US shoots down Russian missile defense proposals
RT | November 21, 2011
Russia’s Ambassador to NATO has said that Russia-US missile defense negotiations have hit an impasse, as Washington rejects Russia’s cooperation in the controversial project.
The United States has rejected every missile defense proposal offered by Moscow, Permanent Representative to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview with Echo of Moscow radio.
Washington has said “no” to the Russian idea of a common missile defense network, Rogozin said. More telling as to the true purpose of the project, perhaps, the US also refused to give legally binding guarantees that the system would not be aimed at Russia’s strategic nuclear defenses under any circumstances.
The United States and NATO have been working on a European missile defense shield to protect Eastern Europe from a rogue missile strike. Russia has warned the West that such a system, without full interoperability between NATO and Russia, will necessarily be viewed as a potential threat to its national security.
In May, during the G8 Summit in Deauville, France, President Dmitry Medvedev warned of “another arms race” unless the two sides reached an acceptable position.
Meanwhile, Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev ordered the negotiators back to the table to continue negotiations until NATO makes its decision on the missile defense architecture.
A final decision is expected to be announced at the NATO Chicago summit in May 2012.
Major push for Iran war by liberal Zionists and hawks
By Scott McConnell | Mondoweiss | November 10, 2011
Robert Wexler, former Florida congressman and a key Obama ally on Israel/Palestine issues, was one of the speakers at a Churches for Middle East Peace dinner last night. Wexler is a liberal Zionist, who (correctly) sees Israel’s long term interest in a two state solution, and has taken a lot of flack for defending Obama from attack by the Zionist right. But last night he was terrifying.
He began by saying he didn’t want to spend much time talking about the troubled peace process, about which there was little new to say, but Iran. What followed was a “Oh how it pains me to conclude this” analysis about how the US (not Israel) must launch a military attack on Iran, due to the progress Teheran has made in its nuclear program. Only then, Wexler said, in a line eerily evocative of the the neocons’ “road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad” line of 2002, will Israel feel secure enough to make peace with the Palestinians. Obama faces the choice of going down in history as the president who was on watch while Iran acquired nuclear weapons, or being the one who stopped it. An Iranian bomb would unleash all kinds of unknowable dangers in the Middle East, but the consequences of the US attack on Iran are knowable. Much as it pained him to say this (channeling the classic Israel “shoot and cry” trope) American military action is the most rational course. He closed by calling explicitly for “regime change” in Teheran.
None of this went over very well with our group. One former ambassador asked a pointed question about whether the Grand Bargain was possible, and when Wexler said it had been tried, the questioner pointed to the Obama administration’s dismissive reaction to the Turkey/Brazil initiative on Iran’s nuclear program. I asked, “While I agreed that the consequences of a nuclear Iran are unknowable, could he please tell us the consequences of a US attack, since he claimed they are knowable.” He didn’t answer, pontificating for three minutes on “what if they got the bomb” and then saying American military planning could game out the consequences of a US attack. One sentence.
A couple of thoughts. First Wexler made not even passing mention of a possible Israeli strike– he seems to know that Israel by itself doesn’t have the capacity to end Iran’s nuclear program or do very much more than damage Iran and stir up hatreds that will last generations. So this has to be an American operation. Secondly, he is a major liberal Democratic foreign policy figure, and Obama seems to rely upon him. It’s the first time I’ve seen a representative of this group call explicitly for American attack on Iran.
At my table, the feeling was that we were witnessing the opening volleys of a major new push for war, by liberal Zionists and liberal hawks. By supporting Obama on two states (not that it has made the slightest difference) Wexler has positioned himself as a necessary ally of the administration, so if he defected because of Obama’s reluctance to launch a war, it might be seen as politically damaging. I would like to think that Wexler has no influence in the Obama White House, but I don’t believe that. And he wants another American war on a Muslim country, consequences be dammed. His position is exactly the same as Richard Perle’s.
USA spending more on nukes now than during Cold War
RT | 10 November, 2011
Though it has been decades since the Cold War came to a close, the United States government spends more money on nuclear warheads now than it did during its stand-off with the Soviet Union.
As the US vows to cut down its arsenal of nuclear weapons, the amount the country spends annually on maintaining its supply is much more than America invested each year during the Cold War. Estimates suggest that currently the US puts around $55 billion annually into its nuclear weapons program, reports Mother Jones; by comparison, the cost of the nuke complex for the country during the Cold War ran at an average of only $35 billion each year.
Only three months into his presidency, Barack Obama said in April 2009 that he envisioned an Earth in the future fee of nuclear weapons. Just two years later, however, America’s arsenal of those warheads amounts to roughly 2,500 nukes ready to be deployed.
It was only less than two weeks ago that the United States finally dismantled its largest atomic bomb, the B53, which was said to be 600 times more powerful than the nuke that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan towards the finale of the Second World War. As that nuke was dismantled, Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Poneman told NPR that the bomb was a “Cold War relic” and showed the direction of dismantling that the United States was heading towards.
Even if the country is cutting back on its nukes, the United States has a backup stash larger than the active bombs, allowing for the country to in total have 5,113 nuclear warheads in its position. The surplus of not-quite-ready nukes is at 2,600, and though they cannot be deployed at a drop of a hat like the others, they can be reanimated as full-fledged warheads.
Peter Fedewa of the pro-disarmament Ploughshares Fund says that those nukes “could be ‘raised from the dead’ and brought back into deployment with relative ease.”
Under the START treaty that the US signed with Russia last year, both countries vow to soon enough limit their stash of active warheads to only 1,500. The document does not, however, say how many back-up nukes either country can have. In the interim, Mother Jones reports that the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas holds around 3,000 warheads that are on the schedule to be dismantled, something America used to do at a pace of around 1,300 per year. Last year, however, both Congress and the White House said that the country would cut back on the cost of dismantling the warheads and instead now invest the money on the upkeep of already dead nukes.
At the country’s current rate, dismantling the thousands of atomic nukes would take longer than a decade Joe Cirincione, a longtime analyst of nuclear weapons policy, tells NPR. Currently, only around 250 warheads are dismantled at Pantex each year.
It doesn’t help that the country is more interested in revamping the retired nukes than pulling the plug on them entirely, either.
In 2012, the country will spend $4.1 billion on the “refurbishment” of retired nukes, while only a fraction of that — $57 million — will be invested in dismantling them. That figure accounts for less than one percent of the country’s total budget for the nuclear program. In all, America’s nuclear program operates at a cost of around $55 billion, which is spread across the Departments of Defense, Energy and Homeland Security. Despite Obama’s instance on curbing the program, the tally of funding is believed to have gone up by around $3 billion since only 2008, which at the time accounted for five times the budget of the Department of State — or 14 times what the Energy Department spends on everything else.
“The same facilities that dismantle U.S. nuclear warheads are also refurbishing US warheads,” Cirincione adds to NPR. “And right now a decision has been made to prioritize refurbishment. So we’re actually building more nuclear weapons than we’re dismantling. That didn’t use to be the case, but it is now.”
When weapons are dismantled at the current snail’s pace, the risks in place are of immense danger as well. “There are very strict manuals on exactly what you have to do,” Hans Kristensen, spokesman for the Federation of American Scientists, tells MSNBC. “How much pressure can you apply to each screw, what kind of glue holds the chemical high explosives together around the spear of highly enriched uranium.”
Both Russia and America have agreed to have an arsenal of only 1,550 deployed nukes come 2018, only a fraction of the 22,000-plus on hand at the end of the Cold War. Obama told an audience in Prague in 2009 he aimed “To put an end to Cold War thinking,” adding that America “will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same.” As the country is investing more money in rebuilding nukes than kicking them to the curb, however, will the president follow through with his plea or will it be added to the list of other promises gone unfulfilled?
Keynesian Myths and Illusions
By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH | CounterPunch | November 4, 2011
The Keynesian view that the government can fine tune the economy through “appropriate” fiscal and monetary policies to maintain continuous growth at or near full employment is based on the idea that capitalism can be controlled by the state and managed by professional economists from government departments, that is, capitalism run by “experts” in the interest of all. Economic policy making according to this view is largely a matter of technical expertise or economic know-how, that is, a matter of choice.
The effectiveness of the Keynesian model is, therefore, based largely on a hope, or illusion; since in reality the power or control relation between the state and the market/capitalism is usually the other way around. Economic policy making is more than simply an administrative or technical matter of choice; more importantly, it is a deeply socio-political matter that is organically intertwined with the class nature of the state and the policy making apparatus.
The Keynesian illusion has been nurtured or masked by two major myths. The first myth stems from the perception that attributes the implementation of the New Deal and Social Democratic economic reforms that followed the Great Depression and WW II to the genius of Keynes. This is a myth because those reforms were more a product of the fierce class struggle and overwhelming pressure from the grassroots than that of the brains of experts like Keynes. The harrowing socio-economic turbulence of the 1930s generated momentous social upheavals and extensive working class struggles. The ensuing “threat of revolution,” as FDR put it, and the “menacing” pressure from below prompted reform from above—independent of Keynes.
As a relatively well-known academic/economist, however, Keynes provided the theoretical or intellectual rationale for the badly-needed reforms in order to save capitalism by fending off revolution. The auspicious coincidence of the publication of his famous book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), with the implementation of the New Deal-type economic reforms in the US and Western Europe provided Keynes with much more credit for those reforms and the subsequent economic recovery than he deserved.
The second myth is based on the view that attributes the long economic expansion of the 1948-1968 period in the US and Europe to the efficacy or success of Keynesian policies of economic management. While it is certainly true that expansionary government policies of the time played a big role in the fantastic economic developments of that period, other factors contributed even more to the success of that expansion. These included the need to invest and rebuild the devastated post-war economies around the world, the need to supply the vast post-war global demand for consumer as well as capital goods, lack of competition for US products and capital in global markets—in short, the fact that there was enormous room for growth and expansion in the immediate post-war period.
Harboring these myths and illusions, many Keynesian economists envisioned a silver-lining in the 2008 financial meltdown and the ensuing economic crisis. For, in the “crisis of Neoliberal economics,” they saw an opportunity for a new dawn of Keynesian economics, or the coming of a second New Deal. Well-known Keynesians such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Dean Baker wrote (and continue to write) passionately on the need to revive Keynesian policies, to implement extensive stimulus packages, to reinstate the Glass Steagall Act and other regulatory measures that were put in place in response to the Great Depression. The excitement on the part of many Keynesians about the prospects of what they perceived as an almost automatic switching of policy gears from Neoliberal to Keynesian economics led George Melloan of the Wall Street Journal to write (sarcastically) “We’re all Keynesian’s Again.”
More than three years later, it is abundantly clear that Keynesian policy prescriptions are falling on deaf ears, as Neoliberalism continues to keep Keynesianism at bay. Indeed, even the nominally socialist and Social-Democratic economies of Europe have adopted the unbridled austerity policies of Neoliberalism.
Shunned, Keynesian hopes and illusions have turned into disappointment and anger. For example, using his New York Times’ column, Professor Paul Krugman frequently lashes out at the Obama administration for ignoring the Keynesian policies of economic expansion and job creation and, instead, following policies that are not very different from those of Neoliberal Republicans. “The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing. . . . Think about it: Where are the big public works projects? Where are the armies of government workers? There are actually half a million fewer government employees now than there were when Mr. Obama took office.”
Let me repeat the essential part of Professor Krugman’s statement: “The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing.” This is exactly what I call Keynesian illusion: the belief in the ability of government to control and/or manage capitalism; the perception that government “could and should” invest in job creation but, somehow, does not do it now. Yes, a government could and should invest in job creation; but that would be a different government, a disinterested government independent of special interests, not the Obama administration (or the US government more broadly) that is beholden to the big money for its election/reelection. It is true that a capitalist government may occasionally invest in economic growth and job creation; but those would be occasions when such policies are perceived to be also serving the interests of the ruling class (as in the aftermath of the Great Depression and WWII).
It is obvious that the Keynesians’ disgust with the Neoliberal policies of the government of big business is misplaced. At the heart of their frustration is the unrealistic perception that economic strategies and policies are largely intellectual products, and that policy making is primarily a matter of technical expertise and personal preferences: economists and/or policy makers who are far-sighted, good-hearted, or better equipped with “smart” ideas would opt for “good” or Keynesian-type capitalism; while those lacking such admirable qualities would foolishly or misguidedly or heartlessly choose “bad” or “Neoliberal capitalism” [1].
As I have pointed out in an earlier critique of Keynesian economics, it is not a matter of “bad” vs. “good” policy; it is a matter of class policy. Keynesians are angry because they tend to be oblivious or shy away from the politics of class, that is, the politics of policy making. Instead, they seem to think that economic policy making results mainly from a battle of ideas and theories, and they are disappointed because they are losing that battle.
Professor Krugman passionately writes, “Where are the big public works projects? Where are the armies of government workers?” What he fails to mention is that those “armies of government workers” were put to work not courtesy of FDR, or because of Keynes’ brilliant ideas (in fact, when the FDR administration initially embarked on the implementation of the extensive public works projects it did not even know Keynes was alive), but because much larger armies of workers and other grassroots threatened the capitalist system by persistently marching in the streets and demanding jobs. It is interesting that many Keynesian economists admirably fight (of course, in the realm of ideas) for the rights of workers but shy away from calling on them to rise up to demand their rights.
It is not enough to have a good heart or a compassionate soul; it is equally important not to lose sight of how public policy is made under capitalism. It is not enough to repeatedly bash Ronald Reagan as a wicked king and praise FDR as a wise king. The more important task is to explain why the ruling class ousted the wise king and ushered in the wicked one. Government policy makers are certainly not stupid. Why, then, did they switch from the policies of Keynes and New Deal economics to those of Reagan and Neoliberal economics?
The US capitalist class pursued the Keynesian-type policies in the immediate post-war period as long as political forces and economic conditions, both nationally and internationally, rendered those policies effective. Top among those conditions, as mentioned earlier, were nearly unlimited demand for US manufactures, both at home and abroad, and the lack of competition for both US capital and labor, which allowed US workers to demand decent wages and benefits while at the same time enjoying higher rates of employment.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, both US capital and labor were no longer unrivaled in global markets. Furthermore, during the long cycle of the immediate post-war expansion US manufacturers had invested so much in fixed capital, or capacity building, that by the late 1960s their profit rates had begun to decline as the capital-labor ratio of their operations had become too high. In other words, the enormous amounts of the so-called “sunk costs,” mainly in the form of fixed capital, or plant and equipment, had significantly eroded their profit rates [2].
More than anything else, it was these important changes in the actual conditions of production and the realignment of global markets that precipitated the gradual abandoning of Keynesian economics. Contrary to the repeated claims of the liberal/Keynesian partisans, it was not Ronald Reagan’s ideas or schemes that lay behind the plans of dismantling the New Deal reforms (in fact, steps to hammer away at those reforms had been taken long before Reagan arrived in the White House). Rather, it was the globalization, first, of capital and, then, of labor that rendered Keynesian or New Deal-type economic policies no longer attractive to capitalist profitability, and brought forth Ronald Reagan and Neoliberal austerity economics [3].
Karl Marx argued long ago that dreams of an egalitarian socialist society to supplant capitalism could not be realized unless (a) conscious political actions are taken toward that end (i.e., there is not such a thing as automatic collapse of capitalism), and (b) such actions are carried out on a global level. In light of the relentless Neoliberal austerity race to the bottom that globalization has unleashed in recent years and decades, it is obvious that Marx’s provisos for meaningful social change applies not only to radical socialist ideals but also to reformist capitalist programs a la Keynes.
References
[1] Many progressive/Keynesian economists call the protracted crisis that started in 2008 the crisis of “Neoliberal capitalism,” not of capitalism per se—see, for example, David M. Kotz, “The Financial and Economic Crisis of 2008: A Systemic Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism,” Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2009), pp. 305-317.
[2] For a relatively thorough discussion of this issue see Anwar Shaikh’s “The Falling Rate of Profit and the Economic Crisis in the U.S.”; in The Imperiled Economy, Book I, Union for Radical Political Economy, Robert Cherry, et al. (1987).
[3] For an informative analysis of this transition see Harry Shutt’s The Trouble with Capitalism: An Enquiry into the Causes of Global Economic Failure, Zed Books (1998).
~
Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism
The High Costs of Nuclear Arsenals
Instruments of Annihilation
By DAVID KRIEGER | November 2, 2011
Nuclear weapons are costly in many ways. They change our relationship to other nations, to the earth, to the future and to ourselves.
In the mid-1990s a group of researchers at the Brookings Institution did a study of US expenditures on nuclear weapons. They found that the US had spent $5.8 trillion between 1940 and 1996 (in constant 1996 dollars).
This figure was informally updated in 2005 to $7.5 trillion from 1940 to 2005 (in constant 2005 dollars). Today the figure is approaching $8 trillion, and that amount is for the US alone.
There are currently nine countries with a total of over 20,000 nuclear weapons, spending $105 billion annually on their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems. That will amount to more than $1 trillion over the next decade. The US accounts for about 60 percent of this amount.
The World Bank has estimated that $40 to $60 billion in annual global expenditures would be sufficient to meet the eight agreed-upon United Nations Millennium Development Goals for poverty alleviation by 2015.
Meeting these goals would eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality/empowerment; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop partnerships for development.
The US is now spending over $60 billion annually on nuclear weapons and this is expected to rise to average about $70 billion annually over the next decade. The US spends more than the other eight nuclear weapons states combined.
We are now planning to modernize our nuclear weapons infrastructure and also our nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. This was part of the deal that President Obama agreed to for getting the New START agreement ratified in the Senate. It may prove to be a bad bargain.
The US foreign aid contribution in 2010 was $30 billion; in the same year, we spent $55 billion on our nuclear arsenal. Which expenditures keep us safer?
Another informative comparison is with the regular annual United Nations budget of $2.5 billion and the annual UN Peacekeeping budget of $7.3 billion. UN and Peacekeeping expenditures total to about $10 billion, which is less than one-tenth of what is being spent by the nine nuclear weapon states for maintaining and improving their nuclear arsenals.
The annual UN budget for its disarmament office (United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs) is $10 million. The nuclear weapons states spend more than that amount on their nuclear weapons every hour. Or, to put it another way, the nine nuclear weapons states annually spend 10,000 times more for their nuclear arsenals than the United Nations spends to pursue all forms of disarmament, including nuclear disarmament.
The one place the US is saving money on its nuclear weapons is where it should be spending the most, and that is on the dismantlement of the retired weapons. The amount that the US spends on dismantlement of its nuclear weapons has dropped significantly under the Obama administration from $186 million in 2009 to $96 million in 2010 to $58 million in 2011. In the 1990s the US dismantled more than 1,000 nuclear weapons annually. We dismantled 648 weapons in 2008 and only 260 in 2010.
The US has about 5,000 nuclear weapons awaiting dismantlement, which, at the current rate of dismantlement, will take the US about 20 years. There are another 5,000 US nuclear weapons that are either deployed or held in reserve.
Beyond being very costly to maintain and improve, nuclear weapons have changed us and cost us in many other ways.
They have undermined our respect for the law. How can a country respect the law and be perpetually engaged in threatening mass murder?
These weapons have also undermined our sense of reason, balance and morality. They are designed to kill massively and indiscriminately – men, women and children.
They have increased our secrecy and undermined our democracy. Can you put a cost on losing our democracy?
Uranium mining, nuclear tests and nuclear waste storage for the next 240,000 years have incalculable costs. They are a measure of our hubris, as are the weapons themselves.
Nuclear weapons – perhaps more accurately called instruments of annihilation – require us to play Russian Roulette with our common future. What is the cost of threatening to foreclose the future? What is the cost of actually doing so?
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The Used Car Salesman, a Mexican Drug Cartel and the Saudi Ambassador
An Anatomy of Sanctioning Iran’s Central Bank
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH | CounterPunch | November 2, 2011
When on October 11, 2011, the Obama Administration claimed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) had attempted to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, many commentators expressed skepticism. Why would IRGC-QF, supposedly a professional organization, hire a used-car salesman, with a dubious background, to carry out such a delicate task on the US soil, knowing full well that if the plot is uncovered, there would be severe consequences for Iran? Why would those involved in the plot converse on the phone, knowing full well that such phone calls might be monitored? Why would they wire money for the plot via a foreign bank to a US bank, knowing full well that Iran is under severe US financial sanctions and any transaction originating from Iran will be scrutinized? These and a number of other anomalies made the story hard to believe. Indeed the story was so bizarre that in announcing the case FBI Director Robert Mueller stated that it “reads like the pages of a Hollywood script” (Reuters, October 11, 2011). Others, of course, saw it more as a Keystone Kops script.
The comical nature of the case made it appear so implausible that President Obama became defensive when he was asked about the issue in a press conference on October 13, 2011. In answering the question, Obama referred to the Attorney General’s “specific set of facts” and stated: “those facts are there for all to see. And we would not be bringing forward a case unless we knew exactly how to support all the allegations that are contained in the indictment.”
Even though comical, it is difficult, at least in the short run, to prove or disprove the US allegation against Iran. After all, when invading Iraq in 2003 the US government showed a set of evidence that at first was hard to disprove. It was only later that the set of evidence was shown to be fabricated.
In the absence of evidence to prove or disprove the US allegation, one might approach the issue from a different angle. If the plot was somehow concocted by the US—for example, the used-car salesman was entrapped—what was the US motivation? This question is much easier to answer.
On the same day that the US Attorney General and FBI Director went public with the alleged plot, the Department of Treasury issued a press release announcing the “designation” of not only the used-car salesman but four “senior” IRGC-QF officers connected to the plot. Among the four individuals was IRGC-QF commander Qasem Soleimani. As the press release stated, the Treasury Department had designated Soleimani twice before, once for “his relationship to the IRGC” and again for his connection to “human rights abuses in Syria.” Soleimani’s name was also mentioned as a “key person” involved in “nuclear or ballistic missile activities” in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747, issued on March 24, 2007. In addition, on June 23, 2011, the European council had announced that it is banning travel and freezing the assets of some Syrian individuals and companies and targeting three commanders of IRGC for supporting the Syrian government. Among these was Qasem Soleimani. Thus, it appears that the US was connecting a high profile character, such as Soleimani, to the assassination plot in order to make the case more significant and ominous. But why was the Treasury Department involved in what appeared to be a criminal case in the first place?
There was a partial answer to the above question in the Treasury Department’s announcement. The press release quoted David S. Cohen, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, as saying: “Iran once again has used the Qods Force and the international financial system to pursue an act of international terrorism, this time aimed against a Saudi diplomat. . . The financial transactions at the heart of this plot lay bare the risk that banks and other institutions face in doing business with Iran.” In his press conference on October 13, 2011, President Obama also gave a hint as to why the Department of Treasury was involved in dealing with the alleged terror plot and what the US intended to do about it. He stated that we will “apply the toughest sanctions [against Iran] and continue to mobilize the international community to make sure that Iran is further and further isolated and that it pays a price for this kind of behavior.”
A more specific answer became available on October 13, 2011, when Cohen gave his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. Cohen announced that the Department of Treasury is “weighing more sanctions against Iran’s central bank to tighten the financial screws and deepen the country’s estrangement from the international financial community” (Reuters, October 13, 2011). After this testimony, many news sources correctly realized that the US Treasury Department was intent to use the alleged plot to sanction Iran’s Central Bank or Bank Markazi. Some also realized that such a sanction might paralyze the Iranian economy, since Bank Markazi is the bank of banks in Iran, and sanctioning it is equivalent to immobilizing the US Federal Reserve System. Indeed, one AFP headline on October 14, 2011, read “US mulls Iran ‘sanction of mass destruction’”. The news report correctly pointed out that after “three decades of blanket US sanctions against Iran, it has become received wisdom that the United States has few financial tools left to bend Iran’s will.” One of those tools, the report went on to say, was sanctioning “Bank Markazi—which sits at the center of Iran’s financial and energy interests.” The report quoted Avi Jorisch, a former advisor at the Treasury Department’s office of terrorism and financial intelligence, as saying: “Essentially financial institutions around the world would have to choose between doing business with the United States and with the central bank [of Iran].”
What was missing from the above reports, however, was the history of the attempt by the US to sanction the Central Bank of Iran. Also missing, was the host of characters and institutions behind the attempt. Below, I will provide a brief account of the missing pieces.
After decades of sanctioning Iran and not bringing about the intended “regime change,” the neoconservatives, Israeli lobby groups and their conduits in the US government came up with a novel idea: sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran. In late May and early June of 2008, two resolutions were introduced in the House and Senate, which effectively called, among other things, for a US blockade of Iran and sanctioning of Bank Markazi. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) summarized the two resolutions on its website under “Stop Iran’s Nuclear Program” and called for action:
Members of the House and Senate have introduced resolutions (H. Con. Res. 362 and S. Res. 580) calling on the administration to focus on the urgency of the Iranian nuclear threat and to impose tougher sanctions on Tehran. The resolutions, introduced in the House by Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Mike Pence (R-IN) and in the Senate by Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and John Thune (R-SD), urge the president to sanction Iran’s Central Bank and other international banks and energy companies investing in the country. They also demand that the United States lead an international effort to increase pressure on Iran by curtailing Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum products. Please urge your representatives to cosponsor this critical resolution.
The Bush Administration, however, realized that the rest of the world would not go along with sanctioning Iran’s Central Bank. Instead, the Administration relied on the Treasury Department to sanction major banks in Iran and prepare the ground for sanctioning Bank Markazi at some later date. Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, who was well known for his connection to Israeli lobby groups and his personal war against Iran, was given the task [1]. Levey did succeed, and under his tenure, which lasted well into the Obama Administration, major banks in Iran were sanctioned. Yet, the neoconservatives, Israeli lobby groups and their conduits in the US government wanted more.
Sanctioning Bank Markazi became a campaign issue in the 2008 presidential election. As I mentioned in my pre-election essay, “What the Future has in Store for Iran,” in spring of 2008 John McCain, who was being advised by the neoconservatives, delivered a speech at the AIPAC conference in which he mentioned sanctioning Bank Markazi. “Central Bank of Iran,” McCain stated, “aids in Iran’s terrorism and weapons proliferation.”
He further stated that the Europeans “can help by imposing targeted sanctions that will impose a heavy cost on the regime’s leaders, including the denial of visas and freezing of assets; as a further measure to contain and deter Iran, the United States should impose financial sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran which aids in Iran’s terrorism and weapons proliferation. We must apply the full force of law to prevent business dealings with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
The push to sanction the Central Bank of Iran continued during the campaign season, and just prior to the presidential election of 2008 Senator Charles Schumer pressed the Bush Administration to impose financial sanctions on Bank Markazi (AP, November 6, 2008). Yet, the Bush Administration remained unconvinced that other countries would go along with the sanction and left the matter to be handled by the next administration. Stuart Levey, who stayed in his post in the Obama Administration, continued to lead the sanction campaign against the financial sector of Iran and waited for an opportunity to sanction Bank Markazi. Once he left office in March of 2011, the campaign was carried on by Levey’s deputy, David S. Cohen.
On August 8, 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that more “than 90 U.S. senators signed a letter to President Barack Obama pressing him to sanction Iran’s central bank, with some threatening legislation to force the move, an outcome that would represent a stark escalation in tensions between the two countries.” This, as the report noted, would be a drastic action, a “nuclear option” that if implemented, “could potentially freeze Iran out of the global financial system and make it nearly impossible for Tehran to clear billions of dollars in oil sales.” The letter, as the report stated, was co-sponsored by Senators Mark Kirk and Charles Schumer. It told the President:
We must do more to increase the economic pressure on the regime. In our view, the United States should embark on a comprehensive strategy to pressure Iran’s financial system by imposing sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), or Bank Markazi. If our key allies are willing to join, we believe this step can be even more effective.
As you know, the Iranian regime continues to pursue avenues to circumvent both U.S. and multilateral sanctions. In the banking sector, the Central Bank of Iran lies at the center of Iran’s circumvention strategy. In May, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen stated that “the activities of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) have been, and continue to be, a focus of the Treasury Department. Treasury has noted previously that the CBI and Iranian commercial banks have requested that their names be removed from international payment messages to make it more difficult for intermediary financial institutions to determine the true parties to the transaction, and we remain concerned that the CBI may be facilitating transactions for sanctioned Iranian banks.”
The time has come to impose crippling sanctions on Iran’s financial system by cutting off the CBI. There is strong bipartisan support in Congress for the imposition of sanctions on the CBI. As recently as consideration of the FY10 National Defense Authorization Act, the Senate unanimously supported an amendment urging you to impose such sanctions. We urge you to strongly consider imposing U.S. sanctions against the CBI and to encourage key allies to join us in this important action.
According to the above report, in an interview Kirk stated that “he would introduce a law by year’s end to enforce sanctions on Bank Markazi if the White House doesn’t move independently.” The report quoted Kirk as saying: “The administration will face a choice of whether it wants to lead this effort or be forced to act.” It also quoted Schumer as saying: “It’s time for the administration to use the tools Congress has provided and choke off the money spigot.”
The pressure was on and Under Secretary David S. Cohen had to find a plot to push for sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran. The used-car salesman, hired by IRGC-QF to arrange for the assassination of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador, was just that plot. It was now time to bring on board the rest of the world.
Immediately after the alleged plot, US officials, particularly Under Secretary Cohen, were travelling around the world, trying to convince other countries, especially those that were reluctant to sanction Bank Markazi, that the plot was real. On October 14, 2011, Harakah Daily reported from Ankara that a “US team will travel to Turkey soon to brief Turkish authorities on what the US says a clumsy plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States on American soil.” On October 21, AP reported that following the visit by two US officials to Turkey to “brief the country on evidence they have in the alleged plot,” Turkey’s foreign minister urged Iran to cooperate with the US. On October 24, 2011, the headline of a news item published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty read: “Top U.S. Treasury Official [Cohen] in Europe for Talks on Sanctioning Iranian Central Bank.” After his stop in London, the report stated, Cohen will take his message to Berlin, Paris and Rome. On the same day, AP reported the same news and quoted Cohen as saying: “Iran needs to be held accountable for this plot. . . We are going to continue to look at those financial institutions that are involved with proliferation activity for Iran and continue to try to isolate them from the international financial sector.” According to the report Cohen added: “Any further sanctions would also be part of efforts to deter Iran from pursuing nuclear capabilities . . . and could target the country’s central bank.”
In sum, the bizarre story of the used-car salesman, Mexican drug cartel, and the Saudi Ambassador is inextricably linked to the US-Israeli desire to sanction Bank Markazi. It is expected that this “sanction of mass destruction,” or “nuclear option,” will do the trick and will help to paralyze the Iranian economy. Down the line, it is hoped, the shattered economy will create the right conditions for the overthrow of the “Iranian regime” and its replacement by a US-Israeli friendly government.
What a way to bring about regime change!
Notes
[1] On Levey’s connection to the Israeli lobby groups and the role that he played in sanctioning Iran in the Bush Administration see my book: The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment, Routledge, 2008.
~
Sasan Fayazmanesh is Professor Emeritus of Economics at California State University, Fresno. Sasan is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusions (forthcoming from AK Press.) He can be reached at: sasan.fayazmanesh@gmail.com
Leaving Iraq?
By Ron Paul | November 1, 2011
It is not too often I am pleased by the foreign policy announcements from this administration, but last week’s announcement that the war in Iraq was in its final stage and all the troops may be home for Christmas did sound promising. I have long said that we should simply declare victory and come home. It should not have taken us nearly a decade to do so, and it was supposed to be a priority for the new administration. Instead, it will be one of the last things done before the critical re-election campaign gets into full swing. Better late than never, but, examining the fine print, is there really much here to get excited about? Are all of our men and women really coming home, and is Iraq now to regain its sovereignty? And in this time of economic crisis, are we going to stop hemorrhaging money in Iraq? Sadly, it doesn’t look that way.
First and foremost, any form of withdrawal that is happening is not simply because the administration realized it was the right thing to do. This is not the fulfillment of a campaign promise, or because suddenly the training of their police and military is complete and Iraq is now safe and secure, but because of disagreements with the new government over a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). The current agreement was set up by the previous administration to expire at the end of 2011. Apparently the Iraqis refused to allow continued immunity from prosecution for our forces for any crimes our soldiers might commit on Iraqi soil. Can you imagine having foreign soldiers here, with immunity from our laws and Constitution, with access to your neighborhood?
Some 39,000 American troops will supposedly be headed home by the end of the year. However, the US embassy in Iraq, which is the largest and most expensive in the world, is not being abandoned. Upwards of 17,000 military personnel and private security contractors will remain in Iraq to guard diplomatic personnel, continue training Iraqi forces, maintain “situational awareness” and other functions. This is still a significant American footprint in the country. And considering that a private security contractor costs the US taxpayer about three times as much as a soldier, we’re not going to see any real cost savings. Sadly, these contractors are covered under diplomatic immunity, meaning the Iraqi people will not get the accountability that they were hoping for.
While I applaud the spirit of this announcement – since all our troops should come home from overseas – I have strong reservations about any actual improvements in the situation in Iraq, since plans are already being made to increase the number of troops in surrounding regions. What we really need is a new foreign policy and there is no indication that that is what we have gotten. On the contrary, the administration fully intends to keep troops in Iraq, indefinitely, under a new agreement, while the Iraqis are doing their best to assert their sovereignty and kick us out. Neither are we going to be saving any significant amount of money. My greatest fear, however, is that this troop withdrawal from Iraq will simply pave the way for more endless, wasteful, needless wars.
Keeping Democrats on the Hook
By ALAN NASSER | CounterPunch | November 1, 2011
“I think it’s dangerous, this class warfare”
– Mitt Romney on OWS, Oct. 4, 2011
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) represents a nationwide movement-in-the-making that is independent of the two-Party duopoly. Both the movement’s staying power and its effectiveness depend crucially on this independence. The established powers are fully aware of the dangers implicit in a truly popular democratic, i.e. independent of the two Parties, movement. It is therefore on our agenda to beware of colonization by the powers that be. No one worries about Republican infiltration. It is the Democrats who have the most to lose by OWS. We can be certain that the Party’s operatives will attempt to incorporate the movement into an agenda that does not challenge the legitimacy of the Democratic Party by, for example, underscoring Obama’s whole-hog subservience to Wall Street, and the Party leadership’s acquiescence to the president’s across-the-board betrayal of his once enthusiastic acolytes.
MoveOn has already moved in. An effective Fifth Column can waste no time. The organization responded immediately to OWS’s much publicized presence and broad appeal -polls show most Americans sympathetic to OWS- by forming local groups across the country and never identifying with the already existing OWS, which is at this point no more than the unorganized aggregation of its local assemblages. So far OWS has no clear agenda, no pointed set of demands, nor a clear notion of the sanctions an effective movement would impose if whatever demands are ignored. These are the circumstances we expect a savvy mole to exploit.
MoveOn is a force to be reckoned with. It has developed a sizeable following and an effective communications network. Its principal bad guys are the Republicans; nowhere in its message do we find a statement of preconditions for electoral support of Democratic candidates. The premises implicit in MoveOn’s stance are three: the exclusive objective of big politics is to win elections, no one but a Republican or a Democrat stands a chance of winning a presidential election, and the Republican will always be worse than the Democrat. From these (defective) premises the conclusion does indeed follow that supporting Democrats goes without saying. In fact, it follows that we need not know anything more about a Democratic platform than that the Republican will be worse. MoveOn has bought a subscription to Democratic politics with an obligatory renewal clause.
The organization is in effect an arm of the Democratic Party. It creates a political space in which activists who might otherwise be building a Left political alternative to the Democrats can be seduced to remain in the Party. Accomplishing this goal has never been more urgent to the Democrats than it is now. Disaffection with Obama and the Party is rampant in liberal circles. But MoveOn’s meetings will never conclude that the Democrats’ performance demonstrates that working within the Party will not move us away from Uncle Sam’s multiple wars or toward national health care and a reversal of the tendency toward widening inequality.
Is it possible that deindustrialized, financialized American capitalism is incapable of delivering on the New Deal and Great Society promises that define postwar liberalism, much less on the demands of genuine Left egalitarianism? Could it be that the liberal-conservative, Republican-Democrat alternatives are now politically obsolete? Surely the historical moment has arrived when these questions are up for serious consideration. OWS could in principle address these issues by virtue of its independence of the Parties. MoveOn will not touch them.
The Democratic Party will brook no independent political tendencies. It will marshall its forces on whatever scale necessary to discredit and defeat perceived Left challenges. The Howard Dean campaign of 2003-2004 is a paradigm illustration of the lengths to which the Party will go squelch independent tendencies out of step with the Party consensus.
Dean’s initial issues were health care and fiscal responsibility, but disenchanted Democrats siezed upon his opposition to the Iraq war as their principal rallying point around his campaign. Dean quickly appropriated the momentum of growing anti-war sentiment and took it online with great success. “We fell into this by accident,” Dean averred later. “I wish I could tell you we were smart enough to figure this out. But the community taught us. They seized the initiative through Meetup. They built our organization for us before we had an organization.”
An independent grass roots movement-in-the-making had appropriated Dean’s campaign. Its impressive gains were acknowledged by the Washington Post, which reported in 2003 that “His rivals grudgingly concede that Dean … has clearly tapped into something. He is attracting the largest crowds of the nine Democratic contenders… His supporters arguably are the most intense for this early in the process, tens of thousands of them self-organizing in about 300 cities once a month.” By September 2003 Dean was the leading fundraiser among the Democratic aspirants. The organizer of an earlier Republican online effort, the e.GOP Project, admitted that Dean’s base was “ahead in the game. . . . Left of center organizations are showing more energy, innovation and more strength in numbers.”
The effectiveness of Dean’s grass roots base is all the more impressive given his support for NAFTA, Medicare cuts, and his identification with the politics of the reactionary Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), whose operatives set out to defeat the disloyal upstart early in his campaign. Especially threatening to mainstream Democrats were the findings of polls showing most Americans in synch with Dean’s opposition to the war and therefore out of step with the Party leadership, which was solidly in the Clinton, New Democrat camp. Along with fundraisers for the Democratic National Committee, the DLC began running a series of ads attacking front-runner Dean for his position on NAFTA and Medicare, and for his NRA support. There was of course no mention of Clinton’s championing of NAFTA, nor of his pre-Lewinsky plans with Newt Gingrich to initiate the privatization of Social Security.
The major media were happy to jump onto the Democratic establishment’s attacks. They had started going after him the minute he made a campaign issue of breaking up the corporate media monoplies. Their coup de grace was the invention of “the scream”, Dean’s shout of exuberance intended to cheer up his supporters at a post-caucus rally after the Iowa primaries.
For a time after the Iowa caucus the airways were running the scream non-stop, encouraging the perception of Dean as a crazed nutcase. In context Dean’s shout was all of a piece with the crowd’s yelling and hollering. The television crews recorded the event by plugging into an audio source picking up Dean’s microphone, not the sound of the room. The cameras zeroed in on a tight shot of the candidate; the rest of the room was unseen. The media never provided the wide-angle visual-auditory shot until after the desired impression had been foisted upon viewers. As CBS news online put it after the damage had been done, “In a nutshell, you are not seeing that Dean’s speech fit the tone of the room.” Here we see the unsurprising dovetailing of the politics of both the media and the Party.
Equally unsurprising was Dean’s joining forces after his defeat with the very scoundrels who had worked so hard to bring him down. Mission accomplished: Dean was effectively reabsorbed into Democratic business as usual. The Party remained unchallenged from the Left.
OWS is comparable to the independent grass roots movement-in-the-making that put Dean’s campaign on the political map. But it has identified with no mainstream political figure. There is no individual personality to function as a whipping boy to discredit the entire movement. OWS itself will surely be the target of a sustained Party attempt either to discredit it altogether by character assassination or to keep it within the Democrats’ ambit by, for example, incorporating it into MoveOn. The movement will face the choice whether to remain independent of Democratic control or to become either an appendage of MoveOn or a marginalized grouping in the wake of MoveOn’s growing organizational effectiveness. Considerable political acumen is called for. How shall OWS retain its integrity while incorporating into its political program, such as it is, a determination to resist the sirens of MoveOn or any other arm of the Democrats? This is not a rhetorical question; I’m really asking.
I’ve belatedly made myself part of OWS. No one in the movement knows exactly where it is going. How could it be otherwise, given the number of disillusioned, angry and frustrated citizens motivated by a broad range of scandals – foreclosure, bankruptcy, a health care catastrophe, loss of the bulk of retirement savings, unbearable student debt and job loss? OWS does perceive all this as directly related to the economic crisis, the record inequality currently afflicting the citizenry, and the administration’s exclusive concern with protecting the cynical and lawless financial plutocracy. The gaping disconnect between Obama’s promises and his real-world performance has produced a profound sense of betrayal. No wonder that many are impelled to express in concert some form of resistance.
I stumbled onto MoveOn’s organization here in Tacoma when I misread an announcement and ended up not at an OWS meeting but at MoveOn’s initial gathering. The people were seated, much like an audience, in front of a table where the two MoveOn representatives were signing people up. One of the reps was on the staff of Washington Democratic Representative Adam Smith (sic).
The MoveOn representatives were in charge. They announced that the group would be divided into seven smaller discussion groups. The two reps instructed the groups that they had twenty minutes to come up with a brief list of concerns. After this, a representative from each group would state his/her group’s main issues. These would be written out by one of the MoveOn reps and displayed for all to see. From these combined lists the group would select the issues to adopt as its own. It’s worth mentioning that while there were no students present, five of the seven groups listed the student debt burden as among their priorities.
When it came to our group’s list, one of us, a plumber, stated our three concerns: should we adopt an overarching slogan, like Ban Derivatives Trading or Reinstate Glass-Steagall (everyone in my group, composed of retirees, wage earners and small businessmen, knew what Glass-Steagal was), to write down or forgive entirely student debt, and whether our group should maintain its independence of the two Parties. The third concern was not displayed by the rep.
Another member of our group asked why the independence concern was not acknowledged, and by the way, why should we not join the OWS people who were at this moment occupying a park on Tacoma’s main drag. Is there any reason why we should not be united? The rep replied that OWS and “our” group were “two different organizations.” But why, another asked, should that make any difference to an issue on which the two organizations are in accord. “Well,” replied the rep, “there are many different unions aren’t there? It’s the same thing.” “Sure,” I chimed in, “but a company union is not really a union.” End of discussion, the reps decided.
At the time of that meeting, the majority of Democrats on the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the “supercommittee” whose principal agenda is to recommend the largest cuts in social spending they think they can get away with, had not yet announced its plan. Their announcement at the end of October turns out to be well to the right of the recommendations of the first incarnation of the deficit reduction committee, the National Commission On Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Obama appointed as co-chairs of that bipartisan team the fiscal conservatives and privatizers Erskine Bowles, at the time a director of Morgan Stanley, and retired Republican Wyoming senator Alan Simpson. Most of the remaining committee were ideological clones of the co-chairs; the Commission was a stacked deck. The day before his appointment Bowles said to The New York Times “There isn’t a single sitting member of Congress – not one – that doesn’t know exactly where we’re headed.” The same day, Simpson remarked to the Washington Post “How did we get to a point in America where you get to a certain age in life, regardless of net worth or income, and you’re ‘entitled’? The word itself is killing us.” (Feb. 17, 2010)
The Bowles-Simpson proposed cuts in social spending were as expected: $383 billion from Medicare and Medicaid. But the current Joint Select Committee Democratic majority beats that by $92billon; they’d slash a total of $475 billion. And they recommend about $850 billion less in revenue increases than Bowles-Simpson. The current Democratic plan features greater Medicare beneficiary cuts ($200 billion)than B-S and is eight times the level of Medicare beneficiary cuts recommended in Obama’s September 19 budget plan. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that “Since half of Medicare beneficiaries have incomes below about $21,000, it would be extremely difficult to secure $200 billion in savings from increased Medicare beneficiary charges without requiring significantly larger out-of-pocket payments by beneficiaries with incomes as low as $12,000 or $15,000.”
It is not enough to point out with due indignation that, in the words of an October 31 statement from the AFL-CIO, “Republicans and Democrats on the federal deficit “Super Committee” have called for big cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the AFL-CIO stands firm against cuts to these essential middle-class programs.” Of course both Republicans and Democrats want a reduction in the social wage, but the significance of the present Democratic stand is its more draconian recommendations relative to the predetermined reactionary position of B-S. Nor are we persuaded by our MoveOn liberals’ rejoinder that the Republicans dismiss the Democrats’ plan and demand even greater cuts. So what? Whatever the Democrats put forward, however poisonous it may be, the Republicans will always, on principle, demand something worse. Piling invective on the Republicans is not unworthy, but in this context it’s a distraction.
Keeping the Democrats on the hook should be implicit in whatever pointed demands OWS might come up with. That won’t happen if MoveOn has its way.
Alan Nasser is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He can be reached atnassera@evergreen.edu
Obama Justice Dept. Battles against Freedom of Information Act
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | October 31, 2011
The Obama administration wants to make it tougher for Americans to obtain government records by offering agencies more opportunities to deny Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
The Department of Justice has proposed 15 rule changes to the FOIA, which collectively represent a “huge step back for transparency,” says the Sunlight Foundation.
Among the amendments are changes that would allow federal offices to:
· deny requests that aren’t addressed to precisely the correct department (16.3 (a))
· summarily dismiss requests if they deem the wording too vague (16.3 (c))
· hide what part of the agency is responsible for filling requests (16.4 (e))
· reset their deadlines for responses any time they refer requests among departments (16.5 (a))
· make it more difficult for requests to be deemed urgent (16.5 (e))
· lie, and claim records do not exist, when they do (16.6 (f))
· make it easier for businesses to declare that information is a trade secret (16.7)
· disqualify most schools from getting FOIA fees waived (16.9(a)(4))
Obama’s DOJ Seeks to Weaken the FOIA (by John Wonderlich, Sunlight Foundation)
Comments of the Electronic Privacy Information Center to the Department of Justice (EPIC.org) (pdf)
New Rule Would Allow Government to Say Existing Records Don’t Exist (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
US to Reposition in Kuwait, Expand Presence in Gulf: Report
Al-Manar | October 30, 2011
The United States is planning to escalate its military presence in the Gulf after it withdraws its remaining forces from Iraq by year end. US Officials and diplomats have indicated that the actions could include the repositioning of its military forces in Kuwait so that it would be able to respond to any “security collapse” in Iraq or a “military confrontation” with Iran.
The New York Times published a report Saturday explaining that US President Barack Obama’s alternative to the US presence in Iraq would be a US military presence in Kuwait.
“With an eye on the threat of a belligerent Iran, the administration is also seeking to expand military ties with the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. While the United States has close bilateral military relationships with each, the administration and the military are trying to foster a new security architecture for the Persian Gulf that would integrate air and naval patrols and missile defense,” the NY Times’s report explained.
Quoting US Central Command’s Chief of Staff, Major General Karl R. Horst, the paper said that “the command is focusing on smaller but highly capable deployments and training partnerships with regional militaries… we are kind of thinking of going back to the way it was before we had a “big boots on the ground” presence… I think it is healthy. I think it is efficient. I think it is practical.”
Horst further explained that the training exercises that the “US is executing were a sign of commitment to presence, a sign of commitment of resources, and a sign of commitment in building partner capability and partner capacity.”
In parallel, Central Command’s Chief for Exercises Colonel John G. Worman noted that “for the first time, the military of Iraq had been invited to participate in a regional exercise in Jordan next year, called Eager Lion 12, built around the threat of guerrilla warfare and terrorism.”
According to the paper, a sample from the new US post-Iraq strategy that involves strong collaboration with the Gulf Cooperation Council, is Qatar and the United Arab Emirates’ sending of military forces to Libya as part of the NATO’s intervention there. Another sample is the sending of Saudi forces into Bahrain to assist the government in suppressing the public demonstrations.
This repositioning strategy comes after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced during her presence in Tajikistan last week that the US will have a continuing robust presence in the region, warning Iran against any intervention in Iraq after the US forces’ withdrawal.
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A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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