Juan Cole's: 10 Amazing Predictions for 2006 & They Aren't Pretty!!!

[kpete]

Sunday, January 01, 2006The Professor has his predictions posted, and they arn't pretty



(sorry if this is a dupe - I am out of town & using a new laptop, fun & frustrating)

Ten Amazing Predictions for 2006

1. Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri, whom the Bush administration has failed to capture after all this time, and who was probably responsible for the July 7 bombings in the London subway and the bombings in the Sinai in Egypt, will strike at US allies again in 2006.

2. Saudi Arabia will use the $160 billion windfall from high petroleum prices to strengthen its military and security forces, and to spread its rigid Wahhabi form of Islam.

3. Iran's clerical elites will use the $36 billion windfall from high petroleum prices to strengthen their military and security forces, and to spread their radical Khomeinist form of Islam. The US, even if it takes some desperate step, will prove unable to shake the regime in 2006.

4. The Iraqi government, on which the US is placing its bet, will limp along with less than $19 billion a year in petroleum income because of sabotage and guerrilla war, along with long-neglected fields and dilapidated plants and equipment. Most of that money will be absorbed by the need for internal security, reconstruction and paying off past reparations and debts, as well as by large-scale corruption and embezzlement (billions of dollars went missing during the government of Iyad Allawi in 2004).


http://www.juancole.com/
via:http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/1/124741/2524

[Burma Jones]

1. All of these scenarios are quite likely

One of the more intelligent prognostications I've seen, but then, the guy's probably one of those brainiac Democrats that refuse to wear the blinders and drink the Kool Aid......

[acmavm]

2. We see the signs of all this coming already. I'm intrigued by the fact

that he doesn't have any predictions about the American political scene. Is this not his field? He writes accurately and coherently about the bush** administration and their escapades, but I guess maybe that's because his articles interprets or explains things that the buffoons have already done (or already lied about).

[kpete]

3. Juan Cole on USA

9. New Orleans will for the most part not be rebuilt and will increasingly be eclipsed by Baton Rouge. Louisiana as a result will become a solid Red State. The Republican Party has no particular reason to rebuild a predominantly African-American city that reliably voted Democrat, just as its leader, George W. Bush, apparently had no particular reason to implement relief work there with any urgency or efficiency after the flood. Most of the $25 billion in reconstruction aid promised by the Federal government will never arrive.

10. The United States will continue to lose global political influence because its government is running large deficits and going ever deeper into debt. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower routinely used the threat of calling in loans from war-devastated Europe to get his way. He threatened UK Prime Minister Anthony Eden with loan cancellations if the latter did not get back out of the Suez in late 1956. He threatened DeGaulle with loan cancellations if the latter didn't get France out of rebellious Algeria before it went Communist. Nowadays the US is a massive debtor nation, and has lost that kind of leverage with all but the poorest and most beaten-down countries. The US nuclear arsenal is relatively useless because it cannot actually be used, and the US military is bogged down in Iraq. America remains a superpower for the third and fourth worlds, but is often a helpless, pitiful giant as far as places like Western Europe and China are concerned.
http://www.juancole.com/

[Loge23]

4. #10 is dead on

Most of the industralized countries think we are fools. They've thought that for a long time, but our relative strength as a country and a people were still admirable.
Now that's changed. The world has watched the shining example of freedom/democracy become a nation of followers. Our president is an international fool, an ignoramous. Much of the world sees the American people as over-fed, over-indulged, under-educated, tacky, greedy twits.
We aren't the freedom-loving, wide-open, innovators anymore - annoying, but admirable. Now we're just annoying. Go overseas, you'll get the drift. It's a generalization of course, but this view is quite prevalent.

[BlueJazz]

5. Yep..My (long-time) European friends tell me that a large share of...

..their country-men think of us as "Those idiots that think the world is really 10,000 years old and know little about
scientific thinking". ..AND.. "They take the word of ignorant politicians and clergymen over great Scientists"

All I can say is: Ain't that the sad Truth.

[acmavm]

10. Sorry, I wasn't specific enough. My fault. I mean no predictions as to

what will befall this incompetent and criminal administration and what or who may be indicted in the coming months. There's already articles about how NO will not be rebuilt on the scale that it was pre Katrina, not will it be rebuilt so that all those who made it their lifelong homes will be able to go back. No surprises there, this has been tossed around in the press a number of times.

As for the fact that we are now a debtor nation on a huge scale (to China), well that fact is discussed here every other day. Again, no surprise. DUers have been talking about that for eons.

I want to know what he thinks about the survivability factor of this bunch, about the losses to criminal indictments, who he thinks will go down thanks to their sticky fingers and the way they play light and loose with the truth.

[alfredo]

6. the Kurds will secede from Iraq.

This will spark a war with the Iraq Shia. Turkey could get involved.

[MichiganVote]

7. Well they are certainly considering the option. Just a little more US $$

[alfredo]

9. If they get control of Kirkuk.

that's going to be the big fight.

[MichiganVote]

11. Exactly

[Tom Joad]

8. Number 6 is interesting, and often overlooked by Dems, even.

6. The Israeli-Palestinian struggle will continue in staccatto fashion, because the Israeli government remains expansionist and land-hungry. Because the Sharon government refused to negotiate with real live Palestinians over the Gaza withdrawal no framework for peace was erected. Israeli troops will go back into Gaza from time to time. Israel will settle thousands of colonists on Palestinian land in the west and will blame Palestinians as irrational and bigotted for objecting. The subtle forms of ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Jerusalem will continue or accelerate. Fifteen percent of Palestinian children will continue to suffer from malnutrition, a result of the poverty that derives from having been put since 1967 in a large Israeli jail.

[meganmonkey]

12. Wow - some heavy stuff in there

Juan Cole really knows his stuff...:scared:

[priller]

13. The Louisiana one was right on, also

"9. New Orleans will for the most part not be rebuilt and will increasingly be eclipsed by Baton Rouge. Louisiana as a result will become a solid Red State. The Republican Party has no particular reason to rebuild a predominantly African-American city that reliably voted Democrat, just as its leader, George W. Bush, apparently had no particular reason to implement relief work there with any urgency or efficiency after the flood. Most of the $25 billion in reconstruction aid promised by the Federal government will never arrive."


LA was already pretty solidly red as it was, except for New Orleans and a few other pockets. But he's right about being in no hurry to rebuild a democratic city. That's the way they think, politics above all. The hurricane just diluted a solidly democratic voting block. As that evil with Barbara Bush would say, "heh heh, this is working out very well!"

[greiner3]

14. The first 4 could have said to already occurred in 205;

However the last 6 are chilling in their scope. I had hoped to leave, as a legacy, more than what's left of the US to my children. I feel ineffectual, but still go on in spite of the near uselessness of it all. This feeling hopefully will go away without my having to resort to extraordinary circumstances.