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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

By Kevin Barrett,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Barrett

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been vilified in the Western media for daring to imagine “a world without Israel.”

But according to news reports, Henry Kissinger and sixteen American intelligence agencies agree that in the near future, Israel will no longer exist.

The New York Post quotes Kissinger “word for word”: In 10 years, there will be no more Israel.

Kissinger’s statement is flat and unqualified. He is not saying that Israel is in danger, but could be saved if we just gave it additional trillions of dollars and smashed enough of its enemies with our military. He is not saying that if we elect Netanyahu’s old friend Mitt Romney, Israel could somehow be salvaged. He is not saying that if we bomb Iran, Israel might survive. He is not offering a way out. He is simply stating a fact: In 2022, Israel will no longer exist.

The US Intelligence Community agrees, though perhaps not on the precise 2022 expiration date. Sixteen US intelligence agencies with a combined budget over USD70 billion have issued an 82-page analysis titled “Preparing for a Post-Israel Middle East.”

The US intelligence report observes that the 700,000 Israeli settlers illegally squatting on land stolen in 1967 – land that the entire world agrees belongs to Palestine, not Israel – are not going to pack up and leave peacefully. Since the world will never accept their ongoing presence on stolen land, Israel is like South Africa in the late 1980s.

The extremist Likud coalition governing Israel, according to the US intelligence report, is increasingly condoning and supporting rampant violence and lawlessness by illegal settlers. The report states that the brutality and criminality of the settlers, and the growing apartheid-style infrastructure including the apartheid wall and the ever-more-draconian system of checkpoints, are indefensible, unsustainable, and out of synch with American values.

The sixteen US intelligence agencies agree that Israel cannot withstand the coming pro-Palestinian juggernaut consisting of the Arab Spring, the Islamic Awakening, and the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the past, dictatorships in the region kept a lid on the pro-Palestinian aspirations of their people. But those dictatorships began to topple with the fall of the pro-Israel Shah of Iran in 1979 and the establishment of a democratic Islamic Republic, whose government had little choice but to reflect its people’s opposition to Israel. The same process – the overthrow of dictators who worked with, or at least tolerated, Israel – is now accelerating throughout the region. The result will be governments that are more democratic, more Islamic, and far less friendly to Israel.

The US intelligence community report says that in light of these realities, the US government simply no longer has the military and financial resources to continue propping up Israel against the wishes of more than a billion of its neighbors.

In order to normalize relations with 57 Islamic countries, the report suggests, the US will have to follow its own national interests and pull the plug on Israel. Interestingly, neither Henry Kissinger nor the authors of the US Intelligence Report give any sign that they are going to mourn the demise of Israel. This is remarkable, given that Kissinger is Jewish and has always been viewed as a friend (if occasionally a tough friend) of Israel, and that all Americans, including those who work for intelligence agencies, have been influenced by the strongly pro-Israel media.

What explains such complacency?

Americans who pay attention to international affairs – a category that surely includes Kissinger and the authors of the Intelligence Report – are growing fed up with Israeli intransigence and fanaticism. Netanyahu’s bizarre, widely-ridiculed performance at the United Nations, where he brandished a cartoonish caricature of a bomb in such a way that he himself came across as a caricature of a “mad Zionist,” was the latest in a series of gaffes by Israeli leaders who seem prone to overplaying their hand.

A second factor is the festering resentment many Americans feel over the Israel Lobby’s imperious domination of public discourse. Every time a well-known American journalist is fired for going “off-script” about Israel, as happened to Helen Thomas and Rick Sanchez, a mostly-invisible backlash, like a tidal wave rippling beneath the surface of the ocean, grows in power. And every time the Israel lobby slaps down someone like Maureen Dowd, who recently observed that the same Israel-fanatics who dragged the US into the Iraq war are now trying to do the same thing with Iran, the more people begin to wake up and realize that people like Dowd, Thomas, and Sanchez are speaking the truth.

A third reason for complacency in the face of Israel’s impending demise: The American Jewish community is no longer united in support of Israel, much less its Likudnik leadership. Sophisticated Jewish journalists and analysts like Philip Weiss are recognizing the insanity of Israel’s current leadership and the hopelessness of its predicament.

According to recent reports, it is no longer fashionable among young American Jews to care about Israel. And despite Netanyahu’s frantic attempts to sway Jewish voters toward the Mormon Likudnik Mitt Romney, polls show that Obama, who is on record saying he “hates” the “liar” Netanyahu, will easily win the majority of Jewish votes.

Finally, we come to the least obvious – but most powerful – reason for Kissinger’s and the CIA’s complacency in the face of Israel’s implosion: The inexorable trickle-down of knowledge that Israel and its supporters, not radical Muslims, carried out the 9/11 false-flag attacks.

Increasingly, it is not fringe anti-Semitic groups, but high-level responsible observers, who are saying this. Alan Sabrosky, the half-Jewish former Director of Strategic Studies at the US Army War College, has come on my radio show to say that he has discussed with his colleagues the “100% certainty” that Israel and its supporters did 9/11. And Alan Hart, the former lead BBC correspondent for the Middle East (and personal friend of Golda Meir and Yasser Arafat) has also come on my radio show to break the story that he, too, knows that Israel and company orchestrated 9/11.

Today, we even have a presidential candidate, Merlin Miller, who is on the record stating that Israel, not al-Qaeda, carried out the 9/11 attacks.

The chief purpose of 9/11 was to “seal in blood” an intense, unbreakable emotional bond between the US and Israel, in a desperate bid to assure Israel’s survival by launching a long-term US war against Israel’s enemies. As the “dancing Israelis” arrested for celebrating the 9/11 operation tried to convince the police: “Our enemies are your enemies. The Palestinians are your enemies.”

But more and more Americans, including the US intelligence community as a whole, now recognize that the enemies of Israel (the entire Muslim world of over 1.5 billion people, along with most of the non-European world) do not have to be the enemies of the United States. In fact, the US is going broke and sacrificing thousands of lives in wars for Israel – wars that damage, rather than aid, US strategic interests. (One of those interests, of course, is buying oil and gas from stable, cooperative governments.)

As the recognition grows that 9/11 was not a radical Islamic attack, but an act of dastardly, bloody treason by supporters of Israel, it will become ever-easier for American policy makers, following in the footsteps of Kissinger and the sixteen intelligence agencies, to recognize the obvious: Israel has reached the end of its shelf-life.

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, and author of the books Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009). His website is http://www.truthjihad.com/

News Release

New York / Vienna, 1 October 2012

The UN Chronicle, a quarterly magazine issued by the United Nations Organization, has published in its recent issue (3/2012) an article by the President of the International Progress Organization (I.P.O.), Prof. Hans Köchler, on “The Integrative Approach towards Intercultural Dialogue.” Following his speech at the UN Alliance of Civilizations Forum in Doha (13 December 2011) on “Politics and Cultural Diversity: An Integrative Approach,” the United Nations Department of Public Information invited the President of the I.P.O. to contribute an article to the Chronicle’s special issue on inter-civilizational dialogue. The 2001 United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations was established to redefine diversity and to improve dialogue between civilizations and cultures. The special issue of the UN Chronicle looks at the progress made and lessons learned during the past ten years in achieving these goals. In his article, Prof. Köchler explains the structural link between intercultural dialogue and development, and proposes a number of practical measures, following from a comprehensive and integrative approach, in the fields of education, sports, tourism, and domestic as well as international politics.

The publication of the article coincides with the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the International Progress Organization at the initiative of students and intellectuals from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Founding Assembly was held on 30 October 1972 in Innsbruck, Austria. Since then, individuals and organizations from over 70 countries on all continents have joined the organization which obtained consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in 1977 and with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1978.

The organization was founded with a strategic commitment to dialogue – in the years of the “Cold War” between East and West. Several decades before the topic entered the global mainstream, the I.P.O. has played a vanguard role in the promotion of peace through inter-cultural and inter-civilizational dialogue. In September 1972, the President of the I.P.O. held consultations at the United Nations headquarters in New York on the promotion of cultural co-operation as a basic element of international peace. In a letter, dated 26 September 1972 and addressed to the Division of Philosophy of UNESCO, he suggested the holding of an international conference to discuss the basic issues of a “dialogue between civilizations.” He further explained the paradigm in a public lecture at the University of Innsbruck on “Cultural Self-comprehension and Co-existence: Preconditions of a Fundamental Dialogue” (19 October 1972), an idea which he further developed in his lecture at the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan on “Cultural-philosophical Aspects of International Co-operation” (Amman, 9 March 1974). In the same year, the President of the I.P.O. travelled around the globe and visited 26 countries on all continents to explain the idea of inter-cultural dialogue and to invite experts to an international conference on “The Cultural Self-comprehension of Nations.” He met, among others, with the Poet-President of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor, with the leading Arab author and Minister of Culture of Egypt, Youssef el-Sebai, with the Minister of Education of India, Prof. Nurul Hassan, and with the Director-General of Education of Indonesia, Prof. Ida Bagus Mantra. The International Conference on “The Cultural Self-comprehension of Nations,” the first of its kind, eventually took place in Innsbruck, Austria, in July 1974. To symbolize the idea of dialogue, it was held under the joint patronage of the Heads of State of Austria and Senegal. The International Progress Organization also was among the first to deal with issues of Muslim-Christian dialogue. In November 1981, the I.P.O. organized in Rome, Italy, an International Symposium on “The Concept of Monotheism in Islam and Christianity,” which was held under the patronage of Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and officially supported by Cardinal Franz König, Archbishop of Vienna; Habib Shatty, Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference; Emilio Colombo, Foreign Minister of Italy; and Chadli Klibi, Secretary-General of the League of Arab States.

Since the end of the Cold War and the events of September 11, 2001, the International Progress Organization has continued to promote the idea of peace through dialogue among civilizations and cultures, and has established working relations with a number of like-minded organizations such as the World Public Forum “Dialogue of Civilizations” (Moscow / Vienna), the Dialogue Eurasia Platform (Istanbul), the Asia-Europe Foundation(Singapore), the International Peace Bureau (Geneva), the Islamic Conference Youth Forum (Istanbul), the International Movement for a Just World(Malaysia), and the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (Berlin / New York).

Apart from its promotion of the dialogue of civilizations, the International Progress Organization has launched numerous initiatives in the fields of democracy, conflict resolution, human rights, international law, and in particular international criminal law, and United Nations reform. In a letter to the Security Council, dated 25 April 2000, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan nominated two representatives of the I.P.O., including the organization’s President, as international observers to the Scottish Court in the Netherlands.

The contribution of the International Progress Organization to global dialogue was recognized by numerous international figures including UN Secretaries-General Kurt Waldheim, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Gyani Zail Singh, President of India (1982-1987), conferred on the President of the I.P.O. the Award of the Unity International Foundation. On the occasion of the centenary celebrations of theInternational Peace Bureau (Geneva), the President of the I.P.O. was awarded with that organization’s Honorary Medal.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the International Progress Organization, the President of the organization, Prof. Hans Köchler, issued a special message which concludes with the following words:

We will continue to emphasize the crucial issues of a world order of peace and equality among peoples, nations and, not least, amongcitizens of all cultures and races. In the 21st century, “progress” must not be understood in a narrow materialistic sense. The concept of human rights, if it is to be more than a tool of hegemonial foreign policy, has to be applied to all aspects of society: cultural, social, economic, and political. Only if human rights are established as the guiding principles of international law can we credibly proclaim a “New World Order” of peace and justice. This is the message of the International Progress Organization for the multipolar order of the future.

By Jim Miles

28 September, 2012
@ Countercurrents.org

After beginning his speech with a nice homespun heartfelt story about U.S. diplomat Chris Stevens, Obama turned the rest of his speech into a series of lies that are all too common in U.S. rhetoric, lies that are concealed by fine sounding platitudes and homilies. Some of the lies are direct, but there are also lies of concealment, avoidance, wilful ignorance, and perhaps, genuine ignorance.

The UN

After the introduction, Obama continues by extending his ideas to the UN itself and

the very ideals upon which the United Nations was founded — the notion that people can resolve their differences peacefully; that diplomacy can take the place of war; that in an interdependent world, all of us have a stake in working towards greater opportunity and security for our citizens.

Sounds great, I would buy into it…except for the reality behind the statement. That reality is that the U.S. is one of the countries least disposed to “resolve their differences peacefully.” The global spread of U.S. military bases, generally considered to be well over 750, in over 120 countries in the world, speaks differently about “solving differences peacefully.” Obama reverses the general trend of U.S. history by saying that “diplomacy can take the place of war” when U.S. policy generally tends to be ‘we’ll threaten and manipulate first and then attack – overtly or covertly – if that fails.’

That trend can be seen in the history of Latin America and Asia in particular, with his later focus on Iran not accounting for the history of U.S. intervention there. In 1953 the U.S. and the UK covertly overthrew the democratically elected Mossadegh government of Iran, with all its decades of subsequent events, in Iran, and elsewhere in the world where the Iranian model of displacing uncooperative governments was put into place, the next in line being Guatemala in 1954 (Operation PBSUCCESS).

Finally, in an interdependent world, such as we have now, the “greater opportunity and security for our citizens” tends to speak for the one per cent, the global corporations, rather than the 99 per cent of the rest of the world.

The crisis

Obama then focuses on the crisis, the attacks on the U.S. embassies set off by the hate propaganda produced by the Christian right in the U.S.:

we must speak honestly about the deeper causes of the crisis — because we face a choice between the forces that would drive us apart and the hopes that we hold in common.

And then, he leaves it at that, there is absolutely no honesty in speaking about the “deeper causes of the crisis” being, in my view, “the forces that would drive us apart.” Volumes have been written about the deeper causes of the crisis – to witness, Mossadegh’s Iran and Arbenz’s Guatemala as above, the oil agreements with the Saudi’s after World War II that maintains this bastion of Arabic feudalism to this day, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Philippino’s under Suharto’s U.S. supported leadership, the unilateral support of Israel without acknowledging its nuclear threats and proliferation as well as its international humanitarian law abuses against the Palestinians, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the ongoing drone wars in Pakistan – a few among the many military interventions brought about by U.S. forces.

Some real lies…

We insisted on change in Egypt…. We supported a transition of leadership in Yemen….We intervened in Libya alongside a broad coalition, and with the mandate of the United Nations Security Council….we again declare that the regime of Bashar al-Assad must come to an end so that the suffering of the Syrian people can stop

Not true, as the U.S. did and said nothing when the Egyptian protests started and continued, hoping to maintain the status quo of their militarily supported puppet regime. Not true, as the leadership in Yemen remained under the control of the same regime, backed by the Saudi’s. As for Syria, still unsettled business, the suffering could well have stopped before it started if the U.S. and its coalition partners (the Saudi’s, Bahrain, all the GCC countries, all well known authoritarian governments) were not supplying the rebel groups with armaments but instead worked on replacing war with diplomacy.

Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly disagree with.

I think I covered this above, but let me add a few more. How about Vietnam and its denial of the UN promised vote on unification and the subsequent killing of millions of people? Or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a bombing that served only to demonstrate to the Soviets that the U.S. had and was willing to use nuclear weapons? Or what about the overthrow of Allende and the autocratic setup of Pinochet in Chile? The ongoing senseless blockade of Cuba? It goes on and on….Haiti, Argentina, Brazil, Grenada, Panama, Honduras, Columbia, Indonesia, East Timor, Laos, Hawaii….

The rhetoric continues with its disingenuity

And on this we must agree: There is no speech that justifies mindless violence. There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents.

Fine, then the best thing for the U.S. to do is be quiet until they bring their military home and stop causing much of the mindless violence and the killing of innocents.

Now, let me be clear: Just as we cannot solve every problem in the world, the United States has not and will not seek to dictate the outcome of democratic transitions abroad.

In modern times, Libya and Syria not withstanding, perhaps you did not “dictate” the outcome, but overt operations – as in Yugoslavia and Libya and Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan – combined with more covert operations and influences – as in the ‘colour’ revolutions in the Ukraine, Kirgizstan, and Georgia, along with the all the meddling in post Soviet Russia – have certainly had large effects on populations in those areas.

A politics based only on anger — one based on dividing the world between “us” and “them” — not only sets back international cooperation, it ultimately undermines those who tolerate it. All of us have an interest in standing up to these forces.

Whoa horses! (To use a U.S. cowboy metaphor.) “Us” and “them?” Really? Unfortunately Obama has carried forward and improved upon many of the Bush era practices from his statement about being “with us or being with them.” Yes, all of us do have an interest in standing up to these forces, while remaining clear with where it originated.

Israel and Palestine

Among Israelis and Palestinians, the future must not belong to those who turn their backs on a prospect of peace. Let us leave behind those who thrive on conflict, those who reject the right of Israel to exist. The road is hard, but the destination is clear — a secure, Jewish state of Israel and an independent, prosperous Palestine. Understanding that such a peace must come through a just agreement between the parties, America will walk alongside all who are prepared to make that journey.

If the destination is clear and you are prepared to “walk alongside all who are prepared to make that journey” then peace would already have been achieved. Otherwise, this statement is also a lie. The revelations of the Palestinian Papers by al-Jazeera demonstrated that the Palestinians would go to great lengths to achieve peace; and discussions with most Palestinians show that they wish peace and are resigned to accepting only about 22 per cent of their original homeland to achieve that.

On the other hand, Israel continues to illegally build settlements in occupied territories and confiscate and annex land and resources from the Palestinians. Both Hamas and Fatah have indicated by their actions that they are capable of working towards a peaceful solution. Israel on the other hand has used the “peace process” as a mask to continue with its settlement projects. It also has been the aggressor in most of its wars, most recently with its invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-09, both resulting in large civilian casualties. Israel is content with the status quo, with the its sense of ‘victim hood’ and with the U.S. as ally, its creation of the ‘war on terror’, an unending war that satisfies the political-religious-corporate-warrior elements of both governments.

Next up, Iran

But just as it restricts the rights of its own people, the Iranian government continues to prop up a dictator in Damascus and supports terrorist groups abroad. Time and again, it has failed to take the opportunity to demonstrate that its nuclear program is peaceful, and to meet its obligations to the United Nations.

Double standards abound here. The U.S. has, and does, and will continue to support dictators around the world as the need fits their geopolitical needs. This is particularly obvious today with the U.S. renouncing the Assad regime in Syria while utilizing the dictatorial powers of the Saudis and the GCC countries to get rid of it. The U.S. is the creator of some of the more egregious terrorist actions around the world, using them as convenient, with al-Qaeda being both an enemy and a special operations task force for them at the same time. “Time and again [Israel] has failed to take the opportunity to demonstrate that its nuclear program is peaceful,” a not carefully guarded secret that it has upwards of several hundred nuclear warheads achieved outside of the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty (NPT).

We respect the right of nations to access peaceful nuclear power, but one of the purposes of the United Nations is to see that we harness that power for peace.

Power harnessed for peace? Is that why the U.S. has about 5,000 nuclear warheads and is creating a euphemistic missile defence shield? Is that why the U.S. says nothing about the Israeli nuclear program, and has assisted the Indian nuclear program?

And make no mistake, a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained. It would threaten the elimination of Israel, the security of Gulf nations, and the stability of the global economy.

Can’t be contained? Unlike the Soviet Union, which was contained quite well, with their many thousands of nuclear warheads directed at the U.S.? And perhaps now Russia with fewer warheads, but still with the targeting? The Iranians may be a little bit crazy (as all politicians seem to be), but they have demonstrated over the years that they are not idiotic enough, in spite of their often strange rhetoric, to start a nuclear war. Of course the “security of the Gulf Nations” really refers to the security of U.S. control of the region with the aid of the dictators already in place. Ahh, the real answer is at the end, “the stability of the global economy”, the corporate elite want to continue harvesting the wealth of the world for themselves.

It risks triggering a nuclear-arms race in the region, and the unraveling of the non-proliferation treaty.

Whoa horses (again!)! I am confused. A race has to start somewhere, and Israel had nuclear weapons first, and the U.S. was in the process of helping the Shah with a nuclear program, and the U.S. has helped India avoid the NPT….so where exactly did this race begin? And so who is helping to unravel the NPT?

Universal values

We know from painful experience that the path to security and prosperity does not lie outside the boundaries of international law and respect for human rights.

Now this is true, one of those pleasant homilies that allow the U.S. to feel good about its indispensable self when it castigates then attacks other nations for their own good. It is also obvious that the U.S. has not learned from their “painful experience” as it has always been more painful to others than to them; and they are more than willing to sacrifice many of their own native sons along this path to “security”. The U.S. has shown little respect for international law and human rights over the decades, and continues to reiterate this nice homily while using all means – economic and military – to dominate the world.

But when you strip it all away, people everywhere long for the freedom to determine their destiny; the dignity that comes with work; the comfort that comes with faith; and the justice that exists when governments serve their people — and not the other way around.

The United States of America will always stand up for these aspirations, for our own people and for people all across the world. That was our founding purpose. That is what our history shows.

Another pleasant homily followed by more illusory rhetoric. Yes, the people of the world want two or three square meals a day, a decent job, a reasonable place to live, and the ability to participate in their indigenous culture. The U.S., while proclaiming that it will always stand up for these aspirations as it was their founding purpose, have demonstrated quite the opposite. It started with the first settlers and their “civilizing mission” among the natives, whom, according to their religious beliefs, were nothing more than heathen savages.

The actions that speak the truth against the rhetoric continued across the North American continent with the genocide of large numbers of native people, spread through the other Americas, then took off overseas with its newly acquired Spanish possessions. Once overseas, it became a global power looking to control the wealth of the world for its own homeland purposes.

Imperial designs

The leaders of the U.S. empire utilize the wonderful rhetoric of humanitarian principles, universal values, and freedom of democracy to cover the reality of their actions around the world. The unfortunate part is that some of them actually believe their own rhetoric, remaining blind and ignorant to the manner in which it is applied via the military and corporate structures, and wonder why the rest of the world “hates” them. Obama’s speech reflected this in its finest form. He is a strong speaker, a good orator, but is also simply the front man for the power of the nation – the corporate nation – that is interested in maintaining its significant wealth and power differential with the rest of the world.

The United States is the largest military nation in the world. It carries the largest debt problem in the world (with perhaps the EU combined following closely behind). It remains in defiance of all the scientific information regarding global climate change.

This combination of ill health and grand-standing rhetoric does not bode well for the future of the U.S. and the world.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

28 September 2012

Johannesburg, South Africa

 “The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own. We can easily be enticed to read reconciliation and fairness as meaning parity between justice and injustice. Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less than human if we did so. It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice. “

 Nelson Mandela, 4 December 1997

We, South Africans comprising of various organisations and institutions have over the years acted in solidarity with the Palestinians who are living under Israeli Apartheid and have been dispossessed in various waves of ethnic cleansing;

Gathered at Cosatu House, the headquarters of our country’s largest federation of trade unions, in Johannesburg on 28^th September 2012;

Deeply conscious of the limitations of our society’s transformations and the long walk that our country still has to undertake towards a more just life for all, free from poverty, economic  exploitation, sexism, racism and xenophobia;

Fully aware of the interconnectedness of all human suffering and the debt of solidarity that we owe each other and firmly believing that an injury to one, is an injury to all;

Rejecting the patent untruths of imperialism that this is a dispute by religious groups and those that attempt to set themselves up as honest brokers;

Expressing grave concern at the contravention of the UN resolutions and breach of international humanitarian law;

Mindful of

1. Apartheid Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the occupation and siege of Gaza;
2. The occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and e.g. the equally illegal and repugnant resettlement policies,  eviction of families and communities, the demolition of homes and villages and land grab;
3. The contempt for the will of the Palestinian people displayed by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the free and open Palestinian elections of 2006;
4. The war crimes committed by apartheid Israel during the invasion of Gaza in 2009, and the 2010 massacre;
5. The continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within apartheid Israel;
6. The continued exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;
7. The knowledge that many governments have given and continue to provide apartheid Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allow it to behave with impunity;
8. The role of various institutions of global governance in obstructing diplomatic efforts by Palestinians towards their liberation;
9. The role of governments and multi-national corporations, in cooperation with apartheid Israel, in the plundering of Palestinian land and natural resources as well as entrenching apartheid, masquerading these as assistance to the Palestinian people.

Reaffirm our commitment to:

1. Palestinian self-determination
2. Ending the occupation 
3. Oblige apartheid Israel to end complete disregard of UN and regional resolutions
4. Equal rights for all within historic Palestine
5. The full right of return for Palestinian refugees
6. The United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel
7. Ending imperialism and support the prosecution of perpetrators of violations of Palestinian rights

 Deeply aware of how our own suffering under apartheid and colonialism was reduced by those opposed to our freedom to a dispute between Black and White people;

 Asserting that even-handedness between oppressed and oppressor is escapism, acquiescence, cowardice at the very least and, at worst, complicity;

Immensely indebted to the international community – particularly those from the Frontline Countries in Southern Africa, the Non-Aligned movement and the numerous solidarity formations in Europe, North America and elsewhere who threw their lot in with the oppressed South African people despite their governments’ overwhelming support for the apartheid regime;

Respectful of the observations that the veterans and leaders of our own liberation struggle who have spoken of the daily persecution and humiliation of Palestinians in the shadow of Apartheid Israel; some of these observations include:

Israel’s policy towards her neighbouring Arab states clearly unmasks the true nature and character of the regime in Tel Aviv. It is this blatant arrogance, this open aggressiveness towards her neighbours and the ruthless oppression and exploitation of the Arab people of Palestine which compares Israel more and more to apartheid South Africa. The essence is that under the influence of exclusive nationalist ideologies both Afrikaner nationalists and Israeli Zionists, think and act towards the indigenous majorities in their countries and towards their neighbouring states with the callous inhumanity of all who consider others to be of “inferior races” and less human. (Alfred Nzo, Post-Apartheid SA’s first Foreign Minister)

I never tire of speaking about the very deep distress in my visits to the Holy Land; they remind me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like we did when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. My heart aches. (Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Winner)

The left and progressive forces need to intensive struggles against racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia as critical components of the struggle against the depredations of capitalism and imperialism. Most critically we call upon all left forces globally to intensive solidarity activities with the Palestinian people and their just struggle, and to pressure particularly European governments and the US to facilitate a just solution to the Palestinian and other Middle East problems. (Blade Nzimande, Secretary General of the South African Communist Party and Minister of Higher Education)

Many aspects of Israel’s occupation surpass those of the apartheid regime. Israel’s large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, levelling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites. (Professor John Dugard. Special Rapporteur on Palestine to the United Nations Human Rights Council)

It is perhaps the most pressing moral and ethical challenge of our time, in this the opening years of the 21^st Century, that all of us in this world who are fortunate enough to be free should express our total support and solidarity with the Palestinian people in this hour of perhaps their greatest suffering and need but at the same time a period where their infinite and unconquerable courage and determination shines through.  They will achieve their right to self-determination and join the liberated and independent nations of this world. They will survive and win and be able to contribute their great talents and energy in helping us all build a more prosperous and just world for this and future generations.  I place myself unreservedly in the camp of all those who believe that justice for Palestine means peace, security and justice for all in the Holy Land be they Christians, Jews, Muslims or non-believers, be they Israelis or Palestinians.  This is a just cause which should be supported by the entire international community, by all governments and people of whatever origin, with the same passion that enabled the anti-apartheid movement to see the birth of a non-racist, non-sexist, inclusive democratic South Africa.  (Ronnie Kasrills, Former Leader of our country’s Liberation Army, Mkhonto we Sizwe and former Minister of Water Affairs and Intelligence)

I support a similar call for sanctions against the state of Israel as we had against Apartheid South Africa – Absolutely! Pressure, pressure, pressure from every side and in as many ways as possible: trade sanctions, economic sanctions, financial sanctions, banking sanctions, sports sanctions, cultural sanctions; I’m talking from our own experience. In the beginning we had very broad sanctions and only late in the 1980s did we learn to have targeted sanctions. So you must look to see where the Israelis are most vulnerable; where is the strongest link to the outside community? And you must have strong international solidarity; that’s the only way it will work. You have to remember that for years and years and years when we built up the sanctions campaign it was not with governments in the West. They came on board very, very late. (Professor Allan Boesak, Former Patron of the United Democratic Front)

Our role as activists in the face of what President Nelson Mandela called the greatest moral issue of our time is to raise our voices and mobilise others to stand united in solidarity with the oppressed masses of Palestine and others in the world. For to echo Che Guevara ‘as long as there is a single human being in the world suffering under the yoke of oppression, our struggle cannot be over. (Marius Fransman, Deputy Minister, Department of International Relations and Cooperation)

The occupation wall that the Israeli army has built and continues to build cuts through Palestinian land, separating farmers from their farms. Palestinian farmers experience the daily torture of trying to get to their farms. They have to go through checkpoints that are opened and closed at unpredictable times to tend their olive trees. Many times they are not allowed to and they watch through the barbed wire as their olive trees die – as they and their families get reduced to poverty.  (Pregs Govender, SA Human Rights Commissioner)

Clearly, apartheid was a well-planned and oiled machine of racial segregation, designed from the very beginning to oppress, exploit and dehumanise Black South Africans, especially Black workers and the Black working class. While there are a number of differences between the situation of Black South African workers and Palestinian workers, the oppression and exploitation faced by the Black South African working class and the Palestinian working class resemble each other in many respects, while the Israeli Jewish working class resembles the White labour aristocracy in South Africa. (Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of Congress of South African Trade Unions)

Therefore;

Renew our commitment to act in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians inside the occupied territories, in the diaspora and within the Zionist state of Israel;

Agree to;

1. The founding principles, organisational structure, and coordination for an effective Coalition for a Free Palestine (CFP)
2. Implement a sustained programme of action and solidarity activities in support of Palestine. We particularly pledge our support to the following practical programmes/campaign actions:

        2.1. Build mass education, research, and monitoring capacity for strengthening our campaign actions in support of the cause of the Palestinian people.

        2.2. Build an international anti-apartheid movement against Israel with a specific focus on our  region and the African continent;

      2.3. Establish networked links and specific campaign actions with Palestinian organisations in the Occcupied Territories, inside apartheid Israel and the Palestinian diaspora particularly those in refugee camps;

        2.4. Mainstream Israel as an apartheid state and expose Israel’s apartheid policies and practices;

     2.5. Take stock of, raise the profile of, and build support for the Palestinian cause in all national, regional, continental and international fora;

       2.6. Actively respond to and support the call from virtually all of Palestinian civil society for a Boycott of Israel in the broadest possible manner, Disinvestment  from companies which deal with Israel and advancing sanctions against the Israeli regime (BDS);

      2.7. Challenge the increasing use of the Israeli lobby and others (albeit in ignorance) in using the Bible, the Christian faith and religiosity in the service of apartheid; and support the prophetic (Palestinian) religious leadership – Christian, Muslim and Jewish – who, in the words of the Kairos Palestine Document poignantly remind us that “The injustice against the Palestinian people which is the Israeli occupation, is an evil that must be resisted.”

      2.8. Launch a media offensive that highlights the plight of the Palestinian people under occupation and apartheid and exposes the media for their unbalanced coverage of the Palestinian question and the deliberate distortion of information relating to the struggle of the Palestinian people.

3. Continue to build the relationship between the various formations comprising the CFP and to welcome new organisations wishing to join the CFP.

4. Create public awareness around the CFP and its solidarity Program of Action.

5. Build links with and support the work and programmes of other solidarity movements in order to give meaning to our belief that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Call upon our government to immediately end the trade with companies complicit in the Israeli Occupation and Settlements, to terminate diplomatic relations with the State of Israel until it abides by international law and to continue its support for Palestinian self-determination.

In fulfilling our objectives we undertake to adhere to the following guiding principles:

1. We derive our legitimacy from the people in whose name we are waging or supporting this struggle, the Palestinians themselves;
2. Subscribe to the principle of consultation, transparency, accountability and honesty in carrying out support work, raising resources, and advancing progressive views on the issues around Palestine’
3. Recognise the independence of individual organisations making up the Coalition, respecting our differences yet being a common voice built around the needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people;
4. Respect for each other’s organisations and structures and the leadership of the Palestinian people’s organisations engaged in the liberation struggle.
5. Open and frank, yet comradely, critical engagement on issues of principle and views relating to activities to advance the Palestinian struggle;
6. Prioritise the needs of the people and organisations directly involved in the liberation struggle of Palestine;
7. Recognise and affirm the right of the Palestinian people to resist their oppression and fight for their freedom and respect their means of doing so.
8. While rejecting with contempt the attempts to equate criticisms of Israel as anti-Semitism, or all Jewish people with Zionists, we oppose all forms of discrimination – including anti-Semitism and xenophobia – which sully our vision of a world wherein the dignity of all human beings are respected.
9. Develop close cooperation and solidarity with Palestinian organisations and other solidarity groups, including those comrades who conduct the struggle within the apartheid state of Israel.
10. Play our role in mobilising and participating in a coordinated international anti-apartheid movement such as the movement that assisted us in our liberation from apartheid with a special focus on Southern Africa and the rest of the continent.

By Joseph Kishore

28 September, 2012

@ WSWS.org

In a bellicose speech before the United Nations Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded a “red line” be placed on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, outlining a plan of action that would lead to war next year, if not sooner.

Employing a crude cartoon drawing of a bomb with a lit fuse, Netanyahu said that action to physically destroy Iran’s nuclear program would have to take place before the uranium enrichment process began its final stage, which he claimed would happen around the spring or summer of 2013. “The hour is getting late, very late,” he declared.

The Israeli prime minister compared the Iranian government to Al Qaeda, placing the two within the framework of “a fanatic ideology bent on world domination.” He added, “It makes little differences whether these lethal weapons are in the hands of the world’s most dangerous terrorist regime, or the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization.”

Speaking as the head of state for a government that, in close alliance with the United States, is responsible for military aggression throughout the Middle East and beyond, and is engaged in a brutal occupation of Palestine, Netanyahu said that Israel “cherishes peace.” Israel currently has a stockpile of some 400 atomic bombs and has refused to submit to international inspections.

Iran has denied that is building a nuclear weapon, and international inspectors have found no evidence of anything that goes beyond an energy program. Netanyahu insisted, however, “The red line must be drawn on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program because these facilities are the only nuclear installations we can see and target.” By placing his “red line” before the beginning of the production of weapons-grade uranium, Netanyahu is seeking to establish a pretext for war even before there is any evidence that Iran is actually seeking to build a bomb.

Israeli-US plans for war—which would have devastating and incalculable consequences—are being carried out entirely behind the backs of the American people. One of the principal concerns of the Obama administration has been to delay actions until after the US elections in November, to ensure that the population has no say in the matter.

Whatever their tactical differences, the US and Israel are agreed on basic strategy. “Democrats and Republicans alike” are united in the campaign against Iran, Netanyahu said. He added, “Israel is in discussions with the United States over this issue, and I am confident that we can chart a path forward, together.”

Netanyahu’s remarks came two days after Obama, in his own speech before the United Nations, declared that “a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained… The United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

At the same time, Obama indicated that the administration wants to spend more time increasing sanctions on Iran, which have had a crippling impact on the country’s economy.

Netanyahu’s timetable for military action—coming about six months after the US elections—is an indication that his government is seeking to play down differences with the Obama administration over when military action would take place. On the day of his remarks, a report was leaked from Israel’s Foreign Ministry calling for an additional round of sanctions.

The report, obtained by the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz, also details the devastating impact of existing economic sanctions, including a 50 percent decline in oil exports and a sharp rise in prices for food and other commodities.

Commenting on disagreements over “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear program, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Thursday, “I think that this whole matter of red lines should be made, but not publicly. And I think that at the moment, the talks between us and the Americans, which are excellent, are precisely about this. We are constantly coming closer in our positions.”

Dennis Ross, a career Middle East diplomat under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, including the Obama administration, also emphasized the basic strategic agreement between the US and Israel. “What you are really seeing is an agreement on the objective of making certain Iran cannot have nuclear weapons,” he said in an interview with MSNBC.

Ross added that “one of the reasons it is so important to create a context where the international community believes… that you have exhausted all the diplomatic options and have given the economic sanctions enough time” is “to create the kind of context that demonstrates unmistakably that we went the extra mile and if we had to use force, in fact we were left with no choice.”

The resort to war, Ross said, is “more and more likely.”