ZNet Blogs

As Dick Meister notes in the ZNet top page today, May Day (May First) "herald['s] the coming of Spring with song and dance" but was

I just read (briefly) an interview with Denis Rancourt, a professor at the University of Ottawa who claims climate change is not happening and that talk of climate change serves oil companies. My quick reaction is that this is like Michael Deibert on Haiti or Irshad Manji on Israel/Palestine and terror - reactionary politics wrapped up in some thin progressive language to either dupe or confuse leftists who would otherwise be the most solid advocates of progress (or decent survival).

    The United States -- sometimes alone, often with Israel, now most recently with
    the United Kingdom -- threatens to attack Iran.  Daily, the world's media report
    new U.S. troop, naval, and material commitments to the region (e.g., "bunker-
    buster" bombs to Israel, antimissile systems to allied Persian Gulf states, aircraft
    carrier groups, submarines, and minesweepers to nearby waters), along with a
    series of leaks of plans to attack Iran, and the latest preparations underway to execute them.  Although we do not know whether a full-scale U.S. aerial and/or ground attack on Iranian territory will occur, we cannot but recognize the gravity of the moment, nor of the fact that U.S. forces already occupy countries to Iran's east (Afghanistan) and its west (Iraq), both testaments to military conquests this decade alone. Whatever words may have been spoken by Iran's leadership, these U.S. actions are not empty bluster. Consider that the United States alone accounts for one-half of our world's war-making expenditures, maintains roughly 40 major military bases on foreign soil, and possesses an Air Force and Navy that encircle the globe and can strike anywhere decisively. Consider also that the United States possesses a peerless nuclear-weapons stockpile and means of delivery, including weapons that can be launched from land, sea, or air, as well as space-based satellites that encircle the globe, and point their watchful eyes at everything beneath.  Since it is the United States -- and not Iran -- that possesses the world's unparalleled means of violence, and since it is the United States -- and no other state -- that has employed them on a serial, even recidivist basis for many decades, we believe it time not only to acknowledge the threat posed by the United States, but to take a stand against it, before the United States commits yet another act of aggression.