Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Qualcosa negli USA sta cambiando...

...Ma non e' necessariamente una buona notizia
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10155
 Israel, Alone
The nuclear cat is out of the bag - and Olmert issues a warning...
by Justin Raimondo
Israel's long-standing policy of nuclear ambiguity came to an end the
other day when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in answer to a question
about his country's rumored WMD arsenal, replied,
"Iran openly, explicitly, and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the
map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they [the Iranians]
are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel,
Russia?"
Ha'aretz avers, "It is not clear whether this was a slip of the tongue
on the part of Olmert or an intended statement" - and his aides and
supporters are certainly scrambling to explain his comments away as a
linguistic mix-up. Yet, taken in context - not only the context of
the interview, but the context of Israel's present position - I would
argue the Israeli Prime Minister was sending a message not only to
Iran, but also to the U.S.
As a rebuke to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rants about wiping
Israel off the map, Olmert's is the perfect retort. Everyone knows that
Israel has at least 400 nukes, and it isn't hard to guess in which
direction they're aimed. Olmert is pointedly reminding the Iranians of
what everyone has known for quite some time. All the Israeli prime
minister has to do is give the order, and Tehran would be reduced to a
pool of molten glass.
The message sent to Washington - and, indeed, to the entire world -
is that Israel is making a clean break with the policies of the past,
based as they were on a strategy of economic, diplomatic, and military
dependence on Western allies. Israel feels it has been abandoned by the
West, including not only Britain but also the U.S. - and all bets are
off.
This fear of abandonment, although greatly exaggerated, is not entirely
unfounded. It is based on a sensitive reading of the political dynamics
in the U.S. and the threatened future of Israel's "special
relationship" with the Americans.
The Israel lobby in the U.S. has recently taken it on the chin four
times in a row, without so much as getting a punch in edgewise: it
started with the arrest and indictment of two top AIPAC officials,
Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, for espionage. They are charged with
funneling classified information, some of it high-level stuff, to
Israeli embassy officials. Then there was the Harvard University
research paper authored by professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen
Walt, documenting and decrying what they called "the Lobby" and its
distorting effect on American foreign policy. Now there's the
Baker-Hamilton commission linking the Palestinian question to our
"grave and deteriorating" prospects in Iraq, and, to top it off, the
Jimmy Carter book.
The Lobby is reeling. For the first time since the Eisenhower era, our
Israeli-centric policy in the Middle East is being openly and
successfully challenged. In the past, Israel's amen corner in the U.S.
has been able to effectively neutralize all critics by smearing them,
and the charge of "anti-Semitism" has been applied with an absurdly
broad brush to everyone from Gore Vidal to Pat Buchanan and all points
in between. However, this case is getting increasingly hard to make.
Are we now to believe that the U.S. Department of Justice, Harvard
University, Baker and the Bush I crowd, and Jimmy Carter are all part
of a vast anti-Semitic conspiracy?
Surely not. With the British endorsement of the Baker group's
conclusions, one would also have to include Tony Blair among the
conspirators. When Mearsheimer and Walt published their paper, the
Lobby likened them to David Duke. They can't pull that, however, with
Baker's wise men, a former president, and the British prime minister.
The Lobby has cried wolf once too often. Tony Judt, who has taken more
than a few hits from the tireless efforts of the amen corner, recently
noted the new atmosphere of glasnost when it comes to discussing the
"special" status of American-Israeli relations:
"What seems to me the case is that if you keep pushing, if you insist
there at least be a discussion of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper ... even a
discussion about the failure to discuss it, something does change. And
it seems to me there's a shift."
The Israelis recognize this shift, and Olmert's alleged slip of the
tongue is their answer. The "clean break" strategy embraced by the
Israelis, predicated on the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the
Americans, has so far played out pretty much as outlined in a notorious
game plan drawn up by top U.S. policymakers, including neocon point-man
and former Defense Policy Board official Richard Perle, former Deputy
Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser,
currently Dick Cheney's top adviser on Middle Eastern affairs.
The agenda put forth in this widely cited 1996 document, intended as
advice to then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was
meant to confront the central conundrum at the heart of the Zionist
predicament: how to overcome its essential dependence on the West. As a
settler colony, implanted by force of arms and sustained by aid from
abroad, Israel has from the start been dependent on outside forces to
ensure its survival. What was needed, argued the Clean Breakers, was a
new offensive that would repudiate the concept of "land for peace" and
set Israel free from Western-imposed constraints. Invoking the "right
of hot pursuit," Israel would launch periodic invasions of Palestinian
and Lebanese territory - and set the stage for strikes against Syria
and Iran.
The road to Damascus and Tehran would run through Baghdad, however, as
the authors of "A Clean Break" put it:
"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey
and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This
effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an
important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means
of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."
Syria and Lebanon were seen by the Clean Breakers as the front line in
their battle to expand the frontiers of Israeli power. Following a
successful campaign to "redefine Iraq," it would be possible to
envision a "profound" shift in the regional "strategic balance of
power." Jordan would be drawn into the new order, and the Israelis
would succeed in "diverting Syria's attention by using Lebanese
opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon."
A decade after the Clean Break scenario was conceived, its policy
prescriptions read like prophecies. However, as the game plan
approaches its projected climax - an attack on Iran and/or Syria -
there are numerous indications the U.S. is bailing, and not only in
Iraq. The appearance on the American political and intellectual scene
of forces willing and able to challenge the Lobby's unquestioned
hegemony over U.S. foreign policy - especially when it comes to the
crucial [.pdf] Middle East - threatens to scuttle the Clean Break
scenario. Israel wants regime-change in Syria and Iran, while the
Baker-Hamilton folks want to open up negotiations with them over the
future of Iraq. And the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis on the Lobby's vanguard
role in fomenting war with Iraq is taking root. As the two
distinguished professors put it:
"Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the
decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some
Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any
direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated
in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure."
Citing Philip Zelikow's by-now infamous remarks that the war was really
all about the threat to Israel, and not the U.S., Mearsheimer and Walt
reference a report in the Washington Post that
"'Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike
against Iraq's Saddam Hussein.' By this point, according to Sharon,
strategic coordination between Israel and the U.S. had reached
'unprecedented dimensions', and Israeli intelligence officials had
given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD
programs. As one retired Israeli general later put it, 'Israeli
intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American
and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional
capabilities.'"
Now that the full disaster in Iraq is unfolding in all its bloody
viciousness and tragic futility, the Israelis are catching a lot of the
blame, and the power of the Lobby is being undermined, perhaps fatally.
The cord to the U.S., which has sustained Israel for so long, is in
danger of being cut - before Israel is ready to make the break. Iraq
is destroyed, but the front-line enemies of Israel - Syria and Iran
- are still left standing. Not only that, but Iran is moving ahead
with its nuclear program, and James Baker is whispering sweet nothings
in Bashar Assad's ear.
No wonder the Israelis have abandoned all pretenses of reasonableness
and are now threatening to plunge the Middle East into the throes of a
nuclear Armageddon. Israel is alone against the world, or so their
leaders seem to believe: cornered, they are revealing their true face,
snarling their resentment and defiance - their ire directed not just
or even primarily at the Iranians, but at U.S. policymakers.
Olmert has found the elusive "weapons of mass destruction" said to be
lurking somewhere in the Middle East, threatening the peace and
shadowing the land with the darkest, most ominous war clouds. We know
- now - they aren't anywhere in Iraq, and our own CIA tells us the
Iranians are a good 10 years away from acquiring nukes. No, they are
right where Mordechai Vanunu told us they were.
Would the Israelis ever use them? That is the question that we have to
ask in light of Olmert's unprecedented admission. After all, why "come
out" to the world as a nuclear power at this particular moment? Surely
the threat of a nuclear first strike against Iran is implicit in
Olmert's "slip of the tongue."
The Israeli conceit is that to equate a regime such as the one that
rules in Tehran with Israeli "democracy" is an obscene "moral
equivalence" that overlooks the obvious: after all, we can trust Tel
Aviv with WMD, but not the Iranian ayatollahs. Yet the growing
extremism dominating Israeli political life, as demonstrated by the
rise of such a dangerous character as Avigdor Lieberman, points to a
troubling trend that has culminated in Olmert's stunning announcement.
We are now about to experience the consequences -the "blowback" -
of our Israel-centric policy, which has fostered and nurtured Israeli
ultra-nationalism in the womb of the "special relationship." As in so
many other cases of aiding and abetting foreign "freedom fighters,"
we'll find we have created yet another monster. By the time this
realization dawns on us, however, it will, unfortunately, be too late.

 realization dawns on us, however, it will, unfortunately, be too late.
Potrebbe non essere troppo tardi se i tanti beceri pecoroni alla MMAX
iniziassero *da subito* a darsi da fare veramente nell'interesse di
Israele invece di fare i portatori d'acqua a chi lo sta portando verso
la rovina.

rovina.
...disse il portatore d'acqua antisemita per chi lo sta portando verso
la rovina...
-Stefano

rovina.
...disse il portatore d'acqua antisemita per chi lo sta portando verso
la rovina...
-Stefano

Cenolli Leda ha scritto:

Chi è lei, mi scusi.  Non sapevo che Pumbaa avesse una sorellina...

 which direction they're aimed.
Ma che è tornato Cristo?
Prima le atomiche erano 100, poi ho letto 200..
qui dicono 400.
Fanno come i pani ed i pesci oppure si sparano
numeri un po' a casaccio? ;-)
Per lanciare 400 missili, Israele non dovrebbe essere
tutta una zona di lancio?
Boh!
Ciao!
-- 
Avvertenza:
Dal 1 Gennaio 2007, il nome *CptKirk* verrà sostituito
da *Surak 2.0*.
L'indirizzo di posta, per il momento, resterà lo stesso

 Potrebbe non essere troppo tardi...
pensa in positivo. Il M.O. si autodistrugge nuclearmente. Il problema
palestinese cessa. Le risorse petrolifere sono a disposizione degli
"altri" (cioè noi, ma non volevo sembrare in conflitto
d'interesse).....
vabbè, un pò di materiale radioattivo nell'atmosfera, dalle piogge
acide alle piogge radioattive....
A proposito, hai letto l'ultimo studio che dice che entro il 2040 i
ghiacci artici potrebbero sciogliersi??
Prepara il canotto.....
Mr. X

 Prepara il canotto.....
A dire il vero, anche fosse..il mare salirebbe di max 40 centimetri
quindi bastano degli stivali, ma poi non hai letto l'articolo
su 
scienze.it
.
Una guerra nucleare (anche locale) alzerebbe tanta di quella polvere
che farebbe cadere le temperature per anni (come fanno anche i
vulcani)


Mr. X ha scritto:

Figurati, sto vendendo la casa al mare e la multiproprietà a Posillipo
e ora abito in collina (sono previsti 7-11 metri di aumento del livello
dei mari, dunque dall'acqua sono al sicuro).

 livello dei mari, dunque dall'acqua sono al sicuro).
Maremma boia che 'gnuranza!
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/it/oceani/surriscaldamento-globale
Venitemi a dire che questo mo' č "ottimista"
"Nei prossimi cento anni si prevede un aumento del livello medio
del mare compreso tra i 9 e gli 88 centimetri, a causa delle
immissioni in atmosfera di gas serra."
100 anni per 9-88 centimetri (quindi i miei 40 di media)
poichč si parla dello scioglimento dei ghiacci "sensibili"
cioč parte di quelli della Groenlandia (quelli artici
galleggiando non cambiano i livelli) e quelli di montagna,
ma il grosso (Antartide e Groelandia stessa) viene
calcolato solo dagli allarmisti (e magari ci mettono pure
quelli delle nostre ghiacciaie del frigorifero) poichč
sono a temperature oltre i 20 gradi sottozero e
2 o 3 gradi di differenza non gli fanno nulla.
Ciao!
-- 
Avvertenza:
Dal 1 Gennaio 2007, il nome *CptKirk* verrą sostituito
da *Surak 2.0*.
L'indirizzo di posta, per il momento, resterą lo stesso