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“Men use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.”

(Voltaire: Dialogue XIV, Le Chapon et la Poularde)

Voltaire’s wit often illuminates truth. Consider this revealing “thought” as expressed recently in Alert, the voice of AIPAC to its membership: “Some Americans believe if the Israelis strike Iran, the U.S. will pay the political costs anyway, so it would be better for the Americans to do the job and do it properly. Their clock is a bit different from the one the Israelis hear. Because of their vastly superior firepower, the Americans could strike Iran later, more devastatingly and more sustainably.” How just is it for AIPAC’s mouthpiece to declare that America should “devastate” Iran because it has “vastly more firepower” than Israel and could “do a better job” and “do it properly,” as though this were a clean-up “job” of a waste dump and not an illegal invasion of a member country of the United Nations that has done nothing under international law to threaten the U.S. much less attack it, while the Israeli government and its IDF look on happily content that it is American boys and girls suffering the consequences of the unwarranted attacks and not Jewish boys and girls? Has it come to this, that unnamed Israeli spokespeople, voicing AIPAC’s policies, determine what nation the U.S. should invade without consultation with the representatives of the American people?

Not that this sentiment has not been expressed before. Netanyahu told Piers Morgan the same thing in an interview last year, as I have quoted in previous articles, noting Israel ‘s Zionist government’s desire to use America ‘s military as their own claiming that what is good for Israel is good for America . That protestation completes the wit contained in Voltaire’s quote: because Israel is America ‘s only friend in the mid-east, and the only Democracy, and the only nation in that part of the world aligned with the west, it alone deserves America ‘s “unquestionable” and “unbreakable” support.

Speech that conceals fails to mention that being Israel’s “only friend” has made the U.S. a pariah among nations in the world and made its touted “Democratic freedoms” a laughing stock as the other nations in the UN watch America “support” the Zionists’ agenda to attack Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza, abort international law as it, like Israel, commits extrajudicial executions in foreign states, equips Israel when it invades its neighbors to the north and attacks peace activists aboard vessels from peaceful nations including Turkey, and, ironically sits silently by as Israel dismantles what little of a democracy existed in that nation by creating new laws that deny full citizenship to anyone not a Jew. Thus have we become a nation supportive of a militaristic Theocracy while we continue to mouth the principle of separation of church and state, a principle founded on tolerance, concealing the truth that there are more than 20 great religions with well over a billion people who accept no religion (Adherents.com) all of whom deserve recognition and, as necessary, support from America.

Clearly Israel ‘s needs are not America ‘s needs if we mean by that more war in the mid-east. Have we pulled our troops from Iraq just to move them into Iran ? Does any sensible person believe that the Iranians have a “need” or desire to attack the people of the United States ? Our forces completely surround Iran . We are the nation with atomic weaponry, not Iran . What possible good would Iran achieve by having a nuclear weapon? Hasn’t Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement while Israel , who damns Iran for its nuclear “ambitions,” has an arsenal of nuclear bombs and has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement. Which of these nations is to be feared? Iran has never attacked a neighbor; Israel attacks and occupies its neighbors at will.

Have the Iranians reason to fear control of the U.S. military by Israeli operatives using this nation as its power because Israel wants to devastate Iran the way Iraq has been devastated? Yes. Israel ‘s ultimate goal is control of the mid-east by surgically cutting it into small indefensible sections that can be dominated by Israeli money and American forces. It would appear, however, that Israel fears America does not desire to follow Israel ‘s advice to “take out” Iran the way they convinced the Bush administration to “take out” Saddam Hussein. Hence the constant barrage that characterizes Iran as a warlike state set on wiping Israel off the map and becoming the dominant power in the mid-east.

It’s time, I believe, for the U.S. and the UN to consider how to avoid yet more devastation in the mid-east, not by expanding military operations there but by seeking peace through negotiations and cooperative support for the people of the mid-east. Both Israel and the United States must confront the reality on the ground today that they no longer have control over the people of the mid-east, and recognize the colonial drives that Zionism had designed for Israel are no longer tenable.

While Israeli control of America in the form of Las Vegas billionaires buying the presidency continues in the United States, and Republican candidates crawl to the altar of Mammon to remove Obama, who has already sold his soul to the forces of Evil, the people of the world look on in disbelief, having witnessed for sixty years the dominance of Zionist deceit, treachery, and manipulation of America as it savaged the mid-east in the name of friendship, democracy and shared values. But now, they have moved to take control of their own lives as they watch Israel corrode from within as it metamorphoses into a tribalistic, superstitious people further isolating themselves from the community of nations.

Can they not see that the people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and, arguably, in Yemen and Saudi Arabia have had enough of dictators imposed by the U.S. and Israel to control their governments; can they not see that Turkey broke with the Zionist forces that demanded compliance with their rule regardless of international law and due respect for neighboring nations; are they blind to the Jordanian efforts to take seriously their role as a Palestinian neighbor; do they not see that the people of Egypt have made possible the opening of Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza, that the people of the world have given notice that they will not cease to break that siege with boats entering Gaza through international waters, that the Iraqi people have made clear that they will not cave in to America’s continued control of their country by proxy power, that the peoples of Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia have openly condemned Israel’s injustices to the Palestinian people regardless of their governments paid presidents and prime ministers that claim otherwise; have they stood by blind to the French Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee issuing its recent report condemning Israel’s apartheid practices against Palestinians in the West Bank, blind to Secretary Ban’s clear call to Israel that it must withdraw from the occupied territories, blind to the European Union as it issued its recent report critical of the Israeli government’s on-going occupation and settlement of Palestinian land, blind as well as Russia, China, Iran and numerous other mid-east nations put into practice what they have agreed upon by resorting to other currencies than the dollar to be the international means of finance; unable to see that once the people of the world have had an opportunity to view the critically acclaimed, dramatically powerful, passionately presented film, The Promise , by director Peter Kosminsky of the United Kingdom, where the inhumane policies of the Zionist criminals erupts in all its unguarded ferocity, the veil of respectability will be removed from Israelis’ atrocities for all, and blind, totally blind to the United Nations as it acts upon a resolution to recognize the rights of the Palestinian people to a state of their own, must they not see, both Israel and its people, as well as all Americans, that they must accept the reality that no single nation can force its will on all other nations with impunity; that time is over.

Clearly Israel ‘s militaristic approach to neighborliness does not work. Israel fears “delegitimization,” it fears boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), and it fears total isolation from the world’s communities. Should the U.S. become financially incapacitated through the devaluing of its currency, should it not be able to create adequate jobs for its citizens, should its investment in Israel estimated at $8.2 million per day for a population that is approximately 7 million impair its stability, should the people of America awaken to the control AIPAC has over their President and representatives and the total disregard of America’s security as a result, then Israel could lose both the American veto that has protected it from world condemnation of its policies and America’s military support for its aggressiveness against its neighbors. That would leave Israel isolated, wrapped in fear, and psychologically unstable. Israel ‘s alternative can only be constant instability, never ending terror and war, hatred by their neighbors, innate, simmering self-hate, and mental anguish resulting from exclusionism that leaves open wounds of distrust and self-questioning, a state terribly close to insanity.

Is it not time for Israel to seek peace with its neighbors? Since no sensible person in the mid-east believes that the U.S. can act credibly as a broker for peace, Israel must seek other partners from the UN who can serve that purpose. It must be willing to accept as a premise for peace, justice as defined by the UN’s International Courts and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It must understand that the occupied territories must be returned to their native inhabitants, that the Partition Plan of November 1947 must be a basis for negotiations if only to provide a foundation for equitable land for both peoples. Modification of land distribution could follow as well as a means of providing for the rights of those displaced in the Nakba. The world peace body could serve to protect both peoples as generations come and go until a free movement of all is possible. Then perhaps we could say, men use thoughts to find justice and speech to communicate it.

By William A. Cook

6 February 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. He writes frequently for Internet publications including The Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Atlantic Free Press, Pacific Free Press, Countercurrents, Counterpunch, World Prout Assembly, Dissident Voice, and Information Clearing House among others. His books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and the forthcoming The Plight of the Palestinians. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com

A healthy debate has finally gripped the Occupy Movement: there is now a discussion over strategy. Most Occupiers have learned that raw enthusiasm alone cannot bring victory to a social movement; ideas matter too. Action divorced from strategy equals wasted energy, divisiveness, diversions and unnecessary mistakes. Not all tactics push the movement forward.

Why this debate now? Anyone paying attention can tell that the Occupy Movement has lost momentum; the winter months showcased increasing amount of actions combined with fewer and fewer people. After taking the lead in national Occupy enthusiasm, Occupy Oakland is doing some soul searching after an attempted building takeover resulted in massive police violence.

Some Occupiers claim that Occupy was simply in winter hibernation, waiting for its own Arab Spring. But the movement in Europe has grown during the same winter months. The movements in the Middle East, Russia, and elsewhere too have voted with their feet against hibernation.

A social movement, by definition, requires masses of participants, without which momentum grinds to a halt; the movement ceases to move.

Numbers matter, and Occupy has been shedding numbers for months. A major reason for this is because Occupiers have swerved drastically left, leaving the broader 99% ashore. If this trend isn’t corrected soon, Occupy will resemble the pre-Occupy left: small isolated groups pursuing their own issues, disconnected from the very broader population that must be involved to actually win any significant demands.

This is the original sin of Occupy: Without first sinking its roots deep enough into the broader population, Occupy marched quickly to the left, unconcerned with who was following. Hopefully Occupy can correct this mistake in time, since not doing so would be fatal fast.

Hopefully, Occupiers have passed through the movement’s immature adolescence. For example, Occupy must shed its focus on radical-themed direct actions that inevitably attract only a couple hundred Occupiers but no one else. Again, this was the strategy of pre-Occupy that has already proved its lack of worth. Mass direction action is truly effective, but that raises the critical question: how to bring the masses of working people to Occupy, and vice versa?

Europe has already answered this question, having passed through the adolescence if its own movement, and now focused on bringing down unpopular governments. Greece, for example, went through an immature stage of rioting that showcased much bravery but could provide no real answers. Now, however, a massive workers movement has emerged, the entire 99% is directly involved in producing gigantic demonstrations that soon evolved into one-day General Strikes, and then two-day General Strikes. A common demand in Greece is now for an “indefinite general strike” to bring down the government and stop austerity, i.e., the massive cuts to public programs — education, health care, social services — and jobs.

Demands matter. The entire Greek population would not be going on strike against capitalism — at this time — or against corporate greed, etc.

Typically, an effective general strike — one where the entire 99% participates — happens after a prolonged struggle over demands that affect all working people, where they are agitated enough to take action in the streets. A general strike is the culmination of this movement, itself the byproduct of reaching out to and connecting with broader and broader layers of working people.

Throughout Europe working people are inspired to fight against austerity. Workers in the United States would likely also be inspired to fight against austerity. Unfortunately, there is no venue to do this. The labor and Occupy Movements have failed to take on the key issues that actually have the potential to unite the U.S. population in a European style social movement.

Austerity is happening fast in the United States; on a state-by-state level massive cuts are being pushed through while taxes on the rich stay low. Health care, education, and social services are being killed on a city, state, and federal level. Public sector jobs are being slashed in an epoch of mass joblessness. Medicare and Medicaid are undergoing a very public attack and Social Security is on the chopping block.

Yes, Occupy is too “radical” to unite around these demands; while the labor movement has acted too timidly. Some Occupiers avoid these demands because they fear Democrat co-optation; labor avoids seriously pressing for these demands because they don’t want to upset the Democrats. This is exactly the point: the Democrats — with the Republicans — are the ones pushing these cuts. Fighting austerity in the United States directly challenges the two-party system, while engaging the broader population into struggle.

Without struggle there is no movement. If working people do not identify with the issues that Occupy is fighting for, they will not join, and Occupy’s issues will remain un-achievable.

Occupy Oakland has called for a general strike on May Day. Unless conditions change fast, it is unlikely to succeed, and more likely it will put further distance between Occupy and working people, since the 99% will not take Occupy seriously if it calls for actions it cannot organize. Occupy would do better to follow Europe’s example: organize around demands that connect with working people, so that the real power of the majority of working people can be mobilized in the streets.

By Shamus Cooke

12 February 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Shamus Cooke is a social worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org)

Beirut: “My friends and I like Iran. Maybe they will ask their friends in Lebanon to help baba (daddy) to be allowed to work and our family allowed to own a home outside the camps.” Hanadi, a precocious youngster at Shatila Camp’s Shabiba center on learning last week from her teacher that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameneiand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warmly welcomed Palestinian leaders to Tehran during the33rdanniversary celebrations of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and that both committed Iran to a “religious and moral duty to alleviate the effects on Palestinian refugees of the Nakba’s ethnic cleansing.”

Around noon on Tuesday September 14, 1982, the day before Israel greenlite the launch of the three day Sabra-Shatila Massacre, two white vans pulled into Rue Sabra, diagonal from Akka Palestinian Hospital (PCRS), the main Shatila camp road.

Mrs. Halabi, a Palestinian teacher thought the four foreigners who exited the vehicles near the current Martyrs cemetery, were from a European NGO because the four men carried detailed maps of Shatila camp and she hoped that they might be assessing camp needs for an infrastructure project.

“Can you show us all the camp shelters?” she recalls one of the heavily accented men asking.

“Yes of course,” Mrs.Halabi replied and as the men followed her and took notes and photos, she explained that the shelters were too small to be of much use during “bombardments.”

“We understand”, said the apparent group leader, the only one their Palestinian guide recalls speaking during their visit, and then he added, “Why does this place smell so foul? Embarrassed by the question, Mrs. Halabi explained that the sewers in Palestinian camps, especially Shatila and nearby Burj al Barajneh are always in need of repair.”

We now know that the “European NGO delegation’ members were in reality two Israeli intelligence agents accompanied by two Phalange intelligence operatives including their chief, Elie Hobeika. They arrived at Shatla camp for the purpose of identifying shelters where Palestinians would likely try to hide during the coming days.

And they succeeded.

It was to the 11 shelters inside and on the edge of Shatila camp that the first arriving Christian militiamen found their way through unfamiliar alleys and began their 46 hours of non-stop slaughter. With very few exceptions all of the hundreds of refugees who huddled into the identified shelters were among the first to be massacred.

The Mossad organized group was not the only ones to complain about the sewer gases from Shatila. For weeks the Israeli troops sharing with Hobeika’s troops the HQ west of the camp at the Kuwaiti Embassy also complained to journalists that when the wind came off the mountains to the east and swept thru the camp toward the sea behind them that they “could actually smell the Palestinian terrorists.”

30 years since the massacre at Sabra-Shatila, the camp sewer problem persists. When the wind blows eastward from the sea across Shatila camp the Hezbollah dominated Ghouberi Municipality offices located where the former Algerian Embassy stood in 1982 can smell the Shatila camp sewers just as the Israelis did three decades earlier. During the Sabra-Shatila massacre, the then Algerian Embassy gave sanctuary to refugees lucky enough to flee to the diplomatic compound which is about 50 meters from the eastern edge of Shatila camp. To do so the survivors had to dodge five Israeli tanks positioned along the airport road to in order to seal camp residents inside Shatila. Those who were caught were forced by Israel soldiers back into the death camp.

And those who today work to the east of Shatila in the Ghouberi Municipality offices and live nearby are not alone. If the wind happens to blow from north to south across Shatila camp and the Bir Hassan neighborhood it is the Iranian Embassy that receives the wafting foul air.

While the overwhelmed and broken camp sewers, lack of electricity, inadequate clean water, no heat in winter, no AC in summer, absence of sun light and fresh air, intense over-crowding-sometimes eight persons to a room, inadequate nutrition and health care, sky-rocketing respiratory diseases, high student dropout rates, increased drug usage, are among the seemingly endless problems in the 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and impact every life, every day, recent words of solidarity from Iran are much appreciated.

According to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Iran endorses the creation of a Palestinian state, regarding Israel as Palestine under occupation by the “Zionist regime”. Iran rejects a Two state solution and considers that Palestine is indivisible and inseparable, probably reflecting a majority opinion today as support for Zionist Israel plummets globally.

“Iran does not expect anything except endurance from Palestine’s resistance,” Khamenei was quoted as telling a visiting delegation led by Hamas officials.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had a very successful visit to Lebanon, last year, repeated his call for a free referendum for the entire Palestinian population, including Arab citizens of Israel, to determine the type of government for the future Palestinian state. He reiterated that establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel would “never mean an endorsement of the Israeli occupation”.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told visiting Palestinians Iran would aid those suffering in the camps and spoke of “the need for Palestinian adherence to the basic principles of resistance as the key ingredient for their victory against Israel,” according to the official Iranian PRESS TV news agency.

Evolving PLO-Iranian Relations

Before the Iranian revolution there was no Palestinian embassy in Iran. The Shah was much more interested in maintaining good relations with Israel and the United States, than in the Palestinians or in the Arab-Israeli peace process. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) developed close ties with the Iranian opposition, training Iranian dissidents at PLO camps in Lebanon.

The PLO backed the 1979 revolution, and several days after the revolution, PLO chief Yasser Arafat became the first Arab leader to visit Tehran to congratulate the country’s leadership on their success and he led a 58 member Palestinian delegation. The Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan hosted an official welcome ceremony for Arafat, where the keys to the former Israeli embassy were symbolically handed over to the PLO.

However, the leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini while supporting the Palestinian cause did not warm much to Arafat. During an intense two-hour meeting on Feb. 18, 1979, the ayatollah criticized the PLO for what he considered its limited nationalist and pan-Arab agenda. He urged Arafat to model the PLO on the principles of the Islamic revolution. While Arafat was an observant Muslim, he told aides why he rejected some of the ideas of Khomeini. Arafat and Khomeini never met again.

As with most countries in the region, PLO Iranian relations fluctuated, sometimes dramatically. The Iran-PLO relations deteriorated fast when Arafat supported Iraq during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and again when Saadam invaded Kuwait. Iran condemned Arafat in 1988, after he recognized Israel, renounced terrorism, and called for peace talks with Israel. In 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Arafat a “traitor and an idiot” and while the PLO maintained diplomatic relations with Tehran, Iran did not aid the PLO again until 2000.

Figuratively speaking, will Iran help fix the sewers in Lebanon’s camps? And crucially, will the Iranian leadership ask their close Lebanese friends to enact the right to work and repeal the 2001 law that outlaws home ownership for Palestinians in Lebanon? Quite frankly, the absence of these very basic human rights in Lebanon negatively affects Palestinian lives day after day even more that the goal of liberating Al Aqsa on Temple Mount, however essential that is to achieve.

No right to work or home ownership please, they’re Palestinians!

“Miss International”, Zeinab al Hajj, born and raised in Shatila camp, regularly explains to visitors from Iran: “If we are allowed to work and own a home our capacity to engage in the liberation of Palestine will grow fast. As part of an economic middle class we could do more than scavenging to put bread on our table for our children. We will have the energy and more time to resist the Zionist occupation of our country. Currently we are so forlorn who among us has the energy to do more than just try to survive, not really live mind you, but try to survive and barely keep our families together.”

A bit more than words of solidarity are needed from Iranian friends of Palestine to help them escape the sewers in which they exist not far from where their Muslim sisters and brothers and all foreigners in Lebanon enjoy full civil rights.

During this 33 Anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the 30th anniversary of the 1982 Massacre at Sabra-Shatila, for the Iranian government to give solid achievement to its words and to facilitate the right to work and to own a home for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would require only the cost of one phone call or email from Tehran to Dahiyeh.

Specifically a communication from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah, Sec-Gen. of Hezbollah, to work for Parliament to meet its Lebanese Constitutionally mandated and its internationally required obligation. And they are to immediately grant the basic human right to legally work and to own a home to Lebanon’s quarter million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon just until they are able to return to their own country, Palestine.

By Franklin Lamb

18 February, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

volunteers with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign and Sabra-Shatila Foundation in Lebanon and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

The volatile situation in Syria generated by the Saudi-Qatar-funded Wahhabi armed group known as the Free Syrian Army and backed by the West is now an accident waiting to happen.

There is certainly one ulterior motive behind the US-friendly Syrian crisis extravagantly fuelled by the presstitute media which keep distorting the facts on the grounds. A recent article published by the New York Times by Efraim Halevy, who headed Mossad from 1998 to 2002, sheds light on this motive. He states that Iran’s foothold in Syria has enabled Tehran to pursue its “reckless” regional policies, and to stop those policies, Iran’s presence in Syria must be ended.

To this end, the events in Syria must be so choreographed that they should lead to the overthrow of Assad regime and consequently “result in a strategic debacle for the Iranian government.”

“The public debate in America and Israel these days is focused obsessively on whether to attack Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons ambitions; hardly any attention is being paid to how events in Syria could result in a strategic debacle for the Iranian government,” he said.

So, it seems that the fate of Syria is intimately interwoven with that of Iran. The exorbitant efforts the West is expending in Syria to overthrow the Assad regime are in fact directed against the Islamic Republic. Once the regime of Assad is trampled under the imperialist boots, the political influence of Iran will be severely damaged. In the meantime, some media such as the state-funded BBC, the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera and the Saudi-run Al Arabiya are carving out a similar scenario in league with western imperialists.

In point of fact, Qatar’s sabotage activity in Syria started in February 2011 when Al Jazeera embarked on a pointlessly mischievous act. A page titled “The Syrian Revolution 2011” was created on Facebook which was an open invitation to rebellion in Syria. It was sonorously called “Day of Wrath” in the manner of similar Facebook pages created for uprisings in the region. Instantly, the page received over 80000 likes which was of course a technical manipulation to create multiple accounts. Interestingly, the only channel which promoted and highlighted the spurious event was Al Jazeera which was bitterly disappointed with the failed attempt as the snare it laid failed to catch any game.

Furthermore, Al Jazeera’s reporting is partly based on what it receives from the London-based “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights”, an ostensibly independent institute which has recently come into limelight thanks to its fallacious name. Funded by the Qatari and Saudi Wahhabis, the institute is composed of two groups: some members of the extremist Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and some elements from the PKK, a branch of the terrorist PKK groups who are scattered in parts of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.

Along the lines of the same policy, Saudi-run Arabic channel Al Arabiya keeps delivering exaggerated reports on the number of those killed in Syria and pointing the finger of blame at the Syrian government while independent reports reveal that the terrorists financed by the West and the Wahhabis are behind the killings. On 13 December 2012, armed terrorists exploded a gas pipeline in the Syrian province of Homs. In Idleb province, a homemade bomb killed six workers of a textile factory and wounded 16 others who were going to work on a minibus. The terrorists have also engaged in a number of sabotage activities including attacking Syrian military facilities and law enforcement agencies, exploding oil pipelines, railroads, and killing citizens, burning schools and killing students and teachers all in the name of Syrian government.

On January 18, the Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani in an interview called for deployment of Arab troops in Syria in order to put an end to what he described as “deadly crackdown” in Syria.

Also, a recent report by DEBKAfile reveals that “British and Qatari troops are directing rebel ammunition deliveries and tactics in the bloody battle for Homs”.

According to the report, Britain’s intelligence arm MI6 has set up four operation centers in the city with the troops on the ground gearing up for an undercover Turkish incursion into Syria.

Reportedly, part of the talks between Syrian officials and head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service Mikhail Fradkov which took place on Tuesday (7 February) was focused on the presence of British and Qatari forces in Homs.

Apart from the extremist Wahhabis, the US and Turkey have been training Syrian armed groups in southeastern Turkish city of Hakkari. A former employee with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Sibel Edmonds says the US is involved in smuggling arms into Syria from Incirlik military base in Turkey in addition to providing financial support for Syrian rebels.

The US has reportedly released hundreds of terrorists from its prisons in Iraq provided that they leave the country for Syria and fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The terrorists have entered Syria via Turkey.

Therefore, the US and Turkey have been paving the ground for military intervention in Syria by providing the terrorists with training and arms. Large caches of weapons including anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, mortar bombs and heavy machine guns have been sent via ground to major unrest-wracked Syrian cities.

Add Israel to this list of anti-Syria and anti-Iran groups.

In recent years, Qatar and Israel have cemented their ties to brotherly levels. In January 2008, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak met former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Thani at the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland.

In line with this meeting hitherto kept secret by Israel, a senior Qatari figure reportedly paid a visit to Israel in mid-January 2008 and met Israeli officials with a common agenda: Iran. Also, former Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni visited Qatar in April 2008 and met the Emir, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Oil and Gas. Numerous meetings between the two sides have taken place since then under different pretexts; yet, they have agreed on a number of points, inter alia, diminishing Iran’s influence in the Middle East.

Be it as it may, they are all moving in one single direction in targeting Syria without consciously wishing to form a concerted front.

What a farce!

The extremist Wahhabis, the neo-colonist Zionists and the Western imperialists have taken up arms against those who fly in the face of extremism and expansionism in the region each with its own agenda on Syria as a whipping boy with the ultimate goal of relegating Iran to the outer fringes of political power.

By Dr. Ismail Salami

10 February 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr. Ismail Salami is the author of ‘Iran, Cradle of Civilization’. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

Both Washington and Israel have seized upon a string of abortive bomb plots in India, Georgia and Thailand to escalate war threats against Iran.

In India, an unknown individual on a motorcycle attached a bomb to a car in which the wife of an Israeli diplomat was riding in Delhi on February 13. The woman and the car’s driver were lightly injured. On the same day in Tbilisi, Georgia, a bomb was discovered attached to an Israeli embassy vehicle and defused.

And in Bangkok, Thailand, three individuals identified as Iranians were arrested after a bizarre incident Tuesday in which explosives detonated inside their apartment and one of them blew off his own legs with a homemade grenade.

The three incidents, in which there were no fatalities, were immediately labeled by the Israeli government as terrorist attacks organized by Tehran that, in the words of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demonstrated why all nations must draw “red lines against Iranian aggression.”

“Iran’s terror operations are now exposed for all to see,” Netanyahu said during a Knesset [Israeli parliament] plenum on Wednesday. “Iran is undermining the world’s stability and harms innocent diplomats.”

What was striking about the first two incidents in Delhi and Tbilisi was that they involved the use of devices—bombs attached by magnets to cars—similar to those used to assassinate at least four Iranian nuclear scientists over the past two years.

The reported aim of these attacks has been to sabotage Iran’s supposed quest for a nuclear weapon, although Tehran has denied such aims and neither the International Atomic Energy Agency nor anyone else has provided evidence that Iran is seeking nuclear arms. For its part, Israel is believed to possess some 400 nuclear weapons.

As US intelligence officials and Israeli sources have confirmed, those terrorist attacks—the latest of which claimed the life of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a scientist employed at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility, on January 11—were organized by the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, in collaboration with operatives of the MeK, or People’s Mujahedin, a group classified by Washington as an international terrorist organization.

Despite Israel’s assertions, no officials in any of the three countries that were the scene of the latest incidents have charged the Iranian government with responsibility.

What all three bomb plots appear to have in common is their inept, amateurish character. This was particularly the case in Bangkok, where the three individuals involved made no attempt at concealing their identities—all of them carried Iranian passports, moved into a building close to an Iranian cultural center and then proceeded to blow themselves up.

In Georgia, a government official suggested that a Georgian employee of the embassy may have been targeted for personal reasons.

Why Iran, if it were to seek revenge for Mossad’s murder of its scientists, would choose to do it in two friendly Asian countries—India is the world’s largest importer of Iranian oil—is far from clear. Nor for that matter does the wife of a low-level diplomat seem a likely target for such retaliation.

One curious piece of information was published in the Times of India Thursday. It seems that the chief of Mossad, Tamir Pardo, flew to Delhi just days before the bomb attack as the head of a large delegation of Israeli intelligence agents. While there he held talks with Indian officials on the possible threat of Iranian attacks.

In India itself, there is substantial skepticism about Israel’s charges of Iranian culpability in the attack.

As Times of India columnist Shobhan Saxena commented Wednesday: “The West, led by the US, has been trying for years to damage India’s ties with Iran, our second biggest supplier of oil. Is it a coincidence that this attack happened just about when Iran agreed to take payment in Rupees for the oil it’s selling to India? The Rupee payment agreement signalled the total failure of western countries to stop India from doing business with Iran. So, if Delhi terror incident leads to a friction in Delhi-Tehran ties, who benefits? The whole incident has to be seen in this perspective…The only country that benefits is Israel.”

In Tehran, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the Israeli charges of Iranian government responsibility for the incidents in India, Georgia and Thailand represented “the continuation of the US government’s false claims [that Iran had plotted to] assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington.”

That alleged plot was floated last October by US Attorney General Eric Holder. It supposedly involved a failed Iranian-American car dealer from Texas being recruited by Iranian agents in Mexico and then made the go-between for the hiring of members of the Mexican drug cartel, Los Zetas, to blow up the Saudi ambassador in a Washington, DC restaurant. Iran denied having anything to do with the supposed plot and its details were so improbable that it was widely dismissed as a fabrication, though it is now being revived by US officials in conjunction with the Israeli accusations.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast denied any Iranian role in the three latest incidents. “The Islamic Republic of Iran regards the Zionist regime’s agents as perpetrators of such terrorist actions with criminal and hidden purposes,” he said.

Meanwhile in the midst of the steadily escalating campaign of war propaganda by the US, Israel and the mass media, all depicting Iran as the greatest threat to world peace and security, two US intelligence chiefs presented revealing congressional testimony on Thursday.

Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran is unlikely to initiate any war and would only respond if it were attacked.

“Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz at least temporarily, and may launch missiles against United States forces and our allies in the region if it is attacked,” he said.

Despite the continuous provocations by Israel and Washington, however, along with an ever-tightening sanctions regime that is itself tantamount to an act of war, Burgess added that “the agency assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict.”

Testifying at the same hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declared it “technically feasible” that Tehran could produce a nuclear weapon in one or two years, “but practically not likely.”

In other words, beneath the unrelenting attempts to brand Iran as an aggressor that must be stopped from imminently acquiring nuclear weapons, the assessment of US intelligence is that Iran would only act militarily if attacked and is not even close to challenging Israel’s regional monopoly on nuclear bombs.

The lies about “weapons of mass destruction” and terrorism are being used against Iran—just as they were a decade ago against Iraq—to prepare a war of aggression aimed at furthering US imperialism’s aim of achieving hegemony over the strategically vital energy producing regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.

By Bill Van Auken

17 February 2012

@ WSWS.org

WASHINGTON: US intelligence analysts continue to believe there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper said the latest assessments by US spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program.

The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, the report said.

The report came after the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that it continued to have “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

The Times said there was no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran had been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power.

But the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead — a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003, the paper noted.

Intelligence officials and outside analysts believe there is another possible explanation for Iran’s enrichment activity, the report said.

They say that Iran could be seeking to enhance its influence in the region by creating what some analysts call “strategic ambiguity,” the paper noted.

Rather than building a bomb now, Iran may want to increase its power by sowing doubt among other nations about its nuclear ambitions, The Times said.

Some point to the examples of Pakistan and India, both of which had clandestine nuclear weapons programs for decades before they actually decided to build bombs and test their weapons in 1998, the paper noted.

By AFP

25 February 2012

US military officials confirmed Saturday that US drones are flying over Syria, as fighting spreads inside the country and US officials discuss military or “humanitarian” intervention to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

The drone flights, which flagrantly violate Syrian air space, include a “good number” of both military and US intelligence drones, according to US defense officials. These officials said the drones’ mission is to obtain “intercepts of Syrian government and military communications in an effort to ‘make the case for a widespread international response.’”

The Israeli daily Ha’aretz also reported Saturday that Syrian forces had captured 40 Turkish intelligence operatives working with the “opposition” inside Syria. It said the Turkish operatives confessed to working with the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to train the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), and claimed that Mossad operatives were working with Al Qaeda operatives in Jordan planning operations in Syria.

This echoes testimony Thursday before the US Senate Armed Services Committee by US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. He said that recent bombings in Damascus and Aleppo “had all the earmarks of an al Qaeda-like attack. So we believe that al Qaeda in Iraq is extending its reach into Syria.”

As in last year’s war in Libya, Washington is seizing on violence between the Assad regime and US-backed opposition forces—which are organizing protests and killings inside Syria—to justify military intervention.

Significantly, the US relied extensively on former Al Qaeda fighters of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) to topple Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and it appears a similar relationship is being established in Syria.

Yesterday gunmen in the city of Idlib killed a senior state prosecutor, Idlib Attorney General Nidal Ghazal, as well as Judge Mohammed Ziyadeh and their driver in an ambush. On Saturday gunmen also killed Jamal al-Bish, a member of the city council of Aleppo—Syria’s largest city, which has seen no significant protests against Assad.

The killings follow a series of assassinations of Syrian officials, including the February 11 killing of Brigadier General Issa al-Khouli and last month’s shooting of the head of the Idlib branch of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Abdulrazak Jbero.

According to Syrian state news agency SANA, fighting near the city of Hama yesterday left two Syrian policemen, three “opposition” fighters, and four civilians dead. Military engineering units in the city also dismantled four bombs planted on railways and the Hama-Khattab road.

Even reports by the US-backed Syrian “opposition” and in the US media suggest that the Free Syrian Army and similar forces have little support outside of a few cities such as Deraa, Homs, and Hama. Aided and supplied by Turkey, European powers, and the United States, they are instead using terrorist actions to undermine the Assad regime and facilitate foreign military intervention.

US media report quite openly that Washington’s FSA proxies are preparing bombs for use against Syrian forces. According to a February 15 article, Time reporter Rania Abouzeid visited an FSA safe house in Syria, where she saw defectors from the Syrian army assembling Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) manufactured from yellow granular explosives. She noted that this “crop of IEDs isn’t the first to be aimed against loyalist forces in the area,” interviewing a Syrian army conscript who defected to the FSA out of fear after being hit by an FSA car bomb.

Saturday’s protest march in Mezze—a middle-class neighborhood of the capital, Damascus, which has remained largely loyal to Assad—gathered only “hundreds and hundreds” of people, according to the New York Times. The protest was called against the deaths of three protesters allegedly killed by security forces. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a British-based group that reportedly enjoys Saudi and Qatari funding, said Syrian security forces opened fire on the protest, killing one.

The SOHR added, “If the rallies have reached Damascus and are big enough, we will no longer need an armed revolution.” Such comments only underscore that the Syrian opposition is resorting to terrorist acts, which it cynically calls “revolution,” because it lacks popular support.

This only underscores that the task of fighting the Assad regime falls to the Syrian working class, which alone can overthrow it on a progressive basis, while fighting against the imperialist forces that are now trying to conquer Syria.

The cynical pose of concern struck by the Western governments and media was exemplified by British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who said he was “worried that Syria is going to slide into civil war.” At the same time as officials from NATO countries express concerns about civil war in Syria, they are actively fanning the flames of the conflict.

Two Republican US Senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, called for arming Syrian “rebels” yesterday in Kabul, where they had stopped for talks with the Afghan puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai on their way to discussions with the Egyptian military junta in Cairo.

McCain said, “I believe there are ways to get weapons to the opposition without direct United States involvement… So I am not only not opposed, but I am in favor of weapons being obtained by the opposition.” He suggested that Washington would not need to send weapons directly to the opposition, but could work through “Third World countries.”

Graham made clear that US moves against Syria are part of a broad regional confrontation by the United States against Iran: “Breaking Syria apart from Iran could be as important to containing a nuclear Iran as sanctions. If the Syrian regime is replaced with another form of government that doesn’t tie its future to the Iranians, the world is a better place.”

Graham said that the Cairo-based Arab League could be a “conduit” for US influence in Syria. It appears that Washington may again use its close relations with the Egyptian military junta in the services of counterrevolution in the Middle East.

The New York Times wrote that the Senators’ detailed remarks on arming pro-US Syrian forces “signal that these were themes that they would address when they arrived in Cairo, their next stop.” The United States gives $1.3 billion per year in subsidies to the Egyptian army junta. Over the past year, the junta used these resources both to support NATO-backed rebels in Libya and to suppress the revolutionary struggles of the Egyptian working class.

The Egyptian government withdrew its ambassador to Syria yesterday, prompting Damascus to withdraw its ambassador to Egypt.

In a further sign of an escalating risk of wider war over the ongoing US-led intervention in Syria, an Iranian destroyer and an escorting supply ship docked yesterday at the Syrian port of Tartus after steaming through the Suez Canal.

By Alex Lantier

20 February 2012

@ WSWS.org

The United States, France, Britain and the Arab League are pressing for the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution on Syria, while denying that it is intended to pave the way for Western military intervention.

This is a lie. While the imperialist powers and their proxies are helping arm “rebel” forces that are fighting a deepening civil war in Syria, they are simultaneously trying to intimidate Russia and China, who oppose intervention, by casting them as responsible for the deepening bloodshed in Syria.

The resolution explicitly demands regime change, urging President Bashir al-Assad to step down in favour of his deputy and prepare the way for multi-party elections.

Debate over the Arab League resolution has stalled, with Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, expected to veto it. Last night, diplomats at the UN leaving negotiations for the night said that “key differences” remained between the different countries.

In a propaganda offensive, one leading political figure after another has mixed demands for regime change with reassurances that no Libya-style operation to achieve this is under consideration.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that Assad’s “reign of terror” would end, but claimed there was no intention “to pursue any kind of military intervention.”

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé called foreign intervention “a myth”.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, declared, “The resolution does not call for military action and could not be used to authorise it,” but then warned that, “measures will be considered by this council if there is not an immediate end to the violence.”

Moscow has rejected these assurances. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointedly refused to attend the meeting. Clinton’s spokeswoman said he was unavailable when she called him to discuss the situation.

Lavrov warned that the resolution could lead to “another Libya”. If the opposition “refuses to sit at a negotiation table with the regime,” he asked, “what is the alternative? To bomb the regime? I’ve seen that before. I guarantee the Security Council will never approve this.”

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, declared, “The international community should not be meddling in economic sanctions or through the use of military force.”

The Chinese Ambassador to the UN, Li Baodong, stated his opposition to “pushing for forced regime change in Syria, as it violates the United Nations Charter and the basic norms guiding the practice of international relations.”

The draft is presented as a proposal for a peaceful transfer of power, stating that the security council is “reaffirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Syria, emphasising the need to resolve the current crisis in Syria peacefully, and stressing that nothing in this resolution compels states to resort to the use of force or the threat of force.”

But whereas it does not call for military intervention, neither is it excluded. Rather, it pledges “to review Syria’s implementation of this resolution within 15 days and, in the event that Syria has not complied, to adopt further measures, in consultation with the League of Arab States” [emphasis added].

It was the Arab League which provided the US with a casus belli against Libya when it sanctioned the establishment of a no-fly zone, leading to NATO bombings and military intervention.

That is why, yesterday, Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s European Union envoy, reiterated the demand for the resolution to include “the most important thing: a clear clause ruling out the possibility that the resolution could be used to justify military intervention in Syrian affairs from outside.”

Behind the scenes, the US has made strenuous efforts to court Russia’s support. The Financial Times reported that, “Syrian opposition leaders have joined western and Arab officials in New York in pressuring Moscow. Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group, met Russia’s UN ambassador on Monday, reassuring him that Russia’s interests would be preserved in a post-Assad era.”

The Russian government has until now refused US assurances on Syria.

Syria is Russia’s main ally in the region. It has defence and oil contracts with Damascus worth billions and its only Mediterranean base at the port of Tartus. Moreover, both Russia and China understand that efforts to depose Assad are only a way of isolating Washington’s main target, Iran, in an effort to secure undisputed hegemony over the oil riches of the Middle East and Caspian Basin.

This month, Moscow dispatched three warships to Tartus, including its only aircraft carrier. With the US, Britain and France having dispatched six warships to the Straits of Hormuz, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, after an Iranian threat to close the channel, the danger of a regional war could not be clearer.

Plans for military intervention in Syria are already proceeding.

The US is working with the Gulf States, led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and Turkey to destabilize the Assad regime. The Free Syria Army (FSA) and its political backers in the Syrian National Council (SNC) are acting as a front for their military operations. In the run-up to the UN Security Council, the FSA escalated its offensive in neighborhoods of Damascus and the city of Hama.

The US media is openly debating whether the FSA should be armed by the Obama administration. CNN asked, “What kinds of assistance can and should the United States and its allies provide the FSA as part of an overall strategy of helping to achieve President Obama’s goal outlined last August to get Assad to ‘step aside’? Or should Washington subcontract that such support to regional allies…”

Nicholas Blandford wrote an article for the Christian Science Monitor, “Free Syrian Army: Better tool for toppling Syria’s Assad than UN?”

“Pushing for a UN resolution on Syria is one of the last steps the international community can take before mulling more seriously the military solution that some Syrian activists are openly advocating,” he states.

He cites “US-based Syrian activist Ammar Abdulhamid”—a representative of the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracy—who argues that, “a UN resolution is no longer necessary, and might even be counterproductive… What is needed at this stage is the ability and willingness to provide the necessary materiel and logistical support to the rebels and to provide protest leaders with the training and advice necessary to lead the transitional period themselves.”

There is significant evidence of the US arming the FSA, with reports of unmarked NATO warplanes arriving at Iskenderun, near the Syrian border, delivering Libyan volunteers and weapons, and of US, French and British special-forces, providing training.

Turkey has made clear it backs a military solution. President Abbdullah Gull told Zaman on January 31 that Syria was now on a “path of no return.”

“The end is certain,” he said. If “authoritarian rulers” did not reform, “foreign intervention will be inevitable.”

Turkey is the base of operations for the SNC and the FSA. It is now offering itself as a home to Hamas, reportedly offering funding of up to $300 million. The top leadership of Hamas, a Sunni group originating in the Muslim Brotherhood, has already left Damascus. It has close ties to the Syrian opposition, which is also dominated by the Brotherhood.

By Chris Marsden

2 February 2012

@ WSWS.org