In The News:

New Code Words For Communism: Income Inequality And A 'Shared Commitment To Fighting Growing Inequality'

Barack Obama will meet Pope Francis for the first time Thursday for talks on a shared agenda to fight inequality which the US President hopes will help boost support at home.

The talks between the first Latin-American pope and first African-American US president will focus on tackling the gap between the rich and the poor, but are likely to spill over into thornier issues such as abortion, homosexuals and contraception.

Obama is "mostly going I think to bask in the glow of the new Pope," said Jeremy Shapiro, visiting fellow at Washington's Brookings institute.

His main aim will be "to highlight their sort of mutual attention to the problems of poverty and inequality. This isn't really a foreign policy stop," he said.

- 'Challenge' of income inequality -

According to the White House, Obama hopes to speak to the pope about their "shared commitment to fighting growing inequality", though the peace process in the Middle East, the environment and immigration are also expected to be on the table.

Obama, whose approval rating has been slipping, will be keen to repeat his denunciations about income inequality, which he has described as "the defining challenge of our time".

Earlier this month, he used the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington to argue that his calls for tax hikes on the rich and curbs on abuses by big banks had a strong moral and religious grounding, in an election-year swipe at Republicans.

Pious religious observance should guide political motives and lead to policies that help the sick and the needy, he said -- echoing Francis's rallying cry for more to be done for the poor and disadvantaged.

The pope's critical comments about capitalism last year saw him forced to rebuff accusations from rightwing Americans that his teaching is Marxist. But his condemnation of "the economy of exclusion and inequality" won the support of progressive Catholics.

Obama said he was "hugely impressed" by Francis's inclusive approach after the pope called for the Church to stop obsessing debating teachings on abortion, homosexuals and contraception.

Israel: Abbas Refusal To Discuss 'Jewish State' Torpedoing Talks

By refusing to even discuss recognizing Israel as a Jewish state Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is destroying any chances of reaching a peace agreement, a senior Israeli official said Wednesday.

“President Abbas’s stubborn refusal to discuss mutual recognition between two nation-states stands in stark contrast with Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s willingness to recognize a Palestinian state and his agreement that all of the core issues can be raised in the talks,” the official told The Times of Israel, a day after Abbas again dismissed the idea at an Arab League summit in Kuwait, and hours after the summit’s delegates expressed “total rejection” of Israel’s demand.

By clinging to his position, Abbas “could well torpedo the peace process,” the senior Israeli official said. “He boasted that he refuses to even discuss recognizing the Jewish state, once again parading rejectionism as virtue.

Israel’s demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people has emerged as a key sticking point in the current US-brokered peace negotiations. Netanyahu is adamant that he will not sign any deal without it, while Abbas and other senior PA officials insist they will never acquiesce to the demand.

Globalism And Secretly Negotiating Away U.S. Sovereignty

One leak about the TTIP revealed a proposed “Regulatory Cooperation Council” that would evaluate existing regulations in the U.S. and EU and recommend future rules while coordinating a response to the current regulations.

Writing in the left-leaning the Nation magazine, foreign policy analyst Andrew Erwin said the TTIP was less about reducing tariffs and “more about weakening the power of average citizens to defend themselves against corporate labor and environmental abuses.”

Erwin took particular issue with a section in the TTIP called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement, which stipulates foreign corporations can sue the government utilizing a special international tribunal instead of the country’s own domestic system that uses U.S. law.

“The tribunals are not accountable to any national public or democratically elected body,” wrote Erwin.

While Obama is negotiating the TTIP largely in secret, talks continue to forge ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. The expansive plan is a proposed free-trade agreement between the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

The agreement would create new guidelines for everything from food safety to fracking, financial markets, medical prices, copyright rules and Internet freedom.

On Tuesday, the leaders of Canada and Japan reportedly met on the sidelines of a nuclear summit at the Hague to discuss the TPP.

The TPP negotiations have been criticized by politicians and advocacy groups alike for their secrecy. The few aspects of the partnership leaked to the public indicate an expansive agenda with highly limited congressional oversight.

In February, the Open the Government organization sent a letter to Obama blasting the lack of transparency surrounding the TPP talks, stating the negotiations have been “conducted in unprecedented secrecy.”

“Despite the fact the deal may significantly affect the way we live our lives by limiting our public protections, there has been no public access to even the most fundamental draft agreement texts and other documents,” read the letter.

The missive was signed by advocacy groups such as OpenTheGovernment.org, Project On Government Oversight, ARTICLE 19 and the Global Campaign for Freedom of Expression and Information.

The groups warned issues being secretly negotiated include “patent and copyright, land use, food and product standards, natural resources, professional licensing, government procurement, financial practices, healthcare, energy, telecommunications, and other service sector regulations.”

Western Financial System: 'In A Full State Of Collapse'

Lawrence Freeman: First of all you should not believe what President Obama says. We are in a very dangerous situation that could escalate to a world war. The decisions that President Obama’s made are not his own. He is a effectively a tool of Wall Street and the British financial system, and they have declared war on Russia and President Putin because of the leadership role that Russia plays in the whole Eurasian continent, which is moving in a different direction.

The financial system of the Western countries is in a full state of collapse and that is what is driving this President and the Europeans to this escalating war against Russia and also China. 

Again, we know what the real truth of the matter is. The US government, President Obama, using people from the Cheney administration – of Cheney and Bush – organized a coup in Kiev. Victoria Nuland, who used to work for Cheney, has been organizing, she said, for several years to overthrow the government. We worked with well-known neo-nazis and right wing fascists to illegally overthrow the government in late February. And this was done to try and provoke President Putin in Russia into a response.

And Russians responded by allowing the people of Crimea to rejoin Russia, which they have a great long heritage to. So who is responsible for the situation in Ukraine? It’s the deliberate policy of the US and the Western under this financial system to try to weaken Russia, as an effort to weaken Eurasian-Russian policies for economic development.

 We wanted to use Ukraine, which is a very large country with a long border with Russia. We want to weaken Russia. Because, if you look what Russia is doing with China, with India, with other countries – they are moving forward in terms of economic development, space technology, energy development, infrastructure.

The West right now is going through the most severe financial economic collapse in its history. In Europe and now in the United States, our food supply is dwindling, our energy supplies are not there, we have no forward progressive development. And so the Western financial powers are using Obama and intended to use Ukraine to weaken Russia.

Haunting U.S. And Europe: 'The Specter Of A Russian-Chinese Alliance'

A specter is haunting Europe, and that is the specter of a Russian-Chinese alliance at the expense of Europe. China is dynamic, and its dynamism is transforming the “Silk Road” countries that lie across Russia’s southern border. China is building high-speed rail and high-speed internet south to Rangoon and eastward to Istanbul, intent on transforming its neighbors into an export market for high-value-added manufacturing and high-tech products. It’s one of the most remarkable ventures in world economic history, and the most underreported story of the year. My conservative friends have been predicting China’s economic demise every year for the past dozen, and have been wrong each time. They notice the elephant dung, but ignore the elephant.

China’s appetite for Siberian resources, including hydrocarbons and perhaps including water, is limitless. The Russians and Chinese have every reason to suspect each other. But if they put their differences aside, the economic synergies would be extensive. What should worry the West is the prospective synergies in military technology as well. Russia is rolling out the S500 air defense system. We shuddered at the prospect that Russia might provide its 20-year-old S300 system to Damascus or Tehran; we really don’t know how much better the new iteration is, but it might be a great deal better. Chinese rocketry already is good enough to sink any American ship within several hundred miles of its coastline. We really don’t want them to get together.

That’s precisely what may happen if the West succeeds in “isolating” Russia, as Germany’s leading news organization Der Spiegel has been warning. Of course, all this is on the German language site, beamed to the homefolks; the Germans don’t bother trying to explain things to the Anglos any more. Use Google translate if you want to read it.

A fundament of American policy since Henry Kissinger engineered the great opening to China more than four decades ago has been to keep Russia and China from combining against the West. John Lewis Gaddis in his history of the Cold War claims that the U.S. opening to China was the decisive event in winning the Cold War; I have criticized this view in thepast for underestimating the importance of the Central Front in Europe, but it surely was a critical dimension of U.S. policy.

Presently, we may undo the work of the Cold War era and stand godfather to a new Sino-Russian alliance. This without doubt would be the stupidest move in the history of American foreign policy. Russia’s economy is weak, but Russia has considerable latent resources in military technology. Russia has a limitless market for natural resources in China and a prospective partner in military technology. If we continue to dismantle our defense capacity while Russia and China nourish theirs, we will be in deep trouble.

The best response to Putin’s challenge would be a massive increase in defense R&D, with a view to neutralizing Russia’s perceived areas of strength in missile and air defense technology (remember how SDI cowed Gorbachev in the 1980s?). That would command China’s respect and reduce Russia’s attractiveness as a prospective partner. The Crimea was, is, and will be Russian, and it’s pointless to cry over milk that was spilled in 1783. We need to think several moves ahead on the chessboard. Otherwise, Chancellor Merkel is quite right: sanctions are pointless.

Showdown In Ukraine: Putin's Quest For Ports, Oil, Pipelines And Gas

Yes, Russia is guilty of meddling in Ukraine, but then again so are the United States and the European Union.The major difference is that far less was said and much less reported by the international media over the Americans’ and Europeans’ interference than of Russia’s actions and the reactions it caused.

Where Russia is involved many in the West believe that one only needs to scratch the surface to see traces of the old Soviet Union begin to resurface. After all, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a former KGB officer. The truth is much more complicated than that: or perhaps somewhat simpler.

Russia needs access to warm water ports for its Black Sea fleet and many analysts also believe that this is a major issue of concern for Moscow, which it is. But the plot, as they say, thickens.

There is also another reason for Putin’s intervention in Ukraine and that has to do with Russia elbowing for dominance of the very lucrative and strategically important “energy corridors.”
That is very likely to be the major reason why Putin is willing to risk going to war with the West over Crimea, the pipelines that traverses the Caucasus and the oil and natural gas these pipelines carry westwards to Europe.

If Russia has vested interest in “recolonizing” Ukraine, the United States on the other hand has its own interests in Ukraine and other former Soviet areas.

What is going on today is nothing short of a race for control of what’s going to dominate the energy markets over the next two or three decades: the energy corridors from Central Asia, the Caucuses and through Russia and Ukraine.

How The BRICS (thanks to Russia) Just Kicked The G-7 Out Of The G-20

International discord over Ukraine does not bode well for the settlement of differences over the IMF’s future. Though the G7 is excluding Russia from its number, in retaliation for its action in Crimea, this does not amount to isolating Russia. There has been no suggestion that Russia be excluded from the G20. The USA and its allies have suspected that several other G20 members would not stand for it. This suspicion was confirmed yesterday whenthe BRICS foreign ministers, assembled at the international conference in The Hague, issued a statement condemning ‘the escalation of hostile language, sanctions and counter-sanctions’. They affirmed that the custodianship of the G20 belongs to all member-states equally and no one member-state can unilaterally determine its nature and character. In short, their statement read like a manifesto for a pluralist world in which no one nation, bloc or set of values would predominate.

Beijing  leaders have long dreamt of displacing, or at least dethroning, the US dollar from its reserve currency role. US dominance of the IMF is one of several effective bars to the achievement of such a goal. The kind of action Russia is advocating, the BRICS wresting control of the IMF in despite of US veto power, might have some appeal. That would mark the end of the unified global monetary system that has developed since the IMF was founded in 1945, to be replaced by a bloc of fiat currencies in the developed countries and a system in the emerging sector where currencies were linked to drawing rights in some new international fund, possibly with some material backing. It seems unlikely that convertibility between these monetary systems could be maintained for long. Consequently, the 10 April meeting is shaping up as a potentially critical juncture in world economic history.

Shrinking U.S. Military

A March 25 article in The Washington Times was titled “Obama to Kill Navy’s Tomahawk, Hellfire Missile Programs in Budget Decimation” and on March 21, The Wall Street Journal published a commentary, “America’s Incredible Shrinking Navy.”  When you add those to The New York Times February 23 article, “Pentagon Plans to Shrink Army to Pre-World War II Level”, you’ve got sufficient reason to begin to realize something very ominous is occurring.

This concerned is heightened by the way dozens of high ranking officers are, in the view of some observers, being purged. A number of retired generals are speaking out about it. One of them, retired Army Major General Paul Vallely has charged that Obama is “intentionally weakening and gutting our military and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.” Retired Army Major General Patrick Brady agrees saying, “There is no doubt he is intent on emasculating the military and will fire anyone who disagrees with him.”

The world, over the course of human civilization, has always been a dangerous place. Much of the history of mankind is a history of wars, large and small. In the last century the U.S. military was involved in two world wars, a Korean conflict, a war in Vietnam, and the Gulf War to drive out Hussein’s Iraqi forces after he invaded Kuwait.

The Russian seizure of Crimea in the wake of the protests that has left Ukraine in disarray has put all of Europe on edge and raised questions about the readiness of NATO. A look around the world sees China increasing its military strength, particularly at sea.

The Middle East to include much of northern Africa is a hotbed of turmoil. And, of course, Iran continues to contribute to it, aiding Syria’s regime along with the Russians, supporting Palestinian terror organizations that threaten Israel, while pursuing its own nuclear weapon capabilities.
This would hardly seem a good time to undermine U.S. military capabilities, but that is exactly what is occurring thanks to President Obama.

The Washington Times reported that “President Barack Obama is seeking to abolish two highly successful missile programs that experts say have helped the U.S. Navy maintain military superiority for the past several decades.”  The Tomahawk missile program, under Obama’s 2015 budget proposal, would be completely eliminated by fiscal year 2016. Seth Cropsey, the director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower, said “This really moves the U.S. away from a position of influence and military dominance.”


Writing in The New York Times, Steve Cohen, a former director of the U.S. Naval Institute, noted that “The Navy is supposed to be ‘forward deployed’ to provide the president with tools powerful enough to deal with potential threats and trouble spots.” For decades since the end of World War Two the U.S Navy has patrolled the world’s sea lanes to protect trade between nations, but Cohen said, “The rest of the world isn’t unpatrolled, but it is under-patrolled” noting that “Some 90% of the world’s trade moves by sea. Much of that can be disrupted by attacks on a handful of choke points readily apparent to pirates, terrorists, and rogue nations.”
“With the U.S Navy arguably at its smallest since 1917, we don’t have many ships that are actually at sea. Only 35% of the Navy’s entire fleet is deployed, fewer than 100 ships.”

U.S. air power has been under assault as well by the Obama regime. In June of last year, David A. Deptula, a retired Air Force three-star general and senior military scholar at the Air Force Academy, warned that “In the Air Force alone, more than 30 squadrons are now grounded, along with aircrews, and maintenance and training personnel.” Less than a year ago “The graduate schools for Air Force, Navy and Marine combat aviators” had been cancelled. “Equipment testing and upgrades to F-22s, F-15s, F-16s, and other aircraft have been delayed.”

In September 2013, the commandant of the Marine Corps, James F. Amos, warned that cuts to the nation’s defense and security spending that occurred from 1990 to 2001, reduced its total active-duty strength by 32%. In 2001 the Corps totaled approximately 172,000 Marines, down from 197,000 in the 1990 Gulf War. When 9/11 occurred, the Marines “found themselves short of critical capabilities in intelligence collection and analysis, in communication and in mobility on land, sea and in the air.” These days the Marines are facing further reductions.

It will be up to Congress to eliminate the sequestration cuts and the Obama regime proposals to ensure that the U.S. military is restored to a state of readiness. If it rubber stamps the reductions that have been occurring for more than a decade, the ability of the nation to respond to an attack on our homeland or any of our allies will be highly limited.

You can be sure that those nations unfriendly to our future are fully aware of this and the defeat of our armed forces could occur on the battlefield because it has already occurred here.