Another Reason War Must Be Avoided: Israeli Attack Will Prompt Pakistani Response

Source: YNetNews

European diplomat based in Islamabad says Israeli strike would force Pakistan to support Iranian retaliation, while EU official says 'political and economic consequences of attack would be catastrophic for Europe'

Is the world counting down to "D-Day"? After US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta estimated that Israel would attack Iran by June, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned government officials against "Iran chatter," A European diplomat based in Pakistan said that if Israel attacks, Islamabad will have no choice but to support any Iranian retaliation.

The diplomat's statement raised the specter of putting a nuclear-armed Pakistan at odds with Israel, which is widely believed to have its own significant nuclear arsenal.
 
Related stories:

• Op-ed: Raising the stakes on Iran
• 'Panetta believes Israel will strike Iran soon'
• Iran vows to hit any country that stages attack  

To some, the greatest risk of an attack was to the moribund world economy. Nick Witney, former head of the EU's European Defense Agency, said "the political and economic consequences of an Israeli attack would be catastrophic for Europe" since the likely spike in the price of oil alone "could push the entire EU, including Germany, into recession."

Drones for Peace, Scary Charts, Morality Pills - New World Next Week

Source: Corbett Report and Media Monarchy

Welcome back to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com – the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week:

Europe Anti-Austerity Rallies Turn Ugly

Source: PressTV

Police forces have clashed with anti-austerity protesters in Spain, Greece, and Romania, arresting several activists and injuring many others.

During the latest such protests in Spain, police scuffled with demonstrators in the capital Madrid on Sunday, detaining three people and wounding several others.

Scuffles broke out when 'indignant' Spaniards gathered at a Madrid subway station to protest against rises in the cost of public transportation. Dozens of protesters entered the station and refused to pay, shouting slogans such as “I don't pay for your crisis.”

In the Greek capital Athens, riot police attacked around 2,000 demonstrators protesting against job cuts outside parliament, before detaining three and injuring one.

The demonstrators say Athens has failed to decrease its debt, despite massive lay-offs. Last year, the Greek government cut 10,000 jobs and announced plans for further lay-offs in 2012.

Clashes between riot police and demonstrators have also erupted in the Romanian capital Bucharest for a third day in a row.

At least seven people, including a number of police officers, were injured in the confrontations.

The demonstrators chanted slogans against President Traian Basescu, whom they blame for the country's falling living standards, and called on him to step down.

The demonstrations originally started on Thursday in a show of support for Deputy Health Minister Raed Arafat, who resigned earlier in the week, and as a protest against a pension freeze and a 25 percent cut in public sector wages approved by Romania's center-right government in July 2010.

Arafat, a doctor born in Palestine, had harshly criticized a draft healthcare reform bill and entered a dispute with the president, who is a main supporter of the potential law.

Engineering The Eurozone Collapse - F. William Engdahl

Source:Global Research and Corbett Report
James Corbett

The leaders of the EU prepare for a summit this week as the Eurozone continues to spin out of control. But how did the collapse begin, and who will profit from it? Find out more in this week’s GRTV Feature Interview with F. William Engdahl.

EU Fulfills 'Hitler's Dream' of Dictatorship

Source: RT

Time is running out for Eurozone leaders to save their unified currency as they prepare for eleventh-hour talks in Brussels. But by preserving Euro, Europe dooms itself to Hitler’s dream of Euro dictatorship, believes journalist Tony Gosling. 

­“The individual countries, if they want to retain their sovereignty, then they are going to have to go back to their original currencies,” Gosling told RT.

EU To Sieze Control Over National Economies With the Stroke of a Pen

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

Forget the millions of Europeans affected, the EU won’t even bother to put its attempt to seize control over member state economies to a vote amongst its own parliamentary cronies, preferring instead to change the Lisbon Treaty under powers Eurocrats granted themselves.

Having repeatedly staged national referendums until they got the vote they wanted, the Lisbon Treaty was passed with a provision, the obscure ‘passerelle’ clause, Art. 126 (14) via protocol 12, that bestowed upon Brussels the power to change its terms without any kind of vote whatsoever – popular or parliamentary.

“This decision does not require ratification at national level. This procedure could therefore lead to rapid and significant changes,” according to a confidential text issued by EU President Herman Van Rompuy.

This means that any effort to change the treaty in order to create a “fiscal union,” or in other words, impose centralized control over every member state’s economy from Brussels, would simply be accomplished with the stroke of a pen and would not involve votes from any national parliament or any MEP.

This would then empower the European Commission, “to impose austerity measures on eurozone countries that are being bailed out, usurping the functions of government in countries such as Greece, Ireland, or Portugal,” reports the Guardian.

It’s all part of the technocrats’ agenda to seize “intrusive control of national budgetary policies.”

“Why bother with the one true barbarous relic – democracy – when good ole’ fascism will suffice,” reports Zero Hedge. “And that is how a bunch of corrupt kleptocratic incompetent eurocrats usurp all power in a regime now entirely controlled by Goldman Sachs.”

Germany and France Push for Fiscal Union

Source: AFP

German Chancellor Angela Merkel kicked off a crunch week of talks on saving the euro by laying out a vision Friday for a “fiscal union” in Europe, ahead of a pivotal summit of EU leaders.

A day after French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that Europe needed to be “refounded” in response to a crisis that has threatened the very existence of the EU, Merkel insisted that progress had been made.

Speaking in a hotly awaited speech in the German parliament, Merkel said Europe was “on the verge” of creating what she called a “stability union” for the 17-nation eurozone, with greater budgetary discipline and control.

“Anyone who had said a few months ago that we, at the end of 2011, would be taking very serious and concrete steps toward a European stability union, a European fiscal union, toward introducing (budgetary) intervention in Europe would have been considered crazy,” she said.

She said she would be holding talks with “almost everyone” in the run-up to a summit in Brussels next Friday that many commentators have dubbed the last chance to save the single currency, introduced with such euphoria a decade ago.

And she confirmed she would be heading to Paris for talks with Sarkozy on Monday to thrash out a joint Franco-German position on changing the EU founding texts ahead of the summit.

Highlighting the challenges that face Europe’s leaders, around 17,000 people demonstrated in Athens on Thursday in a bid to force the new government to abandon austerity measures.

The sixth general strike this year in Greece shut down public services and crippled train and ferry services.

Nigel Farage: EU Dictatorship Dominated By Germany Replaces Elected Leaders

Source: MSM

Bankers have seized Europe: Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over

Source: Global Research
Paul Craig Roberts

On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35% of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private banks that hold the troubled sovereign debt from Greece, Italy, and Spain must accept part of the cost of their bailout by writing off some of the debt. The private banks want to avoid any losses either by forcing the Greek, Italian, and Spanish governments to make good on the bonds by imposing extreme austerity on their citizens, or by having the European Central Bank print euros with which to buy the sovereign debt from the private banks. Printing money to make good on debt is contrary to the ECB’s charter and especially frightens Germans, because of the Weimar experience with hyperinflation. 

 

Obviously, the German government got the message from the orchestrated failed bond auction. As I wrote at the time, there is no reason for Germany, with its relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the troubled countries, not to be able to sell its bonds.

If Germany’s creditworthiness is in doubt, how can Germany be expected to bail out other countries?  Evidence that Germany’s failed bond auction was orchestrated is provided by troubled Italy’s successful bond auction two days later.

Strange, isn’t it. Italy, the largest EU country that requires a bailout of its debt, can still sell its bonds, but Germany, which requires no bailout and which is expected to bear a disproportionate cost of Italy’s, Greece’s and Spain’s bailout, could not sell its bonds.

In my opinion, the failed German bond auction was orchestrated by the US Treasury, by the European Central Bank and EU authorities, and by the private banks that own the troubled sovereign debt. 

My opinion is based on the following facts. Goldman Sachs and US banks have guaranteed perhaps one trillion dollars or more of European sovereign debt by selling swaps or insurance against which they have not reserved. The fees the US banks received for guaranteeing the values of European sovereign debt instruments simply went into profits and executive bonuses. This, of course, is what ruined the American insurance giant, AIG, leading to the TARP bailout at US taxpayer expense and Goldman Sachs’ enormous profits.

Democracy in Southern Europe: Out for the Count

Lukas Papademos

Source: End The Lie
Richard Cottrell

How fast things are moving.

In Italy, the new techno-premier installed by the EU, the Trilateralists and the Bilderberg Group, has just effectively suspended parliamentary democracy.

There are no civilian ministers in Prime Minister Mario Monti’s government. All ministerial posts are in the hands of technocrats, soldiers and diplomats.

MP’s have been told they can sit in the wings for the next two years while the new prime minister goes around restoring order.

One glance at the list of ministers was sufficient to convince me that this blatant coup d’état has been in the works for at least the best part of a year.

In Greece, Monti’s lookalike Lukas Papademos has ushered extreme right wing sympathizers with the former Greek military junta (1967-74) back into power.

Just over a week ago I wrote that a Greek military coup had been narrowly averted by the former civilian government headed by Georgios Papandreou summarily sacking the entire general staff.

I suggested that a military putsch had been averted for the time being.

Then, presto, the new head of the defense ministry is Dimitris Avramopoulo, from the right wing New Democracy party which is known for its closeness to the Greek Pentagon and the CIA.

So the Greek military is now effectively underpinning the new government. Something remarkably similar has happened in Italy.

A navy admiral, Giampaolo Di Paola, is now defense minister, thus severing civilian command of the armed forces for the first time since the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini.
We can regard him as NATO’s minister in Rome.

Are the new techno-dictators of Greece and Italy expecting widespread public disorders, real or staged?

It certainly looks that way. Indeed, as I write there are protests breaking out all over Italy. Crowds are gathering in Rome, Milano, Palermo Bari and many other cities protesting the “rape of democracy.”

Italians, of all peoples, know a coup d’état when they see one.

Out Of The Ashes Of The Collapse Of The Eurozone Will A "United States Of Europe" Arise?

Source: The American Dream

All over Europe, headlines are declaring that the eurozone is on the verge of collapse.  Many people falsely assume that this will mean the end of the euro and a return to national currencies.  Unfortunately, that is not going to be the case at all.  Instead, this is going to be yet another example of how the elite attempt to bring order out of chaos.  The European elite have no intention on giving up on a united Europe.  Rather, they hope to be able to bring to life a new "United States of Europe" out of the ashes of the existing eurozone.  Over the coming months we will see widespread panic and fear all across Europe.  The euro will likely sink like a rock and there will probably be huge financial problems in Europe and all around the globe.  But for the European elite, a great crisis like this represents a golden opportunity to tear down the existing structures and build new ones.  The solution that the European elite will be pushing will not be to go back to the way that Europe used to be.  Instead, they will be pushing the idea of a much more tightly integrated Europe really hard.

Of course it will not be called "the United States of Europe", but that is definitely what they have in mind.

But they know that the people of Europe will never go for this solution unless they feel enough fear and pain first.

Right now, the stage is being set for the coming financial crisis in Europe.  All over the EU, media outlets are priming Europeans to expect the worst.  For example, the following comes from an article in the Telegraph....

The collapse of the eurozone would cause a crash that would instantly wipe out half of the value of Europe’s economy, plunging the continent into a depression as deep as the 1930s slump, the president of the European Commission has warned.

Some newspapers are even warning that a financial "armageddon" is coming.  Just check out the following excerpt from an article in the Express....

PREPARATIONS were under way last night for the break-up of the euro as Europe’s debt crisis spiralled out of control.

As Treasury officials worked through the night to soften the impact on Britain, David Cameron warned that the single European currency was facing its “moment of truth”.

Business Secretary Vince Cable went further and spoke about “Armageddon” while Brussels officials warned that the chaos threatened to plunge us all into a new recession.

Iran Threatens to Retaliate If Attacked

Source: Arutz Sheva

Gavriel Queenann 

Iran has threatened to start a 'street war' in Tel Aviv - and in the US and Europe - should its nuclear program be attacked.

"Israel is not big enough to launch a military strike on Iran, but if it takes such a foolish decision, the Iranian military will fight with the Zionist soldiers in Tel Aviv streets... and will force them out of the Palestinian soil," Seyed Hossein Naqavi said.

Naqavi also warned, should Tehran's nuclear program be attacked, the battlefield won't be in Iran, but "the entirety of Europe and the US."

"Iranian forces will fight with the enemies with maximum might and power all throughout the European and US soil, if Iran comes under attack," he reiterated.

Naqavi also responded to reports Britain might strike Iran's nuclear sites, saying "a look at the history reveals that the British regime has been using threat, intimidation, terror and colonialism all throughout the last 500 years."

"Now a country with such a long record of crimes and colonialist actions should know very well that the Islamic Republic enjoys a high military capability today," he added.

Naqavi's remarks have become a part of Tehran's mantra of threatening counter-strikes as international criticism of its nuclear aspirations continues to mount.

Occupy Wall Street Should Demand a Student Loan Amnesty Paid for by a 1% Wall Street Sales Tax – A Strategy Soros is Sure to Hate

From: Tarpley.net
Webster G. Tarpley on Infowars Nightly News

Europe Must Fight Back Against US-UK Speculative Attacks

From: Tarpley.net

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.


The speculative attack by Wall Street and City of London banks and hedge funds against European countries, European banks, and the euro is now reaching a crescendo. The current European crisis does not derive primarily from economic fundamentals, but rather represents a cynically planned assault carried out by Anglo-American financiers, whose philosophy is the traditional Beggar My Neighbor. The goal is to shift the epicenter of the world economic and financial depression from London and New York onto the continent of Europe, and this operation has already partially succeeded. London and New York are exporting their own derivatives depression into the EU, using credit default swaps, corrupt credit ratings agencies, and their entire panoply of financial dirty tricks. We are not dealing here with the normal functioning of markets; we are dealing with all-out economic warfare.

The Wall Street zombie bankers are aiming at a chaotic breakup of the euro with the intention of buying up the old continent at bargain-basement prices. The jackals of the City of London are seeking to smash the euro as a means of breathing new life into the moribund British pound, thereby masking the fact that Britain is more bankrupt than the vast majority of EU member states. The Anglo Americans are also acting to destroy the euro as a possible competitor for the dollar in the role of world reserve currency for the pricing of oil, the activities of international lending institutions, and other functions. The dollar is now so weak and unstable that it can only survive through the downfall of all the alternative currencies.