EU-DIGEST

"Que se vayan todos! - that's the global backlash talking - by Naomi Klein

Watching the crowds in Iceland banging pots and pans until their government fell reminded me of a chant popular in anti-capitalist circles in 2002: "You are Enron. We are Argentina." Its message was simple enough. You - politicians and CEOs huddled at some trade summit - are like the reckless scamming execs at Enron (of course, we didn't know the half of it). We - the rabble outside - are like the people of Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans. They shouted, "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") - and forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks. What made Argentina's 2001-02 uprising unique was that it wasn't directed at a particular political party or even at corruption in the abstract. The target was the dominant economic model: this was the first national revolt against contemporary deregulated capitalism. It has taken a while, but from Iceland to Latvia, South Korea to Greece, the rest of the world is finally having its ¡Que se vayan todos! moment.

The pattern is clear: governments that respond to a crisis created by free-market ideology with an acceleration of that same discredited agenda will not survive to tell the tale.

Labels: Corporate Integrity, Corporate Interest, New World Order

"the party could be over?"
For the complete report from the GNMagazine click on this link

The New World Disorder: Where Is It Taking Us? - by John Ross Schroeder

Author and educator James Martin, founder of the Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford, soberly warns us: "At the start of the 21st century, humankind finds itself on a non-sustainable course—a course that unless it is changed will lead to catastrophes of awesome consequences. This could be humanity's last century, or could be the century in which civilization sets sail towards a far more spectacular future" (The Meaning of the 21st Century, 2007, preface). The choices and options of humanity are narrowing sharply. Intelligent observers of the world scene recognize that we must alter our ways soon or face eking out a bare existence in a shattered and disordered world. Either we are fast running out of time or we may have already passed the dreaded point of no return. Current affairs author and historian Robert Harvey previously articulated his own stark warning: "Unless action is taken as the warm glow of sunset on the twentieth century is replaced by the pale light of dawn on the twenty-first, we will gaze towards the same horizon of global horrors as our great-grandfathers, this time through a nuclear haze. The world is a much more dangerous place than it has been for nearly half a century" (Global Disorder, 2003, p. xxxii).

Czech patriot and former President Vaclav Havel has stated that "cultural conflicts are increasing and are more dangerous today than at any time in history" (quoted by Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1997, p. 28).

Labels: Alliance of Civilizations, End Times, New World Order, War

America's economic power on the Global Stage Waning - by Mallory Factor

The global stage may appear complex, but there are really just two kinds of players: creditor nations and debtor nations. Today, autocratic oil-rich Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and resource-rich states such as China and Russia are developing huge holdings in Western currency, debt, and industries, while democratic Western governments slip deeper and deeper into debt. Though these countries are not richer than the United States or other Western nations, they are now the creditors of those nations. The power is shifting. A new relationship is emerging, one that no longer favors the West. The West’s poor fiscal discipline and failed economic policies have allowed this shift to happen. The economic power of these rising nations began with their central banks purchasing excess reserves of dollars and duros and, later, U.S. and European debt. More recently, many countries have established new financial vehicles called Sovereign Wealth Funds to make direct investments in global companies and industries, thereby extending their nation’s financial influence. Guided by the best and brightest from Wall Street and making more and more sophisticated investments in our economy, these foreign governments are aiming for greater returns, both economic and political, from their investments.

Given their growing economic might, the new “creditor nations” will have the power to further their geopolitical ambitions by using a weapon of international diplomacy and warfare that hasn’t been seen in centuries: economic statecraft. In the emerging world order, global dominance will not be decided only by armies and aircraft, but by greenbacks and euros, rubles and renminbi as well. And the US can no longer simply impose their views on the world. Creditor nations are now projecting power with their economic might — and in new and innovative ways.

Labels: New World Order, US Economy

"Resistance is becoming morally justified" - With GM nearly bankrupt, can America manage?

General Motors (GM) most likely has just a few days before it files for bankruptcy, marking the final death gasps of a company that once controlled 50 percent of the North American vehicle market and sported a peak market value (in April 2000) of $54 billion.While the bankruptcy is great news for America's bankruptcy lawyers and investment bankers -- the pilot fish of American business, snapping up the scraps of food left behind by the economic sharks who create new wealth -- GM's demise also raises a more troubling question: Can America manage? Or more specifically, can American managers still create world-leading industries or have we lost it? First, let's examine GM's pending bankruptcy and the huge amount of money to be made off it by those economic pilot fish. Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the New York firm handling the Lehman case, recently sought approval for billings of $55 million for just three months' work, and is expected to get more from GM.

GM, which has already gotten $19.4 billion in U.S. debt, will require almost four times more -- $40 billion to $70 billion in debtor-in-possession financing -- to create a new version of GM. Bankers will cash in on the GM bankruptcy gold rush as well.

America has recently proven itself to be a failure when it comes to sustaining an automobile industry and our finance industry has only succeeded in gaining control of the global economic system -- right before nearly wiping it out. So can the U.S. economic system still do anything right? Note EU-Digest: If the politicians like it or not, the buck stops with them. They have let this happen and they are still letting this disaster go on. Where is the regulation they promised to put in place around the world to reign in the "free wheeling" of the financial industry?. Maybe it's good to remind government leaders and politicians around the world on what Thomas Jefferson wrote to M. deStael in 1807, "When patience has begotten false estimates of its motives, when wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality". If changes today mean just re-establishing the status quo, millions of desperate people affected by the incompetence of their leaders could very well revert to revolution as the only valuable option for cleaning-up the mess the world finds itself in. Once the masses start moving it will be too late.

Labels: EU, New World Order, Revolution, Thomas-Jefferson, US

As world leaders were meeting to find solutions to the financial crisis, the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board moved to give banks more flexibility in valuing troubled assets. The changes, to take effect in the second quarter, could reduce writedowns and soften blows to bank earnings. In London's heavily guarded Docklands region, world leaders were set to triple the war chest of the International Monetary Fund to fight the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and impose new curbs on financial markets, monetary sources said.The G20 nations also agreed to a crackdown on tax havens, asking the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to publish a list of tax havens, and promising to enforce sanctions on noncompliant countries. This was a long-standing demand of the French side.

France and Germany raised the stakes Wednesday in the run-up to the summit, saying an overhaul of global financial oversight was a "nonnegotiable" take away from the gathering and dismissing calls for further stimulus packages. "We would never have hoped to get so much. This is not the victory of one camp against the other, but shows the growing awareness that the world needs to change", Sarkozy said. Obviously since this was basically a political meeting, everyone needed to declare some kind of victory. If results stay out the politicians we saw and heard will have to pay the bill. The voters usually have little patience.

Labels: Britain. EU, economic meltdown, G20, New World Order, US

Economy Collapse 2009 - New World Order Media Lies

Some questions and answers to the question many people are asking, where do we stand today with the New World Order?

Labels: Economy, New World Order

A New World Order: EU - China - Russia? Why EU and China need Russia - by Nicholas Kimbrell

It is necessary for the EU to go in a different direction, something which is already occurring with the idea of a Kerneuropa, which has its own constellation revolving around it, or the view of the EU as kind of super-market with some responsibilities which are shared and others which are kept rigorously separate. In any case, clarity is needed regarding the direction in which the EU, and not just Russia, is heading.

Note EU-Digest: Author and political analyst Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation set the tone at todays (Friday') opening seminar during a gathering of international scholars, diplomats and political analysts gathered in Beirut,when he said: "After the Uni-Polar Moment," suggesting that "the return to uni-polarity, American hegemony, is literally impossible." Advocating a more rigorous and collective analysis of multi-polarity, particularly in relation to Russia and India, Khanna cited the US, China and the EU as the incumbent and future "centers of gravity." Most of the speakers seemed to challenge the notion of US hegemony without questioning the still-dominant role Washington holds in much of the world. Indeed, featured speakers from rising powers sought to define their policies as distinct from the proactive US unilateralism, particularly in the Middle East. Chu Shulong, deputy director of the Institute of International Strategic and Development Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, emphasized China's desire to end its historic isolation and win regional and global "friends" based on economic and diplomatic terms. It seems the EU will soon need to seek more strategic and economically practical alliances than its present Trans-Atlantic Alliance which has mainly made it a cost sharing partner of the US in military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Labels: Alliance of Civilizations, China, EU, EU Russia, New World Order

EU-Digest Special Report - Russia, Georgia and US: "The infernal logic of mutual escalation"

The blogosphere has been buzzing with comments about the escalating conflict between Georgia and Russia. Based on these circulating reports the following picture seems to emerge.

It is clear now that Georgia 'invaded' South Ossetia first to reclaim what they consider to be their territory. According to Reuters - they have also attacked Ossetian separatists with jets and troops. Also pretty certain now is that the pro-US Georgian leadership, which has ambitions to join NATO, had some sort of assent from Washington before it invaded South Ossetia. Georgia's accession to NATO would commit other NATO countries to defend Georgia's borders, even as independence movements in South Ossetia, Abkhazia - both of which have declared themselves separate from Georgia - and Ajaria take off.

The bottom-line seems to be that the escalation of violence in the area has also become a battle between Washington and Moscow over political control of the oil and gas rich Central Asian territories. It is clear to most observers that the US Administration used the opportunity supplied by 9/11 to position military bases across the region, encircling Russia's southern flank with their own "iron curtain" thereby giving the US crucial military leverage against potentially hostile popular movements.

In respect to Georgia, the Bush administration has always supported the so-called "rose revolution" of the pro-US Mikhail Saakashvili. The US National Endowment for Democracy was heavily involved in Mikheil Saakashvili's political campaign for the Presidency, while at the same time the US State Department halved aid to the country before the elections, in order to apply financial pressure to Saakashvili's oponent. Unfortunately, like the other color-coded 'revolutions', the Georgian one also represented a superficial change in leadership with a new global orientation towards Washington, not a substantial change in the society. In the meantime Saakashvili popularity dropped from an astonishing 94% in the autumn of 2003 to 23% two years later. Washington has consequently repeatedly bailed out the floundering "rose" leadership with aid, and grants, purportedly rewarding it for what they called 'democratic' reforms. These so called democratic reforms including Georgia sending troops to Iraq and allowing US forces to be stationed on their territory and train their military. In 2006 alone former Soviet states have received $565 million in aid programs courtesy of the US Senate, to protect them from "authoritarian Russia". Obviously given the pro-independence separatists trends in Georgia, which benefit the policies of the Putin-Medvedev government, the US is eager to stop this deteriorating situation.

Observers also have concluded that Russia is really not doing anything surprising here: its control of gas and oil in the region is one of its few strengths, and it is exploiting it in the same way the Pentagon does with their military strength. Russia's other strength has been its nuclear arsenal, which it has firmly tucked in its back pocket as a deterrent to other nuclear powers.

As to the conflict with Georgia, Russia can look at the US and refer to Kosovo, where the roles were reversed. South Ossetia has held independence referendums in 1991 and 2006 with no consequences on the ground in either case. Kosovo too did hold a referendum in 1992 without diminishing the apartheid-like Serbian power on the ground. On the other hand, internationally coordinated and recognized independence of Kosovo in February 2008 came through no referendum but by Nato Force. This clearly shows that what people on the ground wish for does not by itself make much of a difference at the end of the day. A factual difference between the two situations are the small population of South Ossetia with 70,000 people versus that of Kosovo with over 2 million.

Russia also knows and fears that the US government's policy seem to be focused on 'neutralizing' Russia's nuclear advantage in the region by aiming to develop a 'missile defense' system around the latter's perimeter, Russia consequently is working aggressively to escalate itsown weapons systems (which are still dwarfed in comparison to the American systems), intimidate rivals, and build up local support - forging new relations with Turkmenistan for example, with a new pipeline to import gas from this country, thus increasing its hold on supplies of energy to Europe.

As it stands now Washington could easily escalate the situation. Looking further into the future one can also see a potential new Brzezinski-advised Obama Administration focussing far more intently on shoring up US power in Central Asia than continuing to fight the costly Iraq insurgency. Present and future US Administrations, in pursuing a "new Cold War strategy", will continue to introduce an infernal logic of mutual escalation, so that even if this present Georgian crisis simmers down, a new one is bound to emerge somewhere soon. The much-vaunted new world order is increasingly resembling the old one, but with more nuclear weapons and less stability for the world.

The position of the EU in all this is negligible. Probably the only positive action some of its members took was to force a delay by the NATO to accept Georgia as a member. Unfortunately, by their own choice, and lack of long term vision by many of its leaders, the EU has no physical force or "spine" to back-up whatever they might decide. Unfortunately this weakness also means that most of the time the Europeans are relegated to follow policies established by Washington, which so far has had more negatives than positives for Europe.

Labels: EU, Georgia, New World Order, Oil, Russia, US

Stocks soar as US Fed, and some other central banks act - to take bad loans off the banks' books - "A desperate move to worsen turmoil"

Stocks rebounded sharply Tuesday after the Federal Reserve and other central banks said they will pump billions into the financial markets to help ease strain from the credit crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average was up more than 150 points in afternoon trading after initially surge more than 250. The program is part of a worldwide effort to help struggling banks and mortgage providers. The Fed — acting in concert with the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada and the Swiss National Bank — agreed to loan banks ultra-safe Treasury securities in exchange for debt that includes slumping mortgage-backed securities.

"The big problem has been the financials, and this helps supply money directly to the banks and may take some of the need for aggressive rate cutting off the table," said Peter Dunay, chief investment strategist at Meridian Equity Partners. "The Fed is basically going to take the bad loans off the banks' books, and the market seems to be loving that idea."

Note EU-Digest: the above seems to indicate a great amount of desperation and panic by the worlds secretive financial community, who now seem to be helping their own before the walls come tumbling down?.

Labels: economic meltdown, New World Order, US Economy, World Economy

The Crashing U.S. Economy Held Hostage - by Richard Cook

Remember when the U.S. was the world’s greatest industrial democracy? Barely thirty years ago the output of our producing economy and the skills of our workforce led the world. What happened? It’s hard to believe that in the space of a generation our character and capabilities just collapsed as, for example, did our steel and automobile industries and our family farming. What then are the causes of the decline? Here’s how I would put it today: our economy is on an artificial life-support system, a barely-breathing hostage in a lunatic asylum. That asylum is the U.S. and world financial systems which are on the verge of collapse. The inmates are the world’s central bankers, along with most of the financial magnates big and small. The fact is that the economy of much of the world is in a decisive downward slide which the financiers cannot stop because the systems they operate are the primary cause. As often happens, the inmates rule the asylum. The problems aren’t confined to the U.S. Unemployment worldwide is increasing, debt is rampant, infrastructures are crumbling, and commodity prices are rising. In such an environment, crime, warfare, terrorism, and other forms of violence are endemic. Only the most naïve, self-centered, and deluded jingoist could describe such a scenario in terms of the freedom-loving Western democracies being besieged by the “bad guys.”

Rather what is happening highlights the growing failures of Western globalist finance whose impact on political stability has been so corrosive. As many responsible commentators are warning, we are likely to see major financial shocks within the next few months. The warnings are even coming from high-flying institutional players like the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund. We may even be seeing the end of an era when the financiers ruled the world. At a certain point, governments or their military and bureaucratic establishments are likely to stop being passive spectators to the onrushing disorder. It is already happening in Russia and elsewhere. The countries that will be least able to master their own destiny are those like the U.S. where governments have been most passive to economic decomposition from actions of their financial sectors. The financiers are the ones who for the last generation have benefited most from economies marked by privatization, deregulation, and speculation, but that may be about to change. Whether the change will be constructive or catastrophic is yet to be seen.

Labels: New World Order, US, US Economy, World Economy

New World Order Evolving - by Ivan Simic

The term "New World Order" (Novus Ordo Mundi) has been used to refer to a new period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power. If we look back through history we can recount various attempts of several countries to create a New World Order or some sort of dominance among countries. Some of these attempts were led by great warriors such as, Alexander the Great (Macedonian Empire), Julius Caesar (Roman Empire), Genghis Khan (Mongol Empire), Napoleon Bonaparte (French Empire), Adolf Hitler, among others. From this we can see that every attempt to rule the world was needless and devastating.

In the very near future, in order to survive, keep national identity and to maintain economy, costume and culture it is more likely that more Unions and Alliances will be formed to create a New World Order; a bigger European Union with new member states such as: Macedonia, Croatia and Turkey. The Union of Asian and Eurasian countries Russia, Mongolia, China and India, The Union of Islamic countries from Middle East and Central Asia, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, stronger unity from The African Union, The Union of Central and South America; Panama, Colombia, Cuba and Venezuela, and eventually The North American Union; USA, Canada and Mexico. After these Unions, we can expect even bigger ones.

Labels: New World Order