Iran, Sun Tzu and the dominatrix

The art of decolonisation is to do it so gently that there remains afterwards a neo-colonial ruling clique that regards you as a wise older brother and protects all your trade links. Britain, and to a lesser extent France, practiced this technique fairly successfully in the 1960s. The US never even attempted it, being too arrogant to see the necessity. Hence the frequent violent coups and revolutions against the US worldwide ever since – RB


Iran, Sun Tzu and the dominatrix
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, May 22 2010


At first, US Sec State Clinton said the Brazil-Turkey mediation to get Iran to accept a nuclear fuel swap was destined to fail. Then the State Dept said it was the “last chance” for an agreement without sanctions. And finally, less than 24 hours after a successful agreement in Tehran, Clinton has whipped the UN Security Council into submission and triumphantly proclaimed to the world that a draft resolution for a fourth UN round of sanctions against Iran has been reached. She framed the drive towards sanctions as “an answer to the efforts undertaken in Tehran over the last few days.” Immediately after a genuine and fruitful mediation on a very sensitive dossier by two emerging powers and honest brokers in the multipolar world, Brazil and Turkey, Washington and its two EU allies at the Security Council, France and Britain, torpedo it. This is what passes for global “diplomacy”. No wonder key US allies Brazil and Turkey, both non-permanent members of the Security Council, and both key regional powers, were fuming after such a public slapping. Brazil at first said it would not even discuss sanctions at the UN. Then Brazil and Turkey sent a formal letter to the UN, asking to be part of the negotiations of the “Iran Six” about the sanctions “to prevent the adoption of measures going against a peaceful solution.” Brazilian Pres Lula, who had personally told Clinton earlier this year that it was “not prudent to push Iran against a wall,” could not help but blast the outdated Security Council, stressing it was not predisposed to negotiations after all. Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu warned the new sanctions package would “spoil the atmosphere.” Turkish PM Erdogan stressed the move seriously damaged the credibility of the Security Council, not failing to wryly remind everyone of the absurd notion of five nuclear-armed permanent Security Council members seeking to dismantle the legal civilian nuclear program of a developing country. As for US credibility, it’s biting the dust once again, not only as far as Lula and Erdogan are concerned, but across the developing world, the real, flesh and blood “international community” following this interminable charade.


Over the past few months, Clinton relentlessly accused Iran of rejecting a similar fuel swap agreement proposed by the US last October. That’s part of the usual Washington script: to behave with textbook deviousness, insisting sanctions “have nothing to do” with enrichment when only a few weeks ago it was the lack of an enrichment deal that was the key reason for more sanctions. Washington only proposed a fuel swap last October because it wanted from the start to force Iran to agree to suspend all its uranium enrichment, to which it has a right as per the NPT. But this was never announced publicly. Iran anyway will continue to produce 20%-enriched uranium, as it has a right to do, according to the NPT, and will start the construction of a new enrichment plant about the same size as Natanz’s. This is part of a plan to build 10 new plants, announced last year by the Ahmadinejad government. Moreover, the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant is under final testing and will be inaugurated this summer. These are irreversible facts on the ground. Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili, the de facto top Iranian nuclear negotiator, may soon meet with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Turkey. Ashton, the “international community’s” designated negotiator, is as representative of global public opinion as a BP press release on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, especially because the EU is bound to issue its own unilateral sanctions against Iran. Same for the US Congress, as Sen Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, has confirmed this week. So apart from the Security Council, Iran will also have to face extra sanctions from the US-led coalition of the willing right-wing, mired-in-decay European poodles. Sun Tzu said:

Allow your enemy to make his own mistakes, and don’t correct them.

China and Russia, both master strategists, are applying this maxim with panache regarding the US. The current 10-page UN draft sanctions resolution was already diluted to death by permanent members Russia and China, and whatever bellicose language remains will be further shot down at the Security Council by non-permanent members Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon. Without unanimity at the Security Council, new sanctions are for all practical purposes dead. There’s no way Washington can coerce the rest of the Security Council to sign up for a new sanctions round when Iran is actually engaged in cooperation. As it stands, the current sanctions package punishes Iran’s import of conventional arms; curbs imports related to ballistic missiles; freezes assets of key members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps; and sets up cargo inspections in seaports and on international waters. Most of these sanctions are voluntary or non-binding, and will have zero interference on Iran’s global trade of oil and gas. Beijing and Moscow are not exactly licking Clinton’s whip. Immediately after her bombastic announcement, the Chinese ambassador at the UN, Li Badong, said the draft resolution “did not close the doors on diplomacy,” once again emphasizing “dialogue, diplomacy and negotiations.” And Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov phoned Clinton, arguing for a deeper analysis of the fuel swap deal mediated by Brazil and Turkey. Lavrov also stressed Russia didn’t like the extra US and EU unilateral sanctions one bit. The Russian Foreign Ministry said:

The unilateral sanctions would include measures of an extraterritorial nature, beyond the agreed decisions of the international community and contradicting the principle of the rule of the international law, enshrined in the UN charter.

So we have come to a situation whereby a real, Iran-approved nuclear fuel swap is on the table at the IAEA, while an offensive towards sanctions on Iran is ongoing at the UN. Who is the real “international community” going to trust? Erdogan could not have put it better:

This is the time to discuss whether we believe in the supremacy of law or the law of the supremes and superiors.

Most of all, what the developing world sees is the past, US, France, Britain, Germany, fighting against the advance of the future, China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia. The global security architecture, policed by a bunch of fearful, self-appointed Western guardians, is in a coma. The “Atlanticist” West is sinking Titanic-style. Only the powerful pro-infinite war lobby in the US is capable of framing a first step towards a full nuclear agreement with Iran as a disaster. That includes the largely discredited pro-Iraq war NYT (the Brazil-Turkey mediation is “complicating sanctions talk”) and WaPo (Iran “creates illusion of progress in nuclear negotiations”). For the pro-war lobby, the fuel swap mediated by Brazil and Turkey is a “threat” because it is on a direct collision course with an attack on Iran, initiated by Israel, then dragging in the US, and “regime change”, the never-reneged Washington desire. At a recent Council on Foreign Relations speech in Montreal, Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that a “global political awakening”, along with infighting among the global elite, was something to be deeply feared. The former US national security adviser remarked:

For the first time in all of human history mankind is politically awakened. That’s a total new reality. It has not been so for most of human history.

Who do these politically awakened upstarts such as Brazil and Turkey think they are, daring to disturb “our” rule of the world? And then uninformed USAians keep asking themselves “Why do they hate us?” Because, among other reasons, unilateral to the core, Washington does not hesitate to lift its middle finger even to its closest friends.

GERMANY'S PARLIAMENT VOTES TO GIVE 66% OF COUNTRY'S ANNUAL INCOME TAX REVENUE TO BANKS ** 123 billion "eurozone" package passed

Germany’s parliament today passed a bill that will mean that about 66 per cent of the country’s income tax revenue each year will go to banks in the form of  interest payments on souvereign dent bonds held by Greece, Portugal and other eurozone nations.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition government voted to give 123 billion as Germany’s portion of a 750-billion euro loan guarantee package prepared by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to enable governments to keep up interest payments to banks on souvereign debt.

The bill was passed by the Bundestag with with 319 "yes" votes, 73 "no" votes and 195 abstentions.

The abstentions came from the center-left opposition Greens and Social Democrats (SPD) and a handful of CDU/CSU and FDP backbenchers.

The 123 billion euro bank package comes on top of the 22.4 billon that Germany’s parliament voted to give Greece two weeks ago.

German taxpayers will, therefore, have to give 145 billion euros or 77% of the country’s annual income tax revenue to the banks in the highly likely event of Greece, Portugal and other countries not being able to meet their souvereign debt interest payments.

A German accountancy website allowing people to calculate what portion of their income tax will go to fund the banks reveals that a man earning 30,000 euros a year, and paying income tax of 5,625 euros, will be giving 3,709 euros to banks as part of the 123 billion eurozone “rescue” package.

He will be giving another 675 euros as part of the 22 billion euro Greek “rescue” package.

Germany spends another 40 billion a year paying interest on its national debts, which were created by the bank bailout and stimulus in the first place.

This means that another 1,200 euros of  the 5,625 euros collected in income tax from a man earning 30,000 euros a years goes on interest payments on the national debt.

In this case,  a total of 5584 euros or 99%  in income tax is being paid directly to banks such as Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs by the German government in the form of interest payments on national and international eurozone debts.

As a result of this bill, only 41 euros of the total annual income tax of 5,625 could soon be available for the government to spend on education, pensions, hospitals and welfare and such like.

41 euros is 0.72% of the total income tax paid by a man earning 30,000 euros each year.

The Merkel government has just announced a raft of deep cuts and tax hikes, which will increase the proportion of the country’s income flowing to the banks and accelerate an economic collapse that could be much more severe than the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The transfer of almost the country’s entire tax revenues to the banks shows that the politicians in Germany are working hand in glove with banks to loot the people on an unprecedented scale under the smokescreen created by the mainstream media.

Though sold by the controlled media as “aid for Greece”, none of the money will go to the people of Greece.

The 123 billion euros and 22 billion euro packages will go straight to the banks who hold souvereign debt bonds issued by the Greek and other eurozone debtor governments if these cannot raise enough money.

These same banks have been artificially pushing up the interest rate using credit default swaps to maximize their profits, and Germany’s recent bank on naked short selling will do little to stop this practise.

The way governments and regulators acted together to help banks create paper debt and then transfer gigantic sums to those banks under the guise of having to rescue them and pay interest payments on the rescue loan is the subject of a parliamentary investigation and criminal probes in Iceland. Several bankers have already been arrested.

In the USA, the SEC has launched a criminal probe into Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, among others, for their role in creating property debts, which were then used as a pretext to get tax payer funds.

The credit rating agencies are also under investigation in the USA for fraud.

German prosecutors have asked the boss of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann, to testify on the bank’s role in the bankrupting of IKB, triggering the bank bailout and stimulus packages that vastly increased the national debt.

But Germany is just the latest country to push through its part of the 750 billion eurozone package.

Austria's parliament on Wednesday voted to provide up to euro15 billion in loan guarantees as its share.

In France, the package is set to go parliament on May 31 and is expected to be passed.

Never in recent European history have governments so blatantly looted taxpayers.

If nothing is done to reverse these bills, the economic and social collapse of Germany, Greece and EU nations is inevitable.

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