While the revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other North African countries may seem like an "Arab revolt", it's actually worldwide.
Protests involving thousands of protesters have recently been held in:
- Halabja, Kut, Sulaimaniya and other Iraqi towns
- And elsewhere
The worldwide riots are not mysterious or unforeseeable. They've been predicted for years, and are a direct result of the bad policy choices made by most nations worldwide.
The Bank for International Settlements - the world's most prestigious financial agency, nicknamed the "central banks' central bank" - warned in December 2008 that the bailouts and other bank rescue programs were transferring risks from private companies to nations.
As I noted at the time:
The Root Cause: Bad Economic PolicyBIS points out in a new report that the bank rescue packages have transferred significant risks onto government balance sheets, which is reflected in the corresponding widening of sovereign credit default swaps:
The scope and magnitude of the bank rescue packages also meant that significant risks had been transferred onto government balance sheets. This was particularly apparent in the market for CDS referencing sovereigns involved either in large individual bank rescues or in broad-based support packages for the financial sector, including the United States. While such CDS were thinly traded prior to the announced rescue packages, spreads widened suddenly on increased demand for credit protection, while corresponding financial sector spreads tightened.In other words, by assuming huge portions of the risk from banks trading in toxic derivatives, and by spending trillions that they don't have, central banks have put their countries at risk ....
Specifically, nations around the world decided to bail out their big banks instead of taking the necessary steps to stabilize their economies (see this, this and this). As such, they all transferred massive debts (from fraudulent and stupid gambling activities) from the balance sheets of the banks to the balance sheets of the country.
The nations have then run their printing presses nonstop in an effort to inflate their way out of their debt crises, even though that effort is doomed to failure from the get-go.
Quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve is obviously causing food prices to skyrocket worldwide (and see this, this and this).
But the fact is that every country in the world that can print money - i.e. which is not locked into a multi-country currency agreement like the Euro - has been printing massive quantities of money.
By way of example only, the Economic Collapse Blog provides the following charts:
The U.S. is printing lots of money.....
The Bank of England is printing lots of money.....
The EU is printing lots of money....
Source: The ECB
Japan is printing lots of money.....
China is printing lots of money.....
Source: The People’s Bank of China
India is printing lots of money.....
Moreover, the austerity measures which governments worldwide are imposing to try to plug their gaping deficits (created by throwing trillions at their banks) are causing people world-wide to push back.
As I warned in February 2009 and again in December of that year:
Unemployment is soaring globally - especially among youth.Numerous high-level officials and experts warn that the economic crisis could lead to unrest world-wide - even in developed countries:
- Today, Moody's warned that future tax rises and spending cuts could trigger social unrest in a range of countries from the developing to the developed world, that in the coming years, evidence of social unrest and public tension may become just as important signs of whether a country will be able to adapt as traditional economic metrics, that a fiscal crisis remains a possibility for a leading economy, and that 2010 would be a “tumultuous year for sovereign debt issuers”.
- The U.S. Army War College warned in 2008 November warned in a monograph [click on Policypointers’ pdf link to see the report] titled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development” of crash-induced unrest:
The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” “An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,” it went on. “Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,” the document read.
- Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said:
"The global economic crisis ... already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries ... Economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they are prolonged for a one- or two-year period," said Blair. "And instability can loosen the fragile hold that many developing countries have on law and order, which can spill out in dangerous ways into the international community."***
"Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one-to-two-year period."***
“The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”
Blair made it clear that - while unrest was currently only happening in Europe - he was worried this could happen within the United States.
[See also this].
- Former national security director Zbigniew Brzezinski warned "there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots."
Others warning of crash-induced unrest include:
- The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned the the financial crisis is the highest national security concern for the U.S., and warned that the fallout from the crisis could lead to of "greater instability".
- The head of the World Trade Organization
- The head of the International Monetary Fund (and see this)
- The head of the World Bank
- Senator Christopher Dodd
- Congressman Ron Paul (radio interview on March 6, 2009)
- Britian's MI5 security agency
- Leading economic historian Niall Ferguson
- Leading economist Marc Faber and billionaire investor Jim Rogers
- Leading economist Nouriel Roubini
- Leading economist John Williams
- Top trend researcher Gerald Calente
- European think tank Leap2020
And the sense of outrage at the injustice of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer is also a growing global trend.
Countries worldwide told their people that bailout out the giant banks was necessary to save the economy. But they haven't delivered, and the "Main Streets" of the world have suffered.
As former American senator (and consummate insider) Chris Dodd said in 2008:
If it turns out that [the banks] are hoarding, you’ll have a revolution on your hands. People will be so livid and furious that their tax money is going to line their pockets instead of doing the right thing. There will be hell to pay.Of course, the big banks are hoarding, and refusing to lend to Main Street. In fact, they admitted back in 2008 that they would. And the same is playing out globally.
As I noted earlier this month:
Agence France-Press reports today:The International Monetary Fund stands ready to help riot-torn Egypt rebuild its economy, the IMF chief said Tuesday as he warned governments to tackle unemployment and income inequality or risk war.No wonder former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski ... warned the Council on Foreign Relations that:
For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. There are only a few pockets of humanity left in the remotest corners of the world that are not politically alert and engaged with the political turmoil and stirrings that are so widespread today around the world.
***
America needs to face squarely a centrally important new global reality: that the world's population is experiencing a political awakening unprecedented in scope and intensity, with the result that the politics of populism are transforming the politics of power. The need to respond to that massive phenomenon poses to the uniquely sovereign America an historic dilemma: What should be the central definition of America's global role?[T]he central challenge of our time is posed not by global terrorism, but rather by the intensifying turbulence caused by the phenomenon of global political awakening. That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing.It is no overstatement to assert that now in the 21st century the population of much of the developing world is politically stirring and in many places seething with unrest. It is a population acutely conscious of social injustice to an unprecedented degree, and often resentful of its perceived lack of political dignity. The nearly universal access to radio, television and increasingly the Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions and envy that can be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or religious passions. These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches.Watch an excerpt:
***
That turmoil is the product of the political awakening, the fact that today vast masses of the world are not politically neutered, as they have been throughout history. They have political consciousness.
***
Politically awakened mankind craves political dignity, which democracy can enhance, but political dignity also encompasses ethnic or national self-determination, religious self-definition, and human and social rights, all in a world now acutely aware of economic, racial and ethnic inequities. The quest for political dignity, especially through national self-determination and social transformation, is part of the pulse of self-assertion by the world's underprivileged
***
We live in an age in which mankind writ large is becoming politically conscious and politically activated to an unprecedented degree, and it is this condition which is producing a great deal of international turmoil.
That turmoil is the product of the political awakening, the fact that today vast masses of the world are not politically neutered, as they have been throughout history. They have political consciousness.
I agree that it is a global revolution of sorts, or rather the first stage of a genuine global revolution which I expect (hope) to unfold along this decade (consciousness organization is still too low).
ReplyDeleteI also agree that it has an economic cause and that you mention is part of that economic background. But it is not so much the cause as the symptom. The real cause is a problem of too low salaries hindering the global demand. In other words: Marx' (or also Keynes') classical overproduction (structural) crisis.
That the oligarchies try to defer their loses to the working class by charging them to the state and cutting social subsidies and rising real taxes against the poor and middling (for example VAT, electricity bills, etc.) should be nor surprise: they will do anything for as long as they can to keep their benefits, which translate as power both in the private as in the public sphere. This is just normal: they will bring the planet and human life to an end if they believe they can get away for a week more thanks to it: they only think of themselves: they are competitive and greedy as demanded by Capitalist anti-ethics ("greed is good" and all that junk).
What is not so normal is that people and their elect representatives are allowing them in most cases to get away with the scam. One of the oligarchy's investments has worked too wall: ideological brainwashing - via school, via TV, via faculties of Economics (or rather seminaries of the priests of the new religion), and of course via the old fashioned church, mosque or equivalent.
Why isn't revolution more widespread and more virulent? Because workers/citizens do not really have anymore the tools to understand what is going on. Until recently the system has worked more or less... and they still hope the problems will be solved by those smiling politicians they elect to do so. But the smiling politicians are not anymore able or at least willing to deliver.
And there is where the revolutions come around. But no sudden burst of popular anger alone will change things. We, Humankind, need also to know and to get actively organized in order to become also constituent, which is the goal of all revolutions (depose the old regime and create something new and better to replace it).
When the The U.S. Army War College made that report in November 2008 it's because Republicans were making up rumors and spreading them all on the news that if a black man were President chaos was break lose in some Southern states. When they refer to "pervasive public health emergencies" they are talking about the new Health Care Bill that Obama was proposing was a form on 'socialism.' The part where they mention a "unforeseen economic collapse" was in the midst of the Economic crisis when George Bush was still President. So, at that time the U.S. was not looking too well. But now we Elected a Great president who saved up from that mess. War's expensive and it runs a country dry. He ended the one in Iraq and is bring the other troops home this summer, and he put regulations on banks to we don't have another mess like that. America's only real problem now are 'the oligarchies, banks, and politicians who try to defer their loses to the working class by charging them to the state and cutting social subsidies and rising real taxes against the poor and middle classes." And some really awful movies...
ReplyDeleteI want some of what Scott is smoking!
ReplyDeleteWe are on the verge of change so sweeping, it will essentially result in a very different looking world. Americans are awakening somewhat, but half are still clinging to the comfortable bubbles they have built for themselves. They cling to their stuff so desperately, that they have to believe the leadership will deliver them from evil. Fasten your seat-belt Scott, we are headed for sever turbulence!
Is Scott some paid Obot troll? He's clearly delusional if he thinks Obama has ended/will end the Middle East wars, and that the health insurance company bailout plan solves the health care crisis in this country.
ReplyDeleteIf you follow the blood trail and body parts, the path always leads to the backdoor of the bankster and Big Oil’s mansions. Ha. Ha.
ReplyDeleteThe economies of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, and Algeria are strictly controlled by the Rothschild’s central banks and their International Monetary Fund. You know, the same Rothschilds that own the lion’s share of the American privately owned Federal Reserve “Central Bank” and Goldman Sachs.
There is another banking system in Africa and the Middle East that is the arch rival to the Rothschild’s banking empire: Islamic banks.
Basically, the Islamic banking system charges no interest as apposed to a fractional reserve banking system that charge interest.
Islamic banks are governed by Muslim Sharia law that bans interest and trading in debt, hoarding of money, creating money from thin air and usury of their depositors; the depositors are partners and paid interest.
Many economists believe that the Islamic bank system it is the better of the two banking models.
There are 1.6 billion of Islam’s faithful in the world and it is easy to see why the Rothschilds and their network of conventional western banks would be threatened by competition from the more appealing, more conservative Islam banks.
What may appear as a good thing that people are freed from the tyranny of dictators in the Middle East and Africa; the people also need to be freed from the tyranny of economic control and serfdom that awaits them from the Central Banks and the BIS.
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