Category Archives: U.S. Politics

Economics, Iran, Sanctions, Terrorism, Turkey, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Oh No, another Iranian-Hezbollah-Turkish-Kurdish Embassy Plot Uncovered……..

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“Intelligence units have warned that the Quds Force, a special unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, plans to send a group to Turkey to carry out a series of demonstrations that may include a bomb attack on the Embassy or Consulate General of the United States. The Turkish Security General Directorate (EGM) has warned police departments in all 81 Turkish provinces that they must be vigilant and remain alert to the existence of such a threat. The intelligence pertaining to the possibility of such an attack was delivered in a secret letter to the information department at Turkey’s General Directorate of Security. The written statement indicates that a team linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard will be sent to Turkey and that it may be planning to bomb the US embassy or consulate general in the country. The Quds Force is infamous for its role in attempting to export Iran’s revolution to other countries through the instigation of chaos and by acting as the overseas branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp.……….”

Haaretz (Israel) has also pulled a rabbit out of its hat by adding Hezbollah to the mix, claiming that Iran’s Lebanese ally was to take part in the plot. The Turkish newspaper Zaman report makes no mention of Hezbollah, but maybe some federal district judge in New York or Washington DC will implicate them, as usual. They may throw in al-Qaeda as co-conspirators for good measure (Saddam Hussein is dead). No mention of a Mexican drug cartel connection, nor anything about Mr. Adel al-Jubair or a Venezuelan hand.

Clearly Republican 2012 candidates for POTUS don’t read the Turkish press, not even Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich. Otherwise the GOP would have called for an immediate declaration of war on all Muslims, including Mr. Perry’s pals in the terrorist Turkish government.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, no doubt, will take the opportunity to declare herself ‘disturbed’ by this ‘disturbing’ report.

An attack on an embassy is a serious act, nearly as much an act of war as blockading a country and preventing its exports and imports, surrounding it with warships and fleets and military bases. And threatening to bomb it. That is why it is highly unlikely that this story is true: the Iranians are not that stupid, or are they?
Cheers
mhg


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GCC, Gulf states, Iran, Oman, OPEC, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

The Next War: Saudis Succeed in Aligning Gulf States with the American-Israeli Position……..

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“Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has advised Saudi officials against making injudicious remarks about boosting oil production amid European countries’ efforts to impose oil sanctions on the Islamic republic. “We expect the countries in the Persian Gulf region, particularly Saudi Arabia, with which we have always called for the best relations, to avoid injudicious discourses,” Salehi said on Tuesday in response to Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who has said that his country will make up for any shortfall in world oil supply caused by sanctions against Iran. “If Saudi officials’ recent remarks are to be regarded as their official view, we advise them to respond more thoughtfully and sensibly to regional issues,” Salehi added. Al-Naimi told CNN on Monday that his country could increase production by two million barrels “almost immediately” if sanctions are imposed on Iran’s oil industry. Iran exports roughly 2.5 million barrels per day. The Saudi minister also expressed his doubts that Iran could successfully close the Strait of Hormuz..……..” Mehr News Agency (Iran)

It looks like the Saudis have succeeded in pushing any hesitant Gulf state toward the American-Israeli position on Iran. With the likely exception of Oman which usually marches to its own music. The Saudis are taking an openly harder line now: the minister said his country is willing to produce about the same amount of crude that Iran would lose in exports. Even more telling, he opined that Iran can’t close the Strait of Hormuz. It sounds like he was inviting the West to go ahead and march toward the destructive regional war that some Gulf oligarchs want the Americans to wage again. The Saudi king and the UAE rulers may get the wish they have expressed in the past (Wikileaks). And there is no doubt that it would be a regional war this time around.
All this is reminiscent of the 1980s, when most GCC Gulf states sided with Saddam Hussein after he invaded Iran. Not only did they supply Saddam with financing and weapons, some of them also sold their own crude oil on behalf of Iraq. Once Iranian’s ability to sell oil was cut, they started the tankers war in the Gulf. That led to confrontations with the U.S navy in the Gulf (of course the Iranians didn’t do well in those confrontations). After that war ended Saddam turned his brotherly neighborly guns south toward the GCC. History may be about to be repeated, but on a larger more destructive scale.
Of course the GCC states have the right to sell as much oil as they want and to whomever they want to. Even to poached former customers of Iran. Still all perfectly legal, more legal than the expected new war that the West may wage in the Gulf. But in time of war and desperation this type of logic is meaningless in reality, and is thrown out the window. The Iranians will correctly see it as an attempt to help the Anglo-American-Israeli war effort against them. The oil embargo is not sanctioned by the United Nations, but is purely American, with Israeli instigation.
From the Iranians’ point of view, they will see the same neighbors again siding with an ‘aggressor’, this time without the convenience of the aggressor being an “Arab” side.
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Europe, France, Muslims, NATO, Turkey, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Texas Governor Talking Turkey: Muslims and Terrorism and NATO and Republican Turkeys and Old Hickory…….

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“Well, obviously when you have a country (Turkey) that is being ruled by, what
many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that
type of activity against their own citizens, then yes. Not only is it
time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to
be in NATO, but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their
foreign aid, to go to zero with it.And you go to zero with
foreign aid for all of those countries. And it doesn’t make any
difference who they are. You go to zero with that foreign aid and then
you have the conversation about, do they have America’s best interest in
mind?………..”

That was Texas governor Rick Perry talking Turkey, addressing a hall apparently full of cheering turkeys. Turks would be surprised to hear that their government is Islamic terrorist.
I wrote here once that the Hitler comparison should be banned by a United Nations resolution, and I was half serious. Now I expect Rick Santorum (and fellow right-wingers at AIPAC) to pick up the slack now and call Turkish prime minister Erdogan a new Hitler, thus joining Nasser and Saddam Hussein and Ahmadinejad in the pantheon.
Funny how Hitler was an Austro-German beer-drinking European from a Catholic background, yet Arab and Muslim leaders have the privilege of being exclusively compared to Hitler in the West. Someone like Andrew Jackson (Old Hickory himself) might object, feeling left out, his Trail of (Indian) Tears demeaned. Many Southern (post-Reconstruction) leaders, governors and “famous” U.S. senators, might feel left out as well. With Hitler’s charred remains still warm in Moscow, the French government of newly American-liberated France massacred thousands of Muslim Algerians who wanted either full equality with the white settlers on their land or independence. Europe of the EU is now full of new little leaders that might be carelessly called would be Hitlers, some of them partners in government (Netherlands and that very same Austria). They also aim their fear-mongering and venom toward people that are mostly Semitic. Again.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Terrorism, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Rick Perry and Afghanistan and the Yellow Rain of Texas…………..

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“GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry is accusing the Obama administration of “over-the-top rhetoric” and “disdain for the military” in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows Marines urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan. No one has been charged in the case, but officials in the U.S. and abroad have called for swift punishment of the four Marines. A military criminal investigation and an internal Marine Corps review are under way. The Geneva Conventions forbid the desecration of the dead…………”

Spoken like a true pandering Republican candidate in 2012.
What Texas governor Perry doesn’t understand is that American soldiers normally don’t urinate on “dead” corpses, not even on enemy corpses. He doesn’t realize there aren’t enough American soldiers who urinate on dead corpses every day, not nearly enough to justify his pandering. The very few imbeciles who might do so are not the type that would vote, especially not in a South Carolina primary. Not even in Texas. Besides, as an aspiring, hopeless, candidate for POTUS, doesn’t he worry about the impact of all this inside and outside the USA? Doesn’t he realize that he insults a couple of million of normal U.S. soldiers who would never think of urinating on another human being?
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Iranian Paranoia, American Paranoia, a World to Conquer…………

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Official Iranian views about the West, especially about the United States, are reciprocated by the other side. There are many plots and conspiracies on each side against the other. Iranian officials and their media are full of foreign plots against their country and the Middle East. American media and especially the (not so hallowed these days) halls of Congress are full of Iranian plots to obliterate Israel and to take over not only the Arab side of the Persian-American Gulf , but the whole Middle East, and also to conquer Latin America. Here are some samples from Iranian news agencies today:

“Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast has said that there is evidence that certain international inspectors, who have travelled to Iran to inspect (nuclear) facilities, have provided terrorist groups with Iranian nuclear scientists’ particulars.”
Mehmanparast means “guest worshiper, or worshiper of the guest in Persian. I suppose it implies unusual hospitality.

“The commander of the Iranian Navy says Iran has always had naval supremacy over the Strait of Hormuz and will not allow the arrogant powers and the Zionist regime to create tension in the region.”

“U.S. President Barack Obama recently announced that his government will soon unveil a new military strategy that switches focus to the Asia-Pacific region. The new focus shows that the United States fears the rise of China, which has enjoyed considerable economic growth over the past ten years.”

“The movements of Western countries’ warships and aircraft carriers in the region are part of the psychological warfare being waged against Iran, a military official said on Sunday.”

“Through sanctions against Iran the United States is seeking to eliminate its economic rivals, particularly China and India, an Iranian Foreign Ministry official argues.”

The above quotes show the degree of Iranian paranoia and suspicion about the West, especially the United States. These are not any wilder than Western (American) suspicions and paranoia and all the recent wild allegations of absurd Iranian plots.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear Iran, Sanctions, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Disturbing Solo Brainstorming: So What is the Goal in Iran?………

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“The Obama administration has been adamant that regime change per se is not the goal of U.S. sanctions. On Wednesday, a Washington Post article initially quoted an anonymous U.S. official as saying “regime change” was the goal, but then was quickly corrected to say “public ire” was the sanctions’ goal, not regime change. Today, a U.S. official told AFP that the goal of the sanctions was to “close down” the Central Bank of Iran (CBI)……..”

This is confusing. There are conflicting reports about the goal in Iran. The three (red) goals given above do not include the ‘nuclear’ program which the Iranians insist is civilian. The Obama administration and the Israelis and the Saudi princes and their Gulf Salfi and Wahhabi faux-liberal admirers insist is for military purposes. There are two reasons not mentioned here for the sanctions and the possible war that may follow: Reason One is to keep the Israeli extreme right-wing government quiet before the 2012 U.S. elections. If you don’t believe that is one important, possibly the most important reason, then I still have that perfect old lame camel for sale. The Likud and its American lobbyists and worshipers can make Mr. Obama’s life miserable between now and November, and they probably will do so anyway.
Reason Two may be to keep Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from being “disturbed”. Lately she has been describing many news, allegations, and rumors about the Iranian mullahs as “disturbing” or that she is ‘disturbed’ about them. The secretary and her spokespersons have been doing that at a ‘disturbing’ rate.
I am sure my confusion, and yours, has not been clarified by this individual solo brainstorming by yours truly.
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Iran, Israel, Mossad, Pakistan, Salafi, Terrorism, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Legalized Bribery, Western Terrorism vs. Islamic Terrorism, a Most pro-Israeli Administration…………

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“In the peculiar American system of legalized bribery, AIPAC has bought most US congressmen by organizing thousands of Jewish and Christian Zionist groups to give money to Congressional campaigns. AIPAC ought to have to register as an agent of a foreign country, but is allowed to so function without any let or hindrance, by the FBI, which really ought to intervene here. The hypocrisy is so thick you could drown in it. The Israel lobbies have managed to configure the Hizbullah party-militia of Lebanon as a “terrorist” organization, when Hizbullah’s major military operations were defensive, aimed at expelling occupying, aggressive Israeli troops from Lebanese territory on which they had unlawfully squatted. But when Mossad (pretending to be Americans) buys Baluchi agents to blow up innocent worshippers in mosques in Zahedan, that is defined away as not terrorism…………”

Also sprach Juan Cole, not unreasonably; in fact quite reasonably.
All these revelations only reinforce deeply ingrained Iranian suspicions that go back almost six decades. Jundullah have committed some gruesome murders against Iranian civilians, like beheadings and slitting throats, Salafi al-Qaeda style crimes. It is not clear yet if it was the CIA that recruited the Salafi terrorists or the friendly Israelis in American disguise (nice friends, no?). But it all reminds the mullahs and ordinary Iranians of the American-British plot that ended their democracy in August 1953. That plot, Operation Ajax, handed absolute power first to the shah, then it lay the seeds for the 1979 revolution, the embassy hostage-taking, and the ongoing crisis.
As for the Israelis, if they were behind it, they certainly will not be punished, not even reprimanded. Not when they have the American Knesset running the show in Washington DC, and a terrified Democrat administration turning a blind eye in a way George W. Bush would never have allowed. This is truly the most pro-Israeli administration in American history. Unfortunately, pro-Israeli also means extreme pro-right-wing Likud.
Cheers
mhg


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Economics, Iran, Iraq, Israel, NATO, Sanctions, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Blockades from Cuba to Iraq to Iran, Netanyahu as King of NATO and the Confederacy ……………

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“But will an oil embargo work? Not as far as oil analyst Paul Stevens of London-based Chatham House is concerned. “If you look at history, oil embargoes have never, ever worked and never, ever been effective…so it’s not going to work,” he said. “It’s just going to cause a great deal of disruption.” Stevens says EU countries that depend on Iranian oil can find new suppliers – like the Gulf states. But Iran may also find new buyers for its oil in Asia. Iranian officials have downplayed the impact of Western measures – including new U.S. sanctions that could reduce Iran’s ability to sell oil and other exports. But Tehran also has threatened to close the critically important Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf………… For his part, Stevens of Chatham House doubts Iran will go through with its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz – in part because it relies on the waterway for its own oil exports. But he believes the deepening standoff between Tehran and Washington, in particular, is creating a dangerously unstable situation. “By trying to limit Iran’s oil exports, it [Washington] is essentially escalating the situation into what could very rapidly become a crisis,“………”

Every time Mr. Netanyahu threatens to wage his own war, Western powers (mainly the Obama administration) panic and tighten their sanctions, really a blockade, against Iran. It is Mr. Netanyahu, a supreme hustler if there ever was one, who calls the shots for the West over many things Middle Eastern, from Palestine to Iran. He exercises his veto power over the two branches of the American government. He has a direct route (hotline) to the leadership of the Congress, which is willing to kiss his posterior in a way he would never dream the Israeli Knesset ever would. He would never get a standing ovation in the original Knesset in Jerusalem. He is fawned upon so much by the American right (and some on the left) it is a wonder he doesn’t immigrate back to the USA and run for office in Georgia or Alabama or Tara.

Boycotts and sanctions rarely work, they never worked against Cuba (been over fifty years) or Iraq (led to an invasion). They do hurt the people. The Cuban boycott caused economic hardships, and the misery it caused only pushed many thousands of Cubans to leave their homeland and cross to Miami. It gave many U.S. administrations the alibi to blame Cuban misery completely on the Castro regime (the Castro regime was partly responsible for erecting inflexible out-dated Soviet-style institutions and stifling dissent). The Cuban boycott has no justification anymore. It has been sustained for decades only by one political pressure group in the United States and can be summarized by a seven-letter word: FLORIDA.
 
The Iranian boycott is even tougher than the Cuban one, it is nearly a blockade by all Western powers that could lead to a war. Yet it is also unlikely to work against Iran: the theocratic regime in Tehran is as confident of being on the right, as committed to not buckle in the face of foreign threats, as Castro was for so many decades. They are as ideologically stubborn, albeit at a stiff economic cost to their people. Besides, they have something the communist Castro has never had since at least July of 1956: they believe divinity (G-O-D) is with them, although I am not sure about h-i-s-t-o-r-y.

Then there are the petroleum and the gas fields. They possibly have the world’s second largest petroleum reserves and possibly the world’s largest gas reserves. Meaning they feel they can outwit and out-wait the West and its blockade. Besides, the way the petroleum markets work makes it hard to distinguish Iranian or Angolan petroleum: there will always be demand for Iranian crude and gas, probably at discounted prices. Both have been mainly sellers’ markets for some time, as countries try to secure sources of supply.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, Muslims, Sanctions, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Panetta the Wild Political Animal: repeating Iraq in Iran?………..

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“Panetta calls for further economic pressure on Iran. The US Defence secretary believes Iran is laying the groundwork for making nuclear weapons but is not yet building a bomb. Leon Panetta called for continued diplomatic and economic pressure to persuade Tehran not to take that step. As he has done previously, Mr Panetta cautioned against a unilateral strike by Israel against Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying the action could trigger Iranian retaliation against US forces in the region. “We have common cause here” with Israel, he said.
…………”

“We have common cause here“: it is more than a common cause. In fact U.S. Middle East foreign policy as regards the eastern Mediterranean and Iran is widely perceived in the region to be made by Israel, through the supremacy of its lobbyists in the U.S. Congress. The Obama administration has been relegated to rubber stamping it.


Leon Panetta is a political animal if he is anything: after all, he was White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton. You can’t get more political than that. He is talking as a politico here, not as US Secretary of Defense or a statesman. The sanctions against Iran are becoming nearly as tight as a blockade. The financial sector is sanctioned by the US Knesset Congress. The petroleum sector is about to be blocked by the US government and Western Europe. What might eventually be left un-blocked are food and medicine. In other words another Iraq blockade imposed solely by the West. We all know what the next step was in Iraq.
Fear and the desperate need for votes next November. That explain Penetta’s call for “further economic pressure on Iran“. We’ve come a long way from Mr. Obama’s 2009 speech to Muslims and Arabs in Cairo.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, Middle East, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

American Politics: Yellow Rose of Texas to the Borders of Mesopotamia and Persia……….

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Yellow Rose of Texas

“There’s a yellow rose in Texas that I am gonna see
Nobody else could miss her, not half as much as me
She cried so when I left her, it like to broke my heart
And if I ever find her we never more will part
She’s the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew
Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew
You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosa Lee
But the Yellow Rose of Texas is the only girl for me

Where the Rio Grande is flowin’, and starry skies are bright
She walks along the river in the quiets of her night
I know that she remembers when we parted long ago
I promised to return and not to leave her so
She’s the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew
Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew
You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosa Lee
But the Yellow Rose of Texas is the only girl for me………” (Mitch Miller version)

Watched bits of the weekend Republican debate-acles in New Hampshire. Texas governor Rick (Boots on the Ground) Perry, who apparently has a lot missing upstairs, is promising to return to Iraq. The governor will now join John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and a gaggle of Republican saboteur-senators in re-invading Iraq. (The proper conservative way to say it is Eyeraq: Iraq sounds suspiciously foreign and liberal and even wishy-washy European).
They want to re-invade Eyeraq in order to keep Eyeran, the evil enemy du jour, out. So these senators and the governor will set up camp in al-Anbar or Diyali or Baghdad and try to proselytize, convert the former Ba’athists and current Shi’as to the joys of free unfettered unregulated unaccountable jungle markets of the sort that gave us the crash of 2008 and the ongoing lousy economy. Each will give their own version, be it the outlier convert right-wing Catholicism (Gingrich), outlier-er weird twilight-zone Catholicism (Santorum), Baptism (Boots-on-the-Ground Perry), WTF hybrid Christianity (John McCain), and the violent settler version of Judaism (Lieberman).
I wish them the worst of luck in staying at their new outpost in Eyeraq. I would also continue to urge them to make tat pilgrimage to the Eyeraq-Eyeran border, dip a few toes on the other side of the border, tease the scowling mullahs to make a grab. The ayatollahs may wish to powwow, have speaks, parley, chew the fat, shoot the breeze, with them on regional issues. In the warm privacy of the notorious Evin in the heart of Tehran.

(Something about Texas is not kosher, has bothered me in recent years. How come one of the biggest richest states with great universities and many good people, a state that elected Lyndon Johnson, now elects such a fuckhead as governor? Oh, and Texas has produced some of the greatest folk songs).
Cheers
mhg


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