5112개의 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
** Sorry, but KCTU's web-poster for the "Nat'l Workers Protest Demonstration" looks for me more as a call for a sad celebration for its own resignation!
Or alternatively just a call for a "mass prayer to achieve a better government"(^^)..
Yesterday the (North) Korean Committee of Space Technology announced that the "Preparations for Launch of Experimental Communications Satellite (are) in Full Gear"!! The name of the strange object: Gwangmyeongseong-2 (*), transported by the Eunha-2 missile.
But while the N.K. propaganda asserts that the launch of the "satellite" (**) is "essential for the construction of the socialist economic power in Korea" (KCNA), at the same time in the Communist Party of China circulate N.K. jokes, like following:
金正日万岁!
Comrade Jeong Man-yong, a farmer at an agriculture "collective" in the D.P.R.K., catches a large fish in the river. Exalted, comrade Jeong comes back home and asks his wife to fry the fish.
“We can have fried-fish for dinner!” said Jeong.
“But we don’t have oil.” countered his wife.
“Then, let’s have steamed fish.”
“We don’t have an iron pot either!”
“OK, then let's just grill it.”
“There is no firewood.”
Angrily Jung goes back to the river and lets the fish go free.
The fish circles around and jumps out of the water, yelling “Long live the General Kim Jong Il!”
김정일 장군님 만세!
* Gwangmyeongseong-1, according to KCNA, was launched 1998.8.31(well, untill now nobody in the int'l military/aerospace agencies has been able to detect the "satellite" visually, by radar, or to pick up its radio signals..) and until now, also according to KCNA, it's transmitting the melody of "Song of General Kim Il-sung" and "Song of General Kim Jong-il" and the Morse signals "Juche Korea" (very useful!!^^).
** Well, nobody believes in N.K.'s fable about the "satellite"! In fact almost everyone (in the int'l military/aerospace community) believes it will be just a new North Korean ICBM (Taepodong-2) test..
Related articles:
☞ Q+A: Why would N.K. test-fire its missiles? (Reuters, 2.24)
☞ North Korea has begun a game of “satellite” (Hankyoreh/analysis, 2.25)
☞ U.S. in 3-Stage Response to N.Korea 'Missile Test' (Chosun Ilbo, 2.25)
☞ Breaking the cycle of brinkmanship (Hankyoreh/editorial, 2.25)
Guadeloupe, the French Caribbean island, where last week the month-long general strike - led by the Collective Against Exploitation (LKP) - escalated into a widespread uprising, is 6,500 km away from Paris, but the demands of the strikers("rioters") in Pointe-à-Pitre are the same as those of Parisians, as the latest edition of The Observer (UK, 2.22) reported:
After squalls in the Caribbean, Sarkozy
faces a storm at home
This time nothing was left to chance. As he walked between the stands of farming produce yesterday, admired the prize bulls, stroked the noses of calves, nibbled a stick of cheese, Nicolas Sarkozy was followed not just by his minister of agriculture and security detail but by a group of well co-ordinated fans bellowing support. "Nicolas, Nicolas," they shouted as the diminutive president forged ahead through a chaos of outstretched hands, moustaches and oversized animals.
The care taken by the presidential staff to ensure an incident-free visit to the annual Farm Fair in southern Paris was due to more than a well-known preference for bling over bovines. Last year the fair saw one of Sarkozy's worst gaffes when he was filmed by an amateur telling a heckler: "Casse-toi, pauvre con" (roughly "get lost, loser"). Farmers are as anxious and angry as everyone else in the country and such a confrontation, eminently likely, could not be risked again.
Already the hyperactive French president's poll ratings, 36%, are at their lowest since he was elected nearly two years ago. "Sarkozy is playing with fire ... Can he prevent the explosion?" L'Express magazine is asking on its front cover this weekend.
Last week that explosion almost came. The country's worst violence since the riots of 2005 saw youths burning cars and charging police night after night. This time the riots were not in the rundown estates that surround many French cities but in the poverty-stricken alleys of Pointe-à-Pitre, on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where per capita income is half that of mainland France and the unemployment rate three times higher.
The violence resonated with a tense and angry public in France itself. The 430,000 people of Guadeloupe are theoretically citizens of the republic like those of Lille, Lyon or Paris and, though many of the roots of the protests lie deep in the colonial past, the slogans and demands of the rioters were very contemporary, focusing on pouvoir d'achat, the famous lack of buying power in the face of high prices and stagnant wages that is the main grievance of all the French.
"Looking at Guadeloupe is like looking at France through a distorting magnifying glass," said Frédéric Dabi, public opinion specialist at pollsters Ifop. "There are things that are specific to Guadeloupe, and there is a sea between over there and France, but there are all the ingredients everywhere for a wave of social panic."
In an Ifop poll for regional newspaper Sud-Ouest last week, 63% of respondents thought similar violence could soon take place on the mainland - a view shared by their leaders. All eyes are now on the general strike planned for next month. An earlier strike and mass demonstration in January was widely supported and seen as a major shot across the bows of the rightwing Sarkozy.
Though trouble in the universities remains limited - French police on Friday removed students who briefly occupied the Sorbonne as part of a long-running dispute over the president's reform plans and perceived contempt for academics - it is nonetheless seen as "warning signs before the storm", according to one French parliamentarian.
In the face of recent protests in schools, ministers backed down from major reforms. "There's the feeling that Sarkozy has a bit too much on his plate," said Jean-Baptiste Prévost, president of France's biggest student union.
For Denis Muzet, a media and public opinion analyst in Paris, all Sarkozy's talk of "reform", the very slogans that got him elected, now scares people. "Even in September, when he spoke of accelerating reforms, it was only the left who worried. When he says it now, everyone is worried," said Muzet.
An indication of the tense atmosphere came when Sarkozy's closest friend said that anyone who didn't own a Rolex watch by the age of 50 was "a failure". The remark, by millionaire advertising tycoon Jacques Séguéla, caused outrage. One French news website called it "obscene", adding it they would like to shove Séguéla's Rolex down his throat. The daily France-Soir said that "in a global financial crisis [where] people are struggling to make ends meet ... most workers will find this highly offensive".
This weekend a fragile calm had been restored to Guadeloupe, the Caribbean island system that was annexed to the kingdom of France in 1674. Last week saw the fatal shooting of a union official in rioting and street battles so bad that 260 specialist police had to be flown in from France to flood the island with forces of order, in the words of the French minister of the interior. Tourists at the many luxury hotels that support the otherwise moribund economy in Guadeloupe fled and flights were cancelled when the airport was temporarily shut.
Despite Sarkozy's offer last week of measures worth €580m to help France's overseas regions, including aid to poor families, relief from social security contributions and price controls, there was still discontent among the protesters, who have organised a general strike that has now lasted for nearly a month. "There is nothing new in Nicolas Sarkozy's announcement. It's still far from what we are demanding, which is a €200 salary increase," said Elie Domota, the leader of Guadeloupe's mass protest movement, Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP).
Negotiations between employers and the LKP, a coalition of unions and leftwing groups, were restarted on Friday but have been put on hold over the weekend. The sticking point is salaries, with bosses speaking of possible increases of between €35 and €120, depending on the sector.
The unrest has highlighted tensions reaching back to the colonial past of Guadeloupe, one of four overseas regions that are, as part of France, part also of the European Union. "The economy has kept the hierarchy of the 19th century, with all its flaws and injustices," said Nelly Schmidt, author and historian at the National Centre of Scientific Research. "There is a profound lack of understanding in France of its former Caribbean colonies. We know about the beaches, the palm trees and the rum and that's about it."
There is deep resentment of the economically powerful minority of béké, or white, families, often descendants of the slave-era colonists. After being abolished by revolutionary forces, slavery was bloodily reinstituted by Napoleon and only finally abolished in 1848.
"Guadeloupe has had a particularly bitter history of relations with the mainland," said Marc Semo, foreign editor of Libération newspaper. "That history has bred a tough and uncompromising claims culture."
Now the strike has spread to neighbouring Martinique and protests have broken out in French Guyana and the Indian Ocean island of Réunion. But it is the concern that the disruption on Guadeloupe might spread to the mainland that forced Sarkozy to act last week, meeting MPs from the dependencies and broadcasting a television address.
The latter was carefully timed to go out - on specialist channels for the overseas territories - after the main evening news bulletins on domestic TV had been broadcast. For the French government fears pressure to extend any pay increase deal in Guadeloupe to mainland France.
Last week, as Sarkozy met senior national union leaders in a social mini-summit, senior figures from the French hard left, such as the self-styled peasant leader José Bové, and the postman head of a popular new French Communist party, Olivier Besancenot, travelled to Guadeloupe. "Their fight is our fight - against capitalism, exploitation, the big supermarkets who make so much profit from us," said Anne Bronnec, 32, a shopworker handing out leaflets in the Bastille district of Paris.
Many analysts speak of a loss of direction at the highest levels of the French state. For Dabi, the pollster, Sarkozy is suffering the same fate as other European leaders who are trying to convince disoriented populations that they have an answer to the financial crisis. "There is a sense of incoherence and a sense that Sarkozy does not really know where he is taking France. But that's largely because there is an incoherence and Sarkozy doesn't know where he is taking France," Dabi said.
Last week Sarkozy unveiled proposals for tax breaks and social benefits he said were worth up to €2.65bn but ruled out raising the minimum wage or reversing key reforms such as plans to cut thousands of public sector posts. "We will beat the crisis through modernising France," the president said in a 10-minute televised speech. However, massive aid for ailing car manufacturers has already been agreed.
The nightmare scenario is that of 1995, when massive industrial action blocked the country for three weeks. The strikes at that time were led by the public sector, while this time it is the private sector that is most at risk from the looming recession. "The public sector can shut down the country, but the private sector can't," said Philippe Waechter, an economist with Nataxis Asset Management.
Equally, according to Dabi, Sarkozy has little to worry about from the left. "There are very few alternatives to Sarkozy right now. Besancenot is doing well with a message that attacks capitalism, neo-liberal economics, the rich and so on, but that's not going to cause too many problems for the president. His core support among traditional rightwing voters remains high."
For media analyst Muzet, there are two sides to the crisis: the pessimism and the worry, but also "the feeling that something is being born", a new solidarity and consciousness of the suffering of others, "in Guadeloupe today, elsewhere tomorrow".
France - whether in Pointe-à-Pitre or Paris - is more divided than ever.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/22/sarkozy-strike-france
Related articles:
☞ Strike in Guadeloupe escalates into rioting (IHT, 2.17)
☞ Guadeloupe - Collective against Exploitation - General Strikers (IWW, 2.17)
☞ General Strike Against the Economic Crisis.. (PA.N.W., 2.18)
☞ Guadeloupe: A Consciousness-Raising Movement (l'Humanite, 2.19)
☞ Guadaloupe riots turn paradise into war zone.. (Guardian, 2.19)
While the rhetoric between N.K. and S.K. is becoming more and more - to put it mildly - icy (N.K.: "The KPA is ready for an all-out war against the puppet military in the south", "The Korean Peninsula is on the brink of war" etc../S.K.: "We'll retaliate and punish merciless any attack from the North!" etc..) some U.S. politicians, analysts and military officers recently presented a real maverick idea how to deal with a possible Taepodong-(ICB)missle test: "Be ready to strike and destroy North Korea's missile test!" (Foreign Policy, 2.17). (*)
Well, that's really a f****** great idea! (^^)
Firstly it would be a very good opprtunity to test capacity of the U.S. missile defense system (in real life, in real time^^)!!
Secondly - undoubtedly - it will open up complete new perspectives in the U.S.-D.P.R.K. relationship!!! (^^)
* To be sure, some of the hardliners in the S.K. ruling class are sympathizing with this idea (!!??):
☞ U.S. Warns It May Shoot Down N.Korean Missile (Chosun Ilbo, 2.12)
But, please dear U.S. Imperialists (incl. your puppet 'gov't' in Seoul), be careful!!
Because "the vengeance by the D.P.R.K. will be without any mercy":
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