World events have taken an interesting turn recently, with the Goldstone report, which wreaked havoc in the beginning of the week being nearly completely overshadowed by Iran’s revelation of another nuclear facility, according to diplomats in Vienna on September 25.

The Iran nuclear threat – although theater is a more suitable term – was highlighted repeatedly, first by US President Barack Obama during a UN speech on September 23, then again by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the next day. The latter came armed with maps and relentlessly provoked Holocaust memories, following the ever so predictable, albeit insensitive and deceptive pattern.

This charade was meant to distract from the nearly 600 page UN report, prepared by South Africa judge Richard Goldstone and others, dedicated mostly to Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Confirming that Israel wantonly used weapons, including illegal weapons, against a defenseless civilian population in Gaza and going so far to say that Israel did not only commit war crimes, but indeed may have also committed crimes against humanity, the findings of the report were all set by the wayside. The report was utterly rebuked by Netanyahu and his ilk, arrogantly disregarded and shelved.

Concurrently, Israel’s official statement regarding the IAEA’s pressure on Israel to sign on to the Non-Proliferation Treaty was that Israel “deplored” such a notion. The Israeli conceit may be redundant, but is as ever infuriating.

Many of Israel’s devoted supporters accused the Goldstone mission of fabricating conclusions before the investigations even came to a close.

And so yet again, Israel unhesitatingly established that they it’s above the law, promptly and successfully turning the world’s attention to the greater menace: Iran.

It seems that President Obama is also learning some painful lessons regarding the balance of power between the US and Israel, going into negotiations in Washington this past week – along with Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas – with a strong stance for the complete freeze of all settlement activity, and ending with clear and potent calls for the Palestinians to continue down the road of diplomacy inspite of Israel’s refusal to consider the option of adhering to international law. In the words of Israeli writer, Uri Avnery, “No point denying it: in the first round of the match between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama was beaten.”

Learning from past history, one can hardly be optimistic to expect a US victory in the second round, or anytime soon for that matter.

And thereafter, the Israeli cue was emulated, and Obama followed it to the letter. Israel’s recent use of illegal weapons on civilians, its arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons and its refusal to consider disarmament paled in comparison to the potential threat that could arise should Iran seek a nuclear weapon some time in the future.

Obama’s words to Ahmedinejad and the people of Iran at the UN were decisive: “They are going to have to make a choice: Are they willing to go down the path to greater prosperity and security for Iran, giving up the acquisition of nuclear weapons … or will they continue down a path that is going to lead to confrontation.”

This is sure to ignite a war of words, to the pleasure of Netanyahu and his extremist government.

But the outcome of this duel will certainly exceed the realm of words.

It seems that Obama’s rebuke and Netanyahu’s declarations could actually lead to the detriment of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and indeed to us all, by encouraging nations who until this point do not possess nuclear weapons to expedite the creation of their own arsenal. After all, what we have learned from this episode is that nations who do not yet possess weapons of mass destruction had better get on the band-wagon and make some, for it seems that without them, they are nothing more than sitting ducks.

How ironic it is, and what a sweet-talker Netanyahu is, to successfully divert the worlds eye, ears and conscience away from what he has indeed done, to the dangerous notion of what another man with up until this point can only be branded for fiery speeches, could do some time in the future.

As for Ahmedinejad’s crusade for Iran, it could be very possible that in the end, the ones who will pay for his bold declarations will be as usual, the Palestinians, who after the scourge of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead nearly one year ago, still await the bare necessities to rebuild, still thirst for clean water and basic sustenance. Netanyahu has been tireless at drawing parallels between Iran and Gaza, presenting them both to the world as dire threats to the existence of the Jewish State. When addressing the UN in New York on September 24, he branded Iran once again, exhorting that. “The struggle against Iran pits civilization against barbarism. This Iranian regime is fueled by extreme fundamentalism. What starts as attacks on Jews always ends up engulfing others. This regime embodies the extremes of Islamic fundamentalism.”

Interesting words from a man whose former administration and current administration could very well face the International Criminal Court for the endorsing the carrying out of crimes against humanity.

Such utterances make one wonder, just who in the world are we to trust, and who in the world are we to fear?

For the time being however, one can only hope that the international community reject all attempts to be blinded by Netanyahu’s fear mongering, and insist on a stern and decisive investigation into the alleged war crimes in Gaza, as presented in the Goldstone report so that the real culprits, not the imagined ones in Tehran, pay for their heinous crimes against the defenseless people of the Strip.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net)  is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, “The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle” (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), now available for pre-orders on Amazon.com.

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Iran vs Israel: What The Media Wants You To Forget

The corporate media have been given their orders to throw the focus back on to Iran.

Here is a recap of what they are trying to make you forget.

1. Last Spring, Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington’s chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel refused.

2. The United Nations passed a resolution calling on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.

3. The IAEA asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to submit to inspections. Israel refused.

4. Iran’s formal notification to the IAEA of the planned construction of the backup fuel-rod facility underscores that Iran is playing by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Iran has signed.

5. Iran allows IAEA inspections of all its facilities.

6. Contrary to face-saving claims, it appears that the US and Israel were both caught off guard by Iran’s announcement. The reasoning is simple. Had the US or Israel announced the existence of he new facility before Iran’s notified the IAEA, it would have put Iran on the defensive. As it is now, the US and Israel seem to be playing catch up, casting doubt on the veracity of Israel’s claims to “know” that Iran is a nuclear threat.

7. The IAEA and all 16 United States Intelligence Agencies are unanimous in agreement that Iran is not building and does not possess nuclear weapons.

8. In 1986, Mordachai Vanunu blew the whistle and provided photographs showing Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons factory underneath the reactor at Dimona.

9. Israel made the same accusations against Iraq that it is making against Iran, leading up to Israel’s bombing of the power station at Osirik. Following the invasion of 2003, international experts examined the ruins of the power station at Osirik and found no evidence of a clandestine weapons factory in the rubble.

10. The United Nations has just released the Goldstone Report, a scathing report which accuses Israel of 37 specific war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza earlier this year. Israel has denounced the report as “Anti-Semitic (even though Judge Goldstone is himself Jewish), and the United States will block the report from being referred to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, thereby making the US Government an accessory after-the-fact.

We all need to be Joe Wilson right now. We need to stand up and scream, “LIAR!” at every politician and every talking media moron that is pushing this war in Iran. And we need to keep dong it until they get the message that we will not be deceived any more.

Israel wants to send your kids off to die in Iran, and YOU are the only one that can stop them.

Please forward this comment to your social networks.

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Another War in the Works
America Is Led and Informed by Liars

by Paul Craig Roberts

Does anyone remember all the lies that they were told by President Bush and the “mainstream media” about the grave threat to America from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? These lies were repeated endlessly in the print and TV media despite the reports from the weapons inspectors, who had been sent to Iraq, that no such weapons existed.

The weapons inspectors did an honest job in Iraq and told the truth, but the mainstream media did not emphasize their findings. Instead, the media served as a Ministry of Propaganda, beating the war drums for the US government.

Now the whole process is repeating itself. This time the target is Iran.

As there is no real case against Iran, Obama took a script from Bush’s playbook and fabricated one.

First the facts: As a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, Iran’s nuclear facilities are open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which carefully monitors Iran’s nuclear energy program to make certain that no material is diverted to nuclear weapons.

The IAEA has monitored Iran’s nuclear energy program and has announced repeatedly that it has found no diversion of nuclear material to a weapons program. All 16 US intelligence agencies have affirmed and reaffirmed that Iran abandoned interest in nuclear weapons years ago.

In keeping with the safeguard agreement that the IAEA be informed before an enrichment facility comes online, Iran informed the IAEA on September 21 that it had a new nuclear facility under construction. By informing the IAEA, Iran fulfilled its obligations under the safeguards agreement. The IAEA will inspect the facility and monitor the nuclear material produced to make sure it is not diverted to a weapons program.

Despite these unequivocal facts, Obama announced on September 25 that Iran has been caught with a “secret nuclear facility” with which to produce a bomb that would threaten the world.

The Obama regime’s claim that Iran is not in compliance with the safeguards agreement is disinformation. Between the end of 2004 and early 2007, Iran voluntarily complied with an additional protocol (Code 3.1) that was never ratified and never became a legal part of the safeguards agreement. The additional protocol would have required Iran to notify the IAEA prior to beginning construction of a new facility, whereas the safeguards agreement in force requires notification prior to completion of a new facility. Iran ceased its voluntary compliance with the unratified additional protocol in March 2007, most likely because of the American and Israeli misrepresentations of Iran’s existing facilities and military threats against them.

By accusing Iran of having a secret “nuclear weapons program” and demanding that Iran “come clean” about the nonexistent program, adding that he does not rule out a military attack on Iran, Obama mimics the discredited Bush regime’s use of nonexistent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” to set up Iraq for invasion.

The US media, even the “liberal” National Public Radio, quickly fell in with the Obama lie machine. Steven Thomma of the McClatchy Newspapers declared the non-operational facility under construction, which Iran reported to the IAEA, to be “a secret nuclear facility.”

Thomma, reported incorrectly that the world didn’t learn of Iran’s “secret” facility, the one that Iran reported to the IAEA the previous Monday, until Obama announced it in a joint appearance in Pittsburgh the following Friday with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkoszy.

Obviously, Thomma has no command over the facts, a routine inadequacy of “mainstream media” reporters. The new facility was revealed when Iran voluntarily reported the facility to the IAEA on September 21.

Ali Akbar Dareini, an Associated Press writer, reported, incorrectly, over AP: “The presence of a second uranium-enrichment site that could potentially produce material for a nuclear weapon has provided one of the strongest indications yet that Iran has something to hide.”

Dareini goes on to write that “the existence of the secret site was first revealed by Western intelligence officials and diplomats on Friday.” Dareini is mistaken. We learned of the facility when the IAEA announced that Iran had reported the facility the previous Monday in keeping with the safeguards agreement.

Dareini’s untruthful report of “a secret underground uranium enrichment facility whose existence has been hidden from international inspectors for years” helped to heighten the orchestrated alarm.

There you have it. The president of the United States and his European puppets are doing what they do best – lying through their teeth. The US “mainstream media” repeats the lies as if they were facts. The US “media” is again making itself an accomplice to wars based on fabrications. Apparently, the media’s main interest is to please the US government and hopefully obtain a taxpayer bailout of its failing print operations.

Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a rare man of principle who has not sold his integrity to the US and Israeli governments, refuted in his report (September 7, 2009) the baseless “accusations that information has been withheld from the Board of Governors about Iran’s nuclear programme. I am dismayed by the allegations of some Member states, which have been fed to the media, that information has been withheld from the Board. These allegations are politically motivated and totally baseless. Such attempts to influence the work of the Secretariat and undermine its independence and objectivity are in violation of Article VII.F. of the IAEA Statute and should cease forthwith.”

As there is no legal basis for action against Iran, the Obama regime is creating another hoax, like the non-existent “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.” The hoax is that a facility, reported to the IAEA by Iran, is a secret facility for making nuclear weapons.

Just as the factual reports from the weapons inspectors in Iraq were ignored by the Bush Regime, the factual reports from the IAEA are ignored by the Obama Regime.

Like the Bush Regime, the Middle East policy of the Obama Regime is based in lies and deception.

Who is the worst enemy of the American people, Iran or the government in Washington and the media whores who serve it?

September 29, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail], a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.

Copyright © 2009 Creators Syndicate

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More Lies, More Deception

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars
September 28, 2009

“What does imperialism mean? It means the assertion of absolute force over  others.” Robert Lowe 1878

The G-20 ministers declared their meeting in Pittsburgh a success, but as Rob Kall reports in OpEdNews.com, the meeting’s main success was to turn Pittsburgh into “a ghost-town, emptied of workers and the usual pedestrians, but filled to overflowing with over 12,000 swat cops from all over the US.”

f Ahmadinejad’s speech is reported by the US print and TV media, statements will be taken out of context and used to enrage the conservatives and Christian Zionists in order to unify them behind the Obama/Israeli assault on Iran.

This is  “freedom and democracy”at work. The leaders of the G-20 countries, which account for 85% of the world’s income, cannot meet in an American city without 12,000 cops outfitted like the emperor’s storm troopers in Star Wars. And the US government complains about Iran.

The US government’s complaints about Iran have reached a new level of shrillness. On September 25 Obama declared: “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.” The heads of America’s British, French, and German puppet states added their two cents worth, giving the government of Iran three months to meet the “international community’s demands”to give up its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty to nuclear energy. In case you don’t know, the term “international community”is shorthand for the US, Israel, and Europe, a handful of arrogant and rich countries that oppress the rest of the world.

Who is breaking the rules? Iran or the United States?

Iran is insisting that the US government abide by the non-proliferation treaty that the US originated and pushed and that Iran signed. But the US government, which is currently engaged in three wars of aggression and has occupying troops in a number of other countries, insists that Iran, which is invading and occupying no country, cannot be trusted with nuclear energy capability, because the capability might in the future lead to nuclear weapon capability, like Israel’s, India’s, and Pakistan’s–all non-signatories to the nuclear proliferation treaty, countries that, unlike Iran, have never submitted to IAEA inspections. Indeed, at this very moment the Israeli government is screaming and yelling “anti-Semite”to the suggestion that Israel submit to IAEA inspections. Iran has submitted to the IAEA inspections for years.

In keeping with its obligations under the treaty, on September 21 Iran disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is constructing another nuclear facility. The British prime minister Gordon Brown confused Iran’s disclosure with “serial deception,”and declared, “We will not let this matter rest.”

What matter? Why does Gordon Brown think that Iran’s disclosure to the IAEA is a deception. Does the moronic UK prime minister mean that Iran is claiming to be constructing a plant but is not, and thus by claiming one is deceiving the world?

Not to be outdone in idiocy, out of Obama’s mouth jumped Orwellian doublespeak: “The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.”

The incongruity blows the mind. Here is Obama, with troops engaged in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan demanding that a peaceful nation at war with no one demonstrate “its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.”

It is the US government and its NATO puppet states, and militarist Israel, of course, that need to be held accountable to international law. Under international law the US, its NATO puppets, and Israel are war criminal governments. There is no doubt about it. The record is totally clear. The US, Israel, and the NATO puppet states have committed military aggression exactly as did Germany’s Third Reich, and they have murdered large numbers of civilians. Following the Fuhrer’s script, “the great democratic republics”have justified these acts of lawlessness with lies and deceptions.

Rudy Giuliani, the former US Attorney who framed high profile victims in order to gain name recognition for a political career, keynoted a rally against Iran in New York on September 25. According to Richard Silverstein at AlterNet, the rally was sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and an organization with connections to an Iranian terror organization (probably financed by the US government) that calls for the violent overthrow of the Iranian government.

The efforts to build pressure for acts of war against Iran continue despite the repeated declaration from the IAEA that there is no sign of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and despite the reaffirmation by US intelligence agencies that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago.

Meanwhile, the US and Israeli governments, who are so solicitous of international law and holding accountable countries that violate it, have moved to prevent the report of Judge Richard Goldstone from reaching the UN Security Council.

Why?

Judge Goldstone’s report found Israel guilty of war crimes in its massive military assault against civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

The continuous efforts of the world’s two militarist-aggressor states–the United States and Israel–to demonize Iran was addressed by Ahmadinejad in his speech to the UN General Assembly (September 23). Ahmadinejad spoke of the assault on human dignity and spiritual values by the selfish material interests of the US and its puppet states. Seeking hegemony “under the mantle of freedom,”the US and its puppets use “the ugliest methods of intimidation and deceit”to disguise that they are “the first who violate”the fundamental principles that they espouse and apply to others.

Why, Ahmadinejad asked the UN General Assembly, do the countries of the world sit there while Israel murders and dispossesses the Palestinian people?

Why, asked Ahmadinejad, do the countries of the world sit there while the US, from thousands of miles away, sends troops to the Middle East, “spreading war, bloodshed, aggression, terror and intimidation in the whole region,”while blaming the countries that are suffering the West’s naked aggression?

Ahmadinejad told the General Assembly what most of the UN representatives already know, that “selfishness and insatiable greed have taken the place of such humanitarian concepts as love, sacrifice, dignity, and justice. . . . Lies have taken the place of honesty; hypocrisy has replaced integrity, and selfishness has taken the place of sacrifice. Deception in foreign affairs is called foresight and statesmanship, looting the wealth of other nations is called development efforts; occupation is said to be a gift that promotes freedom and democracy; and defenseless nations are subjected to repression in the name of defending human rights.”

It could not be put any clearer. However, if Ahmadinejad’s speech is reported by the US print and TV media, statements will be taken out of context and used to enrage the conservatives and Christian Zionists in order to unify them behind the Obama/Israeli assault on Iran.

America will not be satisfied until, like Rome, she has more enemies and more wars than she can survive.

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