As a youngster I once fell in with a rather rough crowd of boys who liked to set off fire-crackers, also known as ‘bangers’.

Fireworks were not hard to get hold of at the time – and my apprentice delinquent friends knew how to hustle. The group of us would head out of an evening and cause minor mischief – simple acts of puerile wickedness such as blowing up garden gnomes.

As soon as I plucked up the courage to give these maniacs a wide berth, I never looked back. Their company got on my nerves. It wasn’t just guilty feelings of wrong-doing or the increasing likelihood we’d all get caught. I was seriously concerned they’d blow me up too – not out of spite as much as by accident. Immature maniacs and gunpowder are an explosive mix.

Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin: keeping cool in the company of hoons

I was reminded of this experience yesterday when I watched the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, emerge from an exhausting closed session of the UN Security Council. The meeting had been called at Russia’s behest. It asked to discuss the latest tensions on the Korean peninsula and try to preserve the peace.

CNN covered Mr Churkin’s press conference, which seemed to be conducted entirely in flawless English. Churkin’s tone was ‘diplomatic’ – but unlike his western counterparts, he was not required to purvey blatant disinformation. Consquently his words were reasonably easy to understand.

The weary Ambassador looked like I felt after surviving an evening out with a bunch of banger-throwing bad boys. He’d survived the experience – but at considerable cost to his nerves.

But what about Korea? What about the world?

Will there be “peace in our time?”

That’s not so clear.

As far as I can tell, the pugnacious leadership in Seoul, egged on by the Americans and the rest of the squalid US cheer squad, is insisting on its ‘right’ to carry out military exercises so close to the North Korean border they’re actually shelling disputed territory.

Why, for God’s sake? WHY?

The only possible reason is to ratchet up tension. Why do that? (I recall the adolescent brat who enjoyed knife-throwing and took offense when I objected to him demonstrating his prowess by narrowly missing my feet. Who need’s that?)

I can’t think of any good reasons to tempt fate like this – not for Koreans at any rate. In any outright conflict, the South with its superpower-on-steroids big buddy would almost certainly prevail. But much of the Korean peninsula – north and south – could become nuclear wasteland in the process. Millions could die. Land could become uninhabitable.

That’s not victory. It’s insanity. Why do that? Who needs it?

Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the UN, gave her press conference shortly after the Russian. She explained the inability of the Security Council to come up with a unanimous position was partly due to the reluctance of some countries to condemn the North for sinking the South Korean submarine Chenoan back in March 2010. She didn’t spell it out, but Russia was clearly one of the Governments that resisted this push.

Rice is too much of a liar – and Churkin was too diplomatic – to explain what that dispute is really about. Russia won’t condemn North Korea over the Chenoan incident because it is not convinced North Korea is actually guilty of the allegations against it. That’s for good reasons.

Evidence over the Chenoan is contradictory and inconclusive at best. Western nations no longer enjoy the benefit of the doubt. We’ve lied too often – and been caught out lying too often. Wisely, the Russians and the Chinese no longer believe everything these governments and their corrupt mass media say – if indeed they ever were so naive. But they do prefer eshewing open accusations of ‘liar’, leaving that kind of plain-speaking to welterweights such as Presidents Chavez and Ahmadinejad. The Russians and Chinese are extremely interested in avoiding World War Three. That’s also for a very good reason. They’re not completely nuts.

Are governments of the western world completely nuts? There are alarming signs that might indeed be the case. Certainly US policy over Korea makes no apparent sense.

If the idea is to end the division of Korea and bring about national reconciliation, this is an crazy way of setting about it. Committing to peace, opening borders, freeing up trade and facilitating the migration of people is the obvious way to help the North change for the better. There are complicating factors. For example, the Chinese have legitimate interests to protect. They don’t want American missiles on their border. That’s understandable – and fair enough. The best solution for Korea is surely is the best solution for the world. Koreans need demilitarisation and disarmament – not a ratcheting up of hostility and tension.

All the Korean people I can remember meeting have been delightful, friendly and very intelligent people. Korea has had a blighted last century. It’s protracted division in this limbo state of ‘no war, no peace’ is a tragedy. But Koreans – north and south – can rightly be proud of remarkable achievments. South Korea has laboured hard to develop one of the most advanced economies on earth. North Korea has survived and remained independent – against all the odds.

Left alone, Koreans could unite at their own pace and lead the world by example. But will they be left alone? Will the bodgy bullies who’ve foisted their presence on Korea blow them up in childish miscalculations?

US bombing of Wonsan, 1951: the brutal war in Korea that still awaits peaceful resolution

A number of commentators have mentioned there seems to be a whiff of August 1914 in the air. With luck, that’s just frazzled nerves and paranoia. But one interest group on earth is interested – or so it would seem – in getting a hot war started. It’s not much bothered about East Asia – but once bangers go off they can start exploding all over the place…

That interest group is the State of Israel. Its main obesession seems to be trying to destroy Iran (with Pakistan, Syria and Lebanon also on the priority hitlist). The whole idea is complete luncacy of course, But the existence of such a push is not in doubt. There’s no secret about the Zionists’ lust to see Iran attacked.

But Israel has at least two problems.

First, it rather lazily wants the USA to do the dirty work on its behalf. Why risk Israeli pilots if another, bigger maniac State is willing to serve as proxy? Yet sections of the US government and military are resisting.

Second – and I suspect this is the key constraint tempering the Israel Lobby’s war lust – it’s maniacs-in-chief know full well that another war started in the middle east would be blamed on Israel (and by extension on Zionists and Jews as a whole) by a majority of the world’s people. However much the western media might spin stories about ‘Iranian provocations’ or uncritically report new false-flag operations, the maniacs know a significant proportion of the people wouldn’t be fooled again.

However… a war that started in Korea, half a world away. Who could blame poor little Israel for that?

Warmongering is a crazy game. Humanity can’t this craziness any longer. The stakes are so high in the 21st century that war, quite simply, must be set aside. It’s a childish thing we shouldn’t do any more…

For the sake of us all, North and South Korea must cool it and do some serious peace-making work.

Zionists and other warmongers should butt out and give peace a chance.

No more wars for Israel!

As the new millenium dawned, the ‘Anglosphere’ had a seemingly well-established grip over the finances of the world. This financial dominance – vastly out of proportion to the populations of the English-speaking nations – was reflected in military muscle. The dominant USA was considered by all and sundry to be the sole remaining ‘Superpower’: politically, militarily and economically.

It seems so long ago. Yet until 2007, the Old Order remained essentially intact. Since then, what we’ve come to know as the ‘World Financial Crisis’ has been akin to a new deal in a global poker game. As the cards are flipped face up in mid-2009, it’s apparent there’s been a phenomenal shift in world power. New players have joined the table. They’re outclassing former high rollers.

The two graphs below show the top twenty banks in the world by market capitalization, in 1999 and 2009 respectively. The author/s of my source for these graphs also points out that last month, for the first time, China became Brazil’s largest trading partner. Trade with Brazil has long been an indicator of financial power  The USA held the No 1 position from the 1930′s; before that, Britain had been the dominant trading partner for several generations.

Dramatic shifts are currently underway – yet there’s no real sign yet that the English-speaking countries intend to put their bloated military spend into reverse and rejoin the rest of the world. If they did, others would be greatly enouraged to do the same. As it is, the rest of the world is likely to view warily the real intentions of nations with a long track record of illegal invasions, imperialism and starting new wars.

The last thing the world needs now is a ramped up arms race. Another major war could well be the last, as Einstein warned.

Curtailment of Anglo-American imperialism is a benefit  – for people in those countries, as well as for the world as a whole. The children of the generation that ‘Lost the British Empire’ experienced unparalled prosperity. The same thing can happen within the USA.

Aside from the interests of war profiteers, economic prosperity is based on peace. It’s possible for Empires to fade gracefully, but only by relinquishing imperial pretensions.

The World's Biggest Banks, 1999

The World's Biggest Banks, 2009

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Update: Readers of this article may also be interested in The trillion dollar question: China or America? by Niall Ferguson in the Daily Telegraph, 1st June 2009.

In a single speech, President Obama has negated much of the goodwill and positive momentum that his new Administration brought to a weary, anxious world.

Obama: risks squandering global goodwill to placate his Zionist 'friends'

By committing to a massive expansion of the US war in Afghanistan, without time limit or any end in sight, Obama dooms his Administration to become another failed war Presidency.

America is now in danger of becoming the largest failed State in human history. Hopelessly corrupted by Zionist infiltrators, it insists of sparring (at massive cost) with invented foes, cranking up futile armed conflicts, against ‘enemies’ nominated by a foreign power, enemies that are really just popular restistance movements.

The real aim of this crazed war – not necessarily Obama’s goal, but the goal of his devious advisers – is the destablization and Balkanization of Pakistan. This is a longstanding Israeli objective. It will be dressed up, characteristically, as an attempt to achieve precisely the opposite.

Obama is clever, but he’s not Superman. He cannot fight demons on a dozen fronts at once. He cannot solve America’s horrific problems, fix its substandard healthcare system, solve it’s grotesque over-dependence on fossil fuels, make friends out of foes, show leadership in solving the global environmental crisis, extricate troops with a modicum of honour from Iraq, stand up to the foreign agents in its midst, pay for some of the damage his predecessor has done to Americans and others, rectify the US fiscal imbalance, keep public debt under control, rebuild America’s creaking civilian infrastructure, restore confidence in the banking system and world economy….. AND fight a massive new unwinnable war against a largely imaginary enemy, under the advice of  Zionist agents who clearly have other interests at heart.

Bay of Pigs Invasion: the fiasco of '61

In 1961, the CIA and military establishment in the USA foisted the Bay of Pigs operation on President Kennedy – another young and popular new US  President. They misled JFK into thinking that the Cuban people would welcome invading forces. They lied.

When Kennedy realized he’d been set up by his own advisers, he refused to play along. Instead of caving in to their demands and escalating the conflict against Cuba, he let the Bay of Pigs invasion fail.

Listen to America's youth, Barak - not to well-groomed Zionist liars

Obama had the chance to do the same with Afghanistan. The war against Afghanistan was launched, in 2001, on the basis of a pack of lies. Instead of helping to expose the lies of 9-11, Obama is squandering his legitimacy in a futile attempt to sustain them. He has now agreed to escalate a failing war against a popular resistance, jeopardizing all his good work on other fronts.

This morning, talking heads on the BBC, CNN and Fox sounded more gleeful than they’ve been for many months. The war mongers are happy again. Another US President has been suckered into an making an open-ended commitment to military conflict. America, playing the role of half-witted big brother of the Jewish State, has agreed to keep playing its sordid game.

President John F Kennedy must be groaning in his grave.

America’s real friends should now get out of Afghanistan without delay and let the misguided State of War fail all alone.

The USA cannot even investigate with integrity the murder (on September 11th 2001) of three thousand of its own citizens. It hasn’t even taken care of the thousands of suffering 9-11 first responders – victims of that despicable Zionist false-flag operation.

The Madrid Windsor Building remained standing after a blaze lasting nearly 24 hours... Yet kamikaze Arabs led by cave-dwellers in Afghanistan turned THREE NYC skyscrapers into dust on 9-11 in a fraction of that time?!! The official rationale for attacking Afghanistan is a sick joke

Nearly eight years after September 2001, a US President continues to lend support to obvious lies. He pretends ‘Al Qaida’ was behind the 9-11 atrocity. How absurd! Surely Obama is not really as stupid as that?

It underlies the truth of Voltaire’s famous remark: “As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities”. Peace-loving people around the world had hoped for better from Obama.

This is not the Change we Need.

The best hope now is that rest of the world stops subsidizing America’s criminal aggression. Creditor nations – principally China and Russia – should tell Obama that if he wants to maintain US military bloat to fight yet more illegal wars, he can’t do it on their slate any more.

They can threaten a collapse of the dollar unless America starts contracting its swollen military industrial complex and withdraws from madcap wars. They won’t do this in public, of course. But there are ways of getting the message across.

The long-suffering giants of Eurasia should play their trump card.

No more wars for Israel on their tab.

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Less than 12 hours after Obama’s speech. Neocons, who usually Obama-bash for breakfast entertainment, are praising the President’s ‘courage’ and locking in behind him. Yet the American public is deeply sceptical.

Check out Robert Kagan’s Obama’s Gutsy Decision on Afghanistan in the Washington Post – as well as the comments below the article. Here are five of my favourite comments from the public:

1/ Kagan in favor of an Obama decision? Better rethink the decision. This guy has been so wrong, so often.

2/ I love President Obama. No doubt about that, but I disagree with him on his thinking regarding Afghanistan and I believe this is the last nail in the coffin which destroys the country of the USA as Afghanistan destroyed the former Soviet Union and every other invader to that amazing land of long suffering people.

If a neocon supports what President Obama is doing, then what President Obama is doing can’t be right.

I would ask that President Obama rethink what he is getting us into and reevaluate this recipe for disaster. It is going to cause more suffering and more pain. We don’t have the money for such a disruptive activity as endless war.

3/ Stop listening to the neocons. Listen to the people.

4/ Kagan, a guy who never saw a war he didn’t like, now thinks the Army is going to “strengthen Afghan civil society”… Please. How about presenting one piece of evidence that the Army is capable of doing such a thing. Kagan, a guy who never saw mission-creep he didn’t like.

5/ ”..And the end of the fight
Is tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear,
“A fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the East.”

— Rudyard Kipling
___________________

From the Russian President, a perfectly nuanced comment under the headline Afghanistan Must Ultimately Rule Itself – Medvedev, showing yet again why that country is such a strong force in world chess:

Russia's President Medvedev: no fool

“I believe that today a number of threats are still there and in that sense we are ready to participate in the efforts directed at putting things in order, at preventing terrorist attacks,” Medvedev said in an excerpt from an interview recorded on Thursday. “On the other hand, I too believe that sooner or later there must be a normal political system in place in Afghanistan,” he added, speaking through an interpreter.“It is impossible to rule Afghanistan with the aid of the (NATO) alliance, it is impossible to rule Afghanistan from abroad, Afghanistan should find its own path to democracy.”

Translation? How about: “America can have it’s damn fool war if it wants, and I won’t help them blame Russia for its failure – but fail it will…”

It’s hard to conceptualize world economic affairs in all their complexity. Yet some of the fundamentals of the economic crisis are not too hard to grasp. The careful use of analogy can help. Here’s a neighbourhood analogy. To keep it simple, I’ll mention only two important households…

Imagine you are the head of a poor but very large household. Your family works hard over many years to make cheap products for neighbours to enjoy. One very rich neighbour in particular buys vast amounts of your produce.

It's not easy being brave

In return for your family’s sweated labour, you’re paid wages in the form of personal IOUs. The guy who buys most of your goods pays by personal cheque. He has the biggest, most expensive house on the block, so you consider his IOUs/cheques are good. You cash some cheques, but being a thifty type, you save many of his payments too. Over time, your savings accumulate.

Your big and wealthy neighbour spends a lot of money on extravagances. You think it unwise, but consider that’s his business. He employs huge numbers of security guards armed with powerful, expensive weapons – spending far more on this than anyone else on the block. Indeed, he spends nearly as much on ‘security’ as all the other households put together. From time to time, some of his henchmen invade other people’s houses. You think that’s wrong and say so… but he does command a lot more heavy firepower than you could ever afford, so you don’t complain too loud. Meanwhile, you work harder and harder to make more things for him to enjoy. Your savings keep accumulating…

Currency Reserves of Industrialized and Developing Nations - via the Wall Street Journal

Then the ‘system’ comes adrift. Last year, it became apparent that your ‘rich’ neighbour is in severe financial trouble. Abruptly, he stops buying lots of your products. His reduced purchasing power affects your own household and many members of your family lose their jobs.

At least you have savings to fall back on… but there’s a catch. Those savings are in the form of your powerful neighbour’s personal cheques. Yet now he is barely solvent. He’s not completely broke; nevertheless, he can’t honour the cheques he paid you before if you present too many at once. Like a bank in crisis, he asks that you ration yourself, drawing only a little of your hard-earned cash at a time. If not, he may default on all the other IOUs.

Meanwhile, this reckless neighbour keeps spending like there’s no tomorrow on his ‘security’. You feel the real purpose of all those henchmen is to bully and intimidate. Perhaps he’s out to intimidate you?

A neighbourhood meeting has been called for next month to help sort out this ‘crisis of confidence’, which is affecting all households on your block.

You suggest that from now on, your high-spending, heavily-armed neighbour pays his bills in a neutral common currency. No more personal cheques: you want real cash! After all, your abrasive neighbour wants to keep paying you with his cheques – but never accepts YOUR cheques. Only his IOUs are used as a ‘reserve currency’. Infuriatingly, he also insists on his right to keep spending as much as he likes on security guards and weapons.

Your name is China. You want a new world currency. Your wastrel neighbour is called the USA. He wants US dollars to be used long into the future as the world’s reserve currency – just as they are today.

You will doubtless cop a bucketing from bought-and-paid for talking heads throughout the ‘western world’ – but you are right! Stand on principle!

Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the People's Bank of China: seeks a global reserve currency

Time is up for America’s dollar extortion racket. The world needs safe, stable currency. We simply can’t afford not to have it any longer.

The advantages of The Global are many – as long as a global currency is implemented with wisdom and in the interests of all (not just the rich and powerful). I’ll list just a few:

1. Backed by the entire world economy – or the overwhelming preponderance thereof – a global currency would be safe and secure in a way no other currency before has been. Humanity as a whole becomes the lender of last resort. Which human – or group of humans -  can question our collective credit-worthiness?
2. In times of deflation (which prevails throughout much of the poorer countries of the world, even in times of relative economic boom) liquidity could be achieved by issuing money which, matched by an increase in productive output, is non-inflationary in its impact.
3. There would be no need for the world to borrow money from banks or other financial institutions. Who or what, after all, is more financially secure than the world as a whole? Global currency should be issued directly. Debt-free expansion of the economy, therefore, becomes achieveable.
4. The world as a whole has no incentive to undergo ecological destruction. As a whole, it has a disinterested interest in ensuring that further economic growth is decoupled from ecological impact. Funds created in Globals by a global authority should, without fear or favour, be subject to ecological strictures. The global objective is not economic growth at any ecological price, but rather economic growth that’s directed towards achieving global ecological sustainability.
5. By general agreement, the military sector should never be funded by Globals. Sci-fi aside, the world has no external enemy. It has no need for a bloated military. On the contrary, it urgently needs to redeploy resources on peaceful, constructive objectives. If sub-global entities seek military ‘defense’, they should pay for it themselves. The ability of bankrupt nations to do so would, of course, be very limited. That is as it should be. In such circumstances, a revival of President Kennedy’s plan for global disarmament would be the best route to follow. That’s the plan JFK presented in person to the UN General Assembly in 1961 that you’ve probably never heard about before. It’s taken 48 years, but the time for global disarmament has now arrived.
6. Transnational corporations, by definition, trade across national borders. They should be required to use Globals in all transactions. They should be taxed – at a standard rate – by a global economic authority. Goodbye transfer pricing. Hello fairness in taxation. It’s time to take the TNCs off welfare! TNCs must pay share of the global tax burden. The use of Globals would greatly facilitate this.

It goes without saying that there are many potential pitfalls. Crucially, such a scheme must be accompanied by real democratic reform. The Global Issuing Authority must operate with complete transparency and under genuine democratic control – meaning that the interests of each person on earthare equitably represented in finanical decision-making.

John Maynard Keynes: back in the 1940s he proposed a global reserve currency

A year ago, anyone suggesting a global currency was considered a fool and dreamer. Now the leadership of the most populous country on earth has proposed it (supported by Russia, the world’s largest nation). The discussion we need to have about the proposal originally floated by John Maynard Keynes two generations ago can no longer be deferred.

China is right. We do need a global reserve currency. We can build a sustainable global economy – but only through co-operation. We need a financial system that isn’t a scam run by the wealthy, for the wealthy.

In the mid 1940s, Keynes’ proposal for a global reserve currency (he called it ‘bancor’, but I think the Global has a better ring) was torpedoed by a greedy US Administration, flexing its muscles as a superpower, whose economic policies were dominated by the interests of finance capital. The situation in the USA hasn’t changed much since then – except that America is now effectively bankcrupt and its bargaining power is much reduced.

Humanity needs a financial system that works for humanity – not the other way round. Keynes’ bancor model has merit, but must be updated. At minimum, it needs an ecological dimension added that was beyond the awareness of most people in the 1940s.

If the super-rich, the banking elite and their militarist allies want to play Monopoly, perhaps they should find another planet to continue their selfish game? On this planet, it’s time to stop playing games with the world’s prosperity.