Quote of the Day: Why Saudi Arabia May Become The Mideast’s Newest Hotspot

Writes historian Eric Margolis at the Lew Rockwell.com

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have been de facto US-British-French protectorates since the end of World War II. They sell the western powers oil at rock bottom prices and buy fabulous amounts of arms from these powers in exchange for the west protecting the ruling families.

As Libya’s late Muammar Kadaffi once told me, “the Saudis and Gulf emirates are very rich families paying the west for protection and living behind high walls.”

Kadaffi’s overthrow and murder were aided by the western powers, notably France, and the oil sheiks. Kadaffi constantly denounced the Saudis and their Gulf neighbors as robbers, traitors to the Arab cause, and puppets of the west.

Many Arabs and Iranians agreed with Kadaffi. While Islam commands all Muslims to share their wealth with the needy and aid fellow Muslims in distress, the Saudis spent untold billions on casinos, palaces, and European hookers while millions of Muslims starved. The Saudis spent even more billions for western high-tech arms they cannot use.

During the dreadful war in Bosnia, 1992-1995, the Saudis, who arrogate to themselves the title of ‘Defenders of Islam” and its holy places, averted their eyes as hundreds of thousands of Bosnians were massacred, raped, driven from their homes by Serbs, and mosques were blown up.

The Saudi dynasty has clung to power through lavish social spending and cutting off the heads of dissidents, who are routinely framed with charges of drug dealing. The Saudis have one of the world’s worst human rights records.

Saudi’s royals are afraid of their own military, so keep it feeble and inept aside from the air force. They rely on the National Guard, a Bedouin tribal forces also known as the White Army. In the past, Pakistan was paid to keep 40,000 troops in Saudi to protect the royal family. These soldiers are long gone, but the Saudis are pressing impoverished Pakistan to return its military contingent.

The US-backed and supplied Saudi war against dirt-poor Yemen has shown its military to be incompetent and heedless of civilian casualties. The Saudis run the risk of becoming stuck in a protracted guerilla war in Yemen’s wild mountains. The US, Britain, and France maintain discreet military bases in the kingdom and Gulf coast. The US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, where a pro-democracy uprising was recently crushed by rented Pakistani police and troops. Reports say 30,000 Pakistani troops may be stationed in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

Earlier this month, the Saudis and Egypt’s military junta announced they would build a bridge across the narrow Strait of Tiran (leading to the Red Sea) to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The clear purpose of a large bridge in this remote, desolate region is to facilitate the passage of Egyptian troops and armor into Saudi Arabia to protect the Saudis. Egypt now relies on Saudi cash to stay afloat.

But Saudi Arabia’s seemingly endless supply of money is now threatened by the precipitous drop in world oil prices. Riyadh just announced it will seek $10 billion in loans from abroad to offset a budget shortfall. This is unprecedented and leads many to wonder if the days of free-spending Saudis are over. Add rumors of a bitter power-struggle in the 6,000-member royal family and growing internal dissent and uber-reactionary Saudi Arabia may become the Mideast’s newest hotspot.

Two things, if this becomes true, which could part of what I have been discussing, then what should happen to Philippine OFWs?

Next, as for Saudi's public arbitrary/summary execution of the political opposition under the cover of drug dealing, will this resonate with the political climate in the Philippines under a new potential populist 'strong man rule' regime?

Updated to add: there goes the bug which automatically shrinks font to the smallest--again! Sorry for this

Eric Margolis: Russians Won World War II

World War II has been popularly sold as having been won by the West. However historian Eric Margolis sets the record straight: it was the Russians that delivered the fatal blow to Nazi Germany. 

Importantly, Mr. Margolis says that applied to today's geopolitical developments, the lessons of World War II should not be forgotten.

From LewRockwell.com (bold mine)

It was churlish for western leaders to boycott this week’s Victory Parade in Moscow that commemorated the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany 70 years ago.

Historic events are facts that should not be manipulated according to the latest political fashions. Being angry at Moscow for mucking about in Ukraine does not in any way lessen the glory, admiration and thanks owed to the Russian people for their heroism during World War II.

Americans and Canadians like to believe they won the war in Europe and give insufficient recognition to the decisive Soviet role. Most Europeans would rather not think about the matter. By contrast, Russians know that it was their soldiers who really won the war. They remain angry that their military achievements are ignored by American triumphalists and myth -makers.   

Not only did Stalin’s Soviet Union play the key role in crushing Nazi Germany, its huge sacrifices saved the lives of countless American, British and Canadian soldiers. Were it not for the USSR’s victory, Nazi Germany might be alive and well today.

Let’s do the numbers. The Soviet armed forces destroyed 507 German division and 100 allied Axis divisions (according to Soviet figures). These latter included the pan-European Waffen SS whose largest numbers came from Belgium, Holland and Scandinavia, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Finland and a division from Spain.

Soviet military historians claim their forces destroyed 77,000 enemy planes, 48,000 enemy tanks and armored vehicles. The Red Army accounted for 75-80% of Axis casualties in World war II.

In the process,  1,710 Russian cities, 70,000 towns and villages, 31,850 factories or and 1,974 collective farms were destroyed. Add 84,000 schools, 43,000 libraries and 65,000 km of railway.

The leading Russian military historian Dimitri Volkogonov revealed during the Gorbachev years that  Russia’s total losses from 1941-1945 were 26.6  to 27 million dead. Ten million of them were Soviet soldiers dead or missing. Compare this to total US dead in the European theater of 139,000. 

No one likes to admit it was Stalin who defeated Nazi Germany. Stalin killed far more people than Adolf Hitler, including 6 million Ukrainians liquidated in the early 1930’s and four million Muslims during the war. The Soviet gulag was grinding up victims well into the 1950’s.   

Today, seven decades later, we are barraged with films and reports about Germany’s concentration camps while Stalin’s far more extensive and lethal gulag is ignored. Roosevelt spoke warmly of Stalin as “Uncle Joe.” Churchill kept silent.

When Americans, British and Canadians landed at Normandy in June, 1944, they met Germany forces that had been shattered on the Eastern Front and bled white. Understrength German units had almost no gasoline and were low on ammunition, tanks and artillery.

Mr. Margolis adds that the Russians contributed to the defeat of the Japanese imperial army at China and Manchuria.

The shattering of the Kwantung army is believed by some historians to have contributed to Japan’s surrender. Other historians suggest that America’s use of two nuclear weapons against Japan was a hasty effort to make it surrender before the Red Army landed in Japan.

Read the rest here

Eric Margolis: US Supplied Iraq’s Saddam with Chemical and Biological Weapons

Writing at the LewRockwell.com historian Eric Margolis claims that the US has been responsible for supplying chemical and biological weapons to their once favored tyrant ally, Saddam Hussein (bold mine, italics original)

While covering Iraq in 1990 – just before the first massive US bombing campaign – I discovered the US and Britain had secretly built a germ weapons arsenal for Iraq to use against Iran in the eight year-Iran-Iraq War.

This while both the US and Britain were fulminating with breathtaking hypocrisy against the alleged dangers of Iraq’s supposed WMD’s (weapons of mass destruction) that never existed. Some years later, the two leading apostles of attacking Iraq, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, delivered Philippics against Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs while never mentioning that high level of western support for Iraq’s late leader.

Last week the widely read “New York Times” ran a multi-page exposé entitled “Abandoned Chemical Weapons and Secret Casualties in Iraq.”

The NY Times played a key role in driving the US into two wars against Iraq. America’s leading newspaper is finally facing part of the ugly truth over Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the pretext used by the US to bomb, then invade Iraq. Perhaps it’s trying to atone, or clear its besmirched name.

Iraq had no nuclear weapons, as the US falsely claimed. But it did have an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons – delivered by the western powers. All were battlefield arms, not strategic, weapons. None could be delivered more than 100 kms.

According to the “New York Times,”  after the second war against Iraq in 2003, 17 US servicemen and seven Iraqis were injured by mustard and nerve gas after they dug up buried caches of Iraq’s 1980’s chemical weapons. Shamefully, their plight was kept secret by the Pentagon; the soldiers were refused adequate medical care in order to cover up this sordid story.

But what I uncovered in Baghdad was far worse.

I found two British scientists who had been employed at Iraq’s top secret Salman Pak chemical and biowarfare laboratory near Baghdad. The Brits confided to me they were part of a large technical team secretly organized and “seconded” to Iraq in the mid-1980’s by the British government and the MI6 Secret Intelligence Service. Their goal was to develop and “weaponize” anthrax, plague, botulism and other pathogens for use as tactical germ weapons.

The US and  Saudi Arabia feared Iran’s Islamic revolution would sweep the Mideast and overthrow its oil monarchs. So Washington and its Arab allies convinced Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, to invade Iran and overthrow its new government. Arms and money flowed to Iraq from the US, Britain,  Kuwait and the Saudis.

After three years of WWI-style warfare, Iraq found its outnumbered troops could not stop Iranian human-wave attacks. Iran was slowly winning its bloody war against Iraq.

So the US and Britain supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical and biological weapons to break the waves of attacking Iranians. Chemical warfare manufacturing equipment – disguised as insecticide plants – came from Germany, France and Holland. The feed stock for the germ weapons came from a US laboratory in Maryland –approved by the US government. 

Over 500,000 soldiers and civilians died in the eight-year Iran-Iraq conflict. To this day, Iran blames the US and the Saudis for instigating the war and causing some 250,000 Iranian casualties.

By contrast, in the Anglo-American view, chemical and biological weapons were fine – so long as used to kill Muslim Iranians. Used against westerners, they would be denounced as “terrorism.” In 2013, US President Barack Obama threatened Syria with war over unfounded claims that Damascus planned to use chemical weapons on US-backed insurgents.

Read the rest here

The consequence of the past has been relevant to current events. Mr. Margolis concludes:

the current horrible mess in Iraq and Syria is a direct result of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. ISIS is a manufactured monster that could have crawled out of the germ warfare plant at Salman Pak.

What would a US-NATO and Russia War at Ukraine Look Like? Clue: Nuclear War

At the LewRockwell.com, historian Eric Margolis ponders on scenarios from a possible escalation in the Ukraine crisis that leads to the real thing—a shooting war between NATO-US and the Russia.

First, the seeds to war has already been sown. 

Channeling the great French economist  Frederic Bastiat’s if goods don t cross borders, armies will Mr. Margolis writes (bold mine)

Russia and the West are at war – over fruits, veggies, pork, and bank loans. The cause is Ukraine, a vast emptiness formerly unknown to the western world,  but now deemed a vital national security interest worthy of a risking a very scary war.

Economic embargos such as those launched by the US against Russia may seem relatively harmless. They are not. Trade sanctions are a form of strategic warfare that is sometimes followed by bullets and shells.

Think, for good example, of the 1940 US embargo against Japan that led Tokyo’s fateful decision to go to war rather than face slow,economic strangulation. How many Americans know that President Roosevelt closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping to enforce demands that Tokyo get out of Manchuria and China?

Frighteningly, today, there are senior officials in Washington and Moscow who are actually considering a head on clash in Ukraine between Russian forces and NATO – which is an extension of US military power.

More aggravating factors…

Intensifying attacks by Ukrainian government forces (quietly armed and financed by the US) against  pro-Russian separatists and civilian targets in eastern Ukraine are increasing the danger that Moscow may intervene militarily to protect Ukraine’s ethnic Russian minority.

A full-scale military clash could begin with a Russian-declared “no-fly” zone over the eastern Ukraine such as the US imposed over Iraq. Moscow’s aim would be to stop the bombing and shelling of Ukrainian rebel cities by Kiev’s air force.

The balance of power between protagonists…

NATO could quickly deploy its potent air power against Russian aircraft.  US and NATO aircraft flying from new bases in Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland could seriously challenge the Russian Air Force over the Russia-Ukraine border region. More US warplanes would be rushed into Eastern Europe. Russian air defenses are strong and its air bases are close to the sphere of action. Still, NATO air power has a technological superiority over the Russian Air Force and better trained pilots.

On the ground, Russia has a slight advantage. It has 16,000-18,000 troops on the Ukraine border made up of mechanized infantry, armor, mobile air defense and artillery. A competent but small force, and hardly a menace to Europe, as the pro-war media howl.   Compare this small number of troops to the Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front alone in 1944,  made up of six armies and thousands of tanks and heavy guns.

Why a large conventional warfare is like fighting the last war

Russia could fight border skirmishes but certainly not retake Ukraine with this paltry force. Russia’s once 200-division army which boasted some 50,000 tanks is today a shadow of its past: 205,000 active soldiers and 80,000 indifferent reservists spread over the world’s larges nation. Russia, as always, has excellent heavy artillery and good tanks, but nothing compared to WWII when Soviet 152mm guns and rocket batteries were lined up wheel-to-wheel for kilometers.

Any attempt by NATO to capture Crimea would likely be defeated by Soviet air, naval, and land forces. The constricted, shallow Black Sea could prove a death trap for US warships.  Sevastopol (with Leningrad and Stalingrad) was named a Hero City of the Soviet Union for its heroic defense in WWII

Ukraine’s cobbled together army, about 64,000 men, suffers from poor training, logistical problems, and weak leadership. During Soviet days, it numbered more than 700,000 with the cutting edge of Russian weapons. Today, the army is stiffened by foreign mercenaries and far-rightists from Kiev. Even so, it could not stand up to Russia’s better-armed, better-equipped troops.

What about NATO?  In 1970, the US Army had about 710,000 soldiers in Europe, mostly based in Germany. Today, US has only 27,500 German-based troops left,  largely non-combat support units. At best, the US could probably assemble two weak combat brigades – about 5,500 men total – to rush to Ukraine. The rest of US forces are based in Afghanistan, Kuwait, the Gulf,  South Korea, and Japan, or at stateside. Moving them to Europe would take about six months.

From limited conventional war to the risks of Mutually Assured Destruction

So any military clash in Ukraine would initially be limited in scope and intensity. But a confrontation could quickly escalate into a dangerous crisis. The Cold War taught that nuclear – armed powers must never fight directly, only through proxies.

Nothing is worth the risk of nuclear war, even a limited one.

Let the Ukrainians sort out their differences by referendum.

On the 100^th anniversary of World War I, we again see our leaders playing with matches.

The above chart from Businessinsider.com represents the updated distribution of nuclear weapons around the globe.

For those who believe that a US-NATO and Russian nuclear exchange would be like a boxing match that one can just watch while eating popcorns and cheer on the sidelines, here is a quote from political analyst Paul Craig Roberts at his website:

However, Washington believes that it can win a nuclear war with little or no damage to the US. This belief makes nuclear war likely.

As Steven Starr makes clear, this belief is based in ignorance. Nuclear war has no winner. Even if US cities were saved from retaliation by ABMs, the radiation and nuclear winter effects of the weapons that hit Russia and China would destroy the US as well.

A list of potential consequences from a nuclear fallout from any prospective full scale nuclear exchange can be seen here.

Have a nice day

Middle East Crisis: The geopolitics of my enemy’s enemy has become my friend’s enemy

The current crisis in the Middle East has really been a product of the politics of imperialism of which the unraveling political conditions of Iraq represents just one of the many emerging and potential symptoms.  

Iraq emerged as part of the territorial allocation (divisions of spoils from war) awarded to Britain, taken from the vanquished Ottoman Empire, via the Sykes-Picot treaty/agreement (a secret agreement of United Kingdom and France with the assent of Russia in defining their sphere of influence), following the close of World War I. This makes Iraq an artificial nation bound by deep ethnic and religious divide. And US government meddling in the region has only opened up old wounds and complicated highly sensitive relationships.

The Middle East geopolitics of "no permanent friends and only permanent interests" as explained historian Eric Margolis.

The late Saddam Hussein was certainly right when he predicted that America’s invasion of Iraq would become “the Mother of All Battles.” Eleven years later, it continues….

ISIS is a combination of Sunni jihadist groups fighting the Shia-backed Damascus government of Bashar Assad( a US enemy backed by Shia Iran), and resurgent units of Saddam’s old Ba’athist army, led by Izzat Ibrahin al-Douri, the last surviving member of Saddam’s inner circle, and a handful of al-Qaida in Iraq.

They are battling to overthrow the US-installed Shia regime in Baghdad of Nuri al-Maliki, an Iranian ally. There are suspicions ISIS may be secretly financed by Sunni Saudi Arabia, a US ally.

Wait a minute. My enemy’s enemy is my friend, as the old Mideast saying goes. The US is trying to overthrow Syria’s secular government to undermine its ally, Iran. The US has been using brutal jihadist groups against the Assad regime in Damascus. But now these jihadists in Syria have mostly fallen under the sway of ISIS – which is chewing up the US-backed regime in Baghdad. Confusing, is it not? My enemy’s enemy has become my friend’s enemy.

The major beneficiary from the Middle East Crisis….

Following the time-tested Roman imperial formula of ‘divide et impera’ (divide and rule), Washington played Iraq’s long downtrodden Shia against its Sunni minority, igniting a wider Sunni-Shia conflict in the Arab world, notably in Syria. In fact, Israel emerged as the sole strategic victor of the Bush/Cheney war against Iraq.

That war, so far, has cost the US 4,500 soldiers killed, 35,700 wounded, 45,000 sick and over $1 trillion. Iraq lies in ruins, likely shattered beyond all attempts to put it back together. No senior American or British official has faced trial for this disastrous, trumped-up war.

The blowback on Sykes-Picot

Interestingly, efforts by ISIS to forge an Islamic state in a merged Syria and Iraq is one of the first major challenges to the foul Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 under which the British and French Empires secretly colluded to divide up the moribund Ottoman Empire’s Mideast domains. Today’s artificial Mideast borders were drawn by the Anglo-French imperialists to impose their rule on the region. Iraq and Syria were the most egregious examples.

ISIS appears set on erasing the British-French borders and re-creating the unified Ottoman province (Turkish: vilyat) of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. In the West, the neocon-dominated commentariat calls ISIS terrorists. In the Mideast, many see them as anti-colonial fighters struggling to reunite the Arab world sundered and splintered by the western powers. The western powers are now preparing to strike back.

Read the entire article here

If the conditions in the Middle East spreads and deteriorates, such poses a substantial risk on the stability of the region. Aside from the potential impact on oil prices which will compound on the growing global inflationary pressures, a regional conflict will destabilize global trade and economy (e.g. OFWs)

Don't worry be happy, stocks will rise forever.

Quote of the Day: War fever feeds on ignorance

Ignorance is a primary fuel of nationalism and aggression. Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrel, as Dr . Johnson observed, and the first platform of fools.

Three professors from Princeton, Dartmouth and Harvard University just did a poll that found only 16% of Americans queried could find Ukraine on the world map. Actually, that’s better than I expected, given American’s notorious geographical illiteracy. Seeing Ukraine’s map on TV every night no doubt helped.

Worryingly, but hardly surprisingly, the poll also found that the further a poll respondent thought Ukraine was from its real location, the more likely he was to support US military intervention in Ukraine. Few Americans could find Iraq (Eye-raq to most), Afghanistan, or Iran (Eye-ran) on the map.

“Let’s get those dirty Commies,” goes the latest wave of war fever to sweep the US, “if we can only find them!” Some respondents put Ukraine in Australia, or South America…

War fever feeds on ignorance. If mobs in Paris had known in August, 1914, that they would die on the mud of Flanders few would have been so eager for war. All sides in World War One mistakenly believed in a short, sweet military victory. The great French voice against the folly of war, Jean Juares, was assassinated by nationalists.

“The proportion of collage grads who could correctly identify Ukraine (20%) is only slightly higher than the proportion of Americans who told Pew (the respected polling outfit) that President Obama was Muslim in August, 2010,” found the Ivy League professors.

About the same percentage of Americans believe that Elvis is still alive, or that an Islamic Caliphate will shortly rule America. Ever since the Bush administration, stupidity and ignorance have become fashionable.

This is from historian Eric Margolis—commenting on the controversial poll published at the Washington Post Blog, where the less Americans know about Ukraine’s location, the greater the desire to intervene—at the LewRockwell.com. 

I find the observation of the relationship between ignorance (which should not be limited to geography) and militancy highly relevant. And this applies everywhere, not just to American's perception to the Ukraine geopolitcal conundrum.

I’ve noticed that for the many who agitate and pine for war are mostly those with hardly any inkling of war’s horrors. Their conception of war seem to emanate from the movies or shows they’ve watched or from games that they have played—as third party or from the audience perspective.  They perhaps expect somebody to do the fighting for and in behalf of them, while like in sport games, they cheer from the sidelines. They hardly seem to grasp that in war, the lives of their treasured family, relatives, friends or their neighbors may be at stake while their homes devastated and ravaged. They also seem to see wars as cost—free (I mean economic aside from social costs).

And mostly the same group usually serve as unwitting instruments or mouthpieces of the major beneficiaries of war: the political class—who pitch the war fever amplified by media to gain popularity via the herding effect to justify the imposition of taxes, inflationism and economic repression in order to expand their control over society and their resources. Wars after all are not only about politics, but about business too.

So the other beneficiaries or the cohorts of the political class are the defense industry and their financiers aside from mainstream media.  And all it takes to push for war is to rile up on the emotions of the unthinking electorates. As a saying goes, if all you have is a (emotional) hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Cayman Islands: Success Story and the Coming Risk from Revenue Starved Governments

At the Lew Rockwell.com, historian Eric Margolis describes the success story of Cayman Islands.

Two things happened to change Cayman from insect hell to the world’s second most important tax haven after Switzerland, and the fifth largest banking center.

First, an intense mosquito control campaign and swamp drainage killed most of the island’s insects. Second, the British Crown colony adopted a no tax policy and removed any restraints on the flow of funds.

The New York and London principals of the West Indies port, land and shipping group for which I was working at the time sent me to Cayman to open up banks. I chartered three, including my favorite brainchild, the German-Atlantic Bank.

Would that I had stayed in the banking business. My principals had remarkable foresight. Forty-four years later, Cayman hosts almost 300 banks, insurance firms of every type, and over 10,000 hedge funds managing some $36 billion in funds, as well as registries for ships and aircraft.

The population has grown to 56,000, nearly a third of whom are expatriate financial executives. The inflow of bank business has allowed life without personal taxes and a per capita income of $47,000, giving Cayman the highest living standard in the West Indies. Over 50% of government revenue comes from the finance industry.

With its azure waters, beautiful beaches, fine hotels, well-regarded restaurants, highly developed communications and public infrastructure, Cayman is a paradise for tourists and finance.

Now the coming risk:

By contrast, tax collectors everywhere hate Cayman.

The island’s ultra discreet banks are awash with hot money, particularly from Russia. In fact, almost every major business deal in Russia is run through either Cayman, Switzerland, or Cyprus (though it’s gone bust). This island is a world center for legitimate business but also financial hanky-panky and shielding money from taxes, angry ex-wives and lawsuits.

What makes Cayman so attractive is that it remains a British colony, meaning no revolutions or coups by wild-eyed fanatics. The island offers still largely impenetrable secrecy and a safe place for money. And, to quote Somerset Maugham’s wonderful description of Monaco, “a sunny place for shady people.”…

But Cayman, like other tax havens, is now under heavy fire from abroad. Last year, President Barack Obama singled out Cayman as a major financial malefactor. Revenue hungry governments across the globe are closing in on Cayman.

See the complete article here

If "revenue hungry government across the globe" have been intensifying their leeching of their captive taxpayers, think of what may likely happen when a Black Swan event occurs.

The End of the France’s “bel époque” (beautiful era)?

I see France as one of the most critical countries that may trigger a global debt crisis, as well as, the end of the European Union project that could also incite a regional, if not world war III.

Historian Eric Margolis at Lew Rockwell asks if the current developments would mark the end of the French Belle Époque “beautiful era” or a “period characterized by optimism, peace at home and in Europe, new technology and scientific discoveries” attributed to the epoch of 1871 (Third French Republic) until 1914 (World War I);  (bold mine)

Now, the bad news. Glorious, beautiful, well-run France may be facing the end of its "bel époque." French industry has been ruined by overly powerful unions and their political allies in the Socialist Party.

One would be crazy these days to open a factory in France with its absurd 35-hour work week, endless vacations, surly unions, strikes, and social costs that add 50% to worker’s salaries. Laying off workers during downturns or closing plants involves siege warfare, with posturing socialist politicians fighting employers at every turn.

In an ominous new development, French have taken to comparing their economic malaise to Germany’s vibrant economy where past tough structural reforms in the labor market modernized and made its industry competitive.

Thanks to German’s intelligent system of vocational training for youth, its youngsters are at work while 45% of young French are unemployed. No wonder. French universities keep churning out unemployable graduates in social anthropology, sociology, and film-making.

Government in France employs 56% of all workers, an unsustainable cost that, with retirement at 60 and unemployment benefits – now 32% of GDP – is bleeding the economy to death. Even President Francois Holland’s recent tax increases will not save the economy from ruin – and France from a possible euro crisis.

The problem is that many French know their gravy train must slow down but they can’t bear to change. "La vie en rose" is just too seductive. Special interests – farmers, teachers, truckers, transport unions – demand the "rich" pay the bill. They can shut down France.

But there are not enough "rich" to foot France’s big bills – or America’s, for that matter. Many wealthy French are moving out of the country, like Gerard Depardieu, or quietly moving assets to more friendly locales. French fear that the desperate socialists will slap more and higher taxes on citizens and even on foreign residents. Louis XVI had similar cash problems.

France’s media is full of alarms all about how the industrious Germans are pulling way ahead, as if Germans were somehow a threat to France. This is potentially a very dangerous notion. The Franco-German entente is the rock upon which united Europe is built. Nothing must be allowed to endanger this architecture – particularly not envy, nationalism, and blaming the Teutons for France’s self-inflicted wounds.

What France urgently needs is another Charles De Gaulle who had the courage and strength to end the bitter war in Algeria in 1962 and bring stable government. A new De Gaulle must force drastic cuts in social welfare and spending, and force French to learn a new work ethic.

Socialists eventually run out of money said former UK Prime Minister M. Thatcher, France looks like a noteworthy example.

 

Will the Syrian Civil War lead to World War III?

Will colonial power lust by UK and France over Syria lead to World War III?

Writing at the lewrockwell.com historian Eric Margolis explains of the deteriorating geopolitical events in Syria rooted on past colonial relations:

Adding spice to this dangerous stew, Israel threatened this week to attack Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missiles if delivered to Syria. It remains unclear if these very effective missiles have yet arrived in Syria. Moscow promised S-300’s years ago to both Damascus and Tehran, but delayed deliveries under US pressure. Last week, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad apparently said that the first deliveries of the potent defensive weapons had arrived.

Israel’s three previous air attacks on Syria and threats to destroy S-300 missiles if emplaced there have sharply raised tensions with Moscow. The Russians, whose influence in Syria is being sharply challenged by the West, are low on patience at a time when even Israel is challenging Moscow.

Moscow’s efforts to organize a peace conference over Syria are being thwarted by the EU’s call to lift the so-called Syrian arms embargo and provide more military aid to anti-regime rebels. The entry of some Hezbollah fighters into battles along the Syrian-Lebanese border, and Shia-Sunni fighting inside Lebanon, underline the threat of the civil war becoming regionalized.

Will Russia sit back with its arms folded and watch rebels backed by the Western powers and conservative Arab states overthrow the Assad government? Russia has a small naval depot at Tartus, Syria, but it is hardly of major strategic importance. Of more concern to Moscow is that its influence in the Levant and Caucasus, which is being relentlessly chipped away by the US and its allies.

If Israel continues and intensifies its air strikes and goes after the S-300’s when they are operational (which could take up to one year), Russia may be forced to intervene militarily just as it did in Egypt in 1970 during the “War of Attrition” on the Suez Canal. Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries and fighter squadrons battled Israel air power to a stalemate over the Canal and western Sinai.

Syria’s civil war is clearly threatening to turn into a regional conflagration that involves both the subplot a Sunni-Shia conflict and blatant outside military intervention reminiscent of the 1930’s Spanish civil war. There is also a deeper theme: a major effort to crush Syria, Iran’s sole Arab ally. Right after US forces entered Baghdad in 2003, Israel’s then prime minister Ariel Sharon urged Washington, “the road to Tehran lies through Baghdad.” This time around, the route to Tehran runs via Damascus.

Read the rest here

India: The Rise of a Nuclear Power

A brewing cold war has been developing which has not been in the radar screens of the mainstream.

Writes historian Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:

While the United States beats the war drums over North Korea and Iran’s long-ranged nuclear armed missiles –which they don’t even possess – Washington remains curiously silent about the arrival of the world’s newest member of the big nuke club – India.

In January, Delhi revealed a new, 800km-ranged submarine launched missile (SLBM) designated K-15. Twelve of these strategic, nuclear-armed missiles will be carried by India’s first of a class of domestically built nuclear-powered submarine, "Arihant." India is also working on another SLBM, K-5, with a range of some 2,800km.

These new nuclear subs and their SLBM’s will give India the capability to strike many high-value targets around the globe. Equally important, they complete India’s nuclear triad of nuclear weapons delivered by aircraft, missiles, and now sea that will be invulnerable to a decapitating first strike from either Pakistan or China.

Last February, it was revealed that India is fast developing a new, long-ranged, three-stage ballistic missile, Agni-VI. This powerful missile is said to be able to carry up to ten independently targetable nuclear warheads, known as MIRV’s.

Agni-VI’s range is believed to be at least 10,000km, putting all of China, Japan, Australia, and Russia in its range. A new 15,000km missile capable of hitting North America is also in the works under cover of India’s civilian space program. India is also developing accurate cruise missiles and miniaturized nuclear warheads to fit into their small diameter.

These important strategic developments will put India ahead of other nuclear powers France, Britain, North Korea, and Pakistan, about equal in striking power to Israel and China, and not too far behind the United States and Russia.

Delhi says it needs a nuclear triad because of the growing threat of China, whose conventional and nuclear forces are being rapidly modernized.

This writer has been reporting on the nuclear arms race between India and China since the late 1990’s. China has replaced Pakistan as India’s primary nuclear threat. Even so, Indian and Pakistani nuclear forces remain on a frightening hair-trigger alert within only a 3-5 minute warning time of enemy attack, making the Kashmir cease-fire line (or Line of Control) the world’s most dangerous border.

Pls. read the rest here.

World spending on nuclear weapons as of 2011 from icanw.org

War on Terror: The Imperialist Roots of the Russia-Chechen Conflict

Media likes to portray the “war on terror” such as the Boston bombing incident as either individual (psychological) aberrations or sectarian (religious) problems. They hardly consider the geopolitical or even internal political angles from which may have inspired on such heinous actions. 

Suspects of the unfortunate Boston incident have reportedly been of Chechen descent or from Chechnya

Understanding the Russia-Chechen conflict may give us a clue to the recent events.

From historian Eric Margolis at the lewrockwell.com in 2010

There is an old saying about the fierce Chechen tribes who inhabit southern Russia's Caucasus mountains: "Chechen cannot ever be defeated. They can only be killed."

Chechen are Russia's nemesis. Even the notoriously brutal Russian mafia fears the ferocious Chechen, and for good reason.

Last year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proudly proclaimed that resistance to Russian rule in the North Caucasus had been eliminated. The region was pacified.

Confounding Putin's claim, Chechen suicide bombers hit Moscow's subway last week, killing 39 and injuring over 70. Chechen suicide bombers in Dagestan killed twelve, mostly policemen. There were further attacks in neighboring Dagestan. The North Caucasus was again at a boil.

The attacks seriously rattled Russians and left the Kremlin deeply embarrassed and enraged.

Two "black widows" – wives or daughters of Chechen independence fighters killed or raped by the Russians (Russians call them "Islamic terrorists" and "bandits") – took their revenge last week, as so often in recent years.

The latest Chechen leader, Doku Umarov – all his predecessors were liquidated by Russia – claimed from his hideout in the Caucasus mountains that the subway attacks were reprisal for the recent killing of Chechen civilians by Russian security forces.

He warned Moscow, "we will make you feel what we feel."

In recent years, Chechen "black widows" have brought down two civilian airliners. Other Chechen hijacked an entire Moscow theater, and derailed the "Alexander Nevsky" Express that runs from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Chechen are a tiny but fierce North Caucasian mountain people of Indo-European origin. They, and other Muslim Caucasian tribes, such as Dagestanis and Cherkass (Circasians), have battled Russian imperial rule for the past 300 years.

In 1877, Imperial Russia killed 40% of the Chechen population of about 220,000. Four hundred thousand Cherkass were expelled.

Stalin, from neighboring Georgia, hated Chechen. He divided Chechnya, creating the republic of Ingushetia. Then, in July 1937, his secret police, NKVD, shot 14,000 Chechen.

In 1944, Stalin ordered the entire Chechen people rounded up and shipped in cattle cars to his Siberian concentration camps or dumped to perish into icy fields. Other Muslims followed: Ingush, Tatars, Karachai, Balkars.

Neither bullets nor gas chambers were needed in Stalin's death camps. A third of the prisoners died each year from cold, starvation or disease in the concentration camps. In all, some 2.5 million Soviet Muslims were murdered by Stalin, "the Breaker of Nations," among them half of the Chechen people.

In my new book, American Raj, I entitle the section on the Chechen, "Genocide in the Caucasus."

Gulag survivors filtered back to Chechnya. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechen demanded independence like the Soviet republics.

Instead, Boris Yeltsin's government invaded Chechnya, killing some 100,000 Chechen civilians through massive carpet bombing and shelling. Chechen leader Dzhokar Dudayev was assassinated, reportedly thanks to telephone homing equipment supplied to Moscow by the US National Security Agency. President Bill Clinton actually lauded Boris Yeltsin as "Russia's Abraham Lincoln."

Incredibly, Chechen fighters managed to defeat Russia's army and won de facto independence.

Read the rest here

As one would note, imperialism typically engenders retributions via acts of “terror” or terrorism.

How the Korean Peninsula Crisis will be Settled

Historian Eric Margolis at the lewrockwell.com offers the scenario (bold mine)

Now, the US has finally deployed its diplomatic muscle by sending the new Secretary of State John Kerry to Beijing to try to arm-twist China into clamping down on its errant bad boy, North Korea. The result was a joint communiqué calling on the US and China to jointly pursue the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

China has long advocated this policy, so nothing new here. But the North American media hailed it as a breakthrough in the crisis. In fact, China is not happy with North Korea’s nuclear program, but Beijing considers an independent, stable North Korea essential for the security of its highly sensitive northeast region of Machuria.

Chinese strategists fear the collapse of the Kim dynasty in North Korea would lead to the US-dominated South Korea absorbing the north and even implanting US bases within range of Manchuria and the maritime approaches to Beijing. In 1950, China responded to the advance of US forces onto its Manchurian border, the Yalu River, by intervening in the Korean War with over 1.5 million soldiers.

The collapse of North Korea would also move South Korean and US military power 200 km closer to Russia’s key Far Eastern population and military complex at Vladivostok.

Accordingly, China’s strategy to date has been to talk moderation and issue occasional blasts at North Korea to appease the outside world and its major American trading partner while quietly ensuring that North Korea remains viable. China supplies all of North Korea’s oil, part of its food, and large amounts of industrial and military spare parts.

North Korea’s Kim Jung-un appears to have climbed too far out on a limb by issuing dire threats that include nuclear war. His problem is to climb back without losing too much face or appearing to be forced by the United States.

Prestige is a key factor in dictatorship. An obvious defeat can lead to the dictator’s fall. That’s why Hitler refused to retreat from the deathtrap at Stalingrad, rightly fearing such a loss of prestige and his mystique of military genius would encourage his domestic foes to move against him.

So Kim will likely need Beijing’s help in ending the crisis, and Beijing will be both happy to do so and end up in a position to demand useful concessions from Washington.

Beijing has been claiming that the US whipped up the current Korea crisis to justify deploying new military forces to Asia and emplacing more anti-missile systems in Alaska and a new one in Guam – all part of President Barack Obama’s much heralded "pivot to Asia."

At the end of the day, North Korea will remain as the convenient bogeyman, stooge, prop and supposed “buffer” for the benefit of both China and the US (particularly the military industrial complex and the neocons).

The vaudeville of the geopolitics of blackmail continues.

Will Events in Cyprus Trigger a War?

The Cyprus bank deposit tax fiasco could turn out to be more than just a domestic financial and economic morass; it could morph into a regional geopolitical quagmire or a potential tinderbox for an outbreak of military confrontation or war. 

Such are based on the Cyprus’ unresolved ethnic rivalries, conflicting territorial claims that covers energy resources with neighbors, and the realignment of alliances and rivalries within east Mediterranean region.

Here is a snapshot from historian Eric Margolis at the lewrockwell.com:

But there’s much more to the Cyprus crisis than its dubious banks. Cyprus has bedeviled Europe and world diplomacy since 1974, then Greek Cypriot far rightists staged a coup and sought union – or "enosis" – with mainland Greece. Turkey promptly intervened with 30,000 troops to protect Turkish Cypriots in the north. Many Greeks fled or were expelled to the south.

Europe and the UN have been trying to sort out the Cyprus mess ever since. After decades of mind-numbing negotiations, former UN chief Kofi Annan proposed a sensible deal in 2004 for a Greek-Turkish federation. Turks accepted, but Greek Cypriots blocked it. Britain, which has two important air bases in Cyprus, backed the status quo.

In the same year, the EU committed the grave error of admitting Cyprus as a member without first insisting that Greek Cypriots agree to a peace deal and Greek-Turkish federation.

Northern Cyprus was left in limbo while the south became part of the EU, assuring the island’s ugly dispute would be come part of the European Union. Cyprus should never have been admitted to the EU.

Europeans who opposed Turkish membership in the EU used Cyprus as a pretext to delay admission, infuriating Turkey.

After decades of patient work developing normal relations after centuries of conflict, Greece and Turkey are again up in arms again over Cyprus. Their dangerous problem of overlapping air and sea claims in the Aegean has revived - just when Greece must slash its bloated military budget.

Read the rest here

All political efforts to save and preserve the interests of the political class and their cronies have only opened up old wounds and continues to fan the flames of social enmity.

Will Territorial Claims Dispute Lead to World War III?

All the bellicose posturing over territorial claims are posing as a risk the real thing: World War III.

Historian Eric Margolis points out why

On 30 January, a Chinese Jiangwei II-class frigate entered the disputed waters around the Senkaku Islands, a cluster of uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea claimed by China as the Diaoyu Islands. A Japanese destroyer was waiting.

When the two warships were only 3 km apart, the Chinese frigate turned on its fire control radar that aims its 100mm gun and C-802 anti-ship missiles and "painted" the Japanese vessel. The Japanese destroyer went to battle stations and targeted its weapons on the Chinese intruder.

Fortunately, both sides backed down. But this was the most dangerous confrontation to date over the disputed Senkakus. Japan and China were a button push from war.

Soon after, a Japanese naval helicopter was again "painted’ by Chinese fire control radar. Earlier, Chinese aircraft made a clear intrusion over waters claimed by Japan.

China’s Peoples Liberation Army HQ ordered the armed forces onto high alert and reportedly moved large numbers of warplanes and missile batteries to the East China Sea coast.

A US AWACS radar aircraft went on station to monitor the Senkaku/Diaoyus – a reminder that under the 1951 US-Japan mutual defense treaty, Washington recognized the Senkaku Islands as part of Japan and pledged to defend them if attacked. Japan seized the Senkakus as a prize of its 1894-95 war with Imperial China.

China’s state-run media claimed the US was pushing Japan into a confrontation with Beijing to keep China on the strategic defensive.

Japan’s newly elected government led by conservative PM Shinzo Abe vowed to face down with China. Spasms of angry nationalism erupted in both feuding nations. The Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, who also claim the Senkakus, chimed in with their territorial demands.

A special Chinese crisis group led by new President Xi Jinping has been set up to deal with the Senkakus – meaning any clash there may be more likely to become a major crisis.

Shades of August, 1914, when swaggering, breast-beating, and a bloody incident triggered World War I, a conflict few wanted but none could avoid.

Read the rest here

Oh, you may add to such mounting tensions the recent allegations of Russia’s violation of Japan’s airspace. Japan has ongoing territorial claim dispute with Russia over the South Kuril Islands.

Provocation over territorial claims, for me, have largely been meant to divert the public’s attention over domestic economic issues, as well as, to rally the public’s support by drumming up nationalism against foreign bogeymen.

Although any shooting skirmish that may occur could indeed spark and escalate into the real thing.

Nevertheless wars have been preceded by inflationism. Prior to World War II, I explained how Japan’s pre Keynesian Korekiyo Takahasi’s inflationist policies in the 1930 led to a quasi-coup via the assassination Mr. Takahasi which brought Japan’s military as a political force to the fore, the ramification of which, had been a war economy.

On the other hand, Nazi Germany’s war economy had likewise been mobilized via inflation.

In other words, wars are essentially financed by inflation.

As the great Professor Ludwig von Mises admonished in Nation, State and Economy, (bold mine)

Rational economy first became possible when mankind became accustomed to the use of money, for economic calculation cannot dispense with reducing all values to one common denominator. In all great wars monetary calculation was disrupted by inflation. Earlier it was the debasement of coin; today it is paper-money inflation. The economic behavior of the belligerents was thereby led astray; the true consequences of the war were removed from their view. One can say without exaggeration that inflation is an indispensable intellectual means of militarism. Without it, the repercussions of war on welfare would become obvious much more quickly and penetratingly; war-weariness would set in much earlier.

With almost every major economy wantonly engaging in inflationism, the risks of world at war seems to have dramatically increased. Possible flashpoints are manifold; in the Middle East, the Kashmir region, East Asia’s territorial disputes, or even from the aftermath of a possible collapse of the EU project.

Beware the Escalating Middle East Crisis

Israel’s recent airstrike on Syria could signal the escalation of geopolitical troubles in the Middle East

Historian Eric Margolis at the LewRockwell.com writes,

The Mideast is stumbling into one of its most dangerous crisis in decades. I’m just back from the region – and as an old Mideast hand, I am very worried.

This region is always tense, but right now a series of separate conflicts are rapidly beginning to intersect. We see the Mideast, North Africa and the Sahara buffeted by revolutions and counter-revolutions. Old colonial powers France and Britain, and the US, are trying to reassert their domination in the region. The jihadist are back.

In a brazen act of war, Israel launched airstrikes on Syria last Wednesday in a clear attempt to worsen the crisis in that war-torn nation and challenge Syria’s ally, Iran. Israel’s forces are on high alert and may invade Syria, whose strategic Golan Heights were seized and annexed by Israel. Will more Syrian land follow?

Read the rest here  

The worrying part is the possibility of domino effect from Israel's provocation that could morph into a world war. Mr. Margolis concludes

Russia is growling in the background. Syria, recall, is as close to Russia’s southern border as northern Mexico is to Texas. Washington is underestimating Russia’ growing anger. Israel is still determined to push the US into war against Iran. The Turks can’t decide whether to be neutrals or reborn Ottomans. Caution: danger ahead.