Iran Watch

Here’s what I know. Here’s what I see:

Since Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen visited Israel early this month, the consensus among bloggers has been that an Iran strike by the U.S. is off the table. Worldtribune.com has even reported that an attack in 2008 is off the table for Israel, and a nascent diplomatic effort seems to have formed in the White House. I’m relieved, but the drama continues:

Predictably, The neo-con voices in the media are in a tizzy:

MSNBC’s Fred Kagan said the only way to force Iran to halt its nuclear program is to attack. (Video Here)

John Bolton said the U.S. should help Israel strike Iran. “We will be blamed for the strike anyway, and certainly feel whatever negative consequences result, so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible.” Bolton also predicted that Israel will attack between the U.S. election and inauguration. This ex-Mossad chief agrees.

The reason for this window is that the Israeli war crowd wants to attack while the current administration is in power, but fears an attack would tilt the election toward Obama. (They prefer McCain)

The issue continues to feature prominently in our politics. Obama has adopted an increasingly hostile tone toward Iran, barely distinguishable from McCain’s.

Meanwhile, our ever-obsequious Congress is considering House Resolution 326, which would pretty much guarantee a war with Iran. The anti-war movement (whose existence Big Media does not acknowledge) has had some success pushing back against this idiotic legislation.

All credit card transaction to be reported to the IRS

“Ron Paul: Housing Rescue Bill Has Provision That Will Require All Credit Card Transactions Be Reported To The IRS

Texas Congressman Ron Paul, in a 7 minute video message, has spilled the beans on the so called “Housing Rescue” bill just passed by the House, and soon to be passed by the Senate.

The bill is some 600 pages long. Sneaked into the bill is a provison that will require that all credit card transactions be reported to the IRS.

Further, the bill gives approval to increase the national debt by $800 billion. It also requires that those in the mortgage industry be fingerprinted.

With 600 pages, who knows what else was sneaked into this bill? With 600 pages of legalese, you can sneak in a lot. Once the report is in its final form, we are going to attempt to read it,and file a complete report.”

video at economicpolicyjournal.com

Who the hell are these people? And why don’t they step forward and explain themselves?

UPDATE:
–The Senate has passed this duplicitous, exploitative, 600-page-long legislation.

Kucinich talks Impeachment, Top Democrats Rush to Bush’s Defense

“According to an Associated Press report, when Kucinich tried to introduce similar articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney last November, “Republicans, seeing a chance to force Democrats into an embarrassing debate, voted to bring up the resolution. Democrats countered by pushing through a motion to scuttle the bill from the floor.”

The bullshit they are trying to make us swallow is that Democrats are shunning Kucinich because they think a debate about impeachment would harm their chances of winning the presidency.

In reality, as far back as November 2005, polls showed that the majority of Americans supported impeachment on the basis of Bush lying about the invasion of Iraq, which is specifically what Kucinich’s single article of impeachment that he will present on Friday addresses.

Likewise, latest polls show that almost 70% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, with anti-war sentiment swelling the longer the occupation drags on.

Support for a withdrawal from Iraq and the impeachment of George W. Bush is wildly popular with the majority of the electorate that will vote in November, so why are top Democrats doing everything in their power to prevent Kucinich from drawing attention to the matter?”

Read More from prisonplanet.com

What happened to Mohammed Omer?

Mohammed Omer

They told him: “Oh, you have love in your culture?”

–Award winning Gaza journalist assaulted by Shin Bet
–He details his ordeal on Democracy Now
–The Dutch government says it is shocked by Mohammed Omer’s treatment. The former ambassador Jan Wijenberg said: “This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life … I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future.”

The Myth of War’s Economic Benefit

This great article from thepeoplesvoice.org discusses the economic impact of Iraq and includes many book excerpts including the following:

One of the most pernicious economic myths is the idea that war helps the economy. In reality, war is destructive and it always results in economic retrogression and misery. The US economy didn’t really recover until 1946, when the immediate postwar period witnessed the dismantling of the command economy in favor of a much more liberalized market economy. Peace brought military demobilization, deregulation, and perhaps most importantly, a seventy-five percent reduction in government spending. This was a genuine peace dividend and it set the stage for America’s legendary post-war economic boom.
–War and Economic Decline

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has blamed the Iraq war for sending the United States into a recession. On Wednesday, he told a London think tank that the war caused the credit crunch and the housing crisis that are propelling the current economic downturn. Testifying before the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee the following day, he said our involvement in Iraq has long been “weakening the American economy” and “a day of reckoning” has finally arrived.
–Is the Economy a Casualty of War?

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has blamed the Iraq war for sending the United States into a recession. On Wednesday, he told a London think tank that the war caused the credit crunch and the housing crisis that are propelling the current economic downturn. Testifying before the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee the following day, he said our involvement in Iraq has long been “weakening the American economy” and “a day of reckoning” has finally arrived.
–Is the Economy a Casualty of War?

For big government we now have “The Perfect War,” everywhere and nowhere, secret and interminable. The war will justify ever expanding police powers, higher taxes, and more controls over the citizenry. You can see easily how Washington thrives on war. Since Sept 11th, there have been no nasty challenges to government spending and waste, no tedious debates over things like social security “lockboxes,” nor “political” attacks upon the Presidency. Congressmen and Think Tank experts get lots of TV time and most everyone jumps to obey government orders and support more regulations. Any groups opposed to American military interventions overseas appear unpatriotic and are marginalized, while press coverage of the war is restricted, using the last Gulf War as a model. Big Government, as Orwell wrote, thrives from unwinnable wars; it doesn’t get any better than this.
–John Basil Utley, Alternative to Unending War, Ludwig von Mises Institute

Hollywood pushing torture

“Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the portrayal of torture on network television was a rarity. But the moment piqued interest in Hollywood and led to dozens of television and movie story lines in which American heroes deal with uncooperative antagonists who hold critical information about an imminent attack.

By 2003, the first year of the war in Iraq, there were 228 instances in which torture was portrayed on network TV, according to Human Rights First, a civil liberties group that advocates governments banning torture.

Human Rights First last year launched a campaign to push Hollywood writers and producers away from portrayals of torture as a useful interrogation technique.

. . . .

The group’s highest-profile target has been the Fox hit “24,” a thriller in which protagonist Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, used torture—from staging a mock execution of a detainee’s child to shocking a captive—at least 89 times in the show’s first six seasons.

Army officials have met with the show’s writers and producers to express concern that Bauer’s methods are sending the wrong messages to service members.

. . .

‘The problem with the ticking time-bomb situation is that it’s not real,’ said David Danzig, the director of Human Rights First’s Primetime Torture project. “The problem with ’24,’ when we’re rooting for Jack Bauer torturing the bad guy or when Hollywood shows waterboarding producing the result of the bad guy giving up good information that saves the day, is that gathering good intelligence doesn’t work that way.” Read more from chicagotribune.com

Retired Military Leaders Oppose Provocative House Resolution on Iran

“WASHINGTON – July 11 – Three retired military leaders sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to abandon a resolution currently making its way through Congress that might lead to a blockade or the use of force against Iran. The retired military leaders say H.Con.Res. 362 is ‘poorly conceived, poorly timed, and potentially dangerous.'” Read more from commondreams.org

See full text of the letter by Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr., U.S. Army (ret.); former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Lawrence J. Korb; and Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, U.S. Navy (ret.)

No U.S.-Iraq SOFA agreement

“U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a ‘bridge’ document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.” Read more from washingtonpost.com

The negotiation will be left to the next administration. My translation: Bush and company want to rule Iraq, stay indefinately, and use it as a staging ground to attack Iran, and the Iraqis said no.

WTC 7 and the BBC

After years of pretending World Trade Center Seven never existed and never collapsed, the BBC headlines an article 9/11 third tower mystery ‘solved’. As is typical of 9/11 white-washers, they allow some 9/11-truth-seeker ideas:
-the super-efficient removal and melting-down of debris before it could be investigated
-WTC 7’s occupation by several secretive federal agencies
-unprecedented collapse of a steel-framed structure because of fire (which can’t melt steel)
-the sudden, violent, uniform collapse
-WTC 7’s omission from 9/11 Commission Report

The revelation by so-called ‘experts investigating the collapse’ seems to be nothing more than a reassertion of the boilerplate explanation that fire weakened the steel structure and caused the building’s collapse.

As noted on georgewashington.blogspot.com, this explanation is refutable in one sentence:

Partly EVAPORATED Steel Beams Were Found At WTC 7, but normal office and diesel fires are not nearly hot enough to evaporate steel. (See NY Times article)

Nor does the BBC’s sudden acknowledgment of WTC 7’s collapse explain or even acknowledge their reporting of WTC 7’s collapse BEFORE it happened. Let me say that again: They reported the collapse of WTC 7 BEFORE it happened.

The reassertion of fire causing the collapse also contradicts Larry Silverstein’s infamous pull it remark.

So, you see, the big holes in the official story are still agape, despite BBC’s claim that “the definitive official explanation of what happened to Tower Seven is finally about to be published in America.” We will judge its definitiveness ourselves, thank you.

Public Call for Murder of 9/11 Truth Seekers

“Last week, Michael Reagan outrageously called for the murder of 9/11 truth activists and specifically Mark Dice. On Reagan’s nationally syndicated radio show he told more than four million daily listeners, ‘I will pay for the bullets’ to murder truth activists. Later during his rant he said, ‘How about you take Mark Dice out, and put him in the middle of the firing range. Tie him to a post, don’t blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.’ After a conciliatory interview with Mark Dice yesterday, Reagan failed to retract his order for listeners to shoot truth activists or Mark Dice.”

Read more from nationalexpositor.com

SEE ALSO:
–Canadian MP Libby Davies reads 9/11 petition in Parliament
–Truth Rising, part 1

The Great Depression: What They Said Before, During, After

This great webpage shows the heartbreaking lies and deceptions that occurred around the Great Depression. News is written by wolves for consumption by sheep.

“We will not have any more crashes in our time.”
– John Maynard Keynes in 1927

“There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.”
– Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist , New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929

“This crash is not going to have much effect on business.”
– Arthur Reynolds, Chairman of Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago, October 24, 1929

“The Wall Street crash doesn’t mean that there will be any general or serious business depression… ”
– Business Week, November 2, 1929

“Stabilization at [present] levels is clearly possible.”
– Harvard Economic Society Oct 31, 1931

“All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed… and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S.”
– President F.D. Roosevelt, 1933

Read more from gold-eagle.com