Iran and American Interference

[Sam123]

Quote from achilles28:

If you really believe oil barons would gladly put Americas welfare first - in exchange for their own trillions - I've got a great piece of beach front property in az id like to show you....

Nations cannot flourish without adequate access to plentiful and affordable commodities. Nations go to war almost always because they are competing for resources. Without adequate access to affordable energy and without a military advantage to defend that supply, competitors will surely move in at our disadvantage, and just watch the price of gasoline shoot up to the stratosphere.

Billions have been invested in R&D by the private sector in defense and energy so that oil is accessible, and gasoline is affordable. There is also a vested interest by these private sectors in government foreign policy to ensure that America maintains its advantage. If energy is too expensive, economies are doomed as soon as they start.

That’s the vested interest in America’s welfare I’m referring to. Because of their efforts, gasoline doesn’t cost $10 a gallon today. But at the same time, they want to make money and will continue to “test” the public’s reaction to price. That’s why we have three grades of gas: if everyone buys the premium grade, the price of gas goes up, and visa versa.

However, we saw gasoline go up in tandem with market oil prices, which is suspicious because it’s likely that refineries are buying oil well below market prices. At this point, you have to rely on public outcry, which leads to government intervention (regulation.) In my opinion, I think the public outcry was relatively weak.

Quote from achilles28:

Yes, they're just 'misguided'. Just like Enron, Tyco, Arthur Andersen, Worldcom ect etc.

How can we help those poor souls find their way again?

No, those are examples of companies that shouldn’t be. And most aren’t. In these cases I would put some blame on government for deregulating just about everything in the 90’s. I would also put some blame on a very apathetic public, which causes special interest groups to hijack government. The deregulation was great for business, but it also caused these companies to do what they did, which reminds us why there has to be some practical regulation.

Quote from achilles28:

Interesting. But what makes you think big oil is even one step closer to losing its iron tight grasp on us?

We are still just as dependent on oil as we ever were. Alternative energies receive paltry funding and the lions share is just a distraction to placate the public into believing something is actually being done to wean this countries insatiable addiction to petrochems.

Nothing of any consequence is being done - except that which the American public take it upon themselves to do. Privately.

Is that why Americas best buddy (big oil) was shown over the summer to be consciously sidelining existing refining capacity to exacerbate shortages and boost prices?

Big oil earns tens of billions per quarter. Why would they want to see a resurgence of 15 dollar-a-barrel oil that barely puts them in the black?

But big oil is uneasy with oil at > $60 because expensive energy makes people look for and develop other energies. It makes the big oil lobby lose credibility. Other energies become economical to develop. If big oil controls the world, then we should expect the price of oil to fall back to $30 in the next year. Otherwise, I think they are in trouble.

On top of expensive oil, as every day goes by, America is being placed in an increasingly disadvantageous geopolitical position, because of China and the fact that a lot of the oil sits under an increasingly hostile Islamist World. Because the West is no longer the only major buyer of oil, the industry has become a perpetual seller’s market. And America’s big oil now has to compete with China’s own “big oil” for access to the best fields and so forth. And to have this access, you have to win friends and influence people in high government.

And the Muslim oil-rich World is showing their arrogance and bravado because now they can pit one non-Muslim nation against another while the world makes them filthy rich from buying their expensive oil.

The anti-U.S. propaganda in oil producing nations has a life of its own. Part of this comes from the fact that they know they have China to sell oil to. The other part is coming generations defined by unrelenting anti-U.S. propaganda. We could leave Iraq and condemn Israel tomorrow. It won’t make any difference because hating the U.S. gives them identity, meaning and purpose. Watch the Cartoon Riots turn against the U.S., when the U.S. had nothing to do with it.

In short, you may think America's big oil has all this global power and manipulation. But unless oil falls back to $30 and gasoline back under $1.50, the status quo they try to maintain is losing credibility day by day. Let’s see if they can “get” that price down.

 

[SouthAmerica]

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Sam123: We could leave Iraq and condemn Israel tomorrow.


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February 9, 2006

SouthAmerica: What do you mean by: if the US leave Iraq Americans are condemning Israel?

I don’t agree with you. Israel can take care of their country with no problems. (No country in the area would try to invade Israel – besides Israel is armed with nukes).

Today, Israel probably has the best army in the world – and they show their efficiency with real action – for example the Six Day War in 1967 or the Israeli raid on Antebbe, Uganda (Africa) to save the Israeli being held hostages in 1977 - they are very efficient and when they have a mission it is 123 and the job is done.

The Israelis are completely capable of defending their country from foreign attack and they don’t need the United States to protect them.

If tomorrow the US is forced to leave Iraq - Israel will continue to survive as they have been doing for over 5 decades.


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[Ricter]

Quote from southamerica:

The Israelis are completely capable of defending their country from foreign attack and they don’t need the United States to protect them.

If tomorrow the US is forced to leave Iraq - Israel will continue to survive as they have been doing for over 5 decades.


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Agreed. They only need us to bankroll them. Forever.

 

[jem]

This supposed columinst believes all soverign states have the right to build nuclear bombs. First question would be where in the hell did you learn your international law. Only a crack pot would make such a claim. Asserting such a claim reveals a lack of understanding and a sick and dangerous agenda.

It is a stupedously stupid argument to appeal to soverign rights and that not understand that one of the reasons weaker countries may avail themselves of international law (and the claim soverign rights) is based on their agree to conduct themselves in accordance with interantional norms. Major interanation norms are the Nuclear non-proliferation and the acknowledgement of other countries rights to exist.

By denying Isreals right to exist and stating that it is arming itself with nukes in contravention of international law Iran claim to soverignty is specious at best. (at the very least it has zero rights to arm itself with nukes and the international law makers have every right to ensure that it does not arm itself.)

By the way this columist then says Iran will not use the nukes.

This is the work of a sick person. How the hell do you know Iran will not use nukes.

 

[Sam123]

You are taking that snippet out of context. If it’s not deliberate, then you misunderstood what I was saying.

This is what I said:

“The anti-U.S. propaganda in oil producing nations has a life of its own. Part of this comes from the fact that they know they have China to sell oil to. The other part is coming [from] generations defined by unrelenting anti-U.S. propaganda. We could leave Iraq and condemn Israel tomorrow. It won’t make any difference because hating the U.S. gives them identity, meaning and purpose. Watch the Cartoon Riots turn against the U.S., when the U.S. had nothing to do with it.”

As for Israel being able to defend itself: of course it can, but now that 16% of the Israeli population is Muslim, I doubt it can play hard ball with its neighbors like it did in the past.

Quote from southamerica:

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Sam123: We could leave Iraq and condemn Israel tomorrow.


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February 9, 2006

SouthAmerica: What do you mean by: if the US leave Iraq Americans are condemning Israel?

I don’t agree with you. Israel can take care of their country with no problems. (No country in the area would try to invade Israel – besides Israel is armed with nukes).

Today, Israel probably has the best army in the world – and they show their efficiency with real action – for example the Six Day War in 1967 or the Israeli raid on Antebbe, Uganda (Africa) to save the Israeli being held hostages in 1977 - they are very efficient and when they have a mission it is 123 and the job is done.

The Israelis are completely capable of defending their country from foreign attack and they don’t need the United States to protect them.

If tomorrow the US is forced to leave Iraq - Israel will continue to survive as they have been doing for over 5 decades.


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[SouthAmerica]

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February 9, 2006

SouthAmerica: Reply to jem

In early 2002 I wrote an article that was published on various newspapers and magazines around May 2002. The article mentioned the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the concept of a country’s absolute sovereignty and the reason why Brazil should develop and build nuclear weapons. Here is a copy of most of that article.

Some general from the Pentagon wrote a article twice as long than mine as a rebuttal to my article and Brazzil magazine published his article in June 2002. The general was scared to death regarding my article – his article even included a diagram of what would look like if a nuclear weapon went off in Rio de Janeiro.

The editor of the newspapers and of Brazzil magazine received a lot of letter to the editor regarding my article. The article was a real success based in the reaction that I got from the readers.


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Part 1 of 2

Brazzil
May 2002
”We Need the Bomb”

The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, in force since 1970, became obsolete overnight in 2002. It's time for Brazil to wake up and join the nuclear weapons club. As a sovereign country, Brazil does not need any authorization to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
By: Ricardo C. Amaral


On March 10, 2002, The New York Times had a front-page article outlining the new American nuclear weapons strategy. The Times reported that the American government is in the process of "a broad overhaul of American nuclear policy; a secret Pentagon report calls for developing new nuclear weapons that would be better suited for striking targets in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya."

The New York Times obtained a full copy of the report. It calls for the development of new earth-penetrating nuclear weapons to destroy heavily fortified underground bunkers, including those that are used to store chemical and biological weapons. It argues that the United States may need to resume nuclear testing.

One of the most sensitive portions of the report is a secret discussion of contingencies in which the United States might need to use its "nuclear strike capabilities" against a foe. ...The Bush administration seems to see a new role for nuclear weapons against the `Axis of Evil' and other problem states....

Among Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Libya none has nuclear weapons... "Significantly, all of them have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Washington has promised that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty unless those countries attack the United States or its allies "in alliance with a nuclear weapon state."

Remember, the United States is the only country in history to use nuclear weapons against another country. President Truman unleashed atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki— killing over 100,000 people with one shot. Personally, I never understood why it was necessary for the US to drop the second atomic bomb in Nagasaki, since they had shown to the Japanese the power of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Declassified government documents in the U. S. show that John F. Kennedy considered a pre-emptive atomic weapon strike against the Russians in East Germany in 1961. Richard M. Nixon also suggested to his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, the possibility of using atomic weapons in Vietnam.

Today, the Bush administration is suggesting to the world that in the future the US will use nuclear weapons on pre-emptive nuclear strikes. The US government will treat, in the future, the use of nuclear weapons as just one more instrument or tool that it has available in its arsenal.

The entire world knows that the US means business when it comes to using arms of mass destruction. We all know that when the US government implies that it will use nuclear weapons, you can count on it. I would like to make just one more point on this subject: the US never used atomic weapons against a white/Caucasian state including the Russian Evil Empire and Nazi Germany, but the US used the atomic bomb against another race—Japan a yellow/oriental state.

If race again becomes a major factor in the consideration of where the US will drop an atomic bomb, then matters will become more complicated in the war against Islam—the range of race in Islam and the Muslim world is as wide as in the human race because it includes white, black and yellow people.

Last Resort No More

Since the attack on Nagasaki in 1945, there has been an international understanding that the ultimate weapons of terror (nuclear weapons) would remain weapons of last resort, as they were up to now. There was also an understanding that a nuclear weapons country would never use such a weapon against a non-nuclear weapons country.

Since the break up of the Soviet Union in 1989, the world became a much more dangerous place in terms of the proliferation of nuclear weapon states—the Soviet Union split into various nuclear weapon states. The other problem is that since the 1960's, many other states became nuclear weapon states such as France, China, South Africa, Israel, India and Pakistan.

These are some of the states that have been reported in the press as the new states that have been able to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities since 1960. How about the states which we don't know! The nuclear weapons genie is out of the bottle, and the current US change in policy and strategy reflects that fact. The US is adapting its policies and strategies to be able to handle the new nuclear weapons reality around the world.

Information released by the US State Department regarding this subject indicates that the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) was concluded in 1968 and became effective in 1970. Fear of nuclear weapons proliferation in the 1960's motivated 187 countries to sign that treaty. Only India, Israel, Pakistan and Cuba remain outside that treaty.

The significance of the NPT lies in the fact the five nuclear-weapon States defined in the Treaty—that is, the USA, the Russian Federation, Great Britain, France and China—are not permitted to transfer their nuclear weapons and that all other States Parties (the so-called non-nuclear-weapon States) are allowed neither to receive the transfer of these—thus gaining control of nuclear weapons—nor to develop nuclear weapons themselves. I am not going to bore you, the reader, with further details of this Treaty since the Treaty has become obsolete!

The idea of a country's sovereignty was developed in Europe over the last 400 years. It is a concept closely associated with the rise of the nation-state system from the ashes of the feudalism system of the Middle Ages. Jean Jacques Rousseau in his major work The Social Contract gave us the idea that sovereignty resides in the people (one of the earliest expressions of democratic thought and ideas) rather than with the monarchy.

Sovereignty implies the concept of power, both internal and external: internal sovereignty is the ability of the nation-state to demand obedience to the laws of the nation-state within its borders; external sovereignty governs the relations between nation-states, and implies the premise that these states are theoretically equal under international law.

Modern international law recognizes the concept of nonintervention. The concept of nonintervention has been codified over the years in many treaties and international agreements.

Nonintervention means that sovereign states have the right to be free from interference by others in their domestic affairs. This concept is part of the United Nations Charter.

For a political community to be sovereign, it must meet some specific criteria; it must have the following qualities: 1) territory, 2) population, 3) effective rule over that territory and population, and 4) recognition of the other nation-states.


To be continued on Part 2

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[SouthAmerica]

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Continuation of article Part 2 of 2


Brazzil
May 2002
”We Need the Bomb”


Sovereignty

Brazil needs nuclear weapons to protect its claim of absolute sovereignty over its territory and population. Today, the more a state has the capability to use violence at will, the greater is its contempt for sovereignty, that is, for the sovereignty of other states. We can see all over the world this contempt for sovereignty and international law.

There is one fact which is obvious for any one who is not brain dead—you can't count on your allies to come to your rescue when your country is under attack—unless there is some ulterior motive for the assistance, such as your country is a major oil producing country.

A recent example brings this point to our attention and also can serve as a guide to the future, as to why any country shouldn't rely on old allies to come forward and put everything on the line to help them when they are under attack by a foreign power. When the US attacked Serbia and destroyed that country's entire infrastructure, Russia, a long time ally of Serbia, did not come to its rescue. Instead the Russians barked a few times on behalf of Serbia, then they rolled over and played dead. These events also highlighted to the world how far Russia has declined and how they lost all their clout and weight in international affairs.

If you don't understand that many parts of what is considered international law and treaties have been trashed lately, then you have been living in La-La land. For example, in May 2002, the United States decided to renounce formally any involvement in a treaty creating an international criminal court and has officially "unsigned" the document signed by the Clinton administration. As reported in The New York Times on May 5, 2002, "in doing so the US simultaneously "unsigned" the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a 1969 pact that outlines the obligations of nations to obey other international treaties. Article 18 of the Vienna Convention requires signatory nations like the United States to refrain from taking steps to undermine treaties they signed, even if they do not ratify them."

US Bad Example

I was surprised to find out how simple the process is to repudiate a treaty which a country has signed. How easy it was for the United States to withdraw from the International Criminal Court Treaty—the Bush administration officials just notified the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on May 6, 2002 that the United States was withdrawing from the International Criminal Court Treaty.

The United States, as one of the leading countries in the world, set the example to everyone how simple and easy it is to "unsign a treaty" which is no longer wanted by that country. The United States actions make it clear to the world that treaties are made to be broken and that treaties just have a certain useful purpose. After any treaty ends its useful life it becomes obsolete and has to be scrapped—as in the case of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty.

In another example of worthless treaties, the United States and the Soviet Union signed treaties in the past decades in which they agreed to stop research and production of chemical and biological weapons. Neither country honored any of these treaties, and both countries continued in a clandestine way the development of new chemical and biological weapons.

By definition, any sovereign country must have the right to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons if that country so desires for their national defense. If countries are not allowed to produce these modern weapons to protect themselves, then we can't consider these countries as having actual sovereignty. These countries should receive a new class rating in a new international sovereignty rating system; they should be classified as a third rate class of countries with a semi-sovereignty status.

The world has changed drastically in a very short period of time. Today we live in a much more dangerous world, and many of the old international rules have changed since September 11, 2001.

Brazil and the Bomb

Without nuclear weapons Brazil will never be taken seriously by the major countries of the world. India or Pakistan will be considered ahead of Brazil to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. They will not even bother considering Brazil, without a Brazilian nuclear weapons capability.

As a sovereign country, Brazil does not need authorization from any other country if it decides to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons for defense purposes. If there is any obstacle, such a treaty, it is easy to "unsign" such a document….

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[toc]

"As a sovereign country, Brazil does not need authorization from any other country if it decides to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons for defense purposes."

SouthAmerica,

I did not read your full article, but Brazil also does not sponsor terrorism against anyone in world and does not have a warmongering population with leaders threatening to nuke other nations. Actions speak louder than words. Iran is among the top sponsorers of terrorism and likes to export its medivial period culture and religion. A nation with such views and culture cannot have nukes.

 

[FredBloggs]

Quote from southamerica:

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February 8, 2006

SouthAmerica: Reply to FredBloggs

Today it does not matter if the United States is able to capture or kill Osama Bin Ladden. The United States has turned Osama Bin Ladden into a “Legend” in the same way that they turned Che Guevara into a “Legend” decades ago.

The United States has immortalized Osama Bin Ladden – and he will be known and remembered by future generations as the man who transformed American society as no one had done before.

He is one man with no army, no major equipments and weapons – and he had just a small group of people who used a lot of creativity and imagination and they accomplished their goal armed with state of the art: low-tech box cutters.

I was stunned and very surprised to find out of how little it took for the terrorists to put the United States on its knees. Today I have realized how fragile the entire American system is.

And the Soviet Union thought that they had to spend billions and billions of US dollars to fight against the US. The reality is it took only 19 people armed with low-tech box cutters to change America all the way to its core.


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yes. good points.

its amazing what will power can achieve.

what a shame that it wasn't used for good.

 

[toc]

Regarding bringing America to its knees, the US had little choice but to react 'very firmly' to 9/11 events. Otherwise, terrorists would have up the ante and gone the WMD route using chemical and nuclear items.

It is said that through unofficial channels, this message had been conveyed to AlQueda and associates: That if WMDs are used on US or Western or peaceful nations, covertly or overtly, the 100 Muslim nations on this face of the earth will be nuked repeatedly, does not matter if 1 billion or more die or $10 Trillion is needed for cleanup.

Iraq war was Bush's personal agenda and when it comes to national security, military matters, personal agenda proves to be waste of time, money and resources.

Iraq war is a trade gone bad, can't do anything else till this mess is cleaned up and over with.