Stockton CA on brink of bankruptcy
The signs of better times are easy to spot downtown: the picturesque marina on the San Joaquin Delta, the gleaming waterfront sports arena, and the handsome high-rise that was meant to house a new city hall. But those symbols are now bitter reminders of how bad things are here today: on Tuesday this city of almost 300,000 moved a step closer to becoming the nation’s largest city to declare bankruptcy.
During a contentious meeting that stretched late into the night, the City Council decided, nearly unanimously, to begin mediation with public employee unions and major bond creditors in what is widely seen as the city’s last-ditch attempt to restructure its finances outside of bankruptcy.
. . . .
The city has already drastically cut back municipal staff, including the Police and Fire Departments. With nearly 100 fewer police officers than there were just four years ago, many residents fret about rising crime rates; there were 58 murders last year, an all-time high for the city.
. . . .
Stockton, about an 80-mile drive east of San Francisco, boomed a decade ago, as eager buyers from Silicon Valley bought up homes in the area. But in the past several years, housing values have plummeted, and the city has steadily had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.
During the boom times, the city eagerly began development projects to improve the area, transforming the waterfront and refurbishing several buildings that had fallen into disrepair. City officials lured a Sacramento restaurateur to open an upscale bistro, in part by offering space in a historic downtown building rent-free for five years. But the restaurant struggled and closed after just two years, and the space has sat empty and shuttered for the past year.
In 2007, after Washington Mutual shut down operations in an eight-story building here, the city bought the space for $35 million, reasoning that the price was a bargain, less than the cost of construction. Officials planned to move out of the crumbling old City Hall building and into the Washington Mutual building, but it soon became clear that the city did not have the money for the move. 
(Read more)
Don’t feed the bears!
Something to think about:
1. The Department of Agriculture is distributing the largest number of food stamps in its history.
2. The National Park Service asks us to not to feed the animals because they will grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
Don’t Believe All the Baloney About Iran’s Threat
What kind of defense could Iran actually mount against an attack on its nuclear and military infrastructure by Israel and/or the United States?
First of all, discount all the TV pictures of Iranian missiles being fired and troops marching in review. They are designed to boost civilian morale at home. Ironically, Western media has used them to trumpet Iran’s alleged military threat. One major US TV network, NBC, even has a fixed logo on its reports from Iran: “Iran Threat.”
In reality, Iran, in spite of its 71 million population and oil wealth, is militarily quite weak. Islamic Iran has been under punishing US-led military and economic sanctions since its 1979 revolution, joining other sanctions targets North Korea and Cuba.
As a result, Iran has been unable to modernize most of its 1960’s/1970’s vintage military arsenal, much of which was supplied by the US and Britain to the Shah. Iran’s decrepit civilian aircraft fleet has also been punished by US-led embargos, resulting in numerous crashes due to worn-out equipment and lack of spare parts.
An estimated 45-50% of Iran’s small, obsolete air force is grounded by lack of spare parts or repairs. Iran’s pilots, who last saw action during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, have critically little flying time. Iran’s air force lacks modern radars, communications or electronic warfare equipment.
The mainstay of Iran’s air force remains about 60 ancient US-built F-14 naval fighters, F-4 Phantom strike aircraft dating from the Vietnam era, and some old US F-5 trainers. Iran also has a grab bag of some 25 Soviet/Russian Mig-29’s, a similar number of capable SU-24 strike aircraft, and some 20 Chinese outdated F-7 fighters. The US-supplied aircraft all suffer from metal fatigue and are more of a danger to their hapless pilots than an enemy.
Iran’s bathtub navy has a few small frigates and three modern Russian Kilo-class submarines that are effective in shallow coastal waters. Iran’s sizeable numbers of Chinese anti-ship missiles on shore, at sea and carried by aircraft might score a few lucky hits on the mighty US Navy or oil tankers, as could its ample supply of magnetic mines. (Read more)
John Quincy Adams on Foreign Policy
Former president John Quincy Adams gave perhaps the definitive explanation of America as a defender of its own liberty but not an exporter of liberty to others in this speech:
America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit…. Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, address to U.S. House of Representatives, Jul. 4, 1821
TSA Forces Woman To Use Naked Body Scanner Three Times Because of “Cute” Figure
The incident occurred at DFW International Airport earlier this month. Wife and mother Ellen Terrell was asked by a female TSA screener “Do you play tennis?” When Terrell asked why, the screener responded, “You just have such a cute figure.”
Terrell was then told to go through the naked body scanner not once but a second time. She then heard the TSA screener talking into her microphone saying, “Come on guys, alright, alright, one more time.”
After Terrell was forced to undergo a third blast of radiation from the body scanner, the male TSA agents in the back room who were obviously enjoying the show tried to send her through yet again to see more images of her naked body.
“Guys, it is not blurry, I’m letting her go. Come on out,” the female TSA screener said, finally ending the ordeal.
“I feel like I was totally exposed,” Terrell told CBS 11. “They wanted a nice good look.”
An investigation by CBS 11 News has prompted New York Senator Charles Schumer to introduce legislation that will mandate the TSA provide “passenger advocates” who will be on duty at all times to respond to complaints at every airport in the country. (Read more)
Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress
Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.
The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.
Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well. (Read more)
Why American ‘democracy promotion’ rings hollow in the Middle East
I have to laugh when I see the International Republican Institute (IRI) described by the international media as an “organization that promotes democracy” (in this case, on NPR). The IRI is in the news lately because Egypt’s military government has put some of its members on a “no-fly” list and thereby trapped them in the country, facing investigation and possible trial. I am wondering just how credulous these journalists and editors are: if I were to describe the Center for Economic and Policy Research as “a magical organization that transforms scrap metal into gold”, would that become CEPR’s standard description in the news?
The IRI is an international arm of the US Republican party, so anyone with the stomach to watch the Republican presidential debates might doubt whether this would be a “democracy-promotion” organization. But a look at some of their recent adventures is enough to set the record straight: in 2004, the IRI played a major role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Haiti. In 2002, the head of the IRI publicly celebrated the short-lived military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Venezuela. The IRI was also working with organizations and individuals that were involved in the coup. In 2005, the IRI was involved in an effort to promote changes in Brazil’s electoral laws that would weaken the governing Workers party of then President Lula da Silva.
Most recently, in 2009, there was a military coup against the democratically elected government of Honduras. The Obama administration did everything it could to help the coup succeed, and supported “elections” in November of 2009 to legitimize the coup government. The rest of the world – including even the Organization of American States (OAS), under pressure from South American democracies – refused to send observers. (Read more)
NY Times offers Socialist Criticism of Constitution, 2nd Amendment
Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.
. . . .
The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige.
In an interview, Professor Law identified a central reason for the trend: the availability of newer, sexier and more powerful operating systems in the constitutional marketplace. “Nobody wants to copy Windows 3.1,” he said.
. . . .
As Sanford Levinson wrote in 2006 in “Our Undemocratic Constitution,” “the U.S. Constitution is the most difficult to amend of any constitution currently existing in the world today.”
. . . .
Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.
It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms. (Its brothers in arms are Guatemala and Mexico.) (Read more)
Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets
If only there were some powerful advanced military with a presence in the Middle East…
Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes.
hat is the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation. They describe it as far different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.
“All the pundits who talk about ‘Oh, yeah, bomb Iran,’ it ain’t going to be that easy,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who retired last year as the Air Force’s top intelligence official and who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Gulf War.
. . . .
Given that Israel would want to strike Iran’s four major nuclear sites — the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo, the heavy-water reactor at Arak and the yellowcake-conversion plant at Isfahan — military analysts say the first problem is how to get there. There are three potential routes: to the north over Turkey, to the south over Saudi Arabia or taking a central route across Jordan and Iraq.
The route over Iraq would be the most direct and likely, defense analysts say, because Iraq effectively has no air defenses and the United States, after its December withdrawal, no longer has the obligation to defend Iraqi skies. “That was a concern of the Israelis a year ago, that we would come up and intercept their aircraft if the Israelis chose to take a path across Iraq,” said a former defense official who asked for anonymity to discuss secret intelligence.
Assuming that Jordan tolerates the Israeli overflight, the next problem is distance. Israel has American-built F-15I and F-16I fighter jets that can carry bombs to the targets, but their range — depending on altitude, speed and payload — falls far short of the minimum 2,000-mile round trip.
. . . .
Another major hurdle is Israel’s inventory of bombs capable of penetrating the Natanz facility, believed to be buried under 30 feet of reinforced concrete, and the Fordo site, which is built into a mountain.
Assuming it does not use a nuclear device, Israel has American-made GBU-28 5,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs that could damage such hardened targets, although it is unclear how far down they can go.
. . . .
Should the United States get involved — or decide to strike on its own — military analysts said that the Pentagon had the ability to launch big strikes with bombers, stealth aircraft and cruise missiles, followed up by drones that could carry out damage assessments to help direct further strikes. Unlike Israel, the United States has plenty of refueling capability. Bombers could fly from Al Udeid air base in Qatar, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or bases in Britain and the United States.
Nonetheless, defense officials say it would still be tough to penetrate Iran’s deepest facilities with existing American bombs and so are enhancing an existing 30,000-pound “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” that was specifically designed for Iran and North Korea.
“There’s only one superpower in the world that can carry this off,” General Deptula said. “Israel’s great on a selective strike here and there.” [emphasis added] (Read more)
Main Reason For US Hostility to Iran: they’re leaving the dollar
As tensions between the US and Iran heat up, author Michael T. Winter believes the main reason behind America’s harsh stance is Tehran’s move to seek an alternative to the dollar as an oil currency.
ÂEconomic sanctions, spearheaded by the US and, less willingly, the EU could have a disastrous effect on both of their respective economies. If Iran cannot sell their oil to Europe, there are plenty of customers waiting in the wings, and if they come bearing not petrodollars, but gold and sovereign currencies, then all the better for Iran. These sanctions, if enforced, will in effect place a serious dent in the power of the petrodollar.
Any rhetoric regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the insistence on crippling it is nothing more than a US attempt to force regime change for one more receptive to maintaining the hegemony of the petrodollar.
The world now knows the truth about the US and how they conduct their affairs. US hostilities toward Iran have nothing to do with nuclear weapons development. If that were the case, then North Korea and Pakistan would be facing similar sanctions and threats, but they aren’t. The difference of course is in what lies beneath the ground – oil. Iran has it and the other guys don’t.
At the heart of the issue is not Iran’s dubious attempt to build nuclear weapons, or even oil, but how that oil is paid for. In 1973, Richard Nixon promised King Faisal of Saudi Arabia that the US would protect Saudi Arabian oilfields from any and all interested parties seeking to forcefully wrest them from the House of Saud. It’s important to remember that in 1973, Saudi Arabia didn’t have a fraction of the military and ground forces it possesses today (almost exclusively US manufactured weapons) and the USSR was very much a threat.
In return Saudi Arabia, and by extension OPEC, agreed to sell their oil in US dollars only. As if that weren’t sweet enough, as part of the deal, they were required to invest their profits in US treasuries, bonds and bills. The real zinger is that all countries purchasing oil from OPEC had to do so in US dollars, or ‘petrodollars’. (Read more)
Will America Survive till 2025? Great criticism of American Empire
Iran well prepared for the worst
Most discussions of possible United States military operations in the Persian Gulf, should Iran try to prevent maritime traffic from going through the Strait of Hormuz, generally say that while it would not be a cakewalk, it would not be an enormously difficult task either.
But that conventional wisdom is wrong, according to a recent report issued by an independent, non-profit public policy research institute in Washington DC. The report found that the traditional post-Cold War US military ability to project power overseas with few serious challenges to its freedom of action may be rapidly drawing to a close.
. . . .
For example, the populations, governments and much of the wealth of the region are concentrated in a handful of urban areas within range of Iran’s ballistic missiles. While attacks against Gulf cities may have little direct military utility, their psychological and political impact on regional governments could be significant, especially if Iran demonstrated the capacity to arm its missiles with chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear warheads.
And, as most analysts recognize, Iran could also mobilize its network of predominately Shi’ite proxy groups located across Southwest Asia to conduct acts of terrorism and foment insurrection in states that remain aligned with the United States.
Iran’s proxies could become far more dangerous should Iran arm them with guided rockets, artillery, mortars and missiles (G-RAMM). Other groups, like the Lebanese Hezbollah, could conduct a terrorism campaign designed to broaden the crisis and hold US rear areas – even the US homeland – at risk.
And while that indirect approach may not succeed, Iran could use its ballistic missiles and proxy forces to attack US bases and forces in the Persian Gulf directly.
Iran’s hybrid strategy would continue at sea, where its naval forces would engage in swarming “hit-and-run” attacks using sophisticated guided munitions in the confined and crowded waters of the Strait of Hormuz and possibly out into the Gulf of Oman. Iran could coordinate these attacks with salvos of anti-ship cruise missiles and swarms of unmanned aircraft launched either from the Iranian shore or from the islands guarding the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
That last scenario is hardly theoretical. Lieutenant General Paul K Van Riper (US Marine Corps-retired) gained notoriety after the Millennium Challenge 2002 wargame, which was a major exercise conducted by the US armed forces in mid-2002, likely the largest such exercise in history.
It cost $250 million and involved both live exercises and computer simulations. The simulated combatants were the US, referred to as “Blue”, and an unknown adversary in the Middle East, “Red”, commanded by Lieutenant General Van Riper.
Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue’s approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue’s fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a pre-emptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces’ electronic sensors and destroyed 16 warships.
This included one aircraft carrier, 10 cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue’s navy was “sunk” by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue’s inability to detect them as well as expected.
In the years since then, Iran has been investing in the capabilities necessary to carry out Van Riper’s strategy. Looking at its maritime forces, in mid-2001 Iran launched the first of a new type of locally built craft equipped with rocket launchers.
In July 2002, a conventional arms sale triggered sanctions on several Chinese companies. Beijing had transferred high-speed catamaran missile patrol boats to Iran. The C-14 boats are outfitted with anti-ship cruise missiles. Short-range anti-ship missiles for the patrol boats also were sold from China to Iran in January 2002. The high-speed gunboat can carry up to eight C-701 anti-ship cruise missiles, and usually have one gun.
Between 2003 and 2005, authorities in the Iranian navy continued to talk about their pushes for greater self-sufficiency, including the continued development of domestically produced missile boats and frigates, as well as new details about submarine projects.
In 2006 and 2007, the Iranian navy accepted new missile boats and a frigate, as well as two types of submarines. The Sina class missile boats, introduced in 2006, were essentially Iranian copies of Kaman missile boats already in service. Also in 2006, the Iranians deployed the first of the Nahang class of midget submarines, described as the first Iranian submarine designed and produced without foreign assistance.
In 2007, the Iranian navy accepted the first of three planned Mowj-class frigates, again essentially copies of a ship already in the Iranian inventory, the Alvand class. Also in 2007, it deployed the Qadir midget submarine, sometimes referred to as the first of the Yono class. (Read more)
Israeli Finance Minister Pushes Naval, Aerial Blockade of Iran in Bloomberg Interview
In an interview today with Bloomberg Businessweek, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz rejected the European Union’s ban on importation of Iranian crude oil, insisting it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Instead, Steinitz called for the international community to impose a full naval and aerial blockade across all of Iran so that “no one can even go out [sic].” This is the only option with any chance of success, he said.
Steinitz said a good model for his plan was the Cuban blockade by the United States in 1962, an effort which nearly ended with the annihilation of all life on earth in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Sometimes it might work. You have to at least try,” Steinitz added. It is unclear how he imagines the full aerial blockade in the north could be imposed, since it would presumably be opposed by Russia. (Read more)
Mondoweiss: What did AIPAC do and when did it do it? (Iraq)
As I pointed out yesterday, the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Democratic-Party-linked thinktank in D.C., has met quietly with officials of the Israel lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and explicitly sought to squelch suggestions by its own journalists that AIPAC is pushing war on Iran.
Notably it squelched a CAP blogger, Eli Clifton, who wrote in August at the thinktank’s site that AIPAC’s summons to Congress for sanctions on Iran “brings to mind eery parallels” to its campaign for Iraq sanctions that paved the way for that stupid war. Clifton’s piece concluded:
It would appear that AIPAC is now using the same escalating measures against Iran that were used before the invasion of Iraq.
But in December the thinktank came under heat from a neocon smear campaign that accused Clifton and others of anti-Semitism, and CAP put its tail between its legs and stuck a long amendment to Clifton’s piece, kinda eviscerating it:
we want to make clear that we are not reporting on whether AIPAC lobbied for the Iraq war.
Also as a matter of clarification, international sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, particularly those engineered by the Obama administration, are useful…
What is the truth here?
Though AIPAC wants to deny it now, it lobbied for the Iraq war. And CAP is participating in a coverup.
Here’s the data:
Back in 2000, AIPAC specifically worked to ramp up sanctions on Iraq because of its “weapons of mass destruction.” Remember them? In March 2000, AIPAC circulated an Action Alert to Congress, urging its members to put pressure on Congress to pressure the Clinton administration.
If sanctions were lifted, Saddam could spend the oil revenue to accelerate Iraq’s military programs rather than on the humanitarian needs of Iraqi citizens.
It is essential that you contact your representative today and urge them to sign the letter to President Clinton:
Very similar to the Iran sanctions AIPAC pushed last summer.
Then in April 2003, according to JWeekly, AIPAC rose up against a congressional effort led by California Republican Tom Campbell, then taking on Dianne Feinstein in a Senate race, to weaken those sanctions:
The military threat from Iraq is a major concern of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which favors retaining economic sanctions.
“Lifting sanctions wouldn’t benefit the Iraqi people,” said Amy Friedkin, an AIPAC national vice president who lives in San Francisco. Rather, it would enable Saddam to obtain more oil money, and use it to amass more weapons. That would constitute a danger to the rest of the Middle East and the world, she added…
Campbell and his allies are now rallying behind H.R. 3825, legislation by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) that would allow U.S. companies to export food and medicine to Iraq outside of the U.N. oil-for-food program. Campbell and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) are among the bill’s co-sponsors.
Friedkin said AIPAC opposes the bill, although the organization recognizes the sponsors’ “very compassionate reasons” for proposing it.
Elliot Brandt, AIPAC’s Pacific Northwest regional director, said: “AIPAC has no desire to hurt the people of Iraq, but we have a vested interest in hurting Saddam Hussein’s ability to build weapons of mass destruction. Rather than blaming the sanctions for hurting the people of Iraq, we should be putting the blame on Saddam Hussein, who is cynically and cruelly using his people as a political card to generate sympathy and support.”
Talk about eery parallels: When Obama tried to stop sanctions on the Iran Central Bank, AIPAC posterized Obama in the Senate 100-0 last December.
Let’s skip forward to the Iraq war itself, 2003.
In The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Walt and Mearsheimer clearly show that AIPAC pushed the Iraq war, though quietly.
AIPAC usually supports what Israel wants, and Israel certainly wanted the United States to invade Iraq. Nathan Guttman made this very connection in his reporting [in Haaretz, April 2003] on AIPAC’s annual conference in the spring of 2003, shortly after the war started: “AIPAC is wont to support whatever is good for Israel, and so long as Israel supports the war, so too do the thousands of the AIPAC lobbyists who convened in the American capital.” AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr’s statement to the New York Sun in January 2003 is even more revealing, as he acknowledged “‘quietly’ lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq” was one of “AIPAC’s successes over the past year.” And in a lengthy New Yorker profile of Steven J. Rosen, who was AIPAC’s policy director during the run-up to the Iraq war, Jeffrey Goldberg reported that “AIPAC lobbied Congress in favor of the Iraq war.”
Dana Milbank reported in the Washington Post on that AIPAC conference as the Iraq war began:
Officially, AIPAC had no position on the merits of a war against Iraq before it started. Officially, Iraq is not the subject of the pro-Israel lobby’s three-day meeting here.