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News & Analysis
Obama's Contribution to Peace: Congress Declares War on Iran?
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 – by
Staff Report
Barack Obama
Obama DOCTRINE: Congress Just Declared Preemptive WAR On Iran ... War with Iran has already been decided by the powers that be and the modern-day quasi-declaration happened last Thursday. Using the same legislative and propaganda playbook that led to the Iraq War, the U.S. Government has just officially declared War on Iran. Reuters reported "Congress on Thursday approved tough new unilateral sanctions aimed at squeezing Iran's energy and banking sectors, which could also hurt companies from other countries doing business with Tehran. ... This authority is what the Obama Administration claims also gives them the legal argument to bomb sovereign countries like Pakistan. – Before It's News
Dominant Social Theme: Don't look at the man behind the curtain. He's holding a gun, but he doesn't exist.
Free-Market Analysis: We write a lot about the alternative press, but when it comes to analyzing the dominant social themes of the power elite, we try to take excerpts from mainstream publications to show how these fear-based memes are disseminated and the ways the are positioned by the elite-controlled media for maximum impact.
But sometimes, as in this case, using an excerpt from an alternative news sources points up another salient factor about power elite themes – what is left unsaid is often as important as what is reported. In this case, the alternative website Before It's News makes a good argument that the US is actually already at war with Iran and that the West is simply in a transitional military phase prior to beginning the shooting and bombing.
We have actually written about this ourselves, pointing out in the past that the Draconian sanctions on Japan prior to World War II induced the Japanese to attack the United States. Sanctions, in fact, are indeed a kind of warfare because they take state power – and the threat of state violence – to enforce. Here's some more from the article:
This unilateral decision by the United States Congress comes on the heels of a 12-2 U.N. Security Council vote on June 8th to impose a "modest tightening of sanctions" against Iran. Of course, Russia and China have been assured that sanctions won't apply to their energy needs in order to secure their votes. After the vote President Obama asserted that, "these sanctions do not close the door on diplomacy."
However, the United States preempted this embargo vote in Congress by taking up an aggressive posture in tandem with Israel by deploying an Armada of Battleships to the Red Sea. There are now reports from the Israeli National News that, "The Israeli Air Force recently unloaded military equipment at a Saudi Arabia base, a semi-official Iranian news agency claimed Wednesday, while a large American force has massed in Azerbaijan, which is on the northwest border of Iran."
Now, it seems that the United States is working overtime to sell their war plans to potential allies. CIA chief, Leon Panetta appeared on ABC's This Week and announced that the Iranians, "have enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons. They do have to enrich it, fully, in order to get there. And we would estimate that if they made that decision, it would probably take a year to get there, probably another year to develop the kind of weapon delivery system in order to make that viable."
While world leaders negotiate their piece of the Iranian pie in G8 negotiations, the multi-nation fear campaign has begun. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday that a CIA warning that Iran has enough uranium to build two atomic bombs was "worrying," and criticized Tehran's secrecy over its nuclear program.
This is excellent analysis, pulling together a number of news strands to provide "the big picture" about what is going on. But where's the mainstream reporting? Why wouldn't the mainstream press want to cover such a military build up as prelude to the biggest war the West has waged since World War II? Is it because the idea likely is to provoke Iran into a military move of some sort? Perhaps the West's military planners do not want publicity because it begins to look as if the West, especially US and Israel, are in some sense the agressors.
Why would the US and Israel, especially, want a war with Iran? In fact, in our opinion, the fear of a nuclear weapon in Iran's hands is overblown. Iran's leaders would no more lob a nuclear device at Israel than Israel would send a bomb toward Iran. In Israel's case, the resultant global firestorm of anger would be so intense that it would likely threaten the fabric of the state itself. In Iran's case, the blowback might be nuclear and the US and Israel have terrible arsenals indeed.
There must be some other reason why the West – and specifically the Anglo-American axis – is apparently set on attacking Iran. We think the larger reason has to do with culture itself – specifically Persian culture and the ability of the Muslim world to compete militarily in any way with the West. The Muslim culture, especially after decades of Western initiated aggression, is still antithetical to Western business practices and financial methodologies.
Using this logic, one may arrive at the conclusion that the violence the West has aimed at the Middle East is part of a larger campaign to transmute Muslim culture and make it possible for the West to absorb hundreds of millions Muslims on its way to a kind of world governance. In fact, we cannot think of a Muslim country that has a nuclear device save Pakistan, and Pakistan nuclear devices we have read are in large part secured by US army and intelligence forces. Iran would be a different story.
In fact, were Muslim cultures generally to possess weapons "of mass destruction," then it would be a great deal more difficult for the West to bring transformative violence to bear. Of course, there are other more mundane reasons why the West seeks a war with Iran. In the case of Israel, a successful war against Iran would remove a powerful and tenacious adversary to Israel's dominance in the region.
The Anglo-American axis has other reasons as well, we think. Iran borders Afghanistan and a successful war against Iran would likely allow a military buildup there that might complement similar buildups in Pakistan and elsewhere. The West then would virtually ring Afghanistan and while this might not be advantageous from a strategic standpoint, it would certainly help in terms of supply routs, aircraft corridors, command and control of drone attacks, etc.
But is it practical? It seems to us, and we wrote this just yesterday in our further analysis of the war in Afghanistan, that much the elite is doing these days is being driven by a kind of weakness and desperation. The Iraq "war" is not yet settled from what we can tell (mainstream reporting aside), but the Pentagon is racing to remove soldiers from Iraq to bring them over to Afghanistan.
As Afghanistan is not going well either, we imagine that Anglo-American elite may have in mind widening the war in the hopes of polarizing world sentiment and draining antagonism on the home-front. (In a sense this approach might be likened to making war "too big to fail.") We've always had the suspicions that this was what the power elite had in mind because of various bellicose statements made by such Western leaders as Dick Cheney. Here's something on the so-called Long War paradigm, apparently written by famous leftist Tom Hayden. (We found the article posted on a "Let's Roll" Internet forum site, though it may have appeared in early April in the LA Times, and also appears at Information Clearinghouse.) Excerpt as follows:
Your Government Is Planning to Stay at War for the Next 80 Years Anyone Got a Problem with That? Without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travelers have embraced a doctrine known as the Long War, which projects an "arc of instability" caused by insurgent groups from Europe to South Asia that will last between 50 and 80 years. According to one of its architects, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are just "small wars in the midst of a big one."
Consider the audacity of such an idea. An 80-year undeclared war would entangle 20 future presidential terms stretching far into the future of voters not yet born. The American death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan now approaches 5,000, with the number of wounded a multiple many times greater. Including the American dead from 9/11, that's 8,000 dead so far in the first decade of the Long War. And if the American armed forces are stretched thin today, try to conceive of seven more decades of combat. The costs are unimaginable too. According to economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, Iraq alone will be a $3-trillion war. Those costs, and the other deficit spending of recent years, yield "virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors," according to a New York Times budget analysis in February. Continued deficit financing for the Long War will rob today's younger generation of resources for their future.
The term "Long War" was first applied to America's post-9/11 conflicts in 2004 by Gen. John P. Abizaid, then head of U.S. Central Command, and by the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State, Gen. Richard B. Myers, in 2005. According to David Kilcullen, a top counterinsurgency advisor to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and a proponent of the Long War doctrine, the concept was polished in "a series of windowless offices deep inside the Pentagon" by a small team that successfully lobbied to incorporate the term into the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, the nation's long-term military blueprint. President George W. Bush declared in his 2006 State of the Union message that "our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy." ...
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President Obama has implied his own disagreement with the Long War doctrine without openly repudiating the term. He has pledged to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2012, differing with those like Ricks who predict continuing combat, resulting in a Korean-style occupation. Obama also pledges to "begin" American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan by summer 2011, in contrast to those who demand we remain until an undefined victory. Obama told West Point cadets that "our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended, because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own."
We have many differences of opinion with Tom Hayden from an economic standpoint, but we share his distaste for the prospect of a century's worth of "anti-terror" conflict. We do grant its possibility though, based not on modern-day planning but on what we understand of the elite's reaction to the Gutenberg press 500 years ago. While the ascension of this communications technology was relative bloodless, the social and religious changes it sparked provided the rationale for numerous skirmishes and wars, including the so-called Peasant War that roiled Europe for over 30 years.
War is the elite's answer to social enlightenment as well as transformative technology in our opinion. Internet censorship itself is obviously on the table. But the larger strategy is a pincer-like movement that uses both military conflicts and censorship to control the flow of knowledge and the growing comprehension of just how manipulated Western societies have been over the past century.
Will it work? We are on record as saying that likely it will not, or not in the long run. Human beings are "naked apes," and the difference between the human ape and any other species is mostly in the dexterity with which we wield tools. We would argue that, in a sense, humanity has evolved along with such tools, and that perhaps our brains have even adapted to their advancing complexity. Young people, especially, mostly males in the sexual prime, see the utilization of the most advanced toolkits as a way of enhancing genetic desirability.
This may be seem far-fetched to some, but we would argue it is a salient trait of "humanness" and that if the power elite believes it can control such cutting edge technologies, it is going to end up battling human biology. (Given that the power elite is indeed the power elite, it will do so anyway, we have no doubt.)
We also have questions about the desirability of going to war with Iran. We found a terrific article on this subject in The American Chronicle where an Iranian-born writer analyzed the practicality of a Western war against Iran in an article entitled, "How can we win without going to war with Iran?" The writer, Ghazal Omid, argued that the West would be far better off encouraging democratic trends in Iran than attacking it. Here's an excerpt from the article that best sums up Omid's warning in our opinion:
The Government of Iran prays for a war with the USA. War would be a death sentence, not only for the Iranian opposition but also potentially for millions of innocent others. The Iranian regime sees war as necessary if it is to continue in power and disregards "collateral damage" as insignificant. The initiation of war with Iran would be Armageddon.
If not for the eight year Iraq/Iran war, the Iranian regime would not have remained in power as long it has. This time, they are wishing for a global Jihad, a holy war of Muslims against Americans, the so-called "infidels." Has anyone in America noticed that Ahmadinejad has been coached to smile frequently? Why? It is because he is using the opportunity given him by American media and freedom to appeal to Iranians and Muslims around the world.
His fake smile and body language says, "I did what I could to stop a war but despite all my gallant efforts, America wants Iranian children dead. America wants you to die." This is his message to the children in Iran. With this message, everybody in Iran would pick up a flag. Hell, even political prisoners who are now fighting the Iranian government, paying with their lives in its medieval prisons would pick up a flag to go to war, even though Iranians hate its central logo. Americans don't know the Iranian government is using human shields to protect the nuclear sites. Ahmadinejad himself has said ten thousand school children have been placed near the sites ...
It would seem now that war with Iran is definitely on the horizon, though we still have a hard time believing that it will actually occur. Perhaps the buildups are merely "messages," but in any case, we would tend to believe that what is happening is indicative, in some sense, of weakness not strength. The memes of the elite are failing. Fear-based manipulations have lost credibility throughout the West. There is general rebellion against elite-initiated "austerity" in Europe and a Tea Party movement has ignited in the US.
The Internet itself, along with the invention of nuclear weapons, has considerably depleted the applicability of tried-and-true elite strategies of command and control that were used with such great effectiveness in the 20th century. If the Anglo-American elite does intend to "double down" once more with a war against Iran, there is little that Western citizens can do for the moment to stop such hostilities. But in the long run, we would argue, there will probably be a lot that can be done, and a lot will be.
Conclusion: A war against Iran would probably turn regional conflicts into a war against the Muslim world. At least it might be perceived this way by Shias and Sunnis alike, as the West would then be at war with both sects – a billion and a half Muslims. There is no telling how such a war would turn out. The elite may believe that such militarism is both controllable and sanitary; war being just another methodology of domestic control designed to reassert dominance within the West itself, as wars are almost always directed at the citizens of those states waging it (by their own governments). But those who plan these sorts of engagements may not be thinking clearly. The 21st century is not the 20th.
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Posted by Cossack55 on 6/29/2010 5:44:29 AM
"But those who plan these sorts of engagements may not be thinking clearly." Please. Leave understatement to the Brits. They are the master of that particular device. "The 21st century is not the 20th." Again with the understatement, tho correct. With the possible exception of 1940-1943 and 1962 there was always the expectation of actually making it to the next century. We have now moved from peak oil to terminal oil. Good luck making it to the 22nd, and i'm feeling optomistic today.
Posted by Archie Dean on 6/29/2010 6:28:06 AM
One issue this (excellent) article does not comment upon, which I consider to be especially relevant, is Ahmadinejad's call for an end to oil trading is US Dollars. Saddam Hussein, I believe, also passed similar comment sometime prior to the U.S. / U.K. invasion of Iraq.
'Why should we accept your near enough worthless paper for our valuable oil'? is not something the Americans want to hear or encourage, and they will fight tooth and nail to discourage such sentiment. Regime change in Iraq, so be it. Regime change in Iran " well, such is life.
The reasoning, I think, is obvious; loss of reserve currency status is potentially catastrophic for the U.S. " perhaps even resulting in the place imploding. At best such a loss would surely signal 'end of empire' " again, not a happy thought for the military industrial complex.
Those who say that fiat currencies are not backed by anything at all are wrong " they are backed by State force, and with the U.S. remaining the mightiest military on earth by some distance, I do personally imagine that the $ will lose its 'reserve' status any time soon.
In a sentence therefore, Ahmadinejad effectively signed his own death warrant the day he suggested trading oil in anything other than the US $. From that point to this, it has only a question of when Iran will be attacked, rather than if it will be.
Reply from the Daily Bell:
We have written about this very point in the past and agree with you.
Posted by AmanfromMars on 6/29/2010 6:53:38 AM
"The Muslim culture, especially after decades of Western initiated aggression, is still antithetical to Western business practices and financial methodologies."
Hmmm. You may like to consider that Western business practices and financial methodologies are not ethical, led as they are by a few whom the Daily Bell identify as Power Elite and whose control is only leveraged with the printing and distribution of promisory notes, whether money or bonds. It is though a very artificial control and easily usurped and abused.
Are we to be led to believe that there would be UK support for an attack on and war against Iran too ..... in a time when every day we are being led to believe that there is no money, whenever money is being printed/invented as if it were going out of fashion? Methinks that would be a hard to impossible sell which would defeat the government and its masters, who are definitely not in any government.
"The memes of the elite are failing. Fear-based manipulations have lost credibility throughout the West. There is general rebellion against elite-initiated "austerity" in Europe and a Tea Party movement has ignited in the US.
The Internet itself, along with the invention of nuclear weapons, has considerably depleted the applicability of tried-and-true elite strategies of command and control that were used with such great effectiveness in the 20th century." ...... What the Internet can do, and is doing, you would probably not believe, even whenever it shared with you in plain text ........ Click to View Link .... although I fully appreciate that that assertion would be too much of an arrogant assumption of ignorance in educated and intelligent open-minded company and communities which can grow in stature.
Fortunately though, is it not necessary for all or even many to understand, although you can be assured that there is no expense or effort being spared to constantly provide you with that which you may not know, so that intelligent support can be fed into what can maybe best be described as, a Cloud Based Virtual Machine into SurReal New World Order Programs and Pogroms, which would be akin to a Power Elite Morph?
Which national intelligence service remotely runs the United States? Its former colonial imperialists and latter day socialists? Now that is a novel muse on old established power networks which haven't gone away, you know, but rather more made themselves much more comfortable underground and out of sight in the shade and in shadows?
Nothing is ever as it really seems, is it?
Posted by B. Benhamid on 6/29/2010 7:08:06 AM
Iran is just another Muslim country that Israel wants to destroy and the US will be asked to sacrifice the men and equipment to achieve this goal for them.
Obama our Puppet in Chief will lead us into an additional illegal and useless war which the US will lose and not ever recover from.
Their eyes are open but they do not see.
Posted by John Acord on 6/29/2010 8:06:10 AM
Faced with two conflicts, which the US and its few remaining allies have not mastered and will soon be forced to withdraw from, there is little possibility of a war with Iran. The USA simply has neither the military resources nor the popular support for a third adventure; this time against a far more formidable opponent. Israel knows a raid, and that is the best they can hope for, will accomplish little but to provoke Hamas and Hezbollah into attacking Israel, this time with widespread support in the USA and Europe. Perhaps, even risking a ME conflict involving the Turks.
Best the US and Europe uses this opportunity to cleanse us of the Muslims in our midst who pose both a short-term and long-term threat to Western Civilization. Deportation would save trillions in welfare and crime and policing costs. Perhaps, returning a few million of these somewhat westernized people will encourage their own societies to throw off the yoke of Islamic slavery.
Reply from the Daily Bell:
"Best the US and Europe uses this opportunity to cleanse us of the Muslims in our midst who pose both a short-term and long-term threat to Western Civilization."
You sure it's Muslims that are the threat?
Posted by CC on 6/29/2010 8:19:41 AM
The war will turn from a war against Iran, to crusade from the west against all Muslims. Iran and it's allies will insure it, not the other way around. It is they who have declared war on the west, while those media fools & idiots were, and still are, obsessed with the false notion of an imperialist American-Anglo empire.
You must realize that The Muslims doctrine is on the march, slowly integrating and taking over countries, not by terror as some may believe, but through the countries own law. For the Koran is a book of legal coercion, not persuasion.
Under Muslim law, It does not matter what the individual thinks,desires, or their needs. Slowly the law is being replaced, whether you keep you eyes shut or not. And, unless you stop it, you will know that it is here, when they start beheading people in the streets. And by then, there will be no left to help you, regardless of what you believe.
Posted by Lysander on 6/29/2010 10:02:54 AM
The problem in predicting war with Iran is that every argument against war is also an argument for it (from the elite perspective I mean)
A war at this stage will only exacerbate serious economic problems in the west. And yet, No war will mean Iran has successfully defied Anglo-American ultimatums. It will be impossible to maintain order if that kind of thinking spreads. Most in the west understand perfectly well their control of the middle east rests on the heads of tottering dictators that are at their beck and call. That keep an angry populace in check.
Many make the analogy between the Iranian opposition and the velvet revolutions of 1989-90. But I submit to the Bell that the real analogy is that Egypt,Jordan and Saudi Arabia are the Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary of the ruling elite of today. That the Elite in the west are like the Soviet leadership fearing a collapse of their Warsaw Pact allies. A nuclear Iran, or even merely nuclear capable, will be a rally point that could unify tribal and sectarian factions, all of whom looking for leadership. It actually does not matter whether or not Iran even has such ambitious plans in mind. The mere fact that it **might** is enough to cause sleepless nights.
And the results of Iranian resistance are obvious. Israel, for the first time, is deterred from attacking Lebanon, its onetime speed bag of the 70's and 80's. Even Turkey seems less inclined to follow the leaders. What if Egypt's compliant government falls, or considers that alignment with the 'resistance' faction offers the best chance for survival? And then Jordan? And, most important by far, what of Saudi Arabia? A Saudi government that is not beholden to the west, or one that is unable to ensure peaceful oil production, is a catastrophe. Or one whose Shiite population, sitting atop all the oil, rebels.
Looking at al that, it is impossible to believe that the West wont attack Iran. And yet...
The West has other problems besides. In the modern era, it has to compete against the BRIC nations, and an assortment of midlevel powers that have their own interests in mind. A war with Iran will only put them in a far worse position to compete. Oil at 300$ per barrel will only cripple western economies already on their knees. Unrest in Greece can spread elsewhere in the event of economic collapse, brought about by the unavailability of oil. Unrest spell loss of control.
And so we are left to guess. My guess is that there will be no war. The reason? In March of 2008, Iran captured a British ship that allegedly strayed into Iranian waters. If the west was looking for a pretext for war, that was it. They didn't bite. The Iranians took the sailors prisoners, had some amusing photo ops and then let them go. End of story. And that sums up our situation now. A successful Iran rallying the middle east is unacceptable. An actual war is unacceptable. So what will they do? Probably what they've been doing. Threats, sanctions, covert ops when they can get away with it. Lick their wounds when Iran slips a bomb or two to Iraq or Afghanistan in retaliation.
And just keep hoping their luck changes.
Posted by AmanfromMars on 6/29/2010 10:14:30 AM
"One issue this (excellent) article does not comment upon, which I consider to be especially relevant, is Ahmadinejad's call for an end to oil trading is US Dollars. Saddam Hussein, I believe, also passed similar comment sometime prior to the U.S. / U.K. invasion of Iraq. 'Why should we accept your near enough worthless paper for our valuable oil'? is not something the Americans want to hear or encourage, and they will fight tooth and nail to discourage such sentiment." ..... Posted by Archie Dean on 6/29/2010 6:28:06 AM
Archie Dean, Hi,
Surely the systemic flaw in that particular argument, is that no matter what currency oil is traded in, the very fact that nations print as much currency as they want and need [and do not believe anyone who tells you that they don't or can't] means that it is always purchased with worthless paper, albeit with it given a notional monetary value for trading purposes.
To think that only Uncle Sam gets a free ride because they own the dollar franchise and can print and/or transfer dollar wealth for next to nothing to purchase whatever they need, is misleading, for it is matched by every other country which can print their own currency at will and then have the system convert it to dollars to satisfy easier trading. To change oil trades to another nominated currency would really have no effect whatsoever on any nation as all are in that little exclusive club.
That is why whenever there is a particularly astute and valuable business in the market place, to buy it for 100s or 1000s of millions of dollars or pounds or euros or yen or yuan is only a perception game whenever played in Great Game circles, as the purchase vehicle is artificial and specifically designed for the game.
And it is not as if any wealth at all is ever taken out of the system with any purchase, mega or otherwise, for all that happens is that it is just moved around inside the system with any debit transaction being just another credit transfer.
It is though those extremely convenient niceties which the money system and it cohorts are being so unsuccessful in doggedly trying to conceal from the great unwashed, who are getting smarter and learning quicker about everything every day, and that does not bode well for those who would be pumping and pimping austerity and cuts and hardship and raised taxes and working to death's door before qualifying for retirement, for as Henry Ford famously said ..."It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
The genie is out of the bottle and the bottle is broken and he aint going back, and that dictates that an altogether completely different mode of controlling action be employed, for is there not a growing popular global unrest which can very easily and extremely quickly, with the speed and ease of global communication today, turn into revolution before tomorrow morning, with the mob knowing exactly who they are looking for, and who has been responsible for their dire straits plight.
Reply from the Daily Bell:
Good point, thanks.
Posted by Bill on 6/29/2010 11:07:58 AM
Overall an excellent analysis of the situation. However, I would point out the impact of American television is still more powerful than the internet and given the number of lies I receive everyday via the internet, both will be used to justify this war. Well intentioned Americans pass these "untruths" on without question, even when vetting them is simple with several web sites committed to dispelling rumor and innuendo. The elite may also believe Obama will either be defeated in 2012 or fall in line in order to win re-election. In either case we are only pawns in the game.
Posted by Chris on 6/29/2010 11:21:49 AM
"This may be seem far-fetched to some, but we would argue it is a salient trait of "humanness" and that if the power elite believes it can control such cutting edge technologies, it is going to end up battling human biology."
I don't agree with this argument. It HAS controlled the cutting edge technologies consistently throughout the last 500 years. How is NOW any different?
If my family had an urge to take have perfect control over the planet and leave vast amounts of land for our personal use under the guise of "public property" and other machinations...
I first would want to have people hustle and bustle to get technology to a level to REPLACE HUMAN WORKERS. I would want this done in a century – not centuries. I would not want to wait and without the proper framing of the issue it would look to the people that would spend their lives slaving over creating this technology (including all the servants – ah – I mean service industry people – that would have to cater to the developers)- it would look like the equivalent of asking people to build a pyramid.
Once the technology was sufficiently advanced much of the workforce that was previously needed (including servants) could be eliminated and the remaining required people could be corralled in a city environment which most people have been trained to find appealing (over generations).
I'm not of the same mind as say the Unibomber – but I am a little more cautious about the hip-hip-horay attitude people have with GOVERNMENT and FOUNDATION funded technologies
Posted by Leonardo Pisano on 6/29/2010 12:23:17 PM
The Muslim world is a brewing vulcano, with underlying the Shi'ites vs Sunni streams. Ran is mainly shi'ites, whereas Saudi Arabia is mainly Sunni. A Western attack or provocation on any group would only bring about that both unite against the common enemy (the "infidels" as the article so nicely call them).
A shrewder strategy is to stir up the boiling vulcano, and invoke war between Shi'ites and Sunnis. In fact, in Iraq this is already happening " the Shi'ite is in minority there. Of course, the US must be out of Iraq before it boils over, so my suspicion is there is a subtle manipulation going on with carefully designed steps in time.
The nuke issue is the excuse to win public support to intervention, should this shi'ite-sunni war run out of hand. One of the strategic goals, imho, is to control the Street of Hormuz, through which 60% or so of world oil supply is distributed to the rest of the world. But this is a sub-goal for the power elite to a higher order of control, as the DB and Lila Rajiva have made clear in earlier posts.
Reply from the Daily Bell:
"A shrewder strategy is to stir up the boiling vulcano, and invoke war between Shi'ites and Sunnis. In fact, in Iraq this is already happening " the Shi'ite is in minority there."
This is does not seem to be the Western strategy, though. Or not overtly.
Posted by Obewon on 6/29/2010 1:56:10 PM
This is an excellent commentary!
As an American, I am ashamed of a great many things about my own government: its fraud, deceit, & cover-up, the ineptitude of its elected officials, its actions, its policies, and especially its foreign policies towards Muslim nations. While many Americans feel the same way, I also realize that our government's negative propaganda towards Iran (in order to gain public support from its citizens) is kicking into high gear.
Yes, the Power Elite have total control of our Teleprompter-In-Chief Obama (actually, as one reader above stated, a better description in this case would be "Puppet-In-Chief"!!!). So arguably the biggest reason for the ensuing actions of the US towards Iran is the total fear that the USD may lose its global reserve currency status. The US will do whatever is necessary to keep this "extraordinary privilege" (Charles DeGaulle's phrase!). Archie Dean's comment above is right on target, and is well worth reading.
Reply from the Daily Bell:
Thank you for the kind words. But the dollar as a reserve currency is not the main reason for Middle East fighting. Afghanistan never made such threats to the best of our knowledge.
Posted by Chucky on 6/29/2010 2:18:05 PM
this is sad but true. As we all know, their new world other requires chaos to be birth and also the USD value will fall greatly and then they will introduce us with the cashless society. Why is it that nothing else they do shocks me?
because their goal per Henry Kissinger is that Obama is prone to bring the new world other. I do not believe that the POTUS have any plans of a second term so most likely, within his term in office, US as we know it will come to ruins. Mainstream media is owned by the world elite and they use the media to move the emotions of the public to suppoort or critize any thing. God help us all.
Posted by Zenbillionaire on 6/29/2010 9:49:34 PM
THere seems to be a common theme in the wars prosecuted by what you refer to as the Anglo-American Elite over the course of my lifetime; they have all been wars of aggression and they've all been wars against civilian populations that were out of uniform.
Since WWII, the US hasn't fought against a national army. It seems telling to me that the US, Britain and to some extent NATO in general have been practicing the art of putting down poorly armed civilian insurrections for the past 60 years using funding obtained from a poorly armed civilian population on the verge of insurrection. It's ironic.
Reply from the Daily Bell:
Interesting observation. It is true that Western forces are never deployed against similarly commensurate forces. The Afghanistan war, of course, was supposed launched with a similar equation in mind. It is possible that those behind it miscalculated.
Posted by SP on 6/29/2010 10:55:57 PM
These are interesting times to be sure. Great read on an incredibly important topic. I suggest we all prepare for the worst.
Posted by AmanfromMars on 6/29/2010 11:12:18 PM
"Mainstream media is owned by the world elite and they use the media to move the emotions of the public to suppoort or critize any thing. God help us all." .... Posted by Chucky on 6/29/2010 2:18:05 PM
That may or may not be the case, Chucky, but they have absolutely no influence over Indymedia and/or Underground Sources which have free rein and reign/undisputed leverage in Networks InterNetworking Joint Applications with Internet Control in Intelligence Communities. In those fields are they just as stupefied go-with-the-flow spectators.
And when such communities rate the Old Guard Establishment as an anachronism and as a Server Message Block on rapid, unprecedented progress, do they simply decline engagement in their memes, deeming it to be unnecessary and designedly restrictive and constrictive of Novel Intellectual Property and Post Modern Idealism.
Which is what World Wide Webs and Internets/Global Information and Intelligence Grids are all about, are they not?
Such institutes and resources as the World Wide Web and Internets, are vitally important and indispensable and an extremely convenient, remote means of Global Control of Chaos*, or New World Order Programs, whether run by old school Power Elites or Significant Virtual Others, and as intangible assets, are they beyond harm in destructive and exclusive selfish manipulation plays which would seek to deny their services to ...... well, it is time to consider that global developments have allowed and/or are creating smarter human beings who think not only of and for themselves but also of and for all others, and would act with what they know in order to share what they have discovered and are uncovering.
And that would make them considerably SMARTer** than any traditional, old family team of Power Elitists by Virtue of that Peculiar Algorithm and Gracious Mindset.
In those circumstances, simple common sense would dictate that rather than fight against such change, existing systems leaders should be buying up and buying into that which confronts and challenges them to progress and expand, rather than consolidate and contract.
In essence, they are being tested/interviewed by a new System of Perceptions Management and IT for the necessary Dynamic Intelligence to stay as Enabling Mentors and Role Play Model Leaders in a Revitalising and Revitalised Great Game, with Alienated and Alienating Security Protocols for what are Top Open Secret Works, for Nothing is being hidden from anybody whenever IT so transparently shares what IT is doing.
It is as well to ponder that Change/Growth/Evolution/Revolution/call it what you will delivers something totally different from that which is gone before and traditional fare, and the Future will be nothing like the Present as the Present is nothing like the Past. And for an idea of the scale of the change to come, one merely needs to consider that in the Past there was thought to be absolutely nothing and then ..... Big Bang ...... and immediately everything we imagine and see to be true.
*Cloud Hosted Advanced Operating Systems
** Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology
Posted by Wrusssr on 6/30/2010 3:06:06 AM
Didn't Iran get its new Iranian Oil Bourse (IOB) open on the free-trade-zone island of Kish in the Persian Gulf in 2008? Where trades can be made in products produced directly from oil?
With the country's full intention of eventually trading oil on a scale with the New York and London bourses (where all trades and purchases are done in U.S. dollars"the world's defacto currency for any oil purchase)?
But . . . I could have sworn Iran announced their IOB would trade in euros? And didn't Saddam begin selling oil in euros in 2000? And unload the vast majority of his dollars for euros in 2002?
What's a "free" market to do?
Look! "Airplanes" are flying into the twin-towers!
Thank goodness for 19 mostly Saudi highjackers! All just in the nick of time for the U.S. to gear up to go get even and go invade. . .and go invade. . .
. . . Iraq in 2003.
Other oil producing countries watched and waited; the unresolved matter of Iran in the backs their minds. (Or thoughts to that effect.)
The first oil sales from Iraq following the occupation were in dollars.
The only global arena of total superiority the U.S. has left is military.
A new "war" would be an additional suggestion to its 'allies' to keep those dollars in their vaults in case they needed them to buy oil unless. . .
. . . bombing Iran backfires.
Or the U.S. runs out of money in Afghanistan.
Can Oz escape the punji pit as the thundering hoards rush towards its edge?
Can Superman duck the financial kryptonite?
Only the Shadow (gov-ment) knows.
Don't touch that dial! There's more of the false flag show coming right up.
Reply from the Daily Bell:
Again, how do you explain Afghanistan?
Posted by Chinese Wisdom on 6/30/2010 3:30:12 AM
@DB " Again, how do you explain Afghanistan?
Very easily... it borders China. The Chinese leaders need to be "motivated" to maintain their fiat money course and backroom currency deals with power elite leaders and the Anglo-American countries that postulate their intentions. It is that simple, and yes, it does come down to currency control once again.
You should know better DB...
It is also the same reason that North Korea is on the radar screen. China is being flanked. Iran and Iraq represent much needed oil and other resources. Anglo-American control puts the "white faces" back in top spot.
EOS.
Reply from the Daily Bell:
So America has been attacking Afghanistan for nine years to threaten China?
Nuclear weapons and trade agreements are not enough? China owning US$1 trillion in American debt is not enough? American presence in Pakistan is not enough?
America virtually surrounds China already via Japan, South Korea and numerous other Asian countries. America's 100,000 troops have to be in close enough proximity to China to threaten that nation's 1.3 billion citizens? That's the real reason?
Or is to widen and deepen a war global domination that is aimed in fact at Muslims and the Muslim religion?
Posted by Wrusssr on 6/30/2010 3:52:51 AM
I have a swag. It involves sick veterans and populations and depleted uranium. Schwarzkopt swung his forces around and called Washington to ask permission to finish the Kuwait job in Baghdad. His answer was no. Stop there.
I always wondered about that. No reason to stop, really, unless to wait for something else. . .
We didn't concentrate as much ordnance in Afghanistan as we did in Iraq our first time around. And I don't think we have a green zone there either. Regardless, we're back. . .
I'm no longer sure the end game to all this is totally about oil, either, though it and the pipelines (when finished) will definitely definitely be prized among the spoils.
Reply from the Daily Bell:
There is plenty of oil in the world. It may be abiotic. Why did Big Oil insist on calling their product "Fossil fuels." Sending a message? ...
Posted by Peter Underwood on 6/30/2010 8:00:20 AM
John Perkins describes how the US engineered its mandate to trade oil exclusively in USD in the 1970s (Confessions of an Economic Hitman). I often wondered why he was allowed to 'spill' such plausible beans. My suspicion was that if the power elite needed to silence him, they would have...QED: it's yet another 'leak' to keep the conspiratorians busy – false trails – diversion tactics etc?
As I have reported before, a Texan I met in San Antonio in the 90s answered my question about the 'questionable backing' to the USD: "Of course it's well backed, with 50,000 nukes, you Brits have no idea!" Only one man's view..nevertheless, rather insightful I thought!
BTW: It is definitely worth considering that oil may actually be manufactured deep in the earth, in which case we may never run out – message received DB:
"Within the mantle, carbon may exist as hydrocarbons, chiefly methane,[citation needed] and as elemental carbon, carbon dioxide and carbonates. The abiotic hypothesis is that the full suite of hydrocarbons found in petroleum can be generated in the mantle by abiogenic processes,[11] and these hydrocarbons can migrate out of the mantle into the crust until they escape to the surface or are trapped by impermeable strata, forming petroleum reservoirs".
extract from: Click to View Link
Do "they" and DB know something else we don't?
Posted by Glenn Williams on 6/30/2010 9:39:00 AM
Why don't we just let Iran self destruct on their own, either from pressure from their neighbors or from their own people who desire what most educated people desire-freedom. The last thing we need is to galvanize the people of Iran by attacking them. If they try to launch a nuke (which is probably years away), Then it would be destroyed before it leaves their borders and the retaliation would be complete destruction. All we would do is to further alienate our global partners and our enemies would have a propaganda free for all. We will give the mad Arabs another reason to wage jihad. We should concentrate on protecting our own borders and getting our own house in order. Our economy is on the same path of destruction as Greece.
Posted by Victor Barney on 6/30/2010 12:36:14 PM
Using the Hebrew Set-Apart Scriptures to interpret this war with Iran, I will say the following: First, America and Great Britain are Israel, but lost their identity because the lost the Sabbath sign.
Second, The same Scriptures state that Israel will completely destroy its' brother Edom in the latter days, which I understand now is Turkey. That's interesting because they are the only Muslim country in NATO. I also know that the "beast" in the end days also control all the other Islam countries, but I'm not sure what this would mean, unless America also is this beast of Revelation?
Interesting times, especially since America has now appointed a forbidden foreigner to lead them(Deuteronomy 17:15), not to mention that this leader is also an anti-messiah(Marxist)!
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