The Insanities of Our Time

“The greatest contradiction of our time is the ability of our species to destroy itself, and its inability to govern itself.”

By Fidel Castro Ruz

April 28, 2010 "Granma International" --  We must call a spade a spade. Those who still have any common sense find it easy to see how little realistic thinking there is in today’s world.When American President Barack Obama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Moore said, “Now, earn it.” Many people liked the sharpness of that witty comment, though many thought the decision of the Norwegian Committee was an example of demagoguery that exalted the apparently harmless politicking of the new US President, an African-American, a good communicator and a clever politician at the head of a powerful empire enmeshed in a deep economic crisis.

The World Conference in Copenhagen was about to be held and Obama raised hope that the United States would join the world consensus for a binding agreement to prevent the ecological catastrophe that threatens humanity. What happened there was disappointing; international public was the victim of a painful deception.
At the recent World Conference of the Peoples on Climate Change and the Rights of the Mother Land held in Bolivia, proposals filled with the wisdom of the ancient indigenous nations were made, nations that were invaded and virtually destroyed by European conquerors who, in search of gold and easy riches, for centuries imposed selfish cultures that were incompatible with the most sacred interests of humanity.

Two news reports received yesterday reveal the philosophy of the empire that wants us to believe in its “democratic,” “peaceful,” “selfless” and “honest” nature. Just read the text of these press dispatches, both datelined in the US capital.

[For space reasons, we have omitted two U.S. news articles that Fidel quotes in full: one describes Obama’s proposal to deploy non-nuclear “super-bombs” on missiles that can hit anywhere in the world in an hour; the other announces last week’s launch by the U.S. Air Force of a top-secret military spaceship.]

Do they need anything else?

Today they face an enormous challenge: climate change that is already unstoppable. We’re told of unavoidable temperature increases of more than two degrees Celsius, with catastrophic consequences. In less than 40 years, a short time, the world’s population will increase by 2 billion reaching 9 billion people. Harbors, hotels, tourist resorts, roads, industries and other facilities close to the shores will be underwater in less than half the life of a generation. A wealthy and developed nation today selfishly refuses to make the least sacrifice to ensure the survival of the human species. Farming land and drinking water will be considerably reduced. The oceans will be contaminated; many marine species and other food sources will disappear.

We know this not simply from logical deduction, but from scientific research.

Through natural breeding and the transfer of various species from one continent to another, human being have been able to increase food and other useful crop yields per hectare, easing shortages of food such as maize, potatoes, wheat, flax and other essential products. Later, genetic manipulation and chemical fertilizers also contributed to meeting crucial needs, but they are now reaching the limits of their ability to produce healthy food for human consumption.

In just two centuries we have seen the depletion of hydrocarbons that it took nature 400 million years to create. Crucial non-renewable mineral resources, essential to the world economy are also being depleted.
At the same time, science has developed the capacity to destroy the planet several times over in a matter of hours. The greatest contradiction of our time is the ability of our species to destroy itself, and its inability to govern itself.

Humanity has managed to raise its mode of life beyond all the previous limits of survival, but in that struggle, we have consumed all available resources at an ever accelerating pace. Science has enabled us to turn matter into energy, through huge expensive nuclear technology – but there is no sign that the process can be reversed. Even with infinite investments in research it is impossible to recreate in a few decades what it took the universe tens of thousands of millions of years. Will the wunderkind Barack Obama tell us how?

Science has grown remarkably, but so too have ignorance and poverty. Can anyone prove that isn’t true?
From Granma International, April 26, 2010, translated by Ian Angus for Climate & Capitalism.

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty:

Last Gasp of a Moribund Civilization

By Prof. John Kozy

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding." Ralph Waldo Emerson

April 28, 2010 "Global Research" -- When I was a boy, I knew a man who repaired clocks and watches as a hobby. (Quartz watches had not yet been invented.) I often sat for hours in utter fascination watching him work. Then one day, I asked, "Frank, how do you know how to do that?" He answered, "Johnny, what man has done, man can do." Therein lies the fallacy of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Science and technology is a Pandora's Box. Once opened by one man, company, or country, what is emitted soon becomes everyone's.

The United States made the first atomic bomb in 1945. The first attempt at non-proliferation was limited to trying to keep the knowledge of how to build the bomb secret. It failed, and within a decade, the USSR (1949), the UK (1952), France (1960), and China (1964) had built bombs. Since then India (1974), Israel (1979), Pakistan (1998), and North Korea (2006) have become nuclear powers, and South Africa has the capability, having produced six nuclear weapons in the 1980s but later disassembled them. Now the know-how is widespread.

Only two nations benefited from World War II: Russia and America. The other nations that made up what is called Western Civilization had become American vassal states; they could no longer act alone. Their national policies become subject to American approval, and when America calls, they, if reluctantly, become part of some coalition that America decides to build. At the end of World War II, America had become the predominant Western power. But being the predominant Western power did not mean it had become the predominant power, and the non-western world soon realized it even although Americans assumed it had.

The United Nations was ostensibly established:  

* to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

* to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

* to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

* to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

* to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and

* to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

* to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

* to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples. . . .

Obviously, it has failed. But although those words come from the Charter, they were and are sheer propaganda. The organization was formed by World War II's victorious powers in an attempt to control the world. The Security Council was established in a way that gave those nations absolute control over the organization. Each of the five permanent members of the Council can veto any resolution it disapproves of.

 The five permanent members are China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States—all nuclear powers. Originally they were Nationalist China, France, the USSR, the UK, and the USA—the countries that made up the allied coalition that defeated the axis in World War II. But most of these nations were no longer really great powers. France and the UK had become vassal states of the USA. Nationalist China had been reduced to an island; the real China was Communist and occupied the mainland. The USSR was a Communist world power, that has now been superceded by the Russian Federation. The cooperation that the United States expected from the other members of the Security Council dissipated.

When North Korea invaded the South in an attempt to unify the nation which had been bifurcated for political reasons at the end of World War II, the UN Security Council, at the request of the US and minus the absent Soviet delegate, passed a resolution calling for the assistance of all UN members in halting the North Koreans. The UN coalition consisted of sixteen mostly Western nations: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, the UK, and the USA. Although never totally defeated, the coalition managed only to preserve the status quo that preceded the invasion. But the war demonstrated that the Western powers that were victorious in World War II were not invincible, and the French and American debacles in Viet Nam confirmed this vincibility.

The Persian Gulf War (Desert Storm) was again initiated with United Nations authorization by a coalition force from 34 nations to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait after it was invaded. (Twenty-six nations contributed personnel, many in non-combative roles: the USA, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, the UK, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, France, Germany, Honduras, Italy, Kuwait, New Zealand, Niger, Oman, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and South Korea. More than sixty percent of the personnel came from the USA. Although totally victorious over Iraq's conventional army, for political reasons, the war again merely reestablished the status quo. (In this conflict, South Korea, whose existence was preserved by a similar war fought by a similar coalition, contributed merely one medical battalion. Interesting! Was this really a coalition of the "willing"?)

Since then, US forces have been driven out of Lebanon (1983) and Somalia (1993) and have been bogged down along with other coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than eight years. What has become obvious to the rest of the world, and perhaps even American diplomats, is that the armed forces of Western coalitions and other coalition partners are not invincible. Western Civilization can no longer advance its goals using conventional military means. But the major Western nations are still members of the nuclear club. The last option these nations have of maintaining their control is keeping the nuclear club limited to Western nations as far as possible by means of the NPT and using their nuclear power as a threat.

But American policies alone have made this impossible; it shared its atomic weapons with NATO allies; Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey store and can deploy atomic bombs. Now although some of these countries have asked the US to remove these weapons, the US refuses to. And although the US hopes to force North Korea to relinquish its weapons and to keep Iran from acquiring them, Americans say nothing about Israeli, Indian, and Pakistani nuclear capabilities. The result, of course, is an argument for the NPT that is seen as disingenuous; it carries no conviction, and American and Western influence on the world wanes.

The North Koreans and Iranians are not moved by American protestations. Israel routinely rejects American policy initiatives. The Russians and the Chinese are, at best, lukewarm about sanctioning Iran, and the Chinese openly laugh at American diplomats who speak in China. Even the peoples of many Western nations deride American policy initiatives. America has lost its preeminent position. It has now become a vassal state of its own making. Everything it wants to do requires the cooperation of its coalitions, and even when it gets it, the initiatives often fail.

Can the expansion and enforcement of the NPT succeed? Doubtful! The knowledge of how to build atomic weapons is widespread; it can no longer be contained. So the policy now is to maintain control of the fissionable material needed to make the bombs. But that has little chance of succeeding. Western policies are too contradictory. As Emerson so aptly put it, "What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."

The United States with all of its policing powers has demonstrated that even it cannot stop the smuggling of contraband into its own land. The nations from which the contraband comes can not stop it, even with American help. How can the US expect other nations to stop it? In many parts of the world, especially the non-Western parts, smuggling has been carried on for centuries. Even Western businesses are often complicit is defying American export controls and sanctions. The initiative is a fool's errand, the last gasp of a moribund civilization. The only hope of avoiding a future nuclear war is the total abolition of nuclear weapons. But once the nations that comprise the Western world do that, their worldly control vanishes.

No civilization in history that collapsed after a period of greatness has ever regained its dominance. Egypt lasted for three millennia; today it is little more than a field for archaeological study. The Persian Empire, which lasted for more than three hundred years, became the largest and most powerful empire of its time; today, all that remains is Iran. Greece has never recovered from its collapse after its Golden Age, and the greatness of Rome has been reduced to Italy. When Mussolini tried to revive Roman greatness, he failed miserably. The Spanish, Dutch, French, and English empires have expired and these nations are now mere vassals states, although France and England still pretend to be world powers. Lasting greatness is not attained by the imposition of power. As with all the great civilizations of the past, Western Civilization is doomed as long as it continues to pursue this method of dominance. The NPT won't save it.
 

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage.

 

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

The Big Six Banks are Shorting the American Dream

The American Dream has been a nightmare on main street for a very long time now. It's nice that others are catching on and, perhaps, if we are lucky, people will stop being bilked by that old saw.

By Jerry Mazza

April 28, 2010 --  The Big Six investment banks, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, are “shorting the American Dream,” according to economist Simon Johnson and entrepreneur James Kwak in an interview on April 16, “Financial Regulation and Regulatory Capture” on Bill Moyers Journal. Here’s a summary of the big and important ideas and issues on the table.

First, Simon Johnson is a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, now teaching at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. James Kwak is a former management consultant at McKinsley & company, co-founder of the successful software company, Guidewire, and presently studying law at Yale Law School. Together Johnson and Kwak run the economic website BaselineScenario.com. To boot, they have written a new best seller, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.

The big ideas that emerge from the title of their interview are that financial regulators are not enough to deal with the Big Six banks, whose employees are very smart people, very hungry for financial opportunity, legit or not legit. Thus, very often regulators are sucked into large investment banks or affiliated financial institutions like the distinguished Michael Oxley, co-author of the Sarbanes Oxley Act. Oxley has joined the financial industry, along with some 124 former other members of Congress and their aides.

To Oxley’s undying credit, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act grew out of the debacle of Enron and made it a law that CEOs and other top managers were and are responsible for the policies and actions of their companies on their watch and can’t just shrug their shoulders, saying they didn’t know what was happening. What Johnson and Kwak are really calling for are more laws on the books that can safeguard against financial abuse.

Unfortunately, we have, as they point out, former Clinton Treasury Chief Robert Rubin now getting $100 million a year to consult for Citibank and he can’t explain how the company came so incredibly close to financial collapse. Yet, when Newsweek wanted someone of note to explain all this, the job was given to, guess who, Robert Rubin. Suddenly, he found religion?

Charles Prince, another former Citi CEO said: “Let me start by saying I’m sorry. I’m sorry that our management team, starting with me, like so many others, could not see the unprecedented market collapse that lay before me.” He must have seen it for years before that if he wasn’t blind or deaf, because it was reported on Internet news services at the very least, particularly Citi’s huge derivatives debt.

Both Rubin and Prince were accused by Democratic Chairman of the Bipartisan Financial Enquiry Committee Phil Angelides, “of either pulling the levers or being asleep at the switch.” This writer’s money is on pulling the levers.

Also, there is Washington Mutual’s CEO Dave Beck appearing before Senator Carl Levin, investigating how so many bad loans were made at WaMu. After all, this was the biggest “meltdown belly-up of a major investment bank in US history.” Yet a blasé Beck said when asked what happened, “It’s a very real possibility that the loans that went out were better quality than Mr. Shaw laid out.” Levin rebutted, “And there’s a very real good possibility that they were exactly the quality that he laid out, right? Is that right?” Beck wavered, “That’s right.” A frustrated Levin answered, “Okay. And you don’t know and apparently you don’t care. And the trouble is you should have cared.” So it goes.

In keeping with Beck’s feigned ignorance, it’s interesting that the Johnson-Kwak interview aired the day before the NY Times broke the story U.S. Accuses Goldman Sachs of Fraud. The short version of the article is that Goldman profited from the sale of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that were packaged with garbage loans and peddled to hedge funds and investors. This plan was the brainchild of Fabrice Tourre, a vice president at Goldman in London. The plan, cited in the SEC case as Abacus 2007-ACi, proved successful in having Wall Street hedge fund investors make a mountain of money on negative bets or “shorting,” betting on the bad loans to fail, which they did, thereby adding more disaster to the subprime lending market and helping to “short the American Dream,” that is, the market is not a level playing field for investors.

The follow-up Times article, Top Goldman Leaders Said to Have Overseen Mortgage Unit, indicates that “Mr. Tourre was the only person named in the SEC. suit. But according to interviews with eight former Goldman employees, senior bank executives played a pivotal role in overseeing the mortgage unit just as the housing market began to go south. These people spoke on the condition that they not be named so as not to jeopardize business relationships or to anger executives at Goldman, viewed as the most powerful bank on Wall Street.

“According to these people, executives up to and including Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chairman and chief executive, took an active role in overseeing the mortgage unit as the tremors in the housing market began to reverberate through the nation’s economy. It was Goldman’s top leadership, these people say, that finally ended the dispute on the mortgage desk by siding with those who, like Mr. Tourre and Mr. Egol, believed home prices would decline . . .”

The reason for extending the chain of responsibility up to the top is precisely to invoke a law like the Sarbanes Oxley Act, so that Abacus is not seen as the random action of a greedy profiteer, which also occurs, according to Johnson and Kwak. Now, it is verified that Abacus was a corporate plan that had the blessings of the CEO and top management. Let’s see what shakes out of this or what dodges are made.

Another major problem that Johnson and Kwak see is that the six megabanks have become a financial oligarchy. In fact, their aggregate assets equal some 63 percent of GDP. Back in the 1990s, adjusted for inflation, their assets equated to less than 20 percent of GDP. This rise in financial power gives them the notion that they can go out and take more and more risks. After all, the taxpayer and Uncle Sam will be willing to bail them out if they fail. The Fed lending window is wide open to them. It encourages them to “distort the system . . . change the rules of the game to favor themselves. To that end, they spend a million dollars a day lobbying against reforms to fix the financial system.”

As asset power increases, the oligarchy’s power to twist arms in Congress increases. In fact, Johnson claims “the big banks got stronger as a result of the bailout . . . They’re turning that increased economic clout into more political power. And they’re using the political power to go out and take the same sort of risks that got us into disaster in September 2008,” when Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail and shook the international banking system.

The truth is Citibank alone, according to Johnson and Kwak, controls some $12.5 trillion in assets, so it can’t be allowed to fail without causing another catastrophe à la Lehman Brothers. Johnson and Kwak’s idea is to have the banks break themselves down to into entities with no more than a $100 billion cap each. That makes them and the other mega-banks small enough to fail. This is really a key point. And one wonders why the Glass-Steagall Act hasn’t been reinstituted as promised to help facilitate this division for break-down purposes.

Included in the “too big to fail” discussion were the quasi-government/Wall Street Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage lenders, which literally “captured Congress” with their financial lobbying in the 1990s, arguing for rights to take on improper risk. And it was the Republicans who “called them on that.” Unfortunately, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in 2008, confronted with the multiple “too big to fail” banks, as Johnson points out, “was right. If you let JPMorgan Chase or Goldman Sachs fail, the consequences would have been devastating, because they are so big. It’s a Fannie May and Freddy Mac structure come to Wall Street, come to the top guys on Wall Street. And our Republican colleagues and friends should recognize this, they should acknowledge it. And then we can all fix it together.”

On the other hand, Johnson and Kwak’s whole point is also that we can’t allow these bailouts to continue. We have to fix the system with a series of laws that prevent the next bubble, the mindless creation of toxic lending, and the imminent failure of banks that have wrongly become “too big to fail.” We can’t institutionalize the corruption that leads to financial failure. We have to legislate against it. Or the economy will collapse.

To that point, Johnson and Kwak single out Magnetar, “a hedge fund named after a neutron star that spews deadly radiation cross the galaxies,” if you can believe that weirdness. “Magnetar worked with American banks to create toxic CDOs, securities backed by subprime mortgages that managers knew were bad. Magnetar took information and bet against the same investments which they recommended to buyers. Selling short and making a fortune.” This process is as deadly as radiation and a repetitive event in contemporary finance. It’s got to go.

Another scam pointed out by Johnson and Kwak is Goldman bailing out Greece with an initial amount of money and then stashing that debt paper in a secret Cayman account. Then it sold a second round of debt to investors, not divulging the first debt, and how deep the total truly was. Then it bet against Greece paying it off and once again made a fortune off of investor ignorance and Greece’s bad luck. These are not accidents. 

These are planned strategies to defraud, to look for the loopholes to cheat, to short the American Dream.

Also, a not so accidental complexity in procedures, management, sheer numbers of employees and divisions in huge financial companies makes for rogue traders who seek loopholes to create questionable if not illegal offerings, even at their company’s expense. The moral barometer here is at its nadir.

Moyers pointed out “that even when JPMorgan Chase lost $880 million [in] one of these whacky obscure deals . . . the executives still paid themselves millions of dollars in up-front fees. It exploded and personally they still made money.” This is a classic case of top executives cheating their own company, as Enron’s cheating their own employees out of retirement funds, walking away with hundreds of millions, and later with jail sentences. There is a fundamental cynicism in the financial community that their ilk is above the law, that they are smartest guys in the room, and not subject to the suckers’ rules.

This kind of brashness is reminiscent of CEO Jamie Dimon who said of his company JPMorgan Chase in 2009 that “they had the best year in their history.” That’s because his company was “big and beautiful” and sucked up enough of the bailout dollars to land in the black. This is a guy who dines with President Obama, does lunch, and god knows what else, namely playing financial oligarch. Obama called him “a savvy businessman,” but in this writer’s opinion, he’s a high level sleaze.

Yet it comes down to the lobbying dollars that help keeps this deadbeat oligarchy afloat and the lack sufficient of legislation like the Glass-Steagall Act from resurfacing to separate commercial banks from investment banks. Or to have a toothier Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which former Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chair Brooksley Born wanted to protect against derivatives.

The act was gutted by Senator Phil Gramm with Clinton’s blessings in 1999. The link above is to an article I wrote about Born’s travails, the intimidations by Greenspan, Rubin, and particularly Larry Summers, who called her, saying he had 13 bankers in the room who all said that if she proceeded with her CFMA, the financial system would totally collapse. She subsequently resigned, having done all she could to protect her fellow citizens from these financial predators.

Johnson and Kwak remind us to remember that fighting this fight is a long-term job and not a quick fix. As Johnson points out, Teddy Roosevelt faced the bankers for a decade and brought Morgan in tow as FDR did his corps of bankers. Early on Andrew Jackson faced down the national bank. It will take a president with backbone and conviction to tell these guys what to do, rather than seeking “consensus” in lieu of courage. I also believe there are intelligent Republicans out there who see and know what’s going on and need to act in unison with their Democratic counterparts.

Like the Marines, we need a few good men, maybe more than a few, to stand up and fight the Blankfeins, the Rubins, the Princes, etc. Kwak suggested that some people should go to jail for fraud. I’m for that, the more the merrier to make an example and save the financial system. Both Johnson and Kwak are practicing financial professionals who believe in the system, which can’t be run with a totally unregulated free-market hand, but with laws that keep the playing field level.

As a closer, Moyers pointed to the Republican leader in Congress, Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky who was being taken to task by reporters recently for “attending a fundraiser with hedge funds and other Wall Street poobahs.”

This came, as Johnson shredded a recent statement by McConnell: “He [McConnell] says let the biggest banks fail, go bankrupt, don’t do anything, leave the situation as it is now and when they get in trouble, let them fail. If you do that, you’ll have catastrophe. The bankruptcy system clearly and manifestly cannot deal with the failure of a complex, global, financial institution. And we have the evidence before us in what happened after Lehman Brothers failed. That was bankruptcy. It caused chaos around the world, Bill. That’s what the Republicans are advocating. If we just leave things as they are and next time we’ll take that chaos and we’ll get a second Great Depression. We’re arguing for reform. We’re arguing for change. We’re arguing for ways to make those biggest banks smaller and safer. If they were small enough to fail, that’s a very different story. And that’s a much safer place to be.

When Moyers asked, “What do these big six banks think about what Senator McConnell is saying?” Kwak nailed it: “Well, the big six banks don’t want any reform at all, essentially. So, I think . . . there’s some evidence that Senator McConnell has been talking to the big banks and to other people on Wall Street.” So let’s leave it at another regulatory capture.

Hopefully, you’ve gotten an idea of what a brilliant and important interview this was. See or read it for yourself, before your American Dream gets shorted again in a new financial collapse.

 
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net. His new book, “State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on” is available at www.jerrymazza.com

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Zionism and Racism

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Israeli Lobby

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

U.S. support for Israel

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

AIPAC

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

War For Israel

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Iran a Threat? I Mean, Really?

Chirac, for one, said exactly what I have been saying for years. Anyone who owns a nuclear weapon and uses it can be expected to be reduced to a radioactive pile of rubble. It's a lot of money to spend on a weapon one dares not use, ever. 

If Iran should even appear as though they intend to launch a Nuclear weapon toward Israel, those poor Iranians will pay dearly for the actions of a terribly irresponsible government.

By Ray McGovern

April 27, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- With all the current hype about the "threat" from Iran, it is time to review the record -- and especially the significant bits and pieces that find neither ink nor air in our Israel-friendly, Fawning Corporate Media (FCM).
First, on the chance you missed it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said publicly that Iran "doesn't directly threaten the United States." Her momentary lapse came while answering a question at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 14.

Fortunately for her, most of her FCM fellow travelers must have been either jet-lagged or sunning themselves poolside when she made her unusual admission. And those who were present did Clinton the favor of disappearing her gaffe and ignoring its significance. (All one happy traveling family, you know.)

But she said it. It's on the State Department Web site. Those who had been poolside could have read the text after showering. They might have recognized a real story there. Granted, the substance was so off-message that it would probably not have been welcomed by editors back home.

In a rambling comment, Clinton had charged (incorrectly) that, despite President Barack Obama's reaching out to the Iranian leaders, he had elicited no sign they were willing to engage:

"Part of the goal -- not the only goal, but part of the goal -- that we were pursuing was to try to influence the Iranian decision regarding whether or not to pursue a nuclear weapon. And, as I said in my speech, you know, the evidence is accumulating that that [pursuing a nuclear weapon] is exactly what they are trying to do, which is deeply concerning, because it doesn't directly threaten the United States, but it directly threatens a lot of our friends, allies, and partners here in this region and beyond." (Emphasis added)


Qatar Afraid? Not So Much

The moderator turned to Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Al-Thani and invited him to give his perspective on "the danger that the Secretary just alluded to...if Iran gets the bomb."

Al-Thani pointed to Iran's "official answer" that it is not seeking to have a nuclear bomb; instead, the Iranians "explain to us that their intention is to use these facilities for their peaceful reactors for electricity and medical use...

"We have good relations with Iran," he added.  "And we have continuous dialogue with the Iranians." The prime minister added, "the best thing for this problem is a direct dialogue between the United States and Iran," and "dialogue through messenger is not good."

Al-Thani stressed that, "For a small country, stability and peace are very important," and intimated -- diplomatically but clearly -- that he was at least as afraid of what Israel and the U.S. might do, as what Iran might do.

All right. Secretary Clinton concedes that Iran does not directly threaten the United States. Now who are these "friends" to whom she refers? First and foremost, Israel, of course.  How often have we heard Israeli officials warn that they would consider nuclear weapons in Iran's hands an "existential" threat?

Time to do a reality check. Former French President Jacques Chirac is perhaps the best-known world statesman to hold up to public ridicule the notion that Israel, with between 200 and 300 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, would consider Iran's possession of a nuclear bomb an existential threat.

In a recorded interview with the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and Le Nouvel Observateur, on Jan. 29, 2007, Chirac put it this way:

"Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed."

Chirac concluded that Iran's possession of a nuclear bomb would not be "very dangerous."

Chirac and a Hard Place

Immediately, the former French president found himself caught between Chirac and a hard place. He was forced to retract, but chose to do so in so clumsy a way as to demonstrate rather clearly that he stood by his initial candor on the subject.

On Jan. 30, Chirac told the New York Times:

"I should rather have paid attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on record. ... I don't think I spoke about Israel yesterday. Maybe I did so, but I don't think so. I have no recollection of that."

Israel's leaders must have been laughing up their sleeve at that. Their continued ability to intimidate presidents of other countries -- including President Barack Obama -- is truly remarkable, particularly when it comes to helping to keep Israel's precious "secret," that it possesses one of the world's most sophisticated nuclear arsenals.

Shortly after Obama became U.S. President, veteran reporter Helen Thomas asked him if he knew of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons, and Obama awkwardly responded that he didn't want to "speculate."  Thomas later commented, "I did not ask him to speculate; he is supposed to know!"

More recently, on April 13, 2010, Obama looked like a deer caught in the headlights when the Washington Post's Scott Wilson, taking a leaf out of Helen Thomas' book, asked him if he would "call on Israel to declare its nuclear program and sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Watch the video, unless you have no stomach for seeing our normally articulate President stutter his way through an improvised mini-filibuster, and then grovel: "And, as far as Israel goes, I'm not going to comment on their program..."

The following day the Jerusalem Post smirked, "President Dodges Question About Israel's Nuclear Program." The article continued: "Obama took a few seconds to formulate his response, but quickly took the weight off Israel and called on all countries to abide by the NPT."

The Jerusalem Post added that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak chose that same day to send a clear message "also to those who are our friends and allies," that Israel will not be pressured into signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

(Also the following day, the Washington Post made no reference to the question from its own reporter or Obama's stumbling non-answer.)


Consistent Obsequiousness

In his response to Scott Wilson, Obama felt it necessary to tack on the observation that his words regarding the NPT represented the "consistent policy" of prior U.S. administrations. This reflects the de rigueur attempt to avert any adverse reaction from the Likud Lobby to even the slightest suggestion that Obama might be ratcheting up, even a notch or two, any pressure on Israel to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal and sign the NPT.

Actually, the greatest consistency to the policy has been U.S. obsequious promotion of a flagrant double standard. Clearly, Washington and the FCM find it easier to draw black-and-white distinctions between noble Israel and evil Iran, if there's no acknowledgement that Israel already has nukes and Iran has disavowed any intention of getting them.

This never-ending hypocrisy shows itself in various telling ways. I am reminded of an early Sunday morning talk show over five years ago at which Sen. Richard Lugar, then chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked why Iran might think it has to acquire nuclear weapons. Perhaps Lugar had not yet had his morning coffee, because he almost blew it with his answer:

"Well, you know, Israel has..." Oops. At that point he caught himself and abruptly stopped. The pause was embarrassing, but he then recovered and tried to limit the damage.

Aware that he could not simply leave the words "Israel has" twisting slowly in the wind, Lugar began again: "Well, Israel is alleged to have a nuclear capability."

Is "alleged" to have? Lugar was chair of the Foreign Relations Committee from 1985 to 1987; and then again from 2003 to 2007. No one told him that Israel has nuclear weapons? But, of course, he did know, but he also knew that U.S. policy on disclosure of this "secret" -- over four decades -- has been to protect Israel's nuclear "ambiguity."

Small wonder that our most senior officials and lawmakers - and Lugar, remember, is one of the more honest among them -- are widely seen as hypocritical, the word Scott Wilson used to frame his question to Obama.

The Fawning Corporate Media, of course, ignores this hypocrisy, which is their standard operating procedure when the word "Israel" is spoken in unflattering contexts. But the Iranians, Syrians and others in the Middle East pay very close attention.


Obama Overachieving

As for Obama, the die was cast during the presidential campaign when, on June 3, 2008, in the obligatory appearance before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he threw raw red meat to the Likud Lobby.

Someone wrote into his speech: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided." This obsequious gesture went well beyond the policy of prior U.S. administrations on this highly sensitive issue, and Obama had to backtrack two days later.

"Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations," Obama said when asked if he was saying the Palestinians had no future claim to the city.

The person who inserted the offending sentence into his speech was neither identified nor fired, as he or she should have been. My guess is that the sentence inserter has only risen in power within the Obama administration.

So, why am I reprising this sorry history? Because this is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees as the context of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

Even when Israel acts in a manner that flies in the face of stated U.S. policy, which calls on all nations to sign the NPT and to submit to transparency in their nuclear programs, Netanyahu has every reason to believe that Washington's power-players will back down and the U.S. FCM will intuitively understand its role in the cover-up.

L'Affaire Biden -- when the Vice President was mouse-trapped and humiliated when Israel announced plans to build 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem shortly after he arrived in Israel to reaffirm U.S. solidarity with Israel -- was dismissed as a mere "spat" by the neoconservative Washington Post.  (If the Post has a vestigial claim to distinction, it is how well it is plugged in to the establishment.)


Making Amends

Rather than Israel making amends to the United States, it has been vice versa.

Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, trudged over to an affair organized by the AIPAC offshoot think tank, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), last Wednesday to make a major address.
I got to wondering, after reading his text, which planet Jones lives on. He devoted his first nine paragraphs to fulsome praise for WINEP's "objective analysis" and scholarship, adding that "our nation -- and indeed the world -- needs institutions like yours now more than ever."

Most importantly, Jones gave pride of place to "preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them," only then tacking on the need to forge "lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians." He was particularly effusive in stating:

"There is no space -- no space -- between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security." 

Those were the exact words used by Vice President Joe Biden in Israel on March 9, before he was mouse trapped.


"No Space" -- a Problem

The message is inescapably clear: Netanyahu has every reason to believe that the Siamese-twin relationship with the United States is back to normal, despite the suggestion from CENTCOM Commander, Gen. David Petraeus, earlier this year that total identification with Israel costs the lives of American troops. 

Petraeus's main message was that this identification fosters the widespread impression that the U.S. is incapable of standing up to Israel. The briefing that he sponsored reportedly noted, "America was not only viewed as weak, but there was a growing perception that its military posture in the region was eroding."

However, in the address to WINEP, National Security Adviser Jones evidenced no concern on that score. Worse still, in hyping the threat from Iran, he seemed to be channeling Dick Cheney's rhetoric before the attack on Iraq, simply substituting an "n" for the "q." Thus:

"Iran's continued defiance of its international obligations on its nuclear program and its support of terrorism represents (sic) a significant regional and global threat. A nuclear-armed Iran could transform the landscape of the Middle East...fatally wounding the global non-proliferation regime, and emboldening terrorists and extremists who threaten the United States and our allies."


A More Ominous Mousetrap?

Jacques Chirac may have gone a bit too far in belittling Israel's concern over the possibility of Iran acquiring a small nuclear capability, but it is truly hard to imagine that Israel would feel incapable of deterring what would be a suicidal Iranian attack.

The real threat to Israel's "security interests" would be something quite different. If Iran acquired one or two nuclear weapons, Israel might be deprived of the full freedom of action it now enjoys in attacking its Arab neighbors.

Even a rudimentary Iranian capability could work as a deterrent the next time the Israelis decide they would like to attack Lebanon, Syria or Gaza. Clearly, the Israelis would prefer not to have to look over their shoulder at what Tehran might contemplate doing in the way of retaliation.

However, there has been a big downside for Israel in hyping the "existential threat" supposedly posed by Iran. This exaggerated danger and the fear it engenders have caused many highly qualified Israelis, who find a ready market for their skills abroad, to emigrate.

That could well become a true "existential threat" to a small country traditionally dependent on immigration to populate it and on its skilled population to make its economy function. The departure of well-educated secular Jews also could tip the country's political balance more in favor of the ultra-conservative settlers who are already an important part of Netanyahu's Likud coalition.

Still, at this point, Netanyahu has the initiative regarding what will happen next with Iran, assuming Tehran doesn't fully capitulate to the U.S.-led pressure campaign. Netanyahu could decide if and when to launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, thus forcing Washington's hand in deciding whether to back Israel if Iran retaliates.

Netanyahu may not be impressed -- or deterred -- by anything short of a public pronouncement from Obama that the U.S. will not support Israel if it provokes war with Iran. The more Obama avoids such blunt language, the more Netanyahu is likely to view Obama as a weakling who can be played politically.

If I am right in thinking that Netanyahu feels himself in the catbird seat, then an Israeli attack on Iran seems more likely than not. For instance, would Netanyahu judge that Obama lacked the political spine to have the U.S. forces controlling Iraqi airspace shoot down Israeli aircraft on their way to Iran? Many analysts feel that Obama would back down and let the warplanes proceed to their targets.

Then, if Iran sought to retaliate, would Obama feel compelled to come to Israel's defense and "finish the job" by devastating what was left of Iran's nuclear and military capacity? Again, many analysts believe that Obama would see little choice, politically.

Yet, whatever we think the answers are, the only calculation that matters is that of Israel's leaders. My guess is Netanyahu would not anticipate a strong reaction from President Obama, who has, time and again, showed himself to have a preference for caving in-to be more politician than statesman.

James Jones is, after all, Obama's national security adviser, and is throwing off signals that can only encourage Netanyahu to believe that Jones's boss would scurry to find some way to avoid the domestic political opprobrium that would accrue, were the President to seem less than fully supportive of Israel.


Key Judgments on Iran Nuclear

Netanyahu has other reasons to take heart with the political direction in Washington.

According to Sunday's Washington Post, the U.S. intelligence community is preparing what is called a Memorandum to Holders of the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 on Iran, in other words an update to that full-scale NIE-the one in which all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies girded their loins and unanimously spoke truth to power about Iran's nuclear program.

The update is now projected for completion this August, delayed from last fall reportedly because of new incoming information coming from sources that the Post describes as "motivated by antipathy toward the government" of Iran.  Does this not sound familiar?  Think of the similar Iraqi "sources" who provided us with such stellar intelligence on Baghdad's nuclear program.

The Post article recalls that the 2007 NIE presented the "startling conclusion" that Iran had halted work on developing a nuclear warhead. That reportedly occurred four years prior, in the fall of 2003. Why "startling?" Because this contradicted what President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had been saying, repeatedly, for years-right up until the time the Key Judgments of the NIE were sanitized and made public.
It is a hopeful thing that senior intelligence officials from both CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have, as the Post puts it, "avoided contradicting the language used in the 2007 NIE." Some, though, are said to be privately asserting their belief that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon.  Apparently, "faith-based intelligence" is not yet dead.

The Post says there is an expectation that the previous NIE "will be corrected" to indicate a darker interpretation of Iranian nuclear program.

It seems a safe, if sad, bet that the same Likud-friendly forces that attacked experienced diplomat Chas Freeman as a "realist" and got him "un-appointed," after National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair had named him Director of the National Intelligence Council, will try to Netanyahu-ize the upcoming Memorandum to Holders.

The National Intelligence Council has purview over such memoranda, as well as over NIEs. Without Freeman, or anyone similarly substantive and strong, it is doubtful that the intelligence community will not be able to resist the political pressures to conform.


Resisting Pressure

Nevertheless, the intelligence admirals, generals and other high officials seem to be avoiding the temptation to play that game, so far.

The Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Ronald Burgess, and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, hewed to the intelligence analysts' judgments in their testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last Wednesday.

Indeed, their answer to the question as to how soon Iran could have a deliverable nuclear weapon, in fact, sounded very familiar:

"Experience says it is going to take you three to five years" to move from having enough highly enriched uranium to having a "deliverable weapon that is usable... something that can actually create a detonation, an explosion that would be considered a nuclear weapon," Cartwright told the panel.

What makes Cartwright's assessment familiar -- and relatively reassuring -- is that five years ago, a previous DIA director told Congress that Iran is not likely to have a nuclear weapon until "early in the next decade" -- this decade. Now, we're early in that decade and Iran's nuclear timetable, if you assume it does intend to build a bomb, has been pushed back to the middle of this decade.

Indeed, the Iranians have been about five years away from a nuclear weapon for several decades now, according to periodic intelligence estimates. They just never seem to get much closer. But there's no trace of embarrassment among U.S. policymakers or any notice of this slipping timetable by the FCM.

Not that NIEs -- or U.S. officials -- matter much in terms of a potential military showdown with Iran. The "decider" here is Netanyahu, unless Obama stands up and tells him, publicly, "If you attack Iran, you're on your own."

Don't hold your breath.

 

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA analyst, he chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief. He serves on the Steering Committee of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
This article originally appeared on Consortiumnews.com.

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Why Soldiers Get A Kick Out Of Killing

Training young men to become enthusiastic killers. How, then, do you "untrain" them before they rejoin a civilized society. 

Are we creating sociopaths to join the small percentage that already exist in uniform at any given time?

Nature or Nurture?
By John Horgan

April 27, 2010 "Scientific America" - April 23, 2010 -- Do some soldiers enjoy killing? If so, why? This question is thrust upon us by the recently released video of U.S. Apache helicopter pilots shooting a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad in 2007. Mistaking the camera of the Reuters reporter for a weapon, the pilots machine-gunned the reporter and driver and other nearby people.

The most chilling aspect of the video, which was made public by Wikileaks, is the chatter between two pilots, whose names have not been released. As Elizabeth Bumiller of The New York Times put it, the soldiers "revel in their kill." "Look at those dead bastards," one pilot says. "Nice," the other replies.

The exchange reminds me of a Times story from March 2003, during the U.S. invasion of Baghdad. The reporter quotes Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, a Marine sharpshooter, saying, "We had a great day. We killed a lot of people." Noting that his troop killed an Iraqi woman standing near a militant, Schrumpf adds, "I'm sorry, but the chick was in the way."

Does the apparent satisfaction—call it the Schrumpf effect—that some soldiers take in killing stem primarily from nature or nurture? Nature, claims Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard University and an authority on chimpanzees. Wrangham asserts that natural selection embedded in both male humans and chimpanzees—our closest genetic relatives—an innate propensity for "intergroup coalitionary killing" [pdf], in which members of one group attack members of a rival group. Male humans "enjoy the opportunity" to kill others, Wrangham says, especially if they run little risk of being killed themselves.

Several years ago, geneticists at Victoria University in New Zealand linked violent male aggression to a variant of a gene that encodes for the enzyme monoamine oxidase A, which regulates the function of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin. According to the researchers, the so-called "warrior gene" is carried by 56 percent of Maori men, who are renowned for being "fearless warriors," and only 34 percent of Caucasian males.

But studies of World War II veterans suggest that very few men are innately bellicose. The psychiatrists Roy Swank and Walter Marchand found that 98 percent of soldiers who endured 60 days of continuous combat suffered psychiatric symptoms, either temporary or permanent. The two out of 100 soldiers who seemed unscathed by prolonged combat displayed "aggressive psychopathic personalities," the psychiatrists reported. In other words, combat didn't drive these men crazy because they were crazy to begin with.

Surveys of WWII infantrymen carried out by U.S. Army Brig. Gen. S.L.A. Marshall found that only 15 to 20 percent had fired their weapons in combat, even when ordered to do so. Marshall concluded that most soldiers avoid firing at the enemy because they fear killing as well as being killed. "The average and healthy individual," Marshall contended in his postwar book Men Against Fire, "has such an inner and usually unrealized resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility…At the vital point he becomes a conscientious objector."

Critics have challenged Marshall's claims, but the U.S. military took them so seriously that it revamped its training to boost firing rates in subsequent wars, according to Dave Grossman, a former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and professor of psychology at West Point. In his 1995 book On Killing, Grossman argues that Marshall's results have been corroborated by reports from World War I, the American Civil War, the Napoleonic wars and other conflicts. "The singular lack of enthusiasm for killing one's fellow man has existed throughout military history," Grossman asserts.

The reluctance of ordinary men to kill can be overcome by intensified training, direct commands from officers, long-range weapons and propaganda that glorifies the soldier's cause and dehumanizes the enemy. "With the proper conditioning and the proper circumstances, it appears that almost anyone can and will kill," Grossman writes. Many soldiers who kill enemies in battle are initially exhilarated, Grossman says, but later they often feel profound revulsion and remorse, which may transmute into post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments. Indeed, Grossman believes that the troubles experienced by many combat veterans are evidence of a "powerful, innate human resistance toward killing one's own species."

In other words, the Schrumpf effect is usually a product less of nature than of nurture—although "nurture" is an odd term for training that turns ordinary young men into enthusiastic killers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Horgan, a former Scientific American staff writer, directs the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology. (Photo courtesy of Skye Horgan.)

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Progressive Surge In The U.K.

NTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

With national elections approaching on May 6, the United Kingdom hosted its first-ever prime ministerial TV debate last week, featuring Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party, David Cameron of the Conservative Party, and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats. Heading into the debate, the election was "considered too close to call" and "likely to be a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives." But Clegg, who offered himself "up as the fresh and honest alternative to two tired old parties," was the clear winner in the post-debate polls, instantly altering the dynamics of the race. Clegg's debate performance and the subsequent surge in the polls for the Liberal Democrats has led some observers to compare him to President Obama and his rise in the 2008 campaign. The three leaders engaged in a second debate yesterday, in which Cameron and Brown both engaged Clegg more aggressively in an effort to stop what some have dubbed "Cleggmania." Though the Liberal Democrats are often labeled the "centrist party" in Britain, much of Clegg's surge has been attributed to his steadfast advocacy for progressive policy positions.

STANDING FOR PROGRESS: Staking his claim to the mantle of progressive leadership, Clegg declared last night, "We shouldn't be facing allegations of complicity in torture. We shouldn't have invaded Iraq. ... I want us to lead in creating a world free of nuclear weapons and I want us to lead on the biggest challenge of all – climate change." Brown and Clegg stressed their policy differences. Clegg proudly declared his support for the legalization of undocumented immigrants, arguing, "If they want to play by the rules, pay their taxes, speak English: that is a smart, fair effective way of dealing with immigration." Brown and Cameron responded by accusing Clegg of supporting "amnesty." They also attacked Clegg from the right over his proposal to include Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent in the strategic defense review after the election, which Clegg says could lead to a "cheaper and better" alternative. In defending his position on Trident, Clegg cited Obama: "President Obama said last week, I think quite rightly, that now the greatest threat to us is not the Cold War threat of old. It's terrorists getting hold of dirty bombs." Both Cameron and Brown have tried to use Clegg's Trident position to portray him as weak on Iran. "I say to you, Nick, get real, get real, because Iran, you're saying, might be able to have a nuclear weapon, and you wouldn't take action against them, but you're saying that we have got to give up our Trident submarines and our nuclear weapon now," said Brown. "To say, get real, what is dangerous is to commit to spend" up to £100 billion "that we might not have on a system which almost certainly won't help, when the world is changing, when we're facing new threats," replied Clegg strongly. Among Brits who watched yesterday's debate, Clegg was viewed as the narrow winner.

EUROPE MATTERS: In last night's debate, Brown attempted to paint both of his rivals as outside the mainstream when it comes to foreign relations. "I am afraid David is anti-European, Nick is anti- American. Both of them are out of touch with reality," said Brown. Brown's claim that Clegg is anti-American is unfair, as Clegg says he is "an Atlanticist" who wants "a positive, strong and even uniquely warm relationship with the United States." But he is right to raise concerns about Cameron's Euro-skepticism. In a column released yesterday, Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta wrote that "worryingly, under David Cameron's leadership, the Conservative Party's traditional Euro-skepticism has become more extreme." Pointing to Cameron's decision to have the Conservative Party leave the European People's Party -- the main center-right grouping in the European Parliament -- "to form a new parliamentary group with a maverick collection of racist, homophobic, and xenophobic members of the European Parliament," Podesta noted that "Cameron's willingness to forgo political influence to placate extreme elements of his own party" would hurt U.S. interests if he were to become Prime Minister. "American hopes for a more dynamic and equal European partner are still much less likely to be realized if Britain is on the fringes of the debate about the future of the union," wrote Podesta. Both Brown and Clegg criticized Cameron yesterday for aligning himself with "right-wing extremists," in Brown's words, or as Clegg called them, "nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists, [and] homophobes."

CAMERON'S PROBLEMS: Cameron's willingness to make common cause with Europe's far-right parties has caused him to stumble in his efforts to appear mainstream on a number of issues. Though Cameron has made an effort to reach out to the LGBT community in the past year, the change in conservative attitudes towards gay rights appear to be more rhetorical than substantive. Last summer, "Cameron offered a public apology for section 28, the controversial Tory legislation introduced in the 1980s that banned the 'promotion' of homosexuality in schools" even though he voted "against the repeal of section 28 as recently as 2003." Last month, Cameron sat for an interview with an LGBT magazine to promote the party's alleged move to the left on social and equality issues, but paused the interview after he fumbled an answer about the Tories' voting record on gay equality. Then, a Tory Member of Parliament was secretly recorded as saying that "people who ran bed and breakfasts in their homes should 'have the right' to turn away homosexual couples." Last week, Cameron's shadow defense minister said that gay sex should be illegal for 16 and 17 year olds and compared it to preventing "service personnel aged under 18 from fighting on frontlines." Though Cameron's political coalition is home to Britain's climate deniers, he says he believes that "we need a greater sense of urgency on climate change." Cameron has made some positive efforts on this front, even sending his shadow minister on the environment and climate change to America in order to lobby Republican lawmakers to support clean energy legislation. But at the same time, Cameron has described himself as a "Lawsonian," referring to Lord Nigel Lawson, who has written that he has "no idea whether the majority scientific view" on climate change "(and it is far from a consensus) is correct." Lawson has also said that "there is a strong moral argument [to keep emitting]" and that "a warmer climate brings benefits as well as disadvantages."
 

There is nothing civil about civil wars!