The arrogance of a nuclear and only remaining super power. That is the only way to describe the atte4mpt US to alter the NPT101. What else does the US want? That no nation enriches uranium without her consent? If this swap-deal falters on account of US belligerence; then all nations that are not subservient to US interests should withdraw from the NPT. Afterall, India had developed and detonated the BOMB, yet the US has pressured other nation to continue nuclear cooperation with India, No one talks about inspections even if cursory, what a hypocracy. Of course no one dares mention that today Israel has more nuclear arms in stock than France and Britain.

American cold shoulder on the Iranian fuel-swap deal with Brazil and Turkey has changed the fundamental equation on NPT as Alastair Crooke so rightly points up.

This really proves the claim that India’s former foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee had made to UN General Assembly not long ago i.e. ‘NPT is a fraud perpetrated by haves against the have-nots’.

Let us face it - nuclear weapon crowns not just the powerful but the powerless equally.

Five Brahmins of UN Security Council have a right to possess, improve and increase their nuclear weapons stockpiles while preaching others the evils of the same weapons.

It is highly unlikely that any of these Brahmins is going to completely let go the safety and prestige that their nuclear weapons confer upon them. They will find every excuse to hold on to their nuclear weapon stockpiles while trying to monopolize that possession.

NPT allows the ‘haves’ to bypass its rules as demonstrated by China which is currently operating the biggest nuclear proliferation axis in the world - that of China, Pakistan and North Korea.

NPT is totally ignoring China’s central damning role in proliferating nuclear weapons technology in the first place.

Let us NOT forget that China made this world lot more dangerous by proliferating its nuclear weapon technology to Pakistan and North Korea. Let us NOT forget that Pakistan in turn proliferated Chinese nuclear weapon technology to Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Neither China nor Pakistan have been held accountable for making this world whole lot more ‘unsafe’ by proliferating nuclear weapon technology. That free pass given to China and Pakistan have turned all this Obama talk about reining in nuclear proliferation in to a joke.

Anyway it is doubtful that Obama or any other US President can cork the nuclear genie that US unleashed in 1945. That august body called US Senate with its 100 thinking heads will never approve a treaty ‘destroying all the nuclear weapons of all the countries in the world bar none’ even if some US President was to succeed in getting such a treaty agreed to.

They will never give peace a chance.

http://lalqila.wordpress.com/

What’s behind the sudden crisis in Korea? Who benefits? – Watching Israel Delegitimize the U.S.

The United Nations has long been scheduled to review the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to consider the creation of a Middle East free of nuclear weapons. As the date approached, the world community experienced a well-timed torpedo attack on a South Korean warship, reportedly by a North Korean submarine.

In the midst of these negotiations, mainstream media has been flooding the national consciousness with power-of-association stories about Iran, its nuclear program and even its links to North Korea. Tehran, of course, was the third member in the trio of Bush-era Evil Doers.

News outlets controlled by Israeli-American Rupert Murdoch are particularly active, including Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

Is it true that Tel Aviv transferred to Pyongyang a German-made submarine? If so, does that qualify as evil doing?

Read the full article here: http://lalqila.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/what%e2%80%99s-behind-the-sudden-crisis-in-korea-who-benefits-watching-israel-delegitimize-the-u-s/

This article may have well been written by Iran's Ambassador to the UN. Until Mr. Crooke, a repentant British spy, comes cleans about the funding of his organization, I will take everything he writes with a huge dosage of salt.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Global-Viewpoint/2010/0524/Former-CIA-officer-on-Iran-Brazil-and-Turkey-are-vital-checks-and-balances

Former CIA officer on Iran: Brazil and Turkey are vital checks and balances

Shouldn’t the world welcome the actions of two significant, responsible, democratic, and rational states to intervene and help check the foolishnesses of decades of US policy on Iran?

By Graham E. Fuller
posted May 24, 2010 at 1:14 pm EDT
Washington —

If Washington thinks it now faces complications on getting United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran, that’s not the half of it. A greater obstacle is the subtle change introduced into international power relationships by the actions of Brazil and Turkey that has accompanied it.

These two medium-size powers, Brazil and Turkey, have just challenged the guiding hand of Washington in determining nuclear strategy towards Iran. They undertook their own initiative to persuade Iran to accede to a deal on the handling of nuclear fuel issues. Not only was that initiative entirely independent, it moved ahead in the face of fairly crude American warnings to both states not to contemplate it – even though it closely paralleled one offered to Iran last year that fell through, mainly due to Iranian maneuvering and its fundamental distrust of Washington’s intent and blustering style.

Adding insult to injury, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan both had the temerity to actually succeed in their negotiations with Iran while Washington was publicly predicting their certain (and hoped for) failure.

Are the Iranians simply engaging in another con game, playing for time – a maneuver at which they excel? Or has something more profound taken place?

First, it is not only the terms of the deal that matter, but the messengers and atmospherics. Washington for decades has dealt with Iran – almost always indirectly – with considerable truculence and belligerence as the background music to “negotiations.” This is business as usual – the world’s sole superpower demanding others to agree to its strategy of the moment.

When Mr. Lula and Mr. Erdogan came to Tehran, the game was entirely different. It wasn’t the content so much as the negotiators, the venue, and the atmospherics. Tehran did not feel this time that it was acceding to superpower pressure, but to a reasoned and respectful request by two significant peer states in the world with no record of imperialism in Iran. In one sense, the deal was almost bound to succeed. What Iran wants as much as anything in this world is to blunt US dominance of the international order, and especially its ability to dictate terms in the Middle East.

If Iran is to yield at all on nuclear policy, what better device than to accede to two respected and successful states that were themselves defying Washington’s wishes in even attempting negotiations? If Tehran had refused that offer, it might have torpedoed the very concept of independent alternative, non-American efforts in international strategy. It made all the sense in the world for Iran to say “yes” this time to this combination of approach.

The same goes for China and Russia. After the Lula-Erdogan success, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton immediately proclaimed her own success at garnering Russian and Chinese support for enhanced sanctions against Iran – a stunningly insulting response to the remarkable accomplishment of Brazilian and Turkish negotiation. These states are, after all, immensely important to US regional and global interests. To blow them off like that was a major blunder, not just in terms of Iran, but in broader global strategy. The rest of the world has surely taken further negative note that Washington’s game remains depressingly familiar.

But do we really believe Clinton has in fact garnered Russian and Chinese support? Just as Tehran had every incentive to accept a proposal from “equals,” offered with respect instead of bluster and threats, so too Russia and China have every reason to welcome this initiative from Brazil and Turkey. Yes, the terms of the agreement do matter somewhat, but what is far more important for them is the slow but inexorable decay of US ability to deliver international diktats and to have its way. This is what Chinese and Russian foreign-policy strategy is all about. Neither of these countries will, in the end, permit the US hard-line approach to win out over the Brazilian-Turkish one in the Security Council, even if the Brazilian-Turkish deal requires a little tweaking. Russia and China champion the emergence of multiple sources of global power and influence that chip away at dying American unipolar power.

China and Russia, of course, represent the alternative polarity in the emerging struggle to end American hegemony in international affairs. But of greater moment, they now witness the political center in international politics shifting away from Washington as well. These two countries that defied American wishes are not just some Third World rabble-rousers scoring cheap points off the US. They are two major countries that are supposedly close friends of the US This makes the affront even crueler.

These events are profound signs of the times. The problem with unipolar power is that without checks and balances it invariably becomes subject to error and foolishness. On occasion, Americans actually believe in checks and balances when it comes to our own Constitution. Microsoft may be a great corporation, but nobody wants it to have a monopoly on IT.

Similarly in the world, international checks and balances are valuable safety valves. When Washington moves into its fourth decade of paralysis and incompetence in handling Iran, still unable even to speak to it – just as it cannot bring itself to talk to Cuba after 50 years – it has exacerbated the problem, strengthened Iran and the forces of radicalism in the Middle East, polarized emotions and, worst, failed in all respects. Shouldn’t the world welcome the actions of two significant, responsible, democratic, and rational states to intervene and help check the foolishnesses of decades of US policy? That is what checks and balances are all about and why the center is shifting.

And, who knows? “Rogue states” – a term beloved in Washington in reference to recalcitrant countries that don’t toe the Washington line – may more readily come to accede to new approaches free of the old imperial techniques of interventionism and ultimatums. Meanwhile, the US is rapidly running the risk of becoming its own “failed state” in terms of being able to exercise competent and effective international leadership since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Graham E. Fuller is the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA and author of numerous books on international politics, including the forthcoming “A World Without Islam” (August 2010).

http://non-intervention.com/288/america-first-never-for-u-s-media-or-politicians/

America first? – Never for U.S. media or politicians?
By mike | Published: May 18, 2010

I keep getting e-mail from a man named David Horowitz who wants me to give money to his movement to stop what he calls “President Obama’s war on Israel.” The notes are much like the earlier one I wrote about here from the Republicans’ congressional leader John Boehner asking for money to help his party protect Israel against Obama.

Now what in the world could these two men be talking about?

Obama is completely owned by the Israelis, just as his predecessors were. U.S. taxpayers continue to see their money channeled to the war-wanting Israeli theocracy, even as the number of jobless and homeless increase domestically. Our soldier-children are still on the hook to die for Israel — without a declaration of war — if Netanyahu divines that his holy book tells him that Israel’s God-given deed for all of Palestine needs protecting by attacking Iran. (NB: Odd isn’t it, how Washington routinely uses the separation-of-church-and-state tenet to attack U.S. Christians, but believes it is inapplicable when the U.S. federal government financially supports or militarily defends overseas theocracies like Israel and Saudi Arabia?)

In addition, Obama has an Israeli military veteran as his chief of staff, and almost certainly as a conduit for making sure his friends in that military are up-to-date on U.S.-collected intelligence. And 76 U.S. senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Clinton in April, 2010 — after Netanyahu publicly humiliated Obama and Biden — urging unqualified support for Israel because it is a “reliable ally and friend and has helped advance American interests.” This explains a lot about America’s problems if 76 senators believe Israel’s suborning U.S. citizens to spy on their country; selling U.S. high-technology to U.S. enemies; and corrupting the U.S. political system — at least to the extent of 76 AIPAC-owned U.S. senators – are the traits of a “reliable ally and friend.”

“Obama’s war on Israel” must meet a new-age definition of war that I have yet to learn. For all intents and purposes, Obama is an Israeli operative, as were his predecessors. Indeed, in this one area of policy U.S. presidents are very close to being agents of a foreign power, more interested in protecting Israel’s interests and territorial ambitions than in defending America.

Anyway, the war that more concerns me at the moment is the looming “Obama/McCain, Democratic/Republican war on the lives of America’s soldier-children and economy in the name of helping Israel destroy Iran.” That’s a long name for a war, and even an acronym would be too big a mouthful. If the war occurs, maybe we can just call it by its proper name: “TREASON.”

These two medium-size powers, Brazil and Turkey, have just challenged the guiding hand of Washington in determining nuclear strategy towards Iran. They undertook their own initiative to persuade Iran to accede to a deal on the handling of nuclear fuel issues. Not only was that initiative entirely independent, it moved replica omega ahead in the face of fairly crude American warnings to both states not to contemplate it – even though it closely paralleled one offered to Iran last year that fell through, mainly due to Iranian maneuvering and its fundamental distrust of Washington’s intent and blustering style.

Adding insult to injury, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan both had the temerity to actually succeed in their negotiations with Iran while Washington was publicly predicting their certain (and hoped for) failure.