Friday, January 6, 2012
National News
Eye on a changing Canada: Who monitors Harper/Baird religious freedom monitor? Canadians should closely monitor the Office of Religious Freedom?will it operate on principles or politics?
By its decision to carry out the political and moral cleansing of our public life, the Government is creating and securing the conditions for a really deep and inner religious life. Adolf Hitler, speech before the Reichstag on March 23, 1933
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom?s India Chapter report on the extent of religious freedom in India released last week was an unwelcome ?gift? to India on the eve of its 62nd Independence Day. The report deserves to be flung into the nearest trash bin not because its prejudiced contents are predictable but because it?s the latest instance of America?s self-arrogated right to meddle with a sovereign republic?s internal affairs. India firmly refused to issue visas to the USCIRF team despite recurrent requests earlier this year. This is entirely consistent with our time-honoured tradition of disallowing such intrusive adventures by foreign powers. The fact that the USCIRF?s India Chapter has released its report without first-hand experience of the situation here further bolsters its non-existent credibility. - "Surpassing Goebbels" by Sandeep B. The Pioneer, August 19, 2009. The Pioneer is a medium-sized English language newspaper in India. (Sandeep B's op-ed is reposted here.)
Consider the domestic front. Many recoil at the thought of government promotion of religion, arguing that a secular government has no business doing so. Yet, the government guarantees religious freedom in Canada through the Charter of Rights. So, proponents argue, why not extend this Canadian value to our foreign policy? But it can get tricky on the domestic front. Consider Quebec?s proposed Bill 94, which would curtail access to education and health care to women wearing niqabs. Will the new Office of Religious Freedom assail this practice? Will it highlight the inconsistency of legislation that forbids niqabi women from voting, yet allows mail-in votes? Earlier this year, Tory MP Steven Blaney was set to introduce such legislation (by way of a private member?s bill), with the full endorsement of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. It remains to be seen whether the Conservatives will push this bill forward; doing so would certainly dampen their credibility on religious freedom overseas. - Sheema Khan
I?m sure they?ll trump up some stupid Charter of Rights challenge. - Canada's Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, speaking to host Dave Rutherford on CHQR, a Calgary-based Conservative radio show
Freedom of religion is one of the first things in the Charter, it?s one of the first things in the Bill of Rights, it?s front and centre in the UN Declaration of Human Rights ? it?s an essential human right.... - Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird
Jim comment: Many over the years (including me) have seen the US Commission on International Religious Freedom's definition of ?religious freedom? as code for ?Christian evangelizing?. Championed by our autocratic, Christian Zionist prime minister, how will Canada's newly forming Office of Religious Freedom function?
Intro: John Baird crafts Canadian foreign policy with a hard edge
Campbell Clark Globe and Mail Canada Last updated January 1, 2012
The man rewriting Stephen Harper?s foreign policy for majority-government times makes no apologies for stepping on a few toes. From climate change to Israel, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is willing to shrug off the gripes. ... But it?s not a mandate to please all. The image of Canada seeking to play honest broker and likable conciliator on the world stage is being changed by a deliberate edge to Conservative foreign policy. ...
Muslim women must show faces when taking citizenship oath
Kim Mackrael and Les Perreaux Globe and Mail Canada Last updated January 1, 2012
A requirement for new Canadians to show their faces while taking the oath of citizenship puts the federal government on one side of a simmering debate over how far the state should go to accommodate minorities. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced Monday that Muslim women who wear burkas or niqabs must remove the garments when they are becoming citizens.
The decision comes as the Supreme Court of Canada considers whether a woman should be allowed to testify in court with her face covered. And Quebec is debating a bill to ban face coverings for people receiving some government services, and those providing them. Two federal Conservative attempts to ban veiled voting have stalled before becoming law in recent years.
Speaking to reporters in Montreal, Mr. Kenney said showing one?s face while taking the oath is a matter of ?deep principle? that strikes at Canadian values of openness and equality. ... But some experts say the move appears more political than practical. ... Speaking on CHQR, a Calgary-based Conservative radio show Monday morning, Mr. Kenney said he isn?t worried about legal objections to the ban. ?I?m sure they?ll trump up some stupid Charter of Rights challenge. That?s democracy. They?re welcome to object,? he told host Dave Rutherford.
Items: Who monitors our new religious freedom monitor?
Sheema Khan Globe and Mail Canada June 8, 2011
In last week?s Throne Speech, the Conservatives made good on their campaign pledge to create an Office of Religious Freedom to monitor treatment of believers worldwide and promote religious freedom as a key objective of Canadian foreign policy.
While the election pledge was seen as a carrot in the Conservatives? plan to woo ethnic communities, others saw the move as a bread-and-butter issue for the party?s base of evangelical Christians. Regardless, the new office has set lofty goals ? and, as with any political vehicle, noble ends will almost certainly be hijacked by partisanship and inconsistency. ...
Conservatives laying groundwork for Office of Religious Freedom
Stephen Chase Globe and Mail Canada January 2, 2012
The Harper government is preparing to carve out a new role for Canada as a champion of religious rights abroad, another sign of the Conservative shift in foreign policy and one that has roots in the tragic 2011 assassination of a Pakistani cabinet minister. Early in 2012, the [CPC] will finally flesh out a campaign promise to install the Office of Religious Freedom within the secular confines of the Department of Foreign Affairs ? a controversial pledge that has drawn accusations of vote pandering and blurring lines between church and state. ...
The new Conservative office ? which will publicly criticize regimes that mistreat religious minorities ? is in part a workaround to avoid the pushback the [CPC] previously encountered from the Foreign Affairs bureaucracy. Conservatives privately complain that civil servants in some instances resisted their efforts to raise concern about religious persecution. ...
John Baird defends religious freedom office
Mike Blanchfield The Canadian Press/Toronto Star Canada January 2, 2012
OTTAWA?Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says his department?s new Office of Religious Freedom won?t become a vehicle for playing domestic politics in Canada?s immigrant communities. Baird dismissed criticism that the new office could lead to an uncomfortable mix of religion and politics.
?Freedom of religion is one of the first things in the Charter, it?s one of the first things in the Bill of Rights, it?s front and centre in the UN Declaration of Human Rights ? it?s an essential human right; I don?t see any concern about that at all,? Baird said in an interview. ... Baird has high hopes for the Office of Religious Freedom, even though it will come with a modest $5 million price tag. That will include a relatively minuscule $500,000 budget for operations, so it won?t be a major drag on already thin resources.
But some are warning the office could have a broad impact, and not the positive one the Conservative government is looking for. Alex Neve, the head of Amnesty International Canada, says that while religious persecution ?is a serious human rights concern right around the world? he?s not confident about the government?s approach to the new office. ?We?re watching it with interest but also with considerable concern,? said Neve. ?There is such complete secrecy about it.?
His organization has met with Foreign Affairs officials, but questions about the office generate vague responses along the lines of ?work is under way? and ?you?ll be hearing more,? said Neve.
Neve said religious freedom can have a ?contentious relationship? with other crucial human-rights concerns such as women?s equality, the equality rights of gays and lesbians, and freedom of expression. ?It?s an area obviously where governments need to tread carefully. They need to do so in ways where they don?t ? either intentionally or unintentionally ? convey a message that some religions are preferred over others.? ...
Keep bureaucrats out of religion rights battle
Editorial EMC News Almanac/Carleton Place Local Community News Smiths Falls, Ontario, Canada January 5, 2012
The path to Hell is paved with good intentions.
The Harper government's decision to establish an Office of Religious Freedom within the Department of Foreign Affairs is one such well-intentioned move.
The soon-to-be-established office is modeled loosely on a similar office established by former U.S. President George W. Bush [sic, USCIRF was established by President Clinton] which also makes it suspect.
While Bush did much good by not demonizing Muslims after 9/11, as he so easily could have done, his military adventures in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan, have solidified his, and America's foreign image, real or imagined, as a Christian Crusader nation. This is something his predecessor, Barack Obama, has had to work hard to overturn.
Canada is already seen to be in the thrall of the pro-Israel lobby, and this move could further remove Canada's position as an honest broker in the Middle East. This could prove difficult in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, as Islamist parties in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere gain power, and religious tensions rise.
Countless times in the past, bringing religion and politics, even in a diplomatic setting, together, can have unintended consequences. And besides, in an era when the federal government is supposed to be tightening its belt, with public sector job cuts on the horizon, is this office really necessary?
Are there not non-governmental organizations that can do this? [One such, KAIROS, had its funding cut off by the Harper government.]Are there not human rights units within Foreign Affairs that can carry this mandate along? ...
As in so many things, the Harper government is following the United States' lead. "They accomplished a lot," Baird said of his meeting last summer with Suzan Johnson Cook, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. But he added "ours will be a made-in-Canada approach."
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
WikipediaLast modified December 18, 2011
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives. USCIRF's principal responsibilities are to review the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and to make policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress. It describes itself as "[g]rounded in and informed by the American experience". It is rooted in the U.S. Evangelical movement[1] and its original intention was to protect Christians around the world.[2] Such organisations as Christian Solidarity International, International Christian Concern, Open Doors and the Cardinal Kung Foundation as well as the lawyer Michael Horowitz were influences for the foundation of the International Religious Freedom Act.[2]
It is funded entirely by the federal government on an annual basis and its staff members are government employees. ...
In the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, Congress created three mechanisms in order to advance universal human rights:
- An Office of International Religious Freedom in the United States Department of State, headed by an Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom
- A mandate that the State Department prepare Annual Reports on International Religious Freedom
- A requirement to name the most egregious religious freedom violators as Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs) and to take policy actions in response to all violations of religious freedom as a specific element of U.S. foreign policy programs, cultural exchanges, and international broadcasting.
...
Religious Freedom
U. S. Department of State USA n. d.
Visit this page for its embedded links.
The Office of International Religious Freedom has the mission of promoting religious freedom as a core objective of U.S. foreign policy. The office is headed by Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook. We monitor religious persecution and discrimination worldwide, recommend and implement policies in respective regions or countries, and develop programs to promote religious freedom. ...
For information on religious freedom in the United States please check the website of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, which publishes a newsletter, "Religious Freedom in Focus", covering cases involving religious freedom around the United States. ...
Posted at: Friday, January 06, 2012 - 01:15 PM -- Posted by: Jim Scott -- Permalink: (#)
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Commentary
Canadian Spring, please! May we suggest a resolution for 2012? Defeat Stephen Harper's government
Two Canadians killed this week in Mexico, a nation embroiled in civil war (oops, sorry, drug war). The USA is the seat of an evil axis of nations waging war (in all its forms) around the globe. Ya, go ahead: Integrate us, Stephen.
More to the point: It will will take a decade to reverse the damage Harper has already done to Canada. If he wins a second majority, it will take a generation or more to reverse the damage.
There was never a Trudeauland or Mulroneyland or Chr?tienland, but as The Globe?s Lawrence Martin has made us understand, there is already a Harperland whose nature is quite apparent. Like the American conservatives whom the Harperites so envy, our government has concocted a new reality of its own that it is systematically imposing on the Canadian people. The values and moral code of Mr. Harper?s new Canada are clear. A central tenet of the new reality is the repudiation of the need for anything as irrelevant as evidence, facts or rationality whenever they are inconvenient. - Gerald Caplan, "Be very afraid: Stephen Harper is inventing a new Canada", December 16, 2011
The time for [a] movement is upon us. If we wait until 2014, it will be too late. - Murray Dobbin
Ousting quasi-dictator Harper means putting country ahead of party
Murray Dobbin rabble.ca Canada January 3, 2012
This item originally appeared in The Tyee. Visit this page for its embedded links.
As we enter the new year the prospects for defeating the Harper government in 2015 seem uncertain at best. And yet if those who care about the country were musing over a new year's resolution that would be it: a dedication to this single overarching purpose. Even if Stephen Harper is soundly defeated in the next election if will take a decade to reverse the damage he has already done. If he wins a second majority, it will take a generation or more.
There is a deep malaise in Canadian democracy rooted, it seems, in a profound alienation from politics and radically lowered expectations of what is possible from government. Much of this is the result of a deliberate strategy of voter suppression employed by the Conservatives, a strategy of making politics so offensive and good government so unimaginable that millions of people simply tune out as if it has nothing to do with them.
For those who thought that this was a temporary attitude of the Harper anti-government, that there would be more civility with a Conservative majority, the evidence is in: this is a permanent strategy to keep the party in power. It will not diminish with time or with the advance of the Harper agenda. This was never about Harper being frustrated with his minority status. It is about who the man is -- a malignant political rogue, contemptuous of his own country -- and what his agenda has always been: a right-wing libertarian remaking of the nation. ...
Posted at: Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 09:58 PM -- Posted by: Jim Scott -- Permalink: (#) World News
Africa dispatches: Western Axis proxies working at their assigned tasks
Qatar is doing the dirty work on the ground in Libya. In lush, fertile (but exceptionally resource-rich) Congo, corporations and ruling elite profit as the people go hungry. The United States' involvement in Congo since before independence from Belgium in June 1960 has been steady, sinister, and penetrating. Today, according to Africa Command: "The United States military will continue working with the Congolese armed forces in training, advising and capacity building to support security assistance cooperation activities but has no plans to put combat troops [t]here...."
Why the Libyans have fallen out of love with Qatar
Steven Sotloff TIME USA January 2, 2012
Visit this page for its embedded links.
Tripoli - When Libya's cashed-strapped rebels needed financial support to bankroll their revolution last spring, they did not look to Western powers such as the U.S. and England for aid. Instead they turned to tiny Qatar. The Persian Gulf emirate provided the struggling rebels everything from weapons to heating oil. During the eight-month revolution, Libyans in rebel-held areas praised Qatar. But after the capital of Tripoli fell and the country's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was killed, Libyans turned on their benefactor, accusing Qatar of a hidden agenda: getting a small faction of Islamists to implement its agenda.
Qatar's role was crucial during the early days of the revolution. It spearheaded the Arab League's effort to urge the U.N. to establish a no-fly zone in Libya. The resolution paved the way for the NATO air campaign that turned the tide of the war and sealed Gaddafi's fate.
Qatar provided the rebels with weapons and supplies they needed to fight the Libyan leader's troops. Early on, the Qataris delivered logistical provisions, ranging from walkie-talkies to Chevrolet SUVs. As it became clear that the rebels were underequipped and no match for Gaddafi's better-outfitted troops, the Qataris sent heavy weaponry like French Milan antitank missiles. The Qataris also trained the rebels, taking hundreds to Doha while sending their officers to Libya to provide battlefield expertise. Today, they are preparing to fund a program to send Libyan troops to train in France.
Qatar did much more than finance weapons purchases and provide battlefield training. With no access to money and facing legal difficulties in selling oil, the rebels' political body ? known as the National Transitional Council (NTC) ? could not pay Libyan salaries and fund the wide-ranging subsidies on everything from bread to gas, which grease the economy. Qatar stepped in by offering to market 1 million barrels of oil for the NTC, which brought in about $100 million. Later, the small but immensely rich country delivered four consignments of refined petroleum products, such as diesel and gasoline. When international oil firms refused to offload oil shipments in Benghazi's port until the NTC paid for them, Qatar intervened and pledged to do so if the Libyan council could not.
Qatar also helped launch a Libyan satellite channel, Libya al-Ahrar, by providing it office space in Doha and transmitting its signal. The network was established in March to chip away at Gaddafi's support in areas still under his control. After the Arab League instructed Arab satellite providers to stop transmitting Gaddafi's state-run Libyan television on their frequencies in May, many of the country's residents relied on Libya al-Ahrar and its prorebel slant for their news. In explaining that his country's aid was purely altruistic, the Qatari emir said he wanted "to ease the suffering of the Libyan brethren and to meet their humanitarian needs."
But with Gaddafi dead and his regime a distant memory, many Libyans are now complaining that Qatari aid has come at a price. They say Qatar provided a narrow clique of Islamists with arms and money, giving them great leverage over the political process. ...
Below: Fixated on the lucrative extraction of valuable minerals like copper and cobalt, the DRC governement totally ignoes agriculture. Less than 1 percent of the Congolese national budget, [Dr. Eric Tollens, an expert on nutrition in Congo at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium] said, goes to agriculture. Foreign donors finance ?all agricultural projects,? he said, and ?massive amounts of food? are imported in this rich land, so food is expensive. ?Agricultural productivity is simply gone,? he said in an interview, adding that there was no reason for a lush, fertile country like Congo to be importing 20,000 tons of beans a year.
For Congo children, food today means none tomorrow
Adam Nossiter New York Times USA Webposted January 2, 2012
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KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo ? Today, the big children will eat, Cynthia, 15, and Guellor, 13. Tomorrow, it will be the turn of the little ones, B?n?dicte, Josiane and Manass?, 3, 6, and 9.
Of course, the small ones will fuss. ?Yes, sure, they ask for food, but we don?t have any,? said their mother, Ghislaine Berbok, a police officer who earns $50 a month. There will have been a little bread for them at breakfast, but nothing more.
?At night they will be weak,? she said. ?Sure, they complain. But there is nothing we can do.?
The Berboks are practicing a Kinshasa family ritual almost as common here as corrugated metal roofs and dirt streets: the ?power cut,? as residents in this capital of some 10 million have ironically christened it. On some days, some children eat, others do not. On other days, all the children eat, and the adults do not. Or vice versa.
The term ?power cut? ? in French, d?lestage ? is meant to evoke another unloved routine of city life: the rolling blackouts that hit first one neighborhood, then another.
D?lestage is universally used in French-speaking Africa to describe these state-decreed power cutoffs, but when applied to rationing food it illustrates a stark survival calculus, one the head of a household must painfully impose on the rest. And unlike the blackouts, it is not merely a temporary unpleasantness mandated from on high. ...
Posted at: Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 06:24 PM -- Posted by: Jim Scott -- Permalink: (#) Commentary
What is happening in Syria is a calculated campaign to bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad to replace it with a regime "more compatible" with Israeli/United States' interests
?Syrians being killed by gangs and defectors?
Russia Today Russia January 4, 2012
As Syrian forces reportedly continue to kill civilian protesters, armed rebels have threatened to step up their own attacks. Middle East expert Dr. Jeremy Salt says there is tunnel vision when it comes to deciding just who is doing the killing. ...
Middle Eastern politics expert Dr. Jeremy Salt says figures about numbers of deaths, even from official sources, differ too much to be reliable.
?In its report, the Human Rights Council said 4,000 [people have been killed in Syria to date]?but there was no information about where they got that figure from,? he said. ?A few days later, Navi Pillay, who is the UN Human Rights Commissioner, stood up in the Security Council and said 5,000 ? and the figure echoes around the world,? he told RT.
"I think it lodges in the popular imagination as 5,000 people being killed by the Syrian government ? by the security forces, by the military ? whatever. Whereas in fact, I don?t think there?s any doubt at all that a large number of military, of civilians have been killed by armed gangs and by defectors,? Salt explained. ...
What is happening in Syria is a calculated campaign to bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad to replace it with a regime "more compatible" with United States interests. The most important component of this struggle has been the deliberate construction of a largely false narrative that pits unarmed democracy demonstrators being killed in their hundreds and thousands as they protest peacefully against an oppressive, violent regime, a "killing machine" led by the "monster" Assad.
A mistaken case for Syrian regime change
Aisling Byrne Asia Times Online Hong Kong January 5, 2012
"War with Iran is already here," wrote a leading Israeli commentator recently, describing "the combination of covert warfare and international pressure" being applied to Iran.
Although not mentioned, the "strategic prize" of the first stage of this war on Iran is Syria; the first campaign in a much wider sectarian power-bid. "Other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself," Saudi King Abdullah was reported to have said last summer, "nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria." [1]
By December, senior United States officials were explicit about their regime change agenda for Syria: Tom Donilon, the US National Security Adviser, explained that the "end of the [President Bashar al-]Assad regime would constitute Iran's greatest setback in the region yet - a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran."
Shortly before, a key official in terms of operationalizing this policy, Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing that the US would "relentlessly pursue our two-track strategy of supporting the opposition and diplomatically and financially strangling the [Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved". [2]
What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime "more compatible" with US interests in the region.
The blueprint for this project is essentially a report produced by the neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime change in Iran in 2009. The report - "Which Path to Persia?" [3] - continues to be the generic strategic approach for US-led regime change in the region.
A rereading of it, together with the more recent "Towards a Post-Assad Syria" [4] (which adopts the same language and perspective, but focuses on Syria, and was recently produced by two US neo-conservative think-tanks) illustrates how developments in Syria have been shaped according to the step-by-step approach detailed in the "Paths to Persia" report with the same key objective: regime change. ...
Posted at: Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 03:28 PM -- Posted by: Jim Scott -- Permalink: (#) World News
Obama seeks to distance U.S. from Israeli attack on Iran. Meanwhile Iran reaches out to Latin America as sanctions continue to squeeze; said sanctions bring little joy to EU
United States President Barack Obama is attempting to distance his administration from an Israeli attack on Iran, while at the same time making it clear that he is not going to tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would not countenance such an attack. Gareth Porter reports.
Obama seeks to distance U.S. from Israeli attack
Gareth Porter Inter Press Service International January 3, 2012
WASHINGTON, Jan 3, 2012 (IPS) - President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are engaged in intense maneuvering over Netanyahu's aim of entangling the United States in an Israeli war against Iran.
Netanyahu is exploiting the extraordinary influence his right-wing Likud Party exercises over the Republican Party and the U.S. Congress on matters related to Israel in order to maximise the likelihood that the United States would participate in an attack on Iran.
Obama, meanwhile, appears to be hoping that he can avoid being caught up in a regional war started by Israel if he distances the United States from any Israeli attack.
New evidence surfaced in 2011 that Netanyahu has been serious about dealing a military blow to the Iranian nuclear programme. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who left his job in September 2010, revealed in his first public appearance after Mossad Jun. 2 that he, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) chief Gabi Ashkenazi and Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin had been able to "block any dangerous adventure" by Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
The Hebrew language daily Maariv reported that those three, along with President Shimon Peres and IDF Senior Commander Gadi Eisenkrot, had vetoed a 2010 proposal by Netanyahu to attack Iran.
Dagan said he was going public because he was "afraid there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak". Dagan also said an Israeli attack on Iran could trigger a war that would "endanger the (Israeli) state's existence", indicating that his revelation was not part of a psywar campaign. ...
Related: Iran seeking to expand influence in Latin America
Joby Warrick Washington Post USA January 1, 2012
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Iran is quietly seeking to expand its ties with Latin America in what U.S. officials and regional experts say is an effort to circumvent economic sanctions and gain access to much-needed markets and raw materials.
The new diplomatic offensive, which comes amid rising tensions with Washington and European powers, includes a four-nation swing through South and Central America this month by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His government has vowed to increase its economic, political and military influence in the United States? back yard.
The visit reinforces recent commitments by Iran to invest millions of dollars in economic development projects for the region, from a mining joint venture in Ecuador to factories for petrochemicals and small-arms ammunition in Venezuela.
Iran has also dramatically expanded its diplomatic missions throughout the hemisphere and dispatched members of its elite Quds Force ? the military unit U.S. officials in October linked to a foiled assassination plot in Washington ? to serve in its embassies, U.S. officials and Iran experts say. ...
Iranian currency slides under latest U.S. sanctions
Thomas Erdbrink Washington Post USA January 2, 2012
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TEHRAN ? Iran?s ailing currency took a steep slide Monday, losing 12 percent against foreign currencies after President Obama on Saturday signed a bill that places the Islamic republic?s central bank under unilateral sanctions. The currency, which economists say was held artificially high for years against the dollar and the euro, has lost about 35 percent of its value since September. ...
UK sabre-rattling at Washington's behest is an idiocy, and likely to do little other than escalate the steps to open conflict thinks Simon Jenkins.
Why is Britain ramping up sanctions against Iran?
Simon Jenkins guardian.co.uk UK Webposted January 3, 2012
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'The dog returns to its vomit, and the sow returns to her mire/ And the burnt fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire." Kipling was right. Britain is out of Iraq and desperate to get out of Afghanistan. So why gird ourselves for a fight with Iran, a proud country of 75 million people with whom we cannot go to war without taking leave of our senses?
Do any of Britain's leaders really think further economic sanctions will stop Iran's nuclear programme? I cannot believe it. Sanctions did not topple Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic or Muammar Gaddafi; they led merely to war. Sanctions have been imposed on Iran for 33 years because there was nothing else to do. They have done no good and almost certainly been counterproductive in reinforcing autocracy.
Washington has announced new commercial and financial sanctions on Iran, blacklisting anyone who does business with it. With an election in the offing, President Obama must show America's pro-Israel lobby that he is tough somewhere in the Middle East. The EU must this month decide whether to collude with the US in this dangerous game and ban Iran's oil exports. The threat was enough to get Tehran to test medium-range missiles in the Gulf, and its wilder heads to murmur about closing the Straits of Hormuz, thus blocking a third of the world's sea-borne oil.
This sabre-rattling ? in the midst of a recession ? is beyond stupid. No one has seriously doubted that Iran's government, surrounded by nuclear-armed or nuclear-allied powers, would one day seek a similar capability. It is the nature of well-resourced and insecure regimes to find comfort in "the ultimate weapon". It seems of no account that no war fought by a nuclear power has seen such a weapon even threatened. It was not a factor in Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, the Caucasus, Kashmir or numerous Middle East conflicts. The one time such weapons were "on the table" was over Cuba in 1962 ? and then they probably helped prevent war.
Any fool may say, you cannot be too careful. It is the motto of the arms race. Israel has a nuclear capability for that reason, and that is why Iran wants one. A pre-emptive Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear plants might postpone their work, but make eventual war more likely. I would prefer it if Iran had no such missiles, but that is hardly for Britain to say when it demands "the right" to its own. In this case, what matters is the avoidance of escalation, of the megaphone belligerence that makes some western leaders vulnerable to the "inevitability" of war. ...
The long experience of sanctions indicates that they suck the sanctioning powers into confrontation. Their imposition is a prelude either to inert hostility or to war. They embattle the victim regime, driving power and money to its ruling cadres. In Tehran, as in Tripoli and Baghdad in the 1990s, sanctions toppled nobody but made rulers and generals rich. They impoverish not just the poor but the mercantile and professional classes, denying them contact with the outside world. They hasten middle-class emigration and thus reduce the scope for political pluralism and opposition. ...
Oil toy: ?Iran embargo to bring little joy to EU?
Russia Today Russia January 5, 2012
Includes a four minute, 45 second video clip.
EU states have reached an agreement in principle to ban Iran?s oil exports. But with the EU?s staggering economy dependent on Iranian oil, the economic problems crippling the West could increase twofold, says political analyst Christoph R. Hoerstel.
The European Union has given a tentative agreement on slapping an oil embargo on Iran. Consultations are continuing, but diplomats say the ban could come into force by January 30. Some EU countries would like a grace period to allow time to find other suppliers. The bloc is Iran?s second largest customer after China, with countries like Greece, Italy and Spain especially dependent on Iranian crude exports. ...
But it is not all sanction talk for Iran. On Thursday, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated his support for Russia?s phased plan to restore confidence in the Iranian nuclear program. The comments were made in a telephone conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Moscow?s plan proposes easing or lifting another set of existing sanctions in response to Tehran replying to questions on its nuclear program. The proposal, which also suggests no new unilateral sanctions should be applied, was first mooted in Washington in July 2011, but has not gained much support in the West.
To discuss the spiking tensions around oil, the Strait of Hormuz and Iran?s nuclear program, RT has caught up with Christoph R. Hoerstel, a government consultant and political analyst in Berlin. ...
RT: What about the global economy as a whole? How much will the effects be felt if an embargo pushes oil prices higher, as we are already seeing a spike?
CRH: Everybody knows with the ongoing currency crisis of dollar and euro and the ongoing financial crisis, there is a slump in the economy to be reckoned with, already affecting the US. If that happens, the ongoing multiple crises will double through this single step.
RT: Britain is reportedly going to support Washington and pledge its military resources, if necessary, to the resolution of the current Persian Gulf deadlock. Are we actually seeing a preparation for war here?
Christoph R. Hoerstel: If you want, it is a kind of preparation of war we are seeing. What usually happens behind the scenes, and in this case, is that the Ministry of Defense in the UK is checking its readiness status on paper. They are not moving any troops, but this is going to happen. And Washington, as we know, is constantly, every day, war-gaming the whole globe. So, for them, it is no surprise at all.
...
Posted at: Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 03:23 PM -- Posted by: Jim Scott -- Permalink: (#) World News
Refocusing military strategy of the Western Axis war: Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize president, makes arms sales a key tool of U.S. foreign policy
The Nobel Peace Prize
?The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.?
(Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel)
Intro: Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense
Department of Defense, United States of America USA January 2012
A 16-page PDF. This is Obama's PNAC (Project for the New American Century).
Items: Obama makes arms sales a key tool of U.S. foreign policy
Loren Thompson Forbes USA January 2, 2012
In a striking departure from the ideological preferences of the post-Vietnam Democratic Party, President Barack Obama has made overseas arms sales a pillar of U.S. foreign policy. The President and his advisors apparently have decided that well-armed allies are the next best thing to U.S. ?boots on the ground? when it comes to advancing America?s global security interests.
A case in point was the Christmas Eve disclosure that the administration would sell $30 billion in fighter jets, munitions, spare parts and support services to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In the past, some Democrats in Congress might have questioned the propriety of selling high-tech weapons to a government noted for its conservative social policies. But administration officials described the deal as a pragmatic solution to regional security needs, one that would provide the world?s preeminent oil producer with the means to deter Iranian aggression without compromising Israel?s defense. Having already approved a $60 billion package of arms sales with the kingdom ? of which the fighter deal is only one part ? Congress is sure to accept White House reasoning.
It doesn?t hurt that such sales create tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S. ... What the president and his advisors have figured out is that, unlike sending troops to fight overseas, there is almost no downside to sending weapons. ... So the Obama Administration has abandoned any pretense of limiting overseas arms sales, and embraced the reality that America is likely to remain the world?s biggest weapons merchant for many years to come.
The change of heart was signaled only months after Obama took office, when incoming Pentagon policy chief Michelle Flournoy dismissed the notion that the new administration would have an ?arms sale policy,? describing the U.S. approach instead as a ?commitment to build partner capacity and doing that on a strategic basis that takes a requirements-based approach.? In effect, Flournoy set aside ideology in favor of a technocratic framework for assessing the military needs of overseas friends and allies. ...
Lexington analyst: Obama arms sales 'a striking departure' from other Dems
John T. Bennett The Hill, DECON Hill blog USA January 2, 2012
President Obama has made arming Washington?s allies in the Middle East and Asia a key facet of his foreign policy, breaking with decades of Democratic practice, says a prominent defense analyst.
Over the last few months of 2011, the Obama administration inked deals to send U.S fighter jets and other systems to several key allies in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. Those transactions have been labeled by analysts as hedges against China?s military build-up and an increasingly aggressive Iran.
Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, in a Monday Forbes.com piece, called the administration?s arms sales ?a striking departure from the ideological preferences of the post-Vietnam Democratic Party.?
?The President and his [advisers] apparently have decided that well-armed allies are the next best thing to U.S. 'boots on the ground' when it comes to advancing America?s global security interests,? Thompson noted. ...
Related: Obama describes refocused strategy for leaner military
Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker New York Times USA January 5, 2012
President Obama after speaking about military strategy at the Pentagon on Thursday. Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times. Visit this page for its embedded links.
WASHINGTON ? President Obama outlined a broad new military strategy for the United States on Thursday, one that refocuses the armed forces on threats in Asia and the Pacific region, continues a strong presence in the Middle East but makes clear that American ground forces will no longer be large enough to conduct prolonged, large-scale counterinsurgency campaigns like those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In an unusual appearance in the Pentagon briefing room, Mr. Obama put his mark on a military strategy that moves away from the grinding wars he inherited from the Bush administration and relies more on naval and air power in the Pacific and the Strait of Hormuz as a counterbalance to China and Iran.
Mr. Obama?s strategy embraces hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to the military, making it an awkward codicil to the uneasy relationship he has shared with the military since his first days in office.
In a letter accompanying the new strategy, the president wrote, ?We must put our fiscal house in order here at home and renew our long-term economic strength.?
But in an election year when he has been under assault from Republican presidential candidates for cutting the military budget and for what they say is his weak response to Iranian threats, Mr. Obama also said that the United States would ?avoid repeating the mistakes of the past when our military was left ill-prepared for the future.?
To that end, the president wrote, his administration will continue to invest in counterterrorism, intelligence gathering, cyberwarfare and countering the proliferation of nuclear weapons. ...
Obama vows US will stay world's top military power
Robert Burns Associated Press USA January 5, 2012
President Barack Obama vowed Thursday the United States will remain the world's pre-eminent military power even as the Pentagon scales back spending, shrinks the Army and Marine Corps and pulls back from Europe.
In a rare appearance at the Pentagon, Obama said the U.S. is "turning a page" after having killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, withdrawn troops from Iraq and begun to wind down the war in Afghanistan. He outlined a vision for the future that would ensure an uncompromised U.S. military strength operating with less money. "Our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority," Obama said, with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey at his side.
Obama said his administration would not repeat the mistakes made after World War II and Vietnam when defense reductions left the military ill-prepared. "As commander in chief, I will not let that happen again," he said. "Not on my watch." ...
Pentagon?s new defence strategy eyes China
Aaffan Chowdhry Globe and Mail Canada January 5, 2012
Visit this page for its embedded links.
The Pentagon?s strategic review of the U.S. military comes in the age of austerity.
Defence budget cuts are on the way, the only question is: how deep will they be? Estimates range from at least $450-billion to $1-trillion over the next decade.
But one of the key aspects of President Barack Obama?s comments this morning at the Pentagon is the shift in strategy to bolster the air force and navy, and to build the U.S. military?s capacity in the Pacific region to counter China?s growing military presence. ... Reality check: the size of the U.S. military and the scale of U.S. defence spending will continue to dwarf China?s military growth for years to come. Mr. Obama will be careful to point out in an election year that, whatever reductions in defence, the U.S. defence spending will continue to grow but just not at the pace it has in the past. ...
Hu Jintao tells China navy: Prepare for warfare
BBC UK December 7, 2011
China's navy should speed up its development and prepare for warfare, President Hu Jintao has said. He told military personnel they should "make extended preparations for warfare".
China is locked in territorial disputes with several other nations in the South China Sea. Political tension is also growing with the US, which is seeking to boost its presence in the region. ...
China has recently acquired its first aircraft carrier and has been vocal about its naval ambitions. But its military remains primarily a land-based force, and its naval capabilities are still dwarfed by the US.
Mr Hu told a meeting of military officials that the navy should "accelerate its transformation and modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for warfare in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security". The word "warfare" was used in official media, but other translations used "military combat" and "military struggle".
Analysts say Mr Hu's comments are unusually blunt, and are likely to be aimed at the US and Beijing's rivals in the South China Sea. ...
Plucked from the archives: The United States has the doctrine, the means and the motivation to make mischief for China in 2012. In an unusually toxic election year, expect the US to feed the "return to Asia" narrative with the specter of China as an arrogant and destabilizing regional threat. That will make China leery and ready to repel any sign that Washington may apply its "preventative diplomacy" doctrine to cross red lines in Taiwan, Tibet and the South China Sea. Miscalculation on either side could spark trouble.
Maybe that war with China isn't so far off
Peter Lee Asia Times Online Hong Kong December 22, 2011
The year 2011 has been a tough one for Sino-United States ties. And 2012 does not look like it's going to be a good year either, with a presidential election year in the United States. For both the Democratic and Republican parties, bashing the Chinese economic, military and freedom-averse menace will probably be a campaign-trail staple.
Lunch-pail issues - protectionism and the undervalued yuan - will focus disapproving US eyes.
Tensions will also be exacerbated by the Barack Obama administration's "return to Asia" - a return to proactive containment of China - and the temptation to apply dangerous and destabilizing new doctrine, preventive diplomacy, to China.
The potential for friction certainly exists.
China, as it approaches a leadership transition, wants to avoid friction. However, the United States appears to welcome it and, in the election year, might even incite it.
The US, under the Obama administration and thanks in large part to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's team at the State Department, has been quite adept in putting China at a geopolitical disadvantage in Europe, Africa and Asia.
It is a valid question, however, to ask whether all this diplomatic and military tail-twisting is the best way to advance America's interests - which are meat and potatoes economic concerns, rather than pie-in-the-sky security scenarios, as Clinton made clear in her manifesto, America's Pacific Century:
Harnessing Asia's growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests ... broader commitment to elevate economic statecraft as a pillar of American foreign policy. Increasingly, economic progress depends on strong diplomatic ties, and diplomatic progress depends on strong economic ties. And naturally, a focus on promoting American prosperity means a greater focus on trade and economic openness in the Asia-Pacific.
In any event, the media are happy to stir the geopolitical pot on America's behalf. ...
Peter Lee's essay above was originally posted on December 26, 2011. It is one of the seven links in our post The Western Axis war (it is one war): Blame some foreign devil(s)
Posted at: Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 03:00 PM -- Posted by: Jim Scott -- Permalink: (#) Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Commentary
Climate change ? our real bequest to future generations (not that US Republican Party presidential candidate front-runners understand that)
Between the drought in the Southwest, which wreaked havoc on farms and ranches in both the U.S. and Mexico, and Hurricane Irene, which hit the East Coast at the worst possible moment (peak harvest for farmers in New York state and elsewhere), 2011 was a terrible weather year. The result? Fewer pumpkins for Halloween, and a costlier Thanksgiving, to start with. But this year was also a reminder of the ways a shifting climate could make food production especially unpredictable in the future. - Twilight Greenaway, The bad food news of 2011, December 27, 2011
The point is not that we should worry about an invasion from hostile powers, but instead, that we should not imagine that we will be able to inflict great harm on the rest of the world with impunity. In other words, our children and grandchildren may well be forced to pay a substantial price for the damage caused by our greenhouse gas emissions today. - Dean Baker
Santorum vs. Romney: The climate is screwed either way
Lisa Hymas Grist USA January 4, 2012
Romney & Santorum, both bad news for the environment. Photos: WEBN TV's "Political Pulse" & IowaPolitics.com
Visit this page for its embedded links.
Rick Santorum, who surged at the last minute to give Mitt Romney a real run for his money in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses, is less green than his rival, and decidedly nuttier when it comes to climate change. But let's not split hairs here. Both men will staunchly defend fossil fuels, and neither is likely to do much of anything to fight global warming. ...
Ron Paul finished a strong third in Iowa, but there's no hope for the environment in that showing. Paul is just about as wacky on climate change as Santorum.
Newt Gingrich, ?amateur paleontologist,? knows science better than you.
Newt Gingrich reins himself in during final push
Ginger Gibson and JameS Hohmann POLITICO.com USA December 31, 2011
Gingrich 'doesn't speak in sound bites,' a spokesman said. Photo: AP
ATLANTIC, Iowa ? After months of bringing his legendary rhetorical meanderings to the presidential campaign trail, Newt Gingrich has suddenly discovered message control. ...
Of course, he?s not a completely changed man. At a town hall meeting here Saturday afternoon, Gingrich delivered his neatly segmented remarks on taxes, regulations and an overarching economy, but when asked to explain his position on global warming, he delivered a new line.
?I?m an amateur paleontologist,? Gingrich said. ?I spend a lot of time looking at the Earth?s temperature for a very long time. I?m a lot harder to convince than just looking at a computer model.? ...
Why isn?t there a more massive, activist climate movement?
Ted Glick Grist USA December 29, 2011
Eight years ago I decided that I needed to change my life. The reason? The late summer heat wave which hit Western Europe in August, 2003, leading to 30,000 or more deaths.
I knew about the issue of global warming before 2003. Indeed, in 2002, during a Green Party of New Jersey campaign for the U.S. Senate, it was one of my major issues. Prominent in my basic brochure was this statement: ?Move towards energy independence, reverse global warming and create jobs through a crash program to get energy from the sun, the wind and other renewable fuels.?
But it was that European heat wave that literally drove me to serious study about this issue, and by the end of the year I was convinced that the climate crisis was much more serious, much more imminent, than I had thought. Ever since, work in support of a renewable energy revolution has been my top priority.
There?s no question but that today, compared to eight years ago, there is much more consciousness about and work on this most overarching and urgent of issues. As the climate crisis has led to stronger, more frequent and more destructive weather impacts?droughts, floods, powerful winds, rain and snow deluges, deadly hurricanes, huge tornadoes and more?so has it led to a stronger international climate movement. In 2010 there were 7,300 local actions in 188 countries around the world on the same 10/10/10 day of action organized by 350.org.
But the deeper truth is that, certainly in the United States, there is a disconnect between the urgency of this civilizational crisis and the response to it on the part of the broad progressive citizenry, those tens of millions of people who believe generally in human rights and fact-based decision-making. ...
As we enter the critical political year of 2012, I hope and pray that many more people in the USA and around the world will make a new year?s resolution to speak up and take action on the biggest threat to our common future that human society has ever faced.
Climate change ? our real bequest to future generations
Dean Baker Guardian UK January 3, 2012
Thailand was recently hit by the worst flooding the country has seen in 50 years. Photo: Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters
It is remarkable how efforts to reduce the government deficit/debt are often portrayed as a generational issue, while efforts to reduce global warming are almost never framed in this way. This contrast is striking because the issues involved in reducing the deficit or debt have little direct relevance to distribution between generations, whereas global warming is almost entirely a question of distribution between generations. ...
The main factor that will determine the economic wellbeing of our children and grandchildren will be the strength of the economy that we pass down to them. This will depend, in turn, on the quality of the capital and infrastructure we pass onto them, along with the level of education we give them, the state of technical knowledge we achieve and the state of the natural environment. ...
If the deficit has little to with the wellbeing of our children and grandchildren, global warming has everything to do with it. We run the risk of handing them a planet without many of the fascinating features that we had the opportunity to enjoy (for example, coral reefs that are dying, plant and animal species that are becoming extinct, landscapes that are being transformed). Far more seriously, we face the likelihood of handing them a planet in which hundreds of millions of people risk death by starvation due to drought in central Africa, or through flooding in Bangladesh and other densely populated low-lying areas in Asia, as a result of human caused global warming.
The guiding philosophy on this issue in the United States is pretty much that we can inflict whatever harm we want on people elsewhere in the world because we are powerful and they are not. This is certainly true today, but will it still be true 60 or 70 years from now? Do we expect that the United States will still be able to act unilaterally without regard to the consequences that our actions have on the rest of the world? ...
Those who want to worry about questions of generational equity might start to wrap their heads around combating global warming. Global warming threatens to do far more damage to the wellbeing of future generations than the social security and Medicare benefits going to baby-boomers, no matter how much the deficit hawks try to twist the numbers to claim otherwise.
Related: Screw China: American scientists are finding replacements for rare earth
Sarah Laskow Grist USA January 4, 2012
Visit this page for its embedded links.
Priuses, wind turbines, and other clean technologies require rare earth materials, which generally go into ultra-strong magnets that help power clean technology. But rare earth elements have a couple of problems: China controls most of the supply, they require less-than-environmentally-friendly mining to get at, and, uh, they?re rare. So there's a race on to create a replacement magnet component that doesn't require rare earth.
CleanTechnica reports that a team at Boston's Northeastern University has taken one step in the right direction -- developing a material with similar magnetic properties to rare earth. (Now there's just the small challenge of creating a battery that rivals the current technology in cost and incorporating it into commercial processes across the world.) To whatever degree the federal government is pouring (dribbling?) money into energy research these days, it's pouring money into this, because screw China. So we can expect discoveries like this one to start popping up fairly regularly.
Posted at: Wednesday, January 04, 2012 - 03:39 PM -- Posted by: Jim Scott -- Permalink: (#) Social Ideas
Cause for concern: Notes on the future of food
Report: Green economy to be
Source: http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22055
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