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WHY VISIT THIS SITE? Because, for many years now, we have (alas) proved to be correct in our analysis of world affairs. For example see our letter to The Independent of 10 September 2002.  So we submit that it is quite likely our current concerns are worth considering!

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Consumerism

Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff is extremely timely as a trenchant critique of consumerism.

Western (indeed increasingly world) civilisation is at a critical juncture. Either we go for guided capitalism - capitalism which will be profitable in meeting the needs of society - or we continue with unguided capitalism which has fed the age of waste in which we have been living since the recovery from World war II in the 50s and 60s.

Humanity now faces existential threats - climate change, nuclear wmd proliferation, overpopulation, threats of epidemics, exhaustion of resources from oil to water - etc. etc. Quite apart from the imperative to meet these immense challenges by cooperation rather than eternal war for ever diminishing space and resources, it is indisputable that the developing countries cannot achieve anything even near the US and European standards of living in the present age of waste.

Annie Leonard's figures show dramaticaly how our wealth has been spent on waste, frittered on baubles and inessentials, instead of spent on such things as education (including of women being vital for population control), health, alternative energy, water supply, etc. etc.       

The era of waste will have to end one day and resources redirected - but will we wake up in time - or will those existential threats have become irreversible before we do?

We must answer the question - is life really just all about unlimited consumption (percentage "growth" of our economies)or are there other imperatives for survival, other values than material? As Wordsworth famously remarked - "getting and spending we lay waste our powers".  Not only in a spiritual sense, but our powers to survive as a species.  

Our politicians worldwide are a large part of the problem for they do not and maybe cannot concentrate on the whole picture of our predicament - they are too busy worrying about the next election and how to pay for it - or they are fearful that their dictatorship will meet a stronger force than they.

US & Palestine

re General Petraeus’ appeal to Mullen (and indirectly the White House) for a resolution of the Palestine problem as vital for US interests


This key Petraeus move is very encouraging. Nothing is more important for undermining the appeal of "jihadism" and motivation for suicide bombing - in a word for reducing the "clash of civilisations" that we are livnig through since the invasion of Iraq - than resolving the Palestine problem.


Now that Prime Minister Netanyahu has thrown down the gauntlet either he and the suicidal Israeli fundamentalist "right" will prevail - or the US will.


But the "Pentagon lobby" is also heavily infiltrated by Israel's backwoodsmen and by Mossad's powerful influence within the Pentagon.  Then there is the media - especially Murdoch's - and the still great influence of the neo-conservatives and their Project for a New American Century. They  got us (Britain too) into Iraq.


This is a tug of war between Titans. Little poodle Israel has long been strong enough to wag the tail of the huge American hound! 


Here post-Lisbon Europe could greatly help reinforce Obama's US Administration in out-manoevring the Israeli stone-wallers.  The first great test for "new" Europe. But will it pass that test so critical for the future of the West?

Netanyahu's slaps in the US face

Comment on Eric Alterman, Daily Beast - Netanyahu's slaps in the US face
11.3.'10


Resolving the Palestine problem is the sine qua non for undermining justified Muslim resentment against the West and the appeal of "jihadism" and suicide bombing. 


Little poodle Israel is at present wagging the huge American hound. Obama, who knows very well what needs to be done, has suffered a knock out blow. Is he (and the US) down for the count or will he get up and prevail? If the EU can find its spine now the Lisbon treaty is in force, it could greatly help, with Russia, in forcing the Netanyahus and religious extremists to accept a Palestine state. It's cart before the horse to blame the Palestinians for not being a valid partner for negotiations - show them there is a way forward and only if they won't take it can you blame them. (We've been saying this since 2002) 


10.3.'10 re Alan Hart
We at this diplomatic consultancy pointed out in Sept 2002 that the necessary corollary to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was a resolution of the Palestine/Israeli decades-long running sore on international relations. That's because nothing was causing more resentment and hatred of the West among the world's Muslims (and many non-Muslims) than the miserable fate of the Palestinians. 
It is the same today in 2010 - nothing would do more towards de-fanging the "clash of civilisations" and the motivation of "jihadis" and suicide bombers than establishing a Palestinian state (before Israeli settlements make that impossible). 
Because the Palestinian problem was left to fester after President Clinton's effort in 1999, G W Bush (with his invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib etc.) and Osama bin Laden (and his "Al Qaeda and Co.") have together succeeded in vastly exacerbating that worldwide quasi-religious confrontation inaptly called "the War on Terror". 
It is no use fighting in Afghanistan and indeed everywhere else that Al Qaeda and Co. pop up, if the underlying justified Muslim resentments are not addressed - and that means having the determination and courage to get a Palestinian state on track. This is not just a matter for the US. Europe and Russia, if they lived up to their convictions, and together took action, could greatly help President Obama to overcome the immense political difficulties for the US to stand up to Israel's present extremist government - which in fact is acting against Israel's longer term interests - incidentally worrying many Jews in the US and elsewhere.

Comment on Sanctions on Iran, and Israel/Palestine. Israel's grip on US Middle East Policy.

Comment on Sanctions on Iran, and Israel/Palestine. Israel's grip on US Middle East Policy.           
10.2.'10


Mr. Rosenberg is correct. AIPAC is a danger for the US and its ability to have a constructive foreign policy not just in the Middle East but in the world. This Israeli hold on US policy is very dangerous for us in Europe too.  

Alas, Israel's hard line governments are actually endangering "Israel's right to exist" by blocking enlightened US foreign policy. In what was once called the "War against Terrorism", far more important than military action, is the need to undermine the motives for "jihadism".  And the only way to do that is to cure the Israel/Palestine running sore on the international body.  

Even today after the hugely increased hatreds caused by the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, rendition etc. etc., the treatment of the Palestinians remains no. 1 motive for moderate Muslims to oppose the West ("clash of civilisations") and for young Muslims to support Al Qaeda and co. in countries around the world. But  AIPAC and Mossad oppose any real move towards justice for the Palestnians.  All this plays into the hands of the present Iranian Government.  

Gasoline sanctions could - as many observers point out - be disastous and prove just what Ahmedinejad wants to galvanise the Iranian people behind him and HIS "neo-conservatives" (yes- that's what the Islamic Republic's extremists are). He is deliberately throwing down the gauntlet - and it is folly for the West to pick it up.  

We who want to see a new era of intenrational cooperatio, need to be enlightened friends of both Israel and of Iran - despite their non-cooperative confrontational  
governments.
  
Enough said - more on www.dipconsult.eu. JP Diplomatic Consultancy's website

Comment on Prof Lawrence Lessing's article re the dysfunctional US government

Comment on Prof Lawrence Lessing's article re the dysfunctional US government (9 Feb '10)


Professor Lessing has indeed "stated the obvious with brilliance" - something we badly need. 


If I may comment as a European: - 


The "ominously dysfunctional" US government is paralleled by our equally dysfunctional European Union(which the coming into force of the Lisbon treaty has not - yet - improved). 


On the international scene a US President can't make international obligations (e.g. at Copenhagen over climate change) because of the dysfunctional ("fund-raising") Senate. And Europe can't speak with one voice because no one is in charge of its foreign policy. 


With the sunset in the West (much hastened by the worldwide fall-out from the Iraq war) we are not declining "gracefully" (as Immanuel Wallerstein put it) while inaugurating an era of international cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War. (Yet that is essential if humanity is to face up to the new existential challenges without the "endless wars" the Pentagon foresees). 


Instead, the US and Europe are demonstrating the worst weaknesses of democracy (which we are at such pains to try to propagate) while authoritarian Russia and China are demonstrating their ability to take international decisions and to implement them - but too often not in the direction of mutually beneficial cooperation.


As Professor Lessing points out, the US problem could be resolved if only enough influential people grasped the danger and got together (as at the start of a war) to take the needed action. And equally Europe too, could wake up and, with similar cooperative determination, forge a united foreign policy at least for the great issues. 


But in the US and Europe few perceive our peril as they would an incipient war. The established parties won't help - they are either "fund raising" or steeped in the paralysis of outmoded ideologies of left and right. And the media, largely dominated by commercial interests, is ill placed to help with a wake up call. 


We need a leader from outside our closed political shops whether in the US or Europe to cry our deficiencies to the roof-tops. I too, had thought Obama might be that man. But so far he's behaved as just another - albeit brilliant - insider. Might he change faced with defeat in 2012? A leaderless Europe might then wake up and follow. He would need - as he needs now - united European support.

Obama's open files

JP Diplomatic Consultancy - our "round up"                                 5 February 2010


Obama and the State of the Union: look at all those open files!
(n.b. those disappointed by Obama’s ‘lack of progress’)  


Existential challenges: for the first time in history humanity faces a raft of existential challenges – climate change, pandemics, water shortage, nuclear proliferation, and overpopulation (the least discussed).  And all need to be confronted as it is already late in the day.


If there is to be any hope of our species meeting these challenges, it is clear that there must be a shift in the foreign policies of the leading powers from confrontation to cooperation. President Barak Obama does appear genuine in trying to lead in creating the era of cooperation that was made possible by the end of the cold war – but which was already proving elusive before fading away with President G. W. Bush’s eight years of confrontation. But, as we warned during the 2008 presidential election, President Obama is finding it quite extraordinarily difficult to make that huge ark, USS America, alter course from confrontation to cooperation.  


And if the United States does not clearly make that shift, no other major power is likely to take the lead. On the contrary, used to reacting to G. W. Bush’s neo-conservative (Project for a New American Century) attempt to create a uni-polar world, China and Russia in particular will continue to be tempted, and at times act, to take advantage of America and the West’s present weakness to forward their own narrow national interests in a confrontational manner.    . 


So it is vital that President Obama’s moves toward cooperation succeed. Otherwise the Pentagon is likely to prove correct in formulating its dread vision of an indefinite era of unending wars as each nation struggles to keep a portion of an ever-diminishing cake – ever diminishing because of the failure of humanity as a whole to meet those existential challenges.  


“Too many open files”   Our own experience working for political leaders is that just one unexpected development can take a minister’s mind away from some urgently required decision in order to deal with a minor crisis demanding immediate attention. Great leaders can of course focus on several matters at once. They are able to do so because they have well chosen their cabinet and can trust their ministers to brief them accurately and truthfully about any problem in their department that needs the leader’s personal attention. In turn, ministers know that the leader has the talent quickly to understand the issue and give the guidance required.  


But, after seven disastrous years of President G. W. Bush, President Obama has – as he himself acknowledges – inherited “too many open files” (to cite the warning our computers generate from time to time). This would be daunting for any leader – even for one so gifted as Obama. 


To short list just some of these “open files” all requiring his attention is to take a peek at Obama’s work load – remembering that he too, lives a 24 hours day:-  


1. Climate change (over which G.W. Bush lost ten precious years doing nothing). This very complex but top priority problem is perhaps the main reason why a new era of international cooperation is essential. Here America must lead – not promise to act if China or some other country acts first. But there is immense opposition from major corporate interests to truly effective action by the US. And misrepresentation of the issues has confused not just the public but much of Congress. There is also the paralysis of the Senate (see below). Possibly the best hope is for the European Union to take the lead – as it attempted to do at Copenhagen speaking for the first time with “post Lisbon” unity – and so obliging the US to follow. A strategy of “after you, Claude” requiring some hours of briefing and careful consideration by the President himself.    


2. The threat of nuclear proliferation, presently from North Korea and Iran, is perhaps the second most urgent problem requiring far greater cooperation from the major powers. Here much depends on improved relations especially with Russia – the only other possessor of a huge stock of nuclear weapons. That in turn requires rebuilding trust by definitively ending the neo-conservative uni-polar policies that Russia, China and other countries believe the US is continuing to pursue. In the case of North Korea, the best hope for success if for China, Russia, Japan and other countries involved to take the lead. In the case of Iran, once again real results are most likely to come from pressure by Russia and the European Union, backed by other countries in the region. But arranging for the US to back the initiatives of others demands great diplomatic skill and coordinatioin – requiring the President’s personal attention.

3. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars undertaken simultaneously by G. W. Bush Because simultaneous, and thus over-straining American resources, they have morphed into two “Vietnams” which have to be dealt with at the same time (“Vietnams” in the sense “now we’re in, how to do we get out with least damage”) The outcome in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan still remains decidedly uncertain. At this late stage Obama has few options in both striving to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible without a collapse of security, and striving to hold Afghanistan long enough to internationalise the stabilisation of the country. These formidable tasks are all the more difficult thanks to the widespread perception by friends and enemies alike that the US is close to losing both the wars Present G W Bush started.    


4. Closely connected to both these wars is the “clash of civilisations” (Islam versus the secular West) – greatly exacerbated by Al Qaeda’s stunning success with “9/11” – a provocation designed to provoke a disproportionate ill-directed response from the US. The Iraq war, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, extraordinary rendition, and the failure to resolve the Palestine problem have all helped to make Al Qaeda’s gamble a huge success: it has successfully spawned offspring not only in Islamic countries but also in Western countries, notably the United Kingdom. This requires a comprehensive international effort to undermine Al Qaeda’s appeal – starting with a major attempt to resolve the Palestine problem, for the plight of the Palestinians still remains the No.1 reason for Muslim resentment and a major motive for “jihadism” and suicide attacks.    


5. But the decades old Palestine problem which might at last have been resolved in the wake of “9/11” at the height of America’s international popularity, is stuck as never before with extremists dominant in both Israel and Palestine. And this at a time when the US is unable to pursue its own foreign policy in the Middle East because of the overwhelming influence of hard line Israeli governments through Jewish lobbying of both Congress and the media, and through the Mossad’s peculiarly close relationship with the Pentagon and the CIA. This provoked the second intifada and the electoral victory of Hamas – equally as obdurate as its Israeli opponent.  The virtual Israeli “veto” freezes all attempts to establish a Palestine state, and hence to diminish Al Qaeda & Co.’s appeal and enable majority non “jihadi” Muslims to take a stand against violence without being labelled American stooges.


6. The Palestine problem and much else that needs to be resolved in the Middle East again comes back to the fact that no US president can achieve his foreign policy aims without international support. And he has to start with mending fences with the European Union and deftly encouraging the ability of the Union to speak with one voice on the international stage now that the Lisbon treaty has came into force. That is not impossible – as mentioned, it happened at the Copenhagen conference on climate change. But restoring Western unity is not enough. As President Obama has acknowledged, nothing much can be done without Russia – that other essentially European country. And reconciling Russia and Europe so bringing Russia into the “greater West” is a formidable task after and suspicions and hostility aroused not just by Putin’s Russia, but also by G W Bush’s America and some of the Europeans themselves. Nevertheless the national interests of the US, the EU, and Russia coincide remarkably – and this is recognised by clearer heads in all three.


7. And on top of these great political challenges President Obama has to grapple with the financial and economic collapse from the final year of the last US administration - essentially caused by President G W Bush continuing the fiscal deregulation begun by his predecessors of both parties, and which he exacerbated by going recklessly to war on a massive tax cut.  At the root of the financial crisis is the strange but tenacious return of laissez-faire capitalist ideology notably under Britain’s former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher and America’s President Reagan, neither of whom appear to have grasped the lessons of the Great Depression of the 1930s which led to the post-Keynesian pragmatic economics of the post World War II years where banking was confined to banking leaving risky speculation to other concerns. Fiscal discipline required annual budget surpluses to have large stimulus funds available to cushion trade cycle slumps. But under G W Bush the significant surplus left by the Clinton administration was replaced by large and ever growing deficits during years when the economy was healthy.  So President Obama has been forced to further increase the deficit to provide the huge stimulus needed after years of government and private prodigality. But to do this he has has to do all he can to de-fang the opposition with its long outdated laissez-faire concepts and its refusal to accept that capitalism, to be socially acceptable, requires rules and their enforcement every bit as much as, say, football.


8. The Great Depression of the 1930s absorbed the lion’s share of the attention of both President Hoover and President Roosevelt but neither had also to deal with climate change, two “Vietnams”, nuclear proliferation etc. let alone one other “open file”: the American “addiction to oil” and the related collapse of the automobile industry partly due to government failure to require less gas-guzzling products. Lessening oil-addiction requires drastic economies, securing oil supplies, and major investment in alternative energy in very tight fiscal conditions.     


9. Another aspect of the financial crisis is the US’ huge deficits on both balance of trade and balance of payments, which, coupled with Chinese undervaluation of their currency, have led to China’s vast  holdings of US Treasury bonds giving China a major say over US and Western financial policies. Here part of the solution is to encourage savings when so many Americans are “under water” with mortgage and credit card debt. Even more difficult is persuading an exultant China that beggar my neighbour is not in its long term interest.   


10. Then on the home front there is the imperative for the US to catch up with other advanced nations in providing universal health care – all but ignored by G.W. Bush. And health care is only one of America’s political problems that cannot be resolved without standing up to corporate interests and their lobbying power. But the big corporations are shielded by the sharp division of American society between the “politically correct” the self-described “progressives” and the traditionalist conservatives, particularly in the “red” states where ordinary people  vote Republican against their financial interests to preserve what they see as their traditional morality, their way of life. So there is the task of gathering a sharply divided electorate behind the internal and external policies required by a pragmatic approach to governing. That means reassuring both “Americas” and that means persuading each side to compromise. And that is essential if Obama’s welcome pragmatism is to continue into a second term.
                                          
11. There are of course even more “open files”, but no list can leave out the present near ungovernability of the United States. None of the great challenges the United States and the West) faces can be resolved because the present filibuster arrangements require a 60 vote majority in a hundred member Senate to pass legislation. And at present the Republican party is in no mood to help a Democrat President to achieve the essential changes in foreign and domestic policy that the country urgently needs. Exploiting the President’s difficulties – in large measure caused by them -  their eyes are on this year’s Congressional elections and, already, on the 2012 presidential election.  So something needs to be done about the filibuster so that government can be carried on with a simple majority in the Senate.


Many people, including Americans, do not realise how far the Senate is profoundly undemocratic.  While 4 states have a population of over 18 million, 21 have a population under 3 million and 6 have less than a million  – yet all are represented by two senators. The two senators from California represent 37 million people, while those from Wyoming represent just over half a million! Worse, of the four most populous states three voted Democrat in 2008 – only Texas went Republican. And in the 21 states with a tenth of the population of Florida, the majority are central “red” states that are Republican. So even though the Democrats have a simple majority in the Senate, all legislation requiring a filibuster proof vote of 60, can be blocked by the senators from just 5 of the Republican central states whose electors typically have little interest in the great questions of the day. In a time of acute party conflict when the minority party is bent on wrecking the presidency, only a reform of the filibuster rules will make America able to take a full part in international affairs. Finding a way out of this paralysis is far from easy, and another urgent call on the President’s attention. Because all treaties must be approved by the Senate, America could not go to Copenhagen with a guaranteed offer for approval. Europe could, and so could China.   


12.  As if all this was not agenda enough for a superman, another element in the separation of powers remains under the control of G W Bush “right wing” appointees - the Supreme Court, which has just issued a judgment that threatens to tip future elections into the hands of the more extreme Republicans. It ruled 5 to 4 that there is effectively no financial limit to what corporations may spend on candidates’ election expenses. As America’s democracy depends in large measure on any administration’s ability to stand up to the great corporations and financial entities where necessary, means must somehow be found to negate this judgment. But how pass a Constitutional Amendment or even corrective legislation with the Senate as it is? That’ another dilemma for the President.


There are many other open files requiring some attention from the President, such as countering the misinformation of an overwhelming “right wing” media (notably Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation,slashing waste from the Pentagon's over $700bn budget (including the $159bn for the two wars and the the supplementary $33bn requested for the Afghanistan surge), mending relations with an increasingly independent Latin America, and responding to the situation the Sudan where peace in the South is again at risk, and the conditions in Darfur remain inhuman.  But we have said enough to demonstrate President Obama’s Herculean workload and the need for patriotic Americans to sink their bitter “progressives” versus traditionalist differences and back this unusually gifted President who is blocked by so many ill-wishers from taking the actions needed to bring about the change he has promised. The US is the world’s lead country and the world is imperilled when its institutions are clogged and its electorate polarised. As never before there is a need for true patriotism and a readiness to compromise – and this applies not only to the public and Congress, but to the media.           
                                                                                                [ends, 2750 wds

Corporate entity - the Supreme Court Decision

Corporate entity - the Supreme Court Decision


By dip consult | January 23, 2010 
This Supreme Court decision is alarming for us in Europe. We had to suffer 8 years of G W Bush gravely damaging the Western position in the world. In most of our countries there are strict rules about financial support for parties and individual candidates. This ruling appears to make the US - the lead democracy - an exception. 


The nightmare for us is Obama - whatever we may think about his effectiveness - losing in 2012 and the Republicans returning backed with unlimited corporate contributions (bribes too?) with an extreme right Congess and another President who is a follower of neo-conservatism. (Even with Mme Palin! Though that seems less likely now).


So, from our point of view it is essential to undo the Supreme Court's ruling by legislation or by constitutional amendment even before this November's Congressional elections (When with this ruling in place the Republicans could end the Democratic majority)

Why do they hate us?

 Western hypocrisy prevents us reducing the motives for jihad
                     We must answer "why do they hate us?"


The extraordinary hypocrisy of "the West" has been even more difficult to overcome since the invasion of Iraq and the manifold disasters that came therefrom. One reason is that our leaders and representatives cannot bring themselves to admit to so great an error. 


That means they cannot face up to the real motives of Al Qaeda, "jihadsts" (suicide or other) and understand the silence of so very many non-violent Muslims.
Bin Laden puts Israel/Palestine as his third motive in declaring war on America in 1998. (Presumably for religious and his own political reasons). 


But there is no doubt that, in the minds of probably the great majority of Muslims and many others (like myself) Israel's treatment of the conquered Palestinians decades after the Arab nations' defeat is so shocking and inhuman that it is the first cause of anti-American and anti Israeli bitterness - and thus the main motive for many young Muslims joining to fight a guerrilla or terrorist war.


Since then of course there has been the Iraq war, Abu Graib, Bagram, rendition, the acceptance of large scale civilian casualties - etc. etc. (And most particularly Israel's wars against Lebanon and occupied Gaza). All this, coming on top of the Palestine issue, has vastly increased Muslim feelings of bitterness and impotence - and so vastly increased the motivation for young Muslims to immolate themselves for "jihad".


There is another factor - America has lost in Iraq and is losing in Afghanistan. Throughout the Muslim world and in the West, "Al Qaeda and Co" (clones) are succeeding in spreading fear and mayhem. This perception of the accelerating "Decline of the West" greatly increases the attraction of "being in for the kill."


Our Western failure to admit our errors even to ourselves stops us from recognising that one side of the anti-terrorist medal is security, but the other is diminishing the motivation for Islamic terrorists. That implies recognising the understandable hatred of so many Muslims and doing something to correct this. And the obvious and easiest first step is to act decisively to resolve the Palestine problem.


This is something the Obama administration cannot do because it is too weak in Congress, too beset with other top priorities, and it is faced with the immense power of the Israel lobby in Congress and in the media (especially Murdoch's) and the symbionic relationship between the Pentagon and the Mossad.


Europe surprised me by having a unified voice at Copenhagen. If it can now - post Lisbon - have a united determination to cure the running sore of  Palestine which has dogged international affairs for so long, then it can greatly - perhaps critically - help the Obama administration to oblige the Israeli government to achieve a two state solution.   


But, as things are, it is no use lamenting that "moderate Muslims" are not speaking out against terrorism. Anyone who does so, appears to side with America's and the West's evils in supporting Israel when Israel is so clearly in the wrong (and indeed is itself embracing suicidal policies as so many Jews and Israelis point out). 


Until we in the West understand this we cannot begin to defang terrorism by removing legitimate grievances.  As Burns put it "Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us".

re PLEASE CUT OBAMA SOME SLACK

18 December 2009   re PLEASE CUT OBAMA SOME SLACK


We in Europe (for the most part) envy you who have a brilliant president, and we are dismayed that so many of you lucky Americans are so critical, even opposed, to him instead of helping him. Not just your right wing Christian freaks and your Cheney neo-conservatives, but your so-called "progressives" (we call ours "politically correct") who seem more interested in gay marriage, abortion at government expense, rushing out of Afghanistan and Iraq no matter the consequences etc. 


Far too many Americans simply do not realise that even a political genius - and Obama may yet prove to be one - cannot quickly deal with "too many open files": in other words the ten year catastrophe of the G W Bush years. G W got us two "Vietnams" (he got us into and then abandoned Afghanistan for Iraq, and Obama has to find a way out of both without total disaster); ten years of neglect of climate change (maybe it's to late now to avoid appalling consequences); failure to get the US what we all have - universal health care; actual encouragement of the plutocracy and big business now all but all-powerful in US politics; and subservience of US mid East foreign policy to extremist Israeli governments. And the list of these open files goes on and on - and there's only 24 hours in a day. 


Faced with such bitter opposition and a far from effectively Democratic Congress, he has tried to seek some bi-partisanship, but the hard right in the Senate (a most undemocratic institution!) won't yield - the Republicans have their eyes on the mid-term, even the Presidential election. So anything goes to bring down the US president. 


For us in Europe the possibility of a return to Republican rule is a nightmare. American democracy plus the US Supreme Court got us G W Bush. And at one point it looked as if McCain would win in 2008 and quite possibly deliver us President Madame Pailin! 


For heavens sake, you "progressives", recognise your (and our) existential predicament and back Obama! He's your (and our) best hope - at least he understands what needs to be done - and your extremists on left and right are out to ditch him! You too, must learn that compromise is an essential element in democracy - though of course the problem is just how far to compromise, and just what elements of one's own agenda can be postponed in order to get vital things done. Abortion, gay marriage, etc. and quitting wars precipitately alienate maybe half of the US electorate. Do you want to lose control of Congress in this year's elections?

Chilcot Inquiry

THE UK's CHILCOT INQUIRY: CAN IT REVEAL THE REAL REASONS FOR THE INVASION OF IRAQ, AND WHY BOTH US AND UK DEMOCRACY FAILED TO STOP IT?                                     
16 December 2009 
  
The UK’s ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war has very broad terms of reference: to examine the UK’s involvement in Iraq both during the run up to the conflict and the military action and its aftermath – how decisions were made and actions taken over the period from the summer of 2001 to July 2009. 


We may find out why Mr. Blair did not follow Harold Wilson’s precedent over Vietnam and refuse British involvement in Iraq. But this is an inquiry by UK "Mandarins" - the cream of the UK's bureaucracy. So there is much concern that two vital questions will be dodged :- what were the real reasons for the invasion? And why did both US presidential democracy and UK parliamentary democracy fail so spectacularly by voting for war without considering the consequences? Answers are essential if, as is claimed, the purpose of Chilcot is to draw lessons for the future.


How was it that UK and US elected representatives in Parliament and Congress – Labour and Conservative, Republican and Democrat – came to authorise the war (House of Commons, 18 March 2003, 412-149, House of Representatives 10 October 2002, 296-133, Senate next day 77-23). How did such overwhelming majorities ignore the equally overwhelming non-secret evidence of the unacceptably severe worldwide repercussions almost certain to follow an invasion not approved by the UN Security Council?


Yet there were several top “establishment” figures, on both right and left, warning against an “unapproved” invasion. To cite just three: Brent Scowcroft, widely respected Republican top security guru, warned on 4 August 2002 that an invasion “could turn the whole region into a cauldron and thus destroy the ‘war on terrorism’”,.and Robin Cook, former British Labour Foreign Secretary, in his resignation speech on 17 March 2003, stressed the dire consequences for the West of losing the extraordinary worldwide backing the US had achieved after “9/11”. Veteran Senator Byrd’s even more forceful and prescient speeches of 12 February 2003 and 19 March 2003 set out the principal reasons against giving war powers to President G.W. Bush. How was it that these and many other distinguished voices went all but unheard by major media and by elected representatives in the UK and the US?


We are not talking rocket science – just a basic knowledge of foreign affairs and a dose of common sense! My own piece in The Independent on 10 September 2002, six months before the invasion, merely voiced what many well qualified observers had warned several more months earlier – that 9/11 was clearly designed to provoke a unilateral disproportionate and ill-directed response from the United States to destabilise the Middle East, provoke a clash of civilisations, and create worldwide economic and political havoc to Al Qaeda’s advantage; President G. W. Bush’s occupation of Afghanistan had won all but unanimous support worldwide, and 9/11 had not succeeded - but an invasion of Iraq could well prove exactly what Al Qaeda had sought to trigger.  


In 2002 any elected representative could have done as Senator Byrd did and gather their own cogent reasons for opposing an Iraq war. Among those circulating at the time:-
1. It would be folly to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq while Afghanistan was still unfinished business. It would inevitably lose to Iraq top priority for troops and reconstruction – so putting in jeopardy success in Afghanistan.


2.  An invasion would much help Al Qaeda in stirring up anti-Western and anti-Israeli bitterness when what was needed was to undercut Al Qaeda’s appeal with a major effort to cure the running sore of Israel/Palestine - never had the chances of success been greater.


3.  An invasion not approved by the UN Security Council would split the West and gravely weaken NATO given French and German opposition.


4.  A weakened UN would inhibit the emergence after the Cold War of a new     era of cooperation indispensable for confronting, not only terrorism, but other great issues from genocide to existential challenges, like climate change.  


5.  Occupying a second Muslim country would greatly assist Al Qaeda in provoking the“clash of civilisations” it needed to expand terrorism from Pakistan to Morocco and within the Western countries themselves.


6.  Putting US forces in Iraq to its west as well as in Afghanistan to its east would surely end Iran’s tentative co-operation in 2002 over the removal of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The reformists would lose out to the hard-liners. And Iran would use all means to exert maximum influence not just in Iraq but in the whole region.


7.  Because Iraq is fissiparous – replete with ethnic and religious divides -. serious civil disturbance must be anticipated unless Saddam Hussein were immediately replaced by a firm interim governor. But the projected troop levels would be too low to cope. Even more ominously, Britain was known to have complained to the US of a lack of planning for the occupation and eventual withdrawal.            


8.  Saddam Hussein’s fascist style secular government was doing the West’s work – preventing Al Qaeda from getting a foothold in Iraq. So Iraq could wait at least while the French plan for beefed up inspections ran its course.


9.  Independent experts were agreed that Iraq was far from obtaining nuclear weapons and had no means of effective delivery abroad of chemical or biological weapons. Invading Iraq would impede the urgent international effort required to deal with North Korea’s then imminent nuclear weapons capability, thus dissuading others, such as Iran, from proliferating. 


And what we most need the truth about:- 


10. There was compelling circumstantial evidence that Vice President Cheney and his fellow neo-conservatives in top positions in the Bush administration saw the occupation of Iraq as the key to clinching US dominance in a uni-polar world – so ensuring success for their much publicised Project for New American Century. A dazzling prospect for the G. W. Bush presidency, but one doomed to failure because so obviously based on ignorance of the realities of the Middle East and so heedless of the determined opposition to US global hegemony of Russia, China and even of some allies.


With such compelling arguments around - what prevented a cross-party refusal to follow Bush and Blair? Party loyalty on such a crucial issue should not have choked debate in the UK parliament just because the party leaders, Mr. Blair and Mr. Duncan Smith, were pro-war. Or do backbench MPs and members of Congress no longer perceive themselves as watchdogs for their constituents and their country? Were many simply beguiled by the intelligence that was so obviously being manipulated?  How many naive humanitarians voted primarily to end a cruel tyranny? How many mistakenly believed Iraq would be a cake-walk? How many failed to seek independent advice on foreign affairs? How many – particularly in Congress but also some UK MPs – were influenced by electoral considerations?


While the UK and the US commend the virtues of democracy to the world we need to ask with Senator Byrd at that fateful Senate Debate why was the Senate – and equally the UK Parliament – “silent - ominously, dreadfully silent”. Why was there “no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out to the nation the pros and cons of this particular war“? This is all the more extraordinary when the British people, usually so un-demonstrative - were manifesting widespread opposition to the proposed invasion (e.g. the “March of the Million” through London) and polls suggested that a majority of Americans did not want an invasion without the British.


This grave failure of democracy in both the UK and the US must be explained and the facts faced if the political and media “establishments” of both countries are to make the fundamental readjustments needed to move on from the G. W. Bush era of confrontation and its dire worldwide consequences, into a long overdue era of international cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War.


To claim “we were tricked into war” is no excuse, rather it is an admission of culpable negligence if pleaded by our elected representatives. And to try to hide the full reasons for the invasion - especially the ill-conceived attempt to clinch US global hegemony via Iraq - will leave the unattainable dream of a uni-polar world alive for the far right and the neo-cons to brandish in an effort to wreck the Obama administration's efforts to bring in a new era of international cooperation after the self-destructive years of G.W. Bush confrontation. 


Can Chilcot - an Inquiry by those closest to the UK government apparatus, and the US/UK media - so tainted by majority support for the invasion - now bring themselves to face the truth about Iraq and give it to the British and American people? Or will the lessons of "Iraq" never be learned?                                                                                                          
                                                                                                             [ends

STOP BLAIR BECOMING EU "PRESIDENT"

STOP BLAIR BECOMING EU "PRESIDENT"         25 Oct. 2009


tags: stop Blair, Bush, EU Presidency, Sarkozy, Merkel, Iraq war, Afghanistan 


Thank you, Lord Rees-Mogg! Yes -  Blair must be stopped! How can any European leader - particularly a French or German leader - for a moment think of appointing Blair EU "President" ? 

No European has done as much harm to the EU as Tony Blair who broke with France and Germany dividing our continent by invading Iraq with the hapless G.W. Bush. No one, not G W Bush nor Cheney, was so successful in deceiving the Anglo-American politicians and peoples with his forged arguments for war.    

America's, Europe's, and NATO's desperate position in Afghanistan directly results from neglect due to the priority of the Bush/Blair folly in Iraq.  

My consultancy is a Cassandra. From Sept 2002 we warned just why "Iraq" would end in catastrophe for the West. See our www.dipconsult.eu for the real reasons for the war, and its the worldwide consequences. But it was Blair they heard!

Isn't it enough that myopic Bush made Blair toothless peacemaker for the Middle East he has done so much to wreck?  

The only way forward in Afghanistan is internationalisation

The only way forward in Afghanistan is internationalisation. 24 Oct 2009


We hear all the time what America must do, what NATO must do. But, after the criminal folly of the Bush/Blair catastrophic (for Western interests) invasion of Iraq, America is in terminal decline as remaining superpower - it is now first amongst equals. And equals do not include Europe, the main part of NATO apart from the US. That's because Europe does not have a single voice in the world. And NATO is seen by the great powers as, like the US, an ailing entity. Worse - the Europeans see Afghanistan as where the US is trying to get them to pull American chestnuts out of the fire lit by Bush & Blair in Iraq (which deprived America and NATO of success in Afghanistan). Ask the chancelleries of the world if this is not privately their reading! 


But the great powers (and all the Security Council veto-bearers) have a major common interest in the stabilisation of Iraq. So do all of Afghanistan's neighbours - the ex-soviets, Iran, Pakistan, and China. This is shared by many other countries notably India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and all the other Arab and Muslim countries.


This makes a formidable force if directed on that sole issue of Afghanistan stabilisation. Many of these countries have unique abilities to put pressure on the various parties from Taliban, warlords and others. Many, like the Saudis, have financial and other resources which they could bring to bear. 


No, the stabilisation of Afghanistan is not impossible if approached as a major national interest of so many countries. 


But America must first show clearly (if tacitly) that it has abandoned as unfeasable (after the disaster of the Iraq war) the G W Bush/Cheney/neo-conservative aim for a unipolar world, that is for US worldwide hegemony sought by the Project for a New American Century. 


Determined but sensitive diplomacy such as the US now possesses could restore at least in so far as Afghanistan concerned, that astonishing international support that G W Bush threw away by invading Iraq. It would take a good year to determine what each power could provide and to organise their co-ordinated actions. 


Meanwhile the US would have to hold the fort in Afghanistan. Of course, once this internationalisation was known to be the US objective, it would be much easier to gather the various elements of pressure to be exerted on the parties. 


Such joint efforts involving countries that are no friends of each other are possible. Study the situations in Europe after the Wars of Religion and after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In the latter case France, the defeated former superpower, by good diplomacy recovered much ground (only to throw it away again!). The US, as first among equals could achieve Afghanistan stabilisation although it cannot win - after the Bush era neglect and the present perception by Al Qaeda and Taliban and many others - that America is the losing once-was-superpower.

COMMENT ON THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

COMMENT ON THE GOLDSTONE REPORT            23 Oct. 2009


Tags: Goldstone report, Russia and Goldstone, Israel Palestine, Afganistan,
Obama & public option health, Obama and cessation settlement constuction


It is entirely the fault of the West for having allowed tiny Israel to become the tail that wags not just the US but the whole Western dog. Russia at least recognises its own self-interest. 


Most of us Europeans have immense sympathy for the Jews after WWII. But we failed to give the Jewish survivors the welcome they desperately needed. Hence the very size of the desperate rush to Palestine and the determination of the Jewish terrorists in forcing the UK to abandon the Mandate. 


The West then utterly failed in the basic humanitarian duty to look after the Palestinian victims of the establishment of Israel. 


That the West helped Israel survive the Arab wars in no way required permitting a resurgent Israel to dominate our foreign policies in the Middle East and beyond. 


But we did. And we let Israel/Palestine became an ever-worsening running sore on world affairs - the key focus of Arab and Muslim resentment and hatred against the West. 


Well we knew this but - apart from a little palliative aid - we did nothing effective until Al Qaeda woke us up. We know that Al Qaeda & Co. derived (and still does) more support and recruitment from the oppression of the Palestinians than from anything else. 


Yet we are STILL doing nothing to enforce a solution of Israel/Palestine even though the shape of a workable, fairly just, settlement has been clear for years. 


An invasion of Afghanistan may have been politically inevitable after "9/11" but it was quite obvious, as many of us pointed out, that the essential corollary was to move quickly to a solution of Israel/Palestine (which was then more attainable than ever). 


To win against Al Qaeda and Arab and Muslim resentment - the "War on Terror" syndrome - troops to Afghanistan will be far less effective than standing up to the present extremist Israeli government, AIPAC, Mossad, and its other foreign agents and force that indispensable Israel/Palestine settlement. All the powers that count know this full well.


Given the political power of Israel in the US, President Obama needs the help of all those countries and most of all Europe and Russia. 


Two litmus tests: will Obama get that public option on US health care? That would mark a major victory towards ending financiers and corporate control of US society. And will he oblige Israel genuinely to stop all further settlement in the occupied territories and in E Jerusalem? That would mark the beginning of US recovering control from Israel of large areas of its foreign policy. 


The outcome of those two political battles may well determine the Obama presidency - for the American people themselves, for US success in opening a new era of international cooperation after the catastrophe of the G W Bush years. Those were a doomed armed search for a uni-polar world - the Cheney/neo-conservative hegemonic dream set out in their Project for a New American Century. 


Final thought - it hardly needs saying (and a great many Jews are saying) that the establishment of a Palestinian state will do more for the security of Israel than any number of wars and bombs.

OUR COMMENT on Geert Wilders' arrival in UK

OUR COMMENT on Geert Wilders' arrival in UK       17 October 2009


tags: Geert Wilders, Islam and tolerance, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, choice of religion, atheism, religion and violence, Manuel II Paleologus, political correctness 


RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE 


Although Mr. Wilders expresses himself with extremist language, we favour his admission to the UK - hoping though, that during his visit he will show a decent respect for the opinions of others. 


A large number of people are interested in trying to find out if any religion can explain why we are here, or whether atheism is a more realistic position. Many others wonder whether the religion they were born into really does best explain the phenomenon of life and spirituality. 


Making up your mind about this all-important matter implies the ability to have calm discussions with people of all views, and for theologians and others to be able to write and publish, freely and without fear, why they believe as they do. In the first decade of the 21st century we are still very far from these fundamentals underlying religious freedom - the freedom to worship or not to worship.    


Unfortunately so many people are filled with hatred or resentment of anyone who does not hold their "faith" making fruitful discussion impossible. One notes too, that those least sure of the certainty of their beliefs are often the most full of hatred for "infidels" - for their  intolerance helps protect them from doubt.


People so easily forget that their "faith" is faith and not certainty. 


Islam seems to be going through a bad phase of such intolerance similar to what Christianity went through with the Inquisition and the 17th century religious wars.   


As regards Islam: no one appears to have come forward to answer the question of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus (which the present pope got so much blame for citing): "Show me just what it was that Mohammed brought that was new?" A fundamental question that surely deserves an answer? .   


Or have we lost the freedom to talk about such things both in the Muslim world and in our own Islamophobic "politically correct" environment?

US Christianity

BOTH ‘LEFT’ AND ‘RIGHT’ – THE CHRISTIAN DILEMMA IN AMERICA


tags: American Christians, religious right, US Catholic vote, G W Bush, Obama, politically correct, family values, Vatican foreign policy, Monica Lewinsky, Michael Moore, abortion, justice for Palestinians, US Senate voting  


The 'religious right' and the Monica Lewinsky affair together gave us Europeans (who are too divided to have much political say in the world) the 8 year disaster (for the West) of the G W Bush neo-conservative presidency. But if the Catholic vote had been less divided these two factors would not have prevailed. 


The categories of 'left' and 'right' don't help much with the Catholic vote. Almost one American in four is said to be Catholic. But this is a swing voting group: psephologists reckon 47% voted Bush in 2000, but gave him a 52% majority in 2004. 


Among Christians as a whole (other than "religious right" said to be some 14%) there is much the same division. Pulling to the 'right' is opposition to abortion on demand (which makes the Catholic bishops politically a virtually "single sin" group), respect for the family as the basic unit of society, opposition to homosexual marriage, and concern for traditional morality as a whole as opposed to leftie "political correctness". 


Pulling to the left though, is profound moral opposition to the prevailing "worship of the golden calf" - unbridled capitalism: Catholic Michael Moore's stance. There is too, a growing conviction that Christians should act to meet the existential challenges of climate change despite the cost. And recognition there is 'sin' too in aggressive war, genocide, lack of concern for the world's poor and for social justice (including justice for Palestinians), and also in failing support health care for all Americans. For Catholics that all fits in with Catholic social teaching at least since the 19th century, and with the international policies of the last two popes. Other ‘main-line’ Christians too, derive much the same convictions from the New Testament. 


From what he has said, President Obama appears to share, at least in part, this Christian dilemma and to be trying to reconcile these by no means inconsistent concerns.


Achieving even limited success is another matter - especially given the undemocratic nature of the US Senate where two votes go to each state irrespective of population. That gives an inordinate say to mid-west sparsely populated staunchly Republican states with major ‘religious right’ constituencies. Enough maybe to deprive the Democrats of the 60 Senatorial votes needed to fend off an effective veto. Indeed the whole traditional Christian ethos (however tenuous) of US governments is being stifled by dollar-heavy lobbying (‘your election expenses paid’), AIPAC and Israel Government pressure, and monumental dishonesty in the financial sector. Not to mention pervasive racism subtly sapping the authority of a non-white president. 


While working on the vital task of bringing cooperation instead of confrontation to intenrationla affairs, President Obama is now under internal attack from 'left' and 'right' and this is exacerbated by the divisions in main-line Christianity. 
Perhaps all concerned would do well to study the holistic approach to all these issues and to the Obama presidency adopted by the Vatican under Benedict XVI.

Our comment on emerging new economic organisations in the US

Our comment on emerging new economic organisations in the US: (8.10.09)

Post-capitalist developments of this sort are extremely important. Our bankers and most of the West's leaders are struggling just to get back ante-meltdown 2008, to the Era of Waste which started half a century ago with the recovery from World War II. But even if they did, that would only prolong the agony. 


The waste of finite resources, the ruin of the environment, cannot continue if mankind is to meet the existential challenges it now faces. 


Capitalism - especially decontrolled laissez-faire capitalism - was and remains the largest factor in creating and continuing this Era of Waste. The worship of the Golden Cal - of the "bottom line", must be replaced partly by far stricter controls and partly by such new economic arrangements. Instead of blindly shifting from one immediately profitable path to another we must know what we are trying to do.


Capitalism plus government and non-governmental projects brought us through the great wars because all sought victory as an end.


In a word, humanity must have a "telos" - an end or purpose - that it is consciously moving towards. And the "telos" we can surely all agree on is doing all that is required for the survival of mankind. 


The US - which took over from Britain in creating modern capitalism and is now suffering so severely from what it wrought - is surely the one country with the dynamism and imagination to lead the world toward that "telos" for survival. If the US shows a way to do that, China - already trying to re-organise for that same purpose - would join in. 


But first we have to change the mind-set of politicians, the "old" media, and all the others who are now so blindly struggling to get back to "the good old days" before 2008.That first step forward may prove the most difficult one of all!

Internationalise Afghanistan

AFGHANISTAN MUST BE INTERNATIONALISED      [8 October 2009]

Those of left and right with simplistic ideas about what President Obama's strategy should be for Afghanistan fail to appreciate just how complex a "Vietnam" he has inherited from President G W Bush: "Now we're in, how the hell do we get out with least damage?" 


This of course arose - as we and many other professionals, not attached to or paid by the US or UK governments, predicted in 2002 - because the invasion of Iraq by President G W Bush lost America the astonishing world-wide support it enjoyed after "9/11" and Afghanistan inevitably lost to Iraq its priority for money, troops and expertise. And now after 7 years of neglect, the US faces defeat or an endless unpopular guerilla war. At present Americans see this as an American problem that America - or rather President Obama - has to solve.  


But for years now we have urged that "Afghanistan" be internationalised through an effort (by no means impossible) to recover that world-wide consensus the calamitous G W Bush threw away. 


Why not impossible? Because, provided, the US now makes it plain (even tacitly) that it has abandoned the Cheney/neo-conservative aim of a uni-polar world (US hegemony in the 21st century) and now genuinely seeks international cooperation in place of 'Bushian' confrontation, that consensus can largely be rebuilt by determined yet sensitive diplomacy. 


For virtually all countries have a major national interest in the stability of Afghanistan - even of "Afpak". So there is a real chance of gaining and exerting immense pressure from all parties on all parties to obtain that stability.


Fortunately President Obama, unlike his predecessor, is prepared to talk and negotiate with all concerned. The principal powers with a major interest in stability in Afghanistan are Iran, Pakistan, Russia and ex-Soviet Central Asia, the European Union, non-European NATO countries (Turkey & Canada), China (increasingly), India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, the Gulf States, other Arab and Islamic countries from Morocco to Malaysia and Indonesia. The list goes on. 


But - recovering such consensus and agreeing the part each country can play will take at least a year. And meanwhile the US (thanks to the destructive Bush legacy) will have to hold the fort and take such immediate military and reconstruction measures as are needed. 


Announcing such internationalisation would, in the interim,  greatly help in removing the present widespread expectation that Americans are about to do a bunk - so encouraging for Taliban/Al Qaeda and so bad for the morale of Afghans and US/NATO troops. Even more importantly the American people and Congress would respond if President Obama makes it clear that his military and other decisions are determined by the need to hold the situation, improving the reconstruction and security requirements while the US works to bring about the largest possible international consortium for stabilising Afghanistan.      


Probably the Europeans won't be much help with more than a dribble troops because here in Europe the perception of governments and people alike is that we're being asked to pull American chestnuts out of the fire that they themselves lit. But if we know where America is heading our governments can certainly be cajoled into doing much more, and much better, reconstruction and the training of Afghans - even at considerable cost at a time of financial woe.  . 


Successful US diplomacy rallying the key countries for the stabilisation of Afghanistan could lead to an international conference to put the seal on what had been agreed. The prospect of such a "Congress" - something on the lines of the Congress of Vienna which established a new order in Europe after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars - could mark an important step towards the establishment of an era of international cooperation made possible by the end of the Cold War, and the ending of the neo-conservative drive for that uni-polar dream which was to have been realised by taking over Iraq - but which, ironically, the Iraq adventure has put out of reach.  

Without profound commitment by the great powers to a future of cooperation, humanity faces the Pentagon's alternative dread scenario of endless wars as neighbour struggles against neighbour for survival as the existential challenges mankind faces become more strident. So, with opposition to American hegemony out of the way, cooperation has considerable appeal. It has already shown its potential over North Korea and the world financial crisis.     

So - given determination and an all out diplomatic effort - Afghanistan could become the catalyst heralding that long elusive New World Order. President Obama has the exceptional intelligence, the pragmatism, and a profound knowledge of the world today to navigate the many shoals and rocks to bring the "Vietnam" he has inherited in Afghanistan to the best possible conclusion. 


But he faces, to us Europeans, astonishing opposition in his own country from both left and right. Apart from the two wars, he has "too many open files" -  the environment, non-proliferation, Al Qaeda and terrorism, bolshie banks, rogue and failed states, health care nihilists, the social demands of "progressives", selfish corporate lobbying, Israel's dominance in US politics, the future of the dollar, relations with China and Russia, renewing infrastructure, US investment in the future to replace the last half-century's epoch of waste  - and so on and on.  

So the new US administration needs as never before all the support it can get for enlightened policies. To our shame we in Europe are too divided by our outdated petty nationalisms to give the support we owe and should give in our own interests. Curiously it could be Russia and China that, starting with Afghanistan, will rally to help America to decline with wisdom from its age of Imperialism and use its still immense power and influence in establishing a multi-polar world capable of answering the worldwide challenges all countries  face.                
                                                                                                   [ends