When to attack Iran

I have been listening and reading the news about the increased sanctions against Iran, like everyone else. It was not until I read this latest news that something clicked into place.

• Business Week  Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) — A European Union embargo on Iranian oil will probably be phased in to protect countries with the greatest reliance on imports from the country, according to an EU official familiar with the talks.
• Telegraph (UK): Japan agrees to cut dependency on Iranian oil as US scores significant coup against regime…
  However, any embargos are only likely to come into effect gradually. Refiners generally buy two thirds of their crude on long term contracts, and these will probably be honoured. The proposed EU embargo – which all member states are understood to endorse in principle – is likely to be phased in over a period of up to 12 months.

As I said earlier, there is little risk of a US-Israeli attack on Iran because of the disastrous effect it will surely have on oil prices.

How to avoid this? Get the “allies” (Europe) to reduce dependence on Iranian oil until a halt in Iran’s oil is barely felt in Europe and North America.

 

An attack after such a reduction of dependence on Iranian oil, will barely affect oil prices except that the non-European countries will feel a pinch and really, who cares about them when we are fighting a “War!” on terrorism/Iran/Islam?

 

China might disagree, but it could be placated somehow, with US dollars (not Israeli shekels). The rest of Asia, Africa and South America don’t carry sufficient power to merit America’s attention.

 

I am convinced that once the West’s oil dependence on Iranian oil is taken care of, a US-Israel attack on Iran will follow within days.

Israel wants it and America is desperate to oblige.

 

There will be no invasion, just an attack that, over a period of a week or two, will destroy all of Iran’s fighting capacity and most if not all, of Iran’s infrastructure a la Iraq. It will be done by the US under a fig-leaf covering of the “Coalition of the Willing” (Europe) and the Coalition of the Servile (Middle-East); Israel’s role, if any, will remain protected.

 

Who gives a damn about long-term consequences?

 

Post script:  This is an excellent analysis by Mehmet Kalyoncu, on the planning and events that are today, leading us to the brink of a “War!” on Iran.

Maybe I am just imagining that the US is targeting Muslims…

Or, why Muslims need to wake up…

A lot of people have told me to “tone it down”,  not sound so “anti-American” and asked me why I hate America so much that I keep criticizing it and if I do hate America so much, why don’t I “go back where I came from”? I have even been accused of supporting and inciting terrorism (but when I consider the source and intelligence of those criticisms, I suppose I shouldn’t mind too much).

Fair enough.

Maybe I AM imagining that the US is geared up to target Muslims and maybe things are not so bad after all.

The again, maybe the Tooth Fairy is leaving gold coins in exchange for teeth these days too.

Let us look objectively and see where the results take us, shall we?

Congress Okay’s Indefinite Military “Detention” of Muslims

So, who’s going to vote against the Holy Grail of Defense Appropriations, especially to protect “Muzlems“?

 

“Defense” has become such an ultra-patriotic issue that nobody dares speak against “Defense” and all sorts of evil is justified behind the screen of “Defense”. Our idiotic “War!”s have morphed into a “Defense” issue where being against the Iraq “War!” and the Afghan “War!” means we are weak on “Defense” and we are against “our boys” who are out there sacrificing their lives to protect us. Nobody dares ask how this protection became necessary or why and why opposing the idiot “War!”s means we hate “our boys in uniform”.

 

“Defense” has become a racket where millionaire have become billionaires but the appetites are not yet sated.

 

It is this atmosphere that the latest Defense Appropriations bills came up in the House and in the Senate. I suppose it is fine that they did, after all, once we are in a “War!”, there is little choice but to continue funding the “Defense” forces. This is where “earmarks” slither into the picture. These are supposedly “minor” attachments to the larger bill such that in order to vote against the earmark, one has to vote against the entire bill. In matters of important bills, it is very difficult for a Senator or a Representative to vote against an entire bill, just to take a stand against an earmark.

This must have been the line of thinking when they inserted provisions in the Defense Appropriations Bills (H.R. 1540 and S. 1967), provisions that could almost be overlooked unless one were reading the bill (which most Congress members don’t); sections 1031 and 1032 allow the Administration to imprison (“Detain”) people indefinitely.

Israel or Palestine? “My Home!”

This is a small part of the well-known story of two families, a Jewish one and a Muslim one, who are rooted in the same land…in the same house.

Watch the video!

Steadfast Hope Video

I don’t believe there will ever be peace on “The Holy Land” as long as the game being played is a zero-sum game; “I cannot win unless you lose”.

 

Almost every Jews in Israel lives on land that has been stolen in some form or another and they justify it as the fulfillment of God’s promise to the Jews. God has been used as the ultimate justifier in every atrocity that we can think of, from the current Muslim-on-Muslim slaughters

Droning on the “Af-Pak” border

The story was terrible, 28 (later corrected to 24) Pakistani soldiers killed by US attack helicopters and other aircraft.

 

To soothe the shock, US forces said they were responding to cross-border firing, but the story looks thin and stinks of cover-up, arrogance and lies.

 

The first point of issue would be to ask how it is that the US, fighting across Pakistan’s border and launching continuous attacks at Pakistan’s people along the borders, was so completely unaware of where Pakistani soldiers are deployed…fighting America’s war by killing their own people! US forces, euphemistically called “NATO forces”, have to be completely incompetent if they don’t even keep track of the military movements of its ally of convenience in this idiotic “War!” against and unseen, unknown enemy.

Pakistan’s JF-17 Presentation in Dubai Air Show

Guns or butter? that has been the single driving question throughout history.

 

Pakistan’s JF-17 is a nice fighter jet that speaks well for Pakistan’s military assembly and production plants. The aircraft is a Chinese design, made up of components from many countries (mostly Chinese, some Russian and Western) and assembled in Pakistan, I doubt if it is better that the US F-16 and F-18s in any respects except for being cheaper. By next year, it is estimated that Pakistan will be producing 58% of the components itself.

 

It is a national disgrace, that these aircraft were first used against the people of South Waziristan.

 

That said, it is a national tragedy for Pakistan to be so involved in building war machines that cost BILLIONS and become obsolete after just a few years

Murder of Anwar Al-Awlaki; Slaughter of the Constitution

President Barak Obama grandly announced that a CIA drone attack had killed Anwar Al-Awlaki in Yemen along with Samir Khan, the editor of his website. “This is further proof that al Qaeda and its affiliates will have no safe haven anywhere in the world,” Obama said. The Press dutifully reported the announcement, some joined in the celebrations of having gotten another terrorist but nobody questioned the methodology that resulted in ending not one, but TWO American citizens’ lives.

Who cares? We got another one! Someone should care, certainly I do.

They were murdered.

Is Pakistan the problem?

Out-going Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen accused Pakistan  of not only aiding terrorism against the US, but of fomenting it by supporting and directing the militant Haqqani network. By the way, the Haqqanis are located among the semi-autonomous, Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and are a US-manufactured group dating back to the days of our war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Not to be out-done, calls are coming from Congress to take military action against Pakistanand to send US troops within Pakistan to resolve the “Haqqani problem”; it is, after all, time for elections.

While such strong statements may pander well to the American public, they do nothing to help ease the increasingly worsening situation in the “Af-Pak” region in fact, such speeches only underscore the dismal state of understanding of the problems in that region. America defines problems exclusively as they relate to itself and attempts to define the origins and broader impacts of the underlying issues, are regarded as treason.

As the “Muslim World” disintegrates…

Pakistan. Newsflash that more people have been killed in Karachi, shot in sectarian attacks. Areas of Karachi are “no-go” for Pathans (Pashtuns) and other areas are “no-go” for Urdu-speaking (“Muhajirs”).

The ethnic battles are fired and fuelled by ethnic-political leaders who are in regional government and have employed thugs to create greater rifts between ethnic people in order to be more powerful within their own ethnic groups.

Hate and Fear are universal in creating leadership.

 

Pakistan’s ethnic splits occur between Pathans, Punjabis, Sindhis, Mohaijrs and Baloch…all fired and fuelled by

Crumbling US-Pakistan relations

“U.S. Is Deferring Millions in Pakistani Military Aid”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/world/asia/10intel.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
“WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is suspending and, in some cases, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military, in a move to chasten Pakistan for expelling American military trainers and to press its army to fight militants more effectively.”
 
This headline may strike well at home in the US, but it reflects the arrogant, self-centered, group-think that has become the hallmark of the US. To be sure, there are many lobbies that will applaud this decision, lobbies such as, Right-wing Republicans, the Tea Party, right-wing Jewish and Christian groups and of course, there is always India. To these groups, any bashing of the “nucular, trrrrst” Pakistan is a welcome development.
 
Of course, Pakistan does deserve a swift kick in the behind and often, but this is not the time to do so. A sudden cutting off of aid reinforces the unreliability of the US as a friend and partner; the US has been complaining for long that the US-Pakistan relationship is a transactional one and by treating it so transactionally right now, the US is telling Pakistan…the civilians and the military… that the US cannot be trusted when Pakistan needs a friend