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President al-Assad Appoints Sattam Jad’an al-Dandah as Syria’s Ambassador to Iraq 

Oct 09, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday issued decree no. 358 for 2012 appointing Sattam Jad’an al-Dandah as Syria’s Ambassador to Iraq.

Al-Dandah was sworn in before President al-Assad.

Afterwards, the President received al-Dandah and provided him with his directives, wishing him success in his duties.

The swearing-in ceremony was attended by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign and Expatriates Minister Walid al-Moallem.

Terrorist Groups Trying to Cross Border from Lebanon and Turkey Repelled

Oct 09, 2012

PROVINCES, (SANA)-  The Armed forces on Tuesday carried out qualitative operations destroying a field hospital, three DShK-equipped vehicles, three anti-aircraft machineguns and six cars used by terrorists to transfer weapons and ammunitions near Dar al-Shifa and al-Shaar Hospitals in al-Shaar area in Aleppo city.

The armed forces also destroyed a terrorist center in the same area.

Six cars transporting terrorists, another carrying a number of terrorist groups’ leaders and two DShK-equipped vehicles were destroyed in the area around the Sports Institute in Bustan al-Basha.

All the terrorists inside the vehicles were killed.

An army unit destroyed two vehicles equipped with DShK machineguns and two others transporting terrorists, weapons and ammunition near the Infrimary in the same area.

Another army unit destroyed a truck loaded with weapons and ammunition, killing all the terrorists inside it in the area around the Infirmary.

A sniper and a number of terrorists were killed during the operations carried out by the armed forces to clear Karm al-Jabal area of the armed terrorist groups.

An armed forces unit carried out an operation al-Sha’ar roundabout in Aleppo city, resulting in the destruction of 4 busses full of terrorists, 4 cars equipped with DShk machineguns and two sets of twin-mounted anti-aircraft machineguns, and a gathering of terrorists.

A unit of the armed forces targeted gatherings and centers of terrorists near Sukkar Mosque and al-Thawra School in Bustan al-Qasr, south of the Justice Palace and near Yousef al-Azmeh School in al-Hawooz roundabout in Aleppo, inflicting heavy losses upon them.

Terrorists Target State Cleaning Workers in Aleppo While on Duty

A number of terrorists opened fire at cleaners affiliated with Aleppo City Council, killing the driver Turki l-Naseh and the worker Taleb Bartilo.

Meanwhile, a mortar shell, fired by terrorists in the area of al-Sheikh Maqsoud in the city of Aleppo, caused the martyrdom of cleaner Ammar Na’na’ and citizen Jarrah Ayoub Issa, and the injury of three others.

Another cleaner, Mohammad Khayat, in Qadi Askar area was also martyred in shooting by an armed terrorist group while he was in the line of duty.

Armed Forces Deal Painful Blows to Terrorists in Aleppo Countryside

Units of the armed forces destroyed a convoy of vehicles used by terrorists on Kafr Touran road in the countryside of Aleppo, in addition to destroying three DShK-equipped cars and a number of motorcycles with all the terrorists inside of them.

Another army unit killed a number of terrorists in Zrouneh village to the south of Ebin town in the countryside of Aleppo, destroying a number of motorcycles they were using.

A unit of the armed forces targeted centers of terrorists in Kafr Hamra in the countryside of Aleppo, killing a number of them.

Terrorists Jamal Shamta from Andan, Walid Hmandoush from Deir Hafer and Faisal Kdro from Badees were identified among the dead.

Authorities in Hama Kill, Injure a number of terrorists

The competent authorities clashed with a number of terrorists at al-Hamiydea, Masha’a al-Arabe’en in Hama, killing and  injuring most of them and confiscating their weapons.

A source in Hama told SANA reporter that among the terrorists killed were Ammar bin Ahmad Jihad al-Ahmad, known as Abu Hadid and Ahmad al-Khart, known as Ahmad Jero.

Among the weapons seized were snipers, rifles, RPGs and explosives.

Terrorists Killed in Bab Houd, Homs

A unit of the armed forces clashed with an armed terrorist group at Bab Houd neighborhood in Homs, killing most of them

A source in Homs said that another Army unit found 50 explosive devices, 180 booby-trapped gas cylinder planed by the terrorists in the houses of people at Bab al-Turkman neighborhood after forcing the citizens to leave their homes.

Army units clean al-Rawda, al-Midan, Beit Fares and al-Araja villages in Lattakia countryside from the armed terrorist groups

The army units cleaned al-Rawda, al-Midan, Beit Fares and al-Araja villages in Lattakia countryside from the armed terrorist groups.

A source in Lattakia told SANA reporter that during the cleansing operations, the army destroyed a number of DSHK-equipped cars and machineguns, killing all the mercenaries.

Authorities in East Ghouta Pursuit, kill mercenaries

The competent authorities pursued armed terrorist groups in the East Ghouta, Damascus countryside, killing most of them and confiscating their weapons including RPGs, bombs and machineguns.

A source in the Governorate told SANA reporter that the authorities also killed a number of mercenaries in al-Hajera, among them of non-Syria nationalities, destroying their cars equipped with machineguns.

Afghani and Chechen Terrorists Killed in Homs Countryside

A unit of the armed forces on Tuesday killed a number of mercenary terrorists of Afghani and Chechen nationalities in al-Ziraa village in al-Qsier countryside in Homs.

SANA reporter quoted a source in the province as saying that the armed forces also seized various kinds of weapons, including 2 RPG launchers, M-16 rifles, a sniper rifle, and Israeli-made machinegun and a number of explosive devices with 30-50 kg weight.

Military engineering units dismantled 8 explosive devices planted by armed terrorist groups at al-Dareh al-Kabireh crossroad near Homs-Hama detour.

A source told SANA reporter that the explosive devices were planted under a bridge, noting that they weighed 80 to 100 kg.

Al-Khandaq Street in in Homs City Cleared from Terrorists, Terrorists Killed While Attempting to Flee al-Khalidiye Neighborhood

The armed forces cleared al-Khandaq Street in Bab Hood neighborhood, Homs city, from the terrorist groups killing a number of terrorists.

Authorities eliminated a number of terrorists who attempted to flee al-Khalidiye neighborhood in Homs city to the areas of Jouret al-Shiyah and al-Ghouta via the sewers.

An official source told SANA’s correspondent that the authorities set an ambush for the terrorists, leading to the death of many of them including the leader of a terrorist group called Talal Sa’eq Qamhiye.

The source added that the authorities also clashed with terrorists near Balqis School in al-Khalidiye neighborhood, eliminating most of them, and that a workshop for manufacturing explosive devices was also uncovered opposite Zanoubia School in the neighborhood, while engineering units dismantled many explosive devices planted in one of the streets in the same area.

Terrorists Trying to Cross Border from Lebanon Repelled

Another unit of the armed forces killed a number of terrorists who attempted to infiltrate from the Lebanese territories into Syria near Khirbet al-Nea’mat site in al-Qsier countryside.

Terrorists Arrested in Eastern Ghota, Damascus Countryside

A unit of the Armed Forces carried out a qualitative operation against an armed terrorist group in Deir al-Assafir town in Eastern Ghota in Damascus Countryside.

The army arrested terrorist Mohammad Yassin al-Rifae, one of the most dangerous terrorist groups’ leaders, and a number of his armed group’s members.

Armed Forces Foil Terrorist Infiltration Attempt from Turkish Territories into Syria

A unit of the armed forces foiled on Tuesday a terrorist infiltration attempt from the Turkish territories into Syria in Jisr al-Shughour countryside in Idleb province.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the armed forces clashed with the armed terrorist group and eliminated a large number of its members, adding that the armed forces seized the terrorists’ weapons, while the rest of the group ran away back into the Turkish territories.

The authorities destroyed  several vehicles equipped with various machineguns and eliminated tens of terrorists in Maaret al-Numan area in the countryside of the province.

Armed Forces Raid Terrorists’ Den, Seize Weapons in Hama City

In Hama province, an armed forces unit on Tuesday raided a den for the armed terrorist groups in al-Hamidiyeh neighborhood in the city of Hama.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the army members seized amounts of weapons, ammunition and wireless communication devices used by the terrorists in the den.

Two of the most dangerous leaders of terrorist groups in the area, who are Ammar Ahmad Jihad al-Ahmad and Ahmad Mqaffaq Hamameh, were killed in the operation, while the leader of a third terrorist group, called Ahmad al-Kharat, was arrested.

Citizens Injured in Roadside Bomb Blast in al-Zablatani, Damascus

Oct 09, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- A number of citizens on Tuesday got injured in an explosion of a roadside bomb planted by a terrorist group in al-Zablatani area in Damascus.

The explosion caused damage to a number of cars.

29 Citizens from Aleppo Involved in Recent Events Released

Oct 09, 2012

ALEPPO, (SANA) – 29 citizens from Aleppo who got involved in recent events but did not commit murders were released on Tuesday after turning themselves in and handing over their weapons to the authorities.

The released citizens pledged not to take up weapons again or commit any act that might harm Syria’s security and stability.

NPF Parties and National Powers Forum Stresses Political Dialogue, Rejects Violence and Foreign Interference

Oct 09, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- The political forum of the coalition parties of the National Progressive Front (NPF) and national and progressive powers on Tuesday affirmed rejection of all forms of foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs as they are aimed at destabilizing the country and seizing its sovereignty and political decision.

In its concluding statement, the forum stressed that confronting foreign interference is a national duty and the responsibility of all the spectrums and social and political components of the Syrian people.

“Evoking foreign interference is a betrayal whose perpetrators should be held to account according to the laws and rules imposed by the requirements of protecting the homeland and defending its land and people,” the statement said.

It highlighted the participant parties’ stress that there will be no reconciliation with those who have given up their conscience to the homeland’s enemies.

The forum underscored that the political dialogue integrates with the higher national interests and goes in line with the keenness on the homeland and its people and resources.

It affirmed that Syria is now facing universal imperialist conspiracies, hailing the national role and the great sacrifices of the Syrian Arab Army and the armed forces in defending the homeland and the unity binding the Syrian people and its army.

The statement said the phenomenon of terrorism in an imported one that is aimed at sabotaging the state in service of powers seeking to deviate Syria from its natural role in the region, stressing that the ongoing mission of combating and uprooting terrorism is in response to reasons of national security and protection of citizens.

The statement called for adopting an economic and social policy that preserves national production, fulfills the citizens’ needs and improves their living conditions through developing productive sectors.

It also underlined the role of the public sector and the need for developing means of the state’s intervention in economic and social domains.

The statement stressed the necessity of protecting state institutions and upgrading their performance and role, in addition to combating all the negative phenomena, especially corruption, through following rationalized economic policies that contribute to ending corruption and achieve social justice.

The forum highlighted that the NPF parties and national powers converged on common national and progressive points to share in embracing them and implementing them on the ground, stressing their commitment to their principles and exerting efforts to be active and enhance their presence in the country side by side with all spectrums of the Syrian people.

The forum’s concluding session continued deliberations on national dialogue as a must to get out of the crisis and the role of the national reconciliation in reuniting the Syrian people, in addition to the role of the Syrian Arab army in the face of the armed terrorist groups to restore security and stability.

Member of the political bureau of the Arab Democratic Union Party, Nassr Ali Younes Ghanem, said that undermining Syria is the main goal for passing the US scheme in the region, integrating Syria into the western strategy, quashing the national and pan-Arab ideology of the Syrian Arab Army and ending Syria’s support to the Arab resistance and forcing it to sign incomplete peace agreement with the Zionist entity.

In turn, Ayman Mikhail Samaan from the Arab Socialists Movement said that Syria is facing an international terrorism as there are several countries that provide financial and military support as well as harbor to the gunmen who carry out terrorist operations against the Syrian state, stressing Syria’s right to defend and protect its citizens and entity.

He called upon the Syrian people to stand by the Syrian army in its war against the armed terrorist groups which target the homeland and its service institutions, infrastructure, worship houses, scientific experts and clergymen.

Iskandar Jaradeh from the Syrian Communist Party underlined the importance of dialogue in reaching a common ground among all sides without giving up national principles.

In turn, Maher al-Jajeh from the Syrian Unified Communist Party said that the Syrian Arab Army with its high morale and spirit provide to be the primary defender of the country, stressing the ened for national reconciliation to focus on the social aspects of citizens who were marginalized by previous economic policies.

Maher Sakkour of the Arab Writers Guild called on progressive and national parties and forces to boost their participation in resolving the crisis, while Laith Ramadan of the Arab Socialists Movement noted that the Syrian Arab Army was the main target of the war against Syria due to weaken it and deviate it from its main task of defending the homeland and protecting citizens.

For his part, Basem Radwan of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party called on all national forces to put the country’s interests above all others and help restore security and safety and continue the process of building and reform, in addition to confronting terrorists and their extremist mentality.

Similarly, Habib Ali Issa of the General Union of Farmers said that resolving the crisis must begin by having parties and national forces assume their role in all neighborhoods, villages and cities and by organizing meetings between popular organizations and citizens to achieve reconciliation.

Najdat Yousef of the Syrian Unified Communist Party said that the National Progressive Front bear part of the responsibility for the current crisis as it didn’t carry out its role effectively.

Meanwhile, chairman of Damascus Trade Union Jamal al-Qadri said that this forum will help find a way out of the crisis with its recommendations and suggestions, calling for a new political discourse that guarantees the rights of all social classes, primarily workers and farmers.

In turn, Ahmad al-Dalati of the Democratic Socialist Unionist Party said that dialogue and reconciliation are the basis of overcoming the crisis and formulating Syria’s future, while Mohammad Muayed of the Arab Socialist Union Party lauded the heroics of the Syrian Arab Army and called for dialogue on the national basis of protecting the unity of Syria and its people, rejecting violence and foreign interference, creating a realistic economic model, providing citizens’ needs, combating monopolists, and controlling spending and consumption.

Nizar Benni al-Marjeh of the Arab Writers Guild said that the vision has become clearer regarding the crisis, with signs indicating that the conspiracy against Syria is falling apart. He also called for an active political role on the ground, involving youths, and establishing an organized  popular structure to support the army and help preserve Syria’s security and stability.

The two-day forum  tackled the topics of political dialogue, the army as the shield of the homeland, combating terrorism, rejection of foreign intervention, national reconciliation, and protecting the state and its institutions.

China against Any Action to Escalate Tension on Turkish-Syrian Border

Oct 09, 2012

BEIJING, (SANA)- China called for keeping away from any action that could escalate tension on the border between Turkey and Syria, stressing the necessity of respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the two countries and showing self-restraint.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Li, expressed at a press conference on Tuesday, reported by Xinhua news agency, his country’s concern about the current conditions in Syria and their repercussions.

The Chinese spokesman’s statement came at a time when the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues escalating the situation and threats of action against Damascus while going ahead with smuggling terrorists and weapons into Syria to disturb its stability.

Abdollahian: Armed Terrorist Groups in Syria Responsible for Lives of the 47 Abducted Iranians

Oct 09, 2012

TEHRAN, (SANA) – Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, affirmed that the armed terrorist groups are responsible for the lives of the 47 Iranians who were abducted while visiting Syria, voicing optimism over the possibility of their release.

In a statement to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) on Tuesday, Abdollahian said that there are intense communication and discussions currently being carried out by the Iranian Foreign Minister with counterparts in some countries to release the abductees, adding that all 47 abductees are currently in a good physical condition.

On whether Saudi Arabia has withdrawn from the quartet launched by Egypt to resolve the Syrian crisis, Abdollahian said that Saudi Arabia’s failure to participate in the two most recent meetings of the quarter is something that warrants consideration, adding that Iran supports the Egyptian initiative particularly since it’s based on resolving the crisis through political methods only.

He stressed that Iran defended the Syrian people and the Syrian government’s reform project in all conferences, and that it affirmed the need for an immediate cessation of violence, monitoring borders, and refraining from arming irresponsible groups, in addition to underlining the need to hold negotiations between the opposition, the Syrian people’s representatives and the government.

Abdollahian also affirmed that Iran supports Syria strongly regarding the matter of the resistance axis.

Yurt Newspaper: Armed Terrorist Groups trade in Organs of Syrian Martyrs

Oct 09, 2012

ANKARA, (SANA)-Turkish Yurt Newspaper said that the armed terrorist groups in Syria trade in the organs of the Syrian martyrs whom they abduct and kill, then giving their stolen organs to the guerillas of organ trafficking with expensive prices.

The newspaper’s correspondent in Syria has shed the light on heinous events and violations regarding the organ trafficking, quoting a Syrian citizen who works as a director as saying “Most of the Syrians abducted by the armed groups would be killed, then gunmen trade in their corpses through removing their kidneys, eyes and liver.”

It added that the Syrian citizen underlined that “unknown persons contacted him and offered 300.000 Syrian Pounds in return for handing them the body of his brother who was martyred at the hands of terrorists.

Greek Communist Party Newspaper: Syria and the Region Targeted by Imperialist Powers

Oct 09, 2012

ATHENS, (SANA)- Rizospastis, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Greece, stressed that the imperialist powers are targeting Syria and the entire Middle East region through using mercenary armed terrorist groups to hit Syria’s stability under the cover of opposition, with the aim of overcoming Iran and controlling the oil and natural gas transfer lines.

In an article published on Tuesday, writer Dimitris Karagiannis scoffed at the claims for freedom and democracy promoted by the imperialist powers and the Gulf monarchies and emirates like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey as means to justify the targeting of Syria.

The writer ridiculed Erdogan government’s today’s talk about human rights while thousands of political prisoners of left-wing powers and Kurds are languishing in its jails.

The article pointed out that the real objective behind Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey’s arming, funding and training of the mercenary and armed terrorist groups and sending them to Syria over more than a year now is to destroy Syria and divide it into weak cantons that will be unable in the future of confronting the imperialist ambitions.

Karagiannis affirmed that what is happening in Syria is part of the imperialist plots in the region to take control of the gas and oil transfer lines, noting that the government in Turkey is seeking its share from this.

He cautioned against the pretexts used by the Turkish government and the NATO to justify waging an attack on Syria while this government continues shelling areas in north Iraq.

Russian Journalist: What is Happening in Syria is Organized Terrorism Promoted by Arab and Foreign Satellite Channels

Oct 09, 2012

TARTOUS, (SANA) – Russian journalist Anhar Kochneva affirmed that what is taking place in Syria is organized terrorism supported by foreign sides and promoted by Arab and Foreign satellite channels to spread fear among Syrians and shed the blood of civilians and military personnel.

In a lecture delivered on Tuesday at the Arab Cultural Center in Tartous, Kochneva said that she accompanied the Syrian Arab Army during several of its operations and Damascus and its countryside, photographing and documenting them and later publishing.

She noted that the army personnel were committed to protecting the journalists accompanying them, even if it cost them their lives.

Kochneva said that terrorists attack journalists accompanying the army,  affirming that terrorist groups failed to affect the Syrians’ awareness and so they resorted to bombings, murder, abduction and massacres to manipulate the world’s public opinion.

She pointed out that biased media broadcasts false urgent news that have no credibility, which is something she verified personally, calling on the Syrian national media to continue carrying out its mission and do so faster to prevent satellite channels from fabricating news.

Kochneva said that the unjust sanctions and decisions against Syrian media constitute a medal of honor for Syrian journalists, stressing that emerging from the current crisis requires resilience, fidelity, sacrifice, confidence and a lot of work.

During the lecture, Kochneva showed video footage she recoded personally showing the Syrian Arab Army entering areas devastated by the terrorists, in addition to videos showing the terrorists using children in their crimes and committing massacres against civilians.

Lattakia Harbor Receives 599 Ships Carrying 3.86 Million Tons of Cargo in Nine Months

Oct 09, 2012

LATTAKIA, (SANA) – During the past nine months, the General Establishment of Lattakia Harbor received 599 ships carrying 3.86 million tons of cargo, primarily soy, lumber, machinery, equipment, cement and iron.

Director General of the Establishment, Hatem al-Mahmoudi, said that the Harbor exported 613,000 tons of goods, mostly consisting of fertilizer, glass and machinery, with the Harbor’s profits amounting to around SYP 1.406 billion since the beginning of 2012.

In September, the Harbor saw the movement of around 214,000 tons of goods; 157,000 of them imports and 57,000 of them exports.

‘Colorful Drops’ Voluntary Team in Lattakia… Initiative to Encourage Social Interaction

Oct 09, 2012

LATTAKIA, (SANA) – Colorful Drops Voluntary team, established one year ago by a group of youth in Lattakia province, is aimed at encouraging the spirit of initiative and interaction among people from different ages and social classes.

The main purpose of the team was to encourage citizens to be active members in any societal initiative that contribute to adding more to the province’s beauty and improving the society and health awareness.

The team coordinator , Nour Ibrahim, said that they started as a training group of “Colors” project, which is a local initiative to promote collective voluntary work in Lattakia, adding that the team trained more 60 boy and girl who in turn will train others with the aim to carry out a certain development project.

Ibrahim added that the team carried out two voluntary projects since its establishment, indicating that the first one aimed to increase health awareness of gibbosity and scoliosis diseases among the youth between ages 12 and 18 given that school bags and desks are among their main causes.

She added that the project was conducted in a number of schools in Lattakia and its countryside over one month and it benefited about 5500 students.

She said that the team collected necessary information and health consultations from several health institutions and associations, after which the team members were trained to introduce the subject and prepare all related releases, in addition to benefiting from the medical expertise of some members.

A supervisor in the team, Nour al-Zaman Haidar, said that the second project’s main idea was to rehabilitate a neglected neighborhood in Lattakia city last summer with the aim of improving life conditions of its inhabitants, who expressed readiness to contribute to the project.

She attributed choosing the area for many reasons since it is a popular neighborhood that brings together all spectrums of the Syrian people , not to mention the distorted urban structure.

Haidar said that the indirect reasons of the project can be summed up in raising environmental awareness of the inhabitants and spreading the culture of voluntary work, in addition to strengthening national unity and encouraging popular initiatives by the inhabitants.

She hailed the aid provided by Lattakia City Council and Directorate of Parks as well as the authorities concerned and other civil organizations to make their project a success within a short period of time.

She added that the work plan of the project, which took ten day, included cleaning the neighborhood and repainting the walls and doors of its houses after which the phrase “With Love We Build Syria” was written on the wall in a puzzle form with Ugaritic letters.

Team of “Colorful Drops” comprises 20 young volunteers from different university specializations.

By Chris Hedges

09 October, 2012

@ TruthDig.com

Chris Hedges gave this talk Sunday night in New York City at a protest denouncing the 11th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. The event, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was led by Veterans for Peace.

Many of us who are here carry within us death. The smell of decayed and bloated corpses. The cries of the wounded. The shrieks of children. The sound of gunfire. The deafening blasts. The fear. The stench of cordite. The humiliation that comes when you surrender to terror and beg for life. The loss of comrades and friends. And then the aftermath. The long alienation. The numbness. The nightmares. The lack of sleep. The inability to connect to all living things, even to those we love the most. The regret. The repugnant lies mouthed around us about honor and heroism and glory. The absurdity. The waste. The futility.

It is only the maimed that finally know war. And we are the maimed. We are the broken and the lame. We ask for forgiveness. We seek redemption. We carry on our backs this awful cross of death, for the essence of war is death, and the weight of it digs into our shoulders and eats away at our souls. We drag it through life, up hills and down hills, along the roads, into the most intimate recesses of our lives. It never leaves us. Those who know us best know that there is something unspeakable and evil many of us harbor within us. This evil is intimate. It is personal. We do not speak its name. It is the evil of things done and things left undone. It is the evil of war.

We do not speak of war. War is captured only in the long, vacant stares, in the silences, in the trembling fingers, in the memories most of us keep buried deep within us, in the tears.

It is impossible to portray war. Narratives, even anti-war narratives, make the irrational rational. They make the incomprehensible comprehensible. They make the illogical logical. They make the despicable beautiful. All words and images, all discussions, all films, all evocations of war, good or bad, are an obscenity. There is nothing to say. There are only the scars and wounds. These we carry within us. These we cannot articulate. The horror. The horror.

War gives to its killers a God-like power to take life. And there are those here tonight that have felt and exercised that power. They turned other human beings into objects. And in that process of killing they became objects, machines, instruments of death, war’s victimizers and war’s victims. And they do not want to be machines again.

We wander through life with the deadness of war within us. There is no escape. There is no peace. We know an awful truth, an existential truth. War exposed the lies of patriotism and collective virtue of the nation that our churches, our schools, our press, our movies, our books, our government told us about ourselves, about who we were. And we see through these illusions. But those who speak this truth are cast out. Ghosts. Strangers in a strange land.

Who are our brothers and sisters? Who is our family? Whom have we become? We have become those whom we once despised and killed. We have become the enemy. Our mother is the mother grieving over her murdered child, and we murdered this child, in a mud-walled village of Afghanistan or a sand-filled cemetery in Fallujah. Our father is the father lying on a pallet in a hut, paralyzed by the blast from an iron fragmentation bomb. Our sister lives in poverty in a refugee camp outside Kabul, widowed, desperately poor, raising her children alone. Our brother, yes, our brother, is in the Taliban and the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaida. And he has an automatic rifle. And he kills. And he is becoming us. War is always the same plague. It imparts the same deadly virus. It teaches us to deny another’s humanity, worth, being, and to kill and be killed.

There are days we wish we were whole. We wish we could put down this cross. We envy those who, in their innocence, believe in the innate goodness of America and the righteousness of war and celebrate what we know is despicable. And sometimes it makes us wish for death, for the peace of it. But we know too the awful truth, as James Baldwin wrote, that “people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” And we would rather be maimed and broken and in pain than be a monster, and some of us, once, were monsters.

I cannot heal you. You will never be healed. I cannot take away your wounds, visible and invisible. I cannot promise that it will be better. I cannot impart to you the cheerful and childish optimism that is the curse of America. I can only tell you to stand up, to pick up your cross, to keep moving. I can only tell you that you must always defy the forces that eat away at you, at the nation—this plague of war.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child?

A long ways from home

A long ways from home

Towering about us are banks and other financial institutions that profit from war. War, for some, is a business. And across this country lies a labyrinth of military industries that produce nothing but instruments of death. And some of us once served these forces. It is death we defy, not our own death, but the vast enterprise of death. The dark, primeval lusts for power and personal wealth, the hypermasculine language of war and patriotism, are used to justify the slaughter of the weak and the innocent and mock justice. … And we will not use these words of war.

We cannot flee from evil. Some of us have tried through drink and drugs and self-destructiveness. Evil is always with us. It is because we know evil, our own evil, that we do not let go, do not surrender. It is because we know evil that we resist. It is because we know violence that we are nonviolent. And we know that it is not about us; war taught us that. It is about the other, lying by the side of the road. It is about reaching down in defiance of creeds and oaths, in defiance of religion and nationality, and lifting our enemy up. All acts of healing and love—and the defiance of war is an affirmation of love—allow us to shout out to the vast powers of the universe that, however broken we are, we are not yet helpless, however much we despair we are not yet without hope, however weak we may feel, we will always, always, always resist. And it is in this act of resistance that we find our salvation.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

By Tom Engelhardt

09 October, 2012

@ Tomdispatch.com

Americans lived in a “victory culture” for much of the twentieth century. You could say that we experienced an almost 75-year stretch of triumphalism — think of it as the real “American Century” — from World War I to the end of the Cold War, with time off for a destructive stalemate in Korea and a defeat in Vietnam too shocking to absorb or shake off.

When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, it all seemed so obvious. Fate had clearly dealt Washington a royal flush. It was victory with a capital V. The United States was, after all, the last standing superpower, after centuries of unceasing great power rivalries on the planet. It had a military beyond compare and no enemy, hardly a “rogue state,” on the horizon. It was almost unnerving, such clear sailing into a dominant future, but a moment for the ages nonetheless. Within a decade, pundits in Washington were hailing us as “the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.”

And here’s the odd thing: in a sense, little has changed since then and yet everything seems different. Think of it as the American imperial paradox: everywhere there are now “threats” against our well-being which seem to demand action and yet nowhere are there commensurate enemies to go with them. Everywhere the U.S. military still reigns supreme by almost any measure you might care to apply; and yet — in case the paradox has escaped you — nowhere can it achieve its goals, however modest.

At one level, the American situation should simply take your breath away. Never before in modern history had there been an arms race of only one or a great power confrontation of only one. And at least in military terms, just as the neoconservatives imagined in those early years of the twenty-first century, the United States remains the “sole superpower” or even “hyperpower” of planet Earth.

The Planet’s Top Gun

And yet the more dominant the U.S. military becomes in its ability to destroy and the more its forces are spread across the globe, the more the defeats and semi-defeats pile up, the more the missteps and mistakes grow, the more the strains show, the more the suicides rise, the more the nation’s treasure disappears down a black hole — and in response to all of this, the more moves the Pentagon makes.

A great power without a significant enemy? You might have to go back to the Roman Empire at its height or some Chinese dynasty in full flower to find anything like it. And yet Osama bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaeda is reportedly a shadow of its former self. The great regional threats of the moment, North Korea and Iran, are regimes held together by baling wire and the suffering of their populaces. The only incipient great power rival on the planet, China, has just launched its first aircraft carrier, a refurbished Ukrainian throwaway from the 1990s on whose deck the country has no planes capable of landing.

The U.S. has 1,000 or more bases around the world; other countries, a handful. The U.S. spends as much on its military as the next 14 powers (mostly allies) combined. In fact, it’s investing an estimated $1.45 trillion to produce and operate a single future aircraft, the F-35 — more than any country, the U.S. included, now spends on its national defense annually.

The U.S. military is singular in other ways, too. It alone has divided the globe — the complete world — into six “commands.” With (lest anything be left out) an added command, Stratcom, for the heavens and another, recently established, for the only space not previously occupied, cyberspace, where we’re already unofficially “at war.” No other country on the planet thinks of itself in faintly comparable military terms.

When its high command plans for its future “needs,” thanks to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, they repair (don’t say “retreat”) to a military base south of the capital where they argue out their future and war-game various possible crises while striding across a map of the world larger than a basketball court. What other military would come up with such a method?

The president now has at his command not one, but two private armies. The first is the CIA, which in recent years has been heavily militarized, is overseen by a former four-star general (who calls the job “living the dream”), and is running its own private assassination campaigns and drone air wars throughout the Greater Middle East. The second is an expanding elite, the Joint Special Operations Command, cocooned inside the U.S. military, members of whom are now deployed to hot spots around the globe.

The U.S. Navy, with its 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carrier task forces, is dominant on the global waves in a way that only the British Navy might once have been; and the U.S. Air Force controls the global skies in much of the world in a totally uncontested fashion. (Despite numerous wars and conflicts, the last American plane possibly downed in aerial combat was in the first Gulf War in 1991.) Across much of the global south, there is no sovereign space Washington’s drones can’t penetrate to kill those judged by the White House to be threats.

In sum, the U.S. is now the sole planetary Top Gun in a way that empire-builders once undoubtedly fantasized about, but that none from Genghis Khan on have ever achieved: alone and essentially uncontested on the planet. In fact, by every measure (except success), the likes of it has never been seen.

Blindsided by Predictably Unintended Consequences

By all the usual measuring sticks, the U.S. should be supreme in a historically unprecedented way. And yet it couldn’t be more obvious that it’s not, that despite all the bases, elite forces, private armies, drones, aircraft carriers, wars, conflicts, strikes, interventions, and clandestine operations, despite a labyrinthine intelligence bureaucracy that never seems to stop growing and into which we pour a minimum of $80 billion a year, nothing seems to work out in an imperially satisfying way. It couldn’t be more obvious that this is not a glorious dream, but some kind of ever-expanding imperial nightmare.

This should, of course, have been self-evident since at least early 2004, less than a year after the Bush administration invaded and occupied Iraq, when the roadside bombs started to explode and the suicide bombings to mount, while the comparisons of the United States to Rome and of a prospective Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East to the Pax Romana vanished like a morning mist on a blazing day. Still, the wars against relatively small, ill-armed sets of insurgents dragged toward their dismally predictable ends. (It says the world that, after almost 11 years of war, the 2,000th U.S. military death in Afghanistan occurred at the hands of an Afghan “ally” in an “insider attack.”) In those years, Washington continued to be regularly blindsided by the unintended consequences of its military moves. Surprises — none pleasant — became the order of the day and victories proved vanishingly rare.

One thing seems obvious: a superpower military with unparalleled capabilities for one-way destruction no longer has the more basic ability to impose its will anywhere on the planet. Quite the opposite, U.S. military power has been remarkably discredited globally by the most pitiful of forces. From Pakistan to Honduras, just about anywhere it goes in the old colonial or neocolonial world, in those regions known in the contested Cold War era as the Third World, resistance of one unexpected sort or another arises and failure ensues in some often long-drawn-out and spectacular fashion.

Given the lack of enemies — a few thousand jihadis, a small set of minority insurgencies, a couple of feeble regional powers — why this is so, what exactly the force is that prevents Washington’s success, remains mysterious. Certainly, it’s in some way related to the more than half-century of decolonization movements, rebellions, and insurgencies that were a feature of the previous century.

It also has something to do with the way economic heft has spread beyond the U.S., Europe, and Japan — with the rise of the “tigers” in Asia, the explosion of the Chinese and Indian economies, the advances of Brazil and Turkey, and the movement of the planet toward some kind of genuine economic multipolarity. It may also have something to do with the end of the Cold War, which put an end as well to several centuries of imperial or great power competition and left the sole “victor,” it now seems clear, heading toward the exits wreathed in self-congratulation.

Explain it as you will, it’s as if the planet itself, or humanity, had somehow been inoculated against the imposition of imperial power, as if it now rejected it whenever and wherever applied. In the previous century, it took a half-nation, North Korea, backed by Russian supplies and Chinese troops to fight the U.S. to a draw, or a popular insurgent movement backed by a local power, North Vietnam, backed in turn by the Soviet Union and China to defeat American power. Now, small-scale minority insurgencies, largely using roadside bombs and suicide bombers, are fighting American power to a draw (or worse) with no great power behind them at all.

Think of the growing force that resists such military might as the equivalent of the “dark matter” in the universe. The evidence is in. We now know (or should know) that it’s there, even if we can’t see it.

Washington’s Wars on Autopilot

After the last decade of military failures, stand-offs, and frustrations, you might think that this would be apparent in Washington. After all, the U.S. is now visibly an overextended empire, its sway waning from the Greater Middle East to Latin America, the limits of its power increasingly evident. And yet, here’s the curious thing: two administrations in Washington have drawn none of the obvious conclusions, and no matter how the presidential election turns out, it’s already clear that, in this regard, nothing will change.

Even as military power has proven itself a bust again and again, our policymakers have come to rely ever more completely on a military-first response to global problems. In other words, we are not just a classically overextended empire, but also an overwrought one operating on some kind of militarized autopilot. Lacking is a learning curve. By all evidence, it’s not just that there isn’t one, but that there can’t be one.

Washington, it seems, now has only one mode of thought and action, no matter who is at the helm or what the problem may be, and it always involves, directly or indirectly, openly or clandestinely, the application of militarized force. Nor does it matter that each further application only destabilizes some region yet more or undermines further what once were known as “American interests.”

Take Libya, as an example. It briefly seemed to count as a rare American military success story: a decisive intervention in support of a rebellion against a brutal dictator — so brutal, in fact, that the CIA previously shipped “terrorist suspects,” Islamic rebels fighting against the Gaddafi regime, there for torture. No U.S. casualties resulted, while American and NATO air strikes were decisive in bringing a set of ill-armed, ill-organized rebels to power.

In the world of unintended consequences, however, the fall of Gaddafi sent Tuareg mercenaries from his militias, armed with high-end weaponry, across the border into Mali. There, when the dust settled, the whole northern part of the country had come unhinged and fallen under the sway of Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda wannabes as other parts of North Africa threatened to destabilize. At the same time, of course, the first American casualties of the intervention occurred when Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in an attack on the Benghazi consulate and a local “safe house.”

With matters worsening regionally, the response couldn’t have been more predictable. As Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post recently reported, in ongoing secret meetings, the White House is planning for military operations against al-Qaeda-in-the-Magreb (North Africa), now armed with weaponry pillaged from Gaddafi’s stockpiles. These plans evidently include the approach used in Yemen (U.S. special forces on the ground and CIA drone strikes), or a Somalia “formula” (drone strikes, special forces operations, CIA operations, and the support of African proxy armies), or even at some point “the possibility of direct U.S. intervention.”

In addition, Eric Schmitt and David Kilpatrick of the New York Times report that the Obama administration is “preparing retaliation” against those it believes killed the U.S. ambassador, possibly including “drone strikes, special operations raids like the one that killed Osama bin Laden, and joint missions with Libyan authorities.” The near certainty that, like the previous intervention, this next set of military actions will only further destabilize the region with yet more unpleasant surprises and unintended consequences hardly seems to matter. Nor does the fact that, in crude form, the results of such acts are known to us ahead of time have an effect on the unstoppable urge to plan and order them.

Such situations are increasingly legion across the Greater Middle East and elsewhere. Take one other tiny example: Iraq, from which, after almost a decade-long military disaster, the “last” U.S. units essentially fled in the middle of the night as 2011 ended. Even in those last moments, the Obama administration and the Pentagon were still trying to keep significant numbers of U.S. troops there (and, in fact, did manage to leave behind possibly several hundred as trainers of elite Iraqi units). Meanwhile, Iraq has been supportive of the embattled Syrian regime and drawn ever closer to Iran, even as its own sectarian strife has ratcheted upward. Having watched this unsettling fallout from its last round in the country, according to the New York Times, the U.S. is now negotiating an agreement “that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence.”

Don’t you just want to speak to those negotiators the way you might to a child: No, don’t do that! The urge to return to the scene of their previous disaster, however, seems unstaunchable. You could offer various explanations for why our policymakers, military and civilian, continue in such a repetitive — and even from an imperial point of view — self-destructive vein in situations where unpleasant surprises are essentially guaranteed and lack of success a given. Yes, there is the military-industrial complex to be fed. Yes, we are interested in the control of crucial resources, especially energy, and so on.

But it’s probably more reasonable to say that a deeply militarized mindset and the global maneuvers that go with it are by now just part of the way of life of a Washington eternally “at war.” They are the tics of a great power with the equivalent of Tourette’s Syndrome. They happen because they can’t help but happen, because they are engraved in the policy DNA of our national security complex, and can evidently no longer be altered. In other words, they can’t help themselves.

That’s the only logical conclusion in a world where it has become ever less imaginable to do the obvious, which is far less or nothing at all. (Northern Chad? When did it become crucial to our well being?) Downsizing the mission? Inconceivable. Thinking the unthinkable? Don’t even give it a thought!

What remains is, of course, a self-evident formula for disaster on autopilot. But don’t tell Washington. It won’t matter. Its denizens can’t take it in.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as The End of Victory Culture, his history of the Cold War, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.

9 October, 2012

@ RT.com

The United States and Israel are already involved in discussions over how they could soon conduct a joint surgical strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, a source close to the talks tells Foreign Policy magazine.

After months of urging from Israeli authorities for the US to intervene in a rumored Iranian plan to procure a nuke, a source speaking on condition of anonymity tells Foreign Policy’s David Rothkopf that the two allies have come close to signing off on an attack against Iran.

Although no plan of action has been set in stone yet, the source says the attack will likely be from the sky and consist of drone strikes and bomber jets for only “a couple of hours” at best but would not require more than “a day or two” of action.

But while the US has not officially signed onto the strike, the source reports, American involvement would be absolutely necessary in order to effectively take out the structures where Iranian scientists are assumed to be attempting to procure a nuclear warhead.

“To get to buried Iranian facilities, such as the enrichment plant at Fordow, would require bunker-busting munitions on a scale that no Israeli plane is capable of delivering,” Rothkopf writes in the article, published Monday, October 8. “The mission, therefore, must involve the United States, whether acting alone or in concert with the Israelis and others.”

Israel has long attested that Iranian officials are enriching nuclear materials to be used with volatile warheads, despite longstanding claims from Iran that any program they are operating exists for peaceful purposes only. Hostilities between Israel and their neighboring foe have only worsened as of late, prompting Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to insist that America draw “red lines before Iran,” and demand that the US offer them an ultimatum before time runs out. Last month US President Barack Obama dismissed Israel’s warnings against an escalating nuclear threat, though, saying he understand their concerns over what damage Iran could do with a nuclear weapon, but that he would continue to “block out any noise” from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he insists on American intervention.

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly only days later, though, President Obama appeared to be more willing to act if Iran is proven to be procuring a weapon of mass destruction, vowing, “the United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” and said that any attempts by Iran to procure a nuclear warhead would “threaten the elimination of Israel, the security of Gulf nations, and the stability of the global economy” and is “not a challenge that can be contained.”

Now following a report RT published last week concerning classified footage of Iranian facilities believed to be handed over to American intelligence from a defected member of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entourage, the US may finally be ready to give in to Israeli pressure and strike Iran.

If the rumored plan of attack is put into action, the source says, the strike is expected to set back the nation’s nuclear program “many years,” and doing so without civilian casualties. The end result, however, could be one immensely beneficial to America, specifically its holdings in the Middle East where the country has long expressed a vested interested.

Should US provide power to strike Iran, the source says, the attack would have a long-term effect in the region, but particularly on America’s investments there. The strike, says the source, would be “transformative,” – “saving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, reanimating the peace process, securing the (Persian) Gulf, sending an unequivocal message to Russia and China, and assuring American ascendancy in the region for a decade to come.”

Should Israel strike Iran without the direct aid of the US, however, America would not necessarily be in the clear. Although President Obama has advocated for a peaceful resolution to Israeli/Iranian disputes, Iran’s officials have suggested that they have no problem with striking the US if their allies make the first move.

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard told reporters last month that his country “will definitely be at war with American bases should a war break out,” explaining that “There will be no neutral country in the region,” and, “To us, these bases are equal to US soil.”

© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005 – 2011. All rights reserved.

By Joseph Kishore

09 October, 2012

@ WSWS.org

In a bellicose foreign policy speech Monday, Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney threatened war with Iran, expanded military intervention in Syria, an unending occupation of Afghanistan, and the reintroduction of US troops into Iraq.

While framed as a criticism of the policy of the Obama administration, the main contours of Romney’s speech were in line with the agenda proposed by the current president. Romney’s remarks highlighted the bipartisan conspiracy against the American people, as both candidates plan an aggressive expansion of US militarism abroad, behind the backs of the public.

Romney delivered his speech at the Virginia Military Institute, continuing a tradition, shared by the current president, in which foreign policy speeches are delivered before a military audience. The military is treated as—and indeed is in fact—an independent and overriding power in the American political establishment.

After his speech, Romney held a closed-door meeting with retired generals, in which the war plans of a potential Romney administration were no doubt discussed with even greater candor.

Romney declared that the US needed to “change course in the Middle East” and said that “our words” must be “backed up by deeds.”

On Iran, Romney said that the country “has never been closer to a nuclear weapons capability…. 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,” he said. “I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran, and will tighten the sanctions we currently have.”

Romney’s position closely paralleled remarks made by Obama before the United Nations last month, when the president insisted that “the United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” Without presenting any evidence that Iran is actually pursuing a nuclear weapon, the US and its allies have imposed devastating economic sanctions on the country, as part of their preparations for war. (See: Obama uses UN speech to threaten war against Iran)

There are certain tactical differences within the American ruling class, and between the US and the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, over the timing of any US strikes on Iran. Romney sought to exploit these differences to stake out a position slightly to the right of Obama, stating that “the world must never see any daylight between” the US and Israel.

However, in his own speech before the UN last month, Netanyahu suggested that his differences with the Obama administration had been at least temporarily resolved. The Israeli prime minister appeared to accept postponing military action until the spring or summer of next year, while also acceding to Obama’s call for tighter economic sanctions.

On Syria, Romney said he favored giving more supplies and heavy weapons to the Syrian opposition. “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.”

The CIA under the Obama administration is currently directing arms to the anti-Assad forces in Syria, coordinating this with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states. The administration has as yet refrained from sending certain weapons, in part over concern about the implications of the fact that in its campaign for regime change in Syria, the US is relying on Islamic fundamentalist elements. Any weapons could end up directed back at the US, as in the attack in Libya last month that killed the US ambassador.

The recent clashes between Syria and NATO member Turkey underscore that the proxy civil war stoked by the Obama administration could easily and rapidly explode into a war throughout the Middle East, bringing in the all the major powers, including the United States, Russia and China.

In his speech, Romney added barbs directed at both these countries—saying that “Putin’s Russia casts a long shadow over young democracies” in Europe and that “China’s recent assertiveness is sending chills through the region.”

Romney added that he would “roll back President Obama’s deep and arbitrary cuts to our national defense that would devastate our military,” a reference to the automatic military cuts included in an agreement between the Democrats and Republicans in 2011. Both parties are determined to prevent these cuts by slashing hundreds of billions more in social programs—to be implemented after the November elections.

On Afghanistan, Romney followed Obama in calling for a “transition to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014.” At the same time, he made clear, as current US generals have, that the US occupation would continue indefinitely if “conditions on the ground” and “the best advice of our military commanders” deems this necessary.

As for Iraq, Romney criticized Obama for carrying out an “abrupt troop withdrawal,” suggesting that the departure of US troops may be reversed. “The president tried—and failed—to secure a responsible and gradual drawdown that would have better secured our gains,” he said.

The general response of left-liberal circles to Romney’s remarks was to proclaim its “centrist” character, in which Romney supposedly has abandoned his more bellicose positions. The Nation’s Ben Adler, for example, headlines his comment posted Monday, “Romney’s Flip-Flop to Center Continues With Foreign Policy.”

In fact, if The Nation feels that the political distance separating it from Romney is shrinking, it is not because Romney’s calls for massive military spending and war are left-wing. It is because The Nation and the social layer for which it speaks are moving very quickly to the right and have embraced the imperialist policies proposed by both major parties.

The Obama administration has become the vehicle for the supposedly “left” layers of the upper middle class to fall entirely behind the basic strategy of American imperialism, particularly through support for the war in Libya and the US-backed civil war in Syria.

Indeed, it is notable that one of the main criticisms Romney sought to level at the Obama administration—that it is not supplying sufficiently advanced weaponry to the anti-Assad forces in Syria—is entirely in line with similar criticisms advanced by pseudo-left groups like the International Socialist Organization.

In military policy, as in domestic policy, there is a vast and unbridgeable gulf between this entire political establishment and the sentiments of the majority of the American population.

Romney is running on a platform of “more war”—bucking a tradition in which even the most reactionary politicians seek to make an appeal to the overriding anti-war sentiment of the American people. Nixon, for example, famously campaigned in 1968 on the basis of a “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam, and then expanded the war enormously after taking office.

The Obama administration cannot mobilize popular opposition to war against Romney, however, because its policies are barely distinguishable from those proposed by the Republican candidate.

Regardless of who is elected in November, Romney or Obama, the American ruling class is set on a course that is leading to new wars in the Middle East—a policy of criminal aggression that is leading the world into a new world war, with incalculable consequences.

Oct 8, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

When a neurosurgeon found himself in a coma, he experienced things he never thought possible—a journey to the afterlife.

As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father’s path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.

The brain is an astonishingly sophisticated but extremely delicate mechanism. Reduce the amount of oxygen it receives by the smallest amount and it will react. It was no big surprise that people who had undergone severe trauma would return from their experiences with strange stories. But that didn’t mean they had journeyed anywhere real.

Although I considered myself a faithful Christian, I was so more in name than in actual belief. I didn’t begrudge those who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good man who had suffered at the hands of the world. I sympathized deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there who loved us unconditionally. In fact, I envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to believe them myself.

In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.

I know how pronouncements like mine sound to skeptics, so I will tell my story with the logic and language of the scientist I am.

Very early one morning four years ago, I awoke with an extremely intense headache. Within hours, my entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down. Doctors at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia, a hospital where I myself worked as a neurosurgeon, determined that I had somehow contracted a very rare bacterial meningitis that mostly attacks newborns. E. coli bacteria had penetrated my cerebrospinal fluid and were eating my brain.

When I entered the emergency room that morning, my chances of survival in anything beyond a vegetative state were already low. They soon sank to near nonexistent. For seven days I lay in a deep coma, my body unresponsive, my higher-order brain functions totally offline.

Alexander discusses his experience on the Science channel’s ‘Through the Wormhole.’

Then, on the morning of my seventh day in the hospital, as my doctors weighed whether to discontinue treatment, my eyes popped open.

‘You have nothing to fear.’ ‘There is nothing you can do wrong.’ The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief. (Photo illustration by Newsweek; Source: Buena Vista Images-Getty Images)

There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.

But that dimension—in rough outline, the same one described by countless subjects of near-death experiences and other mystical states—is there. It exists, and what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey.

I’m not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history. But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma.

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.

It took me months to come to terms with what happened to me. Not just the medical impossibility that I had been conscious during my coma, but—more importantly—the things that happened during that time. Toward the beginning of my adventure, I was in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky.

Reliving History: The search for the meaning of the afterlife is as old as humanity itself. Over the years Newsweek has run numerous covers about religion, God, and that search. As Dr. Alexander says, it’s unlikely we’ll know the answer in our lifetimes, but that doesn’t mean we won’t keep asking.

Higher than the clouds—immeasurably higher—flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamerlike lines behind them.

Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms.

A sound, huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. Again, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the joy of these creatures, as they soared along, was such that they had to make this noise—that if the joy didn’t come out of them this way then they would simply not otherwise be able to contain it. The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet.

Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it—without joining with it in some mysterious way. Again, from my present perspective, I would suggest that you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word “at” itself implies a separation that did not exist there. Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of everything else, like the rich and intermingled designs on a Persian carpet … or a butterfly’s wing.

It gets stranger still. For most of my journey, someone else was with me. A woman. She was young, and I remember what she looked like in complete detail. She had high cheekbones and deep-blue eyes. Golden brown tresses framed her lovely face. When first I saw her, we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, which after a moment I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us—vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the woods and coming back up around us again. It was a river of life and color, moving through the air. The woman’s outfit was simple, like a peasant’s, but its colors—powder blue, indigo, and pastel orange-peach—had the same overwhelming, super-vivid aliveness that everything else had. She looked at me with a look that, if you saw it for five seconds, would make your whole life up to that point worth living, no matter what had happened in it so far. It was not a romantic look. It was not a look of friendship. It was a look that was somehow beyond all these, beyond all the different compartments of love we have down here on earth. It was something higher, holding all those other kinds of love within itself while at the same time being much bigger than all of them.

Without using any words, she spoke to me. The message went through me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true. I knew so in the same way that I knew that the world around us was real—was not some fantasy, passing and insubstantial.

The message had three parts, and if I had to translate them into earthly language, I’d say they ran something like this:

“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”

“You have nothing to fear.”

“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief. It was like being handed the rules to a game I’d been playing all my life without ever fully understanding it.

“We will show you many things here,” the woman said, again, without actually using these words but by driving their conceptual essence directly into me. “But eventually, you will go back.”

To this, I had only one question.

Back where?

The universe as I experienced it in my coma is … the same one that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking of in their (very) different ways. (Ed Morris / Getty Images)

A warm wind blew through, like the kind that spring up on the most perfect summer days, tossing the leaves of the trees and flowing past like heavenly water. A divine breeze. It changed everything, shifting the world around me into an even higher octave, a higher vibration.

Although I still had little language function, at least as we think of it on earth, I began wordlessly putting questions to this wind, and to the divine being that I sensed at work behind or within it.

Where is this place?

Who am I?

Why am I here?

Each time I silently put one of these questions out, the answer came instantly in an explosion of light, color, love, and beauty that blew through me like a crashing wave. What was important about these blasts was that they didn’t simply silence my questions by overwhelming them. They answered them, but in a way that bypassed language. Thoughts entered me directly. But it wasn’t thought like we experience on earth. It wasn’t vague, immaterial, or abstract. These thoughts were solid and immediate—hotter than fire and wetter than water—and as I received them I was able to instantly and effortlessly understand concepts that would have taken me years to fully grasp in my earthly life.

I continued moving forward and found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch-black as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me. The orb was a kind of “interpreter” between me and this vast presence surrounding me. It was as if I were being born into a larger world, and the universe itself was like a giant cosmic womb, and the orb (which I sensed was somehow connected with, or even identical to, the woman on the butterfly wing) was guiding me through it.

Later, when I was back, I found a quotation by the 17th-century Christian poet Henry Vaughan that came close to describing this magical place, this vast, inky-black core that was the home of the Divine itself.

“There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling darkness …”

That was it exactly: an inky darkness that was also full to brimming with light.

I know full well how extraordinary, how frankly unbelievable, all this sounds. Had someone—even a doctor—told me a story like this in the old days, I would have been quite certain that they were under the spell of some delusion. But what happened to me was, far from being delusional, as real or more real than any event in my life. That includes my wedding day and the birth of my two sons.

What happened to me demands explanation.

Modern physics tells us that the universe is a unity—that it is undivided. Though we seem to live in a world of separation and difference, physics tells us that beneath the surface, every object and event in the universe is completely woven up with every other object and event. There is no true separation.

Before my experience these ideas were abstractions. Today they are realities. Not only is the universe defined by unity, it is also—I now know—defined by love. The universe as I experienced it in my coma is—I have come to see with both shock and joy—the same one that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking of in their (very) different ways.

I’ve spent decades as a neurosurgeon at some of the most prestigious medical institutions in our country. I know that many of my peers hold—as I myself did—to the theory that the brain, and in particular the cortex, generates consciousness and that we live in a universe devoid of any kind of emotion, much less the unconditional love that I now know God and the universe have toward us. But that belief, that theory, now lies broken at our feet. What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow scientists and to people at large.

I don’t expect this to be an easy task, for the reasons I described above. When the castle of an old scientific theory begins to show fault lines, no one wants to pay attention at first. The old castle simply took too much work to build in the first place, and if it falls, an entirely new one will have to be constructed in its place.

I learned this firsthand after I was well enough to get back out into the world and talk to others—people, that is, other than my long-suffering wife, Holley, and our two sons—about what had happened to me. The looks of polite disbelief, especially among my medical friends, soon made me realize what a task I would have getting people to understand the enormity of what I had seen and experienced that week while my brain was down.

One of the few places I didn’t have trouble getting my story across was a place I’d seen fairly little of before my experience: church. The first time I entered a church after my coma, I saw everything with fresh eyes. The colors of the stained-glass windows recalled the luminous beauty of the landscapes I’d seen in the world above. The deep bass notes of the organ reminded me of how thoughts and emotions in that world are like waves that move through you. And, most important, a painting of Jesus breaking bread with his disciples evoked the message that lay at the very heart of my journey: that we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably glorious than the one I’d learned of as a child in Sunday school.

Today many believe that the living spiritual truths of religion have lost their power, and that science, not faith, is the road to truth. Before my experience I strongly suspected that this was the case myself.

But I now understand that such a view is far too simple. The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed. In its place a new view of mind and body will emerge, and in fact is emerging already. This view is scientific and spiritual in equal measure and will value what the greatest scientists of history themselves always valued above all: truth.

This new picture of reality will take a long time to put together. It won’t be finished in my time, or even, I suspect, my sons’ either. In fact, reality is too vast, too complex, and too irreducibly mysterious for a full picture of it ever to be absolutely complete. But in essence, it will show the universe as evolving, multi-dimensional, and known down to its every last atom by a God who cares for us even more deeply and fiercely than any parent ever loved their child.

I’m still a doctor, and still a man of science every bit as much as I was before I had my experience. But on a deep level I’m very different from the person I was before, because I’ve caught a glimpse of this emerging picture of reality. And you can believe me when I tell you that it will be worth every bit of the work it will take us, and those who come after us, to get it right.

Dr. Eben Alexander has been a neurosurgeon for the past 25 years. His book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, will be published by Simon & Schuster on Oct. 23, 2012.

By Nile Bowie

6 October, 2012

@Global Research, Region: Middle East & North Africa

ESFAHAN – Dramatic fluctuations of the Iranian rial triggered small protests among merchants in Tehran’s grand bazaar on October 3rd, 2012. In an attempt by authorities to prevent further devaluation, Iran’s central bank recently issued new limits on the amount of USD available for purchase at a subsidized rate, leading many to panic as the rial fell 40% against the dollar since the start of October. Although the demonstrations were economic in nature, many took advantage of the moment to voice their grievances against the political system, with many crediting President Ahmadinejad with overseeing fiscal mismanagement that has exacerbated Washington’s unceasing barrage of economic sanctions. Ahmadinejad’s political opponents also blame his administration for economic mismanagement, sentiment that is appearing more frequently among Iranian society.

While combating the challenges that economic sanctions represent is an arduous task for any government, it is important to recognize that these sanctions are not aimed against Iran’s government, but at its poor and merchant population. An unnamed US intelligence source cited by the Washington Post claims:

”In addition to the direct pressure sanctions exert on the regime’s ability to finance its priorities, another option here is that they will create hate and discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways.”

Washington has long engaged in psychological operations that aim to foment the kind of “hate and discontent” among Iran’s factory workers, merchants, shopkeepers, students, and manufacturers – as part of a series of measures taken to coax widespread social discontent and unrest throughout the country to topple the government.

For the average Iranian business owner and worker, US-led sanctions and currency devaluation have affected everyday transactions that provide paychecks and economic viability for millions of people. From urban shopkeepers to rural restaurant owners, many have been forced to close their businesses because they are unable to profit from reselling imported goods purchased with dollars. Isolation from the global banking system has made it increasingly more difficult for Iranian students studying abroad to receive money from their families. Sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank aim to devastate the Iranian export economy, affecting everyone from oil exporters to carpet weavers and pistachio cultivators. By crippling people’s livelihoods and hindering their ability to pursue education and afford necessities such as food and medication, the Obama administration believes such measures will erode public confidence in the government and challenge its legitimacy.

Such policy is not only immoral, but exhibits the fraudulence and dishonesty of the United States toward the values of liberty and the pursuit of happiness it claims to represent. Although western media has gone to great lengths to depict Obama as being reluctant to endorse a tough stance on Iran, it is clear that Washington is quietly pursuing belligerent policy against Tehran – one that has alienated Iranians that seek reconciliation with the United States and greatly escalated tensions and the possibility of war. As demonstrated by the covert measures being taken against Tehran – including sabotage, cyber warfare, and targeted assassinations – Washington is fully committed to preventing Tehran’s independent technological, economic and political development. While US-led sanctions are intended to target all mechanisms necessary for international oil transactions, Iran continues to show defiance by pursuing diplomacy and mutually beneficial economic development with its energy hungry allies across Asia.

China has continued to purchase larger amounts of Iranian oil despite the sanctions regime. While the fledging European Union cuts its ties with Tehran, Beijing has moved closer with Iran to provide credit lines and consumer goods. Additionally, nations such as India, Malaysia and Japan have continued their energy imports from Iran – making efforts to internationally isolate Tehran increasing more difficult. Iran has actively engaged in the modernization of its energy infrastructure, including the construction of fifteen domestic pipelines throughout the country. Furthermore, Iranian firms are planning to construct an electrical power plant and a pipeline to provide energy to Pakistan. In the interest of pursuing mutually beneficially economic development, Tehran has sought further cooperation with its neighbors in Pakistan and Turkmenistan. Iran’s domestic investments emphasize the importance of developing the kind of trade and energy infrastructure needed to continue resistance to hegemony without being internationally isolated.

Tehran has pledged $25 billion to develop its Chabahar port, and an additional $4 billion of investment into several different ports around the country. The expanded trade and energy capabilities that would result from such investment would solidify Iran’s place in the global economy, and its seat among world powers. It is for this reason that “the threat of Iran developing nuclear weapons” is used as a stale pretext to enforce economic sanctions, despite a complete lack of evidence to implicate Iran with weaponizing its nuclear energy program. Tehran must be diligent in finding ways to manage its currency devaluation and economic growth – because of its natural resources and abundant energy wealth, the country is in a unique position to deflect international sanctions and use them to its advantage. By partnering with its international allies, Iran can bolster its domestic manufacturing industries and secure international markets for its products. Policy makers in Washington and Tel Aviv should remember that chess is an Iranian game.

Nile Bowie is a Kuala Lumpur-based American writer, video producer and frequent contributor to Global Research.  He explores issues of terrorism, economics and geopolitics. Nile Bowie is currently reporting out of Iran.

Palestine Update Edition 2: No. 44  

By Yousef Munayyer | Sabbah Report: http://sabbah.biz/mt/?p=14119

At the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) last week the Israeli Prime Minister succeeded and failed simultaneously. With a cartoonish display, Benjamin Netanyahu managed to become the laughing stock of the internet as parodied images of his bomb chart filled blogs and websites. Iran’s nuclear program, which is something the Israelis have demanded the world take seriously, became a subject of jest. But at the same time something else happened: by the time Netanyahu was done with his classroom antics, no one even remembered that Mahmoud Abbas, the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), had spoken just minutes before.

Abbas, for his part, delivered an important speech [PDF] even though it contained little in terms of a clear strategy for moving forward. There were, however, noticeable shifts in the language he chose to use, including emphasis on “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” and “boycott.” Abbas has long been seen as a moderate Palestinian voice by Washington and his adoption of this language may well be a veiled message that it’s becoming too difficult to maintain cooperation and moderation while there is no progress toward Palestinian self-determination. Most importantly, Abbas took the opportunity to warn the world of the ongoing and impending Nakbathe Palestinians are experiencing at the hands of Israeli occupation. Here, in a hall of world leaders, Abbas stood, literally saying that the Palestinian people are being “wiped off the map.”

Enter Netanyahu, and his cartoon. Abbas’s warning was all but forgotten.

What we saw at the UNGA last week was a microcosm of a much larger and ongoing strategy on the part of Netanyahu: to use the Iranian issue to make the Palestinian issue disappear.

In reality, the Iranian issue is being inflated by an Israeli prime minister who is worried about domestic politics in Israel and in the United States. Netanyahu uses Iran to marginalize the Palestinian issue and place a check on President Obama. Only this can explain two bewildering facts.

First, Netanyahu touts a contradictory narrative in which he claims Iran is simultaneously irrational but nonetheless an actor whose decision calculus would be altered by “red lines.” Of course this doesn’t make sense but Netanyahu needs to portray Iran as an irrational actor or else a sense of urgency around the issue will disappear and containment will seem like a viable policy option (which it is).

Second, in January of this year Israeli officials began speaking of intelligence estimates leaving them no choice but to strike in the next six to nine months. Miraculously, the Israeli timeline for a strike coincided precisely with the American electoral calendar. But now, a month away from the election and at the very end of the timeline for a strike that the Israelis laid out, the Israeli prime minister is telling the world we have another six to nine months.

Concerns over the transparency of Iran’s nuclear program and the threat it poses to the nuclear non-proliferation regime are understandable. The hysterical saber-rattling of Benjamin Netanyahu however, which threatens to drag the United States into another costly war, is not.

For now, the Israeli Prime Minister has succeeded in deflecting attention away from the Palestinianissue. Once the American election is over however, this will become more difficult to do, especially if Barack Obama is re-elected. Both Obama and Mitt Romney are committed to Israel, but if Obama is free from electoral constraints he may have an opportunity to revisit the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Election season in Israel, which will likely be in the late winter or spring, will buy Netanyahu a bit more time. After that, however, we will be at a critical crossroads.

The Palestinian leadership sees a closing window of opportunity. If there is no significant movement in the first year of Obama’s second term, should he have one, then there will likely be no movement for the next six years. For Palestinians already on the brink this is beyond unacceptable.

For officials in Ramallah the stakes are high. The success of Islamist politics in the region, particularly in Egypt, may prove to be a boost to Hamas and leave the Fateh-dominatedPalestinian Authority/PLO in an even weaker position. Failure to secure progress and continued financial strife will be devastating. The incentive for them to act will be great and the window in which to do it in is shrinking.

Palestinian leaders must find a way to put the question of Palestine back at the forefront of the international agenda in the next few months. Otherwise, it will likely end up there anyway when Palestinians erupt in uprising, tired of persistent failures to advance their legitimate rights.

* Yousef Munayyer is a writer and political analyst based in Washington, DC. He is currently theExecutive Director of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development.

By Jack A. Smith

05 October, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Despite the sharp charges and counter-charges about foreign/military and national security policy there are no important differences on such matters between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney. The back and forth between the candidates on international issues is largely about appearance not substance.

The Washington Post noted Sept. 26 that the two candidates “made clear this week that they share an overriding belief — American political and economic values should triumph in the world.” Add to that uplifting phrase the implicit words “by any means necessary,” and you have the essence of Washington’s international endeavors.

There are significant differences within the GOP’s right wing factions — from neoconservatives and ultra nationalists to libertarians and traditional foreign policy pragmatic realists — that make it extremely difficult for the Republicans to articulate a comprehensive foreign/military policy. This is why Romney confines himself to criticizing Obama’s international record without elaborating on his own perspective, except to imply he would do everything better than the incumbent.

Only nuances divide the two ruling parties on the principal strategic international objectives that determine the development of policy. Washington’s main goals include:

• Retaining worldwide “leadership,” a euphemism for geopolitical hegemony.

• Maintaining the unparalleled military power required to crush any other country, using all means from drones to nuclear weapons. This is made clear in the incumbent administration’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), and the January 2012 strategic defense guidance titled, “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense.”

• Containing the rise of China’s power and influence, not only globally but within its own East Asian regional sphere of influence, where the U.S. still intends to reign supreme. Obama’s “pivot” to Asia is part of Washington’s encirclement of China militarily and politically through its alliances with key Asian-Pacific allies. In four years, according to the IMF, China’s economy will overtake that of the U.S. — and Washington intends to have its fleets, air bases, troops and treaties in place for the celebration.

• Exercising decisive authority over the entire resource-rich Middle East and adjacent North Africa. Only The Iranian and Syrian governments remain to be toppled. (Shia Iraq, too, if it gets too close to Iran.)

• Provoking regime change in Iran through crippling sanctions intended to wreck the country’s economy and, with Israel, threats of war. There is no proof Iran is constructing a nuclear weapon.

• Seeking regime change in Syria, Shia Iran’s (and Russia’s) principal Arab ally. Obama is giving political and material support to fractious rebel forces in the civil war who are also supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. The U.S. interest is in controlling the replacement regime.

• Weakening and isolating Russia as it develops closer economic and political ties to China, and particularly when it expresses opposition to certain of Washington’s less savory schemes, such as continuing to expand NATO, seeking to crush Iran and Syria, and erecting anti-missile systems in Europe. In 20 years, NATO has been extended from Europe to Central Asia, adjacent to China and former Soviet republics.

• Continuing the over 50-year Cold War economic embargo, sanctions and various acts of subversion against Cuba in hopes of destroying socialism in that Caribbean Island nation.

• Recovering at least enough hegemony throughout Latin America — nearly all of which the U.S. dominated until perhaps 15 years ago — to undermine or remove left wing governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

• Significantly increasing U.S. military engagement in Africa.

Both the right/far right Republican Party and the center right Democratic Party agree on these goals, although their language to describe them is always decorated with inspiring rhetoric about the triumph of American political and economic values; about spreading democracy and good feeling; about protecting the American people from terrorism and danger.

Today’s foreign/military policy goals are contemporary adaptations of a consistent, bipartisan international perspective that began to take shape at the end of World War II in 1945. Since the implosion of the Soviet Union ended the 45-year Cold War two decades ago — leaving the U.S. and its imperialist ambitions as the single world superpower — Washington protects its role as “unipolar” hegemon like a hungry dog with a meaty bone.

The people of the United States have no influence over the fundamentals of Washington’s foreign/military objectives. Many Americans seem to have no idea about Washington’s actual goals. As far as a large number of voters are concerned the big foreign/military policy/national security issues in the election boil down to Iran’s dangerous nuclear weapon; the need to stand up for Israel; stopping China from “stealing” American jobs; and preventing a terrorist attack on America.

One reason is the ignorance of a large portion of voters about past and present history and foreign affairs. Another is that many people still entertain the deeply flawed myths about “American exceptionalism” and the “American Century.” Lastly, there’s round-the-clock government and mass media misinformation.

After decades of living within an aggressive superpower it is no oddity that even ostensibly informed delegates to the recent Republican and Democratic political conventions engaged in passionate mass chanting of the hyper-nationalist “USA!, USA!, USA!,” when they were whipped up by party leaders evoking the glories of killing Osama bin-Laden, patriotism, war and the superiority of our way of life.

Since Romney has no foreign policy record, and he’ll probably do everything Obama would do only worse (and he probably won’t even win the election) we will concentrate mainly on Obama’s foreign/military policy and the pivot to China.

One of President Obama’s most important military decisions this year was a new strategic guidance for the Pentagon published Jan. 5 in a 16-page document titled “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense.”

The new doctrine is the response by the White House and Congress to the stagnant economy and new military considerations. It reduces the number of military personnel and expects to lower Pentagon costs over 10 years by $487 billion, as called for by the Budget Control Act of 2011. This amounts to a cut of almost $50 billion a year in an overall annual Pentagon budget of about $700 billion, and most of the savings will be in getting rid of obsolete equipment and in payrolls. This may all be reversed by Congress.

Introducing “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership” to the media, Obama declared:

“As we look beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and the end of long-term nation-building with large military footprints — we’ll be able to ensure our security with smaller conventional ground forces. We’ll continue to get rid of outdated Cold War-era systems so that we can invest in the capabilities that we need for the future, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, counterterrorism, countering weapons of mass destruction and the ability to operate in environments where adversaries try to deny us access. So, yes, our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats.”

Following the president, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta declared:

“As we shift the size and composition of our ground, air and naval forces, we must be capable of successfully confronting and defeating any aggressor and respond to the changing nature of warfare. Our strategy review concluded that the United States must have the capability to fight several conflicts at the same time. We are not confronting, obviously, the threats of the past; we are confronting the threats of the 21st century. And that demands greater flexibility to shift and deploy forces to be able to fight and defeat any enemy anywhere. How we defeat the enemy may very well vary across conflicts. But make no mistake, we will have the capability to confront and defeat more than one adversary at a time.”

The Congressional Research Service summarized five key points from the defense guidance, which it said was “written as a blueprint for the joint force of 2020.” They are:

1. A shift in overall focus from winning today’s wars to preparing for future challenges.

2. A shift in geographical priorities toward the Asia and the Pacific region while retaining emphasis on the Middle East.

3. A shift in the balance of missions toward more emphasis on projecting power in areas in which U.S. access and freedom to operate are challenged by asymmetric means (“anti-access”) and less emphasis on stabilization operations, while retaining a full-spectrum force.

4. A corresponding shift in force structure, including reductions in Army and Marine Corps endstrength, toward a smaller, more agile force including the ability to mobilize quickly. [The Army plans to cut about 50,000 from a force of 570,000. In 2001 there were 482,000.]

5. A corresponding shift toward advanced capabilities including Special Operations Forces, new technologies such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and unmanned systems, and cyberspace capabilities.

Here are the new military priorities, according to Obama’s war doctrine (notice the omission of counter-insurgency, a previous favorite):

• Engage in counter-terrorism and irregular warfare. • Deter and defeat aggression. • Project power despite anti-access/area denial challenges. • Counter weapons of mass destruction (WMD). • Operate effectively in cyberspace and space. • Maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent. • Defend the homeland and provide support to civil authorities. • Provide a stabilizing presence. • Conduct stability and counterinsurgency operations. • Conduct humanitarian, disaster relief, and other operations.

In an article critical of the military and titled “A Leaner, More Efficient Empire,” progressive authors Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis wrote:

“In an age when U.S. power can be projected through private mercenary armies and unmanned Predator drones, the U.S. military need no longer rely on massive, conventional ground forces to pursue its imperial agenda, a fact President Barack Obama is now acknowledging. But make no mistake: while the tactics may be changing, the U.S. taxpayer — and poor foreigners abroad — will still be saddled with overblown military budgets and militaristic policies.

” ‘Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow,’ the president told reporters, ‘but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow.’ In fact, he added with a touch of pride, it ‘will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration,’ totaling more than $700 billion a year and accounting for about half of the average American’s income tax. So much for the Pentagon’s budget being slashed.”

The Obama Administration’s so-called pivot to the Asia-Pacific region, actually East and South Asia (including India) and the Indian Ocean area, was unveiled last fall — first in an article in Foreign Policy magazine by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton titled “America’s Pacific Century,” then with attendant fanfare by President Obama on his trip to Hawaii, Australia and Indonesia.

The “pivot” involves attempting to establish a U.S.-initiated free trade zone in the region, while also strengthening Washington’s ties with a number of existing allied countries, such as Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and India, among others. A few of these allies have sharp disagreements with China about claims to small islands in the South China Sea, a major waterway for trade and commerce. The U.S., while saying it is neutral, is siding with its allies on this extremely sensitive issue.

Over the months it has become clear that the principal element of the “pivot” is military, and the allies are meant to give the U.S. support and backing for whatever transpires.

The U.S. for decades has encircled China with military might — spy planes and satellites, Navy warships cruising with thousands of personnel nearby and in the South China Sea, 40,000 U.S. troops in Japan, 28,000 in South Korea, 500 in the Philippines, many thousands in Afghanistan, plus a number of Pacific island airbases.

Now it turns out that the Navy is moving a majority of its cruisers, destroyers and aircraft carrier battle groups from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In addition old military bases in the region are being refurbished and new bases are under construction. Australia has granted Obama’s request to allow a Marine base to be established in Darwin to accommodate a force of 2,500 troops. Meanwhile Singapore has been prevailed upon to allow the berthing of four U.S. Navy ships at the entrance to the Malacca Straits, through which enter almost all sea traffic between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, a key trade route.

An article in the Sept./Oct. 2012 Foreign Affairs by Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell, titled “The Sum of Beijing’s Fears,” paints a clear picture of American power on the coast of China:

“U.S. military forces are globally deployed and technologically advanced, with massive concentrations of firepower all around the Chinese rim. The U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) is the largest of the United States’ six regional combatant commands in terms of its geographic scope and non-wartime manpower. PACOM’s assets include about 325,000 military and civilian personnel, along with some 180 ships and 1,900 aircraft. To the west, PACOM gives way to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for an area stretching from Central Asia to Egypt. Before Sept. 11, 2001, CENTCOM had no forces stationed directly on China’s borders except for its training and supply missions in Pakistan. But with the beginning of the “war on terror,” CENTCOM placed tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan and gained extended access to an air base in Kyrgyzstan.

“The operational capabilities of U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific are magnified by bilateral defense treaties with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea and cooperative arrangements with other partners. And to top it off, the United States possesses some 5,200 nuclear warheads deployed in an invulnerable sea, land, and air triad. Taken together, this U.S. defense posture creates what Qian Wenrong of the Xinhua News Agency’s Research Center for International Issue Studies has called a “strategic ring of encirclement.”

An article in Foreign Policy last January by Clyde Prestowitz asked: “Why is the ‘pivot’ a mistake? Because it presumes a threat where none exists but where the presumption could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and where others could deal with any threats should they arise in the future. Because it entails further expenditures far beyond what is necessary for effective defense of the United States and its interests. And because it reduces U.S. productive power, competitiveness, and long-term U.S. living standards by providing a kind of subsidy for the offshoring of U.S.-based production capacity.”

This development cannot be separated from the increasing economic growth and potential of China in relation to the obvious beginning of America’s decline. Washington may remain the world hegemon for a couple of more decades — and Beijing is not taking one step in that direction and may never do so. (Beijing seems to prefer a multipolar world leadership of several nations and regional blocs, as do a number of economically rising countries.)

“Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership,” as noted above, specified that the thrust of the Pentagon’s attention has now shifted to Asia. The most recent Quadrennial Defense Review already has informally identified China as a possible nation-state aggressor against which America must defend itself. The U.S. claims it is not attempting to contain China, but why the military buildup? It cannot be aimed at any other country in the region but China. Why also in his convention acceptance speech did Obama brag that “We’ve reasserted our power across the Pacific and stood up to China on behalf of our workers.”

The U.S. evidently is developing war games against China. On Aug. 2 John Glaser wrote in Antiwar.com: “The Pentagon is drawing up new plans to prepare for an air and sea war in Asia, presumably against China, in the Obama administration’s most belligerent manifestation yet of the so-called pivot to Asia-Pacific…. New war strategies called ‘Air-Sea Battle’ reveal Washington’s broader goals in the region,” including a possible war.”

The Aug. 1 Washington Post reported that in the games “Stealthy American bombers and submarines would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems located deep inside the country. The initial ‘blinding campaign’ would be followed by a larger air and naval assault.”

Both candidates have opportunistically interjected China-bashing into their campaigns, second only to Iran-bashing. Obama has several times told working class audiences that China is stealing their jobs. Romney fumes about China’s alleged currency “cheating.” Republican former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sharply criticized both candidates Oct. 3 for “appealing to American suspicions of China in their campaigns.”

Kissinger, whose recent book “On China” we recommend, also wrote a piece in the March-April Foreign Affairs titled “The Future of U.S.-Chinese Relations — Conflict Is a Choice, Not a Necessity” that injects an element of understanding into the matter.

“The American debate, on both sides of the political divide, often describes China as a ‘rising power’ that will need to ‘mature’ and learn how to exercise responsibility on the world stage. China, however, sees itself not as a rising power but as a returning one, predominant in its region for two millennia and temporarily displaced by colonial exploiters taking advantage of Chinese domestic strife and decay. It views the prospect of a strong China exercising influence in economic, cultural, political, and military affairs not as an unnatural challenge to world order but rather as a return to normality. Americans need not agree with every aspect of the Chinese analysis to understand that lecturing a country with a history of millennia about its need to ‘grow up’ and behave ‘responsibly’ can be needlessly grating.”

Clearly, the Obama Administration is opposed to modern China even becoming “predominant in its region” once again, much less in the world. At this stage Washington is predominant in East Asia, and between its military power and subordinate regional allies it is not prepared to move over even within China’s own sphere. No one can predict how this will play out in 20 or 30 years, of course.

The author is editor of the Activist Newsletter and is former editor of the (U.S.) Guardian Newsweekly. He may be reached at jacdon@earthlink.net or http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.co

INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER STATEMENT ON THE BORDER STRIKE BY TURKEY ON SYRIA

STOP NATO WAR ON SYRIA !

NATO-member Turkey has used alleged mortar fire from Syria as a pretext to launch artillery fire across the border, killing Syrian soldiers, and to prepare military intervention. NATO – an alliance mainly of the former colonial overlords of the world and the current biggest imperialist powers – immediately supported Turkey’s aggression. The British and German governments, the European Union and the U.S. all criticized the Syrian government and sympathized with Turkey. The Turkish Parliament has approved further attacks.

The Syrian government, following news that the mortar fire had killed five people in Turkey, immediately promised to investigate what happened and has not tried to retaliate for the Turkish shelling. No one knows even if the mortar fire came from the Syrian army or from its enemies in the insurgency. Or if anti-government “insurgent” forces fired on Syria from the Turkish border town, which has been used as a staging area by these reactionary forces.

While there is a flurry of diplomatic moves in the United Nations, there is no doubt that this latest aggression by NATO-backed Turkey can be the opening move to direct military intervention from the imperialist powers. This is something that NATO is looking for. The imperialists have fomented, armed and financed the armed insurgency in Syria. They have supported the most reactionary sectarian forces in an attempt to weaken the Syrian government and bring turmoil to the country. But it’s not working.

The U.S. and its NATO allies have attempted to win Security Council backing for military intervention. They had gotten such backing last year regarding Libya before they destroyed that country. So far Russian and China have refused to allow NATO to use the U.N. to cover up aggression.

According to a report in the Oct. 4 New York Times, the anti-Syria insurgency has begun to stall. The armed opposition’s “commanders have given up trying to entice defectors [from the Syrian army], and others have resorted to more desperate measures: cajoling, duping, threatening and even drugging and kidnapping military men to get them to change sides, or at least stay out of the fight.”

There is good reason for the insurgency to lose political steam. Even many forces inside Syria that are not supporters of the government see the so-called Free Syrian Army — whose troops contain many mercenaries or sectarian fighters from other countries — as a threat to the very existence of Syria as a unified and independent state.

The lesson of this latest event for the anti-war movement and the people of the U.S. is clear. Stay alert!

Be prepared for a new series of lies about Syria. Be prepared for a new attack from NATO member Turkey on its neighbor, Syria.

Bring this message to the anti-war actions taking place Oct. 5-7 across North America.

Source: Peace for Life