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Why Not Crippling Sanctions for Israel and the US?

Paul Craigs Robert | 02.09.2009 20:32 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Anti-racism | World

Iran is developing nuclear energy, which is its right as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran’s nuclear energy program is subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which consistently reports that its inspections find no diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.

The position taken by Israel, and by Israel’s puppet in Washington, is that Iran must not be allowed to have the rights as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that every other signatory has, because Iran might divert enriched uranium to a weapons program.

In other words, Israel and the US defy international law by claiming the right to abrogate Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy.



In Israel, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week Netanyahu called for “crippling sanctions” against Iran.

The kind of blockade that Netanyahu wants qualifies as an act of war. Israel has long threatened to attack Iran on its own but prefers to draw in the US and NATO.

Why does Israel want to initiate a war between the United States and Iran?

Is Iran attacking other countries, bombing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure?

No. These are crimes committed by Israel and the US.

Is Iran evicting peoples from lands they have occupied for centuries and herding them into ghettoes?

No, that’s what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for 60 years.

What is Iran doing?

Iran is developing nuclear energy, which is its right as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran’s nuclear energy program is subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which consistently reports that its inspections find no diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.

The position taken by Israel, and by Israel’s puppet in Washington, is that Iran must not be allowed to have the rights as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that every other signatory has, because Iran might divert enriched uranium to a weapons program.

In other words, Israel and the US claim the right to abrogate Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy. The Israeli/US position has no basis in international law or in anything other than the arrogance of Israel and the United States.

The hypocrisy is extreme. Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed its nuclear weapons illegally on the sly, with, as far as we know, US help.

As Israel is an illegal possessor of nuclear weapons and has a fanatical government that is capable of using them, crippling sanctions should be applied to Israel to force it to disarm.

Israel qualifies for crippling sanctions for another reason. It is an apartheid state, as former US President Jimmy Carter demonstrated in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The US led the imposition of sanctions against South Africa because of South Africa’s apartheid practices. The sanctions forced the white government to hand over political power to the black population. Israel practices a worse form of apartheid than did the white South African government. Yet, Israel maintains that it is “anti-semitic” to criticize Israel for a practice that the world regards as abhorrent.

What remains of the Palestinian West Bank that has not been stolen by Israel consists of isolated ghettoes. Palestinians are cut off from hospitals, schools, their farms, and from one another. They cannot travel from one ghetto to another without Israeli permission enforced at checkpoints.

The Israeli government’s explanation for its gross violation of human rights comprises the greatest collection of lies in world history. No one, with the exception of American “christian zionists,” believes one word of it.

The United States also qualifies for crippling sanctions. Indeed, the US is over-qualified. On the basis of lies and intentional deception of the US Congress, the US public, the UN and NATO, the US government invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and used the “war on terror” that Washington orchestrated to overturn US civil liberties enshrined in the US Constitution. One million Iraqis have paid with their lives for America’s crimes and four million are displaced. Iraq and its infrastructure are in ruins, and Iraq’s professional elites, necessary to a modern organized society, are dead or dispersed. The US government has committed a war crime on a grand scale. If Iran qualifies for sanctions, the US qualifies a thousand times over.

No one knows how many women, children, and village elders have been murdered by the US in Afghanistan. However, the American war of aggression against the Afghan people is now in its ninth year. According to the US military, an American victory is still a long ways away. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared in August that the military situation in Afghanistan is “serious and deteriorating.”

Older Americans can look forward to the continuation of this war for the rest of their lives, while their Social Security and Medicare rights are reduced in order to free up funds for the US armaments industry. Bush/Cheney and Obama/Biden have made munitions the only safe stock investment in the United States.

What is the purpose of the war of aggression against Afghanistan? Soon after his inauguration, President Obama promised to provide an answer but did not. Instead, Obama quickly escalated the war in Afghanistan and launched a new one in Pakistan that has already displaced 2 million Pakistanis. Obama has sent 21,000 more US troops into Afghanistan and already the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is requesting 20,000 more.

Obama is escalating America’s war of aggression against the Afghanistan people despite three high profile opinion polls that show that the American public is firmly opposed to the continuation of the war against Afghanistan.

Sadly, the ironclad agreement between Israel and Washington to war against Muslim peoples is far stronger than the connection between the American public and the American government. At a farewell dinner party last Thursday for Israel’s military attache in Washington, who is returning to Israel to become deputy chief of staff of the Israeli military, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, and and Dan Shapiro, who is in charge of Middle East affairs on the National Security Council, were present to pay their respects. Admiral Mullen declared that the US will always stand with Israel. No matter how many war crimes Israel commits. No matter how many women and children Israel murders. No many how many Palestinians Israel drives from their homes, villages, and lands. If truth could be told, the true axis-of-evil is the United States and Israel.

Millions of Americans are now homeless because of foreclosures. Millions more have lost their jobs, and even more millions have no access to health care. Yet, the US government continues to squander hundreds of billions of dollars on wars that serve no US purpose. President Obama and General McChrystal have taken the position that they know best, the American public be damned.

It could not be made any clearer that the President of the United States and the US military have no regard whatsoever for democracy, human rights, and international law. This is yet another reason to apply crippling sanctions against Washington, a government that has emerged under Bush/Obama as a brownshirt state that deals in lies, torture, murder, war crimes, and deception.

Many governments are complicit in America’s war crimes. With Obama’s budget deep in the red, Washington’s wars of naked aggression are dependent on financing by the Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Saudis, South Koreans, Indians, Canadians and Europeans. The second this foreign financing of American war crimes stops, America’s wars of aggression against Muslims stop.

The US is not a forever “superpower” that can indefinitely ignore its own laws and international law. The US will eventually fall as a result of its hubris, arrogance, and imperial overreach. When the American Empire collapses, will its enablers also be held accountable in the war crimes court?

Paul Craigs Robert
- Homepage: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23398.htm

Comments

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no to nuclear power. period.

02.09.2009 21:35

Nuclear power is bad for the environment and the planet. I'm surprised this Iran is supported on indymedia

Lucid


We are losing our humanity

02.09.2009 23:36

Is there any entity in the West that Israel can’t manipulate and control to speak on their behalf and execute their deranged agenda? I really wonder, in horror though, as I’m afraid that the answer may be “probably not”.

What kind of a mind-numbing drug Israel had the West, especially the US, swallow, which renders them incapable of lucid, conscience-led and morality-based free thought, and sacrifice every principle they claim to believe in?

What has Israel gotten on them that they, well, so many of them, talk, think and act as brainless proxies for Israel, forgetting and ignoring, ever so indiscreetly, the facts about what the hell is Israel to begin with, what horrendous war crimes it committed and continues to commit every single day against an innocent, unfortunate people , with unprecedented-in-history impunity.

Have they – the civilized countries of the West – no shame, no conscience, no mind, and no dignity to question the puzzling and creepy free reign Israel has in exploiting them like the sad petty puppets they are, and in breaking every international and human law that prohibit the ugliest and saddest joke and genocide against innocent people, who are vilified, vehemently, for barely and hopelessly trying to resist what Israel is doing to them.

Can any one of Israel’s supporters say with clear conscience that they wouldn’t do as much, if not more, much more, of what the Palestinians are doing to fight the atrocities of Israel against their people, if Israel did to them what it has been doing to the Palestinians for the last 60 years?

And we thought the Nazis and many other insane movements like them in past history were bad, and yet we still repeat our banal, hypocritical preaching about our beliefs and principles against tyrannical, evil regimes in the world that don’t respect human rights that we supposedly espouse, while we watch, allow and even condone the apartheid practices of one of history’s ugliest and most despicable lie of a country, which was built on outrageous lies of biblical proportions.

I wouldn’t worry so much about Iran, which showed no credible reason whatsoever for the West to be concerned, but I’d worry a hell of a lot more about the insane, schizophrenic and paranoid regime in Israel, which if not exposed, checked and stopped, it can lead this world to a new and much worse era of destruction and death for all concerned.

Tania


Lucid

03.09.2009 06:50

Should all states that have nuclear power be the target of bombings? The sheer hypocrisy of states with nuclear power threatening to carpet bomb Iran because it has a program to get nuclear power obviously escaped you.

dicuL


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Bigger picture

03.09.2009 09:10

I am always amazed that the burning hatred some people who post to Indy have for Israel blinds them to the bigger world view. Iran is by anybody's definition a rogue state, its run by a bunch of extreme clerics, restrictes woman and gay rights, funds terrorism and has just ignored the democratic views of its people in a stolen election. Even if there is a chance of them getting a nuke I think it's a bad idea and I am shocked you don't.

Amazed


FLASHBACK: Mayors' petition for the removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe

03.09.2009 11:04



1) Petition by the European Mayors on whose territory US nuclear weapons are deployed (December 2007)

2) Percentage of population desiring Europe to be free of nuclear weapons (May 2006)

______________________


 http://www.2020visioncampaign.org/pages/319


excerpt from: European mayors want withdrawal of US nukes from their territory marking INF [i.e. the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty] 20th anniversary

2020 Vision Campaign website, 6 December 2007


“While our public is regularly provided alarming media reports of nuclear dangers in Iraq, North Korea or Iran, what is supposed to be a well-informed western audience is living in ignorance of the destructive power of thousands of potential Hiroshimas stored in their backyards.”


[Mayors for Peace petition launched on 6 December 2007 by the European Mayors on whose territory US nuclear weapons are deployed, namely:

Vedat Karadag (Incirlik, TURKEY), Stefano Del Cont (Aviano, ITALY), Anna Giulia Guarneri (Ghedi, ITALY), Theo Kelchtermans (Peer, BELGIUM), Dr. Joke W. Kersten (Uden, NETHERLANDS), Heinz Onnertz (Buechel, GERMANY) ] [4]

_________________


 http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/nuclear-weapons-in-europe-survey.pdf


Nuclear Weapons in Europe: Survey Results in Six European Countries

public opinion survey by Strategic Communications, Greenpeace International website, 25 May 2006


---------------------Yes----------No

Turkey-----------88.1%-----2.5%
Italy---------------71.5%-----9.3%
Germany-------70.5%----26.8%
Belgium---------64.6%----31.2%
Netherlands----63.3%---26.0%
UK-----------------55.7%---39.5%

_________________

dandelion salad
- Homepage: http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/us-ambassador-iran%e2%80%99s-pursuit-of-nuclear-weapons-is-a-great-danger-to-turkey/


dicuL

03.09.2009 12:12

> Should all states that have nuclear power be the target of bombings?
No.

Does anyone want Iran to have nuclear technology?
(that is a yes/no question btw)

Lucid


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ill informed do-gooders

03.09.2009 12:53

> “While our public is regularly provided alarming media reports of nuclear dangers in Iraq, North Korea or Iran, what is supposed to be a well-informed western audience is living in ignorance of the destructive power of thousands of potential Hiroshimas stored in their backyards.”

This has to rank as one of the dumbest statements I've heard this year.

The "well-informed western audience" isn't bothered by the nuclear missiles in their backyards because they are pointing OUTWARDS. They are not dangerous in the same way that a truck is not dangerous when its not driving towards you, or a bullet is not dangerous when it is heading away from you.

IF Iran or N.Korea were to get nuclear weapons on long range missiles, they would be pointed TOWARDS America. Anyone who says they think they wouldn't is lying.
This concerns people in America because if it happened then it is a danger to their self preservation. Since nuclear technology is a massive stepping-stone towards this potential situation, why sit back and run the risk?

I understand the issue of lots of bombs and destructive power etc. Thats fair enough. But what has it got to do with other countries developing nuclear technology? If you let them develop nuclear power, then the percentage risk that a nuclear bomb is going to be pointing in your direction sometime in the future will be increased.

In a nutshell, What is the advantages to us in allowing Iran to develop nuclear technology?
(Most people seem to bleat on about "hypocrisy" and "fairness" at this point like its a game of cricket where each side should be equal. It isn't). The ideal situation for us is NOT a level playing field. The ideal situation is that we have all the weapons, and they don't have the capability to make any.

General Patton


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Straw man.

03.09.2009 16:23

"If you let them develop nuclear power, then the percentage risk that a nuclear bomb is going to be pointing in your direction sometime in the future will be increased."

A leads to B leads to C...

If you accept C and they do develop a bomb then they will point it at whoever they feel threatened by. Just like we do.

No threat, no target.

The argument over Iran and its bomb-potential is a tactical argument postulated by a hostile Israel. It has nothing to do with us. Even Israel couldn't qualify being a target because as we all should know...it doesn't have a bomb of its own. Despite the best efforts of its allies to convince the world otherwise!

Public do betters.


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@General Patton

04.09.2009 08:39

> The ideal situation for us is NOT a level playing field. The ideal situation is that we have
> all the weapons, and they don't have the capability to make any.

The problem with this analysis is that inequality leads to instability. Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot, we had no nukes, but Iran and similar countries did have them pointing at us, and were threatening us if we tried to develop them.

We would be extremely pissed off and would probably use guerilla tactics (or "terrorism", depending on which side you are on) against them. That's no way to run a global society. Trying to control people by force never works in the long run - authoritarian regimes always topple in the end.

If we want to live in a world free from human-caused death and destruction, we need to realise we are all in it together, and splitting up into factions where one bullies the others is just a recipe for disaster.

Personally I think nuclear energy is too polluting, too dangerous, and too run by centralised big governments to be useful, but that's a separate issue.

anon


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strategic advantages

04.09.2009 18:07

==Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot, we had no nukes, but Iran and similar countries did have them pointing at us, and were threatening us if we tried to develop them.

Yes, it wouldn't be good for us because we would be at a serious disadvantage. It would be very bad indeed. Fortunately this is not the case.

If both sides had them they we risk coming into a cold war which is a big disadvantage to us also.

The final option of us having no bombs each is just not possible. You can't uninvent the nuclear bomb.

So, the only option that is advantageous to us is to have the bombs and ensure they dont get any nearer to having them for as long as possible.

And the previous poster is making the assumption that their leaders will think logically.
If ours dont, then why would he assume that theirs would?



General Patton


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