Major Victory for Free Speech Rights

August 19, 2008, New York – A group of 52 local activists today announced a $2 million settlement in their lawsuit against the City of New York. The activists were illegally arrested on April 7, 2003 while protesting against the Iraq war in front of a military contractor's offices in midtown.

The Bush administration's possible blockade on Iran threatens a widened Middle East war.

I agree that: "it is ill advised to sacrifice the blood of our citizens for the terrorists in the White House..."

"I agree that: "a lost life is a lost life irrelevant whose it is.."

I agree that: "we cannot hear their cries.."

Important and major geopolitical moves indicate big things brewing in a developing Middle East war. Russia has moved forces into South Ossetia and a huge US naval armada is now heading for Iran as the world watches the Olympic Games.

By Prof. James Petras - July 30, 2008

On July 18, 2008 The New York Times published an article by Israeli-Jewish historian, Professor Benny Morris, advocating an Israeli nuclear-genocidal attack on Iran with the likelihood of killing 70 million Iranians – 12 times the number of Jewish victims in the Nazi holocaust...Morris is a frequent lecturer and consultant to the Israeli political and military establishment and has unique access to Israeli strategic military planners...Morris’ views are not the idle ranting of a marginal psychopath, as witnessed by the recent publication of his latest op-ed article in the New York Times.

CAIRO - For decades, the U.S. has jealously guarded its role of sole arbiter of the Arab-Israeli dispute. In light of recent shows of support for Israel by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama, however, many Arabs fear that Zionist influence on the U.S. body politic — across the political spectrum — has made the notion of ‘U.S. even-handedness’ a contradiction in terms.

By URI AVNERY - July 19/20, 2008

On Wednesday, [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah became the most important and powerful person in Lebanon. Three months after the crisis that almost caused a civil war, when [Lebanese] Prime Minister Fuad Siniora demanded that Hezbollah turn over its private communication network, Lebanon has become a unified country. Demands like the disarming of Hezbollah have become a pipe dream. Lebanon is also united in the demand for the liberation of the Shebaa farms [from Israel] and for the delivery by Israel of the maps of minefields and the deadly cluster bombs left by [Israel's] army after the second Lebanon war.

By Andrew G. Marshall - July 10, 2008

...[W]hy [was] Iraq...occupied[?]...If the answer is...to spread democracy and freedom and rid the world of tyranny and terror, then it doesn’t make sense that the British or Americans would orchestrate terror...However, if the answer to the question...was not to spread democracy and freedom, but to spread fear and chaos, plunge the country into civil war, balkanize Iraq into several countries, and create an "arc of crisis" across the Middle East, enveloping neighboring countries, notably Iran, then terror is a very efficient and effective means to an end.

Veteran Israeli peace activist, journalist and author Uri Avnery weighs in on the debate over whether a U.S./Israel attack on Iran is imminent.

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil leapt $5 to a new record high near $147 a barrel on Friday, spurred by growing worries of threats to supplies from Iran and Nigeria and the possibility of a strike by Brazilian oil workers next week.

By PATRICK COCKBURN - July 5/6, 2008

Iraq will be plunged into a new war if Israel or the US launches an attack on Iran, Iraqi leaders have warned. Iranian retaliation would take place in Iraq...The Iraqi government may be militarily dependent on the 140,000 US troops in the country, but its Shia and Kurdish leaders have long been allied to Iran.

By Naomi Klein - July 05, 2008

[Iraq's] invaders should be paying billions in reparations not using the war as a reason to pillage its richest resource.

By: Ian Sinclair | Winnipeg Free Press

[W]hile the United States is seen as a bellicose, aggressive superpower, many Canadians view their nation as the leading peacekeeping force in the world...This quaint picture of nation-building and development work sits uneasily with the cold facts of the Canadian deployment...

In reality...Canadian troops (in Afghanistan) fired an incredible 4.7 million bullets between April 2006 and December 2007...

By KAMRAN MATIN - May 23, 2008

Today the Kurdish people, particularly in Iraq and Iran, find themselves in a critical conjuncture. The American imperial project in the Middle East seems...to be compatible with the Kurdish national struggle whose strengthening directly undermines the state-classes of Iran and Syria where US seeks further ‘regime-change’. Given the brutality with which these states have treated their Kurdish sub-citizens the temptation to...side with the American project has been rather strong not only among the traditional Kurdish nationalist political parties but also among the ordinary Kurdish people.

By CONN HALLINAN - June 7/8, 2008

...[O]ver the past several months, a number of moves by the White House strongly suggest that the Bush Administration will attack Iran sometime in the near future...There is a certain disconnect to all this, particularly given last December’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluding that Iran had abandoned its program to build a nuclear weapon. The NIE is the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence services...However, shortly after the intelligence estimate on Iran was released, the old “into Iraq gang” went to work undermining it.