Next president is to face an "imminent international crisis"

[Need Vacation]

There is a very strong rumor circulating on the web about the "imminent international crisis" that will unfold as soon as the president-elect is sworn into office. Here's just one of the links that has Gen. Powell warning about it:

http://www.dailypaul.com/node/69879
and this
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmi...be_tested.html

There has also been a word about the "imminent international crisis" from people like Madelene Albright, and Brzezinski. Does any one have a guess as to what they are talking about? And why do these people know "when" this crisis will take place?

[Rickson]

Just like they knew about Oklahoma City, 9/11, the 7-7 bombings, etc.

There are no terrorists other than our gov't.

[kolya23]

I can't click on those links, but this whole thing seems absurd. What is p(major event in the first 100 days in office)? Pretty high, especially if some Nostradamus out there has predicted that there will be an event, and so any event will be interpreted as such.

Speaking generally, I think the most likely imminent international crises are regime collapse in Iran, regime collapse in North Korea, and something economic (such as complete economic collapse in country X). With lower oil prices, the regime in Iran could be in trouble, and that is always an unstable situation with competing power centers in the gov't. Huge petro$, like winning, cures everything, but the whole house of cards could collapse.

Suppsedly Kim Jong Il is dying or severely ill, and there is maneuvering in North Korea regarding his succession. If North Korea rejoined the int'l community, that would actually be a huge crisis, as it would be expensive for S Korea to reconstruct, and it would call into question the reason for American alliances with Japan and S Korea (right now, we're supposedly defending against N Korea, not China).

The economic one is obvious.

A fourth one could be if the Iraqis are unable to come to a deal with us about the status of forces agreement in Iraq. But I don't think that's very serious.

[Ohel Moed]

Speaking about North Korea, I found this story, about a 25-year-old man who lived for 22 years in a North Korean prison camp, and escaped, very fascinating:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0081105f1.html

Escapee gives glimpse of North prison camps


By ALEX MARTIN
Staff writer
Shin Dong Hyuk had just turned 14 when he was forced to watch the executions of his mother and older brother for trying to escape from North Korea's "total control" prison camp No. 14, a Stalinist gulag for political prisoners. His mother was hanged; his brother was shot nine times.


http://www.japantimes.co.jp/images/p...0081105f1a.jpg




At the time, Shin, who was born and raised in the camp, felt no pity for them. Total control meant the political prisoners were in until they died.

"They tried to escape. Naturally, death was the price they had to pay," said Shin, who had absorbed the inhuman logic of the camp.

Now 25, Shin acknowledged to The Japan Times in late October that he has only recently begun to understand that this was an abnormal sentiment to harbor against one's kin.

"I suffered for their misdeeds, and I blamed them for bringing such pain upon me," Shin said through an interpreter, referring to the torture he suffered as retaliation for the failed escape attempt by his mother and brother. "But if I am ever reincarnated, I'd like to know what it feels like to be loved by your parents, and to love them back, like a normal person."

Shin is the sole known escapee born and raised in North Korea's prison camp No. 14.

Spending his first 22 years under intense persecution, working in factories, living on meager rations meted out by sadistic guards who would torture the captives at every possible excuse, Shin did not even consider bolting until he heard stories of the outside world from a new inmate brought to his section.

His curiosity aroused, Shin agreed to escape with him on Jan. 2, 2005. However, while Shin managed to get away, the man died stuck in the electrified perimeter fence.

Crossing into China a month later, Shin spent a year in hiding before being taken in by the South Korean Consulate in Shanghai. The mission arranged his defection to Seoul, where he lives today.

Speaking in late October during a weeklong tour of Tokyo, Shin said he feels it his duty to spread the word on the cruel realities the prisoners face.

"If talking about my experiences could hasten in any way the dismantling of the prison camps and the democratization of North Korea, I couldn't ask for more," Shin said.

A victim of the hermit state's guilt-by-association collective punishment of political criminals, Shin was born Nov. 18, 1982, in the camp situated near Kaechon, 75 km north of Pyongyang.

His father, a model prisoner the guards rewarded by granting him permission to marry, was initially captured and taken to camp No. 14 with his family in 1965 after officials discovered that two of his brothers had defected to the South during the Korean War — conduct that branded the entire family and descendants three generations down as "traitors of the country."

Born to work and die in the camp and considered unfit for any ideological training, Shin said he had not known who either Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il were until after his escape.

"From what I've learned in the past few years, Kim and his regime seem to me like a giant fraud ring," Shin said.

Gruesome mementos of Shin's past are engraved across his body: his back is covered with scars of severe burns he was administered when he was 13 — in retaliation for the attempted escape of his mother and brother. His right middle finger was lopped off as punishment for accidentally dropping a sewing machine, and both his shins are badly scarred, wounded during his escape, when his feet were temporarily tangled while he crawled through the electric fence that killed his fellow escapee.

In 2007, Shin published an autobiography titled "Escape to the Outside World" in Korean and later in Japanese. It offers a detailed portrait of the system maintained in these camps, where children like Shin — prisoners from birth — are dehumanized and isolated from their families as slave laborers to toil away in various factories that are reported to be providing a large-scale production base for the Kim regime.

Shin said he did not know the destination of the products they made, but believes he and his fellow inmates served as a wage-free, valuable workforce.

Human Rights Watch and No Fence in North Korea, which supported Shin's visit to Tokyo, said they were looking to publish his book in English to reach a wider audience.

American human rights investigator David Hawk's report on the North's concentration camps, titled "The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps," says these institutions feature "forced labor colonies, camps, and prisons, where scores of thousands of prisoners — some political, some convicted felons — are worked, many to their deaths, in mining, logging, farming and industrial enterprises, often in remote valleys located in the mountainous areas of North Korea."

Shin said he still has much trouble adjusting to his new environment and is trying to grasp the concept of "freedom."

"My entire life was dictated by the rules of camp No. 14. Here I am in a democratic country, and I find myself experiencing difficulty making my own decisions," Shin said. He also has a hard time understanding emotions most of humanity usually take for granted — joy, friendship and love.

"I first learned of the term 'to have fun,' after I came to South Korea," he said. "When people ask me what I enjoy doing, the closest feeling I can relate to that is from memories of my childhood when I used to play simple games with other children of the camp. That's about it."

Today, Shin works part-time in Seoul restaurants when he is not busy with his human rights activities. He spends a lot of his time on his own, and doesn't interact with others that often.

"I've met a few other North Korean defectors in Seoul, but only for a quick chat. I'm learning how to use the Internet, but besides that, I don't have much to say about myself besides my past experience," he said, adding he hopes to someday have a girlfriend.

When asked what he would say if he had the chance to talk to the next U.S. president, Shin said he'd like to ask him to help terminate the concentration camps.

"My heart is still with the prisoners. We need to demolish that system," he said.

[Need Vacation]

I found a youtube record of the Biden's speech in Seattle.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWXOC45IW30

This is just weird that a VP candidate can give a speech like that and not a single media outlet would pick it up. Why did I have to go on youtube to find something like that in the first place?
Anyway, my guess is that it will be something related to Iran. Don't know what exactly it's gonna be though.

And here's the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough - I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it's gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you, not financially to help him, we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they're made if they work, then they weren't viewed as a crisis. If they don't work, it's viewed as you didn't make the right decision, a little bit like how we hesitated so long dealing with Bosnia and dealing with Kosovo, and consequently 200,000 people lost their lives that maybe didn't have to lose lives. It's how we made a mistake in Iraq. We made a mistake in Somalia. So there's gonna be some tough decisions. They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the sub-continent. They may emanate from Russia's newly-emboldened position because they're floating in a sea of oil.

[The President]

Originally Posted by Need Vacation

This is just weird that a VP candidate can give a speech like that and not a single media outlet would pick it up. Why did I have to go on youtube to find something like that in the first place?

It was all over just about every media outlet three weeks ago when it happened.

[Westley]

Only really obscure ones, like ABC

http://www.actuarialoutpost.com/actu...d.php?t=150792

[DoctorNo]

Originally Posted by Need Vacation

This is just weird that a VP candidate can give a speech like that and not a single media outlet would pick it up. Why did I have to go on youtube to find something like that in the first place?

???

McCain's campaign was using Biden's speech, for Pete's sake, so clearly someone knew about it. Not sure why you didn't hear about it.

[Need Vacation]

Originally Posted by The President

It was all over just about every media outlet three weeks ago when it happened.

My bad, i haven't been watching much of the news really. The football season is underway, you know.

[Patrick Bauer]

My predictions for International fan crapping for Jan. 2009 to April 2009.
One or more of these things will occur.
1. Government collapse/regime change in Pakistan.
2. Israel bombs multiple locations within Iran as a nuclear deterrent.
3. Putin is "invited" into Georgia or some other ex-soviet state beginning the rebuild of CCCP 2.