The abuses do not begin and end with cracking down on Occupy Movement free speech. The goal is far greater -- even more war and Perkins-style economic assassinations. Apathy means the war machine goes forward. The goal of occupiers is to call attention to the corporate greed and military madness behind our US policy of endless war as Orwell described in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
(RT ) Iran war drumbeat on CrossTalk with Mark Levine and guests
Nov. 14, 2011 - Is the latest IAEA report a case for a war with Iran? Why does the US get to read it first? Is there enough evidence to conclude that Iran's nuclear program goes far beyond peaceful purposes? And why is no-one questioning the credibility of the IAEA?
("Invisible Empire") The military-industrial complex
On Earth, strange things, including frogs and fish, sometimes fall from the sky, but on a distant extrasolar planet, the weather could be even weirder: When a front moves in, small rocks rain down on the surface, a new study suggests.
The exoplanet, COROT-7b, was discovered in February by the COROT space telescope launched by the French and European space agencies. Last month it became the first planet outside our solar system to be confirmed as a rocky body — most other known exoplanets are gas giants.
The planet is nearly twice the size of Earth and about five times the mass of our world. Calculations have indicated it has a density about that of Earth's, which means it is likely made up of silicate rocks, just as Earth's crust is. More>>
Protests continue but are receiving less attention from the mass media obsessed with coverage of mass distraction. Check the Huffington Post for opinions and discussions:
A supporter of Iran's former Prime Minister Mousavi holds a slogan during a rally in Tehran, capital of Iran, 6/15/09 (Xinhua).
A standing president stole votes, and an election resulted in what exit polling and statistics said was an impossibility. Vote rigging was alleged. Un-accidental miscounting was obvious so that votes didn't count, and voters were disenfranchised.
The world was upset. American protesters poured out into the streets and the paramilitary was allowed to violently repress civilians with impunity. And Bush was still treated like a legitimate president.
Now it seems Mr. Ahmadinejad has followed suit. While India is the largest experiment in democracy, the U.S. is the most corrupt and well disguised perfunctory democratic act. We installed computer voting machines that preselect a candidate and passed laws that makes examining these machines a crime (Help America Vote Act).
We have a political lobbying system that pre-picks a winner based on money, the best politician money can buy. Voting is just a formality, one that changes nothing but instead entrenches the system so that whomever is selected is sure to go along to get along. Who could blame Iran or any other nation hiding behind the legitimacy of "government for the people by the people"?
Netanyahu and his right-wing political machine were not going to let Tzipi Livni stand in his way. Should, then, Ahminajad be expected to simply stand aside?
Iran's Guardian Council ready to recount disputed polling boxes (Xinhua, chinaview.cn, 6/16/09)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
·Iran's Guardian Council is ready to recount the disputed votes. ·Recount may lead to changes in the candidates' tally, GC says. ·Khamenei has ordered the GC to investigate claims of vote fraud.
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's Guardian Council (GC) said on Tuesday that it is ready to recount the disputed polling boxes, local English-language Press TV said. The council, Iran's top legislative body, has agreed on a recount of disputed ballot boxes in last week's presidential election if it finds irregularities in the vote count, Press TV said. "If it is necessary, exact recount will be done," the local IRNA quoted the Guardian Council spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei assaying on Tuesday in another report. More>>
Dumpsters are set on fire by supporters of Iran's defeated reformist presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi during clashes with police in Tehran June 13, 2009. (Xinhua/Reuters) Photo gallery
Palin and McCain were willing to support Israel 100%; the American public rejected the offer. But the media and the current administration seem to have a cozier relationship. Without Iran making waves, none of this would be in the news at all. Noam Chomsky explains.
Does an Israeli illegally run America's Department of Homeland Security?
Controlled Press Hides Chertoff's Israeli Roots
Michael Chertoff, the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, was approved in a 98-0 vote in the U.S. Senate without the question of his Israeli roots "and nationality" even being raised.
On February 15, 2005, Michael Chertoff -- an apparent dual national with Israeli roots -- was sworn in as the second Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The new "homeland security czar," who oversees the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, seems to be hiding his own dual-national status with the cooperation of the controlled press.
Although the media scrutinized Bernard Kerik, President George W. Bush's first choice to head DHS, had uncovered embarrassing details about his mother, there was no discussion of Chertoff's mother, who played a noteworthy role in the creation of the Zionist state in Palestine.
The omission of Chertoff's mother's Zionist past suggests that there is an effort by the media to conceal his ties to Israel and his status as a "de jure" Israeli national, by birth.
Under Israeli law, a child born to an Israeli citizen, including children born outside of Israel as first generation out of Israel, is considered an Israeli citizen. The child remains an Israeli national until he or she formally renounces their Israeli nationality.... More>>
GENEVA – A day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused an uproar with a speech attacking Israel at a U.N. conference on racism, the U.N. said Tuesday that Ahmadinejad had actually dropped language from the speech that described the Holocaust as "ambiguous and dubious."
The U.N. and the Iranian Mission in Geneva did not comment on why the change was made. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, however, said he had met with the Iranian president before his speech Monday and reminded him the U.N. had adopted resolutions "to revoke the equation of Zionism with racism and to reaffirm the historical facts of the Holocaust."
Ahmadinejad is lampooned as a pariah and strawman to despise. But as unpalatable a figure as he may be, his statements ring true for many even as they offend others (Cartoon: atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com).
Ahmadinejad may have decided to drop the Holocaust phrase that was in his original text to deliver his condemnation of Israel in a more palatable fashion for many countries.
Still, Ahmadinejad's accusation that the West used the Holocaust as a "pretext" for aggression against Palestinians still provoked walkouts by delegates including every European Union country in attendance. But others, including those from the Vatican, stayed because they said he stopped short of denying the Holocaust.
The walkout came after Ahmadinejad accused Western nations of complicity in violence against Palestinians surrounding the foundation of Israel.
The original text of his speech said "following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question of Holocaust."
U.N. spokeswoman Marie Heuze said U.N. officials had checked back with the interpreters and the Farsi recording of Ahmadinejad's speech, and determined that the Iranian president had dropped the terms "ambiguous and dubious," referring instead in Farsi to "the abuse of the question of the Holocaust."
Adding to the confusion, the live English translation of the speech did not mention the word "Holocaust" at all, while the French stayed true to the spoken words of Ahmadinejad. The English translator apparently was following the prepared text and stopped speaking when the Iranian president changed the wording.
The meeting turned chaotic from the start when two protesters in rainbow wigs tossed red clown noses at Ahmadinejad as he began his speech with a Muslim prayer. A Jewish student group from France said it had been trying to convey "the masquerade that this conference represents."
The United States and eight other Western countries had already boycotted the event that started on the eve of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, because of concerns Muslim countries would drown out all other issues with calls to denounce Israel and restrict free speech when it comes to criticizing Islam.
Over 100 other countries on Tuesday approved a 16-page declaration calling on the world to combat intolerance. The declaration did not mention Israel, but among dozens of other points, it reaffirms a 2001 statement issued after the U.N.'s first global racism meeting in South Africa that recognized the "plight of the Palestinians" while affirming the Jewish state's right to security.
That support of the 2001 document was cited by President Barack Obama's administration as the reason it boycotted the Geneva meeting.
African-American groups participating in the conference sharply criticized Obama and his administration for not attending and not signing its declaration against racism.
"The boycott of the Obama administration both saddens us and angers us," said Jaribu Hill, executive director of the Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights.
"We will not let Mr. Obama off the hook simply because he stands inside black skin, or because his campaign served to energize and inspire thousands of young people and people of color," she said.
Ban, the U.N. chief, was heartened at the adoption of the declaration by consensus and urged countries not at the conference to rejoin the fight against racism.
In Paris, France's foreign minister criticized the U.S. decision to stay away from an event featuring Ahmadinejad while declaring itself open for negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.
"More than a paradox, it could really be a mistake," Bernard Kouchner said.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a note Tuesday thanking those nations that boycotted the Geneva conference.
"This decision restored a bit of sanity to a world in which an anti-racism conference turns its stage over to a Holocaust denier who expresses his desire to wipe Israel off the map," the note said, according to his office.
Most of Ahmadinejad's rhetoric was not new but its timing and high profile could complicate U.S. efforts to warm ties with the Islamic republic. Alejandro Wolff, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, denounced what he called "the Ahmadinejad spectacle."
In Tehran, some 200 people gathered at the airport to give Ahmadinejad a hero's welcome as he returned home.
Iranian state TV described him as having defended Palestinian rights against a racist regime. The official IRNA news agency quoted lawmaker Mohammad RezaBahonar as saying that Ahmadinejad's speech in Geneva was a "great achievement for (Iran's ruling) system."
The U.N. said it expelled 13 people Tuesday from the conference, including members of Jewish and Iranian groups that disrupted Ahmadinejad's speech.
"At the United Nations we demand that conferences and debates be held in a spirit of mutual respect and dignity," Heuze said.
___
AP writers Frank Jordans in Geneva, Angela Charlton in Paris, Mark Lavie in Jerusalem, and Edith Lederer at the UN in New York contributed to this report.
WARNING: Expletives and offensive humor by Sarah Silverman, a Jewish comedienne
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The abuses do not begin and end with cracking down on Occupy Movement free speech. The goal is far greater -- even more war and Perkins-style economic assassinations. Apathy means the war machine goes forward. The goal of occupiers is to call attention to the corporate greed and military madness behind our US policy of endless war as Orwell described in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
