Europeans migrate south as continent drifts deeper into crisis

Helen Pidd in Berlin guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 December 2011 14.01 GMT

Tens of thousands of Irish, Greek and Portuguese people leave in search of a new life as the eurozone's woes worsen

Gaelic sportsman Mick Hallows of the Roundtowers club in Clondalkin, Dublin who has emigrated to Australia because of a lack of work in Ireland. Photograph: Kim Haughton

Since its conception, the European Union has been a haven for those seeking refuge from war, persecution and poverty in other parts of the world. But as the EU faces what Angela Merkel has called its toughest hour since the second world war, the tables appear to be turning. A new stream of migrants is leaving the continent. It threatens to become a torrent if the debt crisis continues to worsen.

Tens of thousands of Portuguese, Greek and Irish people have left their homelands this year, many heading for the southern hemisphere. Anecdotal evidence points to the same happening in Spain and Italy.

The Guardian has spoken to dozens of Europeans who have left, or are planning to leave. Their stories highlight surprising new migration routes – from Lisbon to Luanda, Dublin to Perth, Barcelona to Buenos Aires – as well as more traditional migration patterns.

This year, 2,500 Greek citizens have moved to Australia and another 40,000 have "expressed interest" in moving south. Ireland's central statistics office has projected that 50,000 people will have left the republic by the end of the year, many for Australia and the US.

Portugal's foreign ministry reports that at least 10,000 people have left for oil-rich Angola. On 31 October, there were 97,616 Portuguese people registered in the consulates in Luanda and Benguela, almost double the number in 2005.

The Portuguese are also heading to other former colonies, such as Mozambique and Brazil. According to Brazilian government figures, the number of foreigners legally living in Brazil rose to 1.47 million in June, up more than 50% from 961,877 last December. Not all are Europeans, but the number of Portuguese alone has jumped from 276,000 in 2010 to nearly 330,000.

Gonçalo Pires, a graphic designer who has swapped Lisbon for Rio de Janeiro, said: "It's a pretty depressing environment there [in Portugal]." In Brazil, by contrast, "there are lots of opportunities to find work, to find clients and projects".

Joy Drosis, who left her Greek homeland for a life in Australia, expressed similar motives. "I had to do something. If I had stayed in Greece, we were all doomed," she said. "I'm lucky that I can speak the language: many others can't." The key moment in this southerly migration may have come last month, when the Portuguese prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, made a humbling visit to Angola, begging for inbound investment. Just 36 years after the end of Portuguese colonial rule in Angola, its president was ready to show mercy. "We're aware of the difficulties the Portuguese people have faced recently," said José Eduardo dos Santos. "Angola is open and available to help Portugal face this crisis."

But the Portuguese making this move will not have it easy: life expectancy in Angola is still just 39, compared with 79 in Portugal, and crime is rife.

In Ireland, where 14.5% of the population are jobless, emigration has climbed steadily since 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the bottom fell out of the Irish housing market. In the 12 months to April this year, 40,200 Irish passport-holders left, up from 27,700 the previous year, according to the central statistics office. Irish nationals were by far the largest constituent group among emigrants, at almost 53%.

The Guardian spoke to one Dublin under-19s football and hurling club that had lost eight out of 15 players in the past 18 months. Most of the nascent sports stars had headed to Australia. Experts believe the exodus will increase, given the £1.4bn tax rises and austerity measures just announced. The thinktank the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) forecast this month that 75,000 people would emigrate from Ireland in 2012 .

For departing Greeks the top destinations over the years, according to the World Bank, have been Germany, Australia, Canada, Albania, Turkey, UK, Cyprus, Israel and Belgium. Skilled Greeks are particularly likely to leave: as an example of what can happen, 4,886 physicians emigrated in the year 2000 (the last year for which the World Bank's Migration and Remittances Factbook cites data for departing doctors), meaning the country lost 9.4% of its doctors in that single year. The World Bank gives the number of immigrants living in Greece as about 1.13 million in 2010, around 10% of the population. Most have come, over the years, from poorer countries such as Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia, it is likely that the majority of new arrivals lack the skills to replace the emigrants.

Additional reporting by Henry McDonald in Dublin, Helena Smith in Athens, Tom Phillips in São Paulo, and Alison Rourke in Sydney

• This article was amended on 22 December 2011 to delete a sentence reading: "In 2010, 1.21 million people emigrated [from Greece], according to the World Bank, equalling 10.8% of the population." This was actually the total "stock" of Greeks said by the World Bank to be living overseas as of 2010, not the number who emigrated in that year. Also deleted was a reference stating that "1.3 million people arrived [in Greece] in 2011". This was the total "stock" of immigrants said by the World Bank to be living in Greece as of 2010, not the number who arrived in that year. A sentence saying that 4,886 physicians emigrated from Greece in 2010 has been corrected; the year was 2000.

Europeans migrate south as continent drifts deeper into crisis | World news | The Guardian

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dead at 69

Reuters Published Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011 10:09PM EST

Last updated Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 1:06AM EST

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, revered at home by a propaganda machine that turned him into a demi-god and vilified in the West as a temperamental tyrant with a nuclear arsenal, has died, North Korean state television reported on Monday.

Mr. Kim suffered a massive heart attack on a train on Saturday, the North’s KCNA news agency said in a separate dispatch about his death.

More related to this story

• Analysis: What are the implications for Kim Jong-il's death?
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• Rise of Kim Jong-il’s son gives birth to cult legend

An autopsy conducted on Sunday confirmed the cause of death, it said.

The leader’s son, Kim Jong-un, was at the head of a long list of officials making up the funeral committee, indicating he will lead it.

Mr. Kim was the unchallenged head of the reclusive state whose economy fell deeper into poverty during his years in power as he vexed the world by developing a nuclear arms programme and an arsenal of missiles aimed to hit neighbours Japan and South Korea.

Mr. Kim had been portrayed as a criminal mastermind behind deadly bombings, a jovial dinner host, a comic buffoon in Hollywood movies and by the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush as the ruler of “an outpost of tyranny”.

He was thought to have suffered a stroke in August 2008.

Known at home as “the Dear Leader”, Mr. Kim took over North Korea in 1994 when his father and founder of the reclusive state Kim Il-sung, known as “the Great Leader”, died.

Kim Jong-il, famed for his bouffant hair-do, platform shoes and jump suits, slowly emerged from his father’s shadows to become one of the world’s most enigmatic leaders who put North Korea on the path of becoming a nuclear power.

His state was also frequently cited as a threat to global stability.

EARLY YEARS

Despite being on the world stage longer than most world leaders, little was known about Mr. Kim. He rarely spoke in public, almost never travelled abroad and has an official biography that is steeped in propaganda but lacking in concrete substance.

Mr. Kim had a host of titles in North Korea, but president was not one of them. Kim Il-sung was given the posthumous title of president for life, while his son’s most powerful posts included the chairman of the National Defence Commission, the real centre of power in North Korea, and Supreme Commander of the Korea People’s Army.

North Korean propaganda said Kim Jong-il was born on Feb. 16, 1942, at a secret camp for rebel fighters led by his father near Korea’s famed Mount Paektu. But analysts say he was likely born in the Soviet Union when his father was with other Korean communist exiles receiving military and other training.

His official biography said that in elementary school he showed his revolutionary spirit by leading marches to battlefields where Korean rebels fought against Japanese occupiers of the peninsula.

By the time he was in middle school he had shown himself to be an exemplary factory worker who could repair trucks and electric motors.

He went to Kim Il-sung University where he studied the great works of communist thinkers as well as his father’s revolutionary theory, in a systematic way, state propaganda said.

North Korea analysts said however, Mr. Kim lived a life of privilege in the capital, Pyongyang, when his family returned to the divided peninsula in 1945.

The Soviets later installed Kim Il-sung as the new leader of North Korea and the family lived in a Pyongyang mansion formerly occupied by a Japanese officer.

Kim Jong-il’s younger brother mysteriously drowned in a pool at the residence in 1947.

Mr. Kim likely spent many of his younger years in China to receive an education and to keep him safe during the 1950-1953 Korean War, analysts said.

ANOINTED SUCCESSOR

After graduating from college, Mr. Kim joined the ruling Worker’s Party of Korea in 1964 and quickly rose through its ranks. By 1973, he was the party’s secretary of organisation and propaganda, and in 1974 his father anointed him as his successor.

Mr. Kim gradually increased his power in domestic affairs over the following years and his control within the ruling party greatly increased when the younger Mr. Kim was given senior posts in the Politburo and Military Commission in 1980.

Intelligence experts say Mr. Kim ordered a 1983 bombing in Myanmar that killed 17 senior South Korean officials and the destruction of a Korean Air jetliner in 1987 that killed 115.

He is also suspected of devising plans to raise cash by kidnapping Japanese, dealing drugs through North Korean embassies and turning the country into a major producer of counterfeit currency.

Mr. Kim was known as a womaniser, a drinker and a movie buff, according to those people who had been in close contact with him and later left the country. He enjoyed ogling Russian dancing girls, amassing a wine cellar with more than 10,000 bottles and downing massive amounts of lobster and cognac.

North Korea’s propaganda machine painted a much more different picture.

It said Mr. Kim piloted jet fighters -- even though he travelled by land for his infrequent trips abroad. He penned operas, had a photographic memory, produced movies and accomplished a feat unmatched in the annals of professional golf, shooting 11 holes-in-one on the first round he ever played.

When he first took power in 1994, many analysts thought Mr. Kim’s term as North Korea’s leader would be short-lived and powerful elements in the military would rise up to take control of the state.

The already anaemic economy was in a shambles due to the end of the Cold War and the loss of traditional trading partners. Poor harvests and floods led to about 1 million people to die in a famine in the 1990s after he took power.

Despite the tenuous position from which he started, Mr. Kim managed to stay in power. He also installed economic reforms that were designed to bring a small and controlled amount of free-market economics into the state-planned economy.

NUCLEAR POWER

His greatest moment may have come on June 15, 2000, when he hosted the first summit of the leaders of the two Koreas when then South Korean Kim Dae-jung visited Pyongyang.

Mr. Kim’s image was transformed from a feared and mysterious leader to a kind-hearted host who had the world knocking on his door. A landmark summit with then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Russian President Vladimir Putin soon followed the visit by South Korea’s president.

The ray of sunshine out of the North then came to an end.

In 2002, tension rose after Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a nuclear arms programme in violation of a 1994 agreement that was to have frozen its atomic ambitions.

North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in December 2002 and said in January 2003 it was quitting the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In February 2005, North Korea said it had nuclear weapons and in October 2006, it rattled the region by exploding a nuclear device. North Korea conducted a second nuclear test in May 2009.

Kim Jong-il reportedly told visitors that it was the dying wish of his father to see the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons and he wanted to work toward that end, but he first wanted to see the United States treat his state with respect.

Tensions heightened to their highest levels in years in 2010 with the torpedoing of a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors. The South blamed the attack on Pyongyang, but North denied responsibility. Later that year, the North bombarded a South Korean island, the first such attack against civilian target since the 1950-53 Korean War.

This year, Mr. Kim’s health appeared to have improved and he visibly gained weight. He visited China twice and travelled to Russia for the first time in nearly a decade.

Mr. Kim has three known sons. He is believed to have anointed the youngest, Kim Jong-un, to succeed him.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dead at 69 - The Globe and Mail

Garry Kasparov on Vladimir Putin and why chess is simpler than politics.

By Charles Clover Posted Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011, at 7:36 AM ET

 

Garry Kasparov

At first, playing chess against Garry Kasparov is much like playing chess against anyone else. Take the pieces. They look the same as when you are playing against other people. They move the same way. For some reason this is surprising to me, and so is the fact that we are five moves in and he has not checkmated me yet. He must be off his game, or, just maybe, dare I hope, I am a lot smarter than I thought I was?

But there he is, across the table, actually thinking about his next move. I have a rush of satisfaction. Brain the size of a planet, the greatest chess player who ever lived, and I have made him think.

This moment has been a long time coming. When I had originally explained to Kasparov’s assistant that I wanted to play chess against the great man himself, she had made it clear that this was asking quite a lot, but she would see what she could do.

Then, when I arrive at his flat, I have to re-explain my errand to his mother, who seems to run the PR show for Garry Kasparov Inc. “What rank are you?” she finally asks.

“Um, no rank really. But I know the rules,” I say helpfully.

“No problem, I’ll put out the board. You know where the pieces go?”

When her son comes into the living room, I have a weak-kneed, gibbering moment where I can’t stop grinning. Kasparov, radiating the kind of charisma you tend to radiate if you recreationally play chess against supercomputers, takes his seat behind the board, and rearranges the kings and queens. I have put them on the wrong squares.

He is a bit plumper and greyer than when he played his famous marathon match against Anatoly Karpov almost 30 years ago, but has none of the arrogance or ill temper one expects of great sportsmen.

“What should we talk about first?” I ask. “Politics or chess?”

“I think your readership is more interested in politics? We can talk chess later,” he says.

Kasparov’s career has always mingled the two. His great rivalry with Karpov, the standard bearer of the Soviet establishment, tracked the decline of the Soviet Union when Kasparov, the darling of the democratic intelligentsia, beat his fellow grand master in 1985. At the world championship in 1990, he played under a Russian flag (despite being from Azerbaijan) while Karpov played for the Soviet Union. When Kasparov won, it was a sensation.

After retiring in 2005, Kasparov became the face of opposition to an increasingly authoritarian turn under Russia’s then president, Vladimir Putin, now prime minister. For a time, his face was ubiquitous at opposition marches in Moscow that usually featured more grey-clad riot police than demonstrators. He was arrested twice – the second time he spent five days in prison. But he was more successful at chess (“where the rules are fixed and the outcome is unpredictable”, as he puts it) than he is at politics in Putin’s Russia (“where the rules are unpredictable and the outcome is fixed”).

For someone who sees so many moves into the future, his decision to take on Putin in 2005 was reckless and ill timed, the political equivalent of a kamikaze dive when the regime was at its most popular and most repressive – before it was chastened by the economic collapse of 2009.

“[Politics] was a different game [from chess],” he says. “But although it was different, I had to play. There’s not much you can do, if you believe, as I do, that it is a very important moral choice.” Kasparov was vilified and Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth group, famously produced door mats emblazoned with Kasparov’s face for “patriotic” Russians to wipe their feet on. He was also hounded for supposed collaboration with the CIA.

“I used to play chess expecting to win,” he says, “but this game [politics] was not about winning or losing. It was about losing. From the beginning the position was a dead loss.”

Kasparov is still credited by democrats for fighting the good fight. “We showed people that they could think over Putin, past Putin,” as he put it. Today, their opposition, which a few years ago was limited to a few hundred activists from Moscow and other major cities, now seems to have rubbed off in a generalised mood, and Putin and the Kremlin establishment have seen their approval ratings fall off a cliff.

I want to know what he thinks of the big news that week – for the first time Putin had been booed in public while giving a speech at a martial arts event. (At the time of going to press, protesters were marching on Moscow’s streets.) “It’s a natural process of a rejection. He stayed too long. And he’s no longer the man offering a bright future,” Kasparov says. “The state has lost its sacred image, and that is always a sign of change.”

Kasparov readily admits that he has now lowered his profile. Some in the opposition whisper that he has been threatened, but he says he simply needed to devote more time to his pet causes, such as a new global initiative to teach chess in schools.

He continues to be active in the anti-Putin opposition, but he is no longer out being thrown in police paddy wagons or manhandled by gangs of regime thugs. “The fact that I’m not as visible here doesn’t mean that I lost my touch with the Russian political reality,” he insists. “Basically, I live on a plane. I can’t make a single dollar in my native country. (Income from the corporate speaking circuit is impossible here, since no Russian firm wants to be associated with him.)

He vows nevertheless “to keep up my responsibilities for my friends and for my allies here”. He has just returned from campaigning in Washington on behalf of the Magnitsky act, a law that would ban Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses from setting foot on US soil. He also actively campaigned for a boycott of the recent parliamentary elections, clearly rigged for the benefit of a handful of loyal opposition parties and the United Russia party.

“We should tell the people honestly that this is not an election. We have to start creating an alternative,” he says. “It’s not happening overnight – it may take a month, six months, a year, several years – but you have to start moving people in the right direction.”

We have been playing for about a half an hour, about 10 moves in, and I have two of his pawns. And he has only got one of mine. I’m actually winning. Against Kasparov. I’m giddy. Overconfident. It is all going to my head.

There is a certain temptation in chess to get style points for breeziness. He moves, and then I move right away, as if to say “oh yeah, I’m just sitting here writing in my notebook and playing chess with Garry Kasparov, and it’s all a piece of cake because I do this every day.”

This leads me, on move 16, to rashly move my bishop to f5.

The point at which you become aware that this is not like any other chess game is when, 20 moves later, after you have been checkmated, he can hit the rewind button in his head, and put the pieces back the way they were on move 16, and explain to me that this was my “collapse”. Then he can show me how by moving my knight to f7, it would have avoided catastrophe, and plays out the next dozen hypothetical moves.

I nod sagely, even though I have very little grasp of what he is talking about.

Then he takes my notebook, and writes out all 35 moves in the game from memory, putting a question mark next to move eight (pawn to f6) and move 16 to highlight my major blunders.

I lasted 35 moves! And he swears he was playing his hardest. Swears.

Garry Kasparov on Vladimir Putin and why chess is simpler than politics. - Slate Magazine

Across debt-stricken Europe, austerity's bite is felt

 

From French bankers and Italian politicians to British strikers and the average Greek, everyone in Europe is feeling the cost-cutting brought on by the euro debt crisis.

By Robert Marquand, Staff writer / December 16, 2011

A demonstrator shouts antigovernment slogans outside the Parliament, in front of a riot police cordon during a demonstration to protest against the austerity policy in Paris, Tuesday. Michel Euler/AP

Paris

After two years of crisis and bank debt in Europe, the roaring euro party is over.

Greeks are emptying their bank accounts, Italians are proposing that the Roman Catholic Church begin to pay nearly $1 billion in property taxes on lucrative hotels and businesses, and in the UK, protesters sans jobs have settled near 10 Downing in the wake of the nation’s biggest general strike in years.

Spain has seen well-dressed panhandlers in Madrid. The Netherlands report higher bankruptcies and lower exports. French banks are cutting thousands of jobs. And in bailed-out Portugal, two religious and two civil holidays – weekdays off – will now fall on weekends, even as healthcare costs there have suddenly doubled in many hospitals.

The eurozone crisis explained in 5 simple graphs

All across Europe, the severity of belt-tightening and public anger has brought a new stream of “austerity stories” to the fore: job cuts and their effect, new instances of ethnic hate, worry about social stability.

Rising right-wing violence

The majority of these stories flow out of Europe’s southern tier, the “less competitive” economies.

Two Senegalese street traders in a Florence market were shot and killed Dec. 13 by a right-wing fanatic and three wounded. Higher piles of uncollected garbage sit on Greek streets and there’s an increase of drugs and crime there. Immigrants who used to be welcome labor five years ago in Greece, Italy, and especially in Spain, are now subject to heavy ID checks and public frowns, and there are more spasms of violence by vigilante groups. At times, the surly climate means that “Anyone who might pass for migrant runs the risk of being beaten up,” says Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch Europe.

“There’s a gloomy mood… in ordinary neighbourhoods that I visit… worry about jobs, benefits, social security and the cost of living,” says Pap Ndiaye, social historian at the Paris School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences. “On top of that, minorities are concerned about backlash or adding problems to the general population. A few years ago, minorities with degrees were leaving France for Great Britain but now the UK is no longer so hospitable. Now we are seeing a phenomenon of looking to the Americas. More professionals are moving to Montreal, for example… with no plans to come back to France.”

Belt-tightening across the spectrum

To ease austerity, Greece is selling ferryboats to Turkey and what appear to be third-world items like string, used auto parts, and TV antennas to improbable places like the Bahamas and the Marshall Islands. Italy this week said it will release some 3,300 prisoners with less than 18 months on their sentence –  remanded to their homes – to save an estimated $500,000 a day.

As Greece ekes out its EU bailout loans quarterly – the next tranche is still under negotiation – ordinary folks are depleting their bank accounts. The governor of the Greek central bank, Georgios Provopoulos, recently told parliament, "In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November, the decline continued on a large scale.” The effect is to reduce the ability of banks to lend, he said. 

Some of the austerity effect may be indirectly positive. In Spain, archeologists outside Seville are glad that the building craze of the past 10 years has been halted, since planned shopping centers were to be erected on unexplored Copper Age settlements. Spanish police have also cracked down on a sophisticated forgery ring that was printing 50 euro notes out of a canning factory.

In Italy, the 950 members of parliament that make nearly $200,000 a year are expected to cut their pay as the new government of Mario Monti seeks to deal with a cumulative 1.9 trillion euros in debt. Italy’s politicians earn twice that of French and German counterparts, and four times that of Spanish.

Strains in northern Europe

Yet various stresses and strains owing to new fracturing in Europe are not restricted just to the southern tier. Britain reports a 17-year high in unemployment even as EU figures show it has the 2nd highest living standard in Europe. London riots last August took place mainly among have-nots. Prime Minister David Cameron decided last week to opt-out of a German-French-engineered intergovernmental EU treaty designed to force discipline on EU states and stop future crises, seen as possibly isolating Britain. The decision highlighted an earlier decision by the town council of Bishop’s Stortford to alter an official 46-year old “sister city” or “twinning” relationship with the German town of Friedberg, near Frankfurt. The council is made up of mostly Tory or “euroskeptic” politicians and critics chided the town for downgrading the sister city status at a time of drift of European unity.

More pertinently, perhaps, official November figures in the Netherlands, a more competitive state, show that some 610 businesses declared bankruptcy, an increase of 85 from October, and up from an average of roughly 500. Meanwhile, Dutch exports declined for the first time in two years in October. Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager told reporters this week the country faces recessionary times and said there “are no taboos” in what may be cut in the budget.

“We felt this coming. It is certainly not positive,” he said. “There are no easy times ahead of us.” The Netherlands will cut an estimated $24 billion under austerity measures, though the Freedom Party of anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders says it will not vote for cuts without a promise to end some $6 billion in foreign development aid.

Across debt-stricken Europe, austerity's bite is felt - CSMonitor.com

"New Iraq" Not So Free for Non-Muslims

Written by Bruce Walker Thursday, 15 December 2011 09:06

 

On  Monday, President Obama, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (left), announced that American forces had helped create a “new Iraq.” During a closed-door meeting after the public gathering with Maliki, Obama told reporters: “People throughout the region will see a new Iraq that’s determining its own destiny, a county in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process.”

But the President’s comments do not square with what his own State Department and various independent watchdog groups are saying about the conditions of Christians and Jews in the “new Iraq.” On December 7, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) — whose members are appointed by the President and congressional leaders — sent a letter to President Obama which stated in part:

Since 2008, and most recently in May 2011, USCIRF has recommended that Iraq should be designated as a "country of particular concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act for systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom. Despite an overall decrease in violence in the country, members of Iraq’s smallest religious minorities, including Christians, Sabean Mandaeans, and Yazidis continue to suffer from targeted violence, threats, and intimidation, against which the government does not provide effective protection. ... For Iraq to become a secure and stable democracy, it must guarantee and enforce the human rights of all Iraqis, both in law and in practice [and ensure] the need for this government to protect Iraq’s most vulnerable religious minority communities, who face the threat of religious cleansing, and ensure them justice.

Last December, the commission reported: “In practice, government institutions do not acknowledge conversion from Islam for official purposes, and persons who leave Islam often face severe social persecution, including death, often by assailants known to the victims.”  It noted as well that promoting “Zionist principles” or associating with “Zionist organizations” is a crime in Iraq, and that those found guilty of such a crime may be executed.

The commission also observed that the number of Christians in Iraq has plummeted since the American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In 2003, that population was between 800,000 and 1,400,000; today it stands between 400,000 and 600,000. (Saddam was friendly towards Christians and even named his close advisor, Tariq Aziz, a member of the Chaldean Catholic church, Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq.) Iraq's Jewish population of Iraq has also dropped off sharply in the last 60 years, although not especially since Operation Iraqi Freedom. There were 150,000 Jews in Iraq at the time Israel was granted statehood in 1948. By 2004 there were only 35 Jews left in Iraq, and now there are just 10 Jews (or perhaps even fewer).

While Westerners tend to focus on Jews and Christians in Iraq, until recently this ancient land has been home to many different religions — most having some historical connection to Judaism or Christianity, such as the Yezidis, the Sabean-Mandeans, and the Shabaks. Members of each of these religions have suffered atrocities at the hands of Muslim Iraqis in the last few years. Those of the Baha'i and Zoroastrian faiths — both monotheistic religions that arose in Iran and Iraq, with adherents also in America, Europe, and India — are also routinely persecuted by Muslims in the “New Iraq.”

"New Iraq" Not So Free for Non-Muslims

Downed US drone: How Iran caught the 'beast'

By Scott Peterson, Staff writer / December 9, 2011

Iran's apparent capture of a largely intact RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone, which was reportedly monitoring Iran's nuclear program, is a significant loss for the US.

This photo released on Dec. 8, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, claims to show the chief of the aerospace division of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh (l.) listening to an unidentified colonel as he points to US RQ-170 Sentinel drone.  Sepahnews/AP

Hours after Iran state TV displayed the cream-colored American bat-wing RQ-170 "Sentinel" drone – it's undercarriage hidden by banners of a US flag, with stars replaced by skulls and marked with anti-US slogans – Iranian officials said the spy craft was proof of enduring US hostility toward Iran.

"Iran will target all US military bases around the world," in case of further violations, warned conservative lawmaker Mohammad Kossari today. Iran's response would be "terrifying."

IN PICTURES: Iran's military might

US officials confirmed with "high confidence" that the drone displayed by Iran is almost certainly the one reported lost last by US forces in Afghanistan last week. It was on an intelligence mission to hunt evidence in Iran of nuclear weapons work.

Despite those and other intelligence-gathering efforts – which are reported to include even surreptitiously installing radiation detectors at suspect sites in Tehran – the drone flights have apparently not yielded new evidence that would change conclusions by the United States and the United Nations that Iran stopped systematic nuclear weapons-related work in 2003.

Loss of the stealth drone is "very significant," says Robert Densmore, a defense journalist and former US Navy electronic countermeasures officer contacted in London.

"These Sentinels are pretty rare technology still, and to have one in such good condition, to be lost to a potential adversary like this, is pretty significant, especially because Iran has open ties to Russia and has been courted by China," says Mr. Densmore.

US loss

"Strategically, the US will suffer from the loss of this because ... it has radar, a fuselage, and coating that makes it low-observable, and the electronics inside are also very high-tech," says Densmore. "Diplomatically, Iran is really looking for a way to save some face," after the expulsion of Iranian diplomats from London, and increased scrutiny of its nuclear program, adds Densmore. "They are really looking for something to say to the world, to change public opinion, to say, 'Look, we're really the victims here.'"

Iran officially complained to the UN Security Council for the "blatant and provocative" violation of its airspace, and demanded "condemnation of such aggressive acts."

State-run PressTV said that international law made the clandestine US flights over Iran an "act of war."

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had tracked and brought down the plane. After crossing into Iran,"this aircraft fell into the trap of our armed forces and was downed," said IRGC aerospace chief Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh. "Military experts are well aware how precious the technological information of this drone is," said General Hajizadeh.

Officials from Russia and China – which have close trade ties with Iran, and oppose Western efforts to increase pressure – "have asked for permission to inspect the US spy drone," Iranian media reported.

How Iran got the 'beast'

Nicknamed the "Beast of Kandahar" after it was first spotted in 2009 on an airport runway in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the drone was used to monitor Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, undetected, before the raid to kill the Al Qaeda leader.

The Iranian video shows Hajizadeh and another Guard officer examining the craft with its radar-evading curves and wingspan which resembles the larger B-2 stealth bomber. It was placed on a platform with banners hiding the undercarriage and landing gear. The banners – fixed to either wing with clear packing tape – read: "The US can't mess with us," and "We'll crush America underfoot."

It was not clear how Iran acquired the drone intact. Some US experts dismiss the possibility that Iran could hack and then takeover the drone's controls, as Iran claims. And yet similar disruptions have proven possible in other battlefields, notably with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and drones from Israel.

"Those jamming capabilities exist, and a lot of them are not as new as we would like to imagine," says former US Navy electronics warfare officer Densmore.
"Anything that has a sensor, that takes communications links – as does the RQ-170, which has two, one for the satellite, and the other is line-of-sight with the ground control station – all it takes is disrupting that," says Densmore.

Often flying at 50,000-foot altitude, the RQ-170 would have had a hard landing, some say. And yet the Iranian video shows little visible damage, except that wings appear to have been reattached, and there was a small dent on the front edge of the left wing.

A senior US military source "with intimate knowledge of the Sentinel drone" was paraphrased by Fox News days ago as saying that the lost craft was "presumed to be intact since it is programmed to fly level and find a place to land, rather than crashing."

"This is a big prize in terms of technology," the source told Fox.

$6 million drone

The unmanned $6 million stealth drone is made by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs. It is the third high-profile loss of stealth technology: the first when a US F-117 jet fighter was shot down during the Kosovo conflict  in 1999; the second when a stealth helicopter was damaged and largely destroyed in situ during the Bin Laden raid in Pakistan.

But this drone is not the most sophisticated stealth technology in the US arsenal, according to the website AviationIntel.com.

The RQ-170 was "most likely constructed with expendability in mind," and so had "dumbed-down stealth characteristics" that would mean the US military's "most sensitive stealth secrets" would not be compromised, the site says.

AviationIntel also says Iran recently received from Russia an advanced mobile jamming and intelligence system called "Avtobaza" that could have detected the drone and perhaps jammed its communications links.

"There is no reason why [that] system could not have detected the Sentinel's electronic trail and either jammed it and/or have alerted fighter aircraft and SAM [surface-to-air missile] installations as to its whereabouts," said AviationIntel on its site. "Further, these systems are supposed to be used in direct conjunction with Iran's nuclear development sites."

While the drone could have operated with limited electronic connectivity, making it less visible, AviationIntel indicates, a "more likely scenario" would be one of "actively transmitting live video, detailed radar maps, or electronic intelligence, in real-time," making detection easier by the Russian-made system.

Iranian officials said that this is not the first drone to be shot down in the region. Last January, Hazijadeh told an IRGC publication that Iran had "shot down a large number of their highly advanced spy planes." They were brought down outside Iranian airspace, and Iran "invited Russian experts" to see two of them," and later reproduced them through reverse engineering," reported the Fars News Agency, which is linked to the IRGC.

Iranian ability

Iran's own technical capacity is unknown. The country has excelled in some fields like nanotechnology, and stem-cell research, and created a sophisticated nuclear program that includes 8,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium – despite an array of sanctions.

But there are also limits, as evidenced by the launch of Iran's first Omid (Hope) satellite in 2009. While that event put Iran into an elite scientific club of just nine nations, the innards of the satellite appeared to be rudimentary.

State TV showed footage at the time of the satellite being assembled into a square silver box, its guts similar to those of a 1950s transistor radio, with D-size batteries and wires held in place with black electrical tape. Iran has also frequently made claims about advanced military systems that later proved exaggerated.

Aerial surveillance inside Iran is not new, according to a Washington Post report from early 2005 noted by the EAWorldview website. US officials said US drones were at the time "penetrating Iranian airspace" from bases in Iraq, using "radar, video, still photography and air filters designed to pick up traces of nuclear activity," the Post reported.

"We've always relied on [drones] as a force multiplier, a technological edge that we've had, and we've always known it wouldn't be a permanent advantage," says Densmore. Opponents "are expecting us now to deploy these things, they're looking for them, so a lot of that advantage has been lost."

(The original version of this story incorrectly attributed authorship. The piece was written by staff writer Scott Peterson.)

Downed US drone: How Iran caught the 'beast' - CSMonitor.com

Saudis sentence Australian man to 500 lashes for blasphemy

 James Massola From: The Australian

December 07, 2011 5:48PM

 

The family of Mansor Almaribe, who is facing a year in jail and 500 lashes in Saudi Arabia. Picture are Mohammad, 16, Jamal, 24, Wafaa, Isaam, 21, and Wally, 2. Picture: Fiona Hamilton Source: Herald Sun

THE family of an Australian man sentenced to 500 lashes and a year in jail in Saudi Arabia fears he will not survive the punishment.

Mansor Almaribe, from the Victorian town of Shepparton, was yesterday found guilty of blasphemy by a Saudi Arabian court.

The 45-year-old father of five was arrested in the city of Medina on November 14 while making the hajj pilgrimage and accused of insulting companions of the prophet Mohammed.

It's reported he was reading and praying in a group when accosted by religious police and arrested.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Australian ambassador in Saudi Arabia,  Neil Hawkins, had been in touch with authorities to plead for leniency.

“The Australian ambassador has been in touch with Saudi authorities after a 45-year-old Australian man was sentenced by a court in Saudi Arabia to one year in jail and 500 lashes,” a DFAT spokeswoman said.

The ambassador would "urgently pursue avenues for leniency with relevant authorities".

A consular official attended the sentencing, at which Mr Almaribe was initially given a two-year jail term, subsequently reduced.

One of the man's sons, Mohammed, told the ABC his father had serious health problems.

“Five hundred slashes on his back and he has back problems. I wouldn't think he'd survive 50,” he said.

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict form of Sharia or Islamic law and the dominant form of Islam in the country is Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative strand of Sunni Islam.

Mr Almaribe is a constituent of Liberal MP Sharman Stone, who has called on Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd to intervene, “even perhaps to remove the sentence all together if that can be achieved”, she said.

Additional reporting: AAP

Saudis sentence Australian man to 500 lashes for blasphemy | The Australian

Egypt’s Vote Propels Islamic Law Into Spotlight

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: December 3, 2011

The Muslim Brotherhood sent out volunteers last week for Egypt's election. Early results suggest the group's party has about 40 percent of the vote.

CAIRO — To Sheik Abdel Moneim el-Shahat, the Muslim Brotherhood’s call to apply only the broad principles of Islamic law allows too much freedom.

Sheik Abdel Moneim el-Shahat, a leader of the ultraconservative Salafi movement, has called for stricter use of Islamic law.

Sheik Shahat is a leader of the ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis, whose coalition of parties is running second behind the Brotherhood party in the early returns of Egypt’s parliamentary elections. He and his allies are demanding strict prohibitions against interest-bearing loans, alcohol and “fornication,” with traditional Islamic corporal punishment like stoning for adultery.

“I want to say: citizenship restricted by Islamic Shariah, freedom restricted by Islamic Shariah, equality restricted by Islamic Shariah,” he said in a public debate. “Shariah is obligatory, not just the principles — freedom and justice and all that.”

The unexpected electoral success of the Salafis — reported to have won about 25 percent of the votes in the first round of the elections, second only to the roughly 40 percent for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party — is terrifying Egyptian liberals and troubling the West. But their new clout is also presenting a challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood, in part by plunging it into a polarizing Islamist-against-Islamist debate over the application of Islamic law in Egypt’s promised democracy, a debate the Brotherhood had worked hard to avoid.

“The Salafis want to have that conversation right now, and the Brotherhood doesn’t,” said Shadi Hamid, a researcher with the Brookings Doha Center, a Brookings Institution project in Qatar. “The Brotherhood is not interested in talking about Islamic law right now because they have other priorities that are more important. But the Salafis are going to insist on putting religion in the forefront of the debate, and that will be very difficult for the Brotherhood to ignore.”

The Brotherhood, the venerable group that virtually invented the Islamist movement eight decades ago, is at its core a middle-class missionary institution, led not by religious scholars but by doctors, lawyers and professionals. It has long sought to move Egypt toward a more orthodox Islamic society from the bottom up, one person and family at a time. After a long struggle in the shadows of the rule of President Hosni Mubarak, its leaders have sought to avoid potentially divisive conversations about the details of Islamic law that might set off alarms about an Islamist takeover. But their evasiveness on the subject has played into long-term suspicions of even fellow Islamists that they are too concerned with their own power.

The Salafis are political newcomers, directed by religious leaders who favor long beards in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad. Many frown on the mixing of the sexes, refusing to shake hands with women let alone condoning any sort of political activity by them. Although their parties are required to include female candidates, they usually print pictures of flowers instead of the women’s faces on campaign posters. And while the Salafis’ ideology strikes many Egyptians as extreme and anachronistic, their sheiks command built-in networks of devoted followers, and even voters who disagree with their puritanical doctrine often credit the Salafis with integrity and authenticity.

After the first election results last week, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party quickly declared that it had no plans to form any coalition with the Salafis, with some members already ending months of restrained silence by striking back. In an interview after the vote, for example, Dina Zakaria, a spokeswoman for the party, derided the Salafis’ prohibition on women in leadership roles and their refusal to print the faces of their female candidates.

“We don’t hold stagnant positions,” she said, insisting that the Brotherhood’s party favored an evolving understanding of Islam that supported the right of women to choose their own roles. (At campaign rallies, women from the party sometimes underscore the point by saying Muhammad even enlisted women in combat.)

Such debates, however, threaten to knock the Brotherhood off the fine line it has attempted to walk.

In public statements, the party’s leaders have preferred to focus on broader themes of Islamic identity and the bread-and-butter questions that are the more urgent concerns of voters. On the campaign trail, the Brotherhood sometimes even seems to appeal to both sides from the same podium — sounding like Salafis themselves one minute but avowing moderation the next.

“To give your vote for Islamists is a religious issue,” an Islamic scholar, Sayed Abdel Karim, declared at a campaign rally in Giza, across the Nile from Cairo, calling for “the rule of God, not the rule of the people.”

“The revival of Islamic spirit in the region is a direct threat to Israel and the future of the Western civilization, Europe and the U.S.,” he said, asserting that “the enemy media” were already saying that “those who love Jews, the United States and Europe should make every effort to keep the Islamic spirit dormant. Look at the conspiracy!”

But moments later, the main speaker and the top candidate on his party’s list, Essam el-Erian, declared that the party believed only in nonsectarian citizenship for all, that Christians and Muslims should enjoy equal rights as “sons of the nation” in the eyes of a neutral state and that the next constitution should protect free expression. And he pledged warm relations with any nation that respected Egypt’s “independence and culture.”

(Brotherhood leaders have said they support retaining the 1979 Camp David peace treaty with Israel, with some possible modifications, while the Salafis have sometimes talked of putting it to a national referendum.)

“The garrison of religion in Egypt has special characteristics,” Mr. Erian said, “tolerance and moderation.”

Leaders of the Brotherhood’s party have endorsed public commitments to protect individual rights. And its platform strikes a consistent theme of eschewing the quick prod of legal coercion in favor of encouraging private endeavors toward gradual change. Unlike the Salafis, it has not proposed to regulate the content of arts or entertainment, women’s work or dress, or even the religious content of public education. In fact, the party’s platform calls for smaller government to limit corruption and liberalize the economy.

Instead the party proposes to nudge Egyptian society by the power of example. In culture, it would encourage “self-censorship” by asking artists and writers to sign a voluntary “code of ethics.” The government, meanwhile, would support music, films and other arts that extol religious and family values.

For social welfare, the party seeks to institutionalize the obligatory Islamic charitable contribution, known as Zakat, by collecting a mandatory 2.5 percent income tax from all Muslims, which the government would then pass to regulated Islamic charities. It would encourage these Islamic charities to set up their own religious schools and hospitals. And to encourage women to accept traditional gender roles, it would promote family values in entertainment while subsidizing community centers for matchmaking and marriage counseling.

“Do you find anything saying that our party is going to impose any kind of law on the moral side?” challenged Mr. Erian, who is running for Parliament in Giza.

Every major party here — liberal or Islamist — supports retaining the clause in the Constitution stipulating that Islam is the source of Egyptian law. But competing Islamist parties offer conflicting ideas about “activating” the clause.

The most liberal — like the former Brotherhood members in the Center Party and the presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, both breakaways from the Brotherhood — advocate essentially secular-liberal states, arguing that government should not get involved in interpreting Islam.

The Salafis, on the other hand, often favor the idea that a specialized council of religious scholars should advise the Parliament or review its legislation to ensure compliance with Islamic law.

The Brotherhood debated similar ideas as recently as a few years ago.

This year, however, the Freedom and Justice Party has sought a middle approach. Its platform calls for Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court to rule on compliance with Shariah. But that stance is essentially without consequence because the court already had that power under Mr. Mubarak, and the judiciary is a bastion of liberalism whose views of Islamic law are highly flexible, to say the least.

“Religious scholars’ guardianship over political life is completely unacceptable,” Mohamed Beltagy, another leader of the Brotherhood’s party, said in an interview. “Nobody could speak in the name of the heavens or the name of religion. We don’t accept tyranny in the name of religion any more than we accept tyranny in the name of the military.”

His party’s position, he argued, was in reality no different from the Center Party’s, though he acknowledged that his view was considered “debatable” within the Brotherhood.

Mayy el Sheikh and Amina Ismail contributed reporting.

Egypt’s Vote Propels Islamic Law Into Spotlight - NYTimes.com

Islamists in Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood's long wait for power is over

By Tom Perry and Edmund Blair, Reuters / December 1, 2011

Muslim Brotherhood candidates will get 40 percent of the seats in Egypt's parliament, early results indicate. The Muslim Brotherhood, banned by Mubarak for decades, will now move into power.

An Egyptian woman stands in front of a campaign sign for The Freedom and Justice party, which is tied to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, in Alexandria. (AP Photo/Tarek Fawzy)

Cairo

After waiting 83 years, the Muslim Brotherhood finally senses a chance to be at the centre of how Egypt is governed and the Islamists hope to lead the renaissance of a nation which has suffered a steep economic and political decline.

That ambition above all else will define the next steps of a group which owes its survival to pragmatism. The Brotherhood will likely carry on treading lightly, hoping to ease fears at home and abroad over its vision for the new Egypt.

A strong Brotherhood showing in elections which began this week has brought the country closer to a prospect unthinkable just a year ago: a government influenced and possibly even led by a group outlawed under ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

According to preliminary indications cited by the Brotherhood and candidates running against it, the group could win 40 percent of the seats in the new parliament, though official results have yet to be released.

Headed by doctors, engineers and teachers, the Brotherhood's slogan is "Islam is the solution". Yet it talks the same language as other reformists when it comes to the need for democracy, an independent judiciary and social justice in Egypt.

Its critics say such language masks their goals of turning Egypt into an Islamic state by stealth, curbing freedoms for 80 million people who include some eight million Christian Copts.

At the group's office, a simple apartment building in a residential district on the Nile, one of the group's leaders outlines a political programme that has triggered comparisons with moderate Islamist groups elsewhere in the region.

"Now is the time for us to build a modern country, a modern state of law, a democratic state," said Essam al-Erian, a doctor who was a political prisoner when Mubarak was deposed in February, and who is also a leader of the Brotherhood's newly-founded political party.

He rejected a comparison between his movement and Turkey's ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, which has Islamist roots. "I hope we can give a different model," Erian told Reuters in an interview.

"We hope that when we build a modern democratic country in Egypt this will be a good example, inspiring others to build democracy," he added.

BANNED AND NOW EMPOWERED

Those are the long-stated aims of a group that was a vocal critic of Mubarak during his three decades in power. The president maintained a formal ban on the Brotherhood, routinely rounding up and imprisoning leaders such as Erian.

That reflects the Islamist group's turbulent relationship with the state since it was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, himself a teacher. Though the Brotherhood disavowed violence in Egypt in the 1970s, state suspicions lingered over its goals.

In the post-Mubarak era, it faces new competition from more radical Islamist groups that have emerged as rivals. Brotherhood leaders have spoken about the new Salafi parties with disregard, bordering on disdain. But on the streets, the groups cooperated in the run-up to the election that began on Monday.

That has only strengthened a view among secular Egyptians and a broader section of society that the Brotherhood shares the Salafis' appetite for tighter implementation of Islamic law.

Some wonder whether the group might ban mixed beach bathing or the sale of alcohol. Such measures would hit a tourism sector that employs one in eight Egyptians.

The 79-page manifesto of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party does little to ease such worries. For instance, it criticises Egypt's music scene for "stirring desires".

"Egyptian song must be directed towards more ethical and creative horizons that are consistent with the society's values and identity," the document says.

Ali Khafagi, a 28-year-old Brotherhood activist, says fears about the group are overblown. A member since high school, he describes the Brotherhood as "very moderate and open minded".

"The Brotherhood's goal is to end corruption and start reform and economic development and that is what attracted many of its supporters to join it including myself," he said.

Khafagi dismissed talk about the Brotherhood banning alcohol or forcing women to wear headscarves if it came to power.

"That could only be done by a mad group and the Brotherhood is not a mad group, but a decent logical group with a good understanding of the Egyptian people and Islam," he added.

INTERNATIONAL FEARS

The Brotherhood's future policies are as much a source of concern abroad as at home.

In the United States, which gives Egypt $1.3 billion in military aid each year, figures including U.S. Senator John McCain have voiced concerns. McCain in March warned about the group's rise leading to a "more extreme" form of government.

But in recognition of the role they expect the Brotherhood to play, the U.S. government is now in touch with the group.

Foreign governments wonder how the Brotherhood might act if it gained a major say in foreign policy, defined in the Mubarak era by an alliance with the United States and peace with Israel.

The ideological parent of the Palestinian group Hamas, which is classified by Washington as a terrorist organisation, the Brotherhood does not hide its enmity towards Israel.

Its leaders say they would not cancel the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, but have spoken about the possibility of putting it to a referendum. More likely would be preserving the deal while cancelling all forms of cooperation with Israel, diplomats say.

In the near term, analysts and diplomats expect the Brotherhood to avoid areas of controversy, instead focusing on reforms around which it can build consensus.

"From our conversations with the Muslim Brotherhood, we expect them to be pragmatic and to work with a broad range of partners to find solutions to the difficult political and economic problems facing Egypt," a Western diplomat said.

Conscious of the concerns of fellow Egyptians, the Brotherhood could try to build a coalition in the new parliament with secular groups, said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center.

"They will go out of their way to show they are going to work with leftist and liberal groups," he said.

They must also manage their relationship with the ruling military council, a legacy of the Mubarak era.

Though they have backed the generals' plan for the post-Mubarak transition to civilian rule, the Islamists distrust the military's strategy and want an end to its role in government.

The Brotherhood's call for parliament to form a new government in January when the elections conclude could set the stage for confrontation with the military because only last Saturday the generals said that would remain their prerogative.

But above all, the Brotherhood, which gained trust by aiding the poor during the Mubarak years, will aim for economic growth to ease poverty and convince voters they are fit to govern.

"They are going to have to deliver something. The bread and butter issues will be their focus," Hamid said. "They still care about Islamisation, though it doesn't figure prominently in their rhetoric these days," he added.

"They will be consumed with economic policies."

(Additional reporting by Shaimaa Fayed and Yasmine Saleh; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Peter Millership and Alistair Lyon)

Islamists in Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood's long wait for power is over - CSMonitor.com

The Great American Debt

Written by Sam Blumenfeld

Tuesday, 29 November 2011 01:49

The American national debt hangs over the nation’s head like the sword of Damocles, ready to drop and severely damage the American economy. The present debt has now reached the astronomical sum of $15 trillion, and continues to grow. The federal budget submitted to Congress by President Obama on February 14, 2011 was $3.729 trillion. But revenues come to only $2.627 trillion, meaning that there would be a deficit of $1.101 trillion. In other words, the federal government would have to borrow over a trillion dollars just to meet its present expenditures

Each year since 1969, Congress has spent more money than it takes in, and each year the Treasury Department has had to borrow money to meet Congress’ appropriations, which always increase. Indeed, the Treasury Department has the third largest expenditure in the federal budget. Only Defense and the income redistribution programs of the Departments of Health and Human Services, HUD, and Agriculture (food stamps) are higher.

As the debt increases, so do the interest payments. Social spending is the largest item in our federal budget, and ObamaCare has greatly increased that expenditure. At a time when our national debt was in the trillions, the enactment of ObamaCare was a totally irresponsible act on the part of the new administration.

For the fiscal year 2011, the Treasury Department spent $454 billion on interest payments to the holders of our national debt. That’s almost a half trillion dollars, just for interest payments. Compare that to $6 billion for NASA, $70 billion for the Department of Education, and $26 billion for the Department of Transportation. And it looks like we shall have to make those interest payments into the foreseeable future, meaning that they will be paid by our children and grandchildren.

How much is America worth? It’s an important question because if we owe more than we are worth, and have to keep borrowing to keep Washington’s redistribution machine running, we are headed either toward default of the debt or bankruptcy. That would destroy the credit of our federal government. Of course, inflation could delay the moment of reckoning, but it would also destroy the savings of millions of Americans. Indeed, we are already seeing the effects of inflation in the grocery store and shopping mall.

The Obama administration insists that we raise the taxes of the rich to help cover our deficit. Republicans argue that the federal government must cut its spending to achieve a balanced budget. Taking more money out of the private sector, where it can be used to generate wealth, and transferring it to the public sector, which only knows how to spend money, would harm the economy as a whole.

Obama is an ideological socialist. He believes that the purpose of the private sector is to pay for the lavish social programs of the public sector. But what he seems not to realize is that the private sector has given the government all that it can without harming its ability to generate additional wealth. But socialists don’t seem to care if they kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Their attitude is reflected in the signs being held by the Occupiers of Wall Street: Kill Capitalism; People Not Profits, as if it’s possible to help people without profits.

The European Union, run by socialist governments, is facing the same problem. Because of over-regulation and a basic hostility toward capitalism, the private sector is stagnant and cannot support the ever growing demands of the public sector. And so these socialist leaders, whose governments have borrowed more than they can pay back, have to face reality. In Spain the voters threw out the socialist government by the largest margin in Spain’s electoral history. And Spain has always been a hotbed of socialism and anarchism. But economic reality has hit them in the face like a bucket of cold water.
What happened in Spain in November may be a forerunner of what can happen in the United States in November 2012. The Conservative People’s Party’s candidate, Mariano Rajoy, enjoyed a landslide victory, winning an absolute parliamentary majority with a crushing 16 percentage points over the Socialists. The party will have 186 seats of the parliament’s 350. The Socialists lost a third of their seats, as voters dumped a government that presided over a dramatic economic slump that has left 23 percent of Spaniards unemployed.

"It is no secret to anyone that we are going to rule in the most delicate circumstances Spain has faced in 30 years," Rajoy said. He pleaded for time. "There will be no miracles," he said. "We haven't promised any." The new Spanish leader has promised major reforms, more austerity, and strict deficit control in tune with market demands and with those of Germany's Angela Merkel, the European Central Bank and the European commission. Rajoy’s shadow Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro has said the new government will act hard and fast, introducing reforms immediately. Rajoy must now name his future Finance Minister. He has said in the past that he is happy to choose someone from outside the party, so may end up naming a market-friendly technocrat.

Nor would there be any instantaneous miracles if Republicans win the White House in November 2012 and a Tea Party majority takes over both houses of Congress. Here in America, we are finally coming to grips with the basic fundamentals of economics. In Spain, they call the socialists Socialists. But here in squeamish America, the “S” word, is rarely if ever mentioned in the establishment media, and it’s amusing to watch the liberal pundits discussing the problems between Obama and the Republicans in the usual terms of political party jargon. But that’s because the word has come down from above that the term socialism must not be mentioned because it too well describes what our problem is. The Democrats know that most Americans do not favor socialism. They prefer the terms liberal or progressive, but not socialist. Yet if you read Radical-in-Chief by Stanley Kurtz, you will know where Obama comes from ideologically. Kurtz minces no words: Obama is a Socialist.

How can we realistically deal with the national debt in a way that does not penalize future generations with terrible economic burdens? The answer is surprisingly simple: The government must stop spending so much money, and Congress must begin dismantling the socialist programs that are leading us to bankruptcy. Only a growing economy will enable us to create the new wealth needed to pay down the debt. It will mean weaning the public from its addiction to government money. Which means that the private sector will have to create enough new jobs to hire people dependent on the redistribution of other people’s money.

It was President Lyndon Baines Johnson, back in 1965, who got us on the socialist treadmill of wealth redistribution by getting his progressive Congress to vote for the Great Society, named after British Socialist Graham Wallas’s book, The Great Society, published in 1914. It became the blueprint for the expansion of the federal government into socialism. Thus was enacted the famous War on Poverty (a war we could never win), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (which put the federal government into all public school classrooms to the detriment of academic excellence), Medicare and Medicaid (enacted to prepare us for socialized medicine), National Public Radio (subsidized liberal indoctrination via radio and television), the National Endowment for the Arts (so government could choose its favorites), the National Endowment for the Humanities (to make symphony orchestras, playwrights, and writers dependent on federal money).

And every administration after Johnson added its own new programs on the premise that the taxpayer would provide an inexhaustible amount of money to pay for it all. Even “conservative” Republican George W. Bush couldn’t resist adding his own entitlement to those already driving the government into the red, a Prescription Drug Plan. I guess he expected to win the plaudits of the AARP.

However, like Spain, we have reached the end of the road. Our debt is beyond anything ever created in the history of mankind. The American people must finally decide whether they want socialism or capitalism. They can’t have both. But how many voters in America know the difference between the two? Our present problems are based on the premise that we could have both.

The Great American Debt

Banks Prepare for the Worst as Europe's Downward Spiral Continues

 

Written by Charles Scaliger

Wednesday, 30 November 2011 10:00

The European crisis continues to mushroom, even as Eurocrats meet in Brussels to try to stave off implosion of the eurozone. Tuesday’s sale of Italian debt forced the government of Italy again to accept interest rates or “yields” in excess of seven percent, a level proven by experience to be unsustainable. Thursday will be another bellwether day, as Spain and Belgium — both of whose bonds are commanding steep yields — auction off debt of their own. But at the rate interests on government debt are rising across the eurozone, a few more weeks could write the epitaph for the once-touted international currency.

While European politicians continue to insist, as politicians will, that Europe’s problems will be resolved and that the eurozone will be kept intact at any cost, the world’s financial and banking elites are apparently coming to a different conclusion. Banks and banking regulators in Asia, the United Kingdom, and North America are busily drawing up contingency plans for a eurozone breakup while trying to reduce their exposure to European debt. “We cannot be, and are not, complacent on this front,” declared Andrew Bailey, a regulator at Britain’s Financial Services Authority, last week. “We must not ignore the prospect of a disorderly departure of some countries from the euro zone.”

According to the New York Times’ Liz Alderman, writing on November 25:

Banks including Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and Nomura issued a cascade of reports this week examining the likelihood of a breakup of the euro zone. “The euro zone financial crisis has entered a far more dangerous phase,” analysts at Nomura wrote on Friday. Unless the European Central Bank steps in to help where politicians have failed, “a euro breakup now appears probable rather than possible,” the bank said.

Major British financial institutions, like the Royal Bank of Scotland, are drawing up contingency plans in case the unthinkable veers toward reality, bank supervisors said Thursday. United States regulators have been pushing American banks like Citigroup and others to reduce their exposure to the euro zone. In Asia, authorities in Hong Kong have stepped up their monitoring of the international exposure of foreign and local banks in light of the European crisis.

Within Europe, interestingly, the situation is different. So strong is the conviction that the eurozone will remain intact — it was, after all, designed with no mechanism for any member to opt out — that European banks have no plans for any change in the status quo. “While in the United States there is clearly a view that Europe can break up, here, we believe Europe must remain as it is,” one French banker told the Times. “So no one is saying, ‘We need a fallback.’” Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s second-largest bank, completely omitted a eurozone breakup as a possibility in its latest two-year strategic plan, drawn up last March. “Even though the situation has evolved, we haven’t revised our scenario to take that into consideration,” Andrea Beltratti, a top bank official, told the Times.

The state of denial is endemic across Europe, with the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel flatly denying that the euro will be jettisoned — even though such an outcome would probably be beneficial to Germany. Free of the euro obligations to the weaker economies of Club Med, an emancipated Germany with a reconstituted mark would probably see its economy soar relative to much of the rest of Europe, as would the Netherlands on the guilder and France on the franc. Europe’s heavily-indebted south, from Portugal to Greece, would probably be forced to default, with the wealthy north no longer under any obligation to bail them out.

The effort to keep the eurozone on life support is driven less by prudent economics than by political fanaticism, the pipe dream of a United States of Europe devised in the fires of World War II. But such an outcome has never been achieved except by military force. The Caesars did it, and so did Napoleon. But an economic union, as events are now teaching the world, is as fragile as a spring flower: vibrant as long as the sun shines, but unable to survive when the economic weather changes for the worse.

Banks Prepare for the Worst as Europe's Downward Spiral Continues