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NexThink

European & Global Issues


 

NexThink is a Collective Intelligence open project promoting interdisciplinary approaches to encourage both theoretical and policy-oriented research on European and global topics. It does not replace traditional knowledge centers but it concentrates on all what they do not do. The novelty here is that users are both knowledge receivers and knowledge makers. This takes place within a unique model that integrates and concentrates multistream knowledge channels, both local and global. Exploring the content is a form of learning and re-searching that is both user-centered and social. Anyone interested in this alternative knowledge environment and experience can contribute, share with others  and co-edit articles, comments, analysis, information, and any other meaningful digital material. Current NexThink intelligence areas are:
The "Great Game": Eurasia and the History of War

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, for Global Research

 

The History of War

History is often self-repeating. Those who are oblivious to the lessons of history are, by virtue of ignorance, doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Samuel P. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations,” is an outright camouflage, an ideological instrument used to reach geo-political objectives. This "conflict notion" is part of a broad strategy which has been used throughout history to divide, conquer, and rule. By Huntington’s definitions, nine diverse civilizations co-inhabit Eurasia; establishing conflict between them is a means towards controlling them and eventually absorbing them in the Spencerian sense of war and the social evolution of nation-states and societies, as defined by British sociologist Herbert Spencer. Is humanity witness once again to a gradual march towards a large-scale international war like the Second World War, as Vladimir Putin has warned the Russian people? Or is fear being used to push forward otherwise unacceptable global economic policies? If the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the dual-thrones of Austria and Hungary (the Austro-Hungarian Empire), on June 28, 1914 was the cause of the First World War why then was there talk of a major war throughout Europe in 1905? It was on the eve of the First World War that radical changes were made to the banking system in the U.S. and on the eve of the Second World War that otherwise unpopular economic reforms were implemented in Britain. War allows otherwise unpopular measures to be accepted by domestic populations or gives them stealthy means for execution.

 

Following sections: Mackinder’s Warnings: Divide the Continentals (Eurasians) - Learning from History: The Prevention of the German Ostbewegung - A Lesson from History: Playing the Russians and the Germans in War - The Roots of an Anglo-American Compact - The Second World War: Playing the Soviets against the Germans - The Roots of Strategic Balkanization: Preventing the Unification of Eurasia - Redrawing Eastern Europe and the Middle East: The Template for Iraq - The Pirenne Thesis - The Eurasians Strike Back: The New Silk Road - A Mediterranean Union and an Islamic Union: The West versus the Eurasian Heartland - The Bloc Concept and Regionalization: Orwellian Showdown between Oceania and Eurasia? 

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A comeback for the greenback?

Washington abandons its laissez-faire attitude to the falling dollar

by Mark Schieritz for The German Times

A weak dollar served the interests of the Americans. Now, those days are over. Washington has rediscovered the virtues of a strong currency.

How times do change: A few weeks ago, U.S. authorities were still calmly watching the dollar plunge. Now, hardly a day goes by without a warning from Washington about the dangers of continuing dollar devaluation. “We pay careful attention to the consequences of changes in the value of the dollar for inflation and expected inflation,” Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve said recently. And Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson did not even want to rule out interventions in the currency market.

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A very Israeli decision

by  Herb Keinon, The Jerusalem Post

 

Much will be said and written in the coming days about Sunday's cabinet decision approving the release of Samir Kuntar, four Hizbullah fighters, an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners, dozens of Hizbullah and Palestinian bodies, and information on the disappearance of four Iranian diplomats in exchange for Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, both now presumed dead, and a Hizbullah report on the fate of Ron Arad.

But one thing is clear. This decision reflects some key characteristics of Israeli society. Indeed, it is fair to say it was a typically Israeli decision - for better and for worse.

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Not quiet on the eastern front

How to lose friends and alienate people, from Economist.com
Had it been cooked up in the Kremlin's department of fiendishly clever geopolitical plots it could hardly be more damaging. First, America arm-twists some of its most loyal European allies to do dreadful things in great secrecy. Then it boasts about them. The result: America's tattered moral authority frays further, and the allies look stupid in the eyes of their voters and neighbours.

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A chance for Europe to face the New Truth

By John Vinocur, International Herald Tribune

AMSTERDAM: Welcome to the European Union's how-to era: how to save it, how to fix it, how to make its peoples love it - or, failing that, like it enough to care.

The reality is that they don't, unless the matter at hand directly concerns new benefits, unwanted obligations or the fear of reducing the multiple and already-pocketed individual advantages of EU membership.

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