Obama's MENA speech: tick tock tick tock -- ding ding ding! Time's up, Mr Commander-in-Chief

Counting on my fingers and toes several times I think today is the 60 day-deadline for President Obama to ask Congress -- yes, by gum I see from Daily Kos and CNN that today is indeed the day President Barack Obama is supposed to comply with the part of the War Powers Act that says POTUS must receive congressional authorization for committing U.S. troops to a military action that lasts longer than 60 days.

Nuts to that, sez that great European statesman, Senator John McCain. According to CNN's report:

McCain said he doesn't believe the War Powers Act is constitutional and therefore he doesn't believe the president needs congressional authorization to continue the mission.

"I've never recognized the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, nor has any president, either Republican or Democrat," McCain said.

Yes but there are a few stick-in-the-muds among Republicans (see the CNN report) and Democrats (see Daily Kos) who want to bring the matter of continued U.S. military involvement in Libya to a vote.

If you interject, 'So that's what Obama's speech was about yesterday' -- yes. The part of the speech that addressed the Israeli-Palestinian situation was probably Obama's way of putting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the spot ahead of their meeting in Washington today. But the speech would have happened without the visit and Obama's incendiary comments relating to Israel. Obama knew he had to throw together a policy on MENA ahead of the 60-day deadline to rationalize continued U.S. military actions in Libya. He had to do this in the attempt to placate his American Leftist voter base.

The American Leftists -- the real Leftists -- aren't buying Obama's reasons for U.S. military intervention in Libya, as you can see from reading Rep. Mike Honda's op-ed at Daily Kos. Honda (D-CA) is a Senior Democratic Whip and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus's Taskforce on Peace and Security.

And CNN's report carries a letter to Obama from six Conservative Republican senators who pretty much echo the crux of Honda's argument.

As it so happened just around the time of Obama's speech NATO launched attacks in Libya that were an escalation in their intervention to help the rebels eject Col. Gadhafi from power -- an intervention which for some queer reason NATO leaders portray as designed to protect Libya's civilian population. See this Reuters report for details on the latest NATO strikes. As Rep. Honda points out there were plenty of options NATO and the Obama administration could have taken if civilian protection was their real aim.

OSCE's backdoor attempt to influence Thailand's election and why Americans should take note

OSCE Permanent Council

[Flipping her pen in the air] Can't I go on vacation for a few weeks without the cockroaches running riot in Washington? Never mind; it's a rhetorical question.

Actually the OSCE machinations with Thaksin Shinawatra started before my vacation but the situation flew under my radar until some nice person decided to ruin my holiday by alerting me.

The story is that the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) invited Thaksin to Washington to testify on human rights violations in Thailand and specifically during the Red Shirt 'riots' this Spring. (See Asia Sentinel report via Irrawaddy , December 15, "Thaksin goes to America.")

Pundita readers might recall what I and the rest of the outside world went through in the effort to get a fix on what was really happening in Bangkok during the riots. It turned out the riots were street theater that masked a sophisticated 5GW-type operation to destabilize Thailand's government, and which pointed to Thaksin as the mastermind.

That's not even addressing Thaksin's alleged human rights abuses and strong-arm tactics while he served as Thailand's prime minister.

In short, asking Thaksin to hold forth on human rights abuses and authoritarian trends in Thailand's government is asking the fox to point out weaknesses in the chicken coop. Despite this, the OSCE decided to give Thaksin a big public platform in Washington at a most sensitive juncture in Thailand's politics. (AFP report today, "Thai PM faces key electoral test in 2011.")

It's possible Thaksin's visa application to enter the USA will be denied, given the terrorism charges against him in Thailand. And his planned appearance in December has been postponed until January, ostensibly because Congress will be in session then, but probably in response to howls of protest from Thailand's government and various quarters in Washington. (The Straits Times, December 13 report, "Thaksin's US Hearing Put Off;" December 7 VOA report, "Thailand May Seek Extradition of Thaksin If He Enters US.")

Yet in light of Thaksin's spotty human rights record while he was PM, and given the great importance of the present Thai administration's assistance to Washington in the war on terror -- assistance which included their part in a sting operation that netted Viktor Bout -- one has to wonder about the backstory to the OSCE decision to call Thaksin to testify.

The Bout arrest is notable in this context because of alleged attempts by some of his buddies in the Russian mobs to bribe Thai officials -- a story that came to public view light in a Wikileaks leaked U.S. State Department cable. (Dec 1 AFP
report)

However, I think the real backstory is the story of the OSCE itself, what it's become since the mid-1990s. (See Wikipedia article on the organization in particular the Criticisms section.)

The larger story is what U.S. foreign policy has become since the mid-1990s. President Bill Clinton's administration was so tilted toward the EU it's not much of an exaggeration to say that during the Clinton era U.S. foreign policy was run from a postbox in Brussels when it wasn't run from London.

Add to this foreign lobbies, U.S. domestic defense lobbies, and U.S. domestic lobbies with foreign agendas have become such a huge industry in Washington since the 1990s that the USA doesn't have a foreign 'policy' anymore. It has thousands of competing interests, which pull members of Congress, key government agencies and the presidential administration in a thousand different directions. That's not policy. That's The Blob.

And the OSCE, a United Nations-chartered organization that is today the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization, is very much a part of the blob. I guess one benefit is that all these European organizations keep the manufacturers of large mahogany tables in business. And I really do applaud the European Union; I am so happy the West Europeans are not always warring with each other anymore.

But it's like ex-smokers who chew gum incessantly: they seem to have replaced battles with councils, which proliferate at an ever-increasing rate. And that's okay for the Europeans, as long as they're happy. But America is not the Roman Empire. It's not the British Empire. And if we don't want to go the way of those empires, we need to stop with our attempts to imitate the Europeans, else we'll be destroyed by the blob, which at last count was ten zillion lobbies, agencies, and NGOs.

And we need to stuff our ears with cotton whenever the EU tells Americans that we must be involved in their way of doing things because the USA is a superpower nation. Seems to me the Europeans are telling every nation it needs to be involved in the EU's way of doing things. The problem is that the European Union is not a nation. It's the world's most powerful trading bloc.

I'm not going to sit here and say that the OSCE has given every sign that it's morphed into yet one more front organization for the European Union. Vladimir Putin has already said it for me. (See Wikipedia's article on the OSCE.) I will say that the OSCE has no business trying to manipulate America's relationship with Thailand and to compound their sneakiness by doing this behind the American public's back.

Before I return to my vacation I will also note that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's idea is to get the OSCE even more involved in security for Afghanistan. (See December 1 Bloomberg report.) For the love of sanity: we need fewer outside agencies in Afghanistan and less OSCE involvement because with every additional layer of bureaucracy that's imported, this only adds to the corruption and the confusion in the country. But then everyone at State already knows this.

The world is not high school, Mr Obama

My greatest concern at this time is that the leaders in the European Union are trying to rush the Obama administration into making far-reaching decisions. My second greatest concern is that Mr Obama is rushing because he doesn't want to be unpopular.

I have noticed that President Obama has a tendency to confuse the world with high school. The EU is going to have a lot of fun with his view of the world if he doesn't wise up fast.

The goal for the U.S. President is not popularity. The goal is to act in the best interests of the United States, which is the economic engine of the world. No amount of U.S. popularity will save the world if the U.S. falls.

But since the rise of the EU, every time a U.S. administration doesn't do exactly what the EU leaders want, suddenly all over Western Europe half the population turns into streets and shouts Down with the USA.

And the BBC is always on the spot to record the protests for the evening's broadcast, which is global.

Then -- and this is the part I love -- they send armies of Talking Heads to appear on U.S. TV shows, to explain to Americans what steps we can take to stem the tide of anti-Americanism sweeping the world.

Get used to it, Mr President.

A wag observed recently that the economic crisis is "Obama's Iraq." I think the better comparison is the immediate aftermath of 9/11. So much is happening so fast in this war on the global economic meltdown, and on so many fronts, it harks to the storm of government activities here and abroad that arose in the wake of al Qaeda's attack on America.

The comparison falls apart, however, if you consider that the Bush administration was well-settled in place when the attack occurred, whereas Barack Obama moved into the White House in the midst of the financial meltdown.

So I am not happy that the EU -- poked and prodded by our dear allies, the 'Big Three,' Germany, France, and UK -- has chosen the April 2nd Group of 20 summit as the drop-dead date for the United States to have in place a plan for sweeping new regulations. Regulations meant not only to stem the present global economic crisis but also any future ones. And for the US to decide whether to accept the EU plan, in which Gordon Brown has a big part, for saving the world.

Gee, why not also make April 2 the drop-dead deadline for getting a space station on the moon, finding the cure for AIDS, and ending global poverty?

Of course there needs to be an international, coordinated approach to dealing with the crisis, and yes we know that Europe is being hit even harder by the economic crisis than the United States.

But this 'hurry up and sign on the dotted line because the sky is falling' -- c'mon guys.

If there was ever a time for a U.S. President to invoke the raw power of America's hyperpower status, the G20 summit is it. This should be a working summit, a discussion summit, and not the place to agree to regulations that will have a profound affect on the entire world for many decades to come.

Yet not 24 hours had passed since President Obama's address to Congress (and my post warning that something was afoot with Gordon Brown) that he announced the U.S. is preparing sweeping new regulations with the entire globe in mind:

President Obama outlined broad plans on Wednesday to revamp the nation’s financial system.

Obama is seeking a host of new regulations amid a historic meltdown to prevent a future financial crisis.

“We can no longer sustain 21st-century markets with 20th-century regulations,” Obama said following an Oval Office meeting with his top lieutenants and the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate panels overseeing the financial industry. [...]

Obama has said he would like to complete an outline on future regulation by a G-20 heads-of-state meeting in London in early April.

Moving legislation through Congress, however, could take more time. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has laid out a two-stage process for regulatory legislation that will be a lobbying bonanza, with outside think tanks, advocacy groups, government panels and watchdog offices weighing in with stacks of reports.

Obama, who also met with congressional leaders on his budget Wednesday, said he is trying to avoid both “an oppressive government-run economy” and “a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism.”

The definition of "low-information American" is "Democrat politician." So I'll cut President Obama slack and assume he really doesn't know that if only we'd had an unforgiving and chaotic capitalism, the global economic crisis would have been over by now.

There has been so much government intervention in financial markets here and abroad that it'll be a miracle if the world pulls out of the worst part of the economic crisis by the start of the next decade.

There is no solution for this problem until everyone throws in the towel and finally admits that Ayn Rand was completely right; that will happen only with a profound transformation in consciousness that might be slated for the year 3,001 CE.

Until then, we'll have to bump along with governments playing mechanic whenever their regulations produce economic chaos. Of course this always results in more government regulations. But we're trying for least harm here. And that means the United States shouldn't rush to do things the EU way.

I want to show you something. Here is the list of the G20 members. (There are two G20s -- one is the "major economies" and the other is "developing nations;" the meeting taking place in London on April 2 is the G20 major economies.)Watch carefully; don't blink:

In 2009, there are 20 members of the G-20. These include the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries:

Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
India
Indonesia
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Russia
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
South Korea
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States

The 20th member is the European Union, which is represented by the rotating Council presidency and the European Central Bank.

So that's why they don't describe the G20 members as "nations;" it's because the European Union is a bloc of nations.

Looking at our map of the world we see that Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom are in Europe and the EU. That means the EU Big Three are twice represented at the G20 summit, which gives them tremendous clout.

If you say, 'Hey, no fair' -- there is no 'fair' from the EU point of view when it comes to wringing concessions from a hyperpower. That's their excuse and they're sticking to it: the USA is a hyperpower and so we need to eke out a little patch of bipolarity in the world.

The EU viewpoint studiously overlooks the fact that the big bad hyperpower has made it possible for Western Europe to recover from two world wars in relative peace and raise a very powerful trading bloc that is America's biggest trade competitor.

I think even before he was in office President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed that the EU nations take on responsibility for defending themselves. The proposal went over in Europe's major capitals (including Paris) like bacon at a bar mitzvah. Why spend money on defense when those governments can rely on the USA for defending them, which frees up the European governments to support massive social welfare programs?

So I don't want Democrats writing me to complain that not all their politicians are low on information. Virtually every Democrat politician points to Western Europe's social welfare programs as a model for the United States.

Earth calling Democrats: You want the European Social Welfare model applied to the USA? In that event, who's going to take on the responsibility for defending the US -- not to mention Europe and the Middle Eastern oilfields -- if the US follows the European welfare model? China? Guatemala? Or should we ask the EU and their flotilla of rubber duckies to patrol the oceans?

Where was I? The Hill's report on the Obama administration's scurrying to concoct new regulations is a handy guide to the kind of regulations being considered.

With regard to the EU plan, a UK Guardian report from February 16 sketches the broad outline of Gordon Brown's plan for saving the world from economic catastrophe, present and future. I suggest you use the report, which I have posted below, as a handy program guide for Brown's speech to the U.S. Congress on March 4.

Is it a good idea to give more funds and power to the IMF? There's no choice about adding to their coffers. They're having to bail out a number of European nations and before the global downturn is over they'll probably have to bail out half of Africa.

With regard to increasing the IMF's power: I would rather see the IMF take the heat than the USA for the mistakes and friendly fire that are to occur in the fog of war against the global financial crisis.

So while I want to see all the details before saying yes, I am in favor of handing the IMF some I repeat some regulatory powers.

As for the rest of Mr Brown's proposals: he's trying for more integration and control of the globalized financial markets so to prevent another falling-dominoes scenario. This, on the argument that all the markets are inextricably entwined.

But you can argue, as Phillip Blond has (see my post of yesterday), that it was the lack of firewalls to protect domestic financial markets that turned the housing mortgage crisis into a global series of cascading catastrophes.

How to set up firewalls for markets that trade both globally and locally? That question should be the top one for Obama's regulatory team, the Federal Reserve, and Congress. The answers they come up with should be America's top contribution to the G20 summit.

As for Gordon Brown's plan to give the G20 a permanent secretariat -- you gotta think like a bunko squad cop to fathom Mr Brown's machinations.

Gordon Brown seeks sweeping reforms to give IMF global 'surveillance role'

By Patrick Wintour, political editor
Guardian; February 16, 2009

Gordon Brown is making reform of the International Monetary Fund, its governance, funding and powers of surveillance, the centrepiece of a 45-day diplomatic drive in an attempt to make the G20 summit in London a turning point in remaking the international economic order.

Brown, in alliance with the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, wants to increase the funding of the IMF, speed up a review to give China and India clearer voting rights, and also give the fund powers to direct nation states to respond to its surveillance reports.

He also wants to give the G20 a permanent secretariat, so making it a powerful body overseeing finance and largely eclipsing the G8.

The prime minister is meeting the IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on Wednesday, the pope on Thursday and the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, on Friday, before joining a mini-summit of European G20 members France, Italy and Germany in Berlin hosted by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.

No 10 angrily denied suggestions that Merkel is lining Brown up to be a new IMF super-regulator. Some officials believe a cabinet member leaked the suggestion.

Britain is chairing the G20, with a summit in London on 2 April to be attended by Barack Obama, and Brown is using the event to advance his long-nurtured plans to reform the IMF. It is a huge test of his diplomatic skills as he seeks to weld conflicting goals and ensure practical proposals emerge rather than rhetorical bombast that fails to assure the markets.

On the IMF, Britain wants to expand its existing lines of credit, so giving "emerging market economies" an opportunity to contribute. Brown has also considered a loan or bond facility funded by Arab states, Japan and China.

He and Rudd also want allocate additional special drawing rights (SDRs) to the IMF's newer members, as agreed in 1997, so giving them access to foreign exchange. SDRs are an official international reserve asset issued by the IMF to its members, who can exchange them for freely useable currency.

Strauss-Kahn has called for the IMF's resources to be doubled $500bn. Brown is also interested in the IMF supporting – through expertise and financing – the creation of a network of national "bad banks" to take on toxic assets.

Finally, he wants to give the IMF a strengthened mandate to provide early warning of weaknesses and advice on remedial policies, similar to those provided by a central bank.

At a seminar on the G20 summit last week Brown argued: "The world lacks a proper early warning system. There is the Bank for International Settlement, there is the Financial Stability Forum, but we have never given anybody sufficient teeth so that their views are treated so seriously that people will immediately have to act when that early warning is given. We still lack the means for financial supervision." The International Monetary Fund, he said, "cannot have a role that is simply commentating on the global economy, it must have a surveillance role that is effective".

He added: "If people feel that the IMF is simply the representative of the richest countries with very little say for the poorer countries, if people think that the World Bank is similarly constructed, then people are going to either seek to have other institutions or going to reject the existing institutions, and of course the danger of that at this time is protectionism."

The aim appears to be develop a "grand bargain" in which there is a greater role for emerging economies such as China in the IMF, and easier access to its financial assistance, in exchange for such countries playing by the global rules and not trying to build up surpluses and reserves as an insurance policy.

Other issues to be addressed include whether hedge funds and shadow banking are brought within the remit of regulation and Brown has also asked Pascal Lamy, the head of the World Trade Organisation, to compile a report for the G20 on the threat posed by protectionism.

Brown now reckons that unless new credit lines are opened, as many as 100 million people will be driven into poverty as a result of the global financial crisis. He has been struck by figures from the International Institute of Finance which said two years ago net flows to the emerging markets were nearly $1 trillion, but that in 2009 this figure will be $160-170bn – a 700% fall in two years.

The Juggernaut of Multiculturalism comes up against the Juggernaut of Protectionism. Why does this remind me of a scene in Jurassic Park?

The title of John Batchelor's post this morning, and the pictures that accompany it, say it all: British National Party Preaches Protectionism to Hosannas. Now how on earth did this state of affairs descend on Merry Olde England? Let's review:

A year ago I wrote a post that I sarcastically titled More on Archbishop of Canterbury's voter registration drive for the British National Party, in which I warned that the archbishop had gone too far in his determination to shut up Britons and ram Sharia law down their throats.

That followed my Rise of Mordor posts on the archbishop's call for the instatement of Sharia law in Britain, and his frightening call to criminalize unkind and thoughtless speech.(1,2) While Britons fumed over his remarks, Williams ducked the issue by parsing in virtually unintelligible sentences exactly what he had said and not said.

The archbishop -- Rowan Williams -- and the Labor government, were clearly unaware of the strength of the gathering storm in Britain. Yet the signs were starkly evident by 2007 because Britons had been signing up in droves to join the extremely nationalist, right-wing British National Party.(3)

A year or so before, many of those Britons wouldn't have been caught dead belonging to the BNP. But with the widespread perception that British society was crumbling while Labor fiddled, desperation had driven many Britons to the BNP -- with the inevitable result that the BNP platform had to become somewhat more inclusive to accommodate all the new members.

As late as the Spring of 2008 the Labor government had a chance to save the situation by making real changes. But Gordon Brown and his advisors settled for trying to 'manage' the outpourings of anger.

Of course the government didn't have a crystal ball; they couldn't imagine the meltdown in the banking industry and the credit markets and how, within a matter of weeks, the financial crisis would engulf the United Kingdom and ignite the most virulent protectionist sentiments.

But that's always the way it is. It's never just one thing; it's a buildup of several things, until a government is sitting on a mountain of bone-dry tinder. Then, all it takes is the spark of one incident. The spark turned out to fury about loss of jobs to foreigners and immigrants, as is evident from John Batchelor's post.

Realize that it was never really about Islam. The growing Islamization of British society was only a symptom. It was always about Gordon Brown's push to make Britain the world's Sharia banking capital, and the government's attempt to quash both dissent against Islamization and the loudest yelling from extremist British Muslim groups.

To get everyone to shut up, the government had to deploy multiculturalism laws so ruthlessly that it could be fairly said the government was veering toward totalitarianism. That is why even some British Muslims (and Sikhs and Hindus) demanded to join the BNP. They or their parents or grandparents had not fled their countries to live under a government so sweeping in its control that even the slightest politically incorrect word or action might be cause for criminal charges.

By the time Queen Elizabeth noticed that something had gone terribly awry with British society, it was too late; the RUSI report in response to her discreet inquiries did nothing to remove the government's blinkers:

[...] The report had concluded that Britain's "misplaced deference to multiculturalism" was undermining the fight against extremists, and that military and security services were having to fight threats at home and abroad.

The defence minister, Bob Ainsworth, described Rusi's report as "extraordinary", and rejected its findings strongly.

"There's a lot of nonsense talked about deference to multiculturalism. Who is deferring to multiculturalism?" he asked on the BBC's World at One. "Who in our society objects to the basic premise that all of the people who live in our country owe allegiance to our country?"[...](5)

So it really comes down to David Cameron. If he listens to Phillip Blond, that is perhaps the Conservative party's one chance at mounting an effective answer to the British National Party.

It seems Cameron is listening, at least to some extent. But the window for decisive action is closing fast.

If all the above is news to Americans, ask your major news outlets why they haven't been reporting on the issues. Only those Americans who kept very close tabs on doings in Europe had any idea how much anger had built up in several EU countries about the heavy-handed use of multiculturalism laws to silence dissent.

The upshot? Another crisis appearing 'out of the blue.'

Nothing in human affairs happens out of the blue. Europe has been in big trouble for at least three years; anyone who has closely followed the Gates of Vienna blog knows that.

As to what it all means for Americans -- it means the fight of our lives against the same kind of multiculturalism laws that hold several EU populations hostage.

The other night CNBC aired a speech by the late economist Milton Friedman; during the Q&A he observed that whatever criticism one might have of globalization people had to remember that it had lifted hundreds of millions of people around the globe out of abject poverty.

But globalization and giving the world's poorest a leg up are not the real issue; the issue is the kind of laws that were created to enforce dictates that globalized trade imposes on democratic societies -- laws that Left-leaning coalitions strongly support for reasons of their own.

Yet when it comes to the point where citizens in a democracy must say and do nothing to offend the global consumer and the immigrant workers employed in globalized industries, you're looking at the death of liberty. Many Europeans have already figured this out and thus, the crisis on the Continent that the mainstream U.S. new media have studiously avoided reporting.

What is the answer? The marriage between mega-corporations that do big global trade and government needs to be ended. The question is how it will end: the BNP way or Phillip Blond's way. I'd advise going for the latter.

1) The Rise of Mordor, Part 1 ...; January 30, 2008

2) The Rise of Mordor, Part 2 ...; February 7, 2008

3) The British National Party Gains Strength; Times Online, April 19, 2007

4) Government rejects charge of 'flabby' response to terrorism; Guardian; February 15, 2008

5) See also Localism, Faux Localism, and the Rise of the red Tories ...; Pundita, February 15, 2009