IRAN: US Regime Change Project is Immoral and Illegal

A symbol of America’s contempt for international law.

[Photo from the sleuthjournal.com]

By David William Pear

“We’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
-US General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO

 

Contemptuous of international law, the US makes no secret of its plots to overthrow the leaders of internationally recognized governments that reject the neoliberal New World Order. Iran is at the top of the US enemies list. The US has been at it since the 1979 Iran Revolution, when the Iranian people overthrew the US’s “our boy”, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah had become the US’s “our boy” as CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt referred to him in 1953, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower overthrew the popular democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Overthrowing governments is illegal according to US law and international law. It is also immoral if one believes in democracy, self-determination, and the sovereignty of nations, respect for human life, and the rule of law.

The Weaponization of Human Rights

The crushing economic sanctions now unilaterally imposed by the US on Iran are causing massive suffering and the deaths of thousands of Iranian civilians. The US response is glee that the sanctions are “working”. This is nothing short of barbaric siege warfare to starve the Iranians out. Under international law the Iran sanctions may be illegal, since they are not authorized by the United Nations. The collective punishment of economic warfare is immoral, economic terrorism and a weapon of mass destruction. Secondary sanctions that impose sanctions on non-US and non-Iranian financial institutions that transact business with Iran amounts to blackmail, especially since it is the US that violated the Iran Nuclear Deal, and not Iran.

Weaponizing human rights is a most cynical tool of US imperialism, especially since the US has a very poor record on human rights at home. While holding itself out in biblical terms as a “city on a hill” (Matthew 5:14-16), the US is not a model of John Winthrop’s Christian Charity, as politicians such as Ronald Reagan have opined. The US is the only developed country that does not consider healthcare a universal human right, and it has been steadily cutting FDR’s New Deal social benefits, while the rich get richer from tax cuts. In 2008 the US bailed out the banks, while millions of homeowners lost their homes. Over 20% of US children live in poverty. Basic human services that are the responsibility of government have been turned into cash machines by privatizing.

George H. W. Bush’s New World Order neoliberals and neocons despise any country that closes its doors to US corporate exploitation, and instead uses its own natural resources for the benefit of its own people. The US uses “human rights” to attack countries such as Venezuela, Libya, and Iran that consider economic freedom from need a human right.

One of the main reasons that Iran’s moderate President Hassan Rouhani negotiated the Iran Nuclear Deal was so that the lifting of UN Security Council economic sanctions would give Iran the much needed ability to increase social spending for the Iranian people. Instead, the imposition of even harsher US unilateral sanctions by the Trump neocon stacked administration has dashed Rouhani’s hopes, and makes the economic situation direr for the Iranian people. The nefarious purpose of sanctions is to make the Iranian people suffer so that they will become disgruntled and rebellious.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) is a right wing neocon funded and infested think thank that has been particular rapacious in attacking Iran. FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz has been previously hailed as “the architect of many of the Iran sanctions”, as reported by The Nation magazine, How the Anti-Iran Lobby Machine Dominates Capitol Hill.

As Robert Fantina has written in Counterpunch, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy is intensively lobbying for the US to sanction Iran’s “The Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order” (EIKO). One of EIKO’s subsidiaries is the Barakat Foundation, which is a charitable foundation that is concerned with social programs for the people. The Ayatollah Khomeini has described it by saying,

“I’m concerned about solving problems of the deprived classes of the society. For instance, solve problems of 1000 villages completely. How good would it be if 1000 points of the country are solved or 1000 schools are built in the country.”… The Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order.

Targeting human rights organization to “promote human rights” is a cruel oxymoron. It is weaponizing human rights at its worst, and attacks the most vulnerable people in a society.

Liberals often consider economic sanctions an acceptable, even humane, alternative to force. Nothing could be further from the truth, and progressive people everywhere need to recognize it. Economic sanctions are violence. The Geneva Conventions recognize that siege warfare and collective punishment against civilians are war crimes. How could something that is illegal in wartime be legal in peacetime? The International Committee of the Red Cross has often raised concerns about economic sanctions, including UN authorized economic sanctions.

What “interference” in other countries looks like…

The Western-made weapons surrendered by armed groups in Deraa are “material evidence of gross interference” in Syria, according to Russian Foreign ministry. The Syrian province was under militant control for years.

“Enormous number of Western-produced modern weapons and equipment was handed over by reconciled militants to the Syrian army,” spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, during her weekly news briefing on Thursday. “Different antitank missile systems, armored vehicles and small arms represent material evidence of gross interference in Syria.”

 

Stockpiles of surrendered Western arms in Syria a sign of ‘gross interference’ – Russia

 

PS

Russian doc on mopping up the rest of the terrorist-controlled areas:

 

North Korea Can Never Trust the U.S.A.

By David William Pear

 

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (i.e. North Korea) cannot trust the United States of America. The US does not keep its promises, honor its treaties and obey international laws. This is not opinion; it is the history of the US, beginning with the many broken promises and treaties with the Native Americans.

The US has broken promises and treaties in every corner of the globe. The US ignores the UN Charter, which is a treaty. It flouts international law, which is based on treaties. The US habitually starts asymmetrical wars, which is aggression and the worst of all war crimes. It destroys nations, leaving millions of people dead, dying, and in misery.

Libya was once a prosperous nation. Muammar Gaddafi was an eccentric dictator, but he had a love for Libya and its people. Under Gaddafi the people enjoyed a high standard of living, economic freedom, and gender equality. Education and medical care were free. Having a home and food was considered a human right. Libya’s oil wealth benefited the people.

Gaddafi was attacked and vilified by the US for decades. After the attacks on the US of September 11, 2001 Gaddafi cooperated with the US in the War on Terror. That is not to say that the War on Terror was a good thing, but Gaddafi was being US friendly. In further efforts to establish friendly relations with the US, Gaddafi denuclearized in 2003. President George W. Bush praised Libya for denuclearizing and suggested Libya as a model for North Korea. In 2011 President Obama wantonly destroyed Libya and conspired in Gaddafi’s assassination. Obama’s Secretary of State gloated afterwards “we came, we saw, he died…ha,ha,ha”.

Even if North Korea completely and forever denuclearizes Kim Jong-un can never be assured that one day the US won’t try to do the same thing to North Korea that it did to Libya. North Korea can never put its trust in the US, because the US has proved itself untrustworthy over and over again.

Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program since the early 1990’s. After the First Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein cooperated with the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors right up until the US invasion in 2003. The weapons inspectors advised against the invasion and recommended that the inspections be continued. President George W. Bush invaded anyway based on known lies that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program. After the invasion and destruction of Iraq, 1625 weapons inspectors spent the next 2 years searching Iraq and found no weapons of mass destruction.

The US continues to accuse Iran of having a nuclear weapons program even though the IAEA certifies that it doesn’t, and all 16 US intelligence agencies have said that Iran has not had an active nuclear weapons program since 2003. Facts do not matter to the US. It creates its own reality. Based on its own unreality, the US can invent any reason it wants to impose sanctions and invade asymmetrical countries.

Iraq denuclearized, Libya denuclearized and Iran denuclearized. The US invaded Iraq based on the unreality of the existence of nuclear weapons. Libya was invaded based on the invented unreality that the invasion was for human rights. The US has imposed sanctions on Venezuela because it does not consider it “democratic enough”. The US has imposed sanction against Russia because of its alleged invasion of Ukraine, after a US instigated putsch.

Hedges v. Trump

 

 

I was ready to give Hedges a pass when he went and flaunted his brainwashing and utter ignorance concerning 9/11. As large as Trump’s fans’ blind spots he has his own to match. Hedges’ cowardice in confronting the plentiful evidence of 9/11 Treason sinks his credibility. All the vocabulary and bluster doesn’t make up for a malignant position this critical.

It’s ALL a direct line from 9/11 to Trump’s fascism. The country died that day, and Hedges will never comprehend.

 

Russian General: ISIS Only Remains in US Controlled Areas

 

Breaking: ISIS terrorists are only present in US-controlled areas in Syria – Russian MoD

BEIRUT, LEBANON (12:00 P.M.) – The Islamic State’s (ISIS) last pockets of resistance are located inside areas controlled by the U.S. forces, the Russian Ministry of Defense Spokesperson Major General Igor Konashenkov said this morning.

“As for the current situation in the Syrian Arab Republic, we recommend the Pentagon chief to examine the map showing the situation in this country. All remaining pockets of resistance of Daesh terrorists in Syria are located only in areas controlled by the United States,” Konashenkov said.

Syria War Next Phase

 

Over 70 Syrian tribes declare war on US-backed forces, foreign troops in northern Syria

US proxy forces and troops are illegally occupying Syrian territory. This is a violation of the UN Charter, of International Law, and yet the US as the bully of the world has VETO power when it comes to illegal aggression.

 

Russian special commission exposes election meddling by US

 

The US has been the “main violator of international law” since the founding of the United Nations, and has “interfered more than 120 times in the affairs of 60 countries on all continents.” Washington’s closest allies – the UK, Germany, France, NATO, and European countries – are also to blame, since they either participate directly or support US activities, according to the document.

Funding NGOs & stirring dissent: Russian special commission exposes election meddling by US

NGOs operating in Russia have enjoyed a steady flow of funding from abroad, which spiked following the failure to discredit the 2012 presidential election. In 2015, for instance, politically active NGOs [inside Russia] received 80 billion rubles (around $1.3 billion) from the US alone, the report says.

Reality doesn’t fly on US corporate media, or with the mainstream dolts. This is, of course, entirely true and has been for your entire lifetime.