Here are some of my predictions about the near term future:1) Due to economic decline in the US more and more poor and working class kids will join the foreign legion to fight resource wars for the corporate barons. Young kids are now being prepared for a life of "be all you can be" endless warriors.
2) The US will not be leaving Iraq even at the end of 2010 as now promised by Obama. New instability there will "necessitate" new agreements with the puppet government in Iraq to allow the US to remain on permanent bases for years to come.
3) The war in Afghanistan, Obama's "right war", will continue to widen into Pakistan and the government there will collapse and the US will "have to occupy" Pakistan in order to "bring stability" to that nuclear armed nation. Check out the map and see how control of Afghanistan and Pakistan are necessary for the oil corporations to build pipelines from the Caspian Sea south to the Arabian Sea. (This will also please India who the US wishes to recruit for the long-term goal of containing their neighbor China.)
4) Israel will continue to smash the Palestinian people and push them bit by bit out of Gaza. The US will look the other way and keep talking about the need for peace in the Middle East. Israel will attack Iran at some point with the US offering military support via satellite technology and military funding assistance.
5) The Obama administration will continue to talk about getting rid of nuclear weapons and their desire to have good relations with Russia while at the same time pressing hard for NATO to expand eastward right up to Russia's borders. This will make Russia less inclined to get rid of their nuclear force which the US will use as evidence to show that the "raging Russian bear" is on the loose again and can't be trusted....off to a new Cold War and it is "all their fault"!
6) The US will continue to use fear of North Korean rocket capability to cover its massive offensive military expansion in the Asian-Pacific that is being used to surround China. China, as a result, will continue to steadily expand its military and the Obama administration will use that expansion as evidence that we must be tough with an "aggressive and expansionist" Communist China.
7) The US will use AfriCom to initiate a massive military expansion onto the African continent in a play for the vast natural resources that exist there. Using rhetoric about saving Africans from "genocide" the first US black president will lead the US into hot wars in Africa.
8) The peace movement in the US will remain divided between those who "support the president" and those who don't feel that an effective peace movement can be an agent of any political party. The Democrats will use this divide-and-conquer strategy to keep the peace movement at bay for much of Obama's first-term in office and will get much of the progressive community clamoring for more Democratic seats in Congress in the 2010 elections "so we can really take care of business now." The strategy of some so-called peace groups to declare the Iraq occupation over, take no position on Afghanistan, and to virtually ignore the issue of military spending will make any real foreign policy changes extremely difficult to bring about. Despite this divide within the peace movement those who have an honest and consistent analysis of US empire will continue to work and to chip away at the bedrock of American corporate imperialism.
9) There will be no real health care in the US as the insurance industry ensures they maintain control of the nation's "health insurance" system.
10) OK, there will be some green jobs created by Obama. He does promise to spend $15 billion a year creating green jobs and I think he will do it....but compare that with our present spending of over $12 billion per month on Iraq and Afghanistan and ask yourself this question: where is the real priority? Climate change will continue to worsen as we fiddle in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa with resource wars.
11) I don't try to depress people but I refuse to drink the Kool-aid and ignore obvious reality. In my view of the world nothing changes as long as we refuse to see the writing on the wall. Wake up and then we can react - that is my mantra for real change - and dare I say - real hope.
Keep track of my predictions and you can grade me a year from now.
Peace out.
The only one I might disagree with is AfriCom and a new Africa resource war, but with Congo still in a shambles, and the Somalia/Ethiopia border overrun with CIA and Special Forces, you may be right! Thanks for providing the most realistic set of predictions we're likely to see.
ReplyDeleteyou pretty much hit it on the head, but I don't think your picture is nearly as 'dire' as what I see in the near term. I see the liklihood of a civil war in the united states, sometime around 2010-2011 if it takes that long, with the nation splitting into provinces due to the obvious inefficiency of centralized governmental control of everything. in addition to this, I see a significant increase in the illegal surveillance and spying on citizens, some form of gun control or confiscation measure enacted in washington, and I predict 35-45 percent unemployment to be a matter of fact reality by the year 2012, with a global depression well set in, replete with global strife, Israeli incursions into Syria, and involvement of this country in a joint attack of some kind on Iran.
ReplyDeletelots of tyranny, dwindling foodstuffs, and hyper-inflation to the point where ten dollar loaves of bread and twenty dollar gallon jugs of milk will be the norm.
look for a probably european war crimes trial, and convictions of several officials from this government for torture, mass murder, and arms peddling / profiteering.
needless to say, we are in for a very very very nasty ride, amigo.