The Intermediate Zone

Greek Drama Has Lessons for the Western World

avidavis — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:30:34 +0000

As Greek prime minister George Papendreou submitted his resignation to the president on Saturday, there were no cheers of exaltation rising from the streets of Greek cities. Instead, there was only a palpable sense of dread, as the future looked more grimly uncertain than ever.

Papendreou, the scion of the country’s most prominent political family- whose father and grandfather had both served as prime ministers - became the latest victim of the sentient notion that Europe would be a harbinger of a new era for mankind – a place where conciliation would replace confrontation and where amity would replace division.

But the Greek political class on Saturday demonstrated that the new Europe would be a far more divided place than any European leader could have imagined sixteen years ago following the signing of the Maatricht Treaty. One can only gasp in wonder as a country roiled by a one trillion euro debt and confronted with the snarling contempt of other major European countries, could not bring itself to recognize that without a unified voice which accepts the austerity plan imposed upon it by the European Union, the entire country could be engulfed in an economic cataclysm that would make German stagflation of the 1920s look like a Saturday afternoon game of Monopoly.

For what had collapsed by Saturday night in Athens was not only the prime minister’s center-right coalition but the very idea of a unified Greek nation, one that believed that as a people and a country it possessed a common destiny and common purpose. The failure of the two major parties to forge an alliance to stave off the worst financial crisis in the country’s history, is a telling sign of what will become of other European countries as they pass through exactly the same crisis in the coming twelve months. It is very difficult to fathom how a democratic country, faced with such unflinching and demanding partners - who control the very monetary lifelines necessary to keep their economy alive, could be so conflicted on what is the only possible course for it to take.

But this is the face of the New Europe. Given to years of lassitude, the Greeks, and most Europeans have no stomach for austerity. Profligacy, social welfare, neoptism, corruption and a vibrant, fairly open black market, has produced a country where people don’t work much, retire young and take long vacations.

The Greek model actually describes the bulk of Europe, where the work ethic has given way to the pleasure ethic and the lambent idea that government can always be counted on to bail out failed enterprises. But what happens when the government has no money to bail out anybody and the source that it must rely on – namely foreign investment, remains skittish and uncertain about the country’s future? What happens when no one – not the European Union, not the United States and not China - is prepared to say we believe in your future and we will continue to fund your debt?

What then happens is a complete collapse of confidence and a fatalism that grips everyone from the prime minister to the local fruit vendor. That is what was on display in the streets of Athens on Saturday night. No matter what happens with the dissolution of the government or new elections in the not-too-distant future, the crushing weight of debt will be the overriding, ever present concern of whomever takes over the running of the Greek Republic.

The Greeks have good reason to wonder who will ultimately control their fate. Angeliki Martaki, a retiree quoted in the Los Angeles Times on Friday, summed up what many ordinary Europeans must be feeling about their future: “All the Euro has bought us has been pain. At least with the drachma, we were what we were: Greek. Now, I don’t know what we are and who is in charge of our national destiny.”

I heard the same sentiments expressed to me in villages in England and coffee shops in Madrid. A collapse of national purpose; the absence of great leaders who can rouse the population to work and save; the lack of a pervasive national sentiment boldly declaring” we are all in this together.” Instead, as countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal progressively unravel, the citizens of these once great, independent countries will find themselves having to fend for themselves, with no one but the Gods to hear their cries of pain.

That idea – that soon there actually may be no one willling or able to come to the rescue - is a lesson that every citizen in the West should take to heart.

AFA’s Summer Conference- Big Footprint: Is Green the New Tyranny?

avidavis — Tue, 24 May 2011 02:06:28 +0000

Sunday, June 12 – Monday, June 13, 2011

International Conference:

Big Footprint: Is Green the New Tyranny?

with:

Lord Monckton, Chris Horner, Steve Milloy, Brian Sussman

among thirty other speakers

UCLA Faculty Center
405 N. Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, California

Click for details

Upcoming Event! Conspiracy Theory or Absolute Reality? The U.N.’s Agenda 21 and its Threat to Individual Freedom, Private Property and National Sovereignty

avidavis — Tue, 24 May 2011 01:44:03 +0000

American Freedom Alliance presents an afternoon seminar

Conspiracy Theory or Absolute Reality?
The U.N.’s Agenda 21 and its Threat to Individual Freedom,
Private Property and National Sovereignty

with

Michael Shaw
President, Freedom Advocates

and

Col. Samuel Kastel
(Colonel in the IDF Reserves)

Sunday, May 29, 2011
2:00 pm – 8:00 pm
(including dinner)

Location: to be disclosed upon RSVP

Admission: $35.00

Parking: Free by Valet

An event in support of the AFA summer conference
Big Footprint: Is Green the New Tyranny?
Sunday June 12- Monday, June 13, 2011

Agenda 21 is the United Nations’ initiative to control the world’s resources under the pretext of environmental protection. Employing counterfeit science, it declares that a planetary catastrophe
resulting from human activity is well underway and that it can only be arrested by the surrender of material comforts, reduced energy consumption and a transfer of wealth. Agenda 21 has proliferated countless unelected bodies worldwide that dictate so-called environmental policy to governments, locally, nationally and internationally. With patient, incremental steps, often advancing beneath the radar of public awareness, Agenda 21 is the gradual implementation of global government, often referred to by its advocates as “The New World Order.” It seeks to dissolve the nation state, eliminate private property, and curtail individual freedom. Ultimately it envisions absolute control over every aspect of our lives.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Michael Shaw is a licensed attorney and CPA. He built a career in the development and operation of a multi-state self storage company. Today he is an abundance ecologist and the creator of Liberty Garden, a 75 acre coastal native plant oasis on the coast of Santa Cruz County. Michael’s primary focus is centered on guiding Freedom Advocates, a
tax exempt organization, that works to deliver the message that in America, government was designed to protect individual rights. This is in stark contrast to the globalist doctrine behind Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development (now adopted by the current U.S. Administration). Michael and his expanding team at Freedom Advocates explain how this agenda infiltrates our lives at the local level, and what we can do to stop it..

Colonel Samuel Kastel served with distinction with the Israel Defense Forces, participating in the 1982 Lebanon War and 2006 Lebanon War as well as in many aspects of Israeli intelligence. Today his work focuses on the attempts of NGOs and multilateral organizations to delegitimize the State of Israel, developing a particular expertise with regard to the threats emanating from the United Nations and multilateral
organizations. He is in the preliminary stage of investigating Agenda 21. He has already discovered that it is having a strategic impact on Israel from top down policies within the government and from hostile NGOs outside the government. He will share his recent findings.

Please respond to the American Freedom Alliance (310) 444 3085
or at adavis@americanfreedomalliance.org

Click here for AFA Lecture Series Page

Freedom Fueled the American Moon Shot

avidavis — Tue, 24 May 2011 01:35:08 +0000

Freedom Fueled the American Moon Shot.

The above article was published on American Thinker yesterday, and was written by the American Freedom Alliance’s Senior Fellow, Larry Greenfield. The text is reproduced below.

May 22, 2011

Freedom Fueled the American Moon Shot

By Larry Greenfield

50 years ago this Wednesday, on May 25th, 1961, President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to win the space race, thus fulfilling one of humanity’s dearest dreams:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

Conceived half a century ago, during the Eisenhower Administration, and conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Apollo program responded to the surprise Soviet Sputnik 1 orbital satellite.

America’s scientific ambitions, human achievements, and exploratory adventures have been unparalleled ever since.

Noteworthy, Kennedy’s moonshot was announced during a speech to Congress that included his articulation of the Freedom Doctrine.

Our strength as well as our convictions have imposed upon this nation the role of leader in freedom’s cause.

No role in history could be more difficult or more important. We stand for freedom.

That is our conviction for ourselves–that is our only commitment to others. No friend, no neutral and no adversary should think otherwise.

We are not against any man — or any nation–or any system — except as it is hostile to freedom.

Nor am I here to present a new military doctrine, bearing any one name or aimed at any one area. I am here to promote the freedom doctrine.

President Kennedy’s speech is remembered for his Cold War challenge to catch up to and pass the Soviet military space threat.

But the speech was also a remarkable call to affirm the ever-renewing American revolutionary campaign for independence, security, prosperity, and liberty.

Today, 50 years after President Kennedy’s urging, President Obama has deeply disappointed many Americans, including the first man to land on the moon, Neil Armstrong, with weak Presidential support for lunar exploration and continued human spaceflight.

Noting the decision to cancel the Ares 1 launch vehicle and the Constellation moon landing program, Armstrong and Apollo veterans Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan wrote publicly:

For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature.

Somehow, Mr. Obama still dares to call this time our Sputnik moment, our challenge to “win the future” against economic competitors in the fields of bio-science, clean energy technology, and computer engineering.

But what is this decade’s big vision for achievement, advancement and ambition?

Imperative must be national projects such as energy independence, border security, counter-terrorism, and innovative re-industrialization to compete against China, India, Brazil, and other emerging economies.

American leadership will also develop medical treatments and cures in cardiology and cancer and countless diseases. We shall partner as well for global food, water, and environmental sustainability by incentivizing governments towards internal decency, and international trade and security.

But, perhaps the most important mission of our time is within the American civic mind. We must nurture a return to the American founding principle of individual liberty itself, so severely threatened by the growth over the past 50 years of big government and its entitled constituencies, who would be unrecognizable to the patriots who declared independence and pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.

Two American Presidents of the past half century, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, repeatedly insisted that the American future was bright and positive, calling forth a new frontier and remaining always a shining city on a hill.

This spirit was captured when brave Astronaut Armstrong took his first step on the moon on July 20, 1969, declaring:

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

The seven words on the plaque that remains on the surface of the Moon, in the Sea of Tranquility, where America’s noblest hopes and aspirations landed, are:

We came in peace for all mankind.

Inspired by liberty, Americans have always been dreamers, discoverers, and doers.

President Kennedy boldly promoted our national lunar space program, and called for us to chase the stars and touch the face of the moon, the romantic symbol throughout history of possibilities outside our normal reach.

The Apollo freedom flight reached its target and returned, inviting us to dream American dreams again and again.

Wherever we go next, we go forward in freedom, the essential American spirit and still the American way.

Larry Greenfield is fellow in American studies at the Claremont Institute, and Senior Fellow of the American Freedom Alliance.

5th AFA International Conference of the Air: China Ascendant: Is the U.S. Losing it’s Status?

avidavis — Tue, 24 May 2011 01:23:49 +0000

Yesterday, American Freedom Alliance Senior Fellows Avi Davis (author of this blog) and Larry Greenfield co-hosted the American Freedom Alliance’s 5th International Conference of the Air. The conference included Gordon Chang, David P. Goldman, Ross Terill, and Professor June Teufel Dreyer, and looked at the rise of China and what that could mean for the U.S. If you missed it, you can listen to it at any time at Western Word Radio, where it (and all other Western Word Radio shows) are archived for your convenience.

AFA’s Conference of the Air series bring together academics and experts on topics relevant to the preservation of Western civilization. They are conducted via conference call and broadcasted live (and then archived) at Western Word Radio so that you can listen to them on your computer, no matter where you are in the world.

Western Word Radio interview with Thomas Sowell

avidavis — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:42:35 +0000

American Freedom Alliance president, Avi Davis, interviewed Thomas Sowell this morning on Western Word Radio.

The show is archived and available for download and streaming here

Thomas Sowell, author of Economic Facts and Falacies is regarded as one of America’s most esteemed thinkers. His most famous work, Basic Economics has been translated into six languages and he is a much sought after commentator on current trends in American society. He is currently a scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has published in both academic journals and in such popular media as the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Forbes Magazine and Fortune.

What Direction Syria?

avidavis — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:43:09 +0000

As the tidal wave that is the Middle East Revolutions swept into Syria last week, many in the West began to ask whether this foretells the end of the Assad dynasty. The present ruler’s father Hafez al Assad took control of Syria in 1969 in a military coup, imposing martial law under an emergency decree that has never been lifted. His son, Bashar, a English trained dentist, has shown little desire to change the repressive tactics of his father and has followed the same anti- Zionist anti Western policies.

And why not? The policies worked. Maintaining an outside enemy who threatened the country with annihilation was the stock in trade of both Assads and has ensured the longevity of their minority Allawite rule.

But the risings in Daara, unthinkable a few months ago, have put the regime on notice. The repressive tactics that resulted in the slaughter of 10,000 Shiites in Hama in 1982 and the fear ofthe the long arm Syrian Secret Service, may no longer be enough to bottle the curdling hatred of the regime. Assad has already been seen making economic and social concessions to the demonstrators in an effort to avoid the fate of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia.

It is probably too little, too late. The momentum of change in the Middle East is running against him and the present occupant of the Syrian presidency may not have the wit nor the cunning his father might have mustered to avert a coming disaster.

Meanwhile the West cannot afford to ignore the unfolding Syrian drama. Consumed with assault on the Ghaddafi regime in Libya, it will lose a vital opportunity if it does not come to the aid of the Syrian opposition. Syria holds the key to much of the instability inthe Middle East. Its sponsorship of Hezbollah in Lebanon ( which has reduced that state to practical vassalage); its alliance with Iran which is a constant threat to a nascent Iraqi democratic state and its willingness to house exiled Palestinian leaders, places it front and center in the struggle to defeat terrorists and their state sponsors.

A Syria free of the crushing dictatorship that has rul the past ed it for the past 42 years may not suddenly become a Western ally. But the success of a rebellion against the Assad regime will send a voluble message to other dictatorships that change, supported, if not led by the West, was not just a fluke in Libya and Egypt and may be coming their way.

Libyan Attack May Represent a Shift in Global Power

avidavis — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 18:25:32 +0000

There is good news for internationalists in the recent coalition attacks on Libya. The assault, led by France, with vigorous support from Britain and sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council, provides an example of the muscular application of the principle of collective security upon which the United Nations was founded.

If only the international community had mustered the same tenacity in Rwanda in 1995 or in the Sudan in this decade, then perhaps millions of innocent Africans would be alive today.

The news is not quite as good for the projection of American power. There is no doubt that Barack Obama’s hesitancy and lack of resolve in defending those struggling for freedom will be noted – by America’s foes and allies alike. By adopting a multilateral approach to addressing a threat to national security, he has begun the outsourcing of American foreign policy.

And in case there are doubts, a Ghaddafi victory does represent a threat to national security. It offers challenges to the supply of U.S. oil; it threatens the war on terror and it presages a cycle of revenge which was exemplified 25 years ago with the downing of U.S. Air 109 over Lockerbie in Scotland.

We will learn soon enough what the outsourcing of American policy will mean for the United States’ standing in the world. The continuing failure of the same policy of multilateralism in its attempt to prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons has only increased that country’s determination to pursue policies inimical to U.S.national security. No one should count on the Libyan excursion acting as a precursor to an invasion of Iran. There is no comparison in terms of international consensus.

Rather, the decision of the Obama Administration to follow rather than lead will send a message to the mullahs that they indeed have very little to fear at all from a United States whose own penchant for collective action and consistent dithering will compromise any serious efforts to permanently strangle the Iranian menace.

Conference of the Air: The Middle East Revolutions and their Impact on Women’s Rights

avidavis — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:22:34 +0000

American Freedom Alliance presents

Its 4th Conference of the Air

The Middle East Revolutions and their Impact on Women’s Rights

Featuring:

Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Kiran Zaidi, Parvin Dabati, Raheel Reza,

Sunday, March 20, 2011

10:00 am – 1:00 pm PDT
(1:00 PM – 4:00 pm EST)

Streamed live on the Internet and then archived.
Log in from anywhere in the world and listen at any time at:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ WesternWordRadio

The cataclysmic events which have roiled the Middle East over the past three months have produced their share of concern around the world. Who or what will replace the dictatorial regimes of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt? What will the fallout for other Arab nations in the region and will the fragile peace agreement between Egypt and Israel survive?

Among some of the more pressing questions however, and the one most forgotten, is what do these upheavals signal for the future of Muslim women and their role in Muslim society? Do the revolutions signal greater openness to women’s participation? Or is the New Middle East going to look much like its older version? For without a greater public presence for women in Muslim society can there really be any advance towards the kind of liberty and freedom the revolutions have so far extolled?

Join AFA for a three hour Conference of the Air as Muslim women from around the world give voice to ideas and philosophies regarding their own and their compatriots’ future.

Join us at this extraordinary first time debate on issues of vital importance to the future of the United Sates and the world.

Click here for AFA Lecture Series Page

Contact AFA for further information at (310) 444 3085 or access AFA website www.americanfreedomalliance.org

Peter King’s Valuable Investigations

avidavis — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:37:19 +0000

The new Chairman of Homeland Security, Peter King, has begun an overdue investigation into radicalization among America’s Muslims. For years, reporters, journalists and authors have been warning us about the increasing dangers we face from a home-grown jihad that is both nurtured and protected by an overweening political correctness which has brooked no opposition. Yet investigators such as Steve Emerson ( The Investigative Project); Robert Spencer ( JIHAD WATCH) and David Gaubatz ( author of Muslim Mafia) have made the case over and over again that there are some very serious problems emanating from the Muslim community in this country which go largely unaddressed because of fears of provoking charges of religious intolerance. Finally this ridiculous taboo has been jettisoned and our political leaders are beginning to act like grown ups who recognize they are faced with a serious internal dilemma that is not going to be dealt with by the expression of pieties about multicultural sensitivities.

The escalation of Islamic inspired attacks on American soil since 9/11( with over 30 attacks committed or foiled in the intervening ten years) should have been cause enough for several such inquiries.

Movies such as The Third Jihad and Homegrown Terrorism have given us plenty of cause for thought. Peter King is translating that thought now into action. Lets hope that political correctness does not inhibit further development of these important investigations into the problems lurking within our Muslim communities.