United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

On Wednesday a long article that will appear in Sunday's New York Times Magazine was posted online.  --  In it, Ronen Bergman, a writer Yedioth Ahronoth and author of The Secret War With Iran wrote:  "After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012."[1]  --  Bergman cited Matthew Kroenig, Stanton nuclear security fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and special adviser in the Pentagon from July 2010 to July 2011, as authority for the assertion that "United States has asked Israel not to attack Iran and to provide Washington with notice if it intends to strike.  Israel responded negatively to both requests.  It refused to guarantee that it will not attack or to provide prior notice if it does.”  --  COMMENT:  This article appears to sympathize with those who oppose an Israeli attack on Iran, but it accepts the premises of those who favor such an attack.  --  In the very first paragraph of the article, Ehud Barak's assertion that "The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map," which is false, stands uncontradicted.  --  In fact, not only did the president of Iran never say this, the words he did say alluded to something said by the Ayatollah Khomeini: “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." --  This means: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."  --  Arash Norouzi, co-founder of the Mossadegh Project, who calls the notion that Ahamdinejad declared that Israel “must be wiped off the map” the “rumor of the century.”   --  He points out that Khomeini and Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime, which, he says, “is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map.  --  In 2006, Jonathan Steele published a refutation of this persistent Big Lie in the London Guardian, which Prof. Juan Cole of the Univ. of Michigan praised as "a good piece."  --  And in an article posted on the CounterPunch web site, Prof. Viriginia Tilley, an associate professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, analyzed the propadanda device, noting that, “Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction.  Iran's president has not threatened any action against Israel. . . . By the logic that dominates Western mainsteam coverage of Ahmadinejad, every momento mori would constitute a murder threat."  --  Ironically, the world press has devoted much more attention to whether the Iranian president said that Israel should be "wiped off the map" than to the many Palestinian villages that actually have been wiped off the map....

In a column published Wednesday in the London Independent, Robert Fisk reviewed the "Israeli version" of the history Iran's nuclear program.  --  He noted while a number of Israeli leaders claim Iran is on the verge of possessing nuclear weapons, "reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996.  That was 16 years ago.  And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999."[1]  --  Moreover,  "when Ayatollah Khomeini . . . took over Iran in 1979, he ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was 'the work of the Devil.'  Only when Saddam invaded Iran -- with our Western encouragement -- and started using poison gas against the Iranians (chemical components arriving from the West, of course) was Khomeini persuaded to reopen it."  --  BACKGROUND:  These assertions are supported by Gordon Corera's Shopping for Bombs (Oxford UP, 2006), where we read:  "[A]fter the revolution in 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah, the nuclear program fizzled -- Iran's new leader Ayatollah Khomenei rejected contact with the West, including science and technology, and saw nuclear weapons as the work of the devil and un-Islamic.  The Shah's half built facilities began to rust.  The contracts for nuclear technology and construction were cancelled and a brain drain began, as educated professionals and scientists headed for the West.  Before 1979 the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran was estimated to have employed more than forty-five hundred scientists, but soon after the revolution that figure was down to only eight hundred.  Sensing the new regime's weakness, Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein launched an attack on Iran in September 1980. . . . Iraq began to deploy chemical weapons . . . In all, Iraq would use more than one hundred thousand bombs, rockets, and shells armed with chemicals during the eight-year war.  In response, Iran began to develop its own chemical weapons program.  And at the same time, it began to look once more at the nuclear option" (p. 61).  --  Gordon Corera is a BBC correspondent....

Depending on your source, the embargo on Iranian oil imports imposed Monday by the E.U., which will take full effect in July, are a "hope of reducing the risk of a military strike against Iran, probably by Israel,"[1], "part of efforts to ratchet up pressure on the Persian Gulf nation’s nuclear program,"[2], or an "embargo" that is "an act of economic war that heightens the danger of a slide into military hostilities in the Persian Gulf."[3]  --  But since an Iranian state-owned company holds a 10% stake in a natural-gas project in the Caspian Sea, BP is slated to get an exemption from U.S. sanctions because the sanctions aren't supposed to affect efforts "to bring gas from Azerbaijan to Europe and Turkey" or to affect Europe's "energy security and independence from Russia" — are you following this?  —  the Wall Street Journal said.[4]  --  COMMENT:  It's beginning to look to us (though what do we know?) like some people somewhere have decided that now (i.e. the near future) is the time to do in the allied régimes in Syria and Iran.  --  Everyone knows that that's been a goal of the U.S. national security state for a very long time, and we get the feeling that some people somewhere have decided that the stars are not going to align themselves any better than they already have to permit this to come about.  --  So little by little the pieces and the people appear to be moving into place to make this happen.  --  Didn't we read just the other day that "The U.S. is considering closing its embassy in Damascus amid concerns about the security of the staff there"? ...

Reviewing the events of 2011, Human Rights Watch's annual world report, released Sunday, concluded that Iraq is intensifying a harsh crackdown on freedom of expression and assembly.[1]  --  The organization's Middle East director said the country "is quickly slipping back into authoritarianism."[1]  --  “Despite U.S. government assurances that it helped create a stable democracy," she said, "the reality is that it left behind a budding police state.”  --  Reporting on the statement, the Associated Press refrained from mentioning the fact that the U.S. called its war in Iraq "Operation Iraqi Freedom" -- indeed, it never mentioned the war at all.  --  But AP did report that "'Iraqis are quickly losing ground on the most basic of rights, including the right to free speech and assembly,' said Samer Muscati, an Iraq researcher for [Human Rights Watch].  'Nowadays, every time someone attends a peaceful protest, they put themselves at risk of attack and abuse by security forces or their proxies.'"[2] ...

On Saturday U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told sailors on the USS Enterprise ("the Big E") heading (in March, with the other ships in its "strike group") for the Persian Gulf that the U.S. is committed to maintaining eleven aircraft carriers despite budgetary pressures, the Associated Press reported.[1]  --  "The USS Enterprise, which is based in Norfolk, Va., was built 50 years ago as the first nuclear-powered carrier, and is now the oldest active duty ship in America's Naval fleet.  The ship's upcoming deployment will be its 22nd and final tour, after which it is scheduled to be deactivated.  It is being replaced by the USS Gerald R. Ford, which is the first in a new class of technologically advanced carriers.  There will be about a 33-month gap before the Ford is commissioned, but Congress has granted a waiver allowing the Navy to drop to 10 carriers for that period of time," because "Congress . . . has passed a law requiring the Defense Department to maintain 11 of the ships."  --  AP said that Panetta would spend the night on the carrier.  --  Reuters, which calls the Persian Gulf "the Gulf," said that "Panetta's trip to the Enterprise came as its strike group ran drills confronting a hostile, hypothetical nation named 'Garnet.'"[2]  --  The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) said Panetta promised whatever the budget "cuts," the U.S. military would "remain capable of taking on any aggressor and focused on the Middle East, all while adding renewed focus in the Pacific."[3]  --  BACKGROUND:  In addition to the eleven nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, each carrying about 5,680 personnel and 85-90 aircraft, the U.S. Navy also maintains nine other amphibious assault ships that can be used as aircraft carriers:  the USS Peleliu (carrying 2,805 personnel, 6 attack planes, 29 helicopters), and eight Wasp-class vessels (designed to carry 1,208 personnel, a contingent of 1,894 marines, 6-20 attack aircraft, and 20-42 helicopters): the USS Wasp, the USS Essex, the USS Kearsarge, the USS Boxer, the USS Bataan, the USS Bonhomme Richard, the USS Iwo Jima, and the USS Makin Island.  --  In 2012, all are currently in active service.  --  Construction of the first of a new class of aircraft carriers (Ford-class) began in 2007 at Newport News and the completion of the USS Gerald R. Ford is planned for 2015.  --  So far two others (each costing about $9bn) have been authorized for construction.  --  COMMENT:  No other nation's military maintains more than two aircraft carriers....

Soldiers from the U.S. and other coalition countries "are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces," the New York Times reported Friday.[1]  --  A new coalition report (originally distributed as unclassified, later changed to classified, but still, apparently, accessible on the Internet) "makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort : the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban," Matthew Rosenberg said.  --  In fact, the report "played down the role of Taliban infiltrators in the killings" and called the problem one the "magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history."  --  Thus despite official condemnations, "chat-room and Facebook posts by Marines and their supporters were full of praise for the desecration" of Taliban bodies that came to light last week....

On Wed., Jan. 25, from 7:00 p.m to 8:30 p.m., the World Affairs Council of Tacoma will inaugurate a new Travel Talk program with a presentation by Prof. Patrick O'Neil of the University of Puget Sound on "Understanding Iran."[1]  --  Prof. O'Neil's talk will take place at the Varsity Grill in downtown Tacoma.[1]  --  This event is free and open to the public; food and beverages will be available for purchase....

In dramatic testimony published Thursday and translated below, two Swiss reporters who accompanied Gilles Jacquier, the French journalist who died on Jan. 11 in Syria, gave an account of the mysterious circumstances of his death in Thursday's Le Courrier (Geneva), translated below.[1,2,3,4,5,6] ...

"Striking down the judicial precedent that established the legal supremacy of right over wrong more than two centuries ago, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned Right v. Wrong," the Onion reported Wednesday.[1] ...

Emanuele Ottolenghi, 42, who has a Ph.D. in political science from Jerusalem University and taught Israel Studies at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and at the Middle East Centre of St. Antony's College, Oxford University, before moving first to the AJC-founded Transatlantic Institute and then to the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is an Iran hawk and an important advocate of the economic war currently being waged against Iran.  --  On Tuesday this friend of Michael Ledeen urged readers of the Wall Street Journal not to "believe Iran's hype" about escalation in the Persian Gulf and instead to celebrate "the ultimate weapon in the Western sanctions toolkit," viz. Iran's being "squeezed out of the oil market without a significant long-term spike in oil prices."[1]  --   "Tehran, in other words, has no arrows left in its quiver," he said.  --  "Iran's economy critically depends on oil exports. . . . Iran's fragile and deteriorating circumstances -- rampant inflation, currency in free-fall and high unemployment, just to mention a few problems Tehran cannot control -- make the regime very vulnerable to such measures.  In particular, an oil embargo could destabilize the regime by unleashing a domestic backlash susceptible to revive a beleaguered internal opposition."  --  BACKGROUND:  The prospect of the collapse of the Islamic Republic has been a perennial object of delectation for neoconservatives like Ottolenghi.  --  In his Iran: The Looming Crisis: Can the West Live with Iran's Nuclear Threat? (Profile Books, 2010), Ottolenghi wrote that "sanctions should be integrated into a broader effort aimed at helping Iran's domestic opposition to oust the regime."  --  In October 2010, in a piece called “Free Iran,” he commiserated with the Iranians affected:  “As the weight of economic sanctions begins to crush Iran's economy, it is more important than ever that we reach out to ordinary Iranians to let them know that our disagreement is with the regime, not the people, and that their freedom is the best guarantee for our security . . . For too long, Western democracies have spoken to the regime as if its oppressed subjects did not matter.  The time has come to speak directly to the people of Iran and promise them that their human rights will be our cause too."  --  Or, as Lewis Carroll put it:  "'O Oysters, come and walk with us!' / The Walrus did beseech. / 'A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, / Along the briny beach: / We cannot do with more than four, / To give a hand to each.' / The eldest Oyster looked at him, / But never a word he said: / The eldest Oyster winked his eye, / And shook his heavy head -- / Meaning to say he did not choose / To leave the oyster-bed. / But four young Oysters hurried up, / All eager for the treat: / Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, / Their shoes were clean and neat -- / And this was odd, because, you know, / They hadn't any feet. / Four other Oysters followed them, / And yet another four; / And thick and fast they came at last, / And more, and more, and more -- / All hopping through the frothy waves, / And scrambling to the shore. / The Walrus and the Carpenter / Walked on a mile or so, / And then they rested on a rock / Conveniently low: / And all the little Oysters stood / And waited in a row. / 'The time has come,' the Walrus said, / 'To talk of many things: / Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing-wax -- / Of cabbages -- and kings -- / And why the sea is boiling hot -- / And whether pigs have wings.' / 'But wait a bit,' the Oysters cried, / 'Before we have our chat; / For some of us are out of breath, / And all of us are fat!' / 'No hurry!' said the Carpenter. / They thanked him much for that. / 'A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said, / 'Is what we chiefly need: / Pepper and vinegar besides / Are very good indeed -- / Now if you're ready, Oysters dear, / We can begin to feed.' / 'But not on us!' the Oysters cried, / Turning a little blue. / 'After such kindness, that would be / A dismal thing to do!' / 'The night is fine,' the Walrus said. / 'Do you admire the view? / It was so kind of you to come! / And you are very nice!' / The Carpenter said nothing but / 'Cut us another slice: / I wish you were not quite so deaf -- / I've had to ask you twice!' / 'It seems a shame,' the Walrus said, / 'To play them such a trick, / After we've brought them out so far, / And made them trot so quick!' / The Carpenter said nothing but / 'The butter's spread too thick!' / 'I weep for you,' the Walrus said: / 'I deeply sympathize.' / With sobs and tears he sorted out / Those of the largest size, / Holding his pocket-handkerchief / Before his streaming eyes. / 'O Oysters,' said the Carpenter, / 'You've had a pleasant run! / Shall we be trotting home again?' / But answer came there none -- / And this was scarcely odd, because / They'd eaten every one." ...

What has happened to democracy in Europe, and why are European intellectuals so disengaged from the European crisis?  --  Swedish intellectual and cultural critic Per Wirtén asked these questions late last month in a long piece posted on the website Eurozine and reposted on the website Open Democracy last week.[1]  --  "A cautious interpretation," Wirtén wrote, "based on the recent European summit meetings . . . suggests that the profound crisis of the euro could, in the best case, deliver the push towards integration that many have predicted.  The euro mechanism would then lead to Europe reversing into a stronger political union, albeit at an appallingly high social cost. . . . But a stronger political union, with a common policy on control and stabilization and with the euro as the adhesive, would force the member states to choose whether to stay or go:  no euro, no E.U. membership.  If this is so, the decisions currently being made are leading not to division and fragmentation but are moves towards a much more complex integration process.  However this cannot not take place unless the issues of popular rule, citizenship and democracy are brought center stage.  What, then, would be the character of this European super-state, in many ways such a strange concept?  That question awaits [European intellectuals'] answers -- our taking sides." ...

On Tues., Jan. 17, 2012, thanks largely to the efforts of activist David Swanson, the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, home of Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and the University of Virginia, voted 4-0 with one abstention in favor of a resolution that called on the U.S. Congress and the president "to end foreign ground and drone wars, refrain from entering new military ventures in Iran, and reduce base military spending in order to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, re-train and re-employ those losing jobs in the process of conversion to non-military industries, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy."[1,2,3]  --  The council rejected an attempt by Councilmember Kathy Galvin to introduce language supporting the troops and the president and passed the motion after fifteen minutes of discussion....

On Tuesday the Wall Street Journal noted "the first verbal sparring" between Iran and Saudi Arabia (described as "one of the Western-allied monarchies directly across the Persian Gulf") over the kingdom's promise to boost its oil production as needed.[1]  --  "'We invite Saudi officials to further reflect on and consider' their pledge to make up for any cut in oil exports, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said," Benoît Faucon, Rakesh Sharma, and Se Young Lee reported.  --  Also on Tuesday, India said it would ignore the U.S. sanctions regime and would not stop buying Iranian oil because it recognizes only "sanctions which are made by the United Nations."  --  India's foreign secretary said that an Indian delegation was on its way to Tehran "to work out a mechanism for uninterrupted purchase of oil from Iran and to work out a financing mechanism."  --  As Columbia University Iran expert Gary Sick pointed out on NPR on Tuesday, although the official line is that sanctions are an instrument to bring Iran back into P5+1 negotiations, in reality they are "intended for regime change."[2]  --  Sick said that the U.S. is not engaged in "warfare by another name" but rather in "warfare period."  --  What since goes around comes around, and Sick said he was concerned that Americans "act as if we are able to function with total impunity.  We can do what we like, but nobody can do it to us."  --  "[N]obody seems to ask the question of whether there isn't going to be some blowback from [cyberattacks like the Stuxnet worm], because of all the fields in the world where you can play, probably the cyberwarfare field is the levelest."  --  Sick called it war, but for the notion that it's a crime it's necessary to quit National Propaganda Radio and venture out of mainstream media to, say, WSWS, for an extended discussion of "the criminality of U.S. foreign policy."[3]  --  "The brazen defense by the [New York] Times and virtually the entire establishment media in the U.S. of assassination as a legitimate tactic underscores the criminalization of U.S. foreign policy, particularly over the past twenty years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union," wrote Peter Symonds.  --  "It also expresses the collapse of any democratic consciousness or commitment to democratic rights within the ruling class." ...

"A Sunday Times [of London] report revealed Monday that Mossad agents were behind last week’s assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist," Haaretz reported.[1]  --  While the U.S. has indignantly rejected the notion that the U.S. was involved, a blog entry on the website of the Jerusalem Post (appearing under the rubric "Antisemitism and Jewish Survival") held out the hope that all of this Israel-blaming was merely an American feint:  "After all, the American armada IS positioned to attack; he does have 50,000+ troops in Kuwait and the Gulf Emirates; and, thanks to the 'now you see it, now not' foil of the cancelled Austere Challenge 12 there are an addition 9,000 U.S. troops already in place in Israel."[2]  --  On Monday, The Hill reported that "The likelihood of military conflict between the United States and Iran is higher now than at any time in more than two decades, military analysts say, as tensions continue to escalate over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and blustery rhetoric."[3] ...

John Wylie Needham was an Army Ranger who was decorated for bravery in Iraq, who made an effort to expose war crimes in Iraq, who was denied treatment he needed for his severe case of war-induced PTSD, who ran amok in southern California when he returned to civilian life and who was accused of murder, and who died at the age of 26 in February 2010.[1]  --  Investigation of his case by Michael De Yoanna and Mark Benjamin led to the discovery of a tape in which "a psychologist admitted he was pressured to not diagnose soldiers with PTSD but to instead label them with disorders that would effectively leave them with lowered or no benefits for mental health care."[2]  --  His father, Michael Needham, is convinced that John's life unraveled because he was denied the treatment that was due to him, as he explains in a recently released 47-minute film in which he tells the story of his life.[3]  --  It includes portions of a letter that John Needham wrote describing war crimes he witnessed in Iraq, but for which no one has been held accountable.  --  The film concludes by arguing that the United States has subverted the rule of law by failing to hold accountable those responsible for war crimes....

An article posted Sunday on a conservative website by a retired USN intelligence officer who lives in suburban southern California and is also an evangelical columnist who writes about how to fight "The Evil One" argued that "there is more talk than anything else" in recent developments in Iran's standoff with the West, and that "it cannot be argued that the Obama posture is anything other than defensive."[1]  --  COMMENT:  We suppose that "ought not" or "should not" could be conceivably be defended here, but "cannot"?  --  What with the sanctions, the financial strangulation, the arrival of more troops and aircraft carriers, the use of stealth drones over Iran, the assassination campaign, the shipment of 55 bunker-busting bombs to Israel, the upgraded stealth bomber hangars in Diego Garcia, the plans to construct model Iranian villages for war training in the Rocky Mountains, the reports that "The U.K. and U.S. are drawing up plans to attack Iran," and the threats from a nuclear power that "all options are on the table"?  --  Wouldn't it at least be possible to argue "that the Obama posture is other than defensive"? ...

In Tacoma on Tues., Jan. 17, and Thurs., Jan. 19, workshops will be held on what the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission allows, why, in the interest of our democracy, it needs to be overturned, and how that can be done.[1] ...

In its lead story Monday, the New York Times reported that "Just after the last American troops left in December, the Iraqis stopped issuing and renewing many weapons licenses and other authorizations" to foreign contractors.[1]  --  In recent weeks, "a few hundred foreign contractors," included many who work at the huge U.S. embassy in Baghdad, have been detained after being stopped at the airport or checkpoints around the city "for having expired documents that the government would not renew," Michael S. Schmidt and Eric Schmitt said.  --  The Times called it "one of the first major signs of the Iraqi government’s asserting its sovereignty after the American troop withdrawal."  --  An adviser to the Iraqi president was unimpressed by American complaints:  "Mr. Rashid said that traveling to the United States to work was no different.  'Every time I go to the airport in New York they open my suitcase three times,' he said.  'How long does it take to get an American visa?'"  --  "The United States Embassy in Baghdad, as well as senior State Department and military officials, say that no Americans are currently being detained, and they insist the detentions and visa delays are more the result of bureaucratic inexperience than malevolent intentions."  --  The Washington Post quoted an unnamed Iraqi businessman who said:  "We are, on one side, trying to promote Iraq to get foreign investors, but from the other side, the government is creating all kinds of difficulties.  They just create rules overnight.  It’s a state of chaos.”[2] ...

On Sunday Le Figaro (Paris), in an article translated below, endorsed the interpretation that the U.S. cancelled missile defense exercises with Israel to express its displeasure at the assassination of an Iranian scientist at the Mossad's behest.[1]  --  Adèle Smith also said that the administration had leaked the Foreign Policy story about Israelis posing as CIA agents to recruit members of Jundallah, an anti-Iranian terrorist group.  --  In brief, "[t]he United States is letting it be known more and more openly in recent days that it is exasperated by Israel's secret services."  --  "The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, will go to Israel this week to try to convince Netanyahu not to launch a military attack against the Iranian nuclear complex [at Fordo].  The repeated demands of the secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, have for the moment received no response." ...

Senior Israeli military officers say "that the [previously announced U.S.-Israeli missile defense] drill scheduled for April has been canceled, the Jerusalem Post reported early Sunday.[1]  --  "Officials refused to elaborate on the reasons behind talks to postpone or cancel the drill, but said they were mostly 'technical and logistical,'" Yaakov Katz said.  --  "Talks about postponing the drill took the Americans, as well as the Israeli Air Defense division, responsible for missile defense, by surprise.  Just last Thursday, top IAF officers had said that the drill was scheduled for this spring."  --  A subsequent Jerusalem Post article, also by Katz, reported that US EUCOM said the exercise would be conducted later this year.[2]  --  DPA reported of the cancellation or postponement that "The reason was its high cost, the report said."[3]  --  But Arutz Sheva said that "it is difficult to believe that money is a problem."  --  "A delay of another three months will give the Obama administration additional time to try to prove its sanctions against Iran are working, hopefully precluding the need for a military strike to stop Iran’s nuclear development," opined Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu....