Friday

The Daily WAR (13-07)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    The Holy See is calling for a human centered approach to achieving the international millennium goals, underling the issues of stabilizing the population and the need to foster development.
    Archbishop Migliore, permanent observer of the Holy See to the UN, affirmed this to a commission on population and development of the UN Economic and Social Council.
    "The Holy See continues to believe that the proper focus for addressing global development should primarily be on programs and values which support personal and social development."
 
 
 
    Chancellor Merkel said she wants to see a change of the alliance's strategies. NATO's partnership with Russia must be rebuilt and civil reconstruction in Afghanistan strengthened.
 
    NATO is turning 60, but what is the meaning of the alliance today?
    On the eve of a NATO summit to be held in France and Germany, Berlin's foreign minister sketches out his vision for the military alliance's future and warns against taking on too many new tasks.
 
 
 
    Barack Obama, concerned about offending Britain and Germany, rebuffed strenuous attempts by President Sarkozy to persuade him to make a trip to Normandy this week.
 
    Turkey's prime minister has warned that the favourite candidate to take over as NATO leader is unsuitable for the position.
    France, Germany, Britain and the US had hoped to use a symbolic meeting in Strasbourg, marking the Alliance's 60th anniversary, to install Rasmussen in the post.
 
    Russia accused Georgia on Thursday of planning revenge against pro-Moscow separatists and warned the US against arms sales to Tbilisi.
 
 
 
    Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles Freeman has cast doubt whether Israel can continue to survive in the Middle East.
    "I don't see how Israel can continue to survive in the long term as a state in the Middle East if it is not prepared to deal with respect and consideration with its Arab neighbors specially the Palestinians."
 
    Israeli police questioned the Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, under caution for more than seven hours on suspicion of bribery and money laundering.
 
    JStreet, a pro-Israel lobby in the US, has launched a campaign expressing the organization's concern over the appointment of Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman to head Israel's Foreign Ministry and his party's strong representation in the Knesset.
 
    Avigdor Lieberman's remarks on his first full day as foreign minister show how Israel's new government risks being seen as the central obstacle to peace.
 
    Syrian President Assad is escalating his rhetoric against Israel, vowing that "the day in which we will be liberated [on the Golan] is at hand - by peace or war."
    Assad told the Qatari newspaper A-Sharq: "This enemy does not want peace. What is the alternative? The parallel route to the peace process is resistance. The Israeli will not come by his own will, so there is no alternative but for him to come from fear."
 
    Discussions at the NATO summit that takes place today and Saturday will be dominated by the occupation of Afghanistan — the most protracted war carried out by the military alliance in its 60-year history.
    Nevertheless, just as the G20 summit revealed profound fault lines between the Atlantic partners over economic policy, the list of contentious foreign policy issues between the US-Britain and leading European nations is growing.
    The current economic crisis is fuelling conflicts between the great powers that threaten to break the NATO alliance apart and raise the spectre of a new world war.
 
    Obama is to put Gordon Brown under pressure to deploy more troops in Afghanistan after senior figures in his Administration declared Britain and other NATO allies needed to start "talking specifics" about what more they can contribute for the war effort.
 
    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, has expressed concern that Pakistan may implode with nuclear weapons in near future, and also "use" them.
 
    As North Korea begins final preparations for a rocket launch, Seoul warns that the launch could be expected on Saturday.
    "If tomorrow's weather is suitable for them, if they think it's suitable for them to test fire this missile then it's going to be tomorrow."
 
 
 
    Iran's official news agency is reporting that German contractors are in talks with Iranians to use the Islamic Republic's territory to ship supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan.
    "The German sides negotiating with Iran are representatives of private firms that provide foodstuff and fuel for the German forces serving at NATO units in Afghanistan," said an unnamed German military official.
 
    Tehran's growing nuclear capability mixed with the Netanyahu Cabinet's military experience. It could be a lethal cocktail.
    These warnings are not new but the political and military circumstances are conspiring to make an Israeli attack on Iran a probability, unless the Middle East experiences dramatic changes in the coming weeks and months.
    When Netanyahu travels to Washington next month, Iran is expected to dominate talks. Israel will not attack Iran without tacit approval from America.
    But time is running out. This could become Obama's biggest challenge.
 
 
 
    An analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies says a new threat from a Pakistani branch of the Taliban to attack Washington, DC, needs to be taken seriously.
 
    For the financial crisis that has wiped out trillions in wealth, many have felt the lash of public outrage.
    But the Big Kahuna has escaped. The Federal Reserve.
    "(T)he very people who devised the policies that produced the mess are now posing as the wise public servants who will show us the way out," writes Thomas Woods in "Meltdown."
    Already in its 6th week on the New York Times best-seller list, this eminently readable book traces the Fed's role in every financial crisis since this creature was spawned on Jekyl Island in 1913.
 
     Unemployment in the US has jumped to its highest level since 1983 after employers cut 663,000 jobs and workers' hours to the lowest on record, government figures have shown.
    The US Labor Department reported the rate leaped to 8.5% in March and revised its figures for January to show job losses of 741,000, the biggest decline since October 1949.
    Also, a record 32.2 million people, 1-in-10 Americans, are now receiving food stamps.
 
 
 
    Leaders of the world's largest economies have reached an agreement to tackle the global financial crisis with measures worth $1 trillion.
    The deal came at a summit of G20 countries in London, called to discuss plans to beat the economic slump.
    We look at the details of the plan and whether it will work.
 
    In the morning, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown were conciliatory.
    In the evening, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel went on the war path.
    They said they would accept no compromises when it came to financial market regulation.
 
    EU finance ministers are to start work on a massive overhaul of their financial system, just a day after G20 leaders agreed on broad measures to kick-start the global economy at their summit in London.
 
    Gordon Brown announced the creation of a "new world order" after the conclusion of the G20 summit of world leaders in London.
    "Today's decisions, of course, will not immediately solve the crisis. But we have begun the process by which it will be solved. I think a new world order is emerging with the foundation of a new progressive era of international co-operation."
 
    Global leaders took their biggest steps yet toward a new world order that's less US-centric with a more heavily regulated financial industry and a greater role for international institutions and emerging markets.
    President Sarkozy said that they turned the page on the Anglo-Saxon model of free markets by placing stricter limits on hedge funds and other financiers.
    "It's the passing of an era," said the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. "The U.S. is becoming less dominant while other nations are gaining influence."
 
    The G20 summit failed to adopt the principal demands of either the US-UK or a European bloc led by Germany and France.
    Instead, they papered over their differences with a 9-page communiqué, much of which consisted of high-flown phrases.
    It was Obama and Brown who made the most grandiose claims for the London summit. This is all nonsense.
    As for the claim that the summit signaled the emergence of a "new world order" based on international cooperation, the reality is that the summit only confirmed the collapse of the old world order, established in the aftermath of WW2 and based on the unchallenged economic and financial supremacy of the US capitalism and a dollar-based world monetary system.
    In reality, inter-imperialist antagonisms were manifest throughout the summit and will inevitably sharpen as the economic crisis worsens.
    The London summit has only demonstrated the irreconcilable contradiction between the globally integrated economy and the capitalist nation state system, and the impossibility of the rival national states adopting a genuinely international approach to the crisis.
 
    The International Monetary Fund was the day's main winner hands down. Showered with new resources and new tasks, its importance is set to grow in the coming years.
 
    French news outlets saw the G20 as marking a shift in the way world finance is regulated and could not help from having a dig at the UK and US.
    But several columnists remained sceptical as to whether the G20 summit would rein in "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism, despite all the good intentions.
 
    The world's press has given a largely positive reaction to the G20 summit's efforts to tackle the global financial crisis.
    But some newspapers express fears that the G20's measures do not go far enough, while others question whether the pledges made in London will benefit developing countries.
 
    Russia's media has welcomed the death of the Anglo-Saxon economic model at the G20 summit but noted that Moscow played only a peripheral role in the debate over how to end the global recession.
 
    Leaders at Thursday's meeting had an urgent responsibility to come up with concrete policies to fix the global financial system and restore growth. They fell short.
    Where they fell dangerously short was their refusal to commit to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars in additional fiscal stimulus that the world economy needs to pull out of its frighteningly steep dive.
    European leaders — most notably Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel — made clear going into the meeting that they were not going to give in on that issue.
    German politicians are historically afraid of touching off inflation with too much deficit spending. But inflation is not the danger Europe faces today, and German history should make them equally wary of the disastrous consequences of a new depression.
    To pull out of the current crisis, it will take a lot more than was done in London.
 
    Credit where credit (line) is due: the G20 outcome was better than I expected, with something substantive and important emerging — namely, much bigger funding for international financial institutions (IFIs), plus expanded trade credit. This will help smaller, currency-crisis countries a lot.
    A turning point? No.
 
    This is a not a fight between the US-UK on one side, and Europe on the other. This the entire world on one side, and France-Germany on the other.
    Japan, China, India, and Brazil have all -- to varying degrees -- backed extreme stimulus to prevent the collapse of global demand.
    No doubt Chancellor Merkel is right - in a very narrow sense - that indebted countries cannot keep piling up more debt as if there was no tomorrow.
    But there is a deeper issue that seems to elude her entirely: global demand is contracting.
    So if the surplus states refuse to step into the breach, global demand will collapse.
    This is the plain reality, whoever you blame for causing this crisis.
    Merkel - daughter of Lutheran clergyman -- seems to have a moral view that somehow there are good imbalances (Germany's surpluses) and bad imbalances (America's deficits).
    This is frankly childish. The global economy is a single organism. All imbalances are bad when they become extreme.
    For now we watch this G20 fritter away its energies on side-shows, or bread and circuses for the mobs: tax havens, hedge funds, wars on bankers - it is pathetic.
 
    The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity.
    A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order.
    "We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity."
    SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.
    In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing".
    In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body.
    Conspiracy theorists will love it.
 
    The big news last week was a speech by the governor of China's central bank calling for a new "super-sovereign reserve currency."
    The paranoid wing of the Republican Party [assisted by the Paranoid Protestants] promptly warned of a dastardly plot to make America give up the dollar.
    But Zhou's speech was actually an admission of weakness.
    In effect, he was saying that China had driven itself into a dollar trap, and that it can neither get itself out nor change the policies that put it in that trap in the first place.
 
    How far is China willing to go to safeguard their assets?
    If China purchases fewer of those Treasuries, or, in the worst-case scenario, holds a nightmare sell-off of those assets, it could ruin the US economy in ways we can only imagine at this stage of the geopolitical game.
    At best, it could dump the dollar into the currency basement as the world follows China's suit and diversifies its reserves in other denominations.
    At worst, it could spell the end of America as a superpower and destroy the global economy as we know it.
 
    Venezuelan President Chávez and Iranian President Ahmadinejad agreed on Thursday that the global financial crisis was a spiritual crisis and called for "fair trade" over free trade.
    "I believe the current crisis goes well beyond an economic crisis. It's more a spiritual and moral crisis," Chávez said. "It's like a cancer that has spread and affects relations between our peoples.
    "Our countries must strengthen their trade alliance to free ourselves from global free trade and create trade that is fair and complementary."
 
    Behind the anti-capitalist ranting lie genuine popular concerns about globalisation that world leaders are simply ignoring.
 
    Banks have been nationalized, manager bonuses limited and huge public debts accumulated.
    Indeed, about the only element of recent economic thought that remains taboo is blind faith in free trade. That might be a mistake.
 
 
 
    The first part of this essay introduced the theme of the unison between 3 of the larger global concerns: the economy, the war on terror and the environment.
    While looking at the economy necessitated turning to the military, the following look at the military necessitates a turn towards the military.
 
 
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