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waitew Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Total posts: 301 Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: 30-03-2012 06:47 Post subject: |
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The Powers that be don't merely want to attack Iran. They want to invade Iran. This should have been obvious to everyone who can find Afghanistan and Iraq on a map since 2003.
The 'withdrawal' (not really true we have a 'private' army of contractors there who still answer to the CIA & still control the country and it's oil) is simply 'creating' the cover story. Next they'll stage a false flag attack and blame it on Iran and then masses of US troops will pour back into Iraq & Afghanistan in preparation for a 'retaliatory' invasion. When people like me point out an invasion was the plan all along,the 'withdrawal' will be pointed to as 'evidence' that it wasn't.
This,of course,also suggests that the bombings/attacks in Iraq are really being done by US contractors and or Islamic CIA assets (Al Qeada-which means they don't even have to lie as long as people don't know Al Qeada is controlled by the CIA.) These bombing will also further public support for a 're-occupation' of Iraq in preparation of an invasion of Iran. |
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| Analis Great Old One Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Total posts: 851 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 02-04-2012 21:04 Post subject: |
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I doubt that the USA would be in a hurry to re-occupy Iraq. But the new independant Iraq does not agree with their hostility towards Iran, and has become a thorn in their side. The coming war with Iran is probably one of the motives behind their attempts at destabilizing Syria, with the help of their Saudi and Qatari allies. And they would probably try to do the same to Iraq, and Lebanon along with it. Those countries have become collateral victims.
http://www.voltairenet.org/The-statement-of-the-Security
| Quote: | News analysis
Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the conspiracy against Lebanon and Iraq
The predicament endured by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the government of Qatar is major, considering that the defeat in Syria is placing the rulers of the Kingdom and the Qatari Emirate in an awkward position. It is consequently clear that Riyadh and Doha are planning to undermine the Lebanese and Iraqi situations to compensate for the great losses in the context of the conspiracy against Syria.
Firstly, the Saudi and Qatari officials are extremely concerned about the new Arab situation which will be generated by President Bashar al-Assad’s victory over the world war.
[......]
Secondly, all the political signs and facts on the field reveal that the Gulf rulers are trying to activate a wide-scale sabotage plan against Lebanon and Iraq to compensate for the losses and implement the American-Israeli inclination to prevent the bloc which includes Iran, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon from turning into a regional bloc opposed to America and Israel, while preventing any geographic, political or economic communication between those states –or at least obstructing it. This is due to the fact that the formation of this bloc would herald a strategic transformation in the region and constitute a nightmare to Israel and the Gulf governments, as its independence character could soon attract Jordan, Palestine and Egypt. Hence, work is ongoing to activate the presence of the gangs of takfir in Iraq and to escalate their operations, while trying to revive sectarian divisions and coordination between the extremist groups to break Iraq apart under the headline of federal states with enhanced prerogatives to prevent the establishment of an Iraqi central state. Indeed, such a central state following stability on the economic and the security levels in Iraq could turn the country into a worthy opponent, while its relations with Iran and Syria would cause a major setback for the colonial Israeli alliance.
Thirdly, in Lebanon the gathering of the terrorist gangs for which dens, camps and operations rooms were established, is motivated by the need to turn them into a combating force led by the Future Movement and the Lebanese Forces in parallel to the imminent and final settlement of the situation by Syrian state, in order to compensate for the failure in Syria by igniting the Lebanese situation. This step features a clear wager on the ability to deplete the Lebanese resistance through a sectarian strife being prepared in the North, the Bekaa and the camps, as an alternative option for the ability to strike the Syrian fort that is embracing the resistance.
Some experts are expecting the failure of the Gulf wager and believe that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is facing a difficult internal test which might shift its attention away from any other arenas. But clearly, the detonation of the situation in Lebanon is combining the security axis that is reviving the tools represented by the gangs of tafkir and the terrorist groups in Lebanon under the command of the Future Movement, and the Saudi attempts to bring Walid Jumblatt back to the March 14 alliance in order to remove the current parliamentary majority from power whenever Saudi Arabia chooses to do so. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-04-2012 12:16 Post subject: |
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Full text at link.
| Quote: | Time is fast running out
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004797
It is clear that the Obama administration is preparing US public opinion for war, writes Yassamine Mather
On Saturday April 14 Iran will attend talks with six world powers. The US has indicated this is Iran’s “last chance” to avoid military intervention and the Obama administration is taking very specific demands to the talks as preconditions for further negotiations: for example, Iran “must immediately close” a large nuclear facility allegedly built underneath a mountain if it wants to avoid a devastating strike.
Other “near term” concessions to avoid a potential military conflict include the suspension of high-level uranium enrichment and the surrender by Tehran of existing stockpiles of the fuel, according to senior US officials. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton made the usual noises about time “running out for diplomacy”, while expressing “doubts” about whether Iran has any real intention of negotiating a solution. In other words, preparing US public opinion for an attack that is possibly already scheduled.
The preconditions put Iran’s Islamic government in an impossible situation and, although Tehran might use the talks to buy more time, accepting such conditions would represent such a terrible humiliation that it would be tantamount to political suicide for a dictatorship whose unpopularity continues to rise. But, there again, the US is hardly aiming to make life easy of the theocracy. In Tehran, some senior clerics are hoping that the 12th Shia Imam will make his reappearance even sooner than they are apt to predict.
As for Washington, in an election year the Obama administration has decided it cannot afford to look “weak” on Iran, as the Republican right ups the pressure for military action. To add to the pressure, the US navy has announced the deployment of a second aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, to the Persian Gulf region, where it will join the USS Abraham Lincoln. This will increase its ability to launch a massive air war on Iran at short notice.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Centre for Research on Globalization quoted political analyst Ralph Schoenman to the effect that Nato and the US are arming Israel with missile capacity in relation to a “projected and planned attack upon Iran”, According to Schoenman, Italy’s sale of 30 M-346 training jets to Israel is part of these preparations. And the Israeli military has gained access to airbases in Azerbaijan, according to Mark Perry of the journal Foreign Policy:
“Obama administration officials now believe that the ‘submerged’ aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance - the security cooperation between the two countries - is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran ... senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran’s northern border.” One “senior administration official” is quoted as saying: “The Israelis have bought an airfield … and the airfield is called Azerbaijan.” [1] |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-04-2012 15:33 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Dear friends and supporters of Hands Off the People of Iran,
I am writing to you, as the threat of war against Iran further escalates. In response to this awful prospect, Hands Off the People of Iran has intensified its campaigning work and is seeking to draw new forces into the fight. For example, this month we are hosting an important conference to look at the political and economic dynamics behind the war drive (http://hopoi.org/?p=1975). Also, we are advertising Hopi’s message more widely with a full page advert in the New Statesman’s Iran special, available in late April. These two initiatives alone will set us back £4,000.
Hopi is run on a shoestring. We are totally reliant on the support of anti-war activists who recognise the unique value of our work for the cash to make it happen. That’s why I’m writing to you. We need donations big and small. If every comrade who thinks our campaign does a good job – that the anti-war movement needs a voice like Hopi’s – made a donation, then we could not simply fund the activities I describe above, but could look to expand our work and influence in the coming period.
You can donate via the Paypal button on our website (www.hopoi.org) or by sending a cheque to Hopi, PO Box 54631, London N16 8YE
I look forward to hearing from you - your help is much appreciated.
In solidarity,
Yassamine Mather
Chair, Hands Off the People of Iran
www.hopoi.org
office@hopoi.info
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 19-04-2012 13:54 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Mobilise against threat
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004808
We must mobilse against the threat of war with Iran says Yassamine Mather
On Saturday April 14, Iran attended talks on its nuclear programme with six world powers in Istanbul. In the end, this ‘summit’ was little more than talks about talks - to take place in May in Baghdad. The uneasy stand-off continues and the strong possibility remains of an attack on Iran within months. Indeed, the outcome of the meeting has provoked a degree of cynicism, with press outlets in the US, the UK and Israel pointing out that Syria now seems to have learned the ‘Iran method’ - that is, agree to talks simply to buy time and postpone intervention.
Israel’s so-called ‘frustration’ threatens to boil over - there is no guarantee that it will simply wait. A major Israeli TV station has reported that the country’s air force is psyched up for an attack on Iran. A reporter from Channel 10 spent several weeks interviewing pilots and other military personnel at an Israeli air base and remarked upon the palpable sense of excitement they displayed at the prospect of Israel’s first full-scale air campaign in 30 year. Many spoke openly about the “years of preparation” that are now almost over, as the momentum towards military action gathers pace. The reporter, Alon Ben-David, saw “dozens if not more planes” being readied to carry out an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, including F-15 fighter jets, escort planes and air tankers to refuel the squadron en route to its target.
An attack on Iran would be a disaster and threaten to unleash reactionary developments across the region. Hands Off the People of Iran has organised a school over the weekend on April 21-22 to arm comrades in the workers’ and progressive movement with a thorough understanding of the pressures that are now pushing towards another catastrophic war in the Middle East. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 02-05-2012 13:32 Post subject: |
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Full text at link.
| Quote: | Ideas to empower the anti-war movement
http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/ideas-empower-anti-war-movement
Michael Copestake reports on HOPI's successful weekend school
Binyamin Netanyhu and Barack Obama: war threats
“The only thing that is certain is uncertainty,” said Labour MP John McDonnell in his talk at the April 21-22 weekend school organised by the Hands Off the People of Iran at the University of London Union.
Given the negotiations between the five members of the United Nations security council plus Germany and Iran that have just completed in Istanbul and are due to resume next month in May in Baghdad (of all the places to talk peace in the Middle East, could there be a more ironic one?) and the decline in the number of those mobilised on demonstrations and marches against war, the truth of this statement should be well noted by all. The continued threat of direct military action against Iran combined with factors such as the US electoral cycle constitute a heady and unpredictable brew.
The weekend school was part of the continued efforts of Hopi to reorientate the left against both the imperialist war drive and the sickening anti-working class regime of the Iranian state itself. Aiming to provide an analysis of the forces driving to war and the general condition of the Iranian state and society, Hopi brought together a range of speakers, including Iranian activists and exiles, National Union of Journalists president Donnacha DeLong, as well as comrade McDonnell himself. ...
Irrationality
The speaker for the first session on the Saturday was CPGB’s Mike Macnair, who sought to explain what he judged to be the increasingly irrational military adventures of the United States and its imperialist allies. These tend to end in social chaos, as in Iraq, rather than the imposition of some pax Americana, and comrade Macnair linked them to three distinctive cyclical tendencies within capitalism. ...
Iran working class
Iranian trade unionist and former political prisoner of the Iranian regime, Majid Tamjidi, gave an illuminating and hard-headed assessment of the plight of the Iranian working class, caught as it is in the vice of imperialist sanctions and neoliberal Islamic despotism.
What came through in comrade Tamjidi’s talk was the nightmarish coincidence of the needs of the US and Iranian states, which serves to push both further down the road towards military conflict. The bluster and bravado with which the Iranian regime responds to sanctions and threats of war feed US portrayals of Iran as intransigent and in need of a swift and harsh remedy. The missing element in the narratives of both the imperialist and Iranian governments is the masses themselves, yet they are being crushed under the weight of both sanctions and the neoliberal policies of the theocratic state, resulting in 60% of Iranians living below the poverty line, 12 million on insecure ‘instant dismissal’ temporary work contracts, and at least 30,000 deaths per annum in workplace accidents.
This focus on the desperate economic situation of Iran and the Iranian working class was picked up in a session on the second day on the political economy of Iran, addressed by Mohamed Shalgouni of the Organisation of Revolutionary Workers in Iran and Hopi chair Yassamine Mather.
The audience was straining to hear the words of comrade Shalgouni, not just because he was so quietly spoken, but because of the great interest in the things he had to say. He provided a compelling dissection of the role of the regime in the economy of Iran, of which 70% is directly or indirectly controlled by the state and its related bodies, increasingly under the auspices of utterly phoney privatisations that give ownership of companies to state and military officials technically at ‘arm’s length’ from the government in a kind of pocket-bursting, oligarchic give-away, last seen on a such a scale in the crash privatisations undertaken in the collapsing Soviet Union. That there can be such a bonanza for state bureaucrats and heavies is a legacy of the revolution, which resulted in the expropriation of the holdings of the royal family and a series of nationalisations. This self-interested gangsterism by the state, taken with three decades of increasingly severe sanctions, has led to the ruin of much of what remained of the Iranian economy and, with the possible closure of French car plants under the pressure of the United States, the situation grows more and more dire. ...
More focused on the immediate situation facing the wider world and its working class movement was the talk given by comrade Moshé Machover, co-founder of Israeli socialist party Matzpen. This was also the case with the panel discussion led by left-Labour stalwart John McDonnell MP, who humorously referred to himself and Jeremy Corbyn as the “parliamentary wing” of Hopi, Sarah McDonald, a runner in the previous weekend’s Vienna marathon in aid of Workers Fund Iran, and NUJ president Donnacha DeLong. ... |
Edit to fix duplication. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 03-05-2012 12:42 Post subject: |
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Full text at link.
| Quote: | War threats and Iran's impoverished workers
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004823
The Iranian people are the main victims of the sanctions campaign, insists Majid Tamjidi
Iranian oilworker: white contracts
Over the last few years western governments have created an atmosphere of war against Iran and in the last few months severe sanctions have come into effect. In addition we face the threat of military attacks by Israel against Iran’s strategic centres, including nuclear facilities.
On the other hand, inside Iran the authorities - in particular supreme leader Ali Khamenei and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - have reacted to these threats with exaggerated bravado. The regime is trying to convince the population that these are just empty threats, that sanctions have had no effect and that Iran is capable of giving a fierce response to any military attack. On sanctions Ahmadinejad’s line is: ‘Even if we don’t sell any oil for two or three years we will have enough foreign currency to survive perfectly well.’ Of course, all this is taking place against the background of both secret and open negotiations with the west.
Both sides imbue their opponents with specific characteristics. The west portrays Iran as a dictatorship depriving its population of ‘human rights’, pursuing nuclear technology and thus threatening ‘world peace’, arguing that in order for a ‘democratic regime’ to be established in Iran, another Middle East war might be necessary. The Islamic regime states that it has no intention of producing nuclear arms and claims to be a state relying on the religious and moral beliefs of its population: beliefs that are superior to western ideologies about ‘human rights’.
It is not difficult to rebuff western excuses for creating this atmosphere of war and sanctions. The west is Israel’s main ally in the region and that country is a nuclear power. The US and its allies have never questioned Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, nor have they threatened it militarily. The imperialist powers’ main interactions in the region are with Saudi Arabia, which must hold the gold medal (or at least silver) for human rights abuses. The western media do not pay attention to the real victims of human rights abuses in Iran, such as Mahmoud Salehi, the labour activist who has spent the last few years in and out of Iranian jails for organising a May Day gathering. The soft war against Iran conducted by media like the BBC Persian service and Voice of America has not mentioned Salehi’s recent trip to France as a representative of the Iranian labour movement, while people like former Islamic guard Mohsen Sazegara and other ‘democracy campaigners’ are getting wall to wall coverage to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish them from these stations’ presenters.
On the other hand, the Iranian people have shown time and again that they have no allegiance to the laws of their country and they have protested against them. The constant arrest, imprisonment and forced exile of many students, women, labour activists, writers and supporters of religious and national minorities is testimony to the fact that the Iranian people do not support Islamic legislation. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-05-2012 13:09 Post subject: |
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Full text at linlk.
| Quote: | Imperialism finds new pretext for threats
As Iranian workers went out in remarkable numbers for May Day, a new dispute over some small islands in the Gulf shows that despite apparent progress on the nuclear question a new source of tension has been found. Yassamine Mather reports.
A week can be a long time in politics, but in Iran it can seem more like a year.
Last week, as news agencies were reporting rumours of the regime’s possible retreat over its nuclear programme, the price of gold dropped on the Tehran exchange market - a clear sign of reduced tensions between western powers and Iran. The factional fighting of recent years also seemed to belong to the distant past, as figureheads of various factions of the regime, including those arch enemies, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the current incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attended the meetings of the National Expediency Council. They even managed to smile for the cameras in a pre-arranged photo-shoot.
However, then came news of another conflict in the Persian Gulf - this time between Iran on the one side and Saudi Arabia and Gulf Cooperation Council countries on the other. Arab and US media reported that the Peninsula Shield Force, the military coordinating army of the GCC, had been carrying out military manoeuvres to “test harmony and coordination among ground, air and naval forces and their readiness”.
The military exercise was seen as a response to Iran’s continued occupation of three islands in the Gulf - the tiny Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb islets, near the mouth of the Straits of Hormuz, that was seized in 1971 by the shah after British forces left the region. Abu Musa, the only inhabited island of the three, was placed under joint administration in a deal with Sharjah, now part of the United Arab Emirates. They have since been a bone of contention with the UAE, which claims sovereignty over them.
While the dispute seemed to have been forgotten for most of the decades since, in the last two months the UAE has been mounting increasingly vocal demands for the return of their territory - with the backing of the GCC and the Arab League. This, of course, has brought an angry response from the Iranians, who vowed to “crush any act of aggression” and prompted a visit to Abu Musa by Ahmadinejad a few weeks ago. In Tehran the rumour is that even the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was not aware of the trip before it took place - on the eve of the international nuclear talks.
http://www.hopi-ireland.org/c/imperialism-finds-new-pretext-threats |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 24-05-2012 13:27 Post subject: |
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Full text at link.
| Quote: | Iran and Islamophobia
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004850
Is there something suspect about the opposition of Hands Off the People of Iran to the Iranian theocracy? Yassamine Mather answers some of the allegations
One of the arguments put forward against Hands Off the People of Iran is that our slogan, ‘No to the theocracy’ (which usually follows ‘No to imperialism’), is pandering to Islamophobia, especially at a time when there is a threat of war against Iran. In dismissing such accusations we have to point out one more time that it is not Islamophobic to support the call for separation of state and religion in a country where three decades of Shia governance has left religion’s reputation in tatters. There is a difference between being anti-Islamic and being against the rule of the clergy: the left cannot compromise on the basic democratic demand for separation of church and state.
In addition there are major differences between the propaganda used in the current escalation of imperialist threats against Iran and the anti-Islam arguments used in justifying ‘the war on terror’ and the subsequent Islamophobia. In the aftermath of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, as the United States went on a mission to spread ‘liberal democracy’ through conflict, it was necessary to identify an enemy, albeit a largely invisible one, and to a certain extent a very specific form of anti-Islamic propaganda was used: Islam (of a certain type) was ‘the other’, whose terror had to be defeated. However, even then, the ‘war on terror’ was not presented as a war against Islam as such, but against a specific enemy.
At its height we did not see the demonisation of Saudi Arabia or the Gulf states who preach and finance Islamic fundamentalism. Although most of the perpetrators of 9/11 suicide attacks were from Saudi Arabia, the air raids and military invasion were directed against Afghanistan. The western ‘allies’ did not want to mention that the origins of the group claiming responsibility for 9/11, Al Qa’eda , could be traced to the deliberate politicisation of Islamic groups during the cold war by the United States and its allies. Recent history was brushed under the carpet, with media analysts and military experts failing to mention that since the 1950s western governments had encouraged, financed and even initiated Islamic groups in the Arab world and beyond in order to undermine and confront secular, nationalist and socialist forces. From Hamas in Palestine to the Taliban in Afghanistan, they were indeed creations of imperialism, with the deliberate aim of weakening revolutionary forces in the region.
So in many ways the ‘Islamic’ in this ‘war on Islamic terrorism’ was at best ambiguous and at worst misleading. Of course, in France, where the Arabs are the poor of the banlieues, the war was an excuse to attack the underclass, and to a certain extent in the rest of continental Europe, as well as the United Kingdom, a side benefit of the ‘war on terror’ was to isolate further a section of the immigrant population. In other words, its anti-Islamic character was only stressed when it suited the warmongers. At no time was their anti-Islam aimed at rich Saudis, Kuwaitis or Qataris - even though, for example, the Saudi royals continued to apply its constant state of internal terror in the name of Islamic fundamentalism. According to Alain Badiou, the predicate ‘Islamic’ in ‘Islamic terrorism’ has no function except to give content to the word ‘terrorism’.[1]
One could argue that, far from being a war against Islam, the ‘war on Islamic terrorism’ was used to incriminate, victimise and therefore control a certain section of dark-skinned migrants. Here I am not advocating indifference to the plight of Muslim migrants who bore the brunt of the attacks in response to 9/11. However, this fictitious war on Islam was not a war against a Muslim nation (such a thing does not exist) and in forming alliances to oppose it the left should have been honest about the reactionary nature of Al Qa’eda and the Taliban, and less eager to excuse Islamic fundamentalism.
Having said that, as far as the threat of war against Iran is concerned, the issue of ‘war against Islamic terrorism’ is not relevant. No-one in authority in the US or Europe has used the term for the last few years and military action against Iran is proposed not on the basis of the regime’s Islamic fundamentalism as such, but because of its alleged intention to acquire nuclear weapons. In fact vilification of the country’s civilian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is far more prevalent than that of senior clerics. The occasional attempts by US military officials to link the Iranian regime with Al Qa’eda and the Taliban backfired. It is now known that in fact Iran arrested bin Laden’s relatives in the early 2000s.[2] |
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| Human_84 We wont hurt you human.
Great Old One Joined: 30 Mar 2005 Total posts: 1386 Location: Invisible, sitting next to you. Gender: Male |
| Posted: 25-05-2012 20:27 Post subject: |
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| Without reading all 45 pages, can someone tell me in simple terms why Iran is so bothered by Israel? Google doesn't seem to know. |
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| AngelAlice Great Old One Joined: 07 Apr 2006 Total posts: 723 Location: marshy middle ground Gender: Female |
| Posted: 25-05-2012 20:32 Post subject: |
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| Human_84 wrote: | | Without reading all 45 pages, can someone tell me in simple terms why Iran is so bothered by Israel? Google doesn't seem to know. |
I thought it was Israel that was bothered by Iran - so I can't help you there. |
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Mythopoeika Boring petty conservative
Joined: 18 Sep 2001 Total posts: 9109 Location: Not far from Bedford Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 25-05-2012 20:38 Post subject: |
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| Human_84 wrote: | | Without reading all 45 pages, can someone tell me in simple terms why Iran is so bothered by Israel? Google doesn't seem to know. |
Probably because of some of the ill-considered and cynical statements of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 25-05-2012 20:41 Post subject: |
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| AngelAlice wrote: | | Human_84 wrote: | | Without reading all 45 pages, can someone tell me in simple terms why Iran is so bothered by Israel? Google doesn't seem to know. |
I thought it was Israel that was bothered by Iran - so I can't help you there. |
Same here! Its Israel who is threatening to bomb Irans nuclear facilities.
Iran have zero nuclear weapons, Israel have circa 300 nuclear weapons.
There was a time when I would have said that no Israeli Cabinet would authorise the casual use of nuclear weapons, but with the Russian Mafia Immigrants party in government along with ultra-orthodox parties anything is possible.
I support a nuclear weapon free Middle East and I want to see the Iranian Theocracy over thrown from within and from below. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 01-06-2012 23:51 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Joining forces against war and expulsions
Milton Keynes Hands Off the People of Iran and the local Stop the War Coalition group joined forces for a meeting on the threat of war against Iran reports Dave Isaacson.
Comrades from the Hands of the People of Iran campaign in Milton Keynes have responded to the recently escalating sanctions and war threats against Iran by working closely with the local Stop the War group to build opposition to any imperialist intervention. We worked together to organise a joint Hopi/STW public meeting to discuss these issues on Monday May 28.
Over 20 people attended, which for a town such as Milton Keynes is reasonable. The meeting was addressed by Israeli socialist Moshé Machover, who is also a member of the Hopi steering committee. He gave an excellent opening, looking at the reasons why policymakers in the US and Israel want to see a change of regime in Iran and why some actively favour the methods of war to achieve such an aim. Moshé examined the long-term strategic interests of Zionism in Israel in particular. He argued that these interests flow from the fact that Israel is a certain type of colonial settler state, based upon the total exclusion of the indigenous population, to the extent that this can be achieved (unlike some other settler states such as South Africa and Algeria, where native peoples were needed for their labour-power).
With Israel’s determination to scupper any hopes that Palestinians have for an independent sovereign state on the one hand, and the Zionist nightmare of ‘demographic peril’ (the fear that the growing Palestinian population will increasingly outnumber Israelis) on the other, the very presence of the Palestinians is intolerable to Zionism. Comrade Machover explained that the solution that many Zionists have longed to put into practice is to simply expel the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza: ie, ethnic cleansing.
Indeed the current Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is on record telling students in a speech at Bar-Ilan University in November 1989 that “the government had failed to exploit politically favourable situations in order to carry out ‘large-scale’ expulsions at times when ‘the damage would have been relatively small. I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people’.” Israeli provocations that lead to a regional conflagration involving Iran and the US could create just the “politically favourable situation” Netanyahu wishes for - a sideshow while they ethnically cleanse the Palestinians.
Moshé’s talk was well received and there were some very interesting questions which prompted further discussions on issues such as the current conflict in Syria, Israel’s own development of a nuclear arsenal, and an assessment of the Occupy movement. One speaker expressed scepticism about the scale of the ethnic cleansing Moshé argues Israeli politicians would like to carry out. He felt that such a thing would just not be acceptable in this day and age. Moshé responded that it is precisely our job to make sure that such acts are made unacceptable, and indeed made impossible, through our collective opposition. To achieve such aims we need political organisation and a programme.
Everybody I spoke to left feeling that the meeting had been a success. Everyone took home Hopi literature and many bought a copy of Moshé’s new book - Israelis and Palestinians: conflict and resolution. As well as Hopi and STW, the local Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch was also present with a stall. These are all good signs that people are taking the issues seriously and want to learn more.
As Moshé explained at the end of the meeting, this summer is a particularly dangerous one for the Middle East. We must keep a close eye on the situation and do all we can develop the ideas and organisation we need to pose an internationalist and socialist alternative to imperialism and Zionism. Hopi is very clear: we stand in solidarity with the Iranian people - not their regime - and oppose all sanctions and war threats. In Milton Keynes we will continue to work closely with the local STW group (which incidentally displays none of the sectarianism towards Hopi that we have experienced at a national level). It is also worth mentioning our gratitude to Milton Keynes trades council, an affiliate of Hopi, who financed the meeting with a £100 donation.
http://hopoi.org/ |
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| Mal_Content Great Old One Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Total posts: 779 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 02-06-2012 12:42 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: June 1, 2012 344 Comments
WASHINGTON — From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.
Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.
At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.
“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.
Told it was unclear how much the Iranians knew about the code, and offered evidence that it was still causing havoc, Mr. Obama decided that the cyberattacks should proceed. In the following weeks, the Natanz plant was hit by a newer version of the computer worm, and then another after that. The last of that series of attacks, a few weeks after Stuxnet was detected around the world, temporarily took out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran had spinning at the time to purify uranium.
This account of the American and Israeli effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program is based on interviews over the past 18 months with current and former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program, as well as a range of outside experts. None would allow their names to be used because the effort remains highly classified, and parts of it continue to this day.
These officials gave differing assessments of how successful the sabotage program was in slowing Iran’s progress toward developing the ability to build nuclear weapons. Internal Obama administration estimates say the effort was set back by 18 months to two years, but some experts inside and outside the government are more skeptical, noting that Iran’s enrichment levels have steadily recovered, giving the country enough fuel today for five or more weapons, with additional enrichment.
Whether Iran is still trying to design and build a weapon is in dispute. The most recent United States intelligence estimate concludes that Iran suspended major parts of its weaponization effort after 2003, though there is evidence that some remnants of it continue.
Iran initially denied that its enrichment facilities had been hit by Stuxnet, then said it had found the worm and contained it. Last year, the nation announced that it had begun its own military cyberunit, and Brig. Gen. Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization, said that the Iranian military was prepared “to fight our enemies” in “cyberspace and Internet warfare.” But there has been scant evidence that it has begun to strike back.
The United States government only recently acknowledged developing cyberweapons, and it has never admitted using them. There have been reports of one-time attacks against personal computers used by members of Al Qaeda, and of contemplated attacks against the computers that run air defense systems, including during the NATO-led air attack on Libya last year. But Olympic Games was of an entirely different type and sophistication.
It appears to be the first time the United States has repeatedly used cyberweapons to cripple another country’s infrastructure, achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives. The code itself is 50 times as big as the typical computer worm, Carey Nachenberg, a vice president of Symantec, one of the many groups that have dissected the code, said at a symposium at Stanford University in April. Those forensic investigations into the inner workings of the code, while picking apart how it worked, came to no conclusions about who was responsible.
A similar process is now under way to figure out the origins of another cyberweapon called Flame that was recently discovered to have attacked the computers of Iranian officials, sweeping up information from those machines. But the computer code appears to be at least five years old, and American officials say that it was not part of Olympic Games. They have declined to say whether the United States was responsible for the Flame attack. |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html |
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