Abby and Robbie discuss the reality of war: the pre-propaganda that has manufactured consent for the illegal occupations, video game warfare and cognitive dissonance in combat, the Marine urination scandal; Martin Luther King Jr. and historical revisionism minimizing how anti-imperialism was the main pillar of his philosophical platform; the CIA and the US covert war in Iran; SOPA, PIPA breakdown, the difference between copyright and fair use, the threat to net neutrality and websites like Media Roots under this overarching legislation.

In a recent episode, one of the management consultants pitches a company about the need to launch a new product.  She recounts the story of the Polaroid Company known as the Apple of its day, widely admired for the cool design of its instant cameras.

When I lived in Cambridge, Mass., Polaroid was one of the town’s biggest employers, an economic powerhouse.

But soon it was gone. It failed to see new competitive products on the horizon. It only saw the future as its past.

It went bankrupt.

That seems to be the case of our own bankrupt foreign policy that operates with a limited playbook, of negative “options” build around threats, warnings, covert actions and military adventures.

The gap between what we say and what we do has become a chasm, a paper tiger in words first coined by Chairman Mao.

Here’s President Obama, counseling Israel, a nuclear power not to attack Iran which fears could become one.  No one mentions that nuclear deterrence has been a cornerstone of US policy since we became the first and only nation to drop a nuclear bomb on civilians.

In some ways, the mad policy of “Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) kept the nuclear peace since the 1940’s. To date we have opposed tougher UN rules to stop nuclear proliferation when it involves our allies or us.

Now, to keep the peace and stop a war on Iran, President Obama says we should practice “diplomacy”.

Diplomacy like Nixon used on “Red” China that led to a reversal of decades of isolation and included mutual recognition and booming trade? (Without China, our economy would be in a deeper depression than it is.)

Nope, not that kind of diplomacy.

Obama has gone back further to the failed policy of embargo and isolation that was supposed to bring The Cuban Revolution to its knees in the 1960s.

60 years later, Cuba has reformed but not changed its system while we still refuse to officially recognize its existence.

Our country, born in revolution, still won’t recognize Iran’s Revolution of 33 years ago either, Instead, in the name of diplomacy, the White House has released an executive order imposing tough new sanctions on Tehran,

When I asked Iran’s President Ahmadinejad during a very recent trip there if he would talk to Washington, he told me they wouldn’t talk to him or his government

So much for diplomacy!

Does anyone remember how covert diplomacy with Iran in 1980 delayed the release of the hostages, a maneuver that helped conservative hero Ronald Reagan win election?

Instead, of any diplomacy, the United States is sending more Naval armadas to surround Iran while it is suspected that Israel has been assassinating its scientists and sabotaging its nuclear program with sophisticated viruses.

Everyday new bombing threats are being heard, shades of Dick Cheney singing “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran….” Hahaha!

To my surprise, most of the Iranians I spoke to at a recent conference I attended in Tehran seemed not as alarmed as I thought they would be. Most, naively perhaps, believe that the US or Israel would not dare attack Iran because it is too strong and will retaliate.

That is certainly the rhetoric we are hearing from the country’s Supreme Ruler Khomeini.

His response to sanctions seems to be ‘bring them on,” arguing they will only force Iran into becoming stronger militarily and more self-reliant economically.

He has responded to our threats with some of his own, taking tough about supporting resistance to Israel and countering US initiatives. His hard line is becoming harder in response to ours.

The New York Times reports growing anxiety among Iran’s middle classes.

Already there have been reports of new military maneuvers by Iran and US troops being dispatched to islands off the coat of Yemen, near Iran,

Under Republican and Israeli criticisms, Obama feels he has to appear even tougher.  “Appear” is the operative word.

But remember that saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Where are we going?

Rather than relax tensions, US style diplomacy is raising them to higher levels accompanied by escalating media propaganda built on calculated leaks by “intelligence experts” warning of imminent Iranian attacks on the US.

The less the evidence, the more psycops rumors become news.

There are even reports of Iran is unleashing Al Qaeda terrorists even though Tehran has jailed many and is ideologically at odds with the Saudi-oriented Wahabi brand of Islam. favored by the late Sheikh bin Laden.

The Wall Street Journal, no supporter of the Ayatollahs, ran a full-page story Monday on “US Fears Iran’s Links to Al Qaeda.” That was the headline. In the body of the story, unnamed US officials were quoted downplaying the link and dismissing the idea.

One said: “There is not significant information to suggest a working relationship between Iran and al Qaeda.” (Excuse me but hasn’t Obama also been implying that by killing bin Laden, al Qaeda has been contained as a threat?)

The Journal also quotes Hilary Mann Leverett, a National Security aide in the Clinton and Bush Administrations. She says bluntly,” I think (there) is a war-fevered hysteria going on now. A lot of this stuff is really flimsy and is really questionable.”

Questionable or not, deceptive claims are making headlines and feeding more hysteria that could lead to the very military actions that Obama is saying he doesn’t support.

The late Richard Nixon used to approach diplomacy by drawing three columns on a piece of paper.

One said, “What We Want,’ the second, “What They Want, and the third, “What can we agree on?”

Obama seems to have only one column on his agenda:  ‘How can I get reelected,” a goal he says, humbly, he feels he “deserves.”

Right now, he and his Secretary of State are pandering to the right and the Israeli Lobby while pretending to cut military spending,

As the objective situation becomes more dangerous,  all this game playing aimed at perception management goes on.

We are talking here about more than a conflict with a country we have had a conflict with for decades but the danger of a third world war.

China and Russia are no t exactly on board the US escalation train. Iran’s neighbors don’t need new tensions in the region because they have plenty of their own.

Is our past once more destined to become our future?

Filmmaker Danny Schechter is just back from a visit to Iran. Access to his News Dissector blog seems to be blocked so he will be posting on Http://mediachannel1.org
Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

Tehran. Photo: Maryam Ashoori (CC)

As the psyops operations and media propaganda intensifies, you might think war is imminent for defense and that Iran is doing what countries under threat do in these circumstances—such as mobilizing their people and preparing for a bombing onslaught.

Think again. While I have been told that military targets have been or are being moved around, the atmosphere in Tehran is relaxed with more talk of a cultural battlefield than a military one. There’s a commemoration under way of the 33^rd anniversary of the Iranian revolution and an international conference on “Hollywoodism and Cinema” as an extension of an annual Fajr film festival.

And that’s what I am doing here, as a guest participant in an event that sees Hollywood as a bigger enemy than the Pentagon. It has become for then an ISM and is the subject of discussions over its global role in shaping positive attitudes towards what passes for American “civilization,” its relationship to the awakenings and uprisings throughout the world—Iran’s Press TV probably devotes more coverage to Occupy Wall Street than any TV channel and its alleged support for Zionism and Israel, a country that’s only cited here as “the Zionist Regime.”

Israel, in turn is even more hostile seeing Iran as an “existential threat.” Sometimes it looks like both countries—both under the influence of religious fanaticism– need a stereotyped enemy to rally their own populations. It is Israel that is banging the drums loudest for war.

The conference was opened by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who didn’t have much good to say about Hollywood, which, paradoxically, celebrated its 125^th anniversary on February 1.

“All those who work in Hollywood push ideas, based on getting maximum of profit and pleasure using any possible methods,” Ahmadinejad said. “We do not expect anything from Hollywood.”

Speaking softly and philosophically, Ahmadinejad noted that people must “deliver truth and facts”, so that “masses would follow up.”

About 48 foreign scholars are here, and one News Dissector. Most of President’s speech was really about values more than politics emphasizing the importance of the cultural environment. He believes it is impacted negatively by a movie industry that does little to educate customers about the world’s crises.

He rejected Marxism and Liberalism speaking of man as a creation of God who is caught between conflicting pressures to be selfish or to serve humanity.

I am not sure that the President knew that one of the Hollywood companies leading the charge against Iran is owned by Disney and one I used to work for: ABC News.

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) singles out a recent ABC newscast as an egregious example of propaganda.

“America’s top spy warns that Iran is willing to launch a terrorist strike inside the U.S.,” announced anchor Diane Sawyer at the top of the program. “We’ll tell you his evidence.”

The ABC report was actually very light on evidence. It did, however, pass along numerous incendiary allegations from government officials–without the skeptical scrutiny that is real journalism’s primary function.

Echoing the government, Sawyer set up the report with an assertion that Iran is “more determined than ever to launch an attack on U.S. soil.” Correspondent Martha Raddatz, claiming that the “the saber-rattling coming from Iran has been constant,” told viewers that Clapper delivered “a new bracing warning…. Iran may be more ready than ever to launch terror attacks inside the United States.”

Reports like this are barely criticized in Iran because there have been so many of them for so many years, with ABC’s earlier “America Held Hostage” series a well known example of reporting as incitement.

After his talk, an Iranian friend pushed me into the President’s path where I tried to engage him, asking if would be willing to talk to American leaders.

He smiled, responding, “Washington does not want to have any dialogues.” So that was a non-starter.

I then smiled back and asked if the American people have reasons to fear him and an Iranian nuclear bomb.

This time, he laughed as if I was being naïve. (I was trying to be provocative.)

Looking up at me, he asked if I thought he was scary, and then denied that Iran was building bombs or threatening the American people. He was very calm as he spoke.

Admittedly the evidence for Iran doing so is not very strong and, in fact, a recent report indicated that the US military wants Israel to chill out its agitation and bombing threats.

(Gareth Porter reports on IPS: “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders Jan. 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, according to accounts from well-placed senior military officers.”)

I then told the President I have been covering Occupy Wall Street and asked what his advice would be to them.

As a charter member of the Iranian student movement, he was quick to express admiration for those in the streets struggling for justice in America, but added, “The Wall Street movement has to deepen its work” by intensifying its organizing efforts.

At that point, his security intensified its presence, and after welcoming me to his country, I was pushed gently to the side as he went back to work. My “interview” was over.

The conference continued in the afternoon with more reports on the Occupy Movement and analysis of Hollywood’s impact. On hand to receive an award for his father Oliver Stone, was his son Sean who spoke about the growing power of social media. If nothing else, his dad has proven that Hollywood can produce topical dramas and social criticism.

The Zionism issue was spoken to by three anti-Zionist Rabbis and raised in an interview that I did live on Press TV Thursday night which I found not so much anti-Semitic as totally uninformed about many in the Jewish community worldwide who are not only not ardent Zionists but are critical of the Israeli occupation of Palestinians and the suppression of their rights.

The host was startled by the vehemence of my views that may not have much support at high levels in the government. I was glad to have an opportunity to publicly challenge holocaust denial in Iran and combat stereotypes, even as Hollywood legitimately stood accused of creating them of Muslims.

This is my second trip to Iran, a country that is being embargoed, sanctioned and put down in our media with nary a chance to talk back. That’s why I came—to learn more about Iran’s views that have been banished from the airways in Britain, and rarely, if ever, given airtime in what passes for our “free” media. Iran is escalating its media efforts with a new channel in Spanish.

There is more to come, and I am already on Kabob overload.

Danny Schechter writes about Occupy Wall Street on Al Jazeera, Progressive Radio Network other outlets and his News Dissector blog. He made the film Plunder the Crime Of Our Time. Please email comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

Few of us have had totally ideal childhoods, but self-aware people usually get past this stuff by the time they’ve graduated college. The scipts get more and more alike and the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in.

If you’re altruistic types you’ll try to talk through the whole thing rationally before retreating to your separate corners in order to get your heads together. Ideally you’ll be able to part on friendly terms, but more often there are some undignified scenes ahead, complete with gouged eye sockets and your shame forever documented in a police report. From Haaretz:

Israeli Mossad agents posed as CIA officers in order to recruit members of a Pakistani terror group to carry out assassinations and attacks against the regime in Iran, Foreign Policy revealed on Friday, quoting U.S. intelligence memos.

Foreign Policy’s Mark Perry reported that the Mossad operation was carried out in 2007-2008, behind the back of the U.S. government, and infuriated then U.S. President George W. Bush.

Perry quotes a number of American intelligence officials and claims that the Mossad agents used American dollars and U.S. passports to pose as CIA spies to try to recruit members of Jundallah, a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization that has carried out a series of attacks in Iran and assassinations of government officials.

According to the report, Israel’s recruitment attempts took place mostly in London, right under the nose of U.S. intelligence officials.

“It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” Foreign Policy quoted an intelligence officer as saying. “Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”…

[continues at Haaretz]

Amir Mirzaei Hekmati

Robert Mackey writes for the New York Times:

According to Iranian state television, a former United States marine who was convicted of spying on Iran and sentenced to death on Monday was also involved in a nefarious plot to brainwash the youth of the Middle East using an unlikely tool: video games.

In a video report broadcast last month, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, the former marine of Iranian descent who was arrested during a visit to Tehran in August, allegedly confessed to a career in American intelligence that included a stint at a video game company in New York that was “a cover for the C.I.A.”

According to an English translation of the report published by The Tehran Times, an Iranian state-run newspaper, about one-third of the way through the report, Mr. Hekmati said he had worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, after he left the Marine Corps in 2005. Then, according to the newspaper’s somewhat oddly worded translation, Mr. Hekmati said in Persian:

After Darpa, I was recruited by Kuma Games Company, a computer games company which received money from C.I.A. to design and make special films and computer games to change the public opinion’s mindset in the Middle East and distribute them among Middle East residents free of charge. The goal of Kuma Games was to convince the people of the world and Iraq that what the U.S. does in Iraq and other countries is good and acceptable.

He reportedly added: “The head of Kuma called me and said, ‘I have received your resume from Darpa, and we have a program in which you can help us.’ ” Kuma, Mr. Hekmati explained, “was also a cover for the C.I.A. and only the chief of company knows that you’re working with the agency.”*

(After the verdict against Mr. Hekmati was reported on Monday, his family, along with the White House and the State Department, flatly denied that he was a spy.)…

Read more here.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta let slip on Sunday the big open secret that Washington war hawks don’t want widely known: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Panetta admitted that despite all the rhetoric, Iran is not pursuing the ability to split atoms with weapons, saying it is instead pursuing “a nuclear capability.” That “capability” falls in line with what Iran has said for years: that it is developing nuclear energy facilities, not nuclear weapons.

“They cannot continue to do what they’re doing. Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what concerns us.”

Republicans have been beating the drums of war in recent weeks as tensions in the Iranian gulf have soared. Iran has threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil transport hub crucial to global industry, if U.S. warships return to monitor their activities.

Iran said recently that it had created the country’s first ever nuclear fuel rod made from domestic uranium enriched at their own facilities.

Nuclear fuel enrichment is much different from enrichment for weapons. Most commercial nuclear reactors use lightly enriched uranium, which is between 3-5 percent enriched. Weapons-grade uranium must be enriched to approximately 85 percent or more of a key radioactive isotope for it to be usable in an atomic bomb.

It’s true: if you want peace, you must prepare for war; however, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it–so I guess war with Iran is inevitable. Tom Engelhardt writes at Alternet:

These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the U.S. and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered. Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus:

Summer 1953: The CIA and British intelligence hatch a plot for a coup that overthrows a democratically elected government in Iran intent on nationalizing that country’s oil industry. In its place, they put an autocrat, the young Shah of Iran, and his soon-to-be feared secret police. He runs the country as his repressive fiefdom for a quarter-century, becoming Washington’s “bulwark” in the Persian Gulf — until overthrown in 1979 by a home-grown revolutionary movement, which ushers in the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs. While Khomeini & Co. were hardly Washington’s men, thanks to that 1953 coup they were, in a sense, its own political offspring. In other words, the fatal decision to overthrow a popular democratic government shaped the Iranian world Washington now loathes, and even then oil was at the bottom of things.

1967: Under the U.S. “Atoms for Peace” program, started in the 1950s…

[continues at at Alternet]

Iran protested the United States and United Kingdom for their roles in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Wednesday, implicating the two nations in the attack, the official Iranian Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Saturday.

Iran sent a letter to the Swiss embassy in Tehran – the only official diplomatic channel between Iran and the United States in Tehran – saying that CIA-led operations in the Islamic Republic are known, and blaming the US for supporting “terrorist groups against Iran.”

Tehran also sent a letter to the British Foreign Ministry, claiming British intelligence operations aided in the killing of the 32-year-old Roshan in a car bomb.

The letter cited a quote by Foreign Intelligence Service Head (MI6) John Sawers, who said that the UK was beginning intelligence operations against Iran, according to IRNA.

Iran demanded a response from both governments.

The Islamic Republic has blamed the violent death of Roshan on the CIA, Israel and now MI6. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton summarily denied the charges and Israeli President Shimon Peres said that Israel had no role in the attack, to the best of his knowledge…

[continues at the Jerusalem Post]

It’s deja vu all over again. AIPAC is trying to trick the United States into another catastrophic war with a Middle Eastern country on behalf of the Likud Party’s colonial ambitions, and the New York Times is misleading the public with allegations that say that the country is developing “weapons of mass destruction”.In an article attributed to Steven Erlanger on January 4 (”Europe Takes Bold Step Toward a Ban on Iranian Oil”), this paragraph appeared:

The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear programme has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign [emphasis my own].

The claim that there is “a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear programme has a military objective” is misguided.

As Washington Post’s Ombudsman Patrick Pexton noted on December 9:

But the IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multiyear effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb.

Indeed, if you try now to find the offending paragraph on the New York Times website, you can’t. They took it down. But there is no note, like there is supposed to be, acknowledging that they changed the article, and that there was something wrong with it before. Sneaky, huh?

You can still find the original here.

Indeed (at least at the time of writing), if you go to the New York Times website and search with the phrase ”military objective”, the article pops right up. But if you open the article, the text is gone. But again, there is no explanatory note saying that they changed the text.

Note that in other contexts, the New York Times claims to be quite punctilious about corrections.

This is not an isolated example in the Times‘ reporting…

Read more here.

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 breezed through Congress and headed to the White House, even though public opposition to parts of the bill, now directed at President Obama in the hope of a hail Mary veto, remains strong. The most troubling aspects of the bill violate fundamental rights provided in the U.S. Constitution to American citizens by giving the government sweeping power to indefinitely detain citizens without trial. Like many other pieces of legislation, this year’s NDAA is another push in a long series of movements marching the U.S. Towards a hard right, nearly fascist state.

In addition to this, the NDAA also contains troubling language regarding Department of Defense interests in Iran, China, Wikileaks, defense contractors and more. A report from a conference on the NDAA contains tough talk in respect to both China and Iran. Considering the amount of saber rattling many warhawks have already engaged in, one has to wonder seriously whether the U.S. Could further engage in military actions towards Iran and what exactly, the DOD believes our attitude towards the Chinese will be in the coming year. The bill contains an amendment which requires economic sanctions towards entities in Iran as well as a provision for “an independent review of current U.S. Capability gaps to counter Iran and China” (emphasis mine). The conference report also says it “takes steps to ensure that the United States is fully prepared to defend our vital interests against an emerging competitor” in regards to China.

Given the information dumps from Wikileaks over past two years, as well as the horrid treatment of Private Bradley Manning, on trial for providing information to Wikileaks, the Pentagon is very interested in keeping other potential whistleblowers at bay. The Defense Department’s research arm already expressed interest this year in employing a disinformation campaign against would be Wikileakers. The NDAA conference report codifies that interest, saying it:

Requires the Secretary of Defense to establish a comprehensive program to detect unauthorized uses of classified information. Requires technological solutions, updated policies and procedures, and enforcement measures to assist with detection of such unauthorized activities.

Read the full post at Diatribe Media.

An order from Gen Mohammed Ali Jaafari, the commander of the guards, raised the operational readiness status of the country’s forces, initiating preparations for potential external strikes and covert attacks.

Western intelligence officials said the Islamic Republic had initiated plans to disperse long-range missiles, high explosives, artillery and guards units to key defensive positions.

The order was given in response to the mounting international pressure over Iran’s nuclear programme. Preparation for a confrontation has gathered pace following last month’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna that produced evidence that Iran was actively working to produce nuclear weapons.

The Iranian leadership fears the country is being subjected to a carefully co-ordinated attack by Western intelligence and security agencies to destroy key elements of its nuclear infrastructure.

Recent explosions have added to the growing sense of paranoia within Iran, with the regime fearing it will be the target of a surprise military strike by Israel or the US…

[continues in the Telegraph]

U.S. Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro says the U.S. and the Israeli regime are set to hold their ‘largest and most significant’ joint military maneuvers without offering details about the time and location of the war games.

More than 5,000 U.S. and Israeli forces will take part in the war drills, said Shapiro, in a Saturday speech at the Israeli-sponsored think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). He reportedly did not mention a specific time and location for what observers have described as part of the new U.S.-led publicity campaign aimed at raising the threat level against Iran.

The joint military maneuver will simulate Israel’s ballistic missile system and will allow Washington to ‘learn from’ Tel Aviv’s experience in warfare, the senior American official added.

More: Press TV

The Obama Administration announced two weeks ago that a bumbling Iranian-American used car salesman had conspired with a U.S. government agent posing as a representative of Mexican drug cartels to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. This brought highly skeptical reactions from experts here across the political spectrum.

But even if some of this tale turns out to be true, the handling of such accusations is inherently political. For example, the U.S.  government’s 9/11 commission investigated the links between the attackers and the Saudi ruling family, but refused to make public the results of that investigation. The reason is obvious: There is dirt there and Washington doesn’t want to create friction with a key ally. And keep in mind that this is about complicity with an attack on American soil that killed 3,000 people.

By contrast, the Obama Administration seized upon the rather dubious speculation that “the highest levels of the Iranian government” were involved in this alleged plot.  President Obama announced that “all options are on the table,” which is well-known code for possible military action. This is extremist and dangerous rhetoric.

Read more here.

Once again, the military industrial complex is howling about money, with its most fervent supporters knowing that the U.S. government is completely broke, but believing budget cuts have to come from somewhere that isn’t the DOD. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Wednesday that another round of cuts aside from the $350 billion called for in August is “nuts” and would be a “doomsday mechanism,” according to The Hill.

Since the year 2000, defense spending has increased 86%, not counting funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other money going to the general “War on Terror.” The DOD budget has increased in size every year, and by the end of FY2011, total military spending including ongoing wars will nearly hit $3 trillion.

In no uncertain terms, Panetta hinted that even if conflicts were to end, defense spending would not decrease “on his watch.” At the Association of the U.S. Army conference, Panetta said in the past, the military was “hollowed out” at the end of major conflicts and said “we must never make that mistake again.” In other words, though we spend more money each year on the military, it will never be enough, and enacting a small portion of cuts, drawn out over a decade, is more dangerous to national security than a new Soviet Russia teeming with Osama Bin Ladens.

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

Iran Affairs

I’m sure you’ve heard about the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US and bomb the Israeli embassy etc. which was supposedly “directed by factions of the Iranian government” (whatever that means.)

Simple question: Why? Suppose the alleged plot was successful – then what? Apart from risking a major diplomatic incident, what would Iran have to gain from doing any of this? Would Saudi Arabia or Israel simply disappear? Are the Iranians just crazy people who like to blow up places for no real gain?

There have been many such ‘terror plots’ foiled in the US – and the one thing they all had in common was that there was a government informant who was involved and even instigated the plot by recruiting some otherwise hapless and simple-minded “terrorists” and provided them with the tools and financing – including buying them the military boots that were later presented in their trial as evidence of their militancy, as well as the cameras that they used to photograph their intended targets.

How hapless and simple-minded? Remember Jose Padilla who was supposedly going to launch a nuclear “dirty bomb” attack? Did you know he was planning to convert plain uranium ore (i.e. rocks) into enriched uranium … by swinging a bucket of the stuff in a circle over his head? Yes folks, these are the “terrorists.”

Of course the line between informant and agent provocateur is very negligible. Some of you may remember Tommy the Traveler, a government agent who traveled to college campuses across the US and infiltrated student anti-war movements, in order to provoke them into committing acts of violence for which they could be arrested?

There have been plenty of conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11. These conspiracy theorists believe that the U.S. government manufactured the attacks while others believe that it was the Israeli Mossad who was behind them. They site claims such as the Pentagon was not hit by a plane but by a rocket, and that the World Trade center building number seven was brought down by a controlled demolition. The prescribers to these theories have been some scattered individuals here and there who do not posses the research capabilities and capacities that are only available to governments. However, there has been one exception: the government of Iran.

The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government. So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?

Since the start of the Iranian revolution, Iran wanted to project an image of antiAmericanism. This would serve as a rallying call for the millions of Muslims around the world who despise America for its aggression against them. Iran played this card very well and garnered a lot of support among the Muslims as being the country that is willing to stand up to America.

If Iran was genuine in its animosity towards the U.S., it would be pleased to see another entity striking a blow at the Great Satan but that’s not the case. For Iran, anti-Americanism is merely a game of politics. It is anti-America when it suits it and it is a collaborator with the U.S. when it suits it, as we have seen in the shameful assistance Iran gave to the U.S. in its invasion of Afghanistan and in the Shi`a of Iraq, backed by Iran, bringing the American forces into the country and welcoming them with open arms.

Therefore with 9/11, the Iranians saw a great operation that had brought damage to the U.S. like nothing they had ever dreamed of causing during their two decades in power. For them, al Qaeda was a competitor for the hearts and minds of the disenfranchised Muslims around the world. Al Qaeda, an organization under fire, with no state, succeeded in what Iran couldn’t. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11 and what better way to do so? Conspiracy theories.

Iran and the Shi`a in general do not want to give al Qaeda credit for the greatest and biggest operation ever committed against America because this would expose their lip-service jihad against the Great Satan.

Robert Baer

Well it won’t be much of a surprise then, will it? The presenter and narrator of three disinformation documentary films (the two Cult of the Suicide Bomber films and Car Bomb), ex-CIA Middle East agent Bob Baer lets the cat out of the bag, as reported by Al Jazeera:

A longtime CIA officer who spent 21 years in the Middle East is predicting that Israel will bomb Iran in the fall, dragging the United States into another major war and endangering US military and civilian personnel (and other interests) throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Earlier this week, Robert Baer appeared on the provocative KPFK Los Angeles show Background Briefing, hosted by Ian Masters. It was there that he predicted that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is likely to ignite a war with Iran in the very near future.

Robert Baer has had a storied career, including a stint in Iraq in the 1990s where he organised opposition to Saddam Hussein. (He was recalled after being accused of trying to organise Saddam’s assassination.) Upon his retirement, he received a top decoration for meritorious service.

Baer is no ordinary CIA operative. George Clooney won an Oscar for playing a character based on Baer in the film Syriana (Baer also wrote the book).

He obviously won’t name many of his sources in Israel, the United States, and elsewhere, but the few he has named are all Israeli security figures who have publically warned that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are hell-bent on war.

Baer was especially impressed by the unprecedented warning about Netanyahu’s plans by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan. Dagan left the Israeli intelligence agency in September 2010. Two months ago, he predicted that Israel would attack and said that doing so would be “the stupidest thing” he could imagine…

[continues at Al Jazeera]

Photo: Ehsan Iran (CC)

“If the inmate is not powerful enough or guards would not take care of him, he will be certainly raped. Prison guards ignore those who are seen with condoms simply because they were given out to them by the guards at first place” … Saeed Kamali Dehghan reports in the Guardian:

Prison guards in Iran are giving condoms to criminals and encouraging them to systematically rape young opposition activists locked up with them, according to accounts from inside the country’s jail system.

A series of dramatic letters written by prisoners and families of imprisoned activists allege that authorities are intentionally facilitating mass rape and using it as a form of punishment.

Mehdi Mahmoudian, an outspoken member of Iran’s Participation Front, a reformist political party, is among those prisoners who have succeeded in smuggling out letters revealing the extent of rape inside some of the most notorious prisons.

Mahmoudian was arrested in the aftermath of Iran’s 2009 disputed presidential election for speaking to the press about the regime’s suppression of the movement and is currently in Rajaeeshahr prison in Karaj, a city 12 miles (20km) to the west of the capital, Tehran.

“In various cells inside the prison, rape has become a common act and acceptable,” he wrote in a letter published on Kaleme.com, the official website of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

According to Mahmoudian and letters published on various opposition websites, political prisoners are locked up with some of the most dangerous criminals – murderers and ex-members of armed gangs.

Meanwhile, 26 prominent political activists who have been in jail since the 2009 election have written to an official prison monitoring body accusing the government’s intelligence ministry and the revolutionary guards of harassing inmates with unlawful tactics that included sexual assaults.

Mohsen Aminzadeh, a senior deputy foreign minister, Mohsen Mirdamadi, a leader of a reformist party and Behzad Nabavi, a veteran activist are among those who put their signatures on the letter.

Speaking to Jaras, a website run by opposition activists, families of political prisoners have alleged that prison guards are failing to protect them from rape or sexual assault.

“During exercise periods, the strong ask for sex without any consideration. Criminals are repeatedly seen with condoms in hand, hunting for their victims,” an unnamed family member told Jaras.

“If the inmate is not powerful enough or guards would not take care of him, he will be certainly raped. Prison guards ignore those who are seen with condoms simply because they were given out to them by the guards at first place,” the family member said.

I guess that’s why Ahmadinejad claims there are no homosexuals in Iran.  (Meanwhile, in the USA, prison rape is generally considered fertile ground for comedy.)  Read more here.

The Iranian government is planning to wall-off much of the country’s online access. A high-ranking Iranian official has their new solution: A “Halal Internet” that will run as a nationwide intranet and be subject to extensive censorship.

According to Iranian Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs Ali Agha Mohammadi, the ”Halal Internet” project is expected to be completed in 18 months. Mohammadi explicitly cited China’s extensive internet controls as an inspiration for the project, which will be completed with the help of what the Minister calls “foreign consultants.”

Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology Reza Taghipour Anvari is also on record as a supporter of the plan. Persian-language financial paper Donya e Eqtesad cited him as praising the nationwide intranet’s ability to censor “dirty and unethical” content.

In nearby Pakistan, Fast Company has already reported on the growth of explicitly Islam-oriented Facebook rival MillatFacebook. As for the Iranian government, they already have competition for the “Halal Internet” branding effort–a New Jersey-based firm called HalalGate already markets internet filtering software called HalalInternet.

Hackers claiming to be part of protest group “Anonymous” published on Friday over 10,000 internal emails from the Iranian government’s ministry of foreign affairs, as part of an ongoing campaign against the authoritarian regime.

The emails were published to torrent file sharing website The Pirate Bay, along with usernames and passwords. Members also claimed they had taken control of the government’s servers.

In a chat with Raw Story, members of Anonymous on the #OpIran server said they were leading the charge because they want Iranians to know they’re not alone in their struggle against the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

They also pointed to a declaration of intent to attack the Iranian government, which they published to YouTube in February.

For more information, see original article.

TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday accused Western countries of devising plans to “cause drought” in the Islamic republic, as he inaugurated a dam in a central province.

“Western countries have designed plans to cause drought in certain areas of the world, including Iran,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in the central city of Arak in Markazi province.

“According to reports on climate, whose accuracy has been verified, European countries are using special equipment to force clouds to dump” their water on their continent, he said.

By doing so, “they prevent rain clouds from reaching regional countries, including Iran,” Ahmadinejad charged. Iran has experienced several droughts in recent years.

For more information, see original article.

The Times Of India reports:

Al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden was a prisoner in US custody for “sometime” before he was killed by the American military, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said.

“I have exact information that bin Laden was held by the American military for sometime… until the day they killed him he was a prisoner held by them,” the hardline president said in a live interview on Iranian state television.

“Please pay attention. This is important. He was held by them for sometime. They made him sick and while he was sick they killed him,” Ahmadinejad added.

He accused US President Barack Obama for announcing the al-Qaida leader’s death for “political gain.”

“What the US president has done is for domestic political gain. In other words, they killed him for Mr Obama’s election and now they are seeking to replace him with someone else,” Ahmadinejad said without elaborating.

Bin Laden was shot dead on May 2 in a US commando raid on a heavily fortified compound near Islamabad, Pakistan.

On May 4, Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi too had cast doubt on bin Laden’s death, saying there were “ambiguities” over the way he was killed

[Continues at The Times Of India]

Close allies of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being “magicians” and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as “a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds”.

The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached.

Read More: Guardian

Israeli fighter jets are conducting drills at a military base in Iraq in preparation for a strike on Iran, the Islamic Republic’s Press TV reported.

The report said the Israeli planes participating in the drills include F-15, F-16, F-18 and F-22 fighter jets. It said they have conducted weeklong exercises, flying mainly at night.

Press TV said its report was based on information received from a source close to Moqtada al-Sadr’s group in Iraq.

Sadr is considered to be one of the most influential religious political figures in Iraq but holds no official title. He has repeatedly called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition troops and U.N. forces deployed in Iraq.

The air drills are being conducted in collaboration with the U.S. military, the report said. It said Iraq was not informed of the exercises.

The U.S. maintains a number of military bases in Iraq and the government in Baghdad is not involved in any military activities occurring there, the report said…

For more information, see original article.

From CNN:

The Internet hackers group Anonymous plans to hack Iran on Sunday, according to a press release published on their website. The group wants to use International Workers’ Day, which commemorates the first national general strike in the United States, as an opportunity to reignite last year’s protests in Iran.

Exactly how they intend to “attack” Iran remains to be seen. The sophistication of their previous attacks ranges from the denial-of-service overloading of web servers (this simply knocks a website out) to the exploitation of code and accessing of private data (more like the hacking seen in the movies).

The announcement follows news from the Bahrain News Agency that Iranian hackers had tried to access the Housing Ministry’s database regarding those who benefit from the housing services…

[continues at CNN]

Photo: FARS

Hank Mills reports for Pure Energy Systems News that nuclear engineer Mehran Tavakoli Keshe has came forward as being the developer of the technology being used in Iran’s new “flying saucer.” His technology is claimed to harness magnetism and gravity to allow travel throughout the solar system and beyond:

On March 16th, 2011, the hard-line Iranian news agency Fars issued a press release stating Iran had developed a flying saucer. The unmanned saucer named “Zohal” is stated to be equipped with an auto-pilot system, GPS, and an imaging system. It is claimed the craft can fly indoors and outside. Initially, the press release included a stock photo of a flying saucer that was obviously from an old SCIFI movie. This image was later replaced with a picture of what looks like an ordinary quadrocopter. Such an image would tend to indicate there is nothing exotic about the craft

Now, nuclear Engineer, Mehran Tavakoli Keshe, who we have interviewed and covered here in our news for a couple of years, has came forward and claimed to be the developer of the gravity manipulating technology being used in the Iranian flying saucer – something he divulged to us in the past, prior to the official Iranian announcement.

Mehran Keshe is the director of the Keshe Foundation. He claims to have developed a special plasma reactor that allows for the manipulation of gravitational and magnetic fields to produce motion…

[continues at Pure Energy Systems News]

Photo: FARS News Agency (Iran)

From the Times of India:

An aircraft created by scientists in Iran is, they claim, the world’s first flying saucer.

The unmanned spaceship, called the Zohal or Saturn in English, is designed for “aerial imaging” but can be used for “various missions” .

The hardline Fars news agency illustrated its story with a photo of a flying saucer, similar to one appearing in a 1950s Hollywood B-movie , hovering over an unidentified wooded landscape. The reports gave no indication of the spaceship’s size.

But they indicated it was small by claiming, somewhat bizarrely, that it can also fly indoors.

“Easy transportation and launch and flying, making less noise, are some of the advantages of the device ,” the Daily Mail quoted ISNA, Iran’s students’ news agency, as saying in its report. “The device belonging to the new generation of vertical flyers is designed for aerial photography.”

“It is equipped with autopilot, image stabiliser and GPS and has a separate system for aerial recording with full HD quality.

[continues in the Times of India]

In a formal complaint to the International Olympic Committee, Tehran has called for the graphic to be replaced and its designers “confronted”, warning that Iranian athletes might otherwise be ordered to stay away from the London Games.

According to the state-backed Iranian Students News Agency, which is frequently used to convey official pronouncements, the letter says: “As internet documents have proved, using the word Zion in the logo of the 2012 Olympic Games is a disgracing action and against the Olympics’ valuable mottos.

“There is no doubt that negligence of the issue from your side may affect the presence of some countries in the Games, especially Iran which abides by commitment to the values and principles.”

Amid the popular uproar that accompanied the unveiling of the logo in 2007, there were some claims, particularly on conspiracy-oriented websites, that its constituent shapes could be rearranged to make the world “Zion” and some animations were posted on YouTube showing how to do it.

An IOC official confirmed that the Iranian letter had been received but said: “The London 2012 logo represents the figure 2012, nothing else.”