The CIA/MIC’s campaign of economic terrorism in Iran is working. I wonder how long it will be before a “populist uprising” takes place which we can conveniently get behind and help in the subsequent regime change?
Iran police clash with protesters over currency crisis
Riot police in Iran have clashed with protesters in the capital over sharp falls in the currency, the rial.
Tear gas was used to disperse the demonstrators, some of whom were setting fire to tyres and rubbish bins. There were many arrests, reports say.
Eyewitnesses told the BBC that scores of people gathered outside the central bank, calling for the governor to stand down, chanting anti-government slogans.
The rial has plummeted to record lows against the US dollar in recent days.
Money dealers were joined by traders from the nearby central bazaar, reports say.
Amateur video footage posted online appeared to show hundreds of people marching towards Iran’s central bank.
Eyewitnesses told BBC Persian that riot police fired tear gas to disperse the crowds.
Reports say many shops in the central Grand Bazaar have brought down their shutters in sympathy with the demonstrators.
Traders are angry at the lack of direction from the government in the crisis, which they say has led to more instability in prices, making trading almost impossible, commentators say.
Arrests
The head of Tehran’s bazaar unions, Ahmad Karimi-Esfahani, said shopkeepers had not opened their businesses as they were “worried about security” but he expected them to reopen on Thursday.
A protest outside the bazaar started with a small group and then grew, he told the Iranian Labour News Agency (Ilna).
One eyewitness, who gave his name only as Omid, told the BBC that the Sabze Maydon area within the bazaar was closed down and some shop windows were smashed.
He said the government had closed the currency exchange shops, hoping to curtail the turmoil.
A senior Iranian police commander confirmed to Ilna that “a limited number of people protested in front of the bazaar,” but he said the bazaar was not closed.
Hundreds of police are also reported to have rounded up and arrested illegal money changers in the capital.
Tehran’s bazaar is traditionally the biggest financial ally of the Iranian regime. The bazaar is said to have bankrolled the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The political core of the bazaar is the Islamic Allied Society or Motalefeh, a political group loyal to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The protests were clearly targeting President Ahmadinejad’s government, accusing it of mismanagement and inefficiency in curtailing Iran’s currency crisis, says BBC Persian’s Amir Paivar.
President Ahmadinejad has blamed Western sanctions for the fall in the rial, saying they amounted to an economic war.
However, many Iranians accuse him of financial mismanagement.
US officials say the slide reflects the success of US economic sanctions targeted at Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.
Meanwhile, Ayatollah Khamenei said in a speech that the Iranian people would never submit to pressure from abroad.
Iran would put this crisis behind it, he was quoted by Iranian news agencies as saying.
This is how the CIA/military-industrial complex achieves its goals. Economic terrorism to incite, pick one of the uprisings to support (or create your own), then covertly or overtly engage in regime change. Bonus points if you can drum up domestic support by alleging the regime-to-be-changed has WMD’s or is a threat to “national security”. Wake the fuck up, people.
US develops Mach 6 Missile Platform - Because Fuck You
Perhaps Han Solo said it best in Star Wars when, describing his hyper-fast smuggling spaceship the Millennium Falcon, he said, “It may not look like much, but it’s got it where it counts.”
While the Air Force might take exception to being likened to the Falcon, in reality the platypus-nosed X-51A Waverider hypersonic flight test vehicle really doesn’t look like much. But it definitely has it where it counts.
On Tuesday, the unmanned 25-foot-long vehicle will be dropped off of the wing of a converted B-52 bomber off the California coast and try to fly for 300 seconds at science fiction-like speeds of Mach 6, over 4,500 mph - fast enough to fly from New York to London in less than an hour.
It is the Pentagon’s latest test as it studies the possibilities of hypersonic flight, defined as moving at speeds of Mach 5 (about 3,400 mph) and above without leaving the atmosphere. The technology could eventually bring missiles or airplanes to the other side of the planet in minutes instead of hours.
The Air Force and the Pentagon are not saying much about Tuesday’s test, but the military could use such technology for reconnaissance aircraft, cruise missile-like weapons or vehicles that could carry people or cargo so fast adversaries would not have time to react, according to military analysts.
The Air Force conceived the X-51A program in 2004 and, according to the military analysis website Globalsecurity.org, the service has spent $140 million on the Waverider system. The Air Force will not disclose the actual cost of the program.
The Air Force will not disclose the actual cost of the program. Just a couple hundred or thousand million dollars of our money they are spending, but they will not tell us how much of our money they are spending on developing a Mach 6 missile platform. A Mach 6 missile platform. What the fucking fuck.
I mourn the loss of all human life, be it American or otherwise. It is regrettable that so many people died on 9/11, and while I do not buy into the mainstream story of what transpired that day, suffice to say it is deeply troubling that in response to terrorists killing innocent people in an act of vengeance for the American military industrial complex’s history of war crimes, the American military industrial complex opened up whole new theaters of war, invaded sovereign nations, fabricated justification for invading others, killed thousands of “enemy combatants” and innocent civilians, displaced hundreds of thousands more, curtailed domestic civil liberties, and created a remote-controlled assassination drone program which has killed US citizens abroad with no regard for due process or other constitutional law, amongst other blighted acts, all while so many Americans cheer them on, and hold in highest regard the men and women who volunteer to participate.
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In the car, on the way to work, listening to NPR. Since 2004, the 300+ US drone strikes on the Afghan/Pakistan border killed 70% “militants” (people that say no to US imperialism and allegedly have taken up arms). In other words, 30% of drone assassination victims were non-militants (people who may or may not say no to US imperialism and have not taken up arms). 30% innocent men, women, and children. How do you think the friends and families of the murdered innocent feel? Lives ruined by missiles fired from remote controlled US assassination machines. Is this a war on terror or a war of terror? If for every “militant” we kill, we inspire others to hate everything the US stands for and thus create more enemies to US imperialism, imagine how many more we create by murdering innocents and writing it off as collateral damage. Hey, remember that 16 year old US citizen our government drones assassinated in Yemen last fall? Yeah, that happened, too.
Fuck war. Fuck capitalism. Fuck states. Fuck religion. Fuck money. I hope the world explodes.
Pakistan is helping Afghan Taliban, says Nato report
[[The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.
It alleges that Pakistan knows the locations of senior Taliban leaders.
A BBC correspondent says the report is painful reading for international forces and the Afghan government.
Pakistan has strenuously denied any links with the Taliban on previous occasions.
“We have long been concerned about ties between elements of the ISI and some extremist networks,” said US Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby, adding that the US Defence Department had not seen the report.
Villagers often prefer the Taliban to “corrupt” Afghan authorities, the report alleges]]
If your reaction after reading this was “let’s bomb Pakistan”, you’re what’s wrong with America.
We supported and trained the Taliban when they fought the Soviets. Now we’re trying to fight them, despite the fact that the popular sovereignty of the Afghan people has been established by their backing of the Taliban.
We’re flying drones over Afghanistan, Pakistan, and numerous other countries, raining missiles and murdering indiscriminately, all in the name of US national security, all in the name of killing the evil doers, the terrorists. We are the evil doers. We are the terrorists. We are our own threat to US national security.
US drones murdered 9 people in Yemen last night. But it’s ok, because they were suspected of being terrorists. Suspected, so they were executed. Whether or not they were a threat to you or I is unclear. What is clear is that they were murdered by missiles paid for by our tax dollars. Happy Tuesday, we’re all serial killers.
