I am becoming increasingly troubled by the one-sided news stories that are portraying Iran as a menace much the same way Iraq was portrayed in 2002-2003. We need to remember how we were deceived in the past — by lies and propaganda that was spread through the media. Let’s smarten up and demand real information this time. If we rely on information distributed by the administration, half truths and blurry images we are in real trouble.

Here’s an excellent piece that ran today on AntiWar.com:

Viewpoint: Living with Iraq’s violence
An Iraqi member of staff at the BBC Baghdad bureau reflects on the daily toll the violence is taking on the people of his country. For security reasons, the author’s name is not being published.

Violent death in Iraq is an everyday event. In Baghdad people put up signs on the street to announce deaths. I am always surprised to read one which says that someone died of natural causes.

Because it is so common, you get used to the number of violent deaths. The problem is you just bury it deep inside you. It becomes like a time bomb, you never know when it is going to explode.

All these feelings of fear, sadness and frustration burst out of me one morning last week when I lost Marwan, a relative of mine.

Marwan’s day began as usual. He got into his car and started the engine. But rather than driving off, his car blew up when the engine warmed up. He died instantly.

Marwan was a police officer. I suppose that it is why he was targeted.

The tragedy didn’t end there. A few minutes later, his wife Wafa shot herself when she realised her husband was dead. The couple left behind a baby boy Ahmad who is only 11 months old.

This wasn’t the only tragedy in Wafa’s life. Two years ago, a Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, assassinated her brother-in-law Waheed.

Four years ago, a rocket which was fired by Sunni insurgents from devastated her family when it hit Wafa’s aunt’s house.

Wafa’s 12-year-old cousin Mustafa was killed. Her mother, who was visiting the house, was paralysed and Wafa’s six-year-old brother Saad lost one eye.

Tragedies like the one Wafa experienced have become part of the life of most Iraqis. It is very unusual not to have a tragedy in the family.

Mourning events have replaced birthdays and wedding parties. You are always surrounded by death. The unwanted guest will visit you at any moment.

You will see it on TV, you will hear it on the radio, and you’ll read about it in the newspapers. Even when you think that it is hundreds of miles away from you, it will touch you in some way.

WHY ARE YOU CALLING?

As a journalist I have to gather information about bombings across Iraq. Last week there was a large bomb near Mosul, one of Iraq’s main cities.

I have a book full of telephone numbers, which I was given by a former colleague who left the office. Other numbers I collected myself.

There was this number for a doctor in Mosul that I tried to call. I wanted to get information about the latest casualties. A young woman answered the phone. She was very curious as to why I was calling.

“Why are you calling,” she asked. “Where did you get this number from? How do you know this doctor?”

Her reaction was very unusual. It took me a while to realise that this woman was the doctor’s daughter.

She started crying and said: “My father was assassinated two years ago in his clinic”.

I could hear in her voice the unspoken question: Why he had been assassinated? I could feel that she’d been asking the same question for two years. I apologised and expressed my sympathy.

After I hung up I realised what I could have said to the doctor’s daughter.

“My poor young woman, your father died in vain just like Marwan, Mustafa, Wafa and thousands and thousands of Iraqis,” I could have said.

“We have become the firewood in a war which has no logic and victims of warriors who lack honour and nobility. Warriors we read about in history books at least had honour.”

I think it is time to seriously consider going to that remote island I have always dreamed of.

MY IRAQ

Just before I finished writing these comments a police source called me to say that a man had got a court order to evict a bad tenant from an apartment he owns.

The tenant did not want to give the apartment back to the owner in a good condition, so instead he blew it up injuring two civilians.

This is my Iraq.

I love this! People need to see for themselves what waterboarding is so they can decide whether it is torture or not. I believe it is torture. It is a crime against humanity and the US government should be forced to stop.

Children’s cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants is being used as part of an art installation to protest against water-boarding as a form of torture.

The Water-boarding Thrill Ride by artist Steve Powers has been installed at Coney Island theme park in New York.

A sign on the outside shows SpongeBob saying “It don’t Gitmo better!” - a reference to Guantanamo Bay - as another character pours water over him.

The US has admitted using the simulated drowning method on terrorism suspects.

For one dollar, visitors get to look through a barred window at a Guantanamo-like interrogation, enacted by animated robots.

A hooded figure leans over a man in an orange jumpsuit, whose face is covered with a towel and his body tethered to a tilted plane.

‘Crazy’

Lights then come on and water pours into the man’s nose and mouth, producing convulsions for 15 seconds.

Powers says his aim is to provoke people into thinking about the interrogation technique, which simulates the feeling of drowning and is denounced by human rights groups as a form of torture.

“Robot water-boarding became a way of exploring the issue without doing any harm,” he told The New York Times.

“It’s putting a unique experience on the table. And it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to look in there and say: ‘That’s really what’s going on? That’s crazy.’”

Marion Tracey, 57, from New Jersey, said she found the installation disturbing and made her think of her father who had nightmares after returning from World War II.

“In all wars, horrible things happen - I’d rather not see it,” she said.

Alex Soto, 23, said he thought it was a good thing for people to learn about water-boarding, but added: “It is pretty twisted.”

Powers says he plans to subject himself to water-boarding by a professional trained in interrogation techniques later this month.

The installation will then be moved to Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armoury.

This is a joke — the man who leads an administration that has practiced widespread torture and “extraordinary renditions;” has unlawfully imprisoned Americans and immigrants has denied the writ of habeas corpus and has at least two illegal detention centers — believes that he can comment on China’s human rights record? The world must be chuckling.

George Bush urges China to improve its human rights records

US President George W Bush has expressed “deep concerns” over China’s human rights record in a speech on the eve of the Beijing Olympics.

“The US believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings,” he said in the Thai capital Bangkok.

He praised China’s economy but said only respect for human rights would let it realise its full potential.

Mr Bush has been criticised by some campaigners for going to the Games.

He was due to fly to Beijing following the speech in Bangkok, a stop on his final trip to Asia before he leaves office in January.

The wide-ranging address was more nuanced than Mr Bush’s past speeches on China, the BBC’s Jonathan Head reports from Bangkok.

It is unlikely to cause much offense in China, our correspondent says, and many people will see it more as a valedictory speech for Mr Bush’s record in Asia rather than an outline of future US policy.

‘Firm opposition’

President Bush said he was optimistic about China’s future and said change in China would arrive “on its own terms”.

But his criticisms of China’s human rights record were clear.

“America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists,” he said.

“We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly and labour rights not to antagonise China’s leaders but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential.

“And we press for openness and justice not to impose our beliefs, but to allow the Chinese people to express theirs.”

Beijing police dragged away three US Christians who tried to demonstrate on Tiananmen Square on Thursday in support of religious freedom.

A plainclothes policeman was amongst the security officials who stepped in and led Reverend Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defence Coalition in Washington, away from the centre of the square.

Four pro-Tibet activists from Britain and the US were arrested and held briefly in Beijing on Wednesday after a protest close to the Olympic stadium.

China’s terms

The US, Mr Bush said, recognised that the growth sparked by China’s free market reforms was “good for the Chinese people” and the country’s’ purchasing power was “good for the world”.

On foreign policy, he commended China’s “critical leadership role” in the negotiations to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, and the “constructive relationship” between Beijing and Washington over Taiwan.

But without going into detail, he added that China as a “global economic leader” had the duty to “act responsibly on matters from energy to the environment to development in Africa”.

“Ultimately,” said Mr Bush, “only China can decide what course it will follow.”

“Change in China will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and traditions.”

While “optimistic about China’s future”, he added:

“Young people who grow up with the freedom to trade goods will ultimately demand the freedom to trade ideas, especially on an unrestricted internet.”

This was an apparent reference to Chinese restrictions on certain news and human rights websites.

Beijing recently appeared to ease its curbs after foreign journalists covering the Olympic Games in China complained about being denied access.

Burma refugees

Mr Bush’s address also called for an end to what he described as tyranny in Thailand’s neighbour, Burma.

Friday’s Olympic opening ceremony coincides with the 20th anniversary of a democracy uprising in Burma, which was crushed by the military.

“Together, we seek an end to tyranny in Burma,” he said. “The noble cause has many devoted champions, and I happen to be married to one of them.”

First lady Laura Bush flew to the Thai-Burmese border to spend the day at the Mae La refugee camp where about 35,000 refugees live, having fled their homes.

An interesting blog piece dispelling the recent rumors about an alleged nuclear bomb facility being built in the Khuzestan Province in Iran.

Two days ago, I received an e-mail from a friend of mine with a link to an Arab publication as well as MEMRI translation of the news about Iran’s secret nuclear plant being made in Ahvaz.

Since I was born in that town, the news got my attention.

Briefly, the report said that Tehran has started building a secret nuclear plant for manufacturing atomic bombs in Al-Zarqan Area near Al-Ahwaz City in southwest Iran and its border with Iraq and that a lot of people have been relocated by force. The report said the plant was ordered not to employ Arab speaking people or any other locals. I had not heard of the city of Al-Zarqan before, but then I realized that the Arabs do not have the letter G in their language and they replace it with ‘q’ or ‘qh’. So the name in Farsi is Zargan.

…First of all, the plant (according to some official broadcasts from IRI) is undergoing a major upgrade/re-construction as well as they are adding several additions to its original power stations (link in Farsi). This upgrade was announced and many Iranian and foreign companies were bidding for the job (see also here), so again, this showed that the project was nothing secret.

Another important fact about the power plant was that it was privatized in 2004 and it is no longer in the hands of the Iranian Tavanir (state owned company that controls all nationalized power stations in Iran).

Read more here.

Full disclosure, it is my husband’s blog.

The latest Pew Research study shows newspapers have cut both international and national news in favor of local coverage. I support covering local news, but ignoring everything else is dangerous and sets us up for more miserable failures both nationally and internationally. We need to monitor what our government is doing in our names. Write to your local paper and ask that they include coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tell them you want to know what your elected officials are doing.

Almost two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news, and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them have smaller news staffs, according to a new study.

The study, by the Pew Research Center and Tyler Marshall, a former foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, is based on a written survey of the top editors at 259 newspapers of all sizes and interviews with a sampling of those editors.

The findings come as no surprise to anyone following the travails of the newspaper industry, racked every few days by new reports of layoffs, falling revenue, credit downgrades, shrinking page counts and declining circulation. But the Pew study appears to be the broadest attempt yet to measure how widespread the changes have been.

Sixty-four percent of the newspapers reported cutting the space given to foreign news over three years, making that the area that has suffered at the most papers as the business contracts. Only 10 percent of the editors said they considered foreign news “very essential” to their papers.

“It’s really concerning when we have two wars overseas, our economy is more global, we’re competing with economies that are growing faster than ours, and our dependence on foreign oil is one of the biggest stories,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Almost half the papers said they had cut the human resources devoted to covering news from abroad, a striking figure given that most newspapers are small and historically have not had any reporters or editors working full time on foreign news.

“In many cases, the resource they had for foreign news was an editor pulling material from the wire services, or they were willing to send a reporter overseas in limited cases, and they’re doing less of that now, or none at all,” Mr. Rosenstiel said.

Three-fifths of the papers reported having less space for news over all, as newspapers try to save money by shifting to smaller pages and printing fewer of them. The only area cut nearly as often as foreign news was national news, which declined at 57 percent of the papers. Business coverage ranked next, reduced by one-third of the papers.

Large-circulation papers have been far more likely to reduce the space given to business, the arts, features and opinions — areas that historically have not been central to small papers.

Half of all papers said they had increased the amount of state and local news they published, especially “hyper-local” community news.

At 59 percent of the newspapers, editors said news staffing had declined over the previous three years, and that was true at 85 percent of the large papers. In the months since the survey was taken, the nation’s major newspaper chains have made some of the deepest newsroom cuts on record.

Yet the shrunken newsrooms have taken on added duties in feeding their Web sites, like producing subsites covering specific towns or neighborhoods, or posting articles in the morning and updating them throughout the day. And most papers report that their reporters’ blog posts are not edited before going online.

A majority of the editors who took part in the study said they worry about a loss of institutional memory and journalistic standards, as experienced people leave the business and a younger crew of reporters publishes more news quickly online. But almost half the editors said they were more excited than fearful about the possibilities of the Internet.

“One thing that surprised me was how optimistic the editors are,” Mr. Rosenstiel said. “They’re convinced that they can still make their newspapers better, because otherwise I’m not sure they could go to work in the morning.”

Another great article by Seymour M. Hersh.

Preparing the Battlefield

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

“The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.

Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.

Yet another example of how American tax dollars are being misused.

Whistle-Blower Suits Languish at Justice

More than 900 cases alleging that government contractors and drugmakers have defrauded taxpayers out of billions of dollars are languishing in a backlog that has built up over the past decade because the Justice Department cannot keep pace with the surge in charges brought by whistle-blowers, according to lawyers involved in the disputes.

The issue is drawing renewed interest among lawmakers and nonprofit groups because many of the cases involve the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rising health-care payouts, and privatization of government functions — all of which offer rich new opportunities to swindle taxpayers.

Since 2001, 300 to 400 civil cases have been filed each year by employees charging that their companies defrauded the government. But under the cumbersome process that governs these cases, Justice Department lawyers must review them under seal, and whistle-blowers routinely wait 14 months or longer just to learn whether the department will get involved. The government rejects about three-quarters of the cases it receives, saying that the vast majority have little merit.

Disputes can stay buried for years more while the government investigates the allegations.

“Even if no new cases are filed, it might take 10 years for the Department of Justice to clear its desk. Cases in the backlog represent a lot of money being left on the table,” said Patrick Burns, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, which advocates for Justice to receive more funding to support cases by whistle-blowers and their attorneys.

As the rhetoric about the need to attack Iran builds, let’s pause to remember what war is — what it means to those living in a country under attack and to our sons, daughters, husbands, brothers and sisters that we send to kill. Listen to soldiers as they describe war and then decide whether it is worth attacking another country that is not a danger to the US or its allies. Israel can protect itself, it has plenty of nuclear weapons.

What the media is not telling you AGAIN, is that most insiders do not believe that there are WMDs in Iran. The leaders of Iran have repeatedly said they do not favor the development of nuclear weapons. Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and many other countries have praised Iran for its help during recent difficult times. We hear a lot about what the president of Iran says. What we don’t hear is that he is a figure head and that the country’s religious leaders rule. They have repeatedly said they consider nuclear weapons a crime against Islam.

Let’s be smarter than our leaders give us credit for.

Let’s protect the innocent children who will be killed if we attack Iran.

Let’s protect our sons and daughters from war.

Let’s focus on becoming a nation that we can be proud of again. Vote in November and hold your Congressional representatives responsible. They are destroying our country and we need to take it back.

Most of all, let’s say no to war.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Below is an excellent article on the buildup to a war with Iran.

The Myth of ‘Weapons-Grade’ Enrichment
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times

Talk about the double standards at the United Nations. Whereas UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has repeatedly condemned Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric against Israel, expressing “shock and dismay”, he has remained ominously, and inexcusably, silent about the blatant Israeli threats of military attacks on Iran, thus undermining the world’s confidence in his ability to steer the global community clear of yet another major war in the Middle East caldron.

Having turned a blind eye to Iran’s formal protest at the UN regarding Israel’s explicit threats, Ban may need to revisit his own statement of June 7, 2007, “The secretary general points out that all members have undertaken to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

In light of new media disclosures about Israel’s advanced plans to launch a major air offensive against Iran’s nuclear installations, bound to inflict serious civilian casualties and trigger the volatile region into a “fireball”, to paraphrase the reaction of the head of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohammad ElBaradei, who has stated categorically that he would resign immediately if Iran is attacked, Ban is borderline on the verge of skirting his official obligation by refusing to issue a stern statement on this serious matter of war and peace.

ElBaradei’s comments followed confirmation by sources at the Pentagon and other US government agencies that Israel recently carried out a full rehearsal of an air assault on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Should Israel deliver on its stated threats and drop its bombs on Iran, thus triggering a major conflict in the Middle East, with dangerous and unanticipated consequences, then the UN will be widely regarded a key casualty of this crisis, and would be blamed for failing in prudent crisis-management.

Unfortunately, compounding the UN’s shortcoming above-cited is a related failure of mainstream media in the US and Europe to criticize Ban’s flawed approach to the Iran crisis, or to address the systematic disinformation and planned paranoia about Iran’s nuclear program put forth by Israel and its allies.

Instead, the US media in particular have allowed themselves to become an unwitting accomplice of Israel’s anti-Iran propaganda machine, dutifully recycling the line that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons, has amassed “weapons-grade” enriched uranium, and is thus on the verge of arriving at “the point of no return” with respect to bomb-making.

In a word, the race to dupe public opinion about a “clear and present danger” posed by Iran’s nuclear program, to justify Israel’s threatened attack (with the US’s tacit approval) is in full gear and the US media are by and large about to receive another “F” card, just as they did with the US’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the “pluralistic” media became a shell of itself by blindly echoing the White House’s spin about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Indeed, it is remarkable how little the US media have learned, or evolved, since then and how frozen their will is when it comes to their sedimented inability to criticize the state of Israel, recalling the criticisms of US editorials by former president Jimmy Carter in his book, Worse than Apartheid. In fact, the rather uniform, uncritical and conformist behavior of the US media shows that they are worse than Israel’s own media, they occasionally display signs of independence from the government on foreign policy matters.