Geopolitical thread

[Samudragupta]

Siemens is moving BRICs executive in its top Management positions....probably just some indications of the things to come.....

[svinayak]

TO be a multi national company you need to work with BRICS ++

[abhishek_sharma]

x-post

The Atomic Bombings of Japan: A 50-Year Retrospective

[Ravi Karumanchiri]

High stakes in Eurasia's 'New Great Game'
China and Russia will benefit from US mistakes in Afghanistan, and the operation in Libya, gaining influence and energy.
Pepe Escobar Last Modified: 04 Jul 2011 14:39

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/op ... 01343.html

[svinayak]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 06942.html
Comment

I'm sure that some of the anti-American posts got your hackles up. But know this. Even the USA cannot live in splendid, self sufficient, isolation, divorced from the rest of the world. You rather remind me of the tale of Nero fiddling whilst Rome and the Roman Empire burned. It still burned, despite Nero's refusal to acknowledge it.

The USA as an empire is on its way out and its customs and ideas will soon be considered as outdated and not up to the job (much the same as the British Empire that was). A new broom is beginning to sweep the world, and I confidently believe that mass killing and warfare between nations and peoples will be considered as totally unacceptable within the next 50 years.

The big issues of the day are not whether the USA can stay safely inside its bunker. The big issues of today are the fact that China, India and other Asian countries are beginning to take the lead in the world. They come with a completely different set of ideas and ideals some of which we in the west find strange and sometimes unpalatable. If we are to influence this sea change then we perhaps need to learn a little humility and begin to consider that there are other viewpoints out there.

At the moment there are 9 billion people facing starvation in the Horn of Africa. That can't be right can it? It is no longer acceptable to cluck and say "shame" and then just leave them to die. I was looking at the images on the TV this morning and there is absolutely no difference between the pictures I saw there and the pictures we are all familiar with in the concentration camps of Germany after the Second World War. We may not be gassing and burning them but we sure as hell are standing aside whilst they die. And yet still we engage in warfare that spends billions of dollars/euros/pounds killing and maiming and posturing. What strange times we live in!

[UBanerjee]

A new broom is beginning to sweep the world, and I confidently believe that mass killing and warfare between nations and peoples will be considered as totally unacceptable within the next 50 years.

Yes, that is what they said 20 years ago after FSU fell, and 60 years ago after Germany/Japan fell, and 90 years ago when Germany fell the first time. Interesting.

[Ravi Karumanchiri]

^^^

Plus ça change plus ça reste la même...

(The more things change, the more they stay the same...)

[ramana]

From Foreign Affairs,

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ ... ?page=show

FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE

What China Wants
Bargaining With Beijing

By Andrew J. Nathan

July/August 2011

Henry Kissinger’s new book* argues that the United States should yield gracefully to China’s rise; Aaron Friedberg’s gives the opposite advice. By focusing on intentions instead of capabilities, both books overstate China’s actual power.

ANDREW J. NATHAN is Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and a co-author, with Andrew Scobell, of the forthcoming book China’s Search for Security.

As a connoisseur of fine diplomacy, Henry Kissinger finds a lot of it to admire in China. His new book, cast as a history of Chinese foreign policy, traces the twists and turns of Chinese strategy since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, quoting liberally from his numerous conversations with Chinese leaders. But On China is really neither history nor memoir. Its purpose is to argue that the United States should yield gracefully to China’s rise in order to avoid a tragic conflict.

Aaron Friedberg gives the opposite advice. A Princeton professor and former foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, he analyzes the strategies that China and the United States have used in dealing with each other since the early 1990s and tries to decipher China’s intentions in the coming decades. In the face of growing Chinese power and ambition, the United States, he argues, must stand strong in those many areas in which China’s interests are adverse to its own. Together, the two books offer a window onto the strategic split over China among mainstream Republicans.

Kissinger likens Chinese diplomacy to the game of wei qi (equivalent to the Japanese game of go), a patient contest of encirclement in which victory is only relative. Chinese strategists view the quest for a decisive outcome as illusory. Instead, they play a game of "combative coexistence," seeking to improve their relative power position amid the ever-changing forces of world politics. At the necessary moment, one may deliver a salutary psychological shock and then withdraw, as the Chinese did to the Indians in 1962 to put a stop to incursions along their contested border, and as they did to the Soviets in 1969 to deter Moscow from probing Chinese positions along their frontier. On other occasions, one may hide one’s light and bide one’s time, as Deng Xiaoping famously advised his colleagues to do in 1991, telling them to maintain good relations with the United States while building up China’s strength. Or it might be useful to claim hurt dignity and designate a whole topic as nonnegotiable, as Beijing did in 1993-94 when U.S. President Bill Clinton tried to make favorable tariff rates conditional on improvements on human rights, and as it is doing today over territorial issues.

Kissinger sees contrasts here with the usual approach of U.S. diplomats, which often frustrated him when he was running the show. Where American negotiators tend to compartmentalize issues and seek solutions, their Chinese counterparts prefer to integrate issues and seek understandings. Whereas Americans believe that agreements can be reached in one sector while disagreements are expressed in another, Chinese prefer to characterize the whole atmosphere as warm or cold, friendly or tense, creating an incentive for the other side to put disagreements on the back burner. Whereas Americans are troubled by deadlocks, Chinese know how to leverage them to keep pressure on the other side. American diplomacy is transactional; Chinese diplomacy, psychological.

Kissinger quotes the advice of the ancient military strategist Sun-tzu, who argued that one can win a battle before it begins by staking out a dominant political and psychological position. As far back as the third century, the military commander Zhuge Liang turned back an enemy army by opening the city gates and sunning himself on the ramparts; this looked like a trap and frightened away the opposing general. In 1793-94, the Qianlong emperor fended off the British delegate Lord George Macartney with smothering hospitality; when Macartney failed to get the point, the court dismissed him with a note left on a silk chair. In 1958, Mao Zedong received the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev not just at his private swimming pool but in it, forcing the Soviet leader to negotiate in water wings. When Kissinger met Zhou Enlai for the first time, in 1971, the premier had arranged his schedule to leave only two negotiating slots, totaling 13 hours, available during Kissinger’s time in Beijing, forcing the American envoy to agree to a presidential visit with few details resolved in advance.

Such tactics make hospitality "an aspect of strategy," Kissinger explains, leaving a foreign guest awed, discomfited, or wooed by the host’s wealth, generosity, and composure. Chinese diplomats are adept at the use of friendship, which leaves "the other side . . . flattered by being admitted to the Chinese ’club’ as an ’old friend,’ a posture that makes disagreement more complicated and confrontations painful," Kissinger writes. As the Manchu diplomat Qiying said about dealing with the British "barbarians," it was necessary to "curb them by sincerity."

It helps to come from an ancient civilization. "The duration and scale of the Chinese past allow Chinese leaders to use the mantle of an almost limitless history to evoke a certain modesty in their opposite numbers," Kissinger writes. His occasional digs at the United States -- whose foreign policy culture he describes as "missionary," interventionist, narrow-visioned, and crassly pragmatic -- show how hard it was to represent a nation that lacks that asset. At Kissinger and Zhou’s first conversation, Zhou ceded seniority to the United States by comparing the age of the American republic (some 200 years) to that of the People’s Republic (22 years). It was flattering, even though Kissinger knew it was false.

The problem with Kissinger’s book is not the facts. These are well grounded in the scholarly literature and, throughout much of the book, in the notes of conversations in which he himself took part. But newer scholarship has long since called into doubt any essentialism about China’s "singularity," "centrality," or "strategic patience." Although Kissinger does not use the word, the picture he paints is of an eternal -- and very Oriental -- China. And it is not clear why China’s long history of diplomacy makes it necessary for the United States to yield to Chinese preferences in the present. What is lacking for such an argument is an analysis of the material realities of China’s relative power, which even after 20 years of spectacular economic growth remain in many ways unfavorable.

CONTENTIOUS INTENTIONS

Friedberg also exaggerates Chinese power, although in pursuit of a different argument. His is the most thoughtful and informative of a stream of China-threat books that have come out since the mid-1990s. Within that genre, its contribution is to focus on China’s strategic intentions. Although Friedberg agrees with the classical realist logic that a change in power relations inevitably generates rivalry, he also believes it is important to figure out what, as he puts it, China wants.

His method is to synthesize the views of Chinese public intellectuals who write in Chinese policy magazines roughly similar in function to Foreign Affairs and in other media. The authors on whom he draws are professors or fellows (and some graduate students) at universities and think tanks and a few military officers who work in jobs that allow them to write books and articles for the general public. Friedberg argues that these materials "reflect the main currents of ’responsible’ opinion" among Chinese writers, "some of [whom] are known to have access to the inner circles of the party and state." What he reads these experts as saying is that China should seek to "displace the United States as the dominant player in East Asia, and perhaps to extrude it from the region altogether."

But this method of assessing Chinese intentions is full of pitfalls. Authors who write for the Chinese public have to compete for attention the same way that American public intellectuals do, with edgy views and vivid writing. And they do not all agree with one another. In fact, the authors Friedberg cites take varied positions, ranging from that of Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu, who wants China to become "world number one," to that of the scholar Wang Jisi, who emphasizes common interests between China and the United States. The attempt to synthesize these views creates a false unity, with Friedberg privileging those of the writers who say the sharpest things. Moreover, as pointed out by Thomas Christensen in these pages ("The Advantages of an Assertive China," March/April 2011), Chinese policymakers have consistently been more cautious in practice than the Chinese media have been in their rhetoric. The proper takeaway from Friedberg’s analysis is that the Chinese public has been treated to a rich diet of nationalist sentimentality, which for whatever reason is permitted -- or perhaps even mandated -- by the propaganda department, which ultimately controls the Chinese media.

By focusing on intentions, Friedberg, like Kissinger, leaves out any serious accounting of China’s capability to achieve the goals that various writers propose. Such an audit would show that China is bogged down both internally and in Asia generally. At home, it devotes enormous resources, including military ones, to maintaining control over the two-fifths of its territory that comprise Xinjiang and greater Tibet, to keeping civil order throughout the densely populated and socially unstable Han heartland, and to deterring Taiwan’s independence. Around its borders, it is surrounded chiefly by two kinds of countries: unstable ones where almost any conceivable change will make life more difficult for Chinese strategists (such as Myanmar, North Korea, and the weak states of Central Asia) and strong ones that are likely to get stronger in the future and compete with China (such as India, Japan, Russia, and Vietnam). And everywhere on its periphery, on land and at sea, China faces the powerful presence of the United States. The U.S. Pacific Command remains the most muscular of the U.S. military’s six regional combatant commands, after the Central Command (which is managing two ongoing wars), and it continues to adjust its strategies as China’s military modernizes.

Friedberg is also imprecise. His title, A Contest for Supremacy, means one thing; part of his subtitle, the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, means another -- and neither idea is vindicated by the body of the book. He is on firmer ground when he writes that "if China’s power continues to grow, and if it continues to be ruled by a one-party authoritarian regime, its relations with the United States are going to become increasingly tense and competitive." But friction is not conflict.

And all this assumes that China’s rise will continue unabated. Friedberg reasonably enough makes this assumption for the purposes of argument. But it is unlikely to prove correct in the long run because China’s economic and political model faces so many vulnerabilities. To add to the worries of Chinese leaders, as Friedberg points out, there are U.S. intentions: "stripped of diplomatic niceties, the ultimate aim of the American strategy is to hasten a revolution, albeit a peaceful one, that will sweep away China’s one-party authoritarian state." This helps explain why Chinese leaders act more like people under siege than like people on an expansionist warpath.

Even if China does stay on course, it cannot hope for anything that can reasonably be called supremacy, or even regional mastery, unless U.S. power radically declines. Absent that development, it is implausible that, as Friedberg predicts, "the nations of Asia will choose eventually to follow the lead of a rising China, ’bandwagoning’ with it . . . rather than trying to balance against it." Instead, the more China rises, the more most of China’s neighbors will want to balance with the United States, not against it.

REACTING TO RISE

Kissinger ends his book with a policy recommendation that is disappointingly brief and imprecise. He urges the creation of a Pacific Community, "to which the United States, China, and other states all belong and in whose peaceful development all participate." But why should the United States yield so much authority to China? Every other potential member of this community will also ask whether such a project would enhance or reduce its power. The Chinese will wonder why they should bind themselves to U.S. priorities in this way. Larger Asian powers, such as Japan and South Korea, will doubt the benefit of submerging themselves in a U.S.-Chinese condominium. And smaller states will see themselves at risk of being sold out by their major ally, either China or the United States. The proposal’s premise, that a U.S.-Chinese confrontation must be avoided, is sound, but it fails to take national interests into account.

Friedberg rejects the idea of a two-power condominium in Asia as appeasement. At the other extreme, he discredits the idea of trying to delay or derail China’s rise as too confrontational. A third option, "enhanced engagement," is fine as far as it goes, but it places too much hope in the willingness of Chinese policymakers to cooperate with an opponent whose interests are not identical to their own. Instead, he recommends that the United States set proper boundaries for China’s rise by maintaining a favorable balance of power in Asia. This will require the United States to undertake "costly and difficult measures," such as maintaining its alliances with Japan and South Korea and its cooperative relations with most of China’s other neighbors, continuing to upgrade its military posture to match China’s military modernization, and balancing its transpacific trade relationships. In a version of "we have met the enemy and he is us," Friedberg says that in order to do all this, the United States must restore its economy, keep its scientific edge, protect its advanced technology, and maintain its margin of military advantage.

One can only say amen to the recommendation that the United States pull up its socks. Such proposals are persuasive with or without China in the picture, and it is well to reinforce them in the context of China’s rise. But few of them are controversial. That they form the core of Friedberg’s strategy is a sign that the United States’ future in Asia is not as hostage to China’s rise as is implied by the alarmist tone of his earlier chapters. China cannot displace the United States from Asia; only the United States can. Friedberg’s counsel resembles the essence of U.S. policy for at least the last decade. Certainly, the Obama administration has been working to do what Friedberg suggests. The United States is hardly "on track to lose [its] geopolitical contest with China."

The real target of Friedberg’s criticism is not U.S. policy but "China-watchers in academia, commerce, and government," whom he accuses of stifling debate and of "willful, blinkered optimism." Prominent among these is Kissinger, whom Friedberg characterizes as part of a "Shanghai Coalition" (more plainly, a new China lobby) that wants "to avoid criticism of China and to support good relations." Friedberg’s strongest disagreement with this group concerns the place of human rights in Washington’s China policy.

If a key technique of Sun-tzu-style diplomacy is to convince the other side that certain issues are too culturally and politically sensitive to be discussed, China seems to have secured that part of the wei qi board when it comes to Kissinger’s views on human rights. Speaking of the immediate post-Tiananmen period, Kissinger says that "the American advocates of human rights insisted on values they considered universal" and that such universalism "challenges the element of nuance by which foreign policy is generally obliged to operate." He continues: "If adoption of American principles of governance is made the central condition for progress in all other areas of the relationship, deadlock is inevitable." These statements combine three fallacies: that the universality of international human rights is a matter of opinion rather than international law, that human rights equals American principles of governance, and that promoting human rights means holding hostage progress in all other areas.

Friedberg’s counterargument is persuasive. Showing softness on core values will reinforce the view of many Chinese that the United States is in decline, thus encouraging China to miscalculate U.S. resolve. As Friedberg writes, "Soft-pedaling talk of freedom will not reassure China’s leaders as much as it will embolden them." He tellingly applies Kissinger’s insight into the emollient effects of friendship to Kissinger himself, arguing that the Shanghai Coalition’s members are motivated in part by "the psychic rewards that come from believing that they are helping to promote peace and the gratification of being revered and well treated by Beijing."

It is no wonder that Chinese statecraft aims to establish the cultural relativity of human rights and to pose talk of human rights as the enemy of friendship. After all, the failure to respect human rights is a glaring weakness of Chinese power both at home and abroad, whereas promoting human rights has been among the United States’ most successful maneuvers on the wei qi board of world politics. What is surprising is that the United States’ master strategist wants to play this part of the game by Beijing’s rules. Would it not make more sense to emulate Chinese strategy than to yield to it? Emphasizing the principled centrality of the human rights idea to American ideology and keeping the issue active in bilateral relations even though it cannot be solved would seem to be -- along with exercising the United States’ strengths in other fields -- a good way to set the boundaries within which a rising Chinese power can operate without threatening U.S. interests.

*Henry Kissinger on China: Author Henry A. Kissinger, Publisher Penguin Press, Year 2011, Pages 608 pp., ISBN 1594202711, Price $36.00.

[Neshant]

Henry Kissinger’s new book* argues that the United States should yield gracefully to China’s rise;

the guy must be out of his mind.

[UBanerjee]

I almost wonder if Kissinger was a Soviet sleeper agent . The idea actually wouldn't be unprecedented; FDR's administration was extensively penetrated by the Comintern, from the lower and mid levels to Harry Hopkins, his right hand man.

[kumarn]

What kind of analysis is this which ignores the elephant in the room?

[abhishek_sharma]

Is human rights just the latest utopia?

[Philip]

The annual meeting of the highly secretive Bilderberg group.often accused of manipulating world events,was held in Switzerland this June.Formed after WW2 with the late Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands as head for decades,the members and attendees of the Group consisit of the who's who of the western establishment's financial,political,diplomatic and military movers and shakers.Here are alleged details of their confabulations.

Bilderberg 2011 Agenda

St. Moritz, Switzerland June 9-12
The agenda for the Bilderberg 2011 Conference included a variety of topics.

According to leaks from at least one attendee, the topic of primary concern involves the "Arab Spring" revolts and efforts to widen the revolt into a regional war to produce regime-change and trigger a wider, world war. Part of the plan was for NATO to engage Libya's dictator in a military conflict that would trigger a regional war. To accomplish this, U.S. participation is required, but the U.S. Congress is upset that Obama has violated the Constitution and War Power's Act by not garnering Congressional approval before committing U.S. forces to military action. A new move is underway in Congress to now halt U.S. participation in the Libyan conflict. This move triggered great concern and dismay within the Bilderberg Conference this year as it could put a halt to springing a wider Mideast war.

The Bilderberg group's justification for war is based on the growing overpopulation of the world with limited resources to support such expanding population. Wars reduce the population levels and a great world war could massively de-populate Earth and bring human population levels within manageable limits to match natural resources. On this matter, the Bilderberg attendees were united in agreement for the need of war. The topic dominated the entire first day of the conference and was a backdrop for other issues discussed during the next two days of meetings.

The second most discussed issue involved was growing publicity about the group and its plans for global government and the growing public opposition to not only global government but opposition to Bilderberg and its annual meetings. In conference discussions, there was a consensus that the unregulated internet is the primary factor enabling opposition to grow and possibly bring a halt to Bilderberg and its plans and goals for global government. Conferees discussed new, legal measures being undertaken to regulate, control and eliminate internet websites and emailing messages. In other words, new laws and regulations are being developed to legally censor internet content and make opposition to global government a criminal offense. Look for censorship efforts to step up and take hold in the next six to twelve months.

Along these same lines, the Bilderbergers were highly concerned and angered by the growing opposition in America, taking form through the American Patriot and Tea Party movement. This opposition is being taken as a serious threat to globalization plans. The group singled out media magnate, Rupert Murdoch and his media empire's coverage of globalization and of Bilderberg. Private attempts are being made to convince Murdoch to force his empire to scale back publicity and coverage of attempts to create a global government. The attendees were stunned by the presence of demonstrators at the conference and the presence of alternative media reporters providing coverage through the internet.

The third most important topic for discussion involved efforts to restructure the world's economy by crashing the system in a new crisis that will end with a collapse of the current system, to be replaced by a new global system, with an electronic currency and an all-powerful central banking system. Plans will include a new electronic currency utilizing micro-chip implants to be placed in the hands or wrists of citizens of the world. Such plans are already in place in the USA, thanks to the new Obama Health Care law which mandates micro-chip implants for all Americans by March of 2013. The Obama plan argues that the micro-chip must hold all medical records and personal identification of the person being implanted. Similar measures are reportedly underway in Europe.

In bringing down the world's economy, the globalists publicly wring their hands and engage in futile steps to shore up the Euro currency and stave off national bankruptcies in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, but behind the scenes, this is exactly what the Illuminists desire because everything must collapse to make way for a New World Order and a global dictator. This aspect is little understood among the Bilderberg critics and reporters covering Bilderberg.

As part of the take-down of the world's economy, a new IMF chieftain must be appointed in the wake of the arrest of the IMF chief in New York City last month. The Bilderberg conferees shared opinions back and forth on who should be selected to take over as the IMF leader and be a key player in the coming economic collapse willing to institute the Bilderberg global government concept into a newly structured international monetary system.

Three candidates are being considered to take over at the IMF. These candidates are:
Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel and member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission
Augustin Carstens, head of Mexico's Central Bank
Christine Lagarde, the Finance Minister of France

While Fischer is considered a personal favorite by many within the globalist movement, his Jewish banker background may be considered to provocative for conspiracy theorists, whereas Christine Lagarde, a French woman would provide a more positive public relations face for the globalist agenda.

The Bilderberg attendees expressed no choice on the candidacies of the three, but Lagarde seemed to hold the greater regard among attendees.

Alleged attendee list.
http://www.infowars.com/bilderberg-2011 ... ndee-list/

Belgium

Coene, Luc, Governor, National Bank of Belgium
Davignon, Etienne, Minister of State
Leysen, Thomas, Chairman, Umicore
China

Fu, Ying, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs
Huang, Yiping, Professor of Economics, China Center for Economic Research, Peking University
Denmark

Eldrup, Anders, CEO, DONG Energy
Federspiel, Ulrik, Vice President, Global Affairs, Haldor Topsøe A/S
Schütze, Peter, Member of the Executive Management, Nordea Bank AB
Germany

Ackermann, Josef, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank
Enders, Thomas, CEO, Airbus SAS
Löscher, Peter, President and CEO, Siemens AG
Nass, Matthias, Chief International Correspondent, Die Zeit
Steinbrück, Peer, Member of the Bundestag; Former Minister of Finance
Finland

Apunen, Matti, Director, Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA
Johansson, Ole, Chairman, Confederation of the Finnish Industries EK
Ollila, Jorma, Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
Pentikäinen, Mikael, Publisher and Senior Editor-in-Chief, Helsingin Sanomat
France

Baverez, Nicolas, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Bazire, Nicolas, Managing Director, Groupe Arnault /LVMH
Castries, Henri de, Chairman and CEO, AXA
Lévy, Maurice, Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe S.A.
Montbrial, Thierry de, President, French Institute for International Relations
Roy, Olivier, Professor of Social and Political Theory, European University Institute
Great Britain

Agius, Marcus, Chairman, Barclays PLC
Flint, Douglas J., Group Chairman, HSBC Holdings
Kerr, John, Member, House of Lords; Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
Lambert, Richard, Independent Non-Executive Director, Ernst & Young
Mandelson, Peter, Member, House of Lords; Chairman, Global Counsel
Micklethwait, John, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
Osborne, George, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Stewart, Rory, Member of Parliament
Taylor, J. Martin, Chairman, Syngenta International AG
Greece

David, George A., Chairman, Coca-Cola H.B.C. S.A.
Hardouvelis, Gikas A., Chief Economist and Head of Research, Eurobank EFG
Papaconstantinou, George, Minister of Finance
Tsoukalis, Loukas, President, ELIAMEP Grisons
International Organizations

Almunia, Joaquín, Vice President, European Commission
Daele, Frans van, Chief of Staff to the President of the European Council
Kroes, Neelie, Vice President, European Commission; Commissioner for Digital Agenda
Lamy, Pascal, Director General, World Trade Organization
Rompuy, Herman van, President, European Council
Sheeran, Josette, Executive Director, United Nations World Food Programme
Solana Madariaga, Javier, President, ESADEgeo Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics
Trichet, Jean-Claude, President, European Central Bank
Zoellick, Robert B., President, The World Bank Group
Ireland

Gallagher, Paul, Senior Counsel; Former Attorney General
McDowell, Michael, Senior Counsel, Law Library; Former Deputy Prime Minister
Sutherland, Peter D., Chairman, Goldman Sachs International
Italy

Bernabè, Franco, CEO, Telecom Italia SpA
Elkann, John, Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.
Monti, Mario, President, Univers Commerciale Luigi Bocconi
Scaroni, Paolo, CEO, Eni S.p.A.
Tremonti, Giulio, Minister of Economy and Finance
Canada

Carney, Mark J., Governor, Bank of Canada
Clark, Edmund, President and CEO, TD Bank Financial Group
McKenna, Frank, Deputy Chair, TD Bank Financial Group
Orbinksi, James, Professor of Medicine and Political Science, University of Toronto
Prichard, J. Robert S., Chair, Torys LLP
Reisman, Heather, Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc. Center, Brookings Institution
Netherlands

Bolland, Marc J., Chief Executive, Marks and Spencer Group plc
Chavannes, Marc E., Political Columnist, NRC Handelsblad; Professor of Journalism
Halberstadt, Victor, Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings
H.M. the Queen of the Netherlands
Rosenthal, Uri, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Winter, Jaap W., Partner, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek
Norway

Myklebust, Egil, Former Chairman of the Board of Directors SAS, sk Hydro ASA
H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon of Norway
Ottersen, Ole Petter, Rector, University of Oslo
Solberg, Erna, Leader of the Conservative Party
Austria

Bronner, Oscar, CEO and Publisher, Standard Medien AG
Faymann, Werner, Federal Chancellor
Rothensteiner, Walter, Chairman of the Board, Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG
Scholten, Rudolf, Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG
Portugal

Balsemão, Francisco Pinto, Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister
Ferreira Alves, Clara, CEO, Claref LDA; writer
Nogueira Leite, António, Member of the Board, José de Mello Investimentos, SGPS, SA
Sweden

Mordashov, Alexey A., CEO, Severstal
Schweden
Bildt, Carl, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Björling, Ewa, Minister for Trade
Wallenberg, Jacob, Chairman, Investor AB
Switzerland

Brabeck-Letmathe, Peter, Chairman, Nestlé S.A.
Groth, Hans, Senior Director, Healthcare Policy & Market Access, Oncology Business Unit, Pfizer Europe
Janom Steiner, Barbara, Head of the Department of Justice, Security and Health, Canton
Kudelski, André, Chairman and CEO, Kudelski Group SA
Leuthard, Doris, Federal Councillor
Schmid, Martin, President, Government of the Canton Grisons
Schweiger, Rolf, Ständerat
Soiron, Rolf, Chairman of the Board, Holcim Ltd., Lonza Ltd.
Vasella, Daniel L., Chairman, Novartis AG
Witmer, Jürg, Chairman, Givaudan SA and Clariant AG
Spain

Cebrián, Juan Luis, CEO, PRISA
Cospedal, María Dolores de, Secretary General, Partido Popular
León Gross, Bernardino, Secretary General of the Spanish Presidency
Nin Génova, Juan María, President and CEO, La Caixa
H.M. Queen Sofia of Spain
Turkey

Ciliv, Süreyya, CEO, Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S.
Gülek Domac, Tayyibe, Former Minister of State
Koç, Mustafa V., Chairman, Koç Holding A.S.
Pekin, Sefika, Founding Partner, Pekin & Bayar Law Firm
USA

Alexander, Keith B., Commander, USCYBERCOM; Director, National Security Agency
Altman, Roger C., Chairman, Evercore Partners Inc.
Bezos, Jeff, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
Collins, Timothy C., CEO, Ripplewood Holdings, LLC
Feldstein, Martin S., George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard University
Hoffman, Reid, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, LinkedIn
Hughes, Chris R., Co-founder, Facebook
Jacobs, Kenneth M., Chairman & CEO, Lazard
Johnson, James A., Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
Jordan, Jr., Vernon E., Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
Keane, John M., Senior Partner, SCP Partners; General, US Army, Retired
Kissinger, Henry A., Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
Kleinfeld, Klaus, Chairman and CEO, Alcoa
Kravis, Henry R., Co-Chairman and co-CEO, Kohlberg Kravis, Roberts & Co.
Kravis, Marie-Josée, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
Li, Cheng, Senior Fellow and Director of Research, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution
Mundie, Craig J., Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation
Orszag, Peter R., Vice Chairman, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
Perle, Richard N., Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Rockefeller, David, Former Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank
Rose, Charlie, Executive Editor and Anchor, Charlie Rose
Rubin, Robert E., Co-Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations; Former Secretary of the Treasury
Schmidt, Eric, Executive Chairman, Google Inc.
Steinberg, James B., Deputy Secretary of State
Thiel, Peter A., President, Clarium Capital Management, LLC
Varney, Christine A., Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
Vaupel, James W., Founding Director, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Warsh, Kevin, Former Governor, Federal Reserve Board
Wolfensohn, James D., Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC

Our BIlderberg 2011 coverage is sponsored by Midas Resources, the trusted name in precious metals. Visit them at http://www.midasresources.com/

[Philip]

Follow-up to the above post.

http://www.infowars.com/bilderberg-plan ... ing-apart/

quote:

As the official Bilderberg Meetings website reported last week, one of the key topics of discussion at this year’s conference in St. Moritz was, “The Euro and Challenges for the European Union,” a typically euphemistic title that serves to downplay the reality of the fact that these were no less than crisis talks aimed at salvaging the great European Project that Bilderberg itself formulated in the 1950′s. Indeed, Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon bragged last year that the single currency was a brainchild of Bilderberg.

[abhishek_sharma]

Whatever happened to the war in Libya?

[ramana]

abhishek, The End of History has resulted in an assault on secularism and by default the West. Where ever you see there is religious extremism in and outside the West.

[Pranav]

I almost wonder if Kissinger was a Soviet sleeper agent . The idea actually wouldn't be unprecedented; FDR's administration was extensively penetrated by the Comintern, from the lower and mid levels to Harry Hopkins, his right hand man.

Actually the original Bolshevik state was an agent of some western "capitalist" families.

[svinayak]

People may become a nation's resource.
Believe it or not, multi-racial, tropical Brazil's women are approaching a reproductive rate of Sweden's blonds (1.7). And Brazilian demographers are worrying about the start of an aging population pyramid after 2020. Believe it or not - Mexico's women who had 5 children just a few years ago - now have only 2. And in Rio Novosti, a Russian geostrategic expert consoled Russians about the declining Russian population in the Far East:" In the future we could attract workers from India and Bangladesh to settle in Russia's Far East."

[Klaus]

Middle East diplomatic quartet faces hurdles to Mideast Peace

Representatives of the Quartet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon; EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton; US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, declined to issue a statement about their evening dinner.

Israel also wants sovereignty over east Jerusalem, annexed after its 1967 occupation, as well as large swaths of settlements in the West Bank and a military presence in the Palestinian section of the Jordan Valley.

The Palestinians reject these conditions, and demand a freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

[RajeshA]

Published on Jul 15, 2011
By Walter Russel Mead
Global Weirding: Get Ready For 21st Century Revolutions In Climate, Politics And Religion: Business Insider

India Unbound

India is if anything headed on an even wilder voyage into the unknown. “A million mutinies” is how VS Naipaul described it years ago; try a billion plus and growing. India is the world’s largest democracy and home, as former Team Mead associate now prize-winning author Ben Skinner has argued, to its largest number of slaves (pdf). It is America’s most natural strategic ally in the 21st century, but most of the people in the two countries have only the vaguest ideas about their prospective new partners. This vast and diverse country with its thicket of cultures and religions is in some ways more like a continent than a nation state. The inevitable stresses of accelerating economic development and the accompanying social change are going to test India and its neighbors as they have never been tested before. With a decaying, strategically addled but nuclear armed neighbor in Pakistan, and a dangerously explosive rivalry with China that is likely to escalate over time, India’s external environment is as challenging as its internal issues. On the other hand, geography and demography seem to be conspiring to make India a major force in East Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Nobody knows where this is going, but the emergence of India on the world stage could be even more challenging and transformative than the rise of China.

[svinayak]

emergence of India on the world stage could be even more challenging and transformative than the rise of China.
Mostl false alarm.
The funding of arms and military to Pakistan by the west and global help to PRC to create a large un transparent state and military by the west is the biggest problem of the 21st century. N proliferation by PRC to pak without any body questioning is changing the balance in the world. All this looks more like containment of India than anything else.

[RajeshA]

^^^

I think he meant it neutrally or positively!

[Prem]

Indics will hope their arrival to be transformative thus naturally challenging for established dogmatic norms and speculations. Cheenas have no philosphical, spiritual,social , intellectual arrow in their quiver. Multi level challenging by abstract thinking , Multi tasking , multi dimentional Indics will carry all these and able to pull them at ease even out of their mushhrraf. We can offer the "epicopial"level granduer in living and thinking.

[abhishek_sharma]

Nationalism Rules: It’s the most powerful political force in the world and ignoring it will come at a price.

[Paul]

Is the intensifying camapaign againt the Murdich tabloids payback by the Bildberg group for covering the Bildberg events by Murdoch's media empire???

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ExMurdoch ... et=&ccode=

[Airavat]

The secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation told the BBC this morning that Europe will increasingly have to rely on emerging powers like India and China to step up to the mark on international crisis management. Rasmussen said European leadership such as that seen in Libya would be impossible if defence cuts continue. "I think it is a positive story that the Libya operation has been conducted under the leadership of European allies together with Canada and partners in the region," he said. "For the first time in the history of NATO we have seen an operation not led by the Americans."

"In the longer term perspective, if the current developments continue, the influence of Europe on the international stage will gradually decline because of a lack of critical transport capabilities and critical intelligence gathering capabilities," Rasmussen said. He added: "Because of this lack of capability Europe will not be able to participate in international crisis management and the gap will be filled by emerging powers like India and China – and that is a fact."

Public Service Europe

[Philip]

France's secret war and acts of genocide...and this is not the war in Libya where it has dropped arms secretly to arm the Libyan rebels who have now been found out to have "disposed" of Libyan soldiers in Balkans' manner.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 96062.html

Inside France's secret war

For 40 years, the French government has been fighting a secret war in Africa, hidden not only from its people, but from the world. It has led the French to slaughter democrats, install dictator after dictator – and to fund and fuel the most vicious genocide since the Nazis. Today, this war is so violent that thousands are fleeing across the border from the Central African Republic into Darfur – seeking sanctuary in the world's most notorious killing fields

By Johann Hari in Birao, Central African Republic

"I watched my parents forced to work in the fields when I was a child," he says in Sango, the local language. "When they got tired, they were whipped and beaten and made to go faster. It was constantly like this." The French flag was first hoisted in the heart of Africa on 3 October 1880, seizing the right bank of the Congo for the cause of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – for the white man. The territory was swiftly divided up between French corporations, who were given the right effectively to enslave the people, like Zolo's parents, and force them to harvest its rubber. This rubber was processed into car tyres for sale in Paris and London and New York. A French missionary called Father Daigre described what he saw: " It is common to meet long files of prisoners, naked and in a pitiful state, being dragged along by a rope round their necks. They are famished, sick, and fall down like flies. The really ill and the little children are left in the villages to die of starvation. The people least affected often killed the dying, for food."

Zolo nods when I mention this. "When the whites were here, we suffered even more," he says. "They forced us to work. We were slaves."

One horrified French administrator wrote in the 1920s that the locals reacted to being enslaved by the corporations by becoming "a troglodyte, subsisting wretchedly on roots until he starves to death, rather than accept these terrible burdens". Areas that had "only a few months ago been rich, populous and firmly established in large villages" became, he wrote, "wasteland, sown with dilapidated villages and deserted plantations".

But in the 1950s, men like Zolo rose and refused to be enslaved. "We followed Boganda," he says. Barthélemy Boganda was born in a Central African village near here in 1910, and, as a child, he saw his mother beaten to death by the guards in charge of gathering rubber for a French corporation. He rose steadily through the Catholic priesthood, married a French woman, and, quite suddenly, became the leader of the CAR's pro-democracy movement. He would begin his speeches to the French by introducing himself as the son of a polygamous cannibal, and then lecture them on the values of the French Revolution with a fluency that left them stunned and shamed. He crafted a vision of a democratic Africa beyond tribe, beyond race and beyond colonialism. He was passionate about the need for a plurality of political parties, a free press, and human rights. He rhapsodised about his vision of a United States of Africa, linking together the countries of Central Africa into a USA Mk II.

"And they killed him," Zolo says, shaking his head and kicking at the earth beneath his feet. On 29 March 1959, not long after the French era of direct rule had ended, President Boganda's plane was blasted out of the air. The French press reported that there had been "suspicious materials " found in the remains of the fuselage – but on the orders of the French government, the local investigation was abandoned. The French installed the dictator David Dacko in his place. He swiftly shut down Boganda's democratic reforms, brought back many French corporations, and reintroduced their old system of forced labour, rebranding it "village work". French rule over the CAR – the whippings Zolo remembers – did not end with "independence". It simply mutated, into a new and slippery form, and it is at the root of the current war.

But the clues to this lie far to the west, in the capital city. " Nothing happens in this country without somebody pulling a lever in Paris," a taxi driver tells me as I leave to travel to Bangui at the bottom of the country, driving through clouds of red-dust and past swarms of street-children. I have an appointment with an underground figure in the opposition to keep.....

[brihaspati]

Philip ji,
are'nt all the "western" European winners of the European war in WWII, more or less involved in the same over various parts of the world? Many in Africa? Belgium? Netherlands? UK? Portugal?

[svinayak]

The secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation told the BBC this morning that Europe will increasingly have to rely on emerging powers like India and China to step up to the mark on international crisis management.

"Because of this lack of capability Europe will not be able to participate in international crisis management and the gap will be filled by emerging powers like India and China – and that is a fact."

They want free service without giving India any representation to India in UNSC or other bodies.

[abhishek_sharma]

Professor John Mearsheimer talked about his book, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in International Politics (Video)

[Inder Sharma]

Not to forget the French involvement in the Rwandan Genocide.

[Philip]

Yes Bri.It appears that the victims of war want to punish innocent hapless peoples of the "turd world", sadistically in an act of revenge as they cannot punish their own tribes-the Europeans linked by a common history and royal families.

Now here is the latest news about the Libyan fiasco where the western powers waging war for the rebels hoping to establisha puppet regime and grab the oil face infighting within rebel ranks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -side.html

Libyan rebel leader shot dead 'by own side’
The military commander of the Libyan rebels fighting to topple Col Muammar Gaddafi was killed on Thursday night, reportedly by his own side, just hours after his arrest.

[JE Menon]

The silliness by the EU over Libya is incomprehensible.

Seriously, can't make head or tail of it. Nor can the Libyans, it seems.

It appears like France/UK jumped into it just because the US is playing big brother in other areas!!! What the hell do they expect the outcome to be? So far, the only logical likelihood is a partition of sorts, de facto or de jure. But how will that benefit these guys more than what it used to be under Qadhafi? Crazy, and if it lasts much longer, questions will start being asked internally... I mean it's a miracle that it is not a bigger issue already! None of these guys can really afford this Libyan adventure.

[SwamyG]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/us/po ... lobal-home

It raised questions about whether the United States now faces brinkmanship over a variety of issues between an emboldened conservative movement and a president whose authority is under challenge. And for all the talk on the right about “American exceptionalism,” especially among members of the Tea Party, it put doubts in the minds of many about whether America’s military and economic dominance is something the country is still willing to pay for — and will always survive.

“The lucky thing for us is that we are in a race with Europe and Japan for ‘most financially irresponsible superpower,’ ” Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College and author of many works on the waxing and waning of American power, said on Sunday. “And right now, the Europeans and Japanese have substantial advantages in that race.”

As Mr. Garten puts it, “the lesson of the debt limit crisis is that if there is another financial calamity, we’re operating without a safety net. Get used to it.”

[abhishek_sharma]

Best and Worst U.S. Presidents

There are some comments on Truman's presidency.

[abhishek_sharma]

U.S. Foreign Policy as seen from Asia

[SwamyG]

Anybody with more gyaan on the riots in London? I know there are at least couple of England based BRFites. Is this related to economic or social troubles?

[ramana]

^^^^ Please read the Indo-UK thread. It has many posts.

[abhishek_sharma]

The Arctic: A New Partnership Paradigm or the Next "Cold War"?

[Philip]

How Bahrain hopes to recruit Pakis and thuss obtain a N-umbrella by default ahainst Iran.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htatri ... 10809.aspx

Bahrain Hires Pakistani Nukes
August 9, 2011: In the last five months, Bahrain has recruited over 3,000 Pakistanis to serve in the Bahraini security forces. That’s because Bahrain is a small (population 1.2 million) Persian Gulf monarchy with a Sunni minority ruling a Shia majority. For the last six months, the country has been wracked by interminable demonstrations by angry Shia, and an increasingly violent crackdown. This is not the first time the Shia Arabs have rebelled against their Sunni rulers, and won't be the last.