US Empire

De svenska stridsflygplan som sattes in i Libyen borde användas till att också angripa mål på marken i offensiv krigföring. Det tyckte Folkpartiets militante ledare Jan Björklund, när den svenska insatsen i Libyen diskuterades i mars 2011. Så blev det dessbättre inte. Men Sverige deltog, med brett parlamentariskt stöd, i ett krig som efteråt alltför lite har ifrågasatts. Sverige svarade för en fjärdedel av flygspaningen för att lokalisera bombmål. Kriget kallades ”humanitär intervention” och genomfördes av Nato med stöd av FN-resolution nummer 1 973. Men i själva verket var det inget annat än ett traditionellt kolonialkrig, sammanfattar den norske fredsforskaren Ola Tunander i sin bok Libyenkrigets geopolitik, som är en svidande genomgång av krigets förutsättningar och konsekvenser. Det här är en bok som politiker som Björklund och Bildt borde läsa. Om de gör det tvivlar jag på att de kommer att sova gott efteråt.

2013 is the year that accountability and Justice for Iraq should be high on the agenda of the International Human Rights Community. Hans C. von Sponeck, member of the BRussells Tribunal, who resigned as Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq in 2000, wrote a moving apology letter to the Iraqi people in June 2003. We republish this letter again today. By Hans von Sponeck What we have done to you in the name of freedom and democracy has no parallel in history. We have trampled the truth concerning your suffering, we endeavoured to solicit allies through bribery and ruthlessly marginalized those who objected to our imperial intentions. Brute force became the substitute for the promise of 1945 “to save future generations from the scourge of war”. It was you who paid the price. Will you ever forgive us? The torture of dictatorship was terrible for you; we added the sword of sanctions....

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> In Afghanistan the coalition of Western armed forces has lost 3,000 soldiers during its 10 years of war. In comparison the Soviet Union lost 15,000 during its 9 year long war between 1979 and 89. The Soviet Union politically had not much to show for it and it is a safe bet to say that the US and their NATO allies, unless they pull their finger out, will not have much on the political front to show for it by the time they complete in 2014 the withdrawal that has already begun. As did the Soviet Union the US and NATO will leave behind better roads, schools, health clinics and the rest. In fact the last few years there has been a remarkable increase in Afghanistan’s growth rate with infant mortality falling fast and the number of children being educated rising rapidly but politics has a habit in Afghanistan...

Not since early Cold War days when the US and NATO effectively encircled the Soviet Union, feeding Stalin’s paranoia, has America moved to be so profoundly counterproductive. It is now beginning to encircle China- at least that is how China is seeing it. Of course “encircling” is a bit of an exaggerated notion since the Soviet Union was too large ever to be totally encircled. Likewise today China is content with the state of affairs on its long Russian, Mongolian and North Korean borders. But “encircling” does suggest a process. Why of all people is President Barack Obama initiating this? We may not know the answer to that but we do know what he is doing.

The November 22 ceasefire between Israeli and Hamas forces is a huge relief for the civilian population on both sides—the primary victims of the conflict. But the Obama administration’s unconscionable decision the previous week to block a ceasefire effort by the UN Security Council not only resulted in additional civilian deaths but also serves as an indication that, despite the president owing his re-election to the hard work of his progressive base, his foreign policy will continue to lean to the right. The draft resolution blocked by the United States explicitly condemned all acts of terrorism and violence towards civilians, reaffirmed the right of all states to live in peace within secure and recognized borders, and called for an immediate and durable ceasefire. It reiterated that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could only be resolved through peaceful means and called for an immediate resumption of a substantive bilateral negotiating process between Israel...

The Gaza Ceasefire, unlike a similar ceasefire achieved after Operation Cast Lead four years ago, is an event that has a likely significance far beyond ending the violence after eight days of murderous attacks. It is just possible that it will be looked back upon as a turning point in the long struggle between Israel and Palestine. Many have talked about ‘the fog of war,’ but it pales besides the ‘the fog of truce making,’ and in our media-infected air, the outcomes along with conjectures about the future are already being spun in all possible directions. Supporters of every position give their own spin, and then proclaim ‘victory.’ But as with the violent phases of the conflict, it is clarifying to distinguish the more persuasive contentions and interpretations from those that are less persuasive. What follows is one such attempt at such clarification.

… was the title of the Symposium at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia-USA 17-19 Nov 2012. An example of the blossoming wave of peace studies all over the US; inter-disciplinary and international. Most papers were given by very promising students on most aspects of peace studies. It is inconceivable that this will not have a major impact on US foreign policy in a generation or so, particularly with the demographic shift from the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) males voting Romney to the negations of all of that, including Blacks, Latins and women voting Obama. And with that shift the idea of a Chosen People with a Promised Land and a Covenant with the Almighty making them exceptional and indispensable, above the law of ordinary states, will slowly die.

From Washington, DC on Election Night One of them won, of course, even if the real winners as usual were the non-voters, for whatever reason: men more than women. About 23:15 Obama passed the magic 50 percent mark, not of popular votes but of electoral colleges, with 302-206, well above 270; it turned into a landslide. Net result: status quo, no change. The media did their best to make the presidential election look important, being the pinnacle, the altar on which democracy is built. Some democracy. Bad enough with a Supreme Court washing the process in six billion dollars as one more freedom of expression like talking words; any kind of words, libelous, often neither true nor relevant. Stupid TV spots. But many issues were somehow articulated, there were real disagreements, there was some kind of rhetorical left-right.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the third and final presidential debate of the 2012 campaign was the similarity between the two candidates on many basic foreign policy issues. Part of the reason is that, as he did in the first two debates, GOP candidate Mitt Romney reversed himself on a number of extreme right-wing positions he had taken earlier in a desperate effort to depict himself as a moderate. At the same time, Obama’s hawkish stances served as yet another reminder of just how far to the right Obama has evolved since running as an anti-war candidate just four years ago. Indeed, Romney’s perceived need to lie about Obama’s record and his reluctance to provide much in the way of specific policy alternatives is indicative of how little difference there actually is between the two when it comes to the U.S. role in the world. Both candidates agree on...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Bar Martin Luther King, Barack Obama is the finest political orator in America’s living memory. His supporters are dumbstruck that in his debate with his challenger for the November 6th vote for the presidency his performance was so weak. He didn’t even mention Mitt Romney’s absurd statement that he has written off 47% of Americans because they depend on some sort of government handouts. Hopefully Obama can recover this lost ground in the next two debates, one on domestic policy, the other on foreign affairs.

Testimony for Russell Tribunal on Palestine – New York City Honorable Members of the Jury! Sociocide is a new concept that has not found its place in positive international law. But Genocide, the unspeakable crime of massive killing of members of a genus, a nation, for no other reason than membership, has. And Ecocide, the unspeakable crime of killing Mother Earth who nourishes us all, is finding its place via the constitutions of some countries in Latin America. Sociocide, the killing of a society’s capacity to survive and to reproduce itself, should become equally and prominently a crime against humanity.

By David Krieger Fifty years ago this month, the world teetered on the precipice of a nuclear war between the US and Soviet Union during the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis. We were fortunate to have survived that crisis, thanks largely to the restraint shown by President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev. Now, fifty years later, there is no immediate crisis such as that in 1962 over Soviet nuclear-armed missiles being placed in Cuba. There are, however, still some 19,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine nuclear-armed nations: the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Approximately 95 percent of these weapons are in the arsenals of the US and Russia. Some 2,000 of them are kept in a state of high alert, ready to be immediately launched upon an order to do so at any moment of any day or night.