US and British intelligence agencies allegedly fabricating video as a pretext for war with Iran

George Galloway schools caller on Iran’s nuclear program

Ron Paul: Iran sanctions would prevent China from doing business in the US

Ron Paul
Campaign For Liberty
Thursday, Dec 17th, 2009

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives
Statement Opposing the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act
December 15, 2009

I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a US war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for “non-controversial” business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?

This legislation seeks to bar from doing business in the United States any foreign entity that sells refined petroleum to Iran or otherwise enhances Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum such as financing, brokering, underwriting, or providing ships for such. Such sanctions also apply to any entity that provides goods or services that enhance Iran’s ability to maintain or expand its domestic production of refined petroleum. This casts the sanctions net worldwide, with enormous international economic implications.

Recently, the Financial Times reported that, “[i]n recent months, Chinese companies have greatly expanded their presence in Iran’s oil sector. In the coming months, Sinopec, the state-owned Chinese oil company, is scheduled to complete the expansion of the Tabriz and Shazand refineries — adding 3.3 million gallons of gasoline per day.”

Are we to conclude, with this in mind, that China or its major state-owned corporations will be forbidden by this legislation from doing business with the United States? What of our other trading partners who currently do business in Iran’s petroleum sector or insure those who do so? Has anyone seen an estimate of how this sanctions act will affect the US economy if it is actually enforced?

As we have learned with US sanctions on Iraq, and indeed with US sanctions on Cuba and elsewhere, it is citizens rather than governments who suffer most. The purpose of these sanctions is to change the regime in Iran, but past practice has demonstrated time and again that sanctions only strengthen regimes they target and marginalize any opposition. As would be the case were we in the US targeted for regime change by a foreign government, people in Iran will tend to put aside political and other differences to oppose that threatening external force. Thus this legislation will likely serve to strengthen the popularity of the current Iranian government. Any opposition continuing to function in Iran would be seen as operating in concert with the foreign entity seeking to overthrow the regime.

This legislation seeks to bring Iran in line with international demands regarding its nuclear materials enrichment programs, but what is ironic is that Section 2 of HR 2194 itself violates the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which both the United States and Iran are signatories. This section states that “[i]t shall be the policy of the United States… to prevent Iran from achieving the capability to make nuclear weapons, including by supporting international diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment program.” Article V of the NPT states clearly that, “[n]othing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty.” As Iran has never been found in violation of the NPT — has never been found to have diverted nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes — this legislation seeking to deny Iran the right to enrichment even for peaceful purposes itself violates the NPT.

Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that many of my colleagues opposing war on Iran will vote in favor of this legislation, seeing it as a step short of war to bring Iran into line with US demands. I would remind them that sanctions and the blockades that are required to enforce them are themselves acts of war according to international law. I urge my colleagues to reject this saber-rattling but ultimately counterproductive legislation.

Israel and U.S. jointly target Sweden in propaganda blitzkrieg

(WMR) — After the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published an expose of the Israeli Defense Forces harvesting the organs from young Palestinians killed by its forces in the West Bank, Israel’s propaganda machine, which has its tentacles in the world’s largest media companies and the Pentagon, went to work on demonizing Sweden.

Our sources in Finland report that Finnish television is stating that Israel’s Mossad was behind the hijacking of the Maltese-flagged, Russian-crewed, and Russo-Finnish chartered ”Arctic Sea” in Swedish territorial waters. The charter firm is Solchart Arkhangelsk Ltd. of Helsinki. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office Investigation Committee says it is cooperating with authorities in Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and Sweden on the hijacking of the “Arctic Sea.” Israel is noticeably absent from the list of cooperating countries.

The timing of the Israeli piracy operation was to divert attention away from the Swedish media coverage of the organ theft story and get an additional bang out of claiming that the ship, which was carrying Finnish timber from Pietarssari, Finland, to Algeria, was carrying S-300 missiles to Iran. The Mossad-influenced media outlets, including Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times of London, and the UK’s Daily Telegraph, are spinning the story that the S-300 missiles were loaded onto the Arctic Sea in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea, that represents only one of three nations in the Baltic that remain outside of NATO: Russia, Sweden, and Finland. It is no coincidence that the Israeli propaganda machine is accusing Finland of being involved in the missile transfer and Sweden permitting its territorial waters to be used in the ship’s voyage to Algeria.

The Israeli-influenced media are reporting that the “Arctic Sea” consorted with organized crime elements in Kaliningard to effect the transfer of the missiles. However, the Israelis are not commenting on reports that the “Arctic Sea’s” hijackers, ethnic Russians from Russia, Latvia, and Estonia, have been linked to “Mishpucka” (Jewish mafia) circles in Eastern Europe. Israel is obviously concerned that their role in the ship’s hijacking will come out in the Moscow trial of their eight organized crime-linked hijackers and shine a light on the close connections between the Mossad and the Mishpucka in Eastern Europe.

The hijackers have been identified as Estonian nationals and residents Yevgeniy Mironov, Aleksey Buleyev, Dmitriy Bartenev, Igor Borisov, Andrey Lunev and Aleksey Andryushin, and Latvian residents Vitaliy Lepin and Dmitriy Savin.

Sweden and Finland, in addition to having no desire to join NATO, have also voiced sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. Aftonbladet and Sweden were accused of being “anti-Semitic,” a familiar mantra from the Israelis when their human rights policies are criticized. The Swedish government rejected a demand by Israeli expansionist Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to condemn the Aftonbladet report on organ harveting and trafficking by the Israelis.

Israel’s ambassador in Stockholm, Benny Dagan, when asked by a Swedish reporter why Israel did not investigate the Aftonbladet report on organ harvesting, replied with an unusual answer: “Why don’t we investigate why the Mossad and the Jews were behind the bombing of the twin towers?”

Based on Israel’s past false flag and organized crime syndicate operations, both investigations may have merit.

Israel turned up the heat on Sweden. Aftonbladet’s editor Jan Helin was accused of being a “Nazi.” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was disinvited from visiting Israel. The whining from Israel and its echo chambers in the corporate media came amid other shots fired from the Israelis against Ireland’s former President and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson over her being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, Norway for its policy of disinvesting in Israeli firms, Swedish aid to the Palestinians, and former Finnish President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari for calling for Hamas to be included in the Middle East peace talks, and Scotland for releasing a Libyan agent convicted of bombing Pan Am 103 to Libya.

Israeli and American Jewish right-wing commentators have hurled contempt on the Celtic and Nordic nations, regardless of their liberal and social democratic traditions, complaining that they are all rife with anti-Semites and support terrorism. The Celtics and Nordics got a taste from the Israelis of what is usually dished out to the Slavics. Sweden came in for the most abuse from the Israeli propaganda circles.

It should come as no surprise that of all the charities operating in the Kabul region, that it was a Swedish charity-run hospital in Shaniz, south of the Afghan capital, that was stormed by U.S. troops on September 6. The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan stated that U.S. forces tied up hospital staff members and the visiting relatives of patients. The Americans smashed doors and searched hospital wards looking for “Taliban.” The incursion violated international laws and agreements on the inviolability of hospitals and medical staff in war zones but exactly mirrors Israeli tactics in Gaza and the West Bank.

There are a number of Pentagon holdovers from the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld neocon clique who “Israelized” U.S. military and security policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and are obviously still calling the shots.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2009 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).