Targeting Iran: Part I

I have wondered for quite a while now how and when an attack on Iran might take place, and by whom that attack might be done: the US, and a coalition of allies, or Israel using a pre-emptive strike on key sites.

There is theoretically two prevailing 'wisdoms' that underpin a possible use of force against Iran: The US, that maintain that Iran's nuclear ambition is fueled by it's dwindling oil reserves and therefore is looking at an expansion role, while Israel maintains that it will be defending itself from an Iranian nuclear weapon which they may provide to Hizbullah, or use against Israel atop a medium range tactical missile.

I believe that Iran is essentially held in 'check' by the US and it's allies Britain, France and others, by the US occupation of Iraq, and forces in Afghanistan, not to mention a large fleet in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf which could further restrict Iran's options.

Looking at the Iranian order of battle, in a Persian Gulf conflict, mining the Straits of Hormuz and ex-Russian 'Kilo' submarines currently pose the biggest threat to allied shipping in the Gulf.

Further analysis shows that the radar and air-defense stations dotted along the Iran's Gulf coast from Chan Bahar near the Pakistan border to near the Turkish border at Kerend, would likely need a massed air attack to penetrate further than a few hundred miles. That is only if the targets are Bushehr or Natanz (and the target packages might well include those two sites), but the coailition would likely use cruise missiles and not air strikes against them. Running that gauntlet would be quite risky until those sites are sufficently suppessed to allow more penetrating raids inland.

History often has a way of repeating itself. American forces have been planning possible battle scenario's against Iran for some time. One such plan favors the 'northern route' (first suggested by Scott Ritter in 2006), via the Caspian Sea, which constitutes the shortest distance to Tehran. So, the Soviet occupation of Northern Iran in the 1940's and the various Russo-Persian Wars have attested to the significance of this corridor. Rafsanjani doesn't think so, though.

However, regardless of how many visits by Dick Cheney to Azerbaijan to get their approval to station US soldiers there for a possible invasion of Iran (or continued support for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline), I think this is unlikely for the US as an invasion assembly point, not least of which due to it's proximity to Russia (the Azeri policy, is not to allow permanent US bases, but may allow temporary deployment, all this could change, after all Azerbaijan did support Georgia in the recent Russian conflict), and difficult supply lines, which might give the Iranians time to mobilize forces to the north as the US builds up forces in the region. It even has a CONPLAN number and has been exercised called was called (in 2003) rather ominously, TIRANNT.

Although too, this could be a significant way to divert the Iranians from an invasion from the Persian Gulf, the distance between a Gulf coast beachhead and Tehran (nominally near the Bushehr area and breaking out from there), would slow any attack, and leave vulnerable long lines of supply and communication along the roads to Tehran in the north. Iran would be a difficult adversary and losses will be high, not to mention blowback from any intervention, in Iran, Afghanistan and other.

Israel on the other hand, have likely solved the technical difficulties of a strike against Iran, and are not hampered by the same political pressure that the US is under. While they could not stage an invasion against Iran, the possibility of a air strike against various targets in Iran is a looming possibility.

There is 5 possiblilties for an Israeli strike on Iran:

1. Through Jordan and Saudi Arabia
2. Through Jordan and Iraq
3. Around the Arabian Peninsula
4. From bases in Turkey
5. From Bases in Georgia through Azerbaijan

In the next installment, we'll look closer at each scenario in detail.

Amy Goodman Arrested at RNC

Watching the video of Democracy Now host, Amy Goodman being arrested was disheartening, to liberals, leftists and radicals alike. After all, Amy was just asking a question to a police officer about how she might see an official to ask a few questions. She was credentialed and clearly in the video you can see that credential dangling from her neck - and she didn't cross the line as the police suggested. Amy now finds herself, and some of her crew charged with terrorism related offenses and conspiracy to riot - watch how Nicole Salazar was arrested as she was trying to report on an RNC protest rally. Clearly the police had expected a riot, so one wonders the psychology of the police move to "suit up" and the response constituting some kind of "self-fulfilling prophesy" from the 'men-in-blue'. Obviously, the Minnesota police have not experienced real democracy in action. The paltry gathering at the RNC shows how complacent we have become about our democracy. Glenn Greenwald's coverage is spectacular and should be injested twice daily to remind people that the story will get out there, despite the official and police efforts to tell a different story: this bit is awesome.

But this is nothing new - rioters have been shot at, journalists have been arrested and police have routinely lied about it, despite evidence to the contrary. This is what the authorities do - it is their 'thing': writer Naomi Wolf in her book The End of America takes a historical look at the rise of fascism, outlining the 10 steps necessary for a state to take control of individuals' lives. These ten steps include the following, and the St.Paul/Minnesota police were clearly following #6 and 8:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the condensed list, but you can read it in her words here.

Technology, Just like Walking on the Moon

I guess I may actually delight my creationist friends in this post, just a wee bit. But only a little, especially since the post goes on to look at possible evolutionary timelines...

Recently we learned that the Neanderthal's used pretty good stoneage tools, and could have likely competed quite successfully with Cro-Magnon's and other Homo Sapien species with which they might have likely lived side-by-side. Yes, that's right, there were at least two species of hominids on Earth at the same time, and one won out over the other. So, not only were Neanderthals competing for limited resources, they were doing so with similar knowledge of primative stone instument technology to that of other advanced hominid species. Of course, they had clear differences with Homo Sapiens and they were well adapted to the colder climate that prevailed on Earth at that time.

This got me to thinking. The prevailing theory is that Neanderthals didn't interbreed with early humans, even though some paleobiologists think it possible. Was it early humans that killed or displaced them, understanding that Neanderthal competition may decline in the available food package for both species survival? Was it climate change, where at the time, the planets temperature was warming up and the ice caps were receding to their current positions? Some suggest that got even colder, and contributed to the extinction of Neanderthal! And what about disease?

It appears DNA has offered a glimpse into their demise. But maybe only some Neanderthals bred with Cro-magnons, while others in disperate regions didn't. At least we know there wasn't a hybrid, so you're in luck. Anyway, you can read all about the conflicting theoretical possibilities about the extinction of the Neanderthals, without me explaining it rudimentarily. I personally like the red-head theory myself, and considering my daughter has red-hair has made me speculate on my Neanderthal origins as it has been pointed out to me as I grunt for food. But my eating habits are not the subject of this post. Travel tehcnology is.

If you like the "Out-of-Africa" theory, then you'll like this one: an epic journey on a scale and parallel with Homer's Odyssey! It involves the first Australians. I believe that the scale of the migration, the first sea peoples to get in a boat and navigate a large body of water, is on par with getting to the moon. The planning must have been staggering - no Kontiki Raft thing either.

About 50,000 years ago, or there abouts, the first arrivals to Australia were likely weaving together a raft from bamboo and were cruising outer islands in an attempt to make a crossing to the Australian continent. They kind of had an idea of where it was, and the sea levels were likely lower to allow some island hopping and a successful crossing. They would have had to experiment first though, doing day trips to find out how much provisioning to take. This is an arduous task, and requires quite extensive planning. They were the first Australians, and their progeny were probably similar to the skeletal remains of Mungo Man, found in the Willandra Lakes area of New South Wales, at a place called Lake Mungo.

Using some sophisticated dating techniques which involves analysis of quartz granuals to determine when they last saw sunlight (optically stimulated luminescence dating), the samples from Lake Mungo seem to suggest that the bones were buried about 60-45,000 years ago. These remains are human in appearance, and almost indistinguishable from modern humans.

There is always a catch. I like catches in science. In the 1960's, Dr. Alan Thorne discovered in Victoria at a place called Kow Swamp, other skeletal remains. However not only is this one is only dated to about 9000 years ago, it has way more robust features - thick brow ridges, heavier set bone structure, large cranial capacity - more like Neanderthal, Homo Habilis/Homo Erectus. Perhaps it is a new species of Homo Sapien. There is new debate about later Homo species: H. rhodesiensis, H. floresiensis and H. sapiens (both H. s. idaltu and H. s. sapiens) - could the Kow Swamp remains be a new sub-species of Homo Sapien? Thorne initially believed the robust skulls belonged to Homo erectus, but the dates are far too late for that and the skulls do not match modern understandings of H. erectus characteristics. Researchers today believe that the Kow Swamp skeletons are evidence of changes in human skeletal morphology in the last 10,000 years. But what changes and why? How did a more recent and robust hominid make its way to Australia in the last 10,000 years?

You won't hear much about the Kow Swamp find, even at Wikipedia, but I really hope that more investigation is made into the ancestors of early Australians that made an epic journey, fraught with many more risks than even stepping onto the moon. I like a good mystery, especially a science one.

Weak US Dollar...or, How I stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Euro

Despite the rhetoric coming from Washington to the contrary, it seems many businesses, especially exporters are happy with the weak dollar regime.

You may think it might reinvigorate manufacturing and exporting in the US as the price of imported goods rise? Reduce the need for outsourcing, perhaps? Bring jobs back to America? The IMF and other institutions believe the US dollar has been over valued for way too long...Hmmm.

I don't disagree, but we need a much more critical eye, I believe. Well, with that in mind, lets take a look at those premises:

1. Collapsed Economy Assumption (leading from a weaker dollar stance): Although the dollar has lost considerable ground, especially against the Euro, it remains the worlds reserve currency - that is the currency that the world uses to purchase stuff - regardless of what backs it up or not. True, we no longer have a gold standard, but most floated currencies worldwide do not, and are left to the free market to bring about currency fluctuations. Sure this leads to some speculative machinations, but overall, the dollar has remained a safe haven.So what makes the dollar such a strong currency, even though it has had its moment in the sun (I personally believe that the US dollar has seen its peak and will likely be replaced in the near future by another currency in the reserve spot)? "The Market": 300 million American consumers eager for more stuff to fill their homes and garages.What I think you're referring to is the notion that Japan, China and Germany will sell off their vast quantities of dollars and start trading in Euro's for purchases immediately, collapsing the US economy, the dollar value and the bond markets. America would not be able to pay out all that money in reserve, and the interest accumulated would be impossible. America will implode and the world will plundge into a new Dark Age. I'm not sure that is going to happen - there are way to many risk management mechanisms on the world financial markets to allow that kind of scenario to play out, although possible. Who is going to benefit from that? No one that I can see.

However, what is likely is a switch to Euro's might set off a series of small wars that might link hands over water, energy and arable land - most of this may play out in the region we know in the West as the Middle East. That will be costly.

Moreover, since there is no credit crunch in China or Japan, I think the problem that Europe (particularly Britain) and the United States is currently plagued with, is a practice of predatory capitalism; a series of Enron-esq, Arthur Anderson-esq colorful accounting practices and Sub-Prime mortgage lending-esq failures that have wittled away what confidence the 'market' has placed in dollars. Part of the reason Chinese products have been so prominant in this market is due to the race to the bottom line most US manufacturers have been able to acquire or extract from the Chinese manufacturing base - those savings have been passed along to a customer demand side that salivates for more imports, at the expense of local manufacturing and a robust export market and American jobs.

2. The IMF is not God, I agree, but it is part of the Trinity of the market - releasing comparative studies of relative currency strengths over time and issue it, or disseminate it, to banks and other lenders and agencies to advise them on the kinds of risks that exist in the market, much like what people ask my company to do. Ultimately the market decides what is best for the market, and the Economist magazine has a really good comparison of currency units - the Big Mac Index - which compares the prices of Big Macs in each country relative to the US dollar on purchasing power parity. Consistently, the US currency has been extensively over-valued. It may take a while for market correction to realise this, but when it does, it adjusts reasonably well, as we are currently seeing.

3. American Lifestyle will be Compromised: Americans take the world for granted. The air and oceans, rivers and forests have been polluted, largely, by Americans - salmon hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest are serverely compromised by pollution that happened in the 1960's; air quality in areas like Dallas, Los Angeles and New York, by gas guzzling cars and industry in the 1970's - so the problems are not new. America, by and large, has used the rest of the world as a cheap labor resource going back 100 years or more: one recalls United Fruit Company in Central America, but there are other classic cases from the idea of floating an old cruise ship off the California coast, filled with computer programmers and coders, so as to avoid paying taxes, prevent a reasonable wage being paid to employees, and to avoid a myriad of other laws and ordinances otherwise being incurred by being on the land. It's just nonsense.

Who does the money go to anyway? Well, a conservative, Kevin Phillips, wrote a book in the 1990's called "Politics of the Rich and Poor". In it he outlines how the rich stay rich at the expense of the rest of America, and compromises the ideals of a fair and equitable society, pursuit of happiness, yada, yada, yada. He wrote a follow-up book in 2003 called "Wealth and Democracy" whose main premise is that, while reconstructing the history of wealth in America, shatters the myth of the "free market" and instead lays out a system of greed, corruption and a spectacle of social misconduct by the rich and powerful to create a landed class of aristocracy - who claim "class war" any time the rest want something as simple as tax relief or better health care. He certainly, while not making the explicit claim, makes the market look like a giant ponzi scheme, where the wealthy classes keep making money and the rest are plunged into something akin to wage slavery, or prisoners of debt, or possession collection - filling our homes and garages with cheap Chinese made junk. Both are worth a read.

It is going too far to expect miracles from the market, whose timelessness is indeed about shifting from one good idea to the next. The Euro's time is here. America can embrace it, or fall hard resisting. If a slight reduction in spending power and a slight increase in inflation is too much for Americans to handle, then perhaps the good life has softened their idea of responsibility in the world economy, and have been living too long, high on the hog.

Setting the Agenda

I'm disappointed in the GP, almost as much as I am with the elites. Of course, the elites should know better. The elites set the agenda, while the prolateriat and petty bourgeois follow like sheeple. I don't often like to speak ill of my class though, but several things have really gotten my back up lately. It revolves around who sets the agenda - a hint: it's not you! Toynbee's account may be more accurate than Marx in this regard, but also, Dewey's may be more salient than Lippman'.

So who sets the agenda? Is it top down, or bottom driven. Well, both, with a lot of difficulty. However, it is derived from the top and modified in the theoretical 'south'. Let me explain...this may sound a little like a Maoist contradiction.

Watching (and listening) to the Daily Show the other night, but especially his interview with a 'scholar' from the CEI, Chhristopher Horner, which have the hide to call him an "expert". Besides the fact that I now despise this perfectly adept word due to its use by PR and Marketing aggrandizers, this man is hardly one of them.

Horner's argument has been diatribed in his latest tome. You can read it, but I don't see much point. Horner's book is full of cartoons, and very little data - unlike this publication. But it's not what Horner said that made me actually give a damn about listening to this ass. It was John Stewart saying that the debate about global warming was just that: a debate and a 'heated' one at that (funny use of the word heat). See the video here!

This is much the same kind of agenda setting by the right that they give to other emotive topics where they invent new language to motivate their constituency, such as the "class warfare" dabate, the debate on the aforementioned "climate change", partial birth abortions and the list goes on.

Unfortunately for them, there is not debate. It is pure concoction and delivered to the world as them versus the rest of us, while the real story lies elsewhere - they are at war with the classes below them, climate change will hurt their bottom line, and the term late term abortions will not motivate their right-wing-nuts enough to get them into the streets or bomb abortion clinics.

Which brings me back to Horner's Corner of the global warming heavy weight bout. There is NO debate. Horner's citation of 1970's scientific warnings of global cooling did not garner as much of a consensus as today's global warming adherents - and today, it is not a consensus - when a tropical shark washes up on a beach in Maine, you really need to stand up and ask a question of the panel - "what is next, and what can we do to minimise the impact". Not to mention the post-carbon world, on which we are on a collision course - we talk much about lowering our carbon emissions now, but we may be forced to give them up completely. Now that would be a good debate.

But digression aside, the agenda is increasingly being set by those that wish to politicize events that will be less than political, but rather practical when the great coastal cities of the world will be underwater.

No one has debated what we are to do with the refugee's, where our fresh water will come from, food production, lowered standards of living, the impact of water borne diseases or in fact, wars over smaller units of territory. It is doubtful Holland or the other 'low countries' will survive without an extreme injection of EU funding. Manhattan Island might well be underwater with the Wall Street bull trying to keep its head above the rising tide - one boat the rising tide will not lift.

So, lets not debate the undebatable, the undeniable and the obvious. Who knows, looking on the bright side, global warming might stop us finally from having a class war and rally together to solve the problems which will inevitably rise.

Suzi Weissman interviews Chalmers Johnson

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