Iran OKs $5b in foreign investment plans, attracts $2b, despite sanctions:
Iran’s deputy minister of economy says the Islamic Republic has approved $5 billion worth of foreign investment plans in the recent 10 months, of…
Previously, Iranian Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Shamseddin Hosseini assured foreign investors of the safety of their investment in the Islamic Republic.
Iran will certainly cut crude exports to some EU nations
TEHRAN – Iran will certainly stop exporting crude oil to some European Union countries in response to the recent oil embargo on the country, Oil Mini…
No restriction on trade with Iran: India
Few days after Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India will not scale down its petroleum imports from Iran despite U.S. and European sanct…
Iranian companies look to invest in Basra’s agriculture
BASRA: The Chairman of southern Iraq’s Basra Investment Commission, Khalaf al-Badran, has announced that a group of the Iranian Companies wish to…
Iran Provided 8.6% of Japan’s oil imports in December 2011
Tokyo- (PanOrient News)— Iran supplied 8.6% of total Japanese crude oil imports in December, the Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry …
Sri Lanka may drop dollar to keep importing oil from Iran
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka may avoid a costly squeeze by the United States sanctions on Iranian crude by purchasing it in a currency other than dollars, foll…
Iran adapts to tighter sanctions, U.S. body says
Iran has adapted to tightened sanctions by decreasing its dependence on imported refined petroleum products, as the U.S. stepped up penalties on fore…
Iran seeks tenfold electricity exports to Pakistan
Iran and Pakistan started new round of talks on boosting Iranian electricity exports to the neighboring country by over 10 folds to reach 4,000 megaw…
Iran to start early production at joint oilfield with Iraq
Iran will begin early production at the Yadavaran oilfield, which is associated with Iraq, by the end of the current calendar year
Thanks to a subservient mainstream media, we are now fed a constant diet of preposterous double-think from American political leaders and their Israeli minions with regard to Iran and its alleged threat to world security. In this inadvertently valuable service, the pliant uncritical mainstream media is giving full vent to the most outrageous drivel dressed up as serious discourse.
By acting as mouthpieces rather than critical interlocutors, the media are allowing such political figures to indict themselves with their own baseless, contradictory and hypocritical words. A few recent examples: Director of US National Intelligence James Clapper Jr in congressional testimony this week asserted that Iranian leaders are “now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime”.
The Washington Post reported the “intelligence” briefing with the headline: ‘Iran, perceiving threat from West, willing to attack on US soil, US intelligence report finds. Yet Clapper, the US nation’s supposed intelligence supremo, presents no evidence to support his reckless claim that Iranian forces are preparing such attacks. Indeed, the Washington Post notes in the same paragraph quoting the Director of National Intelligence: “US officials said they have seen no intelligence to indicate that Iran is actively plotting attacks on US soil.”
Then the paper goes on to amplify the unfounded accusations and assertions, by writing: “The warning about Iran’s more aggressive stance was included in written testimony that Clapper submitted to Congress”. Note how the paper in the space of few words moves effortlessly from acknowledging that there is no evidence to support Clapper’s claptrap premise to peddling the claptrap conclusion that Iran has taken a “more aggressive stance”.
Rather than taking Clapper to task to justify his hyperbole about Iranian “threats on American soil” and possibly misleading Congress and the American people, the Washington Post passively goes along with the flow of what appears to be out-and-out propaganda. This meekness and complicity of the media in conditioning public opinion for a baseless war on Iran has echoes of the elusive, non-existent weapons of mass destruction that US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister were allowed to lie about by the same media for their criminal war on Iraq. But, as noted, this abject “churnalism” may eventually be a good thing. For it allows political leaders and their advisors to hang themselves with their own words.
Another recent star-turn on the propaganda stage was that of US Defense Secretary Leon E Panetta who told CBS 60 Minutes programme at the weekend that Iran may be “one year away” from acquiring an atomic bomb. “That’s a red line for us, and it’s a red line, obviously, for the Israelis,” said Panetta. Yet only a few weeks ago Panetta admitted on national media that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon. “
Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No,” he said then. However, in no time at all, Panetta has pirouetted over Iran, and yet the mainstream media permit the farce to be aired instead of ripping it apart, exposing what could be criminal misinformation. Only last week the pirouetting Panetta told the Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon needs to redesign its 30,000-pound bomb known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator in order to take out Iranian nuclear facilities. US workers and their families will be throwing more of their taxes into the coffers of Lockheed Martin to facilitate the Pentagon’s phallic fantasies – all on account of lies and deception, or at least no evidence to provide a modicum of justification. Finally, Israeli President Shimon Peres weighs in with this ridiculous rant, given prominence by the Haaretz newspaper. This week Peres claimed that Iran’s ‘evil’ leaders cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, calling the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions the world’s single most important issue, according to Haaretz.
“Nuclear weapons mustn’t be allowed to fall into the hands of Iran’s Ayatollah regime,” Peres said, calling Iran’s religious leadership the “most morally corrupt regime in the world… It is the duty of the international community to prevent evil and nuclear [weapons] from coming together. That is the obligations of most of the leaders of the free world, one which they must meet.”
Reality check. These are words from the leader of a country that has for decades violated international and committed systematic crimes against humanity on the Palestinian people; that has invaded and occupied foreign territories; that runs clandestine murder and terror operations in foreign states; and that, to boot, possesses up to 300 nuclear weapons in contravention of international law. This rogue, criminal state along with its patron in Washington is maligning another state over its legitimate pursuit of civilian nuclear energy and trying to precipitate a war that could most likely escalate into a global nuclear conflagration – all based on lies. Talk about lunatics running the asylum.
The propaganda fog over Iran in particular is becoming so thick it is almost laughable – because the political leaders who are spouting this fog don’t even seem to realize just how much they are tripping up over their own absurd statements. And thanks, in a way, to the pathetically servile mainstream media, the lies and deceptions of these political figures are being exposed for all their worthlessness and criminality.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent
With the drums of war beating ever louder against Iran, the U.S. military has quickly moved to reestablish a war footing in the Persian Gulf. The preparations for a looming military confrontation thus continue apace.
According to the Washington Post(1/27), “The Pentagon is rushing to send a large floating base for commando teams to the Middle East.” As the paper reports, the USS Ponce, a 40-year old amphibious transport dock previously set for decommission, will now be converted into a special ops hub, and then likely sent to the Persian Gulf.
The Pentagon, the Post reports, is seeking to retrofit the USS Ponce on an accelerated timeline. In fact, the military has gone ahead and waived “normal procurement rules because any delay presented a ‘national security risk.’”
At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reports (1/28) the Pentagon has notified Congress that it will divert an additional $82 million to refine the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP). (The MOP is a 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bomb “specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs.”)
The decision to seek an upgrade in the MOP reportedly comes after a series of tests revealed that the ordinance remains incapable of destroying certain Iranian nuclear facilities, such as the enrichment site at Fordow, located near the holy city of Qom. (Fordow is buried deep within the mountainside, below 260 feet of rock and soil).
The Journal also reports that, “The decision to ask now for more money to develop the weapon was directly related to efforts by the U.S. military’s Central Command to prepare military options against Iran as quickly as possible.” And thus much the same as with the retrofitting of the USS Ponce, the Pentagon has decided to sidestep the normal budgetary request process in seeking additional funds for the MOP. As Journal notes, “The Pentagon deems the MOP upgrades to be a matter of some urgency.”
Meanwhile, it was also reported Friday that the joint Israel-U.S. war games—deemed Austere Challenge 12—have been rescheduled for October 2012. The games were originally scheduled for spring, but were postponed on January 15 for reasons that were unclear. But with Austere Challenge 12 now set to take place in October, U.S. military officers are scheduled to begin arriving in Israel this coming week in preparation for the largest joint operation ever conducted between the two armed forces.
These latest military maneuvers come on the heels of an announced U.S. troop build-up in the region revealed earlier this month. As the Los Angeles Times first reported (1/12), the build-up, including the stationing of 15,000 U.S. troops in Kuwait, is “intended as a quick-reaction and contingency force in case a military crisis erupts in the standoff with Tehran over its suspected nuclear weapons program.”
Another quite interesting and revealing Ben post here. It sounds from what he reports here, that we are in the last act of this dark old global soap opera. Ben gives some of the history behind much of this, from his understanding, and lays it out for all to see. The fact that he puts so much of this type of information out there tells me he knows he is “protected” (whatever that means) and that this dark-oriented group is pretty much out of it, power-wise. Others have likewise reported such (SaLuSa, Montague Keen, Wanderer).
As always, suggest using your Higher Discretion as you read.
Highlights
…911… attacks…was an esoteric battle in a war for control of the global financial system… the 311 nuclear tsunami attack against Japan was also part of this battle.
…A critical mass of military, law-enforcement, banking and other officials has been identified and is about to arrest the culprits behind these and other attacks.
…global…accounts…backed by the pooled assets of many of the world’s governments… meant to be used to finance peaceful development… were mostly misspent on war by a group of misguided oligarchs concentrated in the financial, military, oil and (to a lesser extent) pharmaceutical industries.
…the top cabalists include George Bushes Jr.&Sr, Henry (Heinz) Kissinger, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Senator J. Rockefeller, Paul Wolfowitz, Frank Carlucci, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair and the Pope.
When U.S. President John F. Kennedy agreed with the 77-nation non-aligned group to create US treasury dollars to finance the development of the third world…, he was killed.
The problem with this fake war on terror is that it required the rest of the world to continue financing the US military industrial complex.
When Putin kicked the cabalists out of Russia, suddenly the cabal’s control over oil, and thus their stranglehold over much of the world’s economy, began to collapse.
However, the entire [cabal] plan began to crumble after 2006 when the Chinese began to stop buying US Treasury certificates.
…in June of 2009…two Japanese carrying $134.5 billion of various bonds were seized in Italy and had [them] taken… the trail led to cabal members located at the very top of the Western power structure.
Until this mess can be sorted out, a freeze has been put out at the very highest levels of the global financial system. This is what is ultimately behind the recent financial turmoil seen around the world.
The best intelligence available says…many cabal members will be put in jail while [thoss] judged to have sincerely worked with the greater good in mind, will be allowed to stay free…
There will also be some sort of announcements to the global public at large about what has been going on. Humanity will then enter uncharted waters.
Although a decade of research has proven a high level cabal at the top of the Western power structure was behind the 911 terror attacks, few realize the attack was an esoteric battle in a war for control of the global financial system. Fewer still realize the 311 nuclear tsunami attack against Japan was also part of this battle. However, a critical mass of military, law-enforcement, banking and other officials has identified and is about to arrest the culprits behind these and other attacks. The search for the ultimate culprits led to something known as the global collateral accounts and a high level group of conspirators that illegally took them over. These accounts are backed by the pooled assets of many of the world’s governments and were meant to be used to finance peaceful development. Instead, they were mostly misspent on war by a group of misguided oligarchs concentrated in the financial, military, oil and (to a lesser extent) pharmaceutical industries.
According to a US intelligence group that has been on this case for some time, the top cabalists include George Bushes Jr.&Sr, Henry (Heinz) Kissinger, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Senator J. Rockefeller, Paul Wolfowitz, Frank Carlucci, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair and the Pope. Of course there were many thousands of working below them or else above them in the shadows who were in on the scheme. The intelligence and police agencies of the world have now obtained the codes for the global collateral accounts and can trace in detail who has been using these funds, and for what purpose, ever since they were hijacked in the 1950’s.
Marketwatch’s David Weidner makes a stop on Mean Street to point out that amid all of Apple’s recently reported financial successes, there is a familiar dark side to all the good news. Photo: Reuters.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” ~ H. L. Mencken
TEHRAN | Sun Jan 29, 2012 2:22pm EST (Reuters) – Iran sent conflicting signals in a dispute with the West over its nuclear ambitions on Sunday, vowing to stop oil exports soon to “some” countries but postponing a parliamentary debate on a proposed halt to such sales to the European Union.
The Islamic Republic declared itself optimistic about a visit by U.N. nuclear experts that began on Sunday but also warned the inspectors to be “professional” or see Tehran reducing cooperation with the world body on atomic matters.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection delegation will seek to advance efforts to resolve a row about nuclear work which Iran says is for making electricity but the West suspects is aimed at seeking a nuclear weapon.
Tensions with the West rose this month when Washington and the European Union (EU) imposed the toughest sanctions yet in a drive to force Tehran to provide more information on its nuclear program. The measures take direct aim at the ability of OPEC’s second biggest oil exporter to sell its crude.
In a remark suggesting Iran would fight sanctions with sanctions, Iran’s oil minister said the Islamic state would soon stop exporting crude to “some” countries.
Rostam Qasemi did not identify the countries but was speaking less than a week after the EU’s 27 member states agreed to stop importing crude from Iran from July 1.
“Soon we will cut exporting oil to some countries,” the state news agency IRNA quoted Qasemi as saying.
Last month, at the massive Fort Meade army installation, Private First Class Bradley Manning, who grew in Crescent, OK, finally had his “day in court” – actually, seven days of a military “Article 32 hearing.”
The outcome of those hearings is that Manning will stand trial for “aiding the enemy,” among other charges, which could put him in prison for the rest of his life, and possibly result in a death sentence.
Any resemblance to actual justice or due process in Manning’s Article 32 hearing was purely coincidental.
As most of the world now knows, Manning has been accused of making thousands of allegedly “secret” military videos, diplomatic cables, and other documents available to the media outlet, Wikileaks.
Before any evidence had even been presented to a court, Manning had already been punished beyond the bounds of the U.S. Constitution. He’d been subjected to months of torturous conditions of confinement, including sleep deprivation, complete isolation from human contact and forced nudity, before being transferred to reportedly more humane conditions in the wake of global outrage.
The evidence we saw presented at the Article 32 hearing does not justify keeping Private Manning in custody, much less continuing these proceedings for a formal trial.
The Article 32 hearing is roughly analogous to a “probable cause hearing” afforded to criminal defendants in civilian courts, but with significant differences. It is actually an “investigative process,” where the government is permitted to unveil its purported evidence in the presence of an Investigative Officer [IO], rather than a judge.
Motions to suppress potentially illegally-seized and questionable evidence were not heard [unlike civilian cases], essentially allowing the government to present its version of the case against Manning undeterred by due process considerations.
The most serious charge against Manning is violation of Article 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, “Aiding the Enemy,” claiming that Manning did “knowingly give intelligence to the enemy, through indirect means.”
The identity of the “enemy” was revealed on the last day of the hearing to be “Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and ‘classified’ enemies.”
SUPERPOWER is a comprehensive film that asks tough questions and goes behind the scenes of America’s national security apparatus and military actions. Far from a conspiracy film about the dangers of government secrets and regime change, this well-balanced film straddles the philosophical divide and allows viewers to understand the US quest for global dominance through economic and military strategy that is exposed through review of historical events, personal interviews, and analysis of US foreign policy.
Featuring interviews with Michel Chossudovsky, Bill Blum, Chalmers Johnson and Noam Chomsky, among many others.
SUPERPOWER has won a number of awards, including the 5th Annual Hollywood F.A.M.E. Award for Documentary of the Year 2011 as well as the 2011 32nd Annual People’s Choice Bronze Telly Award.
Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham (Editors)
INTRODUCTION
[scroll down for Reader's Table of Contents]
The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest.
The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.
The concept of the “Long War” has characterized US military doctrine since the end of World War II. The broader objective of global military dominance in support of an imperial project was first formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War.
In September 1990, some five weeks after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, US President and Commander in Chief George Herbert Walker Bush delivered a historical address to a joint session of the US Congress and the Senate in which he proclaimed a New World Order emerging from the rubble of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union.
Bush Senior had envisaged a world of “peaceful international co-operation”, one which was no longer locked into the confrontation between competing super powers, under the shadow of the doctrine of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) which had characterized the Cold War era.
Bush declared emphatically at the outset of what became known as “the post-Cold War era” that:
“a new partnership of nations has begun, and we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times… a new world order can emerge: A new era freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.”
Of course, speeches by American presidents are often occasions for cynical platitudes and contradictions that should not be taken at face value. After all, President Bush was holding forth on international law and justice only months after his country had invaded Panama in December 1989 causing the deaths of several thousand citizens – committing crimes comparable to what Saddam Hussein would be accused of and supposedly held to account for. Also in 1991, the US and its NATO allies went on to unleash, under a “humanitarian” mantle, a protracted war against Yugoslavia, leading to the destruction, fragmentation and impoverishment of an entire country.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to use Bush Senior’s slanted vision of a “New World Order” as a reference point for how dramatically the world has changed in the intervening 20 years of the so-called post-Cold War era, and in particular how unilaterally degenerate the contemporary international conduct of the US has become under the Clinton, G. W. Bush Junior and Obama administrations.
Bush Senior’s “promise” of world peace has opened up, in the wake of the Cold War, an age of continuous warfare accompanied by a process of economic dislocation, social devastation and environmental degradation.
In a bitter irony, this concept of peaceful international co-operation and partnership was used as a pretext to unleash The Gulf War, which consisted in “defending the sovereignty” of Kuwait and “upholding international law” following the Iraqi 1990 invasion.
Global Warfare
We are dealing with a global military agenda, namely “Global Warfare”. Far from a world of peaceful cooperation, we are living in a dystopian world of permanent wars – wars that are being waged in flagrant contravention of international law and against public opinion and interest.
Far from a “new era more secure in the quest for peace” we may see a world more akin to George Orwell’s 1984, dominated by perpetual conflict, insecurity, authoritarian surveillance, doublethink and public mind control.
A problem for many citizens is that “doublethink and mind control” have become so deeply embedded and disseminated by the mass media, including the so-called quality free press, such as The New York Times and The Guardian.
The Post 9/11 Era: America’s Doctrine of Pre-emptive Warfare
Allegedly sponsored by Al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon played a central role in molding public opinion. One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to “fabricate an enemy”. The “outside enemy” personified by Osama bin Laden is “threatening America”.
Pre-emptive war directed against “Islamic terrorists” is required to defend the Homeland. Realities are turned upside down: America is under attack.
In the wake of 9/11, the creation of this “outside enemy” served to obfuscate the real economic and strategic objectives behind the American-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Waged on the grounds of self-defense, the pre-emptive war is upheld as a “just war” with a humanitarian mandate.
