Category Archives: Foreign Affairs
American Scholar of Russian Studies Stephen Cohen: NATO games in Ukraine bring world 5 minutes before nuclear midnight
In a thought provoking interview on RT, with renound American scholar of Russian studies Stephen Cohen, who is also a professor at New York University and Princeton discusses where the war in eastern Ukraine may lead.
It has now been six months into this roiling conflict that began back in April of this year which has displaced over 1 million people and taken nearly 4,000 lives in the region.
The West and Russia can’t seem to get over their differences, with the tensions between Washington and the Kremlin changing the stakes for the whole world. How far would this confrontation go? Is there another Cold War coming? And finally, will the world once again know the horror of a Nuclear War looming over humanity? RT’s Sophie&Co today asked Stephen Cohen these questions on Friday, October 10th, 2014.
Meteor Streaks Over The Skies of Central Russia Causing Damage and Injuries
showered fireballs over a large expanse while causing aerial explosions that damaged buildings, shattered windows and injured 1,200 people. The Interior Ministry said that the meteorite explosions are a very rare spectacle, it also unleashed a sonic boom.Ron Paul Bids Farwell to Congress in a Powerful Speech For Liberty
Ron Paul (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
This past Wednesday Congressman Ron Paul of Texas gave his farewell speech to Congress with heavy words of what is needed to revitalize our liberties as men and women for freedom. At the same time the stock market has been contracting throughout the month with many financial analysts speculating a stock market crash, or at the very least a minor market correction. The latter possibility could surpass the 2008 recession market correction where many people lost 30% of their 401k’s and portfolios. With European austerity protests and public disputes over how to handle Greece becoming more volatile, the threat of tax hikes (fiscal cliff) under the Obama administration on dividends and capital gains further strangling the middle class, the question of whether the Fed is actually doing the U.S. a service with QE3? and the recent news that 40 states now have filed for secession from the Union has to make you wonder what has brought us to this point? Ron Paul’s farewell speech reveals the state of the crisis we face pretty clearly.
Ron Paul said this in reference to the liberties our founding fathers warned us of losing.
“After over 100 years we face a society quite different from the one that was intended by the Founders. In many ways their efforts to protect future generations with the Constitution from this danger has failed. Skeptics, at the time the Constitution was written in 1787, warned us of today’s possible outcome. The insidious nature of the erosion of our liberties and the reassurance our great abundance gave us, allowed the process to evolve into the dangerous period in which we now live.”
In regards to the ever burgeoning size of the Federal Government he comments:
Today we face a dependency on government largesse for almost every need. Our liberties are restricted and government operates outside the rule of law, protecting and rewarding those who buy or coerce government into satisfying their demands. Here are a few examples:
- Undeclared wars are commonplace.
- Welfare for the rich and poor is considered an entitlement.
- The economy is overregulated, overtaxed and grossly distorted by a deeply flawed monetary system.
- Debt is growing exponentially.
- The Patriot Act and FISA legislation passed without much debate have resulted in a steady erosion of our 4th Amendment rights.
- Tragically our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
- The drone warfare we are pursuing worldwide is destined to end badly for us as the hatred builds for innocent lives lost and the international laws flaunted. Once we are financially weakened and militarily challenged, there will be a lot resentment thrown our way.
- It’s now the law of the land that the military can arrest American citizens, hold them indefinitely, without charges or a trial.
- Rampant hostility toward free trade is supported by a large number in Washington.
- Supporters of sanctions, currency manipulation and WTO trade retaliation, call the true free traders “isolationists.”
- Sanctions are used to punish countries that don’t follow our orders.
- Bailouts and guarantees for all kinds of misbehavior are routine.
- Central economic planning through monetary policy, regulations and legislative mandates has been an acceptable policy.
Washington Institute For New East Policy Suggest how to Instigate a War With Iran
The interesting aspect about this discussion by the Washington Institute For New East Policy, a Neocon (Globalist) think-tank, is that its primary
Patrick Clawson describes how to go about prompting a War with Iran at a Washington Institute for New East Policy conference.
purpose is not necessarily to debate the current political elements of the Iranian question. They aren’t contemplating the viability, or morality of a war with Iran. Instead, they are attempting to devise strategies by which the government could convince the American public and the world that a war with Iran is the “right thing to do”, even if it means fabricating their own justification.
Think tanks like this not only construct policy framework, but they also write the subversive talking points used in the mainstream media that manipulate the masses into acceptance of that framework. In the video above, there is no suggestion that Iran would be left alone if the will of the public leans away from conflict. Instead, Patrick Clawson ,who works frequently with the Council On Foreign Relations openly suggests that a Gulf Of Tonkin style event be engineered (he uses the phrase “covert means”) in order to force a war into being.
Island Dispute Foments Between China and Japan
An escalating disagreement between China and Japan over a string of islands in the East China Sea continues to spark protest on both sides.
Protests over the islands, known as the Senkaku by Japan and the Diaoyu by China, grew in Tokyo over the weekend. Japan has bought the islands
Violent anti-Japanese Protests erupt across China.
privately, but China says it is the rightful owner. Japan believes the group of these tiny islands lies just outside Chinese waters, but Beijing draws the border differently. The islands are also near rich fishing grounds and known to contain large oil deposits.
Earlier this past summer, in late July Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei expressed China’s “grave concern” and “strong displeasure” over what he described as the “highly irresponsible remarks” made by Prime Minister Noda.
Japanese Prime minister Yoshihiko Noda said Japan was ready to send in the military if necessary to protect the disputed islands of Senkaku,
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is facing dismal public poll numbers and increasing opposition within parliament all amidst the rising tensions with China.
known as the Diaoyu Islands in China. Yoshihiko Noda said,
“If a neighbouring country does something illegal in the vicinity of the Senkaku islands, we will, if need be, send the Self-Defense Forces and deal with this firmly as a nation. But preventive measures and crisis management, including diplomatic solutions, are paramount in order to prevent any such scenario from unfolding.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei also reaffirmed China’s
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei
determination to safeguard its territorial sovereignty. He added that the Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands have been part of China’s inherent territory since ancient times. Hong also took note of Japan’s willingness to solve the issue through diplomatic efforts, and called on them to make concrete efforts in light of over-all Japan-China relations.
Now today, Wednesday September 26, 2012 Japan‘s main opposition party selects a nationalist leader Shinzo Abe who is tipped by some to become prime minister by the
Analysts believe Abe, 59, could lead the L.D.P. to victory in an election that could be called as early as this November.
year’s end, raising fears of an increase in tensions with China and South Korea over rival territorial claims.
He has said he wants to water down a 1995 statement by the then socialist prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama, apologising for Japan’s wartime aggression, and to withdraw a 1993 apology for its use of Korean women as sex slaves before and during the war.
Hopefully this rhetoric charged island squabble will abate and these two Asian Powers can resolve this matter diplomatically. “I am concerned
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is walking a diplomatic tight rope between Japan and China
that when these countries engage in provocations of one kind or another over these various islands, that it raises the possibility that a misjudgment on one side or the other could result in violence, and could result in conflict,” U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said this, when asked recently about a clash between Japan and China.
“We do not take a position on the ultimate sovereignty of these islands,” Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee.
“That is not in our strategic interest and clearly would undermine the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific as a whole,” he added.
These uninhabited islets in the East China Sea are “clearly” covered by a 1960 security treaty obligating the United States to come to Japan’s aid if attacked, a top U.S. diplomat says.
Guatemalan Volcanic Eruption Urges Mass Evacuations
A volcano erupted Thursday in Guatemala, prompting officials to evacuate 35,000 residents, said a spokeswoman for the Red Cross. The “Volcan de Fuego,” or Fire Volcano, began spewing ash at 10 a.m. and
was continuing to belch forth late in the afternoon near the country’s former capital, Antigua, said Carmen Maria Caballero of the Guatemalan Red Cross.
Volcanologists said powerful eruptions were catapulting burning rocks as high as 1,000m (3,280ft) above the crater and lava was flowing down its slopes.
Local residents reported how the roaring of the volcano shook windows and roofs in nearby villages. Experts say the eruption of Fuego, 50km (31 miles) south-west of Guatemala City, is the biggest since 1999.
Fuego exploded into a series of powerful eruptions outside one of Guatemala’s most famous tourist attractions on Thursday, hurling thick clouds of ash nearly two miles (three kilometers) high, spewing rivers of lava down its flanks.
Guatemala’s head of emergency evacuations, Sergio Cabanas, said the evacuees were ordered to leave some 17 villages around the Volcan del Fuego, which sits about six miles southwest (16 kilometers) from the colonial city of Antigua, home to 45,000 people. The ash was blowing south-southeast and authorities said the tourist center of the country was not currently in danger, although they expected the eruption to last for at least 12 more hours.
Hundreds of cars, trucks and buses, completely blanketed with charcoal grey cash, sped away from the volcano along the a two-lane paved highway toward Guatemala City. Dozens of people crammed into the backs of trucks. Thick clouds of ash reduced visibility to less than 10 feet in the area of sugarcane fields surrounding the volcano. The elderly, women and children filled old school buses and ambulances that carried them from the area.
The agency said lava rolled nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) down slopes billowing with ash around the Volcan del Fuego, a 12,346-foot-high (3,763-meter-high) volcano whose name translates as “Volcano of Fire.”
“A paroxysm of an eruption is taking place, a great volcanic eruption, with strong explosions and columns of ash,” said Gustavo Chicna, a volcanologist with the National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology. He said cinders spewing from the volcano were settling a half-inch thick in some places and that extremely hot gases were also rolling down the sides of the volcano, which was almost entirely wreathed in ash and smoke. The emergency agency warned that flights through the area could be affected.
Differences Between 2012 Presidential Candidates Romney and Obama?
Republican and Democratic presidential candidates Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama are more alike than different in their stances on
many issues like universal health care, gun rights, energy, NDAA, the Patriot Act, Iran, sanctions, economic stimulus. bank and auto bailouts, civil rights, TARP, the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, and campaign donations.
They are both for government mandating healthcare, concur that income taxes should remain the same on those who pay the most and they agree the President may start a war on his own without a declaration of war from Congress like in the current cases of Libya and Syria. The distinctions, are that one is more inclined toward Labor Unions and the other is more in favor of big business.
Remembering the 4th of July and What it Stood For
By: Ryan Matthew Dernick
Today when you are leisurely out enjoying the fireworks with family or friends remember this day was achieved through the blood sweat and tears by our American forefathers. Their hope was to draft a Declaration of Independence that would free them from the oppressive tyrannical nature of the British Empire. Tyranny now can be epitomized by the deleterious nature of the global banking system and its threat to not just our sovereign-ties but the entire economic freedoms of the world. From austerity measures overseas, to quantitative easing in the United States, the banks got us vaulted. I leave you with The Declaration of 
Independence July 4,1776 from the the U.S. Government Archives. This is a blueprint for any country or peoples who feel the ugly hand of tyranny upon them.
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:
Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton
Can The Eurozone Weather the Financial Storm?
By Ryan Matthew Dernick
As the Eurozone continues to teeter at the edge of the precipice of an artificialized debt cliff, one can only wonder if the 100billion dollar
The Eurozone now has 4 of its EU countries financially hemorrhaging.
bailout that Spain just received actually will help them. Spain now joins Greece, Ireland and Portugal as the fourth EU country to ask for a bailout. So far, the EU and IMF have doled out over 500 billion euros to shore up debt-stricken member states.
Will the systemic present state of the Eurozone improve? So far it doesn’t seem promising, because June is the fifth consecutive month activity across the 17-nation bloc has declined, dragging down heavyweights Germany and France and likely increasing calls for the European Central Bank to take action to support the economy. Collapsing banks are not the worry in Germany but inflation of currency could hit Angela Merkel’s country moving German’s to invest in real estate.
17 Member States of the European Union that use the euro as their currency are Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland
In Europe’s most economically stricken countries, people are taking their money out of their banks as a way to protect their savings from the continent’s growing financial turmoil. Concerned that their savings could be devalued by a Bank Holiday, or that banks are on the verge of collapse and that governments cannot make good on deposit insurance, people in Greece, Spain and beyond are taking their money out of the Banks by the billions.
The looming fears of Greece exiting from the euro zone relaxed after pro-bailout parties loyal to the banks took weekend elections, though risks are increasing with Spain, the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy, will need a full blown international rescue.
An unfolding two-and-a-half year old crisis has slowed the global economy, and world leaders meeting in Mexico pressed on the euro zone to move towards a fiscal and banking union to fix the crisis that now threatens to overtake Spain.
In Europe, the United States and elsewhere we need to break the walls of ignorance and liberate “We the People” from a selfishly myopic selected few. Is it the purported Too Big to Go to Jail or is it Too Big to Fail? Similar to the ratcheting up of proposed austerity measures through bailouts in the Eurozone.
Lets not forget Jon Corzine White House Economic Adviser, former Governor of New Jersey and CEO of once M.F. Global a sub investment banking company of Jamie Dimon‘s JP Morgan. Corzine lost 1.4 billion dollars of peoples money from their segregated accounts late last year then Dimon lost almost 3 billion recently this year when the credit markets were supposedly stable. Both were met with questioning but nothing resulted from any questioning.
It would be economically prudent to reinstate The Glass Steagall Act here in the U.S., which was put in place by Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the last Great Depression in the early 20th Century to stop banks from insider trading via derivatives but was then reversed by the Clinton Administration in 1999 prior to the 2008 onset of the present recession. Is this irony or another global corporate takeover? This is not a partisan issue, or a national issue but a global issue that traverses any and all political ideologies. There needs to be more transparency on behalf of the international banking community and actual consequences for malfeasant banking practices.
BellwetherPost 