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Threats Against Iran Escalate - From Jeremy R. Hammond

The threat of military attack against Iran has continued to escalate as the European Union this week conceded to pressure from the U.S. to implement stricter sanctions against Iran for refusing to cease from enriching uranium for its nuclear program. Earlier this week, Israeli transport minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, "If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective. Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."

The Office of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly in favor of military strikes against Iran, and President Bush has repeatedly described an attack as an "option" that he is keeping "on the table". Leading officials and military experts at the Pentagon, on the other hand, have reportedly been opposed to attacking Iran, and the State Department is said to favor a diplomatic approach...

Iran has repeatedly called on Washington to engage in discussions not only about its nuclear program, but on working towards a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, calls which have been rebuffed by the U.S., probably in no small part because any such talks would inevitably include a focus on Israel, the only nation in the region armed with nuclear weapons. [More]

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Bush Will Be Impeached If He Attacks Iran - From Senator Joe Biden
11 dec  |  I don't think we went to war [in Iraq] because of oil, but the only thing I can fit together with Cheney and his gang is that they're smarter than they're acting. They went to war in the hope they would be able to do two things. One, have a government that sat on a whole bunch of oil that still exists in the world that would be indebted to us. Two, have permanent military bases in Iraq to dominate that part of the world to be able to control oil. Not to steal it for American oil companies, but to be able to control the pricing, control the access of it, a very Machiavellian view. There's nothing idealistic about Cheney.

I don't know what President Bush thinks, but I think he's bought hook, line and sinker the Cheney rationale that the only way for us to be able to be dominant in the 21st century is to use our overwhelming power in the face of the moral disapprobation of the rest of the world, threaten the rest of the world, and that's how we avoid war in the future...

[As for Iran] the president has no constitutional authority to take this nation to war against a country of 70 million people, unless we're attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, I would move to impeach him... I don't say it lightly. I say it because they should understand that what they were threatening, what they were saying... what we were about to do would be the most disastrous thing that could be done at this moment in our history. . . read more

The Georgian Farce - From Ron Jacobs
22 aug  |  The sycophantic leader of Georgia - put into place by the CIA and its front organization the National Endowment for Democracy(NED) - looks to Washington for support in his insistence that the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia must remain part of the country he leads. Russia insists on the opposite, just like Washington insisted about the Serbian province of Kosovo in 1999.

Naturally, every politician inside the American Beltway misses the aforementioned contradiction and agrees with Dick Cheney that the Russians must not be allowed to have their way. After all, it is Washington's world now and, even if there is hardly a horse's hair worth of difference between the governments in Washington and Moscow, Moscow can not be allowed to think that it can be Washington's equal on the world stage.

It is in historical moments like this that the citizen can truly see how little they matter. We have two powerful regimes trifling over a piece of territory that most of the world could care less about. Both of these regimes have proven that they are more than willing to kill thousands of people, destroy hundreds of square miles of land and water, and waste billions of dollars in doing so just so they can establish their position in their battle to control their world. It is their world because no matter how it turns out they will profit and we will pay. [More] . . read more

No Nukes For You, Nasty Iran!
12 dec  |  A recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003. But if you were gunning for another war, take a trip down saber-rattling lane with this recap of some rhetorical highlights of those heady pre-NIE days. . . read more
Syrian Nukes: The Phantom Menace - From John W Farley
26 apr  |  Last September 6, Israel bombed a Syrian building at Dair el Zor. In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, little was said in public, by either Israel or Syria, but later the Israelis started claiming that the Syrians were building a nuclear reactor. On the radio today (April 25), I heard as if it were undisputed fact, the U.S. government claim to have "proof" of a Syrian-North Korean nuclear connection. Now I see that AP have a story headlined "White House says Syria 'must come clean' about nuclear work," while ABC news has a video entitled "Syria's Nuclear Reactor".

Are the wonderful mainstream media, who gave us Saddam's mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction, lying to us again? The answer is yes.

Journalist Laura Rozen spoke with Joseph Cirincione, director of nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress. Cirincione says "In attacking Dair el Zor in Syria on Sept. 6, the Israeli air force wasn’t targeting a nuclear site but rather one of the main arms depots in the country. Dair el Zor houses a huge underground base where the Syrian army stores the long and medium-range missiles it mostly buys from Iran and North Korea"... Cirincione says that there is a small Syrian nuclear research program, which has been around for 40 years and is going nowhere....

So what is really going on here? Cirincione told the BBC that "This appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda." The preexisting political agenda may be promoting a war with Syria and/or Iran, or torpedoing negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea. Finally, Cirincione adds ominously "If this sounds like the run-up to the war with Iraq, then it should." [More] . . read more

The pointless battle against binge drinking
5 may  |  By Stephen Myles

Since the days of Alexander the Great, binge drinking has been a very popular past time - leading to him apparently killing a friend and burning down Persepolis while drunk.

Those are some Great shoes to fill.

Yet, governments, schools and the media have repeatedly tried to teach us of binge drinking's dangers. 

Dartmouth University has taken the lead, instigating a new nationwide policy to curb heavy drinking by their students.

Pour me another glass.

Binge drinking is defined as "the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men — or four or more drinks in a row by women — at least once in the previous 2 weeks. Heavy binge drinking includes three or more such episodes in 2 weeks."

Seems I don't know anyone who isn't a heavy binge drinker.

Do you think this definition should be changed or should we change people's attitudes? Or should you follow HPD's no fools guide to drinking a lot but not dying?  . . read more

The Rudd Delusion - From Antony Loewenstein
22 nov  |  The Federal election will be a contest between a social and economic conservative (John Howard) and a marginally less social and economic conservative (Kevin Rudd). Those so-called progressives, such as Robert Manne, hoping that a Rudd victory would usher in a period of more reflective foreign policy and the ability to say "no" to Washington, are kidding themselves... The Labor Party is not the utopia imagined by people like Manne, but rather a business that may tinker around the edges of domestic policy, but maintain an essentially U.S.-focused outlook. The key question facing a newly elected Rudd Government (or a re-elected Howard one) is a possible US or Israeli-led strike on Iran...

A Rudd Government would likely sanction a U.S.-led strike against Iran. Perhaps covertly, but Rudd has offered no assurances that he believes the Bush Administration should not be trusted over its Iran policy. Besides, arguing against the Iraq invasion is a luxury that Rudd would never indulge in power. Not unlike Howard and a host of past Labor Prime Ministers, Washington’s call is one that Australian leaders find impossible to resist...

A likely Rudd Government may be forced to make a decision on this matter within months of assuming office. Silence is not an option. If Rudd, like Howard, joins America in an unprovoked attack against a Middle Eastern nation, he will be as worthy of contempt as our current prime minister.  . . read more

Articles of Impeachment - From Dennis Kucinich
13 nov  |  In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office... and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests...

[Cheney has] purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests... [He] has openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the United States, and done so with the United States proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining the national security of the United States...

The Vice President's deception upon the citizens and Congress of the United States that enabled the failed U.S. invasion of Iraq forcibly altered the rules of diplomacy such that the Vice President's recent belligerent actions towards Iran are destabilizing and counterproductive to the national security of the U.S. In all of this, Vice President Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as Vice President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and the manifest injury of the people of the United States [and] by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office. . . read more

Iraq, U.S. Neocons and the Israel Lobby
21 dec  |  What is at the heart of the special relationship between the USA and Israel? Does Israel truly represent a strategic U.S. asset in the Middle East? Are the two nations really partners in the same "War on Terror", with the same threats up against them, and the same interests at stake? Author and political scientist John Mearsheimer argues that neoconservative and pro-Israel lobby groups were both greatly influential to the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq. . . read more
The Agenda Behind the Hoax - From Paul Craig Roberts
24 apr  |  Why does the Bush Regime want to rule Iraq? Some speculate that it is a matter of “peak oil.” Oil supplies are said to be declining even as demand for oil multiplies from developing countries such as China. According to this argument, the U.S. decided to seize Iraq to insure its own oil supply. This explanation is problematic. Most U.S. oil comes from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela. The best way for the U.S. to insure its oil supplies would be to protect the dollar’s role as world reserve currency. Moreover, $3-5 trillion would have purchased a tremendous amount of oil...

The more likely explanation for the U.S. invasion of Iraq is the neoconservative Bush Regime’s commitment to the defense of Israeli territorial expansion. There is no such thing as a neoconservative who is not allied with Israel. Israel hopes to steal all of the West Bank and southern Lebanon for its territorial expansion. An American colonial regime in Iraq not only buttresses Israel from attack, but also can pressure Syria and Iran from giving support to the Palestinians and Lebanese. The Iraqi war is a war for Israeli territorial expansion. Americans are dying and bleeding to death financially for Israel. Bush’s “war on terror” is a hoax that serves to cover U.S. intervention in the Middle East in behalf of “greater Israel.” [More]

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. . . read more

Is Bush Planning to Attack Iran?
16 sep  |  Aijaz Ahmad, Senior Editorial Consultant and political commentator for the Indian news magazine Frontline, analyzes America's threats toward Iran. "This administration is determined to attack Iran before it leaves office." . . read more
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan (1986)