Arundhati Roy: ‘You can’t change the system by joining it’

Arundhati Roy: ‘You can’t change the system by joining it’

Posted on November 18, 2012 |

 

In the past, Reformers like Sayyid Qutb and Imam Khomeini had claimed that an Islamic system cannot be established in a Muslim-majority state through participating in the corrupt democratic and banking systems established by the former western colonial powers in the Muslim world.

 

Arundhati Roy, famous Indian writer, author and human rights activist – has expressed similar views in her recent interview she gave to Saba Naqvi. She addressed India’s many illness, such as, corruption in all sectors, political frauds, religious fascism, plight of Hindu women, war on minorites and Hindu caste system. However, some of her statements have international implications. 

“Change will come. It has to. But I doubt it will be ushered by a new political party hoping to change the system by winning the elections. Because those who have tried to change the system that way ended up changed by it,” said Roy. 

Who would know that better than the American voters? They’re asked every four year to enjoy the country’s democratic system which is rigged to make sure that voters can choose between two donkeys owned by big money elites (mostly pro-Israel Jewish billionaires) that created and feed them. The cozy political rivalry is based on Jewish Lenin’s dictum: “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves“. Both Obama and Romney are anti-Muslim and blind supporters of the Zionist regime – and both have condoned the Jewish army’s on-going war on 1.5 million Gazans.

 

Roy says that India is ruled by big corporations like Reliance and Tata. With multi-billion assests, these corporations controls country’s mainstream media, mining, pharmaceutical, steel, automobile industries – and all major political parties through big cash contributions. 

“Wether you’re communist, Capitalist, Gandhian, Hindutva-ist, Islamist, Feminist, Ambedkarite, Environmentalist, whether you are a farmer, a businessman, journalist, writer, poet, or fool, even if you believe in privatisation and in the new economy – whatever – if you have a modicum of concern or affection, leave alone love, for this country, surely you must see that this is the clear and present danger? Even if these corporations and politicians were scrupulously honest, it is an absurd situation for a country to be in. Unless mega corporations are reined in and limited by legislation, unless the levers of such untrammelled power (which includes the power to buy politics and policymaking, justice, elections and the news) is taken away from them, unless the cross-ownership of businesses is regulated, unless the media is freed from the absolute control of big business, we are headed for a shipwreck. No amount of noise, no amount of anti-corruption campaigns, no amount of elections can stop that,” she said.

 

Read Arundhati’s complete interviews, here.

Romney’s Five Wars

Posted on 10/09/2012 by Juan Cole

 

Mitt Romney’s speech at VMI on foreign policy has been widely condemned as vague and lacking in substance, sort of like the man who gave it. But the speech is also full of suggestions and criticisms of the Obama administration that are simply not realistic. The speech is Romney’s “Mission Impossible,” only without the cool theme music and also without a prayer of being actually achievable short of launching a series of 5 wars. I’ve decided that my initial assumption that a businessman of Romney’s experience must know something about the world was dead wrong. Apparently it is possible to sit in cushy big offices in companies like Bain, and to remain completely ignorant of foreign affairs. Romney’s speeches are all just a replaying for us of the prejudices of CEOs when they play golf together and complain vaguely about the Chinese, Russians, Arabs, and so forth. Or, maybe Romney has gotten so many campaign contributions from arms manufacturers that he can’t help see foreign affairs through the lens of new wars he wants to fight.

1. The First War: Return to Iraq

Romney wants to send US troops back into Iraq and complained again about Obama’s “abrupt” withdrawal from that country. I don’t know how many ways there are of saying this, but it was from the beginning absolutely impossible for US troops to remain in Iraq legally. Romney apparently let Dan Senor, Bremer’s Neocon spokesman who came out to lie to us every day in Baghdad, write the following paragraph:

: “In Iraq, the costly gains made by our troops are being eroded by rising violence, a resurgent Al-Qaeda, the weakening of democracy in Baghdad, and the rising influence of Iran. And yet, America’s ability to influence events for the better in Iraq has been undermined by the abrupt withdrawal of our entire troop presence. The President tried—and failed—to secure a responsible and gradual drawdown that would have better secured our gains.”

Romney’s premise, that the US military in Iraq had some sort of ‘achievement’ that is in danger of being lost now that it is out of the country is ridiculous. The United States launched an illegal war of aggression on Iraq that virtually destroyed the country and kicked off a power vacuum that eventuated in a civil war that still continues at a low level. In 2006 when there were over 150,000 US troops in Iraq, in some months the death toll from political violence was 2500. That doesn’t even count all the armed Iraqis the US military was killing. The United States military never controlled Iraq and could never prevent bombings and attacks. When the US troops stopped patrolling major cities, the death toll promptly fell, because guerrillas were no longer setting improvised explosive devices to hit US convoys– operations that often wounded Iraqi by-standers as well.

In August, 2012, the death toll from political violence in Iraq was 164, half what it had been in July, after a crackdown by Iraqi army and police. So Romney is just wrong that there is some sort of secular trend in Iraq toward the kind of violence that had racked the country half a decade ago, and it is wrong to think that the US military was anyway primarily responsible for the end of the mass killings. What appears to have happened is that in 2006-2007, Iraqis living in mixed neighborhoods having both Sunnis and Shiites ethnically cleansed one another. Once the neighborhoods were mostly only one sect, the killing subsided (you’d have to get in your car and drive a while to find someone of a different persuasion to kill). That wasn’t a US achievement, it was a US failure!

By the way, it seems likely that more people are still being killed monthly in Mexico’s drug war than die in Iraq of sectarian strife. Does Mr. Romney want to put Woodrow Wilson’s troops back into Mexico along with W.’s troops in Iraq?

It was the then leader of the Republican Party, George W. Bush, who negotiated the December 31, 2011, deadline for withdrawing US troops from Iraq with the Iraqi parliament. Obama simply implemented the agreement Bush signed. The reason the accord had to be worked out with the Iraqi parliament was that Bush wanted to be sure that US officers and troops could not be prosecuted for military actions they undertook in Iraq. The only way to forestall such prosecutions was a bilateral agreement authorizing US troops to fight in Iraq, and signed by the Iraqi government. Simply negotiating it with the prime minister would not have made it legally solid enough to protect the troops. Their presence had to be authorized by the Iraqi legislature. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was barely able to get the agreement passed, and only succeeded because it seemed to a lot of members of parliament their best bet for ushering US troops out of the country.

For that agreement to be renegotiated so that US combat units remained in Iraq would have required another vote of parliament. The Iraqi parliament is dominated by Shiites, along with Sunnis and a minority of Kurds. The Kurds were the only group that might have voted to keep US troops in the country, and they just don’t have that many seats. The Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party of al-Maliki, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and the Sadrists or followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, dominate parliament, along with Sunni nationalists. None of them wanted US troops in their country in the first place. They would never, ever have voted for a continued US troop presence in Iraq, and there would have been no way for Romney to make them do so if he had been president. His snide implication that Obama had a shot at this endeavor, and took it and missed, is just inside the beltway wishful thinking.
 
Guys! The Iraqis don’t like you. They didn’t want you in their country. They didn’t give you candy or put garlands around your neck. They killed over 4,000 of your troops, hundreds more of your contractors, and only failed to kill more because they were poorly armed compared to you.
After 8 years of ‘shaping’ Iraq, you got a Shiite government allied with Iran and Syria, the leader of which is now in Moscow seeking a $5 billion arms deal from Mr. Putin, so as to become more independent of the US. That was your best shot at empire, with hundreds of thousands of troops cycling through and a trillion dollars to play with, and it didn’t work. Because in today’s world it doesn’t work. Political-military empire is over. People are mobilized.
 
The only way for the US to dominate Iraq any more would be to re-invade the country, which would be Romney’s first war.

2. War number 2: Syria

Romney apparently wants to get deeply involved in the civil war in Syria. It is not clear why, except that he wants to differentiate himself from Obama. On Libya, he had grudgingly accepted the no-fly zone but called anything beyond that ‘mission creep’ and ‘mission muddle,’ and he thought too many resources were going into overthrowing Gaddafi. But apparently he isn’t afraid of mission creep were he to put his hand into the Syrian beehive. He said,

“The President has failed to lead in Syria, where more than 30,000 men, women, and children have been massacred by the Assad regime over the past 20 months. Violent extremists are flowing into the fight. Our ally Turkey has been attacked. And the conflict threatens stability in the region.”

He goes on to say later in the speech,

“we are missing an historic opportunity to win new friends who share our values in the Middle East—friends who are fighting for their own futures against the very same violent extremists, and evil tyrants, and angry mobs who seek to harm us. Unfortunately, so many of these people who could be our friends feel that our President is indifferent to their quest for freedom and dignity. As one Syrian woman put it, “We will not forget that you forgot about us.” It is time to change course in the Middle East . . . “

“In Syria, I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets.”

So, it seems clear that Romney wants to “lead” in Syria, i.e., get involved in the war there.
But the reason that not only Obama but the entirety of Europe has declined to get involved in Syria is that there is no UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. In its absence, any army that used force except in self defense would be open to being hauled before judges in the Hague or judges in some country where the judiciary claims universal jurisdiction.
 
If the US went into Syria unilaterally, the same thing would happen to Romney as happened to Bush– the US would bear all the costs and would gradually become isolated and alone in the enterprise. As for fearing that people won’t forget that the US did not come to their aid, you could equally fear all the people who will be upset that the US intervened militarily, or you could fear ingratitude even if we did intervene (there are lots of examples of both).

3. The Third War is with Iran

Romney couldn’t stop Iran’s nuclear enrichment program if he were president, any more than Obama can. That step would require an invasion and occupation of the country. Simply bombing the facilities would only briefly set them back.
Romney said,

“I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran, and will tighten the sanctions we currently have. I will restore the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region—and work with Israel to increase our military assistance and coordination.
For the sake of peace, we must make clear to Iran through actions—not just words—that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated. I will reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security—the world must never see any daylight between our two nations. I will deepen our critical cooperation with our partners in the Gulf. “

)
But close cooperation with Israel against Iran would ensure that none of our Arab allies would be willing to associate themselves with such a campaign. There is a reason that George H. W. Bush kept PM Yitzhak Shamir out of the Gulf War.

And, Romney can’t tighten sanctions on Iran any further without going all the way to an actual naval blockade of Iranian commerce. The US already has a financial blockade against Iran. Blockades, like ultimatums, cause wars. Countries threatened with strangulation frequently strike out. Even more stringent sanctions and blockades risk pushing Iran into reacting violently for self-preservation.

4. The fourth war is in Afghanistan. 

Although Romney said he would wind down the war there by 2014, just as Obama has pledged, he intended to ‘remain strong’ and to ‘consult our military,’ i.e. he implicitly is reopening the question of the US withdrawal from that country. He said,

“President Obama would have you believe that anyone who disagrees with his decisions in Afghanistan is arguing for endless war. But the route to more war – and to potential attacks here at home – is a politically timed retreat that abandons the Afghan people to the same extremists who ravaged their country and used it to launch the attacks of 9/11.
I will evaluate conditions on the ground and weigh the best advice of our military commanders. And I will affirm that my duty is not to my political prospects, but to the security of the nation. ”

There is no reason for Romney to bring up his political prospects being damaged unless he is considering reneging on Obama’s pledge to get out of Afghanistan. Likewise, that is implied by his reference to ‘evaluating conditions on the ground’ and taking ‘the best advice of our military commanders.’
 
On Afghanistan, Romney is pulling an anti-Nixon. He appears to have a secret plan not to end the war in Afghanistan.

5. The small wars: 

Intervention in Yemen, Somalia, perhaps even Libya in a ‘war on terror.’
The US has hit Yemen and Somalia with drone strikes and is occasionally kind of at war in those countries, though it is a desultory, occasional, and limited sort of conflict.

Romney says that drones are not enough. What would you use in such conflicts besides drones? Infantry? The implication of being ‘more forceful’ and dismissing drone strikes is that you would support the insertion of troops into those conflicts.

Romney’s various wars would, if pursued, bankrupt the country and cause more backlash and terrorism against the United States. Romney thinks that US prestige flows from strength, defined as military might.
 
But in fact what people in the Middle East admire about the US is its values, such as democracy and the rule of law. They hate our military hubris and still have not forgiven us for what we did to Iraq.
The only positive thing about Romney’s speech was his commitment to getting a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Unfortunately, we know from his leaked fundraiser recording of last May that he intends to ‘kick the can down the road’ on the Israel-Palestine issues, and that he does not trust the Palestinians with a state. So that positive language is just lies.

Four or five wars and lots of other conflicts are not a foreign policy vision, they are a nightmare.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Mitt Romney – a danger to USA and world peace

Wednesday, 31 October 2012 21:04

By Jamal Kanj Gulf Daily News   Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may have been to Harvard University, but his recurring gaffes suggest he is not ready to be commander-in-chief of the world’s biggest superpower.   It has been an eventful summer of blunders for Romney and company.   Two months before his July public stumbles in England and Palestine, and speaking before a private 50,000-dollar fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida, Romney declared that 47 per cent of the American electorate were irrelevant.   At the fundraiser, he labelled almost half of Americans as non-tax-payers with victim mentality, elaborating that it was not his job “to worry about those people”. That is despite his mother admitting his father was on government welfare as a child.   Romney’s insincerity was further evident when he asked his running mate to furnish the campaign with 10 years of income tax history, while he refused to release information more than two years old.   The documents made public show that Romney paid less than 15 per cent income tax, while the average for Americans is typically more than 30 per cent.   After disregarding 47 per cent of Americans, Romney declared that Palestinian-Israeli peace is “almost unthinkable to accomplish”.   It isn’t a coincidence that this outlook is shared by those on the extreme right of Israeli politics such as Foreign Minister Avigador Lieberman, who proclaimed in December 2010 that peace with the Palestinians “is impossible”.   Trying to sound convincing, Romney absurdly equated the Palestine conflict with other longstanding, unresolved disputes between Taiwan and China and North and South Korea.   Although all go back several years, it is stupid to suggest the situation in Palestine an entity under foreign military subjugation shares any similarities with sovereign Pyongyang or Taipei.   By embracing the right-wing Israeli viewpoint, neo-conservative presidential advisers have always advocated American and international disengagement allowing Israel to impose its conditions while ignoring international law by building illegal Jews-only settlements on occupied land.   Almost a year ago at a Republican debate, Romney pledged that before making important decisions he would call his “friend Bibi Netanyahu” to ask him: “Would it help if I said this? What would you like me to do?”   Romney supposedly met Netanyahu when they worked at Bain Consulting Group in the 1970s. In the same debate, Romney fondly said that Netanyahu was “not just a friend, he’s an old friend”. “We can almost speak in shorthand.”   However, his “old friend” Bibi is not so sure. Responding to a Vanity Fair magazine question this summer, Netanyahu said: “I don’t think we had any particular connections, I knew him and he knew me, I suppose.”   Besides lying about his friendship with Netanyahu, it was remarkable that a US presidential hopeful would publicly commit to let the leader of a foreign country decide US foreign policy.   At every corner Republican pundits come to Romney’s defence and say the Harvard-educated nominee’s statements are “not articulate”, “not elegant” or “gaffes”.   Parroting his advisers’ remarks is Romney’s main predicament. He lacks ingenuity and, like George W. Bush, would let his advisers run the White House.   Such traits are not those of a national leader, but of a man who poses a dangerous threat to America and world peace.   River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Pastor: Hurricane Sandy is a ‘Curse from G-d of Israel’

Posted on October 30, 2012 |

 

Pastor John McTernan Ph.D, founder of Defend and Proclaim the Faith Ministries, is a staunch defender of the Zionist entity and one of those Christian evangelist preachers who still believe that US President Barack Hussein Obama is a Crypto Muslim (secretly a Muslim). A poll taken by Associated Press last month shows that 18% of Americans believe Barack Obama is ‘Jewish’ as compared to 10% who think he is ‘Muslim’.

On October 28, 2012, the good-old paster posted on his official website ‘John McTernan’s Insight’ that Hurricane Sandy and earlier Hurricane Isaac and Hurricane Katrina – are all signs that “the Holy God of Israel is systematically destroying America right before our eyes”.

 

McTernan believes that ever since George Bush Sr signed the Madrid Peace Process to divide the land of Israel in 1991, ‘America has been under God’s judgment since this event’.

 

McTernan said: “Obama is 100% behind the Muslim Brotherhood which has vowed to destroy Israel and take Jerusalem“. Funny, Israeli Mossad propaganda arm, the Middle East Media Research Institute had claimed that Iranian President Dr. Ahmadinejad had made that statement in 2005.

John McTernan is known for his anti-homosexual rants. He has criticized both Obama and Romney for their support for same-sex marriage. In May 2012, when Israeli ambassador Michael Oren was a keynote speaker at the 20th anniversary celebration of LGBT event in Philadelphia - McTernan put a ‘duct-tape’ on his big mouth, lest it offend his Lord’s ‘Chosen People‘. Oren had boasted that the Zionist entity was heaven for LGBT communities while they’re being executed in Iran.

White House Jewish correspondent William Koenig agrees with McTernan. He also believes that some of the United States’ most catastrophic storms and events have correlated closely with the nation’s G-d defying attempts to divide the land of Israel.

“When we put pressure on Israel to divide their land, we have enormous, record setting events, often within 24 hours. Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 – we have experienced over 90 record-setting, all-time events as we have acted against Israel. And the greater pressure on Israel to co-operate, the greater the catastrophe” – quoted by Drew Zahn in WND, October 28, 2012.

Israel’s Shas Party’s spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Pastor John Hagee had also claimed that Hurricane Katrina was Jewish G-d’s vengeance against America for forcing Jewish army to pull out of Gaza Strip.

However, Canadian Jewish professor Michel Chossudovsky disputes the Israel’s divine crap. He says Hurricane Katrina was a man-made disaster created for the benefit of some of Zionist fatcats. Read his article here.

As far the 9/11 is concerned – Israeli Jewish author Barry Chamish in an interview with Kevin Barrett PhD in August 2012, had confirmed that Israel was behind the 9/11 terrorism.

 

Hurricane Sandy, dubbed a ‘Frankenstorm’, could affect up to 60 million people as several states have declared emergencies, schools have closed and transport services suspended. It’s already done $20 billion damage so far. The US east coast states along the path of Sandy have began to shut down most of their operation ahead of the storm. Emergency has already been declared in New York, Washington DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

 

Irish TV host: ‘Israel is a cancer in foreign affairs’

Posted on October 29, 2012 |

 

Former newspaper editor Vincent Browne, the host of Ireland’s top television political talkshow, ‘Tonight with Vincent Browne’, on TV3 has called Israel “a cancer in foreign affairs”. After the remark, Vincent said that his criticism of Israel doesn’t mean he hates the Jewish people.
“Israel is a cancer in the foreign affairs. It polarises the Islamic community of the world against the rest of the world,” said Browne.

“Unless you deal with the problem of Israel and Palestinians in that part of the world, there’s going to be conflict and disharmony. It’s a massive injustice – they stole the land from Arabs,” added Browne.

On the show, Vincent also blasted both US president Barack Obama and his main challenger Mitt Romney for avoiding to discuss Israel’s harmful effects on American foreign policy – which has fueled Muslim hatred toward America and the West. Incidentally, the US third party presidential candidate, Jill Stein (Jewish herself), has called both Obama and Romney as Israeli slaves.

Israel’s deputy ambassador to Ireland, Nurit Tinari-Modai, called Browne “an anti-Semite” while claiming her parents were brutally murdered during the Holocaust. Interestingly, Rabbi Wolf Gunther Plaut, in his 1990 book, ‘The Man Who Would Be Messiah’, has claimed that Holocaust was committed by Frankist Jews.

“I would have never believed that the day would come when a presenter on an Irish TV station would make racist, anti-Semitic remarks,” she said.
In response, Browne said:”What I resent is the suggestion that because you’re critical of Israel, you’re automatically anti-Semitic. I don’t think that’s acceptable“. Browne also refused to apologise for his statement and insisted that the Zionist entity was established in 1948 after European Jews stole Arab land.

Browne claimed that pro-Israel Jewish groups are in habit of blackmailing Israel’s critics by branding them as “anti-Semites” or “Holocaust deniers”. He insisted his remarks were not much different from Irish or European foreign policy.

Vincent Browne 68, is a journalist, editor, talkshow host and founder of popular Village Magazine which he sold in 1998. As a war-reporter, Browne covered Czechoslovakia in 1968 and later IRA-British war for The Irish Times.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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I am not anti-Semitic, claims Vincent Browne

Sunday, October 28, 2012 at 10:15AM Gilad Atzmon

 

Telling the truth about the Jewish state can be very dangerous for your career. The following was published today by the Irish Independent:

 

I am not anti-Semitic, claims Vincent Browne

TV3 broadcaster Vincent Browne insists he is not anti-Semitic after branding Israel a "cancer" in foreign affairs.

 

But Israel's deputy ambassador to Ireland said she never believed the day would come when an Irish TV presenter would make "racist, anti-Semitic remarks".

 

Mr Browne, pictured, had been complaining on his show about the lack of discussion of Israel during the last US presidential debate between Republican nominee Mitt Romney and US President Barack Obama.

 

"Israel is the cancer in foreign affairs. It polarises the Islamic community of the world against the rest of the world," he said. 

"Unless you deal with the problem of Israel and the Palestinians in that part of the world, there's going to be conflict and disharmony. It's a massive injustice -- they stole the land from the Arabs."

Mr Browne admitted that his choice of language could have been better but insisted that the criticism was justified.

 

"What I resent is the suggestion that because you're critical of Israel, you're automatically anti-Semitic. I don't think that's acceptable," he said.

 

Mr Browne refused to apologise for his remarks, saying that Israel was founded in 1948 by taking land from the Arabs.

 

He said it was "blackmail" to try to brand everyone who was critical of Israel as anti-Semitic. "I don't think I differ too much from Irish or European foreign policy," he said.

 

But his remarks drew a strong reaction from Israel's deputy ambassador to Ireland Nurit Tinari-Modai, who said her grandparents were brutally murdered during the Holocaust.

 

"I would have never believed that the day would come when a presenter on an Irish TV station would make racist, anti-Semitic remarks," she said.

 

She made her comments to the 'Jewish Chronicle' newspaper, the most widely read Jewish newspaper in Britain.

 

A TV3 spokeswoman said she was not aware of any complaints being made about Mr Browne's remarks.

 

- Michael Brennan Deputy Political Editor

Irish Independent

 

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Jill Stein: ‘Obama-Romney are Israel’s slaves’

Posted on October 24, 2012 |

 

“I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it,”Ariel Sharon to Shimon Peres, Kol Yisrael radio, October 3, 2001.

I know it’s very anti-Semitic of me to repeat an eleven-year-old statement – but then on Monday, Green Party’s Jewish presidential candidate Jill Stein, repeated a similar statement, saying that both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for having a “slave-like” mentality toward Israel during a debate with Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson, the former Mayor of Salt Lake City. Both candidates supported the Islamic Republic for its efforts to seek a nuclear free Middle East.

Both criticized Israeli leaders for their warmongering against Iran. Anderson said that Iranian president Ahmadinejad never said “wipe Israel off the map”. He said the elimination of the Zionist regime but his statement in Persian language was distorted to demonized Iran. Jill said that it’s time for the US to raise the bar for Israel at level with Iran and other nations. Watch the debate video below.

All those billion of people living in the uncivilized world who hate America’s freedom of speech – would be surprised to learn that police arrested Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, after they tried to enter the site of last week presidential debate at Hofstra University. The two were protesting against the exclusion of all but Barack Obama and Mitt Romney from taking part in the debate.

Anyone, who doubts Jill Stein’s claim, should learn what Obama-Romney have stated during the recent presidential debates.

“What I’ve done throughout my presidency and will continue to do, is, number one, make sure that these (Muslim) countries are supporting our counterterrorism efforts; number two, make sure that they are standing by our interests in Israel’s security, because it is a true friend and our greatest ally in the region,” said Barack Ben-Obama.

“(Egypt) They have to abide by their treaty with Israel. That is a red line for us, because not only is Israel’s security at stake, but our security is at stake if that unravels,” said Obama.

“First, Syrians are going to have to determine their own future. Our aid to the rebels is in consultations with our regional allies icluding Israel. Secondly, Syria’s an opportunity for us because Syria plays an important role in the Middle East, particularly right now. Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea. It’s the route for them to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatens, of course, our ally Israel. We need to make sure as well that we coordinate this effort with our allies and particularly with Israel,” parroted Romney.

Read Justin Raimondo’s article, published on October 24, 2012, entitled ‘Debate Summary: ‘Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel’, here.

 

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

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Questioning Presidential War Powers

By Philip Giraldi • October 18, 2012, 11:17 AM

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post is the paper’s most consistently readable columnist addressing foreign policy and national security issues. Which is no doubt why he seldom appears on the editorial/op-ed pages and is instead consigned to a corner plot on something called the “Fed Page,” which follows business news.

In today’s paper Pincus suggests that Bob Schieffer, moderator of the upcoming Monday presidential debate on foreign policy, ask the two candidates about war powers. The war powers issue is fundamental to the current U.S. malaise as the de facto acceptance of presidential prerogative to go to war has created what is essentially a permanent state of small-scale wars and so-called humanitarian interventions. The Constitution is clear that only Congress has the authority to declare war, but it is also true that the United States is obliged to comply with treaties that it has entered into. U.S. membership in the UN is based on a treaty ratified by the Senate which enables Washington to participate in military operations authorized by the Security Council, though it does not require American involvement. This is why both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have sought UN approval for actions taken against Iraq, Libya, and now Syria.

Pincus notes that Mitt Romney has stated that he believes that the president currently has full authority to use military force against nations like Iran. As Obama has engaged in military action in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Uganda without any sanction from the United Nations, he apparently shares that belief. Pincus describes how Obama ordered military operations against Libya with a two-page letter to Congress claiming that as “commander in chief he had constitutional authority to authorize the military operations to prevent a humanitarian disaster.”

As presidential prerogative would appear to be an essentially unconstitutional and possibly illegal mechanism for starting a war of aggression against Iran, Pincus goes on to ask, “Does Obama or Romney believe that any military action against Iran would be as limited as the one in Libya?…What solution is required by each candidate for this situation [Iranian enrichment of uranium]? Do they believe that any deal with Iran requires Israeli approval?”

Apropos of cutting a deal with Iran, at a conference yesterday in Washington former senior CIA analyst Paul Pillar noted that an agreement with Tehran over its nuclear program is within reach. It requires negotiation to have Iran back off from its enrichment program in stages while sanctions against it are also removed in a commensurate fashion, the stick and carrot approach. Obviously any rapprochement with Iran would face strong opposition from various domestic constituencies as well as from the Israeli government, but the only alternative is to maintain a constant state of no-war no-peace with red lines that are very much subject to interpretation. Or to go to war. Neither Romney nor Obama seems prepared to do what is necessary to change direction and peacefully resolve a long simmering rivalry and both are instead inclined to cite prerogative to start an armed conflict that could easily have catastrophic consequences. They should certainly be challenged on these views and what the possible consequences might be, though it is doubtful whether either will respond to such serious questions with candor.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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The Judification of American Democracy (video)

Sunday, October 21, 2012 at 9:32AM Gilad Atzmon

 

Deeply within the spirit of The Book of Esther that teaches female Jews how to bridge the gap between sex and political power, Sarah Silverman offers intimate services to Zionist billioner Sheldon Adelson.

In the video, Comedian Sarah Silverman makes a proposal to 'scissor' Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson if he will donate his money to President Barack Obama and not Willard Mitt Romney.

“If you give that $100 million to Obama instead of Romney, I will, well, I won’t have sex with you because we’re not married and I’m a nice girl. But, I will scissor you wearing a bikini bottom through to fruition, that means until you c-m.”

Sarah Silverman then demonstrates the position with a small dog.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

US Elections and the Middle East

US President Barack Obama (R) listens as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (L) speaks at Magness Arena at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado, October 3, 2012.

Mon Oct 15, 2012 5:34AM

By Ramzy Baroud

Although some real differences may be underscored between both candidates on various issues in the Middle East, both are strong supporters of Israel, both tirelessly vying for the backing of the strong pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Obama, however, until now at least, refuses to concede to Israeli demands of agreeing on ‘redlines’ on Iran’s supposed quest for a nuclear bomb. Romney is exploiting that diversion to the maximum."
 

US elections are manifestly linked to the Middle East, at least rhetorically. In practical terms, however, US foreign policies in the region are compelled by the Middle East’s own dynamics and the US’ own political climate, economic woes, or ambitions. There is little historic evidence that US foreign policy in the Arab world has been guided by moral compulsion.

When it comes to the Middle East - and much of the world - it is mostly about style. The country’s two leading political parties have proven equally to be interventionists. In the last two decades Democrats seemed to lean more towards unilateralism in foreign policy as in war, while Republicans, as highlighted by the administration of George W. Bush, are much less worried about the mere definitions of their conducts. The US administration of Bill Clinton (1993-2001) maintained a draconian siege on Iraq that caused what former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark described as ‘genocide.’ Two years later, W. Bush chose the direct war path, which simply rebranded the ongoing ‘genocide’. In both cases, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died.

Despite the warrior-like saber-rattling by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney about his intentions to transform the Middle East to suit US interests shall he be elected, few would take that as more than despairing attempts at reaching out to the most zealous members and groups of his party, especially those who wield political influence, media access and, of course, funds. The pro-Israeli gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson is referenced more than others, but there are many others who demand such satisfactory rhetoric before reaching out for their checkbooks.

Ultimately, “it's the economy, stupid” - a phrase that reached legendary eminence after it was coined for Bill Clinton as he unleashed his successful presidential campaign in 1992. Once again, the phrase is likely to be the determinant factor on November 6.

American voters will decide whether to extend President Barack Obama’s mandate by four more years or hand a more impulsive, but equally opportunistic Romney the fate of a country that has long crossed the line of economic recession into uncharted territories since the Great Depression in 1929.

Romney, the archetypal American elite with ample wealth, lifestyle and language so detached from the average American is doing his very best to exploit Obama’s failing to rescue the currently tattered, and largely struggling economy. The recovery, despite the hype, is still lacking at best. With a large and growing deficit, and unrelenting government borrowing, prospects for the future remain dim.

“Economic growth has never been weaker in a post-war recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower,” wrote Paul Wiseman, in the Huffington Post (August 15). These were his thoughts on a thorough analysis produced by the Associated Press, which concluded that Obama-championed recovery since 2009 has been the weakest of all 10 US recessions since World War II.

The recession which dates back to 2007-2008, scaled back economic growth, caused massive cuts and cost numerous jobs. Republicans often wish to omit the eight-year legacy of George W. Bush and his colossal military expenditure. It is in these instances that the Middle East becomes a victim of omission, for heedless wars and an unprecedented strain on the economy as a result of them seem too trivial to mention. Listening to Romney rambling about his prospected foreign policy, one gets the impression that another war is already in the making. Destination doesn’t matter, what matters is that Romney appears strong, decisive and ready for a combat at a moment’s notice.

Democrats are focusing their strategy on dividing their campaign messages between the economy (placing the recovery within generally upbeat news of positive economic indicators) and other issues that matter to large sectors of American society: health care, abortion, immigration, civil rights questions, and so on. With the economy continuing to follow an impulsive line of logic, both parties are still busy defining the very problems facing their nation, leaving the task of devising real solutions, if any, to a later date.

The heavy sense of disappointment felt by many Americans is unmistakable. Long gone is the ‘hope and change’ fervor of Obama’s last election campaign. Democrats are no longer offering sensational answers; it’s mostly about braving the difficult journey ahead. Republicans seem more united by their own aversion of Obama than their affinity to Romney. The latter’s lack of consistency, inability to form and staunchly defend a cohesive vision, and clearly expressed disinterest in 47 per cent of American voters (per a leaked video recording) makes him hardly the long-awaited savior. Moreover, disorganized and divided Republicans between traditional conservatives, Tea Party supporters and religious zealots among others are hardly ready for the coveted ‘landslide’, as boldly anticipated by Keith Edwards in the American Thinker (October 02).

The importance of the elections is barely accentuated by the political forte or aptitudes of its main candidates, but by the historic transition that the United States is currently undergoing. This is not just within the realm of the devastated economy, but in its global standing as well. Here is where the Middle East mostly fits in: The timing of the region’s own transition - exemplified by ongoing revolutions, political upheavals and civil wars - couldn’t be any more challenging or inopportune. Just as US foreign policy was reconsidering neoconservative war wisdom, momentous events throughout the Middle East are wreaking havoc on an already disorderly American retreat. Unable to completely shift from its militant policy of old, the Obama administration is trying to weather the storm until the elections are over.

In a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed on October 1, Romney recharged, with the hope of challenging mounting accusations that see his foreign policy expertise as deficient and misguided. “Our country seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them,” he wrote, once more demanding action against Iran, even more US support of Israel, and greater intervention in Syria, Libya and elsewhere. His administration, he said, will “encourage liberty and opportunity” to replace extremism in the Middle East.

Although some real differences may be underscored between both candidates on various issues in the Middle East, both are strong supporters of Israel, both tirelessly vying for the backing of the strong pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Obama, however, until now at least, refuses to concede to Israeli demands of agreeing on ‘redlines’ on Iran’s supposed quest for a nuclear bomb. Romney is exploiting that diversion to the maximum.

There is little that Middle Eastern countries can expect from the outcome of the upcoming elections. The region seems propelled by its own dynamics, despite insistent US attempts at intervening or meddling to ‘shape outcomes’ of ongoing conflicts. Equally important, regardless of who will reside in the White House, the sluggish economy and the fear of getting entangled in new military adventures, will likely redefine future US relations to the region.

 

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

 

 

Don’t Vote for Evil

By Paul Craig Roberts

 

"Information Clearing House" - Back during the George W. Bush neocon regime, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in his UN speech summed up George W. Bush for the world. I am quoting Chavez from memory, not verbatim. “Yesterday standing at this same podium was Satan himself, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur.”

Chavez is one of the American right-wing’s favorite bogyman, because Chavez helps the people instead of bleeding them for the rich, which is Washington’s way. While Washington has driven all but the one percent into the ground, Chavez cut poverty in half, doubled university enrollment, and provided health care and old age pensions to millions of Venezuelans for the first time.

 

Little wonder he was elected to a third term as president despite the many millions of dollars Washington poured into the election campaign of Chavez’s opponent.

While Washington and the EU preach neoliberalism–the supremacy of capital over labor–South American politicians who reject Washington’s way are being elected and reelected in Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia.
 

It was the Ecuadoran government, not Washington, that had the moral integrity to grant political asylum to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange. The only time Washington grants asylum is when it can be used to embarrass an opponent.
 

In contrast to the leadership that is emerging in South America as more governments there reject the traditional hegemony of Washington, the US political elite, whether Republican or Democrat, are aligned with the rich against the American people.

 

The Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has promised to cut taxes on the rich, taxes which are already rock bottom, to block any regulation of the gangsters in the financial arena, and to privatize Social Security and Medicare.

 

Privatizing Social Security and Medicare means to divert the people’s tax dollars to the profits of private corporations. In Republican hands, privatization means only one thing: to cut the people’s benefits and to use the people’s tax dollars to increase the profits in the private sector. Romney’s policy is just another policy that sacrifices the people to the one percent.
 

Unfortunately, the Democrats, if a lesser evil, are still an evil. There is no reason to vote for the reelection of a president who codified into law the Bush regime’s destruction of the US Constitution, who went one step further and asserted the power to murder US citizens without due process of law, and who has done nothing to stop the exploitation of the American people by the one percent.
 

As Gerald Celente says in the Autumn Issue of the Trends Journal, when confronted with the choice between two evils, you don’t vote for the lesser evil. You boycott the election and do not vote. “Lessor or greater, evil is evil.”
 

If Americans had any sense, no one would vote in the November election. Whoever wins the November election, it will be a defeat for the American people.
 

An Obama or Romney win stands in stark contract with Chavez’s win. Here is how Lula da Silva, the popular former president of Brazil summed it up: “Chavez’s victory is a victory for all the peoples of Latin America. It is another blow against imperialism.” Washington, making full use of the almighty dollar, was unable to buy the Venezuelan election.
 

How will a Romney or Obama win be summed up? The answer will be in terms of which candidate is best for Israel’s interest; which is best for Wall Street’s interest, which is best for agribusiness; which is most likely to attack Iran; which is most likely to subject economic and war protesters to indefinite detention as domestic extremists.
 

The only people who will benefit from the election of either Romney or Obama are those associated with the private oligarchies that rule America.
 

This article was originally posted at Counterpunch
 

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, Wirtschaft am Abgrund (Economies In Collapse) has just been published.

Why I Dislike Israel

 

by Philip Giraldi
Even those pundits who seem to want to distance U.S. foreign policy from Tel Aviv’s demands and begin treating Israel like any other country sometimes feel compelled to make excuses and apologies before getting down to the nitty-gritty. The self-lacerating prologues generally describe how much the writer really has a lot of Jewish friends and how he or she thinks Israelis are great people and that Israel is a wonderful country before launching into what is usually a fairly mild critique.

Well, I don’t feel that way. I don’t like Israel very much. Whether or not I have Jewish friends does not define how I see Israel and is irrelevant to the argument. And as for the Israelis, when I was a CIA officer overseas, I certainly encountered many of them. Some were fine people and some were not so fine, just like the general run of people everywhere else in the world. But even the existence of good upstanding Israelis doesn’t alter the fact that the governments that they have elected are essentially part of a long-running criminal enterprise judging by the serial convictions of former presidents and prime ministers.

Most recently, former President Moshe Katsav was convicted of rape, while almost every recent head of government, including the current one, has been investigated for corruption. Further, the Israeli government is a rogue regime by most international standards, engaging as it does in torture, arbitrary imprisonment, and continued occupation of territories seized by its military. Worse still, it has successfully manipulated my country, the United States, and has done terrible damage both to our political system and to the American people, a crime that I just cannot forgive, condone, or explain away.

The most recent outrage is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s direct interference in U.S. domestic politics through his appearance in a television ad appearing in Florida that serves as an endorsement of Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The Netanyahu ad and his involvement in the election has been widely reported in the media and has even been condemned by several leading Jewish congressmen, but it has elicited no response from either Obama or Romney. Both should be condemning in the strongest terms the completely unprecedented intervention by a foreign head of government in an American election. That they are saying nothing is a testament to the power that Israel and its friends in Congress and the media have over the U.S. political establishment. Romney might even privately approve of the ads, as he has basically promised to cede to Netanyahu the right to set the limits for U.S. policy in the Middle East.

And why is Benjamin Netanyahu in such a lather? It is because President Barack Obama will not concede to him a “red line” that would automatically trigger a U.S. attack on Iran. Consider for a moment the hubris of Netanyahu in demanding that Washington meet his conditions for going to war with Iran, a nation that for all its frequently described faults has not attacked anyone, has not threatened to attack anyone, and has not made the political decision to acquire a nuclear weapon in spite of what one reads in the U.S. press. At the U.N., Netanyahu’s chart showing a cartoon bomb with a sputtering fuse reminiscent of something that might have been employed by an anarchist in the 1870s failed to pass any credibility test even for the inevitable cheerleaders in the U.S. media. If the U.S. is to go to war based on a Netanyahu cartoon then it deserves everything it gets when the venture turns sour, most likely Iraq Redux, only 10 times worse.

Even more outrageous, and a lot less reported in the media, were the comments made by Patrick Clawson, director of research for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an organization founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). WINEP is widely viewed as a major component of the Israel Lobby in Washington and is closely tied to the Israeli government, with which it communicates on a regular basis. Clawson heads WINEP’s Iran Security Initiative. At a briefing on Sept. 24 he said, “I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough, and it’s very hard for me to see how the United States … uh … president can get us to war with Iran.… The traditional way America gets to war is what would be best for U.S. interests.”

Note that Clawson states his conviction that initiating a crisis to get the U.S. involved in a war with Iran and thereby fooling the American people into thinking that it is the right thing to do is actually a “U.S. interest.” He cites Pearl Harbor, Fort Sumter, the Lusitania, and the Gulf of Tonkin as models for how to get engaged. Which inevitably leads to Clawson’s solution: “if the Iranians aren’t going to compromise it would be best if someone else started the war … Iranian submarines periodically go down. Some day one of them may not come up…. We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier at that.” Clawson is clearly approving of Israel’s staging an incident that would lead to war, possibly even a false-flag operation carried out by Israel that would implicate the United States directly, or he is urging the White House to do the job itself.

Clawson not surprisingly has never served in the U.S. military and has a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research, which would at first glance seem to disqualify him from figuring out how to set up a covert operation to sink a submarine and thereby start a war. He might be seen as moderately ridiculous, but like many of his neoconservative colleagues he is well wired into the system. He writes regularly for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal; appears on television as an “expert”; and is a colleague at WINEP of the ubiquitous Dennis Ross, sometimes called “Israel’s lawyer,” who was until recently President Obama’s point man on the Middle East. Clawson is a useful idiot who would be registered as an agent of the Israeli government if the Justice Department were doing its job, but instead he is feted as a man who tells it like it is in terms of American interests. The distortion of the foreign-policy decision-making in this country is something that can be attributed to Clawson and his host of fellow travelers, all of whom promote Israel’s perceived interests at the expense of the United States. And they do it with their eyes wide open.

I will deliberately avoid belaboring another Israel Firster Pamela Geller and her New York subway posters calling Palestinians savages and Israelis civilized, as I am sure the point has been made about how any lie that can serve the cause of Israel will be aggressively defended as “free speech.” A poster excoriating Jews or blacks in similar terms as “savages” would not have seen the light of day in New York City, another indication of the power of the Lobby and its friends to control the debate about the Middle East and game the system.

And then there are the reasons to dislike Israel and what it represents that go way back. In 1952’s Lavon Affair, the Israelis were prepared to blow up a U.S. Information Center in Alexandria and blame it on the Egyptians. In 1967, the Israelis attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty, killing 34 crewmen, and then used their power over President Lyndon Johnson to block an investigation into what had occurred. In 1987, Jonathan Pollard was convicted of spying for Israel with investigators determining that he had been the most damaging spy in the history of the United States. In the 1960s, Israelis stole uranium from a lab in Pennsylvania to construct a secret nuclear arsenal. And the spying and theft of U.S. technology continues. Israel is the most active “friendly nation” when it comes to stealing U.S. secrets, and when its spies are caught, they are either sent home or, if they are Americans, receive a slap on the wrist.

And Israel gets away with killing American citizens — literally — in the cases of Rachel Corrie and Furkan Dogan of the Mavi Marmara. And let’s not forget Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians which has made the United States complicit in a crime against humanity. Tel Aviv has also played a key role in Washington’s going to war against Iraq, in promulgating a U.S.-led global war on terror against the Muslim world, and in crying wolf over Iran, all of which have served no U.S. interest. Through it all, Congress and the media are oblivious to what is taking place. Israel is a net recipient of over $123 billion in U.S. aid and continues to get $3 billion a year even though its per capita income is higher than that of Spain or Italy. No one questions anything having to do with Israel while Congress rubber-stamps resolution after resolution virtually promising to go to war on Israel’s behalf.
I have to admit that I don’t like what my own government is doing these days, but I like Israel even less and it is past time to do something about it. No more money, no more political support, no more tolerance of spying, and no more having to listen to demands for red lines to go to war. No more favorable press when the demented Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a cartoon at the U.N. The United States government exists to serve the American people, no more, no less, and it is time that our elected representatives begin to remember that fact.

Source: Antiwar.com

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About the Author

Philip Giraldi, Executive Director of Council for the National Interest(CNI), is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served 18 years in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992, and designated as the Agency’s senior officer for Olympic Games support. Dr. Giraldi holds an MA and PhD from the University of London. He speaks Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!