Toward Global Disaster: Chaos and Intervention in the Middle East - by Richard Falk

here are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III. The reckless confrontation with Russia along its borders, reinforced by provocative weapons deployments in several NATO countries and the promotion of governing regimes hostile to Russia in such countries as Ukraine and Georgia seems to exhibit Cold War nostalgia, and is certainly not the way to preserve peace.
Add to this the increasingly belligerent approach recently taken by the United States naval officers and defense officials to China with respect to island disputes and navigational rights in the South China Seas. Such posturing has all the ingredients needed for intensifying international conflict, giving a militarist signature to Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia.’
These developments are happening during the supposedly conflict averse Obama presidency. Looking ahead to new leadership, even the most optimistic scenario that brings Hilary Clinton to the White House is sure to make these pre-war drum beats even louder. From a more detached perspective it is fair to observe that Obama seems rather peace-oriented only because American political leaders and the Beltway/media mainstream have become so accustomed to relying on military solutions whether successful or not, whether dangerous and wasteful or not, that is, only by comparison with more hawkish alternatives.
The current paranoid political atmosphere in the United States is a further relevant concern, calling for police state governmental authority at home, increased weapons budgets, and the continuing militarization of policing and law enforcement. Such moves encourage an even more militaristic approach to foreign challenges that seem aimed at American and Israeli interests by ISIS, Iran, and China. Where this kind of war-mongering will lead is unknowable, but what is frighteningly clear is that this dangerous geopolitical bravado is likely to become even more strident as the 2016 campaign unfolds to choose the next American president. Already Donald Trump, the clear Republican frontrunner, has seemed to commit the United States to a struggle against all of Islam by his foolish effort to insist that every Muslim is terrorist suspect Islam as a potential terrorist who should be so treated. Even Samuel Huntington were he still alive might not welcome such an advocate of ‘the clash of civilizations’!
- See more at: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/56296-toward-global-disaster.html#sthash.SZ6YWySZ.dpuf

here are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III. The reckless confrontation with Russia along its borders, reinforced by provocative weapons deployments in several NATO countries and the promotion of governing regimes hostile to Russia in such countries as Ukraine and Georgia seems to exhibit Cold War nostalgia, and is certainly not the way to preserve peace.
Add to this the increasingly belligerent approach recently taken by the United States naval officers and defense officials to China with respect to island disputes and navigational rights in the South China Seas. Such posturing has all the ingredients needed for intensifying international conflict, giving a militarist signature to Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia.’
These developments are happening during the supposedly conflict averse Obama presidency. Looking ahead to new leadership, even the most optimistic scenario that brings Hilary Clinton to the White House is sure to make these pre-war drum beats even louder. From a more detached perspective it is fair to observe that Obama seems rather peace-oriented only because American political leaders and the Beltway/media mainstream have become so accustomed to relying on military solutions whether successful or not, whether dangerous and wasteful or not, that is, only by comparison with more hawkish alternatives.
The current paranoid political atmosphere in the United States is a further relevant concern, calling for police state governmental authority at home, increased weapons budgets, and the continuing militarization of policing and law enforcement. Such moves encourage an even more militaristic approach to foreign challenges that seem aimed at American and Israeli interests by ISIS, Iran, and China. Where this kind of war-mongering will lead is unknowable, but what is frighteningly clear is that this dangerous geopolitical bravado is likely to become even more strident as the 2016 campaign unfolds to choose the next American president. Already Donald Trump, the clear Republican frontrunner, has seemed to commit the United States to a struggle against all of Islam by his foolish effort to insist that every Muslim is terrorist suspect Islam as a potential terrorist who should be so treated. Even Samuel Huntington were he still alive might not welcome such an advocate of ‘the clash of civilizations’!
- See more at: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/56296-toward-global-disaster.html#sthash.SZ6YWySZ.dpuf

here are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III. The reckless confrontation with Russia along its borders, reinforced by provocative weapons deployments in several NATO countries and the promotion of governing regimes hostile to Russia in such countries as Ukraine and Georgia seems to exhibit Cold War nostalgia, and is certainly not the way to preserve peace.
Add to this the increasingly belligerent approach recently taken by the United States naval officers and defense officials to China with respect to island disputes and navigational rights in the South China Seas. Such posturing has all the ingredients needed for intensifying international conflict, giving a militarist signature to Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia.’
These developments are happening during the supposedly conflict averse Obama presidency. Looking ahead to new leadership, even the most optimistic scenario that brings Hilary Clinton to the White House is sure to make these pre-war drum beats even louder. From a more detached perspective it is fair to observe that Obama seems rather peace-oriented only because American political leaders and the Beltway/media mainstream have become so accustomed to relying on military solutions whether successful or not, whether dangerous and wasteful or not, that is, only by comparison with more hawkish alternatives.
The current paranoid political atmosphere in the United States is a further relevant concern, calling for police state governmental authority at home, increased weapons budgets, and the continuing militarization of policing and law enforcement. Such moves encourage an even more militaristic approach to foreign challenges that seem aimed at American and Israeli interests by ISIS, Iran, and China. Where this kind of war-mongering will lead is unknowable, but what is frighteningly clear is that this dangerous geopolitical bravado is likely to become even more strident as the 2016 campaign unfolds to choose the next American president. Already Donald Trump, the clear Republican frontrunner, has seemed to commit the United States to a struggle against all of Islam by his foolish effort to insist that every Muslim is terrorist suspect Islam as a potential terrorist who should be so treated. Even Samuel Huntington were he still alive might not welcome such an advocate of ‘the clash of civilizations’!
- See more at: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/56296-toward-global-disaster.html#sthash.SZ6YWySZ.dpuf

There are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III. The reckless confrontation with Russia along its borders, reinforced by provocative weapons deployments in several NATO countries and the promotion of governing regimes hostile to Russia in such countries as Ukraine and Georgia seems to exhibit Cold War nostalgia, and is certainly not the way to preserve peace.

Add to this the increasingly belligerent approach recently taken by the United States naval officers and defense officials to China with respect to island disputes and navigational rights in the South China Seas. Such posturing has all the ingredients needed for intensifying international conflict, giving a militarist signature to Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia.’

These developments are happening during the supposedly conflict averse Obama presidency. Looking ahead to new leadership, even the most optimistic scenario that brings Hilary Clinton to the White House is sure to make these pre-war drum beats even louder. From a more detached perspective it is fair to observe that Obama seems rather peace-oriented only because American political leaders and the Beltway/media mainstream have become so accustomed to relying on military solutions whether successful or not, whether dangerous and wasteful or not, that is, only by comparison with more hawkish alternatives.

The current paranoid political atmosphere in the United States is a further relevant concern, calling for police state governmental authority at home, increased weapons budgets, and the continuing militarization of policing and law enforcement. Such moves encourage an even more militaristic approach to foreign challenges that seem aimed at American and Israeli interests by ISIS, Iran, and China. Where this kind of war-mongering will lead is unknowable, but what is frighteningly clear is that this dangerous geopolitical bravado is likely to become even more strident as the 2016 campaign unfolds to choose the next American president.

Already Donald Trump, the clear Republican frontrunner, has seemed to commit the United States to a struggle against all of Islam by his foolish effort to insist that every Muslim is terrorist suspect Islam as a potential terrorist who should be so treated. Even Samuel Huntington were he still alive might not welcome such an advocate of ‘the clash of civilizations’!

Read more: Toward Global Disaster: Chaos and Intervention in the Middle East

Six Years After Lehman’s Bankruptcy, Wall Street Is as Reckless as Ever - by David Dayen

In his primetime address on Wednesday, President Obama bookended the two mid-September anniversaries that define this era — 13 years since 9/11 and 6 years since the fall of Lehman Brothers, signifying the financial crisis. The debate over how to best fight terrorism and how to best prevent future Wall Street collapses share a common thread, at least according to critics: Policymakers have mostly tried to look busy for the purposes of public image, rather than addressing the root causes of the events.

I’ll leave the foreign policy debate to those better equipped to discuss it, but let’s take financial reform. Though Congress passed Dodd-Frank in 2010, and regulators have written rules ever since (only completing about 55 percent of them more than four years later), the massively complex law has failed to fully contain Wall Street’s predilection for threatening the economy.

The biggest banks remain too big to competently manage their affairs and too interconnected to be safely dissolved in the event of collapse, as the recent rejection of their “living wills” showed. Wall Street continues to amass outsized risk. Sales of securitized loans based on corporate debt are at a post-crisis high, and protections for investors for these loans have completely broken down.  A recent academic study of the Volcker rule, the signature Dodd-Frank provision to eliminate proprietary trading at deposit-taking banks, found that affected banks have taken on more risk and carried less liquid assets than before the rule’s enactment.

Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf lays the problem at the feet of Dodd-Frank itself, a sprawling document that employs 30,000 pages of rules to merely preserve the existing system. “If we want everything to stay the same, everything must change,” Wolf writes, quoting a character from the Italian epic The Leopard.

If you focus only on one area where regulators have taken significant steps of late, you could actually manage a cheer. Bolstered by a rough consensus that transcends party ideology, and a persistent intellectual force from outside the Beltway, regulators have appeared to agree that if they cannot eliminate financial risk they can at least make it more likely that banks, not taxpayers, will pay to clean up the aftermath. I

n his primetime address recently, President Obama bookended the two mid-September anniversaries that define this era — 13 years since 9/11 and 6 years since the fall of Lehman Brothers, signifying the financial crisis.

The debate over how to best fight terrorism and how to best prevent future Wall Street collapses share a common thread, at least according to critics: Policymakers have mostly tried to look busy for the purposes of public image, rather than addressing the root causes of the events. I’ll leave the foreign policy debate to those better equipped to discuss it, but let’s take financial reform. Though Congress passed Dodd-Frank in 2010, and regulators have written rules ever since (only completing of them more than four years later), the massively complex law has failed to fully contain Wall Street’s predilection for threatening the economy.

/Six-Years-After-Lehman-s-Bankruptcy-Wall-Street-Reckless-Anniversarys that define this era — 13 years since 9/11 and 6 years since the fall of Lehman Brothers, signifying the financial crisis.

The debate over how to best fight terrorism and how to best prevent future Wall Street collapses share a common thread, at least according to critics: Policymakers have mostly tried to look busy for the purposes of public image, rather than addressing the root causes of the events.

I’ll leave the foreign policy debate to those better equipped to discuss it, but let’s take financial reform.

Though Congress passed Dodd-Frank in 2010, and regulators have written rules ever since (only completing about 55 percent of them more than four years later), the massively complex law has failed to fully contain Wall Street’s predilection for threatening the economy.

The biggest banks remain too big to competently manage their affairs and too interconnected to be safely dissolved in the event of collapse, as the recent rejection of their “living wills” showed. Wall Street continues to amass outsized risk. Sales of securitized loans based on corporate debt are at a post-crisis high, and protections for investors for these loans have completely broken down.  A recent academic study of the Volcker rule, the signature Dodd-Frank provision to eliminate proprietary trading at deposit-taking banks, found that affected banks have taken on more risk and carried less liquid assets than before the rule’s enactment.

Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf lays the problem at the feet of Dodd-Frank itself, a sprawling document that employs 30,000 pages of rules to merely preserve the existing system. “If we want everything to stay the same, everything must change,” Wolf writes, quoting a character from the Italian epic The Leopard.

If you focus only on one area where regulators have taken significant steps of late, you could actually manage a cheer. Bolstered by a rough consensus that transcends party ideology, and a persistent intellectual force from outside the Beltway, regulators have appeared to agree that if they cannot eliminate financial risk they can at least make it more likely that banks, not taxpayers, will pay to clean up the aftermath.

Read more: Six Years After Lehman’s Bankruptcy, Wall Street Is as Reckless as Ever | The Fiscal Times