settlers6maan.jpgSettlers Fill Ancient Well near Salfit

Settlers Fill Ancient Well near Salfit Monday July 27, 2015 Israeli settlers filled up an ancient agricultural well in the West Bank village of Deir Istiya west of Salfit on Saturday, local farmers told Ma'an News Agency. Witnesses said that the settlers filled the well with earth and rocks using "primitive" tools. Khalid Maali, a researcher on settlement affairs, said that filling up the well is part of a larger plan to forcibly move people from Wadi Qana to clear the way for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. Several illegal Israeli settlements surround Deir Istiya, the closest of which are Revava and YaqirI. About 17 percent of Deir Istiya's village territory is classified as Area B, according to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, with the remaining 83 percent Area C, giving Israel full civil and military authority. ARIJ said in a 2013 report that Deir Istiya "has been subjected to numerous Israeli confiscations for the benefit of various Israeli objectives," including the construction of settlements, outposts, checkpoints, bypass roads and the Israeli separation wall. The report said that Israeli settlers living on the village's land "have had a significant impact on Palestinian residents and their properties." Settler attacks have contributed to the loss of Palestinian lands and landowners have been barred from their plots, which have been fenced in with barbed wire and planted with trees, the report said. It added: "Israeli settlers have also carried out a series of attacks against Palestinian landowners in an attempt to intimidate them and deter them from returning to their lands." Israeli forces continue abuses on Gaza fishermen, open fire at dawn 21st July 2015 At 3:00 AM on the 21st of July 2015, Israeli forces once again opened fire on fishermen in the Gaza city area. 20 year old Ahmed Ismail al-Sharafi was shot in the right side of the back. The bullet exited very close to the spine. Two other fishermen were arrested and one of the boats was taken to Ashdod port. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reports that in May alone, there were a total of 51 incidents of shootings, incursions into the coastal enclave, and arrests. This included 41 shootings, which left nine injured, including one minor. Despite Israeli promises at the end of the ceasefire to ease restrictions on Palestinian access to both the sea and the border region near the “security buffer zone,” these attacks continue on a very often basis.

 

Lobbyists Fundraising for Clinton, Bush, Rubio and Kasich Are Coworkers Just how incestuous is the small world of big money politics? The leading Democratic candidate and at least three major Republican candidates are all relying on members of the same lobbying firm to help them raise presidential campaign cash: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Akin Gump is hardly a household name, but the law and lobbying firm is famous in Washington for its ability to sell access to those in power. Akin Gump’s employee roster is filled with former members of Congress, and its client list is a veritable who’s who of elite interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Monsanto, Boeing, Chevron, Gilead Sciences, Pfizer and AT&T. The United Arab Emirates and Japan are among the foreign governments represented by the firm. In presidential politics, lobbying firms influence candidates by soliciting sizable donations to allied Super PACs and by mobilizing large numbers of traditional campaign checks. The practice of collecting checks on behalf of a candidate is known as “bundling.” Last week, the Clinton, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio campaigns filed reports with the Federal Election Commission to list their lobbyist bundlers, revealing that all three have relied on Akin Gump for campaign cash. In Clinton’s case, her campaign not only used Akin Gump lobbyists as bundlers, but the Clinton campaign treasurer, Jose H. Villarreal, works for Akin Gump’s lobbying division, though he is not registered as a lobbyist. In addition, former Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., who is now employed by Akin Gump, has been tapped to raise money for the presidential campaign of Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, who kicked off his candidacy on Tuesday. For Clinton, Akin Gump lobbyists Donald Pongrace, Scott Parven, Allison Binney, Brian Pomper and Arshi Siddiqui are listed as bundlers. Together, Akin Gump’s pro-Clinton team brought in $129,850 in the first six months of this year. On the Republican side, Akin Gump’s Geoff Verhoff bundled $21,000 for Rubio and Tom Loeffler raised $31,500 for Bush. The arrangement means that in practical terms, if an establishment candidate [IF??? IF? nothing else is possible] makes it to the White House, there’s a good chance he or she will have won with money raised by Akin Gump. “As a result of the breadth and depth of our experience and relationships, our firm is well positioned to represent its clients — regardless of which party controls the legislative or executive branch,” boasts the Akin Gump website, touting the firm’s lobbying practice.

 

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Reviewing Trashy Hasbara against BDS  "Definitely not ‘civilized’ western nations, their governments, churches and media, nor Arab countries shackled to US dollars. Palestinians are, moreover, abandoned by a spineless UN, and betrayed by the treason of the Palestinian Authority that collaborates with Israel. Apart from BDS friends and actions, Palestine is alone."  by Vacy Vlazna, Intifada-Palestine.com Boycotting Israel is Wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis by Philip Mendes, Nick Dyrenfurth is a slipshod diatribe against the  principled efforts of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. It beggars belief that this silly book, riddled with hasbara and anti-arabsemitism, is written by academics with research skills: Monash University’s Philip Mendes and Nick  Dyrenfurth who, once wrote that Australia’s exPrime Minister John Howard “speaks fluent spin”- Dyrenfurth should know! Hasbara is pro-Israel propaganda, in short – spin & lies justifying decades of Zionist war crimes and crimes against humanity. Greater than arms and security, Israel’s largest  export industry is Hasbara swallowed and regurgitated mainly by western US-allied governments and their mainstream media Murdoch Fox News, CNN, BBC, ABC, etc: “Israel has already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into what in Hebrew is called hasbara, or information for the outside world (hence, propaganda). This has included an entire range of efforts: lunches and free trips for influential journalists; seminars for Jewish university students who over a week in a secluded country estate can be primed to “defend” Israel on the campus; bombarding congressmen and -women with invitations and visits; pamphlets and, most important, money for election campaigns; directing (or, as the case requires, harassing) photographers and writers of the current Intifada into producing certain images and not others; lecture and concert tours by prominent Israelis; training commentators to make frequent references to the Holocaust and Israel’s predicament today; many advertisements in the newspapers attacking Arabs and praising Israel; and on and on. Because so many powerful people in the media and publishing business are strong supporters of Israel, the task is made vastly easier.” ~Edward Said The book does have some compensatory tidbits. It gives a vaguely interesting overview (once the hasbara has been filtered away) of the BDS movement worldwide, it points out who is worthy of trust ( BDS Activists) and who isn’t (anti-BDS)… and … resolutely confirms the spreading success of the BDS strategy through the authors’ irrational scrambling to debase and discredit BDS. In a nutshell, it trumpets- BDS is freaking out zionists. Mendes and Dyrenfuth’s, faux premise is that BDS is an apocalyptic bogeyman descended from Nazis that is out to destroy the zionist enterprise of establishing Eretz Israel “from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”, Genesis 15:18-21. To the authors, this relentless unholy real-estate creep – which since 1947 has allowed for Zionist terrorists to massacre, to demolish homes, (30,000 demolition orders since 1992) and 385 villages, to coercively deport 700,000 indigenous Palestinians, to detain and imprison over 1 million Palestinians, to daily uproot, since 1967,  800,000 olive trees ( and livelihoods), to finance over half a million  illegal rabid Jewish settlers on stolen Palestinian land, to perpetrate three monstrous high-tech military assaults on besieged Gaza – must be preserved and protected from BDS and the Palestinian Right of Return sanctioned in international law which the zionist spin insists would be the end of the innocent and benign ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East. What really feared is,  “the end of Israel as a Jewish supremacist state, that is one which allows people like Mendes & Dyrenfurth, simply by virtue of their having Jewish mothers,* to swan in or out of Israel (im)proper as they please, while denying the same right to its original, indigenous non-Jewish inhabitants, ethnically cleansed in 1948. IOW, to discriminate in favour of Jews but against non-Jewish Palestinians.” MERC The bogeyman furthermore will eat up Israel, Gaza and the West Bank and spit out “a secular democratic state in the entire area of historic Palestine, where everyone enjoys equal rights, irrespective of ethnicity, religion or any identity attribute”.  This vision of a truly egalitarian one state provokes in the authors catastrophic horror. This so-called horror is sheer mendacity. The present ‘facts on the  ground’ substantiate the existence of a one state dominated by Jews who control the Palestinians under a crushing and brutal military occupation and apartheid policies. Notwithstanding, armed to their lying teeth, the authors soldier on attacking BDS with volleys of high speed strike hasbara: “ the boycott involves a McCarthyist form of blacklisting “- BAM!! “ The BDS movement promotes hate speech” – BAM!!! “ the core agenda of the BDS movement is anti-Semitic” BAM BAM!! “ BDS movement’s ongoing ethnic stereotyping of all Israeli Jews as evil”  BAM BAM!!! “ the real core aims of the BDS movement, namely to demonise and isolate Israel as a precursor to its destruction.” BAM BAM BAM!!!! And, now, wait for it- for the holocaust bomb, “The potential destruction of the world’s largest Jewish population just seven decades after the Holocaust would have a catastrophically traumatic effect on almost all of the seven million Jews living outside Israel.” “For many Jews, this indiscriminate attempt to boycott a Jewish-owned business is frighteningly reminiscent of the Nazi boycott of Jewish commerce in the 1930s.” KABOOM!! At this point, Mendes and Dyrenfurth are struck with selective dementia. Forgotten is the remarkable 1930’s  boycott of Nazi products well organised by American Jews. Ultimately Mendes and Dyrenfurth have compiled a combo of Zionist cliches:  antisemitic-BDS-thugs-have-exploited-and-coerced-self-hating-Jews-to-help-destroy-poor-misunderstood-Israel-and-deligitimise-its-right-to-exist-by-using-Nazi-tactics-that-raise-the-spectre-of-the-imminent-holocaust-that-will-befall-all-Jews. This hackneyed scaremongering is no less than psychological abuse by Zionist kapos who keep Jews, from childhood onwards, as eternal victims locked in a cruel mind-games ghetto. Speaking of ghettos, who and what will shield and free little Hamza Almadani, 3, the thousands of Palestinians maimed for life and Palestinian families from Israel’s armament testing range we know as Gaza? Who and what will prevent other children from losing an eye like Yahiya al-Amudi 10,? Who and what will end the torture of Palestinian children in Israeli  prisons or save them from being shot in the back like Mohammed Kasbeh,17 ? Definitely not ‘civilized’ western nations, their governments, churches and media, nor Arab countries shackled to US dollars. Palestinians are, moreover, abandoned by a spineless UN, and betrayed by the treason of the Palestinian Authority that collaborates with Israel. Apart from BDS friends and actions, Palestine is alone. For all their back-slapping as ‘progressives,’ Mendes and Dyrenfurth’s intention to smear and thereby demolish BDS, a non-violent stratagem (with action as its prime mover) to advocate for Palestine’s political and human rights, is  a violent act.  An act that is regressive morally for its machiavellian motive to prolong the ethnic cleansing of  all of Palestine.

 

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Break With The Democrats -Built A Labor Party- The Time IS Now!

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AFL-CIO Richard Trumka is trying to navigate a divide in the federation he leads. (Photo by Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) THE BIG IDEA: Their hearts are for Bernie, but their heads tell them to get behind Hillary. Sanders has undeniably been a more reliable ally for unions on the issues they most care about, especially trade. Though many leaders view Clinton warily, they recognize that she is the overwhelming frontrunner and see her as their best bet to hold the White House. I spent yesterday staking out the AFL-CIO’s executive council meeting in Silver Spring, Md., where the leaders of the 56 unions that make up the federation are gathering behind closed doors to mull a possible endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary. Sanders got an hour to make his pitch Wednesday; Clinton will get an hour this afternoon. Then the union chiefs, who represent 12.5 million workers, will debate privately over what to do. Two-thirds of them need to sign onto any endorsement. That could be difficult at this stage in the nominating fight, especially with Sanders looking as strong as he does right now. Here’s what the tension boils down to: Top political operatives inside organized labor – already reeling from long-term declines in membership – do not want to lose even more juice by backing the quixotic bid of a self-described democratic socialist from Vermont. But others lower in the ranks, and those who have worked closely with Sanders over his 25 years in Congress, are more concerned about ideological purity than anything else. Sanders meeting with the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas this March. (AP Photo/John Locher) Sanders used his time yesterday to argue that he could actually win a general election. Normally, the senator does not speak from notes, but he carried with him the results of a CNN/ORC poll published Sunday that tested head-to-head matchups of him and Clinton versus various Republicans. Among registered voters, he was statistically tied with Jeb Bush, led Donald Trump by 21 points, and beat Scott Walker by 5 points. “Her numbers were a little bit better,” he said. “That to my mind answers the question of electability. Can Bernie Sanders win? Well, we know that CNN is an infallible news organization, don’t we? They never get it wrong. And they’ve told us that, yes, I can win!” Sanders then made the case that he’s stronger on labor’s issues. “I am not aware that there is anybody in the House and Senate that has a stronger voting record for the AFL-CIO,” he said. “It’s a 98 percent lifetime voting record.” Two women epitomize the divide inside labor: Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers, defended her group’s early endorsement of Clinton. She’s a close friend and ally going back to Hillary’s days as first lady, so the move was not surprising but it drew quiet complaints from other union heavyweights about jumping the gun. “I love Bernie. I think he’s a great guy. As someone who personally believes you have to fight against oligarchs, I love that he uses the word,” Weingarten said. “This is someone who has spent 25 years fighting to change the balance, just like we have fought to change the balance, BUT what we need is to WIN in changing that balance, not just fight.” She knocked her hand on the table for emphasis and repeated the word “WIN” a few more times. AFT President Randi Weingarten (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the 185,000-member National Nurses United, hinted that her group may endorse Sanders sometime in the next month. “He can talk about our issues as well as we can talk about our issues,” she said last night. “Bernie Sanders taught many of us single payer health care … His politics haven’t shifted in 40 years. It’s as though he’s from the labor movement.” Then she described the endorsement choice as “complicated” and “difficult,” saying it is “not black-and-white.” Sanders is headlining a 9 a.m. rally outside the Capitol this morning, cosponsored by her group, to celebrate Medicare’s 50th anniversary. It would be historically unusual for the AFL-CIO to endorse so early. The federation as a whole has only waded early into a competitive Democratic primary twice over the past three decades (for Al Gore in 2000 and Walter Mondale in 1984). Normally, individual unions offer their own endorsements. Then the federation gets behind someone once it is clear who the nominee will be.

NO to RE/MAX: Stop Selling Houses on Stolen Land

NO to RE/MAX: Stop Selling Houses on Stolen Land

When: Monday, August 10, 2015, 3:30 pm to 7:00 pm

Where: Hynes Convention Center • 900 Boylston St • Boston

RE/MAX Israel sells properties not only in Israel proper, but also in occupied Palestinian lands in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

RE/MAX International and RE/MAX Israel profit from the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Re/MAX is having a national convention here in Boston August 9th-August 11th.

Join us in saying NO to RE/MAX

United for Justice with Peace

Jewish Voice for Peace, Boston

Code Pink Boston 

American Jews for a Just Peace

Cambridge Bethlehem People to People Project

Massachusetts Peace Action

Contact: Info@justicewithpeace.org - 617-383-4857

Upcoming Events: 

Hiroshima / Nagasaki Week in Massachusetts

Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - 7:00pm

Across Massachusetts

Activists Dangle From Oregon Bridge for 2nd Day to Protest Arctic Drilling

Activists Dangle From Oregon Bridge for 2nd Day to Protest Arctic Drilling

By CHRISTINE HAUSER

New York Times, July 30, 2015

Nehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/us/greenpeace-activists-dangle-from-oregon-bridge-for-2nd-day-to-protest-arctic-drilling.html?

   

Activists protesting Shell’s Arctic aspirations dangled from the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Ore., on Wednesday.                    

Activists who have spent more than 24 hours dangling from an Oregon bridge to protest Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic vowed to sustain their human barricade, after they joined kayakers in the water below to block an icebreaking ship from leaving Portland.

Some of the 13 activists from Greenpeace are providing live updates from their swaying bivouacs beneath the St. Johns Bridge, where they unfurled banners and stayed roped together to form a blockade as helpers on the bridge lowered supplies in sacks.   

According to the Greenpeace blog, the icebreaker Fennica leased by Shell was prevented on Wednesday from joining the rest of the drilling fleet in the Arctic. Unless it does so, the company will be unable to proceed with drilling in the Chukchi Sea. The vessel is carrying a piece of equipment that is used to cap an oil well in the event of a blowout.

A Shell spokesman, Curtis Smith, told The Associated Press: “As for the activities of the day, we respect the choice that anyone might make to protest based on Shell’s Arctic aspirations; we just ask that they do so safely and within the boundaries of the law.    

On Thursday morning, the icebreaker started moving toward the bridge, with Coast Guard vessels nearby, and then retreated. The activists cleared out of the way for a barge, unrelated to the protest, to pass through.

The protest against Shell’s Arctic drilling plans in Portland follows another in Washington State, where protesters, some in kayaks, helped muster public pressure to seek a delay of the mooring of Shell’s rigs.

It is not clear how long the activists can sustain their midair protest site over the Willamette River. Kayakers have been working in shifts, Daphne Wysham, a member of the group, told The Oregonian.

The executive director of Greenpeace USA, Annie Leonard, said in an interview at the start of the protest that the bridge danglers and the kayakers were a “line of defense.”

“And these activists, in the air and on water, are right now the last thing that stands between Shell Oil and its absolutely pathological plans to drill for oil in the Arctic this summer,” she said in an interview with Democracy Now!

          Activists in Oregon Suspend Themselves from Bridge to Block Arctic-Bound Oil Ship Video by Democracy Now!

A spokesman for the local sheriff’s office, Lt. Steve Alexander, said on Wednesday in The Oregonian that the authorities were there in case anyone fell from the bridge and to keep the river navigable.

Videos posted by Greenpeace USA show sacks of supplies being lowered to the dangling activists.

On a Reddit forum, the activists described some of the conditions, such as how they prepared for the heat of 100 degrees Fahrenheit: with long-sleeve shirts, sunscreen, shade and water. They are also posting images and updates on Twitter from the protest via #ShellNo of the view from their suspended sites.        

Daniel Patrick Welch Exclusive interview with REN TV

Published on Jun 1, 2014

Exclusive interview with Daniel Patrick Welch regarding
US foreign policy, CIA intrigue in Latin America, as well as the ramifications for current policy in Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela

 



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GREEK SURRENDER. . . Deutschland Über Alles?

GREEK SURRENDER. . .  Deutschland Über Alles?

 

The Denouement

For many decades, the view was widespread on the left that there was a distinct European variety of capitalism which could be positively contrasted with the Anglo-American more ‘free market’ variety. The labour movements of northern Europe were usually seen as being the decisive force behind greater state economic involvement, more capitalist cooperation with unions, and more egalitarian social welfare and labour market regimes. The development of the European Union added a further attractive dimension to this, especially for internationalists. It was considered retrograde to want to stay out, let alone get out, of the European ‘project’ at each phase of its development, with many seeing participation in its institutions as the decisive terrain for the left's engagement.

The hyper-austerity policies European states have pursued since 2009, contributing to the powerfully lingering effects of the first great global capitalist crisis of the 21st century, already shattered a good deal of the left's illusions about Europe. The denouement of the Syriza strategy in Greece appears to have written finis to it. More

 

Understanding the Defeat Means Preparing a Victory
[T]he relation of forces within Europe... can at the moment only produce defeats.

The blackmailing of Greece by the creditors leaves open two paths, both of which would be defeats. This is unavoidable. First, Grexit: It means: ‘We'll take from you the possibility of carrying out Europe's class conflict within European political space. If you want to keep fighting, then fight for your survival at home and let the world watch the hopelessness of your struggle. If you want to keep on fighting in the name of your population, then your population is going to suffer the consequences.’ A Grexit makes the problem of inner-European politics into one of developmental and humanitarian aid. It isolates the political conflict in Europe, limiting it to Greek territory. More

 

The Real Plan B: The New Greek Marathon

In the face of being excluded from desperately needed funds and the threat of being kicked out of the European Union, the Greek parliament has now voted to accept the Troika memorandum. The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras acknowledged – unlike social democrats choosing to implement neoliberalism as part of their ‘modernization‘ – that this was ‘a bad deal’ forced on the Greeks. Syriza's MPs were divided although three quarters of them followed Tsipras and voted yes. Outside in Syntagma Square thousands of angry demonstrators gathered and then marched through downtown Athens, this time the ‘NO’ being reserved for rejecting the memorandum. There is a strong current of dissent in the Syriza party Central Committee, which has yet to meet. Yet there is also a general sense we get from party members and supporters at all levels we have talked with here that the government should be supported and continue in office.

In the face of these divisions and frustrations, what if anything might be done to revive and continue Syriza's struggle against neoliberalism? And since neoliberalism is what capitalism is today – there is no other kind – what can be done to lay the basis for ending capitalism? This is not just a question for Greeks, though crucial aspects of this dilemma are of course specific to Greece, but for how the left everywhere thinks about and responds to the challenges of coming to power in a hostile environment to try to protect people from the worst depredations of neoliberalism, and tries to embark on ‘really-existing transitions’ to a more egalitarian, solidaristic, substantively more democratic world. More
 

The Euro-Summit ‘Agreement’ on Greece – annotated by former finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis

The Euro Summit statement (or Terms of Greece's Surrender - as it will go down in history) follows, annotated by yours truly. The original text is untouched with my notes confined to square brackets (and in red). Read and weep.  More

 

On Greek Crisis

“Well you’ll be around for long enough to remember the 1967 coup d’état, you will recall that the choice of weapon used in order to bring down democracy then was the tanks, well this time it was the banks, the banks were used by foreign powers to take over the government, 67 they used the tanks to take over the government the difference is now that this time there are also taking over all remaining public property, they are putting in a company that is going to be domiciled in Luxembourg (laughs), remember Lux licks, um and ah the Greek government is going to have to sell all of it according to a specified timetable, give 50% of it back to the troika for repaying unpayable debt, use another part of it to recapitalise the banks without ever having any control over the banks, the banks remain completely under the control of the oligarchs who brought the country to its knees a few years ago… so this is ah um how should I put it, you are right it is a complete annulment of national sovereignty.   More

 

AUSTERITY WILL WRECK EUROPE: Greece and the scary new European ultra-nationalism

German characterizations of Greece, in the press and in political speeches, range from patronizing to vicious—and they do not sound pretty in a German accent. One cosmopolitan German whom I know well, a man who has long lived in the United States, told me in 2012: “They should just dig a big hole, toss the Greeks in, and cover it over.” … Germany acts in tandem with a deeply conservative European Commission permanent bureaucracy, with hedge funds as enforcers. In effect, without the broad consent or understanding of the European public, a huge amount of sovereignty has been transferred from nation-states to EU officials, who are beyond direct democratic accountability—and that authority is being used to enforce a perverse economic strategy… The obsession among Europe’s leaders with debt repayment rather than debt relief, and the protracted policy deadlock while the crisis worsens, are chillingly reminiscent of the 1920s. Unless the broader ideology of austerity for states and license for bankers is reversed, Europe will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, and the Continent’s institutions will face a generation of lost prosperity and lost legitimacy for its democratic governing institutions.

 

Greece’s Surrender: A Return to 1919, or to 1905?

For those who viewed the last five months as not just a dispute about the finances of a small country but as part of a much larger battle about the future of Europe, these are important developments. And they will affect not only Greece but other heavily indebted countries, such as Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and France.  >From this perspective, this week’s agreement with the creditors isn’t the end: it is the beginning of a movement to wrench Europe away from technocracy, debt deflation, and Teutonic fiscal orthodoxy. This was the vision that Varoufakis spoke about in a speech he gave in Berlin last month, when he called for an end to the vicious cycle of austerity and depression and for a new Europe. And it is the vision that motivates Tsipras and other members of Syriza. “The neoliberals have had the upper hand in Europe for thirty years and we want to move away from that, in form as well as substance,” Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, Tsipras’s chief of staff, told Robert Misik, an Austrian journalist, who has just published a long piece about Greece on Social Europe. “These are political mechanisms that, in the end, disenfranchise whole nations, and you can’t change them all within four months.”  More

 

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THE IRAN NUCLEAR AGREEMENT: THE CHOICE

 

The Iran deal, explained in clear language by a nuclear expert

The intention of this agreement is to take the weapons option off the table for the next 25 years, and the agreement does that… It exceeds or is directly in line with everything in the US fact sheet that was put out [in April]. I thought the US fact sheet was a great deal, and I think this is a good deal.  When I say that, I mean that it's a very good nonproliferation deal. If you want it to focus on the problems with Iran running around in Iraq or Syria, this deal is not for you. If you are focused on the nuclear issue specifically, it's a very good deal. It makes the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon in the next 25 years extremely remote. It would require a Herculean effort of subterfuge and clandestine activity… Iran knows what it's doing going into this. They know the consequences if they screw up here, and the provisions are very tight, the inspection regime is very robust. The likelihood of getting caught is near 100 percent.  More

 

Nonproliferation Expert: “IT’S A DAMN GOOD DEAL”

I went through the documents, including the White House fact sheet, as well as my own notes from conversations with administration officials. It would seem that the agreement is as good or better in all important respects than what officials described in the spring… But there will also be a cottage industry in Washington, D.C., for the next decade dedicated to manufacturing one crisis after another to try to derail this agreement… What’s going to be needed to deal with this is a sense of calm, a sense of perspective, and a sense of humor. There are going to be lots of people who get red in the face, point out all the terrible things the Iranian government does, and generally make accusations quicker than they can be debunked or resolved through negotiations. It will be important to step back every now again, breathe deeply, look at how things have turned out in North Korea and Iraq and remember: This is a pretty damned good deal.  More

 

100-Plus Former U.S. Ambassadors Applaud Iran Deal

As the controversy over the Iran deal heats up—and it’s going to get a lot hotter, especially come September—more than 100 former U.S. ambassadors have signed on to a letter drafted by The Iran Project applauding what they characterized as a “landmark agreement” and urging its support by Congress. Signatories included former Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, Daniel Kurtzer (ambassador to Israel and Egypt), one-time neoconservative heartthrob Ryan Crocker (ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria), Frank Wisner (former ambassador to India, Egypt, the Philippines, and Zambia and under secretary of defense for international security affairs), and Thomas Pickering (former under secretary of state for political affairs and ambassador to Israel, Russia, India, and the United Nations). The letter was released on the same day that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also spoke out in favor of the deal.    More

 

U.S. Offers to Help Israel Bolster Defenses, Yet Iran Nuclear Deal Leaves Ally Uneasy

When President Obama called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday to discuss the nuclear deal with Iran, the American president offered the Israeli leader, who had just deemed the agreement a “historic mistake,” a consolation prize: a fattening of the already generous military aid package the United States gives Israel… In Israel, the question was not whether the deal would be followed by a robust new military aid package from Washington, but rather when such discussions would commence and what might be on the shopping list. Isaac Herzog, the leader of the opposition in Parliament, said Tuesday night that he would soon travel to the United States “to advance a package of security measures to suit the new situation.”… The current agreement, which went into effect in 2009, provides for $3 billion a year, most of which is used by Israel to buy American military hardware, such as jets and components for missile defense. In talks that started long before the Iran nuclear deal began to take shape, Israel requested between $4.2 billion and $4.5 billion a year for the next 10 years, an official familiar with the talks said.   More

70 YEARS, NEVER AGAIN: Hiroshima-Nagasaki Week!

70 YEARS, NEVER AGAIN: Hiroshima-Nagasaki Week!

August 5-9, 2015

 

Thursday, August 6: Join the annual Procession and Commemoration as Boston Remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From throughout the region, we will gather at 3 pm at First Church of Boston, 66 Marlborough St, and proceed through the Public Garden to Copley Square, to remember through dance, music, and speakers the horrendous bombings that launched the age of nuclear peril. This is one of many events across Massachusetts calling attention to the people’s demand for nuclear disarmament.

 

Entering the Age of Nuclear Terror

Seventy years ago, on July 16, 1945, an assortment of scientists, including refugees who had fled European fascism, succeeded in exploding the first experimental atomic bomb in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico… Then mission creep entered the picture and a scramble for other targets ensued. Despite the certainty that Japan was trying to find a way to surrender with honor, the U.S. military started looking for Japanese targets. The Trinity test bomb was essentially identical to the one that would destroy Nagasaki a few weeks later on Aug. 9. Motivating factors for not just mothballing the massively expensive project included 1) the huge secret costs that would be difficult to explain to Congress if the bomb hadn’t been used, 2) the momentum that had been built up was impossible to stop, 3) the unquenchable desire to achieve retribution against Japan for its ambush at Pearl Harbor (killing 2,500 soldiers), and 4) the need to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that the United States had “the bomb” and to warn Stalin to stay away from the spoils of the already defeated Japan.  More

 

IRAN: GIVE WAR A CHANCE?

IRAN: GIVE WAR A CHANCE?

After years of sanctions, suspicion, war threats, and negotiations, six world powers and Iran announced a comprehensive deal last week to resolve disputes over Iran’s nuclear program and roll back sanctions. The agreement was signed between Iran and the “P5+1” – including the US, UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany. Neocon Republicans (and some Democrats), together with Israel and its US supporters, have launched an intensive campaign to block this important step to avoid a new war in the Middle East.

 

Congressional offices are already receiving hundreds of calls from well-organized and well-financed anti-peace organizations. Republicans have introduced a bill (HR 367) to repudiate the agreement.  

 

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Call your senators and congresspeople today and ask them to support this historic agreement!

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Phone: (202) 224-4543; Senator Ed Markey, Phone: (202) 224-2742; Representative Michael Capuano, Phone: (202) 225-5111; Representative Stephen Lynch, (202) 225-8273; Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121 for other reps.  So far as we know as of now, Sen. Warren, Reps. Capuano and McGovern are clearly supportive of the deal; Lynch and Moulton probably leaning toward a YES but hesitant; Senator Markey officially undecided (possibly leaning Yes) and needs calls.

 

And Sign this petition in favor of the agreement.

 

GOP against Iran deal, with or without reading it

Republicans fall into two camps when it comes to President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. Some are against it. Others want to read it before announcing their opposition. Either way, they are laying down markers for next year's campaigns for the White House and control of Congress. They question the deal's impact on the security of Israel, and wonder aloud why anyone would trust President Barack Obama, whom they accuse of naively trusting the word of the Iranian leadership.   More

 

  

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A US-Turkey Sponsored “Islamic State Free Zone” within Syria By Devon DB, Global Research, July 30, 2015 An article in the New York Times was published recently discussing that the US and Turkey had agreed to create a ‘safe zone’ in Syria. Specifically the article stated that the plan was to have “an Islamic State-free zone controlled by relatively moderate Syrian insurgents, which the Turks say could also be a ‘safe zone’ for displaced Syrians.” Now, ignoring the fact that this is obviously a massive infringement upon the sovereignty of the Syrian state, there are some problems with this, as well as larger implications. For starters, Turkey has actively been aiding ISIS. In November 2014, Newsweek ran an interview with a former ISIS member in which he stated that he “travelled in a convoy of trucks as part of an ISIS unit from their stronghold in Raqqa, across Turkish border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February” and that commanders told him and other fighters that they nothing to fear “because there was full cooperation with the Turks.” The very next month,Claudia Roth, then-deputy speaker of the German Parliament, noted that the Turkish government was aiding ISIS. In addition to this, information just came to light from a US Special Forces raid in May, which shows “undeniable” evidence that “Turkish officials directly dealt with ranking ISIS members.” The second problem is the hope that “relatively moderate Syrian insurgents” will take over the area. This assumes that there are moderates, which doesn’t seem to be true, given the fact that the US essentially gave up on the Free Syrian Army when it decided to create an entirely new force of fighters. Before then, the US had been touting the FSA as moderates. (This, of course, doesn’t get into the fact that, for example, an FSA brigade commander admitted to working with Al Nusra and ISI or that a major beneficiary of this war on ISIS is AL Qaeda.) A third problem is that while Turkey has essentially declared war on ISIS, they are bombing Kurdish positions as well, due to the fear that they have always had of Kurdish independence. The US had been backing the Kurds, however it seems to now have sold them out, at least on the Syrian front, in order to further its own goals in the region and calms the Turks’ nerves. The Times article also reported that “American officials said they would need to arrange the same kind of system for calling in airstrikes that American Special Operations forces have worked out successfully with Kurdish fighters to the east in Syria,” which sounds like Libya, where US forces were on the ground, aiding the Libyan rebels. Furthermore, the article later reports that “Insurgents, as well as their supporters in the Syrian opposition and the Turkish government, are already envisioning the plan as a step toward establishing an area where alternative governance could be set up without fear of attack by Islamic State or government forces.” Thus implying that this entire idea of a ‘safe zone’ could really just be used as a staging ground to consolidate anti-Syrian government forces and allow them to coordinate attacks. What this does for the US is it allows for them to continue to put even more pressure on the Syrian government, it gives the Turks free reign for the most part and lets them know that Washington will turn a blind eye to the bombing of the Kurds, and gives the US the option of turning the situation into another Libya, all while the US doesn’t have to truly directly engage in any actions aside from Special Forces and air strikes. This entire scenario could allow for another Libya-type situation to unfold where the goal posts are constantly shifted until they are at the outcome the US and its allies want: the fall of the Assad government.

 

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Russia Shoots Down “US Stealth Coup”: Tough Times for America’s “Color Revolution” industry.

Russia Shoots Down “US Stealth Coup”: Tough Times for America’s “Color Revolution” industry. By Tony Cartalucci,Global Research, July 31, 2015 Times are tough for America’s “color revolution” industry. Perfected in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, and honed during the so-called “Arab Spring,” the process of backing subversion in a targeted country and overthrowing a sitting government under the cover of staged mass protests appears to be finally at the end of running its course. That is because the United States can no longer hide the fact that it is behind these protests and often, even hide their role in the armed elements that are brought in covertly to give targeted governments their final push out the door. Nations have learned to identify, expose, and resist this tactic, and like Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime’s tactic of Blitzkrieg or “lighting war,” once appropriate countermeasures are found, the effectiveness of lighting fast, overwhelming force be it military or political, is rendered impotent. This was most recently observed in Armenia during the so-called “Electric Yerevan” protests – Yerevan being the capital of Armenia, and “electric” in reference to the alleged motivation of protesters – rising electric prices. American-backed “color revolutions” always start out with a seemingly legitimate motivation, but soon quickly become political in nature, sidestepping many of the legitimate, practical demands first made, and focusing almost entirely on “regime change.” For the Armenian agitators leading the “Electric Yerevan,” they didn’t even make it that far and spent most of their initial momentum attempting to convince the world they were not just another US-backed mob. The Stealth Coup  Nikol Pashinyan and his “Civic Contract” party are transparently US-backed. So many found it suspicious that he was the most prominent voice insisting that the “Electric Yerevan” was not political and by no means a US-backed movement. Verelq, an Armenian-based news website which inexplicably links to the US State Department’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Armenian site, would report in their article, “Nikol Pashinyan: Protest actions in Yerevan are of exclusively social nature,” that: “Even if you look at the ongoing processes through the microscope, you cannot see any foreign political or domestic political components in the demonstrations. People do not want electricity to grow in price. That’s all,” said Pashinyan. He said electric power is first of all a product: the Electric Networks sells it and the citizens buy it. “The protest actions should be considered as protection of consumers’ rights. Politics is nowhere near,” he said. But politics were very near, including politicians like Pashinyan himself, who made it a point to visit jailed protesters throughout the failed uprising and even at one point called for the construction of a “human wall” of prominent Armenian personalities between protesters and police. US State Department-funded Armenia Now (of the New Times Journalist Training Center) reported in their article, “Politics in the Middle: Lawmakers, public figures form “human wall” between police, protesters,” that: The appeal to create a human wall was made by opposition lawmaker Nikol Pashinyan late on Tuesday as he urged all former and current MPs, scholars, show-biz representatives, lawyers, reporters, religious representatives and other public figures to visit the standoff site in order to ensure no force is applied against the protesters. Other obvious ties between the protests, Pashinyan, and US-backed NGOs have been laid out by geopolitical analyst Andrew Korybko in his article, “‘Electric Yerevan’ is Sliding Out of Control.” Despite these links, some have attempted to claim Pashinyan was merely an opportunist and that his US-backing, and attempts by US NGOs to manipulate the protests had little to do with the protests themselves. But nothing could be further from the truth. Stealth Agitators America’s next generation of “color revolutions” attempt to obfuscate all possible ties between themselves and their agitators in an attempt to take back the strategic initiative by maintaining maximum plausible deniability. But if one knows where to look, they will find that no amount of obfuscation and subterfuge can cover the links between the US State Department and its mobs. The protests were the work of  the “No To Plunder” group, led by lawyers and activists emanating from the US State Department National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, and Open Society-funded Armenian Young Lawyers Association (AYLA) and the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office who openly coordinated efforts with “No To Plunder” to pressure the government on a number of issues. At least 2 members of AYLA, Ara Gharagyozyan and Arthur Kocharyan, were identified as core members of “No To Plunder.”  AYLA’s news website “Iravaban” would list a number of young lawyers and activists attending one of its internship programs in 2014. Iravaban would also cover the protests in intricate detail from start to end, as well as report on activities AYLA and the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office undertook to support the protests. A number of other pro-protest “news sites” included Hetq, which while it admits it is funded by convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, does not list the US NED as a sponsor – NED however does list Hetq. There is also Media.am, funded by USAID as well as the European Endowment for Democracy. All of this adds up to a large network of locally-based but foreign funded and directed media outlets that help add the illusion of consensus to disinformation spread regarding the protests. Together with US-funded training programs indoctrinating students and training lawyers and activists in the finer arts of sedition, then allowing them to go off on their own to lead mobs, the US believes sufficient plausible deniability has been created to hide ties between themselves and protest leaders. Similar efforts have been made in both Hong Kong and more recently in Thailand, where overtly US-backed mobs have been replaced by students trained, then unleashed by US-proxies. Despite this careful arrangement, the “Electric Yerevan” protests never reached critical mass. The reason for this is simple – they were suspected of being US-backed and the more overt US assets that would eventually need to move in to lead the protests were unable to, lest they confirmed that suspicion and undermined the entire effort. Without these more mainstream assets moving in and providing support, larger protests are logistically and politically impossible. How to Shoot Down a Stealth Coup Russia’s emerging media influence on the world stage played an essential role in unmasking and disrupting America’s efforts to destabilize and overthrow the government in Armenia. The ability to be one step ahead of the Western-narrative and expose the players before they even take to the stage, meant that people already knew what to look for. When the protesters hit the streets, and as the protests dragged on, US NGOs and Western media reports supporting the protests confirmed initial Russian warnings. When clumsy, overt assets like Pashinyan began getting involved, there was little doubt that electrical prices, while a real point of contention, were being used as a means to create a larger, more disruptive, and ultimately dangerous attempt at foreign-backed regime change. In the future, the government of Armenia should be careful about giving such points of contention for foreign interests to use in the first place – meaning that dedication to economic and social progress cannot be ignored, even if one is confident they can tamp down potential protests. Other nations around the world have a lot to learn from how Russia disrupted this latest attempt by America to project power beyond its shores and disrupt the lives of a sovereign people thousands of miles away. By simply informing people of what is really going on, following the money, and exposing the players involved, people in Armenia were able to assess for themselves whether or not to support the mobs – they chose wisely not to. Were Armenia to adopt similar laws as Russia’s regarding NGOs – mandating that they declare openly and often their foreign funding – people can better assess whether or not mobs these NGOs are supporting are truly marching for their interests, or Wall Street and Washington’s.

 

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No Killer/No Spy Drones...

No Killer/No Spy Drones...

One night my friend from high school, Carver High Class of 1967 down in Southeastern Massachusetts Sam Lowell who I hadn’t seen in a while I were, full disclosure while having a few high-shelf whiskeys at Jack Higgin’s Sunnyvale Grille in Boston, arguing over the increasing use of and increased dependence on killer/spy drones in military doctrine, American military doctrine anyway. Me, well again for full disclosure I am a supporter of Veterans For Peace and have been involved with such groups, both veteran and civilian peace groups, since my own military service ended back during Vietnam War days. I follow the line of VFP that killer/spy drones are qualitatively a no better (or no worse) part of the modern military arsenal that any other weapon and need to be opposed with the same rigor as we do for nuclear weapons and other all the military hardware used in the seemingly endless wars the American imperium has dragged us into. (That “line” business in relationship to VFP is unlike various Marxist groups and quasi-Marxist collectives I hung around with in my younger days after discharge from the American Army a matter of choice rather than obligation. In those old-time organizations based on the concept of democratic centralism one, if one disagreed with the organizational “line” would if in the minority keep quiet in public about the difference. VFP, based on more broadly-based democratic principles reflecting a different mission and different way to change the world, has no such restrictions although arguing for support of killer/spy drones would put one in opposition with the goals of the organization and one would in good conscience have to consider whether continued membership was appropriate.      

Sam’s position, full disclosure he was granted an exemption from military duty during the Vietnam War period after his father had died suddenly in 1965 and he was the sole support, or close to it, of his mother and four younger sisters, was a little more nuanced if nevertheless flatly wrong from my perspective. Perhaps reflecting an “average Joe” position of a guy who did not serve in the military and had not seen up close what all the “benefits” of modern military technology have brought forth to level whatever target they have chosen to obliterate and under what conditions. In the post-9/11 period he like many from our generation of ’68 had made a sea-change in their former anti-military positions and have embraced some form of selected approval of various aspects of current military doctrine. Starting with the initial approval of the “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq which in the end left egg all over his face. Sam, nevertheless, argued that the high degree of accuracy, the “cleanness” of the method, and the destruction of the specific object (his word, I would say person or place, mainly person) without high casualties on the American side (that reduction of “boots on the ground” argument which underpins much of modern doctrine in the wake of Vietnam and even Iraq itself) to fight the “war on terrorism” which disturbs his old age has made him a partisan of such weaponry.       

As usual these days we argued for a few hours or until the whiskey ran out, or we ran out of steam and agreed to disagree. The next day though, no, the day after that I got to thinking about the issue and while not intending to directly counter his arguments wrote a short statement that reflects my own current thinking the matter. Here it is:

“Ever since the early days of humankind's existence an argument has always been made by someone and not always by the gung-ho warriors, many times rather by some safely-ensconced desk-bound soul who was too busy to become a warrior but was more than glad to let some other mother's son do the bitch work, that with some new technology, some new strategic gee-gad, warfare, the killing on one of our own species, would become less deadly, would be more morally justified, would bring the long hoped for peace that lots of people have yacked about in the abstract until some governmental decision to go to war gets their war blood up.

Those arguments are being retailed these days by the killer/spy drone aficionados who think they have found something new under the sun. Don't believe that false bill of goods, don't believe the insane war lies from warriors, arm-chair warriors, or the merely fearful, it is the same old killing machine that has gone on for eons. Killing from far way places like Nevada to the Middle East in war game rooms with screens set up like video games except tell that to the "sorry, collateral damage, no foul because not intended" victims who got in the way. Enough said and enough of killer drones killing and spy drones spying too.”