Sanctions on Iran. What are the Implications?

Ali Fathollah-Nejad, Global Research

The prospects for democracy, socio-economic development, and conflict resolution will suffer if the West continues to rely on punitive measures

This time, the warmongers' silly season found its apogée in U.S. neo-conservative Daniel Pipes' advice to Obama to "bomb Iran," which appeared shortly after Tony Blair, having outlined why he helped invade Iraq, remarked ominously, "We face the same problem about Iran today." The Chilcot Inquiry in the United Kingdom on how the Iraq War was launched ironically coincided with a considerable military build-up in the Persian Gulf region. All this occurred amidst the continued struggle of Iran’s civil rights movement and proclamations of Western leaders to be in support of the latter’s efforts. But is there any evidence for this?

In contradistinction to war, sanctions are widely portrayed as necessary, almost healthy medicine to bring about change in the opponent’s policies. However, as the history of the West–Iran conflict proves, sanctions have rather the state of crisis alive than contributed to its resolution. Nonetheless, Western governments do not seem to have lost their dubious fascination for them.

As the call for “crippling sanctions” became morally questionable when last summer the impressive Green wave shook the streets of Tehran for fear of wrecking the same, today the benign sounding “smart” or “targeted” sanctions are on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Yet, a close look reveals a great deal of wishful thinking as to the effects of such sanctions.

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The Poodle Gets Kicked

Patrick J Buchanan

Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode. First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel “a central bolt in our existence.” “For world Jewry,” Joe went on, presumably including 5 million Americans, “Israel is the heart. … Israel is the light. … Israel is the hope.”

Meeting Shimon Peres the next day, Joe confessed that when he first visited at age 29, “Israel captured my heart.” In Peres’ guestbook, he wrote, “The bond between our two nations has been and remains unshakeable.” He then told Peres and the world, “There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.”

As Peres spoke, Biden took notes. When Peres called him “a friend,” Joe gushed, “It’s good to be home.” Even at AIPAC, they must have been gagging. Walking around the corner to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office, Joe called him by his nickname, “Bibi,” declared him a “real” friend and said the U.S. relationship with Israel “has been and will continue to be the centerpiece of our policy.”

Then the sandbag hit.

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Dismantling America

Patrick J Buchanan

Though Bush 41 and Bush 43 often disagreed, one issue did unite them both with Bill Clinton: protectionism. Globalists all, they rejected any federal measure to protect America’s industrial base, economic independence or the wages of U.S. workers.

Together they rammed through NAFTA, brought America under the World Trade Organization, abolished tariffs and granted Chinese-made goods unrestricted access to the immense U.S. market.

Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services has compiled, in 44 pages of charts and graphs, the results of two decades of this Bush-Clinton experiment in globalization. His compilation might be titled, “Indices of the Industrial Decline and Fall of the United States.”

From 2000 to 2009, industrial production declined here for the first time since the 1930s. Gross domestic product also fell, and we actually lost jobs.

In traded goods alone, we ran up $6.2 trillion in deficits — $3.8 trillion of that in manufactured goods. Things that we once made in America—indeed, we made everything—we now buy from abroad with money that we borrow from abroad.

Over this Lost Decade, 5.8 million manufacturing jobs, one of every three we had in Y2K, disappeared. That unprecedented job loss was partly made up by adding 1.9 million government workers.

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VIDEO: Is Catastrophe Ahead for US-China Relations?

Michel Chossudovsky of the Center for Research on Globalization, speaks to RT about U.S. missiles pointed at Chinese cities and how an attack on Iran would be threaten China (since Iran is a major supplier of gasoline to China).

U.S. Hyperinflation Possible By Year 2015

National Inflation Association

The U.S. government this week reported a record monthly budget deficit for February 2010 of $220.9 billion. Total tax receipts for the month were only $107.5 billion compared to outlays of $328.4 billion. The total U.S. deficit for the first five months of fiscal year 2010 was $651.6 billion, with tax receipts of $800.5 billion and outlays of $1.45 trillion. The deficit was up 10.5% for the first five months of fiscal year 2010 over the same period in fiscal year 2009.

We are now at a point where if the U.S. government taxed Americans 100% of their income, the tax receipts generated would not be enough to balance the budget. Likewise, if the U.S. government cut 100% of its spending including defense, but kept paying Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, we would still have a budget deficit. NIA believes it will be impossible for the U.S. to have a balanced budget ever again.

The U.S. national debt is now $12.55 trillion of which $8.061 trillion is public debt. Due to the Federal Reserve's artificially low interest rates of 0% to 0.25%, interest payments on our national debt last month were only $16.9 billion, an interest rate of only 2.548% on our public debt. The reason for the spread between our 2.548% interest rate on the public debt and the federal funds rate of 0 to 0.25% is that a portion of our national debt is made up of long-term bonds at higher interest rates.

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Eye for An Eye: China Releases Report on Human Rights Violations "in the U S of A" (Full Text)

Full Text of report published by China's Information Office of the State Council titled "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009"

The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010, posing as "the world judge of human rights" again. As in previous years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory. The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 is prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States.

I. On Life, Property and Personal Security
Widespread violent crimes in the United States posed threats to the lives, properties and personal security of its people.
In 2008, U.S. residents experienced 4.9 million violent crimes, 16.3 million property crimes and 137,000 personal thefts, and the violent crime rate was 19.3 victimizations per 1,000 persons aged 12 or over, according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2009 (Criminal Victimization 2008, U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov). In 2008, over 14 million arrests occurred for all offenses (except traffic violations) in the country, and the arrest rate for violent crime was 198.2 per 100,000 inhabitants (Crime in the United States, 2008, http://www.fbi.gov). In 2009, a total of 35 domestic homicides occurred in Philadelphia, a 67 percent increase from 2008 (The New York Times, December 30, 2009). In New York City, 461 murders were reported in 2009, and the crime rate was 1,151 cases per 100,000 people. San Antonio in Texas was deemed as the most dangerous among 25 U.S.

The Mayor Of Detroit’s Radical Plan To Bulldoze One Quarter Of The City

Michael Snyder, Business Insider
How do you save a city that is dramatically declining like Detroit? Well, for the mayor of Detroit the answer is simple - you bulldoze one-fourth of the city. Faced with a 300 million dollar budget deficit and a rapidly dwindling tax base, Detroit finds itself having to make some really hard choices.
During the glory days of the 1950s, Detroit was a booming metropolis of approximately 2 million people, but now young people have left in droves and the current population is less than a million. The true unemployment rate for those still living in Detroit is estimated to be somewhere around 45 to 50 percent, and poverty and desperation have become entrenched everywhere. In many areas of the city, only one or two houses remain occupied an an entire city block. In fact, some areas of Detroit have so many vacant, burned-out homes that they literally look like war zones. And yes, it is true that there are actually some houses in Detroit that you can actually buy for just one dollar. According to one recent estimate, Detroit has 33,500 empty houses and 91,000 vacant residential lots. So what can be done when an entire city experiences economic collapse?

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Wall Street Carbon Traders Facing Pink Slips

Finally some good news. Wall Street which had earlier been stretching its hands out with glee to grab the $2 trillion carbon trading jackpot, may now be forced to show the newly appointed carbon traders the door. According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Wall Street was supposed to become the capital of a global carbon trading market worth a trillion dollars a year but now many who thought green trading desks would be the next big thing are fearing the pink slip.

US banks had looked forward to a huge "cap-and-trade market" a system where companies would buy and sell the right to emit gases blamed for warming the planet. Many hired carbon traders, picked up assets, and trained members of energy desks to deal in emissions markets.

But prospects for a broad US carbon market have dimmed. US Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican working on a compromise climate bill, declared economy-wide cap-and-trade "dead" this month.

At least one bank with carbon trade assets has already been hit. EcoSecurities, a clean energy project developer and carbon trader, bought by JP Morgan Chase last year has closed its New York-based US office leading to a loss of up to 20 jobs.

JP Morgan has said a senior carbon trader, who had recently moved to Washington, is leaving the bank this month. Banks that that did not expand in advance of a cap-and-trade bill may not have to cut much staff, but long-anticipated expansions will not happen either.

"It's like all-out war," Peter Fusaro, an expert at Global Change Associates in New York, said about the political and market odds stacked against creation of a big carbon market. Many in green groups, banks and the government had hoped the United States would anchor a global market worth up to $USD2.0 trillion a year by 2020.

Without creation of a US market on emissions from tailpipes to smokestacks, the Obama administration must find different ways to meet President Obama's goal of cutting emissions 17 per cent by 2020 under 2005 levels.

Whether one believes in global warming or not, it is a sure thing that pollution is threatening fragile ecosystems of the planet. For all the nonsensical "clean-coal" technology talk, any chemistry major will tell you that one can never burn fossil fuels in a clean fashion. The U.S. is the world's largest consumer of energy, a majority of which (86% in 2005) is derived from burning fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal and natural gas. It is no wonder that the U.S. is also the world's largest polluter, since the by products of burning fossil fuels includes poisonous chemicals like sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide (which cause acid rain) as well as toxic metals such as lead, mercury and arsenic.

Actual NASA Picture of Smog Covering China

In addition, with the West having conveniently shifted its industrial plants out of sight to the East, the pollution smog has now moved to envelop the emerging markets of China & India. Major Chinese/Indian cities are now completely cloaked in smog from industrial and vehicular emissions. The situation in these cities is extremely grim, with an alarming increase in the rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases in local populations, especially in young children.

More reckless speculation using Carbon derivatives will not solve the problem. Innovative and environmentally sound green technologies like wind and solar will.

Beware Counterfeiters

Kevin Bambrough & David Franklin, Sprott Asset Management

Long time readers know that we have written about gold many times over the last ten years, starting with an October 2001 article entitled “All that Glitters is Gold”. We first invested in the precious metal based on the belief that central bank sales were filling a fundamental supply deficit that existed in the gold market. We also wrote that if you believed in gold as a financial instrument you might envision a gold price appreciation of 45% to US$400 per ounce, or even higher, as investors sought to protect their wealth in the ‘bear market’ that followed the 2000 stock meltdown. What a difference nine years have made. In 2010, Central Banks are now close to becoming net buyers of gold while mine output continues to decline. With major indices returning nothing to investors over the last ten years it has been a lost decade for stocks but an excellent decade for gold.

Gold’s recent appreciation in US dollars has led some market commentators to question its fair value. This is nothing new for gold – it has been criticized and downplayed as an asset ever since it came off its previous peak in 1980 of US$850 per ounce. In our view, however, it is not gold’s value that is in question; it is the value of paper money.

Let us consider the supply and demand fundamentals of paper money. Clearly, the supply of paper money is technically infinite. This has, of course, not always been the case. For millennia, money was commodity based - its value was linked to goods produced from land and labour. It was impossible to counterfeit wheat, nickel, copper or other commodities and therefore impossible to counterfeit money. Money was viewed as a link to, or representative of, productive capacity. If you had money, you had the right to trade it in for something real, and therefore possessed real wealth.

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Jim Sinclair's History Lesson: In 1979 For 24 Hours the Dollar Was Not Accepted in Europe - Setting off a Rush into Gold and Silver

"Loss of confidence in a currency (which is NOT an economic event), always leads to hyperinflation. Credit Default Swaps are now being used to slaughter currencies. The intent is to destroy for profit. Confidence in currencies will fall everywhere and gold will rally" - Jim Sinclair

In a highly information interview that recently aired on King World News (link at end of post) Jim Sinclair peer's into the future by revisiting history. In late 1979-early 1980, gold prices skyrocketed from under $350 in 1979 to a peak of $850 in 1980 (see chart below). According to Jim there was a massive panic out of paper currency into gold, after Europe suspended acceptance of the dollar for 24 hours - this lit the fuse for the stampede into gold and silver. 

The website bullnotbull.com offers a historical perspective:

It may seem like ancient history now, but only because we know how the story ends. At the time, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which began around Christmas 1979, was a terrible global shock. The Soviets had just signed a "bilateral treaty of cooperation" with Afghanistan in 1978, but by the next year relations had deteriorated, and on December 27, 1979, 700 troops, including 54 KGB spetsnaz special forces troops dressed in Afghan uniforms seized all major governmental, military and media buildings in Kabul, including their primary target - the Tajbeg Presidential Palace, where they killed President Hafizullah Amin. [Before this was even completed,] the Soviets announced on Radio Kabul that Afghanistan had been liberated from Amin's rule.
It was a slap in the face to a cold war America already weakened by high inflation and unemployment, a struggling economy, and high energy prices. The future of the American economy and American power did not feel at all certain. As a safe haven in times of panic and strife, gold simply reflected that fear.

After the crisis was over the buying panic subsided and gold prices collpased marking the beginning of a 22 year bear market in gold.

LISTEN To JIM SINCLAIR's Interview on King World News here: Part I & Part II