Saturday, February 21, 2009

WAR ON TERROR

OBAMA AWOL IN TERROR WAR

By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann

02.19.2009

President Barack Obama’s record in battling terrorism has proven so weak that one wonders if he really takes the issue seriously.

Since he has taken office, the president has:

• Announced closure of Guantanamo.

• Declined to prosecute the mastermind behind the USS Cole bombing.

• Closed all overseas CIA interrogation centers.

• Appointed an Attorney General and Justice Department officials on record as opposed to the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques in terror investigations.

• Granted Al Arabia television his first news organization interview and called Fatah Party leader and PA President Mahmoud Abbass in his first phone contact with any foreign leader.

Now, with no strings attached, the president has allocated $20.3 million in “post-conflict humanitarian aid” to “Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza. The additional funds bring to $60 million U.S. aid commitments in Gaza.

Of course, Gaza is totally controlled by the terrorist group Hamas which grabs any aid that arrives and uses it for its own purposes. In fact, on February 7th, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) - the body charged with distributing the new U.S. aid - announced that it was suspending assistance in Gaza because ten lorries, laden with humanitarian supplies, were seized by Hamas members. It was the second time that week that Hamas has stolen aid destined for the UNRWA.

Christopher Gunness, a UNRWA spokesman, told Al Jazeera that UN aid shipments would not restart until the goods were returned. “Until we get all of this aid back, and until we receive credible assurances from the Hamas government, the suspension of our imports of aid into Gaza will continue, he said.”

Responding to the obvious low profile Obama is giving his battle against terrorism, two key nations - one an adversary and the other an ally - both acted to aid al Qaeda in the days after Obama’s inauguration. Neither got so much as a verbal a slap on the wrist from the new Administration.

The Associated Press reported, on February 8th, that Yemen, which boasts of having a “truce” with al Qaeda, “released 170 men it had arrested on suspicion of having ties to al Qaeda.” The announcement came “two weeks after [al Qaeda] announced that Yemen had become the base of its activities for the whole Arabian Peninsula.”

Yemen has also made it clear that it expects most of the 100 remaining Yemenis at Guantanamo (out of the 250 inmates still there) to be sent home after Obama orders the prison shut.

And, Pakistan, a supposed ally, has just concluded a deal with the Taliban ceding to its control an area on the Afghan/Paki border which its troops had, unsuccessfully, tried to capture. The Taliban now has the same deal it had in Afghanistan - a protected sanctuary from which to launch raids on the West. In view of the Administration’s passive acquiescence in the Paki decision, one is driven to ask why do we still care about freedom in Afghanistan?

On all fronts, the message from Obama is the same - surrender, pullback, and weakness. It is a matter of time until al Qaeda and other terrorists walk through the door he and his appointees are holding open and hit us again.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

AMERICAN LAWYERS

American Lawyers: Terrorists’ Weapons

From the May 2007 Trumpet Print Edition »

A stealth battlefront in the “war on terror” By Joel Hilliker

America’s “war on terror” is actually a war against some very inventive, if ruthless, individuals. Though outmatched by American might in every sense, clever Islamists are leveling the battlefield by turning our strengths into liabilities. Commercial jetliners, for example, make for devastatingly effective guided missiles.

One weapon Islamists are using against us is American lawyers.

The Rise of “Lawfare”

“Lawfare” is a recently coined term denoting efforts to achieve military objectives through legal maneuvers. It is proving to be a helpful tool for Islamists, who have used it to intimidate the American military into softening its battle tactics, to shut down terrorist surveillance programs, to access secret information on counterterrorist measures, to secure extra rights and even gain freedom for captured terrorists, and to swing American and global public opinion against the United States. These successes jeopardize American lives and handicap the nation’s war-making capabilities.

Lawfare practitioners do not act alone. They hire whole colonies of Lilliputian lawyers to tie Gulliver—the U.S. Armed Forces—to the ground. They rely on the active help of self-righteous civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (aclu), the Center for Constitutional Rights (ccr), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (cair). And giving their litigious efforts greater traction with the public is the artificial amplification provided courtesy of the newsmedia, which are eager to publicize any allegations of government or military wrongdoing while ignoring the big picture.

A peek at just how calculated the effort is came when British authorities seized an al Qaeda training manual instructing operatives, if captured, to falsely claim torture and other abuses. This tactic has worked especially well at Guantanamo Bay; detainees’ accusations have turned the prison into a lightning rod for public criticism over human-rights violations and generated countless demands for its closure.

U.S. federal courts are choked with lawsuits from Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners. The Wall Street Journal reports, “The suits range from habeas corpus petitions to free captured enemy combatants [such suits were dismissed by the Court of Appeals in Washington, d.c., on February 20 in its ruling on Boumediene v. Bush—though the case is being appealed to the Supreme Court], to tort suits seeking monies from U.S. government officials, to challenges regarding the detainees’ conditions of confinement. … Several suits [also] seek to hold the U.S. liable for the alleged misconduct of other governments”—such as torturing individuals whom the U.S. has deported (February 23).

Via several separate cases, lawyers have aggressively worked to secure the right of captured foreign combatants to petition federal courts for freedom. Misguided activists behave as though the rights given to U.S. citizens under the Constitution extend by natural-born right even to foreigners engaged in terrorism against the U.S. After spending considerable time on trial at all levels, up to the Supreme Court, the issue has met with some measure of success. (Most notably, in the 2004 Rasul v. Bush case, the Supreme Court found that appeals by prisoners at Guantanamo over wrongful imprisonment fell under the jurisdiction not of the U.S. military but of U.S. criminal courts.) That such efforts could put dangerous people back into business is evidenced by the fact that 1 in 20 terrorism suspects the U.S. government has released has later been found engaging in terrorist activity, according to military analyst James Dunnigan. It appears that some American lawyers are prioritizing invented “rights” of dangerous enemies over the lives of American citizens.

Trying terrorists and foreign combatants in U.S. criminal courts comes with genuine security risks. For one, there is a potential that, in the discovery process of a legal proceeding, in which each side must turn over information to the other, the enemy will learn how the U.S. gains its intelligence to prevent attacks. This occurred in 1995, during the trial of an Egyptian jihadist, when the U.S. handed over a list of names to the defendant’s lawyers that eventually fell into the hands of al Qaeda’s leaders, tipping them off to what Washington knew about them.

But the implications of extending the jurisdiction of civilian courts over military matters—in effect blurring the line between military law and criminal law—are even more far-reaching and ridiculous. Jeff Breinholt, deputy chief of the U.S. Department of Justice Counterterrorism Section, gives one example: “[T]he U.S. military could, under established rules in the Law of Armed Conflict, legally bomb a building, but then legally be prohibited, based on the Fourth Amendment, from searching the same building without a warrant” (FindLaw.com, March 9).

While this would never happen, it illustrates the flaw in allowing enemies to call on the judicial branch of the U.S. government for help in a war being waged by the executive and legislative branches.

Criminalizing Warfare

In trying to handicap U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, these groups have also attacked technological intelligence gathering. In the most well-known example, the aclu, ccr and cair filed suit against the National Security Agency for listening in on phone conversations of al Qaeda suspects on American soil. With the help of the New York Times, the lawsuit attracted public outrage over the program; meanwhile, terrorists, having learned of their vulnerability, switched to using disposable cell phones that were beyond the listening ear of the U.S. government.

In the end, lawfare is meant to spook military leaders and soldiers into hypersensitivity over the legalities of each word and step; as they modify their actions to avoid being slapped with war-crimes charges, they lose effectiveness as a fighting force.

Bruce Anderson explained in the Spectator that soldiers “have to make instant life-and-death decisions. In the nature of human decision-making, not all of them will be the right ones. But if this means that lawyers thousands of miles away can spend many hours reviewing a decision which a soldier had to take in a fraction of a second, two consequences will ensue. Fine young men will be subjected to injustice. Worse still, the entire process of military decision-making will be degraded. At a moment when the soldier’s mind should be focused exclusively on operational requirements and the safety of his comrades, he cannot be expected to ask himself how the lawyers might second-guess him. If he does, he will cease to be a good soldier” (July 23, 2005). Just as the enemy wants.

It is not difficult to imagine how vulnerability to prosecution would undermine the confidence and readiness, not to mention morale, of a fighting force. Today’s military is already saturated with examples of political correctness trumping security concerns. As the Wall Street Journal said, the goal of lawfare seems to be nothing less than the “criminalization of traditional warfare” (op. cit.).

Of course the military must operate under the rule of law. But it is of necessity a different law than that which applies to the rest of the us. As one British general put it, “Soldiers are not merely civilians in uniform. They form a distinctive group within our society, which is required either to kill other human beings or … to sacrifice themselves for the nation.” Thus soldiers, operating under military law, face punishment and/or protection from military officers who are trained to review and judge actions within the appropriate context. Civilian courts, by accepting certain cases and ruling in ways that blur these lines, risk being used and exploited by enemies of the nation for nefarious purposes.

The fact that these Islamist abuses of the American judiciary are as successful as they are exposes some tremendous flaws in our system. The American judiciary has become a paperwork factory, a protocol mill that entangles us in a web of processes that provide only a caricature of real justice. Our pursuit of impartiality has effectively outlawed common sense.

“No One Goes to Law Honestly”

The logic in Proverbs 18:5 is basic, but it is largely ignored: “It is wrong for a judge to favor the wicked and condemn the innocent” (The Living Bible). A truly functional system could not be hijacked by enemies of the state; real justice would never take a backseat to criminal rights, real or imagined. For example, in the system of Mosaic law, in which much of American law finds its roots, is the simple but wise dictum, “Keep thee far from a false matter …” (Exodus 23:7)—a law that, if kept in a spirit of fair and sound judgment, would instantly unclog the judicial logjam that results from having to treat every trumped-up lawsuit with equal seriousness.

Even now, wise, authoritative judges can still shut down foolish lawyers and activists who seek to misuse the system. But as the Prophet Isaiah foretold of our modern world, such judges are disappearing (Isaiah 3:1-2). As a result, base individuals behave themselves proudly against the honorable (verse 5). Another of Isaiah’s end-time prophecies reads, “No one enters suit justly, no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity” (Isaiah 59:4, Revised Standard Version).

Though a blizzard of accusations has been leveled against the U.S. over all aspects of the execution of its “war on terror,” all but a few have been proven false. By several measures, no military in history has worked harder in a time of war to protect civilians and mete out violence with such precision. Still, in the virulently anti-American environment of today, even false accusations, pumped through the megaphone of the media, serve to prejudice the American public and tip the scales against the U.S. in the court of world opinion.

Lawfare provides a microcosmic look at the nature of our time: The strong, under curses from God, are becoming weak; and the weak, strong. •

Thursday, February 12, 2009

AMERICA IMPLODES FROM WITHIN

« Storm clouds hover over the U.S. Capitol.
(Getty Images)

Experts Say Economic Storm Has Barely Begun

February 11, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com

What America has experienced so far are picnic winds. The worst is yet ahead. By Robert Morley

Yesterday, several tornadoes wreaked destruction and death through the greater Oklahoma City area. It took only minutes. Sheets of twisted metal have been left hanging in trees, power lines are ripped apart, homes are obliterated and left looking like piles of bombed-out rubble.

I saw one awe-inspiring twister as it blasted lightning, rained hail, and demolished buildings just a mile away.

One frightful lesson became evident: how fast a storm can arrive. Another: how brutal it can be. When the tornado sirens went off, there was not much you could do but head for whatever shelter was nearby. And pray.

For at least eight people yesterday, that wasn’t enough.

America is facing an economic storm far greater than the deadly tornadoes that swept Oklahoma. Time is short. The warning sirens, audible for years, are today blaring for all to hear. There is no need to be caught out in the open with nowhere to go.

The leading edge has arrived.

America’s economic core—its biggest financial institutions—are in tatters. And there have been casualties: Record numbers are losing their homes, companies are going out of business, and almost 600,000 jobs are being lost per month.

But according to the best economists—the courageous voices not bought and paid for by self-interest groups—what America has experienced so far is but the first few gusts of an unprecedented storm.

Here is a short survey of what some of the experts have warned over the past week.

Gerard Cassidy, Royal Bank of Canada analyst, on why the banking crisis is just beginning:

“We are nowhere near the end of this down leg in the current credit cycle. Bank stocks will likely remain under pressure as the industry confronts its … problems ….”

According to Cassidy and the rbc, approximately 1,000 U.S. banks will fail in the next three to five years as commercial loan losses begin to compound residential mortgage losses—that’s approximately one in eight banks in America predicted to collapse.

rbc’s previous estimates were for only 200 to 300 bank failures.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph economics analyst, on foreigners abandoning U.S. bonds:

“Who can blame bond vigilantes for going on strike? Nobody wants to be left holding the bag if and when the global monetary blitz succeeds in stoking inflation. Governments are borrowing frantically to fund their bailouts and cover a collapse in tax revenue. The U.S. Treasury alone needs to raise $2 trillion in 2009. Where is the money to come from?”

Yes, foreigners may have begun to balk at lending to the U.S. According to Evans-Pritchard, many countries faced with the carrot of spending money at home to stimulate their own economies, and the stick of the U.S. government devaluing its currency (i.e. creating money out of thin air) to pay the bills, are now selling U.S. treasuries.

Yields on 10-year treasuries have risen to levels that “if allowed to persist” will “asphyxiate the U.S. economy.”

“My own view,” laments Evans-Pritchard, “is that there is no hope at all of stabilizing the world economy on current policies.” We are moving into the stage of the crisis that mirrors 1932, he says.

Marc Faber, economic analyst, on why the U.S. dollar faces collapse:

“In the U.S., we have a totally new school, and it’s called the Zimbabwe school,” says Faber. “And it’s founded by one of the great leaders of this world, Mr. Robert Mugabe, that has managed to totally impoverish his own country. And that is the monetary policy the U.S. is pursuing.”

According to Faber, Zimbabwe economics is America’s plan to borrow, print and spend money in an attempt to fix an economy that has broken due to too much borrowing, printing and spending. He says the U.S. risks being hit by Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation and that there are signs America is turning into a banana republic (a country characterized by totalitarianism, extensive government intervention in the economy, and the polarization of wealth).

How bad could it get? Faber says 200 percent inflation is not out of the question at some point. “If I look at government debt in the U.S., and debt in general, I think the only way they will not default physically on their debt is to inflate.”

Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of Crash Proof, on why the stimulus bill will lead to “unmitigated disaster”:

“This week President Obama claimed that failure to pass his economic stimulus bill will have catastrophic consequences for the U.S economy. The reality is the catastrophe will be far greater with his plan than without it. If the trends of January and early February of 2009 continue, the rug will be completely pulled out from beneath the U.S. economy, and the full cost of the president’s ‘economic depressant package’ will be apparent to all.”

Like Faber, Schiff also worries about the dollar, saying that temporary aberrations have caused the dollar’s value to hold up despite the “corporate losses, frozen credit markets and plunging home prices” that “were the opening salvo in the unfolding economic crisis.”

Schiff says the dollar’s strength will be short-lived. And when the administration tries to fund all of its spending plans, it could send the dollar’s value plummeting.

“The dollar rally has run out of steam, gold has clearly broken out, and commodity prices are moving back up. … If foreign capital does not continue to pour into treasuries, interest rates and consumer prices in the U.S. will soar. At that point, we will finally be confronted with the real crises ….”

The predicted storm is coming. And it will get much worse before it gets better.

Prepare now to lower your standard of living. Increase savings and get out of debt. Live on less now, so you will have more to live on later.

But there is only one way to be truly safe from a storm. And this is something else that the recent tornadoes in Oklahoma drove home—only God can offer true protection. Isn’t it better that we turn to Him now, in advance of the full force of the storm heading in this direction?

For information on how best to prosper in the turbulent times ahead, read “How You Can Prosper in a Recession!”, The Seven Laws of Success and Repentance Toward God. •

Monday, February 09, 2009

HERES YOUR CHANGE

U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailouts as Senate Votes

By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged to provide up to $5.7 trillion more if needed. The total already tapped has decreased about 1 percent since November, mostly because foreign central banks are using fewer dollars in currency-exchange agreements called swaps. The Senate is to vote early this week on a stimulus package totaling at least $780 billion that President Barack Obama says is needed to avert a deeper recession. That measure would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.

Only the stimulus package to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates approved in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion in commitments are lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the authority of the Fed and the FDIC. The recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

Financial Rescue

The pledges, amounting to almost two-thirds of the value of everything produced in the U.S. last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up about 18 months ago. The promises are composed of about $1 trillion in stimulus packages, around $3 trillion in lending and spending and $5.7 trillion in agreements to provide aid.

Federal Reserve lending to banks peaked at a record $2.3 trillion in December, dropping to $1.83 trillion by last week. The Fed balance sheet is still more than double the $880 billion it was in the week before Sept. 17 when it agreed to accept lower-quality collateral.

The worst financial crisis in two generations has erased $14.5 trillion, or 33 percent, of the value of the world’s companies since Sept. 15; brought down Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.; and led to the takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. by Bank of America Corp.

The $9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world. It’s 13 times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and is almost enough to pay off every home mortgage loan in the U.S., calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve.

‘All the Stops’

“The Fed, Treasury and FDIC are pulling out all the stops to stop any widespread systemic damage to the economy,” said Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica Inc. in Dallas and a former senior economist at the central bank. “The federal government is on the hook for an awful lot of money but I think it’s needed to help the financial system recover.”

Bloomberg News tabulated data from the Fed, Treasury and FDIC and interviewed regulators, economists and academic researchers to gauge the full extent of the government’s rescue effort.

Commitments may expand again soon. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner postponed an announcement scheduled for today that was to focus on new guarantees for illiquid assets to insure against losses without taking them off banks’ balance sheets. The Treasury said it would delay the announcement until after the Senate votes on the stimulus package.

Program Delay

The government is already backing $301 billion of Citigroup Inc. securities and another $118 billion from Bank of America. The government hasn’t yet paid out on any of the guarantees.

The Fed said Friday that it is delaying the start a $200 billion program called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, to revive the market for securities based on consumer loans such as credit-card, auto and student borrowings.

Most of the spending programs are run out of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where Geithner served as president. He was sworn in as Treasury secretary on Jan. 26.

When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. The Federal Reserve so far is refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return. Collateral is an asset pledged by a borrower in the event a loan payment isn’t made.

Fed Sued

Bloomberg requested details of Fed lending under the Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit against the central bank Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure of borrower banks and their collateral. Arguments in the suit may be heard as soon as this month, according to the court docket. Bloomberg asked the Treasury in an FOIA request Jan. 28 for a detailed list of the securities it planned to guarantee for Citigroup and Bank of America. Bloomberg hasn’t received a response to the request.

The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

For Related News and Information:

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Pittman in New York at mpittman@bloomberg.net ; Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: February 9, 2009 00:01 EST

Friday, February 06, 2009

HARRY GORMAN

COMMENTARY BY HARRY GORMAN

MY FRIEND HARRY IS ALMOST 94 YEARS OLD

Fellow Americans,

"Out of the mouths of babes you sometimes hear wisdom their elders rarely exhibit".

Nice phrase to quote but, unfortunately, not true.

That innocent children need time to develop brain and thinking skills -- and years for -- growth, school, social contacts, work, mind enrichment through reading -- and then, perhaps wisdom.

I've "found" a few of these gifted young children and will ask them to comment on current events -- so often distorted by their elders, the media and politicians who speak with forked tongues, false promises -- and lies.
Look at the face of that loudmouth on today's attachment.

He is typical of the "true believer" Eric Hoffer so accurately describes. Don't confuse him with facts -- his mind is made up.
This zealot wants to save the world when all he needs do is look around him -- with open, not a zealot's glare, and see that our (his) America is being pushed into poverty -- even as we posture and rattle our non-existent "wealth" to show what charitable people we are. (which we are, to a fault).

That innocent child is there to remind Loudmouth
that the ones really being hurt by his insane giveaway doctrines -- are the innocent children, already burdened with a close to $11 TRILLION Federal Debt and about to taste the bitter fruits of yet another sure-to-fail policy -- President Obama's plan to spend another $2 TRILLION to 'jump start' and 'grow' our dying economy.

Throwing money at a dying economy will NOT work.
I lived the Depression of the 1930s and assure you that the New Deal did NOT cure the Depression.

It got really bad in 1933. When I was married in 1939 I was earning $24 a week, my wife $10 -- both of us lucky to be working when 25% of the working population was out of work.

What got us of the Depression was World War II.
The 1950s gave us the most prosperous times in our history because Japan and all of Europe were in a shambles and our factories were the only ones turning out products for the world market.

Since Nixon and Republican and Democrats in Congress tricked us into the Global Economy with phony promises of great jobs for Americans --- those lies have greased the plank down which our entire economy is heading for the sewer.

I predicted today's layoffs, foreclosures, assorted miseries years ago. Few listened. A few dubbed me "Mr. Doom and Gloom".
So, here, my last prediction "Funny Money" (not backed by gold) will create "jobs" -- along with hyper-inflation which will raise the cost of everything.

Obama will create mostly SERVICE JOBS (infrastructure, health care, pretty parks, police, other community SERVICES (which COST $$ and produce no E-X-P-O-R-T products.

AGAIN ---- only PRODUCTIVE JOBS that produce products for domestic sale and for EXPORT -- will bring in REAL money to fill our empty Treasury.
Unless you can get our factories back from overseas, we will shrink steadily to Third World standard of living.

So, President Obama -- unless you are willing to make the
CHANGE from "free" trade to "fair" trade, by dismantling those loss-loss "most favored nation" trade treaties, (including Commerce Secretary Judge Gregg's who "loves" N.A.F.T.A. and C.A.F.T.A. (both failures for U.S. -- you will FAIL,-- and leave that cute baby asking a sensible question: "What right do you (we) have to BURY him in debt he nor following generations can ever hope to clear off our mis-managed books?

And a JOB?. . . . a PRODUCTIVE JOB?..

H-m-m?

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

YOU WANTED CHANGE - HERE IT IS...

It Will Not Be The CHANGE You Expected!

By Leon Fisher

When the euphoria over the election of Barack Obama wears off, and the uncertainty of a rapidly deteriorating economy and the revulsion of the continuing bloodletting in the Mid-east begin to once again penetrate the thick skulls of the naive and gullible fools who were taken in by the mass media election hype wake up, they will find to their disappointment the same corrupt and incompetent government in Washington whose irresponsible policies have brought America to the edge of the abyss.

Obama, despite all his rhetoric of change and hope, has no intention of carrying out the will of the people, nor does he have the power to do so.

Contrary to the propaganda of the mass media, and the adoration of his mindless devotees, Obama has not come from the wilderness to lead the chosen ones out of the ever deepening morass of war and economic chaos to some utopian paradise, but will dutifully follow in the footsteps of those Presidents which preceded him, continuing to support the interests
of the greedy Globalist Capitalist class who hold the real power in America. Obama's actions thus far has reinforced the suspicions of many that he is going to be just another empty barrel echoing the same loud noises we have all heard so many times before.

Only the noise coming from this empty barrel sounds so much more convincing in comparison to the almost illiterate former President GW Bush.Obama can speak clearly and eloquently, and his youth suggests a new beginning seductive to the thinking of the average empty headed American voter more concerned with image than substance. This modern day snake oil salesman is just what the bankrupt political system needed to regain the credibility which it has lost in the eyes of the people. With polls taken in recent months showing the approval ratings of both President and Congress falling to their lowest levels in recent history, a public relations campaign centered around a candidate like Obama was inevitable.

With the help of the politically embedded mass media, and the support of egotistical high profile hypocrites in the entertainment industry, have succeeded once again in hoodwinking a significant portion of the public into supporting the status quo. A hint of what is in store for the American people can be gleaned from the comments of the new nominee for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Wall St. insider and admitted tax evader who advocates giving trillions more of taxpayer dollars to his former Wall St. associates while scaling back entitlement programs such as Social Security to help pay for it all. It is apparent that Geithner's remarks, and those of former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who advocates that white males should be excluded from any taxpayer funded construction projects, is part and parcel of the tactics of the ruling capitalist class of attacking social programs as wasteful and race baiting to divide and conquer. Judging from the men and women who make up Obama's Cabinet it is reasonable to assume that Obama's support for Wall St. and the war against the American worker begun by corporate hack and grade B actor Ronald Reagan, will continue.

While Obama promised to withdraw American troops from Iraq by 2010, many of these troops will not be coming home at all but redeployed to Afghanistan in an attempt to salvage a war which many consider already lost. In fact, only hours after taking office Obama approved air strikes into Pakistan, and in so doing wasted no time in establishing himself as the new warmonger in chief. His actions so far will no doubt be a disappointment to anti war activists who supported Obama and the Democrats during the election, as well as risking a further expansion of the war into Pakistan. However, those Americans against the war who voted for Obama should have known better, having already been burned voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006, and whose promises were never kept. If the actions of the new President are a let down to the anti war crowd, Obama's economic stimulus package will be nothing less than a total disaster for working Americans, whose support helped win the election.

With the details of the Obama economic stimulus package being made public, it is being viewed by its critics as nothing more than another wasteful Washington spending bill filled with the usual pork, with hundreds of billions more going to the same banks and corporate crooks who gave themselves millions in bonuses, corporate jets, buyouts, vacations, and remodeled offices with taxpayer dollars from the first bailout which the Jr Senator from Illinois we recall, interrupted his election campaign to rush back to Washington to vote for despite overwhelming public opinion against. Not even a month has gone by since Obama has taken office than it is becoming painfully obvious that the new President and his Administration will be nothing more than the toadies and lackeys of the same powerful lobbies and special interests whose cash has bought and sold successive governments in Washington for decades resulting in Americas declining fortunes, and whose fall draws near.

Leon Fisher

Saturday, January 31, 2009

GUANTANAMO PRISONERS

« Former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are reemerging as terrorists.
(Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images)

Guantanamo’s Catch-and-Releases Already Back to Terrorism

January 28, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com

Action: 520 detainees released. Result: 11 percent back fighting America. Bigger problem: What to do with the remaining 245 hardcore terrorists.

On Sunday, it was revealed that two men released from the U.S. terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay in 2007 had reemerged as top-level al Qaeda operatives. Three days later, other former Guantanamo prisoners were arrested. Is closing Guantanamo really such a good idea?

Appearing on a jihadist website, terrorist Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri taunted the U.S. Identifying himself by his Guantanamo number, 372, he said: “By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned for.”

Al-Shahri is now considered the number-two al Qaeda man in Yemen. Shown in a video seated next to al-Shahri is prisoner 333, also known as Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, who is now a ranking al Qaeda field commander.

Then on Tuesday, more bad news emerged. Saudi Arabia announced that it had rearrested nine Islamist terrorists, including at least two former Guantanamo inmates.

These latest Guantanamo catch-and-release resurfacings couldn’t have come at much worse of a time for President Barack Obama, who recently issued an executive order to close the Guantanamo facility and is looking for a home for the remaining 245 terrorists.

Although Europe—and much of the rest of the world—lobbied for Guantanamo’s closure, Europeans have now found themselves in the prickly position of having gotten what they wished for.

According to Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, none of the 27 member countries are “very hot” on taking inmates from Guantanamo. In fact, many European countries including Britain, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Slovenia are rejecting detainees. Even the German government, which pushed especially hard to shutter Guantanamo, is split on the issue.

Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said that member states could not accept any Guantanamo residents unless Obama’s administration could prove that the prisoners posed no further security risks.

And that could be a bit difficult. According to the U.S. Defense Department, so far 11 percent of former Guantanamo detainees are known to have reintegrated themselves into terrorist networks or are actively fighting against the U.S. True numbers may be even higher.

However, at least one congresswoman, as quoted by Fox News, says the report should not slow down the Guantanamo closure.

Further complicating the issue is that human rights groups oppose returning many of the prisoners to their home countries because they may be put at risk.

The price America will end up paying for policies such as shutting this prison down is revealed in Stephen Flurry’s article “Obama’s CIA Pick Reveals Radical Shift in Fighting Terrorism.” •

Thursday, January 29, 2009

MEXICO AND PAKISTAN - COLLAPSING RIGHT NOW

Mexico: Bordering on Collapse

January 29, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com

The United States faces a number of serious crises. Here’s one many Americans haven’t yet considered.

Brad Macdonald

Islamic terrorists are not the only ones with a liking for decapitation. In the Mexican town of Praxedis last week, police commander Martin Castro’s severed head appeared in front of the local police station, left in an ice cooler.

A calling card from the Sinoloa drug cartel accompanied the bloodied gift.

Beheading is a tool worn with use in the macabre profession of Mexican drug cartels. Last month, eight soldiers and a state police officer were found beheaded in the state of Guerero. Along with the corpses was the message, “For every one of us you kill, we’ll kill 10 of you.” And if you think that’s sadistic, consider the former occupation of Santiago Meza Lopez. Last week, Lopez admitted to helping a drug cartel dispose of more than 300 bodies by dissolving them in sodium hydroxide.

“According to Mexico’s attorney general, 6,616 people died in drug-trafficking violence last year,” the Wall Street Journal reported this week. That’s in one year. “A high percentage of those killed were themselves criminal, but many law enforcement agents battling organized crime were also murdered. The carnage continues. For the first 22 days of this year the body count is 354″ (emphasis mine throughout). The number of deaths in 2008 was double the figure for 2007.

This trend is indicative of a major crisis. Mexico is coming unhinged.

Drug cartels have stepped up their war against the Mexican government since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderón was elected and began a campaign to destroy organized crime. As soon as Calderón began confronting the cartels, observed the Journal, it became “apparent that the cartels would stop at nothing to preserve their operations, and that a state commitment to confrontation meant that violence would escalate.”

Escalate it did. Emboldened by billion-dollar bank accounts, vast recruitment pools of countless unemployed, desperate Mexicans, friendship with international crime organizations, support from major-league weapons suppliers, and, above all, an insatiable American demand for their supply, Mexico’s drug cartels in recent years have transformed into well-equipped, well-organized, technologically advanced, highly mobile, powerful armies!

That’s no exaggeration.

Retired U.S. Army general and former drug czar Barry McCaffrey, who recently visited Mexico, assessed the struggle between the government and the drug kingdoms thus:

The outgunned Mexican law enforcement authorities face armed criminal attacks from platoon-sized units employing night vision goggles, electronic intercept collection, encrypted communications, fairly sophisticated information operations, seagoing submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, rpgs, Anti-Tank 66mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50-cal sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40mm grenade machine guns.

These illegal drug cartels are better-financed, better-equipped and better-organized than some national armies!

And that’s not half the story. In addition to their impressive firepower and taste for brutality, both of which they have proven willing to use, these organizations have infiltrated deep within the Mexican government. Corruption infects the government like cancer, giving the drug lords a decisive advantage over Calderón and his dreams of squelching Mexico’s drug trade.

Last October, for example, 35 employees of the Office of the Mexican Attorney General’s anti-organized-crime unit were arrested and charged with corruption. It’s widely recognized that corruption riddles lower levels of the Mexican government, especially in states, cities and towns along the U.S. border through which drugs flow incessantly, but this arrest proved that even the upper echelons of government are not out of the reach of cartels.

After the arrests, it emerged that the top officials were paid up to $450,000 per month to funnel information to the drug lords. In Mexico, local police officers make around $10,000 per year, senators around $48,000, and the president $220,000. Corruption is inevitable when government employees can potentially earn more in a month protecting and facilitating the work of the cartels than they do in an entire year working against them for the government. In some smaller towns, the loyalty of the entire police force has been purchased for a few hundred thousand dollars. In some cases, the support of entire towns has been purchased by cash-rich drug cartels promising to take care of loyal townsfolk.

Further evidence of the cartels’ reach emerged last November, when Noé Ramírez Mandujano, a lead figure in the Mexican government’s anti-drug campaign, was arrested on suspicion of accepting a $450,000 payoff from a drug cartel he was supposed to be hunting down. Manuel Mondragon, a senior police officer in Mexico City, admitted that a “spiderweb of corruption has penetrated many parts of our department.” Corruption plagues every nook and cranny of the Mexican government, from local police officers to police chiefs to mayors to judges to the attorney general’s office to members of the military!

Rejecting a cartel’s advances is virtually impossible—particularly when remaining loyal to Calderón could result in the loss of your head!

Even President Calderón is not safe. Reporting on the chaos in Mexico, the Telegraph in London reported earlier this month that “an officer in the elite presidential guard was recently accused of taking thousands of dollars from traffickers in exchange for reports on President Calderón’s movements.” Analysts at Stratfor have been tracking the deteriorating situation in Mexico for more than two years. Last December they explained the reason for, and the sobering extent of, the corruption within the Mexican government:

The problem of corruption boils down to the lure of money and the threat of death. Known by the phrase plata o plomo (which literally translates to “silver or lead,” with the implied meaning, “take a bribe or take a bullet”), the choice given to law enforcement and government officials puts them under the threat of death if they do not permit (or, as is often the case, facilitate) cartel operations. With the government historically unable to protect all of its personnel from these kinds of threats—and certainly unable to match the cartels’ deep pockets—Mexico’s law enforcement officials have become almost universally unreliable.

No wonder President Calderón is losing his war to the drug cartels: Mexico’s law enforcement system is being infiltrated, undermined and hijacked by the drug cartels!

There’s a term for a state that is incapable of enforcing law. It’s a failed state!

And that is what many are saying Mexico is on the road to becoming. In America, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council have all, in one way or another, recently expressed alarm that Mexico could collapse under the strain of drug cartel violence.

In its “2009 National Drug Threat Assessment,” released on December 15, the U.S. Department of Justice stated that Mexican drug traffickers “represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States.” With that statement, said Stratfor, “the Justice Department is acknowledging that Mexican drug cartels are the number-one criminal enemy of the U.S. government—a position held in the past by Irish, Italian, Russian and Colombian criminal enterprises”—a reality that has been extant for some time (Dec. 17, 2008).

The U.S. Joint Forces Command released a similar warning recently. “In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world,” warned the command’s “Joint Operating Environment (joe 2008)” report, “two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico. … In particular, the growing assault by the drug cartels and their thugs on the Mexican government over the past several years reminds one that an unstable Mexico could represent a homeland security problem of immense proportions to the United States.”

Pause for a moment and think about that: American military officials believe Mexico is at risk of a “rapid and sudden collapse” in the same way that Pakistan is!

That may sound preposterous to some. But it’s not so hard to believe if you consider that other major crises are converging on Mexico in addition to the chaos being caused by the rapidly deteriorating security situation.

First, Mexico’s economy, which is tied closely to the American economy, is being hit hard by the global economic crisis. Economic growth is slowing, the peso appears unstable and has devalued by about 20 percent since the beginning of 2008, less cash is flowing from America into Mexico, and, perhaps most dangerously, unemployment is rising, which ultimately leads to a disgruntled, restless society. In addition to those economic woes, oil revenues, which comprise 40 percent of the federal budget, will soon begin to plummet.

In short, the Mexican economy verges on collapse!

Second, Mexico’s political landscape is shifting and steadily growing more unstable. “Mexico has seen a massive spike in crime and drug-related violence coincide with the first eight years of rule by Calderón’s National Action Party (pan),” Stratfor reported. “To make things worse, the global financial crisis has begun to impact Mexico … and the impact on employment could be devastating. Given the confluence of events, it is almost guaranteed that Calderón and the pan will suffer political losses going forward, weakening the party’s ability to move forward with decisive action” (Dec. 9, 2008).

Stratfor concluded its analysis with a warning similar to the one issued by the American government:

Mexico’s most critical challenge is the convergence of events it now faces. The downturn in the economy, the political dynamics or the deteriorating security situation, each on its own, might not pose an insurmountable problem for Mexico. What could prove insurmountable is the confluence of all three, which now appears to be in the making.

Perhaps it’s difficult for Americans to replace the images of Mexico’s white, sandy beaches, deluxe hotels and bright, cheap tropical fruit with images of a failed state.

Try this.

Think about Pakistan. Nestled between the Middle East and Asia, it can be much easier to consider Pakistan in those terms. Its economy is tanking and unemployment is growing. Infrastructure is crumbling, and social unrest and dissatisfaction are seething. Handicapped by political gridlock, Pakistan’s central government is weak and ineffective. It has lost control over large swaths of territory, and is now unable to make major decisions, enact legislation and implement a united foreign policy. In short, the nation cannot set itself back on the path to success.

Worse still, Pakistan’s government has been deeply infiltrated by radical Islamists who wield significant influence over the nation’s military and intelligence departments. Entire regions of Pakistan are now controlled by radical Islamic groups, which, blinded by their religious aspirations, have little desire to ensure people are fed, create jobs, stimulate an economy or guarantee social stability, thereby exacerbating the nation’s spiral toward disaster.

Now take it one step further. Pakistan’s internal chaos makes it a national security threat to adjacent states, and even the world. The terrorist attacks last November in Mumbai, India, you might remember, were traced back to radical Islamists operating out of Pakistan.

In Pakistan, chaos reigns supreme.

Finally, imagine if Pakistan was situated on America’s southern border! •

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