Month: June 2009

On the pretence of peace

Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv Sunday (AP Photo)
Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv Sunday (AP Photo)

A guest op-ed from Brenda Heard of Friends of Lebanon.

On Sunday 14 June 2009, hours before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a statement announcing his expectations of the international community, Israeli F-16 jets dropped several bombs along the southern Gaza border.  The Israeli military said it was targeting underground tunnels.  Four Palestinians were wounded. (More on the exchange of hostilities here and here.)

As the Palestinians were being treated in hospital, Netanyahu proclaimed, “Peace has always been our people’s most ardent desire.”  In fact the speech was interwoven with Hallmark-Greeting-Card-messages of tranquil harmony.  “If we join hands and work together for peace. . . .”

Cut the violins.  In essence, Netanyahu stated that he expected the international community to support his desire to turn his holy land into his Disney land so as to regain the tourist trade needed to bolster an ailing Israeli economy.  We could make this whole Palestinian problem go away, he said, if we simply ignore those we forced out and bend those remaining into complete submission.  Lest anyone get the wrong idea, though, we’ll let them keep a flag and a song.  Just to prove how civilised we are.

Continue reading “On the pretence of peace”

The Day of Destiny: ‘Tanks, guns, Basiji, you have no effect now’

Robert Fisk witnesses the courage of one million opposition protesters.

tehran-shot-man-EPA_188001s
A demonstrator who was shot during a protest in the streets of the capital Tehran today

It was Iran’s day of destiny and day of courage. A million of its people marched from Engelob Square to Azadi Square – from the Square of Revolution to the Square of Freedom – beneath the eyes of Tehran’s brutal riot police. The crowds were singing and shouting and laughing and abusing their “President” as “dust”.Mirhossein Mousavi was among them, riding atop a car amid the exhaust smoke and heat, unsmiling, stunned, unaware that so epic a demonstration could blossom amid the hopelessness of Iran’s post-election bloodshed. He may have officially lost last Friday’s election, but yesterday was his electoral victory parade through the streets of his capital. It ended, inevitably, in gunfire and blood.

Continue reading “The Day of Destiny: ‘Tanks, guns, Basiji, you have no effect now’”

The winds of change?

D'oh!
D'oh!

Two bits of very good news emerge today.

First, following on the publication of Dennis Ross’ new book on how to use negotiations to launch a war against Iran, Haaretz is reporting that Ross is being relieved of his duties as Obama’s point man on Iran.  It is as if this current Obama administration will not offer all the support possible to warmongers to kill as much Muslims as possible!  Poor Ross must be pining for the good days of American foreign policy, where lust for war against Muslims seemed like a precondition for joining any foreign policy team.

Second, the American people, it seems, have had enough with the incestuous relationship of their government with the regime of Tel Aviv.  In a few months, the percentage of Americans who say the US should support Israel has dropped from 71% to 44%.  The Israel Project (a propaganda outfit that makes AIPAC look reasoned) conducted the poll, though it refuses to publish its results officially. Could it be the mass murder in Gaza? The apartheid in the West Bank? Or could it be the rhetoric of Bibi and his fascist buddies? Or was it, perhaps, the Israeli ministerial calls for regime change in America?

Not all is well in America’s Zionistan.  Are these two bits of news a turning point in the American-Israeli relationship? We’ll have to wait and see.

The American Empire Is Bankrupt

Chris Hedges examines moves by Russia/China to dump the Dollar as a global reserve currency stating that “it marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back.”

I’d also recommend the Michael Hudson article De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire referred to by Hedges.

This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.

Continue reading “The American Empire Is Bankrupt”

Open Letter To Stephen Colbert On His Shows From Iraq

Stephen Colbert was recently on a USO tour of Iraq to entertain the illegal occupiers of the country.  The show however went far beyond entertainment, and verged on pro-war propaganda.  Among other things it included interviews with Ray Odierno, the fellow whose units according to Thomas Ricks were responsible  for much of the abuses in the initial phase of the war, and with the Kurdish boot-licker they have installed as Iraq’s deputy prime minister, a truly execrable creature. Surprisingly, no one has spoken out against this supposed enlightened ‘liberal’ whitewashing Bush’s genocidal war. That is, until now. Here is Danny Schechter, the News Dissector’s open letter to Colbert.

Operation Iraqi Stephen
Operation Iraqi Stephen

Dear Stephen Strong:

Welcome home, soldier. Your week in Iraq is all over, but the war, of course, isn’t. At least your presence there reminded us that Americans troops are still there. I am sure your presence gave them something fun to do, but hey, Nation, shouldn’t we think a little deeper about this fused exercise in military promotion and self-promotion?

Your shtick as the conservative counterpart as an O’Reilly wanna-be to Jon Stewart aside, you were not the only one flattered and enabled by the nominally apolitical USO to entertain the troops. These exercises are part of “selling” as well as “telling.”

Al Franken went on such a tour when Bush was in command although I noticed that W appears along with other former POTUS’s to endorse your cheerleading for our “service members.”

What are they really serving?

Continue reading “Open Letter To Stephen Colbert On His Shows From Iraq”

A response to “new” politics

Politics
by Carol Ann Duffy

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.

No Liberal Inevitability

Mir Hossein Mousavi
Mir Hossein Mousavi (Credit: Hasan Sarbakhshian)

I imagine that many PULSE readers, like me, hope that Iran is able to preserve the anti-imperialist character of its revolution while ridding itself of the more oppressive aspects, such as dress codes, morality police, and harassment of intellectuals. In these elections, Mousavi certainly seemed the more intelligent and diplomatic of the candidates. The commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s announcement even before votes were counted that a ‘popular revolution’ would not be tolerated seems to suggest that the election results have in fact been rigged. Yet nothing is clear. Mousavi’s campaign was aimed at the merchant class and the liberal bourgeoisie – no more than a third of the population. And Mousavi received about a third of the votes.

Abbas Barzegar believes Ahmedinejad won the election fair and square, and that Iranian and Western commentators indulge in wishful thinking when they find this incredible. “Observers,” he writes, “would do us a favour by taking a deeper look into Iranian society, giving us a more accurate picture of the very organic religious structures of the country, and dispensing with the narrative of liberal inevitability.”

I have been in Iran for exactly one week covering the 2009 Iranian election carnival. Since I arrived, few here doubted that the incumbent firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would win. My airport cab driver reminded me that the president had visited every province twice in the last four years – “Iran isn’t Tehran,” he said. Even when I asked Mousavi supporters if their man could really carry more than capital, their responses were filled with an Obamasque provisional optimism – “Yes we can”, “I hope so”, “If you vote.” So the question occupying the international media, “How did Mousavi lose?” seems to be less a problem of the Iranian election commission and more a matter of bad perception rooted in the stubborn refusal to understand the role of religion in Iran.

Continue reading “No Liberal Inevitability”

Entering Palestine

I love it when Arab Christians have names like Omar. It shows, on their fathers’ part, a rejection of the sectarianism which cripples us. I know of a Christian family in Beirut which named its eldest son Jihad, and Muslim families with sons called Fidel and Guevara. Omar is not merely a specifically Muslim name; it’s more particularly a Sunni name, disliked by some Shia for theological-historical reasons. Omar is not a good name to have written on your ID card while driving through a Shia-militia-controlled area of Baghdad. But I know an Iraqi Shia woman whose brother is called Omar, because her father rejected the whole sorry sectarian business.

By and large, the Palestinians have avoided the curse. It’s still the case that if you ask a Palestinian whether he’s Muslim or Christian he responds, “Palestinian!” I mention this because our guide from Amman to the Allenby Bridge was a Palestinian Christian called Omar, and because the Palestinians, unlike their enemies, are proud of their diversity and pluralism.

Swaying in the bus aisle, Omar explained that Jordanian officers would check our passports but would not stamp them. “The Jordanian government has recognised Israel, but not Israeli control over the West Bank. Why are there Israeli police on the border and not Palestinians? Jordan recognises this as a crossing, but not a border.”

Surely Omar was pleased that, since the peace agreement, he could visit his family in Bethlehem? Not really: “Jordan allows every Israeli to come here. They get visas automatically when they come in. But we have to apply at the Israeli embassy, where they treat us badly, and 95% of applications are refused. I tried to go in for my uncle’s funeral, but they wouldn’t let me. This is the balanced peace we have with our neighbours.”

The Jordanian side of the crossing takes less than ten minutes. Omar collects our passports to flash at an officer while we drink water in the shade. Then back onto the bus, without Omar, and over the bridge.

Continue reading “Entering Palestine”

Phyllis Bennis on Obama’s Cairo speech

phyllisbennisThis week from CounterSpin – “Barack Obama has either been currying favor with Muslims or extending an olive branch in the Middle East depending on which media you consume. We’ll talk with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies about Obama’s major speech in Cairo, and the size of the gap between words and actions.”

Phyllis Bennis on CounterSpin (9:46): MP3

Talking to Iran will make it “easier to sell” war on Iran, says man responsible for talking to Iran

Dennis-Ross_2
Dennis Ross

As Iranians go to the polls to repudiate (it seems) some of the most pernicious aspects of Ahmadinejad’s rule, America’s Iran point man continues to make Ahmadinejad look like a reasonable peacenik.

The newly released book by Dennis Ross, President Obama’s special adviser on Iran, reads like a how-to manual for launching a war on Iran, marketing the war successfully, and making sure the Iranians cop all the blame for it.  Ross will have none of Bush’s incompetent warmongering on flimsy pretenses of democracy and WMD’s; when Ross launches his illegal war on Iran, it will be stage-managed to within an inch of its life.

“Tougher policies – either militarily or meaningful containment – will be easier to sell internationally and domestically if we have diplomatically tried to resolve our differences with Iran in a serious and credible fashion,” writes Ross.

Note that there is no way to read this sentence but to see that the goal is to attack Iran.  America trying to diplomatically resolve its differences with Iran is not a goal in itself; it is merely a means to more easily sell war and sanctions.

Continue reading “Talking to Iran will make it “easier to sell” war on Iran, says man responsible for talking to Iran”