The International Monetary Fund has rejected a call by a US-based anti-Iranian group to cut its ties with the Central Bank of Iran.
The IMF said on Tuesday that its relationship with the Central Bank of Iran is based on its constitution, noting that Iran’s membership does not contravene US or EU sanctions on Tehran, AFP reported.
The anti-Iranian group also criticized IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde over her meeting with Central Bank of Iran Governor Mahmoud Bahmani on the sidelines of the semiannual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington in late April.
The US-based anti-Iranian group consists of former US diplomats and government officials.
IMF spokesman William Murray said, “According to our constitution… the IMF’s holdings of each member’s currency are maintained with the central bank of the relevant member, including Iran… There is nothing in the EU or US sanctions regimes that is inconsistent with these arrangements.”
Headquartered in Washington, the IMF is an organization of 188 countries working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.
Calgary – Activists and Academics are increasingly questioning the purpose of Canada having ‘hate speech’ laws to criminalize certain forms of speech.
Critics say such laws are applied inconsistently and often serve the interests of powerful groups whilst doing nothing to prevent the tide of Islamophobia that has swept Canada since the disputed events of 9/11.
‘I can tell you that headline wasn’t in Calgary….it could be in the National Post but I can tell you that didn’t originate in Calgary’
That was the response of Rick Hanson, Chief of the Calgary police when confronted by Press TV with a hateful headline claiming that Iraqis worship the devil, printed by one of Canada’s most prominent broadsheet newspapers. The question was prompted after the police chief had given a speech in which he had affirmed his desire to use controversial anti-Hate Crime legislation to stamp out prejudice and discrimination in the city of Calgary. Canada has Hate Speech laws which criminalize certain forms of speech that are deemed to be illegitimate by the Canadian state.
Press TV was interested to discover whether or not Hate Speech laws were being applied consistently in Canada, even to powerful elites who seek to demonize Muslims. The police chief’s response was terse.
Critics say that Hate Speech laws are not applied consistently in Canada as every day we see the mainstream media stigmatizing and dehumanizing Middle Eastern people with impunity. On the other hand those anti-racists who criticize Israel’s policies of genocide and apartheid are finding their freedom of speech to do so increasingly challenged with powerful pro-Israel lobbyists seeking to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
Press TV got in touch with a prestigious Canadian professor and member of the Canadian Islamic Congress who had tried but failed to invoke Canada’s Hate-Speech laws to prosecute a journalist in Canada who had disseminated anti-Islamic conspiracy theories in an article published in a prominent Canadian magazine called MacCleans.
It is clear that Hate Speech laws are controversial. And when such laws are being applied inconsistently and in a politicized or ethnicized manner experts warn that they can only have a negative effect on society.
Democratic elections in the NATO member states serve one clear purpose. They contribute to the self-satisfaction concerning “our values” needed to justify military intervention in the imperfect internal affairs of other countries. But do the citizens really decide policy through their votes, or is electoral democracy fatally corrupted by the power of money?
At least in its form, the French presidential election is a model of resistance to the power of money that so blatantly dominates presidential elections in the United States.
While the United States is locked in a two-party system where both parties depend on millions of dollars from rich donors, the French two-round system allows as many candidates as can gather the required number (500) of mayors’ signatures to run in the first round. Then voters can decide between the two front-runners in the second round.
For the final phase of the first round campaign, which ended with the election this Sunday, April 22, all candidates receive equal television time to get across their message, without having to pay for it.
This time around, there were ten candidates, five of whom had at least a chance at the start to make it into the second round, even though polls showed the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialist Party candidate François Hollande leading the pack. But an upset was at least theoretically possible, as happened in 2002, when the National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen knocked out the Socialist Party candidate Lionel Jospin in the first round, handing Jacques Chirac a landslide victory in the run-off.
The most suspenseful aspect of the first round turned out to be the duel for third place between Jean-Marie’s daughter and political successor Marine Le Pen and the Left Front candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Marine set out to beat her father’s score ten years ago, while Mélenchon set himself the goal of beating her. The two adversaries were the most charismatic of the ten candidates. As candidate of the Left Front, Mélenchon lost his bid to come in third, but thanks to his extraordinary verbal skills has succeeded in reviving a political force to the left of the Socialist Party.
Percentage results of candidates in April 22 first round of French Persidential election
François Hollande, Socialist Party 29 %
Nicolas Sarkozy, outgoing President 26 %
Marine Le Pen, National Front 18 %
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Left Front 11 %
François Bayrou, centrist 9 %
Eva Joly, Greens 2 %
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Social Gaullist 1.8%
Philippe Poutou, New Anti-Capitalist Party (Trotskyist) 1.2%
Nathalie Arthaud, communist (Lutte Ouvrière, Trotskyist) 0.7%
Jacques Cheminade, progressist (Lyndon Larouche influence) 0.2%
Participation was high, at around 80%. The first round is altogether more entertaining and interesting than the second round. It provides more information about the real preferences of voters than the second round, which, like U.S. presidential elections, is often decided on the “lesser evil” principle, with increasing numbers of voters aware that whoever wins, the policies will be much the same.
A few observations:
Every candidate except Sarkozy, the self-styled centrist Bayrou and the Green candidate Eva Joly singled out the world of finance as the main adversary. Hollande did so quite explicitly in his main campaign speech, although shortly afterwards he watered his wine considerably during a visit to London, the City oblige. This hostility toward banks has horrified Anglo-American commentators, from The Economist to John Vinocur of the International Herald Tribune, for whom realism consists in docile obedience to the demands of “the markets”. Acting uppity toward finance capital is close to insanity. If “the right” is defined first of all by subservience to finance capital, then aside from Sarkozy, Bayrou and perhaps Joly, all the other candidates were basically on the left. And all of them except Sarkozy would be considered far to the left of any leading politician in the United States.
This applies notably to Marine Le Pen, whose social program was designed to win working class and youth votes. Her “far right” label is due primarily to her criticism of Muslim practices in France and demands to reduce immigration quotas, but her position on these issues would be considered moderate in the Netherlands or in much of the United States. Even she stressed that the immigration problem, as she saw it, was not the fault of the immigrants themselves but of the politicians and the elite who brought them here. The main tone of her political message was resolutely populist, attacking the “Paris elite”. Demagogic, yes, often vague and playing fast and loose with statistics, but a model of reason compared to the utterances of the “Tea Party”. Her political challenge was to hold onto her father’s ultra-conservative constituency while wooing discontented low income voters. She apparently won more working class votes than Mélenchon.
Mélenchon left the Socialist party to found the Left Party in 2008. As candidate for the broader Left Front, he has raised the spirits of the demoralized French Communist Party, which fell below 2% in the 2007 election and gave up running a candidate of its own. Its militants have responded enthusiastically to Mélenchon’s revival of red flags and fiery rhetoric. He would put lower and upper limits on wages and salaries. His program, including calls for constitutional revision that would guarantee such progressive measures as gay marriage, assisted suicide and the right to abortion, surely goes far beyond the demands of his constituency, more concerned with jobs and wages, and reflects his personal adherence to the progressive philosophy of French Free Masonry. It is certainly his quick witted debating skill that appeals to voters more than the details of his ambitious program.
Disillusion with the euro and Europe
The two leading candidates remain faithful to the dogma of “European construction”. But elsewhere splits are beginning to show. Marine Le Pen condemns the euro as a failure which had wrecked European economies and is doomed to disappear.
Certainly, François Asselineau, who has founded his own party, the Union Populaire Républicaine, with the sole object of leaving the European Union, has been totally deprived of any media coverage, and was unable to gather the necessary signatures for candidacy. But the social Gaullist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who is only beginning to be known to the French public, is adamant that France should return to the franc, retaining the euro only as a reserve currency around which EU member state currencies should be allowed to fluctuate. Dupont-Aignan calls the euro a “racket” and a “poison” for EU economies, which are too diverse for a single currency. To the objection that leaving the euro would cause huge inflation, he accuses present EU leaders of creating inflation by allowing private banks to borrow at 1% and then ruin member States by lending to them at higher and higher rates. After France recovers its sovereignty by leaving the euro, Dupont-Aignan would have the Bank of France finance the state at zero interest, which would allow the government to reduce its debt and hire more teachers, policemen and researchers, instead of reducing their number. He would also take measures to protect French industry from cheap imports.
In contrast, Mélenchon advocates strongly interventionist economic policies without accounting for the fact that they would go against European Union directives as well as the monetarist policy governing the euro. Mélenchon speaks of using the economic weight of France to persuade Germany to change its deflationist policies. This raises the problem of the clear contradiction between social policies to which the French are attached and the European Union’s control of economic policy that is fatal to those social policies.
Foreign policy confusion
Foreign policy has been almost entirely absent from this campaign. This could be because voters are not thought to be interested, or because there is no strong opposition between the candidates. François Hollande conforms to the mainstream consensus, saying he would support military intervention in Syria if based on a UN resolution. Much of the French left has swallowed the “Responsibility to Protect” ideology.
Already last year, Mélenchon dismayed a certain number of his admirers by supporting the war in Libya, on the grounds that it was based on a UN Resolution. He now calls for withdrawal from NATO and construction of an independent United Nations intervention force.
Not surprisingly, the Gaullist Dupont-Aignan opposes arming the Syrian opposition, pointing to the fact that arms provided to Libyan rebels ended up in the hands of militias who are destabilizing the whole region. He maintains that France should have acted differently in Libya and with Russia, instead of following the anti-Russian policy of the United States.
Among the leading candidates, the only clear anti-war policy is that of Marine Le Pen, who favors immediate withdrawal from both Afghanistan and the NATO command, describes the current French government policy of supporting the Syrian opposition as “totally irresponsible”, calls for recognition of a Palestinian State and opposes threats to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, which have not been proven to be military. And she adds: “As far as I know, no nation which has atomic weapons has ever asked for permission from anyone, neither the United States, nor France, nor Israel, nor Pakistan… Must we then plunge the world into a war whose extent we will not control because certain foreign counties ask us to?”
Marine Le Pen is regularly stigmatized as “racist” for her desire to reduce immigration. But which is worse: refusing entry to Muslim immigrants, or bombing them in their home countries?
The worst is yet to come
Even before the vote, John Vinocur raged against the “miserable precedent” represented by the fact that what he dubbed the “Rejection Front” made up of Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon was almost sure to beat the first round score of either mainstream candidate. Thus, he said, France would have “legitimatized two political currents that spurn serious solutions for France’s economic grief, reject civility and common sense and variously propose regression through loony yet authoritarian economics, class warfare, class or racial prejudices, anti-Western instincts, and the politics of endless rage.”
Wow, take that you frogs. Look to the calm, intelligent debate of U.S. Republican primaries for guidance, and remember that whatever foolish things you want, like jobs, medical care or a roof over your head, it’s the markets that have the last word.
Exit polls pointed to a solid victory for Hollande in the second round. The standard description of Marine Le Pen as “the far right” could suggest that her voters would turn to the right wing candidate, Sarkozy, in the runoff. But this is far from the case. The social and foreign policy positions of Marine Le Pen have won over a number of voters disenchanted with the left. Her voters may split fifty-fifty in the second round. She herself clearly looks forward to the defeat of Sarkozy in order to become the undisputed leader of a recomposed right-wing opposition, which could make life difficult for the future President Hollande. Perhaps the only thing that could save Sarkozy would be massive abstention, but that does not look likely.
Actually, the timing of this election is favorable to a fairly limp, ill-defined candidate like Hollande, because the future is as unclear as he is. The Greek disaster, the financial woes of Portugal, Spain and Italy are ominous for France, and the French are worried. But most French people are still too well off to be seriously alarmed. The critics like Vinocur or The Economist seem to think that a French candidate for president should run on a campaign of telling people that they should happily prepare to give up all the comforts they enjoy, because that is what the financial markets demand. If things are as bad as these champions of financial globalization are predicting, then this first round may provide better hints to the French future than the final round of the Hollande-Sarkozy election in two weeks time.
The economic, political and social outlook for the second decade of the 21st century is profoundly negative. The almost universal consensus, even among mainstream orthodox economists, is pessimistic regarding the world economy.
Although, even here, their predictions understate the scope and depth of the crises, there are powerful reasons to believe that beginning in the second decade of this century, we are heading toward a steeper decline than what was experienced during the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009. With fewer resources, greater debt and increasing popular resistance to shouldering the burden of saving the capitalist system, the governments cannot revive the economic system.
Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the US and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline. The new centers of growth, China, India, Brazil, Russia, which provided a new impetus for world growth during the first decade are de-accelerating rapidly and will continue to do so throughout the new decade.
The political and military outlook is equally bleak, especially in the Middle East and South Asia where the US and the EU are engaged in prolonged colonial wars, either directly or through proxies. Imperial wars are deepening the economic crises, draining resources, rather than extracting wealth, and in particular with regard to US-Israeli war preparations against Iran threatening to provoke a major economic depression.
We will proceed with an overview of the principal regions of the world political economy beginning with the ongoing crises in the European Union and follow with a discussion of the causes and consequences of the decay of the US Empire. We will then analyze the negative impact of the US proxy wars for Israel in the Middle East before turning to the dynamic growth, conflicts and reforms in the BRICs: China as it emerges as a major world economic power; Russia under the dynamic leadership of President Putin and Brazil as an emerging hegemon in Latin America. We will conclude by examining the social and political consequences of prolonged crises, especially the effects of prolonged class based austerity programs and new colonial wars on the class struggle and the reshaping of the global configuration of power in a world without a dominant hegemon.
The Crises of the European Union
The Eurozone faces a triple economic crises: an economy immersed in an ongoing recession including a depressed manufacturing sector; a severe decline in trade; and a precarious financial sector in which bankers in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal are on the verge of bankruptcy [1].
A crisis is developing in the empire resulting from sequential costly colonial wars and economic sanctions toward the Arab-Islamic world – Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.
A constitutional crises as rising mass protests have led to the extension of police state measures including the suspension of constitutional guarantees and the criminalization of social protests in Spain, Greece and England.
Throughout 2012 unemployment rose to the highest levels since the introduction of the single currency in 1999. Annual trade with the EU’s main-commercial partners in Asia fell precipitously – over 18% with China, 14% with South Korea and a similar downturn with Japan [2].
Specifically, the crises wracked European Union is on the verge of a break up and the de facto multi-tiered structure is turning into a series of bilateral/multi-lateral trade and investment agreements. Germany-France the Low and Nordic countries are best placed to attempt to weather the downturn. England, namely the City of London – in splendid isolation – is sinking into negative growth, its financiers scrambling to find new speculative opportunities among the Gulf petrol-states and other ‘niches’. Eastern and central Europe, particularly Poland and the Czech Republic, have deepened their ties to Germany but are suffering the consequences of the general decline of world markets. Southern Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy) are in a deep depression suffering double digit negative growth over the period 2009-2013 while unemployment skyrockets to over 20% as the massive debt payments fueled by savage assaults on wages and social benefits and the decline of public investments, severely reduce consumer demand [3].
Depression level unemployment and under-employment, running to one-third of the labor force and youth (17-24) unemployment of nearly 50% in southern Europe, detonates prolonged social conflicts, repeated general strikes in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy intensifying into popular uprisings. A break-up of the European Union is almost inevitable. The euro as a currency of choice may be replaced followed by a return to national currencies, accompanied by devaluations and protectionism. Nationalism and class struggle are the order of the day. Banks in Germany, France and Switzerland are preparing to suffer “haircuts” – huge losses on their loans to the South. Major bailouts have become necessary, polarizing German and French societies, between the tax-paying majorities and the bankers. Trade union militancy and rightwing pseudo ‘populism’ (neo-fascism) are challenging incumbent rightist (Spain, Portugal), social democratic and “technocratic” regimes (Greece, Italy).
In response to crises and mass protest, police state measures have increased in Spain. The neo-Franco regime of Mariano Rajoy has implemented new repressive laws, which penalize social movements for engaging in passive or active resistance to public authority, with jail terms ranging from one to three years [4]. In Britain, Prime Minister Cameron has approved measures allowing police to intervene in any and all personal e-mails or other correspondence without any judicial authorization.
A depressed, fragmented and polarized Europe is less likely to join in any Zionist inspired US-Israeli military interventions. Already economic sanctions against Libya, Iran and even Syria, have caused a crippling 20% increase in the price of oil in 2012, undermining any chances of economic recovery. If crises ridden Europe follows Washington’s confrontationalist approach to Russia and China it will limit access to two of the most dynamic markets for its exports.
Wars and economic crises, each mutually reinforce the other in a downward spiral. As costly imperial wars multiply, the Eurozone domestic economy decays.
The US Crisis Continues
The US crisis has several inter-related dimensions: a decline in world market shares and hegemony especially in Asia and Latin America; rising class based inequalities and differential economic ‘recovery’ between capital and labor; and a increasingly repressive police state designed to forestall domestic opposition to new overseas wars (especially with Iran) and a long term decline in living standards.
Nothing illustrates the decline of the US empire as clearly as its shrinking share of world trade and manufacturing, in the latter case by China’s forceful entry as the “workplace of the world” [5]. Even in traditional US “spheres of influence”. Latin America and the Caribbean the US no longer is the dominant trader and financier [6].
Between 2005-2010 Chinese state banks lent more than $75 billion to Latin America more than the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Ex-Imp Bank combined. The US has been displaced by China as the leading trading partner of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Ecuador – specializing in agro-mineral exports [7]. US de-facto devaluation of its currency and state subsidized interest rates has prejudiced Brazilian exports and created what its Finance Minister describes as a “currency war” – setting the US on a collision course with the biggest and most important economy in the region [8]. The US came up with no major economic initiatives to recast US relations with Brazil in recent meetings with President Rouseff. Nor did the US succeed in imposing its oil sanctions policy toward Iran in Latin America and Asia. India and China have rejected US policy and have continued to purchase Iranian oil [9].
Despite a slight and tenuous decline in unemployment, mainly a result of the shrinking o the labor force due to the fact that many long term unemployed workers have given up looking for jobs, the US economy has been incapable of dealing with a ballooning $1.6 trillion fiscal deficit. Because of cumulative public and household debt, Washington is finding it difficult to spend its way toward a robust recovery. Nor can it count on ‘exporting’ its way out of stagnation by turning to Asia, as China, India and the rest of Asia are losing economic steam. China’s growth for 2012 is likely to be 7.5% far below its 9% average and India will decline from 8% to 5% or lower [10].
The US economic crisis has hit the working and middle class the hardest They received nothing similar to the trillion dollar Wall Street bailout to ameliorate their socio-economic plight [11].
According to one report “about 12 million borrowers, or one in five of US homeowners with mortgages, owe more than their property is worth” depressing the housing market and reducing the net worth of US households by several trillion dollars [12].
The “decline in unemployment” claimed by the Obama regime is largely a result of the decline of the labor force from 146 million in 2007 to 140 million in 2011. In 2008 62.7% of the population was employed by 2012 it had dropped to 58.5%, thus accounting for the decline in unemployment from 9.3% to 8.3%. If the same number of workers were seeking work in 2012 as there were in 2007, unemployment [13] would be over 11%. The decline of the median income is cause and consequence of the sharp decline in the “middle class”. Well paid manufacturing jobs are replaced by low paid “service jobs”: over 90% of the 27.3 million new jobs added over the last two decades are in the service sector [14].
Exploitation of labor is evidenced in the growing productivity of labor even as the number of workers decreases: all the gains from technological innovations accrues to capital, as robots replace line workers. As efficiency rises, jobs dissolve and profits increase. Labor’s share of national income has fallen from 63% to 58% over the past 20 years. While median wages declined 2.7% since the recession of 2008-2010, profits have increased nearly 30%. While the domestic market shrinks, the Standard and Poor 400 draw 33% of their profits from exploiting cheap labor overseas. Globalization has clearly prejudiced US labor and benefited the multinational corporations (MNC). A case in point is General Motors which in 2011 recorded $7.6 billion, its largest profit ever in 2011 [15]
The Obama 2013 budget plan proposes to deepen the social divide by cutting health care and social security by $364 billion while only increasing taxes on the rich by less than one-third that amount. [16]
Faced with growing discontent with the economic crisis, overseas imperial wars, rising oil prices and declining living standards, the US has vastly increased police state legislation allowing the state to assassinate citizens suspected of fraternizing with ill-defined terrorists, suspending judicial oversight (habeas corpus) on the use of police intervention in homes and offices and cyber sites.
A presidential decree on March 16, 2012, authorized the state seizure of all major work sites and the militarization of labor in time of “emergency” – including in peace time. [17]
The US and England are the biggest losers from the Iraqi post war economic reconstruction. Of $1.86 trillion dollars in infrastructure projects, US and UK corporations will gain less than 5% [18]. A similar outcome is likely in Libya and elsewhere. US imperial militarism destroys an adversary, plunging into debt to do so, and non-belligerents reap the lucrative post-war economic reconstruction contracts. In fact empire building drains trillions in military spending without any commensurate extraction of economic wealth. In fact the domestic economy is drained to fund the military empire of 700 military bases. As the wars multiply, domestic consumption shrinks.
US economic stagnation and jobless recovery is evident in the rising number of Americans dependent on food kitchens, the epidemic in home foreclosure – over 10 million are 3 months or more behind in mortgage payments – and 30% of school children dependent on free lunches and breakfasts.
Labor exploitation (“productivity”) has intensified as capitalists force workers to produce more, for less pay, thus widening the income gap between wages and profits. [19] Several decades ago the average US CEO to worker salary differential was 70 to 1. Today it is 350 to 1. Inequalities have reached unprecedented levels and are increasing: over the past 10 years the top 1% of the class structure received 90% of the growth of income, leading to a real decline in median income of over 5%.
The economic downturn and growth of unemployment is accompanied by savage cuts in social programs to pay for the bailout of financially troubled banks, Wall Street investment houses and the automobile industry. The debates among the Democratic and Republican parties are over how much to cut the public health programs for retirees (Medicare) and for the poor (Medicare) and how to proceed in privatizing Social Security in order to secure the ‘confidence’ of the bondholders. Faced with limited political choices, the electorate is reacting by voting out incumbents, abstaining in large numbers – over 60% in congressional elections and 50% in presidential elections – or via spontaneous and organized mass movements, such as the “occupy Wall Street” protest. Dissatisfaction, hostility and frustration pervade the North American political culture. Both major parties attempt to deflect criticism and distract discontented voters by demonizing Islamic citizens and countries as “threats to national security” and augmenting the police powers of the state at the expense of constitutional freedoms. Democratic Party demagogues blame unfair trading practices of China rather than the massive flight of US MNC to mainland China. The Republican Party demagogues blame largely Latin American immigrant workers for “stealing American jobs” for Wall Street’s financial destruction of US manufacturing sector. Both, following the lead of the “Israeli Lobby, fulminate against Iran’s Islamo-fascists.
New Wars in the Midst of Crises: Zionists Pull the Trigger
In what is likely a first in world history, a global imperial power the US is subject to the dictates and pays tribute (in the form of military and economic aid to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars over the past half century) to a marginal state, Israel, with little significance to the world economy and few allies. [20] Never in past empires, has a tiny minority, US Zionists forcefully acted on behalf of the tributary state, and had such a powerful influence in harnessing an imperial state to serve the military interests of a foreign power. Never in history has a prosperous elite, educated in the most prestigious schools and occupying strategic economic, cultural and political positions of power, driven an empire into a series of prolonged colonial wars which prejudice major private institutions (oil) industry, drain the public treasury, impoverish the vast majority of taxpayers and consumers of energy in pursuit of the goal of a “Greater Israel”.
Finally never in the history of modern social analysis has the public and blatant display of elite power and political manipulation on behalf of a foreign regime been so deliberately slighted and obfuscated, by complicit or intimidated scholars and journalists, another instance of the pervasive power of intimidation of the Zionist power configuration [21].
It is precisely this elite exercise of power on behalf of a foreign regime that explains the repeated costly imperial wars against Arab and Islamic countries, even in the midst of a major prolonged economic crisis. Since the Israeli Lobby’s first and abiding loyalty is to Israel, they have no qualms about deepening the US fiscal deficit based on trillion dollar military expenditures for wars to advance Israeli domination in the Middle East.
The 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations and their “Israel First” followers in Congress, State, Treasury and the Pentagon have escalated economic sanctions and military preparations for war with Iran despite the loss of a major market for US exports and the sidetracking of scarce economic resources to unproductive military expenditures. As a result of war threats emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv, speculators have pushed up the price of oil by 20% in the first 6 months of 2012, further undercutting any hope of an economic recovery. A US-Israeli attack on Iran will not result in a short localized war: it will result in a regional conflagration, sharply reducing the flow of oil, sending prices skyrocketing and in short order lead to a world depression. [22] Given the extremist Israeli regime’s success in securing blind obedience to its war polices from the US Congress and White House, with regard to Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Lebanon (2006) any doubts about the real possibility of an attack on Iran, with a major catastrophic outcome, can be set aside.
China: Neo-Liberalism and the Compensatory Mechanisms in 2012
China’s dynamic growth over the past 30 years owes as much to the socialist revolution in 1949 as it does to capitalist investment from 1980 to the present. The revolution created the modern state and defeated the Japanese imperial army, local warlords and corrupt political rulers of the Kuo Ming tan and ended Euro-US foreign coastal enclaves. The revolution laid the bases for a unified country. By mobilizing labor, it created the essential infrastructure linking economic sectors; via an agrarian reform liberated the peasantry from semi-feudal constraints and created a domestic market; via universal free public education and health programs it created a modern healthy, educated labor force and an army of scientists, engineers and technicians, producing innovations and spurring double digit growth. The capitalist transition began in 1980 and accelerated thereafter via the de-collectivization of agriculture, privatization of industry, trade and urban land and the large scale, long-term entry of major MNCs.
The transition and consolidation of capitalist China had a dual effect: it unleashed the forces of production leading to double digit growth and it polarized class relations between a super-rich ruling class, a privileged ‘new petty bourgeois’ and a vast army of poorly paid exploited factory workers and migrant construction and domestic service workers.
As China became the ‘workplace of the world’ it also became the locus of the world’s worst social inequalities. Chinese capital in partnership with foreign capital turned it into the world’s second biggest economy. But China’s second and third generation of post-socialist working class increasingly has engaged in mass action demanding a greater share of the wealth, a return to free public health and education and low cost housing[23]. China’s elite is faced with dual pressures: on one side from private capital demanding greater financial de-regulation to allow for overseas investment and on the other side from labor’s clamor for greater political freedom and social spending on housing and an end to vast networks of corruption between Party officials and business elites[24]. As China’s economy matured it turned to greater investments in basic research and advanced engineering, moving China up the value chain toward complex and innovat6ive manufacturing[25]. Faced with shrinking trade surpluses due to declining demand from the crises ridden Euro zone and the US an increasingly sharp inter-elite struggle emerged, pitting neo-liberals against populists. The core leadership around premier Wen Jiabao embraced the opening of financial markets, the entry of foreign finance capital, the liberalization of the political system to allow for competing elites and the repression of advocates of neo-populist policies such as those proposed by former mayor of Chongging and ex- politburo member Bo Xilai. Bo promoted greater social insurance, environmental protection and social housing, greater social equality and robust prosecution of corrupt business-Party mafias [26]. The defeat of the symbolic head of the “populist faction”, with the arrest of BoXilai, heralded by the western financial press as a victory over “neo-Maoist demagogy”, signals the deepening and open embrace of neo-liberalism and the gradual discarding of the public regulatory regime over foreign financial flows [27]. This in turn increases China’s vulnerability to financial turmoil and opens opportunities for outward flows of capital by China’s new rich billionaires. The announced growth of domestic social spending has yet to ameliorate the class inequalities: China and its elite have become a mecca for luxury goods manufacturers and fashion designers both domestically and overseas in Paris, London, Milan and New York.
Faced with intensifying pressures from below and especially in light of the deepening of the neo-liberal option [28], the Chinese elite also has to deal with the crises in its principal export markets in the Euro zone.
China faces the US-EU crises of the new decade with several possibilities for ameliorating its impact. Beijing is shifting toward producing goods and services for the 700 million domestic consumers currently out of the economic loop. By increasing wages, social services and environmental safety, China is compensating for the loss of overseas markets. China is vastly increasing public spending on expanding public health coverage, increasing wages, and plowing billions into basic research and technology. China’s economic growth, which depended on real estate speculation, has shifted gears, as the regime has tightened lending and demanded greater municipal investment in low cost social housing for the middle and working class. To avoid a sharp downturn, leading to job losses, municipal bankruptcies and increased social and class conflicts, China is prepared to launch a massive stimulus package as it did in 2008/9. Faced with rising demands for greater economic and political liberalization from the new economic elite and working class demands for social equality and higher wages, the different factions in the Communist Party debate over greater liberalization and gradual democratization [29]. The outcome will profoundly affect China’s class structure, political institutions as well as the relative strength of market – state relations. A turn toward greater liberalization and deregulation of financial markets, as appears most likely could heighten class conflicts and provoke an economic crisis which will likely strengthen opposition to the market.
Russia Faces the Crises
The post-Soviet decade (1990-1999) witnessed the greatest peacetime human catastrophe: life expectancy fell from 66 years to 58 years in the course of three years, with over 3 million Russians dying prematurely, as newly minted capitalist oligarchs plundered the economy and public treasury [30]. Incumbent dictator Yeltsin literally bombarded the opposition led parliament in buttressing his regime. He was elected President in 1996 thanks to oligarchical media manipulation, gangster dominated regional electoral processes and massive State and private funding. Over a trillion dollars of public resources, from diverse sectors including oil, gas ,banks and transport, were seized by thugs and oligarchs for a fraction of their value [31]. Living standards plunged, pensioners suffered extreme hardships and many were evicted from public housing in choice locations.
At the height of the neo-liberal onslaught over 60% of the Russian population fell below the poverty life – the greatest decline since the end of WW II. Russia fell from co-equal world superpower to a vassal state of the Euro-US Empire.
With the advent of the Putin era, at the onset of the new century, Russia began a rapid and steep recovery. During the first decade of the 21st century poverty was reduced to less than 20% of the population. Wages and salaries were paid on time and increased by over 90%. The Russian economy grew by nearly 8% per annum and its trade surpluses led to foreign reserves exceeding 300 billion dollars, Russia regained its status as a respected power in the international political arena, forming part of the rising BRIC quartet (Brazil, Russia, India and China).
Putin, while not reversing the privatization or prosecuting the oligarchic elites for illicit enrichment, did limit their stranglehold over public policy. For his pursuit of Russian national interests and opposition to US missile encroachment on its borders, he was targeted by the western media as “hardline” [32]. For winning elections and imposing some restraints on the western funded and influenced propaganda – think tanks, NGOs and media outlets – he was dubbed “authoritarian” by the imperial mass media. Nevertheless, Putin’s stabilization and state promoted prosperity marginalized the western backed opposition and received the popular backing of close to two-thirds of the electorate.
The election of President Putin with over 60% of the vote in 2012 was a major blow to the western backed opposition intent on turning the clock back to the Yeltsin era … Putin promised a more independent policy and less collaboration in backing US promoted uprisings and sanctions against Russian allies like Syria and trading partners like Iran. Putin has turned toward greater trade and diplomatic ties with China. Russia benefits from the rise in oil prices, exceeding $120 a barrel. The crisis of the EU and weakening of NATO makes Obama’s planned missile placements pointed at Russia less palatable and more a provocation.
The western media backed opposition, despite its financial clout failed to degrade Putin’s image: its investment boycotts went nowhere and they were thoroughly beaten in the Presidential elections by a big margin. The recession has not weakened the Russian economy. Putin continues to rely on public ownership and greater dependency on overseas oil giants and oligarchs to sustain growth, an unstable and contradictory coalition.
The Transition 2011 – 2012: From Regional Stagnation and Recession to World Crises
The year 2011 laid the groundwork for deepening the crisis of the European Union. The crisis began with the recession in the Eurozone, stagnation in the US and the outbreak of mass protests against the brutal austerity programs that slashed living standards on a continent wide scale. The events of 2011 were a dress rehearsal for a new year of popular rebellions and general strikes. Moreover, the escalation of Zionist orchestrated war fever against Iran in 2011 led to brutal sanctions and the greater likelihood of the biggest regional war since the US-Indo-Chinese conflict. The electoral campaigns and outcomes of Presidential elections in the US and France offer no relief or alternatives – neither of the leading candidates offers an alternative to the deepening global conflicts and economic crises.
During 2011 the Obama regime announced a policy of military confrontation with Russia and military encirclement of China. His policies are designed to undermine Russia’s strategic defense and degrade China’s rise as a world economic power. In the face of a deepening economic recession and with the decline of overseas markets, especially in Europe, Washington perversely and aggressively pursues policies limiting lucrative export to the China market and the inflow of its investments. The White House effort to disrupt China’s trade and investments in Asia, Africa and elsewhere has been a dismal failure. In fact China has replaced the US as the principal aid beneficiary in Latin America and even the Caribbean. US efforts to exploit China’s internal ethnic and popular conflicts and to increase its military presence off China’s coastline has only encouraged China to increase its defense budget by 12% annually and to increase its investments in domestic security and social programs. A major provocation or fabricated offshore incident in this context is not to be excluded. US failed efforts to stem the rise of China has led to rabid chauvinist calls by right-wing pundits for a costly new ‘Cold War’. Obama’s Far East military build-up has provided the framework and justification for a large-scale, long-term costly confrontation with China. This is a desperate effort to prop up declining US influence and strategic positions in Asia. However, the US military “quadrangle of power” – US-Japan-Australia-South Korea – with satellite support from the Philippines is no match to China’s deepening trade, investment and currency ties with regional partners in Asia, and its growing financial links with Latin America and Africa. Washington’s military build-up exists in an economic vacuum, devoid of any new economic initiatives. It only serves to exacerbate the domestic fiscal deficit, while its military bases, troop emplacements, and arms spending add to the balance of payments deficit.
The austerity programs imposed in Europe, from England to Latvia to southern Europe took hold with a vengeance in 2012. Massive public sector firings and reduced private sector salaries and job opportunities, led to a year of permanent class warfare and regime challenges. The ‘austerity policies’ in Southern Europe were accompanied by debt defaults resulting in substantial bank losses in France, Germany and England. The British financial ruling class successfully pressured the Conservative/Liberal coalition regime to increase regressive taxes, reduce corporate taxes, privatize public health and education and repress popular unrest. A new tough neo-Thatcherite style of autocratic rule based on greater police powers over private communications has been legislated. The opposition Labor-trade union alliance has relied on vacuous verbal protest while tightening the leash on the rebellious rank and file. The regressive socio-economic policies put in place from 2008 to 2012 throughout Europe have set the stage for new non-elected technocratic and police-state regimes which in turn lead to more acute social confrontations. The second decade looms as a “lost decade” for workers and unemployed youth with no future.
The Coming Wars that End America “As We Know It”
The impossible demands that the Israeli regime dictated when the P-5 plus one announced the opening of a new round of negotiations with Iran have become the bases for Washington’s ‘non-negotiable demands’. Israel, via Washington, demands that Iran dismantle its newly built multi-billion dollar modern nuclear research center at Fordo, stop all uranium enrichment, destroy what they call “military grade enriched material”, (uranium enrichment to 20%) and allow permanent and pervasive International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring of all Iranian defense facilities [33]. No country among the over one hundred engaged in nuclear research is subject to these conditions. In fact, Iran is well within the parameters of international law and the non-proliferation agreement – while Israel rejects any international inspection of its nuclear weapons stockpile and never signed the non-proliferation agreement.
The Iranians propose to negotiate the terms of enrichment limiting the quantity, level of enrichment and inspection. But certainly and justifiably they will not destroy their advanced research facilities, nor end all enrichment. In other words the Israeli-Zionist-Washington position is devised specifically to sabotage a reasonable compromise that assures the peaceful usage of Iran’s nuclear program. The purpose is to create a pretext for claiming that “negotiations” were “tried” but failed and that a military attack is “justified”. [34]
Under Obama, as with his predecessor, the US has demonstrated its unyielding embrace of the doctrine of foreign policy by unilateral fiat in pursuit of a unipolar world.
Washington rejected a negotiated settlement of the Libyan crisis: it backed an all-out air and maritime war, marked by military success and the total destruction of its economy, society and political order. [35]
The US and its NATO satraps and Gulf state clients demand that the Syrian government unilaterally curtail its military defense of the country while they continue to provide arms, financial aid and mercenaries to the armed opposition. In effect the US backs a unilateral cease fire to facilitate the advance of their client mercenary “rebels”. [36]
The US, alone and without a single supporting country, insisted that Cuba be excluded from the “summit of the Americas” in Cartagena, Colombia on April 14-15, 2012 [37]. The attending countries made it clear to Obama that this will be that last summit in which Cuba will be excluded [38]. A unilateral US veto over Latin America’s progressive policies is dead and buried. In contrast the US, the Euro zone and Israel ally with the most retrograde regimes, like the Gulf petrol-dictators in pursuit of their colonial wars. Policies rejected by the major power in Asia (China, India) Latin America (Brazil, Argentina) Africa (South Africa) and Russia. In other words, despite growing international isolation and the tremendous chaos and destruction which colonial wars bring in their wake, the Zionist-militarist-Wall Street complex that rules the US and therefore NATO, refuses to reflect and reconsider the realities of the 21st century. Washington fails to recognize a multi-polar world, that colonial wars destroy empires and that an imperial policy dictated by a minority elite aligned to a racist-military-colonial regime can only lead to disasters.
Obama has laid the groundwork for a new and bigger war in the Middle East by relocating troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrating them against Iran. To undermine Iran, Washington is expanding clandestine military and civilian operations against Iranian allies in Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela and China. The key to the US and Israeli bellicose strategy toward Iran is a series of wars in neighboring states, world- wide economic sanctions , cyber-attacks aimed at disabling vital industries and clandestine terrorist assassinations of scientists and military officials. The entire push, planning and execution of the US policies leading up to war with Iran can be attributed to the Zionist power configuration occupying strategic positions in the US Administration, mass media and ‘civil society’. Even the financial press highlights the political influence of Jewish money in the election and selection of presidential candidates and policy makers: The Financial Times highlights the role of the 1% Jewish power elite in its tittle article “The Jewish Vote: Small segment but a big role in raising funds” [39]. Equally important, it is public knowledge that leading Israeli backed and Zionist run foundations play a deciding role in designing US and Euro- zone sanctions policy toward Iran, which prejudices their economies. According to the Financial Times “Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (sic) who helped write the latest sanctions bill admits that there is a risk oil prices could rise even further” [40]. A systematic analysis of policymakers designing and implementing economic sanctions policy in Congress finds prominent roles for leading Zionists such as Waxman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Levin, Cantor, Berman and their numerous camp followers. Dennis Ross in [concert with] the White House, Jeffrey Feltman in the State Department and David Cohen in the Treasury, ensure that the White House toes the Israeli line. The Obama regime, in the midst of the presidential re-election campaign, is especially beholden to multi-millionaire Zionist fund raisers and takes its cue from the ‘52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organization. Combined they raise over 50% of the Democratic party campaign funds. The Israeli-US Zionist strategy is to encircle Iran, weaken it economically and attack its military. The Iraq war is the US “model” for its current build up for an attack on Iran. Israel is the principal political and military beneficiary of the Iraq and Libyan wars as is the case in the current proxy war against Syria. These wars have destroyed Israel’s adversaries or are in the process of doing so. But the economic, political and human cost to the US has been enormous: trillions of dollars in war debts have bled the US treasury, without any economic returns, as US oil profits have been sacrificed in Iraq and Iran.
Economic sanctions, which were designed to create domestic discontent in Iran, are the principal weapon of choice. This policy has backfired as it boosted the price of oil by 20% in 2012, undermining any economic recovery in the EU and the US. The global sanctions campaign which engaged the energies of the major Jewish-Zionist lobbies succeeded as the Obama regime followed with an escalation of financial sanctions. The US-NATO- Israeli regimes have faced no opposition from the mass media, Congress or the White Office. The Zionist power configuration (ZPC) is even virtually exempt from criticism by most progressive writers, peace movements and leftist grouplets – with a few notable exceptions. The past year’s re-positioning of US troops from Iraq, the dispatch of aircraft carriers off the coast of Iran, the economic sanctions and the rising pressure from Israel’s “lobby” in the US increases the likelihood of war in the Middle East. This likely means a “surprise” aerial and maritime missile attack by US-Israel forces. Israel’s pretext of an “imminent nuclear attack” and White House claims that the “failure” of Iran to negotiate in good faith will be faithfully transmitted by the Israel lobby to their lackeys in the US Congress and to the western public for consumption and transmission to the rest of the western world. Contrary to Israeli leaders this will not be a limited war: Iran is capable of sustaining a prolonged war, extending across the Gulf region. Iran is capable of crossing borders into Iraq aided by its Shi’a allies. It can paralyze the flow of oil in the Hormuz Straits. It can send missiles into the Saudi oilfields. A US-Israeli war on Iran will be a destructive, bloody, prolonged war which could provoke a global depression. The US will bear the direct military cost by itself and the rest of the world will pay a dear economic price. The Zionist promoted US war will convert the recession of 2008- 2012 into a major depression and probably provoke mass upheavals.
Conclusion
The world configuration of power in the new decade is far more complex than the designation concocted by the leading banking houses[41]. For example, the “BRICs” includes a truly global power, China, a center of manufacturing, science and growth; Russia a military power highly dependent on energy exports and lacking a competitive manufacturing sector; Brazil is a commodity-dependent export economy suffering economic stagnation; and India where three quarters of the populace live at a or below $3 a day. The decline of the US-EU axis is not accompanied by a new multi-polar global power configuration. The crises engendered by neo-liberalism in the West is accompanied by its growth in Asia, especially China, India, South Korea and Indonesia. The decline of neo-liberalism is not accompanied by the rise of socialism: in Southern Europe, authoritarian rightist regimes buttress the crises-racked neo-liberal order by imposing policies by fiat and by criminalizing the social movements and civil disobedience and by centralizing executive power. By ignoring financial speculation as the detonator of the crises and the state bailout of the banks for the high indebtedness, the regimes perversely blame popular social program for the crises and impose harsh anti-popular austerity programs which lower living standards and increase profits. The debate between neo-liberals and neo-keynesians focuses on ‘austerity’ versus ‘spending’ – neither of which faces the class bases of state policy and the class relations which define economic costs and benefits. What is clear throughout the prolonged socio-economic crises is the impermeability of the state: despite mass disaffection, repeated general strikes and multitudinous and demonstrations, the capitalist state ignores majoritarian interests and persists in imposing savage retrograde reductions in living standards. Capitalist rule in the West is based on a reversal of seventy years of social gains. The reality of growing immiseration replaces the idea of social progress. We have passed from the so-called “golden age” of post-World War II capitalism to the long night of the “dark ages” of capitalism, an epoch of decay and descent into barbarism.
All indications point to the second decade of the 21st century being an epoch of unrelenting economic crises spreading outward from Europe and the US to Asia and its dependencies in Africa and Latin America. Catastrophic imperial and proxy wars accelerate the continued decay of the US empire and facilitate the rise of Asia as the epicenter of world capitalism and as the site for rising class conflict. The crisis in capitalist class rule is truly global and is spilling over into sharpening inter-imperialist trade confrontations. Colonial wars are undermining any efforts to ameliorate this crisis. Prolonged economic crises and a never ending downward spiral in living standards, fueled by class based austerity programs designed to reduce wages and social benefit and increase profits. In response emerging mass social movements are playing a dominant role within the anti-capitalist opposition. Direct action is gradually overshadowing electoral politics, moving over time from protests and rebellions, toward overt struggles for state power.
[1] On the continuing recession in the euro zone especially in Greece, see Financial Times, 2/16/12, p.2.
[2] Financial Times, 12/15/11, p. 3.
[3] BBC Business News, 4/2/12.
[4] LaJornada, 4/12/12.
[5] Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline (Little, Brown: 2012)
[6] Financial Times, 2/16/12.
[7] ibid
[8] LaJornada, 4/10/12, and Financial Tines 1/11/12, p.7.
[9] Financial Times 3/2/12
[10] International Monetary Fund “Projections for Growth 2012”, March 2012.
[11] Financial Times, 4/11/12, p. 6.
[12] ibid
[13] Financial Times, 12/12/11, p. 1.
[14] Financial Times, 12/15/11, p. 1
[15] Earthlink news 2/6/2012
[16] BBC News 2/13/2012
[17] Executive Order – National Defense Resource Preparedness, March 16, 2012; Stephen Lendman, “Police State America”, http://www.FreedomsPhoenix.com
[18] Financial Times 12/16/2011 p 3
[19] Financial Times 12/16/2011 p6
[20] James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, Atlanta 2006).
[21] James Petras, “On Bended Knee: Zionist Power in American Politics” in James Petras War Crimes in Gaza (Clarity: Atlanta 2010) pp. 69 -104
[22] James Petras, “US-Israeli War on Iran: The Myth of Limited Warfare”, Axis of Logic, 4/15/2012; New York Times, 3/21/2012; Financial Times, 3/24/2012 p 7. http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1894
[23] Chinaworker.info 3/18/12.
[24] Financial Times 2/29/12, p. 13.
[25] “A Bumper Year for Chinese Science” Science Vol. 335, March 9, 2012, p. 1156.
[26] Dexter Roberts “Chinese Premier Wen Jialao Talks Like a Bold Reformer”, Bloomberg Business Week, 4/4/12.
[29] Martin Wolf, “China is Right to Open Slowly”. Financial Times, 2/29/12, p. 13.
[30] David Hoffman, The Oligarchs (Public Affairs: New York 2002).
[31] Hoffman op. cit. Part Two, pp. 177 – 324.
[32] The entire western press including the New York Times: the Financial Times, to the Washington Post and El País, Le Monde have waged a savage propaganda campaign against Putin and in defense of the Yeltsin era, overlooking the enormous differences in quality of life.
NAZARETH — Hebrew media sources reported, on Monday, that the US stores military equipment worth U.S. $800 million in Israel, noting that this quantity will increase soon reaching $1.2 billion.
Citing a report issued by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Hebrew TV Channel2 said the US ordnance, including missiles, armored vehicles and artillery ammunition, is allowed to be used by Israel in the event of a military emergency.
The storage of military equipment came within the strategic partnership between the two countries which began in the early nineties. The report revealed that during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the US allowed Israel to access its military emergency stores.
It is noted that the US began stockpiling $100 million in military equipment in Israel in 1990, then it increased to $800 in 2010, and it is predicted to reach $1.2 billion in the coming years.
Any sanctions on Iran’s oil sector imposed over the country’s nuclear program will backfire on the United States, regardless of their outcome, says an energy economist and columnist.
“Oil sanctions are a bad idea if they work, and a bad idea if they fail,” wrote Robin M. Mills.
If the sanctions work, American allies will be punished and some economically vulnerable countries, such as Greece, will suffer a cutoff of oil just at the time they can least afford it, he explained.
Or, if they “succeed” more dramatically, and Iran’s exports are really interrupted, oil prices will soar, “plunging the world back into renewed recession,” Mills added.
“But most likely, oil sanctions would fail, and a great deal of diplomatic capital will have been expended to no avail,” the energy economist asserted.
He cited the examples of Japan and South Korea as evidence of the failure of the sanctions, saying both countries rely on Iran for 10 percent of their crude imports, and have waived oil sanctions.
The columnist further mentioned the case of Turkey which renewed its long-standing crude contract with Iran on December 21.
“Iran should be able to find ways round tightened oil sanctions,” Mills stressed.
Mills further reiterated the repeated assertions of Iranian officials that the sanctions have served as opportunities for the country.
“The United States’ last secret weapon — embargoing gasoline shipments to Iran — inspired Tehran to make its long-overdue subsidy reform and step up domestic refining capacity,” he said.
Mills who has authored The Myth of the Oil Crisis said domestic Iranian oil and gas companies have also been encouraged to develop shared fields with production potential of 1.1 million barrels per day.
“In a way, the US Congress did Iran a favor,” Mills said.
The economist said the proposed sanctions “make even less sense” on a geopolitical level as the embargoes are a gift on a plate to two US rivals, China and Russia.
“The lengths to which the United States will go to shoot itself in the foot are sometimes astounding,” Mills said.
He went on to draw attention to the deliberately concealed cost of the sanctions on the US economy, saying decades of sanctions resulting in expensive oil have set the United States back half a trillion dollars.
“Still unanswered is the rather important question of how the U.S. plans to turn any tactical gains from sanctions into strategic success — or, indeed, even to define what realistic “success” looks like.”
Mills also touched upon the resolve of the Iranian nation in overcoming the sanctions, saying they “have seen their country survive even tougher times than today, and emerge … with revolutionary fervor strengthened.”
“For them to bow to sanctions by making significant concessions on the nuclear issue would be political suicide.”
As an alternative to sanctions, Mills proposed the “acknowledgement of Iran’s legitimate interests, with removal of some sanctions as carrots for cooperation.”
“My advice? Ignore all the crowing coming from Washington,” he concluded.
Twice in the last 4 years, oil prices have surged causing major disruption in the global economy. In 2008 oil prices went up to $147 per barrel, and last year, disruptions in the supply of oil from Libya sent the price of oil rocketing up to $127. The sharp increase in the price of oil has had a worrying impact on the global economy, and the US as well as Europe has felt the effect. Oil prices are up around 15% since the beginning of the year and rich-country oil stocks are at a 5-year low. Oil prices rose by 80% at the start of the first Gulf War. Now that global oil prices are on the rise again, at a time when the financial crisis is only starting to recover, there is more pressure on western governments to act. Economic sanctions on Iran have the potential to make the situation much worse for the west – but by their own doing. Iran – a major contributor to the world’s oil economy – exports 20% of the world’s oil needs. With oil embargoes already on Syria disruption to this supply of oil from Iran could be disastrous for the West.
The US government pretends to live under the rule of law, to respect human rights, and to provide freedom and democracy to citizens. Washington’s pretense and the stark reality are diametrically opposed.
US government officials routinely criticize other governments for being undemocratic and for violating human rights. Yet, no other country except Israel sends bombs, missiles, and drones into sovereign countries to murder civilian populations. The torture prisons of Abu Gahraib, Guantanamo, and CIA secret rendition sites are the contributions of the Bush/Obama regimes to human rights.
Washington violates the human rights of its own citizens. Washington has suspended the civil liberties guaranteed in the US Constitution and declared its intention to detain US citizens indefinitely without due process of law. President Obama has announced that he, at his discretion, can murder US citizens whom he regards as a threat to the US.
Congress did not respond to these extraordinary announcements with impeachment proceedings. There was no uproar from the federal courts, law schools, or bar associations. Glenn Greenwald reports that the Department of Homeland Security harasses journalists who refuse to be presstitutes, and we have seen videos of the brutal police oppression of peaceful OWS protestors. Chris Floyd has described on CounterPunch the torture-perverts who rule the US.
Now Washington is forcing as much of the world as it can to overthrow international treaties and international law. Washington has issued a ukase that its word alone is international law. Any country, except those who receive Washington’s dispensation, that engages in trade with Iran or purchases Iran’s oil will be sanctioned by the US. These countries will be cut off from US markets, and their banking systems will not be able to use banks that process international payments. In other words, Washington’s “sanctions against Iran” apply not to Iran but to countries that defy Washington and meet their energy needs with Iranian oil.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, so far Washington has granted special privileges to Japan and 10 European Union countries to continue purchasing Iranian oil. Requiring countries to shut down their economies in order to comply with Washington’s vendetta against Iran, a vendetta that has been ongoing ever since the Iranians overthrew the Washington-installed puppet, the Shah of Iran, more than three decades ago, was more than Washington could get away with. Washington has permitted Japan to keep importing between 78-85 per cent of its normal oil imports from Iran.
Washington’s dispensations, however, are arbitrary. Dispensations have not been granted to China, India, Turkey, and South Korea. India and China are the largest importers of Iranian oil, and Turkey and South Korea are among the top ten importers. Before looking at possible unintended consequences of Washington’s vendetta against Iran, what is Washington’s case against Iran?
Frankly, Washington has no case. It is the hoax of “weapons of mass destruction” all over again. Iran, unlike Israel, signed the non-proliferation treaty. All countries that sign the treaty have the right to nuclear energy. Washington claims that Iran is violating the treaty by developing a nuclear weapon. There is no evidence whatsoever for Washington’s assertion. Washington’s own 16 intelligence agencies are unanimous that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. Moreover, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s weapons inspectors are in Iran and have reported consistently that there is no diversion of nuclear material from the energy program to a weapons program.
On the rare occasion when Washington is reminded of the facts, Washington makes a different case. Washington asserts that Iran’s rights under the non-proliferation treaty notwithstanding, Iran cannot have a nuclear energy program, because Iran would then have learned enough to be able at some future time to make a bomb. The world’s apex bully has unilaterally decided that the possibility that Iran might one day decide to make a nuke is too great a risk to take. It is better, Washington says, to drive up the oil price, disrupt the world economy, violate international law, and risk a major war than to have to worry that a future Iranian government will make a nuclear weapon. This is the Jeremy Bentham tyrannical approach to law that was repudiated by the Anglo-American legal system.
It is difficult to characterize Washington’s position as one of good judgment. Moreover, Washington has never explained the huge risk Washington sees in the possibility of an Iranian nuke. Why is this risk so much greater than the risk associated with Soviet nukes or with the nukes of the US, Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea today? Iran is a relatively small country. It does not have Washington’s world ambitions. Unlike Washington, Iran is not at war with a half dozen countries. Why is Washington destroying America’s reputation as a country that respects law and risking a major war and economic dislocation over some possible future development, the probability of which is unknown?
There is no good answer to this question. Lacking evidence for a case against Iran, Washington and Israel have substituted demonization. The lie has been established as truth that the current president of Iran intends to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
This lie has succeeded as propaganda even though numerous language experts have proven that the intention attributed to the Iranian president by American-Israeli propaganda is a gross mistranslation of what the president of Iran said. Once again, for Washington and its presstitutes, facts do not count. The agenda is all that counts, and any lie will be used to advance the agenda.
Washington’s sanctions could end up biting Washington harder than they bite Iran. What will Washington do if India, China, Turkey and South Korea do not succumb to Washington’s threats?
According to recent news reports, India and China are not inclined to inconvenience themselves and to harm their economic development in order to support Washington’s vendetta against Iran. Having watched China’s rapid rise and having observed North Korea’s immunity to American attack, South Korea might be wondering how much longer it intends to remain Washington’s puppet state. Turkey, where the civilian and somewhat Islamist government has managed to become independent of the US- controlled Turkish military, appears to be slowly coming to the realization that Washington and NATO have Turkey in a “service role” in which Turkey is Washington’s agent against its own kind.
The Turkish government appears to be reassessing the benefits of being Washington’s pawn.
What Turkey and South Korea face is basically a decision whether they will be independent countries or be subsumed within Washington’s empire. The success of the American-Israeli assault on Iran’s independence depends on India and China.
If India and China give the bird to Washington, what can Washington do? Absolutely nothing. What if Washington, drowning in its gigantic hubris, announced sanctions against India and China?
Wal-Mart’s shelves would be empty, and America’s largest retailer would be hammering on the White House door.
Apple Computer and innumerable powerful US corporations, which have offshored their production for the American market to China, would see their profits evaporate. Together with their Wall Street allies, these powerful corporations would assault America with more force than the Red Army. The Chinese trade surplus would cease to flow into US Treasury debt. The offshored-to-India back office operations of banks, credit card companies, and customer service departments of utilities throughout the US would cease to function.
In America, chaos would reign. Such are the rewards to the Empire of globalism.
Obama and the neoconservative and Israeli warmongers who urge him on to more wars do not understand that the US is no longer an independent country. America is owned by offshoring corporations and the foreign countries in which the corporations have located their production for US markets. Sanctions on China and India (and South Korea) mean sanctions on US corporations. Sanctions on Turkey mean sanctions on a NATO ally.
Do China, India, South Korea and Turkey realize that they hold the winning cards? Do they understand that they can give the bird to the American Empire and bring it down in collapse, or are they brainwashed like Europe and the rest of the world that the powerful Americans cannot be resisted?
Will China and India exercise their power over the US, or will the two countries fudge the issue and adopt a pose that saves face for Washington while they continue to purchase Iranian oil?
The answer to this question is: how much will Washington pay China and India in secret concessions, such as eviction of the US from the South China Sea, for their pretense that China and India acknowledge Washington’s dictatorial powers over the rest of the world?
Without concession to China and India, Washington is likely to be ignored while it watches its power evaporate. A country that cannot produce industrial and manufactured goods, but can only print debt instruments and money is not a powerful country. It is a washed-up two-bit punk that can continue to strut around until the proverbial boy says: “the Emperor has no clothes”.
An Iranian lawmaker says it is time for the West to close Iran’s nuclear case as no non-civilian diversion has ever been found in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program.
“Western countries have been investigating Iran’s nuclear activities for years and have conducted the highest number of inspections on the nuclear plants and the nuclear activities of Iran,” Zohreh Elahian, a member of Iran’s Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy said on Thursday.
Following the extensive inspections and supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), even a single case of violation has not occurred and no document proving the Western claim of military diversions in Iran’s nuclear program has been found, she added.
“Therefore, it is time for Iran’s nuclear case to be declared closed once and for all,” Elahian added.
“According to documents, Iran has offered the highest degree of cooperation with the inspectors of the IAEA,” she said, adding that the IAEA’s inspections have gone far beyond Iran’s legal commitments to the international nuclear agency, but Tehran has agreed to such inspections in order to demonstrate its goodwill.
“Western countries should pay heed to the fact that if Iran was to retreat and give up its rights, it would have done that by now,” Elahian said.
The Iranian lawmaker’s remarks come as Iran is expected to resume its multifaceted talks with the P5+1 – the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany – in Istanbul on April 14.
On April 9, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) announced that the first round of fresh talks between Tehran and the P5+1 would be held in the Turkish port city of Istanbul, and the second would be in Baghdad.
Earlier the same day, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi had stressed that Tehran would not accept any preconditions for the negotiations with the P5+1, expressing hope the new round of talks would yield win-win results.
Iran and the P5+1 have held two rounds of multifaceted talks, one in Geneva in December 2010 and another in the Turkish city of Istanbul in January 2011.
Riyadh has sent a message to Islamabad offering an “alternative package” to meet Pakistan’s growing energy need so that it can abandon the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project, Press TV reports.
The message from Saudi King Abdullah was conveyed by the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz in his meetings with Pakistani leaders on Tuesday.
Unnamed diplomatic sources in Pakistan said Saudi Arabia has asked the Pakistani government to reconsider its decision to pursue energy cooperation with Iran, which includes the construction of the IP gas pipeline and purchasing electricity and oil from Tehran.
The deputy foreign minister also had a meeting with Pakistani premier Yousaf Raza Gilani during which, a prime minister’s aide said a “special message” from the Saudi monarch was delivered.
Saudi Arabia is said to have offered Pakistan a loan for the construction of a new oil facility to bail the country out of its financial and energy crises.
A Pakistani official, who asked not to be named, said the offer would be discussed at a Pak-Saudi joint ministerial meeting which is being planned.
The Saudi official’s visit closely followed a trip by Saudi Culture and Information Minister Abdul Aziz bin Mohiuddin Al-Khoja last week.
Energy-hungry Pakistan is looking to increase its fuel imports from various sources, including Iran, to reduce power shortages that have crippled the country’s industry and shaved percentage points off its GDP growth.
Washington has frequently indicated its resentment at the IP gas pipeline project. An article published in the International Herald Tribune on January 25, said Washington is trying to lure Islamabad away from the project by offering cheaper gas to the country.
The multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline aims to export a daily amount of 21.5 million cubic meters (or 7.8 billion cubic meters per year) of the Iranian natural gas to Pakistan.
The maximum daily gas transfer capacity of the 56-inch pipeline which runs over 900 km of Iran’s soil from Asalouyeh in Bushehr Province to the city of Iranshahr in Sistan and Baluchestan Province has been estimated at 110 million cubic meters.
The Swedish Academy in charge of selecting laureates for the Nobel Prize in Literature has rejected a call by an Israeli writers group to revoke the award of German Nobelist Gunter Grass.
“Regarding the current debate over Gunter Grass’ poem “Was gesagt wered muss” (What must be said) I wish to point out that Mr. Grass received his Nobel Prize in 1999 on literary merit and merit alone – this applies to all recipients,” said Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Academy, on Tuesday.
“There is and will be no discussion in the Swedish Academy on rescinding the award,” said Englund.
The Hebrew Writers’ Association had earlier on Tuesday condemned Grass for writing a poem in which he expressed concern over the consequences of both a nuclear-armed Israel and a possible Israeli attack on Iran.
“We are struck by the shameful and immoral positions taken by Gunter Grass,” Herzl Hakak, the head of the Israeli association said, adding that they “call on writers worldwide to denounce” the opinions of the German Nobelist.
The controversial poem, which was published in the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung last week, has also provoked the anger of both Israeli and German officials.
Germany’s Social Democrats, one of the country’s main political parties, announced that Grass was no longer welcomed at their campaign rallies.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, meanwhile, described the poem as “shameful”, saying it was “an expression of the cynicism of some of the West’s intellectuals”.
Despite all the condemnation, Grass has stated that he has received “piles” of supportive messages for speaking out.
In the poem, the Nobelist writes “Why do I say only now … that the nuclear power Israel endangers an already fragile world peace? Because that must be said which may already be too late to say tomorrow.”
“I will be silent no longer, because I am weary of the West’s hypocrisy,” Grass adds.
Grass won the Nobel Prize in 1999. His 1958 novel, The Tin Drum, was an indictment of the German mindset in the Nazi era.
Meanwhile, the Israeli regime remains the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and it has never allowed inspections of its nuclear facilities nor has it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) based on its policy of nuclear ambiguity.
According to a survey conducted in 2011 by the Berlin-based Friedrich Ebert Foundation, more than 50 percent of Europeans believe that the Tel Aviv regime is the most serious threat to global security.
Tens of thousands of protesters have attended rallies in more than 70 cities across Germany to protest against the US-led war in Afghanistan as well as the proliferation of nuclear arms.
Hundreds of protesters also gathered in front of the US embassy in the capital Berlin on Saturday to voice opposition to US policies in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Chanting slogans in support of the Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass who criticized Israeli policies in the Middle East in his recent poem, the protesters demanded an end to war and violence.
“We are generally protesting an increase of violence, threats of violence and war. Central, it is the situation in Afghanistan and we demand an immediate withdrawal of all German troops from Afghanistan,” Ekkehard Lentz of Bremen Peace Forum said.
Meanwhile, several demonstrations were also held in front of a number of US military bases across the European country.
Protesters also thronged in front of a German military airbase in southwest Germany, which is home to at least 20 US nuclear warheads.
“More weapons are being produced throughout the world and more weapons are being traded than ever before. This indicates that we are to face much more terrible times,” Peter Sturtynski of Federal Committee for Peace Council said.
The traditional Easter marches continue throughout the weekend. Last year, more than 120,000 people joined the protests on the same occasion.
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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