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Condemned to Endless War: The Sisyphean US terror policy

March 30, 2013 in ANON NeWs, Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

By Sam Sacks, a political commentator and journalist, the last five years spent covering politics in Washington, DC.  –  rt.com

US Army troops from C-Company. 1st platoon, 1-23 infantry prepare to deploy 'A-pops' - charges fired by rocket onto surfaces suspected to have IED (improvised explosive devices) traps which explode and trigger the safe detonation of the devices at the village of Gerandai in Panjway district, Kandahar Province on September 21, 2012. (AFP Photo)

US Army troops from C-Company. 1st platoon, 1-23 infantry prepare to deploy ‘A-pops’ – charges fired by rocket onto surfaces suspected to have IED (improvised explosive devices) traps which explode and trigger the safe detonation of the devices at the village of Gerandai in Panjway district, Kandahar Province on September 21, 2012. (AFP Photo)

Remember all that talk about leaving Afghanistan in 2014? None of it was serious.

A promise by the administration to leave Afghanistan came as recently as last October, in the vice presidential debate, when Vice President Joe Biden promised, “We are leaving… We are leaving [Afghanistan] in 2014.”

Сan someone define the word “leaving?”

Because, according to the former commander in Afghanistan, when it comes to 2014 plans in that country, we’re not going anywhere.

Speaking to the Brookings Institution this week in Washington, DC, the retired General John Allen saidout of all the options for American forces in Afghanistan after the supposed 2014 withdraw date, the “zero option” – removing all US troops – was never really an option at all.

“I was never asked to conduct any analysis with respect to the zero option,” General Allen told Brookings.  Read the rest of this entry →

Lawsuit Filed Against George W Bush In California For Fabricating Iraq War

March 22, 2013 in ANON NeWs, Finance, Headline, Occupy, Politics, Video Perspective

Forward to the video from roguemedia, we believe this is finally getting at what is discussed in the tab at the top of the page here, “Rico Law, Arrest The Politicians.”  It is high time that these criminal scum face a public trial, and hang for the crime of treason.  We suggest the book “U.S. v. BUSH” written by Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor as futher reading into this matter.  It is written out in a format that details,  with specific evidence that was available at the time of its writing, before her death, what a grand jury trial would look like if Bush were to be held accountable for his actions.

This matter is beyond any presidential pardon, or executive authority,  and in our opinion is a matter of national security,  quite possibly the only way that the United States can redeem itself in the eyes of the world in light of what our government has done..

The criminals that fabricated the reason behind the war with Iraq are facing a lawsuit in California Northern District By Comar Law. May our justice system represent the interest of all Americans. To learn more visit: http://WitnessIraq.com To receive a copy of this filing look up Case Number C 13 1125 with the United States District Court of Northern California.

Active-duty troops, vets launch campaign to help GIs resist Afghanistan war

June 27, 2012 in ANON NeWs, Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

‘Our Lives, Our Rights’ campaign asserts the right to refuse to fight

In response to the catastrophic, immoral war in Afghanistan and the ceaseless epidemic of military suicides, active-duty U.S. troops along with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have launched a nation-wide campaign to educate and assist service members in their right to refuse to fight. Click here for news coverage of the campaign.

The founders of the campaign are war resisters and active-duty service members who are currently refusing to participate in the war any longer.

Please make a donation to help launch this important campaign.

This campaign is called “Our Lives, Our Rights.” Its purpose is to reach-out to service members throughout the entire U.S. military in everyway we can—passing out flyers on bases, sending care packages, building an online and media presence, creating organizing teams in military units, and more—to spread the message that the officers and politicians do not care about our lives, and that we have rights as service members. Above all, we hold that the most fundamental right we have is to refuse to deploy to the absurd, immoral war in Afghanistan.

As the politicians lie and stumble over themselves to explain why we must endlessly occupy Afghanistan, and while the generals refuse to address the criminal negligence for troops with PTSD, countless lives are literally being thrown away. It’s a critical time for service members to know about their rights and how to exercise them.

Thousands of U.S. service members today qualify to become Conscientious Objectors, whether or not they have deployed before, entitling them to be exempt from deployment and a discharge with full benefits. Others who are compelled to go AWOL also have legal rights and options. Those with psychological trauma, diagnosed or not, have the right to demand adequate treatment and exemption from deployment. But these rights are unknown to most—so we want to make sure all service members know with this campaign.

Those who resist the war or advocate for their interests can face harassment, intimidation and denial of rights by their chain of command, or need help properly exercising their rights. This campaign will provide a community of support from other service members and veterans, expose mistreatment by the chain of command, and assist service members in the process.

We believe this campaign has the potential to save the lives of scores of U.S. service members and present a real challenge to the generals and politicians who are orchestrating the destruction of so many lives at home and abroad. To maximize the potential of the campaign, we need your help.

Here’s how you can help the ‘Our Lives, Our Rights’ campaign reach thousands of U.S. service members all over the world:

UN Expert: CIA Drone Strikes “A War Crime”

June 26, 2012 in Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

www.uruknet.info

The UN’s expert on extrajudicial killings has described a tactic used by the CIA and first exposed by a Bureau investigation as ‘a war crime’.

Earlier this year the Bureau and the Sunday Times revealed the CIA was deliberately targeting rescuers and funeral-goers in its Pakistan drone strikes. Those controversial tactics have reportedly been revived.

Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur, told a meeting in Geneva on June 21: ’Reference should be made to a study earlier this year by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism… If civilian ‘rescuers’ are indeed being intentionally targeted, there is no doubt about the law: those strikes are a war crime.’

Heyns’ forthright comments were made at an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) event, linked to a UN debate into the US covert war on terror.

Ambassador Zamir Akram, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva told the Bureau ‘we fully agree with what has been said by Mr Heyns.’ Ambassador Akram called on the US ‘to respect the growing international opinion’ that the use of drones ‘not only violates our sovereignty but also violates the UN charter in our view and also international law.’ Read the rest of this entry →

Build up to WW3 – Philippines & U.S. stage War Games in face of CHINA warning

May 9, 2012 in Headline, Politics, Video Perspective, World News

Published on Apr 30, 2012 by

Build up to WW3 – Philippines & U.S. stage War Games in face of CHINA warning

U.S. and Philippine commandos waded ashore on Wednesday in a mock assault to retake a small island in energy-rich waters disputed with China, part of a drill involving thousands of troops Beijing had said would raise the risk of armed conflict. Read the rest of this entry →

KONY 2012

March 14, 2012 in Documentary, Headline, Occupy, Politics, Video Perspective

Uploaded by on Mar 5, 2012

KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.


HOW TO HELP:
Visit: http://kony2012.com
Donate to Invisible Children: https://stayclassy.org/checkout/set-donation?eid=14711
For info on Invisible Children: http://invisiblechildren.com

American Facing Prison for Protesting Killings of Civilians and Children Afganistan

March 13, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

KATHY KELLY  –  accuracy.org Institute for public accuracy
Kelly is just back from Afghanistan and may be sentenced to prison today along with other peace activists for protests outside the base. She is with the group Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She was on “Democracy Now!” this morning along with a representative from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. She said today: “President Obama and U.S. military brass are depicting a U.S. soldier killing 16 Afghan civilians as an exceptional event. But in fact, this tragedy reflects and encapsulates the U.S. war of choice in Afghanistan. Groups of U.S. soldiers have been breaking into Afghan homes and killing people, without cause or provocation, for the last 11 years. Civilians have been afflicted by aerial bombing by helicopter gunships, drone surveillance and attacks, and night raids.

“In the recent past, Afghan civilians have been appalled and agitated by news of U.S. soldiers that went on killing sprees, cutting off body parts of their victims to save as war trophies. They’ve been repulsed by photos of U.S. soldiers urinating on the corpses of Afghans whom they have killed. The burning of the Quran further enraged civilians. One of the greatest factors contributing to public dismay and hostility towards the foreign forces is the practice of night raids. As many as 40 of these raids happen around the country on some nights, and the U.S. military reports an average of 10 a night. U.S. /NATO soldiers burst into people’s homes and attack people in their sleep.

The U.S. wants the Karzai government to sign a Strategic Protection Agreement that will allow U.S./NATO forces to stay in Afghanistan until 2024 and possibly beyond. This agreement will very likely frustrate possibilities for a negotiated settlement since Taliban forces have repeatedly stated their demand that all foreign troops leave Afghanistan. The Strategic Partnership Agreement has never been presented to the Afghan Members of Parliament for their consideration. No one in the U.S. or Karzai government seems concerned about how ordinary Afghans might view the Strategic Partnership Agreement.

“Arguably, people in Afghanistan are looking for ways to vent long-suppressed anger over having their future dictated by their invaders and occupiers.”

Kelly recently wrote the piece “The Ghost and the Machine: Drone Warfare and Accountability” along with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers.

Also see from the The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers: “2 Million Candles to End the Afghan War.”

See by Anand Gopal “Night Raids, Hidden Detention Centers, the ‘Black Jail,’ and the Dogs of War in Afghanistan.”

US may use CIA cloak to hide Afghan presence

March 7, 2012 in Headline, Politics, Update, World News

Afghan men walk past by US soldiers in Ghazni province on February 2, 2012 (AFP Photo / Aref Yaqubi)

The Pentagon is reportedly deliberating over putting elite troops and Special Forces in Afghanistan under CIA control. The move would reduce official US presence with a view to meeting Obama’s promise of total withdrawal from the country by 2014.

Top US military sources told Agence France-Presse that the idea had been circulated by senior defense intelligence as a way to reduce US presence in Afghanistan before the 2014 deadline.

It is one of several initiatives currently under discussion in the Pentagon, according to AFP sources. The proposals have not yet been presented to US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

Washington has denied the existence of such a proposal, with Pentagon spokesperson George Little calling the claims “simply wrong.”

If the plan were to go ahead, Washington would be able to say it had no soldiers on the ground, as putting troops under CIA control would re-classify them as spies. As such the US could legitimately maintain its military presence in the war-torn country.

Moreover, the US government would not be obliged to inform the American public over funding or military operations of CIA-controlled troops. Administration would fall to the White House, with top intelligence officials effectively turning it into a covert operation.

In order to be approved, the plan would have to pass through the White House, congressional oversight committees and the Afghan government.

Special Forces under the guise of the CIA were used last year in the operation to raid Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

US forces currently stationed in Afghanistan work in tandem with local security forces, training Afghan troops and conducting raids on Al-Qaeda stronghold areas. The Obama administration had promised a complete withdrawal of US presence from the country by 2014, and is currently implementing a gradual handover of security to Afghan hands.

The deteriorating relationship between the two cooperating forces has recently been marred by reports of US troops burning Korans. Over 30 people died, including several Western soldiers, in the ensuing protests across the country.

http://rt.com/news/cia-us-special-forces-829/

Who Controls Whom?

March 6, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

by Gary Leupp

The Obama-Netanyahu Encounter

By all reports, Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu dislike and mistrust one another. An exchange between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Obama in Cannes last November, inadvertently caught on an open microphone, revealed  the two men’s feelings for the Israeli leader. Sarkozy said he “couldn’t bear” Netanyahu and called him “a liar.” Obama responded, in apparent agreement: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you.”

Now Obama has to deal with him again one-on-one as Netanyahu visits Washington, pressing his demand that the U.S. bomb Iran or at least give him the green light to start something that will inevitably involve the U.S.  The Israeli prepared for the meeting by hosting powerful senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham in Israel last week. (McCain is the Ranking Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Graham also a member). Their visit followed February visits by U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both of whom warned Israel not to bomb, as this would compound U.S. difficulties in the region. Read the rest of this entry →

One Percenter Erin Burnett: OutFront Corporate Fascist and Iran War Drumbeater

March 5, 2012 in Editorial, Headline, Occupy, Politics, World News

occupyoakland.org

Ten years ago, most Americans believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Today, most Americans believe Iran has nuclear weapons. And once again, Big Lie propagandists like Erin Burnett are (mis)leading us into war.

ONE PERCENTER ERIN BURNETT: OUTFRONT CORPORATE FASCIST AND IRAN WAR DRUMBEATER

Various versions have been circulating for weeks, but if there’s anyone left in America who hasn’t seen the video of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Persian posse strolling around in those white lab coats that our perpetual war profiteers want us to believe are clear indications of their diabolical nuclear capabilities, they can view it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=httHhaIRGYE

Note that CNN uploaded this video to YouTube on February 15th with the white-on-red “LIVE” text overlay intact. It wasn’t “live” then, it wasn’t “live” any of the other countless times they’ve aired it since then, and it wasn’t “live” on March 2nd when la femme fasciste Erin Burnett had it looping in background as she beat her incessant Iran War drum on the Friday evening edition of “OutFront”. Read the rest of this entry →

CIA ex-chief lauds Stuxnet virus use against Iran

March 4, 2012 in ANON NeWs, Headline, Politics, World News

A former CIA chief has praised the US use of Stuxnet virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear energy program, noting that the measure legitimized using malware as a weapon to cause destruction.

“We have entered into a new phase of conflict in which we use a cyber weapon to create physical destruction,” said Michael Hayden, former director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in an interview with CBS television to be broadcast on Sunday.

“This was a good idea, alright?” he added.

The retired US general went on to say that the attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear energy program by Stuxnet has given legitimacy to the use of malicious software as a new type of warfare. Read the rest of this entry →

Yet Another NATO Air Raid Kills Afghan civilians, Including Children

February 29, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

By Madison Ruppert  -  Editor of End the Lie

Kapisa province in Afghanistan

An air raid carried out by NATO forces in the Tagab district of the eastern Kapisa province in Afghanistan resulted in at least three civilian deaths and four injuries.

The provincial council representative for the eastern Kapisa province stated that the air raid, conducted by French troops, resulted in two children being among the casualties, according to Khwaja Ghulam Mohammad Zmarai, the deputy provincial council for the Kapisa province, Khaama reports.

Zmarai stated that the French troops had received inaccurate intelligence from local residents as to the presence of suspected Taliban militants. Read the rest of this entry →

U.S. military told to prepare for Iran ops

February 22, 2012 in Headline, Politics, Update, World News

*** As a forward to this article Rogue media has found this tasty bit of info – InformationClearingHouse – A veteran Pentagon employee who was a key player in the effort to find links between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida has been stripped of his security clearance, according to senior U.S. officials.

The employee, F. Michael Maloof, is associated with a Lebanese-American businessman who is under federal investigation for possible involvement in a gun-running scheme to Liberia, the West African nation embroiled in civil war. The businessman, Imad El Haje, approached Maloof on behalf of Syria to seek help in arranging a communications channel between Syria and the Defense Department.  ***  It would seem that the author has been part of a group of warhawks that have been trying to push for war in Iran for quite some time*** ******************************************************************************************

By F. Michael Maloof

WASHINGTON – Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta believes that Israel could attack Iran in an April-to-June timeframe, and there apparently has been a decision made for the U.S. to help in an assault on the radical Islamic nation’s nuclear facilities.

U.S. military sources tell WND that the Pentagon has begun preparations for “a number of operational plans and counter-operations,” with a Feb. 22 due date for submitting the plans.

There also is a request for identifying U.S. forces “by 1 March with a ‘through’ date of October.”

The military sources indicated that U.S. forces will be augmented by an Aegis warship, presumably one of the two in the U.S. carrier task forces scheduled to be in the Persian Gulf. Read the rest of this entry →

Depleted Uranium: A War Crime Within a War Crime

February 20, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that “Gulf-era veterans” now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period. Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes.

This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.

Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems.

The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II.

Read the rest of this entry →

Special Ops Now Defines The Pentagon’s Expanding Wars

February 16, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

By Danny Schechter

William H McRaven is an admiral in Obama’s Navy. He was a member of Seal Team 3, and oversaw the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

He’s the consummate Special Ops warrior and wants more special ops forces, more drones and, most significantly, more “autonomy” (read, power) to position “his” troops in more places. He is now lobbying to expand his “freedom” by building a bigger personal arsenal of undercover operatives under his command.

The NY Times refers to his guys somewhat vaguely as “elite units” that “have traditionally operated in “the dark corners of American foreign policy.”

That shines light on it, doesn’t it? What it says is: forget transparency and accountability. The hidden government is always hiding.

Read the rest of this entry →

In Washington, Fear the Silence, Not the Noise – Crackdown on Whistleblowers in the Military

February 14, 2012 in Uncategorized

One thing is obvious.  No one ever joins the government in order to be a whistleblower or leaker.  Whistleblowers are created, not born.  To offer an example, as Peter Van Buren is happy to admit, before he spent a year on two forward operating bases in Iraq running a State Department provincial reconstruction team, he was “a more or less content Foreign Service Officer.”  It is perhaps typical of whistleblowers and leakers that something they are privy to simply pushes them over the edge.

Read the rest of this entry →

Drastic Outcome: West ‘could fire first shots of WWIII’ in Syria

February 14, 2012 in Headline, Politics, Update, World News

Uploaded by on Feb 14, 2012

Russia says it will study an Arab League proposal for a joint Arab-UN peacekeeping mission in Syria. But Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that a ceasefire should be achieved before any mission of this kind could be deployed. For more on the crisis in Syria RT talks to Tony Gosling, an investigative journalist based in the UK, who writes extensively on the Middle East.

The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn’t Want You to Read

February 13, 2012 in Headline, Politics, Update, World News

Earlier this week, the New York Times’ Scott Shane published a bombshell piece about Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, a 17-year Army veteran recently returned from a second tour in Afghanistan. According to the Times, the 48-year-old Davis had written an 84-page unclassified report, as well as a classified report, offering his assessment of the decade-long war. That assessment is essentially that the war has been a disaster and the military’s top brass has not leveled with the American public about just how badly it’s been going. “How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?” Davis boldly asks in an article summarizing his views in The Armed Forces Journal.

Davis last month submitted the unclassified report –titled “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leader’s Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” – for an internal Army review. Such a report could then be released to the public. However, according to U.S. military officials familiar with the situation, the Pentagon is refusing to do so. Rolling Stone has now obtained a full copy of the 84-page unclassified version, which has been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House. We’ve decided to publish it in full; it’s well worth reading for yourself. It is, in my estimation, one of the most significant documents published by an active-duty officer in the past ten years.

Here is the report’s damning opening lines: “Senior ranking U.S. military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the U.S. Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable. This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan.” Davis goes on to explain that everything in the report is “open source” – i.e., unclassified – information. According to Davis, the classified report, which he legally submitted to Congress, is even more devastating. “If the public had access to these classified reports they would see the dramatic gulf between what is often said in public by our senior leaders and what is actually true behind the scenes,” Davis writes. “It would be illegal for me to discuss, use, or cite classified material in an open venue and thus I will not do so; I am no WikiLeaks guy Part II.”

Read the rest of this entry →

Occupy Draws Strength From the Powerless

February 13, 2012 in Editorial, Headline, Occupy, Politics, Update

By Chris Hedges

AP / Evan Vucci - An Occupy demonstrator lays besides an Urbandale, Iowa police car during a protest outside the headquarters of former Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann.

There is a recipe for breaking popular movements. I watched it play out over five years in the war in El Salvador. I now see these familiar patterns in the assault against the Occupy movement. It goes like this. Physically eradicate the insurgents’ logistical base of operations to disrupt communication and organization. Dry up financial and material support. Create rival organizations—the group Stand for Oakland seems to be one of these attempts—to discredit and purge the rebel leadership. Infiltrate the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries, a tactic carried out consciously, or perhaps unconsciously, by an anonymous West Coast group known as OLAASM—Occupy Los Angeles Anti Social Media. Provoke the movement—or front groups acting in the name of the movement—to carry out actions such as vandalism and physical confrontations with the police that alienate the wider populace from the insurgency. Invent atrocities and repugnant acts supposedly carried out by the movement and plant these stories in the media. Finally, offer up a political alternative. In the war in El Salvador it was Jose Napoleon Duarte. For the Occupy movement it is someone like Van Jones. And use this “reformist” to co-opt the language of the movement and promise to promote the movement’s core aims through the electoral process.

Counterinsurgency campaigns, although they involve arms and weapons, are primarily about, in the old cliché, hearts and minds. And the tactics employed by our intelligence operatives abroad are not dissimilar to those employed by our intelligence operatives at home. These operatives are, in fact, often the same people. The state has expended external resources to break the movement. It is reasonable to assume it has expended internal resources to break the movement.

The security and surveillance state has a vast arsenal and array of tools at its disposal. It operates in secret. It dissembles and lies. It hides behind phony organizations and individuals who use false histories and false names. It has millions of dollars to spend, the capacity to deny not only its activities but also its existence. Its physical assets honeycomb the country. It can wiretap, eavesdrop and monitor every form of communication. It can hire informants, send in clandestine agents, recruit members within the movement by offering legal immunity, churn out a steady stream of divisive propaganda and amass huge databases and clandestine operations centers. And it is authorized to use deadly force.

Read the rest of this entry →

Azerbaijan Hub for Mossad’s Assassination & Espionage Operations against Iran

February 13, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

To-Be-NATO Ally Azerbaijan Proves its NATO-Worthiness

Iran’s foreign ministry summoned Azerbaijan’s ambassador to rebuke him for Azerbaijan’s alleged link to Mossad operations against the Iranian government. Earlier today, the London Times reported that Israel’s Mossad has been using Azerbaijan as a hub to spy on the Islamic Republic, citing testimony from a still- anonymous Mossad agent.

“Following the movements of the terrorists involved in assassination of Iranian scientists in Azerbaijan republic and the facilities provided to them to go to Tel Aviv in collaboration with Mossad spy network.”

Iran’s Press TV reports further on the meeting:

In a Sunday meeting with Azerbaijan’s envoy to Tehran Javanshir Akhundov, the Director General of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’ Office for Commonwealth and Caucasus
Affairs voiced strong objection to the presence and unrestricted activity of Mossad intelligence agents in Azerbaijan, who are involved in espionage activities against the Islamic Republic.

Read the rest of this entry →

Could NATO get pulled into Syria intervention by Turkey under the collective defense initiative?

February 12, 2012 in Finance, Headline, Politics, Update, World News

One of the most fundamental principles of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the principle of collective defense, wherein an armed attack on a NATO Ally constitutes an attack against all members of the alliance.

This concept could possibly be utilized by Turkey in the event of a large stream of refugees departing from Syria to Turkey in order for Ankara to call upon NATO to come to their defense under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

This possibility was outlined in a recent article published in Turkey’s Sunday’s Zaman, in which it is said that the political will of NATO members will be the decisive factor in whether or not Article 5 is invoked in a situation where Turkey is not able to handle a refugee crisis without outside assistance.

With the repeated failed attempts to get a resolution on Syria through the United Nations Security Council – all of which have been blocked by China and Russia, the two countries which make up the most prominent opposition to the Western push to intervene in Syria – there is increasing speculation that Turkey and other NATO member states will intervene outside of the United Nations.

Read the rest of this entry →

‘Israel a bully on the verge of global isolation’

February 8, 2012 in Editorial, Headline, Politics, Video Perspective, World News

from – rt.com

Israeli soldiers advance during a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel in the village of Kfar Kadum, near the West Bank city of Nablus, on January 6, 2012      (AFP Photo / Jaafar Ashtiyeh)

Israel should put an end to pointedly hawkish political discourse towards Iran because a preemptive assault might cost it a loss of global legitimacy, warns Elan Baruch, a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa.

­For Baruch, who recently resigned from government on grounds of principle, it is obvious that Iran is pursuing a position of a regional power “to serve interests that go beyond the immediate borders of Iran”. Primarily, Iranian politics is defensive and oriented towards self-protection, but for the domestic political discourse of Israel that is far from obvious.

Read the rest of this entry →

Elect Romney, Get War in Iran?

February 6, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

By Max Blumenthal  –  from  alternet.org

Should Mitt Romney make it to the White House, his Middle East policy and plan for Iran may be as hawkish as that of Bush Junior, thanks to
Eliot Cohen.

Photo Credit: C-SPAN

In 2005, a group of graduate students at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced and International Studies (SAIS) participated in the school’s annual diplomatic simulation. The high-pressure scenario required the students to negotiate a resolution to a standoff with a nuclear-armed Republic of Pakistan. Mara Karlin, a student known for her hawkish politics on Israel and the Middle East, played President of the United States.

Though most of the participants were confident they could head off a military conflict with diplomatic measures, Karlin jumped the gun. According to a former SAIS student, not only did Karlin order a nuclear strike on Pakistan, she also took the opportunity to nuke Iran. Her classmates were shocked. It was the first time in 45 years that a simulation concluded with the deployment of a nuclear weapon.

That year, Karlin received a plum job in the Bush administration’s Department of Defense where, according to her bio she was “intimately involved in formulating U.S. policy on Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel-Palestinian affairs.” Lebanon was a special area of focus for Karlin. She claims to have helped structure the Lebanese Armed Forces and coordinated relations between the US and Lebanese militaries.

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Return of Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine – Iran

February 4, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

By Robert Parry  — from  consortiumnews.com

Just as happened before the Iraq War, those who want to bomb Iran are scaring the American people with made-up scenarios about grave dangers ahead, new warnings as ludicrous as the “mushroom cloud” tales that panicked the U.S. public a decade ago, reports Robert Parry.

A weak point in the psyches of many Americans is that they allow their imaginations to run wild about potential threats to their personal safety, no matter how implausible the dangers may be. Perhaps, this is a side effect from watching too many scary movies and violent TV shows.

But this vulnerability also may explain why the current war hysteria against Iran is reviving the sorts of fanciful threats to the United States last seen before the Iraq War. Since right-wing Israelis and their neocon allies are having trouble selling the U.S. public on a new preemptive war in the Middle East, they have again resorted to dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to scare easily frightened Americans.

If it's bad and it's related to oil, you know Dick Cheney must be involved in some way

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Obama to Israel: No US War on Iran

February 2, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

By Gareth Porter  -  taken from consortiumnews.com

President Obama is caught in a dilemma, how to dissuade Israel from going to war with Iran without alienating pro-Israeli voters in November. So, the Obama administration has told Israel that the U.S. won’t support an attack on Iran but has done so quietly, Gareth Porter reports for Inter Press Service.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders on Jan. 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, according to accounts from well-placed senior military officers.

Dempsey’s warning, conveyed to both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, represents the strongest move yet by President Barack Obama to deter an Israeli attack and ensure that the United States is not caught up in a regional conflagration with Iran.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey (left) with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Vice President Joe Biden, President Barack Obama and former JCS chairman Mike Mullen (White House photo by Pete Souza)

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The World War on Democracy

January 23, 2012 in Headline, Politics, World News

by John Pilger  –    Global Research, January 19, 2012

Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence. She was the embodiment of people’s resistance to the war on democracy. I first glimpsed her in a 1950s Colonial Office film about the Chagos islanders, a tiny creole nation living midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean. The camera panned across thriving villages, a church, a school, a hospital, set in a phenomenon of natural beauty and peace. Lisette remembers the producer saying to her and her teenage friends, “Keep smiling girls!”

Sitting in her kitchen in Mauritius many years later, she said, “I didn’t have to be told to smile. I was a happy child, because my roots were deep in the islands, my paradise. My great-grandmother was born there; I made six children there. That’s why they couldn’t legally throw us out of our own homes; they had to terrify us into leaving or force us out. At first, they tried to starve us. The food ships stopped arriving [then] they spread rumours we would be bombed, then they turned on our dogs.”

In the early 1960s, the Labour government of Harold Wilson secretly agreed to a demand from Washington that the Chagos archipelago, a British colony, be “swept” and “sanitised” of its 2,500 inhabitants so that a military base could be built on the principal island, Diego Garcia. “They knew we were inseparable from our pets,” said Lisette, “When the American soldiers arrived to build the base, they backed their big trucks against the brick shed where we prepared the coconuts; hundreds of our dogs had been rounded up and imprisoned there. Then they gassed them through tubes from the trucks’ exhausts. You could hear them crying.”

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