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February 22nd, 2007
January 31st, 2007
pinkville
 | 08:27 pm - counting down to Iran
Iran Clock Is Ticking
by Robert Parry
31 January 2007, Consortium News
While congressional Democrats test how far they should go in challenging George W. Bush’s war powers, the time may be running out to stop Bush from ordering a major escalation of the Middle East conflict by attacking Iran.
Military and intelligence sources continue to tell me that preparations are advancing for a war with Iran starting possibly as early as mid-to-late February. The sources offer some differences of opinion over whether Bush might cite a provocation from Iran or whether Israel will take the lead in launching air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But there is growing alarm among military and intelligence experts that Bush already has decided to attack and simply is waiting for a second aircraft carrier strike force to arrive in the region – and for a propaganda blitz to stir up some pro-war sentiment at home.
One well-informed U.S. military source called me in a fury after consulting with Pentagon associates and discovering how far along the war preparations are. He said the plans call for extensive aerial attacks on Iran, including use of powerful bunker-busting ordnance.
Another source with a pipeline into Israeli thinking said the Iran war plan has expanded over the past several weeks. Earlier thinking had been that Israeli warplanes would hit Iranian nuclear targets with U.S. forces in reserve in case of Iranian retaliation, but now the strategy anticipates a major U.S. military follow-up to an Israeli attack, the source said.
Both sources used the same word “crazy” in describing the plan to expand the war to Iran. The two sources, like others I have interviewed, said that attacking Iran could touch off a regional – and possibly global – conflagration.
“It will be like the TV show ‘24’,” the American military source said, citing the likelihood of Islamic retaliation reaching directly into the United States.
Though Bush insists that no decision has been made on attacking Iran, he offered similar assurances of his commitment to peace in the months before invading Iraq in 2003. Yet leaked documents from London made clear that he had set a course for war nine months to a year before the Iraq invasion.
In other words, Bush’s statements that he has no plans to "invade" Iran and that he’s still committed to settle differences with Iran over its nuclear program diplomatically should be taken with a grain of salt.
There is, of course, the possibility that the war preparations are a game of chicken to pressure Iran to accept outside controls on its nuclear program and to trim back its regional ambitions. But sometimes such high-stakes gambles lead to miscalculations or set in motion dynamics that can't be controlled.
( read the rest of this article )
Current Music: Holger Czukay ~ Persian Love
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October 9th, 2006
pinkville
| 07:56 pm - the next 'conquest'... the rapture
Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse
Monday 9 October 2006
by Chris Hedges
The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.
War with Iran—a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East—is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.” They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran. Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America. He knows nothing about the Middle East. He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.
These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war, a doctrine which, as William R. Polk points out, is a slight corruption of Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution. These two revolutionary doctrines serve the same function, to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to silence domestic critics who challenge leaders in a time of national crisis. It works. The citizens of the United States, slowly being stripped of their civil liberties, are being herded sheep-like, once again, over a cliff.
( the full article )
Current Music: TV On The Radio ~ I Was A Lover
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May 13th, 2006
May 11th, 2006
yes_justice
 | 12:22 pm - One Two Three Four! We Don't Want Your Stinking War
Go Read Juan Cole's, "Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist
And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War! ".
( Here's an excerpt (war images behind cut) )
I call on university students across America to begin holding antiwar rallies. The only way you can have a war on Iran is to draft the young people. It is you who are on the line. Demonstrate! Demonstrate against the very hint of war! Demonstrate in front of the warmongering "institutes" in Washington, DC! Demonstrate to end the one we've already got! (See Speaker's Forum on Iraq
Here is what the real Iran experts think about the prospect of an Iran war.
Because Hitchens's dirty tricks and lies against me are only the beginning. Whoever stands against the Perpetual War machine will be attacked, slimed, marginalized, and destroyed if the warmongers get their way. I don't care. Thus far and no farther.
One, two, three, four. We don't want your stinking war! Go Read The Rest
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April 19th, 2006
andrewcarr
| 07:41 am
There are so many depths and sub-avenues of the way that the government manipulated and lied to us on the subject of Iraq, that it would take all day for me to go through them all. Things like the way that foreigners were demonised as anti-patriotic, the media bias, the powerful sense of nationalism. In particular, the way the French were made out to look like the bad guys, regardless of how true that was. If you remember, the French said they would vote against the war only if it were to proceed before the weapons inspectors were finished their work. Not, as is the perception, that they would have veto-ed the war regardless. Of course, if they had held on for the French in the UN, they wouldn't have got it, because if the weapons inspectors had finished their work, they would have said that Saddam had nothing and we wouldn't have been able to have that lovely war.
I want to focus on two points, not the propaganda on the build up to the war, but the lasting perception in people's minds that it has left.
1. As a message to Middle Eastern governments:
People say it's important to find WMDs, but it isn't. Not finding WMDs wouldn't particularly have harmed the President's support (let's go with Bush, because Blair has no support left to lose*) at home if it wasn't for the lingering war, the occupation and the continuing death toll. In fact, not finding WMDs would send a very clear message to the rest of the Middle East. If America wanted to send the message that they're a dangerous rouge state, attacking for resources and didn't need any reason to do so, then they couldn't have done better. If they wanted to intimidate, let's say, Syria, then a very clear message has been sent.
2. To alter the minds of the country:
This is my main point. Because of this war, governments have somehow used the excuse of a pre-emptive war, based on WMDs as a supposedly justifiable reason to destroy a country and plunge it into chaos. Now Iran, North Korea and a host of other countries could be in our sights, and all our governments have to do for public approval is prove they have weapons. It doesn't matter if they pose no threat to us, or have no intention whatsoever to hurt us... they have weapons. It doesn't matter that this concept is highly illegal and Tony Blair and George Bush would have been hung under Nuremburg law because... they have weapons.
Let's go back to 1945 in Germany. This is what was read out to Nazi soldiers before they were hung:
"To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the acumilated evil of the whole"
To think that we're any different from the Nazis because we're under a mythical pretension of rightousness would be stupid. Hitler and the Germans also proclaimed this. They proclaimed they they were Christians. They manipulated the media to extordinary lengths to convince the nationals that they were on the right side.
And, more importantly and more relivantly, the early invasions of neighbouring countries prepared the psychological landscape for the massacre that was to come.
Famously, George Orwell once wrote:
"Who controls the present controls the past, who controls past controls the future"
We are forgetting the past and allowing ourselves to be decieved again. Educated people like us should be able to to snap out of our willing ignorance. Pre-emptive war isn't a new idea, it's existed for a long time and just because the BBC says that everybody hates us, doesn't mean that everybody is going to attack us. A tense peace is better than an intense war. Our need for resources shouldn't be the cause of the end of the world. Yes, they have weapons, but so do we. And there's only one side being aggressive.
*except Hilary Armstrong
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April 17th, 2006
April 16th, 2006
ambient_1
 | 11:23 am - Marching to the Drumbeat of Armageddon
Ladies and gentlemen, we currently find ourselves in a very precarious position. We now have six retired generals coming forward and asking for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. In addition, we are faced with those war-mongering neocons (none of whom have ever served in the military) thoughtlessly committing our troops to battle and planning on using what they call "small tactical nuclear weapons" on Iran. The lack of humanity on the part of these people is staggering, but let’s face it, they are desperate and they will do anything to avoid having to take responsibility for their mistakes and most certainly their crimes. They have fucked things up so badly in Iraq, (as we told them they would) but they cling to this irrational hope that if they escalate this conflict that they can still win it. The problem that these stupid shortsighted neocons have is this: They have never been willing to accept that not everyone in the world agrees with their myopic worldview. They said that we’d be greeted in Iraq as liberators but they were wrong. They said that we would find weapons of mass destruction but they were wrong. In fact, I cannot think of one thing that they were right about. Not one.
So now, as they put forward their new reasons for wanting to go into Iran, we find ourselves in awe of their arrogance but we cannot be anything other than baffled by their continuous ignorance and stupidity. They are like the gambler who sits at the table long after he has lost all of his money, sold his watch, his car and put the deed to his house on the table in the hopes that his luck will change. There is no logic or reason to this when you consider the untold death and destruction that they will inflict on the world simply because they believe that their luck will change. The only thing that can stand in their way is “We the people” and we must block their plans with everything that we can because if they do go forward with this atrocity, we will have only ourselves to blame. We won’t be able to sit back and say to the rest of the world that it’s their fault because... if we could get enough people into the streets all over this country, we would be able to stop them. That said I am not convinced, however, that even if we got everybody out into the streets and transported them to the white house steps that they would stop their outrageous plans to drag us all into Armageddon because as I have already stated, they are anything but reasonable. But we must try, either way; we owe it to the rest of the world.
( Read more )
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andrewcarr
| 10:14 am
In 1971 OPEC had a meeting at which they decide that whereever oil is bought or sold, it may only be bought or sold in US dollars. This means that Mexico selling oil to China has to be sold in US dollars, Holland trading with Morrocco has to be done in US dollars, etc etc. What this means is for anyone to trade oil, they have to buy dollars. This is how the US can owe more money than any country in the history of the world, but doesn't have to pay anything back because since 1971, thanks to this OPEC agreement, the US effectively has a magic chequebook.
Imagine you're maxed out past your overdraft limit in every bank in the world, and have been for decades, but it doesn't matter because everyone still accepts your cheques and they never come back to the bank.
So what could possibly happen to the magic chequebook of the US dollar to bring all of that money back to chase Washington on Wall Street? Well, it almost happened.
On 30/10/2000, when a switch was made to a deposit account in the Wall Street branch of a French bank. This was the account handling the 2.3 million barrells of oil sold per day by Iraq under the "oil for food" scheme. The Iraqis said that they wanted to switch the account from being a dollars denominated account to a euro denominated account. The UN couldn't stop them, but it looked like a stupid thing to do at the time because the euro was only worth eighty cents to the dollar. They'd lose money on every barrell they sold. They'd bankrupt their country within a year. The Iraqis didn't care, they hated America so much that they didn't want to trade in their currency.
In 2001, the euro gained 25% against the dollar. The Iranians then decided to switch their central bank's reserve funds from dollars to euros too. This makes them member number two on the axis of evil list, with number one being the Iraqis who started the trend.
7/12/2002, North Korea declares that it's going to do ALL of it's trading in euros. Not just oil, but everything. They're quickly branded "Axis of evil" member number three.
In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, the elected president, gains chainmanship of OPEC. He calls a meeting in Spain, in April of 2003 and on the table is the proposal that every single OPEC member stops trading in dollars and starts trading in euros. If that happened, that would be the federal reserve's worst nightmare because then every single central bank in every single country in the world has to abandon the dollar and start trading in euros. Such is the need for oil. All the dollars in those banks would be flushed out, the market would be awash with dollars and it would become a worthless currency. Worth less than toilet roll. The US would be back in it's 1920s and 1930s depression and this time they wouldn't have the Nazi party to invest in to save themselves.
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April 11th, 2006
ambient_1
| 10:01 am - Why are we planning on Nuking Iran?
Anytime the Bush administration tells you that they are pursuing diplomatic solutions - be afraid; be very afraid. In the past few days president Bush, Scott McClellan and others have said that they are pursuing “diplomatic channels” to the Iran problem. However, according to Seymour Hersh, they are in fact, planning on using small tactical nuclear weapons on Iran. Now let’s just stop for minute and think about what happened when they told us that we were in imminent danger from Iraq. It is astonishing to me that even with the president’s poll numbers as low as they are that they would still try to fly this lead balloon.
In contrast to the article by Seymour Hersh, I read an article in the Los Angeles Free Press stating that Iran poses a “New economic challenge of unprecedented proportions.” According to Art Kunkin and others, an Iranian oil bourse would cause the US dollar to free fall, due to the fact that the only places to buy oil now are on the New York Stock Exchange and the London Exchange, but those purchases must be made in American dollars. However, this bourse would make it possible to buy oil from the Iranian Stock Exchange and that oil would be traded in Euros, not American dollars. This, we are told, will cause the American dollar to fall even further than it already has and according to some economists... plunge the US into a deep depression.
Whether you believe the nuclear weapons justification or you believe the bourse story, it is abundantly clear that the Bush administration is planning on going into Iran. It should also be pointed out that before we attacked Iraq, Saddam was planning on switching to Euros as well; therefore, this may also be one of the real reasons that we attacked Iraq. We know that WMD was a false story and few, (other than Helen Thomas) have asked the president what his real reason for going into Iraq was. However, in this case, I think that I’ll put my money on the bourse story because the Bush administration doesn’t really care about Nukes and if they did, they would be pursuing talks with North Korea but they have not and they will not. That said the clear message that we have sent and are sending to the world is that if you have Nukes, the US will not mess with you. Therefore, it is understandable why so many of these nations want to become a member of the nuclear weapons club.
In my humble opinion... it is time to get very vocal and active if we are to prevent another atrocity from happening. If we Nuke Iran, it will darken the American image worldwide for decades to come. It would also kill many thousands, perhaps millions of innocent people and leave millions of others to die of cancer and the other fallout related diseases. This is not the road that we should be taking. The Bush administration, (in a period of six years) has been successful in undermining all the good ground that we had gained in preventing nuclear weapons proliferation and it appears that they are not done. Whatever their reasoning - we can be certain of one thing... it’s absolutely wrong!
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