California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

A Superpower in Decline

by John Lawrence

1) Rights taken away from women. The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw nearly all abortions in Arizona will likely lead to an influx of patients fleeing the state to find care in California, abortion rights activists said.

2) The world's policeman can't police its own borders. The asylum law lets anyone setting foot on American soil ask for asylum. Court dates for asylum cases are, on average, more than four years out in the future, and even longer for final decisions. Over 3 million cases were pending before immigration courts near the end of 2023, with the backlog growing by 1 million since 2022.

3) The archaic electoral college has never been replaced by a direct popular vote for President. The result is that the winner of the popular vote has not been elected President. Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but Bush was elected President. The Florida Supreme Court sided with Gore, but Bush appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately voted 5 to 4 to reverse the Florida court’s decision and halt the recount. With Florida in hand, Bush won the Electoral College 271 to 266, while Gore ended up getting 500,000 more votes in the popular vote. As a result Gore's push for limits on global warming was lost as Bush promoted fossil fuels. Also Bush lied the US into a disastrous war in Iraq that resulted in Iraq becoming an ally of Iran.

4) 750 military bases in 80 countries are sitting ducks for an attack by Iran or its proxies. The largest U.S. base in the Middle East is located in Qatar, known as Al Udeid Air Base and built in 1996. Other countries where the U.S. has a presence include Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. Three American service members were killed and dozens more were injured in an unmanned aerial drone attack on a base known as Tower 22 in Jordan on January 28, 2024. Now that the US is expecting an attack by Iran, which sitting duck will be next?

5) An insurrectionist with several dozen indictments is allowed to run for President. Last year, Donald Trump became the first former president of the United States to be criminally indicted. Over the span of five months, he was indicted in four separate criminal cases and charged on a total of 91 felony counts.

6) Futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush lied us into war in Iraq. Osama bin Laden eventually killed in Obama administration by small Seal team, proving futility of invading Afghanistan

7) Wealth inequality. The United States exhibits wider disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed nation. There are now more billionaires than ever: 2,781 in all, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021. They’re richer than ever, worth $14.2 trillion in aggregate, up by $2 trillion from 2023 and $1.1 trillion above the previous record, also set in 2021. 

8) Housing unaffordability. San Diego families need an income of nearly $275,000 a year to afford a mortgage on a home, which is nearly double what it was before the pandemic, according to a new report from the real estate website Zillow.

9) Homelessness is an intractable problem. On any given night in the United States, more than half a million people experience homelessness.

10) The filibuster rule and the bicameral legislature. Nothing much can get done unless one party controls both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. President Biden looks stupid since he can't even keep his commitments to NATO because the Republican controlled House won't vote the funds Biden has promised. This means Ukraine will lose the war with Russia, and other countries cannot trust the US to keep its commitments.

11) The Second Amendment. No other country allows the uncontrolled proliferation of guns. More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides.

Off the Top of My Head

Netanyahu is Playing Biden for a Sucker

by John Lawrence

It's clear that Netanyahu doesn't condone the two state solution which Biden favors. Despite Netanyahu's intransigence, Biden and the US keep on giving Israel, one of the most prosperous countries in the world, more money. While the US has given Israel around $4 billion annually, it has given a relative pittance of $500 million annually to the impoverished Palestinian people. Most knowledgeable people think that a two state solution is the only way to resolve not only the crisis in Israel and Palestine, but in the larger Middle East as well. However, Biden is not demanding that Netanyahu accede to the two state solution. Why not? Why does the US keep giving billions of dollars to Israel when Israel is belligerent and intransigent about a rational solution to the problems between the Israelis and the Palestinians? Instead, an intractable problem remains, one which is guaranteed to provide additional conflict and bloodshed in perpetuity. I have written before that the US and the UN should impose a two state solution on Israel and Palestine. Indulging Israel only means that the conflict in the Middle East will never end. The additional issue is that the US has some 30 military bases in the Middle East. The people on these bases are sitting ducks to be picked off by militias operating in those areas as we saw recently when 3 US soldiers were killed at Tower 22 in Iraq. Why are these bases still there? Iraq doesn't want them there. Syria doesn't want them there. They are just contributing to the enmity that exists between some countries, mainly Shiite countries, and the US. Bin Laden's big beef with the US was the presence of US military bases in Saudi Arabia and Somalia. He sought to drive US personnel out of these areas by force. When that didn't work, he began formulating plans to attack the West with an evolving, deadly new brand of jihad. We all know what that led to. Clearly US military bases in the area are a major irritant to Shiite countries such as Iran, Iraq and Syria. And it is cooling what had seemed to be promising developments with the Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

I wrote previously:

The Two State Solution Must Be Created, Implemented and Enforced ... Now.

We know what a Two State solution would look like. Even all the details have been worked out. It's just that Israel and the Palestinians won't agree to it. Therefore, it must be imposed on them ... both. They should not be free to continue their mutual madness forever. What a bizarre notion of "freedom:" this portends. Why, sir, your freedom includes a right to hate and attack your neighbor in perpetuity. Free and sovereign states should not be impeded from protecting themselves even if in the long run they are not protecting themselves but just involving themselves in endless rounds of attacks and counter attacks. The world's most powerful nation just stands back and says in effect "we don't want to impose ourselves on your freedom and sovereignty. You have a sovereign right to go on with endless rounds of revenge, hatred and war."

UN peacekeepers should separate the two sides and impose peace on Israel and Palestine by imposing a two state solution backed by the power of the US. The world should say to them, "Enough." You guys are totally incapable of solving your problems, and, left to your own devices, you will go on killing each other indefinitely. By virtue of your incompetence at creating peace among yourselves, you have both lost your right to come up with a workable solution, and, therefore, one must be imposed on you, like it or not. You have both lost your right to be completely free and sovereign nations. You are both making the world a worse place. Therefore, the world community has lost its patience and tolerance for your local squabbles which are forcing the whole world to stop what it is doing and deal with your seemingly overwhelming problems. We'd like to get on with solving the problem of climate change instead of devoting our attention to interminably, intermittent wars.

World leaders seem to be more adept on giving military advice rather than advice on creating peace in the world. They are just moving pieces around on a chess board devoid of any consideration of how many people will be killed or maimed in the process. For them war is a rational game. The peace makers can't seem to make a rational game out of the steps necessary to create peace in the world. It's not in their play book. So millions of innocents have to suffer because one side is right and the other side is wrong or vice versa. Where are the leaders willing to take a chance on peace?

Off the Top of My Head

What is Justice for George Floyd?

by John Lawrence, June 4, 2020

I just listened to the Reverend Al Sharpton's rousing eulogy for George Floyd. He said we want justice for George Floyd. All over the world people want justice for George Floyd. Even in bombed out Syria, an artist painted a wall honoring George Floyd. That's significant. It's not justice for George Floyd here in America. It's justice for George Floyd all over the world. That means justice for George in the Middle East, justice for George in Iran, justice for George Floyd in China, in Russia. So what would justice be? Reverend Al quoted Ecclesiastes, "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal." So what would this justice be?

For sure criminal justice system reform. Let's start with a national ban on carotid restraint, a national ban on the knee-to-neck restraint. Yes, but that's not enough. I feel that all this protest energy might just be dissipated unless there are concrete demands on the system. Where is Bernie Sanders when we need him now? He had concrete demands: a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, forgiveness of student loan debt. Most of the protesters both black and white are millenials, the most screwed generation in American history. But who among them would most benefit from these progressive demands? African Americans. They are the Americans who not only suffer from the criminal justice system and the law enforcement system, they are the ones who most suffer from poverty as it was made clear George Floyd's family did. Reforming the criminal justice system is not enough. Reforming the economic system is necessary to redress the grievances of first slavery, then Jim Crow and now the videotaped deaths of so many black people that generated the Black Lives Matter movement.

Black Lives Matter in terms of equal economic justice and millenial lives, both black and white, weighed down with student loan debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, matter as well. A country which supports a bloated military bureaucracy that consumes a trillion dollars a year while there is 20% unemployment represents a knee on all our necks. Justice for George Floyd has to extend to justice for all those innocent lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Syria. Justice for George Floyd is justice for the 70 million people, half of them children, in refugee camps. Justice for George is justice for all the poverty stricken in favellas and barrios who can't socially distance. Justice for George Floyd is American acceptance of the United Nations 1948 Declaration of Human Rights which include economic as well as political rights.

Justice for George Floyd is justice for people all over the world: black, white and all shades in between. Justice for George Floyd is justice for people without regard to race, religion or national residence. Justice for George Floyd is electing leaders of our country who will make friends instead of enemies, who will convert swords into plowshares, who will create peace and justice in the world.

Off the Top of My Head

When The Pandemic Is Over, The World Must Come Together

by John Lawrence, April 28, 2020

These are the fateful words of Mikhail Gorbachev, Nobel Prize Laureate and the first and only President of the Soviet Union. Recently, he recalled how the threat of nuclear war was reduced by the treaties in the 1980s made possible by his friendly relationship with Ronald Reagan. Writing in Time magazine, he said, "The leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union declared that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought." Despite the fact that the Cold War was declared to be over, the neocons running foreign policy today have been doing their best to create another one. The pandemic has made it clear that there are more important challenges than U.S.-Russian rivalry, and that the world has more to gain by cooperating even with supposed enemies or rivals than it does by perpetuating idiotic animosities. We have common enemies that affect us all with the coronavirus pandemic being just one of them.

Gorbachev mentioned "poverty and inequality, the degradation of the environment, the depletion of the earth and the oceans." Global warming is an existential threat that must be addressed now or there won't be a habitable earth left to fight over. "We have so far failed to develop and implement strategies and goals common to all mankind." Not only that the U.S. under Trump has retreated from any kind of cooperation with the other nations of the earth even our supposed allies. Instead U.S. foreign policy has been based on ordering other nations around as if we were the supreme bully. Trump's latest blunder is to defund the World Health Organization (WHO) in the middle of a pandemic.

"Progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, adopted by the U.N. in 2000, has been extremely uneven." The U.S. under Trump does not really support the U.N. in any way because it wants to be the ruler of nations not part of an organization that attempts to have a forum for the cooperation of nations. The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000 commits world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. The Eight Millennium Development Goals are:

• to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;
• to achieve universal primary education;
• to promote gender equality and empower women;
• to reduce child mortality;
• to improve maternal health;
• to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases;
• to ensure environmental sustainability; and
• to develop a global partnership for development.

I had never even heard of the Eight Millennium Development Goals although I think I'm pretty well informed. All of the media time spent on Trump's self-serving bragging could have been better spent informing us about this WHO program. But instead the media spends its time either chastising Trump's stupidity or praising his glory depending on which channel you watch. He has changed from campaign rallies to hour long daily commercials for himself.

"What we urgently need now is a rethinking of the entire concept of security. Even after the end of the Cold War, it has been envisioned mostly in military terms." Yes, military hubris crowds out any prospect of peace let alone a prospect of eliminating extreme poverty. Bill Gates is singlehandedly doing his best to eliminate poverty and disease in the world. He basically is a one man United Nations surrogate. He presciently tried to warn us of the pandemic in a Ted talk. Now he is spending millions of his own money on developing a coronavirus vaccine. There are some good people in the world - even billionaires. That I am sure of. It's just that not a lot of them occupy positions of power in the U.S. government.

Gorbachev continued: "The overriding goal must be human security: providing food, water and a clean environment and caring for people's health. To achieve it, we have to develop strategies, make preparations, plan and create reserves. But all efforts will fail if nations continue to waste money by fueling the arms race. I'll never tire of repeating: we need to demilitarize world affairs, international politics and political thinking."

Gorbachev is calling on national leaders to cut military budgets by 10% to 15%. It is not enough. The mindset, even among Democrats, is that we need a huge military to defend ourselves from perceived threats and perceived enemies. They don't have the mindset that they could make the world a better place by defusing tensions among nations that they perceive as threats. It might start by apologizing to Iran for overthrowing their democratically elected leader Mossaddegh and installing the brutal Shah. That would go a long way to establishing a peaceful relationship with Iran. It could start there. Instead the U.S. only fuels tensions by applying sanctions and carrying on like the rest of the world should bow down to the almighty dollar.

Off the Top of My Head

Is the Coronavirus Interrupting Humanity’s Ability to Kill Itself?

by John Lawrence, April 16, 2020

Instead of spending a trillion dollars annually for the instruments of and preparations for war, perhaps we should have spent it on ventilators and PPE. If we're all in this together, does this mean all of humanity or only all of us Americans? Will getting back to normal mean getting back to war? Trump and Pompeo are a continuation of the neocon mentality of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle. These folks are never satisfied unless they have an enemy or a perceived enemy to deal with. If there's not one conveniently around, they'll go out of their way to create one. Then of course we'll need more military aircraft, more aircraft carriers, more smart missiles and more of the other implements of war. What, are we taking a break from war now that the coronavirus is occupying our attention?

Well, the coronavirus has had some good effects. There is less global warming. There hasn't been a recent school shooting. Air pollution is dropping rapidly in cities around the globe. Less fossil fuels are being taken out of the ground and consumed. People have been getting along quite nicely without crowding into sports and concert venues. Money isn't being wasted as flagrantly as it was before. Of course, that's bad for the economy in which money wasting contributes to the 70% consumer economy.

There is a renewed respect for the true heroes, not the armed forces, but the health care workers on the front lines. There is a realization that what is important is not American hegemony but the health and welfare of all the people in the world. As long as some are susceptible to the conditions creating ill health, a virus spawned anywhere, even in the poorest ghetto in Africa, can affect the whole world. The economic systems of the whole world can grind to a halt whether they be capitalistic, communistic or some variation or combination thereof.

Is there a renewed respect for cooperation instead of competition? The coronavirus is humbling. It doesn't respect power. Anyone from the richest and most powerful person in the world to the poorest and least powerful can be taken down by this virus. It has outsmarted and outwitted the ablest and the proudest among us. It has made us aware that we are all human and all susceptible no matter in which nation we live, no matter where we live anywhere in the world. It has made us aware of what is essential and what we can do without.

The pandemic is a dress rehearsal for what needs to be done to combat global warming, another pandemic that affects every human being in the whole world for generations to come. Unlike the coronavirus, global warming will not kill us in as rapid and dramatic a way, but it will kill us just as surely over a longer period of time. Instead of getting back to normal in terms of fossil fuel consumption and creating enemies as a justification for armaments buildups, let's get back to a new normal where priorities are realigned with the health and betterment of all people starting with the least among us. We need to make amends with out mother as well, Mother Earth that is.

Instead of creating and exacerbating relationships with our enemies, let us heal them instead. We were getting along just fine with Iran as long as the nuclear deal was in effect. Everyone was behaving. First, Trump opts out of that, and then goes out of his way to exacerbate tensions. Even with a pandemic affecting Iran to a great degree, the Trump administration has no pity on the average Iranian citizen. His and Pompeo's only concern is to totally wreck their economy with sanctions. Perhaps during a pandemic sanctions there should be a moratorium on sanctions. They are only making relations between the US and other countries, even friendly countries, worse.

The origin of the nasty relationship between the US and Iran was in the 1953 coup orchestrated by the CIA which overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed the Shah in his place. It was the first covert action by the United States to overthrow a democratically-elected government during peacetime. Maybe as a first step to restoring peaceful relations with Iran the US should formally apologize for betraying its own democratic values by ousting a democratically elected leader and installing a cruel dictator. By the way it was all about the fact that Mosaddegh wanted to nationalize Iran's oil. On Aug. 19, 2013, the CIA publicly admitted for the first time its involvement in the 1953 coup against Iran's elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. It still has not apologized though.

Off the Top of My Head

Trump Wants Absolute Authority But Zero Responsibility

by John  Lawrence, April 15, 2020

How does a democracy elect a complete fool and idiot for its Supreme Leader? It's not a great advertisement for democracy. Part of the idiocy is he sanctions China when all the PPE is manufactured in China. There are 150 countries and 50 US states all competing for PPE. If you were China would you show any favoritism towards the US? Hell no. Other countries will be more highly favored and will receive their shipments first. Trump has gone out of his way to antagonize China first with a trade war, then by arresting the CFO of Huawei, Meng Wanzho, and accusing her of fraud. Meng was still in Canada awaiting an extradition request by the US when the coronavirus first broke out in the US.

Huawei was accused of violating US sanctions against selling equipment to Iran. Leaving aside the argument that one country should be in the position of dictating to another country with whom they can do business, consider the conundrum the US is now in as it begs China for priority in the distribution of PPE and other vital necessities. What is Trump going to do sanction them again for not giving the US the products it needs to combat the coronavirus?

On top of that, the US under Trump refuses to let Iran have even humanitarian assistance combating the coronavirus. I guess we're not in this together after all especially when it comes to Iran. The United States sent Iran a blunt message last month: the spread of the coronavirus will not save it from U.S. sanctions that are choking off its oil revenues and isolating its economy. So in other words the Trump administration hopes that everyone in Iran dies. At least they will not get any mercy from the US. Iran, devastated by the coronavirus, asked the U.S. to lift sanctions on humanitarian grounds. The New York Times reported:

As Iran struggles with a devastating coronavirus outbreak, a broken economy and a severe shortage of medical equipment, it says that American trade sanctions are taking Iranian lives and has called for the United States to lift them on humanitarian grounds.

Iran’s plea is gaining traction around the globe, winning support from allies like Russia and China, but also the European Union, the United Nations secretary general, rights groups and nearly three dozen members of Congress, who have appealed to the Trump administration to suspend the sanctions for as long as Iran is battling the coronavirus.

Iran, a global epicenter of the virus, has confirmed more than 47,000 cases and more than 3,000 deaths, although public health experts estimate the real toll to be several times higher.

“We had always said the sanctions are unjust but coronavirus revealed this injustice to the world,” Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said in a recent video message, which he began by removing a surgical mask from his face with blue latex gloves. He referred to the sanctions as “economic terrorism.”

Trump has isolated the United States. Increasingly, the other countries of the world including US allies are disagreeing and actually finding fault with the way the Trump administration is conducting itself. Iran even applied to the IMF for a loan. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said last week the IMF would be guilty of discrimination if it withholds the money for the country, which is a member of the IMF. Despite that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the IMF not to grant them a loan. This is just downright mean, cruel and heartless. Despite that Iran has a few friends in the world including China and Russia. The US is doing everything it can do to tweak all three country's noses in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.

Are we really all in this together? I don't think so. In one of the few instances of aid, Britain, France, and Germany used a special trading mechanism for the first time on March 31 to send medical supplies to Iran in a way that does not violate the sanctions. It's also important to point out that, if Hillary Clinton had been elected instead of Donald Trump, the US would never have sanctioned Iran in the first place since it was complying with the JCPOA nuclear plan agreed upon by Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany) together with the European Union. Trump is a rogue President whose sanctions are creating antagonism and chaos in the world community. This is becoming even more obvious in this time of pandemic.

As Sanders Demands End to Iran Sanctions to Save Lives Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, Biden Says He Needs 'More Information'

Published on Monday, March 30, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Iran is facing a catastrophic toll from the coronavirus pandemic," said Sanders. "U.S. sanctions should not be contributing to this humanitarian disaster."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

17 Comments

A view of the fairground of Iran, Tehran's largest shopping mall, after it converted into a hospital for coronavirus (COVID-19) patients, in Tehran, Iran on March 30, 2020. (Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

After Sen. Bernie Sanders and other progressive lawmakers last week called on the Trump administration to end its economic warfare against Iran amid the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden on Sunday refused to commit to even temporarily lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran that are severely restricting the country's access to essential medical supplies.

"There is no logic to these sanctions. They're cruel and unusual punishment, full stop."
—Sina Toossi, National Iranian American Council

"I don't have enough information about the situation in Iran right now," said Biden, the former vice president under the Obama administration, which negotiated the Iran nuclear accord that President Donald Trump scrapped in 2018.

"There's a lot of speculation from my foreign policy team that they're in real trouble and they're lying," said Biden. "But I would need more information to make that judgement. I don't have the national security information available."

Watch:

EXCLUSIVE: Would Joe Biden temporarily lift sanctions on Iran during the coroanvirus pandemic? #MTP #IfItsSunday@JoeBiden: "There's a lot of speculation ... that they're in real trouble and they're lying. But I would need more information to make that judgement." pic.twitter.com/d6KFmcm9FZ

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 29, 2020

The dire situation in Iran has been international news for weeks and the public outcry over U.S. sanctions has been coming from human rights groups as well as Biden's fellow Democrats.

Biden's remarks on Sunday came a week after more than dozen members of Congress—including Sanders, Biden's remaining 2020 Democratic presidential rival—sent letters to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin demanding that the White House immediately lift sanctions on Iran as the nation attempts to combat one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks in the world.

"Rather than continue to pile on sanctions in the Iranian people's hour of need, we urge you to substantially suspend sanctions on Iran in a humanitarian gesture to the Iranian people to better enable them to fight the virus," reads a letter signed by Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and six other members of Congress.

The letter was sent days after Pompeo announced that the Trump administration is imposing more sanctions on Iran in an effort to "deprive the regime of critical income from its petrochemical industry and further Iran's economic and diplomatic isolation."

Iran is facing a catastrophic toll from the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. sanctions should not be contributing to this humanitarian disaster.

As a caring nation, we must lift any sanctions hurting Iran’s ability to address this crisis, including financial sanctions. https://t.co/OBjff1nsxz

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 18, 2020

The U.S. reimposed sweeping sanctions on Iran in 2018 after Trump violated the Iran nuclear deal, effectively killing a signature foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration. On the campaign trail, Biden has condemned Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement and vowed to return to the negotiating table with Iran if elected president.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that U.S. sanctions against Iran—where the coronavirus has officially infected more than 41,000 people and killed nearly 2,800—"have limited Tehran's ability to finance and purchase essential items from abroad, including drugs as well as the raw materials and equipment needed to manufacture medicines domestically."

"There is no logic to these sanctions," tweeted Sina Toossi, senior research analyst with the National Iranian American Council. "They're cruel and unusual punishment, full stop."

An anonymous employee of a major Iranian pharmaceutical company told the Post that "the sanctions have definitely made the import and production processes longer and more expensive."

"Some suppliers are afraid and not willing to work with us anymore," the person said. "The sanctions have reduced Iran's capacity to control the outbreak."

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Off the Top of My Head

The Fog of War: Iran Version

John Lawrence, January 12, 2020

Worse than the killing of one Iranian General (along with 10 of his cohorts) and the lobbing of missiles into an American air force base in Iraq (which killed no Americans) was the shooting down of a plane in Tehran with the loss of 176 lives - men, women and children. This was the worst tragedy of this little skirmish between the US and Iran, but it exemplifies the reality that the worst casualties of war are always innocent civilians. It was an accident, but there are always these types of accidents when hostilities dictate that some hostile action be taken to take out one bad guy. Whether or not Qasem Soleimani was a bad guy, the tragedy of the entire situation was the loss of innocent life.

Getting in bed with Saudi Arabia (the killer of Jamal Khashoggi) determines that we must be enemies with Iran because the enemy of my friend is my enemy. Without considering the human rights implications, President Nixon made a deal with the devil in 1971 in order to make the US dollar the world's reserve currency. He allied the US with Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia controlled the world's oil supply at that time. Henceforth, Saudi Arabia would only accept payment for oil in US dollars. This made the US and Saudi Arabia the equivalent of Ugolino della Gherardesca and Archbishop Ruggieri  in Dante's Inferno. Ugolino's punishment involves his being entrapped in ice up to his neck in the lowest circle of Hell with his betrayer, Archbishop Ruggieri, who left him to starve to death. Ugolino is constantly gnawing at Ruggieri's skull.

Saudi Arabia is constantly gnawing at the US' neck, figuratively of course. All but one of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Osama bin Laden was a Saudi citizen. By contrast Iran or its citizens have never done anything equivalent to the US. True in 1979 they captured fifty-two American diplomats and citizens who were held hostage for 444 days by a group of Iranian college students who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. This was in retaliation for the US supported coup in 1953 which eliminated the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed the ruthless Shah of Iran. Again it was all about the oil. Mosaddegh nationalized Iran's oil. The Shah undid that to the delight of the US and British oil interests. Oil has been the cause of much war, and now it is the cause of global warming which is destroying the earth.

Perhaps if the US admitted the fact that it overthrew a democratically elected leader in Iran and apologized for that initial sin, things could become a lot better in terms of relations between the two countries. Despite the hostility between the two countries, George W Bush lied the US into war in Iraq which effectively brought Iraq into Iran's sphere of influence because the majority of Iraqis have the same religion as most Iranians - Shiite Islam. All of the treasure and loss of life produced the exact opposite of the outcome the US wanted. War has a way of coming back and slapping the perpetrator in the face. The result of US wars in the Middle East has been to increase Iranian influence there, not the result the US wanted.

The loss of the Ukraine bound plane in Tehran brings to mind another military blunder when in 2004, General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was asked about a report that his troops had taken out a wedding party in western Iraq, including the wedding singer and his musicians, killing 43 people, 14 of them children. He responded: “How many people go to the middle of the desert… to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?” Figures by the Iraq Body Count project indicate that, from 20 March 2003 to 14 March 2013, of 174,000 casualties only 39,900 were combatants, resulting in a civilian casualty rate of 77%. War is bad enough for the people doing the actual fighting, but it is many times worse for innocent men, women and children.

Off the Top of My Head

Sanctions Hasten Other Nations' Exit from the Dollar

by John Lawrence, January 11, 2020

The US threatened to put sanctions on any nation buying Iranian oil. So far this strategy doesn't appear to be working since some other nations don't agree with this US policy and are willing to go ahead and buy Iranian oil anyway although they are probably not paying in US dollars. In 1971 President Nixon made a deal with Saudi Arabia that it would accept payment for oil only in dollars. This made the US dollar the world's reserve currency. Since the beginning of 2003, Iran has required payment in euros for exports to Asia and Europe. The government opened an Iranian Oil Bourse on the free trade zone on the island of Kish, for the express purpose of trading oil priced in other currencies, including euros. So even before the sanctions, Iran broke ranks with the US-Saudi agreement and was willing to exchange oil for other currencies.

This is how Iran got in trouble with the US originally when in 1951 Iran nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Foreign companies owned most of Iran's oil prior to that time. In August 1953, the government of Mosaddegh, who had spearheaded the nationalization of Iranian oil, was overthrown by a military coup d'état orchestrated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and the British Secret Intelligence Service. Mosaddegh was sentenced to three years in prison and then kept under house arrest until his death in 1967. This ushered in the era of the notorious Shah of Iran who immediately unnationalized Iranian oil and gave control of its oil back to the US and Britain.

Now that the US is sanctioning all exports of Iranian oil, Iran is selling oil anyway on the "gray market." Essentially it is smuggling Iranian oil to willing buyers who are paying Iran much less than they would be paying other countries in dollars for the same oil. China is the main nation willing to defy US sanctions and buy Iranian oil. However, the US is hesitant to put sanctions on China, a major trading partner, which has become too powerful to bow to US demands. This is all leading to dedollarization in world markets and the use of other currencies for trading. Since the US has weaponized the dollar, the result will be that other currencies will take on perhaps a shared role in becoming world reserve currencies.

In August 2018, Venezuela joined the group of countries that allow their oil to be purchased in currencies other than US Dollars, thus allowing purchases in Euros, Yuan and other directly convertible currencies. This tendency will be increasing around the world as the US tries to bully other countries by using sanctions. This means that petrodollar recycling which has allowed the US to run huge budget deficits will decline. The US will probably continue to run huge budget deficits with the Federal Reserve just printing the money to make up the difference between the deficits and diminished petrodollar recycling.

Another trend that will diminish the role of the dollar as the world's reserve currency is the conversion from fossil fuel products to renewable energy sources which must be done at a faster rate if the earth is to be protected from global warming. As the Fed ramps up its printing of dollars, the dollar will, inevitably lose value even if it doesn't result in inflation in the US. But inflation is in the eyes of the beholder. Already the increased money printing has caused tremendous inflation in asset prices, namely the stock market and real estate. It's just that the government excludes these assets from its inflation index so it seems like there is low inflation. Those experiencing skyrocketing rents would probably disagree.

China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013, overtaking the US. This means that the US can hardly threaten a more powerful nation economically with sanctions. In 2018, China was the world's largest economy for the fourth year in a row. It produced $25.3 trillion in economic output according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund. It contributed 19% of the world's total gross domestic product of $135.2 trillion. The European Union was in second place, generating $22 trillion. Together, China and the EU generate 35% of the world's economic output. The United States remained in third place, producing $20.5 trillion.

The US is losing its ability to push other nations around because the dollar is the world's reserve currency. The dollar is fast losing even that status so, if China wants to buy Iranian oil, they will do so, sanctions or no sanctions. Even the EU is defying US sanctions as Germany continues developing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which will deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany. The US has no hesitation in sanctioning Russia, but it will back off from sanctioning a major NATO ally, Germany, over this deal which Germany badly wants. The sanctions amount to no more than a slight delay in the completion of the pipeline.

There Is Zero Actual Evidence Iran Is Responsible for Killing Hundreds of Americans

Published on Tuesday, January 07, 2020

by The Progressive

The assertions being repeated today seem based on apparently groundless claims from twelve years ago by the same people who said Iraq possessed weapons, weapons programs, and weapons systems that were such a grave threat that they ignited the U.S.-Iraq war.

by Stephen Zunes

 

4 Comments

Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) march during the annual military parade marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the devastating 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, in the capital Tehran on September 22, 2018. (Photo: STR / AFP /Getty Images)

The skepticism expressed by some leading Democrats and the mainstream media regarding the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani has been refreshing, after decades of bipartisan support for disastrous U.S. policies in the region. 

These critiques, not unreasonably, have acknowledged Suleiman’s nefarious role in advancing Iran’s geostrategic reach in the Middle East supporting extremist militia, exacerbating sectarianism, and suppressing progressive democratic movements.

However, the claim that Soleimani and the Iranian government are somehow responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of Americans” in Iraq—which has been repeated by leading Democrats and the mainstream media—appears to be groundless.

There have not been significant U.S. casualties in Iraq since around 2007, when charges of Iranian involvement in attacks against U.S. forces first surfaced. Virtually all attacks against U.S. forces since the 2003 invasion had come from Baathist, Sunni, and other anti-Iranian groups. Of the more than 10,000 suspected insurgents arrested in U.S. counter-insurgency sweeps prior to the first U.S. withdrawal in 2011, the relatively few foreigners among them were Arabs, not Iranians.

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, compiled by America’s sixteen intelligence agencies and issued in February 2007, downplayed Iran’s role in Iraq’s violence and instability. Yet it was at this point that the George W. Bush Administration began making the case that Iran had become the principal foreign threat to U.S. forces in Iraq.

The Bush Administration’s case was based primarily on assertions that bomb fragments, such as those displayed by U.S. military officials in a press conference in Baghdad on February 11 of that year, were of Iranian origin. But they never showed any proof making this linkage.

U.S. officials originally claimed to have documents, computer files, confessions by captured Iranians, and evidence that Iranian officials were caught with explosives. None of this was ever made public, however, raising doubts as to whether such evidence even existed in the first place.

They then insisted that Iran was responsible for the increased sophistication over the past several months of what are known as “improvised explosive devices” (IEDs), which were being used by Iraqi insurgents against U.S. and Iraqi military convoys. But the increased sophistication is not necessarily a result of outside aid. In virtually every conflict, particularly those involving irregular warfare, each side constantly seeks to improve the accuracy and lethality of its weapons in the course of the struggle.

Of particular concern to U.S. officials were the alleged increase in attacks by IEDs using “explosively formed projectiles” (EFPs), which U.S. officials claimed had killed 170 U.S. and allied soldiers.

While the Bush Administration insisted the machine-tooling was so sophisticated it could only have been manufactured in Iran, British government scientists found that the devices could have simply been “turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions” and were not that different than munitions manufactured elsewhere.

The pre-invasion Iraqi army and the munitions industry that supported it certainly possessed enough resident technical expertise to produce the material that the insurgents are using. Indeed, it is rather bizarre that the same U.S. administration that insisted just four years earlier that Iraq was technologically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and was on the verge of developing an atomic bomb would then be incapable of developing an effective roadside bomb without direct support from its neighbor Iran.

Furthermore, so many metal tubes and explosives were stolen from Iraqi army stockpiles during the chaos following the 2003 U.S. invasion, the insurgents presumably possessed enough material to manufacture their own IEDs for decades. And even if the pieces of weaponry displayed by U.S. military officials came from Iran, there is a huge black market in various explosive devices in Iraq. So it would not be surprising to find components from any number of countries, including those of recent manufacture.

Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, admitted that there was no proof that the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi insurgents with the lethal weaponry. The British government withdrew similar charges they made in 2005, and the Iraqi government has also denied U.S. accusations of an Iranian connection.

"The claim that Soleimani and the Iranian government are somehow responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of Americans” in Iraq appears to be groundless."

In short, the assertions being repeated today seem based on apparently groundless claims from twelve years ago by the same people who said Iraq possessed weapons, weapons programs, and weapons systems that were such a grave threat that they ignited the U.S.-Iraq war. It was this invasion, of course, that led to the rise of pro-Iranian sectarian parties and militia and the resulting Iranian influence in that Arab country.

Segments of the Iranian government and religious hierarchy certainly have been providing training, arms, as well as financial and logistical support to Iraqi Shia political groups and their militias. Soleimani was a key figure in that effort. They were highly effective, if sometimes ruthless, fighters in the war against ISIS, often in conjunction with U.S. forces.

In addition, some of these militias directed death squads against the Sunni Arab community in Iraq during the height of the country’s sectarian violence between 2006 and 2008. More recently, the militias have been targeting pro-democracy anti-corruption protesters. The proxies are brutal and it’s not surprising that so many Iraqis want the Iranians out.

However, these Shia parties are part of Iraq’s elected coalition government and the militia are state-sanctioned, making them technically part of the Iraqi armed forces. And it’s more than ironic for the United States to insist that Iran has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of their next-door neighbor that the United States invaded, occupied, engaged in a bloody counter-insurgency war, and, where nearly seventeen years later, it continues to station thousands of troops.

Rather than recognizing that Iran is simply seeking to take advantage from the dramatic U.S.-instigated changes in the political and strategic situation on their western flank (as would any regional power in a comparable situation), Bush—and now Trump, with the backing of many Democrats—has tried to depict Iran’s role as something far more sinister: yet another front of “the war on terrorism,” making an aggressive U.S. response a matter of “self-defense.”

Although Iranian policy has certainly contributed to the suffering of the Iraqi people, it pales in comparison to the damage inflicted upon that country by the United States. And, if those in Washington, D.C., really want to protect American soldiers from pro-Iranian militia, they simply need to do what the Iraqis and a lot of others have been demanding: Get them out of Iraq. Now.

Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies. Recognized as one the country’s leading scholars of U.S. Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action, Professor Zunes serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, a contributing editor of Tikkun, and co-chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

© 2019 The Progressive

Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Demands Official UN Probe of Soleimani Assassination

Published on Tuesday, January 07, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Messages and bilateral exchanges are not enough," said Agnes Callamard.

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

7 Comments

Agnes Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, speaks at a press conference in Brussels on December 3, 2019. (Photo: Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images)

The United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions on Monday called for an impartial probe into the legality of the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, warning that strongly worded denunciations from the international community are far from a sufficient response.

"Messages and bilateral exchanges are not enough," Agnes Callamard tweeted in response to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres' call for deescalation of military tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Callamard urged Guterres to activate Article 99 of the U.N. charter and "establish an impartial inquiry into [the] lawfulness of Soleimani's killing and events leading up to it." Article 99 gives the secretary general authority to bring to the U.N. Security Council "any matter which... may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security."

The moral voice of UNSG @AntonioGuteres matters a great deal in times of crisis. But messages and bilateral exchanges are not enough. Activate Article 99 of the UN Charter; establish an impartial inquiry into lawfulness of #Suleimani killing and events leading up to it. https://t.co/pxnD9Sw81W

— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) January 6, 2020

Callamard tweeted last week that the U.S. drone strike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad was likely a violation of international law, an assessment echoed by other legal experts.

President Donald Trump and members of his administration justified the strike on the grounds that Soleimani was plotting "imminent" attacks on American forces in Iraq, but the White House has yet to present any evidence supporting its self-defense narrative. Callamard told Reuters Saturday that the U.S. assassination of  Soleimani "appears far more retaliatory for past acts than anticipatory for imminent self-defense."

"Lawful justifications for such killings are very narrowly defined and it is hard to imagine how any of these can apply to these killings," Callamard added.

During a press conference on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo failed to cite a specific example of the supposedly imminent threat that warranted Soleimani's assassination.

REPORTER: Can you be specific about the imminent threat that Soleimani posed?

POMPEO: "We know what happened at the end of last year & ultimately led to the death of an American. If you are looking for immanence, look no further than the days that led up to the strike." pic.twitter.com/yhqyNToZxd

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 7, 2020

Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law, argued in a New York Times op-ed Monday that the U.S. assassination of Soleimani was both "illegal" and a "predictable" consequence of the dangerous precedents set by the so-called war on terror.

"In employing the euphemism 'targeted killing' for a member of a sovereign state," Greenberg wrote, "the Trump administration has exposed the faulty assumptions and dangerous legacy posed by the war on terror's targeted killing policy."

"A policy that attempted to cordon off the war on terror from the rules of war, that depended on 'trust me' government, and that rationalized the expansion of executive authority without congressional approval," said Greenberg, "set the foundation for last week's killing and its unleashing of threats of violent retaliation."

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Off the Top of My Head

Terrorism is in the Eyes of the Beholder

by John Lawrence, January 7, 2020

The words "terrorism" and "terrorist" are overused and have completely lost their meaning. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. The Kurds consider themselves freedom fighters. They were allies of the US in ridding Syria of ISIS. However, Turkey, a NATO ally, calls them terrorists. General Soleimani, who was just assassinated by the US, was considered a "good guy" as long as he was fighting ISIS. The U.S. and Iran are mutual enemies of ISIS and effectively fought against ISIS to crush the terrorist group’s de facto state in Iraq and Syria. General Soleimani deserves credit for leading this fight against ISIS so is he a terrorist or an anti-terrorist, an ally in the fight against ISIS or, now that that fight has been won, a terrorist? The nuances of the Middle East situation are too much for an imbecile like Trump to appreciate. His other advisors aren't much better.

The ISIS so-called caliphate has largely been destroyed. That should be considered a victory, but the US should not get all the credit for that victory. Other actors like the Kurds and the Iranians deserve credit for that outcome as well. But it will be a cold day in hell before the US gives the Iranians any credit for anything. What the US should be doing is leaving the Middle East and letting the Middle East sort out its own situation. Continuing to provoke the hostility between Sunnis and Shiites is only contributing to exacerbate the Middle East situation. Trump said he wanted to end the endless wars in the Middle East so why doesn't he do it? The answer is that Trump is drunk with power, and he has made Iran the bogieman so he can vent his animosity on them. This is only increasing tensions until they will blow up into a major war that will accomplish nothing but the deaths of millions of civilians and the destruction of billions of dollars worth of property including priceless Iranian historic and cultural sites.

Finally, we can appreciate how important the Iran nuclear deal was now that Trump's first step towards war was in the abandoning of it. It at least brought Iran to the negotiating table and within reach of being included among other civilized nations. Instead it has been driven away from meaningful negotiations by Trump's refusal to have diplomatic negotiations with them. This is how hostilities leading to war begin. Put a narcissistic imbecile with a lot of pet peeves in charge of the world's largest military, and the result is that he inevitably will use that power to get his own way regardless of the destruction that that involves. The last time we saw this situation was in the 1930s, but Hitler's power to destroy civilization was trivial compared to Trump's arsenal. Hitler also started by being democratically appointed to the Chancellorship. That was before he became Fuhrer.

We can hope that cooler heads will prevail, but where are the cooler heads in the Trump administration? Trump along with his henchmen in the Senate who are totally enabling him has effectively taken over the American political structure just as Hitler took over the Reichstag. The Democratic controlled House can do nothing to stop Trump as long as the Senate under Mitch McConnell is totally on Trump's side. They are egging him on instead of putting the brakes on him. Trump is convinced that the majority of Americans are totally behind him. Like Hitler he is leading rallies of support on a constant basis unlike any President we have known hitherto. All that is missing is the torchlight parades. There is effectively no governmental constraint on his doing anything he wants to do, and that does not auger well for a salutary outcome for the US, Iran, our NATO allies or the world.

Meet the Corporate War Profiteers Making a Killing on Trump's Attacks on Iran

Published on

Monday, January 06, 2020

by Foreign Policy In Focus

As long as the top executives of our privatized war economy can reap unlimited rewards, the profit motive for war in Iran—or anywhere—will persist.

by Sarah Anderson

 

6 Comments

We can put an end to dangerous war profiteering by denying federal contracts to corporations that pay their top executives excessively. (Photo: Chris Devers / Flickr)

CEOs of major U.S. military contractors stand to reap huge windfalls from the escalation of conflict with Iran. This was evident in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian military official last week. As soon as the news reached financial markets, these companies’ share prices spiked, inflating the value of their executives’ stock-based pay.

I took a look at how the CEOs at the top five Pentagon contractors were affected by this surge, using the most recent SEC information on their stock holdings.

Northrop Grumman executives saw the biggest increase in the value of their stocks after the U.S. airstrike that killed Qasem Suleimani on January 2. Shares in the B-2 bomber maker rose 5.43 percent by the end of trading the following day.

Wesley Bush, who turned Northrop Grumman’s reins over to Kathy Warden last year, held 251,947 shares of company stock in various trusts as of his final SEC Form 4 filing in May 2019. (Companies must submit these reports when top executives and directors buy and sell company stock.) Assuming Bush is still sitting on that stockpile, he saw the value grow by $4.9 million to a total of $94.5 million last Friday.

New Northrop Grumman CEO Warden saw the 92,894 shares she’d accumulated as the firm’s COO expand in value by more than $2.7 million in just one day of post-assassination trading.

Lockheed Martin, whose Hellfire missiles were reportedly used in the attack at the Baghdad airport, saw a 3.6 percent increase in price per share on January 3. Marillyn Hewson, CEO of the world’s largest weapon maker, may be kicking herself for selling off a considerable chunk of stock last year when it was trading at around $307. Nevertheless, by the time Lockheed shares reached $413 at the closing bell, her remaining stash had increased in value by about $646,000.

What about the manufacturer of the MQ-9 Reaper that carried the Hellfire missiles? That would be General Atomics. Despite raking in $2.8 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts in 2018, the drone maker is not required to disclose executive compensation information because it is a privately held corporation.

We do know General Atomics CEO Neal Blue is worth an estimated $4.1 billion—and he’s a major investor in oil production, a sector that also stands to profit from conflict with a major oil-producing country like Iran.

Suleimani’s killing also inflated the value of General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic’s fortune. As the weapon maker’s share price rose about 1 percentage point on January 3, the former CIA official saw her stock holdings increase by more than $1.2 million.

Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy saw a single-day increase in his stock of more than half a million dollars, as the missile and bomb manufacturer’s share price increased nearly 1.5 percent. Boeing stock remained flat on Friday. But Dennis Muilenberg, recently ousted as CEO over the 737 aircraft scandal, appears to be well-positioned to benefit from any continued upward drift of the defense sector.

As of his final Form 4 report, Muilenburg was sitting on stock worth about $47.7 million. In his yet to be finalized exit package, the disgraced former executive could also pocket huge sums of currently unvested stock grants.

Hopefully sanity will soon prevail and the terrifyingly high tensions between the Trump administration and Iran will de-escalate. But even if the military stock surge of this past Friday turns out to be a market blip, it’s a sobering reminder of who stands to gain the most from a war that could put millions of lives at risk.

We can put an end to dangerous war profiteering by denying federal contracts to corporations that pay their top executives excessively. In 2008, John McCain, then a Republican presidential candidate, proposed capping CEO pay at companies receiving taxpayer bailouts at no more than $400,000 (the salary of the U.S. president). That notion should be extended to companies that receive massive taxpayer-funded contracts.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, for instance, has a plan to deny federal contracts to companies that pay CEOs more than 150 times what their typical worker makes.

As long as we allow the top executives of our privatized war economy to reap unlimited rewards, the profit motive for war in Iran—or anywhere—will persist.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies, and is a co-editor of Inequality.org. @Anderson_IPS

© 2019 Foreign Policy In Focus

Off the Top of My Head

Qasem Soleimani?: Neva Hoid Ov'm

by John Lawrence, January 6, 2019

We heard a lot about Osama bin Laden before he was killed. Ditto for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. We were assured these were very bad guys, and we were happy to learn they had been eliminated from the face of the earth, but Qasem Soleimani? The American public had not been prepared for the sudden take out of this guy. Who the hell was he? Turns out he was a very high level general in the Iranian military sort of equivalent to Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command. So if it goes tit for tat, US Generals must be looking over their shoulders. Now Pompeo tells us in retrospect that Soleimani is a great terrorist sort of along the lines of Osama or Abu Bakr, but it doesn't quite add up. These days anyone the US doesn't like is a terrorist and that holds for other countries as well. It seems that "terrorist" has lost the meaning of the word.

Trump's statement that they had to take Soleimani out because he was planning an "imminent" attack to kill Americans doesn't hold water. Where is the evidence? It's another Trump bullshit lie, and Trump has no credibility anyway since he lies every day. But in this regard he isn't any different from George W Bush who lied us into the war in Iraq in the first place by claiming Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Or for that matter the lie that got us into the Vietnam war, the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Pentagon Papers, the memoirs of Robert McNamara, and NSA publications from 2005, proved material misrepresentation by the US government to justify a war against Vietnam. So they're pretty much all liars, but Trump has taken it to a whole new level.

The intelligence on this "imminent" attack on a high ranking Iranian general was not shared with our NATO allies who are about to the point of being sick of us nor was it shared with Congress. Trump evidently believes that, not only can he kill somebody in the middle of 5th Avenue and get away with it, he believes he can kill anyone in the world with no repercussions. Trump not only believes he can perpetrate a crime and get away with it, he believes he can commit a war crime on behalf of the United States and get away with it.

Even the Democrats have joined the chorus about how bad Soleimani was. Elizabeth Warren tweeted that Suleimani was "responsible for the deaths of thousands". Just which deaths is Soleimani supposed to be responsible for? Craig Murray writes:

The truth of the matter is that if you take every American killed including and since 9/11, in the resultant Middle East related wars, conflicts and terrorist acts, well over 90% of them have been killed by Sunni Muslims financed and supported out of Saudi Arabia and its gulf satellites, and less than 10% of those Americans have been killed by Shia Muslims tied to Iran.

This is a horribly inconvenient fact for US administrations which, regardless of party, are beholden to Saudi Arabia and its money. It is, the USA affirms, the Sunnis who are the allies and the Shias who are the enemy. Yet every journalist or aid worker hostage who has been horribly beheaded or otherwise executed has been murdered by a Sunni, every jihadist terrorist attack in the USA itself, including 9/11, has been exclusively Sunni, the Benghazi attack was by Sunnis, Isil are Sunni, Al Nusra are Sunni, the Taliban are Sunni and the vast majority of US troops killed in the region are killed by Sunnis.

Precisely which are these hundreds of deaths for which the Shia forces of Soleimani were responsible? Is there a list? It is of course a simple lie. Its tenuous connection with truth relates to the Pentagon’s estimate – suspiciously upped repeatedly since Iran became the designated enemy – that back during the invasion of Iraq itself, 83% of US troop deaths were at the hands of Sunni resistance and 17% of of US troop deaths were at the hands of Shia resistance, that is 603 troops. All the latter are now lain at the door of Soleimani, remarkably.

Those were US troops killed in combat during an invasion. The Iraqi Shia militias – whether Iran backed or not – had every legal right to fight the US invasion. The idea that the killing of invading American troops was somehow illegal or illegitimate is risible. Plainly the US propaganda that Soleimani was “responsible for hundreds of American deaths” is intended, as part of the justification for his murder, to give the impression he was involved in terrorism, not legitimate combat against invading forces. The idea that the US has the right to execute those who fight it when it invades is an absolutely stinking abnegation of the laws of war.

As Mr. Murray points out, most of the Americans killed since 9/11 were killed by Sunnis tied to Saudi Arabia yet we continue to be allies with Saudi Arabia because of oil. Oil justifies everything. Now Trump is threatening to put sanctions on Iraq, a country we invaded in order to get rid of Saddam and turn it into a democracy. Since the majority in Iraq is Shia, George W Bush delivered the country to a Shia majority who just happen to be allied with Shiite Iran. The US, not understanding the Sunni-Shiite split has blundered on its Middle East policy ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Our turning over Iraq to the Shiite majority in the name of democracy, and then having remorse over the fact that they are now aligned with Iran is sheer stupid blundering. But what do you expect from a bunch of ignorant, stupid people who had and still have no understanding of the history of the area. Now Trump threatens to sanction Iraq if it kicks out US troops. Didn't we invade there to create democracy? Now Trump is going to sanction a country we invaded in order to save it because it might be expressing its democratic will.

I wrote in 2018:

Morality and ethics have been totally thrown out the window by the US in the conduct of international relations. Any careful consideration would conclude that Iran, although far from perfect, is a more moral and ethical country than Saudi Arabia. Yet we have to hate Iran and sanction Iran and try to bring Iran's economy to its knees because Saudi Arabia hates Iran and they are our ally? This whole thing is ridiculous. Trump is trying to preserve Saudi Arabia as an American ally because Nixon made a deal with the Saudis to sell oil only for dollars thus making the dollar the world's reserve currency. The Saudis off people in the public square for hardly any reason at all. Their religion, Wahhabism, preaches death to the West and to Jews. Usama bin Laden was a Saudi as were 15 of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. The Saudis are just using the US and vice versa.

Trump has fanned the fires of way with Iran ever since he backed out of the nuclear deal. Soon there won't even be a negotiating table to go to. It's a natural progression from backing away from negotiations to sanctioning to assassinating, Khashoggi style, an Iranian general. Trump is not only ruining the US moral and ethical reputation, he is ruining the US dollar as the world's reserve currency with his crazy sanctioning. The world is in the process of finding other ways of settling their accounts without the use of the US dollar or institutions predicated on the US dollar.

'Right Now Is the Moment to Decide If You Are Pro-Peace or Not': Ocasio-Cortez Joins Progressive Chorus Against War With Iran

Published on Friday, January 03, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Congress now has a moral and legal obligation to reassert its power to stop this war and protect innocent people from horrific consequences."

by Eoin Higgins, staff writer

 

70 Comments

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) attends Women's March 2019 on January 19, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Progressives on Friday, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called for Congressional action to rein in the administration after a drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, a move seen by observers as an act of war that is nearly certain to exacerbate a historically tense moment in the Persian Gulf region.

"Right now is the moment to decide if you are pro-peace or not," tweeted Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.

Last night the President engaged in what is widely being recognized as an act of war against Iran, one that now risks the lives of millions of innocent people.

Now is the moment to prevent war & protect innocent people - the question for many is how, publicly & Congressionally:

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 3, 2020

"Congress now has a moral and legal obligation to reassert its power to stop this war and protect innocent people from horrific consequences," the congresswoman added.

Ocasio-Cortez joined a growing chorus from the left urging restraint and diplomacy from the U.S. and Iran. 

"There is no military solution to this crisis," Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement. "Instead, we must pursue meaningful diplomacy to achieve peace and stability in the region."

There is no military solution to this crisis — instead, we must pursue meaningful diplomacy to achieve peace and stability in the region.

Full statement from @repmarkpocan & @RepJayapal ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/x5Yz3o40pI

— Progressive Caucus (@USProgressives) January 3, 2020

Jayapal added in a tweet that Soleimani's killing "dangerously doubles down on reckless military brinkmanship."

The attack on Soleimani, one of the leaders of Iran's Quds Force and a major figure in the Iranian government, and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis came on Friday morning near the Baghdad airport. 

By striking the Iranian leader, Ploughshares Fund director of programs Michelle Dover told Common Dreams in an email, the U.S. "has imperiled any near term chances for diplomacy."

"The primary question now is whether the U.S. government is prepared for the Iranian response," said Dover. "The U.S. public should be calling on Congress to assert its authorities and oversight roles to prevent an unintentional slide into war." 

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) in a statement called for peace and noted that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), first passed by Congress in 2001 days after the 9/11 attacks with Lee as the sole dissenting vote, was used by the White House as the justification for the strike. 

"We must work to prevent further military action in the region," said Lee. "We have known for years that there is no military solution, and it's past time to return to a diplomatic strategy with our allies. We must protect our national security, our brave troops, our allies, and the American people."

Lee included in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) an amendment which would have repealed the AUMF, but, as Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out on Twitter, that language was stripped from the final bill delivering the president billions in war funding, which passed Congress with bipartisan support. 

There were two amendments stripped from the NDAA that could have prevented tonight's escalation.

My amendment to prevent funding for war with Iran without Congressional approval.@BLeeForCongress's amendment to repeal the 2001 AUMF.

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) January 3, 2020

Liberal advocacy group MoveOn on Friday launched a petition asking Congress to halt the march to war. 

"Congress is the only branch of government that has the constitutional power to decide where and whether to send U.S. forces into harm's way," the group said. "We urge you to act immediately to stop a catastrophic war with Iran."

The Nation's Jeet Heer warned Friday that Congress has not been known recently for its bravery in the face of war-time presidents.

"Trump's petty motives and incoherent policy have been enabled by a Congress that has long been derelict in its duty to provide oversight over foreign policy," said Heer. "This abdication of responsibility is all too typical of American politics since the 9/11 terrorist attacks—under both Democratic and Republican presidents."

There is no justification for starting a war w/ Iran.

Endless wars kill innocent people and put trillions of $ in the pockets war profiteers.

We can't allow Trump to thrust us into another costly & deadly war.

Sign here to Stop War with Iran:https://t.co/7NafViabSq

— jordan (@JordanUhl) January 3, 2020

In a statement to Common Dreams, Alliance for Peacebuilding president and CEO Uzra Zeya said that the correct response to the continuing tensions is trying to find a way forward without violence.

"We must reject retribution and military action towards all-out war that endangers the future of Iranians and Americans alike," said Zeya. "Peacebuilding—in the form of de-escalation, dialogue, restraint, and diplomacy—is now more important than ever."

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Off the Top of My Head

How Soon We Forget

by John Lawrence

It looks like Trump is about to blunder us into another war ... this time with Iran. How soon we forget that George W Bush's splendid little war with Iraq essentially turned the country over to the democratic majority (we all support democracy, don't we) which just happened to be Shiites aligned with Iran which is also a Shiite country. Or is this too complicated for the average Congressman to understand? Now Trump is all excited about the fact that Iraq and Iran are buddies since he has gone out of his way to alienate Iran, first by opting out of the Iran nuclear deal supported by all the other signatories who just happen to be our allies. He couldn't have made a better move to increase tensions with Iran.

So now the war hawks are beating the drums to punish Iran after all the painful negotiations it took just to get the Iran nuclear deal which at least gave us and the world a platform to bring Iran in out of the cold and make it part of the civilized world. Nah, in effect, says Trump. We want Iran as our enemy, and we don't talk to or negotiate with enemies. Many years of diplomacy totally wasted thanks to Donald J Trump. Obama bent over backward as did many other diplomats to bring Iran to the table, and now Trump has kicked the table over spilling everyone's hard work and ordering the janitor to place it all in the garbage can. How can the American people support this?

The general that Trump ordered killed, Qasem Soleimani, had done a lot to get rid of ISIS in Iraq. This is how we reward him. But never mind, yesterday's friends can be today's enemies. Just think about the Kurds! It doesn't matter. Any enemy will do to justify the trillions of dollars we lavish on the military-industrial complex. Trump even puts sanctions on countries who buy their weapons from some other country than America. America First, you know. We even order our friends not to do deals that we don't like. So far nobody is taking the hint about Boeing's 737MAX. They will all be buying aircraft from France's Airbus from now on. Germany may be next on Trump's hit list . He's ordered them not to buy cheaper natural gas from Russia when they could buy more expensive natural gas from the US. Who do those Germans think they are? Economically collaborating with the enemy.

Instead of "The Art of the Deal" Trump is now fully qualified to write or have ghostwritten for him "How to Make the World a More Dangerous Place in Three Easy Lessons." I'm sure all his right wing base will make it a best seller even though it might take a billionaire to buy up most of the copies to make it so. I'm sure Iran has some nasty little secrets up their sleeve if Trump escalates. That's how wars start don't they. Tit for Tat. The point is that Trump needs a war so everyone can rally around him. Let's hoist the flag and his reelection will be secured.

No War for Oil, Say Climate Advocates, as Trump Admin Pushes for Conflict With Iran

Published on Monday, September 16, 2019

by Common Dreams

"Oil has fueled violence and the climate emergency for far too long."

by Andrea Germanos, staff writer

 

1 Comments

Protesters hold a sign against the Iraq War outside the White House in 2004. (Photo: Elvert Barnes/flickr/cc)

After President Donald Trump threatened Iran via tweet Sunday, climate campaigners on Monday drew renewed attention to the danger of pursuing war for oil.

Their calls came after Trump tweeted the U.S. is "locked and loaded" in response to a weekend attack on Saudi oil facilities and suggested he was merely waiting for the directive from Riyadh. The White House has blamed Iran, without evidence, for the attacks.  

The focus on wars for oil came as thousands of young activists worldwide mobilize for the global #ClimateStrike on Sept. 20.

Commenting on the simmering tensions, author and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote on Twitter, "Getting ready for war to insure the supply of a substance that is wrecking the planet."

 

Climate group Greenpeace International weighed in as well, urging the use of "diplomacy over force" and "peaceful renewable energies" over fossil fuels.

Between 1/4 and 1/2 of all wars between countries since 1973 are linked to oil. Oil has fuelled violence and the climate emergency for far too long. We must choose diplomacy over force, and peaceful renewable energies, like wind and solar, over dirty, destructive oil. https://t.co/dUdkvum0mW

— Greenpeace PressDesk (@greenpeacepress) September 16, 2019

"Fossil fuels are dangerous," tweeted environmental scientist Jonathan Foley late Sunday. "For our security. For our economy. For our health. And for the planet."

"Let's not be held hostage by this industry any more," he added. "It's time to move to a better world."

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Off the Top of My Head

The US is Now Arming ISIS After Spending Trillions Trying to Get Rid of ISIS

by John Lawrence

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is the only Democrat bringing up the absurdity of the US continuing to arm terrorists, whom we spent trillions to eradicate, in their efforts to overthrow Assad in Syria. Since Assad is allied with Iran (his religion is a variation of Shiite Islam which is espoused by Iran), all of a sudden it's not ISIS that are the terrorists, it's Iran and everyone allied with Iran who are the terrorists. This is all a game designed to spend trillions of dollars and destroy millions of lives just so the US can maintain its military spending at a high level while accomplishing nothing but death and destruction. What the US foreign policy experts don't seem to understand is that what is going on in the Middle East is fundamentally a continuation of the Sunni-Shiite split that happened centuries ago. Add to that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and you have a real mess.

Tulsi Gabbard understands the ridiculousness of this continued mucking around in this conflict which has produced nothing but death and destruction and wasted trillions of dollars:

Under U.S. law it is illegal for any American to provide money or assistance to al-Qaeda, ISIS or other terrorist groups. If an American citizen gave money, weapons or support to al-Qaeda or ISIS, he or she would be thrown in jail. Yet the U.S. government has been violating this law for years, quietly supporting allies and partners of al-Qaeda, ISIL, Jabhat Fateh al Sham and other terrorist groups with money, weapons, and intelligence support, in their fight to overthrow the Syrian government. The CIA has also been funneling weapons and money through Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and others who provide direct and indirect support to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. This support has allowed al-Qaeda and their fellow terrorist organizations to establish strongholds throughout Syria, including in Aleppo.

Since the US has redefined Iran as the enemy and undertaken a series of provocations towards Iran, all of a sudden anyone who is fighting Iran's friend Assad, namely ISIS is a friend of ours. All of a sudden Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism and not ISIS. It all depends whose side you're on how you define who is and who isn't a terrorist. Since the brou ha ha over Jamal Khashoggi's death at the hands of Saudi Arabia has died down, we can now get on with our close relationship with the Sunni country of Saudi Arabia which spawned ISIS (who are Sunnis) in the first place. Now it's Sunnis good, Shiites bad although by taking out Saddam in Iraq we created a Shiite state affiliated with Iran since the majority of Iraquis are Shiites (Saddam was a Sunni).

So there's this big realignment of US foreign policy since Trump backed out of the JCPOA, the nuclear arms deal with Iran. This deal made Iran a partner instead of an adversary. Now Trump has accomplished the goal of turning them into an adversary and may even start a war with them. At the same time he is doubling down on his efforts to oust Assad in Syria since Assad is an ally of Iran.

Tulsi continues:

The CIA has long been supporting a group called Fursan al Haqq, providing them with salaries, weapons and support, including surface to air missiles.  This group is cooperating with and fighting alongside an al-Qaeda affiliated group trying to overthrow the Syrian government. The Levant Front is another so-called moderate umbrella group of Syrian opposition fighters. Over the past year, the United States has been working with Turkey to give this group intelligence support and other forms of military assistance. This group has joined forces with al-Qaeda’s offshoot group in Syria.

Why is she the only Democrat talking about this stuff? Who is going to define who is and who is not a terrorist? A terrorist is in the eyes of the beholder and has become a meaningless term used to justify every side in a conflict. As Tulsi points out, "Our limited resources should go toward rebuilding our communities here at home, not fueling more counterproductive regime change wars abroad."

At the root of the conflict is the continually festering situation between the Palestinians and Israel. Even though the Palestinians are essentially Sunnis, the Shiite nation of Iran is supporting them in a proxy war against Israel through its proxy, Hezbollah. If this issue were to be resolved, then maybe all parties could get along, and Sunnis, Shiites and Jews could all be friends. In any event the US mucking around in the Middle East has only made the situation worse while spending trillions of dollars that could have been better spent at home.

Off the Top of My Head

Sanctions Are US Economic Warfare

by John Lawrence

No less than a military strike, the US uses sanctions to try and effect regime change in Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere. The US forbids third parties from doing business with countries it has targeted and tries to ruin their economies. This may or may not work, but it sure hurts the lives of the common people, the very people the US hopes to "save" from the supposed tyranny of its leaders. It represents warfare by another means. Clausewitz said, "War is the continuation of politics by other means." Well, sanctions are the continuation of war by other means. Forget politics or diplomacy. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JPCOA was the deal with Iran participated in by the US, China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany) and the European Union. This is the deal that Trump took the US out of and immediately applied sanctions not only to Iran but to every country doing business with Iran.

So force not diplomacy is the trend for the US in international relations. No wonder we're at the brink of war with Iran. First withdraw from diplomacy conducted by numerous nations, then apply economic warfare, then set up the military for provocations by sending numerous ships and aircraft to the region, then strike after some provocation. As Trump said, we will "obliterate" Iran. As if the US hasn't learned its lesson in the middle east after conducting numerous tragic fiascoes in that region involving the killing of hundreds of thousands of locals and thousands of Americans. Those not being killed come home with PTSD and are committing suicide at the rate of 20 a day. Trump, himself, never went to war. Neither did his chief warmonger, John Bolton. Bolton wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book: "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost." But these guys are just itching for war, if not with Venezuela, than with Iran.

The Guardian reported:

The US is now engaged in three major confrontations around the world that have the potential to degrade into war. And in the driving seat on all three fronts is John Bolton, one of the most fervent believers in American military power ever to work in the White House.

Donald Trump’s 70-year-old national security adviser has been a fixture in US foreign policy over the past four decades, and has spent that time, whether in or out of government, mostly arguing for the most hawkish position on any issue put in front of him.

“He actually believes when America leads, the world is a safer and better place – not just for us but for the world,” said Mark Groombridge, who worked for Bolton for more than 10 years. ...

These days, Bolton looks considerably more cheerful, having reached the peak of the policymaking establishment that had once seemed out of his reach.

Bolton seems to have played a key role in the collapse of the second Trump summit with Kim Jong-un in February, when he appeared to have drafted a maximalist list of demands for all-or-nothing disarmament that was presented to the North Korean dictator in Hanoi. A year of diplomacy ground to a halt, and Kim, who had been expecting a more gradualist approach, has now started goading the US with a return to missile tests.

In the standoff in Venezuela, Bolton was again centre stage, making himself the lead US voice for a failed effort at regime change in Venezuela in late April, producing a personal video appeal calling – in vain – on Nicolás Maduro’s top aides to defect. Behind the scenes he has urged a reluctant US Southern Command to come up with ever more aggressive solutions to Maduro’s hold on power.

And in the fast-moving escalation of tensions with Iran, it is Bolton who has seized the initiative, spun military deployments in the Gulf that were already in the pipeline as confrontational steps against Tehran, and reportedly irritated some in the Pentagon and intelligence agencies by putting a sensationalist spin on intelligence about Iranian military movements.

Bolton is a dangerous man. He wants war so badly just like Dick Cheney and Bush Junior did that he will lie us into it like they did. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail at least till we can get this crew out of there in the next election. Tulsi Gabbard, a war vet, was the only Democrat to challenge the military-industrial complex in the Democratic debates although Bernie had a few choice words as well. America under Trump and Bolton and the other neocon hawks is a war mongering nation. It is dead set on destroying a nation's economy with sanctions until it can get the war it lusts after. Sanctions only presage military involvement.

Off the Top of My Head

The Weaponization of the American Dollar

by John Lawrence, June 24, 2019

Imagine if you had the power to tell your friends what they could buy, where they could buy it, with whom they could do business and with whom they could not do business. That's the power that the US has over other countries, businesses and individuals. It can tell businesses in other countries who they can sell their products to and from whom they can buy needed materials even though those transactions have nothing to do with the United States. It can tell a Chinese company not to sell its products to Iran, and, if it does, it will be hit with enormous fines. Such was the case when the Chinese telecommunications company, ZTE, sold its phones to North Korea. ZTE was hit hard by the inability to buy essential components from suppliers because of sanctions for trading with North Korea and Iran. In these cases, the entity was not in violation of laws where it was domiciled or operated, and the proscribed acts took place outside the US.

That's right. The US is the dictator of the world when it comes to telling the rest of the world who it can do business with. This is the result of sanctions. Sanctions work because every business transaction worldwide has to be processed through SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. This system enables financial institutions to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized environment. Since the dollar serves as the world's reserve currency, SWIFT facilitates the international dollar system. Obviously, the US controls SWIFT. It is not an independent international institution. The US can impose primary sanctions on any country or entity within a country, and it can impose secondary sanctions even on its allies by telling them they can not do business with that country or entity.

Recently, since Trump dropped out of the nuclear deal with Iran, the US has been imposing sanction after sanction on Iran which has had the effect of ruining that country's economy. Then it has ordered its allies not to do any business with Iran. This amounts to economic warfare, and the US stands all too ready to back up economic warfare with its gargantuan and unparalleled military warfare apparatus. So the US, especially under Trump, is becoming the world's bully even going so far as to sanction companies that it can't outcompete with on a level playing field. Such is the case with Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant.

Huawei buys many of its components from the US. Trump has threatened to stop those transactions thus ruining Huawei's business. The Trump administration has decided to add Huawei and about 70 affiliates to its so-called “Entity List," which precludes the company from acquiring equipment from U.S. firms without government approval. It’s the latest broadside to the Shenzen-based company, which U.S. officials have said represents a security threat because of its ties to the Chinese government. Huawei has denied those allegations. So the message is clear. If a US company cannot outcompete a Chinese company, it can screw up its business model and outcompete them that way.

The Foundation for Economic Education reported:

A number of countries, including China, Russia, and Iran, have taken steps to limit their dependence on the dollar and have even been working to establish alternative payment systems. A growing number of central banks have been buying gold as a way to diversify their holdings away from the greenback. It comes as no surprise that countries on shaky ground with the U.S. would take such measures, but even traditional U.S. allies have grown weary of American economic bullying.

On Sept. 24, the E.U. announced its plans to create a special payment channel to circumvent U.S. economic sanctions and facilitate trade with Iran. E.U. foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini made the announcement after a meeting with foreign ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran. She said the new payment channel would allow companies to preserve oil and other business deals with Iran:

In practical terms, this will mean that E.U. member states will set up a legal entity to facilitate legitimate financial transactions with Iran and this will allow European companies to continue to trade with Iran in accordance with European Union law and could be open to other partners in the world.

The plan comes in response to Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. The E.U., Russia, and China released a joint statement saying the “Special Purpose Vehicle” will “assist and reassure economic operators pursuing legitimate business with Iran.” The statement also said the signatories to the Iran deal “reconfirmed their commitment to its full and effective implementation in good faith and in a constructive atmosphere.”

The Special Purpose Vehicle will serve as a clearinghouse for transactions with Iran. An Al Jazeera reporter explained it this way:

If the Italians want to buy some Iranian oil, they will wire the money to this entity which will then handle the financial transactions from there and vice versa. There will be no involvement of commercial banks and central banks, both of whom are terrified at the prospect of US retribution if they are seen to be going against US sanctions.

Rodger Shanahan, a research fellow at the Lowry Institute for International Policy, called the plan “a poke in the eye for the U.S.”

However, although alternative institutions may make financial transactions outside the US banking system possible because they can't be blocked by a US controlled institution, it does not relieve the countries which engage in such transactions from being sanctioned in other ways. Just because a US bank doesn't block the transaction doesn't mean that the US will not find a way to use sanctions to bestow economic hardship on a country. Only when countries are independent of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency will they be free to conduct business with whomever they choose without the threat of economic retaliation from the US.

Off the Top of My Head

The American Empire

by John Lawrence, October5, 2018

It's an empire when you have 1000 military bases in almost every country of the world. Those countries without American military bases are surrounded by countries that do have them. It's an empire when you control the world's reserve currency and financial system. It's an empire when the American central bank (the Federal Reserve) controls the other central banks of the world. It's an empire when you can apply sanctions that limit the rights of other countries to do business with each other. It's an empire when you can freeze bank accounts of anyone anywhere in the world.

Total, the French oil company, won't do business with Iran because the US applied sanctions that would threaten Total's bottom line if they persisted in their business relationship with Iran.

CNBC reported:

French energy giant Total has yet to permanently pull out of Iran following the renewal of U.S. sanctions, but CEO Patrick Pouyanne on Wednesday sounded a pessimistic note about his company's prospects in the country.

Total positioned itself to develop a portion of the world's largest natural gas field after the 2015 Iran nuclear deal lifted punishing sanctions on the Iranian economy. However, the company is now preparing to abandon the Persian Gulf project unless the U.S. government issues the company a sanctions waiver.

That would protect Total from so-called secondary sanctions, which the United States can use to punish foreign companies that engage in prohibited activity with Iran. Washington gave firms 90 to 180 days to wind down their business in the country after President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear deal last month.

"There's not a single international company like Total who can work in any country with secondary sanctions. I don't have the right. It's just the reality of the world," Pouyanne told CNBC at an OPEC seminar in Vienna.

Pouyanne acknowledged that his position probably does not sit well with Europe's leaders. The European Union has attempted to salvage the nuclear deal by passing measures aimed at protecting the bloc's firms that have business dealings in Iran.

But Pouyanne told CNBC he must be pragmatic and face reality.

"The reality is that the capital of the world today is in the hands of the U.S.," he said. "Is it right that in this world the U.S. [is] using that ... to impose some rules for other countries? That's a debate."

Secondary sanctions are particularly perilous for multinationals like Total. Engaging in sanctioned activity with Iran could prompt the American government to cut Total off from the massive U.S. financial system and force the firm to wind down its operations in the States.

"The U.S. could decide that I could not have access to any U.S. financing," Pouyanne said. "It's impossible, let me be clear, to run an international company like Total without having access to U.S. financing or to U.S. shareholding."

Total says U.S. banks are involved in about 90 percent of the company's financing operations, while American investors account for more than 30 percent of its shareholding. The company has more than $10 billion deployed in U.S. operations.

By comparison, Total spent less than 40 million euros, or roughly $46 million, on its project developing the massive South Pars natural gas field in Iranian waters.

America was already great before Trump came to office if by great you mean that the US controls every other country in the world both militarily and economically. The only thing not great about America is that it has a great underclass of homeless and people living paycheck to paycheck but every empire has had its slaves or peons. I guess Trump is going to double down on American greatness and really crack the whip on these other countries that don't fall into line. When he's done with them, they will either pay up or be forced into submission as American sanctions are applied to them.

Off the Top of My Head

Will the US Sanction the EU?

by John Lawrence

The rest of the world doesn't agree with President Trump's pulling out of the nuclear agreement with Iran. Iran has been complying with the agreement so why should the US pull out based on the judgment of one man? If the US is a democracy, shouldn't it take more than one to reverse a policy that was entered into on behalf of the world's greatest super power? The US has vowed to put sanctions on any entity doing business with Iran. However, the EU is standing up to the US in the persona of Trump and devising a workaround that will supply Iran with everything it needs regardless of Trump's threat of sanctions.

DW reported:

The remaining signatories of the Iran nuclear deal announced on Monday that they would establish a channel to facilitate payments for Iran's exports, including oil, as well as its imports. The decision was reached after high-level closed-door talks at the UN in New York.

"Mindful of the urgency and the need for tangible results, the participants welcomed practical proposals to maintain and develop payment channels, notably the initiative to establish a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to facilitate payments related to Iran's exports, including oil," Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the EU announced in a joint statement.

The members' stated intent is "to protect the freedom of their economic operators to pursue legitimate business with Iran."

The SPV could breathe life into the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear deal, and was sought by Tehran in order to counter the reimposition of sanctions triggered by the US's exit from the deal.

The European Union has struggled to devise a workable legal framework to shield its companies from the effects of US sanctions, which are set to come into effect in November, and has tried to deter firms from pulling out of Iran.

If Trump can singlehandedly and unilaterally pull out of an international deal, it effectively makes him a dictator. The fact that this deal was never ratified by Congress signifies the fact that the US Congress is totally dysfunctional. In a democracy, the people or their representatives should stand behind the deals made in their name. Just because Trump thinks the Iran deal was a bad deal does not make it so. Every other signatory to the deal thinks it was a good deal. Trump is just exercising dictatorial powers turning the US into a dictatorship with a Congress that is irrelevant. This is how democracies become dictatorships.

Will the US then sanction the EU and drive the US further apart from its erstwhile allies? Already China and Russia are developing ways to circumvent US sanctions. They are tired of having the US, which they thought was a rational and trustworthy actor, control the world's financial system. When the dollar no longer reigns supreme, the chickens will soon be coming home to roost on the US national debt. But no worries. The Federal Reserve will simply print more money to pay off the debt. That seems to be working so far.

EU, China and Russia in move to sidestep US sanctions on Iran

From the Guardian:

Special Purpose Vehicle aims to keep Iran in 2015 nuclear deal with barter system

 Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov with EU external affairs chief Federica Mogherini in New York on Tuesday. Photograph: Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

The European Union, Iran, China and Russia have set out a plan to sidestep unilateral US sanctions designed to cripple the Iranian economy and force the Iranians to renegotiate the nuclear deal signed in 2015.

European diplomats hope the proposed measure – known as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) – will help persuade an increasingly reluctant Iran to stay inside the deal in the hope of rescuing its economy.

Speaking on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York, Federica Mogherini, the EU external affairs chief, said the SPV was designed to facilitate payments related to Iran’s exports – including oil – and imports, so long as the firms involved were carrying out legitimate business under EU law.

Speaking on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York, Federica Mogherini, the EU external affairs chief, said the SPV was designed to facilitate payments related to Iran’s exports – including oil – and imports, so long as the firms involved were carrying out legitimate business under EU law.

The aim is to make the SPV available not just to EU firms but to others, she added.

In his address to the United Nations general assembly, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, stressed Tehran’s continued commitment to the deal and accused the US of pressurising other countries into violating the nuclear agreement.

“Confronting multilateralism is not a sign of strength,” he said. “Rather, it is a symptom of the weakness of intellect. It betrays an inability in understanding a complex and interconnected world.”

But the US president Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, addressing an anti-Iran pressure group, said he was “disturbed and indeed deeply disappointed” by the EU plan.

“This is one of the of the most counterproductive measures imaginable for regional and global peace and security,” Pompeo said.

Versions of the SPV floated by thinktanks suggest it could underpin a sophisticated barter system that can avoid US Treasury sanctions. For example, Iran could ship crude oil to a French firm, accumulating credit that could then be used to pay an Italian manufacturer for goods shipped the other way, without any funds traversing through Iranian hands or the banking system.

A multinational European state-backed financial intermediary would be set up to handle deals with companies interested in Iran transactions and with Iranian counter-parties. Any transactions would not be transparent to the US, and involve euros and sterling rather than dollars.

The proposal is additional to a blocking statute passed by the EU in August that theoretically makes EU companies immune from sanctions imposed by the US in pursuit of its Iran policy. In theory, the statute empowers EU firms to seek compensation from US Treasury for trying to impose extra-territorial sanctions in breach of the statute. So far this statute has not been tested in court.

Richard Nephew, a former Barack Obama official and author of The Art of Sanctions, expressed scepticism on Twitter, saying that for the SPV to be taken up, European firms – many with either US employees, or US subsidiaries – must still be prepared to take the risk of being sanctioned by the US.

He also suggested US sanctions could be applied to the traded good as much as to the cash to fund the trade. He predicted few firms would take that risk, outside some SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] heavily dependent on Iran for their income.

Jarrett Blanc, another former Obama staffer for the Iran deal, broadly agreed with Nephew, but was more sympathetic, writing that “the symbolism here is probably Europe’s most important contribution, and it may be sufficient depending on what China, India, Turkey do on oil”. He added: “The payment mechanism move opens the door to a longer-term degradation of US sanctions power.”

Either way, Europe needs a solution soon after months of railing against US economic imperialism. The vast majority of European firms are planning to pull out.

Trump announced two sets of US secondary sanctions in May, and other sanctions imposed in August cover shipping and insurance. The other more important sanctions – aimed at ending Iranian oil exports, still the heart of the faltering Iranian economy – do not bite until 5 November.

In advance of the oil sanctions, Iran’s crude sales to China fell 21% between May and August, according to Eurasia Group. But it is unclear how long China will stick to that trend.

The assumption is that many countries like India and Russia will continue to trade with Iran and challenge the US to try to impose sanctions, pointing out that in reality it is the US, by tearing up the agreement and not them, that is in breach of UN resolutions.

EU and Iran Will Attempt to Salvage Nuclear Deal Following Trump's Breach of Agreement

Published on Saturday, May 19, 2018 by Common Dreams

"America's actions...show that it is not a trustworthy country in international dealings."

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

24 Comments

Miguel Arias Canete, the EU's top energy official, announced Saturday that the EU will attempt to salvage the Iran nuclear deal without the U.S.(Photo: Union Europea en Peru/Flickr/cc)

The European Union and Iran signaled on Saturday that they would not permit President Donald Trump's deeply unpopular decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal to deteriorate their own involvement in the agreement.

"We have sent a message to our Iranian friends that as long as they are sticking to the agreement the Europeans will...fulfill their commitment. And they said the same thing on the other side," Manuel Arias Canete, the EU's top energy official, told reporters in Tehran.

Trump announced  on May 8 that the U.S. would reimpose sanctions that had been lifted under the agreement reached in 2015 by the Obama administration, in exchange for Iran's curbing of its nuclear program.

The president breached the agreement despite multiple reports from international investigators since the deal was reached that Iran was fully complying with the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The EU will aim to continue trade with Iran, Arias told reporters. The EU's announcement came a day after the European Commission declared it would introduce a law to ban companies on the continent from complying with Trump's sanctions—further isolating the Trump administration in its stance against Iran. 

Should the EU's attempts to salvage the deal with Iran fall through in the wake of Trump's decision, said Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi, the country could resume their enrichment of 20 percent uranium. The JCPOA successfully kept Iran's supply of low enriched uranium at about one percent of its level before the deal was reached.

"We hope [Europe's] efforts materialize," Salehi said at a news conference on Saturday. "America's actions...show that it is not a trustworthy country in international dealings."

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