US Speeds Up Preparations for Iran War

Well, the NYT headline actually says "U.S. Speeding Up Missile Defenses in Persian Gulf", but we all know why the US is supplying "Missile Defenses" to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, and it's NOT the stated reason: "part of a coordinated administration strategy to increase pressure on Iran" or "also partly intended to counter the impression that Iran is fast becoming the most powerful military force in the Middle East, to forestall any Iranian escalation of its confrontation with the West if new sanctions are imposed. In addition, the administration is trying to show Israel that there is no immediate need for military strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile facilities, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity."

The NYT almost had it though: "to forestall any Iranian escalation of its confrontation with the West if new sanctions are imposed." Just replace that phrase with 'to forestall any Iranian reactions to a US or Israeli attack'!


The US/UK/Israeli axis of evil has been winding up the threats in recents weeks and months, but the last few days have seen a massive propaganda effort, including by Blair at the Chilcott whitewash.

We have what The Hill calls a 'bipartisan group of senators' but which I call a group of bloodsucking crooks demanding "crippling sanctions" against Iran.

Another consummate liar and crook, Hillary Clinton has started threatening China over Iran, which is really quite the most hilarious a piece of chutzpah I think I've ever come across. Perhaps someone ought to remind her that China virtually owns the US, and could seriously hurt it, as the Chinese reaction to US arms sales to Taiwan showed just recently. Even more amusing when we consider how she went pleading to Chinese just last February "to continue buying US Treasury bonds"

Back to Iran; the latest threats from the best Congress money can buy are now to Iran's fuel suppliers. Note how the Washington Post Propaganda Pamphlet explains how this is "aimed at pressuring Tehran to give up its nuclear program". Bullshit! We have seen in the 1990's in Iraq how sanctions were used to destroy an entire country (and in particular its water supply) while killing half a million children in one of the most brutal West-imposed genocides of recent times. But for the US 'the price was worth it'.

Apart from the "deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf," the US is also "placing special ships off the Iranian coast...Aegis cruisers on patrol in the Persian Gulf at all times. Those cruisers are equipped with advanced radar and antimissile systems designed to intercept medium-range missiles.". Note that this buildup is merely "defensive" by nature! Why do they need defences? Does anyone who is NOT a raving lunatic really think that Iran will start a war of aggression on the rest of the Gulf states? Or is it much more likely that if Iran was attacked by Israel or the US (the same thing), it would retaliate targeting US military installations in the Gulf states mentioned?

And note the capabilities of the Aegis Cruisers: "Built to be employed in support of Carrier Battle Groups, Amphibious Assault Groups, as well as interdiction and escort missions, their mission is two-fold. First, to prevent the employment of weapons against friendly forces by destroying enemy missiles, aircraft, submarines and surface ships. Second, to conduct offensive actions against the enemy through the employment of long range anti-ship and land attack missiles, and through naval gunfire support."

Lets have a look at those installations:

Bahrain

UAE

Kuwait

Qatar

Oman

As the NYT reported in 2005 "the military has more than $1.2 billion in construction under way or on the drawing board to upgrade 16 air bases throughout the Middle East and Southwest Asia."

Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), stated: “[T]he countries of the Arabian Peninsula are key partners … CENTCOM ground, air, maritime, and special operations forces participate in numerous operations and training events, bilateral and multilateral, with our partners from the Peninsula. We help develop indigenous capabilities for counter terrorism; border, maritime, and critical infrastructure security; and deterring Iranian aggression. As a part of all this, our FMS [foreign military sales] and FMF [foreign military financing] programs are helping to improve the capabilities and interoperability of our partners’ forces. We are also working toward an integrated air and missile defense network for the Gulf. All of these cooperative efforts are facilitated by the critical base and port facilities that Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE [United Arab Emirates], and others provide for U.S. forces.”

For a more detailed look Nick Turse has an excellent  piece here:"Out of Iraq, Into the Gulf".

Even France is at it.

If Iran were attacked by either the US or Israel, Iran would be within its rights to retaliate. And retaliating against US bases would be competely logical and legitimate.

The swine who sold us swine flu - Bryan Hemming

Here's something interesting for you to mull. Right since the first outbreak of swine flu in Mexico early last year I can't remember one pig being tested positive for it. I can't even recall any tests being done on pigs.

The transportation of live pigs and pork products from country to country has never been restricted or curtailed - as was the case with birds when avian flu broke out, and cows when CJD, and foot and mouth were around.

Pigs have never been slaughtered to prevent the disease spreading, as far as I know, nor have they been vaccinated with Tamilflu (now there's a golden opportunity Rumsfeld missed). So do pigs suffer from swine flu or don't they? And if they do, why can't we catch it from pigs now when someone must've caught it from a pig before?

Did I jump a page in the swine flu saga? Have I missed the report that discovered swine flu never came from pigs in the first place, or has someone been pulling my pisser? If swine flu came from pigs I'd expect to read about it somewhere, or if it didn't, I'd expect read that. Or to hear it called something else like donkey flu.

Of course, if it didn't come from swine it must have come from something else, like a biolab, for instance, as more and more people are beginning to suspect. So perhaps it came from swine after all.

The Daily Mail should be informed!

The Kelly cover-up: Hutton blinks

Panicked by the reaction to his Dr. Kelly cover-up, Hutton blinked. According to the Guardian he now says:

"I requested that the postmortem report should not be disclosed for 70 years as I was concerned that the publication of that report would cause [Kelly's] daughters and his wife further and unnecessary distress," Hutton said.
"I consider that the disclosure of the report to doctors and their legal advisers for the purposes of legal proceedings would not undermine the protection which I wished to give."

Update:

More details here:

"'Much of the material in the post-mortem report had been given in oral evidence in public at the inquiry and substantial parts of that evidence had been set out in my report<" he said.
''However, I consider that the disclosure of the report to doctors and their legal advisers for the purposes of legal proceedings would not undermine the protection which I wished to give to Dr Kelly's family, provided that conditions were imposed restricting the use and publication of the report to such proceedings, and I have written to the Ministry of Justice to this effect.''
"

Chris Hedges: Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction

Yet another superbly accurate analysis from Chris Hedges. This man has an uncanny knack of putting into words exactly what I think, but can't put into words.

Thank you, Mr. Hedges.

Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d’état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.
The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.
Much of the outrage expressed about the court’s ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of “inverted totalitarianism.”
Inverted totalitarianism represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry,” Wolin writes in “Democracy Incorporated.” Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.
Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by “power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions,” Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people’s right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the “persons” agree to a “settlement.” Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not “admitting any wrongdoing.” There is a word for this. It is called corruption.
Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $26 million last year and drug companies such as Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly kicked in tens of millions more to buy off the two parties. These corporations have made sure our so-called health reform bill will force us to buy their predatory and defective products. The oil and gas industry, the coal industry, defense contractors and telecommunications companies have thwarted the drive for sustainable energy and orchestrated the steady erosion of civil liberties. Politicians do corporate bidding and stage hollow acts of political theater to keep the fiction of the democratic state alive.
There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on “American Idol.” Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite.
Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home. We, like all empires, have been eviscerated by our own expansionism. We utilize weapons of horrific destructive power, subsidize their development with billions in taxpayer dollars, and are the world’s largest arms dealer. And the Constitution, as Wolin notes, is “conscripted to serve as power’s apprentice rather than its conscience.”
“Inverted totalitarianism reverses things,” Wolin writes. “It is politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.” 
Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures and assumptions. They saturate the airwaves with manufactured controversy, whether it is Tiger Woods or the dispute between Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. They manipulate images to make us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, which is how Barack Obama became president. And the draconian internal control employed by the Department of Homeland Security, the military and the police over any form of popular dissent, coupled with the corporate media’s censorship, does for inverted totalitarianism what thugs and bonfires of books do in classical totalitarian regimes.
“It seems a replay of historical experience that the bias displayed by today’s media should be aimed consistently at the shredded remains of liberalism,” Wolin writes. “Recall that an element common to most 20th century totalitarianism, whether Fascist or Stalinist, was hostility towards the left. In the United States, the left is assumed to consist solely of liberals, occasionally of ‘the left wing of the Democratic Party,’ never of democrats.”
Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. Wolin, who taught at Berkeley and later at Princeton, is arguably the country’s foremost political philosopher. And yet his book was virtually ignored. This is also why Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, along with intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, are not given a part in our national discourse.
The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as “soft” or “unpatriotic.” The “patriotic” citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government. The most powerful instruments of state power and control are effectively removed from public discussion. We, as imperial citizens, are taught to be contemptuous of government bureaucracy, yet we stand like sheep before Homeland Security agents in airports and are mute when Congress permits our private correspondence and conversations to be monitored and archived. We endure more state control than at any time in American history. 
The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, writes a column published every Monday on Truthdig. His latest book is “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”

Lord Hutton's Murder Cover up - Further Revelations

The Guardian today has some interesting further revelations on what appears to be Lord Hutton's criminal attempts to distort the justice system by covering -up the murder of Dr. David Kelly. (See "Lord Hutton confirms Dr. David Kelly was murdered")

Firstly, Hutton made the ruling back in 2003 and secondly, according to the Guardian "freedom of information experts say there appear to be strong grounds for the legal challenges. "If Lord Hutton was not carrying out a statutory inquiry, I can't immediately see what power he had to order that these records be closed," said Maurice Frankel, Director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information."

Interestingly, and again this news was kept very low profile, several colleagues of Kelly (including at Porton Down) also died in mysterious circumstances.

Almost a year after Kelly was murdered, his colleague and "chief scientist for chemical and biological defence at Porton Down" (Kelly was Director of the Microbiology Division), Dr Paul Norman, was killed when the Cessna 206 he was piloting crashed shortly after taking off from Dunkeswell Airfield in Devon. It was officially decalred an 'accident' at the inquest. Although "Accident investigators failed to trace the exact cause of the engine failure", the Telegraph report  states that he "was an internationally-known expert on weapons of mass destruction and his death has been linked to other experts, including Dr David Kelly, by conspiracy theory websites." The Mail, however, reported that accident investigators had indicated that the accident "may have been caused by the pilot switching to an empty tank of fuel".

Dr. David Kelly had links to three other top microbiologists whose deaths have left unanswered questions. One was Vladimir Pasechnik: This is an extract of the NYT obituary:
"Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, a senior Soviet biologist whose defection in 1989 alerted Western intelligence to the scope of Moscow's clandestine efforts to adapt germs and viruses for military use, died on Wednesday in Wiltshire, England. He was 64 and lived in a nearby village.
The cause was a stroke, said Dr. Christopher J. Davis of Great Falls, Va., formerly in British intelligence.
It was Dr. Pasechnik who provided a first glimpse of Biopreparat, a network of secret laboratories, each focused on a deadly agent. His revelations were confirmed in 1992 with the defection to the United States of Dr. Ken Alibek, the No. 2 scientist for the program."

The Kelly murder has also been linked to the Anthrax scare in the US and the death of FBI suspect Bruce Ivins - also in suspicious circumstances - by Edward Jay Epstein in the Wall Street Journal yesterday in his OpEd piece "The Anthrax Attacks Remain Unsolved": Bruce Ivins' suicide "as Eric Nadler and Bob Coen show in their documentary "The Anthrax War," was one of four suicides among American and British biowarfare researchers in past years".

Here are some clips from the film:


The Man Who Knew Too Much? from Field Agent C on Vimeo.




Anthrax War on Sky News 7/11/09 from Field Agent C on Vimeo.


View the next one here as I can't embed it.


Confronting Doctor Death from Field Agent C on Vimeo.

Another one here.


Doctor Alibek and Ukraine's Mystery Illness from Field Agent C on Vimeo.


The Ghost of Frank Olson from Field Agent C on Vimeo.


Inside the Vault. from Field Agent C on Vimeo.

.

Scotland Yard is preparing to use the controversial “kettling” tactic at anti-war demo on Friday

Hopefully, the organisers of the anti-war demonstration planned for Friday's appearance of Bliar at the Chilcott Enquiry, Stop the War Coalition, have studied police tactics at these events and have thought up ways to counter them.

According to the Times today, "Scotland Yard is preparing to use the controversial “kettling” tactic in which protesters are enclosed within police cordons for many hours...senior officers say that it is the safest and most effective way of controlling large and volatile crowds in built-up areas.
The police operation will be overseen by a Gold Commander based at the Special Operations Room in Lambeth that will have live footage of the area immediately surrounding the QEII centre. Dozens of officers will be on duty outside the centre, with Territorial Support Group officers nearby with their full riot equipment."

Israeli Minister: 'Israel is a very racist society'

Very unusual for Israeli monsters ministers to admit anything, but here we have it, in black and white and from the Jerusalem Post no less. The problem is she wasn't talking about  Israeli attitudes to Palestinians. But about Israeli attitudes to 'immigants from Ethiopia'! The Palestrinians aren't even human for the vast bulk of Israeli society, merely drugged cockroaches or two-footed animals.

"In a recent survey, Israelis were asked which sector of the population they would most like to have as neighbors. The results gave veteran Israelis the top grade, followed bynew immigrants from the US, immigrants from France, immigrants from the former Soviet Union and lastly immigrants from Ethiopia. The same results were found when people were asked which population group they would be happy to have their children go to school with, and also which people they would like their children to marry.
"We are racist. Israel is a very racist society. I know what olim have gone through over the past 20 years."

Lord Hutton confirms Dr. David Kelly was murdered

Hutton has confirmed that Dr David Kelly was murdered.

That is the only possible reading of his extraordinary decision to order "that medical records in the case be kept secret for 70 years,"


Note that in the link, the Independent article has nothing to do with the Kelly affair but is stuck in the middle of the article.

MSN have a fuller article: "70-year gag on Kelly death evidence":

"Evidence relating to the death of Government weapons inspector David Kelly is to be kept secret for 70 years, it has been reported.
A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, means medical records including the post-mortem report will remain classified until after all those with a direct interest in the case are dead, the Mail on Sunday reported.
And a 30-year secrecy order has been placed on written records provided to Lord Hutton's inquiry which were not produced in evidence.
The Ministry of Justice said decisions on the evidence were a matter for Lord Hutton. But Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who has conducted his own investigations into Dr Kelly's death, described the order as "astonishing".
Dr Kelly's body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on the Government's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capable of being fired within 45 minutes.
An inquest was suspended by then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, who ruled that Lord Hutton's inquiry could take its place. But in the event, the inquiry focused more on the question of how the BBC report came to be broadcast than on the medical explanation for Dr Kelly's death.
Lord Hutton's report in 2004 concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist. But the finding has been challenged by doctors who claim that the weapons inspector's stated injuries were not serious enough.
One of the doctors seeking a full inquest, former assistant coroner Michael Powers, told the Mail on Sunday he had seen a letter from the legal team of Oxfordshire County Council explaining the unusual restrictions placed by Lord Hutton on material relating to his inquiry.
The letter states: "Lord Hutton made a request for the records provided to the inquiry, not produced in evidence, to be closed for 30 years, and that medical (including post-mortem) reports and photographs be closed for 70 years."
Dr Powers asked: "Supposedly all evidence relevant to the cause of death has been heard in public at the time of Lord Hutton's inquiry. If these secret reports support the suicide finding, what could they contain that could be so sensitive?"

This not only means that Kelly was murdered, it means that Lord Hutton is a criminal. He is responsible for the cover-up of a murder. 

NB:

"Last night, the Ministry of Justice was unable to explain the legal basis for Lord Hutton’s order."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245599/David-Kelly-post-mortem-kept-secret-70-years-doctors-accuse-Lord-Hutton-concealing-vital-information.html#ixzz0dYBvhP9X

"

Straw Lies to the Chilcott Enquiry

One just has to read Craig Murray's post at his blog "Jack Straw's Biggest Lie":

"I was a British Ambassador at the time of the events covered by the Iraq Inquiry. I know many of the witnesses and a great deal of the background. I can therefore see right through the smooth presentation. Jack Straw was the smoothest of all - but he told lie after lie.
Straw's biggest and most important lie goes right to the heart of the question of whether the war was legal. Did UN Security Council Resolution 1441 provide a legal basis for the invasion, or would a second resolution specifically authorising military action have been required?"

Read the rest at Craig's blog.

Securing Disaster in Haiti

For one of the best analyses on what is really happening in Haiti go no further than the excellent HaitiAnalysis.com blog:

Today there is a brilliant piece by Peter Hallward: "Securing Disaster in Haiti".