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By Richard Vodra JD CFP

08 January, 2013

@Advisor Perspectives

A few weeks ago, John Mauldin called fracking a “happy solution” that will produce jobs, potentially solve our trade deficit and generate new tax revenue, though energy prices may rise in the process. But how excited should we be about the “shale revolution”?

Over the last few years, we have seen increasing enthusiasm – bordering on hype – over the idea that horizontal drilling plus hydraulic fracturing of shale rock to produce oil and gas, commonly referred to as “fracking,” is changing everything. The US is about to be the leading oil-producing nation again, says the International Energy Agency. We have 100 years of abundant gas supplies, says President Obama. In the recent election, thanks to these developments, the candidates were actually debating how soon the United States would be “energy independent.”

Largely due to fracking in North Dakota and Texas, US oil production has grown from five million barrels per day (bpd) in 2008 to about 6.5 million bpd now, though that is still much less than the total amount we use. Natural gas production over that time has risen from 21 trillion cubic feet per year to about 24.7 trillion cubic feet today, led by fracking for gas in Texas, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania. After decades of declining production, these reverses are big news.

That’s indisputable. The question is “how big?”

Some background

First, a bit of geology. Oil and natural gas are ancient plant life that has been transformed by millions of years of pressure into hydrocarbons and captured in rock formations rather than escaping into the air. When these pressure-cooker carbons end up with a single carbon atom, the resulting methane is what we call natural gas. When there are two, three, or four carbons, the resulting “natural gas liquids” have mostly industrial uses, and while they are often included in statistical reports of oil production, they are not “oil.” Molecules with more carbon atoms are liquids that are mostly used for transportation fuel – what we call oil. Refineries sort out all these molecules and remove various impurities. When gas and oil are found in large quantities in sandstone or other porous rock, we call that “conventional” oil or gas, because the fossil fuel can flow through pores in the rocks to reach a well. (Note that “gas” as I’m using it in this article refers to “natural gas” or methane, not to “gasoline.”)

Sometimes, though, the gas is locked up in the shale rock where it formed, and it won’t move, or the oil is so thick or impartially “cooked,” that we have to use extreme “unconventional” technologies to get at it. Worldwide production of conventional oil has been on a plateau since about 2005, so we have turned to “unconventional” production to keep the wheels of the world economy turning. The Canadian tar sands, for example, are a major “unconventional” oil source.

So is fracking of shale.

Shale is a very solid rock that forms numerous thin layers. When gas is present, it is found in pores barely larger than a single gas molecule. Oil engineers have combined several technologies developed over decades to drill horizontally along a shale layer, rather than vertically through it, and to apply a high-pressure mix of water, chemicals and sand through holes in the drill pipe to shatter, or fracture, the shale, allowing the gas or oil to move to the pipe and up to the surface. Fracked wells in oil country commonly produce a mixture of oil, gas, and natural gas liquids. (Some wells target gas alone; these are called “dry gas” wells.) It turns out there is a lot of oil and gas in those rocks, if you’re willing to invest the money and energy necessary to get it, and, with technological changes, what couldn’t be extracted economically a decade ago can be today.

Fracking today

So how is this working out in the real world? Let’s look at some of the impacts.

Oil and gas are priced on a spot basis, based on today’s mix of supply and demand, and prices are very volatile. Because natural gas is hard to transport globally, the American price is independent of the world price, and currently is much lower. Oil, in contrast, is traded around the world and normally has a much more uniform price globally. The large increase in US gas production caused US gas prices to collapse from over $13 per thousand cubic feet in 2008 to under $2 briefly this year, and they remain under $3.50. At such low prices, gas is cheaper than coal for use in electricity plants, and companies are replacing old coal plants with new gas-powered plants. Even a nuclear plant in Wisconsin was shut down in favor of gas generation. If gas prices go up, however, such decisions could prove hasty and shortsighted.

The problem is that no one can make money producing gas at $3 per thousand cubic feet. The actual break-even price for shale gas production is estimated to be in the $6 to $8 range. The shale boom started when gas was higher than that, so companies eagerly paid for leasing rights and access to drilling rigs. Leases commonly require drilling to start within a few years or the lease is void, so there was a strong incentive to start production and secure the well rights. When everybody did that at once, a surplus of gas hit the market, prices collapsed, and drilling for dry gas abruptly slowed.

Two aspects of shale production make it radically different from conventional production. First, it takes a lot more energy (including many miles of steel tubing per well, for example) to extract energy out of these wells. Traditional wells have a ratio of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) of 10- or 20-to-one, or an energy cost factor of 5 to 10%. The EROEI with fracking is in the range of 5- or 10-to-one, or a cost factor of 10 to 20%. Professor Charles Hall of the State University of New York, a recognized expert in the field, claims that modern civilization will have trouble functioning with an average EROEI under 10-15, so shale oil and gas alone could not support our civilization at its current standard-of-living. EROEI roughly correlates with financial cost, and a typical fracking oil well in Texas now costs over $10 million to drill, compared to less than $1 million for a conventional well.

The other thing about extraction from shale is that it ends quickly. A conventional well’s production declines at about 5-8% per year, and it can remain productive for decades. By contrast, the first-year decline in shale wells is over 60%, and about 90% of a well’s production occurs in the first five years. That creates a “drilling treadmill,” as new wells are needed simply to replace production from wells drilled a few years before.

Further, studies by Arthur Berman, David Hughes, and Rafael Sandrea have analyzed well-by-well data from existing mature oil and gas shale fields and concluded that the ultimate production from these sources is likely to be much more limited than optimists claim. While fields are large, covering many counties or even states, most production comes from a few “sweet spots,” where drilling opportunities are limited by quality acreage. While the Bakken field in North Dakota is producing about 750,000 barrels per day now, and common projections are for production to reach two million bpd in a few years, both Hughes and Sandrea project a maximum of less than one million bpd within five years, and a sharp decline after that.

That is disheartening, since a lot of current policymaking assumes that abundant and cheap gas and oil will be ours for many years to come, and the problem is what we will do with it all. Oil companies are lobbying to lift restrictions on exporting American crude oil and to build gasexporting facilities. It has been suggested that one purpose of those proposals is to link our market to the (higher-priced) world market. By contrast, companies building new electricity generating facilities and designing new trucks are counting on cheap gas (under $6) in the future, and they are likely to be disappointed.

The shale boom has enabled – or perhaps, some say, was itself enabled by – financial wizardry on Wall Street. Recent changes in how the SEC allows corporations to report their oil and gas reserves have made shale holdings a valuable tool for supporting stock prices, leading to a wave of fee-generating M and A activity. Additionally, some firms are securitizing packages of leases, bringing back memories of subprime mortgages. With low interest rates, capital is plentiful, and those who wanted to explore these newly productive oilfields did not have trouble raising money, at least to get the shale boom started. Once again, the opportunities for gain in the financial economy overrode the realities of the “real” economy.

Thus, shale oil and gas may be both less plentiful and less affordable than many assume, and should not form the basis for long-term assumptions about energy independence or a new economy.

Environmental issues

Between ongoing droughts in the Midwest and superstorm Sandy in New York, more Americans are accepting the idea that the climate is changing for the worse, and that human beings and our fossil fuels are largely responsible. One attraction of natural gas is that it produces less CO2 at the point of use than coal does, so replacing coal with gas seems to many people like prudent change.

But since a lot of methane is released in the fracking process, there is considerable dispute about what the net benefit of gas really is. Moreover, the growing use of gas in the US is not reducing the production of coal but rather is facilitating more exports of coal to China, India, and Europe. While this helps our trade balance, it does not do much for climate control.

One long-term strategy for limiting climate change is to replace fossil fuels with “renewable energy,” mostly wind and solar-based systems, while also using the energy we have more efficiently. But such alternatives are not as attractive as fossil fuels from either a cost or reliability perspective (if they were, we would already be using them), even though they may be necessary in the future. It normally takes decades for a society to transition to a new energy system, and cheap gas is making it hard to get support for these new technologies (or for nuclear, which is even more expensive than renewable energy sources).

And what about more immediate environmental concerns? The most common objection to fracking is not the false promises discussed above but its impact on the world we live in. In John Mauldin’s piece, he said that, according to “true experts, properly done, horizontal drilling and fracking pose no danger to the environment.” (Of course, “properly done,” there would be no automobile accidents or outbreaks of food poisoning, either.) Here are a few legitimate concerns that have been raised about fracking’s environmental effects:

>> Fracking uses millions of gallons of water per well, most of which is unusable thereafter. There is competition for water rights between oil companies on one hand and farmers and ranchers on the other. Last summer Pennsylvania suspended fracking for a while, due to low stream flows.

>> The mix of chemicals used in fracking is treated as proprietary, is not subject to much regulation, and therefore is not tested for environmental safety before use. Not surprisingly, when leakages and spills have occurred, they have harmed people and farm animals.

>> Possible pollution of drinking water is a matter of considerable debate. Although fracking is normally done well below the water table, there are natural fissures in the rock that can allow chemicals to migrate. The disposal of used fracking water is another major source of concern, although some operators are experimenting with ways to recycle and reuse the fracking water.

>> Earthquakes in areas that don’t commonly have them, including Ohio and Oklahoma, have been linked to fracking activities nearby.

>> The shale production process requires thousands of wells, and each well requires dozens of heavy truck trips to carry the drilling equipment, pipe, and water and chemicals to the well site, often over rural roads not built for such intense traffic. In many cases it is not clear whose responsibility it is to pay for the road damage.

>> The impact on a community of a blizzard of drilling activity is very disruptive, and recovery when the oil folks leave town in a year or three may be quite difficult. When it requires $15 per hour to get people to work in a fast food restaurant, as Mauldin describes in his story, people living on fixed incomes or not participating in the drilling boom will be adversely affected.

>> In contrast to long-lived conventional wells, as I noted above, shale wells will likely have a short productive life. Who will be responsible for the long-term monitoring of the spent wells? The record of other extractive industries does not give cause for much optimism.

Creating a happier solution

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, recently told the Wall Street Journal that our American system of private ownership of mineral rights, the fact that we have independent drilling companies, and our mature system of refined rules and experienced industry personnel “ensures that all natural resources are fully developed” in this country. Whatever the concerns, in other words, it is likely that extraction of oil and gas from shale deposits will continue. It is also likely that it will not turn out to be the “happy solution” that Mauldin and others want to see.

This boom (or is it a bubble?) creates a unique opportunity. The burst of new oil and gas is like winning a lottery. As most financial advisors know, sudden wealth can only enable long-term security if serious planning is involved at the outset. That’s what we should be doing now.

We need a new energy system, both because climate impacts are growing and fuel supplies are limited. Building it out will require a lot of capital and extensive labor – all fueled by a lot of energy – before the new electricity starts to flow. Rather than seeing how fast we can use up our bounty with cheaper electricity, business as usual, and disregard for the consequences, we should invest this one-time abundance to promote long-term low-carbon prosperity. If we do, once prices are back up and production has dropped back to normal levels we will have something to base an economy on. If we don’t, we’ll just end up with a shale oil and gas hangover and nothing to show for our binge.

Richard Vodra, J.D., CFPR, is the President of Worldview Two Planning of McLean, VA. He recently retired from a 27-year career as a personal financial planner. He is a member of the Board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA). He can be reached at rvodra@worldviewtwo.com.

 

By Herman Daly

08 January, 2013

@ The Daly News

Foreword to Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources, a book by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill (published by Berrett-Koehler in the U.S. and Earthscan in the U.K.)

I have long wanted to write a book on the subject of “enough” but never did. Now I don’t have to because Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill have done it in a clearer and more accessible way than I could have. Therefore it is a special pleasure for me to write a foreword calling attention to their important contribution.

Enough should be the central concept in economics. Enough means “sufficient for a good life.” This raises the perennial philosophical question, “What is a good life?” That is not easy to answer, but at a minimum we can say that the current answer of “having ever more” is wrong. It is worth working hard and sacrificing some things to have enough; but it is stupid to work even harder to have more than enough. And to get more than enough not by hard work, but by exploitation of others, is immoral.

Living on enough is closely related to sharing, a virtue which today is often referred to as “class warfare.” Real class warfare, however, will not result from sharing, but from the greed of elites who promote growth because they capture nearly all of the benefits from it, while “sharing” only the costs.

Enough is the theme of the story of God’s gift of manna to the ancient Hebrews in the wilderness. Food in the form of manna arrived like dew on the grass every morning and was enough for the day. If people tried to gather more than enough and accumulate it, it would spoil and go to waste. So God’s gift was wrapped up in the condition of enough — sufficiency and sharing — an idea later amplified in the Lord’s Prayer, “give us this day our daily bread.” Not bread for the rest of our lives or excess bread with which to buy whatever luxuries we may covet, but enough bread to sustain and enjoy fully the gift of life itself.

This story from Exodus has parallels in the thoughts of pioneer ecological economist and Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Frederick Soddy. Soddy observed that humanity lives off the revenue of current sunshine that is gathered each day by plants with the aid of soil and water. Unlike manna some of the sunshine was accumulated and stored by geologic processes, and we have consumed it lavishly with mixed results. Today we also try to accumulate surplus solar income and exchange it for a permanent lien on future solar income. We then expect this surplus, converted into debt in the bank, to grow at compound interest. But the future solar-based revenue, against which the debt is a lien, cannot keep up with the mathematics of exponential growth, giving rise to debt repudiation and depression.

For the Hebrews in the wilderness the manna economy was designed with “enough” as a built-in feature. Our economy does not have that automatic regulation. We have to recognize the value of enough and build it into our economic institutions and culture. Thanks to Dietz and O’Neill for helping us do that.

Herman Daly is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. He was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. He is closely associated with theories of a Steady state economy. He is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the NCSE Lifetime Achievement Award

By Franklin Lamb

08 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Damascus: Easy walking distance from this observer’s hotel near the city center, the Damascus Opera House, the site of yesterday’s Presidential address, was inaugurated in May of 2004 by the President and his wife, completing a project of his late father, Hafez, who actually planned the opera house in detail, but which had been put on hold since the late 1970’s. Located off Umayyad Square, the multipurpose culture center complex, presented its most recent opera, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s, The Marriage of Figaro, just months before the current crisis erupted.

The nearly 1,400 seating capacity Opera Theater was packed for yesterday’s presidential address, and as in the final scene of Mozart’s Opera, the conclusion of Bashar Assad’s performance was followed by, as Mozart wrote, “a night-long celebration” among many of his supporters here in Damascus. Basher Assad’s glory, as he tried to leave the stage last night and was swarmed by scores of admirers, may not have been that of Caesar’s, during the Gallic wars as the latter also portrayed a domestic crisis and challenge as a defensive struggle to save “Rome”. And granted, it is unlikely that Syria’s president will appear to his critics as posh as John Kennedy at Vienna’s Opera House. But the man connected with his audience (s) during his watershed speech. He excelled in delivery, content and, most critically, stating and advocating what he believes is his countryman’s case. While welcoming foreign advice on how to end the current crisis, he insisted that the Syrian people throughout their history of resistance to occupation and hegemony have rejected the orders from certain governments he referred to, in the current crisis, as the “masters of the puppets” who are every day causing death, destruction and deprivations across the Syrian Arab Republic. Admittedly sleep deprived, this observer, as he listened to Bashar Assad’s address was reminded of a Macbeth or Brutus soliloquy. I could not help but transpose in my mind Brutus’ plea in Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

“Who is here so rude or unpatriotic that would not be a Syrian? Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak–for him

I have not intentionally or unjustly wronged. I pause for a reply.”

Following his presidential address to the nation, one local journalist, who is sometimes critical of the regime, elaborated–in answer to my question about Assad’s apparent enduring popularity during this tragic period for people of Syria: “It’s true. And it’s partly due to the fact that he is modest, even humble– and well-educated in contrast to some regional monarchs who are essentially illiterate and uninterested in the world outside their fiefdoms palaces.” She continued, “Before the crisis it was not unusual to spot him, without a security convoy, driving himself around downtown, his car full of kids- doing errands or taking them out to eat-sometimes collecting them from school. You saw his almost boyish charm yesterday as he entered the hall and made his way down the aisle to the podium as he greeted members of the audience. As he departed he did not appear in a hurry as he shook hands. Bashar Assad obviously enjoys being among people and is not at all a sullen remote type personality as some critics wrongly portray him.” Following the speech, when the lovely chamber maid who daily spruces up my hotel room dropped by in early evening to do something, I was reading and watching the news. They showed a clip of the president delivering his noontime speech. She lite up when she saw Bashar, spontaneously walked across the room, wrapped her arms around the TV set and hugged it while kissing the screen. I noticed that the lady’s hands were wet and became fearful that the dear woman might get electrocuted! One well known politically connected Sheik in Damascus offered his view last night to this observer that Assad’s message was to the Syrian people and to his country’s foreign friends and to those who are neutral–and not to his governments enemies. He also suggested that the President will deliver two more speeches in the near future, the next one perhaps having a “FDR fireside chat” format. The Sunni Sheik referred to yesterday’s speech as the first of three “victory” speeches he expected to be delivered. He also spoke about the UAE and Saudi Arabia in relation to what was happening in Syria and the fact that they are experiencing challenges of their own. In the case of the Saudi Kingdom, and against the backdrop of increased Iran-Saudi consultations regarding Syria, the ill health of King Abdullah and the evident succession power struggle which has intensified recently, with some of the royal family potentates reportedly being strongly opposed to the current campaign to undermine the Assad regime. The Syrian government, despite its detractors, is seen by many in the Gulf countries as being pedigree Arab nationalists with a history of mutual respect for other countries. The Sheik also sees signs of the Obama administration backing off from its covert war against Syria partly due to the fractured and often coherent message coming from various spokesman of the misnomered “coalition.” Mr. Assad, in what historians and Middle East analysts may well dub an historic speech, offered a new plan to his countrymen, friends and foes alike, and to the international community to immediately end the crisis

It includes, in sequential order:

* foreign countries to stop financing the rebels;

* Syria’s government putting down its arms and declaring an amnesty;

* a national conference and dialogue;

* the drafting of a constitution approved by referendum;

* a coalition government, presumably until the holding of elections scheduled for 2014.

One Congressional staffer on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee emailed late today that the Obama administration may well be willing to accept Bashar Assad’s “Damascus Opera House” formula given the fast changing geopolitical reality the region and the military stalemate on the ground in Syria. Both facts suggesting that there is no realistic alternative to the current elected government or that there is much of a realistic prospect that the regime will throw in the towel or collapse anytime soon.

The Congressional staffer, who works on US-Middle East issues, also believes that the incoming Secretary of State, John Kerrey and the likely new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who will face a tough Senate confirmation fight, but will likely survive it, would go along. In contract to President Assad’s speech this morning, one of the leaders of the so-called opposition, George Sabra, did not appear capable of offering much to aid the process of ending the current crisis in Syria. Said Mr. Sabra, “No one could possibly think about dialogue or working with this regime in any way. It is not a possibility. It is out of the question.”

This may not be the evolving international view.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and can be reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com

 

 

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

07 January 2013

@ Project Syndicate

NEW YORK – In the shadow of the euro crisis and America’s fiscal cliff, it is easy to ignore the global economy’s long-term problems. But, while we focus on immediate concerns, they continue to fester, and we overlook them at our peril.

The most serious is global warming. While the global economy’s weak performance has led to a corresponding slowdown in the increase in carbon emissions, it amounts to only a short respite. And we are far behind the curve: Because we have been so slow to respond to climate change, achieving the targeted limit of a two-degree (centigrade) rise in global temperature, will require sharp reductions in emissions in the future.

Some suggest that, given the economic slowdown, we should put global warming on the backburner. On the contrary, retrofitting the global economy for climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth.

At the same time, the pace of technological progress and globalization necessitates rapid structural changes in both developed and developing countries alike. Such changes can be traumatic, and markets often do not handle them well.

Just as the Great Depression arose in part from the difficulties in moving from a rural, agrarian economy to an urban, manufacturing one, so today’s problems arise partly from the need to move from manufacturing to services. New firms must be created, and modern financial markets are better at speculation and exploitation than they are at providing funds for new enterprises, especially small and medium-size companies.

Moreover, making the transition requires investments in human capital that individuals often cannot afford. Among the services that people want are health and education, two sectors in which government naturally plays an important role (owing to inherent market imperfections in these sectors and concerns about equity).

Before the 2008 crisis, there was much talk of global imbalances, and the need for the trade-surplus countries, like Germany and China, to increase their consumption. That issue has not gone away; indeed, Germany’s failure to address its chronic external surplus is part and parcel of the euro crisis. China’s surplus, as a percentage of GDP, has fallen, but the long-term implications have yet to play out.

America’s overall trade deficit will not disappear without an increase in domestic savings and a more fundamental change in global monetary arrangements. The former would exacerbate the country’s slowdown, and neither change is in the cards. As China increases its consumption, it will not necessarily buy more goods from the United States. In fact, it is more likely to increase consumption of non-traded goods – like health care and education – resulting in profound disturbances to the global supply chain, especially in countries that had been supplying the inputs to China’s manufacturing exporters.

Finally, there is a worldwide crisis in inequality. The problem is not only that the top income groups are getting a larger share of the economic pie, but also that those in the middle are not sharing in economic growth, while in many countries poverty is increasing. In the US, equality of opportunity has been exposed as a myth.

While the Great Recession has exacerbated these trends, they were apparent long before its onset. Indeed, I (and others) have argued that growing inequality is one of the reasons for the economic slowdown, and is partly a consequence of the global economy’s deep, ongoing structural changes.

An economic and political system that does not deliver for most citizens is one that is not sustainable in the long run. Eventually, faith in democracy and the market economy will erode, and the legitimacy of existing institutions and arrangements will be called into question.

The good news is that the gap between the emerging and advanced countries has narrowed greatly in the last three decades. Nonetheless, hundreds of millions of people remain in poverty, and there has been only a little progress in reducing the gap between the least developed countries and the rest.

Here, unfair trade agreements – including the persistence of unjustifiable agricultural subsidies, which depress the prices upon which the income of many of the poorest depend – have played a role. The developed countries have not lived up to their promise in Doha in November 2001 to create a pro-development trade regime, or to their pledge at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005 to provide significantly more assistance to the poorest countries.

The market will not, on its own, solve any of these problems. Global warming is a quintessential “public goods” problem. To make the structural transitions that the world needs, we need governments to take a more active role – at a time when demands for cutbacks are increasing in Europe and the US.

As we struggle with today’s crises, we should be asking whether we are responding in ways that exacerbate our long-term problems. The path marked out by the deficit hawks and austerity advocates both weakens the economy today and undermines future prospects. The irony is that, with insufficient aggregate demand the major source of global weakness today, there is an alternative: invest in our future, in ways that help us to address simultaneously the problems of global warming, global inequality and poverty, and the necessity of structural change.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book is The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future.

By Noam Chomsky,

@ ZNet

06 January 13

Reporting on the final U.S. presidential campaign debate, on foreign policy, The Wall Street Journal observed that “the only country mentioned more (than Israel) was Iran, which is seen by most nations in the Middle East as the gravest security threat to the region.”

The two candidates agreed that a nuclear Iran is the gravest threat to the region, if not the world, as Romney explicitly maintained, reiterating a conventional view.

On Israel, the candidates vied in declaring their devotion to it, but Israeli officials were nevertheless unsatisfied. They had “hoped for more ‘aggressive’ language from Mr. Romney,” according to the reporters. It was not enough that Romney demanded that Iran not be permitted to “reach a point of nuclear capability.”

Arabs were dissatisfied too, because Arab fears about Iran were “debated through the lens of Israeli security instead of the region’s,” while Arab concerns were largely ignored – again the conventional treatment.

The Journal article, like countless others on Iran, leaves critical questions unanswered, among them: Who exactly sees Iran as the gravest security threat? And what do Arabs (and most of the world) think can be done about the threat, whatever they take it to be?

The first question is easily answered. The “Iranian threat” is overwhelmingly a Western obsession, shared by Arab dictators, though not Arab populations.

As numerous polls have shown, although citizens of Arab countries generally dislike Iran, they do not regard it as a very serious threat. Rather, they perceive the threat to be Israel and the United States; and many, sometimes considerable majorities, regard Iranian nuclear weapons as a counter to these threats.

In high places in the U.S., some concur with the Arab populations’ perception, among them Gen. Lee Butler, former head of the Strategic Command. In 1998 he said, “It is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East,” one nation, Israel, should have a powerful nuclear weapons arsenal, which “inspires other nations to do so.”

Still more dangerous is the nuclear-deterrent strategy of which Butler was a leading designer for many years. Such a strategy, he wrote in 2002, is “a formula for unmitigated catastrophe,” and he called on the United States and other nuclear powers to accept their commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to make “good faith” efforts to eliminate the plague of nuclear weapons.

Nations have a legal obligation to pursue such efforts seriously, the World Court ruled in 1996: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” In 2002, George W. Bush’s administration declared that the United States is not bound by the obligation.

A large majority of the world appears to share Arab views on the Iranian threat. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has vigorously supported Iran’s right to enrich uranium, most recently at its summit meeting in Tehran last August.

India, the most populous member of the NAM, has found ways to evade the onerous U.S. financial sanctions on Iran. Plans are proceeding to link Iran’s Chabahar port, refurbished with Indian assistance, to Central Asia through Afghanistan. Trade relations are also reported to be increasing. Were it not for strong U.S. pressures, these natural relations would probably improve substantially.

China, which has observer status at the NAM, is doing much the same. China is expanding development projects westward, including initiatives to reconstitute the old Silk Road from China to Europe. A high-speed rail line connects China to Kazakhstan and beyond. The line will presumably reach Turkmenistan, with its rich energy resources, and will probably link with Iran and extend to Turkey and Europe.

China has also taken over the major Gwadar port in Pakistan, enabling it to obtain oil from the Middle East while avoiding the Hormuz and Malacca straits, which are clogged with traffic and U.S.-controlled. The Pakistani press reports that “Crude oil imports from Iran, the Arab Gulf states and Africa could be transported overland to northwest China through the port.”

At its Tehran summit in August, the NAM reiterated the long-standing proposal to mitigate or end the threat of nuclear weapons in the Middle East by establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. Moves in that direction are clearly the most straightforward and least onerous way to overcome the threats. They are supported by almost the entire world.

A fine opportunity to carry such measures forward arose last month, when an international conference was planned on the matter in Helsinki.

A conference did take place, but not the one that was planned. Only nongovernmental organizations participated in the alternate conference, hosted by the Peace Union of Finland. The planned international conference was canceled by Washington in November, shortly after Iran agreed to attend.

The Obama administration’s official reason was “political turmoil in the region and Iran’s defiant stance on nonproliferation,” the Associated Press reported, along with lack of consensus “on how to approach the conference.” That reason is the approved reference to the fact that the region’s only nuclear power, Israel, refused to attend, calling the request to do so “coercion.”

Apparently, the Obama administration is keeping to its earlier position that “conditions are not right unless all members of the region participate.” The United States will not allow measures to place Israel’s nuclear facilities under international inspection. Nor will the U.S. release information on “the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities.”

The Kuwait news agency immediately reported that “the Arab group of states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states agreed to continue lobbying for a conference on establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction.”

Last month, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to join the NPT, 174-6. Voting no was the usual contingent: Israel, the United States, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

A few days later, the United States carried out a nuclear weapons test, again banning international inspectors from the test site in Nevada. Iran protested, as did the mayor of Hiroshima and some Japanese peace groups.

Establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone of course requires the cooperation of the nuclear powers: In the Middle East, that would include the United States and Israel, which refuse. The same is true elsewhere. Such zones in Africa and the Pacific await implementation because the U.S. insists on maintaining and upgrading nuclear weapons bases on islands it controls.

As the NGO meeting convened in Helsinki, a dinner took place in New York under the auspices of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of the Israeli lobby.

According to an enthusiastic report on the “gala” in the Israeli press, Dennis Ross, Elliott Abrams and other “former top advisers to Obama and Bush” assured the audience that “the president will strike (Iran) next year if diplomacy doesn’t succeed” – a most attractive holiday gift.

Americans can hardly be aware of how diplomacy has once again failed, for a simple reason: Virtually nothing is reported in the United States about the fate of the most obvious way to address “the gravest threat” – Establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.

By Mary Shaw

06 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

January 11, 2013, will mark the 11th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

In 2009, just two days after taking office, President Obama issued an executive order calling for the Guantanamo prison to be closed within a year, and for detainees to be given fair trials in U.S. federal courts. But, since then, he has repeatedly signed Congress’s defense bills that keep Gitmo going, even while blaming Congress for his failure to keep his promise.

As several human rights groups have pointed out, until this changes and the prison is closed as promised, Gitmo will remain a big, black blemish on our national image, and a symbol of an immoral “war on terror” that will continue to serve as a recruiting tool for terrorists. It’s an atrocity that Obama inherited, but now he owns it.

“It’s not encouraging that the President continues to be willing to tie his own hands when it comes to closing Guantanamo,” said C. Dixon Osburn, Director of the Law and Security Program at Human Rights First. “The injustice of Guantanamo continues to serve as a stain on American global leadership on human rights.”

As long as Gitmo remains in business, so will the faulty military tribunals that are trying the detainees who are “lucky” enough to be charged and tried rather than held in legal limbo. According to Amnesty International, “[military commissions] have been specifically crafted to enable the U.S. authorities to circumvent protections that defendants would enjoy in a civilian courtroom. The fact that they have undergone multiple statutory and procedural revisions suggests that they fall short of the ‘regularly constituted court’ standard required by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.”

And these military trials are also less efficient, noted Laura Pitter, Counterterrorism Advisor for Human Rights Watch: “The attacks of 9/11 were a great tragedy for all Americans and without doubt a crime that must be prosecuted. But it’s disturbing to watch that horrific crime so dramatically change the U.S. system of justice – a source of pride for so many Americans. It’s more disturbing given that it’s not necessary or prudent. Federal courts have completed hundreds of terrorism cases since 9/11, while the commissions have dispensed with a mere seven.”

I strongly urge President Obama to think about this again as he starts his second term. As a constitutional attorney, he should know as well as anyone that ensuring true justice does not mean that you’re weak on terror. Indeed, it takes far more strength to do the right thing.

Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist, with a focus on politics, human rights, and social justice. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views appear regularly in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com

By Glenn Greenwald,

@Guardian UK

05 January 13

As the Pentagon’s former top lawyer urges that the war be viewed as finite, the US moves in the opposite direction.

Last month, outgoing pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson gave a speech at the Oxford Union and said that the War on Terror must, at some point, come to an end:

“Now that efforts by the US military against al-Qaida are in their 12th year, we must also ask ourselves: How will this conflict end? … ‘War’ must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. We must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the ‘new normal.’ Peace must be regarded as the norm toward which the human race continually strives…

    “There will come a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al-Qaida and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, that al-Qaida will be effectively destroyed.”

On Thursday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow interviewed Johnson, and before doing so, she opined as follows:

    “When does this thing we are in now end? And if it does not have an end – and I’m not speaking as a lawyer here, I am just speaking as a citizen who feels morally accountable for my country’s actions – if it does not have an end, then morally speaking it does not seem like it is a war. And then, our country is killing people and locking them up outside the traditional judicial system in a way I think we maybe cannot be forgiven for.”

It is precisely the intrinsic endlessness of this so-called “war” that is its most corrupting and menacing attribute, for the reasons Maddow explained. But despite the happy talk from Johnson, it is not ending soon. By its very terms, it cannot. And all one has to do is look at the words and actions of the Obama administration to know this.

In October, the Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported that the administration was instituting a “disposition matrix” to determine how terrorism suspects will be disposed of, all based on this fact: “among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade.” As Miller puts it: “That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”

 

The polices adopted by the Obama administration just over the last couple of years leave no doubt that they are accelerating, not winding down, the war apparatus that has been relentlessly strengthened over the last decade. In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has diluted decades-old Miranda warnings; codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil; plotted to relocate Guantanamo to Illinois; increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the camp; minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens; renewed the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years, as well as the Patriot Act, without a single reform; and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of indefinitely held detainees.

Does that sound to you like a government anticipating the end of the War on Terror any time soon? Or does it sound like one working feverishly to make their terrorism-justified powers of detention, surveillance, killing and secrecy permanent? About all of this, the ACLU’s Executive Director, Anthony Romero, provided the answer on Thursday: “President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day. His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended.”

There’s a good reason US officials are assuming the “War on Terror” will persist indefinitely: namely, their actions ensure that this occurs. The New York Times’ Matthew Rosenberg this morning examines what the US government seems to regard as the strange phenomenon of Afghan soldiers attacking US troops with increasing frequency, and in doing so, discovers a shocking reality: people end up disliking those who occupy and bomb their country:

    “Such insider attacks, by Afghan security forces on their Western allies, became ‘the signature violence of 2012’, in the words of one former American official. The surge in attacks has provided the clearest sign yet that Afghan resentment of foreigners is becoming unmanageable, and American officials have expressed worries about its disruptive effects on the training mission that is the core of the American withdrawal plan for 2014…

    “But behind it all, many senior coalition and Afghan officials are now concluding that after nearly 12 years of war, the view of foreigners held by many Afghans has come to mirror that of the Taliban. Hope has turned into hatred, and some will find a reason to act on those feelings.

    “‘A great percentage of the insider attacks have the enemy narrative – the narrative that the infidels have to be driven out – somewhere inside of them, but they aren’t directed by the enemy,’ said a senior coalition officer, who asked not to be identified because of Afghan and American sensitivities about the attacks.”

In other words, more than a decade of occupying and brutalizing that country has turned large swaths of the population into the “Taliban”, to the extent that the “Taliban” means: Afghans willing to use violence to force the US and its allies out of their country. As always, the US – through the very policies of aggression and militarism justified in the name of terrorism – is creating the very “terrorists” those polices are supposedly designed to combat. It’s a pure and perfect system of self-perpetuation.

 

Exactly the same thing is happening in Yemen, where nothing is more effective at driving Yemenis into the arms of al-Qaida than the rapidly escalated drone attacks under Obama. This morning, the Times reported that US air strikes in Yemen are carried out in close cooperation with the air force of Saudi Arabia, which will only exacerbate that problem. Indeed, virtually every person accused of plotting to target the US with terrorist attacks in last several years has expressly cited increasing US violence, aggression and militarism in the Muslim world as the cause.

There’s no question that this “war” will continue indefinitely. There is no question that US actions are the cause of that, the gasoline that fuels the fire. The only question – and it’s becoming less of a question for me all the time – is whether this endless war is the intended result of US actions or just an unwanted miscalculation.

It’s increasingly hard to make the case that it’s the latter. The US has long known, and its own studies have emphatically concluded, that “terrorism” is motivated not by a “hatred of our freedoms” but by US policy and aggression in the Muslim world. This causal connection is not news to the US government. Despite this – or, more accurately, because of it – they continue with these policies.

One of the most difficult endeavors is to divine the motives of other people (divining our own motives is difficult enough). That becomes even more difficult when attempting to discern the motives not of a single actor but a collection of individuals with different motives and interests (“the US government”).

But what one can say for certain is that there is zero reason for US officials to want an end to the war on terror, and numerous and significant reasons why they would want it to continue. It’s always been the case that the power of political officials is at its greatest, its most unrestrained, in a state of war. Cicero, two thousand years ago, warned that “In times of war, the law falls silent” (Inter arma enim silent leges). John Jay, in Federalist No. 4, warned that as a result of that truth, “nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it . . . for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans.”

If you were a US leader, or an official of the National Security State, or a beneficiary of the private military and surveillance industries, why would you possibly want the war on terror to end? That would be the worst thing that could happen. It’s that war that generates limitless power, impenetrable secrecy, an unquestioning citizenry, and massive profit.

Just this week, a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration need not respond to the New York Times and the ACLU’s mere request to disclose the government’s legal rationale for why the President believes he can target US citizens for assassination without due process. Even while recognizing how perverse her own ruling was – “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me” and it imposes “a veritable Catch-22” – the federal judge nonetheless explained that federal courts have constructed such a protective shield around the US government in the name of terrorism that it amounts to an unfettered license to violate even the most basic rights: “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret” (emphasis added).

Why would anyone in the US government or its owners have any interest in putting an end to this sham bonanza of power and profit called “the war on terror”? Johnson is right that there must be an end to this war imminently, and Maddow is right that the failure to do so will render all the due-process-free and lawless killing and imprisoning and invading and bombing morally indefensible and historically unforgivable.

But the notion that the US government is even entertaining putting an end to any of this is a pipe dream, and the belief that they even want to is fantasy. They’re preparing for more endless war; their actions are fueling that war; and they continue to reap untold benefits from its continuation. Only outside compulsion, from citizens, can make an end to all of this possible.

 

By Alaa al-Aswany

05 January, 2013

@ As-Safir

Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany writes that Salafist sheikhs and Muslim Brotherhood leaders do not adhere to the principles of Islam, but rather are focused on maintaining power by any means necessary

Here’s what the camera recorded: The minister of information, who belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, went to vote on the day of the constitutional referendum. When he saw the long lines of voters stretching endlessly, he ducked into the Electoral Commission from the back door and voted within a few moments… while ordinary voters had to wait outside for hours just to get inside the commission building. As the minister was leaving, a courageous reporter had the temerity to ask him: “Why didn’t you come in through the main door like everyone else?”

Without hesitation the minister answered: “I did come in though the main door. I didn’t go in through any side door.”

And so the minister lied openly, shamelessly, in front of all the assembled cameras and journalists. In a democratic country, such a lie from a government minister would constitute a scandal, maybe even lead to the minister’s dismissal. But here in Egypt, now under the beneficent rule of the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Brotherhood’s minister will remain in his position as long as he holds the guide’s favor.

The odd thing is that the minister is a religious man, who no doubt makes sure to say his daily prayers, in preparation for which Muslims must enter a state of ritual purity — and yet he lied.

The question is: does a lie not sully one’s purity? Does this religious minister not know that lying is forbidden by Islam, and that God does not accept prayers uttered by liars?

The question does not address itself to this lying minister alone, but to the entire leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Mohammed Morsi. They do not practice what they preach. They make promises but do not fulfill them.

They are prepared to do anything in order to hold on to power. The Brotherhood’s lies cannot be counted, but the latest of them was this referendum, the results of which were brazenly falsified in order to ram through their constitution. All manner of violations took place in the course of this referendum, beginning with preventing the Copts from voting, irregular ballots, terrorizing voters and buying the votes of the poor, to collective voting and cutting power to the commissions’ facilities in order to rig the results. All this was done by men calling themselves “Muslim Brothers,” men who failed to consider for even a moment that lying, deceit and tampering with the will of the people are all behaviors that contravene the most fundamental tenets of Islam.

 

And should you attempt, dear reader, to direct some criticism at the guide of the Brotherhood, whether by Facebook or Twitter, you will be bombarded by obscene insults hurled by devoted young men specifically tasked by the guide’s office with insulting Brotherhood opponents over the internet.

How can obscene liars dare to call themselves “Muslim Brothers,” when Islam urges us to be upright, honest and polite? What is the secret of this flagrant contradiction between belief and practice? The followers of political Islam (including the Brotherhood, Salafists and jihadists) simply do not understand their religion as ordinary Muslims do. Rather, their understanding of religion is based on the following guidelines:

First: Absolute obedience to the supreme guide

The Salfists and Muslim Brothers are loathe to admit to anything not professed as true by the supreme guide of the Brotherhood or by Salafist sheikhs. In order to become a member of the Brotherhood, one must not only swear allegiance and obedience to the supreme guide’s instructions, but to believe them at heart as well.

A soldier might carry out the orders of his superior without being convinced of their soundness, but how can you demand that thousands of people be convinced that whatever another (ordinary, fallible) human being said is true? That they must support everything he does and look upon it as though it were flawless? In effect, one has completely nullified their minds and removed their powers of discernment, rendering them pliant tools in the hand of the supreme guide, to be moved about at his will.

Many Muslim Brothers are highly educated young men, among them doctors and engineers. But they are in a state of total intellectual subordination to their Shaykh, who has deprived them of the ability to think independently or reason critically.

For evidence, one need look no further than what Sheikh Hazim Salah Abu Ismail did with his followers. This man preoccupied the entire country with the question of his mother’s nationality. Though it became clear that she was an American citizen, contrary to what Abu Ismail had said, he constantly called upon his followers to go out and riot, even while he retired to his home where he could enjoy the warmth and the delicious meals he craved. Meanwhile his followers were left to absorb the clubs and blows of the police. Yet none of Abu Ismail’s followers dared to reprove him for his repeated flights or to criticize him over the question of his mother’s nationality. For everything he did, in their eyes, was righteousness absolute.

Take another example. When the Brotherhood’s supreme guide came out of the mosque, the Brothers knelt at his foot and competed with one another for the honor of putting his shoe on. The sense of humility needed to cause a proud man to beg another man to put his shoe on his noble foot indicates the degree of the Brothers’ submissiveness to their supreme guide and their inability to think for themselves.

Second: An exclusivist understanding of religion

 

With the Salafists and the Muslim Brothers, there is no room for discussion or airing different points of view on religion. Their Islam is whatever their sheikh or supreme guide says it is: no more, no less. The strange thing is that most of their comments on the internet are filled with major grammatical errors. This indicates that they do not read, and that their culture is an oral one, where they sit at the foot of their sheikh, absorb his words and then repeat them.

There is no point in engaging them in discussion, because they would refuse to hear out any opinion that does not accord with that of their sheikh, even if it were to come from the most widely respected clerics, even if you beseech them to talk things through, they will act belligerently toward you. They have built their lives upon the belief that the sheikh’s words are truth itself. If you tell them something that causes them to doubt that, they will attack you in defense of their beliefs (that, if shaken, would force them to re-evaluate their entire lives).

Third: Demonizing dissidents

The Brotherhood’s supreme guide and the Salafist sheikhs normally attempt to dehumanize their opponents. The Salafists and Muslim Brothers do not believe that their opponents are individuals, each with their own private life. Instead they place them all under the same negative, all-embracing category of “secularists,” “followers of the West,” or “enemies of Shariah law.” They don’t look upon their political opponents as people simply hold a different opinion, but as godless infidels or Zionist collaborators.

This contempt for their opponents naturally makes it easier to assault their rights. If you thought of yourself as the only person who possesses absolute truth, while all who opposed you were collaborators or enemies of the faith, it would be illogical for you to grant them the same rights as you, because you are superior to them. You bear the message of God; they are the followers of Satan. You are a pure soul, implementing the will of God, while they are impure enemies of Islam. Assaulting their rights is tolerable and, at any given moment, may even become necessary. We saw just this when Morsi called up the Brotherhood’s militias to attack those protesting in front of the presidential palace.

Here the contradiction between belief and practice appeared in full force: groups of bearded men who would never permit themselves any moral backsliding in prayer were committing heinous crimes without the slightest sense of guilt: beating young girls, attacking protesters, subjecting them to hideous torture, brutally assaulting fellow Egyptians whose only crime lay in the fact that they were Christians. The Brothers’ and Salafists’ understanding of the faith had put them in a state of war with whoever disagreed with them. And all is fair in war. Beginning with lying, rigging elections and ending in beating and torture…

Fourth: Searching for the grand conspiracy

The American ambassador in Cairo went to monitor the referendum, when a group of Salafist and Brotherhood youth gathered around her and began to angrily chant: “Islamic! Islamic!” These youth had been convinced by their sheikhs that there was a grand conspiracy against Islam being led by America. And because they are in mental thrall to their sheikhs, it was difficult for them to see that the truth was the exact opposite: the US doesn’t care about Islam at all. It only cares about protecting its interests and Israel’s security. America would happily welcome an Islamic government as long as it would protect these interests. Examples abound: America’s greatest ally for half a century is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which the Salafists and the Brotherhood consider a model for Islamic government. Then there’s the Taliban, which was originally founded by American intelligence. In Pakistan, General Zia al-Haq took power with Saudi funding so that he could become an American-allied ruler.

The Brotherhood has come to understand this equation, and since the days of Mubarak has opened its own channels to the American administration. Morsi has sought to guarantee Israeli security by using his influence with Hamas. And one who follows international press will find a great deal of Western officials praising Morsi just as they once praised Mubarak. The American administration prefers that Egypt be ruled by a cooperative dictator who can control his people and guarantee America’s interests. It does not want a democratic regime in Egypt, for this would turn the country into a regional giant that would determine the fate of the Middle East and might threaten Israel. This truth shines clear as day, but the sheikhs of political Islam continue to convince their followers that the US is conspiring against Islam even as they meet with American officials and seek to please them in every way. The notion of a vast conspiracy against Islam is a delusion, but it possesses important value to the sheikhs, for it enables them to sharpen the religious sentiments of the young and prepares them to accept their elders’ commands.

These are the four cornerstones of political Islam. It radically upends the meaning of religion. Instead of becoming a path to truth, justice, liberty and equality, it is turned into a tool for hating others, holding them in contempt, assaulting their liberties and their lives. And so the first elected president of Egypt has transformed himself into a dictator who nullified the constitution, and imposed a distorted replacement in its place, held a rigged referendum, and sent his thugs to besiege the constitutional court to terrorize the judges and intimidate them into not invalidating the new constitution.

Even so this unfortunate transformation of Morsi’s has not been without its positive effects. For example, it has inspired patriotic and revolutionary groups to unite and combine forces for the first time to save the state from the Brotherhood attempting to hijack it. The Brotherhood’s ascent to power has been a long-delayed but necessary test that Egypt had to undergo. The revolution has always had to overcome three obstacles: Mubarak, the army and the Brotherhood. It has succeeded in ousting Mubarak and putting him on trial. It succeeded in getting rid of the power of the army. Now all that remains is the Brotherhood. They have failed the test of rule, and revealed their ugly face within a few short months.

Stop any ordinary Egyptian in the street and ask him what he thinks about the Brotherhood. Whatever level of education he has, you’ll find he understands the difference between true Islam and the Brotherhood’s Islam, the “Islam” that permits lying, fraud and aggression. Every day, the Brotherhood loses more and more of its popularity, until it becomes impossible for any of its leaders (including Morsi himself) to appear in public without being hounded by hostile chants from the passerby. The crimes committed by the Brotherhood over the last few months have cost them their popularity, and the more they sense this, the greater their violence and belligerence will grow.

I expect that, in the near future we will see more repressive measures, acts of aggression and assassinations against all who oppose the Brothers. Our duty now is to topple the distorted, bastardized constitution by any peaceful means possible. The rigged referendum on this constitution counts for nothing. It was manufactured by an invalid, illegal constitutional committee that the judiciary almost dissolved for a second time, and would have but for Morsi’s blocking judicial rulings with his own dictatorial announcement.

The revolution will continue until the Brotherhood’s rule is toppled as completely as Mubarak’s regime. Then, and only then, will Egypt be able to move toward the future that it deserves.

Democracy is the solution.

*Al- Monitor, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2012/12/how-to-lie-and-remain-pure.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Translated by Mike Nahum. Original title: How to Lie and Remain Pure. Posted on: Dec 25, 2012. Translated from: As-Safir (Lebanon),

By Ismail Salami

05 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

In what can be seen as a blatantly overt interference in Iran’s affairs, US President Barack Obama has recently enacted a law “aimed at countering Tehran’s alleged influence in Latin America” through a new diplomatic and political strategy to be designed by the State Department.

Iran has strongly slammed the move as an overt intervention.

“It is an overt intervention in Latin American affairs… that shows they are not familiar with new world relations. The United States still lives in the Cold War era and considers Latin America as its back yard”.

Strategically dubbed as ‘Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act of 2012′, the act calls for the State Department to develop a plan within 180 days to “address Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity”.

Also, the text calls on the Department of Homeland Security to bolster surveillance at US borders with Canada and Mexico to “prevent operatives from Iran, the IRGC [Iranian Revolution Guards Corps], its Quds Force, Hezbollah or any other terrorist organization from entering the United States.”

In recent years, the Islamic Republic has formed a solid alliance with a number of Latin American countries which have readily welcomed Iran ‘s good will gestures. Without a doubt, the influence of Iran has travelled far beyond the Middle East and has reached Latin America , a fact which has ruffled many feathers in Washington .

Time and again, the US has declared that it closely monitors Iran’s activities (i.e. influence) lest the ever-increasing influence of the country may disturb its political and military equations in the Middle East in particular and the world in general.

The new act which can be viewed but as a salad of lame excuses concocted by the US to ‘counter’ Iran’s influence has been formulated with the express intention of stifling an already sprouting intellectual apology for Iranian nuclear energy program which the US and the West have always sought to depict as anything but intended for peaceful purposes.

The act directly indicates that the US is hell bent on blocking the route to any ways which may be used to assuage the ‘painful effect of the sanctions’ on Iran and that the country “is pursuing cooperation with Latin American countries by signing economic and security agreements in order to create a network of diplomatic and economic relationships to lessen the blow of international sanctions and oppose Western attempts to constrict its ambitions.”

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has conducted a research on Iran’s influence in Latin America and has aptly called it ‘ Iran in Latin America : Threat or ‘Axis of Annoyance’?’. According to the research, the growing and multi-layered relationship between Iran and Latin American countries since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005 “is driven by a combination of factors. These include, for both sides, and economic self-interest, shared anti-U.S. and anti-imperialist ideology, and the desire—especially evident in the Brazilian case—to play a larger role on the world stage, assert foreign policy independence, and diversify international partners beyond the United States .”

It should be noted that the phobia of Iran ‘s influence in Latin America has long started to pinch the US government. This has provided the advocates of Washington ‘s policies to disseminate unfounded lies in the media about Iran . In an article, Rep. Allen B. West voices his agonized exasperation over Iran-Venezuela ties that ‘Right here, under our noses, a strategic alliance is being formed between Iran and Venezuela ”.

Mr. West offers a poor case against Iran and accuses the country of forming “a complex financial web to bypass international sanctions against the ayatollahs and an operational infrastructure for carrying out terrorism against the nations of the free world, especially the United States and Israel .” According to Mr. West, the United States and Israel constitute parts of the free world. By any standards, this slanted definition renders all other definitions of the ‘free world’ grotesquely appalling.

Mr. West goes to extremes when he brings up the threadbare allegation of Washington that Iran sought to ‘hire an operative known as Mansour Arbabsiar’ to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel A. al-Jubeir. Accusative lies and fabrications of this nature abound in Western media. Interestingly, Mr. West repeats Israel and the welfare of Israel several times in his article as if to pledge his allegiance to Tel Aviv.

He even recklessly accuses Iran of introducing “into the modern Middle East the concept of religiously sanctioned suicide terrorism” and lays bare his ignorance of the fact that Iran has been constantly a victim of terrorism backed and financed by terrorists groups such as MKO which was recently delisted by Washington as a terrorist organization ‘for not inscrutable reasons’.

For Washington and allies, Iran is not a real threat but rather an ‘axis of annoyance’, a thorn in their side, a political counterbalance to their sinister modus operandi in the region.

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

By Colin Todhunter

05 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

“I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle” – Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63, “The Spirit of Enterprise” , 1934.

When rich companies with politically-connected lobbyists and seats on government-appointed bodies bend policies for their own ends, we are in serious trouble. It is then that our democratic institutions become hijacked and our choices, freedoms and rights are destroyed. Corporate interests have too often used their dubious ‘science’, lobbyists, political connections and presence within the heart of governments, in conjunction with their public relations machines, to subvert democratic machinery for their own benefit. Once their power has been established, anyone who questions them or who stands in their way can expect a very bumpy ride.

The power and influence of the GMO sector

The revolving door between the private sector and government bodies has been well established. Over the past few years in Britain, the media has occasionally shed light on the cosy and highly questionable links between the armaments industry and top people in the Ministry of Defence. In the US, many senior figures from the Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) industry, especially Monsanto, have moved with ease to take up positions with the Food and Drug Administration. Writer and researcher William F Engdahl writes about a similar influence in Europe, noting the links between the GMO sector within the European Food Safety Authority. He states that over half of the scientists involved in the GMO panel which positively reviewed the Monsanto’s study for GMO maize in 2009, leading to its EU-wide authorisation, had links with the biotech industry.

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job” – Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications. “Playing God in the Garden” New York Times Magazine,October 25, 1998.

When corporate interests are able to gain access to such positions of power, little wonder they have some heavy-duty tools at their disposal to (attempt to) fend off criticism by all means necessary.

Take the GMO sector, for instance. A well-worn tactic, certainly not exclusive to that sector, has been to slur and attack figures that have challenged the ‘science’ and claims of the industry. With threats of lawsuits and UK government pressure, some years ago top research scientist Dr Arpad Pusztai was effectively silenced over his research concerning the dangers of GM food. A campaign was set in motion to destroy his reputation. Similarly, a WikiLeaks cable highlighted how GMOs were being forced into European nations by the US ambassador to France who plotted with other US officials to create a ‘retaliatory target list’ of anyone who tried to regulate GMOs. Now that clearly indicates the power of the industry!

Champions of the poor: GM frontier technology

What the GMO sector fails to grasp is that the onus is on it to prove that its products are safe. And it has patently failed to do this. No independent testing was done before Bush senior allowed GMOs onto the US market. The onus should not be on others to prove it is safe (or unsafe) after it is on the market.

Now that scientists such as Professor Seralini at the University of Caen in France are in a sense playing catch-up by testing previously independently untested GMOs, he is accused of “lies” and “deceit.” In fact, a prominent figure in the GMO sector recently told me that “You people (the ‘anti-GM brigade’) have no shame. You are all disgusting enemies of the poor farmers around the world by trying to block a safe product of a frontier technology…”

Little mention there of the tens of thousands of poor farmers who took their own lives in the Indian cotton belt because they became indebted due to this “frontier technology” not delivering the results that the GMO industry has said it would. If there is a ‘disgusting enemy’, surely it is the profiteering corporate-controlled terminator seed technology of the GMO industry that has resulted in mass suicides and the destruction of traditional farmer-controlled agricultural practices developed over thousands of years.

But this is symptomatic of the industry: it says a product is safe, therefore it is. We are expected to take its claims at face value, not least because the industry has gained an air of pseudo respectability: the US FDA sanctions such products. I use the word ‘pseudo’ because, as already noted, the revolving door between top figures at Monsanto and positions at the FDA makes it difficult to see where the line between the two is actually drawn. People are rightly suspicious of the links between the FDA and GMO industry in the US and the links between it and the regulatory body within the EU.

The impact of the corporate hijacking of food and agriculture

The corporations currently forwarding their GM agenda represent the so-called “Green Revolution’s” second coming. Agriculture has changed more over the last two generations than it did in the previous 12,000 years. Environmentalist Vandana Shiva notes that, after 1945, chemical manufacturers who had been involved in the weapons industry turned their attention to applying their chemical know-how to farming. As a result ‘dwarf seeds’ were purposively created to specifically respond to their chemicals. Over the coming years, agriculture became transformed into a chemical-dependent industry that has destroyed biodiversity. What we are left with is crop monocultures, which according to Shiva reflects a monoculture of thinking. In effect, modern agriculture is part of the paradigm of control based on mass standardization and a dependency on corporate products: corporate monoculture.

The implications have been vast. Chemical-industrial agriculture has proved extremely lucrative for the oil and chemicals industry and has served to maintain and promote Western hegemony, not least via ‘structural adjustment’ and the consequent uprooting of traditional farming practices in favour of single-crop export-oriented policies, dam building to cater for what became a highly water intensive industry, loans and indebtedness, etc.

Apart from tying poorer countries into an unequal system of global trade and reinforcing global inequalities, the corporate hijacking of food and agriculture has had many other implications, not least where health is concerned.

Dr Meryl Hammond, founder of the Campaign for Alternatives to Pesticides, told a Canadian parliament committee in 2009 that a raft of studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals point to strong associations between chemical pesticides and a vast range of serious life-threatening health consequences. Shiv Chopra, a top food advisor to the Canadian government, has documented how all kinds of food products that were known to be dangerous were passed by the regulatory authority and put on the market there due to the power of the food industry.

Severe anemia, permanent brain damage, Alzheimer’s, dementia, neurological disorders, reproductive problems, diminished intelligence, impaired immune system, behavioural disorders, cancers, hyperactivity and learning disability are just some of the diseases linked to our food.

Of course, just like cigarettes and the tobacco industry before, trying to ‘prove’ the glaringly obvious link will take decades as deceit is passed off as ‘science’ or becomes institutionalized due to the hijacking of government bodies by the corporations involved in food production.

In ‘GMOs Ticking Time Bomb’, Rima E Laibow, Medical Director of Natural Solutions Foundation, argues that every single independent study conducted on the impact of GMOs shows they damage organs and cause infertility, immune system failure, holes in the GI tract and multiple system failure when eaten. She argues that they cause a variety of changes, some of which we can’t even guess at as new proteins are coded due to altered DNA – some which we’ve never seen before. Laiblow concludes we are playing with genetic fire. Yet, they are on the commercial market in the US and elsewhere.

We are standing in the way of progress!

Science has become a political football. Anyone who questions the safety of GMOs is “clueless” and indulges in “scare mongering” and “falsehoods.” In fact, the same prominent GMO sector figure referred to earlier says about such people that all they know “is to stop progress.” Furthermore, he stated that “scientific jokers” like Professor Seralini would not be allowed to set foot in the “real world of science” in North America and that they have a “hey day” in countries like India because of “ignoramuses.”

 

But can we expect much better from an industry that has a record of smearing and attempting to ruin people who criticise it? Are those of us who question the political links of the GMO industry and the nature of its products ready to take lessons on ethics and high-minded notions of ‘human progress’ from anyone involved with it?

This is an industry that has contaminated crops and bullied farmers with lawsuits in North America, an industry whose companies have been charged with and most often found guilty of contaminating the environment and seriously damaging health with PCBs and dioxins, an industry complicit in concealing the deadly impact of GM corn on animals, an industry where bribery seems to be second nature (eg Monsanto in Indonesia), an industry associated with human rights violations in Brazil and an industry that will not label its foods in the US.

As Vandana Shiva has noted, the 2005 US-India nuclear deal (allowing India to develop its nuclear sector despite it not being a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and pushed through with a cash for votes tactic in the Indian parliament!) was linked to the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, which was aimed at widening access to India’s agricultural and retail sectors. This initiative was drawn up with the full and direct participation of representatives from various companies, including Monsanto, Cargill and Walmart.

When the most powerful country comes knocking at your door seeking to gain access to your market, there’s good chance that once its corporate-tipped jackboot is in, you won’t be able to get it out. In India, the pressure is building to release GM food onto the market.

So far, Bt cotton has been the only GM crop allowed in India , but the GM sector is ‘lobbying’ to bring in other GM crops, including rice, tomato and wheat. It is interesting to note that the Supreme Court has not banned open field trials of genetically modified food crops. Contamination of traditional crops by GM crops thus remains a serious issue.

    “The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded [with GMOs] that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender” – Don Westfall, biotech industry consultant and vice-president of Promar International, in the Toronto Star,January 9 2001.

Open field planting is but one way of achieving what Westfall states. T he European Commission has already suspected GMO contamination in exported basmati rice from India .

    “What you are seeing is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it’s really a consolidation of the entire food chain” – Robert Fraley, co-president of Monsanto’s agricultural sector 1996, in the Farm Journal. Quoted in:Flint J. (1998) Agricultural industry giants moving towards genetic monopolism. Telepolis, Heise.

As powerful agribusiness concerns seek to “consolidate the entire food chain,” it is patently clear that it’s not just the health of the nation (any nation) that is at stake, but global control of food, countries and populations too.

Colin Todhunter Originally from the northwest of England, Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India. He has written extensively for the Deccan Herald (the Bangalore-based broadsheet), New Indian Express and Morning Star (Britain). His articles have also appeared in various other newspapers, journals and books. His East by Northwest website is at: http://colintodhunter.blogspot.com