Obama's Paradigm Shift in Geopolitics (Updated)

Update: Sen. Kyl brings up another important aspect of this case. It brings back to life the Cold War paradigm of the "spheres of influence" through which swathes of the globe were either on the East or on the West's side. No wonder the Poles are upset. What's more, they were informed about the decision about the same time as the news broke. I have a feeling this mistake may cast a very long shadow.



Newt Gingrich also weighing in. This looks worse by the hour. The program was apparently scrapped without any quid pro quo and Obama on Russian insistance "correcting an American mistake". Incidentally, I think this administration will find the Russians quite racist and very insensitive to their notions of political correctness. 



Almost simultaneously news is breaking that may well define history. 

On the eve of the Soviet Union invading Poland 70 years ago US President Obama has made it formally known he's flinging Europe under the appeasement bus. How sensitive and empathic! After the debacles of the Iran uprising and the Honduras enormity, Obama is now pandering to the next autocracy. It is unmistable. Obama is not the champion of liberty-hungry peoples.

Our valued contributor, Dr Sam Holliday, director of the Armiger Cromwell Center just sent in this:

It is too soon to know all of the implications of today's announcement by the Obama administration scrapping plans for a Ballistic Missile Defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. But the timing of this announcement is interesting. Today marks the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, sixteen days after the beginning of the German attack. I doubt that Obama and his postmodern experts gave it much thought, but I'm certain that the timing of this announcement was not lost on the Poles. This will be seen as another betrayal of Poland by a great power.

At the same time news is breaking that one of the main reasons the Bush administration proposed the missile defense shield, is one disastrous step closer to apocalyptic reality.

Times Online: "Dismay in Europe as Obama ditches missile defence"

President Obama dismayed America's allies in Europe and angered his political opponents at home today when he formally ditched plans to set up a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The project had been close to the heart of Mr Obama's predecessor, President Bush, who had argued before leaving office in January that it was needed to defend against long-range ballistic missile attacks from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. (...) >>>

It's no surpise the German Spiegel Online is able to report:

Sense of Triumph in Moscow

"Euphoria over Obama's Decision To Shelve Missile Shield"

Moscow is triumphant over Obama's decision to cancel his missile shield plan. But it is no foregone conclusion that Russia will harden its line against Iran. And Poland and the Czech Republic will also expect overtures from the United States. (...) >>>

Manure hits the fan on the Iran nuke front as well, as IAEA in a secret report admit Iran has now enough info to plug the holes in its program!

The Yeshiva World News: "Secret Report: IAEA Says Iran Can Make Nuke Bomb"

A breaking news report released by the Associated Press just moments ago, claims that they have seen a “secret report” in which the International Atomic Energy Agency agrees with Washington’s fears that Iran has the capabilities to manufacture a nuclear bomb. The “secret report” also concludes that Iran is currently working on producing a missile which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

Additionally, the AP reports that the highly secret IAEA document which the USA claims IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei withheld, says Iran has “sufficient information” and will “overcome problems” on missile technology.

The US, France, and Israel have recently accused the outgoing head of the IAEA, Mohammad ElBaradei, of concealing information regarding Iran’s nuclear program. ElBaradei rejected the allegations, saying they had political motives. >>>

Charming!

Update:

The Washington Examiner: "Obama helps strengthen General Electric-Putin ties", by Timothy P. Carney

Reuters reports an interesting nugget in the wake of President Barack Obama's decision to grant Vladimir Putin his wish and kill the Eastern European missile shield:

Shortly after the pullback on the shield programme was announced, Russia's government said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would meet several U.S. executives on Friday from firms including General Electric, Morgan Stanley as well as TPG, one of the world's largest private equity firms.

General Electric may be the company with the closest ties to the Obama administration (if not, GE is second only to Goldman Sachs) (...) Reuters paints the broader picture (...) GE CEO Jeff Immelt sits on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and GE owns MSNBC, the network famously friendly to Obama. (...) Read it all >>>

Russia, for obvious reasons, but other opponents of the plan as well, want us to forget that we're talking here of a defensive system.  They like to present it as if the missile shield is an offensive weapon.

For his part Czech President Václav Klaus can't say he's surprised. The signals have been coming for some time (indeed).

Der Spiegel's complete coverage of the missile shield contraversy and an interview with former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. And then there's this comment:

US President Barack Obama has scrapped his predecessor's plans for a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. German editorialists hope the move will encourage Russia to back tougher sanctions against Iran. But while some praise the decision as hopeful and brave, others dub it naive and dangerous.

They can't be serious! German editorialists hope the move will encourage Russia to back tougher sanctions against Iran ... completely unhinged ... are there no grown-ups in the place anymore?

Here's a reaction from Poland just in.

Mohamed ElBaradei: Useful Idiot or Trojan Horse?

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of IAEA, keeps saying over and over again what Washington doesn't want to hear: "There is no proof that Iran tries to acquire atomic weapons." And a few weeks ago, a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate seemed to confirm that there is no proof of on-going nuclear weapons program in Iran since the fall of 2003.

In his Vienna apartment, ElBaradei accepted an interview by the French weekly magazine Paris-Match. Here are a few excerpts and comments:

Paris-Match: A new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded that there had been no on-going nuclear weapons program in Iran since the fall of 2003? Is it a victory for you?

ElBaradei: It's a nice Christmas gift! We have some concerns about the Iranian nuclear program but this doesn't mean that Iran is a impending threat. And this doesn't mean that we have proof that Iran tries to acquire nuclear weapons. This report gives diplomacy new opportunities. We need to stop the war logic.

My comments: And you implicitly admit that you have no sure proof that Iran does NOT try to acquire nuclear weapons, Mr ElB ...

P-M: Is Iran threatening world peace?

ElB: In the short term I would say, no. In the long term, it's different. Several countries don't trust Iranian leaders.

My comments: Tell me, Mr ELB, what do you think? Are they trustworthy? What does it mean: "in the long-term it's different"?

P-M: After this NIE report, there'll be no American raid against Iran?

ElB: I hope so. A raid against Iran would have negative effects. This would solve no problem. First, Iranians have no big nuclear infrastructure. Destroying it would only delay their program for a few months. Then they would restart their nuclear activities in a clandestine way. And let's speak about the consequences in the region! The Muslim world is angry, feels humiliated. A war would draw further extremism.

My comments: So when activities are clandestine, it's though to detect it, right? Give me some proof that part of the program isn't clandestine already. And, oh Mr ElB, I forgot: you are yourself a Muslim with a biased view. Stop it with this leitmotiv of the angry and humiliated people. Humiliated by whom? Their own leaders, their own sick society based on a fascist religion.

P-M: France, amongst other countries want new sanctions against Iran. What is your position about that?

ElB: These countries are free to take this position, even if I have my ideas on the question. I'm pretty sure about one thing: without negotiations, there'll be no long-lasting solution. The Iranian nuclear problem is only part of a complex situation involving the Middle East and Muslim world security. To establish confidence between parts, you have to talk about Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, you have to talk about extremism, human rights, poverty. Many people in this region have to live on less than two dollars a day. Is this acceptable? This people' ll become extremists. Because they have nothing to loose, because they feel humiliated.

My comments: READ: "by negotiations, I mean that the Western world has to honor every demand of the Muslim world." And Mr ElB, yes lets talk about poverty. 2 dollars a day? Unacceptable! Especially when you realize that these people are sailing on a sea of oil! So give us a break : there is more than enough money within the Muslim world to solve the poverty problems. The western world? It does more than enough, buying your oil. The truth is: YOUR world, Mr ElB, should feel ASHAMED, not only humiliated. And after all, what's your job? You're the director general of IAEA, you're not supposed to do politics. And as we speak about your function, I would have expected to see a physicist fill the position, not a legal expert.

P-M: Iran did sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT or NNPT). Why then forbid them to produce nuclear energy for civil purposes?

ElB: By law, Iran indeed has the right to produce nuclear energy. But, as Iran hid part of its program for years, the international community doesn't trust them anymore. The Iranian case raises fundamental questions about the NPT and its purpose. That's why I suggest that uranium enrichment should be submitted to multilateral control, even for Western countries. Western super powers have to understand that if they want a long-term system, it must be fair. When they signed the NPT the nuclear states - USA, France, UK, China and Russia - committed themselves to massive disarmament. They are far from it!
If Iranians created a nuclear program, it's for economical reasons but also because they don't feel secure.

Comments: Oh! So they already did hide part of the program! Reading you, I thought this would be the case only if USA smashes their nuclear stuff ... Tell me, you're sure they don't keep on doing it, only with more efficiency. And tell me how a country would feel more secure with ONLY a CIVILIAN nuclear program?

P-M: Thus you understand the argument: "if super powers, Israel and Pakistan have nuclear weapons, why can't we?"

ElB: Sure! If a country doesn't feel secure, acquiring nuclear weapons - or at least an uranium enrichment program - is a means of protection. We can't go on living in a world divided between states which have nuclear weapons and states which don't have it. Nuclear states say to the rest of the world: "We need nuclear weapons for our security but you can't have it because that's not good for you, it threatens the world's security!" That's not fair. Super powers have to set the example. For the first time in a US presidential election, several candidates, namely Barack Obama and John Edwards, committed themselves for nuclear weapons abolition. That's a good thing.

Comments: READ : "Let's hope Americans vote Obama (or at least Edwards), a new Jimmy Carter for America; my Iranian friends would find that so funny!" By the way, yes Mr ElB, the Western world needs nuclear capacity to protect itself against evil minded people like Ahmadinejad, El Assad, Kim Jong Il, to name but a few. And yes, some countries should NEVER possess a nuclear weapon, because they are managed by fanatic, intolerant and racist leaders. And, my dear American friends, I beg you, please: no votes for Obama nor Edwards.

P-M: Is a new Hiroshima possible?

ElB: If we don't change our system, yes. There are still many nuclear weapons on the planet. Maybe you'll awake one morning to discover that half the planet has vanished. Because of a computer bug, perhaps. Nobody realizes that we live in a very precarious world.

Comment: Wow! This one is gross ... If someone still had a doubt that you're a dishonest and biased individual, this should clear his mind. Don't tell me you really believe that our leaders haven't thought about that and that they haven't secured the system.

P-M: The new French administration is very tough about the Iranian problem. Do you have the impression that their foreign politicies have changed?

ElB: (Silence) I would rather wait before answering. I have to meet Mr Kouchner (Minister of Foreign Affairs) in February in Paris. I hope that France will go on with its traditional politicies as a valuable partner.

My comments: READ: "I still can't believe these stupid Frenchies did elect Sarkozy. Soft belly Chirac gave us such a good feeling! Come on, Frenchies! We all know you have an anti-USA tendency. Don't deceive us! We want a divided western world!".

P-M: For more than 40 years, you've been living outside your native country. Do you still feel Egyptian?

ElB: You may think it's a cliché, but the world is my home. I lived in New York, in Geneva, in Vienna. I just bought a house in Gers, France. To me, borders and nationalities sound more and more superficial.

My comments: Oh yes, this one is such a "cliché"! Nothing beats it if you want to convince us that you're Mr Nice, Mr Useful Idiot or worse ...

- Filed on Articles in "Iran Nuke Alert (temp. k.a. as the NIE Hoax)", cat. Iran -

Berlin-Tehran: the Counter-Enlightenment Axis

Earlier this year Leeds University bowed for the forces of obscurantism and intimidation in cancelling a series of events on the theme "Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East", involving Matthias Küntzel, a Hamburg-based author and political scientist who specialises in the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Since the 9/11 demo "Stop the Islamization of Europe" was prohibited in Brussels by the Socialist mayor of that city under the excuse of 'security fears', this seems to have become the standard excuse.

Nevertheless, Leeds University at some point retrieved their moral and intellectual backbone and reissued the invitation to Küntzel, who this week finally held the oration on his new book "Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11" to an audience of about 120 people.

Melanie Phillips in a recent post on the subject "The Nazi roots of Muslim antisemitism" writes: "Muslims despised Jews as second-class citizens, but they did not see them as a global conspiracy. They do now - and that’s because of the influence of the Nazis. Key to this was the alliance during the 1930s between the Arab Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, and the Nazis."

Küntzel: "Islamism ... was established as a mass movement by the Muslim Brotherhood, which stands in relation to Al Qaeda as the Bolsheviks did to communism. The Brotherhood is a revolutionary political movement focused almost entirely on Zionism and the Jews. It is inspired by two sources: the Koran and Islamic theology, plus Nazi doctrine and influences, using not only Nazi-like patterns of action and slogans but also, historically, Nazi funding."

In "Yes my Friends, I will Call for War" we have seen how historical, colonial ties led Nazism and Fascism into the Middle East where it fell on the fertile breeding ground of Islamic collectivism and subjectivism, the traits it has in common with the European - overwhelmingly Germanic - Counter-Enlightenment movement, which was a reaction started by Swiss born Frenchman Rousseau against the rationality of the Enlightenment, giving later rise to philosophies in the same vein by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, through to the Nazist Heidegger and postmoderns Foucault et al.

Phillips quotes Küntzel as follows: "For Islamists, the issue at stake is not the welfare of individual Palestinians, but the abolition of Enlightenment, reason, and individual freedom – achievements whose spread is attributed primarily to the Jews."

So, there you have it: the Enlightenment is a Jewish project! Nothing could be further from the truth, but it is one of the lies Middle East conspiracy theories seem to thrive on, and another interface of Marxism and Nazism with Islam: the aversion to Reality and Reason.

Moving the attention to Shi'ism Phillips further quotes: "This Nazi/Islamist propaganda also made an impact in Iran, where it reached a certain Ayatollah Khomeini: even the German consulate in Tehran was surprised by the success of this propaganda.

"Throughout the country spiritual leaders are coming out and saying ‘that the twelfth Imam has been sent into the world by God in the form of Adolf Hitler’ we learn from a report to Berlin in February 1941. So, ‘without any legation involvement, an increasingly effective form of propaganda has arisen, which sees the Führer and Germany as the answer to every prayer… One way to promote this trend is sharply to emphasize Muhammad’s struggle against the Jews in the olden days and that of the Führer today.’"

It therefore may not come as a very big surprise that today the same Axis is revived in reaction to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's demand that in the event that the U.N. Security Council should prove incapable of measures in the Iran nuclear issue, Europeans take action against the recalcitrant Iranian stance.

It is only by applying massive economic pressure, Sarkozy argued, that "a catastrophic alternative" could still be avoided, "either the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran." The policy presented by Sarkozy is in fact the only non-military option available. It is only the European Union - in casu Germany - that is in a position to force a change in Iranian policy without the use of military force.

In his article "Berlin and Vienna Stand Against the West: European Divisions in the Iranian Bomb" in World Politics Review above mentioned German author Matthias Küntzel writes: "The former Director of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Tehran, Michael Tockuss, drew attention to Germany's importance for Iran when he noted, in an interview with the German magazine Focus , that "around two-thirds of Iranian industry is essentially equipped with plant and machinery of German manufacture. The Iranians are thoroughly dependent upon German replacement parts and suppliers."

Here's the European reaction to Sarkozy's proposal for a unilateral European boycott against Iran: "... Germany and Austria ... have rejected it. ... German Chancellor Angela Merkel is supposed in principle to support the Sarkozy proposal, but has explained Germany's hesitations by reference to her Social Democratic coalition partners."

The cooperative Counter-Enlightenment Axis and their inability of spotting objective Evil never fails! Their alternative: "... Germany, Austria, and Russia are prepared now to accept Iran's nuclear facilities as long as they are placed under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They have thus effectively shelved the strategy hitherto pursued by the U.N. Security Council."

"By opposing the prompt passage of a new sanctions resolution, Germany has, in effect, departed from the Western block in order to make common cause with China and Russia against the core Western powers. It is remarkable that in taking this unprecedented step it is coming to the aid of a government that denies the Holocaust and wants to eliminate Israel."

"The question of whether a country or society has drawn the correct lessons from the history of National Socialism is not to be answered by pretty speeches, but only in practice. As concerns Germany's and Austria's Iran policy, the answer is clearly "no." Iran's progress in obtaining a nuclear capacity casts the shadow of a potential nuclear Holocaust over the Middle East. Berlin and Vienna are standing on the front lines: not however with those who are attempting to avert the catastrophe, but rather with those who are, for whatever reasons, paving the way for it."

Amorality, as a result of the rejection of Reality as posited by Counter-Enlightenment Axis is today alive and well, and unfaltering.

Update: A lot of material is suddenly surfacing about Amin al Husseini. Not only was he the Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, he also appears to have been directly involved in Ottoman atrocities committed against Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians in the aftermath of the World War I (see comment by Politics and Free Thinking). It's hushed up, but Yassir Arafat was related to him. For the completeness of the files, here are the relevant links - Hat tip Jack:

- "Tell the Children the Truth"
- "Pearls of Wisdom" This is an important historic document. Please let us know if it ever fails, or is removed.