Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category

Walkout on Ahmadinejad at UN: The Craven Whores Doth Protest Too Much

September 29, 2010
Dr K R Bolton, Foreign Policy Journal,  Sep 28, 2010

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

While it is all very easy for the news media, sundry interest groups, and government functionaries throughout the world to dismiss Dr Ahmadinejad as a Mad Mullah beyond the ken of rational debate, perhaps that is because Iran’s president poses questions that are too near the mark to allow a sensible hearing.

As if it weren’t enough being the leader of a large Islamic nation that does not kowtow to the USA and to Israel, Dr Ahmadinejad put himself beyond redemption for eternity by suggesting that “holocaust revisionism” should be subjected to the same standards of scholarly scrutiny as any other historical matter,[1] and like the Left-wing Jewish academic Prof. Norman G Finkelstein, suggested that the holocaust was being exploited for political and economic motives.[2] Being Jewish, Left-wing and the son of parents who had survived both the Warsaw Ghetto and Nazi concentration camps,[3] didn’t save Finkelstein from the Zionist smear-brigade, so Dr Ahmadinejad is not about to be cut any slack.

When Dr Ahmadinejad reached the UN podium on September 24, it is certain that Israel, the USA and sundry lackeys to both states, waited with baited breath to see what the president would do this time to try and expose their corrupt system before what remains of states that have any sense of national sovereignty and dignity. The reaction of the delegates from the USA, Australia, New Zealand, all 27 delegates from the EU states, Canada, and Costa Rica was to walk out en mass — the response of those who have nothing thoughtful or honest to offer. In New Zealand’s case, our state relies of moral posturing at world forums to compensate for national impotence.

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Turning Back From the Point of No Return – Implications of the Threat to Bomb Iran

August 26, 2010
Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, August 26, 2010

The drums for war on Iran have been banging louder than ever lately, with a spate of articles by political commentators either directly encouraging the bombing of the Islamic Republic or otherwise offering a narrative in which this is effectively portrayed as the only option to prevent Iran from waging a nuclear holocaust against Israel. A prominent example of the latter is Jeffrey Goldberg’s article last month in the Atlantic magazine, “The Point of No Return”.[1] Goldberg’s lengthy piece essentially boils down to this: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons poses an existential threat to Israel’s existence comparable to the Nazi Holocaust, and although the U.S. recognizes this threat, the Obama administration is weak, so Israel will have no choice but to act alone in bombing Iran to ensure its own survival.

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Blum: USrael and Iran

August 5, 2010

William Blum, Foreign Policy Journal, August 5, 2010

If and when the United States and Israel bomb Iran (marking the sixth country so blessed by Barack Obama) and this sad old world has a new daily horror show to look at on their TV sets, and we then discover that Iran was not actually building nuclear weapons after all, the American mainstream media and the benighted American mind will ask: “Why didn’t they tell us that? Did they want us to bomb them?”

The same questions were asked about Iraq following the discovery that Saddam Hussein didn’t in fact have any weapons of mass destruction. However, in actuality, before the US invasion Iraqi officials had stated clearly on repeated occasions that they had no such weapons. I’m reminded of this by the recent news report about Hans Blix, former chief United Nations weapons inspector, who led a doomed hunt for WMD in Iraq. Last week he told the British inquiry into the March 2003 invasion that those who were “100 percent certain there were weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq turned out to have “less than zero percent knowledge” of where the purported hidden caches might be. He testified that he had warned British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a February 2003 meeting — as well as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in separate talks — that Hussein might have no weapons of mass destruction.[1]

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Fidel Castro: Finding out the truth in time

June 30, 2010

Reflections of Fidel

Granma, June 28, 2010

WHEN I was writing one of my previous reflections, as a disaster for humanity was rapidly approaching, my greatest concern was to fulfill the elemental duty of informing our people.

Today I feel calmer than 26 days ago. As things continue happening in the short term, I can reiterate and enrich information to national and international public opinion.

Obama promised to attend the quarter-final game on July 2 if his country won in the second round. He must know, more than anybody, that those quarter finals could not take place if extremely grave events should happen beforehand, or at least he should know that.

Last Friday, June 25, an international news agency of known attention to detail in the information that it provides, published statements from “…the naval commander of the elite corps of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, General Ali Fadavi…” warning that “… if the United States and its allies inspect Iranian ships in international waters ‘they will receive a response in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.’”

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Propaganda and Iran’s Election

June 22, 2010

By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, Consortiumnews.com, June 22, 2010

Editor’s Note: The remarkably biased U.S. reporting on Iran’s election a year ago – portraying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory as “fraudulent” despite strong evidence to the contrary – has laid the groundwork for a new Middle East conflict, much as bogus reporting on Iraq’s WMD did in 2002-03.

Washington’s conventional wisdom has now wrapped itself into the logical pretzel of backing a “democracy movement” whose goal is to overturn the democratic judgment of a foreign people, as Edward S. Herman and David Peterson report in this guest essay:

It is almost a commonplace that the flow of information, opinion, and moral indignation in the United States adapts well to the demands of state policy.

If the state is hostile to Iran, even openly trying to engage in “regime change,” and if it is supportive of the state of Israel, no matter what crimes Israel may commit, and if it doesn’t like the populist president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and supports his overthrow and a follow-up “demonstration election” by the local elite, the media and many intellectuals will follow the state agenda, even if they must indulge in mental somersaults.

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Fidel Castro’s Reflection: A Swipe Waiting to Happen

June 15, 2010
by Fidel Castro, Escambray,  June 11, 2010

Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro condemns the Draft Resolution promoted by the United States and adopted by the Security Council in New York arguing the well known pretext that Iran deserved the sanctions for its violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On Tuesday, June 8, I wrote at noon time the Reflection “On the Brink of Tragedy.” Later, I watched Randy Alonso’s TV program Roundtable, usually aired at 6:30 pm.

That day, outstanding and prestigious Cuban intellectuals taking part in the program answered the pointed questions raised by the moderator with eloquent words that showed great respect for my views, but they did not think there was any reason for Iran to reject the likely decision –already known—that would be adopted by the Security Council in New York in the morning of June 9, undoubtedly concerted by the leaders of the five powers with the right of veto: the United States, France and the United Kingdom, with those of Russia and China.

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U.S. Seeks to Punish Iran with New Sanctions Resolution

June 11, 2010

Jeremy R. Hammond, Foreign Policy Journal, June 10, 2010

The United Nations Security Council yesterday passed a fourth sanctions resolution against Iran for its insistence on enriching its own uranium under its nuclear program and for what the resolution described as insufficient cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Experts criticized the U.S. policy of continually seeking tougher sanctions on Iran by pointing out how ineffective it is.

Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and current director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said the chance that the new resolution would get Iran to acquiesce to U.S. demands is “virtually zero.”

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Obama Goes with Neocon Flow on Iran

June 11, 2010

By Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, June 10, 2010

Whether wittingly or witlessly, President Barack Obama is pursuing a neocon-charted path on Iran that parallels the one that George W. Bush took to war with Iraq – ratcheting up sanctions against the “enemy,” refusing to tolerate more peaceful options, and swaggering along with the propagandistic tough-guy-ism of the major U.S. news media.

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The Obama administration is celebrating its victory in getting the UN Security Council on Wednesday to approve a fourth round of economic sanctions against Iran. Obama also is expected to sign on to even more draconian penalties that should soon sail through Congress.

Obama may be thinking that his UN diplomatic achievement will buy him some credibility – and some time – with American neocons and Israel’s Likud government, which favor a showdown with Iran over its nuclear program.

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Chernus: Israel Raises Nuke Threat to Iran

June 6, 2010
by Professor  Ira Chernus, CommonDreams.org, June 3, 2010

You’ve got to give Israel’s leaders credit for creativity, if for nothing else. They never run out of new excuses for their violence, each more imaginative (and imaginary) than the last. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just gave his official explanation to the Israeli people for the deaths on the Mavi Marmara. And guess whose fault it was. (Are you ready for this?) Iran!

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised, since Netanyahu and most of Israel have been obsessed with Iran as the source of all evil for years now. But how did he make such far-fetched connection? Simple: “Iran is continuing to smuggle weapons into Gaza. It is our obligation to prevent these weapons from being brought in by land and sea. … If the blockade had been broken, dozens and hundreds more ships carrying weapons could have come.”

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The Coming Iran War

May 30, 2010

MJ Rosenberg, The Huffington Post, May 28, 2010


It’s happening again.

The same forces — with a few new additions and minus a few smart defectors — who pushed the United States into a needless and deadly war with Iraq are now organizing for the next war.

This time the target is Iran, which, just like Iraq, is said to be on the verge of creating weapons of mass destruction.

Also, just like Iraq, its president is a supposed madman determined to destroy Israel.

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