Israel to station German nuclear submarine in Persian Gulf
Press TV – January 18, 2010
Ahead of an Israeli-German cabinet meeting in Berlin, median reports indicate that Israel intends to station one of its German-made Dolphin submarines in the waters of the Persian Gulf.
“Israel’s use of the dolphin submarine in exercises in the red sea aroused fears that Israel may seek to maintain a continued presence in the Persian Gulf as soon as it receives its submarines form Germany in 2011-2012,” the tagesspiegel said on Sunday.
The meeting, delayed in November due to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s illness, is expected to focus on Israel’s push to buy a sixth Dolphin-class nuclear submarine from the Germans.
During the day-long trip by the centre-right government, Netanyahu seeks to expand Tel Aviv’s submarine fleet.
Israel has previously received three submarines as a donation form the government of the then German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
The German newspaper Berliner Zeitung in 2003 revealed that Germany`s leading shipyard company Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft was involved in negotiations with Israel to construct two additional Dolphin submarines.
The company confirmed the reports adding the German government had approved them. Days later the German Focus magazine reported that Tel Aviv will not be receiving the submarines as the German government had decided to halt the delivery of the two submarines to Israel.
The Dolphin submarines are among the most sophisticated and capable submarines in the world, that could be equipped with nuclear missiles. Built in German shipyards for the Israel Navy, the submarine is capable of carrying American-supplied Harpoon cruise missiles equipped with nuclear warheads.
This is while political groups opposed to Israel’s “occupation, settler and war politics” have announced plans to demonstrate near the Federal Chancellor’s Officer.
“Why is a joint cabinet session taking place with a racist, fascist, Zionist ideology?” one of the groups asked in its announcement.
After the United States, Germany is the principal donor of both economic and military aid to Israel. While restrictive German export regulations bar the sale of weapons to crisis areas, the German government has justified its actions by describing the move as “special responsibility” towards Tel Aviv.
Behind The Der Spiegel Tirades
Political Theatrics | January 17, 2010
At the beginning of the new year, German weekly magazine Der Spiegel ran a controversial report claiming that the Lebanese movement Hezbollah was involved in drug trafficking to finance its “terrorist operations against Israel”. The article proceeded to allege that individuals involved in the cartel had contacts with the central nexus of the resistance movement including its Secretary-General. Needless to state, no factual evidence was cited in support of the claims as in the case of a growing list of previous smear-campaigns.
In his widely acclaimed book, ‘Resistance is the Essence of the Islamist Revolution’, director of Conflicts Forum, Alastair Crooke, argues that the West not only suffers from a “blind spot” when it comes to comprehending ‘political Islam’, but that it regularly employs an historically potent association of Islam with violence to drive in a perception of “reason capsized into madness” when depicting present-day resistance groups. As such, these groups come to symbolise everything that an idealised West isn’t; a big-toothed bogeyman of sorts. The recent allegations made by Der Spiegel touch on these historical stereotypes, and in tune with age-old precedent, they aim to influence policy patterns in one form or another.
Before examining potential policy implications, a brief survey of Der Spiegel’s coverage of Hezbollah over recent years is instructive:
“Again and again [Nasrallah] seeks to provoke: No mention is made without any incitement against Jews.” (18.08.2006); “Hezbollah’s high-tech weapons endanger Germany Navy” (15.09.2006); “Hezbollah is not Suppenküche! It is a war party that wants to destroy Israel!” (23.03.2007); “Israel must adjust to a new wave of terrorist attacks against “Jewish targets” overseas … Hezbollah [has] activated its “sleeper” cells.” (21.07.2008), et al.
These brief snippets do not even begin to take into account the derogatory imagery – bordering on outright racist – resorted to when portraying supporters of Hezbollah. If you’re on planet Der Spiegel, these individuals are nonsensical maniacs with “crooked teeth” whose sole aptitude is sloganeering, whereas their fellow Lebanese are cultured beings whose women don “Fendi handbag[s]”.
To suggest the description ‘asinine’ fits well with this variety of journalism, far from sounding harsh, it would seem more like an understatement.
In the run-up to the June 2009 elections in Lebanon, Der Spiegel put together its most daring attack to-date against the Lebanese movement by linking it to the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri. Less than two weeks from ballot day, the German magazine’s blinding front-page headline: “Breakthrough in Tribunal Investigation: New Evidence Points to Hezbollah in Hariri Murder”, had unmistakably clear motives. Despite the rapturous outburst, Der Spiegel was unbecomingly silent after the elections; the breakthrough that was glowingly pitched mere days earlier as an outcome of “serendipity à la Sherlock Holmes and the state-of-the-art technology used by cyber detectives” was deemed unworthy of further commentary. The story had satisfied its use.
Moving on to present, the timing for the explosive drug-cartel exposé is likewise edifying. In the US, the “Israel Lobby’s War on Al Manar TV” reflects a re-energised penchant on Capitol Hill to plaster the Lebanese movement with the dreaded “T” word. [1]
As with most, if not all, matters of relevance to the Middle East, one can trace the causes for Washington’s disposition to the not too distant Tel Aviv. The comments of Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, over the past week have heightened the possibility of a new war against Gaza, and increased the likelihood of another “July War” against Lebanon. Whilst the editors at Ha’aretz are making no secrets of an open-inclination towards an inevitable war path, their suggestion that the Israeli political-military complex calculates war decisions on the basis of whether and when all its citizens feasibly possess gas masks is rather inane, amongst other things. All in all, the prospect of war looms large over the Middle East with Hobbes’ caveat ringing loud and clear, “the nature of war, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto”. Within this context, smear-campaigns and fear-mongering have obvious ends in mind.
Far more importantly, however, Der Spiegel’s smear-campaign against Hezbollah is aimed at policy circles within the EU. Over recent months, there has been growing momentum to adopt “dialogue” as the preferred paradigm in coming to grips with resistance movements in the Middle East. Organisations that have consistently stressed the importance of mutual dialogue, such as the Conflicts Forum, will have been encouraged, no doubt, by the positive steps taken during 2009 to shift away from a “failed” policy. [2]
Of the more notable exchanges, former British Cabinet member MP Clare Short visited Damascus to hold talks with Khaled Meshal, as part of a small delegation of MPs after which she underlined the need to “talk to Hamas”. Later in the same month, MP Hussein Hajj Hassan from the Loyalty to the Resistance party affiliated to Hezbollah visited Britain to take part in a symposium dealing with issues concerning the Middle East. Three months later in June, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana met with Hajj Hassan in Beirut, marking the first time a senior EU diplomat held talks with the political party.
The end of 2009 saw further drama for Israel. Towards the close of its rotating EU presidency role, Sweden proposed a resolution to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. By this time, Tel Aviv had simply seen enough. Pro-Israeli lobby groups and EU allies (primarily France and Germany) frantically pushed their weight around, and heavily watered down the draft resolution which eventually called for Jerusalem as “the future capital of the two states”. [3]
Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign ministry, which has unsurprisingly shed all considerations for diplomatic courtesy under Avigdor Lieberman, lashed out at Sweden for putting forward the resolution. “The peace process in the Middle East is not like IKEA furniture,” remarked a foreign ministry official, in reference to the Swedish furniture chain. “It takes more than a screw and a hammer, it takes a true understanding of the constraints and sensitivities of both sides, and in that Sweden failed miserably”, he sarcastically went on to add.
Israel’s take on the happenings in Brussels – putting aside the childish rattle – was manifestly clear. The obvious lesson to be derived from 2009 for Tel Aviv, as far as EU involvement in the Middle East is concerned, was similarly evident.
One must underline at this point that despite consistent pressures exerted by Israel and co., the positions adopted by a growing number of EU parliamentarians vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict has been very honourable. Earlier on Friday, a 60-member strong delegation made their way into Gaza to assess the wide-scale damage caused by Israel’s brutal war last year, as part of a bid to mount pressure for an end to the Siege.
For Israel, this sort of involvement is clearly not welcome. And hence, the appearance of baseless slander and smear-campaigns in leading European media outlets, which aim to cast resistance movements as erratic, lawless, mafia-like entities whose “sleeper cells” and “networks” pervade across the heart of Europe. Der Spiegel’s recent claims, apart from being the usual, old vituperations, should rather be viewed in the context of a wider agenda to curtail dialogue between resistance movements and western officials.
Evidently thus, there are certain stakeholders who wish to see the EU mutate into some variant of a collectivised imbecile, which keeps a measured silence on all subjects whose implicit or explicit implications reach Israeli shores. Der Spiegel’s recent tirades have set the new strategy in motion. However, if the most recent words from Gaza are any indication, Israel will need to try much, much harder.
Notes:
1. “The Israel Lobby’s War on Al Manar TV”, The Palestine Chronicle, 03 January 2010 http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15659
2. “Language – a tool to transform different into dangerous”, Conflicts Forum, 02 February 2008 http://conflictsforum.org/2008/language-a-tool-to-transform-different-into-dangerous/
3. “Jewish settlers: We’ll burn you all!”, ChamPress, 26 December 2009 http://www.champress.net/index.php?q=en/Article/view/50833
Turkish FM: We oppose Iran sanctions
Press TV – January 14, 2010 07:17:58 GMT
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says Ankara is against imposing further sanctions on Iran over the country’s nuclear program.
“Every country has the right to pursue nuclear power for peaceful purposes,” Davutoglu told the Guardian newspaper during his recent visit to London.
“We also don’t want more sanctions [on Iran]. Sanctions hurt ordinary people and neighboring countries,” he added, repeating a former Turkish offer to mediate negotiations between Tehran and the West.
The Turkish Foreign Minister stressed that the current standoff could only be overcome through diplomatic efforts.
“We don’t forget the very bad experience in Iraq. We would advise intensified negotiations through diplomacy. An absence of mutual trust is the problem,” he said.
Davutoglu reiterated that Turkey was against any kind of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, whether in Iran, Israel or anywhere else.
Israel, the US and their European allies claim that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon. This is while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports and US National Intelligence Estimates issued so far point to the contrary.
Although the published reports by the UN nuclear watchdog and the main American intelligence authority confirm Iran’s stance that it does not have a military nuclear program, Washington and Tel Aviv have not backed down from their stance.
While Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Israel remains one of the only three regimes in the world that has not signed the international pact.
Tehran has repeatedly called for the removal of all weapons of mass destruction from across the globe.
Israel, however, is the Middle East’s sole nuclear-armed power with a stockpile that is reported to include over 200 ready-to-launch atomic warheads.
Meritocracy and Jewish kinship networks
By Philip Weiss | January 13, 2010
A lot of people are talking about David Brooks’s distastefully-smug column in the Times yesterday about Jewish achievement, in which he says that we are 2 percent of the U.S. population and 25 percent of this and that. And that we get all the patents in the Middle East while the Arabs smoke hookahs.
He asks how this can be, and talks about our incredible culture. I agree: it’s a helluva bookish culture. Though that same intellectual culture is going out the window now that the chief occupation of Jewish leadership is saying, Repeat after us, apartheid is democracy.
But I’d like to inject a realistic note here. How much of Jewish achievement reflects the fact that Jews look out for one another? When I had to get a partner on this website to keep it going, I was most comfortable getting another Jew. Years ago when I was at the Harvard Crimson newspaper, my Irish-Catholic friend Mary Ridge informed me that it was a “Jewish club”–we selected for our own kind; and the Crimson produced a lot of professional journalism talent. I have gotten most of my journalism work from Jewish bosses.
Jews have kinship networks as strong as other people’s, maybe more strong. All that Hollywood talent– producers are always aware of who is a Jew, and I am sure they feel more comfortable hiring Jews. Landsman. My parents liked the idea of my marrying a Jew because Jews are gemutlich, as my mom always says– family, kin. We know all the social cues, can finish one another’s sentences, etc.
And look at the New York Times, where Brooks works. Is it an expression of Jewish genius that most of the political columnists are Jewish? Tom Friedman, Nick Kristof, Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, David Brooks et al. Or does it maybe reflect the fact that a Jewish family has majority ownership of the newspaper and that most of the big editors have been Jewish and at some level, unconscious or otherwise, they favor Jews?
So I think some of the amazing record of Jewish achievement reflects discrimination; and Jews are powerful enough in this society that we ought to be conscious of that. Brooks has often praised the late sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, and Baltzell said as much about the last establishment; he said that WASPs favor other WASPs, and that it was hurting the American establishment.
I venture that the same thing is happening today in the Jewish portion of the establishment. We discriminate in favor of our own; and it’s doing a number on foreign policy.
What should be done about this? Jews in powerful positions should be aware of this, and seek greater diversity in their hiring.
Iran offers nuke fuel deal
By Laura Rozen | Politico | January 10, 2010 07:57 PM EST
There are signs that negotiations with Iran over a nuclear fuel swap have resumed despite the expiration of the end-of-year deadline for a deal set by President Barack Obama.
While the Obama administration has stepped up talk of expanding sanctions on the regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iranian news reports and U.S. official sources say that Iran has recently returned a formal counter offer to swap low enriched uranium, or LEU, in exchange for nuclear fuel cells produced in the West.
The proposal comes as Iranian news reports say the foreign ministry has announced the halting of uranium enrichment for two months as a good-will gesture. Outside observers have not confirmed that claim.
A U.S. nonproliferation hand confirmed Sunday that Iran had offered a formal response in late December or early January. While the Iranian fuel-swap response was said to have been conveyed by the highest levels of the Iranian government, U.S. officials contacted Sunday gave no public indication that they have any interest in the counter-offer.
“The Iranians have been saying different things for weeks, but what matters is whether they will accept the IAEA’s proposed TRR deal, which they agreed to in principle on October 1 but then walked away from,” an administration official said. “They know what they need to do to satisfy the international communities concerns and to date they have not done so.”
The Tehran Research Reactor proposal, or TRR, calls on Iran to immediately send 1,200 kg of its LEU to Russia, and France would in return supply Iran with nuclear fuel cells for medical use. The plan would have left Iran without enough fissile material to enrich for use in a nuclear weapon, putting time back on the clock for international negotiations on the nation’s nuclear program.
Iran’s counter-offer also proposes sending the 1,200 kg abroad – probably to Turkey – but in batches, starting with a first shipment of 400 kg. The offer seems to establish Iran’s willingness to export the LEU out of the country, which would satisfy a key Western condition.
“My understanding is that they [U.S. officials] have not given up on the TRR deal,” one Washington Iran hand said on condition of anonymity Sunday. “They need it. So if there was a chance of salvaging something …. They still want to get a deal.”
“As long as under no situation over the next year there is enough LEU to produce a bomb, whether Iran ships out the fuel in one, two or three batches, is just a logistical issue,” he said.
NSC nuclear czar Gary Samore and his shop and the U.S. mission to the IAEA in Vienna would be best placed to handle talks about a deal, it was suggested.
One source told POLITICO that an agreement between Iran and the “P5+1” – as the group composed of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. is known – could be announced in “the very near future.”
While Iranian negotiators tentatively approved the TRR deal in October, the proposal came under fire in the Iranian parliament, and Iran hadn’t until now formally replied to the offer.
The closed nature of Iran’s nuclear program and the political upheaval there since the disputed June elections have made it difficult to interpret the nature of that silence, which could be a delaying device, a failure to achieve consensus with the government, or an attempt to win domestic political points by holding out on a deal until after the deadline had passed.
The U.S., for its part, has been working to balance a level of support for political dissidents in Iran with its negotiations with the government on its nuclear program.
Buried deep in Iranian news reports last week was a quote attributed to Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, seeming to indicate that Iran has stopped enriching uranium at all for two months as a good will gesture:
“On the request of certain impartial countries who asked Iran not to enrich uranium for two months in order to give the West some time to respond, [Mehmanparasat] said, ‘To show our goodwill to the international community, we agreed with this request, and one month has passed since that time and one month is left,’” the Tehran Times reported last Monday. “’If the other side responds to Iran’s request in the remaining time, we will start the work. Otherwise, we will make the necessary decision.’”
Nonproliferation experts contacted Sunday said they were not aware of a halt to Iran’s uranium enrichment.
In its analysis of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report, however, the nonproliferation group ISIS noted that Iran was holding its enrichment rate steady and was not using all of the centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility. But it wasn’t clear if technical problems or a political decision or something else accounted for the unused centrifuges.
“There’s a lot more uncertainty now about whether the slow-down in the operation of centrifuges has its origins in technical difficulties, the change in leadership of the Iranian nuclear program, or an Iranian decision to deliberately slow the program down in order to give diplomatic solution a chance to work,” ISIS’s Jacqueline Shire told POLITICO Sunday.
The administration official did not say whether the U.S. had indications that Iran had halted or drastically slowed down its uranium enrichment.
The Iranian proposal to send the LEU to Turkey, a Muslim nation that’s been increasing its economic ties to Iran, could help set the stage for any agreement.
“I believe that Turkey can be an important player in trying to move Iran” away from what the U.S. and other nations suspect is a nuclear weapons program, President Obama said after meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House in December.
© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
Iran Uses Fear of Covert Nuclear Sites to Deter Attack
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (IPS) – The New York Times reported Tuesday that Iran had “quietly hidden an increasingly large part of its atomic complex” in a vast network of tunnels and bunkers buried in mountainsides.
The story continued a narrative begun last September, when a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility near Qom was reported to have been discovered by U.S. and Western intelligence. The premise of that narrative is that Iran wanted secret nuclear facilities in order to be able to make a nuclear weapon without being detected by the international community.
But all the evidence indicates that the real story is exactly the opposite: far from wanting to hide the existence of nuclear facilities from the outside world, Iran has wanted Western intelligence to conclude that it was putting some of its key nuclear facilities deep underground for more than three years.
The reason for that surprising conclusion is simple: Iran’s primary problem in regard to its nuclear programme has been how to deter a U.S. or Israeli attack on its nuclear sites. To do that, Iranian officials believed they needed to convince U.S. and Israeli military planners that they wouldn’t be able to destroy some of Iran’s nuclear sites and couldn’t identify others.
The key to unraveling the confusion surrounding the Qom facility and the system of tunnel complexes is the fact that Iran knew the site at Qom was being closely watched by U.S. and other intelligence agencies both through satellite photographs and spy networks on the ground well before construction of the facility began.
The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the Mujahideen E Khalq anti-regime terrorist organisation, held a press conference on Dec. 20, 2005, in which it charged that four underground tunnel complexes were connected with Iran’s nuclear programme, including one near Qom.
NCRI had created very strong international pressure on Iran’s nuclear programme by revealing the existence of the Natanz enrichment facility in an August 2002 press conference. A number of its charges had been referred to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for investigation.
It is now clear that there was nothing in the tunnel complex at Qom related to the nuclear programme when the NCRI made that charge.
Given the close ties between the MEK and both the U.S. and Israel, however, Iran’s decision makers had to be well aware that foreign intelligence agencies would focus their surveillance in Iran on the tunnel complexes that the MEK had identified.
U.S. and European officials have confirmed that systematic surveillance of the site by satellite photography began in 2006.
What happened next is a particularly important clue to Iran’s strategy. According to multiple sources, an anti-aircraft battery was moved to the base of the mountain into which the tunnel complex had been dug.
That was a clear indication that Iranian officials not only knew the site was under surveillance but wanted to draw attention to it.
That move prompted serious debate within the intelligence community. French security consultant Roland Jacquard, who had contacts in the intelligence community, recalled to Time magazine last October that some analysts suggested that it could be a “decoy”, aimed at fixing intelligence attention on that site, while the real nuclear facilities were being built elsewhere.
If Iran had believed the site was not under surveillance, there would have been no reason to move an anti-aircraft battery to it.
That anti-aircraft battery was evidently intended to ensure that foreign intelligence would be watching as construction of a new facility continued at Qom. Satellite imagery that has been obtained by the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C. shows that construction of the facility began sometime between mid-2006 and mid-2007, according to satellite imagery interpretation specialist Paul Brannan of the ISIS.
Of course intelligence analysts could not be certain of the site’s precise purpose until a later stage of construction. A senior U.S. intelligence official revealed in the Sep. 25 briefing that the analysts were not confident that it was indeed an enrichment facility until sometime in spring 2009.
Meanwhile, the Iranians were providing foreign intelligence agencies with clear evidence it would use a “passive defence strategy” to protect its nuclear facilities. In a statement on Iranian television Sept. 24, 2007, the Chairman of the Passive Defence Organisation, Gholam Reza Jalali, said the strategy would “conceal and protect the country’s important and sensitive facilities, [which] would minimise their vulnerability…”
Jalali revealed to Mehr news agency Aug. 24, 2007 that a nuclear installation monitored by the IAEA was part of the plan. As the New York Times reported Tuesday, tunnels have been built into mountains near the Isfahan uranium conversion complex.
News media have consistently reported that Iran informed the IAEA about the Qom facility in a letter Sep. 21 only because the site had been discovered by Western intelligence.
But a set of Questions and Answers issued by the Barack Obama administration the same day as the press briefing admitted, “We do not know” in answer to the question, “Why did the Iranians decide to reveal this facility at this time?”
In fact, Iran’s Sep. 21 letter the IAEA, an excerpt of which was published in the Nov. 16 IAEA report, appears to have been part of the strategy of confusing U.S. and Israeli war planners. It stated that the construction of a second enrichment facility had been “based on [its] sovereign right of safeguarding…sensitive nuclear facilities through various means such as utilization of passive defense systems…”
As Time magazine’s John Barry noted in an Oct. 2 story, the letter was read by intelligence analysts as suggesting that among the more than a dozen tunnel sites being closely monitored were more undisclosed nuclear sites.
A few days later, the Iranian daily Kayhan, which is very close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the announcement of the site had helped to foil plans for a military strike by the West, because “the multiplicity of facilities is a very effective defensive action”.
That statement hinted that Iran was able to complicate the task of U.S. and Israeli military planners by introducing uncertainty about where additional nuclear facilities might be hidden.
The New York Times article on Iran’s tunnel complex indicates that Iran’s strategy has succeeded in influencing debates in Israel and the United States over the feasibility of a devastating blow to the Iranian nuclear programme. The Times called the tunneling system “a cloak of invisibility” that is “complicating the West’s military and geopolitical calculus”.
It said some analysts consider Iran’s “passive defense” strategy “a crucial factor” in the Obama administration’s insistence on a non-military solution.
One indication of that the Iranian strategy has had an impact on Israeli calculations is that Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze’evi Farkash, the head of intelligence for the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) from 2002 to 2006, supported an attack on Iran by the U.S. Air Force – a standard Israeli position – at a meeting at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy last October.
But Farkash warned that Western intelligence still may not know about all of Iran’s nuclear sites. In other statements, Farkash has opposed an Israeli strike.
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.
Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth?
By Paul Craig Roberts | January 7, 2010
What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida’s expertise in pulling off 9/11.
If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida “mastermind” behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.
After such amazing success, al-Qaida would have attracted the best minds in the business, but, instead, it has been reduced to amateur stunts.
The Underwear Bomb plot is being played to the hilt on the TV media and especially on Fox “news.” After reading recently that The Washington Post allowed a lobbyist to write a news story that preached the lobbyist’s interest, I wondered if the manufacturers of full body scanners were behind the heavy coverage of the Underwear Bomber, if not behind the plot itself. In America, everything is for sale. Integrity is gone with the wind.
Recently I read a column by an author who has a “convenience theory” about the Underwear Bomber being a Nigerian allegedly trained by al-Qaida in Yemen. As the U.S. is involved in an undeclared war in Yemen, about which neither the American public nor Congress were informed or consulted, the Underwear Bomb plot provided a convenient excuse for Washington’s new war, regardless of whether it was a real attack or a put-up job.
Once you start to ask yourself about whose agenda is served by events and their news spin, other things come to mind. For example, last July there was a news report that the government in Yemen had disbanded a terrorist cell, which was operating under the supervision of Israeli intelligence services. According to the news report, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told Saba news agency that a terrorist cell was arrested and that the case was referred to judicial authorities “for its links with the Israeli intelligence services.”
Could the Underwear Bomber have been one of the Israeli terrorist recruits? Certainly Israel has an interest in keeping the US fully engaged militarily against all potential foes of Israel’s territorial expansion.
The thought brought back memory of my Russian studies at Oxford University where I learned that the Tsar’s secret police set off bombs so that they could blame those whom they wanted to arrest.
I next remembered that Francesco Cossiga, the president of Italy from 1985-1992, revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, a false flag operation under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The bombings were blamed on communists and were used to discredit communist parties in elections.
An Italian parliamentary investigation unearthed the fact that the attacks were overseen by the CIA. Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated in sworn testimony that the attacks targeted innocent civilians, including women and children, in order “to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
What a coincidence. That is exactly what 9/11 succeeded in accomplishing in the U.S.
Among the well-meaning and the gullible in the West, the supposition still exists that government represents the public interest. Political parties keep this myth alive by fighting over which party best represents the public’s interest. In truth, government represents private interests, those of the office holders themselves and those of the lobby groups that finance their political campaigns. The public is in the dark as to the real agendas.
The U.S. and its puppet state allies were led to war in the Middle East and Afghanistan entirely on the basis of lies and deception. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist and were known by the U.S. and British governments not to exist. Forged documents, such as the “yellowcake documents,” were leaked to newspapers in order to create news reporting that would bring the public along with the government’s war agenda.
Now the same thing is happening in regard to the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program. Forged documents leaked to The Times (London) that indicated Iran was developing a “nuclear trigger” mechanism have been revealed as forgeries.
Who benefits? Clearly, attacking Iran is on the Israeli-U.S. agenda, and someone is creating the “evidence” to support the case, just as the leaked secret “Downing Street Memo” to the British cabinet informed Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government that President Bush had already made the decision to invade Iraq and “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
The willingness of people to believe their rulers and the propaganda ministries that serve the rulers is astonishing. Many Americans believe Iran has a nuclear weapons program despite the unanimous conclusion of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to the contrary.
Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives fought hard with limited success to change the CIA’s role from intelligence agency to a political agency that manufactures facts in support of the neoconservative agenda. For the Bush Regime creating “new realities” was more important than knowing the facts.
Recently I read a proposal from a person purporting to favor an independent media that stated that we must save the print media from financial failure with government subsidies. Such a subsidy would complete the subservience of the media to government.Even in Stalinist Russia, a totalitarian political system where everyone knew that there was no free press, a gullible or intimidated public and Communist Party enabled Joseph Stalin to put the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution on show trial and execute them as capitalist spies.
In the U.S. we are developing our own show trials. Sheikh Mohammed’s will be a big one. As Chris Hedges recently pointed out, once government uses demonized Muslims to get the new justice (sic) system going, the rest of us will be next.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.
US-Pakistan “diplomatic” dispute escalates
By Ein Katzenfreund | Aletho News | January 9, 2010
The neoconservative Wall Street Journal, New York Times and many other English-language media and even the Chinese news agency Xinhua just wrote in bold headlines that the US has asked Pakistan to stop “harassment” of their “diplomats”. It is quite uncommon that a country tries to escalate diplomatic differences with a friendly country over the mass media, rather than resolving it discreetly. Pakistan is an important “partner” for the United States in its struggle to dominate the Middle East, which it sells to the public as a global war on terror.
In the Wall Street Journal version and the associated Western media, the story of the diplomatic dispute is told somewhat like this: Pakistani authorities and security forces are harassing US diplomats in Pakistan by temporarily arresting them, searching their cars and systematically delaying visa requests. Due to this harassment the US now has difficulty implementing its five-year program to support civilian projects in Pakistan worth 1.5 billion US dollars annually. The Pakistani government demands direct payment so that it can spend the money where it is needed but the US doesn’t do this as it wants full administrative control. The Wall Street Journal suggests that the Pakistani intelligence service ISI is behind the harassment campaign and that the ISI is impeding peace and development in Pakistan. That’s what the story looks like in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. The New York Times adds that the US embassy in Islamabad has plans to increase its staff to implement its assistance program in Pakistan from 500 to 800 people and casually states that President Zardari has demanded a cessation of air strikes by US drones on Pakistani territory, and instead proposes that the US give Pakistan the drone technology.
In Pakistan the story appears a bit different. First of all, it is carefully noted in Pakistan that the US hires death squads from the notorious Blackwater outfit as “diplomats”. The US government officially denies that it uses Blackwater for assassinations, but since it was announced that the suicide attack on the secret drone base in Afghanistan’s Khost killed two mercenaries from Blackwater the official claims have been exposed as a blatant lie.
However the troubles of the US in Pakistan are even more serious. Zahid Malik explained on December 7th in the Pakistan Observer in detail that the head of the ISI, General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, personally confronted the CIA boss Leon Panetta with evidence that the US backs warlords and terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the purpose of destabilizing Pakistan. The role Stanley McCrystal’s JSOC terrorist group plays in this dirty war is also public knowledge. None of this surprises Pakistanis as everyone in Pakistan knows that the US runs a secret war against Pakistan. This is becoming disastrous for the US because in the eyes of the Pakistani population the US is widely decried as a state sponsor of terrorism and any Pakistani government making common cause with the United States is considered to be treasonous.
The most important point is that the United States under Obama is trying to deceive Pakistan. The US promised to fight alongside Pakistan but they secretly fought against Pakistan and they were caught. It couldn’t be worse for the US. In this situation even the $1.5 billion annual bribe won’t help them out. If the US does not maintain the cooperation of Pakistani security services there will be no reliable transit of supplies for the U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan via Pakistan anymore. Pakistan can add to its demands whatever it wants whenever it wants, because the US is so dependent on the supply routes through Pakistan. Obama would like to increase US troops in Afghanistan by about 30 – 40,000 official soldiers. As for supply routes for his troops in Afghanistan he has the following possibilities: Pakistan, Russia, and Iran. As the US has no internal influence in Iran and Russia, these countries are not ideal options. The result is that if Pakistani supply routes are closed Obama’s occupation of Afghanistan will end and Pakistan wins influence. Until then Pakistan may ask what it wants of the US, and the US must pay whatever the price is. If the US is escalating its diplomatic dispute with Pakistan now in the media, that suggests that the US administration has just now realized what kind of an ugly trap they have fallen into in Afghanistan.
Was this really that hard to foresee? Honestly, who is stupid enough to choose to occupy Afghanistan? OK, the think tank IASPS proposed it, but they also called for war on Iraq for the reorganization of the Middle East in Israel’s favor. It is noteworthy that Barack Obama still follows this Zionist-designed war policy even though it brings nothing but predictable disaster for the US.
Iran’s Press TV is modest: it reported that five Americans were arrested because they used fake license plates, but that they were released later because the US embassy said that they were diplomats. Oh, but of course when US Marines raided the Algerian embassy in Baghdad it was something entirely different and in no way harassment or a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
The author manages a German language news blog at – http://www.mein-parteibuch.com/
When Israel snaps its fingers British ministers jump
Stuart Littlewood | January 7, 2010
While the Viva Palestina convoy drama was being played out, a delegation of senior Israeli military officers cancelled a planned visit to the UK for fear of being arrested over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
With the insufferable arrogance we have come to expect from Israelis, deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon demanded from Britain’s Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, an immediate solution to the “intolerable” situation.
“If the British law remains unchanged, this would undermine the good relations between the two countries who share common values and interests. The British must bear in mind that these visits serve both countries,” Ayalon is reported as saying.
“This legislation is often misused,” he added. “It initially targeted Nazi criminals, but terrorist organisations like Hamas are today using it to take democracies hostage. We have to put an end to this absurdity…”
That is typical Israeli ‘crapaganda’. Britain does not share Israel’s racist and criminal values. In fact, we have nothing in common worth mentioning. And of course Hamas is no more a terrorist organization than the Israeli regime itself.
What is absurd is that murderous Israelis, with the stench of mega-deaths on them, expect to be let into the UK.
Last month, Tzipi Livni, now leader of Israel’s main opposition party but foreign minister at the time of the blitzkrieg against Gaza, cancelled a visit to Britain after an arrest warrant was issued by a British court. An Israeli spokesperson said: “Only actions can put an end to this absurd situation, which would have seemed a comedy of errors were it not so serious.”
The errors are all Livni’s. Her appalling crimes are not funny. Yet British prime minister Gordon Brown insists that she is welcome and says he’ll change the law that allows British courts to issue warrants for alleged war crimes suspects.
According to Baroness Scotland, speaking at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israeli leaders should not face arrest for war crimes under the law of universal jurisdiction. “The government is looking urgently at ways in which the UK system might be changed to avoid this situation arising again. Israel’s leaders should always be able to travel freely to the UK.”
And David Miliband, foreign secretary, says the British government is determined that arrest threats against visitors of Ms Livni’s stature won’t happen again. “Israel is a strategic partner and a close friend of the United Kingdom. We are determined to protect and develop these ties. Israeli leaders – like leaders from other countries – must be able to visit and have a proper dialogue with the British government.”
Livni, referring to the slaughter she oversaw in Gaza a year ago, had the gall to say: “I would make the same decisions all over again.” So Miliband seems happy for even the vilest foreign criminals to walk the streets of our capital.
However, Livni is no longer a serving minister so why should even the most twisted minds in the British government consider rolling out the red carpet for her?
Israel itself was happy to use “universal jurisdiction” to try Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. The principle, let us remember, is that there can be no hiding place for those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, extrajudicial executions, war crimes, torture and forced disappearances.
But it seems Brown and Miliband will go to any lengths, even as far as dismantling our solemn obligations under international law, in order to protect their unsavoury friends. They need reminding that states which are party to the Geneva Conventions are obliged to seek out and either prosecute or extradite those suspected of having committed grave breaches of the Conventions: “Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts…”
“Grave breaches” means willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and other serious violations of the laws of war… all the atrocities committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Instead of making Britain an even bigger laughing-stock, Brown, Miliband and Scotland should get busy and do their duty, not duck it. The British public’s message to Israel meanwhile is simple. If you must come here, make sure your hands are clean. War criminals are not welcome.
Stuart Littlewood
7 January 2010
Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit http://www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk
Iran Running Out of Life-Saving Isotopes
By Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran | Spiegel Online | January 6, 2010
Trade sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program are affecting treatment of people suffering from heart and kidney disease and various cancers. Some 850,000 patients are at risk because the country is running out of radioactive isotopes essential to radiotherapy.
Ruhollah Solook, 78, was dying before a donated kidney and complex radiotherapy saved his life. Recovering in an isolation room in Tehran’s oldest hospital, he expressed his joy in a telephone interview. “They saved my life already. I hope they will be able to cure me entirely now.”
But Solook’s treatment has become a race against time, as has that of 850,000 other Iranians suffering from heart and kidney disease and various cancers. Sometime after March 2010, the country will run out of technetium-99, a radioisotope crucial to the treatment of these diseases. Technetium-99 is currently produced locally in Iran.
“We recommend treatment with these products to hundreds of patients every month in our hospital alone,” said Dr. Gholamreza Pourmand, Solook’s physician. Technetium-99 is essential to radiotherapy, Pourmand said: “If we cannot help these people, some will die. It’s as simple as that.”
Rare and Precious
The impending shortage of technetium-99 is caused by the controversy surrounding the Iranian nuclear program. The sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, aimed at moving Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program, are supposed to leave medical practice unaffected. In reality, however, Iran has become unable to procure a wide range of medical products. Body scanners cannot be imported from the US or the EU, since parts in these machines could also be useful to Iran’s nuclear program. An embargo on medical isotopes was introduced in 2007, in defiance of the medical exception clause touted as part of the trade sanctions, Iranian leaders said.
Isotopes are a rare commodity produced at only five sites worldwide. One of these, the High Flux Reactor in the Dutch town of Petten, currently accounts for 30 to 40 percent of worldwide production, but it is scheduled for retirement soon. Apart from the UN sanctions, so many restrictions — particularly American — on trade with Iran exist, that in practice nobody is willing to supply Iran with medical isotopes any longer.
Out of dire necessity, Iran now uses its 41-year-old research reactor in Tehran — originally constructed by the US — exclusively for isotope production, a job which used to take only a day a week. However, the reactor’s fuel, provided by Argentina in 1993, is quickly running out, the scientists said.
‘We Will Make Our Own’
Iranian leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, say that Iran might produce new fuel itself, which would prove a sensitive issue. Iran would need to enrich uranium up to 19.75 percent purity, which would not only be a gross violation of UN sanctions — it would also bring the country one step closer to the militarization of its nuclear program.
“We would prefer to buy the fuel as quickly as possible,” said Mohammad Ghannadi, vice-president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), sitting in his office in downtown Tehran. At his desk, Ghannadi had a bird’s-eye view of the experimental nuclear facility, the only functional reactor in Iran. Two chimneys on the facility belt out white smoke. “We can enrich on our own,” he said. “But we will run into technical difficulties. We also won’t be ready in time to help our patients.”
Iran’s dire need for the special fuel has led the UN International Atomic Energy Agency to put forward an unusual proposal, which might, if successful, build trust between Iran and other nations.
According to this proposal, the US would upgrade Iran’s old research reactor, and Russia and France would send the Persian nation 116 kilograms (256 pounds) of fuel. The IAEA, which already has the reactor under strict surveillance, would ensure it is not used for the production of nuclear armaments. In return, Iran would have to move most of its low-grade enriched uranium beyond its borders, leaving it with an insufficient stockpile for the production of weapons-grade uranium. Iran, however, has demanded firmer assurances that the promised fuel will actually be delivered. It also finds the time it would take to actually deliver the fuel — a year, according to the Iranians — too long.
“Every nuclear scientist understands that research reactors and medical isotopes have nothing to do with nuclear weapons,” Ghannadi said. One of his own family members recovered from breast cancer only recently with the help of medical isotopes generated in his reactor. “We’re talking about people here,” he noted. “If somebody falls ill, you give them medicine. Give us the fuel, and then we will cure the people.”
Desperate Phone Calls
It is not the first time Iran has fallen short of medical isotopes. When foreign imports came to an abrupt halt in 2007, the Iranians also tried to make their own. “But we were late,” one of Ghannadi’s assistants recalled. Patients went untreated for two months. “We got hundreds of phone calls a day. Government officials, hospitals and even patients called us asking for help,” he said.
In Tehran’s Shariati hospital, one of 120 medical facilities in Iran where nuclear technology is employed, patients are lined up waiting to use a decrepit German body scanner. In 2007, dozens of people would also wait here for treatment that didn’t come, recalled Moshen Saghari, a nuclear science professor.
“When the West talks of human rights in Iran, it should not forget about our patients,” said the doctor, a graduate of a prestigious American university. “The country that taught me everything I know is now preventing me from using that knowledge in Iran. Quite ironic.”
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From the Archives
The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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