My Identity / Hoviate Man : Iranian rap against the Movie 300

My Identity / Hoviate Manby Yas Featuring Aminهويت منياس با همراهي امينبراي اعتراض به فيلم 300 Listen. I want to tell you my intentThey want to erase my identityThe history of the land of the AryansIs screaming until we come to itSo now is the […]

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France and US tell IAEA to shut up-Let us spread the lies about Iran's WMD!

Here we go again,It is 2002 and 2003 all over again. These bastards want a war, they want Iran’s OIL and no one can stop them.Bush and Bush light are doing it again, discrediting the IAEA just like they did before the war against Iraq. The same liers (now the French Poodle instead of the British one), and the same 'logic'.

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Olbermann on O'Reilly's Dumbledore, Gay Sex Obsessions:

Olbermann: "A month after his racist remarks about a New York restaurant, O'Reilly now coming out against tolerance a little more than four years after, according to the lawsuit from his former producer Andrea Mackris, BillO tried to talk her and a female friend of hers into performing homosexual acts while he was present.

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W.M.D. in Iran? Q.E.D.

Asking Cheney some questions? "First you threatened to take action if Iran built a nuclear weapon. Now you’re threatening to take action if Iran knows how to build a nuclear weapon. What’s next? You threaten to take action if Ahmadinejad dresses up as a nuclear weapon for Halloween?"

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Old High school sweetheart!

Many of us are guilty of looking at others our own age and thinking, "Surely, I can't be that old". If you've ever done this, then you'll appreciate the following.

My name is Alice Smith and I was sitting in the waiting froom for my first appointment with a new dentist.

I noticed his DDS diploma, which bore his full name. Suddenly, I remembered a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name had been in my high school class some 40-odd years ago. Could he be the same guy that I had a secret crush on way back then?

Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought. This balding, grey-haired man with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been my classmate.

After he examined my teeth, I asked him if he had attended Morgan Park High School.

"Yes. Yes, I did. I'm a mustang," he gleamed with pride.

"When did you graduate?" I asked.

"In 1965," he replied. "Why do you ask?"

"You were in my class!" I exclaimed.

He looked at me closely ... and then that ugly, old, bald, wrinkled, fat ass, grey-haired decrepit son-of-a-bitch asked, "What did you teach?"

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Danish FP (Folke Partiet, People's Party) put Muhammad Cartoon on their ads

The Danish FP has decided to use a cartoon of Prophet Muhammad in their latest election campaign.

http://politiken.dk/archive/00215/Pia_muhammed_215219c.jpg

 

The image is an excuse to ride the wave of Anti-immigrant and Anti-Muslim wave that is gaining momentum in Skandinavia these days. The FP has been loosing supporters in the past few years and now they want to use this extreme measure to get some help from the Danish Ultra right and anti-immigrants who see the increasing number of people from Middle East and other Muslim countries as a danger to their life style.

 

The cartoon is not as bad as the other Danish cartoons published by  the right wing magazine Jyllans Posten last year, but it is a clear indication that like the Swedish Sverige Demokrater (SD) party, the Danish FP is preparing what the SD’s internal paper called “The incoming war against the Muslims”, something they later called “an innocent mistake, because they meant “the ongoing war against militant Muslims”.

 

Man, every time I think the world can not sink lower, these idiots prove me wrong!

 

Source : http://politiken.dk/politik/article404718.ece

             Aftonbladet: Hatet hotar demokratin

ABC News: White House Requests Bunker-Buster Bombs — Is Iran Attack Next?

This is so stupid, Iran, just like Afghanistan is located on a very fragile part of the earth, such massive explosions will create a shock in the “earth quake” belt and the results will be massive earth quakes in India or further down close to Malaysia or even Japan on one side, Italy, Turkey or Greece on the other side. If these people even had a slightest understand of geology and how fragile our earth is, they would have never even imagined such stupid bombs, but on the other hand, the result will be in a place outside of the US, so the fight will be “out there” so Americans can live happily “at home”.

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Fwd: Beautiful Pictures of Home

Look at this slide show of Iran and stand in awe! .

http://picasaweb.google.com/aatrvash/Iran02/photo?authkey=WHfBV-cDZ2E#s5096647203900199522  

Then ask yourself what our duty would be if this magnificent land with its 70+ million population- 65% under 30 years of age, rich cultural heritage, amazing beauty and unparalleled natural resources were attacked and destroyed, as has been planned?

Remember, in today's wars, about 80% of casualties are civilians. If there is ever a war launched against Iran, mullahs and mullah-compatibles like Ahmaghinejad will be the last group to be affected.

What is our duty?

Yes .... I know! ....I am as guilty as the next person. Probably most of us will go back to watching re-runs of Friends, Seinfeld and Family Guy, and put the voice of our conscience on mute, until we fall asleep in front of our Flat screen TV,  struggle to sleep at night and next morning drag ourselves to work exhausted and with a splitting headache.

Mehrdad Zangeneh

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General Says Bush Personally Ordered Torture Tactics

More than 100,000 pages of newly released government documents to demonstrate how US military interrogators "abused, tortured or killed" scores of prisoners rounded up since Sept. 11, 2001, including some who were not even expected of having terrorist ties, according to a just-published book.

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Pentagon Used Independent Military Newspaper For Pro-Bush PR Campaign

The Pentagon has engaged in an aggressive U.S. grassroots efforts to drum up support for Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the guise of supporting the troops. A central front in this effort has been the "non-political" America Supports You (ASY) program.

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Action requiered!

Ce mardi 23 octobre 2007, quoique vous fassiez entre 19h55 et 20h00, faites le dans le noir!

 

Lors de sa première édition en février dernier, 3 millions de foyers (soit environ 7 millions de personnes) s'étaient mobilisées en éteignant symboliquement leurs lumières pendant 5 minutes. Depuis, cette opération a été reprise aux États-unis et en Australie.

 

Ce mardi 23 octobre, le WWF France et l'Alliance pour la planète vous invitent à manifester visiblement votre soutien en éteignant vos lumières pendant 5 minutes entre 19h55 et 20h  et à vous joindre au grand rassemblement citoyen contre le dérèglement climatique :

 

mardi 23 octobre à partir de 19h45  au pied de la tour Eiffel

 

A la veille des négociations finales du Grenelle de l'environnement, plus la mobilisation sera forte et visible, plus les chances d'aboutir à des mesures ambitieuses seront élevées!

 

Il faut amplifier la mobilisation, n'hésitez pas à faire tourner autour de vous cet appel !

 

WWF

 

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/grp_test/20071022/ttc-les-internautes-invites-eteindre-la-549fc7d.html

 

[pic] ATM Iranian Style!

This is from a country that Bush says will start the WW III?!

Chomsky about the US media and Cold War II

Will the U.S. response to Iran’s supposed threat heat up Cold War II?

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Oct2007/chomsky.html

By Noam Chomsky 

These are exciting days in Washington, as the government directs its energies to the demanding task of “containing Iran” in what Washington Post correspondent Robin Wright, joining others, calls “Cold War II.” 

During Cold War I, the task was to contain two awesome forces. The lesser and more moderate force was “an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost.” Hence “if the United States is to survive,” it will have to adopt a “repugnant philosophy” and reject “acceptable norms of human conduct” and the “long-standing American concepts of ‘fair play’” that had been exhibited with such searing clarity in the conquest of the national territory, the Philippines, Haiti, and other beneficiaries of “the idealistic new world bent on ending inhumanity,” as the newspaper of record describes our noble mission. The judgments about the nature of the super-Hitler and the necessary response are those of General Jimmy Doolittle, in a critical assessment of the CIA commissioned by President Eisenhower in 1954. They are quite consistent with those of Truman administration liberals, the “wise men” who were “present at the creation,” notoriously in NSC 68 but in fact quite consistently. 

In the face of the Kremlin’s unbridled aggression in every corner of the world, it is perhaps understandable that the U.S. resisted in defense of human values with a savage display of torture, terror, subversion, and violence while doing “everything in its power to alter or abolish any regime not openly allied with America,” as Tim Weiner summarizes the doctrine of the Eisenhower administration in his recent history of the CIA. And just as the Truman liberals easily matched their successors in fevered rhetoric about the implacable enemy and its campaign to rule the world, so did John F. Kennedy, who bitterly condemned the “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy,” and dismissed the proposal of its leader (Khrushchev) for sharp mutual cuts in offensive weaponry, then reacted to his unilateral implementation of these proposals with a huge military build-up. The Kennedy brothers also quickly surpassed Eisenhower in violence and terror, as they “unleashed covert action with an unprecedented intensity” (Wiener), doubling Eisenhower’s annual record of major CIA covert operations, with horrendous consequences worldwide, even a close brush with terminal nuclear war. 

But at least it was possible to deal with Russia, unlike the fiercer enemy, China. The more thoughtful scholars recognized that Russia was poised uneasily between civilization and barbarism. As Henry Kissinger later explained in his academic essays, only the West has undergone the Newtonian revolution and is therefore “deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer,” while the rest still believe “that the real world is almost completely internal to the observer,” the “basic division” that is “the deepest problem of the contemporary international order.” But Russia, unlike third word peasants who think that rain and sun are inside their heads, was perhaps coming to the realization that the world is not just a dream, Kissinger felt. 

Not so the still more savage and bloodthirsty enemy, China, which for liberal Democrat intellectuals at various times rampaged as a “a Slavic Manchukuo,” a blind puppet of its Kremlin master, or a monster utterly unconstrained as it pursued its crazed campaign to crush the world in its tentacles, or whatever else circumstances demanded. The remarkable tale of doctrinal fanaticism from the 1940s to the 1970s, which makes contemporary rhetoric seem rather moderate, is reviewed by James Peck in his highly revealing study of the national security culture, Washington’s China. 

In later years, there were attempts to mimic the valiant deeds of the defenders of virtue from the two villainous global conquerors and their loyal slaves—for example, when the Gipper strapped on his cowboy boots and declared a National Emergency because Nicaraguan hordes were only two days from Harlingen Texas, though, as he courageously informed the press, despite the tremendous odds, “I refuse to give up. I remember a man named Winston Churchill who said, ‘Never give in. Never, never, never.’ So we won’t.” With consequences that need not be reviewed. 

Even with the best of efforts, however, the attempts never were able to recapture the glorious days of Cold War I. But now, at last, those heights might be within reach, as another implacable enemy bent on world conquest has arisen, which we must contain before it destroys us all: Iran. 

Perhaps it’s a lift to the spirits to be able to recover those heady Cold War days when at least there was a legitimate force to contain, however dubious the pretexts and disgraceful the means. But it is instructive to take a closer look at the contours of Cold War II as they are being designed by “the former Kremlinologists now running U.S. foreign policy, such as Rice and Gates” (Wright). 

The task of containment is to establish “a bulwark against Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East,” Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper explain in the New York Times (July 31). To contain Iran’s influence we must surround Iran with U.S. and NATO ground forces, along with massive naval deployments in the Persian Gulf and of course incomparable air power and weapons of mass destruction. And we must provide a huge flow of arms to what Condoleezza Rice calls “the forces of moderation and reform” in the region, the brutal tyrannies of Egypt and Saudi Arabia and, with particular munificence, Israel, by now virtually an adjunct of the militarized high-tech U.S. economy. All to contain Iran’s influence. A daunting challenge indeed. 

And daunting it is. In Iraq, Iranian support is welcomed by much of the majority Shi’ite population. In an August visit to Teheran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met with the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, President Ahmadinejad, and other senior officials, and thanked Tehran for its “positive and constructive” role in improving security in Iraq, eliciting a sharp reprimand from President Bush, who “declares Teheran a regional peril and asserts the Iraqi leader must understand,” to quote the headline of the Los Angeles Times report on al-Maliki’s intellectual deficiencies. A few days before, also greatly to Bush’s discomfiture, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Washington’s favorite, described Iran as “a helper and a solution” in his country. Similar problems abound beyond Iran’s immediate neighbors. In Lebanon, according to polls, most Lebanese see Iranian-backed Hezbollah “as a legitimate force defending their country from Israel,” Wright reports. And in Palestine, Iranian-backed Hamas won a free election, eliciting savage punishment of the Palestinian population by the U.S. and Israel for the crime of voting “the wrong way,” another episode in “democracy promotion.” 

But no matter. The aim of U.S. militancy and the arms flow to the moderates is to counter “what everyone in the region believes is a flexing of muscles by a more aggressive Iran,” according to an unnamed senior U.S. government official—“everyone” being the technical term used to refer to Washington and its more loyal clients. Iran’s aggression consists in its being welcomed by many within the region, and allegedly supporting resistance to the U.S. occupation of neighboring Iraq. 

It’s likely, though little discussed, that a prime concern about Iran’s influence is to the East, where in mid-August, “Russia and China today host Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a summit of a Central Asian security club designed to counter U.S. influence in the region,” the business press reports. The “security club” is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which has been slowly taking shape in recent years. Its membership includes not only the two giants Russia and China, but also the energy-rich Central Asian states Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan. Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was a guest of honor at the August meeting. “In another unwelcome development for the Americans, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov also accepted an invitation to attend the summit,” another step in its improvement of relations with Russia, particularly in energy, reversing a long-standing policy of isolation from Russia. “Russia in May secured a deal to build a new pipeline to import more gas from Turkmenistan, bolstering its dominant hold on supplies to Europe and heading off a competing U.S.-backed plan that would bypass Russian territory.” 

Along with Iran, there are three other official observer states: India, Pakistan, and Mongolia. Washington’s request for similar status was denied. In 2005 the SCO called for a timetable for termination of any U.S. military presence in Central Asia. The participants at the August meeting flew to the Urals to attend the first joint Russia-China military exercises on Russian soil. 

Association of Iran with the SCO extends its inroads into the Middle East, where China has been increasing trade and other relations with the jewel in the crown, Saudi Arabia. There is an oppressed Shi’ite population in Saudi Arabia that is also susceptible to Iran’s influence—and happens to sit on most of Saudi oil. About 40 percent of Middle East oil is reported to be heading East, not West. As the flow Eastward increases, U.S. control declines over this lever of world domination, a “stupendous source of strategic power,” as the State Department described Saudi oil 60 years ago. 

In Cold War I, the Kremlin had imposed an iron curtain and built the Berlin Wall to contain Western influence. In Cold War II, Wright reports, the former Kremlinologists framing policy are imposing a “green curtain” to bar Iranian influence. In short, government-media doctrine is that the Iranian threat is rather similar to the Western threat that the Kremlin sought to contain, and the U.S. is eagerly taking on the Kremlin’s role in the thrilling new Cold War. 

All of this is presented without noticeable concern. Nevertheless, the recognition that the U.S. government is modeling itself on Stalin and his successors in the new Cold War must be arousing at least some flickers of embarrassment. Perhaps that is how we can explain the ferocious Washington Post editorial announcing that Iran has escalated its aggressiveness to a Hot War: “the Revolutionary Guard, a radical state within Iran’s Islamic state, is waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible.” The U.S. must therefore “fight back,” the editors thunder, finding quite “puzzling...the murmurs of disapproval from European diplomats and others who say they favor using diplomacy and economic pressure, rather than military action, to rein in Iran,” even in the face of its outright aggression. The evidence that Iran is waging war against the U.S. is now conclusive. After all, it comes from an Administration that has never deceived the American people, even improving on the famous stellar honesty of its predecessors. 

Suppose that for once Washington’s charges happen to be true, and Iran really is providing Shi’ite militias with roadside bombs that kill U.S. forces, perhaps even making use of some of the advanced weaponry lavishly provided to the Revolutionary Guard by Ronald Reagan in order to fund the illegal war against Nicaragua, under the pretext of arms for hostages (the number of hostages tripled during these endeavors). If the charges are true, then Iran could properly be charged with a minuscule fraction of the iniquity of the Reagan administration, which provided Stinger missiles and other high-tech military aid to the “insurgents” seeking to disrupt Soviet efforts to bring stability and justice to Afghanistan, as they saw it. Perhaps Iran is even guilty of some of the crimes of the Roosevelt administration, which assisted terrorist partisans attacking peaceful and sovereign Vichy France in 1940-41, and had thus declared war on Germany even before Pearl Harbor. 

One can pursue these questions further. The CIA station chief in Pakistan in 1981, Howard Hart, reports that “I was the first chief of station ever sent abroad with this wonderful order: ‘Go kill Soviet soldiers.’ Imagine! I loved it.” Of course “the mission was not to liberate Afghanistan,” Tim Wiener writes in his history of the CIA, repeating the obvious. But “it was a noble goal,” he writes. Killing Russians with no concern for the fate of Afghans is a “noble goal,” but support for resistance to a U.S. invasion and occupation would be a vile act and declaration of war. 

Without irony, the Bush administration and the media charge that Iran is “meddling” in Iraq, otherwise presumably free from foreign interference. The evidence is partly technical. Do the serial numbers on the Improvised Explosive Devices really trace back to Iran? If so, does the leadership of Iran know about the IEDs, or only the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Settling the debate, the White House plans to brand the Revolutionary Guard as a “specially designated global terrorist” force, an unprecedented action against a national military branch, authorizing Washington to undertake a wide range of punitive actions. Watching in disbelief, much of the world asks whether the U.S. military, invading and occupying Iran’s neighbors, might better merit this charge—or its Israeli client, now about to receive a huge increase in military aid to commemorate 40 years of harsh occupation and illegal settlement, and its fifth invasion of Lebanon a year ago. 

It is instructive that Washington’s propaganda framework is reflexively accepted, apparently without notice, in U.S. and other Western commentary and reporting, apart from the marginal fringe of what is called “the loony left.” What is considered “criticism” is skepticism as to whether all of Washington’s charges about Iranian aggression in Iraq are true. It might be an interesting research project to see how closely the propaganda of Russia, Nazi Germany, and other aggressors and occupiers matched the standards of today’s liberal press and commentators. 

The comparisons are of course unfair. Unlike German and Russian occupiers, American forces are in Iraq by right, on the principle, too obvious even to enunciate, that the U.S. owns the world. Therefore, as a matter of elementary logic, the U.S. cannot invade and occupy another country. The U.S. can only defend and liberate others. No other category exists. Predecessors, including the most monstrous, have commonly sworn by the same principle, but again there is an obvious difference: they were wrong and we are right. QED. 

Another comparison comes to mind, which is studiously ignored when we are sternly admonished of the ominous consequences that might follow withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The preferred analogy is Indochina, highlighted in a shameful speech by the president on August 22. That analogy can perhaps pass muster among those who have succeeded in effacing from their minds the record of U.S. actions in Indochina, including the destruction of much of Vietnam and the murderous bombing of Laos and Cambodia as the U.S. began its withdrawal from the wreckage of South Vietnam. In Cambodia, the bombing was in accord with Kissinger’s genocidal orders: “anything that flies on anything that moves”—actions that drove “an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency [the Khmer Rouge] that had enjoyed relatively little support before the Kissinger- Nixon bombing was inaugurated,” as Cambodia specialists Owen Taylor and Ben Kiernan observe in a highly important study that passed virtually without notice, in which they reveal that the bombing was five times the incredible level reported earlier, greater than all allied bombing in World War II. Completely suppressing all relevant facts, it is then possible for the president and many commentators to present Khmer Rouge crimes as a justification for continuing to devastate Iraq. 

But although the grotesque Indochina analogy receives much attention, the obvious analogy is ignored: the Russian withdrawal from Afganistan, which, as Soviet analysts predicted, led to shocking violence and destruction as the country was taken over by Reagan’s favorites, who amused themselves by such acts as throwing acid in the faces of women in Kabul they regarded as too liberated, and who then virtually destroyed the city and much else, creating such havoc and terror that the population actually welcomed the Taliban. That analogy could indeed be invoked without utter absurdity by advocates of “staying the course,” but evidently it is best forgotten. 

Under the heading “Secretary Rice’s Mideast mission: contain Iran,” the press reports Rice’s warning that Iran is “the single most important single-country challenge to...U.S. interests in the Middle East.” That is a reasonable judgment. Given the long-standing principle that Washington must do “everything in its power to alter or abolish any regime not openly allied with America,” Iran does pose a unique challenge, and it is natural that the task of containing Iranian influence should be a high priority. 

As elsewhere, Bush administration rhetoric is relatively mild in this case. For the Kennedy administration, “Latin America was the most dangerous area in the world” when there was a threat that the progressive Cheddi Jagan might win a free election in British Guiana, overturned by CIA shenanigans that handed the country over to the thuggish racist Forbes Burnham. A few years earlier, Iraq was “the most dangerous place in the world” (CIA director Allen Dulles) after General Abdel Karim Qassim broke the Anglo-American condominium over Middle East oil, overthrowing the pro-U.S. monarchy, which had been heavily infiltrated by the CIA. A primary concern was that Qassim might join Nasser, then the supreme Middle East devil, in using the incomparable energy resources of the Middle East for the domestic population. The issue for Washington was not so much access as control. At the time and for many years after, Washington was purposely exhausting domestic oil resources in the interests of “national security,” meaning security for the profits of Texas oil men, like the failed entrepreneur who now sits in the Oval Office. But as high-level planner George Kennan had explained well before, we cannot relax our guard when there is any interfence with “protection of our resources” (which accidentally happen to be somewhere else). 

Unquestionably, Iran’s government merits harsh condemnation, though it has not engaged in worldwide terror, subversion, and aggression, following the U.S. model—which extends to today’s Iran as well, if ABC news is correct in reporting that the U.S. is supporting Pakistan-based Jundullah, which is carrying out terrorist acts inside Iran. The sole act of aggression attributed to Iran is the conquest of two small islands in the Gulf—under Washington’s close ally the Shah. In addition to internal repression—heightened, as Iranian dissidents regularly protest, by U.S. militancy—the prospect that Iran might develop nuclear weapons also is deeply troubling. Though Iran has every right to develop nuclear energy, no one—including the majority of Iranians—wants it to have nuclear weapons. That would add to the threat to survival posed much more seriously by its near neighbors Pakistan, India, and Israel, all nuclear armed with the blessing of the U.S., which most of the world regards as the leading threat to world peace, for evident reasons. 

Iran rejects U.S. control of the Middle East, challenging fundamental policy doctrine, but it hardly poses a military threat. On the contrary, it has been the victim of outside powers for years: in recent memory, when the U.S. and Britain overthrew its parliamentary government and installed a brutal tyrant in 1953, and when the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein’s murderous invasion, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Iranians, many with chemical weapons, without the “international community” lifting a finger—something that Iranians do not forget as easily as the perpetrators. And then under severe sanctions as a punishment for disobedience. 

Israel regards Iran as a threat. Israel seeks to dominate the region with no interference, and Iran might be some slight counterbalance, while also supporting domestic forces that do not bend to Israel’s will. It may, however, be useful to bear in mind that Hamas has accepted the international consensus on a two-state settlement on the international border, and Hezbollah, along with Iran, has made clear that it would accept any outcome approved by Palestinians, leaving the U.S. and Israel isolated in their traditional rejectionism. 

But Iran is hardly a military threat to Israel. And whatever threat there might be could be overcome if the U.S. would accept the view of the great majority of its own citizens and of Iranians and permit the Middle East to become a nuclear-weapons free zone, including Iran and Israel, and U.S. forces deployed there. One may also recall that UN Security Council Resolution 687 of April 3, 1991, to which Washington appeals when convenient, calls for “establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery.” 

It is widely recognized that use of military force in Iran would risk blowing up the entire region, with untold consequences beyond. We know from polls that in the surrounding countries, where the Iranian government is hardly popular—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan—nevertheless large majorities prefer even a nuclear-armed Iran to any form of military action against it. 

The rhetoric about Iran has escalated to the point where both political parties and practically the whole U.S. press accept it as legitimate and, in fact, honorable, that “all options are on the table,” to quote Hillary Clinton and everybody else, possibly even nuclear weapons. “All options on the table” means that Washington threatens war. 

The UN Charter outlaws “the threat or use of force.” The United States, which has chosen to become an outlaw state, disregards international laws and norms. We’re allowed to threaten anybody we want—and to attack anyone we choose. 

 

Washington’s feverish new Cold War “containment” policy has spread to Europe. Washington intends to install a “missile defense system” in the Czech Republic and Poland, marketed to Europe as a shield against Iranian missiles. Even if Iran had nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, the chances of its using them to attack Europe are perhaps on a par with the chances of Europe’s being hit by an asteroid, so perhaps Europe would do as well to invest in an asteroid defense system. Furthermore, if Iran were to indicate the slightest intention of aiming a missile at Europe or Israel, the country would be vaporized. 

Of course, Russian planners are gravely upset by the shield proposal. We can imagine how the U.S. would respond if a Russian anti-missile system were erected in Canada. The Russians have good reason to regard an anti-missile system as part of a first-strike weapon against them. It is generally understood that such a system could never block a first strike, but it could conceivably impede a retaliatory strike. On all sides, “missile defense” is therefore understood to be a first-strike weapon, eliminating a deterrent to attack. A small initial installation in Eastern Europe could easily be a base for later expansion. More obviously, the only military function of such a system with regard to Iran, the declared aim, would be to bar an Iranian deterrent to U.S. or Israel aggression. 

Not surprisingly, in reaction to the “missile defense” plans, Russia has resorted to its own dangerous gestures, including the recent decision to renew long-range patrols by nuclear-capable bombers after a 15-year hiatus, in one recent case near the U.S. military base on Guam. These actions reflect Russia’s anger “over what it has called American and NATO aggressiveness, including plans for a missile-defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland, analysts said” (Andrew Kramer, NYT). 

The shield ratchets the threat of war a few notches higher, in the Middle East and elsewhere, with incalculable consequences, and the potential for a terminal nuclear war. The immediate fear is that by accident or design, Washington’s war planners or their Israeli surrogate might decide to escalate their Cold War II into a hot one—in this case a real hot war. 

 

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GOP Debate: Ron Paul Gets Booed For Saying 70 Percent of Americans Oppose I

It's hard to overstate how awful the Republican Party looks when watching its would-be presidential nominees discuss their ideas for 90 minutes on Fox News. At one point during last night's debate in Orlando, Rudy Giuliani literally blew kisses to the state of the Florida in order to thank the state for helping steal the 2000 election. "You saved us in 2000," Giuliani said. "That was a big one."

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Chinese growth 'to overtake US'

The Bald Headed Eagle Economy being overtaken by The Dragon Economy

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Blair accuses Iran of fuelling 'deadly ideology' of militant Islam

The bastard war criminal is paying back for the blood money he received from his master Bush. This low life belongs to the international criminal court but instead his is free and acting like a world leader. Fucking prick!"Tony Blair has accused Iran of backing and financing terrorist attacks, and warned that the threat of militant Islam is similar to that posed by fascism in the early 20th century."

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Can We Prevent an Iran Attack?

The most pro-Iranian Shiite political party is the one least hostile to the United States. In the battle now underway between the SIIC and Moqtada al-Sadr for control of southern Iraq and of the central government in Baghdad, the United States and Iran are on the same side. The U.S. has good reason to worry about Iran's activities in Iraq. But contrary to the Bush administration's allegations -- supported by both General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in their recent congressional testimony -- Iran does not oppose Iraq's new political order. In fact, Iran is the major beneficiary of the American-induced changes in Iraq since 2003.

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Trouble for EMP (Ericsson)

It seems that they are in trouble! Ericsson AB lost 24% of it’s value in Sweden yesterday!

 

European stocks fall further, hit by Ericsson, banks

 

LONDON, Oct 16 - European shares hit their lowest levels in eight sessions on Tuesday as a profit warning from telecoms equipment maker Ericsson battered the technology sector, while banking stocks also fell.

he pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index declined 0.7 percent to finish at 1,576.0, its lowest close since Oct 4, extending Monday's 0.9 percent fall. The index is still up 6 percent so far this year.

Ericsson tumbled nearly 24 percent while Nokia and Philips also declined.

"I think it's a major disaster and unfortunately it's more than a Q3 issue," said Thomas Langer, analyst at WestLB, which cut its rating on Ericsson shares to a "reduce" from "buy".

This week's losses in European stocks came after equities rose for nearly three weeks and recovered from worries linked to problems in the credit markets and risky U.S. mortgages.

"We remain overweight, though with a slightly reduced exposure, reflecting the short term threat of some market pullback given the very strong performance of recent weeks," Philipp Vorndran, a senior investment strategist at the asset management division of Credit Suisse said in a note.

"Looking ahead to the medium to longer-term, we remain convinced that equities are the best way to participate in capital market growth and we would use any setback as a buying opportunity to add to our favoured positions," he said.

Within equity markets we continue to favour emerging markets, despite what are starting to look like stretched valuations."

U.S. stocks were lower towards the close of European trading hours on disappointing corporate earnings and rising oil prices.

OIL AT NEW RECORD

Among gainers, BP , Total and Royal Dutch Shell all rose as U.S. crude oil hit a new record on tight supplies.

Oil prices jumped 3 percent to nearly $88 a barrel, setting a new record and extending a rally that has added about eight dollars a barrel in a week on tight supplies, strong demand and tension in northern Iraq.

Oil has set a series of records over the past three days.

Among losers, Royal Bank of Scotland , BNP Paribas and Barclays and other banks all fell on persistent concerns about the fallout from the squeeze in credit markets.

Around European markets, Germany's DAX index <.GDAXI> eased 0.1 percent, UK's FTSE 100 index <.FTSE> lost 0.5 percent and France's CAC 40 <.FCHI> shed 0.6 percent.

Swiss drugs maker Roche fell 2.9 percent after the company missed forecasts on lower orders of influenza drug Tamiflu, even though it confirmed its full-year outlook.

 

Researchers: There is hope for nurds "Humans will wed robots"

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots.

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Former President Carter Says US Does Torture: "I Don't Think It, I Know It"

When asked if Bush is lying about torture, Carter said, "The president is self-defining what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners. Yes."

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CNBC GOP Debate: Warmonger McCain Strikes Again

McCain on war with Iran: “A Possibility that is maybe closer to reality than we are discussing tonight.”Nice comment: by tubular "Nothing spreads freedom faster than a 10 kill-a-ton nuclear warhead. Yee Hah, The b-2 bombers and crew can be back in Knob Noster, Missouri in time for the next NASCAR race and all Iranians will be praising Jezus, and eating at Jack-In-The-Box by sundown!"

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Supreme Court sides with Bush - German Citizen that was tortured by the CIA

The U.S. government has fought the lawsuit, arguing the case must be dismissed because it could expose state secrets important to the war on terrorism. A German citizen who was, in the course of the CIA's extraordinary rendition programme, detained, flown to Afghanistan, and interrogated and allegedly tortured by the CIA for several months

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Democrats Seem Ready to Extend Wiretap Powers

Democrats remain nervous that they will be called soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on gathering intelligence. Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess.

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Republicans: The President can attack Iran without Congress approval

Apparently unaware that the Constitution gives only Congress the power to declare war, the GOP candidates answered, by and large, yes. They could attack Iran, if it posed an imminent threat, without consulting the Congress.

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White House Intel Leak to Fox News Tips Off Al Qaeda, Ruins Spy Effort

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

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Egyptian Bloggers Expose Horror of Police Torture

Dozens of amateur videos - mostly from cell phone cameras - have surfaced on blogs within the past year, showing systematic torture in Egyptian police stations. The videos have thrust a once rarely mentioned subject onto the front pages of Cairo newspapers.

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Ethanol from highly polluting olive mill water

Scientists from the Department of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences, at the Faculty of Science of the Hashemite University in Jordan have succeeded in pretreating olive mill wastewater by means of enzymes found in a fungus, in such a way that it becomes a promising substrate for the production of bioethanol.

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Women prisoners languish in Iraq jail without trial

Many of the prisoners, the statement said, were detained because their husbands or sons were suspected of having links to forces resisting U.S. occupation.

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What ever happened to the Anthrax story?

Does anyone remember the stories about the Anthrax madness back in 2001?Why we don’t hear anything about it any more? It just disappeared? * Was it a psy-ops for preparing the public for the invasion of Iraq? * Was it a test run by the terrorists? * Or the US military? * Or was it act of a single lunatic?

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Right Wing Launches Baseless Smear Campaign Against 12 Year Old

Two weeks ago, the Democratic radio address was delivered by a 12-year old Maryland boy named Graeme Frost. Graeme told his story of being involved in a severe car accident three years ago, and having received access to medical care because of the Children's Health Insurance Program.

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The Government Sanctioned Bombing of Appalachia

Thanks to Bush, Big Coal uses 3 million pounds of explosives each day in West Virginia to fuel our addiction to dirty energy.

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Web site gives you anagram of your name!

This is really funny, you put any words in it and it gives you all the possible anagrams with those characters!

 

http://wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html

 

 

Springsteen's New Album Is OUT

Most of the songs are political allegories under the veil of intensely personal stories of relationships struggling to survive.If anyone is still doubting Bruce's intentions, check out his appearance on the "Today Show" last week (thanks to Tennessee Guerrilla Women for the heads up)

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Free online classes from Berkley

http://ie.youtube.com/ucberkeley

Just in case you are interested in some physics and humanitarian classes.

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Chevron's Pipeline Is the Burmese Regime's Lifeline

The barbarous military regime depends on revenue from the nation’s gas reserves and partners such as Chevron, a detail ignored by the Bush administration. Human-rights groups around the world have called for a global day of action on Saturday, Oct. 6, in solidarity with the people of Burma.

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Leading Americans Ask U.S. Military to Refuse to Attack Iran

Country music legend Willie Nelson, literary icon Gore Vidal, Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega, author and radio host Thom Hartmann, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Rabbi Steven Jacobs, and dozens of other prominent Americans have signed a letter asking the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. military personnel to refuse orders to launch an aggressive war on Iran.

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Eternally Vigilant? | ZNet Blogs

The article provides links to 2 different videos that show Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger welcoming two different heads of state to his university's regular World Leaders Forum at the start of two different school years: Sept 2005 and Sept 2007. Comparing how they greeted Musharaf and how they treated Ahmadinejad!

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Cardboard copper used to reduce shoplifting is stolen from store

This is really funny story! They stole the dummy police picture :)

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Roumer: Russia Evacuates Entire Bushehr Staff

This sounds more like psychological warfare than anything else to me.First of all, the source “Khorramshar News Agency” is very dudgy, I have never heard of it before DebkaFile mentioned it. Second, DebkaFile is the front runner for the Israeli Counter Intelligence services that is know for spreading “feeler” stories about Israeli enemies.

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U.S. Troops Bait Iraqis So Snipers Can Kill Them

US soldiers are luring Iraqis to their deaths by scattering military equipment on the ground as "bait", and then shooting those who pick them up, it has been alleged at a court martial. The highly controversial tactic,have been responsible for the deaths of a number of Iraqis who were subsequently classified as enemy combatants and used in statistics to show the "success" of the "surge" in US forces.

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Four Myths Government and Media Use to Scare Us About 'Dictators'

I am not sure if I agree with the whole content of this message, but it is good read anyway....Fog Facts: The Bush White House calls Iran's President Ahmadinejad a "dictator" when he isn't -- part of scaring the public into thinking preemptive war is a good thing.

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FWD: "Breasts not Bombs" protest in Washington DC (front of White House)

Got this from a friend of mine:

Topless anti-war protest near White House Associated Press - September 29, 2007 5:53 AM ET

WHITE HOUSE (AP) - Anti-Iraq-war protesters have staged a small, but eye-catching, demonstration at the White House.

Five women and one man from the group Breasts not Bombs staged the event in Lafayette Park across from the White House. And it wasn't the bombs that were on display.

Spokeswoman Janine Boneparth (BOH'-nuh-pahrt) says going topless is just another way to oppose the Iraq carnage. She says what's obscene is not the protest, but President Bush's conduct of the war.

Nearby Secret Service agents made no move to interveneJ

For pictures go to (it is not work-safe)

http://www.breastsnotbombs.org/index.php?option=co

Bush Draws Fire at Climate Talks - CommonDreams.org

“It is striking that the (Bush) administration at the moment in the international conversation seems to be pretty isolated,” said John Ashton, Britain’s climate envoy. “I think that the argument that we can do this through voluntary approaches is now pretty much discredited internationally.”

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US officials "I hate all Iranians"

There is so much "love" in thins world, specially from the American officials these days! She hates 71 million people for what? For the action of the their government? Britsh MPs visiting the Pentagon to discuss America's stance on Iran and Iraq were shocked to be told by one of President Bush's senior women officials: "I hate all Iranians".

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