GPI -- GDP is killing us

Real Wealth
The Genuine Progress Indicator Could Provide an Environmental Measure of the Planet's Health

by Linda Baker

On October 17, 1995, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) asked his colleagues in the Senate to rethink sacred notions of economic progress. "We are told daily that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in America is up, our economy is moving forward and we are doing so well. But why, when Americans are working longer and harder just to keep up, why are we told that things are so good, that the GDP is a measure of enormous progress?"

The answer, continued Dorgan, is that the GDP is fatally flawed, as it privileges the world of the market at the expense of social and environmental breakdown. "The gross domestic product adds up everything Americans spend and declares that as the total good. As a result, the hundreds of billions of dollars that Americans spend to cope with crime, the lawyers, and social breakdown costs, is all GDP--car crashes, fender benders in front of the Capitol. Mr. President, $200 billion a year in repair bills and hospital bills give this country a real boost," says Dorgan.

The New Measure

Dorgan based much of his speech on an article that had come out in The Atlantic Monthly that same month, titled "If the Economy is Up, Why Is America Down?" In it, authors Clifford Cobb, Tad Halstead and Jonathan Rowe (who now does research for Dorgan) propose a different measure--a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). The GPI would add up the nation's expenses (GDP), factor in sectors that are usually excluded from the market economy such as housework and volunteering, and then subtract social ills: crime, natural resource depletion and loss of leisure time.

No surprise: the GPI figures reveal a cloud in the silver lining of the GDP. As measured by the GPI, the U.S. economy has declined by 45 percent in the past two decades. The GDP figures, on the other hand, indicate the economy has more than doubled its growth rate since the early 1950s.

The disparity between the two indexes, argue the authors, confirms that the GDP is no longer an accurate gauge of economic progress. "The GPI reveals that much of what we now call growth or GDP is really just one of three things in disguise: fixing blunders and social decay from the past, borrowing resources from the future, or shifting functions from the traditional realm of household and community to the realm of the monetized economy."

Illustration by Chris Murphy
Three years after the publication of the Atlantic article, Dorgan's impassioned 40-minute speech, and a flurry of congratulatory newspaper articles and editorials, the GPI remains controversial for its economic methodology. Yet it is becoming a powerful tool for advocates of social change, environmentalists in particular. The ideas embodied in the GPI are being pursued in books such as Paul Hawken's Natural Capitalism and Stanford University biologist Gretchen C. Daly's Nature's Services, both of which underscore the economic worth of ecosystem "services." And across the country, dozens of communities are adopting their own "sustainability indicators" as a means of assessing their economic, environmental and social condition.

Changing Directions

"We want people to rethink what progress is all about," says Mathis Wackernagel, director of Indicator Programs at Redefining Progress, the San Francisco-based policy organization that developed the GPI and other social progress indicators. "We want to live well as people, but there's only so much ecological capacity on this planet. That's the essence of the sustainable dilemma, and that's what the GPI and other 'real life' measures can help us to do."

The criticisms leveled against the GDP, the country's main index of progress, boil down to this: what it deems as growth is merely increased spending. It doesn't tell us if the spending is good or bad. This kind of critique is nothing new. In fact, it originated with Simon Kuznets, the man who helped create the national accounting system to jump start a post-war economy. In his first report to Congress in 1934, Kuznets warned that "the welfare of a nation" can "scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above." Further, argued Kuznets, as the economy expands, the requirements for economic growth also change. "Goals for more growth," he said, "should specify more growth of what and for what."

Since that time, a number of economists and policy makers have tried to highlight the shortcomings of the GDP. Just before he was assassinated, Robert Kennedy delivered a speech attacking the national index that was all the more notable since it came from an aspiring president. "If you were an economist with a soul, Bobby Kennedy's GDP speech made you weep," says Everett Erlich, undersecretary for economic affairs from 1993 to 1997 and now president of ESC, an economics consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

Over 400 U.S. economists, including Professor Herbert Simon, a Nobel laureate, and Professor Robert Eisner, a former president of the American Economics Association, are backing a GPI initiative stating that the GDP ignores social and environmental costs and is thus "inadequate and misleading as a measure of true prosperity." Despite increasing interest, however, an intractable political and corporate culture has successfully arrested efforts to change the nation's system of tallying accounts. The quarterly release of GDP figures has become a national ritual, albeit one that is little understood by the public.

Today, GDP percentages are used as a blueprint for Wall Street takeovers, federal budget calculations and political campaign strategies. Just last January, in his State of the Union address, Clinton exploited the mystique of quarterly GDP numbers to keep attention focused on national well-being instead of presidential impeachment.
The nation's political reliance on the GDP was spotlighted in 1994, when the Commerce Department undertook a project to adjust the GDP for depletion of oil and other nonrenewable resources. Called the Integrated Economic and Satellite Accounts (IESA), the program was eventually supposed to include renewable resources like forests and factors such as changes in air quality. But soon after the data on nonrenewables was published, Congress cried foul and effectively shut down the program. The rationale was clear: "Somebody is going to say...that the coal industry isn't contributing anything to the country," Congressman Alan Mollohan of West Virginia said at the time.

According to Larry Moran, a spokesperson for the Commerce Department, the Bureau of Economic Affairs has not received any funding for Phase Two of the IESA and has no plans to move forward with the environmental accounting system. When they shut down the IESA, says Erlich, "Congress made thinking about a Green GDP a thought crime."

Compelling Logic

But it is precisely because the GDP is so clearly skewed in favor of natural resource exploitation that the GPI is such a compelling idea for environmentalists. According to the perverse logic of the GDP, the nation prospers every time there is an oil spill, an increase in air pollution or a depletion of habitat. Why? Because an environmental disaster creates jobs and stimulates the economy. As the people at Redefining Progress put it, when measured by the GDP, the nation's most desirable habitat is a multibillion dollar, toxic Superfund site. "If we have to use one index as a guide to policy," says Jay Andrew Hoerner, senior research scholar at the Center for Sustainable Economy, "we must make the kinds of adjustments made in the GPI."

In a sense, we already are. Seemingly disparate concerns--the North American Free Trade Agreement and rapid deforestation, corporate welfare and global warming--are weakening the traditional polarization between environmental protection and economic growth. Green taxes, natural capitalism and ecological deficits--an entirely new language has been created to explain an environmentalism rooted in self-interest and an economics rooted in nature's commodities. Redefining Progress itself is reaping the benefits of these shifting alliances, says Wackernagel. "Banks are now giving us money," he says, making reference to the organization's "Ecological Footprint" project, which monitors the ecological capacity of individual countries. "They are investing in government bonds and want to know, 'Do countries have ecological deficits? Are they overspending their natural capacity?'"

Governments, says Wackernagel, don't want to expose themselves because it's obvious they're moving in the wrong direction. "But these will be the vulnerable countries of the future." Indonesia provides a useful case study. Since 1970, development experts had labeled the southeast Asian country a success story for its rapid growth rate (as measured by GDP) of seven percent a year. But a study by the World Resources Institute in 1989 revealed that after adding in the costs of forest clear-cutting and intensive farming, the country's rate of sustainable growth was really only one-half the original. Ten years later, with the clarity of hindsight, the collapse of the Indonesian economy is proof of the GDP's fragile mask.

Limits to Growth

Paul Hawken outlines a similar scenario in Natural Capitalism. For the first time in history, argues Hawken, the obstacle to national and global prosperity is not the lack of man-made capital such as investments, factories and equipment, but the lack of natural capital, which he defines as both nonrenewable and renewable resources. "The limits to increased fish harvests are not boats," he writes, "but productive fisheries; the limits to irrigation are not pumps or electricity, but viable aquifers; the limits to pulp and lumber production are not sawmills, but plentiful forests."

Moreover, argues Hawken, it's time to stop defining natural capital in terms of the commodities they provide--wood, for example. Instead, we should recognize the critical "services" they provide, like clean air and water, ocean productivity and fertile soil. In her essay "Valuing Nature's Services," Worldwatch Institute researcher Janet Abramovitz takes these ideas one step further by recognizing and assigning value to the "income" the ecosystem delivers to the market economy: production of raw materials, purification of water, waste decomposition, soil maintenance, pollination and pest control, and regulation of local and global climates.

"Honeybee pollination activity is 60 to 100 times more valuable than the honey they produce," writes Abramovitz. "The value of wild blueberry bees is so great, with each one pollinating four to five gallons of blueberries in its life, that farmers view them as 'flying $50 bills.'"

Ecological economists (who are creating a new field within the established discipline of environmental economics) argue that the GDP not only encourages exploitation of natural resources but that, astoundingly, it ignores the use value of renewable and nonrenewable resources to the economy. "Nature's 'free' goods and services aren't included in the gross domestic product," writes Abramovitz. "But nature's services are not, in fact, free, and the future will bear the hidden costs of losing them." The mission statement of Portland, Oregon-based EcoTrust, one of a small but growing number of organizations seeking to use economic tools for conservation purposes, puts it this way: "The development of a conservation economy is a deeply 'conservative' strategy. Just as a reasonable businessperson will seek to grow his or her asset base and live off current income instead of debt, conservation economics seeks to preserve and grow the natural capital ...to live off income instead of 'eating our seed corn,' and to build as much new wealth as possible on increasing knowledge."

Neither Right Nor Left

Although ecologically-minded organizations are often associated with political liberals, proponents of the GPI have discovered unlikely bedfellows in the form of conservative groups that are joining the attack on the nation's main index of progress. In 1993, former Secretary of Education William Bennett produced a study called the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, to chart the social decline that has taken place--divorce, crime, media addiction--even as the economy has grown. The right-leaning Family Research Council has developed a similar measure.

At the same time, Redefining Progress is not the only progressive institution to generate social change indicators. Another national gauge of well-being is the Index of Social Health, which is published annually by Fordham University's Graduate Center in Tarrytown, New York. Since 1985, the center has studied the nation's health through the evaluation of 16 indicators affecting children, teenagers, adults and the elderly: infant mortality, child abuse, poverty, suicides, drug use, drop-out rates, average salaries and health insurance coverage. Like the GPI, the Fordham Index shows steady declines, from 73.8 out of a possible 100 in 1970 to 40.6 in 1993. There is also the Physical Quality of Life Index, which measures literacy, infant mortality and life expectancy, as does the Worldwatch Institute in its State of the World volumes.

Together, these indexes reinforce the need for new definitions of growth and progress. Moreover, the social message sounded by these national monitors can also be heard at the local and regional level. In response to tremendous increases in urban growth, communities across the country are undertaking "community indicator projects" that take a frank look at livability issues. Sustainable Seattle, for example, is internationally known for its indicator model, which uses a list of 40 cultural, ecological, economic and social indicators to assess progress toward sustainability. Last year, the group released a "Sustainable 98 Report" showing, among other things, that wild salmon runs in the Cedar River watershed have stabilized at dangerously low levels and that automobile use had increased even as fuel efficiency decreased.

Like the GPI, these indicators are a way of measuring the health of a community; they do not measure the success of a particular policy or program. But like the GPI, the ultimate goal of the community indicator projects is to move the benchmarks into action. This is beginning to happen. For instance, the city of Seattle not only incorporated the indicators report into its comprehensive plan, but King County Executive Ron Simms also held up the report as a guide for his public policy goals. "This is my textbook," he said in an interview last year. "And I think I'll have been successful at the end of the year if we have moved all the indicators up."

In Santa Monica, one of the Sustainable City Programs' 1995 indicators showed only 15 percent of the municipal fleet of vehicles used reduced-emission fuels. In response, city officials instituted a new schedule of vehicle maintenance so that Santa Monica will have 75 percent of its fleet running on low-emissions fuels by 2000.

Over the last few years, the city of Noblesville, Indiana and Indiana University developed a series of community benchmarks which have been integrated into the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance. Responding to a benchmark governing park space per resident, the city adopted a park impact fee policy and then used the money to purchase land adjacent to an historic community park and along the nearby White River.

Many textbook economists are critical of the GPI because they are convinced of the absolute value of measuring market activity; by the same token, they argue that it is difficult to quantify activities that take place outside of the marketplace. "The market economy does two very important things for us as individuals that can explain why it should be measured separately from everything else," says Larry Moran at the Bureau of Economic Affairs. "It provides jobs and those jobs provide income. We don't count things like housework or mowing the lawn because they provide neither." But to highlight the costs as well as the benefits of "jobs and income," the GPI considers more than 20 aspects of the economy which the GDP ignores. Thus, in addition to subtracting the costs of environmental degradation such as pollution and damage to agriculture and water, the GPI also counts such negative factors as repairs after auto accidents and security devices people pay to prevent crime.

Illustration by Chris Murphy
It also adds in "non-market" factors such as unpaid domestic labor, contributions to neighborhood groups and care of the elderly. Most controversially, it makes an adjustment for income distribution; that is, even if overall income levels increase, the GPI labels greater income inequality as a negative for economic and social progress.

Value Judgements for the Earth

Implicit to the market-based critique of the GPI is that the new measure substitutes value judgments for the objectivity of the market, an argument that updates age-old questions about economic theory for the end of the millennium. Is the market simply about individual choice? Or are those choices influenced by circumstance? In the 1990s, how much of our "income" is generated by social problems and how many of our consumption "choices" are dictated by environmental and social decline?

As Wackernagel points out, the market itself is a value judgement, as it dismisses everything but financial transactions. "Valuations are arbitrary judgements and the GDP is full of them," says Wackernagel. "It says many things have the value zero, such as housework and the environment." The GPI figures aren't perfect, he says. "But we think it's better to give a rough estimate than to say these things are worth nothing."

Whatever questions they may have about the GPI's value, most critics agree that the measure's natural resource adjustments are the most sound methodologically--another sign the environmental movement may be at the vanguard of the GDP reform effort. "It's very difficult to count leisure time or women's work in the home," says Erlich. "But we have information on environmental quality."

Once again, however, the problem is that the GDP disregards this information. "We'll have a consulting firm come out and try and estimate the cost to our economy of reducing carbon emissions," says Jim Barrett, an environmental economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. "Instead of saying anything about environmental costs, we'll hear: 'In 2010, our GDP will be 3.2 percent lower than it otherwise would have been.'" This gives policy officials an out, says Barrett. "They say, 'If the value to our nation is a loss of three percent, why should we do it?'"

There hasn't been another GPI speech in the Senate since Senator Dorgan delivered his stinging rebuke of the GDP in 1995. Yet the GPI continues to stimulate discussion both here and abroad, where at least 11 countries--including Austria, England, Sweden and Germany--have recalculated their gross domestic product using the GPI (known as the ISEW abroad). Like their counterpart in the United States, the European GPIs post steady declines over the last 30 years.

But perhaps more importantly, the GPI is emblematic of a grassroots movement that has been building in this country for over two decades: an acknowledgment that sprawl, growth and congestion are changing neighborhoods, depleting green spaces and affecting our quality of life. Americans might be ahead of their policy makers in measuring what's really important.

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CONTACTS

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CIA murdering - stop them, arrest them!

Predators, Warriors and Ravens: the CIA Drones Wage War

by Lara Marlowe May 30, 2010
Irish Times - 2010-05-29

The CIA.s use of unmanned aircraft to kill insurgents and militants marks a turning point in the history of war

THE COURTYARD of the Pentagon feels like a cross between an arms fair and a used-car lot on a fine May morning. "Congratulations 1,000,000 Army Unmanned Aircraft System Flight Hours," says a banner.

With 5,456 US servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Afghan war going badly, the US military celebrates what it can. Unmanned Aircraft Systems, also known as Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles but referred to as drones, are the military.s most important technological asset. Last year the CIA.s director, Leon Panetta, called the Predator drone programme "the only game in town".

"We.ve reached a turning point in the history of war, and maybe in humanity," says Peter Singer, director of defence studies at the Brookings Institution and author of Wired for War , which chronicles the shift to robotic warfare. There were only a handful of drones in the inventory when the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Singer says. "Today there are more than 7,000 airborne drones, and some 12,000 ground-based robots . . . Very soon there will be tens of thousands."

This week the army chose to advertise its drone revolution by inviting journalists to a press conference celebrating the millionth hour. Col Gregory Gonzalez, project manager for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, tells us drones are equivalent to the use of radar in the second World War, or helicopters in Korea and Vietnam. "They.ve been funding us really well, because they know there.s a bang for the buck," Col Gonzalez says.

A representative selection of the army.s drones are displayed in a lane under the trees. There.s a Shadow, equipped with an Israeli-made camera, used mainly for surveillance, but also for some targeting, and the diminutive Raven, a battlefield surveillance drone that is launched by hand.

The only weaponised drone, and the star of the exhibition, is the Warrior, a souped-up Predator that carries four laser-guided Hellfire missiles under its wings. The army calls it the Grey Eagle. "There are rules in army aviation that you have to have a

North American Indian chief or tribe name," says Lt Col Kevin Messer.

Predator drones have been used extensively by the CIA to assassinate alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The army uses drones mostly in what it calls TIC (troops in combat) incidents. The CIA does not comment on its top-secret programme, though the New York Times reported this month that the intelligence agency believes it has killed more than 500 militants in the past two years "and a few dozen nearby civilians". Other estimates of civilian victims range much higher.

Elsewhere in Washington -- in think tanks, on university campuses and in the higher echelons of government -- the reliance on unmanned aircraft to search out and kill perceived enemies has prompted heated debate. But here in the Pentagon the language is technical and acronym-packed, devoid of geopolitical or moral content.

Each army Predator costs $6 million "without payload", Col Messer explains. I hear about its SAR (synthetic aperture radar), GMTI (ground moving target indicator) and EOIR (electrical optical infrared) ball. The drone.s ungainly "camel hump" hides a rotating satellite dish. Its mission is RSTA (reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition). "If it.s a target I want to prosecute, I can do it," says Col Messer. "If it.s a target I want to kill, I can do it. It is the sexiest programme in the army."

The technology is becoming more accessible. Forty-three nations are building military robots, as are some non-state actors, such as the Lebanese Hizbullah.

Critics of the US.s reliance on drones portray it as a cowardly weapon, since operators can kill without any risk to themselves. An executive order handed down by president Gerald Ford in 1976 banned US intelligence from carrying out assassinations. Before 9/11, US officials criticised Israel for assassinating Hamas leaders. That changed after the atrocities of 9/11, when George W Bush authorised the CIA to kill members of al-Qaeda and their allies anywhere in the world and Congress approved the measure.

On March 24th the state department.s legal advisor, Harold Koh, made the clearest statement yet of the Obama administration.s policy on drone strikes. Koh said the strikes were legal under the 2001 Congressional Authorisation for Use of Military Force, and under the principle of self-defence. He called them "targeted killings" -- the Israeli term -- not assassinations.

The Obama administration has more than doubled the number of drone strikes. Some influential policymakers, including Vice- President Joe Biden, advocate relying even more heavily on drones to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, to keep US soldiers out of battle.

The killing of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, along with 11 family members and bodyguards by a Predator drone last August, was considered a triumph for US intelligence. But as Jane Mayer reported in the New Yorker , it took 16 missile strikes over more than a year for the CIA to kill Mehsud. Between 207 and 321 people were killed in those strikes, depending on which news reports one tallies.

Now the CIA is trying to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born cleric who is believed to have inspired the Fort Hood killings last November and the attempted car-bombing of Times Square this month. Awlaki lives in Yemen, where the drones are searching for him. If US authorities wanted to tap his telephone, they would need a court warrant. But the CIA can assassinate him with the approval of the National Security Council and no judicial review.

Peter Singer says there have been 134 unmanned airstrikes in Pakistan. "But we don.t call it a war. We perceive it differently." There is also a danger, says Singer, that the military and CIA succumb to "the tempation of technology" and go after "low-hanging fruit". He does not oppose drone strikes, but wants them to be handed over to the military -- not the CIA. "I want someone in uniform to be in charge of that."

In the US the drone strikes are presented as efficient, precise and costless. In the Middle East and Pakistan they are perceived as cruel and cowardly. Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-born US citizen who tried to detonate a home-made car bomb on Times Square, told a friend he was angered by the drone strikes in Pakistan. Critics question whether the political "blowback" from drone strikes outweighs the strategic advantage.

U.N. Official To Call For End Of CIA Drone Strikes

by Corey Flintoff

May 28, 2010
A soon-to-be-released United Nations report will call into question the use of unmanned aircraft for targeted killings in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The report, to be released next week by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, will call on the United States to stop allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to carry out drone attacks on suspected militants.

The special rapporteur, New York University law professor Philip Alston, told The New York Times that the CIA does not have the public accountability that's required of the U.S. military. Alston says the use of the drones and their firepower should be restricted to the armed forces.
Alston told The Associated Press that he sees "no legal prohibition on CIA agents" piloting the remotely controlled aircraft, but that the practice is undesirable because the C.I.A. doesn't comply with "any of the requirements as to transparency and accountability which are central to international humanitarian law."

A CIA spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, responded. "Without discussing or confirming any specific action or program, this agency's operations unfold within a framework of law and close government oversight. The accountability's real, and it would be wrong for anyone to suggest otherwise," he said.

Alston, an Australian, is expected to deliver his report on the subject to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday.

He told the Times that the report will not say it is a war crime for nonmilitary personnel to fly combat drones, but some legal experts have said the pilots who operate the aircraft for the CIA could be liable for criminal prosecution.

David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, says he agrees that the drone strikes are not war crimes. But he says that the CIA pilots who fly the drones could be regarded as common criminals. "They have no legal authority to be killing anyone," Glazier says. "They have committed the crime of murder under Pakistan's law."
Glazier says that the issue comes down to who is considered a "privileged belligerent" in a conflict. Soldiers in organized armies are considered privileged belligerents who can't be prosecuted for war crimes if they kill enemy soldiers in battle.

But someone who doesn't wear a uniform, or belong to an army . such as a member of a terrorist group, or a civilian CIA pilot . might be prosecuted for murder, Glazier says.

That comment drew a response from a U.S. official: "Those who think we strike at terrorists over the objections of the Pakistani government are mistaken. This is a common fight against those who menace both our countries. That fact alone renders absurd the notion that U.S. officials might be tried in a Pakistani court for counterterrorism operations."

The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity because the United States has never officially acknowledged that the CIA has a program to use Predator drones and other remotely controlled aircraft to attack suspected Taliban and al-Qaida militants, but the program has been widely reported in U.S. media.

Last December, U.S. counterterrorism officials told reporters that the Obama administration had approved an expansion of the program, which has been credited with the killings of militant figures such as Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who reportedly died in a CIA drone attack.

Most recently, security officials in Pakistan said a U.S. drone attack killed six militants in a village in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan.

NPR

According to our database, as of 1 April 2010, there have been a total of 127 confirmed CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, killing a total of 1247 people.

chunks of rubber - transocean

chunks of rubber - transocean

I FOUND JUST ONE Webpage that actually reports on the
low-down of the Oil disaster...

WASHINGTON, May 26, 2010

Oil Rig Explosion Followed Argument, Warnings

Internal BP Documents, Testimony to Government Panel Show Bad Signs Leading up to Explosion on Deepwater Horizon Rig

(CBS) A mechanic's testimony Wednesday before a government panel and internal documents BP provided to Congress help piece together the hours leading up to the explosion that left 11 workers dead and caused the leak spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon had finished drilling. Workers were getting ready to seal the well shut until another rig could pump the oil. Eleven hours before the explosion, chief mechanic Douglas Brown says there was tension over how to cap the well between the rig's owner, Transocean, and a BP representative, whom he calls "the company man," CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

"The driller was outlining what as going to be taking place, whereupon the company man stood up and said, 'No, we have some changes to that,'" Brown testified during a hearing.

When others disagreed, Brown said "the company man was basically saying, 'Well, this is how it's gonna be.'"

Internal documents BP provided Congress help piece together the most detail yet of events after that contentious meeting.

At 5:05 p.m. Central time - five hours before the explosion - a possible leak in the critical rubber gasket closes tightly around the drill pipe.

Mike Williams, the rig's chief electronics tech, told CBS' "60 Minutes" that chunks of rubber from the gasket had broken loose weeks before, but a supervisor brushed off concerns.

"I thought how can it be not a big deal? There's chunks of our seal is now missing," Williams said.

About two hours before the explosion, there's a bad pressure test result, a possible "influx of the well." Pressure builds and there's an indicator that BP investigators now call "a very large abnormality." Yet the rig team moves on. BP says this may have been a "fundamental mistake."

At 51 minutes before the explosion, a bad sign: more fluid flows out of the well than is being pumped in.

At 41 minutes before, the pump is closed for a test, but the well continues to flow. Pressure unexpectedly rises.

At 18 minutes before, data show more abnormal pressures and "mud returns." The pump abruptly shuts down.

The new data from BP suggests the crew may have attempted mechanical fixes at that point to control pressure but in vain. Pressure shot up and the well exploded.

FTT FAT Tobin Tax - Geithner in Europe

Haha, Geithner is visitng Europe TO BEG !!

iT's very hush hush, but the USA and UK are broke and cannot be fixed.

The whole focus on Germany and the Euro is just deception.
The REAL PROBLEM (the megaton damocles sword) is the unsalvagable
crisis in the anglo-american countries. They can not pay back
wha they owe once the boc of financial tricks goes empty.

The FTT (Google: FINANZTRANSAKTIONSSTEUER) is a rescue for the
european economies, it gives the people back what is theirs.
But at the same time it will expose the untenable finances of UK/USA.

The FTT required REPORTING of transactions. A killer.
The FTT taxes transactions with 0.05 per cent. This makes small, infrequentnsactions benefit over frequent, speculative money moving exercises.

In line with SILVIO GESELL it make money more real.
Like real goods, money needs to be controlled by something other
than free will.

The BROADBENT artivle here is lucid, recommended reading:

Not only bankers need a bailout

Tax on transactions could raise money earmarked to address global problems

Published On Sun May 23 2010 Ed Broadbent

Everyone can agree that everything should be done to avert another financial crisis, which then morphs into an economic crisis, thereby imposing pain and suffering on many people throughout the world who had nothing to do with creating the financial crisis.

There is a lot of talk at present about a levy on financial institutions that would create a fund to bail them out in the future and lessen the burden on taxpayers. That's what the influential International Monetary Fund (IMF) favours.

That's all to the good but what we risk losing sight of is what needs to be done to bail out the rest of us, to provide insurance for us as well as for them. That includes some of the worst off people in the world, who are already in a condition of extreme poverty.

Regardless of what is done with respect to a tax on financial institutions, including what some are now calling a Financial Activities Tax, there is a compelling case for implementing a Financial Transactions Tax (FTT).

The Canadian government has a lot to teach our G20 colleagues, whom we will be hosting here in June. Our strong recovery with respect to other G20 countries is a testament to our sound banking system.

But in terms of how that same banking system should contribute toward alleviating future crises our government has little to say. Indeed, our message is simple, and simplistic: not our problem.

I think the government is wrong.

While we do not need to recoup the cost of bailing out our banking sector, the financial and economic crises have had a truly devastating impact around the world and have hurt many Canadians.

It has been estimated that it would cost more than $700 billion (U.S.) annually to buy our way out of these crises. That is what would be required to meet the budget deficits in developed countries resulting from the economic crisis; to finance the costs of mitigating climate change in developing countries; and to help the developing countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals of better lives for people that developed countries like Canada committed to.

That's where the FTT comes in.

It is a tiny tax that is nevertheless a giant step forward. Present proposals are for a tax of 0.05 per cent on financial transactions globally that could raise close to that $700 billion annually because of the huge number of transactions.

The tax would deter harmful speculation that causes crises. But that is only half the story. It would at the same time provide the funds that could alleviate the current economic and climate crises.

Such financial resources are essential, particularly at a time when some governments, including ours, are freezing aid budgets.

And administering the tax is feasible. The technology that made possible the quantum leap in financial transactions in recent years can itself be used to collect the tax.

The financial transactions that most of us engage in would not be affected and we will not have to pay this tax. It would apply to transactions in stocks, bonds, derivatives, currencies and hedge funds. That's the world of financial institutions and speculators where the big money is made, and that is where any burden would fall.

The IMF is a player in all this, and at the moment it gives first priority to taxing financial institutions directly so as to create an insurance fund for future bailouts.

So be it, but that is no alternative to a FTT which can provide, in effect, social insurance for the rest of us who bear the real costs of crises.

It is, after all, in our interest as Canadians to reduce the likelihood of financial crises anywhere in the world that play back adversely on our economy and our people.

Given Canada's privileged position in global governance as the host of both the G8 and G20, let us not pass up our chance on the world stage to do good.

Lest we forget, the FTT is a Canadian legacy. Just over 11 years ago, this country, through our Parliament, declared “the government should enact a tax on financial transactions in concert with the international community.” We were the first country in the world to do that.

Globalization demonstrates its dark side by the financial and economic crises we are experiencing. Let us demonstrate its bright side by imposing the first global tax that will serve global goals.

Ed Broadbent is writing on behalf of Make Poverty History's G8/G20 At The Table Campaign. He is the former leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada.

Economic Warfare - FRENCH article explains

Economic Warfare

english version wiki:

(a VERY short article on how this is ancient military stuff only)

french version:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffr.wikipedia.org%2Fw%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DGuerre_%25C3%25A9conomique%26printable%3Dyes

East India company.. a ruthless murderous exploitation PRIVATE
enterprise. supported by the STATE ELITES and MILITARY/SECRET SERVICE

and who's national emblem?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

look under flags:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#Flags

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffr.wikipedia.org%2Fw%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DGuerre_%25C3%25A9conomique%26printable%3Dyes

Early economic wars stood since the antiquity regularly in connection with the Kolonialisierung of strange countries and had above all the goal of conquering stranger resources without a detailed armed conflict to lead. With often small military means, however extensive one-sided commercial agreements could often be exploited raw materials and the work of the kolonialisierten country in the further process without the employment by weapons, since the native population did not recognize the consequence of her promises first. If the exploitation was noticed, the aggressive business partner already extensive influence on legislation had itself and/or executive provides. Only after long negotiations and numerous wars almost all colonies became in 20. Century given up.
modern times

Against center of the past century the restaurant espionage developed as means of strategic warfare between nations and business enterprises. By purposeful spying of state or professional secrets with the help of secretofficial methods here one tries to attain certain key authority. The goal of the damage and/or destruction of the competitor or parts of the opposing national economy are the center of attention here. The successful destruction or defense of jobs as well as grown infrastructure in this connection of the war-prominent parties likewise as .victory "or .defeat "is marked, like a lost or won battle of conventional warfare.

Middle of the 90's of the last century was damaged for example the German company Enercon by US-American spies, when these finished that at that time first transmissionless wind power station. The proofs for the wire-tapping that Security Agency (NSA) on the enterprise in Germany became national during the court hearing admit. Due to a simultaneous patent application of the Enercon technology in the USA imposed the American law thereupon a general import prohibition for Enercon, valid up to the year 2010. By this case of espionage the enterprise suffered according to own data of turnover losses of approx. 50 million euros and about 300 planned additional jobs not to create not to be able.
possibilities

trade barriers

Another form of the economic war between nations is represented by the employment by trade barriers. If tariffs, consolidated from communication links to the economic blockade and isolation of an entire national economy, are used import regulations or the interruption the industrial production, so far available, does not come to succumbing, the supply of the population will more with difficulty, if necessary can funds on international accounts any more not be made arrangements and private as well as commercial Internet traffic comes to succumbing. An in such a manner attacked national economy is insulating, with the consequence of an using depletion and an extreme damage of the internal economy (example from the year 2001: Somalia will become on pressure of the USA separated from the Internet and all external accounts of the Somali bank Al Barakaat frozen. The consequence was that no more money could flow into the country, approximately from Somalis, which worked abroad and money to their families sent - left down.)

military mechanisms

Espionage mechanisms, which were directed at times of the cold war against hostile states, can be inserted today also against business enterprises of friendly states around Wirtschaftspionage to operate. Dan Smith, until 1993 as Militärattaché at the Londoner message, stressed the NSA opposite the BBC, spies not on behalf individual US enterprises. It was however admitted that the goals were so broadly selected that one notes "inevitably" also communication, which is militarily not relevant. In the Upper Bavarian bath Aibling was until 2004 a Echelon station, the second largest hearing plant of the USA abroad. With this probably world-wide largest electronic monitor, consisting of 120 listening posts, which hear around the clock telecommunications satellites and Mobilfunksender as well as Untersee Telefonkabel and Mailserver tap, loud the former director of NSA William Studeman is along-cut, in one hour of approx. approximately two million messages. In such a way won realizations can be used in the form of patent applications against the competitor or be useful for selling price calculation.

Patentportfolio

To force patent rights on a large scale to it begun a competitor to the task or fusion, the attacking enterprise the aggressive use of patent laws avails itself. Above all financially strong enterprises use patents, which they did not develop for the purposeful absorption of the innovation potential in the competition also, but buy up (see also: Patentportfolio).

Recent example of this debate points the discussion to the harmonization draft of the European union for software patents on software-based technology. Although it does not handle legal in Europe for such patents gives, have international and European enterprises of already as a precaution approx. 30,000 such software patents obtains. With the entry into force of the Hamonisierungsbeschlusses in its of US enterprises version (JURI draft) became suddenly a still highly visible number of computer programmes launched suddenly patent illegal.

A question in the connection, arranged into the future, concerns the planned possibility of making by patents the human genetic make-up commercialable. The prospect with the help of the genetic engineering economic interests for monopolizing of vital interests of supply of a national economy in the health service to use, became not urgent all experience after due to the observation of important participants in the economy the benefit of humans, but for the achievement of economic power, also as weapon against nations and enterprises against the background net yield-oriented interests of shareholder to be used.
hostile assumption

A form of the economic war possible between enterprises is the so-called hostile assumption, to attain i.e. the broad buying up of shares with the goal also against the express agreement of attacked management a controlling interest over the competitors.
parallels to conventional warfare

The rearrangement of resources is likewise planned in the economic war, as in a conventional war. Parallel ones are:

* strategic planning of combined measures with time and regional purchase
* High financial expenditure for espionage and infiltration
* combined strategic and operational employment of the weapons
* Execution of diverting manoeuvres and multi-front conflicts
* Acceptance of substantial destruction on economical level

see also

* École de guerre économique

Web on the left of

* Internet site by Bernd of olive Bühler, lecturer in economic war
* German Internet site of the Brillstein Security Group
* Colonial right as preliminary stage of a global "Kolonialisierung"
* Exemplary example Somalia
* Heise article for the Internet separation of Somalia
* Information of the protection of the constitution for the prevention of sabotage and restaurant economics
* Thesis (diploma) with the emphasis "hostile assumption"
* Information portal to European Union software patents
* "Whom genes" NDR contribution belong to the topic patent war

Economic war

An article of Wikipédia, the free encyclopaedia.

This article does not quote sufficiently its sources (August 2008).

If you know the treated topic, thank you to indicate the passages to sourcer with {{desired Référence}} or, better, include the useful references by binding them to the footnotes. (To modify the article)

The economic war [note 1] is a polysemous concept which can return to several definitions:

* From a point of view mercantilist or néo-mercantilist, the economic war indicates a conflict between concurrent economies in the play of the international exchanges, conflict from which one will leave gaining and a loser (if the "economic war" is avoided by reciprocal concessions, one speaks sometimes about "enlightened mercenary attitude" [1]).
* From a point of view mercantilist or imperialist, the "economic war" can consist of a military action having economic purposes. [2]
* Within the framework of an armed conflict, one speaks about economic war to stress the importance of the industrial dimension of the conflict. [3]
* In this same context, the economic war also makes it possible to make pressure on the populations enemies: thanks to the blockade for example. [4]
* Certain mercantilists or néo-mercantilists speak about economic war to indicate the competition exacerbated between companies, this one appearing by aggressive practices (industrial espionage, dumping"). According to some of which the partisans of the Free trade, this use concerns an abuse language [5].

The economic war in the mercantilists

The concept of "economic war" remains relatively vague and cannot be allotted to such or such current of thought without neglecting certain subtleties of them. Although some mercantilists admit the benefits of the foreign trade, the concept of war economic finds its bases in this thought which dominated the economy of the XVI E to the XVIII E centuries. One indicates, generally in a pejorative way, preaching term "néo-mercantilists" the people that the international business concerns a "economic war".

This period is marked by a rise of the maritime power of the United Kingdom and Provinces Linked, which seek to develop economic new rules which are more favorable to them, whereas the powers of Europe of the South (Spain and Portugal) profited from a monopoly with the treaty of Tordesillas (1494) at the time of the great discoveries at the end of the XV E century and to the XVI E century. After the creation of the English Company of the Eastern Indies by England (1600) then the response of the Provinces Linked with the Company Dutchwoman of the Eastern Indies (1602), France reacts in its turn by the creation of the French company of the Eastern Indies (1664).

It is in this context of commercial war that the Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius founded the international law. [6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_international_law

This intra-European commercial war should not thus make forget the importance of the international law in the appearance of competitions between economic powers.

Economy with the service of the war

Following Machiavel, the majority of the thinkers mercantilists see in the economy art to enrich the Prince [7] and the kingdom, from a point of view of power, i.e. a military optics. [8]

Thus the French mercantilist Antoine de Montchrestien explains in 1615:

"It is impossible to make the war without men, to maintain the men without balances, to provide to their balance without tributes, of raising tributes without trade. " [9]

Thus to increase the power of the Prince while enabling him to carry out the war, it is essential to develop the national trade, and to fight the foreign trade. The objective is double: it is necessary that the Prince has more gold, and that the foreign Princes have some less. Accordingly, nation's economy with a warlike vocation. Jean-Baptiste Colbert precise: "The companies of trade are the armies of the king, and manufactures are its reserves". The objective of its "armies" and to push back the foreign "armies". Thus to underline this hatred of the foreign trade, Antoine de Montchrestien declares:

"The foreign merchants are as pumps which draw out of the kingdom ["] pure substance of our people ["] ; in fact leeches stick to this large body of France, draw its best blood and gorge themselves some"

The war with the service of the economy

The idea that the war can be an economic growth factor was in the beginning developed by the mercantilists. [10]

To gain the economic war, the mercantilists recommend the military expansion, not against the unfavourable powers only, but against third nations. In order to limit the dependence with respect to the foreign merchants, it is necessary to annex the territories which will provide the richnesses the metropolis does not have. The mercantilists thus recommend the colonial expansion.
The dynamics of the economic war

The interactions between war and economy produce a dynamics favorable at the same time to the military power and the national wealth. Admittedly, the conquests increase the richnesses, and the richnesses increase the conquest appropriatenesses, but the system mercantilist also rests on mechanisms more subtle. For example, the monopolies granted to the national companies for the trade with the colonies (as Navigation Act de Cromwell) allow the expansion of the merchant fleet of the country, and reduce the profitable construction appropriatenesses of ships for the unfavourable countries. The trade thus allows the control of the seas and conversely.

Critical of the economic war mercantilist

For the philosophers of the Lights

The philosophers of the Lights are among the first (preceded by some statesmen as Vauban) has to criticize the system mercantilist. In spirit of the laws, Montesquieu wants to show that Commerce and Peaces always go hand in hand:

The Trade cures destroying prejudices; and it is almost a general rule, which everywhere where there is trade, there is soft manners; and that everywhere where there are soft manners, there is trade. ["] The natural effect of the trade is to carry to peace. Two nations which negotiate together make reciprocally dependent; if one may find it beneficial to buy, the other may find it beneficial to sell; and all the unions are founded on mutual needs." [11]

Thereafter, the philosopher David Hume will attack directly the theory mercantilist while trying to show the theoretical faults of them. According to the mercantilists, the international business must be used to fill the cases of the State. It is necessary thus that the trade balance is surplus. David Hume tries to show that on the long run a trade balance is balanced always overall [12]. Thus, when a nation has an active balance, the strong one of re-entry of currency causes inflation and thus a loss of competitiveness which results in a trade balance becoming overdrawn. The economic war delivered by the mercantilists thus concerns for him a theoretical error.

At the liberal economists and keynesians

For holding of the economic liberalism, the prosperity of the ones made the prosperity of the others. The confrontation of the egoistic or national interests should not lead to the war but to the harmony. Thus according to Jean-Baptiste Say:

"A nation, compared to a close nation, is in the same case as a province compared to another province, than a city compared to the campaigns: it is interested to see it thriving, and assured to benefit from its opulence. " [13]

It was also the opinion defended by John Maynard Keynes at the time of the crisis of 1929 when the governments tried to secure unemployment by exporting it in the foreign countries (political known as: beggar-my-neighbour policy). According to him, measurements harming the foreign economies, harm into final the nation's economy.
The economic war in optics néo-mercantilist

Certain States or individuals, qualified "néo-mercantilists" see in the international business an economic war requiring of the aggressive practices. Their ideas are illustrated according to them by the many commercial quarrels between nations. Thus Elie Cohen explains:

There is an old bottom mercantilist in France which tends to see in the commercial quarrels the shadow of the economic war, even of the war by other means. [14]

In the free-traders

Paul Krugman estimates that the concept of war economic derives from the dangerous obsession of competitiveness and the desire to get shivers:

"First of all, the image of the competition is more exciting and the shiver makes sell. The subtitle of the enormous best-seller which was the work To ballast Thurow Head to Head is "the future economic battle between Japan, Europe and America"; the fourth of cover announces that "the decisive war of the century started ["] and America perhaps already decided to lose it". [15]

But for him, the diffusion of the concept of "economic war" is a true problem because she threatens the assets of the international business and risk to lead to a commercial war which does not take place to be:

"Another danger, much more serious, would be that this obsession of competitiveness leads to conflicts in connection with the international business, even with a true commercial war." [16]

Theoretical work of this authors sought to show that the national wealth was not dependent on the international competitiveness of a country but on its only productivity. Consequently the idea that the best competitiveness of the foreign countries does not have negative effects on the interior richness.

It is not with the economic war as competition between states that Joseph Schumpeter was interested but in the risk of a keen and thus potentially harmful competition between companies. It rejects the idea that the competition exacerbated between economic entities having for end the constitution of monopoly has some destroying consequence. According to him this competition does not constitute a "war with the knife" harming the general interest.
Various current practices according to sights mercantilists
Competing laying off

This practice consists in trying to engage employees of concurrent companies, with two aims:

* to reduce the labour force and the know-how of the concurrent company;
* thanks to the discharged employee, to recover the work methods, the techniques of the concurrent company, thanks to the know-how of the engaged person.

The lobbying

It is a technique of pressure or influence on decision makers (political, economic often). It can be direct, by interventions, or even soudoiement (see: corruption), or indirect by the creation of Web sites, mailing, communities of practice, reviews, articles directed in the newspapers, publicity, and by the communication in all its forms, all means intended to influence mentalities.

The lobbying is facilitated by the fact that the companies now associate competences of ONG on the sociétales questions (environment, human rights). This practice frequent in the Anglo-Saxon world (the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Scandinavia), and is facilitated by the use of the English language like common language.

In addition to ONG, the lobbying employs today institutional networks like those of the international chamber of commerce, the WBCSD, the Business Action for Sustainable Development, OECD, OMC, the IMF, the tops of the Earth. It is based on the effectiveness of account-returned written written by certain people or networks which take part in the tops.

Even if drifts exist, generally it is not a question of methods dishonest persons in the sense that they are generally based on rules enacted gradually by international agencies. On the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon legal system of common law proves more effective, in any case until today, to address the sociétaux stakes of the sustainable development and the responsibility sociétale through the multiplicity for the recipients of the companies.

The lobbying finds a ground fertile in the implementation of the new countable standards IAS/IFRS which integrate the immaterial capital henceforth.

Through the lobbying, they is two cultures and two designs of legal systems which are confronted: the civil law which dominates in continental Europe, and Common law.

Standardization

The standards and the standards in general (safety, information systems, accountancy, traceability, etc) can make it possible to achieve certain mercantilists goals:

* to protect itself from a foreign competition;
* to impose its products on third countries, when the standards in question have an international application (example: the GMO).

The preeminence of English in the international relations belongs to this standardization, and is sometimes perceived as handicapping the countries where English is not the native tongue (see also: Academy of the English Rug), or the geographical areas as Europe where there exists a great diversity of native tongues. In the United States was born the Dictionnaires project from formerly [17]. The choice of scientific English would have being associated with a step with this type, because it is the blur on the definitions of the English languages which gives to handling the place that it should not have" the illuminant examples are not example the words "meatus", "seed" or management [desired ref.].

Countable standards IAS/IFRS are the standards which currently have the most influence on the business management, and even indirectly on the systems of public accounts in the European Union. It is a question indeed today of entering the immaterial capital made up by competences of the companies, their commercial relations, their structures (patents, information systems of the companies and even of the administrations). This accounting is intended to be managed through intangible fixed assets, which, with the dires of much of experts, account for 60 to 70 % of the value of the companies.

Thus, one invests today twice more in pure knowledge (formation, control of the change,") that in the pure production equipments.

The sociocultural influence

According to the specialists in economic intelligence Eric Denécé and Claude Revel, the United States seeks to position upstream markets while exploiting on all the techniques of the influence, and in particular the sociocultural influence.

Little by little a formatting of the ideas occurs on the American model in good number of countries of Europe, of which France. For example, on the level of the business schools, Masters off Businesses Administration became the reference. The consultancies and of audit Anglo-Saxons recruit in this crucible.

The film diffusion everywhere in the world makes it possible to prepare the ground with the future establishments of companies and makes easier the installation of the domination economic [18].

Humanitarian actions and ONG

These institutions can have a cultural, economic, and political influence on the countries where they are established, and being used by the companies like a means of being introduced into new countries. The opacity in particular of their operation was clarified by the recent studies of the Prometheus foundation chaired by appointed Bernard Carayon and Jean-Michel Boucheron UMP and PS.

The competing counterfeit

The counterfeit is the imitation of a product developed by a competitor. It concerns for example, the luxury items, but also the software, the drugs, etc
This competition is often illegal because she violates the industrial property and the patents.

The war of information

The war of information is the common point of the majority of the methods employed today (lobbying, standardization, social learning,") to acquire an economic superiority while exploiting the cultural factor.

The acquisition of knowledge employs today methods which are not necessarily dishonest persons like the open sources (white information), i.e. the collection of information available in source open on Internet networks.

The best method to secure itself against a systematic plundering is to adopt a systematically careful and nonnaive attitude, and to build networks extranet in access restricted for the communities of practice which relate to only certain recipients of the company.

Bibliography

* The other war of the United States, Economy: secrecies of a machine of conquest, Eric Denécé and Claude Revel, Robert Laffont, 2005.
* Secrecies of the economic war of Ali Laïdi and Denis Lanvaux at Threshold.
* The world economic war, Bernard Esambert, Olivier Orban, 1991.
* Economic patriotism, of the war at economic peace, Bernard Carayon, Editions of the Rock, 2006 (ISBN 2268058808)
* Christian Schmidt, To think the war, to think the economy, Odile Jacob, 1991.

Notes and references

Notes

1. ? Term forged in the years 80-90 years by Bernard Esambert and some strategists of company impressed by the play of go.

References

1. ? according to the expression of Paul Krugman indicating the practices of OMC
2. ? Example: "Continental Blockade, economic machine of war against England"" Jean Tulard, "Empire (First) 1804-1814", in Encyclopædia Universalis 2005
3. ? Example: "In 1914, Rathenau becomes the director of the Office of the raw materials, which enables him to direct all the economic war." François-Georges Dreyfus, "Rathenau Walther (1867-1922)", in Encyclopædia Universalis 2005
4. ? "It acts to undertake an economic action which will weaken the other part, even with the detriment of its own economic advantages." Fanny Coulomb, "For a new conceptualization of the economic war", War and Economy, in Geopolitical Reference, Ellipse, 2003
5. ? Parler about economic "war" in connection with the confrontation between two concurrent companies constitutes also a "abuse" language, which will then let suppose that any competition is connected with the war. Fanny Coulomb, COp cit.
6. ? Of iure praedae, On the right of capture, including Hugo Grotius. Pond liberum, Free Seas in 1604.
7. ? "In a well organized government, the State must be rich and the poor citizens" Machiavel, the Prince, 1514
8. ? "It is necessary to ensure the richness of the Prince, for him, but also to finance the ceaseless wars" Michel Beaud, Histoire of the Capitalism of 1500 to 2000, fifth updated edition, Points Threshold, 1999, page 33.
9. ? Antoine de Montchrestien, political Treaty of economy, 1615
10. ? "the war like development and power-factor: this design, in its most achieved form, date of the mercantilists"" Jacques Fontanel and Ron Smith, "economists and the war", in Le Monde, March 19, 1991
11. ? Montesquieu, Of the Spirit of the laws, 1748
12. ? David Hume, Political discourses, 1752
13. ? Jean-Baptiste Say, political Treaty of economy, 1803
14. ? Elie Cohen, "the economic War will not take place" (in Guerre (S) and Peace, CNRS Thema 2nd quarter 2004), [1] [archive]
15. ? Paul Krugman, Universalization is not guilty, the Discovery/Poche, 2000, pages 30-31
16. ? Paul Krugman, COp cit., page 33
17. ? ARTFL dictionary collection [archive]
18. ? Eric Denécé and Claude Revel, the other war of the United States, economy: secrecies of a machine of conquest, page 165

== GERMAN WIKIPEDIA =====

Ihre Spenden helfen, Wikipedia zu betreiben.
Economic war
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Changes too: Navigation, search

Economic war colloquially an intensive argument between enterprise, different or same states, led with economic instruments, is called, whereby beside economic often also legal, political and/or secretofficial instruments use to find. The competition is a forerunner of the economic war. The economic war is to differentiate of a military war led from economic motives.

historical view

20.

Early economic wars stood since the antiquity regularly in connection with the Kolonialisierung of strange countries and had above all the goal of conquering stranger resources without a detailed armed conflict to lead. With often small military means, however extensive one-sided commercial agreements could often be exploited raw materials and the work of the kolonialisierten country in the further process without the employment by weapons, since the native population did not recognize the consequence of her promises first. If the exploitation was noticed, the aggressive business partner already extensive influence on legislation had itself and/or executive provides. Only after long negotiations and numerous wars almost all colonies became in 20. Century given up.
modern times

Against center of the past century the restaurant espionage developed as means of strategic warfare between nations and business enterprises. By purposeful spying of state or professional secrets with the help of secretofficial methods here one tries to attain certain key authority. The goal of the damage and/or destruction of the competitor or parts of the opposing national economy are the center of attention here. The successful destruction or defense of jobs as well as grown infrastructure in this connection of the war-prominent parties likewise as .victory "or .defeat "is marked, like a lost or won battle of conventional warfare.

Middle of the 90's of the last century was damaged for example the German company Enercon by US-American spies, when these finished that at that time first transmissionless wind power station. The proofs for the wire-tapping that Security Agency (NSA) on the enterprise in Germany became national during the court hearing admit. Due to a simultaneous patent application of the Enercon technology in the USA imposed the American law thereupon a general import prohibition for Enercon, valid up to the year 2010. By this case of espionage the enterprise suffered according to own data of turnover losses of approx. 50 million euros and about 300 planned additional jobs not to create not to be able.
possibilities

trade barriers

Another form of the economic war between nations is represented by the employment by trade barriers. If tariffs, consolidated from communication links to the economic blockade and isolation of an entire national economy, are used import regulations or the interruption the industrial production, so far available, does not come to succumbing, the supply of the population will more with difficulty, if necessary can funds on international accounts any more not be made arrangements and private as well as commercial Internet traffic comes to succumbing. An in such a manner attacked national economy is insulating, with the consequence of an using depletion and an extreme damage of the internal economy (example from the year 2001: Somalia will become on pressure of the USA separated from the Internet and all external accounts of the Somali bank Al Barakaat frozen. The consequence was that no more money could flow into the country, approximately from Somalis, which worked abroad and money to their families sent - left down.)

military mechanisms

Espionage mechanisms, which were directed at times of the cold war against hostile states, can be inserted today also against business enterprises of friendly states around Wirtschaftspionage to operate. Dan Smith, until 1993 as Militärattaché at the Londoner message, stressed the NSA opposite the BBC, spies not on behalf individual US enterprises. It was however admitted that the goals were so broadly selected that one notes "inevitably" also communication, which is militarily not relevant. In the Upper Bavarian bath Aibling was until 2004 a Echelon station, the second largest hearing plant of the USA abroad. With this probably world-wide largest electronic monitor, consisting of 120 listening posts, which hear around the clock telecommunications satellites and Mobilfunksender as well as Untersee Telefonkabel and Mailserver tap, loud the former director of NSA William Studeman is along-cut, in one hour of approx. approximately two million messages. In such a way won realizations can be used in the form of patent applications against the competitor or be useful for selling price calculation.

Patentportfolio

To force patent rights on a large scale to it begun a competitor to the task or fusion, the attacking enterprise the aggressive use of patent laws avails itself. Above all financially strong enterprises use patents, which they did not develop for the purposeful absorption of the innovation potential in the competition also, but buy up (see also: Patentportfolio).

Recent example of this debate points the discussion to the harmonization draft of the European union for software patents on software-based technology. Although it does not handle legal in Europe for such patents gives, have international and European enterprises of already as a precaution approx. 30,000 such software patents obtains. With the entry into force of the Hamonisierungsbeschlusses in its of US enterprises version (JURI draft) became suddenly a still highly visible number of computer programmes launched suddenly patent illegal.

A question in the connection, arranged into the future, concerns the planned possibility of making by patents the human genetic make-up commercialable. The prospect with the help of the genetic engineering economic interests for monopolizing of vital interests of supply of a national economy in the health service to use, became not urgent all experience after due to the observation of important participants in the economy the benefit of humans, but for the achievement of economic power, also as weapon against nations and enterprises against the background net yield-oriented interests of shareholder to be used.
hostile assumption

A form of the economic war possible between enterprises is the so-called hostile assumption, to attain i.e. the broad buying up of shares with the goal also against the express agreement of attacked management a controlling interest over the competitors.
parallels to conventional warfare

The rearrangement of resources is likewise planned in the economic war, as in a conventional war. Parallel ones are:

* strategic planning of combined measures with time and regional purchase
* High financial expenditure for espionage and infiltration
* combined strategic and operational employment of the weapons
* Execution of diverting manoeuvres and multi-front conflicts
* Acceptance of substantial destruction on economical level

see also

* École de guerre économique

Web on the left of

* Internet site by Bernd of olive Bühler, lecturer in economic war
* German Internet site of the Brillstein Security Group
* Colonial right as preliminary stage of a global "Kolonialisierung"
* Exemplary example Somalia
* Heise article for the Internet separation of Somalia
* Information of the protection of the constitution for the prevention of sabotage and restaurant economics
* Thesis (diploma) with the emphasis "hostile assumption"
* Information portal to European Union software patents
* "Whom genes" NDR contribution belong to the topic patent war

Jeffrey Sachs: "EU can do Tobin tax"

Jeffrey Sachs: "EU can do Tobin tax"

VIENNA (Dow Jones)--Euro-zone finance ministers have made a key commitment to work together for the swift introduction of a Europe-wide tax on financial transactions, the Austrian finance minister said Tuesday, urging European heads of states and governments to get behind the initiative.

Finance Minister Josef Proell denounced the idea of national taxes on financial transactions and dubbed the decision at a meeting late Monday by the Euro Group a "milestone agreement."

"We have agreed in unison to accelerate and further the work for an introduction of a Europe-wide financial transaction tax. The financial markets must also make a contribution to overcoming the economic crisis. This is a milestone towards the completion of this large project," Finance Minister Josef Proell said in a statement.

"I now expect the heads of states and governments to do their part to secure the implementation," Proell said.

His comments follow statements made in the Austrian media by Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, according to which the Austrian government leader is ready to implement a national financial transaction tax regardless of whether a Europe-wide agreement is reached or not.

"I consider it a mistake to pursue a solo solution, even before a European solution has been fought for," Proell said.

-By Flemming E. Hansen, Dow Jones Newswires

In german:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veVBRisJysE January
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFollQIQjOA March
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K8JI1rI6Kk May
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C6546WOmcI

In English (Rasmussen):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbExWw0kt7c March

PES: European Socialists call for tax on speculators - Conservatives hesitant
2010/03/11
The Party of European Socialists. (PES) President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen welcomed the European Parliament.s decision today to call for a common EU position on a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT).

"The PES has long called for an FTT to curb the excesses of speculators. We are happy to see the European Parliament take this step despite resistance from Conservatives", said Mr. Rasmussen. He praised the efforts of Udo Bullmann MEP (S&D) whose amendments have given the resolution much needed backbone.

"It is for this reason that the PES is participating in a Conference organised by the Global Progressive Forum and the European Progressive Political Foundation FEPS , on 15 March (next Monday), a high level conference on why we need an FTT," stated Mr. Rasmussen. The PES leader will open the event with a live transatlantic link with US trade union leader, Richard Trumka, to illustrate the growing efforts for the tax on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mr Rasmussen gave his comments as calls intensified for the EU to support an FTT. Renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs, when asked today if such an action should be taken, stated that; "the EU is big enough to do this".

Mr Rasmussen.s comments follow the declarations of European Commissioner for Taxation, Algirdas .emeta before the Parliament Monday, who expressed a more hesitant position towards the introduction of a Financial Transaction Tax. The Lithuanian conservative tried to say that the tax would reduce EU competitiveness, despite the levy agreed by FTT advocates of only 0.05%.

The tax is currently being dealt with through the G20 process, with the IMF due to issue a report in April. However the PES is of the opinion that the EU can and should move forward and promote the idea on the global stage.

"A growing number of Head of States across Europe are calling for a Financial Transaction Tax. Mr .emeta could soon find himself alone with only speculators for company" said Rasmussen.

======================

Finanztransaktionssteuer, Nein!

May 20, 2010 - 9:56 pm

Robert A. Green is a CPA and founder and CEO of Green & Company Inc. (GreenTraderTax.com and GreenTraderFunds.com), a publishing company, and Green & Company CPAs, LLC, a virtual tax and accounting firm catering to traders and investment management businesses.

Talk of a financial-transaction tax (FTT) has resurfaced yet again. This time, it was Germany.s governing parties calling for one in Europe. Germany is fed up with the E.U. PIIGS bailout and financial irresponsibility. Many German leaders blame investment banks for helping PIIGS cheat on their reported budgets and selling short. The governing parties want action against this irresponsibility, but unfortunately, they.re failing to understand that a FTT will worsen their market and it will be detrimental to their banks. A FTT will put small traders out of business overnight, and push those who do stay in business to other markets. It has the potential to increase unemployment and reduce liquidity in the markets.

Will it actually see the light of day? That remains to be seen, but there's a lot of anger now in Germany that surely won't stop it from happening. Germany.s frustration with the Greece bailout could propel it to usher in a euro tax with fiscal federal oversight. German taxpayers are footing the biggest bailout bill and want fiscal austerity, central budget review and compliance. They want this bailout money paid back, and a FTT may be the way to ease the frustration, despite its consequences.

True, the European Union could benefit from a federal euro tax, and it could very well move forward with this in the form of a FTT. But the entire G-20 shouldn.t be asked to follow suit. In addition, E.U. regulators have recently brought another troubling idea to the table: an E.U. fund passport that would impose rigorous E.U. rules on non-European fund managers. In my view, this is another bad idea that will hurt our marketplace.

The U.K. doesn't seem to have the power to block a FTT this time. Well, Gordon Brown.s U.K. could have slowed down unbridled German and French financial regulation, but the "new" U.K., the one that hasn.t participated in the Greek bailout, probably won.t be able to stop a FTT. I hope Treasury Secretary Geithner will stand firm on his opposition to a FTT and combat the E.U. attack on non E.U.-hedge funds.

There.s a lot going on in Europe right now. I.m fearful this meltdown is the real deal, but let.s hope the E.U. bailout succeeds. It worked in the U.S. Will it work in Europe, too? We shall see.

Tags: Angela Merkel, Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Financial Transaction Tax, Finanztransaktionssteuer, FTT, Germany, Timothy Geithner

========

20 may 2010

Europe's Finance Industry Regulations

London's Lobbyists Prepare to Return Fire

By Carsten Volkery and Michael Kröger

Hedge fund regulations, a tax on financial markets, a ban on naked short selling. The EU's bid to rein in the speculators has the financial industry up in arms. Lobbyists are already preparing to systematically attack the new proposals.

A day after the European Union outlined proposals to increase regulation of the financial markets, London's financial professionals are preparing a counter-attack. Some greeted the proposed regulations with contempt, others conjured up horror scenarios to campaign against the planned regulations.

"We are very disappointed by the proposals from Brussels," says Andrew Shrimpton, a partner at the leading London hedge fund consultancy Kinetic Partners. If the rules were really to be implemented then the sector would shrink massively, he says.

He was reacting to the announcement of several pieces of bad news for the financial industry this week. On Tuesday the German banking regulators BaFin announced that it was banning naked short-selling on government bonds issued by EU countries and naked credit default swaps. Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling center-right government in Berlin said that it wanted to see a Europe-wide tax on financial markets introduced. And EU finance ministers, along with the Economic and Financial Committee of the European Parliament, voted for tougher regulation of hedge funds and private equity companies, despite objections from the British government.

The planned limits on hedge funds have provoked particular criticism in London, Europe's financial mecca. The industry there is particularly aggrieved as 80 percent of European hedge funds are based in Great Britain -- and many working in the City point out that Germany would not tolerate Brussels attempting to curb, for example, its automotive industry.

'Switzerland Is Waiting with Open Arms'

The ban on naked short selling has also been a cause for complaint. It was a knee-jerk reaction by the German government, says Manoj Ladwa of the Internet trading platform ETX Capital. "Angela Merkel's comments added fuel to the fire. They exacerbate the fears about the euro," he said.

The financial industry is threatening Europe with possible consequences. Half of all hedge funds in Britain are branches of US companies, says Shrimpton. "It really is an Anglo-American industry." The US managers will now be thinking about whether it is worth maintaining a London office.

Ladwa also claims that financial institutions in Frankfurt and London could be in danger if the EU regulates unilaterally. "Switzerland is waiting with open arms," he says. The danger is real, he insists, adding that he knows people who have already moved their company offices.

The threat is an old one. It belongs to the standard repertoire of traders and fund managers and is reiterated whenever higher taxes or stricter regulation are under discussion. The last time London's finance professionals threatened a mass exodus was in December 2009 after Gordon Brown's government decided to impose a one-time 50-percent tax on bankers' bonuses.

However, the great exodus didn't actually happen. Most of them stayed put.

That could be because there are other factors that are much more important when choosing the location for a company's headquarters. A survey by the commercial real estate agency Cushman and Wakefield showed that fund managers named proximity to international airports, local business infrastructure and access to well-educated staff as their top priorities. The financial metropolis of London beats Geneva hands down on all these points.

Trading of Blows

Yes, a few companies are establishing offices in Switzerland and other countries, but many are following the example of Blue Crest Capital: It recently opened a branch in Geneva with a staff of 50 but it still kept its headquarters in London along with its 300 employees.

It is unlikely there will be many companies moving this time either. What is likely is an even nastier trading of blows between the financial industry lobbyists and the EU. The two drafts by the European Parliament and the EU finance ministers on the regulations of the hedge funds are far from the final word. In the coming weeks, the two drafts must become one, and the British, via representatives in Brussels and finance industry lobbyists -- are going to try to overturn as many of the measures as they can.

In particular the European Parliament's draft, which is much tougher than that of the finance ministers, has come in for sharp criticism. Sources in the City say that it is clear that professionals were at work when it came to the finance ministers' proposals, whereas the European Parliament did not understand the material.

Both drafts contain suggestions that are "impractical and unworkable" says Andrew Baker, who heads the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA). That includes the idea of an EU fund passport. The proposal would impose strict EU rules on non-European fund managers but would leave the enforcement of the new rules to foreign regulators such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The lobby group is concerned that since these bodies will presumably refuse to work according EU law, US funds could be excluded from the European market.

The industry is also adverse to the limits on the investments that the European fund managers can execute in the future. That could squeeze profits and in the end European investors would bear the costs, AIMA warns.

Doubts About the Entire Approach

The lobby group is hoping that negotiations between the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament on the final text of the directive could see these measures scrapped. AIMA is relying on the member states to prevail over the parliament. The European Parliament draft is "disproportionate to the point of being punitive," and amounts to singling out hedge funds and private equity companies for special treatment within the financial sector. The finance ministers' proposals are "much more practical and realistic" AIMA argues.

In fact it is not just the lobbyists who have slammed the new financial regulations. Independent experts are also highly critical. "A step toward regulating hedge funds makes sense," says Hans-Peter Burghof, professor of banking and finance at the University of Hohenheim. The decisive flaw in the new rules, however, is that the hedge fund managers have to reveal their investment strategies. "That is like forcing Coca Cola to reveal its secret recipe." Innovation would be choked off, he argues.

Thomas Heidorn of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management has doubts about the entire approach. In fact, no one really knows how much naked short selling with credit default swaps on European government bonds there has actually been, he says. According to the available data, there has not been a lot, he says.

And the EU Commissioner for the Internal Market and Financial Services, Michel Barnier, thinks the regulations could even be potentially dangerous. "The issue is extremely complex," he told financial daily Handelsblatt. Political mistakes could have "extremely serious consequences.

================

Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) is .simple, principled and do-able.
15/03/2010
Richard Trumka, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen

Richard Trumka, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen

"A Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) is simple, principled and do-able", was the clear message from Party of European Socialists President (PES) Poul Nyrup Rasmussen. Mr. Rasmussen was speaking at a high level conference organized by the Global Progressive Forum (GPF) and the FEPS political foundation. The conference, "Fighting for a financial transaction tax -- how and why" saw over 100 progressive Brussels decision makers come together to generate momentum for the FTT concept.

Mr. Rasmussen added that; "Today, we are pressing for a global FTT -- it is a progressive way out of the crisis; it makes those responsible for the crisis pay towards recovery; It acts as a coolant that calms the worst excesses of speculation; and it allows us to begin to fill the huge hole in our public budgets".

Representatives from both sides of the Atlantic were there. Richard Trumka, the President of the AFLCIO, the biggest American Trade Union Federation, spoke from Washington by video link. He outlined the developments on the FTT in the United States. "He stated that the U.S. administration needs to find new revenues for job creation, the FTT provides this opportunity".

The participants acknowledged that the next big development was a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the feasibility of the FTT. Participants pledged their commitment to react should the IMF attempt to sweep the proposals under the carpet. The report is due in early April.

The Party of European Socialists (PES) has called for a .European Action Day. on 24 April to highlight the issue. PES activists all over Europe will hold events to highlight the need for an FTT.

The Action Day plans are part of a wider mobilization effort in the run up to the June G20 meeting in Toronto Canada.

http://europeansforfinancialreform.org/en/news/pes-european-socialists-call-tax-speculators-conservatives-hesitant

=============

in the USA: (via Wall Street Journal wsj)

By John D. McKinnon

John D. McKinnon reports on tax policy.

A tax on Wall Street financial transactions remains on the table, says an influential House Democrat who.s been talking up the idea among his fellow lawmakers.

This weekend, the trading tax took a step forward . and a step back . when U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed it at an international meeting in Scotland, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner appeared to shoot it down.

The plan already has won the support of France and Germany as a way to help offset the cost of future financial bailouts. Supporters also think a transactions tax could reduce market volatility. But Geithner said a "day-by-day" tax on transactions is "not something we.re prepared to support."

Back in the U.S., lawmakers who back the idea aren.t worried, and continue to discuss it, including with administration officials. "I know they [administration officials] are beginning to take a look at this in one fashion or another, too," Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D., Colo.), an influential member of the House Rules and Financial Services committees, said in a telephone interview on Monday. "I do think they are willing to take a look at some things..It.s one we.re going to continue to pursue."

A transactions tax is being discussed in the House as a way to offset the cost of additional infrastructure spending to stimulate the economy. It also could surface as a way to cut the huge federal budget deficit next year. Supporters of the transaction tax say it would apply broadly to all sorts of financial trading, including stock and bond sales as well as trading in derivatives. It wouldn.t apply to ordinary consumer transactions such as credit-card purchases.

Some Democrats view the idea as a matter of fairness, too. "We help Wall Street, [so] Wall Street can help Main Street," Perlmutter said. "There.s a huge sentiment within the country that there.s got to be some help at some level for the rest of the country."

IRAN demands 9-11 to be told....

LETTER FROM the President of Iran

to the

UN Secretary General

asking for investigation into 9/11

operative sentence:

"investigation into the main culprits behind the September 11 attacks "

======= FULL TEXT ===========

Presidency of The Islamic Republic of Iran News Service
Archive - Messages and Letters

Tuesday 13 April 2010 - 09:53
UN urged to condemn NATO support to terrorism

IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a letter to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday pointed to actions by the American and NATO intelligence and security forces in supporting the terrorist and gang leader, Abdulmalik Riggi and asked him to condemn these crimes and defend the rights of the Iranian nation.

Here is the President Ahmadinejad's letter:

I have the pleasure to offer to Your Excellency my best wishes on the occasion of Nowruz and the beginning of the New Solar Year, 1389. I also wish to seize the moment to praise the efforts initiated by Your Excellency and members of the United Nations General Assembly for the international registration of Nowruz, a cultural event that glorifies humanitarian shared values and principles. I hope this initiative will lay a solid foundation for the spread of Nowruz culture that stands for peace, amity, dynamism, constructive cooperation and sustainable security across the world.

As you are aware, terrorism has emerged today as the most formidable challenges besetting the world community, and many policy­-makings and military actions have been launched on the pretext of fighting terrorism.

Excellency,
You are certainly familiar with the name of Abdulmalik Riggi, a terrorist and gang leader who had used Afghanistan and Pakistan as safe havens over the past years to infiltrate into Iran's southeast borders for conducting armed robberies and terrorist acts. More than 140 innocent Iranians including women, men and children were killed with the most horrendous methods, and more than 260 were wounded.

Although the international organizations that claim to be advocating human rights, have been silent all this time vis-a-vis these crimes, most deplorable is the measures undertaken by NATO intelligence and security forces in Afghanistan as well as the attitudes of some American and European media in trying to support these crimes and cleanse the blood-stained hands of this criminal and his mercenaries. There is concrete evidence on the involvement of intelligence and security services of at least three countries supporting his terrorist operations.

Some western media that use a small mistake of a police officer- in countries that defy hegemony and imperialistic policies- to raise loud and deafening cries as pretending to be in deep grief for human rights abuse as part of efforts aimed at portraying the barbaric killing of defenseless people as a holy campaign, have either been silent towards all these crimes and brutalities, or have made interviews and featured numerous articles or reports to introduce this murderer as a freedom fighter or a democracy activist.

It is all the more regrettable that terrorism has turned into a tool to subdue nations, and those who allege to be combating terrorism now find themselves at the forefront of supporting' terrorism.

Excellency,
I have attached to this letter a video featuring, a very small part of the crimes committed by this terrorist, and the way he enjoyed media supports. It also contains part of the confessions he made on the backings provided by NATO members for his activities. As the Secretary General of the United Nations you are expected to take the following measures based on your legal and humanitarian responsibilities, and inform the people of Iran and all nations of its results:

1- Blunt condemnation of crimes and restoration of the rights of the oppressed people of Iran as the main victim of terrorism.

2- Condemnation of the supports given by NATO members for terrorism in the region, official impeachment of all those who officially supported this criminal, and restoration of the rights of victims, and of the government and people of Iran.

3- The arrest by the Iranian Intelligence service of this terrorist who was widely supported by NATO members has made clear the right approach that must be taken to combat terrorism.

Following September 11 attacks, and on the pretext of fighting against a number of terrorist operatives, more than a million people in our region have been victimized and a few more millions been displaced, two members of the United Nations have been occupied by NATO and the American military forces, and a third country is susceptible to military aggressions. The current method of combating terrorism, even if the claims of its proponents are accepted as true, has obviously failed.

"If terrorism nearly exists, isn't it possible to apply a rational method that has been efficiently used by the Iranian intelligence and security apparatus in dealing with Abdulmalik Riggi. We have emphasized time and again that settlement of problems in our region does not need wide­-scale military expeditions or actions."

Excellency, you are at least expected to appoint an independent fact-finding team which is trusted by the countries of the region, to launch a comprehensive investigation into the main culprits behind the September 11 attacks as principal excuse for attacking the Middle East, the intentions of NATO military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, the methods used, and the outcome of their presence and engagement, with results to be presented to the General Assembly.

Mr. Secretary General,
As you know, since the presence of American and NATO forces, not only a few million people were killed, wounded, and displaced, cultivation of illicit crop has also multiplied and the people of our region continue to live under the shadow of threat.

Who or what other organization has the responsibility to support the rights, security and independence of nations in the region. If the United-Nations has no responsibility, it has to announce to the suffering nations that where or what other organization they should raise their complaint or grievances to. If this is the case what is the philosophy behind the establishment of the United Nations?

The expectation is that Your Excellency actively put this issue on your agenda and adopt necessary decisions to put an end to massacres, increasing narcotic production, and occupation.

May God the Almighty bless the entire world with peace and justice.

Permanent Link: http://www.President.ir/en/?ArtID=21131

www.President.ir - www.GOVIR.ir - www.President.GOV.ir