Bombing Iran? America Says Wait
February 19th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, and Secretary of State Clinton were in the Middle East in the last few days informing Israel that it had better not attack Iran. Israel is a fantastically terrified garrison state, eager to bomb the smithereens out of Iran–Haggai Ram writes of the “exaggerated or misplaced anxieties” which have succeeded only in scaring the Israeli public “out of its wits.” A witless terrified country reacts with violence, unless told to do otherwise by its financier.
See, hatred and fear of Iran is a bi-partisan near-consensus, but the means through which policymakers will act on that hatred and fear are the object of at least a little bit of debate. Given the power differential between the United States and Israel, America’s orders to Israel for a stay of bombardment shouldn’t be surprising except to those who advocate a mono-causal analysis of the Empire’s foreign policy. In this case, American policy-makers understand, I suspect, the dangers of war but are getting twitchy about the prospect of pummeling some more people in the Middle East, an essential pre-requisite for being an American statesmen. The Lobby is one force pushing for war, but far from the only one.
Lobby aside, American policy is headstrong and blind. Headstrong because it can not tolerate an independent Iran that refuses to vet its foreign policy with the empire, which includes the ability to be nuclear-capable without being nuclear-armed, probably Iran’s goal. And blind because it thinks that the regime is weak enough that destabilization will uproot it from the society within which it is embedded. Not a chance, say the Leveretts. Even those in the midst of reverie and with considerably less grounded visions of what the green movement is and isn’t, like Farhang Jahanpour, note that
So How Do I Look? – Zionist Self-Righteousness in the Face of Delegitimization
February 18th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Sabra and Shatila / Gaza
In 1982 Ariel Sharon enabled the massacres in refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. To Israel, this was a disaster. Not because innocent human beings, already victims of a mass ethnic cleansing, were brutally murdered, but because, for the first time, Israel was suffering a major wave of criticism from the international community. How does one untangle from such a nasty debacle? No! One does not apologize, compensate, and bring the guilty parties to justice! Instead, one creates one of the most successful and unscrupulous PR systems in the 20th century.
Lately, however, it seems there are cracks in the system. One might conclude, that Hasbara isn’t as airtight as it used to be, and maybe it needs a bit of a facelift. Either that, or we could say, one may be overlooking some facts. « Read the rest of this entry »
Raymond Deane’s Open Letter to the Heinrich Böll Foundation on Norman Finkelstein
February 17th, 2010 § 9 Comments
UPDATE: It now appears that the Rosa Luxemburg House has also cancelled the lecture. For shame.
Raymond Deane, renowned composer and founding member and former chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, sent this open letter to the Heinrich Böll Foundation after they cancelled Norman Finkelstein’s scheduled lecture in Berlin under the pretense that Finkelstein is a “controversial” figure. PULSE is the first site to publish this letter in English. The letter is also being translated into German, and will be appearing on several German websites shortly. Finkelstein’s talk will still take place, but will be hosted by the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
BDS: Calling all Geographers
February 17th, 2010 § 1 Comment
What follows is an open letter in response to the International Geographical Union’s (IGU) refusal to relocate its July 12 – 16, 2010 regional conference outside of Tel Aviv in support of the internationally supported Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign aimed at Israel. The IGU was initially confronted by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel in November 2009. This letter was printed on the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel’s website today.
Geographers and other academics can sign the letter here.
As geographers, faculty, students, and people of conscience, we are profoundly dismayed by IGU’s decision to hold its July 2010 regional conference in Tel Aviv, in violation of the widely endorsed Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. We are equally troubled by IGU’s response [1] to the open letter issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which urged the Executive Committee to relocate the upcoming regional conference out of Israel [2].
Murderers at Large
February 17th, 2010 § 1 Comment
These people murdered the Palestinian leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. According to British officials, the death squad was sent by the Israeli spy agency Mossad. An international arrest warrant is out for them. Report them to your nearest police station if you come across them.
Offensive in Marja directed at US public opinion
February 17th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
The reported arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar by US forces in cooperation with Pakistan is significant. He was a key member of the Quetta Shura, the central command of the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan sees the Afghan Taliban as a strategic asset in its struggle against regional rivals. It would be odd therefore to hand over such a key figure to US forces. I therefore suspect three possible scenarios: 1) The reported negotiations that Baradar had been conducting with coalition forces were unauthorized by the shura, and therefore they chose to throw him under the bus with Pakistani cooperation to preempt any possible betrayal; 2) Baradar has already cut a deal and the ‘arrest’ is staged to make his coming in from the cold appear more respectable; 3) Pakistan is trying to signal its indispensability to the Taliban who in recent months had been growing increasingly recalcitrant. Either way, it is unlikely that Baradar’s arrest will do much to diminish the gains that the Taliban have been making in recent year. Here I would also like to recommend one of the best, most comprehensive, books on the Afghan Taliban: Antonio Guistozzi’s Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002-2007.
In related news, one of the world’s finest investigative reporters, Gareth Porter of the Inter Press Service is just back from Afghanistan. He notes that the attack on Marja is meant to prepare Americans to accept negotiations with Taliban.
The Silent War: Israel’s Blockade of Gaza
February 17th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
A brief and informative audio-visual summary of the current situation in Gaza produced by Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP).
Mughniyeh Martyred
February 16th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Imad Mughniyeh
It’s two years now since the assassination of top Hizbullah operative Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus. Hizbullah is still promising retaliation ‘at a time of its choosing’. Meanwhile, Israel’s assassinations of resistance figures continue – most recently Hamas’s Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered in Dubai. The Emirati regime has taken no retaliatory action. I wrote the following in the immediate aftermath of Mughniyeh’s killing.
In this post I will jettison my chances of ever being granted an American visa (update: I have since been granted an American visa), by committing imperially-defined thought crime and supporting the strategy, if not all the tactics, of the martyred resistance leader Imad Mughniyeh. In today’s sad world you can be demonised, even prosecuted, for refusing to sing the ideological chorus with Israel (specifically Danny Yatom) that assassinations of resistance fighters represent “a great achievement for the free world in its fight against terror.” But I believe it is important not to be cowed by such hypocrisy and intimidation.
Face to Face with Baroness Jenny Tonge
February 16th, 2010 § 1 Comment
I once had the pleasure of sharing a platform with the honourable (in the true sense of the word) Jenny Tonge. She has been a frequent target of the UK Israel lobby’s character assassins. Once again, she’s in the cross-hairs. Here, in an interview from 14 February 2009, she speaks to friend of PULSE Lauren Booth about the concerns that animate her activism.
Pro-Chávez half of politically polarized Venezuelan couple eats socialist arepa
February 15th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Hugo Chávez at the December 2009 inauguration of the arepera socialista, part of the new Comerso (Socialist Market Corporation) initiative.
In line at the newly-inaugurated “arepera socialista”—a Caracas cafeteria offering cornmeal arepas, staple of the Venezuelan diet, at one-third the non-socialist price—a retired telecommunications employee named Ramón took advantage of the hour and a half wait to get through the door to list the issues on which he and his wife differed. A partisan of the opposition to President Hugo Chávez, the wife was reported to harbor the notion that milk not purchased at government-subsidized food shops was inherently more effective; Ramón maintained that there were more flexible members of the opposition, who complained continuously about Chávez but nonetheless indulged in socialist arepas and filled their gas tanks for less than a dollar.
