They can’t drink, they can’t smoke, they can’t chase skirt or burka. They can’t do a goddam thing. Except try to make nuclear weapons. It’s hard to get a handle on Mohamad Morsi. Sort of. Obviously the U.S. thought they were cutting a better deal here than with Mubarak; or else they just have him by the kebabs with some help by Saudi Arabia to keep the regime afloat and the salaries paid. The liberal left has been attempting to sculpt the Syrian rebels into a romanticized version of freedom fighters on high moral ground, figures out of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, but the boots on the battlefield tell a more complicated and ambiguous story, one which may have the American trademark of “biting the hand that feeds you” written into the script…
( see link at end) Thomas Friedman: …Excuse me, President Morsi, but there is only one reason the Iranian regime wants to hold the meeting in Tehran and have heads of state like you attend, and that is to signal to Iran’s people that the world approves of their country’s clerical leadership and therefore they should never, ever, ever again think about launching a democracy movement — the exact same kind of democracy movement that brought you, Mr. Morsi, to power in Egypt.
—And the super-rich are spending their cash, not knowing when the party might be over.
Porsche opened a dealership in Tehran a few years back. The pressure not to do business in Iran has built to such a degree that Porsche recently decided to close its business there, but even so, it was a surprise to many that there was a lively market for these coveted luxury cars in Iran, a country in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed to spread the oil wealth to people’s tables, but not necessarily to their garages. Ahmadinejad was elected on a populist platform, by voters who had grown tired of some of the more corrupt Ayatollahs.
Meanwhile, the revolving restaurant at the top of the Milad Tower in Tehran aspired briefly to be a beacon of bling, offering gold-topped ice cream desserts in its rooftop restaurant, a delicacy that cost hundreds of dollars per sweet serving, until the Mayor of Tehran had it yanked from the menu.—Read More:http://sheikyermami.com/2012/08/04/elite-iranians-live-in-luxury-as-rest-of-country-feels-economic-strain-of-sanctions/
…In 2009, this Iranian regime literally killed the Green Revolution. It gunned down hundreds and jailed thousands of Iranians who wanted the one thing that Egyptians got: to have their votes counted honestly and the results respected. Morsi, who was brought to power by a courageous democracy revolution that neither he nor his Muslim Brotherhood party started — but who benefited from the free and fair election that followed — is lending his legitimacy to an Iranian regime that brutally crushed just such a movement in Tehran. This does not augur well for Morsi’s presidency. In fact, he should be ashamed of himself….
—IT COULD have been disastrous. Standard Chartered was facing a hearing before New York state’s Department of Financial Services (DFS) on August 15th that would have certainly aired embarrassing information. Instead it will be expensive. The bank has acceded to a fast settlement of the charges that it had illicitly processed $250 billion in transactions with Iran, paying $340m in civil penalties and agreeing to various other provisions.
As a result of the deal, the bank’s management is temporarily off the hook for personal liability. Just as important, they will not have to defend the bank’s actions before the regulator. The agreement also appears to cap potential penalties which, in theory, could have included losing a critical license to operate in America and thus provide its vast emerging-markets network with cross-border dollar transactions.
Any celebration, however, will be muted. In the agreement, Standard Chartered acknowledged that the scope of its illicit activity was indeed $250 billion, the number put forward by the DFS, and not merely $14m, which the bank initially insisted was the case.
Furthermore, the payment does not stop America’s other regulators from pursuing their own charges. Ordinarily there is a sorting out process between regulators before a settlement, and often before the announcement of charges. But in this case the DFS moved ahead on its own, much to the surprise of Standard Chartered, as well as officials at the Federal Reserve, Treasury and Justice Department.—Read More:http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/08/standard-chartered-and-iran-0 image:http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/morsi-in-iran-nam-summit-has-a-duty-to-protect-syrians-from-oppressive-regime-1.461688
“The Iranian regime has offered Morsi a sanitized tour of its nuclear facilities” noted Karim Sadjadpour, the Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment. “As a former political prisoner in Mubarak’s Egypt, Morsi should also request a visit to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. It will remind him of his own past, and offer him a glimpse of Iran’s future.” Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/opinion/friedman-morsis-wrong-turn.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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