Earlier this week, as part of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Hillary appeared on Al Jazeera English to talk about the war on terror and American foreign policy, see here. She made a series of points that warrant serious discussion by Americans as they reflect on the 10-year record of their country’s still ongoing “global war on terror”:
First, Hillary argues that the “Bush Doctrine” of preventive war, far from having been repudiated, remains central to U.S. foreign policy. People have applied the label, “Bush Doctrine”, to other aspects of the George W. Bush Administration’s approach to the war on terror—e.g., countries are either “with us or with the terrorists”, states that harbor or support terrorists are indistinguishable from terrorists themselves, and democracy promotion as the way to “drain the swamp” in which terrorists breed. But surely the most salient is, as Hillary describes it, a self-proclaimed American prerogative to start a war against a country “on the basis of the possibility that there could be, at some down the road years from now, an attack on the United States” emanating from that country. While Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency promising not just to end the war in Iraq, but to end the “mindset” that got the United States into that war, he has, with his Libyan intervention, extended the notion of preventive war to encompass “preventive humanitarian intervention”.
Second, Hillary argues that Americans have yet to confront the myth, promulgated by the Bush Administration and embraced by virtually all of America’s political class, that al-Qa’ida attacked the United States because they “hate our values”, because Americans allow women to drive and proclaim religious toleration. But, Hillary points out, the record on this issue is clear: al-Qa’ida did not and does not care what Americans do in their “infidel homeland”; it cares about “what we were doing over there”, in the Middle East and the Muslim world more broadly. She notes that the impact of American foreign policy in “fomenting, generating, recruiting terrorists overseas” (a question that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself posed, asking in a leaked Pentagon memo whether the United States was creating more terrorists than it was capturing and killing) “was never answered by the Bush White House, and is still not being answered by the Obama Administration today”.
Third, there is still a “fundamental state of denial, not just among Republicans and Democrats when they are in office, but among the American foreign policy elite”, about what most people in the Muslim world and much of “what we used to call the Third World” really want. Hillary argues that what countries in the Muslim world and the global South really seem to want is “independence”, and part of that is “an independent foreign policy, something that adheres to the culture, values, beliefs, and concerns of their citizens”. But American foreign policy elites are still not prepared to acknowledge this. They continue believing that, “given the choice, people will not choose to be independent. They will choose to be secular, first and foremost, and pro-American”, even if this means signing up “for a U.S. policy of rendering their own citizens to places to be tortured, even if it means working with the Israelis to keep a civilian population under siege in Gaza, we still somehow think that people will choose to do that”. She explains how, for example, this belief is an important factor driving current U.S. policy toward Syria.
Finally, she notes how “countries like Iran, with an independent foreign policy”, are “going to be able to work with [these newly independent states in the Middle East] more effectively than the United States”.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
fyi,
Instability in global financial markets has caused a great increase in “super-premium” residential property in London and other “western” cities, further enriching many of the richest people in those countries. True, many in the middle and working classes have been hurt.
fyi,
The deep recession caused by reckless “banking” in Europe and the US tended to dampen upward movement of oil prices.
I think Iran could support the move for UN recognition of Palestine with “1967″ borders, and count on the Zionist-expansionist lobby in the US to ensure America will block it.
James Canning says: September 18, 2011 at 1:20 pm
I am satisfied that the Iranian leaders are doing all that is necessary to resist Axis Powers.
The Axis Powers will come to rue their decision in 2007.
For Iran, there is either surrender or a long hard slog.
What helped Iran enormously was the collapse of the financial system of the Axis Powers, followed by the Arab Spring, and now the Palestinains’ bid for UN recognition.
Of these 3, I think the most beneficial to Iran in the long term is the coming global stagflation that will make economic sanctions against Iran moot.
In all wars, logistics is the key.
fyi,
I take it you are satisfied to have Iran portrayed as a party obstructing resolution of the Israel/Palestine problem. Even if this plays directly into the hands of enemies of Iran trying to set up a catastrophic war.
fyi,
Can show show any poll results, to back up your claim that Iran increasingly is seen as the “standard bearer” for Islam? Are you in effect arguing that most Muslims oppose any deal with Israel, even if all Muslim countries endorsed the 2002 Saudi peace plan?
James Canning says: September 17, 2011 at 12:39 pm
I am suggesting none of that.
My point is that the continuation of the war in Palestine which has and is and will poison the relationship of Axis Powers and the Muslim world is in the national interest of Iran.
James Canning says: September 17, 2011 at 12:34 pm
Of course the Iranians will stick to the high moral ground.
They are not stupid.
And since the United States and the European Union have no power to end the war in Palestine, Iranians will utilize the continuation of that war to the hilt to advance their own postion among Muslims.
Iran has become the standard bearer of Islam, thanks to the United States.
fyi,
You contend, in effect, that Iran should assist the anti-Iran propagandists, by actually trying to block the Palestinian UN bid in hopes of setting up more war in the Middle East.
I think your expectation that Sunnis in the Middle East will follow Iran, if Iran helps Israel screw the Palestinians, is well wide of the mark.
fyi,
I think the Iranian government does best by keeping to the moral high ground, and this includes seeking minimum justice for the Palestinians (meaning an end to the occupation of the West Bank, blockade of Gaza, etc.).
There is a sharp division of opinion in Washington, and even within the Obama administration, and it does not make sense to facilitate the efforts of those who want even more Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, endless war, etc.
James Canning says: September 16, 2011 at 6:01 pm
However foolish that might be, it reflects a certain and dominant mode of thinking in Washington D.C.
If I were an Iranian strategic planner I would certainly hope for more of the same policies from Washigton.
“God turned their tricks against them.”
Pankaj Mishra has interesting comments on Palestinian UN bid (“The west will not prevent a Palestinian state’s eventual birth”).
http://guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/sep/14/west-palestinian-state-israel-self-determination
bushtehliberator,
Are you actually once again arguing the US won a “victory” in Iraq? Because G W Bush was foolish enough to squander many more hundreds of billions of dollars, in rejecting the advice of the Iraq Study Group?
Those interested in the Israeli diplomats who were conspiring to set up war with Iran by planting false stories, can read some of what appeared in the first breaking of that story:
http:www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/2011/09/15/democracy-worshippers/#comments
(K. W. Jeter)
dear James Canning,
Your reply to ” Jahmat”: ‘yes.and Al-Sadr offered in 2006 to facilitate the withdrawal of all US troops. The moron in the White House rejected the advice of the Iraq Study Group to pull all US troops out asap.’
Are you still upset that the Surrender Monkeys failed to ” snatch defeat from victory ” So sad.
O-Bambi, the Reluctant Neo-Con,will be gone by’13 ; then the A-Team Neo-Cons can focus on #2 in the Axis of Evil,the Islamic (NOT !) Republic (NOT !) of Iran.
fyi,
I would like to see Anthony Cordesman explain why the US should be spending $10 billion per month on the quagmire in Afghanistan, when Russia, China and Iran all have an interest in seeing minimum stability achieved in that country.
What a preposterous notion, that the US is “competing” with Iran in Afghanistan.
Dr. Cordersman’s views:
http://csis.org/files/publication/110914_Iran_Ch_9_AfPakCentAsia.pdf
Spiegel compilation is headed: “Lip service is no longer sufficient for the Palestinians”. Very true indeed.
Unknown Unknowns says: September 16, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Just because some one is a Muslim does not give that person the right to dictate to others how to behave and how to be Muslims. Least of all, to try to shove their low-class culture down the throat of their betters.
Some German opinion on Palestinian UN bid:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0%2c1518%2c786684%2c00.html#ref%3dnlint
Humanist,
Credit to you for Barbara Slavin article. You probably noticed Slavin does not mention that American stupidity blocked Iran’s IAEA application to refuel the TRR and virtually forced Iran to enrich to 20%. I am sure she is not unaware of that fact.
Interesting Barba Slavin article Sept. 16th at Politico that you linked. At least she credits Iran with staying within bounds of NPT. I think she is quite wrong to say:”Iranian leaders see their nuclear program as providing prestige and deterrence against foreign invasion.” I think it is more accurate to say that domestic politics require Iran to continue its nuclear programme. Yes, there is a certain prestige that goes with it, but I doubt Iranian leaders see their programme as “deterring” an attack.
fyi,
Iran has indicated a number of times it will accept Israel within “1967″ borders if the Palestinians accept that outcome. UN recognition would pressure Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank. This would be a good thing for the entire Middle East.
You seem eager to help neocon propagandists portray Iran as blocking resolution of Israel/Palestine problem.
fyi says:
September 16, 2011 at 1:32 pm
One could only hope…
*
Allow me to finish the sentence for you, dear fyi.
One could only hope… that the Axis Powers make these blunders, so that the Great Iranian Nation, with its great government which is based on the principles and values of Islam and Independence from foreign interference, which was voted in and endorsed by the nation overwhelmingly in two referenda because they love Islam – is strengthened and endures as the catastrophe that it is and has been from day one.
No, dear fyi, you don’t lie to yourself; you are just inconsistent with us to an extent that can only be described as clinical schizophrenia.
You denigrate and then praise and want the best for the ‘catastrophe’ that is the country of your heritage, wishing it was more like your adopted country, (which is bad enough), but then you go ahead adn denigrate *that* country’s culture and foreign policy.
Most cases of ambivalence have difficulty in deciding to shit or get off the pot. You, on the other hand, shit on one pot, only to get up and go ahead and shit on another pot – all in the same breath.
Congratulations to you both! Your lack of ambivalence is refreshing.
Humanist,
I talked to several people in Seattle today, who try to be well-informed about the Middle East and the Israel/Palestine problem, and they did not even know that Israeli diplomats had been conspiring with officials of Aipac and Winep, and US politicians, to plant false stories in the media regarding Iran, to set up war. And this is after the Richard Siverstein story made the front page of the Seattle Times!
Humanist,
thanks for the link. And yes, suppression of free speech and the right of association is part and parcel of the effort of delusional Zionists, in the US and other countries, to facilitate continuing oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. Which means being hostile to any country unfriendly toward Israel. Or offering support to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians.
Fanatical “supporters” of Israel right or wrong are quite prepared to subvert the Republic itself.
Unknown Unknowns says: September 16, 2011 at 1:28 pm
I do not lie to myself.
James Canning
Re: September 15, 2011 at 1:43 pm
You write “Very interesting that Israeli gov’t conspires to set up vexatious litigation against American companies observing the boycott of Israel.”
It is not only the BDS supporters, every entity that criticizes Israel can be harassed or prosecuted if any of its actions touch skewed US laws or the US harsh sanction rules. Even academics are not immune. For example read “Columbia warned over students’ dinner with Ahmadinejad” in Global News Service of the Jewish People:
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/09/15/3089406/columbia-warned-over-students-dinner-with-ahmadinejad
Pay attention who is warning Columbia University and the ‘words’ they are using in the harassment.
Apparently some extremely zealous Jews are the worst enemies of their own people.
Mind boggling amazing stuff when we consider how quickly the world is changing in the wrong direction.
Pirouz says:
September 16, 2011 at 1:24 am
My dear friend Pirouz;
You are one of the people on this site for whom I have a great admiration. You are an extremely honest person who pursues the “truth” irrespective of where it leads us and irrespective of whether it validates or refutes your beliefes. And that for me is an extremely admirable quality in a human being.
Therefore I very much hope that you will not misunderstand this message to be some sort of an attempt to create an over-heated meaningless polemic.
In your message you mention two concepts to be among the pillars of your worldview:
1) Secularism and 2)the American interpretation of Western liberalism.
I have some comments with regards to both:
1) Secularism: It has always captured my attention that pretty much the vast majority of those who support secularism (and this includes myself) are non-religious. I have seen some rare examples of people who are deeply pious and yet they support a secular system. One example would be the first president of Iran, Mr. Bani-Sadr, I once read in his newspaper that one of his fellows claimed -in support of secularism- that Muhammad’s being the head of the Islamic state was not due to his being the prophete of Islam but rather because he had got the bi-at (ie. the hand shake which signified the concent -or “vote” if you will) of the people. Still that doesnt make the state which was headed by Mohammad a “secular” one; it was an Islamic state.
You see the paradox faced by secularism is that if a person is deeply pious, he or she cannot possibly accept a state which would go against its religious beliefs.
Let me give you an example: In Turkey, prostitution is legal. What’s more is that prostitutes pay taxes, and with those taxes, schools, roads and hospitals are built. Can a devout muslim in Turkey eat and consume the “haram” money obtained from a prostitute?? In other words can the state supported by a muslim play the role of a “pimp” to a prostitute and charge her a percentage of her earnings?
I think the reason that some people do not see certain contradictions between secularism and religion is the Western systems where many people seem to be -to say the least- mildy religious and still have no problem with a secular state. I think that there are two key points in that observation which often would go unnoticed: a) mildly religious and b) for such people the states afairs are not run in a radically conflicting way to their religious beliefes. Either they give far more importance to some benefits that they receive from the system than they do to their beliefs (meaning that after all they really dont care all that much about their religion) or they believe in some sort of “diluted” version of their religion which is void of any actual content and is mainly useful in the times of stress and fear only (eg. at times where their life is under threat or they are about to lose a loved one).
2) The Amrican interpretation of Western liberalism. Some people have argued that the ideas of “freedom” and “rights” in liberalism has been mainly about the “rights of ownership of the means of production” for one social class and the “freedom from the bonds of owning their own means of labour/means of production” for another class. In short such people would argue that “capitalism” is at the very core of “liberalism” and capitalism needs “expansion”. Indeed capitalism cannot survive without expansion, it LIVES THROUGH PERPETUAL EXPANSION. Well expansion calls for dictating to the peripheral countries your own “system” and in so doing absorbing and integrating their natural resources, their labour and their markets into your own (and hence “expanding”). The problem is that the very same people who make this argument also argue that since this sytem conflicts with the interests of the VAST MAJORITY of the people there will be resistance and hence the western countries have to “to push [their] particular beliefs on unwilling peoples around the globe”. Otherwise their own system will not survive!
As I said before, my main goal when I wrote this message was to just give an alternative explanation to the implicit question that you ask and not to shove my own opinion don anyone’s throat.
James Canning says: September 16, 2011 at 1:05 pm
I think the best thing that could happen for Iran are the following:
1- US vetoes Palestinian state.
2- Very many EU states UK, France, Germany, Italy), US, Canada, and Australia vote against the Palestinian states during the General Assembly session. {Thus voting for apartheid against a PAN Islamic cause.]
3- US closes the PA Office in Washington DC.
4- MEK is de-listed as a terrorist organization.
I think that Iranian leaders could be cautiously optimistic for one or all of the above.
One could only hope…
fyi says:
September 16, 2011 at 12:25 pm
hans says: September 16, 2011 at 3:45 am
The Islamic Republic of Iran was the creation of 2 referranda in both of which females could vote. And they did. The referranda were not rigged; people – both men and women – love Islam even if you cannot comprehend it.
*
Here you go, dear. It seems you forgot to take your meds again.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/mental-health-medications/what-medications-are-used-to-treat-schizophrenia.shtml
ای ول استقلال!
http://www.irangoals.com/2011/09/16/video-perspolis-tehran-esteghlal-tehran-6/
Rehmat,
Andrew is a highly regarded given name for Scots, and Maxwell is a very old and respected surname in Scotland. Not Jewish. Robert Maxwell, the fraudster, changed his name to Maxwell.
Philip Stephens has excellent comments in the Financial Times today: “Israel should back a Palestinian state”. Quote: “Everyone knows that Barack Obama’s threatened veto has more to do with a hostile Congress and with the president’s re-election campaign than with considerations of justice or statecraft.”
hans says: September 16, 2011 at 3:45 am
The Islamic Republic of Iran was the creation of 2 referranda in both of which females could vote.
And they did.
The referranda were not rigged; people – both men and women – love Islam even if you cannot comprehend it.
Barbara Slavin visa has been refused. Here’s the pay back:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63686.html
Israelis are known for marketing their version of Holocaust via pornography. Similarly, this year, British Broadcasting Company’s Jews took five non-believers of 9/11 official story on a 8-day journey across the east coast of United States in search for ‘the truth’ (watch the documentary below). On the way they meet ‘experts’ and victims of the attack. Their guide was no other than Irish comedian with a Jewish surname, Andrew Maxwell. He tried to convince the five non-believers that Osama Bin Laden was indeed behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. However, Osama Bin Laden was never wanted for this crime and his name never showed-up on FBI’s wanted poster due to lack of evidence….
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/sept-11-and-bbcs-conspiracy-roadtrip/
http://www.anunews.net/
(Look at Dick Cheyney and Bush Jun.:-)
“What did lasting damage to the nation was not 9/11, it was remembering 9/11. Not only did overreaction to 9/11 play a substantial role in bankrupting the country…it also made Americans fearful and sheepish. They’re convinced the towel-heads are trying to kill them. They believe they can protect themselves by spending trillions of dollars they don’t have on military campaigns that don’t work.”
@fyi says:
September 15, 2011 at 3:23 pm
A Sunni version of the Islamic Republic of Iran Turkey or Malaysia. Come to think why do the Islamic countries just have a referendum for female only whether they would like to live under an Islamic state! Maybe Iran should be the first country to have this referendum!
You know, Arnold, I’m an ardent secularist and believer in the American interpretation of Western liberalism.
But I’ll be damned if I’m going to push my particular beliefs on unwilling peoples around the globe.
Let them find their own way, I say..
And who the hell foes Juan think he is, anyway? More and more, he’s a mirror of that which he repudiates.
http://farasatkhah.blogsky.com/1390/06/16/post-61/
fyi says:
September 15, 2011 at 5:16 pm
“you have proven exactly what?”
Proven: Just because some people talk emphatically, it doesn’t mean they are not talking out of their hat.
Dan:
Thanks for the link to what to me is a very important clip from Wesley Clarke.
How people can still think of this country as a democracy is truly beyond me. The oligarchs have gotten so brazen, they don’t even have to “manufacture consent” anymore – the sheeple give it based solely on the inertia of a simulacrum that once was.
In my post on September 12, 2011 at 10:51 pm, instead of the Shock Doctrine the movie, I mistakenly provided the link for Naomi Klein’s talk in Oregon. Sorry.
Here is the intended link: for the video of 1 hour 18 minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHrEH5G90wo
The former US Speaker of House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, who recently blasted Barack Obama on CBN, saying that the President and his administration are just as dangerous as ‘radical Islamists’. Newt, like Pat Robertson, too, believes in a forgiving Christian God – because he needs so much forgiving for cheating on and then dumping two of his sick wives. Newt divorced his first wife Jackie in the hospital when she was recovering from Uterine cancer surgery in 1978. Then he married his mistress Marianne. Marianne Gingrich, learned about Newt’s infidelity with a young staffer just after Marianne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Recently, Newt Gingrich, told David Brody on CBN that he divorced his two wives because he cared for his country.
Pat Robertson: ‘Divorce your terminal sick wife’
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/pat-robertson-%e2%80%98divorce-your-terminal-sick-wife%e2%80%99/
James Canning says:
September 15, 2011 at 1:37 pm and September 15, 2011 at 1:02 pm
I could not agree with you more.
BiBiJon says: September 15, 2011 at 5:12 pm
Bravo silly man; you have proven exactly what?
May God protect Iran from people such as yourselves.
fyi says:
September 15, 2011 at 4:47 pm
“The bullet does not have suffcient mass.”
fyi, You yourself quoted the formula: KE = 1/2(mv^2) which doesn’t seem to imply what is/isn’t sufficient mass?
Glass melts at about 1400 degrees C.
Hope that helps.
BiBiJon says: September 15, 2011 at 3:59 pm
The bullet does not have suffcient mass.
What is specific heat capacity of that bullet-proof glass?
What is its specific heat of melting?
Do you know?
If you do, then:
KE = mc(t1-t2) + mC_melting
And that applies if the bullet is brought to total rest.
Arnold Evans says:
September 15, 2011 at 1:33 pm
The difference between Republicans and Democrats so far as I can surmise is that Republicans are after oil, whereas Democrats are after the soul.
fyi says:
September 14, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Dearest resident most distinguished physicist, fyi:
I’m still waiting for an answer.
Why would/wouldn’t a 308Win bullet developing 3500 Joules of KE melt a cubic centimeter of glass upon impact?
Again, thanks in advance.
James Canning says: September 15, 2011 at 2:10 pm
A Sunni version of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in fact, would be an anti-dote to Sunni Extremism.
For 400 years the Shia Doctors of Religious Sciences of Islam have waged a struggle against irrationalism and superstition. They have pushed their Doctrine of Innovation.
Would it be that a Sunni polity could be that fortunate.
Reza,
I might add that a major challenge for Russia is to achieve a basically honest police force for the country. And to cut down significantly on other corruption. More than one million young Russians have left the country in recent years, due in large part to being tired of dealing with corrupt police and other officials.
China, on the other hand, needs to reduce its population by hundreds of millions of people, over the next few decades.
fyi,
I think most of the Egyptian middle class are primarily interested in better econmic growth and development. Sunni extremism has been imported from the Gulf, especially SAudi Arabia, due to quest (via migration) for better jobs and economic opportunity.
Reza,
I agree that both China and Russia will spend more on “defence” in coming years. China’s spending is rising rapidly in percentage terms.
And the relative decline of the US is actually accelerated by idiotic “defence” spending (more than five times the combined spending of the EU!).
And yes, “the west” will do well to promote mutual benefit with all rising economies.
Russia and China will rise faster, if they avoid foolish squandering on defence. No country is going to attack China or Russia (apart from continuing terrorist schemes in Muslim areas).
Arnold Evans says: September 15, 2011 at 1:33 pm
If only Sunni Muslims could have a “Sunni” version of the Islamic Republic of Iran they would have had the best government that they have ever had.
In fact, a “Sunni” version of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for vast numbers of Sunnii Muslims – Arab or non-Arab – remains a utopian vision.
Richard Silverstein says that there was almost certainly a deal between the incoming Obama administration and Israel, to stop the Israeli rampage in Gaza before Obama actually entered the White House. I should think this is correct.
Very interesting that Israeli gov’t conspires to set up vexatious litigation against American companies observing the boycott of Israel.
Dan Cooper,
We all should keep in mind that all of the top officials of the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, who conspired to set up the illegal invasion of Iraq, were Jews, and neocons, and they had close ties to Israeli defence contractors and related financial interests. And that using knowingly false intelligence, planted in US newspapers etc., was deliberate part of the scheme.
Another edition of comments that probably will not make it past the JuanCole.com censor:
If you weren’t trying to turn Egypt into a Sunni version of Iran, it is hard to see why you’d be so upset with what Erdogan said.
And what if he is?
What if Egypt has more voters who want a Sunni version of Iran than voters who think like Juan Cole? Even if there is no majority in support of that, why shouldn’t someone with a different idea of how a state should be run than Juan Cole be able to advocate for that position, to let the voters decide or even be swayed?
Americans and other Westerners are reflexively anti-democratic, reflexively colonialistic, when it comes to the Middle East.
We can see under Obama than we could under Bush that this tendency spans across very close to the entire US political spectrum.
Humanist,
Thanks, and all who post on this site should read the story you linked (Scott Horton interviews Richard Silverstein, on FBI monitoring of Israel gov’t conspiracy to set up war with Iran by planting false stories about Iran in US news media).
New very important material on what James Canning had posted earlier.
Listen to Richard Silverstein himself about Israel’s activities in US to instigate a war with Iran
http://antiwar.com/radio/2011/09/14/richard-silverstein/
Dan Cooper,
Neocon hubris and stupidity brought disaster to the American taxpayers. And of course they are still at it. And let’s not forget that idiots like John McCain and Joe Lieberman caused Saakashvili’s head to swell to dangerous proportions, resulting in Georgia’s reckless attack on Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia.
http://www.truth-out.org/terrorism-issue-wasnt-discussed/1316009285
Gareth Porter has some insight this week: “The terrorism issue that wasn’t discussed”.
http://www.truth-out.org/terrorism-issue-wasn't-discussed/1316009285
US spending last year on “defence” was about $1.2 trillion, while 26 countries in EU spent combined $220 million. EU countries obviously sensible about “defence” needs.
A some-what dated Turkish Perspective
http://www.mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/gulf-states-and-iran-turkish-perspective?print
In Case You Missed It
Former U.S General Admits to America Foreign Policy Coup
Video
Former four star general and NATO commander Wesley Clark talks about the neocon plan to invade seven countries in five years including Iran.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29129.htm
BiBiJon says:
. Tony Judt, not much.
“Israel’s successful defiance of international law for so long has made Jerusalem blind and deaf”
Funny the author (Merav Michaeli ) refers to Jerusalem??? Vs Telaviv??
But then again may be, just may be they are learning……!!!!
Israeli ambassador on the run from Jordan!! (DID they get the message?)
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/09/201191583348898579.html
Unknown Unknowns says:
September 15, 2011 at 12:39 am
“Ron Paul talks common sense on Iran, starting at minute 4:20″
We would have many more politicians talking common sense if they started at 420. Notice, Paul mentions Israel’s nukes (a nation clearly more “nutty” than Iran) and Neil moves on to a different story. Incompetent collusive jerk.
Joe and Bahram;
Thank you for your insights.
Unknown Unknowns says:
September 15, 2011 at 12:52 am
Here, Photi, you’re still awake:
Actually, been roofing all week. I was drifting off by that time.
Hearing Ron Paul speak makes me all the more frustrated with American foreign policy. Everyone knows what’s up and yet they keep spewing their lies. When will the madness end?
No, not justified, DUSTified!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249885/New-World-Trade-Center-9-11-aerial-images-ABC-News.html
Who is making those new brown clouds?
Who is making those clouds these days,
Who is making those new brown clouds,
Better ask the philostopher and see what he says
Matt Damon on shrapnel, chronic hemorrhoids, bongs, and joining the national guard.
http://dailybail.com/home/good-will-hunting-got-it-right.html
Here, Photi, you’re still awake:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2liR4AOZ1EU
The faces of McCain and Romney are priceless in this one too.
Ron Paul talks common sense on Iran, starting at minute 4:20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EeEcL-dq_8
“Americans make false promises to the world, which, in their own desperate hopes the world accepts at face value. These promises never come true, as with the treaties with the Indians. Every single one was broken,” John Kaminski, an American writer, Sept.9, 2011.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/palestinian-state-and-israeli-hasbara/
If Ahmadinejad says it, it’s anti-Semitic. Tony Judt, not much.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/tony-judts-final-word-on-israel/245051/2/?single_page=true
My previous post was aimed at James.
You write Rich and powerful Jews told Truman he ““would be ridden out of Washington on a rail”” if he failed to recognise Israel immediately.
That kind of threat (nearly 60 years ago) is interesting. Have you read it someplace? If so please let me know.
In the background of my mind Truman is a religious man (although I am always skeptical when I hear a politician pretending to be religious, except G.W. Bush and Tony Blair!)
The most striking quote I remember from Truman is “Atomic Bomb is a gift from God to Americans”
fyi says:
September 14, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Dearest resident illustrious physicist, fyi:
I’m still waiting for an answer.
I think you are on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough. That might be me not studying my physics, perhaps you have broken through. Your unique insight did not occur to drafters of the 9/11 commission report, nor to National Institute of Science and technology, the agency responsible for explaining the three building collapses. Or, maybe it did occur to them, in which case please tell me which page of the reports to re-read.
Again, thanks in advance.
UU,
Is Saudi Arabia funding the opposition “army” in Syria?
Perhaps Prince Turki al-Faisal should get credit for strong support of Palestinian statehood bid at UN.
European Council on Foreign Relations has issued a report: “Why Europeans Should Vote Yes” on Palestinian statehood bid at UN.
I recommend Jonathan Freedland’s “Britain should say yes to Palestinian statehood – - and so should Israel”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/13/britain-yes-to-palestinian-statehood
Unknown Unknowns,
I think per capita wealth of the Italians is about $250,000. This apparently is higher than that of “whites” in the US, and many times that of “blacks” in the US.
Joe
“During the military exercises, a missile fired by an F-5 fighter jet was instantly detected and destroyed by a Mig-29 fighter jet.”
This is a direct quote from the Farsnews article posted by Pirouz_2 and that is exactly what is seen in the Pictures posted at Farsnews. This is not something new for the IRIAF they have been using this training methode for years because its cheap and simple. Iranian media as well as other media are not military experts and tend to misunderstand military related matters and in this case have wrongly stated that this is an anti-missile system. I have also read anouther similar article that made it sound as though the F-5 had Fired a Missile AT the MiG-29 and that the missile was intersepted.
Unknown Unknowns,
The “hikers” probably would not have had anything in their possession to indicate what they were doing, apart from hiking. But a release before the UN General Assembly meets probably is a sensible move, as we discussed.
The British have sent a very good team to Tripoli, and we can hope public order in the country is restored fairly soon, that oil and gas production resume as fast as possible, etc. Dominick Asquith, the Special Representative from the UK, formerly was ambasador to Egypt and Iraq.
Clint,
The article in Atlantic by Ali Vaez and Charles Ferguson, that you linked, is worth reading. Thanks. Iran is credited with much better transparency as of late, and taken to task for producing 20% U. I think you are right that it is about as good as one can hope for these days, from mainstream US magazine.
http://www.farsnews.com/plarg.php?nn=27631&st=92639
The moment of impact.
http://www.farsnews.com/plarg.php?nn=27622&st=92639
In this picture we can see the F-5 breaking away after it launched the target rocket while the MiG-29 is firing its R-73 at the target rocket.
@ Bahram,
But the picture is not accompanying the news. The article is saying a completely different thing. It is discussing incoming anti-air missiles and their intercept. These are two different things.
Joe
http://www.farsnews.com/plarg.php?nn=27630&st=92639
In this picture you can see the R-73 aam streaking towards the target Rocket from the rear. If it was an anti-air to air missile it would have to engage its target from the head on.
fyi says:
September 14, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Dearest resident physics genious, fyi:
Consider a 308 Win. cartridge, which develops about 3000 joules of KE at the hundred yards mark. It’s impact cross-section on a bulletproof glass is less than one square centimeter. Is that enough KE, that according to you when it coverts to heat, to melt a small hole through the glass?
If not, why not?
BTW 308win weighs 150 grain (9.7 grams) and has a speed of 2600 feet/s after 100 yard travel.
BiBiJon says:
September 14, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Methinks you are correct. That, in any case, is the broad vector of Turkey’s pendulum.
fyi says “It would be helpful if you and your colleague Mr. Unknown-Unknowns had the decency to admit that even the Americans might be telling the truth in this case.”
Weasels are incapable of telling the truth, even when they are telling the truth. While it is true that even a garbage can gets a steak once in a while, Weasels don’t get squat. They are garbage cans in the land of vegetarians.
You may now return to genuflecting before Uncle Weasel and kissing his Ring, until the schizophrenia meds ware off again.
Unknown Unknowns says:
September 14, 2011 at 2:19 pm
UU,
reagrding Iran and Turkey (Egypt and the Arab Spring):
There’s been much chatter about Iran voicing displeasure with Assad, or Turkey becoming pro-Palestinian, etc. If these events are not discussed in isolation, then MSM refers to them in the context such as Iran-Turkey jockeying, or Arab vs Iranian, or Sunni vs Shiite.
I have not come across any analysis that sees various (and changing) positions taken by the important actors in the region as a sign of then drawing closer on geopolitical issues which necessitates one to heat up her rhetoric, as another cools hers. The apparent jostle is not indicative of rivalry. It is indicative of long-term vision of an enduring alliance that necessitates readjusting certain positions. Methinks.
BiBiJon says: September 14, 2011 at 3:34 pm
You are missing the mass in your comparison with bullet-proof glass.
Please learn some physics before wasting my time.
It would be helpful if you and your colleague Mr. Unknown-Unknowns had the decency to admit that even the Americans might be telling the truth in this case.
The Atlantic has a piece on the Iranian nuclear program written by people at Federation of AMerican Scientists — pretty good but still seems they don’t highlight the IAEA’s over-reach and Amano’s bias:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/on-irans-nuclear-program-science-contradicts-rhetoric/245030/
Seems to be trapped in the DC politically possible realm……
@ Bahram,
I beg to differ. The article does not mention what you say at all. It specifically says the system counters anti-air missiles and not testing of air2air missiles. Anyways, air2air missiles are usually tested on cheap drones and not on small rockets such as those fired from F-5.
Pirouz_2 & Joe
That article is verry misleading. It is referring to a Cheap method used by the IRIAF to test fire Its heat seaking air to air Missles. In this case IT was an F-5 flying along side a MiG-29. The F-5 Fired an Unguided target rocket and the MiG-29 then locked on and Fired an R-73 IR guided air to air missile that destroyed the target rocket.
fyi says:
September 14, 2011 at 2:34 pm
“I have a message for you: in Iran, no thinking person doubts that 19 Muslim Arabs attacked the United States.”
fyi,
Do thinking Iranians subscribe to your ground-breaking, seminal theory:
=================
When an object with a very large kinetic energy comes to a sudden and abrupt rest, its kinetic energy is converted into thermal energy.
http://www.raceforiran.com/is-americas-traditional-grand-strategy-in-the-middle-east-over#comment-42884
Repeated:
When a moving object suddently stops, its kinetic energy is converted into heat.
That energy is given by e=1/2 m V ^ 2.
In such situations, the material object first melts – then the molten material cuts through all in its path like a hot knife through butter; it melts steel.
,http://www.raceforiran.com/iran-and-syria-america%E2%80%99s-middle-east-pundits-get-it-wrong-again#comment-55694
==========================================
Could you please explain why your average bullet fails to go through a bulletproof glass? Thanks a bunch of kilo-joules in advance.
If you are hoping that blaming Arabs will save Iran from being accused of complicity in 9/11, then aren’t you a little late?
@ Pirouz_2,
No where in the news it mentions specifically that the system physically destroys the incoming missiles. It is most probably an electronic/electro-optic intercept system which renders the missiles useless. It is a sophisticated piece of equipment but whether the first version of Iranian made ones are as effective as top of the line western equipment is any body’s argument. But the important thing here is not perhaps the sophistication of the system but the fact that Iranians have ventured into such technologies and as time passes, they will become better in producing more high tech equipment.
fyi says “in Iran, no thinking person doubts that 19 Muslim Arabs attacked the United States.”
Source this outrageous allegation, kind sir, if ye can. For methinks ye be up to yer neck in shyte.
James:
Yes, perhaps so. It might well be a good move. Especially after they failed to produce the “evidence”. It is all well and good to have the trial in closed sessions, but it seems to me that the releasing of evidence, if indeed they have any, which I doubt, would be in the national interest (rather than keeping it secret).
Unknown Unknowns says: September 14, 2011 at 2:26 pm
You best pay attention to the fact that after 9/11/2001 attacks, it was soley the Arabs who denied that the perpetrators were Muslim Arabs.
And now you are repeating the same garbage.
Well, I have a message for you: in Iran, no thinking person doubts that 19 Muslim Arabs attacked the United States.
You can go and push your conspiracy theory or theories as much as you like; it is irrelevant.
hans:
Yes, please do elaborate, but also, do take a chill pill :D
Em, further to this quote, posted yesterday,
“It is said that men go mad in herds, and only come to their senses slowly, and one by one.” -Charles MacKay
I give you:
“Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
Freddie Kruger, I mean Nietzsche, before he was taken over by madness.
fyi says “Stop acting like an ignorant Arab.”
I seem to have touched a sore nerve. This is the second time you have vilified an entire race, the pinnacle of which is one you avow to be your prophet.
My advice to you is to stop being such a bigoted anti-semite! :D Our host & hostess might take umbrage.
In my humbling opinion, (following the late great Marshall Hodgeson, actually), the proximity of Iranians and Arabs both in terms of geography, and culturally, spiritually, et c., it is more fruitful to think in terms of an Irano-Semitic amalgam.
BiBiJon says “Imagine having to define the West in terms like 1 in 6 Americans are at or below poverty line, and the endemic social injustices that represents.”
Nice paragraph and punchline. And imagine what that ratio would be if the criterion for poverty was redefined to be something north of the pitiless $22,000 p.a. for a family of four.
I wonder if anyone knows of a site such as http://www.shadowstats.com/ that has taken the effort to come up with the real numbers. I would not be surprised if the actual ratio of people living at or below the poverty line in the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world is 1 in 4 or even i in 3, with the rest a paycheck or two away from bankruptcy.
I recommend Kurt Vonnegut’s “Player Piano” for a good portrayal of slavery in its modern guise.
O Spartacus, Where art thou??
UU,
Perhaps should say “would be good move” (release of hikers at this time).
Unknown Unknowns,
that is a great lite you linked (for Eric and Arnold). “Turkey eyes intel cooperation with Iran, Iraq” is worth reading too. I think Erdogan is tired of Israeli support for Kurdish terrorists operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Unknown Unknowns,
Wasn’t the release of the two “hikers” a reasonable move, prior to UN General Assembly meeting in NYC this month?
BiBiJon,
The “US Mediabots” who persist in serving as propagandists for Zionist expansionism, are in most cases rewarded in various ways by rich and powerful Jews in the US who favor permanent oppression of the Palestinians.
kooshy,
Is there any country in the UN, apart from Israel, that does not see the borders of Palestine as the Green Line, in effect? All countries see the colonies of Jews built in the West Bank as illegal under international law.
kooshy says:
September 14, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Just a reminder that Plaestine is not alone. Israel too has no internationally recognized borders. Or, at least what is recognized is the 1949 armistice, the green line.
kooshy,
Israel was recognised by the UN without borders that were accepted by the international community.
Humanist,
And we also should bear in mind that all of Truman’s foreign policy and military advisers told him not to recognise Israel when the borders of Israel were in dispute.
Rich and powerful Jews told Truman he “would be ridden out of Washington on a rail” if he failed to recognise Israel immediately.
Humanist,
Great post. And we should remember that John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s secretary of state, wanted to force Israel to evacuate a portion of the territory taken during the 1948-49 war. Dulles wanted to get closer to a 50/50 territorial split. And now, with the Palestinians amenable to having a state with but 22% of what was Palestine in 1947, Israel wants more! And stooge US politicians try to help Israel take more!
Fyi
“The recognition of the State of Palestine effectively means that the State of Israel is illegalling occupying and populating a sovereign state.’
How that is possible if one wouldn’t be able to determine and recognize the borders that form the state of Palestine, full sovereignty of a state can be recognized only when there is internationally recognized borders otherwise this is just another PR campaign to delay the inevitable.
None of the states that so far have recognized the state of Palestine have recognized her current boarders, this is meaningless, this is just like if I recognize that you exist but can’t accept your nationality and don’t know what to do with you.
The FBI was monitoring Israeli diplomats operating out of Chicago, New York and Washington, spreading false stories about Iran in effort to clear the way for war with Iran (by deceiving the American public with planted stories in the news media).
Seattle Times article about Richard Silverstein:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016189267_espionage13m.html
Eric
You question the worry of Israel / US on UN General Assembly’s recognitions of state of Palestine.
Isn’t that legally similar to the creation of Israel by UN?.Causing a ‘huge thing’ materializing out of practically ‘nothing’? (Palestinians claim before 1948 only 3% of the population was Jewish who owned 7% of the land)
I am illiterate on legal issues but in my view, ignoring the chronic problems of poverty, abuse of the weak masses and the ruthlessness of colonial powers, the issue of Palestinian sufferings is the most agonizing fresh wound on the body of our humanity. This view is (This view is obviously opposed by those who have no sympathy for human pain)
I am sure great majority (if not all) of the truly independent members of UN would despairingly try to somehow reverse the tragic UN wrong of 1948.
Wouldn’t that, among other implications, be a strong denunciation of activities of Israel, its puppets and US?
Isn’t that a real ‘big’ and hard to ignore condemnation?
Arrogance has its limits, when great majority of audience boos a speaker, he/she better decide to leave the auditorium.
BiBiJon,
Thanks for link to Sharmine Narwani’s exposure of latest rubbish from Jonathan Tobin in Commentary magazine (where a great deal of rubbish about what is going on in the Middle East can be found).
Israel lobby attacks Turkey because Turkey wants minimum justice for the Palestinians, and Israel out of the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
Reza,
Thanks for the link to that poll. And interesting to see that almost twice as many Democrats as Republicans, see US influence in the world as having increased over the past 10 years! Must be simply that a Democrat is in the White House.
But the great majority of Americans, according to the poll, see the obvious: that US influence has declined.
Sharmine Narwani takes a deep look at that Zogby poll:
“US policies, therefore, rarely get challenged in any meaningful way. Even after glaring failures like the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, nuclear negotiations with Iran, false WMD intelligence about Iraq, an unsuccessful “War on Terror,” etc., US MediaBots faithfully report from the perspective of the same misguided American politicians and special interest groups.”
http://mideastshuffle.com/2011/09/12/feeding-the-beast-when-journalists-fuel-harmful-narratives/
Arnold Evans says:
September 14, 2011 at 12:48 pm
“My feeling is still that there is a fear that Israel might end the peace process using the pretext of UN recognition.”
Arnold, what is the “peace process?” What are going to be the tell-tale signs that it has been “ended?”
The Seattle Times article yesterday about Richard Silverstein did not mention that the Israeli diplomats being monitored by the FBI were conspiring with officials of both AIPAC and WINEP, and US politicians, to plant false stories about Iran in US newspapers to deceive the American public, in effort to set up war with Iran.
Jonathan Martin did quote Brian Baird, the former US Congressman from Vancouver, Washington State: “”There’s an attitude [by Israeli government] that anyone who questions Israel is anti-Israel. I find that anti-American.” Baird was one of the few US Congressmen with the courage to speak up on behalf of the Palestinians.
Arnold,
Avigdor Lieberman is unwilling to have a viable independent Palestine in any event, so Abbas is quite right to seek UN recognition with 1967 borders.
Seattle Times had interesting story Sept. 13th regarding FBI programme to monitor Israeli diplomats conspiring to set up war with Iran (“Seattle blogger inflames left and right alike about Israeli security issues”, by Jonathan Martin).
My feeling is still that there is a fear that Israel might end the peace process using the pretext of UN recognition.
Abbas is less afraid of this than Obama is, because Abbas has decided that Obama claiming to be fair while actually favoring Israel right or wrong is, now, just as bad or worse for the PA than him openly favoring Israel right or wrong.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/8762950/Israel-warns-of-harsh-consequences-of-Palestinian-UN-bid.html
Hardline Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned on Wednesday there would be “harsh and grave consequences” if the Palestinians persist with their plan to seek UN membership as a state.
‘What I can say with the greatest confidence is that from the moment they pass a unilateral decision there will be harsh and grave consequences,’ Lieberman told an agricultural conference in southern Israel.
Speaking shortly before a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, he did not elaborate on the possible consequences.
“The moment has not yet come to give details of what will happen,” he said.
Quite irrelevant to the topic at hand:
Pirouz and/or Galen;
Would you have a look at this news and tell me if it makes any sense to you?
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9006230006
I had heard of “evading” Air-to-air (or surface-to-air) missiles, but it is the first time I hear about “destroying” an air-to-air missile. Is there any plausibility to this announcement or is it just military BS?
Eric Brill, Arnold Evans and Masoud etc. may want to check legal and technical details being discussed at:
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com
A little out my depth but I think this is good chance to influence debate at the IAEA
Unknown Unknowns says: September 14, 2011 at 1:22 am
Rubbish.
Stop acting like an ignorant Arab.
Unknown Unknowns says: September 14, 2011 at 12:08 am
Iranian judiciary is a work-in-progress.
It is populated by foolish judges and inept prosecutors.
Look no futher than Mr. Aqajeri’s blasphemy trial.
And unlike the United States or United Kingdom, there is no right to “Habeas Corpus”.
The trial, however, was behind closed doors; similar in that US security courts.
Eric A. Brill says: September 13, 2011 at 10:19 pm
and
Arnold Evans says: September 13, 2011 at 11:35 pm
The recognition of the State of Palestine effectively means that the State of Israel is illegalling occupying and populating a sovereign state.
Every single individual carrying out such policies, together with settlers, are thus criminals under international law.
They can be prosecuted.
Furthermore, the US veto in UNSC will further damage, if not destroy, the US position among Muslims and Muslim states.
Every single state that votes against the State of Palestine resolution in UNGA has to justify that vote to her citizens and to others.
For example, Australia will without a doubt vote against Palestinian state. Then they will have to explain to the whole world why 750,000 dirt farmers in East Timor deserved Australia’s support in becoming a state but not 5 million Palestinians.
Furthermore, the creation of the Paelstinian state opens up the possibility of material and financial aide to Palestinian fighters, they no longer will be terrorists under international law but Freedom Fighters and Partsians; like the Free French and the Partsians in Yugoslavia or USSR during WWII.
This is an excellent move by Palestinians.
I note that the vote for or against Palestine is a vote for or against Islam.
Even as He Clashes With Israel, Turkey’s Erdogan is Displacing Iran’s Influence
Posted by Tony Karon
Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/14/even-as-he-clashes-with-israel-turkeys-erdogan-is-displacing-irans-influence/#ixzz1Xvm26z77
Here we go again: the horse race between Turkey and Iran for the mantle of justice for Arabs.
Note to Tony: People in the region find the other Tony (Blair) to be more honest when he says forthrightly the Western civilization is in peril if the Muslim world wakes up. Look Tony, Western material, spiritual and intellectual sense of self-worth is tied up with demeaning others. Analysis, such as yours, that sows the seeds of division and rivalry among Muslims in general, and among power houses of Mid East, Iran, Turkey and Egypt in particular, coming from a westerner who desperately needs that disunity among the nations of Mid East is not worth the paper it is written on. So self-serving it is that it defies characterization. I empathize of course. Imagine having to define the West in terms like 1 in 6 Americans are at or below poverty line, and the endemic social injustices that represents.
hans says:
September 14, 2011 at 6:33 am
You wrote :
“”You seem to forget the Iranian government supports these Weasel-Gesellschaften barbarism in Libya,…”"
Hans , it is arduous [sch(w)eißtreibend] to look through your line of thought , may be you could elaborate further…
“Some religious bigotry called Islamic Awakening”
I object to the unwarranted sense of superiority of the ‘awake’ towards the ‘asleep’.
Has anyone seen this WPO poll?
It is a survey of U.S public opinion on the 911 decade and the consequences it had for American power and prestige:
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep11a/9-11Anniversary_Sep11_quaire.pdf
Most Americans seem to think that U.S influence has diminished.
On Palestinian Statehood
=======================
I think it is more constructive to think in opposite terms. PA’s push at the UN (GA, or UNSC) for statehood will put front and center Palestinian statelessness.
What was after WW I, an A category mandate, I.e. essentially ready to function as a state, is forced to wallow in stateless purgatory for one reason: The United States.
In turn, PA’s statelessness will highlight UNSC’s undemocratic nature, further sullying all of that body’s resolutions as arbitrary, unfair and unjust.
@Unknown Unknowns says:
September 14, 2011 at 1:28 am
Here we go again with Prince Turki Wahhabistani petrodollar hush money funding more Weasel-Gesellschaften barbarism.
You seem to forget the Iranian government supports these Weasel-Gesellschaften barbarism in Libya, in fact it even calls them Revolutionaries and some religious bigotry called Islamic Awakening. I am not sure the President of IRI supports them but definitely the SL and the parliament do.
Eric A. Brill says:
September 13, 2011 at 10:19 pm
Eric, this puts Obama in the hot seat not unlike President Kennedy during the civil rights movement. Only worse, as Obama’s third world descent potentially puts him into Uncle Tom territory on the global stage.
Syrian opposition forms military battalions ‘without partisan interest’
ANKARA — Syria’s opposition has reported the formation of a military to fight President Bashar Assad.
The opposition said the so-called Free Syrian Army has formed several battalions assigned to fight Assad forces in central and northern Syria. The units were identified as the Muawiya Ibn Abu Sufyan and the Abu Ubeida Bin Jarrah, meant for deployment in the Damascus. In August, the Free Army said it established its first battalion in the northeastern city of Homs, a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency.
*
Here we go again with Prince Turki Wahhabistani petrodollar hush money funding more Weasel-Gesellschaften barbarism.
fyi says: “I respectfully decline to debate what, to me, are established facts.”
Paul Craig Roberts and I agree with you: To the eternal shame of this country and its hear no evil and see no evil, but talk plenty of evil sheeple, there *is* no debate.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29114.htm
There are 40 comments below the article. Read them just to get a feel of their position, then tell me that the facts regarding the matter are “established”.
There are two types of responses in situations such as these:
1) The typical one, which is “paradigmatic”, i.e., if it fits in my paradigm-cocoon, I will entertain it; otherwise, forget about it.
2) The empirical approach, which lets the facts lead them where they will, come what may.
Fact: Buildings do not come down at freefall speed.
Fact: Nanothermite residue abounds in the WTC dust (as do millions of molten steel micro-spheres)
Etc., etc., etc.
Photi:
I agree: their expressions were priceless :o)
As far as his domestic policies, (1) I think they will be tempered by the realities of office once he is in, and (2) can they really be any worse than George the Younger and Barry White’s? I doubt it. Besides, one the biggest problem with the economy is its being bled to death by the military budget. His foreign policy (if they let him implement it before they assassinate him) will stop the bleeding. That alone wil be a huge boon for the economy. Another thing he wants to do (again, another reason he will not survive the vetting process) is to abolish the Federal Reserve system, which is a system whereby the US Government is charged interest for the money that is created in order to keep pace with the natural growth of the size of the economy due to productivity and increased efficiency. Currently, a large portion of the annual budget goes to service the interest on the debt the US government owes the private interests who own the Federal Reserve (which is no more “Federal” than Federal Express; well, its a little more complex than that, but ultimately, that’s what it boils down to) who have been charging Uncle Weasel interest for the privilege of printing money for him since 1913. Stopping *that* kind of massive hemorrhage will be another unprecedented boon.
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5318883/Creature_From_Jekyll_Island_by_G._Edward_Griffin_.PDF
Egypt pleased Iran finally handed over brother of Sadat assassin
Ahram Online: An Egyptian diplomatic source said that Iran’s recent initiative to send back to Cairo two men long wanted by his government on criminal charges represents a positive step towards better Egyptian-Iranian relations.
Iran has recently handed over to Egypt Mostafa Hamed, a prominent Al-Qaeda’s operative and historian, and Mohamed Shawky El-Islamboly, brother of Sadat assassin Khaled, who is facing the death penalty at home. The two men have taken took refuge in Iran for years. The diplomatic source added that Egypt is keen on bridging its relations with Iran. However, they said that there are still several issues that need to be sorted out between the two countries including those dealing with the security of the Arab Gulf countries.
Iran to give $100 mn aid to Pakistan
Tehran: Iran will donate USD 100 million to Pakistan to help rehabilitate its flood affected people in the country’s Sindh province, a media report said. Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar made the announcement during a meeting with visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani here on Sunday.
*
They should have denominated the aid in Yuans!
Can anyone say why Iran’s treatment of the whole “hiker” issue has been so inept?
Who is responsible for this ineptitude?
First they don’t give them a speedy trial. Then they release one. Then they try them, without providing any evidence. Then they sentence them. And now they want to release them “on bail”! Whoever hear of a post-sentencing release on bail?? Really stupid stuff. Obviously the problem is not Salehi. So is it that Ahmadinejad does not have final authority and forces from within the Bayt-e Rahbari (Office of the Supreme Leader) keep baiting and switching on him? If so, this is, I regret to say, a really bad black eye for our esteemed Leader.
My list of UNSC members was incomplete, I left out Brazil and India. I don’t think either is likely to vote against Palestine.
Arnold and Eric:
In case you missed the link to this important site, posted by the great VoT a few weeks back:
http://irdiplomacy.ir/en
Unknown Unknowns,
The expressions on Gingrich’s and Santorum’s faces at the end of the highlights you linked to are priceless! They think that Ron Paul is the spectacle! The incredulity of fools.
If Paul wouldn’t be such a disaster for domestic politics i’d be more inclined to vote for him.
Eric A. Brill says:
September 13, 2011 at 10:19 pm
Eric, I think when we are talking about admitting a member of the UN, the relevant clause concerning the UNSC voting procedure is paragraph 2 of Article 27:
2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members.
Which contrasts sharply with paragraph 3 of that same article:
3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.
Also, I believe that by convention, an ‘abstention’, should be considered an affirmative vote. I think the Palestinians said are waiting until Lebanon assumes presidency of the UNSC, this may be more than symbolism.
This means Israel needs to get to 6. The players are: US, France, Germany, Britain, Russia, China, Bosnia, Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Columbia, Germany, Portugal and South Africa.
Now, I’ll give them the US, France, Germany and Britain. The swing votes will probably be Columbia, Portugal, and Gabon. I think Arab/Muslim public opinion is too important to the other members for them to vote explicitly against Palestine, although I could of course be wrong.
I wonder what the US/Israeli response would be if the GA went ahead and conferred full member status to the delegation without consulting the UNSC(They might be able, for instance, to interpret some prior UNSC resolution on the conflict ‘creatively’). I guess they would either have to muster up a security council resolution banning the recognition of a Palestinian state, and get it to pass by a two thirds majority, or otherwise, file suit at the ICJ. Neither sounds like a whole lot of fun.
Even if the resolution doesn’t pass the security council, the GA can certainly take steps to make the PA delegation ‘more like’ a state until the distinction is virtually blurred.
I think at the end of the day, it is not so important what the outcome of this process is. What is important is that this is the first real diplomatic initiative taken by the PA since Oslo. That’s what’s really got their knickers in a knot. The US and Israel may be able to pull out all the stops and avert disaster this time, but it is a diplomatically expensive process, and not one that is very sustainable. The US will not enjoy being isolated at a time like this, and Egypt and Turkey are making it harder and harder for Israel to slaughter Palestinians. And that’s basically their entire toolbox(except of course for starting yet another war….)
More, I think Netanyahu would rather the US say “Israel right or wrong” than what the US is saying now about working for justice for all. Because if not today, then maybe tomorrow the peace process will end and when it does, it is better that the US had already formally or at least publicly made that commitment.
My best guess is that Netanyahu is the wild card here.
Eric, I also don’t see what the fuss is about.
My best guess is that Netanyahu might use it as a justification for more provocations against the Palestinians, for example, saying that Israel is no longer bound by any limit to the speed of settlement expansion.
Where it hurts is if either side says the peace process is now over. Abbas is clear that he will not say that Netanyahu has not been. But the peace process is a core of the US liberal justification for supporting Israel as an occupying country. Netanyahu may not respect that core, thinking AIPAC and Co. can bulldoze their agenda through the US political system without the fig of a peace process.
If Abbas calls Netanyahu’s bluff, then Netanyahu may call Obama’s and the US political system’s bluff. Obama would not want that.
Obama can say “the US is being fair and working hard to build a Palestinian state and supports Israel for the sakes of everyone”. But a peace process is an important part of him being able to say that. Can Obama say “Israel, right or wrong”?
And if he does, Erdogan moves closer to Ahmadinejad, calls for Egyptian elections become more fierce and more likely to produce an Egyptian Erdogan, at the very least and there is a real question of how remaining colonies (assuming Egypt leaves relatively soon, still Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and others) will respond and how much pressure will be brought to bear on them.
Obama wants there to be a peace process. Abbas too, Netanyahu, a lot less so.
This might be a step toward breaking the peace process that Obama is uncomfortably worried might not be containable.
Eric: good to see you back. Yours is a good question to which I have no answer. All I can contribute is what I heard on the tail end of Amy Goodman’s interview with Chomsky on today’s edition of Democracy Now, where the Left Gatekeeper said that he did not believe the Palestinians would be asking for full statehood, settling for an “enhanced observer status” (whatever that means – he didn’t elaborate), because they will know that if they do not settle for this, the US will cut off all funding and Israel will choke off all Palestinian funds flow over which it has control.
I don’t know what’s going on, but it seems to me the mood in Egypt is highly volatile relative to the US & Israel just trampling on the rights and aspirations of the Palestinians. Methinks possibly that element is a major part of the equation.
Ron Paul highlights from last night’s debate. The last minute is very interesting (where he talks about the real motive behind the attacks of 9/11), in terms of the cheers and boos that he got. Needless to say, 9/11 truth is not quite ready for primetime.
http://12160.info/group/ronpaulforpresident2012/forum/topics/ron-paul-highlights-cnn-tea-party-debate?xg_source=activity
Off-topic (upcoming UN vote on Palestine recognition). From NYT article:
“The United States faced increasing pressure on Tuesday as the Palestinian quest for statehood gained support from Turkey and other countries, even as the Obama administration sought an 11th-hour compromise that would avoid a confrontation at the United Nations next week.”
I’ll confess to being totally surprised that the US and Israel are so worked up about this. When the subject first came up months ago, I assumed the General Assembly resolution would just get added to the very long list of anti-Israel resolutions that have been entirely ignored by the US and Israel over the years.
What am I missing here? Why does this one have the US and Israel so worried?
Empty,
“I have found several of the Pacific Northwest areas quite breathtaking. I am not surprised that you feel right at home. I also agree that getting to see Iran’s wilderness in a visa-approved way is far more respectful (and less hazardous) than just “happening upon” it.”.
How unfortunate the hikers. The bottom line is that as late as 2008 the US has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to destabilize the Iranian “regime”. I don’t know what Americans expect. I shudder the thought what would happen if Iran pledged that kind of money to destabilize the American regime.
I am quite serious though about volunteering to plant trees (or to build trails, or to survey potential areas for back country trekking). I am a carpenter by trade but Obamanomics hasn’t quite worked out here in these parts, so it is not like i have much going on at the moment. Anyway, keep it in mind for a rainy day. I have no doubt Iran’s imprint is an essential ingredient to my soul which i do not yet have.
Fiorangela says: September 12, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Fio,
Thanks for the link to Tyler Kent case!
It goes to show you that in the two tiered justice system in the West, the rich and powerful can pretty much get away with murder, whereas the poor whom can’t make $350 bail for petty crime of sleeping in car ( as documented by NPR) languish in jail for years to benefit the prison industrial complex.
Former US Congressman, Rev. Walter Edward Fauntroy 78 (D 1971-90)), was in Tripoli when the city was run-over by NATO-supported rebels. After escaping from the rebel controlled Libya, he gave an interview in his hometown Northwest DC. In which he claimed that mass killing of civilians as reported by the western media were not done by Qaddafi’s loyalists or the rebels – but the French and Danish soldiers……
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/pastor-fauntroy-european-soldiers-massacred-libyan-civilian/
ANN CURRY INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD SHOWN AT NBC TODAY’S SHOW, TODAY:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/277139/nbc-today-show-a-day-in-the-life-of-irans-president
Very interesting…
Fiorangela,
Great post. And Aipac and other elements of extremist pro-Israel groups do have a choke-hold on the US Congress. Leading neocon Richard Perle said in 2007 that any Congressman opposing a bill (proposed law) in Congress that was supported by Aipac, could expect to lose the next election.
James Canning wrote, at 2:16 pm:
“Yet, Andrea Mitchell challenged the statement! Note that she phrased it thusly: that Ahmadinejad was claiming the president and commander-in-chief “did not have the decision-making power”.”
University of California professor of history Kenneth Waltz agrees with Dr. Ahmadinejad:
“We’re in a real bad spot regarding Israel. American policy makers do NOT have freedom of movement . . . What the executive branch may want to do is often NOT what is going to be permitted by the Congress! Congressmen depend on goodwill toward Israel in order to finance their campaigns; Israel is very influential in the United States because of the press that it enjoys, because of the various ways it has of influencing the American press. . . .”
So did Yale University Prof. Bradley Westerfield, the intellectual who most influenced Dick Cheney’s thinking. In the early 1950s, Westerfield wrote:
““Palestine is the classic case in recent years of the determination of American foreign policy and domestic political considerations. . . .” :http://www.raceforiran.com/iran-and-al-qa%E2%80%99ida-can-the-charges-be-substantiated-3#comment-53281
University professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer also agree with Dr. Ahmadinejad :http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby
How credible is Andrea Mitchell when her position is more closely allied with that of Alan Greenspan, her husband, who, after he screwed up the US economy, admitted to a US Senate committee that the theory he was working under — Randian economics — “might have had a flaw.”
Loz,
Ahmadinejad also told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News that Muslims are not against Christians or Jews, and that Zionist organizations in the US are blocking Obama’s wishes to improve US-Iran relations. TOTALLY TRUE, AND EXTREMELY OBVIOUS TO ANYONE FOLLOWING THIS MATTER! Yet, Andrea Mitchell challenged the statement! Note that she phrased it thusly: that Ahmadinejad was claiming the president and commander-in-chief “did not have the decision-making power”. Rubbish! Obama obviously has the power to make the decision, but he is prevented from using that power due to overwhelming political strength of the Jews in America (in alliance with idiot Christian Zionists).
Rehmat,
You are quite right that Israel, and American neocons, work to undermine the territorial integrity of Iraq, Iran and Turkey, and of course Syria, by supporting Kurdish terrorists.
Rehmat,
Re: neocon delusions in 2006 about “winning” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their foolish notions that weakening Iran was to the way forward. Jacques Chirac told Tony Blair before the illegal invasion of Iraq that the result of that illegal invasion would be a Shia government in control of the country, and friendly toward Iran.
Iran’s considerable assistance is essential for minimum stability to be achieved in Afghanstan. Foolish neocons refuse to accept that fact. And Aipac and other extremist Jewish organizations in the US of course refuse to accept it.
Kathleen,
Great posts. And what a spectacle, for Ron Paul to be booed because he says the truth about the motives of Osama bin Laden! A large portion of the Republican Party base in America is ignorant and actually stupid, virtually beyond belief.
Fiorangela,
Great post and I of course also commend Philip Weiss and his site.
And yes, it would be interesting to see identified the names of the people who are trying to suppress discussion in the US regarding Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, even on public radio etc etc.
Lin to NPR Talk of the Nation blog
Call in at 2 pm est. 1-800- 989 talk
http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2011/09/13/140410138/september-13th-whats-on-todays-show
Dore Gold and Neil Conan are likely to use this hour to repeat rah rah Israel. So call and challenge them with facts.
Send in your questions for Dore Gold on Talk of the Nation today.
Israel Under Siege
Call in at 2 pm est. Be polite, tell them you are a first time caller, that you love the show yada yada. Sometimes the screeners at TOTN are so pro Israel that they can not see or think straight. Be factual, polite and have a reasonable question. Get on air be polite and ask what you want. Stay on topic
link to npr.org
My comments at the blog of the nation (I have gotten through many times over the years so highly unlikely my questions will be asked. Give it a try. Millions of people listen to these shows so good way to inform the public, send them to this site or Mondoweiss for factual information and diverse discussions and opinions..go for it
my comments
“Former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit Micheal Scheuer and other former CIA analyst have stated that one of the main reasons for the anger, hatred and violence directed towards the US is the US support for Israel no matter how many illegal settlements and illegal housing in East Jerusalem they continue to build and expand.
When will Dore Gold and others who continue to spin the reasons for the anger address the real reasons… Israel’s continued defiance of International agreements and treaties.”
“Last night during the Republican debates the brave Rep Paul brought up the stated Al Qeada reasons for the attack on 9/11
quote “Ron Paul was booed at the CNN/Tea Party Republican debate on Monday night after saying that al Qaeda did not attack the United States because “we’re free,” but because of U.S. military operations in the Middle East and the nation’s “unfair” treatment of Palestinians.
“This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and their attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true,” he said, eliciting some cheers from the crowd.
But as he continued, the cheers were drowned out with boos.
“Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment,” Paul said before being interrupted by more boos. “I didn’t say that, I’m just trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombings.”
Rick Santorum repeated the lies that most of our Reps repeat “they hate us for our freedoms”
BiBiJon,
Yes, there is room for Egypt, Iran and Turkey, and of course Saudi Arabia and Israel. As powers in the Middle East. Israel needs to accept it can be rich and powerful within pre-1967 borders. And US neocons need to comprehend that fact.
A leader (editorial) in Financial Times today fingers Netanyahu as the primary guilty party blocking resolution of Israel/Palestine problem. Correctly, of course.
Loz,
Thanks for the link to Andrea Mitchell’s interview with president of Iran, in Tehran. Ahmadinejad said Muslims do not hate Americans, and Americans do not hate Muslims, but that Zionists in the US try to foster fear and hatred of Muslims. Mitchell challenged that statement but it seems obvious to anyone following the matter that Ahmadinejad is quite right.
Short clip of a fresh interview with Ahmadinejad where he points out the obvious. Just ignore the reporter though who tries to ridicule him as always.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpgkIK9apHs
Kathleen, and RFI all,
In the wake of a purge of Arab and Black American participants on DailyKos, Simone Daud, a highly respected Israeli Arab voice for Palestinians who was banned from DKos in that purge, has joined the Mondoweiss and linked his blog, Arab Sources to Weiss’s efforts.
Phil Weiss is to be congratulated, and supported, for his efforts to open up the conversation on US-Israel-Palestine relations. Well done, Philip Weiss. (I hereby recant and apologize for an earlier, petulant denunciation of Mondoweiss.)
Phil concentrates on Palestine activism, and the addition of Simone Daud strengthens that branch of Mondoweiss’s work.
Nima Shirazi is occasionally featured on Mondoweiss, but a stronger presence of Iranians or advocates for Iran on Mondoweiss would round out their coverage nicely.
by the way, Kathleen, in a comment on Mondo, you observed that Diane Rehm has gone AIPAC, and allows little coverage of Israel/Palestine issues. C Span is following suit. Not only the guests on Washington Journal, and the attitudes and actions of the moderators on WJ, but also the selection of books/authors that C Span interviews, and the events videographed, suggest a bias in favor of Israel and Israel advocates on C Span. Peter Slen, Connie Doebele, and Susan Swain maintain a high degree of professionalism and objectivity, but not so the rest of C Span’s on-air personalities. Wonder who/what got to them, who is in the background pulling strings? NPR, similar situation.
finally, Kathleen, re the DKos purge (aka Markos Gone Wild), Volleyboy, one of the vilest of the pro-zionists on the site, has announced that he is leaving the forum, having had his privileges curtailed. rats and ships and all that.
Thank you for the very informative writeup. in my experience things are slighly more complicated. time will tell, but the problem is I do not have enough time. anyway, it is good to know we are not alone in the struggle. but you might want to reconsider some fragments in your post. after all, if it can do all that, why do we even need the rest anylonger? just a bit. cheers
Photi,
Regarding your post, September 13, 2011 at 9:49 am,
I honestly think that it is the responsibility and obligation of ALL nations to participate in a meaningful and principled way in all areas that concerns human affairs (be they environmental, financial, and the like) on earth. The higher the resources (material, human, technical, etc.), the heavier should be their responsibility and the higher their accountability. Therefore, I won’t single out any one, two, or three country. Every nation’s responsibility is commensurate to her capacity.
Photi,
RE: Regarding 4 and 5 on your list, if you could direct me to further reading on Islam’s view towards protecting the environment, i would be obliged.
I think if you use a more focused approach and an appropriate methodology, the first and foremost authority on the subject is Quran itself. There is also a lot of general sources from hadith such as Nahjol-Balagheh, Ossol_e Kafi, Behar_ol_Anvar, etc. There are also quite a few publications that address Islam and Environment (if you search the web, you could find quite a few in English). I have some criticism of some of the published work that I won’t go into here.
My recommendation would be to start with Quran. You could also wait a few years for the book that is at an early stage by myself to come out in a few years…:) I don’t recommend waiting though….
RE: If you ever have any need for volunteers to plant trees in Iran’s wilderness, you know where to find me. I am from the Pacific Northwest in the US, Washington State. I feel right at home in the mountains and have explored many of Washington’s beautiful alpine meadows. What a great way that would be to see Iran! (the legit, visitor visa-approved way of course).
I have found several of the Pacific Northwest areas quite breathtaking. I am not surprised that you feel right at home. I also agree that getting to see Iran’s wilderness in a visa-approved way is far more respectful (and less hazardous) than just “happening upon” it.
Off topic but relevant as general information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-14897612
St Andrews student sentenced for Israel flag racism
A student at St Andrews University who was found guilty of a racist breach of the peace after he insulted the Israeli flag has been given community service.
Empty,
I am waaay outside my comfort zone when i start opining about economics.
It is my opinion however that the WTO is in dire need of a country like Iran to help it lay out principles of unacceptable behavior if the world is to proceed with globalization.
Globalization does not have to equal corporate tyranny and the ‘lowest common denominator’.
Outside of the issue of human rights, the American left and the Islamic Republic of Iran share many viewpoints in common. Issues of greed, corporate tyranny, rational management of the earth’s resources and the all around disgust with the way in which Mother Earth is being raped everyday all provide areas of mutual concern between American liberals and the Iranian government, that, if cultivated, would lead to a US-Iran policy bursting with mutual interests and congruent policies.
Human Rights, however, and all the propaganda that comes with them stand in the way of these mutual interests being recognized and explored.
Torture, Kafkaesque non-trials of non-prisoner prisoners, the Patriot Act, the War on Terror, decades upon decades of providing cover and finances for Israel’s TERRORfying oppression of the Palestinians and the Arabs generally, the illegal war on Iraq and the slow manifestation of the emerging war with Iran and all the other BULLSHIT Americans do around the globe however are preventing a real discussion in America about those human rights.
President Obama, where’s your head man?
Unknown Unknowns says: September 12, 2011 at 11:02 pm
I respectfully decline to debate what, to me, are established facts.
NY Times is being uncharacteristically evenhanded on Iran.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/world/middleeast/14iran.html
Today we have a story that mentions both the planned release of 2 American “spies” from prison, and VP abbasi’s offer of IAEA supervision of Iran’s nuclear industry for five years.
I am once again willing to go out on a limb of the fruit tree of optimism that US, having exhausted all and every bone-headed foreign policy approach to the Mid East, has now settled on accepting Iran, Turkey and Egypt as major regional powers that should be dealt with as they are, not as “some wish them to be.”
Where does this leave KSA, and Israel? The ‘real’ world has plenty space for both.
It’s no secret that US and Israel have been aiding anti-Islamist Kurd terrorist group in Islamic Republic. American Jewish investigating reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in Jewish magazine, The New Yorker, on November 27, 2006 that many neocons in Bush administration believe that Washington cannot win the war in both Afghanistan and Iraq without weakening Islamic regime in Iran. But they also realize that the goal cannot be achieved by military attack as the West learned by their experience in 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. The military adventure failed not only to destroy Hizbullah but made its leader Sheikh Nasrallah more popular, not only among Arabs Arab but also among Israelis. Some of other means to pressure Tehran include both Israel and the US arming the militant Kurdish group ‘Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK)‘, a sister organization of PKK. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border terrorism in western Iran. Israel has played a major role in supplying arms and providing information on Iranian targets through members of Kurd Jewish community. There are over 50,000 Kurd Jews in Israel.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/turkey-israel-%e2%80%98who-is-bluffing-who%e2%80%99/
Speaking of unprincipled stance….
http://www.youtube.com/user/goodboy405#p/u/1/XCamQnnO05M
Unknown Unknowns says:
September 12, 2011 at 11:49 pm
People put way too much trust in Mr. Erdogan. I don’t. Let’s say I am too suspicious and have a problem in trusting people.
The moment Mr. Erdogan, starts discussing the future of Palestine with the true representatives of Palestine (ie. HAMAS), the moment he changes his approach to Syria and Libya, the moment he says “no” to NATO missile defense in Turkey, the moment he starts giving support to Hezballah, the moment he takes action to pull out of NATO, the moment he becomes more like “Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America” (ALBA), I will start to doubt my convictions about him.
Erdogan and Abbas are in Cairo, discussing the Palestinian bid for statehood, no doubt.
I found it rich that Uncle Weasel who has singlehandedly ripped to shreds so many norms of international law (torture, extraordinary rendition, and most importantly, just the simple rule that you do not attack and invade another country unless …) expressed outrage that the Egyptian government stood by while the wall to the Israeli embassy was demolished brick by brick. Some fool stated on the Newshour today something to the affect that, “How could they fail to defend this ‘sacred obligation’.”
Go ahead, have it both ways. The American sheeple won’t know the difference, and who cares what the rest of the world thinks.
Weasels will be weasels.
No, this quote is *not* about 9/11. It’s about the holocaust (Reg. TM) :D
“It is said that men go mad in herds, and only come to their senses slowly, and one by one.” -Charles MacKay
OK, OK, I’ll try to stop with the 9/11 theme, now that we are in 9/12. But this last one is pretty good. Summarizes it in 5 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98
Bibijon:
I’m not sure there will be any direct fallout. It’ll be the US’ move at that point. If the US follows through with threats to cut off Abbas’ aid, Hamas will take power in the West Bank and the US will try to starve the Palestinians as they are Gaza. This will lurch Turkey, probably Egypt, but not the colonial dictatorships against the US and West to China’s and especially Russia’s benefit. It will also make the colonial dictatorships in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and others less secure in power unless they also really break.
I don’t think the US will follow through with those threats. Instead, we will see a situation a lot like the situation we see today.
What the peace process is is an illusion designed to make Israeli occupation of large numbers of Palestinians palatable to western liberal values. That will be damaged. Westerners who hold liberal values will decide how they take that. Two states was never going to happen or be stable if it had happened.
I not too long ago read a PA claim that before Oslo, the Palestinian population was declining and slowly being expelled and that situation was reversed with this peace process charade. If so, the Palestinians got something out of it and they may be reaching the point where they’ve gotten all they’re going to get and have no further use for this transaction.
Abbas may well declare the peace process as we now know it dead, because Israel refused to stop expanding settlements but that would be the only direct impact. The impact on the ground depends especially on how the western liberal-valued audience for the peace process reacts to that declaration.
PG:
As far as I can see, Saudi Arabia is no more independent than it has ever been. I think Egypt is proving that anything beyond superficial and meaningless gestures of independence can only come from current US colonies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait and others if there is a change in government either by an ideological coup or by elections. Until then, we should expect to see no effective changes in policy from the colonies.
fyi:
If the answer is Yes, the official conspiracy theory is fishy, then leave it at that. But if the answer is No, then please proceed to provide the reasonable explanations for your position, so that the rest of us can be enlightened and feel safe enough to take off our tin-foil hats.
I thank you in advance for sticking to the question, and give notice that if you do not respond to the question, now that it has been posed for the third time, that I will consider your response a forfeiture disguised as some inanity, and will not continue the thread.
fyi says “The burden is on you to supply proof for your assertions.”
Why? You believe in one conspiracy theory, I think an alternate one is more credible. Why is the burden on me to prove ‘my’ version? I’m not even saying that my version is what happened. All I’m saying is that it is more likely to be the case, given all the absurdities of the version of events you seem to believe in. But for some reason, you continue to refuse to answer my simple question, so I will put it to you a *third* time:
(You can ignore the specifics in the preamble if you prefer and just answer the question at the end having to do with fish)
However, I am still waiting for my question to be answered: How is it possible for 19 hijackers to get on planes the passenger manifests of which do not have the name of a single one of them on it? Isn’t that, to say the least, highly unlikely? And doesn’t this unlikelihood turn into the impossible when the BBC and other media reported many of those named as having ’shown up’ in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, where they claimd to have been studying or leading their lives all along? You know, the same BBC that annouced the fall of WTC 7 a half hour or so too early (while the building was still standing behind the reporter as she was reporting that it too had fallen) ?? The same media that reported confidently within 30 minutes of the collapse that this was the work of Al-Qaeda? How would they know with such confidence so soon, unless they were just putting out a story that gullible types just latched on to, because the MSM said so. So gullible, in fact, that they (you) don’t see a problem with a paper passport of one of the kidnappers conviniently showing up undamaged in the rubble, whereas the titanium-hardened black boxes of all four of the alleged airplanes just vanished into thin air, having been vaporized by the heat of the fires.
I don’t know about you, but *my* oven didn’t collapse on 9/11 or any other day before or since, and its metal surfaces don’t even have two inches of asbestos fireproofing!
Don’t you find *any* of this to smell even slightly fishy?
Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine is another must read book.
A video with the same name can be watched here (1 hour 38 min)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4231109320246838401#:
She is someone to watch in future times, she has a sharp analytical mind filled with deep sensation of empathy for all humanity. She is now an active member of BDS (Boycott, divest and sanction Israel)
Maybe She is hated by zealous Zionists similar to how AIPACers detest Hillary Mann Leverette (both are Jewish)
I am thinking only the individuals who posses knowledge-based analytical mentalities are capable of clearly and astutely understanding the current social and political events. Also they are the only ones who can foresee or predict the future events with far much less errors. It seems the amount of their errors become smaller when their minds are also based on minimal amount of self-righteousness or selfishness, nationalism (tribalism) and any type of superstition belief. Also the errors will tend towards negligible levels when maximal amount of empathy and wish for universal benevolence for all preoccupies their minds.
Hats off to the likes of Kleins, Leveretts and others who, instead of seeking easily achievable material fortunes by surrendering to monsters of our times, settle for the environ where there is less superficial luxury yet where the air is filled with deep satisfying sensation of civility and integrity.
Arnold Evans says:
September 12, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Arnold,
I too believe a UNSC veto is all but certain. But, Faisal’s piece, whoever wrote it for him, had interesting inserts. Exonerating the US from brutal oppression in Bahrain, and carving out possibilities for outright (military even) intervention in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, even Iran, pretending this is as a result of a break from the US, providing a plausible deniability to Washington.
What do you think is going to be the fallout from the veto in Europe and the mid east?
Sakineh Bagoom at 4:58:
This is not the first time a situation like the Silverstein/Shamai Leibowitz affair has unfolded.
Arnold Evans:
It seems, apart of empowering Iran and bring a righteous majority (to which James Canning sees this true evolution idiotic!) to the position of power in Iraq, one of the disastrous outcome (for the U.S I mean) of the Iraq’s war was the inability of the U.S to pressure SA as before. at least that was the case prior to all these uprisings in the Arab world.
what do you think of it? anybody else has anything to say about this notion?
Bibijon, I disagree. I’m very sure we are going to see a US veto if the Palestinians present to the Security Council. I’ve read nothing to the contrary and read that probably two dozen times from semi-independent sources, all ultimately sourced to the Obama administration.
The Saudi opinion piece was token resistance from a government that wants to pretend to be independent.
I noticed a few things about that piece.
1) If it does not, American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region.
Faisal is very concerned with Israel’s security. Much more than a public figure could be if the government was accountable to the people of that country.
2) Saudi leaders would be forced by domestic and regional pressures to adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy. Like our recent military support for Bahrain’s monarchy, which America opposed, Saudi Arabia would pursue other policies at odds with those of the United States, including opposing the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq and refusing to open an embassy there despite American pressure to do so. The Saudi government might part ways with Washington in Afghanistan and Yemen as well.
Do you see what this guy is describing as “far more independent and assertive”? If you want to be assertive, buy centrifuges from Russia, China, Brazil, Japan or Korea and end Israel’s monopoly on regional nuclear capability. Or pressure Bahrain to ask the US to give up its base there, or threaten to do so. Or fund Hamas. Or fund the PA when the PA does not submit to US conditions.
We can all think of a million ways Saudi Arabia could really be independent and assertive. Somehow Faisal can only think of things that either his country is already doing without threatening the US’ position, things that would not harm the US or Israel if his country was to do them, or things that help the US and Israel, like protecting the pro-US stooge dictator of Bahrain from his people.
3) Speaking of which: The only losers in this scenario would be Syria and Iran, pariah states that have worked tirelessly — through their support of Hamas and Hezbollah — to undermine the peace process. Saudi Arabia recently played a leading role in isolating Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal government by demanding an end to the killing of protesters and recalling the Saudi ambassador from Damascus. The impending fall of Mr. Assad’s barbarous regime provides a rare strategic opportunity to weaken Iran. Without this vital ally, Tehran will find it more difficult to foment discord in the Arab world.
Wait. What? This is the threatening opinion piece? How’d this get into an essay about how much harm Saudi Arabia could do to US interests? First, Hezbollah and Hamas both won the most votes in their elections. Who in the Middle East sees them as undermining the peace process, other than US stooges? Second, since Faisal already mentioned Bahrain and Yemen, weren’t protesters brutally killed in both countries with Saudi support?
The moral of the story is that smart people don’t rise to positions of authority in colonial stooge dictatorships. We’ll never read an editorial like this coming from Erdogan’s government because it would be an embarrassment that could cost him votes. We may read pieces like this coming from Egypt today, but after elections, hopefully there will be elections, this era is over in Egypt.
Saudi Arabia is not a country that can pressure the US to do anything. If it follows Egypt’s lead and becomes a government responsible to its people through elections, it will have the ability to pressure the US. But Barack Obama knows that and is now, in a stunning betrayal of what in some sense are his own people, the world’s leading proponent of keeping the nearly 30 million people who live in Saudi Arabia and more than that elsewhere in Israel’s region under the indirect control of the US congress and executive branch rather than accountable governments.
9/11 and $98 billion DHS hoax
One day before the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 terrorist attack – Israel-Firster Hillary Clinton claimed that Al-Qaeda is behind the latest threat against United States.
On Sunday, Frontier Flight 623 from Denver-to-Detroit was escorted by USAF fighter jets until it safely landed at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The jetliner was parked in a remote area and a bomb squad searched the plane without finding any dangerous devices. Why? Because three of the passengers (2 males and 1 female) made frequent visits to the restroom! After several hours of interrogation the three suspected ‘terrorists‘ by FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force members, they’re released without any charges being filed.
In another incident Sunday, a pair of fighter jets were scrambled to escort an American Airlines Flight 34 from Los Angeles into New York’s JFK International Airport after the pilot became spooked by passengers’ frequent trips to and from the restroom.
Interestingly, No F16 scrambled the sky until two of the four so-called ‘hijacked commercial planes’ smashed into the WTC on September 11, 2001.
Since the FBI has not released the names of the ‘suspected terrorists’ – it’s fair to assume they were not Muslims.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/911-and-98-billion-dhs-hoax/
James Canning says:
September 12, 2011 at 5:33 pm
“Prince Turki al-Faisal is quite right: the US should support the Palestinian bid for UN recognition, and the 2002 Arab peace plan should be the basis for resolving the Israel/Palestine problem.”
James,
For a moment consider it this way. The United States has begun to realize that vetoing Palestinian statehood at the UN at this time is untenable for the following reasons.
a) There is no reservoir of US credibility in the middle eas. A veto in the middle east, according to all available opinion polls, will be the death knell to American influence in the region. It may well spark off even more revolutions. All remaining “moderate Arab” dictators will have to cut their longevity by half after such a veto.
b) According to latest PIPA poll of American opinion, support for Israel is declining rapidly.
c) Europeans are agitating for some semblance of a solution for Israel/Palestine conflict, before European credibility/influence follows that of the US’ down the same toilet.
Now, uncle Sam needed help to sell the upcoming non-veto vote/abstention for Palestinian statehood to the Lobby here in America, and cover Hilary’s behind as she makes a U-turn, while eating her boots. They thought up a fig leaf in the shape of a prince Turki opinion piece in NY Times. On the plus side, they give their loyal servants, the Saudi royals, credit for moving the process forward, and thereby, and therefore deny any such credit to Arab Awakening, Turkey, Egypt and Iran.
All in all, outside hyper Zionist circles, statehood will be easier to live with, than the fall out of as a result of veto of statehood. My prediction: the Zionists are not interested in what is rational. They will force Obama to commit diplomatic suicide.
I’d hate to see you become a cynic too. But, naivete is no panacea either. Please try and consider why such a Saudi missive is delivered publicly.
James,
I think China will have more of a military presence over the next couple of decades, as will Russia, but equally it is true that more industrial production will be based in developing countries like Brazil, Iran, Indonesia and even Africa. The challenge for the West is how to deal with this development and also to try and benefit from it if possible.
Interesting interview with former FBI agent Ali Soufan (born Lebanon): “We did exactly what al-Qaida wanted us to do” at Speigel online today.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0%2c1518%2c785558%2c00.html#ref%3dnlint
Reza,
I of course agree. China is predicted to be 40% of the global market for luxury automobiles by 2020.
We are moving towards a regionalized, multi-polar world. Resurgent nations like China, India, Brazil, Turkey and Iran among others are going to shape the course of this century. The United States will continue to be a superpower, but it won’t be able to do whatever it pleases and will have to cooperate and negotiate in order to defend its interests and security.
Unknown Unknowns says: September 12, 2011 at 2:02 pm
I am not going to try to disprove a possibility.
The burden is on you to supply proof for your assertions.
And the conspiracy that you are suggesting requires the existence of very many smart people in US.
There are not that many smart people in the world.
fyi,
I think it fair to say that Stratfor, and George Friedman, would much prefer the American people not to comprehend the absurdity of spending trillions of dollars on a “war on terror”. And Friedman calls it a “successful war”! Rubbish.
Fior,
Italians are the largest component of the population of Argentina. Maybe you have cousins there?
fyi,
North Korea would not be attacked even if it had no nukes. Who would attack NK?
Fortunately, Iran does not seem prepared to follow your advice and try to build nukes on the sly.
Sakineh,
Richard Silverstein says he supports the two-state solution to Israel/Palestine problem, with 1967 borders (adjusted). He probably has a pretty good feel for the attitude of Jews in Seattle, Washington State, on this score.
Unknown Unknowns,
And we should consider to what degree is all the Israeli noise about Iran an effort to deflect attention from Israel’s continuing oppression of the Palestinians?
Unknown Unknowns,
I agree there is danger in the new radar installation in Turkey, if access to info from that station is provided to Israel and Israel sees it as enabling a surprise attack on Iran.
Israel still has the basic problem that it cannot expect to take out Iran’s entire nuclear programme in a surprise attack.
Obviously I do not want an Israeli attack (or any attack) against Iran.
BiBiJon,
Prince Turki al-Faisal is quite right: the US should support the Palestinian bid for UN recognition, and the 2002 Arab peace plan should be the basis for resolving the Israel/Palestine problem.
Sakineh,
Interesting post. I think quite a few Americans of Italian descent have obtained passports from Italy.
To me, it is especially interesting that the Israeli diplomats who conspired to subvert the national security of the US by planting false stories about Iran in American newspapers, in effort to set up illegal and insane war with Iran, have not been punished. The whistleblower, of course, was sent to prison. And the conspiracy continues.
Should read ‘American hostages in Iran and 41’s whereabouts’
Fio,
Justin Raimondo is thinking of doing a reverse migration back to Italy, because he feels betrayed by the American government. In this whistle-blower piece about foreign government officials, utilizing their resources in the United States to plot to drag America into a ruinous war, the Richard Silverstein/Shamai Leibowitz affair, he writes:
”As naïve as it might sound, especially coming from a libertarian, I really did think my country was better than this. I am horrified in a way I’ve never been before: I feel betrayed – and vulnerable. While leaving wouldn’t shield me from the Evil Eye of the FBI, or whomever, it would satisfy my own desire to make a statement about the America that once was, and isn’t anymore.
I’m thinking of Italy, perhaps, as the perfect place for an American expatriate of my heritage: I could get dual Italian-American citizenship, and shack up with my relatives in Calabria. So a shout-out to them, if they’re out there, in the form of an S.O.S.: hey guys, the Mafia that’s taken over the US government is after me over here, and so I’m making the same journey my immigrant grandfather made, only in reverse – you got a room to rent?
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/09/08/911-and-the-bizarro-effect/
If anyone has a URL to the Silverstein post, it would be much appreciated (original is deleted/maybe cached version?).
Also, a must read by Robert Parry on the Iranian hostages and 41’s whereabouts
Bush’s “October Surprise” File in Dispute
‘http://www.truth-out.org/bushs-october-surprise-file-dispute/1315852680
And,
Arnold,
I was going to write that you could check the Bushehr going on-line off of your wish list. But you beat me to it. Hopefully we get to see the other item on that list come true (Egypt election)
Welcome back old chap!
Yes, that would still qualify it as a panic brain fart.
I wonder if that other whore, Turkey, will be swayed by its Turkish *ghayrat* to release some hot air of its own. Here we have the Palestinians taking their case to the UN, Uncle Weasel and Auntie Hillarious saying they won’t stand for it (‘not a speck of cereal for my dog’), and the gauntlet having been thrown down by the Champion of the Under-trodden and Wretched of the Earth. Do I hear a second? Turkey? Egypt? ANYone?
BiBiJon:
Your “throwing caution to the gust of flatulence” made me chuckle :o)
Yeah, its *some* sort of brain fart alright. A *panic* brain fart, as you surmise, probably.
And then I can hear James in the background going, “See, I *told* you Turki’s no friend of AIPAC!” [UU Rolls his eyes.]
Unknown Unknowns says:
September 12, 2011 at 3:17 pm
UU,
Another interpretation is that Turki is saying essentially that you (the US) are so scraping the bottom of the credibility barrel that you cannot afford to have two spoilt misbehaving brat liabilities in the region. It is the opening salvo. He is saying either KSA-centric, or Israel-centric, but not both. Both is just not doable in current circumstances. Don’t care if its going to be Egypt, Turkey, Iran, or some alliance of the three that will rue the roost. The point is I, KSA, will end up as a nobody. Please hear my cries! Heed my tantrums.
Link to the Gideon Levy, Fisk, Ashour interview
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/09/2011911113517936430.html
This is a great interview with Gideon Levy, Robert Fisk, Omar Ashour on the Egyptian/Israel situation.
Egypt and Israel: A troubled peace
link to english.aljazeera.net
Gideon Levy: “Good reasons to be angry with Israel”
“When you see no hope for any improvement. When you see a right wing nationalist government in Israel who does not offer anything to the Palestinians”
Unknown Unknowns says:
September 12, 2011 at 3:17 pm
UU, I kind of, sort of think it is for real.
Real is the bestiality inherent in the unnatural relationship between the US and KSA.
It’s real in the sense that the accumulating dysfunction occasionally seeps through the pores.
It is real in the sense that the situation has gotten so out of hand, that to make the ‘joint’ missives believable you are invited to believe:
a) US bears no fault for Bahrain (an independent KSA twitch)
b) KSA is soooooo pro-Palestinian
It might be that Turki has gone bunkers. I think Turki is saying all is lost, throwing caution to the gust of flatulence, he is pleading insanity to see if that’ll cut any muster with anyone, someone, anyone at all.
BiBIJon:
Thanks for the link to Turki’s OpEd piece. I thought it was rich for him to refer to Asad’s regime as “brutal” and to call Iran a pariah state. But the piece was interesting. It remains to be seen if this is just a poodle protectorate overstepping its bounds and barking like annoying little dogs tend to do, or whether there is actually something to the threat. Somehow, I doubt it; there is no *ghayrat* in Wahhabistan Central. Unless of course the impetus is from the Aal ash-Shaykh snake, which makes up the second of the two snakes in the double helix around the rod of Asclepius. If things have gotten so out of hand in relations among the two, so that the billions of petrodollars that the Aal as-Sa’ud pays to the Aal ash-Shaykh each year as hush money (you know, how all the terror and hate around the world is funded) is insufficient, and that the Aal ash-Shaykn snake has reared its ugly head and demanded that the drunkards and addicts to gambling and illicit sex cease their debauchery for one New York minute to insist on Palestinian statehood not being vetoed… now if *that* is what has been happening behind the scene – and it could well be – then fasten your seat belts, boys and girls, as we are in for an interesting ride.
Don’t know how many have come across his highness, Turki Al-Faisal publicly threatening the US with divorce if the US vetoes Palestinian bid for statehood. On the positive side, Turki suggests if the love-fest continues, then together US and Saudis can confront Iran.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/opinion/veto-a-state-lose-an-ally.html?ref=opinion
Suffice to say Hilary Clinton has made a right mess of the middle east. Obama undoubtedly will pay a price.
James:
Yes, I believe Israel does have a sophisticated radar system. That is not the issue. The issue is that with access to the system which Turkey has agreed to have installed right on the border with Iran, this gives Israel early warning of counter-measures, which she otherwise would not have. And, according to Kaveh, this is a foolhardy move by Turkey, as it could be a very significant strategic tipping point, nullifying the missile deterrent that Iran currently enjoys and which has kept the rabid Bibi at bay.
hans:
Take a chill pill. If Press TV isn’t as sophisticated as Voltairenet.org, I’m sorry. They operate on a budget of $20 million a year. What do you want? Give them time, though. They will improve by leaps and bounds, just as the country that has given birth to them is improving by leaps and bounds, contrary to the expectation of those who wish her harm, la’natullah alayhim ajma’in.
fyi,
Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Atta was indeed on one of those planes. That does not prove the alternate and in my view much more plausable theory that a Straussian element within the Wall Street/ Pentagon Complex masterminded the whole thing using Moslem-like dupes and patsies as static and distraction; fodder for the likes of yourself and Mr. Atta’s siblings.
However, I am still waiting for my question to be answered: How is it possible for 19 hijackers to get on planes the passenger manifests of which do not have the name of a single one of them on it? Isn’t that, to say the least, highly unlikely? And doesn’t this unlikelihood turn into the impossible when the BBC and other media reported many of those named as having ‘shown up’ in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, where they claimd to have been studying or leading their lives all along? You know, the same BBC that annouced the fall of WTC 7 a half hour or so too early (while the building was still standing behind the reporter as she was reporting that it too had fallen) ?? The same media that reported confidently within 30 minutes of the collapse that this was the work of Al-Qaeda? How would they know with such confidence so soon, unless they were just putting out a story that gullible types just latched on to, because the MSM said so. So gullible, in fact, that they (you) don’t see a problem with a paper passport of one of the kidnappers conviniently showing up undamaged in the rubble, whereas the titanium-hardened black boxes of all four of the alleged airplanes just vanished into thin air, having been vaporized by the heat of the fires.
I don’t know about you, but *my* oven didn’t collapse on 9/11 or any other day before or since, and its metal surfaces don’t even have two inches of asbestos fireproofing!
Don’t you find *any* of this to smell even slightly fishy? If not, I suggest you see an ear, throat and nose specialist. Tell him an Unknown person sent you with the diagnosis that you’re out of your freakin’ gourd.
Bob Woodward has some interesting comments in the Washington Post today (“In Cheney’s memoirs, it’s clear Iraq’s lessons didn’t sink in”). Dick Cheney in 2007 wanted G W Bush to attack the so-called Syrian nuclear reactor even though the CIA said it had no intelligence establishing that it was a nuclear reactor and that it was related to a nuclear weapons programme.
Empty,
I agree with you that ethical principles should be at the heart of foreign policy decisions. And various arguments about policy choices can be made, even relying on ethical principles. What was so especially vicious about the conspiracy to set up the illegal invasion of Iraq was that the conspirators set out to deceive the American public and even the US Congress, using knowingly false intelligence about Iraqi WMD.
Clint,
Yes, the downside to Iran’s production of 20% LEU is that it cleared the way for yet more demonising of Iran, on grounds the 20% enrichment is just a way-station to going to weapons-grade later. Did some of the fanatical supporters of Israel, who blocked the deal to refuel the TRR, hope Iran would enrich to 20%?
Rehmat,
Yes, and al-Sadr offered in 2006 to facilitate US withdrawal. Iran and Syria also offered to help ensure safe withdrawal of all US troops. The moron in the White House rejected the advice of the Iraq Study Group to pull all US troops out of Iraq asap.
bushtheliberator,
You think the US “won” the Iraq War? Yes, the US/UK invasion overthrew Saddam very quickly, which was of course no surprise. Then the catstrophe was created by dissolving the Iraqi army and security services. There was no “victory” for the US in Iraq, and in fact, as General Odom used to say, it was the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of the US.
The al-Qaeda leader in Iraq had a strong taste for slaughtering as many Shia as possible. This was not a good strategy.
Al-Sadr: ‘Let US forces leave Iraq in peace’
Some Islamophobes have been warning Obama administration that once US lift its occupation of Iraq, Baghdad will tilt more towards Tehran and al-Sadr’s guns will join Hizbullah and Hamas to “wipe Zionist regime off the map“…..
http://rehmat2.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/al-sadr-%e2%80%98let-us-forces-leave-iraq-in-peace%e2%80%99/
“Photi, Criticism of Henry Kissinger amounts to hatred against Jews and therefore, a crime under US Hate Law,” Abe Foxman, national director ADL.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/bilderberg-kissinger-and-jewish-hatred/
Unknown Unknowns,
Isn’t the advanced radar system already installed in Israel? Turkey did not like the sharing of intelligence with Israel, that the new facility in Turkey may enable.
Borzou Duraghi in the Financial Times today (“Gaddafi’s inner circle clamoured for change”), reports that Kaled Kaim, deputy foreign minister of Gaddafi government, says he and other officials tried to warn Gaddafi not to attack Benghazi because it would trigger western military intervention. Kaim says the decision to attack was “very stupid”, and that it was taken by Mutassim Gaddafi.
More hasbara bashing goodness on Mondoweiss. this little gem is too good not to share. The topic is why the US government is not concerned that Israel executes American citizens with impunity:
“Watcher465 September 12, 2011 at 11:44 am
Yet when I made a comment about the Jewishness of Oppenheimer and Kissinger in a negative way your friend eee stated that he considered them Americans and nothing to do with Israel their interests. So you want it both ways. You have an answer for everything. It’s always a bullshit answer but an answer never the less. Deny, Deflect, Delay, Deride, the four pillars of the Hasbarat credo. I’m going to reinforce that in my comments from now on until you get sick of it and then I’ll say it some more. I’m sure you’ll send a response as you lot can’t help having the last word and your response will include at least one of your four pillars. Hasbarat troll!”
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/09/nyt-calls-dogan-a-turk-yes-and-how-many-other-american-deaths-go-unaudited.html#comment-362237
UU, too funny, messed up bible stories. i will have to go through them all. posted on my FB today, thanks;)
Unknown Unknowns says:
September 12, 2011 at 10:02 am
A good source on what’s happening in Libya since the “victory” of the Weasels and their Wahhabistani thugs and misfits:
@UU the Iranian government openly supports them and PressTV is the only channel which calls them revolutionaries! I think the President does support them but he is forced because of the SL religious bigotry. Did he not say the Islamic Awakening was coming to UK. I think the only thing he says right is when he keeps his views to himself!
fyi says:
September 12, 2011 at 10:04 am
::::::::::::::::
This is just propoganda from the Iranian President.
Mr. Ahmadinejad is making these statements to de-legitimized US as much as he can; he knows that US is the enemy and thus must be smeared as much as possible.
:::::::::::::::::
This ties rather well into Hilary Mann-Leveret’s comments at al-Jazeera. US’ all-or-nothing approach to Iran’s “independence” has created a dynamic where no accommodation is possible. demonization begets demonization, evil begets evil, etc. It is difficult to read Barbara Slavin’s account of Iran’s repeated overtures for rapprochement hitting a Strausian wall, and not put the lion’s share of the blame for the current state of affairs at US’ feet.
::::::::::::::::::::::
The fact remains that the United States was attacked by terrorists that were inspired by Islam in order to retaliate for the depredations of Israel in Palestine and in Lebanon.
That is, the provocations of Israel finally resulted in a blow against her primary patron, the United States.
That the attackers on the United States were terrorists there could be no doubt:
- They wore no uniforms and were not affiliated with any uniformed military force.
- They committed an act of war against the United States. But no legitimate Authority had authorized that Act of War. That is there was no recognized spiritual or temporal authority behind that Act of War.
- They primarily targeted civilians – an act of terrorism – not to break the enemies will to resist but to create havoc.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Majority of the innocents murdered on 9/11 died not according to any remotely possible premeditation, but as a result of wholly unexpected, freak-of-nature collapse of 3 buildings in NY. Without those collapses, the 19 alleged hijackers did not premeditatedly murder any more people than Timothy McVeigh, or Anders Behring Breivik did. There can be no question that USG, aided and abetted by MSM “USED” the freak event as an excuse for a military onslaught on the Muslim world. The targets were essentially defenseless, and thus assumed to be a cake walk — military-on-military it was cake-walk — but the occupation and attempt at pacification were altogether another story.
Bottom line: Ahmadinejad is correct when he calls the war excuse a “game.” Even for those who believe kinetic energy is converted to heat, and not converted to deformation, vibration, and sound as all physicists do, as does commonsense derived from everyday experience which is also bolstered by the fact that there are no transducers ever proposed, designed, patented, let alone built to convert kinetic energy upon dead-stop impact to heat; That EVERY heat generating device known to man uses as input electrical or chemical energy or friction to produce heat; Even an excessively modest genius in physics has to admit a “game” has been played to blame the super-natural on the evil Muslims.
No game is cost-free. Madame et Monsieur place your bets!
Unknown Unknowns says: September 12, 2011 at 10:51 am
You are clearly unwilling to admit the obvious.
Even the late Mr. Atta’s sisters – professors in Egypt – do not dispute that their brother was the leader of the 9/11/2001 attacks on US.
fyi says “The fact remains that the United States was attacked by terrorists that were inspired by Islam”.
No. This is not a fact. It is your opinion, based on heresay. And all you have to do is to consider the fact that the alleged terrorists’ names were not on any of the airline manifests. Just consider the scene at the boarding gate of someone wanting to board a plane without his name being on the manifest of ticketholders. Obviously, this would be impossible, without causing a scene, and the plane would never take off with such an anomoly…
If you were not aware of this fact, then think again. If you were and still think the official story is possible, then you have some sort of psychological block.
You are right though, in this: if, upon a real investigation, it becomes clear that terrorists did this who were inspired by the Moslem faith (even though the act itself puts them outside the fold of Islam), then Moslems must take responsibility for their acts. I do not, however, believe this to be the case.
Arnold: Welcome back. You were missed.
Bushehr is on line!
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_IRAN_NUCLEAR
This is great news. The full wikileaks stash being released was also good, if late news.
Unknown Unknowns says: September 12, 2011 at 9:03 am
This is just propoganda from the Iranian President.
It just shows how much the political situation between Iran (and Muslim states) on the one side and US (and EU) on the other side has deteriorated.
The fact remains that the United States was attacked by terrorists that were inspired by Islam in order to retaliate for the depredations of Israel in Palestine and in Lebanon.
That is, the provocations of Israel finally resulted in a blow against her primary patron, the United States.
That the attackers on the United States were terrorists there could be no doubt:
- They wore no uniforms and were not affiliated with any uniformed military force.
- They committed an act of war against the United States. But no legitimate Authority had authorized that Act of War. That is there was no recognized spiritual or temporal authority behind that Act of War.
- They primarily targeted civilians – an act of terrorism – not to break the enemies will to resist but to create havoc.
Mr. Ahmadinejad is making these statements to de-legitimized US as much as he can; he knows that US is the enemy and thus must be smeared as much as possible.
A good source on what’s happening in Libya since the “victory” of the Weasels and their Wahhabistani thugs and misfits:
http://libya360.wordpress.com/
Dear Fior:
I’m sorry for the suffering of your grandparents. And thank you for seconding my opinion. Yes, these kinds of opaque interventions in the lives of others without input from them or any concern as to the impact on their lives has a history that goes back, it would seem, to that ultimate fratricidal “intervention” of Kane on his brother Abel.
Here’s how it went down. You gotta love eve’s Picassoesque eyes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGukKa1vEzA
Unknown Unknowns says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
September 12, 2011 at 9:32 am
Thierry Mayssan on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the movement for uncovering the Truth of what happened that day that he sparked off.
Money quotes:
… respect for victims – not just those who died on that day in the United States, but also those who were killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere – requires precisely that we seek the truth instead of settling for outrageous lies. And how can democracy thrive if we fail to question official “truths” or, worse, if we substitute rational debate with verbal abuse?
In the days following the attacks, through a series of articles, and in subsequent months through books and lectures, I challenged Bush’s version of the events and accused the Straussian faction of the US military-industrial complex of having sponsored them. Although initially alone in my approach and heckled by the Atlanticist press, I gradually mobilized international public opinion, including in the United States, until last year when my questions rang out at the podium of the UN General Assembly. The more the US authorities tried to contradict me, the more they were contradicting themselves. Doubt spread and today those who doubt are the majority.
…
The dividing line can be summarized as follows: on one side, the globalized Western elites cling to the official version; on the other side, the majority of Western populations and the Third World denounce the lie.
What is important is not to determine how some individuals, who were not on the flight manifests yet made it on board the aircraft, can hijack the flight, or how a Boeing can fold back its wings, enter through a small door and disappear inside the Pentagon, but rather if from that day the West has been the target of a world Islamic conspiracy, or if instead the attacks were orchestrated by a US faction to embark with impunity on the conquest of the world.
Here’s the entirety of the short article:
http://www.voltairenet.org/Orwellian-September-11
Unknown Unknowns wrote:
“As just one example, take the effect of NAFTA on the Mexican maize farmer. The dumping of cheap US corn into Mexico (made possible after NAFTA lifted tariffs set up against just such actions) destroyed the local maize industry. Other industries were similarly destroyed, bringing about untold pain and misery to tens of millions of people, that is still ongoing today.”
this is from History of the Italian People,” by Giuliano Procacci:
“The vast importation of American and Russian corn . . .in 1887 – caused a sharp fall of almost 30 per cent in the price of corn, making it not worth growing on poorer land . . . the cultivation of olives and vegetables and stock-raising also suffered. . . .The poorest people paid the price . . .In wide areas of the countryside undernourishment was the rule, malaria and pellagra raged . . .claim[ing] thousands of victims each year. Many of Italy’s largest class, the poor, lived in hovels, with children forced to work at a very early age, illiteracy and degradation.
“The victims of the great agricultural crisis were seized by the resolute and desperate desire to escape the spiral of poverty and degradation in which they were imprisoned. At first unobtrusively, then with growing speed, there took shape the phenomenon of mass-emigration, which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was common to Italy . . .Swarms of emigrants crammed themselves into the holds of transatlantic ships, and poured, as workers, into the vast melting-pot of North America.”
Otherwise titled, Why My Grandparents Left belle d’Italia.
Kaveh Afrasiabi in today’s Asia Times on Turkey’s decision to install the NATO THAAD radar system on its soil.
According to Iranian military commander Farzad Esamili, X-band radar brings insecurity to the host nation. The openly anti-Iran radar, part of an integrated missile system known as THAAD, is designed to intercept medium-range missiles at very high altitudes and also in space. Once installed, it would provide additional security for Israel, which never tires of threatening to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Consequently, once installed the radar near Iranian territory may play a decisive role in Israel’s decision to go ahead with planned attacks on Iran, thus serving as an instrument of war rather than pre-emption or security.
By undermining the deterrent value of Iran’s missiles, the radar will undoubtedly be factored into Israel’s military calculations against Iran, which is why Tehran is so adamantly opposed to it; even more so than Russia, whose commentators and officials have condemned Turkey’s embrace of the radar as definitely harmful to Russia’s national security interests.
These kind of events are the reason why Iran is fighting on the side of Truth (haqq) and her enemies are on the side of the Falsehood (batel)
*
Ahmadinejad Views 9/11 Events as US Excuse for Attacking Muslim States
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemned Washington for planning the September 11 incidents, and said the US staged the move in a bid to find an excuse to wage war on Muslim nations.
“The September 11 (attacks) were actually a planned game to provoke the human community’s sentiments and find an excuse for launching attack on Muslim regions and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, which led to the massacre of one million innocent people,” Ahmadinejad said on Sunday.
The rest of the story from the Fars News Agency:
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9006200086
Empty:
Thanks for your considered response. While it is of course true that sustainable development and the precautionary principle are things that no sane individual would be against, it is the (mis)uses of these concepts by opaque organizations with a hidden agenda, and specifically their use to bring about that agenda in a non-democratic and non-participatory way that is at issue.
And while it is of course true that the forces of evil are only empowered in so far as and to the extent that God gives them rope, as it were, there is no question that these organizations do exist, are extremely powerful in their ability to manifest their agendas in reality, and that these agenda hurt millions of people. As just one example, take the effect of NAFTA on the Mexican maize farmer. The dumping of cheap US corn into Mexico (made possible after NAFTA lifted tariffs set up against just such actions) destroyed the local maize industry. Other industries were similarly destroyed, bringing about untold pain and misery to tens of millions of people, that is still ongoing today.
The point is, the effects and possible ramifications of all of these multinational agreements which are shoved down the throats of local legislators, are not deliberated upon at the local, regional or even national levels. They are the agendas of the multinational corporations that are formalized into multilateral “trade” agreements by corporate lawyers, and incorporated into the national legislatures of the affected countries by diktat (hence negating the very principles of precaution and sustainability that they avow.)
ISLAM & ENVIRONMENT
According to Holy Qur’an – All things in the known and unknown worlds were created by Allah for different functions – to praise Allah and serve each other. Therefore, preservation of the environment is part of Shari’ah’s jurisdiction – misuse and destruction of it is against Islamic injunctions. And since Allah has appointed human-beings as “the Khalifah (Guardian)” on Earth – the protection of environment from human greed becomes his moral duty.
Islam’s protection of environment is being applied in Misali Island for the perservation of under-water life. The Island located on the channel between Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania – is only 1 km in size……
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/island-islam/
Ahmadinejad criticizes Bashar, Again!
“Iran’s enemies are jubilant it might lose in Syria a vital regional ally. Probably they rejoice too soon. Iran will do what it can to prop up the Assad regime, but it is taking such steps as it can to reach an accommodation with any successor” writes Patrick Cockburn.
The fact is no matter who replaces Ba’athist regime in Damascus, it will be anti-Israel as we see in case of post-Ba’athist Iraq…..
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/ahmadinejad-criticizes-bashar-again/
Empty says:
September 11, 2011 at 11:08 am
Empty,
Regarding 4 and 5 on your list, if you could direct me to further reading on Islam’s view towards protecting the environement, i would be obliged.
If you ever have any need for volunteers to plant trees in Iran’s wilderness, you know where to find me. I am from the Pacific Northwest in the US, Washington State. I feel right at home in the mountains and have explored many of Washington’s beautiful alpine meadows. What a great way that would be to see Iran! (the legit, visitor visa-approved way of course).
Yet more baseless fear mongering and LIES on Iran’s nuclear program:
http://www.tnr.com/article/environment-and-energy/94715/jones-nuclear-iran-ahmadinejad
A friend who is a scientist sent the following critique of the National Review article:
=======
author: “Given Iran’s current enrichment capacity and its current stockpile of low and medium enriched uranium”
truth: Iran has U of enrichment <20%, which is considered LEU — the author is hype-ing and spinning.
========
author: " This move is designed to facilitate Iran’s plans to accelerate its production of medium enriched uranium"
truth: No evidence for that at all. Iran is planning 19.75% enrichment: LOW E.U.
========
author: "And there are plenty of indications that Iran has a desire to produce a complete nuclear weapon. As the IAEA has already explained, Iran has the basic information to produce such a weapon and last Friday said that it was “increasingly concerned” about Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons."
truth:
The report states:
“In particular, the Agency is increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile, about which the Agency continues to receive new information.”
This is a monumentally irresponsible and misleading and politicized statement: the *possible* existence of *past* activities? i.e. there is no evidence that the Agency has in hand that Iran is doing anything nefarious in the nuclear realm, but it has a lot of unfounded past suspicions and “new information” on ballistic missile development.
Great.
The IAEA is tasked with looking into nuclear materials diversion.
There is no such diversion in Iran.
There is no known nuclear weapons program or any evidence of it. Even DNI Clapper has said that.
Yes, thank you IAEA, we already know Iran is making missiles.
End of story.
There is nothing new in here having to do with any nefarious nuclear weapons activity in Iran.
On what the IAEA is tasked to do when a country has ratified the AP versus when it has not.
For clarification, please see IAEA website:
QUOTE:
“What verification measures are used?
Safeguards are based on assessments of the correctness and completeness of a State’s declared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities. Verification measures include on-site inspections, visits, and ongoing monitoring and evaluation. ******Basically, two sets of measures are carried out in accordance with the type of safeguards agreements in force with a State.*******
* One set relates to verifying State reports of ****declared***** nuclear material and activities. These measures – authorized under NPT-type comprehensive safeguards agreements – largely are based on nuclear material accountancy, complemented by containment and surveillance techniques, such as tamper-proof seals and cameras that the IAEA installs at facilities.
* Another set adds measures to strengthen the IAEA’s inspection capabilities. They include those incorporated in what is known as an “Additional Protocol” – this is a legal document complementing comprehensive safeguards agreements. The measures enable the IAEA not only to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material but also to provide assurances as to the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in a State.”
==========
As Iran has not ratified the A.P. it falls under the first category.
=========
*Correction for awkward typos and omissions(from my last post): Last sentence should have read “When you put meat out to rot, don’t go complaining when the maggots show up.”
Red says:
September 11, 2011 at 4:51 pm
The “Iran behind 9/11″ lawsuit is not new news; Israel is merely exploiting 9/11 to ramp up the cogency of the lawsuit.
see here — The Havlish plaintiffs initiated this action in February, 2002.
and here — booster-shot of publicity in May 2011:
:http://articles.philly.com/2011-05-20/business/29564554_1_qaeda-al-qaeda-iran-government
and
:http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/the_intelligencer_news/kin-of-victims-accuse-iran/article_d22b7bb6-82cf-11e0-9755-001a4bcf6878.html
and
:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/middleeast/20terror.html
Playing John the Baptist to today’s YNET article, on Aug 31, 2011, the Jewish Press sent out this bulletin:
:http://www.jewishpressads.com/printArticle.cfm?contentid=49535
This is the same kind of lawsuit as that filed against Iran by the American Jewish families of victims of Intifada acts in Israel. American Jews were injured in Israel, return to US, claim injury caused by Iran, file a case in US courts, Iran declines to appear to defend, default judgment goes to the claimants who are awarded a massive amount of money. In this particular instance, the plaintiff’s/lawsuit victors then attempted to seize Iranian assets in the US, specifically, priceless clays in the keeping of University of Chicago.
The “Iran did 9/11″ lawsuits are, similarly, all about attempting to bilk Iran of money/assets.
I recall having traced the attorneys whose names are attached to the lawsuits; I’m too lazy to look thru my files, but I recall that the named lawyers — Mellon and Pantazis, appear to be American/goy frontmen for the same Israel-based firm that sued Jimmy Carter over his book, “Peace Not Apartheid.”
It’s a disgusting abuse of the American legal system.
bushthetyrant,
How many of those “al Qaida” members in Iraq do you think were recruited as a direct result of Bush’s illegal war against Iraq and its brutal, torture-filled occupation?
When you put meat out to rot, do go complaining with the maggots show up.
dear James Canning,
I can’t agree with your dismissal of Chas. Krauthammer’s AQ analysis as ‘rubbish”.
Mr. K > >::: Iraq” the central campaign in the crushing of AQ “.
AQ reached its political pinnacle in Iraq’s Sunni insurgency, but the rejection of AQ by the Awakening Movement sent AQ to the political Ash Heap (and a few cadres to the morgue)> About the same time,dear Pres.GW Bush confounded the Surrender Monkeys, and political opportunists by sending a Surge of troops to Iraq ;
And the ” Lost ” Iraq War was won !Don’cha’ love a happy ending>>goodby AQ !
James Canning,
RE: “You think a country should not consider the circumstances obtaining at the time of a given decision, in making important foreign policy decisions? The idiotic US invasion of Iraq was brought about by ignoring the latest evidence that Iraq had no WMD.”
I think all nation’s foreign policy should be based on ethical principles and principles of justice and mutual respect. Once that is set, I believe there then should be appropriate reactions/stance about anticipated and unanticipated events entirely based on those principles.
RE: “I do not agree that British foreign policy ‘has always been unprincipled and opportunistic.’”
Okay.
First Iraq, now Iran and Hizbollah is behind 911.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4120430,00.html
ARe those people sick in their heads? Seriously, what have become with these sick warmongering minds?
James Canning says: September 11, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Mrs. Thatcher once publicly stated the following – while Primer Minister of UK -:
“Nuclear Weapons have kept the peace in Europe.”
And they have done so on the Korean Penninsula.
And will do so in the Middle East.
Dr. Friedman on 9/11/2001
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110905-911-and-successful-war
Persian Gulf,
What makes you think that NK’s possession of nukes is essential to preventing a war? Are you aware that South Korea would be very reluctant to take over the administration of NK, even if the regime offered to leave the country?
SK economy is maybe 40 times the size of NK’s. What better evidence is there, that NK government is incompetent almost beyond belief?
Persian Gulf,
I see no possible change in the assessment of US intelligence agencies, that attacking Iran would not prevent Iran from subsequently developing nuclear weapons.
What would be the purpose of an attack on Iran? The Gulf monarchies do not want another war in the Gulf. Full stop.
Persian Gulf,
I have said many times that I do not expect an Israeli or American attack on Iran, unless it appears Iran is in fact building nukes. Sixteen US intelligence agencies agree there is no evidence the government of Iran wants nukes or is building them on the sly. Thus an attack on Iran would be illegal under international law.
Persian Gulf,
I think a world without nuclear weapons would be a good thing.
Getting Israel to get rid of its nukes is a more likely course to follow, than seeking elimination of nukes by Russia, China, France and the UK (and the US).
Persian Gulf,
Why do Russia and China want North Korea to get rid of its nukes?
Photi,
To what extent was the British decision to back France in an attack on Gaddafi the result of recent Franco-British efforts to coordinate defence spending?
To what extent was the decision to attack Gaddafi related to Gaddafi’s ranting on TV about exterminating cockroaches?
Neither factor would argue for an attack on Iran.
Empty,
I do not agree that British foreign policy “has always been unprincipled and opportunistic”.
Photi,
I think the P5+1 genuinely do not want an Iran armed with nukes. But of course I agree with you that the key element is the Green Line (pre-1967 borders of Israel), and Israeli efforts to keep most of the illegal colonies of Jews in the West Bank. The Israel lobby does not want the American public to comprehend that the demonisation of Iran is intended to enable Israel to continue to oppress the Palestinians in the West Bank.
Empty,
You think a country should not consider the circumstances obtaining at the time of a given decision, in making important foreign policy decisions? The idiotic US invasion of Iraq was brought about by ignoring the latest evidence that Iraq had no WMD.
James Canning,
Thank you for making an explicit statement about Britain’s foreign policy decisions to be ad hoc and based on what she deems to be the need of the moment. We agree that Britain’s foreign policy has always been unprincipled and opportunistic. It takes great courage to openly admit that though. Bravo.
“Jews do not have a common origin, that their Semitic origins are a myth. Jews have no origin in Palestine whatsoever, and therefore their act of so-called ‘return’ must be realised as pretext for a tribal expansionist invasion,” Gilad Atzmon in his new book ‘The Wandering Who?‘,
Bibi: ‘Why Egyptian hate Israel?’
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/bibi-why-egyptian-hate-israel/
Unknown Unknowns,
RE: “The New World Order is an open conspiracy or open secret, whose agenda can be seen at work in such organizations and fora as……” and “The unmitigated audacity and arrogance of their agenda is truly staggering. Here’s an example:..;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEEgtOFFlM…”
1. I equally reject the works/words of the “NWOists” [and all their garden varieties] and the views expressed in the video.
2. The NWOists and other similar shadowy entities (as the thesis), and the manufactured Al-Qaeda (as their anti-thesis) are nothing, absolutely nothing, but tiny synthetic pimples on the buttocks of the universe.
3. There is absolutely no entity that could operate outside God’s (الله) playing field (الملک). And the rules of the game is already set by the Almighty. The groups you listed are just a bunch of نوچه, however, even their master, the universal reject and rajeem (الشیطان الرجیم) is limited to where it can or cannot go and what it can and cannot do. حالا اونها یک سری گ**های زیادی می خورن شما چرا نا خواسته تبلیغشون رو می کنین؟! My limited understanding tells me that you’re mocking them. But just in case others are tempted to believe….
4. Now, with the content of the video…it fully misrepresents the concept of environmental sustainability. The actual definition is “the use and development of resources by the current generation to meet their needs and aspirations in a manner that does not diminish the capacity of other people, current and future generations to do the same.” I do not see this definition to be in contradiction with significant verses in Quran such as …کلوا و اشربوا می رزق الله و لا تعثوا فی الارض مفسدین (Quran, Chapter 2, Verse 60) –Interpretation/Translation: “….eat and drink from that which God has provided and do not corrupt the earth.” [Corruption has many aspects that include physical, social, environmental, etc.]. In essence, there is an order to correctly use the resources but not transgress, use in excess, or corrupt. Full Stop.
I am yet to observe a single modification that human beings have made to anything in nature and billed it as an “improvement” upon nature or “development” that has not been, at best, but a temporary myopic change for a slight benefit while messing up fifty or a hundred other items that is directly or indirectly connected to that supposed “improvement”. I personally see these undertakings as lessons to reach a deeper understanding about what God has promised: that is, if any of you [human beings] think that you could do better than what I have done, have at it! Let us then see who The Omniscient is.
5. The video also misrepresents the concept of the “Precautionary Principle.” I am not only quite familiar with the concept but also know and work closely with the folks who are the key scientists who constructed the principle. First and foremost, this principle was created to address the critical problem associated with the production of a host of toxic chemicals. Although the precautionary principle has been adopted/used and abused by other fields, the original field was the field of toxicology and clean production. It asserts that when we are not sure of the deleterious effects of toxic chemicals and the mechanism of their impacts on human health and environment, we must err on the side of caution and postpone their production or engage in cleaner productions. This framework was a direct response to environmental and public health disasters of the 20th century with toxic products such as DDT, DDE (daughter products of DDT), asbestos, etc. The number one champion fighting and financing a disinformation campaign against precautionary principles has been DuPont, Monsanto, and the like. I must add that these propaganda efforts are in parallel with bribing universities, and threatening researchers and scientists with lawsuits to retract their scientific findings about short-, medium-, and long-term harmful effects of these toxic chemicals.
6. There are more false statements in that video. These were just a couple of examples I mentioned. It would be interesting to find out who the speaker is and how the gathering in which he speaks was financed to see who is trying to ride the wave of anti-NWOs to push their own misguided agenda. I won’t be surprised if a few of the institutions/organizations you listed are involved.
7. I do admit that the UN is used as a tool by the US and its misguided partners to force other nations to do things against their populations under the guise of sustainable development, clean production, human rights, etc. even through undertakings such as Agenda 21. Therefore, one must develop extremely sophisticated filters the tease apart the “good” from the “good-wash”; the mixed model “good-bad hybrid”; the bad in the clothing of “good”; the “good lite” or “bad lite”; or other garden varieties of ضلالت.
Bernard Henri-Levi is a phony intellectual, EXCEPT when he bashes Iran.
Persian Gulf,
I am ambivalent on the nuclear issue and whether or not Iran should seek one. I do accept that Nuclear technology is their right and a good fit considering Iran’s central importance to the energy markets.
The ‘bomb’ issue however is not what the West is primarily concerned about. Continued cover for Israeli oppression of the Palestinians is America’s real issue and so any real solution will have to originate there on the Green Line.
Photi says:
September 10, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Indeed, his ad hoc position and the fact that a war with Iran is unthinkable necessitates a de jure nuclear Iran. when it become thinkable, it will surely be to late for Iran to get out of the trap.
Saudi Arabi’s hostility toward Iran is on its peak. they already told the U.S to attack Iran. what else they can do? if they can get the nuke, they will anyway. otherwise, they just simply can’t. Contrary to James’ warning, the regional development is in favor of Iran going fully nuclear. Mobarak is gone, Turkey has changed, Israel is severely isolated…. The U.S is in a big trouble and won’t get out of the mess for a decade at least, if ever. This is an historic opportunity.
Photi says: September 10, 2011 at 10:13 pm
My memory does not serve me well but in 2007 or 2008 Mr. G W Bush stated something to the effect that “if you want to prevent World War III, prevent a nuclear Iran.”
And you may recall Mr. Fiedel Castros’s warnings last years about the danger of World War III triggered by US-Israeli War against Iran.
Any US action against Iran will lead to US troops invading Iran; there is no other way for US to preosectute such a war.
At the same time, due to strategic necessity, the Russian Federation will begin resupplying Iran, perhaps through Astrakhan and the Caspian Sea.
US then will either have to accept a stalemate in the Persian Gulf and the Iranian Plateau or esclacte against the Russian Federation.
At that point WWIII starts.
This is just one – and only one – possible scenario of how US War with Iran could lead to World War III.
And for this one has to thank the US planners and strategic thinkers.
A man spends thousands of dollars equipping himself with hammers – small hammers, large hammers, gigantic hammers, tiny hammers etc.
Howver, he only owns a single screwdriver attached to his Swiss Army Knife and a lone plier.
To such a man – equipped with hundreds of hammers – all tasks look like nails to be hammered in.
Persian Gulf,
“as you say, foreign policy matters are of necessity ad hoc. Attacking Iran is unthinkable at this time bc it’s perceived that it won’t success. per your definition, the conditions and perceptions might change in future and it could simply become thinkable. at that time Iranians can’t look for you for an explanation or they can’t tell themselves oh s**t James’ predictions was wrong. honestly, this line of thinking is insulting. it means you don’t see a big group of people intelligent enough to understand their own security.”
this is interesting. James, by your own ‘ad hoc’ logic your position is transitory and subject to change without notice. Surely something more robust than ‘tickle me pink’ emotions should guarantee stability to the globe?
The ad hoc position is a hoodwink.
James Canning:
why are you so concerned about NK’s nukes and not Britain’s nukes? why should Britain have nukes at all? Britain invaded other sovereign nations many times, even in recent history. isn’t it dangerous for an aggressive nation like that to have nukes? please tell your many friends in the British government to move toward disarmament. Britain is not under attack, perceived or otherwise. why don’t you guys implement NPT yourself? the world is watching you.
obviously, NK’s nukes provided stability otherwise we would have seen a war over there too.
as you say, foreign policy matters are of necessity ad hoc. Attacking Iran is unthinkable at this time bc it’s perceived that it won’t success. per your definition, the conditions and perceptions might change in future and it could simply become thinkable. at that time Iranians can’t look for you for an explanation or they can’t tell themselves oh s**t James’ predictions was wrong. honestly, this line of thinking is insulting. it means you don’t see a big group of people intelligent enough to understand their own security.
US Report: ‘Iran executes gays and lesbians’
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/us-report-iran-executes-gays-and-lesbians/
Have anyone heard the story how a stranger on September 11, 2001 – saved the lives of nine fellow Jews dying inside WTC? The story was published in Jewish Beliefnet.com in 2002, but later taken-off the site.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/911-waiting-for-the-tenth-man/
Persian Gulf,
There are various factions in America, contending one way and another to have their viewpoint put into practice by the US government, and often the various interest groups work to some extent at cross-purposes. And an enormous amount of blather is put out by lobbyists, think tank stooges of the armaments manufacturers, etc etc.
As Gideon Rachman said in the Financial Times Sept/ 9th: “One consequence of 9/11 iks that it may have persuaded the US to spend a decade pouring vital resources into combating the wrong threat.” I agree completely with GR. So, where was the Grand Strategy”? Work to wreck the power of the US by squandering trillions of dollars on foolish military adventures in the Middle East?
Persian Gulf,
Of course I see the problems im the ME caused by Israel. And by foolish American support of Israel right or wrong.
Persian Gulf,
I know the UK does not want war with Iran, and it does not want a US or Israel war with Iran. And Britain has a great deal of experience with global strategic thinking. However, many decisions in foreign policy matters are of necessity ad hoc, meaning they are taken one at a time based on conditions etc. that are perceived at that time.
The sensible course if to seek a Middle East free of nukes. And I hope the effort to get North Korea to destroy its nukes will succeed.
Do you want to see a Saudi Arabia with nukes?
A huge factor in Obama’s inability to deal openly and honestly with Iran is simply the enormous power of the Israel lobby to inflict injury on him and his political programme domestically.
Guy Dinmore of the Financial Times (“Fear of a ‘clash of civilisations’ appears to be overdone”, Sept. 9) wrote that “External firepower propelled the downfall of Libya’s Muammer Gaddafi, but outside intervention against Syria’s despotic regime is unlikely and in the case of Iran almost unthinkable.” Dinmore is quite right: outside intervention in Iran is almost unthinkable.
Unknown Unknowns,
Very interesting that Iran already has the gas pipeline up to the border of Pakistan. I wonder if insurance is an issue for the line in Pakistan.
It’s about time, boys! I guess some beebol are slower than others. Sheesh.
Unknown Unknowns says:
January 28, 2011 at 1:34 pm
I guess it’s too late for the Israeli embassy (though there may still be some documentary goodies extant), as their staff has reportedly been helicoptered out already, but how about another US embassy siege? :o)
C’mon you Moslem Brethren of mine, where is your ghayrat (spiritual jealousy)? The world is watching.
Oh, and don’t forget to storm the Gaza border crossing.
Cheers!
Gilani leaves for Iran today
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, will be arriving in Tehran for an official three-day visit on Sunday.
According to official sources, Gilani would discuss Tehran-Islamabad relations and the regional importance of the two countries with Iranian officials during his trip.
Gilani is also expected to visit the city of Mashhad in Khorasan Razavi Province and the Gilan Province in the north, IRNA reported.
According to FARS news agency During the two-day visit, which will take place at the invitation of Iranian First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, the Pakistani premier will attend meetings with senior Iranian officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, to discuss expansion of bilateral relations and exchange view over the latest developments in the region.
Gilani will be accompanied by his country’s oil and foreign ministers as well as Baluchistan governor.
The Iran-Pakistan pipeline is expected to be a key part of the agenda of the talks. The pipeline was originally meant to have India as its terminal location but New Delhi has not been able to make a firm commitment on the project to date.
Iran has already built its portion of the gas pipeline up to the Pakistani border. The Pakistani portion of the pipeline is expected to cost $1.65 billion, little more than a fifth of the total $7.5 billion price tag of the whole project. The total cost may rise after the completion of a feasibility study. It is expected to begin supplying gas to Pakistan by the middle of 2014.
Haggai Ram’s thesis in “Iranophobia, The Logic of an Israeli Obsession,” correlated Israel’s phobic reaction to Iran with the twin events of Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt and the Khomeini revolution. The latter was tremendously destabilizing to Israelis, who had been accustomed to deep penetration of Iran’s government institutions and, post-Khomeini, felt cut off from information. The Egypt peace treaty helped to substitute for that sense of information/security.
So what will be the impact of the increasing distancing of Egypt from Israel? Will that mean that Iran will not be Israel’s main target for a time, especially given that Turkey is also drawing sharper lines around its relationship with Israel? Will Israel’s increasing isolation result in an Israel that is even more dangerous? In which direction will Israel’s fear lash out — Gaza? Lebanon? Syria? Egypt? Iran?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQezbUk-sdA
MHF says:
September 10, 2011 at 3:13 pm
You wrote:
“CRAP”
Have you also been living for 9 months in Iran ?
I watched and listened to Hilary’s interview with AJ.
She gives Iran’s “independent Foreign Policy” as example in her justification of what she says. What she doe not take into account is this: When she is listening to gangsters calling themselves “government” in Iran (which she calls Iran’s independent foreign policy) are saying and doing, she is listening to a bunch of gangsters taken over a very large country, and calling themselves “government.” She assumes that is Iranian policy and what people in Iran like and want to do.
These folks calling themselves “experts” must one day wake-up– you are not listening to people who live in Iran. Gangsters do not represent Iran. They are a bunch of out-laws who have taken over the country and money by accident, and are having fun!
I am so sorry that Bush & Co. had had people as uninformed like Hilary and her husband working for them– they should have had a better system to select people.
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James Canning:
if the U.S grand strategy is not to destroy independent Iran, what is it then? do you want to say there is no such a strategy? do you want to say a global power of that magnitude and extend does not have any strategy or has not yet thought of one?
I think, the U.S motives are pretty clear for outsiders, even for non-expert people. I remember talking to an Indian colleague last year. he was emphasizing on the U.S agenda in the Persian Gulf region and why it does not want to come to the term of current Iran as my other Turkish colleague was naively advocating.
re-instability in the ME, can you define what kind of instability a nuclear test made by Iran would bring to the region? the region is already messed up, thanks to the policies of the Axis Powers and their little thug, i.e. israel. don’t you see that? what it means to be more unstable? if anything, an Iran making a nuclear test would definitely bring stability in the greater middle east.
James Canning says: September 10, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Mr. Clinton had escalated a dispute over inpections to a cause belli.
I think someone was pushing the US grand strategic agenda during the first months of the new President’s term.
What that someone (or those someones) not seem to have been aware of was the fact that after the 1991 war against Iraq, North Koreans had moved their forces South and had taken Seoul hostage.
That is my personal opinion of the situation at that time.
Look, US can go and sign a Peace Treaty with North Korea tomorrow.
But US leaders won’t; always waiting for the collapse of NK – just like USSR.
Likewise with Iran.
fyi,
NK was a signatory to NPT and was refusing to allow inspection of spent nuclear fuel. US concern was NK was using spent nuclear fuel to produce plutonium to build nukes contrary to NPT. Correct statement?
fyi,
Are you claiming there was not a serious dispute with North Korea, arising from NK’s refusal to allow inspections of spent nuclear fuel? In 1994.
I recommend Gideon Rachman’s “World has changed in suprising ways” (Financial Times Sept. 9). ‘In searching for a way of defining the new US approach to the world [after 9/11], Mr Bush fell back on the ideas promoted by the “neoconservatives”, the only faction within his administration that could present him with a satisfyingly bold explanation and response to the events of 9/11.’
James Canning says: September 10, 2011 at 1:58 pm
No.
Mr. Clinton was leading US to war with NK.
THere are many execuses to start a war and more can be manufactured.
fyi,
Is it not correct to say the serious problem the Clinton administration had with North Korea, was that NK was refusing to allow inspection of spent nuclear fuel? Surely an easy yes or no.
Empty,
Bravo re: your comment on the reasons Iran wanted to apprehend al-Qaeda terrorists.
fyi,
Your warning that paying too much attention to domestic politics, and thereby failing to deal with problems in the foreign policy arena, is well taken. Consider the catastrophe of the First World War, and the fact almost the entire attention of the British Parliament in the two months after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (June 1914) was taken up by problems in Ireland. Britain might have been able to prevent the outbreak of a general European war, if this gigantic distraction had not existed.
Unknown Unknowns,
Aren’t you forgetting the hundreds of billionaires in Russia and China? India has quite a few too. And Kazakhstan.
Klaus Weiss,
Regarding your comment about Israel exploiting the holocaust, clearly this situation obtains in the US as well as Germany. Americans are asked to make amends to survivors of the holocaust, even though the US obviously did not cause the holocaust.
Ironically, German and US support for Israel often is so strong as to encourage the Israeli government to engage in actions actually contrary to the best interests of Israel.
Empty says “[The] US, on the other hand, does not seem to have an ultimate goal.
*
Au contraire, mon frère. The goal of the world hegemon, whose primary cat’s paw is the US, is a world which is governed by one government wherein the superrich of today consolidate their position and continue to skim the cream which results from the unjust maldistribution of resources. The New World Order is an open conspiracy or open secret, whose agenda can be seen at work in such organizations and fora as:
The Bildergerg Group
The Trilateral Commission
The Council on Foreign Relations
The Royal Institute for International Affairs
The International Monetary Fund
The World Bank
The World Trade Organization
The Security and Prosperity Partnership
Etc.
The unmitigated audacity and arrogance of their agenda is truly staggering. Here’s an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEEgtOFFlM
James Canning says: September 9, 2011 at 6:50 pm
Please take the time to investigate how Mr. Clinton was leading US to a war with North Korea at the start of his presidency.
James Canning says: September 9, 2011 at 6:37 pm
You cannot afford the price of domestic politics in foreign policy.
Nobody can afford that level of self-indulgence anymore without courting disaster.
“Let the games begin.”
Photi:
I think Sassan is hopeless, and so I for one shall ignore him.
Regarding Guantanamo prisoners, the American Declaration of Independence declares all men to be created equal. How hard is that to understand?
Without that ideal we are not America. President Obama needs to start doing what he said he was going to do. Change we can believe in.
Some interesting and detailed information on the legal status of the Prisoners of War at Guantanamo Bay and other things related to torture:
The ‘War on Terror’ goes to court from al-jazeera.
“When district court judges began reviewing the materials in habeas cases, the government lost the majority of cases because that evidence did not stand up to scrutiny. However, the government’s losing streak has been reversed on appeal by the heavily right-wing DC Circuit Court, which has crafted its decisions to ensure that no Guantánamo detainees, regardless of the flimsiness of evidence or credible assertions of interrogational violence, will be freed on a court order.
Boumediene was decided during the 2008 presidential campaign. Republican contender John McCain called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country”, whereas Obama praised the Supreme Court for taking “an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus”.
–A “scene in a movie” rather…..
–”jihad” rather (not jihah)
Brothers Unknown Unknowns and Empty,
Thank you for your comments. Empty, your commentary on the false idols and how it deals with contemporary life and the ‘truths’ every individual should confront is profound.
I do hope you both and others are preparing responses for Sassanin in the previous thread. He has made specific assertions about the composition of Iranian society that contradicts the reality many of us who frequent this site take for granted. At one point he even praises the Shah as a lesser evil than the Islamic republic.
How much resonance does a guy (or gal) like this have in the Iranian diaspora?
Photi,
If I understood you correctly, it seems you also were saying in your posts that Iran’s arrest of some foreigners and Taliban members who fled to Iran after the bombing of Afghanistan was a collaboration with/helping of the US government and then concluded that Iran must have believed they [alleged Taliban members] must have had a role in 9/11. Am I correct about the gist of what you were saying? If no, would you mind clarifying? If yes, then I’d like to respond to that.
To understand Iran’s role, one must also understand Iran’s relationship with Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Northern Alliance prior to 9/11/2001. In 1998, the Taliban administration and forces decapitated all Iranian diplomats and staff in the consulate in Mazar Sharif. Iran was clearly on the side of Northern Alliance and considered the Taliban as a misguided and illegitimate force that came to power in Afghanistan with an everlasting help and support of the US and Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the arrest of suspected individuals/groups that fled to Iran after the US bombing of Afghanistan was not to help the US. It just happened that the US action conveniently facilitated Iran’s access to suspected members of a group it considered not only hostile but actually potential criminals who had killed quite a few Iranian diplomats 4 years earlier. This was just one of several reasons for Iran’s action/behavior. As far as I have examined the actual statements from the official Iranian governments in their original script, helping the US has not been a goal. There have, however, been discussions about exploring areas where interests might temporarily coincide. One significant difference, I think, between the US goals and Iran’s goals is that Iran knows exactly what it wants and takes steps (tiny as they might seem) toward that ultimate goal and it seems events of the past decade have somehow helped Iran in that direction. US, on the other hand, does not seem to have an ultimate goal. It reminds me of a scent in a movie in which the “hero” of the story was blind folded in a room with a sword in his hand. He kept on jumping around and hitting a lot of items in its way but not hitting a single one of his enemy. Being a Hollywood movie, however, he somehow magically won and killed all its adversaries and came out victorious.
Hillary Mann Leverett:
Just watched the video. Brava! It is amazing, truly amazing to me what the left has become. As if George the Younger’s policy shift reversing hundreds of years of rule-of-law thinking and tradition to satisfy the neocon fantasy of full-spectrum dominance, as if that was not ridiculous enough, to take the position that “I’m gonna attack whoever I feel like it whether or not that country poses an clear and present danger because it is what I decide that matters, and that this is ultimately going to *reduce* external threats to the US”, just when you thought this could not be topped, in wales Barry White with his doctrine of “preventive humanitarian intervention”, to spread this insanity to countries where even the fig-leaf of a potential future threat in US eyes is no longer required. And of course Barry’s doctrine does not apply to allies of the US such as in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is moored. Is this nightmare of the abdication of what little moral authority the left still had *ever* going to end?
But on the topic of 9/11 and who is winning the war on terror: it is a war on Islam which cannot and will not be won by the US, but in its first battle, that of associating Islam with terrorists, the US has surely won. Islam, unlike Christianity apparently, has rules on what is licit and illicit in war; rules that all 5 of the Islamic Rites agree upon. This included the rule that it is not permissible to kill civilians. The Wahhabis and Salafis and whatever else these dupes and patsies were that supposedly died in planes crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon (only to show up not dead in their home countries days and weeks later, but that’s another story), and whoever else believes that it is permissible to kill civilians and non-combatants have removed themselves from the fold of Islam by virtue of the fact of this newfangled abhorrent belief. When the United States associates these their operatives with Islam by calling them Moslem terrorists (a contradiction in terms), they are just doing what they do best: lying and cheating and generally Weaseling their way through life. But when Moslem leaders don’t cal them on it and continue to call them on their lies and weaseling ways until public discourse does not associate terrorism with Islam and Moslems, then those leaders have conceded the point and lost significant ground in the first battle of that war.
Photi,
RE: NY buildings’ collapse on 9/11, I read your comments and some of the questions you had posed in prior posts. I did not wish to put any comments in the previous thread because of what it visually propagated without deconstructing the chosen image. So, I am putting a summary of my response here.
1. I think what you have been doing is great. That is, it seems (from reading your posts) you’re researching and reviewing documents and evaluating them for yourself. That is an excellent approach. One thing that has worked well for me and would like to share with you is that I use the first “shahadat/شهادت” as an overarching framework. I often think about what it really means to say لا اله الا الله (translation/interpretation: there is no “elaah/idol” but Allah). Why is it that we first have to reject all the false gods before admitting into our heart الله. This way of thinking has had a good practical application for me. When things are not really clear to me and I have a lot of doubts, I first try to evaluate and examine whatever scenario/story/theory that is before me and try to see if it is اله/false god/falsehood or not before I get to ponder about finding the “truth” or alternative explanations. Sometimes the discomfort with not knowing and haste to know what the truth is might just tempt me to accept something as the truth (this could be an official explanation of something, for example) just to gain comfort and peace of mind. But that comfort is temporary and not real. I think our truth-seeking فطرت keeps on nagging at us (no matter how deeply we bury it) till we attend to it. I hope this is useful as a way to think about things.
Also, I think the fact that you’re exploring is excellent. It is a form of جهاد /jihah and I wish you well. I am certain that even if you don’t fully get what the truth is, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of “that which is not”.
2. You asked a question about possible stripping of the fireproof coating from the steel beams as a consequence of a sudden pressure that might have been created by the planes’ impact (into the building) if I understood you correctly (if not, please correct me).
Chrysotile asbestos (this is outlawed now due to extremely high toxicity and carcinogenicity of the product when inhaled) used to be sprayed on the structures meant to be fireproofed. Over that, there would be construction material such as cement, etc. If I were to draw an analogy, I would say if you sprayed a tick layer of “anti rust” chemical over an iron rod and then cover that with a thick layer of paint. To strip the “anti rust” you’ll need to do it either physically (using sand paper, for example) or chemically using appropriate solvents. To fully strip it in a matter of few minutes or even few hours if you were to expose it to one sudden impact coupled with fire is not plausible. For this process to happen to fireproofing material does not seem logical based on the understanding of the material we have so far.
Perhaps it is a slip of the pen, an oversight, or a genuine truthful statement based on فطرت انسانی “the essence of humanity” but the title and the body of the post interpreted together a) puts Iran on one side and the terrorists,/two US administrations/a list of inhuman activities on the other side; b) makes a clear transition from what people “are” to what people “do” which has a great potential to allow a escape from the entrapment of false dichotomies.
Meet Rabbi Herschel Gluck of Stoke Newington (London). He is founder of the London-based Muslim-Jewish Forum. The good rabbi has acted as an ‘Ambassador of Peace’ on behalf of the Zionist regime for many years behind the scene.
Israel had exploited Rabbi Gluck’s good standing with the British Muslims to work as a ‘go-between’ Tel Aviv and Tehran for the release of Jewish soldiers (Col. Elhanan Tannenbaum, Ron Arad, Benny Avraham, Gilad Shalit, etc.) captured by Lebanese resistance Hizbullah fighters as POW. US Congress called for the immediate release of Israeli criminals while Israel Occupation Force (IOF) failed to get them free during 2006 war.
British daily The Independent reported today that according to Wikileaks – in 2009, Rabbi Gluck on behalf of the Zionist regime and the British government held secret talks with Ayatollah Syed Salman Safavi, brother of the military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for the realease of some the Israeli soldiers in Hizbullah captivity.
Rabbi Gluck said the release of the confidential cable, sent from the United States’ London embassy to Washington in April 2009, had potentially compromised the safety of his Iranian counterpart, and jeopardised their attempts “to build bridges and find solutions to difficult issues”.
Is it another attempt by the frustrated Jewish Lobby to create rift among the Iranian leaders? Brigadier General Yahya Rahim-Safavi is Head of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. (IRGC) and also a top military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Military Commander Ayatullah Khameini. The General in September 2010 had claimed that both CIA and Mossad were behind the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“The US and the Zionists developed the strategy of the September 11 attacks in an effort to counter the Islamic vigilance and to control energy resources in the Middle East,” IRNA quoted Brigadier General Yahya Rahim-Safavi as saying.
The IRGC was declared a ‘terrorist organization’ by the US government to please its masters in Tel Aviv.
http://rehmat2.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/the-israeli-ayatullah/
CIA officer in charge of hunting down Osama bin Laden says….
Why do they hate us?
Mike Scheurer is well placed to analyze the roots of terror since he served on the desk at the CIA tasked with hunting and killing Usama Bin Laden — in fact, he led it.
Here is what he said in The Hill newspaper:
http://thehill.com/special-reports/homeland-security-january-2010/75531-when-troops-and-cia-officers-die-for-a-fantasy
“The young Nigerian in Detroit and the Jordanian bomber in Khost and his wife have told America’s Marines, soldiers, and CIA officers what they already surely sense, but what their political leaders deny.
Both attackers cited motivations that pivot on U.S. support for Israel against the Palestinians; U.S. occupation of Muslim lands; and U.S. attacks on their fellow Muslims. The three individuals’ words echo the components of U.S. foreign policy named by bin Laden in 1996 as the causes of war — which also include U.S. support for Arab tyrants and exploitation of Muslim energy resources — and which polls show 80 percent of the world’s Muslims identify as attacks on their faith.
While it is hard for Americans to hear, we are at war with a steadily growing number of young men and women in the Muslim world because of what the U.S. government has done in that arena since 1945. The current slate of U.S. foreign policies toward the Islamic world generates the basic and most compelling and uniting motivation for our Islamist enemies.
Should some of these policies be changed? I surely think so…..”
Miscellaneous technical comments/suggestions:
1. Good move on creating a YouTube channel. Uploading the previous videos would be great.
2. Titles are quite important with the YOuTube videos. Inserting good keywords into the title makes the video more likely to be found in an ad hoc search. Therefore, the title “Leverett Aljazeera Interview” is not a particularly effective and useful one.
3. Adding a shortcut key to the tweeter, facebook, etc. tag would be useful.
Rick Perry Needs to ‘Tone Down’ His Rhetoric, Says Kim Jong-Il
‘He Scares Me,’ North Korean Dictator Says
By Andy Borowitz
September 09, 2011 – PYONGYANG (Borowitz Report) – Gov. Rick Perry’s performance in this week’s Republican debate, in which he called Social Security a Ponzi scheme and took pride in executing an innocent man, “made him seem like a totally unhinged lunatic,” said North Korean President Kim Jong-Il today.
The reclusive Kim, who rarely speaks out on U.S. politics, said he was breaking his silence in this case because “quite frankly, he scares me.”
The North Korean dictator said that Gov. Perry would have to “tone down” his rhetoric considerably if he were to become a head of state.
“When you’re President of a country, you can’t go around spouting the first crazy thing that comes into your head,” Mr. Kim said. “That man I saw onstage gave me the willies, and I don’t think I’m alone on this.”
While the North Korean dictator said there was still a chance that Mr. Perry might “dial it back a little,” watching the Texas Governor at Wednesday night’s debate left him “shaken.”
“I’ll tell you this,” Kim said, “I would not want a person like that to have access to nuclear weapons.”
Elsewhere, some Republican lawmakers said they were unable to hear President Obama’s jobs speech due to fingers stuck in their ears.
Photi:
I don’t know what you read, but this is the pertinent question, in my view, with regard to the Pentagon aspect of that day that begs to be answered:
The below link is of a picture of the trajectory of the projectile (whatever it was), entering the outer wall of E-ring, and passing through 4 other walls, before exiting the inner wall of C-ring – a total of 6 hardened outer walls in all.
http://911review.org/Wiki/PentagonAttackDamage.shtml
As can be seen in the next picture, each wall has two layers of brick covering an inner layer of reinforced concrete. (Some of the bent rebar can be seen to either side of the hole.)
,http://www.odeion.org/cruisemissile/c-hole6.jpg
The hole in the enlarged picture above can be seen in context here (circled in red):
,http://911review.org/Wiki/PentagonAttackDamage.shtml
So there arise two problems, both insurmountable, as best as I can determine:
1. The hole is too small. It is the size of the door of a two-car garage! (Therefore, it cannot have been made by a jet liner.)
2. Even if we were to close our eyes to that little factoid (and there is no reason to do so, but, just for the hell of it, *if* we were to do so…), the other problem that remains is that a hollow aluminum tube – which is all an airplane is – cannot go through *one*, let alone 6 hardened exterior walls of brick and reinforced concrete! What am I saying? It can’t even go through a layer of 5/8″ gypsum board! Don’t believe me? Try it yourself the next time you finish a can of Coke. Hold it in the palm of your hand and slam it against a wall, any wall. A hollow, interior gypsum board wall. All you will succeed in doing is crushing the can, and possibly making a little dent in the gypsum. OK, so the kenetic energy is multiplied by orders of magnitude when you speed the thing up? Fine. So let’s give it the benefit of the doubt and say it will penetrate all the way thorough one wall. But not six!! And certainly, not in the diameter of the width of the door of a two-car garage.
Something is seriously wrong, and the fact that the footage captured by all of the cameras atop the Pentagon are not being release
,http://files.abovetopsecret.com/uploads/ats48924_062a_COMP.jpg
makes it stink even more.
Here is a good rundown of the 3 largest Navies in the East Mediterranean. They are Turkey, Israel and the US. The author mentions the likelihood of the current tensions sparking a military conflict between Turkey and Israel remains small. He states the US would intervene prior to any aid ships actually breaking the siege on Gaza:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=possibility-of-turkish-israeli-military-conflict-still-small-2011-09-09
Israel better fold, the year isn’t 1967. This could get ugly quick. The world knows the siege of Gaza is wrong.
Richard Siverstein:
“Given that Turkey fully intends to break the Gaza blockade, Israel has little choice if it wishes to continue the blockade but to stop the Turks. If it allows the Turks to proceed, then the entire Israeli rationale claiming the siege is legal falls like a house of cards. If Israel resists there will be bloodshed. If it does not, the siege will, even according to the rationale offered by Palmer, no longer be valid. These will be interesting times.
Of course, Turkey may just be bluffing in an attempt to compel Israel to offer the full apology and reparations Turkey has demanded. In that sense this could be brinksmanship, albeit of the most dangerous and dramatic kind. My money? Israel folds. Israel doesn’t like facing long odds. It prefers a sure thing like fighting poorly armed Hamas militants to fighting a well-armed nation whose population is ten times larger than its own.”
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/09/08/turkey-lays-down-gauntlet-to-israel-will-provide-armed-escort-for-future-turkish-gaza-flotillas/
*please excuse that first sentence, i am referring to available evidence about the flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11/2001.
Unknown Unknowns,
The following is the conclusion of an essay analyzing the available evidence. I did not read through the essay word for word, but did read substantial portions of it and thought the author did a good job demonstrating the available evidence does not contradict with the 757 theory.
An important factor to consider is that this sort of thing very quickly creates a money-making industry where the ‘truth’ is best kept in X-file limbo in order to increase the the interest and thus the money factor further.
“Conclusion
In this essay I asked what conclusions about the Pentagon attack were supported by physical evidence — primarily post-crash photographs of the site. I found that, in every aspect I considered, this evidence comports with the crash of a Boeing 757. At the same time, the evidence does not conclusively prove that the aircraft was a 757, much less that it was Flight 77. However, that lack of conclusiveness should not be surprising given the systematic suppression of evidence by authorities.”
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagon/index.html
Serifo,
If i were the Israelis I would be suing for peace with the Palestinians. That is pretty arrogant of them to put up a wall in egypt which could only be symbolic of the wall being built in Palestine which is symbolic of the Israeli inability to live in peace with her neighbors.
if the Israelis would quit being so damn belligerent their world would cease being so insecure.
Off Topic
The Israeli Embassy in Cairo is under attack by protesters ! Apparently the Israeli Ambassador is leaving Cairo ASAP !
“Stock prices decline on American exchanges, as investors trade heavily amid increasing European debt crisis concerns.”
Interesting that, the investors were’nt concerned with the gov fear mongering of an imminent terror attack, but they were concerned by EU economic terror!!!!
“what countries in the Muslim world and the global South really seem to want is “independence”, and part of that is “an independent foreign policy, something that adheres to the culture, values, beliefs, and concerns of their citizens”
HL
.. and the Egyptian demonstrators have taken over isreali embassy and are throwing embassy documents out the window!!!! Israeli government still mum…..
But they don’t get the message!!!!!!
Al-Jazeera – Pro-Israel Arab Network
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/al-jazeera-pro-israel-arab-network/
Iran – Wins the war on terrorism
Israel – Gains everything from the 9/11 false-flag operation.
US Jews – Receives 81% of grants from US Department of Homeland Security (HLS).
US citizen – 51% cannot afford education and 46% cannot afford basic medicare.
US Fatcats – America boasts 1680 billionaires and 324,000 millionaires.
US debt – Over $11.7 trillion and increasing every month thanks to pro-Israel wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/sept-11-%e2%80%93-how-it-benefits-thee/
fyi,
Are you referring to the dispute with NK, in which the NK gov’t was not allowing inspection of spent nuclear fuel (even though it was signatory to NPT)?
fyi,
Surely you are not arguing that North Korea is a rising world power! NK government is incompetent almost beyond belief.
fyi,
You should read comments by the former Russian foreign minister, Primakov, who stresses the need to consider domestic politics in Germany, or the US, etc., in evaluating what can be done with given proposals, etc. This is very basic.
I thought Hillary made an important point, in her interview, that many of those in Washington hoping for an overthrow of the Syrian government see it as possibly enabling Israel to keep the Golan Heights. I do not think any Syrian government will accept Israeli annexation of the GH.
James Canning says: September 9, 2011 at 6:07 pm
Man come off it; Mr. Clinton was also leading US to war with North Korea before someone whispered some unpleasant facts into his ear.
AIPAC did not tell him to go for a war with North Korea.
US planners (of that grand strategy) did.
I would respectfully suggest you think about my evidence before resuming your responses; me thinks that you are in state of denial.
James Canning says: September 9, 2011 at 6:07 pm
Foreigners do not care one whit about domestic dallyings in the United States.
paul says: September 9, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Of course, what do you expect.
The Axis Powers have run out of any political solutions in the Persian Gulf, in the Levant, and in Palestine.
Their last chance was in 2007 with Iran.
And in 1999 in Palestine.
Ask the US-EU Leaders for a postive and credible political program – outside of war – in the Middle East.
They have none.
That is why Turkey is going its way – her leaders have grasped the lack of leadership coming out of US & EU.
That is why Mr. Ahmadinejad just today announced an Islamic meeting on the disposition of the situation in Syria.
US & EU can offer only war.
fyi,
Clinton was aware that one reason he defeated H G W Bush in 1992 is that the Jews wanted to punish Bush for attempting to force Israel to end the occupation of WB and Gaza. But I agree Clinton killed the Conoco deal because Aipac and other elements of extremist Jewish lobby opposed it.
And how many US Congressmen put in an appearance at most recent Aipac convention in Washington? Was it 330?
fyi,
Yes, of course the American electorate should be condemned for choosing stooges of the Israel lobby to serve in the US Congress. In my experience, most Americans are extremely ignorant about the Middle East, and the American role in promoting Israeli terrorism in the ME.
paul,
What leads you to think the UK wants a Nato war in Syria? There is no evidence for this claim.
fyi,
The UK government wants Israel out of the West Bank. You may recall that after the 1967 war, Britain in the UN tried to force Israel out of all the territories occupied during the June war. Lyndon Johnson failed to give the UK adequate backing on the matter.
U.S. Mulls Staging Troops in Kuwait After Iraq Withdrawal
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/9/headlines
I find it interesting that each party’s partisans often think that their wars are ‘good’ wars. The very same folks who CONTINUE to howl over Bush’s Iraq war in many cases choose to defend Obama’s lovely assault on Libya. I remember right wing commenters claiming years ago, at the height of liberal/Dem/left outrage over Bush, that many of the same outraged ones would support similar wars by a Dem. To my horror, they’ve turned out to be absolutely right about that.
Iran’s foreign policy is deeply conflicted. They cannot decide if they are anti-imperial/anti-colonial, or if they are pro-theocracy. I mean, they can’t decide which is more important to them. Their attitude about the war on Libya reveals this. They have chosen to support the Nato war on Libya, while mouthing anti-imperial platitudes against it. The folly of this is clear, as the US and Nato are already shifting their bombsights towards Syria and Iran.
Klaus Weiß says: September 9, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Thank you for your comments.
I do not believe that the relationship between non-Jewish Americans and Jewsih Americans is in any way, shape or form analogous to the one that obtains in Germany.
America has been a great country for Jews.
Fyi: Taking into consideration what Germans, not just their elite, but average Germans, did to the European Jews, the question about the proportions of Jewish inhabitants is slightly unfair. It is obvious that today’s Germans have nothing to do with the Holocaust, and that Israel has nothing to do with the Holocaust but with Zionism, but how can the society of the successors of the culprits demand an end to being regarded as the successors of the culprits? Israel is exploiting this and probably will do so in the future, but I wonder what can be done about it …
James Canning says: September 9, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Nevertheless, the electorate cannot be excused.
And nobdoy put a gun to Mr. Clinton’s head and forced him to rescind the CONOCO deal or to impose Dual Containment.
You are clutching at straws.
Fareed Zakaria joins those who argue the Libyan intervention “offers a new model for the West”. It obviously was much better than the idiotic and illegal invasion of Iraq, and the foolish gross enlargement of the Afghan War by Obama. But the flouting of the UNSC resolution was dangerous, and I still think was a mistake.
It does seem clear that there was a good deal of resistance, even in the Pentagon, to the US attack on Gaddafi, and I think the intervention in Libya was more of a “freak” event that just a further example of entrenched policy.
Without the ranting of Gaddafi on TV, about exterminating cockroaches, the political pressure on David Cameron to back Sarkozy would have been less. On the other hand, Cameron was trying to work joint defence deals with France, and this led him to seek to accomdate Sarkozy’s intervention desires. And let’s not forget Bernard-Henri Levy and his appeals to his close friend Sarkozy.
fyi,
Do you know any political fundraisers in the US? I do. And for decades now, many people approaching a rich Jew for a campaign contribution will often be told: “You tell the Senator Israel is keeping the West Bank.” Or something along those lines.
fyi,
It is not the numbers of Jews in the US that is so significant; instead, it is their great wealth and economic power. With but 1.8% of the population, their gross wealth is close to that of the remaining 98.2% of the American people. Cash talks in American politics. The New York Times more than 40 years ago learned the financial penalty that the Israel lobby would impose on the newspaper if it did not meet certain demands made upon it. The late Punch Sulzberger used to talk about it on occasion.
Leading neocon propagandist, Charles Krauthammer, today in the Washington Post claims that Iraq was “the central campaign in the crushing of al-Qaeda”! Astonishing rubbish.
off topic:
Hail to the True Victors of Rupert’s Revolution
By John Pilger
Nicholas Sarkozy, a Napoleonic Islamophobe whose intelligence services almost certainly set up the coup against Gaddafi.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29066.htm
James Canning says: September 9, 2011 at 1:30 pm
The freely elected representatives of American people cheered the leader of Jewish Apartheid state in US Congress.
That fact speaks for itself.
Jews are too small a population in US to account for this turn of events by themselves.
And what about UK?
Or Germany?
Or Italy?
Or France?
“And all our yesterdays have lighted fools. The way to dusty death.”
fyi,
Is Israel a scorpion on the neck of the US, and due to wealth and power of the Jews in the US this danger is not brought to the attention of the American people?
Why are most Americans not even aware Iran has tried to restore normal relations with the US a number of times? Who is responsible for this remarkable ignorance? Seventh-Day Adventists? Unitarians? Or another group?
At Spiegel online today, good commentary by Gregor Peter Schmitz: “Bush’s Tragic Legacy – - How 9/11 Triggered America’s Decline”. And the stupidity of the Bush administration continues.
BiBiJon says: September 9, 2011 at 11:35 am
For the Americans, as far as I can infer from public sources, their attachment to their grand strategy is due to hubris.
In the 1940s and 1950s, they were running the world.
They are still mentally living in that world.
Just read the history of the Decline and Fall of General Motors Corporation and ask yourself how could that happen.
And for almost 30 years individual human beings inside and outside of GM, who wished GM well, tried to persuade her leaders to changes course; to no avail.
GM leaders were promoted based on how well they played internal politics of GM; they lost sight of what they were there for.
And as GM went, so could US.
BiBiJon,
Many members of the US Congress are not especially fond of Israel but they simply are all too aware that if they fail to toe the line laid down by Aipac, Winep, etc etc etc their seats are at risk.
Bravo, Hillary. I think the core problem in US ME foreign policy is simply that Aipac, Winep and other groups promoted by rich and very powerful Jews in the US, effectively control the US Congress on key issues. Thanks to major news organisations, newspapers, etc. in the US.
fyi,
You and Mann-Leverett have emphasized the US’ aversion to an independent Iran. The events, and deeds of past 32 years clearly support your assertions.
My question is what motivates this thinking among the ‘policy elites’, and the policies that emanate from it, and the dogged pursuit of the same tactics no matter how abject a failure those tactics have proven to be.
If it were based on a hoped for derived benefit, then I’d expect such a benefit to be quantifiable. I expect both the US and Iran, calculator in hand, be totting up costs and benefits and arrive at policies that make temporal sense.
If Persian-aversion is based on some ideology that has become the organizing force in the vaccuum of any other belief system, then I’d like to hear your explanations.