New Internationalism

Timing of the recent escalation in tension between Israel and Gaza is not coincidental. It is a calculated move, Phyllis Bennis, director of the Institute for Policy Studies has told RT.

“The Israelis launched their attack shortly after the US elections and shortly before the US was about to swear in a president at the inauguration in January and just before Israeli elections were scheduled as well. So there is no question that it has everything to do with Israeli politics,” she says.

In this case, I think there are differences that are not small. The question of who gets appointed to the Supreme Court is the choice between whether we get a conservative centrist, which will be the likely choice of a second Obama term, or a right-wing extremist, which is the likely choice of a Romney presidency. That matters.

I vote on the basis of understanding what elections are all about. If you want to call it lesser evil, you can call it lesser evil. I call it using one tactic to avoid the worst options coming to more power. I would rather have the less-worst options coming to power.

The Middle East is undergoing an explosion of turmoil, but the United States is not at the center of it and has limited influence in shaping its outcomes, says Bennis.

“Let’s all take a deep breath and remember that it’s not always about us,” she wrote in a recent posting for the New Internationalism Project, which she directs at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank.

"I think [Mitt Romney] is looking for a way to distinguish himself from President Obama's foreign policy, and since he doesn't have a significant difference in the actual policy prescriptions that he's calling for, what he's resorting to is simply saying, 'President Obama isn't tough enough. His rhetoric isn't firm enough. He's leading from behind instead of in front.' But when pressed, what would you actually do? He's given out policies that are really not that different."

Most importantly, nobody dared to breathe the truth, lest it actually get out -- America Is Not Broke.

That's right, the debate was an exercise in ridiculousness that produced no insight, no plan, no inspiration, no leadership, no truth. We are rich. We have enough money to put nutritious food on the tables of the one in five U.S. kids who are hungry and undernourished. We have enough money to help the laid-off moms and dads make ends meet until they get another job.

 As Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies writes, the Israeli position is much more dangerous. “There is no accepted international definition of 'nuclear capability.' Usually it refers to some combination of access to enriched uranium or the ability to enrich uranium, and the scientific know-how to follow the how-to-build-a-nuke instructions that are pretty much all over the internet. Like every country that produces nuclear power Iran has all that.”

I think his message was aimed much more at President Obama and the American people, as well as his own constituency back home, more than it was at Iran directly or the General Assembly as a whole. His prop, as you have defined it, is a rather cartoonish sort of grade-school level poster of a bomb. And he sort of used this funny language where he said – this is a bomb, this is a fuse.