Archive for the ‘World’ Category

by George Friedman

Israel is now entering its third strategic environment. The constant threat of state-on-state war defined the first, which lasted from the founding of the Jewish state until its peace treaty with Egypt. A secure periphery defined the second, which lasted until recently and focused on the Palestinian issue, Lebanon and the rise of radical Sunni Islamists. The rise of Iran as a regional power and the need to build international coalitions to contain it define the third.

Israel’s fundamental strategic problem is that its national security interests outstrip its national resources, whether industrial, geographic, demographic or economic. During the first phase, it was highly dependent on outside powers — first the Soviet Union, then France and finally the United States — in whose interest it was to provide material support to Israel. In the second phase, the threat lessened, leaving Israel relatively free to define its major issues, such as containing the Palestinians and attempting to pacify Lebanon. Its dependence on outside powers decreased, meaning it could disregard those powers from time to time. In the third phase, Israel’s dependence on outside powers, particularly the United States, began increasing. With this increase, Israel’s freedom for maneuver began declining.

Containing the Palestinians by Managing its Neighbors

The Palestinian issue, of course, has existed since Israel’s founding. By itself, this issue does not pose an existential threat to Israel, since the Palestinians cannot threaten the Israeli state’s survival. The Palestinians have had the ability to impose a significant cost on the occupation of the West Bank and the containing of the Gaza Strip, however. They have forced the Israelis to control significant hostile populations with costly, ongoing operations and to pay political costs to countries Israel needs to manage its periphery and global interests. The split between Hamas and Fatah reduced the overall threat but raised the political costs. This became apparent during the winter of 2008-2009 during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza when Hamas, for its own reasons, chose to foment conflict with Israel. Israel’s response to Hamas’ actions cost the Jewish state support in Europe, Turkey and other places.

Ideological or religious considerations aside, the occupation of the territories makes strategic sense in that if Israel withdraws, Hamas might become militarized to the point of threatening Israel with direct attack or artillery and rocket fire. Israel thus sees itself forced into an occupation that carries significant political costs in order to deal with a theoretical military threat. The threat is presently just theoretical, however, because of Israel’s management of its strategic relations with its neighboring nation-states.

Israel has based its management of its regional problem less on creating a balance of power in the region than on taking advantage of tensions among its neighbors to prevent them from creating a united military front against Israel. From 1948 until the 1970s, Lebanon refrained from engaging Israel. Meanwhile, Jordan’s Hashemite regime had deep-seated tensions with the Palestinians, with Syria and with Nasserite Egypt. In spite of Israeli-Jordanian conflict in 1967, Jordan saw Israel as a guarantor of its national security. Following the 1973 war, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel that created a buffer zone in the Sinai Peninsula.

By then, Lebanon had begun to shift its position, less because of any formal government policy and more because of the disintegration of the Lebanese state and the emergence of a Palestine Liberation Organization presence in southern Lebanon. Currently, with Syria in chaos, Jordan dependent on Israel and Egypt still maintaining the treaty with Israel despite recent Islamist political gains, only Lebanon poses a threat, and that threat is minor.

The Palestinians therefore lack the political or military support to challenge Israel. This in turn has meant that other countries’ alienation over Israeli policy toward the Palestinians has carried little risk. European countries opposed to Israeli policy are unlikely to take significant action. Because political opposition cannot translate into meaningful action, Israel can afford a higher level of aggressiveness toward the Palestinians.

Thus, Israel’s strongest interest is in maintaining divisions among its neighbors and maintaining their disinterest in engaging Israel. In different ways, unrest in Egypt and Syria and Iran’s regional emergence pose a serious challenge to this strategy.

Egypt

Egypt is the ultimate threat to Israel. It has a huge population and, as it demonstrated in 1973, it is capable of mounting complex military operations.

But to do what it did in 1973, Egypt needed an outside power with an interest in supplying Egypt with massive weaponry and other support. In 1973, that power was the Soviet Union, but the Egyptians reversed their alliance position to the U.S. camp following that war. Once their primary source of weaponry became the United States, using that weaponry depended heavily on U.S. supplies of spare parts and contractors.

At this point, no foreign power would be capable of, or interested in, supporting the Egyptian military should Cairo experience regime change and a break with the United States. And a breach of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty alone would not generate a threat to Israel. The United States would act as a brake on Egyptian military capabilities, and no new source would step in. Even if a new source did emerge, it would take a generation for the Egyptians to become militarily effective using new weapon systems. In the long run, however, Egypt will remain Israel’s problem.

Syria

The near-term question is Syria’s future. Israel had maintained a complex and not always transparent relationship with the Syrian government. In spite of formal hostilities, the two shared common interests in Lebanon. Israel did not want to manage Lebanon after Israeli failures in the 1980s, but it still wanted Lebanon — and particularly Hezbollah — managed. Syria wanted to control Lebanon for political and economic reasons and did not want Israel interfering there. An implicit accommodation was thus possible, one that didn’t begin to unravel until the United States forced Syria out of Lebanon, freeing Hezbollah from Syrian controls and setting the stage for the 2006 war.

Israel continued to view the Alawite regime in Syria as preferable to a radical Sunni regime. In the context of the U.S. presence in Iraq, the threat to Israel came from radical Sunni Islamists; Israel’s interests lay with whoever opposed them. Today, with the United States out of Iraq and Iran a dominant influence there, the Israelis face a more complex choice. If the regime of President Bashar al Assad survives (with or without al Assad himself), Iran — which is supplying weapons and advisers to Syria — will wield much greater influence in Syria. In effect, this would create an Iranian sphere of influence running from western Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria and into Lebanon via Hezbollah. It would create a regional power. And an Iranian regional power would pose severe dangers to Israel.

Accordingly, Israel has shifted its thinking from supporting the al Assad regime to wanting it to depart so that a Sunni government hostile to Iran but not dominated by radical Islamists could emerge. Here we reach the limits of Israeli power, because what happens in Syria is beyond Israel’s control. Those who might influence the course of events in Syria apart from Iran include Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Both are being extremely cautious in their actions, however, and neither government is excessively sensitive to U.S. needs. Israel’s main ally, the United States, has little influence in Syria, particularly given Russian and, to some extent, Chinese opposition to American efforts to shape Syria’s future.

Even more than Egypt, Syria is a present threat to Israel, not by itself but because it could bring a more distant power — Iran — to bear. As important, Syria could threaten the stability of the region by reshaping the politics of Lebanon or destabilizing Jordan. The only positive dimension for Israel is that Iran’s military probably will not be able to deploy significant forces far from its borders for many years. Iran simply lacks the logistical or command capabilities for such an operation. But developing them is just a matter of time. Israel could, of course, launch a war in Syria. But the challenge of occupying Syria would dwarf the challenge Israel faces with the Palestinians. On the other side of the equation, an Iranian presence in Syria could reshape the West Bank in spite of Shiite-Sunni tensions.

The United States and the Europeans, with Libya as a model, theoretically could step into managing Syria. But Libya was a seven-month war in a much less populous country. It is unlikely they would attempt this in Syria, and if they did, it would not be because Israel needed them to do so. And this points to Israel’s core strategic weakness. In dealing with Syria and the emergent Iranian influence there, Israel is incapable of managing the situation by itself. It must have outside powers intervening on its behalf. And that intervention poses military and political challenges that Israel’s patron, the United States, doesn’t want to undertake.

It is important to understand that Israel, after a long period in which it was able to manage its national security issues, is now re-entering the phase where it cannot do so without outside support. This is where its policy on the Palestinians begins to hurt, particularly in Europe, where intervention on behalf of Israeli interests would conflict with domestic European political forces. In the United States, where the Israeli-Palestinian problem has less impact, the appetite to intervene in yet another Muslim country is simply not there, particularly without European allies.

Iran

This is all compounded by the question of Iranian nuclear weapons. In our view, as we have said, the Iranians are far closer to a controlled underground test than to a deliverable weapon. Israel’s problem is that Iran appears on the verge of a strategic realignment in the region. The sense that Iran is an emerging nuclear power both enhances Iran’s position and decreases anyone’s appetite to do anything about it. Israel is practicing psychological warfare against Iran, but it still faces a serious problem: The more Iran consolidates its position in the Middle East and the closer it is to a weapon the more other countries outside the region will have to accommodate themselves to Iran. And this leaves Israel vulnerable.

Israel cannot do much about Syria, but a successful attack on Iranian nuclear facilities could undermine Iranian credibility at a time when Israel badly needs to do just that. Here again, Israel faces its strategic problem. It might be able to carry out an effective strike against Iran, particularly if, as has been speculated, a country such as Azerbaijan provides facilities like airfields. However, even with such assistance, Israel’s air force is relatively small, meaning there is no certainty of success. Nor could Israel strike without American knowledge and approval. The Americans will know about an Israeli strike by technical intelligence. Hiding such a strike from either the Americans or Russians would be difficult, compounding the danger to Israel.

More important, Israel cannot strike Iran without U.S. permission because Israel cannot guarantee that the Iranians would not mine the Strait of Hormuz. Only the United States could hope to stop the Iranians from doing so, and the United States would need to initiate the conflict by taking out the Iranian mine-laying capability before the first Israeli strike. Given its dependence on the United States for managing its national security, the decision to attack would have to be taken jointly. An uncoordinated attack by Israel would be possible only if Israel were willing to be the cause of global economic chaos.

Israel’s strategic problem is that it must align its strategy with the United States and with anyone the United States regards as essential to its national security, such as the Saudis. But the United States has interests beyond Israel, so Israel is constantly entangled with its patron’s multiplicity of interests. This limits its range of action as severely as its air force’s constraints do.

Since its peace treaty with Egypt, Israeli dependence on outsiders was limited. Israel could act on issues like settlements, for example, regardless of American views. That period is coming to an end, and with it the period in which Israel could afford to deviate from its patron. People frequently discuss any U.S.-Israeli rift in terms of personal relations between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but this is mistaken. It is uncertainty in Egypt and Syria and the emergence of Iran that have created a new strategic reality for Israel.

Read more: Israel’s New Strategic Environment | Stratfor

May 7, 2012 by Bob Livingston

The ultimate goal of the elites is to create a one world socialist government.
The march toward a union of the United States, Canada and Mexico — and ultimately global government — continues apace.
The ultimate goal of the elites is to create a one world socialist government. They have succeeded in combining most of Europe into a European Union (though the economic disaster there caused by the excessive corruption of the banksters, who overplayed their hands, may cause it to fly apart and the euro to crash). But even now we hear of a sinister plot by a covert group of EU foreign ministers who want to gain sweeping control over the entire EU and force member countries into ever-greater political and economic union.
The group holding the secret talks (excluding a representative from Great Britain) is called the “Berlin Group” of Europhile politicians and is being led by the German foreign minister. Its goal, according to opponents, is to create a modern-day equivalent of the European emperor envisioned by Napoleon Bonaparte or a return to the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne that dominated Europe in the Dark Ages.
“This is a plot by people who want to abolish nation states and create a United States of Europe,” said Lord David Stoddart of Swindon, who for many years chaired the Campaign for an Independent Britain. “The whole thing is barmy. These people are determined to achieve their final objective.”
The drive by the elites to form a united North America has been going on for many years and must be accomplished before the elites’ goal of global governance can be realized. It has been dismissed as conspiracy theory nuttery by the elites, even as they wrote policy papers and books on the subject. As we noted last year, cables released by WikiLeaks show that a single North America is the goal of the banksters and corporatist thieves.
But President Barack Obama, who was chosen to carry out this task by those who really rule the world, has worked hard to speed the process along. He was selected during a secret meeting with the Bilderberg group at its conference in Chantilly, Va., in June 2008. It’s a meeting that was not announced to the press pool covering the Obama campaign until the reporters had been locked on Obama’s campaign plane. Campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs was glib with reporters who at the time protested the secrecy of the meeting. (The original Associated Press version of this story has been scrubbed from the Internet and only heavily edited versions can be found using Google.)
Recent executive orders signed by Obama with little or no coverage by the corporatist mainstream media reveal the progress of the elites’ intentions. One was signed in February 2011, and it was a major step in erasing the border between the United States and Canada. It was a continuation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) that was begun by George W. Bush in 2005.
The second one signed by Obama last week under the guise of streamlining U.S. regulations to make it easier for U.S. companies to compete globally, makes the U.S. comport to regulations set by the world.
“Today’s executive order marks a paradigm shift for U.S. regulators by directing them to take the international implications of their work into account in a consistent and comprehensive way,” Sean Heather, vice president of the chamber’s Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation, said in an e-mailed statement, according to a report in Businessweek.com.
In an April 30 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, White House Regulation Czar Cass Sunstein wrote:
More generally, President Obama has worked closely with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts to create High-Level Regulatory Cooperation Councils with both countries. The councils are developing and implementing plans to eliminate or prevent the creation of unnecessary burdens on cross-border trade, streamline regulatory requirements, and promote greater certainty for the general public and for businesses in the regulation of food, pharmaceuticals, nanotechnology and other areas.
Obama is a globalist, as his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta revealed in a Congressional hearing when he said the Administration would defer to the U.N. and NATO rather than Congress when deciding when and where to send the U.S. military.
Obama’s actions have served to strengthen the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, all to the benefit of the banksters who control him and to the detriment of the people he’s supposed to represent. The IMF, World Bank and WTO are simply piggy banks for the corporatists to use to their benefit as they loot and pillage economies around the globe, as John Perkins points out in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Of course, there will be many who will claim there is no evidence that America is in danger of being absorbed into the global community under the auspices of the U.N. or some as-yet devised agency. But that would be a denial of basic facts. And, by the way, they were saying much the same about the EU at the time it was being created. The elites don’t go for Hail Marys; they do things incrementally. Gradualism is their game. They are patient, but insidious and determined liars.
Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott, who was deputy Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, wrote in a 1992 Time Magazine article: “I’ll bet that within the next hundred years (I’m giving the world time for setbacks and myself time to be out of the betting game, just in case I lose this one), nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority.”
Bilderberger Henry Kissinger, speaking of the North American Free Trade Agreement, once said: “What Congress will have before it is not a conventional trade agreement but the architecture of a new international system… a first step toward a new world order.”
He believed Obama would be the one who would finally bring the new world order into being. In January 2009, days before Obama’s inauguration, Kissinger said: “The president-elect is coming into office at a moment when there is upheaval in many parts of the world simultaneously. You have India, Pakistan; you have the jihadist movement. So he can’t really say there is one problem, that it’s the most important one. But he can give new impetus to American foreign policy partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It’s a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis.”
And Obama knows what his job is. In a speech he delivered in Prague last year on nuclear weapons, Obama said, “All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime.”
This new world order would end American sovereignty and turn America into nothing more than a socialist puppet state of the U.N. or some other as-yet revealed entity.
The elites are further along in Europe. It is a road map for where they want to move America.
Bilderbergers Again Meeting In Virginia
As mentioned earlier, the Bilderberg group met in Chantilly the summer prior to the 2008 election and selected Obama as the next President. So is it just a coincidence that the secretive confab of global movers and shakers is set to meet again in Chantilly this summer?
Bilderberg watchers have noted that the Westerfields Marriot Washington Dulles hotel, site of the Bilderberg meeting in both 2002 and 2008, is fully booked from May 31-June 3. The group meets annually to determine the big issues of the coming year.
But don’t expect any coverage from the corporatist MSM. They are merely mouthpieces for the establishment and know what they can and can’t say. And they aren’t invited unless they’ve proven themselves trustworthy.
“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years,” David Rockefeller said in a speech leaked from a Bilderberger meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany in 1991. “It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
The growth of the alternative media on the Internet has slowed down that march. But the elites continue to work hard to get the Internet – and, therefore, the message — under their control.
More On Senator Marco Rubio
Florida Senator Marco Rubio is being heavily vetted by the global movers and shakers and Mitt Romney may soon have orders to name Rubio as his Vice President. In April, Rubio flew commercial to attend the Summit of the Americas. Even the less-than-forthcoming Washington Post found it curious that Rubio was the only Senator on the Senate Foreign Relations committee to attend the meeting, and that he went to such effort to get there.
Last week, I explained the ramifications of Rubio’s audition appearance before Brookings, a policy arm of the Bilderberg group. The Post pointed out the similarities between Rubio’s appearances and John Edwards’ appearance at the Bilderberg conference in 2004, just before he was selected as John Kerry’s running mate.
Watch for a Virginia trip by Rubio, if that’s indeed where the Bilderbergers hold their conference. This is further evidence of the fallacy of the left/right paradigm that consumes so much political discourse today.

ICELAND FORCES DEBT FORGIVENESS: TOTAL US MEDIA BLACKOUT – “When Debt Is Fraud, Debt Forgiveness Is The Last And Only Remedy”

Finally serious economists are considering a position I have been maintaining and writing about since the 2008 financial meltdown. Whatever its name— erasure, repudiation, abolishment, cancellation, jubilee—debt forgiveness, will have to eventually emerge forefront in global efforts to solve an ongoing systemic financial crisis.

The US Rothschild Controlled Media (RCM) has completely BLACKED OUT/CENSORED any news about Iceland’s DEBT FORGIVENESS.
If you Google “ICELAND FORGIVES ENTIRE POPULATION OF MORTGAGE DEBT” you will get ‘About 359,000 Results’. Not one of them is a Media Outlet in the US. Not one single Major or Minor news outlet in America has mentioned a single word about this story.
This is TOTAL MEDIA CENSORSHIP and a TOTAL MEDIA BLACKOUT, and it should tell you who owns and runs the Media in America.
BANKERS. Foreign Bankers.
We are allowed to see a tortured, bleeding, dying Gaddafi anywhere, but we are not allowed to know about Debt Forgiveness.
If you Google “DEBT FORGIVENESS” About 1 million 850 results. Not one of them talks about forgiving debt. Okay, 1 does.
But still, out of over a million and a half results.
The MAINSTREAM MEDIA totally censors anything to do with Debt Forgiveness.
The government of Iceland has forgiven the mortgage debt for much of its population. This nation chose a very different way of stopping the crisis from the rest of European countries. It decided to hear the requests of the population and to put politicians and bankers on the bench of the accused three years after their financial excesses would sank one of the most prosperous economies in 2008.
Iceland Forgives Mortgage Debt for the Population. Putting Bankers and Politicians on “Bench of Accused”
This is awesome. It shows when the people DO STAND UP they have more power and win against the corrupt bankers and politicians of a country. Iceland is forgiving and erasing the mortgage debt of the population.
They are putting the bankers and politicians on the “Bench of the Accused.” Which means I assume they are putting them on trial for corruption.
Now the rest of people of the world need to start doing the same thing. We all need to stand up and against all the corruption and fraud of the banks and politicians that are puppets of the banks and corporations.
The beauty of it is that they will have a load of cash to circulate into the economy and into service industries etc…instead of feeding it to the parasite bankers and out of the economy, great idea. If it was warmer I’d move to Iceland.
For Whom The Bell Tolls:
This could very well be the first chime of many to signal the Death of the World Banking System headed by our ‘good’ friends the Rothschild’s.
Iceland Strikes the First Major Blow Against the World Banking (Fraud) Cartel. This is what can immediately put money into the hands of many American’s.
The Us Government through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA own 96% of all bad housing loans. Many have stated, that in effect,
“The US Government is Foreclosing on itself.” This is the very definition of Insanity. It is a form of Suicide.
Major Banks only hold 3% of bad housing loans, 3%!
This is not a banking problem, it is a Government problem, they hold the loans!
We were just about to do a story on America Foreclosing on itself when this article came across our computer.
Times have just gotten brighter.
Finally serious economists are considering a position I have been maintaining and writing about since the 2008 financial meltdown. Whatever its name— erasure, repudiation, abolishment, cancellation, jubilee—debt forgiveness, will have to eventually emerge forefront in global efforts to solve an ongoing systemic financial crisis.
“On a grand scale the only way to erase counterfeit money and (counterfeit) assets of hundreds of trillions of dollars is to erase the debts associated with those fake assets. (Let me underscore again, these are not “toxic” assets, they are fake assets.)… Forgiveness in general, and forgiveness of debt in particular, stand as virtues if they free us up to acknowledge, address, and learn from our culpability, start anew, and create forward.” (The Big Squeeze, Part 3: The Quiet Rebellion: Civil Disobedience, Local Markets, and Debt Erasure (January 29, 2011)

Debt forgiveness, therefore, accomplishes two important things. It eliminates the increasing and outsized portion of productive enterprise to pay off unproductive obligations, and it clears the ground for new opportunities, new thinking, invention, and entrepreneurialism. This is why the ability to declare bankruptcy is so essential in the pursuit of both happiness and innovation.
Currently we are mired in a “new normal” and calls for “austerity” which are nothing more than the delusional efforts of a status quo to avoid the consequences of its own error and fraud and to profit evermore. So bedazzled by the false wealth created by debt multiplication and its concomitant fantasy of ever-higher returns, this status quo continues to be stupidly amazed that people are not spending and that the economy is not picking up. But how could it be otherwise?
Productive wealth has been trapped in a web of parasitic theft, counterfeiting, liability evasion, non-regulation, and prosecutorial non-accountability. All the fundamental attributes of a functioning exchange economy have been warped to reward creative criminals. I spoke extensively about this in my posts from 2008. (Imaginary Worth, Empire of Debt: How Modern Finance Created Its Own Downfall (October 15, 2008)
The unsustainable nature of debt
Two observations: 1) Fabricated/parasitic so-called “wealth” destroys value by diluting the value of productive wealth. 2) Debt/credit that cannot be paid back is never an asset and is always a hot-potato liability (needing to be foisted to a greater fool to garner “profit” and transaction fees):
“The models [modern debt are] based upon had no contact with reality. They assumed unlimited growth and ability to pay. When matched against the reality of people paying ten times their salary for mortgages that actually added more money owed to their principal (i.e. with negative amortization), required no money down, and set up “balloon payments,” large step-ups in payments after a few years) there is no possible way they could NOT default in a predictable span of time.” (Part II: How the Credit Default Swap Scam Works (October 13, 2008)
Systemically, all debt that charges a percentage (“usury”) originates in delusion. Debt grows exponentially indefinitely, growth (income and otherwise) cannot. This leads to a widening condition where the fruits of productive “growth” devoted to interest payments increase until those fruits are entirely consumed. (The Elephant In The Room: Debt Grows Exponentially, While Economies Only Grow In An S-Curve (Washington’s Blog)
Once this happens, stores of wealth (hard assets) begin to be cannibalized to make up for the difference. You see this in Greece with its sale of public assets to private companies, and in middle-class America where people are liquidating retirement accounts to pay for their cost of living.
This problem is compounded by a private Federal Reserve that lends money into circulation at interest, and then allows the multiplication of this consumer debt-money liability through fractional reserve banking. The money in circulation today could pay only a small fraction of the total private and public debt. That fact alone is evidence of a kind of systemic fraud. “If you just work hard enough, save, and make sensible decisions, you can get out of debt” could only physically work for a bare fraction of the population, given the money-to-debt ratio. The rest would have to simply default to clear the boards.
This is why debt forgiveness makes not only moral but rational, mathematical sense. Finances require balancing to be coherent. There must be some way to redress systemic imbalance. One has to be able to “zero the scales” to get an accurate weight of value and to re-establish healthy value creation.
Voices in the debate
Some analysts are beginning to see the forest through the trees in terms of debt forgiveness. Steve Keen, Australian economist and current deflationist, and Michael Hudson, American economic contrarian and prescient essayist, are both using clear-sighted reality-based financial analysis to debunk accounting games that obscure the untenable debt situation and to call for debt forgiveness.
How can selling sovereign assets and imposing austerity on Greek citizens (taking money out of their hands through higher taxes and lower benefits) do anything other than hollow out value and contract the Greek economy in the face of a deep global recession? Michael Hudson: It can’t. Greece’s debt needs to be written off.
“It seems unreasonable and unrealistic to expect that large sectors of the New European population can be made subject to salary garnishment throughout their lives, reducing them to a lifetime of debt peonage… (T)he only way to resolve it is to negotiate a debt write-off…” (The Coming European Debt Wars: EU Countries sinking into Depression (Michael Hudson, Global Research, April 9, 2010)
(“[We’ll Have] a Never-Ending Depression Unless We Repudiate the Debt, Which Never Should Have Been Extended In The First Place” (Washington’s Blog)
Why isn’t “quantitative easing” and flooding the U.S. economy with debt-money working to prime borrowing and lending? Steve Keen: Because the money is going into deleveraging in a time of overextension:
“Bernanke is throwing (a) trillion dollars into the system. Rather than that leading to ten trillion dollars of additional credit money, creating the inflation people are expecting, that trillion dollars is all that goes in, and people deleveraging actually reduce their level of spending by more than a trillion dollars by trying to pay their debt down, and it cancels out what the government is trying to do… We need a 21st century jubilee.” (On the Edge with . . . Steve Keen (Max Keiser, video)
Other well-known commentators are not seeing the debt forest at all. In their contentious debates over deflation and inflation, neither Rick Ackerman nor Gonzalo Lira seem to be aware of the overwhelmingly fraudulent nature of present global debt– including the 600 to 1,000 trillion dollars of fabricated notional wealth represented by the derivatives markets, fraudclosure, and a host of other sources.
Rick Ackerman: “’Ultimately, every penny of every debt must be paid — if not by the borrower, then by the lender.’ Inflationists and deflationists implicitly agree on this point… and we differ only on the question of who, borrower or lender, will take the hit.” (Let’s Think This Through Together….)
I posted a pithy response in the comment section:
“Both Rick and Gonzalo left out the obvious third way–debt forgiveness. No… debt does not have to be paid by someone; it can be absolved, especially debt created upon fraudulent and/or counterfeit-ridden practice… (D)erivatives are not real wealth, and neither was the ostensible climb in the values of housing resting in large part on those phony-wealth derivatives.
The only “real wealth” here revolves around ability to produce real and needed goods (to allow us to survive), and the ability to create something that increases one’s quality of life (to promote our thriving). Precious little of the present global economy involves either one of these. Yeah, if we use FASB standards and Goldman Sachs accounting, we can pretend our worthless junk is all really simply very rare, “unique condition” collectibles worth trillions of dollars.
I’ve got a better idea. Take our financial junk out of the global attic in boxes, put them out on the front lawn, and see if anyone wants to pay a few bucks for the various items, give away the leftovers to anyone interested passing on the sidewalk, and recycle, donate, or dispose of the rest. It’s a moving sale, and if our economy is going to get moving, maybe we ought to have one.” (Zeus Yiamouyiannis April 6, 2011 at 4:11 pm)
How it might play out
This subtle debt extortion creates a system of never-ending debt-slavery for a vast majority of the population. When this “manageable” slavery is aggravated by a desire to use hardship to extort ever greater assets from the overburdened at ever cheaper prices (what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism”), by open and unapologetic widespread fraud, and by the unjust offloading of risk and liability to taxpayers who had nothing to do with poor decisions of private banks, then the systemic abuse is revealed in the daily lives of citizens.
Debt creates scarcity, which stimulates fear, which drives manic competition, which favors opportunism, collusion, and concentrations of power, which translates to abuse, which results in a collapse of legitimacy for the economic system. Overreach causes a breaking point, and we are getting close to it. Will the response be warfare, taxpayer revolt, political upheaval, mass default, debt forgiveness, something other, some combination? I have predicted pockets of violence would be mixed with some softer combination of taxpayer revolt, mass default, political upheaval, and debt forgiveness, along with a return to community exchange to meet basic needs. (The Big Squeeze, Part 3: The Quiet Rebellion: Civil Disobedience, Local Markets, and Debt Erasure (January 29, 2011)
This possibility of epic reprisal may very well compel banks to come to the table around debt forgiveness to avoid violent backlash and criminal prosecution, even over preserving their gravy train companies. The bitter irony of these companies and their galloping greed is that they ended up victimizing each other by selling junk to each other and extracting all the real value in salary and bonuses. Their assets rest on notional values, that when unmasked would drive each into immediate insolvency. They have simply been scam artists, producing little value and extracting mountains of money.
What might this look like? Looking at present trends and using the very useful framework of Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief, it might go something like this…
Average debtor:
1) Denial: Liquidate savings to pay for over-priced house and cost of living.
2) Anger and fear: Exhaust resources, experience want, compounded by austerity measures.
3) Bargaining: Attempt to negotiate with bank through HAMP and other mechanisms to lower payments. Banks don ‘t bite and even have incentives to foreclose.
4) Depression: Lose/default on the house and move in with family or cheap rental.
5) Find out life is better without being a debt slave and spend more time with community and the ones you love.
Bankers:
1) Denial: Collect 144 billion in bonuses after financial collapse and laugh as not a single trading day loss arises for zombie TBTF banks completely subsidized by governments.
2) Anger: Express false righteousness, indignation, and hubris over even modest/toothless demands/regulations attempted to be placed on them by governments. Exhibit sadistic zeal at being able to simply claim you own and liquidate properties they have no clear title to.
3) Bargaining: Experience dawning awareness that may have just cooked your own gooses as strategic defaults skyrocket, populist demands to prosecute fraudclosure gain traction, and quantitative easing ad infinitum dwindles and fails to keep stock prices artificially aloft. Improvise panicked attempts to “be reasonable” and actually negotiate, once the asset and money flow well runs dry.
4) Depression: Contemplate and realize possible bankruptcy by big banks. Retreat to the Hamptons to hire criminal defense lawyers, contemplate empty life, and shoulder the abuse of media and contempt of a global citizenry.
5) Acceptance: Trying to regain “good guy” status and avoid criminal prosecution by agreeing to be part of debt forgiveness.
Once defaults happen in increasing numbers and certain asset prices plunge (i.e. real estate), what will initially look like a bonanza for capitalist parasites could easily get out of hand, with people either unable or unwilling to buy inventory even at greatly reduced prices. Profits would tank at banks, liabilities would skyrocket even with most of it transferred to government guarantee. Because no one plays the game anymore, banks could go under as well, as people rise to vote out bank-friendly politicians and simply refuse to pay. This unraveling could easily force exposure of the notional value of derivatives in banks as worthless, meaning they are as bankrupt as the people they exploited. At this point, there will be a common desire and need to simply “forgive” the debts and try to find some way to distribute these empty homes.
Conclusion
Debt forgiveness simply calls out either the inherent systemic inability to make good on debts or the recognition that debt was produced through fraudulent means. In the present situation, both conditions obtain. There has likely been no point in world history where debt forgiveness has been so comprehensively merited. The only speculation from my point (barring world-wide global feudalism and eternal debt slavery) is whether we will initiate such forgiveness or be forced into it.
Thank you, Zeus, for this prescient and insightful analysis of debt and debt renunciation.The Kondratieff Cycle can only turn to Spring after debt renunciation completes the Winter cycle. Let’s stop pretending we’re still in Summer, and that the Fed’s puny “quantitative easing” and monetary cargo-cult machinations can reverse the seasons.

By Caroline B. Glick

Hatred of Jews is the central animating feature of the political and strategic reality of the Middle East. It is hatred of Jews that dictates the legal regimes, foreign policies, military aspirations, cultural mores, educational themes and even public health policies of our neighbors from Ramallah to Teheran.
Despite the centrality of Jew hatred in all aspects of public life in the Arab and Muslim world, our neighbors’ unrelenting and irrational abhorrence for Israel and the Jewish people remains a dirty secret that you aren’t supposed to mention in polite company. From Washington to Brussels, talk of the policy implications of Arab and Muslim Jew hatred is prohibited.
Omar Abu-Sneina, a convicted terrorist murderer is one of the thousand Palestinian terrorists that Israel released from prison in order to secure the release of Israeli hostage IDF Sgt. Gilad Schalit. Originally from Hebron, Abu-Sneina was released to Hamas-controlled Gaza. This week the IDF announced that since his release Abu-Sneina has returned to the terror business. The Israel Security Agency intercepted a memory card he sent his family in Hebron with instructions for how his fellow terrorists should go about kidnapping and holding IDF soldiers hostage. The instructions demonstrate how for Abu-Sneina, Israelis don’t even deserve to be treated like animals.
Among other things, he discussed how to hide a hostage. As he put it, “Avoid hiding [the captive soldier] in desolate places, tunnels or forests, unless the aforementioned [captive] is a corpse or a severed head. If the aforementioned is a live human, that must be visited at least once a week and provided with food and drink, it is best to hide him in a house, an agricultural farm, a workplace, etc.”
Abu-Sneina’s coldblooded cruelty and rejection of the inherent value of the lives of Israelis is not simply a function of the fact that he is a terrorist. It is a reflection of the values of Palestinian society. Those values are continuously expressed and reinforced by Fatah and Hamas controlled media outlets, cultural and educational institutions and religious authorities. The ubiquitousness of Jew hatred in the daily lives of Palestinians is so overwhelming it is difficult to imagine any facet of Palestinian life that isn’t inundated by it.
Take grammar lessons. According to a translation provided by Palestinian Media Watch, the Palestinian Authority’s Arabic language matriculation examinations for high school students include questions such as, “Punctuate the underlined phrase: Do not view the occupier as human.” And “Punctuate the underlined phrase: We shall die in order that our land may live.”

This week a Palestinian court sentenced Muhammad Abu Shahala to death for selling a home in Hebron near the Cave of the Patriarchs to Jews. Shahala was arrested shortly after several Jewish families moved into the house last month. He was reportedly tortured and quickly tried and sentenced to die by a PA court.

The PA was established in May 1994. The first law it adopted defined selling land to Jews a capital offense. Shortly thereafter scores of Arab land sellers began turning up dead in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in both judicial and extrajudicial killings.
Leaders of the Jewish community of Hebron wrote a letter to international leaders this week asking them to intervene with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and demand that he cancel Shahala’s sentence. They addressed the letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, the Director General of the International Red Cross Yves Daccord as well as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres. In it they wrote, “It is appalling to think that property sales should be defined as a ‘capital crime’ punishable by death. The very fact that such a ‘law’ exists within the framework of the PA legal system points to a barbaric and perverse type of justice, reminiscent of practices implemented during the dark ages.”

They went on to make the reasonable comparison between the PA’s law prohibiting land sales to Jews to Nazi Germany’s Nuremburg laws that constrained and finally outlawed trade between Jews and Germans. The letter concluded with the question, “Is the Palestinian Authority a reincarnation of the Third Reich?”
The Palestinians of course are far from unique in their obsession with hating Jews. Their hemorrhage of hatred, their obsessive need to reject any move towards peaceful coexistence with Israel, or what the renowned late Palestinian poet Yousuf Al Khatib referred to picturesquely as “the Jewish filth of Europe” is matched in every Arab land. And of course, it is the primary obsession of the Iranian regime.

The parallels between Nazi laws and the laws of the PA and the Arab states that outlaw all cooperation with Israel and make such cooperation a capital offense are obvious and straightforward. Yet generally speaking, anyone who points out this fact is automatically dismissed as an alarmist or an extremist. Given the PA’s relative military weakness when compared with Israel and the Arab world’s current lack of interest in waging active war against Israel, noting their inarguable ideological affinity with the Nazis is considered socially and even intellectually unacceptable. The fact that they lack the ability to implement their ideology renders it improper to mention it.

The social prohibition on drawing parallels between the threats facing Israel today and those that faced the Jewish people seventy years ago is not limited to the discourse on Arab world’s conflict with Israel. It extends as well to polite society’s discourse on Iran’s nuclear program, which the Iranian regime has made clear repeatedly is aimed at destroying Israel.
In his address to the nation at the annual Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony at Yad Vashem on Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took aim at that taboo when he attacked those who accuse him of belittling the Holocaust by comparing the annihilation of European Jewry to the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Netanyahu said, “I know there are also those who believe that the unique evil of the Holocaust should never be invoked in discussing other threats facing the Jewish people. To do so, they argue, is to belittle the Holocaust and to offend its victims.
“I totally disagree. On the contrary. To cower from speaking the uncomfortable truth — that today like then, there are those who want to destroy millions of Jewish people — that is to belittle the Holocaust, that is to offend its victims and that is to ignore the lessons.

“Not only does the Prime Minister of Israel have the right, when speaking of these existential dangers, to invoke the memory of a third of our nation which was annihilated. It is his duty.”
Netanyahu is right, of course. Unfortunately for Israel, raising the Holocaust in the context of a discussion about contemporary threats to the Jewish people is the rhetorical equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb. Just as no one is allowed to use a nuclear bomb, no one is allowed to mention the Holocaust. And that means that there is ultimately no way to speak about the violent hatred that animates our enemies in every aspect of their policy making. From the seemingly anodyne issue of property sales to the existential issue of nuclear weapons programs, the Jew hatred that lies at the foundation of their actions is out of bounds for discussion.

Actually, the situation is both better and worse than that. Netanyahu’s rhetorical boldness in drawing the parallel between Iran and the Nazis is arguably the only reason that the EU and the Obama administration have taken any actions against Iran. No, as their feckless negotiations with the mullahs, their foot dragging in implementing economic sanctions, and their outspoken opposition to military action against Iran make clear, they do not really mind the prospect of Iran acquiring the ability to wipe out the Jewish state. But the only reason they have adopted sanctions at all is because Netanyahu’s Holocaust rhetoric made them fear that Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear installations if they didn’t.

On the other hand, when it comes to their direct dealings with Jew haters, Westerners not only fail to confront them about their prejudice. They enable it. For instance, at a townhall meeting during her visit to Tunisia last month, Hillary Clinton was asked how US leaders can be trusted when during elections, “most of the candidates from both sides run towards the Zionist lobbies to get their support.”

Rather than reject the anti-Jewish premise of the question — that Jews exert inordinate control over US politics or that there is something wrong with candidates expressing support for Israel — Clinton treated the question as legitimate.
Clinton said, “A lot of things are said in political campaigns that should not bear a lot of attention.”

Clinton even congratulated her anti-Jewish questioner saying, “I think it’s a fair question because I � sometimes am a little surprised that people around the world pay more attention to what is said in our political campaigns than most Americans.”
Similarly, a report on the behind the scenes goings on at last weekend’s nuclear negotiations with Iran published by Al-Monitor described the friendly discussion that took place at a dinner Friday night between EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian chief negotiator Saeed Jalili. According to a European diplomat, the conversation was aimed at breaking the ice. And it included a discussion of “political party funding in the US.”

It is hard to imagine that such a discussion involved anything other than a group tongue clucking session directed against the inordinate impact of “Jewish money” on US electoral politics. That is, it is all but impossible to imagine that the discussion involved anything other than Ashton attempting to build a rapport with her Iranian counterpart based on shared hatred or contempt for Jews.

The fact that the West refuses to consider the policy implications of the most powerful force in Arab and Iranian policymaking and political life does not mean that Israeli policy makers should necessarily expand their discussion of the topic — although it would probably not hurt for them to do so. What it means is that the general policy debate in the West about the nature of Middle Eastern politics is completely divorced from reality.

Because the Americans and the Europeans refuse to acknowledge the elephant of Jew hatred in the middle of the room, they cannot be trusted to make reasoned or rational policy decisions. And since they cannot be trusted to act rationally, Israel cannot rely on the Americans or the Europeans as allies or partners when it confronts threats from its Jew obsessed neighbors.

UN Agenda 21 – Poison Pill For America

Obama’s New Green World Order

TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION – SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS – NOW!

I have to be honest with you.

This is the most disturbing email I have ever written. I am frightened for our country. I am frightened for its freedom-loving citizens. But most of all, I am frightened for the future of America. Obama supports beating up the U.S. Constitution and we must not let it be replaced by United Nations Agenda 21.

The UN is ruthlessly advancing a new plan that will make America a HOSTAGE to the United Nations. While Obama and the liberal media ignore gas prices streaking to $5/gal. and England is already paying $10/gal.

UN Agenda 21 could…

Wipe private property off the face of the earth.
Force you and your family to live in a single-family energy efficient home.
Confiscate private farms and farmland.
Snatch away private landholdings.
Ban individual ownership of cars.

Tell The Senate To REJECT All Attempts To Implement UN Agenda 21!
Support the U.S. Constitution – SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS – NOW!

Sound too outlandish to be true? The scariest part is… IT IS TRUE! So what exactly is Agenda 21? I’ll tell you in a minute. But first, I’ll give you some background information that is critical to understanding how this anti-freedom scheme came about.

In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) was held in Rio de Janeiro to discuss global initiatives. 172 governments attended and 108 sent their heads of state. And about 2,400 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) showed up for the “GLOBAL FORUM.”

Tell The Senate To REJECT All Attempts To Implement UN Agenda 21! Support the U.S. Constitution – SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS – NOW! and We will send you the book Black and Blue: How Obama and the Democrats are Beating Up the Constitution and our GET HOPE-Fire OBAMA Sticker!

This group of POWERFUL world leaders and environmentalists spent their time discussing typical green movement hogwash like alternative energy, the phony science of climate change and “deadly” car emissions. Back in 1992, most people dismissed this conference as a green rant fest.

However, that was a huge mistake…

…Because the politicians came up with a plan for a centrally ruled global society. They called that plan Agenda 21. The plan’s contract would make governments around the world a SLAVE to the every wish and whim of the United Nations.

We cannot make the same mistake with Agenda 21!

UN Agenda 21 would also dictate…

Where we live
What we eat
How and what we learn
Where and when we can move (if at all)

Here’s how the UN describes it:

“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”

Tell The Senate To REJECT All Attempts To Implement UN Agenda 21!
Support the U.S. Constitution – SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS – NOW!

It’s already happening right now.

Obama, who has vowed to “fundamentally transform America,” is pushing to implement this freedom-grabbing plan UNDER THE RADAR.

On June 9, 2011 he signed EXECUTIVE ORDER 13575 and established the White House Rural Council (WHRC). This new administrative body is responsible for federally coordinating and implementing sustainable and green development locally.

Here is an excerpt from EO 13575:

Section 1. Policy- Sixteen percent of the American population lives in rural counties. Strong, sustainable rural communities are essential to winning the future and ensuring American competitiveness in the years ahead.

“Sustainable” became a buzzword at the UN’s 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil (where Agenda 21 was created).

Sustainable = Agenda 21

Mike Opelka of The Blaze reports,

“Warning bells should have been sounding all across rural America when the phrase “sustainable rural communities” came up. As we know from researching the UN plan for Sustainable Development known as Agenda 21, these are code words for the true fundamental transformation America.”

UN Agenda 21 is a transnational attempt to erode property rights, destroy freedom and make America submissive to foreign bureaucrats.

That’s why we need to act QUICKLY.

We don’t have much time to waste before this TOTALITARIAN TREATY BECOMES LAW OF THE LAND!

THIS IS NOT A FIGHT WE CAN AFFORD TO LOSE

1. Select Below – Tell The Senate To REJECT Attempts To Submit America To The UN.

Tell The Senate To REJECT All Attempts To Implement UN Agenda 21!
Support the U.S. Constitution – SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS – NOW!

2. Send this Alert to EVERYONE you know and every like-minded friend on your personal email list who wants to STOP the UN from encroaching on your God-given rights! We need to get HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of faxes delivered to EACH AND EVERY Senator. It’s time the Senate gets the message – LOUD & CLEAR!

3. Keep calling your Senators today, toll free numbers include 1-877-851-6437 and 1-866-220-0044, or call 1-202-225-3121 AND REGISTER YOUR OUTRAGE! Demand the Senate STOP Agenda 21 DEAD IN ITS TRACKS.

4. CALL President Obama, 202-456-1111 and 202-456-1414 expressing your disdain and ABSOLUTE REJECTION of the UN plan. Tell Obama that you DO NOT SUPPORT destroying personal property rights, confiscating private land and banning private ownership of cars.

5. Print this copy and pass it around where normal working class Americans gather who care about the future of our country. Polling data reveals that Americans treasure their Constitutional rights and personal freedoms. They DO NOT want to be controlled by DESPOTIC rule and CONCEDE to foreign leaders.

DO NOT BE SILENCED – MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

NOTE: We need TENS OF THOUSANDS of faxes and PHONE CALLS and EMAILS delivered TO ALL SENATORS RIGHT AWAY!

Your voice can be heard — we need your urgent help at AmeriPAC.

Tell The Senate To REJECT All Attempts To Implement UN Agenda 21!
Support the U.S. Constitution – SEND FAXES TO ALL 100 SENATORS – NOW!

Defend America,

Alan M. Gottlieb
Chairman, AmeriPAC

If you prefer to send a check, please mail to:
American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC)
PO Box 1682
Dept Code 5498-max
Bellevue, WA 98009-1682

Ten Candidates, Including Front-Runners, Barred From Egyptian Presidential Race

Egypt’s election commission on Saturday disqualified 10 presidential hopefuls, including the three front-runners, from running in a surprise decision that threatened to upend the already tumultuous race.

Farouk Sultan, the head of the Supreme Presidential Election Commission, told The Associated Press that those barred from the race included Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief Omar Suleiman; the chief strategist for the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat el-Shater; and hard-line lawyer-turned-preacher Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. He did not give a reason.

The announcement came as a shock to many Egyptians as three of the 10 excluded were considered among the front-runners. They now have 48 hours to appeal the decision, according to election rules. The final list of candidates will be announced on April 26

For all the gains radical Muslims appear to have been making in Egypt, many believe the military ultimately will not allow them to take over the government, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Some Egyptians in Washington sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood tell G2Bulletin that they fear this development in spite of the recent parliamentary gains by the Brotherhood and the more fundamentalist Salafist al-Nour party.

Now that the Brotherhood has nominated Khairat al-Shater to be its presidential candidate, the military has put up its own candidate, Omar Suleiman, the former spy chief to ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Given the public and often violent protests for a free and democratic government to replace the military-backed Mubarak government last year, Suleiman’s candidacy came as a major surprise.

According to al-Shater, the candidacy of Suleiman, 75, is “reinventing a new Mubarak regime with a new look.”

Suleiman initially said that he would not be a candidate but then raised more than 100,000 signatures, about four times the required names needed to run for the May 23-24 presidential election.

This development has been unsettling to Egyptians who thought that the military would accede to popular elections. Instead, G2Bulletin sources say that that the military is reluctant to give up power after 60 years and could stage a coup to preserve its position if Suleiman doesn’t win.

“If that happens,” one Egyptian told G2Bulletin, “there will be a civil war, and this time it will be quite bloody.”

Already, there are increasing indications that the Egyptian military may be manipulating events behind the scenes to retain its hold on power.

Following the overthrow of Mubarak in February 2011, there appeared to be a good working relationship between the Brotherhood and the council of military generals that now form the interim government.

The tide turned last November, however, after the near-majority of the Brotherhood in the parliament sought to have the army-appointed cabinet dismissed.

By George Friedman

For centuries, the dilemma facing Iran (and before it, Persia) has been guaranteeing national survival and autonomy in the face of stronger regional powers like Ottoman Turkey and the Russian Empire. Though always weaker than these larger empires, Iran survived for three reasons: geography, resources and diplomacy. Iran’s size and mountainous terrain made military forays into the country difficult and dangerous. Iran also was able to field sufficient force to deter attacks while permitting occasional assertions of power. At the same time, Tehran engaged in clever diplomatic efforts, playing threatening powers off each other.

The intrusion of European imperial powers into the region compounded Iran’s difficulties in the 19th century, along with the lodging of British power to Iran’s west in Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula following the end of World War I. This coincided with a transformation of the global economy to an oil-based system. Then as now, the region was a major source of global oil. Where the British once had interests in the region, the emergence of oil as the foundation of industrial and military power made these interests urgent. Following World War II, the Americans and the Soviets became the outside powers with the ability and desire to influence the region, but Tehran’s basic strategic reality persisted. Iran faced both regional and global threats that it had to deflect or align with. And because of oil, the global power could not lose interest while the regional powers did not have the option of losing interest.

Whether ruled by shah or ayatollah, Iran’s strategy remained the same: deter by geography, protect with defensive forces, and engage in complex diplomatic maneuvers. But underneath this reality, another vision of Iran’s role always lurked.

Iran as Regional Power

A vision of Iran — a country with an essentially defensive posture — as a regional power remained. The shah competed with Saudi Arabia over Oman and dreamed of nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad duels with Saudi Arabia over Bahrain, and also dreams of nuclear weapons. When we look beyond the rhetoric — something we always should do when studying foreign policy, since the rhetoric is intended to intimidate, seduce and confuse foreign powers and the public — we see substantial continuity in Iran’s strategy since World War II. Iran dreams of achieving regional dominance by breaking free from its constraints and the threats posed by nearby powers.

Since World War II, Iran has had to deal with regional dangers like Iraq, with which it fought a brutal war lasting nearly a decade and costing Iran about 1 million casualties. It also has had to deal with the United States, whose power ultimately defined patterns in the region. So long as the United States had an overriding interest in the region, Iran had no choice but to define its policies in terms of the United States. For the shah, that meant submitting to the United States while subtly trying to control American actions. For the Islamic republic, it meant opposing the United States while trying to manipulate it into taking actions in the interests of Iran. Both acted within the traditions of Iranian strategic subtlety.

The Islamic republic proved more successful than the shah. It conducted a sophisticated disinformation campaign prior to the 2003 Iraq war to convince the United States that invading Iraq would be militarily easy and that Iraqis would welcome the Americans with open arms. This fed the existing U.S. desire to invade Iraq, becoming one factor among many that made the invasion seem doable. In a second phase, the Iranians helped many factions in Iraq resist the Americans, turning the occupation — and plans for reconstructing Iraq according to American blueprints — into a nightmare. In a third and final phase, Iran used its influence in Iraq to divide and paralyze the country after the Americans withdrew.

As a result of this maneuvering, Iran achieved two goals. First, the Americans disposed of Iran’s archenemy, Saddam Hussein, turning Iraq into a strategic cripple. Second, Iran helped force the United States out of Iraq, creating a vacuum in Iraq and undermining U.S. credibility in the region — and sapping any U.S. appetite for further military adventures in the Middle East. I want to emphasize that all of this was not an Iranian plot: Many other factors contributed to this sequence of events. At the same time, Iranian maneuvering was no minor factor in the process; Iran skillfully exploited events that it helped shape.

There was a defensive point to this. Iran had seen the United States invade the countries surrounding it, Iraq to its west and Afghanistan to its east. It viewed the United States as extremely powerful and unpredictable to the point of irrationality, though also able to be manipulated. Tehran therefore could not dismiss the possibility that the United States would choose war with Iran. Expelling the United States from Iraq, however, limited American military options in the region.

This strategy also had an offensive dimension. The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq positioned Iran to fill the vacuum. Critically, the geopolitics of the region had created an opening for Iran probably for the first time in centuries. First, the collapse of the Soviet Union released pressure from the north. Coming on top of the Ottoman collapse after World War I, Iran now no longer faced a regional power that could challenge it. Second, with the drawdown of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan, the global power had limited military options and even more limited political options for acting against Iran.

Iran’s Opportunity

Iran now had the opportunity to consider emerging as a regional power rather than solely pursuing complex maneuvers to protect Iranian autonomy and the regime. The Iranians understood that the moods of global powers shifted unpredictably, the United States more than most. Therefore it knew that the more aggressive it became, the more the United States may militarily commit itself to containing Iran. At the same time, the United States might do so even without Iranian action. Accordingly, Iran searched for a strategy that might solidify its regional influence while not triggering U.S. retaliation.

Anyone studying the United States understands its concern with nuclear weapons. Throughout the Cold War it lived in the shadow of a Soviet first strike. The Bush administration used the possibility of an Iraqi nuclear program to rally domestic support for the invasion. When the Soviets and the Chinese attained nuclear weapons, the American response bordered on panic. The United States simultaneously became more cautious in its approach to those countries.

In looking at North Korea, the Iranians recognized a pattern they could use to their advantage. Regime survival in North Korea, a country of little consequence, was uncertain in the 1990s. When it undertook a nuclear program, however, the United States focused heavily on North Korea, simultaneously becoming more cautious in its approach to the North. Tremendous diplomatic activity and periodic aid was brought to bear to limit North Korea’s program. From the North Korean point of view, actually acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons was not the point; North Korea was not a major power like China and Russia, and a miscalculation on Pyongyang’s part could lead to more U.S. aggression. Rather, the process of developing nuclear weapons itself inflated North Korea’s importance while inducing the United States to offer incentives or impose relatively ineffective economic sanctions (and thereby avoiding more dangerous military action). North Korea became a centerpiece of U.S. concern while the United States avoided actions that might destabilize North Korea and shake loose the weapons the North might have.

The North Koreans knew that having a deliverable weapon would prove dangerous, but that having a weapons program gave them leverage — a lesson the Iranians learned well. From the Iranians’ point of view, a nuclear program causes the United States simultaneously to take them more seriously and to increase its caution while dealing with them. At present, the United States leads a group of countries with varying degrees of enthusiasm for imposing sanctions that might cause some economic pain to Iran, but give the United States a pretext not to undertake the military action Iran really fears and that the United States does not want to take.

Israel, however, must take a different view of Iran’s weapons program. While not a threat to the United States, the program may threaten Israel. The Israelis’ problem is that they must trust their intelligence on the level of development of Iran’s weapons. The United States can afford a miscalculation; Israel might not be able to afford it. This lack of certainty makes Israel unpredictable. From the Iranian point of view, however, an Israeli attack might be welcome.

Iran does not have nuclear weapons and may be following the North Korean strategy of never developing deliverable weapons. If they did, however, and the Israelis attacked and destroyed them, the Iranians would be as they were before acquiring nuclear weapons. But if the Israelis attacked and failed to destroy them, the Iranians would emerge stronger. The Iranians could retaliate by taking action in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States, which ultimately is the guarantor of the global maritime flow of oil, might engage Iran militarily. Or it might enter into negotiations with Iran to guarantee the flow. An Israeli attack, whether successful or unsuccessful, would set the stage for Iranian actions that would threaten the global economy, paint Israel as the villain, and result in the United States being forced by European and Asian powers to guarantee the flow of oil with diplomatic concessions rather than military action. An attack by Israel, successful or unsuccessful, would cost Iran little and create substantial opportunities. In my view, the Iranians want a program, not a weapon, but having the Israelis attack the program would suit Iran’s interests quite nicely.

The nuclear option falls into the category of Iranian manipulation of regional and global powers, long a historical necessity for the Iranians. But another, and more significant event is under way in Syria.

Syria’s Importance to Iran

As we have written, if the Syrian regime survives, this in part would be due to Iranian support. Isolated from the rest of the world, Syria would become dependent on Iran. If that were to happen, an Iranian sphere of influence would stretch from western Afghanistan to Beirut. This in turn would fundamentally shift the balance of power in the Middle East, fulfilling Iran’s dream of becoming a dominant regional power in the Persian Gulf and beyond. This was the shah’s and the ayatollah’s dream. And this is why the United States is currently obsessing over Syria.

What would such a sphere of influence give the Iranians? Three things. First, it would force the global power, the United States, to abandon ideas of destroying Iran, as the breadth of its influence would produce dangerously unpredictable results. Second, it would legitimize the regime inside Iran and in the region beyond any legitimacy it currently has. Third, with proxies along Saudi Arabia’s northern border in Iraq and Shia along the western coast of the Persian Gulf, Iran could force shifts in the financial distribution of revenues from oil. Faced with regime preservation, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states would have to be flexible on Iranian demands, to say the least. Diverting that money to Iran would strengthen it greatly.

Iran has applied its strategy under regimes of various ideologies. The shah, whom many considered psychologically unstable and megalomaniacal, pursued this strategy with restraint and care. The current regime, also considered ideologically and psychologically unstable, has been equally restrained in its actions. Rhetoric and ideology can mislead, and usually are intended to do just that.

This long-term strategy, pursued since the 16th century after Persia became Islamic, now sees a window of opportunity opening, engineered in some measure by Iran itself. Tehran’s goal is to extend the American paralysis while it exploits the opportunities that the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq has created. Simultaneously, it wants to create a coherent sphere of influence that the United States will have to accommodate itself to in order to satisfy the demand of its coalition for a stable supply of oil and limited conflict in the region.

Iran is pursuing a two-pronged strategy toward this end. The first is to avoid any sudden moves, to allow processes to run their course. The second is to create a diversion through its nuclear program, causing the United States to replicate its North Korea policy in Iran. If its program causes an Israeli airstrike, Iran can turn that to its advantage as well. The Iranians understand that having nuclear weapons is dangerous but that having a weapons program is advantageous. But the key is not the nuclear program. That is merely a tool to divert attention from what is actually happening — a shift in the balance of power in the Middle East.

Read more: Iran’s Strategy | Stratfor

This is a CULTURE CLASH. The problem with this specific subpopulation of people is that their culture and beliefs never have, and never will, be in harmony with those values that are European. This is what this VERY RAPIDLY INCREASING subpopulation of the UK want for Britain….Sharia law, Sharia courts, death for gay men and women, death for adultery, death for unbelievers, death for apostasy, amputation for theft, subjugation of women, animal cruelty and child cruelty.

One cannot help but be moved to tears by this amazing young man; Sung-bong Choi.

When Sung-bong decided to sing on the Talent Show “Korea’s Got Talent” he had no idea that he would win the hearts of millions all over the world!

His story of his childhood is so moving that even the judges had a hard time keeping their composure.

He told the judges that even though he didn’t think he could sing very well, he sang because it made him happy.

They couldn’t have been more surprised.

urriaan Maessen
Infowars
In a recent statement put out by “Planet Under Pressure” several scientists call for denser cities in order to mitigate worldwide population growth. When in doubt that UN’s Agenda 21 is not the Mein Kampf of our day, one should consider yet another in-your-face confession from yet another certified biocratic control freak
According to an MSNBC article one of the scientists while speaking about human populations worldwide, stated:
“We certainly don’t want them strolling about the entire countryside. We want them to save land for nature by living closely [together].”urriaan Maessen
Infowars
In a recent statement put out by “Planet Under Pressure” several scientists call for denser cities in order to mitigate worldwide population growth. When in doubt that UN’s Agenda 21 is not the Mein Kampf of our day, one should consider yet another in-your-face confession from yet another certified biocratic control freak
According to an MSNBC article one of the scientists while speaking about human populations worldwide, stated:
“We certainly don’t want them strolling about the entire countryside. We want them to save land for nature by living closely [together].”

Insisting the world’s population be locked up within the confounds of mega-cities, the elite realizes that if the herd is to be properly controlled walls are needed- thick walls, and by constructing these walls, making the masses go this or that way will be made easier..
Chief scientist Michail Fragkias involved with “Planet under Pressure” told MSNBC that “the answer (to population growth) is denser cities.”
The conference, co-sponsored by NASA and UNEP by the way, released its statement calling for denser cities to mitigate “worldwide population growth” ahead of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development taking place in June of this year.

“If cities can develop in height rather than in width that would be much more preferable and environmentally not as harmful”, Fragkias said.
People who know anything about history know that the creation of mega-cities in which the masses may be rounded up and enclosed, is identical to the Nazi principle of the “ghetto” as a means of managing the masses. Every student of history may also know what happens to those masses shortly after.
Some of the organizers of “Planet under Pressure” are founding their plea on the notion that we (as humanity) have entered the “Anthropocene”: a new geological era in which humans- not natural conditions- are the main drivers of geological and meteorological processes. Citing a website devoted to this concept, Martin Rees of the Royal Society stated at the conference:
“This century is special in the Earth’s history. It is the first when one species — ours — has the planet’s future in its hands,” reports the AFP news agency. “We’ve invented a new geological era: the Anthropocene.”, he stated.
This echoes yet another scientist, a professor at the University of Colorado, who in recent times also mentioned this new era in relation to a call for population control when he stated:
“Scientists now speak of humanity’s increased demands and impacts on the globe as ushering in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Such selfish and destructive appropriation of the resources of the Earth can only be described as interspecies genocide.”
In addition the professor said: “Ending human population growth is almost certainly a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for preventing catastrophic global climate change. Indeed, significantly reducing current human numbers (emphasis added) may be necessary in order to do so.”
The call for compact cities, filled to the brim with humans, is part of the UN’s depopulation agenda for sure. Within these proposed mega-cities humans will be allowed to use RFID technology so they can be kept in check. The rest of the world, the “countryside” as one of the scientists told MSNBC, is reserved for the elite.

By Robert Kaplan

Myanmar’s ongoing liberalization and its normalization of relations with the outside world have the possibility of profoundly affecting geopolitics in Asia — and all for the better.

Geographically, Myanmar dominates the Bay of Bengal. It is where the spheres of influence of China and India overlap. Myanmar is also abundant in oil, natural gas, coal, zinc, copper, precious stones, timber and hydropower, with some uranium deposits as well. The prize of the Indo-Pacific region, Myanmar has been locked up by dictatorship for decades, even as the Chinese have been slowly stripping it of natural resources. Think of Myanmar as another Afghanistan in terms of its potential to change a region: a key, geo-strategic puzzle piece ravaged by war and ineffective government that, if only normalized, would unroll trade routes in all directions.

Ever since China’s Yuan (ethnic Mongol) dynasty invaded Myanmar in the 13th century, Myanmar has been under the shadow of a Greater China, with no insurmountable geographic barriers or architectural obstacles like the Great Wall to separate the two lands — though the Hengduan Shan range borders the two countries. At the same time, Myanmar has historically been the home of an Indian business community — a middleman minority in sociological terms — that facilitated the British hold on Myanmar as part of a Greater British India.

But if Myanmar continues on its path of reform by opening links to the United States and neighboring countries, rather than remaining a natural resource tract to be exploited by China, Myanmar will develop into an energy and natural resource hub in its own right, uniting the Indian subcontinent, China and Southeast Asia all into one fluid, organic continuum. And although Chinese influence in Myanmar would diminish in relative terms, China would still benefit immensely. Indeed, Kunming, in China’s southern Yunnan province, would become the economic capital of Southeast Asia, where river and rail routes from Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam would converge.

Much of this infrastructure activity is already under way. At Ramree Island off Myanmar’s northwestern Arakan coast, the Chinese are constructing pipelines to take oil and natural gas from Africa, the Persian Gulf and the Bay of Bengal across the heart of Myanmar to Kunming. The purpose will be to alleviate China’s dependence on the Strait of Malacca, through which four-fifths of its crude oil imports pass at present. There will also be a high-speed rail line roughly along this route by 2015.

India, too, is constructing an energy terminal at Sittwe, north of Ramree, on Myanmar’s coast, that will potentially carry offshore natural gas northwest through Bangladesh to the vast demographic inkblot that is the Indian state of West Bengal. The Indian pipeline would actually split into two directions, with another proposed route going to the north around Bangladesh. Commercial goods will follow along new highways to be built to India. Kolkata, Chittagong and Yangon, rather than being cities in three separate countries, will finally be part of one Indian Ocean world.

The salient fact here is that by liberating Myanmar, India’s hitherto landlocked northeast, lying on the far side of Bangladesh, will also be opened up to the outside. Northeast India has suffered from bad geography and underdevelopment, and as a consequence it has experienced about a dozen insurgencies in recent decades. Hilly and jungle-covered, northeast India is cut off from India proper by backbreakingly poor Bangladesh to the west and by Myanmar, hitherto a hermetic and undeveloped state, to the east. But Myanmar’s political opening and economic development changes this geopolitical fact, because both India’s northeast and Bangladesh will benefit from Myanmar’s political and economic renewal.

With poverty reduced somewhat in all these areas, the pressure on Kolkata and West Bengal to absorb economic refugees will be alleviated. This immeasurably strengthens India, whose land borders with semi-failed states within the subcontinent (Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh) has undermined its ability to project political and military power outward into Asia and the Middle East. More broadly, a liberalized Myanmar draws India deeper into Asia, so that India can more effectively balance against China.

But while the future beckons with opportunities, the present is still not assured. The political transition in Myanmar has only begun, and much can still go wrong. The problem, as it was in Yugoslavia and Iraq, is regional and ethnic divides.

Myanmar is a vast kingdom organized around the central Irrawaddy River Valley. The ethnic Burman word for this valley is Myanmar, hence the official name of the country. But a third of the population is not ethnic Burman, even as regionally based minorities in friable borderlands account for seven of Myanmar’s 14 states. The hill areas around the Irrawaddy Valley are populated by Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karen and Karenni peoples, who also have their own armies and irregular forces, which have been battling the Burman-controlled national army since the early Cold War period.

Worse, these minority-populated hill regions are ethnically divided from within. For example, the Shan area is also home to Was, Lahus, Paos, Kayans and other tribal peoples. All these groups are products of historical migrations from Tibet, China, India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Cambodia, so that the Chin in western Myanmar have almost nothing in common with the Karen in eastern Myanmar. Nor is there a community of language and culture between the Shans and the ethnic Burmans, except for their Buddhist religion. As for the Arakanese, heirs to a cosmopolitan seaboard civilization influenced by Hindu Bengal, they feel particularly disconnected from the rest of Myanmar and compare their plight to disenfranchised minorities in the Middle East and Africa.

In other words, simply holding elections is not enough if all elections do is bring ethnic Burmans to power who do not compromise with the minorities. The military came to power in Myanmar in 1962 to control the minority-populated borderlands around the Irrawaddy Valley. The military has governed now for half a century. Myanmar has few functioning institutions that are not military-dominated. A system with generous power awarded to the minorities must now be constructed from scratch; peaceful integration of restive minorities requires vibrant federal institutions.

Myanmar, it is true, is becoming less repressive and more open to the outside world. But that in and of itself does not make for a viable institutionalized state. In sum, for Myanmar to succeed, even with civilians in control, the military will have to play a significant role for years to come, because it is mainly officers who know how to run things.

But given its immense natural resources and sizable population of 48 million, if Myanmar can build pan-ethnic institutions in coming decades it could come close to being a midlevel power in its own right — something that would not necessarily harm Indian and Chinese interests, and, by the way, would unleash trade throughout Asia and the Indian Ocean world.

Read more: How Myanmar Liberates Asia, by Robert D. Kaplan | Stratfor

by Marian L. Tupy
This article appeared in Global Post on March 17, 2012.

WASHINGTON — Slovakia’s elections resulted in a historic victory for the leftist former Prime Minister Robert Fico and his Smer party.

For the first time since independence in 1993, one political party has obtained an overall majority in Parliament. Hobbled by corruption allegations, the center-right has suffered a humiliating defeat.

Unfortunately, there is little chance that Fico will govern Slovakia in a cleaner fashion.

Marian Tupy is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity in Washington, D.C.

More by Marian L. Tupy
The breakup of Slovakia’s center-right coalition government in October 2011 came as a shock to many. Iveta Radicova’s cabinet, which has been in power since Fico’s defeat in June 2010, was making good progress on the reforms of the over-regulated business environment, inefficient judiciary and corrupt public procurement procedures. The cause of the breakup was a disagreement over Slovakia’s participation in the European Financial Stability Facility and the concomitant 13 billion euros in loan guarantees to Greece.

The libertarian-leaning Freedom and Solidarity Party refused to support the controversial measure that was backed by the rest of the coalition — consisting of two Christian Democratic parties and a Hungarian minority party. Fico’s price for supporting the passage of the Greek bailout in Parliament was an early election.

At first it seemed that center right parties would be returned with a majority, but then a transcript of a wiretapping operation codenamed “Gorilla,” which was conducted by the Slovak Information Service between 2005 and 2006, appeared on the internet.

The transcript indicates that senior figures from across the political spectrum took substantial kickbacks in privatization deals concluded under the premiership of Mikulas Dzurinda between 1998 and 2006. Dzurinda, who is foreign minister and Radicova’s party boss, has denied any wrongdoing. Fico, who is also mentioned in “Gorilla,” was marked by massive corruption scandals while he was Prime Minister from 2006 to 2010. What, then, explains the latter’s victory?

Compared to previous administrations, Radicova’s government was relatively clean and “Gorilla” refers to past corruption of only some of her cabinet colleagues. Still, the center right was elected to end Fico’s shenanigans, not to perpetuate them, and the charge of hypocrisy stuck. Simply put, Fico has benefited from the electorate’s desire to punish the political elite in the only way it could — by kicking the rascals out of office. Smer just happened to be the ready alternative.

Fico’s previous stint in office was marked by excessive deficit spending and deep suspicion of the free market. Reform of Slovakia’s mediocre business environment is thus highly unlikely on his watch. Moreover, to raise the revenue he needs to pay off his constituents — pensioners and other low-income groups — he has already promised to abandon Slovakia’s successful flat-income-tax reform, introduce a bank tax, and, ominously, take another look at the partly private pension system. If those measures do not suffice, the country’s debt will likely grow larger.

What about the perennial issue of corruption?

In the aftermath of the “Gorilla” revelations, all parties promised to do more to combat corruption. Unfortunately, Slovakia has limited experience with the rule of law. The problem is not paucity of anti-corruption laws, but their lackluster enforcement, which partly explains why no senior political figure has ever been indicted on a criminal charge. Most Slovaks see politicians as being above the law. Distrust of the democratic system of government is increasing.

Without a good rule of law, it might be more fruitful to limit politicians’ opportunities for self-enrichment by reducing the scope and size of the state. Despite the tremendous progress toward economic freedom that Slovakia has made since the fall of communism — it ranked 13th on the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World index in 2011 — the role of the state in the economy remains large.

For example, the government continues to spend some 40 percent of gross domestic product and government procurement has traditionally provided ample opportunities for enrichment of politicians and their appointees. Slovakia also maintains a number of state-owned companies, including the post office and railroads, and controlling stakes in a number of enterprises, including the Slovak gas company (SPP) and power distributors. Subsidies and licenses provide additional scope for favoritism and corruption.

The Slovak electorate must understand that as long as the government continues to tax, redistribute, own and regulate large portions of the economy, corruption will persist. Unfortunately, Fico is likely to make the state even larger.

Pope Benedict XVI has called for freedom of conscience and religion in Cuba. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images
Pope Benedict XVI, flying to Cuba for a historic visit, has said that Marxism was out of place in the contemporary world and urged Cubans to find “new models”.

His remarks on Friday were at least as forthright as any made by his predecessor, John Paul II, on a groundbreaking trip to the country 14 years ago. Answering a question about his visit to Cuba, which has remained a communist bastion for more than 50 years, the pope said: “Today it is evident that Marxist ideology in the way it was conceived no longer corresponds to reality.”

He told reporters accompanying him on the papal plane: “In this way we can no longer respond and build a society. New models must be found with patience and in a constructive way.”

Benedict also said that his church wanted “to help in the spirit of dialogue to avoid trauma and to help bring about a just and fraternal society”. But his comments are likely to cause irritation in Havana.

The pope’s use of the word “trauma” reflected fears in the Vatican of a disorderly transition after the death of Cuba’s 85-year-old revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro. In 2008, the ailing Castro handed over power to his brother, Raul.

The pope himself will turn 85 next month, and Friday saw him with a walking stick for the first time in public. He used the cane to cover the 100 metres or so from his helicopter to the plane that would fly him to Mexico on the first leg of his journey.

Papal aides said he had been using the stick in private for about two months because it made him feel more secure, and not for medical reasons. Last year, he began using a wheeled platform during ceremonies in St Peter’s.

An environmental report issued by an agency of the United Nations last month has some critics sounding the alarm, saying it is a clarion call for “global governance” over how the Earth is managed.

The report, “21 Issues for the 21st Century,” from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Foresight Process, is the culmination of a two-year deliberative process involving 22 core scientists. It is expected to receive considerable attention in the run-up to the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which will be held in Rio, Brazil, in June

The scientists who wrote the report say it focuses on identifying emerging issues in the global environment, and that it is not about mandating solutions.

But its critics see an agenda lurking in its 60 pages, which call for a complete overhaul of how the world’s food and water are created and distributed — something the report says is “urgently needed” for the human race to keep feeding and hydrating itself safely.

By George Friedman

The fall of the Soviet Union ended the European epoch, the period in which European power dominated the world. It left the United States as the only global power, something for which it was culturally and institutionally unprepared. Since the end of World War II, the United States had defined its foreign policy in terms of its confrontation with the Soviet Union. Virtually everything it did around the world in some fashion related to this confrontation. The fall of the Soviet Union simultaneously freed the United States from a dangerous confrontation and eliminated the focus of its foreign policy.

In the course of a century, the United States had gone from marginal to world power. It had waged war or Cold War from 1917 until 1991, with roughly 20 years of peace between the two wars dominated by the Great Depression and numerous interventions in Latin America. Accordingly, the 20th century was a time of conflict and crisis for the United States. It entered the century without well-developed governmental institutions for managing its foreign policy. It built its foreign policy apparatus to deal with war and the threat of war; the sudden absence of an adversary inevitably left the United States off-balance.

After the Cold War

The post-Cold War period can be divided into three parts. A simultaneous optimism and uncertainty marked the first, which lasted from 1992 until 2001. On one hand, the fall of the Soviet Union promised a period in which economic development supplanted war. On the other, American institutions were born in battle, so to speak, so transforming them for a time of apparently extended peace was not easy. Presidents George HW Bush and Bill Clinton both pursued a policy built around economic growth, with periodic and not fully predictable military interventions in places such as Panama, Somalia, Haiti and Kosovo.

These interventions were not seen as critical to U.S. national security. In some cases, they were seen as solving a marginal problem, such as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega’s drug trafficking. Alternatively, they were explained as primarily humanitarian missions. Some have sought a pattern or logic to these varied interventions; in fact, they were as random as they appeared, driven more by domestic politics and alliance pressures than any clear national purpose. U.S. power was so overwhelming that these interventions cost relatively little and risked even less.

The period where indulgences could be tolerated ended on Sept. 11, 2001. At that point, the United States faced a situation congruent with its strategic culture. It had a real, if unconventional, enemy that posed a genuine threat to the homeland. The institutions built up during and after World War II could function again effectively. In an odd and tragic way, the United States was back in its comfort zone, fighting a war it saw as imposed on it.

The period from 2001 until about 2007 consisted of a series of wars in the Islamic world. Like all wars, they involved brilliant successes and abject failures. They can be judged one of two ways. First, if the wars were intended to prevent al Qaeda from ever attacking the United States again in the fashion of 9/11, they succeeded. Even if it is difficult to see how the war in Iraq meshes with this goal, all wars involve dubious operations; the measure of war is success. If, however, the purpose of these wars was to create a sphere of pro-U.S. regimes, stable and emulating American values, they clearly failed.

By 2007 and the surge in Iraq, U.S. foreign policy moved into its present phase. No longer was the primary goal to dominate the region. Rather, it was to withdraw from the region while attempting to sustain regimes able to defend themselves and not hostile to the United States. The withdrawal from Iraq did not achieve this goal; the withdrawal from Afghanistan probably will not either. Having withdrawn from Iraq, the United States will withdraw from Afghanistan regardless of the aftermath. The United States will not end its involvement in the region, and the primary goal of defeating al Qaeda will no longer be the centerpiece.

President Barack Obama continued the strategy his predecessor, George W. Bush, set in Iraq after 2007. While Obama increased forces beyond what Bush did in Afghanistan, he nevertheless accepted the concept of a surge — the increase of forces designed to facilitate withdrawal. For Obama, the core strategic problem was not the wars but rather the problem of the 1990s — namely, how to accommodate the United States and its institutions to a world without major enemies.

The Failure of Reset

The reset button Hillary Clinton gave to the Russians symbolized Obama’s strategy. Obama wanted to reset U.S. foreign policy to the period before 9/11, a period when U.S. interventions, although frequent, were minor and could be justified as humanitarian. Economic issues dominated the period, and the primary issue was managing prosperity. It also was a period in which U.S.-European and U.S.-Chinese relations fell into alignment, and when U.S.-Russian relations were stable. Obama thus sought a return to a period when the international system was stable, pro-American and prosperous. While understandable from an American point of view, Russia, for example, considers the 1990s an unmitigated disaster to which it must never return.

The problem in this strategy was that it was impossible to reset the international system. The prosperity of the 1990s had turned into the difficulties of the post-2008 financial crisis. This obviously created preoccupations with managing the domestic economy, but as we saw in our first installment, the financial crisis redefined the way the rest of the world operated. The Europe, China and Russia of the 1990s no longer existed, and the Middle East had been transformed as well.

During the 1990s, it was possible to speak of Europe as a single entity with the expectation that European unity would intensify. That was no longer the case by 2010. The European financial crisis had torn apart the unity that had existed in the 1990s, putting European institutions under intense pressure along with trans-Atlantic institutions such as NATO. In many ways, the United States was irrelevant to the issues the European Union faced. The Europeans might have wanted money from the Americans, but they did not want 1990s-style leadership.

China had also changed. Unease about the state of its economy had replaced the self-confidence of the elite that had dominated during the 1990s in China. Its exports were under heavy pressure, and concerns about social stability had increased. China also had become increasingly repressive and hostile, at least rhetorically, in its foreign policy.

In the Middle East, there was little receptivity to Obama’s public diplomacy. In practical terms, the expansion of Iranian power was substantial. Given Israeli fears over Iranian nuclear weapons, Obama found himself walking a fine line between possible conflict with Iran and allowing events to take their own course.

Limiting Intervention

This emerged as the foundation of U.S. foreign policy. Where previously the United States saw itself as having an imperative to try to manage events, Obama clearly saw that as a problem. As seen in this strategy, the United States has limited resources that have been overly strained during the wars. Rather than attempting to manage foreign events, Obama is shifting U.S. strategy toward limiting intervention and allowing events to proceed on their own.

Strategy in Europe clearly reflects this. Washington has avoided any attempt to lead the Europeans to a solution even though the United States has provided massive assistance via the Federal Reserve. This strategy is designed to stabilize rather than to manage. With the Russians, who clearly have reached a point of self-confidence, the failure of an attempt to reset relations resulted in a withdrawal of U.S. focus and attention in the Russian periphery and a willingness by Washington to stand by and allow the Russians to evolve as they will. Similarly, whatever the rhetoric of China and U.S. discussions of redeployment to deal with the Chinese threat, U.S. policy remains passive and accepting.

It is in Iran that we see this most clearly. Apart from nuclear weapons, Iran is becoming a major regional power with a substantial sphere of influence. Rather than attempt to block the Iranians directly, the United States has chosen to stand by and allow the game to play out, making it clear to the Israelis that it prefers diplomacy over military action, which in practical terms means allowing events to take their own course.

This is not necessarily a foolish policy. The entire notion of the balance of power is built on the assumption that regional challengers confront regional opponents who will counterbalance them. Balance-of-power theory assumes the leading power intervenes only when an imbalance occurs. Since no intervention is practical in China, Europe or Russia, a degree of passivity makes sense. In the case of Iran, where military action against its conventional forces is difficult and against its nuclear facilities risky, the same logic applies.

In this strategy, Obama has not returned to the 1990s. Rather, he is attempting to stake out new ground. It is not isolationism in its classic sense, as the United States is now the only global power. He appears to be engineering a new strategy, acknowledging that many outcomes in most of the world are acceptable to the United States and that no one outcome is inherently superior or possible to achieve. The U.S. interest lies in resuming its own prosperity; the arrangements the rest of the world makes are, within very broad limits, acceptable.

Put differently, unable to return U.S. foreign policy to the 1990s and unwilling and unable to continue the post-9/11 strategy, Obama is pursuing a policy of acquiescence. He is decreasing the use of military force and, having limited economic leverage, allowing the system to evolve on its own.

Implicit in this strategy is the existence of overwhelming military force, particularly naval power.

Europe is not manageable through military force, and it poses the most serious long-term threat. As Europe frays, Germany’s interests may be better served in a relationship with Russia. Germany needs Russian energy, and Russia needs German technology. Neither is happy with American power, and together they may limit it. Indeed, an entente between Germany and Russia was a founding fear of U.S. foreign policy from World War I until the Cold War. This is the only combination that could conceivably threaten the United States. The American counter here is to support Poland, which physically divides the two, along with other key allies in Europe, and the United States is doing this with a high degree of caution.

China is highly vulnerable to naval force because of the configuration of its coastal waters, which provides choke points for access to its shores. The ultimate Chinese fear is an American blockade, which the weak Chinese navy would be unable to counter, but this is a distant fear. Still, it is the ultimate American advantage.

Russia’s vulnerability lies in the ability of its former fellow members of the Soviet Union, which it is trying to organize into a Eurasian Union, to undermine its post-Soviet agenda. The United States has not interfered in this process significantly, but it has economic incentives and covert influence it could use to undermine or at least challenge Russia. Russia is aware of these capabilities and that the United States has not yet used them.

The same strategy is in place with Iran. Sanctions on Iran are unlikely to work because they are too porous and China and Russia will not honor them. Still, the United States pursues them not for what they will achieve but for what they will avoid — namely, direct action. Rhetoric aside, the assumption underlying U.S. quiescence is that regional forces, the Turks in particular, will be forced to deal with the Iranians themselves, and that patience will allow a balance of power to emerge.

The Risks of Inaction

U.S. strategy under Obama is classic in the sense that it allows the system to evolve as it will, thereby allowing the United States to reduce its efforts. On the other hand, U.S. military power is sufficient that should the situation evolve unsatisfactorily, intervention and reversal is still possible. Obama has to fight the foreign policy establishment, particularly the U.S. Defense Department and intelligence community, to resist older temptations. He is trying to rebuild the foreign policy architecture away from the World War II-Cold War model, and that takes time.

The weakness in Obama’s strategy is that the situation in many regions could suddenly and unexpectedly move in undesirable directions. Unlike the Cold War system, which tended to react too soon to problems, it is not clear that the current system won’t take too long to react. Strategies create psychological frameworks that in turn shape decisions, and Obama has created a situation wherein the United States may not react quickly enough if the passive approach were to collapse suddenly.

It is difficult to see the current strategy as a permanent model. Before balances of power are created, great powers must ensure that a balance is possible. In Europe, within China, against Russia and in the Persian Gulf, it is not clear what the balance consists of. It is not obvious that the regional balance will contain emerging powers. Therefore, this is not a classic balance-of-power strategy. Rather it is an ad hoc strategy imposed by the financial crisis and its impact on psychology and by war-weariness. These issues cannot be ignored, but they do not provide a stable foundation for a long-term policy, which will likely replace the one Obama is pursuing now.

I want to extend my sincere condolences to the families of the Army Colonel and Major who were killed by Afghanistan security forces over this “burning Koran” episode.

If we had resolute leadership in the White House, we would have explained that these Islamic terrorist enemy combatants detained at the Parwan facility used the Koran to write jihadist messages to pass to others. In doing so, they violated their own cultural practice and defiled the Koran and turned the Koran into contraband. The Islamic cultural practice and Parwan detention facility procedures support burning the “contraband.” Instead here we go again, offering apology after apology and promising to “hold those responsible accountable.” Responsible for what?

When tolerance becomes a one-way street it leads to cultural suicide. This time it immediately led to the deaths of two American Warriors. America is awaiting the apology from President Hamid Karzai.

-Congressman Allen West

Widely read conservative Internet publisher Andrew Breitbart, whose flare for battle with politicians and the mainstream media earned him a reputation as one of the nation’s most influential commentators, died Thursday.
The websites he founded ran a statement Thursday morning announcing that Breitbart, 43, died “unexpectedly from natural causes” in Los Angeles shortly after midnight. His attorney and editor-in-chief of those sites confirmed his death to Fox News.
Related Slideshow

Conservative Commentator Andrew Breitbart Dead at 43
Conservative Internet publisher, activist and commentator Andrew Breitbart — founder of Breitbart.com, BigGovernment.com and other widely read websites — has died in Los Angeles. He was 43.

“We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior,” the statement said. “Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love.”

Breitbart was a prolific commentator who founded several websites devoted to covering politics, entertainment and everything in-between. Earlier in his career, he worked for the Drudge Report before breaking off to start his own outlets — including Big Government, Big Hollywood and Breitbart.tv.

The statement on his sites quoted the concluding passage from his book, Righteous Indignation.
“I love my job. I love fighting for what I believe in. I love having fun while doing it. I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report. I love fighting back, I love finding allies, and — famously — I enjoy making enemies. Three years ago, I was mostly a behind-the-scenes guy who linked to stuff on a very popular website. I always wondered what it would be like to enter the public realm to fight for what I believe in. I’ve lost friends, perhaps dozens. But I’ve gained hundreds, thousands — who knows? — of allies. At the end of the day, I can look at myself in the mirror, and I sleep very well at night,” Breitbart wrote.
The statement ended: “Andrew is at rest, yet the happy warrior lives on, in each of us.”

Breitbart was walking near his house in the Brentwood neighborhood shortly after midnight Thursday when he collapsed, his father-in-law Orson Bean said.
Someone saw him fall and called paramedics, who tried to revive him. They rushed him to the emergency room at UCLA Medical Center, Bean said. Breitbart had suffered heart problems a year earlier, but Bean said he could not pinpoint what happened.
“I don’t know what to say. It’s devastating,” Bean told The Associated Press.

Those who knew and worked with him described Breitbart almost uniformly as “fearless,” sharply intelligent, witty and devoted to his work.
“He was the modern conservative iteration of a 1960′s radical,” conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg told Fox News, minutes after Breitbart’s death was reported.
“When I say he was the most fearless guy I ever knew, it really is true. I mean, he truly loved the fight,” he said.

Breitbart considered his charge to expose corruption, hypocrisy and media bias, and leveraged his network of websites to reach for that goal.
He was on the forefront of reporting several controversies, notably the salacious tweets former Rep. Anthony Weiner had sent to young women before his resignation.

Breitbart became embroiled in a controversy of his own, though, for his reporting on a web video of Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod. The edited video appeared to show Sherrod making a racist comment, but the full tape later put the remark in context and made clear that Sherrod was actually talking about bridging racial differences. Sherrod was fired after the edited video surfaced, and later filed suit against Breitbart.

Breitbart, though, went on to report on one of the biggest congressional scandals of 2011 — the tweets sent by Weiner to young women he met online. The former New York congressman, who is married, adamantly denied the reports at first, before admitting to them in a tearful press conference and resigning.

One of Breitbart’s most memorable moments came when he commandeered the podium before Weiner’s final New York conference, holding court with reporters and demanding an apology from Weiner — while Weiner waited to attend his own press conference.

Goldberg recalled how one of Breitbart’s favorite pastimes was to retweet the nasty things other people said about him. “He considered it a badge of honor,” Goldberg said.

Breitbart’s final tweet, posted shortly before he was reported to have died, typified the combative and blunt tone he took with his online debaters. “I called you a putz cause I thought you were being intentionally disingenuous. If not I apologize,” he wrote to the individual he had been arguing with.

News of Breitbart’s death reverberated on Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail. Rick Santorum said he was “crestfallen.”
“What a powerful force,” Santorum said. “What a huge loss, in my opinion, for our country and certainly for the conservative movement.”
Breitbart is survived by his wife Susannah Bean Breitbart, 41, and four children.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Expose Agenda 21
‎”The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” – Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations