Category: 04 Inter-State Conflict

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Yoda: Israel Fears Exponential Growth of Boycott, Disvetment and Sanctions (BDS) — Good, This Is…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Fear, evil should…

Why Israel Fears the Boycott

By OMAR BARGHOUTI

JERUSALEM — IF Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempts to revive talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority fail because of Israel’s continuing construction of illegal settlements, the Israeli government is likely to face an international boycott “on steroids,” as Mr. Kerry warned last August.

These days, Israel seems as terrified by the “exponential” growth of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (or B.D.S.) movement as it is by Iran’s rising clout in the region. Last June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively declared B.D.S. a strategic threat. Calling it the “delegitimization” movement, he assigned the overall responsibility for fighting it to his Strategic Affairs Ministry. But B.D.S. doesn’t pose an existential threat to Israel; it poses a serious challenge to Israel’s system of oppression of the Palestinian people, which is the root cause of its growing worldwide isolation.

Read full article.

 

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Chuck Spinney: Is US Starting a New Cold War in the Ukraine? At What Cost to Our Future?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

WEEKEND EDITION JAN 31-FEB 02, 2014

What is the Real Price of Starting Another Cold War?
by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

In the late 1980s, the leaders of the West promised Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev that they would not expand eastward if the Soviet Union pulled out of Eastern Europe and ended the Cold War.  That promise was not kept.  A triumphal West stuck it to the Soviet Union’s  greatly weakened Russian successor by incorporating the former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO and the EU.  But that was not enough to sate the lust of the neo-liberal triumphalists in search of a new imperium.  Their next move tried to incorporate the Caucasus country of Georgia — a country more a part of Central Asia than of Europe — into the West’s sphere of influence.  That turned out to be a bridge too far; the Russians intervened militarily to put a stop to the lunacy.

But events in the Ukraine suggest that stop may have been viewed as a temporary speed bump on the pathway to rolling back Russia’s geography to the years of Ivan the Terrible.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Is US Starting a New Cold War in the Ukraine? At What Cost to Our Future?”

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Betty Boop: Tomgram on Nick Turse, Secret Wars, & Black Ops Blowback — US Government Learning Impaired & Morally Challenged

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Peace Intelligence

betty boop hotTomgram: Nick Turse, Secret Wars and Black Ops Blowback

Nick Turse is the author of Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, just now out in paperback.

Tom: These days, when I check out the latest news on Washington’s global war-making, I regularly find at least one story that fits a new category in my mind that I call: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

EXTRACTS:

Continue reading “Betty Boop: Tomgram on Nick Turse, Secret Wars, & Black Ops Blowback — US Government Learning Impaired & Morally Challenged”

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Tikkun Rabbi Michael Lerner: Uri Avnery & MJ Rosenberg on Israel’s Latest Mishugas

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence
Michael Lerner
Michael Lerner

Editor's Note: It's hard to know the right reaction to Israel's latest craziness (mishugas)—its attempts to block Obama's deal with Iran to stop the potential militarization of Iran's nuclear capacity. Israel is trying to block the deal by using its American allies to push the Senate to vote on new sanctions against Iran now, instead of allowing the process toward a possible accommodation to be explored. Israel's goal is transparent: create conditions that Iran cannot accept, then argue that this proves Iran is really after the militarization of its nuclear capacities, then attack Iran with U.S. backing, and then use Iran's military response as proof that it was seeking nuclear capacity to attack Israel. Should one respond with sadness (see MJ Rosenberg’s article below) or with outrage?

Below I am also sharing a piece in which Israeli peace movement (Gush Shalom) leader Uri Avnery shows the craziness of Netanyahu's latest attempt to block an agreement with the Palestinians, this time by demanding that the Palestinians recognize Israel not just as a state the way all other parties recognize Israel, but as a JEWISH state (presumably meaning its right to discriminate against non-Jews or something of the sort).

Israel: The Dream Dies by MJ Rosenberg

Bibi & Libie by Uri Avnery

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Winslow Wheeler: Robert Gate’s Real Legacy — Dead, Mutated, Amputated, Wounded, “Etcetera”

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities
Winslow Wheeler
Winslow Wheeler

Today's fixation in Washington is former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' so called new revelation, breathlessly reported by the Washington Post (Robert Woodward), the New York Times (Thom Shanker) and others, that Barak Obama was not fully committed to George Bush's (and Robert Gates') war in Afghanistan, especially the troop surge there which Obama allowed himself to be maneuvered into by the Pentagon's generals (and Robert Gates).  We are then blown away-well, not entirely–by the other dramatic news from Gates that Hilary Clinton said politics influenced her own position during her 2007-8 presidential campaign on the other troop surge-the one in Iraq.  Quite a stunner, eh? 

Without giving this fluff any further attention, it's time to consider something a little more important and a little less comforting to those seeking to distract us from the effects of their handiwork.  

Consider the question of life and death.  Specifically, almost a half a million deaths, mostly of civilians.  That is the tally in Iraq directly attributable to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq: “461,000, just under half a million people,” a recent study says.  It came out in October 2013.  (I had cast it into my to-read pile; I finally got to it; I urge you to read it-more promptly than I did.)

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Robert Gate's Real Legacy — Dead, Mutated, Amputated, Wounded, “Etcetera””

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4th Media: Iraq’s Unending Tragedy

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities

4th media croppedA documentary film by John Pilger

Sanctions enforced by the UN on Iraq since the Gulf War have killed more people than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, including over half a million children – many of whom weren’t even born when the Gulf War began.\

Broadcast 03/06/2000 ITV  Runtime 75 Minutes

Bombings, Invasion, Misery: Fallujah, Symbol of Iraq’s Unending Tragedy

“It Wasn’t a War, It Was a Massacre”