Sunday Roundup - December 21, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we look at Cuba, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Pakistan, nuclear weapons, US-Russia relations, and in brief, the US federal judiciary, the death penalty, Venezuela and Colombia.   

Cuba
President Obama took a major step towards normalizing relations with Cuba on Wednesday.  The shift will see the reopening of a U.S. embassy in Havana and an easing of the decades-long trade embargo of the island.  Obama detailed the changes in a White House address that coincided with a prisoner swap with Cuban authorities. U.S. citizen Alan Gross, a USAID contract worker whom Havana accused of spying, was released in exchange for three Cuban nationals jailed in Florida.  “We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries," Obama said...The policy shift amends existing regulations of the executive branch governing U.S. Cuba policy...These changes will allow an expansion of authorized travel categories by Americans to Cuba, increased caps for legal remittances from the U.S. to Cubans, greater commercial ties to the Cuban private sector and additional allowances between mutual exports and imports and authorizations for additional financial and banking transactions.  The reset in relations also includes a review of the U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Pope Francis and Uruguayan President José Mujica each played a role in the recent events which followed after more than a year of back-channel communications.  [Al Jazeera, Dec. 17]  The embargo has been opposed by the vast majority of nations - 188 of 193 nations voted to strike it down at this year's UN General Assembly vote on the embargo.  Latin American nations, which have long been especially critical of the embargo, welcomed the move.
Related

Pope John Paul II with President Fidel Castro in Cuba, 1998
Photo Credit: AP/Jose Goitia

"The US – not Cuba – comes in from the cold: Obama shifted US policy on Havana towards that of the rest of world, saying that decades-long embargo had failed" [Al Jazeera, Dec. 17]
"The spirit is willing: Papal role in Cuba thaw started with John Paul II" [Al Jazeera, Dec. 17]
John Paul II had raised eyebrows in 1996 when he granted a Vatican audience to the former seminarian-turned-revolutionary Fidel Castro. Even more remarkable, back then, was the apparent meeting of minds the two men had at the U.N. World Food conference in Rome that year on the question of hunger — and embargoes.

Occupied Palestinian Territory
With the US warning of a possible veto, Palestinian leaders and negotiators are pressing ahead with a Palestinian statehood resolution.  Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said the draft would be submitted to the Security Council after the Palestinians agreed with France on a merged text...The new text would set a two-year deadline for wrapping up negotiations on a final agreement paving the way to a new Palestinian state with Jerusalem as the shared capital...The Palestinians pushed for action at the United Nations as the European parliament overwhelmingly backed recognition of a Palestinian state..."The draft that will be presented...is the French draft based on Palestinian observations and decisions," Malki told AFP...UN diplomats however cautioned that action may not be imminent. Jordan was due to meet with Britain, France and the United States later before deciding on whether to submit the Palestinian text.  Secretary Kerry is meeting with Israel's Netanyahu, Palestinian negotiators, and European ministers in an attempt to head off a Security Council confrontation.  The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, warned this week that the international community could not simply ignore the Palestinian question.  "The Palestinian question is not going to evaporate," he said.  Mansour warned of more confrontation on the ground and said the Palestinians were ready to take action at the General Assembly and at the International Criminal Court. [AFP/Yahoo News, Dec. 18] 

To hold out hope that the Israeli government will negotiate in good faith on Palestinian statehood without serious international pressure is a cruel hoax.  It's been 21 years since the Oslo 2 Accord, which provided for a two-state solution.  Progress on Oslo has been virtually non-existent since the assassination of Nobel-Peace-Prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli right-wing extremist.  Kerry's failed peace talks are just the latest indication of the long-standing Israeli intransigence.  

After 47 years of military occupation, with the Gaza Strip devastated by a blockade and military assaults, with a government defying international law by illegal settlements and collective punishment, with an Israeli President who has built a political career on preventing a two-state solution, it is time for Palestinian statehood to be imposed by the world community.  Palestinians are only asking for what every other people have - a homeland (193 at last count).  As it is, the land sought by Palestinians has been reduced to just 40 percent of that proposed for their state by UN Resolution 181.  

If the world has learned anything after Israel's sabotage of the "Kerry":peace talks and after its brutal assault against Gaza this summer, it's that a two-state solution will never happen as long as the United States enables Israeli oppression by its arms sales and Security Council vetoes.  To continue this policy is morally reprehensible and makes a mockery of the United States's view of itself as a defender of human rights.  

Related
"Hamas taken off EU terror blacklist: Move comes as European parliament adopts resolution supporting principle of Palestinian statehood" [The Guardian, Dec. 17]

Pakistan
Seven heavily-armed Taliban gunmen carried out an attack on a school in Pakistan that left at least 141 people, mostly teenagers and younger children, dead.  Whatever these lunatics were thinking, unmitigated outrage spread quickly across the world  - even other terrorists denounced the attack.  It takes something unusually vile for the world to pay much attention to a terrorist outrage in Pakistan. Since 2007 the annual toll of murders by jihadists has never dropped below 2,000 and in 2012 and 2013 it was not far off 4,000....But the horror of the attack by the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organisation of militant groups officially known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), on an army-run school in Peshawar stands out for the scale and nature of its brutality....The army, and previous governments, must take much of the responsibility for the violence the country has suffered in recent years. The growth of the TTP is a direct consequence of neurotic fear of encirclement by India which is widespread in Pakistan’s ruling class and has led to the disastrous policy of exploiting and encouraging jihadist groups...After Nawaz Sharif became prime minister in June 2013 and Raheel Sharif (they are not related) took over as chief of army staff a year ago this disastrous policy began to change. Both men came to the conclusion that jihadist terrorism poses a greater threat to their country than India does....Reining in other terrorist groups that the state has cultivated will ultimately require moves towards a rapprochement with India over Kashmir. For that to happen India’s government will also have to show vision. [The Economist, Dec. 20]
Related
"3 Problems Pakistani Politics has to Resolve after Grisly School Attack" [Informed Comment, Dec. 17]

Nuclear Weapons
James Carroll at TomDispatch plots the long, sad course from Obama's 2009 Prague speech on banishing nuclear weapons ("As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act... So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.") to his role as an enabler of their renewal, Obama’s timing in 2009 was critical. The weapons and delivery systems of the nuclear arsenal were aging fast....massive reductions in the arsenal had to begin before pressures to launch a program for the wholesale replacement of those weapons systems grew too strong to resist...Obama, in other words, was presiding over a golden moment, but an apocalyptic deadline was bearing down. And sure enough, that deadline came crashing through.  Thanks to Pentagon pressure, Russia's ambition to return to world power status, and extremist Republicans taking Congress hostage,  Obama has become the "Ahab of Nuclear Weapons".  In order to get the votes of Senate Republicans to ratify the START treaty, Obama made what turned out to be a devil’s bargain.  He agreed to lay the groundwork for a vast “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which, in the name of updating an aged system, is already morphing into a full-blown reinvention of the arms cache at an estimated future cost of more than a trillion dollars. Carroll wonders what might happen if the President went directly to the people and passionately made the case today that he made in Prague five years.  Although there is no sign that the president intends to do such a thing any longer,... if a commander-in-chief were to order nuclear reductions into the hundreds, the result might actually be a transformation of the American political conscience. In the process, the global dream of a nuclear-free world could be resuscitated and the commitment of non-nuclear states (including Iran) to refrain from nuclear-weapons development could be rescued. Ending on a pessimistic note, Carroll writes: Because of decisions likely to be taken this year and next, no American president will ever again be able to embrace this purpose as Obama once did. Nuclear weapons will instead become a normalized and permanent part of the twenty-first century American arsenal, and therefore of the arsenals of many other nations. [TomDispatch, Dec. 11]

Russia
On Thursday, President Obama signed a bill that will allow the White House to levy further sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, though the Administration has said it has no immediate plans to introduce them....US entities would be forbidden from investing in gas giant Gazprom, and the company would face additional sanctions if it broke off supplies to key eastern European countries.... Other sanctions would involve Russia’s arms exporter Rosoboronexport. Perhaps most crucially, organizations in [Russia’s] embattled financial sector would be barred from dealing with any US banks...In a related move, the bill authorizes Obama to supply anti-tank weapons, surveillance drones and other sophisticated equipment for Petro Poroshenko's government in Kiev, though White House officials said the President had no immediate plans to allow US weapons to be used to put down the uprising in the east of the country...Two factors appear to have put a brake on the plan. Obama is loathe to impose new measures without backing from Brussels, where there is no unity on the need for future sanctions...and the Russia rouble has collapsed over the past week - partly due to oil prices. [Russia Times, Dec. 18]
Dmitri Trenin at The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace believes that the West and Russia may now be entering a state of permanent crisis.  Conflict resolution is not on the agenda. It is time for permanent crisis management. ...Crisis management must ensure, at minimum, that there is no resumption of hostilities in eastern Ukraine. Should Kiev, with Washington's blessing or its acquiescence, attempt to retake Donetsk and Lugansk, the Kremlin may not confine itself to restoring the status quo...The best one can do now is to engage in practical steps to make life less miserable for the people directly affected. The trilateral Russia-Ukraine-EU agreement on gas supplies to Ukraine finally concluded at the end of October is a useful first step...Ukraine and Europe...should not overreact to the November 2 elections in Donbass. They would be wise to engage with newly elected leaders of the region. Talking with people, including adversaries, and dealing with them does not imply recognition of an entity, but can be useful in managing important practical issues.  Europeans need to find a way to relate to Russians, even if, in Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel's memorable phrase, Putin may "live in another world." If Europe and Germany want to be a serious player..., they have to build a relationship with Russia on a new foundation of realism and pragmatism.  [CEIP, Nov. 4]

In Brief - Links
US Federal Judiciary
"The Senate Just Cemented Obama's Judicial Legacy" [Huffington Post, Dec. 18]
The number of vacancies in the Federal courts is now 41 out of 874 judgeships.  This is down from 86 vacancies in March.

Colombia
"Colombia rebuffs FARC ceasefire offer: Government says peace deal must be reached before it will accept rebels’ demand that truce be verified by other countries" [The Guardian, Dec. 18]

Venezuela
"Venezuela sanctions highlight US hypocrisy on human rights: Obama should follow his example on Cuba and engage with, not punish, Venezuela" [Al Jazeera, Dec. 18]

Death Penalty
In 2014, 35 people were executed, the fewest in 20 years. Death sentences dropped to their lowest level in the modern era of the death penalty, with 72 people sentenced to death, the smallest number in 40 years. Just seven states carried out executions, and three states (Texas, Missouri, and Florida) accounted for 80% of the executions.  [Death Penalty Information Center, Dec. 18]

Armistice Day, the Gulf of Tonkin and the Berlin Wall

"The First World War, boys,

It came and it went

The reason for fighting

I never did get"

- Bob Dylan, "With God on Our Side"

In the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, an armistice was signed between Germany and the Allied Powers that put an end to fighting on the western front in the Great War. The war started in 1914 making this year the 100th anniversary of its beginning.  The Great War/World War I was one of the most inexplainable and horrific wars in history.  Bob Dylan is not alone in wondering why an assassination in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist grew into the greatest global conflict the world had yet seen. By the time it was over in 1918, "The Great War" claimed more than 16 million lives, including 7 million civilians. The trenches, machine guns, chemical weapons, and the use of airplanes made this war different - more horrific and more deadly than previous wars. The Treaty of Versailles, by severely punishing the Germans as if they were solely responsible for the war, laid the grounds for the rise of Hitler and World War II, with its even greater death toll.  The "war to end all wars" did no such thing.

This year is also the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which marked the beginning of the massive escalation of United States involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam.  I was at a baseball game with my father that August in 1964.  Fans erupted in applause when some "retaliatory action" against North Vietnam was announced.  I'm sure none of that delirious and deluded mass had any idea what the consequences of the American escalation would be.  Or the background and disputable evidence for the incidents on which the retaliation was supposedly based.  The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave President Johnson the right to wage all out war against North Vietnam without securing a formal Declaration of War from Congress.  That was in the days of the Cold War with the Soviet Union when the bogus "domino theory" held sway over the American political landscape and military thinking. 

The Cold War came to a symbolic end 25 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.  The Soviet Union itself officially came to an end on December 26, 1991.  Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union and the man responsible for the liberaliziation of the Soviet system embodied in the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (change), had resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over power to Russian President Boris Yeltsin.  And now the man at the center of the reforms that led to the end of the Cold War and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion is warning us that the world is on the brink of a new cold war.  Speaking in Berlin during the celebration commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mikhail Gorbachev warned that the world was “on the brink of a new cold war” and strongly criticised the west for having sown the seeds of the current crisis by mishandling the fallout from the collapse of the iron curtain.  “Instead of building new mechanisms and institutions of European security and pursuing a major demilitarisation of European politics … the west, and particularly the United States, declared victory in the cold war...Euphoria and triumphalism went to the heads of western leaders. Taking advantage of Russia’s weakening and the lack of a counterweight, they claimed monopoly leadership and domination in the world.”  The enlargement of NATO, Kosovo, missile defence plans and wars in the Middle East had led to a “collapse of trust”, said Gorbachev, now 83. “To put it metaphorically, a blister has now turned into a bloody, festering wound.” [The Guardian, November 8]

The 3,000 wars of recorded human history have claimed more than 340,000,000 lives.  Hundreds of millions have been forced to leave their homes.  And still the wars go on.

At present, more than 60 countries are suffering armed conflict.

For the first time since World War II, there are more than 50,000,000 refugees and internally displaced persons - more than half of whom are children.

Twenty five years after the Cold War ended, nine countries still possess 17,000 nuclear weapons.

In 2013, the nations of the world spent about $1,700,000,000,000 on their military budgets.

In the United States, Armistice Day is commemorated now as Veterans Day - a day to remember the sacrifices of the men and women sent to fight and die in wars.  As we remember veterans, we should also continue the struggle against the notions that violence is a viable solution and that war is a means of achieving peace.  I refuse to believe that war and violence are ingrained indelibly in human nature. We must continue to believe in the transformative power of nonviolent action and work against the underlying causes of war - the "interwoven systems of domination and exploitation at the roots of inequality and injustice."

"History tells us that the absence of war is not the presence of peace. We have seen time and time again that violence does not end when you put down the gun, that war is not over when you declare a ceasefire. We understand that there are interwoven systems of domination and exploitation at the roots of inequality and injustice, and that to 'remove all causes of war' we must collaborate and stand in solidarity with oppressed people across the globe."  

- War Resisters League Statement of Purpose

"I wonder how foreign policies would look if we ...thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never...wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children."

- Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

Featured Post

Remembering the Fallen, Memorial Day (May 27) 2013

Featured Video
To paraphrase former president Reagan, "Tear down that wall, Mr. Netanyahu."
A powerful video and rendition of "We Shall Overcome" by Roger Waters.

Sunday Roundup - August 10, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the mainstream US corporate media.  Today we look at Iraq, the nuclear weapons era, and Gaza.


Iraq

Map is from The Guardian

The destabilization of the Middle East caused by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq continues the legacy of the neocons who misled our country into this unjustifiable war.  Iraq is on the verge of unraveling as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) forces advance throughout the northwestern section of the country and into Syria.   Isis forces advanced across north-western Iraq almost unchecked since a small band of hardliners stormed Iraq's second city, Mosul, on 10 June, sending the Iraqi army fleeing and shattering the central government's control. Flush with weapons looted from Iraqi arsenals, Isis sacked Tikrit and advanced on Kirkuk. With new recruits lured or pressganged along the way, it has captured five oilfields and three cities, an 800-mile stretch of border with Syria. It has menaced Baghdad and is now within striking distance of Iraq's two largest dams.  

The latest ISIS campaign is against Kurdish minority Yazidis.  UN groups say at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, many of them women and children, have taken refuge in nine locations on Mount Sinjar, a craggy, mile-high ridge identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah's ark.   At least 130,000 more people, many from the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar, have fled to Dohuk, in the Kurdish north, or to Irbil, where regional authorities have been struggling since June to deal with one of the biggest and most rapid refugee movements in decades. [The Guardian, August 6]

On Friday, US began airstrikes against the militant forces.  U.S. warplanes bombed Islamist fighters marching on Iraq's Kurdish capital on Friday after President Barack Obama said Washington must act to prevent "genocide".  Islamic State fighters...have advanced to within a half hour's drive of Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdish region and a hub for U.S. oil companies. [Reuters, August 8]

Related
Stephen Walt, "Do No (More) Harm" (Foreign Policy, August 7) - the case against bombing the Islamic State..."Every time the U.S. touches the Middle East, it makes things worse. It's time to walk away and not look back...This argument would not preclude limited U.S. action for purely humanitarian purposes -- such as humanitarian airdrops for the beleaguered religious minorities now threatened with starvation in Iraq."


The Nuclear Weapons Era
On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  It was the beginning of the nuclear weapons era.  In his  introduction to a Noam Chomsky article, Tom Englehardt at TomDispatch writes that the way for the bombing of Hiroshima had been paved by an evolution in warfare: the increasing targeting of civilian populations from the air (something that can be seen again today in the carnage of Gaza)....Targeted by the planet’s major nuclear arsenals would be the civilian inhabitants not just of single cities but of scores and scores of cities, even of the planet itself.  On August 6th, 70 years ago, the possibility of the apocalypse passed out of the hands of God or the gods and into human hands, which meant a new kind of history had begun whose endpoint is unknowable.  Noam Chomsky's article reviews the insane strategies of the nuclear weapons era (NWE) and the squandered opportunities to reduce the threat.  He quotes General Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which controls nuclear weapons and strategy.  Twenty years ago, he wrote that we had so far survived the NWE “by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.”  Chomsky concludes As General Butler observed, it is a near miracle that we have escaped destruction so far, and the longer we tempt fate, the less likely it is that we can hope for divine intervention to perpetuate the miracle.  Nine countries currently possess at least 16,300 nuclear weapons - a significant drop from the 60-70,000 present at the peak but a long way from zero.

Table is from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and appeared in Business Insider

Note: A Ploughshares Fund estimate puts the nuclear weapons total at 17,300.


Gaza
A three-day ceasefire ended Friday.  Al Jazeera  reports: Israel has hit the Gaza Strip with missiles and artillery for the first time in three days, while Palestinian fighters launched a barrage of rockets at Israel, just hours after a ceasefire between the two sides expired....The ceasefire expired as no progress was made in the Egyptian-mediated talks aimed at finding a durable solution to the month-long fighting.  The Egyptian-brokered talks had not resumed as of Saturday night.

Preliminary UN estimates of the destruction to date in six areas of the Gaza Strip based on satellite images show a total of 3246 structures damaged or destroyed (1525 destroyed, 700 severely damaged, 1021 moderately damaged), 4900 acres of farmland destroyed, and 1288 road or rural area craters.  A UN report on casualties (August 6) estimated that 1,843 Palestinians had been killed and 66 Israelis and one Thai national since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on 8 July.  Of those Palestinians, the status of 279 could not be identified, at least 1,354 were civilians, including 415 children and 214 women.  Israel's 67 deaths include 3 civilians.

Meanwhile, pressure is mounting for an investigation into possible war crimes.  The UN could launch an independent investigation into the conduct of the war: The U.S. has cast the sole vote against establishing an investigation by the United Nations into war crimes committed in Gaza.  Yesterday [July 23], the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 29-1, with 17 abstentions, to establish an inquiry. The United States was the only no vote. The European nations on the council all abstained. [Mondo Weiss, July 24]  Also, The Guardian reported on August 5: Palestinian political leaders are poised to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) with the aim of putting Israel in the dock on war crimes charges, officials said today.  "Israel has left us with no other option," Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, told reporters after meeting ICC officials in The Hague to discuss the implications of signing the Rome Statute. It would make the Palestinian state a member of the court with the authority to call for an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The destruction of property and the death toll in Occupied Gaza now exceed those of the Israeli siege of Dec 2008-Jan 2009.  Without accountability for the massive civilian casualties and damage inflicted by the IDF, what The Nation has called "the cycle of impunity" will continue.  Impunity is what happens when an aggressor fractures the norms of international law and basic human rights yet is never held to account, and so is free to commit the same crimes again and again. That is what we’re seeing now, and that is exactly what the Goldstone Report—the findings of the UN investigation of Operation Cast Lead in 2008–09—so presciently warned against. It said then that bringing to justice those who committed war crimes—Israel as well as Hamas—was perhaps the only effective way to prevent another round of violence. [The Nation, posted July 16]

Related
"What the Gaza War Means for the Middle East" (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 27) - "Despite the horrifying human toll of the latest Israel offensive against Gaza, Palestinians are rallying in even greater numbers around Hamas. They have rejected any ceasefire proposal that does not end the crippling seven-year blockade of Gaza; a blockade that has been described as a form of collective punishment that keeps Palestinians trapped in the largest 'open-air prison camp' in the world."

Marjorie Cohn, "Israel Inflicts Illegal Collective Punishment on Gaza" (Huffington Post, July 14) - "Israel's overwhelming use of military force constitutes collective punishment, which is a war crime... Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, specifically forbids collective punishment. It says, 'No protected person [civilian] may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed ... Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited'  "

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, 12 August 1949

Update Last Sunday's round-up noted that the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier was used as the Israeli justification for the increased violence on Friday August 1 that left around 100 Palestinians dead.  Consistent with the Hamas' statement at the time, the kidnapping did not actually occur and  Israel confirmed on Saturday August 2 that the soldier presumed captured had been killed in action. 

A Diplomatic Victory

The G3+3 have reached an interim six-month agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.  This is the best news on foreign relations that we have had for a long time.  Let's hope the war-mongers, neocons, lobby-influenced Congressmen, and Benjamin Netanyahu don't manage to find a way to scuttle it before the next stage.  Even as this past weekend's negotiations were getting underway, Senators, including Democrats, were lining up to impose additional sanctions on Iran.  Pro-Israel groups, mainly AIPAC, contributed no less than $12.5 million to congressional candidates during the period from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2012 - putting them solidly among the top special interest group lobbies in the country.   Nevertheless, the historic agreement, interim though it may be, was made and initial indications from Congress are that they will allow time to see if the agreement will work. 

As Reuters reported on Sunday November 24: "Iran and six world powers clinched a deal on Sunday curbing the Iranian nuclear programme in exchange for initial sanctions relief, signalling the start of a game-changing rapprochement that would reduce the risk of a wider Middle East war.  Aimed at easing a long festering standoff, the interim pact between Iran and the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia won the critical endorsement of Iranian clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei...The agreement, which halts Iran's most sensitive nuclear activity, its higher-grade enrichment of uranium, was tailored as a package of confidence-building steps towards reducing decades of tension and ultimately creating a more stable, secure Middle East."  The negotiators noted that this was an important first step, that "the accord created time and space for follow-up talks on a comprehensive solution to the dispute".  Iranian Foreign Minister and chief negotiator Mohammed Javed Zarif said "in an interview broadcast on state television that Iran would move quickly to start implementing the agreement and it was ready to begin talks on a final accord."

Some US allies in the Middle East - particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel - are not happy with the détente in US-Iranian relations.  Netanyahu went so far as to call the negotiated agreement a "historic blunder."   To which should be said that Saudi Arabia and Israel should have no fears.  Just because we are lessening the chances of war in the Middle East doesn't mean they are no longer our allies. The amount of military aid and sales to these countries is staggering.  Israel receives direct US military aid - averaging 1.8 billion dollars annually since 1987 and increasing to 2.4 billion/year in 2008.  Saudi Arabia purchases billions of dollars of military equipment from the American arms industry.  With a more peaceful Middle East, perhaps there would not be a need for these expenditures. 

Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  As such, it has the right to develop its nuclear industry for peaceful purposes.  It also has the obligation to allow periodic inspections. As noted in a Washington Post article from August 2012, "IAEA inspectors are regularly in Iran, but the core of the current dispute is that Tehran is not letting them have unfettered access to all of the country’s nuclear installations."  Apparently that has changed with the agreement reached this weekend. 

Israel is not a signatory to the treaty and not subject to inspections of its nuclear facilities.  It is estimated that Israel has at least 80 nuclear weapons, although they have never admitted it publicly.  The last person to disclose the Israeli nuclear program, nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, "was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Italy, taken home to trial, convicted and served 18 years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement." [Washington Post]

Maybe it's too much to hope for but a totally nuclear free Middle East would be a good thing.  And a totally nuclear free world would be even better.  That would give us all something to be truly thankful for. 

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Happy Thanksgiving! The Left Bank Café will be back after the Thanksgiving holidays.

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Stop Stumbling into War Now

Inconceivable as it may be after the recent disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the midst of the ongoing economic problems in this country, the US may find itself in a war with Iran in the near future.  With increasingly belligerent talk and accusations against Iran from Israel's Netanyahu and with Israeli and American drones in the area, there is an increasing sense of a mindless drift towards war. 

Charles Mutede's February 14 post on The Stranger blog summarizes the situation with Israel's right-wing leader:  "Netanyahu apparently feels, however, that he can manipulate right-wing Israeli influence on American politics to make it impossible for Obama to stay out of an Israeli war on Iran. He has defied the Obama administration by refusing to assure Washington that he would consult them before making any decision on war with Iran." 

Frankly who the f**k does Netanyahu think he is?  Even George Bush would not be convinced to tolerate and support an Israeli strike against Iran. 

Hopefully Obama will not be forced into an Iran war by the right-wing lunatics and neocons in Congress and in the Republican Party in this election year.  Hopefully he will take the only path to peace possible and publicly warn Netanyahu that if he institutes any such attack against Washington's wishes, he is totally on his own for the duration. 

And hopefully, Obama was just grand-standing in his State of the Union when he said that he "will take no options off the table to achieve [the] goal [of preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons capability]".  As noted in today's Huffington Post, there is little enthusiasm in the military for any such war.  Quoting Gen. Martin Dempsey's comment to the National Journal last month,  a war with Iran "would be really destabilizing ... I personally believe that we should be in the business of deterring [war] as a first priority."  Dempsey is the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  So at least there is sanity at that spot.

As for the presence of US ships near Iranian waters and US drones near the Iranian border, Rep. Dennis Kucinich asks how would we react if an Iranian aircraft flew near our coast?  Maintaining the peace requires an all-out effort in diplomacy, not provocations against Iran's national sovereignty.  Kucinich suggests if we want to deter Iranians from nuclear energy, we should show them the cost of such energy and that there are better ways to power a nation.  If we want to deter them from developing nuclear weapons capability, the US should take the lead in nuclear disarmament.  As Kucinich says in the linked video , "Don't we have enough wars that we're fighting in the United States? Do we need another war? Did I miss something that we somehow ran out of wars?"

Noam Chomsky in a HuffingtonPost/TomDispatch co-post notes another diplomatic path to solve the nuclear weapons issue.  He sites overwhelming international support for undertaking "meaningful steps towards establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, including Iran and Israel (and applying as well to U.S. forces deployed there), better still extending to South Asia."  This fuller solution (Middle East plus South Asia) would have the advantage of bringing Israel, Pakistan and India under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  These three countries are the only ones to never have signed the NPT and they all have nuclear weapons. (It should be noted that North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003.) 

There is some hope that world peace can be maintained and that we will not stumble into another disastrous war in the Middle East.  It is going to take hard diplomatic work, creative solutions, and the courage and political will to stand up to those who would clamor for that war or try to lure us into it.