Turkey slaps 36 protesters with terrorist charges
Press TV – January 3, 2014
Prosecutors in Turkey have charged 36 people with terrorism in connection with massive anti-government protests that rocked the country last year.
According to the indictment published on Friday, the suspects face a range of charges including membership in a terrorist organization, illegal possession of hazardous material, and terrorist propaganda.
“Protests that began in May went beyond a democratic reaction and turned into propaganda and demonstration outlets of terrorist organizations with the guidance of marginal groups,” read the document.
“As a result, public property was destroyed, civil servants were incapacitated and security forces were injured,” it added.
The defendants will face up to 58 years in prison if convicted.
In December 2013, more than 250 other protesters were indicted with similar charges.
Anti-government demonstrations erupted in late May 2013, when people in Istanbul protested against the planned destruction of Gezi Park, in the city’s Taksim Square.
However, the protests soon spread across the country and snowballed into a nationwide outburst of anger against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule.
Panic, Predictions and Propaganda: Endless Empty Estimates on Iran’s Nuclear Program
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | December 31, 2013
“As you know, Iran is just a week away from a nuclear weapon. ‘They have been for the past 20 years…,’ says people who would like to bomb Iran.” – Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, November 12, 2013
It has been three years since I published “The Phantom Menace: Fantasies, Falsehoods, and Fear-Mongering about Iran’s Nuclear Program,” a timeline of constant American, Israeli, and European assertions regarding the supposed inevitability and imminence of a nuclear-armed Iran – hysterical allegations that have been made repeatedly for the past three decades, none of which has ever come true.
So far, through August 2013, 80 updates cataloging new alarmist claims and dire predictions have been added to the original piece (they can all be read here). More extensive follow-up catalogs were posted in November 2011 and October 2012.
Over the past few months, new estimates and predictions have poured in. Below are some of them.
While reading, please remember that any estimate given for a potential Iranian “breakout” scenario in which Iran makes a “dash” for a nuclear weapon (or simply just enriching enough uranium to weapons grade levels for a single bomb) relies on the presumption that Iran:
1. has a nuclear weapons program;
2. wants to build nuclear weapons or acquire sufficient capability to be able to quickly develop a bomb;
3. and has made or will soon make a decision to militarize its fully legal, strictly safeguarded and constantly monitored civilian nuclear energy program.
Not a single one of these assertions is confirmed and there is overwhelming evidence that argues that each assumption is demonstrably false.
The consensus view of all 16 American intelligence agencies has maintained since 2007 that, by 2003, Iran ceased whatever research (if any) into nuclear weaponization it may have conducted up until that point, and has never resumed that work. This determination has been consistently reaffirmed ever since (in 2009, 2010, and again in 2011).
The United States intelligence community and its allies, including Israel, have long assessed that Iran is not and never has been in possession of nuclear weapons, is not building nuclear weapons, and its leadership has not even made the political decision to do so.
In early 2012, James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, stated in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, “We do not know…if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”
The same day, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Ronald Burgess said that “the agency assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict” and maintained that Iran’s military doctrine is defensive in nature and designed only for deterrence.
Clapper repeated this conclusion verbatim a number of times this past year.
Moreover, the IAEA itself continually confirms that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program and has stated it has “no concrete proof that Iran has or has ever had a nuclear weapons program.”(emphasis added) Beyond this, IAEA inspectors have never found evidence of illegal nuclear activity in Iran, even after Iran voluntarily accepted the intrusive inspections of the IAEA’s Additional Protocol for over two years.
In November 2003, the IAEA affirmed that “to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities referred to above were related to a nuclear weapons programme.” And the following year, after extensive inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities were conducted under the auspices of the Additional Protocol, the IAEA again concluded that “all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities.”
Even if Iran were to technically acquire the capability to make nuclear bombs and stopped short of militarizing its program, far from being a rogue outlier, it would be joining a nuclear club of dozens of other nations that currently have the materials and knowledge to rapidly produce nuclear weapons.
The alarming time frames dished out constantly are all hypothetical, not actual. The beginning of each worrying countdown to any potential Iranian bomb must start after a decision is made by the Iranian leadership to actually start developing weapons grade fuel, which it is not currently doing.
It is like predicting it would take only a year to learn how to speak French fluently once one actually begins using Rosetta Stone, except without ever making the decision, let alone move, to actually buy the program. The year time frame, in that case, doesn’t make sense. You’ll always be a year away from something that supposedly will take a year if you never actually start the process of accomplishing whatever it is.
As senior Iranian officials have confirmed constantly for decades, that decision will never be made (and if it were, the move to weaponize would be immediately detected by the international community), which means that the timelines are all fantasies based on a starting point that will never occur.
With this in mind, sit back and enjoy:
SEPTEMBER 2013
On September 5, Jasmin Ramsey of Inter Press Service (IPS) reported, “U.S. and Israeli fears that Iran could achieve the capability to dash toward a nuclear weapon by as early as 2014 according to worst-case assessments,” though she added, “To date, the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran has not made the decision to pursue nuclear weapons.”
Ramsey quoted Colin Kahl, Obama’s former senior Middle East advisor at the Pentagon, as saying, “The issue then is not whether Iran will make the decision in 2014 to dash for nuclear weapons. We don’t know whether they will or whether they want to and probably the probability is that they won’t, but they might.”
On September 8, perennial Israeli hysteric Yuval Steinitz – currently Netanyahu’s International Relations, Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister – warned against Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s “offensive of friendliness and moderation toward the West,” which he deemed to be a ruse to charm and deceive world leaders and the media and “calm fears over a nuclear Iran.” Rouhani’s real plan, Steinitz announced at an annual conference held by Israel’s Institute for Counter-Terrorism, is to “laugh all the way to the bomb.”
“The centrifuges continue to spin. The heavy water facility [at Arak] continues to work. Make no mistake; Iran must be judged on its actions, not on its words,” Steinitz declared. If one were to judge Steinitz by his own words, however, one might point out that not a single one of Iran’s centrifuges produces weapons-grade uranium, all are under strict international inspection, and that the operational heavy water production plant at Arak is not a nuclear site. The heavy water nuclear reactor at Arak, however, is still under construction and is not yet up and running.
On September 10, the routinely hilarious Gregory S. Jones published another speculative analysis on Iran’s breakout capacity, again based solely on fantastical notions that Iran would be able to somehow convert its entire stockpile of low enriched uranium to weapons-grade in the blink of an eye and without detection or international intervention.
This time around, Jones uses a fancy calculator and elaborate daydreams to surmise that “Iran can produce enough HEU for a nuclear weapon in just six weeks and its entire stockpile of enriched uranium can be used to produce enough HEU for three weapons in four months.” Moreover, Jones asserts that, were Iran to have some “clandestine enrichment facility specifically designed to enrich uranium from 20% to 90%,” it could then “produce enough HEU for a nuclear weapon in just three weeks.”
Jones writes that, while using a secret enrichment lair has the “disadvantage” of “violating IAEA safeguards,” he points out that “the time needed for Iran to produce HEU by this method is so short as to make it very doubtful that any effective counteraction could be taken before Iran obtained a nuclear weapon.”
The fact that enriching uranium to weapons-grade is not the same thing as producing a deliverable nuclear weapon is irrelevant to Jones, as are over a decade of consistent IAEA inspections and safeguards that have never once detected any move by Iran to militarize its civilian nuclear program.
On September 20, Reuters quoted Yuval Steinitz as saying, “There is no more time to hold negotiations” with Iran over its nuclear program. “If the Iranians continue to run, in another half a year they will have bomb capability,” he told the right-wing, Sheldon Adelson-owned Israel Hayom daily in an interview.
The same day, in an apparent attempt to prove just how dedicated he is to spouting nonsensical propaganda, New York Times reporter David Sanger wrote, “Unless a good deal of the current infrastructure is dismantled, Iran will be able to maintain a threshold nuclear capability — that is, it will be just a few weeks, and a few screwdriver turns, from building a weapon. It is unclear whether Mr. Obama can live with that; the Israelis say they cannot.”
Also on September 20, a post by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a right-wing, pro-war outfit that is effectively one of the neoconservative successors to the Project for a New American Century, declared that nothing – diplomacy, sanctions, threats – has caused Iran “to halt its drive to nuclear weapons-making capability. Instead, the potential threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program has only grown.”
The post, penned by Robert Zarate, continues, “Even if it is true that Iranian leaders have not made the final decision to assemble a nuclear weapon, Iran not only holds all of the raw ingredients required that for an atomic bomb, but also is making technical advances that could rapidly shorten the amount of time it would need to build a nuclear weapon to a matter of months, if not weeks.”
On September 22, The New York Times reported, “American intelligence experts believe Iran is still many months, if not years, away from having such a [nuclear] weapon.”
An Israeli intelligence assessment, leaked to and published by The Washington Post on September 23, concluded that “[t]he current Iranian charm offensive aims at reaching a deal with the international community… will preserve Iran’s ability to rapidly build a nuclear weapon at a time of its choosing — the so-called breakout option.” It adds that Iran has continued to “move full-steam ahead toward attaining a nuclear weapons capability.”
The same day, Brookings analyst Kenneth Pollack wrote in The New Republic that, were Iran’s “enrichment capability” to be “capped and constrained by intrusive inspections” (which, mind you, it already is) and “its ability to work on weaponization is precluded by those same inspections,” it would then “take Iran at least six months and probably more like a year to assemble a crude nuclear device, once it decided to do so, and it would be highly likely that the inspectors would discover such a gambit long before it came close to fruition.”
In a one minute-long video message, issued on September 24, in response to U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Iran thinks that soothing words and token actions will enable it to continue on its path to the bomb.” He added, “Israel will welcome a genuine diplomatic solution that truly dismantles Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons, but we will not be fooled by half measures that merely provide a smokescreen for Iran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and the world will not be fooled either.”
On September 27, Maariv reporter Shalom Yerushalmi quoted anonymous Israeli “government security sources up to date on development in Iran” as telling him, “It’s too late for Israel [to prevent an Iranian bomb]. Iran has crossed all the borders and all the constraints, and it has a first nuclear bomb in its possession, and maybe more than that.”
The same day, Ehud Yaari, an analyst for Israel’s popular Channel 2 TV News, said on the air that Iran was no more than “one to two months away” from having a sufficient amount of highly-enriched uranium with which to build its first bomb. He added that, if Iran begins using more advanced centrifuges, that time frame could be cut to merely “two or three weeks.”
On September 28, New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren wrote that Israeli and Arab leaders “worry about Iran’s sincerity, and fear that Mr. Obama’s desire for a diplomatic deal will only buy Iran time to continue a march toward building a nuclear weapon.” Yuval Steinitz – who else? – was quoted as saying, “The most critical problem with Iran is its aim of achieving nuclear weapons, but the problem with Iran is wider. Iran is not a peace-seeking country or regime — on the contrary. Iran is maybe the most aggressive country in the world, and it’s not just against Israel.”
Rudoren also gave space to other Israeli analysts who oppose diplomacy. Their “main concern now is that four to six months of negotiations would allow Iran to get to the breakout point for developing a bomb,” she wrote, before quoting Jonathan Spyer of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya as warning, “It’s not just that forever we go on with an Iranian nuclear program that never reaches conclusion, it’s that diplomacy can be a way of helping it get to the finishing line.”
Paper of record, people, paper of record.
On September 29, Britain’s Sunday Times reported that, at their upcoming meeting at the White House, Netanyahu would provide Obama “with an intelligence report asserting that Iran has amassed enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon,” according to the Times of Israel.
The same day, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told ABC News‘ George Stephanopolous, “Mr. Netanyahu and his colleagues have been saying since 1991 — and you can refer to your records — that Iran is six months away from a nuclear weapon. And we are how many years, 22 years after that and they are still saying we’re six months away from nuclear weapons.”
“We’re not seeking nuclear weapons. So, we’re not six months, six years, sixty years away from nuclear weapons. We don’t want nuclear weapons,” he added.
The next day, on September 30, FPI board member Bill Kristol wrote in his Weekly Standard column that “the accommodation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons lies ahead as surely as the accommodation of Nazi Germany’s expansionist dreams,” and shamelessly continued, “As Iran moves closer to nuclear weapons, undeterred by the West’s leading power, a 21st-century tragedy threatens to unfold.”
OCTOBER 2013
On October 1, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an interview on Iranian television, “We have seen nothing from Netanyahu but lies and actions to deceive and scare, and international public opinion will not let these lies go unanswered.”
“For 22 years, the Zionist regime has been lying by repeating endlessly that Iran will have the atomic bomb in six months,” Zarif said, speaking from the United Nations in New York City. “After all these years, the world must understand the reality of these lies and not allow them to be repeated.”
On October 4, Kurt Eichenwald wrote a cover story for the first online issue of Newsweek entitled, “The Phantom Menace” (sound familiar?), in which he called out all the speculation and fear-mongering over Iran as “hysteria,” explaining:
Interviews with military strategists and foreign and domestic intelligence officers, and a review of the 34 years of warnings about the Iranians’ threat to America’s vital interests, all show that the doomsaying is based on suspicion, supposition and precious little hard data. It is, in many ways, a repeat of the supposed threat from Iraq that led to war – except this time, the intelligence world knows there are no weapons of mass destruction.
Eichenwald cites the view of Christopher J. Bolan, a former army intelligence officer who served as a national security advisor to both Al Gore and Dick Cheney and who now teaches military strategy at the prestigious United States Army War College: “Iran is not a threat to American vital interests. They don’t want nuclear weapons. I think it has just been overly alarmist when folks are advocating a more aggressive reaction,” Bolan said “Even if they manage to get sufficient enriched uranium, it is going to be years before they can weaponize it. The timeline is not urgent. We have years, if that is the objective of the government, which, again, I think is a pretty questionable claim.”
In an interview with the Associated Press on October 5, President Barack Obama stated that the current “U.S. intelligence assessment” maintains that Iran “continues to be a year or more away” from being able to produce a nuclear bomb. “And in fact, actually, our estimate is probably more conservative than the estimates of Israeli intelligence services,” he added.
AP itself, in its interview of the American president, inadvertently revealed just how tedious and interchangeable these constant, recycled predictions really are. The question posed to Obama – the one eliciting the above response – was set up with the following statement: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that Iran is about six months away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.”
This wasn’t true, it was a misinterpreted reiteration of something stupid Netanyahu said a year ago. Note the correction issued by AP in its transcript of the interview:
Last year. Most. Needed to produce. All gibberish, signifying nothing.
On October 6, French Foreign Minister Fabius Laurent said in a radio interview with Europe 1 that nuclear negotiations with Iran must bear fruit quickly lest Iranian facilities be allowed to progress to a point beyond which they can be bombed into oblivion. If the heavy water reactor at Arak, for example, were to become operational, “we wouldn’t be able to destroy it because if you bomb plutonium it will leak. This means it’s a race against time,” he said, continuing that there is “roughly a year” before this becomes a possibility.
The next day, on October 7, Reuters quoted an unnamed “Israeli official” in reaction to Obama’s “year or more” timeframe as saying, “If Iran decides to complete uranium enrichment, it would be able to do so within a few weeks from the moment of decision.”
On October 17, BuzzFeed‘s Sheera Frenkel quoted an anonymous “Israeli diplomat” as telling her that a nuclear-armed Iran “is not a far off possibility but a very near, almost actualized thing.” In an exceptionally alarmist post entitled, “What If Iran Already Has a Nuke?” – which reads more like an Israeli Foreign Ministry press release than an independent news report – Frenkel writes of another recent Maariv article by Shalom Yerushalmi that claimed Israeli officials believe Iran already has a nuclear warhead.
“They made it very clear that Iran already had the uranium for one bomb, and it was very very probable that they had put that one bomb together,” Yerushalmi told Frenkel. “This opinion is growing though many are afraid to say it too loudly because they would then be admitting that Israel, specifically Netanyahu, has failed the central mission of his political life.”
Relaying what an unnamed Israeli official told him, Yerusalmi said, “This is no longer about how to prevent a bomb but about how to prevent its being launched, and what to do if and when.”
Meanwhile, Gary Samore, a former advisor to Obama and longtime pro-Israel hawk, told Frenkel, “We have seen a number of significant changes in the last few weeks that have suggested that Iran is closer, much closer to a bomb than ever before,” adding, “We can’t be precise about the timeline, nobody can because there are too many factors. What we can say is that they are very close and there is nothing standing in their way other than international pressure.”
On October 22, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor delivered a speech before the UN Security Council during which he declared that “Iran is marching towards a bomb,” and warned, “The clock is ticking and time is running out.”
On October 24, David Albright and his colleagues at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) issued a new report estimating Iranian nuclear “breakout” capacity. They write that Iran could potentially produce one nuclear bomb’s worth of weapons grade uranium (WGU) in about a month or two, depending on the specific stockpile and method used. “It is possible that Iran could use a covert plant to break out in as little as approximately one to two weeks,” the report claims.
The authors also note that “the estimates in this report do not include the additional time that Iran would need to convert WGU into weapons components and manufacture a nuclear weapon.”
This report was publicized in an error-filled USA Today article by Oren Dorell on October 25, headlined, “Iran may be month away from bomb.”
The same day, Ian Bremmer, president of the consulting firm Eurasia Group, wrote a commentary for Reuters in which he stated, “Iran is getting significantly closer to nuclear weapons capability” and cited an International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) report from August as claiming that Iran “is on pace to become nuclear-weapons capable in 2014 or 2015 — and that window could narrow further.”
Bremmer added, “Iran is approaching nuclear breakout capacity, the point at which it could conceivably race to produce sufficient material for a nuclear weapon and hide it in a secure location before the U.S. or Israel could amass a military response to stop them. A realistic worst-case scenario could see breakout time drop to around 10 days — a span too short to assemble an effective response — by the middle of next year.”
NOVEMBER 2013
A series of infographics provided by the New York Times on November 8 used David Albright’s hypothetical estimates to promote the dire assessments that “Iran has the technology and material to produce fuel for power or a weapon” and “Iran could quickly move to a nuclear ‘breakout.'” The graphics, created by Sergio Peçanha, illustrate potential measures, outlined in the Institute for Science and International Security report, “that could elevate the breakout time to more than six months.”
One of the graphics (seen above) shows Iran having 19,000 centrifuges, but does not note that roughly half of those, while installed, are not operational.
In testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee on November 13, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish, Iran-obsessed think tank, said that if Iran is able to continue construction of its heavy water reactor at Arak over the next six months, “Tehran will gain an extra six months to develop the capacity to produce a plutonium bomb.” He added, that “while keeping all existing sanctions in place, Iran should be given an ultimatum” to suspend its enrichment at both the Natanz and Fordow facilities, where, he said, “nuclear experts estimate that Iran is no more than eight months from achieving an undetectable nuclear breakout.”
The chairman of the committee, Congressman Ed Royce of California, declared during the same hearing, “Only when the Iranian regime is forced to decide between economic collapse or compromise on its rush to develop a nuclear weapons capability, do we have a chance to avoid that terrible outcome.”
At the hearing, Colin Kahl, Obama’s former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, made the case for diplomacy, citing ISIS estimates for emphasis. “The Institute for Science and International Security estimates it would currently take Iran as little as 1.3-2.3 months to produce one bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium using a combination of its 3.5 percent and 20 percent uranium stockpile,” he said. “However, if Iran stops 20 percent enrichment and neutralizes most of its 20 percent stockpile, this would lengthen the breakout time for weapons-grade uranium to 3.1-3.5 months.”
Later in the hearing, Kahl explained that, if accepted and implemented, the deal proposed to Iran by the P5+1, would thus “double Iran’s breakout time.”
The same day, November 13, top U.S. officials – including Secretary of State John Kerry, Undersecretary Wendy Sherman, Vice President Joe Biden, and others – met with members of the Senate Banking Committee in a closed-door session to convince them of the benefit of working toward a nuclear deal with Iran and dispel rumors about potential sanctions relief floated by the Israeli government and their lobbyists in Washington.
Senator Mark Kirk, a leading Iran hawk who has stated, “It’s okay to take the food out of the mouths of the citizens” of Iran and who, in 2010, received vastly more money from pro-Israel lobbying groups than any other politician, was unhappy with what he heard from Kerry.
The presentation, Kirk told reporters after the meeting, was “very unconvincing” and “fairly anti-Israeli. I was supposed to disbelieve everything the Israelis had just told me, and I think the Israelis probably have a pretty good intelligence service.”
Presumably, he was referring to the same Israelis who have insisted Iran has been on the brink of having a nuclear bomb for over two decades now.
Kirk added that the Israelis had told him that the “total changes proposed set back the program by 24 days.”
On November 14, Adiv Sternman of the Times of Israel wrote, “Responding to an International Atomic Energy Agency report claiming that Iran had substantially cut uranium enrichment since the election of President Hassan Rouhani last June, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu said he was ‘not impressed,’ and that Iran still strives to acquire nuclear weapons.”
Netanyahu continued, “Iran is not expanding its nuclear program because it already has the foundations needed for nuclear weapons. The question is not whether they are expanding the program, but how to stop the Iranian military nuclear program.”
On November 24, New York Times reporter David Sanger – who has a dubious history of writing ignorant and incorrect things about Iran – doubled-down on his complete misunderstanding of Iran’s nuclear program (or any nuclear program or weapons development whatsoever), writing of the “deep suspicion inside Mr. Netanyahu’s government that Mr. Obama will settle for a final agreement that leaves Iran a few screwdriver turns short of a weapon.”
Sanger also wrote that the just-inked interim nuclear deal, “according to American intelligence estimates, would slow Iran’s dash time by only a month to a few months,” and added that “it will take Iran several months to produce weapons-grade fuel from its current stocks, and perhaps a year or more to fashion that fuel into a usable weapon and shrink it to fit atop one of the country’s Shahab missiles.”
In a November 25 op-ed for the Washington Post about the tenets of the interim nuclear deal signed in Geneva between Iran and six world powers and the voluntarily accepted limitations on the Iranian program, ISIS head David Albright wrote, “If Iran used all of its installed centrifuges, the time it would need to produce a weapon would expand to at least 1.9 to 2.2 months, up from at least 1 month to 1.6 months.”
On November 26, Siegfried Hecker, a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, claimed that Iran was “[v]ery close, possibly weeks away from making sufficient highly enriched uranium bomb fuel, and six months or so away from building a nuclear weapon.” He further suggested that “Iran had likely previously done most of the work necessary to build nuclear weapons once it obtained the capacity to produce bomb fuel. Iran’s extensive missile development and testing program also points to Tehran pursuing the option of missile deliverable nuclear weapons.”
On November 27, a report from the Israeli daily Maariv claimed “that Israeli experts have estimated that Tehran’s schedule for nuclear enrichment has only been delayed for up to two weeks.”
A summary of the report by the Israeli settler-run news outlet Arutz Sheva confused Iran’s hypothetical capacity to enrich one bomb’s worth of uranium to weapons grade levels with Iran’s ability to manufacture a deliverable nuclear warhead, issuing the screaming headline, “Estimate: Iran Could Produce a Nuclear Weapon Within 36 Days.”
DECEMBER 2013
In a grossly misleading and disingenuous December 2 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz wrote that the recently-signed “interim agreement leaves Iran, hopefully only temporarily, in the position of a nuclear threshold power—a country that can achieve a military nuclear capability within months of its choosing to do so.”
Speaking at the pro-Israel Saban Center’s annual conference in Washington D.C. on December 7, President Barack Obama said that aspects of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure “cannot justify simply wanting some peaceful nuclear power, but frankly hint at a desire to have breakout capacity and go right to the edge of breakout capacity.” He later stated that, without an interim deal that slows Iran’s nuclear progress, “all the breakout capacity we’re concerned about will accelerate in the next six months… They would be that much closer to breakout capacity six months from now.”
Later that day, John Kerry addressed the same conference and reiterated the White House line. “Iran’s breakout time, the period required to produce enough weapons-grade material intended for nuclear weapons, will have been increased because of our diplomacy,” he said.
On December 10, Fredrik Dahl of Reuters wrote, “Last month’s preliminary accord reached after marathon talks in Geneva is seen as a first step towards resolving a decade-old standoff over suspicions Iran might be covertly pursuing a nuclear weapons ‘breakout’ capability, a perception that has raised the risk of a wider Middle East war.”
On December 11, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett had told Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to leverage its temporary membership on the United Nations Security Council to scuttle the nascent diplomacy over the Iranian nuclear program. After absurdly stating that “Iran is on the verge of having to give up its nuclear production because of the economic sanctions,” Bennett said, “Our objective is to dismantle effectively all their centrifuges so the time they need for a nuclear break-out is not six weeks but three years.”
On December 19, French Foreign Minister Fabius Laurent cast doubt on the ability to reach a final deal with Iran over the latter’s nuclear program. “It is unclear if the Iranians will accept to definitively abandon any capacity of getting a weapon or only agree to interrupt the nuclear programme,” he said, “What is at stake is to ensure that there is no breakout capacity.”
In a December 30 interview with the Times of Israel, former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren said that Iran already has “enough in their 3.5% stockpile for more than four bombs,” and that Iran could “breakout” as a nuclear weapons state in a matter of “weeks.”
On December 30, former Senator Joe Lieberman, now with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, issued his own rabid predication for the next twelve months. Speaking on FOX News, Lieberman declared, “tougher sanctions will not convince Iran to find a diplomatic way to end their nuclear weapons project and I think there is a better than even chance that before the end of 2014 the U.S. and/or Israel will take military action to disable Iran’s nuclear program.”
A NEW YEAR, A RESOLUTION?
Despite so much incessant nonsense, the year thankfully ended on a high note. Writing for the indispensable LobeLog on December 31, 2013 – New Year’s Eve – François Nicoullaud, a career diplomat and former French ambassador to Iran, addressed the claim that, with its current technical capabilities, Iran “would be able to produce the fissile material necessary for a bomb in just a few weeks.”
“But what is the practical value of such estimates?,” Nicoullaud rhetorically asks, before laying out some important facts:
First, having the material for the bomb does not mean having the bomb. Several months, possibly a good year or more, would still be necessary to manufacture and test a first nuclear explosive device. Second, to maintain a minimal deterrent effect after an initial test, at least two or three bombs should be kept in stock. To obtain such a deterrent, however, would significantly add to the time needed for enrichment to 90%. Some argue that as soon as this highly enriched uranium would be produced, and subsequently diverted, it would escape the safeguards of the IAEA, making it much more difficult for the international community to react. But why? The whole country would still be there, both as a possible target for increased sanctions and more. And if a few weeks are theoretically enough for a successful breakout, a few days should be enough to deploy and deliver an adequate response.
The entire article is worth reading, if only to rinse the awful taste of hysteria with some effervescent and much-needed rationality and honesty.
Just a day earlier, on December 30, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani published an article that was syndicated around the world. In addition to talk of rejuvenating the Iranian economy, improving relations with European and North American nations, and working toward a peaceful end to the bloody civil war in Syria, Rouhani wrote clearly about “Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy programme which has been subject to enormous hype in recent decades.”
Since the early 1990s, one prediction after another regarding how close Iran was to acquiring a nuclear bomb has proved baseless. Throughout this period, alarmists tried to paint Iran as a threat to the Middle East and the world.
We all know who the chief agitator is, and what purposes are to be served by hyping this issue. We know also that this claim fluctuates in proportion to the amount of international pressure to stop settlement construction and end the occupation of Palestinian lands. These false alarms continue, despite US national intelligence estimates according to which Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon.
In fact, we are committed not to work toward developing and producing a nuclear bomb. As enunciated in the fatwa issued by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, we strongly believe that the development, production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are contrary to Islamic norms. We never even contemplated the option of acquiring nuclear weapons, because we believe that such weapons could undermine our national security interests; as a result, they have no place in Iran’s security doctrine. Even the perception that Iran may develop nuclear weapons is detrimental to our security and overall national interest.
Don’t expect Rohani’s statements to temper the obsessive rhetoric so frequently published in our mainstream media. It would be imprudent to anticipate 2014 will see fewer platforms for anti-Iran propaganda in the press and less lies from Israeli and American politicians.
Nevertheless, with both the Rouhani and Obama administrations current and continuing dedication to diplomacy, we can hope that the new year will finally bring out a verifiable resolution to the ridiculous impasse over Iran’s nuclear program.
Until then, the least we can demand is the truth and less scare-mongering.
Happy New Year, dear readers.
Let’s hope it’s a good one, as the man says. Without any fear.
War is over, if we want it.
A Stupid Question
By Kim Petersen | Dissident Voice | January 2, 2014
Zionist Jews have, predictably, taken umbrage to the vote of American Studies Association to boycott Israeli universities. David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, contends that the vote casts a “long shadow” on the American Studies Association.1
A Stupid Question
“After all,” Harris writes, “how else to explain the fact that no other country in the world — not Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Sudan or any other serial human rights violator — has been the object of such a boycott by the group?”
Anyone aware of the occupation and oppression wreaked by the Jewish state against Palestinians must assume that Harris is either ignorant or lying. Harris ostensibly cannot fathom why Israel would be targeted.
How to explain? Unlike in Israel,
1. Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and Sudan are not engaged in the occupation and annexation of the territory of another people.2
2. Minorities in Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and Sudan do not suffer under an official state-sanctioned system of apartheid.3
3. Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Syria are not waging war upon neighbor states. Sudan, a recently severed country, still has border hostilities with South Sudan.
4. Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Syria do not practice genocide.4 Given the complex situation that existed in the Darfur region of Sudan, I’ll exclude Sudan again from the conversation.
It is important to emphasize that Harris, in his letter, does not deny that Israel is guilty of the crimes that has made it a target of the boycott. Instead he argues tu quoque. In other words, others do it too, so why pick only on Israel? This is a morally vacuous defense. Whether or not Sudan, for example, engages in the same morally reprehensible behaviors as Israel does not lessen Israel’s own crimes. People of conscience have a duty to speak out against violations of human rights wherever they may be occurring.
Nonetheless, a moral tenet would posit that one’s own state would, first and foremost, be held to an equal or higher standard of conduct when criticizing other states. Since Canada and the United States are, like Israel, founded on the genocide and dispossession of Indigenous people, any criticism directed at Israel while silent on the crimes in one’s own backyard would ring of hypocrisy. To the extent that the American Studies Association does not address a similar level of immorality in its own country would be of concern.
In attempting to defend Israel, one lie that Harris trots out is the trope of Israel being “the one truly democratic state [sic] in the Middle East …” It is a lie, but even if it were true, why should being a democracy exculpate war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace?
Shlomo Sand wrote a section, “’Jewish and Democratic’ – an Oxymoron?” in his book, The Invention of the Jewish People. Sand concluded:
The essentialist outlook that depends on the definitions of Jew and non-Jew, and the definition of the state by way of this outlook, together with the stubborn public refusal to allow Israel to be a republic of all Israeli citizens, constitute a deep-rooted barrier to any kind of democracy. (307)
Sand sees Israel as “a Jewish ethnocracy … a state whose main purpose is to serve not a civil-egalitarian demos but a biological-religious ethnos that is wholly fictitious historically, but dynamic, exclusive and discriminatory in its political manifestation.” (307)
Harris also pleaded that Israel “is engaged in an intensive and complex peace process with the Palestinians…”
This is an appeal to the ignorance or moral incompetence of members of the general public.
Who with an iota of critical-thinking ability would fall for the canard of a peaceful intent on Israel’s behalf while it continues building Jew-only “settlements” in the Occupied Territories? After all, Jews would have to be stupid (and they aren’t) to invest money and labor to build “settlements” only to knowingly have to abandon them to a so-called peace process.
Harris asks, “If Israel is so anathema to the majority of the association’s members, then presumably they will extend the boycott beyond Israeli universities to everything Israeli.” Harris twists the situation. The notion of a Jewish state that discriminates openly against non-Jews is anathema. Any state that discriminates against groups within the state is engaged in behavior that is anathema. However, leaving aside anarchist arguments, it is not the state, per se, that is anathema, but the actions of the state.
Consequently, when Harris chides the American Studies Association social justice orientation as “regrettable behavior,” he should be encouraged to look in the mirror and confront, what can only most euphemistically be called, Israel’s own regrettable behavior.
Harris is correct in that there are other nation-states that are deserving of the opprobrium that a boycott evokes. Canada is surely deserving for its crimes against its Original Peoples. Canada also deserves criticism for its staunch support of Zionism. There are plenty of states whose citizens need to confront the crimes of their state. This does not absolve Israel of its crimes or the censure conferred by a boycott; it merely means that there are other states deserving of censure.
- David Harris, “Parsing an Academic Boycott of Israel,” Letters to the New York Times, 17 December 2013.
- Some may point to the Kurdish areas in Iran, but these areas are internationally recognized as part of Iran.
- In Sudan, Black-Arab violence has been reported, but there are not, e.g., Arab-only roads in Sudan.
- Or as many euphemistically put it: ethnic cleansing. For an elaboration see Kim Petersen, “Bleaching the Atrocities of Genocide,” Dissident Voice, 7 June 2007.
Kim Petersen can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org.
Palestinian Teen Dies After IOF Shooting
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | January 03, 2014
Palestinian Medical sources have reported that a Palestinian teen has died of wounds suffered Thursday, after Israeli soldiers opened fire at an area in northern Gaza.
The sources said that Adnan Abu Khater, 17 years of age, was seriously injured east of Jabalia town, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and was moved to the Ash-Shifa Medical Center, west of Gaza City.
Abu Khater was then moved to surgery, and remained in very serious condition until he passed away on Friday morning.
Furthermore, the Israeli army fired several shells at an area east of Al-Boreij refugee camp, in Central Gaza, causing excessive damage but no injuries.
The Israeli Air Force also carried out several air strikes targeting various areas in the Gaza Strip, mainly agricultural lands east of Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza, in addition to firing missiles into lands east of Gaza City and Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza.
Eyewitnesses stated that Israeli soldiers, stationed across the border east of Gaza City, fired dozens of rounds of live ammunition into Palestinian farmlands.
Israeli navy boats also fired rounds of live ammunition at several Palestinian fishing boats in Palestinian territorial waters, causing damage but no injuries.
Checkpoint 300
By Ali Morgan | Green Numberplate | December 31, 2013
It is 3.45 a.m. and my team-mate and I arrive for our regular monitoring duty at Israeli Checkpoint 300, which allows entry through the Separation Barrier, from Bethlehem to East Jerusalem. Nearly 200 men are already queuing for the checkpoint to open and hundreds more are swarming in to join the crush at the bottom of the main entrance lane – a huge cage, 1m wide and about 300m long, totally enclosed by iron bars.
Over 5,000 Palestinians trudge through this checkpoint between 4 a.m.and 7 a.m. everyday. They are mostly men, eager to catch buses on the other side to go to work on building sites and other low paid jobs in Israel, because the occupation has strangled the Palestinian economy. The same osmosis is happening across checkpoints up and down the concrete and wire membrane that now surrounds the West Bank; 32,000 grey figures in dusty working clothes and heavy boots, filtering East to West in pre-dawn darkness, unseen by the world. Yet these people consider themselves the lucky few. They have been granted permits to work in Israel or to attend a hospital appointment in East Jerusalem.
The men queue for up to 80 minutes each morning. Young and old, crammed together like cattle in the blue cage, shuffling slowly up the lane to a single turnstile. If someone should be taken ill, or injured, there is no chance of getting out until he reaches the turnstile. Only internationals and a handful of Palestinian women, children and old men with permits for hospital appointments, are allowed through the separate ‘humanitarian’ turnstile. After the first turnstile the younger men race across the tarmac to the terminal building, leaping barriers to get ahead in the next queue through more turnstiles, metal detectors and finally to the ID booths. Here each person must hold up his ID card to the glass, followed by his work permit and place his finger on an electronic finger print scanner. All this is checked by a bored and sullen Israeli soldier, wearing a bullet proof vest and an automatic machine gun behind the bullet proof glass. Private Israeli security guards with sub-machine guns prowl near the ID booths. A tinny voice barks orders in Hebrew at the lines of Palestinians.
This morning is worse than usual. The soldier controlling the first turnstile keeps locking it every few minutes. The bars rebound jarringly in the face of an old man and the queue halts for the fifth time. The crush of bodies intensifies for the next 20 minutes. Men begin shouting and complaining. Many climb over the top of the cage and queue-jump through gaps in the corrugated tin roof, desperate not to miss their buses and lose a day’s pay. When the turnstile finally opens again, 500 men surge through in 10 minutes calling ‘Yalla, yalla!’ (Go, go) to those ahead. One man stumbles, falls and is nearly trampled by the crowd pushing up behind. He is saved by another man who braces himself across the line whilst others haul the man to his feet.
I ring the military ‘Humanitarian Hotline’ three times. The soldier answering tells me it is a new unit on duty today and they don’t know what they are doing. After a few minutes two armed security guards appear from the main terminal to reinforce the soldier, rather than help people in the cage. I speak to the guards from my observation spot alongside the cage, asking them to do something before someone gets trampled or crushed. One of the new security guards finally turns and yells at me, motioning towards the crowd in the cage, ‘You do something! This is not Israel!’ as if the it is the behaviour of the Palestinians that is the problem. ‘That’s right!’ I respond in astonishment at this admission, ‘This is not Israel – it is Palestine! But Israel built the checkpoint and (Separation) Wall’. He turns his back on me.
My team-mate and I change places and I move to monitor the ID booths near the exit on the Jerusalem side. Only one of three metal detectors is open and the soldiers in the five ID booths keep turning men back. We try to speak to those who are refused entry to find out why. Most are given no explanation and we work with the Israeli human rights organisation, Machsom Watch, to find out. Sometimes the Palestinian has suddenly been blacklisted for unexplained ‘security reasons’. Sometimes his work permit has expired. People often don’t know that their permit has expired until they get to the checkpoint. The Israeli employer applies for the permits for their workers and sometimes simply cancel them when they no longer need the workers. The employee only finds out when he reaches the ID booth, after hours of travelling and queuing.
In addition to the thirty two thousand who are permitted to enter East Jerusalem and Israel, the Israeli authorities are well aware that another 20,000 West Bank Palestinians enter Israel without permits each day. Thousands of people, desperate for work, walk for hours across hills and through woods where the Barrier does not yet reach. The risks are high and many people serve repeated terms in Israeli prisons when they are discovered in Israel without a permit. A high proportion of the West Bank population was dependent on work in Israel before Israel began building the Separation Barrier in 2002. By then, the years of occupation since 1967 had dismantled the West Bank’s economy, with Israel controlling and taxing raw materials and products; the costs and uncertainty deterring investment.
After two and a half hours, people begin to stream through the terminal. The inexperienced Israeli army unit have finally given up and simply thrown open the gates, allowing everyone to by-pass the security checks, as though acknowledging that security is not the real issue here.
And after enduring this systematic inhumanity and humiliation day in, day out, these Palestinians pass me at the exit with a smile and ‘Good morning’ – many kneeling for morning prayers on the exit slope – refusing to be humiliated, refusing to be dehumanised.
How Much Money Do The Rothschilds Have?
Bilzerian Report / March 16, 2012
For more than 200 years the Rothschild family has kept their banks in family hands, out of the general view of the public, in an effort to conceal their vast wealth. The Rothschilds have taken advantage of tax-free jurisdictions and have purposefully established their banks in countries with strict banking secrecy laws like Monaco, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.
The Rothschild dynasty first began to acquire prominence around the mid 1700′s. The first major patriarch of the family, Mayar Amschel Rothschild, sent his 5 sons to strategic banking centers throughout Europe. Nathan Rothschild went to London, Jabob to Paris, Salomon to Vienna, Asmchel (Jr.) to Frankfurt, and Calmann Rothschild to Naples.
From 1813-1815 Nathan Rothschild almost single handedly financed the British war effort while his brothers financed the French war effort. In one year of the war, 1815, Nathan Rothschild provided the British government with nearly 10 million pounds, which is equivalent to 6.5 billion pounds today.
Since the Rothschilds were playing both sides of the warring parties, they were the only ones who could get through both sides of the blockades quickly. Their network of banks provided news of major battles to Nathan Rothschild in London before even the British government received it. The Rothschilds traded on this inside information on the London stock exchange, making vast fortunes in the process. After the final battle of Waterloo, Nathan Rothschild received news that the British were victorious and promptly started to sell British government treasuries. The market knew by this point that Nathan was getting information before anyone one else and therefore assumed the British had lost the battle and started selling their British government bonds. Once the price had crashed, Nathan used his agents to secretly buy up nearly the entirety of the British government debt. Using large amounts of leverage, Nathan Rothschild made many multiples of his money on this one trade.
After the war, Nathan Rothschild bragged of turning his 20k pound fortune into 50 million pounds in only 17 years. In 1820, 50 million pounds would be equivalent to 32 billion pounds today. It was at this point that Nathan Rothschild so famously said, “I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”
In 1850, Jacob Rothschild’s recorded net worth was 600 million francs, which was significantly more than all the other French bankers combined. In today’s US dollars that would be equivalent to $11.4 billion. James and Nathan Rothschild became two of the richest men in the world in only a few decades. With this vast wealth they built or bought 41 massive mansions and palaces across Europe. The video below (at 2:22) shows just a fraction of their real estate holdings.
In 1840, the Rothschild family became the Bank of England’s bullion brokers.
In 1844, Salomon Rothschild purchased the United Coal Mines of Vitkovice and Austro-Hungarian Blast Furnace Company which went on to become one of the top ten global industrial companies.
In 1845, the Rothschild family was granted exclusive access to build a rail transport company across much of France. The company was called Chemin de Fer du Nord.
In 1871, the Rothschild family raised 5 billion francs so the French government could pay reparations to Prussia. This sum would be equivalent to $95 billion today.
In 1880, the Rothschild family took control of Rio Tinto, ending up with a 30% stake. Rio Tinto is now the 4th largest mining company in the world. In the same year, the Rothschilds founded Imerys, which is currently a world leader in industrial metals mining.
In 1890, the Rothschild family founded the mining company Eramet, which is currently a multi-billion dollar company listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange.
Kuhn and Loeb, which received financing from the Rothschilds, financed Standard Oil, various profitable railroad projects, and Carnegie’s steel empire. The European Rothschild dynasty also had close financial ties to multiple leading American banks including J.P. Morgan.
In 1886, the French Rothschild bank acquired significant Russian oil fields and formed the Caspian and Black Sea Petroleum Company, which became the world’s second largest oil producer. They sold their interest to Royal Dutch Shell in 1911 for an undisclosed amount.
In 1887, the Rothschild family financed and invested in the Kimberly diamond mines in South Africa, which became De Beers. The Rothschilds were the largest shareholders.
To this day the Rothschild family own and operate some of the largest and most profitable investment banks around the world.
During the first 17 years of his career, Nathan Rothschild’s annual rate of return was 81.4%, while Jacob’s annual rate of return from 1812-1868 was 14%.
Based on historical records and financial calculations it is possible to provide a rough estimate of their wealth today. The following estimate of the Rothschild family fortune will be based on an annual rate of return of 5%, which is extremely conservative given their past track record of using power, political connections, and inside information to make incredibly high annual returns. When the extremely profitable investments listed above are factored in, it is a certainty that they were able to achieve such a modest return.
In 1817, Nathan Rothschild bragged of having 50 million pounds. At a 5% annual rate of return that would equate to roughly 500 billion pounds today. In 1850, Jacob Rothschild was worth 600 million francs. At a 5% annual return that would equate to 860 billion francs, which would have been converted to Euros in 2001 at a 6.56 to 1 ratio, equalling €130 billion. By 2012, that fortune would total €224 billion.
Combined their fortunes would equal more than 1 trillion US dollars, which could do any one of the following:
1. Buy every stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange
2. Support the military of every NATO country combined for a year
3. Buy everyone on earth an iPod
4. Pay off Greece’s debt 2.5 times
5. Run the Australian government for nearly 3 years.
Obviously this estimate is conservative in its own right, and does not take into account the fortunes of the other three brothers who built financial empires in Switzerland, Frankfurt, and Italy. The Rothschild family eventually spread their operations to America, Israel, and most tax-free jurisdictions around the world.
As per the command of the patriarch, Mayar Amschel Rothschild, the family has intermarried and maintained cohesiveness until the present day so the fortune was not squandered or dispersed. One of their websites today reads: “Across two centuries and many generations, the qualities associated with the Rothschild family have remained unchanged: innovation, industriousness and, above all, strength through unity.”
In 1909, British Prime Minister Lloyd George claimed that Lord Nathan Rothschild was the most powerful man in Britain. This is of course at a time when Britain was considered to be one of the world’s preeminent superpowers. During the 20th century the Rothschild family started to disappear from mainstream attention. Many Rothschild financed biographies were released during this time period, which claimed that their fortunes have dwindled in modern times. It should be noted that these biographies have not given any detailed accounting of the families’ assets or mentioned the specific investments that lost more money than was made through some of the world’s most profitable investments listed above.
The real questions that must be asked are why the most powerful family in the history of the world, who financed nations and provided the money to create Israel, are not prominently featured in history courses? And why the media refuses to even mention the name of this incredibly wealthy and powerful family today?
The answers to these questions are one in the same. As the video below proves, nearly the entirety of the American (and European) media are controlled by Jewish Zionists. And these Zionists know that if the world knew that one family controlled more wealth than dozens of poor nations put together, there would be a public outcry.
Iran, the United States, and the Middle East in 2014
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | January 1, 2014
First of all, our very best wishes for the New Year!
2013 was, for many reasons, an important year for the Islamic Republic of Iran, for U.S.-Iranian relations, and for the Middle East more generally. Looking back, one thing which strikes us as especially important is that, during 2013, the failures of U.S. grand strategy in the Middle East (and the gradual implosion of America’s position in the region) became evident even to some who were too analytically obtuse or ideologically reluctant to notice it earlier.
President Obama’s largely self-inflicted debacle over his declared intention to attack Syria after chemical weapons were used there in August was particularly crucial in this regard. It is no accident that the Obama administration became at least superficially more interested in diplomacy after this episode. For Obama’s flailing over Syria underscored that, after strategically failed military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the United States cannot now credibly threaten the effective use of force for hegemonic purposes in the Middle East.
If 2013 was a year in which the profound deficiencies of America’s Middle East strategy were on extended display, we expect that 2014 will be a year in which the effectiveness of Iranian strategy comes to the fore. We are not optimistic that Obama and his team will get diplomacy with Iran “right.” Fundamentally, official Washington remains unwilling to accept the Islamic Republic as an enduring political entity representing legitimate national interests, and to incorporate such acceptance into U.S. policy on the nuclear issue, the Syrian conflict, and other Middle Eastern challenges.
But Iran’s strategy does not depend on Washington getting things right. Indeed, Iranian strategy takes seriously the very real (even likely) prospect that Washington is not capable of negotiating a nuclear settlement grounded in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and respectful of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear rights. Likewise, Iranian strategy takes seriously the very real (even likely) prospect that Washington cannot disenthrall itself from Obama’s extremely foolish declaration in August 2011 that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go—and therefore that the United States will not contribute constructively to the quest for a political settlement to the Syrian conflict.
If the United States can truly reform its approach to the Middle East, certainly Iran can work with that. But if Washington continues down its counter-productive path in the region, Tehran can play off America’s accumulating policy failures and the deepening illegitimacy of its regional posture to advance the Islamic Republic’s strategic position. We look forward to charting and analyzing the course of events in the Middle East, along with all of you, during 2014.
To round off our retrospective look at last year, we recall that, back in February 2013, our newly published book, Going to Tehran, served as the launch point for a Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs symposium on “The U.S.-Iranian Relationship and the Future of International Order.” As a final gift from 2013, we want to share (see here) the issue of the Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs, published in November 2013, presenting the penetrating papers that grew out of this symposium—by Dan Joyner, Richard Butler, Mary Ellen O’Connell, and Jim Houck, along with the two of us.
U.S. Population Growth Slows to Lowest Rate Since 1937
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | January 1, 2014
The United States is barely growing in terms of population, falling to its lowest growth rate since the Great Depression.
In 2013, the nation expanded by less than a percentage point (0.72%), according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
That translated into a population increase of less than three million people nationwide, from 313,873,685 in 2012 to 316,128,839 this year.
The tepid growth was the lowest since 1937, with even slower expansion still to come.
“The census projections to 2060 have us going down to half a percent because we’re an older population, and aging populations don’t grow so much,” William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, told The New York Times.
He added that a slow-growing population could cause a drag on economic growth.
“If we have very sharp declines in growth, that takes a bite out of the economy,” Frey said.
Regionally, the South and the West experienced the strongest population increases, but even there the rates were just under 1%. Things were worse in the Midwest and the Northwest, which saw less than half a percent of growth.
The largest numerical increases in populations took place in California, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Washington.
Percentage-wise, the biggest gainer was North Dakota, where a thriving oil and gas industry helped boost the population by 3.14%. It was followed by the District of Columbia (2.06%), Utah (1.61%) Colorado (1.52%) and Texas (1.49%).
Behind these statistics is, of course, the frequency of births and deaths, which fuels the rate of population growth. In that regard, the Census Bureau offered a projection: this month in the U.S. there will be one birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds.
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“Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism!” The Science is Settled. Right?
ICAN urges the IACC to actually study infant vaccines and autism
By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | March 16, 2026
On behalf of ICAN, we just sent a copy of chapter 11 of Vaccines, Amen to the newly appointed members of the federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC).
If you haven’t already read this chapter, you can read the whole thing in the attached letter. I trust that after you read it, you’ll see why the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is a belief, not science!
IACC Public Comment Letter
1.53MB ∙ PDF file
Includes chapter 11 of Vaccines, Amen
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