Pepe Escobar

As the climax to a leaking frenzy in Western corporate media that bordered on - literally - nuclear hysteria, United Nations inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) finally released a report essentially charging that Tehran had tried to design a nuclear weapon to fit in a missile warhead until as late as last year.

According to the report, Iran worked "on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon including the testing of components".

Besides the effort to redesign and miniaturize a Pakistani nuclear weapon, Tehran is also accused of trying to develop a covert operation to enrich uranium - the "green salt project" - that could be used "in an undisclosed enrichment program".

All this leads the IAEA to express "serious concerns" about research and development "specific to nuclear weapons".

The report sells the notion that while the IAEA has tried for years to monitor declared Iranian stockpiles of uranium ore and processed uranium - currently 73.7 kilograms of 20%-enriched uranium in Natanz plus 4,922 kg of uranium enriched to less than 5% - Tehran, in secret, has been trying to build a nuclear weapon.

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Pepe Escobar

Beware of strangers bearing gifts. Post-modern Amazon and United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally landed in Tripoli - on a military jet - to lavish praise on the dodgy Transitional National Council (TNC), those opportunists/defectors/Islamists formerly known as "North Atlantic Treaty Organization rebels".

Clinton was greeted on Tuesday "on the soil of free Libya" (her words) by what the New York Times quaintly described as an "irregular militia" (translation: a heavily armed gang that is already raising hell against other heavily armed gangs), before meeting TNC chairman Mustafa Abdel-NATO (formerly known as Jalil).

The bulk of the US gifts - US$40 million - on top of the $135 million already disbursed since February (most of it military "aid") is for a missile scramble conducted by "contractors" (ie mercenaries) trying to track the tsunami of mobile anti-aircraft rockets that by now are already conveniently ensconced in secret Islamist warehouses.

Clinton told students at the University of Tripoli, "We are on your side." She could not possibly connect the dots and note that the shabab (young people) who started demonstrating against Muammar Gaddafi in February have absolutely nothing to do with the TNC's opportunists/defectors/Islamists who hijacked the protests. But she did have time to unveil another US foreign policy "secret" - that the US wants Gaddafi "dead or alive", George W Bush-style (or as the beneficiary of targeted assassination, Barack Obama-style).

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Pepe Escobar

They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway - an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein's "hole" - he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) "rebels". And then duly executed.

Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a Libyan doctor who accompanied Gaddafi's body in an ambulance and examined it, said he died from two bullets, one to the chest, one to the head.

The TNC - which has peddled lies, lies and more lies for months - swears he died in "crossfire". It may have been a mob. It may have been Mohammad al-Bibi, a 20-year-old sporting a New York Yankees baseball cap who posed to the whole world brandishing Gaddafi's golden pistol; his ticket perhaps to collect the hefty $20 million dangled as the bounty for Gaddafi "dead or alive".

It gets curioser and curioser when one remembers that this is exactly what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her lightning visit to Tripoli, had announced less than 48 hours before; Gaddafi should be "captured or killed". The Fairy Queenie satisfied Clinton's wishes, who learned about it by watching the screen of a BlackBerry - and reacting with the semantic earthquake "Wow!"

To the winners, the spoils. They all did it; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Pentagon and the TNC. From the minute a United Nations resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya became a green card to regime change, plan A was always to capture and kill him. Targeted assassination; that's Barack Obama administration official policy. There was no plan B.

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Stephen Lendman

After covering Libya's rape since last winter in dozens of articles, no forgiving or forgetting is possible for one of history's great crimes.

Nor is ignoring those responsible, condemning them forthrightly, and explaining why all wars are waged.

NATO outdid Orwell on this one, killing truth by calling war the responsibility to protect - by terrorizing, attacking, and slaughtering civilians like psychopathic assassins.

As a result, honest historians will redefine barbarism to explain NATO's savagery. It includes ongoing crimes of war and against humanity for the most malevolent reasons.

When is war not war? It's when committing cold-blooded murder is called the right thing. When major media scoundrels cheerlead it, and when most people believe it because they're too indifferent, uncaring or lazy to learn the truth.

NATO's rape of Libya is too ugly for proper words to describe. Only honest images can do it, and lots of them.

Instead, the Big Lie substitutes for honest journalism, especially on television where real (not fake) visuals can show mangled bodies, mass destruction, and other evidence of NATO crimes.

Where civilian deaths can be shown graphically in living color. Where responsibility can be placed where it belongs. Where right and wrong can best be explained. Where repetition can arouse public outrage. Where proper analysis in advance perhaps can prevent all wars.

None are liberating, lawful, or virtuous. All are shamelessly exploitive. Libya's one of the worst - unscrupulously benefitting powerful interests criminally, ruthlessly, and diabolically.

It doesn't get any worse than that. Ask Lybians. They'll explain.

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Joachim Guilliard

Um Demokratie nach Libyen und Afrika zu bringen...

Seit dem 19. März bombardiert eine neue „Koalition der Willigen“ Tag für Tag libysche Städte und Armeeeinheiten. Alle Vermittlungsvorschläge werden ignoriert. Die Kriegsallianz werde ihre Luftschläge wohl noch viele Wochen fortsetzen, tönte es vom Außenministertreffen der NATO in Berlin. Das Bündnis müsse Libyen weiter angreifen, bis der Revolutionsführer Muammar al-Gaddafi verjagt sei, verkündeten am Tag darauf die drei Kriegsherren, US-Präsident Barack Obama, der britische Premier David Cameron und Frankreichs Staatschef Nicolas Sarkozy, in einem gemeinsamen Kriegsappell, den sie via Washington Post, Times und Le Figaro in die Welt schleuderten.

Der neue Krieg der NATO wird von einer großen Mehrheit der Staaten in der Welt abgelehnt. Die meisten glauben, dass er nicht zum Schutz der Zivilbevölkerung geführt werde, sondern für den unmittelbaren Zugriff auf die libyschen Öl- und Gasvorräte. Die gleichzeitige französische Intervention in der Elfenbeinküste und die forcierte Ausweitung der militärischen Präsenz der USA in Afrika deuten zudem auf Ziele hin, die darüber hinausgehen: die Sicherung und Ausweitung westlicher Dominanz auf dem gesamten afrikanischen Kontinent, um dessen Rohstoff-Ressourcen ein erbitter Wettkampf stattfindet.

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Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

Oh! spies are of no use nowadays. Their profession is over. The newspapers do their work instead. ~ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, Act III

"He will not be going back to that cell once occupied by Oscar Wilde."

Eventually he didn't. But little did Mark Stephens, one of Julian Assange's lawyers, know that it would still take over three twisting-and-turning hours for his client to finally exit the Royal Courts of Justice in central London a free man.

It's as if WikiLeaks founder Assange, emerging from the silence of the shadows to the proverbially frantic media scrum, already knew that the real war starts now - and has nothing to do with jealous groupies, broken condoms and "sex by surprise".

This was the key passage of Assange's brief statement, read immediately after he was able to breathe the air of London again. He said, "During my time in solitary confinement in the bottom of a Victorian prison, I had time to reflect on the conditions of those people around the world also in solitary confinement, also on remand, in conditions that are more difficult than those faced by me. Those people also need your attention and support."

As in: pay excruciatingly close attention to what the US government is doing to Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old army private accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of cables to WikiLeaks. Manning has been held in solitary confinement at the US Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia, for five months now. He has not been convicted of any crime. In a devastating Salon article, Glenn Greenwald has stressed that Manning is "under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture".

So that was Assange's terse way of saying to the world: Big Brother is watching you. And what they're doing to Manning they want to do to me, to you, and metaphorically to anyone who believes in freedom of information.

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Stephen Lendman

Image from a Corvus Blog VIDEO

In promoting his 2008 book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Jimmy Carter said one reason for writing it was "to provoke (unbiased) discussion, which is very rarely heard in this country" on the question of Israel. In America, "any sort of debate back and forth, any sort of incisive editorial comment in the major newspapers, is almost completely absent....There are no significant countervailing voices" to deter Israel from getting away with murder, an illegal blockade, aggressive wars, and the most extreme crimes against humanity; its latest, of course, the massacre of peace activists taking aid to besieged Gazans.

Besides coming from officials and their spokespersons, Israel's propaganda arm, Israel Politik, said "Israel had no choice but to stop the flotilla from breaking the blockade....While Israel was forced to take action in international waters, its actions are supported by international maritime law." False. Under international law, interdictions in international waters constitute piracy in the broadest sense of the term, and blockades are acts of war, variously defined as:

● surrounding a nation or objective with hostile forces;
● measures to isolate an enemy;
● encirclement and besieging;
● preventing the passage in or out of supplies, military forces or aid in time of or as an act of war; and
● an act of naval warfare to block access to an enemy's coastline and deny entry to all vessels and aircraft.

According to international law expert, Professor Francis Boyle, blockades under international law are:

"....belligerent measures taken by a nation (to) prevent passage of vessels or aircraft to and from another country. Customary international law recognizes blockades as an act of war because of the belligerent use of force even against third party nations in enforcing the blockade. Blockades as acts of war have been recognized as such in the Declaration of Paris of 1856 and the Declaration of London of 1909 that delineate the international rules of warfare."

As an occupying power, Israel is obligated under the Hague Regulations of 1907, Fourth Geneva, and numerous UN resolutions to protect Palestinian rights, including for adequate food, health, education, and housing. The blockade and occupation deny them. According to Amnesty International (AI), "The blockade constitutes collective punishment under international law and must be lifted immediately." So does the occupation. Israel maintains them both repressively. Yet Gaza poses no threat to Israel.

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Pepe Escobar

"All the same, a steady, relentless drip of leaks has built an official narrative of Shahzad linked to the TTP, meeting its leaders, training in Waziristan - and even being coached by US-born imam Anwar al-Awlaki, now hiding in Yemen, who conveniently had just become an assassination target for the Obama administration. Evidence? Nothing concrete."

Intricate shadowplay surrounds the (failed) smoking sports utility vehicle Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. Earlier in 2010, the Central Intelligence Agency warned al-Qaeda might try an attack inside the US "within the next six months". It did happen - like clockwork - with the added bonus that the alleged perpetrators are even more convenient than al-Qaeda.

United States Attorney General Eric Holder is now sure "the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack. We know that they helped facilitate it. We know that they probably helped finance it and that he [Shahzad] was working at their direction". President Barack Obama's homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan basically said the same thing.

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Pepe Escobar

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief - Bob Dylan,
"All Along the Watchtower"

Something's happening in AfPak, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr Beltway think-tanker?

As Washington mashes up the "Taliban" - be they Afghan neo-Taliban or Pakistani Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) - in Empire of Chaos logic to justify perennial United States/North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops stationed in AfPak, an increasing number of Pashtuns living on both sides of the border have seized the opportunity and started to look to the Taliban as a convenient facilitator for the emergence of Pashtunistan. But the Pentagon, make no mistake, knows exactly how to play its New Great Game in Eurasia. Balkanization of AfPak - the break-up of both Afghanistan and Pakistan - will engineer, among other states, an independent Pashtunistan and an independent Balochistan. Empire of Chaos logic is still British imperial divide-and-rule, remixed; and, at least in theory, yields territories much easier to control.

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08/18/09 Eric Margolis The US Denounces Iran While running fake elections in Afghanistan
08/18/09 Chris Floyd The Gadarene Gambit: Surging Over the Cliff in Afghanistan
08/20/09 Pepe Escobar The Afghan pipe dream
08/28/09 Patrick Martin Washington’s double standard: The elections in Iran and Afghanistan
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10/22/09 Eric S. Margolis Flames From Afghanistan Ignite Pakistan
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11/04/09 Malalai Joya Speech of Malalai Joya: No nation can liberate another
11/05/09 Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Why the UN is so disturbed at the Murder of the Western Nationals?
11/05/09 William Bowles The nerve of these guys! Karzai 'wins' anyway
11/06/09 William Bowles Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires or just a graveyard with a pipeline running through it?
11/06/09 Gwynne Dyer Last Exit From Afghanistan
11/12/09 Christopher King The Afghanistan war on Remembrance Sunday
11/17/09 Pepe Escobar UNDER THE AFPAK VOLCANO: Welcome to Pashtunistan
11/23/09 Olivia Ward 'Liberation was just a big lie'
11/24/09 Eric S. Margolis The Pot Calls The Kettle Black
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12/03/09 Stephen Lendman Obamathink on Afghanistan: Escalate to Exit
12/03/09 Justin Raimondo Obama’s War Speech: An Unconvincing Flop
12/11/09 William Blum The Anti-Empire Report -Yeswecanistan
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01/02/10 Peter Dale Scott Obama and Afghanistan: America’s Drug-Corrupted War
01/08/10 What Really Happened Afghan My Lai Massacre
01/20/10 Jeremy Scahill Blackwater Wants to Surge its Armed Force in Afghanistan
01/21/10 Jeffrey Kaye Afghanistan: Women Dying and Torture Run Amuck
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02/28/10 Gwynne Dyer Afghanistan guerrilla war will have a predictable result
02/02/10 Anand Gopal Terror comes at night in Afghanistan
02/03/10 Mehdi Hasan Malalai Joya Intervieved by Mehdi Hasan
02/03/10 Nick Turse Drone surge: Today, tomorrow and 2047
02/15/10 Johann Hari Obama's secret prisons in Afghanistan endanger us all
02/15/10 Chris Floyd The Last Station: Surging Into the Savage Past in Afghanistan
02/17/10 Chris Floyd All Systems Go: No Disfunction in Profitable Afghan Enterprise
02/17/10 Chris Floyd Collateral Accumulation: Passing on the Abiding Wisdom of Empire
02/20/10 David Lindorff Battle for Marjah: The US has Already Lost
02/21/10 Christopher King Dutch government falls over Afghanistan
02/24/10 Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Marjah Operations are an Exemplary Lesson for the Invaders
02/24/10 Chris Floyd Many Thousand Gone
02/28/10 Gwynne Dyer Afghanistan guerrilla war will have a predictable result
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03/07/10 James Lucas Destroying Afghanistan
03/09/10 Gareth Porter Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Information War
03/12/10 Chris Floyd Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion
03/16/10 David Lindorff This Time It's Pregnant Women: Another US Atrocity in the Bush-Obama War in Afghanistan
03/20/10 Chris Floyd Night Riders: Afghan Atrocity and American Values
03/27/10 Chris Floyd An Unaccustomed Truth: American Commander Admits Afghan Atrocities
03/30/10 Rethink Afghanistan NATO Tries to Silence a Truth-Teller in Afghanistan After Killing Pregnant Women
03/30/10 Bill Van Auken Obama’s visit underscores US crisis in Afghanistan
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04/01/10 Richard North "We will not prevail in Afghanistan"
04/03/10 Victor Korgun The Afghan dilemma
04/06/10 Stephen Lendman US-Committed Atrocities in Afghanistan
04/06/10 Tom Eley US Special Forces covered up massacre of Afghans
04/06/10 Stephen Lendman US-Committed Atrocities in Afghanistan
04/14/10 Marc W. Herold Obama’s Unspoken Trade-Off: Dead US/NATO Occupation Troops versus Dead Afghan Civilians?
04/16/10 The Anti Press Special Forces Death Squads in Afghanistan
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