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Iran - All (Nu)Clear

With the recently announced deal with Turkey, Iran just outmaneuvered the US, not to mention the UN and everyone else who has been calling for more tough actions. Iran has agreed to ship 1,200 kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey, where it would be held. In exchange, it is entitled to 120 kg of uranium enriched to 20 percent to use in a Tehran medical research reactor that produces isotopes for cancer treatment. It is interesting that Iran rejected a similar deal in October where it was to ship 1200 kg of LEU - about 70% of stock pile at that time, but now after 6 months, Iran has continued processing and has accumulated double that quantity. It is now ready to ship out the 1200 kg, which would still allow it to keep roughly half the uranium at home...just in case. Granted the deal has many escape clauses, but at this point, the world does not have any choices.

Like it or not, Turkey and Brazil have succeeded where the five permanent members of the UN Security Council had failed. But instead of applauding the deal, the US and EU are pushing towards a fourth U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran's nuclear weapons program. Iran has already proved to the world that the sanctions will not stop its progress and has sent a strong message that, in fact every time sanctions are passed, it will speed up enrichment. Even as the sanctions creak along, at this point, it amounts to pretty much just going through the motion. Russia and China are looking for any excuse to jump off the wagon and protect their interests in Iran. They have already rejected key proposals in stopping Iran's access to international financial markets and continue to arm it with weapons. The GCC too have come together to support Iran's show of goodwill in accepting this deal and the push for sanctions this time around looks like it will clearly not have any impact.

Any effort to dealing with Iran's nuclear capability will have to include realistic expectations. Expecting Iran to give up control of its full LEU capacity is not plausible, especially when the nuclear program enjoys the support of at large part of the Iranian population. Any plan should include small steps of confidence building and Instead of threatening Iran the United States and Europe should welcome initiatives which aim to establish a platform for engagement. But with the US and EU always pushing Iran's back against the wall, Iran is left with very little options other than to continue pursuing nuclear technology. Before criticizing Iran, let’s be clear that what Iran is doing is perfectly legal within the UN framework. Iran is a signatory to the NPT and has the rights to pursue nuclear technology for civilian energy programs. Fact is, Iran has made several compromise offers in the last few years that would address any REAL concern about weapons proliferation. Iran has offered to open its nuclear program to US participation, and to sign the Additional Protocol which allows more intensive IAEA inspections (no other nuclear country has done all that) and yet the US and the West consistently ignore Iran's compromise offers and insist on an unachievable goal of "zero enrichment in Iran" which is a disregard of Iran's sovereign rights as recognized by the NPT.

The reality is that there are only two options: Iran gets nuclear weapons, or someone uses pre-emptive military force to break Iran's nuclear fuel cycle and paralyze its program, at least temporarily. There is no possibility the US will use force, despite its confused and ever-changing policy right from Bush to Obama about the military option always being "on the table." That leaves Israel attacking Iran the only option which will make it vulnerable to potential retaliation and legitimize full blown attacks from Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda and Iran. To be honest, Israel also does not look all that strong since it could not even make a dent to Hamas after it attacked it for weeks last time. In fact Hamas and Hezbollah came out stronger after they were able to withstand the full might of the Israeli army. This is one reason why even Obama has refused to be a part of any Israeli plans to attack Iran since he understands the myth of Israeli army's strength in the Arab world was put to bed when Israel went to war with Hezbollah in 2006.

Its time to wake up folks... The US, Israel and the world have to prepare to deal with a nuclear Iran. Every western country says they will do all they can to prevent this, but given the current political realities in the US, Middle East and EU, it is time for everyone to brace reality and start formulating strategies on how to deal with Iran once it goes nuclear. At this point the only thing the US and EU can do is provide security assurances to neighboring countries and promises of retaliation if Iran uses its nuclear weapons first. The simple fact of Iran possessing nuclear weapons would alone dramatically alter the Middle East balance of power. Iran does not actually have to use its capabilities to prove anything. North Korea is case and point where they torpedoed and sank the South Korean Navy ship, and Kim Jong Il has directed North Korea’s military and civilian population to prepare for war, and the only thing the US and world can do is stand by and deem the behavior "Odd".

Ultimately, the west has to understand that you cannot get a foreign country to do exactly what you want unless you can exert sufficient military or economic force to compel them. In the case of Iran, no country has that level of economic force and the disadvantages of military action far outweigh the advantages. George Bush understood this, Obama understands it and so, unfortunately, do the Iranians. That is why the world is dancing around the issue of Iran's nuclear program for years without anyone being able to take any kind of action. On the other hand, Iran is still merrily enriching uranium at levels that are approaching weapons-grade, and it isn't likely to stop anytime soon. No one should base their future plans on anything except dealing with a nuclear Iran.

Speculating Fear

There are all sorts of reasons over what caused the crash last week, but real question is how can the market go, on a random Thursday afternoon, completely insane? Everyone is looking for someone to blame. But what made the crash on May 6th so absolutely shocking is the market dropped close to 1000 points in a few minutes… I mean in a few MINUTES!!!! Between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. the Dow lost over 900 points before dramatically bouncing back about 600 points.

One thing is for sure, as the trading volume soared, data systems across the stock market began to get clogged. By 2:37 p.m., the overload seemed to have taken its toll on the NYSE's ARCA electronic-trading system. The bid/ask prices got out of control and the price of stocks were going insane. Accenture went from trading at around 40 dollars a share all the way down to one cent before bouncing back. Nasdaq detected what it felt was questionable information in the data and sent out a message saying it would no longer route quotes to ARCA. This step—known as declaring "self-help"—doesn't happen often among the major exchanges. By evening however, all exchanges in a rare coordinated manner put out a statement saying "All trades executed between 2:40 PM and 3:00 PM that increased more than 60% or decreased more than 60% away from the consolidated last print in that security at 2:40 or immediately prior" will be cancelled." Obviously this decision will not be open to appeal but while Nasdaq and others canceled trades on more than 200 largely NYSE-listed companies whose shares fell or rose more than 60 percent, investors unlucky enough to have sold depressed shares of other companies that fell less have little recourse and those who made money by buying at the bottom and made less than 60% can rejoice at others expense. Exchanges have never been blamed for losses, but my guess is this will be tested in courts this time around.

So far, a lot of people have been blamed. But even after a couple of days, there is no real rational explanation as to what went really wrong and caused the drop. There are theories, but no real answers yet!!

So what are the theories circling around?

• Fat Finger Issue - It has been widely suggested that a "fat finger trade" was responsible for triggering the panic. A trader entered a "b" for billion instead of an "m" for million in a trade involving Procter & Gamble. No confirmation yet but after a few days, this explanation possibly looks untrue
• Computer Glitch - There were many erroneous trades due to bad pricing, but the systems of course do not know that and did one thing lead to another and the systems get out of control?? Anybody’s guess at this point
• Stop Orders - There were 1000's of stop orders which got triggered due to the market breaking certain levels. Did a series of stop loss orders trigger a downward spiral maybe?
• European Debt Crisis - Greece definitely contributed to markets going down, but it is unlikely to be the sole cause that led to the all out assault on the markets
• Just plain Fear and Panic - There is also the possibility that this was a real financial panic. There are huge concerns about what is going on in general with the debt levels and the currency markets are fluctuating wildly. The Dow was already down several hundred points even before the massive plunge took place. The reality is that there is a lot of fear in the financial markets right now. But if it was a real panic, then why did the Dow bounce back so quickly?
• HTF - More than 60% of today’s trading is done electronically, so could High Frequency trading have been the cause for what happened? But if it was just high-frequency traders bailing out, why wouldn't [that drop] happen on every stock? It just doesn't add up.
• Hacking - Implausible without proof, but possible. It does sound farfetched, but hey, till now the exchanges have never been held responsible for the losses. So did someone hack into NYSE and purposefully create this mayhem not to mention walking away will a ton of money and a big smile as others are scrambling around to understand what went on.

As more details of last Thursday's collapse become clear, the picture is one of a highly rare confluence of events, some linked, some unrelated, that exposed weaknesses in the stock market large and small. But the only interesting thing here is the catalyst that stopped the fall. Whatever caused the market to crash stopped after a point which led to the reversal. So what was the catalyst?? I doubt anyone can really get to the bottom of this for a long time to come.

Blagojevich - Governor Goofball

Okay, here's what caught my eye during season 3 of Celebrity Apprentice - Guv Blago. He just completely cracked me up! If Blago hoped to reform his criminal image by appearing on Celebrity Apprentice, it did not exactly work out that way. Reality TV is all about entertainment and Rod Blagojevich may just be the biggest buffoon in reality TV history. He just walked around as clueless as clueless can be with his goofy grin on. Ignorance must truly be bliss because this guy seemingly has no skills whatsoever and is caught up in a huge political scandal, yet walks around like he just ate up a huge bowl of sunshine. What surprised me is how Trump constantly promoted him and kept complementing him at every opportunity he got about how tough the Gov is. I wonder what the voters of Illinois — especially the ones that voted for him — think when they see how incompetent he is.

But I absolutely do not hate on Blago. Because all I want on a Sunday night from TV is to be entertained and as far as that goes, oh boy, he was the most entertaining person I have seen in years. And after watching the last few episodes without Blago, I am definitely not getting much laughs anymore on Sunday night. And in the defense of Blago as a goofball and reality TV superstar, I would like to present the following exhibits into evidence:

Exhibit A: I was honestly shocked at his Computer Skills. I don't know what was more awesome, the fact that he did not know how to turn on a computer, did not know how to put a DVD into a computer, knew nothing about email or the fact that it took him 30 minutes to type a few lines in word.

Exhibit B: What stunned me even more was he did not even know how to use a cell phone with speaker turned on. I almost fell off my chair laughing when his team mates were speaking on one end and the Guv was staring at the phone like it was a brick. I mean is he for real? To top it all, he openly asked what is a text message and admitted he did not know how to text and then fell asleep. Certainly a golden moment in reality TV history.

Exhibit C: The ability to turn any conversation into how he Was a fantastic governor. This guy never lets up! And why should he when he yields such unintentionally humorous results? In a matter of seconds — seconds! — He always goes from discussing the task to a list of all his amazing accomplishments as the Gov: Healthcare for children! Preschool for all! No raising taxes! Health care for seniors! The guy is a walking campaign ad. And yet I simply cannot get enough of him.

Exhibit D: My favorite quote "We're prematurely ejaculating. We need more foreplay". My second favorite quote was when it was revealed he would be getting on a plane “I don’t need a passport do I.” (Did he think he was getting a vacation in the Maldives? and then he got on the plane and went to sleep :) and finally on cooking for the celebrity-run diner challenge: "I didn't cook at all when I was governor. I was cooking up results for people."

Exhibit E: Every time Trump asks him who should be fired in his opinion, I am constantly amazed at how he keeps talking for 10 minutes and keeps beating around the bush and never actually answered the question. Guess this is the number one pre-requisite for politicians and he just proved it over and over again.

Exhibit F: The constant hand shaking. Looks like life for him is clearly one long campaign trail. Doesn’t matter if people recoil in horror or start yelling at him about how he should go to prison — he still wants to work the crowd. And I loved the way he viewed New York as one big vote base. It takes him approximately three hours to walk a single block as he goes and aggressively searches out everyone to say hi and kept swearing at his innocence. In television history, I have never seen anyone work a room, street, alley, elevator or storefront like our Blago did.

What else can I say.. When he was on the show, the celebrity apprentice was certainly entertainment at its best. I cannot get over the moments when he just walked around the street of New York and chatted up random people saying "Thank you, I appreciate it. I did nothing wrong" !!!!

Maoism to Terrorism

Who is a bigger threat to India, the homegrown Maoists or terrorist groups across the border that want to destroy India?? What’s the difference really. It looks like both have the same goal - To destroy peace and create terror within India.

India’s Maoist insurgency has taken on a new face altogether and the evidence is mounting. In one of their boldest attacks yet, at least 350 Maoist guerrillas attacked a convoy and killed 76 armed policemen. This is clearly the worst loss in the four-decade-long conflict. After some digging I found that their roots go back to a 1967 peasant uprising in the West Bengali village of Naxalbari—hence their name, Naxalites—the Maoists have pretty much become a full fledged terrorist organization posing a bigger threat than any other Pak based terror group. They have an estimated 14,000 full-time fighters more than any other terrorist outfit and loosely control pretty much the entire jungle areas of central and eastern India where the state is hardly present. Last year 998 people were killed in Maoist-related conflict. This year could be even bloodier and is sure to surpass that number easily.

India's Maoist rebels also easily top the list of the worst human rights offenders among the myriad of insurgent groups in the country and the Asian Centre for Human Rights, which brought out the report "Torture in India, 2010", also noted the total number of reported torture cases had risen between the years 2000 and 2008 in the country where Maoists torture and kill anyone and everyone they even remotely suspect of providing information on them to the authorities. The govt deployment of an additional 15,000 centrally trained troops to the worst-affected states, taking the total to around 75,000 still seems too late for a vast area home to 450m people, this is still a tiny force. Moreover, properly trained state-level officers, who know the local language and conditions, have a much better counterinsurgency record. The clearest example is in Andhra Pradesh where, through better policing and generous development schemes, the insurgency has recently been greatly weakened.

What is more insulting is that the attack on the police personnel was an emphatic response from the rebels to the central government’s latest offer of peace talks. The Home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, nowadays seems to be relaxing at home, while the Maoists loot and extort freely, seems to be in denial (or just weak) in his response and is giving speeches that they are all Indian citizens and force wont be used against them. Well, Mr. Home Minister and the entire Congress govt, while you say all Naxals are Indian Citizens and no army action will be taken to shut them down, with what face is the Indian government talking to Pakistan and asking them to take action against terror groups within POK. Are they are not Pakistani citizens by the same line of reasoning? The whole world is watching and the best India can do is adopt a double standard. How can we expect Pak to take us seriously when our home minister and Air Force chief give public statements that Army won’t use force or undertake Ariel attacks because these terrorists are Indian citizens.

Complacency is partly to blame as until recently few state-level politicians seemed to take the groups threat seriously. Politically, it is a chaos as well. Maoists have their own party (since merging their two main factions in 2004—to form the Communist Party of India -Maoist, under Ganapathi and alarmingly are seen as a party at a national level and they even back many politicians. Even Shibu Soren, chief minister of Maoist-racked Jharkhand, won an election last year with the guerrillas’ support and is predictably reluctant to fight them. This needs to stop and they need to be recognized as a terrorist outfit and any politicians in cahoots with them should be made an example of nationally. It is a shame that we always react to such groups only in the face of some disaster like when LTTE took out our PM or when IA plans was hijacked by LeT Terrorists.

A lot of national tragedies linked to terrorism have hit India in the recent years and the Govt is starting to look very weak when it comes to National security. Wake up Congress and bring out the guns, no need to negotiate with these terrorists and stop pleading with them to put down their arms. Maoist violence and jihadi terrorism are two sides of the same coin and Nationalities should never matter when it comes to dealing with them. If we don’t defend our own country, how can we expect other nations to help us defend ourselves.

Little Maestro