This really is puzzling. If I went to school with someone who became POTUS, I would certainly want to brag about it. For every answer, there are more questions......
FORGET THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE - HOW ABOUT ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE THAT THE IMPOSTER EVER EXISTED - OK... this is past the 'birthers' questions.... this is just plain old common sense, no political agendas for either side. Just common knowledge that citizens of a country and especially American citizens who even know that Andrew Jackson's wife smoked a corn cob pipe and was accused of adultery or that Lincoln never went to school or Kennedy wore a back brace or Truman played the piano.
Good grief... we are Americans! We are known for our humanitarian interests and caring for our 'fellow man'. We care, but none of us know one single humanizing fact about the history of our own president. Honestly, and this is a personal thing...but it's niggled at me for ages that no one who ever dated him ever showed up. The simple fact of his charisma that caused the women to be drawn to him so obviously during his campaign, looks like some lady would not have missed the opportunity.... We all know about JFK's
magnetism, McCain was no monk, Palin's courtship and even her athletic prowess were probed... Biden's aneurisms are no secret. Look at Cheney and Clinton... we all know about their heart problems and certainly speaking of the opposite sex- how could I have left out Wild Bill before or during the
White House? Nope... not one lady has stepped up and said, "He was soooo shy..." or "What a great dancer!!" Now look at the rest of this... no classmates, not even the recorder for the Columbia class notes ever heard of him....
.... I just dunno about this fellow.
Who was the best man at his wedding? Start there. Then check groomsmen.
Then get the footage of the graduation ceremony. Has anyone talked to the professors? It is odd that no one is bragging that they knew him or taught him or lived with him.
When did he meet Michele and how? Are there photos there? Every president gives to the public all their photos, etc. for their library, etc. What has he released? And who in hell voted for him to be the most popular man in 2010????
Does this make you wonder?
Ever wonder why no one ever came forward from President Obama's past saying they knew him, attended school with him, was his friend, etc. ?? Not one person has ever come forward from his past.
VERY, VERY STRANGE...
This should really be a cause for great concern. To those who voted for him, you may have elected an unqualified, inexperienced shadow man. Did you see a picture called The Manchurian Candidate?.....
Let's face it. As insignificant as we all are... someone whom we went to school with remembers our name or face ... someone remembers we were the clown or the dork or the brain or the quiet one or the bully or something about us.
George Stephanopoulos of ABC News said the same thing during the 2008 campaign. He questions why no one has acknowledged the president was in their classroom or ate in the same cafeteria or made impromptu speeches on
campus.
Stephanopoulos also was a classmate of Obama at Columbia -- the class of 1984. He says he never had a single class with him.
While he is such a great orator, why doesn't anyone in Obama's college class remember him? And, why won't he allow Columbia to release his records?
NOBODY REMEMBERS OBAMA AT COLUMBIA
Looking for evidence of Obama's past, Fox News contacted 400 Columbia University students from the period when Obama claims to have been there, but none remembered him.
Wayne Allyn Root was, like Obama, a political science major at Columbia who also graduated in 1983.
In 2008, Root says of Obama, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that knew him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia .. EVER!
Nobody recalls him. Root adds that he was also, like Obama, "Class of '83 political science, pre-law" and says, "You don't get more exact or closer than that." Never met him in my life, don't know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! And five years ago, nobody even knew who he was. The guy who writes the class notes, who's kind of the, as we say in New York, 'the macha' who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him."
Obama's photograph does not appear in the school's yearbook and Obama consistently declines requests to talk about his years at Columbia, provide school records, or provide the name of any former classmates or friends
while at Columbia ..
NOTE: Root graduated as Valedictorian from his high school, Thornton-Donovan School, then graduated from Columbia University in 1983 as a Political Science major in the same class in which Barack Hussein Obama states he was.
Some other interesting questions..
Why was Obama's law license inactivated in 2002?
Why was Michelle's law license inactivated by Court Order?
It is circulating that according to the U.S. Census, there is only one Barack Obama but 27 Social Security numbers and over 80 aliases. WHAT!! ??? The Social Security number he uses now originated in Connecticut where he is never reported to have lived.
No wonder all his records are sealed!
Please continue sending this out to everyone. Somewhere, someone had to know him in school... before he "reorganized" Chicago & burst upon the scene at the 2004 Democratic Convention & made us all swoon with his charm, poise & speaking pizzazz.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Petraeus Potential Presidential Candidate
Interview with Ray McGovern, Former CIA Analyst.
A former CIA analyst says by making General David Petraeus CIA director, President Barack Obama has given him the opportunity to rally neo-cons support and potentially run for president.
Press TV interviewed Ray McGovern regarding the US troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and General Petraeus new position as the Director of the CIA.
Press TV: I wanted to ask you about Petraeus specifically. It's been said that Obama made this move in order to avoid a public tussle with Petraeus over the schedule of the withdrawal out of Afghanistan by moving him out of theater. Do you think that there is some truth to that?
McGovern: There may be a little truth to that but what Obama has really done is given Petraeus the opportunity now to rally support for himself here in Washington. I believe that Petraeus probably has political ambitions. I would not be surprised to see him on the National ticket either in 2012 or 2016.
Press TV: Many observers online are saying that President Obama timed this reshuffle really well and that this will in fact help to play a very crucial role in this Afghanistan withdrawal. How exactly will this help in the Afghanistan withdrawal?
McGovern: It's not going to help at all. The dynamics there in Afghanistan is such that even though the President security commitment from the military leaders was that they would not object in July of this year when the drawdown starts, the drawdown is going to be very painful because the gains made over recent months are really very illusory.
General Petraeus was talking about them being very fragile and very difficult to maintain. So the bottom line really is Afghanistan is a conflict that really needs to be brought to an end. However, the President will not have any help from the military in doing that because what the military does of course is what a hammer does when it sees a nail. It starts the battle.
So it's going to be still quite a challenge for the civilian President to harness military energy particularly in a year leading up to election year when Obama's primary preoccupation is to make sure that no one in the whole world could call him soft on terrorism.
So it's a very sticky thing. The President is not out of the woods. He thinks he has removed Petraeus, but what he has really done is brought Petraeus into Washington where he can maneuver, and have his own support among the neo-cons. Thus he will cause more problems than he could have out there in Kabul.
Press TV: Let's talk about Mr. Ryan Crocker just before letting you go. They are saying for him to be moving to Kabul as the US Ambassador is a good thing for the United States because Mr. Crocker has proved himself to be a formidable diplomatic fixer. They are saying if anyone can deal with the “erratic” Karzai according to US media it's Mr. Crocker Is there some truth to that?
McGovern: Crocker is apparently a quintessential diplomat. That simply means he engages in exposition of our foreign policy or foreign governments. He's never really been styled as a decision maker or a mover and shaker. So in a word, he will be listening to what Hillary Clinton tells him and to what Petraeus tells him and the military.
He will carefully carry out his duties as he did in Bagdad, and they will not really make much of an impact on the policy itself, but rather in the conduct of diplomacy. He is accomplished in that. This is his fifth ambassadorial post. So he will do a decent job on that. Although, what we really need are strong people who can see that there is no end to these wars. The sooner they end the better.
A former CIA analyst says by making General David Petraeus CIA director, President Barack Obama has given him the opportunity to rally neo-cons support and potentially run for president.
Press TV interviewed Ray McGovern regarding the US troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and General Petraeus new position as the Director of the CIA.
Press TV: I wanted to ask you about Petraeus specifically. It's been said that Obama made this move in order to avoid a public tussle with Petraeus over the schedule of the withdrawal out of Afghanistan by moving him out of theater. Do you think that there is some truth to that?
McGovern: There may be a little truth to that but what Obama has really done is given Petraeus the opportunity now to rally support for himself here in Washington. I believe that Petraeus probably has political ambitions. I would not be surprised to see him on the National ticket either in 2012 or 2016.
Press TV: Many observers online are saying that President Obama timed this reshuffle really well and that this will in fact help to play a very crucial role in this Afghanistan withdrawal. How exactly will this help in the Afghanistan withdrawal?
McGovern: It's not going to help at all. The dynamics there in Afghanistan is such that even though the President security commitment from the military leaders was that they would not object in July of this year when the drawdown starts, the drawdown is going to be very painful because the gains made over recent months are really very illusory.
General Petraeus was talking about them being very fragile and very difficult to maintain. So the bottom line really is Afghanistan is a conflict that really needs to be brought to an end. However, the President will not have any help from the military in doing that because what the military does of course is what a hammer does when it sees a nail. It starts the battle.
So it's going to be still quite a challenge for the civilian President to harness military energy particularly in a year leading up to election year when Obama's primary preoccupation is to make sure that no one in the whole world could call him soft on terrorism.
So it's a very sticky thing. The President is not out of the woods. He thinks he has removed Petraeus, but what he has really done is brought Petraeus into Washington where he can maneuver, and have his own support among the neo-cons. Thus he will cause more problems than he could have out there in Kabul.
Press TV: Let's talk about Mr. Ryan Crocker just before letting you go. They are saying for him to be moving to Kabul as the US Ambassador is a good thing for the United States because Mr. Crocker has proved himself to be a formidable diplomatic fixer. They are saying if anyone can deal with the “erratic” Karzai according to US media it's Mr. Crocker Is there some truth to that?
McGovern: Crocker is apparently a quintessential diplomat. That simply means he engages in exposition of our foreign policy or foreign governments. He's never really been styled as a decision maker or a mover and shaker. So in a word, he will be listening to what Hillary Clinton tells him and to what Petraeus tells him and the military.
He will carefully carry out his duties as he did in Bagdad, and they will not really make much of an impact on the policy itself, but rather in the conduct of diplomacy. He is accomplished in that. This is his fifth ambassadorial post. So he will do a decent job on that. Although, what we really need are strong people who can see that there is no end to these wars. The sooner they end the better.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Trump Says Obama's Birth Certificate is a FRAUD - VIDEO
"The President's attorney flew to Hawaii personally to obtain his long form birth certificate. This is the one man, his attorney, that cannot testify against him due to client attorney privilege. Why send your attorney if you weren't hiding something? Did Obama give his attorney power of attorney to obtain his long form, than took the real form to a forger or he did it himself, than presented the forged long form to the press. It seems plausible and probable." - N.P.Contompasis
You've GOT To Be Kidding Me (Birth Certificate)
by Karl Denninger
Oh do c'mon.... oh Donald, this case is not closed.
You can't possibly by serious.
This document has been altered and whoever did it wasn't even very clever in
doing so.
I downloaded the PDF from the White House Web site - the "official copy" right
from the "Horse's Mouth." Then I loaded it into Illustrator. Look at these
images I then screen-captured - first, the ENTIRE image itself:
Note the light blue border? That's the PDF segment that was dropped in the
background, which was the green "safety paper." So far, so good - they just
took the safety paper background and then dropped in a picture. All is well,
right?Well, no.
Mother's "occupation" - the "Non" on "None" has been altered. What was there
before it was tampered with?
The "Accepted date" (bottom right) has been altered. What was there before it
was tampered with?
As has the other "Accepted" date. What was there before it was tampered with?
There's another problem with those dates too - they're clearly altered, as is
the "None"; here's a well-enhanced (at 1200%) version of one of the dates; you
can clearly see the difference in saturation. That was cut into the original
picture folks.
By the way, they were dumb enough to leave the cuts in the clipboard too. The
bottom part (certification) I can see since it's clearly overlaid on a
background. But the content itself?
This document has been altered; it is not simply a photograph of the registrar's
book that was dropped into a background, and it also is not simply an
agglomeration of two images (the background they constructed, the
"certification" and then the actual certificate.)
Now this does not prove that the alterations were actual changes in content.
They might not be.
But..... what other reason is there to alter an alleged high-resolution photograph?
Got Illustrator? Don't believe me - check it yourself.
(To get the full list of things on the clipboard, load it and then select
"Window->Actions->Links." There they are.)
Advice to Obama: Next time you try to alter something you're presenting to the
press hire someone who knows how to do it without getting caught.
Oh do c'mon.... oh Donald, this case is not closed.
You can't possibly by serious.
This document has been altered and whoever did it wasn't even very clever in
doing so.
I downloaded the PDF from the White House Web site - the "official copy" right
from the "Horse's Mouth." Then I loaded it into Illustrator. Look at these
images I then screen-captured - first, the ENTIRE image itself:
background, which was the green "safety paper." So far, so good - they just
took the safety paper background and then dropped in a picture. All is well,
right?Well, no.
before it was tampered with?
As has the other "Accepted" date. What was there before it was tampered with?
There's another problem with those dates too - they're clearly altered, as is
the "None"; here's a well-enhanced (at 1200%) version of one of the dates; you
can clearly see the difference in saturation. That was cut into the original
picture folks.
bottom part (certification) I can see since it's clearly overlaid on a
background. But the content itself?
This document has been altered; it is not simply a photograph of the registrar's
book that was dropped into a background, and it also is not simply an
agglomeration of two images (the background they constructed, the
"certification" and then the actual certificate.)
Now this does not prove that the alterations were actual changes in content.
They might not be.
But..... what other reason is there to alter an alleged high-resolution photograph?
Got Illustrator? Don't believe me - check it yourself.
(To get the full list of things on the clipboard, load it and then select
"Window->Actions->Links." There they are.)
Advice to Obama: Next time you try to alter something you're presenting to the
press hire someone who knows how to do it without getting caught.
President Trump Trumps the President In the Biggest Game of Texas Holdem Ever - Obama Learns He’s Not the Only One That Can Bluff – More Records About the President’s Past to be Released
Today’s release by President Obama of his birth certificate was a huge coupe for Donald Trump. This same pressure is now being put on the leader of the free world to obtain his college records, Selective Service information, how he paid for his expensive education, law license information and just about everything else the main stream media has failed or refused to investigate. It should also be noted that the main stream media has gone the extra mile to help hide and spin what information was out there.
In today’s press conference given by the President he looked irritated, embarrassed and humiliated. His humiliated look is not so much about his birth certificate but more about the fact that he’ll have to give up the rest of his past information which will finally put to bed the question, “WHO IS BARACK OBAMA?”
Donald Trump Escalates his War on President Obama
Michelle Goldberg is another Liberal Jew who writes for The Daily Beast. I've included this article which has the typical racist claims against Republicans and Mr. Trump, but illustrates exactly why most Americans are asking the same questions Donald Trump is asking. - N.P.Contompasis
Donald Trump's New Obama Conspiracy Theory
by Michelle Goldberg
Not content with questioning the president’s birthplace, Donald Trump is now wondering how a “terrible student” got into the Ivy League. Michelle Goldberg traces the far-right history of the claim—which reassures resentful whites that this seemingly brilliant black man isn’t so smart after all.
The birther bit must have been getting old. Now Donald Trump has opened up a new line of attack on President Obama, accusing him of being a “terrible student” who shouldn’t have gotten into Columbia University or Harvard Law School. “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” he asked the Associated Press. “I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.” He continued darkly, “There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president.”
Not content with questioning the president’s birthplace, Donald Trump is now wondering how a “terrible student” got into the Ivy League. (Photo: Richard Drew / AP)
Like everything Trump says about Obama lately, his comments got lots of media play. Less attention has been paid to where they came from. Conspiracy theories about Obama’s education have been floating around the far right since his presidential campaign, with some of the same people who’ve doubted the president’s birth certificate now demanding to see his college transcripts. Once again, Trump has found a way to raid the fever swamps for talking points.
Claims about Obama’s educational history date back to September 2008, when The Wall Street Journal attacked him for not releasing his school records, writing in an editorial, “Some think his transcript, if released, would reveal Mr. Obama as a mediocre student who benefited from racial preference.” Since then, Orly Taitz, queen of the birthers, has developed elaborate theories about Obama’s college years. As Taitz argues, Obama himself acknowledged that he was directionless when he started college. How, then, did he get himself accepted into the Ivy League?
Her speculation: He went as a foreign exchange student. “Sometimes students with poor grades from other countries who have citizenship in other countries can get into top universities,” she told The Daily Beast. “That might be one of the reasons why his records are not unsealed. If his records show he got into Columbia University as a foreign exchange student, then we have a serious issue with his citizenship.”
Taitz said she also believes that Obama only attended Columbia for nine months rather than two years. As proof, she offered a document from the National Student Clearinghouse database, which verifies college degrees. The record, which confirms Obama’s graduation, lists his dates of attendance as September 1982 to May 1983. Kathleen Dugan, a marketing manager at the National Student Clearinghouse, said Taitz’s document is incorrect, the result of the way she conducted her search.
Obama, in this view, is both sinister and stupid, canny enough to perpetrate one of the biggest frauds in American history but still the ultimate affirmative action baby.
“There were duplicate requests to our site from requestor Orly Taitz which, because of the way the queries were input, yielded both correct and incorrect information on past attendance dates for President Barack Obama,” said Dugan.
Taitz, naturally, said she believes there’s something more ominous at work. She noted that Obama has talked about visiting a friend in Pakistan between his sophomore and junior years of college. “The only reasonable conclusion is that he was there not a month or two, but a year and a half,” she said.
And how did this half-educated mediocrity get into Harvard Law School, and then become editor of the Harvard Law Review? Why, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, of course! According to right-wing lore, a militant Black Muslim named Khalid Al-Mansour introduced his protégé to the prince, who presumably saw a chance to advance his Muslim world-domination agenda by grooming the young man for politics. The prince thus pulled strings on Obama’s behalf and even paid his way.
Taitz has forwarded all her information about Obama’s college years to Trump and said she is gratified to hear him raising the issue. “He might have also gotten it from other sources, too, but he definitely got it from me,” she said. Perhaps he’s also been reading the ultra-right-wing website WorldNetDaily, which ran a 2009 piece asking, “Did radical Muslims help send Obama to Harvard?”
It’s easy enough to see why this particular narrative has endured. Not only does it position the president as a Muslim Manchurian candidate with longtime ties to agents of the caliphate, but it also assures resentful whites that this seemingly brilliant black man isn’t so smart after all. In that sense, it’s of a piece with the right-wing obsession with Obama’s use of a teleprompter, and with the widespread suspicion that he didn’t really write the eloquent Dreams From My Father, a claim Trump recently made at a Tea Party rally. Obama, in this view, is both sinister and stupid, canny enough to perpetrate one of the biggest frauds in American history but still the ultimate affirmative-action baby.
Trump is clearly not as intelligent as Obama, but he’s not an idiot, either. When he blows this particular dog whistle, he knows exactly what the Republican base is hearing.
Donald Trump's New Obama Conspiracy Theory
by Michelle Goldberg
Not content with questioning the president’s birthplace, Donald Trump is now wondering how a “terrible student” got into the Ivy League. Michelle Goldberg traces the far-right history of the claim—which reassures resentful whites that this seemingly brilliant black man isn’t so smart after all.
The birther bit must have been getting old. Now Donald Trump has opened up a new line of attack on President Obama, accusing him of being a “terrible student” who shouldn’t have gotten into Columbia University or Harvard Law School. “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” he asked the Associated Press. “I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.” He continued darkly, “There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president.”
Not content with questioning the president’s birthplace, Donald Trump is now wondering how a “terrible student” got into the Ivy League. (Photo: Richard Drew / AP)
Like everything Trump says about Obama lately, his comments got lots of media play. Less attention has been paid to where they came from. Conspiracy theories about Obama’s education have been floating around the far right since his presidential campaign, with some of the same people who’ve doubted the president’s birth certificate now demanding to see his college transcripts. Once again, Trump has found a way to raid the fever swamps for talking points.
Claims about Obama’s educational history date back to September 2008, when The Wall Street Journal attacked him for not releasing his school records, writing in an editorial, “Some think his transcript, if released, would reveal Mr. Obama as a mediocre student who benefited from racial preference.” Since then, Orly Taitz, queen of the birthers, has developed elaborate theories about Obama’s college years. As Taitz argues, Obama himself acknowledged that he was directionless when he started college. How, then, did he get himself accepted into the Ivy League?
Her speculation: He went as a foreign exchange student. “Sometimes students with poor grades from other countries who have citizenship in other countries can get into top universities,” she told The Daily Beast. “That might be one of the reasons why his records are not unsealed. If his records show he got into Columbia University as a foreign exchange student, then we have a serious issue with his citizenship.”
Taitz said she also believes that Obama only attended Columbia for nine months rather than two years. As proof, she offered a document from the National Student Clearinghouse database, which verifies college degrees. The record, which confirms Obama’s graduation, lists his dates of attendance as September 1982 to May 1983. Kathleen Dugan, a marketing manager at the National Student Clearinghouse, said Taitz’s document is incorrect, the result of the way she conducted her search.
Obama, in this view, is both sinister and stupid, canny enough to perpetrate one of the biggest frauds in American history but still the ultimate affirmative action baby.
“There were duplicate requests to our site from requestor Orly Taitz which, because of the way the queries were input, yielded both correct and incorrect information on past attendance dates for President Barack Obama,” said Dugan.
Taitz, naturally, said she believes there’s something more ominous at work. She noted that Obama has talked about visiting a friend in Pakistan between his sophomore and junior years of college. “The only reasonable conclusion is that he was there not a month or two, but a year and a half,” she said.
And how did this half-educated mediocrity get into Harvard Law School, and then become editor of the Harvard Law Review? Why, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, of course! According to right-wing lore, a militant Black Muslim named Khalid Al-Mansour introduced his protégé to the prince, who presumably saw a chance to advance his Muslim world-domination agenda by grooming the young man for politics. The prince thus pulled strings on Obama’s behalf and even paid his way.
Taitz has forwarded all her information about Obama’s college years to Trump and said she is gratified to hear him raising the issue. “He might have also gotten it from other sources, too, but he definitely got it from me,” she said. Perhaps he’s also been reading the ultra-right-wing website WorldNetDaily, which ran a 2009 piece asking, “Did radical Muslims help send Obama to Harvard?”
It’s easy enough to see why this particular narrative has endured. Not only does it position the president as a Muslim Manchurian candidate with longtime ties to agents of the caliphate, but it also assures resentful whites that this seemingly brilliant black man isn’t so smart after all. In that sense, it’s of a piece with the right-wing obsession with Obama’s use of a teleprompter, and with the widespread suspicion that he didn’t really write the eloquent Dreams From My Father, a claim Trump recently made at a Tea Party rally. Obama, in this view, is both sinister and stupid, canny enough to perpetrate one of the biggest frauds in American history but still the ultimate affirmative-action baby.
Trump is clearly not as intelligent as Obama, but he’s not an idiot, either. When he blows this particular dog whistle, he knows exactly what the Republican base is hearing.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Obama is Taking Over All U.S. Oil Production
By Nicholas Contompasis
“It should be clear to everyone by now that President Obama is setting his full efforts on taking over our U.S. oil industry. Just the thought of this should scare every American into the streets in protest. It seems that the health care industry wasn’t enough. The possibility of a second term for this President is a flip of a coin at this juncture so he knows he must work fast as his polls continue to plummet.
Obama is using Vladimir Putin’s template in Russia to crush the industry’s ability to defend itself from the state. By scaring off all domestic and foreign (BP) oil companies from exploring and drilling within U.S. shores, America will no longer produce its own oil, natural gas, gasoline and coal, thus setting up a perfect scenario for creating a national energy company that would be run by Obama and his cronies.
This is probably one of the most dangerous acts by any President domestically against his own people and public corporations.
President Obama’s plan is, and always has been to force the cost of energy higher and higher. His intention is to legally cripple all domestic production by blaming them for the higher cost of energy, till they’re forced offshore to other lands leaving America without any source of domestic energy production.
So, as you look at the laughter on President Obama’s face in this picture, remember he’s laughing at you and he’s also laughing all the way to the bank as you pay more out of your take home pay for energy to warm your families and get to work.
President Obama is getting between your wallet and your gas tank to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Are you going to let him? ”
Written By : Van Helsing
While Comrade Obama lays the groundwork for Soviet-style show trials to blame the people who provide us with gasoline for the cost of their product, here’s an example of why prices won’t be coming down so long as liberals have their “boot on the neck” of the energy sector:Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. …Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby […is] especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area.The closest village to where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, Alaska. It is one of the most remote places in the United States. According to the latest census, the population is 245… The village, which is 1 square mile, sits right along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, 70 miles away from the proposed off-shore drill site.The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project.The arrogant ecototalitarians at the EPA are well past even pretending to be reasonable. Their open intention is to destroy the domestic energy sector, in keeping with Barack Hussein Obama’s campaign promise to make energy prices “skyrocket.”At stake is an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil. That’s how much the U. S. Geological Survey believes is in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean. For perspective, that represents two and a half times more oil than has flowed down the Trans Alaska pipeline throughout its 30-year history. That pipeline is getting dangerously low on oil. At 660,000 barrels a day, it’s carrying only one-third its capacity.Production on the North Slope of Alaska is declining at a rate of about 7 percent a year. If the volume gets much lower, pipeline officials say they will have to shut it down.The EPA is using fumes from an icebreaker at the far end of nowhere as an excuse to shut down the Alaska pipeline. Patriots have to ask themselves: who is likely to inflict more damage on this country, al Qaeda or the EPA?The appeals board, like all things federal under Obama, is a farce:The Environmental Appeals Board has four members: Edward Reich, Charles Sheehan, Kathie Stein and Anna Wolgast. All are registered Democrats and Kathie Stein was an activist attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.That is, the board is a rubber stamp for Obama’s anti-energy agenda.In a depraved act of sabotage, liberals elected a hard left extremist who insolentlytold us up front that he would destroy our standard of living. They deserve the economic disaster that’s beginning to unfold. The rest of us don’t.
Fueled 'by Viagra' - Gaddafi's Troops Use Rape as a Weapon of War With Children as Young as EIGHT among the victims
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
25th April 2011
Children as young as eight are being raped in front of their families by Gaddafi's forces in Libya, according to a leading charity.
Aid workers described horrific stories of widespread sexual abuse, including one incident in which a group of girls was abducted and held hostage for four days.
When they were finally released, they were too traumatized to speak.
Other children have described being forced to watch as their fathers were murdered and their mothers raped.
They told Save The Children that they themselves were then brutally beaten before being released.
Harrowing stories of sexual assaults against women and children have emerged from those who have fled the besieged cities of Misrata, Ajdabia and Rus-Lanuf.
Many families are now in temporary refugee camps in Benghazi, where they talked to Save The Children staff.
Michael Mahrt, the charity's child protection adviser, said: 'The reports of sexual violence against children are unconfirmed but they are consistent and were repeated across the four camps we visited.
'Children told us they have witnessed horrendous scenes. Some said they saw their fathers murdered and mothers raped.
'They described things happening to other children but they may have actually happened to them and they are just too upset to talk about it - it's a typical coping mechanism used by children who have suffered such abuse.
'What is most worrying is that we have only been able to speak to a limited number of children - what else is happening to those who are trapped in Misrata and other parts of the country who do not have a voice?'.
Mr Mahrt said that some children are showing signs of physical and emotional distress; they are withdrawn, refuse to play and wake up crying in the night.
He added: 'Whenever some children hear a gun being fired they re-live the terrible ordeal they have been through. It is clear that for many of them, their suffering is far from over.'
There have been numerous reports of Gaddafi's troops - some fuelled by Viagra - using rape as a weapon of war.
In the most notorious example, 28-year-old Iman al-Obeidi claimed she was assaulted for two days by 15 men after being abducted at a checkpoint.
She was arrested after trying to tell her story to foreign journalists and has subsequently been charged with slander.
Doctors in Misrata have also treated patients who have been sexually assaulted.
But in a conservative society where rape is heavily stigmatised, many women will not tell even their close family what has happened to them.
Rebel spokesman Abdelbaset Abumzirig, who is based in Misrata, said that there has been a string of horrific assaults in Benghazi Street - parallel to Tripoli Street where a armor battle for the city was fought.
'The Gaddafi forces took control of Benghazi Street before we managed to push them out,' he told Al Jazeera.
'They have been ordered to rape because this means they are insulting Misrata itself.'
He said that some families had spoken to human rights organizations about the assaults
'Some have spoken, some others, you know the old traditions, they didn't speak, but it's not a shame,' he added.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Dr Khalifa al-Sharkassi described how two sisters, aged 16 and 20, had been assaulted by African mercenaries after their brothers had joined the rebels.
The girls' mother was locked in another room while they were raped.
'Four or five Africans took turns raping both girls,' he said. '(Now) one of them just sits and cries and looks lost.'
He said another victim had tried to clean herself with bleach after being attacked.
One of his patients had given herself an injection of chlorine in the belief that this would stop herself becoming pregnant.
25th April 2011
Children as young as eight are being raped in front of their families by Gaddafi's forces in Libya, according to a leading charity.
Aid workers described horrific stories of widespread sexual abuse, including one incident in which a group of girls was abducted and held hostage for four days.
When they were finally released, they were too traumatized to speak.
Other children have described being forced to watch as their fathers were murdered and their mothers raped.
They told Save The Children that they themselves were then brutally beaten before being released.
Harrowing stories of sexual assaults against women and children have emerged from those who have fled the besieged cities of Misrata, Ajdabia and Rus-Lanuf.
Many families are now in temporary refugee camps in Benghazi, where they talked to Save The Children staff.
Michael Mahrt, the charity's child protection adviser, said: 'The reports of sexual violence against children are unconfirmed but they are consistent and were repeated across the four camps we visited.
'Children told us they have witnessed horrendous scenes. Some said they saw their fathers murdered and mothers raped.
'They described things happening to other children but they may have actually happened to them and they are just too upset to talk about it - it's a typical coping mechanism used by children who have suffered such abuse.
'What is most worrying is that we have only been able to speak to a limited number of children - what else is happening to those who are trapped in Misrata and other parts of the country who do not have a voice?'.
Mr Mahrt said that some children are showing signs of physical and emotional distress; they are withdrawn, refuse to play and wake up crying in the night.
He added: 'Whenever some children hear a gun being fired they re-live the terrible ordeal they have been through. It is clear that for many of them, their suffering is far from over.'
There have been numerous reports of Gaddafi's troops - some fuelled by Viagra - using rape as a weapon of war.
In the most notorious example, 28-year-old Iman al-Obeidi claimed she was assaulted for two days by 15 men after being abducted at a checkpoint.
She was arrested after trying to tell her story to foreign journalists and has subsequently been charged with slander.
Doctors in Misrata have also treated patients who have been sexually assaulted.
But in a conservative society where rape is heavily stigmatised, many women will not tell even their close family what has happened to them.
Rebel spokesman Abdelbaset Abumzirig, who is based in Misrata, said that there has been a string of horrific assaults in Benghazi Street - parallel to Tripoli Street where a armor battle for the city was fought.
'The Gaddafi forces took control of Benghazi Street before we managed to push them out,' he told Al Jazeera.
'They have been ordered to rape because this means they are insulting Misrata itself.'
He said that some families had spoken to human rights organizations about the assaults
'Some have spoken, some others, you know the old traditions, they didn't speak, but it's not a shame,' he added.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Dr Khalifa al-Sharkassi described how two sisters, aged 16 and 20, had been assaulted by African mercenaries after their brothers had joined the rebels.
The girls' mother was locked in another room while they were raped.
'Four or five Africans took turns raping both girls,' he said. '(Now) one of them just sits and cries and looks lost.'
He said another victim had tried to clean herself with bleach after being attacked.
One of his patients had given herself an injection of chlorine in the belief that this would stop herself becoming pregnant.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Breaking News - WikiLeaks: Al-Qaida Already Has Nuclear Capacity
Monday, 25 Apr 2011
By Martin Gould
U.S. authorities believe al-Qaida already has nuclear capacity and is ready to use it, new WikiLeaks documents detailing prisoner interrogations in Guantanamo Bay have revealed.
And during questioning, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed threatened the terror group would unleash a “nuclear hellstorm,” Britain’s Daily Telegraph reveals.
The Telegraph has reviewed the papers obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
The newspaper promises more revelations throughout the week.
The newspaper says “A senior al-Qaida commander claimed that the terrorist group has hidden a nuclear bomb somewhere in Europe which will be detonated if Osama bin Laden is ever caught or assassinated.
The U.S. authorities uncovered numerous attempts by al-Qaida to obtain nuclear materials and fear that terrorists have already bought uranium.
Other revelations reveal a plot to put cyanide into air-conditioning units of public buildings across the United States and to recruit ground staff at London’s Heathrow Airport to make attacks on planes easier.
The Guantanamo papers contain details of interrogations of more than 700 detainees at the U.S. base on the Cuban mainland.
The Telegraph says the United States admits that at least 150 prisoners were innocent and have been released. Some were arrested merely for wearing a certain brand of Casio watch that had been used as a timer by al-Qaida.
But it is the information from Khalid and other high-ranking al-Qaida operatives that is the most disturbing. In one section the papers reveal that Khalid “had numerous plots and plans for operations targeting the United States, its allies, and its interests worldwide.”
Khalid’s 15-page file adds: “Detainee stated that as an enemy of the United States, he thought about the U.S. policies with which he disagreed and how he could change them. Detainee’s plan was to make U.S. citizens suffer, especially economically, which would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies.
"Targeting priorities were determined by initially assessing those that would have the greatest economic impact, and secondly which would awaken people politically.”
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
By Martin Gould
U.S. authorities believe al-Qaida already has nuclear capacity and is ready to use it, new WikiLeaks documents detailing prisoner interrogations in Guantanamo Bay have revealed.
And during questioning, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed threatened the terror group would unleash a “nuclear hellstorm,” Britain’s Daily Telegraph reveals.
The Telegraph has reviewed the papers obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
The newspaper promises more revelations throughout the week.
The newspaper says “A senior al-Qaida commander claimed that the terrorist group has hidden a nuclear bomb somewhere in Europe which will be detonated if Osama bin Laden is ever caught or assassinated.
The U.S. authorities uncovered numerous attempts by al-Qaida to obtain nuclear materials and fear that terrorists have already bought uranium.
Other revelations reveal a plot to put cyanide into air-conditioning units of public buildings across the United States and to recruit ground staff at London’s Heathrow Airport to make attacks on planes easier.
The Guantanamo papers contain details of interrogations of more than 700 detainees at the U.S. base on the Cuban mainland.
The Telegraph says the United States admits that at least 150 prisoners were innocent and have been released. Some were arrested merely for wearing a certain brand of Casio watch that had been used as a timer by al-Qaida.
But it is the information from Khalid and other high-ranking al-Qaida operatives that is the most disturbing. In one section the papers reveal that Khalid “had numerous plots and plans for operations targeting the United States, its allies, and its interests worldwide.”
Khalid’s 15-page file adds: “Detainee stated that as an enemy of the United States, he thought about the U.S. policies with which he disagreed and how he could change them. Detainee’s plan was to make U.S. citizens suffer, especially economically, which would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies.
"Targeting priorities were determined by initially assessing those that would have the greatest economic impact, and secondly which would awaken people politically.”
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Unions on the Ropes - Public Employees are Fighting Back, but They Seem Almost Sure to Lose
By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Labor unions fight on in Wisconsin, as the Germans did during the bitter winter of 1944-1945. But the war is lost.
To see how grim is the outlook for public employee unions, let's go to Detroit, where Mayor Dave Bing proposed Tuesday a budget which would cut contributions to public employee health plans by 20 percent and would skip a payment to city pension funds.
"If we do nothing, by 2015 fringe benefits are on pace to consume half of our entire general fund revenue," Mr. Bing said. "We cannot afford benefit packages so rich, nor can we afford to protect the interests of 30,000 people at the expense of 700,000."
Mayor Bing is a Democrat in a heavily Democratic city. Yet he has gone "all Scott Walker" on public employee unions, said Matt Continetti of the Weekly Standard.
Scott Walker is Wisconsin's Republican governor, and Wisconsin is to public employee unions what Stalingrad was to the Nazis: the site of their first major defeat.
Democratic state senators fled the state to try to prevent a vote on Gov. Walker's bill to trim the power of public employee unions. But GOP lawmakers braved massive protests and death threats to pass it.
So Maryann Sumi, a circuit court judge in liberal Dane County (Madison), whose son is a labor organizer, issued an injunction to keep the law from going into effect.
Wisconsin's attorney general appealed. Courts can't interfere with the legislative process before a bill becomes law, J.B. Van Hollen said. The case was sent to the state supreme court.
Two supreme court precedents supported his arguments, and conservatives held a 4-3 majority on the supreme court, so the attorney general felt confident.
But Justice David Prosser, a conservative, was up for re-election April 5. Unions poured millions of dollars into the campaign of his opponent, JoAnne Kloppenburg.
On election night, with an unofficial lead of just 204 votes, Ms. Kloppenburg claimed victory.
She was premature. The tally from the heavily Republican city of Brookfield was accidentally omitted when unofficial returns were reported to the Associated Press. Mr. Prosser won by 7,316 votes, according to a canvass of all of Wisconsin's counties completed April 15.
Because the election was so close, the state will pay for a recount if the loser requests it, as Ms. Kloppenburg did Wednesday. This keeps hope alive among liberal diehards, but likely will result only in a further waste of taxpayer money. The largest margin ever overturned by a recount in Wisconsin was less than 500 votes.
It isn't the modest cuts in contributions to health and pension plans in Gov. Walker's bill labor leaders object to most. It isn't even the restriction of collective bargaining to wages only. It's the provision which makes payment of union dues voluntary.
This is a body blow to Democrats, too. They depend heavily on unions to fill their campaign coffers.
Union bosses already have spent gobs of money in Wisconsin, to no avail. They'll spend more trying to recall Republican state senators. If 20 percent of their members decide not to pay dues, they'll be hurting in 2012.
As people learn how lavish their benefits are, support for public employee unions diminishes. A poll taken in March for Investors Business Daily indicated Americans supported the unions over Mr. Walker, 49 percent to 43 percent. This month, respondents to the IBD poll backed limits on collective bargaining rights, 45 percent to 42 percent.
If persuasion isn't working, maybe threats will. Herb Sanders is president of a local in Michigan of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. At a protest at the state capitol April 13, he told an interviewer:
"If necessary, we will use the valuable public service jobs that we perform as a weapon and shut this state down."
So, some public employee unions may try to win public support by attacking the public.
Though thuggery is unappealing to most Americans, union bosses will win some fights. But they'll be rear guard actions like those fought by the Nazis during their retreats to the Rhine and the Elbe. We're flat broke. This dooms them.
It may also doom the Democratic Party, which is a coalition of special interest groups with little more in common than their desire to feed from the public trough. Now that there is less loot for them to split, they may turn on each other.
Jack Kelly is a columnist for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412 263-1476). More articles by this author
Labor unions fight on in Wisconsin, as the Germans did during the bitter winter of 1944-1945. But the war is lost.
To see how grim is the outlook for public employee unions, let's go to Detroit, where Mayor Dave Bing proposed Tuesday a budget which would cut contributions to public employee health plans by 20 percent and would skip a payment to city pension funds.
"If we do nothing, by 2015 fringe benefits are on pace to consume half of our entire general fund revenue," Mr. Bing said. "We cannot afford benefit packages so rich, nor can we afford to protect the interests of 30,000 people at the expense of 700,000."
Mayor Bing is a Democrat in a heavily Democratic city. Yet he has gone "all Scott Walker" on public employee unions, said Matt Continetti of the Weekly Standard.
Scott Walker is Wisconsin's Republican governor, and Wisconsin is to public employee unions what Stalingrad was to the Nazis: the site of their first major defeat.
Democratic state senators fled the state to try to prevent a vote on Gov. Walker's bill to trim the power of public employee unions. But GOP lawmakers braved massive protests and death threats to pass it.
So Maryann Sumi, a circuit court judge in liberal Dane County (Madison), whose son is a labor organizer, issued an injunction to keep the law from going into effect.
Wisconsin's attorney general appealed. Courts can't interfere with the legislative process before a bill becomes law, J.B. Van Hollen said. The case was sent to the state supreme court.
Two supreme court precedents supported his arguments, and conservatives held a 4-3 majority on the supreme court, so the attorney general felt confident.
But Justice David Prosser, a conservative, was up for re-election April 5. Unions poured millions of dollars into the campaign of his opponent, JoAnne Kloppenburg.
On election night, with an unofficial lead of just 204 votes, Ms. Kloppenburg claimed victory.
She was premature. The tally from the heavily Republican city of Brookfield was accidentally omitted when unofficial returns were reported to the Associated Press. Mr. Prosser won by 7,316 votes, according to a canvass of all of Wisconsin's counties completed April 15.
Because the election was so close, the state will pay for a recount if the loser requests it, as Ms. Kloppenburg did Wednesday. This keeps hope alive among liberal diehards, but likely will result only in a further waste of taxpayer money. The largest margin ever overturned by a recount in Wisconsin was less than 500 votes.
It isn't the modest cuts in contributions to health and pension plans in Gov. Walker's bill labor leaders object to most. It isn't even the restriction of collective bargaining to wages only. It's the provision which makes payment of union dues voluntary.
This is a body blow to Democrats, too. They depend heavily on unions to fill their campaign coffers.
Union bosses already have spent gobs of money in Wisconsin, to no avail. They'll spend more trying to recall Republican state senators. If 20 percent of their members decide not to pay dues, they'll be hurting in 2012.
As people learn how lavish their benefits are, support for public employee unions diminishes. A poll taken in March for Investors Business Daily indicated Americans supported the unions over Mr. Walker, 49 percent to 43 percent. This month, respondents to the IBD poll backed limits on collective bargaining rights, 45 percent to 42 percent.
If persuasion isn't working, maybe threats will. Herb Sanders is president of a local in Michigan of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. At a protest at the state capitol April 13, he told an interviewer:
"If necessary, we will use the valuable public service jobs that we perform as a weapon and shut this state down."
So, some public employee unions may try to win public support by attacking the public.
Though thuggery is unappealing to most Americans, union bosses will win some fights. But they'll be rear guard actions like those fought by the Nazis during their retreats to the Rhine and the Elbe. We're flat broke. This dooms them.
It may also doom the Democratic Party, which is a coalition of special interest groups with little more in common than their desire to feed from the public trough. Now that there is less loot for them to split, they may turn on each other.
Jack Kelly is a columnist for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412 263-1476). More articles by this author
IMF Bombshell: Age of America Nears end Commentary: China’s Economy will Surpass the U.S. in 2016
By Brett Arends, MarketWatch
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page’s Steve Moore critiques the president's speeches attacking Republican budget plans.
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.
According to the IMF forecast, whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.
Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.
China’s economy will be the world’s largest within five years or so.
But they’re miscounting. They’re only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates.
That’s a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China’s exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets.
The IMF in its analysis looks beyond exchange rates to the true, real terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities.” That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.
Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.
Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s.
Naturally, all forecasts are fallible. Time and chance happen to them all. The actual date when China surpasses the U.S. might come even earlier than the IMF predicts, or somewhat later. If the great Chinese juggernaut blows a tire, as a growing number fear it might, it could even delay things by several years. But the outcome is scarcely in doubt.
This is more than a statistical story. It is the end of the Age of America. As a bond strategist in Europe told me two weeks ago, “We are witnessing the end of America’s economic hegemony.”
We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. for so long that there is no longer anyone alive who remembers anything else. America overtook Great Britain as the world’s leading economic power in the 1890s and never looked back.
And both those countries live under very similar rules of constitutional government, respect for civil liberties and the rights of property. China has none of those. The Age of China will feel very different.
Victor Cha, senior adviser on Asian affairs at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me China’s neighbors in Asia are already waking up to the dangers. “The region is overwhelmingly looking to the U.S. in a way that it hasn’t done in the past,” he said. “They see the U.S. as a counterweight to China. They also see American hegemony over the last half-century as fairly benign. In China they see the rise of an economic power that is not benevolent, that can be predatory. They don’t see it as a benign hegemony.”
The rise of China, and the relative decline of America, is the biggest story of our time. You can see its implications everywhere, from shuttered factories in the Midwest to soaring costs of oil and other commodities. Last fall, when I attended a conference in London about agricultural investment, I was struck by the number of people there who told stories about Chinese interests snapping up farmland and foodstuff supplies — from South America to China and elsewhere.
This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.
“There are two systems in collision,” said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU’s Stern business school. “They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism.” What we have seen, he said, is “a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That’s very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages.”
The next chapter of the story is just beginning.
What the rise of China means for defense, and international affairs, has barely been touched on. The U.S. is now spending gigantic sums — from a beleaguered economy — to try to maintain its place in the sun. See: Pentagon spending is budget blind spot .
It’s a lesson we could learn more cheaply from the sad story of the British, Spanish and other empires. It doesn’t work. You can’t stay on top if your economy doesn’t.
Equally to the point, here is what this means economically, and for investors.
Some years ago I was having lunch with the smartest investor I know, London-based hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey. He made the argument that markets are reasonably efficient, most of the time, at setting prices. Where they are most likely to fail, though, is in correctly anticipating and pricing big, revolutionary, “paradigm” shifts — whether a rise of disruptive technologies or revolutionary changes in geopolitics. We are living through one now.
The U.S. Treasury market continues to operate on the assumption that it will always remain the global benchmark of money. Business schools still teach students, for example, that the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond is the “risk-free rate” on money. And so it has been for more than a century. But that’s all based on the Age of America.
No wonder so many have been buying gold. If the U.S. dollar ceases to be the world’s sole reserve currency, what will be? The euro would be fine if it acts like the old deutschemark. If it’s just the Greek drachma in drag ... not so much.
The last time the world’s dominant hegemon lost its ability to run things singlehandedly was early in the past century. That’s when the U.S. and Germany surpassed Great Britain. It didn’t turn out well.
Brett Arends is a senior columnist for MarketWatch and a personal-finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page’s Steve Moore critiques the president's speeches attacking Republican budget plans.
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.
According to the IMF forecast, whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.
Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.
China’s economy will be the world’s largest within five years or so.
But they’re miscounting. They’re only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates.
That’s a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China’s exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets.
The IMF in its analysis looks beyond exchange rates to the true, real terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities.” That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.
Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.
Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s.
Naturally, all forecasts are fallible. Time and chance happen to them all. The actual date when China surpasses the U.S. might come even earlier than the IMF predicts, or somewhat later. If the great Chinese juggernaut blows a tire, as a growing number fear it might, it could even delay things by several years. But the outcome is scarcely in doubt.
This is more than a statistical story. It is the end of the Age of America. As a bond strategist in Europe told me two weeks ago, “We are witnessing the end of America’s economic hegemony.”
We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. for so long that there is no longer anyone alive who remembers anything else. America overtook Great Britain as the world’s leading economic power in the 1890s and never looked back.
And both those countries live under very similar rules of constitutional government, respect for civil liberties and the rights of property. China has none of those. The Age of China will feel very different.
Victor Cha, senior adviser on Asian affairs at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me China’s neighbors in Asia are already waking up to the dangers. “The region is overwhelmingly looking to the U.S. in a way that it hasn’t done in the past,” he said. “They see the U.S. as a counterweight to China. They also see American hegemony over the last half-century as fairly benign. In China they see the rise of an economic power that is not benevolent, that can be predatory. They don’t see it as a benign hegemony.”
The rise of China, and the relative decline of America, is the biggest story of our time. You can see its implications everywhere, from shuttered factories in the Midwest to soaring costs of oil and other commodities. Last fall, when I attended a conference in London about agricultural investment, I was struck by the number of people there who told stories about Chinese interests snapping up farmland and foodstuff supplies — from South America to China and elsewhere.
This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.
“There are two systems in collision,” said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU’s Stern business school. “They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism.” What we have seen, he said, is “a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That’s very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages.”
The next chapter of the story is just beginning.
What the rise of China means for defense, and international affairs, has barely been touched on. The U.S. is now spending gigantic sums — from a beleaguered economy — to try to maintain its place in the sun. See: Pentagon spending is budget blind spot .
It’s a lesson we could learn more cheaply from the sad story of the British, Spanish and other empires. It doesn’t work. You can’t stay on top if your economy doesn’t.
Equally to the point, here is what this means economically, and for investors.
Some years ago I was having lunch with the smartest investor I know, London-based hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey. He made the argument that markets are reasonably efficient, most of the time, at setting prices. Where they are most likely to fail, though, is in correctly anticipating and pricing big, revolutionary, “paradigm” shifts — whether a rise of disruptive technologies or revolutionary changes in geopolitics. We are living through one now.
The U.S. Treasury market continues to operate on the assumption that it will always remain the global benchmark of money. Business schools still teach students, for example, that the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond is the “risk-free rate” on money. And so it has been for more than a century. But that’s all based on the Age of America.
No wonder so many have been buying gold. If the U.S. dollar ceases to be the world’s sole reserve currency, what will be? The euro would be fine if it acts like the old deutschemark. If it’s just the Greek drachma in drag ... not so much.
The last time the world’s dominant hegemon lost its ability to run things singlehandedly was early in the past century. That’s when the U.S. and Germany surpassed Great Britain. It didn’t turn out well.
Brett Arends is a senior columnist for MarketWatch and a personal-finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
Liars and Lies - Why America Will not Default on it's Debt if the Ceiling isn't Raised
Posted by Erick Erickson at Red Country
Reporters, Democrats, and even some Republicans have begun repeating an infectious lie in the prelude to the debt ceiling debate. Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner started it off and it has been repeated by reporters in print, on radio, and on television, including Fox News.
The lie is very simple: a failure to raise the debt ceiling will cause a default on American debt.
This is utterly and categorically a lie. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.
As Senator Pat Toomey noted the other day,
Next year, about 7 percent of all projected federal government expenditures will go to interest on our debt. Tax revenue is projected to cover at least 70 percent of all government expenditures. So, under any circumstances, there will be plenty of money to pay our creditors.
Moreover, as the Congressional Research Service has noted, the Treasury secretary himself has the discretion to decide which bills to pay first in the event that a cash flow shortage occurs.
Nonetheless, the media and Democrats keep repeating the lie. And it is a lie.
Veronique de Rugy and Jason Fichtner chronicled debt ceiling fights in the Washington Times and, from their writing, we can categorically show it to be a lie to claim a failure to raise the debt ceiling will cause a default on American debt obligations.
In 1985, Congress waited nearly three months after the debt limit was reached before authorizing a permanent increase. In 1995, 4 1/2 months passed between hitting the ceiling and congressional action. And in 2002, Congress delayed raising the debt ceiling for three months. In each case, the U.S. and the economy survived.
Not only did the economy survive, but the United States did not default on its debt obligations, the United States did not lose its credit rating, and interest rates did not go up as a result of the default.
To say that failing to raise the debt ceiling will cause a default is a lie and anyone who says it is a liar.
If we fail to raise the debt ceiling and do default, it will not because because of a failure to raise the debt ceiling. It will be because Barack Obama and Tim Geithner chose to default for political gain.
Again, as Senator Toomey points out
[A]s the Congressional Research Service has noted, the Treasury secretary himself has the discretion to decide which bills to pay first in the event that a cash flow shortage occurs. Thus, it is he who would have to consciously, and needlessly, choose to default on our debt if the debt ceiling is not promptly raised upon reaching it. It takes a lot of chutzpah to preemptively blame congressional Republicans for a default only he could cause.
Reporters, Democrats, and even some Republicans have begun repeating an infectious lie in the prelude to the debt ceiling debate. Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner started it off and it has been repeated by reporters in print, on radio, and on television, including Fox News.
The lie is very simple: a failure to raise the debt ceiling will cause a default on American debt.
This is utterly and categorically a lie. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.
As Senator Pat Toomey noted the other day,
Next year, about 7 percent of all projected federal government expenditures will go to interest on our debt. Tax revenue is projected to cover at least 70 percent of all government expenditures. So, under any circumstances, there will be plenty of money to pay our creditors.
Moreover, as the Congressional Research Service has noted, the Treasury secretary himself has the discretion to decide which bills to pay first in the event that a cash flow shortage occurs.
Nonetheless, the media and Democrats keep repeating the lie. And it is a lie.
Veronique de Rugy and Jason Fichtner chronicled debt ceiling fights in the Washington Times and, from their writing, we can categorically show it to be a lie to claim a failure to raise the debt ceiling will cause a default on American debt obligations.
In 1985, Congress waited nearly three months after the debt limit was reached before authorizing a permanent increase. In 1995, 4 1/2 months passed between hitting the ceiling and congressional action. And in 2002, Congress delayed raising the debt ceiling for three months. In each case, the U.S. and the economy survived.
Not only did the economy survive, but the United States did not default on its debt obligations, the United States did not lose its credit rating, and interest rates did not go up as a result of the default.
To say that failing to raise the debt ceiling will cause a default is a lie and anyone who says it is a liar.
If we fail to raise the debt ceiling and do default, it will not because because of a failure to raise the debt ceiling. It will be because Barack Obama and Tim Geithner chose to default for political gain.
Again, as Senator Toomey points out
[A]s the Congressional Research Service has noted, the Treasury secretary himself has the discretion to decide which bills to pay first in the event that a cash flow shortage occurs. Thus, it is he who would have to consciously, and needlessly, choose to default on our debt if the debt ceiling is not promptly raised upon reaching it. It takes a lot of chutzpah to preemptively blame congressional Republicans for a default only he could cause.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
In Nigeria the War Between Muslims and Christians Rages on as Over 500 are Killed in the North
"It's no secret that Iran has been sending arms to the Muslims in the North for years. Iran is a cancer on Asia and Africa. It's time to stop fooling around and destroy Iran." N.P.Contompasis
BBCNews
A Nigerian human rights group says more than 500 people died after presidential elections earlier this month.
The Civil Rights Congress said the violence happened mostly in the northern state of Kaduna and that the number of victims could be even higher.
Rioting broke out when it emerged that Goodluck Jonathan, a southern Christian - had defeated a Muslim candidate from the mostly Islamic north.
Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes to escape the violence.
Mr Jonathan's presidential rival Muhammadu Buhari has denied instigating the "sad, unfortunate and totally unwarranted" events.
The Civil Rights Congress said the worst hit area was the town of Zonkwa in rural Kaduna where more than 300 people died.
"The updated figure is about 516," said Shehu Sani, head of the congress.
Correspondents say Nigeria is braced for possible further unrest over governorship elections on Tuesday in most of Nigeria's 36 states.
Muslim opposition supporters staged riots on Monday when the results of the election became clear. Churches were set alight and Muslims were then targeted in revenge attacks.
In the northern city of Kano on Sunday, many Christians celebrated Easter in police and military barracks where they had taken shelter from the riots.
Can Nigeria unite behind Goodluck Jonathan?
Eyo Anthony said he and his family fled when rioters set fire to shops in their neighbourhood.
"Although it has been calm in the past two days I don't intend to go back to my house... until after the governors' elections," he said.
"I know how I managed to escape with my family and I don't want to relive the same experience."
Many in the north felt the next president should have been from their region because a Muslim president died last year before he could finish his term.
However, some analysts say the violence has more to do with poverty and economic marginalisation in the north than religion.
The north and south also have cultural, ethnic and linguistic differences.
Mr Jonathan was appointed to the presidency last year upon the death of incumbent Umaru Yar'Adua, a northern Muslim whom he had served as vice-president.
He has described the violence following the election as "horrific" and "shocking".
BBCNews
A Nigerian human rights group says more than 500 people died after presidential elections earlier this month.
The Civil Rights Congress said the violence happened mostly in the northern state of Kaduna and that the number of victims could be even higher.
Rioting broke out when it emerged that Goodluck Jonathan, a southern Christian - had defeated a Muslim candidate from the mostly Islamic north.
Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes to escape the violence.
Mr Jonathan's presidential rival Muhammadu Buhari has denied instigating the "sad, unfortunate and totally unwarranted" events.
The Civil Rights Congress said the worst hit area was the town of Zonkwa in rural Kaduna where more than 300 people died.
"The updated figure is about 516," said Shehu Sani, head of the congress.
Correspondents say Nigeria is braced for possible further unrest over governorship elections on Tuesday in most of Nigeria's 36 states.
Muslim opposition supporters staged riots on Monday when the results of the election became clear. Churches were set alight and Muslims were then targeted in revenge attacks.
In the northern city of Kano on Sunday, many Christians celebrated Easter in police and military barracks where they had taken shelter from the riots.
Can Nigeria unite behind Goodluck Jonathan?
Eyo Anthony said he and his family fled when rioters set fire to shops in their neighbourhood.
"Although it has been calm in the past two days I don't intend to go back to my house... until after the governors' elections," he said.
"I know how I managed to escape with my family and I don't want to relive the same experience."
Many in the north felt the next president should have been from their region because a Muslim president died last year before he could finish his term.
However, some analysts say the violence has more to do with poverty and economic marginalisation in the north than religion.
The north and south also have cultural, ethnic and linguistic differences.
Mr Jonathan was appointed to the presidency last year upon the death of incumbent Umaru Yar'Adua, a northern Muslim whom he had served as vice-president.
He has described the violence following the election as "horrific" and "shocking".
Breaking News - Reasons Why Obama Is Fighting The Release Of All Past Records!
By Ann Barnhardt:
I can't believe I'm actually going to say this, but I am starting to feel a teensy-weensy bit of respect for Donald Trump. Finally, someone in the mainstream is saying the things that need to be said about Obama's fake nativity story. To clear up a lot of confusion, below is an image of EXACTLY the document that Obama needs to produce. This is the birth certificate of Susan Nordyke, one of a set of twins who were born at the Kapiolani Hospital in Honolulu on August 5, 1961. Obama CLAIMS to have been born on August 6th. Therefore, this certificate form is EXACTLY THE SAME as what would have been generated for Obama.
This form gives the name, age, address, race and description of the occupation of the father. It does NOT give the religion. It gives the name, age, address, race, occupation outside of the home and last date worked of the mother.
Interestingly, IT DOES NOT LIST THE RACE OF THE CHILD. Look for yourself. There is no field at the top for race of the baby.
So, given this, there are several things we can logically conclude:
1. The word "muslim" does not appear on Obama's BC assuming he was in fact born in Honolulu in August of 1961, because these certificates make no mention of religion at all. So that can't be the big secret.
2. Obama himself cannot be listed as either "caucasian" or "arab" because there is no field on the certificate for the race of the child. So that can't be the big secret, either, assuming Obama even has a Hawaii BC.
3. I doubt that the father's field would say either "Frank Marshall Davis" or "Unknown" because the baby was named "Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.". If you're going to go to the lengths of naming a baby "Jr.", then there is no reason not to list "Sr." as the daddy - even if that is a lie. If you name the kid "Jr.", you're in for a penny, in for a pound. Again, this assumes Barry actually has a Hawaii BC.
So where does this leave us?
A. There is no Hawaii birth certificate because he wasn't born in Hawaii. Ann Dunham was present and enrolled at the University of Washington TWO WEEKS after Obama's alleged birth date. He could have been born just across the border in Canada, and then Granny Dunham registered his birth with the state of Hawaii, thus automatically generating the newspaper announcement. This would have been done to fraudulently obtain citizenship for Barry.
B. He could have been born months earlier. Given that Ann picked up, flew across the Pacific, enrolled and began attending classes at UW all before August 20, 1961, it seems a bit much to think that she did all this at the age of 18 with a tiny newborn baby.
C. Obama could have indeed been born in Kenya, and Granny Dunham submitted a false certificate of home birth to get him US citizenship, again, thus automatically generating the newspaper birth announcement.
D. When Obama was adopted by Lolo Soetoro in Indonesia, his original BC was altered to reflect the new name "Barry Soetoro" with Lolo listed as the father. If this is the case, Obama MUST be a dual citizen of Indonesia, because Indonesia required citizenship of adopted children. Also, unless Obama legally had his named changed back to "Barack Obama", his name today legally remains "Barry Soetoro". This would nullify every document he has signed. If you don't believe me, try signing this year's tax return with the name "Peaches McAwesome" and see if you don't get a visit from the IRS. Finally, and I think this is the monster issue, unless Barry formally rescinded his Indonesian citizenship upon reaching the age of majority, he is AT BEST a dual citizen of the US and Indonesia. If he presented himself as an Indonesian citizen after the age of 18 either to acquire college scholarships OR traveling under an Indonesian passport after the age of 18, then there is no way in God's Green Earth that he can be the President of the United States. No person who has EVER, under any circumstance, claimed citizenship to any country other than the United States as an adult be eligible for the Presidency. That's just common sense. The LEGAL standard per the Constitution is far, far more stringent than that. I realize that. I'm just talking about common sense. This is a no-brainer. Obama is a completely illegal usurper, a con artist, a liar, and he MUST be removed, not by impeachment, but by law enforcement. Impeachment only applies to legitimate sitting Presidents. Obama is neither legitimate, nor the President. He is a hostile invader and the enemy of this nation, its people and its Constitution. Barack and Michelle Obama SHOULD spend the rest of their lives being supported and secured by the tax dollars of the people of the United States of America . . . in lovely Florence, Colorado. -Source: http://barnhardt.biz/index.cfm
I can't believe I'm actually going to say this, but I am starting to feel a teensy-weensy bit of respect for Donald Trump. Finally, someone in the mainstream is saying the things that need to be said about Obama's fake nativity story. To clear up a lot of confusion, below is an image of EXACTLY the document that Obama needs to produce. This is the birth certificate of Susan Nordyke, one of a set of twins who were born at the Kapiolani Hospital in Honolulu on August 5, 1961. Obama CLAIMS to have been born on August 6th. Therefore, this certificate form is EXACTLY THE SAME as what would have been generated for Obama.
This form gives the name, age, address, race and description of the occupation of the father. It does NOT give the religion. It gives the name, age, address, race, occupation outside of the home and last date worked of the mother.
Interestingly, IT DOES NOT LIST THE RACE OF THE CHILD. Look for yourself. There is no field at the top for race of the baby.
So, given this, there are several things we can logically conclude:
1. The word "muslim" does not appear on Obama's BC assuming he was in fact born in Honolulu in August of 1961, because these certificates make no mention of religion at all. So that can't be the big secret.
2. Obama himself cannot be listed as either "caucasian" or "arab" because there is no field on the certificate for the race of the child. So that can't be the big secret, either, assuming Obama even has a Hawaii BC.
3. I doubt that the father's field would say either "Frank Marshall Davis" or "Unknown" because the baby was named "Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.". If you're going to go to the lengths of naming a baby "Jr.", then there is no reason not to list "Sr." as the daddy - even if that is a lie. If you name the kid "Jr.", you're in for a penny, in for a pound. Again, this assumes Barry actually has a Hawaii BC.
So where does this leave us?
A. There is no Hawaii birth certificate because he wasn't born in Hawaii. Ann Dunham was present and enrolled at the University of Washington TWO WEEKS after Obama's alleged birth date. He could have been born just across the border in Canada, and then Granny Dunham registered his birth with the state of Hawaii, thus automatically generating the newspaper announcement. This would have been done to fraudulently obtain citizenship for Barry.
B. He could have been born months earlier. Given that Ann picked up, flew across the Pacific, enrolled and began attending classes at UW all before August 20, 1961, it seems a bit much to think that she did all this at the age of 18 with a tiny newborn baby.
C. Obama could have indeed been born in Kenya, and Granny Dunham submitted a false certificate of home birth to get him US citizenship, again, thus automatically generating the newspaper birth announcement.
D. When Obama was adopted by Lolo Soetoro in Indonesia, his original BC was altered to reflect the new name "Barry Soetoro" with Lolo listed as the father. If this is the case, Obama MUST be a dual citizen of Indonesia, because Indonesia required citizenship of adopted children. Also, unless Obama legally had his named changed back to "Barack Obama", his name today legally remains "Barry Soetoro". This would nullify every document he has signed. If you don't believe me, try signing this year's tax return with the name "Peaches McAwesome" and see if you don't get a visit from the IRS. Finally, and I think this is the monster issue, unless Barry formally rescinded his Indonesian citizenship upon reaching the age of majority, he is AT BEST a dual citizen of the US and Indonesia. If he presented himself as an Indonesian citizen after the age of 18 either to acquire college scholarships OR traveling under an Indonesian passport after the age of 18, then there is no way in God's Green Earth that he can be the President of the United States. No person who has EVER, under any circumstance, claimed citizenship to any country other than the United States as an adult be eligible for the Presidency. That's just common sense. The LEGAL standard per the Constitution is far, far more stringent than that. I realize that. I'm just talking about common sense. This is a no-brainer. Obama is a completely illegal usurper, a con artist, a liar, and he MUST be removed, not by impeachment, but by law enforcement. Impeachment only applies to legitimate sitting Presidents. Obama is neither legitimate, nor the President. He is a hostile invader and the enemy of this nation, its people and its Constitution. Barack and Michelle Obama SHOULD spend the rest of their lives being supported and secured by the tax dollars of the people of the United States of America . . . in lovely Florence, Colorado. -Source: http://barnhardt.biz/index.cfm
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Iran Will Invade Saudi Arabia? Can America Handle Another Muslim War?
By Joseph Farah
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
In what could produce a Muslim vs. Muslim military confrontation in the powder-keg that is the Middle East, Shi'a Iran is considering handing Sunni Saudi Arabia an ultimatum over sending its troops to crack down on the Shi'a majority in nearby Bahrain – a development that would be tantamount to armed conflict between the two bastions of Islam, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
Iranian officials even have gone so far as to suggest blocking the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to stop ships carrying military supplies to Bahrain from the Saudi kingdom which, along with the United Arab Emirates, sent troops there at the request of Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.
Al-Khalifa had requested the troops to put down an increase in violence by Shi'a protesters, who make up some 70 percent of the Bahraini population. Both countries sent in some 1,000 troops each along with military equipment provided to them by the United States over time under military assistance programs.
The Bahraini regime and the Saudis blame Iran for instigating the violent demonstrations.
In what now could be a significant escalation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Mohsen Rezael, secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, called for an "ultimatum" to be given to the Saudis in an effort to get them to withdraw their forces from Bahrain.
In making his threat, Rezael said that Iran and Iraq should give deliver the warning.
"Iran and Iraq should give Saudi Arabia an ultimatum to withdraw its forces from Bahrain," Rezael said. "Otherwise, both countries can probe the Saudi-bound weapons in the Strait of Hormuz and prevent the dispatch of equipment for suppression of Bahrain's people to that country."
Just as Rezael has invoked Iraq in Iran's dispute with Saudi Arabia, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi is to pay a visit to Baghdad shortly with a high-ranking delegation of military and defense officials.
As a further warning to Saudi Arabia, Supreme Leader's Adviser for Military Affairs Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi said Riyadh's military intervention in Bahrain also could be a pretext to foreign invasion of Saudi Arabia should popular protests increase in the kingdom.
The Saudi regime is very concerned with increasing unrest in its Eastern province where the population primarily is Shi'a. There already have been a number of demonstrations there that were put down quickly by Saudi police forces.
That region also is where most of the kingdom's oil production takes place.
"The presence and attitude of Saudi Arabia in Bahrain sets an incorrect precedence for similar future events," Safavi warned, "and Saudi Arabia should consider this fact that one day the very same event may recur in Saudi Arabia itself and Saudi Arabia may come under invasion for the very same excuse."
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
In what could produce a Muslim vs. Muslim military confrontation in the powder-keg that is the Middle East, Shi'a Iran is considering handing Sunni Saudi Arabia an ultimatum over sending its troops to crack down on the Shi'a majority in nearby Bahrain – a development that would be tantamount to armed conflict between the two bastions of Islam, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
Iranian officials even have gone so far as to suggest blocking the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to stop ships carrying military supplies to Bahrain from the Saudi kingdom which, along with the United Arab Emirates, sent troops there at the request of Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.
Al-Khalifa had requested the troops to put down an increase in violence by Shi'a protesters, who make up some 70 percent of the Bahraini population. Both countries sent in some 1,000 troops each along with military equipment provided to them by the United States over time under military assistance programs.
The Bahraini regime and the Saudis blame Iran for instigating the violent demonstrations.
In what now could be a significant escalation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Mohsen Rezael, secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, called for an "ultimatum" to be given to the Saudis in an effort to get them to withdraw their forces from Bahrain.
In making his threat, Rezael said that Iran and Iraq should give deliver the warning.
"Iran and Iraq should give Saudi Arabia an ultimatum to withdraw its forces from Bahrain," Rezael said. "Otherwise, both countries can probe the Saudi-bound weapons in the Strait of Hormuz and prevent the dispatch of equipment for suppression of Bahrain's people to that country."
Just as Rezael has invoked Iraq in Iran's dispute with Saudi Arabia, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi is to pay a visit to Baghdad shortly with a high-ranking delegation of military and defense officials.
As a further warning to Saudi Arabia, Supreme Leader's Adviser for Military Affairs Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi said Riyadh's military intervention in Bahrain also could be a pretext to foreign invasion of Saudi Arabia should popular protests increase in the kingdom.
The Saudi regime is very concerned with increasing unrest in its Eastern province where the population primarily is Shi'a. There already have been a number of demonstrations there that were put down quickly by Saudi police forces.
That region also is where most of the kingdom's oil production takes place.
"The presence and attitude of Saudi Arabia in Bahrain sets an incorrect precedence for similar future events," Safavi warned, "and Saudi Arabia should consider this fact that one day the very same event may recur in Saudi Arabia itself and Saudi Arabia may come under invasion for the very same excuse."
Federal Reserve Head Ben Bernanke Announces First Press Conference Ever and Why You Should Be Watching This Wednesday
By Nicholas Contompasis
As headlines stream in from around the world, the effects of Ben Bernanke’s weak dollar, print more money policies, are now hitting the third world like a sledgehammer. I’m convinced that Mr. Bernanke gets no thrill out of printing money, thus devaluing our currency and others that are pegged to the USD. It should now be plain to all that the excess spending of the U.S. government has forced the Federal Reserve to put the printing presses on 24/7 operation till somebody in the government screams “uncle.”
That day of reckoning is coming in May when Congress gets back to work on fixing the “Debt Ceiling” problem. It’s no coincidence that the head of the Fed has announced the first press conference ever, just six days prior to the reconvening of Congress.
If you understand anything about what’s going on, his conference this Wednesday will telegraph what Congress and the President will eventually do. There is no doubt that whatever medicine Mr. Bernanke will be handing out, it won’t go down well with the political class. The Left, who for all intents and purposes put us where we are prematurely, will have a cow, and the Right led by the Tea Party won’t be happy unless all excess spending is stopped in its tracks now.
The problem Mr. Bernanke has is that many around the world are starting to blame him for the upheavals in many African and Middle Eastern countries.
With gasoline and food in the U.S. skyrocketing many here are also looking for a culprit, and Ben is on the short list.
So, it’s my belief that Wednesday’s news conference will clearly lay the blame on Congress, past and present, and will illustrate the magnitude of their folly. Unfortunately, the one person who has allowed this to happen is the President himself, and Mr. Bernanke shouldn’t leave him out as he points his finger around the room, but that wouldn’t be cricket, would it?
Friday, April 22, 2011
Black African Christians Threatened by Muslim Terror Army Al Shabaab in Kenya on Good Friday
By Mwakera Mwajefa
Kenyans urged to leave the shore early and to be careful at shopping malls, places of worship and recreation centres as security agents maintain vigilance against al Shabaab
Visitors enjoying the Easter weekend at the beach were on Friday ordered to leave the shoreline at 6pm over terrorist threat.
Kenyans were also cautioned to be careful when visiting shopping malls, places of worship, government buildings and recreational centres.
On Thursday evening, Police Commissioner Matthew Iteere issued a terrorist alert and asked Kenyans to be “vigilant” wherever they were during the Easter festivities.
He said the police had intelligence report indicating that the Somali-based terror group, al-Shabaab planned to attack certain targets in highly populated areas.
“As part of community policing, we are advising the management of all the places mentioned and other places where a large number of people are admitted to enhance their security measures,” he said.
The commissioner said the police were alert and had improved security in and around the possible targets.
At the Jomo Kenyatta public beach in Mombasa, Mr Levis Juma Malove, a Kenya Maritime Authority search and rescue officer, said a siren would be sounded at 6pm every day to get people out of the water.
This timeframe will affect the stretch from Jomo Kenyatta public beach to Severin, Mombasa Beach to Reef Hotel in the North Coast and the Shelly Beach stretch in the South Coast.
The beach emergency rescue centre will operate between 10.30am and 6.30pm every day during the Easter period.
At the Likoni ferry, the anti-terrorist police unit conducted an impromptu search on passengers and motorists on Thursday.
The security agents used two sniffer dogs to check people’s luggage and vehicle boots in the channel used by 250,000 people and more than 3,000 vehicles daily.
Kenya and the rest of East Africa continue to be under the shadow of al-Shabaab terrorists. The Somali insurgents attacked Kenya and Uganda last year.
And as police issued the terror alert on Thursday, Public Health and Sanitation minister Beth Mugo urged those travelling to observe utmost caution.
Kenyans urged to leave the shore early and to be careful at shopping malls, places of worship and recreation centres as security agents maintain vigilance against al Shabaab
Visitors enjoying the Easter weekend at the beach were on Friday ordered to leave the shoreline at 6pm over terrorist threat.
Kenyans were also cautioned to be careful when visiting shopping malls, places of worship, government buildings and recreational centres.
On Thursday evening, Police Commissioner Matthew Iteere issued a terrorist alert and asked Kenyans to be “vigilant” wherever they were during the Easter festivities.
He said the police had intelligence report indicating that the Somali-based terror group, al-Shabaab planned to attack certain targets in highly populated areas.
“As part of community policing, we are advising the management of all the places mentioned and other places where a large number of people are admitted to enhance their security measures,” he said.
The commissioner said the police were alert and had improved security in and around the possible targets.
At the Jomo Kenyatta public beach in Mombasa, Mr Levis Juma Malove, a Kenya Maritime Authority search and rescue officer, said a siren would be sounded at 6pm every day to get people out of the water.
This timeframe will affect the stretch from Jomo Kenyatta public beach to Severin, Mombasa Beach to Reef Hotel in the North Coast and the Shelly Beach stretch in the South Coast.
The beach emergency rescue centre will operate between 10.30am and 6.30pm every day during the Easter period.
At the Likoni ferry, the anti-terrorist police unit conducted an impromptu search on passengers and motorists on Thursday.
The security agents used two sniffer dogs to check people’s luggage and vehicle boots in the channel used by 250,000 people and more than 3,000 vehicles daily.
Kenya and the rest of East Africa continue to be under the shadow of al-Shabaab terrorists. The Somali insurgents attacked Kenya and Uganda last year.
And as police issued the terror alert on Thursday, Public Health and Sanitation minister Beth Mugo urged those travelling to observe utmost caution.
Obama's War on America
By Nicholas Contompasis
"Since the Supreme Court has declared McCain-Finegold law unconstitutional, the President has been in a panic and paranoid about what the private sector has in store for him come election time next year. By forcing corporations to disclose contributions in excess of $5,000 he will have the ammunition to take punitive governmental action against any corporation that contributes to someone he doesn't like.
At this point over 1,000 companies and unions have been granted health care waivers from HHS. Those waivers could go away in a heartbeat if the political contributions of a corporation were going to Republican candidates.
Obama has proven in the past that he will declare war on corporations and states if they don't follow his socialist doctrines. This is now another front in Obamas war with America."
Obama To Implement Gag Order By Decree
By Bill Wilson
Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commissioner, broke a story for Pajamas Media about a draft executive order by the White House to compel companies, their directors, and officers to disclose donations to candidates, parties, campaign committees, and non-profit groups that make independent expenditures during an election cycle.
The executive order would apply to both “[a]ll contributions or expenditures to or on behalf of federal candidates, parties or party committees made by the bidding entity, its directors or officers, or any affiliates or subsidiaries within its control” and to “[a]ny contributions made to third party entities with the intention or reasonable expectation that parties would use those contributions to make independent expenditures or electioneering communications.”
As von Spakovsky notes, contractors are already barred from making “[a]ny contribution of money or other things of value, or to promise expressly or impliedly to make any such contribution to any political party, committee, or candidate for public office or to any person for any political purpose or use.” So why the seeming redundancy?
The additional obligation, von Spakovsky writes, is that “this will require companies to delve into the personal political activities of their officers and directors — and require them to report political contributions those employees have made, not out of corporate funds (which is illegal), but out of their personal funds.” And therein lays the motive.
As part of the contract-awarding process, the White House wants to know who is giving to whom and will surely make decisions based on that knowledge. This is corrupt Chicago-style political thuggery at its worst.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell strongly condemned the draft order, saying, “No White House should be able to review your political party affiliation before deciding if you’re worthy of a government contract. And no one should have to worry about whether their political support will determine their ability to get or keep a federal contract or keep their job.”
McConnell continued, “Democracy is compromised when individuals and small businesses fear reprisal, or expect favor from the federal government as a result of their political associations.” He’s right. This adds a criterion that affects the awarding of bids that has nothing to do with the price of the contract or the efficiency with which it would be delivered.
Instead, the order will likely have four effects disrupting activities otherwise protected by the First Amendment and distorting the bidding and awarding process: 1) it will intimidate directors, officers, and employees of federal contractors from engaging in political speech and from making donations to candidates and organizations engaged in express advocacy; 2) it will cause others to believe that they need to pay up with the right people in order to get a contract; 3) it will increase the price of federal contracts and lead to inefficiencies; and 4) it will institutionalize corruption as contracts are awarded on the basis of who the employees of the contractor are donating to.
The sheer bias and outrage of this order is indicated by who it does not apply to, as von Spakovsky notes: “Federal employee unions that negotiate contracts for their members worth many times the value of some government contracts are not affected by this order. Neither are the recipients of hundreds of millions of dollars of federal grants.”
So, labor bosses and advocacy organizations that receive federal subsidies, particularly those that have been supportive of Barack Obama and Democrats more broadly, would be exempt from the disclosure requirements. How convenient.
Making matters worse, atop the corruption of the federal contracting process is Obama’s attempt to arbitrarily amend the laws of the land by executive decree. Federal contractor requirements cannot be changed without a vote in Congress. This is an end-run around Congress, with the Obama Administration once again attempting to implement administratively what it cannot achieve legislatively.
The White House could not get the DISCLOSE Act passed last year, and so the draft executive order would compel federal contractors to publicize its employees’ donations to candidates, parties, and also political non-profits that make independent expenditures.
The executive order would apply to any donations in excess of $5,000 in a given year. Any contractor and its directors and officers that donates in the past two years in excess of the specified minimum to an organization that engages in express advocacy of a candidate would have their names submitted to http://data.gov.
Senator McConnell held out hope that the executive order would never be enacted, saying, “It is my sincere hope that recent reports of a draft Executive Order were simply the work of a partisan within the Obama administration and not the position taken by the President himself.” Let us hope he’s right.
"Since the Supreme Court has declared McCain-Finegold law unconstitutional, the President has been in a panic and paranoid about what the private sector has in store for him come election time next year. By forcing corporations to disclose contributions in excess of $5,000 he will have the ammunition to take punitive governmental action against any corporation that contributes to someone he doesn't like.
At this point over 1,000 companies and unions have been granted health care waivers from HHS. Those waivers could go away in a heartbeat if the political contributions of a corporation were going to Republican candidates.
Obama has proven in the past that he will declare war on corporations and states if they don't follow his socialist doctrines. This is now another front in Obamas war with America."
Obama To Implement Gag Order By Decree
By Bill Wilson
Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commissioner, broke a story for Pajamas Media about a draft executive order by the White House to compel companies, their directors, and officers to disclose donations to candidates, parties, campaign committees, and non-profit groups that make independent expenditures during an election cycle.
The executive order would apply to both “[a]ll contributions or expenditures to or on behalf of federal candidates, parties or party committees made by the bidding entity, its directors or officers, or any affiliates or subsidiaries within its control” and to “[a]ny contributions made to third party entities with the intention or reasonable expectation that parties would use those contributions to make independent expenditures or electioneering communications.”
As von Spakovsky notes, contractors are already barred from making “[a]ny contribution of money or other things of value, or to promise expressly or impliedly to make any such contribution to any political party, committee, or candidate for public office or to any person for any political purpose or use.” So why the seeming redundancy?
The additional obligation, von Spakovsky writes, is that “this will require companies to delve into the personal political activities of their officers and directors — and require them to report political contributions those employees have made, not out of corporate funds (which is illegal), but out of their personal funds.” And therein lays the motive.
As part of the contract-awarding process, the White House wants to know who is giving to whom and will surely make decisions based on that knowledge. This is corrupt Chicago-style political thuggery at its worst.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell strongly condemned the draft order, saying, “No White House should be able to review your political party affiliation before deciding if you’re worthy of a government contract. And no one should have to worry about whether their political support will determine their ability to get or keep a federal contract or keep their job.”
McConnell continued, “Democracy is compromised when individuals and small businesses fear reprisal, or expect favor from the federal government as a result of their political associations.” He’s right. This adds a criterion that affects the awarding of bids that has nothing to do with the price of the contract or the efficiency with which it would be delivered.
Instead, the order will likely have four effects disrupting activities otherwise protected by the First Amendment and distorting the bidding and awarding process: 1) it will intimidate directors, officers, and employees of federal contractors from engaging in political speech and from making donations to candidates and organizations engaged in express advocacy; 2) it will cause others to believe that they need to pay up with the right people in order to get a contract; 3) it will increase the price of federal contracts and lead to inefficiencies; and 4) it will institutionalize corruption as contracts are awarded on the basis of who the employees of the contractor are donating to.
The sheer bias and outrage of this order is indicated by who it does not apply to, as von Spakovsky notes: “Federal employee unions that negotiate contracts for their members worth many times the value of some government contracts are not affected by this order. Neither are the recipients of hundreds of millions of dollars of federal grants.”
So, labor bosses and advocacy organizations that receive federal subsidies, particularly those that have been supportive of Barack Obama and Democrats more broadly, would be exempt from the disclosure requirements. How convenient.
Making matters worse, atop the corruption of the federal contracting process is Obama’s attempt to arbitrarily amend the laws of the land by executive decree. Federal contractor requirements cannot be changed without a vote in Congress. This is an end-run around Congress, with the Obama Administration once again attempting to implement administratively what it cannot achieve legislatively.
The White House could not get the DISCLOSE Act passed last year, and so the draft executive order would compel federal contractors to publicize its employees’ donations to candidates, parties, and also political non-profits that make independent expenditures.
The executive order would apply to any donations in excess of $5,000 in a given year. Any contractor and its directors and officers that donates in the past two years in excess of the specified minimum to an organization that engages in express advocacy of a candidate would have their names submitted to http://data.gov.
Senator McConnell held out hope that the executive order would never be enacted, saying, “It is my sincere hope that recent reports of a draft Executive Order were simply the work of a partisan within the Obama administration and not the position taken by the President himself.” Let us hope he’s right.
Killer Combo of High Gas, Food Prices at Key Tipping Point
"What will kill Obama politically will be his lack of concern and nearly cheerleader like approach to higher energy costs for the average American. Not too smart Mr. president. While you're out campaigning the American people suffer. Do you honestly think you deserve a second term? The American people say NO!" - N.P.Contompasis
By: Christina Cheddar Berk
The combination of rising gasoline prices and the steepest increase in the cost of food in a generation is threatening to push the US economy into a recession, according to Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners.
Johnson looks at the percentage of income consumers are spending on gasoline and food as a way of gauging how consumers will fare when energy prices spike.
With gas prices now standing at about $3.90 a gallon, energy costs have now passed 6 percent of spending—a level that Johnson says is a "tipping point" for consumers.
"Energy is not quite as essential as food and water, but is a necessity in today's economy, and when gasoline costs more than bottled water—like now—then it takes a huge bite out of disposable spending," he said, in a research note.
Of the six US recessions since 1970, all but the "9-11 year 2001 recession" have been linked to—of not triggered by—energy prices that crossed the 6 percent of personal consumption expenditures, he said. (During the shallow 2001 recession, energy prices had risen to about 5 percent of spending, which is higher than the long-term 4 percent share.)
What may make matters worse this time around, is there has been a steep increase in food prices that occurred as well. In other recent recessions food costs were benign, at between 7.5 percent and 7.8 percent of spending.
This year food prices have climbed 6.5 percent since the beginning of early January, according to Consumer Growth Partners.
"The combined increase in the necessities of food and energy creates a harsh double whammy for already stressed consumers," Johnson said. The last time this happened was in the recession that lasted from 1973 to 1975.
Johnson estimates that food and energy eat up about 15 percent of consumer spending at today's prices, compared with about 12.7 percent two years ago.
Of course, at lower income levels, these percentages are much higher. One sign of the stress some consumers are already feeling is that some AAA offices have already seen an increase in out-of-gas service calls, as motorists try to put off filling their tanks or drive around trying to seek out the gas station with the least expensive price.
Also some regions are being hit harder than others. Gas prices in Hawaii continue to set new highs, according to AAA data. The average price on Wednesday was $4.51, topping the prior record of $4.50 for a gallon of regular unleaded set in July 2008.
By: Christina Cheddar Berk
The combination of rising gasoline prices and the steepest increase in the cost of food in a generation is threatening to push the US economy into a recession, according to Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners.
Johnson looks at the percentage of income consumers are spending on gasoline and food as a way of gauging how consumers will fare when energy prices spike.
With gas prices now standing at about $3.90 a gallon, energy costs have now passed 6 percent of spending—a level that Johnson says is a "tipping point" for consumers.
"Energy is not quite as essential as food and water, but is a necessity in today's economy, and when gasoline costs more than bottled water—like now—then it takes a huge bite out of disposable spending," he said, in a research note.
Of the six US recessions since 1970, all but the "9-11 year 2001 recession" have been linked to—of not triggered by—energy prices that crossed the 6 percent of personal consumption expenditures, he said. (During the shallow 2001 recession, energy prices had risen to about 5 percent of spending, which is higher than the long-term 4 percent share.)
What may make matters worse this time around, is there has been a steep increase in food prices that occurred as well. In other recent recessions food costs were benign, at between 7.5 percent and 7.8 percent of spending.
This year food prices have climbed 6.5 percent since the beginning of early January, according to Consumer Growth Partners.
"The combined increase in the necessities of food and energy creates a harsh double whammy for already stressed consumers," Johnson said. The last time this happened was in the recession that lasted from 1973 to 1975.
Johnson estimates that food and energy eat up about 15 percent of consumer spending at today's prices, compared with about 12.7 percent two years ago.
Of course, at lower income levels, these percentages are much higher. One sign of the stress some consumers are already feeling is that some AAA offices have already seen an increase in out-of-gas service calls, as motorists try to put off filling their tanks or drive around trying to seek out the gas station with the least expensive price.
Also some regions are being hit harder than others. Gas prices in Hawaii continue to set new highs, according to AAA data. The average price on Wednesday was $4.51, topping the prior record of $4.50 for a gallon of regular unleaded set in July 2008.
New York Times Says That 70% of the Nation Thinks the Country is Headed in the Wrong Direction - "No Shit Sherlocks - Where the Hell Have You Guys Been?"
"It's amazing to read how this poll asks questions that most respondents couldn't possibly give an educated answer too. Most Americans unfortunately have know idea who Paul Ryan is let alone what his plan is to save the economy." - N.P.Contompasis
By JIM RUTENBERG and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
Americans are more pessimistic about the nation’s economic outlook and overall direction than they have been at any time since President Obama’s first two months in office, when the country was still officially ensnared in the Great Recession, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Amid rising gas prices, stubborn unemployment and a cacophonous debate in Washington over the federal government’s ability to meet its future obligations, the poll presents stark evidence that the slow, if unsteady, gains in public confidence earlier this year that a recovery was under way are now all but gone.
Capturing what appears to be an abrupt change in attitude, the survey shows that the number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse has jumped 13 percentage points in just one month. Though there have been encouraging signs of renewed growth since last fall, many economists are having second thoughts, warning that the pace of expansion might not be fast enough to create significant numbers of new jobs.
The dour public mood is dragging down ratings for both parties in Congress and for President Obama, the poll found.
After the first 100 days of divided government, and a new Republican leadership controlling the House of Representatives, 75 percent of respondents disapproved of the way Congress is handling its job.
Disapproval of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy has never been broader — at 57 percent of Americans — a warning sign as he begins to set his sights on re-election in 2012. And a similar percentage disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the federal budget deficit, though more disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are.
Still, for all the talk from Congressional Republicans and Mr. Obama of cutting the deficit as a way to improve the economy, only 29 percent of respondents said it would create more jobs. Twenty-seven percent said it would have no effect on the employment outlook, and 29 percent said it would cost jobs.
When it comes to cutting the deficit and the costs of the nation’s costliest entitlement programs, the poll found conflicting and sometimes contradictory views, with hints of encouragement and peril for both parties.
Mr. Obama has considerable support for his proposal to end tax cuts for those households earning $250,000 a year and more: 72 percent of respondents approved of doing so as a way to address the deficit.
And, in what he can take as a positive sign for his argument the nation has a duty to protect its most vulnerable citizens, about three-quarters of Americans polled think the federal government has a responsibility to provide health care for the elderly, and 56 percent believe it has a similar duty to the poor.
“Keep people’s taxes and give them medical benefits,” Richard Sterling, an independent voter of Naugatuck, Conn., said in a follow-up interview.
In what Republicans can take as a positive sign as they seek a more limited government, 55 percent of poll respondents said they would rather have fewer services from a smaller government than more services from a bigger one, as opposed to 33 percent who said the opposite, a continuation of a trend in Times/CBS polls.
And slightly more Americans approve than disapprove of a proposal by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin to change Medicare from a program that pays doctors and hospitals directly for treating older people to one in which the government helps such patients pay for private plans, though that support derived more from Republicans and independents. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll that found 65 percent opposed Mr. Ryan’s plan, suggesting results can vary based on how the question is asked.
Twice as many respondents said they would prefer cuts in spending on federal programs that benefit people like them as said they would favor a rise in taxes to pay for such programs.
Yet more than 6 in 10 of those surveyed said they believed Medicare was worth the costs. And when asked specifically about Medicare, respondents said they would rather see higher taxes than see a reduction in its available medical services if they had to choose between the two.
Given the choice of cutting military, Social Security or Medicare spending as a way to reduce the overall budget, 45 percent chose military cuts, compared with those to Social Security (17 percent) or Medicare (21 percent.)
The opposition by Tea Party supporters to raising the level of debt the nation can legally carry was shared by nearly two-thirds of poll respondents, including nearly half of Democrats; administration officials say blocking the government from raising that limit could force it to default on its debt payments.
For the most part, Americans split sharply along party lines when it comes to whom they trust most on the deficit, Medicare and Social Security.
But with 70 percent of poll respondents saying that the country was heading in the wrong direction, the public was not exhibiting warm feelings toward officeholders of either party.
Most Americans think neither Mr. Obama nor the Congressional Republicans share their priorities for the country. Mr. Obama’s job approval remains below a majority, with 46 percent saying they approve of his performance in office, while 45 percent do not. And support for his handling of the military campaign in Libya has fallen since last month: 39 percent approve and 45 percent disapprove. In a CBS poll in March, 50 percent approved and 29 percent disapproved.
Republicans have their own challenges. More than half of poll respondents, 56 percent, said they did not have a favorable view of the party, as opposed to 37 percent who said they did. (The Democratic Party fared somewhat better: 49 percent did not have favorable views of it and 44 percent did.)
As the House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, becomes the face of his party in Congress, more disapprove of his job performance (41 percent) than approve of it (32 percent); 27 percent said they did not have an opinion of him.
The displeasure with officeholders of both parties is reminiscent of the mood that prevailed in November, when anti-incumbent sentiment swept Democrats out of power in the House and diminished their edge in the Senate.
Frustration with the pace of economic growth has grown since, with 28 percent of respondents in a New York Times/CBS poll in late October saying the economy was getting worse, and 39 percent saying so in the latest poll. “They’re saying it will get better, but it’s not,” Frank Tufenkdjian, a Republican of Bayville, N.Y., said in a follow-up interview. “I know so many people who are unemployed and can’t find a job.”
The nationwide telephone survey was conducted Friday through Wednesday with 1,224 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
By JIM RUTENBERG and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
Americans are more pessimistic about the nation’s economic outlook and overall direction than they have been at any time since President Obama’s first two months in office, when the country was still officially ensnared in the Great Recession, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Amid rising gas prices, stubborn unemployment and a cacophonous debate in Washington over the federal government’s ability to meet its future obligations, the poll presents stark evidence that the slow, if unsteady, gains in public confidence earlier this year that a recovery was under way are now all but gone.
Capturing what appears to be an abrupt change in attitude, the survey shows that the number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse has jumped 13 percentage points in just one month. Though there have been encouraging signs of renewed growth since last fall, many economists are having second thoughts, warning that the pace of expansion might not be fast enough to create significant numbers of new jobs.
The dour public mood is dragging down ratings for both parties in Congress and for President Obama, the poll found.
After the first 100 days of divided government, and a new Republican leadership controlling the House of Representatives, 75 percent of respondents disapproved of the way Congress is handling its job.
Disapproval of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy has never been broader — at 57 percent of Americans — a warning sign as he begins to set his sights on re-election in 2012. And a similar percentage disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the federal budget deficit, though more disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are.
Still, for all the talk from Congressional Republicans and Mr. Obama of cutting the deficit as a way to improve the economy, only 29 percent of respondents said it would create more jobs. Twenty-seven percent said it would have no effect on the employment outlook, and 29 percent said it would cost jobs.
When it comes to cutting the deficit and the costs of the nation’s costliest entitlement programs, the poll found conflicting and sometimes contradictory views, with hints of encouragement and peril for both parties.
Mr. Obama has considerable support for his proposal to end tax cuts for those households earning $250,000 a year and more: 72 percent of respondents approved of doing so as a way to address the deficit.
And, in what he can take as a positive sign for his argument the nation has a duty to protect its most vulnerable citizens, about three-quarters of Americans polled think the federal government has a responsibility to provide health care for the elderly, and 56 percent believe it has a similar duty to the poor.
“Keep people’s taxes and give them medical benefits,” Richard Sterling, an independent voter of Naugatuck, Conn., said in a follow-up interview.
In what Republicans can take as a positive sign as they seek a more limited government, 55 percent of poll respondents said they would rather have fewer services from a smaller government than more services from a bigger one, as opposed to 33 percent who said the opposite, a continuation of a trend in Times/CBS polls.
And slightly more Americans approve than disapprove of a proposal by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin to change Medicare from a program that pays doctors and hospitals directly for treating older people to one in which the government helps such patients pay for private plans, though that support derived more from Republicans and independents. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll that found 65 percent opposed Mr. Ryan’s plan, suggesting results can vary based on how the question is asked.
Twice as many respondents said they would prefer cuts in spending on federal programs that benefit people like them as said they would favor a rise in taxes to pay for such programs.
Yet more than 6 in 10 of those surveyed said they believed Medicare was worth the costs. And when asked specifically about Medicare, respondents said they would rather see higher taxes than see a reduction in its available medical services if they had to choose between the two.
Given the choice of cutting military, Social Security or Medicare spending as a way to reduce the overall budget, 45 percent chose military cuts, compared with those to Social Security (17 percent) or Medicare (21 percent.)
The opposition by Tea Party supporters to raising the level of debt the nation can legally carry was shared by nearly two-thirds of poll respondents, including nearly half of Democrats; administration officials say blocking the government from raising that limit could force it to default on its debt payments.
For the most part, Americans split sharply along party lines when it comes to whom they trust most on the deficit, Medicare and Social Security.
But with 70 percent of poll respondents saying that the country was heading in the wrong direction, the public was not exhibiting warm feelings toward officeholders of either party.
Most Americans think neither Mr. Obama nor the Congressional Republicans share their priorities for the country. Mr. Obama’s job approval remains below a majority, with 46 percent saying they approve of his performance in office, while 45 percent do not. And support for his handling of the military campaign in Libya has fallen since last month: 39 percent approve and 45 percent disapprove. In a CBS poll in March, 50 percent approved and 29 percent disapproved.
Republicans have their own challenges. More than half of poll respondents, 56 percent, said they did not have a favorable view of the party, as opposed to 37 percent who said they did. (The Democratic Party fared somewhat better: 49 percent did not have favorable views of it and 44 percent did.)
As the House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, becomes the face of his party in Congress, more disapprove of his job performance (41 percent) than approve of it (32 percent); 27 percent said they did not have an opinion of him.
The displeasure with officeholders of both parties is reminiscent of the mood that prevailed in November, when anti-incumbent sentiment swept Democrats out of power in the House and diminished their edge in the Senate.
Frustration with the pace of economic growth has grown since, with 28 percent of respondents in a New York Times/CBS poll in late October saying the economy was getting worse, and 39 percent saying so in the latest poll. “They’re saying it will get better, but it’s not,” Frank Tufenkdjian, a Republican of Bayville, N.Y., said in a follow-up interview. “I know so many people who are unemployed and can’t find a job.”
The nationwide telephone survey was conducted Friday through Wednesday with 1,224 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
White House Said To Be Preparing A New “Peace Plan”
By Saed Bannoura
Over the last four months, the U.S Administration, headed by President Barack Obama, has been preparing a new peace plan that consists of four main principles meant to “restart the stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the four stages of the plan are establishing a Palestinian State, voiding the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem as a capital for two states, and ensuring Israel’s security needs.
The paper said that the White House is weighing the appropriate time to present the new initiative, and whether Obama should present the initiative during a dramatic speech regarding the Middle-East conflict.
The Times added that Obama and U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, support the plan while Middle East Advisor, Dennis Ross, opposes it.
The plan remains subject to doubt and uncertainty as it, so far, has not fully been adopted by the U.S government, and a full rejection is anticipated from
Israel, especially since the plan calls for an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The initiative is also likely to be rejected by the Palestinians as it drops the internationally guaranteed Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees as stated in Security Council number 194.
The Palestinians want a full implementation of all related resolutions and want their right to establish a fully independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in addition to ensuring the implementation of the Right of Return.
Israel also considers its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem as integral parts of the “Jewish State”, and refuses talks on their future. It is also ongoing with its settlement construction and expansion plans.
Israel refuses to grant the Palestinians control over their natural resources, borders, and also insists that the Jordan Valley area remains at all times part of the country.
Over the last four months, the U.S Administration, headed by President Barack Obama, has been preparing a new peace plan that consists of four main principles meant to “restart the stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the four stages of the plan are establishing a Palestinian State, voiding the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem as a capital for two states, and ensuring Israel’s security needs.
The paper said that the White House is weighing the appropriate time to present the new initiative, and whether Obama should present the initiative during a dramatic speech regarding the Middle-East conflict.
The Times added that Obama and U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, support the plan while Middle East Advisor, Dennis Ross, opposes it.
The plan remains subject to doubt and uncertainty as it, so far, has not fully been adopted by the U.S government, and a full rejection is anticipated from
Israel, especially since the plan calls for an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The initiative is also likely to be rejected by the Palestinians as it drops the internationally guaranteed Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees as stated in Security Council number 194.
The Palestinians want a full implementation of all related resolutions and want their right to establish a fully independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in addition to ensuring the implementation of the Right of Return.
Israel also considers its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem as integral parts of the “Jewish State”, and refuses talks on their future. It is also ongoing with its settlement construction and expansion plans.
Israel refuses to grant the Palestinians control over their natural resources, borders, and also insists that the Jordan Valley area remains at all times part of the country.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Al Qaeda Confirms its Role with Libya Rebels
By Jane Jamison
This story comes from Georges Malbrunot Le Figaro blog, translated by Google.
Al Qaeda has offices in Libya: Doesn’t Want U.S., NATO “Help”
It was arguably obvious before the United States undertook “humanitarian” war in Libya that Al Qaeda was behind the Libyan rebels trying to out Muammar Gaddafi.
Al Qaeda’s leadership of the rebels is unquestioned now. The terrorist organization has confirmed which Libyan cities where it maintains “offices” (emirates.) It also says quite vehemently that it does not appreciate U.S., French and NATO involvement and would prefer to die as “martyrs” rather than work with the “Crusaders.”
Further, it is confirmed now by Al Qaeda, that Col. Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, who recently gave an extended interview to the U.K. Telegraph, is an Al Qaeda imam operating out of Derna. [In the interview, Al-Hasidi had admitted recruiting at least 25 Al Qaeda to Dernah. The article described him as a member of “LIFG” Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a branch of Al Qaeda.]
This open admittance of Al Qaeda involvement in and goals for Libya come from an interview with Abi Saleh Mohammed with a Saudi newspaper, translated and reported by Georges Malbrunot at Le Figaro blog:
The media officer in the North African branch of al-Qaeda gave an interesting interview with the Saudi newspaper Al-Hayyat published in London.
Abi Saleh Mohammad said there that the terrorist organization has offices (the emirates in the language of al-Qaeda) in Benghazi, Al Bayda, Al Marj, and especially Dernah Shihata.
“We are especially present at Dernah where Sheikh Abdul Hakim is our Emir and where he trained – along with other brothers – an Islamic council to govern the city under the Sharia, Islamic law, said Mohammad Abi Saleh .
To the east of Libya, the host city of al-Qaida correspond to the main strongholds of the rebels, backed by the Western coalition. The head of al-Qaida also confirms that the terrorist organization has recently acquired weapons, “to protect our soldiers and to defend the banner of Islam.” Dignitaries Algeria and Chad had been worried about such arms transfers to al-Qaida.
This implementation of al-Qaeda in Libya is the origin of Western reservations about the delivery of arms to the rebels, who are struggling to dislodge Colonel Gaddafi in Tripoli power. We reported in early April, recalling the high proportion of Libyan jihadists went to fight U.S. troops in Iraq (see note 2 April).
Asked whether foreign intervention in Libya was positive and helped to prevent the forces from committing a massacre Gaddafi in Benghazi, the representative of al-Qaeda responds unequivocally:
“It is always better to die a martyr rather than seek help from the Crusaders. If the rebels had waited a little, Gaddafi’s troops were defeated. We do not consider foreign intervention in Libya as positive. Criminals (loyal to Qadhafi, ed) and the unholy alliance (forged between the National Transitional Council, recognized by France in particular, note) are our enemies, and we can beat them.”
This story comes from Georges Malbrunot Le Figaro blog, translated by Google.
Al Qaeda has offices in Libya: Doesn’t Want U.S., NATO “Help”
It was arguably obvious before the United States undertook “humanitarian” war in Libya that Al Qaeda was behind the Libyan rebels trying to out Muammar Gaddafi.
Al Qaeda’s leadership of the rebels is unquestioned now. The terrorist organization has confirmed which Libyan cities where it maintains “offices” (emirates.) It also says quite vehemently that it does not appreciate U.S., French and NATO involvement and would prefer to die as “martyrs” rather than work with the “Crusaders.”
Further, it is confirmed now by Al Qaeda, that Col. Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, who recently gave an extended interview to the U.K. Telegraph, is an Al Qaeda imam operating out of Derna. [In the interview, Al-Hasidi had admitted recruiting at least 25 Al Qaeda to Dernah. The article described him as a member of “LIFG” Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a branch of Al Qaeda.]
This open admittance of Al Qaeda involvement in and goals for Libya come from an interview with Abi Saleh Mohammed with a Saudi newspaper, translated and reported by Georges Malbrunot at Le Figaro blog:
The media officer in the North African branch of al-Qaeda gave an interesting interview with the Saudi newspaper Al-Hayyat published in London.
Abi Saleh Mohammad said there that the terrorist organization has offices (the emirates in the language of al-Qaeda) in Benghazi, Al Bayda, Al Marj, and especially Dernah Shihata.
“We are especially present at Dernah where Sheikh Abdul Hakim is our Emir and where he trained – along with other brothers – an Islamic council to govern the city under the Sharia, Islamic law, said Mohammad Abi Saleh .
To the east of Libya, the host city of al-Qaida correspond to the main strongholds of the rebels, backed by the Western coalition. The head of al-Qaida also confirms that the terrorist organization has recently acquired weapons, “to protect our soldiers and to defend the banner of Islam.” Dignitaries Algeria and Chad had been worried about such arms transfers to al-Qaida.
This implementation of al-Qaeda in Libya is the origin of Western reservations about the delivery of arms to the rebels, who are struggling to dislodge Colonel Gaddafi in Tripoli power. We reported in early April, recalling the high proportion of Libyan jihadists went to fight U.S. troops in Iraq (see note 2 April).
Asked whether foreign intervention in Libya was positive and helped to prevent the forces from committing a massacre Gaddafi in Benghazi, the representative of al-Qaeda responds unequivocally:
“It is always better to die a martyr rather than seek help from the Crusaders. If the rebels had waited a little, Gaddafi’s troops were defeated. We do not consider foreign intervention in Libya as positive. Criminals (loyal to Qadhafi, ed) and the unholy alliance (forged between the National Transitional Council, recognized by France in particular, note) are our enemies, and we can beat them.”
From Fox News - Breaking News - Federal Election Commission Investigating Obama's Secret Campaign Cash: Millions From Foreign Sources - Gaza - Palestinians - Why?
by Pamela Geller
Newsmax is reporting that the Federal Election Commission is finally investigating the story I broke back in 2008 on all of the improper campaign contributions, foreign money and illegal donations to the Obama campaign. Newsmax cites Ken Timmerman's article, but I broke the story that Timmerman writes about (all posts here), and it was well documented in my book: The Post American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America.
Obama’s 2008 campaign finance records are full of riddles, mysteries, and unanswered questions. Contributing nearly $25,000 to the Obama campaign was Monir Edwan, who was listed on FEC documents as contributing from the city of Rafah in the state “GA.” Georgia? No – there is no Rafah in the Peach State. Monir Edwan sent money to Obama from Rafah, Gaza. Rafah is a Gaza refugee camp.
The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) “prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.”[i]
Yet no one has found it noteworthy that Barack Hussein Obama himself appears to be in violation of this statute.
According to the FEC, contributions to the Obama campaign from three brothers, Osama, Monir and Hosam Edwan, all from Rafah, totaled $33,000.[ii] And they weren’t alone. Al-Jazeera reported on March 31, 2008 that Gazans were manning phone banks for the Obama campaign.[iii]
The brothers were vocal in their “love” for Obama – which in itself spoke volumes to Obama’s campaign. The media showed no interest, but Obama pricked up his ears. He smelled trouble; even though no reporters asked him about these contributions, he answered anyway. The Obama campaign contended in the summer of 2008 that they had returned $33,500 in illegal contributions from Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza – despite the fact that records do not show that it was returned, and the brothers said they did not receive any money. And indeed, Obama’s refunds and redesignations on file with the FEC show no refund to Osama, Hossam, or Monir Edwan in the Rafah refugee camp.
One of the Gazan brothers, Monir Edwan, claimed that he bought “Obama for President” t-shirts off Obama’s website, and then sold the shirts in Gaza for a profit. All purchases on the Barack Obama website are considered contributions. The brothers allegedly claimed that they were American citizens – so said the Obama camp. They listed their address with the zip code 972 (ironically, the area code for Israel) and entered “GA,” the state abbreviation for Georgia, as their location, while actually living, as we have seen, in a Hamas-controlled refugee camp. If Obama’s people thought they were dealing with American citizens from Georgia, why did they ship the t-shirts that Monir Edwan ordered to the correct address in Gaza? Shipping overseas to a Gaza refugee camp is vastly different from sending a package to the state next door.
On Watchdog.net, a site that monitors campaign contributions, Monir Edwan is listed as Barack Obama’s Top Contributor, giving $24,313 between October 27, 2007 and November 11, 2007.[iv] Intriguingly, however, although it gives zip codes and other details for the other four of Obama’s top five individual contributors, it provides no additional information at all for Monir Edwan – and Edwan’s link is the only dead one on the Watchdog page.
Why did Palestinians in a Gaza refugee camp have such love for Obama in the summer of 2008? Did they know he was going to run a jihad presidency?
Did Jamal M. Barzinji know the same thing?
Jamal M. Barzinji gave the Obama campaign $1,000.
Dr. Jamal M. al-Barzinji is a noted American businessman and political operative. He has most recently been associated with, notably, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). The IIIT is linked to the international Islamic organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood. In a May 22, 1991 document entitled “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” the Brotherhood lays out a plan to do nothing less than conquer and Islamize the United States. The Brotherhood’s success in America would ultimately further the even larger goal of establishing “the global Islamic state.”[v]
The Brotherhood memorandum includes “a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends,” with the appended note: “Imagine if they all march according to one plan!!!” Among these organizations are some of the most prominent “moderate Muslim” organizations in the U.S. today, including the IIIT as well as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); the Muslim Students Association (MSA); the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT); the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA); the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), out of which emerged in 1994 the most prominent Muslim group in the United States, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR); the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA); and many others.
The memorandum also explains that Muslim Brotherhood operatives “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”[vi]
According to the Wall Street Journal, Jamal Barzinji also has business ties to a Muslim Brotherhood activist, Youssef Nada.[vii] And the destruction of Israel is high on the jihadist agenda. After 9/11, federal agents raided Barzinji’s office and home. An affidavit filed in federal court charges that “Barzinji is not only closely associated with PIJ (as evidenced by ties to al-Arian, including documents seized in Tampa), but also with Hamas.”[viii]
PIJ is the jihad terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Just as disturbing were the phone banks in Gaza campaigning for Obama. Muslims in Gaza methodically worked the phones in Internet cafes, calling Americans and doing everything they could to influence the vote.[ix]
When New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler was confronted with the Gaza phone banks issue while campaigning for Obama in South Florida in early November 2008 said that if there “really were phone banks in Gaza, that would be a major campaign issue.” He said it would be all over the media and be a major problem for the campaign. And he laughed at the idea that Obama was receiving campaign contributions from Gaza. The mainstream media laughed along with him, continuing its refusal to cover this explosive story.
If there had been just one questionable tie, one link to jihadist entities, one link to groups advocating the destruction of Israel, Barack Obama might have merited the free pass he got from the mainstream media about this. But there were so many.
And to this day they have never been explained.
Newsmax is reporting that the Federal Election Commission is finally investigating the story I broke back in 2008 on all of the improper campaign contributions, foreign money and illegal donations to the Obama campaign. Newsmax cites Ken Timmerman's article, but I broke the story that Timmerman writes about (all posts here), and it was well documented in my book: The Post American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America.
Obama’s 2008 campaign finance records are full of riddles, mysteries, and unanswered questions. Contributing nearly $25,000 to the Obama campaign was Monir Edwan, who was listed on FEC documents as contributing from the city of Rafah in the state “GA.” Georgia? No – there is no Rafah in the Peach State. Monir Edwan sent money to Obama from Rafah, Gaza. Rafah is a Gaza refugee camp.
The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) “prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.”[i]
Yet no one has found it noteworthy that Barack Hussein Obama himself appears to be in violation of this statute.
According to the FEC, contributions to the Obama campaign from three brothers, Osama, Monir and Hosam Edwan, all from Rafah, totaled $33,000.[ii] And they weren’t alone. Al-Jazeera reported on March 31, 2008 that Gazans were manning phone banks for the Obama campaign.[iii]
The brothers were vocal in their “love” for Obama – which in itself spoke volumes to Obama’s campaign. The media showed no interest, but Obama pricked up his ears. He smelled trouble; even though no reporters asked him about these contributions, he answered anyway. The Obama campaign contended in the summer of 2008 that they had returned $33,500 in illegal contributions from Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza – despite the fact that records do not show that it was returned, and the brothers said they did not receive any money. And indeed, Obama’s refunds and redesignations on file with the FEC show no refund to Osama, Hossam, or Monir Edwan in the Rafah refugee camp.
One of the Gazan brothers, Monir Edwan, claimed that he bought “Obama for President” t-shirts off Obama’s website, and then sold the shirts in Gaza for a profit. All purchases on the Barack Obama website are considered contributions. The brothers allegedly claimed that they were American citizens – so said the Obama camp. They listed their address with the zip code 972 (ironically, the area code for Israel) and entered “GA,” the state abbreviation for Georgia, as their location, while actually living, as we have seen, in a Hamas-controlled refugee camp. If Obama’s people thought they were dealing with American citizens from Georgia, why did they ship the t-shirts that Monir Edwan ordered to the correct address in Gaza? Shipping overseas to a Gaza refugee camp is vastly different from sending a package to the state next door.
On Watchdog.net, a site that monitors campaign contributions, Monir Edwan is listed as Barack Obama’s Top Contributor, giving $24,313 between October 27, 2007 and November 11, 2007.[iv] Intriguingly, however, although it gives zip codes and other details for the other four of Obama’s top five individual contributors, it provides no additional information at all for Monir Edwan – and Edwan’s link is the only dead one on the Watchdog page.
Why did Palestinians in a Gaza refugee camp have such love for Obama in the summer of 2008? Did they know he was going to run a jihad presidency?
Did Jamal M. Barzinji know the same thing?
Jamal M. Barzinji gave the Obama campaign $1,000.
Dr. Jamal M. al-Barzinji is a noted American businessman and political operative. He has most recently been associated with, notably, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). The IIIT is linked to the international Islamic organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood. In a May 22, 1991 document entitled “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” the Brotherhood lays out a plan to do nothing less than conquer and Islamize the United States. The Brotherhood’s success in America would ultimately further the even larger goal of establishing “the global Islamic state.”[v]
The Brotherhood memorandum includes “a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends,” with the appended note: “Imagine if they all march according to one plan!!!” Among these organizations are some of the most prominent “moderate Muslim” organizations in the U.S. today, including the IIIT as well as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); the Muslim Students Association (MSA); the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT); the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA); the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), out of which emerged in 1994 the most prominent Muslim group in the United States, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR); the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA); and many others.
The memorandum also explains that Muslim Brotherhood operatives “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”[vi]
According to the Wall Street Journal, Jamal Barzinji also has business ties to a Muslim Brotherhood activist, Youssef Nada.[vii] And the destruction of Israel is high on the jihadist agenda. After 9/11, federal agents raided Barzinji’s office and home. An affidavit filed in federal court charges that “Barzinji is not only closely associated with PIJ (as evidenced by ties to al-Arian, including documents seized in Tampa), but also with Hamas.”[viii]
PIJ is the jihad terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Just as disturbing were the phone banks in Gaza campaigning for Obama. Muslims in Gaza methodically worked the phones in Internet cafes, calling Americans and doing everything they could to influence the vote.[ix]
When New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler was confronted with the Gaza phone banks issue while campaigning for Obama in South Florida in early November 2008 said that if there “really were phone banks in Gaza, that would be a major campaign issue.” He said it would be all over the media and be a major problem for the campaign. And he laughed at the idea that Obama was receiving campaign contributions from Gaza. The mainstream media laughed along with him, continuing its refusal to cover this explosive story.
If there had been just one questionable tie, one link to jihadist entities, one link to groups advocating the destruction of Israel, Barack Obama might have merited the free pass he got from the mainstream media about this. But there were so many.
And to this day they have never been explained.
Algeria's Minority Group Demands Autonomy, Sparking Stability Concerns of Another Arab Ally
By Ben Evansky
April 12, 2011: Students react to a police officer during a protest in Algiers, as thousands march to demand the resignation of the education minister in the latest anti-government protests to sweep across the Arab world. The students are defying a longtime ban on protests in Algiers, a measure adopted at the height of Algeria's Islamic insurgency and were blocked by police while trying to reach the government's headquarters.
The Obama administration could face potential political upheaval with yet another ally in the Arab world, this time in Algeria.
Documents given to members of Congress and obtained by Fox News show that Algeria's largest minority group, the Kabyles, who number up to 10 million, will demand on Wednesday that their government hold a referendum on autonomy. This will be followed by planned demonstrations, which some analysts fear could lead to a brutal conflict and possible uprising -- if the U.S. doesn't act to bring the sides together and work on a mutually acceptable agreement.
What makes this dilemma particularly difficult for the administration is that the Kabyles, part of the Berber ethnic group, are predominantly secular Muslims and largely pro-Western. They are very active in the fight against Al Qaeda, and even have their own volunteer army to guard against attacks.
Dr Walid Phares, Fox News contributor and author of “The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East,” warns “a confrontation will take place” if nothing is done by the Obama administration.
Ferhat Mehenni, the President of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK), went to Washington D.C. to seek diplomatic support from the U.S. and U.N. to get Algeria to accept a referendum for autonomy.
"Washington must use its diplomacy to create a dialogue between the two parties. If the administration sponsors the dialogue, the chances of heading off the crisis and a potential ethnic conflict would be higher. We must learn from Iraq and Sudan to do a better job in preventive medicine, instead of waiting for the crisis to worsen."
But Phares' warning seems to have so far fallen on deaf ears. Sources tell Fox News that during this week's visit to Washington by Kabyle leaders, requests for meetings with high-ranking officials from the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Pentagon were ignored. The snub comes amid accusations by the Kabyle leaders that the Algerian government is helping the Qaddafi regime stay in power.
They claim Algeria is sending mercenaries, and blocking diplomatic initiatives to unseat him.
The State Department did agree to meet with the leadership, albeit at a lower level. Questions sent to the State Department spokesman were not returned.
Ferhat Mehenni, the president of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK) and head of the visiting delegation, told Fox News that he has been in touch with the Algerian authorities about the upcoming demonstrations. He said he hopes the government doesn't "commit the same mistake" they did 10 years ago, when Algerian security forces brutally crushed demonstrations that called for an end to government repression and an extension of cultural and linguistic rights. More than 120 people were killed in what is known as the "Black Spring.”
Mehenni says the goal of the trip "is to seek diplomatic support from the U.S. administration and the U.N. to pressure Algeria to accept a referendum for autonomy." He said these will be the same demands the Kabyle will call for in Wednesday’s demonstrations, and beyond.
A former U.S. government official with experience in the region wasn’t optimistic that Mehenni's hope for engagement would be met.
"The Algerian government would totally resist the idea of Kabyle autonomy as leading to the breakup of the Algerian state. Algerian government and army are tough customers, and there is no way they could be jaw-boned or nudged into accepting the idea … There is a reason to be concerned about various aspects of human rights and democracy in Algeria, but far less reason to take on only one aspect of the issue and ignore the rest," he said.
Mehenni said he believes it is in America's best interests to support "our rights to exercise our language, culture, democratic and secular values which we naturally share with the West.”
He also charges that Algeria “encourages the terrorism it is supposed to be fighting. It is scandalous to hear some Western officials describe the Algerian regime as ‘secular.’”
Questions to Algerian officials were not returned. But the website of the Algerian Embassy in Washington D.C. glowingly describes the U.S./Algeria relationship as being "stronger than ever." The website notes Algeria works "very closely with the United States to eliminate the scourge of transnational terrorism."
Despite the lower-level State Department reception, the Kabyle delegation was met warmly by members in Congress on both sides of the aisle. Among them was Rep. Sue Myrick, a North Carolina Republican.
Her spokesperson told Fox News the congresswoman felt it's important "to meet with people from this region as the uprisings continue, so that the U.S. can know their message and intentions, and see what groups the U.S. can work with to ensure that extremists don't gain a greater foothold during these unstable times."
Phares said it would be logical for the U.S. to recognize the rights of the Kabyles and "help moderate a dialogue between the Kabyles and the central government. The Kabyles populations have their own identity and have proven their opposition to terrorism, Al Qaeda and extremism. Besides, their culture is secular, diverse and tolerant. This would be an addition to the camp of moderates in the region. All ingredients in this are positive."
April 12, 2011: Students react to a police officer during a protest in Algiers, as thousands march to demand the resignation of the education minister in the latest anti-government protests to sweep across the Arab world. The students are defying a longtime ban on protests in Algiers, a measure adopted at the height of Algeria's Islamic insurgency and were blocked by police while trying to reach the government's headquarters.
The Obama administration could face potential political upheaval with yet another ally in the Arab world, this time in Algeria.
Documents given to members of Congress and obtained by Fox News show that Algeria's largest minority group, the Kabyles, who number up to 10 million, will demand on Wednesday that their government hold a referendum on autonomy. This will be followed by planned demonstrations, which some analysts fear could lead to a brutal conflict and possible uprising -- if the U.S. doesn't act to bring the sides together and work on a mutually acceptable agreement.
What makes this dilemma particularly difficult for the administration is that the Kabyles, part of the Berber ethnic group, are predominantly secular Muslims and largely pro-Western. They are very active in the fight against Al Qaeda, and even have their own volunteer army to guard against attacks.
Dr Walid Phares, Fox News contributor and author of “The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East,” warns “a confrontation will take place” if nothing is done by the Obama administration.
Ferhat Mehenni, the President of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK), went to Washington D.C. to seek diplomatic support from the U.S. and U.N. to get Algeria to accept a referendum for autonomy.
"Washington must use its diplomacy to create a dialogue between the two parties. If the administration sponsors the dialogue, the chances of heading off the crisis and a potential ethnic conflict would be higher. We must learn from Iraq and Sudan to do a better job in preventive medicine, instead of waiting for the crisis to worsen."
But Phares' warning seems to have so far fallen on deaf ears. Sources tell Fox News that during this week's visit to Washington by Kabyle leaders, requests for meetings with high-ranking officials from the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Pentagon were ignored. The snub comes amid accusations by the Kabyle leaders that the Algerian government is helping the Qaddafi regime stay in power.
They claim Algeria is sending mercenaries, and blocking diplomatic initiatives to unseat him.
The State Department did agree to meet with the leadership, albeit at a lower level. Questions sent to the State Department spokesman were not returned.
Ferhat Mehenni, the president of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK) and head of the visiting delegation, told Fox News that he has been in touch with the Algerian authorities about the upcoming demonstrations. He said he hopes the government doesn't "commit the same mistake" they did 10 years ago, when Algerian security forces brutally crushed demonstrations that called for an end to government repression and an extension of cultural and linguistic rights. More than 120 people were killed in what is known as the "Black Spring.”
Mehenni says the goal of the trip "is to seek diplomatic support from the U.S. administration and the U.N. to pressure Algeria to accept a referendum for autonomy." He said these will be the same demands the Kabyle will call for in Wednesday’s demonstrations, and beyond.
A former U.S. government official with experience in the region wasn’t optimistic that Mehenni's hope for engagement would be met.
"The Algerian government would totally resist the idea of Kabyle autonomy as leading to the breakup of the Algerian state. Algerian government and army are tough customers, and there is no way they could be jaw-boned or nudged into accepting the idea … There is a reason to be concerned about various aspects of human rights and democracy in Algeria, but far less reason to take on only one aspect of the issue and ignore the rest," he said.
Mehenni said he believes it is in America's best interests to support "our rights to exercise our language, culture, democratic and secular values which we naturally share with the West.”
He also charges that Algeria “encourages the terrorism it is supposed to be fighting. It is scandalous to hear some Western officials describe the Algerian regime as ‘secular.’”
Questions to Algerian officials were not returned. But the website of the Algerian Embassy in Washington D.C. glowingly describes the U.S./Algeria relationship as being "stronger than ever." The website notes Algeria works "very closely with the United States to eliminate the scourge of transnational terrorism."
Despite the lower-level State Department reception, the Kabyle delegation was met warmly by members in Congress on both sides of the aisle. Among them was Rep. Sue Myrick, a North Carolina Republican.
Her spokesperson told Fox News the congresswoman felt it's important "to meet with people from this region as the uprisings continue, so that the U.S. can know their message and intentions, and see what groups the U.S. can work with to ensure that extremists don't gain a greater foothold during these unstable times."
Phares said it would be logical for the U.S. to recognize the rights of the Kabyles and "help moderate a dialogue between the Kabyles and the central government. The Kabyles populations have their own identity and have proven their opposition to terrorism, Al Qaeda and extremism. Besides, their culture is secular, diverse and tolerant. This would be an addition to the camp of moderates in the region. All ingredients in this are positive."