www.unz.com
A Nobel Peace Prize winner dropped 26,000 bombs In 2016
By Darius Shahtahmasebi via Anti Media
According to an estimate conducted by Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and national security expert Jennifer Wilson, a CFR research associate, President Obama dropped over 26,000 bombs in 2016.
Syria was hit with 12,192 bombs, the highest number of any country on Obama’s hit list. Iraq came in a close second, receiving 12,095 bombs. Altogether, the peace prize laureate dropped at least 26,171 bombs in seven countries last year.
As noted by Zenko and Wilson, the estimates are relatively conservative: “In President Obama’s last year in office, the United States dropped 26,171 bombs in seven countries. This estimate is undoubtedly low, considering reliable data is only available for airstrikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, and a single “strike,” according to the Pentagon’s definition, can involve multiple bombs or munitions. In 2016, the United States dropped 3,027 more bombs—and in one more country, Libya—than in 2015.”
Zenko’s figures were lower for 2015. He estimated 23,144 bombs were dropped in that year — almost 3,000 less than 2016. This marks a sharp increase when it comes to the use of advanced weaponry, though the targets of the bombs remained the same: the vast majority of his 2015 bombs (22,100) were dropped in Iraq and Syria in 2015.
If a peace prize-winning president can detonate this many bombs in 7+ nations, we should all be very wary of what’s to come!
President Obama, who hoped to sow peace, instead led the nation in war
Before he took office in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to end America’s grueling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his second term, he pledged to take the country off what he called a permanent war footing.
www.latimes.com
Top investigative journalist Seymour Hersh:
Turkey staged gas attack to provoke US war on Syria
Assad had been requesting, for months, for a special United Nations Chemical Weapons investigation team to come to Syria to check out earlier allegations that his government had used chemical weapons. The United Nations finally agreed. So why would Assad be so stupid as to carry out a deadly chemical weapons attack on 1,400 women and children the very day the UN chemical weapons inspectors arrive, just miles from where they are staying?
www.wsws.org
US Criminal Hypocrisy at Work in Syria and Yemen
www.springfieldvt.blogspot.com
The War in Yemen Explained in 5 Minutes
Journalist and political analyst Caleb Maupin speaks
It's all about oil, Wall Street.
Journalist and political analyst Caleb Maupin speaks
It's all about oil, Wall Street.
In the Wake of a Tumultuous Year, the Global Elite Face a World of Uncertainty
This year is different. As the world’s financial, corporate and political elites gather this week for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos, the global economic order is teetering. The question is whether it can be rescued.
Read more: www.wsj.com
WORLD DAVOS BRUSSELS BEAT
In the Wake of a Tumultuous Year, the Global Elite Face a World of Uncertainty
Trump’s victory, Brexit vote and rising European populism threaten the march of globalization
Pro-Brexit demonstrators held Union Jack flags as they protested outside the Houses of Parliament on Nov. 23 in London.
Pro-Brexit demonstrators held Union Jack flags as they protested outside the Houses of Parliament on Nov. 23 in London. PHOTO: JACK TAYLOR/GETTY IMAGES
By STEPHEN FIDLER
Jan. 16, 2017 5:00 a.m. ET
180 COMMENTS
This year is different. As the world’s financial, corporate and political elites gather this week for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos, the global economic order is teetering. The question is whether it can be rescued.
In 2016, history began another chapter. Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory and Britain’s decision to leave the European Union reversed a march toward ever-closer global economic integration under way since the end of World War II.
Across continental Europe, antiestablishment political movements have gained ground, fostered by an anemic recovery from the eurozone’s debt crisis that kept wages stagnant and unemployment high in many countries. Their influence could grow further with elections this year in France, Germany, the Netherlands and possibly Italy.
Many hail these developments as a sign of once-disenfranchised people retaking control of their destinies. Others, including those of the global elite gathering this week in Davos, fret that these and other developments risk unraveling international connections that have produced unprecedented wealth.
At the heart of the shift is a fundamental paradox of the postwar global economy: Free trade, greater interconnectedness and rapid technological change have lifted billions of people out of poverty and created a burgeoning middle class in the developing world.
Wealthy countries have grown richer, too. But the benefits have gone disproportionately to a minority, leaving many people feeling left behind or alienated. Globalization—characterized by free flows of goods and capital and national acceptance of international norms—has been good at creating wealth but less successful at maximizing people’s welfare.
Some historians who have studied past periods of globalization question whether the modern version can limp on.
“My hunch is that we are not going to muddle through,” said Harold James, a professor at Princeton University.
Breakdowns in past phases of globalization, such as the one that preceded World War I, “were characterized by eruptions of unexpected sudden crises that highlight new fault lines,” he said. “The world is terribly vulnerable now” to events like last year’s assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey that can escalate out of control.
In terms of overall well-being, the global economy has been doing something right. A World Bank report published in October showed the number of people living in poverty fell to 10.7% of the world’s population in 2013, the latest year for which figures are available, from 35% in 1990, even as the world’s population expanded by almost two billion people.
Protesters held signs opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership during a rally on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 18.
Protesters held signs opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership during a rally on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 18. PHOTO: RODRIGO BUENDIA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Yet, inside many of the world’s richer countries, something has gone wrong. Since the 2008 financial crash, economic insecurity in many Western countries has increased and income and wealth disparities have widened.
Technological change is in part responsible for widening income and wealth gaps, benefiting high-skilled, better-educated individuals. The winners appear to be concentrated in globalized urban centers, leaving many struggling in rural areas or smaller cities.
A study by the Resolution Foundation, a British think tank, suggested some important parallels between Brexit and the Trump victory. Poorer areas in the U.S. swung to Mr. Trump, compared with 2012. In Britain, less-affluent parts of the country were more likely to vote for Brexit.
Areas with larger numbers of older voters swung to Mr. Trump and were more likely to vote for Brexit. The single-most-important variable was education: The less educated were more likely to vote for Mr. Trump and Brexit.
There are similar patterns elsewhere in Europe. Older, less-educated voters tend to be more worried about immigration and support for antiglobalization parties is strong in many postindustrial regions. A Pew Research Center survey last year concluded, “Older Europeans tend to be more inward looking than younger ones.” The average age of European voters is increasing, too.
Growing inequalities have manifested themselves in different ways across economies. In the U.S., unemployment is low and average wages have risen since the crash—but labor-force participation is at almost 40-year lows, suggesting many adults have given up on looking for work.
In the U.K., unemployment is low and labor-force participation rates high, but real wages have declined by 10% since the crash, as severely as in debt-torn Greece. Across much of continental Europe, unemployment rates remain stubbornly high.
These developments, combined with anxieties about immigration and terrorism, have encouraged a backlash against mainstream politicians and associated elites.
Fanning the trend, Western officials say, is Moscow. Donald Tusk, who presides over meetings of EU leaders, said in October that Russia sought to weaken the EU by, among other things, “disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, interference into the political processes in the EU and beyond, hybrid tools in the Balkans.” In an unprecedented assessment, U.S. intelligence agencies say Moscow also interfered in the U.S. election in an effort to help Mr. Trump.
The beneficiaries have been political movements or individuals that combine an appeal to cultural identity, often using anti-immigrant or xenophobic rhetoric, with an antiestablishment narrative.
Despite their nationalist stances, these groups often support one another. UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, who regularly appears at events with other European antiestablishment politicians, was the first foreign politician to meet with Mr. Trump after his election. Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who says policies of globalism have hit poorer Americans, has described himself as “an economic nationalist” who has “admired nationalist movements across the world.”
Assertive nationalism is often mixed with economic policies picked from left or right or both. It has variants, Prof. James says, in the Anglo-Saxon world, in southern Europe where it tends to be more left wing, and in Eastern Europe.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump promised tax cuts, usually associated with the right, and made pledges usually associated with the left to protect social-welfare payments and clamp down on international trade he sees as disadvantaging Americans.
Mainstream economists disagree on a lot of things, but most of them agree that raising barriers to trade, a path countries including the U.S. adopted in the early 1930s, is bad for growth. Without growth, political decisions about distribution of national income become more fraught.
For many economists, the solutions proposed by populist groups are thus likely to be worse—and possibly much worse—than the problems they purport to solve.
Globalization has also needed a sponsor. Britain played that role through much of the 19th century and the U.S. into the current era. But now, the U.S. seems to be turning inward, even though it has largely set and policed the rules of the international game. That has left a vacuum in the Middle East into which others, notably Russia, have stepped.
Russia has long railed against U.S. leadership, but though a powerful geopolitical player that can destabilize its neighbors, it has no economic heft. On current trends, the EU looks more likely to crumble—or at least to shrink—than take over the mantle of the global economy.
The only other possible replacement is China. In the financial crisis, people looked to China to stabilize the global economy, which it helped to do. In a significant gesture, as America occupies itself with its presidential inauguration, Xi Jinping is due to become the first Chinese leader to attend the Davos forum and lay out China’s vision of the globalized world.
Yet China’s readiness for the leadership role is in question, even in the unlikely circumstance that others, like Mr. Trump, were ready to let it happen. A world of even greater uncertainty beckons.
Peace Prize-Winning Obama Gets Department of Defense’s Highest Honor for Dropping 50,000 bombs on muslims in 2 years.
President Barack Obama was given the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service “as a token of appreciation for his service as commander in chief” at a farewell ceremony on January 4.
thefreethoughtproject.com
Politics make strange bedfellows, doesn't it? Progressives don't LIKE wars, they just realize that oppressive dictators need to be stopped. The alt-right isn't "anti-war" as much as they are "pro-dictator."
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