Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category


Trump trade war: May and China fire warning shots
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/trump-trade-war-may-china-fire-warning-shots-1665117?utm_source=email

 

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I thought Trump just wants to make a deal, not make war!

So what gives?

Methinks, the merchants of death are making Trump do this.

But this is self-defeating and counter-productive!

Since the truckers of death are not necessarily independent of, or far removed from, the merchants of innocuous commodities!

Take McDonell Douglas Corporation, an American company, which later on gobbled by The Boeing Company.

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McDonnell Douglas Corporation | American company | Britannica.com
https://www.britannica.com/to…/McDonnell-Douglas-Corporation

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So McDonnell (as Douglas Aircraft) produced the famous DC series of commercial aviation planes, used its expertise to convert the DC-3, the world’s first commercial airliner, into military use as the C-47.

This should not come as a surprise since Donald W. Douglas (1892-1981), Douglas Aircraft’s founder, designed the Cloudster, the first aerodynamically streamlined plane, and founded his company to fill an order for three of the planes for the U.S. Navy.

During the war Douglas contributed 29,000 warplanes, one-sixth of the U.S. airborne fleet. After the war the company continued to dominate the commercial air routes with its new DC-6 and in 1953 brought out its most advanced piston-engined airliner, the DC-7, whose range made possible nonstop coast-to-coast service. With the development of commercial jets, however, Douglas began to lag behind Boeing. It was because of its deteriorating financial condition in the 1960s that it sought a merger with McDonnell.

Under its founder James S. McDonnell (1899–1980), that company grew up quickly during World War II and became a major defense supplier. It designed the world’s first carrier-based jet fighter and went on to produce such widely used jet fighters as the F-4 Phantom, the A-4 Skyhawk, the F-15 Eagle, and the F-18 Hornet. The company also manufactured launch vehicles and cruise missiles. In 1984 it purchased Hughes Helicopters Inc. from the estate of Howard Hughes. In the 1970s the company began diversifying with the acquisition of companies engaged in data processing, satellite communications, information services, and the manufacture of electronic devices.

The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s resulted in a major contraction of U.S. defense industries. In the wave of business consolidations and mergers that followed, McDonnell Douglas was acquired by The Boeing Company.

And what does The Boeing Company produce?

AeroWeb | Boeing (Rockwell) B-1B Lancer

AeroWeb | Boeing CH–47/MH-47 Chinook

AeroWeb | Boeing P–8A Poseidon

But not only those nasty things that help politicians and military leaders command their underlings to kill people especially from afar and with almost no warning.

What else does The Boeing Company produce and sell?

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Boeing-Company

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Boeing Company, American aerospace company—the world’s largest—that is the foremost manufacturer of commercial jet transports. It is also a leading producer of military aircraft, helicopters, space vehicles, and missiles, a standing significantly enhanced with the company’s acquisition of the aerospace and defense units of Rockwell International Corporation in 1996 and its merger with McDonnell Douglas Corporation in 1997. Formerly Boeing Airplane Company, the firm assumed its current name in 1961 to reflect its expansion into fields beyond aircraft manufacture. Headquarters were in Seattle until 2001, when Boeing relocated to Chicago.

Boeing Company’s constituent business units are organized around three main groups of products and services—commercial airplanes, military aircraft and missiles, and space and communications.

Boeing manufactures seven distinct families of commercial aircraft, which are assembled in two facilities—Renton and Everett—in Washington state and one facility in California. The Renton plant builds the narrow-body Boeing 737 and formerly built the 757 aircraft (discontinued in 2004), while the wide-body Boeing 767 and 777 aircraft and a limited number of the largely discontinued 747s are assembled at the Everett plant. The 787 aircraft are assembled at the Everett plant and at a facility in North Charleston, South Carolina.

Boeing Business Jets, a joint venture of Boeing and General Electric Co., makes and markets business jets based on the 737-700 airliner as well as VIP versions of the 747, 777, and 787 airliners.

The company’s military-related activities are centred on the design, manufacture, and support of fighter aircraft, bombers, transports, helicopters, and missiles. Its products include, among others, the F-15 Eagle, F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet, and AV-8 Harrier fighters; the C-17 Globemaster III airlifter; the AH-64 Apache series of attack helicopters; the CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter; and the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft, based on the 767. Boeing contributes to the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor air-superiority stealth fighter and the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.

In partnership with Bell Helicopter Textron, it builds the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, and, with United Technologies’ Sikorsky division, it made the RAH-66 Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter.

The company also builds the Harpoon antiship missile, the air-launched Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM), and the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM).

In the space and communications sector, Boeing produces the Delta family of launch vehicles; the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), an in-space solid-rocket booster; and rocket engines for Delta launchers and other vehicles. It participates in processing, ground operation, and training activities for the U.S. space shuttle fleet through United Space Alliance, a joint venture with Lockheed Martin Corporation.

As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) prime contractor for the International Space Station, Boeing leads an industry team comprising most major U.S. aerospace companies and hundreds of smaller suppliers and integrates the work of ISS participants from non-U.S. countries. Its involvement in commercial space development includes partnerships in the multinational Sea Launch Company and in the Teledesic consortium formed to build a satellite-based, Internet-like telecommunications service.

It also makes satellites for the Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS).

In 2016 Boeing employed a workforce of about 150,500 people in 65 countries and 27 U.S. states.

1FireandFury

It seems that many modern-day technologies started as death technologies.

But not so!

The spear, a weapon that kills, is also the javelin thrown by well-contured athletes of the ancient Olympic Games, the Panhellinic Games of Ancient Greece, originally a festival in honor of Zeus.

It appears that human beings have been producing dual purpose tools since then.

What is quite different now is that the weapons of death have been developing across the centuries to enable alleged combatants in the comfort of airconditioned ‘fortresses’ thousands of miles away to kill other people, designated as adversaries or enemies, without warning and without the normal declaration of war.

I admire the bravery and courage of these arm-chair warriors!

But wait, the merchants of death need to wrack up more sales to keep the economy going, to keep people employed, to get representatives of the people elected and re-elected because they keep on bringing home the bacon by way of more defense contracts for the home district.

So why limit warfare against pip-squeak non-state actors like al-Qaeda and IS?

Why not bring the war to the rogue states: Iran, Iraq, Taliban’s Afghanistan, Yemen, North Korea, and the like?

But that still be inadequate for the merchants’ purposes.

So bring the war to the doorsteps of the great powers like China…and the Russian Federation!

Meanwhile, the same merchants of death will continue to produce and improve and innovate on innocuous products like commercial ailiners and GPS.

What else is new then?

What would be new is if the TRUMPy gets his way.

Everybody makes a deal to make money.

Nobody makes war.

I therefore nominate the Orange Clown in the North for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Further on, I propose that the Nobel Committee revoke the same award from former US President Barack Obama, for being a peace hypocrite and a murderous war-monger!

 

Barack Obama


people power

what an awkward phrase!

why not people’s power?

people power though is

what we have.

Gnadhi leading the salt march

Gandhi leading the salt march

the power of the people
comes in different
shapes and smells
some are perfumed
others are sweaty
some are veiled
others are turbaned
some are bare-headed
others are masked
some are armed
most are not
save for their ardor
and resolve.

Rebel soldier fighting against the Caetano Salazar dictatorship during the 1975 Carnation Revolution in Portugal

Rebel soldier fighting against the Caetano Salazar dictatorship during the 1975 Carnation Revolution in Portugal

Soldiers, priests, and ordinary people unite against the Shah during the 1979 Iranian revolution

Soldiers, priests, and ordinary people unite against the Shah during the 1979 Iranian revolution

Egyptian women calling for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in Tahrir square, Cairo, February 2011

Egyptian women calling for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in Tahrir square, Cairo, February 2011

people power
the power of the people
from Lisboa to Beograd and Kyiv
Tunis to Cairo
Manila to Tbilisi
Seoul to Taipei
Tehran to Santiago de Chile
can only oust leaders
t’is impossible to unite millions
on more than that
the outstanding exception
Martin Luther King’s quest
for equal rights and emancipation.

Protests in Bangkok against government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra

Protests in Bangkok against government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra

Farewell sign for Tunisian prime minister Ben Ali, January 2011

Farewell sign for Tunisian prime minister Ben Ali, January 2011

The universal way to win over battle-hardened soldiers

The universal way to win over battle-hardened soldiers

Martin Luther King delivering his "I have a dream" speech during the 1963 march on Washington, DC

Martin Luther King delivering his “I have a dream” speech during the 1963 march on Washington, DC

Note:  all photos were taken from the public domain.


US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet today to unify  their countries’ positions vis-a-vis Iran and its nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama

Iran had repeatedly vowed that its nuclear program is being developed only for peaceful purposes but Israel and its main ally in the world–the United States–cannot countenance the loss of Israel’s monopoly of nuclear weapons in the strategic Middle East region.  In fact, Israeli forces had attacked Iraqi and Syrian nuclear facilities even without the explicit permission of the United States.

Sanctions against Iraq have been imposed yet both allies have not ruled out the military option.  However, some disagreements supposedly exist between the two and must be ironed out; hence the necessity of today’s meeting.

According to Eli Lake, senior national security correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, the United States and Israel reportedly disagree on what the trigger or “red line” should be for striking Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The Israelis seek to destroy Iran’s ability to manufacture an atomic weapon, whereas President Obama has pledged only to stop Iran from making a nuclear weapon.

Nuclear explosion

I honestly see not much difference between the two positions because at the end of the day, one may just have to use the military option either to destroy a country’s ability to manufacture a nuclear weapon or to stop it from making one.

Obama reportedly decried Israeli’s much too loose talk of war and implied that any precipitate action will not be supported except for a few states.  His tack: diplomacy and pressure will do the trick.

It is my reading that Israel wants the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities be done as soon as possible before they become hard targets–that is, before they get enclosed in mountains.  Israel simply does want Iran to have the capability to build nuclear weapons and the latter’s nuclear facilities give it such capability even if a nuclear bomb has yet to be built.

And a public disagreement may be meant to force the hand of the United States.

Iranian nuclear facilities

It is conventional understanding that in a partnership between a stronger party and a weaker party, the will of the stronger party will prevail.  The US-Israeli relationship belies this common view and the deviation must be explained.

Of course, we have heard of the Israel Lobby.  John Mearsheimer and Stephan Walt, both international security experts, co-wrote the book entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.  The book refers to the Lobby as a loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

Stepan Walt (l) and John Mearsheimer (r)

In addition to the Lobby, I believe what contributes to Israel’s political support within the US is the greater integration of Jewish people into the American mainstream.  One reason is the shared Judeo-Christian ethic.  Another is the earlier Jewish diaspora to the US.

Another explanation is supplied by Hilton Root in his 2008 book, Alliance Curse.  In the book, Root was intrigued by the fact that most of the alliances the US had entered into since the Cold War and beyond were with dictatorships rather than with democracies.  He came up with an intriguing answer.  American voters want results in the form of foreign alliances, military basing rights, defense industries (to be based in their districts), etc.  Their elected representatives willingly oblige.  And dictators–who do not face internal opposition–are more than willing to deal with the Americans.  Americans also find it easier to deal with dictators with the absence of meddling legislatures.

Hilton Root

During martial law, the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos leveraged the country’s strategic location astride sea lines of communication (SLOC) in the South China Sea to earn millions of dollars of military assistance annually from the US government.

The US may be stronger militarily than Israel but the latter has a unique trump card.  Israel is the most reliable US ally in the region and had leveraged this reliability into some form of power vis-a-vis the Americans.  For lack of a better term, this power is akin to the tail wagging the dog.  If the Israelis ‘misbehave’ in a major way, will the Americans abrogate their alliance?  Will they consider the Saudis their main ally in the region?

If Israel launches airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, what credible sanctions can the US impose on it?  Will Obama be brave enough to impose such sanctions as he faces re-election?

Or are these questions trivial given the basic alignment of both states’ interests as far as Iranian nuclear weapons are concerned?