Democracy for Vancouver » Israel

Rob Kall’s Spring Cleaning – Let’s Renew Ourselves

John — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:22:02 +0000

As Rob says, “Think Big”. You can read the whole article with detailed explanations here:

Put all unemployed workers and their families on medicare.
End Unemployment. Give ten million unemployed people jobs.
Military Re-do
End drug laws that involve victimless crimes. End the marijuana laws
Throw out the USA’s participation in the WTO, the WB, NAFTA, CAFTA
Throw out Corporate Personhood
Open up or eliminate the Fed
Regulate banks and the finance industry aggressively
Identify and eliminate too big to fail companies
Get the FCC to set Cable News Fairness Regulations
Switch to paper ballot records nationally
Take a look at the US diet
Pass legislation that ends unequal treatment of everyone
Start funding the policy development and advocacy think tanks like the right has
Pass a bill, using reconciliation, adding the Grayson amendment, that allows anyone to buy into Medicare
Offer serious funding and laws empowering feasibility and pilot studies of new models of health care
Fund a Communications Effectiveness Agency directed by the President
Identify the ten most pressing environmental issues
Fix the textbook system
Play Hardball with Right Wing Israelis and AIPAC
Salvage and Re-invent Journalism
Investigate and Prosecute

Sounds like a contract for a new America to me. Seems as though we are actually making some progress on a few of these goals, albeit very slowly.

The Progressive Revolution

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyu6UdN6pE8

an (un)likely story

missy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:10:18 +0000

thank any of the other “official” stories that have been coming out about the disappearance of that Russian freighter a few weeks ago. If you haven’t been following the story, here’s the background:

WHO: The Arctic Sea and its crew of 15
WHAT: On July 24, the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea radioed that it had been boarded by gunmen posing as law enforcement officers off the coast of Sweden, and its 15 Russian crew members had been tied up and beaten. The ship then sailed into the English Channel with its load of Finnish timber, while making routine communications with British maritime authorities, before slipping off the radar.
WHY IT HAPPENED: European shipping officials are becoming increasingly suspicious that modern-day piracy on the high seas has spread to Europe from the lawless waters of East Africa — although the worldwide recession has also sparked an increase in maritime insurance fraud.
WHAT’S BEING DONE: Five Russian naval vessels — reported to include nuclear submarines — have been dispatched to search for the missing freighter. Finnish police are also helping.

This seems a much more likely explanation than a pirate attack on a vessel carrying lumber in the North Sea off the coast of Sweden (unheard of in this day and age):

Maritime expert flees Russia over Artic Sea reporting
An outspoken Russian journalist who alerted the world to the mysterious disappearance and likely hijacking of the Arctic Sea cargo ship this summer said on Thursday he’d fled Russia in fear of his life.
Mikhail Voitenko, a maritime expert, has suggested the ship may have been carrying a secret Kremlin arms shipment for the Middle East. He believes it was not hijacked as the Kremlin contends but was intercepted by Israeli forces in an international incident neither country wants made public.
In a phone interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said he’d flown to Turkey on Wednesday after receiving a menacing call from a “a cold official voice” the previous day.
The Kremlin has yet to supply a detailed version of events, the crew has refused to say what happened, and the alleged hijackers are in a Moscow jail.

With the Russians and the Israelis involved, I’m surprised that the “official” story didn’t involve gay alien pirates.

so hamas would be justified in assassinating israel’s top scientists?

missy — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:32:12 +0000

Another example of Israeli exceptionalism:

Israel is assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists as part of its efforts to disrupt the Islamist regime’s illicit weapons program, the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday quoted Western intelligence sources as saying.
…
The paper also quoted United States intelligence sources as saying Israel is using sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the Islamist republic’s illicit weapons program as an alternative to direct military strikes.
The British daily said Israel’s Mossad espionage agency was rumored to be behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran’s Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from a reported “gas poisoning” in 2007.
Other recent deaths of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and Europe have been the result of Israeli “hits”, intended to deprive Tehran of key technical skills at the head of the program, according to analysts.
…[T]he new U.S. administration is unlikely to sanction an air attack on Iran’s nuclear installations and that President Barack Obama’s offer to extend a hand of peace to Tehran puts any direct military action beyond reach for now.
…
“Disruption is designed to slow progress on the program, done in such a way that they don’t realize what’s happening. You are never going to stop it,” a former CIA officer on Iran told the newspaper.
“The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach. We certainly don’t want the current Iranian government to have those weapons. It’s a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks,” the official said.

Can you imagine the outcry if Saddam Hussein had poisoned scientists working at Los Alamos, or if Kim Jong Il had ordered the kidnapping of South Korean nuclear physicists? We would consider either an overt act of war.

A few imprecise and rarely fatal rockets that are barely more than toys when measured against the U.S.-funded Israeli arsenal are shot out of Gaza, the Israelis go batshit and kill 1,500 civilians, and the U.S. government calls it justified self-defense. The worldwide intelligence consensus is that Iran’s nuclear weapons program ceased in 2003, but Israeli extrajudicial assassinations of Iranian scientists is met with less than a shrug. “You are never going to stop it.” Funny how that’s never our attitude when it’s an Arab or a Muslim claiming self-defense.

Is it any wonder the whole of the Arab world despises Israel, and considers the U.S. position as an “honest broker” in any Israel/Palestine peace process to be a sick joke?

Sign the Public Letter to President Obama

John — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:43:43 +0000

GAZA, GAZA STRIP - NOVEMBER 25:

Dear Mr. President,

Last year, you were swept into office on the hopeful promise of redemptive change. You inspired the nation by repeating the phrase, “together, we will change the world.” For many Americans, your words were not merely the final lines of a campaign speech, but a call to action for a new historical moment.

Nowhere is that call more urgently needed than in the troubled land of Israel and Palestine, where U.S. policy for the last 60 years has tragically and dramatically failed. Since 1967, the United States has granted Israel more than $100 billion worth of our country’s weapons and funds. To what end? Israel is now better armed, but less secure, than it was 40 years ago. Even those Americans who purport to support “Israel’s security” must question whether Israel’s means matches their own ethics and ends.

And what of the Palestinian people? For more than 60 years, they have lived as second-class citizens, subject to Israeli laws that discriminate against them on the basis of their ethnic and religious status. For more than 40 years, more than 3.5 million Palestinians have lived under the occupation of a foreign military power. Not one Palestinian born in the West Bank or Gaza Strip under the age of 40 has ever known the sweet taste of freedom. As Bob Dylan once asked, “How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?”

His subsequent question stands as a moral challenge to every American: “And how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?” There comes a time when turned heads must be straightened, when closed eyes must be opened, when guarded thoughts must be spoken, when muted voices must be raised, when the sound of silence must be broken. That time is now. The time for a change has come.

As Americans, the change that we seek is a policy toward Israel and Palestine that upholds the interests and ideals of the American people and that includes the incorporation of three interdependent principles:

First, the United States should support the freedom and equal rights of the Palestinian people by conditioning our country’s economic and military assistance to Israel on Israel’s complete withdrawal of its soldiers and settlers from occupied Palestinian land and the reversal of Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian Christians and Muslims. As a result of what some have called the United States’ “special relationship” with Israel, we are uniquely positioned to assist the people of Israel in achieving the existential security that so many have so long sought. But we do Israelis, Palestinians and Americans no favor by simply granting Israel’s government our weapons and funds without insisting that it uphold our interests and ideals.

Second, the United States should support those Israelis that have already made peace with their Palestinian neighbors. No longer can we maintain blind faith in Israel’s political leaders, whose soaring words about pursuing peace with the Palestinian people have been rendered hollow by their shameful deeds in violating the basic rights of the Palestinian people. The United States must instead support those Israelis whose words about peace are rendered authentic by their heroic deeds in pursuing peace, from standing against the demolition of Palestinian homes to helping rebuild them, from working against the uprooting of Palestinian trees to helping replant them, from documenting abuses of Palestinian human rights to physically and legally challenging them. While their numbers today are small, their potential is large. And, in the famous words of Margaret Mead, “a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Help us to transform the moral authority of this small group into a mass movement, for when people lead, governments follow. So it will be in Israel.

And third, the United States should support those Palestinians who seek freedom and equality through nonviolent actions against Israel’s occupation and discriminatory laws. No longer can we reflexively support unelected, but ideologically and tactically expedient, political leaders and violently oppose elected, but ideologically and tactically bankrupt, political factions. In doing both, we undermine our country’s claim to stand for democracy and good governance the world over. There is a third way – there are Palestinians seeking freedom and equality through nonviolent means. Help us to transform the potential of this important group into political power and that political power into permanent peace, for when people lead, governments follow. So it will be in Palestine.

These are principles that the overwhelming majority of Americans can support, principles that will lay the foundation for equality in Israel and Palestine, peace in the Middle East and sustainable security for the peoples of the United States, Israel, the Middle East and beyond. These are the principles on which we will build a great new American movement – an American Movement for Palestinian Rights.

We know that we stand on the right side of history; we believe that the American people will stand by our side; and we hope that you will join us.

Sincerely,

Sign the Petition

Chomsky on Gaza

John — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:56:24 +0000

little tommy is at it again

missy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:39:27 +0000

Read Yglesias and weep.

Because Thomas Friedman is considered a serious thinker by The Village idiots.

i’m guessing they’ll pull out of gaza at 11:59 on tuesday

missy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:55:20 +0000

Will Obama’s U.N. Ambassador abstain on a war crimes vote on this?

The latest fighting overshadowed a visit to Israel where the secretary general was supposed to be exploring efforts to establish a ceasefire in Gaza.
In some of the most intense ground combat of the 20-day-old assault on Gaza, Israeli tanks powered into the southern suburb of Tel el Howa clashing with Palestinian militants firing rockets.
The tanks advanced under a barrage of artillery and mortar fire that struck the al Quds, al Fata and al Wafa hospitals.
There were unconfirmed reports that Shifa, Gaza City’s biggest hospital, was on fire after being struck by Israeli shells.
Israel has repeatedly claimed Hamas commanders are hiding in Shifa although it has provided no evidence to support this.
A tower block housing various media groups including the Gaza offices of Reuters was shelled, injuring two employees of an Arabic television network.
The French government issued a forthright condemnation of Israel’s actions.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the bombings this morning by the Israeli army of several hospitals and a building housing international media in Gaza city,” Eric Chevallier, spokesman for the French foreign ministry in Paris, said.
“We condemn with equal strength the bombing that hit the headquarters of the UN in Gaza, injuring three staff members.
[U.N. Secretary General] Ban said Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, had assured him the incident had been “a grave mistake” which was being taken “very seriously”.
“He assured me that extra caution will be given to UN facilities and stuff and that this will not be repeated,” he said.

Shifa Hospital is where Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert has been working during the current Israeli assault on Gaza:

I think it’s important to understand that the most devastating weapon they are currently using is actually the siege of Gaza, which has been on for eighteen months, which means a lot of starvation, lack of food, water, power supplies, medicines, napkins, anything that people need to live. So it’s one-and-a-half million people who basically is now without their absolutely necessary means for living their lives, and that is, of course, illegal.
…
When it comes to the DIME [dense inert metal explosive] weapons, we have seen a substantial number of amputations, where the amputees do not have shrapnel injuries. On the contrary, they have torn apart their legs, often one or two or even three limbs, their arm also. Some of them are beyond salvage, because the amputations are so high and so fierce that it also affects the lower part of the body. Some are survivable. But typical for these amputations is that there is no sign of metal fragments or shrapnel..
The additional effect in animal studies on the DIME weapon is that the residuals in the muscle in mice will cause a very severe form of muscle cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, which easily spreads to the lungs. This remains to be shown.

In case they weren’t successful killing you the first time around.

Back to Dr. Gilbert:

The condition in Shifa Hospital and in the other hospitals in Gaza is horrifying. I’ve been to Gaza for the last ten years, in and out, teaching and training people in the medical field. I’ve never seen anything like this. I mean, all windows in the Shifa Hospital are out, due to the bombing of the mosque across the street. They have very unstable electricity. They lack supplies, disposables, surgical equipment, trolleys, beds even. They have a fantastic staff, who are working heroically to save their patients, but we have been doing surgery with, almost regularly, two patients in each OR, on the wall, on the floor, in the corridors. The lifts are barely working. The ICU had to triple its capacity with makeshift ICUs.
It is really, truly a scene from Dante’s Inferno. It is these loads of patients coming in. We had 120, 130 patients coming a day, children, women. And I would say approximately 90 percent—I repeat, 90 percent—of the killed and injured that we have seen are civilians. Up ’til yesterday, 971 people have been killed; of them, one of three is a child below eighteen. 4,500 injuries, as of yesterday at 4:00; among them, every second is a woman or a child. So this is really targeting civilian Palestinian population. And we had a large number of pediatric cases with head injuries, with complicated fractures—

This is your foreign policy on Bush.

Five more days…

“every person who doesn’t have to be hurt in gaza helps us and helps you.”

missy — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:18:23 +0000

Jon leads us to the Electronic Intifada, where even prank calls are tools of resistance:

EI: I saw one of the flyers you dropped on Gaza.
Israeli officer: Oh yes that’s right …
EI: I have some information for you on members of terrorist groups that are in Gaza.
Israeli officer: Oh I hope so…
EI: We’re on the same side against terrorism … I have names for you too, if that will help you at all.
Israeli officer: Of course that will be helpful.
EI: You don’t know what the terrorists are doing here in Gaza and we want to be saved from them …
…
EI: But you know the terrorist groups are all over the Strip. I mean there’s no place in the Strip where there aren’t terrorists. They’re all over the place.
Israeli officer: You just wait. We’ll get to them, you’ll see.
EI: But as you know, it’s not easy for one to talk from Gaza, to give you information, it’s not an easy thing.
Israeli officer: Look … your assistance to us will end up helping you too. Every person who doesn’t have to be hurt in Gaza helps us and helps you. We benefit and you benefit. We want to destroy this Hamas leadership who are hiding, afraid for their lives. They are hiding and others are being killed because of them. What are we fighting each other for? Over nothing!
EI: Ok, let’s talk … let me give you some of the information and then we’ll talk some more. Do you have a pen?
Israeli officer: Yes. I have a pen and I’m writing.
EI: I want to give you names of the biggest terrorist organizations, not just in Gaza, but in all Palestine.
Israeli officer: Ok, let’s see
…
EI: All of them are people … you’ll see. The first one, his name is Ehud Barak [Israeli minister of defense].
Israeli officer: Ehud Barak? By God there’s no one like you …
EI: Second, Gabi Ashkenazi [Israeli army chief of staff]
Israeli officer: Do you know him?
EI: Of course. The third one is…
Israeli officer: Wait a minute, one at a time …
EI: No write it down, I don’t have time. The third one is called Ehud Olmert [Israeli prime minister].
Israeli officer: Look, just a minute …
…
Israeli officer: You know what I think? I think you’re not from the Strip.
…
EI: Didn’t I just tell you that there were a number of terrorists in the strip? Record it. There’s a group of terrorists. They’re the biggest terrorists in the world. They call themselves the “Israeli Defense Force” but they’re not defending anyone. They’re a terrorist gang.
Israeli officer: You know …
EI: A terrorist, sectarian, racist gang.
Israeli officer: I just want to say a few words to you …
EI: OK, talk, but I can’t hear you very clearly because of the noise of the terrorists bombs and rockets …
Israeli officer: Ah, terrorist bombs and rockets? I understand what you’re getting at …
Israeli officer:… let me say a few words to you. Look, I’m a Jew and I’m from the Israeli Defense Forces. But unlike you, my great, great, great grandfathers were all born here, going back thousands of years. We never left the country. You Palestinians have never been a nation. The Palestinians settled here recently, only a short time ago. What’s that got to do with me?
EI: Ok, the person who wants to help the people of Gaza talks like that about the Palestinians? You deny their existence?
Israeli officer: Look, I’ll tell you …
EI: You really want to help the Palestinians and this is what you say?
…

Any Israeli who can ask “What’s this got to do with me?” – about Gaza, especially – is a sociopath. (See, e.g., Bush, George W.)

how many more will die before obama takes office?

missy — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:27:09 +0000

Bush’s Alfred E. Neuman impersonation is costing dozens of lives daily. Yes, we have only one president at a time, but I would feel a bit better if Obama stood up and said, “The carnage in Gaza is appalling, and I have asked President Bush to do all he can to stop it in his remaining weeks in office.”

The European Union remains incapable of persuading Israel to halt its war on Hamas and fill a gaping diplomatic vacuum as the world awaits a new U.S. president, experts said Tuesday.
As the conflict rages in the impoverished Gaza Strip, the EU has continued to do what it has always done best — offer humanitarian aid — but has been unable to fill the void as it holds no political leverage over U.S. ally Israel.
With a troika of envoys just leaving, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy still in the Middle East, the EU is showing “energy and creativity,” according to a Norwegian diplomat who helped negotiate the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
“But I think we also have to be aware of some facts of reality,” said the diplomat, Jan Egeland, who now heads the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
He said the United States “is duty-bound to push, and broker, and facilitate with all their might and influence over Israel” to push any peace efforts forward.
“The EU is in all my evening prayers,” he said. “We hope that they can broker something but … I don’t see the EU being able to make either Israel or Hamas change their behaviour.”
He insisted that only coordinated international pressure led by Washington, but including Russia and China, on the main regional players — Israel, Egypt and Iran — could really be efficient.

Janes Defense Weekly is estimating that Israel will stop its offensive within 10 days. Nice that they’re keeping the slaughter to a tight political schedule.

This murderous rampage will end up just like Lebanon in 2006: hundreds and perhaps thousands dead among those on the receiving end of Israel’s wrath, a few Israeli casualties, and only greater support for militants in Gaza.

Either the Israelis are incredibly stupid, or politics has once again trumped human life.

And, once again, Bush is handmaiden to an illegal war on illegally occupied ground.

Pelosi and Reid Must Go

John — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:42:13 +0000

Just read this from Judith Shattuck, the Washington State Coordinator of the Progressive Democrats of America. Nice to be reminded there are many others that see what I see, think what I think and feel what I feel:

My note to Pelosi ….
Quoting: Pelosi: US must stand strongly with Israel Published: 12.28.08, 03:13 / Israel News …Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi issued a statement concerning the Israeli operation in Gaza in which she wrote that “When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally.” According to Pelosi, “Peace between Israelis and Palestinians cannot result from daily barrages of rocket and mortar fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza. Hamas and its supporters must understand that Gaza cannot and will not be allowed to be a sanctuary for attacks on Israel.” (Yitzhak Benhorin, Washington) …
Ms. Pelosi,
All I can say is, your statement is appalling. Quite literally, upon reading this statement I (A.) lost my stomach, and (B.) cried. Get a CLUE. The world will not allow apartheid nor extermination to continue. America must ragain its moral leadership. Israel has found a way to rid itself of the Palestinian problem and is exercising the solution…extermination and removal. Israel has created it’s own Auschwitz in Gaza. You make me puke. I have never spoken so bluntly and sharply to an elected official, and fellow Democrat. I am known for my forbearance and my insistence upon respectful dialogue. But, your unbelievable nonsense is all I can take. You don’t deserve my deference or my respect. Mark my words, you and your ilk will be swept aside in short order. The people have spoken their desire for change. The world watched and celebrated in anticipation of change. If you (and the Obama administration) don’t heed the call for peace, justice, and moral, responsible leadership, it will be unfortunate.
Judith Shattuck

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cydRpiFI4fc

Now how do we get rid of these elected leaders again when most of us blindly vote the party incumbent over the person? We need a campaign system that levels the playing field and enables more candidates to challenge incumbents and win. One of the ways this is done is by voluntarily (until Buckley v. Valeo is overturned) equalizing the funds available to all qualified candidates. Sound familiar?

dedication

missy — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:47:33 +0000

That’s what “Hanukkah” means. And for the last eight nights, my husband, son and I, though atheists all, have lit the menorah and remembered the cleansing of the Temple by the Maccabees, which is especially meaningful now given the housecleaning soon to come to our own federal government.

Go ahead and throw Chimpy and Pickles out with the bathwater. And Dick. And Condi.

For while our little family was celebrating the human capacity to change and grow, to bring peace and compassion to one’s community and therefore to the larger world, with a renewed dedication to goals large and small, Israel was pounding the already shattered Gaza strip into bloody talus.

This is the direct and – for those with half a brain and without a love of power that necessarily excludes the rights or lives of strangers (especially swarthy ones) – completely foreseeable result of BushCo’s demand for elections in the Palestinian territories when every member of Fatah was as mobbed up as Sinatra and as corrupt as Blagojevich, and Hamas was the only group providing the basic services of government (including healthcare*) for the too-long-bereft Palestinians.

If Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and yes, even St. Colin of the Ersatz Anthrax, had dedicated themselves to the turning back the clock thirty years in the Middle East, on an altar of soldiers’ lost limbs and infants’ skulls and the entrails of war widows, they could not have done a better job. Feeble Palestinian rockets plink Israel, while that nuclear locked-n-loaded nation lashes out with all the hellfire of American military materiel, following their disastrous 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon – their last “war to the bitter end“:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel obliterated symbols of Hamas power on the third day of what the defense minister described Monday as a “war to the bitter end,” striking next to the Hamas premier’s home, and devastating a security compound and a university building.
The three-day death toll rose to at least 315 by Monday morning, with some 1,400 wounded. The U.N. said at least 51 of the dead were civilians, and medics said eight children under the age of 17 were killed in two separate strikes overnight. Israel launched its campaign, the deadliest against Palestinians in decades, on Saturday in retaliation for rocket fire aimed at civilians in southern Israeli towns.
Since then, the number of Israeli troops on the Gaza border has doubled and the Cabinet approved the call-up of 6,500 reserve soldiers.
The strikes have driven Hamas leaders into hiding and appear to have gravely damaged the organization’s ability to launch rockets, but barrages continued. Sirens warning of incoming rockets sent Israelis scrambling for cover throughout the day.
One medium-range rocket fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon killed an Arab construction worker there Monday and wounded several others. He was the second Israeli killed since the beginning of the offensive.

What a great way to wrap up the last Hanukkah that will see BushCo in office. Israel couldn’t have given them a more appropriate send-off, and likely undertook their offensive now to get in under the wire before a more balanced but still ridiculously pro-Israel** Obama administration comes into office.

Combine that with a ridiculously volatile crude oil market, Baghdad becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tehran while car bombs still explode all over the ethnically- and religiously- liberated Iraq, Pakistan a nuclear-armed semi-anarchy, Afghanistan as poor and battered as when the Soviets left and we abandoned the Afghans to our well-armed warlords, and China is able to give us a hearty “fuck-you” over Darfur because they hold the paper that has allowed us to turn much of the region into our own private port-o-let.

And that bitter trail of wreckage, my friends, could not have been accomplished without true dedication to the task.

Now all we have to figure out is Why.

My heart begs that the answer not be as simple as the bullying that comes so easily to sociopaths unsure of their manhood.

But my head knows better. And I weep for what has been done in my name.

*How’s that for irony?

**Please look for my maiden name, “Porges,” on the rolls of those murdered at Terezin before you call me an anti-Semite. The only problem with Israel is that it would have been much better if located somewhere between Berlin and Moscow, in the heart of pre-War pogrom territory, rather than fenced to Holocaust survivors after being passed as stolen goods from hand to hand for hundreds of years.

the mustache of preemption and punishment strikes again

missy — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:06:03 +0000

I had to run some errands for work this morning, and so caught John Bolton making the case for bombing Iran on Thom Hartmann’s program.

But before we get to Bolton’s peculiar madness, the EU has, today, succumbed to Bush & Cheney’s warmongering illogic, demanding that Iran to submit to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1696 requiring Iran to stop all processing of fissile material even though the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, clearly allows nations to develop civilian nuclear power.

So, the double standard holds once again: everyone but the U.S. and Israel must obey U.N. mandates:

Washington and Brussels promised to “fully and effectively” implement existing UN security council resolutions on Iran’s nuclear activities, warning also they were “ready to supplement those sanctions with additional measures”.
Later, the EU’s external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, said these could include moves to freeze bank assets.
“We want to indeed show to Iranians that we mean it very seriously … [We are] particularly thinking of asset freezes of banks,” she told reporters.
Bush … said Tehran must transparently end uranium enrichment if it wanted closer ties.
“They can either face isolation, or they can have better relations with all of us,” he said, adding: “Now’s the time for all of us to work together to stop them.”

So, the U.S. and E.U. have weighed in; but what does the International Atomic Energy Agency say?

[T]he IAEA’s technical report and the interpretations of its findings are spinning into an overheated strategic standoff between Western nations, Israel, and Iran that, analysts say, may become reason for a military strike against Iran.
Even as Europeans expect to offer Iran an upgraded incentive package to suspend uranium enrichment in the coming weeks, analysts say that cherry-picking of quotes and Western spin, coupled with “breathless” media reporting about Iranian recalcitrance, could point in a nondiplomatic direction.
…
At issue in Vienna is the meaning of 18 documents that point to secret weaponization work, which the IAEA calls “alleged studies.” Most were provided by US intelligence but were only shown, not given, to the IAEA and to Iran, which dismisses them as fakes.
Those studies “remain a matter of serious concern,” and Iran “has not yet agreed to implement all the transparency measures required to clarify this cluster of allegations,” IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the agency’s 35-member board of governors when they convened on Monday.
….The IAEA, he added, “has not seen indications of the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies.”
…
“Perhaps it’s like Iraq, where the intelligence wasn’t shared because the intelligence wasn’t there,” says [a Western diplomat in Vienna close to the IAEA]. “Certainly there are some people who say this is getting a bit like the pre-Iraq war. [When] finally the inspectors were there and investigated, of course none of the claims stood up.”

Anyone hungry for some Niger yellowcake?

So, back to the Mustachioed One. According to Bolton, the U.S. (and/or Israel) does not need proof of Iranian nuclear enrichment beyond the confines of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Neither does the U.S. (and/or Israel) need an overt threat to enrich weapons-grade uranium or pursue a nuclear weapon. The U.S. (and/or Israel) doesn’t even need the blessing of the U.N. to go beyond the sanctions outlined in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1696.

Why?

Because all the U.S. (and/or Israel) needs to Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran is the concern that Iran might be attempting to enrich uranium to weapons grade. Because that, to Bolton, is justifiable self-defense. The attenuated threat is there.

So, Mr. Bolton, you have just made a much less attenuated threat to attack a sovereign nation which has done nothing to provoke a military response under the internationally-recognized understanding of what constitutes self-defense.

By your own logic, why would Iran not preempt the U.S. from making such a first strike?

It may be suicidal, yes. But, under your own very broad definition of self-defense, that would not make it any less justifiable.

Unless, of course, your real justification is Might Makes Right, also known as “fuck the brown people, we need another election-year war.”

kucinich was right

missy — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:32:29 +0000

The man needs professional help – he seems to think he’s William Wallace:

[T]his concept of stability has — in other words, that foreign policy ought to promote stability as opposed to freedom has led to dangers, and that the only way to solve America’s long-term security needs is to remember that the enemy that we face can only recruit when there’s hopelessness and despair; and that liberty has got the capacity to transform societies from hopeless societies to hopeful societies; and that this administration will continue to press the freedom agenda; and obviously, that freedom agenda is being tested in places like Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian Territories and Afghanistan.

So, we’ve freed Iraqis by invading and occupying their country, and the Iraqis fighting against us are against freedom?

We’ve freed Afghanistan by abandoning the country to the Taliban while we invaded Iraq?

We freed Lebanon by failing to condemn the Israeli incursion of 2006?

We freed the Palestinian territories by cutting off funding after Hamas won free and fair elections?

That Freedom Agenda is something else.

[emphasis added.]

3 Comments

At November 2, 2007, Chief Wahoo clarkblog.org wrote:
Don't you think Mel Gibson looks good in woad??
Regards...
At November 2, 2007, Jeff wrote:
You might be interested in The Wounded Warriors Project. It's a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness for U.S. troops severely wounded in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. It really puts a face on the cost of this conflict. Here's a link:
http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/aarwebs
Jeff
At November 2, 2007, admin democracyforvancouver.org wrote:
Jeff, Your Wounded Warriors Project link is not working. Try this one:
http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org

regarding ahmadinejad

missy — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:26:08 +0000

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, said he thought the invitation to Ahmadinejad was a mistake “because he comes literally with blood on his hands.”

Yes, Ahmadinejad is a nut. He thinks Israel should disappear. But U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) thinks we should wipe Mecca and Medina off the map in response to any future terrorist attack on U.S. soil. How is that different?

And what Lieberman is saying about “blood on his hands” is beyond ridiculous – who has more blood on his hands than George Bush, Lieberman’s best girlfriend? Iran has not engaged in any wars of aggression (or preemption) under Ahmadinejad, and what it has done in Iraq has been in support of the Shiites the last Preznit Bush let get slaughtered after telling them to rise up against Saddam in 1991.

Iran has been such an easy strawman since the Hostage Crisis. And since Saddam isn’t around anymore to use as a convenient boogie-man, Ahmadinejad is the stand-in. He’s an easy one to hate, no doubt – and he doesn’t make it easy on those of us who would like to prevent an unprovoked war on Iran.

But while a nutter, he did ask some pretty prescient questions at his appearance at Columbia yesterday, including:

“Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?”

Good question.

And while all the news outlets seemed to view Ahmadinejad’s comments on 9/11 as questioning al Qaeda’s responsibility, I read these comments completely differently:

“If the root causes of 9/11 are examined properly — why it happened, what caused it, what were the conditions that led to it, who truly was involved, who was really involved — and put it all together to understand how to prevent the crisis in Iraq, fix the problem in Afghanistan and Iraq combined,” Ahmadinejad said.

I believe that 19 al Qaeda-sponsored hijackers executed the terroist plot known as 9/11. I believe that the buildings fell because structural steel was weakened by fire, and the momentum and force of each floor pancaking onto the one below brought the whole of each building down (in much the same way that engineers say if you knocked out the most upriver dam in the Columbia-Snake river system, all the dams below it would be successively knocked out by the combined force of the water impounded behind each dam). I believe that a plane, and not a missile, hit the Pentagon.

But I also believe that we have not dug deep to understand the root causes of 9/11, and why those 19 hijackers were so driven to hate the United States. We have not looked into the U.S. role in propping up the deplorable social and political conditions in our allied countries in the Middle East – chief among them Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The invasion and occupation of Iraq could have been prevented if BushCo hadn’t been so adept at tying Saddam to 9/11 – so much so that one third of Americans still believe this outrageous lie.

Ahmadinejad is crazy and dangerous, in much the same way that Bush, Cheney and Lieberman are crazy and dangerous. Unfortunately, Bush, Cheney and Lieberman have access to much more and deadlier weapons – and they’re not afraid to use them.

2 Comments

At September 25, 2007, g. kortes, vancouver, WA wrote:
I think it is disgusting to jeer the Iranian president. I read on TruthOut that Blackwater might be or did smuggle arms in and the admin. blames Iran. We need the truth on it and 9-11.
At September 25, 2007, bushtool d4v.org wrote:
Well said slim.
As I understand the WTC structure, it was built like a tree with center concrete pillars being like the trunk and each floor hung onto the pillars.
So like dominoes, I can believe it came down much like some of the trees came down in the ice storm that occurred a few years ago here.
Columbia's President Bollinger should be ashamed of himself for personifying the "ugly American" to the world. The university should not invite him to speak if they are going to vilify him. Nothing is gained but further tension between our two countries.
There are tactful ways to confront people we disagree with but apparently the "Bush effect" has spread throughout the land and now our accepted way of interacting with foreigners is to ridicule and threaten them whenever we get the chance.