Critical Standpoint on Iran and the Possibility of Invasion

Really, Bush(et al)? Iran Now? Are you F***ing Kidding Me? UGHHHH.
Like Alex said last night when I told him that they might invade Iran without Congress's permission, "Aww heell no". The following article is a very harsh truth and a glimpse into what this country is in for (World War Tres) if we don't do something about it right. NOW.

Now, what will come first, a world war or a war of the worlds? Both simultaneously? 2012? Colbert the other day was having his Threat Down and the number one threat was... us. As in WE. Not you and me, the powers that be, obviously. Someone save ourselves from ourselves! Not that any of you don't know this, but the US is largely hypocritical in its policies and politics in relation and comparison with other countries, including Iran. Yep, we suck. AND based on what I believe to be true, the administration fits nicely into the definition of a terrorist. Isn't it ironic... don't you think? Well, read the article. You'll know what I'm talking about when I say here comes WW3.

U.S. Ramps Up Threats Against Iran

by Larry Everest

The air is thick with intensifying U.S. threats against Iran. New diplomatic and economic assaults by the U.S. are in the works, and there are reports that discussion within the Bush regime has “tilted” toward war with Iran. Since our last alert (“Alert: Bush Regime Escalates Iran War Preparations” in issue #101, online at revcom.us), the trajectory toward confrontation, possibly war, has accelerated.

Please...


Six years into the bloody conquests and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. is bogged down and facing major difficulties. Its global war was launched post-9/11 with the aim of crushing anti-U.S. Islamic fundamentalism and remaking the Middle East and Central Asian regions, as part of a sweeping plan to create an unchallenged and unchallengeable empire. But in many ways this has backfired. Anti-U.S. anger rages across the region; Islamist movements have been further unleashed and fueled; the U.S. has been unable to secure its imperial grip on Iraq and faces years, perhaps decades, of combat; and the U.S. military is strained.

The U.S. rulers have staked their global power on this war for greater empire, waged under the banner of a “war on terror.” So now they’re increasingly focusing on Iran, a prime target of this war from day one. The imperialists’ problem with Iran’s Islamic Republic is not that it’s a reactionary theocracy that has imprisoned or executed thousands of progressives and revolutionaries and enforces very oppressive social relations. Far from it: the U.S., in fact, has supported—or inflicted—bloody repression and oppressive relations across the region, including in Iran during the reign of the tyrant Shah. No, the U.S. rulers’ problem with the Islamic Republic is that it’s a growing obstacle to their predatory agenda of unfettered hegemony and regional transformation. Iran’s fundamentalist regime has been strengthened by the fall of Saddam Hussein to its west and Afghanistan’s Taliban to its east. In Iraq, Shi’a parties with close ties to Tehran are the predominant faction in the new government, and Iranian influence has greatly increased. It has a nuclear energy program, which has the potential to give it the ability to make nuclear weapons at some point in the future. It’s an ideological and material center of support for Islamist groups and trends throughout the region.

In recent speeches on the U.S. war in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, and Bush all targeted Iran. Winning in Iraq, Bush argued, was key to countering the “destructive ambitions of Iran” and not allowing it to “dominate the region.” Crocker declared that “Iran plays a harmful role in Iraq.” Petraeus denounced Iran’s “malign actions.”

This week both Bush and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are speaking at the UN, and New York has become a stage for whipping up anti-Iran hysteria and hatred. New York authorities refused Ahmadinejad’s request to visit “ground zero” where the World Trade Center stood. Controversy swirls over Columbia University’s decision to allow Ahmadinejad to speak there. And right-wing tabloids are in an anti-Iranian frenzy—the NY Post ran a picture of Ahmadinejad with the caption “NO DOGS ALLOWED.” No doubt Bush will attempt to stoke this belligerent atmosphere in his September 25 UN speech.

This war of words is being accompanied by new diplomatic and economic assaults on Iran. Bush officials were furious when the UN International Atomic Energy Agency recently reported that Iran was being “unusually cooperative,” and the IAEA director, Mohamed ElBaradei, stated that “This is the first time Iran is ready to discuss all the outstanding issues. It’s a significant step.” U.S. officials dismissed the agreement between Iran and the IAEA and denounced ElBaradei for “irresponsible meddling.” This reveals that the U.S. imperialists have never just wanted to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons—they’re out for “regime change,” whether Iran’s ayatollahs want to make a deal or not.

Rather than lessen tensions, the U.S. is intent on further tightening the screws. The U.N. Security Council has so far has passed two punitive measures against Iran, and the U.S. and Europe are waging what some are calling a “financial war” against Iran, designed to cripple its imperialist-dominated economy. Now the U.S. wants yet more sanctions—“with teeth” in the words of Condoleezza Rice. U.S. officials are meeting with other major powers to try and push this through, although China and Russia remain opposed at this point.

On Sept. 20, U.S. forces seized and arrested another Iranian official in Iraq, claiming that he is part of an elite Iranian military unit. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani condemned the action and demanded that the official—who is part of a trade delegation—be released immediately. And the stream of U.S. military “briefings” charging Iran with arming and directing anti-U.S. militias continues.

“A CAREFULLY CALIBRATED PROGRAMME OF ESCALATION”?

Within the Bush administration, a sharp debate has reportedly been taking place between Secretary of State Rice and Vice President Cheney over whether to deal with Iran through continued diplomatic and economic pressure (at least for now), or to more immediately use military means. Rice and Defense Secretary Gates insist that the U.S. still wants to deal with Iran “through diplomatic and economic means,” but a number of recent news stories report that those advocating war are winning the debate. Senior officials believe that “Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran,” the Sunday Telegraph reported (9/16). “Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.” The Telegraph also states that Rice “is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.” The New York Times (9/16) says Bush’s recent speeches “indicated that the debate, at least for now, might have tilted toward Mr. Cheney.”

These stories come in the wake of French President Sarkozy’s statement (immediately after his “heart-to-heart” meeting with Bush this August) that war with Iran is a real possibility—and the ominous declaration by the French Foreign Minister, who said in mid-September that France must “prepare for the worst” and that “The worst, sir, is war.”

Meanwhile, two U.S. naval battle groups are positioned near Iran, including an aircraft carrier battle group headed by the U.S.S. Enterprise and the Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group, with some 10 warships, two submarines, and attack aircraft. The U.S. reportedly plans to build a military base on the Iraq-Iran border. And Adm. Fallon, the U.S. commander for the Middle East, is touring the region, “pressing Arab allies to form a more united front against Iran.” (AP 9/18)

While publicly discounting the possibility of a U.S. attack, Iran’s leaders are making counter-threats of their own. Iran has been shelling Iraqi bases of anti-Iranian Kurdish forces and warns that they will send troops into Iraq if the attacks in Iran by these Kurdish forces don’t stop. The new leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guards publicly warned that Iran has identified U.S. "weak points" in Iraq and Afghanistan and would “launch a crushing response to any attack.” Iranian officials have declared that they will launch missile strikes at U.S. and Western targets across the region, including Israel, if Iran is attacked.

THE DANGER OF WAR & THE URGENCY OF RESISTANCE

The U.S.’s belligerent threats, “financial war,” demand for tougher sanctions, and its funding of covert operations and anti-regime groups inside Iran (as reported by Seymour Hersh last year) may be aimed at forcing the Islamic Republic to capitulate to U.S. demands or to trigger an internal collapse short of war. The Bush regime could also be waiting to see how these moves play out before deciding on war. But it’s also quite possible that the rulers have begun a “calibrated programme of escalation,” as the Telegraph puts it, in preparation for war.

In any case, Iran is increasingly the focus of U.S. imperialist bullying, and the current trajectory is clearly moving toward confrontation. Given these extreme and growing tensions, war could even start by accident or miscalculation by either side—perhaps as the result of a border clash, a naval incident in the Persian Gulf, or some other event. War could also be triggered by what Steve Clemons (Salon.com, Sept. 19) calls an “engineered provocation” by those close to Cheney (perhaps Israel), leading to an “end run” around the rest of the U.S. decision-making apparatus. A dry run for such a provocation may have already taken place on Sept. 6 when, under still mysterious circumstances, Israeli planes attacked targets in Syria. Bush’s former UN Ambassador John Bolton called this air strike “a clear message to Iran that its continued efforts to acquire nuclear weapons are not going to go unanswered.”

What are the Democrats doing as Bush pours gasoline on the flames in the Middle East? A few leading Democrats say they’re opposed to attacking Iran, but when Congressional Democrats have actually done anything, it’s been to pave the way for war—first, by removing legislative language early this year demanding that Bush consult Congress before any attack on Iran; and second, by voting overwhelmingly this summer for a war-like resolution blaming Iran for killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The top Democrats all agree, as Barack Obama recently put it, that Iran “poses a grave challenge.” Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have all said at one time that “all options” against Iran were on the table. As a ruling class party, the Democrats share with Bush and the Republicans the imperialist goal of defeating Islamic fundamentalism, giving full support to Israel, and maintaining the U.S. stranglehold on the region—even as they have various differences over just how to navigate all the roiling contradictions their empire faces.

Any U.S. attack on Iran—no matter the pretext—would be launched to further America’s imperialist aims, not to liberate anyone, save lives, or lessen the danger of nuclear war. It would be unjust and criminal, and could cause enormous suffering and death in Iran and spark bloodshed across the region. U.S. aggression and war threats are already fueling a very bad dynamic in which the reactionary poles of imperialism on one side and Islamic fundamentalism on the other reinforce each other, even as they clash.

All this makes it urgent for people to speak out and protest U.S. bullying and war preparations now. The organization World Can’t Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime has called for people broadly to take up the “Declare It Now! Wear Orange!” campaign. Anti-war protests are scheduled for September 29 and October 27. (See www.worldcantwait.org for details.) Read and distribute Revolution so that many, many more can get the truth and be inspired to politically resist the crimes that the U.S. imperialists are committing and further crimes that they are planning. [Source]
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Inherent Greed and Disregard for the Value of Human Life

21st Century Slavery Under Global Capitalism

TODAY, IT IS ESTIMATED THAT 27 MILLION people in Africa, Asia and Latin America work WITHOUT PAY—AS MODERN-DAY SLAVES.

Women are bought and sold in the trafficking of sex slaves. Bonded laborers are forced to work without pay and with no rights, to pay off debts. Children work with no pay and are sold into sexual slavery.

If things could talk…much of your clothes, your car, your food, your rugs…could tell you they were made with the use of modern-day slave labor.

*****

The fishing industry in Lake Volta, Ghana. Children, as young as three, mend, set and pull nets, and clean fish. Weights are tied on them so that when they dive into the lake to retrieve snagged nets, they will descend more quickly. A lot of this goes on at night, and in the dark depths these children get tangled and trapped in the nets and drown. Their bodies wash up on the shore. The ones who survive get little food. Two boys said when they ate some of the fish they netted, their master beat them with a cane.

Brick kilns in Pakistan. Whole families are lured into the work with promises of good pay. But then end up trapped in bondage – the whole family working for free in order to pay off their debts. Armed guards severely punish any worker who disobeys. A 30-year-old man has old and new scars from such treatment. Once he was beaten unconscious, then locked in a small shed. After three days he was brought out in front of the other workers, hung upside down by a rope and beaten.

A mining town on the Amazon River. Gold from here goes to the biggest banks in the world. Wilma Huamani Sacsi cries when she thinks about her son, Luis Alberto, who never saw his second birthday. With all the workers, he lived in the most unsanitary conditions and had little to eat. When his belly swelled up from a kidney infection, Wilma asked the boss for money to go to a health clinic. But he just told her to go back to work. Holding her son, Wilma set off on foot to the nearest clinic—14 miles away. A doctor there said Luis needed to go to a hospital. Wilma begged in the streets to pay for the trip. But by the time she got enough, Luis was dead.

WHAT KIND OF SYSTEM PRODUCES SUCH HORRORS?

A CAPITALIST-IMPERIALIST SYSTEM WHERE COMMODITY PRODUCERS WILL ALWAYS STRIVE TO FIND THE MOST PROFITABLE WAY TO MAKE THEIR PRODUCTS. And slave labor—not paying workers -- is VERY PROFITABLE.

*****

Along the Amazon River in Brazil, thousands of bonded laborers produce charcoal by burning pieces of hardwood. Recruiters target desperate people in impoverished cities with the promise of jobs with pay. But people end up thousands of miles away into the jungle, working with no pay and no rights because of an endless debt for things bought from the company store – like food, clothing and supplies, even tools, boots and gloves they need for the job.

These slaves work in 95-degree heat and suffer from malaria and chronic coughs. They live in shacks made from plastic sheeting. They are fed rancid meat. Drinking water is contaminated. Latrines are just holes in the ground. Deep in the jungle, they can’t leave even if they want to. They don’t have money to make the trip home and armed guards threaten them if they try to escape.

Charcoal from these camps is used to make pig iron, a basic ingredient of steel. Brokers from steelmakers and foundries buy this pig iron. Then it’s purchased by some of the world’s largest companies to produce things like cars, tractors, sinks, and refrigerators. Companies like Nucor Corp., the second-largest U.S. steel company. Carmakers like Ford, General Motors, Nissan, and Toyota. Producers of appliances like Whirlpool and Kohler.

THE MOST PRIMITIVE AND BARBARIC FORMS OF LABOR SERVE THE INTERESTS OF THE LARGEST AND MOST MODERN CAPITALIST CORPORATIONS IN THE U.S. AND AROUND THE WORLD—which are driven by the need to maximize profit and to come out on top in the cut-throat competition with other capitalists.

The Brazilian government raids slave labor camps and frees people. But as long as Brazil is subordinate to imperialism, it can’t escape the logic of capital. And no matter how many slave labor camps are shut down, they will keep re-emerging—because this system will continue to produce desperate people with no way to survive and capitalist vultures looking to maximize their profits by maximizing exploitation.

*****

Ideologues of globalization extol subcontracting and outsourcing. But in fact what this provides are two valuable things for the capitalists: 1) it cheapens production immeasurably and 2) it provides them with PLAUSIBLE DENIAL that distances them from the brutal, inhuman and murderous production process in which the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings are violently crushed.

And all this is happening under the dominance of U.S. imperialism, the direct and indirect involvement of major global corporations, and the enforcement of IMF and World Bank policies.

What does it say about this system that here in the 21st century you have the most high-tech knowledge and industrial capacity existing alongside the most barbaric, primitive and inhuman slave-like conditions of labor? It may seem like these two things are worlds and centuries apart. But in fact they are part of the integrated system of contemporary global capitalism. A system completely outmoded and unnecessary. [Source]


"The more you know, the harder it is to sleep at night." Oy. Greed officially rules the world.
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Troubles In Palestine

Palestine: A History of Occupation and Resistance


Recent events have focused new world attention on Palestine: the killing of seven Palestinians at a Gaza beach by Israeli artillery shells (and the Israeli government’s outrageous attempts to deny responsibility); the clashes between Palestinian groups, in particular Hamas and Fatah; and the intense suffering of the Palestinians because of the cut off of international aid. Revolution will analyze developments in occupied Palestine more in future issues. In this issue, we present a basic fact sheet on the history of Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance.
A central reality about the state of Israel is that it serves as an attack dog for U.S. imperialist interests. In the Middle East, those interests focus on controlling this strategic crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa and its vast oil reserves.

Without U.S. backing, the state of Israel could not survive. The U.S. gives Israel $2 to $3 billion a year in aid, allowing Israel to build up one of the most powerful armies in the world. The book Deadly Arsenals estimates that Israel has 100 short-range and medium range missiles that are nuclear capable. And Israel has nuclear weapons that could be delivered from fighter jets or launched from ships.

Israel is a direct oppressor of the Palestinian nation. It has also carried out many vicious assaults on the masses and other crimes in the region and around the world on behalf of imperialism. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1976—and again in 1982, killing over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians. In 1982 Israeli warplanes bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq. In 1991 and 2003 Israel supported U.S. wars against Iraq. Israeli agents have trained torturers from Guatemala to South Africa and sold weapons to reactionary pro-U.S. governments all over the world.

Imperialism, Israel, and the Palestinian People
From the 1500s up until World War 1, Palestine was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. In the course of resistance to Ottoman rule, the modern Palestinian nation was forged with a common culture, contiguous (connected) territory and a truncated, but coherent national economic life based on agriculture and processing agricultural products (like olive oil). At the end of World War 1, in 1918, there were 680,000 Palestinians and 56,000 Jews (some of whom were refugees from pogroms in Europe) living in Palestine, and Palestinians owned 97 percent of the land.

After World War 1, imperialist powers carved up the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine. The rivalry was intense because oil was now a precious economic and military commodity. In 1922 Britain got a League of Nations “mandate” to rule Palestine as a colony. Between 1933 and 1945, the British imperialists, along with the U.S., severely restricted Jewish immigration into their own countries in order to push Jews toward Palestine—at a time when Jews in Europe faced the Holocaust.

Zionist Jews from Europe began to colonize historic Palestine (what is today Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank) in the late 1880s. The Zionist movement arose in part as a response by sections of Jews to their persecution in Europe. But, in opposition to forces - often led by communists (who also had a significant following among Jews) - that were fighting to forge opposition to reaction and fascism, Zionist leaders instead offered to set up a settler-state in the Middle East in service of various imperialist powers. When British imperialism took up this offer in the early 1900s, a wave of Zionist settlement began.

In 1936 Palestinians launched an armed uprising against the British and the Zionist settler-colonialists. The British brutally crushed the uprising in 1939 and passed emergency laws condemning to death any Palestinian found with a gun.

Through World War 2, the U.S. emerged as the top imperialist power in the world and moved to replace Britain as the main power in the Middle East. In November 1947, a U.S.-backed UN resolution partitioned Palestine into a Zionist state and an Arab state. At that time, the Palestinians outnumbered Zionist settlers two to one and owned 92 percent of the land. But the partition gave Israel 54 percent of the land. In May 1948—after the Palestinians and the Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition—Israel launched a war against Palestinians. Israeli forces massacred 250 villagers in Deir Yassin, including 100 women and children. Israel used this atrocity to spread terror among the Palestinian people, and many fled their homes in panic. By the war’s end in January 1949, nearly 800,000 Palestinians—two-thirds of the population—had been driven into exile; Israel had seized 77 percent of the land.

The 1960s saw a revolutionary upsurge among Palestinians. Palestinian guerrilla organizations launched armed struggle against Israel in 1965, with the aim of creating a democratic, secular (non-religious) state throughout Palestine. In March 1968 Palestinian fighters held off a major Israeli attack at Karameh, Jordan. In 1967 the Israelis launched the “Six Day War” and seized the remaining 23 percent of historic Palestine—the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem—along with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights.

UN Resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from all areas seized in the 1967 war. But the Israelis began to build heavily armed settlements in the occupied areas. Since 1967, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have been under harsh military occupation, denied basic rights and unable to develop any viable economy.

The Deadly “Peace Process”
The Palestinian intifada (uprising) that erupted the late 1980s deeply shook Israel and the U.S. imperialists. In addition to outright bloody suppression, the U.S. and Israel initiated a so-called “Peace Process.” A key part of U.S. strategy has been the “two-state solution”: official Palestinian “recognition” of Israel and end to all resistance, in return for a small state in the West Bank and Gaza. By the late 1980s Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had basically agreed to this.

The U.S. and Israel have never intended to allow a truly independent Palestinian state. Under the Oslo “peace process” begun in 1993, Israel transferred about 40 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (PA). But this PA territory is only about 10 percent of historic Palestine and consists of small disconnected pieces of land surrounded by areas under Israeli control. The main roads, key water resources, and access to neighboring countries and the sea are all controlled by Israel. And the Oslo agreement made no provisions for the four million Palestinian refugees living outside of Israel, West Bank, and Gaza. During the years of the “peace process” (1993 through 2000), the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank doubled.

The U.S. and Israel dropped this “peace process” and pursued even more unrestrained tactics after the year 2000. Meanwhile Israeli settlements have multiplied, now numbering hundreds, with Israeli troops protecting their land grab and aggression.

Since the late 1980s Israel has at times promoted the growth of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas as a countervailing force against secular forces and to stoke clashes among Palestinian groups. Hamas, with its reactionary ideology, is in some ways a perfect foil for the U.S. and Israel, who try to portray themselves as modern democracies confronting obscurantist theocracies. (Enlightened people in the West who want to oppose fundamentalist theocracies can start at home: the U.S. has a president who is deeply connected to Christian fascist theocrats.) The U.S. and Israel have used the victory of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections to justify intensifying brutality against the Palestinian people by further embedding these attacks in the overall rationale of the “war on terror.”

Intensifying Brutality of Occupation

Israeli brutality against the Palestinian people became even more deadly after Ariel Sharon—the man responsible for the 1982 massacre of hundreds at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon—was installed as Israel’s prime minister in 2001.

In 2002 Israel began erecting a fortified barrier—concrete walls, electrified fences, electric sensors, razor wire, trenches, and watchtowers—across more than 400 miles of Palestinian land in the West Bank. This apartheid wall further isolates many Palestinian towns, separates farmers from their fields, and steals more land from the Palestinians.

In September 2005 Sharon carried out a “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip, dismantling Israeli settlements and military installments—as part of a plan to make Gaza into a big prison for the 1.4 million Palestinians there, while moving to annex more land in the West Bank. Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, has continued on this path, announcing a plan for “unilateral withdraw” from the West Bank—which means consolidating Israeli control over the most valuable and strategic territory, while intensifying the siege around the scattered Palestinian enclaves.

Further adding to the misery of the Palestinian people, the U.S. and European powers invoked Hamas’ victory in the elections for the Palestinian legislature in early 2006 to cut off or restrict aid to the Palestinian Authority. This economic strangulation is having a traumatic effect on the Palestinian people. More than half of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza now live below the international poverty line of $2 a day. The UN’s World Health Organization has warned of a “looming” health crisis, with hospitals and clinics running out of medicine, fuel, and other vital necessities. [Source]

So those are the facts. Now we can talk about HOPE for the Palestinians who are not standing down anytime soon. I learned that from this article. Read.

[p.s. I'll shorten this later. We reset the template temporarily.] Read more!