the only source of life ... blood the only god ... the woman will give birth to pain, the pain too will be thirsty, the pain will not be able to drink from the exploded breast, the pain will grow into a blood thirsty puberty.

The pain will kill the woman because the woman will kill for pain; all mothers will kill for their thirsty children. The death belt is grinning ... the last attire of dignity of a man ... or a woman ...

From the ashes of Gaza

2009-01-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

And Israeli citizens might ponder the following words from Shakespeare (in The Merchant of Venice), which Tariq Ali slightly altered:

"I am a Palestinian. Hath not a Palestinian eyes? Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that … the villainy you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

Gaza watch!

2009-01-11T00:25:00.000-08:00

Keep an eye on what some of the best Middle Eastern bloggers are reporting on the Israeli atrocities in Gaze:

http://pulsemedia.org/

If Palestinians had remained docile and had just gone to death by starvation instead of firecracking things would have been so much easier for Israel!

Talking with Iran

2008-11-21T23:19:00.000-08:00

Howard LaFranchi of The Christian Science Monitor mulls over events that are or will be driving the process towards talks with Iran. Preparation and timing are of the essence.

[...] neither close Obama advisers nor Iran experts are expecting a rush to dialogue with Tehran come Jan. 20, for a number of tactical and event-driven reasons:

• The economic crisis will consume much of the new president's attention and is likely to put off major diplomatic initiatives.

• The sinking price of oil is seen as having clipped Iran's wings, raised domestic woes for Tehran, and made negotiations somewhat less urgent.

• And, most important, Iran holds presidential elections in June, leaving the United States wary of doing anything beforehand that might be used by Iran's extremist and anti-Western forces – in particular President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – to electoral advantage.

Also interesting is the piece that appeared on Link TV dealing more particularly with President Ahmadinejad, titled Ahmadinejad: Guns N' Roses.

Mennonite Uni's in exchange with Iran

2008-11-21T16:08:00.001-08:00

Brilliant!

clipped from www.payvand.com

AKRON, Pa. – A delegation from six U.S. and Canadian Mennonite universities visited Iran from Oct. 4 to 10 to explore opportunities for academic collaboration with Iranian universities.

Iranian university officials expressed particular interest in academic exchanges related to peace, justice, conflict and religion, according to several members of the delegation.

Sommer said she hopes that such exchanges can contribute to peace between Iran and the U.S. despite high tensions between governments. She noted that many Iranians fear a military attack by the U.S. or its allies, and many Americans would be afraid to travel to Iran.

"There's nothing scary about going there," she said.

The delegation's visit is part of MCC's ongoing work to build relationships between people in Iran and the West.

Iranian educators are particularly interested in fostering future interactions between Iranian and North American students. Part of the rationale is to combat harmful stereotypes between Iran and the West

Who has money to buy weapons these days? Surprise: Israel!

2008-11-10T18:14:00.000-08:00

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Lockheed Martin Corp, the U.S. maker of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is lobbying Israel, which has largely weathered the global financial crisis and has ample U.S. defense aid, to close a deal for the jet.

Israel is not a full partner-nation in the production of the F-35, but is among U.S. allies slated to have first pick of the radar-evading, multi-purpose planes early next decade. The F-35 could be a key Israeli bulwark against Iran and other enemies.

U.S. officials have predicted a sale to Israel may be clinched early next year. Funding for the jets, which will cost $40 million a piece, would come mainly from U.S. defense grants to Israel, which will total $30 billion between 2007 and 2017.

Israeli officials have quietly voiced reluctance to be rushed into a deal given discussions on how many Israeli technologies could be incorporated on the Lockheed planes, their delivery schedule, and pricing.

Lockheed Chief Executive Robert Stevens, in a visit to Israel on Sunday, said such concerns could be better addressed by finalizing a sale.

"The earlier one can participate in a program, the greater the amount of participation," he told reporters.

A Lockheed source said seven Israeli companies had already been contracted to contribute to the project.

Robert Trice, a Lockheed senior vice president who accompanied Stevens on the trip, said they had urged their Israeli hosts to speed up proceedings on the F-35.

Asked if Lockheed was attracted by the fact that Israel has a large budget available and has managed, so far, to avoid the fiscal crunches of the financial meltdown, Trice said: "Yes."

Stevens said Lockheed's financial prospects looked good thanks to Washington's awareness of ongoing military needs and the fact that the U.S. defense budget has been set through October 2009, with talks under way about the next fiscal year.

"Our business remains competitive, and it's healthy and it's strong," he said.

There might be some creaks in the international coalition of F-35 production partners. An early order by Italy, Trice said, was scrapped as not affordable. And Norway may see domestic political opposition to going through with the F-35, Trice said.

An Israeli defense official said Israel planned to place an order for the plane, anticipating its delivery by 2014. But he said there were also discussions in Israel on alternatives, such as buying more of the mainstay F-16 jets.

Israel's last major order of American warplanes was for 102 of the custom-built Lockheed F-16I jets. The last four of that batch are due to arrive in Israel in January, Stevens said.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Louise Ireland and Tova Cohen)

Spurned by Bush, Iran again offers talks

2008-11-07T09:52:00.001-08:00

Ahmadinejad says offer of talks made to Bush (and spurned by him) is still on the table for the president-elect:

clipped from www.democracynow.org

Iranian President Congratulates Obama on Election Win

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written Obama a congratulatory letter following his election win. It’s the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution that an Iranian leader has congratulated the winner of an American presidential election. Obama has pledged to meet with Iranian leaders without preconditions. In his letter, Ahmadinejad suggests Iran would be open to talks with the United States in accordance with previous overtures that the Bush administration ignored. Ahmadinejad also writes that he hopes “the unjust actions of the past 60 years will give way to a policy encouraging full rights for all nations, especially the oppressed nations of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Bush snubs Iran breakthrough opportunity

2008-10-06T23:19:00.001-07:00

Did Bush fear it would have undermined McCain? Some Iranians read it as indicative of no interest from America in anything but regime change or attack.

clipped from www.atimes.com

Bush's final Iran blunder?

By announcing that the United States is no longer interested in opening a consular office in Iran, the George W Bush administration has forfeited a golden opportunity for a timely diplomatic breakthrough with Iran

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki

also stated clearly and unambiguously Iran's willingness to consider a "freeze-for-freeze" option on its nuclear program

Iran's new signs of compromise have fallen on deaf ears in the US

Had Bush given a green light to a diplomatic presence in Iran, it would have undermined McCain's foreign policy objectives, benefiting Obama.

But, more than the election concerns, the role and influence of pro-Israel lobbyists deserves consideration

Bush's decision is yet another blunder that ranks with the negative reaction of the White House to an Iranian peace initiative in 2003.

The message that is being read

is that no matter how much interest Iran shows

Washington

still prioritizes

regime change or

outright attack on Iran

Russians: US, Israel to use Georgia for Iran attack

2008-09-20T08:53:00.001-07:00

Russia claims intelligence reveals the USA and Israel are exchanging massive military aid for the right to use airfields to bomb Iran.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Russia's envoy to NATO said that the US plans to use airfields in Georgia for a war on Iran.

Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin said Russian intelligence had obtained information indicating that Washington had launched "active military preparations on Georgia's territory" for an air strike on Iran.

"The reason why Washington values (Georgian President Mikheil) Saakashvili's regime so highly" is that he has given permission to the Pentagon to use its airfields, he said.

Other reports suggested that the Georgian airfields could also be used by Israel for an attack on Iran.

Israel had supplied Georgia with sophisticated Hermes 450 UAV spy drones, multiple rocket launchers and other military equipment that Georgia, as well as modernized Georgia's Soviet-made tanks that were used in the attack against South Ossetia.

Israeli instructors had also helped train Georgia troops.

clipped from www.payvand.com	US Plans to Use Georgia for Attacking Iran: Russia's NATO envoy

Report: US about to strike Iran; Tehran warns of World War III

2008-09-01T11:23:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.israeltoday.co.il

A major Dutch newspaper reported on Monday that the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD recently pulled all of its operatives out of Iran after learning that an American air strike on Iranian nuclear and missile production facilities is imminent.

Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that AIVD had previously been conducting a very successful sabotage operation against Iran's production of medium and long-range missiles.

According to the report, AIVD pulled out of Iran after being warned that the country's missile factories would be among the targets hit by unmanned American bombers "within weeks."

Israel's Ma'ariv daily newspaper reported on Friday that Jerusalem had reached a strategic decision to deny Iran nuclear weapons at all costs and by any means.

Responding to the latest reports, the deputy chief of staff of the Iranian military, General Masoud Jazayeri, said on Saturday that any attack on his nation would result in World War III.

ALETR: US & UK Begin War Games in the Persian Gulf

2008-08-29T12:32:00.001-07:00

The US has begun five-day military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf, claiming it is preparing for a 'potential confrontation' in the region.

According to a US navy statement issued on Wednesday, the joint war games led by Britain's Royal Navy Commodore Peter Hudson have also brought together vessels from Britain and Bahrain and started Sunday.

Earlier in August, a large armada of US and European naval vessels were reportedly deployed to the Persian Gulf to reinforce the US strike force in the region.

The deployment took place following a military operation, which saw more than a dozen warships from the US, Britain and France conducting war games in the Atlantic Ocean.

The current statement by the Bahrain headquarters of the US 5th Fleet claims that the joint maneuvers are aimed at better protecting coalition ships against vessels 'deemed threatening'.

This comes as the West has intensified its go-to-war rhetoric against Iran.

The US, the UK and Israel are among countries that accuse Tehran of pursuing a military nuclear program and under such pretext have attempted to portray the country as a threat to regional and global security. Washington and Tel Aviv have repeatedly threatened to launch military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities should the country continue with its uranium enrichment program. This is while the UN body responsible for monitoring Iranian nuclear activities has confirmed that Tehran enriches uranium-235 to a level of 3.7 percent - a rate consistent with the construction of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear arms production requires an enrichment level of above 90 percent.

[...]

Commodore Hudson stated that the war games dubbed 'Goalkeeper' are intended for practicing skills such as 'locating and tracking' vessels in the Persian Gulf and 'handling command and control' operations during a potential confrontation.

ALERT: America's navy is gearing up for war

2008-08-13T16:05:00.000-07:00

The aircraft carriers USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Ronald Reagan, along with the USS Iwo Jima, an Amphibious Assault Ship are sailing toward the Persian Gulf to reinforce the US strike forces in the region, along with a British Royal Navy carrier battle group and a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine.

More reason to suspect america's heading towards fascism

2008-08-02T19:21:00.000-07:00

Take a look!

Declaration of War

2008-07-07T12:08:00.000-07:00

Markets have been watching every move of President Bush and the Israeli government to decipher whether war with Iran is in the making. Few expected, however, that the equivalent of a green light for war would come from our Democratic-controlled Congress. That is what Congress is preparing to do through a resolution calling for a de facto naval blockade in the Persian Gulf to prohibit Iran from importing refined petroleum products.

The last time the United States imposed a blockade on another country was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy labeled the move "quarantine" because he understood a blockade to be universally regarded as an act of war. Yet, a blockade is exactly what many politicians are considering in Washington and elsewhere.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly suggested the idea to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a recent meeting, and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain alluded to the same during his speech at the America Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington. With hardly a word of opposition, Congress is poised to pass a resolution calling on the president to enact such a blockade, possibly as early as next week. This is a de facto capitulation of the legislative body to the Bush administration.

If they choose to pass this resolution, Congress will make a bad situation worse not only for the American economy, but also for stability in Middle East.

Among factors contributing to short-term oil prices are supply and demand, market speculation and the value of the dollar. Risk of a natural or political catastrophe jeopardizes the production and flow of oil which also plays a major role in the price Americans will have to pay at the pump.

Take, for example, the market´s reaction to Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz´s statement last month that an attack on Iran's nuclear sites may be "unavoidable." That statement has been blamed for the largest single-day rise in the price of oil in history - $11 a barrel.

For each instance of tough talk, money is grabbed directly out of the pockets of American taxpayers and sent to oil-producing states - including, of course, Iran.

A declaration from Congress calling on the president to take such drastic action before direct diplomacy even begins would likely fuel even greater uncertainty in the oil sector.

And, why shouldn't it? The Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf is the strategic chokepoint for nearly 40 percent of the world's oil exports. By recommending a naval blockade in the Persian Gulf, Congress could likely be responsible for oil prices approaching $200 a barrel, which translates to nearly $7.50 a gallon of gas.

Even more significant is the impact such a move would have on the region´s stability. The mere mention of another war in the Middle East sets nerves on edge, and blockading Iran would create a tinderbox where even a small incident could erupt into a conflagration. To say nothing of the fact that a blockade is a prima facie act of war under international law.

Proponents of the naval blockade resolution argue that sanctions and diplomacy have failed, and that the naval blockade is the next step short of war.

They are wrong on both counts: Proper diplomacy - direct talks between the U.S. and Iran - has neither failed nor succeeded, because it has yet to be tried. And the blockade is not a step short of war; it is war. It virtually guarantees military confrontation causing unnecessary casualties on both sides.

The solution to the impasse over Iran's nuclear program will be found not by creating a situation that ensures military confrontation, but through direct diplomacy.

Negotiations are the only way for the international community to guarantee that Iran maintains its nuclear program for civilian use while also preventing another disastrous war that will undoubtedly further destabilize the Middle East.

Time is not neutral in this equation. Nor is it on the side of America or Iran. Time is on the side of war. This scenario, as disastrous as it sounds, assumes that bullying Iran will cause Tehran to stop enrichment altogether. The likely scenario, however - and according to keen observers - is that it is a preamble to war.

For each day that passes without dialogue, the world is brought closer to another war in the Middle East - paid first by Americans at the gas pumps, and eventually, American lives and treasure.

Cyrus Bina, distinguished research professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota, is the author of "The Economics of the Oil Crisis.

Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel, has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College.

This op-ed was first printed by Washington Times, July 5, 2008.

US Says Exercise by Israel Seemed Directed at Iran

2008-06-20T20:45:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.commondreams.org

WASHINGTON - Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Several American officials said the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program.

More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the maneuvers, which were carried out over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece during the first week of June, American officials said.

Israeli officials declined to discuss the details of the exercise. A spokesman for the Israeli military would say only that the country’s air force “regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel.”

H. CON. RES. 362 -Calling For The Naval Blockade of Iran

2008-06-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

H.Con.Res. 362, new resolution introduced on May 22, 2008 by Representatives Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Mike Pence (R-IN), is raising controversy in Washington and across the country. There is a particular clause that some many fear is tantamount to declaring that the President should pursue a naval blockade against Iran, which would be an act of war.

The bill was introduced just prior to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Annual Policy Meeting and urging co-sponsorship is one of AIPAC's central legislative asks. They are currently circulating a letter in support of H.Con.Res. 362 and the Senate companion, S.Res. 580.

According to the House leadership, this resolution is going to "pass like a hot knife through butter" before the end of June on what is called suspension -- meaning no amendments can be introduced during the 20-minute maximum debate. It also means it is assumed the bill will pass by a 2/3 majority and is noncontroversial. As of June 18, the bill already has 169 co-sponsors. If and when the bill is voted on suspension, there will be a roll call vote and AIPAC will use how members voted on the resolution in the lead up to the elections.

When Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment against Vice-President Cheney, and then against President Bush, one of his key accusations was that the Bush Administration has tried to lead the United States into war with Iran. So you might have thought that Members of Congress who signed on to the impeachment crusade shared Rep. Kucinich’s critique of U.S. saber-rattling towards Iran.

If you thought that, you might want to think again. The evidence is, shall we say, mixed. Representative Robert Wexler, who has made support of impeachment a signature issue, has signed on to a House resolution promoted by AIPAC that appears to endorse a naval blockade of Iran. A naval blockade would, of course, be an act of war. If not sanctioned by the UN Security Council - and there is no reason to believe that it would be - it would be a war crime. The resolution makes no mention of seeking Security Council approval.

As well as AIPAC the American Jewish Committee is working to get this resolution passed but they do not mention the part that would enable a Naval Blockade, they call it an urgent effort—economic, political, and diplomatic—to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

If it were just that it would not have this key part buried in the penultimate paragraph of the resolution -

(3) demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran's nuclear program; and

Just Foreign Policy have a form to write to your representative (if a citizen of the American Empire) and wake them up to this and ask them not to support the resolution. Click Here.

Sen. Obama, please re-think your position on Iran

2008-06-17T18:03:00.001-07:00

Face the absence of evidence of nuclear weapons, and call out Sen. McCain for following the WMD scare George Bush followed with Iraq.

clipped from www.lonestaricon.com

Iran stopped researching nuclear weapons in 2003.

The U.S. intelligence community knows this.

The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency knows this.

The international community knows this.

If Iran researched nuclear weapons in secret until March 2004 as documents allege, the IAEA will investigate the matter with due diligence.

And if Iran is caught red-handed, she will comply with the IAEA processes accordingly.

In the meantime, as the Democratic nominee for U.S. president, Obama must change his tune from that of his Republican adversary Sen. John McCain on this issue.

Obama must say that McCain is lying about Iran just like the Bush administration lied about Iraq.

Neither Republican has any proof either Middle Eastern country has nuclear weapons.

Iran is smarter than to launch a nuclear strike on Israel anyway because the Jewish state would retaliate with her own secret nuclear arsenal.

The Biggest Mistake of the 21st Century

2008-06-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

From Der Spiegel........

Israeli Ministers Mull Plans for Military Strike against Iran

The Israeli government no longer believes that sanctions can prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. A broad consensus in favor of a military strike against Tehran's nuclear facilities -- without the Americans, if necessary -- is beginning to take shape.

[...]

The one question over which Israel's various political groups disagree is the timing of an attack. The doves argue that diplomatic efforts by the United Nations should be allowed to continue until Iran is on the verge of completing the bomb. That way, Israel could at least argue convincingly that all non-military options had been exhausted.

The hawks, on the other hand, believe time is running out. They stress that there is now a "favorable window of opportunity" that will close with the US presidential election in November, and that Israel can only depend on American support for as long as current US President George W. Bush is still in charge in Washington. They are convinced that the country cannot truly depend on any of the candidates to succeed Bush in office. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate, has already said that he favors direct negotiations with Tehran. And even if Republican John McCain wins the race, politicians in Jerusalem do not expect him to be ordering an attack as his first official act -- despite his performance, at a campaign appearance last year, of the Beach Boys' song "Barbara Ann" with the lyrics: "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."

[...]

And no one knows better than Israeli leadership itself just how much power lies in the mere belief that a country has nuclear weapons. After all, Israel itself has used this as a deterrent for the past 40 years. It is believed that an estimated 100 to 200 nuclear warheads have been produced at the Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert. Israeli historian Benny Morris, who is not normally considered a hardliner, recently suggested using the weapons: "If the issue is whether Israel or Iran should perish, then Iran should perish."

I find this to be an extremely unstable situation, and would urge everyone to click on the link, and read the entire story.

War back on table?

2008-06-11T18:10:00.001-07:00

The threat of war with Iran has been on and off so many times that one does not know what to believe anymore. Lately, it has seemed that the no-war camp has won. Not any more!

[...] here's the latest story from McClatchy's Washington Bureau, the people who got the Iraq story right before Shock and Awe hit the fan in 2003. And what they have to report is not encouraging [...] - More

Jimmy Carter: Make peace with Iran

2008-06-01T17:55:00.001-07:00

A startling idea! Imagine, trying to make peace with a nation before going to war against it!

clipped from www.independent.co.uk

Jimmy Carter calls for US to make friends with Iran after 27 years

"What happens if, in three years time, Iran has a nuclear weapon," Mr Carter asked. "I'm not sure that is going to happen, but if it does, what do we do? They are rational people like all of us in this room. Do they want to commit suicide? I would guess not. So what we have to do is talk with them now and say to them we want to be their friends.

Twenty-five years ago we cut off trading with Iran. We've got to resume trading to show Iran we are friends."

Mr Carter also criticised President George Bush, saying it was a "serious mistake and terrible departure" from the actions of previous US presidents not to engage with countries with which they differed. "The president of the administration in Washington is the first one to have ever done this and I think we close off ourselves from any sort of rational accommodation of the views of other parties in order to reach out on major goals,"

McCain Gaffe Alert: Iran again

2008-06-01T17:48:00.001-07:00

Sen. McCain invents 20 years of negotiations between the United States and Tehran, apparently unaware of the snubs dealt by the Bush Administration when Iran has tried to talk.

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

It is looking increasingly like John McCain really knows nothing about Iran, despite wanting to bomb them.

Yesterday, in his big non-proliferation speech, McCain took his gaffes to a new level. He actually invented 20 years of negotiations between the United States and Tehran. In his speech, McCain said:

"Today, some people seem to think they've discovered a brand new cause, something no one before them ever thought of. Many believe all we need to do to end the nuclear programs of hostile governments is have our president talk with leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran, as if we haven't tried talking to these governments repeatedly over the past two decades."

Max Bergmann points out: The stated policy of the United States since April 7, 1980 has been that we don't talk to the Iranians.

Taken with his other many gaffes on Iran (repeated Sunni/Shia screw up, the use of Khamenei and Ahmajinedad interchangeably)

such confusion should sound alarm bells

Ahmadinejad's hold on power "slipping badly"

2008-06-01T17:38:00.001-07:00

More pragmatic speaker elected; likely to look for agreement with the West:

clipped from www.time.com

Are Ahmadinejad's Days Numbered?

Ali Larijani projected a presidential bearing as he accepted his election as speaker of Iran's parliament on Wednesday — a vote that boded ill for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Larijani, a high-profile arch-rival of the President, addressed global themes in his address to the opening session of the Majlis

While Iran's insistence on its right to enrich uranium unites all major factions in the country, Larijani represents a more pragmatic approach to handling the issue, aimed at finding agreement with the West and avoiding confrontation.

makes two things clear: President Ahmadinejad's hold on power is slipping badly, and next year's Iranian presidential election race is now wide open

Prominent politicians and clerical figures have begun distancing themselves from Ahmadinejad and rallying around Larijani

Ahmadinejad has alienated many in his own conservative camp with an arrogant personal style and erratic economic and foreign policies

Can someone help me understand?

2008-05-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

Iran's antiquities on loan to U Chicago being auctioned off, because a Jewish lawyer sued Iran, since Hamas attacked an Israeli market!!!

Mr. Fish

2008-05-22T04:16:00.000-07:00

Go Fish

Bush Manifests the Zionist Vision

2008-05-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

Israel: Bush means business on Iran nukes
Haaretz, By Barak Ravid and Shahar Ilan

Israel is fully satisfied with the results of the visit of George W. Bush, including policy on Iran's nuclear program, senior officials in Jerusalem said yesterday.

"In talks with the president of the United States during his visit it was made clear that Bush's statements on the subject of Iran's nuclear program are fully backed in practice," a senior official said.

The president's attitude on Iran was well known in Israel, and the expectation had been that he would use forceful language against Tehran, both during talks with Israeli officials and in his address to the Knesset, not only on the nuclear question but on Iran's role in the region.

During meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, more data was presented to back the desire for a reassessment of an American intelligence report which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program.

One Israeli source said that it is hoped that the new information would influence the administration's stance on Iran's nuclear program.

The source said that Olmert will discuss the subject during his visit to Washington in two weeks.

President Bush addressed the Knesset yesterday, promising unflinching U.S. support. "Citizens of Israel, Masada shall never fall again, and America will always stand with you," he said. Bush added that calls for negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are akin to the efforts to appease Hitler before World War II.

The president opened his speech by saying in Hebrew: "Happy Independence Day." His address focused on the alliance between the U.S. and Israel.

"Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you," Bush said.

"You have raised a modern society in the Promised Land, a light unto the nations that preserves the legacy of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And you have built a mighty democracy that will endure forever and can always count on America to stand at its side."

He noted that Israel's Declaration of Independence "was the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham, Moses, and David - a homeland for the chosen people in Eretz Yisrael."

The president also presented his vision of Israel in the next 60 years. "Israel will be celebrating its 120th anniversary as one of the world's great democracies, a secure and flourishing homeland for the Jewish people."

His address was interrupted no less than 14 times by loud applause.

"America stands with you in breaking up terrorist networks and denying the extremists sanctuary. And America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," the president said.

Bush accused Ahmadinejad of seeking to return the Middle East to the Middle Ages by calling for the destruction of Israel.

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," he said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

After the speech made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the Knesset in March, it was hard to expect a more pro-Zionist speech. But as a former Knesset speaker, MK Reuven Rivlin, put it yesterday, "I wish our leaders would make speeches like this." Rivlin described Bush as "manifesting the Zionist vision."

Contrary to the applause Bush received for his address, the speech by Prime Minister Olmert was less popular and stirred considerable controversy.

Olmert promised that when there is a peace agreement it "will be approved by a large majority in the Knesset and it will be supported by the vast majority of the Israeli public."

Two MKs from the National Union, Zvi Hendel and Uri Ariel, left the plenum in protest, complaining that the event was "used to promote a political agenda that is opposed by most of the Israeli public."

Hendel issued a statement calling on Olmert "to learn from the president of the United States what Zionism is."

MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) called out during Olmert's speech, "in your dreams."

He later proposed that Bush should replace Olmert.

Throughout the exchanges amount the rival Israeli politicians, President Bush appeared to be enjoying himself. When Knesset speaker Dalia Itzik finished her speech, he offered his hand in a "give me five" kind of move.

Olmert diverged from his speech and said that "we will bring before the Knesset an agreement that is based on the vision of two states for two peoples. This agreement will be approved by a large majority in the Knesset and the entire nation."

On Iran, Olmert said that "the seriousness of the threat demands that no means be discounted." However, he made it clear that "a uniform international political and economic front against Iran is currently in place, and tougher and more effective sanctions are a necessary stage, even if it is not the final stage, on the right way to block the Iranian threat."

What does Hillary's Win in West Virginia reflect?

2008-05-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

Demographics of West Virginia (csv)
	White	Black	AIAN*	Asian	NHPI*
2000 (total population)	96.01%	3.49%	0.59%	0.66%	0.05%
2000 (Hispanic only)	0.63%	0.04%	0.02%	0.01%	0.01%
2005 (total population)	95.99%	3.56%	0.56%	0.69%	0.05%
2005 (Hispanic only)	0.80%	0.04%	0.02%	0.01%	0.01%
Growth 2000–05 (total population)	0.46%	2.49%	-3.96%	5.57%	-2.80%
Growth 2000–05 (non-Hispanic only)	0.28%	2.30%	-4.24%	5.96%	-0.52%
Growth 2000–05 (Hispanic only)	27.74%	21.51%	5.56%	-20.22%	-16.67%
* AIAN is American Indian or Alaskan Native; NHPI is Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander

I'd say RACISM!

They told us, shoot them all, because if they let one person attack you, then they are not innocent.

2008-05-13T06:15:00.001-07:00

The Human Shield Movement to Iran: 10,000 Westerners pledge to stop Bush!

2008-05-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

source: payvand.com

The Human Shield Movement to Iran today claimed its 10,000th pledge volunteer and warned President Bush that any attempt at military intervention against Iran would be met by a massive mobilization of human shields.

The human shield movement to Iran has been mobilizing for over three years now using online mechanisms such as Pledge Bank to secure volunteers willing to travel to Iran to position themselves around civilian infrastructure sites in order to try and prevent what they believe would be a catastrophic and unjustified attack. Whilst it is expected that most missiles will be directed at military installations the human shields are concerned that sites in the Iranian capital will also be targeted. Today Steven Morris from Birmingham was the 10,000th person to pledge himself as human shield volunteer. Volunteers from 22 countries have already pledged themselves to the mission and are currently in the latter stages of preparation in order to be ready to travel to Iran "at very short notice".

Steven Morris, the 10,000th pledge member of the movement said today

"I am fully committed to going to Iran to try and stop an attack on Iran. I demonstrated against the Iraq war and it made no difference. Having ten thousand Westerners will make the war-mongers think twice before they attack Iran. I do not support the Ahmadinejad regime but if we ignore international law and start bombing a sovereign nation that has not deviated from its obligations under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and offers no direct threat to any nation, the world will be an much more dangerous place."

A spokesperson for the movement, David Tyler said today;

"Travelling to Iran as human shields is the 'last resort' but it seems that an attack on Iran is not just a real possibility but an imminent reality. The military and political maneuvers all seem to point to one thing, The unproven allegations that Iran is arming insurgents in Iran, the labeling of the Revolutionary Guard as terrorists, the increased military spending, the build up of forces on the Iranian borders and the unverified and unverifiable claims about Iran's nuclear weapons program have left us in little doubt that time is running out. Traditional methods of protest are ineffective in the face of the neo-Con determination to implement their global vision.

We now have our 10,000th pledge member and whilst we recognize that many of these people will not be able to actually travel to Tehran, many have already arranged Iranian visas and are ready to travel to Iran at short notice. None of the shields want to die but all are unwilling to sit by and wait for politicians to launch another disastrous war in their name. It is up to each and every one of us to do everything in our power to prevent a dangerously misguided foreign policy. Many people cannot join the movement because of commitments to family and dependents but it is incumbent on all of us to do something to our opposition to war which will once again be carried out in our name."

For more information contact humanshieldsiran@hotmail.co.uk

Bush Secretly Authorises Assassination Of Iranian Officials

2008-05-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

Democrats Okay Funds for Covert Ops
Secret Bush "Finding" Widens War on Iran
By ANDREW COCKBURN- Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border -- whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law's throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees. That has not proved a problem. An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.

Until recently, the administration faced a serious obstacle to action against Iran in the form of Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon, who made no secret of his contempt for official determination to take us to war. In a widely publicized incident last January, Iranian patrol boats approached a U.S. ship in what the Pentagon described as a "taunting" manner. According to Centcom staff officers, the American commander on the spot was about to open fire. At that point, the U.S. was close to war. He desisted only when Fallon personally and explicitly ordered him not to shoot. The White House, according to the staff officers, was "absolutely furious" with Fallon for defusing the incident.

Fallon has since departed. His abrupt resignation in early March followed the publication of his unvarnished views on our policy of confrontation with Iran, something that is unlikely to happen to his replacement, George Bush's favorite general, David Petraeus.

Though Petraeus is not due to take formal command at Centcom until late summer, there are abundant signs that something may happen before then. A Marine amphibious force, originally due to leave San Diego for the Persian Gulf in mid June, has had its sailing date abruptly moved up to May 4. A scheduled meeting in Europe between French diplomats acting as intermediaries for the U.S. and Iranian representatives has been abruptly cancelled in the last two weeks. Petraeus is said to be at work on a master briefing for congress to demonstrate conclusively that the Iranians are the source of our current troubles in Iraq, thanks to their support for the Shia militia currently under attack by U.S. forces in Baghdad.

Interestingly, despite the bellicose complaints, Petraeus has made little effort to seal the Iran-Iraq border, and in any case two thirds of U.S. casualties still come from Sunni insurgents. "The Shia account for less than one third," a recently returned member of the command staff in Baghdad familiar with the relevant intelligence told me, "but if you want a war you have to sell it."

Even without the covert initiatives described above, the huge and growing armada currently on station in the Gulf is an impressive symbol of American power.

Watch the CARRIER

2008-05-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

PBS: The Carrier

2008-04-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

It may be a little literal and Roberts has perhaps the zealotry of the convert, but there is no doubting the aggressors on planet Earth are the imperial neocons.

Paul Craig Roberts- It is 1939 all over again. The world waits helplessly for the next act of naked aggression by rogue states. Only this time the rogue states are not the Third Reich and Fascist Italy. They are the United States and Israel.

The targeted victims are not Poland and France, but Iran, Syria, the remains of the Palestinian West Bank and southern Lebanon.

The American mass media is overjoyed. War coverage attracts viewers and sells advertising.

The neoconservatives are ecstatic. Hegemony uber alles is back on track.

The US Air Force can’t wait “to show what it can do.”

Defense contractors see no end of the profits.

Under cover of the mayhem and propaganda, Israel can grab the remains of the West Bank and have another go at grabbing the water resources of southern Lebanon.

Unlike the US and Israel, Iran is neither occupying any other country’s territory nor threatening to invade another country. Nevertheless, propaganda against Iran is spouting from US and Israeli mouths at an increasing rate. Lie after lie rolls off the tongues of leaders of the “two great democracies.”

Bush is to kill 3 million Iranians with Nuclear Radiation!

2008-04-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

Is an Attack on Iran Imminent?
by Dan Hamburg

George W. Bush is poised to order a massive aerial bombardment — possibly including tactical nuclear weapons - of up to 10,000 targets in Iran. The attack would be justified on grounds that Iran is interfering with U.S. efforts in Iraq and that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, a charge that was debunked last fall in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

According to international experts, the U.S. declared economic war against Iran on March 20. On that day, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) called on the world’s financial institutions to stop doing business with Iran, making it much more difficult for Iran to engage in global commerce.

Now the Bush administration is preparing to drop the other shoe. Below are some of the indications that a U.S. military attack on Iran is imminent:

The March 11 resignation of CENTCOM Commander Admiral William Fallon who, according to a well-publicized Esquire magazine article, “openly opposed Bush’s Iran policy and was a lone voice against taking military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.”

The recent removal of Vice Admiral John Stufflebeem, Commander of the 6th Fleet (Mediterranean Sea), also known to be a critic of the administration’s war plans.

Two U.S. warships took up positions off Lebanon last month. According to US News & World Report, “The United States would want its warships in the eastern Mediterranean in the event of a military action against Iran.”

The Israeli air strike against Syria last September was advertised as an attack on a nuclear facility. Current speculation is that the real purpose of the raid was to “force Syria to switch on the targeting electronics for newly received Russian anti-aircraft defenses.” Knowing the electronic signatures of these systems would reduce the risks for U.S. and Israeli warplanes heading to Iranian targets.

Israel conducted its largest military exercises ever beginning the week of April 6. This exercise simulated missile strikes from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. (Note: Both 9/11 and the London subway bombing of 7/7/07 occurred simultaneous by with military and/or civil defense exercises.)

One day after a March visit from Vice President Cheney, the Saudi government announced “national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom.” This announcement came following warnings of possible attacks on Iran’s nearby Bushehr nuclear reactors.

According to former U.N. chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter, the Pentagon has contracted for additional bunker-buster bombs and planes that carry them. Delivery is due this month.

The oncoming monsoon season, which would carry radioactive fallout by wind and rain to countries east of Iran (including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India), narrows the window for the optimal launch of an air attack.

Over the past six months, two major incidents have demonstrated the inadequate security of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. On August 30, 2007, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber carrying 6 AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, flew an unauthorized mission from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana. (Barksdale is the major disembarkation point for personnel and materiel going to the Middle East.) This “Bent Spear” incident marked the first time in more than 40 years that nuclear weapons had been flown across the continental United States. A spate of up to eight accidental deaths and suicides of personnel from these two bases adds an ominous twist to this story.

Recently, it was revealed that intercontinental ballistic missile fuses had been sent to Taiwan instead of the helicopter batteries they had ordered. Sharp protests from China forced President Bush to acknowledge the error personally to Chinese Premier Hu Jintao.

As a result of these incidents, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a series of investigations, including a recent order for a complete physical inventory of the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The Bush administration is hypocritical in its claims that Iran cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons. Given the Minot/Barksdale incident and the mix-up between ballistic missile fuses and helicopter batteries, the question that should to be asked is: “Can the U.S. be trusted with nuclear weapons?”

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a “limited” nuclear attack on the main Iranian underground site in Esfahan would result in three million people killed by radiation within two weeks and 35 million people exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

Yet another preemptive attack and the devastation of another civilian population would be grossly immoral and in violation of all international codes of conduct. No one can predict how such an attack would end, especially in the tinderbox that is the Middle East. Every patriotic American, and especially every member of Congress, should do whatever is in their power to stop the Bush-Cheney cabal before they drag us into World War III.

Dan Hamburg is a former Democratic US congressperson from northern California. He is currently executive director of Voice of the Environment, a San Francisco based nonprofit.

Copyright © 2008 by Santa Monica Mirror

Dehumanization of the Western Mind

2008-04-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

A US Casualty of war, A threat to World Peace: Clinton Dehumanised

Source: payvand.com

By Mehrnaz Shahabi (CASMII: www.campaigniran.org)

The shameful exposition by the American presidential hopeful, Hilary Clinton, of her mass genocidal intentions towards Iranians was tragic proof of the dehumanising impact of warmongering on an elite western mind. It is said that humanity is the first casualty of war and this has been starkly clear, not only in the murderous boasting of the presidential candidate's preparedness to "totally obliterate" an entire nation, to prove her appeal as the American president, but worse still, in the meek and acquiescent response or no response at all of the western mainstream journalists, politicians and intelligentsia.

Where are those super champions of human rights and western liberal values who were so 'outraged' by the announcement of Fatwa on Salmon Rushdie? Does that loud and sanguine defense of "freedom of expression" translate into this blood-soaked acquiesce to the liberty of threatening an entire nations to "total obliteration"?

And compare this complacent silence to the flooding of the airwaves and newsrags with propaganda bombardment over the Iranian president's misquoted "wiping Israel off the map" remark, which has gone on incessantly for two and a half years despite frequent attempts at clarification and correction. Such was the "outrage". Of course, many people take their cues on how to respond to the avalanche of complex news, from the mainstream media itself and politicians. So the silence is a cue heavy with meaning and menace.

The Orwellian double talk and double standards are so part of the fabric of every day political culture that they now go down without the need for a pinch of salt and are comfortably digested. However, when the threat of mass genocide, amidst overwhelming silence or inaudible whimpers, is interpreted as a "gaff" (Timothy Garton-Ash, Guardian 24th April), and a rare objection describes it as "probably imprudent" (Lord Malloch-Brown, Guardian 24th April), this is the unmistakable indication of the deadening of sensitivity and tolerance of violence towards nations who are deemed as 'dispensable'; as in Iraq and in Palestine.

This deadening of humanity is the most serious casualty of the immoral invasion of Iraq in the aggressor countries, and if not recovered, there will be dire consequences for the entire world.

The "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide", of the United Nations, defines Genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; …".

Hilary Clinton is threatening the destruction of a "whole national group" and by her violent threat is causing them "serious mental harm". In her ABC News interview, she has unequivocally threatened that: "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran". "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them." This was in reply to the question on how she would respond if Iran attacked Israel by nuclear weapons.

Not only, according to the intensive IAEA inspections, there is no evidence of Iran working towards weaponisation or indeed any rationale for such a threat, but even if, hypothetically, such a threat existed, the threat of "total obliteration" issued to an entire nation remains an insane and criminal intent. This threat of total annihilation which would presumably imply the use of nuclear weapons is directed against a helpless population with catastrophic consequences. Such an attack would not compensate against any unlikely hypothetical attack from Iran, neither would such a threat act as a fearsome deterrent – as it is claimed to be. Just as it is intended to grab the presidency through fear mongering and to feed the monster of America's continuing wars with paranoia, similarly the impact of such fear in Iranians would be the anxiety to defend oneself against a deranged president and a population that goes along with it. According to the UN definition of genocide, Hilary Clinton is threatening mass genocide of an entire nation of 70 million. Is this violent woman fit to hold the presidency of a country with the most powerful war machine in history? Have we become so dehumanised by our incessant killing that we have lost any capacity for outrage?

With over a million Iraqis and thousands of coalition soldiers killed and maimed, the prospect of Hilary Clinton's presidency, who voted in favour of that illegal and immoral war, and has publicly declared her voracious appetite for mass genocide, is a truly terrifying specter.

A lone voice of conscience, in a readers' letter in the Guardian newspaper (24th April) asks: "What would she do if Israel attacked Iran (which is more likely)?". This is the question Clinton should have been asked and the question she should now be asked by the world community. So should statesmen, politicians and journalists internationally be questioned on their views on the US presidential hopeful's mass genocidal intents.

About the author: Mehrnaz Shahabi is an Iranian-British peace activist, translator and independent journalist.

... Payvand News - 04/26/08 ...

She who sacrifices his conscience to ambition, burns a picture to obtain the ashes".

2008-04-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich 4/24/08

Source Payvand.com

It seems Hillary Clinton has sacrificed her conscience to ambition. Chinese proverb has it that "he who sacrifices his conscience to ambition, burns a picture to obtain the ashes". She announced her readiness to reduce 70 million innocent Iranian lives to ashes so that she could imagine her picture in the White House. Hillary's lust for ambition will never be satisfied; on the contrary, it seems to grow more inflamed with the prospect of mass murder. After all, this is nothing new to her.

Hillary knowingly supported the Iraq war to defend the "future of freedom". In her drive for the Iraq war, she was supported by the Progressive Policy Institute, a self-described think-tank of the Democratic Leadership Council[i]. Perhaps no one describes the group better than former neoconservative Jacob Heilbrunn who wrote: "Don't look now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback-and not among the Republicans who have made it famous, but in the Democratic Party,"[ii]. Indeed, many of them supported the war for the purpose of promoting democracy.

Her ideology has contributed to the nation's moral bankruptcy, the loss of over one million lives, and the depletion of America's treasury. These neoliberals who have driven us into a quagmire, elaborated it would serve America's interest to promote the Democratic peace theory. Scholars, university professors, and neoliberal jurists presented the concept that sovereignty, as it stood in international law did not provide immunity from attack to states engaging in systematic human rights abuses or amassing weapons of mass destruction. These would be considered 'pariah' states to be attacked by democratic coalitions with a warrant to liberalize them.[iii] Candidate Hillary comes from this stock. It seems that the only thing which differentiates her from McCain is the conduct of the war in Iraq, not the immoral and illegal war itself.

One can see why she would oppose the Bush conduct in this war by understanding the PPI. A book entitled "With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty" edited by Will Marshall (President of PPI) outlines the strategy difference between the 'progressives' (neoliberals) and the Bush unilateralism. The war in Iraq is part of a strategy for "building a world safe for individual liberty and democracy."^{^[iv]} She has endorsed the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation based on her belief that she holds a superior ideology which must be imposed on others, regardless of the cost and the consequences.

No doubt a person's character is never so well disclosed as when it is seen through the company he/she keeps. It appears that Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D -Texas), co-chair of Hillary's presidential campaign, not only shares her friendship with America's presidential hopeful, but she also promotes America's terrorists[v]. The Mojaheden-e Khalgh (MEK) were put on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list by President Clinton for they were responsible for the assassination of Americans in Iran in the 1970's, as well as for their role in the US embassy takeover[vi], yet their leader and Hillary have a common friend and promoter. Congresswoman Jackson Lee went as far as calling Rajavi "Sister Maryam,[vii]. Are Hillary and Maryam 'sisters' too? Is our presidential candidate 'sister' to a notorious cult leader?

Raymond Tanter, a former National Security Agency staffer who led the IPC, predicted that the MEK would be removed from the terrorist list and be used by the U.S. against the regime. "I foresee a situation where Laura Bush, Condi Rice, Karen Hughes, and Maryam Rajavi are posing for a picture in the White House,"[viii]. Tanter was not far off. The MEK is certainly being used, and in all likelihood they will be moved from the terrorist list. However, Maryam Rajavi may have to wait for the photo op and take it with Sister Hillary.

[i] Tony Smith, "A Pact with the Devil. Washington's bid for world supremacy and the betrayal of the American promise'. Routledge 2007

[ii] Jacob Heilbrunn, "Neocons in the Democratic Party," Los Angeles Times, May 28, 2006.

[iii] Tony Smith. Ibid

[iv] Will Marshall, editor, With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty, PPI (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

[v] http://www.maryam-rajavi.com/content/view/168/66/

[vi] http://www.cfr.org/publication/9158/

[vii] Financial Times, October 6, 2005.

[viii] Connie Bruck, "A reporter at large: Exiles; How Iran's expatriates are gaming the nuclear threat". The New Yorker, March 6, 2006

Hillary Clinton threatens genocide against Iran

2008-04-23T10:07:00.001-07:00

This woman is doing ANYTHING possible to get votes!
And at the end of the day, people who are voting for her are either senile, or battered women with serious phallic envy disorder who seek empowerment in obnoxious talk-tough attitude of this utterly stupid woman: Hillary Clinton!

This is her new cat out of the bag:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could "totally obliterate" Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.

On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle against fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel)," Clinton said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them," she said.

"That's a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic," Clinton said.

Her comments appeared harder than a week ago, when during a presidential debate she promised "massive retaliation" against any Iranian attack on Israel.

Obama rejected Clinton's rhetoric as saber rattling on a day when Pennsyhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giflvania Democrats voted in a party primary contest that could help decide which Democrat will face Republican John McCain for the White House in the November general election.

"One of the things that we've seen over the last several years is a bunch of talk using words like 'obliterate,"' Obama, an Illinois senator, said in a separate ABC interview. "It doesn't actually produce good results. And so I'm not interested in saber rattling."

WAIT A MINUTE MRS DUMB-ASS CLINTON:

Those who have been threatening IRAN with military action in recent months have been Israelis; not the other way around!

Jerusalem Post: "Military Action Against Iran Ready"

AFP: Israel may have to take military action against Iran, Bolton says

Israel Toda: "Israel receive the blessing of EU and US to attack Iran"

London Time: "Leaked, Israel plans nuclear strike against Iran"

London Telegraph: Israel seeks all clear to attack Iran

ICH: Petraeus signals attack against Iran

NOW SHUT UP!

ONE NATION (hope is what we need)

2008-04-21T22:55:00.000-07:00

The following piece is My MoveOn.org Barack Obama Video Contest entry.

If you like it please follow this link and vote. While you're at it, and while you're on the vote page, you will see the video html emed code and the link code, please place the link code on your site for your visitors and if they are inclined to vote for it they can do so via the page that follows and it will count extra toward my video's chances of winning.

There are 1,100 videos entered in the contest! Yikes!

By the way... the incredible artwork you see in the video was rendered by none other than my dear friend and associate, Ben Heine.

Thank you,
Mark (thepoetryman)

Would you have been a Nazi?

2008-04-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

political entertainment

Breaking the Silence

2008-04-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

Breaking the Silence is an organisation of Israeli veterans testifying about the IDF's conduct in the occupied territories, here is an article from The Independent- Our reign of terror , by the Israeli army [their website is www.shovrimshtika.org -but undergoing some problems at present]

Independent.co.uk
Our reign of terror, by the Israeli army
In shocking testimonies that reveal abductions, beatings and torture, Israeli soldiers confess the horror they have visited on Hebron
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Saturday, 19 April 2008

The dark-haired 22-year-old in black T-shirt, blue jeans and red Crocs is understandably hesitant as he sits at a picnic table in the incongruous setting of a beauty spot somewhere in Israel. We know his name and if we used it he would face a criminal investigation and a probable prison sentence.

The birds are singing as he describes in detail some of what he did and saw others do as an enlisted soldier in Hebron. And they are certainly criminal: the incidents in which Palestinian vehicles are stopped for no good reason, the windows smashed and the occupants beaten up for talking back – for saying, for example, they are on the way to hospital; the theft of tobacco from a Palestinian shopkeeper who is then beaten "to a pulp" when he complains; the throwing of stun grenades through the windows of mosques as people prayed. And worse.

The young man left the army only at the end of last year, and his decision to speak is part of a concerted effort to expose the moral price paid by young Israeli conscripts in what is probably the most problematic posting there is in the occupied territories. Not least because Hebron is the only Palestinian city whose centre is directly controlled by the military, 24/7, to protect the notably hardline Jewish settlers there. He says firmly that he now regrets what repeatedly took place during his tour of duty.

But his frequent, if nervous, grins and giggles occasionally show just a hint of the bravado he might have displayed if boasting of his exploits to his mates in a bar. Repeatedly he turns to the older former soldier who has persuaded him to speak to us, and says as if seeking reassurance: "You know how it is in Hebron."

The older ex-soldier is Yehuda Shaul, who does indeed "know how it is in Hebron", having served in the city in a combat unit at the peak of the intifada, and is a founder of Shovrim Shtika, or Breaking the Silence, which will publish tomorrow the disturbing testimonies of 39 Israelis – including this young man – who served in the army in Hebron between 2005 and 2007. They cover a range of experiences, from anger and powerlessness in the face of often violent abuse of Arabs by hardline Jewish settlers, through petty harassment by soldiers, to soldiers beating up Palestinian residents without provocation, looting homes and shops, and opening fire on unarmed demonstrators.

The maltreatment of civilians under occupation is common to many armies in the world – including Britain's, from Northern Ireland to Iraq.

But, paradoxically, few if any countries apart from Israel have an NGO like Breaking the Silence, which seeks – through the experiences of the soldiers themselves – as its website puts it "to force Israeli society to address the reality which it created" in the occupied territories.

The Israeli public was given an unflattering glimpse of military life in Hebron this year when a young lieutenant in the Kfir Brigade called Yaakov Gigi was given a 15-month jail sentence for taking five soldiers with him to hijack a Palestinian taxi, conduct what the Israeli media called a "rampage" in which one of the soldiers shot and wounded a Palestinian civilian who just happened to be in the wrong place, and then tried to lie his way out of it.

In a confessional interview with the Israeli Channel Two investigative programme Uvda, Gigi, who had previously been in many ways a model soldier, talked of "losing the human condition" in Hebron. Asked what he meant, he replied: "To lose the human condition is to become an animal."

The Israeli military did not prosecute the soldier who had fired on the Palestinian, as opposed to Gigi. But the military insists "that the events that occurred within the Kfir Brigade are highly unusual".

But as the 22-year-old soldier, also in the Kfir Brigade, confirms in his testimony to Breaking the Silence, it seems that the event may not have been exceptional. Certainly, our interview tells us, he was "many times" in groups that commandeered taxis, seated the driver in the back, and told him to direct them to places "where they hate the Jews" in order to "make a balagan" – Hebrew for "big mess".

Then there is the inter- clan Palestinian fight: "We were told to go over there and find out what was happening. Our [platoon] commander was a bit screwed in the head. So anyway, we would locate houses, and he'd tell us: 'OK, anyone you see armed with stones or whatever, I don't care what – shoot.' Everyone would think it's the clan fight..." Did the company commander know? "No one knew. Platoon's private initiative, these actions."

Did you hit them? "Sure, not just them. Anyone who came close ... Particularly legs and arms. Some people also sustained abdominal hits ... I think at some point they realised it was soldiers, but they were not sure. Because they could not believe soldiers would do this, you know."

Or using a 10-year-old child to locate and punish a 15-year-old stone-thrower: "So we got hold of just some Palestinian kid nearby, we knew that he knew who it had been. Let's say we beat him a little, to put it mildly, until he told us. You know, the way it goes when your mind's already screwed up, and you have no more patience for Hebron and Arabs and Jews there.

"The kid was really scared, realising we were on to him. We had a commander with us who was a bit of a fanatic. We gave the boy over to this commander, and he really beat the shit out of him ... He showed him all kinds of holes in the ground along the way, asking him: 'Is it here you want to die? Or here?' The kid goes, 'No, no!'

"Anyway, the kid was stood up, and couldn't stay standing on his own two feet. He was already crying ... And the commander continues, 'Don't pretend' and kicks him some more. And then [name withheld], who always had a hard time with such things, went in, caught the squad commander and said, 'Don't touch him any more, that's it.' The commander goes, 'You've become a leftie, what?' And he answers, 'No, I just don't want to see such things.'

"We were right next to this, but did nothing. We were indifferent, you know. OK. Only after the fact you start thinking. Not right away. We were doing such things every day ... It had become a habit...

"And the parents saw it. The commander ordered [the mother], 'Don't get any closer.' He cocked his weapon, already had a bullet inside. She was frightened. He put his weapon literally inside the kid's mouth. 'Anyone gets close, I kill him. Don't bug me. I kill. I have no mercy.' So the father ... got hold of the mother and said, 'Calm down, let them be, so they'll leave him alone.'"

Not every soldier serving in Hebron becomes an "animal". Iftach Arbel, 23, from an upper-middle class, left-of-centre home in Herzylia, served in Hebron as a commander just before the withdrawal from Gaza, when he thinks the army wanted to show it could be tough with settlers, too. And many of the testimonies, including Mr Arbel's, describe how the settlers educate children as young as four to throw stones at Palestinians, attack their homes and even steal their possessions. To Mr Arbel, the Hebron settlers are "pure evil" and the only solution is "to remove the settlers".

He believes it would be possible even within these constraints to treat Palestinians better. He adds: "We did night activity. Choose a house at random, on the aerial photo, so as to practise combat routine and all, which is instructive for the soldiers, I mean, I'm all for it. But then at midnight you wake someone up and turn his whole house upside down with everyone sleeping on the mattresses and all."

But Mr Arbel says that most soldiers are some way between his own extreme and that of the most violent. From just two of his fellow testifiers, you can see what he means.

As one said: "We did all kinds of experiments to see who could do the best split in Abu Snena. We would put [Palestinians] against the wall, make like we were checking them, and ask them to spread their legs. Spread, spread, spread, it was a game to see who could do it best. Or we would check who can hold his breath for longest.

"Choke them. One guy would come, make like he was checking them, and suddenly start yelling like they said something and choke them ... Block their airways; you have to press the adams apple. It's not pleasant. Look at the watch as you're doing it, until he passes out. The one who takes longest to faint wins."

And theft as well as violence. "There's this car accessory shop there. Every time, soldiers would take a tape-disc player, other stuff. This guy, if you go ask him, will tell you plenty of things that soldiers did to him.

"A whole scroll-full ... They would raid his shop regularly. 'Listen, if you tell on us, we'll confiscate your whole store, we'll break everything.' You know, he was afraid to tell. He was already making deals, 'Listen guys, you're damaging me financially.' I personally never took a thing, but I'm telling you, people used to take speakers from him, whole sound systems.

"He'd go, 'Please, give me 500 shekels, I'm losing money here.' 'Listen, if you go on – we'll pick up your whole shop.' 'OK, OK, take it, but listen, don't take more than 10 systems a month.' Something like this.

"'I'm already going bankrupt.' He was so miserable. Guys in our unit used to sell these things back home, make deals with people. People are so stupid."

The military said that Israeli Defence Forces soldiers operate according to "a strict set of moral guidelines" and that their expected adherence to them only "increases wherever and whenever IDF soldiers come in contact with civilians". It added that "if evidence supporting the allegations is uncovered, steps are taken to hold those involved to the level of highest judicial severity". It also said: "The Military Advocate General has issued a number of indictments against soldiers due to allegations of criminal behaviour ... Soldiers found guilty were punished severely by the Military Court, in proportion to the committed offence." It had not by last night quantified such indictments.

In its introduction to the testimonies, Breaking the Silence says: "The soldiers' determination to fulfil their mission yields tragic results: the proper-normative becomes despicable, the inconceivable becomes routine ... [The] testimonies are to illustrate the manner in which they are swept into the brutal reality reigning on the ground, a reality whereby the lives of many thousands of Palestinian families are at the questionable mercy of youths. Hebron turns a focused, flagrant lens at the reality to which Israel's young representatives are constantly sent."

A force for justice

Breaking the Silence was formed four years ago by a group of ex-soldiers, most of whom had served in Israel Defence Forces combat units in Hebron. Many of the soldiers do reserve duty in the military each year. It has collected some 500 testimonies from former soldiers who served in the West Bank and Gaza. Its first public exposure was with an exhibition of photographs by soldiers serving in Hebron and the organisation also runs regular tours of Hebron for Israeli students and diplomats. It receives funding from groups as diverse as the Jewish philanthropic Moriah Fund, the New Israel Fund, the British embassy in Tel Aviv and the EU.

I wish we were not "civilized"

2008-04-18T08:25:00.001-07:00

EMPIRE HEAD-LINES

2008-04-09T07:27:00.000-07:00

Petraeus: Iraq Security Improved, but `Fragile, Reversible’
There is a method to it, a scheme that leaches,
Oozing ugliness from the general’s lips.
It burns my anxious ears and disbelieving eyes.
I hear Gaspar Noe’s `Irreversible’,
See the weight of its cruel cacophony.

Olympic Torch Arrives in the U.S.
Not a moment too soon.
Come, light! Come, ember!
Make your way to the crown of La liberté éclairant le monde,
Reaching out, extend thy transporters bough;
With oily rag, ignite the world’s puddled iron torch.

Clashes along Olympic torch route
Joined together torch through London, game afoot
Ire captures sober flame, hurls down its host
Nineteen nations to go

China jails outspoken activist over Tibet views
Dissident jailed for using tongue
Shackled of seditious idioms
U.S. speechless

Al-Sadr calls for million-Iraqi rally against U.S.
One million liberated flora marching
To our one hundred forty thousand
More than enough blooms

NATO backs Bush's European Missle Shield
Again with the ideas shielding pragmatism
Roar of incoming freedom haters
Hiss of outbound liberators

Destroying Torture Tapes - Freeing themselves from serious legal trouble
A shrieking pale
Is and shall be the ghosts haunting the masters of this
Frame by frame

McCain warns of Iraq genocide
And there he was
Hunched like a sniper, crowd of microphones, a glazed, suffering face
Of one who knows not where they are

Bush lauds pace of Iraq progress
Something is missing
Which explains such optimism, his legendary dim sightedness
I say this as it would be shameful not to mention his strengths

Whom is Israel Buying Oil From?

2008-04-09T05:15:00.001-07:00

Tehran!

US Declares War on Iran

2008-03-24T16:25:00.000-07:00

Washington is now making the most ruthless use of its dollar hegemony against Iran. It just declared war on the entirety of Iran's banking system and will blackmail China, Europe, Japan, et al. to cut off Iran financially.

(1) the March 20 advisory [of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a unit within the US Treasury Department] represents a US declaration of war by sanctions on Iran and a sanctions threat to the international banking community, (2) the US has various unilateral financial sanctions measures at its command in the form of executive orders and Patriot Act Section 311 and (3) the BDA-North Korea sanctions were, at least in retrospect, a test run for Iran.

If the US succeeds, an international quarantine on Iran's banks would disrupt Iran's financial linkages with the world by blocking its ability to process cross-border payments for goods and services exported and imported. Without those linkages Iran is unlikely to be able to engage in global trade and commerce. As 30% of Iran's GDP in 2005 was imports of goods and services and 20% was non-oil exports (World Bank and other data), a large chunk of Iran's economy would shrivel up. The repercussions will be painful and extend well beyond lost business and profits. For example, treating curable illnesses will become difficult. According to an Iranian health ministry official, Iran produces 95% of its own medicines but most pharmaceutical-related raw materials are imported. (John McGlynn, "The March 20, 2008 US Declaration of War on Iran," MRZine, 24 March 2008)

Make no mistake: this economic war is a strategy pursued by both Democrats and Republicans, realists and adventurists alike: Daniel Dombey, "Senators Urge Formal Sanctions," Financial Times, 6 March 2008.

The dollar hegemony is declining (cf. Jeffrey Frankel, "The Euro Could Surpass the Dollar within Ten Years," Vox, 18 March 2008; Wolfgang Münchau, "This Crisis Could Bring the Euro Centre-stage," Financial Times, 23 March 2008), but will it decline fast enough for the Iranians?

The ruling clerics of Iran are able leaders who have run their country with a surer hand than leftists would have, but this presents them with the greatest challenge since Saddam Hussein, backed by the West, invaded Iran -- perhaps even a greater challenge, since at least the richest third of Iranians are not made of the same stuff as those who made the revolution and defended Iran's sovereignty in the eight-year-long war.

American Political Metaphysics

2008-03-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

This is an article I was alerted to by Larry (y'all know Larry). I know it's a little more than fair use, but I thought it warranted being posted in full.

American Political Metaphysics
An Iranian Perspective

by Dr. Haider Mehdi

Manouchehr Mottaki, Iranian Foreign Minister, and his entire foreign policy establishment, along with academics and experts at the Institute for Political and International Studies, appear to be perplexed and amazed at the global political behavior of the US and its allies. They also seem to be baffled and agonized at the Security Council’s role in defying international law and acting as an extended arm of American foreign policy. In an international conference on Iran’s Peaceful Nuclear Program and Activities held in Tehran on March 9, 2008, the Iranians put their case before the world with remarkable skill and accuracy of information and debated their perspective with precision, logic, rationality and diplomatic assertiveness. The participants in the conference were told that current Iranian cooperation with the IAEA was unprecedented in history. Indeed, a 3000-hour investigation by the atomic agency and Iran’s willing and full compliance with the agency requirements say a million things about this nation’s honorable intentions in upholding the rule of international law as well as about world organizations that are supposed to act in a fair manner and treat all nations equally, impartially and without bias or prejudice.

Iran, as a nation, has deep roots in spiritual and religious discourse and faith in humanity’s righteousness. Its poetry and literature are full of metaphysical references to humankind’s sense of compassion, justice, insights into human nature’s philosophical consciousness and adherence to logic, reason and above all, the equality of all people and nations. There is an overwhelming faith in global morality and an associated conviction that all disputes between different countries can be resolved by dialogue and appropriate adjudication.

On the other hand, the American dogmatic global doctrine is fundamentally based on the use of POWER, both political and military, in the promotion of its capitalistic ideological enterprise and the expansion of its authority worldwide. The Iranian world view and the American global perspective are two diametrically opposed concepts. Hence, the Iranian people have great difficulty in comprehending American political behavior vis-à-vis Iran’s desire to acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The Iranians will be well-advised to understand that the US has, traditionally and historically, misused the UN and the Security Council innumerable times as a tool and an extended arm of its foreign policy adventurism by exerting pressures and other tactics on this world body. In the conduct of global politics, the Americans conveniently disregard the notion of morality when self-interest is at stake. The Security Council’s role in slamming sanctions against Iran is a plan of action deliberately orchestrated by the US and its Western European allies to continue their power dominance of the region.

Added to the US traditional imperialistic approach to global politics is another dimension: the Bush administration’s unilateralism in international relations has closed all doors to the possibilities of conflict-resolution by dialogue and mutual understanding amongst nations or through resolutions at the forum of an international organization. Ironically and illogically, another contemporary development in the conduct of global affairs promoted by the US is the notion of its political metaphysics: the notion that America has the right to judge another nation by “assumed intentions” -- the Americans have assumed that Iran’s desire for nuclear technology is entirely for the purpose of acquiring nuclear weapons. Mind it, this assumption has no basis in ground realities or facts – the IAEA’s extensive and exhaustive investigation has no substantial evidence to support this allegation (neither did Saddam’s Iraq have WMDs!). And yet, the US and its allies insist that Iran must be penalized – not because it actually intends to develop nuclear weapons, but because in the view of the American metaphysical approach, Iran is guilty of a crime that it has not committed, that it has not the power or instruments or modalities to commit – but it must be held “guilty” and “punished” because the US believes that an intended global crime of the future has been conceived. Remarkably, this conceived crime of the future has no substantiation in Iranian political behavior or policy planning – it is an imaginary fabrication pushed to the limits of human irrationality and illogical conclusion. And yet, the US persists on its implausible, unreasoned and absurd view.

Iran is faced with a dangerous adversary whose global political behavior has become a matter of concern for all Muslim nations as well as the entire South and Latin American developing countries. The fact of the matter is that America has never reconciled to any revolutionary change anywhere in the world: it did not reconcile to the Russian revolution, it has not come to terms with the Chinese Communist Revolutions, it has not accepted the Socialist Movements in South America and the Non-aligned Movements in the Third World. “The problem is,” said Dr. Maqsood Noori, a Pakistani delegate, “that the US is yet to reconcile to the Iranian Islamic Revolution even after 30 years.” America is an ideological monster that has no intellectual or philosophical strengths or abilities to understand the dynamics of the Iranian Islamic Revolution – the desire of a nation to live by its own history, values, culture and its independent views of itself and the world in which it co-exists with other nations. However, America stubbornly insists that the rest of the world must submit to its military and political power.

That is a mistake that the US has made historically and is making in the contemporary global political system. Consequently, American global behavior has turned the entire world into a conflict arena (global conflicts help American acquire power and richness trough arms sales). There is no end in sight to these American policies; blindness is an asset when one does not wish to see the world as it is.

Iran has limited options in confronting its main adversary. It cannot abandon its legitimate right to nuclear technology, nor should it even consider such a course under the Security Council’s pressure and the US-Western promoted sanctions. Iran must go on a massive diplomatic offensive targeted at the public-at-large in all Muslim nations and the rest of the world highlighting its absolute cooperation with IAEA and its exemplary role in upholding international law. Iran must assume a global leadership role to meet head-on the American-Western ideological morass by exposing the glaring contradictions that are incompatible with the 21st century public political consciousness. The Iranians need to be the voice of humanity in bringing about a transformation in contemporary global politics from that which is based solely on power to one founded on the equality of nations – incorporating fairness, justice, logic, rationality and humanitarian values.

“Ahmadinejad has a message,” recently wrote Dr. Abdullah Al Shayji, a professor of political science at Kuwait University , “which is that politics and strategy can achieve much more than war.”

But the question is: Will Americans and their allies listen to reason? Will they respond positively to the humanity’s contemporary consciousness in global affairs? Will they finally come to terms with equality of nations? Will they finally dump their imperialistic thinking? Will they respect others’ wishes as they expect theirs to be respected by others? Will they honor and admire other values and cultures the way they do their own?

I, for one, am not so optimistic! We must go on awakening America and the West…!

It is another global war against Western colonialism – may that be physical occupation or an irrational attempt to have control over minds.

The present Iranian struggle is to win over the American and Western European political mindset…and triumph over their irrationality!

Dr. Mehdi was a participant at the International Conference on Iran’s Peaceful Nuclear Program and Activities: Modality of Cooperation with the IAEA in Tehran, March 9, 2008.

Ahmad Chalabi promised to pay Scott Ritter with Iraq's oil, if he agreed to work for his cause: to replace Saddam.

2008-03-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

Scott Ritter talks about how Chalabi offered to pay him back when he got control over Iraq's oil revenues, and how the right wing of the republican party roped him in a political process that nodded at overthrowing Saddam and insisting on replacing him with Chalabi!

Dinner With Ahmed
by Scott Ritter

As we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I find myself thinking back on how we got ourselves into this predicament. Like many who played a direct role in the issues surrounding Iraq in the years leading up to the decision to invade, I have wrestled with the demons of history, wondering about the specific impact my actions (or inaction) may have had on the course of human affairs. I’ve also wondered whether or not I have been witness to any events that, if more fully reported, might enable others to have a better understanding of the events that shape our world today, for better or for worse. As I examine where we are today and contemplate our future and those who are positioning themselves to play a role in Iraq, it seems to me that there is at least one such incident, a dinner party I attended at the home of Ahmed Chalabi in June 1998 that is worthy of a more public illumination.

During my time as a weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), I frequently traveled to Washington, D.C., for liaison purposes. The usual customers, so to speak, included the State Department, the CIA and the Department of Defense. All such meetings were conducted in accordance with instructions I had received from the executive chairman of UNSCOM (from 1991 until July 1997 this post was held by a Swede named Rolf Ekéus and after July by an Australian, Richard Butler) and as such were considered “official business.”

I strayed from the umbrella of “official business” only once during my tenure as an inspector, when, in June 1998, during a scheduled official trip to Washington, D.C., I ventured out into the shadows of back-bench domestic American politics. Bill Clinton was president then, and there was a growing undercurrent of neoconservative ideology that was gripping the nation’s capitol as the right wing of the Republican Party, frustrated by its inability to outmaneuver the president on the domestic front, chose to instead do battle on matters pertaining to foreign policy and national security. Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein was deeply entrenched in Baghdad. Economic sanctions, which served as the primary vehicle for containing the Iraqi dictator by denying him markets for his oil-based economy, were collapsing amid international concern for the humanitarian toll that such sanctions took on the people of Iraq, and in the face of old-fashioned greed. U.N. weapons inspections were floundering and the Clinton administration seemed to lack any coherent plan on how to bring order from the foreign policy chaos that was Iraq.

In early June 1998, UNSCOM weapons inspectors received a technical report from a U.S. military laboratory in Aberdeen, Md., which specialized in chemical and biological agent analysis. In March 1998, UNSCOM had retrieved from Iraq several fragments of ballistic missile warheads from a site that had been used by the Iraqis in their program of unilateral destruction of WMD in the summer of 1991. The Iraqis, in an effort to clarify glaring discrepancies in the accounting of their weapons-of-mass-destruction stockpiles, had admitted that a certain number of these warheads had been filled with chemical and biological agent, in particular nerve agent, and anthrax and botulinum toxin biological agent. In an effort to verify the Iraqi claims, UNSCOM had excavated warhead fragments from the declared destruction sites and sent them to the U.S. military laboratory in Aberdeen for analysis.

By early June 1998 the results were back, and they were, on the surface, stunning: Rather than finding evidence of the declared chemical or biological agent that the Iraqis had admitted placing in the warheads, the Aberdeen lab results showed trace evidence of the chemical degradation byproduct of stabilized VX nerve agent, one of the most deadly substances known to man. The Iraqis had admitted trying to produce VX nerve agent in the past, but denied that they had ever succeeded in stabilizing the volatile chemical (i.e., preventing the agent from deteriorating over time and becoming useless as a weapon), let alone filling any warhead with VX. The lab results from Aberdeen, if correct, dramatically contradicted the Iraqi claims and potentially turned the entire disarmament effort of UNSCOM in Iraq on its head.

Butler, the Australian diplomat who headed UNSCOM at the time, was arriving in Baghdad when the Aberdeen lab results were released. Inspectors in New York were able to transmit a copy of the report to Baghdad, and the senior UNSCOM chemical inspector in Iraq at the time was able to meet Butler at plane-side to personally brief him on the dramatic news. Butler was in Baghdad to undertake a delicate negotiation with the Iraqi government on a so-called road map that would serve as the basis upon which UNSCOM and Iraq would seek to work together to clarify outstanding issues, and seek verification for declarations made by Iraq, such as its stance on VX nerve agent, which UNSCOM was unwilling to take at face value. The Aberdeen lab report threw a monkey wrench into Butler’s tightly scripted plan, and he decided to keep the report under wraps for the time being in order to let diplomacy take its course.

The UNSCOM chemical inspectors were furious. Over the years they had uncovered one lie after another about Iraq’s VX nerve agent program. Initially, the inspectors proved that a VX program existed when Iraq claimed it did not (in order to prove that point, inspectors had to burrow down inside bombed-out buildings to recover buried documents the Iraqis thought lost). Later, the inspectors were able to force the Iraqis to admit that the VX nerve agent effort was in fact larger than the laboratory-scale research and development program they tried to peddle once their denials had been proved false. The chemists had already contradicted the Iraqis on the issue of stabilized VX, by finding traces of VX stabilizer in VX agent recovered from containers the Iraqis had thought had been thoroughly sanitized. This discovery forced the Iraqis to admit having attempted VX stabilization. But in the end, the Iraqis maintained that all of their efforts had failed, and that VX agent had never been “weaponized,” or loaded into a warhead or shell. Now, with the Aberdeen lab report, this last lie seemed to have been uncovered.

Over lunch in the U.N. cafeteria, I listened while the UNSCOM chemical weapons inspectors vented their anger and frustration. Butler was selling out, they speculated. Why else wouldn’t he make use of this material? I asked the chemists how certain they were of the lab results. One hundred percent, they said. The lab results had discovered incontrovertible proof of the existence of specific chemicals on the warhead fragments, which could be explained only as the result of the degradation over time of VX stabilizer. “What would be the ideal situation vis-à-vis this information?” I asked. Everyone at the table believed that Butler was being pressured by the Clinton administration not to provoke a major crisis with Iraq over the issue of disarmament, so as not to break the existing Security Council consensus on maintaining economic sanctions. As such, the best scenario would be to have this information made public, published in the press so that neither Butler nor the Clinton administration could ignore it. Several of the inspectors around the table had served as background sources for some of the world’s leading journalists. “Why not slip a copy of the report to one of these press contacts?” I asked. The lab report, they responded, was tightly held. If it was leaked out of New York, suspicion would automatically gravitate toward them, a situation none of the inspectors wanted to deal with. “What if,” I asked, “I could get the lab report released in Washington, D.C., with no UNSCOM fingerprints?” The chemists liked this idea, and slipped me a copy of the lab results.

I was scheduled to fly down to Washington to meet with the CIA about ongoing intelligence support programs then underway. In my desk I had a business card for Randy Scheunemann, the national security adviser to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who was at that time the Senate majority leader. Scheunemann had been part of a congressional staff delegation that had visited the United Nations earlier in 1998, and had met with Butler and some of the UNSCOM inspectors to discuss the situation in Iraq. I dialed the number listed and told Scheunemann I would like to meet with him while I was in Washington to discuss some new developments. He agreed to the meeting and threw in a twist of his own: Would I mind meeting with Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi expatriate who headed an opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress, or INC? Chalabi maintained offices in London and Georgetown, Va., and he shuttled back and forth between the two carrying out his various political intrigues. He was, at the time, in residence in Georgetown, and Scheunemann thought that Chalabi might be of assistance in any matter regarding Iraq.

I had previously met Chalabi in January 1998 in London, where we had discussed various matters pertaining to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and how the INC might be able to assist UNSCOM in gaining access to new sources of information about Saddam’s past proscribed programs. Butler had authorized the London meeting, so I justified any subsequent meeting organized by Scheunemann as a legitimate follow-up. Scheunemann said he would have someone meet me at the airport in Washington.

I landed at National Airport early in the morning. In the terminal I spotted a man in a black suit holding a sign with my name on it. I assumed he was a driver of a car sent to take me to the Senate offices of Scheunemann. I was partly right. The driver was for me, but my destination was not Capitol Hill. “Mr. Chalabi sends his greetings,” the driver said as he ushered me to an awaiting town car. “I will take you to meet Mr. Chalabi now.” Ahmed Chalabi’s Washington headquarters was in a posh red-brick Georgetown town house. Chalabi himself was there to greet me.

I was ushered into Chalabi’s home, where he set out an ambitious program, including briefings to senators and their staffs. The meeting went on well into the next day. I had an open return air ticket but had not planned on spending the night, and as such had not made any hotel arrangements. “Not to worry,” Chalabi said. “You are welcome to stay with me as my guest. We’ll have dinner here tonight, and you can sleep in one of my guest rooms.”

Chalabi’s driver, who turned out to be a Shiite refugee from southern Iraq, drove me to the State Department, where my meeting with the CIA was held. Afterward, I took a cab to Capitol Hill and then made my way to the Senate office building where Randy Scheunemann had his office, right across from Sen. Lott’s. Once there, I got down to business. I handed Scheunemann a copy of the Aberdeen lab report and explained the background of the document. He immediately grasped the importance of what he was holding in his hand. “What would you like me to do with this information?” he asked. I explained the desire to get this data into the public eye, which meant bypassing both Richard Butler and the White House because I and the inspectors I had met with believed that both were seeking to suppress the data. “If it could find its way into the press in a way that removed any UNSCOM fingerprints, this would be ideal. That way the data remains uncompromised, and yet politically Butler and the White House can’t ignore it.” Scheunemann was smiling. “I think we can manage that.”

I thought my mission complete, but Scheunemann picked up the phone, speaking in hushed tones to someone on the other end. Hanging up the receiver, he rose. “Please follow me. Sen. Lott would like to have a chance to speak with you.” We made our way across the hall and into the Senate majority leader’s suite. Lott was meeting with constituents but broke away and ushered me into a side conference room, where we sat around a large wooden table. Scheunemann briefed Lott on the nature of the information I had provided, but withheld any suggestion of leaking it to the press. Lott thanked me for my “service.” “I understand you will be in town for a little while, and that you’re staying at the home of a mutual friend.” Neither Scheunemann nor I had mentioned my arrangements with Chalabi to the senator. “I hope you take some time to talk with him, and some other interesting people I think you will be meeting with. Exchange ideas. See if you can help him in any way. We’re all on the same side here, and we have to start finding ways to break down some barriers others have constructed between us.” I told the senator that I had met with Chalabi previously and saw no reason why we couldn’t engage in an exchange of ideas.

Scheunemann and I left Lott’s office, and I took a cab back to Chalabi’s town house in Georgetown. Chalabi was out when I arrived, but I was met at the door by Francis Brooke, an American from Atlanta who was Chalabi’s principle adviser. Brooke was also a guest at Chalabi’s apartment. I changed out of my suit and made my way downstairs to relax while I waited for dinner. No sooner had I sat down than the doorbell rang. Brooke answered it, and in walked Dr. Max Singer, a noted independent consultant on public policy and a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute who specialized in what was known as “political warfare.” Singer was a busy man, but he had been asked by Scheunemann to prepare a paper titled “The Chalabi Factor,” which outlined the importance and viability of Chalabi and the INC as a realistic opposition to the rule of Saddam Hussein. “Ahmed asked me to drop this off for you to look at,” Singer said, handing me the document. “I will be interested in what you think of it.”

Singer left and I sat down with his paper. The document outlined a political scenario that had Chalabi and the INC exploiting the weakness of the regime of Saddam in northern Iraq (Kurdistan) and southern Iraq, among the Shiites, to install himself as a viable political alternative to the Iraqi dictator. The main thesis centered on gaining a physical foothold in southern Iraq and taking control of the oil fields surrounding Basra, enabling the INC to become economically viable, which in turn created the conditions for political viability. Chalabi, the paper held, was ideally suited for this role since he already had a large following inside Iraq and was widely recognized outside Iraq as a legitimate contender for the helm of post-Saddam Iraq. I was somewhat taken aback by the content of the Singer paper. I was on dangerous political ground here, a U.N. weapons inspector charged with the disarmament of Iraq, suddenly dabbling in the world of regime change. Far from advising me on issues of intelligence regarding Iraqi WMD, Ahmed Chalabi had turned the tables and had me advising him on how to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Within the hour Chalabi returned to his apartment, accompanied by a tall man in a gray suit, Stephen Rademaker. Rademaker was the husband of Danielle Pletka, the senior professional staff member for Near East and South Asia affairs on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Rademaker was the legal counsel for the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and, like his wife, an unabashed member of the right wing of the Republican Party, along with being a champion of Chalabi. Rademaker joined Francis Brooke, Chalabi and me in the comfortably laid-out living room of the town house, where we discussed not arms control but regime change. I started off with the premise that the best way to achieve regime change in Iraq was to hold Saddam accountable for his requirement to disarm, and that the focus of our discussion should therefore be how to get the U.S. government to take more seriously the work of UNSCOM, and to put the weight of America behind such smoking-gun evidence as the VX nerve agent lab report from Aberdeen. Rademaker interjected at that point. “We agree. But we all know Saddam is cheating, and that his days are numbered. What we don’t have is a plan on what we are going to do once Saddam is out of office. Mr. Chalabi represents our best hopes in that regard, which is why we’re delighted that you and he are meeting like this.”

The discussion moved on to the matter of Singer’s Chalabi paper. In the kitchen, Chalabi’s driver had put on an apron and was busy putting together plates of appetizers and beginning preparations for dinner. I had spent the better part of the last three years investigating the inner workings of Saddam’s government, and how the Iraqi president shaped his internal domestic constituencies. “The premise of gaining support among the Kurds and Shi’a I can’t take issue with,” I said, “except to note that my experience with both groups is that neither represents a homogeneous movement that can be treated as a singular element. Things will be much more complicated than that. The key to me is what is missing here: any discussion of the Baath Party or the Sunni tribes. The Baath Party is the only vehicle that exists in Iraq today that unites Sunnis, Shi’a and Kurds alike. It makes modern Iraq function. How do you plan on dealing with the Baath Party in a post-Saddam environment? And what is your plan for winning over the Sunni tribes? How will you bring the tribes that represent the foundation of Saddam’s political support into the fold with your Kurdish and Shi’a supporters?”

Steve Rademaker and Francis Brooke stared blankly. Chalabi was grinning ear to ear. “We have a plan. First, we will do away completely with the Baath Party. Those minor members who were forced to join out of survival, of course, they will be allowed to retain their jobs. But anyone who profited from Baathist rule will be punished. As for the Sunni tribes, we are already in contact with their representatives. We feel that the best way to negotiate with them, however, is to make them realize that there is no future with Saddam. Once they realize that, they will come over to our side.” Chalabi’s “plan” struck me as simplistic at best, and entirely unrealistic.

“What about defeating Saddam’s military?” I asked as the hors d’oeuvres were laid out. “Not just the Iraqi army, but the security forces closest to Saddam, the Special Republican Guard and others?” Chalabi said a few words to Brooke, who got up and returned with a three-page paper entitled “The Military Plan.” Chalabi handed me the document. “This was written for me by Gen. Wayne Downing. I believe you know him from Operation Desert Storm.” Downing commanded U.S. commandos operating in western Iraq who were tasked with interdicting Iraqi Scud missile launches against Israel. I had participated in that effort.

Downing’s paper outlined a plan that had the U.S. military training and equipping a force of several thousand INC soldiers who would operate out of bases in western Iraq. These forces would be equipped with light vehicles armed with anti-tank missile launchers, which Downing believed would be more than a match for any armored force the Iraqis might muster. The plan postulated support from the local tribes in western Iraq, especially the al-Duleimi in and around Ramadi and Anbar. I thought this somewhat fanciful, since the al-Duleimi were among the tribes that provided manpower for some of Saddam’s most elite units. I said as much, but Chalabi dismissed my concerns with a flick of his wrist. “My people have already had discussions with the tribal leaders of the al-Duleimi, who are ready to join us once we get situated on the ground.”

Downing’s plan called for the presence of U.S. military advisers on the ground and U.S. warplanes overhead. “We don’t operate like that,” I said. “If we have forces on the ground, then we’ll need to have a base, with a base support element, and base security, and a quick-reaction force in case some of our boys get in trouble. The U.S. presence would have to be much greater than what you’re saying here.” Again, Chalabi smiled. “That may be so,” he said. “But we don’t have to highlight it at this time.” The “Downing Plan” was a nice bit of trickery, plotting what was ostensibly an Iraqi opposition military force with minor U.S. military involvement, but masking what was in reality a much larger U.S. military effort with a minor role played by Chalabi’s INC “army.”

There was a knock at the door, and Chalabi’s butler answered. In walked Rademaker’s wife, Danielle Pletka, accompanied by none other than James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA. They found seats around the table, and it became clear that this was where we would be eating. The discussion moved from the flawed military planning evident in Gen. Downing’s paper and onto the issue of Chalabi’s political future. Jim Woolsey was an unabashed supporter of Chalabi, something I found strange since Chalabi and the CIA were at odds over many aspects of the INC’s past operations. “This [criticism] is all bunk,” Woolsey said. “Chalabi is an Iraqi patriot and visionary who intimidates many lesser thinkers in Langley [CIA headquarters]. My friend Ahmed is a risk taker who understands the reality of Iraq, unlike the desk-bound analysts and risk-averse operators at the CIA. Chalabi scares these people, so they have created false accusations in order to denigrate him and ultimately destroy him.” Danielle Pletka chimed in. “We cannot allow this to happen. Ahmed Chalabi has many friends in Congress, and it is our goal to make sure Ahmed Chalabi gets the support he needs to not only survive as a viable opposition figure to Saddam Hussein but more importantly to prevail in Iraq.”

And so the night went. Dinner with Ahmed had turned into a political strategy session, the primary topic of interest being how to breathe new life and legitimacy into Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress so that a viable, and thus politically supportable, opposition to Saddam Hussein might be formed. According to Chalabi, this viable opposition already existed; all that was needed was funding and political support (not to mention military assistance in the form of advisers on the ground and fighter-bombers overhead). Personally, I doubted whether Chalabi could muster the forces he claimed inside Iraq. But my doubts were not shared by my dinner companions that evening, and as we sat afterward, sharing drinks and conversation, it was clear that Chalabi was being groomed for another run at power.

He had been embraced by the CIA in the early 1990s, only to be abandoned following halfhearted coup attempts the U.S. government failed to support, and accusations of financial mismanagement. But Trent Lott and the Republican Party were gunning for Bill Clinton and the Democrats, and they believed that with Iraq they had discovered a chink in Clinton’s armor. Chalabi was being resurrected before my eyes. They had picked their cause and selected their champion. Now all they needed was a springboard issue from which to launch their program. And that, apparently, was where I came in.

I rose early the next morning and went downstairs for breakfast before heading back to Capitol Hill and another round of meetings with senators that Pletka had arranged. Chalabi was already up, and we chatted a bit while I ate. “You see, Scott,” he said, “I have many friends here in Washington. With what you know about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, you can be of invaluable assistance to our cause. The VX story is but the tip of the iceberg.” I was taken aback, as I had not shared the VX lab report information with Chalabi. Clearly, one of our co-diners of the previous evening had spoken out of school. “Well, I am just a simple weapons inspector,” I replied. “In any event, it wouldn’t go over well back at the U.N. to have an UNSCOM inspector plotting regime change down in Washington, D.C.” I looked at Chalabi directly. “This is why you must be very discreet about the VX lab report. It simply won’t do for you to have your fingerprints on this information.”

Chalabi smiled and nodded. “I understand completely. As for your status as a weapons inspector, you must understand that those days are nearly gone. The inspection process has run its course. You need to think about what you are going to be doing in the future. I would like you to work for me.” I looked over at him. “How would that work? As an American citizen I can’t be working for you while planning the overthrow of Saddam. I believe there are laws against that.” Chalabi laughed. “Of course. You wouldn’t be working for me, but for the U.S. Senate. My friends would create an advisory position for you, and you would in turn advise me. It wouldn’t pay much upfront,” he said. “But don’t worry. One day I will be the president of Iraq, and will be in control of Iraq’s oil. When that day comes, I will not forget those who helped me in my time of need. Let’s just say that my friends will be given certain oil concessions that will make them very wealthy.” I remained silent.

Chalabi’s butler drove me to the Senate office buildings, where I met up with Pletka. She escorted me to the office of Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican. He had been fully briefed on the VX story. He was also interested in my description of how the Clinton administration was balking at fully supporting the work of the UNSCOM inspectors. “This will not stand,” he said when I was finished. “Believe me when I say you and your colleagues have friends here in the U.S. Senate who will make sure America honors its commitments and obligations, especially when it comes to disarming a cruel tyrant such as Saddam Hussein.”

Afterward, Pletka and I met with her husband, Steve Rademaker, in the Senate office building cafeteria. Rademaker had been hard at work briefing influential congressmen, especially Ben Gillman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, about the VX lab report. “We’ve got their attention,” Rademaker said, “and I think you’ll find that serious pressure will be brought on the Clinton administration to better support your work.” Pletka then took me back to where I had started, the office of Randy Scheunemann. Once again I was ushered in to see Sen. Lott, who thanked me for my service. “This is very important, and we’re very glad you brought the lab report to our attention. Be assured that this matter will be handled with the utmost discretion.” As I got up to leave, Scheunemann brought up the issue of future collaboration. I said that my being a weapons inspector made such collaboration difficult. Lott intervened. “Well, maybe we can find a way to bring you down here working for us. That might be the most useful thing to do.” Chalabi’s schemes seemed to have some substance behind them.

Armed with that potential job offer, I left Washington and returned to New York. Richard Butler was due back at the U.N., where he was planning to announce a “major breakthrough” regarding Iraq’s approach to disarmament. There was to be no mention of the specific details of the VX lab report findings, although Butler had alluded to their existence, and the Iraqi rejection of these findings. Butler was to make a presentation to the Security Council on June 25th. However, my visit to Washington produced results that dramatically altered his planned presentation.

On June 23rd, The Washington Post published a front-page story headlined “Tests Show Nerve Gas Agent in Iraqi Weapons.” The article made the main gist of the Aberdeen lab results public. It also reported on the political work undertaken by Lott and the Republicans based on that information. According to the Post story, “The new indications of Iraqi deception also are likely to reverberate in U.S. politics, where conservative Republicans are increasingly critical of what they see as a failure by the Clinton administration to support strongly either aggressive UNSCOM inspections for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or efforts to overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.”

Senate Majority Leader Lott was quoted in the article as being “deeply disturbed” by reports that the administration had not acted on the VX information. “The latest example of a failed policy toward Iraq will not be swept under the rug,” the Post quoted him as saying. I was just about to conclude that my visit had been a tremendous success when I caught a line in the middle of the article. “The Washington Post obtained a copy of the U.S. Army lab report from officials of the Iraqi National Congress, the principal Iraqi exile opposition group.” After watching the Republicans build up Chalabi, I should have known that they could not have passed up this opportunity to interject his name into the limelight. “This is a smoking gun,” Chalabi said to The Washington Post. “It shows that Saddam is still lying, and that this whole arrangement based on his turning his weapons of terror over to the United Nations is not workable.” The Post then quoted a “Republican Senate source” who echoed Chalabi’s concern: “This report means that they have VX out there now, and can use it. They have lied from the start.”

Today, in the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq, I think back on my visit to Washington and my dinner with Ahmed Chalabi and his friends. The ramifications of that visit were many.

Butler’s report to the Security Council, delivered in late June of 1998, was dramatically revamped in order to take into account the need to discuss the VX findings. The “major breakthrough” in disarmament work with the Iraqis was, as a matter of course, pushed to the sidelines. The Clinton administration, caught off guard, had to come out with public statements proclaiming its support for the work of UNSCOM at a time when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger were lobbying hard behind closed doors for the U.S. to pull back from blanket support of the inspection process.

The Republicans, led by Lott, had a new cause around which to rally in their effort to confront the Democrats: the failure of disarmament and the need to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Randy Scheunemann used the impetus created by the VX nerve agent scandal to draft legislation, the so-called Iraq Liberation Act, which was passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate in October 1998. This legislation solidified regime change in Iraq as the official policy of the United States, and certified Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress as the American choice for replacing Saddam. The Chalabi machine was on a roll, and was not to be stopped until the overthrow of Saddam in April 2003.

Ahmed Chalabi remains a controversial figure today. The U.S. case for war with Iraq was built around the notion of Iraq retaining stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Much of the case was built around so-called intelligence provided by Chalabi’s INC. All of this intelligence proved flawed. Chalabi and the INC have been singled out as the scapegoats for this failure, accused of deliberately misrepresenting data and even fabricating intelligence reports to shore up the U.S. government claim that Iraq did indeed possess proscribed weapons.

As for the Aberdeen VX lab report, the Iraqi government in the end had been telling the truth. It had not succeeded in stabilizing VX nerve agent, and it had never filled any weapons with the agent. Far from representing “incontrovertible evidence” of Iraqi duplicity, the Aberdeen lab results were flawed. Even under ideal circumstances, laboratory analysis conducted at approved facilities operating under strict protocols established in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention had an incredibly high rate of misidentification, and this occurred in known test samples. Detection of a specific chemical agent simply wasn’t a slam-dunk proposition. The Aberdeen samples were taken from metal fragments that had been subjected to explosive demolition and buried in the ground for many years. Subsequent retesting done by French and Swiss labs proved inconclusive. In the end, I was wrong to have pushed so hard to have the lab results made public.

Chalabi’s bid for the leadership of post-Saddam Iraq has stalled, but not stopped. In the aftermath of the Jan. 30, 2005, elections in Iraq, a new Iraqi government was formed, and Chalabi emerged as deputy prime minister responsible for energy policy. In this role, he was given interim responsibility for overseeing the Iraqi Ministry of Oil in April-May 2005 and December 2005-January 2006, which meant he had control over Iraq’s vast economic resources. Chalabi had told me that this had always been his goal. He also told me that he would use his access to Iraq’s riches to “take care” of those of his friends who had supported his rise to power.

Exploiting Iraq’s oil resources for his own benefit has always been a Chalabi goal. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Chalabi took a leading role in planning how the Iraqi oil sector would be managed in post-Saddam Iraq. He chaired a meeting of oil executives at London’s prestigious Royal Institute of International Affairs, the title of which was “Invading Iraq: Dangers and Opportunities for the Energy Sector.” Chalabi also took a leading role in advising the State Department’s Oil and Energy Working Group; in a conference of the group held in December 2002 he pushed for using a revitalized Iraqi oil industry to pay for the cost of the U.S. invasion (former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz relied heavily on Chalabi’s input when he testified to the U.S. Congress that Iraqi oil would more than offset the cost of invading Iraq). Chalabi argued that the best way forward for Iraq’s oil industry was to privatize as quickly as possible, and seek to free it of OPEC-imposed production quotas. Many of Chalabi’s policy positions are reflected in the stalled National Oil Law of Iraq, still pending ratification by the Iraqi parliament.

Chalabi no longer sits as Iraq’s oil czar. In the twists of fortune that mark the instability inherent in the disastrous American occupation of Iraq, Chalabi was compelled to step aside from the Oil Ministry in January 2006, replaced by former nuclear weapons scientist Hussein al-Shahristani. Chalabi’s political aspirations had fallen short in Iraq’s national elections, with his party failing to win even one seat in the Iraqi parliament. Down but not out, Chalabi continues to this day to operate on the fringes of Iraqi politics. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to be the chair of a so-called services committee, helping coordinate the provision of health care, electricity, education and other governmental services to Baghdad neighborhoods in coordination with the American military “surge.” Chalabi’s link to the ongoing “surge” is no accident, since it maintains the connection between him and those in the neoconservative establishment in American politics who have consistently advocated for him in any post-Saddam Iraq.

One of the most visible, and vocal, of these advocates was Randy Scheunemann, the former national security adviser to Trent Lott, who left his job as a Senate staffer. In 2000 he served as the foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain’s unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination. In 2001 he served a short stint as a consultant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In November 2002, Scheunemann helped form a political advocacy group known as the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, whose membership included McCain, who was an honorary co-chair. With Scheunemann guiding him, McCain said in 2003 that Ahmed Chalabi was “a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart.” Scheunemann is a key figure behind McCain’s unabashed support for staying the course in Iraq, and helped shape the “surge” strategy currently being pursued in Iraq. Today, once again, he serves as a senior foreign policy adviser to a McCain presidential campaign.

Danielle Pletka left her job with the Senate to take a position as vice president of the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, where she continues to be a vocal and unapologetic advocate of Ahmed Chalabi. In 2006, Pletka helped form AEI’s Iraq Planning Group, which authored a report released in January 2007 that advocated surging 50,000 troops into Iraq as a remedy to the ongoing impasse. This report took precedence over the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group findings, which articulated a more nuanced approach inclusive of diplomacy and reduction of forces in Iraq. She is an avid supporter of Sen. McCain’s presidential aspirations. Pletka’s husband, Stephen Rademaker, served in the Bush administration as an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation and disarmament issues before leaving in 2006 to join the high-profile Washington, D.C., lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, where he actively operates in support of undermining the current Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki and advocating for Iraqi Kurdish oil autonomy. Another Pletka associate, former CIA Director James Woolsey, has been the pro bono counsel for Chalabi over the years. Woolsey, who openly advocated for the invasion of Iraq prior to March 2003, today is an adviser to McCain’s election campaign, with a primary focus on oil security policy.

Ahmed Chalabi no longer directly controls Iraq’s oil. But at one time he did, and it will be interesting to see how he chose to distribute this largess to his friends and allies. Even more interesting will be how Chalabi leveraged his control of Iraq’s economic wealth to support his continuing claim to the ultimate position of power in Iraq. With the Shiite fundamentalists in Baghdad stumbling in their effort to form a stable government, and with the U.S. balking at Maliki’s theocratic tendencies, rest assured there are many in Washington who continue to look upon Chalabi as the go-to guy to bring secular stability to Iraq. Whether he can accomplish this task is questionable. But, in the meantime, Chalabi is in a position to write many checks, a factor that today makes him so attractive to so many, especially those in the neoconservative establishment with whom he has maintained a relationship over time. Just how attractive will be determined once there is a better understanding of when, and to whom, Chalabi writes his checks, or, more important, who is writing the checks on his behalf.

Fallon Out

2008-03-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

The fallout from the article is blamed (see previous post), he showed himself to be a bloodthirsty racist imperial warrior but not onboard enough with Bush policy on Iran. Whether this means merely the usual distaste for loyalty or has more significance in respect to an attack on Iran is debatable.

The top U.S. military commander for the Middle East resigned Tuesday amid speculation about a rift over U.S. policy in Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Adm. William J. Fallon had asked for permission to retire and that Gates agreed. Gates said the decision, effective March 31, was entirely Fallon’s and that Gates believed it was “the right thing to do.”

FASCIST HORDE

2008-03-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

Fas•cism (noun) [fa’ shizzem]
Authoritarian political ideology where all individual and societal interests are inferior to the needs of the state.

Come!
O ghosts of misery!
Louder than the whole of God,
more wordless than humiliation
breathing hard upon our backs!

Bring forth your most depraved army
over the present carnage of man;
red tongued and in the making!

Come quick under the roaring sky
and lock away hope
in your manifest gulag
of scraggly goddamned vultures!

Thrash all pleasure and goodness
over attentive hearts of dust!

Split the flesh and soul with your shadows!

Program our youth
to cleave all life of what’s left
as hordes of black-shirted assassins!

Keep watch over them
like steely eyed wolves
and stay their dissent with mild anecdote!
In time they’ll be content
to simply live another day
with wet tongue
and fearful consumption...

I detest with all my being that this pillaging horde of scoundrels has twisted the world into a sightless giant of shrieking hell!

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Canary In The Coal Mine

2008-03-06T14:03:00.000-08:00

From ThinkProgress:-

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon “one of the best strategic thinkers in uniform today.” Fallon opposed the “surge” in Iraq and has consistently battled the Bush administration to avoid a confrontation with Iran, calling officials’ war-mongering “not helpful.” Privately, he has vowed that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch.”
According to a new article by Thomas P.M. Barnett in the April issue of Esquire magazine (on newsstands March 12), Fallon may be prematurely “relieved of his command” as soon as this summer:
[W]ell-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don’t want a commander standing in their way.

Update: Not so fast, Chris Floyd says-

There has been quite a buzz in "progressive" circles over the new Esquire article about Admiral William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command, the military satrapy that covers the entire "arc of crisis" at the heart of the "War on Terror," from east Africa, across the Middle East, and on to the borders of China. Much has been made of Fallon's alleged apostasy from the Bush regime's bellicosity toward Tehran; indeed, the article paints Fallon as the sole bulwark against an American attack on Iran – and hints ominously that the good admiral may be forced out by George W. Bush this summer, clearing the way for one last murderous hurrah by the lame duck president. The general reaction to the article seems to be: God preserve this honorable man, and keep him as our shield and defender against the wicked tyrant.

But this is most curious. For behind the melodramatic framing and gushing hero-worship of the article – written by Thomas Barnett (of whom more later) – we find nothing but a few mild disagreements between Fallon and the White House over certain questions of tactics, timing and presentation in regard to American domination of a vast range of nations and peoples.

Fallon himself has long denied the hearsay evidence that he had declared, upon taking over Central Command, that a war on Iran "isn't going to happen on my watch." And in fact, the article itself depicts Fallon's true attitude toward the idea of an attack on Iran right up front, in his own words. After noting Fallon's concerns about focusing too much on Iran to the exclusion of the other "pots boiling over" in the region, Barnett presses the point and asks: And if it comes to war? Fallon replies with stark, brutal clarity:

"'Get serious,' the admiral says. 'These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them.'"

CBS 60 Minutes joins the theater of the macabre!

2008-03-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

I am SHOCKED!

1) Grilling Obama about whether he IS Muslim! The rhumors of his being a Muslim being considered as a SMEAR campaign! And Hillary, suggesting: oh the have made up so many smearing rumors about me, I have sympathy for Obama!

TO BE CALLED A MUSLIM = TO BE SMEARED = TO BE SHAT ON!

2) Ray gun! (active denial)
Idiotic high energy electromagnetic zapping! I wonder if they have made people wear a sheet of aluminum while being zapped! But that is irrelevant! what IS relevant is the theater they set up to test the gun: fake protesters (American), carrying placards of "PEACE NO WAR", being tested on by this weapon! The woman in charge of the project "giggled"!

The beam is the new weapon to keep America in check!

WHAT OUT!

FASCISM'S KNOCKING!

Israel delivers earlier threat to "unleash holocaut on Gaze"

2008-03-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

Israel threatens to unleash 'holocaust' in Gaza

"An Israeli minister gave warning yesterday that the Gaza faces a “holocaust” if Islamist militants there do not end their daily barrages of home-made Qassam rockets, and their increasing use of Iranian-built Grad missiles."

Today, Israel delivered on the promise:

At Least 45 Killed in Israeli Strikes in Gaza

"Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 45 Palestinians, 19 of them civilians, and wounding more than 100 in the deadliest day of fighting in more than a year."

‘Laptop Of Death’ Came From Mossad?

2008-02-29T12:27:00.000-08:00

And not PC World where most horrible Windows based atrocities emanate from, ahem, some excerpts (and check out the Shah's family happy to help out in the 'intelligence')-

(IPS) - The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the "laptop documents" -- 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop -- as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme.

But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel's Mossad.

Despite the fact that it was listed as a terrorist organisation, the MEK was a favourite of neoconservatives in the Pentagon, who were proposing in 2003-2004 to use it as part of a policy to destabilise Iran. The United States is known to have used intelligence from the MEK on Iranian military questions for years. It was considered a credible source of intelligence on the Iranian nuclear programme after 2002, mainly because of its identification of the facility in Natanz as a nuclear site.

The German source said he did not know whether the documents were authentic or not. However, CIA analysts, and European and IAEA officials who were given access to the laptop documents in 2005 were very sceptical about their authenticity.

Scott Ritter, the former U.S. military intelligence officer who was chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, noted in an interview that the CIA has the capability test the authenticity of laptop documents through forensic tests that would reveal when different versions of different documents were created. The fact that the agency could not rule out the possibility of fabrication, according to Ritter, indicates that it had either chosen not to do such tests or that the tests had revealed fraud.

In her February 2006 report on the laptop documents, the Post's Linzer said CIA analysts had originally speculated that a "third country, such as Israel, had fabricated the evidence". They eventually "discounted that theory", she wrote, without explaining why.

Since 2002, new information has emerged indicating that the MEK did not obtain the 2002 data on Natanz itself but received it from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Yossi Melman and Meier Javadanfar, who co-authored a book on the Iranian nuclear programme last year, write that they were told by "very senior Israeli Intelligence officials" in late 2006 that Israeli intelligence had known about Natanz for a full year before the Iranian group's press conference. They explained that they had chosen not to reveal it to the public "because of safety concerns for the sources that provided the information".

Shahriar Ahy, an adviser to monarchist leader Reza Pahlavi, told journalist Connie Bruck that the detailed information on Natanz had not come from MEK but from "a friendly government, and it had come to more than one opposition group, not only the mujahideen."

NeoCon AEI Advance Iranian Influence Meme

2008-02-25T14:25:00.000-08:00

A new report ("Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan") published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think-tank purports to show the reach and scope of Iranian influence across the Middle East...Co-written by AEI fellows Fred Kagan and Danielle Pletka, and Kagan's wife, Kimberly, who heads the Institute for the Study of War...

... it warns: "Much as America might desire to avoid war with Iran, continued Iranian interventions... might ultimately make that option less repulsive than the alternatives." The report relies entirely on open-source material, international and domestic media, non-governmental and government reports, as well as interviews conducted by Fred and Kimberly Kagan, who respectively visited Afghanistan and Iraq.

While President Bush may share AEI's view on Iranian malfeasance, his influence is waning. In a National Public Radio interview this month, Defence Secretary Bob Gates appeared to contradict his boss's view that Iran posed a "threat", instead saying that Tehran posed "significant challenges".

"When I think of a threat I think of a direct military threat, and while the jury's out in terms of whether they have eased up on their support to those opposing us in Iraq, I don't see the Iranians in the near term as a direct military threat," he said.

It seems the scholars at AEI have caught on, as they have attempted to shift the focus of the debate from Iranian motivations and intentions towards an "empirical study" of Iran's influence. In the final analysis, it reflects a tactical shift away from openly beating the war drums as do scholars like Ledeen, whose most recent book is entitled, "The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction", and towards an attempt to highlight the extent of Iranian influence in the region. The conclusion to be drawn is that, even without the nuclear issue at the forefront, Iran continues to exert a negative impact on U.S. interests.

But perhaps the authors should do some fact-checking of their own. On page three, the incorrectly identify the former President of Syria as "Hafez al-Hassad," who died in 2006. Assad died in 2000.

Well they never were the brightest, or the most honest, or...ok they are just scumbags. Obviously angling for that sweet spot of the bipartisan imperial ego that cannot bear any power other than its own to dominate and the arrogant presumption that America has any business (interests)thousands of miles from 'der Homeland'. Give them enough time and they will cook up a report saying Iran causes restless leg syndrome & wrinkles. Keeps them wealthy and after all isn't that the most important function of war and 'think' tanks for the neocon organism?

Is Secret Service Aiding Obama's Assassination?

2008-02-23T09:11:00.000-08:00

The US Secret Service ordered Dallas police to stop screening for weapons at a campaign rally for Barack Obama, according to reports in a Texas newspaper.

Police were told to stop checking people for weapons at the front gates of the Reunion Arena over an hour before the Democratic presidential hopeful appeared on stage on Wednesday, according to a report in Texas newspaper the Star Telegram.

Officers handling security were reportedly ordered to put down metal detectors and to stop checking bags and purses. Several Dallas police officers said they believed it was a lapse in security.

Chief T W Lawrence, head of the Dallas Police's homeland security and special operations divisions, said that while the crowd appeared " friendly" he was still surprised by the great number of people who had entered the building without any checks.

7 steps to revolution

2008-02-22T05:23:00.000-08:00

Betmo pointed out to this article When Change is not enough, 7 steps to revolution
by Sara Robinson

February 20th, 2008 - 6:01pm ET

"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."

— John F. Kennedy

There's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual.

The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s — people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we've also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation — and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that's agitating toward deep structural change.

There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be — at long last — that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government — and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season — the kind we get every 20 to 30 years — or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?

Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions — and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment. In fact, according to some sociologists, we've already lined up all the preconditions that have historically set the stage for full-fledged violent revolution.

It turns out that the energy of this moment is not about Hillary or Ron or Barack. It's about who we are, and where we are, and what happens to people's minds when they're left hanging just a little too far past the moment when they're ready for transformative change.

Way back in 1962, Caltech sociologist James C. Davies published an article in the American Sociological Review that summarized the conditions that determine how and when modern political revolutions occur. Intriguingly, Davies cited another scholar, Crane Brinton, who laid out seven "tentative uniformities" that he argued were the common precursors that set the stage for the Puritan, American, French, and Russian revolutions. As I read Davies' argument, it struck me that the same seven stars Brinton named are now precisely lined up at midheaven over America in 2008. Taken together, it's a convergence that creates the perfect social, economic, and political conditions for the biggest revolution since the shot heard 'round the world.

And even more interestingly: in every case, we got here as a direct result of either intended or unintended consequences of the conservatives' war against liberal government, and their attempt to take over our democracy and replace it with a one-party plutocracy. It turns out that, historically, liberal nations make very poor grounds for revolution — but deeply conservative ones very reliably create the conditions that eventually make violent overthrow necessary. And our own Republicans, it turns out, have done a hell of a job.

Here are the seven criteria, along with the reasons why we're fulfilling each of them now, and how conservative policies conspired to put us on the road to possible revolution.

1. Soaring, Then Crashing

2. They Call It A Class War

3. Deserted Intellectuals

4. Incompetent Government

5. Gutless Wonders in the Ruling Class

6. Fiscal Irresponsibility

7. Inept and Inconsistent Use of Force

(be sure to read the original article for analysis of each point.)

* * *

"A revolutionary state of mind requires the continued, even habitual but dynamic expectation of greater opportunity to satisfy basic needs...but the necessary additional ingredient is a persistent, unrelenting threat to the satisfaction of those needs: not a threat which actually returns people to a state of sheer survival but which put them in the mental state where they believe they will not be able to satisfy one or more basic needs....The crucial factor is the vague or specific fear that ground gained over a long period of time will be quickly lost... [This fear] generates when the existing government suppresses or is blamed for suppressing such opportunity."

When Davies wrote that paragraph in 1962, he probably couldn't have imagined how closely it would describe America in 2008. Thirty years of Republican corporatist government have failed us in ways that are not just inept or corrupt, but also have brought us to the same dangerous brink where so many other empires have erupted into violent revolution. The ground we have gained steadily over the course of the entire 20th Century is eroding under our feet. Movement conservatism has destroyed our economic base, declared open war on the middle and working classes, thwarted the aspirations of the intellectual and professional elites, dismantled the basic processes and functions of democracy, failed to prepare us for the future, overseen the collapse of our economy, and misused police and military force so inconsistently that Americans are losing respect for government.

It's not always the case that revolution inevitably emerges wherever these seven conditions occur together, just as not everybody infected with a virus gets sick. But over the past 350 years, almost every major revolution in a modern industrialized country has been preceded by this pattern of seven preconditions. It's fair to say that all those who get sick start out by being exposed to this virus.

Hillary Clinton is failing because this is a revolutionary moment — and she, regrettably, has the misfortune to be too closely identified with the mounting failures of the past that we're now seeking to move beyond. On the other hand, Ron Paul's otherwise inexplicable success has been built on his pointed and very specific critique of the kinds of government leadership failures I've described.

And Barack Obama is walking away with the moment because he talks of "hope" — which, as Davies makes clear, is the very first thing any would-be revolutionary needs. And then he talks of "change," which many of his followers are clearly hearing as a soft word for "revolution." And then he describes — not in too much detail — a different future, and what it means to be a transformative president, and in doing so answers our deep frustration at 30 years of leaders who faced the looming future by turning their heads instead of facing it.

Will [Obama] deliver on this promise of change? That remains to be seen. But the success of his presidency, if there is to be one, will likely be measured on how well his policies confront and deal with these seven criteria for revolution. If those preconditions are all still in place in 2012, the fury will have had another four years to rise. And at that point, if history rhymes, mere talk of hope and change will no longer be enough.

2008-02-21T05:35:00.001-08:00

America: creative destruction is her middle name

2008-02-12T05:15:00.000-08:00

Michael Ledeen:

"We should have no misgivings about our ability to destroy tyrannies. It is what we do best.

"It comes naturally to us, for we are the one truly revolutionary country in the world, as we have been for more than 200 years. Creative destruction is our middle name. We do it automatically, and that is precisely why the tyrants hate us and are driven to attack us."

Adam Mersereau, a former Marine Corps officer:

"By total war, I mean the kind of warfare that not only destroys the enemy's military forces, but also brings the enemy society to an extremely personal point of decision, so that they are willing to accept a reversal of the cultural trends that spawned the war in the first place.

"A total war strategy does not have to include the intentional targeting of civilians, but the sparing of civilian lives cannot be its first priority ... The purpose of total war is to permanently force your will onto another people group.

"Limited war pits combatants against combatants, while total war pits nation against nation, and even culture against culture."

A video on Iran

2008-02-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

A new Web video on Iran that shows the dangers of an armed U.S. intervention and the need for real diplomacy

Israel's sacred terrorism

2008-02-09T09:39:00.000-08:00

by Livia Rokach, Third Edition

A study based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary, and other documents. Foreword by Noam Chomsky

To all the Palestinian victims of Israel's unholy terrorism, whose sacrifice, suffering and ongoing struggle will yet prove to be the pangs of the rebirth of Palestine...

AAUG PRESS ASSOCIATION OF ARAB-AMERICAN UNIVERSITY GRADUATES, INC., Belmont, Massachusetts; Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rokach, Livia. lsrael's sacred terrorism. (AAUG information paper series: no. 23) ISBN 0-937694-70-3

CONTENTS

Foreword
by Noam Chomsky

Preface To This Edition
by Naseer H. Aruri
(preface notes)

Introduction

Chapters

Moshe Sharett and His Personal Diary

Ben Gurion Goes to Sdeh Boker: Spiritual Retreat as a Tactic

Retaliation for War

"A Historical Opportunity" to Occupy Southern Syria

Let Us Create a Maronite State in Lebanon

Sacred Terrorism

The Lavon Affair: Terrorism to Coerce the West

Nasser: Coexistence with Israel is Possible. Ben Gurion's Reply: Operation Gaza

Disperse the Palestinian Refugees

... and Topple Nasser's Regime

Appendices

Operation Kibya

And Then There was Kafr Qasim

"Soon the Singing Will Turn Into a Death Moan"

The Lavon Affair

Israeli Newspaper Reveals Government's Attempt to Stop Publication of Israel's Sacred Terrorism

Notes

Israel's deadly poison: Polonium 210.

2008-02-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

Alexander Litvinenko was an avid critique of the Russian President, and whistle blower of Russian links to Al-Quaeda.

However, according to Global Research: Alexander Litvinenko was a double agent for Israel as well, and a part of the Russian-Israeli-American weapon smuggling mafia. Victimizing Litvinenko would serve as an instument of smear campaign against the Russian president, who proved to be not so pro-American!

In Decemver 05, 2006, Germany's Spiegel investigated:

Where Polonium Comes From:

and reported that polonium is very hard to produce and that "Russia exports about eight grams per month to the US, its sole buyer, with a single gram selling for about $2 million."

Of course, at that time pointing fingure to Putin was a popular media practice and that was partly because the whistle on Israel's nuclear arsenal was not "officially" blown. To date, the reports on radioactive terrorism are far from complete. So is Russia the only country that can make polonium 210?

[Haaretz:]Karpin reveals in the book that polonium 210, the radioactive substance used to poison Litvinenko, killed several Israeli scientists a few decades ago. The Weizmann Institute scientists were exposed to the dangerous substance, which was found at a number of London sites the late spy had visited, as well as in three British Airways planes that flew the Moscow-London route.

According to the book, in 1957 a leak was discovered at a Weizmann Institute laboratory operated by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Traces of polonium 210 were found on the hands of Prof. Dror Sadeh, a physicist who researched radioactive materials, as well as on various objects in the professor's home. The AEC handled the accident with deep secrecy. After a short investigation, whose results were not presented to even the workers, the lab was hermetically sealed for several months.

A month after the lab closed, a physics student died of leukemia. A few years later, Prof. Yehuda Wolfson, Sadeh's direct supervisor, also died, and Prof. Amos de Shalit, the department's director, died of cancer in 1969 at age 43.

When the leak was discovered, Sadeh was terribly anxious, but tests indicated he was well. But according to Karpin's book, the tests did not include his bone marrow. Sadeh and his wife hid the facts from their family and friends until he died prematurely. The cause of death was cancer.

The Israeli authorities did not admit that the leak and the deaths were connected, but people close to Sadeh confirmed that the state took responsibility for the accident and compensated his family.

"For the first time in many years, we can say the intelligence division carried out its important mission of giving a strategic warning about this war." - former military intelligence head, Major General (res.) Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) in an interview with Geula Even on Channel 1, November 3.

"I would not call it a warning about the war, because we surprised ourselves. This was not a war the other side started." - Ze'evi in response to a question from Raviv Drucker on Channel 10 about whether a warning had been received about the war, December 3.

Now, a question: would you put it past Israel to put some amount of radioactive material in disposal of the Al-Quaeda, and then dump the blame on Iran, should Iran continue it's Uranium enrichment?!