Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Lied To Again - Iranian Uranium Edition
Liberally excerpted from Juan Cole's Informed Comment: IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium and a follow up comment at another posting.(For a complete trip down the "Orwellian memory hole", watch Norman Solomon's War Made Easy: How Presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death. Narrated by Sean Penn.
Torrents are probably available [Here]).
Also see: How To Sell a War, A writeup on the Rendon Group, the folks who brought you the Firdoz Square, Iraq "Saddam Statue 'Teardown'", for more on how the media has a hold on your 'Believe Button', versus what is real and truthful.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium
As I mentioned yesterday, Iran is not producing weapon-grade uranium, and could not easily do so without detection. The Hindu, which despite its name is left of center (and which is one of India's finest newspapers) writes:' Iran has not converted the low-grade uranium that it has produced into weapon-grade uranium, inspectors belonging to the International Atomic Energy Agency have said.
The Austrian Press Agency quoted an IAEA expert as saying that the uranium substances that Iran has produced at its Natanz enrichment facility have been carefully recorded and remote cameras have been installed to supervise part of the stockpile.
“If the Iranians intend to transport these uranium substances to a secret location for further processing, agency’s inspectors will find out,” he said.
The expert added that “so far, Iran has carried out good cooperation with us in relevant verifications”.
IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei has said that Iran has slowed down its uranium enrichment programme.'
US newspapers are complaining that they are losing money and may not survive. After they put all sorts of falsehoods about Iraq on their front pages, it may be that they fatally wounded their credibility with the US public. In any case, the above report does not show up anywhere on the web or in Lexis that I can find, except here in The Hindu, which tells me that someone is not doing their job.
(See also Dr. Jeffrey Lewis).
So... HOW IS the Western media 'reporting' on this?
(and I AM using the term 'reporting' rather loosely here...)
Anonymous said...
I don’t think it is entirely correct to say that there has been no press response to the IAEC report. Consider the following headlines:
“Iran holds enough uranium for bomb”Financial Times 19 Feb 09
“Iran has enriched enough uranium to make bomb, IAEA says”
Guardian 19 Feb 09
“Iran Has More Enriched Uranium Than Thought”
NYT 19 Feb 09
(A Buffalo favorite... RFE/RL makes it sound like a 'sport')
"New IAEA Report Shows Iran Nearing Nuclear Breakout Capability”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 20 Feb 09
Clearly there is a difference in slant between the Hindu article and those listed above.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Barack Obama: He's not really against the war. Not like you and I are. - William Blum, The Anti-Empire Report
The Anti-Empire Report
December 1st, 2008
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
Vote First. Ask Questions Later.
Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way. It was historic. I choked up a number of times, tears came to my eyes, even though I didn't vote for him. I voted for Ralph Nader for the fourth time in a row.
During the past eight years when I've listened to news programs on the radio each day I've made sure to be within a few feet of the radio so I could quickly change the station when that preposterous man or one of his disciples came on; I'm not a masochist, I suffer fools very poorly, and I get bored easily.
Sad to say, I'm already turning the radio off sometimes when Obama comes on. He doesn't say anything, or not enough, or not often enough. Platitudes, clichés, promises without substance, "hope and change", almost everything without sufficient substance, "change and hope", without specifics, designed not to offend. What exactly are the man's principles? He never questions the premises of the empire. Never questions the premises of the "War on Terror".
I'm glad he won for two reasons only: John McCain and Sarah Palin, and I deeply resent the fact that the American system forces me to squeeze out a drop of pleasure from something so far removed from my ideals. Obama's votes came at least as much from people desperate for relief from neo-conservative suffocation as from people who genuinely believed in him. It's a form of extortion – Vote for Obama or you get more of the same. Those are your only choices.
Is there reason to be happy that the insufferably religious George W. is soon to be history? "I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis." That was said by someone named Barack Obama.1 The United States turns out religious fanatics like the Japanese turn out cars. Let's pray for an end to this.
As I've mentioned before, if you're one of those who would like to believe that Obama has to present center-right foreign policy views to be elected, but once he's in the White House we can forget that he misled us repeatedly and the true, progressive man of peace and international law and human rights will emerge ... keep in mind that as a US Senate candidate in 2004 he threatened missile strikes against Iran2, and winning that election apparently did not put him in touch with his inner peacenik. He's been threatening Iran ever since.
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With his popularity Obama could get away with almost anything, but he'll probably continue to play it safe. Or what may be more precise, he'll continue to be himself; which, apparently, is a committed centrist. He's not really against the war. Not like you and I are.
During Obama's first four years in the White House, the United States will not leave Iraq. I doubt that he'd allow a complete withdrawal even in a second term. Has he ever unequivocally called the war illegal and immoral? A crime against humanity? Why is he so close to Colin Powell? Does he not know of Powell's despicable role in the war? And retaining George W Bush's Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, a man against whom it would not be difficult to draw up charges of war crimes?Will he also find a place for Rumsfeld? And Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, a supporter of the war, to run the Homeland Security department? And General James Jones, a former NATO commander (sic), who wants to "win" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who backed John McCain, as his National Security Adviser? Jones is on the Board of Directors of the Boeing Corporation and Chevron Oil. Out of what dark corner of Obama's soul does all this come?
As Noam Chomsky recently pointed out, the election of an indigenous person (Evo Morales) in Bolivia and a progressive person (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) in Haiti were more historic than the election of Barack Obama.
He's not really against torture either.
Not like you and I are.
No one will be punished for using or ordering torture...
In full @ The Anti-Empire Report
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
SHOCKED! Shocked I Say! US Documents on Iran Nukes Forged? (Juan Cole)
Monday, November 10, 2008
US Documents on Iran Nukes Forged?
I'm shocked, shocked that allegations are emerging at the International Atomic Energy Agency that US-supplied "documents" from a laptop acquired in 2004 indicating a secret Iranian weapons program were probably forgeries.The IAEA clearly hopes that the Obama administration will end the previous administration's attempts to undermine it and will stop the Washington habit of using forged documents as a basis for aggressive military responses to nuclear programs and instead will opt for diplomacy.
Source
Since I've got your attention... A comparison is in order... to those Colombian FARC laptops the CIA and the Colombian military killed a number of people over (including a hostage negotiator and a number of Mexican college students) in a high tech (beyond the capabilities of the Colombian military) raid earlier in 2008:
"Using their forensic tools, they (the Interpol experts) found a total of 48,055 files for which the timestamps indicated that they had either been created, accessed, modified or deleted as a result of the direct access to the eight seized exhibits by Colombian authorities between the time of their seizure on 1 March 2008 and 3 March 2008 at 11:45 a.m.Or, to put it graphically:
"The actual seizure of the eight computer exhibits occurred between 5:50 a.m. and 7:50 a.m. (local time at the place of seizure, GMT -5:00) on Saturday, 1 March. However, it was not until more than 48 hours later that the eight seized exhibits were given to the computer forensic specialists of the Colombian Judicial Police," the report goes on to say.
"Access to the data contained in the eight FARC computer exhibits between 1 March 2008, when they were seized by Colombian authorities, and 3 March 2008 at 11:45 a.m., when they were turned over to…the Colombian Judicial Police, did not conform to internationally recognised principles for handling electronic evidence by law enforcement.
Source, IPS News
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Class War... Because Two Wars Are Not Enough - US escalating covert operations against Iran - Seymour Hersh/New Yorker
Want to stop 'em?
Don't bother voting...
Barack Obama supports war with Iran too!
Here's The Buffalo's suggestion...
Go after their friends...
But note:
"...since Barack Obama has no qualms about “unilaterally” militarily attacking other nations, there is absolutely no reason to believe that he would be self-constrained from ordering that Black, Brown, and Red peoples right here inside of the US be viciously attacked via “police actions;” and quite frankly, lots of white Americans themselves might not be that far behind from being sacrificed, especially if they dare to try and get in the way of Mr. Corporate - “unilaterally” attack them - Barack Obama." Source, Black Commentator
"Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed.
But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials.
Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees, the so-called Gang of Eight.Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.“
The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.”
The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said."
There Have Been
Thanks For Stopping By
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Today's US Election News - Zawahiri endorses McCain Plan For Iran; McCain seeks Endorsement of Catholic-Haters; 8% Percent of Pakistanis Back McCain
Does America believes in justice for the people of Iraq? An Open Response To Matthew Walleser’s Informed Comment Guest Editorial on Imperilled US Allies (Iraqi Collaborators)Nevertheless, this is too funny to let slide out of a false sense of Buffalo pride.
My perhaps unpublished 2nd try at commenting on Genocide follows.
Zawahiri endorses McCain Plan to Bomb Iran; McCain seeks Endorsement of Catholic-Haters; 8 Percent of Pakistanis Back McCain
Senator John McCain, who seeks endorsements from haters of Roman Catholics, is alleging that Hamas has "endorsed" Barack Obama. He darkly suggests that this means something.
It is a despicable, dirty campaign trick. Who do you think the Ku Klux Klan will be endorsing? And if the Grand Dragons plump for McCain, does that tell us anything about McCain except that he is pasty faced? You can't logically read off anything at all from an unsolicited endorsement.
Actually it occurred to me to ask who is endorsing McCain in the Muslim world.
Well, it turns out that al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri has declared that he is actually on McCain's side in wanting to destroy Iran. Al-Zawahiri is hurt that McCain keeps confusing hyper-Sunni al-Qaeda with radical Shiism: "Ayman al-Zawahiri said al-Qaeda wants to see the destruction of Iran - a Shiite nation battling the terrorists . . . "The dispute between America and Iran is a genuine struggle, and the possibility of the US striking Iran is real," al-Zawahiri said. . ." Al-Zawahiri hopes that the US struggle with Iran will destroy the latter and weaken the former, putting al-Qaeda in a position to administer the coup de grace.
In essence, al-Zawahiri is endorsing McCain's plan to "bomb, bomb, bomb/ bomb, bomb Iran."
Then, it turns out that 8 percent of Pakistanis support McCain. 30 percent support Hillary Clinton, and she leads in this Muslim country over Obama (13%). But surely it is Pakistani liberals who are favoring Hillary, the sort people who supported Benazir Bhutto.
So which Pakistanis are supporting McCain?
Presumably the conservative Muslims who can't accept the leadership of a woman....
Then, Professor Cole goes on to cover the background of some of John McCain's more 'ardent' U.S. supporters:
But lets consider the people from whom McCain has actively sought an endorsement. Many of them seem to engage in a lot of hate speech against Catholics, Muslims and others.
John McCain's spiritual guides:
John Hagee, whose endorsement John McCain actively sought, compares the Roman Catholic Church to Hitler and depicts it as drinking the blood of the Jews through history:
[Video]
John McCain praised Rod Parsely as a spiritual guide; he is caught on camera below:
[Video]
Parseley accuses the federal government of enabling a genocide against African-Americans.
That's where I attempted to comment, on the casual dismissal of the charge of genocide against African Americans, no matter WHAT the accuser's political background.
I second anonymous' comment in regard to Parsley's statement about Planned Parenthood & Margaret Sanger AND I also am here to say the genocide continues, with more than 40% of male African Americans having been incarcerated in their lives (over 90% of California's prison population is African American and Latino), chemical warfare on their communities in the form of Heroin and Crack Cocaine, much of it imported into the US over the years with the witting or unwitting (I'd be glad to state which I think, but one post on this has already been 'moderated') assistance of the US military and CIA... cf. "The French Connection" Heroin pipeline from the "Golden Triangle" of SE Asia to Marseilles France with the PUBLICLY KNOWN assistance of US Special Forces and the CIA, to the US communities of color in the sixties.
Who would believe that it ever even slowed down since then... and now, the dismemberment of their communities en masse... cf. New Orleans Katrina "reconstruction" (gentrification) and the mass forced relocation of the people who live on 'Hurricane Alley" along the Mississippi coast.
Pardon my analysis...
...but sometime I think we're all actors in an American B Movie
...and we would have much rather had John Wayne...
Y' All know darn well we would have rather had John Wayne than any of the cast of blindly US policy supporting characters currently feeling 'presidential'.
In Full, with videos, at Informed Comment
Thanks For Stopping By
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Proxy War - Iran says U.S. aids rebels at its borders - Los Angeles Times
Iran says U.S. aids rebels at its bordersThe violence may be driving Tehran's efforts to back its own allies in Iraq.
By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 15, 2008
"Analysts say the anti-Iranian groups are tempting assets for the U.S. They say it would be a surprise if the groups were not receiving U.S. funding, but that the strategy would probably not work.
"It will give more encouragement to Iran's hard-liners to step up their own efforts to assist anti-American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst now at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Among the most active groups is the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, known by its Kurdish acronym, PEJAK. It has hundreds of well-trained fighters along with camps in northern Iraq.
Iranian soldiers guarding the border are sometimes ambushed by PEJAK fighters. Iran responds with artillery attacks that send Iraqi villagers scurrying for cover. Border skirmishes last summer and fall between Iranian security forces and PEJAK left dozens dead on both sides.
PEJAK emerged this decade as an Iranian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, an armed group formed to fight a separatist war against the Turkish government.
Former members say PEJAK was meant to circumvent Western restrictions on contacts with the PKK, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union."
Tags:
CIA,
Iran,
Iraq,
Kurdistan,
Middle East,
Militarism,
PEJAK,
Persian Gulf,
PKK,
Proxy Army,
Proxy War
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Good Morning, Vietnam! - Stan Goff, Feral Scholar
The same US press, which has parroted the absurd claims of “surge success” for months now, a success that was based on successful ethnic cleansing in Baghdad combined with the Mehdi Army’s ceasefire, will now have to tie itself in rhetorical knots to explain how this success is now adrift in the columns of black smoke rising from one of the two main oil pipelines passing through the port-transit city of Basra, and why rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds are splashing onto the Green Zone like a storm.Good Morning, Vietnam!
27th March 2008, 03:54 pm
by Stan
Nouri al Maliki, at the behest of his American masters, has thrown the new Army of the Republic of Vietnam against the militias of the most powerful and cohesive popular movement in Iraq, that of Muqtada al Sadr. By all accounts, even with their American advisers, tactical air and intelligence support, this operation appears to be a stupendous failure; the Mehdi Army of Sadr is reported to be routing the Iraqi “government” forces at every turn.
Moreover, it has ignited an uprising that stretches from Baghdad to Basra and all points in between. This flagrant violation of the ceasefire that the Sadrists renewed only days ago for six additional months, by the American-controlled puppet government, has set the stage for the most dangerous moment in Iraq for the occupation forces since the dual rebellions in Fallujah and Najaf in April 2004.
It has also quite probably signed the death warrant for the Iranian-trained and supported militias of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the foundation of Maliki’s last thread of legitimacy as an “Iraqi government.” In Full
Tags:
Basra,
Disinformation,
Ethnic Cleansing,
Green Zone,
Iran,
Iraq,
Muqtada al Sadr
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