Dive into the archives.
- What the US Media Chooses to Ignore
The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These [...]
- Something Iran and the U.S. Have in Common
Amnesty International has condemned the execution of Behnoud Shojaee, a 21-year-old Iranian, at Tehran’s Evin Prison at dawn on Sunday, for a murder he was accused of having committed when he was 17. (full article…)
- Zionist Agression
Israel continues to threaten to invade Iran. (full article…)
- Atoms For Peace
For all the recent uproar over Iran’s nuclear program, little attention has been paid to the fact that the country which first provided Tehran with nuclear equipment was the United States. In 1967, under the “Atoms for Peace” program launched by President Eisenhower, the US sold the Shah of Iran’s government a 5-megawatt, light-water type [...]
- Déjà Vu
Not all are persuaded. Glenn Greenwald, an author and a left-leaning blogger for the online magazine Salon, called the parallels with the charges that Iraq had so-called weapons of mass destruction in 2002 “substantial and disturbing.” “The administration is making inflammatory claims about another country’s W.M.D. program and intentions without providing any evidence,” he said. [...]
- Political Hype
Iran’s not in violation of anything. Iran is in compliance and the IAEA has stated this. The IAEA has said that the fact that Iran was in compliance with the old code 3.1 subsidiary agreement – the old safeguards agreements – means that you can’t find them to be in noncompliance with this new set [...]
- Do They Embrace the Same Commitment For Palestinian Freedom
A new organization of several Israeli and Jewish student groups is working to help young people who are thousands of kilometers away — in Iran. Ahead of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming address at the United Nations General Assembly, Israelis have increased their PR activity in favor of Iranians being oppressed by their regime. (full [...]
- Surprising… But You Wouldn’t Realize This By Reading the NYT
Most Iranians express acceptance of the outcome of the Presidential election. Eighty-one percent say they consider Ahmadinejad to be Iran’s legitimate president, and 62 percent say they have a lot of confidence in the declared election results, while 21 percent say they have some confidence. Just 13 percent say they do not have much confidence [...]
- “Our” Airspace
“We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?” he told the news site ‘The Beast’. (full article…)
- Saudi Arabia
The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites. (more…)
- Joke of the Day
The United States, Mr. Biden said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week,” “cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do.” (more…)
- Regional Bully
An Israeli submarine sailed the Suez Canal to the Red Sea as part of a naval drill last month, defense sources said on Friday, describing the unusual maneuver as a show of strategic reach in the face of Iran. (more…)
- “Brutal”
Iranian officials stepped up efforts to crush the remaining resistance to a disputed presidential election on Wednesday, as security forces overwhelmed a small group of protesters with brutal beatings, tear gas and gunshots in the air. (more…) Somehow, I don’t think the Western press has ever referred to Israel’s weekly beating of demonstrators in the [...]
- The Height of Hyposcrisy
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Wednesday that “the predatory nature of Tehran’s regime has been exposed” (more…)9
- Virtually No Coverage
These reasons explain why over recent weeks while the Iran elections were happening there has been virtually no coverage in most media of demonstrations numbering in the tens of thousands in Georgia or Peru. It has even been reported in Peru that dozens of persons have been killed during the protests, or “clashes” as they’ve [...]
- European Assistance
The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale. (more…)
- Angry Arab on the Situation in Iran
As’ad AbuKhalil, Lebanese politics professor at California State University, said Iranian opponents of Ahmadinejad — if they come out on top — would still likely promote a nationalist agenda that Riyadh sees as a threat to its interests. Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi was prime minister under the Islamic Republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “The site [...]
- Letter To Angry Arab
It is frustrating that everyone I talk to from Pakistan to Egypt loves Ahmadinejad and is shocked to hear that many Iranians think he is ineffective and embarrassing. Meanwhile every Westerner seems to think that Mousavi is a great reformist or revolutionary, and some kind of saintly figure beloved by all. He’s an opportunist crook. [...]
- Zionism In Denial
“It’s a lot more complicated.” He added that the real reason for the deadlock “is not occupation, not settlements and not settlers.” Nor, he said, is it the Palestinians. The biggest obstacle, he said, is “the Iranians.” (more…)
- Colonial Ambitions?
“Sooner or later, the world will realize that Iran wishes to take over the Middle East, and that it has colonial ambitions,” Peres said. (more…) For some reason, Peres’s talk of “colonial ambitions” strikes me as either facetious or deeply cynical. Can anyone tell me why?
- A Date Forgotten
April 9 was the sixth anniversary of the fall of the Saddam Hussein government in Iraq. The date passed without much remark in the United States, which is consumed with its own domestic economic problems and high rates of unemployment, rendering a distant foreign misadventure virtually invisible. Gone are the debates over whether a US [...]
- Global Executions Double in 2008
In 2008, at least 2,390 people were known to have been executed in 25 countries and at least 8,864 people were sentenced to death in 52 countries around the world. As in previous years, the five countries with the highest number of executions in 2008 were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States [...]
- Beholden to Israel
In American politics, you can’t do anything in the Middle East without the approval of Tel Aviv, at least on some level. It’s impossible. I mean, I cannot think of a country that is so beholden to a small country like this, even a superpower, in all of history. I can’t even think of it. [...]
- The Morning After
Obama had thousands of clergy to choose from, and the choice of Warren is not only a slap in the face to progressive ministers toiling on the front lines of advocacy and service, but a bow to the continuing influence of the religious right in American politics. Warren vocally opposes gay marriage, does not believe [...]
- The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy
I have been trying to avoid writing this review, not because of the book’s subject matter (this is not a profound book any sense of the word) but because it has been done so many times before and has by now become quite dated in the ephemeral world of controversy. But I finally read the [...]
- Jeremy Scahill: Obama’s Kettle of Hawks
Barack Obama has assembled a team of rivals to implement his foreign policy. But while pundits and journalists speculate endlessly on the potential for drama with Hillary Clinton at the state department and Bill Clinton’s network of shady funders, the real rivalry that will play out goes virtually unmentioned. The main battles will not be [...]
- Jeremy Scahill: This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites & Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House
U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best [...]
- Alan Bock: No Matter Who Wins, Expect More Wars
If the presidential debate Friday night told us anything, it was that whichever of these candidates is elected, we can expect more wars, or at least more conflicts that put U.S. forces or citizens in danger for dubious reasons. Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama came close to questioning the "bipartisan" consensus on U.S. foreign [...]
- Amy Goodman: Whistle-Blower Points to Target List in U.S. Attack on Hotel
More than five years have passed since the invasion of Iraq, since President Bush stood under the “Mission Accomplished” banner on that aircraft carrier. While these fifth anniversaries got some notice, another did not: the shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by a U.S. Army tank on April 8, 2003. The tank attack killed [...]
- Iran’s (Defunct?) Nuclear Program
In the chronology of the Bush administration’s record of manipulation and willful distortion of evidence, the apparent revelation – revealed in a recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate – that Iran ceased its nuclear program in 2003 promises to usher in a renewed phase of White House propaganda. While the cautious pundits and news anchors of [...]
