Πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα ανάλυση, κατά κύριο λόγο, της εξωτερικής πολιτικής των ΗΠΑ, που έλαβα από eφίλο, την οποία και κυκλοφορώ ανεπιφύλακτα.
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PLHROFORIAKO — Ti mas etoimázoun ta sainia tis Washington kai tou Tel-Aviv ...
(O P. C. Roberts einai mén proin ypourgós tou Reagan klp, allá éxei ekselixthei sé exairetiká proodeutiki foni tis Amerikanikis antipoliteussis, kai gráfei oraia. Prossopiká tón theoró arketá kallitero apó tón N. Chomsky kai polloús állous.)
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The Next War on Washington’s Agenda, 1/12/12
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS [PCR was an editor of the Wall Street J. and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached through his website ]
Only the blind do not see that the US government is preparing to attack Iran. Washington has deployed missiles directed at Iran in its oil emirate puppet states, Oman and the UAE, and little doubt in the other US puppet states in the Middle East. Washington has beefed up Saudi Arabia’s jet fighter force. Most recently, Washington has deployed 9,000 US troops to Israel to participate in “war games” designed to test the US/Israeli air defense system. As Iran represents no threat unless attacked, Washington’s war preparations signal Washington’s intention to attack Iran.
Another signal that Washington has a new war on its agenda is the raised level of Washington’s rhetoric and demonization of Iran. Judging by polls Washington’s propaganda that Iran is threatening the US by developing a nuclear weapon has met with success. Half of the American public support a military attack on Iran in order to
prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability. Those of us who are trying to awaken our fellow citizens start from a deficit that the minds of half of the US population are under Big Brother’s control.
As the International Atomic Energy Agency’s reports from its inspectors on the ground in Iran have made clear for years, there is no evidence that Iran has diverted any enriched uranium from its nuclear energy program. The shrill hype coming from Washington and from the neoconservative media is groundless. it is the same level of lie as Washington’s claim that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Every US soldier who died in that war died in behalf of a lie.
It could not be more obvious that Washington’s war preparations against Iran have nothing to do with deterring Iran from a nuclear weapon. So, what are the war preparations about?
In my judgment, the US government’s war preparations are driven by three factors.
One is the neoconservative ideology, adopted by the US government, that calls for the US to use its superior military and economic position to achieve world hegemony. This goal appeals to American hubris and to the power and profit that it serves.
A second factor is Israel’s desire to eliminate all support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel’s goal is to seize all of Palestine and the water resources of southern Lebanon. Eliminating Iran removes all obstacles to Israel’s expansion.
A third factor is to deter or slow China’s rise as a military and economic power by controlling China’s access to energy. It was China’s oil investments in eastern Libya that led to the sudden move against Libya by the US and its NATO puppets, and it is China’s oil investments elsewhere in Africa that resulted in the Bush regime’s creation of the United States Africa Command, designed to counter China’s economic influence with US military influence. China has significant energy investments in Iran, and a substantial percentage of China’s oil imports are from Iran. Depriving China of independent access to oil is Washington’s way of restraining and boxing in China.
What we are witnessing is a replay of Washington’s policy toward Japan in the 1930s that provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan’s bank balances in the West were seized, and Japan’s access to oil and raw materials was restricted. The purpose was to prevent or to slow Japan’s rise. The result was war.
Despite the hubris in which it wallows, Washington understands the vulnerability of its Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and would not risk losing a fleet and 20,000 US naval personnel unless it was to gain an excuse for a nuclear attack on Iran. A nuclear attack on Iran would alert both China and Russia that they could suffer the same fate. The consequence would be that the world would face a higher risk of nuclear armageddon than existed in the mutually assured destruction of the US-Soviet standoff.
Washington is getting all of us in over our heads. Washington has declared the “Asia-Pacific” and the South China Sea to be areas of “America’s national interest.” What sense does this make? It makes the same sense as if China declared the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea to be areas of China’s national interest.
Washington has deployed 2,500 Marines, promising more to come, to Australia in order to do what? Protect Australia from China or occupy Australia? Encircle China with 2,500 Marines? It would not mean anything to China if Washington deployed 25,000 Marines in Australia.
When you get right down to it, Washington’s tough talk is nothing but a silly pointless provocation of Washington’s largest creditor. What if Washington’s idiocy causes China to worry that Washington and its UK and European puppets will seize its bank balances and refuse to honor China’s holdings of $1 trillion in US Treasury bonds? Will China pull its balances from the weak US, UK, and European banks? Will China decide to strike first, not with nuclear weapons, but by selling its $1 trillion in Treasury bonds all at once?
It would be cheaper than war.
The Federal Reserve would have to quickly print another $1 trillion dollars with which to buy the bonds, or US interest rates would shoot up. What would China do with the $1 trillion in newly printed paper? In my opinion, China would dump it all at once in the currency market, because the Federal Reserve cannot print euros, UK pounds, Japanese yen, Swiss francs, Russian rubles, and Chinese yuan with which to buy up its newly printed currency.
The US dollar would take a beating. US import prices–which now include, thanks to offshoring, almost everything Americans consume–would rise. The hard-pressed 90% would take a further beating, endearing their Washington oppressors to them to an even greater extent. The rest of the world, anticipating nuclear war, would flee the dollar, as Washington would be a primary attack target.
If the missiles aren’t launched, Americans would wake up the next day a bankrupt third world country. If the missiles were launched, few Americans would wake up.
We, as Americans, need to ask ourselves what all this is about? Why is our government so provocative toward Islam, Russia, China, Iran? What purpose, whose purpose is being served? Certainly not ours.
Who benefits from our bankrupt government starting yet more wars, picking this time not on defenseless countries like Iraq and Libya, but on China and Russia? Do the idiots in Washington think the Russian government does not know why Russia is being surrounded with missile bases and radar systems? Do they really believe that the Russian government will fall for its lie that the missiles are directed against Iran? Only American idiots who sit in front of Fox “news” could possible believe that the real issue is an Iranian nuclear weapon.
How much longer will the Russian government permit the US National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front, to interfere in its elections by financing opposition parties led by the likes of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Boris Nemtsov, and Alexei Navalny, who organize protests of every election that Putin’s party wins, alleging without any evidence whatsoever, but providing propaganda for Washington, who no doubt pays well, that the election will be and was stolen?
In the US, such activists would be declared to be “domestic extremists” and be subjected to rough treatment. In America even anti-war activists are subjected to home invasions by the FBI and grand jury investigations.
What this means is that “the criminal state of Russia” is a more tolerant democracy than the US, or for that matter, America’s puppet states in Europe and the UK.
Where do we go from here? If not to nuclear destruction, Americans must wake up. Football games, porn, and shopping malls are one thing. Survival of human life is another. Washington, that is, “representative government,” consists only of a few powerful vested interests. These private interests, not the American people, control the US government.
That is why nothing that the US government does benefits the American people.
The current crop of presidential contenders, except for Ron Paul, represent the controlling interests. War and financial fraud are the only remaining American Values.
Will Americans again give the sheen of “democracy” to rule by a few by participating in the coming rigged elections?
If you have to vote, vote for Ron Paul or for a more extreme third party candidate. Show that you do not support the lie that is the system.
Stop watching television. Stop reading newspapers. Stop spending money. When you do any of these things, you are supporting evil.
PLHROFORIAKO. YG: Apó énkyres pigés, óti einai ná ginei mé tó IRAN thá ginei META tis Amerikanikés proedrikés eklogés, i.e. metá tón Ianouário tou 2013. Tó Pentágono kai éna simantikó méros tou Amerikanikou katestiménou DEN théloun pólemo mé tó Iran. Autoi pou spróxnoun giá pólemo einai tá gerákia (sionistés) tou Israil.
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Chairman of Joint Chiefs to Israelis: U.S. Won’t Join Your War on Iran, FEBRUARY 02, 2012
By GARETH PORTER [GP is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006. ]
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders Jan. 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, according to accounts from well-placed senior military officers. Dempsey’s warning, conveyed to both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, represents the strongest move yet by President Barack Obama to deter an Israeli attack and ensure that the United States is not caught up in a regional conflagration with Iran.
But the Israeli government remains defiant about maintaining its freedom of action to make war on Iran, and it is counting on the influence of right-wing extremist views in U.S. politics to bring pressure to bear on Obama to fall into line with a possible Israeli attack during the election campaign this fall. Obama still appears reluctant to break publicly and explicitly with Israel over its threat of military aggression against Iran, even in the absence of evidence Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon.
Dempsey’s trip was highly unusual, in that there was neither a press conference by the chairman nor any public statement by either side about the substance of his meetings with Israeli leaders. Even more remarkable, no leak about what he said to the Israelis has appeared in either U.S. or Israeli news media, indicating that both sides have regarded what Dempsey said as extremely sensitive. The substance of Dempsey’s warning to the Israelis has become known, however, to active and retired senior flag officers with connections to the JCS, according to a military source who got it from those officers.
A spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Commander Patrick McNally, offered no comment Wednesday when this reporter asked him about the above account of Dempsey’s warning to the Israelis.
The message carried by Dempsey was the first explicit statement to the Netanyahu government that the United States would not defend Israel if it attacked Iran unilaterally. But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had given a clear hint in an interview on “Face the Nation” Jan. 8 that the Obama administration would not help defend Israel in a war against Iran that Israel had initiated.
Asked how the United States would react if Israel were to launch a unilateral attack on Iran, Panetta first emphasized the need for a coordinated policy toward Iran with Israel. But when host Bob Schieffer repeated the question, Panetta said, “If the Israelis made that decision, we would have to be prepared to protect our forces in that situation. And that’s what we’d be concerned about.”
Defense Minister Barak had sought to dampen media speculation before Dempsey’s arrival that the chairman was coming to put pressure on Israel over its threat to attack Iran, but then proceeded to reiterate the Netanyahu-Barak position that they cannot give up their responsibility for the security of Israel “for anyone, including our American friends”. There has been no evidence since the Dempsey visit of any change in the Netanyahu government’s insistence on maintaining its freedom of action to attack Iran.
Dempsey’s meetings with Netanyahu and Barak also failed to resolve the issue of the joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise geared to a missile attack, “Austere Challenge ’12″, which had been scheduled for April 2012 but had been postponed abruptly a few days before his arrival in Israel.
More than two weeks after Dempsey’s meeting with Barak, the spokesman for the Pentagon, John Kirby, told IPS, “All I can say is that the exercise will be held later this year.” That indicated that there has been no major change in the status of U.S.-Israeli discussions of the issue since the postponement of the exercise was leaked Jan. 15. The postponement has been the subject of conflicting and unconvincing explanations from the Israeli side, suggesting disarray in the Netanyahu government over how to handle the issue.
To add to the confusion, Israeli and U.S. statements left it unclear whether the decision had been unilateral or joint as well as the reasons for the decision. Panetta asserted in a news conference Jan. 18 that Barak himself had asked him to postpone the exercise. It now clear that both sides had an interest in postponing the exercise and very possibly letting it expire by failing to reach a decision on it.
The Israelis appear to have two distinct reasons for putting the exercise off, which reflect differences between the interests of Netanyahu and his defense minister.
Netanyahu’s primary interest in relation to the exercise was evidently to give the Republican candidate ammunition to fire at Obama during the fall campaign by insinuating that the postponement was decided at the behest of Obama to reduce tensions with Iran. Thus Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s spokesman, explained it as a “joint” decision with the United States, adding, “The thinking was it was not the right timing now to conduct such an exercise.”
Barak, however, had an entirely different concern, which was related to the Israeli Defense Forces’ readiness to carry out an operation that would involve both attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and minimizing the Iranian retaliatory response.
A former U.S. intelligence analyst who followed the Israeli military closely told IPS he strongly suspects that the IDF has pressed Barak to insist that the Israeli force be at the peak of readiness if and when they are asked to attack Iran. The analyst, who insisted on anonymity because of his continuing contacts with U.S. military and intelligence personnel, said the 2006 Lebanon War debacle continues to haunt the thinking of IDF leaders. In that war, it became clear that the IDF had not been ready to handle Hezbollah rocket attacks adequately, and the prestige of the Israeli military suffered a serious blow.
The insistence of IDF leaders that they never go to war before being fully prepared is a primary consideration for Barak, according to the analyst. “Austere Challenge ’12″ would inevitably involve a major consumption of military resources, he observes, which would reduce Israeli readiness for war in the short run.
The concern about a major military exercise actually reducing the IDF’s readiness for war against Iran would explain why senior Israeli military officials were reported to have suggested that the reasons for the postponement were mostly “technical and logistical”.
The Israeli military concern about expending scarce resources on the exercise would apply, of course, regardless of whether the exercise was planned for April or late 2012. That fact would help explain why the exercise has not been rescheduled, despite statements from the U.S. side that it will be.
The U.S. military, however, has its own reasons for being unenthusiastic about the exercise. IPS has learned from a knowledgeable source that, well before the Obama administration began distancing itself from Israel’s Iran policy, U.S. Central Command chief James N. Mattis had expressed concern about the implications of an exercise so obviously based on a scenario involving Iranian retaliation for an Israeli attack.
U.S. officials have been quoted as suspecting that the Israeli request for a postponement of the exercise indicated that Israel wanted to leave its options open for conducting a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the spring. But a postponement to the fall would not change that problem.
For that reason, the former U.S. intelligence analyst told this reporter he doubts that “Austere Challenge ’12″ will ever be carried out.
But the White House has an obvious political interest in using the military exercise to demonstrate that the Obama administration has increased military cooperation with Israel to an unprecedented level. The Defense Department wants the exercise to be held in October, according to the military source in touch with senior flag officers connected to the Joint Chiefs.
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