Corruption – Page 25 – Public Intelligence Blog

Colombia: The Constitutional Court yesterday declared an agreement granting US military access to Colombian bases unconstitutional on procedural grounds. La Patilla reported the vote was 6-3 against the agreement, and Semana reported the court would soon give a press conference to explain the details. The constitutional court ruled the 2009 accord should be redrafted as an international treaty and sent to Colombia's Congress for approval.

The agreement would have allowed US forces to have access to seven Colombian bases that help support operations against drug trafficking and terrorism. This is the draft legislation that other Latin American leaders criticized lat year because it abetted a rise in US regional influence.

The deal agreed by former President Alvaro Uribe in October 2009 gave the US access to the bases for 10 years and would see a maximum of 800 US military personnel and 600 civilian defense contractors based in Colombia.

The court's chief justice Mauricio Gonzalez said the deal was “an arrangement which requires the State to take on new obligations as well as an extension of previous ones.” He said that as such, it should be “handled as an international treaty, that is, subject to congressional approval”. The court did not rule on the legitimacy of the agreement itself and the ruling does not mean the US has to leave the country altogether.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: President Juan Manuel Santos said the court ruling will have little impact on U.S. military help fighting rebels and will not affect the operations of U.S. troops and contractors working with Colombia's military, The Associated Press reported 18 August. The ruling is primarily procedural not substantive. Nonetheless, it will be an inconvenience.

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Phi Beta Iota: Here is a rough graphic showing the four spheres of influence that are fighting World War III. Nations are flexing their Constitutional muscles against US and external incursions, while at the same time, hybrid organizations and “hidden powers” are fighting in the shadows. Most Nation-States are no longer central because they have lost its legitimacy from a mix of internal corruption and external misadventure.

It is neither possible nor desireable to “fight” the established powers–Non-Zero Strategy requires a focus on the five billion and the creation of infinite wealth with social capitalism and Information Communication Technologies (ICT) as well as energy, food, and other innovations. Non-violent innovation is the only viable winning strategy.

See Also:

Graphic: Four Threat Classes

Search: world map with 8 conflicts

Search: Africa Graphic and Four Threat Classes

Search: five front war the better way to fight

2010/05/152010/05/15

Journal: US Government Missing (or Obscuring) the Fundamentals

Corruption

My good friend Marshall Auerback analyzes the currency/debt crisis in in EU, and explains why this creates a situation fundamentally different from that facing nations with sovereign currencies. like Britain, Japan, and United States. It is a distinction that needs to be kept in mind, if the US is have a constructive fiscal policy.

Marshall also concludes that the crisis in the Euro will not be fixed by the recently approved bailout to Greece, because there is a fundamental flaw at the heart of the EU design. His analysis leads to the following conclusion: By establishing a common currency, the individual countries have sacrificed independent monetary policy to a supranational monetary authority. This obviously sacrificed monetary autonomy, but it also paralyzed each country's ability to run counter-cyclical fiscal policies. The only way out of the trap would be (1) to set up a supranational fiscal agency (in effect, with each member giving up de jure fiscal autonomy and placing each country's counter cyclical policy powers under the supreme power of a supranational fiscal agency — in effect reducing each nation's economic sovereignty to a level similar to that held by a state in the United States, or (2) or by getting out of the euro and going back to some arrangement like that of the EU prior to the adoption of the Euro — an arrangement which, readers should remember, led to enormous progress.

Auerback does not examine the political implications of Option 1 (hopefully he devote his prodigious analytical talents to this question in future), but it seems to me that, given the history of nationalism and cultural differences in Europe, Option 1 might lead to political situation somewhat similar to, if not as extreme as, that of Yugoslavia, before it disintegrated in the 1980s. The relatively rich republics of Yugoslavia (Slovenia and Croatia) resented policies that transferred of wealth to the relatively poorer republics, like Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, or the autonomous region of Kosovo. Once Tito's organizing genius disappeared, the linkages stitching the country together became frayed and eventually snapped as old grievances manifested themselves in newer forms. The same type of evolution could happen to the Europe Union if it underwent a supranational fiscal union, where the rich countries feel they are being unfairly burdened — the beginnings of which are already in evidence.

The great achievement of the EU has been to reduce the probability of violent nationalist conflict among some of its members to a vanishingly small probability while improving the economic lot of its members. Most of this reduction in the propensity toward violence and economic growth took place before the adoption of the Euro. It may be that giving up the Euro is the wiser alternative in the long run, unless someone can synthesize some kind of third option.

CS.

Repeat After Me: the USA Does Not Have a ‘Greece Problem’

Friday, 05/14/2010 – 11:13 am by

NewDeal 2.0

http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/05/14/repeat-after-me-the-usa-does-not-have-a-greece-problem-10863/Marshall Auerback