Decline and Fall ? Euro-Poodles, Latin Tigers, No jobs, and Syria 7/15

We?re shocked, shocked to find that the Americans are spying on us! the European allies say.

Fetch Snowden!!! ? Euro-Poodles France (left)? and Spain were ?Best in Show? with President Obama barking orders. (Italy and Portugal were good poodles too.)

Euro-Poodles

Two weeks ago, whistle blower Edward Snowden revealed that the United States National Security Agency (NSA)? spied on European allies as part of the worldwide program that listens in to every possible form of electronic communication.

SpiegelOnline broke the story.? The? reaction was shock and dismay.? The Guardian? reported that? a key trade pact was in danger due to this affront to the presumed allies.? Germany was a special target.? From the article:

?Germany?s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, called for an explanation from the US authorities: ?If the media reports are true, it is reminiscent of the actions of enemies during the cold war. It is beyond imagination that our friends in the US view Europeans as the enemy.??? Guardian, June 30

I hate to break it to you, Madame Justice Minister, but it?s worse than the U.S. viewing its allies as enemies.? Rather, the U.S. views the nations of Europe as vassal states.? When it appeared that Snowden might be on President Evo Morales? jet going from Moscow to Bolivia, someone in Washington just picked up a phone and dialed in a restricted airspace command to Portugal, Spain, Italy, and France.

The Obama administration said frog and these nations jumped.? This request happened after these countries found out that? the U.S. spied on them.? How upset could they have been?

Latin Tigers

Unlike the Euro-poodles, the Latin American nations showed some backbone.? On July 10, the Organization of American States issued a condemnation of the forced landing of the Morales plane.? ?Individual leaders spoke out at Mercosur, the Southern Common Market.? Collectively, they issued a condemnation of the four European nations for forcing the Morales plane down in Austria by denying over flight rights.? Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Uruguay will be recalling envoys to the four contrives in protest.? That?s the difference between independent nations and vassal states, poodles and tigers.

Jobs Anyone?? Do the (s)elected officials even care?

I find the real unemployment figures from Shadow Government Statistics the best measure of joblessness in this country.? But, let?s take a look at it from another angle.? The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the author of the ?official? unemployment numbers ? 7.6%.? BLS also produces a labor force number, all persons employed and unemployed able to work, and an employment number within the labor force.

In 2007, total employed was at 90% of the labor force, or 138 million workers with 15 million unemployed.? By 2010, total employed dropped to 84%, 130 million, with 24 million unemployed.?? By 2013, June, we?re up to 87% employed and an unemployed total of 20 million, 13%.

Memo to Washington:? Get your act together right now.? The economy is suffering.

Stop exporting good jobs elsewhere and start creating the conditions for job growth here.

Give Main Street some of that special love you gave to Wall Street all these years.

Come up with the $2.2 trillion to fix the infrastructure that must be repaired right now.

Stop being morons!? (Well, stop acting like morons.)

Syria Storyline Changing

The United States, United Kingdom, France, Turkey and Qatar facilitated a civil war in Syria.? Syria never attacked or posed an imminent threat to any of these nations.? It is a war crime.? But nobody cares about that anymore.? ??The crime became particularly grievous when foreign fighters and lethal weapons were sent into Syria to help the rebel cause, the Free Syrian Army (FSA).? Some of those fighters were Al Qaeda loyalists who are particularly viscous toward Syria?s minority Christian community.

How could these western nations support a cause aligned with Al Qaeda?? Aren?t they the bad guys?

Now, the story is changing. ?It seems that Al Qaeda and the FSA are now fighting it out.? Al Qaeda assassinated a member of the FSA military leadership.? Citizens of Syria?s largest city, Aleppo, are protesting Al Qaeda blockades of portions of that city occupied by the Syrian government (where people are starving due to the blockade).

Recently, the FSA surrendered the critical city of Tal Kalakh to the Syrian Army.? The city of 50,000 plus is just north of Lebanon border with Syria.? The FSA leader and fighters were discouraged with the direction of the rebellion.? To preserve the city, they gave up the cause and their weapons to the government.? There are other deals similar to this one in the works, including one for a part of Homs with a population of 700,000.

This could be the beginning of a convoluted end to this conflict.?? FSA leaders surrender to the government as a force preferable to the Al Qaeda and other Islamist forces that commit more atrocities each day.? When enough populated areas switch sides, the Islamists, mostly foreign fighters will have to leave.? The process could get ugly.? The leaders of the Islamists groups have promised to kill the entire FSA.

If a few large FSA controlled regions surrender to the Syrian government, President Obama could claim that his preference for a negotiated settlement had been reached.? Perhaps, he would then have time to do something about jobs in his own country instead of meddling in the affairs of other nations overseas.

END

Decline and Fall ? Euro-Poodles, Latin Tigers, No jobs, and Syria 7/15 by Michael Collins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://agonist.org/decline-and-fall-euro-poodles-latin-tigers-no-jobs-and-syria-715/.

Source: http://agonist.org/decline-and-fall-euro-poodles-latin-tigers-no-jobs-and-syria-715/

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