1. “Israel Violates Economic Sanctions Against Iran
But the temptations of sanctions busting aren’t an “elites only” affair. Under the highly problematic US-Israel Free Trade Agreement, US growers should have an advantage in supplying the $20 million Israeli pistachio market. But grower complaints meticulously documented in 2007 to the US Trade Representative reveal that Israel prefers to avoid importing American nuts while violating its own “Trading with the Enemy Act” by purchasing Iranian pistachios through Turkey. Although US growers supplied scientific test data to the US Trade Representative validating these claims, no punitive measures have been taken by Israel or the USTR (an office of the President).
History suggests that Israelis and their US lobby’s financial backers will be first in line to violate so-called “crippling sanctions” against Iran, a country over which the US has relatively little direct economic leverage. This adds insult to injury, since a real US economic sanctions regime — likely to have been highly successful in averting conditions underlying any potential Middle East nuclear arms race — has been suppressed since it was signed into law over three decades ago.
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The presidential history of capitulation to Israeli violators unmasks these new economic sanctions for what they truly are: corrupt “box checking exercises” as Israel’s lobby eagerly drives the US toward yet another needless — but long planned — military conflict which serves no legitimate American interest.”
http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2010/02/10/israel-violates-economic-sanctions-against-iran/
2. “Tehran Has Little Reason to Fear Sanctions
The biggest problem with existing and future sanctions remains the ability to enforce them. Even if a consensus could be reached on tougher measures, observers fear they would have little impact. In the event of a gasoline embargo, “there will be enough middlemen for Iran to carry on as normal,” Olivier Jakob, managing director of Swiss oil consultant Petromatrix told business news agency Bloomberg.
One recent example underscores the difficulty of enforcing sanctions. A Dutch airline was taken to court in the United States because it had been delivering American airplane technology and replacement parts to Iranian customers for years. The transactions were disguised because orders were made to a European firm which then placed orders on their behalf. The goods would then be delivered to Dubai. From there, the freight would be transported on to Iran.
Officials in Washington are all too familiar with the fact that the Iranians have become masterful at navigating their way around trade restrictions. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently conceded that the US economic embargo against Iran is less than airtight, describing sanctions were “leaky.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,677030,00.html
3. “The Carp of Truth: Jack Straw, Colin Powell and the Smoking Guns of War Crime
But Straw is not done yet. After assuring the grieving families of Britain that he himself — yes, he, the great right honorable high minister of state — feels their pain and shares their heartache, and after acknowledging that yes, it seems that perhaps a few mistakes were made (albeit only with the best intentions), he goes on to justify the whole mass-murdering enterprise:
But that having happened, I think there are few in Iraq, despite the bloodshed, would now say that they want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003.
Putting aside Straw’s unconscious but most apt echo of the poet Paul Celan’s phrase for the unspeakable evil of the Holocaust — “that which happened” — the moral depravity on display here is astonishing, breathtaking, obscene. The right honorable minister might consider asking the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by the invasion and by the virulent extremists it loosened and empowered: would you want to go back to what existed — i.e., you — before 20 March 2003? The right honorable minister might want to ask the more than four million people driven from their homes by the war and the savage sectarian conflicts and “ethnic cleansing” it unleashed and abetted: would you want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003? The right honorable minister might want to ask the tens of millions of Iraqis who have lost their loved ones: would you want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003 — and see if there were any alternatives for a better life other than a massive, unprovoked military invasion, mass death, mass destruction, chaos, collapse, civil war and violent terror from occupiers, mercenaries, sectarians and criminals?
O that the universe was not cold and indifferent, with no avenging furies to drive these bloodstained, sanctimonious wretches into soul-rending storms of madness and remorse. But there is not even an earthly venue where the scurrying servitors of power can receive even a modicum of justice. All we have are a few locked-down, buttoned-up, quasi-secret panels of worthies here and there now and then, to cause, at most, a moment or two of embarrassment before the servitors walk free to line their pockets and heap themselves with honors. Their only punishment, I suppose, must be to be what they are: the stunted, deadened husks of a full humanity that they have lost and will never recover.”
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1922-the-carp-of-truth-jack-straw-colin-powell-and-the-smoking-guns-of-war-crime.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%2Bempire_burlesque%2B%28Empire%2BBurlesque%2B-%2BChris%2BFloyd%29
4. “Lawsuit claims Pomona College student was detained by TSA over Arabic flashcards”
http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/latimes00126.html
5. “There are No Conspiracies Because Daddy Will Always Protect Us
Yesterday, I wrote:
It is scary for people to admit that those who are supposed to be their “leaders” protecting them may in fact be human beings with complicated motives who may not always have their best interests in mind.
Indeed, long-term psychological studies show that approximately one-quarter of the American population has an “authoritarian personality“, where they look for a “strong leader” to protect them (that’s why even after his lies were exposed, Bush still stayed at approximately a 25% approval rating).
Authoritarians not only don’t want to hear that the most powerful people might be acting against their interest, they will violently defend against any such information.
But it’s not just the quarter of the population that can be said to clinically suffer from authoritarian personality disorder.
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Similarly, many Americans have tended to naively believe that our leaders are selfless folks. They forget, of course, that the Founding Fathers loudly warned against relying on the charitable intentions of leaders, expressly set up a government based on the rule of law instead of the rule of men, and warned that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance in holding the feet of the powerful to the fire.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/02/there-are-no-conspiracies-because-daddy.html
6. “Divide and Rule in the U.S.A.: One cannot Rule the World without Keeping One’s Own Nation under Control
“Divide and Rule!” has been the motto of empires from time immemorial. Although the tactic be most cited in discussions of foreign affairs, its application at home is from time to time crucial. One can’t rule the world without keeping one’s own nation under control, and this is an essential prerequisite for empire maintenance abroad.
Keeping people from becoming united in promoting intelligent and fair minded political or economic reform has always been fundamental for any wealthy gang ruling by the sword or fire power, enforcing their usurpation of enough control of land and means of sustenance in order create either serfdom or wage slavery.
One notices that although the past election brought the unity of a Democratic executive enjoying majority leadership of his party in both houses of Congress, soon after the inauguration, corporate controlled media began dedicating most of its national news coverage and commentary to the inner wheeling and dealing of Republicans, projecting them as of more critical national importance than any deliberations of governing Democrats who had won the approval of the majority of an electorate dissatisfied with Republican party rule.
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Blind to the suffering of majority Mankind, the mechanically operating grey eminence of directors within the Financial-Military-Industrial-Complex dictating government foreign policy, not just since the Eisenhower administration, but since before the Civil War, have also discounted the suffering of Americans. (Who are made to suffer to a much lesser degree than their fellow human beings abroad in a U.S. dominated Third World). And just as its State Department promotes civil wars abroad to “divide and rule,” its compliant media similarly promotes rank, relentless and uncompromising confrontation on all issues within the country, be it abortion, homosexual rights, health care, immigration, environmental protection or any other domestic issue, in order to create divisiveness, confusion and avoid harmonious solutions, permitting corporations to “”divide and rule” America.
It might not seem surprising that the empire establishment is having its obedient media focus on a proto-fascist movement that would end all restraint on the preeminence of corporations in America. But it is odd, because at the moment there is no threat to its absolute power from that far less vocal portion of the population that is not totally enfeebled by the egotism and thirst for material accumulation beamed and directed at it through psyche penetrating distractions of clever mass consumer marketing advertising embedded in entertainment and in manipulated and deceptive information/news. “
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17557
7. 148 countries:
“According to the latest DOD quarterly report titled “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,” there are U.S. troops stationed in 148 countries and 11 territories in every corner of the globe. This the greatest number of countries that the United States has ever had troops in. This also means that U.S. troops occupy over 75 percent of the world’s countries.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24648.htm
