/ North America

• US Sanctions Against Iran Undermined by New Government Admissions

  The announcement of the Iranian government that it will activate its Fordow nuclear enrichment site has predictably drawn forth a new round of war propaganda from the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In contrast, the Chinese media accurately report Iran’s affirmation that the new site will be subject to UN inspections and so is perfectly legal. Ironically, what Clinton says is diametrically opposite from the repeated assurances given by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, that Iran is not trying to construct a nuclear warhead. True, he put it in a misleading way, saying that Iran “is not yet building a…

• Mexican Government Under Assault From Drug Cartels, Washington Yawns

  Suspected Mexican drug traffickers from the Zetas drug cartel on 20 September drove two trucks to a main avenue in the Mexican Gulf coast city of Boca del Rio in Veracruz state and dumped 35 corpses during rush hour while gunmen stood guard, menacing frightened motorists with automatic weapons. So, why is this being written about here? Well, if for no other reason, Mexico’s drug cartels have declared a de facto war with the government for control of the country’s northern provinces for exports routes into the United States. Meanwhile, Washington, fixated on the decade-old war on terror, the Middle…

• The Drug War as an International Manifestation: Effects

  At the moment in México, a protest movement has started called the No Mas Sangre (No More Blood) movement. This movement is attempting to show that people do not support nor wish to continue the war on los narcos, which was started in the 2006 after the election of Felipe Calderón (Partido Accionista Nacional). Calderón began this drug war with the support of the United States through the Merida Initiative and also the verbal backing of President George W. Bush. The point of this war was to eradicate the drug cartels in México, that came into power during the 70…

• America: Why Aren’t You Protesting?

  As noted by Richard Heinberg on June 22nd, 2011, the media has lacked the ability to connect the economic situations in the Middle East and their uprisings to what is happening in Europe. I would avoid the word “Revolution” in the case of the Middle Eastern uprisings, seeing as no dramatic systemic changes have taken place, only the ousting of dictators. Same as I would avoid the words of social upheaval in the case of European protests, which have been quite calm and only demanding to maintain the social safety nets produced through years of labor struggle. Rather, the odd…

• United States Confronted With a New Awareness of its Military and Political Constraints

  The momentous protests in the Arab region, and especially Libya, present the Barack Obama administration with a serious foreign-policy test. The conflict in this part of north Africa is the first major new overseas challenge since the president took office in January 2009. The way he handles it is then bound to have important consequences, for Obama’s political future and the US’s geopolitical position alike. The complex issues of grand strategy he has earlier faced include how to deal with Iran (in relation both to Tehran’s nuclear plans, and to the crisis following the stolen election of June 2009); the…

• Wikileaks and America's Damaged Diplomatic Machinery

  The WikiLeaks affair has generated a great deal of commentary but very little of it has examined its effects upon one interested readership: historians. To us it has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, the release of so much, so soon, ought to have given rise to euphoria among those who ordinarily must wait several decades for the release of just a fraction of what has already been promised on the Internet. On the other hand, historians, especially diplomatic historians, tend toward qualified pessimism. One of them, Paul W. Schroeder, concluded last week in the  New York Times…

• Wikileaks: State Secrets or Clever Tactics

  Is the US Government Machiavellian enough to orchestrate the recent brouhaha over the so-called website WikiLeaks, is this a real embarrassment, or will it indeed be damaging as some U.S. diplomats claim? I am not one to support conspiracy theories but when you stop to analyze the content of the information that was leaked it seem that two things emerge: first, the content of the cables were not so earth shattering as to damage national security, or harm Washington’s relations with other countries. Second, upon further analysis, it would appear that the information revealed instead sends a strong message to…

• Washington Turf Wars

  Washington’s bureaucratic turf wars are a dismal reality of politics in Beltwayistan, but are now threatening national policy, as competing agendas threaten policies extending far beyond the continental U.S. In two of the most notable recent examples, the Kazakh “Giffengate” corruption case and attempts to extradite notorious “Lord of War” Viktor Bout to the United States, eager federal officials in both cases are running up against other government elements content to let both cases lie fallow, notably the CIA and Pentagon. The controversies, schizophrenic as they are, shed a bright light into the darker corners of federal realpolitic, pitting the…

• Warbots: US Military Increasing Investment in Automated Technologies

  Last July, Piasecki Aircraft Corporation, with the help of Carnegie Mellon University, developed a navigation system that allows the full-sized helicopters to fly at low altitudes without a pilot. These new unmanned helicopters are the latest in automated military technology; where the predator drone UAV demonstrated a significant step in the development of unmanned - and lethal - military technologies, these helicopters can now be controlled remotely by nothing more than a pilot and computer. In a press release from Helicopter Association International, such autonomous flight at low altitudes is an “unprecedented” innovation, and can be used for “future unmanned…

• The United States Weakest Link

  Any system, organization or device is only as strong as its weakest component. What are the weakest links in the U.S. culture and economy? The reason why most of the "durable consumer goods" sold in the U.S. now are garbage is that most of them contain cheap components which will fail long before the rest of the "durable" is even close to the end of its usefulness. The truism is that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the same is true of organizations, systems, organisms, devices and consumer goods. The fundamental reason for the preponderance…