Thursday, January 22, 2009

Henry Kissinger: The world must forge a new order or retreat to chaos

This is Barack Obama's real "Inaugural Speech." Make no mistake, when we hear talk about the "politics of pragmatism" and "real politics" this view being pushed by Henry Kissinger the day before Barack Obama was sworn into office is what is being referred to.

The "politics of pragmatism" as advocated here by Henry Kissinger is the politics of imperialism; some people refer to this as "neo-liberalism;" while others just refer to it as Wall Street bankers and industrialists wanting to control the entire world in in quest of maximum profits.

I'm not so sure we have to agree what we call this thinking, but, we do have to understand the full ramifications of where we are headed if we allow this policy to be put in place.

Make no mistake; capitalism is in serious trouble... the New York Times describes the present state of the capitalist economy as "in the toilet," while the head of the Federal Reserve says this "isn't your garden variety economic downturn," and the European leaders are warning that "capitalism may never recover."

In fact, we are in a world-wide capitalist depression... capitalism is on the skids to oblivion and Barack Obama following Henry Kissinger's advice here has us well on the road to perdition. And, Obama has only been in office two days now.

Unless the working class smartens up real quick to what is going on here we are in for big, big trouble.

Henry Kissinger speaks for the military-financial-industrial complex... as working people do we want these merchants of death and destruction destroying our lives and our planet?

This essay by Kissinger can only be read to mean one thing... the Wall Street crowd is going to try to do whatever it takes to save their rotten capitalist system... make no mistake; the peoples of the world will never stand for this and this means one thing, and one thing only: war and more wars.

Alan L. Maki




Henry Kissinger: The world must forge a new order or retreat to chaos


Tuesday, 20 January 2009




Not since JFK has there been such a reservoir of expectations



As the new US administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy.


That opportunity involves a seeming contradiction. On one level, the financial collapse represents a major blow to the standing of the United States. While American political judgments have often proved controversial, the American prescription for a world financial order has generally been unchallenged. Now disillusionment with the United States' management of it is widespread.

At the same time, the magnitude of the debacle makes it impossible for the rest of the world to shelter any longer behind American predominance or American failings. Every country will have to reassess its own contribution to the prevailing crisis. Each will seek to make itself independent, to the greatest possible degree, of the conditions that produced the collapse; at the same time, each will be obliged to face the reality that its dilemmas can be mastered only by common action.

Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled.

The nadir of the international financial system coincides with simultaneous political crises around the globe. Never have so many transformations occurred at the same time in so many different parts of the world and been made accessible via instantaneous communication. The alternative to a new international order is chaos.

The financial and political crises are, in fact, closely related partly because, during the period of economic exuberance, a gap had opened up between the economic and the political organisation of the world. The economic world has been globalised. Its institutions have a global reach and have operated by maxims that assumed a self-regulating global market. The financial collapse exposed the mirage. It made evident the absence of global institutions to cushion the shock and to reverse the trend. Inevitably, when the affected publics turned to their political institutions, these were driven principally by domestic politics, not considerations of world order. Every major country has attempted to solve its immediate problems essentially on its own and to defer common action to a later, less crisis-driven point.

So-called rescue packages have emerged on a piecemeal national basis, generally by substituting seemingly unlimited governmental credit for the domestic credit that produced the debacle in the first place, so far without achieving more than stemming incipient panic. International order will not come about either in the political or economic field until there emerge general rules toward which countries can orient themselves.

In the end, the political and economic systems can be harmonised in only one of two ways: by creating an international political regulatory system with the same reach as that of the economic world; or by shrinking the economic units to a size manageable by existing political structures, which is likely to lead to a new mercantilism, perhaps of regional units. A new Bretton Woods kind of global agreement is by far the preferable outcome.

America's role in this enterprise will be decisive. Paradoxically, American influence will be great in proportion to the modesty in our conduct; we need to modify the righteousness that has characterised too many American attitudes, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union. That event and the subsequent period of nearly uninterrupted global growth induced too many to equate world order with the acceptance of American designs, including our domestic preferences. The result was a certain inherent unilateralism – the standard complaint of European critics – or else an insistent kind of consultation by which nations were invited to prove their fitness to enter the international system by conforming to American prescriptions.

Not since the inauguration of president John F Kennedy half a century ago has a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations. It is unprecedented that all the principal actors on the world stage are avowing their desire to undertake the transformations imposed on them by the world crisis in collaboration with the United States.

The extraordinary impact of the President-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order. But it defines an opportunity, not a policy. The ultimate challenge is to shape the common concern of most countries and all major ones regarding the economic crisis, together with a common fear of jihadist terrorism, into a strategy reinforced by the realisation that the new issues like proliferation, energy and climate change permit no national or regional solution.

The new administration could make no worse mistake than to rest on its initial popularity. The role of China in a new world order is crucial. A relationship that started on both sides as essentially a strategic design to constrain a common adversary has evolved over the decades into a pillar of the international system. China made possible the American consumption splurge by buying American debt; America helped the modernisation of the Chinese economy by opening its markets to Chinese goods.

Each side of the Pacific needs the cooperation of the other in addressing the consequences of the financial crisis. Now that the global financial collapse has devastated Chinese export markets, China is emphasising infrastructure development and domestic consumption. It will not be easy to shift gears rapidly, and the Chinese growth rate may fall temporarily below the 7.5 per cent that Chinese experts define as the line that challenges political stability.

What kind of global economic order arises will depend importantly on how China and America deal with each other over the next few years. A frustrated China may take another look at an exclusive regional Asian structure, for which the nucleus already exists in the ASEAN-plus-three concept. At the same time, if protectionism grows in America or if China comes to be seen as a long-term adversary, a self-fulfilling prophecy may blight the prospects of global order. Such a return to mercantilism and 19th-century diplomacy would divide the world into competing regional units with dangerous long-term consequences.

The Sino-American relationship needs to be taken to a new level. This generation of leaders has the opportunity to shape relations into a design for a common destiny, much as was done with trans-Atlantic relations in the postwar period – except that the challenges now are more political and economic than military.

The complexity of the emerging world requires from America a more historical approach than the insistence that every problem has a final solution expressible in programmes with specific time limits not infrequently geared to our political process. We must learn to operate within the attainable and be prepared to pursue ultimate ends by the accumulation of nuance. An international order can be permanent only if its participants have a share not only in building but also in securing it. In this manner, America and its potential partners have a unique opportunity to transform a moment of crisis into a vision of hope.

The author was National Security Adviser, 1969-75 and US Secretary of State, 1973-77.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

"Threats" against Obama will be used as the pretext to silence proponents of a progressive agenda

What we have developing here is a fear of the very grassroots which elected Barack Obama.

The police and various law enforcement agencies will use "security" as the pretext to boot out anyone carrying signs protesting the Israeli killing spree in Gaza from the Inaugural events.

Talk about your "hate" and trying to stifle real dialogue discussion and debate in this country and one only has to consider the very narrow-minded and vicious attacks on progressives coming from outfits like "Progressives for Obama," Campaign for America's Future and Move0n.org to the AFL-CIO and Change To Win to the revisionist leadership of the Communist Party, USA who cry tears of joy for Obama but don't shed a tear for the children who are the primary victims of this Israeli rampage and killing spree.

Key to what these security" outfits will be looking for is anyone showing sympathies for the Palestinian people--- victims of this Israeli genocidal campaign--- who are automatically on the "lists" compiled by the FBI and Homeland Security.

These people who, during the election campaign--- fronted for Obama in trying to thwart and wipe out any dialogue discussion and debate on issues ranging from U.S. backing of Israel to single-payer universal health care to issues surrounding the Minimum Wage and the Employee Free Choice Act are now taking the initiative to make sure the American people suffering the affects of poverty and despair of a rotten capitalist system on the skids to oblivion which has put our country squarely on the road to perdition are not heard--- or seen.

Police agencies arrested leafleters at Obama campaign events and tore signs advocating single-payer universal health care from people's hands as the price for admission to Obama campaign rallies will now step up their undemocratic activities as they try to head off a massive anti-imperialist movement in solidarity with the suffering Palestinian people from developing.

The mere suggestion that I was going to bring pictures of the dead and suffering children to those celebrating Obama's election in Cass Lake, Minnesota drew the most venomous response from the organizers who are members and activists with Moveon.org who stated in no uncertain terms that they would not tolerate their "part-tay" being "disrupted" by someone like me sowing "hate" and "division" around an "issue of no local relevancy." Which corresponds to the statements from "security" officials we read below albeit couched in more Madison Avenue language.

Interesting that the Israeli killing spree of the people in Gaza is not a "local issue" even though among those who castigated me for saying that they could bring the food and drinks for their "part-tay" and I would bring the pictures of the death and destruction from the Israeli rampage and killing spree in Gaza went on to say that they were concerned with "local poverty and suffering" and these fools do not even understand that when the United States government spends thirty-billion dollars supporting this Israeli killing machine using their tax-dollars this creates poverty in their own community... and they say the Israeli killing spree is not a local issue so I can come to "part-tay" but don't rain on their fun by showing them what their silence has wrought... with one individual suggesting I would be offended if he voiced his contrary opinion on Gaza even though I have never tried to silence anyone... what this coward is saying is that he is too embarrassed to state his support for Israel while looking at the faces of the Gaza dead... then insinuating he can't express his opinion because I would try to suppress his views!

I think what all of this demonstrates very clearly is that a huge chasm of earthquake proportions has developed between Obama's rhetoric of "hope" and "change" and "yes we can" and the reality of the imperialist depravity of what Barack Obama really represents: a new voice for Wall Street out to hoodwink the American people as the children of Gaza continue to die at the hands of the Israeli butchers and the American people continue to reap poverty wages for their hard work and have their homes foreclosed on to pay health care bills... all of which are local issues, along with the killing in Gaza that has turned into what can only be described as a full-fledged pogrom.

Moveon.org can take its victory celebrations and stick them where the sun doesn't shine... these people are so callous and uncaring that it doesn't even pay to try to talk to them.

For these people in Moveon.org and their associates, they have "won" an election... their candidate, like them, has remained silent concerning the most vicious carnage since Hitler's S.S. storm troopers and fascist thugs marched into Lidice and "retaliated" against the brave heroes during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Like the German people who patronized the bars and "part-tayed" as they turned their heads in indifference (and support) to the injustices being perpetrated in their name; they too did not want to be bothered with the truth... and if bothered, the Hitler youth were brought in to shut people up.

Who says history does not repeat... when people aren't taught or are unwilling to learn.

Yesterday Paris burned... today it is Gaza... and the "security" police took charge.

Today, like "yesterday"... "security" is the pretext for destroying democracy and silencing those who speak out against injustice.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090115/pl_afp/uspoliticsinaugurationobamasecurity_20090115063336

Unprecedented security as Obama set for White House

WASHINGTON (AFP) – An unprecedented security blanket has been draped over the US capital for Barack Obama's inauguration next week, and the threat level to the country's first black president is expected to remain high well beyond his swearing-in.

More than 12,500 active troops and military reservists, thousands of metropolitan police as well as personnel from 57 departments around the nation are descending on Washington to protect against any potential terrorist attack during Tuesday's historic ceremony, according to officials.

With estimates of up to a record two million people attending, the Department of Homeland Security has designated Obama's inauguration a national special security event.

"I think we all have to be concerned about a chemical, biological, radiological potential attack," Major General Richard Rowe, head of the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee, said Wednesday.

To counter the threat, officials are putting in place what is likely to be the biggest and most advanced inaugural security operation ever.

The US military will fly air patrols, man surface-to-air weapons systems, ply the Potomac River with gunboats, assess chemical and biological threats, organize large-scale medical support in the event of an attack, and provide visible and undercover on-the-ground security.

But a "perfect storm" of factors is brewing that will require security forces around Obama to be in top form for long after he takes office, according to Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Policy Law Center (SPLC) which tracks hate groups.

Outside elements include the vicious economic downturn which may fuel hate groups and extremists in the United States, some of whom "are enraged at the ascendancy of a black man to the White House," Potok told AFP.

"It's perfectly obvious that our first black president is faced with some dangers that other presidents would not be," he said, noting that Obama received official protection 18 months before the November 4 election, earlier than any other presidential candidate.

The SPLC says the Secret Service tasked with protecting presidents acknowledges that Obama has received more threats than any incoming chief executive in history.

They include one that came days before the election in which two white supremacists were arrested in Tennessee for plotting to kill him.

Attacks and threats have soared since his victory, ranging from physical attacks and the burning of crosses in their yards to second-graders chanting "assassinate Obama" on an Idaho schoolbus last November. Potok says Obama has been hanged several times in effigy.

A California man was reportedly arrested last week for posting a note on an Internet message board predicting "he (Obama) will have a 50 cal(iber) in the head soon."

The Secret Service does not provide specifics on the new security regime, but it says it is prepared for any contingency.

"We understand the historical significance of his election, and we pay attention to that," Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told AFP. "We look at every single aspect of protection... any factor that you could imagine."

The president's skin color has clearly added to security concerns in the country, where there are more than 200 million legally owned firearms and about 30,000 gun deaths per year, and where four sitting presidents have been assassinated.

Obama spoke on the campaign trail with The New York Times about his life in the security cocoon, saying "I've got the best protection in the world... So stop worrying."

The protection level ramps up come Tuesday, when Obama will start being whisked to and from appointments in the most secure presidential limousine ever, a hulking Cadillac said to be tough enough to withstand a rocket-propelled grenade.

Experts say threats are amplified by an accumulation of outside factors, including the tanking US economy and the simmering immigration issue which has led to a surge in hate-group numbers.

Fred Burton, vice president of counter-terrorism at geo-political intelligence analysis firm Stratfor, cites as an example the Gaza war being waged by US ally Israel.

"A Sirhan Sirhan-type (attacker) could become the needle in the haystack" that eludes federal agents, Burton said, referring to 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy's convicted assassin. Sirhan is believed to have acted out of Arab nationalism.

"The problem is, it's one thing if you know that person and you have leads to go after," Burton said. "But you're really challenged when you're out there looking for ghosts."