The ampersand (&) in the Amnesty text means “and”. I read the text to say “eyewitness testimony and information gathered from activists outside Iran…”. So 2 sources: (1) eyewitness testimony, and (2) information gathered from activists outside Iran. It truly is incredible to read the text as saying eyewitnesses were outside Iran at the time they witnessed what they testified about.

Posted by: Brian | Nov 19 2019 18:36 utc | 4

@2 Good One!

Posted by: par4 | Nov 19 2019 18:41 utc | 6

Could an “eyewitness outside the country” be viewing in real time from a drone or satellite?

Posted by: Petro-G | Nov 19 2019 18:48 utc | 8

And as if in anticipation of BigLie Media’s onslaught, we have Zarif going off in a speech given yesterday in Astana, as reported here. Essentially anything uttered by “official” Western sources about Iran is a lie or something quite similar and ought to be ignored. Although she can’t be expected to write about all the BigLies being unleashed upon humanity, Calitlin Johnstone at least attempts to debunk several every week. I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering why every human isn’t a complete skeptic when it comes to whatever BigLie Media produces given the thousands of lies it tells yearly. And Twitter’s now censoring Sharmine Narwani, one of the best Middle East journalists. Surely, the West as a concept must now be deemed to be The Walking Dead populated by its Zombie adherents.

Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 19 2019 18:56 utc | 10

The move makes economic sense. It had previously been recommended by the IMF.

If the IMF recommended it, it means it doesn’t make economic sense.

Posted by: vk | Nov 19 2019 19:47 utc | 12

as Brian correctly said in comment #4, the text says ‘eyewitnesses’ and ‘activists outside Iran’. Two different sources, not the same.
It would be good if b would keep the high journalistic standard he usually holds, and not fall victim of the temptation of distorting and intentionally misinterpreting a text.

Posted by: Phil | Nov 19 2019 20:01 utc | 14

– Gasoline prices throughout the Middle East are WAY too low. Gasoline is often sold below the price of production.
– In 2015 Saudi Arabia raised the price of gasoline by a MASSIVE 50% !!!!! Outrageous !!!!! Now the price of gasoline is no longer 14 cents a liter but has risen to the outrageous level of 21 cents !!!

Posted by: Willy2 | Nov 19 2019 20:20 utc | 16

‘Amnesty International’…haw fucking haw…
Zero credibility since time immemorial…along with HRW [Soros Front]…plus the collective corporate western media…stink tanks…NGOs like USAID [CIA lite]…NED etc…
I wonder how many billions a year it takes to keep this huge global propaganda and agitation octopus going…?
BTW…I love that ‘verified’ part…
‘Verified’ by whom and what…the CIA’s magic eight ball…?
Also the ‘unlawful’ killings by the Iranian security officers…
So the 1,000 civilians killed by cops in the USA EVERY YEAR…is never ‘unlawful’…but when rioters and most likely paid agents of a hostile foreign power get shot for setting banks on fire, then it’s ‘unlawful’…
Talk about Orwellian…but nothing surprises anymore…
The same thing about HK…I happened to pick up an MSM rag lying about in a coffee shop this morning and decided to read the ‘report’ out of HK…
What a fucking joke…the police are now ‘besieging’ the campus of those scumbag criminals…the whole narrative is so ridiculously tilted that one has to wonder if these media dirtbags working these foreign bureaus are on some serious psychotropic drugs…
You would have to be in order to invent such a fake reality, when your own eyes are telling you otherwise…
Oh…and the main talking point is how ‘the people’ of Hong Kong are against the Chinese ‘takeover’ of the cherished ‘independence’ of this rotten place…
Thanks to Bernhard for continuing to hammer on this stuff…this is why the comments section here is targeted nonstop by the agit-prop global octopus I mentioned earlier…

Posted by: flankerbandit | Nov 19 2019 20:24 utc | 18

Could an “eyewitness outside the country” be viewing in real time from a drone or satellite?

Do you know how satellites actually work…?
They fly AROUND the earth at about 18,000 mph…so how could they possibly hover in one place and take snapshots…?…real life isn’t a Tome Cruise movie…
Do you know how air defense works…?
Any hostile flying object [even as small as a pigeon] trying to enter sovereign airspace will be picked up by air defense radar and immediately shot down…
I guess you never heard the news about Iran shooting down that MQ4 Triton UAV…a $200 million dollar UAV that flies at 65,000 ft…
Killed before it could even enter Iranian air space…so how is a drone going to be hovering over Tehran…?
Any other preschool questions…?

Posted by: flankerbandit | Nov 19 2019 20:31 utc | 20

This is effectively a carbon tax (or at least a reduction in fossil fuel subsidy).

Posted by: Keith McClary | Nov 19 2019 20:49 utc | 22

OT: A document that could do with more publicity.
A couple of Russians have been to Syria to interview ‘volunteers’ who joined the White Helmets, along with eyewitnesses. The common thread: the takfiris took control of food supplies so the ‘volunteers’ were given the choice of fighting against the Syrian government, joining the White Helmets or death. The ‘volunteers’ were not paid a salary, but they did receive an ‘appreciation’ of about $150-200 a month. The report includes summaries of interviews with the volunteers along with details of WH members who also fought on the front lines.
The White Helmets: Fact-checking by eyewitnesses and former volunteers by M. Grigoriev and S. Maizel
An English translation (PDF format) is available for download from:
https://drop5.dropmefiles.com/dl/lb54g

Posted by: Yonatan | Nov 19 2019 21:01 utc | 24

Activists outside Iran such as Ninel? 😉

Posted by: Lozion | Nov 19 2019 21:03 utc | 26

thanks b…
i have been following this via far news and tehran times – 2 links that offer an alternative to the msm. it is typically educational..
Zarif calls U.S. claim of support for Iranians ‘shameful lie’
Thugs Paid $60 for Each Arson Attack
@13 vk… i agree with you.. anything the imf says – you want to go in the exact opposite direction of the imf! in fact, the imf is a tool of the same empire that seeks to control everything thru their friends and cohorts on wall st.. go do a search on iran and the imf and you can quickly see what i mean…

Posted by: james | Nov 19 2019 21:09 utc | 28

in this post on foreign meddling is as good a thread as any to highlight a demotion: Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s cheerleader and meddler in chief in Global Affairs, is being moved to a domestic portfolio – climate change.

Posted by: Likklemore | Nov 19 2019 21:49 utc | 30

The report I heard said that the welfare program that gives the poorest people in the country was simultaneously increased to cover the increased cost of fuel for the poorest, placing the majority of the pressure of the increase on the wealthy. Somehow this doesn’t sound like regime change. There has been plenty of that for decades, engineered by the CIA.

Posted by: Vonu | Nov 19 2019 21:55 utc | 32

Minor point: “The move makes economic sense. It had previously been recommended by the IMF.”
Perhaps at times the IMF will actually recommend something that makes sense – the same way that a broken analog clock tells the right time twice a day – but saying that something has been recommended by the IMF, is not much of a positive. ‘Had been vigorously opposed by the IMF’? Now THAT might suggest there was something to it…
And I lose track of the number of times that the rich have levied a regressive tax on the working class, and promised to distribute the money ‘to the poor’ – HAHAHAHA fell for it again didn’t you?

Posted by: TG | Nov 19 2019 22:05 utc | 34

A Rocket Scientist here on the board suggested this…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit

Let us look into Rocket Scientist’s helpful pointer…

A geostationary orbit, also referred to as a geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO), is a circular geosynchronous orbit 35,786 kilometres (22,236 miles) above Earth’s equator…

Like William pointed out already…GEO sats ARE NOT USED FOR EARTH IMAGING…
For the simple reason that the optics required would be FAR in excess of the Hubble telescope…
Anyway…it seems you presume to have more technical knowledge of aerospace physics than I do, which is why you have chosen to dispute my point…
Of course you could have looked up Earth Observation Satellite BEFORE proceeding to demonstrate your lack of a preschool diploma…

Most Earth observation satellites carry instruments that should be operated at a relatively low altitude…Earth observation satellites are all operated at altitudes of about 800 km.

Do you need me to explain the physics behind why a sat flying at 800 km altitude needs to go 18,000 mph…?
It’s not actually hard to understand…ever seen the ‘hammer throw’ event in the olympics…where the athlete spins a heavy metal ball on the end of a cable around and around before releasing it…?
Before he releases it, the spinning ball is obviously exerting a very large CENTRIFUGAL FORCE…the cable is keeping it from flying off, by exerting the exact same force in the opposite direction [centripetal]…therefore the two forces are in equilibrium, as per Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which tells us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…
It is the same with a satellite…in order to stay aloft and keep spinning around the earth, its centrifugal force must exactly equal the pull of earth’s gravity…
Since centrifugal force is a factor of the object’s rotational speed, a spacecraft flying in low earth orbit must have a speed of about 8 km/s [about 18,000 mph] in order to develop the CENTRIFUGAL FORCE THAT WILL EXACTLY BALANCE THE PULL OF EARTH’S GRAVITY…
That way, the two forces are in EXACT EQUILIBRIUM…just like that spinning ball in the hammer throw…
Do you have any other insights about orbital mechanics that you would like to educate me on…?
Now let’s get back to the earth imaging sats…in order to cover the entire earth surface, they are placed in a Polar Orbit…
That way the sat is moving around the earth in the vertical plane, while the earth spins below it in the horizontal plane…
That means that a sat will be only momentarily above any particular point on the globe…since the earth is spinning under it, and the sat itself is flying very fast in a perpendicular plane of rotation…
In practical terms, it means that any given spot on earth will only pass under the sat maybe once in a few days…
Now let’s get back to your Einstein-level contribution of suggesting a geostationary orbit nearly 40,000 km from the earth as a means to take pictures of the earth below…[SMFH]
Here we refer to what’s called the Dawes Limit…which is…

a formula to express the maximum resolving power of a microscope or telescope.

This resolving power is measured in angular resolution
The formula is given as…theta = lambda / diameter
Where theta is the angular resolution in radians, lambda is the wavelength of light, and diameter is the size of the optical lens or mirror…
The wavelength of light in the visible spectrum is about 5 x 10^-7 meters…which is about 5 ten-millionths of a meter…
The Hubble telescope has a mirror of 2.4 m, so the angular resolution would be 0.000,000,5 divided by 2.4 = ~0.000,000,2 radians…which, in degrees, equals 0.000,01 degrees…
Now to find the resolution at a particular distance…for example of a GEO satellite which is 35,786 km [~36 million meters]…
To get the linear resolution we multiply the distance times the angular resolution in radians and get…a linear resolution of about 7.5 meters…
Compare that to sat imagery which is now well under 1 meter resolution…for instance 41 cm [0.41 m] for the IKONOS sat…
That is nearly 20 times greater resolution than the Hubble would give from a geostationary orbit…
Would you like to teach us anything else today…or will that be it for now…?

Posted by: flankerbandit | Nov 19 2019 22:18 utc | 36

Bevin @ 39, James @ 36
Bevin, add bang the pots and pans.
Media Reports that Freeland will be replaced by François-Philippe Champagne, an international lawyer who has been the infrastructure minister.
On the CV requirement and previous job experience, I’ll leave it there. It’s politics.

Posted by: Likklemore | Nov 19 2019 22:43 utc | 38

@ Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 19 2019 21:03 utc | 26
Apparently I should have been more specific; I was merely pointing out that it’s perfectly possible to have a satellite sit in one place, not commenting on optics or resolution. But yeah.

Posted by: AshenLight | Nov 19 2019 22:52 utc | 40

Back when I was young and naive I used to believe such organizations wanted to do good in the world. I even talked to several people who worked for HRW. Once the Bush 2 regime finished off Saddam I was in contact with them. There are two Americans I know of who were in correspondence with HRW about documenting Saddam’s genocide of the Kurds. I was one and the other was the late Jude Wanniski, somebody I admired and who I also had correspondence with. This might have been our initial correspondence. He was the only other American I know of who was skeptical that Saddam had committed genocide against the Kurds. We both just looked at it as war propaganda. HRW had released a study after the George Bush 1 regime war in 1993. They sent reporters into Kurdish territory who took detailed accounts of their stories. HRW made huge claims as the US took control of Iraq. They were going to dig up and record all of Saddam’s past evils that had been told to them in the 1993 paper. Most Americans didn’t really care. They just assumed it all must be true. They dug up and documented around 2000 bodies of the Shia rebellion after the Bush 1 regime’s war. They dug up a couple hundred bodies from Saddam’s prison grave yards. They dug up a couple hundred bodies in a couple different areas that the Kurds brought them to. Claiming this was during the Anfal campaign. Saddam had always claimed that the Anfal campaign wasn’t a genocide. He just wanted to push the Kurds off the borders so he could control weapons and arms flow and keep the Kurds docile. That is what he stated the Anfal campaign was about but the US gladly accepted the Kurdish propaganda (to obtain independence from the Iraq government) that it was a genocide. The US used it to stir up war fever. Tony Blair’s 400,000 body count claim from the Anfal campaign may just have been inflated by nearly 400,000. Saddam may very well have been telling the truth. At first HRW returned our correspondence. They told us to be patient. They couldn’t get to many areas because of security concerns. During the interval David Petraeus was paying the Sunnis for peace things weren’t that bad. After assuring us they were working on it HRW went silent to our emails and letters. We quit getting correspondence and couldn’t get anybody to talk to us on the phone about it. This is when I decided most “respected” international human rights organizations may not be what they are cracked up to be. I would take anything Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch has to say with a grain of salt. On the CIA’s Wikipedia web page pay close attention to the details. There is the famous Halabja attack the US initially blamed on Iran since it was on Saddam’s side at the time. In any case the target was the Iranian military as that was the front line during the war. It also is most likely that the US gave Saddam those chemical weapons to use against Iran. There were a reported 5000 deaths from that incident. On the Wikipedia page the overall claim is 50,000 to 100,000. which is a far cry from the hundreds of thousands already. The most notable thing about this entry. The only evidence cited for the 50,000 to 100,000 is the 1993 study. If you follow the link to the report you can read their methodology. Their methodology boils down to… the Kurds told us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfal_genocide

Posted by: goldhoarder | Nov 19 2019 23:01 utc | 42

william gruff @26
“AshenLight @24, do you know how far up geosynchronous orbit is?”
That is why it makes more sense to have large numbers of low-orbit spy satellites, so that a given area of interest can be under continuous surveillance by different satellites at different times.
Besides, the geniuses don’t need satellites. They make it all up anyway.

Posted by: Nu | Nov 19 2019 23:29 utc | 44

I was merely pointing out that it’s perfectly possible to have a satellite sit in one place…

Actually…a GEO sat DOES NOT ‘sit in one place’…it is moving at about 3 km/s [~6,700 mph]…
HOWEVER…to even get to GEO orbit requires a MUCH HIGHER rocket velocity than to get to LEO…about 10 km/s [over 22,000 mph]…
That is why the same rocket can only deliver a fraction of the payload to GTO [geosynchronous transfer orbit] than it can to LEO…typically about a quarter…]

…not commenting on optics or resolution.

Then what was the point of the comment, since the issue of observation and recording images was what the original discussion was about…?
Btw…you’re welcome for the science lesson…
As they say, you can never have enough learning…[unless you happen to be ‘anon’ and an ‘old time lurker’…LOL]

Posted by: flankerbandit | Nov 19 2019 23:43 utc | 46

That is why it makes more sense to have large numbers of low-orbit spy satellites, so that a given area of interest can be under continuous surveillance by different satellites at different times.

Sorry…but again this is not feasible…although perhaps technically possible, given unlimited resources…
Also the issue of resolution comes into play here…even with state of the art resolution of say 0.3 meters [about one foot]…that means that a square foot equals one pixel on your screen…
Considering your HD screen is 1920 x 1080, which is about TWO MILLION pixels…that means your screen contains two million square feet…that’s about 50 acres [20 hectares] that you are looking at on your screen…
That’s not going to be useful to actually capture moving images of objects on the scale of humans…which is what this discussion is about…
Anyway…like I said the technical and monetary requirements for putting up a constellation of spy sats that can monitor a given place on earth would require literally hundreds of sats…it’s totally beyond the realm of the possible…

Posted by: flankerbandit | Nov 20 2019 0:00 utc | 48

Brian @ 4

Verified video footage, eyewitness testimony & information gathered from activists outside Iran

If there was a comma after “testimony” I would agree with you but since there isn’t then “gathered from activists outside Iran” applies to “eyewitness testimony” as well as “information”. The activists outside Iran are collecting eyewitness testimony from people supposedly in Iran and forwarding it. Just like all the shit on Syria that came out of Gaziantep.

Posted by: Ghost Ship | Nov 20 2019 1:09 utc | 50

Which is why SpaceX is doing it right now, Amazon and others planning to follow suit.

Excuse me sir…
Internet sats are now the same thing as reconnaissance sats…?
Please excuse me while I go and dial a call on my shoe phone…and order lunch at the laundromat…

Posted by: flankerbandit | Nov 20 2019 1:40 utc | 52

@67 So the Minister for Galicia is moving on. That’s the good news. The bad news is she may be deputy Prime Minister.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-urged-to-give-freeland-domestic-portfolio-name-her-deputy-pm-1.5361811
(I know this thread is supposed to be about Iran but I got lost in Hubble telescopes)

Posted by: dh | Nov 20 2019 2:09 utc | 54

Pepe on Iran “…Zarif inevitably had to evoke Mike Pompeo: “Today the Secretary of State of the United States says publicly: ‘If Iran wants to eat, it has to obey the United States.’ This is a war crime. Starvation is a crime against humanity. It’s a newspeak headline. If Iran wants its people to eat, it has to follow what he said. He says, ‘Death to the entire Iranian people.’”
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/11/article/irans-only-crime-is-we-decided-not-to-fold/
It ought to be obvious that any discussion of disorder in Iran which is not situated in the context of a long economic war, of almost unprecedented severity, against Iran is nonsensical.
The United States as Pompeo makes clear wants to see Iranians starving and dying for want of proper medicines- that it then actually encourages fascist agitators to protest against the Iranian government’s failure to neutralise US aggression is of little more than passing interest- it is the sort of disgraceful thing that the US does, just as scorpions sting and skunks spray foulness around them.

Posted by: bevin | Nov 20 2019 2:59 utc | 56

Lozion @ 67:
I saw what you did there when you mentioned “a certain enchantress”!

Posted by: Jen | Nov 20 2019 3:08 utc | 58

@74 Jen. Hehe, yeah I thought the word witch was a bit harsh so..

Posted by: Lozion | Nov 20 2019 3:42 utc | 60

Mr ObamBa called it ISIL. (Islamic State in Iraq & Levant)
I call it: IRAN SYRIA IRAQ LEBANON.
Was also referred to as the (Shia Crescent) and (Axis of evil) and so on.
It was Iraq-Iran war followed by Operation Desert Shield also followed by Persian Gulf War-Desert storm. Followed by WMD Concoction-Persian Gulf War II. Followed with 2006 Israel-Hizbollah 33 day war Followed by ISIS-ISIL war in Syria. Add to it the Saudi war on the Hoothis.
It is a World War on the ideology of Shia and there believe in Twelver.
From wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelver
The term Twelver refers to its adherents’ belief in twelve divinely ordained leaders, known as the Twelve Imams, and their belief that the last Imam, Imam al-Mahdi, lives in occultation and will reappear as the promised Mahdi. According to Shia tradition, the Mahdi’s tenure will coincide with the Second Coming of Jesus, who is to assist the Mahdi against the Dajjal.
So the stage and preparations must set be for the Mahdi’s return. The US, Israel and their subjects and trying to derail such preparedness.
These wars will continue under many different names and color revolutions until the real showdown.

Posted by: LinR | Nov 20 2019 4:54 utc | 62

how much the US and the CIA are behind these protests is beyond me, but given the current suffering of the masses of the Iranian people due to the barbaric US and western sanctions, it makes sense to me that people might riot or be very unhappy with this rise in prices.
Once again a foreign set of actors taking advantage of local discontent to drive their color revolution (Ukraine), mass protests, rioting (Hong Kong), military take over (Bolivia), etc etc etc
As is the usual US thing, first apply the sanctions screws to a nation; then sit back for awhile while all the misery trickles down to the lower and middle classes, and discontent builds up; and then when the current government of said nation has to do some rather distasteful thing/s like raise the gas (or food) prices to support other social programs/or whatever, and the people resist or protest the changes…….Well the US is comfortably sitting in a pretty position where it can lecture the so called bad guy government for things which are largely beyond the control of any national elites
What nations do we take as examples of this type of nefarious, extremely wicked and divisive US activity? …..Venezuela? Cuba? Iran? Iraq? Lebanon? Haiti? the list is large, and if you extend the time frame to, say, since World War II, you have an amazingly long list of US attempts through economic or financial tools to mould the entire world to US whims – and if those those work, the bludgeon and military action do.

Posted by: michaelj72 | Nov 20 2019 5:26 utc | 64

I see your boy Trump didn’t waste any time getting Pimpeo to meddle in the riot situation in Iran.
Iran riots Pompeo inflammatory comments
Forget it, most of you Trump bootlickers lost the moral high ground to discuss this development in Iran, HONESTLY.

Posted by: Circe | Nov 20 2019 5:37 utc | 66

Circe@82
Please remember that the Democratic and Republican parties are just two competing mafia gangs. Upton Sinclair in 1904 was perhaps more polite when he called them “two wings of the same bird of prey”. As others at MoA have pointed out, they are all part of the shadow government or controlled by it.
When you call out Trump for his crimes against everything you should remember that almost all Democratic gang members support his actions. Case in point, can you name a dozen Democratic party “leaders” who are actively opposing Trump’s coup in Bolivia?
Unless you are willing to dish it out to both criminal parties you come out as a Democratic party apologist. so sad…

Posted by: krollchem | Nov 20 2019 6:04 utc | 68

re: krollchem | Nov 20 2019 6:04 utc | 84
On the other hand Kroll, Circe has been around for awhile & yes her posts tend to be dem-misguided and can really p1ss me off when she aims at one side of the amerikan empire party while leaving the other half alone, so I skip ’em when I’m not in the mood as I’m sure many others do. Even so such an easy target for bloke bullying should not be accepted by the rest of us as such a recipe method to get ‘the boys’ onside by any poster feeling at a loss because he has somehow slammed his boot in his mouth and is looking for something to wipe the mud off his nose with. And that is what the sly n backhanded criticism of her in this thread seems most like.
IMO, Since Circe has quit her over-posting, she is the least offensive of all the dem shills who have cluttered this site. It’s just a shame that others are taking so long to learn less is better.

Posted by: A User | Nov 20 2019 7:02 utc | 70

Aaaah, that is right – the reason for coming in here tonite (currently 20.10 Wednesday local time) is that despite Jonathon Freedland and the rest of the graun zionists’ claims to the contrary, there is no doubt Mr Corbyn won the ITV leaders debate hands down. ITV’s own polling puts the result at 78% Mr Corbyn 22% Boris ‘the fibber’ Johnson.
Normally I couldn’t give a flying f+ck about such a result since I have long considered the opinion of the average indoctrinated englander, as something to be held in even less regard than the average indoctrinated amerikan.
But Jezza is something different, an actual unashamed socialist who does not regard his beliefs as something that should have been set in stone in 1929 or thereabouts, but who sees that making socialism work in 2019 requires alterations that keep the notion that every human on this planet can & should make an important contribution to our continued survival for which he/she deserves a decent return, with the belief that the way this contribution be measured, then celebrated must change as the way we all behave does.
No more over-centralised top-down strictures from the ‘central committee’ or whatever, and a helluva a lot more bottom-up calls to suit local needs’ innovation.
If Mr Corbyn does suceed, and I rate the odds of that a lot lower than ITV does, the most immediate result in many other alleged democracies will be that all the faux-left, neolib careerists won’t en masse head for the hills, they will try to do their trite “pretend not to be a neolib” act while desperately trying to pretend, actually no-compromise socialism has always been what “they are about”.
Many will get found out before the penny drops, but no matter, in their own typically slimy manner, these creeps will have re-legitimized socialism for bourgeois stick-in-the-muds all over this old rock.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, not in amerika, no one could achieve that right now, but a successful term in govt will demonstrate to amerikans that a society which espouses socialism is capable of achieving improvements in the lives of most citizens without doing any of the nasty sh1t that a century of dem & rethug shills have promised is an inevitable byproduct of a socialist government..
And no, Jezza is not as socialist as I would prefer, but he is a damn sight better than anything else on offer anywhere else.
Mr Corbyn will also be pushing for more engagement and less confrontation with Iran. The BBC will no longer be chief technical resource for the “bring back pahlavi” loons.

Posted by: A User | Nov 20 2019 8:08 utc | 72

Keep in mind that the Iranian gov’t has a continuing problem with smuggling of the cheap gas to outside parties for profit. A problem that Venezuela also has.

Posted by: Bemildred | Nov 20 2019 9:40 utc | 74

@King Lear #89: Putin is not an all-powerful entity that can stop all evils in the world simultaneously and perfectly. “combined with the fact that Russia will probably not deploy any of its Military forces in Iran” Last time Russia attempted to use Iranian airfields as a temporary base for its planes on the way to Syria, it caused such an outcry among ordinary Iranians that the whole arrangement had to be officially scrapped (it may still continue in secret). Many Iranians, especially in the south, have an intense dislike of Russia. The attitudes have somewhat improved in recent years and will continue to improve, especially with the Iran–EAEU preferential trade agreement coming into force last month, but it will take decades⁠—if ever—for ordinary Iranians to start seeing Russia as such a close ally that they would accept the idea of it deploying forces in Iran.

Posted by: S | Nov 20 2019 10:10 utc | 76

FB
Chill out – you are not the policeman of the blog.
Hang on, isn’t someone else trying to be global policeman 🙂

Posted by: m | Nov 20 2019 12:25 utc | 78

@84 krollchem
Were you on an expensive trip around the moon when the Iranians signed the JCPOA???
And did you also miss the part where Trump upon coming into power garburated the Iran deal?
Trump has done more to further the Zionist agenda than all previous Presidents combined!!! How exactly does that not register with you as worse??? I live in the reality that Trump’s making disastrous irreversible changes that any future administration will have to live with! Any rail he can be run out of town on tomorrow is good enough for me but what he deserves is an orange jump suit for the con job he’s pulling and the suffering he’s inflicting.
Trump is PRESIDENT, the only damn President TODAY. He’s responsible for all the shet he’s fastracking for Zionists!
Quit dodging and spinning by throwing an eqivalency test at me! No one is more purity demanding around here than me! I, unlike some of you here fawning everday for Zionist TrumpCon EXERCISE a little thing called INTEGRITY that your Trumppunch drunken stupor apparently evaporates.
@ 87 A User
If you believe Sanders, AOC, Tlaib, Omar are imperialists then you can label me one too! But don’t write about me in that patronizing, condescending manner. I didn’t grow a brain yesterday and my words irritate you because I’m not the fckening hype-O-crite in the monotone echo chamber!
The Iranians would be back on the JCPOA in a New York minute if given the chance! So maybe Kroll and you should put your damn Trump = Dems test to the Iranians suffering Trump’s tyranny instead and then put that equivalency deflection where the sun don’t shine! You obviously don’t live in their Trump reality!

Posted by: Circe | Nov 20 2019 13:07 utc | 80

”Do you know how air defense works? Any hostile flying object [even as small as a pigeon] trying to enter sovereign airspace will be picked up by air defense radar and immediately shot down…”
Tell that to the Saudis. Raytheon must charge extra for those features.

Posted by: OHH | Nov 20 2019 13:46 utc | 82

A good sign that something is propaganda is that it gives some weirdly specific number that no one has a reliable way of knowing (i.e. “106 people killed” instead of just “many people killed”). Why is this? My guess is that it subliminally instills a sense of authority in the person making the (bogus) claim.

Posted by: Timothy Hagios | Nov 20 2019 14:21 utc | 84

The MEK “cult” was always a favorite of the CIA, John Bolton and John McCain and their people, although they don’t share MEK’s political views beyond resistance to the Iranian government. The only good thing is that the people of Iran are very suspicious of MEK or hate them.

Posted by: michael | Nov 20 2019 15:18 utc | 86

For the next minute, hour, day, week, month, year, decade, century (if we humans have one) it will remain true: for as long as a fraction few humans are allowed overpayoverpower, their ability to conceal their true identities and deeds will always exceed your ability to detect and expose same.
We lead ourselves into hope fatigue with incessant regurgitation of opinions about the everyday actions of wealthpower giants who have no scruples.
Look around at what we chimpy humans have made with our reptile-remnant brains in a nuclear situation: starvation for 50 million per anum while less than half of 1 percent possess trillions – for no REASON. Wars, corruption of governments, spooks and spies and weapons peddlers running empires, declining health for humans and planet, crises, robbery, scams, fraud, decaying infrastructure, decline of meaningful education, glorification of the psychopathy that is militarism, a leisure class amidst overwork and underpay for billions, privatization of profits and spread the costs to the working families, violence instigated by those who now have so much money they can and do make human history be what they say it will be; everescalating madness everywhere you look. Every second the overpaidoverpowered commit heinous crimes right round the globe and yet we search in vain for comment from our greatest thinkers on the root cause of our nightmare.
Bears of very little brain, indeed. Technical giants, ethical nonstarters. How obvious is it that nothing can be expected to work when extreme robbery is chosen as the organization model for trying to run societies? The sum total of human intelligence is within cooee of proving itself to be as useful to us as stupidity would be in its place.
No one wants to dance with the wallflower called payjustice, even though she waits in the corner to give us a golden age of peace, safety, happiness, sustainability. Human maturity is stuck at a level that prefers a tiny fraction be supergigarich at the expense of everyone’s everything. Hopeless.
A just cap on fortunes fixes all our ginormous globalocal problems.

Posted by: Phryne’s frock | Nov 20 2019 15:52 utc | 88

Wrapping up: the USA is supporting the protesters in Iran because they are fighting against the gasoline tax hike/creation… which was an IMF recommendation!
Since we already know the IMF is essentially a US Treasury front organization, that means the USA is directly blaming itself for the Iranians’ ongoing protests. Yes people, we’ve reached madness levels of propaganda warfare that were unthinkable a few years ago.
But what impresses me most in this episode is how the Iranian government fell for it. They are the most anti-American country in the world right now, and even then they obeyed the USA to the precipice when it came to economic policies.
Sincerely, I don’t think the level of soft power the USA has reached will ever be reached again by any other future superpower. It’s jaw-dropping to witness the level of legitimacy the Americans enjoy — even after decades of blatant lies, death, destruction and hypocrisy.
This recent Iranian capitulation on the ideological front (because they bowed down to neoliberalism on this one, again) shows the USA still has that Merovingian hair.

Posted by: vk | Nov 20 2019 18:24 utc | 90

A User @ 73
Setting aside UK domestic politics the question is to what extent Corbyn, if elected, could shift UK foreign policy to non-interventionism.
The labour supporters I speak to – they follow Westminster politics more closely than can I – reckon that a Corbyn Government wouldn’t be able to move the needle much on that one.
Apparently Corbyn is going hell for leather replacing the Blairites in his party. There also doesn’t seem to be much doubt that Corbyn himself is non-interventionist by conviction. That, incidentally, is why he might get my vote even though I think Corbyn’s approach to reducing the income gap is mostly pretend politics. Nevertheless, in spite of his personal convictions, if Corbyn were to form a government he would still be reliant on MP’s who don’t share those convictions. He might also be reliant on other parties that are not as non-interventionist as him.
I also ask my labour friends why Corbyn doesn’t speak up more on the issue of UK interventionist policy. They say 1) there are no votes in it and 2) if he did speak up he’d get crucified in the media.
I then ask why Farage can get away with pushing non-interventionism when Corbyn can’t. When they pick themselves up from the floor (for some reason my labour friends don’t seem to take to Farage) they answer that no one is going to paint Farage as being a communist sympathiser whereas if Corbyn speaks up it’ll be just another nail in the coffin of “Corbyn the Red Peril” – you will understand that this relatively inoffensive Islington prog is castigated in all right thinking circles here as being a threat to our way of life more potent than Beria and Trotsky combined. Odd, but that’s how it is.
I don’t buy those excuses entirely but I do reckon that if Corbyn were to find himself in power he’d end up in a similar position to Trump’s – wanting to get us out of these appalling foreign interventions but near powerless to do so in the face of the neocon establishment.
Here’s Farage, from five years back, getting roughed up by the neocon establishment in the person of the then LibDem deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. Bearing in mind that that neocon establishment has the support of almost all the UK political parties that amount to anything, plus the vehement support of almost all continental European governments, I suspect that it’ll take more than an inoffensive Islington Prog to shift UK foreign policy in a non-interventionist direction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBqY7U6m5JE

Posted by: English Outsider | Nov 20 2019 19:15 utc | 92

comment #57

I beg to differ. You and Brian have goofed.
Since Amnesty International has stated that it’s relying on bullshit from ‘eyewitnesses and activists outside Iran’ one may safely assume that all of its sources are outside Iran.
There was nothing preventing Amnesty Mendacity International from tweeting “Verified video footage, eyewitness testimony & information gathered from activists inside and outside Iran.”
But they apparently decided not to stretch the truth THAT far…

it was a tweet … not a WaPo or NYT article. In chatroom and internet language it is common to use abbreviations. In my opinion, this sentence does not need a ‘,’ to distinguish between the sources.
However, I share your view on Amnesty International, which is instrumentalised or weaponised and abused as a tool. I should have pointed that out since I don’t write much in the comment section here, and most people don’t know my position and views.
What Brian and I are trying to point out is the fact that we as commentators and b as journalist and writer should not commit the same mistake like the Western media. It diminishes our credibility. Let’s remember how brilliantly MoA is positioned in the Media Navigator.
https://swprs.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/media-navigator.png
We should at least try to keep it that way, shall we?

Posted by: Phil | Nov 20 2019 20:04 utc | 94

@ bevin 19 (at least until the deck gets shuffled again)
I went looking for the comment you referred to @Zedd 11, because I just thought it dumbfounding when I read it yesterday. Apparently b has expunged it, so thanks for quoting it and refuting it so well. No, it doesn’t square with anything, does it? And if it were true that Rouhani was an Israeli mole, why would Israel be the first to try to exploit that fact? Too clever by half?
I often read (but don’t participate in) the forums on Truthdig. The Israeli messengers are all over editorials there about this, reinforcing the accusations that Iran and it’s leaders are the foulest demons from the very depths of hell, unequaled in their malevolence in all of history. They continue to do it I suppose because there are still so many that continue to bite, chew, and swallow it. Some poster there (TD) feigning obsequiousness helpfulness said, to the effect – “please, Iran, don’t you think it’s time to sit down and talk with the US?” And do what – get handed the terms of their surrender, their enslavement?
I have a plea myself: Hey Europe! – feel around in there and see if you can locate a backbone! Same goes for you China. I know it’s risky and you are risk averse, but your time has come. I don’t think it is a stretch to point out the symbiotic economic dependence of US/China: If one goes down, both go down, and that reality should work as well as any nuclear restraint treaty.
But, I’m ranting. I’ve tried mightily in these last several decades to learn and understand as much as I could about Iran, the ME in general, of Islam and the tribal diversity of that region. I’m no expert, but better informed than many who don’t have the time or inclination to pursue that information. And I’m still in the lagging pack of “also rans” on a site such as this. However, let me posit this: The Islamic Republic of Iran learned, rather harshly, the contours of world power during the Iran/Iraq War, and little has changed since then. Few friends would come to their aid, as today. They are understandably suspicious and cautious. Overtures from China or any other competent power, for them, are fraught with both existential and pragmatic dangers. Persia/Iran has a very long history with Russia/USSR/Russia (Glazunov’s tone poem, Stenka Rozin memorializes some of that (better known for the Song of the Volga Boatmen, what the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle guard were chanting.))
OK, because you didn’t ask: It is an obscure piece, seldom performed, and the story goes like this, as best I remember from the liner notes of the piece of vinyl I have. A beautiful Persian Princess was aboard a royal barge on a journey up the Volga River to be a gift and a bride for a Russian Czar. The Volga Boatmen, river pirates led by Stenka Rozin, intercepted and overpowered the Persian entourage, and Stenka Rozin began to woo the beautiful princess. The Czar learned of this treachery and sent his forces to rescue the princess. A large battle between the Czar’s forces and the Volga Boatmen ensued and both Stenka Rozin and the princess were killed – drowned in the Volga River. Like much Russian musical composition it evokes tragedy, and is laced with historical implications. That one was simple; try following Pushkin’s Russlan and Ludmilla and Mikkel Glinka’s balletic adaptation of same.
So, sue me. Just trying to be the guy in the bar when a fight is about to break out that says “Hey, have you heard the one about the leprechaun and the elf…”

Posted by: vinnieoh | Nov 20 2019 21:55 utc | 96

The Iranian regime has survived forty years. They may be in trouble, but I doubt it. Too much desire from those who want to believe it.

Posted by: Laguerre | Nov 20 2019 22:15 utc | 98

@ Ghost Ship | Nov 20 2019 6:28 utc | 69
OK, let’s settle this once and for all. The rules of English grammar and punctuation call for replacing the comma after the last element in a series with the word “and.”
The Associated Press Stylebook, which was my usage bible during my years as a newspaper reporter and editor, says this:
“Use commas to separate elements in a series, but do not put a comma before the conjunction in a simple series: The flag is red, white and blue. He would nominate Tom, Dick or Harry.
The sentence as b wrote it is therefor correct, and the elements “eyewitness testimony” and “information gathered from activists outside Iran” stand alone and are intended to refer to separate sources.

Posted by: AntiSpin | Nov 21 2019 2:13 utc | 100