Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Did Iran Have to Give Up So Much to Get So Little?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Did Iran Have to Give Up So Much to Get So Little?

Click here to access article by Ismael Hossein-Zaheh from CounterPunch.

The underlying logic for the Iran nuclear negotiations was (and continues to be) altogether preposterous: on one side of the negotiating table sat major nuclear powers who are all in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which requires them to have either dismantled or drastically reduced their nuclear arsenal; on the other side, an NPT–compliant country (Iran) that neither possesses nor pursues nuclear weapons—a fact that is testified to both by the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies. Yet, in an ironically perverse way, the culprits have assumed the role of the police, the prosecutor and the judge, shamelessly persecuting and prosecuting the innocent for no other reason than trying to exercise its NPT-granted right to peaceful nuclear technology.

For a sane approach to nuclear weapons in the Middle East, I recommend this article from Al Akhbar entitled "Former Knesset Member: We Possess Nuclear and Chemical Weapons" to learn what a Knesset member reportedly said in an interview with an Israeli newspaper: "It is time to exit the nuclear closet, (putting an end to the ambiguity shrouding Israel's nuclear program.) ..."either nuclear [capabilities] for all or for none."