There have been a number recent articles that I found interesting.

This one from earlier in the week:
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/the-axis/after-pushing-israel-from-iran-strike-obama-is-suddenly-ok-with-netanyahu.premium-1.462772

This one today:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/iran-war-plan/

I think the back pedaling by Barak is clearly the result of pressure to tone it down particularly after the drum beats of war during the past two weeks in the Israeli media. But the one scenario that you did not write about is that a bargain has been reached to attack after the election is over. I agree that our president prefers covert wars but the run up to this potential war with Iran is way too familiar and feels a lot like the run up to the invasion of Iraq. And he doesn’t have to run for reelection after November. Overt war with Iran would probably require some kind of event to justify it, imho, and that is what I am afraid of. There are a lot of signs that our military brass have strongly exerted influence against it. At least I hope that is the situation.

this is what happens when the USA ambassador, CIA, USA Department of Defense, USA President, and Vice President, and Common Sense, tells you attacking Iran is not an option!

One sure way to crash the World Economy is to attack IRAN!

Iran is aka Persia is not Iraq, and they have never been a friend of the USA, keep in mind the USA back Iraq in the Iraq; Iran war.

Bush silly war with Iraq, put Iran in a very strong position.

Iran no longer has to worry about Iraq, because Iran now control the politics of Iraq.

Iran is no friend of Saudia Arabia either!

Who’s On First.

What a bunch of comedians who pass for human beings.

they have never been a friend of the USA,

Even when the U.S. puppet, the Shah was in charge?

USA back Iraq in the Iraq; Iran war.

I seem to recall something about providing planes for Iran thru Israel. Wasn’t there someone called North involved?

The U.S. has civilian control over the military so the military does not engage in adventurism. /s

The Quid has been pocketed thanks to the pro quo.

I have read that many Israeli higher ups think the entire Iran thing is bat shit crazy…

But here is a more cynical thought…. from what I understand, the plant is now operational…. which means that there are lots of Russians on the ground there. Any attack would take out the Russians and probably piss Putin off.

Word is that Defense Minister Ehud Barak is no longer as gung ho about an attack on Iran as his media interviews suggest. Haaretz’s Amir Oren reported this week that Barak opposes launching an attack on the eve of the U.S. elections,

I’m guessing Ehud saw the GOP and Dem conventions and after convention polling and realized that Mitt’s pro Iran War stand was so unpopular neither side wanted to mention it much.
So if Israel tried an attack before the election the resulting hike in gas prices would likely make an anti Iran war position even more unpopular.
This would not help Mitt win Jewish voters in America and would likely sink Mitt.

Do you have a link to the “Russians on the ground”?

I think the politics of the Presidential Conventions is the real reason Ehud changed his mind. Ehud hoped that if he could use Fox News to make war with Iran a popular issue for both candidates who want Jewish and Christian Fundy voters they could force both Obama and Mitt to publicly support it. That has not happened and in fact Mitt the openly pro war guy seems to be in trouble so its better for Israel if they back down now publicly rather than risk the pro Iran war guys being blamed in part for Mitt losing.
But after the election is when we have to worry Obama and or Mitt will not have to worry about what voters think then.

Everything that happens anywhere in the world at all times has everything to do with the U.S., and only the U.S., esp the U.S. prez election.

We are the only policemen on the beat./s

They’ve caught on to the “good cop, bad cop” game, like we do here in the US.

I thought we were gonna try the biological warfare approach… intestinal flu in the water supply would cause rampant diarrhea in the enrichment bunker. That should slow things down.

Did you just smack your head when you finally reached that startling, yet totally true, conclusion???

heh… sadly, with Israel, to a certain extent, it’s at least partially true.

I think eCAHN recently suggested something more trendy, such as sending in smallpox infested Gucci bags, although I hear that Louis Vuitton is more popular in Persia.

5 years on FDL finally brought truth to my brain.

Maybe we can go back to having Cold War with Russia?? What with KGB Vlad there, I think he’d be all, like: game on, you mo-fo Yankees!

Seems to me that things were better with the Iron Curtain in place.

Who’s in??

ahhh, good. the truth shall set you free! go forth and sin no more!

The U.S. is ginning up the cold war.

WRT China, it’s encircling it with Africom, and Hillary’s recent trip was to set up more bases to necklace China.

The only thing I’ve heard about the U.S. ginning up the Russian part had to do with some unrest the U.S. is behind in the Caucasus. Azerbaijan or something. I forget the details.

You are now seeing the downside of the U.S. not so involved in Iraq.

War with Iran is a losing issue in both campaigns and neither candidate wants to be saddled with it. Heck, when Clint Eastwood mentioned how the Russians fared in Afghanistan and not learning lessons, he got a lot of applause at the *Republican* convention. This country is war weary. Obama is now pressuring Romney for a more detailed stance on Afghanistan. If Romney says he wants to keep troops in Afghanistan and attack Iran he will lose some of his own base, a lot of Independents, etc. and I guess the dumbass is just figuring that out.

Obama simply does not want to have to answer any questions about possible war with Iran. He is out there boasting about how he got us out of Iraq (when the deal was already done when he took office and he in fact tried to keep us there) and is also saying he arranged an end to the Afghanistan war which is entirely not true either. The only thing he has arranged is to withdraw the troops put there as part of his own escalation. And who knows how many mercenaries might be replacing them.

So it’s pretty clear that he does not want to go out selling yet another war (he’s still trying to keep the one he’s waging in Yemen quiet).

U.S. voters are so tired of war that you haven’t heard a peep out of them when O started up the hot war in Syria.

Yes, esp true re Africa.

I enjoy those Scandanavian police/crime mystery novels. Henning Mankell is an interesting writer, who, like Stieg Larssen, also includes a lot of social commentary in his fiction. He recently wrote an interesting mystery called the Man from Beijing, which included a lot of fiction (but I think somewhat factually based) on how China is moving into Africa for land and resources and cheap labor, etc. Unsurprising.

Mankell lives at least part of the time in Africa, so he’s likely to have a reasonably informed viewpoint (but I don’t know how accurate).

I have duly noted Hilbot’s roamings around Africa. The beat goes on… last cheap labor/resources on the planet, just about. Going, going… soon to be a goner…

“A top American source told an Israeli politician this week that the Americans now consider Barak to be a pouring-cold-water-over-things type of person, rather than someone who starts fires.”

For this our sources get the big bucks.

I think US voters are ignorant idiots. And now let me tell you how I REALLY feel…

I found Eastwood’s performance piece very interesting. But here’s my take: the largely dittoheaded audience clapped & cheered at nearly everything Eastwood said… very reflexively. Here’s an old white guy touting his conservative bona fides within the belly of the beast of dreaded, dreadful LIEbrul Hollywood.

I don’t think that the audience really *heard* what he was saying bc, in truth, I doubt that they would agree.

That’s why I found Eastwood’s performance so damned interesting. I don’t know if it was a deliberate smack in the eye of the PTB, but I do think it’s how Eastwood *feels.* What he expected to accomplish is anyone’s guess.

But I doubt that R voters give a crap whether we are at WAR, Inc or not. They’ve been told by Rush to STFU & drink the Kool Aid. If their “team” says WAR is good: booyah!!!!!!

That’s just my take.

My leftwing friends are telling me that we are no longer at WAR anywhere, and that Obama has NO plans to go to WAR anytime soon. So: that’s the damn Kool Aid they’re drinking. Unsure where they line up to drink that shit, but it sure ain’t here.

Hillary’s trip was mostly around Asia.

Junta’s ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims started right after she left.

She watched D convention from Brunei.

There was an interesting article about how Chinese outsmart U.S. in Africa. U.S. sets up military bases & ignites unrest. China forms econ relationships.

Which do you think the Africans prefer?

I’ll see if I can find the link.

On edit: The article was not where I thought it was, so I can’t find the link for now.

To tell the truth we’re getting killed in that Cold War. And it’s not just Africa but Latin America and the Caribbean, parts of Southeast Asia that China’s buying, too. Talking tough against China buys a few rube Republican votes, but the action’s all in building there or accessing its markets.

You saw the cartoons that had Eastwood calling the WH, asking the guy in the Oval Office how he thought he did. . .

No I didn’t, but it makes sense.

A lot of people panned his performance here. I thought it was the highlight of both conventions. Bring it on, Clint, make my day!

Clint/Chair 2012!!

Yep.

Watched a good bit of NAM2012, and it’s also clear that NAM intends to lean against U.S. hegemony.

Oh. Well I thought that Hilary had been doing some serious time in Africa recently as well.

The Chinese are all over the place, and we definitely cannot keep up with them. Too many of ‘em, and I believe that they’re possibly managing their economy better than we do here. Just my very uninformed guess.

Here’s an interesting military hardware article on China that I randomly came across while searching for the article I couldn’t find.

I don’t know anything about military jets, so I link it without being able to judge its veracity.

Yes, China forms econ. relationships, which the top dogs in Africa like, of course. Not so sure how the people feel.

But China seems to me to be making much smarter moves.

The MIC in Team USA is rapidly becoming our undoing. But we’ve seen this movie before all throughout history. Just ask Alexander the Great how that all worked out for him.

The Chinese have a hell of a “job” to manage their economy.

When I was there, over a decade ago, they needed to created 20 million private sector jobs/year to employ school leavers, farm leavers, and SOE downsizing. I imagine the figures aren’t that different today.

There some problems going on in the Chinese economy now, owing, I think, to weakening export demand. I’m not up to speed on the details.

BTW, the Chinese govt junta are mostly trained as engineers. Or at least they were back then.

Another factoid on China which is fascinating: The top 3 on the Central Committee are worth more than everyone inside the Beltway added together.

People can’t feel worse about econ rels than with military ones. At a minimum the Chinese suck less.

Canada kicked out Iranian embassy.

Israel picked up another satellite.

Wow. And they manage it on 1/30th of our budget! I guess if you don’t have to take a bunch of fat guys in yellow sports jackets to bowl games to accomplish the deal it can really help.

I have a friend who is an old China hand (as in smuggled bull semen into China for Mao), and she says there are anywhere between dozens and hundreds of riots daily around the country. I always think of those acrobats who keep all the plates spinning when I think of China.

I’m a big believer in that project, with various reservations. The “non-capitalist path” doesn’t work, but delinking has to. Could be humankind’s greatest hope, along with the power of “peasant” agriculture. Have you read The Darker Nations? Good stuff.

Heh. When I worked on Wall St & was a single mom & had a will contest lawsuit to fight, I used to refer to myself as a plate spinner.

The Darker Nations is not a book I’ve read. I’ll put it in my cart. It looks interesting.

Non-alignment has nothing to do with the way their domestic economies are organized. There are 120 members (193 in U.N.) and 100 sent delegates to Tehran, including who sent heads of state.

Joe Biden’s DNC speech referenced the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program. Let’s hope Israel makes some changes to U.S. foreign policy before it’s too late.

Yes, but it’s an idea (about the need for the Third World to get out from under both the USSR and USSA, dependency, and colonialism) AND organization that goes back some way, and many of its members were taken up with such thinking through the 1970s, to my still-limited understanding. I think it has some roots in the thinking of WEB Dubois.

eCAHN, if politicians thought that American voters would be all in for their wars of choice, they wouldn’t go to such lengths to lie about them. For instance, Obama would not have spent so much effort telling everybody that NATO was leading the war in Libya, not us. There are a whole lot of other examples too. And even the low info voters know that long wars in Afghanistan are stupid. Lastly, the worse the economy gets, the more people will want war spending cut. And if people knew more about our wars there would be even more opposition, I believe. They are largely hidden.

NAM.

What was interesting about this year’s meeting was, in diplomatic speak, the fond memory about the question of whether it was needed or not after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The answer is that it is more relevant than ever to form a structure to lean against U.S. global hegemony.

There was strong verbal (heh, we know how much that’s worth) support for the Palestinians. And since the meeting took place in Tehran, everyone who just showed up was thumbing his nose at the U.S. The grand ayatollah also met with several heads of state. Would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for those.

Even Bankie Moon showed up despite being threatened by U.S.

Nuttyahoo got his panties in a twist over it. Since I am thankful for small favors, that was worth the whole thing.

I understand.

Of course they are hidden in plain view by every single corrupted institution in the U.S. If you try you can figure it out.

My point was that O started ANOTHER hot war right under everyone’s noses.

Opposition to wars is wide but not deep. Part of shock doctrine is to keep people in such economic straits that they can’t spend any time worrying about wars that aren’t reported in the U.S.

If you were a citizen of a nation whose democratically elected leader had been removed in a joint operation coup by the UK & USA in 1953 and then subjected to the reign of terror of the SHAH & SAVAK, you wouldn’t be friends with the USA either.

With Harper in the driver’s seat, Canada has become USA,Inc. North.

So it seems.

I heard today that Harper’s election was engineered by Canada media 60% owned by the Canadian analogue to Sheldon Adelson.

Someone once emphasized the power associated with controlling the flow of information. I think there was even a Bond movie with Jonathan Pryce playing the media-owning villain. But that only happens in the movies, don’t you know.

He’s as reprehensible as they come. What’s saddest about him, like the Brooklyners and the mindless consumerism that has overtaken that country–as well as its weapons–is that they all were manufactured in the US. Racist Israeli kids chanting rap songs as they perform beat-downs on elderly Palestinians; it doesn’t get much scarier than that.

Israel / Iran.

Israel scares it’s citizens, and the world, so does Iran. Both countries have leaders that appear to be irrational. It’s the maddog style of diplmacy.

Both countries have been playing this for years.

Israel gets to carry on kicking Palestinians out of their country, Iran gets to continue to be a theological dictatorship.

a win for both sides.

I no longer believe there is much chance of an attack by Israel or the USA on Iran.

Israel knows that Iran will never attack it, whether they have nuclear weapons or not. likewise the reverse.

sanctions…. who knows. maybe a way to jack up oil prices, or provoke internal discord to allow regime change. I doubt that it has much to do with the non existent nuclear weapons program.