Sunday, June 03, 2012
Seoul Won't Oppose Tokyo's Deployment of Destroyers
Opinion: On Romneyism and US National Security
Which brings us to the presumed Republican Presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. While he stands for a strong national defense--he might even do something about the EMP threat that Obama, like his predecessor, has inexplicably ignored--Romney's economic policy is downright dangerous, so much so that it represents a potential threat to national security. Seriously. Setting aside his record as a wealth-creating but job-destroying private equity baron, which has nothing at all to do with wealth-, value- and job-creating entrepreneurship and venture capital investing, the first Presidential candidate known to have offshore bank accounts is ideologically opposed to stimulating the economy as a means--the only proven means--of ending the current recession/depression. Bowing to his party's right wing, he favors austerity--cutting government spending--at a time when exactly the opposite course of action is urgently needed and uses deficit fear-mongering to justify extreme GOP schemes to slash and permanently dismantle social services.
What does all this have to do with U.S. national security? Plenty. The idea that the United States can afford bad times and mass unemployment as a so-called new normal is dangerously delusional. Democracy itself could again be threatened as it was during the last depression, when the country came closer than most people might realize to being taken over by fascists or Communists. Also dangerously delusional: the notion that a frightened, increasingly hungry and homeless population will have any stomach for significant defense spending and foreign assistance, alliances and interventions, regardless of how necessary they may be (in contrast with the unnecessary Vietnam and Iraq wars).
From nuclear-arming Iran and nuclear-armed North Korea to nuclear weapons-seeking Islamist terror groups, the threats are all too real. Romneyism--a return to Hooverism--is rearing its head at an especially inopportune time.
Copyright © 2012 Foreign Confidential™ Turkey Abandons Syrian Rebels: Report
Thieves Prey on Elderly Greeks
Criminals Target Households Hoarding Cash
What austerity has wrought in Greece: a depression in which people are pulling their money out of banks, afraid of an economic collapse, attracting thieves in the night. Read more.'Republic' Protests Against British Monarchy
Click here to access the website of the group that says it seeks a democratic Britain with an elected head of state--an interesting counterpoint to the fawning coverage of the monarchy.
And … click here … to read about British food banks. Nearly 130,000 people, including at least 45,000 children, are dependent on food banks in Britain as austerity drives the country deeper into depression.Krugman Battles British Austerians on BBC Program
Nobel Prize-winning American economist battles British deficit hawks. Read more.
Fact: austerity measures have failed everywhere, in Europe and in the United States. A global depression looms, an economic catastrophe that could kill democracy, and deficits have very little to do with the problem. The solution--massive government stimulus--is well known and available yet rejected out of hand by the powers that be. Why? The answer must be that massive unemployment is a strategy adopted by forces that aim to permanently pauperize the middle classes under cover of "reform" and "competitiveness."
Related: The Austerity Agenda Unmasked
Christine Lagarde Cries Crocodile Tears for AfricaAssad Denies Regime Role in Houla Massacre
Monday, 4 June 2012
A high-ranking Blue House (South Korea's White House) official says Seoul won't oppose Japan's naval deployment, which is aimed at deterring North Korean aggression; but a formal Japanese-South Korean-American military alliance will have to wait. Read more.
At the same time, this blog has also been sharply critical of President Bush's blunders, including his failure to destroy Al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11 and his incredibly idiotic decision to invade and occupy Iraq, a contained secular enemy that had no weapons of mass destruction and no meaningful Islamist/Al Qaeda connections.
John McCain's maddening support for Islamist "freedom fighters" in Libya and Syria … Samantha Power's perfidious R2P project, which she clearly hopes to eventually use against Israel … the systematic undermining of allies and emboldening of clerical fascists in the name of "democracy promotion" … covert efforts to manipulate Islamism in order to contain and maybe even crack apart China and Russia … more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of world Communism … misreading the intentions of an implacable, apocalyptic enemy, Islamist Iran, and its partner in nuclear and missile crimes, Kimist North Korea … it's all bad, an ongoing foreign policy of folly and unrealism that transcends party lines as it triumphs over reason and common sense.
DEBKAfile reports an Ankara about-face on Syria and a decision by Iranian proxy Hezbollah to smuggle Syrian Scud D missiles into Lebanon, which could cause an Israeli preemptive strike. Read more.
Syria's Iran-backed, beleaguered president has blamed the most recent massacre of women and children on a foreign imperialist plot, saying "not even monsters" would commit such an atrocity. Read more.
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