World Analysis Newswire Archive

The tripartite Iranian declaration poses a potentially fatal blow to the US strategy of isolating Tehran, a strategy that has noting to do with Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions and everything to do with Washington’s deep desire for “regime change” – to bring the Islamic Republic back under US geopolitical control. The independence of Iran from western geopolitical imperatives in a vital energy region is what is at stake, not alleged nuclear ambitions.

A measure of how determined the US is in its need to subjugate the Iranian government can be seen from its curious, cuddly bear diplomacy over conflict in Korean Peninsula. An apparent act of war by a nuclear armed state is being cynically downplayed by the US simply because it needs China to effect further aggression towards Iran – a state which has neither nuclear weapons nor at war with anyone.

"The deal is materially the same one the Obama Administration endorsed just a few months ago and was demanding that Iran agree to as recently as last month, but the US has condemned the deal, demanding Iran submit the offer formally for consideration by the IAEA, which they did today.

But diplomats familiar with the situation say that the prospect of a deal is very unlikely, particularly as the Obama Administration moves forward with plans to sanction Iran which were nominally designed to punish them for not agreeing to the deal in the first place."

Under the Reagan administration (1981-89), the purpose of the “Continuity of Government” (COG) national emergency planning had officially changed: Extraordinary emergency measures, originally designed for an America devastated in a nuclear attack, were now to be applied to anything the US President considered an emergency.

Clearly 9/11 met the conditions for the imposition of COG measures, and we know for certain that COG planning was instituted on that day in 2001, before the last plane had crashed in Pennsylvania.

It is also clear that the planning by Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in the last two decades was not confined to an immediate response to 9/11.

What few have recognized is that nearly a decade after 9/11, COG plans are still authorized by a proclamation of national emergency that has been extended each year by presidential authority, most recently by President Obama in September 2009.

Clearly, the sole use of disarmament rhetoric by the US is now to disarm foreign and domestic opposition to US policies, especially "non-proliferation-themed" geopolitical ambitions. Other than dismantlement of the thousands of warheads put into the dismantlement queue by that pacifistic president George W. Bush, there is no disarmament going on in the US. Quite the reverse is true. The situation is far, far more difficult than it was even 3 or 4 years ago.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-Maoist) has spent a tremendous amount of manpower, financial and materials resources in the electoral campaign, in the process forging a tactical alliance with the landlord-bureaucrat capitalist Manuel Villar, the Nacionalista Party--and indirectly with the family of the late fascist puppet dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The Obama administration's objective is to give a humanitarian image to the "long war" and "global war on terror," labels, which were presented to public opinion in the immediate wake of the 2001 9/11 attacks.

In March of last year, the Defense Department's office of security review stated that that "this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror'. Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' "

The surge in troop deployment is part of a long war scenario, which is by no means limited to the Middle East and Central Asia. While the US and NATO are directly threatening Russia, China and Iran, the Obama doctrine tacitly denies the very existence of a war. What is increasingly presented to public opinion is a Worldwide counter-terrorism crusade against Al Qaeda.

A change of words and labels does not modify the nature of America's global military design. What were dealing with is an intractable war, which in a very real sense threatens the future of humanity.

Less than 24 hours after the nuclear fuel swap plan – which was hailed as a positive development by diverse opinion, including UN chief Ban Ki-moon, China’s foreign minister Yang Jiechi and even French president Nicolas Sarkozy – the Obama administration moved swiftly to sabotage the deal.

This US stonewalling of any avenue for dialogue with Iran has disturbing echoes of Washington’s deliberate sabotaging of diplomatic overtures for a peaceful resolution prior to its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It also exposes Obama’s vow of a new beginning in US foreign policy to be cynical lie, trotted out in front of his nation and the world with hand on heart.

The Obama administration and members of Congress, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein, are, in typical post-9/11 fashion, complaining about “intelligence failures” and vowing yet more aggressive domestic security. The “certain” ties to Pakistan, Waziristan, Iran, etc. will be used as fodder towards the next military attack.

The signs are unavoidable and clear: the Anglo-American empire has run out of time, and oil, and humanity itself has paid the steepest cost. From war and chaos, catastrophic financial meltdowns, or the mega-disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that could ultimately render all else moot, events are well beyond the empire’s ability to control or hide any of it.

In looking back on the history of the current standoff between the US and Iran over Iran's nuclear program, it is instructive to note all the opportunities that the US missed in resolving the standoff peacefully while also addressing any real concerns about weapons proliferation.

Artwork originally produced for Greek newspaper Dromos: www.edromos.gr

In a world in which the technological capacity to kill en masse or with high specificity, to observe intrusively or to monitor activity and communications at a collective or individual level, the capacity and potential exists not only for death and destruction, accidental or deliberate on a vast scale or for genocide of targeted groups but also for manipulation and coercion of groups and individuals in ways that most people could not imagine.

Our only international institution that even comes close to a project plan for salvation is the United Nations; it’s all we have. What the UN lacks is not relevance but effectiveness.

US President Barack Obama, while announcing the results of the Nuclear Posture Review of the Pentagon’s weapons on April 5, explicitly asserted the right to make a nuclear first-strike against Iran and North Korea if the U.S. deemed them to be in violation of nonproliferation rules. The corporate-owned media actually described this as a disarmament proposal!

A week after a coalition Government forms in the UK, and the incumbent and highly controversial Labour Government are retired to opposition, campaigners for reform of the British electoral system gather in London to call for a system of Proportional Representation (PR).

Afghanistan has, whether by convenience, design or some combination of the two, been transformed into a vast training ground for the consolidation of a fifty-nation military structure that has already been extended into Central Asia, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, the Horn of Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Middle East.

It is also a testing range for new 21st century weapons and combat systems intended for future use around the world.

Reflections on the 2010 Campaign.

The 2010 campaign has drawn to a close, and it’s time to distill my experiences after registering hundreds of miles by land, sea, and air crisscrossing the country as a party-list candidate.

In the light of BP's crime against humanity committed in the the Gulf of Mexico, it is well to remember the sordid historical role of BP and its earlier incarnation as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

Both cartoons made for Greek newspaper Dromos.

Recently, we critiqued a Washington Post article that relied almost entirely on unnamed U.S. officials and a known terrorist organization to make the Iraq-redux argument that Iranian “defectors” are providing the U.S. government with critical information about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Yesterday, The New York Times ran an article—by Nazila Fathi, ostensibly reporting on the execution of five prisoners in Iran on Sunday—that epitomizes the same kind of agenda-driven, threat-hyping approach as the Post’s piece on Iran’s nuclear program.

"Nonetheless, the country still faces significant economic challenges, some of which have been worsened by mistaken macroeconomic policy choices. The economy shrank by 3.3% last year. The international press has trouble understanding this, but the problem was that the government's fiscal policy was too conservative – cutting spending as the economy slipped into recession. This was a mistake, but hopefully the government will reverse this quickly with its planned expansion of public investment this year, including $6bn for electricity generation."

Your "new"(really the same old gov this time with a new name to "fool you again") leadership is just the other side of the business party as is the case here in the U.S. the Dems qnd the Repubs, Labour vs a conservative/liberal coalition. They are working together to screw us all. ONLY A TRUE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM CAN SAVE US! We need to build it now!

The Peace Prize President in the White House continues to increase his empty, but angry rhetoric in an attempt to garner enough support for a strike on Iran. The propaganda juggernaut is in full action, and thousands of articles, TV shows, and politicians are beating the drums for a war against Iran. If this sounds eerily familiar, it's because it is.