Iran Affairs

Bush administration re-discovers international law

From Juan Cole's blog:

"U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff told the [U.N.] meeting it was a violation of the U.N. charter for member states to use force against others, or threaten to use it, . . Russia's U.N. envoy, Vitaly Churkin, suggested Wolff's statement was hypocritical and referred to the U.S.-led March 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Moscow strongly opposed. "I would like to ask the distinguished representative of the United States -- weapons of mass destruction. Have you found them yet in Iraq or are you still looking for them?" Wolff accused Churkin of making false comparisons. "I'm not a psychologist and I don't know what brought on the free association we heard from Ambassador Churkin," he said. . . ."

Yeah, there's totally no comparison between Russia invading a country, versus the US invading another country. No comparison at all. None whatsoever. These are TOTALLY DIFFERENT things...COMPLETELY UNRELATED  lol!

You know what this reminds me of? John Bolton -- Undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, and later US Ambassador to UN under President Bush -- and his view on international law:

"It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so-because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States."

In case you missed his views, he repeated them for the benefit of students at his former law school at  Yale:

“When I was here, I didn’t take any courses at all on international law ... and frankly I don’t think I missed a thing.”

Yes, these are precisely the sort of stellar qualifications that gets you appointed as US ambassador to the UN, apparently.

Iran wants to nuke Denver! OMFG!

Apparently, the Israel Project, in addition to trying to scare US Catholics, wants to convince Americans that Iran wants to nuke Denver.

Denver?

No offense to Denver, but I thought US military had claimed Iran was out to nuke much more glamorous cities like Rome and Athens.

Iran = Nazi Germany...?

The next time the Zionist howl about how Iran is equivalent to Nazi Germany, remind them of how the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, and how the same Zionists resorted to murdering Jews in Iraq in order to force a mass migration to "Israel". 

US Military in Iraq: "We arrested..ummm....somebody."

This is what was fist reported:

Iraqi's arrest stokes Iran suspicions Official suspected of ties to militias, bombing Associated Press August 29, 2008

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A senior official in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government was in custody Thursday, suspected of ties to Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias and plotting a June bombing that killed 10 people, including four Americans, Iraqi authorities said.

Ooooh! Iran! bomb! killed Americans! Weasel words: "suspected", "ties", "linked"

But who else was he "linked" to?  Hmmm:

In Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi officials identified a man arrested at the airport by American forces. They said the man, who was arrested as he stepped off a plane from Lebanon on Wednesday, was Ali Faisal al-Lami, a senior Shiite Iraqi government official who works for the de-Baathification council headed by Ahmad Chalabi, the former Bush administration ally.

Wooops!

Iran's uranium enrichment program: the REAL issue.

According to news reports, Iran today announced that it has developed 4000 centrifuges, and this is supposed to be a cause for "concern" because "Western nations" supposedly "fear that Iran's nuclear program is intended to make bombs."

But that's not really the issue and it never was. Framing the issue as "Iran can make nukes" is a convenient pretext.  What's driving this process is not fear of nuclear weapons proliferation, but plain old greed: a conflict between developing and developed countries over control of nuclear fuel production technology that started right after the NPT was signed, long before Iran started enriching uranium. Iran is being forced to give up nuclear fuel production technology to set a precedent against other developing nations.

Article IV of the NPT

When the NonProliferation Treat was signed, it created two classes of countries with respect to nuclear weapons: 5 nuclear-armed countries (Russia, China, US, Britain, France) and everyone else that were the non-nuclear armed countries.  Article IV of the treaty explicitly reminded everyone that by signing the NPT, the non-nuclear armed countries had ONLY agreed to not make nuclear weapons -- they had not given up any other rights regarding their nuclear program, and in exchange they were promised that the nuclear-armed countries would (eventually) get rid of their own nukes, and in the meantime would share access civilian nuclear technology. Article IV of the NPT affirms that all states party to the Treaty in good standing have a right to benefit from the peaceful uses of nuclear power.  It further commits the parties to cooperate with one another in the "fullest possible exchange" of nuclear equipment, materials, and information for peaceful purposes - without discrimination. 

The language of Article IV was drafted specifically to addresses the concerns of developing nations that the NPT would not be used to create two classes of countries when it came to civilian nuclear technology. The initial drafts of the article were vague but the developing nations specifically pressed to the firm-up the wording -- by adding the world "facilitate" for example -- inorder to emphasize the the NPT required an active commitment by the nuclear-armed countries to share nuclear technology.

The NSG and Monopolization of Nuclear Fuel Production

Of course, the nuclear armed countries have since then blatantly violated all of their obligations under the NPT. They have plainly refused to disarm, and are instead making more nukes. With respect to sharin nuclear technology, they simply claimed that Article IV language did not "obligate" them to do so. Specifically, in 1975, the "Nuclear Suppliers Group" was formed, which is essentially an informal club of countries that have nuclear technology. They agreed not to share certain "sensitive" civilian nuclear technologies with other countries, especially not nuclear enrichment technology. This was supposedly motivated by India's test of a nuclear device in 1974 -- but note the irony: India was not a signatory to the NPT anyway.

So, in other words, the Nuclear Suppliers Group used the conduct of a non-NPT member, to undermine their legal committments to other members of the NPT.

The developing countries have long been quite upset about this arbitrary decision to form an extra-legal limitation on Article IV commitments. And ever since then, they've been fighting against the use of the non-proliferation pretext to justify creating a nuclear fuel monopoly.

International Reaction

In reaction to the formation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (and the Carter administration's efforts to limit sharing nuclear technology) the Final Document of the United Nations General Assembly resolution S-10/2 which was adopted at the 27th plenary meeting of the tenth special session on 30 June 1978 stated in paragraph 69:

 "Each country's choices and decisions in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear energy should be respected without jeopardizing its policies or international cooperation agreements and arrangements for peaceful uses of nuclear energy and its fuel-cycle policies". 

 This language was reiterated in the final document of the 1980 NPT Review Conference and  has been consistently reiterated in every Review Conference since then, including the 1995 Review Conference , the 2000 NPT Review Conference and in the Final Document of the 10th Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2002.

So, when some claim that Iran is continuing to enrich uranium in opposition to the "will of the international community" you should wonder what the will of the international community really consists of.

I don' have time to blog about this issue in further detail suffice it to say that several countries have made various proposals to limit and restrict the distribution of nuclear enrichment technology  -- all of them, incidentally, would be "fuel providers" under their own proposals -- and have tried to allay the fears of developing countries that such restrictions would amount to a monopolization of nuclear fuel production. But the devil is in the details of their proposals. For example, they have offered to create a multinational fuel bank to guarantee against interruptions of nuclear fuel supplies so developing nations would not have to worry about fuel cutoffs. However, the developing counties are not worried about 'cut off' of nuclear fuel - they're worried about the developing states charging too much for their nuclear fuel by forming a monopoly. Under the fuel bank proposals, developing countries would ONLY have the right to access these nuclear fuel supplies in cases of CUTOFFS of delivery - not because the states selling nuclear fuel are charging too much. Similarly, the supposedly 'multinational enrichment' facilities proposed are not really 'multinational' and would discriminate against the developing states.

In 2004 the Bush administration revived the efforts to place arbitrary restrictions on the distribution of nuclear enirhment technology too. According to a 2004 analysis by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies:

"Many NPT state parties, particularly those from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), have already stated their opposition to President Bush’s proposals to restrict enrichment. In their view, precluding states from developing enrichment and reprocessing capabilities contradicts an important tenet of the NPT-that is, the deal made by the nuclear weapon states (NWS) to the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS).  Article IV of the NPT states that NNWS have the inalienable right to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, a right intended to provide an incentive for NNWS to give up the pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Bush proposals, however, introduce another element into the nonproliferation regime by segmenting countries into those that can engage in enrichment and reprocessing and those that cannot. Since most states with fuel cycle capabilities are from the developed world, it is clear that the target group of the proposal is the developing world."

In short, whenever the media tries to frame the debate about Iran's nuclear program as "Western states fear Iran is making nukes" you should read that as really saying "Western states want to monopolize nuclear fuel production and are using the trumped up 'fear' of Iran as a pretext".

Israel has a role in this conflict. Israel sees Iran as a competitor and blockage to its desire to dominate the mideast. An economically secure Iran with a reliable source of nuclear fuel to power its industries in the future which is also viewed as being technologically advanced etc. would - in Israeli eyes -- be a threat to Israel's ambitions for regional domination. It would also pose a risk that the US would start to get along with Iran -- in which case, who needs Israel. So the Israelis have been raising a hue and cry about how "threatened" they are by Iran's non-existent nukes, playing the victim as usual while pushing for a war between the US and Iran.

Anyway, gotta run.

4th day of no Yahoo! email

So it is now the 4th day that I have not been able to get into my Yahoo! email account at iranaffairs@yahoo.com. I have 2 other emails accounts with yahoo that I use for personal and business uses, and I haven't had a problem with them. I can also get into my "notepad" and other pars of my IranAffairs account at yahoo -- just not the mail. Wonder why. I keep getting a nice message from Yahoo informing me that I've experienced a Code 1, Code 2, or Code 14 error, and that they're fixing it, but ... stil nothing. Sorta weird, eh? Anyone else experienced this?

Paul Reynolds of the BBC doesn't eat small children, at least not openly.

A few posts ago, I introduced readers to Nukie the Nuclear Spaghetti Monster. Nukie is basically the personification of a logical fallacy, in which absence of evidence is presented as proof of existence, and the burden is shifted to prove a negative. In other words, where Iran is expected to prove that it doesn't have secret, magic enrichment facilities that no one has been able to find, and the fact that no evidence of any such secret facilities exists is only proof that they're well-hidden.

Apparently CAMERA (a far-right pro-Israeli media "watch dog" group) took issue with an article the Paul Reynolds wrote about Iran's nuclear program -- specifically, Reynold's statement that Iran is only producing low-enriched uranium and not 'weapons grade' enriched uranium. CAMERA complained the statement was too sweeping, since Iran "could be" producing weapons grade uranium at some undisclosed facility.

And apparently, Paul Reynolds buckled to CAMERA and modified his article to say:

Iran is not, openly at least, making highly enriched uranium suitable for a weapon...

Which is sort of funny, because he doesn't go on to say that there's no evidence of any hidden enrichment facilities either, according to the IAEA itself.

Lets remember that even when the IAeA was armed with "secret intelligence" about Iran's nuclear program from the US, it still found nothing incriminating -- which is why the IAEA complained publicly about the quality of US intelligence provided to it:

"Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that's come to us has proved to be wrong," said a senior diplomat at the atomic energy agency.

 (In fact, considering that the IAEA monitors Iran's uranium conversion facilities too --and conversion is a step before enrichment -- one has to wonder where the uranium for these alleged hidden enrichment facilities -- which no one has been able to actually find -- would come from. ) But Paul Reynolds and CAMERA aren't concerned with any, you know, facts. Instead they seem to think that innuendo -- "at least not openly" -- is somehow equivalent to objectivity. But then again, the whole "case against Iran" relies on such innuendo, doesn't it?

In short, Paul Reynolds believes in the nuclear spaghetti monster.

Which is all the more laughable becaue I have heard from good sources that Paul Reynolds of the BBC could eat small children. Of course, Paul Reynolds would deny this ... most people who eat children would do so .. but he hasn't proven that he doesn't eat small children. Naturally, most people who know Paul Reynolds would state emphatically that they have never seen him eat small children...at least not openly... and lets face it, would you want your children around a man who is proven to be a potential eater of small children? I think not. Paul Reynolds, when will you prove that you don't secretly eat small children!?

 

 

New York Times banished Israel critic?

Philip Weiss has an interesting blog entry about how the New York Times seems to have banished Mearsheimer from their editorial pages since he wrote about the influence of the Israel Lobby, and yet the likes of Kenneth Pollack who were dead wrong on Iraq (among other things) are still opining there without any problems.

And then: poof, Mearsheimer hasn't been on the Op-Ed page since. By my count, he had about 10 Op-Eds in the decade before that Iraq war piece. (I assume some of these were solicited by the Times.) He has had none since. And this in the prime of his career, doing his most important work.

Gee, what could explain that...hmmm....no idea...the mind boggles...

Poll on attacking Iran

The papers (and particularly pro-Israeli sites) are touting a report that "found 63 percent of voters support U.S. or Israeli military action against Iran if diplomacy fails."

This is an example of how polls can be manipulated to come up with predetermined results. The poll questions (and the articles talking about it) don't mention what "fails" means. After years of propaganda, most Americans have been trained to think that Iran is actually building nukes right now, so to them "fails" means that Iran gets nukes - naturally, a threatening prospect. But not an accurate one.

Nor should this come as a surprise since poll sponsor -- The Israel Project -- has been lobbying for a US attack on Iran for a while now.

This, for example, is what the magazine US Catholic reported last year (try link to cached version if necessary):

IRAN SPAM: A shockingly awful public relations campaign is underway for yet another war.
U.S. Catholic June 2007 p. 38
By Kevin Clarke

WE GET ALL KINDS OF MAIL HERE at US Catholic: scripture interpretation pasted together from magazine headlines with biblical verses twisted in a manner King James could never have anticipated, bitter screeds from subscription-canceling conservatives, ranting monologues from conditionally renewing liberals, and lengthy appeals from our non-Catholic Christian brethren worried over our eternal damnation. We can also count on our share of press releases. Most come from agents representing new authors or seeking to sell the latest incarnation of the commodified Jesus. Many seek some editorial inches to promote worthy advocacy or direct-action campaigns.

And then there are those efforts whose audacity or inappropriateness leaves a fella shaking his head in disbelief. A recent series of slick dispatches from the public relations front of the war on terror falls into this mail pile. Typically illustrated by an 8-by-11 glossy of a mushroom cloud rising from an atomic blast (small irony department: if I'm not mistaken, the photo actually captures a detonation over the Nevada desert during America's wild and crazy what-me -worry-about-nuclear-fallout days), the scary memos from the Israel Project's copywriting crew breathlessly depict the various threats represented by a "nuclear Iran," patiently explaining why that radioactive outcome is "dangerous for everyone." These regular mailings from the Israel Project to "opinion agents" such as yours truly are, in effect, a public relations campaign for war.

The monthly missives I receive from this one pro-Israel lobby are a small part of a broader effort "secure the information stream" and prep Americans for the next exotic stop in the war on terror: sunny Iran. Now to the average shmoe, even contemplating another war while the overtaxed U.S. military machine seems bogged down in Iraq and losing ground in Afghanistan might seem laughably disconnected from reality...

LET ME LIGHT A LANTERN IN A BELL TOWER FOR my fellow Americans: You must awake. There are PR armies of the night with shiny media kits and Dick-Cheneyfied "intelligence" reports quietly at work right now, building momentum for a strike on Iran and a vast broadening of this too costly-and let's just say it-too crazy war on terror...

And this what Mother Jones' Lauren Rozen reported about the Israel Project (try this link to JTA if MoJo link not working):

Focus Grouping War with Iran

Washington Dispatch: A recent Virginia focus group test-marketed language to get tougher on Iran

By Laura Rozen

November 19, 2007

Laura Sonnenmark is a focus group regular. "I've been asked to talk about orange juice, cell phone service, furniture," the Fairfax County, Virginia-based children's book author and Democratic Party volunteer says. But when she was called by a focus group organizer for a prospective assignment earlier this month, she was told the questions this time would be about something "political."

On November 1, she went to the offices of Martin Focus Groups in Alexandria, Virginia, knowing she would be paid $150 for two hours of her time. After joining a half dozen other women in a conference room, she discovered that she had been called in for what seemed an unusual assignment: to help test-market language that could be used to sell military action against Iran to the American public. "The whole basis of the whole thing was, 'we're going to go into Iran and what do we have to do to get you guys to along with it?" says Sonnenmark, 49...

"Of all the focus groups I've ever been to," Sonnenmark wrote in a subsequent email to a group of fellow volunteers for the 2006 Senate campaign of Jim Webb, "I've never seen a moderator who was so persistent in manipulating and leading the participants." (Webb is lead author of a Senate letter warning President Bush not to attack Iran without congressional approval; see here and here.)) The gist of the event was "anti-Iranian," says Sonnenmark.

If the group's organizers were testing the case for military action against Iran—even as a last resort—Sonnenmark believes they could not have been encouraged by the results of this focus group. "I got the general feeling that George Bush didn't have a shot in hell" of winning public support for an Iran attack, she says. Some members of her group suggested that if Hillary Clinton were elected president she might have more credibility in making such a case. As for the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, Sonnenmark's impression was that the group's members did not believe it was up to them to judge.

Sonnenmark left the session wondering if foreign policy hawks would soon be pushing publicly for military action against Iran using language that had been tested on her. But, she says, "It is not going to be so easy this time around."

Remember, despite the efforts to deny it, the Israelis were directly complicit in pushing the US into attacking Iraq (including by providng false intelligence) as Walt-Mearsheimer point out -indeed the real reason for the Iraq war was Israel - and the Israelis insisted on an attack on Iran to follow. But the 2007 NIE seriously undermined Israel's ambitions to cause a war between the US and Iran. That's why theIsrael Project is out to attribute a desire to go to war with Iran to a "majority of Americans" - because the Israelis don't want to be blamed for the consequences of the war that they're pushing:

 

Jewish Leaders Caught In Iran Bind
As Walt-Mearscheimer book appears, efforts to keep
military option open run counter to national mood.
James D. Besser/Washington - Washington Correspondent

The Jewish Week Aug 31, 2007

Even as they fight revived charges that Israel and the pro-Israel community are beating the drums for war with Iran, Jewish leaders here are quietly trying to protect President George W. Bush’s ability to use military force to knock out that country’s nuclear weapons program if diplomatic efforts fail.

But they are running headlong into a national mood of skepticism and distrust about American foreign policy in general — and a surge of opposition to any new U.S. military involvements in particular.

Talking even indirectly about the war option is risky because “there is virtually no public support for an attack on Iran,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato...

At the same time, Jewish leaders are painfully aware of the continuing chorus of those who blame Israel and pro-Israel groups for the war in Iraq.

In their new book, foreign-policy scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer again claim that pro-Israel forces were a “critical element” in the decision to go to war in Iraq. “America would not be in Iraq today” without the efforts of the pro-Israel lobby, they write.

Now, the two say, pro-Israel groups have made war with Iran more likely by pressing the Bush administration to avoid negotiating with the Tehran regime.

Jewish leaders vehemently reject that charge, but recent developments — including a rising chorus of neoconservatives, many of them Jewish, calling for preemptive war and the growing association with hawkish Christian Zionists such as Pastor John Hagee who echo that call — could give it added credence with a war-weary public...

In that environment, Jewish leaders arguing that the military option should not be discarded while insisting they are not pressing for war are walking a “precarious line,” said Johns Hopkins political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg. “It’s harder for pro-Israel groups to avoid the charge that they are indifferent to American interests. And they have the added difficulty of being aligned with the Christian Zionists, some of whom are openly calling for war with Iran.”

With public sentiment against new military conflicts running at flood tide, “It’s a difficult situation for pro-Israel groups to be in,” Ginsberg said. “They have to lie low and bring pressure from the sidelines.”

Signs of the shifting public mood are everywhere. Rep. Steve Israel (D-L.I.) sees it every time he goes home to his district...

Washington’s credibility crisis and signs of a mood of international retreat have led Jewish groups to seek new strategies on Iran.

Email is down

My email account at yahoo.com has suspiciously not been working for the last 2 days, so to contact me, add a comment to one of the posts. It won;t be visible to others since I have to "approve" comments before they're made visible.

CIA intelligence on Iran fabricated?

No intelligence: how good is the information provided by the CIA on Iran?
by Michael Ross. 
Maclean's August 18, 2008  p29

In response to a recent article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker suggesting that the Bush administration has requested up to US$400 million for use in covert action against Iran, a highly respected and long-serving Iran expert and decorated veteran of CIA covert operations in the region has commented that the money would be wasted were the CIA to win control of it. "Information provided to the President by the CIA, which he will use to make his decisions, may prove to be false or non-existent," says Ishmael Jones (a pseudonym), whose assignments included more than 15 years of continuous overseas deep-cover service in several rogue nations before he recently resigned from the CIA in good standing.

Blaming the CIA's culture of Soviet-style bureaucracy, risk-averse senior management, and schemes dedicated to enriching current and former employees, Jones claims that CIA human intelligence operations against Iran are designed to feign activity. "Because of the billions of dollars given to the CIA, the CIA will be unwilling to admit it has no intelligence on Iran and will instead be tempted to provide a false assessment of the threat," adds Jones, whose book about his career, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, was published last month ...

Execution of juvenile offenders in Iran

I am personally opposed to the death penalty under any circumstance however I think it is unfortunate that some self-proclaimed "human rights" groups are using the issue as a pretext to promote a political agenda of regime change.

While it certainly is true that Iran executes individuals whose crimes were committed when they were 16 or 17 years old (since under Islamic law you have to be 15 or older to be held criminally responsible for your actions), and this is a terrible thing in my opinion, lets remember one fact.

It is only relatively recently that the US stopped doing the same thing. In fact, until 2004, the US had the distinction of leading the world in the number of executions of juvenile offenders. Texas was particularly quite keen on it!

Most Americans (and more non-Americans) are no doubt surprised to learn that  it was only in 2005 that the Supreme Court of the United States (in a very narrow 5-4 decision) abolished the practice. At that time, there were 22 such executions in the US, and 78 other juvenile offenders were awaiting their deaths.

I sincerely and fervently hope that the entire death penalty and other such idiotic practices will be eliminated from Iran as well as the rest of the world, even though the death penalty typically has strong popular support.

My opposition to the death penalty is based on many considerations, but in particular it seems to me that if you're going to impose the "ultimate penalty" you should only have the right to to so if you can also impose the "ultimate justice system" -- and no one can.

And let me pre-empt the usual argument that comes my way: "Would you prefer the killer of your mother or child to go free?"  First of all, I never said they should "go free" and secondly, I would probably want to kill them myself, but there's a distinction between pointless personal revenge and justice.

Economist Intelligence Unit on Iran

IRAN COUNTRY VIEW

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

August 18, 2008

Sovereign risk

Stable. Although Iran may find that informal economic sanctions will restrict its access to financing, it remains in good shape to withstand such pressure. Its ample foreign reserves should enable it to meet its debt-repayment schedule.

Currency risk

Stable. The Iranian rial is expected to appreciate against the weakening US dollar in nominal terms in 2008, before depreciating in 2009 as the dollar picks up again. However, Bank Markazi (the central bank) will manage the pace of depreciation to limit the inflationary impact.

Banking sector risk

Stable. The banking sector will stay stable, but the central bank's ability to supervise the sector will remain constrained by political interference. The partial privatisation of Iran's third-largest bank, Bank Mellat, the first sell-off since 1979, has been scheduled for the current fiscal year. . .

Obama on Iran: Israel must be appeased.

With all the talk about how we shouldn't "appease" those who threaten the world, it is interesting that presidential candidate Barack Obama has declared Iran must be pressed through "diplomacy" (code for coersion and sanctions) to give up its nuclear program, so that Israel does not attack Iran.

This while the net result of this policy may be the same as Bush's, the paradigm seems to be different. It acknowledges that US policy with respect to Iran is shaped by Israel's interests and demands rather than any "Iranian threat" posed to the US.

Indeed, according to this paradigm, the "threat" is not anything Iran would do, but what Israel could decide to do: It is Israel which needs to be held back from destabilizing the Mideast (with predictable consequences to oil prices and to the world's economy.) And rather than "appeasing" Iran, Barak seems to suggest Israel must be appeased by adopting an aggressive stance towards Iran.

What all this also suggests is that the US has no real control over Israel's actions - the tail wagging the dog.

In short, Israel is holding the world hostage, demanding that Iran be subjugated to suit Israel, or else Israel will put a firecracker in the world's gas can. And Barak says, OK -- whatever Israel wants, Israel gets.

Anyway, I remember when Cheney was opposed to Iran sanctions before he became VP and did a 180-degree turn around, and so I pretty much expect both Biden and Obama to adopt pretty much the same policies as Bush with respect to Iran once (if) they're in office too.

Photos of Iran on display at Denver

This is an interesting installation of photography about Iran by Tom Loughlin. 

Very creative and beautifully done! Love the

Barclays Bank UK closing Iran-related bank accounts

Apparently Barclays Bank in the UK has started closing the bank accounts of people even remotely associated with Iran. This was happening with Citibank in the US -- they even closed the account of an American-Iranian who had been temporarily detained in Iran against her will, even the account of her husband who had not visited Iran. I also happen to know that the account of a foreign reporter who was stationed in Iran was closed. (The irony that Citibank is closing these accounts for security reasons is simply laughable if you knew what was going on at Citibank which suggests you're better off not banking at Citibank!)

But the interesting thing is that Barclays is applying US laws to the UK:

Bank Saderat is on the US list of banned businesses. but not on the equivalent list in the UK, EU or UN. If it were, then Barclays would have no option but to close your accounts. But US jurisdiction does not run over here, and despite the tone of its letter, there is no legal obligation whatsoever for Barclays to close your accounts.

The solution? File a legal complaint, and switch banks.

I cannot persuade Barclays to overturn a board policy decision. I would take your case to the Financial Ombudsman Service which is certainly aware of Barclays' decision vis-avis Bank Saderat, but so far has had no formal complaint to investigate. But it is not an open-and-shut case. Fortunately other UK banks prefer to follow our Government's guidance rather than use American rules. Lloyds TSB and HSBC, for example, say they would have no difficulty with your circumstances.

I'm not exactly sure what this sort of thing is supposed to accomplish, other than tick off the sort of folks that can only be helpful. I mean, its not like Ahmadinejad is particularly upset that American-Iranians will face pointless banking difficulties. Seems to me that the people behind this move are simply acting out of frustration.

Iran, circa 1954

Check this out and this for a bit of history. And this for a good laugh.

Who is REALLY funding terrorism in Israel?

Reuters has discovered that US taxpayer money is funding racist apartheid Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians:

JERUSALEM, Aug 25 (Reuters) - The United States says Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank threaten any peace between Israel and the Palestinians -- yet it also encourages Americans to help support settlers by offering tax breaks on donations.

But this is the quote that kills me:

"Are you saying you can get a charitable deduction for helping starving people in New York City but you can't get a charitable deduction for helping starving people in Judea and Samaria," said Sondra Oster Baras, president of Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, using an Israeli term for the West Bank. "That's an argument that doesn't make sense."

LOL!! As if A- US taxpayers are obligated to subsidize foreign "charities", and B- that the money is going to "starving people" in "Judea and Samaria" rather than racist occupation thugs that are stealing Palestinian-owned lands.

But I guess that's the sort of logic that you can expect in this tospy-turvy world.

Incidentally:

Israeli government officials recently disclosed that at least US $60 billion has been spent financing illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. According to Israeli prosecutor Talia Sasson, the Israeli government has systematically violated its own laws by financing settlements from foreign donations, the official state budget and secret military accounts. One global nonprofit, the World Zionist Organization, played a central role in coordinating illegal settlement activities.

Lets face some facts, people. There isn't a single town in "Israel" which isn't built over or next to an ethnically-cleansed Palestinian village. Every inch of Israel, every grain of soil, every drop of water, every breath of air -- was stolen from Palestinians. It is all tainted with blood of innocent victims, the racism of Zionism, and the hypocricy of the United States.

US-Iran: Raid on nuclear fuel market

US-Iran: Raid on nuclear fuel market

by Rudo de Ruijter, Independent researcher,

Updated March 2, 2007

In the background of the political joust about Iran, a few countries are reshaping the world. They are taking possession of the global nuclear fuel market. New IAEA regulations should keep newcomers away. The US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Japan will become the world’s nuclear filling stations. Under the auspices of the IAEA these suppliers will dictate the rules, the prices and the currencies they want to get paid in. Iran has become the pretext and test case for their plans. The problems of tomorrow’s world economy are being shaped today.

Read more here.

AIPAC pushes pro-Israeli agenda on US pension funds

A local paper from El Paso, Texas, reports on how AIPAC is trying to force state employee retirement and pension funds to "divest" from companies that operate in Iran -- thus hurting American retirees rather than Iran:

“The goal of the investment portfolio and the policy guiding the decisions affecting the portfolio must be to maximize investment return,” she wrote, telling TRS and ERS leaders that their responsibility was to provide safe and healthy returns “exclusively for the benefit of the members.” She said that decisions based upon any other standard risked violating the Texas Constitution, “endangers the system’s tax exempt status and potentially breaches the board’s fiduciary duties as trustees.” Her message couldn’t have been more direct, and in early meetings of pension board meetings there was indeed some grumbling at the Perry directive. That apparently didn’t go over well at the governor’s office.

There have been several articles on how the fund managers are not happy about the political pressure brought by AIPAC on them, since their job is to manage the retirement funds of their investors and not to promote Israel's agenda.

Yet another case of Israel's hand in the pocket of American taxpayers.

"Global nuclear energy partnership" and Neo-Colonialism

Rudo de Ruijter, an independent researcher based in the Netherlands, has written a piece on his site about the real issue behind the accusations that Iran wants nuclear weapons:

The key for understanding the main issue is the "Global Nuclear Energy Partnership", a plan in which the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and China would become the exclusive suppliers of enriched uranium for all nuclear power plants in all of the 188 countries of the Non Proliferation Treaty. This is not only a huge market for the coming decades, but it will also make the NPT-countries very dependent.

Rudo's article is well researched and backed by extensive footnotes -- note especially the fact that the material which Iran "failed to disclose" to the IAEA merely consisted of only a few grams of uranium.

 I have to agree with the thesis of this article. I have also reach the conclusion that the US is trying to monopolize nuclear fuel, as I wrote in my Le Monde diplomatique article in November 2005:

Under the guise of non-proliferation, the EU and the US are not only undermining the grand bargain between nuclear-armed and non-nuclear armed states that is the NPT; they also want to create an underclass of nuclear energy have-nots, concentrating what could become the world’s sole major source of energy in the hands of the few nations that have granted themselves the right to it.

You can learn more about the international reaction to this attempt at monopolizing nuclear energy fuel at Wikipedia. But note how the US media totally refuses to acknowledge the negative reaction to this policy by the developing world.

Poverty rates in Israel

As a follow-up on my previous post about poverty rates in Iran, a commentor pointed me to this article from Ha'aretz according to which the poverty rate in Israel is about 25%.

For an entity whose small number of inhabitants receive several billion dollars a year from the pockets of unsuspecting American taxpayers, that's pretty pathetic.

Push for Iraq War Preceded Intelligence Findings

The Bush administration decided to go to war, and then pressured to shape the intelligence to justify the decision.

No kidding!

The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported to Bush administration pressure for data justifying an invasion of Iraq, according to a documents posting on the Web today by National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados.

The documents suggest that the public relations push for war came before the intelligence analysis, which then conformed to public positions taken by Pentagon and White House officials. For example, a July 2002 draft of the "White Paper" ultimately issued by the CIA in October 2002 actually pre-dated the National Intelligence Estimate that the paper purportedly summarized, but which Congress did not insist on until September 2002.

So, can we please now stop referring to the Bush administration's deliberate manipulation of the intelligence as a case of inadvertent "intelligence failure"? I'm looking at you, Paul Reynolds of the BBC.

MEK thugs attack pro-peace demonstrators in LA

So apparently a small group of pro-peace demonstrators were attacked by the usual exile oghdei MEK goons in LA. The funniest part is looking at their photos -- they're all over 50, balding, and pretty pathetic. You've really shown your "democracy" loving credentials again, morons. 

I'll say it again: the MEK and the Royalists and the rest of you lot are the best "opposition" that any regime could ever hope for.

Iranian car, American parts

Meet an Iran-made car, the Tondar90 (aka Renault Logan) -- whose seats will be made by Johnson Controls in the US and delivered to Iran by way of Romania.

Does AIPAC know about this?

AIPAC spy trial update - lobby of Israel?

US law requires organizations and individuals that lobby on behalf of foreign entities to register with the government, disclosing their connections to the foreign entity. This minimal level of transparency is required as a preventive measure against the exercise of undue influence over US government policy by a foreign government.

AIPAC however has consistently evaded this requirement (much to the surprise of people who should know better) under various pretexts. The AIPAC espionage trial (and that's what it should be called, not the Franklin espionage trial, since Franklin has long ago pleaded guilty and is serving time) once again bring up the fact that AIPAC is acting like an agent for Israel but is not registered as such.

Now comes an interesting book on the topic which may be a good read for y'all:

Declassified Old Documents Shed New Light on AIPAC Espionage Prosecution Aug 20, 8:00 AM ET

Contact: Grant Smith of IRmep, +1-202-342-7325

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than one thousand documents released under Freedom of Information Act filings reveal details of a secret battle that raged between founders of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and top US law enforcement officials.

The new book "America's Defense Line: The Justice Department's Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government" reproduces and analyzes these files and their troubling implications for rule of law in the United States. "America's Defense Line" also reveals stunning details of a preferential deal engineered within the highest levels of the US Department of Justice over the course of three years and implemented in 1965 -- but kept secret from the American public until today. Old documents and new analysis from the Center for Policy and Law Enforcement raise many questions about the upcoming October 2008 AIPAC espionage trial.

In 2005, Colonel Lawrence Franklin was indicted alongside two executives of AIPAC for allegedly violating the 1917 Espionage Act. Franklin later pled guilty to passing AIPAC a classified presidential directive and other secrets concerning America's Iran policy. Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of AIPAC allegedly forwarded the highly sensitive information to Israeli government officials and select members of Washington's media establishment. This covert leaking appears to be one of many AIPAC tactics designed to encourage tougher U.S. policies toward Iran, from financial boycotts to naval blockades and possibly even military strikes.

On October 28, 2008, government prosecutors are scheduled to appeal the ruling judge's order that they must prove the alleged AIPAC leaks of national defense information actually harmed the United States. The 1917 Espionage Act actually requires a much lower standard of proof: "the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign country."

According to Grant F. Smith, the declassified documents bolster the prosecution's position that the Espionage Act should be tightly interpreted as it was written. "In the early 1960s, the Attorney General found that the Israel lobby was acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Israel and ordered it to register. Nevertheless, after a similar three-year period of delays and appeals, AIPAC's predecessor was allowed to file a secret Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statement, our nation's first exception to that very important public disclosure law. Forcing today's prosecutors to operate under a higher standard of evidence smacks of institutionalized preferential treatment for a lobby that has serially engaged in activities harmful to the United States."

Members of the public can purchase the hardcover edition of "America's Defense Line" for $29.95 at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other fine bookstores. The 340-page report's ISBN number is 0-9764437-2-4.

"Iranian child's arm crushed for stealing bread" video

Interesting to see this old fake video of an "Iranian child whose arm was crushed under a car as punishment for stealing bread" is still around, despite being debunked years ago as a fake.

More interesting yet is the Hebrew language text accompanying the fake video. Most of the other versions of this fake video took care to delete the Hebrew language text so as to hide the true origin of the fake.

 

Iranian Foreign Minister shot

Dennis Ross on Iran: decoding the Zionist-speak

Dennis Ross, a member of the pro-Israeli front Washington Institute for Near East Policy, had written an article on nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Even though the piece is a bit dated, it is still relevant in light of the fact that  the former representative of the Clinton Administration to the Palestinian-Israeli talks, is reportedly a foreign policy advisor to Obama and potential future Secretary of State. It is also interesting as an example of Zionist-speak that can be deconstructed to show its true meaning.

In this article, Ross agrees that preconditions on talks with Iran should be dropped since the current policy has failed to stop Iran's nuclear program and direct negotiations are likely to happen anyway, if only as a pretense to lay the groundwork for the use of force:

Either Clinton or Obama will likely try negotiations as a primary strategy in order to see if there is a way through incentives and disincentives to stop the Iranian nuclear program. Even McCain knows that there is no way he can employ force to set back the Iranian nuclear program without showing the American public (and the world) that he genuinely tried direct negotiations to resolve the issue first.

But he calls for additional sanctions --supposedly as a form of leverage over Iran during the negotiations process -- to get Iran to acquiesce to Ross' desired outcome of any such negotiations:

Iran must see what it can gain from the talks (civil nuclear power, economic benefits, security assurances, and regional acceptance) but also what it must give up (nuclear weapons, the use of terror and subversion, material support for the Hezbollah and the Hamas militias, and opposition to peace with Israel) in order to get it. If there is no pressure, Iran will read negotiations as acquiescence.Laying extensive groundwork for the almost inevitable negotiations that lay ahead with Iran may not guarantee success, particularly if Iran is determined to have nuclear weapons.

And this is where we get to the heart of the Zionist-speak.

What's Zionist-speak? Here's an example: when they demand the recognition of the "Right of Israel to Exist as a Jewish State" -- what they really mean is the right of Israel to ethnically-cleanse and suppress Palestinians in order for a self-identified ethnic minority to maintain dominance over a majority through force of arms. But "Right to Ethnically Cleanse" is not good PR, so instead they spin it as a "Right to Exist".

Similarly, one can spot the Zionist-speak in Ross' proscriptions: when he says that Iran must give up "nuclear weapons" he means that Iran has to give up enrichment. "Civilian nuclear power" means that Iran has to import uranium. The "use of terror and subversion" and "support for Hamas and Hezbollah" means that Iran has to accept Israeli regional domination.

So in short, once you cut through the Zionist-speak, this is what Dennis Ross is saying:

We have to at least make a pretense of talking to Iran, in order to at least make going to war more palatable with public opinion. These negotiations must be accompanied by greater economic pressure on Iran through sanctions, in order to force Iran to give up its enrichment program and accept Israeli regional domination. If the Iranians do not buckle, we can then claim that they have proven to want nuclear weapons, and then we can proceed with attacking Iran.

In short, Dennis Ross is suggesting the continuation of essentially the same policy as the Bush administration, whose aims are exactly what the Israelis desire: a cowed and subjugated Iran that accepts Israeli regional domination and lacking independent nuclear fuel source, or a US war on Iran. And notice how none of this actually has anything to do with whether Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program or not -- which again proves that that's just a pretext for Israel.

Remember when... Bernard Lewis foretold the apocalypse on Aug 22?

Aug 22 2006 was the date that racist "middle east expert" pro-Israeli neocon charlatan scaremonger Bernard Lewis proclaimed would probably be the day that the Evil Ahmadinejad would choose to bring about the apocalypse. (This is the same "expert" who encouraged Bush to invade Iraq since the way to deal with Arabs is supposedly to "hit them in the forhead with a big stick...they respect power.")

Lewis' "expert" scaremongering in the Wall Street Journal explained it thus:

In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time--Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as "by the end of August," but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement was more precise.

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (cf Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

Army seizes power in Iran

ISIS's new site on Iran "nuclear proliferation"

A little birdie told me back in May 2008 that ISIS - David Albright's "think tank" - hired a local (NYC) web design firm to create a website that is "dedicated to nuclear weapons proliferation in Iran".

I've been waiting to see the site but the delay seems interminable. Needless to say, I don't have have high expectations of accuracy or even honesty since ISIS has an avowed agenda to stop countries from developing independent nuclear fuel cycle (in violation of the NPT) and especially since there's no evidence of any "nuclear weapons proliferation" in Iran to start with.

In general, it seems that facts rarely get in the way of these sorts of "think tanks" (aka propaganda outlets) just as the absence of any WMDs in Iraq didn't get in the way of Gary Milholin's "IraqWatch.org" website from promoting efforts to "monitor WMDs in Iraq", whilst also accusing independent weapons inspectors like Hans Blix of being "irrelevant" and "timid" for failing to find the non-existent WMDs in Iraq that Milhollin insisted were there before the invasion.

But I  guess we'll have to wait and see.

Iran's connection to the Georgia war

Here's an interesting tidbit (among other things I won't mention) I was told by an "old hand" in the State Department:

Remember the crazy old bat Bush defense official named Debra Cagan who announced that she "hated all Iranians"? Well she was also in charge of arming Georgia under what was known as the "Train and Equip Program".

Small world.

Nice job, Debra. You go get 'em. I guess losing two wars simultaneously in Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't enough.

Curious search patterns

Out of curiosity I often check my logs to see what search terms people used to visit my site. Some of the search terms are quite predictable, like my name. Others have been repeated for a long time now -- like the fellow who keeps searching for "Iran" and "nuclear war" and "2008" -- as if that would be something you'd have to look up on Google in case you missed the actual event.

But today I had an interesting one: my name and "Afshin Molavi" and "Mexicans".

Now, I know Afshin and am a fan of his writing. 

But what the heck do Mexicans have to with anything?

What color was Pakistan's revolution?

The Bush administration doesn't "color" brand the revolution in Pakistan

A few years ago, the Bush administration touted the soft revolutions which ousted certain regimes in the Mideast and former Soviet countries and branded them each with a particular name that the compliant US media promply promoted: the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon, the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, etc. -- all of which, incidentally, ended in failure and the Bush administration rhetoric about the "march of Democracy" was exposed for the flim-flam it was.

And just yesterday, anti-democractic miltary dictator of an unstable nuclear armed country who had come to power through a coup, whose intelligence operatives are allied with the Taliban and were probably complicit in the deaths of American soliders in Afghanistan -- was finally toppled.

But the Bush administration remains quite and embittered.

There isn't going to be any "color" branding for Pakistan's revolution, apparently.

"Assistant director of Weapons of Mass Destruction" at FBI

I heard an interview this morning on National Public Radio with an FBI official about the Ivins anthrax case. The official was identified as the "Assistant Director of Weapons of Mass Destruction" and his name ... Vahid Majidi.

Here's his photo. But assuming that his Iranian ethnic background makes him some sort of expert on "jihadist fervor" is silly, and is an asumption made only by people who can't distinguish an Iranian and a Bin-Ladenist but assumes they're all alike just because they're "Moslems".

The role of the media in selling bullshit and propaganda

Glenn Greenwald says what I've been saying for years about how the media works in the US:

That's because The [Washington] Post's role here has been and continues to be what the establishment media's role generally is -- to serve government sources and amplify their claims, not to investigate their veracity. That's how it was Saddam Hussein who was the original anthrax culprit, followed by Steven Hatfill, and now Bruce Ivins. It's how Jessica Lynch heroically fought off Iraqi goons in a firefight, how Pat Tillman stood down Al Qaeda monsters until they murdered him, how Iraq possessed mountains of WMDs, and now, how Russia has assaulted the consensus values of the Western World by invading a sovereign country and occupying parts of it for a whole week, etc. etc.

Exactly. And the same applies for the MSM's insistence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program that "threatens Israel".

Irans' rocket launch increases "suspicions"

So according to the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, Iran's launch of a space rocket "increases suspicions" about the Iranian nuclear program. Which should of course not be a surprise, since pretty much anything Iran accomplishes is immediately declared as being suspicious by the Israelis.

In the meantime, they ran a poll and decided that neither presidential candidate is likely to show much spine in dealing with Israel:

"The bottom line is clear, at least on the more troublesome Palestinian front: the panel does not fear Obama, and does not see him as someone ready to make Israel make unacceptable concessions."

"Unacceptable concessions" of course means recognizing the Palestinians' Right to Exist.

"Iranian hit-squads" story debunked

Gareth Porter takes apart the recent "Iranian hit-squads" story:

Far too many reporters have passed on blatant propaganda without the slightest effort to point out its inconsistency with documented facts, much less to try to uncover the truth. But a story by Pamela Hess of Associated Press distributed Aug. 15 sets a new standard for abetting official disinformation.

Mubarak's hypocricy on Iran's nuclear program

So Egypt's Mubarak has puffed himself up and proclaimed that Iran should give up its absolute and unquestionable nuclear rights so as to "reassure" the EU and US.

Funny, because unlike the Iranians, the Egyptianshave flatly refused to sign the Additional Protocol to the Non-proliferation Treaty which allows more stringent IAEA inspections, despite the fact that they too were caught violating their NPT safeguards agreement (violations which were inadequately investigated by the IAEA) while they have also announced plans to expand their nuclear program.

Mubarak supposedly "noted the case of Saddam Hussein, who didn't adequately refute claims over Iraq's supposed WMDs" -- which is a case of Mubarak lying and trying to rewrite history since Iraq filed a 12,200 page report detailing how they didn't have WMDs, only to have Condolezza Rice condemn him for filing such a voluminous report:

"Iraq has filed a false declaration to the United Nations that amounts to a 12,200-page lie."

(Actually, not only was the Iraqi declaration proven correct, it was a little too accurate since Saddam listed the European and American companies that were complicit in his WMD program, which is why 8000 pages of the report were ripped out by the US -- but they were leaked to Andreas Zumach, a reporter for the German daily Die Tageszeitung. The list includes HP and Bechtel, among others. Read more at the LA Weekly and Project Censored.)

In fact, Iran has more than adequately refuted the claims, as 5 years of IAEA reports make it perfectly clear that there's absolutely no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran whatsoever. Furthermore, history shows pretty clearly that the Bush administration planned to invade Iraq regardless of whether Saddam had WMDs or not.

And Mubarak knows all this damn well too.

Indeed, when it comes to offering "reassurances", not only has Iran signed and implemented the Additional Protocol for 2 years, Iran also suspended enrichment for that time period and has also offered to place additional voluntary restrictions on the program that go beyond Iran's legal obligations, such as accepeting multinational enrichment. Egypt has done none of that, and neither have Argentina or Brazil. 

And the US/EU reaction to Iran's generous, voluntary offers of compromise has been to simply ignore it all and further raise their demands -- proving that they're not really interested in any "reassurance" over Iran's nuclear program but are using it as an excuse and a pretext, and so any concessions by Iran will naturally be met with yet more demands.

But I suppose it is in the nature of Mubarak, a two-bit "President-for-Life" and recipient of AIPAC-sponsored bribes from the US, to lack a spine and toady to his bosses. After all, what would Egypt do if the Israelis in the US Congress pulled the plug on his annual $2 billion allowance that keeps him in power? Shoot more voters? Shove broomsticks up the rear of yet more Egyptian Canadians? (Incidentally note the total silence of Canada to the torture of one of their subjects.) All conveniently ignored by Rice, of course, in favor of demonzing Iran instead.

"Murder the Jews...

...who protect the Arabs!" came the call from the yeshiva balcony.

Two Palestinians narrowly escaped a lynching attempt in Jerusalem Tuesday evening after they were assaulted by dozens of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The two Arabs were wounded, while a Jewish resident who protected them with his body was stabbed.

The same sorts of thugs go around beating up on Rabbis -- all the while declaring that Jews are superior to non-Jews.

Meanwhile, roving "Modesty Squads" have been beating women in Jerusalem...when they're not busy shooting Palestinian children:

Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered—death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo—but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.
(Full text also here)

Olympian "escaped" from Iran!

The Torono Star has a hyped, dramatic story about an Iranian named Saeed Azarbayjani  who will be competing as part of Canad's wrestling team "for a country he loves" (Canada).

What's funny is how the article describes him as "escaping from Iran" using a false passport to get through Turkey and obtain refugee status in Canada:

 He will not be completely transparent about his past; he left Iran, where he was a junior national champion before a shoulder injury interrupted his career, for reasons he'd rather not discuss. His family remains there, two parents and five siblings, and he is both respectful of their choice and fearful for their wellbeing should he ruffle the wrong powers from afar.

Well, Toronto, let me see if I can explain: There are a couple million Iranians in Canada, and more in the US, who regularly travel back and forth between the two countries. Iran isn't behind an Iron Curtain. People are free to travel in and out of the country, as long as they have a visa for their destination, and as long as they're not dodging the draft (Iranian men are expected to perform 2 years of national service, unless they have some exemption.)

So, assuming this fellow would not sink so low as to be draft-dodger, then the biggest obstacle for him to arrive in Canada is not the Iranian border, but the Canadian border which would require getting a Canadian visa, something which wouldn't be so easy for someone with no particular skills such as a handyman.

A Poisonous Affair - my review of Joost Hiltermann's book.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recommend Hiltermann's book, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja. It is meticulously researched, though I have my quibbles with it, detailed below.

Just as the myth that Iraq had a hand in 9/11 persists due to the effectiveness of Bush administration propaganda, to this day the Reagan administratin propaganda myth persists that both Iraq and Iran used chemical weapons during the war, when in fact Iran did NOT use chemical weapons, and and Iran didn't even develop the capacity to manufacture chemical weapons (though by 1985 Iran was starting to warn it it would consider using chemical weapon, as international law did permit retaliatory use, and the UN wasn't doing its job by condemning Saddam's atrocities.)

{click to enLARgE}

Indeed the myth that Iran also used chemical weapons is still actively promoted by the New York Times and Washington Post: Michael Gordon of the NY Times reported so in 1989 with one of his usual and trademarked "American Officials Said" lines:

"The American officials said Iran stepped up its chemical purchases in the latter stages of the Iran-Iraq war, during which both sides used chemical weapons"

Gordon again repeated this allegation in 2006 in an interview in which he also promoted one of the standard Rightwing excuses for why Bush lied about the Iraqi WMDs (short version: It was Iran's fault that Saddam inadvertently duped Bush into invading Iraq because Saddam continued to pretend to have WMDs in order to deter Iran - which is of course utter hogwash.) Here, just read for yourself what sort of crap this New York Times' chief military correspondent was still peddling just 2 years ago: 

And I’m going to throw out one last fact for you to ponder. Saddam Hussein wanted the world to think he had W.M.D. We also know that. Saddam’s concern was Iran. Saddam—he had fought a bloody war with Iran for eight years. Both sides used chemical weapons. Saddam wanted to comply with the letter of the U.N. inspections but he had a policy called “deterrence by doubt.” He didn’t want the Iranians to know his cupboard was bare, because he was concerned that would make him vulnerable to some sort of Iranian action.

And the Washington Post's country profile of Iran states unequivocally:

Chemical weapons were used by both countries.

Umm... no.

Anyway, back to Hiltermann's book: He makes clear, once and for all, that Iran did not use chemical weapons during the war,

And when the atrocity at Halabja came to light (Iranians took the international media to the scene of the atrocity --the late Kaveh Golestan was the first photographer to document it) the Reagan administration tried to shift the blame onto Iran (something Hiltermann had written about previously but in less detail)

BUT,

And,

[This is where Hiltermann is weak IMhO. He attributes motivations without sufficient basis. He suggests that it was "antipathy" for Iran that caused no one to question the allegation that Iran used chemical weapons. But he provides no factual basis to back that up. There could have been many other motivations, ie: financial gain. Did Hiltermann investigate that? He also suggests that the only reason that Iran didn't use chemical weapons against Iraq is because Iran didn't have the means to do so -- but again, he attributes motives without sufficient investigation or justification. Couldn't Iran's lack of a chemical weapons capacity itself be due to a moral aversion at ever using the weapons? In an otherwise well-researched book, these leaps to conclusions are glaring.]

Also, United Nations Security Council (whose members were actively backing Saddam) played dumb and refused to intervene and put a stop to Saddam's atrocities:

And what was the conclusion of this policy of looking the other way?

"Yellow Rain" and Biological weapons use by Iraq against Iran?

On the issue of chemical weapons use during the Iran-Iraq war, I recommend A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja by Joost R. Hiltermann

However the use of biological weapons does not seem to be as well-known or well-investigated.

For example, there were several reports of "Yellow Rain" (T-2 tricothecene mycotoxins) used against Iranian troops.

UN investigators visting Iran confirmed the use of chemical weapons including mustard gas and nerve agents but not mycotoxins (1)

Tests performed by Dr. Herbert Mandl at the Toxicological Institute in Ghent, Belgium, on several Iranian battlefield victims of Iraqi chemical weapons who had been sent to Vienna and Stockholm for treatement, revealed "with certain proof" the presence of mycotoxins mixed with mustard gas.(2)

Based on previous (controversial) allegations of similar weapons used against the Hmongs in Vietnam/Cambodia, the Wall Street Journal declared:

"We can confidentally assume that the identification of mycotoxins in the Iran-Iraq war represents yet another Soviet violation of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972".(3)

However, the Washington Post later reported the existence of several undisclosed reports (due to "political sensitivities") about a German role in Iraq's bio-weapons programs which involved mycotoxins, among other things:

"Six German firms supplied some of the equipment Iraq needed to make botulin toxin and mycotoxin germ weapons, including devices that allow germs to grow in laboratories, concentrate pathogens, protect workers from contamination and allow technicians to traverse a contaminated battlefield."(4)

 

And Japanese scientists were also implicated in Iraq's program to produce mycotoxins:

"According to a 1991 US military intelligence memo, Japanese scientists had been assisting scientists from Basra University since 1984 in researching mycotoxins produced by soil fungi, including aflatoxin. The Japanese-Iraqi team used three species of aspergillus mold to produce aflatoxin." (5)

I am not aware of much else being disclosed about Iraqi use of mycotoxins since then. This would have been the first confirmed use of mycotoxins in war but the issue seems to have simply melted away.

Notes:

(1) U.N. TEAM SAYS CHEMICAL ARMS WERE USED IN IRAN New York Times. (Late
Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Mar 27, 1984. pg. A.5

(2)TOXINS ARE REPORTED IN IRAN TESTS AP (NYT); Foreign Desk March 11,
1984, Sunday Late City Final Edition, Section 1, Page 14

(3)New 'Yellow Rain' Victims Wall Street Journal; Mar 12, 1984; p.28

(4) German Firms Primed Iraq's War Machine Series: SENDING EQUIPMENT TO
IRAQ: Anatomy of a Deal Series Number: 2/2; [FINAL Edition] R. Jeffrey
Smith, Marc Fisher. The Washington Post  Jul 23, 1992. pg. a.01

(5) http://cns.miis.edu/research/wmdme/flow/iraq/seed.htm

Rice, McCain, and Humpty-Dumpty: the hypocricy of power-speech.

So not only has Rice rebuked Russia's invasion of Georgia, but now "Mad Bomber" McCain has declared that invading other countries is just so passé ...never mind the little invading of Iraq thing...

I think Humpty Dumpty explained this best in Lewis Caroll's Through the Looking Glass:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

See, apparently, when the US invades other countries, that's not really an "invasion" in the classical meaning of the term. No, its something else.

Similarly, when the US tortures people, that's not really technically "torture" either.

Oh, and "meddling" in Iraq is only something that Iran does.

When bombs are dropped on civilians? "Collateral damage".

Armed British Marines who are taken into custody while illegally entering into Iranian territorial waters? Not "detainees" but hostages.

The involuntary residents of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Diego Garcia and all the other "black site" prisons aren't really "prisoners of war", nor are they civilians and not even humans subject to the Geneva Conventions...no, they're something we just made up: "illegal combatants".

Rounding up millions of Palestinians, depriving them of their property, and shoving them into ghettos isn't ethnic cleansing...no, its just "transfer" of "absentee landowners."

I could go on and on . . .

But Orwell said it too:

Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

Not 1968? Condolezza Rice, the comedienne

I heard what was probably the funniest thing I have heard in a long time. It was Condolezza Rice on BBC saying something about Russia's invasion of Georgia to the effect of:

"This isn't 1968 when Russia can invade a country, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it"

Gee, Rice, isn't that EXACTLY what the US did in Iraq? And in Panama before that?

Royalists Oust Mossadegh

We're coming up to the anniversary, so I thought I'd include more history on this blog for the next few days.

Afshartus killed

A little bit more history: Afshartous was the chief of police in Tehran. The 1953 CIA coup plotters killed him and dumped his mutilated body in Tehran, and then promoted the rumour that he had been killed by "Communists":

"The destabilizing campaign was not restricted to propaganda activities. Weapons were dropped quietly to the tribes. Less quietly, an armed gang — formed of retired officers linked to Zahedi and Baqai — kidnapped General Mohammad Afshartous, Mossadeq’s chief of police. A few days later,his badly tortured body was dumped outside Teheran. This was a major blow to the government. It proved that even the police chief was vulnerable, even in downtown Teheran. It sent a clear warning to other officers. It created an aura of acute instability. And it prompted rumors that others were on a hit list. When Mossadeq canceled public appearances and instead carried out government business from his residence, the Western media claimed he was being paranoid and melodramatic. A note at the Foreign Office stated ambiguously: “You might well consider it desirable to put about the story that the communists are plotting against Musaddiq’s life, and are trying to plant the responsibility onto the British”. Along similar lines, Lankarani bombed the home of a prominent cleric, and sent leaflets to others in the name of the Tudeh heralding the imminent dawn of a bright new “atheistic” republic. This frightened some, including future leaders of the Islamic Republic."

Immediately after the coup, about 23 people who had been held in suspicion to the murder were released from prison. No one has been held accountable for the murder.

Iran as anti-colonialist "bad example"

If Iran manages to keep its nuclear program, it would set a anti-Neo Colonial "bad example" for other nations  -- just as it did in the past when it nationalized its oil industry.

I thought readers may be interested in this cartoon and articles from the NY Times from 1951 (click on them to enlarge.) Essentially, it shows how Iran's nationalization of its oil resources, and ejecting of the British colonial masters from it oil fields, was seen as a threat since other countries had started to learn from the Iranian example. Egypt, for example, followed Iran's footsteps and eventually nationalized the Suez Canal, much to the chagrin of the Brits. Anthony Eden, then British prime minister, called the nationalization of the canal as a "theft," and United States secretary of state Dulles said Egypt would forced to "disgorge" it. No wonder Mossadegh was so popular in Egypt! Of course, the US tried to conveniently attribute all this to Communism in order to dismiss it.

Today there was an article about how  Algeria has expressed support for Iran's nuclear program. Actually, this isn't new - so has Iraq, Bahrain, 118 nation of the Non-Aligned Movement (a majority of the world's nations - twice) and members of the Islamic Conference. This attitude is reflected in international public opinion polls too:

On average 57 per cent favor diplomacy (43 per cent) or no pressure on Iran (14 per cent). Just one-in-three favor economic sanctions (26 per cent) or military strikes (8 per cent).

Nevertheless, in the US, the debate over Iran's nuclear program is being artificially limited to "Should we sanction Iran now or bomb them tomorrow?" or "Will Iran get a bomb today or tomorrow?" or "Can Iran be 'trusted' with nukes or are they just crazy madmen?" or "How can poor little Israel live with the Evil Iranian Threat" - and in deliberately limiting the so-called debate to these questions (which naturally take it for granted that Iran is seeking nukes) Iran ultimately is being portrayed as a threat in order to justify aggression against that country.

But this carefully limited non-debate promoted by the media (and some bloggers like the Goldberg-Sullivan duo) in the US, consistently (and quite deliberately) misses a deeper aspect of the matter: the dispute over Iran's nuclear program is really a North-South conflict between the Developed and the Developing countries, for the control of the world's sole source of reliable energy in the near future. Iran is being used as an example to set a precedent, to deprive these countries of independent access to nuclear energy, and thus ensure the continued rulership of the Haves over the Have-Nots. This would in effect be a new form of energy colonialism.

See, in addition to thumbing its nose at its own NPT obligations, the US has been trying impose illegal limits on the right of other nations to acquire the nuclear fuel cycle, under the guise that such technology can be used to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. Bush has explicitly proposed that suppliers agree not to provide such technologies to any country that does not already possess full-scale, operating enrichment or reprocessing facilities - in other words, some arbitrary set of countries get to keep their nuclear programs, and everyone else has to go hat-in-hand to them for nuclear fuel.

Well, Iran isn't buying it - and neither are other countries.

But you won't hear about any of this in the US media, who will continue to feed you endless speculation about how Iran is "just 6 mos." from a bomb, and whether/when Israel will attack iran, etc -- all a distraction from what's really going on.

The White House interrogation chamber?

There's an "interrogation room" under the White House?

If you ever go to Venice, you'll see the Scala dei Giganti, a stairway that leads up to the Doge's palace. On both sides of the top of the stair way, there are two statues of Neptune and Mars (which are not of the best quality.)

The history of the stairway is interesting because it was made by a particular Venetian Doge who intended to glorify himself by being crowned while standing on top of the stairway. Underneath the stairway was a small prison, so the Doge would be literally standing over his enemies as he was crowned.*

I was reminded of this when I came across Juan Cole's blog entry about Ron Suskind's book, which apparently states that there is an interrogation room right underneath the White House.

Boy, I wonder if the WHite House tours will include the "Interrogation Room" along with the "China Room" and the "Red Room" etc?

I can just see it now:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is where Lincoln sat, and this is where Nixon signed the ABM treaty, and this is where Bush water-boarded people..."

(*However, since Venice was at least technically republic, and the Doge was subject to many checks-and-balances, the city patricians wanted to take the Doges down a notch by placing the two statues by Jacopo Sansovino there, to remind the Doge of his place in the order of things.)