Now I know what 'casus belli' means

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And I found out from Spinwatch's take-up of the story about Dick Cheney planning to have a bunch of Navy Seals dressed as Iranians attack a US warship in the Persian Gulf to provide an excuse to attack Iran.

Dick Cheney is a monster and needs to be locked away.

Iran calls moratorium on stoning

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This is pretty good news for the eight or so people currently lined up for this most hideous of deaths.

"sky-pixie told me to kill unveiled women"

Some whackjob in Iran came up with this shit. I know a couple of Iranian women. They think this is complete bollocks. They don't wear veils in this country. The US has a lot to answer for, having engineered the ascension of this theocracy.

Media Lens vs George Monbiot

Although I worship George he is not without his faults, as the Media Lens posse have elucidated.

The Media Lens boys extensively detail sources who have reported that Iraqis are manufacturing their own IED devices, known as Explosively Formed Penetrators, or EFPs. The US claims that these are, in fact, being supplied by the Iranians is cast as the nonsense that it is (they, actually had substantial evidence that the technology was transferred from Hezbollah, NOT Iranian sources). The British Army knows that Shia militias are making their own and other iraqi machine shops have also been doing so for years. George didn't know this, apparently.

The closing paragraphs are particularly powerful:

"And so, while the media continue to capitalise on any excuse to promote a “clash of civilisations” between the West and “militant Islam”, it remains a remarkable fact that the ‘threats’ faced are mostly invented. Much of the actual violence against the West has been, and will continue to be, in retaliation for grave Western crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere consuming literally millions of lives.

The simplest way for the West to bring its “war on terror” to a successful conclusion would be for it to stop waging war and to renounce terrorism."

US intelligence agencies confess: "Iran is not a nuclear threat"

Its funny, you know, because its the IAEA have been saying this for years but the US refused to acknowledge it and even concocted outright lies (surprise! surprise!) to create antipathy towards Iran. It looks like they've finally run out of ideas for scare stories.

US plays down Iranian nuclear threat

Could the voices of sanity have prevailed in Washington? Possibly.

I'm not gonna throw my hands in the air and pray to the twin gods of beer and masturbation just yet, though. Remember that Bush and Cheney are in the White House for a while yet.

Fuckers.

US fantasies

A passage from this article:

". . . the Americans maintained that withdrawing the [British] coalition presence from Basra, Iraq's second city, would pave the way for Iranian agents to move in. They claimed to have definite intelligence that elements of the al-Quds force were poised to infiltrate across the border from Iran when the British left. The British assessment did not support this scenario, holding that nationalism among the Shia population would supersede any affinity they felt with Shia Iran and that withdrawing from the palace would lessen violence."

Clearly the US weren't sharing their intelligence with the British forces. I think this is because their intelligence was bullshit and the British would have realised this and blown the whistle on their propaganda war against Iran.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a twat

Let's see how the cristo-fascists of the US will respond to the content of his speech today. He denied that homosexuals exist in Iran and he denied that Iran had any intention of developing nuclear warheads. At least one of those two statements is blatantly false, so why not the other?

Nice one, you savage, mysogynistic fuckwit!

this is really fucking scary

The Guardian's article declaring that open warfare could erupt imminently is an appalling piece of journalism. Firstly it does not condemn the open aggression on the part of the US. It does not question any of the US's groundless excuses for their aggression and it simply comments that Gordon Brown will be faced with some sort of dilemma as to with whom to side in any ensuing confrontation- the answer to which should be obvious to anyone with the slightest trace of humanity. But the most alarming piece is the open statement by some ex-CIA source that the decision to go to war has already been taken without any evidence being presented to support such a threat to the already badly destabilised global security situation.

Basically, this is an open declaration of the of editorial team's indifference to another war of aggression by the US.

More on the US escalation.
More.
More.
Possible consequences.

20 facts about Iran

Its a pdf.

Bush is a cock-weasel

The Guardian gets busted regurgitating Pentagon Propaganda

Media Lens have done a thorough takedown on this Guardian front page spread by some goon called Simon Tisdall, slating it for its uncritical regurgitation of an unnamed US official's words. I would like to say that this is uncharacteristic of The Guardian but I really wouldn't know, not being a Professor of Journalism or anything.

Its simulaneously encouraging and alarming when shit like this makes its way into my world as at one stroke I am greatly pleased to see someone monitoring the abuse of the press whilst at the same time being terrified that media outlets that I regularly read might be functioning as outlets of evill. I didn't encounter this article personally but if I did I can assure you that I would have been one of the many people who wrote to the Guardian Editor in horror at this sort of uncritical reporting making its way onto the front page of this paper.

This comment from a CiF thread was particularly frank:

"What the original article conspicuously avoids, and what this miserable excuse for a justification also ignores, is that there is without any doubt a propaganda campaign from the United States regime to justify a military attack on Iran, an attack which the US has repeatedly threatened despite its overt criminality. In that context, a journalist who willingly fires the propaganda missiles of the aggressive US regime is worse than just servile, they will actually share some of the guilt of the crime if the aggression against Iran does eventuate."

the solution to the Iranian debacle

The solution requires no display of military prowess and certainly doesn't involve the Americans. In fact it involves diplomacy and a little economic pressure from some other Europeans. Its time that Europe took its share of responsibility for global security. There is little doubt in my mind that our diplomats would be far more competent at the job than the yee-has of the US Marine Corps.

Iran

there's a great background piece on Iran on the BBC website.

Some chap called Mark Seddon has written a good piece on CiF, summing up the UN sanction debacle and Iran's past and prospective martyrdom by the West.

Iranian idiocy

So the Iranians think they can just kidnap British service personnel? I really didn't think they were stupid enough to simply throw away the high moral ground but it looks like they have been so impressed by George & Tony's incredibly naive foreign policies that they have decided to emulate them.

Fucking idiots.

Scary told you so - no evidence for Iranian complicity in Iraq

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Fucking right I did.

Even if there are Iranians in Iraq- so fucking what? There are Arabs of every nationality as well as a large number of Americans involved in committing attrocities in Iraq. If evidence existed that the Iranian government was involved so fucking what again? The US and UK governments have engaged in the genocide of hundreds of thousands of innocents and have no grounds for complaint. This is what happens when you engage in an illegal war. You have no right to whinge when previous victims of your injust policies seize the opportunity to deal out a few rightly deserved kidney punches when your people are looking the other way.

Another article in the Guardian details how the US and UK have together engineered Iran's supremacy in the middle East:

"The uncomfortable paradox facing London and Washington as they try to put the Iranian genie back in its bottle is that they have done more than anyone to uncork that bottle in the first place and set Iran on the way to regional hegemony.

First they removed the Taliban, Iran's enemy to the east, and then they eliminated Saddam Hussein. In little more than a year, the allies ensured Iran achieved its key strategic objective: to become the dominant power in the Gulf and the Middle East."

Lets face it, of the three I think we're better off with the Iranians coming out on top than the Taliban or Saddam. At least the Iranians are a balance between the outright religious nutcases of the Taliban and the endemically corrupt and totalitarian personality cult of Saddam's Iraq. Iranian culture is- in many ways- far more progressive than the other two (although still appalling brutal in other ways but next to the Taliban and Saddam's secret police I know who I'd rather be imprisoned by).

BBC claims Iranian elements engineer much of the violence against UK forces in Basra

I read this BBC report and decided to post the following to their comments team:

"I was interested to read your report on the Royal Navy personnel taken prisoner by the Iranians. I was particularly caught by this statement:

"It also follows claims that much of the violence against UK forces in Basra is being engineered by Iranian elements, which Tehran denies."

I am following the process of aggression against Iran with great interest and would therefore be very grateful if you could direct me further information on these claims and particularly to the evidence suggesting that this is the case. I am sure you are aware that such a claim is incendiary at this surrent time and I would hate for the BBC to be seen to be spreading rumours about the Iranian's role in Iraq. I was particularly surprised not to see any sort of disclaimer regarding the disparity between the intentions of these "Iranian elements" and the intentions of the Iranian government. I feel that your statement would be better balanced by the inclusion of such clarification.

Sincerely, "


Surely such a major development in Iraq would have warranted more detailed coverage than a single line in a related story. Unless its all bullshit, that is.

I am concerned and confused. I consider the BBC to be above disseminating propaganda. There is enough of this bollocks out there without the Beeb playing along. Such material needs to be better researched and balanced if it is to avoid becoming "popular knowledge". The lethal power of such material has been amply demonstrated by the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in Iraq.

1st there was Iraq's WMD and now there's Iran's

On CiF today.

I'm still too numb from the Iraq debacle to even consider this as a real prospect. Put it this way: The American military don't want war, the American people don't want war, the Iranians don't want war, the Euopeans don't want war. Every informed analyst across the globe says it would be another disaster. So why is it still being pushed by the Shrubbery? Why do these things happen when everyone knows they are going to be a disaster? It's like Western society is masochistic and wants to hurt itself and other people around it. This is why society is in such dire need of a change of government style. If such decisions are left up to some faceless diplomats, ministers and civil servants in London then you will end up with inhuman decisions. If we were allowed to practice direct democracy, can anyone see an attack on Iran happening with UK endorsement? I can't.

Noam Chomsky on Iran, Iraq and the rest of the world

Some fascinating insights here from Prof Chomsky.

"That’s the immediate consequence of constant threats. Everyone knows that. That’s one of the reasons the reformists, Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji and others, are bitterly complaining about the U.S. threats, that it’s undermining their efforts to reform and democratize Iran. But that’s presumably its purpose. Since it’s an obvious consequence you have to assume it’s the purpose. Just like in law, anticipated consequences are taken as the evidence for intention. And here’s it so obvious you can’t seriously doubt it."

"The efforts to intensify the harshness of the regime show up in many ways. For example, the West absolutely adores Ahmadinejad. Any wild statement that he comes out with immediately gets circulated in headlines and mistranslated. They love him. But anybody who knows anything about Iran, presumably the editorial offices, knows that he doesn’t have anything to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Khamenei. But they don’t report his statements, particularly when his statements are pretty conciliatory. For example, they love when Ahmadinejad says that Israel shouldn’t exist, but they don’t like it when Khamenei right afterwards says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine. As far as I’m aware, it never got reported. Actually you could find Khamenei’s more conciliatory positions in the Financial Times, but not here. And it’s repeated by Iranian diplomats but that’s no good. The Arab League proposal calls for normalization of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of the two-state settlement which has been blocked by the United States and Israel for thirty years. And that’s not a good story, so it’s either not mentioned or it’s hidden somewhere.

It’s very hard to predict the Bush administration today because they’re deeply irrational. They were irrational to start with but now they’re desperate. They have created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should’ve been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can’t control it and it’s almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can’t discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can’t get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

We’re supposed to believe that oil had nothing to do with it, that if Iraq were exporting pickles or jelly and the center of world oil production were in the South Pacific that the United States would’ve liberated them anyway. It has nothing to do with the oil, what a crass idea. Anyone with their head screwed on knows that that can’t be true. Allowing an independent and sovereign Iraq could be a nightmare for the United States. It would mean that it would be Shi’ite-dominated, at least if it’s minimally democratic. It would continue to improve relations with Iran, just what the United States doesn’t want to see. And beyond that, right across the border in Saudi Arabia where most of Saudi oil is, there happens to be a large Shi’ite population, probably a majority.

massive holes in Bush's 'evidence' of Iranian complicity in Iraqi resistance

http://arabisto.com/p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=352

Interesting site. I will read more.

Addition

Good analysis of the US's policy of accusing Iran of "supporting" terrorism.

"What is interesting about the framework for discussion of Iranian support for attacks on US troops in Iraq is the underlying assumption that it would be most heinous for Iran to involve itself with its next-door neighbor. The US, on the other hand, has every right to interfere, politically and militarily, in the affairs of the Mesopotamian country on the other side of the world. This declared right for the US to use violence to meet political ends (which, incidentally, meets the definition of terrorism) is never questioned in Washington or the corporate media, while the conjecture about Iranian involvement in Iraq rages on. An alternative framework for discussion is possible. It could be assumed that the same standards must apply to the US as to Iran. But that would be unthinkable. The US is instead absurdly portrayed as the defender of Iraq, struggling to keep other parties from destabilizing the country. Iraq is preposterously “the front line” in the “war on terrorism” as a result of waging a “war on terrorism” against Iraq."

Time to reign in the neo-cons

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When as conservative publication as The Economist makes a stand against Bush's apocalyptic aspirations, you know its time to take action. (I know this is a few weeks old but I've been sitting on it in my drafts box.)

Interestingly The Economist- unlike Jacques Chirac- considers a benuked Iran to be a threat. There are several opinions to be found on this matter but I find Chirac's the most rational. This position is backed up by the North Korean situation: If a despot as insane and callous about their own populace's welfare as Kim Jong Il won't start shooting off nukes for fear of reprisals then Iranians certainly won't. On the other hand, the chances of Israel or the US using nuclear weapons are far, far higher.

Another interesting point about the Economist article is their conviction regarding "Iran's apparent determination to build nuclear weapons". Now, I really dislike groundless speculation and I think that the press should not be repeating Bush's propaganda without any real evidence, which of course, there isn't. I believe that Iran has probably looked at the possibilities of 'going nuclear' but it would be pretty obvious to them that they are under intense scrutiny from foreign intelligence agencies and they wouldn't be able to conduct a serious secret weapons program for long. Instead I reckon they are bluffing in an attempt to utilise the spectacularly immoral deception of the Iraqi intelligence debacle to their own ends by using the ignorance and bigotry of the Neo-Cons to draw sympathy in the international forum. Canny and wise, no doubt as the neocons have blatantly fallen for it and are on a war footing. The Iranians have no weapons program. I am sure of it. They might have some documents that roughly describe how to make hemispheres of enriched uranium that can only be used to construct nuclear warheads but these are actually more likely to be US fabrications. Ultimately, if the US or Israel are stupid enough to rise to the Iranian bait and launch some pre-emptive strike then the Iranian cause will unite the- currently split- nation and most likely the rest of the middle east too in a concerted opposition to US imperialism. And rightly so.