Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine

If you read War Crimes Times, you know the story, and you know what to do. But even if you do, watch this 23-minute video for the often clever, and sometimes appalling, images.

If you don't know the story or what to do, viewing is mandatory:

The Supreme War Crime

"Israel, has hundreds of nuclear weapons, refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and will not allow the IAEA to inspect its facilities. It is also likely the guilty party for the assassinations of several Iranian nuclear scientists.  Yet, you don't hear the halls of Congress and the Oval Office resounding with calls for a pre-emptive attack upon Israel...." 

by Dennis Loo

The U.S. and Israel have launched punishing sanctions upon Iran and one or both have assassinated Iranian scientists. Sanctions are not a way of avoiding a war; they are a prelude to war; they are the beginning stages of a war.

Before the unprovoked attack upon Iraq by Bush and Cheney, some of us tried to alert the public to what The New York Times and others would not tell people: it is a war crime to attack a country that has not first attacked you, WMD or no WMD. Apparently, this was not among the "news that's fit to print."
Had the people learned this simple fact, then we could have avoided the more than a million Iraqis who have died violent deaths because of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and we could have avoided the more than 50,000 Americans who have died in the war, either of injuries inflicted in combat or afterwards due to suicides (with 18/day killing themselves because of PTSD and related grief and pain). 

Not only is it a war crime to launch an unprovoked attack on another country, it is the supreme war crime. Read the whole article.

Iran : Fact Checking the Media

by Dennis Kucinich

During an interview last month on CBS' Face the Nation, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta set the record straight on Iran: "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No." But if you read recent news reports lately, you'd think otherwise.

The media coverage on Iran is mirroring the coverage in the lead-up to the Iraq war: grand claims about a smoking gun that doesn't exist. For example, The New York Times incorrectly reported last month that the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran concluded that their nuclear program had a military objective. The paper's public editor, Arthur Brisbane, was forced to acknowledge their mistake and wrote: "Some readers, mindful of the faulty intelligence and reporting about Saddam Hussein's weapons program, are watching the Iran nuclear coverage very closely." Other media outlets such as National Public Radio, PBS and The Washington Post have been challenged on their coverage too.

A recent publication from the Center for Strategic and International Studies titled "The IAEA's Iran Report and Misplaced Paranoia," noted that "With few exceptions, these revelations are not exactly new. More importantly, neither is the thrust of the report: that Iran is developing some capabilities that can only be understood as preliminaries to the development of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, early coverage of the report's release gives the opposite impression."

Many have recognized that the media failed to do its job in the lead-up to the Iraq war. The potential consequences of treading on that same path with Iran are grave. The U.S. has thus far spent over $1.2 trillion of borrowed money on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military action against Iran would be disastrous for the region and for U.S. moral standing. A serious diplomatic track based on mutual trust and respect is the only way to achieve increased transparency.