Nazareth.
It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick.
The aim: to kill terrorists.
Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army.
Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people — Palestinians in Gaza — who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick. Continue reading
Ever since a group of ordinary people from more than 40 different countries came together and set sail for Gaza have we seen various world leaders scramble to persuade Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza. Why? To honour the memory of those martyred by Israeli soldiers who shot nine unarmed peace activists at virtually point-blank range? Hell no!
They realize that people power has achieved more in that one heroic action, than any of them have achieved for the people of Palestine. And, despite that brutal episode, they know that more flotillas and convoys are being planned because people power is achieving more than anything else has over the past 60 years for the people of Palestine. Continue reading
“Both the US and United Kingdom have increasing dependence on imported oil from the Middle East. The overriding motivation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are shielded by political smokescreen that the US and UK will run out of sufficient hydrocarbon energy supplies whereas, the Arab and Muslim world would control almost 60% of the world oil producing capacity and perhaps more significantly 95% of the remaining global oil production capacity.”
“It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the “Af-Pak” front to launch terrorist attacks.”
— Chris Floyd, “Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire,” 04/2009)
The Global governance is in shackle – a complete failure, from the working of the UN to the global adventurous organizations such as NATO, the UN Security Council, the EU and other security establishments. They exist to protect the self interest of the minority ruling elite as has been the case throughout the human history. E.H Carr foresaw the teaching-learning role of the history but the modern so called superpowers appear devoid of making good out of the living history. NATO’s priorities were chartered in the collective defense of the member states against the hypothesis of communist led war in Europe, not the adventurous notion of collective security defying its own charter to fight in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq and Pakistan. This clearly is a self-expanded dictum of the NATO war mongers. After the WW2, the UN was the embodiment of collective security for the war torn apart world by the European adventures of national pride and ethnic identity. Like the failure of the League of the Nations, history tells how the UN has come to be a failed enterprise in global affairs. It affirms the principle of self-interest, that is the wars of European nationalism and superiority over others nations in areas irrelevant to the European-American foremost national interests. The European war mongers and the US Empire lost sense of intellect and strategic direction by invading Iraq and Afghanistan under the guise of “war on terrorism.”
They is no rational purpose for the US and Britain to be fighting against the innocent people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Wars are the outcome of naïve, egoistic and corrupt mindset representing minority ruling elite, irresponsible to consequences on human society and are planned, financed and fought by governments, not by groups or ordinary people. Wars are based on political agendas and they long for complete control over resources, people and territory. Most wars would have multiple reasons, domestic, foreign and global outreach. The American led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are fought to maintain the US domination worldwide, to occupy the untapped natural resources of the Middle East in particular the oil and gas, and to protect the value of American dollar as a stable international reserve currency. In September 2000, the proactive policy paper written by the neoconservative intellectuals to envision “the Project for the New American Century (PNAC): sets out the milestone seeking American domination over the rest of the world powers and to meet its energies needs plans to occupy by force all the oil resources in the Arab Middle East. The blueprint supports military occupation of the oil exporting Arab countries and regime change where it is necessary to fulfill the policy aims of the New American Century of global domination. Centuries ago, German historian Carl Von Clausewitz wrote On War: “War is not merely a political act but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.” The small ruling elite who plans and wages war are often afraid of citizenry reaction and refusal to accept the so called antidote for the rationality of a war. Throughout the history European nationalism institutionalized the doctrine of war as a necessity to promote national interest and racial superiority over other by using war as a means to that end. Most proponents of wars have used “fear” as one of the major instruments of propaganda and manipulation to perpetuate allegiance from the ordinary folks to the elite warmongers in a crisis situation. Sheldon Richman (“War is Government Program” ICS, 05/2007), notes that “war is more dangerous than other government programs and not just for the obvious reason – mass murder….war is useful in keeping the population in a state of fear and therefore trustful of their rulers.”
Ordinary citizens do not have passion for war as it disturbs the safe and secure, and destroys the living habitats. The ruling elite, the actual warmongers force people to think in their extreme terms of hatred and rejection of others so that people would be forced to align with the rulers to support and finance the war efforts. Sheldon Richman describes how Herman Goering, Hitler’s chief of the staff, understood the discourse of war making:
“Of course the people don’t want war….but after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether, it’s a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
Paul Craig Roberts (“The Collapse of America Power”: ICS, 03/2008), attempts to explain how the British Empire had collapsed once its financial assets were depleted because of the 2nd World War debts. Correlli Barnett (The Collapse of British Power, 1972) states that at the beginning of the WW2, Britain had limited gold and foreign exchange to meet the pressing demands of the war. The British Government asked America to help finance their sustainability to continue the war. Thus, ‘this dependency signaled the end of British power.’ For its draconian wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is heavily dependent on China, Japan and Saudi Arabia. It is well known that American treasury owes trillion of dollars to its foreign debtors and therefore, its financial dependency is increasingly becoming an obvious indicator of the end of American global hegemony and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the US financial system have broken down and some of the leading banking institutions have gone into declaring the bankruptcy the roller coaster repercussion could be seen across the American economic, social and political spectrum of life. Under the Bush administration, America has shrinked its capability and vitality of role and in fact appears dismantled as a superpower status in global affairs. It is no wonder that other nations of world do not seem to take America and its traditional influential stratum in any serious context. Paul Craig Roberts (The Collapse of American Power”) refers to Noam Chomsky stating that under the neoconservative Bush Presidency, “America thinks that it owns the world.” But the fact of the matter is, explains Roberts, “that the US owes the world. The US ”superpower” cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid.” It is undeniable that the US is “bankrupt” because of the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. David M. Walker Comptroller General of the US and Head of the Government Accountability Office (December 2007). reports that “In everyday language, the US Government cannot pass an audit.”
If one is a financial investor, the obvious question asks Paul C. Roberts, “would you want to hold debt in a currency that has such a poor record against the currency of a small island country that was nuked and defeated in WW II, or against a small landlocked European country that clings to its independence and is not a member of the EU?” Consequently, the American dollar is being replaced by Euro and other currencies and soon is going to be abandoned as a reserve currency in global financial system.
Chris Floyd (Darkness Renewed: Terror as Tool of Empire”), elaborates the warmongering mentality of the US policy makers: You goad and provoke violent extremist groups into retaliating against your attacks, your civilian-slaughtering invasions and incursions into their territory. Being unable to confront directly your war machine – the largest, most advanced military force in the history of the world, sustained by a tsunami of public money that each year surpasses the military spending of the rest of the world – they naturally respond with “asymmetrical” operations. At first, these are directed at nearby targets: your supply lines, the forces of your local proxies and allies, and other chaos-inducing depredations in the groups’ own regions, designed to foul the lines of your control and drive you out. Just as naturally, you use these attacks to justify an even greater military presence in their regions. The cycle inevitably, inexorably ratchets upwards and outwards, until at last the extremists strike at your homeland – either with your connivance, or your covert acquiescence, or, in any event, with your foreknowledge that such an attack was sure to come. This is the moment you have waited for; this is exactly what you wanted. Now you can whip the herd back into a martial frenzy, keep the Long War going, and push aside the rabble’s petty, small-minded desires for a peaceful, prosperous life at home, minding their own business.”
This War on Terror is Bogus
Michel Meacher, British Environment Minister under PM Blair (“This War on Terrorism is Bogus”) provides reliable insight on the real reasons for the “War on Terrorism.” He claims that the war on terror is superficial as “the 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination.” He further records that “the so called “war on terrorism” is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives…..in fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11.” In its report prepared by the Baker Institute of Public Policy (April 2001), it stated clearly that “the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to….the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East” and it its recommendations elaborated the dire need that because it was a challenging risk therefore, the “US military intervention” was the most favored action (Sunday Herald: Oct 6, 2002). Both the US and United Kingdom have increasing dependence on imported oil from the Middle East. The overriding motivation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are shielded by political smokescreen that the US and UK will run out of sufficient hydrocarbon energy supplies whereas, the Arab and Muslim world would control almost 60% of the world oil producing capacity and perhaps more significantly 95% of the remaining global oil production capacity.
The news media reports indicate that the US is predicted to produce only 39% of the domestic oil production in 2010, whereas in 1990 it produced 57% of its total oil consumption. The UK Government projects ”severe” gas shortages by 2005 and it confirmed that 70% of the electricity will drawn from gas and 90% of gas will be imported. It is interesting to note that Iraq is said to have 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its approximately 15-20 % of the world oil reserves. In another research report by the Commission on America’s National Interests (July 2000), it observed that the most promising new energy resources are found in the Caspian Sea, Central Asian region and it would spare the US exclusive dependence on the Saudi Arabian oil imports. The report outlined the feasible routes for the Caspian Seas oil deliveries, one hydrocarbon pipeline via Azerbaijan and Georgia and another pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan would ensure the future strategic demands of the US government.
To review the documentary evidence of the 9/11 events, it is not unlikely that many strategists have seen the American Government failure to avert the 9/11 terrorist attacks as facilitating a much needed stage drama for its policy aims and an invaluable opportunity to attack Iraq and Afghanistan – a military intervention already been well planned in early 2000. The PNAC policy blueprint of September 2000 projects the transformation of the American power as an unchallengeable global superpower and the need for some tangible tragedy to make it happen. The paper outlines that it “is likely to be a long one in the absence of of some catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor.” In his analytical view, Minister Michael Meacher (“This War on terrorism is Bogus”) states that “global war on terrorism” has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave way for a wholly different agenda-the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command and over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project.”
Did the US hegemonic war achieved any of its set goals for world domination? Have the US and UK Governments secured any viable hydrocarbon energy routes to ensure their depleting gas and oil stocks and the much planned control over the Arab oil reserves? Is the US dollar still a welcomed international currency used by the world nations?
Recently, a retried American General Ricardo Sanchez challenged the prevailing notion of the Bush Administration “Mission accomplished “in Iraq, when he asserted that the occupation of Iraq is a “nightmare with no end in sight.” He claimed that the US administration is “incompetent” and “corrupt” and that the most American people could hope for under the present circumstances is to “stave off defeat” in Iraq war. Mike Whitney (“Come and see our overflowing morgues…..come and see the rubble of your surgical strikes”: An Arab Women Blues by Layla Anwar), believes that General Sanchez is neither against the war nor for withdrawal. He simply doesn’t like losing…. and the United Sates is losing.” The General is reported to have admitted that “ after more than four years of fighting , America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism.”
Under President Barrack Obama, the global community looks anxiously how and when the promised change will come to America’s failed strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. How soon, President Obama will be able to put the body of US politics together again after its moral, political and financial collapse. America and Britain appear lost, not knowing how to come out of the self-engineered defeat in wars against Islam and the humanity. Masses have sympathies with the true believers and the Muslim freedom fighters appear to have lost nothing. They had no banks to declare bankruptcy and they had no Bush and Cheney to go down in disgrace. They remain in tact and active all the fronts even buying weapons from the US and Russia to fight against them. American strategists know well to do business in global arms market. The so called superpowers are extremely nervous not knowing how soon they could be replaced by smaller nations of the developing world.
Layla Anwar (“An Arab Women Blues”-blog), a prominent high spirited Iraq female blogger attempts to share the global conscience with an inborn natural perspective of the Iraqi people who are the real victims of this ferocious war against their country. To reflect on how the adversely affected Iraqi people think on the on-going America-British led occupation of Iraq and unending causalities of daily deaths and destruction of the civilian population and habitats, Layla Anwar offers the real world description on her web site:
“Everyday, under the pretext of either al-Qaida, insurgents, militants or whatever imaginary name you coined, you have not ceased, not even for one day, slaughtering our innocents……for 4 years, you have not ceased for one single day, Not during holiday periods, not during religious celebrations, not even during the day your so called God was born….if you have a God that is.”
Did the US Empire achieve any of its strategic goals in transporting super war machines and the military and civilian death squads to Iraq and Afghanistan? Chris Floyd (Darkness Renewed”), explains the prevalent reality in global affairs: “the United States government is planning to use “cover and deception” and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let’s say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.”
Overwhelmingly deficient with its thinking, moral and intellectual resources, America and Britain need “Idea Men” and THINKING people to dispel the obvious military defeat and surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are some of the critical measures that any strategic thinkers should prefer to have for change and adaptability to the future in -waiting for the lost in action US and British forces.
Paul J. Balles (“The World Sickest Warrior State” 03/2010, ICH), offers candid observations:
“We have now reached a stage where our extreme horrors of brutality and cruelty have exceeded our past records. We no longer have the rationale of moral righteousness of the earlier wars…. There were no excuses for Abu-Ghraib, but our interest in that inhuman travesty dried up and blew away. We have little concern about our violations of human rights in Guantanamo. ….the real horrors – of this war come with the primitive killer mentality developed in our youth. I’ve now seen a half dozen documentary films and read eyewitness accounts that reveal troops or pilots gloating over the massacres of civilians who just happened to be available targets.”
The wars spread hatred, chaos and human degeneration as are the global institutions responsible for security, peace and conflict resolution. The UN, NATO and other security agencies are driven to failure by their own deviations of the original role-play and inaction in situation of real world challenges. They have been manipulated and misled by the contemporary superpowers as was the devastating fate of the League of Nations. When something loses its purpose an direction, it ends-up in self-defeat and piles of garbage. American and British policy makers appear more victims of their own failing mindset than the self-desired challenges posed by the Talibans and other Mujihdeens in Afghanistan and Iraq. America and its allies need a Navigational Change. President Obama got elected with the motivational promise: “Yes We Can” Would President Obama know how to make a navigational change when there is nothing left to navigate for Change?
Although the United Nations Security Council, which some politicians believe is one of the most undemocratic organizations in the world, voted in favor of a fourth round of sanctions against Iran over its uranium enrichment program, global public opinion is well aware of the fact that 15 countries, 5 of which are entitled to remain in an unquestionable monopoly and dominance, cannot in reality represent the interests of the international community.
The Security Council, which since its establishment has made discriminatory decisions against the world countries, especially the non-aligned nations who typically try to escape from the hegemony of superpowers, is notorious for its habitual exercise of double standards and it’s clear to everyone that its resolutions are more often than not futile, ineffective, biased and unbinding.
Since 1948, the Security Council has adopted 223 resolutions in condemnation of Israel ‘s violations of international law, including the occupation of Palestinian lands, unilateral incursions into the Lebanese and Syrian soils, developing nuclear weapons, deporting the Palestinian citizens from their homes and building illegal settlements in the West Bank . Interestingly, the Israeli regime did not pay attention to any of these resolutions and the UNSC never pursued its demands to hold Tel Aviv accountable for its continued, flagrant defiance of international regulations.
For instance, the UNSC resolution 487 demanded Israel to put its nuclear facilities under the comprehensive safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Israel never heeded the call and the UNSC never sued Israel for its inattentiveness to the resolution.
As another example, the Security Council adopted six consequent resolutions in the wake of 1982 Lebanon War, calling on Israel to cease its military activities and withdraw its forces from the Lebanese territory, but Israel refused to accept the resolutions until the resolution 517 was adopted in which Tel Aviv was strongly censured for its failure to obey the UNSC resolutions since March 1982.
The criminal state of Israel , since its establishment, attacked all of its neighboring countries on various occasions and incited UNSC resolutions; however, these resolutions never went beyond political statements which were the least spontaneous reactions to Israel ‘s brutality in the Middle East . On March 21, 1968, Israel fought the Battle of Karameh by attacking the Karameh district of Jordan, killing 40 to 84 Jordanians and 100 to 200 Palestinians. The massive attacked was followed by UNSC resolution 248 in which the “flagrant violation of the UN Charter” was strongly condemned by all of the UNSC members, even the United States; however, this verbal condemnation was the sole reaction of the Security Council to Israel’s violence.
In December 1968, Israel Defense Forces raided the Beirut International Airport , destroying 13 civilian airplanes belonging to Lebanon ‘s national flag-carrier Middle East Airlines. The assault was followed by UNSC resolution 262 which condemned Israel once again. The resolution cautioned Israel to retreat from repeating such actions to avoid being punished more severely; however, the further steps never were taken, even when Israel repeated the same criminal actions.
In 1985, Israel staged an air raid on Tunisia to target the Palestinian Liberation Organization headquarters in the country. The resolution condemned Israel and demanded that Tel Aviv refrain from further such attacks. It also noted that Tunisia had the right to repatriations considering the loss of life and material damage caused.
Having killed thousands of civilians since its creation, the criminal record of Israeli regime is clear to the world and every conscious man testifies that this brutal regime deserves the strongest measures to be taken against.
United Nations Security Council never went beyond propagandistic declarations regarding the unlawful and inhuman actions of Tel Aviv, its killing of innocent civilians and violation of international humanitarian law. If it were not the pressure of international community, UNSC even would have not issued these flimsy and ineffective resolutions against Israel .
UNSC never passed any resolution to impose sanctions against Israel even though the transgressions and felonies of Israel are so blatant and conspicuous that nobody can deny the claim that Israel is the most violence and vicious regime in the world, an identical and indistinguishable duplicate of the apartheid regime of South Africa .
The recent resolution of the Security Council against Iran was a clear exercise of double standards by this prejudiced international body and should be answered by the Islamic Republic of Iran categorically. The hypocritical stance of China and Russia regarding Iran ‘s nuclear program and the astounding accompaniment of independent nations such as Gabon , Nigeria , Uganda , Bosnia and Herzegovina and Mexico with the fallacious, deceptive trajectory of the big 5 leave no room for the continued diplomacy and peaceful interaction by Iran .
Iran has so far demonstrated a constructive and productive cooperation with IAEA, G5+1 and European Union, keeping all the doors open for negotiation and reconciliation; however, the time for diplomacy has come to an end. Now that the coalition of superpowers, including China and Russia, have taken a confrontational stance against Iran and want to go through a unilateralistic path, Iran should change its tactic and one of the best solutions it can adopt is to withdraw from IAEA. If Pakistan , India and Israel can enjoy international impunity to develop nuclear weapons simply because they are not IAEA signatories, Iran can have equally the right to progress its peaceful nuclear program by withdrawing from a treaty which had ratified voluntarily.
Muslim Countries Must Rethink United Nations
The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary (PDF Book)
What do nine dead Gaza activists in the Mediterranean, nine-plus percent unemployment, and ninety years of oil catastrophe clean-up have in common?
How about one astonishingly tepid president?
How about one guy in the White House who squirms in his chair anytime someone uses the word “bold” and actually means it?
How about one dude in the Oval Office who seems much more interested in making deals to determine who should be the Democratic candidates for various state offices than in actually solving national problems?
We could hardly have a president more ill-suited to our time if we were to dig up Herbert Hoover and prop his weary bones up on the presidential throne.
Barack Obama has five major problems as president. The first is that he doesn’t understand priorities. The second is that he seems to have little strong conviction on any given issue. The third is that to the extent he stands for anything, it is for maintenance of a status quo that continues to wreck the country in order to service the greed of a few oligarchs. The fourth is that he fundamentally does not understand the powers and the role of the modern presidency. And the fifth is that he maintains the worst communications apparatus in the White House since Jimmy Carter prowled its corridors. In fairness to his communications team, though, he has given them almost nothing to sell. You try singing the praises of bailing out Goldman Sachs one hundred cents on the dollar, or of a health care plan that forces people to buy plans they don’t want from hated insurance vultures. It ain’t easy, pal. Yet, on the other hand, Bush and Cheney had far less than nothing to sell when it came to the Iraq war – indeed, they had nothing but lies – and their team handled that masterfully.
The fundamental characteristic of the Obama presidency is that the president is a reactive object, essentially the victim of events and other political forces, rather than the single greatest center of power in the country, and arguably on the planet. He is the Mr. Bill of politicians. People sometimes excuse the Obama torpor by making reference to all the problems on his plate, and all the enemies at his gate. But what they fail to understand – and, most crucially, what he fails to understand – is the nature of the modern presidency. Successful presidents today (by which I mean those who get what they want) not only drive outcomes in their preferred direction, but shape the very character of the debate itself. And they not only shape the character of the debate, but they determine which items are on the docket.
Moreover, there is a continuously evolving and reciprocal relationship between presidential boldness and achievement. In the same way that nothing breeds success like success, nothing sets the president up for achieving his or her next goal better than succeeding dramatically on the last go around.
This is absolutely a matter of perception, and you can see it best in the way that Congress and especially the Washington press corps fawn over bold and intimidating presidents like Reagan and George W. Bush. The political teams surrounding these presidents understood the psychology of power all too well. They knew that by simultaneously creating a steamroller effect and feigning a clubby atmosphere for Congress and the press, they could leave such hapless hangers-on with only one remaining way to pretend to preserve their dignities. By jumping on board the freight train, they could be given the illusion of being next to power, of being part of the winning team. And so, with virtually the sole exception of the now retired Helen Thomas, this is precisely what they did.
But the game of successfully governing is substantive as well as psychological. More often than not, timidity turns out not to yield the safe course anticipated by those with weak knees, but rather their subsequent undoing. The three cases mentioned at the top of this essay are paradigmatic.
By far and away the most crucial problem on the minds of most Americans today is the economy, as is often the case, but now more than ever. It’s hard to quite figure where Barack Obama is on this issue. What is always most puzzling with this guy is reconciling the fundamentally irrational behavior of his presidency with the obvious intellectual abilities of the president and the administrative masterfulness of the campaign he ran to obtain that office. It seems to me that there are four options for understanding Obama’s self-defeating tendency when it comes to the economic disaster he inherited. One is that he simply isn’t so smart, and doesn’t get the ramifications of continued unemployment at the level it’s currently running. The second option is that he’s just a policy bungler, who has the right intentions but makes lousy choices for trying to get there. The third possibility is that Obama recognizes this latest recession as the capstone (we hope) of a three decade long process by the economic oligarchy seeking nothing less than the downsizing of the American middle class, and he simply lacks the courage to attempt any reversal of this tsunami of wealth redistribution. The final, and scariest – but by no means least probable – explanation for Obama’s behavior is that he is ultimately no less a tool in that very piracy project than was George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.
Whatever the explanation, Obama’s timidity early in his presidency not only failed to solve the problem, but more crucially, now precludes him from introducing any meaningful subsequent attempt at solving the problem. Obama’s management of the economic stimulus bill in the first weeks of his presidency was the very model of how a president should govern – provided, that is, that the nineteenth century hadn’t actually ended over a hundred years ago. This president, who has turned deference to others – including to his sworn enemies – into an art form, told Congress that he wanted a stimulus bill and let them fill in the details. What he got, accordingly, was a giant monstrosity filled with pet projects for each congressional district in America, with about one-third of it constituted by tax cuts in order to buy Republican votes which never came anyhow. Nor has there been, to this day, any urgency about the spending of those funds.
The upshot of all of this is threefold, all of it hugely negative. First, the government spent an enormous amount of money on the stimulus without solving the problem of the recession and unemployment. Second, it therefore massively exacerbated the national debt problem, with little gain to show for it. And, third, the combination of the first two factors effectively precludes any subsequent stimulus package from emerging out of Congress for the foreseeable future, the politics of spending in general and the stimulus in particular having become altogether radioactive.
And here we see how Obama’s failure to lead in the first instance has succeeded above all in digging him into a hole subsequently. We are likely looking at nine or ten percent unemployment for years to come, and Obama’s legislative cowardice has created a situation in which the only remaining meaningful tool by which to transcend this deep recession has been taken off the table. The public looks around and asks, “Why should we spend more money on economic stimulus, when all it does is fail to produce results, while simultaneously increasing the national debt?” It’s a legitimate question, except that it omits consideration of a third alternative, which is to actually do a stimulus correctly, pumping money into infrastructure, alternative energy projects, unemployment compensation, retraining programs and the like, all of which would positively impact the economy in both the short, medium and long terms.
You see the same phenomenon in virtually everything Obama touches. Lots of spiffy rhetoric. But then lots of deference to every other actor in the play (except, of course, for the interests of the American public or for his base of progressive voters), including those who are overtly trying to destroy the president. “You say that Republicans want to remove the public option from the health care bill? Okay, let’s give that to them. It’s bound to buy, golly, what? … zero whole votes from their caucus!” “You say they demand yet more tax cuts be included in the stimulus bill? Let’s do that! And watch them vote against it almost without exception.” Brilliant.
In the Middle East, Obama has spent his first year-and-a-half in office getting bitch-slapped by Noxious Netanyahu, with nothing to show for it but total embarrassment. It’s gotten so bad that you can no longer tell which country is the client state of the other. Is it the one with the economy, military, territory, population and political power that dwarfs the other, or is it the one that continually receives financial, military and political support from the other, no matter what it does? Including, for example, regularly invading its neighbors, strangling a population of over a million people, pissing off the whole world, and humiliating both the president and vice-president of its benefactor country by continuing to build more illegal, peace-preventing settlements, in direct, intentional and arrogant contravention of their expressed preference to the contrary. If Obama could possibly be more passive in this situation, it’s difficult to know how. Perhaps he could strap on a construction belt and assist the Israelis himself in building some apartment complexes in East Jerusalem. While he was at it, maybe he’d take his shirt off in the hot Mediterranean sun, and get in another one of those hunky president photos he seems so fond of.
The story is the same back in the Gulf of Mexico, where Obama recently had his very own Michael Dukakis moment. Trying to look tough, like Dukakis did haplessly riding around on that tank in the picture that spoke a million words (and sank a presidential campaign), Obama decided to use a four-letter word to show how serious he is about those mean fellows at BP and their errant flow of oil. Except that this president is so inept that he could only manage three of the requisite four letters. He told NBC’s Matt Lauer that he has been visiting the oil spill region “so I know whose ass to kick”. I mean, raise your hand if you think that that little display of anger for the cameras was about as authentic as Cheese Whiz. And simultaneously both far less and far more cheesy. But it gets worse. It then turns out that during all of the last 45 or so days, the president hasn’t yet had a phone conversation with the CEO of British Petroleum. Turns out Obama traveled all that way to New Orleans and still couldn’t get a postal code for the limey arse to which to fax over his presidential boot.
Like he would use it if he had it, anyhow. Can you imagine the conversation he might have with Tony Hayward?
Obama: “Hey, Tony, your oil spill is really causing me problems, so I thought I’d call to kick your ass a little.”
Hayward: “Screw you, punk. You do what I tell you.”
Obama: “Oh god, you’re right. Christ! Sorry. I forgot myself. For a minute there I thought I was talking to my daughter about her homework.”
Hayward: “Get your facts straight, pal. Starting with who here works for whom.”
Obama: “Yes, sir. Right away, sir. What can we do for you?”
Hayward: “Nothing at all would be perfect, just like you have been doing. Just let us drill where we want, spill where want, thrill as is our wont to the sheer brazenness of our lies, and bill your account for the damages. We’re not greedy we won’t ask for more than that.”
Obama: “You got it, Mr. Hayward. We’ll get right on it. Raaaahhm!!!”
The only thing more grim than the visage of the pathetic Obama administration in non-action is a consideration of the opportunity lost here. Obama had all the cards stacked in his favor, ranging from a destroyed opposition party, to a series of crises, to a public demanding change, to massive majorities in Congress, to global good will. He’s pissed it all away in his unrelenting dedication to mediocrity and inoffensiveness.
And the only thing more grim than that is to consider where this all leads. Every day I shudder a little more as yet another two-by-four is crow-barred out from the edifice of America’s experiment in liberal democracy. Every time the Supreme Court hands down a decision, it means more power for the state, more power for the imperial president (whom they also select when they feel like it), and especially, more power for the rich. Every day more people are dying in the stupid and endless wars of the twilight empire, for which nobody can even articulate a purpose. Every election cycle more lethally vicious regressives are victorious, crushing common sense and human rights in tandem, moving the country further in the direction of mindless fascism.
There’s no other word for it. This country is just plain rotting from within.
And, thus, perhaps the most tragic aspect of the Obama regime will not be the embarrassingly hapless conduct of this baseball of a president, getting smacked around by big steroid-sculpted biceps swinging fat slabs of menacing lumber at the velocity of their choice. Nor will it be the blown opportunities of epic proportion, not likely to be seen again for a long time.
It is likely to be, instead, the door that was opened for far worse to be inflicted upon the American public and the world.
By failing to stand for anything while the country crumbles, Obama has virtually begged those who would make the trains run on time to seize power.
And why shouldn’t they “take their country back” from this president, anyhow?
I mean, the guy wasn’t even born in America, right?
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.
I had wanted to go to Kashmir ever since I visited Palestine in 2007. There are many similarities in the nature of the occupation as well as the struggles, both being nearly 63 years old. One difference is that while Israel is seen as an external occupying force in Palestine, the Kashmir issue is considered an ‘internal’ matter or a conflict between Pakistan and India and the voice of Kashmiris is often lost. As a result there are fewer international organizations monitoring the region and little information about the extent and impact of the occupation gets out. Continue reading
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.
While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.
“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.
“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.
American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.
So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.
Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.
The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.
Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.
“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.
At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.
Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”
With virtually no mining industry or infrastructure in place today, it will take decades for Afghanistan to exploit its mineral wealth fully. “This is a country that has no mining culture,” said Jack Medlin, a geologist in the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs program. “They’ve had some small artisanal mines, but now there could be some very, very large mines that will require more than just a gold pan.”
The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency.
The Pentagon task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development. International accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult with the Afghan Ministry of Mines, and technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on mineral rights by next fall, officials said.
“The Ministry of Mines is not ready to handle this,” Mr. Brinkley said. “We are trying to help them get ready.”
Like much of the recent history of the country, the story of the discovery of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth is one of missed opportunities and the distractions of war.
In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.
During the chaos of the 1990s, when Afghanistan was mired in civil war and later ruled by the Taliban, a small group of Afghan geologists protected the charts by taking them home, and returned them to the Geological Survey’s library only after the American invasion and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.
“There were maps, but the development did not take place, because you had 30 to 35 years of war,” said Ahmad Hujabre, an Afghan engineer who worked for the Ministry of Mines in the 1970s.
Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country.
The data from those flights was so promising that in 2007, the geologists returned for an even more sophisticated study, using an old British bomber equipped with instruments that offered a three-dimensional profile of mineral deposits below the earth’s surface. It was the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted.
The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing.
But the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information — and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.
Soon, the Pentagon business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai.
So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan.
Just this month, American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which now has the world’s largest known lithium reserves.
For the geologists who are now scouring some of the most remote stretches of Afghanistan to complete the technical studies necessary before the international bidding process is begun, there is a growing sense that they are in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.
“On the ground, it’s very, very, promising,” Mr. Medlin said. “Actually, it’s pretty amazing.”
Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.
In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.
To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.
“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”
Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one.
The four main targets for any raid on Iran would be the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, the gas storage development at Isfahan and the heavy-water reactor at Arak. Secondary targets include the lightwater reactor at Bushehr, which could produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.
The targets lie as far as 1,400 miles (2,250km) from Israel; the outer limits of their bombers’ range, even with aerial refuelling. An open corridor across northern Saudi Arabia would significantly shorten the distance. An airstrike would involve multiple waves of bombers, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest.
Passing over Iraq would require at least tacit agreement to the raid from Washington. So far, the Obama Administration has refused to give its approval as it pursues a diplomatic solution to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Military analysts say Israel has held back only because of this failure to secure consensus from America and Arab states. Military analysts doubt that an airstrike alone would be sufficient to knock out the key nuclear facilities, which are heavily fortified and deep underground or within mountains. However, if the latest sanctions prove ineffective the pressure from the Israelis on Washington to approve military action will intensify. Iran vowed to continue enriching uranium after the UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions yet in an effort to halt the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme, which Tehran claims is intended for civil energy purposes only. President Ahmadinejad has described the UN resolution as “a used handkerchief, which should be thrown in the dustbin”.
Israeli officials refused to comment yesterday on details for a raid on Iran, which the Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has refused to rule out. Questioned on the option of a Saudi flight path for Israeli bombers, Aharaon Zeevi Farkash, who headed military intelligence until 2006 and has been involved in war games simulating a strike on Iran, said: “I know that Saudi Arabia is even more afraid than Israel of an Iranian nuclear capacity.”
In 2007 Israel was reported to have used Turkish air space to attack a suspected nuclear reactor being built by Iran’s main regional ally, Syria. Although Turkey publicly protested against the “violation” of its air space, it is thought to have turned a blind eye in what many saw as a dry run for a strike on Iran’s far more substantial — and better-defended — nuclear sites.
Israeli intelligence experts say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are at least as worried as themselves and the West about an Iranian nuclear arsenal.Israel has sent missile-class warships and at least one submarine capable of launching a nuclear warhead through the Suez Canal for deployment in the Red Sea within the past year, as both a warning to Iran and in anticipation of a possible strike. Israeli newspapers reported last year that high-ranking officials, including the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have met their Saudi Arabian counterparts to discuss the Iranian issue. It was also reported that Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, met Saudi intelligence officials last year to gain assurances that Riyadh would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets violating Saudi airspace during the bombing run. Both governments have denied the reports.
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