A radical (explosive?) answer to Brexit and the future of Great Britain

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The most vexing problem with Brexit is Northern Ireland and its open border with the Republic of Ireland to its south.

Northern Ireland was always an anomaly.  It has been a pain the neck since Cromwell imported a bunch of extreme Protestant settlers from Scotland into Ireland centuries ago.  If it were not for these  stubborn  Protestants, who are becoming a minority in their own baileywick, by the way, the island of Ireland would be united.  In the not-so-old days the Catholic Church ran the south, but does so no longer.  The religious Protestants have increasingly less to worry about.  Northerners have been moving  and trading  easily and increasingly over the border,  coming and going constantly while the whole island is part of the EU.  Meanwhile, Northern Ireland costs the English a small fortune, but contributes little to Britain economically.

The whole Brexit fiasco could be resolved by the prime Minister announcing that she is proposing a vote in Northern Ireland on a merger between  North and South. The vote would be predicated on the termination of English subsidies, and the promise by the government in London to facilitate the move of those who strongly object to unification to England, together with financial help for them to find homes and jobs.

Doing this, with the cooperation of Dublin, of course, ( I am assuming that unification would be popular with the vast majority of Irish people, even most Norterners) would remove the need for a backstop as England leaves the EU and recognises the fact that Northerners voted strongly to remain in the EU (yes!).

I acknowledge that the corollary of this idea raises the immediate question of the future of Scotland in the union.  Scotland also voted strongly to remain (yes!) So let them go if they vote to do so, with the understanding that there would be a hard border between Scotland and England.  Being a canny lot they would apply to rejoin the EU.  They might or might not vote for independence, but in any case  this is the side effect of the manoeuvering of the Leave faction, that is, the breakup of the “United” Kingdom.  “Leave” leaders have a lot to answer for.  It’s just that they take responsibilty for nothing.

Why is this anything to do with Epicureanism?  Because in Britain friends are unfriending friends, neighbours aren’t speaking to one another, the public discourse is extreme and almost violent and families are divided.  I personally favour a new referendum, but it isn’t clear that that would achieve a resolution.  If this goes on much longer the country will not only be an economic basket case but will remain bitterly divided.  Better to have a moderate resolution.  The above idea would aggrieve a small number of northern Ireland Protestants. That  is regrettable but preferable to continuing with a situation that benefits only Vladimir Putin.

 

 

 

 

 

War with Iran? Part 2

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Continued from yesterday:

The Trump administration is, in fact, experiencing increasing difficulty finding allies ready to join a new Coalition of the Willing to confront Iran. The only two charter members so far, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are, however, enthusiastic indeed. Last month there was a rally in Warsaw to promote war, featuring Netanyahu as the  ringleader of the war party.   He was heard remarking that Israel and its Arab allies want war with Iran.  “This is an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.” (He later insisted that the correct translation should have been “combating Iran,” but the damage had already been done.)  Many of America’s allies, staunchly opposing Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear accord, would have nothing to do with it. In an effort to mollify the Europeans, in particular, the United States and Poland awkwardly renamed it: “The Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East.”  But the French, the Germans, and the European Union, among others, flatly declined to send ministerial-level representatives, since their policy is to salvage the Iran nuclear deal and to circumvent American sanctions (Trump and Pence are furious).  The many Arab nations not in thrall to Saudi Arabia similarly sent low-level delegations. Turkey and Russia boycotted altogether, convening a summit of their own in which Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Iran’s Rouhani.

In past year the Iranian has taken a nosedive, the currency has plunged, inflation is rampant, and there have been street demonstrations with shouts denouncing the Dictator.   Zarif, Iran’s  Western-oriented foreign minister, who supported the nuclear deal, resigned, although Rouhani rejected the resignation.   However, there are hard-liners who want Rouhani to go, want to abandon the accord and resume the nuclear program.  The Zarif resignation crisis threw into stark relief the deep tensions within Iranian politics and raised a key question: As the Trump administration accelerates its efforts to seek a confrontation, will they find an echo among Iranian hardliners who’d like nothing more than a face-off with the United States.  Maybe that’s exactly what Bolton and Pompeo want.  If so, prepare yourself: another stupid and unnecessary American war unlikely to work out the way anyone in Washington dreams it might.

An edited (for length) version of an article by Bob Dreyfuss, an investigative journalist, published in TomDispatch .  He is the founder of  The Dreyfuss Report and a contributing editor at the Nation.  He  has written for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the American Prospect, the New Republic, and many other magazines.      Original Copyright 2019 Bob Dreyfuss.

To visit the Bob Dreyfuss website:  TheDreyfussReport.com  https://thedreyfussreport.com

To visit TomDispatch:    tomdispatch@nationinstitute.org

War with Iran? Part 1 (divided into two for readability. It is long, but very important – it may not be reported in the mainline media)

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(The following 3 paragraphs are by Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tom Dispatch, the inside, go-to publication for military affairs, edited for length. Go to tomdispatch@nationinstitute.org

It is possible that the next U.S. military disaster of the twenty-first century might be Iran. That country has, of course, had a significant spot on Washington’s war-making to-do list since the days of George W. Bush’s presidency. After all, the Washington catch-phrase of that moment when neocons like John Bolton helped take us so disastrously into Iraq was “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.” The “real men” didn’t make it then. The question is: Will they now?

On  entering the Oval Office, Donald Trump turned to retired Marine Corps General James Mattis, revelling in his nickname, “Mad Dog”, as secretary of defense. As it happened, Mattis already had a reputation for being obsessed about Iran. As the head of U.S. Central Command in 2011, he reportedly responded to a query from President Obama about the top three threats across the Greater Middle East by saying, “Number one: Iran. Number two: Iran. Number three: Iran.” In the end, he was evidently removed from that command early because he hatched a scheme to take out an Iranian oil refinery or power plant  to pay Iran back for supporting Iraqi Shia militias then fighting American troops.

In the Trump era, the media began reporting that the same James Mattis was acting as a crucial restraint — yes, restraint — on the president!   Alongside him is National Security Advisor John Bolton (famous for a 2015 New York Times op-ed entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran”), and that other notorious Iranophobe, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (Bolton, a man who never saw a regime he didn’t want to change, has had similar urges when it comes to North Korea and may recently have been responsible for torpedoing the president’s summit with Kim Jong-un.) Now, of course, Mattis is gone, but the other two remain.

(The following is by Bob Drefuss, edited for length).

President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are all weakened at home and have few allies abroad.  Are they reckless enough to set off a war with Iran? Could military actions designed to be limited — say, a heightening of the Israeli bombing of Iranian forces inside Syria, or possible U.S. cross-border attacks from Iraq, or a clash between American and Iranian naval ships in the Persian Gulf — trigger a wider war?

Worryingly, the answers are: yes and yes. Even though Western Europe has lined up in opposition to any future conflict with Iran, even though Russia and China would rail against it, even though most Washington foreign policy experts would be horrified by the outbreak of such a war, it could happen.  Such a war could quickly spread across much of the Middle East, not just to Saudi Arabia and Israel, the region’s two major anti-Iranian powers, but Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and the various Persian Gulf states. It might indeed be, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani suggested last year (unconsciously echoing Iran’s former enemy, Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein) the “mother of all wars.” And though the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution last month calling for the United States to return to the nuclear agreement that President Obama signed, there are still a significant number of congressional Democrats who believe that Iran is a major threat to U.S. interests in the region,  a prime state sponsor of terrorism.

By openly calling for the toppling of the government in Tehran, by withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement and reimposing onerous sanctions to cripple that country’s economy, by encouraging Iranians to rise up in revolt, by overtly supporting various exile groups (and perhaps covertly even terrorists), and by joining with Israel and Saudi Arabia in an informal anti-Iranian alliance, the Administration is attempting to force the collapse of the Iranian regime, which just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

There are three potential flashpoints where limited skirmishes, were they to break out, could quickly escalate into a major shooting war.

The first is in Syria and Lebanon. Iran is deeply involved in defending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and is closely allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite political party with a potent paramilitary arm. Weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu openly boasted that his country’s air force had successfully taken out Iranian targets in Syria. In fact, little noticed here, dozens of such strikes have taken place for more than a year, with mounting Iranian casualties.

Until now, the Iranian leadership has avoided a direct response that would heighten the confrontation with Israel, just as it has avoided unleashing Hezbollah, a well-armed, battle-tested proxy force.  That could, however, change if the hardliners in Iran decided to retaliate. Should this simmering conflict explode, does anyone doubt that President Trump would soon join the fray on Israel’s side or that congressional Democrats would quickly succumb to the administration’s calls to back the Jewish state?

Next, consider Iraq as a possible flashpoint for conflict. In February, a blustery Trump told CBS’s Face the Nation that he intends to keep U.S. forces in Iraq “because I want to be looking a little bit at Iran because Iran is the real problem.” His comments did not exactly go over well with the Iraqi political class, since many of that country’s parties and militias are backed by Iran.

Trump’s declaration followed a Wall Street Journal report late last year that Bolton had asked the Pentagon — over the opposition of various generals and then-Secretary of Defense Mattis — to prepare options for “retaliatory strikes” against Iran. This roughly coincided with a couple of small rocket attacks against Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and the airport in Basra, Iraq’s Persian Gulf port city, neither of which caused any casualties.  Pompeo blamed Iran for the attacks, which he called “life-threatening,” adding, “Iran did not stop these attacks, which were carried out by proxies it has supported with funding, training, and weapons.” No “retaliatory strikes” were launched, but plans do undoubtedly now exist for them and it’s not hard to imagine Bolton and Pompeo persuading Trump to go ahead and use them — with incalculable consequences.

Finally, there’s the Persian Gulf itself. Ever since the George W. Bush years, the U.S. Navy has worried about possible clashes with Iran’s naval forces in those waters and there have been a number of incidents. The Obama administration tried, but failed, to arrange a hotline to the  Iranians to try to defuse any such incident.  Under Trump, however, such caution is disregarded.   Trump himself reinforced the US naval presence in the Gulf and asked Mattis to prepare plans to blow up Iran’s “fast boats,” small gunboats there.  In response, President Hassan Rouhani announced that his country had developed submarines capable of launching cruise missiles against naval targets.  The Iranians also began a series of Persian Gulf war games and, in late February, test fired one of those sub-launched missiles.

Add in one more thing: in an eerie replay of a key argument George Bush and Dick Cheney used for going to war with Iraq in 2003. In mid-February the right-wing media outlet Washington Times ran an “exclusive” report , citing Trump administration sources, claiming that Iran is now aiding and abetting al-Qaeda with a “clandestine sanctuary to funnel fighters, money, and weapons across the Middle East.”  It added that the administration is seeking to use this information to establish “a potential legal justification for military strikes against Iran or its proxies.” Needless to say, few are the terrorism experts or Iran specialists who would agree that Iran has anything like an active relationship with al-Qaeda.

Part of an edited (for length) version of an article by Bob Dreyfuss, an investigative journalist, published in TomDispatch .  He is the founder of  The Dreyfuss Report and a contributing editor at the Nation.  He  has written for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the American Prospect, the New Republic, and many other magazines. He is the author of “Devils’ Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam”  Original Copyright 2019 Bob Dreyfuss   TheDreyfussReport.com  https://thedreyfussreport.com

TOMORROW:  PART 2

Liberty and licence: a moral and ethical question.

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The  posting below about Big Soda trying to persuade the government that consuming excessive sugar is fine as long as you take plenty of exercise raises the issue of Liberty.

The Obama Administration was taken to task for what some regarded as too many regulations protecting consumers, the environment etc.  The current Administration is scrapping swathes of these regulations.

I would like to hear from a Libertarian about the moral and ethical issues that arise from this dismantling policy.  For instance, is it ethical for the government to tell people it’s o.k to drink as much sugar – sweetened soda as they want as long as they get some exercise, when all the medical research tells us that exercise cannot,  by itself, prevent obesity and illness?   Is it o.k to allow companies to dump toxic waste near rivers that provide drinking water?  Is it the legitimate exercise of liberty to foul the air we breathe with coal and other fumes and particulates that create long term health problems?  It is, in the name of liberty, o.k to feed , say, chickens copious amounts of antibiotics ( to protect farm investment) that are then consumed by humans?  Is it acceptable to allow mining and oil drilling in “protected” areas of natural beauty?

One could go on for pages!  What I would like to know is at what point is it acceptable to Libertarians to restrain the impulse to monetarise and exploit everything in sight in the name of profit, shareholder value and capitalism?  And what and who would you protect from disease and death?  Did you oppose the campaign to rein back Philip Morris and their tobacco business?   ( apologies for being dramatic, but in my world a government exists to benefit the whole population , not just those with connections and money. Yes, think moderation).

Big soda altering government policies in their own commercial interest

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Consumer groups in the US have accused Coca Cola of trying to alter the policy of the  Centers for Disease Control in relation to sugar consumption by donating $1 million to the CDC Foundation and pressing the CDC to downplay sugar consumption as a cause of obesity and bad health (diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and cancer) and  instead talk about the importance  of exercise, which, by itself, in isolation will not reverse obesity or diabetes.  There have been no investigations or regulatory activity by Congress into Big Sugar and Big Soda under Obama or under Trump, so far.  

Just another case that illustrates who runs the country.  This is a run-of-the-mill example of how the interests of the ordinary citizen are subordinated to raising cash for Party coffers . Thousands of lives were lost before previous governments actually did something to stop Big Tobacco knowingly supply products that caused lung cancer.  Eventually, warnings were printed on cigarette packs, and cigarette use dwindled.  High consumption of sugar costs the country huge amounts in terms of healthcare.   American healthcare costs per head of population are already high enough, for goodness sake.

Moderation is a key Epicurean principle.  If the government, quaking with fear before a hoard of highly-paid lobbyists, cannot even try to protect the health of unaware consumers, then at least it shouldn’t allow the industry to peddle the lie that you can drink as much sweet soda as you want as long as you get a bit of exercise.  Stand up to these lobbyists.  Drink soda in moderation!  ( Mr. Trump, are you listening?)