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Rationalizing Idiocy: Attacking Iran For All the Right Reasons?

By Ron Jacobs
January 30, 2012 - dissidentvoice.org

Unlike a couple of years ago, when the consensus was split, there recently seems to be a growing consensus among pundits and certain politicians that Washington will be launching a military attack on Iran. While pundits do not have the power to make war, politicians in Congress certainly do. Furthermore, pundits convinced that this is an advisable route will do their best to bend the ears of those politicians so that there wishes can be filled, especially if those pundits are representing interests that believe they would benefit from such an attack.

Why now? Part of the reason is because the majority of US troops are out of Iraq, thereby leaving a minimal number of American soldiers available for Iranian retaliation. A related reason could be the loss of prestige to Washington with the withdrawal of those troops. It’s not like Washington won its war in Iraq; it’s more like it was a stalemate with Tehran still holding on to a couple key cards. Israel, with an element of its ruling elites always ready to attack any perceived enemy, is of course a constant element in the drive to destroy Iran, as are the ruling families of certain Arab Gulf states that compete with Tehran in the oil market. Iran’s alleged support for various resistance movements in the Middle East and Asia provides Israel with but one more reason to call for war, especially since those resistance movements are primarily opposed to Israel’s expansionist anti-Palestinian policies.

Black America Still Paralyzed, Powerless, Irrelevant

Black America Still Paralyzed, Powerless, Irrelevant: Year 4 of the Obama Era

By Bruce A. Dixon
January 20, 2012 - blackagendareport.com

Three years ago this week, more than 2 million souls, at least half of them African American, converged upon the nation's capital. They came, in what my colleague Glen Ford called the Great Black Hajj of 2009, to witness and celebrate the swearing in of the nation's first African American president. They wept and danced and sang and prophesied. They marveled at how far they had come. It was, their leaders assured them, the beginning of a new day.

Three years later, it's clear that this is indeed a new day, a new era. But for most of black America, it's not the one they hoped for. Nobody expected urban poverty would begin to vanish overnight, or that millions of acres of lost black farmland would be restored. But promises were made, and expectations were justifiably high, not because Barack Obama had promised to investigate Wall Street, prosecute banksters, or stop the imperial wars and illegal foreclosures, but because humans do have the right to expect justice at home and peace abroad, whether their leaders deliver these things or not.

Beating Up on Chavez

By Stephen Lendman
January 20, 2012

Since inaugurated in February 1999, he's faced open US hostility, including by go-along major media scoundrels.

New York Times writer Simon Romero's among them. On January 6, he and William Neuman played both Chavez and Iranian cards headlining, "Increasingly Isolated, Iranian Leader Set to Visit Allies," saying:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visiting "some of the United States' most ardent critics: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador."

Chavez "is Mr. Ahmadinejad's most vociferous ally in the region." Central University of Venezuela Professor Elsa Cardozo said his visit gave Chavez a chance to "project his own style and radical message. His core supporters are very radical and he doesn't want to lose them."

Aljazeera Coverage: The Revolution Will Be Televised, and also Manipulated

By Ramzy Baroud
January 13, 2012

In the final days of the Libyan conflict, as NATO conducted a nonstop bombing campaign, an Aljazeera Arabic television correspondent’s actions raised more than eyebrows. They also raised serious questions regarding the journalistic responsibility of Arab media – or in fact any media - during times of conflict.

Using a handheld transceiver, the journalist aired live communication between a Libyan commander and his troops in a Tripoli neighborhood targeted by a massive air assault. Millions of people listened, as surely did NATO military intelligence, to sensitive information disclosed by an overpowered, largely defeated army. The Doha-based news anchor sought further elaboration, and the reporter readily provided all the details he knew.

Hell No, We Won�t Go To War Against Africa!

By Mark P. Fancher
January 11, 2012 - blackagendareport.com

“AFRICOM was integrally involved in the imperialist take-over of Libya, and now U.S. troops are trudging through Uganda.”

In 2005, U.S. Army brass panicked after reviewing the results of a specially commissioned study that showed a 41 percent drop in recruitment of people of African descent over a five year period. “It’s alarming,” said a general in charge of Army recruitment. He went on to attribute the de facto boycott to the war in Iraq and the views of teachers, preachers, coaches and other “influencers” in the black community who were urging young people not to sign on to what was ultimately acknowledged by many to be a pointless, senseless invasion and occupation of a sovereign country.

At the time, Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel was quoted as saying: “I have not found a black person in support of this war in my district.” Little wonder. Parents and grandparents still had painful memories of veterans of the U.S. debacle in Vietnam who returned broken physically, mentally and spiritually. The war-resisting spirit of these elders was revived by the then most recent imperialist escapade, and they made clear to their children and grandchildren that they had better “just say ‘no’” to military recruiters when they came calling.

Iran Fights Back

By Margaret Kimberley
January 11, 2012 - blackagendareport.com

“The devils in Washington do go crazy whenever their will is thwarted.”

It is a good thing for people all over the world that Iran feels confident enough to threaten resistance to United States aggression. In the uni-polar world, that is to say one controlled by American interests, the only salvation for humanity is the ability and willingness of nations to push back against imperialism’s dictates.

The signs that Iran will be a new target for the U.S. are ominous and unmistakable. The propaganda campaign against it is growing, with constant and false claims that Iran is a danger to the world and on the verge of producing nuclear weapons.

Exxon 'Loses' Venezuela Nationalisation Case

By Chris Arsenault - Al Jazeera
January 9th 2012

Hugo Chavez must be smiling.

In the latest showdown between western oil companies and Venezuela’s populist president, Exxon Mobil is widely seen as the loser, after the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ruled that the world’s biggest oil company would not be entitled to most of the damages it demanded after its fields were nationalised.

"The ICC only awarded Exxon ten per cent of what they wanted," Chavez said recently. "You can make your own conclusions."

Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company, said on January 2 it would pay Exxon Mobile $255m, after accounting for money frozen in a New York bank account and outstanding debts.

The Reality of America's Aggression Against Iraq

War Without End, Amen: The Reality of America's Aggression Against Iraq

By Chris Floyd
December 21, 2011 - chris-floyd.com

In March 2003, the United States of America launched an entirely unprovoked act of military aggression against a nation which had not attacked it and posed no threat to it. This act led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It drove millions more from their homes, and plunged the entire conquered nation into suffering, fear, hatred and deprivation.

This is the reality of what actually happened in Iraq: aggression, slaughter, atrocity, ruin. It is the only reality; there is no other. And it was done deliberately, knowingly, willingly. Indeed, the bipartisan American power structure spent more than $1 trillion to make it happen. It is a record of unspeakable savagery, an abomination, an outpouring of the most profound and filthy moral evil.

Africa Lies Naked to Euro-American Military Offensive

By Glen Ford
December 02, 2011 - blackagendareport.com

“The United States and its allies, principally the French, are positioned to ‘take’ much of the continent with the collaboration of most of its governments.”

The United States and its allies are engaged in an Asian and African offensive, a multi-pronged assault thinly camouflaged as humanitarian intervention that, in some regions, looks like a blitzkrieg. This frenzied aggression, still in its first year, saw NATO transformed into an expeditionary force to crush the unoffending Gaddafi regime in Libya and is now poised to topple the secular order in Syria. Although drawing on longstanding schemes for overt and covert regime change in selected countries, and fully consistent with global capital’s historic imperative to bludgeon the planet into one malleable market subordinate to Washington, London and Paris, the current offensive had a particular genesis in time: the nightmare vision of an Arab awakening.

The prospect of an Arab Spring at the dawn of 2011 sparked a general hysteria in imperial capitals. Suddenly, they stared in the face of geopolitical death at the hands of the Arab “street.” Washington understands full well that the emergence of Arab governments that reflect the will of the people would soon result, as Noam Chomsky is fond of saying, in the U.S. being “thrown out” of the region – the final toll of the bell, not just for the oil-hungry West, but for international capital’s annexes in the autocratic cesspools of the Persian Gulf.

Turkey's Foreign Policy Falls Over Syrian 'Abyss'

Turkey's 'Zero-Problems' Foreign Policy Falls Over Syrian 'Abyss'

By Ramzy Baroud
November 29, 2011

When Recep Tayyip Erdogan became Turkey's prime minister in 2003, he seemed to be certain of the new direction his country would take. It would maintain cordial ties with Turkey's old friends, Israel included, but also reach out to its Arab and Muslim neighbors, Syria in particular. The friendly relations between Ankara and Damascus soon morphed from rhetorical emphasis on cultural ties into trade deals and economic exchanges worth billions of dollars. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's vision of a 'zero-problems' foreign policy seemed like a truly achievable feat, even in a region marred by conflict, foreign occupations and 'great game' rivalry.