Archives: Articles

By David Swanson

1. WEALTH GAP: The playing field is not level. The median wealth of a white household in the United States is over 13 times that of a black household, and the gap is widening. Most black households have less than $350 in savings. It takes money not just to make money but to get a start, to live near good schools, to live free of lead paint poisoning, or to address the special needs that every person has.

2. EDUCATION: Black students are three times as likely as whites to attend schools where fewer than 60 percent of the teachers meet all the state certification and licensure requirements. This is a crude measurement of how some of our schools are even worse than others, but it’s a good one. Such a situation is driven by the disparity in wealth noted above, by segregation, and by racist attitudes that accept it.

3. JOBS: The employment game is rigged. Identical resumes and job applications result in 50% fewer calls from employers when the applicant’s name sounds black. Whether those choices are conscious or intentional or thought through is not terribly relevant. This sort of experiment has been run numerous times with the same result. An African-American trying to find a job must face all the usual hurdles, plus possible hurdles created by wealth disparity (such as lack of transportation, lack of prior friendship with insiders, lack of education), plus the racism of many people who read and consider resumes. As a result, the unemployment rate for blacks is twice as high as for whites.

4. COSTS: Banks both fail to make the same number of fair loans in predominantly black neighborhoods and concentrate predatory loans that unfairly strip the borrower of equity in those same neighborhoods. Blacks are charged prices roughly $700 higher than white people when buying cars. Not only is it very expensive to be poor, not only has poverty been criminalized so that people are ending up in jail for the inability to pay a bill or a fine or a traffic ticket, but racism tends to exacerbate all of these problems if you’re black. One of many ways it does this is by making you more likely to be given a fine or a ticket in the first place.

5. POLICING: Punishment is disproportionate. African American students are more likely to be punished harshly — with suspension or arrest — than whites. Black drivers are twice as likely to be pulled over by police, and three times as likely to be searched during a stop. Blacks are four times as likely to experience the use of force during an encounter with police, and black male teens are 21 times more likely to be killed by police. The police have been militarized especially in black neighborhoods, and the military training appears to have a significant impact. The provision of weapons of war to police has accelerated under both Bush and Obama. Here’s one way to push back.

6. WAR ON DRUGS: Blacks do not use more drugs than whites but are far more likely to be arrested, more likely if arrested to be prosecuted, more likely if prosecuted to be prosecuted for a felony, and more likely if convicted to be given a harsh sentence. African Americans are imprisoned at six times the rate of whites. Upon release, the “felon” label further slants the uneven field. Of course we need to end mass incarceration entirely. The point here is just that it has a racist impact.

7. MEDIA: The U.S. media subtly promotes racism through what it includes, what it excludes, and whom it chooses to treat as a human and whom as a monster. Of course, no one has to believe what their television says, but everyone must engage in constant re-education to correct for it.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie.

27 August, 2015
Davidswanson.org

 

By Ramzy Baroud

Another war is in the making in Libya: the questions are ‘how’ and ‘when’? While the prospect of another military showdown is unlikely to deliver Libya from its current security upheaval and political conflict, it is likely to change the very nature of conflict in that rich, but divided, Arab country.

An important pre-requisite to war is to locate an enemy or, if needed, invent one. The so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS), although hardly an important component in the country’s divisive politics, is likely to be that antagonist.

Libya is currently split, politically, between two governments, and, geographically, among many armies, militias, tribes and mercenaries. It is a failed state par excellence, although such a designation does not do justice to the complexity of the Libyan case, together with the root causes of that failure.

Now that ‘IS’ has practically taken over the city of Sirte, once a stronghold for former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and the bastion of al-Qadhadhfa tribe, the scene is becoming murkier than ever before. Conventional wisdom has it that the advent of the opportunistic, bloodthirsty group is a natural event considering the security vacuum resulting from political and military disputes. But there is more to the story.

Several major events led to the current stalemate and utter chaos in Libya. One was the military intervention by NATO, which was promoted, then, as a way to support Libyans in their uprising against long-time leader, Gaddafi. NATO’s intentional misreading of UN resolution 1973, resulted in ‘Operation Unified Protector’, which overthrew Gaddafi, killed thousands and entrusted the country into the hands of numerous militias that were, at the time, referred to collectively as the ‘rebels’.

The urgency which NATO assigned to its war – the aim of which was, supposedly, to prevent a possible ‘genocide’ – kept many in the media either supportive or quiet. Few dared to speak out:

“While NATO’s UN mandate was to protect civilians, the alliance, in practice, turned that mission on its head. Throwing its weight behind one side in a civil war to oust Gaddafi’s regime, it became the air force for the rebel militias on the ground,” wrote Seumas Milne in the Guardian in May 2012.

“So while the death toll was perhaps between 1,000 and 2,000 when NATO intervened in March, by October it was estimated by the NTC (National Transitional Council) to be 30,000 – including thousands of civilians.”

Another important event was the elections. Libyans voted in 2014, yielding a bizarre political reality where two ‘governments’ claim to be the legitimate representatives of the Libyan people: one in Tobruk and Beida, and the other in Tripoli. Each ‘government’ has its own military arms, tribal alliances and regional benefactors. Moreover, each is eager to claim a larger share of the country’s massive oil wealth and access to ports, thus running its own economy.

The most that these governments managed to achieve, however, is a political and military stalemate, interrupted by major or minor battles and an occasional massacre. That is, until ‘IS’ appeared on the scene.

The sudden advent of ‘IS’ was convenient. At first, the ‘IS’ threat appeared as an exaggerated claim by Libya’s Arab neighbours to justify their own military intervention. Then, it was verified by video evidence showing visually-manipulated ‘IS’ ‘giants’ slitting the throats of poor Egyptian labourers at some mysterious beach. Then, with little happening in between, ‘IS’ fighters began taking over entire towns, prompting calls by Libyan leaders for military intervention.

But the takeover of Sirte by ‘IS’ cannot be easily explained in so casual a way as a militant group seeking inroads in a politically divided country. That sudden takeover happened within a specific political context that can explain the rise of ‘IS’ more convincingly.

In May, Libya Dawn’s 166th Brigade (affiliated with groups that currently control Tripoli) withdrew from Sirte without much explanation.

“A mystery continues to surround the sudden withdrawal of the brigade,” wrote Kamel Abdallah in al-Ahram Weekly. “Officials have yet to offer an account, in spite of the fact that this action helped ‘IS’ forces secure an unrivalled grip on the city.”

While Salafi fighters, along with armed members of the al-Qadhadhfa tribe, moved to halt the advances of ‘IS’ (with terrible massacres reported, but not yet verified) both Libyan governments are yet to make any palpable move against ‘IS’. Not even the insistent war-enthusiastic, anti-Islamist General Khalifa Heftar, and his so-called “Libyan National Army” made much of an effort to fight ‘IS’, which is also expanding in other parts of Libya.

Instead, as ‘IS’ moves forward and consolidates its grip on Sirte and elsewhere, the Tobruk-based Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thinni urged “sister Arab nations” to come to Libya’s aid and carry out air strikes on Sirte. He has also urged Arab countries to lobby the UN to end its weapons embargo on Libya, which is already saturated with arms that are often delivered illegally from various regional Arab sources.

The Tripoli government is also urging action against ‘IS’, but both governments, which failed to achieve a political roadmap for unity, still refuse to work together.

The call for Arab intervention in Libya’s state of security bedlam is politically-motivated, of course, for Al-Thinni is hoping that the air strikes would empower his forces to widen their control over the country, in addition to strengthening his government’s political position in any future UN-mediated agreement.

But another war is being plotted elsewhere, this time involving NATO’s usual suspects. The Western scheming, however, is far more involved than Al-Thinni’s political designs. The London Times reported on August 1st that “hundreds of British troops are being lined up to go to Libya as part of a major new international mission,” which will also include “military personnel from Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the United States … in an operation that looks set to be activated once the rival warring factions inside Libya agree to form a single government of national unity.”

Those involved in the operation which, according to a UK Government source, could be actualized “towards the end of August”, are countries with vested economic interests and are the same parties behind the war in Libya in 2011.

Commenting on the report, Jean Shaoul wrote, “Italy, the former colonial power in Libya, is expected to provide the largest contingent of ground troops. France has colonial and commercial ties with Libya’s neighbours, Tunisia, Mali and Algeria. Spain retains outposts in northern Morocco and the other major power involved, Germany, is once again seeking to gain access to Africa’s resources and markets.”

It is becoming clearer that Libya, once a sovereign and relatively wealthy nation, is becoming a mere playground for a massive geopolitical game and large economic interests and ambitions. Sadly, Libyans themselves are the very enablers behind the division of their own country, with Arab and Western powers scheming to ensure a larger share of Libya’s economic wealth and strategic value.

The takeover of Sirte by ‘IS’ is reported as a watershed moment that is, once again, generating war frenzy – similar to that which preceded NATO’s military intervention in 2011. Regardless of whether Arabs bomb Libya, or Western powers do so, the crisis in that country is likely to escalate, if not worsen, as history has amply shown.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

27 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By William John Cox

I received my first gun when I was eight years old, and carried guns for many years during a 45-year career in the justice system. As a police officer, three of my friends were murdered in the line of duty; I saw two armed men shot to death during a bank robbery; I was almost shot by fellow officers as I (wearing plain clothes) exited another bank that was being robbed; and I faced down—without killing him—an armed man with a gun who had just shot his girlfriend. I know and respect guns, but what I fear are the myths surrounding the value of their ownership and the contribution they make to our safety.

Reality. When the men of Concord assembled at the North Bridge on April 19, 1775 to confront the British Army, it was not so much that they possessed firearms that carried the day. Rather, it was their discipline from having been drilled as a militia that provided the victory. Later, when the Bill of Rights was enacted, the Second Amendment was included to ensure that the People—fearful of a standing army—retained the power to organize in resistance to tyranny and to preserve their new republic. Moreover, the southern states demanded the right to maintain state militias to control their slaves.

Initially, in most states, and excepting a few officials, all white men were required to join the militia and equip themselves with a musket. Records were kept and officials knew who had firearms and how well they were trained to perform their public duty. Later, in the Wild West—contrary to movie images—cowboys had to deposit their guns at the sheriff’s office on entering most towns.

As America evolved to become a more urban and industrialized society, militias were replaced by National Guards in every state, and the percentage of Americans who personally owned firearms dropped. States began to legislate against the possession of dangerous weapons, such as sawed-off shotguns and machine guns, and prohibited carrying concealed handguns. Regarding these laws, the courts consistently ruled that the Second Amendment preserved the right of states to organize National Guards, rather than an unlimited personal right of gun ownership.

In 2009, the Congressional Research Service estimated there were more than 310 million firearms in America. In the absence of reliable records and based on background checks made on those who purchase from licensed dealers, it appears the total number of guns in America has been increasing by almost ten percent each year. Today, there could be as many as 350 million privately-owned guns, far in excess of the current population of 319 million.

Polls show that only 32 percent of all Americans own a firearm, including half of all Republicans and a quarter of Democrats. At 47 percent, southern whites have the highest percentage of guns, and less than 16 percent of all households keeping guns are occupied by a hunter.

While the overall rate of violent crime has also been decreasing in the United States, the vast increase in the total number of guns may be driven by a residual fear of crime; the consequences of the wars on drugs and terrorism; criminal gangs; glorified violence in movies and video games; and disquiet about growing governmental power and the loss of freedoms.

Legal restrictions on the purchase of guns are largely ineffective for a number of reasons. The process imposed by law on purchases from licensed dealers is unwieldy, and there are statutory limitations on the maintenance of records by law enforcement. Individuals who would otherwise be denied the right to purchase guns can easily use “straw men” to make purchases on their behalf. Many corrupt licensed gun dealers are involved in the illicit trafficking of weapons. It is not difficult to purchase firearms at gun shows and from private individuals. Finally, the hundreds of thousands of guns which are stolen each year during burglaries and other property crimes become readily available on the streets. Astoundingly, more than a quarter of the guns purchased from federally-licensed gun dealers end up seized by law enforcement in connection with crimes committed within two years of the original purchase.

Police officers undergo rigorous training in the use of the firearms they carry, including the law and policy; alternatives to gun deployment; awareness of the background of targets; and self control of physical and mental faculties during highly stressful situations. Even so, viral videos of contagion shootings—wherein multiple officers fire off a fuselage of shots at unarmed or mentally impaired individuals—and other out-of-policy and illegal shootings by officers regularly appear on the Internet and television. With the proliferation of open-carry laws and the authorization of concealed weapons for untrained people, the United States is also experiencing a vast increase in accidental and unjustifiable deliberate shootings by untrained civilians armed with the same weapons carried by law enforcement officers.

Insanity. With the highest level of gun ownership in the developed world, the U.S. also suffers the greatest gun violence—by far. Americans are 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun than the citizens in all other developed nations. We recognize the names and stories of the most violent and senseless incidents—Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Binghamton, Killeen, Tucson, Charleston, and now Lafayette; however, these media sideshows represent only a small percentage of the mind-boggling totals. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were a total of 33,636 firearms deaths and 84,258 firearm injuries in 2013, the last year for which complete statistics are available.

As horrible as these numbers are, the insanity of a modern urban society allowing itself to become saturated with deadly firearms is demonstrated by the harm done to children. Almost 75 percent of all children murdered each year in the entire developed world are killed in the United States—American children have a 17 times greater chance of dying of gunshot wounds. Children between the ages of five and fourteen in the U.S. commit suicide at twice the average of other developed countries, with firearm-related suicides being ten times the average. About one-third of all American children live in a household with a gun, and one in five have witnessed a shooting.

In addition to the murder of children is the horrific rate they suffer from accidental deaths and serious injuries in the United States as a result of the prevalence of firearms. Children younger than 15 years are nine times more likely to die from gun accidents than in other developed nations—mostly at the hands of friends and relatives. Guns are now killing three thousand American children and injuring seven thousand each year.

Just one of these cases demonstrates the craziness of allowing deadly weapons in the hands of children. Small .22-caliber “Crickett” rifles are marketed with colorful stocks as “my first rifle,” and a Kentucky family presented one to their five-year-old son. Believing the weapon was unloaded, the boy’s mother left him in the house playing with his gun. Unsurprisingly, the boy shot and killed his two-year-old sister—the children’s grandmother said it was “God’s will.”

Added to the tragedy suffered by these families in the increasingly punitive American society is the prosecution of grieving parents for having failed to prevent the deaths of their own loved ones. The greater crime is the one committed by society as a whole—which shares the responsibility for allowing the grave risk of danger to little children to continue unabated.

The insanity of the murder and mayhem inflicted on the children of America is easily verifiable—a more difficult question is the effect high levels of actual gun violence and imaginary gun violence seen on television and played out in computer games will have on future generations. It may be that, as a republic, America is sowing the seeds of its own destruction as gun violence overwhelms its ability to protect public safety in a manner consistent with the values of a free and democratic society.

Fantasy. Following the Civil War, the National Rifle Association (NRA) was organized by former Union generals to improve rifle marksmanship, since only one-in-a-thousand shots fired by Union soldiers hit their targets. The NRA organized rifle clubs and advised state National Guards on how to improve marksmanship. It supported the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, and the Gun Control Act of 1968—which collectively regulated machine guns and other “gangster” weapons and established a system of federally-licensed manufacturers and dealers. Since that time, however, the leadership of the NRA has become increasingly radicalized, and it has become one of the most powerful political lobbies in the nation. It obstructs all gun control measures and defends the right of individuals to possess the weapons of their choice, including assault rifles, high capacity magazines, and armor-piercing bullets. Financially contributing to more than half of all members of Congress, the NRA opposes regulation. Instead, it promotes gun-safety education and increased sentences for gun-related offenses—since “people, not guns, commit crimes.” The NRA believes society would be safer if more, better-trained people owned more firearms to defend themselves against gun attacks. To this end, the NRA encourages children as young as five years to own firearms and participate in gun sports.

The NRA’s Eddie Eagle program teaches children to not touch found guns and to inform an adult. Evaluation of the program reveals that young children cannot resist picking up and playing with guns, irrespective of their indoctrination. All too often in families that keep firearms, children accidentally shoot their playmates, siblings and parents.

In 2012, a mentally disturbed 20-year-old boy shot his mother—a gun enthusiast who had taught him target shooting—and then went to the Sandy Hook school where he shot 20 children and six teachers before killing himself. The NRA’s response was to oppose gun-free zones at schools and to advocate arming teachers and deploying armed police officers in all schools.

After 32 students and faculty were murdered at Virginia Tech in the deadliest shooting by one person in U.S. history, the NRA recommended that students be allowed to carry concealed weapons on their campuses. Its lobbyist said, “Police can’t stop the crime, only the victim has a chance to stop it.” Instead of calling for more guns on campuses, survivors and the families of the Virginia Tech victims established a foundation to “address issues that contribute to violence such as bullying and mental health.”

As a result of the NRA’s efforts, eight states now allow their college students to be armed. The deadly combination of youth, alcohol, and guns has forced affected colleges to divert funding from education to security. Confronted with the same high risk factors, the military prohibits most troops from being armed on bases outside of combat zones, or during recruiting duties.

According to the Small Arms Survey, the manufacture of personal firearms in the United States is a multi-billion dollar industry with thousands of businesses holding federal licenses. The industry produces most of the guns and accessories sold in America and is the world’s leading small arms exporter. Manufacturers and dealers have organized the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) to lobby against government regulation. The foundation claims the gun industry contributes $33 billion to the U.S. economy each year.

On the other side of the equation, it is impossible to accurately calculate the financial impact gun violence has on American society when justice system costs, security procedures, and reductions in the quality of life are added to medical care expenses. The best estimate by the Pacific Institute of Research and Evaluation places the annual economic cost of the gun industry at $174 billion—more than five times its contribution.

It is pure fantasy to imagine that arming everyone—even assuming improved screening, a high level of training, and owner responsibility—will significantly improve public safety. By every measure, having a gun in a household increases the risk of death and injury. Research reported in the New England Journal of Medicine found that living in a home with guns increased the risk of homicidal death by between 40 and 170 percent. Another study more precisely concluded that the presence of guns increased the risk of homicidal death by 90 percent. Women are more than three times as likely to be murdered by guns in the hands of their husbands or intimate acquaintances than by guns, knives, or other weapons wielded by strangers.

Rather than providing protection, possessing a gun actually increases the risk that a person will be shot during an assault. Armed victims of assault are 4.5 times more likely to be shot than unarmed persons. The possession of a gun by a victim escalates, rather than reduces, the potential of violence. Relying on the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Violence Policy Center found that for every homicide case in which a gun was justifiably used, there were 44 criminal homicides.

Despite these facts, the ultra-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—which advocates the interests of big business in state and federal legislatures—has promoted “stand-your-ground,” or “shoot-first” laws around the country. The law, drafted by the NRA, provides a statutory defense for people who use guns in self defense during confrontations in which they feel threatened. (George Zimmerman used the Florida statute to escape conviction after he killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager.) According to NRA official, Wayne LaPierre, the law has “a big tailwind” as it has been adopted, in one form or another, by 25 states.

Following every mass shooting, one of the first questions asked is the mental state of the shooter and how he was able to obtain firearms. There are no easy answers since differing levels of mental competency are involved. Criminal defendants can rely on the defense of insanity only if they are found to be incapable of determining right from wrong. This is very difficult to prove, as people can exhibit a wide range of personality, emotional, and mental problems, while retaining the ability to understand and appreciate the nature and consequences of their actions.

Many Americans receive psychiatric care and psychological counseling, and the willingness and ability to confront and resolve one’s emotional issues is considered a healthy thing to do. What is hard to determine is whether an individual’s mental problems pose a risk of harm to themselves or others to the extent it justifies a deprivation of the right to own firearms. This is because most interactions between patients and their therapists are necessarily privileged and confidential, and due process considerations make it very difficult to involuntarily commit mentally ill people.

Examining the two most recent mass killings, we find evidence that both shooters had mental problems. Given the ready availability of firearms—legal and illegal—could these massacres have been prevented?

Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old high school dropout who shot and killed nine people in a Charleston church had been arrested several times for drug possession and was convinced black people were “taking over the world.” He said he wanted to start a “race war” and was “looking to kill a bunch of people.” He posted that “N—— are stupid and violent.” Using birthday money, he legally purchased a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol. As he shot down his black victims while they prayed in church, he said, “I have to do it. You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.” As bigoted as his statements may have been, it is unlikely they would have been sufficient to have had him civilly committed, or to now serve as a legal defense at his criminal trial.

John R. Houser, the 59-year-old bar owner who shot and killed two women and wounded nine others in a Lafayette theatre had once been hospitalized for psychiatric care. Hatred of women and domestic violence compelled his family members to hide his guns and obtain court protective orders. He ranted about white supremacy, displayed a swastika, and wrote about the power of a “lone wolf.” Despite this threatening behavior, he was able to legally purchase a .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol. Following the shooting, he committed suicide rather than be arrested.

These and other mass shooting cases are exceptional only because of the number of victims. The vast majority of gun assaults and homicides are committed by individuals who are emotionally disturbed, but who could not be committed or locked up. In cases of armed assaults and suicides, it is the ready availability of a firearm that allows an angry or depressed person to use a gun under conditions where otherwise there would be a much lower risk of harm to the individual or to others. It is fantasy to believe these troubled people could ever be properly identified and effectively deprived of access to firearms.

Only 32 percent of Americans own guns—but they own a lot of guns. If one-third of the population were infected with a contagious deadly disease, would the majority of the people, and their representatives, be justified in taking preventative steps to protect the public health?

Responsibility. Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death and injury in the United States with the CDC reporting 33,804 deaths during 2013, but firearm-related deaths are closely tied at 33,636. In a number of states, there are now more deaths from firearms than automobile accidents. Overall, while the rate of firearm deaths has been rising, the rate and number of traffic deaths has been falling as a result of effective government safety regulations for both drivers and vehicles.

Few people doubt the wisdom of requiring seat belts and air bags in cars; for transporting young children in approved car seats; that cars are registered; that drivers are educated, tested, and licensed; that they obey the rules of the road; and that they are required to have liability insurance. However, any legislative or executive action to regulate the safety of firearms or the ability of individuals to obtain and carry them is met with defiant resistance by the politically powerful gun lobby—and the politicians they bribe with campaign contributions.

Using a vehicle as a weapon is considered to be an assault with a deadly weapon (ADW) in most jurisdictions; however, one rarely hears about cars being used in that manner. All too often, road rage manifests itself with one driver shooting another. Automobile ADW is so rare that there are no readily available statistics to determine its frequency. Just imagine, however, the fear and outrage if there were 21,175 intentional fatal traffic collisions each year in the United States—which is the number of firearm suicides recorded by the CDC in 2013. Or, if cars were used as weapons almost a half million times each year—which is the number of Americans who reported they were victims of a crime involving a firearm in 2011 during a survey by the National Institute of Justice. Would drivers feel safe knowing that cars approaching from the opposite direction at a high rate of speed were being operated by unlicensed ten-year-olds?

Guns are the only consumer products that are not subject to federal regulation, and it is not the Second Amendment that prevents the registration of guns in the same manner as vehicles and the testing and licensing of gun owners as is required for all drivers. This fact was made clear by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 when it struck down a ban on the possession of handguns (District of Columbia vs. Heller) as violating the right to personally bear firearms. Regarding regulation, the court said its “opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

The Court explicitly did not address the District’s licensing requirement that had been upheld in the lower court, which ruled: “Reasonable restrictions also might be thought consistent with a ‘well regulated militia.’ The registration of firearms gives the government information as to how many people would be armed for militia service if called up.” From this, it would appear that, while the Court now says the Second Amendment confers a right to personally own a gun outside of a militia, the right is subject to reasonable regulation.

The Court’s opinion was delivered by Justice Scalia, who interprets constitutional meaning as it was understood at the time of enactment. Since militia members and their weapons were subject to government inspection and regulation at the time the Amendment was enacted, it would not seem unreasonable to expect that even the conservative branch of the Court would uphold firearm registration and licensing of owners similar to that presently imposed on the ownership and operation of automobiles, or the carrying of concealed handguns. Necessarily, reasonable regulations would have to preserve due process and could not be so onerous as to constitute prohibition.

Since a small minority of Americans actually own guns, the primary obstacle to responsible regulation of firearm ownership is the combined power of the NRA, NSSF and ALEC, which have mastered the political tactics of legal bribery, negative campaigns, and intimidation litigation. Even so, state and federal legislators brave enough to endure the wrath of the gun lobby would undoubtedly find broad public support for firearm registration and owner licensing. In a survey conducted in 2014, 72 percent of respondents said they would favor “a law which would require a person to obtain a police permit before he or she could buy a gun,” although other surveys indicate growing support of gun rights.

Even with reasonable registration and licensing, firearms would continue to pose a significant danger to public safety due to their overwhelming proliferation throughout American society. Therefore, additional, constitutionally acceptable, steps would have to be taken to further reduce the threat.

It is far too quick and easy for an angry person to point a finger wrapped around the trigger of a gun and apply slight pressure—thereby destroying the lives of the victim and the shooter. Efforts to protect both must deal with the fact that gun violence is often a consequence of other psychological and social issues, such as domestic violence, child abuse, and bullying of the perpetrator. Even without guns, these causative factors can manifest themselves in violence, albeit at a far less deadly level.

In addition to teaching small children to avoid picking up a gun, they must also learn to respect the equality of others and to avoid violent behavior. Children are more capable of acquiring empathy and experiencing positive interpersonal relations, than resisting playing with an attractive deadly toy. There is clear evidence that children can be taught to resolve conflicts and problems without resorting to violence. School-based anti-bullying programs have become widespread and have been successful in reducing violence among students.

Just because Americans have a right to own firearms does not mean that they have to do so. The percentage of individuals who own firearms continues to decrease. People can continue to freely choose to give up their firearms and to live, more safely, without them—both personally and as a society. There have been some successes with “buy back” programs whereby people are paid for their guns. All too often, however, the guns turned in are old, defective, or obsolete. What is needed is a broad-based grassroots movement to encourage the American people to participate in achieving a voluntary and massive reduction of operable firearms in their own homes and communities.

Imagine an innovative national program whereby surrendered and confiscated guns are welded into massive peace sculptures in front of local courthouses, police stations, and other public buildings. Competitions could be held for artists to design unique works of art for each location. Instead of blood running down the sidewalks, let it be rust, as these monuments to nonviolence slowly grow with discarded weapons and become more interesting over the years. Just as those who fight and die for freedom are honored, those who nonviolently strive to achieve peace should also be memorialized. Perhaps, some day Americans will look at these sculptures in amazement and recall a time in when people owned machines designed to kill other people and how they voluntarily overcame their addiction.

Reflections. As an eight-year-old farm boy with my first gun, I decided to shoot a hole in a nickel so I could wear it on a leather thong around my neck. Missing it several times, I very carefully balanced the coin on top of the rifle muzzle and pulled the trigger—watching closely to see what would happen. The bullet disintegrated and laced my forehead with lead. I never found the coin, and I did not tell anyone what I had done. I probably told a fib about hitting my head. Had the rifle been an inch lower, however, I might have been blinded and this story would have a different ending.

As a young police officer, I was cleaning my revolver at the armory workbench when another rookie decided to “dry fire” his gun just in back of my head. He had forgotten that he had loaded his revolver, and the bullet passed just above my right ear into the wall. Had he been aiming slightly to his left, I would not be around to tell the story.

Although there were several situations during my service when I would have been legally justified in shooting someone, I never did; however, there was one time when I might have, but was unarmed. One night, two men tried to rob me as I was walking home from the store on a dark side street. One hit me in the face with a bottle of wine before breaking it over my head. I was able to fight them off and chase them down the street, but in my fury, I probably would have shot one or both of them if I had a gun. I remain thankful I was spared having to ever take the life of another person.

Many years ago, I acquired a .22-caliber magnum rifle from a client for safekeeping. It was unlikely the gun had been used in a crime, but my client never requested its return, and I still have it safely stored in my home. There is a box of bullets for its magazine, and I would undoubtedly use it to defend my family or myself if I had no other choice, but I would rather contribute it to the construction of a monument to nonviolence in my city. I do not think I am either naive or foolish, and I believe there are many thousands of other thoughtful people who would make the same choice. Together, we can courageously create a reality in which children are safe and are allowed to grow up in a responsible society in which sanity, rather than fantasy, prevails.

William John Cox wrote the shooting policy of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Role of the Police in America for President Nixon’s National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals before becoming a prosecutor and public interest lawyer. His memoir, “The Holocaust Case: Defeat of Denial” was published in July.

26 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Robert Barsocchini

How did the US propel itself so far ahead, to the point that it could, alone, comprise about half of global military spending?

Professor of history at Cornell University: “The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African-Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. Yet it is the truth.”

Even divided in half, the two halves of the US would still be tied for the lead in global military spending, 89 billion dollars each ahead of the number two spender, China.

Also notice how North Korea’s spending is represented by a pin-prick dot above South Korea, and that Iran’s budget is not high enough even to be given a number on the chart (it was under 10 billion in 2009).

It would take 16 billion dollars to clean up the un-exploded bombs the US left in Laos, which continue to kill thousands of people, mostly children. But the US won’t pay it.

Author is a regular contributor to CounterCurrents.org, and also writes professionally for the film industry. On Twitter @_DirtyTruths

26 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

By David Bromwich

“We’re going to push and push until some larger force makes us stop.”

David Addington, the legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, made that declaration to Jack Goldsmith of the Office of Legal Counsel in the months after September 11, 2001. Goldsmith would later recall that Cheney and Addington were the first people he had ever met of a certain kind: “Cheney is not subtle, and he has never hidden the ball. The amazing thing is that he does what he says. Relentlessness is a quality I saw in him and Addington that I never saw before in my life.”

Goldsmith did not consider himself an adversary of Cheney and Addington. He probably shared many of their political views. What shocked him was their confidence in a set of secret laws and violent policies that could destroy innocent lives and warp the Constitution. The neoconservatives — the opinion-makers and legislative pedagogues who since 2001 have justified the Cheney-Bush policies — fit the same description. They are relentless, they push until they are stopped, and thus far they have never been stopped for long.

The campaign for the Iraq war of 2003, the purest example of their handiwork, began with a strategy memorandum in 1996, so it is fair to say that they have been pitching to break up the Middle East for a full two decades. But fortune played them a nasty trick with the signing of the nuclear agreement between the P5+1 powers and Iran. War and the prospect of war have been the source of their undeniable importance. If the Iran nuclear deal attains legitimacy, much of their power will slip through their fingers. Theimperialist idealism that drives their ventures from day to day will be cheated of the enemy it cannot live without.

Iran might then become just one more unlucky country — authoritarian and cruelly oppressive but an object of persuasion and not the focus of a never-ending threat of force. The neoconservatives are enraged and their response has been feverish: if they were an individual, you would say that he was a danger to himself and others. They still get plenty of attention and airtime, but the main difference between 2003 and 2015 is the absence of a president who obeys them — something that has only served to sharpen their anger.

President Obama defended the nuclear deal vigorously in a recent speech at American University. This was the first such extended explanation of a foreign policy decision in his presidency, and it lacked even an ounce of inspirational fluff. It was, in fact, the first of his utterances not likely to be remembered for its “eloquence,” because it merits the higher praise of good sense. It has been predictably denounced in some quarters as stiff, unkind, ungenerous, and “over the top.”

Obama began by speaking of the ideology that incited and justified the Iraq War of 2003. He called it a “mindset,” and the word was appropriate — suggesting a pair of earphones around a head that prevents us from hearing any penetrating noise from the external world. Starting in the summer of 2002, Americans heard a voice that said: Bomb, invade, occupy Iraq! And do the same to other countries! For the sake of our sanity, Obama explained, we had to take off those earphones:

“We had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place. It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy; a mindset that put a premium on unilateral U.S. action over the painstaking work of building international consensus; a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported. Leaders did not level with the American people about the costs of war, insisting that we could easily impose our will on a part of the world with a profoundly different culture and history. And, of course, those calling for war labeled themselves strong and decisive, while dismissing those who disagreed as weak — even appeasers of a malevolent adversary.”

In this precise catalogue of mental traits, Obama was careful to name no names, but he made it easy to construct a key:

A mindset characterized by a preference for military action: President George W. Bush ordering the U.N. nuclear inspectors out of Iraq (though they had asked to stay and complete their work) because there was a pressing need to bomb in March 2003;

A mindset that put a premium on unilateral U.S. action: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissing the skeptical challenge and eventual non-participation of France and Germany as proof of the irrelevance of “old Europe”;

A mindset that exaggerated threats: the barely vetted New York Times stories by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, which an administration bent on war first molded and then cited on TV news shows as evidence to justify preventive war;

Leaders did not level with the American people about the costs of war:Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz pooh-poohing the estimate by Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki that it would take 400,000 troops to maintain order in Iraq after the war;

Insisting that we could easily impose our will on a part of the world with a profoundly different culture and history: the bromides of Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on the indwelling Arab spirit that yearns for American-style democracy across the Middle East.

Obama went on to assert that there was a continuity of persons as well as ideas between the propagandists who told us to bomb, invade, and occupy Iraq in 2003 and those now spending tens of millions of dollars to ensure that Congress will abort the nuclear deal. “The same mindset,” the president remarked, “in many cases offered by the same people who seem to have no compunction with being repeatedly wrong, led to a war that did more to strengthen Iran, more to isolate the United States, than anything we have done in the decades before or since.”

Those people have never recognized that they were wrong. Some put the blame on President Bush or his viceroy in Baghdad, the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer, for mismanaging the occupation that followed the invasion; others continue to nurse the fantastic theory that Saddam Hussein really was in possession of nuclear weapons butsomehow smuggled them across the border to Syria and fooled both U.S. reconnaissance teams and the U.N. inspectors; still others maintain that Shiite militias and weaponry dispatched to Iraq from Iran were the chief culprits in the disaster of the postwar insurgency.

Bear in mind that these opinion-makers, in 2003, hardly understood the difference between Shiite and Sunni in the country they wanted to invade. To put the blame now on Iran betrays a genius for circular reasoning. Since all Shia militias are allied by religion with Iran, it can be argued that Iraq was not destroyed by a catastrophic war of choice whose effects set the region on fire. No: the United States under Bush and Cheney was an unpresuming superpower doing its proper work, bringing peace and democracy to one of the dark places of the earth by means of a clean, fast, “surgical” war. In 2004 and 2005, just as in 2015, it was Iran that caused the trouble.

Simple Facts That Are Not Known

Because the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has scorned the nuclear deal without any attention to detail, the president felt compelled in his speech to recognize candidly the difference of national interest that exists between Israel and the United States. Though we are allies, he said, we are two different countries, and he left his listeners to draw the necessary inference: it is not possible for two countries (any more than two persons) to be at once different and the same. Obama went on to connect the nations in question to this premise of international politics:

“I believe [the terms of the agreement] are in America’s interest and Israel’s interest. And as president of the United States, it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and ally.”

The last affirmation is critical. A president takes an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States” — that is, to attend to the interest of his own country and not another.

The danger of playing favorites in the world of nations, with a partiality that knows no limits, was a main topic of George Washington’s great Farewell Address. “Permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded,” said Washington, because

“a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”

There are Americans today who submit to a ruling passion that favors uniquely the interests of Israel, and the president had them in mind when he invoked his duties under the Constitution toward the only country whose framework of laws and institutions he had sworn to uphold. Genuine respect for another democracy formed part of his thinking here. Not only was Obama not elected to support Netanyahu’s idea of America’s interest, he was also not elected by Israelis to support his own idea of Israel’s interest.

In a recent commentary in Foreign Affairs, the prominent Israeli journalist and former government adviser Daniel Levy pointed out a fact that is not much remembered today regarding Netanyahu’s continuous effort to sabotage negotiations with Iran. It was the Israeli prime minister who initially demanded that nuclear negotiations be pursued on a separate track from any agreement about the trade or sale of conventional weapons. He chose that path because he was certain it would cause negotiations to collapse. The gambit having failed, he now makes the lifting of sanctions on conventional weaponry a significant objection to the “bad deal” in Vienna.

Obama concluded his argument by saying that “alternatives to military action will have been exhausted if we reject a hard-won diplomatic solution that the world almost unanimously supports. So let’s not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war — maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.” A measured statement and demonstrably true.

But you would never come within hailing distance of this truth if you listened to the numbers of Congressional Republicans who repeat the neoconservative watchwords and their accompanying digests of the recent history of the Middle East. They run through recitations of the dramatis personae of the war on terror with the alacrity of trained seals. Israel lives in a “dangerous neighborhood.” Islamists are “knocking on our door” and “looking for gaps in the border with Mexico.” Iran is “the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the world.” Barack Obama is “an appeaser” and “it’s five minutes to midnightin Munich.” Elected officials who walk on two legs in the twenty-first century are not embarrassed to say these things without the slightest idea of their provenance.

If there was a fault in the president’s explanation of his policy, it lay in some things he omitted to say. When you are educating a people who have been proselytized, as Americans have been, by a political cult for the better part of two decades, nothing should be taken for granted. Most Americans do not know that the fanatical Islamists, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, the Islamic State (IS) — the active and destructive revolutionary force in the greater Middle East at the moment — are called Sunni Muslims. Nor do they know that the Shia Muslims who govern Iran and who support the government of Syria have never attacked the United States.

To say it as simply as it should be said: the Shiites and Sunnis are different sects, and the Shiites of Iran are fighting against the same enemies the U.S. is fighting in Syria and elsewhere. Again, most Americans who get their information from miscellaneous online scraps have no idea that exclusively Sunni fanatics made up the force of hijackers who struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. They would be surprised to learn that none of these people came from Iraq or Iran. They do not know that 15 of the 19 came from Saudi Arabia — a supposed ally of the United States. And they do not know that the Islamist warriors who brought chaos and destruction to Syria and Iraq are bankrolled in part by members of the Saudi and Qatari elite who have nothing to do with Iran. It has never been emphasized — it is scarcely written in a way that might be noticeable even in our newspaper of record — that Iran itself has carried the heaviest burden of the fight against IS.

Throughout his presidency, when speaking of Iran, Obama has mixed every expression of hope for improved relations with a measure of opprobrium. He has treated Iran as an exceptional offender against the laws of nations, a country that requires attention only in the cause of disarmament. He does this to assure the policy elite that he respects and can hum the familiar tunes. But this subservience to cliché is timid, unrealistic, and pragmatically ill advised. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill did not denounce the Soviet Union when they took that country’s dictator, Joseph Stalin, as a partner in war in 1941, though Stalin’s crimes exceeded anything attributable to the Iranian mullahs. Ritual denunciation of a necessary ally is a transparent absurdity. And in a democracy, it prevents ordinary people from arriving at an understanding of what is happening.

Nuclear Deals and Their Critics, Then and Now

What are the odds that the neoconservatives and the Republicans whose policy they manage will succeed in aborting the P5+1 nuclear deal? One can take some encouragement from the last comparably ambitious effort at rapprochement with an enemy: the conversations between President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Washington, and Moscow in 1986, 1987, and 1988. At the same time, one ought to be forewarned by the way that unexpected change of course was greeted. The neoconservative cult was just forming then. Some of its early leaders like Richard Perle had positions in the Reagan administration, and they were unanimously hostile to the talks that would yield the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) of 1988. The agreement set out the terms for the destruction of 2,611 missiles, capable of delivering 4,000 warheads — the biggest step in lowering the risk of nuclear war since the Test Ban Treaty championed by President Kennedy and passed in late 1963.

But as James Mann recounted in The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan — a narrative of the anticommunist president’s surprising late turn in foreign policy — all of Reagan’s diplomatic efforts were deeply disapproved at the time, not only by the neoconservative hotheads but by those masters of the “diplomatic breakthrough,” former President Richard Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; by the most widely quoted columnists of the right, George Will and William Safire; and by Timemagazine, which ran a story titled “Has Reagan Gone Soft?” The Reagan-Gorbachev talks were looked upon with suspicion, too, by “realists” and “moderates” of the political and security establishment, including Robert Gates and then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. Why Gates? Because he was deputy director of the CIA and the Agency was thoroughly convinced that Soviet Russia and its leadership could never change. Why Bush? Because he was already running for president.

The political and media establishment of that moment was startled by the change that President Reagan first signaled in 1986, as startled as today’s establishment has been by the signing of the P5+1 agreement. This was the same Ronald Reagan who in 1983 had called the Soviet Union “an evil empire.” At the end of his visit to Moscow in June 1988, Reagan was asked by the ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson, “Do you still think you’re in an evil empire, Mr. President?”

“No,” Reagan replied. “I was talking about another time and another era.” And he stuck to that answer at a press conference the next day, adding: “I think that a great deal of [the change] is due to the General Secretary, who I have found different than previous Soviet leaders… A large part of it is Mr. Gorbachev as a leader.”

By 1987, Reagan’s popularity had hit a low of 47% — largely because of the Iran-Contra scandal — but he still retained his reputation as the most irreproachable defender of the West against world communism. Obama for his part has done everything he could — short of emulating the invade-and-occupy strategy of Bush — to maintain U.S. force projection in the Middle East in a manner to which Washington has become accustomed since 9/11. He doubtless believes in this policy, and he has surrounded himself with adepts of “humanitarian war”; but he clearly also calculated that a generous ration of conformity would protect him when he tried for his own breakthrough in negotiations with Iran.

In the end, Reagan got a 93-5 vote in the Senate for his nuclear treaty with the Soviet Union. Obama is hoping for much less — a vote of less than two thirds of that body opposed to the Iran settlement. But he is confronted by the full-scale hostility of a Republican party with a new character and with financial backing of a new kind.

The U.S. military and security establishment has sided with the president. And though the fact is little known here, so have the vast majority of Israelis who can speak with any authority on issues of defense and security. Even the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, has signaled his belief that Netanyahu’s interventions in American politics are wrong. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has advised that, however reluctantly, Israel should accept the nuclear agreement and forge an understanding with the U.S. about what to do in case of its violation. To this remarkable consensus should be added the public letter — signed by 29 American scientists, many of them deeply involved in nuclear issues, including six recipients of the Nobel Prize — which vouches for the stringency of the agreement and praises the “unprecedented” rigor of the 24-day cap on Iranian delays for site inspection: an interval so short (as no one knows better than these scientists) that successful concealment of traces of nuclear activity becomes impossible.

Two other public letters supporting the nuclear deal have been notable. The first was signed by former U.S. diplomats endorsing the agreement unambiguously, among them Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq after 2003; Nicholas Burns, who negotiated with Iran for the younger Bush; and Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel and Egypt who served under both President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. A further letter carried the personal and institutional authority of dozens of retired admirals and generals. So close an approach to unanimity on the benefits of an agreement among the U.S. military, diplomatic, and scientific communities has seldom been achieved. Even President Reagan could not claim this degree of support by qualified judges when he submitted the INF treaty to the Senate.

Such endorsements ought to represent a substantial cause for hope. But Obama’s supporters would be hard pressed to call the contest a draw on television and radio. The neoconservatives — and the Republicans channeling them — are once again working with boundless energy. Careers are being built on this fight, as in the case of Senator Tom Cotton, and more than onepresidential candidacy has been staked on it.

On the day of Obama’s speech, even a relatively informed talk show host like Charlie Rose allowed his coverage to slant sharply against the agreement. His four guests were the Haaretz reporter Chemi Shalev; the Daily Beastcolumnist Jonathan Alter; the former State Department official and president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass; and the neoconservative venture capitalist, Mark Dubowitz, who has come to be treated as an expert on the nuclear policies and government of Iran.

Haass, passionately opposed to the agreement, said that the president’s speech had been “way over the top,” and hoped Congress would correct its “clear flaws.” Shalev rated the speech honest and “bracing” but thought it would leave many in the Jewish community “offended.” Dubowitz spoke of Iran as a perfidious nation that ought to be subjected to relentless and ever-increasing penalties. His solution: “empower the next president to go back and renegotiate.” Jonathan Alter alone defended the agreement.

Planning to Attack Iran, 2002-2015

By now, the active participants in mainstream commentary on the War on Terror all have a history, and one can learn a good deal by looking back. Haass, for example, a pillar of the foreign policy establishment, worked in the State Department under Bush and Cheney and made no public objection to the Iraq War. Dubowitz has recently co-authored several articles with Reuel Marc Gerecht, a leading propagandist for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In acharacteristic piece in the Wall Street Journal last November, Gerecht and Dubowitz argued that the P5+1 negotiations opened a path to a nuclear bomb for Iran. President Obama, they said, was too weak and trapped by his own errors to explore any alternatives, but there were three “scenarios” that a wiser and stronger president might consider. First, “the White House could give up on diplomacy and preemptively strike Iran’s nuclear sites”; second, “the administration could give up on the current talks and default back to sanctions”; third, “new, even more biting sanctions could be enacted, causing Tehran considerable pain.” The range of advisable policy, for Gerecht and Dubowitz, begins with “crippling sanctions” and ends with a war of aggression.

These scenarios typify the neoconservative “options.” Writing on his own inthe Atlantic in June 2013, Dubowitz informed American readers that there was nothing to celebrate in the Iranian presidential election that brought to power the apparently rational and moderate Hassan Rouhani. “A loyalist of Iran’s supreme leader and a master of nuclear deceit,” Rouhani, as interpreted by Dubowitz, is a false friend whose new authority “doesn’t get us any closer to stopping Iran’s nuclear drive.”

Consider Gerecht in his solo flights and you can see what made the president say that these are the people who gave us the Iraq War. They were as sure then about the good that would follow the bombing and invasion of that country as they are now about the benefits of attacking Iran. Indeed, Gerecht has the distinction of having called for an attack on Iran even before the official launch of the Bush strategy on Iraq.

It is said that Dick Cheney’s August 26, 2002, speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars marked the first formal description of the War on Terror offered by a U.S. leader to American citizens. But Gerecht, a former CIA specialist on the Middle East, stole a march on the vice president. In theWeekly Standard of August 6, 2002, under the title “Regime Change in Iran?,” he declared his belief that President Bush was the possessor of a “revolutionary edge and appeal… in the Middle East.” The younger Bush had

“sliced across national borders and civilizational divides with an unqualified assertion of a moral norm. The president declared, ‘The people of Iran want the same freedoms, human rights, and opportunities as people around the world.’ America will stand ‘alongside people everywhere determined to build a world of freedom, dignity, and tolerance.’”

The analyst Gerecht took up where the evangelist Bush left off: the relevant country to attack in August 2002 — on behalf of its people of course — was Iran. Gerecht had no doubt that

“the Iranian people overwhelmingly view clerical rule as fundamentally illegitimate. The heavily Westernized clerics of Iran’s religious establishment — and these mullahs are on both sides of the so-called ‘moderate-conservative’ split — know perfectly well that the Persian word azadi, ‘freedom,’ is perhaps the most evocative word in the language now… Azadi has also become indissolubly associated with the United States.”

This was the way the neoconservatives were already writing and thinking back in August 2002. It is hard to know which is more astounding, the show of philological virtuosity or the self-assurance regarding the advisability of war against a nation of 70 million.

General prognostications, however, are never enough for the neoconservatives, and Gerecht in 2002 enumerated the specific benefits of disorder in Iraq and Iran:

“An American invasion [of Iraq] could possibly provoke riots in Iran — simultaneous uprisings in major cities that would simply be beyond the scope of regime-loyal specialized riot-control units. The army or the Revolutionary Guard Corps would have to be pulled into service in large numbers, and that’s when things could get interesting.”

That was how he had it scored. Bush, the voice of freedom, would be adored as a benevolent emperor at a distance:

“President Bush, of course, doesn’t need National Iranian Television broadcasts to beam his message into the Islamic Republic. Everything he says moves at light speed through the country. The president just needs to keep talking about freedom being the birthright of Muslim peoples.”

Such was the neoconservative recipe for democracy in the Middle East: beam the words of George W. Bush to people everywhere, invade Iraq, and spark a democratic uprising in Iran (assisted if necessary by U.S. bombs and soldiers).

For a final glimpse of the same “mindset,” look closely at Gerecht’s advice on Syria in June 2014. Writing again in the Weekly Standard, he deprecated the very idea of getting help from Iran in the fight against the Islamic State. “The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Enemy” declares the title of the piece, and the article makes the same point with a minimal reliance on facts. Sunni terrorists are portrayed as impetuous youngsters who naturally go too far, but it is too early to gauge their trajectory: the changes they bring may not ultimately be uncongenial to American interest. The Shiite masterminds of Iran, on the other hand, have long ago attained full maturity and will never change. Gerecht’s hope, last summer, was that substantial Iranian casualties in a war against IS would lead to the spontaneous uprising that failed to materialize in 2003.

“It is possible that the present Sunni-Shiite conflict could, if the Iranian body count rises and too much national treasure is spent, produce shock waves that fundamentally weaken the clerical regime… Things could get violent inside the Islamic Republic.”

The vision underlying this policy amounts to selective or strategic tolerance of al-Qaeda and IS for the sake of destroying Iran.

Will the War on Terror Be Debated?

How can such opinions be contested in American politics? The answer will have to come from what remains of the potential opposition party in the war on terror. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut has been a remarkable exception, but for the most part the Democrats are preoccupied with domestic policy. If almost two-thirds of Congress today is poised to vote against the Iran settlement, this embarrassment is the result of years of systematic neglect. Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Ron Wyden, Tammy Baldwin, and a few others have the talent to lead an opposition to a pursuit of the war on terror on the neoconservative plan, but to have any effect they would have to speak up regularly on foreign policy.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party and its billionaire bankrollers are playing the long game on Iran. They would like to gain the two-thirds majority to override Obama’s veto of a Congressional vote against the nuclear agreement, but they do not really expect that to happen. The survival of any agreement, however, depends not only on its approval but on its legitimation. Their hope is to depress public support for the P5+1 deal so much that the next president and members of the next Congress would require extraordinary courage to persist with American participation.

In the Foreign Affairs column mentioned earlier, Daniel Levy concluded that the long game is also Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy:

”Netanyahu is going for a twofer — if he loses on the veto-proof super majority in Congress, he can still succeed in keeping the Iran deal politically controversial and fragile and prevent any further détente with Iran. The hope, in this case, is that the next U.S. administration can resume the status quo ante in January 2017.”

What we are seeing, then, is not simply a concentrated effort that will end with the vote by the Senate in September on the P5+1 nuclear deal. It is the earliest phase of a lobbying campaign intended to usher in a Republican president of appropriate views in January 2017.

One may recognize that the money is there for such a long-term drive and yet still wonder at the virulence of the campaign to destroy Iran. What exactly allows the war party to keep on as they do? Within Israel, the cause is a political theology that obliges its believers to fight preemptive wars without any end in sight in order to guard against enemies who have opposed the existence of the Jewish state ever since its creation. This is a defensive fear that responds to an irrefutable historical reality. The neoconservatives and the better informed among their Republican followers are harder to grasp — harder anyway until you realize that, for them, we are Rome and the Republican Party is the cradle of future American emperors, praetors, and proconsuls.

“Ideology,” as the political essayist and Czech dissident Vaclav Havel once wrote, is “the bridge of excuses” a government offers to the people it rules. Between 2001 and 2009, the U.S. government was run by neoconservatives; they had a fair shot and the public judgment went against them; but in a climate of resurgent confusion about the Middle East, they have come a long way toward rebuilding their bridge. They are zealots but also prudent careerists, and the combination of money and revived propaganda may succeed in blurring many unhappy memories. Nor can they be accused of insincerity. When a theorist at a neoconservative think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies or the American Enterprise Institute, affirms that democracy is what the Iranian people will have as soon as the U.S. cripples the resources of that country, he surely believes what he is saying. The projection seems as true to them now as it was in 2002, 2007, and 2010, as true as it will be in 2017 when a new president, preferably another young man of “spirit” like George W. Bush, succeeds the weak and deplorable Barack Obama. For such people, the battle is never over, and there is always another war ahead. They will push until they are stopped.

David Bromwich, a TomDispatch regular, teaches literature at Yale University and is the author of Moral Imagination.

Copyright 2015 David Bromwich

26 August, 2015
TomDispatch.com

 

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

The dramatic collapse of the Shanghai stock exchange has been presented to public opinion as the result of a spontaneous “market mechanism”, triggered by weaknesses in China’s economy.

The Western media consensus in chorus (WSJ, Bloomberg, Financial Times) portend that Chinese stocks tumbled due to “uncertainty” in response to recent data “suggesting a downturn in the world’s second-largest economy”.

This interpretation is erroneous. It distorts the workings of stock markets which are the object of routine speculative operations. An engineered decline in the Dow Jones, for instance, can be precipitated in various ways: e.g. short selling, betting on the decline of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the options market, etc. 1

Amply documented, financial markets are rigged by the megabanks. Powerful financial institutions including JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, et al and their affiliated hedge funds have the ability of “pushing up” the stock market and then “pulling it down”. They make windfall gains on the upturn as well as on the downturn. This procedure also applies to the oil, metals and commodity markets.

It’s financial fraud or what former high-level Wall Street insider and former Assistant HUD Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts calls “pump and dump,” defined as “artificially inflating the price of a stock or other security through promotion, in order to sell at the inflated price,” then profit more on the downside by short-selling. “This practice is illegal under securities law, yet it is particularly common,” (See Stephen Lendman, Manipulation: How Financial Markets Really Work, Global Research, March 20, 2009

The Shanghai Stock Exchange Collapse

The Shanghai SSE Composite Index progressed over the last year from approximately 2209 on August 27, 2014 to more than 5166 on June 21st, 2015 (circa 140% increase); then from June 21st it collapsed by more than 30 percent in a matter of two weeks to 3507 (July 8).

A further collapse occurred starting on August 19, in the week immediately following the Tianjin explosions (August 12, 2015) culminating on Black Monday August 24th (with a dramatic 7.63 percent decline in one day).

Did the Tianjin Explosion contribute to exacerbating “uncertainty” with regard to the Chinese equity market?

The evolution of the SSE over that one year period has nothing to do with spontaneous market forces or real economy benchmarks. It has all the appearances of a carefully engineered speculative onslaught, an upward push and a downward pull.

The possibility of market rigging was investigated by the Chinese authorities in July 2015 following the June 21 meltdown of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (see graph above):

The regulator said [Report July 3] that it would be looking into whether parties were mis-selling financial products. ….

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said it would base its investigation on reports of abnormal market movements from the stock market and futures exchanges.

…. Some reports have accused overseas investors of driving prices down by short-selling stocks on Chinese bourses, meaning they were betting on stocks falling.

… Any criminal cases will be transferred to the police, the regulator said.

The China Financial Futures Exchange (CFFEX) has suspended 19 accounts from short-selling for a month, reports Reuters news agency, citing unnamed sources. (BBC, August 25, 2015, emphasis added)

The media consensus (as well as statements emanating from the Chinese authorities) was that Chinese financial actors rather than foreign banks could have been behind the process of stock market rigging: “Overseas investors have limited access to Chinese markets”. Market manipulation did not emanate from foreign sources, according to the Global Times.

This assessment, however, does not take into consideration that Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC et al are major financial actors within China, operating in Shanghai through Chinese financial proxies in partner joint ventures.

Moreover, these Western financial institutions are known to have played an overriding role in manipulating stock markets as well foreign exchange markets:

Regulators fined six major banks a total of $4.3 billion for failing to stop traders from trying to manipulate the foreign exchange market, following a yearlong global investigation.

HSBC Holdings Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc, UBS AG and Bank of America Corp all faced penalties resulting from the inquiry, which has put the largely unregulated $5-trillion-a-day market on a tighter leash, accelerated the push to automate trading and ensnared the Bank of England.

…

Dealers used code names to identify clients without naming them and swapped information in online chatrooms with pseudonyms such as “the players”, “the 3 musketeers” and “1 team, 1 dream.” Those who were not involved were belittled, and traders used obscene language to congratulate themselves on quick profits made from their scams, authorities said. (Reuters, November 11, 2014).

Goldman Sachs among other major financial institutions operates out of Shanghai since 2004 under a joint venture arrangement with the Beijing Gao Hua Securities Company.

Goldman is known to use so-called “high frequency trading programs” in stock market transactions:

“Markets can be rigged with computers using high-frequency trading programs (HFT), which now compose 70% of market trading; and Goldman Sachs is the undisputed leader in this new gaming technique. (See Ellen Brown, Stock Market Collapse: More Goldman Market Rigging, Global Research, May 8, 2010)

Another factor which has facilitated speculative operations on the Shanghai Stock Exchange has been the integration of the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets in 2014 under the so-called “Stock Connect” link. The procedure enables foreigners to buy Chinese A shares listed on the Shanghai exchange out of Hong Kong, with “limited restrictions”, namely full access to China’s equity market.

Financial Warfare

These engineered upward and downward swings of the Shanghai Composite Index ultimately result in the confiscation of billions of dollars of money wealth including Chinese State funds provided by the People’s Bank of China to prop up the Shanghai Stock Market. Where does the money go. Who are the recipients of this multi-billion dollar trade?

In response to the August meltdown, the People’s Bank of China “offered 150 billion yuan ($23.43 billion) worth of seven-day reverse repurchase agreements, a form of short-term loans to commercial lenders.”. This money was wasted. It did not result in reversing the meltdown of the Shanghai stock exchange.

Geopolitics

Geopolitical considerations are also relevant. While the Pentagon and NATO coordinate military operations against sovereign countries, Wall Street carries out concurrent destabilizing actions on financial markets including the rigging of the oil, gold and foreign exchange markets directed against Russia and China.

Is the “possible” rigging of the Shanghai Stock Exchange part of a broader package of US actions against China which consists in weakening China’s economy and financial system?

Does China’s financial collapse serve broader US foreign policy interests which include routine threats directed against China, not to mention US military deployments in the South China Sea?

Are we dealing with “financial warfare” directed against a competing World economic power?

It is worth noting that speculative procedures (rigging) have also been used in the oil and foreign exchange markets against the Russian Federation. Combined with the sanctions regime, the objective was to push down the price of crude oil (as well as the value of the Russian rouble), with a view to weakening the Russian economy.

“Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ directed against China is reinforced through concurrent destabilizing actions on the Shanghai stock exchange. The ultimate intent is to undermine –through non-military means– the national economy of the People’s Republic of China.” (Michel Chossudovsky, US-NATO Military Deployments, Economic Warfare, Goldman Sachs and the Next Financial Meltdown, Global Research, August 8, 2015

Note

1. The latter is one among several instruments used by speculators. There is no buy sell transaction of shares of company listed on the stock exchange: a bet is placed on an upward or downward movement of the DJIA. It’s an index fund: ask and put options.

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

26 August 2015

By Paul Craig Roberts

Europe is being overrun by refugees from Washington’s, and Israel’s, hegemonic policies in the Middle East and North Africa that are resulting in the slaughter of massive numbers of civilians. The inflows are so heavy that European governments are squabbling among themselves about who is to take the refugees. Hungary is considering constructing a fence, like the US and Israel, to keep out the undesirables. Everywhere in the Western media there are reports deploring the influx of migrants; yet nowhere is there any reference to the cause of the problem.

The European governments and their insouciant populations are themselves responsible for their immigrant problems. For 14 years Europe has supported Washington’s aggressive militarism that has murdered and dislocated millions of peoples who never lifted a finger against Washington. The destruction of entire countries such as Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, and now Syria and Yemen, and the continuing US slaughter of Pakistani civilians with the full complicity of the corrupt and traitorous Pakistani government, produced a refugee problem that the moronic Europeans brought upon themselves.

Europe deserves the problem, but it is not enough punishment for their crimes against humanity in support of Washington’s world hegemony.

In the Western world insouciance rules governments as well as peoples, and most likely also everywhere else in the world. It remains to be seen whether Russia and China have any clearer grasp of the reality that confronts them.

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency until his retirement in August 2014, has confirmed that the Obama regime disregarded his advice and made a willful decision to support the jihadists who now comprise ISIS. ( https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/officials-islamic-state-arose-from-us-support-for-al-qaeda-in-iraq-a37c9a60be4 ) Here we have an American government so insouciant, and with nothing but tunnel vision, empowering the various elements that comprise Washington’s excuse for the “war on terror” and the destruction of several countries. Just as the idiot Europeans produce their own refugee problems, the idiot Americans produce their own terrorist problems. It is mindless. And there is no end to it.

Consider the insanity of the Obama regime’s policy toward the Soviet Union. Kissinger and Brzezinski, two of the left-wing’s most hated bogymen, are astonished at the total unawareness of Washington and the EU of the consequences of their aggression and false accusations toward Russia. Kissinger says that America’s foreign policy is in the hands of “ahistorical people,” who do not comprehend that “we should not engage in international conflicts if, at the beginning, we cannot describe an end.” Kissinger criticizes Washington and the EU for their misconception that the West could act in Ukraine in ways inconsistent with Russian interests and receive a pass from the Russian government.

As for the Idiotic claim that Putin is responsible for the Ukrainian tragedy, Kissinger says:

“It is not conceivable that Putin spends sixty billion euros on turning a summer resort into a winter Olympic village in order to start a military crisis the week after a concluding Olympic ceremony that depicted Russia as a part of Western civilization.” ( http://sputniknews.com/world/20150819/1025918194/us-russia-policy-history-kissinger.html )

Don’t expect the low-grade morons who comprise the Western media to notice anything as obvious as the meaning Kissinger’s observation.

Brzezinski has joined Kissinger in stating unequivocally that “Russia must be reassured that Ukraine will never become a NATO member.” ( http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150630/1024022244.html )

Kissinger is correct that Americans and their leaders are ahistorical. The US operates on the basis of a priori theories that justify American preconceptions and desires. This is a prescription for war, disaster, and the demise of humanity.

Even American commentators whom one would consider to be intelligent are ahistorical. Writing on OpEdNews (8-18-15) William Bike says that Ronald Reagan advocated the destruction of the Soviet Union. Reagan did no such thing. Reagan was respectful of the Soviet leadership and worked with Gorbachev to end the Cold War. Reagan never spoke about winning the Cold War, only about bringing it to an end. The Soviet Union collapsed as a consequence of Gorbachev being arrested by hardline communists, opposed to Gorbachev’s policies, who launched a coup. The coup failed, but it took down the Soviet government. Reagan had nothing to do with it and was no longer in office.

Some ahistorical Americans cannot tell the difference between the war criminals Clinton, Bush, Cheney, and Obama, and Jimmy Carter, who spent his life doing, and trying to do, good deeds. No sooner do we hear that the 90-year old former president has cancer than Matt Peppe regals us on CounterPunch about “Jimmy Carter’s Blood-Drenched Legacy” (8-18-15). Peppe describes Carter as just another hypocrite who professed human rights but had a “penchant for bloodshed.” What Peppe means is that Carter did not stop bloodshed initiated by foreigners abroad. In other words Carter failed as a global policeman. Peppe’s criticism of Carter, of course, is the stale and false neoconservative criticism of Carter.

Peppe, like so many others, shows an astonishing ignorance of the constraints existing policies institutionalized in government exercise over presidents. In American politics, interest groups are more powerful than the elected politicians. Look around you. The federal agencies created to oversea the wellbeing of the national forests, public lands, air and water are staffed with the executives of the very polluting and clear-cutting industries that the agencies are supposed to be regulating. Read CounterPunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair’s book, Born Under A Bad Sky, to understand that those who are supposed to be regulated are in fact doing the regulating, and in their interests. The public interest is nowhere in the picture.

Look away from the environment to economic policy. The same financial executives who caused the ongoing financial crisis resulting in enormous ongoing public subsidies to the private banking system, now into the eight year, are the ones who run the US Treasury and Federal Reserve.

Without a strong movement behind him, from whose ranks a president can staff an administration committed to major changes, the president is in effect a captive of the private interests who finance political campaigns. Reagan is the only president of our time who had even a semblance of a movement behind him, and the “Reaganites” in his administration were counterbalanced by the Bush Establishment Republicans.

During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a movement behind him consisting of New Dealers. Consequently, Roosevelt was able to achieve a number of overdue reforms such as Social Security.

Nevertheless, Roosevelt did not see himself as being in charge. In The Age of Acquiescence (2015), Steve Fraser quotes President Roosevelt telling Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau at the end of 1934 that “the people I have called the ‘money changers in the Temple’ are still in absolute control. It will take many years and possibly several revolutions to eliminate them.”

Eight decades later as Nomi Prins has made clear in All The Presidents’ Bankers (2014), the money changers are still in control. Nothing less than fire and the sword can dislodge them.

Yet, and it will forever be the case, America has commentators who really believe that a president can change things but refuses to do so because he prefers the way that they are.

Unless there is a major disaster, such as the Great Depression, or a lessor challenge, such as stagflation for which solutions were scarce, a president without a movement is outgunned by powerful private interest groups, and sometimes even if he has a movement.

Private interests were empowered by the Republican Supreme Court’s decision that the purchase of the US government by corporate money is the constitutionally protected exercise of free speech.

To be completely clear, the US Supreme Court has ruled that organized interest groups have the right to control the US government.

Under this Supreme Court ruling, how can the United States pretend to be a democracy?

How can Washington justify its genocidal murders as “bringing democracy” to the decimated?

Unless the world wakes up and realizes that total evil has the reins in the West, humanity has no future.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

20 August, 2015
Paulcraigroberts.org

 

By Noam Chomsky

Throughout the world there is great relief and optimism about the nuclear deal reached in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 nations, the five veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. Most of the world apparently shares the assessment of the U.S. Arms Control Association that “the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action establishes a strong and effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by which Iran could acquire material for nuclear weapons for more than a generation and a verification system to promptly detect and deter possible efforts by Iran to covertly pursue nuclear weapons that will last indefinitely.”

There are, however, striking exceptions to the general enthusiasm: the United States and its closest regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. One consequence of this is that U.S. corporations, much to their chagrin, are prevented from flocking to Tehran along with their European counterparts. Prominent sectors of U.S. power and opinion share the stand of the two regional allies and so are in a state of virtual hysteria over “the Iranian threat.” Sober commentary in the United States, pretty much across the spectrum, declares that country to be “the gravest threat to world peace.” Even supporters of the agreement here are wary, given the exceptional gravity of that threat. After all, how can we trust the Iranians with their terrible record of aggression, violence, disruption, and deceit?

Opposition within the political class is so strong that public opinion has shifted quickly from significant support for the deal to an even split. Republicans are almost unanimously opposed to the agreement. The current Republican primaries illustrate the proclaimed reasons. Senator Ted Cruz, considered one of the intellectuals among the crowded field of presidential candidates, warns that Iran may still be able to produce nuclear weapons and could someday use one to set off an Electro Magnetic Pulse that “would take down the electrical grid of the entire eastern seaboard” of the United States, killing “tens of millions of Americans.”

The two most likely winners, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, are battling over whether to bomb Iran immediately after being elected or after the first Cabinet meeting. The one candidate with some foreign policy experience, Lindsey Graham, describes the deal as “a death sentence for the state of Israel,” which will certainly come as a surprise to Israeli intelligence and strategic analysts — and which Graham knows to be utter nonsense, raising immediate questions about actual motives.

Keep in mind that the Republicans long ago abandoned the pretense of functioning as a normal congressional party. They have, as respected conservative political commentator Norman Ornstein of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute observed, become a “radical insurgency” that scarcely seeks to participate in normal congressional politics.

Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, the party leadership has plunged so far into the pockets of the very rich and the corporate sector that they can attract votes only by mobilizing parts of the population that have not previously been an organized political force. Among them are extremist evangelical Christians, now probably a majority of Republican voters; remnants of the former slave-holding states; nativists who are terrified that “they” are taking our white Christian Anglo-Saxon country away from us; and others who turn the Republican primaries into spectacles remote from the mainstream of modern society — though not from the mainstream of the most powerful country in world history.

The departure from global standards, however, goes far beyond the bounds of the Republican radical insurgency. Across the spectrum, there is, for instance, general agreement with the “pragmatic” conclusion of General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Vienna deal does not “prevent the United States from striking Iranian facilities if officials decide that it is cheating on the agreement,” even though a unilateral military strike is “far less likely” if Iran behaves.

Former Clinton and Obama Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross typically recommends that “Iran must have no doubts that if we see it moving towards a weapon, that would trigger the use of force” even after the termination of the deal, when Iran is theoretically free to do what it wants. In fact, the existence of a termination point 15 years hence is, he adds, “the greatest single problem with the agreement.” He also suggests that the U.S. provide Israel with specially outfitted B-52 bombers and bunker-busting bombs to protect itself before that terrifying date arrives.

“The Greatest Threat”

Opponents of the nuclear deal charge that it does not go far enough. Some supporters agree, holding that “if the Vienna deal is to mean anything, the whole of the Middle East must rid itself of weapons of mass destruction.” The author of those words, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif, added that “Iran, in its national capacity and as current chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement [the governments of the large majority of the world’s population], is prepared to work with the international community to achieve these goals, knowing full well that, along the way, it will probably run into many hurdles raised by the skeptics of peace and diplomacy.” Iran has signed “a historic nuclear deal,” he continues, and now it is the turn of Israel, “the holdout.”

Israel, of course, is one of the three nuclear powers, along with India and Pakistan, whose weapons programs have been abetted by the United States and that refuse to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Zarif was referring to the regular five-year NPT review conference, which ended in failure in April when the U.S. (joined by Canada and Great Britain) once again blocked efforts to move toward a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East. Such efforts have been led by Egypt and other Arab states for 20 years. As Jayantha Dhanapala and Sergio Duarte, leading figures in the promotion of such efforts at the NPT and other U.N. agencies, observe in “Is There a Future for the NPT?,” an article in the journal of the Arms Control Association: “The successful adoption in 1995 of the resolution on the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East was the main element of a package that permitted the indefinite extension of the NPT.” The NPT, in turn, is the most important arms control treaty of all. If it were adhered to, it could end the scourge of nuclear weapons.

Repeatedly, implementation of the resolution has been blocked by the U.S., most recently by President Obama in 2010 and again in 2015, as Dhanapala and Duarte point out, “on behalf of a state that is not a party to the NPT and is widely believed to be the only one in the region possessing nuclear weapons” — a polite and understated reference to Israel. This failure, they hope, “will not be the coup de grâce to the two longstanding NPT objectives of accelerated progress on nuclear disarmament and establishing a Middle Eastern WMD-free zone.”

A nuclear-weapons-free Middle East would be a straightforward way to address whatever threat Iran allegedly poses, but a great deal more is at stake in Washington’s continuing sabotage of the effort in order to protect its Israeli client. After all, this is not the only case in which opportunities to end the alleged Iranian threat have been undermined by Washington, raising further questions about just what is actually at stake.

In considering this matter, it is instructive to examine both the unspoken assumptions in the situation and the questions that are rarely asked. Let us consider a few of these assumptions, beginning with the most serious: that Iran is the gravest threat to world peace.

In the U.S., it is a virtual cliché among high officials and commentators that Iran wins that grim prize. There is also a world outside the U.S. and although its views are not reported in the mainstream here, perhaps they are of some interest. According to the leading western polling agencies (WIN/Gallup International), the prize for “greatest threat” is won by the United States. The rest of the world regards it as the gravest threat to world peace by a large margin. In second place, far below, is Pakistan, its ranking probably inflated by the Indian vote. Iran is ranked below those two, along with China, Israel, North Korea, and Afghanistan.

“The World’s Leading Supporter of Terrorism”

Turning to the next obvious question, what in fact is the Iranian threat? Why, for example, are Israel and Saudi Arabia trembling in fear over that country? Whatever the threat is, it can hardly be military. Years ago, U.S. intelligence informed Congress that Iran has very low military expenditures by the standards of the region and that its strategic doctrines are defensive — designed, that is, to deter aggression. The U.S. intelligence community has also reported that it has no evidence Iran is pursuing an actual nuclear weapons program and that “Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy.”

The authoritative SIPRI review of global armaments ranks the U.S., as usual, way in the lead in military expenditures. China comes in second with about one-third of U.S. expenditures. Far below are Russia and Saudi Arabia, which are nonetheless well above any western European state. Iran is scarcely mentioned. Full details are provided in an April report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which finds “a conclusive case that the Arab Gulf states have… an overwhelming advantage of Iran in both military spending and access to modern arms.”

Iran’s military spending, for instance, is a fraction of Saudi Arabia’s and far below even the spending of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Altogether, the Gulf Cooperation Council states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — outspend Iran on arms by a factor of eight, an imbalance that goes back decades. The CSIS report adds: “The Arab Gulf states have acquired and are acquiring some of the most advanced and effective weapons in the world [while] Iran has essentially been forced to live in the past, often relying on systems originally delivered at the time of the Shah.” In other words, they are virtually obsolete. When it comes to Israel, of course, the imbalance is even greater. Possessing the most advanced U.S. weaponry and a virtual offshore military base for the global superpower, it also has a huge stock of nuclear weapons.

To be sure, Israel faces the “existential threat” of Iranian pronouncements: Supreme Leader Khamenei and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously threatened it with destruction. Except that they didn’t — and if they had, it would be of little moment. Ahmadinejad, for instance, predicted that “under God’s grace [the Zionist regime] will be wiped off the map.” In other words, he hoped that regime change would someday take place. Even that falls far short of the direct calls in both Washington and Tel Aviv for regime change in Iran, not to speak of the actions taken to implement regime change. These, of course, go back to the actual “regime change” of 1953, when the U.S. and Britain organized a military coup to overthrow Iran’s parliamentary government and install the dictatorship of the Shah, who proceeded to amass one of the worst human rights records on the planet.

These crimes were certainly known to readers of the reports of Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, but not to readers of the U.S. press, which has devoted plenty of space to Iranian human rights violations — but only since 1979 when the Shah’s regime was overthrown. (To check the facts on this, read The U.S. Press and Iran, a carefully documented study by Mansour Farhang and William Dorman.)

None of this is a departure from the norm. The United States, as is well known, holds the world championship title in regime change and Israel is no laggard either. The most destructive of its invasions of Lebanon in 1982 was explicitly aimed at regime change, as well as at securing its hold on the occupied territories. The pretexts offered were thin indeed and collapsed at once. That, too, is not unusual and pretty much independent of the nature of the society — from the laments in the Declaration of Independence about the “merciless Indian savages” to Hitler’s defense of Germany from the “wild terror” of the Poles.

No serious analyst believes that Iran would ever use, or even threaten to use, a nuclear weapon if it had one, and so face instant destruction. There is, however, real concern that a nuclear weapon might fall into jihadi hands — not thanks to Iran, but via U.S. ally Pakistan. In the journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, two leading Pakistani nuclear scientists, Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mian, write that increasing fears of “militants seizing nuclear weapons or materials and unleashing nuclear terrorism [have led to]… the creation of a dedicated force of over 20,000 troops to guard nuclear facilities. There is no reason to assume, however, that this force would be immune to the problems associated with the units guarding regular military facilities,” which have frequently suffered attacks with “insider help.” In brief, the problem is real, just displaced to Iran thanks to fantasies concocted for other reasons.

Other concerns about the Iranian threat include its role as “the world’s leading supporter of terrorism,” which primarily refers to its support for Hezbollah and Hamas. Both of those movements emerged in resistance to U.S.-backed Israeli violence and aggression, which vastly exceeds anything attributed to these villains, let alone the normal practice of the hegemonic power whose global drone assassination campaign alone dominates (and helps to foster) international terrorism.

Those two villainous Iranian clients also share the crime of winning the popular vote in the only free elections in the Arab world. Hezbollah is guilty of the even more heinous crime of compelling Israel to withdraw from its occupation of southern Lebanon, which took place in violation of U.N. Security Council orders dating back decades and involved an illegal regime of terror and sometimes extreme violence. Whatever one thinks of Hezbollah, Hamas, or other beneficiaries of Iranian support, Iran hardly ranks high in support of terror worldwide.

“Fueling Instability”

Another concern, voiced at the U.N. by U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, is the “instability that Iran fuels beyond its nuclear program.” The U.S. will continue to scrutinize this misbehavior, she declared. In that, she echoed the assurance Defense Secretary Ashton Carter offered while standing on Israel’s northern border that “we will continue to help Israel counter Iran’s malign influence” in supporting Hezbollah, and that the U.S. reserves the right to use military force against Iran as it deems appropriate.

The way Iran “fuels instability” can be seen particularly dramatically in Iraq where, among other crimes, it alone at once came to the aid of Kurds defending themselves from the invasion of Islamic State militants, even as it is building a $2.5 billion power plant in the southern port city of Basra to try to bring electrical power back to the level reached before the 2003 invasion. Ambassador Power’s usage is, however, standard: Thanks to that invasion, hundreds of thousands were killed and millions of refugees generated, barbarous acts of torture were committed — Iraqis have compared the destruction to the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century — leaving Iraq the unhappiest country in the world according to WIN/Gallup polls. Meanwhile, sectarian conflict was ignited, tearing the region to shreds and laying the basis for the creation of the monstrosity that is ISIS. And all of that is called “stabilization.”

Only Iran’s shameful actions, however, “fuel instability.” The standard usage sometimes reaches levels that are almost surreal, as when liberal commentator James Chace, former editor of Foreign Affairs, explained that the U.S. sought to “destabilize a freely elected Marxist government in Chile” because “we were determined to seek stability” under the Pinochet dictatorship.

Others are outraged that Washington should negotiate at all with a “contemptible” regime like Iran’s with its horrifying human rights record and urge instead that we pursue “an American-sponsored alliance between Israel and the Sunni states.” So writes Leon Wieseltier, contributing editor to the venerable liberal journal the Atlantic, who can barely conceal his visceral hatred for all things Iranian. With a straight face, this respected liberal intellectual recommends that Saudi Arabia, which makes Iran look like a virtual paradise, and Israel, with its vicious crimes in Gaza and elsewhere, should ally to teach that country good behavior. Perhaps the recommendation is not entirely unreasonable when we consider the human rights records of the regimes the U.S. has imposed and supported throughout the world.

Though the Iranian government is no doubt a threat to its own people, it regrettably breaks no records in this regard, not descending to the level of favored U.S. allies. That, however, cannot be the concern of Washington, and surely not Tel Aviv or Riyadh.

It might also be useful to recall — surely Iranians do — that not a day has passed since 1953 in which the U.S. was not harming Iranians. After all, as soon as they overthrew the hated U.S.-imposed regime of the Shah in 1979, Washington put its support behind Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who would, in 1980, launch a murderous assault on their country. President Reagan went so far as to deny Saddam’s major crime, his chemical warfare assault on Iraq’s Kurdish population, which he blamed on Iran instead. When Saddam was tried for crimes under U.S. auspices, that horrendous crime, as well as others in which the U.S. was complicit, was carefully excluded from the charges, which were restricted to one of his minor crimes, the murder of 148 Shi’ites in 1982, a footnote to his gruesome record.

Saddam was such a valued friend of Washington that he was even granted a privilege otherwise accorded only to Israel. In 1987, his forces were allowed to attack a U.S. naval vessel, the USS Stark, with impunity, killing 37 crewmen. (Israel had acted similarly in its 1967 attack on the USS Liberty.) Iran pretty much conceded defeat shortly after, when the U.S. launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian ships and oil platforms in Iranian territorial waters. That operation culminated when the USS Vincennes, under no credible threat, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in Iranian airspace, with 290 killed — and the subsequent granting of a Legion of Merit award to the commander of the Vincennes for “exceptionally meritorious conduct” and for maintaining a “calm and professional atmosphere” during the period when the attack on the airliner took place. Comments philosopher Thill Raghu, “We can only stand in awe of such display of American exceptionalism!”

After the war ended, the U.S. continued to support Saddam Hussein, Iran’s primary enemy. President George H.W. Bush even invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the U.S. for advanced training in weapons production, an extremely serious threat to Iran. Sanctions against that country were intensified, including against foreign firms dealing with it, and actions were initiated to bar it from the international financial system.

In recent years the hostility has extended to sabotage, the murder of nuclear scientists (presumably by Israel), and cyberwar, openly proclaimed with pride. The Pentagon regards cyberwar as an act of war, justifying a military response, as does NATO, which affirmed in September 2014 that cyber attacks may trigger the collective defense obligations of the NATO powers — when we are the target that is, not the perpetrators.

“The Prime Rogue State”

It is only fair to add that there have been breaks in this pattern. President George W. Bush, for example, offered several significant gifts to Iran by destroying its major enemies, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. He even placed Iran’s Iraqi enemy under its influence after the U.S. defeat, which was so severe that Washington had to abandon its officially declared goals of establishing permanent military bases (“enduring camps”) and ensuring that U.S. corporations would have privileged access to Iraq’s vast oil resources.

Do Iranian leaders intend to develop nuclear weapons today? We can decide for ourselves how credible their denials are, but that they had such intentions in the past is beyond question. After all, it was asserted openly on the highest authority and foreign journalists were informed that Iran would develop nuclear weapons “certainly, and sooner than one thinks.” The father of Iran’s nuclear energy program and former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization was confident that the leadership’s plan “was to build a nuclear bomb.” The CIA also reported that it had “no doubt” Iran would develop nuclear weapons if neighboring countries did (as they have).

All of this was, of course, under the Shah, the “highest authority” just quoted and at a time when top U.S. officials — Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Henry Kissinger, among others — were urging him to proceed with his nuclear programs and pressuring universities to accommodate these efforts. Under such pressures, my own university, MIT, made a deal with the Shah to admit Iranian students to the nuclear engineering program in return for grants he offered and over the strong objections of the student body, but with comparably strong faculty support (in a meeting that older faculty will doubtless remember well).

Asked later why he supported such programs under the Shah but opposed them more recently, Kissinger responded honestly that Iran was an ally then.

Putting aside absurdities, what is the real threat of Iran that inspires such fear and fury? A natural place to turn for an answer is, again, U.S. intelligence. Recall its analysis that Iran poses no military threat, that its strategic doctrines are defensive, and that its nuclear programs (with no effort to produce bombs, as far as can be determined) are “a central part of its deterrent strategy.”

Who, then, would be concerned by an Iranian deterrent? The answer is plain: the rogue states that rampage in the region and do not want to tolerate any impediment to their reliance on aggression and violence. In the lead in this regard are the U.S. and Israel, with Saudi Arabia trying its best to join the club with its invasion of Bahrain (to support the crushing of a reform movement there) and now its murderous assault on Yemen, accelerating a growing humanitarian catastrophe in that country.

For the United States, the characterization is familiar. Fifteen years ago, the prominent political analyst Samuel Huntington, professor of the science of government at Harvard, warned in the establishment journal Foreign Affairs that for much of the world the U.S. was “becoming the rogue superpower… the single greatest external threat to their societies.” Shortly after, his words were echoed by Robert Jervis, the president of the American Political Science Association: “In the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States.” As we have seen, global opinion supports this judgment by a substantial margin.

Furthermore, the mantle is worn with pride. That is the clear meaning of the insistence of the political class that the U.S. reserves the right to resort to force if it unilaterally determines that Iran is violating some commitment. This policy is of long standing, especially for liberal Democrats, and by no means restricted to Iran. The Clinton Doctrine, for instance, confirmed that the U.S. was entitled to resort to the “unilateral use of military power” even to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources,” let alone alleged “security” or “humanitarian” concerns. Adherence to various versions of this doctrine has been well confirmed in practice, as need hardly be discussed among people willing to look at the facts of current history.

These are among the critical matters that should be the focus of attention in analyzing the nuclear deal at Vienna, whether it stands or is sabotaged by Congress, as it may well be.

Noam Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A TomDispatch regular, among his recent books are Hegemony or Survival, Failed States, Power Systems, Hopes and Prospects, and Masters of Mankind.

20 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

By Arthur Neslen

Islamic leaders have issued a clarion call to 1.6bn Muslims around the world to work towards phasing out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and a 100% renewable energy strategy.

The grand mufti’s of Lebanon and Uganda endorsed the Islamic declaration on climate change, along with prominent Islamic scholars and teachers from 20 countries, at a symposium in Istanbul.

Their collective statement makes several detailed political demands likely to increase pressure on Gulf states ahead of the Paris climate summit in December.

“We particularly call on the well-off nations and oil-producing states to lead the way in phasing out their greenhouse gas emissions as early as possible and no later than the middle of the century,” it says.

Clear emissions reductions targets and monitoring systems should be agreed in Paris, the statement says, along with “generous financial and technical support” for poorer countries to help wean them off fossil fuels.

So far, Morocco is the only Middle Eastern country to present an emissions-cutting climate pledge ahead of the summit. But Hakima el-Haite, the country’s environment minister said that the declaration could help to change mindsets and behaviours around climate change in some Gulf states.

“It is an emotive call for a spiritual fight against climate change that will be very important for Muslims,” she told the Guardian. “It speaks to issues of fairness, accountability, differentiation and adaptation in the Paris agreement. I think that the right way to make this sort of call is through the Qur’an.”

El-Haite predicted that Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries would sign up to a climate agreement in Paris but said that international support would first be needed to address the “financial gap” involved in transiting from fossil fuels to renewables-based economies.

The Istanbul declaration was made by Islamic figures from Bosnia to Indonesia and follows a ground-breaking Papal encyclical last month. Heads of state, corporations, and all peoples are addressed in the Istanbul call, which carries a universal and startlingly bleak message.

“We are in danger of ending life as we know it on our planet,” the statement says. “This current rate of climate change cannot be sustained, and the earth’s fine equilibrium (mīzān) may soon be lost.”

“What will future generations say of us, who leave them a degraded planet as our legacy?” the religious leaders ask. “How will we face our Lord and Creator?”

Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) which represents 210 million Muslims welcomed the statement, saying: “we are committed to to implementing all [its] recommendations. The climate crisis needs to be tackled through collaborative efforts.”

The MUI has already issued one environmental fatwa against rogue mining operations and Syamsuddin reportedly consulted with Indonesia’s environment minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar over the weekend, before attending the symposium.

Unlike the Catholic church, Islam is a decentralised religion with no unitary authority, and the final statement addressed a range of secular concerns with calls for divestment, a circular economy, and tempered growth rates.

“To chase after unlimited economic growth in a planet that is finite and already overloaded is not viable. Growth must be pursued wisely and in moderation,” one passage reads.

Another calls for corporations and the business sector to “shoulder the consequences of their profit-making activities and to take a visibly more active role in reducing their carbon footprint and other forms of impact upon the natural environment”.

The United Nations’ climate chief, Christiana Figueres said that overall, the declaration showed how a clean energy future rested on a shift in the value attached to the world’s environment and people. “Islam’s teachings, which emphasize the duty of humans as stewards of the Earth and the teacher’s role as an appointed guide, illuminate pathways to take the right action on climate change,” she said.

The declaration on climate change was also welcomed by Cardinal Peter Turkson, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, “with great joy, and in a spirit of solidarity”. Turkson pledged that the Catholic Church would work with the declaration’s authors to protect their common earthly home.

Organisers say that one religious scholar from Saudi Arabia was among the 60 participants at the meeting but that none of the invited Shia leaders attended.

Arthur Neslen is the Europe environment correspondent at the Guardian. He has previously worked for the BBC, the Economist, Al Jazeera, and EurActiv, where his journalism won environmental awards. He has written two books about Israeli and Palestinian identity

18 August 2015

By Paul Craig Roberts

It appears that the Russian government has made a mistake with regard to its approach to the breakaway Republics consisting of Russian peoples in former Russian territories who reject being governed by the anti-Russian coup government installed in Kiev by Washington. The Russian government could have ended the crisis by accepting the requests of these territories to be reunited with Russia. Instead, the Russian government opted for a diplomatic approach—hands off Donetsk and Luhansk—and this diplomacy has now failed. The coup government in Kiev never had any intention of keeping the Minsk agreement, and Washington had no intention of permitting the Minsk agreement to be kept. Apparently, even the realistic Putin succumbed to wishful thinking.

The Minsk agreement, which the Russian government backed for diplomatic reasons, has served to allow Washington time to train, equip, and mobilize much stronger forces now preparing to resume the attack on Donetsk and Luhansk. If these Republics are overrun, Vladimir Putin and Russia itself will lose all credibility. Whether Putin realizes it or not, Russia’s credibility is at stake on the Donetsk frontier, not in diplomatic meetings with Washington’s European vassals who are powerless to act outside of Washington’s control. If Washington prevails in Ukraine, Russia and China can forget about the BRICS and Eurasian trade groups offering alternatives to Washington’s economic hegemony. Washington intends to ensure its hegemony by prevailing in Ukraine.

In his description of the situation, the leader of the Donetsk Republic appears to be worn down by having lost the advantages over Ukraine that Donetsk had prior to the failed Minsk agreement: http://russia-insider.com/en/moscows-top-man-donbass-says-all-out-war-will-start-soon-video/ri9255 Perhaps he is thinking of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when Cassius says to Brutus, “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries.”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

19 August, 2015
Paulcraigroberts.org