Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

News stories on the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report suggested new reasons to fear that Iran is closer to a “breakout” capability than ever before, citing a nearly 50-percent increase in its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium and the installation of hundreds of additional centrifuges at the Fordow enrichment installation.

But the supposedly dramatic increase in the stockpile of uranium that could theoretically be used to enrich to weapons grade is based on misleading figures in the Nov. 16 IAEA report. The actual increase in the level of that stockpile appears to be 20 percent.

The coverage of the completion of the installation of 2,800 centrifuges at Fordow, meanwhile, continued the media practice of ignoring the linkage between large numbers of idle centrifuges and future negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme.

The latest round of media coverage of the Iran issue again highlights the failure of major news outlets to reflect the complexity and political subtleties of the Iranian enrichment programme.

The IAEA report created understandable confusion about the stockpile of uranium enriched to 20-percent – also called 20 percent LEU (low enriched uranium). It does not use the term “stockpile” at all. Instead, it says Iran produced 43 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium during the three months since the August report and cited a total of 135 kg of 20-percent uranium now “in storage”, compared with only 91.4 kg in August.

Based on those figures, Reuters suggested that Iran might already be two-thirds of the way to the level of 200-250 kg that “experts say” could be used to build a bomb. The Guardian’s Julian Borger wrote that Iran was enriching uranium at a pace that would reach the Israeli “red line” in just seven months. …

Read on: truth-out.org/news/item/12883-iaea-data-on-sensitive-iranian-stockpil

These talking heads in Washington appear quite happy with the idea of a “hot war” between Israel and Iran. It feels to me like the American people are being prepared, or set up, for this coming attack on Iran.

Rick Rozoff from Stop NATO website reports that on November 12, two days before Israel launched the “Operation Pillar of Defense” attack on the Gaza Strip, the three-week-long Austere Challenge interceptor missile exercises held by the Pentagon and Israel in the latter nation ended. The largest-ever joint war games, with 3,500 American and 1,000 Israeli military personnel involved, tested the Israeli Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow territorial and the longer-range US Patriot and Standard Missile-3 interceptor systems.

This indicates to me that Israel and the US had in fact planned this whole attack in advance to create a “battlefield” test of the new Iron Dome missile defense system in preparation for possible use against Iran. …

Read on: space4peace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/cavalierly-talking-war-with-iran.html

Experts said conflict revealed Hamas’ capabilities and showed that the nation’s anti-missile system works.

The conflict that ended, for now, in a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel seemed like the latest episode in a periodic showdown. But there was a second, strategic agenda unfolding, said U.S. and Israeli officials: The exchange was something of a practice run for any future armed confrontation with Iran, featuring improved rockets that can reach Jerusalem and new anti-missile systems to counter them.

It is Iran, of course, that most preoccupies Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama. While disagreeing on tactics, both have made it clear that time is short — probably measured in months — to resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

One key to their war-gaming has been cutting off Iran’s ability to slip next-generation missiles into the Gaza Strip or Lebanon, where they could be launched by Iran’s surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, during any crisis over sanctions or an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States and a military historian, likened the insertion of Iranian missiles into Gaza to the Cuban missile crisis.

“In the Cuban missile crisis, the U.S. was not confronting Cuba, but rather the Soviet Union,” Oren said. “In Operation Pillar of Defense [the name the Israel Defense Force gave the Gaza operation], Israel was not confronting Gaza, but Iran.”

It is an imprecise analogy. What the Soviet Union was slipping into Cuba 50 years ago was a nuclear arsenal. In Gaza, the rockets and parts that came from Iran were conventional, and, as the Israelis learned, still have accuracy problems. But from one point of view, Israel was using the battle to learn the capabilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad — the group that has the closest ties to Iran — as well as to disrupt those links. …

Read on: www.startribune.com/world/180548631.html

“From the Kindertransport in Europe in the 1930’s to early childhood education and youth empowerment of Palestinians in Gaza in 2012, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) has dedicated itself to peace and service on behalf of all people, irrespective of their faiths and affiliations, where lives are impacted by violence, poverty and injustice.

“Quakers know from centuries of engagement against war and for peace, that violence begets violence. Quakers seek to speak truth to power, and at this time the balance of power is with Israel which controls the Gaza Strip through its illegal occupation and prolonged siege.

“We call for an immediate end to the use of force by all parties.

“Continued military escalation and violence will do nothing to make either Palestinian or Israeli civilians safer. We ask that International law be upheld, and that all those Israelis and Palestinians who work for peace be given the opportunity to move forward together towards a shared peaceful future.

“Quakers call on the international community to use its influence and diplomatic weight to act urgently to bring about a ceasefire to end the current violence. Knowing that there is a human face to this tragedy as it continues to unfold, we pray that all the people of the region be allowed to live in peace.”

The statement, signed by Paul Parker, Recording Clerk for Quakers in Britain, is being sent to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague and to the Israeli embassy and the Palestinian embassy in London.

Israeli hardliners joke about the periodic need to decimate each new generation of Palestinian militants as “mowing the grass,” a process underway again in new bombardments of Gaza. This ugly metaphor has also penetrated the think-tank world of Official Washington, as ex-CIA analyst Elizabeth Murray learned.

In early 2010, one of Washington DC’s most prestigious think tanks was holding a seminar on the Middle East which included a discussion of Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 assault on Gaza which killed about 1,300 Palestinians. When the death toll was mentioned, one expert on the panel smiled enigmatically and intoned: “It’s unfortunate, but every once in a while you have to mow the lawn.”

The remark, which likened killing hundreds of men, women and children – many of them noncombatants – with trimming the grass, was greeted with a light tittering around the room, which was filled with some of Washington’s most elite, highly educated and well-paid Middle East experts. Not a single one objected to the panelist’s black humor. …

Read on: truth-out.org/news/item/12801-likening-palestinians-to-blades-of-grass

The US missile defense shield based in Eastern Europe has been under heavy criticism from Russia. The shield – which is being put in place to protect NATO countries – has Russian officials questioning the United State’s intentions. Russia believes the US defense system is aimed at their missiles and said the US must address their concerns or they will be forced to launch a pre-emptive strike to put an end to the defense shield. Bruce K. Gagnon, coordinator for Space4Peace.Org, joins us with more.

CAAB is on the Advisory Board of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space www.space4peace.org

Remarks at the biennial general meeting of the War and Law League in San Francisco on Armistice Day 2012.

I’ll try briefly to make five points.

First, there are clear laws on the books that make U.S. wars unlawful, along with U.S. threats of war and U.S. propaganda for war. The laws are either forgotten, ignored, evaded, or cleverly reinterpreted to reverse their meaning. But they could be enforced someday.

Second, U.S. wars are evolving in ways that make them violate additional laws without bringing them into compliance with any of the laws already violated.

Third, participants in U.S. wars face occasional prosecution at home or abroad for their specific actions, although those actions do not stray from the basic purpose of the wars.

Fourth, other nations are prosecuted for or would be prosecuted if they attempted the same behavior engaged in by the United States.

And Fifth, U.S. wars are launched and conducted by officials elected in an illegitimate system dominated by open bribery. …

Read on: warisacrime.org/content/us-wars-are-they-lawful

This film was made in 2005 – it describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military–industrial complex and its 50-year involvement with the wars led by the United States to date, especially its 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world.

It really sets out why CAAB was founded and why we exist today. We strongly encourage you to watch it – if you haven’t (it is long – 99 minutes but well worth doing) – just to warn you – it is harrowing.

More about the film: www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/main.html

Purchase on Amazon: US – UK.

The Lahore High Court has summoned the Pakistan government to immediately respond to the argument addressed in a petition against ongoing US assassination drone attacks in Pakistan. …

www.presstv.com/detail/2012/11/03/270294/petition-urges-halt-to-us-assassination-drones-in-pakistan/

Those are the words of former Chinese diplomat Jia Xiudong. And they reflect the thinking in the Chinese government, as best we can tell. They don’t appreciate Obama’s “pivot” to Asia, a bellicose posture involving surging American militarism in the region and antagonizing Beijing in the hopes that US hegemony will be maintained.

China already feels squeezed by American militarism in its backyard. But it’s set to get much worse: a video report [the video above] from former CNN journalist Mike Chinoy, a senior fellow at the US-China Institute at the University of Southern California, reveals that the Navy will aim to have “60 percent of its assets” in the Pacific Ocean. …

antiwar.com/blog/2012/11/05/how-the-us-turns-peaceful-exchange-with-china-into-a-casus-belli/