U.S. Pursues Tactic of Financial Isolation

As debate swirls about whether new international sanctions
against North Korea will be effective, the Bush administration appears to
have made some headway in using new American legal tools to cut off both
North Korea and Iran from the international financial system. The American
campaign to use its own financial regulations to put pressure on North Korea
and Iran has been a mix of implicit threats backed by explicit action,
American officials and banking experts say. Over the last year, American
officials have met with many private banks overseas to warn them of the risk
of doing business with certain Iranian and North Korean trading companies
and businesses that the United States says have been tied to terrorist
groups or to the spread of nuclear materials. One of the main unspoken
messages of the visits, experts say, is that the United States government
may eventually bar American banks from working with financial institutions
doing business with groups tied to terrorism. This campaign of pressure has
been backed up by specific actions. The most notable was when the United
States last month barred American banks from facilitating certain
transactions, including the sale of oil, for a leading Iranian bank with
reputed ties to terrorist groups. As a result of the American campaign,
banking officials and experts say that some foreign banks are cutting ties
with North Korea and Iran. But while achieving some unilateral success in
economically punishing North Korea and Iran for their nuclear ambitions,
some experts say the moves against Iran, at least, could damage American
economic interests if that country switched to currencies other than the
dollar for its large oil trades. The United States had turned to unilateral
action in part out of frustration that its efforts to mobilize international
sanctions had run into trouble. That frustration might remain if the United
Nations sanctions against North Korea, passed Saturday, prove not to be as
effective as the United States hopes. Most experts acknowledge that a
globally cooperative effort would be much more effective than the American
unilateral efforts, but that the United States can inflict some pain with
the creative use of the reach of its own laws and pressure. The ban on
American transactions with the Iranian bank, Bank Saderat, means that it
will no longer be able to obtain American dollars for its dealings with any
other bank in the world. Bank Saderat is one of Iran's half-dozen largest
banks. The technical term for the banned activity is a "U-turn
transaction." Such a transaction permits, for example, Iran to sell oil to a
German customer, who in turn directs a European bank to deposit dollars
obtained from an American bank into an Iranian bank account located in
Europe. The phrase "U-turn" applies because the funds are transferred to a
United States bank and instantly turned back as dollars to a European bank.
Many American banking officials predict that, in coming months, the United
States will ban American bank involvement in transactions involving the
other leading banks in Iran. That is because there is a widespread
assumption among bankers that all of Iran's state-owned banks engage in the
same activities as Bank Saderat. The likely result is that Iran will have
difficulty selling its oil for dollars, the international medium of exchange
for all oil sales. "This is a pretty dramatic uptick of pressure from the
United States," said Judith Lee, a law partner specializing in economic
sanctions at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington. "It is going to create
significant difficulties for European banks and European countries."
American officials decline to say whether the move against Bank Saderat
would apply to other Iranian banks. Stuart Levey, under secretary of the
Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said recently that in the
last two years the United States had "learned a number of lessons about how
best to use financial tools to apply financial pressure" on countries like
Iran and North Korea. In the last year, Levey has traveled to several
countries in Europe to exert pressure on Iran and to Singapore, China,
Macao, Hong Kong, Vietnam and South Korea to press banks to break their ties
with North Korea. The message was reinforced a year ago when the United
States barred financial transactions with a bank in Macao, Banco Delta Asia,
which officials said was involved in North Korean nuclear dealings, money
laundering and counterfeiting. Last month, citing news media reports, Levey
said that at least two dozen financial institutions overseas had curtailed
or suspended business with North Korea. China, for instance, froze the
accounts of North Korea in a Macao branch of the Bank of China and also
cracked down on the circulation of counterfeit American dollars in China
near the North Korean border. The administration hopes that could set a
pattern for the future, American officials said. "We have no reason to
believe that China will not continue to protect their financial system from
abuse," a Treasury official said Sunday. As for Iran, several European
banks, including Credit Suisse and UBS in Switzerland, HSBC in Britain and
ABN Amro in the Netherlands, have announced curbs on dealings with Iranian
banks and businesses. "We are seeing a whole series of banks not doing
business with Iran, restricting the flow of funds into Iran significantly,"
said Edward Morse, chief energy economist at Lehman Brothers. Last month,
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. suggested at an international meeting
in Singapore that banks around the world should stop doing business with
more than 30 Iranian companies and government enterprises that American
intelligence had linked to various illicit activities. Evidence that
American moves against Iran might be having an effect came at the same
meeting, when Ebrahim Sheibany, the Iranian central bank governor, told a
local paper at an international financial meeting that Iran would have "no
choice" but to shift its sale of oil away from the dollar and to the euro or
Asian currencies. Whether that shift away from dollars could have the
unintended effect of hurting the United States is a matter of debate. Some
experts say there is a danger that if Iran does shift currencies, it could
weaken the standing of the dollar as a reserve currency, forcing the United
States to raise interest rates to attract dollar purchasers. "This is a
step where the end result could clearly weaken the dollar," said John
Heimann, an investment banker and former comptroller of the currency in the
Carter administration. "What has to be considered is whether or not we are
shooting ourselves in the foot."

By Steven R. Weisman The New York Times Published: October 16, 2006

One of These Days - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Monday dawned warm and rainless. Aurelio Escovar, a dentist without a degree, and a very early riser, opened his office at six. He took some false teeth, still mounted in their plaster mold, out of the glass case and put on the table a fistful of instruments which he arranged in size order, as if they were on display. He wore a collarless striped shirt, closed at the neck with a golden stud, and pants held up by suspenders He was erect and skinny, with a look that rarely corresponded to the situation, the way deaf people have of looking.

When he had things arranged on the table, he pulled the drill toward the dental chair and sat down to polish the false teeth. He seemed not to be thinking about what he was doing, but worked steadily, pumping the drill with his feet, even when he didn't need it.

After eight he stopped for a while to look at the sky through the window, and he saw two pensive buzzards who were drying themselves in the sun on the ridgepole of the house next door. He went on working with the idea that before lunch it would rain again. The shrill voice of his elevenyear-old son interrupted his concentration.

"Papa."

"What?"

"The Mayor wants to know if you'll pull his tooth."

"Tell him I'm not here."

He was polishing a gold tooth. He held it at arm's length, and examined it with his eyes half closed. His son shouted again from the little waiting room.

"He says you are, too, because he can hear you."

The dentist kept examining the tooth. Only when he had put it on the table with the finished work did he say:

"So much the better."

He operated the drill again. He took several pieces of a bridge out of a cardboard box where he kept the things he still had to do and began to polish the gold.

"Papa."

"What?"

He still hadn't changed his expression.

"He says if you don't take out his tooth, he'll shoot you."

Without hurrying, with an extremely tranquil movement, he stopped pedaling the drill, pushed it away from the chair, and pulled the lower drawer of the table all the way out. There was a revolver. "O.K.," he said. "Tell him to come and shoot me."

He rolled the chair over opposite the door, his hand resting on the edge of the drawer. The Mayor appeared at the door. He had shaved the left side of his face, but the other side, swollen and in pain, had a five-day-old beard. The dentist saw many nights of desperation in his dull eyes. He closed the drawer with his fingertips and said softly:

"Sit down."

"Good morning," said the Mayor.

"Morning," said the dentist.

While the instruments were boiling, the Mayor leaned his skull on the headrest of the chair and felt better. His breath was icy. It was a poor office: an old wooden chair, the pedal drill, a glass case with ceramic bottles. Opposite the chair was a window with a shoulder-high cloth curtain. When he felt the dentist approach, the Mayor braced his heels and opened his mouth.

Aurelio Escovar turned his head toward the light. After inspecting the infected tooth, he closed the Mayor's jaw with a cautious pressure of his fingers.

"It has to be without anesthesia," he said.

"Why?"

"Because you have an abscess."

The Mayor looked him in the eye. "All right," he said, and tried to smile. The dentist did not return the smile. He brought the basin of sterilized instruments to the worktable and took them out of the water with a pair of cold tweezers, still without hurrying. Then he pushed the spittoon with the tip of his shoe, and went to wash his hands in the washbasin. He did all this without looking at the Mayor. But the Mayor didn't take his eyes off him.

It was a lower wisdom tooth. The dentist spread his feet and grasped the tooth with the hot forceps. The Mayor seized the arms of the chair, braced his feet with all his strength, and felt an icy void in his kidneys, but didn't make a sound. The dentist moved only his wrist. Without rancor, rather with a bitter tenderness, he said:

"Now you'll pay for our twenty dead men."

The Mayor felt the crunch of bones in his jaw, and his eyes filled with tears. But he didn't breathe until he felt the tooth come out. Then he saw it through his tears. It seemed so foreign to his pain that he failed to understand his torture of the five previous nights.

Bent over the spittoon, sweating, panting, he unbuttoned his tunic and reached for the handkerchief in his pants pocket.  The dentist gave him a clean cloth.

"Dry your tears," he said.

The Mayor did.  He was trembling.  While the dentist washed his hands, he saw the crumbling ceiling and a dusty spider web with spider's eggs and dead insects.  The dentist returned, drying his hands.  "Go to bed," he said, "and gargle with salt water."  The Mayor stood up, said goodbye with a casual military salute, and walked toward the door, stretching his legs, without buttoning up his tunic.

"Send the bill," he said.

"To you or the town?"

The Mayor didn't look at him.  He closed the door and said through the screen:

"It's the same damn thing."

Butterflies - Roger Dean Kiser

There was a time in my life when beauty meant something special to me. I guess that would have been when I was about six or seven years old, just several weeks or maybe a month before the orphanage turned me into an old man.
     I would get up every morning at the orphanage, make my bed just like the little soldier that I had become and then I would get into one of the two straight lines and march to breakfast with the other twenty or thirty boys who also lived in my dormitory.
     After breakfast one Saturday morning I returned to the dormitory and saw the house parent chasing the beautiful monarch butterflies who lived by the hundreds in the azalea bushes strewn around the orphanage.
     I carefully watched as he caught these beautiful creatures, one after the other, and then took them from the net and then stuck straight pins through their head and wings, pinning them onto a heavy cardboard sheet.
     How cruel it was to kill something of such beauty. I had walked many times out into the bushes, all by myself, just so the butterflies could land on my head, face and hands so I could look at them up close.
     When the telephone rang the house parent laid the large cardboard paper down on the back cement step and went inside to answer the phone. I walked up to the cardboard and looked at the one butterfly who he had just pinned to the large paper. It was still moving about so I reached down and touched it on the wing causing one of the pins to fall out. It started flying around and around trying to get away but it was still pinned by the one wing with the other straight pin. Finally it's wing broke off and the butterfly fell to the ground and just quivered.
     I picked up the torn wing and the butterfly and I spat on it's wing and tried to get it to stick back on so it could fly away and be free before the house parent came back. But it would not stay on him.
     The next thing I knew the house parent came walking back out of the back door by the garbage room and started yelling at me. I told him that I did not do anything but he did not believe me. He picked up the cardboard paper and started hitting me on the top of the head. There were all kinds of butterfly pieces going everywhere. He threw the cardboard down on the ground and told me to pick it up and put it in the garbage can inside the back room of the dormitory and then he left.
I sat there in the dirt, by that big old tree, for the longest time trying to fit all the butterfly pieces back together so I could bury them whole, but it was too hard to do. So I prayed for them and then I put them in an old torn up shoe box and I buried them in the bottom of the fort that I had built in the ground, out by the large bamboos, near the blackberry bushes.
     Every year when the butterflies would return to the orphanage and try to land on me I would try and shoo them away because they did not know that the orphanage was a bad place to live and a very bad place to die.

The Hero - Sue Ragland

My mother's parents came from Hungary, but my grandfather was educated in Germany. Even though Hungarian was his native language, he preferred German to all the other languages he spoke. It seems he was able to hold a conversation in nine languages, but was most comfortable in German. Every morning, before going to his office, he read the German language newspaper, which was American owned and published in New York.
     My grandfather was the only one in his family to come to the United States. He still had relatives living in Europe. When the first World War broke out, he lamented the fact that if my uncle, his only son had to go, it would be cousin fighting against cousin. In the early days of the war, my grandmother implored him to stop taking the German newspaper and to take an English language paper, instead. He scoffed at the idea, explaining that the fact that it was in German did not make it a German newspaper, but only an American newspaper, printed in German. But my grandmother insisted, if only that the neighbors not see him read it and think he was German. So, under duress, he finally gave up the German newspaper.
     One day, the inevitable happened and my Uncle Milton received his draft notice. My Grandparents were very upset, but my mother, his little sister was ecstatic. Now she could brag about her soldier brother going off to war. She was ten years old and my uncle, realizing how he was regarded by his little sister and all of her friends, went out and bought them all service pins, which meant that they had a loved one in the service. All the little girls were delighted. When the day came for him to leave, his whole regiment, in their uniforms, left together from the same train station. There was a band playing and my mother and her friends came to see him off. Each one wore her service pin and waved a small American flag, cheering the boys, as they left.
     The moment came and the soldiers, all rookies, none of whom had had any training, but who had nevertheless all been issued, uniforms, boarded the train. The band played and the crowd cheered. Although no one noticed, I'm sure my grandmother had a tear in her eye for the only son, going off to war. The train groaned as if it knew the destiny to which it was taking its passengers, but it soon it began to move. Still cheering and waving their flags, the band still playing, the train slowly departed the station.
     It had gone about a thousand yards when it suddenly ground to a halt. The band stopped playing, the crowd stopped cheering. Everyone gazed in wonder as the train slowly backed up and returned to the station. It seemed an eternity until the doors opened and the men started to file out. Someone shouted, "It's the armistice. The war is over." For a moment, nobody moved, but then the people heard someone bark orders at the soldiers. The men lined up formed into two lines, walked down the steps and, with the band in tow, playing a Sousa march, paraded down the street, as returning heroes, to be welcomed home by the assembled throng. As soon as the parade ended they were, immediately, mustered out of the army. My mother said it was a great day, but she was just a little disappointed that it didn't last a tiny bit longer. The next day my uncle returned to his job, and my grandfather resumed reading the German newspaper, which he read until the day he died.