Alarm bells in the U.S.

Alarms are ringing as negative trends come together in a perfect storm. Is the United States sleepwalking into economic and geopolitical decline?

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large

WASHINGTON, May 29 (UPI) — Gen. David Richards, the British chief of staff, in the understatement of the week, says the strategic landscape is “worrying” and the outlook “bleak.”

The United States as the world’s strongest geopolitical player has become ungovernable, saddled with a dysfunctional Congress. House and Senate together, with 535 members, maintain 250 committees and subcommittees and micromanage muscular government decisions into unworkable policy directives.

No fewer than 108 committees have oversight jurisdiction on Homeland Security.

The latest book of Edward Luce, the Financial Times’ chief U.S. commentator, and former FT Washington bureau chief (2006-11), is titled, “Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent.”

America, he says, is sleepwalking into economic and geopolitical decline.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/de-Borchgrave/2012/05/29/Commentary-Alarm-bells-in-the-US/UPI-42381338299783/#ixzz1wIdSUlVl

China’s Port in Pakistan?

– China’s dream of Indian Ocean ports — the so-called string of pearls — is heightening geopolitical tensions in a rough neighborhood.

BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN

Pakistani officials have announced that the Chinese look favorably on taking over the operation of the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar close to the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz, and perhaps building a naval base for the Pakistanis there as well. The Chinese have apparently contradicted these claims, indicating that they have made no such decisions on these matters.

The fact that Pakistan should want deeper Chinese involvement with this strategically located port, even as the Chinese are hesitant to do just that, should surprise no one. Gwadar is where dreams clash with reality. …

Read more : ForeignPolicy

U.S. women jump in to save Sindh, Balochistan from genocide

by Ahmar Mustikhan

Women in the United States have taken up the cudgels to stop the on-going genocide in Balochistan and extrajudicial killings in Sindh.

Jane Wesiner a staunch supporter of an independent Balochistan spoke with Senator John F. Kerry, who is chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and asked him to support the idea of a free country for the stateless Baloch people in southwest Asia.

Balochistan, which is named after the Baloch people, was a free country before the British set foot in the region in 1839, but left it divided by the time colonialism ended in Indian subcontinent in August 1947.

Weisner, who is affiliated with the American Friends of Balochistan, said she spoke personally to Senator Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Forigien Affairs Committee, Thursday about Pakistan’s role in hiding bin Laden.

“More importantly I asked him to personally look into the systematic genocide of the Baloch. I spoke to him about the geopolitical advantages of a free and independent Balochistan

Continue reading on Examiner.com: U.S. women jump in to save Sindh, Balochistan from genocide – Baltimore Foreign Policy | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/foreign-policy-in-baltimore/u-s-women-jump-to-save-balochistan-from-genocide-contact-lawmakers?fb_comment=33154981#ixzz1MLsZN8cG

World War III: One Nation at a Time

Look past the puppets and above the globalists’ stage.

commentary by Tony Cartalucci

The globalists are infiltrating, corrupting, and turning the entire planet, one nation at a time in a combined scientific-geopolitical dictatorship that will be effectively impossible to reverse once it is completed. The latest Western-fueled conflagration in the Arab world indicates an accelerated regional strategy of destabilizing and taking over target nations. Nations like Russia and China, whose interests are being directly threatened and stripped away in this malicious melee, appear powerless and unprepared.

Some nations succumb in silence behind the scenes, others are invaded, mercilessly brutalized, and assimilated into the globalist combine. The civil society overlay the globalists use to establish what amounts to a subversive shadow government is always creeping forward no matter how hard a target nation may try to ward it off. Only in the most extreme cases, such as Qaddafi’s Libya has civil society been uprooted entirely – making military intervention an acceptable and inevitable alternative from a globalist perspective. …

Read more : Info Wars

Obama’s Wars: implications for Pakistan

The US is not about to handover the keys to Kabul. Hopefully, the Pakistani establishment will reconsider its strategic calculus; living lies is incongruent with the geopolitical realities.

by Dr Mohammad Taqi

While NATO may have softened its position from its earlier stance of using the ‘right’ of hot pursuit, Pakistani authorities will find it increasingly difficult to defend their untenable position in the face of intense pressure and scrutiny from the US. ….

Read more >> Daily Times

China’s Discreet Hold on Pakistan’s Northern Borderlands

By SELIG S. HARRISON

While the world focuses on the flood-ravaged Indus River valley, a quiet geopolitical crisis is unfolding in the Himalayan borderlands of northern Pakistan, where Islamabad is handing over de facto control of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the northwest corner of disputed Kashmir to China.

The entire Pakistan-occupied western portion of Kashmir stretching from Gilgit in the north to Azad (Free) Kashmir in the south is closed to the world, in contrast to the media access that India permits in the eastern part, where it is combating a Pakistan-backed insurgency. But reports from a variety of foreign intelligence sources, Pakistani journalists and Pakistani human rights workers reveal two important new developments in Gilgit-Baltistan: a simmering rebellion against Pakistani rule and the influx of an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army.

China wants a grip on the region to assure unfettered road and rail access to the Gulf through Pakistan. It takes 16 to 25 days for Chinese oil tankers to reach the Gulf. When high-speed rail and road links through Gilgit and Baltistan are completed, China will be able to transport cargo from Eastern China to the new Chinese-built Pakistani naval bases at Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara, just east of the Gulf, within 48 hours.

Many of the P.L.A. soldiers entering Gilgit-Baltistan are expected to work on the railroad. Some are extending the Karakoram Highway, built to link China’s Sinkiang Province with Pakistan. Others are working on dams, expressways and other projects.

Read more >> The New York Times