Iran has been pushed into a corner and is fighting for its life. The safest weapon in its arsenal is an economic strategy; and it is the one point where the United States is vulnerable.
There is no doubt about it. Section 1245 of the National Defense Authorization Act that was signed into law by President Obama on December 31, 2011 is having the intended effect upon Iran.
Unlike previous sanctions, Section 1245 attacks the foundation of the Iranian economy. The provisions of the law seek to stop the sale of crude oil and to block transactions between the Iranian central bank and the rest of the world. About fifty percent of the national budget is funded from the sale of exported crude oil that provides eighty percent of the foreign exchange. “Crude (oil) sales are a trap which we inherited from the years before the (1979 Islamic) Revolution,” Khamenei told a gathering of researchers and scientists at the end of July.
An immediate consequence of the legislation has been the plunge in the exchange rate of the Iranian Rial that has lost half its value against the U.S. dollar. A combination of devalued currency and a break down in international bank transfers has created shortages of imported products, including basic food grains. The result is seen in an official inflation rate of 25 percent and an unemployment rate of 12.3 percent.
Before the implementation of the sanctions, Iranian oil exports were the second largest in OPEC at 2.2 million barrels per day. Today, the current level is around 1.1 million barrels, but that does not take into account the oil leakage through the sanction barriers. A friendly government in Baghdad makes Iraq one of the easier routes to the world market. Shipments of gold bullion through Turkey to Iran indicate that the Iranians are selling to someone.
After nearly thirty years of dealing with American sanctions, the Iranians have developed methods of evading some of the restrictions, but the current application goes far beyond anything faced earlier. The National Iranian Oil Company has been forced to relinquish its monopoly of sales and authorized private traders to market the crude. The Oil Products Exporters Union expects to manage a fifth of exports and claims to have completed arrangements with refiners in Europe.
In spite of the evasive measures that are being employed, The Iranian treasury is still losing about thirty billion dollars per annum, a decline from seventy-two billion in 2011. Beyond that, reduced exports are causing a problem of what to do with the surplus. On shore facilities have been filled. Seven million barrels are being held at Sidi Kerir in Egypt.
That leaves the tankers as the only other storage choice. Half the Iran tanker fleet of forty-seven ships is already sitting at anchor with tanks full and no place to go.
The less attractive possibility is for the National Iranian Oil Company to continue shutting down wells. Already, production has declined from 3.5 to 3.3 million barrels per day.
Once they are shut down and the pressurizing of the aging neglected wells stopped, salt water seepage will make it costly and difficult to reactivate them. When they are reopened, production is likely to be reduced. This is the long term damage that the sanctions will have upon the economy.
How long can they endure the losses? That is the question that the Ayatollah has to be asking.
So far, there are no signs that people are starving from food shortages, and there is no indication that people are taking their grievances into the streets. Regardless, Tehran cannot ignore the long term damage to the economy and the potential for social disorder.
Right now, the bombs are not falling. Sooner or later, though, the risk of war must be resolved. They cannot ignore that Section 1245 is a declaration of war; and must be treated accordingly. The Ayatollah has said, “Threat for threat.”
Ayatollah Khamenei compares the present situation of Iran to Mohammed and his early followers who were besieged for three years in the desert of Saudi Arabia. When there seemed to be no hope, they struck the surrounding superior army and defeated it at Badr and Kheybar.
He sees Iran is also surrounded by an enemy. They are being confronted by two carrier battle groups with a formidable destructive capacity that Iran cannot hope to stop or to match; the repeated threats from politicians in the United States and Israel to attack Iranian nuclear facilities; the newest sanctions that are slowly strangling the economy; and Khamenei believes that it is all for the sole purpose of regime change.
That raises the question. How does a minor military power contend with the forces available to the United States? The leaders in Tehran talk about closing the Straits of Hormuz and developing new missiles. It is all bravado that Khamenei hopes will calm anxieties at home and frighten potential aggressors.
Over the three decades of the Islamic Republic, the Iranians have been careful about pushing Washington to the point that it would retaliate militarily. The Ayatollah is not going to provoke the U.S. to destroy the theocratic regime and his political career.
“….to defend ourselves we will attack on the same level as the enemies attack us,” Khamenei said on television in March. Section 1245 is economic warfare. That is most likely to be the battlefield that Khamenei will choose and it fits perfectly into the strategies employed over the centuries by the persecuted Shia minority
Where is the United States vulnerable economically? It is the draconian character of the sanctions.
At the end of June, Washington did what was expected. All twenty of Iran’s regular buyers were granted six month wavers that will push the next decision beyond the November election. To have found any of the twenty governments to be in violation of the sanction restrictions would have compelled Washington to deny access to the U.S. financial system. That would have Sparked an economic war with countries taking sides in support or in opposition to the United States.
It is no secret that many governments object to the sanctions and are willing to deal outside of normal channels for a reduced price. If the Iranians should use the new private traders to dump a few million barrels of oil onto the market at a sharply discounted price, they just might encourage one of these governments to openly defy the United States for a bargain. Should the United States imposes restrictions upon the offender, that could trigger an unwanted trade war, while ignoring the challenge would render the sanctions meaningless and invite everyone else to go bargain hunting.
As a persecuted minority, the Shia have learned that the weaker in a conflict must employ cunning rather than muscle,. The philosophy is the core principle of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that focuses upon the use of asymmetric warfare. Employing economic tactics is just another form of the asymmetric warfare.
It is the inherent weakness of the alliance that is Iran’s strength. The unwillingness of Washington to pressure supposed allies and the simple fact that there are buyers willing to defy the sanctions secretly reveals the cracks in the system. If the Iranians can break through the weak point in the American siege, they will be able to repeat without firing a shot the triumph of Badr and Kheybar
By. Felix Imonti
You can reach Felix at: feliximonti@gmail.com
Oscar Mannheim says:
As Tonto (“fool” in Spanish) said to the Lone Ranger when surrounded by Indians: “What you mean WE, white man?” The day Americans and Europeans awaken to the nation-state identity analogous to the Lone Ranger is the day the people of those nations stop being fools and wise up to the fact that the “masked man” and his agents abroad are the real enemy. But the “masked man” knows fools when he sees them and will work incessantly to keep them fooled. Why not? It works for the bankers. But if all those Indians ever awaken and turn their attention to those who have pitted them against one another, not even Silver will be able to escape their wrath.
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10th August 2012 at 5:52 pm
Zarathustra says:
Travel writer Rick Steves produced a one hour documentary about Iran a couple of years ago. It can be found on youtube. He also held a lecture about it, which I found much more interesting. If you want to gain a bit of insight into what makes Iranians tick, it’s well worth an hour of your time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtELk8S3dhU
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10th August 2012 at 5:56 pm
Muck About says:
It is a really hard thing to back up a moral line in the sand. Saddam was the first our “ever ready” military jumped on. Now, Iraq is slowly dissolving into a civil war between Shiites and Sunni mucuslims with a bit of Kurdish “just leave us along” on the side!. Boy, am I glad that there is only one brand of Catholic and Baptist (well, close) and Mormon. Just think of the joy of one religion with two segments that believe the other half needs to be killed off!
Talk about dumb shit.
Now Afganistan, again split between Sunni and Shiite and poppy growers. We’re supposed to straighten out 2,000 years of cut throat tribal and religious rivals and make ‘em all life happily ever after????? Sheeeeeit… Or Shiiiiiiite..
After that come Sunni Iran and Sunni with an Alawite minority ruled Syria, merrily killing off Christian citizens and Shiite citizens and we’re gonna screw with that as well????????????? WTF.
When will the TPTB learn that when religion is involved, not to mention oil and religion, and religion and oil, and oil and religion, unless it spills over into YOUR OWN BACKYARD, don’t fuck with it.
For every American military man that has boots on the ground over there, two Al-Quida insurgents are generated. The madrassas in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (our “friend”) can supply unending numbers ten to sixteen year old brainwashed kids willing to strap on an explosive vest and make red mist out of whatever target he is given. They are using the now-and-then female as well – usually one who’s husband was an Al-Quida member and got killed and is now faced with the choice of dying or being a prostitute.
Why are we there? Good training for the military grunts provided they survive the tour(s) there. The military ALWAYS needs a shooting war somewhere in order to train personnel by shoting at live targets and getting shot at as well.
Do we have a real positive reason to be screwing around in a country that has broken the back of empires for thousands of years whenever they’ve been invaded? Damned if I know and I’ve looked long and deep at the “Why?” of being there.
But, of course, the military/industrial complex needs wars to fight and people to kill to stay in business and make gobs of money stolen from the taxpayers of the United States by inflation and by the Government borrowing $1.5 trillion dollars (from the Federal Reserve) to finance all those things that go “BOOM” and “BANG” and “ROAR” and “Rat-ta-ta-tat” so I’d say that is a major reason we are there killing off our 20-24 year old men, crippling many more in order to line the pockets of the politicians and Elites and engineers and technicians who make all those disposable things that go BANG.
What this has to do with the Constitutional requirement to “provide for the common defense” I have been unable to figure out. I figure that if we pulled every soldier, sailor and airman back within our borders, it would take 25 years for anyone to just figure out how to start invading us, much less do any damage that would require a response to “provide for the common defense” of the country.
I am more than seriously pissed at all this and have withdrawn my participation in the economy, debt of all sort, consumerism, borrowing and everything else I can think of that contributes to the current system.
I expect that 2012 will be the first year in over 55 that I will not vote, having no choices that I can morally support.
I will no longer support the “system” and will take any actions that I can to withdraw from contributing to it.
The End..
MA
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10th August 2012 at 6:00 pm
FBD says:
A Naval blockade IS an act of war.
Starving a nation via economic sanctions …. well, what is the goddamn difference?
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10th August 2012 at 7:15 pm
FBD says:
Seven words people from other countries never want to hear;
“We’re Americans, and we’re here to help.”
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10th August 2012 at 7:18 pm
Muck About says:
@FBD: Teling illustration. Worse than telling. Damning illustration. We deserve what we get.
MA
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10th August 2012 at 7:28 pm
Administrator says:
SSS was involved in 75% of those overthrows.
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10th August 2012 at 7:35 pm
TeresaE says:
We invade sovereign nations and kill people with drones.
We order the world around to back or whims and fancies and pursuits.
We have already declared war on most of the world, why wouldn’t we think Iran is in that group?
Makes me sick how many of my fellow citizens are still brainwashed into believing this crap is NOT war, and IS for our “safety.”
This subject led to one helluva blowout in my house a couple weeks ago. He thinks we should kill more people without trials, evidence or even jurisdiction.
I think he is a commie-stooge.
We’ve reached a truce, I don’t tell him what a war-mongering asshole he is, and he thinks I’m a liberal, tree-hugger when it comes to “our safety.”
grrrrrr.
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10th August 2012 at 9:00 pm
bb says:
we are at war Iran …. oh well somebody needs a history lesson . For the last 1500 years Islam has been at war the west and they still are .This is what MUHAMMAD tells them to do.Make non muslims confess Allah is god or die and he tells them to do this over and over in the Quran.Just read the damn thing and you will see. THE religion of ISLAM is SATANIC to the core . IT hates everything we americans embrace and if they had the right weapons they would kill every one of us and think nothing of it . Read the Quran and read the history of ISLAM.
Something to think about .911 muslims were able to take down world trade center and WHEN they get the right weapons they are going to take down NEW YORK CITY.
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10th August 2012 at 9:46 pm
bb says:
Obama chose to be ISRAEL’s bitch well good for him because ISRAEL’s is GOD’s bitch. And by GOD i do not mean ALLAH.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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10th August 2012 at 9:58 pm
GoldenTool says:
@ muck
Afghan is direct pipeline access for oil to chine from Iran and Iraq. That is why we are there, we control the oil. Just like Pakistan is with India and we all know how well those 2 get along.
Bringing up another point why would the US take the chance of fighting on US soil when you can fight on the enemies territory unless you are trying to slow bleed them out over a large logistical nightmare, similar to Napoleonic wars in Russia 1812. Long term this could be Russia or China’s plan in dealing with the US, but really we aren’t close to taking over anyone’s territory and probably couldn’t even if we wanted to. We are just controlling energy and access to it. Control the energy you control the government, control the food, at this point I’d almost say water, and you control the people. I believe Kissinger said that.
Make no mistake bb above is correct, Islam as an aggressive organization will not stop. They haven’t yet since becoming a religion… Politics aside Mitt/Obama whatever, 911 stuff aside, even oil aside, Islam is a warring religion and has been since inception. Eventually it will come down to an us or them scenario, which might be 100 even 500 years from now, but it will happen. Unless we control the energy and tech so no one can get to us. Then you just have to worry about some crazy bastard with a nuke, because there is no group that would want to put boots on the ground in the US unless it was from within. That is a different ball of wax so…
There are a lot of dynamics involved in the world now and this article is very good on in my opinion. All the US bashing aside, some of which is deserved probably.
“Do unto others.”
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10th August 2012 at 11:32 pm
Zarathustra says:
bb, you are a fucking moron. I bet you don’t even have a passport.
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10th August 2012 at 11:41 pm
FBD says:
@bb — contemplate these pictures
Islam Empire
British Empire
French Empire
American Empire
Maybe you shouldn’t be quite so terrified of the Muslim Terror?
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10th August 2012 at 12:26 am
bb says:
DEAR MR. ZARATHUSTA , Was it something i said that upset your tummy. fucking moron , well been called worst and i do have a passport ha ha but you never addressed anything you just resorted to name calling ,taking a cheap shot.Are you a liberal bitch just pulling my chain or would you like some more history lessons.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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10th August 2012 at 12:28 am
Zarathustra says:
bb, watch the video I posted earlier, then can talk about those evil iranians. Oh and fuck Israel.
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10th August 2012 at 12:44 am
bb says:
FBD That is nice layout and it is correct .I don;t live in big city ,so i am not terrifed of muslim terror at least right now .I just wish people would have the backbone to call ISLAM what it really is.ISLAM puts everybody in two camps .
HOUSE OF WAR AND HOUSE OF ISLAM if you don;t belive .you are in the HOUSE OF WAR and they the true muslims are to wage war against you.where they find you. THE muslims that carried
OUT911 were just being true to the QURAN and MUHAMMAD.
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10th August 2012 at 12:58 am
Ron says:
Whats the war about? Israel can take care of itself. Were all staged for an Iran war.Its a bad idea that would doom our country.
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10th August 2012 at 1:00 am
FBD says:
Admin’s TBP Internet Blogging Empire — (showing all worldwide connections)
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10th August 2012 at 1:00 am
bb says:
MR. ZARTHUSTA, sorry to upset your tummy again but this RICK STEVES is just another damn
USEFUL IDIOT used for propaganda .
Hot debate. What do you think?
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10th August 2012 at 1:26 am
bb says:
RON ,IF ISRAEL were push into the sea today ,ISLAM would still be at war with us .IN their eyes we are INFIDELS in THE HOUSE OF WAR .
Hot debate. What do you think?
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10th August 2012 at 1:40 am
bb says:
MR. ZARATHUSTA , THE iranians are evil and so are you and i .WE are all SINFUL ,EVIL and WICKED according to GOD;S MORAL LAW .
now can we be friends or am i in THE HOUSE OF WAR. good night
Hot debate. What do you think?
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10th August 2012 at 1:55 am
ThePessimisticChemist says:
The menace of the cold war wasn’t the USSR.
It was us. They folded and now there isn’t a country around to even begin to keep us honest. Since then we have waged all out war on two different countries, and are itching to go after a third.
I subscribe to the theory that the best defense is a good offense, however the US takes this so far overboard that we are now threatening ANY country with overt military action if theyt begin to challenge us.
Sickening.
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10th August 2012 at 2:08 am
dilligaf says:
these wars are the training ground of todays police force.
an un- uniformed enemy. the enemy is who we tell you they are.
kill kill kill….
come home and join the local protect and serve. and now we tell you who the new enemy is…..
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10th August 2012 at 2:50 am
dilligaf says:
we had a local “hero vet” cop, almost shoot a local comic book store employee, for standing in front of his store, gasp, dressed as a watcher.
they proceeded to prosecute said employee and not the roid driven killing machine.
we are fucked.
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10th August 2012 at 3:01 am
Anonymous says:
The Standard Charter ‘event’ this week shouts to the international banking community that Israel has control of the New York bank clearing system. Israel has the capacity to shut down a bank if it does not comply or cleverly avoids clearing sanctions against Iran. One should expect that Israel and its lobby AIPAC will follow through with that demand because there is obviously nothing stopping them. The New York bank clearing system, built, financed, fine tuned and brilliantly managed by Americans for over a century is no longer ours…it belongs to Israel and they will do as they please.
As regulators, Congress, and the Administration gawk at this blatant display of arrogance on the part of the ‘lobby’, they will, at the same time do nothing. Israel, and anyone else paying attention, will read this as forfeiture and rightly so for that is what it is. This is a quantum leap in the destruction of America. How can this possibly be in the interest of the citizens of this once great country? Rather, it is in the interest of only one country….Israel.
As a final point we should now expect accelerated efforts on the part of global traders to terminate the dollar as the global reserve currency. Wouldn’t you??
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10th August 2012 at 5:58 am
Mr. Happy says:
Sorry, the above ‘Anonymous’ was me. Hit the submit button too soon.
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10th August 2012 at 6:03 am
flash says:
Iran should take a lesson from the consequences of Japan’s defiance of the evil Empires demands and acquiescence, before they too get their eyeballs smoked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfJZ6nwxD38
http://life.time.com/history/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-photos-from-the-ruins/#9
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10th August 2012 at 6:47 am
flash says:
Prophetic song from Jackson Browne circa 1986 pre-echoing the anxiety felt by many today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFowNFvmUxw
Lives In the Balance
Songwriters: BROWNE, JACKSON
I’ve been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you’ve seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war
And there’s a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs
On the radio talk shows and the t.v.
You hear one thing again and again
How the u.s.a. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends–
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can’t take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire
There’s a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can’t even say the names
They sell us the president the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they’re never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire
Lives In The Balance lyrics © Jackson Browne/Swallow Turn Music/Night Kitchen Music/Open Window Music
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10th August 2012 at 6:56 am
flash says:
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
Albert Einstein
The Neoconservative War Criminals In Our Midst
Paul Craig Roberts
The State Department has an office that hunts German war criminals. Bureaucracies being what they are, the office will exist into next century when any surviving German prison guards will be 200 years old. From time to time the State Department claims to have found a lowly German soldier who was assigned as a prison camp guard. The ancient personage, who had lived in the US for the past 50 or 60 years without doing harm to anyone, is then merciless persecuted, usually on the basis of hearsay. I have never understood what the State Department thinks the alleged prison guard was supposed to have done–freed the prisoners, resign his position?–when Prussian aristocrats, high-ranking German Army generals and Field Marshall and national hero Erwin Rommel were murdered for trying to overthrow Hitler.
What the State Department needs is an office that rounds up American war criminals.
They are in abundance and not hard to find. Indeed, recently 56 of them made themselves public by signing a letter to President Obama demanding that he send in the US Army to complete the destruction of Syria and its people that Washington has begun.
At the Nuremberg Trials of the defeated Germans after World War II, the US government established the principle that naked aggression–the American way in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen–is a war crime. Therefore, there is a very strong precedent for the State Department to round up those neoconservatives who are fomenting more war crimes.
But don’t expect it to happen. Today, war criminals run the State Department and the entire US Government. They are elected to the presidency, the House, and the Senate, and appointed to the federal courts as judges. American soldiers, such as Bradley Manning, who behave as the State Department expects German soldiers to have behaved, are not honored, but are thrown into dungeons and tortured while a court marshall case is concocted against them.
Hypocrisy is Washington’s hallmark, and all but the most delusional are now accustomed to their rulers speaking one way and behaving in the opposite. It is now part of the American character to regard ourselves as members of the “virtuous nation,” “the indispensable people,” while our rulers commit war crimes around the globe.
Whereas we have all been made complicit in war crimes by “our” government, it still behooves us to know who are the active war criminals in our midst who have burdened us with our war criminal reputation.
You can learn the identity of many of those who are driving the world into World War Three, while their policies result in the murder of large numbers of Arabs and Muslims in Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon, by perusing the signatures to the contrived letter to Obama from the neoconsevatives calling on Obama to invade Syria in order to “rescue” the Syrian people from their government.
According the the letter signed by 56 neoconservatives, only the Syrian government is responsible for deaths in Syria. The Washington sponsored and armed “rebels” are merely protecting the Syrian people from the Assad government. According to the letter signers, the only way the Syrian people can be saved is if Washington overthrows the Syrian government and installs a puppet state attentive to the needs of Israel and Washington.
Among the 56 signatures are a few names from the Syrian National Congress, believed to be a CIA front, and a few names from dupes among the goyim. The rest of the signatures are those of Jewish neoconservatives tightly allied with Israel, some of whom are apparently dual-Israeli citizens who participate in the formation of US foreign policy. The names on this list comprise a concentration of evil, the goal of which is not only to bring armageddon to the Syrian people but also to the world.
The letter to Obama is part of the propaganda operation to demonize the Syrian government with lies in order to get rid of a government that supports Hizbollah, the Muslims in southern Lebanon who have twice driven the vaunted, but cowardly, Israeli army out of Lebanon, thus preventing the Israeli government from achieving its aim of stealing the water resources of southern Lebanon.
Not a single sentence in the letter is correct. Listen to this one for example: “The Assad regime poses a grave threat to national security interests of the United States.” What utter total absurdity, and the morons who signed the letter pretend to be “security experts.”
How do we evaluate the fact that 56 people have no shame whatsoever and will lie to the President of the United States, telling him to his face the most absurd and obvious false things in order to advance their personal agenda at the expense of not merely the lives of Syrians but, by leading to wider war, of life on earth?
This same neocon architects of armageddon are also working against Iran, Russia, the former Soviet central Asian countries, Ukraine, Belarus, and China. It seems that they can’t wait to start a nuclear war.
You can find the names of some of humanity’s worst enemies here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32021.htm
Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor’s Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.
He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department’s Meritorious Service Award for “his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy.” From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.
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10th August 2012 at 7:02 am
ThePessimisticChemist says:
I just thumbs-upped not one, but TWO flash posts in the same damned conversation.
The end is truly nigh.
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10th August 2012 at 9:31 am
Novista says:
bb
I am impressed with your quran scholarship. Where did you learn Arabic?
Of course, it’s well known in Islam that the only true quran is in the language. Though that historically presents a problem, due to the style of writing the script. Do you read the earlier without the diacritical marks? Whici of the Readers and Transmitters versions do you prefer?
I only scratched the surface of the language in my two years in Riyadh (and a little time in Medina).
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10th August 2012 at 9:16 pm