The Week in Review
Middle East
A section of an ancient city wall of Jerusalem from the 10th century b.c.—possibly built by King Solomon—has been revealed in archaeological excavations directed by Dr. Eilat Mazar. The wall, 70 meters long and 6 meters high, is located in the area known as the Ophel, between the City of David and the southern wall of the Temple Mount. Dr. Mazar believes the wall “may correlate with written descriptions of Solomon’s building in Jerusalem,” she said. “The Bible tells us that Solomon built—with the assistance of the Phoenicians, who were outstanding builders—the temple and his new palace and surrounded them with a city, most probably connected to the more ancient wall of the City of David.” Mazar cited 1 Kings 3:1, where it says Solomon “made an end of building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall of Jerusalem round about.”
Iran announced on Monday that it plans to build two new uranium enrichment facilities deep inside mountains in order to protect them from attack. Iranian Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi said that Iran’s more advanced centrifuges would be used at these sites. “Hopefully, we may begin construction of two new enrichment sites in the next Iranian year [which begins March 21] as ordered by the president,” the semi-official isna quoted Salehi as saying.
Iranian Interior Minister Mustafa Mohammad-Najjar announced Tuesday that the leader of Iran’s anti-regime Jundallah militant group, Abdolmalek Rigi, had been captured in Pakistan by Iranian authorities and transferred to Iran. The Sunni organization has been responsible for dozens of attacks in Iran, including one last October that killed more than 40 people, including 15 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Details of the capture remain hazy, though it appears to have involved Pakistani cooperation. Stratfor points to another possible angle to the story: “Iran claims Rigi was at a U.S. military base within 24 hours before his capture. And Stratfor sources in Iran suggest that the United States allowed Pakistan to turn Rigi over to the Iranians, with the United States seeking in return greater assistance from Iran in stabilizing Iraq” (February 24). Though Stratfor says this version of the story cannot be verified, it says “the possibility of U.S. assistance—in an attempt to make Iran more willing to cooperate in other areas—cannot be ruled out.” If this is the case, it would once again demonstrate the leverage Iran has over the U.S., particularly in Iraq.
Last week, America’s commanding general in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, revealed that the two politicians who organized the banning of about 500 Sunni candidates from running in Iraq’s upcoming March 7 elections are linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and have attended senior-level meetings with Iranian officials. One of those politicians is Ahmed Chalabi, who controls the electoral commission that disqualified the candidates. Earlier this month an appeals panel lifted the ban, but that decision was overruled by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki several days later, despite U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visiting Iraq and urging Iraqi officials to reconsider. The Maliki government blasted the U.S. for interfering, illustrating just how weak America’s influence in Iraq has become—and how strong Iran’s. Now a major Sunni political bloc, the National Dialogue Front, says it will boycott the election. This will help ensure a Shiite victory—and also, probably, a spike in Sunni violence. The Sunnis have been checkmated, and they know it.
Iran is seeking to double its trade with Iraq to $8 billion this year, the Iranian consul in the Iraqi southern oil hub of Basra Mohammed Reza Baghban said on Sunday. “We are sure that, if there are no obstacles in Iraqi-Iranian economic relations, bilateral trade between the two countries will be double what it was in 2009,” Baghban told reporters. Iran is Iraq’s largest trade partner, and has been the biggest investor in its Shiite neighbor since 2003.
Europe
The Dutch government collapsed on February 20 over a disagreement within the ruling coalition over the country’s participation in the Afghanistan war. The Labor Party wanted to keep its campaign promise and bring all Dutch troops home; however, its coalition partners, the Christian Democrats in the cda and cd, wanted to leave 500 to 600 men in the country to train Afghan police as per nato’s request. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands ordered a new election to be held on June 9. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this will probably be Geert Wilders and his right-wing anti-Islamic Freedom Party. According to opinion polls, the Party for Freedom would increase its number of seats in the 150-strong parliament from 9 to 24—making it the second-largest party after the Christian Democrats. A senior Labor politician called for the other parties to work together to keep Wilders out of government, but has been criticized for doing so by the other parties. Watch for Wilders’s party to continue to succeed as Europe’s citizens turn further against Islam and immigration.
Roughly 2 million public and private workers refused to work in Greece’s second 24-hour strike in two weeks on February 24. The general strike stopped all bus, train, ferry and air travel; it closed schools and government offices and left hospitals staffed by emergency crews. The strikes were in protest of the government’s austerity program to bring the country’s deficit under control. Much of the anger was directed against the European Union, and Germany in particular, as people feel the EU has let them down. Many are accusing the Germans of refusing to pay reparations after World War ii. On February 23, Fitch downgraded the long-term debt ratings of Greece’s four largest banks from bbb+ to bbb. Watch for Greece’s crisis to put even more pressure on the whole eurozone in the future.
Germany and France also experienced strikes over their austerity measures this week. Pilots for Lufthansa Airlines began a four-day strike that grounded 45 percent of flights. In France, labor unions went on strike at oil refineries owned by Total, threatening to create gas shortages. Europe avoided a lot of social unrest during the economic downturn in 2009 through large stimulus measures. Now, however, governments need to spend less in order to pay back the debt created by the stimulus initiatives. This could lead to increased social unrest and friction within Europe in 2010.
The European Commission is investigating Google based on complaints that the Internet search company was lowering the search rankings of its competitors. Though such an investigation does not automatically lead to an antitrust inquiry, this is another example of Europe’s regulatory imperialism. Watch for Europe to accrue greater control over the global economy through these types of court cases. For more information, see our April 2008 Trumpet article, “Bending the World to Its Rules.”
Asia
China expanded its lead as the world’s foremost agricultural producer in 2008 with its food production jumping 30 percent, according to a February 23 note by the World Trade Organization (wto) secretariat. In 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, Chinese agricultural output jumped to $759.94 billion from 2007’s $584.25 figure. The latest figure for the EU’s agricultural output is from 2000 when the figure was $248.69 billion. That was the year China overtook it with its production at $268.15 billion. Data from some individual EU nations suggest the EU might have retaken the lead a year later, but China pulled back ahead conclusively by the middle of the decade. The latest year for which figures are available for U.S. food production was 2007, when it was $311.23 billion. China has been consistently ahead of the U.S. since 1995 when the World Trade Organization series began.
Beijing has defended its recent reductions in holdings of U.S. treasury securities, saying the U.S. should take steps to bolster confidence in the U.S. dollar. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang made the statement Thursday in response to questions about China dumping U.S. treasury securities last December. Qin said there are two sides to the issue, explaining that, on one hand, Beijing is following the principle of “ensuring safety, liquidity and good value” in managing its foreign holdings, but on the other side of the issue, that Washington should take action to promote confidence in the greenback in the international market. In December 2009, China cut its holdings of U.S. debt by us$34.2 billion, leaving Japan as the largest holder of U.S. treasury securities.
Latin America/Africa
Latin American and Caribbean leaders agreed on February 23 to create a new regional alliance to replace the Organization of American States (oas). The oas contains the U.S. and Canada. These two North American countries, however, will not be welcome in the new organization. At the conclusion of a two-day summit in Cancun, Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced to participants from 32 nations representing Latin America and the Caribbean that this new bloc “must as a priority push for regional integration … and promote the regional agenda in global meetings,” adding that the name and structure of the new organization will be determined at a further summit to be held in Caracus, Venezuela, next year. Mexico and Brazil are the driving forces behind the new bloc, which, in an early sign of strengthening anti-Anglo-Saxon orientation in the region, threw its weight behind renewed calls by Argentina for the handing over of the Falkland Islands by Britain to that southern Latino nation. Yet despite the outward show of bravado in seeking to distance the region from Anglo-Saxon influence, Latin America does not have any real history of intra-regional cohesion. It is not unlike the unwieldy and fractious EU in this respect. Yet both these regions have one overarching potentially binding force in common that could, amid crisis, rapidly unify their respective masses together: Roman Catholicism. Bible prophecy declares that it will be Rome’s religion that finally binds the unwieldy EU together to give it the political unity it needs in order to lead globally in the near future. The EU will wield that power over a very Catholic Latin America in particular.
Few nations would celebrate the birthday of terrorist and despot-extraordinaire Robert Mugabe. Yet China threw the Zimbabwean president a party at its embassy in Harare to celebrate his 86th birthday on February 21. This marked the first time Mugabe has visited a country’s embassy since he took over the country in 1980. “This proves the special friendly relations between the two countries,” said a statement on the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. China is hungry for resources and has no qualms about dealing with—or even throwing birthday parties for—genocidal dictators to get them. Chinese troops have even been seen walking the streets of one of Zimbabwe’s biggest cities. Watch for Europe and Asia to continue to compete for Africa’s resources.
Anglo-America
The former financial capital of the world is now home to the “lepers in London.” Bloomberg quoted London Mayor Boris Johnson as calling the city’s financial center a “leper colony” after taxpayers paid more than £800 billion to bail out bankers. Prime Minister Gordon Brown joined in the bashing by criticizing the “bankrupt ideology” of free-market “fundamentalism,” pledging to make the banks “the servant of people.” The report amounted to one more nail in the coffin of the world’s former financial powerhouse.
Initial jobless claims in the United States rose last week, jumping 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 496,000.
On Tuesday, a 32-year-old man brought a rifle to Deer Creek Middle School outside of Denver. The gunman raised the weapon in the school’s parking lot and shot two young students before being tackled to the ground by a 57-year-old math teacher who charged at him. The shooting was within a few miles of Columbine High School, where two deranged teenage gunman killed 12 students and one teacher back in 1999.
Meanwhile, America wrapped itself up in health-care debate as Democrats and Republicans sparred over the mammoth health-care bill before Congress. The six-hour meeting revealed division within America’s leadership and how distracted it is from the nation’s dying economy and from the rest of the world.