Bill Van Auken: Obama et al Determined for More War!

President Barack Obama used a visit to Washington's Holocaust Museum to unveil a set of new sanctions against Iran and Syria and to promote the administration's use of "human rights" as a pretext for aggressive war and regime change. The new sanctions target Syrian and Iranian intelligence agencies as well as telecommunications and Internet providers for use of information technology to monitor and repress political opposition. They have been rolled out under conditions in which the United Nations is deploying its monitors in Syria to oversee a ceasefire and as Iran prepares for a second round of negotiations in Baghdad with the PS+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) over its nuclear program. The timing of this latest round of sanctions, coming on top of a whole series of unilateral US and European Union measures aimed at crippling the Syrian and Iranian economies, strongly indicates that Washington is merely using negotiations with both countries as a cover for preparing war and regime change. Obama's executive order calls for Washington to impose sanctions on Syrian and Iranian officials for using information technology, including software to track cellphones and monitor Internet use, and to spy upon and repress dissidents. It would also punish what the US president refers to as the "digital guns for hire," ie, information technology companies that sell software and equipment to targeted regimes. "These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them," Obama declared!