05.14.12
Posted in Middle East, Israelis, Iranians at 5:36 pm by Gutter Grunt
May14.2012. Hareetz started off the day with a lead piece on an imbecilic “new image” from inside Iran’s Parchin military base proving that Iran is making a nuke, citing an unidentified AP report. The “image” turns out to be a sophomoric computer-geek’s failed attempt at computer-assisted drafting.
What a coincidence that Hareetz starts hawking this “evidence” just days before Iran is to sit down with the IAEA in Baghdad. Nima Shirazi over at Wide Asleep in America very able writer. He has cut Hareetz into tiny pieces like pink slime. For instance, he reminds us of the similar cylinder-and-cube computer drawings that were used by Colin Powell as “evidence” of Sadam’s many weapons of mass destruction.
Next Hareetz compounded their insult of their readers’ collective intelligence with Barak Ravid’s piece in which he laments the possibility that an Israeli attack on Iran will be cut off because there might be an agreement between Iran and the IAEA next week. With respect to the stupid sphere and cube drawing, Ravid actually had this to say:
The interest behind leaking the information could belong to one of the powers who wishes to push Iran further into a corner and force the Islamic Republic into making more concessions in the negotiations.
Alternatively, the leak could benefit Israel, as Israel tries to make it clear to the world powers that only partial demands on Iran will not put a stop to the county’s military nuclear program.
Is this guy joking? Israel is “[t]he interest behind leaking the “information,” there is no “[a]lternatively” about it. If there is any information coming out of Iran, it is through the MEK terrorist network trained and paid for by the US and Israel. This is just more of Israel’s spooky propaganda machine spouting lies through AP hack George Jahn. As Nami points out Jahn has a history of pumping this Iran story with “sources” deep inside Iran. Here
In my opinion, you should put George Jahn down on your list of unreliable AP hacks to avoid. And put AP and Hareetz both down on your list of Israeli propaganda outlets.
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Posted in Israelis, Palestinians, Daily Dish, Iranians, Nuclear threats at 1:08 pm by Gutter Grunt
Petri dish art by Klari Reis [Whoa . . . almost ocular.]
With these two Israeli apologists in charge, what hope do we have of ever having a non-nuclear world? Just as in the run-up to the neo-con’s Iraq fiasco, now we are seeing brain-ded graphics that are supposed to be some sort of proof of Iran’s misdeeds and threats to the world, which must, of course, be neutralized at all costs. “All costs” meaning more Americans dying for Israel. Nami Shirazi, an excellent writer with a sharp pen, pretty well dissects the AP for publishing this bullshit. He also goes after Catherine Ashton’s outrageously dangerous allegations that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. I ask you, with Catherine Ashton and Hillary Clinton in charge of the IAEA’s attempts to de-nuke the Middle East, what are the chances of Israel throwing nukes all over the place before it’s all over? Answer: about as close to 100% as you can get.
Check the fine print. An agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinian prisoners has been signed that should bring an end to the hunger strike. Here is al Jazeera’s summary. Note that the IDF can still pull any Palestinian off the street, hold him for 6 months without charge under “administrative detention,” and renew it indefinitely every 6 months. This alone is more than enough reason to expel Israel from the UN.
The latest on Fukushima from Arni Gunderson. Sometimes Arni strikes me as a bit of a self-promoter, and when these dooms-day prophets hold up their latest book and start hawking them, my skeptic’s filter dial gets set to “High.” But he has a lot of information and he’s about as clear a speaker as I know. He’s done a lot of work to understand the Fukushima disaster. IOW, he’s worth listening to, especially if you’re on the West Coast. Here’s his summary as of May12.2012.
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05.13.12
Posted in Israelis, Palestinians, America, Daily Dish, Israeli Firsters, Technology at 8:31 pm by Gutter Grunt
Petri dish art by Klari Reis [See her site. She has 365 of these things!]
While Palestinian prisoners starve, IDF nut-cases threaten to rape protesters As 2000 illegally incarcerated Palestinians continue their hunger strike in Israeli prisons, two have now gone more than 77 days. That is 2 days beyond what was thought humanly possible. A third intifada is just around the corner. Meanwhile Mondoweiss quotes a Palestinian peace protester saying she was assaulted, full-body searched, and threatened with rape by IDF soldiers.
Does US breach 1st Amendment by supporting a Jewish state? Israel is a Jewish state. I don’t have any real problem with that as long as they leave me alone. But I do have a problem with this: the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution has been interpreted as requiring a firewall between government and religion. The US government, for instance, would not be able to support Jews over Muslims or Christians in the US. So how is it that the US can send $100 billion to the Jewish state over the last 6 decades and not violate the separation doctrine? And now we learn that the Obama administration has a “Jewish outreach director.” Is someone seriously arguing that the Executive Branch sending US tax money on a Jewish outreach director is not a violation of the separation doctrine?? Seems to me that any country that presents itself as a Jewish state, a Christian state, an Islamic state, or any other state governed by religious percepts should be automatically excluded from receiving Americans’ tax money until such time that the 1st Amendment is revoked or amended.
Why “nmn” will change the world. It seems that the only good news anymore comes from the scientists. Even the positive financial news gets worse and worse; the political news is always annoying; and the climate news just keeps getting weirder and weirder. So how about some good news: A group of scientists at Brookhaven have taken a big step in finding a cheap catalyst to crack the water molecule, which means a cheap way to make H2, which means a cheap way to produce energy that does not increase greenhouse gases. The catalyst is nickel-molybdenum-nitrogen. This is a game changer, and the price of platinum is bound to crash. Imagine having a small electric plant in each community that runs on water and produces electricity and O2. The grid would be thousands of tiny grids, none of which would reach more than 50 miles. Designed properly, they would be linked for emergencies, so if one generator goes down its neighbors can take up the slack. This is what the future of energy looks like. Forget electricity produced on a mega-scale. Local is the future.
List of Israeli Acts of Apartheid (AIA) I have started a separate page to keep a list of Israeli acts of apartheid. Updates can be found by going to the Israeli Acts of Apartheid page listed in the upper right.
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05.11.12
Posted in Israelis, America, Daily Dish, Iranians, Koreas, Nuclear threats at 11:46 am by Gutter Grunt
Petri dish art by Klari Reis [See her site. She has 365 of these things!]
Apario federal complaint Justice Dept. has filed its complaint against Maricopa County’s racist sheriff Joe Apario. It doesn’t ask for any punishment or fines; it only asks the court to make this creep with a badge follow the Constitution. Big deal. When they file a Section 1983 action against him, I’ll cheer.
Israel booted out of Chicago NATO conference. NATO members and a couple dozen “friends” of NATO are heading to Chicago for an annual conference. Israel won’t be attending this year, and, man, are they pissed off. The problem? Turkey, a NATO member, is flexing some muscle within NATO. IOW Israel is getting blow-back from its killing 9 Turks on the Mavi Marmara last year. Good. They need some blow-back.
Obama = Bush? Pro Publica has produced a helpful timeline of the Bush and Obama approaches to torture, surveillance, and torture. Sometimes it gets a little confusing as to whether Obama has followed up on his 2008 promises, and this timeline indicates that he has in a couple of cases (enhanced interrogation and black sites) but mostly he has continued to degrade the cherished American meaning of human rights. Waterboarding may be way down, but killing innocent people with drones is going out the roof.
Correction to Okseok Seo story Yesterday I observed the deathly silence over the death of IAEA inspector Okseok Seo in Iran. Turns out CNN ran the story the day before.
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05.10.12
Posted in America, Good cop/Bad cop, Daily Dish, Iranians at 9:56 am by Gutter Grunt
Petri dish art by Klari Reis [See her site for lots more petri dishes.]
Killer Cops to stand trial in Kelly Thomas case. Kelly Thomas was the young schizophrenic man killed by police in Fullerton CA, July2011. Yesterday a judge ordered two of the cops to stand trial. They are Manuel “get-you-fucking-hands-on-your-knees” Ramos and Jay Cicinelli. But the big news was the prosecutors finally releasing the video of the killing. Not easy to watch, but it should do what it’s supposed to do: taint the jury pool so the cops can later say they didn’t get a fair trial. The UK Guardian has the most informative article I’ve found.
IAEA investigator killed in Iran. A SoKo inspector named Okseok Seo was killed in Iran on Tuesday in a car “accident.” One would think that the death of an IAEA inspector in Iran would be front page on all msm before the body cooled down. Not so. This story is waaay under the radar so far. MSNBC, Harretz, al Jazeeera, HuffPost, - nil. The National Post has run an AP article that says the accident was near the contentious Fordow reactor. The Islamic Republic News Agency has a mini-article on the accident, putting it near the “Khandab complex in Markazi province”. Jeffery Lewis over at the Arms Control Wonk has a fascinating post on this death and the mysterious death of IAEA inspector Pierre Noir while investigating Taiwan in 1979. At the time Taiwan was trying to build a nuke and the US was all over them like it is now all over Iran. Noir was electrocuted. Lewis says the Iran accident was near Arak, which is more than 100 mi from Fordow, as the cruise missile flies.
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05.09.12
Posted in Israelis, Palestinians, Israeli Firsters at 7:33 pm by Gutter Grunt
News break: Another first for the Gutter Grunt.
In the Apr23.2012 Daily Dish I suggested that Israel-firster Lee Kaplan photo-shopped the dust-up between the peace protesters and Lt Colonel Shalom Eisner that went viral. Now the analysis is in. This sort of propaganda lying makes me ill.
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Posted in Environment -- Humans Screwing Nature, America, Technology at 1:18 pm by Gutter Grunt
Today I came upon two troubling essays about how dark our present age is, and how much darker it’s going to get.
The first was an essay by Noam Chompsky I found on TomDispatch.com. While I was distracted by a few factual and logical flaws, it is, nevertheless, worth reading — especially if you have kids.
I believe Chompsky is arguing that the takeover by workers of the means of production is the only way out of this mess. That might be right, but it’s already been tried a couple of times without huge success: the USSR and United Airlines. Clearly, these models would have to be tweaked a bit, but see what you think. Here’s the Chompsky link:
A Rebellious World or a New Dark Age?
The second foreboding piece I received by Email. It purports to be a posthumous epistle from future-thinker Ernest Callenbach, who died in April. As always, he has much to say that is worth thinking about. Given that he was well down the final, dark corridor when he wrote it, I find his final sentence most poignant: Let us embrace decay, for it is the source of all new life and growth.
Here is the complete essay:
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Israelis, America, Daily Dish, Iranians at 11:12 am by Gutter Grunt
Petri dish art by Klari Reis [Klari!! (You can tell I’m crazy about this lady.)]
Eisner gets new job Remember Shalom Eisner, the IDF officer who bashed the unarmed, peace protester in the face with the butt of his US-made M16? We all thought he got canned from the IDF for his psychopathy. Not so. He got a new job training soldiers. That tells you all you need to know about Israel’s own psychopathy and how they keep perpetuating it.
Moon rock psychopath. Speaking of government-paid psychopaths, NASA has sure had it’s share of psychopath criminals. On Mar04.2012 National Geo aired a documentary on the Thad Roberts moon-rock heist. The documentary was called Million Dollar Moon Rock Heist, and was produced by a British company called Icon Films, mis-identified by the Daily Mail as “Iconic Films.” The film is now scheduled to air in the UK. Thad Roberts did 6 years in a federal pen and, according to this 2011 CBS interview, still thinks he’s going to get a ride into space. Not just a psychopath, a delusional psychopath. There are those who think this guy should have been locked up for good for contaminating the irreplaceable moon rocks. Although repeatedly hailed as a “genius,” the guy is obviously a megalomaniac moron. But there is a larger moron accusation to be had here: why would anyone at NASA store moon rocks worth $30M in an office cabinet that any megalomaniac moron could put on a dolly and wheel out the door? I mean, ok, you’re pretty smart if you can get to the moon and bring back rocks, but you’re pretty stupid if you don’t protect them when have them. Double duh for NASA.
Iran sanctions back-firing could bring down EU economy. With Europe’s economy on the brink of serious cavitation, the EU ban on importing Iranian oil starts Jul01.2012. But since most of Iran’s oil goes to Russia, China, and India, who’s going to feel the pain? Iran? Well, you gotta’ have boats to carry that oil, and those boats have to be insured, and the insurance companies are mostly in London and they will be prohibited from insuring the boats. So, hey, the insurance brokers lose billions of dollars as the EU cuts London’s throat on this deal, too. That is precisely why the UK is begging the EU [meaning Obama] to delay the ban on insurance. But if they don ban the insurance, Iran just keeps shipping the oil and the sanctions fail. In the mean time, Israel, which has its own huge nuclear arsenal but is not a part of the 5+1 talks scheduled with Iran on May23 has submitted its list of demands, which include the demand that Iran dismantle its facility at Qom. Fat chance.
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05.08.12
Posted in Israelis, Palestinians, America, Daily Dish, Israeli Firsters at 6:51 pm by Gutter Grunt
Petri dish art by Klari Reis [See her site. She has 365 of these things!]
America’s covert apartheid. So many of us “Free Palestine” bloggers write as if it was just Israel wrapped up in the apartheid paradigm. The US has been there for 250 years, but you have to look under the rug to see it — covert apartheid. Or you can look in Rosebud, S.D. James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples is investigating the US Indian claims and, shamefully, not a single member of Congress would speak with him. But here’s the really shameful part: you have to go to the UK Guardian to get this story. Is the reason the US msm and politicians refuse to address Israel’s apartheid because the pot’s-black-too accusations will blow back into the Americans’ faces?
Japan’s radioactive black bears. One of the most dire indications of Japan’s radioactive future is hidden in this May02 article on high levels of cesium in Japanese food. Two of the hot samples detected were black bear meat. Note that there is no natural radioactive Cs; anything above 0 is human-sourced contamination — in this case, in wild mammals. With a half-life of 30 years, this stuff will be in the biosphere for at least 200 years to come.
WTF?? Joe Biden threatens Ahmadinejad’s life and encourages Israeli attack. Israeli-firster Joe Biden spoke to a bunch of rabbis today in Atlanta and the blogosphere is lighting up like a menorah on the eighth night of Hanukkah. There was Biden’s blatant death threat that Ahmadinejad will be gone in 2 years. There was plenty of encouragement for Israel to attack with or without the US. Here. Here. There was Biden’s comparing Obama to Truman, which Nima Shirazi takes apart very deftly. Obama really needs to dump Biden. Obama just kicked off his re-election puffery, but I have not seen anything about who his running mate will be. I would guess he’s going to give it to Hillary and let her have a well-deserved break.
Keeping the heat on the Israeli hasbara pigs. talknic has done a great job in converting to video my previous article on how the IDF photoshopped their attack on the Mavi Marmara. Pass it around. The world has to see who the liars are in the I/P conflict.
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05.06.12
Posted in Middle East, Israelis, America, Wing-Nuts -- right, Daily Dish, Iranians, Nuclear threats at 9:52 pm by Gutter Grunt
Petri dish art by Klari Reis [Oooo. Blue! Again ! See her site!]
Fukushima Resource Page Here is a collection of topic-indexed links to help keep up on the Fukushima crisis. This is not a daily effort, but rather a place to go to find sources of info. There is a static link in the Pages column to the right.
Of morons and megalomaniacs. Ted Nugent needs to get a larger pair of knickers because the ones he has on now keep getting in a twist. This guy absolutely delights me, particularly because just by being himself he chips away at the Republicans’ chances of beating Obama, which are zero and getting worse. Here is his latest Nugent blow-out on camera, this time with CBS correspondent Jeff Glof. Absolutely amazing to see an on-camera megalomanic melt down that can top Rush. But the most amazing thing about the CBS interview is the size of the tree over Golf’s right shoulder. What a beautiful tree.
Ya’ gotta’ love the Scots’ sense of humor. Here is a photo-story about a Scottish lady, Violet D’Mello, getting mauled by a pair of “tame” cheetahs in a South African wildlife park. Where did the photos come from? Well, Violet’s husband, Archibald, who kept the camera clicking throughout the attack. The article says he was outside the enclosure, but that is clearly not the case — there is no enclosure between his camera and his wife while she is being chewed up by the cats. The humorous part? This trip was Archibald’s way of saying “Happy Birthday, dear” to Violet.
Can Iran kick America’s ass? Here’s Bibi Netanyahoo’s calculus: If Israel attacks Iran, the blow back from Iran will only take a few hundred Israeli lives, but it will draw the US into the fight because Obama “has Israel’s back.” OK, so the trade-off is a few hundred Zionists for the US 6th Fleet kicking Iran’s ass. Not bad. But consider that in the 2002 Millennium Challenge war games, the US military discovered Iran’s small-boat swarming attacks and sea-skimmer cruise missiles would take out the big boats — like the carrier USS Stennis. The results were so distressing that they closed the war games down. According to the NYT, as recently amplified by ex-CIA dude Philip Giralidi, the most recent war games in March were not much more optimistic. So Bibi’s calculus is really this: Israel gives up a few hundred Zionists, Iran has huge loss of life, tens of thousands at least, and the 6th Fleet has large loss of life and ships, probably thousands. My question is: Who is the winner here? With this sort of loss of American life and assets looming, why does Obama even talk to Netanyahoo? How stupid is it that Israel — a worthless country that has no resources, no strategic value, nothing – could put thousands of US lives and billions of US dollars at risk? Well, you say, they managed to do it in Iraq. Nowhere in the history of the US will you find a more stupid, one-sided alliance. Why is that?
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