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An important question about Rafiq Hariri´s assassination, which sometimes is concealed by other questions, is “why”. Although some few ones in Lebanon, for purely political reasons, have played down the significance of Sayyed Nasrallah´s revelations, most Lebanese (about 70%, according to the polls) have understood the importance of this evidence. Even without it, many Lebanese remember the golden rule of any criminal investigation: who the crime benefits. The answer is not difficult to find out; the powers that most clearly were able to advance their strategic aims due to Hariri´s murder and blaming the crime on Syria and/or Hezbollah were the US and Israel. Actually, with the full political, economic and military support from the US, the Zionist regime had been attempting to transform Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate for many years. Since its forced withdrawal from this country in May 2000, Israel had two primary goals in Lebanon: forcing a withdrawal of Syria, and, thus, reducing its influence, and disarming the Resistance. The first goal was achieved shortly after the Hariri murder but the second one has been impossible to achieve despite a military aggression in 2006 as well as mobilizing local, regional and international political powers for that purpose.
A prominent Israeli rabbi whose party shares power in the Netanyahu government called for the extermination of Arabs in a recent sermon. The 89-year-old Ovadia Yosef urged God to strike “these Ishmaelites and Palestinians with a plague; these evil haters of Israel.” He then singled out the Palestinian leader of Fatah, exclaiming that “Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth.” Yosef is the spiritual leader of the Shas Party, an ultra-Orthodox right-wing outfit that governs in concert with other parties, including Likud. In religious terminology, the Ishmaelites are the descendants of Ishmael, who was Abraham’s elder son. As the rabbi doubtless knows, the Arabs are considered the descendants of the Ishmaelites in Islamic tradition.
Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assumed office in 2005 as the Iranian head of state, he made attempts to reverse the passive, submissive stance of Iran towards the Eastern and Western superpowers and proposed new theories for an innovative international order. He accelerated Iran's nuclear program and made remarkable advancements in nationalizing the peaceful use of nuclear energy in Iran. He put forward insightful and astute questions: "why should Israel possess nuclear weapons in violation of the international law", "why should Israel occupy the lands which don't belong to it", "why should Israel repeatedly threaten its neighbors and wage wars against them", "why should Holocaust be used as a pretext to suppress the Palestinian nation?", "why should Iran be deprived of the peaceful uses of nuclear power while the United States, Russia, France, United Kingdom and China have thousands of nuclear weapons?" These questions were not digestible for the United States and its stalwart allies around the world; therefore, some measures should be adopted to suffocate this man and the people he represents internationally. The reason was simple. Ahmadinejad and Iran would not make concessions and thus should be silenced at any cost. So, who is going to pay the price for silencing Iran?
Since its forced withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has had two primary objectives in Lebanon: forcing a withdrawal of Syria and hence reducing its influence, and secondly, disarming Hezbollah and other resistance groups. The first goal was achieved shortly after the Hariri assassination but the second has been difficult to accomplish despite employing a vicious military attack in 2006 as well as mobilizing all levers of local, regional and international political powers. But pinning the assassination of Hariri on Hezbollah could be the trigger to a bloody sectarian civil war by exploiting the Sunni-Shi’a divide. At minimum Israel and its allies hope that under indictment Hezbollah and its friends would be on the defensive, thus forcing the disarmament of its militia or at least curbing their influence. If anything, Nasrallah’s presentation succeeded in forcing the international tribunal to consider Israel as a possible suspect.
Folks like Jeffrey Goldberg refer casually, but intentionally, to “Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.” The neocons seem to be as strong now as under George W. Bush, with their Real-Men-Go-to-Tehran-type macho undiminished. Can integrity trump macho this time? Without a strong man at the helm in the intelligence community, it will be very difficult. And the administration let drop months ago that this time the key judgments of the Memorandum to Holders will not be made public. Meanwhile, Goldberg and his neocon colleague flaks are trying to create as much pressure as they can on Obama to produce a scarier Estimate … or to delay the one in progress sine die. The situation would seem even bleaker were it not for the availability of WikiLeaks and other non-FCM news outlets that would be ready and willing to publish documents about what is actually going on behind the scenes.
On July 30th it was reported by Israeli news media that the Israeli Occupation
Forces were conducting military drills on “precipitous cliff caves similar to
the mountain tunnels in which Iran has hidden nuclear facilities” in Romania.
Six Israeli airmen died in a Sikorsky "Yasour" CH-53 helicopter crash over the
Romanian Carpathian Mountains Monday, July 26th. The crash occurred in the last
stage of a joint Israeli-US-Romanian exercise for simulating an attack on Iran. PressTV reported on August 1st that Israel has openly threatened to bomb Iran's
nuclear installation for years and that “the likelihood of such an attack has
significantly increased due to Tel Aviv's growing impatience with the United
Nations Security Council sanctions and similar unilateral measures adopted by
the US and EU, which have failed to change Tehran's stance on its peaceful
nuclear issue. The drumbeats of war are getting louder and the signs are becoming clearer.
For much of the British and American press hailed the "end" of the war and reported "US troops to leave Iraq". Nothing could be further from the truth. The US isn't withdrawing from Iraq at all – it's rebranding the occupation. Just as George Bush's war on terror was retitled "overseas contingency operations" when Obama became president, US "combat operations" will be rebadged from next month as "stability operations". Meanwhile, the US government isn't just rebranding the occupation, it's also privatising it. There are around 100,000 private contractors working for the occupying forces, of whom more than 11,000 are armed mercenaries, mostly "third country nationals", typically from the developing world. One Peruvian and two Ugandan security contractors were killed in a rocket attack on the Green Zone only a fortnight ago. The advantage of an outsourced occupation is clearly that someone other than US soldiers can do the dying to maintain control of Iraq. It also helps get round the commitment, made just before Bush left office, to pull all American troops out by the end of 2011. What is abundantly clear is that the US, whose embassy in Baghdad is now the size of Vatican City, has no intention of letting go of Iraq any time soon.
There are many people in Afghanistan and Pakistan — the ones still living — who deeply resent the US presence there and the drones that fly overhead and drop bombs on their houses, their wedding parties, their funerals, their life. As in Iraq, the American “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan regularly, routinely, and conspicuously creates numerous new anti-American terrorists. The only “war of necessity” that draws the United States to Afghanistan is the need for protected oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea area, the establishment of military bases in this country that is surrounded by the oil-rich Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf regions, and making it easier to watch and pressure next-door Iran. What more could any respectable imperialist nation desire? Oh, did I mention that the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex and its shareholders will be further enriched?
Tony Blair’s term as envoy of the Quartet (US, UK, Russia, UN) has been marked by many photo opportunities but few, if any, accomplishments. Indeed, research shows that Blair’s relationship with one of the world’s richest men poses a clear and significant conflict of interest with his duties as Quartet envoy. Blair is close friends with Bernard Arnault, the chairman of the luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy Group (LVMH), and has refused to publicly disclose whether or not he accepted a paid post as adviser to Arnault, as reported in the media. LVMH has been implicated in benefiting from Israel’s occupation through its subsidiary, the cosmetics retail chain Sephora. At the end of May, the French-based Coordination des Appels pour une Paix Juste au Proche Orient (CAPJPO) (Coordinated Appeals for a Just Peace in the Middle East) launched legal action against Sephora because of its retailing of products made with stolen Palestinian natural resources in illegal Israeli settlements.
