Et tu, Gul? Then fall, Erdogan

Turkey in Turmoil

By M K Bhadrakumar 

One thing that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said before pushing ahead on Tuesday with a four-day tour of the Maghreb tour still hangs suspended in the air. Hardly anyone picked it up. He said Turkish intelligence is looking into possible links between the recent incidents in Istanbul, scene of violently suppressed protests, and foreign elements. 

Erdogan hinted that some leads are already available with the Turkish intelligence. "Our intelligence work is ongoing. It is not possible to reveal their names. But we will have meetings with their heads." 

His words suggested that there might have been concerted foreign interference. Logically, the eyes turn toward Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad. But then, Erdogan also blamed Twitter for inciting unrest. He said,

There is now a menace, which is called Twitter. The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.

The shameful silence of the French elite

France's Blood Libel Against Israel

By Guy Milliere

On September 30, 2000, at the beginning of the Palestinian terrorist offensive against Israel called since then the "second intifada," a particularly violent clash took place at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. As shots were exchanged between Arab militiamen and Israeli soldiers, cameramen from various television channels were nearby, filming news reports. One of these reports quickly spread around the world and became a ubiquitous tool for anti-Israeli Arab propaganda. It showed a young boy huddling against his father, the two unsuccessfully trying to protect themselves from gunfire: the son appeared to have been killed. The commentary accompanying the images was overwhelming. The last words of the voice-over, uttered in a stricken tone, were: "The child is dead".

The child, Mohammed al-Dura, immediately became a "martyr" -- and a symbol. The Israeli army clearly dared to kill defenseless people, even children!

The report was considered indisputable: it had been broadcast on the main French public channel, France 2, and validated by a noted journalist, Charles Enderlin.

Why Serial Asset Bubbles Are Now The New Normal

One question distills the dynamics down to their essence: cui bono, to whose benefit?   

By Charles Smith

Why are asset bubbles constantly popping up around the globe? The answer is actually quite simple. Asset bubbles are now so ubiquitous that we've habituated to extraordinary excesses as the New Normal; the stock market of the world's third largest economy (Japan) can rise by 60% in a matter of months and this is met with enthusiasm rather than horror: oh goody, another bubblicious rise to catch on the way up and then dump before it pops.

Have you seen the futures for 'roo bellies and bat guano? To the moon, Baby! The key feature of the New Normal bubbles is that they are finance-driven: the secular market demand for housing (new homes and rental housing) in post-bubble markets such as Phoenix has not skyrocketed; the huge leaps in housing valuations are driven by finance, i.e. huge pools of cheap credit seeking a yield somewhere, anywhere:

The Hidden Jobless Disaster

At the present slow pace of job growth, it will require more than a decade to get back to full employment defined by pre-recession standards

By EDWARD P. LAZEAR

The market tanked Wednesday on bad preliminary job news. And so, when Friday's jobs report is released, the unemployment rate and the number of new jobs will come in for close scrutiny. Then again, they always attract the most attention. Even the Federal Reserve focuses on the unemployment rate, announcing on a number of occasions that a rate of 6.5% will indicate when it is time to start raising interest rates and winding down the Fed's easy-money policies.

Yet the unemployment rate is not the best guide to the strength of the labor market, particularly during this recession and recovery. Instead, the Fed and the rest of us should be watching the employment rate. There are two reasons.

First, the better measure of a strong labor market is the proportion of the population that is working, not the proportion that isn't. In 2006, 63.4% of the working-age population was employed. That percentage declined to a low of 58.2% in July 2011 and now stands at 58.6%. By this measure, the labor market's health has barely changed over the past three years.

Small African Country To "Seize" Chinese Oil Exploration Assets

Global GDP desperately needs a source of Keynesian "growth"...

It's one thing for broke Argentina to nationalize assets of just as broke Spain. However when tiny west-African country Gabon decides to "seize" assets from three international oil companies including China's petrochemical giant Sinopec, things not only get interesting, but puts a brand new pawn on the global geopolitical chessboard. But why is Gabon seeking to antagonize some of the primary participants in its crude extraction supply chain? Simple: leverage, or its own perception thereof. As the FT reports, this surprising move comes as Gabon prepares to "launch a licensing round for the deep waters off its coast. Experts say reserves in the Gabon Basin could rival deep offshore discoveries in Brazil."

So what happens next? The same as when every banana republic reverts to its banana republic stats - corporate partners are alienated, a rogue oligarchic regime proceeds to spend whatever money it has managed to steal in recent years, the government is destabilized, a military coup follows, currency devaluation, hyperinflation, economic collapse, until one oligarch is replaced with another (future) who attempts to restore relations with the same corporations that are being nationalized today.

From FT:

Tensions between the industry and Gabon’s oil ministry come as a number of African countries attempt to wrest better terms from foreign multinationals and clamp down on transfer pricing and tax evasion.

Barack Obama's national security state is now beyond democratic control

All the laughter once directed at the “paranoid” Right now rings hollow

By Tim Stanley

Those crazy American conspiracy theorists who live up trees with guns and drink their own pee don’t seem quite so crazy anymore.  It turns out that a “secret court order” has empowered the US government to collect the phone records of millions of users of Verizon , one of the most popular telephone providers – a massive domestic surveillance programme and a shocking intrusion into the lives of others. For the first time in history, being an AT&T customer doesn’t seem such a bad thing after all.

Of course, it isn't the first time that a US administration has spied on its own people. The origins of this particular order lie first in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and then in Section 215 of the Patriot Act, backed by George W Bush and passed by Congress after 9/11. Normally, domestic surveillance only targets suspicious individuals, not the entire population, but in 2006 it was discovered that a similarly wide database of cellular records was being collected from customers of Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth. There was plenty of outrage and plenty of lawsuits, but the National Security Agency never confirmed that the programme had been shut down. It would appear that it’s still in rude health: the latest court order for collecting data runs from April 25 to July 19.

The story of The Republic of Cyprus’ descent into bankruptcy is a Greek tragedy of epic proportions

The entire bailout of Cyprus is essentially a wholesale theft of national assets

by John Henry Morgan

The Cyprus Political Crisis post-1974

In July 1974, in the face of an airborne invasion backed by the armour of NATO member Turkey, 200,000 Greek Cypriot citizens ran from their homes with only the clothes on their backs. The Greek Cypriot armour and infantry were no match for the second largest standing army in NATO, equal in size to the British and French forces combined. The Greek Cypriots were easily routed. The victors conducted summary executions of thousands of their prisoners and threw some of the bodies down wells to hide their crimes.

37% of the island of Cyprus was taken; 50,000 Turkish Cypriots fled north and took shelter in the homes abandoned by the Greek Cypriots; 200,000 Greek Cypriot refugees fled south and were housed in tents, in the same way that hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are now sheltered by the Turkish Government in 2013.

Yet so began the housing boom in Cyprus. Refugees in the Turkish-occupied North had the pick of thousands of abandoned homes. Refugees in the South had to build their own. The Cyprus Government parceled out plots of government land. The banks would not give mortgages on state land so the Cyprus Government stepped in and funded the construction industry.

Political opportunism was not far off. During his election campaign Former President Glafcos Clerides allegedly promised to give Greek Cypriot refugees temporary title to thousands of Turkish Cypriot homes and land. Once he was elected, the program was halted. He handed out 8,000 Government jobs to party cronies in his 10 years as President, perhaps by way of consolation.

Patronage, cronyism and clientelism have been the hallmark of government control in both the South and occupied-North of Cyprus. Since the Turkish occupation, employment in the State sector in Cyprus has been used to reward party loyalty (and to incentivize elections). The civil service in the free Republic of Cyprus has grown from 18,000 workers in 1978 (costing €36 million in annual salaries and benefits), to 70,000 workers in 2012 (costing taxpayers and business €2.8 billion per year).

One in six workers out of a total workforce of 440,000 are employed in the public sector. The government controls an empire of 63 Semi-Government Organisations (SGOs) plus the Cyprus National Guard, an army of conscripts headed by a permanent officer corps. Officials in charge of the SGOs are appointed by party affiliation. SGOs are monopolies and can set their own tariffs.

State teachers have become the highest paid in Europe, with top teachers earning almost three times (282%) the salaries of their counterparts across Europe. In January 2013, state teachers went on strike because they were required to work one extra lesson per week, 40 minutes. Electricity prices skyrocketed to the second highest in Europe, to fund the pensions of the broader state sector. Between 2009 and 2011, the price of domestic electricity doubled. A clerk in government with a High School Certificate could earn the same salary as a Professor in a private university.

In December 2012, the pension funds of the Telecommunications, Electricity and Ports Authorities were raided to pay State workers their 13th cheques. In May 2013, the workers of the Ports Authority downed tools because their 14th cheque was reduced by half.

All political parties have been complicit in the transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public sector. In 2009, 98 shipping containers of Iranian armaments on their way to Syria, were intercepted by the US Navy. On 11 July, 2011, they exploded while being stored at the Cyprus naval base. The island’s main power station was destroyed and 13 lives were lost. Insurance companies paid out the first claims within weeks. The Cypriot Parliament charged the taxpayers €99 million to cover claims for “Public Liability”. The item was slipped in as the last entry of the 2013 State Budget.

The DIKO Party is the government’s coalition partner (and coalition partner of most of the previous governments). While in power from 2003 to 2008, is alleged to have amassed €18 million of Party funds by endorsing a contract to buy two additional Airbus planes for the loss-making Cyprus Airways.

In 2007, the DIKO government asked parliament to approve the construction of a multi-billion Euro offshore floating Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal. The gas was meant to be used to power the Vassilikos Power station (destroyed in July 2011, as mentioned above). Parliament questioned why such a massive construction was needed when a few storage tanks would suffice. The government failed to tell the nation that trillions of cubic feet of gas had been discovered offshore. Politicians had set up a front company to take a cut of the billions of Euros taxpayers would contribute to build the plant and to ensure they received an annual dividend from the profits of selling millions of cubic feet of LNG to Europe.

Government debt has been compounded because Cypriots generally avoid paying taxes. Indeed, there are only 52 tax inspectors in the whole country. In her report to Parliament in April 2013, the Auditor-General noted that Cypriots owed their government €1.6 billion in back-taxes and fines, enough to pay off all Eurobond debt due in 2013. She pointed out that failure to collect taxes meant that €300 million of State revenue had been irretrievably lost.

At the end of December 2012, ex-President Christofias vacated the rotating Presidency of the European Council. For 6 months work, he would receive an EU pension estimated at €10,000 per month, courtesy of European taxpayers. For his 17 years as an MP and 5 years as President of the Republic of Cyprus, he would receive a State pension of €22,000 per month, a brand new BMW limousine costing €43,000, a driver, a secretary and 15 body-guards, courtesy of Cypriot taxpayers.

Just one month before Cypriot Presidential elections of February 2013, the Trade Union-backed Communist regime of ex-President Christofias was assiduously appointing party apparatchiks to all key State posts, such as to the Central Bank of Cyprus and the newly-formed State Hydrocarbons Company (theoretically a private company). This guaranteed that the looting and pillage of the Cyprus economy could continue, long after President Christofias had left power.

What We Don't Know About Spying on Citizens

Scarier Than What We Know

The NSA's surveillance of cell-phone calls show how badly we need to protect the whistle-blowers who provide transparency and accountability

By Bruce Schneier

Yesterday, we learned that the NSA received all calling records from Verizon customers for a three-month period starting in April. That's everything except the voice content: who called who, where they were, how long the call lasted -- for millions of people, both Americans and foreigners. This "metadata" allows the government to track the movements of everyone during that period, and a build a detailed picture of who talks to whom. It's exactly the same data the Justice Department collected about AP journalists.

The Guardian delivered this revelation after receiving a copy of a secret memo about this -- presumably from a whistle-blower. We don't know if the other phone companies handed data to the NSA too. We don't know if this was a one-off demand or a continuously renewed demand; the order started a few days after the Boston bombers were captured by police.

We don't know a lot about how the government spies on us, but we know some things. We know the FBI has issued tens of thousands of ultra-secretNational Security Letters to collect all sorts of data on people -- we believe on millions of people -- and has been abusing them to spy on cloud-computer users. We know it can collect a wide array of personal data from the Internet without a warrant. We also know that the FBI has beenintercepting cell-phone data, all but voice content, for the past 20 years without a warrant, and can use the microphone on some powered-off cell phones as a room bug -- presumably only with a warrant.

Debt and deficits don't matter--until they do

$179,000 Each - In Debt

by Charles Hugh-Smith

Longtime contributor B.C. recently shared some eye-opening charts of debt in the U.S. The charts are self-explanatory, but I've added a few notes to highlight some of the key points.

Here is a chart of total government debt, local, state and Federal. For decades we've been assured by the delusional alliance of the Keynesian Cargo Cult and self-serving politicos that "deficits don't matter." Is adding debt while gross domestic product (GDP), wages, etc. are basically flatlined sustainable forever? Deficits don't matter until they do, and that will likely be a Supernova Model event of sudden crisis and implosion. When Escape from a Previously Successful Model Is Impossible (November 29, 2012)

Let's add household debt to the total government debt. This doesn't change the trajectory of rising debt much, but it neatly illustrates the era of financialization and "deficits don't matter" which began in the early 1980s of "financial innovations" such as securitizing the bedrock of middle class wealth, the family home.

Repetitive Stupidity

China Ponders Tariffs on EU Wine in Response to EU Tariffs on Solar Panels

By Mike "Mish" Shedlock

No one wins a trade war. Ever. Not countries, not companies, and certainly not consumers. Yet, here we go again. People's Daily says China has more cards to play in EU trade dispute.

China still has plenty more cards to play in an increasingly ugly trade dispute with the European Union, the official People's Daily newspaper said on Thursday, accusing Europe of not realizing that its global power was waning.

The EU will impose duties on imports of Chinese solar panels from this week, a move that infuriated Beijing despite European attempts to soften the blow with a reduced rate. China in response announced on Wednesday its own anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probe into imports of wine from the EU.

"We have set the table for talks, (yet) there are still plenty of cards we can play," the newspaper wrote. "China does not want a trade war, but trade protectionism cannot but bring about a counter-attack."

A declining Europe needs to understand it can no longer laud it over other countries, the paper added.

"Times change and power rises and falls. Still this has not changed the deep-rooted, haughty attitudes of certain Europeans," it wrote.

The scale of domestic surveillance under Obama, frightens even hard core leftists

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

Under the terms of the order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data and the time and duration of all calls

by Glenn Greenwald

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

What if Laws Applied to Everyone?

What do we do about a government that breaks the laws we have hired it to enforce? 

by Andrew P. Napolitano

What if government officials have written laws that apply only to us and not to them? What if we gave them the power to protect our freedoms and our safety and they used that power to trick and trap some of us? What if government officials broke the laws we hired them to enforce? What if they prosecuted others for breaking the same laws they broke?

What if the government enacted a law making it a crime to provide material assistance to terrorist organizations? What if that law was intended to stop people from giving cash and weapons to organizations that bomb and maim and kill? What if the government looked at that law and claimed it applied to a dentist or a shopkeeper who sold services or goods to a terrorist organization, and not just to financiers and bomb makers?

What if an organization that killed also owned a hospital or a school and the law made it a crime to contribute to the hospital or the school? What if the Supreme Court ruled that the law is so broad that it covers backslapping, advocacy and free speech? What if the court ruled that the law makes it a crime to encourage any terrorist organization to do anything – fix teeth, educate children, save lives or kill people? What if the law makes it a crime to talk to any person known to be a terrorist? What if the law is so broad that it punishes ideas and the free expression of those ideas, even if no one is harmed thereby?

Let’s get real about reversing the recession Part II

Britain has profound economic problems that can only be addressed through the wholesale renewal of production and infrastructure

by Phil Mullan 

The unemployment puzzle: why didn’t it rise further?

Probably the most popular conjunctural explanation for the ‘productivity puzzle’ relates to what’s been happening to jobs: employment didn’t fall away as much as it would normally be expected to in the recent recession. It did rise but to a lower level than many anticipated – seven to eight per cent rather than the predicted double-figures percentage. Hence sharply lower output in the recession (by over six per cent) as a ratio to relatively more workers and more working hours expressed itself as reduced productivity. And because unemployment didn’t rise as much as might have been expected during the recession, the normal start of the recovery in the productivity statistics, with firms laying off workers, didn’t happen either. 

A common rationalisation for this is that Britain has experienced an increase in ‘labour-market flexibility’ - the economists’ way of saying that people have been prepared to accept lower wages or work fewer hours. As a result, it’s been less costly for employers to keep on more workers than in previous downturns. The fall in real wages since 2008 has made it cheaper for businesses to hold on to labour.

Argentina’s crazy plan to save the economy through money laundering

Cristinanomics

BY DOUGLAS FARAH

Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has hit on a novel way to try to alleviate her self-inflicted economic free fall and acute shortage of hard currency -- invite money launderers from around the world to put their dollars in Argentine banks with no questions asked.

That's not, of course, the official plan. But this month's move is the latest in a series of steps that seem more rooted in magical thinking than in economic reality that have pushed Argentina ever closer to financial ruin and international pariah status. The government-sponsored amnesty to allow any amount of dollars from anywhere in the world to find a home in Argentina, with no questions asked, was passed into law last Wednesday. The justification is the need for hard currency because the current economic policies have drive up the value of the "blue-" or black-market dollar to 10 pesos while the official exchange remains pegged at 5 pesos.

The Federal Reserve is making unemployment worse and the average American poorer

The Fed's Zero Interest Rate Policies Amount To A War On Jobs

By Marc A. Miles

It is easy to conclude that Federal Reserve policy has failed.  Despite record low rates generated by massive purchases of government and mortgage back securities, economic growth is stuck below 2.5 percent and unemployment remains far from pre-recession levels.

In fact it is much worse.  The Fed’s policy has actually retarded job creation.

Fewer Job Opportunities

Understanding this perverse employment outcome requires simply understanding employers’ incentives. To expand production employers either hire more workers or invest in new machinery and technology. The decision is influenced strongly by the relative cost of the two. If the relative cost of workers falls, the employer hires more people and spends less on investments. Conversely, a higher relative cost of workers encourages slower hiring.

Abstract Immigrants

Unlike inanimate objects, people have cultures and not all cultures are compatible

Admitting people with incompatible cultures is an irreversible decision with incalculable consequences.

By Thomas Sowell

One of the many sad signs of our times is the way current immigration issues are discussed. A hundred years ago, the immigration controversies of that era were discussed in the context of innumerable facts about particular immigrant groups. Many of those facts were published in a huge, multi-volume 1911 study by a commission headed by Senator William P. Dillingham.

That and other studies of the time presented hard data on such things as which groups’ children were doing well in school and which were not; which groups had high crime rates or high rates of alcoholism, and which groups were over-represented among people living on the dole.

China And The Biggest Territory Grab Since World War II

So China’s claim to the South China Sea, if permitted to stand, will mark the end of the open architecture of the Post-War world

Filipinos protest in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, as part of a global protest over an escalating territorial row in the South China Sea. The territorial row centres on Scarborough Shoal, a tiny rocky outcrop in the South China Sea which the Philippines says is part of its territory because it falls within its exclusive economic zone. China, however, claims virtually all of the South China Sea, which is believed to sit atop huge oil and gas reserves, as its historical territory, even waters close to the coasts of other Asian countries.

By Gordon G. Chang
On June 1^nd , the New York Times reported that China’s mapping authority, Sino-maps Press, issued a new map of the country showing 80% of the South China Sea as internal Chinese water. 

What’s at issue?  Each year, more than half of the world’s annual merchant tonnage passes through the South China Sea as well as a third of the global trade in crude oil and over half of LNG trade.

Beijing’s assertion of sovereignty over that body of water does not necessarily mean it will close the South China Sea off to international commerce.  Yet that would be the next step.  Given its extremely broad view of its right to regulate coastal traffic, Beijing will undoubtedly define the concept of “innocent passage” narrowly and require vessels entering that sea to obtain its permission beforehand and similarly require aircraft flying over it to do the same.  The South China Sea, bordered by eight nations, has long been considered international water.

Can We Get It Back?

Booming economic growth was always the foundation of America

By Peter Ferrara

As Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon reported in their underappreciated work, It’s Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years, the American standard of living (real per capita GDP) grew by seven times from 1900 to 2000. That was the foundation of modern America, and the modern world.

Moreover, it was accomplished with Americans staying in school much longer, and retiring earlier, over the course of that century, which means they worked much less over their lives on average. The average work week, in fact, declined by 50% from 1900 to 1950.

The Fundamental Transformation of America
As a result of that booming economic growth, the typical home that most Americans own today is far superior, bigger, less crowded, and stocked with modern conveniences. By 2000, the average new house in America was 50% bigger than even in the 1960s, with 2-3 times as many rooms per person as in 1900. Moore and Simon add:

It is hard for us to imagine, for example, that in 1900 less than one in five homes had running water, flush toilets, a vacuum cleaner, or gas or electric heat. As of 1950 fewer than 20 percent of homes had air conditioning, a dishwasher, or a microwave oven. Today between 80 and 100 percent of American homes have all of these modern conveniences.

The Forgotten Scandal

True remorse should start with George Zimmerman

By Arnold S. Trebach

Our Attorney General and his boss in the Oval Office have started a combined remorse and charm offensive, which is certainly welcome in light of their numerous scandalous transgressions in recent months. Actually of course those transgressions go back for years. Messrs. Obama and Holder have recently declared that they want to rethink how they can improve their approach to dealing with investigations of reporters who are seeking information from officials. That might help resolve only one of the scandals in which this villainous administration is now involved. Still in the forefront of the public mind are the Benghazi horrors and the IRS depredations.

However, in my mind, the remorse and charm of our leaders ought to be focused on the horrors that they have purposely visited upon one of our decent minority citizens, George Zimmerman. Dealing with his tragic situation will take not only charm and remorse but also guts and courage.

Unlike the other scandals, wherein many of the facts are still unclear, most of the important facts concerning the Zimmerman-Martin tragedy are well known already.

There is no doubt that George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. There is no doubt that Zimmerman claimed he acted out of fear for his life and in self-defense, an issue at the heart of the legal case.

There is no doubt that Zimmerman has persisted in that claim of self-defense. There is also no doubt that the reports of the front-line police officers who responded to the scene of the incident tended to support Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. There is no doubt that Bill Lee, then the Police Chief of Sanford, reviewed all of the evidence and on the basis of that evidence and extensive experience, concluded that there was insufficient evidence to hold Zimmerman. The same was true of the conclusions of the experienced and competent State Attorney, Norman Wolfinger. Part of the evidence they reviewed included the lie detector test that Zimmerman willingly took while in police custody. He passed that objective test. In other words, these experienced police and prosecutorial officials concluded that the suspect was innocent of any criminal behavior.

Is Democracy in Retreat?

No, but further advances depend on the liberal democracies' getting their houses in order 

by LILIA SHEVTSOVA

The decline of democracy and popular disenchantment with democratic institutions have recently become hot topics in academic and think tank circles. Freedom House, in its annual Freedom in the World report released in January, cites a seventh consecutive year of decline in freedom around the world but cautions that the decline is not a precipitous one and thus shouldn’t be exaggerated. Joshua Kurlantzick’s book, Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government, and essay in Foreign Policy “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”, by comparison, offer a starker view of a ”consistent” decline of democracy. Kurlantzick identifies the key culprit for the decline: The middle class, contrary to the expectations of Samuel Huntington and Seymour Martin Lipset, isn’t showing all that much of a longing for freedom these days.

Interestingly, the democratic societies of today feel democratic “retreatism” and the absence of a policy vector much more acutely than they did from the 1960s through the early 1970s, the last period of democratic stagnation and crisis. True, at that time, Western civilization could not afford a prolonged spell of depression and pessimism; the existence of the Soviet Union and the world Communist system forced the West to focus intently on the struggle for the preeminence of its principles. The West constantly needed to flex its muscles and look for ways to reassert itself.

Today the decline of democracy seems more palpable. At the very least, democracy seems to have lost its energy, or has allowed that energy to flow into populist channels. The excitement following the Arab Awakening in 2011 has been replaced by concern that Islamist movements have hijacked whatever democratic prospects existed in those countries. This is especially true of Egypt, and in Syria, the tragedy unfolding on a daily basis and the impact of that tragedy on Syria’s neighbors have also dampened democratic hopes in the region. With only a few exceptions (Georgia, Moldova, and Kyrgyzstan), Eurasia has become a region known for its rising anti-democratic behavior and policies; Russia has experienced the worst deterioration in human rights since the collapse of the USSR. Repression in China has actually increased in recent years—and China presents its own model as an alternative to Western democracy.

At the same time, Western democracies are consumed with their own challenges, most notably the economic crisis, felt in many countries, but most severely in Greece and Spain.. Despite its Nobel Peace Prize last year, the European Union, Western civilization’s most ambitious project in the 20^th century, is a source of concern and disappointment (with notable exceptions, including the Nordic states in particular). The United States is increasingly turning inward, pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan and showing great reluctance to get more involved in Syria.