Syria's target one, then Iran. Whether full-scale war's planned isn't clear.

Not the entire world is wishing for a different Iran, although it does seem like that at times. Superpowers China and Russia are charting their own course, and in spite of their modern relationships with the West, there are still a lot of differences.

On Iran, Obama has come to a crossroads. He will soon be called on to refute accusations of weakness by an explosive demonstration of "strength." If things get to that point, there is no doubt that he will do what the war party expects him to do

In fact, the flyer recommends that anyone “overly concerned about privacy” or attempting to “shield the screen from view of others” should be considered suspicious and potentially engaged in terrorist activities.

News reports on Iran are now following each other in rapid succession, and together they form a new step towards a military conflict. [...] What follows is an analysis of these fast-moving developments

The target date for deploying the commando platform in the Persian Gulf in four or five months indicates Washington is preparing for military clashes to blow up with Iran in the late spring or early summer.

"When we talked about this in the government, the consensus was that [attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent -- an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon and that would build it in secret."

It is clear that all the pieces are being put into place for a war against Iran. It is a long-term project demanding many years worth of preparation, and the ultimate goal is getting closer all the time. One component of this preparation is the covert arming of Syrian rebels.

Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish military bases close to Iskenderum on the Syrian border, delivering weapons from the late Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenals as well as volunteers from the Libyan Transitional National Council who are experienced in pitting local volunteers against trained soldiers, a skill they acquired confronting Gaddafi’s army.

Danger Room has confirmed with the U.S. Special Operations Command that a new elite commando team is operating in the region. The primary, day-to-day mission of the team, known as Joint Special Operations Task Force-Gulf Cooperation Council, is to mentor military units belonging to the U.S.’ oil-rich Arab allies, who collectively are known as the Gulf Cooperation Council. Those Arab states consider Iran to be their primary foreign threat.

While the world is getting the impression that a war with Iran has drawn a few steps closer, representatives of Israel and the U.S. are making some remarkable statements about the Islamic Republic. These statements are remarkable in part because, at the same time, the build-up to a military confrontation would seem to be continuing apace.

Tehran is backed by Russia which says military action would bring disastrous results. Iran agreed to resume six-party talks over its atomic programme. But there are fears the country is already under attack, after the latest murder of one of its nuclear scientists, which Tehran blames on Israel.

Russia has reportedly ordered the military to plan war games to deal with potential spillover from a US-Iran conflict.

But simply because the opposition to the Syrian and Iranian governments have taken over the news agenda does not mean that what they say is true.

A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran.

We are currently winding down what you labeled a “dumb war;” we should not undertake another dumb war against a country almost three times larger than Iraq, that would set off a major regional war and create generations of jihadis. Such a war, contrary to what some argue, would not make Israel or the U.S. safer

The number is shocking and sobering. It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.

“President Obama's action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director.

Elsewhere in Whitehall there are fears that a collapse of the euro could lead to widespread civil unrest – and even spark a flood of economic refugees.

The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States.

Undercover journalist Suzuki worked at Fukushima. He wrote a book about what he exposed: workers who ignore the radiation levels, workers who have to work there to pay off their debt to te mafia, corruption, fraud and no progress. Watch the press conference where Susuki alos shows pictures he took with his special wrist watch.

De Wit: No, but it’s going to cost an awful lot of money to reprint all of those currencies and make the switch.
Spits: Sure, but it’s going to cost a lot more money to try and save the euro, which cannot be saved.

[...] proactive thinking on the part of those operating inside the ruling establishment can nevertheless be a positive thing. This is exactly what Marietje Schaake, European Member of Parliament for the Dutch political party D66, contributes in her article [...]. I ask het what she means by going from being the governed to being the governors'.

Obama’s newly signed “findings,” authorizing covert operations to destabilize the Iranian and Syrian governments; how the US and Israel use the Baluch Jundallah, Kurdish PJAK and MEK groups to commit terrorism-by-proxy.

Larry Wilkerson in a conversation with Paul Jay on the National Defense Authorization Act that passed the Senate, giving the military power for indefinite detention without trial is a draconian violation of our rights.

Ambassador Dan Shapiro rebuffs previous claims by U.S. officials that Israel would not alert Washington ahead of a strike on Iran.

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD's program on the CIA prison is set to air Thursday.

'Why shouldn't we at least study seriously all available options, including acquiring WMDs, so that our future generations will not blame us for neglecting any courses of action that will keep looming dangers away from us.'

Just like the taxpayers of medieval Italian cities, we're having our money siphoned off to pay for a a greedy military machine.

"We definitely are doing that," the report quotes Art Keller, a former CIA case officer who worked on Iran, as saying. "It's pretty much the stated mission of the (CIA's) counter-proliferation division to do what it takes to slow Iran's weapons of mass destruction program."

Spits: Wat deed Keynes? Die deed het helemaal andersom, zette alles op zijn kop: productie is niet belangrijk, de vraag is belangrijk. Want we moeten zorgen dat de werkgelegenheid op peil wordt gehouden, dat mensen genoeg te besteden hebben, et cetera. Vandaar dat hij aankwam met allerlei soorten ingrepen, zoals  renteverlagingen, het extra drukken van geld et cetera.

These documents show how top government officials willfully concealed from Congress and the public the true extent of the 2008-'09 bailouts that enriched the few and enhanced the interests of giant Wall Streets firms. Here’s what we now know:

Advisor to pension funds Albert Spits reads between the lines, takes account of the various economic schools of thought (more to come on this soon in this interview series) and examines past developments to see what they might have to teach us about the future. With the facts in tow, Spits sorts through the fluctuations and takes note of where things are headed, though he also points out how things could turn out should we choose to deal with these problems differently.

Glenn Greenwald provides further documentation that the various Middle Eastern and North African wars were planned before 9/11:

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

There's not much you can do in Iran right now without us finding out something about it. They found nothing. Nothing. No evidence of any weaponization. In other words, no evidence of a facility to build the bomb. They have facilities to enrich, but not separate facilities for building a bomb. This is simply a fact. We haven’t found it, if it does exist. It’s still a fantasy. We still want to think—many people do think—it does. [...] it’s some sort of a fantasy land being built up here, as it was with Iraq, the same sort of—no lessons learned, obviously.

"We've been led by the nose to believe that this container is important, when in fact it's not important at all," Kelley said. 

According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.” The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”

The issue of Iran is immersed in a fog of propaganda, deception, fear and interests. Once you step out of the fog and rise above the news coverage about Iran you see that a battle is being waged on multiple fronts. It is a war about power.

The information war that is currently raging around Iran is part of the ongoing conflict with the country. It is one component of the preparations for war against Iran that have been underway for years, and which follow the template used to conquer Iraq.

In an article responding to the report released by the IAEA CNN headlines: 'Iran developing nuclear bombs'. Media and politics worldwide make bold statements as to what to do about the Iranian 'situation'. But what are the facts? 

Below is some must read commentary from Emad Mostaque of Religare Capital Markets on what this IAEA finding will mean for the region, for the world and for what really matters: capital markets.

Iran is once again finding itself at the top of the agenda. Pressure is being stepped up on all of the parties involved. This is a new step on the road to the next war - this one against Iran.

A close analysis of the FBI deposition reveals, however, that independent evidence for the charge that Arbabsiar was sent by the Qods Force on a mission to arrange for the assassination of Jubeir is lacking. The FBI account is full of holes and contradictions, moreover. 

The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.

Haaretz said that Netanyahu and Barak had already scored a significant win by convincing Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to throw his support behind a strike. But the newspaper cited the senior Israeli official as saying there was still "a small advantage" in the cabinet for those opposed to an attack.

the fallback is now to try to dramatically increase military ties with the GCC nations (fresh off their brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain) and to deploy massive numbers of troops in the region through them, as a way to spite Iran.

Here’s a brief list of why we should be angry and the charts to back it up. 

Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

So maybe it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Ahmed Maher, one of the leading figures in those Egyptian protests, has been corresponding for weeks with the Occupy Wall Streeters, whom he calls “our brothers.” [...] The denizens of the downtown park flock to an excited Maher when they learn an Egyptian revolutionary is there to support them. 

[...] for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous.

In every single health category evaluated as part of both studies, the overall health of unvaccinated children was leaps and bounds ahead of the vaccinated children.

Back in July, 21-year CIA veteran Robert Baer told KPFK Los Angeles that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was planning an attack on Iran in September to coincide with the Palestine bid for UN membership. Speaking with the Alex Jones Show today, former State Department official Steve Pieczenik, who has numerous inside intelligence sources having worked in several sensitive positions during the course of his career, also indicated that the terror plot was completely fabricated and that it would be used a pretext to justify a military strike against Iran.

As many observers have pointed out, the story given us by Attorney General Eric Holder about the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C., makes no sense. Veteran CIA operative Bob Baer, now retired, notes that Iranian intelligence is highly professional and works through proxies, and this sloppy operation simply is not their modus operandi.

The report details how torture methods included suspending people by their wrists, beatings to the soles of their feet, electric shocks, twisting detainees’ genitals, removing toe nails and being put in stress positions.

One of the drawings Zubaydah had sketched captured in incredible detail the waterboarding sessions he underwent. Another drawing showed him being chained by his wrists to the ceiling of a CIA black site prison where he was held and another showed him strapped to a chair and being doused with water as part of a sleep deprivation program [...].

Finnish and international researchers recently found a conclusive link between the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine and new cases of narcolepsy, a chronic nervous system disorder which causes people to often uncontrollably fall asleep. The Finnish Pharmaceutical Insurance Pool (LVP), which represents insurance companies, said Wednesday it would honour all insurance claims in this category.

FBI agents and informants target not just active jihadists, but tens of thousands of law-abiding people, seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity.

Bennett did not break down the tally further, but said all the imagery is classified "TOP SECRET," meaning that disclosure of the material could lead to "exceptionally grave damage" to U.S. national security.

"Some countries won't accept the prospect of Tehran reaching the threshold of nuclear armament," he said. "Personally I am convinced that it would be a very complicated operation …with disastrous consequences in the region."

Umar was escorted through security without a passport and with an intentionally defective bomb in order to stage a false flag terrorist attack.

'The courageous and honorable protests underway in Wall Street should serve to bring this calamity to public attention, and to lead to dedicated efforts to overcome it and set the society on a more healthy course.'

"The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99 Percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the one percent," said a statement on the Occupy Wall Street website.

Tony Blair’s close relationship to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has come under fresh scrutiny after it emerged he had six private meetings with the dictator in the three years after he left Downing Street.

Cheney told Newsmax TV that "Iran represents an existential threat, and [the Israelis] will do whatever they have to do to guarantee their survival and their security.”

The Independent revealed, after discovering secret files in Tripoli, how Britain played a key role in the rendition of Mr Belhaj, which delivered him into hands of the Gaddafi regime for seven years of incarceration, six of them in solitary confinement.

During that meeting Welch advised Gaddafi's team on how to win the propaganda war, suggesting several "confidence-building measures", according to the documents. The documents appear to indicate that an influential US political personality was advising Gaddafi on how to beat the US and NATO.

After enquiries in the UK, Malta, Libya and Italy, the commission identified six grounds where it believed a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

The verdict in the Lockerbie case is based on lies and deception, and the man convicted of the crime, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, cannot be the perpetrator. This appears from revelations contained in a secret section of an official report.

Six companies. Six truths. The countdown starts...

"I think we are heading for a market shock in September or October that will match anything we have ever seen before," said a senior credit banker at a major European bank.

Things are out of alignment. Journalists are identifying with the wrong people. Therefore the kind of work they are doing is not as useful as we need it to be.

Soldier from 22 SAS Regiment  were first sent into the north African country several weeks ago by David Cameron and they have remained there to find Gaddafi, according to the Daily Telegraph.

For weeks, military and intelligence officers have been helping the rebels plan their co-ordinated attack on the capital, and Whitehall sources have disclosed that the RAF stepped up raids on Tripoli on Saturday morning in a pre-arranged plan to pave the way for the rebel advance.

The operation was kept separate from the NATO command structure to avoid compromising its mandate from the United Nations — to protect civilians. [...] Diplomats acknowledge that covert teams from France, Britain and some East European states provided critical assistance. The assistance included logisticians, security advisers and forward air controllers for the rebel army, as well as intelligence operatives, damage assessment analysts and other experts, according to a diplomat based at NATO's headquarters in Brussels.

Jon Stewart, appropriately, let 'em all have it for that last night, asking incredulously: "How did libertarian Ron Paul become the 13th floor in a hotel?!"...

The documents also reveal that at least one CIA paramilitary officer opened fire on the Agency’s B-26 planes, which had been disguised to resemble those used by the Cuban Revolutionary Air Defense Force. According to the officer, Grayston Lynch, who is quoted in the documents, CIA support vessels could not distinguish friendly from enemy planes, while the CIA’s B-26 bombers, which were piloted by Cuban exiles, failed to heed warnings to “stay away” from American ships.

The Bureau’s fundamental reassessment of the covert US campaign involved a complete re-examination of all that is known about each US drone strike.

Individuals who work in the finance, insurance and real estate sector are responsible for raising at least $11.8 million for Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to the Center's research. All of Obama's bundlers have raised a minimum of $35 million so far this year.

An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders.

The architectural maps, contracts, and Spoonamore emails, along with the history of Connell's partisan activities, shed new light on how easy it was to hack the 2004 Ohio presidential election. 

Our analysis of 116 drone strikes that took place between August 2010 and Brennan’s speech on June 29 reveals:

There is almost "near certainty" that Netanyahu is "planning an attack [on Iran] ... and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he's also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict," Baer explained.

At the facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted “combat” operations against members of Al Shabab, an Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.

Tony Farrell, who has a university degree in statistics, was employed for 12 years as a ‘Police Intelligence Analyst’ with South Yorkshire Police. His job was to provide a yearly ‘Strategic Threat Assessment Matrix’ to enable police to prioritize resources and activities. Fully expecting Farrell to regurgitate the contention that Muslim extremists posed the biggest threat, his bosses were stunned when Farrell instead reported that the 2005 London bombings were staged by British intelligence and that the official story was a “monstrous lie”.

[...] dozens of computer security researchers around the world would spend months deconstructing what would come to be known as the most complex malware ever written — a piece of software that would ultimately make history as the world’s first real cyberweapon.

“Richard Nixon’s [Department of Justice] 40 years ago attempted to curtail the freedoms of the press and politically regulate the press through the use of policy created around the espionage investigation of the New York Times. I feel that the WikiLeaks case we have going on now provides Obama’s DOJ ample opportunity to continue this attempt to politically regulate the U.S. media.”

The remedies to the US deficit follow immediately from this diagnosis: put America back to work by stimulating the economy; end the mindless wars; rein in military and drug costs; and raise taxes, at least on the very rich.

What Fishman's article actually does is bolster the previous view of Manning's alleged leaks as motivated by noble and understandable horror at what the U.S. was doing in Iraq specifically and that region generally, and a resulting desire to take action to shed light on what he was seeing and to do what he could to stop it.

In the interview with DeepJournal Flynn reviews that WHO report. Flynn is dissapounted by the conclusions of the report, basically claiming that the WHO made no mistakes in handling the H1N1 pandemic, whilst in fact an experimental vaccin was used on millions of people for a flu that was very mild.

Eight years later, the CIA unceremoniously released CAPTUS. (The agency declined to comment for this story.) Whether that means CAPTUS was innocent or merely no longer useful as a source of information, we may never know. Carle spoke to Danger Room about what it’s like to interrogate a man in a place too dark for the law to find.

''Greece, Portugal and Ireland don't just need to have their debts written off, they need to have a 30 per cent to 40 per cent depreciation of their real exchange rate,'' he told the conference. ''There are two ways to do that, either pull out of the euro and depreciate by 40 per cent, or have deflation of 40 per cent over the next 12 months.

Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.

Given the extent of U.S. military support around the world, the suppression of global uprisings using U.S.-made munitions is likely to be far greater than is represented by these stories and has continued despite controversy over the practice.  In fact, recent protests in Egypt indicate that government forces are still using the same U.S. made tear gas projectiles.

During his confirmation hearing last Thursday, Petraeus issued a public plea to take the “rear view mirrors off the bus” and drop any inquiries into CIA torture. He also suggested that the CIA might return to abusive interrogations in “special cases” of imminent danger, prompting criticism from Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.). The Senate confirmed Petraeus as the next CIA director on Thursday, 94-0, practically simultaneously with Holder’s announcement. Udall did not object.

As rising food prices force up inflation and compound poverty and hunger for billions of people, today it is the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, as well as the giant, publicity shy trading houses such as Bunge, Cargill, Dreyfuss and Glencore, who are profiting.

A new report just published by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies measures the categories of cost to make the point that the pay out is miniscule, if there's any at all.

But one of the nastiest moves has been the institution, by Michigan governor Rick Snyder, of an “emergency manager” over several cities in his state, as well as the Detroit public school system. This manager has the unilateral authority to fire officials, close schools, void union contracts, and assume total control over areas declared to be in a financial state of emergency by the state. And it looks like the idea is spreading.

While Ministers have claimed British banks have ‘only £2.5bn’ of exposure to Greek government debt, the Bank of England says potential losses would amount to just £8bn.But according to the channel’s research, a complex web of derivatives and insurance deals means Britain’s financial institutions could be hit with losses of up to £366bn from the collapse of the Greek economy, equal to 24% of Britain’s GDP.

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