Peace and Justice Post

Faced with a round of threats and speculations of an impending war so shrill that it has sent oil prices soaring, Russia and China were quick today to caution the United States against launching an attack on Iran.

Attacking Iran would be a “very serious mistake fraught with unpredictable consequences,” warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while China expressed concern that the threats were harming the prospects of diplomacy.

They are just the latest in a growing chorus of nations to express concerns about starting another major war. Germany has also said they oppose such a move.

A growing number of US officials past and present have expressed a preference for launching a military attack on Iran soon, with an IAEA report alleging some vague allegations about computer simulations serving as the latest pretext.

Israeli officials have also been hyping the prospect of launching an attack on Iran themselves, with President Shimon Peres insisted the war was “more likely” than any sort of diplomatic solution. Israeli military officials are said to prefer an attack before winter.

Last week Israel successfully test-fired a new long-range ballistic missile, capable of striking military targets deep inside Iran.

In remarks to Israel’s Knesset, Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “A nuclear Iran will pose a serious threat to the Middle East and the entire world, and it of course poses a direct and heavy threat to us.”

On September 3^rd, Gen. Hasan Firouzabadi, supreme commander of Iran’s military and Revolutionary Guards armed forces, said, “Iran hopes there won’t be a need to target the nuclear facility of the Zionist regime, but if there is, Israel would receive dreadful retribution. Our developed weapons can hit any part of the Zionist regime.” [1]

Israeli ambassador in Washington Michael Oren, claims Hezbollah in South Lebanon has 16,000 rockets ranged to cover every part of Israel with enhanced precision and that includes the Dimona WMD facility- which has never allowed International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors into.

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By Richard Falk, MWC News,November 7, 2011

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As someone who has witnessed the humiliations daily endured by Palestinians living decade after decade under ‘occupation’ the word occupation was for me an inalterably dirty word. I associated the practice of occupation, especially prolonged occupation of the sort that Israel has imposed on Palestine as synonymous with ‘abuse’ and ‘oppression.’ Having just completed two days of intense discussions between leading Israeli and Palestinian voices for peace at an LSE workshop presided over by Mary Kaldor and Lakhdar Brahimi reached a single Archimedean point of consensus: ‘End the Occupation.’ Personally, I was not so content with this outcome as it tended to narrow the Palestinian agenda to a kind of ‘land for peace’ formula, neglecting the plight, the rights, and the prospects of five million or so territorially dispossessed Palestinians living as refugees or exile, often enduring intolerable situations of vulnerability and deprivation that has continued for generations,  whose persistence is incompatible with a sustainable peace or a tolerable future.

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By Frances Fox Piven,  Countercurrents.org, November 7, 2011

Source: TomDispatch.com

Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Financial Morality

We’ve been at war for decades now — not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed — until now.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.

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Much of the international support that Israel receives is based on several lies it tells and re-tells as “facts”.

By Joseph Massad, Information Clearing House, November 7, 2011

In 1991, negotiations started officially and unofficially between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (and the Palestinians associated with it) and the Israeli government. At the time, Israel had occupied the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip for the previous 24 years.

Today, 20 years later, Israel and President Obama insist that the only way to bring about peace, and presumably end the Occupation, is to continue with negotiations. It is unclear if what Obama and Israel are claiming is that Israel needs 24 years of negotiations in order to end its 24-year occupation of Palestinian land, so that by the time the occupation ends, it will have lasted for 48 years.

This of course is the optimistic reading of the Israeli and US positions; the reality of the negotiations and what they aim to achieve, however, is far more insidious.

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If there is a fixed human nature, then why have human societies differed so radically?

Paul D’Amato,   Socialist Worker, November 4, 2011

WHY DO people behave the way they do? One common answer to this question is that behavior is determined by something in our “human nature.” So greed, selfishness, violence and war are all blamed on something innate to all of us.

Of course, for every manifestation of greed, selfishness and violence, there are at least as may examples of compassion and sharing.

But leaving that aside for a moment, the problem with the commonly held view of human nature is this: If there is a fixed human nature, then how can it be that human societies have differed so much between different regions and historical times?

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Tariq Aziz (centre, second row) attending a meeting about drones strikes in Waziristan, held in Islamabad, Pakistan on 28 October 2011. Three days later, the 16 year old was reported killed by a drone-launched missile. Photograph: Pratap Chatterjee/BIJ

Last Friday, I met a boy, just before he was assassinated by the CIA. Tariq Aziz was 16, a quiet young man from North Waziristan, who, like most teenagers, enjoyed soccer. Seventy-two hours later, a Hellfire missile is believed to have killed him as he was travelling in a car to meet his aunt in Miran Shah, to take her home after her wedding. Killed with him was his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan.

Over 2,300 people in Pakistan have been killed by such missiles carried by drone aircraft such as the Predator and the Reaper, and launched by remote control from Langley, Virginia. Tariq and Waheed brought the known total of children killed in this way to 175, according to statistics maintained by the organisation I work for, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

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By Julie Hyland,  wsws.org, November 5, 2011

The vote by Unesco to admit Palestine as a member has met with an aggressive reaction from Israel and the United States.

The Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation voted by 107 votes to 14, with 52 abstentions, Monday, in favour of Palestinian membership—surpassing the 81 majority required.

Almost immediately, the Obama administration in Washington announced it would stop its $60 million annual donation, which makes up almost one-quarter of Unesco’s funds. The US was supported by Canada, which said it too would withhold its $10 million contribution.

Susan Rice, US ambassador to the United Nations, described Monday’s vote as “deeply damaging” to Unesco, while Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, denounced it as “inexplicable.”

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by Jacob G. Hornberger, fff.org, November 3, 2011

Yesterday I attended a funeral for a friend’s mother at Arlington National Cemetery. During the service, my eyes focused on three nearby gravestones — a Lt. Colonel, a 1st Lieutenant, and a captain. The inscriptions on the gravestones stated that all three had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and that all three had died in 2011. I noticed that the captain died at the age of 30.

All I could think was: What a horrible waste of life. Three lives shortened, needlessly. All three, dying for nothing.

It was the captain’s gravestone that hit me the hardest. Inscribed near the bottom of that gravestone were three letters: “VMI.”

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