Congress's Choice

I'm really happy about the Iran deal, and looking at the international politics makes it really clear this is the right decision. 1. We are strengthening the President of Iran relative to the Supreme Leader, strengthening Iranian democracy. 2. The government which gave birth to al Qaeda with probably the worst women's rights record in the world which is openly led by the radical perversion of Islam called Wahabbism, this of course being Saudi Arabia, is unhappy. 3. Liberals in Israel are happy and Netanyahu is furious. 4. We are going to have more oil in the market, pushing down prices further hurting the government of the world's largest petrostate, which is Russia. 5. Increasing trade with Iran is going to open economic opportunities for the average Iranian people. (all of the evidence in IPE points in this direction) 6. We are going to have a more open dialogue with Iran, whose President is the only leader in the Muslim world who I have seen consistently uphold values of tolerance and seeking peace over the last decade.

For these reasons, this was definitely the right decision and this will help make the world a safer place where we will have less religious extremism and a more tolerant planet. Sanctions only increase violence and discontent. A basic message of international relations research is that trade and communication are the major bringers of peace in the world, and this decision is going to increase both.

Now it is time for Congress to choose between peace and war, tolerance and intolerance, dialogue and distrust. I hope that enough members of congress will see what is really happening.

The international lobby as well is going to be very stark with Sweden lobbying for increasing trade while the Wahabbi state of Saudi Arabia is going to be lobbying for increasing sanctions. The government of Israel is going to be lobbying against the deal while liberal Israelis are going to be lobbying in favor of the deal. They have a choice between increasing the oil market share of Putin or decreasing the oil market share of Putin. The right answer should be obvious to anyone who looks at the international consequences of this decision. At the bare minimum Iran will open to Europe which will severely hurt the political elite of Russia.

Viva la Europa

We are currently witnessing the biggest play of fools in the history of the world in Europe. These mistakes happened 100 years ago when trade broke down across Europe leading to one of the largest wars the world had seen to that point.

In international politics there are some major theories which talk about how to bring peace to the world. One which has some support is the Democratic peace theory which (as the name implies) is the theory that democracies don't go to war with each other.

However, the theory which has very solid support is the interdependent peace theory. The idea is that if you trade with other countries you will not go to war with them. The strength to this theory is it explains why Europe doesn't go to war with Russia while given tensions democratic peace theory predicts war. European leaders have no incentive to go to war because of the imports and exports they have with Russia.

Now when it comes to the ongoing austerity crisis and depression in Greece, this theory implies a lot for the future. If Greece severed it's connections with the European Union they will very likely find another ally. Given their treatment by the EPP I don't see too many short term incentives for them to stay in the EU.

Putin is currently very interested in expanding his power and we have seen him reach out to Greece in particular as being his next target in his power grab. Given the human rights records of the other countries he has close relations with,  Kazakhstan, Iran, Belarus, Syria, and North Korea being the most impressive examples, I find no reason to believe this change in international relations will bring anything good to Greece or Europe. If this pattern were to continue than than I see no reason Putin would then try in a carrot and stick approach to expand to Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Adding over 50 million people to his alliance is something I can see him do.

Now, this is far more than just a shift in power relations and who the biggest ally of these medium sized nations will be. I expect that as Putin grows his relationship with these countries we will see the same pattern of a reduction in the validity and transparency of elections like we see in Russia today. This will be a massive reduction in the human rights in those countries just like the Franco regime. I see nothing besides EU membership standing in the way.

We also see another trend in the EU today which is already eroding their rights. What is happening today in Hungary is very disturbing and hopefully won't expand to other countries. The current prime minister of Hungary has been accused of undermining human rights by multiple human rights organizations. https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/hungary The EPP is not willing to hold their member accountable to the laws of the European Union, further proof of their true intentions of undermining liberalism and the EU. This was never about Greece's debt from the start. It was about undermining the largest barrier to fascism in Europe.

Before the EPP gained power in the EU we did not see the problems in Greece and Hungary that are happening today. I love Europe and don't want to see an erosion in their liberties or a failure of one of the greatest political experiments in human history. None of this was inevitable and it was all artificially manufactured. It is time for those who love Europe to stand up to the EPP and Putin and save the EU.

The last two breakdowns in trade was in the years prior to the first and second world wars. The current erosion of trade and human rights is a threat to world peace and must be stopped.

Open call for evidence of Russian protests

I am aware there are protests going on in Moscow regularly against the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. Given the significant restrictions on freedom of the press, it is not safe for Russians to post pictures of the protests without becoming the next target of the FSB (the successor to the KGB).

Because of this unfortunate reality, if you have evidence of the current protests and you want to make sure the world can know about what is going on please send pictures to stidmatt@gmail.com so I can post them here so the world can know what is happening today. The world needs to see as many pictures as possible, and the people who are protesting against the status quo need to be as safe as possible, so posting with your own name is not safe. If there are protests in other authoritarian states and you want to make sure the world knows, please feel free to send me those pictures as well.

You will remain anonymous if you don't give me your name and I will not ask for your name for your safety.

If you send me a photo that is not from where you claim to be I will find out and you will be blacklisted. Don't even try to recycle old pictures.

Warning: I have a virus scanner so don't even try to send me any bad code. If you send me one bad email you will be forwarded directly to spam forever so don't even try.

We've seen these Russian elections before

Putin is going to say that he will leave it to the people of Crimea to decide whether they want to join Russia. There are two problems with this:

1. Putin has used this strategy before in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and he did this after deporting all of the ethnic Georgians in these areas. If he does the same thing as Crimea there is no question how they will vote.
2. Russia has a reputation of getting very results on their elections, by having ballot stuffing, harassment, and other issues which are widely reported on. I see no reason to believe this will be any different.

The  election will be a sham and everyone knows it, it is an old Communist tradition of having "elections" where you always know who will win. China and North Korea use these and the USSR did, and the elections in Russia look more like the old Soviet elections every year. Since there will almost certainly be no EU or UN observers (except of course the Russian observers) there can be no doubt who will win the election, regardless of what the people in Crimea want.

http://t.co/3nPsA0qEUs

Refugees and war

My other blog has my travel journal, and this post builds off it. I just posted about my first direct experience with a young refugee: http://stidmatt.blogspot.com/2013/05/istanbul-and-tbilisi-march-16th-and-17th.html

The world spent $1.735 trillion USD collectively in 2012. Source

There are about 2 million refugees in the world. Source

If every refugee, from birth to death, was given only $1000 per year out of the global military budget than the military budget of the world would decrease to only $1.733 trillion.

There are approximately 284,000,000 people age 20-24 in the world today (Source). If every college age student received $5,000 guaranteed college tuition from this military fund the military budget of the world would decrease to $299 billion.

A more peaceful world is possible. A more just world is possible. As the 11th most decorated American soldier ever, Major General Smedley Butler said,

"Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket, 1. We must take the profit out of war."

If war wasn't profitable there wouldn't be the need to save 2 million refugees. If the people of the world made it clear that their money was to be used for building their countries, we would have money to ensure that every person has a decent education and the world would be a much better place. But this will only happen once we realize it is what we really want.