Crude Spills Into Tigris After Iraq Pipeline Bombing
(Courtesy of Antiwar.com)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The Mirage of 'Victory'
America's real war aims in Iraq
By Justin Raimondo
"......As I have been saying for months – or is that years? – our real war aims have nothing to do with stability, democracy, or finding "weapons of mass destruction" that never existed in any case. Our goal has always been to plunge the Arab and Muslim nations of the Middle East into chaos, the better to move in, take control, and ensure the two main objectives of our foreign policy: access to oil, and security for a Greater Israel. A stable Iraq makes achieving these two goals more unlikely, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq – extended into the indefinite future – gives us many more options, including the option to extend the war beyond Iraq's borders – which has been our real goal all along."
By Justin Raimondo
"......As I have been saying for months – or is that years? – our real war aims have nothing to do with stability, democracy, or finding "weapons of mass destruction" that never existed in any case. Our goal has always been to plunge the Arab and Muslim nations of the Middle East into chaos, the better to move in, take control, and ensure the two main objectives of our foreign policy: access to oil, and security for a Greater Israel. A stable Iraq makes achieving these two goals more unlikely, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq – extended into the indefinite future – gives us many more options, including the option to extend the war beyond Iraq's borders – which has been our real goal all along."
It depends who is doing the torturing
By Amira Hass
".......In reality, however, the legitimacy of the PA leadership stems from its compliance with the U.S. standard for an acceptable Arab regime. Ignoring the PA's campaigns of repression is a repetition of past mistakes. It means a denial of the fact that Hamas has won its popularity not because of its religious-political vision, and that the dual reason for its victory at the polls has not disappeared: The PLO failed in the negotiations to achieve political independence; at the same time, its internal administration is tainted by a lack of caring for its people and by seeing mainly to the interests of a limited stratum of society. This stratum owes its comfortable status to the adherence to a tactic of failed negotiations with Israel, over a non-solution. "
".......In reality, however, the legitimacy of the PA leadership stems from its compliance with the U.S. standard for an acceptable Arab regime. Ignoring the PA's campaigns of repression is a repetition of past mistakes. It means a denial of the fact that Hamas has won its popularity not because of its religious-political vision, and that the dual reason for its victory at the polls has not disappeared: The PLO failed in the negotiations to achieve political independence; at the same time, its internal administration is tainted by a lack of caring for its people and by seeing mainly to the interests of a limited stratum of society. This stratum owes its comfortable status to the adherence to a tactic of failed negotiations with Israel, over a non-solution. "
A real success story in the US's Iraq: Iran
By Peter Galbraith
Asia Times
(This essay appears in the October 11 issue of the New York Review of Books and is posted with the permission of the editors of that magazine.)
A Long, Good Essay
"......Muqtada has made Iraqi nationalism his political platform. He has attacked the SIIC for its pro-Iranian leanings and challenged Iraq's most important religious figure, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, himself an Iranian citizen. Asked about charges that Iran was organizing Iraqi insurgents, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told The Financial Times on May 10, "The whole idea is unreasonable. Why should we do that? Why should we undermine a government in Iraq that we support more than anybody else?"
The US cannot now undo Bush's strategic gift to Iran. But importantly, the most pro-Iranian Shi'ite political party is the one least hostile to the US. In the battle now under way between the SIIC and Muqtada for control of southern Iraq and of the central government in Baghdad, the US and Iran are on the same side. The US has good reason to worry about Iran's activities in Iraq. But contrary to the Bush administration's allegations - supported by both General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in their recent congressional testimony - Iran does not oppose Iraq's new political order. In fact, Iran is the major beneficiary of the US-induced changes in Iraq since 2003."
Asia Times
(This essay appears in the October 11 issue of the New York Review of Books and is posted with the permission of the editors of that magazine.)
A Long, Good Essay
"......Muqtada has made Iraqi nationalism his political platform. He has attacked the SIIC for its pro-Iranian leanings and challenged Iraq's most important religious figure, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, himself an Iranian citizen. Asked about charges that Iran was organizing Iraqi insurgents, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told The Financial Times on May 10, "The whole idea is unreasonable. Why should we do that? Why should we undermine a government in Iraq that we support more than anybody else?"
The US cannot now undo Bush's strategic gift to Iran. But importantly, the most pro-Iranian Shi'ite political party is the one least hostile to the US. In the battle now under way between the SIIC and Muqtada for control of southern Iraq and of the central government in Baghdad, the US and Iran are on the same side. The US has good reason to worry about Iran's activities in Iraq. But contrary to the Bush administration's allegations - supported by both General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in their recent congressional testimony - Iran does not oppose Iraq's new political order. In fact, Iran is the major beneficiary of the US-induced changes in Iraq since 2003."
Saudis quietly go about 'business' in Iraq
By Dahr Jamail
Asia Times
".....The great irony is that while these accusations toward Tehran are supported by thin evidence, plenty of evidence does exist that another of Iraq's neighbors, US ally Saudi Arabia, is supporting resistance groups in Iraq, and intends to continue to do so.
A neighborly mess: Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia
"Saudi Arabia has both the means and the religious responsibility to intervene" in Iraq, wrote Nawaf Obaid, neo-conservative ally and a former security adviser to the Saudi government, in a shockingly frank editorial for the Washington Post last November.
He warned the Bush administration, sinking ever deeper into the quagmire of Iraq: "America must not ignore the counsel of Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States. If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis."
Obaid's warning, in response to talk of a possible US withdrawal from Iraq, noted the current Saudi political stance of "I am my brother's keeper" toward fellow Sunni Arabs in Iraq. Clearly, the Saudis do not consider all Iraqis their brothers, particularly the Shi'ites......."
Asia Times
".....The great irony is that while these accusations toward Tehran are supported by thin evidence, plenty of evidence does exist that another of Iraq's neighbors, US ally Saudi Arabia, is supporting resistance groups in Iraq, and intends to continue to do so.
A neighborly mess: Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia
"Saudi Arabia has both the means and the religious responsibility to intervene" in Iraq, wrote Nawaf Obaid, neo-conservative ally and a former security adviser to the Saudi government, in a shockingly frank editorial for the Washington Post last November.
He warned the Bush administration, sinking ever deeper into the quagmire of Iraq: "America must not ignore the counsel of Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States. If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis."
Obaid's warning, in response to talk of a possible US withdrawal from Iraq, noted the current Saudi political stance of "I am my brother's keeper" toward fellow Sunni Arabs in Iraq. Clearly, the Saudis do not consider all Iraqis their brothers, particularly the Shi'ites......."
Neo-cons have Syria in their sights
By Khody Akhavi
Asia Times
".....For neo-conservatives in the United Sates, though, this is an opportunity to re-ignite political debate that fits neatly with the infamous cast of the "axis of evil": Syria has long been designated as a junior partner in the "reign of terror" of Iran, North Korea and the erstwhile Iraq......
"Once again, this appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the US-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the US and Syria," said Cirincione, who previously served as director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace......
Experts are still unsure of what that intelligence entails, and whether is it "nuclear", "non-conventional", "chemical" or nothing of the sort. Regardless, in most of the narratives, the North Korea connection remains a salient point......"
Asia Times
".....For neo-conservatives in the United Sates, though, this is an opportunity to re-ignite political debate that fits neatly with the infamous cast of the "axis of evil": Syria has long been designated as a junior partner in the "reign of terror" of Iran, North Korea and the erstwhile Iraq......
"Once again, this appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the US-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the US and Syria," said Cirincione, who previously served as director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace......
Experts are still unsure of what that intelligence entails, and whether is it "nuclear", "non-conventional", "chemical" or nothing of the sort. Regardless, in most of the narratives, the North Korea connection remains a salient point......"
Israel's Agenda For Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer
By VICTORIA BUCH
CounterPunch
"......I believe that the final objective of our rulers is to set the stage for the second Naqba. Otherwise what is the point of the endless goading of Palestinians into violence? Any minimally thoughtful person understands that the Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories will lead to an eventual paroxysm of violence. Do not tell me that our leaders never thought about it. Granted, amongst them there are total opportunists who do not care about anything except staying in power. But somebody is pushing the ethnic cleansing forward. Sharon was the foremost among them, but judging from the well organized continuation, his associates are fully operational and in business. These people are actually looking forward to the violence. They have their eyes on the real-estate prize - the West Bank. A paroxysm of violence would enable the State of Israel to annex the West Bank - the entire West Bank, that is, while getting rid of most of Palestinian inhabitants. Just like in 1948. This is, in my view, the envisaged end-game. Where do they propose to expel the Palestinians? Jordan? The Gaza Strip? Syria? I do not know......."
CounterPunch
"......I believe that the final objective of our rulers is to set the stage for the second Naqba. Otherwise what is the point of the endless goading of Palestinians into violence? Any minimally thoughtful person understands that the Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories will lead to an eventual paroxysm of violence. Do not tell me that our leaders never thought about it. Granted, amongst them there are total opportunists who do not care about anything except staying in power. But somebody is pushing the ethnic cleansing forward. Sharon was the foremost among them, but judging from the well organized continuation, his associates are fully operational and in business. These people are actually looking forward to the violence. They have their eyes on the real-estate prize - the West Bank. A paroxysm of violence would enable the State of Israel to annex the West Bank - the entire West Bank, that is, while getting rid of most of Palestinian inhabitants. Just like in 1948. This is, in my view, the envisaged end-game. Where do they propose to expel the Palestinians? Jordan? The Gaza Strip? Syria? I do not know......."
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Adm. Fallon Presses Case Against Iran
"The top U.S. military commander for the Middle East is pressing Arab allies to form a more united front against Iran, seen by Washington as the region's long-term threat.
At military compounds and royal reception halls across the Persian Gulf, Adm. William Fallon is delivering personal appeals to Arab leaders to counter Iran's ambitions to expand its regional influence and move ahead with its nuclear program.
Fallon has carefully avoided publicly discussing any war contingency plans or making any direct threats against Iran, which sits in his sphere of operations. As head of U.S. Central Command, he oversees forces in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.
His current 10-day trip, which began Saturday in Bahrain, was more about seeking to quietly galvanize Gulf leaders while letting others sharply escalate pressure on Tehran. On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the world should prepare for war if Iran obtains nuclear weapons.
"We are not looking for a new NATO-type alliance against Iran," Fallon told The Associated Press after talks with Bahrain's defense minister, Sheik Khalifa bin Ahmad Al Khalifa......"
At military compounds and royal reception halls across the Persian Gulf, Adm. William Fallon is delivering personal appeals to Arab leaders to counter Iran's ambitions to expand its regional influence and move ahead with its nuclear program.
Fallon has carefully avoided publicly discussing any war contingency plans or making any direct threats against Iran, which sits in his sphere of operations. As head of U.S. Central Command, he oversees forces in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.
His current 10-day trip, which began Saturday in Bahrain, was more about seeking to quietly galvanize Gulf leaders while letting others sharply escalate pressure on Tehran. On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the world should prepare for war if Iran obtains nuclear weapons.
"We are not looking for a new NATO-type alliance against Iran," Fallon told The Associated Press after talks with Bahrain's defense minister, Sheik Khalifa bin Ahmad Al Khalifa......"
Yet Another Peace Conference!
By Dr. Hassan Afif El-Hassan
Special to PalestineChronicle.com
"Conferences, meetings, summits, initiatives and envoys became the life support of the so called peace in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since 1991. Peace is a big industry in the Middle East today, but not real peace. Ask the frustrated Palestinians standing in lines for hours at the more than 500 checkpoints and roadblocks that Israel operates in the West Bank or the expatriates stranded at the border with Egypt trying to return to their homes in Gaza. Or ask the three generations of refugees living stateless in camps. There is too much talk on confidence building between Abbas and Olmert these days, twice a month at least, but nothing on the main issues, borders, the refugees and Jerusalem. I wonder how they spend the two-hour sessions without discussing the issues! May be how to strangle their common enemies, those Palestinians who do not recognize the Jewish only settlements!......
If there will be a conference, Abbas should not expect it to deliver a settlement the Palestinians could accept. It is time Abbas recognize his power base is not in Tel Aviv or Washington even if they were the return addresses of his paycheck. His power base is the Palestinian people, including those who do not agree on his policy. If Abbas and his lieutenants are serious about peace with justice, they should seek to strengthen their stand among their own people first by having peace with their fellow political opponents rather than attending another futile so called “peace conference”."
Advice to the resistance: "Let's not be lured into fighting Iran too"
A Good Piece From
Missing Links
"One reason for the recent American exaggeration of the Iranian role in Iraq, most notably in the Petraeus testimony, is to invite the Sunni resistance to enter into an arrangement of convenience with the American occupation, either by the Sunnis joining the so-called political process in order to help fend off Iranian influence in the Green Zone, or else by suspending or easing their attacks on the American occupation in the interests of a tacit agreement to focus on the Iranian threat. This is the reading of Awni Qalamji, a Sunni-resistance ideologue writing in his regular Al-Quds al-Arabi opinion column. Naturally Qalamji's point is to warn against getting sucked into taking any such attitude.
Of course, he writes, no one can or should underestimate the damage that the Iranians have done to the interests of Iraqi unity and independence. However, he warns:
All of this doesn't give us the right--and particularly it doesn't give the Iraqi resistance the right--to alter the arrangement of our priorities and make secondary struggles more important than the main struggle against the occupation. In fact it has been said, always and everywhere since the beginning of the Age of Colonialism, that it is the occupation that gives birth to the legitimacy of the resistance, and it follows that the main battlefield in the liberation of Iraq is to focus our fighting on the American occupation, as the spearhead and leader of the occupation and its main force.
It is one of the lessons of all colonial struggles including Vietnam and Algeria that resistance begins and ends with the preservation of one's own forces and the demolition of those of the occupier, and under no reasoning or pretext, no matter how apparently convincing, should the resistance forces be dissipated in more than one front. Dispersal of resistance forces among different fronts makes them easier targets for the occupation forces, and Qalamji says this is particularly the case now, considering that the resistance is still weak in rear-guard support and fixed bases......
All of which is by way of explaining why I posted today's post. It is because it illustrates an important factor in resistance thinking: namely that the US is in the process of trying to lure the resistance into a tacit deal that would have the effect of focusing on the Iran as the enemy. Part of the run-up to a war with Iran? I don't know."
Missing Links
"One reason for the recent American exaggeration of the Iranian role in Iraq, most notably in the Petraeus testimony, is to invite the Sunni resistance to enter into an arrangement of convenience with the American occupation, either by the Sunnis joining the so-called political process in order to help fend off Iranian influence in the Green Zone, or else by suspending or easing their attacks on the American occupation in the interests of a tacit agreement to focus on the Iranian threat. This is the reading of Awni Qalamji, a Sunni-resistance ideologue writing in his regular Al-Quds al-Arabi opinion column. Naturally Qalamji's point is to warn against getting sucked into taking any such attitude.
Of course, he writes, no one can or should underestimate the damage that the Iranians have done to the interests of Iraqi unity and independence. However, he warns:
All of this doesn't give us the right--and particularly it doesn't give the Iraqi resistance the right--to alter the arrangement of our priorities and make secondary struggles more important than the main struggle against the occupation. In fact it has been said, always and everywhere since the beginning of the Age of Colonialism, that it is the occupation that gives birth to the legitimacy of the resistance, and it follows that the main battlefield in the liberation of Iraq is to focus our fighting on the American occupation, as the spearhead and leader of the occupation and its main force.
It is one of the lessons of all colonial struggles including Vietnam and Algeria that resistance begins and ends with the preservation of one's own forces and the demolition of those of the occupier, and under no reasoning or pretext, no matter how apparently convincing, should the resistance forces be dissipated in more than one front. Dispersal of resistance forces among different fronts makes them easier targets for the occupation forces, and Qalamji says this is particularly the case now, considering that the resistance is still weak in rear-guard support and fixed bases......
All of which is by way of explaining why I posted today's post. It is because it illustrates an important factor in resistance thinking: namely that the US is in the process of trying to lure the resistance into a tacit deal that would have the effect of focusing on the Iran as the enemy. Part of the run-up to a war with Iran? I don't know."
Audio: Crossing the Line interviews Kathleen and Bill Christison
"This week on Crossing The Line: Host Christopher Brown speaks with Bill and Kathleen Christison both formerly of the CIA. Bill was a senior official of the CIA and served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. Kathleen is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. Brown talks with two about the recent leak of an Israeli document which outlines a final status for a Palestinian state."
Click Here to Listen
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Can Iraq (or Anyone) Hold Blackwater Accountable for Killing Iraqi Civilians? A Debate on the Role of Private Contractors in Iraq
Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman
"The Bush administration is trying to stop the Iraqi government from banning the private military firm Blackwater. Iraqi officials say they've revoked Blackwater's license over a deadly shooting that killed up to eleven civilians. Witnesses say Blackwater guards fired indiscriminately after a car bomb exploded near their convoy. Blackwater is denying wrongdoing and says its guards properly responded to an ambush from insurgents. But Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani called the shootings “a big crime that we can't be silent about.”
U.S. officials have already gone into overdrive to prevent the move. On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and vowed an investigation. But the Iraqi government appears to be holding ground. Earlier today, Maliki's cabinet said it supports the ban and will review the legal status of all private military companies working in Iraq.
The shootout is only Blackwater's latest controversy in Iraq. The North Carolina-based firm operates under a multi-million dollar contract to protect U.S. officials and facilities. It's been allowed close to free reign under a murky legal environment that offers little to no oversight over its operations.
The author and independent journalist Jeremy Scahill has been closely following Blackwater. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” Jeremy joins me in the firehouse studio.
And joining me from Washington, D.C. is Doug Brooks. He is president of International Peace Operations Association, a trade group for the private security industry. Blackwater is a founding member......"
Repugnant Black Water ... سـِيـَان
By Imad Khadduri
Tens of thousands of private security war criminals roam Iraq
"......"Section 2: Iraqi Legal Process
1) Unless provided otherwise herein, the MNF, the CPA, Foreign Liaison Missions, their Personnel, property, funds and assets, and all International Consultants shall be immune from Iraqi legal process.
Section 4: Contractors
3) Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal process with respect to acts performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a Contract or any sub-contract thereto."......."
Tens of thousands of private security war criminals roam Iraq
"......"Section 2: Iraqi Legal Process
1) Unless provided otherwise herein, the MNF, the CPA, Foreign Liaison Missions, their Personnel, property, funds and assets, and all International Consultants shall be immune from Iraqi legal process.
Section 4: Contractors
3) Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal process with respect to acts performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a Contract or any sub-contract thereto."......."
Bush's 'proxy war' claim over Iran exposed
By Gareth Porter
Asia Times
"......Petraeus' contradictory statements on the Quds Force are emblematic of a US administration propaganda line that has in essence fallen apart because it was so obviously out of line with reality. Nine months after the George W Bush administration declared that it was going to go after Iranian agents in Iraq who were threatening US troops, the US military still has not produced any evidence that Quds Force operatives in Iraq were engaged in assisting the militias fighting against US troops......
The charge that Iran is using the Quds Force to fight a proxy war is an effort to raise tensions with Iran by suggesting a potential reason for a US attack against that country. Similarly, the pressure for targeting the Quds Force in Iraq late last year came from senior officials in the Bush administration who wished to demonstrate US resolve to confront Iran, according to an in-depth account of the origins of the plan by the Washington Post's Dafna Linzer published on February 26.
That policy was regarded with "skepticism" by the intelligence community, the State Department and the Defense Department when it was proposed, Linzer wrote, because of the fear it would contribute to an escalation of conflict with Iran.
"This has little to do with Iraq," a senior intelligence officer told Linzer. "It's all about pushing Iran's buttons. It's purely political." "
Asia Times
"......Petraeus' contradictory statements on the Quds Force are emblematic of a US administration propaganda line that has in essence fallen apart because it was so obviously out of line with reality. Nine months after the George W Bush administration declared that it was going to go after Iranian agents in Iraq who were threatening US troops, the US military still has not produced any evidence that Quds Force operatives in Iraq were engaged in assisting the militias fighting against US troops......
The charge that Iran is using the Quds Force to fight a proxy war is an effort to raise tensions with Iran by suggesting a potential reason for a US attack against that country. Similarly, the pressure for targeting the Quds Force in Iraq late last year came from senior officials in the Bush administration who wished to demonstrate US resolve to confront Iran, according to an in-depth account of the origins of the plan by the Washington Post's Dafna Linzer published on February 26.
That policy was regarded with "skepticism" by the intelligence community, the State Department and the Defense Department when it was proposed, Linzer wrote, because of the fear it would contribute to an escalation of conflict with Iran.
"This has little to do with Iraq," a senior intelligence officer told Linzer. "It's all about pushing Iran's buttons. It's purely political." "
A double standard on academic freedom
George Bisharat, Baltimore Sun, Sep 18, 2007
"Two hundred thousand Palestinian children began school in the Gaza Strip this month without a full complement of textbooks. Why? Because Israel, which maintains a stranglehold over this small strip of land along the Mediterranean even after withdrawing its settlers from there in 2005, considers paper, ink and binding materials not to be "fundamental humanitarian needs."
Israel, attempting to throttle the democratically elected Hamas government, generally permits only food, medicine and fuel to enter Gaza, and allows virtually no Palestinian exports to leave. Lately, it held up delivery of materials needed for printing textbooks. As a result, Gaza students began the year facing a 30 percent shortage of texts......
Boycotts are always somewhat blunt tools, and they inevitably impose costs on some who are undeserving of them. That was true of the boycott of apartheid South Africa, which applied to all academics -- as well as athletes, businesspeople, artists and others. At the time, the international community weighed the cost to academic freedom against the advancement of justice and equal rights for black South Africans, and the choice was clear.
Two hundred thousand Palestinian schoolchildren are wondering how the world will respond faced with a similar choice today."
A silent warning shot
Israel's air strike deep into Syrian territory sends a clear, deadly serious message of intent to Tehran.
By Simon Tisdall
The Guardian
".....US hawks, who say the north cannot be trusted and oppose the deal in principle, are already pointing to the supposed Syrian connection as proof they are right. This line of thinking, going well beyond specific concerns about Israeli or Middle Eastern security, serves a wider, darker neocon agenda......
Stories about Korean-made nukes secreted in the wastes of northern Syria will look like fairytale material to many. The real-time targets are, potentially, Iran's nuclear, military and command facilities. And Israel, no longer content with trial runs up and down the Mediterranean, just demonstrated how easily it could hit them."
By Simon Tisdall
The Guardian
".....US hawks, who say the north cannot be trusted and oppose the deal in principle, are already pointing to the supposed Syrian connection as proof they are right. This line of thinking, going well beyond specific concerns about Israeli or Middle Eastern security, serves a wider, darker neocon agenda......
Stories about Korean-made nukes secreted in the wastes of northern Syria will look like fairytale material to many. The real-time targets are, potentially, Iran's nuclear, military and command facilities. And Israel, no longer content with trial runs up and down the Mediterranean, just demonstrated how easily it could hit them."
It is unjust and absurd to apply economics to this hell
The government must acknowledge the present catastrophe in Palestine is a direct consequence of Israeli intransigence
Karma Nabulsi
(fellow in politics and international relations at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University)
Tuesday September 18, 2007
The Guardian
"No people, territory or issue on earth have had more international attention devoted to them than Palestine and its people. Yet no conflict looks further from resolution, and no people further from achieving the freedom promised them. More Palestinians lack more basic freedoms today than they did 60 years ago. While an expensive and extensive peace process was in full swing, Israel managed to illegally expropriate most of the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, install hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers, kill more Palestinian families, arrest more young men, destroy more crops, homes and businesses, build a monstrous wall deemed illegal by the international court of justice, and set forth, unchecked, a policy of aggressive expansionism in Palestine that continues until this moment.....
The latest initiative from the government suggests improvements driven by private investment. The absurdity of proposing to stimulate investment in this hell - where because of Israeli closures and checkpoints Palestinians cannot trade between their own towns much less with the outside world - or the fact that the present economic catastrophe is a direct consequence of the military occupation, gets no acknowledgement here. By avoiding the real issue of Israeli intransigence, and with no plan on tackling it, neither jobs nor justice are on offer to Palestinians. They expect international support to help them win their freedom - or at least not assistance in their oppression. As Mary Anderson, a contributor to the Chatham House book, explains: if you can do no good in Palestine, at least do no harm."
Karma Nabulsi
(fellow in politics and international relations at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University)
Tuesday September 18, 2007
The Guardian
"No people, territory or issue on earth have had more international attention devoted to them than Palestine and its people. Yet no conflict looks further from resolution, and no people further from achieving the freedom promised them. More Palestinians lack more basic freedoms today than they did 60 years ago. While an expensive and extensive peace process was in full swing, Israel managed to illegally expropriate most of the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, install hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers, kill more Palestinian families, arrest more young men, destroy more crops, homes and businesses, build a monstrous wall deemed illegal by the international court of justice, and set forth, unchecked, a policy of aggressive expansionism in Palestine that continues until this moment.....
The latest initiative from the government suggests improvements driven by private investment. The absurdity of proposing to stimulate investment in this hell - where because of Israeli closures and checkpoints Palestinians cannot trade between their own towns much less with the outside world - or the fact that the present economic catastrophe is a direct consequence of the military occupation, gets no acknowledgement here. By avoiding the real issue of Israeli intransigence, and with no plan on tackling it, neither jobs nor justice are on offer to Palestinians. They expect international support to help them win their freedom - or at least not assistance in their oppression. As Mary Anderson, a contributor to the Chatham House book, explains: if you can do no good in Palestine, at least do no harm."
Drift into war with Iran out of control, says UN
· Officials back nuclear inspector's warning
· Tehran denounces French extremism in growing row
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor and Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Tuesday September 18, 2007
The Guardian
"The UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector yesterday warned against the use of force against Iran, in what UN officials said was an attempt to halt an "out of control" drift to war.
His outspoken remarks, which drew a parallel between Iran and Iraq, appeared to take aim at the US and Britain. They followed comments on Sunday night by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who said: "We have to prepare for the worst," adding "the worst is war".
"I would not talk about any use of force," Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna. "There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons."......
"There's a strategic reason for doing these things," one official said. "He really is alarmed. He sees this thing going out of control. The feeling around here is that this looks like the run-up to the Iraq war."
Last month, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, sparked a heated political debate in Paris when he called the Iranian stand-off "the greatest crisis" of current times, saying the world had "a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran"......"
· Tehran denounces French extremism in growing row
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor and Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Tuesday September 18, 2007
The Guardian
"The UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector yesterday warned against the use of force against Iran, in what UN officials said was an attempt to halt an "out of control" drift to war.
His outspoken remarks, which drew a parallel between Iran and Iraq, appeared to take aim at the US and Britain. They followed comments on Sunday night by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who said: "We have to prepare for the worst," adding "the worst is war".
"I would not talk about any use of force," Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna. "There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons."......
"There's a strategic reason for doing these things," one official said. "He really is alarmed. He sees this thing going out of control. The feeling around here is that this looks like the run-up to the Iraq war."
Last month, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, sparked a heated political debate in Paris when he called the Iranian stand-off "the greatest crisis" of current times, saying the world had "a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran"......"
French-kissing the war on Iran
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
"President George W Bush goes to New York next week for the annual United Nations General Assembly to ratchet up the demonization of Iran, confident that his new French ally is doing "a heck of a job". President Nicolas Sarkozy - widely referred to in Paris as King Sarko the First - has let loose the dogs of war .....
The Sarkozy-sponsored, Europe-wide demonization-of-Iran campaign has now begun. Hot on the heels of Sarkozy coining the ultimate catch phrase - "the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran" - it was the turn of his glamorous, dashing, humanitarian top diplomat.
"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," said Bernard Kouchner, foreign minister and founder of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) on French 24-hour news channel LCI......
As much as Europe may be divided over the issue, the problem is there's a looming fatalistic atmosphere in most European chancelleries, not to mention the European Union in Brussels, that an attack on Iran is all but inevitable.
The white man's oil burden
Meanwhile, it seems clear that Sarkozy's game is playing messenger to big (energy) business. He is well known in Paris as the man of the CAC 40 - the French equivalent of the Dow Jones index........"
Asia Times
"President George W Bush goes to New York next week for the annual United Nations General Assembly to ratchet up the demonization of Iran, confident that his new French ally is doing "a heck of a job". President Nicolas Sarkozy - widely referred to in Paris as King Sarko the First - has let loose the dogs of war .....
The Sarkozy-sponsored, Europe-wide demonization-of-Iran campaign has now begun. Hot on the heels of Sarkozy coining the ultimate catch phrase - "the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran" - it was the turn of his glamorous, dashing, humanitarian top diplomat.
"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," said Bernard Kouchner, foreign minister and founder of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) on French 24-hour news channel LCI......
As much as Europe may be divided over the issue, the problem is there's a looming fatalistic atmosphere in most European chancelleries, not to mention the European Union in Brussels, that an attack on Iran is all but inevitable.
The white man's oil burden
Meanwhile, it seems clear that Sarkozy's game is playing messenger to big (energy) business. He is well known in Paris as the man of the CAC 40 - the French equivalent of the Dow Jones index........"
Monday, September 17, 2007
CIA and Mossad Smear Cindy Sheehan
By Kurt Nimmo
".....For instance, consider the propaganda routinely dispensed by WorldNet Daily, the disgusting neocon website, basically serving as a Mossad branch office operated by Joseph Farah, a one-time cohort of documented CIA operative, Richard Mellon Scaife.
According to WND, “Muslim terrorist leaders are ‘thankful’ for the efforts of activist and congressional candidate Cindy Sheehan, stating in a new book Sheehan’s anti-Iraq war activities and her statements against President Bush ‘give us hope’ the U.S. will change its Mideast policies,” neocon author Aaron Klein reports.
In order to put things into perspective, it should be noted that Mr. Klein “reports” not only for the Jerusalem bureau for WorldNetDaily but also the Jewish Press, the Hebrew language newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth’s website YNet, and the shameless neocon propaganda broadsheet, the New York Sun, founded and bankrolled by convicted mail fraudster and obstructionist of justice, Baron Black of Crossharbour, aka Conrad Black. It should also be noted that Klein’s weekly column for the Jewish Press fits in nicely with the hate-mongering and slanderous “journalism” of fellow contributor Steven Plaut, an Israeli academic who was recently convicted of libeling professor of politics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Neve Gordon. Birds of a feather, I suppose.
Mr. Klein would have us believe Cindy Sheehan is admired by “Ramadan Adassi, chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group in the West Bank’s Anskar Refugee Camp.”
Naturally, this makes perfect sense as the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is a wholly owed subsidiary of Fatah and “US-Israeli intelligence agencies have been collaborating with high-ranking members of the PA to help crush the Palestinian national liberation movement,” according to Mike Whitney. Even Aaron Klein admits as much—although, as a supposed Middle East expert, he does not bother to hitch the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades wagon to the CIA as well, a simple enough conclusion.
In other words, the CIA and Mossad, by way of their trusted weasels and collaborators in Fatah and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, are busy attempting to discredit antiwar activist Sheehan, who is particularly dangerous now that she has declared her desire to run for Congress......."
".....For instance, consider the propaganda routinely dispensed by WorldNet Daily, the disgusting neocon website, basically serving as a Mossad branch office operated by Joseph Farah, a one-time cohort of documented CIA operative, Richard Mellon Scaife.
According to WND, “Muslim terrorist leaders are ‘thankful’ for the efforts of activist and congressional candidate Cindy Sheehan, stating in a new book Sheehan’s anti-Iraq war activities and her statements against President Bush ‘give us hope’ the U.S. will change its Mideast policies,” neocon author Aaron Klein reports.
In order to put things into perspective, it should be noted that Mr. Klein “reports” not only for the Jerusalem bureau for WorldNetDaily but also the Jewish Press, the Hebrew language newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth’s website YNet, and the shameless neocon propaganda broadsheet, the New York Sun, founded and bankrolled by convicted mail fraudster and obstructionist of justice, Baron Black of Crossharbour, aka Conrad Black. It should also be noted that Klein’s weekly column for the Jewish Press fits in nicely with the hate-mongering and slanderous “journalism” of fellow contributor Steven Plaut, an Israeli academic who was recently convicted of libeling professor of politics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Neve Gordon. Birds of a feather, I suppose.
Mr. Klein would have us believe Cindy Sheehan is admired by “Ramadan Adassi, chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group in the West Bank’s Anskar Refugee Camp.”
Naturally, this makes perfect sense as the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is a wholly owed subsidiary of Fatah and “US-Israeli intelligence agencies have been collaborating with high-ranking members of the PA to help crush the Palestinian national liberation movement,” according to Mike Whitney. Even Aaron Klein admits as much—although, as a supposed Middle East expert, he does not bother to hitch the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades wagon to the CIA as well, a simple enough conclusion.
In other words, the CIA and Mossad, by way of their trusted weasels and collaborators in Fatah and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, are busy attempting to discredit antiwar activist Sheehan, who is particularly dangerous now that she has declared her desire to run for Congress......."
The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman
Don't Miss This Full-Hour Interview
It is Great and Full of Ideas!
"Pinochet's coup in Chile, the massacre in Tiananmen Square, the collapse of the Soviet Union, September 11th, 2001, the war on Iraq, the Asian tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina. Award-winning investigative journalist Naomi Klein brings together all of these world-changing events in her new book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." In her first national broadcast interview since the publication of "The Shock Doctrine," Klein joins us in our firehouse studio for the hour. Klein writes, "The history of the contemporary free market was written in shocks." She argues that "Some of the most infamous human rights violations of the past thirty-five years, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by anti-democratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market reforms." ......
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, the shock doctrine, like all doctrines, is a philosophy of power. It’s a philosophy about how to achieve your political and economic goals. And this is a philosophy that holds that the best way, the best time, to push through radical free-market ideas is in the aftermath of a major shock. Now, that shock could be an economic meltdown. It could be a natural disaster. It could be a terrorist attack. It could be a war. But the idea, as you just saw in the film, is that these crises, these disasters, these shocks soften up whole societies. They discombobulate them. People lose their bearings. And a window opens up, just like the window in the interrogation chamber. And in that window, you can push through what economists call “economic shock therapy.” That’s sort of extreme country makeovers. It’s everything all at once. It’s not, you know, one reform here, one reform there, but the kind of radical change that we saw in Russia in the 1990s, that Paul Bremer tried to push through in Iraq after the invasion. So that’s the shock doctrine.
And it’s not claiming that right-wingers in a contemporary age are the only people who have ever exploited crisis, because this idea of exploiting a crisis is not unique to this particular ideology. Fascists have done it. State communists have done it. But this is an attempt to better understand the ideology that we live with, the dominant ideology of our time, which is unfettered market economics......"
The Shock Doctrine Short Film, a film by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein, directed by Jonás Cuarón. Click Here to Watch
‘Giving’ and Taking
By Chris Hedges
"Bill Clinton has written a new book. It is called “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.” He will give a portion of the proceeds to charity. Giving, the former president informs us, gives us fulfilment in life and is “the fabric of our shared humanity.”
His book is the political equivalent of “Marley & Me” It is filled with a lot of vapid, feel-good stories about ordinary and wealthy Americans setting out to make the world a better place. It smacks of the philanthropy-as-publicity that characterized the largesse of the robber barons—the Mellons and the Rockefellers—and has become a pastime for our own oligarchic elite. Clinton’s call for charity is the equivalent of well-scrubbed prep school students spending a day in a soup kitchen, doling out food to the people whose jobs were outsourced by their mommies and daddies. It does little to alleviate suffering. But it is a balm to the conscience of the oligarchic class that profits handsomely from the impoverishment of the working class, globalization and our anti-democratic corporate state. The rich love to dine out on their own goodness......."
Sabra and Shatila: 25 Years on
Commentary by Khalid Amayreh
"......Nobody knows the exact number of the victims, but according to various accounts, the number ranged between 2000 and 3500.
The utter Nazi-like nature of the atrocities was as numbing as it was conspicuous. Human corpses were in every corner, every street, every home, everywhere. Blackened bodies smelling of roasted flesh from the electricity shocks that had convulsed their bodies, with the electric cables still tied around their lifeless limbs. Body parts ripped from their small torsos scattered here and there. Women horribly raped, with their legs shamelessly ripped apart, even without a cover of clothing to preserve their dignity at the moment of death.
Many women were gunned down while cooking in their kitchens. A headless baby-boy in diapers was lying next to two murdered women. Slaughtered babies piled, their bodies blackened as they began to decompose, children with their throats slashed, and mounds of rotting corpses bloated in the heat. Entire families executed or axed to death, with their blood splashed on the walls of their homes. It was Auschwitz re-enacted, with helpless Palestinian as victims, and insolent Jews as victimizers.....
And when some distraught refugees tried to escape, appealing to whatever shred of humanity they thought the Israeli occupation army might have had, they were turned back at gunpoint to face ultimate brutal death at the hands of Israel’s dogs......
The massacres of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila were not a thunder on clear day. They were meticulously planned and supervised by the Israeli army, especially Ariel Sharon, who probably was the main mastermind of the massacre. Other Israeli officers, like Amos Yaron, also played key roles in effecting the massacre. Sharon is now in a deep comma for nearly two years. Maybe God is punishing him for the tens of thousands of innocent lives he killed in the name of fulfilling Jewish nationalism. Eli Hobeika, the Phalangist commander who directly supervised the brutal slaughter, in league with Sharon and Yaron, was assassinated a few years ago in Beirut. But Yaron and many other war criminals remain outside the reach of justice. May they all rot in hell......
Israel wanted then as it does now to tell the Palestinians that it would not hesitate to outmatch and outperform the Gestapo, SS and wehrmacht in order to achieve its goals of ethnic cleansing and territorial aggrandizement......
And a word to the Palestinian people. Don’t take your physical survival for granted. The world that kept silent and did nothing to save the screaming women and children from the Nazis of our time will not hasten to save you when the next slaughter-time approaches. Rely on yourselves and don’t trust the criminal American government and mendacious Europe . Didn’t the Regan administration promise to protect the refugees following the negotiated withdrawal of PLO forces from Beirut ?
Nor should you rely on official Arab regimes. They are America’s cheap slaves."
Thanks to The Washington Post
By Gideon Levy
".....For months now, the security establishment has been flooding us with incessant warnings about an impending confrontation with Syria. The source of these warnings and the degree to which they can be trusted has never been clarified. The average news consumer knows merely that Syria has proposed peace and has cautioned against starting a war. He also knows that Israel did not relate favorably to the peace proposal and did not even try to challenge it or to examine how serious it was. The situation is explosive, the defense establishment has told us time and again.
And then suddenly one night - boom! Suspicious cargo from North Korea, according to the report in The Washington Post; North Korean know-how for enriching uranium, according to Fox News; an aerial-photography mission, according to The New York Times; or weapons systems and "a big hole in the desert," according to CNN......
The usual reason given for the resounding silence is that Israel does not wish to embarrass Syria or drag it into a war. That is a strange excuse. It is to be hoped that it was taken into account before the air force planes took off to wherever it was that they flew - if they did indeed fly there. Syria will, or will not, take retaliatory action against Israel not for what it says, but for what it does. News reports do not drive a country to go to war......"
".....For months now, the security establishment has been flooding us with incessant warnings about an impending confrontation with Syria. The source of these warnings and the degree to which they can be trusted has never been clarified. The average news consumer knows merely that Syria has proposed peace and has cautioned against starting a war. He also knows that Israel did not relate favorably to the peace proposal and did not even try to challenge it or to examine how serious it was. The situation is explosive, the defense establishment has told us time and again.
And then suddenly one night - boom! Suspicious cargo from North Korea, according to the report in The Washington Post; North Korean know-how for enriching uranium, according to Fox News; an aerial-photography mission, according to The New York Times; or weapons systems and "a big hole in the desert," according to CNN......
The usual reason given for the resounding silence is that Israel does not wish to embarrass Syria or drag it into a war. That is a strange excuse. It is to be hoped that it was taken into account before the air force planes took off to wherever it was that they flew - if they did indeed fly there. Syria will, or will not, take retaliatory action against Israel not for what it says, but for what it does. News reports do not drive a country to go to war......"
Finkelstein Interviewed
Norman Finkelstein interviewed by
George McLeod
"Israel critic Norman Finkelstein made national headlines after his tenure was denied by DePaul University . Finkelstein, an author of five books, had received outstanding reviews from his students and peers. His dismissal sparked student protests and sit-ins, and led top academics to rally to his defence. Many questioned whether campuses had fallen victim to powerful pressure groups.
In this interview with George McLeod, Norman Finkelstein discusses the Israel lobby, his writings and what makes the Israel issue unusually sensitive in the US......"
George McLeod
"Israel critic Norman Finkelstein made national headlines after his tenure was denied by DePaul University . Finkelstein, an author of five books, had received outstanding reviews from his students and peers. His dismissal sparked student protests and sit-ins, and led top academics to rally to his defence. Many questioned whether campuses had fallen victim to powerful pressure groups.
In this interview with George McLeod, Norman Finkelstein discusses the Israel lobby, his writings and what makes the Israel issue unusually sensitive in the US......"
From the General Who Never Saw a War He didn't Like: The Next War
It's always looming. But has our military learned the right lessons from this one to fight it and win?
By Wesley K. Clark
(Former supreme commander of NATO, led alliance military forces in the Kosovo war in 1999.)
W.P.
"......Think another war can't happen? Think again. Unchastened by the Iraq fiasco, hawks in Vice President Cheney's office have been pushing the use of force. It isn't hard to foresee the range of military options that policymakers face.
The next war would begin with an intense air and naval campaign. Let's say you're planning the conflict as part of the staff of the Joint Chiefs. Your list of targets isn't that long -- only a few dozen nuclear sites -- but you can't risk retaliation from Tehran. So you allow 21 days for the bombardment, to be safe; you'd aim to strike every command-and-control facility, radar site, missile site, storage site, airfield, ship and base in Iran. To prevent world oil prices from soaring, you'd have to try to protect every oil and gas rig, and the big ports and load points. You'd need to use B-2s and lots of missiles up front, plus many small amphibious task forces to take out particularly tough targets along the coast, with manned and unmanned air reconnaissance. And don't forget the Special Forces, to penetrate deep inside Iran, call in airstrikes and drag the evidence of Tehran's nuclear ambitions out into the open for a world that's understandably skeptical of U.S. assertions that yet another Gulf rogue is on the brink of getting the bomb......."
It is the death of history
Special investigation by Robert Fisk
"2,000-year-old Sumerian cities torn apart and plundered by robbers. The very walls of the mighty Ur of the Chaldees cracking under the strain of massive troop movements, the privatisation of looting as landlords buy up the remaining sites of ancient Mesopotamia to strip them of their artefacts and wealth. The near total destruction of Iraq's historic past – the very cradle of human civilisation – has emerged as one of the most shameful symbols of our disastrous occupation......"
Answers to your questions
By Naomi Klein
The Guardian
"The Shock Doctrine: Thanks to everyone who posted questions on last week's Open Thread. Here are my replies......"
Greenspan Misses Cheney's Memo: Spills the Beans on Oil
A Good Piece
By Ray McGovern
".....Sadly for Bush and Cheney, Greenspan decided to put prudence aside in his new book, The Age of Turbulence, and answer the most neuralgic issue of our times – why the United States invaded Iraq.
Greenspan writes:
"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
Everyone knows? Would that it were so. But it’s hardly everyone. Sometimes I think it’s hardly anyone.
There are so many, still, who "can’t handle the truth," and that is all too understandable. I have found it a wrenching experience to be forced to conclude that the America I love would deliberately launch what the Nuremburg Tribunal called the "supreme international crime" – a war of aggression – largely for oil. For those who are able to overcome the very common, instinctive denial, for those who can handle the truth, it really helps to turn off the Sunday football games early enough to catch up on what’s going on.......
Other Factors Behind the Invasion
There were, to be sure, other factors behind the ill-starred attack on Iraq – the Bush administration’s determination to acquire large, permanent military bases in the area outside of Saudi Arabia, for one. But that factor can be viewed as a subset of the energy motivation – the need to have substantial influence over the extraction and disposition of the oil in Iraq. In other words, the felt need for what the Pentagon prefers to call "enduring" military bases in the Middle East is a function of its strategic importance which, in turn, is a function – you guessed it – of its natural resources. Not only oil, but natural gas and water as well.
I find the evidence persuasive that the other major factor in the Bush/Cheney decision to make war on Iraq was the misguided notion that this would make that part of the world safer for Israel. Indeed, the so-called "neoconservatives" still running U.S. policy toward the Middle East continue to have great difficulty distinguishing between what they perceive to be the strategic interests of Israel and those of the United States. And in my view, they show themselves extremely myopic on both counts."
By Ray McGovern
".....Sadly for Bush and Cheney, Greenspan decided to put prudence aside in his new book, The Age of Turbulence, and answer the most neuralgic issue of our times – why the United States invaded Iraq.
Greenspan writes:
"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
Everyone knows? Would that it were so. But it’s hardly everyone. Sometimes I think it’s hardly anyone.
There are so many, still, who "can’t handle the truth," and that is all too understandable. I have found it a wrenching experience to be forced to conclude that the America I love would deliberately launch what the Nuremburg Tribunal called the "supreme international crime" – a war of aggression – largely for oil. For those who are able to overcome the very common, instinctive denial, for those who can handle the truth, it really helps to turn off the Sunday football games early enough to catch up on what’s going on.......
Other Factors Behind the Invasion
There were, to be sure, other factors behind the ill-starred attack on Iraq – the Bush administration’s determination to acquire large, permanent military bases in the area outside of Saudi Arabia, for one. But that factor can be viewed as a subset of the energy motivation – the need to have substantial influence over the extraction and disposition of the oil in Iraq. In other words, the felt need for what the Pentagon prefers to call "enduring" military bases in the Middle East is a function of its strategic importance which, in turn, is a function – you guessed it – of its natural resources. Not only oil, but natural gas and water as well.
I find the evidence persuasive that the other major factor in the Bush/Cheney decision to make war on Iraq was the misguided notion that this would make that part of the world safer for Israel. Indeed, the so-called "neoconservatives" still running U.S. policy toward the Middle East continue to have great difficulty distinguishing between what they perceive to be the strategic interests of Israel and those of the United States. And in my view, they show themselves extremely myopic on both counts."
An 'Enduring Relationship' – Or A Perpetual Burden?
Iraq as South Korea
By Justin Raimondo
"......Andrea Mitchell, appearing on The Chris Matthews Show this [Sunday] morning, reported that the initial draft of the speech – which used the phrase "enduring strategic relationship" – caused consternation in some quarters, because it smacked too much of what it really is: an intention to establish a permanent military garrison in Iraq, just as we have maintained in South Korea for the past 56 years.
Leave it to our Orwellian war propagandists, however, to portray such a radical extension of our announced war aims as a partial withdrawal. In the Bizarro World lexicon of administration officials, the proclamation of a permanent American presence is a "drawdown" – and the court stenographers otherwise known as the mainstream media report it as such.......
As it now stands, not a single major American politician is opposing this giant step toward a permanent US military presence in Iraq. For all of the Democratic candidates' "antiwar" pretensions, none of the frontrunners have denounced this ominous turn: indeed, as we have seen, John Kerry, one of the party's major spokesmen in the Senate, has signed on to the Bush plan. Where oh where are the supposedly anti-interventionist "net-roots"? Where is Moveon.org? Where is the Democratic majority that was elected on a pledge to get out of Iraq – or, at least, an implied promise to stop Mad King George and his neocon courtiers from running completely amok?
Bush's proposed "enduring relationship" is a euphemism for a perpetual burden – and a flashpoint for war. If "realism" means anything, it must reject this permanent projection of American power as militarily, politically, and morally indefensible."
By Justin Raimondo
"......Andrea Mitchell, appearing on The Chris Matthews Show this [Sunday] morning, reported that the initial draft of the speech – which used the phrase "enduring strategic relationship" – caused consternation in some quarters, because it smacked too much of what it really is: an intention to establish a permanent military garrison in Iraq, just as we have maintained in South Korea for the past 56 years.
Leave it to our Orwellian war propagandists, however, to portray such a radical extension of our announced war aims as a partial withdrawal. In the Bizarro World lexicon of administration officials, the proclamation of a permanent American presence is a "drawdown" – and the court stenographers otherwise known as the mainstream media report it as such.......
As it now stands, not a single major American politician is opposing this giant step toward a permanent US military presence in Iraq. For all of the Democratic candidates' "antiwar" pretensions, none of the frontrunners have denounced this ominous turn: indeed, as we have seen, John Kerry, one of the party's major spokesmen in the Senate, has signed on to the Bush plan. Where oh where are the supposedly anti-interventionist "net-roots"? Where is Moveon.org? Where is the Democratic majority that was elected on a pledge to get out of Iraq – or, at least, an implied promise to stop Mad King George and his neocon courtiers from running completely amok?
Bush's proposed "enduring relationship" is a euphemism for a perpetual burden – and a flashpoint for war. If "realism" means anything, it must reject this permanent projection of American power as militarily, politically, and morally indefensible."
The Puppet is Getting Cold Feet
Abbas threatens to boycott November peace summit
"Palestinian authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will not attend Washington's regional peace summit in November unless Israel agrees to a reach an agreement with the Palestinians there, Abbas' associates told Haaretz Sunday, adding the summit could "prove dangerous". With U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expected to arrive in Jerusalem Monday, the Saudis also submitted some preconditions for their attendance.
The Palestinian sources were reacting to Olmert's statement that afternoon that Israel and the Palestinians will not present an Agreement of Principles on final status issues at the summit, but issue a joint declaration instead. "We are formulating a joint declaration to headline the regional meeting, should it take place," Olmert told ministers from his party, Kadima, in Jerusalem.
"If Olmert says there'll just be a declaration, it's not worth going to this meeting in Washington," said Nimr Hamad, an adviser to Abbas. In an unusual move, the chairman's office issued a press release reacting to Olmert's statement......"
Iran offers to share with Saudis nuclear technology
"Iran stands by the Saudi nation and is prepared to share experience with the country in nuclear technology under the IAEA supervision, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Saudi King Abdullah over phone on Saturday.
Referring to enemies' efforts to block the Iranian nation's nuclear progress, Ahmadinejad said enemies of Iran have failed. Ahmadinejad congratulated the Saudi nation and government on advent of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
"The enemies intend to divide Muslim nations, especially the Iranian and Saudi nations," Ahmadinejad said.
He said that while Muslim states try to strengthen their unity, the enemies try to divide them by spreading rumors. The Saudi king, for his part, congratulated the Iranian nation and government on advent of the holy month of Ramadan and said efforts should be made to foil the enemies' plots.
Terming Ahmadinejad as a "big lover of the world of Islam and Muslims," the king regretted mistreatment of the Iranian Hajj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia. "
US, Israel beating the drums of war against Iran
Al-Manar Special - Hasan Hijazi - Translated
"17/09/2007 Beating the drums of war or raising the tone before negotiations?
What is the US and Israel up to after accusing Syria of seeking to possess nuclear arms? Are the allies preparing a file for Syria similar to the Iraqi file of weapons of mass destruction? Did Tel Aviv and Washington, according to former US envoy John Bolton, deliver a message to Iran more than it did to Syria after Israel's violation to Syria's airspace? The remaining question is: which country will the US-Israeli attack target first, Syria or Iran?
"This is John Bolton we are talking about. He has strong ties with US intelligence services. Bolton had warned against the nuclear bond between North Korea and Syria. When we asked him about this, he told us that a military strike against Iran is inevitable to stop its nuclear program," Israeli Channel 10 correspondent in Washington, Gil Timari said. In the same context, Israel broke its silence as to its aerial assault inside Syria. Amos Yedlin, the Israeli military intelligence chief, said that Israel's force of deterrence had been restored recently after it was dealt a serious blow during the 2006 war against Lebanon. Israeli commentators explained Yedlin's comments as implicit acknowledgment of the Israeli air violation which they said conveyed a message to Iran and Syria.
"Iran will continue what it had begun and Israel cannot wait for anyone to do the job for it, therefore it has to move to stop this in every possible way," former Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom said. For his part military analyst Yu'av Limor said that Israel had announced on many occasions that it will not allow any country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, adding that Israel proved this when it attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Limor concluded that "the attack against Syria" was a message to Iran that Israel will not let it possess nuclear weapons, especially when economic sanctions "will not divert Iran from its nuclear ambitions," according to Limor."
Only Iran Can End U.S. Iraq Nightmare
By Tony Karon
"As I wrote on TIME.com last week, Bush is in no position to bring the Iraq war to a satisfactory conclusion; the U.S. is treading water in Iraq lacking both any reason to believe the current balance of forces there will allow the attainment of U.S. goals, and any leverage capable of altering that balance of power.....
The latter point, really is the key to understanding the current quagmire. The idea of reaching out to Iran has become conventional wisdom in Washington diplomatic circles since the Iraq Study Group report, but it has only been grasped in a facile bound-to-fail sense. So Ambassador Crocker testified that he had talked to Iran on a number of occasions about ending their subversive activities, but to no avail. And this is largely accepted by the liberal hawk camp, while the neocons say told you so......
After all, when Iran retaliates for whatever Bush throws at them, the Iranians are likely to target U.S. forces in Iraq, cutting off their supply lines in Baghdad and targeting them via guerrilla forces in Iraq and medium range rocket attacks. Iran, for purposes of its asymmetrical response to any attack by the U.S. needs plenty of Americans within reach of its capabilities.
And its own survival is a far greater concern for the Iranian regime than the future of Iraq.
There lies the rub: The U.S. cannot stabilize Iraq without cooperation from Iran; the price of such cooperation is normalizing relations with the Tehran regime; the Bush Administration has no intention of doing that, clinging instead to fantasies of regime-change; Iraq remains a nightmare........"
"As I wrote on TIME.com last week, Bush is in no position to bring the Iraq war to a satisfactory conclusion; the U.S. is treading water in Iraq lacking both any reason to believe the current balance of forces there will allow the attainment of U.S. goals, and any leverage capable of altering that balance of power.....
The latter point, really is the key to understanding the current quagmire. The idea of reaching out to Iran has become conventional wisdom in Washington diplomatic circles since the Iraq Study Group report, but it has only been grasped in a facile bound-to-fail sense. So Ambassador Crocker testified that he had talked to Iran on a number of occasions about ending their subversive activities, but to no avail. And this is largely accepted by the liberal hawk camp, while the neocons say told you so......
After all, when Iran retaliates for whatever Bush throws at them, the Iranians are likely to target U.S. forces in Iraq, cutting off their supply lines in Baghdad and targeting them via guerrilla forces in Iraq and medium range rocket attacks. Iran, for purposes of its asymmetrical response to any attack by the U.S. needs plenty of Americans within reach of its capabilities.
And its own survival is a far greater concern for the Iranian regime than the future of Iraq.
There lies the rub: The U.S. cannot stabilize Iraq without cooperation from Iran; the price of such cooperation is normalizing relations with the Tehran regime; the Bush Administration has no intention of doing that, clinging instead to fantasies of regime-change; Iraq remains a nightmare........"
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Bush Administration War Plans directed against Iran
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, September 16, 2007
"Quoting official sources, the Western media is now confirming, rather belatedly, that the Bush Administration's war plans directed against Iran are "for real" and should be taken seriously.
"Punitive bombings" directed against Tehran could be launched within the next few months.
The diplomatic mode has been switched off: The Pentagon is said to be "taking steps to ensure military confrontation with Iran" because diplomatic initiatives have allegedly failed to reach a solution.
These diabolical statements come within barely a couple of weeks following the release of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear program. The later confirms unequivocally that Iran's nuclear program is of a civilian nature and that Iran has neither the intention nor the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons.....
Escalation Scenarios
If this military operation were to be launched, the entire Middle East Central Asian region would flare up.
The war would encompass an area extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier.
In this regard, US military planners have analyzed various "escalation scenarios".
In fact, they expect the war to escalate. In other words, escalation, namely retaliation by Iran is a desired objective. It is part of the military agenda....."
Global Research, September 16, 2007
"Quoting official sources, the Western media is now confirming, rather belatedly, that the Bush Administration's war plans directed against Iran are "for real" and should be taken seriously.
"Punitive bombings" directed against Tehran could be launched within the next few months.
The diplomatic mode has been switched off: The Pentagon is said to be "taking steps to ensure military confrontation with Iran" because diplomatic initiatives have allegedly failed to reach a solution.
These diabolical statements come within barely a couple of weeks following the release of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear program. The later confirms unequivocally that Iran's nuclear program is of a civilian nature and that Iran has neither the intention nor the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons.....
Escalation Scenarios
If this military operation were to be launched, the entire Middle East Central Asian region would flare up.
The war would encompass an area extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier.
In this regard, US military planners have analyzed various "escalation scenarios".
In fact, they expect the war to escalate. In other words, escalation, namely retaliation by Iran is a desired objective. It is part of the military agenda....."
Free Sami Al-Haj
Contributed by Sara
To: U.S. Congress
Sami Al-Haj is a cameraman for Al Jazeera who has been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. He was seized in December 2001 while on assignment covering the U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan, and was sent to Guantanamo in June 2002. He has been on a hunger strike for more than 230 days and is currently being force-fed using a painful procedure intended to discourage hunger strikes. He is reported to be in critical condition, both physically and mentally.
Sami, who is a Sudanese citizen, has not been charged with any crime. According to his lawyer, the military's interrogations of Sami have focused almost entirely on obtaining intelligence on Al Jazeera and its staff. All the known evidence suggests that Sami's incarceration is part of an ongoing U.S. campaign to punish Al Jazeera for its critical coverage of the Bush Administration and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This campaign makes a mockery of U.S. claims to support democratic principles of freedom of expression and freedom of the press throughout the world.
We demand the immediate release of Sami Al-Haj from Guantanamo and his safe return to Sudan.
We also request that Congress investigate possible violations of U.S. and international law by the Bush Administration in its campaign against Al Jazeera, including the six-year incarceration of Sami Al-Haj.
Sincerely,
Sign Petition
Q&A: 'War on Terror Served Iran's Interests Best'
Interview with Tariq Ali
IPS- Inter Press Service via uruknet.info
"......When IPS correspondent Aoun Abbas Sahi interviewed Ali, who was in Pakistan recently, the writer, known for his incisive political commentaries, explained why he believed U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan was doomed to fail from the start -- because of the Iran factor.
IPS: Who, according to you, is the main beneficiary of the United States-led 'war on terror’?
Tariq Ali (TA): Undoubtedly Iran. But then the Americans could not have occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and without Iran’s support. This is what no one likes talking about. Had the Iranians said, if you take Iraq we will fight you, the occupation probably would not have taken place. But the Iranians, who regarded the Taliban and Saddam Hussain as enemies, kept silent. The Americans thought, because the Iranians supported them before they went in, things would be fine. But the Iranians were opportunists. They had their own agenda and defended their own state interests -- just like the U.S. defends its state interests. These state interests are now clashing and so the U.S. is threatening Iran......."
IPS- Inter Press Service via uruknet.info
"......When IPS correspondent Aoun Abbas Sahi interviewed Ali, who was in Pakistan recently, the writer, known for his incisive political commentaries, explained why he believed U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan was doomed to fail from the start -- because of the Iran factor.
IPS: Who, according to you, is the main beneficiary of the United States-led 'war on terror’?
Tariq Ali (TA): Undoubtedly Iran. But then the Americans could not have occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and without Iran’s support. This is what no one likes talking about. Had the Iranians said, if you take Iraq we will fight you, the occupation probably would not have taken place. But the Iranians, who regarded the Taliban and Saddam Hussain as enemies, kept silent. The Americans thought, because the Iranians supported them before they went in, things would be fine. But the Iranians were opportunists. They had their own agenda and defended their own state interests -- just like the U.S. defends its state interests. These state interests are now clashing and so the U.S. is threatening Iran......."
Humiliated In The Shackles
By Sami al Hajj
(Sami Al-Haj is prisoner 345 at the United States Detainment Camp in Guantanamo Bay Cuba. Sami has been on hunger strike since 7th January, 2007 and is close to death. He was arrested in Pakistan in December 2001 while travelling with a legitimate visa to work in Afghanistan as a cameraman for Al Jazeera. He has been held in custody since then but no charges have been filed against him.)
When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,
Hot tears covered my face.
When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed
A message for my son.
Mohammad, I am afflicted.
In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.
The oppressors are playing with me,
As they move freely around the world.
They ask me to spy on my countrymen,
Claiming it would be a good deed.
They offer me money and land,
And freedom to go where I please.
Their temptations seize
My attention like lightning in the sky.
But their gift is an empty snake,
Carrying hypocrisy in its mouth like venom,
They have monuments to liberty
And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.
But I explained to them that
Architecture is not justice.
America, you ride on the backs of orphans,
And terrorize them daily.
Bush, beware.
The world recognizes an arrogant liar.
To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.
I am homesick and oppressed.
Mohammad, do not forget me.
Support the cause of your father, a God-fearing man.
I was humiliated in the shackles.
How can I now compose verses? How can I now write?
After the shackles and the nights and the suffering and the tears,
How can I write poetry?
My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish,
Violent with passion.
I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors'.
I am overwhelmed with apprehension.
Lord, unite me with my son Mohammad.
Lord, grant success to the righteous
Gaza's de facto government demolishes part of prison captured from Fatah
"Gaza – Ma'an – The de facto government of the Gaza Strip and the Hamas-affiliated Executive Force demolished a bloc of six prison cells at the central prison in Gaza City on Sunday.
The Hamas government said it destroyed the cells under the slogan "no more tyranny", to demonstrate Hamas' commitment to political freedom in the Gaza Strip. Hamas' forces took over the Saraya security service compound, where the prison is located, from Fatah's forces during fighting in June. He said the cells were 'old and inappropriate.'
The manager of the prison, Ali Humaid said, "The removal of the old cells was not meant to be decorative, yet it was a removal of what was contradictory to human dignity and law." "
It's Not About Oil, Stupid, but Flattening Arab and Muslim Countries
By Kurt Nimmo
"Now that he is retired, elderly, and has nothing to lose, former fed banking cartel don Alan Greenspan “has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil,” the Times Online reports. “In his long-awaited memoir,” Greenspan writes (or his ghost writer writes) that he is “saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Greenspan’s use of the adverb “largely” is deceptive. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, as Bush crime family intimate Philip Zelikow admitted, was about the “unstated threat” to Israel, that is to say Israel’s hegemony in the neighborhood. “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002. “And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.”......."
Sabra And Shatila
On massacres, atrocities and holocausts
by Sonja Karkar
Women for Palestine
"......The bigger picture
The length of time since these acts were carried out should be no impediment to exposing the truth. More than 60 years after the Nazi atrocities against the Jews in Europe, the world still mourns and remembers and erects monuments and museums to that violent holocaust. How they are done, to whom they are done and to how many does not make the crimes any more or less heinous. They can never be justified even on the strength of one state’s rationale that another people ought to be punished, or worse still, are simply inferior or worthless beings. It should lead all of us to question on whose judgment are such decisions made and how can we possibly justify such crimes at all?
The atrocities committed in the camps of Sabra and Shatila should be put in the context of an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. The MacBride report found that these atrocities “were not inconsistent with wider Israeli intentions to destroy Palestinian political will and cultural identity.” [17] Since Deir Yassin and the other massacres of 1948, those who survived have joined hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing a litany of massacres committed in 1953, 1967 and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and the killing is still going on today. Thus were the victims and survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacre gathered up in the perpetual nakba of the slaughtered, the dispossessed, the displaced and the discarded - a pattern of ethnic cleansing perpetrated under the Zionist plan to finally and forever extinguish Palestinian society and its people.
This is why we must remember Sabra and Shatila, twenty-five years on."
War Drums Beat With a French Accent
French FM: World must 'prepare for worst' in face of Iran crisis
"The world must "must prepare for the worst" - including the possibility of war - in light of the Iranian nuclear crisis, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Sunday.
"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," Kouchner said in an interview on LCI television and RTL radio.
Kouchner also said during the interview that France had advised its large companies not to respond to tenders in Iran and repeated a call for greater pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program......."
Iraq and Afghanistan Two Sides of Same Coin
by Haroon Siddiqui
The Toronto Star
"On the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Canadians have been inundated with what are largely American concerns.....
All this underscores the need for a holistic view of the world, difficult as it is amid the CNN-ization of our media and the Americanization of our politics under Stephen Harper.
America is mired in Iraq and we are mired in Afghanistan. Bush does not have a clear exit strategy there, nor does Harper in Afghanistan. The instincts of both are to keep the wars going and “win.” Yet neither quite knows how......
The problems are the policies.
More and more allies understand. Distancing itself from Washington, Britain has abandoned Basra city to the mercies of Shiite militias. The Germans and other NATO allies won’t join us in southern Afghanistan. Either they are cowards or they are smarter than us.
Unless Ottawa comes to grips with these realities, Harper will be spinning his wheels as much as Bush - at the expense of our troops, our international credibility and, more ominously, perhaps our security."
The Toronto Star
"On the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Canadians have been inundated with what are largely American concerns.....
All this underscores the need for a holistic view of the world, difficult as it is amid the CNN-ization of our media and the Americanization of our politics under Stephen Harper.
America is mired in Iraq and we are mired in Afghanistan. Bush does not have a clear exit strategy there, nor does Harper in Afghanistan. The instincts of both are to keep the wars going and “win.” Yet neither quite knows how......
The problems are the policies.
More and more allies understand. Distancing itself from Washington, Britain has abandoned Basra city to the mercies of Shiite militias. The Germans and other NATO allies won’t join us in southern Afghanistan. Either they are cowards or they are smarter than us.
Unless Ottawa comes to grips with these realities, Harper will be spinning his wheels as much as Bush - at the expense of our troops, our international credibility and, more ominously, perhaps our security."
Current Al-Jazeera (Arabic) Online Poll
The question is:
Do you see Iran as a threat to the region?
With about 1,300 responding so far, 65% said no.
Video: McCain To MoveOn: Get Out
"(CBS) Arizona Senator John McCain has taken criticism of anti-war group MoveOn.org to a whole new level: He is suggesting that the organization “ought to be thrown out of this country.”
The liberal advocacy group angered Republicans earlier this week with a full-page ad in the New York Times criticizing Gen. David Petraeus as he prepared to testify before Congress. The ad, which asserted that Petraeus was “cooking the books” on the situation in Iraq carried the headline, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?”....."
The liberal advocacy group angered Republicans earlier this week with a full-page ad in the New York Times criticizing Gen. David Petraeus as he prepared to testify before Congress. The ad, which asserted that Petraeus was “cooking the books” on the situation in Iraq carried the headline, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?”....."
Syria warns of US 'lies', NKorea dismiss nuclear links
"16/09/2007 Syrian official daily Ath-Thawra warned on Sunday that US "lies" over nuclear cooperation with North Korea could serve as a pretext for an attack on Syria following an Israeli violation of its airspace.
"Members of the choir have started up a new song that is full of hostility, this time about Syrian-Korean nuclear cooperation," the daily said. "This is a big lie... Syria is used to having to put up with such lies." "The United States and Israel need a file... after the recent violation of Syrian airspace by Israeli planes," Ath-Thawra said. "The latest accusation could be a prelude to more attacks on Syria." Ath-Thawra said "the occupation of Iraq was based on this kind of accusation," referring to former dictator Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction which were never found after the US-led invasion of 2003.
NKorean envoy dismisses Syria nuclear links
A senior North Korean diplomat has dismissed media reports that the communist state may be helping Syria build a nuclear facility, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said Sunday. "They often say things that are groundless," Kim Myong-Gil, the North's deputy UN mission chief, told Yonhap in the first official response to last week's reports about alleged cooperation between Pyongyang and Damascus. Both the New York Times and Washington Post reported, citing unnamed sources, that North Korea may be helping Syria build a nuclear weapons facility."
25 years on Sabra, Shatila Massacres (16-18 Sep. 1982)
Al-Manar special - Hanan Awarekeh
"16/09/2007 25 years have passed on the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon. 25 years of agony, memories and constant shock by the survivors of one of the worst Israeli carnage against unarmed Palestinian refugees.
June 1982, Israeli occupation forces commanded by then defense minister Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon and reached the capital Beirut. After two months of fighting, a cease-fire was negotiated through the mediation of United States envoy Philip Habib. The Palestine Liberation Organization withdrew from Lebanon under the terms of the reached agreement. The Palestinians were rendered powerless and helpless. On Wednesday 15 September, one day after the assassination of President-elect Bashir Gemayel (the founder of the Lebanese Forces), the Israeli army occupied West Beirut, "encircling and sealing" the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and announced that "2,000 terrorists" had remained inside.
Sharon had announced, on 9 July 1982, his intention to send the Phalanges Brigades into West Beirut, and in his autobiography he confirms having negotiated the operation that authorized the "Lebanese forces" to "mop up" Palestinian camps, during his meeting with Bashir Gemayel in Bikfaya. By dawn on 15 September 1982, Israeli fighter-bombers were flying low over West Beirut and Israeli troops had secured their entry. By midday, the camps of Sabra and Shatila were surrounded by Israeli tanks and soldiers.
By midday Thursday 16 September 1982, the Israeli military command gave the Lebanese Forces militia green light to enter the refugee camps. Shortly after 5pm, a unit of approximately 150 Lebanese Forces militiamen entered Shatila camp from the south and south-west. For the next 40 hours the Lebanese Forces militia raped, killed, and injured a large number of unarmed civilians, mostly children, women and elderly people inside the "encircled and sealed" camps. These actions, accompanied or followed by systematic roundups, backed or reinforced by the Israeli army, resulted in dozens of disappearances. The exact figure can never be determined because, in addition to the approximately 1,000 people who were buried in communal graves by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) or in the cemeteries of Beirut by members of their families, a large number of corpses were buried beneath buildings bulldozed by militiamen themselves.
The death toll is estimated between 2,500 and 3,500 civilians. The victims and survivors of the massacres have never been deemed entitled to a formal investigation of the tragedy.
The Israeli Knesset named a commission of inquiry, to be presided over by Yitzhak Kahan, in September 1982. In spite of the limitations of the Commission's mandate (limited because it was a political rather than a judicial mandate and because the voices and demands of the victims were completely ignored), the Commission concluded that Ariel Sharon was personally responsible for the massacres. Upon the insistence of the Commission, and the demonstrations that followed its report, Sharon resigned from his post of Minister of Defense but remained in the government as Minister without Portfolio.
The United Nations Security Council condemned the massacre with Resolution 521 (19 September 1982). This condemnation was followed by a 16 December 1982 General Assembly resolution qualifying the massacre as an "act of genocide."
Despite evidence of what the UN Security Council described as a "criminal massacre," and the ranking of the Sabra and Shatila massacres in humankind's collective memory as among the most heinous crimes of the 20th century, the man found "personally responsible" for this crime, as well as his associates and the people who carried out the massacres, have never been pursued or punished.
In 1984, Israeli journalists Schiff and Ya'ari concluded their chapter on the massacre with this sobering reflection: "If there is a moral to the painful episode of Sabra and Shatila, it has yet to be acknowledged." The reality of this impunity remains true to this day."
British academics warn US is preparing “shock and awe” attack on Iran
by Peter Symonds
Global Research, September 15, 2007
"An 80-page study written by two British security analysts and released on August 28 makes a chilling estimation of the overwhelming force that the US would use in the event of any attack on Iran. “The US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days, if not hours, of President George W. Bush giving the order,” the paper declared......
Both Plesch and Butcher have written extensively on security and international relations......But it did outline the Pentagon’s extensive preparations and examined probable US military strategies.
Plesch and Butcher assessed that any US military attack would not be limited to Iran’s nuclear facilities, but would aim to eliminate its ability to strike back by destroying its military capacities and economic infrastructure. “Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion.....
Plesch and Butcher analysed the available types of US bombers and conventional bombs and calculated that 100 strategic bombers, each with 100 “smart” bombs, would be enough to hit 10,000 individual targets. “This strike power alone is sufficient to destroy all major Iranian political, military, economic and transport capabilities,” the authors conclude. “Such a strike would take ‘shock and awe’ to a new level and leave Iran with few if any conventional military capabilities to block the straits of Hormuz or provide conventional military support to insurgents in Iraq.”......
The paper noted the existence of standing US war plans to counter any blockade of the strategic straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, and to seize the western Iranian province of Khurzestan, where the bulk of the country’s oil production occurs.......
Considering the question “how likely is an attack?” the authors pointed out: “The [US] administration has steadfastly refused to remove the military option from the table, and has continued to prepare to go to war. Congress rejected a proposal to require the president to consult it before going to war with Iran.” The study cited a number of menacing comments by senior Bush officials this year......
The authors rebutted many of the arguments commonly advanced as reasons why the US would not launch an attack on Iran. They assessed the likelihood of a compromise over Iran’s nuclear programs as “extremely remote” as “the United States refuses to offer any form of security guarantee to Iran, and indeed is actively engaged in attempts to undermine Iranian authorities.” As to the European Union’s attempts to broker a deal, “privately, and not so privately, senior US officials ... deride the EU’s efforts as futile.”
Responding to those who point out the US military is bogged down in Iraq and lacks troops, the study stated: “Army overstretch from long-term deployments in Iraq is a significant problem, but providing forces for a short duration war (following the pattern of the initial invasion of Iraq) would be much less of a problem. Iran has little ability for conventional military attack outside its own territory, allowing the US considerable scope to sit back and await internal developments after the type of attacks described in this paper.”
The paper also considers Iran’s capacity to retaliate in other ways, either directly against US allies like Israel and US bases or indirectly by encouraging unrest among Iraqi Shiites. The authors regarded such arguments as strengthening the military case for an overwhelming, rather than limited, US attack.....
The rather limited scope of the study only makes its conclusion all the more disturbing: the military preparations that would allow the Bush administration to reduce much of Iran to rubble at short notice have already been completed."
Global Research, September 15, 2007
"An 80-page study written by two British security analysts and released on August 28 makes a chilling estimation of the overwhelming force that the US would use in the event of any attack on Iran. “The US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days, if not hours, of President George W. Bush giving the order,” the paper declared......
Both Plesch and Butcher have written extensively on security and international relations......But it did outline the Pentagon’s extensive preparations and examined probable US military strategies.
Plesch and Butcher assessed that any US military attack would not be limited to Iran’s nuclear facilities, but would aim to eliminate its ability to strike back by destroying its military capacities and economic infrastructure. “Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion.....
Plesch and Butcher analysed the available types of US bombers and conventional bombs and calculated that 100 strategic bombers, each with 100 “smart” bombs, would be enough to hit 10,000 individual targets. “This strike power alone is sufficient to destroy all major Iranian political, military, economic and transport capabilities,” the authors conclude. “Such a strike would take ‘shock and awe’ to a new level and leave Iran with few if any conventional military capabilities to block the straits of Hormuz or provide conventional military support to insurgents in Iraq.”......
The paper noted the existence of standing US war plans to counter any blockade of the strategic straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, and to seize the western Iranian province of Khurzestan, where the bulk of the country’s oil production occurs.......
Considering the question “how likely is an attack?” the authors pointed out: “The [US] administration has steadfastly refused to remove the military option from the table, and has continued to prepare to go to war. Congress rejected a proposal to require the president to consult it before going to war with Iran.” The study cited a number of menacing comments by senior Bush officials this year......
The authors rebutted many of the arguments commonly advanced as reasons why the US would not launch an attack on Iran. They assessed the likelihood of a compromise over Iran’s nuclear programs as “extremely remote” as “the United States refuses to offer any form of security guarantee to Iran, and indeed is actively engaged in attempts to undermine Iranian authorities.” As to the European Union’s attempts to broker a deal, “privately, and not so privately, senior US officials ... deride the EU’s efforts as futile.”
Responding to those who point out the US military is bogged down in Iraq and lacks troops, the study stated: “Army overstretch from long-term deployments in Iraq is a significant problem, but providing forces for a short duration war (following the pattern of the initial invasion of Iraq) would be much less of a problem. Iran has little ability for conventional military attack outside its own territory, allowing the US considerable scope to sit back and await internal developments after the type of attacks described in this paper.”
The paper also considers Iran’s capacity to retaliate in other ways, either directly against US allies like Israel and US bases or indirectly by encouraging unrest among Iraqi Shiites. The authors regarded such arguments as strengthening the military case for an overwhelming, rather than limited, US attack.....
The rather limited scope of the study only makes its conclusion all the more disturbing: the military preparations that would allow the Bush administration to reduce much of Iran to rubble at short notice have already been completed."
Norman Finkelstein's Speaking Engagements
Oct 15: Los Angeles, CA
UCLA
Oct 20-21: Kyoto, JAPAN
Doshisha University
Oct 23: Oxford, ENGLAND
The Oxford Union
Nov 15: Los Angeles, CA
University of Southern California
Nov 29: Ottawa, Canada
Parliament Hill
The Iraq That George Has "Liberated": Ethnic violence forces more Arabs to flee Kirkuk
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
"KIRKUK, 16 September 2007 (IRIN) - Iraqi Arab residents of the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, some 250km from Baghdad, say scores of Arab families are fleeing the city as ethnic violence increases there.
“The attacks on our community have worsened since February 2007. We are being forced to leave the city almost empty-handed and the government isn’t taking any action to support us,” said Ali Akram Mahmoud, a spokesperson for Kirkuk’s Arabs Association (KAA), formed in 2003 with the aim of safeguarding the rights of Arabs who had settled in the city.
“The number of [Arab] families fleeing the city has increased by 20 percent on previous years. Their flight will seriously affect the upcoming referendum in which Kurds will have a majority not because of their numbers but because, with guns in their hands, they will have forced all Arabs to flee the city. It is absolutely unfair,” he said.......
A local Iraq Red Crescent senior official, who prefers anonymity for security reasons, said since June 2007 at least 2,000 Arab families had fled Kirkuk. “Hundreds of families are fleeing the city without their belongings.” They had been forced to search for displacement camps and many had joined the nearly one million displaced families in southern governorates, whilst others were staying on roadsides or in poor areas, he said.
In a local police station IRIN witnessed dozens of families begging for help from police after being forced from their homes by Kurdish militias. They were all told the same thing - that they could not be given individual protection and that they would be best advised to find more secure accommodation in southern Iraq......."
Articles of faith
When two eminent US scholars wrote about the 'Israel lobby' they were vilified by colleagues and the Washington Post. This week Barack Obama joined the attack. Ed Pilkington hears their story
Saturday September 15, 2007
The Guardian
"Given the reception John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt received for their London Review of Books essay last year on what they called the Israel Lobby, it would have been understandable had they crawled away to a dark corner of their respective academic institutions to lick their wounds. Their argument that US foreign policy has been distorted by the stultifying power of pro-Israeli groups and individuals was met with a firestorm of protest that has smouldered ever since......
Given the battering he has taken, Walt is remarkably upbeat. "We were surprised by how nasty it got," says the Harvard professor. "The David Duke reference, the neo-Nazi websites - these were intended to smear us and swing attention on to us rather than to what we were saying. It wasn't pleasant, but it never made me doubt what we had written or doubt myself." Standing tall in the face of attack is one thing; to raise your head above the parapet for a second round is quite another. But that is what the Mearsheimer/Walt double act are doing: they have gone on the offensive with the publication of a book-length version of their original treatise......
There is one obvious question to put to Walt: why do it to yourself? Wasn't one stoning enough? "We did ask ourselves, did we want to go through this again?" he admits, but only to add: "It didn't take us all that long to figure out we had more to say and it was our job to say it."
By writing a 496-page book, as opposed to the original article's mere 13,000 words, the authors hope to present a more nuanced version of their case. They have taken in new examples to support their thesis, notably the second Lebanon war, which broke out in the interim, and have sought to address some of the points raised by critics.
.....But from the 1960s onwards the relationship deepened to the extent that today American and Israeli interests are deemed by many Americans to be essentially identical. The authors ask why this is the case, and argue that strategically there is no reason for it......
But the authors have brought into the open aspects of American intellectual life that needed airing. They cast light on the overweening activities of specific pro-Israeli groups, most importantly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Aipac is a self-avowed lobby (it calls itself America's pro-Israel lobby) and has been ranked the second most powerful such body in the US.......
.....Walt and Mearsheimer have also put their finger on the limits of acceptable discourse in the US. It is notable that none of the candidates standing for president in 2008 have a word of criticism for Israeli state behaviour; this week Barack Obama pulled an advert for his campaign from the Amazon page selling The Israel Lobby, denouncing the book as "just wrong".
So what happened to America's commitment to free speech, the First Amendment? "We knew from De Tocqueville this country is driven by conformity," Judt says. "The law can't make people speak out - it can only prevent people from stopping free speech. What's happened is not censorship, but self-censorship." Judt believes that a few well-organised groups including Aipac have succeeded in proscribing debate. He recalls a prominent Democratic senator confiding to him that he would never criticise Israel in public. "He told me that if he did so, for the rest of his career he would never be able to get a majority for what he cared about. He would be cut off at the knees."
In the final chapter of the book, Walt and Mearsheimer make a shopping list of reforms. They call for: a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis; greater separation of US foreign policy from Israel for both nations' sake; and campaign finance reform to reduce the power of pro-Israeli groups.
Nothing outlandish, or even controversial, there. Coming at the end of such a bumpy ride of claim and counter-claim, the conclusion feels almost disappointingly gentle. That in itself bears eloquent witness to the state of affairs in America today, where thoughts considered unremarkable elsewhere are deemed beyond the pale."
Moran Upsets Jewish Groups Again
U.S. House Democrat Said Pro-Israel Lobby Promoted War
"Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) has again come under fire from local Jewish organizations for remarking in a magazine interview that the "extraordinarily powerful" pro-Israel lobby played a strong role promoting the war in Iraq.
In an interview with Tikkun, a California-based Jewish magazine, Moran said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is "the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. I don't think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful -- most of them are quite wealthy -- they have been able to exert power."
Moran's remarks were criticized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the National Jewish Democratic Council. Ronald Halber, executive director of the first group, said Moran's remarks are anti-Semitic and draw on ugly stereotypes about Jewish wealth, power and influence......."
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