Getting tense innit. What with the Iranians arresting 15 British Marines and Sailors in disputed waters after the British had boarded a dhow to search for contraband cars. Blair has produced a map of the 'maritime boundaries' which Craig Murray, former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, calls a fake . He should know, having had direct responsibility for the sea boundaries when Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1989 to 1992 .

The Iranians are quite understandably a bit touchy at the moment about their international borders. There are wars going on in two neighbouring countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, being conducted by an Anglo/American alliance which has been making threatening military noises against Iran while building up its naval presence in the Gulf, 'surging' troops into Iraq and putting missile 'defence' systems in their client regimes like the Emirates.

And then there is the Black-ops being conducted inside Iran by both British and American special forces with finance and support from Saudi Arabia, that Seymour Hersh first reported a year ago and has updated for the New Yorker on March 5 this year. Tom Engelhardt thinks aloud why it is still being ignored by all other media. Its still going on and is highly coordinated with MEK, a terrorist organisation recruited from Iranians and which aligned with Saddam during the Iraq/Iran war of the 1980s. Further destabilisation is being promoted with ethnic and religious groups in Iran being bribed and armed by the USA.

 

Iranian diplomats and delegations in Iraq, recognised and welcomed by the puppet Iraqi government, have been arrested by US forces and Bush, on the 26th January 2007 gave carte blanche to his troops to shoot up Iranians in Iraq .  Six weeks following Bush's announcement, there was a suicide bombing of a Shia pilgrimage to Kerbala commemorating Arba'een, one of the holiest religious festival in the Shia calender. Estimates range of the number of pilgrims being up to 6 million, almost a third of the Iraqi population! I cannot find any news reports giving the nationalities of the pilgrims. By how much would Bush's words have dissuaded Shia Iranians from attending the festival and what odds that the bombing was Black-ops, considered sanctioned by Bush's remarks?

The UN, under extreme pressure from the USA, is passing resolutions that attempt to deny the Iranians their legal rights to acquire nuclear power. Whether one agrees or not with using nuclear power stations to generate electricity, Iran still has the internationally recognised right to exploit the knowledge and technology. The USA claims that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons with the knowledge despite Iran signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and being in compliance with it according to the International Atomic Energy Authority. Unlike such nuclear armed states as Israel, India and Pakistan which have not signed the treaty and which are therefore outside the remit of the IAEA.

Turkey is threatening to attack the Kurdish PKK across the border in Northern Iraq, further destabilising the Kurdish controlled area and with the potential of creating a refugee crisis on the Iranian border. There are reports of Israeli agents - transcript Seymour Hirsh interview at democracynow.org - supporting and training a Kurdish group in terror tactics to be conducted in Iran.

And all the while shrill talking heads in the media, shills for the racist Israeli government, are demanding that Iran should be destroyed because Israel feels it is facing an existential threat. Now, is that the existential threat which implies that they think they are being threatened so are, when in fact they are the one's doing the threatening when already having nuclear weapons? Does an existential threat mean I can physically attack someone because I merely think they are threatening me? Would I be diagnosed as paranoid or labelled, possibly gaoled, with the psychiatrically vaguer definition of 'personality disorder' if I did? Does a racist have a 'personality disorder' or do they hold to a political philosophy? Madness does truely lurk here.

On top of this is the 28 years of demonisation of Iran since the foundation of the Islamic state in 1979, when the people overthrew the corrupt and barbaric regime of the Shah and his secret police - Savak. Torturers and assassins trained by the CIA who imposed the Shah on the Iranian people in 1954 following a coup against the democratically elected Mossadeq government, and which was engineered from Langley. Done with the active invovlement of the British government whose 'interests' were being threatened when Mossadeq nationalised the oil. This history of course is not placed before the USA or British publics in any concerted way by our governments, schools or compliant media, instead we are fed a diet of lies about the character of the Iranian people, stereotyping their country and hence them, as "Islamofascist".

This demonising doesn't just apply to Iranians but all Muslims or those who can be thought of as Muslim because of the colour of their skin. The British Asian community, be they Muslim, Hindi, Sikh or none of the above, are living in fear because of the repercussions from this reactionary policy. A policy solely employed to gain control of the world's most important oil region for the benefit of a global and national elite. The poor of this Earth don't benefit, that's for sure.  

The mullahs did not enamour me at all in 1979. Once the Shah's state fell they went business like about annihilating the secular forces who were aligned with them in overthrowing the regime, and without whom it would not have been possible. Theocracy is still anathema to me, but that doesn't mean I think it should be defeated by bombing, because you can not kill an idea militarily with a bullet, only politically and then only by the people living under it leading the change. Bombing the Iranian people is designed to ensure the negation of any popular, democratic will to achieve that. The greatest enemy to imperial nations is a strong, popular and vibrant democracy.

Earlier this month an international meeting was held in Baghdad. The meeting was to discuss the stabilisation of Iraq and, "The conference brought together mid-level officials from Iraq's neighbours, the permanent UN Security Council members - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - and Arab countries." From Sydney Morning Herald . A lot was made of the fact that both the USA and Iran would be there meeting overtly for the first time and that maybe the confrontation between them could be eased. Not much happened.

Also, the USA has started making noises other than condemnation of the Palestinians and has agreed to meet with Palestinian ministers who are not members of Hamas. If I remember correctly, something similar to this happened just before the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Then Bush/blair made conciliatory statements about the Palestinians, holding out the possibility of some positive movement in their generations old struggle against racist Israel's occupation and annexing of their land. Once Iraq was invaded any commitment to the Palestinians was immediately forgotten and could be considered a cynical charade from the start designed to placate pan-Arab anger, dampen the world's anquish for the Palestinians and to divert attention from the build up to the illegal invasion. Which reminds me of that old two liner by General Sun-Tzu;
            
                                                                 "The Way of War is
                                                                        A Way of Deception."

Something else has been dropped into the equation though. On 10 Feb 2007 the Russian President, Vladimir Putin made a speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy. There was some interest in the western media and internet news outlets, with a few of them carrying edited translations of the speech which represented about a third of what he said. None though carried the Q&A session at the end of the speech. Interest by the media didn't last long and only really looked at a few phrases from the speech. Such as the following paragraph;

"We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?"

Important as such a slap is to US arrogance there are other aspects of the speech that deserve more consideration. Including NATO deployment of anti-missile missiles on the Russian borders despite guarantees to the contrary; European energy and trade co-operation; Iran and uranium enrichment and global security, most of which make sense in a multipolar capitalist world not a unipolar one. You can read all that here if you wish, I'm more interested in looking at something else neglected and which indicates a much more assertive response to the USA's attempts to make a world where they are the sole hegemonic power. The following is from the Q&A session.

QUESTION: I understand your sincerity and I hope that you will accept our sincerity. First of all, about arms control. Who needs a new arms race? I want to point out that the USA has not developed a new strategic weapon in more than two decades and that you recently tested the Topol-M missile, and that it is already deployed in silos and on mobile installations. You criticised the USA for unilateral actions and said twice that military actions can only be legitimate if they receive UN approval. The USA is carrying out military actions in Iraq and in Afghanistan according to UN decisions and today in Kosovo the majority of troops are supporting peace-making operations in this country.

My question is the following: are you saying that independently of how Russia perceives a threat to its international interests, it will not undertake military operations without UN approval?

ANSWER: Fine question, excellent! I am very grateful to you for this question. It will give me the opportunity to talk about the essence of what is happening. What are we indebted to in the past decades if there was a stand-off between two superpowers and two systems but nevertheless a big war did not take place? We are indebted to the balance of powers between these two superpowers. There was an equilibrium and a fear of mutual destruction. And in those days one party was afraid to make an extra step without consulting the other. And this was certainly a fragile peace and a frightening one. But as we see today, it was reliable enough. Today, it seems that the peace is not so reliable.

Yes, the United States is ostensibly not developing an offensive weapon. In any case, the public does not know about this. Even though they are certainly developing them. But we aren’t even going to ask about this now. We know that these developments are proceeding. But we pretend that we don’t know, so we say that they aren’t developing new weapons. But what do we know? That the United States is actively developing and already strengthening an anti-missile defence system. Today this system is ineffective but we do not know exactly whether it will one day be effective. But in theory it is being created for that purpose. So hypothetically we recognise that when this moment arrives, the possible threat from our nuclear forces will be completely neutralised. Russia’s present nuclear capabilities, that is. The balance of powers will be absolutely destroyed and one of the parties will benefit from the feeling of complete security. This means that its hands will be free not only in local but eventually also in global conflicts.

We are discussing this with you now. I would not want anyone to suspect any aggressive intentions on our part. But the system of international relations is just like mathematics. There are no personal dimensions. And of course we should react to this. How? Either the same as you and therefore by building a multi-billion dollar anti-missile system or, in view of our present economic and financial possibilities, by developing an asymmetrical answer. So that everybody can understand that the anti-missile defence system is useless against Russia because we have certain weapons that easily overcome it. And we are proceeding in this direction. It is cheaper for us. And this is in no way directed against the United States themselves.

I completely agree if you say that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is not directed against us, just as our new weapons are not directed against you. And I fully agree with my colleague and my friend about another thing. Do you know – and I will not be afraid of the word – that in spite of all our disagreements I consider the President of the United States my friend. He is a decent person and I know that today the wolves can blame the United States for everything that is being done on the international arena and internally. But I know that he is a decent person and it is possible to talk and reach agreements with him. And when I talked to him he said: “I proceed from the fact that Russia and the USA will never be opponents and enemies again”. I agree with him. But I repeat once again that there are symmetries and asymmetries here, there is nothing personal. It is simply a calculation.

And now about whether Russia will use military force without the sanction of the UN. We will always operate strictly within the international legal framework. My basic education is in law and I will allow myself to remind both myself and my colleagues that according to the UN Charter peace-keeping operations require the sanction of both the UN and the UN Security Council. This is in the case of peace-keeping operations. But in the UN Charter there is also an article about self-defence. And no sanctions are required in this case."

A rather long extract but one I think is quite important, if you ignore the bit about Bush "my friend" and the chill in the spine from the cold mathematics of nuclear war calculation. The missile referred to in the question, the Topol-M , and the one that Putin said can defeat any 'Star Wars' defence, will do just that. It's in service, though not in great numbers but will,  'provide the country with a compact and modern nuclear deterrent force by 2015-20, which will guarantee "unsustainable damage" to any potential first-strike aggressor'. (Jane's - my emphasis). The USA's Strategic Defence Initiative is redundant 18 years before planned completion. Oops! That's a bit flippant, especially when it marks an absolute limit to USA military might and the impossibility of 'full spectrum dominance', but what a waste of resources by the USA!

More importantly though, Putin has brought Russian nuclear assets into geo-political play. I don't think I exaggerate. At such a juncture in world politics, where the USA is threatening the use of nuclear weapons against Iran - "all options are on the table" - then Putin's words on Russian nuclear weapons capability have great relevance. So great in fact I think the speech was responsible for the proposed explosives test of 700 tons of an ammonium nitrate/fuel bomb at the the nuclear weapons test site in the Nevada desert - Divine Strake - being cancelled . Cancelled as a signal that a nuclear assault on Iran would not happen. This doesn't mean that a conventional war to try and annex the oil rich region of south-west Iran isn't being considered, or that such narcissists as the metronomic liar Dickhead Cheney (who still loves, let alone likes, his own reflection in the mirror for some reason), haven't given up their lusting to use nuclear bombs.  

A conventional war* is probably still being sought, the plans are in place and only require an excuse to action. Unless there is a major move away from hydrocarbon energy dependency and a major change in the USA's political culture, then the threat of force and its use to acquire a shrinking resource will intensify.

Is the stand off with Iran and the British over the Marines and Sailors an excuse that could trigger a war and how would Russia respond if Iran was warred against?

Israel tried to use the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Lebanon's Hesbollah as the excuse to destroy the Lebanese infrastructure last year. It has since been made public that Israel pulled the plans for the war from the shelf. As I said at the time ; "Excuses to implement Israel's already decided war plans are like buses - very rarely on time but one will come along eventually". And as I have said before about our relationship to the USA and its similarities with Israel's; "......and Britain - another country whose nuclear assets are in vassalage to the USA."

Every decision of Britain's relating to the arrested Marines and Sailors is determined by the USA. Being in a supine alliance with, and at war alongside rapacious USA capitalism for the control of the Middle East's remaining oil, make it so. What is making the situation with the British Marines tense is that reports are emerging of USA troop movements on the Iraq/Iran border as I write.

China cannot be ignored in this scenario. Their oil interests in Sudan are already coming under threat with the murderous situation in Darfur and to lose Iranian energy would be devastating to them, Iran is the second-largest supplier of their oil. The destruction of the redundant weather satellite , 600 miles up, by the Chinese with one of their own missiles, has put China on a par with the USA, who already achieved the feat in the 1980s. It threatens to blind the USA military who require satellite communication for their high-tech weaponry.

Putin's speech can also be interpreted as Russia giving the all clear to the USA to wage conventionally war on Iran, in that Russia will only use their nuclear weapons in self-defence against a direct attack on their territory. In a multipolar capitalist world it could be to Russian advantage that China's insatiable demand for oil is disrupted and the agreements they have with Iran scuppered. The price of oil is already rising with the uncertainty and any attack wrecking oil production and delivery from Iran would make China more dependent on Russian energy supplies, with potential for a tighter knit Shanghai Cooperation Organisation under the leadership of Russia. Blocs are being forced as the world gets more dangerous.

The people making these geopolitical decisions don't actually give a damn about the mass of humanity. Putin's answer, in the Q&A session above, was brutally honest in describing the process as 'like mathematics' and 'a calculation', as though devoid of any warmth for humanity. Unlike Bush/blair who are obviously involved with the same cold, inhumane decision making processes but can't find the honesty within themselves to say so, instead conjure up fantasies about doing God's will as camouflage for genocide. But then they have lied us to the precipice so why get honest now.

So what now? The system needs to be turned upside down by those at the bottom. That's not going to happen tomorrow but there are signs of hope that it can be achieved. Taking action for the benefit of humanity always brings hope and the movements are building, growing. Slowly, but growing.

In Ecuador 5th-9th march 2007, an international gathering of anti-bases activist was held and launched the 'International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases (No Bases)'. Declaration here . The reports from Medea Benjamin and Herbert Docena at Focus on the Global South, of the meeting and their first action at the USA's Eloy Alfaro air base in Manta, Ecuador, are pleasent reminders of the relationship between theory and action. One of the participants in the meetings and action had this to say, “Five years of organizing the World Social Forums and other meetings and we’re learning.”

It seems the imaginings emanating from the World Social Forum are rippling around the world and are more than dreams. Have the ability to be a material force. Hopefully.

Ordinary people are getting together and challenging the way things are. There is a vibrant and growing peace, movement recovering from the disappointment of not stopping the war on Iraq. They are carrying through a diverse range of actions from petitioning to occupying Senators offices to mass demos. Yet it seems it is not enough in the aggressor nations in the Middle East - the USA, Britain and Israel - to end their respective establishments coveting of criminal and murderous policies. It seems what is needed here is nothing less than a new state. Last October I wrote about where I thought it was coming from;

"Any new state will not just materialise out of thin air even if the capitalist social relations, codified by the present one dissipate like mist in the morning. It will be based on, and take its moral, ethical and cultural mores from something that is already in existence. For the want of sounding fanciful or mechanistic, I believe that it will be based on the matrix of civil society organisations that we have now or which are in the process of becoming. What new political instrument capable of representing this matrix - locally, regionally, nationally and internationally -  will be an organic expression of the needs of civil society not something imposed on it.....
 
......Civil society organisations have a reach throughout the body politic and impact on every bodies lives, especially the poor, alienated and disenfranchised, no matter how lightly or fleetingly. They act for and are run by the ordinary, normal majority of us, and reflect our wants and needs, be it by gender, race, culture, work, age, disability, sexuality etc etc.

From the Womans Institute - yes the WI - to the parent teacher association to the trades unions to international solidarity campaigns to allotment societies to the list is endless....,"

The anti-war movement has to be an integral part of this matrix and mostly is. All those attending demos or other actions are also involved in one civil society activity or another, and their examples and arguments are winning, bringing hope. Only by translating the popular opposition to the war into non-violent mass participatory civil disobedience and direct action will space be found for civil society to built the new political instrument/formation.

But that is not going to help with the present crisis and resolve the issue of the arrested Marines and Sailors in the short term. It could take an international effort of the sort Prof. Francis A. Boyle is putting forward . It is a recourse to the 1899 Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. It requires a signatory state to the convention to step in and offer mediation between Britain and Iran. Craig Murray, in a more recent post to his site, is saying that there maybe some movement at the FCO trying to get the British position back to reality.

The urgency of such a call by Boyle and movement in the FCO is apparent by the reports eminating from Mosnews.com , that Russian intelligence have evidence a war on Iran is planned for early April. Reports out of Israel are giving the date as Friday 6th April. So we could even see World War Three starting this Good Friday. Bush/blair are not that cynical - are they?

Stop the War Coalition is calling people to an emergency protest outside the gates of Downing Street at 6pm on the day of any attack on Iran.

 

We could be waking up to the smell of burning at 3 O'Clock in the morning, as was suggested to me last Thursday by a not unattractive woman on the surface. Engaged in conversation about a film again - The Exorcism of Emily Rose - which I have not seen. I had written in the previous post about recognising triggers that had been induced during  12 hours of lost time. The point about it is that once recognised the effects dissipate like the mist in the morning. So it looks like a change in cafe.

 

 

 

 

 

* DU - Depleted Uranium - will be used in any attack on Iran and can only be considered a 'nuclear' weapon, but the way nuclear, as opposed to conventional war is understood, is when nuclear explosions precede mushroom clouds and hundreds of thousands die simultaneously. Instantaneous mass murder.