Category Archives: Iran

UPDATED: Here Comes The Bomb (Casus Belli)

Barack Obama, Homeland Security, Iran, Journalism, Media, Military, Technology, Terrorism, War

More war is on its way—and sooner than you think.

For the last week or so, the president’s most loyal lap dogs—America’s brain-dead broadcasters—have been beating the drum for an urgent need, identified by- and acted on by the Pentagon: “to develop its largest bomb because officials believe [the current arsenal] is not capable of destroying Iran’s fortified underground facilities.”

That acts of war and elections often coincide should come as no surprise. It’s unfortunate, but electability in fin de siècle America still hinges on projecting bully power around the world—an American leader has to aspire to “protect” borders and people not his own, and if they refuse his advances, he should be prepared to bomb them to kingdom come.

Having used the American military to particularly great political effect—the barefaced Barack Obama is preparing to blast Iranians with something even “better” than the BLU-82.

This flaccid, coward of a politician is intent on shoring up his commander-in-chief credentials so as to seduce a militarist America for the second time. The Pentagon, under the president who has perfected the art of state assassination, is working on a “13.6 ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP).” It “is the deepest penetrating ‘bunker buster’ currently in the U.S. arsenal, designed to take out fortifications built by Iran to hide their alleged nuclear weapons. (Via The DailyMail Online.)

UPDATE (Feb. 1): “Spy Chief Sees Iran Threats in U.S”:

The U.S., “spy chief James Clapper” “has concluded that some Iranian officials, probably including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ‘are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States as a response to real or perceived actions that threaten the regime,’ according to an assessment provided by Mr. Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence.”

Clapper’s claptrap evidence is here, detailed in my “Is A-Jad (Ahmadinejad) The Fall Guy For The AG (Attorney General)?”

[It’s]…the kind of cloak-and-dagger that belongs in an episode of “The Unit,” not in the courts of a civilized country. To entrap the two defendants, Mansour Arbabsiar and Ali Gholam Shakuri, assistant US attorneys relied on Title 18 of the United States Code. Sections in this “versatile” law were used to ensnare domestic diva Martha Stewart (for fibbing to the Feds about a recipe, not for insider trading).

UPDATED: The Vexing Case of the Vanishing Iranian Scientists

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Intelligence, Iran, Israel, Middle East

I fully expect to hear former CIA operative Michael Scheuer on Judge Napolitano’s Freedom Watch tonight. I expect Scheuer to implicate the Israeli Mossad in the killing of an Iranian nuclear chemist by motorbike assassins. For once, I expect I to agree almost completely with what Scheuer will posit on the show (if Nap’s producers have been quick on their feet, as I expect they have).

If Israel has indeed been eliminating Iran’s intellectual arsenal, it may be acting in bad faith, in seriously bad faith. It knows that the US has zero credibility with the Arab world. No surprise there. America’s lack of credibility in the Middle East is well deserved. Israel knows full well that if Hillary Rodham Clinton, “the gorgon who heads Caesar’s state department,” denies doing the deed, as Clinton has, no one will believe the woman who cackled, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” when she was informed of Col. Muammar Gadhafi’s execution by her proxies.

If Israel had indeed “recruited Iranian operatives on the ground,” as it is alleged to have done, to carry out these precision killings, Bibi’s government has placed the Obama administration in a very dodgy position.

UPDATE: I stopped listening after a while; I have an allergy to truth deniers such as Erika Payne. I think the story was not covered on Freedom Watch. Perhaps tomorrow.

Save the People; Fail the EU

Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Iran, Political Economy, Propaganda, Trade

“The EU is our biggest trading partner. We cannot afford to let it fail. We send much of our goods and services to Europe. We share their values. We want to crush Iran with our European pals. They bomb and regulate the world with us. If the Eurozone goes down in flames; if we let them—we’ll be next.” So said President Barack Obama on November 28. Well, sort of. (Okay, I’ve ad-libbed a LOT, but I think I know my president by now.)

Obama was entertaining leaders of the European Union. He promised them that America would stand ready to do its part to help them withstand the Eurozone crisis.

The stakes are too high, you say? For whom, Mr. President? Cui Bono? Who Benefits, Barack?

Ask yourself that question each time you hear a reporter/pundit/analyst/politician insist that the EU and the Euro zone cannot be allowed to fail.

In reply to the question as to what will happen if this colossus collapses, the stakeholders above parrot a bunch of non sequiturs or circular arguments. In the tradition of “a statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it,” these reasons don’t necessarily obtain:

We can’t allow the thing to fail because the stakes are too high. Again: For whom?

David Böcking of Spiegel Online (a most intelligent newspaper; the Germans are impressive) advances the arguments against the break-up of the Eurozone. These are mostly legalistic, and are not rooted in real economic realities. The treaties, observes Böcking, don’t allow for easy disengagement. Legal disputes could arise over debt owed if the seceding country had borrowed money. And, mostly, sinecured EU official would lose sway on the world stage.

Brace for impact, if you believed these bastards, but here are the economic realities:

We flesh-and-blood Americans trade not with Barack or with Brussels, the seat of the European central government, but rather with the people of Belgium, the Netherland, Germany, France. If the financial institutions into which Europeans and Americans have been herded by bureaucrats on both sides of the Atlantic collapse, well then, individual producers and traders will find a way to make a living without these artificial, inorganic structures.

This is a failure of government, not of all the people, although some of the governed, maybe even the majority, have failed. The people who’ve failed are those who have eaten the state’s forbidden fruit.

UPDATED: Jingoism Trumps ‘Jingle Bells’ in Nov. 22 Republican Debate

Elections, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Iran, Israel, Military, Nationhood, Republicans

CNN’s co-sponsors of the Republican debate from Constitution Hall, in the nation’s capital, were the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. That fact set the jingoistic, interventionist tone for the evening. There were lots of leading questions from scholars of these respective special interests. Implicit in all these questions was the demand for a better-defined role (read war) for America in Iran, Syria (“no fly zone”) and Sudan (all the better to inflame and focus the local Al-Qaeda chapter).
Mitt Romney ended this long, two-hour session by cementing the position of all the Republican candidates, bar Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman to a lesser degree: American exceptionalism means asserting America’s military superiority. Unclear was how that position coincided with US economic bankruptcy.

In the next hour, I will be teasing out the details of the debate for you with the analysis you’ve come to except here at BAB (donation buttons to the left of you).

Humorous highlights (all the more essential given the fact that these are dead-end debates; the resignation written all over Ron Paul’s face says it all):

Herman Cain (Chairman/CEO, Godfather’s Pizza) calls Wolf Blitzes “Blitz,” and firmly tells him, “No, Blitz.”
Michele Bachmann (U.S. Representative, Minnesota, State Senator; Attorney) about Pakistan: “It is too nuclear to fail.”
A scrappy Ron Paul (U.S. Representative, Texas, Physician) shouts half-way through the first hour: “How about the rest of us?” “Blitz ignores Paul, and his own promise at the onset to allocate fair time to all.

UPDATE: Okay to the meat of the exchanges:

Introductions: Rick P. touted the bliss of marriage and the beauty of his wife. Newt Gingrich sucked up to the hosts and think tanks named above. MB blew kisses to the troops. Ron Paul said what needed saying: “I am convinced that needless and unnecessary wars are a great detriment. They undermine our prosperity and our liberties. They add to our deficits and they consume our welfare. We should take a careful look at our foreign policy.”

Patriot Act: Ron Paul sustained the momentum by calling the thing unpatriotic, advocating that one prosecute cases as the crimes they are. Paul also warned about sacrificing liberty for security in pursuit of total safety and a total police state. The other candidates, with the exception of Jon Huntsman, plumped for an extension and an expansion of the Act.

The Nation’s Paid Pimps: Paul was not asked about the Transportation and Security Administration. Perry has moved to criminalize the TSA’s pat downs in his state of Texas, but here the governor spoke primarily about privatization, getting rid of the unions, and doing better counterintelligence, as if the government could do anything better. Rick Santorum spoke to the Israeli model. This meant what I call “rational profiling” (“Cabbies Do It Too). Ron Paul stepped in it (it was a matter of time, I guess). First Paul quite correctly called the other candidates on their circular reasoning: They all kept calling for Patriot-Act type preemption against dem “terrorists.” However, until you bring a case against someone, he is but a suspect. After that fabulous point, Paul went and ruined it all by saying something stupid like “don’t profile.”

Pakistan/Afghanistan: Newt Gingrich stood out in his quest to effect a sort of American coup in both Pakistan and Afghanistan—I thought we had already done so; semantics, really—take over operations and run these places like we need to. G-d help us. Mitt wants nation building. For a clever man he sure sounded stupid claiming that divesting from these hell holes forthwith would threaten the gains and investment in blood and treasure made so far. Perry had taken his meds for this debate. No pennies for Pakistan was his position. He also spoke of encouraging the region’s countries to trade. It’s probably as good as talking to the hand, but it’s sure worth suggesting barter over boycotts and bombs. Jon repeated his best lines from the CNN/Tea Party Debate in Tampa, Florida, where he advocated for divesting from these crap countries.

Interspersed were questions from the pompous audience about sanctions on Iran (more, more), possible attacks on A-Jad, and requests for foreign aid. The last position was advanced by no other than Bush’s Paul (Dundes) Wolfowitz. Naturally, now that Wolfy is president of the World Bank, he’d like to secure a supply of US funny money with which to sustain his new fiefdom.

I’m getting terribly bored. This whole competition will end badly. My report will commence tomorrow, if your interest is sustained. But Let me end with immigration, an issue on which they all sucked mightily, and should read “Suicide of A Superpower” and its sequel).

Like most Americans (except for us immigrants), the candidates, in their call for more special visas for highly skilled individuals, proved that they know close to nothing about America’s labyrinthine visa programs. They advocated for fixing the immigration system so that the US could import many more brilliant individuals, as if there was a limit on, or an impediment to, such immigration.

THERE are no limits on the number of geniuses American companies can import.

America already has an “Extraordinary Ability” Visa. In exchange for my spouse’s exceptional abilities and qualifications, he was awarded the O-1 visa. And we, in short order, gained green cards.

The primary H-1B hogs—Infosys (and another eight, sister Indian firms), Microsoft, and Intel—are forever claiming that they are desperate for talent. But, in reality, they have unlimited access to individuals with unique abilities through the open-ended O-1 visa program.

I believe that before the article titled “Why Aren’t The H-1B Hogs Satisfied With The O-1 ‘Extraordinary Ability’ Visa?” was written, no immigration expert had made the simple point above.

That’s right: The O-1 visa program enables the importation of as many geniuses as a company can find, from every corner of the world.