The news today is not all one might desire. At home, The National Intelligence Council, a body of analysts from every spectrum of the American intelligence community, has issued a report that is quite bleak.
It says, in part, that “the next two decades will see a world living with the daily threat of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe and the decline of America as the dominant global power… The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons.”
The Report further predicts a “transfer of wealth from West to East,” a rise in the “influence of nonstate actors” and the “decline” of “the United States’ relative strength.”
Which brings us to the next problem of the day: I did not read about this Report on the front pages of my New York newspapers. I found it in the online version of the Times of London.
The “spooks,” (my affectionate term for the intelligence analysts), did not address what may happen–what has already happened–when our citizens are continuously misled by the media. By “mislead” I also mean taught to think alike, and in polarizing ways. The media, (and I’m a member of it), does not always give all the news, and it often either aggrandizes or diminishes an event by placing it on the front pages or by “hiding” it on the back pages. The crucial role that propaganda will play in the brainwashing of our nation was not addressed.
But, to be fair, the full-length Report was not yet available online so I am relying entirely on the newspaper article which might not have had the word count to include more of what the Report says. Thus, I might have been “misled,” or rather, under-informed.
There is one more piece of troubling news today. As many of us have predicted, a British lawyer, Sheikh Faiz ul-Aqtab Siddiqi (of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal), gave a lecture in which he argued that polygamy should be recognized in England. Of course, such unions are already supported “on the dole.” Siddiqi argued for legal recognition.
He stated:
“In a jurisdiction where rights are afforded to a mistress, or many mistresses, and where there are same-sex marriages … polygamous marriages should not be such an alien concept.”
Soon, any objection to legally recognizing polygamy will be termed “racist” and “Islamophobic.” Or, seen as cold-hearted towards women who are “destitute.” However, Rosa Freedman, the journalist, pointed out that adulterous and same-sex unions are not forced upon anyone whereas polygamous unions often are.
It is important to understand that Siddiqi is not a raving lunatic spewing hate towards the infidel but is, rather, a practicing barrister and a honey-tongued debater. Siddiqi has long been involved in trying to “reform” English law in order to “accommodate Muslim cultural practices.” He is a “well-respected” member of many Muslim organizations.
I wonder what the British “spooks” might have to say about the future of Britain in terms of whether it will soon be living under Shariah law–and in the name of the most advanced Western concepts of tolerance and multi-culturalism?
Well, let’s all put our heads in the sand and have a good weekend anyway.
But, there is some good news too: The American Report notes that while “terrorism would survive until 2025″ that “al-Qaeda’s terrorist wave” is weakening and might decay “sooner than people think.” They also envision that “an alternative to oil might be in place by 2025.”
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5 Comments
1. cedarford:We can see the effects of “Free Trade!!” being deletorious and key to America’s decline as a great power. It is all about the slow sucking out of good jobs, technological and scientific edges, wealth of America in return for ChinaMart.
You shed most of your engineering, scientific R&D jobs and value-added manufacturing jobs to Asia so “consumers” get cheaper stuff and don’t have to learn so much or work so hard….you get a diminishing nation, losing it’s wealth and edges in industry, technology, military and financial clout…and rooms full of great China junk in return.
Saying spooks claim it will be so in 2025 more than it is today, unless we rid ourselves of destructive globalist ideology, is an obvious no-brainer.
Kudos to the spooks for saying what the Right-Wing Republicans, Club for Growth ideologues, “Technology will solve all problems” crowd, Right-to-Lifers, the environmentalists, and Open Borders liberals all shun saying:
The world is overpopulated. Too many people soon to be chasing too few resources. Thus resource wars where the problem is not steady supplies of water and arable land, but excess humans. And an exhausted, demographically challenged West no longer able or willing to take on legitimate, let alone economic refugees. Or be the world’s 9/11 and freedom of the seas service.
Not unless the “Old Laws” and “Old Institutions” like the UN and Geneva Conventions and various “human rights laws” dramatically change.
Nov 21, 2008 - 5:12 pm 2. Ritchie Emmons:I don’t put much stock at all into reports of the future. How many reports with projections that go out decades turn out to be wrong? I’d say way more so than the ones that turn out to be right. There are so many unforeseen intervening events that are going to take place between now and 2025 that predicting anything but the mere arrival of 2025 is all but useless.
Who expected 9/11? That’s had a profound impact on things. A year ago, who would have thought that there would be a collapse of the financial markets? The economy may well be changing forever into something that we can’t yet recognize. A couple of decades ago who thought something like the Internet would alter our lives?
To commenter #1, the fear of overpopulation is overblown and has been for ages. And I’m a little perplexed by your claim that overpopulation is the problem, but then in the same paragraph lament the problem of demographics in the West (as in too few people). We humans (American in particular) will find a way to address any problems of population vs resources. Where we used to grow one unit of food on a unit of land, we now can grow 2 or even 3 units on that same piece of land. Never underestimate the human capacity to address the needs required to survive. Especially if that capacity is of the American sort.
Nov 22, 2008 - 9:42 am 3. cedarford:Emmons –
Norman Borlaug, the Leader of the Team behind Green Revolution, warned it was a one-time deal. That the technology that boosted hi-yield agriculture did not imply that technology would triple it again as population rose. He has warned and warned against overpopulation complacency since the 70s.
We humans (American in particular) will find a way to address any problems of population vs resources….Never underestimate the human capacity to address the needs required to survive.
Except when we humans don’t. Which is the true lesson of history as civilizations collapse from too many people and futile “solutions” to problems of drought, salinization or loss of soil, crop disease or human disease from “too much packed in too small an area”.
War and famine and even genocide are the consequence.
(Rwanda being the most overpopulated country in high-breeding Africa was a trigger to that genocide. Darfur is essentially a conflict over scarce arable land between nomads and farmers.)
It is also disingenuous to declare 9/11 and the present economic catastrophe “totally unforeseen events”. After all the wars fought and economic recessions and depressions – it is silly to claim how “shocked and surprised” certain experts were when they happened again in our lifetime.
Nov 22, 2008 - 2:19 pm 4. Dave:Intelligence services and business advisors have warned since the 70s that the inexorable trend towards overpopulated cities and lands will make governance difficult without authoritarian measures to allocate and restrict resources, deal with inadequate water, infrastructure and jobs for exploding populations…. That resource wars are inevitable, that “borderless” cultures and economies can take their dysfunctions global.
Dr Chesler fans might want to check out Richard Fernandez’s “Belmont Club”.
One poster there Leo Limbeck III (L3 to friends) thoroughly debunks the notion of
transfer of wealth.
We certainly have sent more cash abroad than we should have but that transfer of cash has in no way created wealth among the recipients.
Other Blemont Clubbers have joined in with the effects of theft, and so forth and so on.
Problems we got. Gloom and doom, we do not.
Nov 23, 2008 - 12:00 am 5. A. Nonymous:I distinctly remember predictions from the late 60s that Japan will be ruling the world by the new millenium. Also, we were supposed to be starving by noe. Prognostication is a lot of fun, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of sense in brooding about it…
Nov 23, 2008 - 7:33 pm