A great piece by Naj Taylor, which dramatically underscores the emptiness of Australia’s contribution to positive & constructive international relations & amplifies our appalling behaviour in recently purchasing a seat, even if only on a temporary basis, on the UN Security Council.

The smug, but muddleheaded conceit that our political leaders pass-off as triumphant diplomatic surefootedness is matched only by the breathtaking hypocrisy that inevitably characterises the behaviour of ‘nations’ incapable of acting independently & bereft of the national character necessary to forge & sustain a balanced & principled approach to the formulation & pursuit of their country’s foreign policy objectives.

Break a leg.

In a 155-page report, four US nuclear experts have called upon the Obama administration to impose tougher economic sanctions against Iran and resort to overt operations through using warplanes and missiles on Iranian nuclear sites.

Apart from the fact that morbid mindset of this nature only helps fan up chaos and serves as an impetus to widespread pandemonium in the region, any mention of any such policy let alone an adoption of it will gradually terminate in an endless array of military legitimizations.

Co-authored by Mark Dubowitz, who runs Zionist-controlled Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and David Albright, a physicist who heads the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and who is responsible for concocting lies and myths about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and drawing the country into an abysmal vortex of destruction and devastation, the report can be but seen in the light of yet another overtly brash attempt by the US to push ahead with further militarism in the Middle East.

Dubbed as ‘U.S. Nonproliferation Strategy for the Changing Middle East,’ the report falls short of mentioning any other Middle Eastern countries, which may be seeking a nuclear weapons program, and instead focuses heavily on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The authors of the conspiratorial report urge Washington to “undertake additional overt preparations for the use of warplanes and/or missiles to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities with high explosives” and “increase Iranian isolation, including through regime change in Syria and deepening Iran’s diplomatic isolation.”

Naturally, the words have been deliberately and carefully chosen in the report.

By ‘overt preparations’, the authors explicitly admit that the US government has in the past used ‘covert operations’ as well i.e. assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and infiltrating and disrupting the computer systems. Somewhere in the report, the authors unambiguously refer to Washington’s sabotage activities in Iran. They say, “Press reports indicate that sabotage has been used to slow the Iranian nuclear program, including through infiltration and disruption of procurement networks and cyberattacks designed to inflict physical damage to the program. Judicious use of this tool should be included in continued U.S. efforts to constrain the Iranian nuclear program.”

Iran will save itself, the report says, only if it accepts the terms set by the authors. In other words, Iran has to kowtow to the terms set by the report which are as follows:

1) Suspension by Iran of the following proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities: (a) all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA; and (b) work on all heavy water-related projects, including the construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water, also to be verified by the IAEA;

2) Provision by Iran of such access and cooperation as the IAEA requests to be able to verify the suspensions and to resolve all outstanding issues, as identified in IAEA reports;

3) A full accounting and resolution of all outstanding questions about Iran’s past and any current (as of the time of agreement) nuclear weapons related activities;

4) Complete closure of the Fordow facility and any other deeply buried enrichment facility that is either complete or under construction; and

5) Iran’s binding agreement to intrusive and comprehensive inspections that are at a minimum as stringent as those outlined in the IAEA’s Additional.

If truth be told, these terms are nothing new and only reek of a Zionist influence contaminating the already decomposing American policy. On May 9, 2012, just ahead of the May 23 talks in Baghdad, where six world powers were slated to sit down with Iranian officials and resolve the so-called nuclear issue, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the talks will be successful only if Iran agrees to “halt all uranium enrichment, ship its current stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country and dismantle an underground enrichment facility near the city of Qom (Fordow).” Interestingly, when the IAEA-Iran meeting took place in May, these three demands were exactly (but not coincidently) put on IAEA’s agenda and the Iranian side was demanded to abide by these if it sought any resolution of the issue.

What strikes the mind as reasonably acceptable is that the authors are no political well-wishers; rather, they are indeed so morbidly obsessed with paving the way for another ravaging war in the Middle East that they are trying to cook up another fairy tale as David Albright and his ‘company’ did in Iraq.

In point of fact, similar lies were told about Iraq before the US invaded the country. US intelligence agencies announced in 2003 that Iraq “could be planning a chemical or biological attack on American cities through the use of remote-controlled "drone" planes equipped with GPS tracking maps”. They even said that these “vehicles have already been, or could be, transported” inside the United States. Add to this a more blatant lie: Iraq could be 'months away' from building nuclear bomb. Analysts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said in 2002 that Saddam Hussein could be "months" away from assembling a nuclear bomb and has stockpiled possibly thousands of litres of deadly anthrax”.

Former US president George W. Bush who was extremely keen on launching a war came up with ‘new evidence’ which he said showed Iraq’s ‘continued appetite’ for nuclear bombs. His evidence: Iraq had tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminium tubes which Bush said “were used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon”. Bush presented this as a document to the UN.

However, UN weapons inspectors conducted investigations for weeks and were quite confident that the tubes were never meant to be used for enriching uranium (See Iraq, Lies, Cover-Ups, and Consequences By Rodney Stich p. 141).

The Iraq war was waged on the strength of a heap of lies disseminated by all and sundry in the US government and that which claimed the lives of over one million people. The bitter irony is that those who are responsible for playing havoc with the lives of a million people are not surprisingly fettered by shackles to await a sore chastisement as the essence of humanity necessitates it; instead, they are free and to crown it all, they are even allowed the latitude to continue with their myths and engage in yet another military mischief.

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

US Cooks Up Nuclear Fairy Tale On Iran

Intelligence director James Clapper says Tehran still has not decided whether to pursue militarization of nuclear program.

Iran cannot enrich uranium to the point of being able to make a bomb without the international community finding out, a top US intelligence official said Tuesday while delivering an otherwise sobering report on worldwide threats.

National Intelligence director James Clapper told a Senate panel that Tehran is developing nuclear capabilities to enhance its security and influence and “give it the ability to develop a nuclear weapon.”

But the report stopped short of saying a decision has been made.

“We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons,” the report said.

Clapper explained that in the last year, Iran has made progress in working toward producing weapons-grade uranium. However, the report said Iran “could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of weapons-grade uranium before this activity is discovered.”

The assessment on Iran comes shortly before President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that the world has until this summer - at the latest - to keep Tehran from building a bomb. The Israeli leader repeatedly has indicated Israel is willing to strike militarily to stop Iran, a step that would likely drag in the United States.

Clapper, testifying with newly installed CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director Robert Mueller to the Senate Intelligence Committee, also spoke about threats emanating from Syria and North Korea.

He said that both Iran and Syria had acquired ballistic missiles from Pyongyang

In Syria, President Bashar Assad’s inability to quash the uprising in his country increases the possibility that he will use chemical weapons against his people, Clapper said.

“We assess that an increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be prepared to use chemical weapons against the Syrian people,” he said. “In addition, groups or individuals in Syria could gain access to chemical weapons-related material.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence committee, described Syria as a “massive and still growing humanitarian disaster under way with no end in sight.”

The United Nations estimates more than 70,000 people have been killed in the civil war, which started two years ago against Assad’s rule.

The report said terrorist threats are in transition with an increasingly decentralized global jihadist movement. The Arab Spring, however, has created a spike in threats to US interests in the region “that likely will endure until political upheaval stabilizes and security forces regain their capabilities.”

An unpredictable North Korea, with its nuclear weapons and missile programs, was touted as the most serious threat to the United States and East Asia nations.

The outlook on North Korea comes as the communist regime announced that it was “completely scrapping” the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and has maintained peace on the peninsula for more than half a century. The Obama administration on Monday slapped new sanctions against North Korea’s primary exchange bank and several senior government officials as it expressed concern about the North’s “bellicose rhetoric.”

“The Intelligence community has long assessed that, in Pyongyang’s view, its nuclear capabilities are intended for deterrence, international prestige and coercive diplomacy. We do not know Pyongyang’s nuclear doctrine or employment concepts,” Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Although we assess with low confidence that the North would only attempt to use nuclear weapons against U.S. forces or allies to preserve the Kim regime, we do not know what would constitute, from the North’s perspective, crossing that threshold.”

North Korea, led by its young leader Kim Jong Un, has defied the international community in the last three months, testing an intercontinental ballistic missile and a third nuclear bomb.

“These programs demonstrate North Korea’s commitment to develop long-range missile technology that could pose a direct threat to the United States, and its efforts to produce and market ballistic missiles raise broader regional and global security concerns,” the report said.

Copyright Associated Press

from the Anti-Empire Report ….

The marvelous world of Freedom of Speech

So, the United States and its Western partners have banned Iranian TV from North America and in various European countries. Did you hear about that? Probably not if you’re not on the mailing list of PressTV, the 24-hour English-Language Iranian news channel. According to PressTV:

The Iranian film channel, iFilm, as well as Iranian radio stations, have also been banned from sensitive Western eyes and ears, all such media having been removed in February from the Galaxy 19 satellite platform serving the United States and Canada.

In December the Spanish satellite company, Hispasat, terminated the broadcast of the Iranian Spanish-language channel Hispan TV. Hispasat is partly owned by Eutelsat, whose French-Israeli CEO is blamed for the recent wave of attacks on Iranian media in Europe.

The American Jewish Committee has welcomed these developments. AJC Executive Director David Harris has acknowledged that the committee had for months been engaged in discussions with the Spaniards over taking Iranian channels off the air.

A careful search of the Lexis-Nexis data base of international media reveals that not one English-language print newspaper, broadcast station, or news agency in the world has reported on the PressTV news story since it appeared February 8. One Internet newspaper, Digital Journal, ran the story on February 10.

The United States, Canada, Spain, and France are thus amongst those countries proudly celebrating their commitment to the time-honored concept of freedom of speech. Other nations of “The Free World” cannot be far behind as Washington continues to turn the screws of Iranian sanctions still tighter.

In his classic 1984, George Orwell defined “doublethink” as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” In the United States, the preferred label given by the Ministry of Truth to such hypocrisy is “American exceptionalism”, which manifests itself in the assertion of a divinely ordained mission as well in the insistence on America’s right to apply double standards in its own favor and reject “moral equivalence”.

The use of sanctions to prevent foreign media from saying things that Washington has decided should not be said is actually a marked improvement over previous American methods. For example, on October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government’s Radio Shari were bombed and shortly after this the US bombed some 20 regional radio sites. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: “Naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets. They are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists.” And in Yugoslavia, in 1999, during the infamous 78-bombing of the Balkan country which posed no threat at all to the United States, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted because it was broadcasting things which the United States and NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was causing). The bombs took the lives of many of the station’s staff, and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage.