Peace and Justice Post

Dr Isamil Salami, Veterns Today, Nov 14, 2011

Following the recent IAEA report released on Iran’s nuclear program which many observers found professionally faulty, Washington once again ratcheted  up the ‘bomb, bomb Iran’ rhetoric.

The rhetoric escalated even more in the US presidential debate on Saturday when some of the Republicans made it loud and clear that a war with Iran would be the ultimate solution to Iran’s nuclear program.

“Totally. Absolutely without any doubt the Iranians if they develop a nuclear weapon … the whole region is going to want a nuclear weapon. Then you march down the road of Armageddon. If you open Pandora’s box, if you attack Iran, if they get a nuclear weapon you empty Pandora’s box, that’s the world we live in. So I support the option of a military option as a last resort,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday.

Continues >>

Despite reams of nonsense published by the likes of Eli Lake and Avi Issacharoff in the Washington Times and Haaretz respectively, regurgitating IDF talking points that the Eilat terror attacks were planned and orchestrated by the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza–Idan Landau, Alex Fishman and I knew otherwise.  We said the attacks were carried out by Egyptian militants based in Sinai.  We said that killing 30 Gazans merely because the Israeli government couldn’t take revenge on Egypt and needed to take revenge on someone, was criminal.  Issacharoff even sneered at my talking of this as a potential war crime.  Well, who’s sneering now?

Continues >>

By Stephen Lendman, rense.com, Nov 11, 2011

News is carefully filtered, dissent marginalized, and supporting imperial belligerence substitutes for full and accurate disclosure.

As a result, patriotism means going along with rogue policies. Never mind rule of law principles and democratic values. Free and open societies are risked. So is humanity if belligerents overstep.

The IAEA Iranian nuclear program report stirred a hornet’s nest of inflammatory commentary, no matter the agency’s fabricated contents. Previous US intelligence assessments refuted them, including most recently in March 2011.

Nonetheless, IAEA allegations proved red meat for America’s media. Commentaries from three major broadsheets are typical.

Continues >>

Arab League Should Suspend Syria

(New York) – The systematic nature of abuses against civilians in Homs by Syrian government forces, including torture and unlawful killings, indicate that crimes against humanity have been committed, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Human Rights Watch urged the Arab League, meeting in Cairo on November 12, 2011, to suspend Syria’s membership in the League and to ask the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo and sanctions against individuals responsible for the violations, and refer Syria to the International Criminal Court.

Continues >>

By Richard Falk,ZNet, November 12, 2011

 Source: Richardfalk.com

How many times have we heard in recent weeks either outright threats to attack Iran mainly emanating from Israel or the more muted posture adopted by the United States that leaves ‘all options’ on the table including ‘the military option’? What has Iran done to justify this frantic war-mongering in a strategic region that is sorting out the contradictory effects of the long Arab Spring and is the contested site of energy geopolitics that has replaced territory and minerals as the core issue of world politics? 

As a matter of historical context, it is worth observing that the Western military interventions of recent years, Iraq and Libya, were both in oil-producing countries, devastating the country to achieve regime change, which remains the central tenet of the neocon/Netanyahu vision for a reconfiguration of power in the Middle East. . .

Continues >>

Veterans Today, November 13, 2011

The American ‘Foreign Policy’ Household Book

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad” Aldous Huxley

The Council for The National Interest

The Israel Lobby is one of the most powerful and pervasive special interest groups in the United States. It began its activities many decades ago and played a major role in the creation of Israel.

It consists of a multitude of institutions, many of them extremely well-funded, that work to influence Congress, the Presidency, academia, the media, religious institutions, and the American public on behalf of Israel. It also includes influential individuals.

Continues >>

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“The president is happiest when John Boehner and the Republicans come to the negotiating table but that is when the rest of us are most at risk.” In his quest for a Grand Bargain with the GOP, Obama has declared war against every progressive principle and betrayed every core constituency of the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, “thanks to his success in marketing himself as an agent of change, and the complete capitulation of black voters and other progressives, Obama is free to do as he pleases in America and around the world.”

Freedom Rider: Obama Perfects Right Wing Policy

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“Nothing sticks to him, no matter how awful his actions.”

Conservative pundit William Kristol had this to say about Barack Obama, a man he lauded as a “born again neo-con.” “What’s the joke – they told me if I voted for McCain, we’d be going to war in a third Muslim country? I voted for McCain and we’re doing it.”

It was said that Ronald Reagan had teflon, that is to say, nothing stuck to him. If Reagan had teflon, then Barack Obama has patented a brand new, space aged non-stick material, because nothing sticks to him, no matter how awful his actions. Thanks to his success in marketing himself as an agent of change, and the complete capitulation of black voters and other progressives, Obama is free to do as he pleases in America and around the world.

Continues >>

by James Petras, Information Clearing House, November 9, 2011

After nearly 3 years in deep pursuit of the colonial wars initiated by ex-President Bush, the Obama regime has finally recognized the catastrophic domestic and foreign consequences. As a result the “reality principle” has taken hold; the maintenance of the US Empire requires modification of tactics and strategies, to cut political, military and diplomatic losses[1].

In response to major military and political losses as well as new opportunity, the White House is fashioning a new doctrine of imperial conquest based on intensified aerial warfare, greater extra-territorial intervention, and, when circumstances allow, alliances with collaborators. This includes the arming and financial backing of retrograde despotic regimes in the Gulf city-states, fundamentalists, opportunist defectors, mercenaries , academic exiles gangsters and other rabble willing to serve the empire for a price.

Whether these ‘changes’ add up to a new post-colonial “Obama doctrine” or simply reflects a series of improvisations resulting from past losses (“making a virtue of necessity”) remains to be seen.

Continues >>

“We will not build two (nuclear) bombs in the face of (America’s) 20,000,” said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in response to an International Atomic Energy Agency report this week that accuses Iran of doing just that. He called Yukiya Amano, the head of the IAEA, a US puppet, saying: “This person does not publish a report about America and its allies’ nuclear arsenals.”

Well, that’s true, actually. Amano will never publish a report about America’s nuclear weapons (only 5,133 of them now, actually). He hasn’t said anything about Israel’s, Britain’s and France’s weapons of mass destruction either. And his report is largely based on information fed to him by Western intelligence agencies.

But apart from that, Amano is as impartial and free from US influence as you would expect a career Japanese diplomat to be. Only cynical people will see any resemblance to Colin Powell’s performance at the United Nations in 2003, when the US defense secretary held up a test tube and assured us all that Iraq really was working on germ warfare.

Continues >>