Robert Kelley, former chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Former inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency Robert Kelley says the
IAEA includes rumors in its reports about Iran's nuclear energy program.
Kelley said that the November report of the IAEA and its appendix on the alleged military aspect of Iran's nuclear energy program was shocking since it was full of outdated information.
He said that anyone who followed Iran's nuclear energy program and the related reports could figure out that the November report contained old information.
He said that the report
only covered information up until 2003 when CIA announced that Iran had stopped its alleged military nuclear program.
The former IAEA inspector said that the report was also very biased as it only selected and highlighted those explanations that were to the detriment of Iran although it contained other explanations as well that could be given for a subject in question.
© GonzaloLira BlogspotDon't be fooled - it's flexible at the top.
A lot of people - and I am one of them - claim that personal and business freedoms are being eroded as never before. They show as evidence the roll-back of civil liberties, the over-regulation of business, the insistence on "compliance" by the various security agencies of every little rule, no matter how trivial - in short, the over-regulation of American life.
They are right: The U.S. government is guilty of over-regulating individuals and businesses - egregiously so.
On the other hand, a lot of
other people - and I am one of them too - claim that certain persons and corporations act lawlessly as never before. They show as evidence the abuses of power of those in leadership - be it business, government, the military, or the intelligence/security aparatus - and they insist that something has to be done about it, some regulations have to be imposed.
They are right too: The U.S. government is just as guilty of under-regulating certain individuals and businesses as it is of over-regulating other people and businesses.
Obvious question: How can they both be right? How can it be that a few people, a few businesses, a few institutions are getting away with murder - in some cases literally - while most of us are under a crippling yoke of excessive, dishonest, petty and trivial rules and regulations that either serve no purpose, or actively pervert the welfare of our society?
Simple answer: Structural Pliancy.
Let me explain.
Gordon Gekko, the infamously cutthroat capitalist and lead character in Oliver Stone's
Wall Street, captured the heady years of the 1980s with a
single, indelible line:
Greed is good. Today, it is Edward Conard, a friend and former colleague of Mitt Romney's at the private equity firm Bain Capital, who has offered a new mantra for the 1%, a
cri de coeur for the Gekkos of the twenty-first century:
Inequality is good.
In his new book
Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong, Conard argues that gaping income inequality is an indication of a healthy economy, not a sick one. The more unequal we are, Conard
told the
New York Times Magazine, the better off we all will be. Why? Because economies grow and thrive when smart people devise solutions to our thorniest problems by inventing or perfecting goods and services. Conard singled out a group of twentysomethings sitting at a Manhattan coffee shop one afternoon, deriding them as lazy "art-history majors." Those people should be out creating businesses and taking risks, he insisted, because that's how societies prosper. And the way to encourage that risk-taking is the promise of obscene wealth for those who succeed (and, implicitly, dismal poverty for those who don't).
How obscene should that wealth be? In 2008, the top 1%
commanded 21% of all income in America. Conard says our society would improve if only that figure were doubled.
Comment: It is not just the fact that governments and companies are preying upon the poor for profit that should raise alarm. Not just the increasing harshness of penalties and restrictions imposed upon those already living in near impossible conditions. Nor the ever tightening noose of control used to entrap them. Oppressive as that all is, there is more to consider here.
What is perhaps more alarming is the way that America's poorest are being portrayed by politicians and the media to the rest of society. The author nearly had it with "being poor itself is not yet a crime", yet the poor are increasingly depicted as lazy, unworthy of help or consideration. We are encouraged to believe that they all commit crimes, are undeserving of our help or concern and are wholly responsible for their own plight.
The more government 'cracks down' on the poorest, creates 'criminals' of them via a predatory system and highlights those 'crimes' to the rest of the population, the more it propagates the idea of an entire criminal class. In other words, the crackdown is about the propaganda benefit to the psychopathic power structure, making a profit while they're at it is just a perk.
And the aim of all this? To justify inequality, to deflect attention from the monumental crimes of a tiny 'elite' by criminalizing the trivial. To erase any doubts or concerns the public may harbor about the poorest in society - even to encourage fear, hatred, anger and suspicion, to make them 'other'.
It's a distorted view of reality, created by psychopaths, propagated by authoritarians and their followers with the aim of making others think as they do and see as they do. To make an inhumane, uncaring, unjust system acceptable, and to make you think that that is justified, needed, 'normal'.
There's a war on for your mind.
YnetThu, 17 May 2012 16:48 UTC
© unknown
Israel is ranked third among nations perceived as having a negative influence on the world, the BBC's annual poll shows, indicating further decline in the Jewish state's global image.
Only Iran and Pakistan did worse than Israel in the survey.
The poll, undertaken between December 2011 and February 2012, encompassed 24,090 respondents worldwide. Iran took the unflattering top spot, again, with 55% of respondents saying is has a negative influence on the world. Pakistan ranked second (51%), with Israel and North Korea tied for third place (50%).
Last year, 47% of poll respondents said Israel had a negative effect on the world.
© Uriel Sinai/GETTY IMAGES
Should the United States put solving Israel's budget problems ahead of its own?
When it comes to defense spending, it appears that the United States already is.
Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, will meet Thursday in Washington with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to finalize a deal in which the United States will provide
an additional $680 million to Israel over three years. The money is meant to help pay for procuring three or four new batteries and interceptors for Israel's Iron Dome short-range rocket defense program. The funds may also be used for the systems after their deployment, according to the report of the House Armed Services Committee on the fiscal 2013 Defense Authorization bill.
The Iron Dome funds, already in legislation before Congress, will be
on top of the $3.1 billion in military aid grants being provided to Israel in 2013 and every year thereafter through 2017. That deal is part of a 10-year memorandum of understanding agreed to in 2007 during the George W. Bush presidency.
A new chapter has been added to the shale gas industry's eco-terrorism, counterinsurgency and psychological operations saga.
In March,
NBC News investigative reporter
Michael Isikoff revealed that many prominent U.S. public officials
are on the payroll of the
People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a group labeled by the
U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization. These U.S. officials are lobbying hard to remove the MEK from the list.
Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, after the recent
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project decision - a
controversial decision itself - it is a federal crime to provide "material support" for a designated terrorist organization. But legal niceties are apparently of nil concern to those on the dole of the MEK, a list that includes several big name political figures,
according to a report written by former Bush Administration attorney and RAND Corporation analyst
Jeremiah Goulka. A sample is below:
Tam Dalyell
Tam Dalyell, the Father of the House, sparked outrage last night by accusing the Prime Minister of "being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers".
In an interview with
Vanity Fair, the Left-wing Labour MP named
Lord Levy, Tony Blair's personal envoy on the Middle East, Peter Mandelson, whose father was Jewish, and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who has Jewish ancestry, as three of the leading figures who had influenced Mr Blair's policies on the Middle East.Yesterday Mr Dalyell, the MP for Linlithgow, told
The Telegraph: "I am fully aware that one is treading on cut glass on this issue and no one wants to be accused of anti-Semitism but, if it is a question of launching an assault on Syria or Iran . . . then one has to be candid."
He added: "I am not going to be labelled anti-Semitic. My children worked on a kibbutz. But the time has come for candour."
The Prime Minister, Mr Dalyell claimed, was also indirectly influenced by Jewish people in the Bush administration, including Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, and Ari Fleischer, the President's press secretary.
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.comWed, 28 Mar 2012 14:01 UTC
Rudy Giuliani and Maryam Rajavi
Jeremiah Goulka worked as a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department, and then went to work as an analyst with the RAND Corporation, where he was sent to Iraq to analyze, among other things, the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), publishing an
oft-cited study on the group. MEK has been in the news of late because a
high-powered bipartisan cast of former Washington officials have established close ties with the group and have been vocally advocating on its behalf, often in exchange for large payments, despite MEK's having been
formally designated by the U.S. Government as a Terrorist organization. That close association on the part of numerous Washington officials with a Terrorist organization has led to a
formal federal investigation of those officials. Goulka has written and supplied to me two superb Op-Eds on the MEK controversy - one about the group itself and the other explaining why so many prominent Washington officials are openly providing material support to this designated Terror group - and I'm publishing the two Op-Eds below with his consent (as you read them, remember that paid MEK shill Howard Dean actually
called on its leader to be recognized as President of Iran while paid MEK shill Rudy Giuliani has continuously hailed the group's benevolence).
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) - the political arm of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO) often known as the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), a terrorist organization
trained by the United States and
the Israeli Mossad to carry out assassinations and other
covert operations in Iran - has put out another propaganda report dealing with the Iranian nuclear program.
In their latest report, which a top U.S. nuclear expert already said should be treated with great skepticism according to
Haaretz, claims that there are 60 scientists and engineers currently playing a role in the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Of course, in reality, the
United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has confirmed that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons on multiple occasions. Similarly, the United States intelligence community
does not have any evidence indicating that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.
Even
the Israeli military chief Benny Gantz shares this position, making the claims from the NCRI highly suspicious at best.
The NCRI's track record is far from one which would inspire confidence in the accuracy of their claims.
On
May 21, 1975, Col. Paul Shaffer, a military attaché to the US mission in Iran, kissed his wife and two children goodbye, and entered a waiting car with his colleague, Lt. Col. Jack Turner, whose wife was getting their three children ready for school. It was the last time the families of these two US servicemen would see them alive.
As the Iranian driver pulled into a side street to avoid traffic a car blocked their passage and another car rammed them from behind. Three gunmen appeared and fired at the two Americans pointblank, killing them instantly: the three escaped in a third car, leaving a leaflet on the blood-drenched seat. The leaflet denounced "US imperialism" and bore the imprint of the
Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), or "People's Crusaders," a Marxist-Islamist group led by
Massoud and
Maryam Rajavi.
All in all, the MEK killed
6 Americans in Iran: Lt. Col. Louis Lee Hawkins, an Army comptroller, cut down by gunman in front of his Tehran home, and William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard, all employees of Rockwell International. They wounded Air Force Gen. Harold L. Price, and tried and failed to kidnap the US ambassador, Douglas MacArthur II. After the Iranian Revolution, the MEK supported the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, opposed the release of the diplomats - calling a mass demonstration in protest - and demanded their execution.
Comment: And where do these rumours come from? The MEK, Mossad's surrogate terror cell:
Target Iran: America and Israel to Officially Unleash MEK Terrorist Cult