Iranian plot to assassinate Barak foiled in Singapore

I've heard of Hezbollah but not Hezbollah-Iranian.

 

jesus.

a whole bit of hysteria to bring war again.

I personally do not give a s*** if Barak is being threatened. Part of the game. You murder five of their scientists, don't expect them to turn the other cheek.

still, this reeks of false flag. why the hell would Iran suddenly want to be inflaming world opinion?

It'll be interesting to see what is declared an "official act of war"---Mossad-supported murders of Iranian nuclear scientists, or an alleged threat against an Israeli leader. Bank on the second.

 

Singapore Police Deny Reports of Plot to Kill Barak in Singapore

Israeli embassy dismisses plot to kill Barak

 

Does it make me an anti-semite if I don't believe it?

 

It seems very unlikely that anyone in high position in the guidance council would conspire with Hezbollah to assassinate a world leader pre-emptive to an Israeli attack. Such a plot, should it succeed serves no apparent purpose except to galvanize the U.S. and other world powers to attack or would give world support to an Israeli pre-emptive attack. It would certainly not stop Israel from attacking. However, it does make sense for Iran to plan for such an attempt if and when Israel actually does physically attack Iran if Iran believes it will not be permitted or able to strike back through conventional means.

I'm also hesitant to believe intelligence coming from Mossad since they have Israel's own best interests in mind, not ours, and would not hesitate to run a false flag operation if they thought it benefited Israel. I wait for confirmation from US intelligence, because, even despite it's failings that lead us to war with Iraq, they are more likely to at least think they have our best interests in mind. Israeli sources have been quick to link the Iranian State to each and every attack or plot even absent evidence. e.g. India or Thailand attack.

Even if Iran was plotting, I don't think it is necessarily evidence that necessitates or justifies an attack. However, if they were plotting a pre-emptive assassination this would be less clear.

David Ignatius whose views pretty closely map the Washington establishment speaking over at NPR had a good take on all this. Israel blames Iran for Shadow War on Israelis. He views it as a tit-for-tat low intensity conflict between the two countries. Israel kills Iranian scientists, Iran tries feebly to kill some Israelis. Eventually quite possibly leading to escalation. Still, there is a huge difference between killing each others civilians and killing each others heads of state. We need to continue to caution restraint on both sides and we need to stay the course - deterrence and containment.

 

Actually disinformation like this is no laughing matter. You get this disinfo spread around by neo-cons and then folks like Basso, who may actually believe it, further spread it. Later nobody remembers how ludicrous it was or there was never any proof at all-- or even occasionally it was proven conclusively to have been a total concoction. All the average low info person is left with is what fiends the Iranians are and we must attack them asap.

The famous Kuwaiti incubator baby hoax. A public relations firm paid by the Kuwaitis arranged for the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US, who had not been out of the DC area for a long time to testify before Congress as an eye witness to the horror she saw in a Kuwaiti hospital.

The CS Monitor:
*********
More than 10 years later, I can still recall my brother Sean's face. It was bright red. Furious. Not one given to fits of temper, Sean was in an uproar. He was a father, and he had just heard that Iraqi soldiers had taken scores of babies out of incubators in Kuwait City and left them to die. The Iraqis had shipped the incubators back to Baghdad. A pacifist by nature, my brother was not in a peaceful mood that day. "We've got to go and get Saddam Hussein. Now," he said passionately.

I completely understood his feelings. Although I had no family of my own then, who could countenance such brutality? The news of the slaughter had come at a key moment in the deliberations about whether the US would invade Iraq. Those who watched the non-stop debates on TV saw that many of those who had previously wavered on the issue had been turned into warriors by this shocking incident.

Too bad it never happened. The babies in the incubator story is a classic example of how easy it is for the public and legislators to be mislead during moments of high tension. It's also a vivid example of how the media can be manipulated if we do not keep our guards up.

The invented story eventually broke apart and was exposed. (I first saw it reported in December of 1992 on CBC-TV's Fifth Estate – Canada's "60 Minutes" – in a program called "Selling the War." The show later won an international Emmy.) But it's been 10 years since it happened, and we again find ourselves facing dramatic decisions about war. It is instructive to look back at what happened, in order that we do not find ourselves deceived again, by either side in the issue

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html

 

Tremendous post. Because the photos and the people and the accusations are made to look ugly/bad by the media, it leaves a certain impression in a viewer's head like "ok, so they didn't do it, but they seem to be routinely suspected of doing it, so I should be careful about these guys."

Thanks a a tip from the board I've been reading and listening to some Aldous Huxley stuff. The spoke about (above) in an interview, referring to it as a kind of protracted hypnosis. Also gets into how advertising is immoral by nature because it gets you to bypass reason. If advertising for example were banned , people would make those decisions using things like market assessments, customer assessments, nutritional facts, etc. Things that will get you closer to finding the true value. But then there is the advertising, which attempts to bypass reason and get you to focus only on the positive side of the advertised product.