Kindness suits them: Moment a fifth-grade football team rallies around bullied special-needs waterboy who likes to wear jackets and ties by dressing up like him | Mail Online.

One of our Partners for Peace – the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding -works on anti-bullying campaigns right here in Gainesville.

“Bomb Bomb Iran” sung by John McCain and his fellow Neo-conservatives has fallen of the Top Ten Hits for warmongers chart.  And according to Juan Cole this will benefit both our Allies in the middle East and the US.

The decade-long Neoconservative plot to take the United States to war against Iran appears to have been foiled.

In response for a loosening of sanctions, worth some $7 billion to Iran, President Hasan Rouhani undertook to freeze enrichment activities at their present level. He also pledged to cast Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 19.75% for the production of medical isotopes in a form that makes it impossible to further enrich it. Nor will Iran produce more 19.5% low enriched uranium. (Uranium enriched to 95% is suitable for a bomb, and the Western diplomats figure that 19.75% is closer to 95% than is the stock of uranium enriched to 3.5% to serve as fuel for the three nuclear power plants at Bushehr. Iran also agreed to do no further work on its proposed heavy-water reactor at Arak. (Heavy-water reactors produce plutonium, with which bombs can easily be constructed).

Ironically the Country with approximately 200  undeclared nukes is screaming over the first peace treaty with Iran in many decades.

Netanyahu was a cheerleader for the Iraq War. He is now deeply wounded that the US is making peace with Iran. He seems to see the US as his personal doberman pinscher, which he is used to siccing on his rivals in the region whenever they complain about his aggressive land thefts.

The irony is that in early 2003, the reformist Iranian government of then-President Mohammad Khatami had sent over to the US a wide-ranging proposal for peace.

The Neoconservatives threw the Iranian proposal in the trash heap and mobilized to make sure there was no rapprochement with Iran. David Frum, Bush’s speech-writer, consulted with eminence grise Richard Perle (then on a Pentagon oversight board) and Irv Lewis “Scooter” Libby (vice presidential felon Richard Bruce Cheney’s chief of staff), and they had already inserted into Bush’s 2002 State of the Union speech the phrase the “axis of evil,” grouping Iran with Iraq and North Korea. Iran had had sympathy demonstrations for the US after 9/11, and, being a Shiite power, feared and hated al-Qaeda (Sunni extremists) as much as Washington did. But the Neoconservatives did not want a US-Iran alliance against al-Qaeda or against Saddam Hussein. Being diplomatic serial killers, they saw Iran rather as their next victim.

Of course there is push back at home against diplomacy from our dysfunctional congress but History does not support many of their objections.

President Obama, eager for some sort of achievement for his second term, has every reason to accept a deal on Iran that involves a heavy inspection regime and gives reasonable assurance that Iran is not weaponizing its nuclear enrichment program.

Republican critics of the deal in the US Congress, who say no to everything, said no to this negotiation as well. They accused Iran of being the world’s primary backer of terrorism.

Really? The GOP backed the Mujahidin and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Contras in Nicaragua, the MEK in Iraq and Iran, and are backing the extremist Sunni rebels in Syria. They aren’t even skittish about allying with al-Qaeda affiliates, even today!

Hamas has largely broken with Iran. The only “terrorist” group Iran is backing is Hizbullah, which isn’t a terrorist group but a party-militia recognized by the Lebanese government as its national guard for its southern border, a border repeatedly breached by Israeli attacks (including an attempt to annex 10% of Lebanon, with a 20-year military occupation).

Even Israeli military intelligence sees some potential benefits to the agreement.

Besides, the US has negotiated and reached agreements with lots of authoritarian governments that support the use of terror, as long as it is right-wing death squads. It had even made up with Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, a serial terrorism-supporter, and put him on the CIA payroll.

The only question here is whether the agreement is in American interests. It is. Ever more severe sanctions increasingly risked war with a country three times as big geographically and 2.5 times as populous as Iraq (the American occupation of which did not go well). That danger is now receding, which can only be a good thing. And if negotiations and UN inspections can indeed

via US-Iran War Averted by Agreement to Negotiate on Nuclear Enrichment | Informed Comment.

In a 45-minute video posted on Tibetan websites Thursday, Tsuglag Rinpoche, leader of the Buddhist extremist group Kammaṭṭhāna, threatened to soon inflict a wave of peace and tranquility on the West.

Speaking in front of a nondescript altar surrounded by candles, burning sticks of incense, and a small golden statue of the Buddha, Rinpoche did not specify when or where an assault of profound inner stillness would occur, but stated in no uncertain terms that the fundamentalist Buddhist cell plans to target all Western suffering.

Its the Onion, of course!

“From New York City to London, Madrid, and Paris, we will not cease until every major metropolis is left in a state of total nirvana,” said Rinpoche, brandishing a pink lotus flower before claiming that Kammaṭṭhāna will seize any opportunity to aggressively instill a deep-seated sense of oneness in all Westerners. “We offered the unenlightened governments of America and Europe a chance to embrace the Eightfold Path, but you have refused. Now, we have no choice but to impose a peaceful spiritual reawakening upon you.”

And Homeland Security is on Orange alert:

several U.S. cities have been placed on high alert and authorities are watching closely for any suspicious peaceful activity in densely populated areas. “We do believe that Kammaṭṭhāna currently possesses the means to inflict widespread balance in the collective subconscious of an American city. However, we are doing absolutely everything in our power to prevent that from happening.”

“The danger of total enlightenment is very real,” Beers added. “And we must be prepared.”

via Buddhist Extremist Cell Vows To Unleash Tranquility On West | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has secured public support from nearly half the Senate, but not enough votes, for her proposal to give victims of rape and sexual assault in the military an independent route outside the chain of command for prosecuting attackers.Gillibrands solution for a problem the military calls an epidemic appears to have stalled in the face of united opposition from the Pentagons top echelon and its allies in Congress, including two female senators who are former prosecutors.Opponents of the proposal by Gillibrand, D-N.Y., insist that commanders, not an outside military lawyer, must be accountable for meting out justice.Even so, major changes are coming for a decades-old military system just a few months after several high-profile cases infuriated Republicans and Democrats.”Sexual assault in the military is not new, but it has been allowed to fester,” Gillibrand said in a recent Senate speech.

via Excite News – Senate showdown over military sexual assault bill.

Gotta Love Allen Grayson!  The only member of the House elected primarily by small donors.

Two Months ago, we were told that if the United States did not attack Syria, we would see a new era of chemical weapons warfare.

Yet here is last week’s Reuters headline: “Syria Meets Deadline To Destroy Chemical Production Facilities.”

Let’s celebrate.

Let’s celebrate the war that never happened.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to hold sad and somber funerals for young Americans who would have lost their lives fighting in Syria.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to nurse and care for the wounded veterans who would have returned from the U.S.-Syrian war.

Let’s celebrate Congress NOT having to appropriate billions of tax dollars in emergency spending to support U.S. military operations in Syria.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to attend bitter marches protesting the U.S. war in Syria.

Let’s celebrate NOT having to rebuild Syria’s roads and bridges and schools, so that we can have a shot at rebuilding our own.

Let’s celebrate peace.

via Hey, We Progressives Won Something. – Democratic Underground.

▶ The Boxer Simon & Garfunkel 1981 – YouTube.

Happy Veterans Day.  This seemed appropriate

From a WWII British Vet:

Why he will stop his visible remembrance

Over the last 10 years the sepia tone of November has become blood-soaked with paper poppies festooning the lapels of our politicians, newsreaders and business leaders. The most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts.

What he will do:

Next year, I won’t wear the poppy but I will until my last breath remember the past and the struggles my generation made to build this country into a civilised state for the working and middle classes. If we are to survive as a progressive nation we have to start tending to our living because the wounded: our poor, our underemployed youth, our hard-pressed middle class and our struggling seniors shouldn’t be left to die on the battleground of modern life.

via This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time | Harry Leslie Smith | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

▶ What Would You Do?: Anti-Muslim Harassment – YouTube.

Here is a video that represents the kind of veteran we can all be proud of.  He appears at the end of the video.

via ▶ Creedence Clearwater Revival – Fortunate Son – YouTube.

JUST A REMINDER!