Category: Geopolitics

North Korea Exporting Fake $100 Bills

North Korea Might Be Exporting Fake $100 Bills
China’s central bank warned its lenders about an influx of high-quality counterfeit American $100 bills — which the United States alleges are made by North Korea — as the spread of the forgeries moves toward the center of a standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.

Governments around Asia are stepping up surveillance for the bogus currency, which law-enforcement officials have dubbed supernotes because they are so difficult to distinguish from genuine money

Terrorist 007, Exposed

Terrorist 007, Exposed
For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi — Terrorist — 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause.

Europe’s Ailing Social Model: Facts & Fairy-Tales

Europe’s Ailing Social Model: Facts & Fairy-Tales | The Brussels Journal
Europe’s social disaster is unfolding while the rest of the world is booming at its fastest rate in three decades. Paradoxically, the Old Europe of the West must now learn from the New Europe of the East, where after years of disastrous socialism, low and simple flat taxes are being introduced, luring investors from all over the world. The higher the tax level, the lower the incentives to make productive contributions to society. The higher the fiscal burden, the more resources flow from the productive sector to the ever more inefficient government apparatus.

My Ideal War

My Ideal War – How the international community should have responded to Bush’s September 2002 U.N. speech. By Christopher Hitchens
Although some early supporters of Saddam’s ouster have cut and run, Christopher Hitchens has stuck with the program. Here is his pre-invasion justification for why the dogs of war needed to be loosed on Saddam. Here he suggests that the United Nations just get on with it. On the eve of the invasion, he spelled out what could happen if the United States did not invade. Hitchens dismissed an article that claimed Saddam tried to make nice with Washington right before the invasion. In late 2003, he renewed his commitment to the war. Just when opponents of the war were beginning to gloat, Hitchens said, “Not so fast.” He’s even admitted to a few misguided ideas of his own. Two years into the invasion he explained why “withdraw” is a four-letter word. In January he had a hunch that al-Qaida might be the ones doing the cutting and running.

Advance and Retreat

TIME Europe Magazine: Advance and Retreat — Mar. 27, 2006

The headline last Friday in the French business newspaper Les Echos: “Is France ungovernable?” In countries where democracy is a recent innovation, street protests and the ballot box coexist as rival sources of legitimacy: People vote, but also demand the right to reverse the outcome later if they change their minds. Thailand and the Philippines both have been wracked by protests in recent weeks by people demanding that the leaders they elected go.

France is hardly a novice at democracy. But, forged by the Revolution of 1789 and their national myths, the French still embrace rebellion as a favorite political tool — even when, as is currently the case, the aim is to resist, not promote, change. Street protesters in France won’t bring down an elected president — as protestors in Manila did in 2001 and are seeking to do again now. But they can make or break a wannabe.

“Disorder, that is the disease of the French,” said Charles de Gaulle, who tried to keep the malady in check with the establishment in 1958 of the quasi-monarchical presidential system that is still in place. “I don’t believe we will ever manage to cure it.”

A Sharp Debate Erupts in China Over Ideologies

A Deabte
BEIJING, March 11 — For the first time in perhaps a decade, the National People’s Congress, the Communist Party-run legislature now convened in its annual two-week session, is consumed with an ideological debate over socialism and capitalism that many assumed had been buried by China’s long streak of fast economic growth.

Let the exchange of trade and ideas with Iran begin.

Christopher Hitchens at his usual provocative best(Click here for the full article)

So, picture if you will the landing of Air Force One at Imam Khomeini International Airport. The president emerges, reclaims the U.S. Embassy in return for an equivalent in Washington and the un-freezing of Iran’s financial assets, and announces that sanctions have been a waste of time and have mainly hurt Iranian civilians. A new era is possible, he goes on to say. America and the Shiite world have a common enemy in al-Qaida, just as they had in Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban, and the Iraqi Baathists. America is home to a large and talented Iranian community. Let the exchange of trade and people and ideas begin! There might perhaps even be a ticklish-to-write paragraph, saying that America is not proud of everything it is has done in the past—most notably Jimmy Carter’s criminal decision to permit Saddam to invade Iran.

Iraqi official blames Golden Mosque attack on Iran

Iraqi official blames Golden Mosque attack on Iran

The only ones who really stood to benefit, and those who really took advantage of the al-Askariya shrine bombing, is Moqtada al-Sadr and his counterparts in Iran. Now, a preliminary investigation by the deputy governor of Saladin, where the Shia holy city of Samarra and the shrine is located, has yielded that the perpetrators of the bombing was most like… dun dun dun… Iran!

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani immediately issued a fatwa following the attack and urged the Shia faithful to restrain themselves. it was al-Sadr who organized the mass extra-judicial killings of hundreds of Sunnis afterwards. It was his Medhi Army militia, along with men infiltrated into the Interior Ministry through the UIA, who ran people off the streets in fear to their homes, and attacked dozens of Sunni mosques. He was the first to call for revenge, yet he was the one praised for brokering compromise between the Shias and Sunnis afterward.

Al-Sadr is in a power struggle with the traditional Shia leader Sistani. The outcome will determine if Iranian-backed Islamo-Facists take over Iraq or if a Unity government can be formed. The Kurds, Sunnis and Secular Parities (Ex-Prime Minister Allawi) are trying to influence the outcome by refusing to back current Prime Minister Jafari, for the same position in the newly elected Parliament. Jafrai, Sadr’s candidate, won the Shia’s own Unity Party (UIA) backing by just one vote. Now the non-Shia parties, who have 53% of the elected seats, are looking for allies amongst the Sistani followers to back another candidate for Prime Minister. Previously they had backed the current Vice President, who lost when Al Sadr cast the deciding UIA party vote. Under the constitution, the nominee of the biggest bloc in parliament gets the first chance to form a new government. The Shiites won 130 of the 275 seats giving them the biggest bloc, but not enough to govern without partners.

If the religious Shia UIA is going to insist on having its way, and al-Sadr is going to remain the most dominant force in that coalition, then the rest of Iraq is ready to block his seemingly destined ascent to power. They realize the danger of a one-party monopoly based on religion, so they’re ready to make the UIA pick a new one or instead form an even larger bloc, allowing them the pick the new government. In our own history, the Second American Revolution was when power was first transferred peacefully from John Adams, who gave up power to Thomas Jefferson, after the presidential election of 1800, effectively realigning the nation. Now, Iraq will have its own. Can the Shia give up power peacefully should it be challenged?…