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.

By Senator Bernie Sanders

BURLINGTON, Vt., Aug. 14 – “We are now in the midst of the fiercest and best-financed attack against Social Security in our lifetimes,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned today on the 77^th anniversary of the most successful program in the modern history of the United States. “Hundreds of millions of dollars are now being spent to destroy Social Security and endanger the well-being of millions of Americans. We must not allow that effort to succeed.”

An Open Letter to Mr. Robert Greenblatt, Chairman of NBC Entertainment, General Wesley Clark (ret.), Producer Mark Burnett and others involved in “Stars Earn Stripes”:

By Kathy Kelly and Dr. Hakim

Two days ago, we spent three anxious hours in an outer waiting area of the "Non-Immigrant Visa" section of the U.S. consulate here in Kabul, Afghanistan, waiting for our young friends Ali and Abdulhai to return from a sojourn through the inner offices where they were being interviewed for visas to come speak to audiences in the United States.

By Robert Fisk, the Independent

Has there ever been a Middle Eastern war of such hypocrisy? A war of such cowardice and such mean morality, of such false rhetoric and such public humiliation? I'm not talking about the physical victims of the Syrian tragedy. I'm referring to the utter lies and mendacity of our masters and our own public opinion – eastern as well as western – in response to the slaughter, a vicious pantomime more worthy of Swiftian satire than Tolstoy or Shakespeare.

By Robert Fisk, The Independent

'Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' th' Tiger," Macbeth's First Witch announces, but Shakespeare got his geography a bit wrong.

By Reese Erlich, The Progressive

Dressed in military fatigues and carrying AK-47 assault rifles, the Zintan militia surrounded the building in Tripoli and entered without a fight.

By Hakim

I am grateful that the U.S. officials at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore considered my visa re-application in the light of the surprising write-in campaign on my behalf, and have kindly granted me a U.S. visit visa.

By Mel Frykberg

TRIPOLI, Jul 14 2012 (IPS) - “The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi,” Nasser al-Hawary, researcher with the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights tells IPS.