Land Destroyer
Western media quietly attempts to censor growing global opposition, begins with Iranian media.
by Tony Cartalucci
October 16, 2012 – Iran’s Press TV reported in their article, “Press TV viewers slam EU move to ban Iran channels as illegal, hypocritical,” that “Press TV viewers have condemned as illegal and hypocritical the ban imposed by the European officials on the broadcast of several Iranian satellite channels.” Nearly no mention is made in the Western media regarding the blatant act of censorship – an act that runs contra to all perceived notions of “Western values,” and an act that directly undermines the narratives of the West supporting “freedom” and “democracy” around the globe.
Image: The West has spent billions trying to leverage “freedom of speech” and “human rights” as a means to undermine, destabilize, overthrow, and replace governments around the world, from the US-engineered Eastern European “color-revolutions” after the fall of the Soviet Union, to the latest US-engineered “Arab Spring,” and all across Southeast Asia. Now with the West pursuing its own campaign of censorship, it is clear that these “values” were merely selectively and opportunistically manipulated.
….
The news has been buried under reports regarding a new round of sanctions passed by the EU which was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize even while pursuing multiple wars across the globe, including continuing operations in Libya, the subversion of Syria, and a decade long occupation of Afghanistan which sees weekly civilian massacres by NATO air strikes on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. In fact, the most recent NATO atrocity occurred not even a week ago, killing 3 children in the Helmand province. Of course this was absent in Western headlines, but it did make headlines in Iran’s Press TV, and indicates a more realistic explanation to the EU’s decision to ban the Iranian news service.
Clearly the EU has no qualms over endangering civilian lives – its concerns over “human rights” are a selectively applied value it uses against its enemies with demonstrably no intention of holding itself to similar standards. Now, the EU has applied this same selective application of supposed “Western values” to “freedom of speech,” curtailing it when that speech endangers its own interests, and pursuing “freedom” when it advances their agenda. And it is this hypocrisy that the increasingly popular Press TV news service has been illustrating, as a counterweight to the uniformly biased and compromised Western press.
It was US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who stated that censorship incurred “long-term economic and social costs,” with oppression leading to “civil unrest and not security.” Many Western politicians executing corporate-financier driven policy have stated that a regime’s pursuit of censorship was a sign of weakness and fear – an indicator that its opposition was gaining ground and that more overt, visible, even desperate measures needed to be implemented. Censorship, according to the West’s own narrative, is part of a self-defeating cycle where legitimacy and the mandate to lead increasingly is fading.
With that consideration in mind, the censorship of Iran’s Press TV should be a sign that Iran’s efforts to balance global public perception skewed by the vast resources of Wall Street and London are succeeding. Along with Russia Today (RT), Press TV has provided nations who aspire to live in a mulipolar world where the primacy of the nation-state prevails, a model to follow in combating the unwarranted power and influence of Western media houses.
Above all, it should be noted that a key contributing factor to Press TV and RT’s success is the growing alternative media – media by the people and for the people – whose legitimacy and reputation is measured in accuracy, consistency, and objectivity, not slick graphics, expensive suits, and million-dollar studios. The alternative media has provided content for growing national news agencies seeking to challenge the West’s hegemony over information, and while national news agencies ultimately pursue national agendas, the content they are drawing on generally come from people simply seeking the truth.
The EU’s act of censorship against Press TV is in turn a strike against the alternative media. Instead of being seen as a setback, it should be seen as a success and a signal to redouble our efforts as individuals to assert our own will and vision for the future over that of the miniscule global elite who have so far gone unchallenged in their designs and aspirations. The alternative media should be only the first in a series of people-driven alternatives systematically undermining and replacing existing corporate-financier dominated paradigms.
October 16, 2012 | Categories: Afghanistan, censorship, co-opting and/or destabilization, EU, Iran, NATO, news, Pakistan, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment
by Danté Xavier Voltaire
21st Century Wire
Guest Columnist
Is there a hidden dimension to the war posturing against Iran by the Western Alliance?
Mehran Tavakoli Keshe, an Iranian born Nuclear Engineer, Inventor and Founder of The Keshe Foundation, based in Belgium, claims to have helped the Iranian Government develop a ‘superior’ space program based on his nuclear plasma technology. The Iranian Government openly promotes their space program and may have used a Keshe technology based ‘UFO’ style anti-gravity spaceship complete with tractor beams to capture the infamous US RQ170 Sentinel drone, an event which embarrassed the Obama administration and shook the CIA in December 2011.
Keshe, who some see as the ‘Tesla of Physics’ has been offering his technology free to any Government or scientist willing to listen for years, but claims he has been turned away first by Nasa in 1985 and subsequently by countless other organizations and Governments. Keshe asserts that only the Iranian Government were willing to co-develop the technology, but this, if true adds a potentially crazy twist to the unfolding Iran saga.
If Iran do possess these advanced technologies, Keshe claims they will have impenetrable airspace defense capabilities and will be able to destroy opposition forces globally within minutes. Staggering as these claims are, and as unlikely a scenario as an Iranian victory over the US, Israel and their allies might seem, there are tantalizing clues that there may be some substance to the story, and Iran might be able to punch well above it’s weight in a military conflict.
Keshe claims to have suffered severe harrassment including incarceration and questioning while in transit by Canadian authorities, for which he has evidence in the form of paperwork and his unexplained absence from a scientific gathering he was due to speak at. His equipment, data and papers have been confiscated or copied by various authorities including the Belgian Government, while an imposter claiming to represent the Keshe Foundation has been causing trouble with Governments and corporations, damaging the Foundations credibility as it tries to advance the scientific community’s understanding of the plasma driven sub-atomic Universe Keshe theorized to develop his range of (he claims) fully working technologies which include food, water and energy solutions.
Keshe’s most intriguing claim is that US President Obama has issued an executive order effectively banning anyone from even viewing the Keshe technologies.
An executive order issued in April this year threatens anyone considered ‘…to have sold, leased, or otherwise provided, directly or indirectly, goods, services, or technology to Iran or Syria likely to be used to facilitate computer or network disruption, monitoring, or tracking that could assist in or enable serious human rights abuses by or on behalf of the Government of Iran or the Government of Syria…’
Keshe’s technology is reported to eradicate local electronic activities while operational, and thus may have been used to electronically sever the US drone from it’s eight communications satellites before it’s capture by Iranian forces. Whether aimed at Keshe or not, this Executive Order could certainly be applied to Keshe and anyone that associates with him due to his collaboration on high technology projects in Tehran. Keshe claims Iran have not initiated aggressive action against anyone for hundreds of years, but have stated that they will not hesitate to use his technology to ‘annihilate’ any aggressor(s) against Iran, should military action take place.
It’s hard to believe the US administration and CIA are not aware of this left field dimension to the military potential of Iran, especially as their RQ 170 Sentinel was captured inexplicably unharmed representing a huge compromise of US military security, even if it was captured using standard hacking techniques – which should have left it a crashed wreck. Could this ‘Keshe factor’ be playing a hidden role in the unfolding story of Iran? If there is even a grain of truth in the plasma theory and the Keshe technologies the implications could be global and game changing for humanity’s immediate and long term future.
Keshe – The ‘Tesla of Physics’..?
Keshe has written an open letter to the Obama administration asking them to accept that his technologies could free the human race from many restrictions and solve most challenges, and to move beyond the power position their current technological advantages give them for the good of humanity. As yet he has received no reply.
Many readers might find this story outlandish, but I encourage those who do to follow your own lines of research to assess this potentially important story – which has implications and dimensions beyond the Iran issue – for themselves.
October 14, 2012 | Categories: Canada, Iran, news, tyranny, US, war | Leave a comment
CounterPsyOps
October 13, 2012
Americans have been told that 150 troops have been sent to Jordan to help with refugee problems from Syria.
Britain is doing the same. A hundred and fifty can be “150” or it can be 800, two countries can be a dozen.
Combine this with the Turkish moves, forcing down a Syrian airliner flying out of Russia, handcuffing and abusing passengers, bizarre tales of imaginary electronics, a brazen confrontation, not just with Syria but Russia, a major and quite relentless nuclear power, and the desperation of the failures to crush Syria according to a long-established timetable become clear.
Intelligence agencies analyze patterns, making up a mosaic that reveals intentions. Our mosaic includes recent claims by the US that Iraq is now the home for a massive new Al-Qaeda force, one made up entirely of former Ba’athists that had been in the pay of the US.
Our source on this is the fleet’s then chief political officer and former presidential advisor Gwyneth Todd, who was, last year, subject to a kidnap/assassination attempt by US government personnel.
Ms. Todd is living in Australia, married to a Defense official, the mother of three. Silencing her, for some reason, had become a priority.
Adding to the “witches brew” of plots against Syria is the corridor Israel has established across Jordan and Iraq to supply their new airbase at Mosul in Iraq’s Kurdish region.
Now the Israeli papers report a “massive air defense exercise” involving the United States, with naval forces to be stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Our first serious question is the troops in Jordan. There is no rationale for the US, Britain and other NATO powers to use Special Operations forces to provide “humanitarian services” to refugees. The United Nations does this as do other NGO’s and, of course, the government of Jordan, which has funds available by agreement, from Saudi Arabia.
The troops, minimally, are involved in intelligence gathering, interviewing refugees, but, additionally, are establishing a foothold for a larger potential force in the immediate future.
Similarly, the current and unsubstantiated misrepresentation of sectarian strife in Iraq, is hardly proof of a “massive” Al-Qaeda cell planning attacks on the United States, as expressed by extremist elements in the American press, more honestly, much of the American press.
We have two uses of the term “massive” as though it had some magic meaning, as though it were a justification for military action.
One problem has been the consistency within the Obama administration, in assuring Iran that no attack will be made until every imaginable diplomatic means is exhausted.
However, Syria has no such blanket protection and, moreover, Secretary of State Clinton has been particularly belligerent in her recent pronouncements.
We seem to be seeing a repetition of recent events in Libya. There has been continual discussion of “buffer zones” and “safety corridors” or rumors of deals to split Syria up or force a “regime change” though no legal authority for any involvement in Syria has been established.
The most recent meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran was particularly clear, 120 nations selected Iran as the movement’s president, representing a majority of the member states of the United Nations.
The ability of the five permanent member states, the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China to veto any military action or authorize it, to support any sanction, was clearly recognized as undemocratic and a relic of both the Cold War and 19th Century colonialism, a disease that seems to be re-infecting the world.
The additional issue, of course, is the use of unauthorized and unrestricted unilateral sanctions, actions that clearly qualify as acts of war in accordance with international law, acts that, in a democratic United Nations, should, in fact, bring about a vote of the General Assembly which, by all that is reasonable, require “reverse sanctions” on the aggressor nations.
An examination of the intended impact of sanctions is directly parallel to the blockade of Europe used by the Allied powers against Germany. The intent, normally part of a combined operation of unrestricted bombing of cities, as with Dresden in 1945, represents a strategic program of unlimited warfare against a civilian population, disease and starvation the desired result.
The targets are clear. Syria is to fall, followed by Lebanon, then the renewal of operations in Iraq and a program of selected destabilization of Iran by nations that, frankly, lack both the will and ability to fight a sustained ground war in Iran.
The intent is clear, mischief, intimidation and enslavement in all cases, the model in place currently in Afghanistan, or intended to be in place anyway.
One might ask, why would a nation being so soundly defeated in an adjacent country want to repeat the same disaster multiplied by ten?
The new schedule is clear, based on the “informed” belief that the American election will be rigged for Romney and his friends in organized crime to win and immediately authorize military action which will, very possibly, end in a world war.
Wilder and more conspiratorial “polls” come out every day; the control of the press is so obvious as to be laughable.
The Libyan attack, one clearly orchestrated from Tel Aviv, one intended to be used by the Romney camp to attack the Obama presidency is, as planned, the primary foreign policy issue.
No American president could live a day telling the truth, “Israel did it.”
Intelligence agencies have been backdating phony reports to invent imaginary Al-Qaeda cells operating for years in Libya, a nation that was the bulwark of the Bush-Blair rendition program.
The new wars will be chasing imaginary Al-Qaeda from Syria to Iraq to Iran and from Yemen to Somalia to Mali and Niger to Nigeria and Cameroon and then to Uganda and Kenya.
The plans are on the drawing board though nobody has told Al-Qaeda yet.
GD/HJL
Source: PressTV
October 13, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, news, Russia, Syria, tyranny, US, videos | Leave a comment
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
October 3, 2012
Is the Obama administration seeking to trigger a war pretext incident, a justification to wage an all out war on Iran?
Provoking a war and then blaming the enemy for carrying out an act of aggression is no longer part of a hidden agenda, a safely guarded secret as in the case of Pearl Harbor (1941) which was used by the FDR administration as a justification for America’s entry into the Second World War.
Similarly, the Gulf of Tonkin incident (1964) was part of a covert operation which served to trigger the adoption by the US Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The latter granted President Lyndon B. Johnson with the “legal justification” for deploying U.S. troops against North Vietnam.
[VIDEO]
See the statements of Hillary Clinton and former Secretary of State James Baker III in video above
(video: courtesy of Information Clearing House and Live Leak)
Is the Obama administration seeking to trigger a war pretext incident, a justification to wage an all out war on Iran?
Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, the sinking of the Lusitania, the USS Maine have become talking points in Washington think tanks.
Covert procedures to trigger a war pretext incident are now part of the public domain. Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute of Near East Studies points to the lessons of history, namely to various incidents in US military history used to justify a declaration of war:
“If the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war.”
Recent developments, including US-NATO war games and the deployment of a powerful naval armada in the Persian Gulf, `”create conditions” which favor a Gulf of Tonkin type incident.
The Obama administration does not hide the underlying intent. Washington is calling for the implementation of acts of provocation directed against Iran, so that Iran would so to speak “fire the first shot”.
Former Secretary of State James Baker III states quite categorically: “we ought to take ‘em out [Iran]“. Hillary Clinton retorts: “Well, we’re working hard [on that]. We’re working hard.”
Baker concludes: “I say if anybody’s going to do it [take ’em out], we ought to do it because we have the capability of doing it”.
Conversations on Diplomacy Moderated by Charlie Rose
June 21, 2012
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III
Benjamin Franklin Room, Washington, DC
Excerpt, See Transcript below
MR. ROSE: This question about Iran: My understanding of the Administration’s position on containment is that dog will not hunt. Right?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes.
MR. ROSE: Do you agree with that?
SECRETARY BAKER: I agree with that.
But at the end of the day, if we don’t get it done the way the Administration’s working on it now — which I totally agree with — then we ought to take them out.
MR. ROSE: Secretary Clinton. (Laughter.)
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we’re working hard. We’re working hard.
SECRETARY BAKER: And that’s a Republican. I said at the end of the day. The end of the day may be next year. (Laughter.) It will be next year.
MR. ROSE: I’m waiting.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yeah. Look, I think the President has been very clear on this. He has always said all options are on the table. And he means it. He addressed this when he spoke to it earlier in the year.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
TRANSCRIPT
M2 PressWIRE
Conversations on Diplomacy Moderated by Charlie Rose
June 21, 2012
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III
Benjamin Franklin Room, Washington, DC
[included below is the relevant excerpt pertaining to Iran (emphasis added)
MR. ROSE: I’m Charlie Rose. Thank you very much for coming this afternoon. This is, as many of you know, a second in a series of conversations with Secretary Clinton and previous secretaries of State. We hope that we will have a chance to do as many secretaries as we can here. And the point of this series is to look at foreign policy in the context of present challenges and options, but also historical lessons and experiences.
. . .
MR. ROSE: This question about Iran: My understanding of the Administration’s position on containment is that dog will not hunt. Right?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes.
MR. ROSE: Do you agree with that?
SECRETARY BAKER: I agree with that.
MR. ROSE: Containment will not work.
SECRETARY BAKER: I agree with that. My personal position on that is this: We ought to try every possible avenue we can to see if we can get them to correct their desire and goal of acquiring a nuclear weapon, but we cannot let them acquire that weapon. We are the only country in the world that can stop that. The Israelis, in my opinion, do not have the capability of stopping it. They can delay it. There will also be many, many … … Israeli strike.
But at the end of the day, if we don’t get it done the way the Administration’s working on it now — which I totally agree with — then we ought to take them out.
MR. ROSE: Secretary Clinton. (Laughter.)
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we’re working hard. We’re working hard.
SECRETARY BAKER: And that’s a Republican. I said at the end of the day. The end of the day may be next year. (Laughter.) It will be next year.
MR. ROSE: I’m waiting.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yeah. Look, I think the President has been very clear on this. He has always said all options are on the table. And he means it. He addressed this when he spoke to it earlier in the year.
MR. ROSE: Meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes. And also in public speeches that he’s given. Look, I mean, I think Jim and I both would agree that everybody needs to know — most particularly the Iranians — that we are serious that they cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. It’s not only about Iran and about Iran’s intentions, however once tries to discern them. It’s about the arms race that would take place in the region with such unforeseen consequences. Because you name any country with the means, anywhere near Iran that is an Arab country, if Iran has a nuclear weapon — I can absolutely bet on it and know I will win — they will be in the market within hours. And that is going to create a cascade of difficult challenges for us and for Israel and …… friends and partners.
So this has such broad consequences. And that’s why we’ve invested an enormous amount in trying to persuade Iran that if — as the Supreme Leader says and issued a fatwa about — it is un-Islamic to have a nuclear weapon, then act upon that edict and demonstrate clearly that Iran will not pursue a nuclear weapon. And we are pushing them in these negotiations to do just that.
MR. ROSE: But as you know, the question is not whether they will have a nuclear weapon, but whether they will have the capacity to quickly have a nuclear weapon.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, that is obviously the question, and that is why Jim said at the end of the day, maybe a year. I mean, these kinds of calculations are –
SECRETARY BAKER: It may be more than that.
SECRETARY CLINTON: It may be more than that. They are difficult to make. A lot of countries around the world have what’s called breakout capacity.
MR. ROSE: Right.
SECRETARY CLINTON: They have stopped short of it. They have not pursued it. They have found it not to be in their interests or in the interests of regional stability.
MR. ROSE: But do you think that’s what they mean and that’s what they intend?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, that’s what we’re testing. That’s what every meeting with them is about, to try to really probe and see what kinds of commitments we can get out of them. Now, at this point we don’t have them, so I can’t speak to what they might be if they are ever to be presented. But that’s why we have to take this meeting by meeting and pursue it as hard as we can.
SECRETARY BAKER: And the problem is not so much the threat they would represent to us or to Israel or to our allies somewhere in the region. It’s the proliferation problem, because it would really then be out of control. And that’s the real thing you have to guard, and that’s why I would say at the end of the …
… at some point you have to say that’s simply not going to happen.
MR. ROSE: I think I heard that loud and clear. But you’ve also suggested that the United States should do it rather than Israel.
SECRETARY BAKER: Absolutely. And the reason I say that is if you look at what Martin Dempsey said not long ago, he said if Israel –
MR. ROSE: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of –
SECRETARY BAKER: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said if Israel hits the Iranian nuclear facilities, we’re going to lose a lot of American lives in the region. Many people in the Israeli national security … … don’t want to do that. They’re having troubles now. The sanctions are not complete yet. We want to squeeze them down more. But they’re having an effect. And the government is having some problems, and you don’t want to lose all that.
SECRETARY CLINTON: In fact, I mean, what Jim is saying is a really important point, because we know that there is a vigorous debate going on within the leadership decision-making group in Iran. There are those who say look, these sanctions are really biting, we’re not making the kind of economic progress we should be making, we don’t give up that much by saying we’re not going to do a nuclear weapon and having a verifiable regime to demonstrate that.
And then frankly, there are those who are saying the best thing that could happen to us is be attacked by somebody, just bring it on, because that would unify us, it would legitimize the regime. You feel sometimes when you … … side of the Iranian Government that we’re not going to give anything up, and in fact we’re going to provoke an attack because then we will be in power for as long as anyone can imagine.
SECRETARY BAKER: And Charlie, let me just explain why I said I don’t think the Israelis can do it but we can. The reason I say that is the Israeli Government came to the prior administration, the Bush 43 Administration, and then they … … made the same request of this Administration. I don’t know the answer to that for sure. The Secretary would. But whether they did or not, that’s the reason I say if anybody’s going to do it, we ought to do it because we have the capability of doing it.
SECRETARY CLINTON: And hopefully we won’t get to that. (Laughter.) I mean, that would be, I think –
MR. ROSE: Because you believe there’ll be a change of behavior or a change of regime?
SECRETARY CLINTON: No, there’s — I’m not going to talk about a change of regime. I see no evidence of that. I think the Iranian people deserve better, but that’s for them to try to determine.
MR. ROSE: …
… Iran, and I want to move to some other issues. Looking back at the time of the protest over the election, do you wish you’d done more? Do you wish you’d been more public, more supportive?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, look, at the time there was a very strong, consistent message coming from within Iran that anything we said would undermine the legitimacy of their opposition. Now –
MR. ROSE: This is from the opposition?
SECRETARY CLINTON: This is from the opposition coming out to us. And one can argue, were they right, were they not right, but at the time it seemed like they had some momentum, they did not want to look like they were acting on behalf of the …
… line that the opposition didn’t want us to cross. That was our assessment.
[READ MORE…]
October 6, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, Iran, news, think tanks, tyranny, US, videos, war | Leave a comment
PN 