[cause the real reasons for them are obscured…]
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cause the real reasons for them are obscured by the rhetoric of humanitarianism.” The conference ap proved the May 20 mobilization with the lessons of NATO’s murderous “humanitarian intervention” into Libya fresh in mind.
The UNAC conference recognized that the U.S. gov ernment has placed Iran in its sights as a target for disruption—and possible armed attack. During her March 31 visit to Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Hill ary Clinton warned that Iran must yield to the U.S. challenge to its nuclear program, and that the “win dow of opportunity will not remain open forever” for a peaceful resolution of the crisis.
In the meantime, she said, the U.S. and its allies would increase their economic pressure against Iran. Clinton’s remarks closely followed President Obama’s announcement that news of Saudi oil production goals had cleared the way for the implementation of ever more extreme sanctions designed to hinder Iran’s ability to export oil.
These overt military activities are coincident with other economic measures designed to hold back so cial transformation in Egypt, where the U.S.-led Inter national Monetary Fund has negotiated a new $3.2 bil lion loan that will further impoverish and disempower the revolutionary-minded masses of that nation.
The UNAC conference highlighted Afghanistan as a nation that is still suffering the murderous rampages, night raids, and drone attacks that have accompanied the U.S.-NATO occupation.
Plenary speaker David Swanson reminded the au dience that one week earlier Hillary Clinton had told reporters that the war in Afghanistan could not be ended without first winning women’s rights. However, “already we have set up a government that endorses wife-beating,” Swanson quipped. “Perhaps once it man dates invasive ultrasounds, we can leave with honor.” The UNAC Action Plan declares that the Afghanistan war must end now, not in 2014 or after.
A key element of the conference was education about (R2P).
NATO is now explicitly understood to be the enforcer of R2P and the International Criminal Court the juridi cal arm. In Libya, all three elements were orchestrated to work together seamlessly for the first time and to ends that were the opposite of humanitarian. Key note speaker at the UNAC conference Andrew Murray, the chief of staff for the British public services union UNITE and a leader of the UK Stop the War Coalition, emphasized that the outcome was “a racist govern ment of gangsters” who have brought the Libyan peo ple little freedom.
The “Shifting Strategies of Empire,” the plenary that opened the conference, took up not only the attempts by the global 1% to expand NATO’s reach, but also the Obama administration’s decision to send combat troops to sub-Saharan Africa and to boost the U.S. na val presence in seas around China. Bernadette Ellorin of the Philippine solidarity organization BAYAN noted that Obama’s “return to Asia” is only the refurbishing of a U.S. military presence that has dominated the re gion for over 100 years.
The new buildup, which includes the blasting of the pristine environmental wonder of the Korean (continued on page 5, in “We’ll demand our right to protest within sight of the NATO Summit”)