High among the blunders of history was the "blank cheque" Kaiser Wilhelm gave Vienna, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to deal with the Serbs as they saw fit. Five weeks later, Vienna cashed the check and declared war, after Belgrade refused to...
Sanctions Give China an Advantage in Iran
LONDON -- The European Union's new sanctions against Iran appear to open a new space for eager Chinese companies to expand their investments in a country viewed as a rogue player by much of the western world. With China recently coming to light as Iran's largest trade...
Thursday: 34 Iraqis Killed, 60 Wounded
The National Security Product
Sources: Amiri Told CIA Iran Has No Nuclear Bomb Program
Contrary to a news media narrative that Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri has provided intelligence on covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, CIA sources familiar with the Amiri case say he told his CIA handlers that there is no such Iranian nuclear weapons program,...
Pavlov’s Dogs of War Revisited
Super Dave Petraeus, newly installed as top banana in the Bananastans*, is practicing the exploding-cigar kind of diplomacy Dick Cheney and his cabin boys perfected during the Li'l Bush regime. Following policies outlined by the neoconservative cabal in their...
Saturday: 4 Iraqis Killed, 7 Wounded
Clues Suggest Amiri Defection Was an Iranian Plant
U.S. officials are explaining Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri's return to Iran as the result of a defector having a change of heart because of his concern about Iranian government threats to his family. Iran and Amiri himself have insisted that it is a simple case of...
The Shahram Charade
By now the narrative is well-established, at least as far as the Western media is concerned: Shahram Amiri, an Iranian scientist, defected to the US last year, but changed his mind and has now returned to Iran. No matter: we squeezed him dry, as one intelligence...
The Shahram Affair
Confronted with the accusation that Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri had been kidnapped by US and Saudi intelligence agencies while on a trip to Mecca, and brought to the US for interrogation, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley averred: “We are not in the...


