Contents contributed and discussions participated by Ed Webb
Why Vladimir Putin Hates Us | Observer - 0 views
Iran An Experiment in Strategic Risk Taking.pdf - 1 views
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what-ever happens next, the patient efforts of the E3/EU+3 since 2006, along with the harshest non-proliferation sanctions ever imposed, will have demon-strated that illegal nuclear proliferation is costly. Simply put, this is the most detailed non-proliferation agreement ever devised. But it nevertheless includes several problematic aspects, which deserve careful scrutiny
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By 2025–30, providing its weaponisation expertise is solid, Iran will be technically in a position to make, in a matter of months, a nuclear weapon that can be carried by a medium-range ballistic missile. By year 15 of the deal, produc-ing one bomb’s worth of HEU might take less than two weeks; and after a few more years, it might only be a matter of days.6 And by the end of the deal, if it had not ratified the Additional Protocol, Iran could just stop its ‘voluntary’ implementation
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Iran has become a nuclear-threshold state, and it will remain one, with our blessing
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Iran An Opening for Diplomacy.pdf - 1 views
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the agreement does, in fact, have the potential to open up the frozen dialogue between the US and Iran and permit a broader discussion of urgent regional issues. This potential unblocking of the relationship could be one of the agreement’s great rewards
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intrusive verification measures that go far beyond what was pos-sible under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and even the Additional Protocol to its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement, effectively blocking a covert path to the development of a nuclear weapon
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Unquestionably, the JCPOA is far from perfect. It could hardly be other-wise. Both sides made compromises to come to an agreement and both sides moved further from their initial positions than they would have expected at the outset. Iranian redlines were reportedly crossed. Security issues, notori-ously intractable and sensitive, were at the heart of the negotiation on all sides. For Tehran, there were hard trade-offs between restricting the prized nuclear programme that it regards as a vital interest, and the lifting of the onerous sanctions that are crippling its economy. Security issues were at stake for the other participants too: preventing a nuclear-armed Iran and thus lessening the danger of conflict in the Middle East, reducing the threat to Israel, as well as the risk of further proliferation in an already-turbulent region
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Iran Non Proliferation Overshadowed.pdf - 2 views
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The tools that succeeded beyond all other non-military means in chang-ing Iran’s behaviour were the sanctions this deal abolishes. The innovation of those sanctions was that they were not only aimed at states proliferating to Iran, or designed to apply after an Iranian nuclear test. They targeted Iran’s crown jewels of oil and other natural resources
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The heart of the deal is the abolition of sanctions in exchange for extend-ing Iran’s breakout time (the length of time it would take to produce material for a nuclear weapon) for a limited period. A better approach would have kept Iran at the table for years, with progressive waiving of sanctions and a corresponding continuation of limits Iran had agreed to extend a number of timesalready
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The sanctions that now remain will not be effective in changing Iran’s behaviour. Iran will be more able to engage in normal arms, nuclear and dual-use technology trade even while it continues its regional military campaigns, and ballistic- and cruise-missile programmes
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Iran A Good Deal.pdf - 2 views
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the verifi-cation procedures of the JCPOA are tighter than the safeguards provided for in the Additional Protocol. The constraints and obligations Iran accepts under the deal also go beyond the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
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Iran’s commitments under that temporary arrangement would fall away if the JCPOA were killed. Iran would be free to resume where it left off two years ago. Only this time the US would have very few partners willing to impose the tough sanctions that compelled the serious negotiations of the past two years
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once it was agreed by eight parties after two years of negotiations, it is now the only deal possible
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US buys ads on Facebook to fight militants - 0 views
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the US has found this year that online ads on social media websites like Facebook, rather than posts, are a cost-effective way to fight the propaganda of the Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups
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Facebook's detailed metrics for advertisers helps the government campaign reach its targets - people who might be groomed online by militants."Using Facebook ads, I can go within Facebook, I can grab an audience. I can pick country X, I need age group 13 to 34, I need people who liked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or any other set, and I can shoot and hit them directly with messages," he said."In some places in the world, it's literally pennies a click to do it," he said.
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Facebook, he noted, offers the government access to affordable amassed and collated user data for singling out target groups and individuals for anti-militant ads the US government runs."The best I can do right now is to have access to big data and to use the analytics tools on the social media platforms, the Facebooks and the others,"
IS 'producing weaponised mustard gas': Watchdog | Middle East Eye - 0 views
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The global watchdog tasked with destroying chemical weapons is probing more than 20 reports of the alleged use of toxic weapons in Syria since August, its chief told the AFP news agency on Friday.And, in what he called an "extremely worrying" development, Ahmet Uzumcu revealed that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) believes the so-called Islamic State (IS) group has manufactured its own mustard gas for use in Syria and Iraq.
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The OPCW is already "collecting information and analysing" it, the OPCW director general said, to see if the allegations "are credible or not in order to deepen our investigation"."The number (of allegations) is quite high. I counted more than 20," said Uzumcu, revealing that even on Thursday the Syrian authorities had sent to the OPCW fresh reports of chemical weapons use against them.
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Samples of mustard gas taken from attacks in Syria and Iraq have now been analysed by the OPCW's dedicated laboratories and "the findings do suggest that this substance may have been produced by IS itself," said Uzumcu.It was "poor quality, but still harmful ... and it was weaponised so it's extremely worrying," the OPCW chief said."Especially given the fact that there are several foreign fighters in those countries who may go back to their countries of origin one day. This requires a high-degree of vigilance within our countries," he warned.
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Dalby geoeconomics of GWoT - 1 views
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a broad complemen-tarity of geopolitical categories that link imperial military actiondirectly with neo-liberal globalisation. Both rely on a dichotomousmapping of the world into civilised core and dangerous periphery,categories that reprise earlier imperial mappings of the world andreplicate the violent practices of empire
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Such metageographies understood as the “spatial structures throughwhich people order their knowledge of the world”,5 often function as theontological categories of political thought and both limit and shape thinkingaccordingly.6 Metageographies “graph the geo” as in literally “writing theearth” in ways that are apparently obvious but which are spatial specificationswith very considerable power.
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discrepancies between olderformulations of empire with assumptions of territorial control and nationalambition abroad, and novel formulations of Empire, where sovereignty andeconomic power transcend the geopolitical constraints of sovereign nationstates
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Buzan on GWoT 2006 - 2 views
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Washington is now embarked on a campaign to persuade itself, the American people and the rest of the world that the ‘global war on terrorism’ (GWoT) will be a ‘long war’. This ‘long war’ is explicitly compared to the Cold War as a similar sort of zero-sum, global-scale, generational struggle against anti-liberal ideolo-gical extremists who want to rule the world.
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When the Cold War ended, Washington seemed to experience a threat defi cit, and there was a string of attempts to fi nd a replacement for the Soviet Union as the enemy focus for US foreign and military policy: fi rst Japan, then China, ‘clash of civilizations’ and rogue states
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the GWoT had the feel of a big idea that might provide a long-term cure for Washington’s threat defi ci
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Manufacturing: Up? Down? | FRED Blog - 0 views
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Manufacturing output is definitively trending up; that is, the number of things produced in this country has increased over time and is currently increasing. This production is accomplished, however, with fewer and fewer employees. It should be no surprise that an economy becomes increasingly better (quicker, more efficient, etc.) at producing things, thanks to increasing productivity per employee through innovations, for example. Recently, though, manufacturing employment is trending up slightly, while productivity has slowed down (as it has in other sectors).
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when an industry needs fewer people because it is better at doing something, this is viewed as a gain by economists: Workers who aren’t needed any more can move on to produce something else. Of course, there are costs in the process if displaced workers cannot find new employment right away. The U.S. has a relatively flexible labor market that has generally managed to respond well to such challenges. In the short-term, though, the gains are not shared by everyone. Manufacturing unemployment is particularly high in recessions, as is seen in the graph below. But consider yet another twist: The current unemployment rate for manufacturing is lower than the rate for the general population.
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