Foreign Reporting and Analysis Since April 2005China Confidential
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Appeasement of Iran Will Lead to Nuclear War
Foreign Confidential....
American and European efforts to appease Iran will not only fail to prevent the Islamist nation from acquiring atomic arms; they will fail to prevent war--atomic war--from engulfing the Middle East.
Just as appeasement of Hitler failed to preserve the peace and instead made World War II inevitable, appeasement of Iran's Hitlerian regime will make war inevitable.
Should the United States adopt an appeasement policy towards Tehran, as advocated by former President Jimmy Carter and his former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski--both of whom were complicit in the Islamist takeover of Iran nearly 30 years ago--Israel will be left with two horrible options, assuming it does not want to simply sit and wait for an Iranian nuclear attack: (1) become the first nation in history to launch a preemptive nuclear strike, or (2) become the first nation in history to knowingly trigger and absorb a massive slaughter of its own citizens, against which it will have to retaliate with nuclear weapons, assuming its capacity to do so remains intact.
The strategic problem, as this reporter and others have noted, is that while Israel is capable of wiping out Iran's menacing nuclear installations without US assistance, absent using nuclear weapons, Israel lacks the punch to also annihilate on its own Iran's huge arsenal of ballistic missiles, which are commanded by Iran's Revolutionary Guard (designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department).
Iran has vowed to "burn Tel Aviv" and destroy Israel--and also attack US bases across the Middle East--if it comes under Israeli or US attack. One must assume that Iran is not bluffing. The monstrous mullahocracy is prepared to level Israeli cities and towns--and launch missiles against Israel's Negev desert nuclear reactor--if its nuclear sites are attacked. Iran's missile-mad, Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, which effectively rules Syria with the Iranian ally's support, will also attack Israel; and an aerial assault of this magnitude means mass death in the Jewish state. (Once the missiles start flying, Iran's Islamist Palestinian ally, Hamas, which came to power with a push from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will fire its own rockets and, more important, launch a wave of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian targets in an attempt to spark a major Palestinian uprising.)
Israel's founders, leaders and warriors have time and again promised the Jewish people the world-over: Never again! Masada shall not fall again. There will be no new Holocaust. Should the civilized world desert Israel, the way it deserted the Jews during the 1930s and '40s, the modern Jewish state that was reconstituted in its ancient homeland in the aftermath of the darkest period in Jewish history will have to use any and all means necessary to fulfill its sacred pledge and purpose.
It should not be so. The situation should never have come to this. But the world's democracies seem bent on repeating hstory....
-Andre Pachter
Copyright 2008
Obama Said to be Skeptical About Global Warming
Dateline USA exclusive....
Good news for frightened Americans. The Candidate of Change could be having serious second thoughts about global warming.
Sources familiar with Barack Obama's ... changing ... views on the subject say the presumptive Democratic candidate for President (a) is no longer certain that the Earth is actually still warming, and (b) is open to the argument that the warming, if it indeed is still occurring, may not be caused by human activity. The shift in thinking explains Obama's willingness to consider offshore oil drilling as part of the solution to the energy crisis.
Campaign insiders say the Senator from Illinois is inching closer to "a T. Boone Pickens strategy," on energy, which emphasizes solar, wind, and natural gas, than to the anti-oil and gas extremism of former Vice President Al Gore. The global warming zealot, who has crusaded to make "carbon" synonymous with pollution, is reportedly stunned by Obama's newfound global warming skepticism. Sources say the two men spoke recently, and Gore was totally taken aback by the Illinois Senator's refusal to accept anthropogenic global warming--and looming catastrophic climate change--as "settled science."
Will poor John McCain benefit from all this? Probably not. The presumptive Republican candidate did not benefit from Obama's flip on the Iraq war surge; and he is unlikely to gain from Obama's flopping on oil and gas. The Arizona Senator is running an awful campaign; he appears tired and old and out of touch--and unhealthy--and, rightly or wrongly, is identified with the Bush administration, which the public blames for a worsening economy and for intervening in Iraq in the first place.High Oil Prices Threaten Global Supply Chains
Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.
“If we think about the Wal-Mart model, it is incredibly fuel-intensive at every stage, and at every one of those stages we are now seeing an inflation of the costs for boats, trucks, cars,” said Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”
“That is necessarily leading to a rethinking of this emissions-intensive model, whether the increased interest in growing foods locally, producing locally or shopping locally, and I think that’s great.”
Many economists argue that globalization will not shift into reverse even if oil prices continue their rising trend. But many see evidence that companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers. Globe-spanning supply chains — Brazilian iron ore turned into Chinese steel used to make washing machines shipped to Long Beach, Calif., and then trucked to appliance stores in Chicago — make less sense today than they did a few years ago.
Click here to continue reading this important article.
Monday, 4 August 2008
Appeasement of Iran Will Lead to Nuclear War. Obama Said to be Skeptical About Global Warming. High Oil Prices Threaten Global Supply Chains.
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