Reframing the Iran Nuclear Agreement

Critics of the proposed "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" agreement with Iran and six other world powers fail to address the double standards that run rampant with the nuclear club. Of the current nuclear club members (US, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) only China and India have pledged a non-first use of nuclear weapons, while the US is the only state that has used them. The use of nuclear weapons would be a moral, environmental and legal crime as they kill indiscriminately.

Those nation states without nuclear weapons that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have in large part agreed to forgo acquisition of nuclear arms because the treaty, which came into affect in 1970, included one of three foundation pillars of the treaty that required the members of the club to eliminate their stockpile of nuclear weapons. Even as the Cold War ended, the US, as the lone superpower, blew an opportunity to defuse what has become again an increasing global concern. Why are no concerns are raised of those nations that already have them, especially those that have not yet declared a no first use?

According to the Federation of American Scientists there are approximately 15,700 nuclear warheads in the hands of the nuclear club. The U.S. and Russia have by far the most, more than 7,000 each. 


The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) reports that each of the club members is building and/or modernizing its stockpile. Why is there  ZERO concern with this fact, while we have so much attention regarding one country that might someday get one and which has signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Pact?

Meanwhile the U.S. budget for nuclear weapons spending grows. The National Priorities Project calculates that we US taxpayers spent $2.2 million EVERY HOUR.


The Union of Concerned Scientists reported earlier this year that President Obama's 2016 budget plan called for $328 billion to be invested in reshaping our nuclear arsenal over the next decade. This from a fellow who gave an impassioned call for nuclear arms reduction in Prague shortly after beginning his presidency.

While President Obama has given lip service to reducing our nuclear arsenal, he has done almost nothing to move forward on it. Perhaps realizing that fear baiting legislators and their military-industrial-complex supporters, would throw out the usual ‘red herring’ that he’d be turning the US over to communists, terrorists, or whatever the evil incarnate du jour happens to be. Just look at what they are saying about the Iran agreement which has broad global support. 

We spend more on military than the next seven nations combined, as Robert Reich notes in his short video on The Costs of War and yet the fear-mongers tell us it’s not enough. We need more weapons, more deadly weapons. If the roles were reversed and China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Brazil, India or Pakistan was in that position, wouldn’t we be concerned about their excessive power? Can you imagine how the rest of the world looks at us – the one that has so many nuclear weapons, has used them, has invaded or attacked numerous nation states since WWII?

I wouldn't claim here that Iran is a democratic paradise, although it seems to treat their people better than does, say our good friend Saudi Arabia, and probably gives less support to enemies of the US than do the Saudis. And don’t forget how we helped overthrow their democratically elected president in the mid-50s and installed our puppet Shah who, like our one time buddy, Saddam, was a terror to his people


Just as Israel has destroyed Gaza to the point that the UN reported last week that at current deteriorating rate, it will be unlivable in five years, so did we with destroy Iraq, not only their infrastructure, but their society. 

We aren’t the saints those who espouse American exceptionalism tout us to be. Nor is Iran, the vilest nation on the planet. The Iranians love their children as much as we love ours. It’s time to stop the cycle of violence. The threats or use of more violence will not provide the children we both love the security and freedom from fear that we all desire. Join with the community of nations in building a peaceful  future by inviting Iran to join with our human family in renouncing nuclear weapons.

Perhaps if we had a department focused on peace instead of war (the Department of Defense was called the Department of War) we could find more ways to use our heads to build a lasting peace. Actually, Rep. Barbara Lee, the ONLY member of Congress brave enough to vote against the "authorization of the use of force" resolution after the 9/11 tragedy  has reintroduced such a proposal to create a Department of Peacebuilding, H.R. 1111.


 Rep. Lee was right on September 14, 2001. And she is right in recommending the peacebuilding approach now. See her short speech to Congress almost 14 years ago to the day and be inspired to stand up for peace and against war.

No Justification

Report on UNCTAD assistance to the Palestinian people: Developments in the economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory

This report just released from the UN Conference on Trade and Development on the situation in Gaza show just what our insane foreign policy can buy. The innocuous title belies the provocative material inside it. Although the brouhaha over the concerns with the pending Iran nuclear agreement will pretty much guarantee this report will be largely ignored by our mass media. I for one am frustrated at the vivid hypocrisy of those in the U.S. Congress that harp on the awful Iranian government while we ignore, for example, our good pals the Saudi Arabian dynasty which funds lots of horror in the world and who treats its own women as second-class citizens.

But all this pales in my mind from yet another pile of evidence of what our blind allegiance to the government of Israel has most recently purchased.  I’ve seen a few photos and little videos of the destruction in Gaza but the 18 page report from the UN  released this week, if you can stomach reading it all, makes pretty clear that you would need a lot of pictures to describe what Israel, and by proxy, the U.S. has inflicted on the people of this ancient land. There is in my mind, NO legitimate moral or legal justification for the situation in the Palestinian Territories, most acutely in Gaza as delineated by this report. The targeted destruction of 15,000 fruit trees is hardly a defensive action.  The report suggests that current trends would make Gaza unlivable in five years. Based on what I read it seems that way now. Let the report speak for itself.

“The Palestinian economy is the economy of an occupied territory, and

therefore – contrary to the claims of some observers – the efficacy of donor support has been undermined by occupation, not by the inadequacy of Palestinian National Authority policies or poor donor coordination. The fiscal burden of the humanitarian crises and the occupation-related fiscal losses have diverted donor aid from development to humanitarian interventions and budget support. No amount of aid would have been sufficient to put any economy on a path of sustainable development under conditions of frequent military strikes and destruction of infrastructure, isolation from global markets, fragmentation of domestic markets and confiscation and denial of access to national natural resources.” (pp.2-3)

The contraction of the Palestinian per capita GDP by 3.3 per cent and the extremely high unemployment rates subject large sections of the Palestinian population to poverty and food insecurity. Before the military operation in Gaza and the economic contraction in 2014, food insecurity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was already very high, with one in three households food insecure, according to 2013 data. Conditions were worse in Gaza, where nearly 6 in 10 households were food insecure compared to 1 in 5 households in the West Bank (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics et al , 2014). (p.4)

Israeli settlements in the West Bank continued to expand, and the number of settlers has quadrupled since the Oslo Accords. Today, settlers outnumber Palestinians in Area C (61 per cent of West Bank area), which includes the most valuable Palestinian natural resources. Overall, 341,000 Israeli settlers live in 235 settlements and outposts in Area C, compared to 300,000 Palestinians (United Nations, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2014a). Settlers’ violence against Palestinians and their productive assets continued, with 9,333 productive trees destroyed or vandalized in 2014. The violence escalated in 2015; in January

alone, another 5,600 trees across the West Bank were uprooted or vandalized (

OCHA, 2015). (p.4)

Towards the end of 2014 the movement of Palestinian people and goods in the

West Bank was hindered by 490 barriers installed by Israel, including checkpoints, roadblocks, trenches and the Separation Barrier, which runs into the Occupied Palestinian Territory and unilaterally redefines the borders away from the internationally recognized Green Line (OCHA, 2014b). Gaza remained under a blockade that isolates it from the world and its traditional markets in the West Bank and Israel, which absorbed some 85 per cent of its exports before the blockade. (p.4)

The latest military operation has effectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid. With the destruction of the economy and its capacity to create jobs, food insecurity now affects 72 per cent of households (Office of the Quartet Representative (OQR), 2014). Consequently, the majority of the population is forced into dependency on humanitarian aid to meet basic needs. The number of Palestinian refugees solely reliant on food distribution from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) increased from 72,000 in 2000 to 868,000 by May 2015, representing half the population of

Gaza and 65 percent of the registered  refugees (UNRWA, 2015b) (p.8)

OQR compiled a partial list of damages incurred by Gaza during the 2014

operation, which have significant economic and social effects, and reported the following (OQR, 2014):

(a)  18,000 housing units destroyed or severely damaged and 44,300 units damaged

(b)  26 schools destroyed and 122 damaged

(c)  15 hospitals and 45 primary health centres damaged

(d)  Gaza’s sole power plant affected by damage and lack of fuel and widespread damage to electricity lines

(e)  20–30 per cent of the water and sewage network damaged

(f)   Water desalination plant in Deiral-Balah damaged

(g)  Total damage to the agricultural sector at $550 million

(h)  220 agricultural wells destroyed or badly damaged

(i)   At least 40,000 people employed in the agricultural sector affected through

Damage to agricultural lands and the loss and/or death of productive animals

(j)   247 factories and 300 commercial establishments fully or partially destroyed

(k) Damages to Gaza Industrial Estate estimated at $5 million

(l)   Widespread damage to landline, mobile and Internet infrastructure, including destruction of switches, fixed - line networks, cellular stations, networks, cables and the headquarters of companies

(m)       Loss of existing contracts and partially approved future contracts of information and communications technology (ICT) - related businesses and software outsourcing centres

(n) A number of tourist sites destroyed or damaged, including sites being considered for application for World Heritage status from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (pp.9-10)

During the last six years, Gaza has endured severe human losses, with

three military operations claiming the lives of at least 3,782 Palestinians and 95 Israelis.4 According to OCHA and UNRWA, in 2014, Gaza witnessed the highest civilian death toll since 1967. By May 2015, 20 per cent of Gaza’s population, or 360,000 people, needed treatment for mental health conditions, and there is already a serious shortages of such services. With regard to children, Gaza’s future human capital, 521 lost their lives, and about 1,000 were injured and 400,000 are in need of immediate psychosocial support (OCHA, 2014c, and Save the Children, 2015). (p.11)

There is much more in these 18 pages which come more than a month after an Amnesty International report on the Gaza conflict.

You might also consider Richard Falk’s recent blog and review of Mohammed Omer’s recently published Shell-Shocked: On the Ground under Israel’s Gaza Assault.

What we do with this is less clear. But adding more arms to the equation is the last thing we should be doing.

Arms Are for Hugging

Arms are for hugging. At least, they should be. But Oscar Arias Sanchez, former President of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner notes that arms are also killing us.
He just published this opinion piece to accompany the First Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (Cancún, Mexico,  August 24-27th, 2015).
“Throughout modern history, we have, in effect, told the children of the world that while we will regulate the international trade in food and textiles and any other product under the sun, we are not interested in regulating the international trade in deadly weapons”.

We just recently passed the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, Most of us with a pulse realize the world is poised to enter into a nuclear arms agreement with Iran, if the U.S. Congress doesn't subvert diplomacy. Yet there comes news this week also of yet other 'illegal' arms being used in Yemen. The U.S. supplied cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, which is not a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. And of course, they are using them in opposition to the treaty.

In fact, as defense analyst William Hartung noted "the volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion." This is the legacy of a Nobel Peace Prize winner? Hartung was reporting before the announcement earlier this month that the US was speeding up arm sales to the Gulf States. Hartung , in a piece published in Foreign Policy this year shared more insights into the growth in the arms trade, calling the Iran negotiations an "Arms Fair".

The latest data available from SIPRI - Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, five of the top six arms manufacturers are US based multinational corporations. Names familiar to most of us including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northop Grumman, and General Dynamics accounted for more than $120 billion in 2013, the last year for which data is available. The stakes are high and President Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago about the power of the "military industrial complex". No doubt, it is alive and well and driving foreign policy here and abroad. 


Oxfam reported recently, while calling for implementation of the International Arms Trade Treaty, that armed violence in Africa alone costs the continent $18 billion a year, the rough equivalent of the total amount of foreign aid they receive.

All this paints a backdrop for the debate over the Iran Nuclear Agreement reached with Britain, China, France, Germany Russia and the U.S. One side you have the Israeli government and its supporters declaring that to agree to this pact is the death to Israel. Of course, Netanyahu, the Israeli President has been making much the same claim for 20 years. Richard Falk, eminent international legal scholar exposes that narrative in a blogpost  last month. 

The fear mongering of those opposed to the agreement, and even some of the supporters, is wildly speculative. Iran is depicted as the axis of evil while Saudi Arabia gets a pass on their behavior towards both their citizens and neighbors, behavior that is arguably worse on both counts. And almost everyone agrees that the failure of this agreement would bring an escalation in violence, instability, and yes, of course arms sales!!!!

Which nations have nuclear weapons now and do they all allow 24x7 inspection of their nuclear facilities by the IAEA? I think we know the answer. Double standards based on raising fear levels escalates the manufacture, sale and use of arms. Let's not let diplomacy get in the way of that. president Eisenhower must be shaking his head and saying, "I told you so."

Let's move beyond the Iran nuclear agreement and get an arms reduction agreement for all arms and use our real arms for hugging and shaking hands.

Thinking the Twenty-First Century

I stumbled on this one, Thinking the Twenty-first Century: Ideas for the New Political Economy, during one of my usual visits to the new book shelf at the MSU Libraries.



I had not heard of the author, Malcolm McIntosh, before, but the title was intriguing and the praise on the book jacket was urging me to peek inside the covers. 

"This book has restless urgency which demands recognition...This is a powerful work by a man at his peak and will, in fifty years' time, be seen as a masterpiece." Tim Smith, co-founder of The Eden Project.

So I added it to the pile at home. I picked it up one morning and then was finished within a week, other books having been started had to wait. The opening sentences compelled me forward.

" This is a book about change, about change that is happening now--what might be called rapid evolution. It is transitionary, necessary, nascent and inelectuble. It is a book about the past, the present and the future and its about theory and practice. It contains evidence, anecdote, musings and passion. It is set in the second decade of the twenty-first century and has been written while I have been undergoing treatment for incurable cancer."

McIntosh, has quite the interesting pedigree as noted at his website at Griffith University (Australia) where he teaches:

          Dr Malcolm McIntosh FRSA is the Founding Director, and a Professor, of the Asia Pacific Centre               for Sustainable Enterprise at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, which he joined in 2009. He started teaching and writing on corporate responsibility and sustainability in 1990 after             previous careers in television production and journalism with the BBC, peace research at Bradford        University, and business and language teaching in Sweden, Japan and Australia. He has worked at       the universities of Warwick and Coventry and been a visiting professor at the universities of Bath,          Bristol, Stellenbosch, Waikato, and Sydney. He is the producer, author or co-author of more than        twenty books and numerous articles for journals, magazines and newspapers and he has been a           frequent commentator on television and radio around the world on social issues, business                    responsibility and sustainable enterprise. He has been a special advisor to the UN global Compact         and was the founding editor of the Journal of Corporate Citizenship. In the last two decades he              has advised governments, corporations and international NGOs as well as working at a                         community level to establish local initiatives. In the words of one reviewer ‘in a world of siloed              thinking he has concentrated on getting people to talk to people they wouldn’t normally talk to’             and built partnerships for innovative research and publishing projects, pioneered the teaching of           business, human rights, and sustainability in business and management schools, and been at the          heart of many corporate responsibility initiatives. He loves working across boundaries and                     breaking the institutionalised rules that prevent the growth of human and Earth-centred                          development.

Given his circumstance of fighting incurable cancer, it should not be surprising to sense an urgency pulsing through this book. Sometimes that urgency could use some editing, but even where some clarity is missing, McIntosh takes us to visit the weeds on the forest floor, but he's also giving us an ecosystem level analysis. Having danced in the world of journalism, research, business, and teaching over a number of decades he brings all those experiences to bear as he synthesizes what he has learned and what direction he encourages us to follow. It is clear he has thought deeply about the Twenty-first Century and we would be wiser if we listened to what he has discerned. Some examples:

     Events come and go. Some commentators have argued that activities around the world in the 1960s achieved little, and the Occupy movement in the 2000s fizzled out without much perceivable success. But, as with the Middle East demonstrations, in each case, the ability to meet and break free of the shackles of government or corporations is a liberation; and the questions that are raised by these free and sometimes random voices echo through social discourse long after the demonstrators have been beaten back by tear gas, truncheon, Injunction, dissipation or exhaustion. It is often to these people that we owe human progress in the face of intransigence or inertia on the part of the institutions that have arisen around power, money, religion or other vested interest. (pp.73-4)

     ...Our current model of capitalism is still, even in this century of growing planetary awareness, based on a model of expansion and limitless resource extraction. Physicist Fritjof Capra's 1982 book The Turning Point drew on the idea of the balance of yin and yang in all things to make the point that the world is currently unbalanced. It is too yang: too masculine,right-brained, aggressive, individualistic, and conquering. This has led to the earth being plundered, not respected. We have forgotten (or did we ever know?) that we are not above nature, but part of it. The yin has become inferior and we are out of balance. We need to balance the whole and introduce awe, wonder and respect in our relationship with that which sustains us. Yin has been regarded as a lower-order function.
     Yin and yang are not a question of either-or but a respect for balance or a holistic view of all issues. Too much yang is implicit in 'scientific/rational' research and management theory and has led to too little light being cast on subjects such as trust, love, and spirituality in business and management. (p.129)

     ...Capitalism and economics did not fail in the 2008/9 crash because capitalism and economics has no memory, soul or conscience. It is simply an idea given substance by its political context. It was that context that failed then and continues to fail now. The dominant model of economics that dominates many large national economies and international trade and banking is illusory, but, in the eyes of commentators such as Philip Morowski, the logic of neoliberalists is that the market 'is the ultimate information system'. It is omnipotent and superior to human intelligence and should, like god, be beyond our control because, if we dally with it, it will fail us. Mirowski, Yvonne Roberts, Picketty and others observe that this model, which espouses freedom through liberalization, marketization, commodification and objectification, has enslaved us all by quantifying all human activity only in financial terms. It would have us trade every tree, all the Earth's resources and our love for one another in worship of the market. It has infantilized us all in the pursuit of the false god of financial growth. (pp. 166-7)

...Our global economic system needs new rules, and not NO rules; and our supra-territorial corporations, whether state-, mutually or shareholder-owned, need new rules on governance, transparency, responsibility, rights, reporting and accountability. So, how did we get to this state?
     Let's distinguish between two issues. First, we all believe in markets, exchange and trade. Who wouldn't? Second, it is recognized that society is made up of institutions and organizations. Both are made in our own image, but both are now in need of rigorous examination to see if they deliver public and social good and to see if they conform to the principle of 'do no harm' and 'the precautionary principle'. (p.175)

McIntosh does his best to help us see the connections and the possibilities that might build a better future for our heirs. His spirited inquiry just might inspire some to get involved. Hope he lives to see a better day.