The Obama Administration’s somewhat bipolar position on nuclear disarmament was in full view today, as the administration publicly signed an NPT declaration calling for a nuclear-free Middle East, then publicly condemned the same deal.
The Final Declaration of the NPT conference, which ended today, calls for an eventual nuclear weapons free zone encompassing the entire Middle East, as well as calling for sped up arms reduction among the current declared nuclear powers the world over.
But almost immediately after agreeing to the pact, US Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher expressed “deep regrets” over the deal, saying it “singled out Israel.”
Yet how could it be any other way? Israel is simultaneously the only nuclear weapons power in the Middle East and the only nation in the region which has refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty.
The Obama Administration has repeatedly promised to keep Israel’s nuclear arsenal a “secret,” free of international scrutiny, but this has run afoul of pressure to live up to his disarmament pledges. For the time being, Israel’s “strategic ambiguity” policy has spread to the Obama Administration, which is trying to simultaneously support Mideast disarmament while opposing the disarmament of the only Mideast state with nuclear arms.
The worst spectacle is the US refusal to disarm. Obama is asking for many billions to update our massive nuclear arsenal. This isn't just US/Zionist arrogance and schizophrenic attitudes, this is naked power at work. Nukes are very naked power, a sword held over the heads of all humanity.
well done, Jason
It is a matter of definition. By a "nuclear free Mideast" is commonly understood the situation wherein nobody in the Mideast region possesses any nuclear weapons, while the US understands this concept as the situation wherein Israel has a guaranteed nuclear monopoly.
The latter being so self-evident in US political circles as to perhaps never have risen to the level of consciousness in the Obama administration that the rest of the world might actually read a nuclear free Mideast as indeed a Mideast that is nuclear free.
This might also be the reason why there is virtually no one within established intellectual circles who sees Obama's (adopted) complaint of singling out the only nuclear power in a region that is to be nuclear free as slightly ironic, perhaps a little humorous.
Or perhaps just downright insane?
It's funny how some 'progressives' think Obama's serious about a nuke-free world.
Another very perverse and sophistic doublebind, typical of American Oedipalism:
(1) The US certainly agrees in principle to a nuclear free Middle East and wishes to apply the rule to every country there across the board
(2) Unfortunately, applying such a rule across the board singles out Israel , so that it does not apply to all the countries in the Middle East equally.
(3) As a consequence the US supports the rule in theory but must oppose its application.
This is, after Deleuze and Guattari, a typical example of the schizophrenia generated by Capitalism.
The sane, naturally, would argue that the the position suggests that the US would like all the countries of the Middle East to have nuclear weapons, so that they could be removed without any one country being singled out, or, much more pertinent, for Israel to give up its nuclear weapons on its own accord BEFORE the rule is applied.
On the other hand, it is always dangerous and a waste of time for the sane to take too seriously what the insane say or do.
The bottomline is these people are clearly insane, and, after Lenin, what to do about it, if anything?
I don't think this has anything to do with "capitalism" but with bendy spines at high places.
And referring to Lenin to determine who is "insane" is stark raving bonkers. Lenin would laugh at you being tortured and shot for not knowing the program of the Third International by heart.
Ah, you have not read Weber then? Nor Deleuze and Guattari either? Very behind the times, Herr Hacklheber. And you really might read seriously Lenin on Imperialism and Finance Capitalism. It might open your eyes–he has it down to a "T". And what Marx and Weber missed, Deleuze and Guattari have nailed, including the fact that Capitalism causes its own peculiar kind of schizophrenia.
Deleuze and Gauttari–one warns you–are, however, not easy going.
There is also an incident in the career of Villa that repays close study.
Young Villa fought with Huerta for Madero. Huerta, however, considered Villa competition and sentenced him to execution. Villa was facing the firing squad when a telegram from Madero arrived commuting the sentence prison Villa later escaped.
The psychological point, Herr Hacklheber? Through it all Villa did not bat an eye.
You mustn't mind Senor Costa. He is determined to pound everything into the Marxist dialectic, which of course has absolutely no way to explain the existence of a small socialist, racist society that exerts a controlling influence on the most powerful nation on the planet, other than to say that it MUST be the result of the internal contradictions of capitalism.
You are quite wrong, Monsieur Valerianus. But the validity of Ricardo, Marx, and Lenin as economic and political analysts is quite beyond challenge by anyone who studies and understands the subject deeply, and who has the right experience.
One notes also that Bastiat is a serious observer of markets, and that Pound, though a cultural Fascist, had considerable insight into Finance Capitalism, banking, and currency.
Certainly much more on that last topic than most Right Wing or faux Libertarian ideologues.
That is just scratching the surface. There are also key and necessary ideas to any exit in Spengler, in Nietzsche, in R. D. Laing, Marcuse, Debord,and so forth–indeed in a long list of genuine minds.
Further one has always valued Rothbard as a critic, and among current practicing economists one sees eye to eye with Paul Craig Roberts on a large number of issues.
One leaves your with your own ideology, and your various conclusions jumped.
Have a nice day.
Had Debord written Das Kapital, which in fact defined "Capitalism",it would have been a slim volume like the volume of Ricardo it clearly and significantly advanced.
More important, there would little or no Hegel, turned upsidedown or not, as a skeleton.
As it stands, Marx's dependence on Hegel in some areas makes his work of limited application outside a strictly western context, though it still pertinent.
But such a slim volume would have been equally deadly both to the Capitalist and the Statist.
The trouble with Right Wingers, including some supposed Libertarians, is that the only Marx they have ever read closely is the Communist Manifesto, which is surely the least important of his works, if the most explosive pamphlet of its times.
But, to shock la bit more–not only did Lenin write centrally important economic works, particularly on Finance Capitalism, but so did Mao.
There are even works of Stalin that are required reading, which one will save for future reference.
The self-censoring and self-policing blinders of the close-minded Capitalist Right, even on such a dry subjects as economics, is quite amusing.
*COUGH*
I would like to question the propriety of considering Chairman Mao in any way an authority on questions financial, except as vessel to ship his own preconceptions. He was just a guerilla fighter who, not averse to political infighting, and with the help of the pressure that Japanese Burn&Slash Imperialism put on the populace, advanced to the point where his clearly ill-informed views could be put into practice, resulting in the death of >50 million people.
Good job.
Furthermore, I shall submit that anyone who consider Marx to be a source of anything except raw material for Freudian analysis could do worse than start with Rothbard's deconstruction of Marx:
http://mises.org/daily/3769
"The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist.
A seemingly trite and banal statement set alongside Marxism's myriad of jargon-ridden concepts in philosophy, economics, and culture, yet Marx's devotion to communism was his crucial focus, far more central than the class struggle, the dialectic, the theory of surplus value, and all the rest.
Communism was the great goal, the vision, the desideratum, the ultimate end that would make the sufferings of mankind throughout history worthwhile. History was the history of suffering, of class struggle, of the exploitation of man by man. In the same way as the return of the Messiah, in Christian theology, will put an end to history and establish a new heaven and a new earth, so the establishment of communism would put an end to human history.
And just as for postmillennial Christians, man, led by God's prophets and saints, will establish a Kingdom of God on Earth (for premillennials, Jesus will have many human assistants in setting up such a kingdom), so, for Marx and other schools of communists, mankind, led by a vanguard of secular saints, will establish a secularized Kingdom of Heaven on earth."
For _real_ good economis, Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" can be recommended. No jargon, no unnecessary complexities.
You are welcome to you absurd and outdated nonsense, Herr Hacklheber.
You still obviously do not know Lenin on Finance Capitalism and Imperialism–it is quite patent.
The new economics will be quite a surprise to you if you live long enough to see it, and have an open enough mind to understand what you see.
Actually, to be precise, there will be several differing new economics, East and West.
The body of Guillaume evanesces into the near nullity of Wheeler foam.
Great article. This is the old story of the "tail wagging the dog." The US has the leverage to rein-in a repressive regime. But sadly, we lack to gonads. We could easily leverage our 3.5 billion in annual aid to demanding that Israel shape up concerning fair treatment of the Palestine problem…inarguably the root of our problems with the Muslim world. For all we do for Israel they in turn do nothing in return except create problems for the US. Were our invertabrate president and Congress to show some bal*s, Israel could be directed to reinvent themselves…so to speak.
As it stands they are a major player in our political arena which has led to numerous foreign policy disasters…one after another. If we continue to allow their imput in the political process, we will find ourselves at war with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Hardly a wise or prudent choice of endeavors for this nearly bankrupt empire formally known as the USA.
"Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word."
Charles de Gaulle
Maybe it would be easier to neither confirm nor deny the existence of Israel.
"singles out Israel?"
They're the only one WITH NUKES in the region, for f*ck's sake!!!
"They're the only one WITH NUKES in the region, for f*ck's sake!!! "
Exactly, that's why the US does not think it is fair to single them out, don' you see?
At some point one is fully confident that the genuine Rothbardians will see what the New Left is referring to here in the way of the psychological perversions of the present hyper-Capitalism and its American duopoly.
Certainly Rothbard himself, a sharp mind and critic, would have got it.
In this context the argument is simple–someone who was purely a sophist could never come up with this perverted argument. Why? Because sophists are rational, no matter how they twist the truth.
These lunatics actually live in their own arguments. And they will live in the exact opposite tomorrow and not see any contradiction, even if they remember what they said the day before.
Sarah Palin is simply the extreme case–it also applies to Obama and most Democrats, to McCain and the Neo-Cons and the Corporatists and the rest.
Do you seriously believe that the British Petroleum executives think that they erred in any way, or that their greed was not a sincere and inncoent march toward the greater good of humankind?
After all, if they don't sacrifice themselves getting that oil out of the offshore fields as quickly and cheaply as possible and at the most profit to themselves who will? God bless American and damn the torpedos–that's progress!
When you grasp that only a pathological schizophrenic can construct a doublebind like that, you will have made some progress on the psychological front.
"The deal singles out Israel",,,, could that possibly be because Israel is the only country in the middle east that actually HAS nuclear weapons? Imagine your in a park in broad daylight. You then pull out a gun and shoot someone in plain sight of a dozen police officers. Then the cops arrest you even though there are other people in the park too! But of course, the police just "singled you out"! What a bizarro world.
A nuclear free Middle-East is a bail out for Isreal to live in peace with its neighbors.I personally doubt if Israel would take this opportunity to normalize its position with the rest of its Semite sisters??
what country is more likely to start ww3… threaten world peace?
Isreal or North Korea?
"what country is more likely to start ww3… threaten world peace?
Israel or North Korea?what country is more likely to start ww3… "
Extremely pertinent observation.
In fact, thereis a startling asymmetry between US policy in the Mediterranean and in regard to the countries that border it and US policy in the South China Sea and the nations bordering it.
Whether by coincidence or design some intriguing mirror images are being generated in regard Israel and North Korea and nuclear weapons, borders, and interference with navigation, military and civilian on the high seas.
Correction: East China Sea–or better yet, just "China Sea."
Israel. North Korea is limited by geography and its lack of an ethnic lobby in Washington.
Consider also the blockade aspect, not only in regard to Iran, but in the context of the following report about supposed Turkish threats from a renowned source of Israeli disinfomation:
http://www.debka.com/article/8805/printversion/
Might it be added that though the American Right Wing, and even the Democrats and supposed Progressives (the other Right Wing) are remarkably ignorant of the works of such thinkers and theorists as Guy Debord, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, the Israeli Right Wing, and even the IDF, are intimately acquainted with their work, and have again and again tried to turn them to account in both military and political "situations".
This is in fact–again whether by coincidence or design–both a Spectacle and an emerging Debordian "Situation" ranging from North Korea to Gaza, and with obvious consequences for any planned "blockade" of Iran.
As British Petroleum's greed and imbecility ravage one gulf, will the Germans be held responsible for the absolute stupidity of giving Israel submarines?