RePortersNoteBook.com: Admiral Mullen Wary of Israeli Attack on Iran

Mar 13, 2010

Admiral Mullen Wary of Israeli Attack on Iran

Admiral Mullen Wary of Israeli Attack on Iran
Ray McGovern

Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came home with sweaty palms from his mid-February visit to Israel. He has been worrying aloud that Israel will mousetrap the U.S. into war with Iran. This is of particular concern because Mullen has had considerable experience in putting the brakes on such Israeli plans in the past. This time, he appears convinced that the Israeli leaders did not take his warnings seriously --notwithstanding the unusually strong language he put into play. Upon arrival in Jerusalem on February 14, Mullen wasted no time in making clear why he had come. He insisted publicly that an attack on Iran would be "a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences."

Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Disinformation
Gareth Porter -- Inter Press Service

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand. It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.

Budget Deficit Sets Record In February
The Associated Press

The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year's record for the full year. The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9 billion, 14 percent higher than the previous record set in February of last year. The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6 billion, 10.5 percent higher than a year ago. The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year will hit an all-time high of $1.56 trillion, surpassing last year's $1.4 trillion total.

List Of Troubled Banks at 16-Year High: Bracing for a Wave of Failures
The New York Times

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is bracing for a new wave of bank failures that could cost the agency many billions of dollars and further strain its finances. With bank failures running at their highest level in nearly two decades, the F.D.I.C. is racing to keep up with rising losses to its insurance fund, which safeguards savers' deposits. On Tuesday, the agency announced that it had placed 702 lenders on its list of "problem" banks, the highest number since 1993. Not all of those banks are destined to founder, and F.D.I.C. officials said Tuesday that they expected failures to peak this year.

'Closet-Nazi' Running for Austrian President
Agence France Presse

A far-right candidate for Austria's presidential election has brought the country's dark past to the surface once more, after denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial. Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional party leader for the Freedom Party (FPOe) who was nominated last week, looks to be the sole candidate to run against incumbent President ... Under the 1947 Verbotsgesetz law, anyone who seeks to set up a Nazi organisation, propagates Nazi ideology or denies Nazi crimes can be jailed for up to 20 years. But Rosenkranz, a mother of ten and the wife of an outspoken figure in Austria's far-right scene, insists the law constitutes "an unnecessary restriction" and that, on the contrary, people should be allowed freedom of opinion.

Hiroshima Book Pulled Over Doubts About Sources
The Telegraph (Britain)

A best-selling book about atom bomb survivors in Japan has been pulled from shops following claims sections of it may have been based on false accounts made up by an imposter. Charles Pellegrino's Last Train from Hiroshima has been dropped by its US publisher, Henry Holt and Company, which said it had doubts over facts in the book. After publication in January, it emerged that a source who claimed to have been on the US bombing mission over Hiroshima had invented his story. The publisher has now said it also has doubts relating to two other people named in the work.

Subversion of Science: How Psychology Lost Darwin
Glayde Whitney -- Institute for Historical Review

When real history is finally written, mainstream social sciences during most of the twentieth century will be exposed as consisting largely of ethnically motivated disinformation. Much has already been written about the subversion of American anthropology: the shift from legitimate science to ideological pap under the direction of the Jewish immigrant Franz Boas. Much less has been written about how psychology was transformed from a branch of natural science into a section of the Marxist-influenced social sciences. In this paper I will provide information on the subversion of psychology, pointing out the role of Boas and others in the subversion of psychology.

Congressional Estimates Show Grim Deficit Picture
The Associated Press

A new congressional report released Friday says the United States' long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama's grim budget submission last month. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama's budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That's $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration. The agency says its future-year predictions of tax revenues are more pessimistic than the administration's ... Economists say that deficits of that size are unsustainable and could put upward pressure on interest rates, crowd out private investment in the economy and ultimately erode the nation's standard of living.

Bad Economies of US States Set To Worsen, Say Governors
Reuters

The already gloomy conditions of states' economies are set to worsen, according to preliminary survey findings from the National Governors Association released on Saturday. "The situation is fairly poor for a lot of states around the country. In fact, most states," Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, who is chairman of the association, said at a press conference at its annual meeting. "What we're finding out from a fiscal standpoint is that the worst is yet to come," Douglas said. In a survey conducted last week of 45 of the 50 states, the group found that states have $18.8 billion of budget gaps yet to be closed in fiscal 2010 ... In the budgets they are drafting for fiscal 2011, states foresee shortfalls of $53.6 billion and for fiscal 2012 $61.6 billion.

America, the Fragile Empire
Niall Ferguson

... If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, what are the implications for the United States today? First, debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time -- it is a precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policymakers and citizens. Second, most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed as the United States contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $1.5 trillion -- about 11% of GDP, the biggest since World War II.

A German Woman Breaks Silence About Red Army Rapes
The Telegraph (Britain)

An 80-year-old German woman has broken an old taboo of silence over the rapes she endured at the hands of Soviet soldiers in the second world war with a searing book about the crimes of the Red Army as it marched towards Berlin. "Why Did I Have To Be A Girl" by Gabriele Koepp is the first book published about the rapes under a victim's real name. Mrs Koepp was one of an estimated two million German girls and women raped by Soviet soldiers, encouraged by their leader Josef Stalin to regard the crime as a spoil of war after Hitler's invasion had left 26 million Russians dead. "Frau. Komm," was a phrase that women dreaded hearing from Red Army soldiers.

In Spain, Bookseller Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison for `Justifying Genocide'
JTA

A Barcelona bookshop owner was sentenced to prison for the crime of "honoring and justifying genocide." Pedro Varela, owner of the Europa bookshop, was given a term of two years, nine months for "selling and spreading in a continuous manner books that honor and justify the genocide committed by Hitler against the Jewish people and other minorities." The sentence, which was handed down Monday in a Barcelona court, also accused the bookshop of marketing "books that belittle other races or ethnicities, women, homosexuals and disabled people," as well as organizing neo-Nazi conferences. Varela also was fined nearly $4,000.

Invictus Idolatry
Peter Hammond (South Africa)

... This beautifully crafted, stirring and inspiring film, Invictus, clearly has a political agenda. It has dangerous distortions of reality and a selective focus ... Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe, (MK), the terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. He had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilizing terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and children, were killed by Nelson Mandela's MK terrorists. South African President P.W. Botha had, on a number of occasions, offered Nelson Mandela freedom from prison, if he would only renounce terrorist violence.

Israel-Palestine Rights and Wrongs: Finkelstein vs. Gissin
RT (Russia) - Video

Rights and wrongs in the Israel-Palestine conflict are debated in this heated exchange between Norman Finkelstein, a fierce and articulate Jewish critic of Israel and its policies, and Ranann Gissin, an ardent defender of the Zionist state and for years a prominent Israeli spokesman. Broadcast on Peter Lavelle's "CrossTalk." Runtime: 26 mins.

British Leader Chamberlain Read and Annotated Hitler's Mein Kampf
The Times (Britain)

Neville Chamberlain read and annotated Hitler's Mein Kampf in its original German before he embarked on his policy of appeasement, says a new biography. The former prime minister, who acquired a 1933 copy of the book, highlighted sections that he thought revealing of the German dictator's mindset, and even added exclamation marks alongside some passages. Chamberlain was struck by sections that underlined Hitler's anti-Semitism, his faith in Aryan superiority and his sense of racial affinity with the British. In one highlighted passage about Anglo-German relations, Hitler states: "The bond of kindred blood and the main features of a common civilisation united us."