2015: A Pivotal Year for Economic and Financial Crises and Wars?

• 2015: A Pivotal Year for Economic and Financial Crises and Wars? 
  by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay, http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/
  (Author of the books “The Code for Global Ethics”, and “The New American Empire”)
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  “The dangerous patriot: The one who drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions. He is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism, …which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor with military victory.” – James A. Donovan (1916-1970), American lawyer and Commander in the United States Navy Reserve
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  “Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control.” – Lord Acton (1834-1902) (John E. Dalberg), English Catholic historian, politician, and writer
  ….
  These days, militaristic Neoconservatives, or Neocons, have near complete control of the American government under the façade of whoever is president at the time. They direct U.S. policies at the State Department, at the Pentagon, at the U.S. Treasury and at the Fed central bank. They are thus in position to influence and frame American foreign policy, military policy, economic and financial policies and monetary policy.
  ….
  The Neocons’ greatest success, however, came with the George W. Bush and Dick Cheney administration (2001-2009) when they persuaded the latter to launch the (illegal) 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a war still with us and expanding today, twelve years later. They also drafted the so-called “Bush Doctrine” of (illegal) preemptive wars and of forced political regime changes in other countries.
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  This was an ideology that the Neocons had long advanced, both when Paul Wolfowitz was Deputy Secretary of Defense for policy in the George H. Bush administration (1989-1993), even though the latter publicly repudiated it, and in various essays published by a neocon think-tank dubbed “The Project for the New American Century (PNAC)” and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan.
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  After the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991, the warmongering Neocons argued that there should not be any “Peace dividend” for American taxpayers but rather that the United States should seize the opportunity to become the sole world military superpower and should therefore increase and not decrease its military spending. The intention was to establish a military New American Empire for the 21st Century, along the lines of the British Empire in the 19th Century.
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  Indeed, after the events of 9/11 and the arrival of George W. Bush in the White House in 2001, Paul Wolfowitz, as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld, was in a better position to push for increased U.S. military spending and for the adoption of a new aggressive U.S. foreign policy. What was most troubling is the fact that the PNAC produced a paper in 2000, titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, (of which Paul Wolfowitz was a signatory), which enigmatically noted that only a “new Pearl Harbor” would make Americans accept the military and defense policy transformations that the neocon group was proposing. Then, in September 2001, the “new Pearl Harbor” coincidentally and conveniently morphed into the 9/11 attacks.
  The war against Afghanistan, where the 9/11 terrorists had trained (and who came from Saudi Arabia and a few other countries), and the war against Iraq, a country not even remotely connected with the events of 9/11, followed.
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  At the beginning of 2015, Neocons occupy key positions within the Barack Obama administration and it should be no surprise that U.S. foreign policy is hardly any different than it was under the George W. Bush administration. They are constantly pushing for provocations, confrontations, conflicts and wars. In fact, the year 2015 could be the year when many of the fires they have lit could turn into conflagrations.
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  Let us look at a few of them.
  1. The danger of another major financial and economic crisis
   ….
  2. The real danger of a nuclear war with the rekindling of the old Cold War with Russia
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  read more!

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