Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Sunday afternoon viewing:
Ron Paul on Iran and the energy crisis. He argues that speculation about a US or Israeli strike on Iran is driving some of the increase in oil prices.
The OPEC president should know a thing or two about what drives oil prices and he agrees.
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/29/2008 01:25:00 PM
|Tip Jar for IC
|Cole @ Macmillan Speakers|
|Global Affairs Blog|
 Facebook |
| |  |
|---|
| | |  |
|---|
Muslim Denunciations of al-Qaeda and Terrorism
Suggested Books about the Middle East
Michigan War Studies Review. Many excellent resources.
Individual items can be linked to through the permalink in the time of posting at the end.
Write your political representatives via Congress.org.
ARCHIVES
The feed address is http://www.juancole.com/ rss.xml
Awards
Winner, October 5, 2007, Scott Nearing Award for Courageous Scholarship (Awarded by the Graduate Students of the Political Science Department, University of Pennsylvania).
Winner, 2005 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Hunter College.
Winner, 2004 Koufax Award for Best Expert Blog
Winner, 2004 Koufax Award for Best
Posting
8 Comments:
Unfortunately, Congressman Paul has some of his figures wrong (in one place he also incorrectly refers to Iraq as Iran); there were no 50,000 children who died as a result of sanctions, but an order of magnitude more. The English Wikipedia has at least two entries on this subject matter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions#Infant_and_child_death_rates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_for_Food_Program
But this is a distraction, as Dr Paul is one of the rarest of all species: an honest politician.
For the interested, the text of the resolution H. CON. RES 362, to which Congressman Paul refers, can be read here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.CON.RES.362:
Also, some of the readers might like to consider the following link:
http://capwiz.com/justforeignpolicy/issues/alert/?alertid=11518951
BF.
Indeed but look at what he says about 362. I went and checked it out; the preamble is as reality-challenged as anything you would expect from the Neconservatives and as Paul points out it proposes a blockade on Iran (resolution 3):
demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran's nuclear program
It's good to hear Ron Paul say what the rest of the world is thinking. But it is not that the information is not known (500,000 children died as an effect of the embargo on Iraq preceeding the war, not the 50,000 he mentions), it is that the American government, and the great majority of its people, do not care if Iranians needlessly die.
May the rest of the world organize its interests to hollow out American power and influence, for the sake of us all.
Yes, our leaders bow to yours... but out of fear, not conviction. The wheel of fortune continues to spin.
The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.
by Seymour M. Hersh
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh?printable=true
The fact that our corrupt Congress was so militantly anti-Iran that they provided $400 million for covert operations against a sovereign country like Iran definitely impacts oil prices, and as I recall the appropriations passed last fall with very little opposition. However Congress chooses to blames "speculators" for high oil prices, even though speculators have been trading commodities on exchanges in New York for nearly 125 years.
The substantial open-interest in crude oil contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange is backed by crude oil in storage in the US, which acts like a US petroleum reserve paid for by speculators. However this will probably be the first time the Congress has become so corrupt that they materially interfere in the operations of a US commodity exchange, and it will likely do lasting damage to US commodity exchanges.
Hersh's article for the New Yorkers says Congressional leaders don't seem too sure exactly how those funds they approved for covert action in Iran are being used. Hersh reports that the "Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney’s office set up priorities for categories of [Iranian] targets, and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results (assassinations, etc.). But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.” Link: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
Will the apparent success of pressure and diplomatic efforts to force North Korea to curtail its nuclear weapons program influence Congress's approach to Iran? If the apparent progress in negotiations with North Korea is real, it's hard to imagine they won't provide a model for negotiations with Iran.
Perhaps the best thread yet explaining/discussing oil futures and the role of investors/speulators. The conclusion from it and the supporting data is speculators have helped keep oil prices lower than they would be otherwise. And it's considereed a certainty that if the triad US/UK/Israel were to cease their illegal and uncalled for assault on Iran, and all sanctions ceased, oil price would fall a considerable amount, perhaps below $100.
The facts now presented allow us to discover the qui bono answer--who benefits from the current state-of-affairs--through a process of elimination I will let the reader perform.
Dear Juan,
I apologize for leaving the following message on this page, which I have already left on a different page of this site as part of a longer message (concerning the Iraqi politician Mr Ahmad Chalabi).
Congressman Dennis Kucinich has placed the following video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8e9yMfMF3g&feature=bzb302
Here he quotes from a report by Physicians for Social Responsibility in which the death-toll of an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is estimated to be 2.6 million people in the first 48 hours following the attack; the number of people suffering from the consequences of radiation is estimated to be 10.5 million. If this is not genocide, then what is?
BF.
Post a Comment
<< Home