This is a lovely bold essay.
Academic speak, career speak and political speak are not in it.
Time to recognise that change comes not from the bourgeois who studies for promotion but from the thinker, the artist, the protester, the mother and father.
The former must be made to sit in the public service seat and not the leader's seat. The latter must be reserved for the people, for those who do sit in it are the people.

All of this is fine and good, but coming from the wrong direction. The Iran situation has little to do with nukes and even less about oil. It has to do with Iran setting up a trade in other currencies than US dollars. THAT is what it is all about. After all, North Korea has nukes and we are not threatening to bomb them if they don't give them up. Likewise Israel and Pakistan. All illegal under the Non-proliferation treaty.

No, the problem is the dollar falling from it's special slot as the world's petro dollar. If, no WHEN, that happens the Us empire is over, and the masters in Washington know it. Saddam was not invaded for W.M.D.s, he was killed because he was selling or going to sell oil for Euros. Gone! Gaddafi was trying to set up a new currency to be used in African countries for trade, and it was to be be based on gold. Gone!

Now we have the BRICS and others arranging for trade with other currencies and the Empire is panicking. They cannot be bombed into submission as several are nuclear countries and several are the Empires loan officers. And all are giving the Empire the finger.

I was sort of agreeing with this piece, until the author suggested that Iran give up their whole nuclear programme, simply as a result of Israel joining the NPT and getting rid of their nuclear weapons.
I have heard of "Eutopia but this is something else.
On a more realistic note, Israel joining/signng up to the NPT (and allowing full inspections) would be a start, and indeed is something which Iran has suggested in the past. The fact remains, that when these meetings take place, there is nothing offered to Iran, nothing on the table to negotiate with, simply a threat of sanctions/possible military action against them, if they do not give in to the demands of Israel/US.
As long as this scenario exists, then there will always be conflict and diplomacy will not be given a chance.

Great article. Exactly what needs doing - and I agree - free of politics and double-speak.

My wife and I were just up in the wee hours discussing the world situation, which directly affects our small family.

There seems to be so few who think like the decent man who wrote this article.

Social Darwinism seems part of life, much as I hate to admit this.

Necessity brings people together - shared necessity that is, but the rich seem almost a separate species, and regard the 99 percent as something disposable, in fact, in need of disposing of, as Lester Brown is right I think - five billion is the maximum carrying capacity of the planet just now.

And even when necessity brings the non-rich together?

Has not Katrina dispelled forever the illusion of the smiling and good-natured face of humanity?

Look around - what is it now, seventy percent can't even figure out that global warming is real and man made!

And we don't know how to eat, work or even play in a healthy manner.

I don't know Kumi - I see little reason for optimism.

Physically, I think the natural world is signalling that we are now in the mathematical position known as critical slowing down - just prior to a change of state.

Geo-politically - it would be laughable if it weren't so tragic.

The Iliad and the Odyssey got it right I think - and we have never developed the common sense to make things better. The UN is now, for me, a bad joke - and utterly incapable of delivering - thanks to geo-politics and the so called democratic nations, which have proven themselves so shallow as to be invisible.

Manysummits
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The only just and sane solution is for no country to have nuclear weapons or for every country to have nuclear weapons. The former is a much better solution.

PS: Israel's "ambiguity" regarding its considerable nuke arsenal (arse?) is unadulterated BS--they world knows it has them, and if they don't, how about then just letting in inspectors to verify?
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http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gandhi-on-jews-and-hitler-incredible.html

"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Iran could equally afford to dismantle its entire nuclear program in favor of smart energy systems, efficient energy use and renewable energy sources. This is not cheap rhetoric. It could be done, and would benefit Iran’s people."

Iran cannot back down from nuclear power because it would shrink their leaders' penises. It basically comes down to that.

We have a group of angry men from the west pounding their penises on their podiums and another group of angry men in Iran not willing to think with anything but their little heads.

Can Iran say Fukushima? Why would any sane country want nuclear power when for much less money they could have green, renewable energy.

But this won't happen because we have an entire planet dominated by the defective y chromosome.

Diplomacy is hard work with complicated processes and no guarantee of full-on success. "Shock and Awe," on the other hand, is simplistic "let's show 'em how much we can blow up and that'll scare 'em into seeing things our way," which is a common thought process among establishmentarian elites but never works. Bombing London didn't persuade the British to give up to Hitler, bombing Hanoi didn't cause the North Vietnamese to give up -- not at all. Japan was thoroughly bombed before Hiroshima-Nagasaki and wasn't ready to give up until the new nuclear technology showed that "shock and awe" can be taken to a whole other new level, now no longer new and astonishing.

That's why places like Iran and North Korea want nuclear weapons, so they can threaten to shock and awe other nations just like the global grown-ups.

Diplomacy is not going to stop Iran. Diplomacy is a plan that is intended to fail but gives the appearance of a "reasonable" attempt (from the perspective of the more powerful nations) to resolve the problem. Once diplomacy fails, the corporations have gained the justification to extract more wealth from taxpayers by launching a "pre-emptive" war to save the world from Iran. All the arguments about the availability of alternative energy strategies are beside the point that possessing a nuclear weapon gives power status. Iran will be attacked to prevent the achievement of that status and to gain control of their oil supply.

When Helen Thomas asked President Obama about Middle East Nuclear Weapons, he said he did not want to "speculate" but the State Department has reams of documentation regarding Israel's Nuclear Weapons.

In 2005, Israeli Nuclear Whistle Blower, Mordechai Vanunu told this author who became a reporter andis now a candidate for US HOUSE:

“President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’

“When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

“Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.”-

On 18 March 2012, Vanunu wrote, “the way to prevent any war with Iran is By demanding, making many programs about Vanunu's Freedom now struggle, and publishing again all the interviews, Videos, and Dimona Photos. Telling Israel the first step in the Path for M.E. disarmament is let Vanunu go NOW!!"

I am Eileen Fleming for US House and I approve of all of my messages.
http://wearewideawake.org
http://www.eileenfleming.org/

The best diplomacy the US could engage in would be to remove the crippling sanctions on Iran and place them instead on Israel, where they belong. Leave them in place until: 1) Israel ceases its belligerent rhetoric toward Iran and its other neighbors; 2) it leaves the Occupied Territories and ceases illegal settlement constructions; 3) it cedes East Jerusalem to the PA; 4) it grants the Palestinian Right of Return; 5) it recognizes the Palestinian state and compensates them for decades of oppression, murder, and humiliation; 6) remove its operatives from US soil. The Zionazis are a much bigger threat to the world than Iran, who hasn't attacked another nation in hundreds of years.

Iran wants what Israel has in Dimona and what we have in greater abundance than the rest of the world combine. We need a nuclear free mideast. Sooner or later an insane leader may initiate a nuclear war unless we get rid of the nuclear race.

Kumi Naidoo writes:
>>What about the so-called P5? The high-handed posturing of Iran’s principle accusers requires some scrutiny. They are the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. They are proof that nuclear weapons provide a seat at the top table of global security and thus power politics. Why else would Britain and France still have their own chairs? What right do any of them have to discuss illegal, so- called "preventative" attacks on a country?

Together they stand for over four decades of bad faith. Under the NPT they promised to disarm in return for all other signatories forgoing nuclear weapons. The P5 committed to negotiate away their deadly nuclear arsenals. They have not done so. Instead, they continue to invest; they continue to modernize their nuclear weapons and delivery mechanisms; they continue to undermine global nuclear non-proliferation efforts.<<

"Four decades of bad faith" is a perfect, but still way too charitable, way of describing the MO of the so-called P5! Universal nuclear disarmament is what the world needs, and that is one area where the so-called P5 will NOT go.

Some among the P5 are not even content with having the capability to destroy the world many times over. The USA, and the Obama administration in particular, is moving aggressively and relentlessly towards a first-strike advantage over Russia with its expansion of the "missile shield" citing the bogus threat from Iran! This is criminal and insane.

And this business about the so-called 'P5+1' including Germany clearly seems to be an attempt to preserve the status quo (all white, except for China) amid a clamor for reorganizing the UN Security Council with more permanent members inducted from Asia, Africa and South America. And Germany is also a leading member of the so-called "Quartet on the Middle East" -- the UN, USA, EU and Russia, with Tony Blair as the Quartet's Special Envoy!!!

Kumi Naidoo clearly highlights the bigger issue here: the hypocrisy and the double standard of the nuclear weapons states. His call for ‘Disruptive Diplomacy’ is a fine idea too and he has articulated what he means by that. But for that to become reality, some of the characters at the top will need be replaced first with those who really want to resolve the "situation" without war.

You know if the western world, Israel and Saudi Arabia were willing to close down all of their plants and destroy all their bombs, I could understand all this hooplah. But they're not. And from what I understand Iran is seeking to generate extra electricty to sell to Iraq, who the western world bombed back twenty years in development and who desperately needs the electricity. I don't see it in any way as a threat.

Much like North Korea trying to send up a satelite, aren't they entitled to one? Don't their cell phone users deserve a satelite of their own?