CURRENCY WARFARE: WHAT ARE THE REAL TARGETS OF THE E.U. OIL EMBARGO AGAINST IRAN?
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28973
Global Research, January 31, 2012
Against whom is the European Union’s so-called “oil embargo on Iran” really aimed at?
This is an important geo-strategic question. Aside from rejecting the new E.U. measures against Iran as counter-productive, Tehran has warned the member states of the European Union that the E.U. oil embargo against Iran will hurt them and their economies far more than Iran.
Tehran has thus warned the leaders of the E.U. countries that the new sanctions are foolish and against their national and bloc interests. But is this correct? At the end of the day, who will benefit from the chain of events that are being set into motion?
ARE OIL EMBARGOS AGAINST IRAN NEW?
Oil embargos against Iran are not new. In 1951, the Iranian government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh with the support of the Iranian Parliament nationalized the Iranian oil industry. As a result of Dr. Mossadegh’s nationalization program, the British militarily blockaded the territorial waters and national ports of Iran with the British Royal Navy and prevented Iran from exporting its oil. They also militarily prevented Iranian trade. London also froze Iranian assets and started a campaign to isolate Iran with sanctions. The government of Dr. Mossadegh was democratic and could not be vilified easily domestically by the British, so they began to portray Mossadegh as a pawn of the Soviet Union who would turn Iran into a communist country together with his Marxist political allies.
The illegal British naval embargo was followed by regime change in Tehran via a 1953 Anglo-American engineered coup d’état. The 1953 coup transformed the Shah of Iran from a constitutional figure head to an absolute monarch and dictator, like the monarchs of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar. Iran was transformed overnight from a democratic constitutional monarchy into a dictatorship.
Today, a militarily imposed oil embargo against Iran is not possible like it was in the early 1950s. Instead London and Washington use the language of righteousness and hide behind false pretexts about Iranian nuclear weapons. Like in the 1950s, the oil embargo against Iran is tied to regime change. Yet, there are also broader objectives that go beyond the boundaries of Iran tied to the Washington’s project to impose an oil embargo against the Iranians.
THE EUROPEAN UNION AND IRANIAN OIL SALES
Iran’s largest customer for oil is the People’s Republic of China. According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), which was created after the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo as the strategic wing of the Western Bloc’s Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Iran exports 543,000 oil barrels per day to China. Iran’s other large customers are India, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea. India imports 341,000 barrels per day from Iran, Turkey imports 370,000 barrels per day from Iran, Japan imports 251,000 barrels per day from Iran, and South Korea imports 239,000 barrels per day from Iran.
According to the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum the European Union only accounts for 18% of Iranian oil exports, which means less than one-fifth of Iranian oil sales. Only “collectively” is the European Union the second largest customer of Iran. All the E.U. countries together import 510,000 barrels per day from Iran. This collective rank that all Iranian oil importing E.U. countries have together is being highlighted by those that want to emphasize the effectiveness of the E.U. oil embargo against Iran.
Iran can replace oil sales to the European Union via new buyers or by increasing sales to existing customers like China and India. An Iranian agreement to work with China for stockpiling Chinese strategic reserves would fill a large portion of the vacuum left by the European Union. Thus, the oil embargo against Iran will have minimal direct effects on Iran. Rather, it is most likely that any of the effects that the Iranian economy feels will be tied to the global ramifications of the oil embargo against Iran.
IRAN AND GLOBAL CURRENCY WARFARE
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), both the U.S. dollar and the euro together constitute 84.4% of the world’s currency exchange reserves (end of 2011 date). The U.S. dollar alone, consists of largest share of the world’s currency exchange reserves in 2011, namely 61.7%.
Energy sales are an important part of this equation, because the American dollar is tied to the oil trade.
Thus, oil trade, through what is called the petro-dollar, is helping sustain the American dollar’s international standing. Countries around the world have been virtually forced to use the U.S. dollar to maintain their energy and trade needs and transactions.
To highlight the importance of the international oil trade to the U.S., all the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates – have their national currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar and thereby sustain the petro-dollar by trading oil in American dollars. Moreover, the currencies of Lebanon, Jordan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Belize, and several tropical islands in the Caribbean Sea are also all pegged to the U.S. dollar. Aside from the overseas territories of the United States, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Panama also all officially use the U.S. dollar as their national currencies.
The euro on the other hand is both a rival of the U.S. dollar as well as an allied currency. Both currencies work in tandem against other currencies in many cases and seem to be controlled by increasingly merging centres of financial power.
Aside from the seventeen European Union members using the euro as their currency, the Principality of Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City have issuing rights and both Montenegro and the Albanian-majority Serbian province of Kosovo also use the euro as their national currencies. Outside of the euro area (Eurozone), the currencies of Bosnia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Latvia, and Lithuania in Europe; the currencies of Cape Verde, Comoros, Morocco, the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, and the two CFA zones in Africa; and the currencies of several Western European overseas dependencies, such as Greenland, are all pegged to the euro.
Several monetary zones are directly tied to the euro. In Oceania, the Comptoirs Français du Pacifique (CFP) franc, simply called the Pacific franc (franc pacifique), used in a monetary union of the French dependencies of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and the Territory of the Wallis and Futuna Islands is pegged to the euro. As mentioned earlier, both the CFA zones in Africa are also pegged to the euro. Thus, both the Financial Community of Africa (Communauté financière d’Afrique, CFA) franc or West African CFA franc in West Africa – used by Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo – and the Financial Cooperation in Central Africa (Coopération financière en Afrique central, CFA) franc or Central African CFA franc – used by Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon – have their fates tied to the monetary value of the euro.
Iran is not looking for military confrontation in the rising hostilities with the United States and European Union. Despite the warped narrative being presented, Tehran has said that it will only close the Strait of Hormuz as a last resort. The Iranians have also said that they will not let U.S. or hostile ships go through Iranian territorial water, which is their legal right, and that hostile ships could navigate through Oman’s territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz instead. As a side note, among other things, the problem for the U.S. and Iran’s other adversaries is that the waters on the Omani side of the Strait of Hormuz are too shallow.
Instead of military confrontation, Tehran is fighting back economically in several ways. The first step, which started before 2012, was Iranian international oil sales and trade were diversified in regards to their currency transactions. This is part of a calculated move by Iran to move away from using the American dollar just like Saddam Hussein of Iraq did in 2000 as a means to fight back against the sanctions imposed on Iraq. In this context, Iran has created an international energy exchange or bourse competing with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), which both operate using the American dollar for transactions. This energy exchange, called the Kish Oil Bourse, was officially opened in August 2011 on Kish Island in the Persian Gulf. Its first transactions were made using the euro and the Emirati dirhem.
In context of euro and U.S. dollar rivalries, the Iranians originally wanted to turn to the euro and a petro-euro system with the hope that the competition between the American dollar and the euro would make the European Union an ally of Iran and de-link the E.U. from the United States. As political tensions have mounted with the E.U., the petro-euro has become less attractive for Tehran. Iran has realized that the European Union is submissive to U.S. interests under corrupt leaders. Thus, to a lesser extent, Iran has also tried to move away from the euro.
Moreover, Iran has broadened its move away from the use of the U.S. dollar and the euro as policy in bilateral trade relations. Iran and India are talking about gold payments for Iranian oil. Iranian and Russian trade is conducted in Iranian rials and Russian roubles, while Iranian trade with China and other Asian countries is conducted using the Chinese renminbi, Iranian rial, Japanese yen, and other non-dollar and non-euro currencies.
While the euro could have been a big winner from a petro-euro system, the actions of the European Union have worked against this. The E.U. oil embargo against Iran is merely hammering the nails in the coffin. Globally, the emerging matrix of Eurasian and international trade and transaction outside of the umbrellas of the American dollar and the euro is weakening both currencies. The Iranian Parliament is now passing legislation to cut oil exports to the members of the European Union that will be part of the sanctions regime until they rescind the Iranian oil sanctions. The Iranian move will be a blow to the euro, especially since the European Union will not have time to prepare for the Iranian energy cuts.
There are several possibilities that could emerge. One of them is that this could be part of what Washington wants and it could be playing into its hands against the European Union. Another is that the U.S. and specific E.U. members are working together against strategic economic rivals and other markets.
WHO BENEFITS? THE ECONOMIC TARGETS ARE BEYOND IRAN...
The end of Iranian oil exports to the European Union and the decline of the euro will directly benefit the United States and the U.S. dollar. What the European Union is doing is merely weakening itself and giving the U.S. dollar the upper hand in its currency rivalry against the euro. Moreover, should the euro collapse, the American dollar will quickly fill much of the void. Despite the fact that Russia will benefit from higher oil prices and greater leverage over E.U. energy security as a supplier, the Kremlin has also warned the European Union that it is working against its own interests and subordinating itself to Washington.
Many important questions are at play about the economic consequences of increased oil prices.
Will the European Union be able to weather the economic storm or a currency collapse?
What the E.U. oil embargo against Iran will do is destabilize the euro and snowball globally hurting non-E.U. economies. In this regard, Tehran has warned that the U.S. aims to hurt rival economies through the adoption of E.U. oil sanctions against Iran. Within this line of thinking, this is the reason why the U.S. is trying to force China, India, South Korea, and Japan in Asia to reduce or cut Iranian oil imports.
Within the European Union, it will be the most fragile and struggling economies, such as Greece and Spain, which will be hurt by the E.U. oil embargo against Iran.
The oil refineries in the European Union countries that import Iranian oil will have to find new sellers as sources and will also be forced to adjust their operations. Piero De Simone, one of the leaders of Italy’s Unione Petrolifera, has warned that approximately seventy oil refineries in the E.U. could be shutdown and that Asian countries could start selling refined Iranian oil to the European Union at the expense of the local refineries and the local petroleum industries.
Despite the political claims supporting an oil embargo against Iran, neither will Saudi Arabia be able to fill the void of Iranian oil exports to the European Union or other markets. A shortfall in oil supplies and the production changes could have spiralling effects in the European Union and on the costs of industrial production, transportation, and market prices. The prediction is that that the E.U. will effectively be deepening the crisis in the euro area or Eurozone.
Moreover, the rise in everyday prices, ranging from food to transportation, will not be limited to the European Union, but will have global ramifications. As prices rise on a global scale, the economies in Latin American, Caribbean, African, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Pacific countries will face new hardship, which the financial sector in the U.S. and several of its partners – including members of the European Union – could capitalize on by taking over certain sectors and markets. The IMF and World Bank, as the Bretton Woods proxies of Wall Street, could get into the mix and impose more privatization programs benefiting the financial sectors of the U.S. and its main partners. Furthermore, how Iran decides to sell the 18% of oil it will stop selling to E.U. members will also be a mediating factor.
THE GHOSTS OF THE 1973 ARAB OIL EMBARGO: LIBYA AND THE INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY
While countries in Africa or the Pacific have no strategic oil reserves and will be at the mercy of global price increases, the U.S. and the European Union have worked and tried to strategically insulate themselves from such scenarios. This is where the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) comes into the picture. Libyan oil reserves are also a factor to the hostilities and petro-politics involving Iran.
The IEA was created after the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. As mentioned earlier it is a “strategic wing of the Western Bloc’s Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).” The OECD is a club of countries that includes the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Turkey, Australia, Israel, and New Zealand. It is essentially based on the contours of the Western Bloc, which is comprised of America’s allies and satellites. Aside from Israel, Chile, Estonia, Iceland, Slovenia, and Mexico all the members of the OECD are members of the IEA.
Since its creation in 1974, one of the responsibilities of the IEA has been to stock strategic oil reserves for the OECD countries. During the NATO war against Libya the IEA actually opened its strategic oil reserves to compensate for the void left by a lack of Libyan oil exports. The only other two times this happened were in 1991, when Washington led a military coalition in its first war against Iraq, and in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the United States.
The war in Libya had many purposes:
(1) preventing African unity;
(2) driving China out of Africa;
(3) strategically controlling important energy reserves; and
(4) guarding oil supplies in the scenario of any American-led conflicts against Syria and Iran.
What the NATO war in Libya has done is secure oil output from Libya, because there was a chance that the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya under Colonial Muammar Qaddafi could have suspended oil sales to the European Union in support of Syria or Iran in possible conflicts with the U.S., NATO, and Israel. It is also interesting to note that one of the Libyan figures that helped enable the war against Libya in the United Nations was Sliman Bouchuiguir, the head of the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR) and the current Libyan ambassador to Switzerland, who worked on formulating a strategy against allowing oil from being used as a strategic weapon to insure that that the 1973 oil crisis never repeat itself for the U.S. and its allies.
Aside from Iran, the Syrians have also been a source of oil imports for the European Union. Like Iran, the E.U. has also cut their bloc off from Syrian oil via a sanctions regime engineered by the U.S. government. With Iranian and Syrian oil cut off from the E.U., the strategic value of Libyan oil rises. In this regard, the reports about the deployment of thousands of U.S. troops to Libyan oil fields can also be analyzed as being coordinated or tied to the growing U.S. and E.U. hostilities with Syria and Iran. Rerouting Libyan oil shipments to the E.U. that were intended for China can also be part of such a strategy.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR
In reality, the sanctions regime engineered by the U.S. government against Iran has gone as far as it can go. All the speeches about Iranian isolation are bravado and far from the reality of current international relations and trade. Brazil, Russia, China, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, and various countries in the post-Soviet space, Asia, Africa, and Latin America have all refused to join the sanctions against the Iranian economy.
The E.U. oil embargo, coupled with the broader sanctions against Iran, has broad psychological implications. Iran and its ally Syria both face a multi-dimensional war that has economic, covert, diplomatic, media, and psychological scopes.
The psychological war, which involves the mainstream media as a tool of foreign policy and war, constitutes an efficient propaganda instrument for the U.S. due to its lower costs. Yet, the psychological war can be fought on both sides.
Much of the power of the U.S. is psychological and tied to fear. Like the geography of the Persian Gulf, time is on Iran’s side and working against the United States.
If Iran continues on its present course and is undeterred by sanctions, this will help break a critical psychological threshold, which around the world tends to discourage countries from confronting and opposing the United States.
Should many countries continue to refuse to bow down to the Obama Administration pertaining to the impostion of sanctions against Iran, this will also be a blow to the prestige and power of the U.S., which would also have economic and financial implications.
Moreover, at the end of the day, the E.U. oil embargo will hurt the E.U. instead of Iran. In the long-term it could also hurt the United States.
Structurally, the effects of the E.U. oil embargo will further entrench the E.U. in the orbit of Washington, but these effects will catalyze growing social opposition to Washington, which will eventually manifest in the political and economic arenas.
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Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Sociologist and award-winning author. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He specializes on the Middle East and Central Asia. He has been a contributor and guest discussing the broader Middle East on numerous international programs and networks such as Al Jazeera, Press TV, teleSUR and Russia Today. His writings have been published in more than ten languages. He also writes for the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF), Moscow.
Global Research Articles by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Nueva Democracia
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martes, 31 de enero de 2012
lunes, 30 de enero de 2012
US/ISRAEL: IRAN IS NOT BUILDING NUKES
US/ISRAEL: IRAN IS NOT BUILDING NUKES
By Ray McGovern – CommonDreams
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-5
http://futurefastforward.com/images/stories/featurearticles/USIsraelIranNot.pdf
Has Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb? That would seem to be the central question in the current bellicose debate over whether the world should simply cripple Iran‘s economy and inflict severe pain on its civilian population or launch a preemptive war to destroy its nuclear capability while possibly achieving ―regime change.‖
And if you‘ve been reading the New York Times or following the rest of the Fawning Corporate Media, you‘d likely assume that everyone who matters agrees that the answer to the question is yes, although the FCM adds the caveat that Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. The line is included with an almost perceptible wink and an ―oh, yeah.‖
However, a consensus seems to be emerging among the intelligence and military agencies of the United States – and Israel – that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. In recent days, that judgment has been expressed by high-profile figures in the defense establishments of the two countries – U.S.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israel‘s Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
You might think that you would have heard more about that, wouldn‘t you? U.S. and Israel agree that Iran is NOT building a nuclear bomb. However, this joint assessment that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb apparently represented too big a change in the accepted narrative for the Times and the rest of the FCM to process.
Yet, on Jan. 18, the day before U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey arrived for talks in Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Barak gave an interview to Israeli Army radio in which he addressed with striking candor how he assesses Iran‘s nuclear program. It was not the normal pabulum.
Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?
Barak: … confusion stems from the fact that people ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case. …
Question: How long will it take from the moment Iran decides to turn it into effective weapons until it has nuclear warheads?
Barak: I don’t know; one has to estimate. … Some say a year, others say 18 months. It doesn’t really matter. To do that, Iran would have to announce it is leaving the [UN International Atomic Energy Agency] inspection regime and stop responding to IAEA’s criticism, etc.
Why haven’t they [the Iranians] done that? Because they realize that … when it became clear to everyone that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, this would constitute definite proof that time is actually running out. This could generate either harsher sanctions or other action against them. They do not want that.
Question: Has the United States asked or demanded that the government inform the Americans in advance, should it decide on military action?
Barak: I don’t want to get into that. We have not made a decision to opt for that, we have not decided on a decision-making date. The whole thing is very far off. …
Question: You said the whole thing is “very far off.” Do you mean weeks, months, years?
Barak: I wouldn’t want to provide any estimates. It’s certainly not urgent. I don’t want to relate to it as though tomorrow it will happen.
As noted in my Jan. 19 article, “Israel Tamps Down Iran War Threats,” which was based mostly on reports from the Israeli press before I had access to the complete transcript of the interview, I noted that Barak appeared to be identifying himself with the consistent assessment of U.S. intelligence community since late 2007 that Iran has not made a decision to go forward with a nuclear bomb.
A Momentous NIE
A formal National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 – a consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies – contradicted the encrusted conventional wisdom that “of course” Iran’s nuclear development program must be aimed at producing nuclear weapons. The NIE stated:
“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; … Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”
The Key Judgments of that Estimate elicited a vituperative reaction from some Israeli officials and in neoconservative circles in the United States. It also angered then-President George W. Bush, who joined the Israelis in expressing disagreement with the judgments. In January 2008, Bush flew to Israel to commiserate with Israeli officials who he said should have been “furious with the United States over the NIE.”
While Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, is replete with bizarre candor, nothing beats his admission that “the NIE tied my hands on the military side,” preventing him from ordering a preemptive war against Iran, an action favored by hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney.
For me personally it was heartening to discover that my former colleagues in the CIA’s analytical division had restored the old ethos of telling difficult truths to power, after the disgraceful years under CIA leaders like George Tenet and John McLaughlin when the CIA followed the politically safer route of telling the powerful what they wanted to hear.
It had been three decades since I chaired a couple of National Intelligence Estimates, but fate never gave me the chance to manage one that played such a key role in preventing an unnecessary and disastrous war — as the November 2007 NIE did.
In such pressure-cooker situations, the Estimates job is not for the malleable or the faint-hearted. The ethos was to speak with courage, and without fear or favor, but that is often easier said than done. In my days, however, we analysts enjoyed career protection for telling it like we saw it. It was an incredible boost to morale to see that happening again in 2007.
Ever since the NIE was published, however, powerful politicians and media pundits have sought to chip away at its conclusions, suggesting that the analysts were hopelessly naïve or politically motivated or vengeful, out to punish Bush and Cheney for the heavy-handed tactics used to push false and dubious claims about Iraq’s WMD in 2002 and 2003.
A New Conventional Wisdom
There emerged in Official Washington a new conventional wisdom that the NIE was erroneous and wasn’t worth mentioning anymore. Though the Obama administration has stood by it, the New York Times and other FCM outlets routinely would state that the United States and Israel agreed that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb and then add the wink-wink denial by Iran.
However, on Jan. 8, Defense Secretary Panetta told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” that “the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them [the Iranians] … and to make sure that they do not make the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon.”
Panetta was making the implicit point that the Iranians had not made that decision, but just in case someone might miss his meaning, Panetta posed the direct question to himself: “Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.”
Barak’s Jan. 18 statement to Israeli Army radio indicated that his views dovetail with those of Panetta – and their comments apparently are backed up by the assessments of each nation’s intelligence analysts. In its report on Defense Minister Barak’s remarks, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Jan. 19 summed up the change in the position of Israeli leaders as follows:
“The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present … to Dempsey indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb. The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon – or, more specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a missile. Nor is it clear when Iran might make such a decision.”
At the New York Times, the initial coverage of Barak’s interview focused on another element. An article by Isabel Kershner and Rick Gladstone appeared on Jan. 19 on page A5 under the headline “Decision on Whether to Attack Iran is ‘Far Off,’ Israeli Defense Minister Says.”
To their credit, the Times’ Kershner and Gladstone did not shrink from offering an accurate translation of what Barak said on the key point of IAEA inspections: “The Iranians have not ended the oversight exercised by the International Atomic Energy Agency … They have not done that because they know that that would constitute proof of the military nature of their nuclear program and that would provoke stronger international sanctions or other types of action against their country.”
But missing from the Times’ article was Barak’s more direct assessment that Iran apparently had not made a decision to press ahead toward construction of a nuclear bomb. That would have undercut the boilerplate in almost every Times story saying that U.S. and Israeli officials believe Iran is working on a nuclear bomb.
But That’s Not the Right Line!
So, what to do? Not surprisingly, the next day (Jan. 20), the Times ran an article by its Middle East bureau chief Ethan Bronner in which he stated categorically: ”Israel and the United States both say that Iran is pursuing the building of nuclear weapons — an assertion denied by Iran — …”
By Jan. 21, the Times had time to prepare an entire page (A8) of articles setting the record “straight,” so to speak, on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and intentions: Here are the most telling excerpts, by article (emphasis mine):
1- “European Union Moves Closer to Imposing Tough Sanctions on Iran,” by Steven Erlanger, Paris:
“Senior French officials are concerned that these measures [sanctions] … will not be strong enough to push the Iranian government into serious, substantive negotiations on its nuclear program which the West says is aimed at producing weapons.”
“In his annual speech on French diplomacy on Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran of lying, and he denounced what he called its ‘senseless race for a nuclear bomb.’”
“Iran says it is enriching uranium solely for peaceful uses and denies a military intent. Butfew in the West believe Tehran, which has not cooperated fully with inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and has been pursuing some technologies that have only a military use.”
(Pardon me, please. I’m having a bad flashback. Anyone remember the Times’ peerless reporting on those infamous “aluminum tubes” that supposedly were destined for nuclear centrifuges — until some folks did a Google search and found they were for the artillery then used by Iraq?)
2- “China Leader Warns Iran Not to Make Nuclear Arms,” by Michael Wines, Beijing
“Prime Minister Wen Jiabao wrapped up a six-day Middle East tour this week with stronger-than-usual criticism of Iran’s defiance on its nuclear program….”
“Mr. Wen’s comments on Iran were unusually pointed for Chinese diplomacy. In Doha, Qatar’s capital, he said China ‘adamantly opposes Iran developing and possessing nuclear weapons.’”
“Western nations suspect that Iran is working toward building a nuclear weapon, while Iran insists its program is peaceful.”
3- “U.S. General Urges Closer Ties With Israel.” by Isabel Kershner, Jerusalem
“Though Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes, Israel, the United Stated, and much of the West are convinced that Iran is working to develop a weapons program. …”
Never (Let Up) on Sunday
Next it was time for the Times to trot out David Sanger from the Washington bullpen. Many will remember him as one of the Times’ stenographers/cheerleaders for the Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq in March 2003. An effusive hawk also on Iran, Sanger was promoted to a position as chief Washington correspondent, apparently for services rendered.
In his Jan. 22 article, “Confronting Iran in a Year of Elections,” Sanger pulls out all the stops, even resurrecting Condoleezza Rice’s “mushroom cloud” to scare all of us — and, not least, the Iranians. He wrote:
“‘From the perception of the Iranians, life may look better on the other side of themushroom cloud,’ said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He may be right: while the Obama administration has vowed that it will never tolerate Iran as a nuclear weapons state, a few officials admit that they may have to settle for a ‘nuclear capable’ Iran that has the technology, the nuclear fuel and the expertise to become a nuclear power in a matter of weeks or months.”
Were that not enough, enter the national champion of the Times cheerleading squad that prepared the American people in 2002 and early 2003 for the attack on Iraq, former Executive Editor Bill Keller. He graced us the next day (Jan. 23) with an op-ed entitled “Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran?” – though he wasn’t favoring a military strike, at least not right now. Here’s Keller:
“The actual state of the [nuclear] program is not entirely clear, but the best open-source estimates are that if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered full-speed-ahead — which there is no sign he has done — they could have an actual weapon in a year or so. … In practice, Obama’s policy promises to be tougher than Bush’s. Because Obama started out with an offer of direct talks — which the Iranians foolishly spurned — world opinion has shifted in our direction.”
Wow. With Iraqi egg still all over his face, the disgraced Keller gets to “spurn” history itself — to rewrite the facts. Sorry, Bill, it was not Iran, but rather Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other neocons in the U.S. Department of State and White House (with you and neocon allies in the press cheering them on), who “foolishly spurned” an offer by Iran in 2010 to trade about half its low-enriched uranium for medical isotopes. It was a deal negotiated by Turkey and Brazil, but it was viewed by the neocons as an obstacle to ratcheting up the sanctions.
In his Jan. 23 column, with more sophomoric glibness, Keller wrote this:
“We may now have sufficient global support to enact the one measure that would be genuinely crippling — a boycott of Iranian oil. The Iranians take this threat to their economic livelihood seriously enough that people who follow the subject no longer minimize the chance of a naval confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s not impossible that we will get war with Iran even without bombing its nuclear facilities.”
How neat! War without even trying!
The Paper of (Checkered Record)
Guidance To All NYT Hands: Are you getting the picture? After all, what does Defense Minister Barak know? Or Defense Secretary Panetta? Or the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community? Or apparently even Israeli intelligence?
The marching orders from the Times’ management appear to be that you should pay no heed to those sources of information. Just repeat the mantra: Everyone knows Iran is hard at work on the Bomb.
As is well known, other newspapers and media outlets take their cue from the Times. Small wonder, then, that USA Today seemed to be following the same guidance on Jan. 23, as can be seen in its major editorial on military action against Iran:
“The U.S. and Iran will keep steaming toward confrontation, Iran intent on acquiring the bomb to establish itself as a regional power, and the U.S. intent on preventing it to protect allies and avoid a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile region.
“One day, the U.S. is likely to face a wrenching choice: bomb Iran, with the nation fully united and prepared for the consequences, or let Iran have the weapons, along with a Cold War-like doctrine ensuring Iran’s nuclear annihilation if it ever uses them. In that context, sanctions remain the last best hope for a satisfactory solution.”
And, of course, the U.S. press corps almost never adds the context that Israel already possesses an undeclared arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons, or that Iran is essentially surrounded by nuclear weapons states, including India, Pakistan, Russia, China and – at sea – the United States.
PBS Equally Guilty
PBS’s behavior adhered to its customary don’t-offend-the-politicians-who-might-otherwise-cut-our-budget attitude on the Jan. 18 “NewsHour” – about 12 hours after Ehud Barak’s interview started making the rounds. Host Margaret Warner set the stage for an interview with neocon Dennis Ross and Vali Nasr (a professor at Tufts) by using a thoroughly misleading clip from former Sen. Rick Santorum’s Jan. 1 appearance on “Meet the Press.”
Warner started by saying: “Back in the U.S. many Republican presidential candidates have been vowing they’d be even tougher with Tehran. Former Senator Rick Santorum spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press: ‘I would be saying to the Iranians, you open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors, or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes and make it very public that we are doing so.’”
Santorum seemed totally unaware that there are U.N. inspectors in Iran, and host David Gregory did nothing to correct him, leaving Santorum’s remark unchallenged. The blogosphere immediately lit up with requests for NBC to tell their viewers that there are already U.N. inspectors in Iran, which unlike Israel is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allows IAEA inspections.
During the Warner interview, Dennis Ross performed true to form, projecting supreme confidence that he knows more about Iran’s nuclear program than the Israeli Defense Minister and the U.S. intelligence community combined:
Margaret Warner: If you hamstring their [Iran’s] Central Bank, and the U.S. persuades all these other big customers not to buy Iranian oil, that could be thought of as an act of war on the part of the Iranians. Is that a danger?
Ross: I think there’s a context here. The context is that the Iranians continue to pursue a nuclear program. And unmistakably to many, that is a nuclear program whose purpose is to achieve nuclear weapons. That has a very high danger, a very high consequence. So the idea that they could continue with that and not realize that at some point they have to make a choice, and if they don’t make the choice, the price they’re going to pay is a very high one, that’s the logic of increasing the pressure.
Never mind that the Israeli Defense Minister had told the press something quite different some 12 hours before.
Still, it is interesting that Barak’s comments on how Israeli intelligence views Iran’s nuclear program now mesh so closely with the NIE in 2007. This is the new and significant story here, as I believe any objective journalist would agree.
However, the FCM — led by the New York Times — cannot countenance admitting that they have been hyping the threat from Iran as they did with Iraq’s non-existent WMDs just nine years ago. So they keep repeating the line that Israel and the U.S. agree that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
In this up-is-down world, America’s newspaper of record won’t even report accurately what Israel (or the CIA) thinks on this important issue, if that goes against the alarmist conventional wisdom that the neocons favor. Thus, we have this divergence between what the U.S. media is reporting as flat fact — i.e., that Israel and the United States believe Iran is building a bomb (though Iran denies it) – and the statements from senior Israeli and U.S. officials that Iran has NOT decided to build a bomb.
While this might strike some as splitting hairs – since peaceful nuclear expertise can have potential military use – this hair is a very important one. If Iran is not working on building a nuclear bomb, then the threats of preemptive war are not only unjustified, they could be exactly the motivation for Iran to decide that it does need a nuclear bomb to protect itself and its people.
------------------
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Nueva Democracia
------------------
By Ray McGovern – CommonDreams
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-5
http://futurefastforward.com/images/stories/featurearticles/USIsraelIranNot.pdf
Has Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb? That would seem to be the central question in the current bellicose debate over whether the world should simply cripple Iran‘s economy and inflict severe pain on its civilian population or launch a preemptive war to destroy its nuclear capability while possibly achieving ―regime change.‖
And if you‘ve been reading the New York Times or following the rest of the Fawning Corporate Media, you‘d likely assume that everyone who matters agrees that the answer to the question is yes, although the FCM adds the caveat that Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. The line is included with an almost perceptible wink and an ―oh, yeah.‖
However, a consensus seems to be emerging among the intelligence and military agencies of the United States – and Israel – that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. In recent days, that judgment has been expressed by high-profile figures in the defense establishments of the two countries – U.S.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israel‘s Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
You might think that you would have heard more about that, wouldn‘t you? U.S. and Israel agree that Iran is NOT building a nuclear bomb. However, this joint assessment that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb apparently represented too big a change in the accepted narrative for the Times and the rest of the FCM to process.
Yet, on Jan. 18, the day before U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey arrived for talks in Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Barak gave an interview to Israeli Army radio in which he addressed with striking candor how he assesses Iran‘s nuclear program. It was not the normal pabulum.
Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?
Barak: … confusion stems from the fact that people ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case. …
Question: How long will it take from the moment Iran decides to turn it into effective weapons until it has nuclear warheads?
Barak: I don’t know; one has to estimate. … Some say a year, others say 18 months. It doesn’t really matter. To do that, Iran would have to announce it is leaving the [UN International Atomic Energy Agency] inspection regime and stop responding to IAEA’s criticism, etc.
Why haven’t they [the Iranians] done that? Because they realize that … when it became clear to everyone that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, this would constitute definite proof that time is actually running out. This could generate either harsher sanctions or other action against them. They do not want that.
Question: Has the United States asked or demanded that the government inform the Americans in advance, should it decide on military action?
Barak: I don’t want to get into that. We have not made a decision to opt for that, we have not decided on a decision-making date. The whole thing is very far off. …
Question: You said the whole thing is “very far off.” Do you mean weeks, months, years?
Barak: I wouldn’t want to provide any estimates. It’s certainly not urgent. I don’t want to relate to it as though tomorrow it will happen.
As noted in my Jan. 19 article, “Israel Tamps Down Iran War Threats,” which was based mostly on reports from the Israeli press before I had access to the complete transcript of the interview, I noted that Barak appeared to be identifying himself with the consistent assessment of U.S. intelligence community since late 2007 that Iran has not made a decision to go forward with a nuclear bomb.
A Momentous NIE
A formal National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 – a consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies – contradicted the encrusted conventional wisdom that “of course” Iran’s nuclear development program must be aimed at producing nuclear weapons. The NIE stated:
“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; … Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”
The Key Judgments of that Estimate elicited a vituperative reaction from some Israeli officials and in neoconservative circles in the United States. It also angered then-President George W. Bush, who joined the Israelis in expressing disagreement with the judgments. In January 2008, Bush flew to Israel to commiserate with Israeli officials who he said should have been “furious with the United States over the NIE.”
While Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, is replete with bizarre candor, nothing beats his admission that “the NIE tied my hands on the military side,” preventing him from ordering a preemptive war against Iran, an action favored by hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney.
For me personally it was heartening to discover that my former colleagues in the CIA’s analytical division had restored the old ethos of telling difficult truths to power, after the disgraceful years under CIA leaders like George Tenet and John McLaughlin when the CIA followed the politically safer route of telling the powerful what they wanted to hear.
It had been three decades since I chaired a couple of National Intelligence Estimates, but fate never gave me the chance to manage one that played such a key role in preventing an unnecessary and disastrous war — as the November 2007 NIE did.
In such pressure-cooker situations, the Estimates job is not for the malleable or the faint-hearted. The ethos was to speak with courage, and without fear or favor, but that is often easier said than done. In my days, however, we analysts enjoyed career protection for telling it like we saw it. It was an incredible boost to morale to see that happening again in 2007.
Ever since the NIE was published, however, powerful politicians and media pundits have sought to chip away at its conclusions, suggesting that the analysts were hopelessly naïve or politically motivated or vengeful, out to punish Bush and Cheney for the heavy-handed tactics used to push false and dubious claims about Iraq’s WMD in 2002 and 2003.
A New Conventional Wisdom
There emerged in Official Washington a new conventional wisdom that the NIE was erroneous and wasn’t worth mentioning anymore. Though the Obama administration has stood by it, the New York Times and other FCM outlets routinely would state that the United States and Israel agreed that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb and then add the wink-wink denial by Iran.
However, on Jan. 8, Defense Secretary Panetta told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” that “the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them [the Iranians] … and to make sure that they do not make the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon.”
Panetta was making the implicit point that the Iranians had not made that decision, but just in case someone might miss his meaning, Panetta posed the direct question to himself: “Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.”
Barak’s Jan. 18 statement to Israeli Army radio indicated that his views dovetail with those of Panetta – and their comments apparently are backed up by the assessments of each nation’s intelligence analysts. In its report on Defense Minister Barak’s remarks, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Jan. 19 summed up the change in the position of Israeli leaders as follows:
“The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present … to Dempsey indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb. The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon – or, more specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a missile. Nor is it clear when Iran might make such a decision.”
At the New York Times, the initial coverage of Barak’s interview focused on another element. An article by Isabel Kershner and Rick Gladstone appeared on Jan. 19 on page A5 under the headline “Decision on Whether to Attack Iran is ‘Far Off,’ Israeli Defense Minister Says.”
To their credit, the Times’ Kershner and Gladstone did not shrink from offering an accurate translation of what Barak said on the key point of IAEA inspections: “The Iranians have not ended the oversight exercised by the International Atomic Energy Agency … They have not done that because they know that that would constitute proof of the military nature of their nuclear program and that would provoke stronger international sanctions or other types of action against their country.”
But missing from the Times’ article was Barak’s more direct assessment that Iran apparently had not made a decision to press ahead toward construction of a nuclear bomb. That would have undercut the boilerplate in almost every Times story saying that U.S. and Israeli officials believe Iran is working on a nuclear bomb.
But That’s Not the Right Line!
So, what to do? Not surprisingly, the next day (Jan. 20), the Times ran an article by its Middle East bureau chief Ethan Bronner in which he stated categorically: ”Israel and the United States both say that Iran is pursuing the building of nuclear weapons — an assertion denied by Iran — …”
By Jan. 21, the Times had time to prepare an entire page (A8) of articles setting the record “straight,” so to speak, on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and intentions: Here are the most telling excerpts, by article (emphasis mine):
1- “European Union Moves Closer to Imposing Tough Sanctions on Iran,” by Steven Erlanger, Paris:
“Senior French officials are concerned that these measures [sanctions] … will not be strong enough to push the Iranian government into serious, substantive negotiations on its nuclear program which the West says is aimed at producing weapons.”
“In his annual speech on French diplomacy on Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran of lying, and he denounced what he called its ‘senseless race for a nuclear bomb.’”
“Iran says it is enriching uranium solely for peaceful uses and denies a military intent. Butfew in the West believe Tehran, which has not cooperated fully with inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and has been pursuing some technologies that have only a military use.”
(Pardon me, please. I’m having a bad flashback. Anyone remember the Times’ peerless reporting on those infamous “aluminum tubes” that supposedly were destined for nuclear centrifuges — until some folks did a Google search and found they were for the artillery then used by Iraq?)
2- “China Leader Warns Iran Not to Make Nuclear Arms,” by Michael Wines, Beijing
“Prime Minister Wen Jiabao wrapped up a six-day Middle East tour this week with stronger-than-usual criticism of Iran’s defiance on its nuclear program….”
“Mr. Wen’s comments on Iran were unusually pointed for Chinese diplomacy. In Doha, Qatar’s capital, he said China ‘adamantly opposes Iran developing and possessing nuclear weapons.’”
“Western nations suspect that Iran is working toward building a nuclear weapon, while Iran insists its program is peaceful.”
3- “U.S. General Urges Closer Ties With Israel.” by Isabel Kershner, Jerusalem
“Though Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes, Israel, the United Stated, and much of the West are convinced that Iran is working to develop a weapons program. …”
Never (Let Up) on Sunday
Next it was time for the Times to trot out David Sanger from the Washington bullpen. Many will remember him as one of the Times’ stenographers/cheerleaders for the Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq in March 2003. An effusive hawk also on Iran, Sanger was promoted to a position as chief Washington correspondent, apparently for services rendered.
In his Jan. 22 article, “Confronting Iran in a Year of Elections,” Sanger pulls out all the stops, even resurrecting Condoleezza Rice’s “mushroom cloud” to scare all of us — and, not least, the Iranians. He wrote:
“‘From the perception of the Iranians, life may look better on the other side of themushroom cloud,’ said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He may be right: while the Obama administration has vowed that it will never tolerate Iran as a nuclear weapons state, a few officials admit that they may have to settle for a ‘nuclear capable’ Iran that has the technology, the nuclear fuel and the expertise to become a nuclear power in a matter of weeks or months.”
Were that not enough, enter the national champion of the Times cheerleading squad that prepared the American people in 2002 and early 2003 for the attack on Iraq, former Executive Editor Bill Keller. He graced us the next day (Jan. 23) with an op-ed entitled “Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran?” – though he wasn’t favoring a military strike, at least not right now. Here’s Keller:
“The actual state of the [nuclear] program is not entirely clear, but the best open-source estimates are that if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered full-speed-ahead — which there is no sign he has done — they could have an actual weapon in a year or so. … In practice, Obama’s policy promises to be tougher than Bush’s. Because Obama started out with an offer of direct talks — which the Iranians foolishly spurned — world opinion has shifted in our direction.”
Wow. With Iraqi egg still all over his face, the disgraced Keller gets to “spurn” history itself — to rewrite the facts. Sorry, Bill, it was not Iran, but rather Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other neocons in the U.S. Department of State and White House (with you and neocon allies in the press cheering them on), who “foolishly spurned” an offer by Iran in 2010 to trade about half its low-enriched uranium for medical isotopes. It was a deal negotiated by Turkey and Brazil, but it was viewed by the neocons as an obstacle to ratcheting up the sanctions.
In his Jan. 23 column, with more sophomoric glibness, Keller wrote this:
“We may now have sufficient global support to enact the one measure that would be genuinely crippling — a boycott of Iranian oil. The Iranians take this threat to their economic livelihood seriously enough that people who follow the subject no longer minimize the chance of a naval confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s not impossible that we will get war with Iran even without bombing its nuclear facilities.”
How neat! War without even trying!
The Paper of (Checkered Record)
Guidance To All NYT Hands: Are you getting the picture? After all, what does Defense Minister Barak know? Or Defense Secretary Panetta? Or the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community? Or apparently even Israeli intelligence?
The marching orders from the Times’ management appear to be that you should pay no heed to those sources of information. Just repeat the mantra: Everyone knows Iran is hard at work on the Bomb.
As is well known, other newspapers and media outlets take their cue from the Times. Small wonder, then, that USA Today seemed to be following the same guidance on Jan. 23, as can be seen in its major editorial on military action against Iran:
“The U.S. and Iran will keep steaming toward confrontation, Iran intent on acquiring the bomb to establish itself as a regional power, and the U.S. intent on preventing it to protect allies and avoid a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile region.
“One day, the U.S. is likely to face a wrenching choice: bomb Iran, with the nation fully united and prepared for the consequences, or let Iran have the weapons, along with a Cold War-like doctrine ensuring Iran’s nuclear annihilation if it ever uses them. In that context, sanctions remain the last best hope for a satisfactory solution.”
And, of course, the U.S. press corps almost never adds the context that Israel already possesses an undeclared arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons, or that Iran is essentially surrounded by nuclear weapons states, including India, Pakistan, Russia, China and – at sea – the United States.
PBS Equally Guilty
PBS’s behavior adhered to its customary don’t-offend-the-politicians-who-might-otherwise-cut-our-budget attitude on the Jan. 18 “NewsHour” – about 12 hours after Ehud Barak’s interview started making the rounds. Host Margaret Warner set the stage for an interview with neocon Dennis Ross and Vali Nasr (a professor at Tufts) by using a thoroughly misleading clip from former Sen. Rick Santorum’s Jan. 1 appearance on “Meet the Press.”
Warner started by saying: “Back in the U.S. many Republican presidential candidates have been vowing they’d be even tougher with Tehran. Former Senator Rick Santorum spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press: ‘I would be saying to the Iranians, you open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors, or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes and make it very public that we are doing so.’”
Santorum seemed totally unaware that there are U.N. inspectors in Iran, and host David Gregory did nothing to correct him, leaving Santorum’s remark unchallenged. The blogosphere immediately lit up with requests for NBC to tell their viewers that there are already U.N. inspectors in Iran, which unlike Israel is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allows IAEA inspections.
During the Warner interview, Dennis Ross performed true to form, projecting supreme confidence that he knows more about Iran’s nuclear program than the Israeli Defense Minister and the U.S. intelligence community combined:
Margaret Warner: If you hamstring their [Iran’s] Central Bank, and the U.S. persuades all these other big customers not to buy Iranian oil, that could be thought of as an act of war on the part of the Iranians. Is that a danger?
Ross: I think there’s a context here. The context is that the Iranians continue to pursue a nuclear program. And unmistakably to many, that is a nuclear program whose purpose is to achieve nuclear weapons. That has a very high danger, a very high consequence. So the idea that they could continue with that and not realize that at some point they have to make a choice, and if they don’t make the choice, the price they’re going to pay is a very high one, that’s the logic of increasing the pressure.
Never mind that the Israeli Defense Minister had told the press something quite different some 12 hours before.
Still, it is interesting that Barak’s comments on how Israeli intelligence views Iran’s nuclear program now mesh so closely with the NIE in 2007. This is the new and significant story here, as I believe any objective journalist would agree.
However, the FCM — led by the New York Times — cannot countenance admitting that they have been hyping the threat from Iran as they did with Iraq’s non-existent WMDs just nine years ago. So they keep repeating the line that Israel and the U.S. agree that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
In this up-is-down world, America’s newspaper of record won’t even report accurately what Israel (or the CIA) thinks on this important issue, if that goes against the alarmist conventional wisdom that the neocons favor. Thus, we have this divergence between what the U.S. media is reporting as flat fact — i.e., that Israel and the United States believe Iran is building a bomb (though Iran denies it) – and the statements from senior Israeli and U.S. officials that Iran has NOT decided to build a bomb.
While this might strike some as splitting hairs – since peaceful nuclear expertise can have potential military use – this hair is a very important one. If Iran is not working on building a nuclear bomb, then the threats of preemptive war are not only unjustified, they could be exactly the motivation for Iran to decide that it does need a nuclear bomb to protect itself and its people.
------------------
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Nueva Democracia
------------------
ACTA IS WORSE THAN SOPA, HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
ACTA IS WORSE THAN SOPA, HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
J. D. Heyes | Monday, January 30
http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/01/30/acta-is-worse-than-sopa-here%E2%80%99s-what-you-need-to-know/
As a warrior for Internet freedom, you helped defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA by supporting Web black outs by sites like Wikipedia and by contacting your lawmaker to voice your displeasure. So loud was your voice that even the president of the United States sided with you in opposing it. (Forbes. Tech section. 1/16/2012 Obama Says So Long SOPA, Killing Controversial Internet Piracy Legislation: President Obama has stepped in and said he would not support the bill SOPA: Stop Online Piracy Act. IN: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/01/16/obama-says-so-long-sopa-killing-controversial-internet-piracy-legislation/ )
But don’t take a deep sigh of relief because, after all, we’re talking about a merger of Washington, D.C., and Hollywood here, as well as global interests. After the motion picture industry, its subsidiaries and all “interested parties” have spent nearly $150 million lobbying for some sort of Internet-centric “anti-piracy” bill, you should have known the powers that be would return.
And they have, only this time they are pushingsomething far more onerous: ACTA, or theAnti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
“Although the proposed treaty’s title might suggest that the agreement deals only with counterfeit physical goods (such as medicines) what little information has been made available publicly by negotiating governments about the content of the treaty makes it clear that it will have a far broader scope and in particular will deal with new tools targeting ‘Internet distribution and information technology’”, says an assessment of ACTA by the watchdogs at the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
“ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers’ privacy and civil liberties for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet [regarding] legitimate commerce and for developing countries’ ability to choose policy options that best suit their domestic priorities and level of economic development,” says EFF’s assessment.
As is usually the case with dubious, rights-stripping legislation, ACTA – which Forbes.com reports was signed by the U.S. in 2011 and has already been sanctioned as well by Japan, Switzerland and many European Union nations – has largely been negotiated in the shadows and, thus, has largely been devoid of scrutiny… until now.
While the Obama administration was shying away from SOPA, it has been aggressively pursuing ACTA (full disclosure: the process was started under the Bush administration). Critics say it is much more far-reaching than SOPA, bypassing “the sovereign laws of participating nations” and “forcing ISP’s across the globe to act as internet police,” Forbes said.
But ACTA isn’t limited just to the Internet. In fact, the agreement would crack down things like generic drugs and would make food patents more difficult to obtain “by enforcing a global standard on seed patents that threatens local farmers and food independence across the developed world,” Forbes says.
The good thing is, there is not universal acceptance of ACTA and its onerous, liberty-stealing provisions. Emerging nations like Brazil and India are adamantly opposed to it for rightfully fearing its provisions would harm their economies.
But Internet freedom is also under attack from other quarters as well. The EFF also notes thatthe Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which is a separate measure, would “rewrite the global rules on IP enforcement”.
“All signatory countries will be required to conform their domestic laws and policies to the provisions of the Agreement,” said the EFF assessment. “In the U.S. this is likely to further entrench controversial aspects of U.S. copyright law. The recently leaked U.S. IP chapter also includes provisions that appear to go beyond current U.S. law. This raises significant concerns for citizens’ due process, privacy and freedom of expression rights.”
SOPA may be history but that doesn’t mean Internet freedom does not remain under assault. Tyrants never stop trying to enforce tyranny.
--------------
J. D. Heyes. Natural News. January 29, 2012
Sources for this article include:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/23/if-you-thought-sopa-was-bad-just-wait-until-you-meet-acta
https://www.eff.org/pages/trans-pacific-partnership-agreement
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/01/16/obama-says-so-long-sopa-killing-controversial-internet-piracy-legislation/
------------------
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Nueva Democracia
------------------
J. D. Heyes | Monday, January 30
http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/01/30/acta-is-worse-than-sopa-here%E2%80%99s-what-you-need-to-know/
As a warrior for Internet freedom, you helped defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA by supporting Web black outs by sites like Wikipedia and by contacting your lawmaker to voice your displeasure. So loud was your voice that even the president of the United States sided with you in opposing it. (Forbes. Tech section. 1/16/2012 Obama Says So Long SOPA, Killing Controversial Internet Piracy Legislation: President Obama has stepped in and said he would not support the bill SOPA: Stop Online Piracy Act. IN: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/01/16/obama-says-so-long-sopa-killing-controversial-internet-piracy-legislation/ )
But don’t take a deep sigh of relief because, after all, we’re talking about a merger of Washington, D.C., and Hollywood here, as well as global interests. After the motion picture industry, its subsidiaries and all “interested parties” have spent nearly $150 million lobbying for some sort of Internet-centric “anti-piracy” bill, you should have known the powers that be would return.
And they have, only this time they are pushingsomething far more onerous: ACTA, or theAnti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
“Although the proposed treaty’s title might suggest that the agreement deals only with counterfeit physical goods (such as medicines) what little information has been made available publicly by negotiating governments about the content of the treaty makes it clear that it will have a far broader scope and in particular will deal with new tools targeting ‘Internet distribution and information technology’”, says an assessment of ACTA by the watchdogs at the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
“ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers’ privacy and civil liberties for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet [regarding] legitimate commerce and for developing countries’ ability to choose policy options that best suit their domestic priorities and level of economic development,” says EFF’s assessment.
As is usually the case with dubious, rights-stripping legislation, ACTA – which Forbes.com reports was signed by the U.S. in 2011 and has already been sanctioned as well by Japan, Switzerland and many European Union nations – has largely been negotiated in the shadows and, thus, has largely been devoid of scrutiny… until now.
While the Obama administration was shying away from SOPA, it has been aggressively pursuing ACTA (full disclosure: the process was started under the Bush administration). Critics say it is much more far-reaching than SOPA, bypassing “the sovereign laws of participating nations” and “forcing ISP’s across the globe to act as internet police,” Forbes said.
But ACTA isn’t limited just to the Internet. In fact, the agreement would crack down things like generic drugs and would make food patents more difficult to obtain “by enforcing a global standard on seed patents that threatens local farmers and food independence across the developed world,” Forbes says.
The good thing is, there is not universal acceptance of ACTA and its onerous, liberty-stealing provisions. Emerging nations like Brazil and India are adamantly opposed to it for rightfully fearing its provisions would harm their economies.
But Internet freedom is also under attack from other quarters as well. The EFF also notes thatthe Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which is a separate measure, would “rewrite the global rules on IP enforcement”.
“All signatory countries will be required to conform their domestic laws and policies to the provisions of the Agreement,” said the EFF assessment. “In the U.S. this is likely to further entrench controversial aspects of U.S. copyright law. The recently leaked U.S. IP chapter also includes provisions that appear to go beyond current U.S. law. This raises significant concerns for citizens’ due process, privacy and freedom of expression rights.”
SOPA may be history but that doesn’t mean Internet freedom does not remain under assault. Tyrants never stop trying to enforce tyranny.
--------------
J. D. Heyes. Natural News. January 29, 2012
Sources for this article include:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/23/if-you-thought-sopa-was-bad-just-wait-until-you-meet-acta
https://www.eff.org/pages/trans-pacific-partnership-agreement
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/01/16/obama-says-so-long-sopa-killing-controversial-internet-piracy-legislation/
------------------
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Nueva Democracia
------------------
THE WAR ON IRAN IS ALREADY UNDERWAY
THE WAR ON IRAN IS ALREADY UNDERWAY
http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/01/29/the-war-on-iran-is-already-underway/
If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia.
The opposition mounted to the plans underlying the military scenario by China, Russia, and India seems to hold the promise of an alliance of countries seeking to tame US hegemony and raging unilateralism.
The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela. The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy.
Chances are that a part of the oil embargo plan is to make the West encounter oil supply problems and start constructing pipelines across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, and Iraq as alternative routes reaching the shores of the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas.
Since the new US military strategy implies focusing on two regions – the Greater Middle East and South East Asia – the issue of the Strait of Hormuz appears coupled to that of the Strait of Malacca which offers the shortest route for the oil supply from the Indian Ocean to China, Japan, South Korea, and the rest of South East Asia.
The EU oil embargo recently slapped on Iran and the threats voiced by the US and other Western countries to come up with further sanctions against the country led watchers to conclude that an armed conflict between Iran and the West has finally became imminent.
The first potential scenario in this context is that the current standoff would eventually escalate into a war. The US forces in the Gulf area currently number 40,000, plus 90,000 are deployed in Afghanistan, just east of Iran, and several thousand support troops are deployed in various Asian countries. That adds up to a considerable military potential which may still fall short of what it takes to keep a lid on everything if armed hostilities break out.
For example, Colin H. Kahl argues in a recent paper in Foreign Affairs that, even though “there is no doubt that Washington will win in the narrow operational sense” (1), the US would have to take a vast array of pertinent problems into account.
At the moment, maintaining the status quo is not in US interests, holds Stratfor, a US-based global intelligence agency: “If al Assad survives and if the situation in Iraq proceeds as it has been proceeding, then Iran is creating a reality that will define the region. The United States does not have a broad and effective coalition, and certainly not one that would rally in the event of war. It has only Israel…” (2)
If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia.
An alternative scenario also deserves attention. EU sanctions would surely hurt many of the European economies – notably, those of Greece, Italy, and Spain – by ricochet. In fact, Spanish diplomatic chief José Manuel García-Margallo Y Marfil bluntly described the sanctions decision as a sacrifice (3).
As for Iran, the oil blockade can cause its annual budget to contract by $15-20 billion, which generally should not be critical but, as the country’s parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential poll are drawing closer and the West actively props up its domestic opposition, outbreaks of unrest in Iran would quite possibly ensue. Tehran has already made it clear it would make a serious effort to find buyers for its oil export elsewhere.
China and India, Iran’s respective number one and number three clients, brushed off the idea of the US-led sanctions momentarily. Japan pledged support for Washington over the matter but did not post any specific plans to reduce the volume of oil it imports from Iran. Japan, by the way, was badly hit in 1973 when Wall Street provoked an oil crisis and US guarantees turned hollow.
Consequently, Tokyo can be expected to approach Washington’s sanction suggestions with the utmost caution and to ask the US for unequivocal guarantees that the White House will be unable to provide. Right now the US is courting South Korea with the aim of having it cut off the import of oil from Iran.
The opposition mounted to the plans underlying the military scenario by China, Russia, and India seems to hold the promise of an alliance of countries seeking to tame US hegemony and raging unilateralism. Stratfor analysts have a point saying that time is not on the US side, considering that the BRICs countries have some opportunities to influence the situation in the potential conflict zone by launching joint anti-terrorism and anti-piracy maneuvers in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, etc.
Inducing regime change in Iran, which is Washington’s end goal, still takes a pretext. The US has long been eying various factions in Iran in the hope of capitalizing on the country’s existing domestic rivalries parallel to the employment of tested color revolution techniques such as the support for the Green Movement or the establishment of a virtual embassy in Iran.
Richard Sanders, a vocal critic of US foreign policy, opined that, at least since the invasion of Mexico in the late XIX century, the US permanently relied on the mechanism of war pretext incidents to compile justifications for its military interventions (4). US arch-conservative Patrick J. Buchanan cited in his opinion piece titled “Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?” the fairly common view that US financial circles knowingly provoked the Pearl Harbor attack to drag the US into a war with the remote goal of ensuring the dollar empire’s global primacy (5).
The lesson to be learned from the history of the Vietnam War, namely the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which USS Maddox entered Vietnam’s territorial waters and opened fire on boats of its navy, is that the initial conflict was similarly ignited by the US intelligence community, the result being that the US Congress authorized LBJ to militarily engage Vietnam.
(By the way, no retribution followed in June 1967 when the Israelis attacked USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 172). The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Speaking of the current developments around the Persian Gulf, Washington’s choice of pretexts for aggression comprises at least three options, namely (1) Iran’s nuclear dossier; (2) an engineered escalation in the Strait of Hormuz; (3) allegations that Iran supports international terrorism.
The US objective behind the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program – to make everybody in the world accept Washington’s rules of the game – has never been deeply hidden. The abundant alarmist talk is intended to deflect attention from the simple truth that building a nuclear arsenal with the help of civilian nuclear technologies is absolutely impossible, but Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela (6). The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy.
The Strait of Hormuz, which is the maritime chokepoint of the Persian Gulf, is regarded as the epicenter of the coming new war. It serves as the avenue for oil supplies from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates and is therefore being closely monitored by all likely parties to the conflict. According to the US Department of Energy, 2011 oil transit via the Strait of Hormuz totaled 17 billion barrels, or roughly 20% of the world’s total (7). Oil prices are projected to increase by 50% if anything disquieting happens in the Strait of Hormuz (8).
Passing through the Strait of Hormuz takes navigation across the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Iran grants as a courtesy the right to sail across its waters based on the UN Treaty on Maritime Goods Transportation.
It must be understood in connection with Washington’s recurrent statements concerning the Strait of Hormuz that in this regard the US and Iran have the same legal status as countries which penned but did not ratify the treaty, and thus the US has no moral right to references to international law. Iran’s administration stressed recently after consultations on national legislation that Tehran would possibly subject to a revision the regulations under which foreign vessels are admitted to Iranian territorial waters (9).
Navies are also supposed to observe certain international laws, in particular those defining the minimal distance to be maintained by vessels of other countries. It constantly pops up in the US media that Iranian boats come riskily close to US vessels but, as watchers note, provocateurs like the CIA-sponsored separatists from Iran’s Baluchistan could in some cases be pulling off the tricks in disguise.
Chances are that a part of the oil embargo plan is to make the West encounter oil supply problems and start constructing pipelines across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, and Iraq as alternative routes reaching the shores of the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas. A few of these projects, the Hashan–Fujairah pipeline, for instance, are as of today in the process of being implemented.
If that is the idea, the explanation behind Washington’s tendency to convince its allies to create a “safer” pipeline infrastructure is straightforward. Geopolitics being an inescapable reality, it does have to be taken into account, though, that the region’s countries remain locked in a variety of conflicts and, due to geographic reasons, Tehran would be a key player even if the pipelines are launched.
Since the new US military strategy implies focusing on two regions – the Greater Middle East and South East Asia – the issue of the Strait of Hormuz appears coupled to that of the Strait of Malacca which offers the shortest route for the oil supply from the Indian Ocean to China, Japan, South Korea, and the rest of South East Asia. The arrangement implicitly factors into the Asian countries’ decision-making related to Iran.
The precedent of “the war on terror” – a campaign during which the US occupied under dubious pretexts Iraq and Afghanistan at the costs of thousands of lives – must also be kept in mind. Ages ago, the White House sanctioned subversive activities against various parts of the the Iranian administration, including the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution.
Former CIA operative Phillip Giraldi writes that US and Israeli agents have been active in Iran for quite some time and are responsible for the epidemic of the Stuxnet virus and the series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear physicists. The groups within Iran which aligned themselves with the country’s foes are the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, the Baluchistan-based separatist Jundallah, whose leader Abdolmajid Rigi was arrested in February, 2010 by Iranian security forces and admitted to cooperating with the CIA, and the Kurdish Free Life of Kurdistan (10).
In essence, a war against Iran – up to date a secret war – is underway. The problem the parties involved are trying to resolve is to find a way of prevailing without entering the “hot” phase of the conflict.
-------------------
Notes
(1) Colin H. Kahl. Not Time to Attack Iran. January 17, 2012.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137031/colin-h-kahl/not-time-to-attack-iran?cid=nlc-public-the_world_this_week-link6-20120120
(2) Iran, the U.S. and the Strait of Hormuz Crisis. January 17, 2012.
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/iran-us-and-strait-hormuz-crisis?utm_source=freelistf&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20120117&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=b90cfbef7b1a402ea2f1fc384080fa15
(3) La UE acuerda vetar las importaciones de petroleo de Iran. 23.01.2012
http://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20120123/54245752767/ue-vetar-importaciones-petroleo-iran.html
(4) Richard Sanders. How to Start a War: The American Use of War Pretext Incidents. Global Research, January 9, 2012.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28554
(5) http://buchanan.org/blog/did-fdr-provoke-pearl-harbor-4953
(6) Recent Events in Iran and the Progress of Its Nuclear Program. January 17, 2012.
http://www.cfr.org/iran/recent-events-iran-progress-its-nuclear-program/p27090?cid=nlc-public-the_world_this_week-link5-20120120
(7) http://www.eia.gov/cabs/world_oil_transit_chokepoints/full.html
(8) Michael T. Klare. Danger Waters. January 10, 2012.
http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2012/01/danger-waters.html#more
(9) Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya. The Geo-Politics of the Strait of Hormuz: Could the U.S. Navy be defeated by Iran in the Persian Gulf? Global Research, January 8, 2012.
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28516
(10) Philip Giraldi. Washington’s Secret Wars. 08 December 2011. http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/news/opinion-a-analysis/item/1236-washington%E2%80%99s-secret-wars
-------------------
MORE INFORMATION:
Israeli superdrone crashes and explodes (VIDEO)
Published: 29 January, 2012
http://rt.com/news/heron-iai-eitan-crash-987/
-------------------
IRAN OPTIMISTIC ABOUT IAEA VISIT: FOREIGN MINISTER
English.news.cn 2012-01-30 00:14:45
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-01/30/c_122626756.htm
-----------------
US' Fifth Fleet threatens Iran over Strait of Hormuz
Published: 29 December, 2011
http://rt.com/usa/news/us-iran-strait-hormuz-863/
-------------------
US navy crosses Strait of Hormuz after Iranian oil threats
Published: 29 December, 2011
http://rt.com/news/usa-navy-iran-oil-903/
--------------
War for Total Control
- by Adrian Salbuchi - 2012-01-29
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28956
---------------
IRAN: DRUMS OF WAR BEATING LOUDER: U.S. Mounts Further Military Build-Up in Persian Gulf
- by Ben Schreiner - 2012-01-29
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28953
---------------------
IRAN WAR: The EU Oil Embargo: Setting the Stage for Military Escalation?
- by Tom Burghardt - 2012-01-29
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28952
--------------------
UNCERTAIN WORLD: WHAT RUSSIA THINKS OF SYRIA
13:25 26/01/2012
Weekly column by Fyodor Lukyanov
http://en.rian.ru/columnists/20120126/170961849.html
------------------
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Nueva Democracia
------------------
http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/01/29/the-war-on-iran-is-already-underway/
If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia.
The opposition mounted to the plans underlying the military scenario by China, Russia, and India seems to hold the promise of an alliance of countries seeking to tame US hegemony and raging unilateralism.
The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela. The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy.
Chances are that a part of the oil embargo plan is to make the West encounter oil supply problems and start constructing pipelines across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, and Iraq as alternative routes reaching the shores of the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas.
Since the new US military strategy implies focusing on two regions – the Greater Middle East and South East Asia – the issue of the Strait of Hormuz appears coupled to that of the Strait of Malacca which offers the shortest route for the oil supply from the Indian Ocean to China, Japan, South Korea, and the rest of South East Asia.
The EU oil embargo recently slapped on Iran and the threats voiced by the US and other Western countries to come up with further sanctions against the country led watchers to conclude that an armed conflict between Iran and the West has finally became imminent.
The first potential scenario in this context is that the current standoff would eventually escalate into a war. The US forces in the Gulf area currently number 40,000, plus 90,000 are deployed in Afghanistan, just east of Iran, and several thousand support troops are deployed in various Asian countries. That adds up to a considerable military potential which may still fall short of what it takes to keep a lid on everything if armed hostilities break out.
For example, Colin H. Kahl argues in a recent paper in Foreign Affairs that, even though “there is no doubt that Washington will win in the narrow operational sense” (1), the US would have to take a vast array of pertinent problems into account.
At the moment, maintaining the status quo is not in US interests, holds Stratfor, a US-based global intelligence agency: “If al Assad survives and if the situation in Iraq proceeds as it has been proceeding, then Iran is creating a reality that will define the region. The United States does not have a broad and effective coalition, and certainly not one that would rally in the event of war. It has only Israel…” (2)
If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia.
An alternative scenario also deserves attention. EU sanctions would surely hurt many of the European economies – notably, those of Greece, Italy, and Spain – by ricochet. In fact, Spanish diplomatic chief José Manuel García-Margallo Y Marfil bluntly described the sanctions decision as a sacrifice (3).
As for Iran, the oil blockade can cause its annual budget to contract by $15-20 billion, which generally should not be critical but, as the country’s parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential poll are drawing closer and the West actively props up its domestic opposition, outbreaks of unrest in Iran would quite possibly ensue. Tehran has already made it clear it would make a serious effort to find buyers for its oil export elsewhere.
China and India, Iran’s respective number one and number three clients, brushed off the idea of the US-led sanctions momentarily. Japan pledged support for Washington over the matter but did not post any specific plans to reduce the volume of oil it imports from Iran. Japan, by the way, was badly hit in 1973 when Wall Street provoked an oil crisis and US guarantees turned hollow.
Consequently, Tokyo can be expected to approach Washington’s sanction suggestions with the utmost caution and to ask the US for unequivocal guarantees that the White House will be unable to provide. Right now the US is courting South Korea with the aim of having it cut off the import of oil from Iran.
The opposition mounted to the plans underlying the military scenario by China, Russia, and India seems to hold the promise of an alliance of countries seeking to tame US hegemony and raging unilateralism. Stratfor analysts have a point saying that time is not on the US side, considering that the BRICs countries have some opportunities to influence the situation in the potential conflict zone by launching joint anti-terrorism and anti-piracy maneuvers in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, etc.
Inducing regime change in Iran, which is Washington’s end goal, still takes a pretext. The US has long been eying various factions in Iran in the hope of capitalizing on the country’s existing domestic rivalries parallel to the employment of tested color revolution techniques such as the support for the Green Movement or the establishment of a virtual embassy in Iran.
Richard Sanders, a vocal critic of US foreign policy, opined that, at least since the invasion of Mexico in the late XIX century, the US permanently relied on the mechanism of war pretext incidents to compile justifications for its military interventions (4). US arch-conservative Patrick J. Buchanan cited in his opinion piece titled “Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?” the fairly common view that US financial circles knowingly provoked the Pearl Harbor attack to drag the US into a war with the remote goal of ensuring the dollar empire’s global primacy (5).
The lesson to be learned from the history of the Vietnam War, namely the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which USS Maddox entered Vietnam’s territorial waters and opened fire on boats of its navy, is that the initial conflict was similarly ignited by the US intelligence community, the result being that the US Congress authorized LBJ to militarily engage Vietnam.
(By the way, no retribution followed in June 1967 when the Israelis attacked USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 172). The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Speaking of the current developments around the Persian Gulf, Washington’s choice of pretexts for aggression comprises at least three options, namely (1) Iran’s nuclear dossier; (2) an engineered escalation in the Strait of Hormuz; (3) allegations that Iran supports international terrorism.
The US objective behind the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program – to make everybody in the world accept Washington’s rules of the game – has never been deeply hidden. The abundant alarmist talk is intended to deflect attention from the simple truth that building a nuclear arsenal with the help of civilian nuclear technologies is absolutely impossible, but Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela (6). The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy.
The Strait of Hormuz, which is the maritime chokepoint of the Persian Gulf, is regarded as the epicenter of the coming new war. It serves as the avenue for oil supplies from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates and is therefore being closely monitored by all likely parties to the conflict. According to the US Department of Energy, 2011 oil transit via the Strait of Hormuz totaled 17 billion barrels, or roughly 20% of the world’s total (7). Oil prices are projected to increase by 50% if anything disquieting happens in the Strait of Hormuz (8).
Passing through the Strait of Hormuz takes navigation across the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Iran grants as a courtesy the right to sail across its waters based on the UN Treaty on Maritime Goods Transportation.
It must be understood in connection with Washington’s recurrent statements concerning the Strait of Hormuz that in this regard the US and Iran have the same legal status as countries which penned but did not ratify the treaty, and thus the US has no moral right to references to international law. Iran’s administration stressed recently after consultations on national legislation that Tehran would possibly subject to a revision the regulations under which foreign vessels are admitted to Iranian territorial waters (9).
Navies are also supposed to observe certain international laws, in particular those defining the minimal distance to be maintained by vessels of other countries. It constantly pops up in the US media that Iranian boats come riskily close to US vessels but, as watchers note, provocateurs like the CIA-sponsored separatists from Iran’s Baluchistan could in some cases be pulling off the tricks in disguise.
Chances are that a part of the oil embargo plan is to make the West encounter oil supply problems and start constructing pipelines across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, and Iraq as alternative routes reaching the shores of the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas. A few of these projects, the Hashan–Fujairah pipeline, for instance, are as of today in the process of being implemented.
If that is the idea, the explanation behind Washington’s tendency to convince its allies to create a “safer” pipeline infrastructure is straightforward. Geopolitics being an inescapable reality, it does have to be taken into account, though, that the region’s countries remain locked in a variety of conflicts and, due to geographic reasons, Tehran would be a key player even if the pipelines are launched.
Since the new US military strategy implies focusing on two regions – the Greater Middle East and South East Asia – the issue of the Strait of Hormuz appears coupled to that of the Strait of Malacca which offers the shortest route for the oil supply from the Indian Ocean to China, Japan, South Korea, and the rest of South East Asia. The arrangement implicitly factors into the Asian countries’ decision-making related to Iran.
The precedent of “the war on terror” – a campaign during which the US occupied under dubious pretexts Iraq and Afghanistan at the costs of thousands of lives – must also be kept in mind. Ages ago, the White House sanctioned subversive activities against various parts of the the Iranian administration, including the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution.
Former CIA operative Phillip Giraldi writes that US and Israeli agents have been active in Iran for quite some time and are responsible for the epidemic of the Stuxnet virus and the series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear physicists. The groups within Iran which aligned themselves with the country’s foes are the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, the Baluchistan-based separatist Jundallah, whose leader Abdolmajid Rigi was arrested in February, 2010 by Iranian security forces and admitted to cooperating with the CIA, and the Kurdish Free Life of Kurdistan (10).
In essence, a war against Iran – up to date a secret war – is underway. The problem the parties involved are trying to resolve is to find a way of prevailing without entering the “hot” phase of the conflict.
-------------------
Notes
(1) Colin H. Kahl. Not Time to Attack Iran. January 17, 2012.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137031/colin-h-kahl/not-time-to-attack-iran?cid=nlc-public-the_world_this_week-link6-20120120
(2) Iran, the U.S. and the Strait of Hormuz Crisis. January 17, 2012.
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/iran-us-and-strait-hormuz-crisis?utm_source=freelistf&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20120117&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=b90cfbef7b1a402ea2f1fc384080fa15
(3) La UE acuerda vetar las importaciones de petroleo de Iran. 23.01.2012
http://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20120123/54245752767/ue-vetar-importaciones-petroleo-iran.html
(4) Richard Sanders. How to Start a War: The American Use of War Pretext Incidents. Global Research, January 9, 2012.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28554
(5) http://buchanan.org/blog/did-fdr-provoke-pearl-harbor-4953
(6) Recent Events in Iran and the Progress of Its Nuclear Program. January 17, 2012.
http://www.cfr.org/iran/recent-events-iran-progress-its-nuclear-program/p27090?cid=nlc-public-the_world_this_week-link5-20120120
(7) http://www.eia.gov/cabs/world_oil_transit_chokepoints/full.html
(8) Michael T. Klare. Danger Waters. January 10, 2012.
http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2012/01/danger-waters.html#more
(9) Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya. The Geo-Politics of the Strait of Hormuz: Could the U.S. Navy be defeated by Iran in the Persian Gulf? Global Research, January 8, 2012.
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28516
(10) Philip Giraldi. Washington’s Secret Wars. 08 December 2011. http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/news/opinion-a-analysis/item/1236-washington%E2%80%99s-secret-wars
-------------------
MORE INFORMATION:
Israeli superdrone crashes and explodes (VIDEO)
Published: 29 January, 2012
http://rt.com/news/heron-iai-eitan-crash-987/
-------------------
IRAN OPTIMISTIC ABOUT IAEA VISIT: FOREIGN MINISTER
English.news.cn 2012-01-30 00:14:45
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-01/30/c_122626756.htm
-----------------
US' Fifth Fleet threatens Iran over Strait of Hormuz
Published: 29 December, 2011
http://rt.com/usa/news/us-iran-strait-hormuz-863/
-------------------
US navy crosses Strait of Hormuz after Iranian oil threats
Published: 29 December, 2011
http://rt.com/news/usa-navy-iran-oil-903/
--------------
War for Total Control
- by Adrian Salbuchi - 2012-01-29
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28956
---------------
IRAN: DRUMS OF WAR BEATING LOUDER: U.S. Mounts Further Military Build-Up in Persian Gulf
- by Ben Schreiner - 2012-01-29
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28953
---------------------
IRAN WAR: The EU Oil Embargo: Setting the Stage for Military Escalation?
- by Tom Burghardt - 2012-01-29
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28952
--------------------
UNCERTAIN WORLD: WHAT RUSSIA THINKS OF SYRIA
13:25 26/01/2012
Weekly column by Fyodor Lukyanov
http://en.rian.ru/columnists/20120126/170961849.html
------------------
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Nueva Democracia
------------------
domingo, 29 de enero de 2012
GINGRICH ATRAPADO EN SU PROPIO GHETTO MENTAL
GINGRICH ATRAPADO EN SU PROPIO GHETTO MENTAL
Part I
GINGRICH TRAPPED IN HIS OWN MENTAL GHETTO
Hugo Adan . January 28, 2012
El canibalismo entre los ricos es un preludio del que vendrá sobre los pobres si algunos de estos llega al poder. Los ricos petroleros fueron un desastre en el poder (los Bush lo rebelaron) y hoy los ricos de la mafia financiera rebelan que ni siquiera están aptos para pretender la casa blanca de nuevo.
El debate entre Romney, Gingrich y Santorum ha creado nausea, asco en el electorado americano. Pocos sabían de la forma como los ricos evaden impuestos (no pagan ni siquiera la mitad de lo que paga el resto de la nación. Romny no paga ni el 14%. La nación paga del 25 al 33%). Esto y los escándalos de corrupción en que los tres estan envueltos (trafico de influencia con entidades bancarias corruptas del país, los que infestaron las finanzas de EU y Europa con sub-prime mortgages y se enriquecieron con los desalojos de casas de millones de americanos) esto alimenta aún mas la ira nacional que recién empezó a estallar con la tomar de calles y plazas. El circo electoral de hoy es tan pestilente y desvergonzado que agrega aún más combustible al estallido de la rebelión popular que pronto habrá de reiniciarse y con más fuerza.
La denuncia de Newt Gingrich sobre la evasión de impuestos de los ricos (lo que agravo Obama con los recortes en el gasto público para educación, salud y beneficios sociales, eso mas los bailouts de Obama, su “flexibilidad financiera” con los bancos mafiosos y la emisión de dólares or quantitative easing ) mas las guerras de saqueo del petróleo ajeno que ambos demócratas y republicanos defienden, han puesto al país al borde del colapso final. Este problema no tiene solución con ninguno de los dos partidos que financian los ricos y que se alterna en el poder para defender los intereses de grandes corporaciones mafiosas.
En buena hora ocurrió la denuncia sobre la evasión de impuestos. Esto no solo sepultó a los republicanos sin o al bipartidismo como acostumbra decir Ron Paul (y que hace el alli?). Pero es cierto, porque Romney antes de morir políticamente lo saco también a Gingrich de la contienda. Romney podrá derrochar su capital mal habido y ganar dentro del Pdo republicano pero está condenado a perder frente a Obama. Su halo de santidad y la expectativa de honradez en él, lo liquidó el canibalismo del Pdo.
Quiza sea tarde para que los republicanos puedan reemplazar la terna y colocar al gobernador de Indiana Mitch Danniels y a Rand Paul (el hijo) como candidatos pero si no lo hacen pierden la Presidencia. Romney, Gingrich y Santorum son ya cadáveres políticos y como todo cadáver tienen derecho al pedo, podrán decir lo que quieran, pero eso no significa que tienen vida en la política “democrática” de los EU.
Los afro-americanos en política son masoquistas y naive y de todos modos van a votar por los demócratas, aun si fue Obama quien ayudo a sacarlos de sus casas, de las escuelas , quien les recorto su medicare-medicaid y su derecho al desempleo. Mas me pegas, mas te quiero, dicen ellos. La única reserva electoral que pudo haber hacer diferencia a favor de los republicanos son los latinos.
Hoy en Florida veremos que lo máximo que obtendrán del voto latino fue lo mismo que obtuvieron en las primarias de ayer y eso es ya una derrota. Y quizá menos latinos vayan a las primarias del Pdo republicano esta vez y esa sería la prueba más contundente de su derrota en Noviembre.
GINGRICH TRAPPED IN HIS OWN MENTAL GHETTO
Decir que el español es el lenguaje de ghetto latino, decirlo en el país de los emigrantes donde los latinos son la mayoría, fue la mas grande estupidez que pudo haber dicho Gingrich y eso no tiene ni jamás tendrá perdón. Y lo dijo justo cuando la comunidad latina había triunfado en su pedido de que el driving test pueda tomarse en español. La mente colonialista del pilgrim Newt Gingrich es demasiado estrecha y absurda, vive en el país donde todos son inmigrantes y renuncia a creer que existe Quebec en Canada y Suiza y muchos biliguistas en Europa. Increible pero cierto, tan cierto como es su racismo anti-latino y esto es lo que comentaremos en los que viene.
======================
Part II.
GINGRICH on SPANISH as THE LANGUAGE OF LIVING IN A GHETTO
Hugo Adan. Jan 28, 2012
GINGRICH GOES TO THE SPANISH GHETTO TO COLLECT VOTES. PATHETIC BUT TRUE!.
Racism against Latinos is deep sited in the mind of the arrogant rich and in the mind and actions of Fed and State bureaucrats who lack basic cultural background to deal with today globalized world. It happens only in America, not in Europe, nor in Canada and several countries of the South. Here these bureaucrats enjoy ruining the life of Latinos not only in the border line with anti-emigration laws, they are excluding Latinos –especially elders who paid taxes- from health benefits, unemployment benefits, not to mention the unequal treatment they receive inside the job market. They can change purposely the DOB of Latinos to exclude them from such benefits and from civil and political rights. It happened to me, it happened to many of us.
Now they want our vote!. Now we say NOT. We should not vote for either one of the dirty couple. The alternative is to help and demand the creation of a United Front against the bipartisan system. There is not real choice in today US elections since both democrats and republicans are owned and financed by the rich. In each State of the union we should create our own alternative in alliance of the working classes of America. We want a united Americas without imperialism, plundering and wars. We need a United Americas with peace and real democracy and that is only possible if we start getting out of the trap called bipartidismo.
KNOW THE STORY AND GET YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS!!.
In April 2008 Gingrich apologized himself for miscommunicating his good intentions in favor of the prosperity of Latinos if they learn good English, instead of focusing on bilingualism. But this apology didn’t focus on the assumed disadvantages of bilingualism and left intact the derogative insult to other languages as ghetto languages. According to the Associated Press, Gingrich equated bilingual education with "the language of living in a ghetto”.
We will see below that in the 2nd part of Gingrich’s statements “the ghetto language was referred to Spanish” since he demanded that “citizenship requires passing a test on American history in English” and demanded that “we do not have to print ballots in any language except English." In the time-context, such claims were placed by the Latino community, so his racism against Latinos was evident and Spanish was in fact considered by him as ghetto language.
FIRST
Let’s check the recent debate-context in which Gingrich’ statements were brought back by Romney and second, the context in which Gingrich said his derogative statement.
The best summary on such debate is the following article:
NEWT GINGRICH SAID SPANISH IS "THE LANGUAGE OF THE GHETTO"
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2012/jan/25/mitt-romney/spanish-language-ad-says-newt-gingrich-said-spanis/
Here some extracts :
“Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are attacking each other on all fronts in Florida ahead of the Jan. 31, 2012, primary.
“In one Spanish-language radio ad, Gingrich calls Romney "anti-immigrant.". .. “Gingrich specifically took exception with Romney's call at a Monday debate for people to deport themselves if they're here illegally.
"I think Romney is amazingly insensitive to the realities of the immigrant community — his whole concept of self-deportation," Gingrich said. "I've not met anyone who thinks it's in touch with reality. People aren't going to self deport."
Gingrich told Univision that Romney's immigration plans are unrealistic and like an "Obama-level fantasy." Said Gingrich: "You have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island bank accounts … to have some fantasy this far from reality."
REGARDING CORRUPTION
Romney found himself the target of his own words on the Florida campaign trail, where he has attacked Gingrich as an "influence peddler" [offering & selling influence: a corrupt interference with authority for personal gains] because he (Romney) was also paid as a consultant for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, implicated in the housing crash and foreclosure crisis gripping 1 in every 360 Florida homes.
Turns out, some Romney campaign advisers were lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some of whom were paid to fight reform efforts, according to the Associated Press and the Daily Caller conservative news website.
Also, AP and the Democratic group American Bridge 21st Century pointed out that one of Romney's investments yielded $500,000 from Fannie Mae. And CNN reported that Romney was a "distinguished panelist" at a Fannie Mae Foundation housing conference in 2004 — just as the housing bubble started to inflate. But it was before Fannie and Freddie began taking on risky home loans.
Romney said there's "absolutely" bipartisan blame for the housing crisis, which started during the George W. Bush administration.
Romney said. "This idea that everybody has to own a home — that we're going to give mortgages to people who can't pay them back — that is a primary reason that we got in the economic stress that occurred within the housing market." [Romney blamed people for dreaming with houses they cannot afford to paid]
-------------------
SECOND. On Spanish as the language of the ghetto
In a rebuttal [to the accusation of corruption and profiteering from the mortgage and foreclosures crisis] Romney attacked Gingrich of saying in radio that "Spanish is the language of the ghetto." Here’s a partial transcript of the ad, which is airing in South Florida (translation courtesy of Patricia Mazzei of the Miami Herald):
"Gingrich enriched himself with Freddie Mac, one of the principle companies responsible for the mortgage collapse that has caused so much damage in our community. [Gingrich compared himself with Reagan but] Reagan would have never offended Hispanics as Gingrich did when he said Spanish is the language of the ghetto. Now, searching for votes, Gingrich wants to change history. But the facts speak for themselves”. Paid for by Romney for President, Incorporated."
WHEN DID GINGRICH SAY, "SPANISH IS THE LANGUAGE OF THE GHETTO."
The claim comes from a speech Gingrich gave on March 31, 2007, to the National Federation of Republican Women, as he was considering running for president in 2008.
“We tracked down the speech in its entirety through C-SPAN, which originally broadcast the speech and has a wonderful video archive. You can watch Gingrich’s remarks by clicking here:
"Nobody in the elite world understands this, this is an enormous center-right country," Gingrich said. "This was driven home for me a couple weeks ago when I was doing a press release for ENGLISH FIRST. They gave me some data. Eighty-five percent of the American people believe English should be the official language of government." according to a Rasmussen poll.
“Gingrich then pivoted to the founding of the colony of Jamestown, "when people who believed their rights came from God first stepped foot on this continent." They had a "very simple model," he said: First "We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and so they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto," Gingrich said. "Second … we should establish that citizenship requires passing a test on American history in English. And if that's true, we do not have to print ballots in any language except English."
“Gingrich’s comments were picked up that day by the Associated Press, which said Gingrich equated bilingual education with "the language of living in a ghetto."
“In looking at his remarks, he did not directly make that linkage -- his "language of living in a ghetto" is juxtaposed with "the language of prosperity." But the larger context, particularly the remark about ballot language, suggests that he was referring to Spanish. He was widely criticized for the comment.
The AP article quoted Peter Zamora, co-chair of the Washington-based Hispanic Education Coalition, which supports bilingual education, as saying, "The tone of Gingrich comments were very hateful. Spanish is spoken by many individuals who do not live in the ghetto."
GINGRICH TRY TO APOLOGIZE
On April 4, Gingrich posted a video on YouTube to explain the comments. He looked in the camera and spoke in Spanish. Check the video Newt Spanish Apology here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg-0aB7jf_c
"Last weekend I made some comments that I recognize produced a bad feeling within the Latino community," Gingrich said in Spanish (his comments in the video are subtitled into English). "The words I chose to express myself were not the best, and what I wanted to say is this. In the United States it is important to speak English well in order to progress and have success. To achieve this goal, we should replace bilingual education programs with intensive English instruction courses and in this way permit that English be the language that all of us have in common”.
"This is an expression of support for Latinos, not an attack on their language. I have never believed that Spanish is a language of people of low income nor a language without beauty."
GINGRICH DID NOT EXPLICITLY APOLOGIZE FOR HIS COMMENTS IN THE WEB VIDEO ABOVE.
“Gingrich was asked about the "ghetto" comment on Jan. 25, 2012, during an interview with Univision. He sidestepped the question in his answer. "I said -- about all languages -- I am for English as the common, unifying language," he said. "If I were going to live in Mexico, I would say that Spanish is really important for me to learn."
-----------------
Part I
GINGRICH TRAPPED IN HIS OWN MENTAL GHETTO
Hugo Adan . January 28, 2012
El canibalismo entre los ricos es un preludio del que vendrá sobre los pobres si algunos de estos llega al poder. Los ricos petroleros fueron un desastre en el poder (los Bush lo rebelaron) y hoy los ricos de la mafia financiera rebelan que ni siquiera están aptos para pretender la casa blanca de nuevo.
El debate entre Romney, Gingrich y Santorum ha creado nausea, asco en el electorado americano. Pocos sabían de la forma como los ricos evaden impuestos (no pagan ni siquiera la mitad de lo que paga el resto de la nación. Romny no paga ni el 14%. La nación paga del 25 al 33%). Esto y los escándalos de corrupción en que los tres estan envueltos (trafico de influencia con entidades bancarias corruptas del país, los que infestaron las finanzas de EU y Europa con sub-prime mortgages y se enriquecieron con los desalojos de casas de millones de americanos) esto alimenta aún mas la ira nacional que recién empezó a estallar con la tomar de calles y plazas. El circo electoral de hoy es tan pestilente y desvergonzado que agrega aún más combustible al estallido de la rebelión popular que pronto habrá de reiniciarse y con más fuerza.
La denuncia de Newt Gingrich sobre la evasión de impuestos de los ricos (lo que agravo Obama con los recortes en el gasto público para educación, salud y beneficios sociales, eso mas los bailouts de Obama, su “flexibilidad financiera” con los bancos mafiosos y la emisión de dólares or quantitative easing ) mas las guerras de saqueo del petróleo ajeno que ambos demócratas y republicanos defienden, han puesto al país al borde del colapso final. Este problema no tiene solución con ninguno de los dos partidos que financian los ricos y que se alterna en el poder para defender los intereses de grandes corporaciones mafiosas.
En buena hora ocurrió la denuncia sobre la evasión de impuestos. Esto no solo sepultó a los republicanos sin o al bipartidismo como acostumbra decir Ron Paul (y que hace el alli?). Pero es cierto, porque Romney antes de morir políticamente lo saco también a Gingrich de la contienda. Romney podrá derrochar su capital mal habido y ganar dentro del Pdo republicano pero está condenado a perder frente a Obama. Su halo de santidad y la expectativa de honradez en él, lo liquidó el canibalismo del Pdo.
Quiza sea tarde para que los republicanos puedan reemplazar la terna y colocar al gobernador de Indiana Mitch Danniels y a Rand Paul (el hijo) como candidatos pero si no lo hacen pierden la Presidencia. Romney, Gingrich y Santorum son ya cadáveres políticos y como todo cadáver tienen derecho al pedo, podrán decir lo que quieran, pero eso no significa que tienen vida en la política “democrática” de los EU.
Los afro-americanos en política son masoquistas y naive y de todos modos van a votar por los demócratas, aun si fue Obama quien ayudo a sacarlos de sus casas, de las escuelas , quien les recorto su medicare-medicaid y su derecho al desempleo. Mas me pegas, mas te quiero, dicen ellos. La única reserva electoral que pudo haber hacer diferencia a favor de los republicanos son los latinos.
Hoy en Florida veremos que lo máximo que obtendrán del voto latino fue lo mismo que obtuvieron en las primarias de ayer y eso es ya una derrota. Y quizá menos latinos vayan a las primarias del Pdo republicano esta vez y esa sería la prueba más contundente de su derrota en Noviembre.
GINGRICH TRAPPED IN HIS OWN MENTAL GHETTO
Decir que el español es el lenguaje de ghetto latino, decirlo en el país de los emigrantes donde los latinos son la mayoría, fue la mas grande estupidez que pudo haber dicho Gingrich y eso no tiene ni jamás tendrá perdón. Y lo dijo justo cuando la comunidad latina había triunfado en su pedido de que el driving test pueda tomarse en español. La mente colonialista del pilgrim Newt Gingrich es demasiado estrecha y absurda, vive en el país donde todos son inmigrantes y renuncia a creer que existe Quebec en Canada y Suiza y muchos biliguistas en Europa. Increible pero cierto, tan cierto como es su racismo anti-latino y esto es lo que comentaremos en los que viene.
======================
Part II.
GINGRICH on SPANISH as THE LANGUAGE OF LIVING IN A GHETTO
Hugo Adan. Jan 28, 2012
GINGRICH GOES TO THE SPANISH GHETTO TO COLLECT VOTES. PATHETIC BUT TRUE!.
Racism against Latinos is deep sited in the mind of the arrogant rich and in the mind and actions of Fed and State bureaucrats who lack basic cultural background to deal with today globalized world. It happens only in America, not in Europe, nor in Canada and several countries of the South. Here these bureaucrats enjoy ruining the life of Latinos not only in the border line with anti-emigration laws, they are excluding Latinos –especially elders who paid taxes- from health benefits, unemployment benefits, not to mention the unequal treatment they receive inside the job market. They can change purposely the DOB of Latinos to exclude them from such benefits and from civil and political rights. It happened to me, it happened to many of us.
Now they want our vote!. Now we say NOT. We should not vote for either one of the dirty couple. The alternative is to help and demand the creation of a United Front against the bipartisan system. There is not real choice in today US elections since both democrats and republicans are owned and financed by the rich. In each State of the union we should create our own alternative in alliance of the working classes of America. We want a united Americas without imperialism, plundering and wars. We need a United Americas with peace and real democracy and that is only possible if we start getting out of the trap called bipartidismo.
KNOW THE STORY AND GET YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS!!.
In April 2008 Gingrich apologized himself for miscommunicating his good intentions in favor of the prosperity of Latinos if they learn good English, instead of focusing on bilingualism. But this apology didn’t focus on the assumed disadvantages of bilingualism and left intact the derogative insult to other languages as ghetto languages. According to the Associated Press, Gingrich equated bilingual education with "the language of living in a ghetto”.
We will see below that in the 2nd part of Gingrich’s statements “the ghetto language was referred to Spanish” since he demanded that “citizenship requires passing a test on American history in English” and demanded that “we do not have to print ballots in any language except English." In the time-context, such claims were placed by the Latino community, so his racism against Latinos was evident and Spanish was in fact considered by him as ghetto language.
FIRST
Let’s check the recent debate-context in which Gingrich’ statements were brought back by Romney and second, the context in which Gingrich said his derogative statement.
The best summary on such debate is the following article:
NEWT GINGRICH SAID SPANISH IS "THE LANGUAGE OF THE GHETTO"
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2012/jan/25/mitt-romney/spanish-language-ad-says-newt-gingrich-said-spanis/
Here some extracts :
“Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are attacking each other on all fronts in Florida ahead of the Jan. 31, 2012, primary.
“In one Spanish-language radio ad, Gingrich calls Romney "anti-immigrant.". .. “Gingrich specifically took exception with Romney's call at a Monday debate for people to deport themselves if they're here illegally.
"I think Romney is amazingly insensitive to the realities of the immigrant community — his whole concept of self-deportation," Gingrich said. "I've not met anyone who thinks it's in touch with reality. People aren't going to self deport."
Gingrich told Univision that Romney's immigration plans are unrealistic and like an "Obama-level fantasy." Said Gingrich: "You have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island bank accounts … to have some fantasy this far from reality."
REGARDING CORRUPTION
Romney found himself the target of his own words on the Florida campaign trail, where he has attacked Gingrich as an "influence peddler" [offering & selling influence: a corrupt interference with authority for personal gains] because he (Romney) was also paid as a consultant for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, implicated in the housing crash and foreclosure crisis gripping 1 in every 360 Florida homes.
Turns out, some Romney campaign advisers were lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some of whom were paid to fight reform efforts, according to the Associated Press and the Daily Caller conservative news website.
Also, AP and the Democratic group American Bridge 21st Century pointed out that one of Romney's investments yielded $500,000 from Fannie Mae. And CNN reported that Romney was a "distinguished panelist" at a Fannie Mae Foundation housing conference in 2004 — just as the housing bubble started to inflate. But it was before Fannie and Freddie began taking on risky home loans.
Romney said there's "absolutely" bipartisan blame for the housing crisis, which started during the George W. Bush administration.
Romney said. "This idea that everybody has to own a home — that we're going to give mortgages to people who can't pay them back — that is a primary reason that we got in the economic stress that occurred within the housing market." [Romney blamed people for dreaming with houses they cannot afford to paid]
-------------------
SECOND. On Spanish as the language of the ghetto
In a rebuttal [to the accusation of corruption and profiteering from the mortgage and foreclosures crisis] Romney attacked Gingrich of saying in radio that "Spanish is the language of the ghetto." Here’s a partial transcript of the ad, which is airing in South Florida (translation courtesy of Patricia Mazzei of the Miami Herald):
"Gingrich enriched himself with Freddie Mac, one of the principle companies responsible for the mortgage collapse that has caused so much damage in our community. [Gingrich compared himself with Reagan but] Reagan would have never offended Hispanics as Gingrich did when he said Spanish is the language of the ghetto. Now, searching for votes, Gingrich wants to change history. But the facts speak for themselves”. Paid for by Romney for President, Incorporated."
WHEN DID GINGRICH SAY, "SPANISH IS THE LANGUAGE OF THE GHETTO."
The claim comes from a speech Gingrich gave on March 31, 2007, to the National Federation of Republican Women, as he was considering running for president in 2008.
“We tracked down the speech in its entirety through C-SPAN, which originally broadcast the speech and has a wonderful video archive. You can watch Gingrich’s remarks by clicking here:
"Nobody in the elite world understands this, this is an enormous center-right country," Gingrich said. "This was driven home for me a couple weeks ago when I was doing a press release for ENGLISH FIRST. They gave me some data. Eighty-five percent of the American people believe English should be the official language of government." according to a Rasmussen poll.
“Gingrich then pivoted to the founding of the colony of Jamestown, "when people who believed their rights came from God first stepped foot on this continent." They had a "very simple model," he said: First "We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and so they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto," Gingrich said. "Second … we should establish that citizenship requires passing a test on American history in English. And if that's true, we do not have to print ballots in any language except English."
“Gingrich’s comments were picked up that day by the Associated Press, which said Gingrich equated bilingual education with "the language of living in a ghetto."
“In looking at his remarks, he did not directly make that linkage -- his "language of living in a ghetto" is juxtaposed with "the language of prosperity." But the larger context, particularly the remark about ballot language, suggests that he was referring to Spanish. He was widely criticized for the comment.
The AP article quoted Peter Zamora, co-chair of the Washington-based Hispanic Education Coalition, which supports bilingual education, as saying, "The tone of Gingrich comments were very hateful. Spanish is spoken by many individuals who do not live in the ghetto."
GINGRICH TRY TO APOLOGIZE
On April 4, Gingrich posted a video on YouTube to explain the comments. He looked in the camera and spoke in Spanish. Check the video Newt Spanish Apology here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg-0aB7jf_c
"Last weekend I made some comments that I recognize produced a bad feeling within the Latino community," Gingrich said in Spanish (his comments in the video are subtitled into English). "The words I chose to express myself were not the best, and what I wanted to say is this. In the United States it is important to speak English well in order to progress and have success. To achieve this goal, we should replace bilingual education programs with intensive English instruction courses and in this way permit that English be the language that all of us have in common”.
"This is an expression of support for Latinos, not an attack on their language. I have never believed that Spanish is a language of people of low income nor a language without beauty."
GINGRICH DID NOT EXPLICITLY APOLOGIZE FOR HIS COMMENTS IN THE WEB VIDEO ABOVE.
“Gingrich was asked about the "ghetto" comment on Jan. 25, 2012, during an interview with Univision. He sidestepped the question in his answer. "I said -- about all languages -- I am for English as the common, unifying language," he said. "If I were going to live in Mexico, I would say that Spanish is really important for me to learn."
-----------------
viernes, 27 de enero de 2012
US ELECCIONES EN TIEMPOS DE DEBACLE MORAL Y ETICA
ELECCIONES en tiempos de debacle moral y ética.
THE HARAKIRI of the REPUBLICAN PARTY
ELECCIONES Y EL HARAKIRI DE LOS REPUBLICANOS
Hugo Adan. Enero 27, 2012
TEMA: La espada de fuego que asesto Gingrich al corazon de Mitt Romney antes de la primarias en South Caroline (pidio Gingrich que Romney de a conocer los impuestos que paga a la nacion que son menos de un 14% mientras el resto del pais paga del 30 al 33%) esa denuncia no solo le costo a Romney la derrota en las primarias de ese Estado, en realidad incinero su candidatura a la Presidencia de la Republica. Por mas que invierta los millones que quiera en las primarias y que gane con ello la eleccion del Pdo republicano como candidato unico, su derrota ya fue capitalizada politicamente por Obama mediante su reciente Mensaje a la Nacion. No solo reafirmo alli la denuncia de Gingrich sino que la amplio a todos los millonarios.
Ni Romney ni Gingrich podrian ganarle a Obama. Aquellos se degollaron a si mismos y lo unico que le queda a los Republicanos es cambiar de candidatos y postular uno nuevo que este a la altura de los caidos.
Santorum (quien de santo no tiene nada pues fue denunciado como corrupto por los mismos de su especie),este sujeto no es mas que un simple caza brujas con la mentalidad de los verdugos de la Sta Inquisicion medieval (del conservatismo ingenuo y asqueroso de este "pro-life" era de esperarse lo que dijo a la nacion: que debemos alegrarnos de que hayan asesinado a cientificos iranies recientemente. De haber existido Santorum en los tiempos de Eistein u Openheimer este habria tambien pedido la muerte de ellos). En Peru solo el cuervo Cipriani del Opus Dei podria decir que Santorum es el candidato ideal para los americanos.
En cuanto a Ron Paul, si este ahora no abandona el chiquero republicano, se quedara como un simple reclutador y manipulador de conciencias en gente joven y honesta en ese Partido quienes a gritos le pide que inicie una revolucion contra el bi-partidismo que Paul denuncia retoricamente. Si Paul se queda alli, pasara al basurero de la historia politica americana. Que hace alli Ron Paul? sino adornar un Pdo podrido y fascistoide, cuyas mayorias lo detestan como real candidato porque no tiene para competir en la compra de elecciones. Si el Pdo diera apoyo a Ron Paul, este podria ganarle a Obama, pero eso es como pedir peras al olmo, un imposible dentro del electorado conservador de los republicanos.
Ron Paul y Neider deben unirse y crear un frente popular contra la corrupcion de la democracia americana y la reconstruccion del pais. Eso significa lanzar la 3ra y real opcion democratica. Que eso en lo inmediato serviria a Obama, quiza pero no mas que el servicio que ya le dio Gingrich. Lo cierto es que los republicanos ya no tienen candidato a Presidente. La 3ra opcion -aunque sea a nivel de Estados- cavaria la fosa donde seria enterrado el continuismo neoliberal desde Reagan hasta Obama.
Se lanzaria con la 3ra opcion un nuevo modelo de democracia orientado al Mercado donde se limite el poder de los grandes especuladores y financistas, con un nuevo Glas Steagle Act, con el impuesto Tobin a toda transacion financiera y con los recortes de privilegios al capital que solo de nombre es americano y que Obama denuncio solo de palabra -en su electoralismo mundano- y que jamas tuvo los cojones de implementar. De la traicion de Obama al pueblo americano ya tenemos bastante y es hora de pasar a la accion. Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Denis Kusinich y el senador de Vermont tienen la palabra.
Dentro de ese Partido, lo unico que les queda a los republicanos es postular un nuevo candidato y el unico que podria serlo seria el Gobernador de Indiana Mitch Daniels, quien hizo la mas coherente critica al discurso de Obama. Entonces podrian ganarle a Obama, las denuncias contra su traicion al pueblo harian el resto.
En el otro lado, el pescado podria caer por la boca y Obama la tiene grande. Como no pudo mencionar el nombre de Romney en su discurso, cometio el "error" de decir una verdad que no planeo decir: que muchos millonarios evaden impuestos y que todos ellos debieran aportar como taxes el 30% de lo que ganan. Esto le podria estar costando su vida politica aun si gana la reeleccion a la Presidencia (al menos esa vida) pues es seguro que los millonarios no solo lo van a usar como hasta ahora lo han hecho -como papel higienico-, sino que a la 1ra de vastos lo van freir en el sarten que tienen reservado para pescados bocones como Obama y reemplazarlo por el VP de turno.
Mi TESIS aqui: Mitt Romney & Newt Gingrich se degollaron entre ellos y decretaron la derrota del Pdo Republicano: este Pdo se quedó hoy sin candidato que pueda enfrentar a Obama. Lo único que les queda es crear uno nuevo o degollar a Obama y en política USAna todo es posible. Pronto veremos –antes de las elecciones de Noviembre, y si postulan un nuevo candidato- como se resuelve el problema que dejo las primarias.
Romney ha muerto políticamente, un payaso del circo interno (Gingrich) lo degolló, pero antes de morir Romney alcanzo a devolverle la daga asesina. Ambos quedaron sin vida politica, los otros candidatos republicanos jamas la tuvieron.
No han pasado dos días y la descomposición acelerada de los cuerpos nauseabundos de Romney y Gingrich empieza ya a polucionar todos el ambiente politico americano.
Peor que la náusea y el asco que provoca esta contienda entre los ricos por comprar la Presidencia es el hecho de que la democracia americana sigue aun sin real alternativa popular. En un articulo de abajo veremos que la mas cercana propuesta a la trampa electoral realmente existente (elegir entre 2 evil forces, demócratas y republicanos, ambos dos financiadas por el gran capital corporativo) es la de Ralph Nader quien propuso quedarse en casa y no votar y aun esa propuesta está muy lejos de ser real alternativa pues no existe aún el Frente Popular unido contra el fascismo disfrazado del “dirty couple” y ni Nader ni Ron Paul tienen agallas para lanzar esa propuesta. Al diablo con la nacion, me quedo en casa, eso suena a traicion
En resumen: Hasta ahora a Obama le fue bien en el uso del lema “mi mejor aliado táctico es el mas cercano enemigo de mi peor enemigo estratégico”. No recuerdo si fue Von Klawsevich or Lao Tse quien acuño esta fórmula de guerra. Pero hay otra, “mientras el enemigo tenga un mínimo de poder militar y económico, cualquier victoria contra él es solo victoria táctica y transitoria, de ningún modo victoria estratégica y final”. Ademas, “cualquier victoria en suelo ajeno no vale nada frente a una derrota en suelo interno”. Veremos que viene dentro del Partido democrata; mas exactamente quien viene como VP, el remplazante de Obama. En ese criadero de cuervos -el partido democrata- cualquiera de ellos le podria sacar los ojos (y no solo eso) a Obama.
He aquí dos arts de democracy now al respecto.
1.
AS ROMNEY RELEASES TAX RETURNS, FMR SENATE INVESTIGATOR SAYS: WE’VE GOT TO START TAXING CORPORATIONS
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/24/as_romney_releases_tax_returns
During the GOP primary, Mitt Romney has come under fierce attack for parking millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven. We speak with Tax Justice Network USA chair Jack Blum, a former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, who says tax evasion could seriously cripple the already struggling economy. Blum appears in "We’re Not Broke," a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film examines widespread corporate tax evasion in the United States and the increasing role of offshore tax havens. "Has [Romney] cheated? No," Blum says. "What he’s done is take full advantage of a system that has been structured the way it is because of political influence and a tremendous amount of lobbying money on Capitol Hill... We must not only rewrite the Internal Revenue Code, but we must get a fair contribution from the very wealthy and from corporations, and that is the only way to balance the budget."
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• "He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address
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As Romney Releases Tax Returns, Fmr Senate Investigator Says: We’ve Got to Start Taxing Corporations. January 24, 2012
AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, from the Sundance Film Festival. Tonight’s State of the Union address by President Obama comes just as a new Pew survey finds 86 percent of Americans say strengthening the economy should be the top priority of the President and Congress. That was the main subject of last night’s Republican primary debate as Mitt Romney went after his rival Newt Gingrich.
MITT ROMNEY: I think it’s about leadership, and the Speaker was given an opportunity to be the leader of our party in 1994. And at the end of four years, he had to resign in disgrace. Now, in the 1970s, he came to Washington. I went to work in my first job in the 1970s at the bottom level of a consulting firm. In the 1990s, he had to resign in disgrace from this job as speaker. I had the opportunity to go off and run the Olympic Winter Games. In the 15 years after he left the speakership, the Speaker has worked—been working as an influence peddler in Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: Before Mitt Romney lost to Newt Gingrich in Saturday’s South Carolina Republican presidential primary, he came under fierce attack for parking millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven. Meanwhile, official documents reviewed by ABC News show that Bain Capital, the private equity partnership Romney once ran, set up some 138 secretive offshore funds in the Cayman Islands.
Well, today we’re turning to a former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, who says tax evasion could seriously cripple the already struggling economy. Jack Blum appears in We’re Not Broke, a documentary that has premiered here at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The film examines widespread corporate tax evasion in the U.S. and the increasing role of offshore tax havens. Jack Blum is a lawyer and chair of Tax Justice Network USA.
Jack, welcome to Democracy Now! OK, the debate is heating up, primarily between Newt Gingrich now and Mitt Romney. Talk about Mitt Romney and his private equity firm Bain Capital.
JACK BLUM: Bain Capital is a firm that specializes in taking over other companies and supposedly putting them on track to success and then selling the companies off. But this industry is built on tax dodgers of various kinds. So, typically, the money that’s used is borrowed money, and the borrowings are secured by the company that they’re buying. Now, what this does is create tremendous tax deductions for interest payments on the loan. The fascinating thing is that the partnerships that do this are also offshore partnerships. They’re set up in the Cayman Islands.
And they’re set up there for three different reasons. First, tax. There is no tax in the Cayman Islands, and there’s a system of deferral of tax, as long as it’s kept offshore. The second reason for being in the Cayman Islands is no disclosure. You can’t find out who the other partners are. You can’t find out anything about how this partnership is put together. And finally, the third reason is no regulation. So there’s no a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. There’s nothing that will tell us what’s really going on in the partnership.
And finally, if he is one of the partners who’s a manager, he takes his income—this is the income he gets for managing other people’s money—and that comes to him in the form of capital gains, because he’s allowed to have what’s called a carried interest. And the carried interest pays a tax rate of 15 percent. He doesn’t even pay Social Security tax.
Now, what’s unbelievable here is that we have a debate going on in the country about firing teachers, firing firemen, firing public officials, because we’ve got to balance the budget. And that debate is being led by Republicans. And these Republicans are saying, "Got to cut the budget, or else we sink." Nobody, and this is both Republicans and Democrats, talk about the missing revenue.
AMY GOODMAN: The issue of corporations paying taxes, the Republicans refer to as a job killer.
JACK BLUM: Well, the truth is that the companies that have not paid taxes are the ones who lay people off. So, Bank of America, which made quite a bit of money last year—had a lot of that written off because of loss carryforwards, but still made a lot of money—actually got a refund from the government and, the day its numbers were announced, fired 30,000 people in a restructuring. So, there’s a mythology here that somehow this system of subsidizing companies by giving them either zero or near zero tax rates through these various loopholes is going to create jobs, is so much nonsense. And there’s now an effort underway, and it’s almost comical, to repatriate funds of the companies moved offshore through transfer pricing and other techniques, and they want to repatriate it at a 5 percent tax rate, arguing that that is going to create jobs. Well, we did it before. And in fact, the companies who repatriated funds laid off thousands and thousands of people.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Mitt Romney’s tax returns.
JACK BLUM: I haven’t seen them. But what I can say is that he is paying less than average middle-class Americans by far. And he’s doing that because all of his income comes in as capital gains. Now, has he cheated? No. What he’s done is take full advantage of a system that has been structured the way it is because of political influence and a tremendous amount of lobbying money on Capitol Hill.
AMY GOODMAN: Is all of this legal?
JACK BLUM: Yes. And that, of course, is the real underlying problem that we confront. It’s legal, and it is the result of an incredible amount of money being spent on lobbying. There’s a recent study done by Citizens for Tax Justice, who put together numbers that show the companies that have taken advantage of these tax schemes are spending upwards of $2 billion a year in lobbying. That’s how they get the breaks. And it’s this congressional campaign money, it’s the ability to get access to the members, the ability to control and dictate what the tax laws will look like, that gives them the opportunity to engineer those laws, to take full advantage and save huge amounts.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to happen?
JACK BLUM: We’ve got to start taxing corporations. Right now, the average American is being asked to subsidize the corporations, pay a lot of tax, and not get any government services. What creates wealth is the commons. What creates wealth is the infrastructure in America. What creates wealth is our educational system. These corporations, that take full advantage of it, don’t want to help pay for it. And that has to be corrected. But until we get our hands around the problem of campaign contributions, and until the public understands what’s going on, that’s going to be very difficult. And the rhetoric in this campaign, this business of saying the problem is that we’ve got to cut, we have to balance the budget, and not discussing this revenue issue, is nothing short of insane.
AMY GOODMAN: Where is Obama when it comes to leadership on this issue?
JACK BLUM: When he was inaugurated and when he was campaigning, he said he’d straighten up the mess that the tax code is. He didn’t do it. And he’s surrounded by a group of advisers who don’t want to tackle these problems, I think, because many of them come out of the very community and the very law firms that have created the problem. Now, in the film, we show him bringing many of the corporate leaders, who are the heads of companies that don’t pay any tax, in to a circle of people who are advising him on the economy. Well, I can assure you they’re not telling him that the way to solve the economic problems is to collect tax from their companies.
AMY GOODMAN: Doesn’t this also have to do with campaign contributions? He says he’s going—they’re going to raise a billion dollars. That’s the Democrats alone. So the Republicans express the philosophy outright. The Democrats rely on the same amounts of money from the corporations that they fear they won’t get.
JACK BLUM: OK, the congressional Democrats do. I should say, to his credit, Obama has said he won’t take contributions from lobbyists, and corporate contributions are prohibited. However, if you look at the congressional side, that’s a whole different story. But really, the reason for bringing these people in as advisers is, at first, to neutralize their desire to pour money to the other side, but then also to give the appearance of being business-friendly and to make sure that the congressional Democrats continue to get the funding they need to get elected. And when we’re running billion-dollar campaigns on all sides, this is pretty amazing stuff.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you want to hear President Obama say in the State of the Union address?
JACK BLUM: That we must not only rewrite the Internal Revenue Code, but we must get a fair contribution from the very wealthy and from corporations, and that that is the only way to balance the budget.
AMY GOODMAN: Citizens United, how does that fit into this picture?
JACK BLUM: We have an amazing situation as a result of Citizens United. "Corporations are people," says Mitt Romney in one of his statements. They’re not. Corporations are a special privilege granted to a group of people so that they can invest money without the fear of losing if the investment goes bad. They’re not people. And Citizens United has allowed corporations to get in the act and contribute to these funds, which are, quote, "independent funds," that spend unlimited amounts of money. And that sort of takes control of the election process. Now, that can’t be allowed. What we have developed is a system of representation that is by money talking and no taxation, which is absolutely the reverse of where this republic started.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you talk about tax justice? How do you change the conversation in this country? You’re featured in a film here at the Sundance Film Festival called We’re Not Broke. That’s going to surprise a lot of people.
JACK BLUM: Well, of course, because there’s been this drumbeat of "We’re broke. We’re broke. We’re broke. Fire everybody." The way we’re going to change that is to show people what’s going on. When people saw this film, when people began to understand that corporations like Google and Apple don’t pay U.S. federal tax, their jaws dropped. Now, how you can solve these budget problems and not talk about that is unfathomable. And we’re going to get them talking about it by looking at those tax returns and looking at what’s really going on.
And this film shows not only the question of how that money has not been paid, but it also shows young people all over the country spontaneously beginning to understand the issue and demonstrating. So, a group called US Uncut stepped forward and began to demonstrate in front of some of these companies, saying, "Pay your fair share of taxes." And that morphed into some of the folks who are in the Occupy movement. So I think there are groups—there are many groups that are involved now in trying to bring this message across. Tax Justice Network has worked with a coalition called the FACT Coalition. It’s more than 40 different non-profit groups—some conservative, some liberal, some religious, some labor. And they’re all talking about the issue of, we have got to get back to a point where there’s tax collected and where government services are provided based on taxes being collected.
AMY GOODMAN: Jack Blum, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, lawyer and chair of Tax Justice Network USA.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Two State of the Union addresses ago, President Obama promised a nuclear renaissance. We’ll look at The Atomic States of America. Stay with us.
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2.
RALPH NADER RESPONDS TO OBAMA’S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
OBAMA SAYS ONE THING AND DOES ANOTHER, says NADER
"He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address. January 25, 2012
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/25/he_says_one_thing_and_does
Responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader says Obama’s criticism of income inequality and Wall Street excess fail to live up to his record in office. "[Obama] says one thing and does another," Nader says. "Where has he been for over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There are existing laws that could prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t sent more than one or two to jail." On foreign policy, Nader says, "I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. [Obama] was very committed to protecting the American empire, in Obama terms."
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined right now by Ralph Nader to talk more about President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime consumer advocate, former presidential candidate. His latest book is Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win."
Ralph Nader, your response to the State of the Union address? It could be President Obama’s last. It could be the beginning of a new President Obama for a second term. What do you think?
RALPH NADER: Well, I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. I mean, he was very committed to protecting the American empire, in Obama terms, force projection in the Pacific, and distorting the whole process of how he explains Iraq and Afghanistan. He talks about Libya and Syria, and then went into the military alliance with Israel and didn’t talk about the peace process or the plight of the Palestinians, who are being so repressed. Leaving Iraq as if it was a victory? Iraq has been destroyed: massive refugees, over a million Iraqis dead, contaminated environment, collapsing infrastructure, sectarian warfare. He should be ashamed of himself that he tries to drape our soldiers, who were sent on lawless military missions to kill and die in those countries, unconstitutional wars that violate Geneva conventions and international law and federal statutes, and drape them as if they’ve come back from Iwo Jima or Normandy. So I think it was very, very poor taste to start and end with this kind of massive militarism and the Obama empire.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And on the economy, Ralph Nader, on the economy, your response to what Obama said last night?
RALPH NADER: A lot of good-sounding words. He’s very good at that. I’m glad he focused on Wall Street abuses on more than one occasion. I’m glad that he focused on renewable energy. But notice that he just mentioned climate change but didn’t go anywhere on that one. He still is not able to use the word "poverty." It’s always the middle class, which is shrinking into poverty. But you’ve got 60, 70, 80 million people living in poverty in the United States, and child poverty.
And the most amazing gap was his promise in 2008 to press for the raising of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.50 by 2011. So, he went for equal pay for equal work for women, but millions of people in this country, one out of every three full-time workers, are earning Wal-Mart wages, many of them not far over the $7.25 rate. Now, the $9.50 minimum wage would still be less in inflation-adjusted terms than it was in 1968, when worker productivity was half of what it is today.
So, a lot of his suggestions, like the attitude toward foreign trade—well, he said that in 2008 he wanted to revise NAFTA. He didn’t lift a finger. So how credible are his words vis-à-vis China, for example, in the trade area and importing hazardous products into this country? How credible are his words? How credible are his words when he says he wants to start a financial crimes unit in the Justice Department? I mean, what does that mean, unless he demands a much larger budget for prosecutors and law enforcement officials against the corporate crime wave? Maybe he needs a subscription to the Corporate Crime Reporter to tell him that we’ve been through these kinds of rhetorics before by prior presidents. They’re going to establish an enforcement unit here and there, but without a major budget, it’s going to go nowhere.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play President Obama’s announcement last night of a new unit devoted to investigating major financial crimes.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We’ll also establish a financial crimes unit of highly trained investigators to crack down on large-scale fraud and protect people’s investments. Some financial firms violate major anti-fraud laws because there’s no real penalty for being a repeat offender. That’s bad for consumers, and it’s bad for the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals who do the right thing. So pass legislation that makes the penalties for fraud count. And tonight I’m asking my attorney general to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama announcing that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will head this unit. I’m going back to the—to August, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman being kicked off a 50-state task force negotiating a possible settlement with the nation’s largest mortgage companies, the move coming just a day after the New York Times reported that the Obama administration was pressuring Schneiderman to agree to a broad state settlement with banks over questionable foreclosure tactics. Ralph Nader, your response?
RALPH NADER: Well, that’s the double standard that he’s such an expert at, Obama. He says one thing and does another. Where has he been for over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There are existing laws that could prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t sent more than one or two to jail. So, it is important to strengthen the corporate criminal laws through congressional legislation, but what has he done? This financial crimes unit, that’s like putting another label on a few doors in the Justice Department without a real expansion in the budget.
But then, when he said to the American people, "no more bailouts, no more handouts, and no more cop-outs" — but that’s what’s been going on. And it’s going on today and it went on last year under his administration. Washington is a bustling bazaar of accounts receivable. They’re bailing out and they’re handing out all kinds of subsidies to corporations—handouts, giveaways, transfer of technology, transfer of medical research to the drug companies without any reasonable price provisions on drugs, giveaway of natural resources on the federal lands. You name it, it’s still going on. And as far as a cop-out, how about his deferred prosecution gimmicks with these corporations under the Justice Department, where they never have to plead guilty, they never have to make themselves vulnerable to civil lawsuits so they pay back the American people what they’ve stolen from them?
So, obviously, State of the Union speeches are full of rhetoric, they’re full of promises, but it’s good to measure them against the past performance of the Obama administration and what his promises were in 2008. They don’t really stand up very well.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ralph Nader, I want to turn to the Republican response to the State of the Union address. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, a former budget director under President George W. Bush, delivered the response to his address, to Obama’s address. He slammed Obama for halting the Keystone XL pipeline project that would transport oil from Canada to Texas, equating the move to a, quote, "pro-poverty policy."
GOV. MITCH DANIELS: The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy. It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of private sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate the public revenues to pay our bills.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ralph Nader, your response?
RALPH NADER: Well, first of all, the XL pipeline is basically shipping very dirty Albertan oil down through the United States, over very, very sensitive aquifers and other environmental conditions, down to the Gulf in order to ship it abroad. That’s the big farce of this pipeline project. It’s not going to be brought to make this country more reliant on Canada instead of the Middle East. It’s basically an export pipeline.
And the second is, Mitch Daniels would have done the public a great service, in his speech, if he would have urged the corporations in this country, who are sitting on $2 trillion of cash, like Cisco and Apple and Google, to start giving some of that cash back to shareholders in terms of dividends and to pension funds and mutual funds, which would increase consumer demand and create more jobs, just the way a minimum wage increase would increase consumer demand to create more jobs. Instead, he didn’t say that. And Obama has constantly restricted any kind of stimulant to tax breaks, to tax incentives, to tax reductions, which of course will not do much to build up the government’s resources for a major job-producing public works program in every community, good-paying jobs repairing America— schools, bridges, public transit, drinking water systems—jobs that cannot be exported abroad. So, we need to develop a very concrete critique of these politicians’ statements up against what they could do if they had the courage of their office.
Imagine Obama never mentioning the Occupy movement. Imagine Obama never mentioning the Occupy Wall Street movement, the main citizen awareness movement to be coupled with his alleged concern with Wall Street abuses. And yet he talks about advancing human dignity for all people abroad, and he never talks about a major human dignity initiative, the Occupy initiative, based on peaceful resistance to oligarchy and plutocracy. He’s a political coward. He’s got to repair back to the Oval Office and ask himself why he can’t stand for the people in this country who are really aware and trying to improve our democracy and advance justice and make government and corporations accountable.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph, you have written a new book called Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win. People may be listening to you right now and agreeing with a lot of what you are saying, and also saying, "What is the alternative here? Mitt Romney? Newt Gingrich?" What is your response to that?
RALPH NADER: Well, this is the book, and I’m going to drop it off at the White House soon. I think he should read it, because the left is not making any demands on Obama because they’re so freaked out by the Republicans and their crazed rhetoric on their debates. Well, if that is going to continue for 2012, that means the corporations are pulling on Obama and the Democratic Party. The Republicans are pulling on Obama and Democratic Party, because they’re getting all the media, because they have a vibrant primary process, and there’s no primary challenge to Obama, so the progressive agenda is not getting any media at all, week after week.
So the alternative, Amy, is for the left, such as they are — progressive, liberal people, I like to call them "justice seekers" — to make demands on Obama, to make demands for improving the rights of labor, improving the rights of small farmers, improving the rights of small business, the environmental demands that need to be made, the crackdown on corporate crime, a whole panoply of corporate reform agenda, the kind of crackdown on these global corporations that have abandoned America and shipped jobs and industries to fascist and communist regimes who know how to keep workers in their place.
But there is no pull, because they’re so freaked out by the Republicans. So, one can really say the Republicans could sit around in a smoke-filled room and say, "Let’s be even more crazed. Let’s be even more corporatist." This will create a good vacuum for the Democrats to move into, because both parties are dialing for the same corporate dollars, and it will bring the left to their knees, because they’ll say, "We’ve got nowhere to go."
Well, the reason why this speech was so failing, especially in foreign and military policy, the reason why it was so failing is because Obama doesn’t have to worry about tens of millions of people who call themselves progressives or liberals, because they have signaled to him that they got nowhere to go. Well, I think if they believe they got nowhere to go, that they don’t want to vote for a third party or Green Party, they can at least, in April, May, June, hold his feet to the fire and present him with a set of progressive demands, in order to tell him that they do have a place to go: they can stay home. And that’s what hurt the Democrats in 2010. People can just stay home.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, I want to thank you for being with us. His book is called Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win.
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THE HARAKIRI of the REPUBLICAN PARTY
ELECCIONES Y EL HARAKIRI DE LOS REPUBLICANOS
Hugo Adan. Enero 27, 2012
TEMA: La espada de fuego que asesto Gingrich al corazon de Mitt Romney antes de la primarias en South Caroline (pidio Gingrich que Romney de a conocer los impuestos que paga a la nacion que son menos de un 14% mientras el resto del pais paga del 30 al 33%) esa denuncia no solo le costo a Romney la derrota en las primarias de ese Estado, en realidad incinero su candidatura a la Presidencia de la Republica. Por mas que invierta los millones que quiera en las primarias y que gane con ello la eleccion del Pdo republicano como candidato unico, su derrota ya fue capitalizada politicamente por Obama mediante su reciente Mensaje a la Nacion. No solo reafirmo alli la denuncia de Gingrich sino que la amplio a todos los millonarios.
Ni Romney ni Gingrich podrian ganarle a Obama. Aquellos se degollaron a si mismos y lo unico que le queda a los Republicanos es cambiar de candidatos y postular uno nuevo que este a la altura de los caidos.
Santorum (quien de santo no tiene nada pues fue denunciado como corrupto por los mismos de su especie),este sujeto no es mas que un simple caza brujas con la mentalidad de los verdugos de la Sta Inquisicion medieval (del conservatismo ingenuo y asqueroso de este "pro-life" era de esperarse lo que dijo a la nacion: que debemos alegrarnos de que hayan asesinado a cientificos iranies recientemente. De haber existido Santorum en los tiempos de Eistein u Openheimer este habria tambien pedido la muerte de ellos). En Peru solo el cuervo Cipriani del Opus Dei podria decir que Santorum es el candidato ideal para los americanos.
En cuanto a Ron Paul, si este ahora no abandona el chiquero republicano, se quedara como un simple reclutador y manipulador de conciencias en gente joven y honesta en ese Partido quienes a gritos le pide que inicie una revolucion contra el bi-partidismo que Paul denuncia retoricamente. Si Paul se queda alli, pasara al basurero de la historia politica americana. Que hace alli Ron Paul? sino adornar un Pdo podrido y fascistoide, cuyas mayorias lo detestan como real candidato porque no tiene para competir en la compra de elecciones. Si el Pdo diera apoyo a Ron Paul, este podria ganarle a Obama, pero eso es como pedir peras al olmo, un imposible dentro del electorado conservador de los republicanos.
Ron Paul y Neider deben unirse y crear un frente popular contra la corrupcion de la democracia americana y la reconstruccion del pais. Eso significa lanzar la 3ra y real opcion democratica. Que eso en lo inmediato serviria a Obama, quiza pero no mas que el servicio que ya le dio Gingrich. Lo cierto es que los republicanos ya no tienen candidato a Presidente. La 3ra opcion -aunque sea a nivel de Estados- cavaria la fosa donde seria enterrado el continuismo neoliberal desde Reagan hasta Obama.
Se lanzaria con la 3ra opcion un nuevo modelo de democracia orientado al Mercado donde se limite el poder de los grandes especuladores y financistas, con un nuevo Glas Steagle Act, con el impuesto Tobin a toda transacion financiera y con los recortes de privilegios al capital que solo de nombre es americano y que Obama denuncio solo de palabra -en su electoralismo mundano- y que jamas tuvo los cojones de implementar. De la traicion de Obama al pueblo americano ya tenemos bastante y es hora de pasar a la accion. Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Denis Kusinich y el senador de Vermont tienen la palabra.
Dentro de ese Partido, lo unico que les queda a los republicanos es postular un nuevo candidato y el unico que podria serlo seria el Gobernador de Indiana Mitch Daniels, quien hizo la mas coherente critica al discurso de Obama. Entonces podrian ganarle a Obama, las denuncias contra su traicion al pueblo harian el resto.
En el otro lado, el pescado podria caer por la boca y Obama la tiene grande. Como no pudo mencionar el nombre de Romney en su discurso, cometio el "error" de decir una verdad que no planeo decir: que muchos millonarios evaden impuestos y que todos ellos debieran aportar como taxes el 30% de lo que ganan. Esto le podria estar costando su vida politica aun si gana la reeleccion a la Presidencia (al menos esa vida) pues es seguro que los millonarios no solo lo van a usar como hasta ahora lo han hecho -como papel higienico-, sino que a la 1ra de vastos lo van freir en el sarten que tienen reservado para pescados bocones como Obama y reemplazarlo por el VP de turno.
Mi TESIS aqui: Mitt Romney & Newt Gingrich se degollaron entre ellos y decretaron la derrota del Pdo Republicano: este Pdo se quedó hoy sin candidato que pueda enfrentar a Obama. Lo único que les queda es crear uno nuevo o degollar a Obama y en política USAna todo es posible. Pronto veremos –antes de las elecciones de Noviembre, y si postulan un nuevo candidato- como se resuelve el problema que dejo las primarias.
Romney ha muerto políticamente, un payaso del circo interno (Gingrich) lo degolló, pero antes de morir Romney alcanzo a devolverle la daga asesina. Ambos quedaron sin vida politica, los otros candidatos republicanos jamas la tuvieron.
No han pasado dos días y la descomposición acelerada de los cuerpos nauseabundos de Romney y Gingrich empieza ya a polucionar todos el ambiente politico americano.
Peor que la náusea y el asco que provoca esta contienda entre los ricos por comprar la Presidencia es el hecho de que la democracia americana sigue aun sin real alternativa popular. En un articulo de abajo veremos que la mas cercana propuesta a la trampa electoral realmente existente (elegir entre 2 evil forces, demócratas y republicanos, ambos dos financiadas por el gran capital corporativo) es la de Ralph Nader quien propuso quedarse en casa y no votar y aun esa propuesta está muy lejos de ser real alternativa pues no existe aún el Frente Popular unido contra el fascismo disfrazado del “dirty couple” y ni Nader ni Ron Paul tienen agallas para lanzar esa propuesta. Al diablo con la nacion, me quedo en casa, eso suena a traicion
En resumen: Hasta ahora a Obama le fue bien en el uso del lema “mi mejor aliado táctico es el mas cercano enemigo de mi peor enemigo estratégico”. No recuerdo si fue Von Klawsevich or Lao Tse quien acuño esta fórmula de guerra. Pero hay otra, “mientras el enemigo tenga un mínimo de poder militar y económico, cualquier victoria contra él es solo victoria táctica y transitoria, de ningún modo victoria estratégica y final”. Ademas, “cualquier victoria en suelo ajeno no vale nada frente a una derrota en suelo interno”. Veremos que viene dentro del Partido democrata; mas exactamente quien viene como VP, el remplazante de Obama. En ese criadero de cuervos -el partido democrata- cualquiera de ellos le podria sacar los ojos (y no solo eso) a Obama.
He aquí dos arts de democracy now al respecto.
1.
AS ROMNEY RELEASES TAX RETURNS, FMR SENATE INVESTIGATOR SAYS: WE’VE GOT TO START TAXING CORPORATIONS
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/24/as_romney_releases_tax_returns
During the GOP primary, Mitt Romney has come under fierce attack for parking millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven. We speak with Tax Justice Network USA chair Jack Blum, a former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, who says tax evasion could seriously cripple the already struggling economy. Blum appears in "We’re Not Broke," a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film examines widespread corporate tax evasion in the United States and the increasing role of offshore tax havens. "Has [Romney] cheated? No," Blum says. "What he’s done is take full advantage of a system that has been structured the way it is because of political influence and a tremendous amount of lobbying money on Capitol Hill... We must not only rewrite the Internal Revenue Code, but we must get a fair contribution from the very wealthy and from corporations, and that is the only way to balance the budget."
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• "He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address
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As Romney Releases Tax Returns, Fmr Senate Investigator Says: We’ve Got to Start Taxing Corporations. January 24, 2012
AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, from the Sundance Film Festival. Tonight’s State of the Union address by President Obama comes just as a new Pew survey finds 86 percent of Americans say strengthening the economy should be the top priority of the President and Congress. That was the main subject of last night’s Republican primary debate as Mitt Romney went after his rival Newt Gingrich.
MITT ROMNEY: I think it’s about leadership, and the Speaker was given an opportunity to be the leader of our party in 1994. And at the end of four years, he had to resign in disgrace. Now, in the 1970s, he came to Washington. I went to work in my first job in the 1970s at the bottom level of a consulting firm. In the 1990s, he had to resign in disgrace from this job as speaker. I had the opportunity to go off and run the Olympic Winter Games. In the 15 years after he left the speakership, the Speaker has worked—been working as an influence peddler in Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: Before Mitt Romney lost to Newt Gingrich in Saturday’s South Carolina Republican presidential primary, he came under fierce attack for parking millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven. Meanwhile, official documents reviewed by ABC News show that Bain Capital, the private equity partnership Romney once ran, set up some 138 secretive offshore funds in the Cayman Islands.
Well, today we’re turning to a former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, who says tax evasion could seriously cripple the already struggling economy. Jack Blum appears in We’re Not Broke, a documentary that has premiered here at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The film examines widespread corporate tax evasion in the U.S. and the increasing role of offshore tax havens. Jack Blum is a lawyer and chair of Tax Justice Network USA.
Jack, welcome to Democracy Now! OK, the debate is heating up, primarily between Newt Gingrich now and Mitt Romney. Talk about Mitt Romney and his private equity firm Bain Capital.
JACK BLUM: Bain Capital is a firm that specializes in taking over other companies and supposedly putting them on track to success and then selling the companies off. But this industry is built on tax dodgers of various kinds. So, typically, the money that’s used is borrowed money, and the borrowings are secured by the company that they’re buying. Now, what this does is create tremendous tax deductions for interest payments on the loan. The fascinating thing is that the partnerships that do this are also offshore partnerships. They’re set up in the Cayman Islands.
And they’re set up there for three different reasons. First, tax. There is no tax in the Cayman Islands, and there’s a system of deferral of tax, as long as it’s kept offshore. The second reason for being in the Cayman Islands is no disclosure. You can’t find out who the other partners are. You can’t find out anything about how this partnership is put together. And finally, the third reason is no regulation. So there’s no a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. There’s nothing that will tell us what’s really going on in the partnership.
And finally, if he is one of the partners who’s a manager, he takes his income—this is the income he gets for managing other people’s money—and that comes to him in the form of capital gains, because he’s allowed to have what’s called a carried interest. And the carried interest pays a tax rate of 15 percent. He doesn’t even pay Social Security tax.
Now, what’s unbelievable here is that we have a debate going on in the country about firing teachers, firing firemen, firing public officials, because we’ve got to balance the budget. And that debate is being led by Republicans. And these Republicans are saying, "Got to cut the budget, or else we sink." Nobody, and this is both Republicans and Democrats, talk about the missing revenue.
AMY GOODMAN: The issue of corporations paying taxes, the Republicans refer to as a job killer.
JACK BLUM: Well, the truth is that the companies that have not paid taxes are the ones who lay people off. So, Bank of America, which made quite a bit of money last year—had a lot of that written off because of loss carryforwards, but still made a lot of money—actually got a refund from the government and, the day its numbers were announced, fired 30,000 people in a restructuring. So, there’s a mythology here that somehow this system of subsidizing companies by giving them either zero or near zero tax rates through these various loopholes is going to create jobs, is so much nonsense. And there’s now an effort underway, and it’s almost comical, to repatriate funds of the companies moved offshore through transfer pricing and other techniques, and they want to repatriate it at a 5 percent tax rate, arguing that that is going to create jobs. Well, we did it before. And in fact, the companies who repatriated funds laid off thousands and thousands of people.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Mitt Romney’s tax returns.
JACK BLUM: I haven’t seen them. But what I can say is that he is paying less than average middle-class Americans by far. And he’s doing that because all of his income comes in as capital gains. Now, has he cheated? No. What he’s done is take full advantage of a system that has been structured the way it is because of political influence and a tremendous amount of lobbying money on Capitol Hill.
AMY GOODMAN: Is all of this legal?
JACK BLUM: Yes. And that, of course, is the real underlying problem that we confront. It’s legal, and it is the result of an incredible amount of money being spent on lobbying. There’s a recent study done by Citizens for Tax Justice, who put together numbers that show the companies that have taken advantage of these tax schemes are spending upwards of $2 billion a year in lobbying. That’s how they get the breaks. And it’s this congressional campaign money, it’s the ability to get access to the members, the ability to control and dictate what the tax laws will look like, that gives them the opportunity to engineer those laws, to take full advantage and save huge amounts.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to happen?
JACK BLUM: We’ve got to start taxing corporations. Right now, the average American is being asked to subsidize the corporations, pay a lot of tax, and not get any government services. What creates wealth is the commons. What creates wealth is the infrastructure in America. What creates wealth is our educational system. These corporations, that take full advantage of it, don’t want to help pay for it. And that has to be corrected. But until we get our hands around the problem of campaign contributions, and until the public understands what’s going on, that’s going to be very difficult. And the rhetoric in this campaign, this business of saying the problem is that we’ve got to cut, we have to balance the budget, and not discussing this revenue issue, is nothing short of insane.
AMY GOODMAN: Where is Obama when it comes to leadership on this issue?
JACK BLUM: When he was inaugurated and when he was campaigning, he said he’d straighten up the mess that the tax code is. He didn’t do it. And he’s surrounded by a group of advisers who don’t want to tackle these problems, I think, because many of them come out of the very community and the very law firms that have created the problem. Now, in the film, we show him bringing many of the corporate leaders, who are the heads of companies that don’t pay any tax, in to a circle of people who are advising him on the economy. Well, I can assure you they’re not telling him that the way to solve the economic problems is to collect tax from their companies.
AMY GOODMAN: Doesn’t this also have to do with campaign contributions? He says he’s going—they’re going to raise a billion dollars. That’s the Democrats alone. So the Republicans express the philosophy outright. The Democrats rely on the same amounts of money from the corporations that they fear they won’t get.
JACK BLUM: OK, the congressional Democrats do. I should say, to his credit, Obama has said he won’t take contributions from lobbyists, and corporate contributions are prohibited. However, if you look at the congressional side, that’s a whole different story. But really, the reason for bringing these people in as advisers is, at first, to neutralize their desire to pour money to the other side, but then also to give the appearance of being business-friendly and to make sure that the congressional Democrats continue to get the funding they need to get elected. And when we’re running billion-dollar campaigns on all sides, this is pretty amazing stuff.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you want to hear President Obama say in the State of the Union address?
JACK BLUM: That we must not only rewrite the Internal Revenue Code, but we must get a fair contribution from the very wealthy and from corporations, and that that is the only way to balance the budget.
AMY GOODMAN: Citizens United, how does that fit into this picture?
JACK BLUM: We have an amazing situation as a result of Citizens United. "Corporations are people," says Mitt Romney in one of his statements. They’re not. Corporations are a special privilege granted to a group of people so that they can invest money without the fear of losing if the investment goes bad. They’re not people. And Citizens United has allowed corporations to get in the act and contribute to these funds, which are, quote, "independent funds," that spend unlimited amounts of money. And that sort of takes control of the election process. Now, that can’t be allowed. What we have developed is a system of representation that is by money talking and no taxation, which is absolutely the reverse of where this republic started.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you talk about tax justice? How do you change the conversation in this country? You’re featured in a film here at the Sundance Film Festival called We’re Not Broke. That’s going to surprise a lot of people.
JACK BLUM: Well, of course, because there’s been this drumbeat of "We’re broke. We’re broke. We’re broke. Fire everybody." The way we’re going to change that is to show people what’s going on. When people saw this film, when people began to understand that corporations like Google and Apple don’t pay U.S. federal tax, their jaws dropped. Now, how you can solve these budget problems and not talk about that is unfathomable. And we’re going to get them talking about it by looking at those tax returns and looking at what’s really going on.
And this film shows not only the question of how that money has not been paid, but it also shows young people all over the country spontaneously beginning to understand the issue and demonstrating. So, a group called US Uncut stepped forward and began to demonstrate in front of some of these companies, saying, "Pay your fair share of taxes." And that morphed into some of the folks who are in the Occupy movement. So I think there are groups—there are many groups that are involved now in trying to bring this message across. Tax Justice Network has worked with a coalition called the FACT Coalition. It’s more than 40 different non-profit groups—some conservative, some liberal, some religious, some labor. And they’re all talking about the issue of, we have got to get back to a point where there’s tax collected and where government services are provided based on taxes being collected.
AMY GOODMAN: Jack Blum, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, lawyer and chair of Tax Justice Network USA.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Two State of the Union addresses ago, President Obama promised a nuclear renaissance. We’ll look at The Atomic States of America. Stay with us.
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2.
RALPH NADER RESPONDS TO OBAMA’S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
OBAMA SAYS ONE THING AND DOES ANOTHER, says NADER
"He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address. January 25, 2012
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/25/he_says_one_thing_and_does
Responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader says Obama’s criticism of income inequality and Wall Street excess fail to live up to his record in office. "[Obama] says one thing and does another," Nader says. "Where has he been for over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There are existing laws that could prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t sent more than one or two to jail." On foreign policy, Nader says, "I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. [Obama] was very committed to protecting the American empire, in Obama terms."
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined right now by Ralph Nader to talk more about President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime consumer advocate, former presidential candidate. His latest book is Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win."
Ralph Nader, your response to the State of the Union address? It could be President Obama’s last. It could be the beginning of a new President Obama for a second term. What do you think?
RALPH NADER: Well, I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. I mean, he was very committed to protecting the American empire, in Obama terms, force projection in the Pacific, and distorting the whole process of how he explains Iraq and Afghanistan. He talks about Libya and Syria, and then went into the military alliance with Israel and didn’t talk about the peace process or the plight of the Palestinians, who are being so repressed. Leaving Iraq as if it was a victory? Iraq has been destroyed: massive refugees, over a million Iraqis dead, contaminated environment, collapsing infrastructure, sectarian warfare. He should be ashamed of himself that he tries to drape our soldiers, who were sent on lawless military missions to kill and die in those countries, unconstitutional wars that violate Geneva conventions and international law and federal statutes, and drape them as if they’ve come back from Iwo Jima or Normandy. So I think it was very, very poor taste to start and end with this kind of massive militarism and the Obama empire.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And on the economy, Ralph Nader, on the economy, your response to what Obama said last night?
RALPH NADER: A lot of good-sounding words. He’s very good at that. I’m glad he focused on Wall Street abuses on more than one occasion. I’m glad that he focused on renewable energy. But notice that he just mentioned climate change but didn’t go anywhere on that one. He still is not able to use the word "poverty." It’s always the middle class, which is shrinking into poverty. But you’ve got 60, 70, 80 million people living in poverty in the United States, and child poverty.
And the most amazing gap was his promise in 2008 to press for the raising of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.50 by 2011. So, he went for equal pay for equal work for women, but millions of people in this country, one out of every three full-time workers, are earning Wal-Mart wages, many of them not far over the $7.25 rate. Now, the $9.50 minimum wage would still be less in inflation-adjusted terms than it was in 1968, when worker productivity was half of what it is today.
So, a lot of his suggestions, like the attitude toward foreign trade—well, he said that in 2008 he wanted to revise NAFTA. He didn’t lift a finger. So how credible are his words vis-à-vis China, for example, in the trade area and importing hazardous products into this country? How credible are his words? How credible are his words when he says he wants to start a financial crimes unit in the Justice Department? I mean, what does that mean, unless he demands a much larger budget for prosecutors and law enforcement officials against the corporate crime wave? Maybe he needs a subscription to the Corporate Crime Reporter to tell him that we’ve been through these kinds of rhetorics before by prior presidents. They’re going to establish an enforcement unit here and there, but without a major budget, it’s going to go nowhere.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play President Obama’s announcement last night of a new unit devoted to investigating major financial crimes.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We’ll also establish a financial crimes unit of highly trained investigators to crack down on large-scale fraud and protect people’s investments. Some financial firms violate major anti-fraud laws because there’s no real penalty for being a repeat offender. That’s bad for consumers, and it’s bad for the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals who do the right thing. So pass legislation that makes the penalties for fraud count. And tonight I’m asking my attorney general to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama announcing that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will head this unit. I’m going back to the—to August, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman being kicked off a 50-state task force negotiating a possible settlement with the nation’s largest mortgage companies, the move coming just a day after the New York Times reported that the Obama administration was pressuring Schneiderman to agree to a broad state settlement with banks over questionable foreclosure tactics. Ralph Nader, your response?
RALPH NADER: Well, that’s the double standard that he’s such an expert at, Obama. He says one thing and does another. Where has he been for over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There are existing laws that could prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t sent more than one or two to jail. So, it is important to strengthen the corporate criminal laws through congressional legislation, but what has he done? This financial crimes unit, that’s like putting another label on a few doors in the Justice Department without a real expansion in the budget.
But then, when he said to the American people, "no more bailouts, no more handouts, and no more cop-outs" — but that’s what’s been going on. And it’s going on today and it went on last year under his administration. Washington is a bustling bazaar of accounts receivable. They’re bailing out and they’re handing out all kinds of subsidies to corporations—handouts, giveaways, transfer of technology, transfer of medical research to the drug companies without any reasonable price provisions on drugs, giveaway of natural resources on the federal lands. You name it, it’s still going on. And as far as a cop-out, how about his deferred prosecution gimmicks with these corporations under the Justice Department, where they never have to plead guilty, they never have to make themselves vulnerable to civil lawsuits so they pay back the American people what they’ve stolen from them?
So, obviously, State of the Union speeches are full of rhetoric, they’re full of promises, but it’s good to measure them against the past performance of the Obama administration and what his promises were in 2008. They don’t really stand up very well.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ralph Nader, I want to turn to the Republican response to the State of the Union address. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, a former budget director under President George W. Bush, delivered the response to his address, to Obama’s address. He slammed Obama for halting the Keystone XL pipeline project that would transport oil from Canada to Texas, equating the move to a, quote, "pro-poverty policy."
GOV. MITCH DANIELS: The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy. It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of private sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate the public revenues to pay our bills.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ralph Nader, your response?
RALPH NADER: Well, first of all, the XL pipeline is basically shipping very dirty Albertan oil down through the United States, over very, very sensitive aquifers and other environmental conditions, down to the Gulf in order to ship it abroad. That’s the big farce of this pipeline project. It’s not going to be brought to make this country more reliant on Canada instead of the Middle East. It’s basically an export pipeline.
And the second is, Mitch Daniels would have done the public a great service, in his speech, if he would have urged the corporations in this country, who are sitting on $2 trillion of cash, like Cisco and Apple and Google, to start giving some of that cash back to shareholders in terms of dividends and to pension funds and mutual funds, which would increase consumer demand and create more jobs, just the way a minimum wage increase would increase consumer demand to create more jobs. Instead, he didn’t say that. And Obama has constantly restricted any kind of stimulant to tax breaks, to tax incentives, to tax reductions, which of course will not do much to build up the government’s resources for a major job-producing public works program in every community, good-paying jobs repairing America— schools, bridges, public transit, drinking water systems—jobs that cannot be exported abroad. So, we need to develop a very concrete critique of these politicians’ statements up against what they could do if they had the courage of their office.
Imagine Obama never mentioning the Occupy movement. Imagine Obama never mentioning the Occupy Wall Street movement, the main citizen awareness movement to be coupled with his alleged concern with Wall Street abuses. And yet he talks about advancing human dignity for all people abroad, and he never talks about a major human dignity initiative, the Occupy initiative, based on peaceful resistance to oligarchy and plutocracy. He’s a political coward. He’s got to repair back to the Oval Office and ask himself why he can’t stand for the people in this country who are really aware and trying to improve our democracy and advance justice and make government and corporations accountable.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph, you have written a new book called Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win. People may be listening to you right now and agreeing with a lot of what you are saying, and also saying, "What is the alternative here? Mitt Romney? Newt Gingrich?" What is your response to that?
RALPH NADER: Well, this is the book, and I’m going to drop it off at the White House soon. I think he should read it, because the left is not making any demands on Obama because they’re so freaked out by the Republicans and their crazed rhetoric on their debates. Well, if that is going to continue for 2012, that means the corporations are pulling on Obama and the Democratic Party. The Republicans are pulling on Obama and Democratic Party, because they’re getting all the media, because they have a vibrant primary process, and there’s no primary challenge to Obama, so the progressive agenda is not getting any media at all, week after week.
So the alternative, Amy, is for the left, such as they are — progressive, liberal people, I like to call them "justice seekers" — to make demands on Obama, to make demands for improving the rights of labor, improving the rights of small farmers, improving the rights of small business, the environmental demands that need to be made, the crackdown on corporate crime, a whole panoply of corporate reform agenda, the kind of crackdown on these global corporations that have abandoned America and shipped jobs and industries to fascist and communist regimes who know how to keep workers in their place.
But there is no pull, because they’re so freaked out by the Republicans. So, one can really say the Republicans could sit around in a smoke-filled room and say, "Let’s be even more crazed. Let’s be even more corporatist." This will create a good vacuum for the Democrats to move into, because both parties are dialing for the same corporate dollars, and it will bring the left to their knees, because they’ll say, "We’ve got nowhere to go."
Well, the reason why this speech was so failing, especially in foreign and military policy, the reason why it was so failing is because Obama doesn’t have to worry about tens of millions of people who call themselves progressives or liberals, because they have signaled to him that they got nowhere to go. Well, I think if they believe they got nowhere to go, that they don’t want to vote for a third party or Green Party, they can at least, in April, May, June, hold his feet to the fire and present him with a set of progressive demands, in order to tell him that they do have a place to go: they can stay home. And that’s what hurt the Democrats in 2010. People can just stay home.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, I want to thank you for being with us. His book is called Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win.
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