Open up Relations With Iran

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/09/us-no-place-iran-at-islamic-state-talks-20149131350596285.html

Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Friday that Iran will have no place at talks regarding the Islamic State due to their support of the Syrian regime.

This however, does not represent the whole picture. It is true that the Supreme Leader of Iran holds almost all the political power, but the current President of Iran, Rouhani, is a reformer and has stated that the future of Syria should be decided by its people.

This has created tension within the Iranian government, between the ideologically right-wing supreme Leader Khamenei who has been in power since 1979 and Rouhani. We should not let this opportunity go to waste and should start dialogue between Rouhani and the United States. If we do this than there is a possibility of renewed protests like we saw in 2009 and since the majority of people support Rouhani as we saw in the 2013 elections we can be fairly certain which side the people are on. This is further proven by how the 2009 elections were clearly fraudulent and the 2005 elections had suspicious characteristics. Basically, most Iranians favor relations with the West along with liberal ideas which gives us a huge advantage over Khamenei.

So, the United States should not unilaterally go into Iran and take out the Supreme Leader given his opposition to his policies. That was a frequent occurrence of American foreign policy and is destructive because it is illiberal and causes people to not support our policies. It also makes it hard to be a liberal nation. George W. Bush (in Iraq), Ronald Reagan (in Grenada), and Richard Nixon (in Chile) performed these policies which made us hated abroad. The future should be more collaborative and focus on expanding the ability of people to determine their own future. When we depose people such as Allende in Chile our image abroad is damaged, decreasing global freedom, and making it harder for America to perform foreign policy. Hurting the people of a nation hurts our ability to have relations with that nation and can take decades to recover. If we want to make long-standing trade relations they need to be beneficial to both sides, make a situation where the people of the nation will favor of our policies and cooperate with foreign governments while respecting sovereignty. This is the most effective way to build long-standing relations, which is what we have done with Europe and Japan and has made those some of our strongest relations in the world with some of the highest approval ratings of the United States. Our relations with nations in the Middle East have been filled with decisions which make them distrust us which makes it the place where people most hate the United States to our peril, and theirs. Overthrowing dictators by bringing the people to our side and improving our image will make this world better in a more effective manner than any other method.

So, this is why we should open the door to the President of Iran who has the support of the people to someday make our relations stronger so Iran can be a land where people have the rights they deserve and we need to change course. We have a golden opportunity right now to help the People and expand freedom and if we are serious about our founding values we will take it. We need to be the peacemaker which will make people across the world love us and want to work with us. Iran is a nation of 77 million people, and if we have them as an ally in a collaborative way we will be better off, and Iran will be able to have freedom.

America loves Iran.

Venezuela-American relations

America's relationship with Venezuela is... complicated. Venezuela currently holds the largest depository of proven oil in the world, and their government doesn't want our oil companies taking their oil, but want to use it for their own national development. This causes tensions, as America's politicians who routinely receive large donations (read bribes) from the oil companies that want to tap the largest proven oil reserve in the world. Venezuela is in a unique position that their late leader Hugo Chavez was a populist, with the goal of protecting Venezuela's natural resources for Venezuelan companies. This caused massive tensions between the government of the United States and Venezuela. Since President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States has mostly pursued an expansionist foreign policy not of military ends, but of economic. When we controlled Cuba under their pre-Castro dictators (let me be clear I am no fan of Castro, he was a dictator by any measure) we had access to large plats of land that we farmed, and controlled our economic interest mostly through military means. Venezuela and the United States have a similar interest in one another, and from the discovery of oil in 1908, which developed strong relations between Venezuela and American oil companies (represented by our government) which for 90 years was a very important source of revenue for our government. In 1943 they set up a 50/50 split with American oil companies which gave immense wealth to both American oil companies and the Venezuelan government.

2001 was a crucial year for the disintegration of Venezuelan-American relations because President Chavez declared all oil in Venezuela property of the state, as in not property of American companies. This means that the American companies that formerly owned and operated oil in Venezuela can't anymore. Oil companies have immense influence in several important ways, first of all they regular give campaign donations to our elected and appointed government officials. (which is often referred to as lobbying, which I personally refer to as bribery) President Bush of course made his fortune in the oil industry, which means that his company and the companies fellow oilmen in his cabinet lead/led (Condoleeza Rice was on the executive board for Chevron, among other high-profile connections) lost billions of dollars in assets in Venezuela with the Venezuelans seeking control over their own economy. This is what turned our relations sour. The second way that oil companies greatly influence our country is through popular perception, and I would bet that they have connections at some level. Corporate America is a very complicated mixture of companies and looking at who is on the boards of directors of different companies I find a lot of people will be on different boards. I didn't find any clear connection between the large companies that own American media (which are News Corporation, Disney, Comcast, and National Amusements) but I did find many connections between them and people on the boards of large financial institutions. Here the skeptical investigator reaches a question... is this enough evidence to become convinced there is a clear conflict of interest between the four large channels and reporting on Venezuela given its complicated connections to the oil industry? Oil is one of the most profitable industries in the world, and if a bank wanted a great industry to make a killing in, a large market would be oil. Looking at the list of people who are on the boards of directors of companies that are available, it is easy to see that many people who lead these massive companies are members of multiple boards, and many investment banks are represented. Looking at large corporations, here is a very small sample of the fortunes of oil in Fortune 500 companies:

1. Berkshire Hathaway has an interest in cheap oil through their subsidiary Lubrizol
2. Chase bank played a big role in financing Enron
3. One needs to look no further than the list of major holders of Exxon Mobil where one can see a number of large banking institutions.

With all of this evidence, it is hard to not be convinced that there is a major conflict of interest between the major news broadcasters regardless of their political alignment and their desire for the largest proven oil reserve in the world... It is quite damning in my opinion. This is enough information for me to conclude that there is enough evidence showing a clear conflict of interest in the foreign reporting of all major corporate American broadcasters.

No wonder American-Venezuelan relations are so poor.