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Today's Top News
Iran Open to New Nuclear Talks: Ahmadinejad
NEW YORK - - Iran and the United States both said they were open to a new round of nuclear talks, but their fierce enmity was again revealed by a war of words over the September 11 attacks.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, confers with an aide during a press conference in New York, Friday Sept. 24, 2010. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) US President Barack Obama and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were both in the spotlight, though they never met, at the UN General Assembly meetings, on a day of dueling rhetoric and diplomatic jockeying for position.
Ahmadinejad said an Iranian official may meet European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton next month in a bid to open new international talks on a program which the West says is a quest for nuclear weapons.
He said some of the six powers negotiating on the nuclear dispute -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- had had contacts with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the UN this week.
Ahmadinejad inisted it was up to Ashton to initiate moves for what he said was a meeting in October scheduled under a longstanding plan.
"If Ms Ashton contacts the Iranian representative she can set a time for talks," the Iranian leader told a press conference.
Denis McDonough, chief of staff of Obama's National Security, noted that Ashton reached out to Iran earlier this year, but never heard back.
"When she hears back, we will know whether they are serious or not," he said.
A day after telling Iran that the door for diplomacy was still open, Obama told the BBC Persian service that a genuine dialogue could see tough new sanctions on Iran removed, along with the fear of armed confrontation.
"Our strong preference is to resolve these issues diplomatically. I think that's in Iran's interest. I think that is in the interest of the international community," Obama said.
"I think it remains possible, but it is going to require a change in mindset inside the Iranian government."
Obama targeted Ahmadinejad over his tirade to the UN Security Council on Thursday, in which he suggested the US government staged the September 11 attacks in 2001.
"It was offensive, it was hateful," Obama said, slamming Ahmadinejad's remarks, and bemoaning the fact the outburst occurred in Manhattan, so close to the Ground Zero footprint of the felled World Trade Center twin towers.
About 3,000 people died in the attacks by Al-Qaeda operatives who hijacked passenger jets and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania.
Ahmadinejad said in his speech that there was a theory that "some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack."
"The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view," he declared to the astonished chamber prompting the US and other Western delegations to leave the assembly hall.
Ahmadinejad showed no desire to quell the controversy on Friday, calling for a UN probe into the "true reason" for the strikes, which he said led to US military actions that killed thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In another development, freed US hiker Sarah Shourd said she met Ahmadinejad in New York to plead for the release of her fiance and a friend still jailed in Iran.
Shourd, 32, was released last week after being detained in July 2009 in Iran, but had to leave behind her fiance Shane Bauer and friend Josh Fattal.
The hikers say they strayed by accident into Iran in July 2009 while hiking in the mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan. But Iranian authorities have alleged that they were spying.
Despite painstaking diplomacy, Iran has so far refused to accept an EU and US package of engagement and incentives to halt what the West says is a drive for nuclear weapons -- a charge Tehran denies.
US officials said here that they believe that the tough new range of sanctions imposed on Iran four months ago is beginning to bite, and has exacted a deeper toll on the economy than the government expected.
However, Obama admitted in his BBC interview that there were "no guarantees" the sanctions would force Iran to change its behavior, though expressed hopes they would cause deep reflection among Iranian leaders.
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31 Comments so far
Show AllAh yes, if our sanctions can cause a half million Iranian children to starve to death and countless others to die from lack of medicines as we did in Iraq, I'm sure some bitch, like Hillary, from the "new" administration will say, "The cost was worth it."
The world had better stop appeasing us and apply some sanctions here, before we try conquering the world in earnest.
It may already be too late.
Under the terms of the NPT, Iran, as a signator, has a legal right to devlop nuclear energy.
Non-signators, India, Pakistan and Israel have developed nuclear weapons arsenals with the blessings of Emperor Obama and the Empire.
I am no expert, but something appears a bit rotten here.
The rotten playing hard ball with the rotten. A crazed religious fanatic in Iran playing nationalism with a crazed religious fanatic nationalists in Israel, who turns to the crazed religious fanatic nationalists in the USA for military support.
We live on a planet. There are no nations, no borders, no states.
Resources are finite. Population increases at three people per second.
Until people go there with their arguments, the bombing of Iran is inevitable. And this time they will probably use nukes.
"A crazed religious fanatic in Iran"
Ahmadinejad is not a religious fanatic. That speech he gave in New York a year or so ago was badly mistranslated by our "media." His statement was to the effect that Israel eventually will vanish into the mists of time. He threatened no attack. That is like Khrushchev banging his shoe on the podium and saying "We will bury you!" He was referring to trade, holding that the Soviets would bankrupt the West through superior trade.
Our mass media and the propaganda ministry immediately transformed that into a threat of nuclear war and started the arms race in earnest.
Several trillion dollars later, I am sure the Military-Congressional-Industrial-Complex is quite happy with the result of that manufactured misunderstanding.
BINGO!
See the Corbett Report (mp3) latest episode "Media Kills".
http://www.corbettreport.com/
US reaction so far:
"OMG they are threatening to talk again, maybe we better sanction them until they shut up".
USA reaction on the spread of 9/11 theories all over the planet for 8 years now:
"OMG!! who in the world would think such a thing could be an inside job?"
It's Panic over 9/11...the ghost of Osama wins again!
but this is a great time to support Iran's call for an official international investigation of the causes of 9/11.
Yeah, all good points.
I could believe most of the story after watching the planes crash into the twin towers but what caused building 7 to collapse straight down in what appeared to be a controlled demolition? No one in Governemnt has come up with any logical reason for that collapse. And they wonder why we are suspicious??
there is a lot about building 7 you won't see on other sites and DVD's here
http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
It doesn't matter if they used jello on the footings when WTC7 was built. The issue is that we never had an investigation. Several commissioners of the 'investigation' committee admited as much.We are NOT going solve 9/11 here or on some web site.
WE NEED A REAL INVESTIGATION, PERIOD.
Well said. The families of those that died on 9/11 have been asking for an investigation for many years. That is NOT going to go away. If the government doesn't chase down the dirty, profit loving, war hogs that did this and put them in prison, the whole USA could go down. These elite prevaricators just do not understand how angry the common man is at the government for their calloused behavior crowned with the 2008 unconstitutional Wall Street 700 billion dollar bailout AFTER the congress had voted it down (the senate pushed it back and broke the law and our democracy). I think that was the last straw and like a spouse who learns they have been cheated, the American public has started en masse to look into the past ten years and scrutinize more closely what happened and how our treasonous government reacted to things. The rational is that if it's all about profits and the people be damned, the hugh 9/11 con for war and profit becomes the most logical possibility. Hence new demands for an investigation. Hence the chief MIC mouthpiece says huffy things like "hateful and inexcusable". We aren't buying it. We don't know what happened and the government whitewashed it in 2003 so we want an investigation NOW.
"Obama targeted Ahmadinejad over his tirade to the UN Security Council on Thursday, in which he suggested the US government staged the September 11 attacks in 2001.
"'It was offensive, it was hateful,' Obama said, slamming Ahmadinejad's remarks, and bemoaning the fact the outburst occurred in Manhattan, so close to the Ground Zero footprint of the felled World Trade Center twin towers."
THE TRUTH can be hateful, Mr. Obomber, especially when you have to bend over constantly to go along with the lies that were and are still perpetrated by members and close a$$ociate$ of the prior administration from the U.S. and other nations, some of whom are now part of or continue to influence your administration.
My experience and observations have been that those who deny the Truth of 9/11 never have examined or want to examine the considerable evidence gathered and the sound conclusions arrived at by a diverse group of professionals and intelligent citizenry who prefer Truth to lies regarding 9/11. The Deniers, it seems, either choose to stay with the Josef Goebbel's-style BIG LIE that keeps being told over and over again by those fully protected in the telling of that BIG LIE ... or ... it is in their own intere$t$ and power needs to keep perpetrating the BIG LIE.
How absolutely lame and riddled with holes is the U.S. government's official "9/11 Commission Report - [the] Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States." [Regarding the no-mention of the free-fall of Building 7, without any kind of "hit," Commissioner & former New Jersey governor William H. Keane stated, when asked about the omission, "Oh, we didn't think it was relevant." Ohhhhhh?]
Further what has been perpetrated on our U.S. citizenry from this contrived 9/11 event is a way of life of fear with an accompanying everyday vocabulary of imminent terror and terrorists under every rock, shored up by the largest, out-of-control, mega-staffed bureauocracy called HOMELAND SECURITY eating up our true people-needs' budget, with the whale-size portion of more of our budget swallowed up by the Pentagon for further attacks, invasions and occupations. An enormous number of people are making a lot of money from securing "homeland security."
From that meticulously planned 9/11 Event, whose previous similar model was designed and presented to John F. Kennedy by the C.I.A. and particular members of our military to justify attacking Cuba and getting rid of Fidel Castro, to which JFK thankfully and wisely said, NO WAY, the foul, obscene perpetration on citizenry in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan and perhaps in Iran soon, of actual death, destruction, displacement, maimings, constant terror of and from imprisonment, torture, unmanned drone and manned bombings has continued for nine years. It doesn't seem as if these obscenities are going to stop anytime soon.
The U.S. with avid helpers from Zionist Israel and poodle-style British leadership are guilty of vile, illegal violence against others to gain control of their oil, natural gas, and strategic locations in the Mid-East. Our current title of EVIL EMPIRE seems a perfect description to those of us who consistently do our "homework."
And shame on you citizens who don't, and allow the propaganda dished out by the news media for more than nine years be internalized as your truth, which you seem to swallow whole along with your Fritos and Doritos and beer and pop in front of your TV's, with your brain power conveniently disengaged.
A full-fledged Depression is a great way to control a population and keep it pre-occupied with survival rather than a little thing called The Truth of 9/11 and perpetual, illegal attacks and "warfare" against the latest in Terrorism and Terrorists.
No accident. No accident at all.
Saddam Hussein was open to a stint on a Barbara Walters' special, and acquitted himself quite reasonably, which is not to say he was a nice guy. Beware, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, if Diane Sawyer is ready to interview you on "60 Minutes." From the actual transcripts of your speeches, you seem to be a considerable cut above Saddam Hussein. However, it wouldn't matter if you were a saint. When the richest and most powerful of the Corporatocracy, and the Pentagon and the Zionists want what they want, both sides of the aisle of the chambers of Senators and Representatives, seem to want to give away the whole store and comply with their demands. Unfortunately so does our President regardless of what he says. His track record indicates that.
Ignorance, stupidity, lack of vision, power and money addictions, a few characteristics that will completely cripple a Congress and a nation. The Constitution? ... Oh, those old pieces of paper ... Irrelevant, in this fearsome and fearful day and age.
The BIG LIE of 9/11 justifies everything. Thank you, Josef Goebbels and the "Protocols of Zion," which you so assiduously drew from and implemented.
Surprise us, President Barack Obomber. Surprise us, by not attacking Iran despite Zionist Israel's desire to do so and the Corporatocracie$ desire to do so. Surprise us with real diplomacy and good intentions brought to fruition.
That would be so refreshing, and give substance to "the hopey-changey thing," as Sarah Palin so brilliantly and wittily put it. [No. I do not support Sarah Palin as a candidate for anything, especially since the idea of attacking Iran is something that makes her blood run hotter.]
Surprise us.
/cm
I couldn't be more pleased to learn that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the so-called "Truther" camp, especially because-- well, as Bio.com informs us:
"He went to primary and high school in Tehran, and excelled in his studies. He received high marks on the national university entrance exams, finishing 130th out of 400,000 students. He entered Iran University of Science and Technology in 1975 and received his undergraduate degree in civil engineering in 1979."*
Of course, the Van Jones debacle firmly established that Team Obama is acutely Trutherphobic through and through. No "Truthers" Need Apply for a position with Team Obama! Yet, for all his posturing High Dudgeon, Obama lacks the superior qualifications and infallible authority of the civil engineer whom he reviles and scorns.
Doubtless the Trutherphobes are bustin' their buttons with righteous pride and satisfaction at the news of Obama carrying their standard into battle. They can have him.
True, all RIGHT-thinking people dismiss Ahmadinejad as a Kook. But personally, I think the guy is on to something.
* http://www.biography.com/articles/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-38656
That man knows his chemistry. I'm sure he is more decent than most of our politicians.
Our Israeli junk yard dog is, however, while similarly highly educated, a total failure at common decency.
Bibi went to MIT and is very brainy himself. We know where HE was on that fateful day and what he said about it being 'good for Israel'. It's amazing how nobody calls him a dangerous, fanatical nuclear weapon obsessed mad man when that is precisely what he is. And this Israelis giving each other high fives and dancing on the white van while filming the "EVENT" (their words, not mine) is definitely 'change the subject time' for our MSM.
Sometimes I think our leaders are bored with all their power. It's like they see us as this gigantic lab rat that just keeps takin' a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. They want to see just how far they can go with the outrageous and absurdly belligerant statements. They deliberately say something sometimes less than a month after saying something which is a direct contradiction of what they previously said as if they are consciously attempting mass cognitive dissonance. My hope is that they drive themselves crazy first (I know - fat chance). I think people like Bush, Bibi, Bernake, Geithner, Obama, Rumsfield, Cheney, Summers, Emanuel, Rove, Clinton (both of them), et al need a nice padded cell for the criminally insane where they can entertain all their warped fantasies without killing us in the process.
Yep, for the secrets of 9/11 ya gotta follow the money...and who controlled the investigation.... the name Bush keeps popin up...
I wonder if there is a pattern here....
Well said. The big boys are consistent in their criminality.
Oilbomber, servant of Empire, is the one who is offensive, and hateful of human lives in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
I am pleased that Ahmadinejad socked it to those creeps.
What I regret is that he did not throw the paper by Niels Harrit et alii on the presence of nanothermite in the dust of the World Trade Center, at the UN Assembly. That might have blown apart the conspiracy of silence enforced by the members of the Axis of the West and their mouthpiece, the various media.
Earthlings in 2120 will wonder how and why the early 21st century humans tolerated such ignorance, intolerance, and brutality,
allowing U.S. criminals to stage the 9/11/01 terrorism and subsequent genocidal wars throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and South America;
allowing financial pirates to steal trillion$$ from ordinary people to fatten their own wallets;
allowing two U.S. criminal political parties to pocket their share of this loot while billions suffered worldwide;
and, worst of all, allowing greedy fossil fuel and nuclear corporate criminals, with massive help from their well-bribed toadies in the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court, to continue polluting and aggravating global warming to the detriment and death of billions of people and millions of species.
"However, Obama admitted in his BBC interview that there were "no guarantees" the sanctions would force Iran to change its behavior, though expressed hopes they would cause deep reflection among Iranian leaders."
Eh? What bad behavior would the article be referring to? Iran has complied with the NPT treaty. It has not made any attempt to create nuclear weapons. Iran has never invaded nor threatened to invade any country. Contrast this "bad behaviour" with the behaviour of Israel and with the USA. Oh, and being the BBC, I bet the interviewers just played along, is if it was IRAN that was exhibiting bad behavior. No one is going to permit the truth to be pointed out in our corporate media. And they are definitely not going to call Obama a lying bastard either.
This propaganda in this article makes me angry. It reminds me very much of the propaganda leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Stuff like "All Saddam has to do is give up his WMD."!
The antics of the US and their dependents was as usual a total overreaction.
Notice how the US Authorities and the Right-Wing Noise Machine really freak out whenever anyone questions the officially sanctioned conspiracy theory. They know that there are so many holes in their explanation that complete denial and ridicule (and in this case a mass walk-out) are their only possible responses.
Do you ever wonder why there was never any real investigation of the worst terrorist attack on American soil in US history? Do you ever wonder why the authorities let the physical evidence be systematically destroyed and now it can never be examined independently? It IS really hard to explain why the laws of physics (and rational thinking) had to be repealed for just that single day.
Our government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to perform the pathetic superficial investigation that they eventually did do.
September 11, 2001
Never Forget
Never Investigate
Boy, Iran is an innocent victim, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is just misunderstood as he ordered people shot down in the streets.
Of course our government ordered those guys to commit suicide, pretend to be islamic terroist's and fly planes into the Twin Towers already wired with explosives and kill 3 thousand people so they could attack Iran and Afghanistan. And not one of the thousands of people that would have been involved in this "plot" have broken their silence.
Where is Fantasy Island when we need it?
There's glaring holes in what you have stated, mightymite, unless you are being sarcastic. Try about 20 people, not thousands involved in cooking up this obscene act of 9-11 treason.
Me thinks you need do some serious reading and serious evaluation of evidence and critical thinking, including what actually happened in Iran and who shot whom down.
/cm
Also rent "Man on Wire" sometime to see how easy it was for people, some of whom did not even speak English, to break into the WTC and secretly cart in hundreds of pounds of supplies, and then secretly install a heavy wire between the top of the two towers.
It is a fascinating documentary.
But maybe MightyMite is right and it is impossible that it ever happened...
In Bugtussle, Texas along with your friends.
Semper Fi!
Like the huge holes blown out of the Twin Towers by hijacked airliners, 9/11 will always be huge holes in our national life. The crime scene is changed and the mysteries grow and theories spread and IRAN IS ASKING "WHY SHOULD THIS BE THE REASON FOR ENDLESS WAR.?!?!"
He did not say it was an "inside job", he said because most people in the world think so, we need an international investigation as to the truth of why we are in this long war.
This guy makes sense.
everyone knows the dirty 9/11 secret
why do people keep playing dumb ~
Perhaps there is a chilling effect from heavily armed swat teams kicking in doors and arresting those who were planning a peaceful demonstration outside the political conventions. Could the fact that FBI thugs and HS personnel are now invading the homes of anti-war activists, rifling their homes and possessions, taking their papers and computers in the name of combating domestic terrorism.
Perhaps the no-bid KBR concentration camps built during the Bushwhacking years and certainly not decommissioned in the Obamanation might be inhibiting a quite a few.
The fact that we are becoming, or have become, an overtly fascist state might have a chilling effect on those who are young, still have homes, young families and jobs.
Many years ago a good friend fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade against Franco's fascists. He was well educated, an excellent writer, but was unemployable. Why?
The Attorney General's office had a classification for him. He was a "premature anti-fascist"! That means he was anti-fascist before our government was anti-fascist. For that reason, he was blackballed from meaningful employment as a security risk.
This crap goes a lot further back than most people think.
Obama targeted Ahmadinejad over his tirade to the UN Security Council on Thursday, in which he suggested the US government staged the September 11 attacks in 2001.
"It was offensive, it was hateful," Obama said....
I see. I guess it is also 'offensive and hateful' for the families of loved ones who died that day to ask for exactly and precisely the same thing that the Iranian leader asked for; A REAL INVESTIGATION.
President Obama, there is no rug big enough to bury this monstrocity under.
And by the way, folks, the Iranian leader 'suggested' nothing of the kind. This is blatant propaganda. The video is on the web. Watch the whole speech. Then look at this news item again. It's a clever distortion.
Finally, I find it telling that CD didn't air this stuff at the same time Huffington Post, of all places, did two days ago. What's the deal here? Are you selfcensoring or is this too 'hotbutton' for our government and they have read you the riot act?
I know, you aren't at liberty to say.
I say you have lost your liberty.