JudyB
Belgrade, ME
The Syrian government has gotten the message from the international community that it will not intervene, so it is free to destroy the opposition. The Russian and Chinese vetoes in the U.N. Security Council reflect these countries' fears of their own people, which is why they cling so desperately to the "nonintervention in internal affairs" excuse. I fear that the Russian foreign minister's visit and vague statements of talks with the opposition will give Assad time to completely obliterate Homs just like his father did. The world will stand by, be shocked, and do nothing.
Phillip
Houston, Tx
We are so gullible here in America. This is so much bigger than Assad trying to hold onto power. It's a power struggle for influence in the region. On one side you have China, Russia and Brazil. On the other side you have America, Germany and Great Britain. Both sides wish to excercise their influence in the region. During the Bush administration we kidnapped suspected terrorists and their supporters. The USA spirited them over to Syria and Egypt to be tortured outside of the authority of American courts.
Syria has received millions of dollars in military aid from Russia. That pales in comparison with the billions of dollars that America provides to Israel. If an armed insurrection happened in America we wouldn't call them the opposition. We would call them terrorists and they would be dealt with accordingly. Some of us in America still use our brains. We examine the history of the region. Collect the facts and are able to see the larger picture. We loved Assad during the Bush era. Now Assad is the villian. Assad became the villian when he began courting the Chinese, Russians and now Brazil.
The Syrian government isn't stupid. They see what happened in Iraq and in Afghanistan when we American's arrived. The see the ridiculous size of the American Embassy in Iraq. Syria understands how America is trying to exercise our influence in the region. The insurrection in Syria has been emboldened by the C.I.A.
common sense
New Hyde Park, NY
To know the source of strength underpinning Assad, look to the Iranian regime. That regime will not let Assad fall. It has already funneled billions to prop him up. His control over Syria is vital to keeping the mullah's weapon route open to the Iranian proxy army in Lebanon. To bring down Assad, the Arab League should be sanctioning the Islamic Republic.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards are now active in the military onslaught in Syria and some have recently been captured working for Assad's forces. The leader of the elite Quds Force is now in Damascus and using his successful experience in destroying the Iranian freedom movement to repress the Syrian feedom fighters.
The extremist Islamic regime which has control over Iran is the cancer of the Middle East. It is the source of weapons and money to the most violent, anti-peace forces in the region. Until that tumor of terror is destroyed, there will be no peace.
Don Stubbs
Twin Cities MN
I would really like to know what "ordinary" Russians think about their government's involvement with Assad. In particular, what they think is the solution to ending Assad's assault on his own citizens. I don't get very far in my search because it seems there are no Russian news outlets - at least in English - that are not propaganda organs of the state.
robert
bruges
The time to discuss is over, I fear. To much blood has already been spoiled. We will be confronted with a political and ethnic conflict (Sunnis versus Shiites or Alawites) that will be terrible its consequences.
Like it was the case in Sarajevo in the nineties, we will be confronted with gruesome images, of suffering and dying children and women and young people.
Russia is again choosing the butcher's side, like it did with Milosevic.
China for its part has made a serious mistake by compromising its relationship with the Arab states, rich in the much needed oil and gas....
The international community should help the Syrian people, because a process of ethnic cleansing has been started.
Joe Rodrigez
NYC
oh man, give peace a chance. The US is not exactly an angel, we have "too many domestic issues" to be going around telling every one else how to live and do things. Dont forget us Americans have gone to Iraq and killed our own and hundreds of thousands of people, including innocent ones you dont hear about for a war that was a lie from the very beginning and everyday someone dies for some restless/paranoid/egotistical politicians !!! And what happened to the liberation in Libya ? its a joke, nothing has changed except businessmen having more leverage to buy everything out and the army got rid of their old stock ? I love this country but we are often getting ahead of ourselves , and bash anything to do with Russia, always looking to make them out as the evil ones and were the hero's, please stop this bull . Lets fix our own first , so that we can lead the world by example if that is so absolutely necessary !! Some cultures cannot change over night, real freedom is expensive and takes time! we should know this best!
Alex
Russian Federation
When US shuts down an embassy or sever ties with Syria's ruling political party , it's an important indicator of forthcoming events that are about to unfold in front of our eyes. Humanitarian aid to the 'freedom fighters' in Syria will be simular to the mujaheddin's aid in Afghanistan in early 80's . Civil war is imminent.
Albert Edelson
Nes Ziona, Israel
Putin, Lavrov and Assad are expert at denial, dismantling and confabulation.
Their twisted, murderous, disturbed logic symptomizes an as yet undiagnosed psychopathic destructiveness. This trio will go down in history as "folie a trois". The people of Syria need immediate humanitarian aid, and the presence of Doctors without Frontiers to alleviate their unbearable suffering. Every hour that humanitarian help does not come, is a stain on the conscience of the Western World.
Rob
Bradenton
The US has no business intervening in Syria's Civil War. No other country intervened in our Civil War when a huge % of the population was slaughtered (yes, including women and children!!) in the name of "preserving the union." Remember General Sherman? Yet Lincoln is considered our greatest president!! Many idiots compare this to WWII and say that the US went to war against Germany to "save the jews." Nothing could be further from the truth! Roosevelt and the antisemitic State Dept knew full well about the slaughter of the jews and specifically refused to bomb a single railroad link to Auchswitz for fear that America's war against Germany had anything to do with saving the jews. We are not the policeman of the world to stop anything that offends our sensibilities. Let Syria resolve its own Civil War as the US did. If Assad is a terrorist and murderer why wasn't Lincoln? I dare anyone to answer this question!
Gennady Shkliarevsky
Rhinebeck, NY
It is distressing to see that the majority of comments completely lack critical dimension--critical, that is, when you ask yourself a question: Is everything I am doing right? Is everything my opponent is doing necessarily wrong? I think that the strong point of Western democracy has always been the capacity for a compromise and giving the benefit of the doubt even to your opponents. It is regretful to see that this attitude is giving way to pro-Western advocacy, if not jingoism. Has the Western intervention brought peace, stability, and democracy to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt? Whence comes this certainty that in the case of Syria an intervention will absolutely work out to the benefit of its people, rather than to a parochial benefit of those who will intervene? When has a pursuit of one's own national interests made the world stable? That is why we have the United Nations. Russia and China have exercised their legitimate right in the Security Council. The US has exercised it also many times. Why is it wrong in one case but right in another? Can anyone explain?
Matty
Boston, MA
Syria has long been a military client for the USSR/Russia.
Mk
NEW YORK CITY
The only reason Mr Lavrov vistied Syria so he can get paid for the arms shipment his country had send last week.
pppprppp
kansas city
and what about the thousands of Syrians who stil support Assad? Are their wishes to be ignored?
SBot
HuBot
Syria is a country that allows weapons to pass through its territory to Lebanon and the west bank. These weapons come from Iran. These weapons used to be rockets, explosives, small arms.
1. That the 'leaders' of these countries allow this to happen is bad enough.
2. That the black market arms dealers might transport weapons without the leaders' knowledge, is a threat to world peace.
3. How did China, N Korea, Pakistan get the bomb?
4. Why?
If America wanted to bomb the world and steal everything, we would simply do it.
Real heroes, of many nationalities, are working together to not only Contain, but Uproot the factors (people, associations) that permit rogue weapon transportation. These groups sell drugs, weapons, people - it must end.
I think Russia and China understand that it must end. Not too sure about al-Assad.
He is a fool. Soon, he to will be dead.
German
Orlando,FL
Russian diplomacy does not have any credibility and never has. They only look for their own interest and still live in a war cold mentality....so any outcome will not have significant results.
beholder
Saint Louis
" The death toll could not be independently confirmed ".This sentence should be at the beginning of the reports about Syria.It is meaningless and even misleading if tucked away somewhere else in a long report.
26.1.12
NYTimes readers about IRAN
Daoud Canada
I can't believe this is even a consideration. Is the Iranian government the best of all possible worlds? Hardly. BUT Has modern Iran invaded any other countries? Does Iran have aircraft carrier groups in the Gulf of Mexico? Has Iran shot down American airliners in American air space? (No, but the US has shot down an Iranian airliner in Iranian air space). Were the 22 9/11 suicide terrorists and Al-Queda Iranian or supporters of Iran? NO, they were mostly Saudi. And the Saudis, Al-Queda, and the Taliban despise the Iranians. Is the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan supported by neighbouring Iran? No. Saudia Arabia has done far more harm to the US and western interests than Iran has ever contemplated.
I greatly dislike the Iranian government and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a horrible buffoon, who says ridiculously stupid rhetorical things, but is vigorously opposed by many Iranians, the US should be very familiar with that situation from 8 years with George W. Bush!
Let Iran be, Ahmadinejad will fade away, and they will slowly evolve in positive directions with the energy and modernity of its enormous youth coupled, who are inevitably the future of a nation.
Attack Iran, and you unleash great horrors on the world, while uniting every Iranian with the worst of its government.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:33 p.m.RECOMMENDED148
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WendiChico, CA
While I believe that Amedenijad is an egotistical nut job, supporting attacks on Iran by Israel is not the way to go. I know the Republicans are all over this, but getting involved in this kind ‘crazy talk’ will not serve this Country at all. We need to take care of our own problems and let Netanyahu worry about Israel.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:55 p.m.RECOMMENDED103
Archie1954Vancouver
Iran is not Iraq or Afghanistan, so please don't ever make the mistake of thinking an attack on it will be a cake walk. There will be huge collateral damage to American interests both at home and abroad, both military and economic. So please tell me why the US would accept the risk of such blowback. I really would like to know what part of US national security is threatened by Iran. Iran is a country that unlike the US has never attacked and occupied another country. It's history unlike the US's does not include numerous wars, attacks, occupations, threats, covert terrorist attacks, embargoes, economic warfare and ancillary belligerant offenses on other countries. So why is the US running scared, why is nothing off the table, why is the Congress just aching for another military debacle when there is absolutely no proof or evidence of a nuclear weapons manufacturing plant in Iran? Can you tell me? I sure would like to know.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:37 p.m.RECOMMENDED94
zorbeckFrankfurt
So, if I understand well, 2012 could be the year of the beginning of the end. I am not particularly fan of Amadenijad and his clerical masters, but I wonder how the West would have reacted if nuclear scientists in Dimona had been decimated in the same way as Iranins today. Denouncing a surge of insidious antisemitic terrorism maybe ?
Arabs have lived with 200 nuclear warheads at their doorstep for nearly 50 years and they survived. Can't Israel survive a nuclear Iran several thousand kms away ? Doesn't Iran have many other reasons to posess AMDs than Israel ? Can't Israel see that by attacking Iran it will trigger, in the long term and possibly even in the short term, precisely what it pretends to avoid ? There are numerous signs that young Iranians hate the regime in place, why pushing them in the ayatola's arms ?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 11:15 a.m.RECOMMENDED84
ElleCloudcuckooland
The Republicans, except Paul (whose foreign policy views seem scary to me) are beating the drum against Iran and in favor of the current Israeli government. I find this frightening, especially Gingrich, who will literally ($10,000,000 so far) owe his election to a rabid proponent of the current Israeli government.
I wish we could consider our own longterm interests and be less influenced by a certain stream of proIsrael opinion. (I consider myself proIsrael, and believe Israel is risking its future by the settlements, its disdain for other democracies, its brand of militarism)
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:37 p.m.RECOMMENDED82
billabalamma
Israel has nukes. Iran and what to do with the nucs is their problem.
Don't get me, my children or my grandchildren into a nuclear confrontation unless we, the US of A, are directly threatened. Do you know or recall, how Germany allowed Austria to drag it and the world into WWI?
We recognized Israel in 48 or 49, maybe not wisely. We should keep our responsibility limited to ensuring the boundaries of the peaceful state we recognized then, not the one claimed now, are not erased.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:54 p.m.RECOMMENDED71
Jack1947NYC
India has lived with a nuclear Pakistan that shelters its terror proxies under a nuclear umbrella. Japan and South Korea have lived with a nuclear North Korea. Israel too will have to live with nuclear neighbors including Iran.
Ehud Barak's observation: "An Iranian bomb would ensure the survival of the current regime, which otherwise would not make it to its 40th anniversary in light of the admiration that the young generation in Iran has displayed for the West. With a bomb, it would be very hard to budge the administration.” is misguided. An Israeli attack will bring all Iranians together. The 'young generation in Iran is just as much in favor of nuclear weapons as the Ayatollahs. An Israeli attack will precipitate a 1000 years of heightened hatred in the middle east that will do no one any good.
Unlike Pakistan, the Iranian leadership are pragmatic and realistic. Iran's reasons for the nuclear option (as Barak has indicated) include immunity from western attack. It is lost on no one that if Iraq and Libya had nukes, Saddam and Qaddafi would still be in power. In fact the North Koreans said as much. Similarly, Pakistan continues its shenanigans and we put up with them because they have nukes.
No easy answers but attacking Iran is clearly the wrong answer.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:12 p.m.RECOMMENDED67
ArchArcadia, Ca
Ronen Bergman wrote, “and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.”
Right, that is why Israel needs US made bunker-busting bombs, US made jets to deliver them, US fuel tankers, and the US Navy to keep the straits open.
US soldiers have been fighting for Israel ever since the US military airlifted to Israeli massive quantities of weapons during the 1967 War. (Without logistics, the front-line foot soldier is useless: The man who carries the bullets to the battlefield is as important as the soldier who fires the bullets.)
Israel cannot defend itself without US aid.
Israel should be required to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The Middle East should be a nuclear free zone.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:51 p.m.RECOMMENDED59
Archie1954Vancouver
Your point is well taken. The whole mess is keyed on the Israelis and it is up to them to settle it before it becomes a bloodbath. If the US weren't continually backing Israel whether wrong or right, Israel would have settled with the Palestinians decades ago.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:33 p.m.RECOMMENDED59
CarltonMontclair
If Israel continues to illegally occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip and oppress and humiliate the Palestinians that live there they will have no security ....Period
They are not hated because they are Jews. They are hated because they are occupiers of lands that don't belong to them.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:57 p.m.RECOMMENDED57
Palmer1619Warminster, PA
Natanyahu will do whatever he wants to do. He seldom tells us what his plans are. He feels he can get away with it because he can count on the US to react in his favor. But why should we have to answer for the voters of Israel? They are the ones who elected hawks. Do we think that the Israelis didn't know that? I don't think so. Israel has always been in a kind of limbo given what surrounds them. Why do the voters there insist on electing a government that relies more on military actions than negotiations? The things the Bush administration did, it did in our name and we are still answering for that. Why do we have to answer for what the Israeli government is doing?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 11:14 a.m.RECOMMENDED57
EronPA
"Will Israel Attack Iran?"
A better Question would be
Will Israel brow beat America into attacking Iran for it?
Here is an idea, Israel has the most powerful military AND atomic deterrent in the middle east. Why dont we let Iran and Israel sort it out on their own?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:52 p.m.RECOMMENDED54
Padman Boston
I am exhausted after reading this whole report, I can see all the reasons why Israel wants to block Iran from making the nukes but still does not make sense. It is not possible for Israel to totally halt the Iranian nuclear project by means of a military attack witout American support and Americans would not go for it. A military strike by Israel and America would be catastrophic for the whole world. Israel should give up this crazy idea of attacking Iran. Let Iran have the nukes. Israel has to learn to live with a nucler Iran. I don't believe that just because Irann has the nukes they are going to wipe out Israel off the map. This is just paranoia. World has more reasons to worry about Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into wrong hands ( al-Qaida) than Iran eliminating Israel.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED52
DavidSchaps
Although they frightened us at the time, it is now clear that neither Japan nor Germany had, or even thought they had, any possibility of conquering and holding even a small portion of the continental United States in 1941; and their decision to declare war put them on a course from which the best they could hope for was a stalemate, and the more likely outcome was their total destruction. Historians now marvel at the blindness that led them to start a war they had no hope of pursuing to a successful conclusion.
Israel, too, has no capability of conquering and holding even a small portion of Iran: they would not be welcomed by any section of the population (even those who hate the ayatollahs), and they haven't got the manpower to conquer, much less to police, so vast and varied an area. I am sure they do not even have a theoretical plan for a ground attack in Iran, just as the Japanese and the Germans had no plan, even theoretical, for an infantry assault on the USA.
And since the war can not end with the conquest of Iran by Israel, it can only end with a stalemate after both sides have been worn down awfully (and in the course of which the Iranians have probably developed and perhaps used nuclear weapons), or with a result yet worse for Israel. As an Israeli, I can understand why my government would want to give the impression of being willing to attack. I hope and pray that they are not foolish enough to stand behind their threats.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:51 p.m.RECOMMENDED50
Milby Boston, MA
Two points I don't see being made very often: 1) Imagine what the situation looks like to Iran. They are under siege from all sides, their citizens are being assassinated, they are constantly threatened with attack, invasion, and regime change, and they are the victims of a concerted and destructive economic war. 2) Nuclear weapons are essentially defensive. They are a guarantee that your nation wont be attacked. It is impossible for Iran to use them preemptively in an attack against Israel, or anyone else, because the entire country would be obliterated in the inevitable retaliation. It just doesn't make any sense that a nuclear Iran would be able to threaten its neighbors or extend nuclear protection to Hamas or Hezbollah or otherwise throw its weight around in the manner Israeli officials are suggesting because those threats simply couldn't be taken seriously. Given the siege mentality of Iran's political leadership, it is only logical for them to pursue nuclear weapons to protect against the invasion they are constantly threatened with. Remember, Israel has at least 200 nuclear weapons that will blanket all of Iran within an hour of any nuclear attack. Iran is not suicidal.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED49
Buzz kSF, Ca
What does the Unites States get from a collective strike on Iran? More unilateral support for our paper "ally" Israel and another trillion dollar deficit to add to our tally sheet?
Good luck Israel.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:50 p.m.RECOMMENDED47
rUS
Of course it's up to Obama. It's entirely up to Obama.
He should be threatening the Israelis with an end to ALL aid, a naval blockade followed by a cruise missile strike on Tel Aviv should they DARE to further destabilize the region by launching an illegal attack on Iran.
Then he should issue an ultimatum: Israel can keep its nuclear arsenal and in exchange, the US will help Iran achieve nuclear parity with them, OR israel relinquishes its WMD and a non-nuclear zone in the Mid East under international supervision is put in place, which is very do-able and represents the only sane strategy to avoid catastrophe.
In reply to salgadoceJan. 25, 2012 at 3:37 p.m.RECOMMENDED45
Ann Delacy Columbia, Maryland
Israel has had warheads for decades, does that possibly frighten Iran and other neighbors of Israel?
Whatever the case, my position is that we have suffered a significant loss of American lives and expended resources that were sorely need by the USA during the last ten years. We simply cannot fiscally or emotionally afford to be dragged into another situation in the Middle East.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:52 p.m.RECOMMENDED40
simjamBethesda, MD
Why does the NY Times keep running incendiary articles that, in effect, keep the US getting involved in a war with Iran on the table? The owner/editors need to come clean.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:52 p.m.RECOMMENDED36
Jazd86Australia
Has everyone forgotten that time and time again the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has inspected and reported that Iran has no nucear weapons program or materials pure enough to even start one? This whole idea is a fear mongering campign. I wish the media would invest more time in reporting that Israel is not part of the nuclear non proliferation treaty, as Iran is, and poses more of a threat to world peace through this fear campaign than they are telling us that Iran does. This is shear madness! Get the facts people. Don't just believe what you hear.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:51 p.m.RECOMMENDED36
kcomesswashington
This is an excellent and thoughtfully prepared article. Unfortunately, the author's conclusion seems valid.
While I certainly support Israel's "right to exist" (not that my endorsement is necessary: that should be a given internationally), I do not support the attitudes and actions of the current government, which not only appears to have adopted many self-defeating actions and attitudes and has not only encouraged extreme right-wing domestic reaction, but is now (once again) on the verge of acting against its manifest best interests.
The problem, as nicely presented in the article, is that an attack on Iran simply won't work and it will be followed by consequences which will be internationally disastrous. So, if President Obama has any remaining sense, he will tell Israel something to the effect that, "You are an independent nation and we can't order you to do anything. However, the US has its own interests and an attack on Iran is not one of them for all the reasons that are well known to your government. So, if you proceed against our wishes, we will refuse to support you, including with logistical, intelligence and equipment resupply, we will cut off military and foreign aid and we will vigorously and unequivocally denounce your actions in the UN. We will follow that with sanctions."
Alternatively, Iran and Israel could reach some sort of compromise, either of an overt or tacit nature. Of course, neither of those will happen, will they?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 7:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED35
Maggie2 Maine
An attack on Iran would not resolve anything, but it most assuredly would unite the people of Iran, even those who oppose the current regime. For all its bluster and posturing, I doubt very much if Iran poses a genuine threat to Israel or any other country. All this talk of attacking Iran is not at all helpful to any possibilty of a return to the negotiating table and is irresponsible in the extreme.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED35
Mark ThomasonClawson, Michigan
Trusted
A war would be bad. Use of nuclear weapons against Iran by Israel would be an entirely different matter, essentially suicide.
The Israelis must be made to understand that if they cross that psychological threshold for use of nuclear weapons, then someone will most certainly use one on Israel next. It might be Pakistan, or Saudis, or other Gulf Arabs, or Turkey, or China, or Russia, but someone will sooner rather than later take them out. Everyone would be harmed and threatened, and everyone will react to some extent. With that barrier broken, it would be just a matter of time. One or more would gain vengeance, or just end the problem, by ending Israel.
The threat of crossing that line is far more dangerous to Israel than the threat of Iran, nuclear or otherwise.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:49 p.m.RECOMMENDED33
JYNXNortheast corridor
I am exhausted by the trouble 7,992 sq mi causes world peace.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED33
rUS
Except they are NOT threatened by Iran--they're threatened by Israel.
Just as the regional powers were ALL opposed to America's massacre in Iraq. They did NOT fear Saddam, they feared the terrorists of the United States— with very good reason.
In reply to ZZJan. 25, 2012 at 3:50 p.m.RECOMMENDED31
HamzaRichmond
Israel had nuclear weapons before the Iranian threat. What was their raison d'tre?
America has been conducting covert and proxy wars with Iran before anyone ever put Iran and Nukes in the same sentence.
This is not about Iran or Nukes. It's about oil and the control of Libyan, Iranian, Iraqi Oil and the middle east.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:42 p.m.RECOMMENDED30
DoyenNY
Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo. Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED28
Joe New York
This may sound like an unorthodox view, but here it is, anyway. For almost 50 years, from the end of World War 2 unil the demise of the Soviet Union, the whole world lived under the specter of a nuclear catastrophe. Both Superpowers possessed - and still do - enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the entire planet many times over. Characteristically, Einstein is supposed to have said that he was not sure about the weaponry of World War 3, but, for sure, World War 4 would be fought with stones and slingshots. Reason prevailed and nothing happened. The Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) poilcy actually saved the world. It is also unclear whether the US would have bombed Hiroshima, if it knew that Japan possessed the same weapon. In the current Middle East situation, it is well known, if not officially confirmed, that Israel possesses a fairly large number of nuclear weapons. Looking at this historical analogy, one should ponder whether the world would be SAFER with an Iran that possesses a nuclear weapon, thus establishing a MAD equilibrium between Israel and Iran.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED28
AlexQueens, NY
A new year is here, but the same old story of treats by Israel against its neighbors continue! Today its the Iranians, yesterday was the Turks, Lebanese, Palestinians, etc..etc.. I just want this madness to stop, before we all suffer.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED27
RVN88Houston,TX
As long as there is Israel, there will never be world peace and prosperity for all nations! And as long as we support this rogue, artificial state, everyone in the world will hate us.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:50 p.m.RECOMMENDED26
EinsteinAmerica
In our world of humanity, Jews and Arabs actually have a lot in common.
This conflict is really more like a family feud that is engulfing the rest of humanity.
Both Jews and Arabs and Persians have beautiful ancient cultures. Why can't they try to respect each other. Why can't they use their collective intelligence to show the world a new way to peace?
Most of humanity just wants to live in peace. We beg you to overcome your differences and create a nuclear-free zone.
It is time to find a path to peace and harmony for the sake of all humanity.$
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:38 p.m.RECOMMENDED24
JerryVNYC
As a longtime supporter of the State of Israel (but not its current government), I believe that an airstrike on Iran would be stupid. We can hope that the young people of Iran will someday be successful in creating an Iranian Spring and the development of a more moderate Iranian government. But an airstrike on Iran would alienate these youg people. Patriotism would come first and all hope of an Iranian Spring would be lost. This is how the young people reacted when Iran was attacked by Sadam's Iraq. They would do so again.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED24
dubiousnew york
Isn't Amed's term over soon?. Sounds like Israel wants to remain the only super power in the area. How come they are allowed to have 500 nukes that they are fitting into subs now.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:54 p.m.RECOMMENDED22
Jon DavisNM
Netanyahu = Ahmedinejad.
If the world could rid of both men and their followers, the world would be a better place. But their existence does highlight two fundamental truths: All religions are the same and no religion has anything positive to offer the world.
And after all, some of the cruelest Islamic practices...like stoning rape victims to death for allowing themselves to be raped...was taken directly from the Jewish Old Testament.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:54 p.m.RECOMMENDED22
DeVonAtlanta, GA
With Iran's nuclear facilities all deeply underground, what exactly would Isreal be bombing? And I just don't see Iran makeing a pre-emptive or unprovoked attack on Isreal, knowing that the rest of the world would bomb the country out of existence. Plus in a possible war with Iran, do we know what side Russia and China are on? I think that President Obama would only go after Iran if there is an international coalition. He does not believe in a pre-emptive go it alone policy like Bush believe in.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:33 p.m.RECOMMENDED22
Colin WrightRichmond, California
"...On the other hand, when a scientist — one who is not a trained soldier or used to facing life-threatening situations, who has a wife and children — watches his colleagues being bumped off one after the other, he definitely begins to fear that the day will come when a man on a motorbike knocks on his car window.” "
In other words, Israel openly practices terrorism, and we continue to support her and protect her from the consequences of that.
Jan. 26, 2012 at 10:54 a.m.RECOMMENDED21
Buzz kSF, Ca
US Aid to Israel is $3.2 billion a years in military allowance plus loan guarantees for billions more plus in August, Ehud Barak told the US Govt Israel wanted $20 billion more.
Every cent we give this wealthy democracy in weapons only "aids" in the perception they don't ever need to make peace. We will just come stuffing them with more and more weapons to kill muslims....not a good plan.
In reply to ArchJan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED21
Archie1954Vancouver
If as the US says, Iran is attempting to get nuclear weapons, an accusation not yet proven, it is for one reason and one reason only, the possession of such weapons by Israel. Either that part of the Middle East was to be nuclear weapon free or it was to have equal access to such weapons by the nations located there. The US with a nod and a wink allowed or even perhaps assisted Israel in possessing those weapons, so today's problems once more can be laid at America's door as is usual in all the hot spots in the world.
In reply to zorbeckJan. 25, 2012 at 3:33 p.m.RECOMMENDED20
Joe Schmoe Brookyn
I agree with Arch. Even if the US aid is a "small part" of Israel's budget, the fact is that they at least have the implicit backing of the USA, and are thus emboldened to do things that effectively make the USA look bad, all the while knowing that the big bully on the block will swoop in to save them if the going gets really rough. Anybody who believes the country of Israel to be an entity that could exist as it currently does, with its currently aggressive policies, without the well known support of the United States is deluded. Watch how quickly Israel plays nice if the USA openly told Israel they're on their own unless, in return for their foreign aid and military backing, they do things that are actually in the USA's interests, like finally making peace with the Palestinians, halting settlement building, etc.
In reply to ArchJan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED19
DTNYC
The author makes a leap at the end which is not supported by the latter half of the article. He shows how much of the Israeli military leadership agrees that it would be futile to attack Iran alone. Netanyahu and Barak are not foolish. They are military men and they know this. And yet the author argues the he believes Israel will attack in 2012. It should be abundantly clear from all these discussions that Israel would not embark on such an adventure alone. And the US is certainly unlikely to go along in the current political environment. So Israel really has no choice but to continue covert operations (assuming they are behind the sabotage), and push for crippling sanctions and encourage opposition groups for regime change. The one major benefit to the Iraq war was the removal of a tyrant. Imagine a free and liberal Iran. The potential is huge. There's a large, young, Western-admiring population. Iran could be a major ally to the US, and yes, even Israel (as they were before the Islamic Revolution). A war would negate any possibility of a friendly Iran, and Israel wouldn't risk creating a permanent enemy who is hellbent on obtaining and using nuclear weapons.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED19
Mark ThomasonClawson, Michigan
Trusted
"For Israel to do this successfully they will have no choice but use tactical nuclear bombs"
Yes, there is a choice not to commit a nuclear holocaust, and Israel of all nations ought to know that.
But if you were right, then that would itself justify an Iranian nuclear deterrent. That is the logic of going around nuking people.
And once that starts, one bomb countries that don't get along with anyone will have a very short life span.
So it is not just criminal, it is also a losing move.
In reply to FigaroJan. 25, 2012 at 8:14 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
Mark ThomasonClawson, Michigan
Trusted
That may be because its not true, and everyone who cares actually knows that.
In reply to Seward RileyJan. 25, 2012 at 5:00 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
HankMaine
TO: r . US
Your comments could be an excellent solution. The United States must make every reasonable effort to stop any war between Israel and Iran within the next 90 days.
If this continues to escalates after the 90 day period the US should with all member countries of the United Nations immediately cut off any and all aid, commerce, banking, diplomatic relations, military assistance etc. to Israel and Iran.
I believe this could resolve the stalemate that has not only affected stability in Iran and Israel but the whole region and possibly the world.
Smart leaders and citizens of these two countries must understand war is not the answer as neither may not survive.
Rational leadership must understand negotiation is the proper way to resolve this matter. Talks vs. all out war, should and must be the only option.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
DeVonAtlanta, GA
Well after 10 years of war in the middle east, the last thing this country needs is to start a new war with Iran. As someone else pointed out when has Iran attacked or bombed any other country? I think the American people need to rise up and be heard and fight against the right's constant drumbeat for war with Iran.
In reply to AriJan. 25, 2012 at 4:48 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
green444 Ann Arbor, MI
You assume the Palestinians would have "settled" with the Israeli's. Is there no room in your world view to accept that the Arabs in the region, Palestinians included, have never accepted Israel as a neighbor and are still focused on their destruction?
In reply to Archie1954Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:50 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
bergamo italy
attacking iran would be another of the crazy things that the Israeli governments since the inception of the state, have accustomed us to expecting. It will not work, because no "surgical" strike has worked so far. It will unite Iranians under Khamenei, while now there is a chance for a change in government, and will bring support for an acceleration, not delay, of the process.
And, in the end, why should Israel have hundreds of bombs, Israel the most war mongering, conservative, aggressive state in the region?
Jan. 26, 2012 at 11:27 a.m.RECOMMENDED14
Mark S Boston, MA
There is the complicating factor that 2012 is an election year in the US. While I don't want to imply that this is the sole (or even major) impetus behind the mounting pressure, I can't imagine Netanyahu DOESN'T know that if he attacks, he will put a president who has struggled against being perceived as anti-Israel in a very, very tight bind only a few months before his election. Obama will probably have little choice at that point, and that's unfortunate.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED14
rUS
"Why do the Arab nations seem to have no interest in stopping Iran?"
Because Iran is not the problem. The US and Israel are the problem.
In reply to Jeff S.Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED13
salgadoce New Mexico
Even if the Israelis force regime change (via US intervention), the 'green' reformists are just as likely to aggressively pursue a nuclear program, so I don't really see the long term benefits of preemptive military action.
If Israel strikes unilaterally, the best it can hope for is to precipitate a US reaction to an Iranian counterattack. I don't believe they are prepared or even capable of any type of prolonged ground offensive (it'd be more of a 'defensive' anyway), given their difficulties in Lebanon in 2006, and given the fact that the IDF is ill-suited to stray too far from Israeli territory. They have robust airstrike capabilities, but as the US campaign in Afghanistan has showed, air-power can only take you so far.
In terms of US interests, any type of kinetic engagement would put the kibosh on the nascent economic recovery at home and in Europe. And with regards to our military materiel and personnel, we just don't have the manpower or assets to pacify the region, should things spiral out of control. The worst case scenario would obviously be a complete mess, but I can't get past the thought that we would probably end up needing to send troops back to (or through) Iraq, and that would be the mother of all sick and twisted absurdities.
If it was up to Obama, I would feel fairly certain that military action would be a no-go. The problem is that it's not up to him. The US, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. are all keying on the Israelis.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 11:14 a.m.RECOMMENDED13
ScientellaPalo Alto
What happened to the rule of law. When Teller died here on Stanford Campus it was from natural causes. No one wanted to buy his house. Bad Karma. However this lackey of the military industrial complex died from natural causes.
Exjudicial assassinations are barbaric. And especially coming from a country, Israel, who actually HAS nukes not just threatening to get them.
Shame on all those who consider starting world war three on the grounds of racist land grab!
I can't believe this is even a consideration. Is the Iranian government the best of all possible worlds? Hardly. BUT Has modern Iran invaded any other countries? Does Iran have aircraft carrier groups in the Gulf of Mexico? Has Iran shot down American airliners in American air space? (No, but the US has shot down an Iranian airliner in Iranian air space). Were the 22 9/11 suicide terrorists and Al-Queda Iranian or supporters of Iran? NO, they were mostly Saudi. And the Saudis, Al-Queda, and the Taliban despise the Iranians. Is the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan supported by neighbouring Iran? No. Saudia Arabia has done far more harm to the US and western interests than Iran has ever contemplated.
I greatly dislike the Iranian government and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a horrible buffoon, who says ridiculously stupid rhetorical things, but is vigorously opposed by many Iranians, the US should be very familiar with that situation from 8 years with George W. Bush!
Let Iran be, Ahmadinejad will fade away, and they will slowly evolve in positive directions with the energy and modernity of its enormous youth coupled, who are inevitably the future of a nation.
Attack Iran, and you unleash great horrors on the world, while uniting every Iranian with the worst of its government.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:33 p.m.RECOMMENDED148
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WendiChico, CA
While I believe that Amedenijad is an egotistical nut job, supporting attacks on Iran by Israel is not the way to go. I know the Republicans are all over this, but getting involved in this kind ‘crazy talk’ will not serve this Country at all. We need to take care of our own problems and let Netanyahu worry about Israel.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:55 p.m.RECOMMENDED103
Archie1954Vancouver
Iran is not Iraq or Afghanistan, so please don't ever make the mistake of thinking an attack on it will be a cake walk. There will be huge collateral damage to American interests both at home and abroad, both military and economic. So please tell me why the US would accept the risk of such blowback. I really would like to know what part of US national security is threatened by Iran. Iran is a country that unlike the US has never attacked and occupied another country. It's history unlike the US's does not include numerous wars, attacks, occupations, threats, covert terrorist attacks, embargoes, economic warfare and ancillary belligerant offenses on other countries. So why is the US running scared, why is nothing off the table, why is the Congress just aching for another military debacle when there is absolutely no proof or evidence of a nuclear weapons manufacturing plant in Iran? Can you tell me? I sure would like to know.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:37 p.m.RECOMMENDED94
zorbeckFrankfurt
So, if I understand well, 2012 could be the year of the beginning of the end. I am not particularly fan of Amadenijad and his clerical masters, but I wonder how the West would have reacted if nuclear scientists in Dimona had been decimated in the same way as Iranins today. Denouncing a surge of insidious antisemitic terrorism maybe ?
Arabs have lived with 200 nuclear warheads at their doorstep for nearly 50 years and they survived. Can't Israel survive a nuclear Iran several thousand kms away ? Doesn't Iran have many other reasons to posess AMDs than Israel ? Can't Israel see that by attacking Iran it will trigger, in the long term and possibly even in the short term, precisely what it pretends to avoid ? There are numerous signs that young Iranians hate the regime in place, why pushing them in the ayatola's arms ?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 11:15 a.m.RECOMMENDED84
ElleCloudcuckooland
The Republicans, except Paul (whose foreign policy views seem scary to me) are beating the drum against Iran and in favor of the current Israeli government. I find this frightening, especially Gingrich, who will literally ($10,000,000 so far) owe his election to a rabid proponent of the current Israeli government.
I wish we could consider our own longterm interests and be less influenced by a certain stream of proIsrael opinion. (I consider myself proIsrael, and believe Israel is risking its future by the settlements, its disdain for other democracies, its brand of militarism)
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:37 p.m.RECOMMENDED82
billabalamma
Israel has nukes. Iran and what to do with the nucs is their problem.
Don't get me, my children or my grandchildren into a nuclear confrontation unless we, the US of A, are directly threatened. Do you know or recall, how Germany allowed Austria to drag it and the world into WWI?
We recognized Israel in 48 or 49, maybe not wisely. We should keep our responsibility limited to ensuring the boundaries of the peaceful state we recognized then, not the one claimed now, are not erased.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:54 p.m.RECOMMENDED71
Jack1947NYC
India has lived with a nuclear Pakistan that shelters its terror proxies under a nuclear umbrella. Japan and South Korea have lived with a nuclear North Korea. Israel too will have to live with nuclear neighbors including Iran.
Ehud Barak's observation: "An Iranian bomb would ensure the survival of the current regime, which otherwise would not make it to its 40th anniversary in light of the admiration that the young generation in Iran has displayed for the West. With a bomb, it would be very hard to budge the administration.” is misguided. An Israeli attack will bring all Iranians together. The 'young generation in Iran is just as much in favor of nuclear weapons as the Ayatollahs. An Israeli attack will precipitate a 1000 years of heightened hatred in the middle east that will do no one any good.
Unlike Pakistan, the Iranian leadership are pragmatic and realistic. Iran's reasons for the nuclear option (as Barak has indicated) include immunity from western attack. It is lost on no one that if Iraq and Libya had nukes, Saddam and Qaddafi would still be in power. In fact the North Koreans said as much. Similarly, Pakistan continues its shenanigans and we put up with them because they have nukes.
No easy answers but attacking Iran is clearly the wrong answer.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:12 p.m.RECOMMENDED67
ArchArcadia, Ca
Ronen Bergman wrote, “and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.”
Right, that is why Israel needs US made bunker-busting bombs, US made jets to deliver them, US fuel tankers, and the US Navy to keep the straits open.
US soldiers have been fighting for Israel ever since the US military airlifted to Israeli massive quantities of weapons during the 1967 War. (Without logistics, the front-line foot soldier is useless: The man who carries the bullets to the battlefield is as important as the soldier who fires the bullets.)
Israel cannot defend itself without US aid.
Israel should be required to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The Middle East should be a nuclear free zone.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:51 p.m.RECOMMENDED59
Archie1954Vancouver
Your point is well taken. The whole mess is keyed on the Israelis and it is up to them to settle it before it becomes a bloodbath. If the US weren't continually backing Israel whether wrong or right, Israel would have settled with the Palestinians decades ago.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:33 p.m.RECOMMENDED59
CarltonMontclair
If Israel continues to illegally occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip and oppress and humiliate the Palestinians that live there they will have no security ....Period
They are not hated because they are Jews. They are hated because they are occupiers of lands that don't belong to them.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:57 p.m.RECOMMENDED57
Palmer1619Warminster, PA
Natanyahu will do whatever he wants to do. He seldom tells us what his plans are. He feels he can get away with it because he can count on the US to react in his favor. But why should we have to answer for the voters of Israel? They are the ones who elected hawks. Do we think that the Israelis didn't know that? I don't think so. Israel has always been in a kind of limbo given what surrounds them. Why do the voters there insist on electing a government that relies more on military actions than negotiations? The things the Bush administration did, it did in our name and we are still answering for that. Why do we have to answer for what the Israeli government is doing?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 11:14 a.m.RECOMMENDED57
EronPA
"Will Israel Attack Iran?"
A better Question would be
Will Israel brow beat America into attacking Iran for it?
Here is an idea, Israel has the most powerful military AND atomic deterrent in the middle east. Why dont we let Iran and Israel sort it out on their own?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:52 p.m.RECOMMENDED54
Padman Boston
I am exhausted after reading this whole report, I can see all the reasons why Israel wants to block Iran from making the nukes but still does not make sense. It is not possible for Israel to totally halt the Iranian nuclear project by means of a military attack witout American support and Americans would not go for it. A military strike by Israel and America would be catastrophic for the whole world. Israel should give up this crazy idea of attacking Iran. Let Iran have the nukes. Israel has to learn to live with a nucler Iran. I don't believe that just because Irann has the nukes they are going to wipe out Israel off the map. This is just paranoia. World has more reasons to worry about Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into wrong hands ( al-Qaida) than Iran eliminating Israel.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED52
DavidSchaps
Although they frightened us at the time, it is now clear that neither Japan nor Germany had, or even thought they had, any possibility of conquering and holding even a small portion of the continental United States in 1941; and their decision to declare war put them on a course from which the best they could hope for was a stalemate, and the more likely outcome was their total destruction. Historians now marvel at the blindness that led them to start a war they had no hope of pursuing to a successful conclusion.
Israel, too, has no capability of conquering and holding even a small portion of Iran: they would not be welcomed by any section of the population (even those who hate the ayatollahs), and they haven't got the manpower to conquer, much less to police, so vast and varied an area. I am sure they do not even have a theoretical plan for a ground attack in Iran, just as the Japanese and the Germans had no plan, even theoretical, for an infantry assault on the USA.
And since the war can not end with the conquest of Iran by Israel, it can only end with a stalemate after both sides have been worn down awfully (and in the course of which the Iranians have probably developed and perhaps used nuclear weapons), or with a result yet worse for Israel. As an Israeli, I can understand why my government would want to give the impression of being willing to attack. I hope and pray that they are not foolish enough to stand behind their threats.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:51 p.m.RECOMMENDED50
Milby Boston, MA
Two points I don't see being made very often: 1) Imagine what the situation looks like to Iran. They are under siege from all sides, their citizens are being assassinated, they are constantly threatened with attack, invasion, and regime change, and they are the victims of a concerted and destructive economic war. 2) Nuclear weapons are essentially defensive. They are a guarantee that your nation wont be attacked. It is impossible for Iran to use them preemptively in an attack against Israel, or anyone else, because the entire country would be obliterated in the inevitable retaliation. It just doesn't make any sense that a nuclear Iran would be able to threaten its neighbors or extend nuclear protection to Hamas or Hezbollah or otherwise throw its weight around in the manner Israeli officials are suggesting because those threats simply couldn't be taken seriously. Given the siege mentality of Iran's political leadership, it is only logical for them to pursue nuclear weapons to protect against the invasion they are constantly threatened with. Remember, Israel has at least 200 nuclear weapons that will blanket all of Iran within an hour of any nuclear attack. Iran is not suicidal.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED49
Buzz kSF, Ca
What does the Unites States get from a collective strike on Iran? More unilateral support for our paper "ally" Israel and another trillion dollar deficit to add to our tally sheet?
Good luck Israel.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:50 p.m.RECOMMENDED47
rUS
Of course it's up to Obama. It's entirely up to Obama.
He should be threatening the Israelis with an end to ALL aid, a naval blockade followed by a cruise missile strike on Tel Aviv should they DARE to further destabilize the region by launching an illegal attack on Iran.
Then he should issue an ultimatum: Israel can keep its nuclear arsenal and in exchange, the US will help Iran achieve nuclear parity with them, OR israel relinquishes its WMD and a non-nuclear zone in the Mid East under international supervision is put in place, which is very do-able and represents the only sane strategy to avoid catastrophe.
In reply to salgadoceJan. 25, 2012 at 3:37 p.m.RECOMMENDED45
Ann Delacy Columbia, Maryland
Israel has had warheads for decades, does that possibly frighten Iran and other neighbors of Israel?
Whatever the case, my position is that we have suffered a significant loss of American lives and expended resources that were sorely need by the USA during the last ten years. We simply cannot fiscally or emotionally afford to be dragged into another situation in the Middle East.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:52 p.m.RECOMMENDED40
simjamBethesda, MD
Why does the NY Times keep running incendiary articles that, in effect, keep the US getting involved in a war with Iran on the table? The owner/editors need to come clean.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:52 p.m.RECOMMENDED36
Jazd86Australia
Has everyone forgotten that time and time again the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has inspected and reported that Iran has no nucear weapons program or materials pure enough to even start one? This whole idea is a fear mongering campign. I wish the media would invest more time in reporting that Israel is not part of the nuclear non proliferation treaty, as Iran is, and poses more of a threat to world peace through this fear campaign than they are telling us that Iran does. This is shear madness! Get the facts people. Don't just believe what you hear.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:51 p.m.RECOMMENDED36
kcomesswashington
This is an excellent and thoughtfully prepared article. Unfortunately, the author's conclusion seems valid.
While I certainly support Israel's "right to exist" (not that my endorsement is necessary: that should be a given internationally), I do not support the attitudes and actions of the current government, which not only appears to have adopted many self-defeating actions and attitudes and has not only encouraged extreme right-wing domestic reaction, but is now (once again) on the verge of acting against its manifest best interests.
The problem, as nicely presented in the article, is that an attack on Iran simply won't work and it will be followed by consequences which will be internationally disastrous. So, if President Obama has any remaining sense, he will tell Israel something to the effect that, "You are an independent nation and we can't order you to do anything. However, the US has its own interests and an attack on Iran is not one of them for all the reasons that are well known to your government. So, if you proceed against our wishes, we will refuse to support you, including with logistical, intelligence and equipment resupply, we will cut off military and foreign aid and we will vigorously and unequivocally denounce your actions in the UN. We will follow that with sanctions."
Alternatively, Iran and Israel could reach some sort of compromise, either of an overt or tacit nature. Of course, neither of those will happen, will they?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 7:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED35
Maggie2 Maine
An attack on Iran would not resolve anything, but it most assuredly would unite the people of Iran, even those who oppose the current regime. For all its bluster and posturing, I doubt very much if Iran poses a genuine threat to Israel or any other country. All this talk of attacking Iran is not at all helpful to any possibilty of a return to the negotiating table and is irresponsible in the extreme.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED35
Mark ThomasonClawson, Michigan
Trusted
A war would be bad. Use of nuclear weapons against Iran by Israel would be an entirely different matter, essentially suicide.
The Israelis must be made to understand that if they cross that psychological threshold for use of nuclear weapons, then someone will most certainly use one on Israel next. It might be Pakistan, or Saudis, or other Gulf Arabs, or Turkey, or China, or Russia, but someone will sooner rather than later take them out. Everyone would be harmed and threatened, and everyone will react to some extent. With that barrier broken, it would be just a matter of time. One or more would gain vengeance, or just end the problem, by ending Israel.
The threat of crossing that line is far more dangerous to Israel than the threat of Iran, nuclear or otherwise.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:49 p.m.RECOMMENDED33
JYNXNortheast corridor
I am exhausted by the trouble 7,992 sq mi causes world peace.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED33
rUS
Except they are NOT threatened by Iran--they're threatened by Israel.
Just as the regional powers were ALL opposed to America's massacre in Iraq. They did NOT fear Saddam, they feared the terrorists of the United States— with very good reason.
In reply to ZZJan. 25, 2012 at 3:50 p.m.RECOMMENDED31
HamzaRichmond
Israel had nuclear weapons before the Iranian threat. What was their raison d'tre?
America has been conducting covert and proxy wars with Iran before anyone ever put Iran and Nukes in the same sentence.
This is not about Iran or Nukes. It's about oil and the control of Libyan, Iranian, Iraqi Oil and the middle east.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:42 p.m.RECOMMENDED30
DoyenNY
Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo. Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED28
Joe New York
This may sound like an unorthodox view, but here it is, anyway. For almost 50 years, from the end of World War 2 unil the demise of the Soviet Union, the whole world lived under the specter of a nuclear catastrophe. Both Superpowers possessed - and still do - enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the entire planet many times over. Characteristically, Einstein is supposed to have said that he was not sure about the weaponry of World War 3, but, for sure, World War 4 would be fought with stones and slingshots. Reason prevailed and nothing happened. The Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) poilcy actually saved the world. It is also unclear whether the US would have bombed Hiroshima, if it knew that Japan possessed the same weapon. In the current Middle East situation, it is well known, if not officially confirmed, that Israel possesses a fairly large number of nuclear weapons. Looking at this historical analogy, one should ponder whether the world would be SAFER with an Iran that possesses a nuclear weapon, thus establishing a MAD equilibrium between Israel and Iran.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED28
AlexQueens, NY
A new year is here, but the same old story of treats by Israel against its neighbors continue! Today its the Iranians, yesterday was the Turks, Lebanese, Palestinians, etc..etc.. I just want this madness to stop, before we all suffer.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED27
RVN88Houston,TX
As long as there is Israel, there will never be world peace and prosperity for all nations! And as long as we support this rogue, artificial state, everyone in the world will hate us.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:50 p.m.RECOMMENDED26
EinsteinAmerica
In our world of humanity, Jews and Arabs actually have a lot in common.
This conflict is really more like a family feud that is engulfing the rest of humanity.
Both Jews and Arabs and Persians have beautiful ancient cultures. Why can't they try to respect each other. Why can't they use their collective intelligence to show the world a new way to peace?
Most of humanity just wants to live in peace. We beg you to overcome your differences and create a nuclear-free zone.
It is time to find a path to peace and harmony for the sake of all humanity.$
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:38 p.m.RECOMMENDED24
JerryVNYC
As a longtime supporter of the State of Israel (but not its current government), I believe that an airstrike on Iran would be stupid. We can hope that the young people of Iran will someday be successful in creating an Iranian Spring and the development of a more moderate Iranian government. But an airstrike on Iran would alienate these youg people. Patriotism would come first and all hope of an Iranian Spring would be lost. This is how the young people reacted when Iran was attacked by Sadam's Iraq. They would do so again.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED24
dubiousnew york
Isn't Amed's term over soon?. Sounds like Israel wants to remain the only super power in the area. How come they are allowed to have 500 nukes that they are fitting into subs now.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:54 p.m.RECOMMENDED22
Jon DavisNM
Netanyahu = Ahmedinejad.
If the world could rid of both men and their followers, the world would be a better place. But their existence does highlight two fundamental truths: All religions are the same and no religion has anything positive to offer the world.
And after all, some of the cruelest Islamic practices...like stoning rape victims to death for allowing themselves to be raped...was taken directly from the Jewish Old Testament.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 4:54 p.m.RECOMMENDED22
DeVonAtlanta, GA
With Iran's nuclear facilities all deeply underground, what exactly would Isreal be bombing? And I just don't see Iran makeing a pre-emptive or unprovoked attack on Isreal, knowing that the rest of the world would bomb the country out of existence. Plus in a possible war with Iran, do we know what side Russia and China are on? I think that President Obama would only go after Iran if there is an international coalition. He does not believe in a pre-emptive go it alone policy like Bush believe in.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:33 p.m.RECOMMENDED22
Colin WrightRichmond, California
"...On the other hand, when a scientist — one who is not a trained soldier or used to facing life-threatening situations, who has a wife and children — watches his colleagues being bumped off one after the other, he definitely begins to fear that the day will come when a man on a motorbike knocks on his car window.” "
In other words, Israel openly practices terrorism, and we continue to support her and protect her from the consequences of that.
Jan. 26, 2012 at 10:54 a.m.RECOMMENDED21
Buzz kSF, Ca
US Aid to Israel is $3.2 billion a years in military allowance plus loan guarantees for billions more plus in August, Ehud Barak told the US Govt Israel wanted $20 billion more.
Every cent we give this wealthy democracy in weapons only "aids" in the perception they don't ever need to make peace. We will just come stuffing them with more and more weapons to kill muslims....not a good plan.
In reply to ArchJan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED21
Archie1954Vancouver
If as the US says, Iran is attempting to get nuclear weapons, an accusation not yet proven, it is for one reason and one reason only, the possession of such weapons by Israel. Either that part of the Middle East was to be nuclear weapon free or it was to have equal access to such weapons by the nations located there. The US with a nod and a wink allowed or even perhaps assisted Israel in possessing those weapons, so today's problems once more can be laid at America's door as is usual in all the hot spots in the world.
In reply to zorbeckJan. 25, 2012 at 3:33 p.m.RECOMMENDED20
Joe Schmoe Brookyn
I agree with Arch. Even if the US aid is a "small part" of Israel's budget, the fact is that they at least have the implicit backing of the USA, and are thus emboldened to do things that effectively make the USA look bad, all the while knowing that the big bully on the block will swoop in to save them if the going gets really rough. Anybody who believes the country of Israel to be an entity that could exist as it currently does, with its currently aggressive policies, without the well known support of the United States is deluded. Watch how quickly Israel plays nice if the USA openly told Israel they're on their own unless, in return for their foreign aid and military backing, they do things that are actually in the USA's interests, like finally making peace with the Palestinians, halting settlement building, etc.
In reply to ArchJan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED19
DTNYC
The author makes a leap at the end which is not supported by the latter half of the article. He shows how much of the Israeli military leadership agrees that it would be futile to attack Iran alone. Netanyahu and Barak are not foolish. They are military men and they know this. And yet the author argues the he believes Israel will attack in 2012. It should be abundantly clear from all these discussions that Israel would not embark on such an adventure alone. And the US is certainly unlikely to go along in the current political environment. So Israel really has no choice but to continue covert operations (assuming they are behind the sabotage), and push for crippling sanctions and encourage opposition groups for regime change. The one major benefit to the Iraq war was the removal of a tyrant. Imagine a free and liberal Iran. The potential is huge. There's a large, young, Western-admiring population. Iran could be a major ally to the US, and yes, even Israel (as they were before the Islamic Revolution). A war would negate any possibility of a friendly Iran, and Israel wouldn't risk creating a permanent enemy who is hellbent on obtaining and using nuclear weapons.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED19
Mark ThomasonClawson, Michigan
Trusted
"For Israel to do this successfully they will have no choice but use tactical nuclear bombs"
Yes, there is a choice not to commit a nuclear holocaust, and Israel of all nations ought to know that.
But if you were right, then that would itself justify an Iranian nuclear deterrent. That is the logic of going around nuking people.
And once that starts, one bomb countries that don't get along with anyone will have a very short life span.
So it is not just criminal, it is also a losing move.
In reply to FigaroJan. 25, 2012 at 8:14 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
Mark ThomasonClawson, Michigan
Trusted
That may be because its not true, and everyone who cares actually knows that.
In reply to Seward RileyJan. 25, 2012 at 5:00 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
HankMaine
TO: r . US
Your comments could be an excellent solution. The United States must make every reasonable effort to stop any war between Israel and Iran within the next 90 days.
If this continues to escalates after the 90 day period the US should with all member countries of the United Nations immediately cut off any and all aid, commerce, banking, diplomatic relations, military assistance etc. to Israel and Iran.
I believe this could resolve the stalemate that has not only affected stability in Iran and Israel but the whole region and possibly the world.
Smart leaders and citizens of these two countries must understand war is not the answer as neither may not survive.
Rational leadership must understand negotiation is the proper way to resolve this matter. Talks vs. all out war, should and must be the only option.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
DeVonAtlanta, GA
Well after 10 years of war in the middle east, the last thing this country needs is to start a new war with Iran. As someone else pointed out when has Iran attacked or bombed any other country? I think the American people need to rise up and be heard and fight against the right's constant drumbeat for war with Iran.
In reply to AriJan. 25, 2012 at 4:48 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
green444 Ann Arbor, MI
You assume the Palestinians would have "settled" with the Israeli's. Is there no room in your world view to accept that the Arabs in the region, Palestinians included, have never accepted Israel as a neighbor and are still focused on their destruction?
In reply to Archie1954Jan. 25, 2012 at 3:50 p.m.RECOMMENDED17
bergamo italy
attacking iran would be another of the crazy things that the Israeli governments since the inception of the state, have accustomed us to expecting. It will not work, because no "surgical" strike has worked so far. It will unite Iranians under Khamenei, while now there is a chance for a change in government, and will bring support for an acceleration, not delay, of the process.
And, in the end, why should Israel have hundreds of bombs, Israel the most war mongering, conservative, aggressive state in the region?
Jan. 26, 2012 at 11:27 a.m.RECOMMENDED14
Mark S Boston, MA
There is the complicating factor that 2012 is an election year in the US. While I don't want to imply that this is the sole (or even major) impetus behind the mounting pressure, I can't imagine Netanyahu DOESN'T know that if he attacks, he will put a president who has struggled against being perceived as anti-Israel in a very, very tight bind only a few months before his election. Obama will probably have little choice at that point, and that's unfortunate.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:09 p.m.RECOMMENDED14
rUS
"Why do the Arab nations seem to have no interest in stopping Iran?"
Because Iran is not the problem. The US and Israel are the problem.
In reply to Jeff S.Jan. 25, 2012 at 5:01 p.m.RECOMMENDED13
salgadoce New Mexico
Even if the Israelis force regime change (via US intervention), the 'green' reformists are just as likely to aggressively pursue a nuclear program, so I don't really see the long term benefits of preemptive military action.
If Israel strikes unilaterally, the best it can hope for is to precipitate a US reaction to an Iranian counterattack. I don't believe they are prepared or even capable of any type of prolonged ground offensive (it'd be more of a 'defensive' anyway), given their difficulties in Lebanon in 2006, and given the fact that the IDF is ill-suited to stray too far from Israeli territory. They have robust airstrike capabilities, but as the US campaign in Afghanistan has showed, air-power can only take you so far.
In terms of US interests, any type of kinetic engagement would put the kibosh on the nascent economic recovery at home and in Europe. And with regards to our military materiel and personnel, we just don't have the manpower or assets to pacify the region, should things spiral out of control. The worst case scenario would obviously be a complete mess, but I can't get past the thought that we would probably end up needing to send troops back to (or through) Iraq, and that would be the mother of all sick and twisted absurdities.
If it was up to Obama, I would feel fairly certain that military action would be a no-go. The problem is that it's not up to him. The US, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. are all keying on the Israelis.
Jan. 25, 2012 at 11:14 a.m.RECOMMENDED13
ScientellaPalo Alto
What happened to the rule of law. When Teller died here on Stanford Campus it was from natural causes. No one wanted to buy his house. Bad Karma. However this lackey of the military industrial complex died from natural causes.
Exjudicial assassinations are barbaric. And especially coming from a country, Israel, who actually HAS nukes not just threatening to get them.
Shame on all those who consider starting world war three on the grounds of racist land grab!
28.12.11
some have spoken, have the others learned?
NYTimes OP-ED:
Mr. Paul’s Discredited Campaign
Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Now, making things worse, he has failed to convincingly repudiate racist remarks that were published under his name for years — or the enthusiastic support he is getting from racist groups.
Mr. Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas who is doing particularly well in Iowa’s precaucus polls, published several newsletters in the ’80s and ’90s with names like the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Political Report. The newsletters interspersed libertarian political and investment commentary with racial bigotry, anti-Semitism and far-right paranoia.
Among other offensive statements, the newsletters said that 95 percent of Washington’s black males were criminals, and they described the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as “Hate Whitey Day.” One 1993 article appeared under a headline lamenting the country’s “disappearing white majority.” Other articles suggested that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, praised the Louisiana racist David Duke and accused some gay men with AIDS of deliberately spreading the disease, “perhaps out of a pathological hatred.”
A direct-mail ad for the newsletters from around 1993 warned of a “coming race war in our big cities” and said there was a “federal-homosexual cover-up” to suppress the impact of AIDS.
Mr. Paul, who, beginning in 2008, has disavowed the articles and their ideas, now says that most of them were written by others and that he was unaware of their content. Even if that were the case, it suggests a stupendous level of negligence that should force a reconsideration by anyone considering entrusting him with the White House.
When the newsletters first became an issue during his Congressional campaigns in the 1990s, however, he did not deny writing some of them or knowing about them.
Mr. Paul has never given a full and detailed accounting of who wrote the newsletters and what his role was in overseeing their publication. It’s especially important that he do so immediately. Those writings have certainly not been forgotten by white supremacist and militia groups that are promoting his candidacy in Iowa and in New Hampshire.
The Times reported on Sunday that dozens of members of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront are volunteering for the Paul campaign, along with far-right militias, survivalists and anti-Zionist groups. Don Black, the Stormfront director, said his members were drawn to Mr. Paul by the newsletters and his positions against immigration and the Fed (run by Jews, Mr. Black said), even if Mr. Paul were not himself a white nationalist.
Mr. Paul, saying he still hopes to “convert” these supporters to his views, has refused to disavow them or to chase them out of his campaign. If he does not do so, he will leave a lasting stain on his candidacy, on the libertarian movement and, very possibly, on the Iowa caucuses.
Mr. Paul’s Discredited Campaign
Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Now, making things worse, he has failed to convincingly repudiate racist remarks that were published under his name for years — or the enthusiastic support he is getting from racist groups.
Mr. Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas who is doing particularly well in Iowa’s precaucus polls, published several newsletters in the ’80s and ’90s with names like the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Political Report. The newsletters interspersed libertarian political and investment commentary with racial bigotry, anti-Semitism and far-right paranoia.
Among other offensive statements, the newsletters said that 95 percent of Washington’s black males were criminals, and they described the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as “Hate Whitey Day.” One 1993 article appeared under a headline lamenting the country’s “disappearing white majority.” Other articles suggested that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, praised the Louisiana racist David Duke and accused some gay men with AIDS of deliberately spreading the disease, “perhaps out of a pathological hatred.”
A direct-mail ad for the newsletters from around 1993 warned of a “coming race war in our big cities” and said there was a “federal-homosexual cover-up” to suppress the impact of AIDS.
Mr. Paul, who, beginning in 2008, has disavowed the articles and their ideas, now says that most of them were written by others and that he was unaware of their content. Even if that were the case, it suggests a stupendous level of negligence that should force a reconsideration by anyone considering entrusting him with the White House.
When the newsletters first became an issue during his Congressional campaigns in the 1990s, however, he did not deny writing some of them or knowing about them.
Mr. Paul has never given a full and detailed accounting of who wrote the newsletters and what his role was in overseeing their publication. It’s especially important that he do so immediately. Those writings have certainly not been forgotten by white supremacist and militia groups that are promoting his candidacy in Iowa and in New Hampshire.
The Times reported on Sunday that dozens of members of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront are volunteering for the Paul campaign, along with far-right militias, survivalists and anti-Zionist groups. Don Black, the Stormfront director, said his members were drawn to Mr. Paul by the newsletters and his positions against immigration and the Fed (run by Jews, Mr. Black said), even if Mr. Paul were not himself a white nationalist.
Mr. Paul, saying he still hopes to “convert” these supporters to his views, has refused to disavow them or to chase them out of his campaign. If he does not do so, he will leave a lasting stain on his candidacy, on the libertarian movement and, very possibly, on the Iowa caucuses.
10.12.11
business talk vs. busiiness sense
What Is Business Waiting For?
By JOE NOCERA
Our current government isn’t going to create jobs, so it’s up to business to do it.
_____________________________
Marie Burns
Fort Myers, Florida
There's a reason your scenario won't happen, and it has nothing to do with fear of going first. It centers on greed, but it's a little more complicated. And not surprisingly, Congressional Republicans figure into the reason business won't be "altruistic" enough to increase the American labor force.
Warren Buffett made a compelling case in yesterday's Times for raising taxes on the rich. That, of course, includes the corporate rich. He pointed out that when taxes on investments were much higher, investors still invested and corporations were big jobs producers.
So why not now? Yves Smith, writing in Salon, notes that what corporate management really wants is "a high degree of certainty in their own profits and pay. Rather than earn their returns the old fashioned way, by serving customers well, by innovating, by expanding into new markets, their 'certainty' amounts to being paid handsomely for doing things that carry no risk."
So -- in the World According to Marie -- where does corporate management get that "certainty" that profits -- and their own pay -- will increase? From Republicans in Congress. A corporation's small investment in lobbyists will yield some fabulous tax breaks. Tax cuts mean higher profits -- profits gained with very little outlay, and comparatively little risk.
Thus, not only do lower corporate taxes not create jobs, as you say, the probability of Republicans bestowing tax breaks on corporations is actually a disincentive to jobs creation. Developing, making & marketing new products is a big risk -- an unknown unknown. Lobbying Congress is a cheap corporate investment that will yield the same profits with very little effort & very little risk. Congressional Republicans are clamoring to comply.
As long as Republicans and ConservaDems rule, don't expect corporate management to put Americans to work. Congress keeps telling them there's an easier way to make a buck.
The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com
John Farrish
Lafayette, LA
It is to laugh. Surely you jest.
The quest for immediate gratification in the form of short term profits has been institutionalized. If some company were to announce it will be foregoing short term profits for the purpose of putting people back to work, the stock value would tank, stockholders would revolt, and company officers would wave their seven figure salaries goodbye.
Anyway, this plan wouldn't work unless a large number of businesses bought into it, because one company hiring a few hundred employees isn't going to help sell stuff to people who don't have any money. And if other people aren't hiring along with the one, there won't be anybody to purchase the excess inventory that was just created.
The mistake you're making here, Mr. Nocera, is the same one supply siders have been making for a very long time: The economy is not supply driven; it's demand driven, and until people have money to spend, not one single "job creator" is ever going to spend a penny making anything. The way to put people to work is to put them to work. Jan Schakowsky, at least, gets this.
When I was working on my bachelor's degree in business administration they taught us about stakeholders. The stakeholders in a business, we were taught, used to be the company's stockholders alone, but that was no longer the case. My professors told me we lived in a much more enlightened society in which not just stockholders, but employees, customers, and the communities in which companies were located were all seen to have a legitimate stake in a company's performance, and managers were ethically bound to serve them all.
My professors lied to me. No such sense of obligation exists, not to employees, not to customers, and not to communities. Certainly not among corporate boards sitting on record piles of cash; their only sense of responsibility is to their own bank accounts. And if what has happened over the last 30 years isn't enough to convince you, then nothing ever will.
Morton Kurzweil
Margate, Florida
Germany has a safety net if universal health care, education, and unemployment income. The investment in workers in a country that has a favorable trade balance, that doesn't use cheap foreign labor to undercut consumer income or permit cash flow to safe havens and relies on the United States to spend an unsustainable level of its budget on international defense, is a great example of where we should be economically - except that our profligacy and uncontrolled "free trade" has been the cause of worldwide recession.
We do not need a smaller government. Our problem is small minds fixated upon the myth of American Christian Dominion, a belief in the manifest destiny of America to lead the world to a new social and moral
order.
That is the Tea Party agenda, a cheap knock off of nineteenth century Western empire building,
We are confused by those who insist that corporations are people with the people who are the We in "We the People". We are confused by those who suggest that morality requires a religious basis. We are confused by those who speak of human rights as they are defined by some religious extremist group.
We need to regain our secular balance if we are to have a government responsible to all the people all of the time.
Economic theories benefit those who would control an economy. Political theories in a secular democracy should respond to the needs of all.
DonB
Reno, NV
Why should we expect business to hire people they don't need?
As a businessman who is not hiring, I can only ask the above. The problem is simply lack of demand for goods and services. Period. It has been clearly documented that the American people have lost something on the order of $7.38 trillion in wealth since 2008. This is the position of the middle class, which heretofore represented 70% of the GDP:
(1) Their houses (their principal asset) are still losing value,
(2) they're not too sure they'll have the same job paying the same wages next year, and
(3) their level of debt is still very high, particularly given (1) and (2).
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Obama needs to buckle down, do a little studying, then come back with his silver tongue, explain clearly what has befallen the middle class over the past 35 years (as Robert Reich has done) and sell infrastructure projects to kick this place into gear. If the repubs don't go along, nail them to the wall with facts, over and over and over again until the history has sunk in.
cbi
Pennsylvania
Joe - I ran a company for 25 years. We had good years and years not so good. We weathered 3 recessions and in all those years I only had to let one person go (out of a staff of 40) because of the economy or product demand. How did we survive? First, in bad years, none of us got raises. As the CEO, I had the very same benefits that my employees had. I received no special perks, got no golden parachute from our board and traveled in coach (150,000 miles per year on average). I set up a pension program for employees that they did not have to put a penny in, but they knew was in lieu of a slightly larger salary. In my 25 years only two employees left the company even though they had better offers. They liked what we did, how we did, and were committed to making it work.
We did put people first. Our employees and our customers. In good years we put the money back into the business, not into bonuses or hiring unneeded staff. We expanded as we saw opportunity and found that recessions created opportunities as our competitors fell by the wayside because of their extensive over-borrowing and greed during their good times.
Yes, we were a small business, but all the Fortune 500 companies in our region learned lessons from us. In fact, at a local meeting of business executives back in 2001, I sat next to the CEOs of three Fortune 500 companies. They were asking me how we kept profitable during those tough times. I said just look out the door. My 8 year old car was parked in a spot next to the three limos with drivers waiting to take these "titans of industry" back the three or four miles to their isolated headquarters. The looked at me with glazed eyes. They didn't get it. And most of the leaders of our biggest companies still don't get it.
Satisfied customers create more business. Respecting employees and creating a level playing field spawns creativity. And ultimately that creates jobs and growth, no matter how small or big the company.
G. Morris
NY and NJ
US corporations are still tied to the Jack Welch dictums:
Keep Full Time Employees to a absolute minimum,
Create a two-tier employee structure with management paid mostly in stock options,
Even our universities have embraced this short-sighted mandate with over 70% of college students now being taught by temps (adjuncts) and the dream of tenure thrown over-board. The average age of a tenured professor is now 55; they shoud be put on the endangered list. They only get to work if their courses are filled by cash-carrying students.
Productivity is high, wages are low and corporate profits are massive. And the income paradigm of our country looks like a template for a Banana Republic.
My children and their spouses work 80 hours a week while some of their friends are either unemployed or waiting tables. They are all well-educated, highly skilled and under utilized by a management class that is addicted to short-term movements in stock prices. Jack Welch's management philosophy only works in the short -term which is now behind us.
Jerry Kriss
Baltimore, MD
Many of the writers above have noted the fallacy in Mr. Nocera's suggestion---that U.S. businesses would voluntarily create jobs in the absence of any increased demand. It's the same fallacy promulgated by the supply-side economists. Our economy is demand driven, and employers won't hire until there is increased demand. That's why they'r sitting on hoards of cash.
In situations like this, the only entity that increase demand is the government. Increased government spending puts more money in people's pockets that they can spend, and demand goes up. How do we pay for that? Increasing taxes! If businesses won't spend the hoarded cash (much of it accumulated from the Bush tax cuts), then the government should. Increased capital gains taxes and taxes on corporate dividends will actually *increase* job creation by business. The higher tax gives them an incentive to put their money back into the business. While hiring workers immediately is not a good idea, plowing that money into refurbished equipment, new equipment, and improved facilities is an investment in the future that will pay off when demand returns. Companies avoid taxes then because that moneyt has turned into a business expense. This purchasing in upgrades also increases demand and stimulates the economy. With higher tax rates, hiring more employees actually will cost a business *less* in net income. The taxed profit has been turned into a business expense.
The evidence for all this is quite clear in the economic record. The economy always boomed when marginal tax rates and taxes on dividends and capital gains were higher, during the Eisenhower era and the Clinton presidency. We should be pushing for higher taxes in these areas now to boost the economy.
John F. McBride
Seattle, WA
Growing up through the Korean War and Cold War years, then Vietnam, I assumed the truth of the constant assertion of living in America: that America is superior and because it is superior everyone wants to live here.
But the decades have gone by and I was disillusioned with time. America has some superior qualities, but isn't carte blanche superior. There are other methods in the world that work as well, and in many cases that work better.
Germany's societal understanding about jobs and employment is one. The much lower cost of health care in other nations and yet equal and even superior care is another.
A truth about America is that we in some large minority, even at times a majority, prefer belief, believing what America is, to the truth.
Sadly our Republican Party in general, and the Tea Party specifically, our extreme right conservatism, refuses to accept that it can learn from others and to insist that even if an idea has been tried time and again, during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II years, and failed, it will work. It has to work.
Maybe you're right Mr. Nocera, and corporations will voluntarily take on solving our employment problem. But I don't believe it. That's not happened in this nation before because our business model prefers strict capitalism and I know it. I'd have be as insane, in trusting after all this time that corporations can be trusted this first time to take this one as Republicans are in asserting that this time supply side and cutting spending in a severe contraction will work even though it never has before in the history of economics.
I'm not that crazy. Once burned, in my case, twice shy.
dickginnold
San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
Great article, Joe. I trained as an economist in the l950s when 'enlightened self interest' was the key word and stocks traded in the 5/10 PE range. Corporate CEOs didn't get rich. There might have been a few $1 to 2M CEOS, but most made a couple hundred thousand. To get through school for a couple years I piled pigs and poured metal for Kaiser Aluminum. I could earn $7,000 with overtime. Henry Kaiser, the CEO got about $200K, 30 times my wage. Our union was respected. Now US CEOs make 10s of millions, maybe up to 100M,, or 100s of times worker salaries,while their corporations are breaking unions, cutting benefits, laying off people, paying off Congressional represenatives and frequently losing money.
In 2008 I visited my relatives in Germany and travelled the country from Berlin to Hamburg. Amazing. Corporate boards have union reps and there is a social compact to share sacrifice, the origin of the hours reduction policy to reduce unemployment.
The country and its flourishing economy puts us to shame, full of windpower and several kinds of fast, modern transit, in its infrastructure, in the mixture of nationalities, social benefits and dignity of workers. I saw huge numbers of export containers in Hamburg, which exports 10M containers a year, mostly filled with industrial goods. During my visit, a Berlin paper had a spread on the top CEO salaries in Germany, major companies like Lufthansa, BMW. I don't believe there was a one above 1 to 3 M Euros,around 40 times the worker earnings, like we had it 60 years ago. They learned democratic capitalism, while the US was taken over by Wall Street and corporate rapists.
Jumper
South Carolina
Twenty-five years ago a young associate professor of business I knew relentlessly repeated to everyone who'd listen a key difference between Japanese managers and U.S. managers. Japanese managers could recite their market share but seldom knew their return on investment (ROI.) U.S. managers could recite their ROI but seldom knew their market share.
This same associate professor condemned the U.S. quarterly-report fixation. It was one of many indicators but it led U.S. investors to want every quarter to be better than the last. Simple algebra with exponents shows that folly.
Today, that former associate professor is Chair of the Department with no shortage of students.
An important question will be how the companies will judge the success of their efforts. Are they willing to be patient? Are workers willing to start at a lower salary? Are corporations willing to raise the pay as profits increase? Some may bring up unions. Only 6.9% of the U.S. private sector workforce is in unions.
You mention the Germans, but the Japanese also have a practice of setting aside money to keep workers on the job. The work may involve a lot of equipment and building maintenance but they are kept employed.
What's also going on in Japan and Germany is that fear is minimized in the workplace. When workplace fear is minimized, productivity increases. People pay attention to productivity and creativity rather than worrying about how to word their resume, or worrying about what they need to ask HR. They discuss coordinating efficiency or product improvement rather than discussing the latest company rumors.
In early 1914, at the height of a two year recession, Henry Ford doubled the daily wage to $5.00. He also cut the work day to eight hours. He was able to keep workers on the job and he was able to run three shifts. Car prices dropped.
Those were benefits to his corporation but those changes also had positive impact on American prosperity and standard of living in general.
By JOE NOCERA
Our current government isn’t going to create jobs, so it’s up to business to do it.
_____________________________
Marie Burns
Fort Myers, Florida
There's a reason your scenario won't happen, and it has nothing to do with fear of going first. It centers on greed, but it's a little more complicated. And not surprisingly, Congressional Republicans figure into the reason business won't be "altruistic" enough to increase the American labor force.
Warren Buffett made a compelling case in yesterday's Times for raising taxes on the rich. That, of course, includes the corporate rich. He pointed out that when taxes on investments were much higher, investors still invested and corporations were big jobs producers.
So why not now? Yves Smith, writing in Salon, notes that what corporate management really wants is "a high degree of certainty in their own profits and pay. Rather than earn their returns the old fashioned way, by serving customers well, by innovating, by expanding into new markets, their 'certainty' amounts to being paid handsomely for doing things that carry no risk."
So -- in the World According to Marie -- where does corporate management get that "certainty" that profits -- and their own pay -- will increase? From Republicans in Congress. A corporation's small investment in lobbyists will yield some fabulous tax breaks. Tax cuts mean higher profits -- profits gained with very little outlay, and comparatively little risk.
Thus, not only do lower corporate taxes not create jobs, as you say, the probability of Republicans bestowing tax breaks on corporations is actually a disincentive to jobs creation. Developing, making & marketing new products is a big risk -- an unknown unknown. Lobbying Congress is a cheap corporate investment that will yield the same profits with very little effort & very little risk. Congressional Republicans are clamoring to comply.
As long as Republicans and ConservaDems rule, don't expect corporate management to put Americans to work. Congress keeps telling them there's an easier way to make a buck.
The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com
John Farrish
Lafayette, LA
It is to laugh. Surely you jest.
The quest for immediate gratification in the form of short term profits has been institutionalized. If some company were to announce it will be foregoing short term profits for the purpose of putting people back to work, the stock value would tank, stockholders would revolt, and company officers would wave their seven figure salaries goodbye.
Anyway, this plan wouldn't work unless a large number of businesses bought into it, because one company hiring a few hundred employees isn't going to help sell stuff to people who don't have any money. And if other people aren't hiring along with the one, there won't be anybody to purchase the excess inventory that was just created.
The mistake you're making here, Mr. Nocera, is the same one supply siders have been making for a very long time: The economy is not supply driven; it's demand driven, and until people have money to spend, not one single "job creator" is ever going to spend a penny making anything. The way to put people to work is to put them to work. Jan Schakowsky, at least, gets this.
When I was working on my bachelor's degree in business administration they taught us about stakeholders. The stakeholders in a business, we were taught, used to be the company's stockholders alone, but that was no longer the case. My professors told me we lived in a much more enlightened society in which not just stockholders, but employees, customers, and the communities in which companies were located were all seen to have a legitimate stake in a company's performance, and managers were ethically bound to serve them all.
My professors lied to me. No such sense of obligation exists, not to employees, not to customers, and not to communities. Certainly not among corporate boards sitting on record piles of cash; their only sense of responsibility is to their own bank accounts. And if what has happened over the last 30 years isn't enough to convince you, then nothing ever will.
Morton Kurzweil
Margate, Florida
Germany has a safety net if universal health care, education, and unemployment income. The investment in workers in a country that has a favorable trade balance, that doesn't use cheap foreign labor to undercut consumer income or permit cash flow to safe havens and relies on the United States to spend an unsustainable level of its budget on international defense, is a great example of where we should be economically - except that our profligacy and uncontrolled "free trade" has been the cause of worldwide recession.
We do not need a smaller government. Our problem is small minds fixated upon the myth of American Christian Dominion, a belief in the manifest destiny of America to lead the world to a new social and moral
order.
That is the Tea Party agenda, a cheap knock off of nineteenth century Western empire building,
We are confused by those who insist that corporations are people with the people who are the We in "We the People". We are confused by those who suggest that morality requires a religious basis. We are confused by those who speak of human rights as they are defined by some religious extremist group.
We need to regain our secular balance if we are to have a government responsible to all the people all of the time.
Economic theories benefit those who would control an economy. Political theories in a secular democracy should respond to the needs of all.
DonB
Reno, NV
Why should we expect business to hire people they don't need?
As a businessman who is not hiring, I can only ask the above. The problem is simply lack of demand for goods and services. Period. It has been clearly documented that the American people have lost something on the order of $7.38 trillion in wealth since 2008. This is the position of the middle class, which heretofore represented 70% of the GDP:
(1) Their houses (their principal asset) are still losing value,
(2) they're not too sure they'll have the same job paying the same wages next year, and
(3) their level of debt is still very high, particularly given (1) and (2).
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Obama needs to buckle down, do a little studying, then come back with his silver tongue, explain clearly what has befallen the middle class over the past 35 years (as Robert Reich has done) and sell infrastructure projects to kick this place into gear. If the repubs don't go along, nail them to the wall with facts, over and over and over again until the history has sunk in.
cbi
Pennsylvania
Joe - I ran a company for 25 years. We had good years and years not so good. We weathered 3 recessions and in all those years I only had to let one person go (out of a staff of 40) because of the economy or product demand. How did we survive? First, in bad years, none of us got raises. As the CEO, I had the very same benefits that my employees had. I received no special perks, got no golden parachute from our board and traveled in coach (150,000 miles per year on average). I set up a pension program for employees that they did not have to put a penny in, but they knew was in lieu of a slightly larger salary. In my 25 years only two employees left the company even though they had better offers. They liked what we did, how we did, and were committed to making it work.
We did put people first. Our employees and our customers. In good years we put the money back into the business, not into bonuses or hiring unneeded staff. We expanded as we saw opportunity and found that recessions created opportunities as our competitors fell by the wayside because of their extensive over-borrowing and greed during their good times.
Yes, we were a small business, but all the Fortune 500 companies in our region learned lessons from us. In fact, at a local meeting of business executives back in 2001, I sat next to the CEOs of three Fortune 500 companies. They were asking me how we kept profitable during those tough times. I said just look out the door. My 8 year old car was parked in a spot next to the three limos with drivers waiting to take these "titans of industry" back the three or four miles to their isolated headquarters. The looked at me with glazed eyes. They didn't get it. And most of the leaders of our biggest companies still don't get it.
Satisfied customers create more business. Respecting employees and creating a level playing field spawns creativity. And ultimately that creates jobs and growth, no matter how small or big the company.
G. Morris
NY and NJ
US corporations are still tied to the Jack Welch dictums:
Keep Full Time Employees to a absolute minimum,
Create a two-tier employee structure with management paid mostly in stock options,
Even our universities have embraced this short-sighted mandate with over 70% of college students now being taught by temps (adjuncts) and the dream of tenure thrown over-board. The average age of a tenured professor is now 55; they shoud be put on the endangered list. They only get to work if their courses are filled by cash-carrying students.
Productivity is high, wages are low and corporate profits are massive. And the income paradigm of our country looks like a template for a Banana Republic.
My children and their spouses work 80 hours a week while some of their friends are either unemployed or waiting tables. They are all well-educated, highly skilled and under utilized by a management class that is addicted to short-term movements in stock prices. Jack Welch's management philosophy only works in the short -term which is now behind us.
Jerry Kriss
Baltimore, MD
Many of the writers above have noted the fallacy in Mr. Nocera's suggestion---that U.S. businesses would voluntarily create jobs in the absence of any increased demand. It's the same fallacy promulgated by the supply-side economists. Our economy is demand driven, and employers won't hire until there is increased demand. That's why they'r sitting on hoards of cash.
In situations like this, the only entity that increase demand is the government. Increased government spending puts more money in people's pockets that they can spend, and demand goes up. How do we pay for that? Increasing taxes! If businesses won't spend the hoarded cash (much of it accumulated from the Bush tax cuts), then the government should. Increased capital gains taxes and taxes on corporate dividends will actually *increase* job creation by business. The higher tax gives them an incentive to put their money back into the business. While hiring workers immediately is not a good idea, plowing that money into refurbished equipment, new equipment, and improved facilities is an investment in the future that will pay off when demand returns. Companies avoid taxes then because that moneyt has turned into a business expense. This purchasing in upgrades also increases demand and stimulates the economy. With higher tax rates, hiring more employees actually will cost a business *less* in net income. The taxed profit has been turned into a business expense.
The evidence for all this is quite clear in the economic record. The economy always boomed when marginal tax rates and taxes on dividends and capital gains were higher, during the Eisenhower era and the Clinton presidency. We should be pushing for higher taxes in these areas now to boost the economy.
John F. McBride
Seattle, WA
Growing up through the Korean War and Cold War years, then Vietnam, I assumed the truth of the constant assertion of living in America: that America is superior and because it is superior everyone wants to live here.
But the decades have gone by and I was disillusioned with time. America has some superior qualities, but isn't carte blanche superior. There are other methods in the world that work as well, and in many cases that work better.
Germany's societal understanding about jobs and employment is one. The much lower cost of health care in other nations and yet equal and even superior care is another.
A truth about America is that we in some large minority, even at times a majority, prefer belief, believing what America is, to the truth.
Sadly our Republican Party in general, and the Tea Party specifically, our extreme right conservatism, refuses to accept that it can learn from others and to insist that even if an idea has been tried time and again, during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II years, and failed, it will work. It has to work.
Maybe you're right Mr. Nocera, and corporations will voluntarily take on solving our employment problem. But I don't believe it. That's not happened in this nation before because our business model prefers strict capitalism and I know it. I'd have be as insane, in trusting after all this time that corporations can be trusted this first time to take this one as Republicans are in asserting that this time supply side and cutting spending in a severe contraction will work even though it never has before in the history of economics.
I'm not that crazy. Once burned, in my case, twice shy.
dickginnold
San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
Great article, Joe. I trained as an economist in the l950s when 'enlightened self interest' was the key word and stocks traded in the 5/10 PE range. Corporate CEOs didn't get rich. There might have been a few $1 to 2M CEOS, but most made a couple hundred thousand. To get through school for a couple years I piled pigs and poured metal for Kaiser Aluminum. I could earn $7,000 with overtime. Henry Kaiser, the CEO got about $200K, 30 times my wage. Our union was respected. Now US CEOs make 10s of millions, maybe up to 100M,, or 100s of times worker salaries,while their corporations are breaking unions, cutting benefits, laying off people, paying off Congressional represenatives and frequently losing money.
In 2008 I visited my relatives in Germany and travelled the country from Berlin to Hamburg. Amazing. Corporate boards have union reps and there is a social compact to share sacrifice, the origin of the hours reduction policy to reduce unemployment.
The country and its flourishing economy puts us to shame, full of windpower and several kinds of fast, modern transit, in its infrastructure, in the mixture of nationalities, social benefits and dignity of workers. I saw huge numbers of export containers in Hamburg, which exports 10M containers a year, mostly filled with industrial goods. During my visit, a Berlin paper had a spread on the top CEO salaries in Germany, major companies like Lufthansa, BMW. I don't believe there was a one above 1 to 3 M Euros,around 40 times the worker earnings, like we had it 60 years ago. They learned democratic capitalism, while the US was taken over by Wall Street and corporate rapists.
Jumper
South Carolina
Twenty-five years ago a young associate professor of business I knew relentlessly repeated to everyone who'd listen a key difference between Japanese managers and U.S. managers. Japanese managers could recite their market share but seldom knew their return on investment (ROI.) U.S. managers could recite their ROI but seldom knew their market share.
This same associate professor condemned the U.S. quarterly-report fixation. It was one of many indicators but it led U.S. investors to want every quarter to be better than the last. Simple algebra with exponents shows that folly.
Today, that former associate professor is Chair of the Department with no shortage of students.
An important question will be how the companies will judge the success of their efforts. Are they willing to be patient? Are workers willing to start at a lower salary? Are corporations willing to raise the pay as profits increase? Some may bring up unions. Only 6.9% of the U.S. private sector workforce is in unions.
You mention the Germans, but the Japanese also have a practice of setting aside money to keep workers on the job. The work may involve a lot of equipment and building maintenance but they are kept employed.
What's also going on in Japan and Germany is that fear is minimized in the workplace. When workplace fear is minimized, productivity increases. People pay attention to productivity and creativity rather than worrying about how to word their resume, or worrying about what they need to ask HR. They discuss coordinating efficiency or product improvement rather than discussing the latest company rumors.
In early 1914, at the height of a two year recession, Henry Ford doubled the daily wage to $5.00. He also cut the work day to eight hours. He was able to keep workers on the job and he was able to run three shifts. Car prices dropped.
Those were benefits to his corporation but those changes also had positive impact on American prosperity and standard of living in general.
9.12.11
The UK: 'Isolated' vs. 'Insulated'
LONDON — When he rejected a new European accord on Friday that would bind the continent ever closer, Prime Minister David Cameron seemingly sacrificed Britain’s place in Europe to preserve the pre-eminence of the City, London’s financial district. The question now is whether his stance will someday seem justified, even prescient.
MFF Frankfurt, Germany
I'm an American, living in Germany for the past 3 years, and with close family in the UK. I travel constantly throughout the EU as well as to England--and all I can say is: the problem is Britain, not Europe. England has had post WWII the most bizarre attachment to the US and all things American, a sort of hero worship that is at times even embarrassing to witness.
As the last UK elections have shown, the Brits are much more aligned to Wall Street and Big Money than to core European values like a solid welfare state and strict regulation of markets. They don't feel European and I've met few Europeans who feel England is part of Europe, either. Traveling in the EU is simple and easy--entering Germany is the easiest, most stress-free country entry I ever experience, but the same cannot be said for the UK.
Part of it is, of course, a result of being an island.
All I can say is: I feel sorry for the regular British folk, duped by their unscrupulous politicians so that they never get to understand how much more important is their link to their own continent rather than the one across the pond.
Al Minneapolis
This just lays bare the fact that the UK government, like its US counterpart, is a creature of the big banks. It also exposes the folly of letting your industrial and manufacturing sector shrivel up in the hope that the financial sector shall takeover as the bedrock of your economy.
The financial sector does not create capital, it only funnels them from those who have spare capital to those who need more of it. New York and London became the dominant financial centers when the UK and the US had the largest, and wealthiest industrial and manufacturing sectors in the world and thus generated the most wealth and capital. In fact London's dominance is now but a vestige of their long dissipated industrial might.
I can very well imagine Merkel thinking "our country's industry and manufacturing is much larger than the UK's, why should we grant special privileges to the UK's financial sector to the detriment of my own country's financial sector when our economy is a much bigger generator of capital than the UK and it's shrunken industrial base? It's not our fault that the UK pursued policies that were harmful to their industry."
campbell spain
As a British citizen living in Spain I am saddened by David Cameron.Britain had the chance to reform the City after the scandals of 2008 but a Tory Government has too many "ties" to the City to act. The City cost UK taxpayers a fortune but wave a few Union Jacks around and everything is forgotten. A mistake of historical proportions has been made.
N P Johnson Sheffield, England
I feel rather disappointed by this country's negative attitude. Look at a map. It's part of Europe. Ok there's 21 miles of water. So what? Hawaii's part of the USA, as is Manhattan. Being an island's nothing to do with it. Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus are all islands and happy to be in the EU. We had an Empire? So did France, Spain, Portugal, Holland? We won the war? Yes but that finished 66 years ago. Not everybody in England is Eurosceptic. It tends to be more the case in the prosperous Home Counties in the south of England around London, where the Conservatives have their power base. Further north the Tories are much less popular, especially in the cities. Labour/LibDems are generally more pro-European. The problem in England is the press. Rabidly Europhobic tabloid papers print whatever suits their point of view, and which is not necessarily accurate. How can the public make a decision in a referendum without being given both sides of the argument and all of the true facts?
robert iacobacci annapolis, md
Since their tentative entry into the EU, Briton has shown their half hearted faith in the institution and its goals. Content to reap the benefits but unwilling to share the burdens that are part of a full fledged commitment. Perhaps this is a good time for the E.U to ask for a decision. The loss of England at this point would do little harm and the British can discover if they perhaps need Europe more then it needs them.
ance Lee Pacific Palisades, California
England's decision - the Conservative party hardly exists in Scotland - is self-destructive. Cameron has played to his party's right wing, a minority of his party, no doubt hoping this will defuse them and let him get on with managing the economic crisis. But it is a defining vote, and he has made himself one of those rightwingers by doing so. If he is comfortable there, he should feel pleased.
The price is high. England now will not participate In whatever measures the other 17 - 26 EU countries take to secure the euro. It will not be able to protect The City, its Wall Street, from whatever body arises by treaty among these states. It will be an outsider. It cannot participate in the shape new European institutions take, who runs them, and how they are run. It will have no membership on its bodies, and no special understandings to protect its interests. It has marginalized itself.
And if, an 'if' of some controversy, a new euro-centered 'national' state arises successfully, the road to further European integration will have been opened, without England. In such a situation, faced by an entity with a far larger population and economy, it can hardly think its financial prominence can continue or be defended.
This decision plays only to a fraction of its internal politics, on whose members the sun never sets in their eyes, even amid their darkness. And it bares a disingenuous political class unwilling to face or speak the truth.
joe new york
The really important and, so far, un-asked question is why Britain insisted its financial institutions be exempt from any jointly agreed upon financial regulations. I'll tell you why. Because the problem is not Greece, or Italy, or Spain, or Ireland, or Portugal or Germany. The problem is in England and the United States. Those two countries are the origin of the speculation that caused a global financial contagion and remain the center of a cancerous derivatives market that has, WITHOUT MEDIA ATTENTION, exploded again this year to over $707 trillion dollars, breaking the record it set in mid-2008, just before the crash.
You think the United States would cede control over its financial institution regulatory framework to an international organization? Uh-huh. Not in a million years. The belly of that beast is too ugly. Britain has extraordinarily lax regulations with respect to leveraged re-hypothication of borrowed capital. That's why it became very attractive to companies like A.I.G. and M.F. Global. You think they want to let someone else lift the curtain on that?
When the mother of all margin calls occurs and the global debt titanic goes down, and the global derivative pyramid scheme the U.S. and Britain built collapses, it will be every man for himself.
Dean Vantari Atlanta, GA
The City vs the People, that is the crux of the matter here. There is a disconnect between the financial sector and the real economy of Europe. All the hand wringing about defaults are the premise of investment bankers, not the People of Europe. It may actually be healthy to maintain a fire wall to isolate the financial speculators in the City, and the Street, from further poisoning the real economy, where real goods and services are exchanged, not digital representations swapped for intangibles. Wealth is not created in any speculative "market", it is created by the work and innovation of real human beings.
W. van Tuinen The Netherlands
Why does every American news article I read talk about 'huge rifts' and 'deep divides'? There are no rifts. There is Britain on one side and everybody else on the other. And Britain matters much less to Europe than they would like and American analysts seem to believe.
Relax.
My government agrees with the changes now on the table and so do I.
I see no looming totalitarianism but an organisation that:
- has resulted in a peace so fundamental that the idea of war between countries in the EU is now basically unimaginable.
- introduced a common currency and open borders, which have allowed all EU citizens to travel all over the continent and become more open-minded and multi-cultural. Even with the financial troubles of the last several years, I myself have found a job in Ireland and work there now without any political hassle.
- provided an economic growth and integration that allows me to live in the luxury I do today.
- has introduced rules and regulations binding all over Europe that safeguard the quality of the food we eat and the appliances we use, where single governments were too slow or corrupt to do this.
- is now slowly but surely working to change a financial system that launched the whole world into a depression. And as far as I can see, the EU is the only government even attempting this.
I am pro-EU and have full confidence in the ability of the EU.
friedmann Paris
The policy of the UK towards Europe is suicidal. Imperial England ruling the open seas is no more. Its special relationship with the US is mostly a servile relationship. Moreover, it is in the US national interest to chose the stronger side (a UE led by Germany) over a country in decline, however important its past tole in world history. Surely, the other EU counties are also declining. But, they seem to have understood that the only way to leverage their weak individual power is through a united, and strong Europe. This involves pooling together some of their sovereign rights of the past to build a novel political entity, the foundation of which is what Jürgen Habermas calls “constitutional patriotism” . Even, Cameron’s belief that he is protecting the City by refusing to sign is probably wrong. I would not be surprised that in the not too distant future, Frankfurt will take business away from London. Of course, this implies the Euro rescue plan works.
Mick Boston
Let’s talk about the democracy deficit. Its a little rich of London to complain about the EU as composed of bunch of undemocratic, unaccountable, and top down faceless bureaucrats and cozy political appointees.
When one considers that the majority of the Britain’s conservative government is elected under a first past the post system and is almost entirely composed of members from southern England. This from a party that is consistently opposed to devolution of powers to the constituent nations of the UK and is adamantly opposed to any type of proportional representation voting system as such suspiciously foreign even though it is in use in parts of the UK. They can fly their St. George’s flag all they want but it is abundantly clear that the UK is run for and by the benefit of the "City". Just ask any Glaswegian, Cardiffian, Manchurian, or Liverpudlian what they think of "London" and where their once prized industries have gone.
-neal02- Germany
I am writing from Germany and the first thing I did after get up from bed was looking for my socks. I do not want to dominate the British nor march into Czechoslovakia.
so far I have heard no constructive proposal of the british but who wants a say, must contribute. That talks about the failure of the euro countrie sucks. The EU has established a single market across the territory of all its members. A monetary union, the eurozone, using a single currency comprises In 2010 the EU generated an estimated 26% (16.242 billion international dollars share of the global gross domestic product making it the largest economy in the world. It is the largest exporter,the largest importer of goods and services, and the biggest trading partner to several large countries such as China, India,and the United States. The euro is designed to help build a single market by, for example: easing travel of citizens and goods, eliminating exchange rate problems, providing price transparency, creating a single financial market, price stability and low interest rates, and providing a currency used internationally and protected against shocks by the large amount of internal trade within the eurozone.
If the Britons withdrawal from the EU they will not participate in this market.
Surely the Euro will not collapse even if many would like.
Patrick Frankfurt, Germany
To all Brits and Americans hailing Mr. Cameron as a fighter for democracy and liberty.
You are kidding yourselves if you tell me the "NO" from Mr. Cameron is in first place the voice of the British people but the will of the so much elected City of London.
British people you are just a supporting side-kick.
Emmanuel New York, NY, USA
The Brits. Masters of deception...but this time they went too far. On this one I'd rather bet my future with no nonsense Germany than follow the foggy treacherous corrupt ways of Wall Street and Old England banksters. Mr Cameron, you are dead wrong!
MFF Frankfurt, Germany
I'm an American, living in Germany for the past 3 years, and with close family in the UK. I travel constantly throughout the EU as well as to England--and all I can say is: the problem is Britain, not Europe. England has had post WWII the most bizarre attachment to the US and all things American, a sort of hero worship that is at times even embarrassing to witness.
As the last UK elections have shown, the Brits are much more aligned to Wall Street and Big Money than to core European values like a solid welfare state and strict regulation of markets. They don't feel European and I've met few Europeans who feel England is part of Europe, either. Traveling in the EU is simple and easy--entering Germany is the easiest, most stress-free country entry I ever experience, but the same cannot be said for the UK.
Part of it is, of course, a result of being an island.
All I can say is: I feel sorry for the regular British folk, duped by their unscrupulous politicians so that they never get to understand how much more important is their link to their own continent rather than the one across the pond.
Al Minneapolis
This just lays bare the fact that the UK government, like its US counterpart, is a creature of the big banks. It also exposes the folly of letting your industrial and manufacturing sector shrivel up in the hope that the financial sector shall takeover as the bedrock of your economy.
The financial sector does not create capital, it only funnels them from those who have spare capital to those who need more of it. New York and London became the dominant financial centers when the UK and the US had the largest, and wealthiest industrial and manufacturing sectors in the world and thus generated the most wealth and capital. In fact London's dominance is now but a vestige of their long dissipated industrial might.
I can very well imagine Merkel thinking "our country's industry and manufacturing is much larger than the UK's, why should we grant special privileges to the UK's financial sector to the detriment of my own country's financial sector when our economy is a much bigger generator of capital than the UK and it's shrunken industrial base? It's not our fault that the UK pursued policies that were harmful to their industry."
campbell spain
As a British citizen living in Spain I am saddened by David Cameron.Britain had the chance to reform the City after the scandals of 2008 but a Tory Government has too many "ties" to the City to act. The City cost UK taxpayers a fortune but wave a few Union Jacks around and everything is forgotten. A mistake of historical proportions has been made.
N P Johnson Sheffield, England
I feel rather disappointed by this country's negative attitude. Look at a map. It's part of Europe. Ok there's 21 miles of water. So what? Hawaii's part of the USA, as is Manhattan. Being an island's nothing to do with it. Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus are all islands and happy to be in the EU. We had an Empire? So did France, Spain, Portugal, Holland? We won the war? Yes but that finished 66 years ago. Not everybody in England is Eurosceptic. It tends to be more the case in the prosperous Home Counties in the south of England around London, where the Conservatives have their power base. Further north the Tories are much less popular, especially in the cities. Labour/LibDems are generally more pro-European. The problem in England is the press. Rabidly Europhobic tabloid papers print whatever suits their point of view, and which is not necessarily accurate. How can the public make a decision in a referendum without being given both sides of the argument and all of the true facts?
robert iacobacci annapolis, md
Since their tentative entry into the EU, Briton has shown their half hearted faith in the institution and its goals. Content to reap the benefits but unwilling to share the burdens that are part of a full fledged commitment. Perhaps this is a good time for the E.U to ask for a decision. The loss of England at this point would do little harm and the British can discover if they perhaps need Europe more then it needs them.
ance Lee Pacific Palisades, California
England's decision - the Conservative party hardly exists in Scotland - is self-destructive. Cameron has played to his party's right wing, a minority of his party, no doubt hoping this will defuse them and let him get on with managing the economic crisis. But it is a defining vote, and he has made himself one of those rightwingers by doing so. If he is comfortable there, he should feel pleased.
The price is high. England now will not participate In whatever measures the other 17 - 26 EU countries take to secure the euro. It will not be able to protect The City, its Wall Street, from whatever body arises by treaty among these states. It will be an outsider. It cannot participate in the shape new European institutions take, who runs them, and how they are run. It will have no membership on its bodies, and no special understandings to protect its interests. It has marginalized itself.
And if, an 'if' of some controversy, a new euro-centered 'national' state arises successfully, the road to further European integration will have been opened, without England. In such a situation, faced by an entity with a far larger population and economy, it can hardly think its financial prominence can continue or be defended.
This decision plays only to a fraction of its internal politics, on whose members the sun never sets in their eyes, even amid their darkness. And it bares a disingenuous political class unwilling to face or speak the truth.
joe new york
The really important and, so far, un-asked question is why Britain insisted its financial institutions be exempt from any jointly agreed upon financial regulations. I'll tell you why. Because the problem is not Greece, or Italy, or Spain, or Ireland, or Portugal or Germany. The problem is in England and the United States. Those two countries are the origin of the speculation that caused a global financial contagion and remain the center of a cancerous derivatives market that has, WITHOUT MEDIA ATTENTION, exploded again this year to over $707 trillion dollars, breaking the record it set in mid-2008, just before the crash.
You think the United States would cede control over its financial institution regulatory framework to an international organization? Uh-huh. Not in a million years. The belly of that beast is too ugly. Britain has extraordinarily lax regulations with respect to leveraged re-hypothication of borrowed capital. That's why it became very attractive to companies like A.I.G. and M.F. Global. You think they want to let someone else lift the curtain on that?
When the mother of all margin calls occurs and the global debt titanic goes down, and the global derivative pyramid scheme the U.S. and Britain built collapses, it will be every man for himself.
Dean Vantari Atlanta, GA
The City vs the People, that is the crux of the matter here. There is a disconnect between the financial sector and the real economy of Europe. All the hand wringing about defaults are the premise of investment bankers, not the People of Europe. It may actually be healthy to maintain a fire wall to isolate the financial speculators in the City, and the Street, from further poisoning the real economy, where real goods and services are exchanged, not digital representations swapped for intangibles. Wealth is not created in any speculative "market", it is created by the work and innovation of real human beings.
W. van Tuinen The Netherlands
Why does every American news article I read talk about 'huge rifts' and 'deep divides'? There are no rifts. There is Britain on one side and everybody else on the other. And Britain matters much less to Europe than they would like and American analysts seem to believe.
Relax.
My government agrees with the changes now on the table and so do I.
I see no looming totalitarianism but an organisation that:
- has resulted in a peace so fundamental that the idea of war between countries in the EU is now basically unimaginable.
- introduced a common currency and open borders, which have allowed all EU citizens to travel all over the continent and become more open-minded and multi-cultural. Even with the financial troubles of the last several years, I myself have found a job in Ireland and work there now without any political hassle.
- provided an economic growth and integration that allows me to live in the luxury I do today.
- has introduced rules and regulations binding all over Europe that safeguard the quality of the food we eat and the appliances we use, where single governments were too slow or corrupt to do this.
- is now slowly but surely working to change a financial system that launched the whole world into a depression. And as far as I can see, the EU is the only government even attempting this.
I am pro-EU and have full confidence in the ability of the EU.
friedmann Paris
The policy of the UK towards Europe is suicidal. Imperial England ruling the open seas is no more. Its special relationship with the US is mostly a servile relationship. Moreover, it is in the US national interest to chose the stronger side (a UE led by Germany) over a country in decline, however important its past tole in world history. Surely, the other EU counties are also declining. But, they seem to have understood that the only way to leverage their weak individual power is through a united, and strong Europe. This involves pooling together some of their sovereign rights of the past to build a novel political entity, the foundation of which is what Jürgen Habermas calls “constitutional patriotism” . Even, Cameron’s belief that he is protecting the City by refusing to sign is probably wrong. I would not be surprised that in the not too distant future, Frankfurt will take business away from London. Of course, this implies the Euro rescue plan works.
Mick Boston
Let’s talk about the democracy deficit. Its a little rich of London to complain about the EU as composed of bunch of undemocratic, unaccountable, and top down faceless bureaucrats and cozy political appointees.
When one considers that the majority of the Britain’s conservative government is elected under a first past the post system and is almost entirely composed of members from southern England. This from a party that is consistently opposed to devolution of powers to the constituent nations of the UK and is adamantly opposed to any type of proportional representation voting system as such suspiciously foreign even though it is in use in parts of the UK. They can fly their St. George’s flag all they want but it is abundantly clear that the UK is run for and by the benefit of the "City". Just ask any Glaswegian, Cardiffian, Manchurian, or Liverpudlian what they think of "London" and where their once prized industries have gone.
-neal02- Germany
I am writing from Germany and the first thing I did after get up from bed was looking for my socks. I do not want to dominate the British nor march into Czechoslovakia.
so far I have heard no constructive proposal of the british but who wants a say, must contribute. That talks about the failure of the euro countrie sucks. The EU has established a single market across the territory of all its members. A monetary union, the eurozone, using a single currency comprises In 2010 the EU generated an estimated 26% (16.242 billion international dollars share of the global gross domestic product making it the largest economy in the world. It is the largest exporter,the largest importer of goods and services, and the biggest trading partner to several large countries such as China, India,and the United States. The euro is designed to help build a single market by, for example: easing travel of citizens and goods, eliminating exchange rate problems, providing price transparency, creating a single financial market, price stability and low interest rates, and providing a currency used internationally and protected against shocks by the large amount of internal trade within the eurozone.
If the Britons withdrawal from the EU they will not participate in this market.
Surely the Euro will not collapse even if many would like.
Patrick Frankfurt, Germany
To all Brits and Americans hailing Mr. Cameron as a fighter for democracy and liberty.
You are kidding yourselves if you tell me the "NO" from Mr. Cameron is in first place the voice of the British people but the will of the so much elected City of London.
British people you are just a supporting side-kick.
Emmanuel New York, NY, USA
The Brits. Masters of deception...but this time they went too far. On this one I'd rather bet my future with no nonsense Germany than follow the foggy treacherous corrupt ways of Wall Street and Old England banksters. Mr Cameron, you are dead wrong!
6.12.11
Pink-er-ology from the left bank of Charles River
Human Nature’s Pathologist
By CARL ZIMMER
In his latest book, Steven Pinker, a leading advocate of evolutionary psychology, says our brains have produced a far less violent world.
___________________________________________
Frank Stanton
Campbell, Ca.
I can live with the idea of the evolution of the brain, and the amount of physical violence may have gone down statistically with time. However, can't one argue that these violent activities have been replaced by predatory practices one sees in downsizing of jobs, exporting jobs to Third World and, in turn, exploiting the poor to a form of near involuntary servitude or even slavery in those countries? In other words, preying upon the weak has changed from cutting off noses to holding people's welfare in one's hands. To some, having one's life destroyed through economic actions, could equate to a long, slow death. In both cases, the perpetrators hold the exploited as having no real value and so act as though the exploited are not even fellow humans. Yes, the mind of some have evolved, but the old cruelties have been replaced by a different kind of cruelty. Of course, by its definition, that is evolution. Maybe the OWS and 99% movement(s) are about an evolved response to the historical cruelties of our time.
Lee
Moosehead Lake
What about the violence against animals at factory farms and the violence of humans against nature. Both have become more widespread and efficient.
Kathleen Fisher
Amherst, MA
I am curious how Mr. Pinker describes what has gone on in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last ten years. I wonder what he thinks of the covert operations in Iran and Pakistan are about. What does he think of the details of rendition. How about Bagram? How about Guantanamo?
ekeizer4
Oregon
There should be a rule against writing about someone who has already been the subject of 1001 articles -- most of which say the exact same things. Regardless of the merits of Mr. Pinker's theories, I am thoroughly sick of hearing about him. There's hardly a magazine or newspaper that has not spilled a potful of ink over his new book, and judging from this profile, there is simply nothing new left to say. So many scientific ideas and non-fiction books barely get a glance from the media. It would be wonderful if we could end this myopic focus on just a couple of authors and spread the wealth around a little more. At some point, publicity is self-defeating: I have read so much about Mr. Pinker and his theory of violence that I have absolutely no desire to buy his book. Why bother, when the media has essentially read it, digested it, and repeated it ad nausea for me?
GrumpaT
Sequim WA
Hamlet said it best:
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Our natures haven't changed. We're as violent and cruel as we ever were. We're just increasingly hemmed in by our civilizing. Now instead of being overtly beastly, we wallow in bestial entertainments and hoard guns. We suffer the miseries of our stifled anger...and just vote no.
Alan
Chicago, IL
"'It’s psychologically astute, given the massive amount of self-serving biases,' he said." And further, "If you want peace, understand psychology."
I wonder if Prof. Pinker would have come to the same conclusions if he had written his book in Kabul or Congo, rather than Cape Cod and Cambridge. Call it the fallacy of "immediacy" or of "near/far" or just "us and them", although as a psychologist Prof. Pinker would be able to provide the proper scientific term for it.
One could equally well argue that the modern state-upon-state violence is far more lethal than older tribe-upon-tribe one, although modern states have mastered the art of lofty justificatory rhetoric to a far greater extent, through great - perhaps evolutionary - refinements in the arts of the technicians of the word such as Prof. Pinker himself. If there is evolution then, it is still in Prof. Pinker's old specialty, language, which can spin its magical web even around most gruesome acts of violence. Prof. Pinker should look further into linguistic bases of civilization. He would then be able to see the primary difference between violence perpetrated by the Congolese and by the Americans, to take just two random examples.
By CARL ZIMMER
In his latest book, Steven Pinker, a leading advocate of evolutionary psychology, says our brains have produced a far less violent world.
___________________________________________
Frank Stanton
Campbell, Ca.
I can live with the idea of the evolution of the brain, and the amount of physical violence may have gone down statistically with time. However, can't one argue that these violent activities have been replaced by predatory practices one sees in downsizing of jobs, exporting jobs to Third World and, in turn, exploiting the poor to a form of near involuntary servitude or even slavery in those countries? In other words, preying upon the weak has changed from cutting off noses to holding people's welfare in one's hands. To some, having one's life destroyed through economic actions, could equate to a long, slow death. In both cases, the perpetrators hold the exploited as having no real value and so act as though the exploited are not even fellow humans. Yes, the mind of some have evolved, but the old cruelties have been replaced by a different kind of cruelty. Of course, by its definition, that is evolution. Maybe the OWS and 99% movement(s) are about an evolved response to the historical cruelties of our time.
Lee
Moosehead Lake
What about the violence against animals at factory farms and the violence of humans against nature. Both have become more widespread and efficient.
Kathleen Fisher
Amherst, MA
I am curious how Mr. Pinker describes what has gone on in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last ten years. I wonder what he thinks of the covert operations in Iran and Pakistan are about. What does he think of the details of rendition. How about Bagram? How about Guantanamo?
ekeizer4
Oregon
There should be a rule against writing about someone who has already been the subject of 1001 articles -- most of which say the exact same things. Regardless of the merits of Mr. Pinker's theories, I am thoroughly sick of hearing about him. There's hardly a magazine or newspaper that has not spilled a potful of ink over his new book, and judging from this profile, there is simply nothing new left to say. So many scientific ideas and non-fiction books barely get a glance from the media. It would be wonderful if we could end this myopic focus on just a couple of authors and spread the wealth around a little more. At some point, publicity is self-defeating: I have read so much about Mr. Pinker and his theory of violence that I have absolutely no desire to buy his book. Why bother, when the media has essentially read it, digested it, and repeated it ad nausea for me?
GrumpaT
Sequim WA
Hamlet said it best:
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Our natures haven't changed. We're as violent and cruel as we ever were. We're just increasingly hemmed in by our civilizing. Now instead of being overtly beastly, we wallow in bestial entertainments and hoard guns. We suffer the miseries of our stifled anger...and just vote no.
Alan
Chicago, IL
"'It’s psychologically astute, given the massive amount of self-serving biases,' he said." And further, "If you want peace, understand psychology."
I wonder if Prof. Pinker would have come to the same conclusions if he had written his book in Kabul or Congo, rather than Cape Cod and Cambridge. Call it the fallacy of "immediacy" or of "near/far" or just "us and them", although as a psychologist Prof. Pinker would be able to provide the proper scientific term for it.
One could equally well argue that the modern state-upon-state violence is far more lethal than older tribe-upon-tribe one, although modern states have mastered the art of lofty justificatory rhetoric to a far greater extent, through great - perhaps evolutionary - refinements in the arts of the technicians of the word such as Prof. Pinker himself. If there is evolution then, it is still in Prof. Pinker's old specialty, language, which can spin its magical web even around most gruesome acts of violence. Prof. Pinker should look further into linguistic bases of civilization. He would then be able to see the primary difference between violence perpetrated by the Congolese and by the Americans, to take just two random examples.
29.11.11
equality of chances? the brightest choose engineering? meritocracy instead of dynasty?
America’s meritocratic, watchdog news media
In this Feb. 9, 2011 photo, Chelsea Clinton attends amfAR's annual New York Gala at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini) (Credit: AP)
(updated below)
New York Times, July 31, 2008:
Business Insider, August 31, 2009:
New York Times, today:
I really don’t understand what those angry, lazy losers in the Occupy movement are so upset about. America is a meritocracy; if you work hard and prove your skills, you get ahead. The winners deserve what they have because they have earned it. And when all else fails, we have a media filled with insurgent outsiders who will be relentless watchdogs over those in power because that’s what our media outlets are: true outsiders there to check the most powerful factions.
Even more encouragingly, we have a media that ensures that diverse views are heard; Chelsea Clinton previously worked at a $12 billion hedge fund and her former-Goldman-Sachs-banker husband earlier this year launched his own hedge fund with “two guys from Goldman,” so she brings a depth and diversity of perspetive that is sorely lacking in our news (true, CNN boldly features Erin Burnett — the former Goldman, Sachs employee and current fiancé of a top Citigroup executive — but nothing can compete with Chelsea Clinton’s rich, impressive journalism background).
Thankfully, the American Founders waged a revolution to free us from the shackles of monarchy so that we’re no longer captive to the inanities of royalty (like those silly Brits). In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine mocked and scorned aristocracies as producing “counterfeit nobles” — those bestowed with prerogatives not because of what they’ve achieved but because of the accidental fortune of their birth — and we are thankfully free of those:
UPDATE: With so many superb young journalists being hired by NBC News based on their record of outstanding achievement, it is — I hope you will agree — understandable that I neglected to include this, from earlier this month:
We all owe our gratitude to NBC News for single-handedly correcting the shameful, long-standing exclusion from our media discourse of the views of young, journalistically accomplished heirs and heiresses to political power and great fortune; it is long overdue that former NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller, son of the CEO and Chairman of Chevron, finally be joined by the next generation.
New York Times, July 31, 2008:
I really don’t understand what those angry, lazy losers in the Occupy movement are so upset about. America is a meritocracy; if you work hard and prove your skills, you get ahead. The winners deserve what they have because they have earned it. And when all else fails, we have a media filled with insurgent outsiders who will be relentless watchdogs over those in power because that’s what our media outlets are: true outsiders there to check the most powerful factions.
Even more encouragingly, we have a media that ensures that diverse views are heard; Chelsea Clinton previously worked at a $12 billion hedge fund and her former-Goldman-Sachs-banker husband earlier this year launched his own hedge fund with “two guys from Goldman,” so she brings a depth and diversity of perspetive that is sorely lacking in our news (true, CNN boldly features Erin Burnett — the former Goldman, Sachs employee and current fiancé of a top Citigroup executive — but nothing can compete with Chelsea Clinton’s rich, impressive journalism background).
Thankfully, the American Founders waged a revolution to free us from the shackles of monarchy so that we’re no longer captive to the inanities of royalty (like those silly Brits). In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine mocked and scorned aristocracies as producing “counterfeit nobles” — those bestowed with prerogatives not because of what they’ve achieved but because of the accidental fortune of their birth — and we are thankfully free of those:
UPDATE: With so many superb young journalists being hired by NBC News based on their record of outstanding achievement, it is — I hope you will agree — understandable that I neglected to include this, from earlier this month:
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