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Saturday 28 January 2012 | World Global Risks 2012: World Economic Forum | | | |
| The seventh edition of the Global Risk report is based on a revamped methodology combining surveys,
workshops and interviews that engage various stakeholders of the World Economic Forum. The starting point is a set of 50 global risks – which are defined as having global geographic scope, cross-industry relevance, uncertainty as to how and when they may occur, and high levels of economic and/or social impact requiring a multistakeholder approach to response. They are divided into five categories: economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological risks. The 2012 list was revised through workshops and interviews with leading experts from the World Economic Forum’s multistakeholder communities.
Read the report at World Economic Forum (pdf)
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Friday 27 January 2012 Friday 20 January 2012 | The US-GCC fatal attraction: Asian Times Online | | | |
| By Pepe Escobar
There's no way to understand the larger-than-life United States-Iran psychodrama, the Western push for regime change in both Syria and Iran, and the trials and tribulations of the Arab Spring(s) - now mired in perpetual winter - without a close look at the fatal attraction between Washington and the GCC. [1]
GCC stands for Gulf Cooperation Council, the club of six wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - UAE), founded in 1981 and which in no time configured as the prime strategic US backyard for the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, for the long-drawn battle in the New Great Game in Eurasia, and also as the headquarters for "containing" Iran.
Read the rest at Asian Times Online
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Thursday 19 January 2012 | The use of web-based disinformation by the 'west': Just World News | | | |
| Posted by Helena CobbanPatrick Cockburn has an extremely important piece at the Independent today, in which he takes to task the major organs of the 'western' media-- including, crucially, today's Al-Jazeera-- for the extremely uncritical and often openly inflammatory use they make of unsubstantiated or highly exaggerated "news reports" coming out of, in particular, Syria and Iran. He writes,
Governments that exclude foreign journalists at times of crisis such as Iran and (until the last week) Syria, create a vacuum of information easily filled by their enemies. These are far better equipped to provide their own version of events than they used to be before the development of mobile phones, satellite television and the internet. State monopolies of information can no longer be maintained. But simply because the opposition to the Syrian and Iranian governments have taken over the news agenda does not mean that what they say is true.Early last year I met some Iranian stringers for Western publications in Tehran whose press credentials had been temporarily suspended by the authorities. I said this must be frustrating them, but they replied that even if they could file stories – saying nothing much was happening – they would not be believed by their editors. These had been convinced by exile groups, using blogs and carefully selected YouTube footage, that Tehran was visibly seething with discontent. If the local reporters said that this was a gross exaggeration, their employers would suspect that had been intimidated or bought off by Iranian security.Read the rest at Just World News
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| Author: Nouriel Roubini · January 13th, 2012 · Macroeconomic indicators for the United States have been better than expected for the last few months. Job creation has picked up. Indicators for manufacturing and services have improved moderately. Even the housing industry has shown some signs of life. And consumption growth has been relatively resilient. But, despite the favorable data, US economic growth will remain weak and below trend throughout 2012. Why is all the recent economic good news not to be believed? Read the rest at Project Syndicate
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Wednesday 18 January 2012 Tuesday 17 January 2012 | Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered: The Guardian | | | |
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Killing our enemies abroad is just state-sponsored terror – whatever euphemism western leaders like to use
 Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the Iranian nuclear scientist killed in Tehran on January 11, with his son, Alireza. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images On the morning of 11 January Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was 32 and married with a young son. He wasn't armed, or anywhere near a battlefield.Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee.Read the rest at The Guardian
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Sunday 15 January 2012 | Nuclear Arms Charge Against Iran Is No Slam Dunk: Robert Kelley: Bloomberg | | | |
| The conflict between Iran and the West just keeps heating up, with the Iranians announcing over the weekend that they have begun to enrich uranium at a second major facility, a well-defended site outside the city of Qom. Given the high stakes, it’s valuable to take another look at the main source of the tension: Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. That this enterprise is active is widely considered a given in the U.S. In fact, the evidence, contained in a November report of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is sketchy. And the way the data have been presented produces a sickly sense of deja vu. I am speaking up about this now because, as a member of the IAEA’s Iraq Action Team in 2003, I learned firsthand how withholding the facts can lead to bloodshed. Having known the details then, though I was not allowed to speak, I feel a certain shared responsibility for the war that killed more than 4,000 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis. A private citizen today, I hope to help ensure the facts are clear before the U.S. takes further steps that could lead, intentionally or otherwise, to a new conflagration, this time in Iran.
Read the rest at Bloomberg
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| Mind over Market: Project Syndicate | | | |
| MILAN – In the 66 years since World War II ended, virtually all centrally planned economies have disappeared, largely as a result of inefficiency and low growth. Nowadays, markets, price signals, decentralization, incentives, and return-driven investment characterize resource allocation almost everywhere. This is not because markets are morally superior, though they do require freedom of choice to function effectively. Markets are tools that, relative to the alternatives, happen to have great strengths with respect to incentives, efficiency, and innovation. But they are not perfect; they underperform in the presence of externalities (the un-priced consequences – for example, air pollution – of individual actions), informational gaps and asymmetries, and coordination problems when there are multiple equilibria, some superior to others. But markets have more fundamental weaknesses. Or, rather, most societies have important economic and social objectives that markets and competition are not designed to achieve. In today’s rapidly globalizing world, the most important of these objectives – expressed in various ways through the political and policymaking process in a wide range of countries – are stability, distributional equity, and sustainability. Read the rest at Project Syndicate
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| Iran has pay back in mind; Asian TimesOnline | | | |
| By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
PALO ALTO, California - Despite a strong pitch by Iran, the United Nations has failed to condemn the latest assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, thus sending a bad signal about the UN's determination to fight global terrorism and to condemn all acts of terrorism even-handedly.
Instead of a swift and decisive response to the letter by Iran's ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the 15 members of the UN Security Council and the president of the UN General Assembly, requesting the UN's condemnation of the terror of scientist Mostafa Rahimi Roshan and his driver in Tehran this week, the only reaction so far has been by Ban's spokesperson promising "to study" the request.
This silence in the face of a clear act of terrorism, attributed to United States and Israel intelligence services by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his message of condolence on Thursday, speaks volumes about the UN, the fact that it is under the sway of the US and other Western powers that pay-lip service to human rights when it comes to victims of terrorism in Iran.
Read the rest at Asian Times Online
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Thursday 12 January 2012 | Once again, war is prime time and journalism's role is taboo: John Pilger | | | |
| On 22 May 2007, the Guardian's front page announced: "Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq." The writer, Simon Tisdall, claimed that Iran had secret plans to defeat American troops in Iraq, which included "forging ties with al-Qaida elements". The coming "showdown" was an Iranian plot to influence a vote in the US Congress. Based entirely on briefings by anonymous US officials, Tisdall's "exclusive" rippled with lurid tales of Iran's "murder cells" and "daily acts of war against US and British forces". His 1,200 words included just 20 for Iran's flat denial.
It was a load of rubbish: in effect a Pentagon press release presented as journalism and reminiscent of the notorious fiction that justified the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003. Among Tisdall's sources were "senior advisers" to General David Petraeus, the US military commander who in 2006 described his strategy of waging a "war of perceptions... conducted continuously through the news media".
The media war against Iran began in 1979 when the west's placeman Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, a tyrant, was overthrown in a popular Islamic revolution. The "loss" of Iran, which under the shah was regarded as the "fourth pillar" of western control of the Middle East, has never been forgiven in Washington and London.Read the rest at John Pilger
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| CIA Red Cell Memorandum on United States "exporting terrorism", 2 Feb 2010: Wikileaks | | | |
| - Release date: August 25, 2010
This CIA "Red Cell" report from February 2, 2010, looks at what will happen if it is internationally understood that the United States is an exporter of terrorism; 'Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon, nor has it been associated only with Islamic radicals or people of Middle Eastern, African or South Asian ethnic origin. This dynamic belies the American belief that our free, open and integrated multicultural society lessens the allure of radicalism and terrorism for US citizens.' The report looks at a number cases of US exported terrorism, including attacks by US based or financed Jewish, Muslim and Irish-nationalism terrorists. It concludes that foreign perceptions of the US as an "Exporter of Terrorism" together with US double standards in international law, may lead to noncooperation in renditions (including the arrest of CIA officers) and the decision to not share terrorism related intelligence with the United States.
Download the rest at Wikileaks
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| French reporter dies under armed gangs fire in the Syrian city of Homs: VoltaireNet | | | |
| Reporter Gilles Jacquier, working for French state TV channel France2 and entered into Syria on his own initiative to cover the events shaking the country, died today in Homs under the fire of the "Free Syrian Army"’s rockets. This attack left 8 people dead and 25 injured, none of them carrying weapons according to our sources.
On the previous day, the reporter had left the press delegation that had been organized at his request, explaining that he was not interested in the meetings with political and religious leaders that were proposed to him. He had then rented a private vehicle to be able to move around at will, thus freeing from all responsibility the people who had helped him obtain a visa.
At the time of the events, the deceased reporter was standing near a pro-government demonstration with his French and Belgian colleagues.
A first rocket-propelled grenade hit the crowd, killing and wounding several people. After assessing the situation from a terrace up above the scene, Mr Jacquier and his cameraman got closer to the bodies in order to film them, then another rocket fell right next to them, killing him and wounding his technician.Read the rest at VoltaireNet
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Wednesday 11 January 2012 | The Manipulation of Fear: Noam Chomsky: The 4th Media | | | |
| The resort to fear by systems of power to discipline the domestic population has left a long and terrible trail of bloodshed and suffering which we ignore at our peril. Recent history provides many shocking illustrations. The mid-twentieth century witnessed perhaps the most awful crimes since the Mongol invasions. The most savage were carried out where western civilisation had achieved its greatest splendours. Germany was a leading centre of the sciences, the arts and literature, humanistic scholarship, and other memorable achievements. Prior to World War I, before anti-German hysteria was fanned in the West, Germany had been regarded by American political scientists as a model democracy as well, to be emulated by the West. In the mid-1930s, Germany was driven within a few years to a level of barbarism that has few historical counterparts. That was true, most notably, among the most educated and civilised sectors of the population. Read the rest at the 4th Media | |
Friday 06 January 2012 | About the Escalating Conflict with Iran (not *yet* open war): Economonitor | | | |
| Summary: Powerful people in the US and Israel seek a war with Iran. Offensive operations against Iran have already began (assassinations and sabotage). Slowly the conflict accelerates, driven by our vast covert warfare machinery and intense propaganda. This series attempts to see the reality behind the deceptions, perhaps a last grasp at reality before overt war begins. This is the fourth in a series; at the end are links to the other chapters. The first article on the FM website about Iran, in November 2007, said that the rumors of war were “almost certainly a bluff”. The dozen articles since then came to the same conclusion. That’s no longer true. Hostilities have began, with strikes by US-Israel (we don’t know who has done what). History shows that these low-intensity conflicts can quickly escalate, from a combination of the attackers’ momentum and the defender’s eventual resistance.Read the rest at Economonitor
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Saturday 31 December 2011 | AMERICA’S DRIVE FOR MIDDLE EAST DOMINANCE SETS THE STAGE FOR ATTACKING IRAN—NEVER MIND INTERNATIONAL LAW (OR EVEN U.S. INTERESTS):Race for Iran | | | |
| Throughout our work on U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the more fundamental themes is the corrosive impact that America’s post-Cold War quest for unadulterated hegemony in the Middle East has had on the strategic calculations of successive U.S. administrations (Democratic and Republican) and, by extension, on U.S. standing and influence in this vitally important region. Instead of dealing soberly and effectively with the Middle East’s complex political and security dynamics and defending its legitimate interests there, the United States has, for the past two decades, tried to coerce political outcomes across the region, with the goal of bringing it under a U.S.-led, highly militarized political and security “umbrella.” Of course, the United States was certainly not above trying to do this sort of thing before the end of the Cold War (witness the CIA’s 1953 coup in Iran). But the Cold War definitely imposed limits on American initiative in the Middle East that effectively disappeared 20 years ago. From this perspective, the big problem with the Islamic Republic is not that it is irrevocably and aggressively anti-American (it is not). The problem is that the Islamic Republic refuses, as a matter of both principle and strategic interest, to accept and endorse American dominance in the region. Read the rest at Race for Iran
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Friday 23 December 2011 | Drone warfare and the stress induced by premeditated murder: War in Context | | | |
| by Paul Woodward on December 22, 2011 A recent study by the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine assessed the level of stress involved in remote warfare being conducted by Air Force drone operators. The New York Times reports: 4 percent or less of operators were at high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, the severe anxiety disorder that can include flashbacks, nightmares, anger, hypervigilance or avoidance of people, places or situations. In those cases, the authors suggested, the operators had seen close-up video of what the military calls collateral damage, casualties of women, children or other civilians. “Collateral damage is unnerving or unsettling to these guys,” Colonel McDonald said. The percentage of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder was 12 to 17 percent, the authors said. In contrast to nearly half of drone operators’ reporting “high operational stress,” 36 percent of a control group of 600 Air Force members in logistics or support jobs reported stress. The Air Force did not compare the stress levels of the drone operators with military pilots who fly planes in the air. The biggest sources of stress for drone operators remained long hours and frequent shift changes because of staff shortages.
Read the rest at War in Context
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