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marmar
marmar's Journal
marmar's Journal
August 6, 2012
CENTRAL LONDON had the most visitors its ever had last week, despite fears the Olympics was putting punters off coming into town.
Figures released today by Transport for London show that 4.4 million passengers used London Underground on Friday 3 August, breaking a record set the day before when 4.3 million took to the Tube.
In the same week last year, the Underground carried 3.7 million passengers.
"Just like our Team GB athletes, records on the Tube are tumbling almost every day right now," said Peter Hendy, London Transport Commissioner. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.londonnet.co.uk/news/2012/aug/london-underground-breaks-passenger-numbers-record-calm-fears-ghost-town-olympics.html
London Underground Breaks Passenger Numbers Record
CENTRAL LONDON had the most visitors its ever had last week, despite fears the Olympics was putting punters off coming into town.
Figures released today by Transport for London show that 4.4 million passengers used London Underground on Friday 3 August, breaking a record set the day before when 4.3 million took to the Tube.
In the same week last year, the Underground carried 3.7 million passengers.
"Just like our Team GB athletes, records on the Tube are tumbling almost every day right now," said Peter Hendy, London Transport Commissioner. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.londonnet.co.uk/news/2012/aug/london-underground-breaks-passenger-numbers-record-calm-fears-ghost-town-olympics.html
August 6, 2012
[font size="1"]Merlin Bartin, a member of the photo club at St. Clair West Seniors Services, stands before an outdoor exhibit that decorates an Eglinton Crosstown construction fence. Bartin says her only regret about the LRT is that it will be completed too late for some of her friends to see.[/font]
Tess Kalinowski
Transportation Reporter
The Eglinton LRT is already changing the face of their neighbourhood. So it was only fitting that residents’ own faces — many of them long-standing members of the Eglinton West community — be part of the street’s transformation.
That’s why visitors who venture into Keelesdale Park near the Chris Tonks Arena will see that the fence around the Crosstown construction site has been embellished with large-scale images of the neighbours and the nearby street.
One streetscape is so large, the photo so crisp, you might be tempted to walk right up the nearby hill it depicts.
The outdoor exhibit is called the Intergenerational Fence Project. It’s the result of a collaboration between the photo club at the St. Clair West Seniors Services Centre (actually located on Eglinton just east of Black Creek Dr.) and some university students. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1237446--eglinton-crosstown-neighbourhoods-getting-involved-construction-of-ttc-line
Toronto Star: Neighbourhoods getting involved construction of TTC line
[font size="1"]Merlin Bartin, a member of the photo club at St. Clair West Seniors Services, stands before an outdoor exhibit that decorates an Eglinton Crosstown construction fence. Bartin says her only regret about the LRT is that it will be completed too late for some of her friends to see.[/font]
Tess Kalinowski
Transportation Reporter
The Eglinton LRT is already changing the face of their neighbourhood. So it was only fitting that residents’ own faces — many of them long-standing members of the Eglinton West community — be part of the street’s transformation.
That’s why visitors who venture into Keelesdale Park near the Chris Tonks Arena will see that the fence around the Crosstown construction site has been embellished with large-scale images of the neighbours and the nearby street.
One streetscape is so large, the photo so crisp, you might be tempted to walk right up the nearby hill it depicts.
The outdoor exhibit is called the Intergenerational Fence Project. It’s the result of a collaboration between the photo club at the St. Clair West Seniors Services Centre (actually located on Eglinton just east of Black Creek Dr.) and some university students. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1237446--eglinton-crosstown-neighbourhoods-getting-involved-construction-of-ttc-line
August 6, 2012
from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:
In a Plutocracy, Only Moguls Have Megaphones
August 5, 2012
In today’s anything-goes political fundraising world, the nation’s super rich and their favored politicos are no longer even going through the motions of maintaining ‘separate and independent’ campaigns.
By Sam Pizzigati
The U.S. Supreme Court’s most notorious decisions have almost always rested on preposterous claims. The 1896 ruling that okayed segregation, for instance, held that imposed racial separation violated no constitutional rights since government had the capacity to keep public services and facilities “separate but equal.”
But government officials during segregation made no effort to offer anything even remotely close to equal services — and no one ever expected they would.
The 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United — the decision that has opened the door to letting rich people essentially spend whatever they want, whenever they want, on political campaigns — rests on another preposterous claim.
All those millions the rich are injecting into politics won’t distort our democracy, the high court assures us, because we can keep these millions separate and independent from the campaigns that the candidates the rich favor are running. ..............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/in-a-plutocracy-only-moguls-have-megaphones/
In a Plutocracy, Only Moguls Have Megaphones
from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:
In a Plutocracy, Only Moguls Have Megaphones
August 5, 2012
In today’s anything-goes political fundraising world, the nation’s super rich and their favored politicos are no longer even going through the motions of maintaining ‘separate and independent’ campaigns.
By Sam Pizzigati
The U.S. Supreme Court’s most notorious decisions have almost always rested on preposterous claims. The 1896 ruling that okayed segregation, for instance, held that imposed racial separation violated no constitutional rights since government had the capacity to keep public services and facilities “separate but equal.”
But government officials during segregation made no effort to offer anything even remotely close to equal services — and no one ever expected they would.
The 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United — the decision that has opened the door to letting rich people essentially spend whatever they want, whenever they want, on political campaigns — rests on another preposterous claim.
All those millions the rich are injecting into politics won’t distort our democracy, the high court assures us, because we can keep these millions separate and independent from the campaigns that the candidates the rich favor are running. ..............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/in-a-plutocracy-only-moguls-have-megaphones/
August 6, 2012
from truthdig:
The Science of Genocide
Posted on Aug 6, 2012
By Chris Hedges
On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was allied. Over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki, it exploded an atomic device that was the most efficient weapon of genocide in human history. The blast killed tens of thousands of men, women and children. It was an act of mass annihilation that was strategically and militarily indefensible. The Japanese had been on the verge of surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military significance. It was a war crime for which no one was ever tried. The explosions, which marked the culmination of three centuries of physics, signaled the ascendancy of the technician and scientist as our most potent agents of death.
“In World War II Auschwitz and Hiroshima showed that progress through technology has escalated man’s destructive impulses into more precise and incredibly more devastating form,” Bruno Bettelheim said. “The concentration camps with their gas chambers, the first atomic bomb … confronted us with the stark reality of overwhelming death, not so much one’s own—this each of us has to face sooner or later, and however uneasily, most of us manage not to be overpowered by our fear of it—but the unnecessary and untimely death of millions. … Progress not only failed to preserve life but it deprived millions of their lives more effectively than had ever been possible before. Whether we choose to recognize it or not, after the second World War Auschwitz and Hiroshima became monuments to the incredible devastation man and technology together bring about.”
The atomic blasts, ignited in large part to send a message to the Soviet Union, were a reminder that science is morally neutral. Science and technology serve the ambitions of humankind. And few in the sciences look beyond the narrow tasks handed to them by corporations or government. They employ their dark arts, often blind to the consequences, to cement into place systems of security and surveillance, as well as systems of environmental destruction, that will result in collective enslavement and mass extermination. As we veer toward environmental collapse we will have to pit ourselves against many of these experts, scientists and technicians whose loyalty is to institutions that profit from exploitation and death.
Scientists and technicians in the United States over the last five decades built 70,000 nuclear weapons at a cost of $5.5 trillion. (The Soviet Union had a nuclear arsenal of similar capability.) By 1963, according to the Columbia University professor Seymour Melman, the United States could overkill the 140 principal cities in the Soviet Union more than 78 times. Yet we went on manufacturing nuclear warheads. And those who publicly questioned the rationality of the massive nuclear buildup, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, who at the government lab at Los Alamos, N.M., had overseen the building of the two bombs used on Japan, often were zealously persecuted on suspicion of being communists or communist sympathizers. It was a war plan that called for a calculated act of enormous, criminal genocide. We built more and more bombs with the sole purpose of killing hundreds of millions of people. And those who built them, with few exceptions, never gave a thought to their suicidal creations. ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_science_of_genocide_20120806/
Chris Hedges: The Science of Genocide
from truthdig:
The Science of Genocide
Posted on Aug 6, 2012
By Chris Hedges
On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was allied. Over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki, it exploded an atomic device that was the most efficient weapon of genocide in human history. The blast killed tens of thousands of men, women and children. It was an act of mass annihilation that was strategically and militarily indefensible. The Japanese had been on the verge of surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military significance. It was a war crime for which no one was ever tried. The explosions, which marked the culmination of three centuries of physics, signaled the ascendancy of the technician and scientist as our most potent agents of death.
“In World War II Auschwitz and Hiroshima showed that progress through technology has escalated man’s destructive impulses into more precise and incredibly more devastating form,” Bruno Bettelheim said. “The concentration camps with their gas chambers, the first atomic bomb … confronted us with the stark reality of overwhelming death, not so much one’s own—this each of us has to face sooner or later, and however uneasily, most of us manage not to be overpowered by our fear of it—but the unnecessary and untimely death of millions. … Progress not only failed to preserve life but it deprived millions of their lives more effectively than had ever been possible before. Whether we choose to recognize it or not, after the second World War Auschwitz and Hiroshima became monuments to the incredible devastation man and technology together bring about.”
The atomic blasts, ignited in large part to send a message to the Soviet Union, were a reminder that science is morally neutral. Science and technology serve the ambitions of humankind. And few in the sciences look beyond the narrow tasks handed to them by corporations or government. They employ their dark arts, often blind to the consequences, to cement into place systems of security and surveillance, as well as systems of environmental destruction, that will result in collective enslavement and mass extermination. As we veer toward environmental collapse we will have to pit ourselves against many of these experts, scientists and technicians whose loyalty is to institutions that profit from exploitation and death.
Scientists and technicians in the United States over the last five decades built 70,000 nuclear weapons at a cost of $5.5 trillion. (The Soviet Union had a nuclear arsenal of similar capability.) By 1963, according to the Columbia University professor Seymour Melman, the United States could overkill the 140 principal cities in the Soviet Union more than 78 times. Yet we went on manufacturing nuclear warheads. And those who publicly questioned the rationality of the massive nuclear buildup, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, who at the government lab at Los Alamos, N.M., had overseen the building of the two bombs used on Japan, often were zealously persecuted on suspicion of being communists or communist sympathizers. It was a war plan that called for a calculated act of enormous, criminal genocide. We built more and more bombs with the sole purpose of killing hundreds of millions of people. And those who built them, with few exceptions, never gave a thought to their suicidal creations. ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_science_of_genocide_20120806/
August 5, 2012
(Guardian UK) Disagreements within the 17-nation euro area are undermining the future of the European Union, said Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti as the stand-off on European Central Bank support for Italian and Spanish debt hardened.
“The tensions that have accompanied the euro zone in the past years are already showing signs of a psychological dissolution of Europe,” he told Germany’s Spiegel magazine in an interview published yesterday. “I can only welcome the ECB’s statement that there is a ‘severe malfunctioning’ in the market for government bonds in the euro region. It’s also true that some countries have to shoulder ‘extraordinarily high’ costs to finance their debts. That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for a long time.” He urged swift action to lower borrowing rates.
Investors and politicians are still grappling with the significance of comments on sovereign debt purchases by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi last week. While markets initially tumbled on Aug. 2 after Draghi said Spain and Italy would have to formally request a resumption of the bank’s bond buying, they rallied the following day as investors concluded that ECB action would occur, albeit on an unknown future date.
“The ECB did not restart its bond purchases this week, as widely expected, but pointed to a more important and constructive shift in its approach to managing the crisis,” Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said in an Aug. 3 note to clients. “If the arrangement sketched out is fully implemented, the ECB will provide an effective liquidity backstop, enabling sovereigns to retain access to markets for a large portion of their funding needs.” ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-05/monti-warns-germany-that-euro-crisis-threatens-europe-s-future.html
Monti of Italy Warns That Currency Crisis Risks Europe’s Future
(Guardian UK) Disagreements within the 17-nation euro area are undermining the future of the European Union, said Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti as the stand-off on European Central Bank support for Italian and Spanish debt hardened.
“The tensions that have accompanied the euro zone in the past years are already showing signs of a psychological dissolution of Europe,” he told Germany’s Spiegel magazine in an interview published yesterday. “I can only welcome the ECB’s statement that there is a ‘severe malfunctioning’ in the market for government bonds in the euro region. It’s also true that some countries have to shoulder ‘extraordinarily high’ costs to finance their debts. That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for a long time.” He urged swift action to lower borrowing rates.
Investors and politicians are still grappling with the significance of comments on sovereign debt purchases by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi last week. While markets initially tumbled on Aug. 2 after Draghi said Spain and Italy would have to formally request a resumption of the bank’s bond buying, they rallied the following day as investors concluded that ECB action would occur, albeit on an unknown future date.
“The ECB did not restart its bond purchases this week, as widely expected, but pointed to a more important and constructive shift in its approach to managing the crisis,” Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said in an Aug. 3 note to clients. “If the arrangement sketched out is fully implemented, the ECB will provide an effective liquidity backstop, enabling sovereigns to retain access to markets for a large portion of their funding needs.” ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-05/monti-warns-germany-that-euro-crisis-threatens-europe-s-future.html
August 5, 2012
https://vimeo.com/46859557
Keesha Gaskins and Michael Waldman on Suppressing Votes By Law
August 3, 2012
This week, Bill talks to Keesha Gaskins and Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice about new voter ID and other election laws that keep the young, elderly, minorities and the poor from exercising one of the most fundamental American rights.
“When these votes come under attack by this level of partisan gamesmanship, it’s completely inappropriate and antithetical to our history,” Gaskins tells Bill. “This is a very real political issue, but beyond that, this is a real issue of real Americans being able to access and be self-determinative in how we’re governed.”
http://billmoyers.com/segment/keesha-gaskins-and-michael-waldman-on-supressing-votes-by-law/
Bill Moyers: Suppressing Votes By Law
https://vimeo.com/46859557
Keesha Gaskins and Michael Waldman on Suppressing Votes By Law
August 3, 2012
This week, Bill talks to Keesha Gaskins and Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice about new voter ID and other election laws that keep the young, elderly, minorities and the poor from exercising one of the most fundamental American rights.
“When these votes come under attack by this level of partisan gamesmanship, it’s completely inappropriate and antithetical to our history,” Gaskins tells Bill. “This is a very real political issue, but beyond that, this is a real issue of real Americans being able to access and be self-determinative in how we’re governed.”
http://billmoyers.com/segment/keesha-gaskins-and-michael-waldman-on-supressing-votes-by-law/
August 5, 2012
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees.
About 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon were killed in Iowa last week as water temperatures reached 97 degrees. Nebraska fishery officials said they've seen thousands of dead sturgeon, catfish, carp, and other species in the Lower Platte River, including the endangered pallid sturgeon. And biologists in Illinois said the hot weather has killed tens of thousands of large- and smallmouth bass and channel catfish and is threatening the population of the greater redhorse fish, a state-endangered species.
So many fish died in one Illinois lake that the carcasses clogged an intake screen near a power plant, lowering water levels to the point that the station had to shut down one of its generators.
"It's something I've never seen in my career, and I've been here for more than 17 years," said Mark Flammang, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. "I think what we're mainly dealing with here are the extremely low flows and this unparalleled heat." ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-fish-die-midwest-streams-heat-183228110.html
Thousands of fish die as Midwest streams heat up
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees.
About 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon were killed in Iowa last week as water temperatures reached 97 degrees. Nebraska fishery officials said they've seen thousands of dead sturgeon, catfish, carp, and other species in the Lower Platte River, including the endangered pallid sturgeon. And biologists in Illinois said the hot weather has killed tens of thousands of large- and smallmouth bass and channel catfish and is threatening the population of the greater redhorse fish, a state-endangered species.
So many fish died in one Illinois lake that the carcasses clogged an intake screen near a power plant, lowering water levels to the point that the station had to shut down one of its generators.
"It's something I've never seen in my career, and I've been here for more than 17 years," said Mark Flammang, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. "I think what we're mainly dealing with here are the extremely low flows and this unparalleled heat." ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-fish-die-midwest-streams-heat-183228110.html
August 5, 2012
The Glaring Problem With National Starbucks Appreciation Day
on August 4, 2012 - 12:40 PM ET
With Chick-fil-A announcing record profits following Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, a fake holiday created by conservative pundits to support the controversial fast-food chain, angry liberals are setting out to respond in kind. August 7, if this Facebook event from gay rights organization Equally Wed is to be believed, is now National Marriage Equality Day, also known as National Starbucks Appreciation Day. The goal, Kirsten Palladino of Equally Wed wrote in the Huffington Post, is simple: “Let’s affirm a business that operates on moral principles and whose executives are willing to take a stand for human dignity and upstanding values, the same that we advocate by simply showing up, drinking and eating at Starbucks on Tuesday, August 7.” While I support the right of gays and lesbians to marry about as much as anyone who is not gay can, I don’t think I’ll be joining Palladino and her friends at Starbucks on Tuesday.
I’m not sure how we got to a place in which it’s considered a political act to buy fast food, but here we are. For the conservatives, it was fried-chicken sandwiches, and now, for the liberals’ turn, we get hastily prepared Frappuccinos. It would be one thing if Starbucks was working in conjunction with Equally Wed. If the coffee giant was giving some of the proceeds from National Marriage Equality Day to any of the very worthy nonprofits working to make same-sex marriage in America legal, I’d be the first one in line on August 7. As it stands, however, Starbucks has yet to make a peep about Starbucks Appreciation Day. Rather, the day is a response to Starbucks’ corporate office’s proclaiming in March of this year that it supports marriage equality in the company’s home state of Washington. Good for Starbucks, but what has it done for me lately? Specifically, is it ready to put its money where its mouth is on August 7?
To be sure, anyone who supports gay rights should say kudos to Starbucks for sacrificing customers by coming out in support of marriage equality (the National Organization for Marriage, of course, has already called for a boycott). But unless Starbucks is going to donate a large percentage of the largesse it gets on August 7 to gay rights causes, why should liberals feel obligated to give their money to a giant corporation? In what way is further enriching a giant food and beverage manufacturer a statement on same-sex marriage? ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blog/169237/glaring-problem-national-starbucks-appreciation-day
The Nation: The Glaring Problem With National Starbucks Appreciation Day
The Glaring Problem With National Starbucks Appreciation Day
on August 4, 2012 - 12:40 PM ET
With Chick-fil-A announcing record profits following Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, a fake holiday created by conservative pundits to support the controversial fast-food chain, angry liberals are setting out to respond in kind. August 7, if this Facebook event from gay rights organization Equally Wed is to be believed, is now National Marriage Equality Day, also known as National Starbucks Appreciation Day. The goal, Kirsten Palladino of Equally Wed wrote in the Huffington Post, is simple: “Let’s affirm a business that operates on moral principles and whose executives are willing to take a stand for human dignity and upstanding values, the same that we advocate by simply showing up, drinking and eating at Starbucks on Tuesday, August 7.” While I support the right of gays and lesbians to marry about as much as anyone who is not gay can, I don’t think I’ll be joining Palladino and her friends at Starbucks on Tuesday.
I’m not sure how we got to a place in which it’s considered a political act to buy fast food, but here we are. For the conservatives, it was fried-chicken sandwiches, and now, for the liberals’ turn, we get hastily prepared Frappuccinos. It would be one thing if Starbucks was working in conjunction with Equally Wed. If the coffee giant was giving some of the proceeds from National Marriage Equality Day to any of the very worthy nonprofits working to make same-sex marriage in America legal, I’d be the first one in line on August 7. As it stands, however, Starbucks has yet to make a peep about Starbucks Appreciation Day. Rather, the day is a response to Starbucks’ corporate office’s proclaiming in March of this year that it supports marriage equality in the company’s home state of Washington. Good for Starbucks, but what has it done for me lately? Specifically, is it ready to put its money where its mouth is on August 7?
To be sure, anyone who supports gay rights should say kudos to Starbucks for sacrificing customers by coming out in support of marriage equality (the National Organization for Marriage, of course, has already called for a boycott). But unless Starbucks is going to donate a large percentage of the largesse it gets on August 7 to gay rights causes, why should liberals feel obligated to give their money to a giant corporation? In what way is further enriching a giant food and beverage manufacturer a statement on same-sex marriage? ................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blog/169237/glaring-problem-national-starbucks-appreciation-day
August 5, 2012
from Consortium News:
Punishing Iran, Endlessly
August 5, 2012
With U.S. politics locked in a competitive “tough-guy-ism” – as Republicans and Democrats up the ante on punishing Iran to avoid being deemed “weak” or insufficiently “pro-Israel” – no one seems to notice that the tactics are fast becoming an end in themselves, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. Pillar
Here we go with another round of Americans on different parts of the political spectrum trying to outdo each other in pushing for more pressure and punishment on Iran. As usual, all this pushing is almost totally devoid of any attention to exactly how the pressure and punishment are supposed to accomplish anything useful or to why they haven’t accomplished more than they have so far.
In coverage of the most recent legislative intensification of the pressure— on which the White House cooperated with Republicans and Democrats in Congress — one searches in vain for any sign of understanding of the basic principle that sanctions can only be one-half of any attempt to influence another government and that as long as Western negotiators fail to couple Iranian concessions with any significant relief from sanctions, the Iranians lack incentive to make concessions no matter how much pressure they feel.
And don’t even bother searching for signs of attention to why the contingency that supposedly is driving all this — a still nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapon — should be such an obsession, beyond repeated chants of the mantra that, to use the words of one presidential candidate, it would be “the greatest threat to the world.”
Pressure on Iran has long ago passed the point of becoming a seemingly mindless, endless exercise in pressure for pressure’s sake. In the absence of any attention to the role of Western negotiating rigidity or flexibility, we have the spectacle of people calling for more of something that they themselves acknowledge isn’t working. .............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/08/05/punishing-iran-endlessly/
Punishing Iran, Endlessly
from Consortium News:
Punishing Iran, Endlessly
August 5, 2012
With U.S. politics locked in a competitive “tough-guy-ism” – as Republicans and Democrats up the ante on punishing Iran to avoid being deemed “weak” or insufficiently “pro-Israel” – no one seems to notice that the tactics are fast becoming an end in themselves, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. Pillar
Here we go with another round of Americans on different parts of the political spectrum trying to outdo each other in pushing for more pressure and punishment on Iran. As usual, all this pushing is almost totally devoid of any attention to exactly how the pressure and punishment are supposed to accomplish anything useful or to why they haven’t accomplished more than they have so far.
In coverage of the most recent legislative intensification of the pressure— on which the White House cooperated with Republicans and Democrats in Congress — one searches in vain for any sign of understanding of the basic principle that sanctions can only be one-half of any attempt to influence another government and that as long as Western negotiators fail to couple Iranian concessions with any significant relief from sanctions, the Iranians lack incentive to make concessions no matter how much pressure they feel.
And don’t even bother searching for signs of attention to why the contingency that supposedly is driving all this — a still nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapon — should be such an obsession, beyond repeated chants of the mantra that, to use the words of one presidential candidate, it would be “the greatest threat to the world.”
Pressure on Iran has long ago passed the point of becoming a seemingly mindless, endless exercise in pressure for pressure’s sake. In the absence of any attention to the role of Western negotiating rigidity or flexibility, we have the spectacle of people calling for more of something that they themselves acknowledge isn’t working. .............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/08/05/punishing-iran-endlessly/
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