Is Iran Preparing to Strike Back
By Brian M. Downing
These attacks are almost certainly directed by Israeli, Saudi, and US intelligence services. They may also be acts of war.
"This business will get out of control."
– The Hunt for Red October
In the last few years diplomatic pressures and economic sanctions have been imposed to convince Iran to allow international inspection of its nuclear research facilities. A number of states have also pursued a violent clandestine campaign of bombings and assassinations that have killed scores of Iranians, including nuclear scientists. These attacks are almost certainly directed by Israeli, Saudi, and US intelligence services. They may also be acts of war.
In recent weeks Iran has decried terrorism around the world (somewhat paradoxically, to be sure), put up a clumsy plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador, boasted of its missile strength, and briefly seized the British embassy in Tehran – an act done not by students as with the US embassy in 1979, but by toughs of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Most recently, the IRGC went on alert, ostensibly to brace for more attacks inside the country.
PermalinkLibya in Pictures: What the Mainstream Media Does Not Tell You
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research
Mirage fighters, F16 fighters, B-2 Stealth bombers, 15,000 NATO air sorties. the bombing of thousands of civilian targets.. NATO is said to be coming to the rescue of the Libyan people. That is what we are being told.
Western journalists have quite deliberately distorted what is happening inside Libya. They have upheld NATO as an instrument of peace and democratization. They have endorsed an illegal and criminal war. They are instruments of US-NATO propaganda.
Global Research's Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya reporting from Tripoli refutes the media consensus which uphold's NATO's humanitarian mandate. He provides us with a review of the mass rallies directed against NATO including extensive photographic evidence. ~ Ed.
Perpetual War, Corporate Greed, & Austerity for the Masses
Larry Pinkney
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” -Frederick Douglass
“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience...Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves...[and] the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” -Howard Zinn
BC Question: What will it take to bring Obama home? As the corporate/military U.S. Empire, headed by the nominally black Barack Obama, with the complicity of his Democrat[ic] and Republican party political pimps, rumbles along, crushing the economic needs, human rights, and aspirations of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and around the world, conditions for just plain ordinary people are worsening and deteriorating at lightning speed. Only the avaricious, blood-sucking, bloated rich are financially benefiting from the increasing misery of the masses of ordinary people.
A Balanced Budget? Ha! What A Crock!
By Silver Shield
I made a call earlier this year that the debt ceiling would be raised after a Contrived Drama plays out in Washington. I became even more emphatic in April when I said that you can “Count On It!” The reason for my bold assertion is because I know that our debt based monetary system MUST have a constant expansion of debt in order to function. Our money IS debt and they are on in the same. Debt needs to be increased every year in excess of the debt AND interest accrued the year before or we would face a catastrophic deflationary crash. And since bankers profit from creating debt/money and politicians gain control from spending money/debt,they will not end this game willingly. They will put on a huge act to reign in our expectations,but this head fake will only result in a higher debt ceiling and QE3.
Vietnam and the New American Way of War
Here was a new generation . . . grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.
– F Scott Fitzgerald
Baghdad falls to US forces.
– 2003 headline
By Brian Downing
When Saigon fell and the last Huey was pushed overboard into the sea, Americans looked back with dismay on their many foreign entanglements that had culminated in the recent calamity. Those who cared to look ahead saw little prospect of war. Surely, they thought, the nation had learned from a war that had brought so much turmoil, cost fifty-eight thousand lives, and ended in defeat.
But Americans settled into a period of inwardness and few saw the new way of war coming into being. The military rebuilt itself, largely independent of the breadth of society, and became the most fearsome army in the world. War-making, in astonishing contrast to post-Vietnam sensibilities, became a de facto presidential power, legitimized by invocation of national security arguments only desultorily debated. This power was ceded by congress and endorsed by a gratefully uninvolved nation.
WHO caves: Allows smallpox stockpiling for three more years
By Rady Ananda
Once again, the World Health Assembly failed to set a deadline for the destruction of smallpox samples, delaying discussion for another three years. Though it still affirms the need for live sample destruction, the two-day “contentious debate” (repeated for the last 25 years) ended on May 24 in a victory for bioweapons development in the U.S. and Russia.
“The retention of the existing stocks of smallpox virus are not required” to maintain and bolster current vaccine supplies, argues Dr. D. A. Henderson in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science. Through current technology, smallpox vaccines can be developed from the known genome. Live viruses are simply no longer needed.
The claimed need to protect against smallpox appears to be a ruse for the development of its use as a bioweapon. Given the history of its use in Native American genocide, the United States should be specifically banned from possessing the live virus. But, this is the same country that’s radiating with impunity the Middle East with depleted uranium.
A Hawk Reappraises the Afghan War
Bing West's "The Wrong War"
By BRIAN M. DOWNING
Bing West, a marine veteran and assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, has written extensively on American soldiers in various wars from the Vietnam War, in which he served, to ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His many books have chronicled the hard work and grim determination of US soldiers and have been typically supportive not only of the troops but also of the wars themselves. As its title more than suggests, this offering is very much a departure on the latter point. (Image Isafmedia)
West's long experience gives him the ability to relate to and learn from the GIs, making his insights more penetrating than those of embedded journalists. He has gone out into foreboding places such as the Korengal Valley in Kunar province in the east, which the US withdrew from last year, and Marja in Helmand to the south, which is one of the three principal areas in the counterinsurgency program.
Idiot or Evil Genius?
By Silver Shield
Back when I was a thoroughly indoctrinated Fox News Junkie, I was constantly confronted by people calling George W. Bush either a complete idiot or and evil genius. GWB was either a drooling buffoon who was incapable of doing the simplest of tasks or he was a third generation Fascist genius, who was hell bent on systematically destroying the American Republic. Being a kool-aide drinker myself, I just didn’t get why people didn’t see him as a warm, caring, strong, and patriotic president. This is what ultimately led me to ask a deeper question, how is it possible that one guy could be seen by so many people, in so many different ways?
Fast forward to the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama (I love how his name still comes up as a misspelling) comes on the scene and the same thing happens again, only in reverse. Now Obama is either a complete idiot or an evil genius. He’s either an empty suit that cannot put two words together without his teleprompter or an evil communist bastard who’s plotting to destroy the America Republic. And yet to the average Obama supporter, they just don’t get why people don’t see him as a young, charismatic, intelligent and motivating president. Again, how is it possible that one guy can be seen by so many people in so many different ways?
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