27개의 게시물을 찾았습니다.
RUSSIAN WISHFUL THINKING
The U.S.A. as a "super power"? But not much longer! The U.S. Dollar? Soon needless! The economic crisis will break the backbone of the USA... The U.S. will split apart before 2011... And already before the end of 2009 Obama will order the martial law in the U.S.A.!!
That's the strange vision predicted by the "prominent scholar" (according to the int'l media) Igor Panarin, the Dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Academy..
The Huffington Post (U.S., 3.04) published following story about Panarin's "mysterious prophecy":
Russian Scholar Predicts: US Will Collapse - Next Year
If you're inclined to believe Igor Panarin, and the Kremlin wouldn't mind if you did, then President Barack Obama will order martial law this year, the U.S. will split into six rump-states before 2011, and Russia and China will become the backbones of a new world order.
Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia's state-guided TV channels. And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership.
"There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010," Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy _ a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend.
The prediction from Panarin, a former spokesman for Russia's Federal Space Agency and reportedly an ex-KGB analyst, meshes with the negative view of the U.S. that has been flowing from the Kremlin in recent years, in particular from Vladimir Putin.
Putin, the former president who is now prime minister, has likened the United States to Nazi Germany's Third Reich and blames Washington for the global financial crisis that has pounded the Russian economy.
Panarin didn't give many specifics on what underlies his analysis, mostly citing newspapers, magazines and other open sources.
He also noted he had been predicting the demise of the world's wealthiest country for more than a decade now.
But he said the recent economic turmoil in the U.S. and other "social and cultural phenomena" led him to nail down a specific timeframe for "The End" _ when the United States will break up into six autonomous regions and Alaska will revert to Russian control.
Panarin argued that Americans are in moral decline, saying their great psychological stress is evident from school shootings, the size of the prison population and the number of gay men.
Turning to economic woes, he cited the slide in major stock indexes, the decline in U.S. gross domestic product and Washington's bailout of banking giant Citigroup as evidence that American dominance of global markets has collapsed.
"I was there recently and things are far from good," he said. "What's happened is the collapse of the American dream."
Panarin insisted he didn't wish for a U.S. collapse, but he predicted Russia and China would emerge from the economic turmoil stronger and said the two nations should work together, even to create a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar.
Asked for comment on how the Foreign Ministry views Panarin's theories, a spokesman said all questions had to be submitted in writing and no answers were likely before Wednesday.
It wasn't clear how persuasive the 20-minute lecture was. One instructor asked Panarin whether his predictions more accurately describe Russia, which is undergoing its worst economic crisis in a decade as well as a demographic collapse that has led some scholars to predict the country's demise.
Panarin dismissed that idea: "The collapse of Russia will not occur."
But Alexei Malashenko, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center who did not attend the lecture, sided with the skeptical instructor, saying Russia is the country that is on the verge of disintegration.
"I can't imagine at all how the United States could ever fall apart," Malashenko told the AP.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/04/igor-panarin-russian-scho_n_171730.html
(Lee)MB - as always - Disconnected From Reality!
While Kim Jong-il before yesterday - once again - declared (via CPRK statement) that 2MB can(must!!) GO TO HELL, MB today (via an interview with The Australian newspaper) wishes the Dear Leader "ALL THE BEST!"(^^)..
Just "enjoy" the following news report by today's Yonhap:
Lee wishes N. Korean leader "well," says
he is needed for peace
In a rare direct comment on the North Korean leader, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak Wednesday wished the North Korean leader well, saying his control of the communist nation is vital to maintaining peace on the Korean Peninsula for the time being.
Kim Jong-il is said to be recovering from a stroke he suffered in August, but recent reports have suggested the North Korean leader, who turned 67 last month and reportedly has kidney ailments, may have named one of his three sons as his successor.
"It appears from Chairman Kim's recent activities that there are not any serious problems for him to continue ruling North Korea, and I think it is better to have a stabilized North Korean regime at this point in time for inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation," Lee said, referring to the North Korean leader by his formal title as chairman of Pyongyang's National Defense Commission.
The remarks are a rare direct evaluation of the North Korean leader by Lee, who took office a year ago.
They were made during an interview with an Australian newspaper, The Australian, in Seoul before Lee started his overseas trip. The full text of the interview was released by Lee's office on Wednesday...
The comments were a "get-well" wish for the North's leader, a presidential aide said.
"This means we need a stabilized North Korea for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and that we need Kim Jong-il, at least for now, to ensure stability in the North," the official told Yonhap, asking not to be identified...
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2009/03/04/85/...HTML
Meanwhile Unification(^^) Minister Hyun In-taek - also complete disconnected from reality! - demanded today that "N. Korea must drop it's smear campaign", as Korea Herald reported.
Last Friday's top headline in Korea Times (online edition):
US Ready to Intercept NK Missile
And only one day later Korea Herald reported following:
The commander of U.S. forces in Asia and the Pacific said that the U.S. military is
prepared to shoot down any North Korean ballistic missile if President Barack
Obama should give the order.
"If a missile leaves the launch pad we'll be prepared to respond upon direction of
the president," Adm. Timothy Keating said in an interview with ABC News.
"Should it look like it's not a satellite launch -- that it's something other than a
satellite launch -- we'll be ready to respond," he said.
Keating, who commands forces that include 28,000 troops in South Korea and
50,000 in Japan, said that the military is ready to respond with at least five
different systems: destroyer, Aegis cruiser, radar, space-based system and
ground-based interceptor. All of these work in conjunction with one another to
protect against any missile threat...
But, no problem for Pyeongyang! Because (as Yonhap headlined today) N. Korea says:
Related:
☞ Pyongyang plays the puppet master (Asia Times, 2.28)
PS:
And - of course - the relationship between Pyeongyang and Seoul is still dominated by "misconceptions"(^^), as you can read in the following lines:
''What protects North Korea are not nuclear weapons and missiles, but
cooperation with the South and the international community," LeeMB said on Sunday in a speech marking the 90th anniversary of the '3.1 Movement for Independence (from the Japanese colonial rule)'. "The door to unconditional dialogue remains open," he said. "The South and North should hold a dialogue at an early date."
However only one day later Pyeongyang, via the 'Committee for the Peaceful(^^) Reunification of Korea'(CPRK), immediately replied with a clear:
"FUCK YOU!"(^^OWTTE)
In CPRK's words: "Lee should refrain from resorting to such foolish tricks any longer and step down from power at an early date..! It will be the only way for normalizing the inter-Korean relations."
Related articles:
☞ North Korea warned of missile fall-out (Asia Times, 3.03)
While the UK currently is supposedly (according to the bourgeois media) worst affected (in Europe) by the World Economic Crisis (*) the cops, as The Guardian (UK, 2.23) wrote in the following article, are predicting that..
Britain Faces Summer of Rage..
Middle-class anger at economic crisis could erupt into violence on streets
Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.
Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.
Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.
He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become "viable targets". So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.
Hartshorn, who receives regular intelligence briefings on potential causes of civil unrest, said the mood at some demonstrations had changed recently, with activists increasingly "intent on coming on to the streets to create public disorder".
The warning comes in the wake of often violent protests against the handling of the economy across Europe. In recent weeks Greek farmers have blocked roads over falling agricultural prices, a million workers in France joined demonstrations to demand greater protection for jobs and wages and Icelandic demonstrators have clashed with police in Reykjavik.
In the UK hundreds of oil refinery workers mounted wildcat strikes last month over the use of foreign workers.
Intelligence reports suggest that "known activists" are also returning to the streets, and police claim they will foment unrest. "Those people would be good at motivating people, but they haven't had the 'footsoldiers' to actually carry out [protests]," Hartshorn said. "Obviously the downturn in the economy, unemployment, repossessions, changes that. Suddenly there is the opportunity for people to mass protest.
"It means that where we would possibly look at certain events and say, 'yes there'll be a lot of people there, there'll be a lot of banner waving, but generally it will be peaceful', [now] we have to make sure these elements don't come out and hijack that event and turn that into disorder."
Hartshorn identified April's G20 meeting of the group of leading and developing nations in London as an event that could kick-start a challenging summer. "We've got G20 coming and I think that is being advertised on some of the sites as the highlight of what they see as a 'summer of rage'," he said.
His comments are likely to be met with disappointment by protest groups, who in recent weeks have complained that police are adopting a more confrontational approach at demonstrations. Officers have been accused of exaggerating the threat posed by activists to justify the use of resources spent on them.
Police were said to have been heavy-handed at Greek solidarity marches in London in December and, last month, at protests against Israel's invasion of Gaza. In August 1,000 officers, helicopters and riot horses were drafted to Kent from 26 UK police forces to oversee the climate camp demonstration against the Kingsnorth power station. The massive operation to monitor the protesters cost £5.9m and resulted in 100 arrests. But in December the government was forced to apologise to parliament after the Guardian revealed that its claims that 70 officers had been hurt in violent clashes were wrong.
However, Hartshorn insisted: "Potentially there will be more industrial actions ... History shows that some of those disputes - Wapping, the miners' strike - have caused great tensions in the community and the police have had difficult times policing and maintaining law and order."
Both "extreme rightwing and extreme leftwing" elements are looking to "use the fact that people are out of jobs" to galvanise support, he said.
A particularly worrying development was the re-emergence of individuals involved in the violent fascist organisation Combat 18, he said. "They are using the fact that there's been lots of talk about eastern European people coming in and taking jobs on the Olympic sites," he said. "They're using those type of arguments to look at getting support."
Hartshorn said he also expected large-scale demonstrations this year on environmental issues, with hardcore green activists "joining forces" with middle-class campaigners over issues such as airport expansion at Heathrow and Stansted. With the prospect of angry demonstrations against the economy, that could open the door to powerful coalitions.
"All you've got to do then is link in with the environmentalists, and look at the oil companies. They're seen to be turning over billions of pounds profit in issues that are seen to be against the environment."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/23/police-civil-unrest-recession
* Of course, in the UK like everywhere: the worst affected is the exploited and oppressed class!!
While today the people in S.K. remember the 90th anniversary of the establishment of its democracy movement, i.e. the "3.1 Movement for Independence (from the Japanese colonial rule) and Democracy", already yesterday - once again - the S.K. gov't demonstrated its understanding of "democracy"! (*)
Source of the pics: KCTU, OMN, TiN, VoP
* Yesterday afternoon, a short while after the "Nat'l Workers Rally" (approx. 30,000 KCTU members participated) in Seoul/Yeouido, the activists (approx. 10,000) who wanted to join the "6th Rally to Commemorate the Victims of the Yongsan Massacre" in downtown Seoul were attacked for the first time by large units of the riot cops.
Later, between the early evening and midnight, at least 10,000 riot cops were deployed in downtown Seoul to prevent any movement of the Yongsan-demo.
And several violent clashes beween them and thousands of demonstrators took place near Namdaemun, in Myeong-dong, on Taepyeong-no etc... (well, finally the cops failed to prevent street protests!!).
Related reports by:
☞ VoP
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