you say
" The Russian military-industrial complex isn’t less than anyone else’s."
incredible statement
Russia spends less than Saudi on military.
Approximately 10% of what USA spends.
Less than half what China spends.
Prof. Robert David English writes in Foreign Affairs:
note that in 2000, when Putin became president, oil stood at $30 per barrel and petroleum accounted for 20 percent of Russia’s GDP. But in 2010, after a decade’s rise pushed oil over $100 per barrel, petroleum had nevertheless fallen to just 11 percent of GDP, according to the World Bank. Thus as oil boomed, Russian agriculture, manufacturing, and services grew even faster.
Krugman’s fellow columnist Thomas Friedman similarly decried Russia’s low life expectancy over a period “that coincides almost exactly with Putin’s leadership of the country … the period of 1990–2013,” while blaming Putin for “slow gains in the life expectancy of an entire nation.” In fact, the first half of this period coincides almost exactly with Yeltsin’s leadership, when male life expectancy fell by over six years—unprecedented for a modern country in peacetime. Under Putin, both male and female life expectancy have made rapid gains, and their combined average recently reached 70 years for the first time in Russian history.
foolish simply because that is how American leaders look when they mock Russia’s prospects, as former U.S. President Barack Obama did when he said, “Russia doesn’t make anything. Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The population is shrinking.”
In fact, Russia’s population has been growing since 2010, and the country has one of the higher birth rates in Europe. Russia is the world’s third-largest immigrant destination in the world, behind only the United States and Germany. And Russian products include the rockets that ferry U.S. astronauts into space.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook admitted that the US still hasn’t actually made any determination who fired those missiles in the first place. It is unclear why they retaliated against the Houthis, who denied involvement, apart from Cook saying that the US believes Iran has “been supportive of the Houthi rebels.”
Still, this act in haste and repent at leisure attitude doesn’t appear to be changing, with Cook vowing the US would “be prepared to respond again” if they think ships off the Yemeni coast are threatened, with the implied threat that they’ll attack the Houthis some more, whether or not they ever determine if the Houthis did anything.
Pentagon officials are also trying to insist that their attacks on the Houthis are totally distinct from the ongoing Saudi war against the Houthis, which the US is already heavily involved in, meaning this amounts to a second, separate war against the Houthis, with even less of a pretext. The Pentagon appears uncomfortable with connecting their heedless attacks to the myriad war crimes in the extent war.
> Few hours before Reuter's announcement of a U.S. Navy destroyer came under missile attack off Yemen on Sunday, Saudi official accounts on tweeter like Journalist Fahd Kamely and Saudi-24 News had tweeted that the Royal Saudi Naval Forces targeted what they thought to be an Iranian ship for suspicion of supplying Houthis with weapons! They immediately deleted their tweets following this announcement, but many people have saved a picture for those tweets before being deleted and since then are circulating them on tweeter...
> KSA newspapers talked about targetting #Iranian navy destroyer in the red sea the same day US destroyer was attacked
>
> The original tweets (if authentic)
>
> @Akhbaar24:
>
> استهداف مدمرة ايرانية أثناء تزويدها للحوثيين بأسلحة مضادة للدروع bit.ly/2e6xLA
>
> Translation: Targeting Iranian destroyer supplying anti-tank weapons to Houthis
>
> @fahadkamly:
>
> القوات البحرية الملكية تستهدف تهدد سفينة ايرانية أثناء محاولتها تزويد الحوثيين بأسلحة مضادة للدروع
>
> Translation: Royal Navy aimed at threatening the Iranian ship during its attempt to supply Houthis with anti-tank weapons.
> http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/10/alleged-attack-on-us-ships-to-justify-continued-war-on-yemen.html#comments
amazing, no mention of USA bombing of Syrian military, which is primary reason that Russia has no trust in USA promises.
Dr Cole has joined the neocon propaganda!
Dr Cole, you surprise me. NATO is fully willing to impose a no fly zone, but all agree the UN Security Council mus first authorize it. Russia has already said it will not support a no fly zone, so UN Security Council is not going to authorize it.
USA and GB were willing to invade/occupy Iraq without UN authorization, but now international law is actually being followed. Like it or not.
Please take a look at NewYorker article by Jon Lee Anderson, he went to Iran and had an interview with Ahmidinejad. He writes (no transcript):
“People miscalculated,” one of my Iranian friends said. “They thought everyone in the country was like themselves, and that the rest of the country was like Tehran.” The demonstrations, in his view, had as much to do with social class as they did with politics. Mousavi’s and Karroubi’s voters in the Green Movement were largely middle or upper class. The soldiers and the Basij who attacked them were for the most part Ahmadinejad voters, drawn, like the President himself, from the less privileged majority of the city’s population, based predominately in the south of the city.
. . .
Ahmadinejad "grinned good-naturedly when I asked him if he understood why some were made nervous by his repeated calls for the destruction of Israel and his insistence on Iran’s right to nuclear energy."
So how is it that Mr. Anderson and NewYorker assert that Ahmadinejad has made "repeated calls for the destruction of Israel". How is it that this gross exaggeration (big lie) is repeated by a supposedly responsible magazine, with a reputation for more depth than wsj or nyt, etc.? Small wonder that Israel can get away with its lies when media like NYer so readily accept them so uncritically.
Also worthwhile: read for yourself the description of Ahmadinejad's position on nuclear arms, and his comparison of Iran with Israel and USA and the NPT.
there are important tasks of education and organization that have to be addressed seriously if US policies are to be shifted. They should lead to actions focusing on specific short-term objectives: ending the savage and criminal siege of Gaza; dismantling the illegal “Separation Wall,” by now a de facto annexation wall; withdrawing the IDF from the illegally annexed Golan Heights and from the West Bank (including illegally annexed “Greater Jerusalem”), which would, presumably, be followed by departure of most of settlers, all of whom, including those in East and expanded Jerusalem, have been transferred (and heavily subsidized) illegally, as Israel recognized as far back as 1967; and of course ending all Israeli construction and other actions in the occupied territories. Popular movements in the US should work to end any US participation in these criminal activities, which would, effectively, end them. That can be done, but only if a level of general understanding is reached that far surpasses what exists today.
Sorry, the quotes were supposed to be:
"Let me be clear: the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable. And I have told Prime Minister Netanyahu we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."
“Everybody knows that we are not going to sort out the problem of the Middle East peace process while there is, effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza.”
“Everybody knows that we are not going to sort out the problem of the Middle East peace process while there is, effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza.”
> “Everybody knows that we are not going to sort out the problem of the Middle East peace process while there is, effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza.”
Thank you very much Mr. Cameron.
No one in USA political leadership has the integrity and courage to speak this truth.
(Jimmy Carter does, but he is powerless and ignored.)
From a logically compelling case that seemed to point clearly in one direction the prosecution switched tack, but not at the beginning: not, in fact, until two years after the bombing, when the politics of the Middle East shifted and new allies had to be found quickly if the flow of cheap oil were to continue.
It is not difficult to achieve a conviction of the innocent. Over many decades several common factors have been identified, and the majority of them are present, centre stage, in this case: achieving the co-operation of witnesses by means of a combination of inducements and fear of the alternative (the tried and tested method of obtaining evidence for the prosecution on which many US cases rely); the provision of factual information by scientists where there is no proper basis for it (a recurrent theme in UK convictions as well as in the US); reliance on ‘identification’ evidence which is no such thing. Add to that the political will to achieve a prosecution, and the rest is easy. Fabrication demands outright dishonesty, but it isn’t always necessary, or necessary in every aspect of an investigation: the momentum of suspicion, and a blinkered determination to focus on a particular thesis and ignore evidence pointing to the contrary, is a certain route to achieving the desired end.
For the first two years there was no mention at all of Libya. The investigation originally seemed to have clear evidence of a motive (tit for tat retaliation); evidence of the existence of a bomb intended to destroy airliners in mid-flight contained in the same brand of cassette radio discovered on the plane; and evidence implicating a Palestinian splinter group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, which was prepared at the time to hire itself out to regimes that were known to be state sponsors of terrorism; Syria was one (somewhat earlier, Libya had been another), so was Iran.
Behind every crime there is of course a motive. For the initial prime suspect, Iran, the motive was brutally clear. In July 1988 a US battleship, the Vincennes, shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in the Persian Gulf, with 290 passengers, many of them pilgrims en route to Mecca. There were no survivors. By chance a television crew was on the Vincennes when the attack took place and images of triumph at the carnage were immediately beamed around the world. When it became clear, as it did straight away, that the attack was an appalling error, the US compounded its mistake: President Reagan claimed self-defence and the ship’s commander and crew were awarded high military honours. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/gareth-peirce/the-framing-of-al-megrahi
Inconvenient Truths by Hugh Miles
Robert Black QC, an emeritus professor of Scottish law at Edinburgh University, was one of the architects of the original trial in Holland. He has closely followed developments since the disaster happened and in 2000 devised the non-jury trial system for the al-Megrahi case.
Even before the trial he was so sure the evidence against al-Megrahi would not stand up in court that he is on record as saying that a conviction would be impossible. When I asked how he feels about this remark now, Black replied: ‘I am still absolutely convinced that I am right. No reasonable tribunal, on the evidence heard at the original trial, should or could have convicted him and it is an absolute disgrace and outrage what the Scottish court did.’
Bin Laden, the Taliban, Zawahiri: Britain's done business with them all
Five years after the 7/7 bombings in London, the UK's decades-long collusion with radical Islam is still going strong
by Mark Curtis
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 July 2010
Pakistan is presenting itself as the new viable partner for Afghanistan to President Hamid Karzai, who has soured on the Americans. Pakistani officials say they can deliver the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, an ally of Al Qaeda who runs a major part of the insurgency in Afghanistan, into a power-sharing arrangement.
In addition, Afghan officials say, the Pakistanis are pushing various other proxies, with General Kayani personally offering to broker a deal with the Taliban leadership.
Washington has watched with some nervousness as General Kayani and Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, shuttle between Islamabad and Kabul, telling Mr. Karzai that they agree with his assessment that the United States cannot win in Afghanistan, and that a postwar Afghanistan should incorporate the Haqqani network, a longtime Pakistani asset.
Pakistan Is Said to Pursue a Foothold in Afghanistan
One of the revelations about McChrystal in the RS article has gone unmentioned elsewhere, i.e., public drunkenness.
Think about McChrystal and his fellow leaders getting drunk in public in Paris.
Is this the conduct of wise men? It is one thing to be a rebellious cadet at West Point, but when one has advanced to the top leadership of a USA war, such conduct is truly reprehensible.
the officials suspect that at least some of these security companies — many of which have ties to top Afghan officials — are using American money to bribe the Taliban. The officials suspect that the security companies may also engage in fake fighting to increase the sense of risk on the roads, and that they may sometimes stage attacks against competitors.
“We’re funding both sides of the war,” a NATO official in Kabul said.
Afghan and NATO officials say that anecdotal evidence suggests that in order to keep their trucks moving — and to keep up their business — some companies may sometimes pay Taliban fighters not to attack, to sometimes mount attacks on competitors, or, as is suspected in the case in Maidan Shahr, to attack NATO forces.
“It would be my expectation that people might create their own demand,” said Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.
Queen Rania (really, Queen of Jordan, the one that used to be a banker at Citi) says:
"What do chocolate, cookies, A4 paper, potato chips, cumin, toys, jelly, nuts, dried fruit, nutmeg, and goats have in common? It's a tricky one. If you're a moderate, they have nothing in common. But if you are a hard-line Israeli politician, they are all potentially dangerous goods that could threaten Israel's security. It seems that side of the political spectrum has won the argument, as all the above are items that the Israeli government has prohibited from entering Gaza."
"It's understandable. I mean, you can inflict a lot of damage on your oppressors with a chocolate biscuit. And those paper cuts, boy, they can really hurt."
maybe you could get her to do a guest column now and then?
The international response is based on the assumption that more forthcoming Palestinian concessions and a continued dialogue with the Israeli political elite will produce a new reality on the ground. The official discourse in the West is that a very reasonable and attainable solution is just around the corner if all sides would make one final effort: the two-state solution.
Nothing is further from the truth than this optimistic scenario. The only version of this solution that is acceptable to Israel is the one that both the tamed Palestine Authority in Ramallah and the more assertive Hamas in Gaza could never ever accept. It is an offer to imprison the Palestinians in stateless enclaves in return for ending their struggle.
Thus even before one discusses either an alternative solution – a single democratic state for all, which I support – or explores a more plausible, two-state settlement, one has to transform fundamentally the Israeli official and public mindset. This mentality is the principal barrier to a peaceful reconciliation in the torn land of Israel and Palestine.
We must keep these trivial deaths in perspective, and
remember how important it is to Israel's security to deny Palestinian women the opportunity to purchase Kotex on the open market.
Today, as foreigners try to take food and fuel by sea to the hungry Palestinians of Gaza, we journalists should be reminding our viewers and listeners of a long-ago day when America and Britain went to the aid of a surrounded people, bringing food and fuel - our own servicemen dying as they did so - to help a starving population. That population had been surrounded by a fence erected by a brutal army which wished to starve the people into submission. The army was Russian. The city was Berlin. The wall was to come later. The people had been our enemies only three years earlier. Yet we flew the Berlin airlift to save them. Now look at Gaza today. Which western journalist - and we love historical parallels - has even mentioned 1948 Berlin in the context of Gaza?
This may be Robert Fisk's best ever, please read the whole speech:
quote:
the convoy of boats setting off for Gaza. I don't think they are a bunch of anti-Israelis. I think the international convoy is on its way because people aboard these ships - from all over the world - are trying to do what our supposedly humanitarian leaders have failed to do. They are bringing food and fuel and hospital equipment to those who suffer. In any other context, the Obamas and the Sarkozys and the Camerons would be competing to land US Marines and the Royal Navy and French forces with humanitarian aid - as Clinton did in Somalia. Didn't the God-like Blair believe in humanitarian 'intervention' in Kosovo and Sierra Leone?
In normal circumstances, Blair might even have put a foot over the border.
But no. We dare not offend the Israelis. And so ordinary people are trying to do what their leaders have culpably failed to do. Their leaders have failed them.
Have the media? Are we showing documentary footage of the Berlin airlift today? Or of Clinton's attempt to rescue the starving people of Somalia, of Blair's humanitarian 'intervention' in the Balkans, just to remind our viewers and readers - and the people on those boats - that this is about hypocrisy on a massive scale?
The hell we are! We prefer 'competing narratives'. Few politicians want the Gaza voyage to reach its destination - be its end successful, farcical or tragic. We believe in the 'peace process', the 'road map'. Keep the 'fence' around the Palestinians. Let the 'key players' sort it out.
please read this entire paper on
ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS
by
Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army
quote:
A bright flash in the south Indian Ocean, observed by an American satellite on 22 September 1979, is widely believed to be a South Africa-Israel joint nuclear test. It was, according to some, the third test of a neutron bomb. The first two were hidden in clouds to fool the satellite and the third was an accident—the weather cleared.84 Experts differ on these possible tests. Several writers report that the scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory believed it to have been a nuclear explosion while a presidential panel decided otherwise.85 President Carter was just entering the Iran hostage nightmare and may have easily decided not to alter 30 years of looking the other way.86 The explosion was almost certainly an Israeli bomb, tested at the invitation of the South Africans. It was more advanced than the “gun type” bombs developed by the South Africans.87 One report claims it was a test of a nuclear artillery shell.88 A 1997 Israeli newspaper quoted South African deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, as confirming it was an Israeli test with South African logistical support.89
THE THIRD TEMPLE'S HOLY OF HOLIES:
ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Please read Ray McGovern on this question:
quote:
>
>
> But if it's not really about the remote possibility of Iran building a nuclear bomb and wanting to commit national suicide by using it, what's actually at stake? The obvious conclusion is that the scare tactics over Iranian nukes are the latest justification for imposing "regime change" in Iran.
>
> That goal dates back at least to President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech in 2002, but it has an earlier precedent. In 1996, leading American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, prepared a radical strategy paper for Israel's Netanyahu calling for a new approach to guaranteeing Israel's security, through the removal or neutralizing of hostile Muslim regimes in the region.
>
> Called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm [2]," the plan envisioned abandoning "land for peace" negotiations and instead "reestablishing the principle of preemption," beginning with the ouster of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and then tackling other regional enemies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
>
> However, to achieve such an ambitious goal -- with the necessary help of American money and military might -- required making traditional peace negotiations appear foolish or impossible and then ratcheting up tensions.
You say:
But the title, “Obama, Karzai Renew Pledge to Continue Fight Against Al-Qaida in Afghanistan,” drives me crazy. There is no al-Qaeda to speak of in Afghanistan and that organization is irrelevant to the social and political struggles in that country.
Al Jazeera reports:
The US president also said the two countries had a "shared goal to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda".
So it would seem that your problem is not really with PBS (its title is accurate), rather your problem is with our President himself. Obama is an improvement over Bush/Cheney for sure, but still he is just another demonizing USA politician.
it was usa that got rid of Jaafari in favor of Maliki last time around,
so now Jaafari apparently wins again and usa has no power to obstruct this time
it was Sadr that usa tried to kill, and now he is the kingmaker
it was Sistani who forced Bush/usa to hold elections (when usa planned not to do so)
and he rescued Sadr with massive public demonstrations when usa was about to kill him
and he put together winning coalition of shia in last election
and now he has done it again: formed a post election coalition of shia
AND he has still NEVER met with any usa official, not once
he did meet with UN head (shortly before he was blown up)
he regards usa occupation as illegal, just like Sadr does
I applaud the Iraqi people and these leaders for winning their independence
from usa occupation, they are almost free of us
"If the USA had a real president" (you say)
then USA would not be in Iraq at all, or would have left in 2008.
Rouhani spoke the truth in a dignified manner. And YOU label it "lashing out"!
you say
" The Russian military-industrial complex isn’t less than anyone else’s."
incredible statement
Russia spends less than Saudi on military.
Approximately 10% of what USA spends.
Less than half what China spends.
Prof. Robert David English writes in Foreign Affairs:
note that in 2000, when Putin became president, oil stood at $30 per barrel and petroleum accounted for 20 percent of Russia’s GDP. But in 2010, after a decade’s rise pushed oil over $100 per barrel, petroleum had nevertheless fallen to just 11 percent of GDP, according to the World Bank. Thus as oil boomed, Russian agriculture, manufacturing, and services grew even faster.
Krugman’s fellow columnist Thomas Friedman similarly decried Russia’s low life expectancy over a period “that coincides almost exactly with Putin’s leadership of the country … the period of 1990–2013,” while blaming Putin for “slow gains in the life expectancy of an entire nation.” In fact, the first half of this period coincides almost exactly with Yeltsin’s leadership, when male life expectancy fell by over six years—unprecedented for a modern country in peacetime. Under Putin, both male and female life expectancy have made rapid gains, and their combined average recently reached 70 years for the first time in Russian history.
foolish simply because that is how American leaders look when they mock Russia’s prospects, as former U.S. President Barack Obama did when he said, “Russia doesn’t make anything. Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The population is shrinking.”
In fact, Russia’s population has been growing since 2010, and the country has one of the higher birth rates in Europe. Russia is the world’s third-largest immigrant destination in the world, behind only the United States and Germany. And Russian products include the rockets that ferry U.S. astronauts into space.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2017-03-10/russia-trump-and-new-d-tente
isn't Aslund the guy who helped Yelsin create the oligarchs and destroy the Russian economy on behalf of the USA?
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook admitted that the US still hasn’t actually made any determination who fired those missiles in the first place. It is unclear why they retaliated against the Houthis, who denied involvement, apart from Cook saying that the US believes Iran has “been supportive of the Houthi rebels.”
Still, this act in haste and repent at leisure attitude doesn’t appear to be changing, with Cook vowing the US would “be prepared to respond again” if they think ships off the Yemeni coast are threatened, with the implied threat that they’ll attack the Houthis some more, whether or not they ever determine if the Houthis did anything.
Pentagon officials are also trying to insist that their attacks on the Houthis are totally distinct from the ongoing Saudi war against the Houthis, which the US is already heavily involved in, meaning this amounts to a second, separate war against the Houthis, with even less of a pretext. The Pentagon appears uncomfortable with connecting their heedless attacks to the myriad war crimes in the extent war.
The Houthis reiterated today that they had nothing to do with the missiles fired near the US ship, and insisted they consider the US attacks “unacceptable.” They warned that they have the right to defend themselves from future US attacks.
http://news.antiwar.com/2016/10/13/after-attacking-yemens-houthis-us-admits-they-dont-know-who-fired-missiles/
> Few hours before Reuter's announcement of a U.S. Navy destroyer came under missile attack off Yemen on Sunday, Saudi official accounts on tweeter like Journalist Fahd Kamely and Saudi-24 News had tweeted that the Royal Saudi Naval Forces targeted what they thought to be an Iranian ship for suspicion of supplying Houthis with weapons! They immediately deleted their tweets following this announcement, but many people have saved a picture for those tweets before being deleted and since then are circulating them on tweeter...
http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Alleged_missile_attack_on_USS_Mason
> KSA newspapers talked about targetting #Iranian navy destroyer in the red sea the same day US destroyer was attacked
>
> The original tweets (if authentic)
>
> @Akhbaar24:
>
> استهداف مدمرة ايرانية أثناء تزويدها للحوثيين بأسلحة مضادة للدروع bit.ly/2e6xLA
>
> Translation: Targeting Iranian destroyer supplying anti-tank weapons to Houthis
>
> @fahadkamly:
>
> القوات البحرية الملكية تستهدف تهدد سفينة ايرانية أثناء محاولتها تزويد الحوثيين بأسلحة مضادة للدروع
>
> Translation: Royal Navy aimed at threatening the Iranian ship during its attempt to supply Houthis with anti-tank weapons.
>
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/10/alleged-attack-on-us-ships-to-justify-continued-war-on-yemen.html#comments
amazing, no mention of USA bombing of Syrian military, which is primary reason that Russia has no trust in USA promises.
Dr Cole has joined the neocon propaganda!
"the adobe of Islam"
is that in New Mexico?
Dr Cole, you surprise me. NATO is fully willing to impose a no fly zone, but all agree the UN Security Council mus first authorize it. Russia has already said it will not support a no fly zone, so UN Security Council is not going to authorize it.
USA and GB were willing to invade/occupy Iraq without UN authorization, but now international law is actually being followed. Like it or not.
Iraqi Parties reject US Power Sharing Proposal
You say:
"If Iraq cannot form a government, then what is left but a coup?"
You could call it a stalemate, or you could say it is already a coup by Al Maliki.
Whatever you call it, it is long past time for USA to go home.
Please take a look at NewYorker article by Jon Lee Anderson, he went to Iran and had an interview with Ahmidinejad. He writes (no transcript):
“People miscalculated,” one of my Iranian friends said. “They thought everyone in the country was like themselves, and that the rest of the country was like Tehran.” The demonstrations, in his view, had as much to do with social class as they did with politics. Mousavi’s and Karroubi’s voters in the Green Movement were largely middle or upper class. The soldiers and the Basij who attacked them were for the most part Ahmadinejad voters, drawn, like the President himself, from the less privileged majority of the city’s population, based predominately in the south of the city.
. . .
Ahmadinejad "grinned good-naturedly when I asked him if he understood why some were made nervous by his repeated calls for the destruction of Israel and his insistence on Iran’s right to nuclear energy."
So how is it that Mr. Anderson and NewYorker assert that Ahmadinejad has made "repeated calls for the destruction of Israel". How is it that this gross exaggeration (big lie) is repeated by a supposedly responsible magazine, with a reputation for more depth than wsj or nyt, etc.? Small wonder that Israel can get away with its lies when media like NYer so readily accept them so uncritically.
Also worthwhile: read for yourself the description of Ahmadinejad's position on nuclear arms, and his comparison of Iran with Israel and USA and the NPT.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/16/100816fa_fact_anderson?currentPage=all#ixzz0wnmwDe00
So please tell us Juan, who is C. E. Carlyn?
Not mentioned in Wikipedia.
Only reference in Google is to this article.
Would be nice to know.
Israel’s War Against Palestine -- Now What?
July 28, 2010
By Noam Chomsky
there are important tasks of education and organization that have to be addressed seriously if US policies are to be shifted. They should lead to actions focusing on specific short-term objectives: ending the savage and criminal siege of Gaza; dismantling the illegal “Separation Wall,” by now a de facto annexation wall; withdrawing the IDF from the illegally annexed Golan Heights and from the West Bank (including illegally annexed “Greater Jerusalem”), which would, presumably, be followed by departure of most of settlers, all of whom, including those in East and expanded Jerusalem, have been transferred (and heavily subsidized) illegally, as Israel recognized as far back as 1967; and of course ending all Israeli construction and other actions in the occupied territories. Popular movements in the US should work to end any US participation in these criminal activities, which would, effectively, end them. That can be done, but only if a level of general understanding is reached that far surpasses what exists today.
http://www.zcommunications.org/contents/171057/print
Constitutional Crisis Unfolds
Sorry, the quotes were supposed to be:
"Let me be clear: the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable. And I have told Prime Minister Netanyahu we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."
“Everybody knows that we are not going to sort out the problem of the Middle East peace process while there is, effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza.”
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/british-leader-calls-gaza-a-prison-camp/
“Everybody knows that we are not going to sort out the problem of the Middle East peace process while there is, effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza.”
> “Everybody knows that we are not going to sort out the problem of the Middle East peace process while there is, effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza.”
Thank you very much Mr. Cameron.
No one in USA political leadership has the integrity and courage to speak this truth.
(Jimmy Carter does, but he is powerless and ignored.)
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/british-leader-calls-gaza-a-prison-camp/
Please read these two articles:
The Framing of al-Megrahi by Gareth Peirce
From a logically compelling case that seemed to point clearly in one direction the prosecution switched tack, but not at the beginning: not, in fact, until two years after the bombing, when the politics of the Middle East shifted and new allies had to be found quickly if the flow of cheap oil were to continue.
It is not difficult to achieve a conviction of the innocent. Over many decades several common factors have been identified, and the majority of them are present, centre stage, in this case: achieving the co-operation of witnesses by means of a combination of inducements and fear of the alternative (the tried and tested method of obtaining evidence for the prosecution on which many US cases rely); the provision of factual information by scientists where there is no proper basis for it (a recurrent theme in UK convictions as well as in the US); reliance on ‘identification’ evidence which is no such thing. Add to that the political will to achieve a prosecution, and the rest is easy. Fabrication demands outright dishonesty, but it isn’t always necessary, or necessary in every aspect of an investigation: the momentum of suspicion, and a blinkered determination to focus on a particular thesis and ignore evidence pointing to the contrary, is a certain route to achieving the desired end.
For the first two years there was no mention at all of Libya. The investigation originally seemed to have clear evidence of a motive (tit for tat retaliation); evidence of the existence of a bomb intended to destroy airliners in mid-flight contained in the same brand of cassette radio discovered on the plane; and evidence implicating a Palestinian splinter group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, which was prepared at the time to hire itself out to regimes that were known to be state sponsors of terrorism; Syria was one (somewhat earlier, Libya had been another), so was Iran.
Behind every crime there is of course a motive. For the initial prime suspect, Iran, the motive was brutally clear. In July 1988 a US battleship, the Vincennes, shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in the Persian Gulf, with 290 passengers, many of them pilgrims en route to Mecca. There were no survivors. By chance a television crew was on the Vincennes when the attack took place and images of triumph at the carnage were immediately beamed around the world. When it became clear, as it did straight away, that the attack was an appalling error, the US compounded its mistake: President Reagan claimed self-defence and the ship’s commander and crew were awarded high military honours.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/gareth-peirce/the-framing-of-al-megrahi
Inconvenient Truths by Hugh Miles
Robert Black QC, an emeritus professor of Scottish law at Edinburgh University, was one of the architects of the original trial in Holland. He has closely followed developments since the disaster happened and in 2000 devised the non-jury trial system for the al-Megrahi case.
Even before the trial he was so sure the evidence against al-Megrahi would not stand up in court that he is on record as saying that a conviction would be impossible. When I asked how he feels about this remark now, Black replied: ‘I am still absolutely convinced that I am right. No reasonable tribunal, on the evidence heard at the original trial, should or could have convicted him and it is an absolute disgrace and outrage what the Scottish court did.’
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n12/hugh-miles/inconvenient-truths
Bin Laden, the Taliban, Zawahiri: Britain's done business with them all
Five years after the 7/7 bombings in London, the UK's decades-long collusion with radical Islam is still going strong
by Mark Curtis
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 July 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/05/bin-laden-radical-islam-collusion/print
as Karzai is Said to Dicker with Insurgents;
and Panetta Scoffs
Taliban Rejoice in McChrystal Firing
Why Petraeus Won't Salvage This War
by Gareth Porter
http://www.commondreams.org/print/57780
brief highlight:
Pakistan is presenting itself as the new viable partner for Afghanistan to President Hamid Karzai, who has soured on the Americans. Pakistani officials say they can deliver the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, an ally of Al Qaeda who runs a major part of the insurgency in Afghanistan, into a power-sharing arrangement.
In addition, Afghan officials say, the Pakistanis are pushing various other proxies, with General Kayani personally offering to broker a deal with the Taliban leadership.
Washington has watched with some nervousness as General Kayani and Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, shuttle between Islamabad and Kabul, telling Mr. Karzai that they agree with his assessment that the United States cannot win in Afghanistan, and that a postwar Afghanistan should incorporate the Haqqani network, a longtime Pakistani asset.
Pakistan Is Said to Pursue a Foothold in Afghanistan
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/world/asia/25islamabad.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
One of the revelations about McChrystal in the RS article has gone unmentioned elsewhere, i.e., public drunkenness.
Think about McChrystal and his fellow leaders getting drunk in public in Paris.
Is this the conduct of wise men? It is one thing to be a rebellious cadet at West Point, but when one has advanced to the top leadership of a USA war, such conduct is truly reprehensible.
Brands Lebanese Women's Aid Mission 'Hizbullah'
excellent analysis of Iran and nuclear technology here:
Hypocrisy and History. What Does Iran Have to Do?
By Ted Snider
http://www.zcommunications.org/hypocrisy-and-history-what-does-iran-have-to-do-by-ted-snider
Bombings Rock Helmand Capital
UN: Roadside Bombings Double
best ever from Robert Fisk, please read:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/fighting-talk-the-new-propaganda-2006001.html
quote:
He called lifting the bans on chocolates and potato chips “frivolous.”
endquote
Reminds one of "let them eat cake"
Taliban Reject Peace Talks
Bombings in Jalalabad, Kunduz, Qandahar
Milo Minderbinder LIVES in Afghanistan!
the officials suspect that at least some of these security companies — many of which have ties to top Afghan officials — are using American money to bribe the Taliban. The officials suspect that the security companies may also engage in fake fighting to increase the sense of risk on the roads, and that they may sometimes stage attacks against competitors.
“We’re funding both sides of the war,” a NATO official in Kabul said.
Afghan and NATO officials say that anecdotal evidence suggests that in order to keep their trucks moving — and to keep up their business — some companies may sometimes pay Taliban fighters not to attack, to sometimes mount attacks on competitors, or, as is suspected in the case in Maidan Shahr, to attack NATO forces.
“It would be my expectation that people might create their own demand,” said Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/world/asia/07convoys.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
Wave of Protests, Gov't Condemnation
Queen Rania (really, Queen of Jordan, the one that used to be a banker at Citi) says:
"What do chocolate, cookies, A4 paper, potato chips, cumin, toys, jelly, nuts, dried fruit, nutmeg, and goats have in common? It's a tricky one. If you're a moderate, they have nothing in common. But if you are a hard-line Israeli politician, they are all potentially dangerous goods that could threaten Israel's security. It seems that side of the political spectrum has won the argument, as all the above are items that the Israeli government has prohibited from entering Gaza."
"It's understandable. I mean, you can inflict a lot of damage on your oppressors with a chocolate biscuit. And those paper cuts, boy, they can really hurt."
maybe you could get her to do a guest column now and then?
read the whole story here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/queen-rania-of-jordan-hardliners-are-now-the-face-of-israel-1993157.html
"Completely unacceptable Use of Force"
Ilan Pappe on Israel mindset:
The international response is based on the assumption that more forthcoming Palestinian concessions and a continued dialogue with the Israeli political elite will produce a new reality on the ground. The official discourse in the West is that a very reasonable and attainable solution is just around the corner if all sides would make one final effort: the two-state solution.
Nothing is further from the truth than this optimistic scenario. The only version of this solution that is acceptable to Israel is the one that both the tamed Palestine Authority in Ramallah and the more assertive Hamas in Gaza could never ever accept. It is an offer to imprison the Palestinians in stateless enclaves in return for ending their struggle.
Thus even before one discusses either an alternative solution – a single democratic state for all, which I support – or explores a more plausible, two-state settlement, one has to transform fundamentally the Israeli official and public mindset. This mentality is the principal barrier to a peaceful reconciliation in the torn land of Israel and Palestine.
Please read the whole analysis here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/ilan-papp-the-deadly-closing-of-the-israeli-mind-1992471.html
We must keep these trivial deaths in perspective, and
remember how important it is to Israel's security to deny Palestinian women the opportunity to purchase Kotex on the open market.
Israelis Threaten to Block it with War Ships
more Fisk:
Today, as foreigners try to take food and fuel by sea to the hungry Palestinians of Gaza, we journalists should be reminding our viewers and listeners of a long-ago day when America and Britain went to the aid of a surrounded people, bringing food and fuel - our own servicemen dying as they did so - to help a starving population. That population had been surrounded by a fence erected by a brutal army which wished to starve the people into submission. The army was Russian. The city was Berlin. The wall was to come later. The people had been our enemies only three years earlier. Yet we flew the Berlin airlift to save them. Now look at Gaza today. Which western journalist - and we love historical parallels - has even mentioned 1948 Berlin in the context of Gaza?
This may be Robert Fisk's best ever, please read the whole speech:
quote:
the convoy of boats setting off for Gaza. I don't think they are a bunch of anti-Israelis. I think the international convoy is on its way because people aboard these ships - from all over the world - are trying to do what our supposedly humanitarian leaders have failed to do. They are bringing food and fuel and hospital equipment to those who suffer. In any other context, the Obamas and the Sarkozys and the Camerons would be competing to land US Marines and the Royal Navy and French forces with humanitarian aid - as Clinton did in Somalia. Didn't the God-like Blair believe in humanitarian 'intervention' in Kosovo and Sierra Leone?
In normal circumstances, Blair might even have put a foot over the border.
But no. We dare not offend the Israelis. And so ordinary people are trying to do what their leaders have culpably failed to do. Their leaders have failed them.
Have the media? Are we showing documentary footage of the Berlin airlift today? Or of Clinton's attempt to rescue the starving people of Somalia, of Blair's humanitarian 'intervention' in the Balkans, just to remind our viewers and readers - and the people on those boats - that this is about hypocrisy on a massive scale?
The hell we are! We prefer 'competing narratives'. Few politicians want the Gaza voyage to reach its destination - be its end successful, farcical or tragic. We believe in the 'peace process', the 'road map'. Keep the 'fence' around the Palestinians. Let the 'key players' sort it out.
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/201052574726865274.html
please read this entire paper on
ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS
by
Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army
quote:
A bright flash in the south Indian Ocean, observed by an American satellite on 22 September 1979, is widely believed to be a South Africa-Israel joint nuclear test. It was, according to some, the third test of a neutron bomb. The first two were hidden in clouds to fool the satellite and the third was an accident—the weather cleared.84 Experts differ on these possible tests. Several writers report that the scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory believed it to have been a nuclear explosion while a presidential panel decided otherwise.85 President Carter was just entering the Iran hostage nightmare and may have easily decided not to alter 30 years of looking the other way.86 The explosion was almost certainly an Israeli bomb, tested at the invitation of the South Africans. It was more advanced than the “gun type” bombs developed by the South Africans.87 One report claims it was a test of a nuclear artillery shell.88 A 1997 Israeli newspaper quoted South African deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, as confirming it was an Israeli test with South African logistical support.89
THE THIRD TEMPLE'S HOLY OF HOLIES:
ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army
The Counterproliferation Papers
Future Warfare Series No. 2
USAF Counterproliferation Center
Air War College
Air University
Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama
http://www.supremelaw.org/authors/farr/farr.htm
US Funds Apartheid Roads on West Bank
http://www.commondreams.org/print/56417
so guess who is the real nuclear proliferator on earth?
Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons
Exclusive: Secret apartheid-era papers give first official evidence of Israeli nuclear weapons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons
Please read Ray McGovern on this question:
quote:
>
>
> But if it's not really about the remote possibility of Iran building a nuclear bomb and wanting to commit national suicide by using it, what's actually at stake? The obvious conclusion is that the scare tactics over Iranian nukes are the latest justification for imposing "regime change" in Iran.
>
> That goal dates back at least to President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech in 2002, but it has an earlier precedent. In 1996, leading American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, prepared a radical strategy paper for Israel's Netanyahu calling for a new approach to guaranteeing Israel's security, through the removal or neutralizing of hostile Muslim regimes in the region.
>
> Called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm [2]," the plan envisioned abandoning "land for peace" negotiations and instead "reestablishing the principle of preemption," beginning with the ouster of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and then tackling other regional enemies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
>
> However, to achieve such an ambitious goal -- with the necessary help of American money and military might -- required making traditional peace negotiations appear foolish or impossible and then ratcheting up tensions.
http://www.commondreams.org/print/56291
You say:
But the title, “Obama, Karzai Renew Pledge to Continue Fight Against Al-Qaida in Afghanistan,” drives me crazy. There is no al-Qaeda to speak of in Afghanistan and that organization is irrelevant to the social and political struggles in that country.
Al Jazeera reports:
The US president also said the two countries had a "shared goal to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda".
So it would seem that your problem is not really with PBS (its title is accurate), rather your problem is with our President himself. Obama is an improvement over Bush/Cheney for sure, but still he is just another demonizing USA politician.
it was usa that got rid of Jaafari in favor of Maliki last time around,
so now Jaafari apparently wins again and usa has no power to obstruct this time
it was Sadr that usa tried to kill, and now he is the kingmaker
it was Sistani who forced Bush/usa to hold elections (when usa planned not to do so)
and he rescued Sadr with massive public demonstrations when usa was about to kill him
and he put together winning coalition of shia in last election
and now he has done it again: formed a post election coalition of shia
AND he has still NEVER met with any usa official, not once
he did meet with UN head (shortly before he was blown up)
he regards usa occupation as illegal, just like Sadr does
I applaud the Iraqi people and these leaders for winning their independence
from usa occupation, they are almost free of us