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Veterans For Peace Appeals to Non-Alignment Movement Leaders: Stop War, Stop Sanctions on Iran
Peaceful Action Urged on Iran Crisis
With the Non-Aligned Movement meeting this week in Tehran, Veterans For Peace is urging the organization of 120 nations not formally allied with any major power bloc to take steps to deter the Israeli-American threats of war against Iran over its nuclear enrichment program.
APPEAL TO NON-ALIGNED LEADERS MEETING IN TEHRAN
FROM: Veterans For Peace
This is an urgent appeal from Veterans For Peace. We are an organization of U.S. veterans formed in 1985 to try to bring an end to war. VFP is a non-profit organization recognized by the UN as an NGO.
We are appealing to the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement to do everything in your power to head off a military attack on Iranin the coming weeks. Israel’s leaders regard the period between now and the U.S. election on November 6 as the most opportune time to virtually guarantee U.S. support for such an attack. And the continuing build-up of U.S. forces in the area of the Persian Gulf strengthens the impression of U.S. readiness to provide it.
Members of the Non-Aligned Movement in dark blue and observer states in light blue. (Graphic by Ichwan Palongengi)
As you non-aligned leaders meet later this week in Tehran, it seems time for plain speaking — and warning. Official statements by Israel and the U.S. assert, with cavalier nonchalance, that the “military option” against Iran is “on the table.”
Thus, Israel and the U.S. are, de facto, in open violation of Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, which prohibits not only the use of force but also the threat to use force against a country from which there is no imminent danger. Sadly, after such threats it can be a short step to the actual use of force, as we observed in the lead-up to the illegal attack on Iraq in March 2003.
The U.S. corporate-owned media is highlighting the same kind of “fixed” intelligence and facts used exactly ten years ago to “justify” the attack on Iraq. Even though in January both Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak, acknowledged that Iran is NOT working on a nuclear weapon, military action is still being blithely promoted as one option to deal with Iran’s “nuclear ambitions.”
We Veterans For Peace know what war is like. President Obama does not. His political advisers also do not. Besides, their attention is fixed almost exclusively on the upcoming presidential election.
What is most dangerous is that the White House threat/mantra that all options, expressly including the “military option,” are on the table is seen by Israeli leaders as tantamount to a pledge that Obama will feel forced to honor, giving them carte blanche for attacking Iran, with the full expectation of U.S. military support.
Veterans For Peace has been trying to warn about the mounting threat to Iran, but our warnings have been kept out of the U.S. corporate-owned media. Six months ago we sent an official memorandum to President Obama warning him that he needed to “talk sense to [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu.”
More recently, at the conclusion of our national conference on August 12th, we issued this statement:
“We reaffirm our solidarity with the Iranian people and urge the United States to lift the economic sanctions that were imposed on Iran. These sanctions are an act of war and are hurting the people of Iran. We demand that our own government stop its threats of war and we implore President Obama to state publicly and very clearly to Israel that the United States will not support an attack on Iran.”
Most Israelis and most Americans do not want war with Iran. As for the harsh sanctions on Iran, it is only the rhetoric of the governments in Tel Aviv and Washington and the parroting corporate media that have misled so many into thinking that sanctions against Iran are needed and morally justified.
Nonaligned countries are aware, better than most, of the suffering incurred by the imposition of such measures. Sanctions against Iran are no more justified than the ones imposed earlier on Iraq, which caused the deaths of at least 500,000 children under the age of five, according to the U.N.
The U.S. Catholic Bishops denounced that death toll as “unconscionable” in a formal statement on November 14, 2001. Madeleine Albright, in contrast, when she was U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., said she thought the toll was “worth it.” Sadly, that kind of thinking still prevails in the Obama administration.
The stringent economic sanctions imposed on Iran are equally unconscionable. And a military attack on Iran would be a flagrant violation of international law.
This is not a time to sit on the sidelines and watch events unfold. Accordingly, we appeal to the leaders of non-aligned nations about to meet this week in Tehran to move swiftly to do what they can to head off any military attack on Iran and to take a strong position against the economic sanctions.
In peace,
Leah Bolger, CDR, USN, (Ret)
President, Veterans For Peace
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An appeal to other crippled, subordinated, class systems requires specific demands, not abstract appeals. The appeal to "head off any military attack on Iran" seems specific, on the surface, but it is lacking in historical, strategic, moral demands. I wholly agree with your concern and using any agency to forward your concern against a looming nuclear holocaust, by Western fascist foreign policies and threats. One of the reasons the earlier attempts by the non alligned nations to Western imperial, corporate domination failed early on was that it clearly failed to come up with a social theory, social strategy, how to become independent, indivisible, as a social agency against class/Empire domination by Western Fascism, Imperialism, post colonialism, and ended up still co opted, corrupted, subordinated by the very forces it was trying to break from.
If I could suggest a theory and strategy on what it would take, not only for the subordinated Post colonial states, but all deformed subordinated class states, which once included the former Stalinist States, to make the case, that so long as ANY CLASS STATE, ALL CLASS STATES, even the dominant, Western proto fascist Empire alliances of Europe and Amerika/Israel, nation states,......DO NOT break from the grip of class hierarchies and the Patriarchal class mechanism, ALL STATES WILL CONTINUE TO BE FAILED CLASS STATES, ORGANIZED FROM THE TOP DOWN, IN A HIERARCHICAL PECKING ORDER INTO ENSLAVEMENT, FASCISM AND WAR... which defines the global, class system that prevents social control in toto. It is also why comparing any post colonial or previous deformed worker's state was completely fallacious, because it assumed social independence when it was its opposite, all comparisons being class outcomes, produced by the dominant global class/empire Matrix.
The demands to any agency trying to break from class/empire control must be organized as a truly social, independent, indivisible social agency, that produces a social agenda, social demands, which calls for the ELIMINATION OF ALL CLASS POLITICIANS, ALL CLASS PARTIES, even the subordinated, so called non alligned class nations, within their own class states by acknowldeging there IS NO ROAD TO FREEDOM, TO SOCIAL CONTROL, so long as any class states exist. ALL CLASS STATES are failed enterprises, failed class states produced by failed class history, which has long ago usurped social power, independent, indivisible social control for civil society by playing the false game , false rules of class history.
THEIR DEMANDS against subordination by other hierarchical, dominating, YET STILL FAILED CLASS STATES, THE WESTERN FASCIST WORLD, cannot be won by being itself a failed, and even weaker failed class state. The social agenda against fascist austerity, fascist Capitalism, Western fascist military alliances, must break through this CLASS/EMPIRE PARADIGM OF CLASS HISTORY by calling for a world wide REJECTION, END OF SUPPORT FOR ANY AND ALL CLASS PARTIES, ALL CLASS POLITICIANS, A GLOBAL BOYCOTT against class hierarchies for a global social agenda that turns right side up the Patriarchal class mechanism, back to the social historical mechanism, which allows social control over wealth and labor or the means of production, THE CALL FOR GLOBAL SOCIAL CLASSES, MIDDLE LAYERS, THAT ARE FREE FROM CLASS CORRUPTION, CLASS HIERARCHIES, THAT ENABLE PARASITICAL RULING CLASSES AND SYSTEMS.
THERE MUST BE A CALL FOR AN INTERNATIONAL BOYCOTT AGAINST NATO, AGAINST WESTERN CORRUPTED U.N AGENCIES, AGAINST ALL CLASS HIERARCHIES TIED TO THE MILLENIUMS OF CLASS HISTORY. A GLOBAL SOCIAL MANIFESTO AND AGENDA WOULD MAKE NOT ONLY THE NON ALLIGNED AN INDEPENDENT, INDIVISIBLE SOCIAL AGENCY, BUT IF EXTENDED TO THE BOWELS OF IMPERIAL, FASCIST WESTERN CLASS STATES, WOULD MAKE SOCIAL CLASSES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD POWERFUL ENOUGH TO FORM CRITICAL SOCIAL FORCES, THAT DISSOLVES THEIR CLASS/EMPIRE POWER....END THEIR WESTERN TOTALITARIANISM, MILITARISM, FASCISM.
CALL FOR A GLOBAL REJECTION OF ALL CLASS PARTIES, ALL CLASS POLITICIANS, BOTH WITHIN THE NON ALLIGNED, STILL FAILED CLASS NATIONS, AND THEIR SLAVE, WESTERN NATIONS, WHO TOO ARE FAILED CLASS STATES, OPERATING WITHIN A FAILED CLASS HISTORY. CALL FOR A GLOBAL BOYCOTT AGAINST ALL SO CALLED RELIGIOUS, SECULAR, "MAINSTREAM" CLASS PARTIES, BECAUSE CLASS SYSTEMS CANNOT BRING ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE, ANY MORE THAN ELEPHANTS CAN CREATE , BIRTH KITTENS. IT IS NOT THE NATURE OF CLASS SYSTEMS TO CHANGE THEIR NATURE OF ENSLAVEMENT, MILITARISM, AS ONLY SOCIAL INDEPDENDENT, GLOBAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS CAN END THIS CLASS HISTORY, ENSLAVEMENT, TOTALITARIANISM, MILITARISM AND FASCISM.!!!
A SOCIAL MANIFESTO AND HISTORICAL THEORY
http://asocialmanifestoagainstclasshistory.com
IF REVOLUTIONARY LIBERALS LIKE BEETHOVEN AND OTHERS KNEW THAT THE SOCIAL ENLIGHTENMENT WAS LOST TO ANOTHER CLASS SYSTEM, AND THE FAILED FRENCH REVOLUTION UNDER NAPOLEON, IT IS TIME FOR ALL SOCIAL THEORISTS, ACTIVISTS, TO REJECT THE NOTION THAT THE ENLIGHTENMENT ACHIEVED ITS GOALS, WHICH ALLOWS THE FALSE CLAIMS THAT CLASS SYSTEMS CAN BIRTH SOCIAL JUSTICE. SOCIAL CLASSES AROUND THE WORLD MUST MOVE BEYOND, REJECT ALL CLASS ELITES, CLASS PARTIES, CLASS POLITICIANS, FOR A GLOBAL SOCIAL AGENDA THAT DISSOLVES THE PARTIAL, DEFORMED MIDDLE CLASS SHOCK TROOPS ENCASED IN CLASS HIERARCHIES IN THE SERVICE OF COLONIALISM, APARTHEID, EMPIRE AND FASCISM. IT MUST RECLAIM THE SOCIAL HISTORICAL MECHANISM OF THE LOST SOCIAL MATRIARCHY, AND RECLAIM THE SOCIAL GOAL OF THE SOCIAL ENLIGHTENMENT, FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF GLOBAL MIDDLE LAYERS/"CLASSES" , COMPLETELY DEVELOPED, "VIABLE", HAVING DISSOLVED THE CLASS HIERARCHIES , THE BACKBONE OF ALL CLASS SYSTEMS LINKED TO THE PATRIARCHAL CLASS MECHANISM.